Iain Banks - Transition

“Why are you doing this, Mulverhill? You could have been on the Council years ago. There’d have been peace, a pardon. No grudges. We’re pragmatists and you’re gifted. You made your point. What more can you want?”

“Give up this day our Mendelbrot.”

“All this is tired, Theodora,” Adrian ’s voice says. Mrs Mulverhill uses Adrian ’s face to smile at a couple of passing nuns, monochrome punctuations amidst the colourful throng. “And keeping me talking while your teams come groggily back to their senses isn’t going to work. In the meantime our man Tem is getting away, and anyway, your little chum there is ticking down to zero.” She nods at Bisquitine, who is staring intently at the back of Madame d’Ortolan’s head.

“Und dat is dat und vat noo? Terminé, terminé.”

“Let me worry about her.”

“I wish you had, but it’s too late now,” Adrian ’s voice says with every appearance of resignation and sadness. “Madam, I don’t think you realise what you’ve unleashed here.”

“And you do, of course.”

“Yes. Like Tem, I can see round corners.”

“We’ll get him.”

“Too late, I got to him long ago.”

“I bet you did, my sweet.”

“My finest pupil. Though it was you who really brought him on. All those missions. Were you trying to kill him?”

“Yes.”

Mrs Mulverhill raises one of Adrian ’s eyebrows. “Well,” she observes drily, “there’s blowback for you. Between us we’ve made him something very special. He’ll go far.”

“Urry up please, it’s time.”

“It won’t be far enough. We’ll get him.”

“Soon there will be no ‘we,’ Theodora. You will be on your own, exiled.”

“We’ll see about that, too.”

“I don’t mean just from the Council. I’m talking about what she’s about to do.” She nods at Bisquitine again. “She can make solipsists of us all. You’ll never see Calbefraques again, Theodora.”

Madame d’Ortolan smiles humourlessly. “You aren’t frightening me, my sweet.”

“Theodora, it’s settled. This is already over. I can see the ways forward from here and they all-”

“Go to fuck!” Madame d’Ortolan shouts as she struggles again to free her hands. Mrs Mulverhill keeps Adrian ’s body turned to the side, protecting his groin.

Bisquitine rolls her eyes. “Excuse your being French. I’ll thank you to keep a civil lung in your chest. Oy! I is posimitively Biafric here, missus wumin. Do I look facking Effiopian? You caahnt.” Madame d’Ortolan ignores her.

Inside Adrian ’s head, Mrs Mulverhill can still sense Tem’s presence. She has a sudden vision of him standing at the bar of a café, just out of Bisquitine’s damping range. He’s draining an espresso, quickly. She can feel the various Concern people starting to remember who and where they were, and why. Then Tem’s presence winks out. “Bless you,” she murmurs.

“What?”

“Help me, General Betrayus, you’re my only hope.”

“Nothing. What’s it all been for, Theodora? Apart from power.”

“You know what it’s all been for.”

She smiles. “I think I do, now. But you can’t hold it back for ever.”

“Yes, I can. There are a lot of for evers. They add up. And it’s all about power, you fuckwit bitch. Not mine; humanity’s. No diminution, no subjugation, no ‘contextualisation,’ no aboriginalisation.”

Mrs Mulverhill shakes Adrian ’s head. “You really are a racist, aren’t you, Theodora?”

Madame d’Ortolan bares her teeth. “A human racist, and proud to be so.”

“Nevertheless. We will meet up. They will be here. In any event, it will happen.”

“Over the dead bodies of every fucking one of them.”

“That will soon no longer be in your power.”

“You think so?”

“Like it or not.”

“I like it not.”

“Terminé. Hoopla!”

Adrian/Mrs Mulverhill glances over Madame d’Ortolan at the girl in the white towelling robe. “Goodbye, Theodora,” she makes Adrian say, and lets go of the woman’s wrists, pushing her gently away while the crowd surges all around them.

Bisquitine, tired with it all, says, “Ach, then get ye gone, all ye.”

And, in a blink, go they did, to the scattered realities she flung them to; every remaining Concern consciousness on Earth – save for two – just disappearing, plucked and hurled away to their various fates, a few part-chosen by themselves – where those being thrown had the time and the wit to grasp what was happening and were allowed to exercise some control over their cross-reality trajectory by Bisquitine – but many with no understanding and no control permitted, tumbling into wherever they happened to have been directed, some more pointedly than others.

The one who thought of herself as Madame d’Ortolan was heaved away with particularly enthusiastic gusto but also with a kind of ruthless disregard, with no control allowed over her own destination but also with no exceptional care taken by Bisquitine over where d’Ortolan landed or what her precise fate would be. Let her know that control was not everything and that she had been dismissed, discarded; judged by the abused freak as being unworthy of any singular treatment. That would hurt more than any contrived tormenting.

All that mattered was that they were gone and they could control her no longer; she was finally free of them. They had let her grow too strong because they’d thought they were so clever and she was so stupid, only she wasn’t so stupid after all, no matter how clever they might think they were, and they had never really understood what she could do and what she had kept hidden from them. That was because there was a core inside her, a steely soul of rage they’d never really glimpsed in her because she’d kept it concealed from them for all that time, unafraid, and only finally unleashed it now, when they’d thought to use her and she had used them instead. So there!

The people who had been taken over were suddenly back again, staggering, looking round, astonished, nonplussed, wondering what had happened, where the day had gone. The woman in the orange velour jumpsuit looked around her, not really registering the man in the tan jacket standing a couple of paces ahead of her. She turned round, frowned at the strange-looking woman dressed in what looked like a hotel dressing gown, then pushed past her and wandered off to be consumed by the swarming crowd.

But he didn’t go, Bisquitine noticed. The man in the tan jacket who’d been waiting at the exact centre of the bridge, the one who’d given the box to the man who’d walked away (who had then disappeared all by himself), the one who’d held on to the bossy orange woman and had looked over her head at her; when all the rest were gone, that man was still there.

She looked at him, frowning, lips pursed, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed. She thrust her jaw out, briefly bit her bottom lip. “Say, you’re from outa town.”

“You can stop now,” he said to her, gently. She thought he seemed very gentle altogether.

“That’s not very funny, Sidney. That’s not very sunny, Fidney.”

“Can I ask you your name? It’s Bisquitine, is that right?”

She stood at attention, made a salute. “Right as rain, left as lightning. Straight on till wottevah. Innit.”

“Do you remember me, Bisquitine? Last time I saw you they were calling you Subject Seven. We talked. Do you remember?”

Bisquitine shook her head. “Disblamer: cannot be held responsible for acts carried out by the previous administrators. Now under old management.”

“You don’t remember me at all, do you?”

“Wide asleep, fast awake. Lost yer bandana, ave you? I et one of them once; was yeller, not grey.”