Iain Banks - Walking on Glass

There was a muffled explosion somewhere on their right, and a thick orange glow spread through the mist, like a setting sun. There was a clattering noise and some howls. The orange glow to their right faded but did not disappear. The seneschal glanced at it briefly but did not appear excessively worried, even when - after a few moments - the scullions running past and round them were all carrying pails of water and sand, fire blankets, cutting gear and stretchers.

"That's another thing," Quiss said as they came closer to where he had dumped the mendacious scullion in the cauldron. "With all this equipment for moving things about the place," he gestured up towards the moving line of clinking cutlery above their heads, looping under the assorted ducting and swivelled prisms of the kitchens" ceiling, "not to mention the clock mechanism and transmission set-up and the complicated plumbing for the floors and ceilings

"Yes?" said the seneschal.

Quiss scowled and said, "Why can't you get the food to us while it's still hot?"

They were passing the vat Quiss had thrown the small attendant into. The scullion appeared to have survived the ordeal and was sitting, quivering and bedraggled, being wiped down by some of its colleagues. An under-cook was supervising the cleaning of the stove around the cauldron and the preparation of fresh ingredients to replace those lost. The seneschal stopped, looking at the work being done with a critical eye. The scullions worked even faster. The one Quiss had dumped in the gruel saw the huge fur-clad figure of the human and started shaking so hard that little flecks of soupy stuff flew off it, like water from a dog.

"Well," the seneschal said, "it's a long way from here to there."

"So construct a dumb-waiter."

"That would be..." the seneschal paused, watching one of the apprentice chefs dipping a long ladle into the cauldron the unfortunate attendant had just vacated. The apprentice put the ladle to its mouth, then nodded appreciatively and started back down the ladder as the seneschal continued, "... going against tradition. It is a great honour for our waiters to take our guests their meals. I certainly could not deprive them of that. A dumbwaiter would be..." the apprentice chef with the ladle was talking to the under-cook now, who also tasted the ladle's contents and nodded, while the seneschal said,'... impersonal."

"Who cares if it's impersonal? These aren't necessarily the sort of... persons I want to have anything to do with anyway," Quiss said, indicating the various attendants, waiters and scullions around them as the under-cook respectfully approached the seneschal, bowing to him. The seneschal stooped slightly as the under-cook borrowed a stool and stood on it to whisper something into his master's ear. The seneschal looked briefly at the quivering attendant being looked after by the others, then he shrugged and said something to the under-cook, who quickly got back down off the stool and turned to the others.

The seneschal looked at Quiss and said, "Unfortunately there are not only your feelings to be taken into account. I have the welfare of my staff to think of. Such is life. I must go now." He turned and left, ignoring the shouts and screams of the small wet attendant as - after the under-cook had gathered the other scullions round, pointed to the cauldron, the ladle and its own belly before nodding at the wet attendant - the kicking, howling creature was grabbed by the same scullions who had recently been comforting it, hoisted up the ladder still resting against the side of the great vat, and thrown back in. The lid clanged down, rattling on its pulleys.

Quiss stamped his foot in frustration, then marched back up the steps to retrieve the rest of his furs and make his way back to the castle's upper reaches.

Open-Plan Go had turned out to be a game of placing black and white stones on a grid to claim territory on an infinite board. It had taken him and the woman two hundred days - as they measured them - to work out and play the game. Again, they were nearly finished now, and here he was yet again, trying to get the heating improved. Since their last game, the heat and light had deteriorated.

"And now I suppose it'll be my fault the heating hasn't got better immediately," he muttered to himself as he walked along the narrow passageway. She would blame him. Well, let her; he wasn't bothered. Just so long as they could finish this stupid game and get on to his answer. She might be better at thinking up things as stupid as their games (infinite pieces which were only infinite in one direction, from a point ; you could hold one end but it was still infinite! Insane!), but he was certain he had the right answer, and a more direct and obvious one than hers had been. He should never have let her talk him into letting her give hers first when they had been deciding how to handle this whole situation. Her and her smooth-talking, "logical" arguments! What a fool he'd been!

"We'll get it right now though," he said to himself, as he ascended through the castle's twisted interior, and the light faded and the cold grew more sharp, and he gathered his furs more closely around him. "Yes, we'll - I'll - get it right this time. Definitely."

Muttering and talking to himself, the old, massive, motley-haired man shuffled through the darkening levels of the castle, wrapped in his furs and hopes and fears.

Quiss's solution to the problem, his answer to the riddle "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" was, "The immovable object loses; force always wins!"

(The red crow, sitting on the balustrade of the balcony, had cackled with laughter. Ajayi had sighed.)

The attendant came back after a few minutes, its little red boots ruffling the hem of its robe. "Much as I dislike being the bearer of bad news..." it began.

A succession of heavy trucks rumbled down Amwell Street as Graham turned onto it from Rosebery Avenue; they were big grey lorries, stone or chippings carriers with great corrugated sides and a plume of dust trailing after them in the near-still air. Graham was heading slightly uphill now, and slowed his pace accordingly. He listened to the traffic, felt the warm air slip by, moved his portfolio from one hand to the other, and thought of her.

He hadn't been able to see Slater for two days after the party, and that time had passed in a daze for him. On the Monday, though, Slater had been in the small steamy cafe and sandwich bar on Red Lion Street which he usually spent most of his term days in, and Graham had supplied him with cups of tea and expensive rounds of smoked salmon on granary bread while Slater slowly, teasingly, told him about Sara.

Yes, they had been neighbours in Shrewsbury, but of course they had only seen each other during the school holidays, and of course they hadn't made friends over some grotty little terrace-house garden fence; he'd first noticed her from the tree house in his parents" garden while she was learning to ride her new pony in her parents" ten acres of mature woodland and well-kept pasture.

"A tree house?" Graham teased back. "Wasn't that a bit butch?" Slater replied tartly: "I was being Jane, sweetie, not Tarzan."

Sara's best years. Slater continued, had been just after leaving school. She had been a scamp in those days, he said, sighing with exaggerated wistfulness. She drank Guinness, smoked Gauloises and would eat anything as long as it was loaded with garlic. Odour-free she wasn't. She carried a large handbag whenever she went out. It contained potatoes to stuff up the exhaust pipes of expensive cars, and a very large sharp knife for tearing holes in the hoods of convertibles. If it could be arranged, she threw up into the cars through the holes so created.