armour. I can interface with other electronic systems, but I cannot interfere with the hardened circuits of military equipment. I possess an internal forcefield which lets me float, regardless of gravity, but apart from using my own mass as a weapon, that is not really of much use, either. In fact, I am not particularly strong; when I needed to be, for my job, there were attachments available for my use. Unfortunately, I was not employing them when I was abducted. Had I been, I probably wouldn't be here now.'
'Damn,' Balveda said into the shadows. 'No aces up your sleeve?'
'No sleeves, Perosteck.'
Balveda took in a deep breath and stared glumly at the dark floor. 'Oh dear,' she said.
'Our leader approaches,' Unaha-Closp said, affecting weariness in its voice. It turned and nodded its front towards Yalson and Horza, returning from the far end of the cavern. The Changer was smiling. Balveda rose smoothly to her feet as Horza beckoned to her.
'Perosteck Balveda,' Horza said, standing with the others at the bottom of the rear access gantry and holding out one hand towards the Idiran trapped in the wreckage above, 'meet Xoxarle.'
'This is the female you claim is a Culture agent, human?' the Idiran said, turning his head awkwardly to look down at the group of people below him.
'Pleased to meet you,' Balveda muttered, arching one eyebrow as she gazed up at the trapped Idiran.
Horza walked up the ramp, passing Wubslin, who was training his gun on the trapped being. Horza still held the remote drone. He came to the second level ramp and looked down at the Idiran's face.
'See this, Xoxarle?' He held the drone up. It glinted in the lights of his suit.
Xoxarle nodded slowly. 'It is a small piece of damaged equipment.' The deep, heavy voice betrayed signs of strain, and Horza could see a trickle of dark purple blood on the floor of the ramp Xoxarle lay squashed upon.
'It's what you two proud warriors had when you thought you'd captured the Mind. This is all there was. A remote drone casting a weak soligram. If you'd taken this back to the fleet they'd have thrown you into the nearest black hole and wiped your name from the records. You're damn lucky I came along when I did.'
The Idiran looked thoughtfully at the wrecked drone for a short while.
'You,' Xoxarle said slowly, 'are lower than vermin, human. Your pathetic tricks and lies would make a yearling laugh. There must be more fat inside your thick skull than there is even on your skinny bones. You aren't fit to be thrown up.'
Horza stepped onto the ramp which had fallen on top of the Idiran. He heard the being's breath suck in harshly through taut lips as he walked slowly over to where Xoxarle's face stuck out beneath the wreckage. 'And you, you goddamn fanatic, aren't fit to wear that uniform.
'Fuck…' the Idiran gasped painfully, '… your animal soul.'
Horza used the neural stunner on Xoxarle. Then he and Yalson and the drone Unaha-Closp levered the ramp off the Idiran's body and sent it crashing down to the station floor. They cut the armour from the giant's body, then hobbled his legs with wire and tied down his arms to his sides. Xoxarle had no broken limbs, but the keratin on one side of his body was cracked and oozed blood, while another wound, between his collar scale and right shoulder plate, had closed up once the pressure was taken off him. He was big, even for an Idiran; over three and a half metres, and not thin. Horza was glad the tall male — a section leader according to the insignia on the armour he had been wearing — was probably injured internally and going to be in pain. It would make him less of a problem to guard once he had woken up; he was too big for the restrainer harness.
Yalson sat, eating a rationfood bar, her gun balanced on one knee and pointing straight at the unconscious Idiran, while Horza sat at the bottom of the ramp and tried to repair his helmet. Unaha-Closp watched over Neisin, as powerless as the rest of them to do anything to help the wounded man.
Wubslin sat on the pallet making some adjustments to the mass sensor. He had already taken a look round the Command System train, but what he really wanted was to see a working one, in better light and without radiation stopping him looking through the reactor car.
Aviger stood by Dorolow's body for a while. Then he went to the far access ramp, where the body of the other Idiran, the one Xoxarle had called Quayanorl, lay, holed and battered, limbs missing. Aviger looked around and thought nobody was watching, but both Horza, looking up from the wrecked helmet, and Balveda, walking round and stamping and shaking her feet in an attempt to keep warm, saw the old man swing his foot at the still body lying on the ramp, kicking the helmed head as hard as he could. The helmet fell off; Aviger kicked the naked head. Balveda looked at Horza, shook her head, then went on pacing up and down.
'You're sure we've accounted for all the Idirans?' Unaha-Closp asked Horza. It had floated about the station and through the train, accompanying Wubslin. Now it was facing the Changer.
'That's the lot,' Horza said, looking not at the drone but at the mess of fractured optic fibres lying bloated and fused together inside the outer skin of his helmet. 'You saw the tracks.'
'Hmm,' the machine said.
'We've won, drone,' Horza said, still not looking at it. 'We'll get the power on in station seven and then it won't take us long to track the Mind down.'
'Your 'Mr Adequate' seems remarkably unconcerned about the liberties we're taking with his train-set,' the drone observed.
Horza looked round at the wreckage and debris scattered near the train, then shrugged and went back to tinkering with the helmet. 'Maybe he's indifferent,' he said.
'Of could it be he's enjoying all this?' Unaha-Closp said. Horza looked at it. The drone went on, 'This place is a monument to death, after all. A sacred place. Perhaps it is as much an altar as a monument, and we are merely carrying out a service of sacrifice for the gods.'
Horza shook his head. 'I think they left the fuse out of your imagination circuits, machine,' he said, and looked back at the helmet.
Unaha-Closp made a hissing noise and went to watch Wubslin, poking around inside the mass sensor.
'What have you got against machines, Horza?' Balveda said, interrupting her pacing to come and stand near by. She rubbed her hands on her nose and ears now and again. Horza sighed and put down the helmet.
'Nothing, Balveda, as long as they stay in their place.'
Balveda made a snorting noise at that, then went on pacing. Yalson spoke from further up the ramp:
'Did you say something funny?'
'I said machines ought to stay in their place. Not the sort of remark that goes down well with the Culture.'
'Yeah,' Yalson said, still watching the Idiran. Then she looked down, at the scarred area on the front of her suit where it had been hit by a plasma bolt. 'Horza?' she said. 'Can we talk somewhere? Not here.'
Horza looked up at her. 'Of course,' he said, puzzled. Wubslin replaced Yalson on the ramp. Yalson walked to where Unaha-Closp floated over Neisin, its lights dim; it held an injector in one hazy field extension.
'How is he?' she asked the machine. It turned its lights up.
'How does he look?' it said. Yalson and Horza said nothing. The drone let its lights fade again. 'He might last a few more hours.'
Yalson shook her head and headed for the tunnel entrance which led to the transit tube, followed by Horza. She stopped inside, just out of sight of the others, and turned to face the Changer. She seemed to search for words but could not find them; she shook her head again and took off her helmet, leaning back against the curved tunnel wall.
'What's the problem, Yalson?' he asked her. He tried to take her hand, but she crossed her arms. 'You having second thoughts about going on with this?'
She shook her head. 'No; I'm going on. I want to see this goddamned super-brain. I don't care who gets it, or if it gets blown up, but I want to find it.'
'I didn't think you regarded it as that important.'
'It's become important.' She looked away, then back again, smiling uncertainly. 'Hell, I'd come along anyway — just to try and keep you out of trouble.'
'I thought maybe you'd gone off me a little lately,' he said.
