3: Remembrance

Ten

He loved the plasma rifle. He was an artist with it; he could paint pictures of destruction, compose symphonies of demolition, write elegies of annihilation, using that weapon.

He stood, thinking about it, while the wind moved dead leaves round his feet and the ancient stones faced into the wind.

They hadn't made it off the planet. The capsule had been attacked by… something. He couldn't tell from the damage whether it had been a beam weapon or some sort of warhead going off nearby. Whatever it had been, it had disabled them. Clamped to the outside of the capsule, he'd been lucky to be on the side that shielded him from whatever had hit it. Had he been on the other side, facing the beam or the warhead, he'd be dead.

They must have been hit by some crude effector weapon as well, because the plasma rifle seemed to have fused. It had been cradled between his suit and the capsule skin and couldn't have been affected by whatever wrecked the capsule itself, but the weapon had smoked and got hot, and when they'd finally landed — Beychae shaken but unhurt — and opened up the gun's inspection panels, it was to find a melted, still-warm mess inside.

Maybe if he'd taken just a little less time to convince Beychae; maybe if he'd just knocked the old guy out and left the talking for later. He'd taken too much time, given them too much time. Seconds counted. Dammit, milliseconds, nanoseconds counted. Too much time.

"They're going to kill you!" he'd shouted. "They want you on their side or they want you dead. The war's going to start soon, Tsoldrin; you support them or you'll have an accident. They won't let you stay neutral!"

"Insane," Beychae repeated, cradling Ubrel Shiol's head in his hands. Saliva trickled from the woman's mouth. "You're insane, Zakalwe; insane." He started to cry.

He went over to the old man, knelt on one knee, holding the gun he'd taken from Shiol. "Tsoldrin; what do you think she had this for?" He put his hand on the old man's shoulder. "Didn't you see the way she moved when she tried to kick me? Tsoldrin; librarians… research assistants… they just don't move like that." He reached out and patted the unconscious woman's collar flat and tidy again. "She was one of your jailers, Tsoldrin; she would probably have been you executioner." He reached under the car, pulled out the bouquet of flowers, and placed them gently under her blonde head, removing Beychae's hands.

"Tsoldrin," he said. "We have to go. She'll be all right." He arranged Shiol's arms in a less awkward position. She was already on her side, so she wouldn't choke. He reached carefully under Beychae's arms and slowly drew the old man up to his feet. Ubrel Shiol's eyes flickered open; she saw the two men in front of her; she muttered something, and one hand went to the back of her neck. She started to roll over, unbalanced in her grogginess; the hand that had gone to her neck came away clutching a tiny cylinder like a pen; he felt Beychae stiffen as the girl looked up and, as she fell forward, tried to point the little laser at Beychae's head.

Beychae looked into her dark, half-unfocused eyes, over the top of the pen laser, and felt a sort of appalled disconnectedness. The girl tried hard to steady herself, aiming at him. Not Zakalwe, he thought; at me. Me!

"Ubrel…" he began.

The girl fell back in a dead faint.

Beychae stared down at her body lying limp on the road. Then he heard somebody saying his name and tugging his arm.

"Tsoldrin… Tsoldrin… Come on, Tsoldrin."

"Zakalwe; she was aiming at me, not you!"

"I know, Tsoldrin."

"She was aiming at me!"

"I know. Come on; here's the capsule."

"At me…"

"I know, I know. Get in here."

He watched the grey clouds move overhead. He stood on the flat stone summit of a high hill, surrounded by other hilltops almost as high, all wooded. He looked resentfully around the forested slopes and the curious, truncated stone pillars and plinths that covered the platform peak. He felt a sense of vertigo, exposed to such wide horizons again after so long spent in the cleft city. He left the view, kicked his way through some wind-piled leaves, back to where Beychae sat and the plasma rifle rested against a great round stone. The capsule was a hundred metres away, down in the trees.

He picked up the plasma rifle for the fifth or sixth time and inspected it.

It made him want to cry; it was such a beautiful weapon. Every time he picked it up he half hoped that it would be all right, that the Culture had fitted it with some self-repair facility without telling him, that the damage would be no more…

The wind blew; the leaves scattered. He shook his head, exasperated. Beychae, sitting in his thickly padded trousers and long jacket, turned to look at him.

"Broken?" the old man asked.

"Broken," he said. His face took on an expression of annoyance; he gripped the weapon round the muzzle with both hands and swung it round his head, then let it go and sent it whirling away into the trees below; it disappeared in a flurry of dislodged leaves.

He sat down beside Beychae.

Plasma rifle gone, just a pistol left; only one suit; probably no way he could use the suit's AG without giving away their position; capsule wrecked; module nowhere to be seen; no word from the terminal earring or the suit itself… it was a sorry mess. He checked the suit for whatever broadcast signals it was picking up; the wrist screen displayed some news headlines programme; nothing about Solotol was mentioned. A few of the Cluster's brush-fire wars were.

Beychae looked at the small screen too. "Can you tell from that whether they are looking for us?" he asked.

"Only if we see it on the news. Military stuff will be tight-beamed; slim chance we'll pick up a transmission." He looked at the clouds. "We'll probably find out more directly, soon enough."

"Hmm," Beychae said. He frowned at the flagstones, then said, "I think I might know where this place is, Zakalwe."

"Yeah?" he said, unenthusiastically. He put his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, and looked out over the wooded plains to the low hills on the horizon.

Beychae nodded. "I've been thinking about it. I believe this is the Srometren Observatory, in Deshal Forest."

"How far is that from Solotol?"

"Oh; different continent. Good two thousand kilometres."

"Same latitude," he said glumly, looking up at the chill grey skies.

"Approximately, if this is the place I think it is."

"Who's in charge here?" he asked. "Whose jurisdiction? Same lot as in Solotol; the Humanists?"

"The same." Beychae said, and got up, brushing the seat of his pants and looking around the flattened hill-top at the curious stone instruments that covered its flagstones. "Srometren Observatory!" he said. "How ironic we should happen to come down here, on our way to the stars!"

"Probably not just chance," he said, picking up a twig and brushing a few random shapes in the dust at his feet. "This place famous?"

"Of course," Beychae said. "It was the centre of astronomical research for the old Vrehid Empire for five hundred years."

"On any tourist routes?"

"Certainly."

"Then it probably has a beacon nearby, to guide aircraft in. Capsule may have made for it when it knew it was crippled. Makes us easier to find." He gazed up at the sky. "For everybody, unfortunately." He shook his head, went back to scratching in the dust with the twig.

"What happens now?" Beychae said.

He shrugged. "We wait and see who turns up. I can't get any of the communication gear to work, so we don't know if the Culture knows all that's happened or not… for all I know the Module's still coming for us, or a whole Culture starship's on its way, or — probably more likely — your pals from Solotol…" He shrugged, threw down the twig and sat back against the stonework behind him, glancing skyward. They might be watching us right now."