Iain Banks - The State of The Art

The ride’s a little bumpy on the famous Road of Skulls…

'My God , what’s happening!' Sammil Mc9 cried, waking up.

The cart he and his companion had hitched a ride on was shaking violently.

Mc9 put his grubby hands on the plank of rotten wood which formed one of the cart’s sides and looked down at the legendary Road, wondering what had caused the cart’s previously merely uncomfortable rattling to become a series of bone-jarring crashes. He expected to discover that they had lost a wheel, or that the snooze-prone carter had let the vehicle wander right off the Road into a boulder-field, but he saw neither of these things. He stared, goggle-eyed, at the Road surface for a moment, then collapsed back inside the cart.

'Golly,' he said to himself, 'I didn’t know the Empire ever had enemies with heads that big. Retribution from beyond the grave, that’s what this is.' He looked forward; the cart’s senile driver was still asleep, despite the vehicle’s frenzied bouncing. Beyond him, the lop-eared old quadruped between the shafts was having some difficulty finding its footing on the oversized skulls forming that part of the Road, which led… Mc9 let his eyes follow the thin white line into the distance… to the City.

It lay on the horizon of the moor, a shimmering blur. Most of the fabled megalopolis was still below the horizon, but its sharp, glittering towers were unmistakable, even through the blue and shifting haze. Mc9 grinned as he saw it, then watched the silent, struggling horse-thing as it clopped and skidded its way along the Road; it was sweating heavily, and beset by a small cloud of flies buzzing around its ear-flapping head like bothersome electrons around some reluctant nucleus.

The old carter woke up and lashed inaccurately at the nag between the shafts, then nodded back into his slumber. Mc9 looked away and gazed out over the moor.

Usually the moor was a cold and desolate place, wrapped in wind and rain, but today it was blisteringly hot; the air reeked of marsh gases and the heath was sprinkled with tiny bright flowers. Mc9 sank back into the straw again, scratching and squirming as the cart bucked and heaved about him. He tried shifting the bundles of straw and the heaps of dried dung into more comfortable configurations, but failed. He was just thinking that the journey would seem very long, and be uncomfortable indeed if this outrageous juddering went on, when the crashes died away and the cart went back to its more normal rattling and squeaking. 'Thank goodness they didn’t hold out too long,' Mc9 muttered to himself, and lay down again, closing his eyes.

…he was driving a haycart down a leafy lane. Birds were chirping, the wine was cool, money weighed in his pocket…

He wasn’t quite asleep when his companion — whose name, despite their long association, Mc9 had never bothered to find out — surfaced from beneath the straw and dung beside him and said, 'Retribution?'

'Eh? What?' Mc9 said, startled.

'What retribution?'

'Oh,' Mc9 said, rubbing his face and grimacing as he squinted at the sun, high in the blue-green sky. 'The retribution inflicted upon us as Subjects of the Reign, by the deceased Enemies of the Beloved Empire.'

The small companion, whose spectacular grubbiness was only partially obscured by a covering of debatably less filthy straw, blinked furiously and shook his head. 'No… me mean, what "retribution" mean?'

'I just told you,' Mc9 complained. 'Getting back at somebody.'

'Oh,' said the companion, and sat mulling this over while Mc9 drifted off to sleep again.

…there were three young milkmaids walking ahead of his haycart; he drew level and they accepted a ride. He reached down to…

His companion dug him in the ribs. 'Like when me take too many bedclothes and you kick I out of bed, or me drink your wine and you make I drink three guts of laxative beer, or when you pregnanted that governor’s daughter and him set the Strategic Debt Collectors on you, or someplace doesn’t pay all its taxes and Its Majesty orders the first born of every family have their Birth Certificates endorsed, or…?'

Mc9, who was well used to his companion employing the verbal equivalent of a Reconnaissance By Fire, held up one hand to stem this flood of examples. His companion continued mumbling away despite the hand over his mouth. Finally the mumbling stopped.

'Yes,' Mc9 told him. 'That’s right.' He took his hand away.

'Or is it like when—?'

'Hey,' Mc9 said brightly. 'How about I tell you a story?'

'Oh, a story ,' beamed his companion, clutching at Mc9’s sleeve in anticipation. 'A story would be… ' his grimy features contorted like a drying mudflat as he struggled to find a suitable adjective. '… Nice.'

'OK. Let go my sleeve and pass me the wine to wet my throat.'

'Oh,' Mc9’s companion said, and looked suddenly wary and doubtful. He glanced over the front of the cart, past the snoring driver and the toiling beast pulling them, and saw the City, still just a distant shimmer at the end of the Road’s bleached ribbon of bone. 'OK,' he sighed.

He handed the wineskin to Mc9, who guzzled about half of what was left before the squealing, protesting companion succeeded in tearing it from his grasp, spilling most of the remainder over the two of them and squirting a jet of the liquid spattering over the neck of the snoring driver, and on out as far as the head of the horse-like animal (which lapped appreciatively at the drops spilling down its sweat-matted face).

The decrepit driver woke with a start and looked around wildly, rubbing his damp neck, waving his frayed whip and apparently fully expecting to have to repel robbers, cut-throats and villains.

Mc9 and his companion grinned sheepishly at him when he turned to look down at them. He scowled, dried his neck with a rag, then turned round and relapsed into his slumber.

'Thanks,' Mc9 told his companion. He wiped his face and sucked at one of the fresh wine stains on his shirt.

The companion took a careful, dainty sip of wine, then twisted the stopper firmly back into the gut and placed it behind his neck as he lay back. Mc9 belched, yawned.

'Yes,' his companion said earnestly. 'Tell I a story. Me would love to hear a story. Tell I a story of love and hate and death and tragedy and comedy and horror and joy and sarcasm, tell I about great deeds and tiny deeds and valiant people and hill people and huge giants and dwarfs, tell I about brave women and beautiful men and great sorcerorcerors… and about unenchanted swords and strange, archaic powers and horrible, sort of ghastly… things that, uhm… shouldn’t be living, and… ahm, funny diseases and general mishaps. Yeah, me like. Tell I. Me want.'

Mc9 was falling asleep again, having had not the slightest intention of telling his companion a story in the first place. The companion prodded him in the back.

'Hey!' He prodded harder. 'Hey! The story! No go to sleep! What about the story?'

'Fornicate the story,' Mc9 said sleepily, not opening his eyes.

'WAA!' the companion said. The carter woke up, turned round and clipped him across the ear. The companion went quiet and sat there, rubbing the side of his head. He prodded Mc9 again and whispered, 'You said you’d tell me a story!'

'Oh, read a book,' mumbled Mc9, snuggling into the straw.

The small companion made a hissing noise and sat back, his lips tight and his little hands clenched under his armpits. He glared at the Road stretching back to the wavering horizon.

After a while, the companion shrugged, reached under the wineskin for his satchel and took out a small, fat black book. He prodded Mc9 once more. 'All we’ve got is this Bible,' he told him. 'What bit should me read?'