Iain Banks - Transition

Turning the seat to face the open doorway, I sit back and put my hands up.

Ms Tobbing spins across the doorway, legs spread and slightly bent, gun levelled. Dark blue trouser suit, hair bunned. That’s all I have time to confirm before she Tasers me and I end up on the floor, jerking and spasming. It’s more painful and distressing than I imagined. I almost wish I’d chosen a different route through those futures, but the others were even bloodier. Not that I’ll expect any thanks, of course.

The rest arrive mob-handed seconds after Ms Tobbing stops zapping me and Dr Jildeep himself administers a syringe full of tranquilliser. I dare say they thought of including something supposed to stop me transitioning too, but those drugs can be permanently damaging and they’ll want me intact.

Wait. This path leads to me killing most of them. Another set of futures bursts into my mind, one of the areas or volumes I couldn’t see into clearly a minute earlier, but which – now that I’m closer to them – have become more distinct. Can I do what this implies I can do? Seriously? I’m slipping away here; I need to decide fast. If I just think in through here-

Ms Tobbing spins across the doorway, legs spread and slightly bent, gun levelled. Dark blue trouser suit, hair bunned. Combined earpiece and microphone. Nice blue blouse. That’s all I have time to confirm before she fires the Taser at me. I’ve used the five seconds and the high-def clarity of my X-ray-specs vision of the palace to pull open a drawer, grab a long boxed roll of aluminium foil and – knowing exactly the trajectory that the Taser’s two little barbs are going to take – feel them whack into it, letting the gun’s charge go zapping down the wires to discharge harmlessly into the foil. My other hand is wrapped in a kitchen towel taken from the same drawer; I use it to grab the wires connecting the barbs to the gun and yank them hard, pulling the still-in-the-course-of-being-surprised Ms Tobbing towards me before she can think to let go of the Taser.

Well, now we find out if the future-path vision thing is going to work or not. According to what I’ve just visualised this looks almost easy.

My hand closes round Ms Tobbing’s right wrist.

I sneeze suddenly, explosively.

My old self stares at me blankly.

Hmm. One of my more handsome incarnations. Though now with snot hanging from his nose. But not even a “Gesundheit.” Really.

I let go of the Taser’s trigger and the gun stops firing uselessly into the packet of foil, now fallen to the floor where I – he – was standing a moment ago. I prise his fingers off my wrist. He smiles vaguely, then shakes his head, his expression changes profoundly and he starts talking loudly in what I think is Slovenian (I have English, German, French, Italian, Mandarin). I use the gun to smack him under the jaw, shutting the kitchen door on him as he’s still staggering backwards.

“Tobbing,” I tell the radio as I turn back down the corridor, letting the expended Taser cartridge fall to the floor and digging a new one out of a pocket to snap onto the gun. “Just dropped an unidentified civilian in the kitchen.”

“Civilian? You sure?” Jildeep’s voice says. “There isn’t supposed to be anybody else here.”

“Well, I’m sure.”

“You still with him?”

“No, I’m heading-”

“Stay with him! Stay – get back there!”

“Oh, forget it,” I mutter.

Sneeze.

No, still no “Gesundheit.”

Same as before except this time I don’t use the radio, I just start jogging down the corridor. There’s some chatter about somebody hearing a Taser go off, but when I’m asked I say I heard nothing. Being a woman is interesting. Moving feels different; broader hips, I suppose, and altered weight distribution. Breasts move very slightly with each pace, but constrained. Sports bra.

Two corners, two corridors and one door later I’m at the entrance to the jetty, cracking the door. I can see Gongova and the blocker – a weedy-looking guy smoking a cigarette with a look of intense concentration. I Taser him and he falls into the waters by the side of the moored launch. Gongova starts, turns, her hand goes for a gun inside her jacket, then she relaxes again and stands there, the gun held loosely in her hand, pointing straight down at the jetty’s timbers. When Jildeep gets here to see what’s been going on she’s going to shoot him in the groin for cheating on her with Tobbing (this is even true, so not entirely all my own work). Appalled at what she has done she will then sit down and sob until this is all over. Which will be in about two and a half minutes.

The weedy blocker guy will drag himself out of the canal coughing dirty water in about a minute, but he won’t be blocking anything for a while and in the meantime the side of the palace he was covering is open.

What I’m doing here is conventionally impossible. You can’t transition into the mind of somebody who can themselves flit, or indeed has ever flitted, even with help. The target individual has to be unAware. As long as they are in that sense innocent and virginal, they’re completely vulnerable; as soon as they’ve completed a single transition, even an assisted one, even one where they’ve simply been taken along for the ride, they’re immune. There would appear to be no exceptions to this rule and it has become so accepted that the Concern has never thought to prepare its agents against the possibility of somebody exercising this ability against them. So I can flit from mind to mind here and cause any internal mayhem I want with seeming impunity.

I still don’t feel I can transition to a different reality altogether and so escape completely – at least not without an incentive so immediate and powerful that I’d rather not subject myself to the experience in the first place – but if this new ability is the trade-off, I’ll happily accept it.

In other words I still need septus, unless I’m feeling feeling very brave or especially desperate, but that shouldn’t be a problem here; these guys ought to be loaded with it. I’d rather have the stuff in the box which Adrian is bringing from London, because it’s Mrs Mulverhill’s finest, untainted with the contaminants that make it easy to trace the flitter, but I’ll take these guys’ supply just in case.

Two of the people searching the upper floors realise they’ve always loved each other and have wasted far too much time already; they fall to fucking on a hallway floor. Another stares fascinated at his own reflection in a bathroom mirror, like he’s never seen himself before. Another loses herself in the depths of a – to be fair – fabulously patterned Persian rug – a Kashan, I’d guess – while another decides to take off all his clothes and dive into the Grand Canal from the roof. The guy at the controls of the launch on the canal sees this, decides he’s in love with the world and vows never to use an internal combustion engine ever again. He takes the keys out of the ignition and drops them into the milky-green waves with a wistful smile. The other guy in the launch just falls into a deep and peaceful sleep. One of the people guarding the calles is absolutely convinced he’s just seen his years-dead father walk past and takes off after him. The rest are still covered by the second blocker, but by the time Jildeep’s even half worked out what’s going on I’ve arrived at the entrance hall and Tasered him as well. Dr Jildeep escapes, skittering down a narrow service corridor – it was him or the blocker with the Taser – but that’s okay.

I’m in Jildeep’s mind now and discovering something galling (I mean apart from the fact he wanted to shoot me in the legs just there, even though his orders forbade this). None of these people have any septus on them. They’re in here clean, just in case I do overpower one of them and take their supply from them and disappear. They were thinking about a conventional physical whack over the back of the head rather than my rather more subtle consciousness manipulation, but the same precautionary principle defeats either, which is irritating.