Consider Phlebas

gripped the edge of the train door, and hauled again. He slid and scraped from the ramp and onto the interior floor of the train itself.

When he was fully inside, he rested.

Blood made a steady roar inside his head.

His hand was becoming tired now and sore. It was not the aching, grinding pain from his wounds, but it worried him more. He was afraid that his hand would soon seize up, that it would grow too weak to grip, and he would be unable to haul himself along.

At least now the way was level. He had a carriage and a half to drag himself, but there was no slope. He tried to look back, behind and down to the place he had lain, but could manage only a brief glimpse before he had to let his head fall back. There was a scraped and bloody trail on the ramp, as though a broom laced with purple paint had been dragged through the dust and debris of the metal surface.

There was no point in looking back. His only way was forward; he had only a little while left. In a half hour or less he would be dead. He would have had longer just lying on the ramp, but moving had shortened his life, quickened the sapping forces steadily draining him of strength and vitality.

He hauled himself towards the longitudinal corridor.

His two useless, shattered legs slithered after him, on a thin slick of blood.

'Changer!'

Horza frowned. He and Yalson were setting out to look over the station. The Idiran called Horza when he was only a few steps away from the pallet where Aviger now sat, looking fed up and pointing his gun in roughly the same direction as Balveda while the Culture agent continued pacing up and down.

'Yes, Xoxarle?' Horza said.

'These wires. They will slice me up soon. I only mention it because you have so studiously avoided destroying me so far; it would be a pity to die accidentally, due to an oversight. Please — go on your way if you cannot be bothered.'

'You want the wires loosened?'

'The merest fraction. They have no give in them, you see, and it would be nice to breathe without dissecting myself.'

'If you try anything this time,' Horza told the Idiran, coming close to him, gun pointed at his face, 'I'll blow both your arms and all three legs off and slide you home on the pallet.'

'Your threatened cruelty has convinced me, human. You obviously know the shame we attach to prosthetics, even if they are the result of battle wounds. I shall behave. Just loosen the wires a little, like a good ally.'

Horza loosened the wires slightly where they were cutting into Xoxarle's body. The section leader flexed and made a loud sighing sound with his mouth.

'Much better, little one. Much better. Now I shall live to face whatever retribution you may imagine is mine.'

'Depend on it,' Horza said. 'If he breathes belligerently,' he told Aviger, 'shoot his legs off.'

'Oh yes, sir,' Aviger said, saluting.

'Hoping to trip over the Mind, Horza?' Balveda asked him. She had stopped pacing and stood facing him and Yalson, her hands in her pockets.

'One never knows, Balveda,' Horza said.

'Tomb robber,' Balveda said through a lazy smile.

Horza turned to Yalson. 'Tell Wubslin we're leaving. Ask him to keep an eye on the platform; make sure Aviger doesn't fall asleep.'

Yalson raised Wubslin on the communicator.

'You'd better come with us,' Horza told Balveda. 'I don't like leaving you here with all this equipment switched on.'

'Oh, Horza,' Balveda smiled, 'don't you trust me?'

'Just walk in front and shut up,' Horza said in a tired voice, and pointed to indicate the direction he wanted to go in. Balveda shrugged and started walking.

'Does she have to come?' Yalson said as she fell into step beside Horza.

'We could always lock her up,' Horza said. He looked at Yalson, who shrugged.

'Oh, what the hell,' she said.

Unaha-Closp floated through the train. Outside, it could see the repair and maintenance cavern, all its machinery — lathes and forges, welding rigs, articulated arms, spare units, huge hanging cradles, a single suspended gantry like a narrow bridge — glinting in the bright overhead lights.

The train was interesting enough; the old technology provided things to look at and bits and pieces to touch and investigate, but Unaha-Closp was mostly just glad to be by itself for a while. It had found the company of the humans wearing after a few days, and the Changer's attitude distressed it most of all. The man was a speciesist! Me, just a machine, thought Unaha-Closp, how dare he!

It had felt good when it had been able to react first in the tunnels, perhaps saving some of the others — perhaps even saving that ungrateful Changer — by knocking Xoxarle out. Much as it disliked admitting it, the drone had felt proud when Horza had thanked it. But it hadn't really altered the man's view; he would probably forget what had happened, or try to tell himself it was just a momentary aberration by a confused machine: a freak. Only Unaha-Closp knew what it felt, only it knew why it had risked injury to protect the humans. Or it should know, it told itself ruefully. Maybe it shouldn't have bothered; maybe it should just have let the Idiran shoot them. It just hadn't seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Mug, Unaha-Closp told itself.

It drifted through the bright, humming spaces of the train, like a detached part of the mechanism itself.

Wubslin scratched his head. He had stopped at the reactor car on his way to the control deck. Some of the reactor carriage doors wouldn't open. They had to be on some sort of security lock, probably controlled from the bridge, or flight deck, or footplate, or whatever they called the bit at the nose the train was controlled from. He looked out of a window, remembering what Horza had ordered.

Aviger sat on the pallet, his gun pointing at the Idiran, who stood stock still against the girders. Wubslin looked away, tested the door through to the reactor area again, then shook his head.

The hand, the arm, was weakening. Above him, rows of seats faced blank screens. He pulled himself along by the stems of the chairs; he was almost at the corridor which led through to the front car.

He wasn't sure how he would get through the corridor. What was there to hold onto? No point in worrying about it now. He grabbed at another chair stem, hauled at it.

From the terrace which looked over the repair area, they could see the front train, the one the drone was in. Poised over the sunken floor of the maintenance area, the glittering length of the train, nestling in the scooped half-tunnel which ran along the far wall, looked like a long thin spaceship, and the dark rock around it like starless space.

Yalson watched the Culture agent's back, frowning. 'She's too damn docile, Horza,' she said, just loud enough for the man to hear.

'That's fine by me,' Horza said. 'The more docile the better.'

Yalson shook her head slightly, not taking her eyes off the woman in front. 'No, she's stringing us along. She hasn't cared up till now; she's known she can afford to let things happen. She's got another card she can play and she's just relaxing until she has to use it.'

'You're imagining things,' Horza told her. 'Your hormones are getting the better of you, developing suspicions and second sight.'

She looked at him, transferring the frown from Balveda to the Changer. Her eyes narrowed. 'What?'

Horza held up his free hand. 'A joke.' He smiled.