11
The Command System: Stations
He was being shaken gently.
“Wake up, now. Come on, wake up. Come on, now, up you get…."
He recognized the voice as Xoralundra’s. The old Idiran was trying to get him to wake up. He pretended to stay asleep.
“I know you’re awake. Come on, now, it’s time to get up."
He opened his eyes with a false weariness. Xoralundra was there, in a bright blue circular room with lots of large couches
set into
alcoves in the blue material. Above hung a white sky with black clouds. It was very bright in the room. He shielded
his eyes and looked at
the Idiran.
“What happened to the Command System." he said, looking around the circular blue room.
“That dream is over now. You did well, passed with flying colors. The Academy and I are very pleased with you."
He couldn’t help but feel pleased. A warm glow seemed to envelop him, and he couldn’t stop a smile appearing on his face.
“Thanks," he said. The Querl nodded.
“You did very well as Bora Horza Gobuchul," Xoralundra said in his rumbling great voice. “Now you should take some time off;
go and
play with Gierashell."
He was swinging his feet off the bed, getting ready to jump down to the floor, when Xoralundra said that. He smiled at the
old Querl.
“Who." he laughed.
“Your friend; Gierashell," the Idiran said.
“You mean Kierachell," he laughed, shaking his head; Xoralundra
must
be getting old!
“I mean Gierashell," the Idiran insisted coldly, stepping back and looking at him strangely. “Who is Kierachell."
“You mean you don’t know. But how could you get her name wrong." he said, shaking his head again at the Querl’s foolishness.
Or was
this still part of some test.
“Just a moment," Xoralundra said. He looked at something in his hand which threw colored lights across his broad, gleaming
face. Then
he slapped his other hand to his mouth, an expression of astonished surprise on his face as he turned to him and
said, “Oh!
Sorry!"
and
suddenly reached over and shoved him back into the—
He sat upright. Something whined in his ear.
He sat back down again slowly, looking round in the grainy darkness to see if any of the others had noticed, but they were
all still. He told
the remote sensor alarm to switch off. The whine in his ear faded. Unaha-Closp’s casing could be seen high
on the far gantry.
Horza opened his visor and wiped some sweat from his nose and brows. The drone had no doubt seen him each time he woke up.
He
wondered what it was thinking now, what it thought of him. Could it see well enough to know that he was having nightmares.
Could it see
through his visor to his face, or sense the small twitches his body made while his brain constructed its own
images from the debris of all his
days. He could blank the visor out; he could set the suit to expand and lock rigid.
He thought about how he must look to it: a small, soft naked thing writhing in a hard cocoon, convulsed with illusions in
its coma.
He decided to stay awake until the others started to rise.
The night passed, and the Free Company awoke to darkness and the labyrinth. The drone said nothing about seeing him wake up
during the
night, and he didn’t ask it. He was falsely jolly and hearty, going round the others, laughing and slapping backs,
telling them they’d get to station
seven today and there they could turn on the lights and get the transit tubes working.
“Tell you what, Wubslin," he said, grinning at the engineer as he rubbed his eyes, “we’ll see if we can’t get one of those
big trains working,
just for the hell of it."
“Well," Wubslin yawned, “if that’s all right…."
“Why not." Horza said, spreading his arms out. “I think Mr. Adequate’s leaving us to it; he’s turning a blind eye to this
whole thing. We’ll get
one of those super-trains running, eh."
Wubslin stretched, smiling and nodding. “Well, yeah, sounds like a good idea to me." Horza smiled widely, winked at Wubslin
and went to
release Balveda. It was like going to release a wild animal, he thought, as he shifted the empty cable drum he
had used to block the door. He
half expected to find Balveda gone, miraculously escaped from her bonds and disappeared from
the room without opening the door; but when
he looked in, there she was, lying calmly in her warm clothes, the harness making
troughs in the fur of the jacket and still attached to the wall
Horza had fixed it to.
“Good morning, Perosteck!" he said breezily.
“Horza," the woman said grumpily, sitting slowly upright, flexing her shoulders and arching her neck, “twenty years at my
mother’s side, more
than I care to think of as a gay and dashing young blade indulging in all the pleasures the Culture has
ever
produced, one or two of maturity,
seventeen in Contact and four in Special Circumstances have not made me pleasant to know
or quick to wake in the mornings. You wouldn’t
have some water to drink, would you. I’ve slept too long, I wasn’t comfortable,
it’s cold and dark, I had nightmares I thought were really horrible
until I woke up and remembered what reality was like at
the moment, and… I mentioned water a moment or two ago; did you hear. Or aren’t I