Surface Detail

“Yes.” The old male looked avuncular, encouraging. He sighed, made a tired-looking gesture with both trunks. “Oh, in time, you might be expected to take back some of what you’ve already said in the past, but we’d leave that for the moment.”

“On pain of what?” Prin asked, trying to sound merely reasonable, pragmatic. “If I didn’t, what then?”

Representative Errun sighed, looked sad. “Son — Prin — you’re smart and you’re principled. You could be set to do very well within the academic community, with the right people taking an interest in your advancement. Very well. Very well indeed. But if you insist on being awkward… well, the same trunks that can help lift you up can keep you pressed down, keep you in your place.” He held up both trunks in a defensive gesture, as though fending off an objection Prin had not voiced. “It’s no great conspiracy, it’s just nature; people are liable to help out people who’ve helped them. Make life difficult for them and they’ll just do the same for you. No need to invoke secret societies or sinister cabals.”

Prin looked away for a moment, taking in the view of the carved wood desk and the highly patterned carpet, wondering idly how deep the level of detail went in such dream-realities. Would a microscope reveal further intricacy, or a blurred pixel?

“Representative,” he said, and both hoped and suspected he sounded tired, “let me be frank. I had thought to string you along, tell you that I’d think about it, that I’d let you know my answer in a few days.”

Errun was shaking his head. “I’m afraid I need your—” he began, but Prin just held one trunk up and talked over him.

“But I’m not going to. The answer is no. I will not deal with you. I intend to make my statement before Council,”

“Prin, no,” the old male said, sitting forward in his seat. “Don’t do this! If you say no to this there’ll be nothing I can do to hold them back. They’ll do whatever they want to do to her. You’ve seen what they do to people, to females in particular. You can’t condemn her to that! For God’s sake! Think what you’re saying! I’ve already asked if there’s any leniency I can ask for, but—”

“Shut up you foul, corrupt, cruel old male,” Prin said, keeping his voice level. “There is no ‘they’; there is only you. You are one of them, you help control them; don’t pretend they are somehow separate from you.”

“Prin! I’m not in Hell; I don’t control what happens there!”

“You’re on the same side, representative. And you must have some control over Hell or you couldn’t offer this deal in the first place.” Prin waved one trunk. “But in any event, let’s not distract ourselves. The answer is no. Now, may I resume my sleep, do I get to wake up screaming or do you intend to subject me to some further punishment in this strange little virtual dream environment we’re inhabiting?”

Errun stared at him wide-eyed. “Do you have any idea what they’ll do to her?” he said, voice raised, hoarse. “What sort of barbarian are you that you can condemn somebody you purport to love to that?”

Prin shook his head. “You really can’t see that you’ve made a monster of yourself, can you, representative? You threaten to do these things, or — if we are to accept your naive attempt to distance yourself from the grisly realties of the environment you so readily support — to let these things happen to another being unless I lie in a manner that suits you, and then you accuse me of being the monster. Your position is perverse, farcical and as intellectually demeaning as it is morally destitute.”

“You cold-hearted bastard!” The representative seemed genuinely upset. Prin got the impression the old male would be out of his seat and attacking him if he’d been younger, or shaking him by the shoulders at the very least. “How can you leave her there? How can you just abandon her?”

“Because if I save her I condemn all the others, representative. Whereas, if I tell you to lift your tail and insert your deal where only a loved one will ever get wind of it, perhaps I can do something to end the obscenity of the Hells, for Chay and all the others.”

“You conceited, presumptuous little shit-head! Who the fuck are you to decide how we run our fucking society?”

“All I can do is tell the—”

“We need the Hells! We’re fallen, evil creatures!”

“Nothing that requires torture for its continuance is worth—”

“You live on your fucking campuses with your heads in the fucking clouds and think everything’s as nice as it is there and everybody as civilised and reasonable and polite and noble and intellectual and as cooperative as they are there and you think that’s the way it is everywhere and how everybody is! You’ve no fucking idea what would happen if we didn’t have the threat of Hell to hold people back!”

“I hear what you say,” Prin told him, keeping calm. Noble? Civilised? Reasonable? Clearly Errun had never sat in on a faculty annual performance, remuneration, seniority and self-criticism meeting. “It’s nonsense, of course, but it is interesting to know that you hold such views.”

“You pompous, egotistical little cunt!” the representative screeched.

“And you, representative, are typical of those with ethical myopia, who feel only for those nearest them. You would save a friend or loved one and feel a glow of self-satisfaction at the act, no matter to what torment that same act condemned countless others.”

“… You self-important little fuck…” Errun growled, talking at the same time as Prin.

“You expect everybody else to feel the same way and deeply resent the fact that some might feel differently.”

“… I’ll make sure they tell her it’s all your fault when they’re fucking her to death every night, a hundred at a time…”

“You are the barbarian, representative; you are the one who thinks so highly of himself he assumes everybody who means something to him ought to be elevated above all others.” Prin took a breath. “And, really, listen to yourself; threatening such depravity just because I won’t do as you demand. How good do you expect to feel about yourself at the end of this, representative?”

“Fuck you, you ice-livered, self-satisfied intellectual shit. Your moral fucking high ground won’t be high enough to escape her screams every night for the rest of your life.”

“You’re just embarrassing yourself now, representative,” Prin told him. “That’s no way for an elderly and respected elected officer of the state to talk. I think we ought to conclude this here, don’t you?”

“This does not end here,” the old male told him, in a voice dripping with hatred and contempt.

But end it did, and Prin woke sweating — but not jerking upright screaming, which was something — with a sort of cold dread in his belly. He hesitated, then reached out, tugging on the antique bell-pull for help.

They found something called a thin-band cerebral induction generator. It had been stuck — a little lop-sided, as though it had been done very hastily — to the back of the bed’s headboard. A shielded cable ran from it through the wall to the roof and a satellite dish disguised as a tile patch. This was what had allowed them to take over his dreams. None of it had been there the day before.

Kemracht, Representative Filhyn’s aide, looked him in the eye as the all-wheel-drive bumped down the road in the darkness, taking them to the next hideout. The lights of the second vehicle, following behind, cast wildly waving shadows about the passenger compartment.

“You still going to testify, Prin?”

Prin, who could not be sure that Kemracht was not the traitor in their midst (those faculty committee meetings also taught you to trust no one), said, “I’ll be saying what I was always going to be saying, Kem,” and left it at that.

Kemracht looked at him for a little while, then patted him on the shoulder with one trunk.

It was like diving into a blizzard of multi-coloured sleet, a disturbed, whirling maelstrom of tens of thousands of barely glimpsed light-points all tearing turmoiled towards you against the darkness.

Auppi Unstril had glanded everything there was worth glanding, slipping into the zoned-out state of steady, unremitting concentration such engagements called for. She was entirely part of the machine, feeling its sensory, power and weapon systems as perfect extensions of herself and connecting with the little ship’s AI as though it was another higher, quicker layer of tissue laid across her own brain, tightly bundled, penetrated and penetrating