The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks Read Free Book Online

closer to the comms unit. ‘This is flier two-two-nine, we have no place safe to put down under cover as advised so we are making maximum speed at minimum altitude towards--’
    Saluus Kehar reached over with one coppery-gold hand and clicked the comms unit off.
    ‘Fuck you!’ Taince said, slapping his hand away even as it went back to the flier’s control yoke.
    ‘Taince, really,’ Sal said, shaking his head but keeping his gaze on the rapidly approaching ship ruins, ‘you don’t have to tell them.’
    ‘Cretin,’ Taince breathed. She switched the comms back on.
    ‘Yes, see previous comment,’ Fassin said, shaking his head.
    ‘Will you leave that alone?’ Sal said, trying and failing to turn the comms unit off again as Taince searched for a working channel and kept slapping his hand away. (Fassin was about to say something to the effect that she was better practised at this form of behaviour than he’d ever have assumed. Then thought the better of it.) ‘Look,’ Sal said, ‘I’m ordering you, Taince; leave the damn thing off. Who does this flier belong to, anyway?’
    ‘Your dad?’ Fassin suggested. Sal glanced back at him, reproachful. Fassin nodded forwards at the swiftly enlarging wreck of the ship. ‘Eyes ahead.’
    Sal turned back. I’m ordering you, thought Fassin, with a sneer. Saluus, really. Had he used that form of words because Taince was in the military and he thought she’d just obey anything anybody called an order, even if it came from a civilian, or because he thought he could start throwing his dynastic weight around already? He was surprised that Taince hadn’t laughed in Sal’s face.
    Oh well, they weren’t innocents any more, Fassin reminded himself, and the more you learned about the world, the galaxy and the Age they were growing up within, the more you realised it was all about hierarchy, about ranking and seniority and pecking order, from well, well below where they were all the way up to gloriously unseeable alien heights. Really they were like lab mice growing up together, rough-and-tumbling in the cage, learning their position in the litter, testing their own and the others’ abilities and weaknesses, working on their moves and strategies for later life, discovering how much leeway they might have or be granted as adults, mapping out the space for their dreams.
    Taince snorted. ‘Probably not even daddy’s car, probably not even a company flier, more likely some complicated sale-and-leaseback deal and it’s owned by an off-planet, tax-opaque semiautomatic front company.’ She growled and slapped the unresponding comms unit.
    Sal shook his head. ‘Such cynicism in the young,’ he said, then looked down at the butterfly shape of the control yoke. ‘Hey, this is vibrating! What--?’
    Taince nodded at the ship ruins, now towering over them. ‘Proximity warning, ace. You might want to slow down, or peel and scrub.’
    ‘How can you talk about exfoliating at a time like this?’ Sal said, grinning. Taince punched his thigh. ‘Ow! That’s assault,’ he said, pretending outrage. ‘I may sue.’ She punched him again. He laughed, throttled back and air-braked, pushing them all forward against their restraints, until the little flier was down to about ten metres per second.
    They passed into the shadow of the giant ship.
    •
    ‘Fassin Taak,’ Major-Domo Verpych said, ‘what trouble have you landed us in now?’ They were hurrying down a wide, windowless passageway under the centre of the house. Before Fassin could reply, Verpych nodded at a side corridor and strode towards it. ‘This way.’
    Fassin lengthened his stride to keep up. ‘I am as ignorant as you are, major-domo.’
    ‘Clearly your gift for understatement has not deserted you.’
    Fassin absorbed this and thought the better of replying. He assumed what he hoped looked like a tolerant smile, though when he glanced at Verpych the major-domo wasn’t looking. Verpych was a small, thin but