"Use of Weapons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Banks Iain)

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Light. Some light. Not very much. Air foul and everywhere pain. He wanted to scream and writhe, but could find no breath and make nothing move. A dark destroying shadow welled up inside him, exterminating thought, and he lost consciousness.

Light. Some light. Not very much. He knew there was pain, too, but somehow it did not seem so important. He was looking at it differently now. That was all you had to do; just think about it differently. He wondered where that idea had come from, and seemed to remember he'd been taught how to do this.

Everything was metaphor; all things were something other than themselves. The pain, for example, was an ocean, and he was adrift on it. His body was a city and his mind a citadel. All communications between the two seemed to have been cut, but within the keep that was his mind he still had power. The part of his consciousness that was telling him the pain did not hurt, and that all things were like other things, was like… like… he found it hard to think of a comparison. A magic mirror, maybe.

Still thinking about that, the light faded, and he slipped away again, into the darkness.

Light. Some light (he'd been here before, hadn't he?). Not very much. He seemed to have left the keep that was his mind, and now he was in a storm-struck leaking boat, images dancing before him.

The light grew slowly in strength until it was almost painful. He felt suddenly terrified, because it seemed to him that he really was on a tiny creaking leaking boat, tossed scudding across a seething black ocean, in the teeth of a howling gale, but now there was light, and it appeared to come from somewhere above him, but when he tried to look at his hand, or the tiny boat, he still couldn't see anything. The light shone into his eyes, but it failed to illuminate anything else. The idea terrified him; the tiny boat was swamped by a wave and he was submerged again in the ocean of pain, burning through every pore of his body. Somewhere, thankfully, somebody threw a switch, and he slipped underneath to darkness, silence and… no pain.

Light. Some light. He remembered this. The light showed a small boat assaulted by waves on a broad dark ocean. Beyond, unreachable for now, there was a great citadel on a small island. And there was sound. Sound… That was new. Been here before, but not with sound. He tried to listen, very hard, but could not make out the words. Still, he formed the impression that maybe somebody was asking questions.

Somebody was asking questions… Who…? He waited for a reply, from outside or from within himself, but nothing came from anywhere; he felt lost and abandoned, and the worst of it was that he felt abandoned by himself.

He decided to ask himself some questions. What was the citadel? That was his mind. The citadel was supposed to come with a city attached, which was his body, but it looked like something else had taken over the city, and there was just the castle, just the keep left. What was the boat, and the ocean? The ocean was pain. He was in the boat now, but before that he'd been in the ocean, up to his neck, waves breaking over him. The boat was… some learned technique which was protecting him from the pain, not letting him forget it was there, but keeping its debilitating effects away from him, letting him think.

So far so good, he thought. Now, what is the light?

He might have to come back to that one. Same with: What is the sound?

He tried another question: Where is this happening?

He searched his sodden clothes but found nothing in any of the pockets. He looked for a name tag that he felt ought to be sewn on to his collar, but it seemed to have been ripped off. He searched the small boat, but still found no answers. So he tried to imagine being in the distant keep over the towering waves, and visualised himself walking into a cavernous store room of jumble and nonsense and memories buried deep in the castle… but could see nothing in detail. His eyes closed and he wept with frustration, while the small boat juddered and tipped underneath him.

When he opened his eyes, he was holding a little clip of paper with the word FOHLS printed on it. He was so surprised he let the slip of paper go; the wind whipped it away into the dark sky over the black waves. But he had remembered. Fohls was the answer. The planet of Fohls.

He felt relieved, and a little proud. He'd discovered something.

What was he doing here?

Funeral. He seemed to remember something about a funeral. Surely it had not been his own.

Was he dead? He thought about this question for a while. He supposed it was possible. Maybe there was an afterlife, after all. Well, if there was life after death, that would teach him. Was this sea of pain a divine punishment? Was the light a god? He dipped his hand over the side of the boat, into the pain; it filled him, and he withdrew. Cruel god if that really was the case. What about all the stuff I did for the Culture? he wanted to ask. Doesn't that cancel some of the bad out? Or were those smug self-satisfied bastards wrong all along? God, he'd love to be able to go back and tell them. Imagine the look on Sma's face!

But he didn't think he was dead. It hadn't been his funeral. He could remember the flat-topped tower by the cliffs looking out over the sea, and helping to carry some old warrior's body there. Yes, somebody had died and they were being ceremonially disposed of.

Something was nagging at him.

Suddenly he clutched at the boat's rotten timbers and stared out over the heaving ocean.

There was a ship. Every now and again he could see a ship, far in the distance. Barely more than a dot, and mostly the waves were in the way, but it was a ship. A hole seemed to open somewhere inside him; his guts fell through it.

He thought he recognised the ship.

Then the boat split apart, and he dropped through it, through the water underneath, then splashed out of the underside of the water, into air again, and saw the ocean beneath him, and a tiny speck of its surface, which he was falling towards. It was another small boat; he crashed through it, through more water, through more air, through the wreckage of a boat, through another layer of water and another level of air…

Hey — one part of his mind thought, as he fell — this is like how Sma described the Reality… splashed through more waves, through the water, out into air, heading for more waves…

This wasn't going to stop. He remembered that the Reality Sma had described was expanding all the time; you could fall through forever; really forever, not until the end of the universe; literally forever.

That won't do, he thought to himself. He'd have to face the ship.

He landed in a little creaking, leaking boat.

The ship was much closer now. The ship was huge and dark and bristled with guns and it was heading straight for him, bow wave a huge white V of foam bisected by its stem.

Shit, he wasn't going to be able to get away from it. The cruel curves of the bows raced slicing towards him. He closed his eyes.

Once upon a time there was… a ship. A great ship. A ship for destroying things with; other ships, people, cities… It was very big and it was designed to kill people and to keep people inside it from being killed.

He tried not to remember what the great ship was called. Instead he saw the ship somehow installed near the middle of a city, and felt confused, and could not work out how it got there. The ship started to look like a castle, for some reason, and that did, and did not, make sense. He began to feel frightened. The ship's name was like some huge sea creature, bumping into the hull of his boat; like a battering-ram thudding into the walls of the castle keep. He tried to block it out, knowing it was just a name but not wanting to hear it because it always made him feel bad.

He put his hands over his ears. That worked for a moment. But then the ship, set in stone, near the centre of the battered city, fired its great guns, gouting black and flashing yellow-white, and he knew what was coming, and tried to scream to cover the noise, but when it arrived it was the name of the ship that the guns had spoken, and it shattered the boat, demolished the castle, and resounded through the bones and spaces of his skull, like the laughter of an insane god, forever.

The light went out then, and he sank gratefully away from the awful, accusing sound.

Light. Staberinde said a calm voice from somewhere inside. Staberinde. It's only a word.

The Staberinde. The ship. He turned away from the light, back into the darkness.

Light. Sounds, too; a voice. What was I thinking about, earlier? (He recalled something about a name, but ignored that.) Funeral. Pains. And the ship. There was a ship. Or there had been. Maybe still is, for all… but there was something about a funeral. The funeral is why you are here. That was what confused you before. You thought you were dead, in fact you were only living. He remembered something about boats and oceans and castles and cities, but could not actually see them any more.

Now, from somewhere, comes touch, touch coming in from out there. Not pain but touch. Two different things…

The touch, again. It feels like the touch of a hand; a hand touching his face, causing more pain, but still a touch, and distinguishably a hand. His face felt terrible. He must look terrible.

Where am I again? Crash. Funeral. Fohls.

Crash. Of course; my name is…

Too hard.

What do I do, then?

That's easier. You are a paid agent of the most advanced — well, certainly the most energetic — humanoid civilisation in the… Reality? (No.) Universe? (No.) Galaxy? Yes, galaxy… and you were representing them at a… a… funeral, and you were coming back on some stupid aircraft to be picked up and taken away from all this, when something happened on board the aircraft and it went… and he'd seen flames and… and there had been that old jungle floating right… then nothing and pain, and nothing but pain. Then drifting and floating in and out of it.

The hand touched his face again. And this time there was something to see. He thought it looked like a cloud, or like a moon through a cloud, itself unseen but shining through.

Possibly the two were connected, he thought. Yes; here it comes again, and yes, there we are; sensation, feeling; the hand on the face again. Throat, swallowing, water or some liquid. You are being given something to drink. From the way it goes down there seems to be… yes, upright, we are upright, not on our back. The hands, own hands, they are… an open feeling, feeling very open, very vulnerable, naked.

Thinking about his body was bringing the pain back again. He decided to give up on that. Try something else.

Try the crash again. Back from the funeral and the desert coming right up… no, mountains. Or was it jungle? He couldn't remember. Where are we? Jungle, no… desert, no… what then? Don't know.

Asleep, he thought suddenly; you were asleep in the aircraft in the night, and had just enough time to wake up in the darkness and see flames and begin to realise before light detonated inside your head. After that, pain. But you didn't see any sort of terrain floating/rushing up to meet you, because it was very dark.

The next time he came round, everything had changed. He felt vulnerable and exposed. As his eyes opened and he tried to remember how to see, he slowly made out dusty streaks of light in a brown gloom, and saw earthenware pots near a mud or earth wall, and a small fireplace in the centre of the room, and spears leaning against a wall, and other blades. Straining his neck to bring his head up, he could see something else; the rough wooden frame he was tied to.

The wooden frame was in the shape of a square; two diagonals made an X inside the square. He was naked, his hands and feet lashed, one to each corner of the frame, which was propped against a wall at about forty-five degrees. A thick hide strap secured his waist to the centre of the X, and all over his body were markings of blood and paint.

He relaxed his neck. "Oh shit," he heard himself croak. He didn't like the look of this.

Where the hell was the Culture? They ought to be rescuing him; that was their job. He did their dirty work, they looked after him. This was the deal. So where the hell were they?

The pain came back, like an old friend by now, from almost everywhere. Straining his neck like that had hurt. Sore head (maybe concussion); broken nose, cracked or broken ribs, one broken arm, two broken legs. Maybe internal injuries; his insides felt pretty sore too; the worst, in fact. He felt bloated and full of decay.

Shit, he thought, I might actually be dying.

He shifted his head, grimacing, (pain poured in as if some protecting shell on his skin had been cracked by the movement) and looked at the ropes lashing him to the wooden frame. Traction was no way to treat a fracture, he told himself, and laughed very briefly, because with the first contraction of his stomach muscles his ribs pulsed suddenly, as though they were at red heat.

He could hear things; distant noises of people shouting now and again, and children yelling, and some sort of animal baying.

He closed his eyes, but heard nothing more distinct. He opened them again. The wall was earth, and he was probably underground, for there were thick sawn-off roots sticking into the space around him. The light was composed of two nearly vertical shafts, slightly angled beams of direct sunlight, so… near midday, near the equator. Underground, he thought, and felt sick. Nice and hard to find. He wondered if the plane had been on course when it crashed, and how far from the crash site he'd been carried. No point in worrying about it.

What else could he see? Crude benches. A coarse cushion, dented. It looked like somebody had sat there, facing him. He assumed it was the owner of the hand he had felt, if there had been one. There was no fire in a circle of stones set underneath one of the holes in the roof. Spears leant against the wall, and other weaponish things were strewn about the place. They were not battle-weapons; ceremonial, or maybe torture. He caught a whiff of something awful, just then, and knew it was gangrene, and knew it must be him.

He began to slip over the edge again, uncertain whether he was falling asleep or really going unconscious, but hoping for one or the other, willing either, because all this was more than he could handle just now. Then the girl came in. She had a jug in her hand, and set it down before looking at him. He tried to speak, but couldn't. Maybe he hadn't really spoken earlier when he'd thought he said, "Shit." He looked at the girl and attempted a smile.

She went out again.

He felt somehow heartened, seeing the girl. A man would have been bad news, he thought. A girl meant things might not be so bad after all. Maybe.

The girl came back, with a bowl of water. She washed him, rubbing away the the blood and the paint. There was some pain. Predictably nothing happened when she washed his genitals; he'd have liked to show signs of life, just for form's sake.

He tried to speak, but failed. The girl let him sip some water from a shallow bowl, and he croaked at her, but nothing distinguishable. She left again.

The next time she came back with some men. They wore many strange clothes, like feathers and skins and bones and wooden tiles of armour laced with gut. They were painted too, and they brought pots and small sticks with them, and used them to paint him again.

They finished and stood back. He wanted to tell them he didn't suit red, but nothing came out. He felt himself falling away, out into the darkness.

When he came to again, he was moving.

The entire frame he was strapped to had be lifted and carted out of the gloom. He faced the sky. Blinding light filled his eyes, dust filled his nose and mouth, and shouts and screams filled his mind. He felt himself shiver like a fever victim, tearing pain from each shattered limb. He tried to shout, and to raise his head to see, but all there was was noise and dust. His insides felt worse; skin taut over his belly.

Then he was upright again, and the village was beneath him. It was small, there were some tents, some wicker and clay dwellings and some holes into the ground. Semi-arid; an indeterminate scrub — stamped down inside the perimeter of the village — vanished quickly beyond it, into a yellow-glowing mist. The sun was just visible, low down. He couldn't work out if it was dawn or dusk.

What he really saw were the people. They were all in front of him; he was up on a mound, the frame tied to two large stakes, and the people were beneath him, all on their knees, heads bowed. There were tiny children, their heads forced down by nearby adults, there were old people held up from collapsing completely by those around them, and every age in between.

Then in front of him walked three people, the girl and two of the men. The men, one on either side of the girl, lowered their heads, knelt down quickly and arose again, and made a sign. The girl did not move, and her gaze was fixed on a point between his eyes. She was dressed in a bright red gown now; he could not remember what she had worn before.

One of the men held a large earthenware pot. The other had a long, curved, broad-bladed sword.

"Hey," he croaked. He couldn't manage anything else. The pain was getting very bad now; being upright didn't do his broken limbs any good at all.

The chanting people seemed to swing about his head; the sunlight dipped and veered, and the three people in front of him became many, multiplying and wavering, unsteady in the waste of mist and dust before him.

Where the hell was Culture?

There was a terrible roaring noise in his head, and the diffuse glow in the midst which was the sun was starting to pulse. The sword glittered to one side; the earthenware pot gleamed on the other. The girl stood directly in front of him, and put her hand into his hair, grasping it.

The roaring noise was filling his ears, and he could not tell if he was shouting and screaming or not. The man to his right raised the sword.

The girl pulled his hair, yanking his head out; he screamed, above the roaring noise, as his broken bones grated. He stared at the dust at the hem of the girl's robe.

"You bastards!" he thought, not sure, even then, exactly who he meant.

He managed to scream one syllable. "El — !"

Then the blade slammed into his neck.

The name died. Everything had ended but it still went on.

There was no pain. The roaring noise was actually quieter. He was looking down at the village and the crouching people. The view swung; he could still feel the pull of the roots of his hair straining at the skin on his scalp. He was swung round.

The slack, headless body dribbled blood down its chest.

That was me! he thought. Me!

He was swung round again; the man with the sword was wiping blood from the blade with a rag. The man with the earthenware pot was trying not to look into his staring eyes, and holding the pot out towards him, the lid in his other hand. So that's what it's for, he thought, feeling somehow stunned into an eerie calmness. Then the roaring noise seemed to gather and start to fade at once. The view was going red. He wondered how much longer this could go on. How long did a brain survive without oxygen?

Now I really am two, he thought, remembering, eyes closing.

And he thought of his heart, stopped now, and only then realised, and wanted to cry but could not, for he had finally lost her. Another name formed in his kind. Dar…

The roar split the skies. He felt the girl's grip loosen. The expression on the face of the youth holding the pot was almost comically fearful. People looked up from the crowd; the roar became a scream, a blast of air swept dust into the air and made the girl holding him stagger; a dark shape swung quickly through the air above the village.

A little late… he heard himself think, slipping away.

There was more noise for a second or two — screams, maybe — and something whacked into his head, and he was rolling away, dust in his mouth and eyes… but he was starting to lose interest in all that stuff, and was happy to let the darkness wash over him. Maybe he was picked up again, later.

But that seemed to happen to somebody else.

When the terrible noise came, and the great, carved black rock landed in the middle of the village — just after the sky's offering had been separated from his body and so joined to the air — everybody ran into the thinning mist, to get away from the screaming light. They gathered, whimpering, at the water hole.

After only fifty heartbeats, the dark shape appeared above the village again, rising hazily into the thinner mists near the sky. It did not roar this time, but moved quickly off with a noise like the wind, and shrank to nothing.

The shaman sent his apprentice back to see how things stood; the quaking youth disappeared into the mist. He returned safely, and the shaman led the still terrified people back to the village.

The body of the sky-offering still hung limply on the wooden frame at the summit of the mound. His head had disappeared.

After much chanting and grinding entrails, spotting shapes in the mists and three trances, the priest and his apprentice decided it was a good omen, and yet a warning at the same time. They sacrificed a meat-animal belonging to the family of the girl who had dropped the sky-offering's head, and put the beast's head in the earthenware pot instead.