Surface Detail

off. He realised she’d probably never handled a gun in her life. “Take care,” he told her. Another hesitation, as he seemed to think about coming towards her, hugging or holding or kissing her, but then she said:

“You too,” and turned and left, walking out of the flier and across the courtyard.

Jasken looked at the floor for a moment, then along it to the paintings in their ornate frames.

Lededje found the young servant Nolyen in the archway leading to the main vestibule, crouched on his haunches. “You were supposed to leave, Nolyen,” she said.

“I know, miss,” he said. He looked like he’d been crying too.

“Go back to the flier, Nolyen,” she told him. “Mr. Jasken will need help looking for people to take to safety. Now, quickly; still time.”

Nolyen ran back towards the flier and helped Jasken throw the paintings out before they took off to look for people to save.

He jogged down the stairs to the basement. The stairwell was poorly lit and he’d forgotten how far down the level holding the deepest strongrooms was. He’d rung for a lift up in the house, but even as he’d stood watching the floor-indicator display winking on and off with an error code, he’d realised he shouldn’t step into an elevator car in the circumstances even if one did arrive.

He stopped on the last landing, above a pool of darkness beneath, and dug inside the hide bag, pulling out a pair of night-vision glasses; lighter, less bulky but also less sophisticated versions of the Oculenses Jasken had worn. They weren’t working either; he threw them away. Next thing he tried was a torch, but the flash-light refused to work too. He smashed it against the wall. That felt good. At least the bag was getting lighter.

He felt his way down the last few stairs and opened the door to the better-lit corridor beyond. Pipes and conduits covered the ceiling, the floor was concrete and a few large metal doors were the only adornments to the rough-cast walls. A few very dim lights were on constantly; others were flickering. He was a little surprised Jasken wasn’t here already. He supposed time seemed to move oddly when everything was getting this fraught. He checked the antique watch; at least twelve minutes to go.

The strongroom door was a massive circular metal plug as tall as a man and a metre thick. The display — he’d forgotten it even had a display — was blinking an error message.

“Cunt!” he screamed, smashing one fist on the door. He rolled the code in anyway, but the noises the mechanism made didn’t even sound right and the display didn’t alter. Certainly there was no series of reassuring clicks from umpteen places round the door’s circumference, as there would have been if it was unlocking itself. He tried the levers and handles that then had to be moved, but they wouldn’t budge.

He glimpsed movement further down the long curve of the corridor, near a set of doors leading to another stairwell.

“Jasken?” he called. It was hard to tell in the dim, inconstant light. Maybe it was the Culture lunatic who’d come to “apprehend” him again. He pulled the Jhlupian gun out. No; the figure moving towards him moved normally, looked Sichultian.

“Jasken?” he shouted.

The figure stopped, maybe thirty metres away. It raised its arms level in front of it, gripping something. A gun! he realised as some-thing flashed. He started to fall into a crouch. There was a smack and a whine from somewhere way overhead and to his left, then a barking roar came ringing down the corridor. Crouched on one knee, he aimed the Jhlupian gun at the figure and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He tried again. The figure fired the gun once more and a bullet kicked off the top of the strongroom door, whining away behind him as another thunderclap of noise pulsed down the corridor. He could see smoke swirling round the figure. Smoke? What were they firing? A fucking musket? But at least their gun still worked, unlike the Jhlupian blaster. Like a knife would still work.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” he said, throwing the useless gun away and scrabbling to his feet, holding the hide bag between him and the figure down the corridor as he ran for the doors he’d just come through.

There was something round lying on the floor of the first landing; he discovered this when he trod on it and his foot went out behind him, dropping him and banging his knee on the next step up. He howled in rage, limped on up the steps.

The fucking gun hadn’t worked! It had worked before but it had stopped! Was it some fucking stupid ceremonial piece of junk that only had one fucking shot in it? Xingre, the bastard, had told him it could stop a tank, bring down aircraft and keep on firing till you grew old. Lying mother-fucking alien cunt!

He was one flight down from the ground floor when he heard the doors at the foot of the stairwell bang open and steps come hurrying up towards him. Fuck everything else, then; just get to Jasken, get to the flier. Cut and run. What fucker would dare fire a fucking gun at him anyway? Probably only the demented little bitch claiming to be Y’breq. She was about as good a shot as he’d have expected.

His lungs and throat felt like a blast furnace after running up all those steps; his knee was hurting really badly but he just had to ignore it. He threw open the door to the main ground-level corridor and ran for the nearest courtyard doors.

The flier wasn’t there. He could see this twenty or more steps away from the doorway because there was a large open reception area with huge windows looking straight out at the courtyard, but he kept on running for the doors, not believing what he was seeing, and threw the doors open anyway, in time to see the flier pulling away overhead, as though it had just taken off from the roof of the mansion.

“Jasken!” he screamed, the force of it tearing at his throat.

He looked frantically round the circular courtyard. This couldn’t be happening. The flier couldn’t have gone. It just couldn’t; he needed it, he needed it to be here, needed it so he could get away. That must have been another, similar flier he’d just seen above the rooftops. It couldn’t have gone. It just wasn’t possible. He was depending on it, so it had to be here. It couldn’t disguise itself, could it? Go see-through or something freakish, could it? It was just a hired civilian flier; nothing military or alien. Best money could hire, built by one of his own companies, but it couldn’t turn fucking invisible. He stared round the courtyard, willing the aircraft still to be there. But all that he could see was a half-collapsed pile of paintings; nothing and nobody else. He glimpsed movement through the windows to one side, in the corridor he’d just run down.

He ran for the nearest archway leading through the house to the grounds. A gun. He needed a gun. An old fashioned chemical-explosion gun. What had happened to Jasken? Jasken had a gun. He always carried several weapons. He had a little hand-gun that had no sight or screen or electrics in it at all, just as a last resort. Dear fuck, it wasn’t Jasken chasing him, was it? He ran through the tall archway leading towards the outside, his steps echoing in the arch high overhead. He glanced back, saw the figure pursuing him, but stumbled and nearly fell as he did so. No, not Jasken. Too small and slim to be Jasken. And Jasken wouldn’t have missed, not twice.

It had to be the little bitch claiming to be Y’breq. She must have tricked Jasken, had an accomplice; maybe the Culture maniac who’d tried to arrest him. They’d be flying the aircraft. The fucking Culture! A gun. Where would he find a gun? He ran out onto the flagstone circle which encompassed the house.

The world was on fire; walls of smoke filled the sky, making a night lit up like hell, flames leaping from a hundred different places, trees and outbuildings all on fire or silhouetted against the fires beyond.

Gun. He needed a gun. There were old-fashioned, ancient, even antique guns splattered liberally over the walls of the house, just like there were swords and spears and shields, but none of them worked; none of them were any fucking use. Who the hell still used old-fashioned guns for fuck’s sake? Gamekeepers? They used lasers like everybody else, didn’t they? He wasn’t even sure where the gamekeepers’ cottages were; hadn’t they been moved when he’d had the raceball court put in?

He limped on, breath wheezing, knee aching, wondering if he could hide in the maze; maybe jump out on whoever was pursuing him, slit their throat using one of the two knives he still had. He sort of remembered the layout of the maze, he thought. He looked at where the maze ought to be and saw its central tower, on fire, flames waving wildly like orange banners from its wooden super-structure. He looked desperately around, searching for the flier, or another aircraft. He should have headed for the garages, he thought. Maybe some of the cars were still there and working. He patted the pocket where his antique watch had been, but it was gone.

Tall, skinny towers and linked, soaring arches stood out black against a distant roaring wall of yellow-orange flame, off to one side.