Fwi-Song’s eyes closed slowly. The hand at his throat flopped across the sand and into the outer edge of the fire, where it
started to sizzle.
Mr. First’s legs beat a tattoo on the sand just as the last of the Eaters ran away, jumping tents and fires and racing for
the canoes or shuttle
or forest. Then the two skinny legs sticking out from under the prophet’s body were reduced to spasms,
and after a while they stopped moving
altogether. None of their movements had succeeded in shifting Fwi-Song’s huge body a
centimeter.
Horza blew some sand off the clumsy-feeling pistol and moved upwind from the smell of the prophet’s hand burning in the fire.
He checked
the gun, looking round the deserted stretch of beach around the fires and tents. The canoes were being launched.
Eaters were crowding into
the Culture shuttle.
Horza stretched his aching limbs, looked at his bare-boned finger, then shrugged, put the gun under one armpit, put his good
hand round
the set of bones, pulled and twisted. His useless bones snapped from their sockets and he threw them onto the fire.
Pain isn’t real anyway,
he told himself shakily, and started for the Culture shuttle at a slow run.
The Eaters in the shuttle saw him coming straight toward them, and started screaming again. They piled out. Some of them ran
down the beach
to wade out after the escaping canoes; others scattered into the forest. Horza slowed down to let them go,
then looked warily at the open doors
of the Culture craft. He could see seats inside, up the short ramp, and lights and a
far bulkhead. He took a deep breath and walked up the
gentle slope of ramp, into the shuttle.
“Hello," said a crudely synthesized voice. Horza looked around. The shuttle looked pretty well used and old. It was Culture,
he was fairly
certain of that, but it wasn’t as neat and spanking-new as the Culture liked its products to look. “Why were
those people so frightened of you."
Horza was still looking round, wondering where and what to address.
“I’m not sure," he said, shrugging. He was naked and still holding the gun, with only a couple of strips of flesh on one finger,
though the
bleeding had quickly stopped. He thought he must look a threatening figure anyway, but maybe the shuttle couldn’t
tell that. “Where are you.
What are you." he said, deciding to feign ignorance. He looked around in a very obvious manner,
hamming up a display of looking forward,
through a door in the bulkhead, to a control area forward.
“I’m the shuttle. Its brain. How do you do."
“Fine," Horza said, “just fine. How are you."
“Very well, considering, thank you. I haven’t been bored at all, but it is nice to have somebody to talk to at last. You speak
very good Marain;
where did you learn."
“Ah… I did a course in it," Horza said. He did some more looking around. “Look, I don’t know where to look when I talk to
you. Where should
I look, huh."
“Ha ha," the shuttle laughed. “I suppose you’d best look up here; forward toward the bulkhead." Horza did so. “See that little
round thing right
in the middle, near the ceiling. That’s one of my eyes."
“Oh," Horza said. He waved and smiled. “Hi. My name’s… Orab."
“Hello, Orab. I’m called Tsealsir. Actually that’s only part of my name designation, but you can call me that. What was happening
out there. I
haven’t been watching the people I’m here to rescue; I was told not to, in case I got upset, but I did hear people
screaming when they came near
and they seemed frightened when they came inside me. Then they saw you and ran away. What is
that you’re holding. Is it a gun. I’ll have to
ask you to put that away for safekeeping. I’m here to rescue people who want
to be rescued when the Orbital is destructed, and we can’t have
dangerous weapons on board, in case somebody gets hurt, can
we. Is that finger hurt. I have a very good medkit on board. Would you like to
use it, Orab."
“Yes, that might be an idea."
“Good. It’s on the inward side of the doorway through to my front compartment on the left."
Horza started walking past the rows of seats toward the front of the shuttle. For all its age, the shuttle smelled of… he
wasn’t quite sure. All
the synthetic materials it was made from, he supposed. After the natural but god-awful odors of the
last day, Horza found the shuttle much more
pleasant, even if it was Culture and therefore belonged to the enemy. Horza touched
the gun he was carrying as though doing something to it.
“Just putting the safety catch on," he told the eye in the ceiling. “Don’t want it to go off, but those people out there were
trying to kill me
earlier, and I feel safer with it in my hand, know what I mean."
“Well, not exactly, Orab," the shuttle said, “but I think I can understand. But you’ll have to give the gun to me before we
take off."
“Oh sure. As soon as you close those rear doors." Horza was in the doorway between the main compartment and the smaller control
area
now. It was in fact a very short corridor, less than two meters long, with opened doors to each compartment. Horza looked
round quickly, but he
couldn’t see another eye. He watched a large flap open at about hip level to reveal a comprehensive
medical kit.
“Well, Orab, I’d close those doors to make you feel a bit safer if I could, but you see I’m here to rescue people who want
to be rescued when
the time comes to destruct the Orbital, and I can’t close those doors until just before I leave, so that
everybody who wants to can get on board.
Actually I can’t really understand why anybody wouldn’t want to escape, but they
told me not to get worried if some people stayed behind. But I
must say I think that would be kind of silly, don’t you, Orab."
Horza was rummaging through the medkit but looking above it at other outlines of doors set in the wall of the short corridor.
He said, “Hmm.
Oh, yeah, that would be. When is the place due to blow, anyway." He poked his head round the corner, into the
control compartment or flight
deck, looking up at another eye set in the corresponding position to the one in the main compartment,
but looking forward from the other side of
the thick wall between the two. Horza grinned and gave a little wave, then ducked
back.
“Hi," the shuttle laughed. “Well, Orab, I’m afraid that we’re going to be forced to destruct the Orbital in forty-three standard
hours. Unless, of
course, the Idirans see sense and are reasonable and withdraw their threat to use Vavatch as a war base."
“Oh," Horza said. He was looking at one of the door outlines above the opened one the medkit was protruding from. As far as
he could
guess, those two eyes were back to back, separated by the thickness of the wall between the two compartments. Unless
there was a mirror he
couldn’t see, he was invisible to the shuttle while he remained in the short corridor.
He looked back, out through the open rear doors; the only movement came from the tops of some distant trees and the smoke
from the
fires. He checked the gun. The projectiles seemed to be hidden in some sort of magazine, but a little circular indicator
with a sweep hand
indicated either one bullet left or one expended out of twelve.
“Yes," the shuttle said. “It’s very sad, of course, but these things are necessary in wartime I suppose. Not that I pretend
to understand it all.
I’m just a humble shuttle, after all. I’d actually been given away as a present to one of the Megaships
because I was too old-fashioned and crude
for the Culture, you know. I thought they could have upgraded me but they didn’t;
they just gave me away. Anyway, they need me now, I’m happy
to say. We have quite a job on our hands, you know, getting everybody
who wants to get off away from Vavatch. I’ll be sorry to see it go; I’ve had
some happy times here, believe me…. But that’s
just the way things go, I suppose. How’s that finger going, by the way. Want me to have a look
at it. Bring the medkit stuff
round into one of the two compartments so I can take a look. I might be able to help, you know. Oh! Are you
touching one of
the other lockers in that corridor."
Horza was trying to lever open the door nearest the roof by using the barrel of the gun. “No," he said, heaving away at it.
“I’m nowhere near
it."