Iain Banks - Walking on Glass

Quiss was depressed by this. He had thought it would be possible to find some way of getting out of one's skull in this place. Perhaps it was thought that here in Castle Doors reality itself was so strange that there was no need for any substance to make it more so. That was Ajayi's sort of thinking; logical but out of touch, even naive.

Then, by chance, he found something which really did do just that; alter reality. But not in the way he had expected.

He had been exploring alone, deep down, well underneath the level of the kitchens and the great central clock mechanism. The walls were of naked slate, blasted and scraped out of the rock on which the castle stood. Light came from transparent pipes set in the ceiling, but it was cold and still quite dark. He came to one of the heavy, metal-strapped doors he had seen time and time again on his travels in the lower levels, but unlike all the rest, this one was open very slightly. He could see a glint of light as he passed; he stopped, looked around, then pulled the door towards him.

It was a small, low-ceilinged room. The ceiling was like that of the upper reaches of the castle, made of glass, with a few dim specimens of the light-fish swimming slowly to and fro. The floor was rock. The room had one other door, on the far wall, also constructed of wood and metal strapping. In the centre of the room, alone in the place, stood a small stool. Above it was what looked like a hole in the glass ceiling.

Quiss looked up and down the dark corridor. There was nobody about. He slipped into the room, observing as he did so that the door had in fact been locked, but somehow the bolt had missed the hole it ought to have slipped into. He let the door swing to behind him, so that it caught on the extruded bolt, but was as closed and as unobstrusive from the outside as possible. He explored the small room.

The far door was locked securely. There was nothing in the place except for the small stool under the hole in the ceiling glass. It looked like the stools the scullions employed to bring themselves up to the right level to attend to their duties in the kitchens. The hole above the stool was dark; something seemed to be shielding the inside of the hole from the glow of the light-fish. A large, shadowy shape filled a circle nearly a metre in diameter around the hole, which was ringed with what looked like some sort of fur, like a collar, and which was just about big enough for a human head to go through. Warily, Quiss went up to it. He stood on the stool.

There were two metal bands, hoops of iron which extended from the lower surface of the glass ceiling's iron reinforcing bands, with leather pads on them. The U-shaped pieces of metal were on either side of the hole, a little over half a metre apart, and hanging about a quarter of a metre down from the ceiling. Looking at them more closely, Quiss saw they were adjustable; they could be lowered or raised slightly, and set further apart or closer together. He didn't like the look of them. He had seen pieces of torturing apparatus which looked vaguely similar.

He peered up into the dark hole in the glass ceiling. He carefully touched the fur surround. It seemed ordinary enough. He took the end of his loose-fitting fur sleeve and poked the pinched cuff up into the hole. It came back down unscathed, and he inspected it carefully. He grimaced, stuck a small finger into the gap. Nothing. He put his whole hand in. There was the faintest of tingling feelings, like blood going back into a cold limb after a winter's walk.

He looked at his hand. It too seemed undamaged and the tingling had disappeared. He put his head tentatively up towards the hole, the fur tickling his grey-haired head. The hole smelled of... fur, if anything. He stuck his head up inside, not the full way, and only briefly. He had a very vague sensation of tingling on his skin, and an even more vague impression of scattered lights.

He put his hand in one more time, felt the tickling, tingling on it, then checked the door again. He stood on the stool and put his head fully up into the hole.

The tingling disappeared quickly. The impression of tiny scattered lights, like a rather too consistent starfield, stayed, and it made no difference whether his eyes were open or not. He thought for a moment he could hear voices, but wasn't sure. The lights were unsettling. He felt he could make them out individually, but at the same time felt there were too many - far too many - to count, or even for him to be able to see separately. Also, he had the disturbing impression that he was looking at the surface of a globe; all of it, all of it at once, in some way spread out in front of him so that no part of it hid another pan. His mind swam. The lights seemed to beckon him, and he could feel himself starting to slide down towards them, then pull back as he fought the impulse. He arrived back at some still point.

He got down out of the hole again. He rubbed his chin. Very odd. He put his head back in. Temporarily ignoring the lights, he snapped his fingers, outside, in the room. He could just hear the small sound. He felt for the iron loops and put his arms through them, supporting himself there as one was obviously meant to.

He felt the pull of those lights again, and let himself go towards them, sliding down towards one area. He found that just by thinking about them he could head for other areas. It was as though he was parachuting, able to steer however he wanted as he fell.

As he approached the area of lights he was sliding towards, he got the impression of them also being strangely globe-like yet spread out. He still had the impression that he could see too many, that they should not look so individual for their apparent size, but he ignored this as he approached the surface of whatever the lights were placed upon. He tried to convince himself that he was floating towards the outside of the sphere, that he had started at the centre and worked his way out, but for some reason he felt he was falling down the way, onto a convex surface.

A single light approached; an orb of shifting, multi-coloured hues, like something cellular, dividing and re-dividing within a single membrane, yet with the patterns in the sphere somehow like distorted pictures, images thrown haphazardly on an unfixed screen. He felt himself float round this odd, scaleless thing, the other lights still apparently as far away as they had always been, and he felt oddly attracted to this globe of light, and that he could somehow, without damage to it or himself, enter inside it.

He was still, when he thought about it, aware he was standing in the room. He snapped his fingers, felt the edge of his tunic sleeve where it still hung at his side, then willed himself to enter the glowing, slowly pulsing sphere.

It was like walking into a room filled with babbling voices and lit with chaotic, ever-changing images. His head was full of confusion for a moment, then he thought he started to glimpse patterns and real shapes within the inchoate mix.

He let himself relax slightly, ready to watch, and just then all the images and noises seemed to coalesce, become part of some single feeling, which included the impression of touch and taste and smell as well. Quiss reacted against this, and was back in the noisy, gaudily chaotic room-feeling. He relaxed again, just a little more warily and slowly. The strange crystallisation of sensation occurred again, and slowly Quiss became aware of some sort of other thought-process, a set of feelings which was at once intimately close but still utterly cut off from him.

The truth of what was going on suddenly hit him, stunning him. He was inside somebody else's head.

He was so amazed he didn't have time to be revolted or really shocked before the novelty, the sheer interest of it all, took him, excited him. He shifted his body slightly, feeling in a very distant sort of way, like something in a dream, his feet move on the small stool he stood on, his armpits settling a little more comfortably into the leather-softened hoops.