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Death And Gravity's message.
But Genar-Hofoen's attention was elsewhere.
The two scratchounds met and locked, falling to the floor of the bait-pit in a
tangle of slowly thrashing limbs. The blue-collared animal had its jaws
clamped around the throat of the red-collared one. Most of the Affronters
were starting to cheer. Fivetide and his supporters were screaming.
Shit.
~ Suit? Genar-Hofoen thought.
~
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What is it
? said the gelfield. ~
I thought you were talking to-?
~ Never mind that now. See that blue scratchound?
~
Can't take my or your eyes off the damn thing.
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~ Effectorise the fucker; get it off the other one.
~
I can't do that! That would be cheating
!
~
Fivetide's arse is hanging way out the merry-go-round on this, suit. Do it
now or take personal responsibility for a major diplomatic incident. Up to
you.
~
What? But-
!
~
Effectorise it now, suit. Come on; I know that last upgrade let you sneak it
under their monitors. Oh! Look at that. Ow! Can't you just feel those
prosthetics round your neck? Fivetide must be kissing his diplomatic career
goodbye right now;
probably already working out a way to challenge me to a duel. After that,
doesn't really matter if I kill him or he kills me; probably come to war
between-
~
All right! All right! There
!
There was a buzzing sensation on top of Genar-Hofoen's right shoulder. The
red scratchound jerked, the blue one doubled up around its midriff and
loosened its grip. The red-collared beast wriggled out from underneath the
other and, twisting, turned on the other beast and immediately reversed the
situation, fastening its prosthetic jaws around the throat of the
blue-collared animal. At Genar-Hofoen's side, still in slow motion, Fivetide
was starting to rise into the air.
~ Right, D and G, what were you saying?
~
What was the delay? What were you doing
?
~ Never mind. Like you said, time's a wasting. Get on with it.
~
I assume it is reward you seek. What do you want
?
~ Golly, let me think. Can I have my own ship?
~
I understand that to be negotiable.
~ I'll bet.
~
You may have whatever you want. There. Will that do
?
~ Oh, of course.
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~
Genar-Hofoen, please. I beg you; say you will do this thing.
~ D and G, you're begging me? Genar-Hofoen asked with a laugh in his thought,
as the blue-collared scratchound writhed hopelessly in the other beast's jaws
and
Fivetide started to turn to him.
~
Yes, I am! Now will you agree? Time is of the essence
!
From the corner of one eye, Genar-Hofoen watched one of Fivetide's limbs begin
to flip towards him. He readied his slow-reacting body for the blow.
~ I'll think about it.
~
But-
!
~ Quit that signal, suit. Tell the module not to wait up. Now, suit -
command instruction: take yourself off-line until I call on you.
Genar-Hofoen halted the effects of the quicken.
He smiled and sighed a happy sigh as Fivetide's celebratory blow landed with a
teeth-rattling thud on his back and the
Culture lost a thousand suckers. Could be a fun evening.
IV
The horror came for the commandant again that night, in the grey area that was
the half-light from a full moon. It was worse this time.
In the dream, he rose from his camp bed in the pale light of dawn. Down the
valley, the chimneys above the charnel wagons belched dark smoke. Nothing
else in the camp was moving. He walked between the silent tents and under the
guard towers to the funicular, which took him up through the forests to the
glaciers.
The light was blinding white and the cold, thin air rasped the back of his
throat. The wind buffeted him, raising veils of snow and ice that shifted
across the fractured surface of the great river of ice, contained between the
jagged banks of the rock-black and snow-white mountains.
The commandant looked around. They were quarrying the deep western face now;
it was the first time he had seen this latest site. The face itself lay
inside a great bowl they had blasted in the glacier; men, machines and
drag-lines moved like
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of the vast cup of shining ice. The face was pure white except for a
speckling of black dots which from this distance appeared just like boulders.
It looked dangerously steep, he thought, but cutting it at a shallower angle
would have taken longer, and they were forever being hurried along by
headquarters&
At the top of the inclined ramp where the drag lines released their hooked
cargoes, a train waited, smoke drifting blackly across the blindingly white
landscape. Guards stamped their feet, engineers stood in animated discussion
by the winch engine and a caravan shack disgorged another shift of stackers
fresh from a break. A sledge full of face-workers was being lowered down the
huge gash in the ice; he could make out the sullen, pinched faces of the men,
bundled in uniforms and clothes that were little better than rags.
There was a rumble, and a vibration beneath his feet.
He looked round to the ice face again to see the entire eastern half of it
crumbling away, collapsing and falling with majestic slowness in billowing
clouds of whiteness onto the tiny black dots of the workers and guards below.
He watched the little figures turn and run from the rushing avalanche of ice
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as it pressed down through the air and along the surface towards them.
A few made it. Most did not, disappearing under the huge white wave, rubbed
out amongst that chalky, glittering turmoil. The noise was a roar so deep he
felt it in his chest.
He ran along the lip of the face-cut to the top of the inclined plane;
everybody was shouting and running around. The entire bottom of the bowl was
filling with the white mist of the kicked-up snow and pulverised ice,
obscuring the still-running survivors just as the ice-fall itself had those it
had buried.
The winch engine laboured, making a high, screeching noise. The drag lines
had stopped. He ran on to the knot of people gathering near the inclined
plane.
I know what happens here
, he thought.
I know what happens to me. I remember the pain. I see the girl. I know this
bit. I know what happens. I must stop running. Why don't I stop running?
Why can't I stop? Why can't I wake up
?
As he got to the others, the strain on the trapped drag line - still being
pulled by the winch engine - proved too much. The steel hawser parted
somewhere down inside the bowl of mist with a noise like a shot. The steel
cable came hissing and sizzing up through the air, snaking and wriggling as it
ripped up the slope towards the lip, loosing most of its grisly cargo from its
hooks as it came, like drops of ice off a whip.
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He screamed to the men at the top of the inclined plane, and tripped, falling
onto his face in the snow.
Only one of the engineers dropped in time.
Most of the rest were cut neatly in half by the scything hawser, falling
slowly to the snow in bloody sprays. Loops of the hawser smacked off the
railway engine with a thunderous clanging noise and wrapped themselves around [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]