The ship didn't even have a name

With the tragic death of Iain Banks - I wanted to share how he and I were finally linked a few hours too late for him to ever know.

For as long as I can remember I've wanted to write science fiction. I wanted to write about alien species, galactic journeys and space-faring adventurers. At school they said I was a good writer but I needed to grow up and write about the real world. Eventually I listened. First I stopped writing sci-fi and then I stopped reading it.

That was a huge mistake. Now I'm older I realise everyone should follow their own path.

But it was only when I picked up Consider Phlebas and read the opening line ‘The ship didn't even have a name' that the upside-down world I'd inhabited for years finally righted itself. With his original brand of sci-fi, full of incredible new species, intelligent spacecraft and underhand galactic politics, Iain Banks brought me back to the genre after years in exile. First I returned to reading it and then - tentatively with one look over my shoulder for my English teacher - I went back to writing it.

I have Iain Banks solely to thank for my reintroduction to sci-fi but that's not my only link with him. We used to live around the corner from each other in Edinburgh, he used to drink in the same pub as me and when I moved to Fife he moved there too, just a mile or two away. I used to joke that he was stalking me.

The tenuous links continued when I wrote a couple of my own science fiction books, one of which – Convergent Space – was mildly successful and was compared to Banks by one or two very kind reviewers. I often wondered whether Banks would one day hear about me or maybe read one of my books. What an accolade that would be.

To Iain Banks of course, I am the ship that didn't even have a name. He didn't know we used to drink in the same pub, live around the corner from each other or that we both chose to move from one place to another place at the same time. He didn't know me from Adam. Nor is he likely to have read any of my books.

But on the day he died the BBC News picked up the tweet I'd written in tribute to him and used it in their main article announcing his death. Finally, too late for him to ever know, my name was momentarily linked with his - and for real this time.

You can still read the BBC article where my quote appears. My dedication (quite rightly) is just above Alex Salmond's. If you want to sample my pale imitation books, they're here on Amazon - Convergent Space Series

Their Bill O' Fare

A sci-fi story for Burns Night

Even when his ship broke through the mass of grey cloud surrounding the planet, Garvis didn't recognise the place. His console scrolled a list of facts: third planet around a class G sun, smaller than his own world, mostly water, breathable atmosphere (just), inhabited by one dominant race (non-spacefaring, intelligence rating 38%), one small moon - lifeless.

He liked playing this game, testing out his memory, trying to remember when he'd been here before but he never fared very well. His mind was too cluttered, a sea of memories of different planets and different places. This was just another world he'd visited long ago for reasons he'd long forgotten.

He was in the control room, slumped in a high-backed triangular chair designed to accommodate his unusual frame: his elongated neck, small inconspicuous head and the large muscular haunches of his back legs. The ship was descending with the secondary shielding down so he could get a good look at the planet but he wasn't flying the ship. Dorza was doing all the work. Dorza was his name for the ship's intelligence (meaning Smart Ass in his language). It was the seventeenth name he'd given the ship over the years. He changed it as he felt the need but Dorza had stuck for quite a while now and for good reason.

‘It's no good,' he said. 'I can't remember. Tell me Dorza, when were we here before?'

‘Forty years ago, give or take.'

‘What's that in their years?'

‘Around 500.'

He groaned, bending his long neck forward. ‘Could you also remind me why I thought this was a good idea?'

The ship's voice gave a metallic rattle that passed for a laugh. ‘Garvis you say that every time. We do this because it's our duty to repair what we've broken.'

‘We don't actually know if we broke anything or not.'

‘We probably did.'

‘Yes I know that. Anything on the scanners?'

‘Not yet.'

His long pointed craft dipped lower giving him a better look at the surface. It was a tough rural wilderness but beautiful, dominated by purple hills interspersed with craggy mountains and velvet green pastures. Many of the lower hills boasted proud, stone-built fortifications. They were all different, all unique in design, from tall, austere, fortified houses to turreted, romantic, fairytale castles superior even to those on his home planet that had inspired his dreams during his youth.

‘Hey Dorza. I think I do recognise this place. We were here on a routine mapping visit.'

‘That's right.'

‘And we went down to the surface.'

‘Well done.'

‘But I'm not sure why we needed to go down.'

‘We didn't need to. If I recall correctly, which I do-'

‘Dorza!'

‘You know, I don't really like that name, especially not when you say it like that.'

Garvis chuckled. ‘I wasn't saying your name.'

‘If I recall correctly,' said Dorza, ignoring him. ‘You said something about spotting the perfect castle?'

‘Oh yes, I remember. Take us to where we landed last time.'

‘I am.’

Garvis couldn't remember how many planets he'd revisited over the years, always looking for the same thing and never finding it. How was he to know he'd had a verlin on board? He didn't even know what a verlin was until the manager at the maintenance station told him they'd found evidence that one had been hibernating on his ship.

‘And it's not here now,' the maintenance manager had told him.

‘That's a relief,' Garvis had said.

‘I think you're missing the point. Verlin breed like crazy. There's no stopping them. If that creature got off at the wrong stop you could have an ecological disaster on your hands.'

‘There was only one,’ Garvis had told him. ‘And I assume it's dead by now.'

He remembered the manager shaking his head at him. ‘Verlin lay up to 300 eggs at a time. If the conditions are right it can lay over a million within a year. And the one you had on board was pregnant. That's probably why she was hibernating. She was waiting to get out onto some planet to lay her eggs.'

Not wanting to be known as a destroyer of worlds, since then Garvis had spent much of his spare time retracing his steps. It turned out that verlin can hibernate for years when they're pregnant, waiting for the right climate (or in this case the right planet) so it could have escaped onto any one of the hundreds of worlds he'd visited over the years.

As they landed on a bed of the soft purple foliage that dominated the high ground of this part of the planet, Dorza gave Garvis a rundown of the his sensor sweep.

‘There are five possible targets in the vicinity. All around the right mass, surface area and speed.'

‘Here we go, chasing creatures all over the planet just to find they’re members of the local wildlife. Why can't you identify their DNA beforehand?'

‘With a camera?' Dorza screeched.

‘It would make my life a lot easier.'

‘What have I told you about reading too much sci-fi?’

Garvis grunted defensively. ‘Maybe I'm just ahead of my time.'

He donned his earpiece and microphone so he could stay in contact with the ship, then pulled on his flexible helmet and neck guard, snapping them into the hinges on his suit. He walked down the short corridor to the exit. The door slid open and he looked outside. It was dusk.

‘What's the dark coefficient?' he asked.

‘30%'

‘Should be enough. Blend me.'

As he stepped out of the ship, the camouflage sensors in the suit merged him with the background, mimicking his environment. If he kept to the shadows hopefully no one would spot a four-legged, long-necked alien walking their fields.

Directly in front of him, high stone walls stretched up in the gloom to form the ramparts of a medieval castle. This is what he had come to see the last time but since then the castle had fallen into ruin and was deserted. He ran a gloved hand over the stone. He wondered what great battles he had missed in the intervening 500 years.

‘The first two targets are close together,' he heard Dorza say through his earpiece. ‘In the next field.'

Garvis turned away from the ruin and passed through an open gate into a field sloping down towards a river. There wasn't much cover so he moved slowly. In the distance two creatures took shape, hopping around, nibbling at the grass.

‘I see something.' He whispered. As he edged closer he saw the creatures were the right size. This might be it. As came closer he saw they had grey fur, long ears and four legs. Nothing like a verlin. Cute though.

‘ID is negative.'

‘The next target is in the woods,' said Dorza flatly.

There was more cover down by the river and Garvis followed it along the side of the field and into the woods on the other side. It was darker under the trees, much safer. He followed Dorza'a instructions and there in a small clearing, munching on a bulbous white fungus, was a round creature with shaggy black hair and no discernible head. Garvis started back.

‘You're not going to believe this,' he whispered. ‘I think we've finally found one.'

‘Are you sure?' said Dorza.

‘I've studied them long enough. That's a verlin.'

‘Excellent!' said Dorza excitedly. ‘At last!'

‘What do we do now?'

‘I'll run some checks to determine the population levels then I'll look at introducing the poison. It won't affect the indigenous-’

There was a loud bang. The verlin flew up into the air and then fell back down a couple of metres from where it had been feeding. It wasn't moving.

‘What was that?' said Dorza.

Garvis pushed himself deeper into the shadows as a thin two-legged creature strode into the clearing. He had a knife in his hand and a primitive projectile weapon over his shoulder. Its barrel was still smoking and Garvis cowered back. Why had this creature shot the virlin? Had they multiplied so much over the years they had to be culled? This was a disturbing development.

The two-legged creature picked up the verlin and made an incision in its hide. With a flick of his hand he deftly turned it inside out and Garvis nearly gagged. Then he stuffed it into an opaque casing, pulled it tightly closed then turned and walked back the way he'd come.

Garvis crept after the creature, following him through the woods to a street of one-storey dwellings. The creature walked up a path to one of the houses and went inside. Garvis looked through the window and saw him hand the verlin to a second creature with longer hair who popped it into a large cooking pot bubbling on a stove.

‘Dorza?'

‘Yes?'

‘I think the Earthsters are going to eat the verlin.'

‘But its cellular structure developed on a different world. Its DNA would be totally alien to the Earthsters and barely digestible.'

‘Nevertheless…'

Garvis crept over to the next house.  Inside a group of Earthsters sat around a large table. These creatures had already cooked themselves a virlin and it lay steaming on a large serving platter. One of them got to his feet and began speaking in verse. Part of the way through his soliloquy he picked up a knife and plunged it into the virlin, slicing it open from top to bottom while still reciting the verse.

At the end of his soliloquy he shouted, ‘Gie her a Haggis!'

‘Dorza,’ whispered Garvis. ‘They seem to worship the verlin which they call a haggis. They have a strange ritual before eating it. Have you got those stats yet?'

‘Yes, it looks like the verlin population has remained low and is confined to the very north of this one island.'

‘I know why. For 500 years the locals have been living on them.'

‘So what do we do now? We can't take away their food supply. We might make an even bigger mess.'

Garvis laughed, after all this searching, after all these years. And in the end they find the verlin has neatly slotted itself into the local food chain.

‘I think we can leave things as they are,' he said.

‘If you think so.'

‘But Dorza. Before we leave I want that recipe. Would it be wrong for me to try this haggis for myself?'

Dorza sighed audibly. ‘You’ve done worse.’