Free Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks

means, Chay. Our lucky charms, our little kernels of saving code. We brought these with us, remember? They did not put these on us! This is our chance. We must be ready.
    No, you’re still a fool. We have nothing. They will find us, give us to the superiors in the machine.
    The flier was in the shape of a giant beetle; it buzzed furiously towards the mill on a blur of iridescent wings, its legs extending as it approached a shaved-level patch of ground by the building’s side.
    Ha! Chay, you’re wrong, my love. We are destined to get out of here. You’re coming with me. Keep a hold of your horrible necklace. This barb; this one right here. Here, can you feel it?
    He directed two of her still-perfect, still-unscarred, undamaged trunk fingers to the control barb.
    I feel it.
    When I say so, you pull hard on that. Do you understand?
    Of course I understand, do you think me a fool?
    Only when I say; pull hard. We shall look like demons to those who are demons themselves, and have their power. The effect will not last long, but long enough to get us through the gate.
    The great beetle-shaped flier was settling on the patch of ground by the mill. A pair of demons, yellow and black striped, emerged from the mill to watch it land. The beetle’s fuselage body was about half the size of the mill; lower, longer, darkly sleek. Its wings settled, folded into its carapace. The rear of its abdomen hinged down and a small group of sturdy, grinning demons and quivering, obviously terrified Pavuleans in rough-looking clothes came out.
    The Pavuleans’ clothes alone marked them out as different, here. In Hell all suffered naked, and any who tried to cover their nudity only ensured themselves further torments as punishment for having had the effrontery to imagine they could exercise any control whatsoever over their suffering.
    The eight Pavuleans exiting the giant beetle were also distinguished from the damned around them by being whole, carrying no scars or obvious injuries, seeping wounds or signs of disease. They looked well fed too, though even from this distance Prin could see a sort of hungry desperation in their movements and their facial expressions, a petrifying sense of probably being about to escape this landscape of pain and terror, but with the realisation dawning on at least some of them that perhaps they had been lied to. Perhaps this was not the end of a brief warning tour of Hell, designed to keep them on the straight and narrow back in the Real, but rather a taste of what was about to become their settled and already inescapable fate; a cruel trick that would be just the first of innumerable cruel tricks. Perhaps they were not getting out at all; perhaps they were here to stay, and to suffer.
    From what Prin knew, for at least one of their number this would be brutally true; such groups were inevitably traumatised in the course of what they were forced to witness during these tours and – utterly unable to establish any rapport with the rapaciously forbidding and utterly disdainful demons who escorted them – quickly drew together, bonding like a tiny herd, finding a rough but real companionship amongst their equally horror-struck companions no matter how various their personalities, situations and histories might have been back in the Real.
    To then have one of your number cut out of your little group, somebody you knew and felt some camaraderie towards, made the experience all the more vivid. It was just about possible to experience one of these horrific excursions and convince yourself that the unfortunates you saw suffering were quite different from you just because of the extremity of their degradation (they appeared sub-Pavulean; little more – perhaps no more – than animals) but to watch one of your group having all of his or her worst fears confirmed, consigned to everlasting torment just at the point when they thought they were about to be allowed to resume their life in the Real, made the lesson the tour was