Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks Read Free Book Online

obsolete power station that had become
the grandly eccentric - not to mention pointedly symbolic - home of the woman
called Diziet Sma.
    The
bird settled belly-down to the swoop, and, level with the roof garden, flung
out its wings, grasping at the air and fluttering to a precipitous halt,
talons tacketing down on a window ledge set in the highest storey of the old
admin block apartments.
    Wings
folded, soot-dark head to one side, one beady eye reflecting the concrete
light, the bird hopped forward to a slid-open window, where soft red curtains
rippled out into the breeze. It stuck its head under the fluttering hem of the
material and peered into the darkened room beyond.
    'You
missed it.' Sma said with quiet scorn, happening to pad past the window just at
that moment. She sipped from a glass of water she held. Droplets from her
shower beaded her tawny body.
    The
bird's head swivelled, following her as she crossed to the closet and commenced
to dress. Swivelling back, the bird's gaze shifted to the male body lying in
the air a little less than a metre above the floor-mounted bed-base. Inside the
dim haze of the bed's AG field, the pale figure of Relstoch Sussepin stirred,
and rolled over in mid-air. His arms floated out to either side, until the weak
centering field on his side of the bed brought them slowly back in towards his
body again. In the dressing room, Sma gargled with some water, then swallowed
it.
    Fifty
metres east, Skaffen-Amtiskaw floated high in the air above the floor of the
turbine hall, surveying the wreckage of the party. The section of the drone's
mind that was controlling the guard-drone disguised as a bird took a last look
at the filigree of scratches on Sussepin's buttocks, and the already fading
bite-marks on Sma's shoulders (as she covered them with a gauzy shirt), and
then released the guard-drone from its control.
    The
bird squawked, jumped back from the curtain, and fell fluttering and frenzied
off the ledge, before opening its wings and beating back up past the gleaming
face of the dam, its shrill alarm-cries echoing back from the concrete slopes
and disturbing it further. Sma heard the distant feedback of commotion as she
buttoned her waistcoat, and smiled.

    'Good
night's sleep?' Skaffen-Amtiskaw inquired as it met her at the portico of the
old admin block.
    'Good
night, no sleep,' Sma yawned, shooing the whining hralzs back into the
building's marble hall, where Maikril the major-domo stood unhappily with a
bunch of leads. She stepped out into the sunlight, pulling on gloves. The drone
held the car door open for her. She filled her lungs with the fresh morning air
and ran down the steps, boot heels clattering. She jumped into the car, winced
a little as she settled in the driver's seat, then flicked a switch that
started the roof folding back, while the drone loaded her luggage into the
trunk. She tapped the battery gauges on the vehicle's dash and blipped the
accelerator, just to feel the wheel motors strain against the brakes. The drone
secured the trunk and floated into the rear seats. She waved to Maikril, who
was chasing one of the hralzs along the steps outside the turbine hall, and
didn't notice. Sma laughed, stood on the throttle and slipped the brakes.
    The
car leapt off in a spray of gravel, took the right-hander beneath the trees
with centimetres to spare, shot out through the station's granite gates with a
farewell shimmy of its rear end, and accelerated hard down Riverside Drive.
    'We
could have flown,' the drone pointed out, over the rush of air.
    But
it suspected Sma wasn't listening.

    The
semantics of fortification were pan-cultural, she thought, as she descended the
stone steps from the curtain wall of the castle, gazing up at the drum-shaped
keep, hazy in the distance on its hill behind several more layers of walls. She
walked across the grass, Skaffen-Amtiskaw at her shoulder, and exited the fort
through a postern.
    The
view led down to the new port and the straits, where