"Don't be silly," Livueta said.
"It's not silly," Darckense said. "We could go to the city. It would be something to do."
"Yes." Cheradenine said. "You're right. It would be."
"Why do you want to go to the city?" Livueta said. "It might be… dangerous there."
"Well it's boring here," Darckense said.
"Yeah, it is," Cheradenine agreed.
"We could take a boat and sail away," Cheradenine said.
"We wouldn't even really have to sail, or row," Elethiomel said. "All we'd have to do is push the boat out and we'd end up in the city eventually anyway."
"I wouldn't go," Livueta said, kicking at a pile of leaves.
"Oh, Livvy," Darckense said. "Now you're being boring. Come on. We've got to do things together."
"I wouldn't go," Livueta repeated.
Elethiomel pressed his lips together. He kicked hard at a huge pile of leaves, sending them up into the air like an explosion. A couple of the guards turned round quickly, then relaxed, looked away again. "We've got to do something," he said, looking at the guards ahead, admiring the big automatic rifles they were allowed to use. He'd never even been allowed to touch a proper big gun; just piddling little small-bore pistols and light carbines.
He caught one of the leaves as it fell past his face.
"Leaves…" he turned the leaf, this way and that, in front of his eyes. "Trees are stupid," he told the others.
"Of course they are," Livueta said. "They don't have nerves and brains, do they?"
"I don't mean that," he said, crumpling the leaf in his hands. "I mean they're such a stupid idea. All this waste every autumn. A tree that kept its leaves wouldn't have to grow new ones; it would grow bigger than all the rest; it would be the king of the trees."
"But the leaves are beautiful!" Darckense said.
Elethiomel shook his head, exchanging looks with Cheradenine. "Girls!" he laughed, sneering.
He forgot what the other word was for a crater; there was another word for a crater, for a big volcanic crater, there was definitely another word for it, there was absolutely and positively another word for it, I just put it down for a minute here and now some bastard's swiped it, the bastard… if I could just find it, I… I just put it down here a minute ago…
Where was the volcano?
The volcano was on a big island on an inland sea, somewhere.
He looked around at the distant heights of the crater walls, trying to remember where this somewhere was. As he moved, his shoulder hurt, where one of the robbers had stabbed him. He'd attempted to protect the wound by shooing the clouds of flies away, but he was fairly sure they'd already laid their eggs.
(Not too near the heart; at least he still carried her there, and it would take a while for the corruption to spread that far. He'd be dead by then, before they found their way to his heart and her.)
But why not? Go ahead; be my guests, little maggots, eat away, sup your fill; quite probably I'll be dead anyway by the time you hatch, and will save you the pain and torment of my attempts to scratch you out… Dear little maggots, sweet little maggots. (Sweet little me; I'm the one that's being eaten.)
He paused and thought about the pool, the little puddle that he orbited around, like a captured rock. It was at the bottom of a small depression, and it seemed to him that he kept on trying to get out away from the stinking water and the slime and the flies that crowded around it and the bird shit he kept crawling through… He didn't manage it; he always seemed to end up back here for some reason, but he thought about it a lot.
The pool was shallow, muddy, rocky and smelly; it was foul and horrid and bloated past its normal limits with the sickness and the blood that he had spilled out into it; he wanted to leave, to get well away from it. Then he would send in a heavy-bomber raid.
He started to crawl again, hauling himself round the pool, disturbing pellets and insects, and heading off towards the lake at one point, then coming back, back to the same point as before, and stopping, gazing transfixed at the pool and the rock.
What had he been doing?
Helping the locals, as usual. Honest counsel; advisor, keeping the loonies at bay and people sweet; later leading a small army. But they'd assumed he'd betray them, and that he'd use the army he'd trained as his own power base. So, on the eve of their victory, the very hour they'd finally stormed the Sanctum, they'd struck at him, too.
They'd taken him to the furnace room, stripped him naked; he'd escaped, but soldiers had been pounding down the stairs and he'd had to run. He'd been forced into the river, when they cornered him again. The dive almost knocked him out. Currents took him and he spun, lazily… he woke up in the morning, under a winch housing on a big river barge; he had no idea how he'd got there. There was a rope trailing astern, and he could only guess he'd climbed up that. His head still hurt.
He took some clothes which were drying on a line behind the wheelhouse, but he was seen; he dived overboard with them, swam to the shore. He'd still been hounded, and all the time he was forced further away from the city and Sanctum, where the Culture might look for him. He spent hours trying to work out how to contact them.
He'd been on a stolen mount, skirting the edge of a water-filled volcanic crater when the robbers struck; they'd beaten him and raped him and cut the tendons in his legs and tossed him into the stinking, yellow-tinged waters of the crater lake, then thrown boulders at him as he tried to swim away, using only his arms, legs floating uselessly behind him.
He knew one of the rocks would hit him sooner or later, so he tried to coax up some of that wonderful Culture training, quickly hyperventilated, and then dived. He only had to wait a couple of seconds. A big rock splashed into the water, in the line of bubbles he'd left when he dived; he embraced the rock like a lover as it wobbled down towards him, and let it take him deep into the darkness of the lake, switching off the way he'd been taught to, but not really caring very much if it didn't work, and he never woke up again.
He'd thought ten minutes when he dived. He woke up in crushing darkness; remembered, and dragged his arms out from under the rock. He kicked for the light but nothing happened. He used his arms. The surface came down to meet him, eventually. Air had never tasted so sweet.
The walls of the crater lake were sheer; the tiny rock island was the only place to swim to. Screeching birds lifted from the island as he thrashed his way ashore.
At least, he thought, as he dragged himself onto the rock through the guano, it wasn't the priests that found me. Then I'd really have been in trouble.
The bends set in a few minutes later, like slow acid seeping into every joint, and he wished the priests had got him.
Still — he told himself, talking to keep his mind away from the pain — they would come for him; the Culture would come down with a beautiful big ship and they would take him up and make it all better.
He was sure they would. He'd be looked after and made better and he'd be safe, very safe and well looked after and free from pain, back in their paradise, and it would be like… like being a child again; like being in the garden again. Except — some rogue part of his mind reminded him — bad things happened in gardens too, sometimes.
Darckense got the armoury guard to help her with a door that was stuck, along the corridor, just round the corner. Cheradenine slipped in and took the autorifle Elethiomel had described. He got back out, covering the gun in a cape, and heard Darckense thanking the guard profusely. They all met up in the rear hall cloakroom, where they whispered excitedly in the comforting smell of wet cloth and floor polish, and took turns holding the gun. It was very heavy.