Authors: Iain Banks
‘Well,’ Ali says sharply, ‘I fucking loved that Wii.’
‘You loved the boxing game, hitting seven kinds of shit out of my Mii,’ Rob says.
‘And I love my iPad too,’ Ali continues, ‘and it’s made a
huge
fucking difference to my life and I have no idea
what
the hell you’re talking about.’
Pris yawns. ‘I just want to say that I suffer from all the above.’
‘Tired?’ Paul asks her.
‘Head full of snoozicles,’ she says, stretching, ‘though no idea if I’ll be able to sleep.’ She pulls her jumper back up from where it’s slipped down her shoulder again. I think I caught a glimpse of some side boob there.
‘Right,’ Haze says. His voice still sounds very nasal. ‘I’ve built this really strong joint, right? Aware of this wired-till-noon effect, so this is the antidote. If we all smoke this,’ he says, holding the joint up in front of us, ‘it’ll precisely counteract the effects of the charlie—’
‘Precisely?’ Paul says.
‘Precisely,’ Haze says, nodding once. ‘It’s been carefully calibrated. It’ll totally knock us out and reset our body clocks back to something like normal. Trust me.’
‘No,’ says Ali.
‘Count me in,’ Paul says. ‘Though we do have all day tomorrow. Like I said. Cunning plan.’
‘There’s tobacco in that,’ Ali says.
‘Not all that much,’ Haze says. ‘It’s mostly dope.’
‘That’s all right then,’ Pris says, stretching again, and laughing. Her hair catches the light, a nimbus round her face.
‘No,’ Ali repeats.
‘Nor me,’ Pris says.
‘Tobacco hurts my throat,’ I tell Haze, when he looks at me. His shoulders slump.
Then he sits up again. ‘Or,’ he says, ‘through the wonders of numerical deconstruction, I could turn this into a bong.’
‘That’s miraculist,’ Rob observes.
‘You’d need a bong,’ Paul points out.
‘I have a bong,’ Haze says. ‘In the car.’ He waves the joint at us. ‘What I want to know is, is it worth my time taking apart this beautifully and robustly rolled jay, this thing of beauty, and going out to the car and finding my bong and then taking the dopal contents and making—’
‘The
dopal
contents?’ Paul asks, grinning.
‘Yes,’ Haze says, nodding, ‘the dopal contents, rather than the tobaccoidal contents of this here joint; taking them and making them into the contents of a bong bowl?’ He looks round at each of us in turn. ‘Are you with me? Are we together, compadres? Do we have a Fellowship of the Bong?’
‘So, to be clear,’ Paul says, ‘no tobacco.’
‘Correct,’ Haze tells him. ‘Zero tobacco. I will carefully separate one from the other.’
‘Fair enough.’ Hol nods. ‘You talked me into it.’
‘Yes, all right,’ Ali says.
‘Then that sounds like a feasible way forward,’ Paul agrees.
‘Yup,’ Rob says. ‘Nominal.’
‘Suppose so,’ Pris says, raising both arms above her head. ‘Regret it in the’ – she glances at her watch – ‘later,’ she says. ‘But then that’s sort of the tradition, I suppose.’
‘I’ll get some ice,’ I tell them. I’ve seen Guy use a bong.
In the Rushlaan mountains there lies a Quest, the Quest of Metalarque, in the Liquile gorge. Somewhere beyond the gorge, beyond its ancient, teetering, half-fallen bridges, wind-abraded scramble ropes, worn climbing chains and crumbling, rusting brackets, beyond its howling, never-ending force of wind, beneath those impenetrable skies, beyond the mazes of flooded tunnels and half-awash, vertiginously pierced cliff galleries, and on the far side of the bestiary of ferocious guard-Revenantaries – so quick, when they kill you, that you barely have time to see them properly, leaving you with only a frozen glimpse of blurred mouth-parts scissoring shut – there lies a treasure, encased, according to the rumours, in a jagged fortalice of black diamond, and guarded by something so big and fast and powerful it preys upon the Revenantaries.
The goal, the treasure, at Quest’s End, is unspecified, but the signs – spread geographically far and historically deep across the whole of HeroSpace – indicate that it must be of the first order. A Pax, a weapon of Absolution, an Imperator-level promotion, a Propagating ChronoSeam, or perhaps even something so potent, so unprecedented, that nothing like it has ever been seen before in HeroSpace. Perhaps the fabled Game-ender (a chilling, ludicrous, almost unthinkable thought), or – perhaps, and there are plenty of rumours to support this outcome too – just nothing: a Quest with an empty treasure chest at its end, or one holding only a slip of parchment with some sarcastic or dismissive message on it, to prove the vanity and idiocy of all Quests; a Quest to draw the most gifted, skilled and competitive away from all other, productive Quests, to leave space for less talented others.
Of course, the knowledge that the laborious, time-, strength- and morale-sapping heroics required to advance in the Quest of Metalarque may ultimately lead to nothing at all – may lead, in fact, to you looking like a dupe, like a fool, subject for evermore to knowing smirks and muttered jibes in taverns throughout the realm, perhaps even with a new, unwanted, unSecret Name – or that it may lead to the end of the whole game, the collapse of the whole world (however unlikely this may seem, especially given the revenues generated by the game for its creators and owners), is itself one of the most effective disincentives to pursuing what would be a dauntingly difficult, fiendishly challenging and just plain off-putting Quest even if you were absolutely assured of great treasure and vastly increased powers following its completion.
Hol nods, when I explain all this. ‘That’s a doozy, all right.’ She pushes a hand through her shadow-black hair.
We’re sitting in front of my main screen, set between the canted mirrors of the old dressing table; Hol’s laptop sits on the raised side of the table. I’ve let her use my seat while I perch on my laundry basket. It creaked a bit when I lowered myself onto it but I don’t think it’s actually going to collapse. That would be humiliating.
We may be the last ones up. The coke might finally be wearing off and the narcotic effects of the final bong have sent all of us to our rooms, possibly even to sleep. I told Hol I’d probably stay up for a little longer, just to keep in touch with HeroSpace. I haven’t played it in nearly twenty-four hours and I feel funny if I don’t spend even just half an hour in-game each day. I won’t be able to accomplish much – I’m too tired and feeling too slow – but there is, anyway, just a comfort in being back in there, just to hang out, all heroic efforts and accomplishments aside.
Currently, in such moments of relaxation, I’ve been manifesting in a feasting hall in Slaughtresgaard, mostly playing dumb-chance dice games and virtually drinking the local ale – which does interesting and uncontrollable things to one’s vision – though also trying to track down a rumoured MovePass that might just help with the Metalarque Revenantaries. The MovePass is supposedly held by a bad-tempered dwarf who chills here, but he’s partial to games of chance and might be persuaded to part with it for the right wager.
Hol said she’d like to see this – Slaughtresgaard is out-Law, and historically a bit tough and mean with Voys, who generally get used for target practice, so she’d never been – and so here we are; me on my computer, Hol on her laptop.
I do something a little underhand, letting Hol enter the hall significantly before me, so that it’s not obvious we’re together. The place is busy, with maybe a hundred avatars present, most of them probably real at this time of night rather than staffers and spear-carriers generated by the game itself – it’s the wee small hours in dear old Blighty but it’s prime evening playing time for West Coast American gamers.
Hol heads blithely for the bar while I pace a couple of steps behind her. Hol is a neat, trim figure in furs and fairly minimal cured-leather armour, lightly armed with a handblade hanging from each hip. She isn’t tall, lithe, pneumatic or even Amazonially statuesque (like the barmaids here are). Instead she presents – sensibly for somebody at her level – as someone who wants to blend in, not attract attention. Her handblade scabbards are buttoned, which is akin to displaying a Peace badge, hereabouts.
My longsword sheath doesn’t even have a button, and I keep it greased. This is about my eleventh or twelfth longsword; I’ve sold the rest for good money back in the real world. Serious, high-provenance, multi-kill swords look great and shout threat, but the truth is they don’t make that big a difference; a good swordsman with a generic, off-the-shelf sword from a low-rep blacksmith will skewer a newbie toting the best steel money can buy, every time. It’s like tennis rackets; if you’re an average club player you can have the finest, highest-tech, carbon-fibre racket on the market, but it’ll make no difference if you come up against somebody like Roger Federer; he could probably thrash you using a coal shovel.
Anyway, Hol patently presents no threat, but in a place like Slaughtresgaard that doesn’t mean you won’t get threatened. Arguably it almost guarantees it. And of course her attribute, skill and experience status are on show for all to see – you have no choice, as a Voy.
And attract attention is exactly what she does, almost immediately, while she’s still a step away from the bar and marvelling at the giant snakes curled sleeping inside the glass bar top. (The snakes are there in case things get too rowdy; the staff just open the customer side of the cages and let the snakes out. The reptiles are kept hungry, so the place tends to clear pretty quickly; stops people smashing bottles off the counter tops too, on the rare occasions when the weaponry peace-bonding rule is actually being enforced.)
–
You here to meet somebody?
Hol is asked, by a tall, thin, black-clad guy who looks suspiciously like Neo in the
Matrix
movies, even down to the shiny black shoes. (There are a lot of these guys about. Still.) He’s presenting vaguely as a necromancer, but de-chromed, in the parlance; exact status hard to determine. Could be anything from a lowly wizard’s even-more-lowly assistant to a TrueMage, though obviously we’re meant to assume closer to the latter. I think I know how the rest of this exchange is supposed to go: Hol says … well, almost anything, and then he says something like,
Better hope you meet them soon, little lady
(or something equally rubbish), while he works up the gumption to knife her. Also, it’s hard to treat somebody seriously when they insist on expressing themselves in
Gothick
. I mean, really.
‘Whoa,’ Hol says, over a stifled yawn, ‘am I being hit on here, or threatened?’
‘Threatened,’ I tell her. In the game, I remain a couple of steps back. ‘Ask him who he is, why he wants to know.’
–
Who wants to know?
Hol types (in a rare font I don’t recognise).
But that’s already too aggressive. Before Neo the Necromancer can reply – possibly by just knifing her without further ado – I flit forward and I’m suddenly at Hol’s avatar’s side, my left bicep touching her right shoulder, my gauntleted right hand resting easily on my belt buckle, mailed fingertips almost but not quite touching the pommel of my sword. (I’m still using a matched pair of Pro-level joysticks; people have claimed the Wii and the Kinect work better, but I disagree; for now at least a good set of joysticks gives superior accuracy.)
–
She’s with me,
I tell Neo. (I use a
very
understated font. And I keep the size as small as you’re allowed; the time it takes for somebody to have to peer more closely at their screen, or readjust the settings at their end, might be the difference between getting the first blow in or not.) I signify a smile, but I also give him a narrow angle on my full status.
He smiles back, after a moment. –
Apologies, sir
, he says.
Please
: he offers me a contact, which I deign to accept because there’s no need to be rude, even if I’m highly unlikely ever to need somebody like this. –
If I can ever be of any help …
(I just nod.)
To Hol’s avatar he says,
–
Lucky
, and then disappears. Not disappears as in disappears into the crowd; disappears as in disappears in a puff of smoke. Necros are prone to doing this.
Hol looks at me, in reality. ‘Did we just avoid a Mos Eisley Cantina arm-getting-lopped-off scene there?’
‘Sort of,’ I tell her. This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for (though at the low-violence end of the spectrum), and I feel elated and proud, because I protected her, and yet also a bit low and conniving for having set it all up in the first place. Had we swaggered into the hall side by side, only some nutter with a death wish would even have dared speak to her.
‘Think I’m out of my depth here,’ she tells me. ‘I’m cutting out. You’re the big beast here. I’ll just watch you, from outside.’
‘Your choice,’ I tell her. Hol logs out.
I cut to the chase, quitting the feasting hall and dropping straight into the last place I got to in the Metalarque Quest. ‘This is how big a beast I am against these guys,’ I tell her ruefully. My avatar is standing in the gloom of a tunnel deep in a maze-mine hidden behind a waterfall. I kick open a door of pitted wood and rusting iron.
Usually in HeroSpace when you kick down a door the best technique is to charge straight in, before the splintered wreckage has a chance to bounce. I tried that here the last few times, though, and discovered you just get chomped by something on the other side you can’t even see (lanterns, even shielded ones, have long since blown out, all lamp filaments melt at the threshold and even luminosity coatings stop working). This time I step to one side and wait to see what might emerge.
Something piano-black and shiny that might owe a little to the alien in
Alien
– but with two extra, very long, toothy heads where the arms would be on anything remotely humanoid – comes tearing out of the darkness and immediately engages. I’m experimenting with a metal-mesh throw-net, and chuck that over the bastard. Amazingly, this seems to work, slowing it down long enough to give me a chance to skewer it with my longsword. Only I’m too slow, reaction times degraded, and I miss the opening as its heads and grapple-limbs thrash, and it gets me, biting off my sword arm at the elbow.