introducing
If you enjoyed
CONSIDER PHLEBAS,
look out for
MATTER
by Iain M. Banks
A light breeze produced a dry rattling sound from some nearby bushes. It lifted delicate little veils of dust from a few sandy
patches nearby and
shifted a lock of dark hair across the forehead of the woman sitting on the wood and canvas camp chair
which was perched, not quite level, on
a patch of bare rock near the edge of a low ridge looking out over the scrub and sand
of the desert. In the distance, trembling through the heat
haze, was the straight line of the road. Some scrawny trees, few
taller than one man standing on another’s shoulders, marked the course of the
dusty highway. Further away, tens of kilometers
beyond the road, a line of dark, jagged mountains shimmered in the baking air.
By most human standards the woman was tall, slim and well muscled. Her hair was short and straight and dark and her skin was
the color of
pale agate. There was nobody of her specific kind within several thousand light-years of where she sat, though
if there had been they might
have said that she was somewhere between being a young woman and one at the very start of middle
age. They would, however, have thought
she looked somewhat short and bulky. She was dressed in a pair of wide,loose-fitting
pants and a thin, cool-looking jacket, both the same
shade as the sand. She wore a wide black hat to shade her from the late
morning sun, which showed as a harsh white point high in the
cloudless, pale green sky. She raised a pair of very old and
worn-looking binoculars to her night-dark eyes and looked out toward the point
where the desert road met the horizon to the
west. There was a folding table to her right holding a glass and a bottle of chilled water. A small
backpack lay underneath.
She reached out with her other hand and lifted the glass from the table, sipping at the water while still looking through
the ancient field glasses.
“They’re about an hour away," said the machine floating to her left. The machine looked like a scruffy metal suitcase. It
moved a little in the
air, rotating and tipping as though looking up at the seated woman. “And anyway," it continued, “you
won’t see much at all with those museum
pieces."
She put the glass down on the table again and lowered the binoculars. “They were my father’s," she told the machine.
“Really," the drone said, with what might have been a sigh.
A screen flicked into existence a couple of meters in front of the woman, filling half her field of view. It showed, from
a point a hundred
meters above and in front of its leading edge, an army of men—some mounted, most on foot—marching along
another section of the desert
highway, all raising dust which piled into the air and drifted slowly away to the southeast.
Sunlight glittered off the edges of raised spears and
pikes. Banners, flags and pennants swayed above the heads of the mass
of moving men. The army filled the road for a couple of kilometers
behind the mounted men at its head. Bringing up the rear
were baggage carts, covered and open wagons, wheeled catapults and trebuchets
and a variety of lumbering wooden siege engines,
all pulled by dark, powerful-looking animals whose sweating shoulders towered over the men
walking at their sides.
The woman tutted. “Put that away," she said.
“Yes, ma’am," the machine said. The screen vanished.
The woman looked through the binoculars again, using both hands this time. “I can see their dust," she announced. “And another
couple of
scouts, I think."
“Astounding," the drone said.
If the woman heard the sarcasm in the machine’s voice, she chose to ignore it. She drained the water glass, placed the field
glasses on the
table, pulled the brim of her hat down over her eyes and settled back in the camp seat, crossing her arms and
stretching her booted feet out,
crossed at the ankle. “Having a snooze," she told the drone from beneath the hat. “Wake me
when it’s time."
“Just you make yourself comfortable there," the drone told her.
“Mm-hmm."
Turminder Xuss (drone, offensive) watched the woman Djan Seriy Anaplian for a few minutes, monitoring her slowing breathing
and her
gradually relaxing muscle-state until it knew she was genuinely asleep.
“Sweet dreams, princess," it said quietly. Reviewing its words immediately, the drone was completely unable to determine whether
a
disinterested observer would have detected any trace of sarcasm or not.
It checked round its half-dozen previously deployed scout and secondary knife missiles, using their sensors to watch the still
distant
approaching army draw slowly closer and monitoring the various small patrols and individual scouts the army had sent
out ahead of it.
For a while, it watched the army move. From a certain perspective it looked like a single great organism inching darkly across
the tawny
sweep of desert; something segmented, hesitant—bits of it would come to a stop for no obvious reason for long moments,
before starting off
again, so that it seemed to shuffle rather than flow en masse—but determined, unarguably fixed in its
onward purpose. And all on their way to
war, the drone thought sourly, to take and burn and loot and rape and raze. What sullen
application these humans devoted to destruction.
About half an hour later, when the front of the army was hazily visible on the desert highway a couple of kilometers to the
west, a single
mounted scout came riding along the top of the ridge, straight toward where the drone kept vigil and the woman
slept. The man showed no sign
of having seen through the camouflage field surrounding their little encampment, but unless
he changed course he was going to ride right into