‘Captain,’ Xoralundra said briskly, ‘in this war there have to date been fourteen single-duel engagements between Type 5 light cruisers and Mountain class General Contact Units. All have ended in victory for the enemy. Have you ever seen what is left of a light cruiser after a GCU has finished with it?’
‘No, Querl.’
‘Neither have I, and I have no intention of seeing it for the first time from the inside. Proceed at once.’ Xoralundra hit the helmet button again. He fastened his gaze on Horza. ‘I shall do what I can to secure your release from the service with sufficient funds, if you succeed. Now, once we have made contact with the main body of the fleet you will go by fast picket to Schar’s World. You will be given a shuttle there, just beyond the Quiet Barrier. It will be unarmed, although it will have the equipment we think you may need, including some close-range hyperspace spectographic analysers, should the Mind conduct a limited destruct.’
‘How can you be certain it’ll be “limited”?’ Horza asked sceptically.
‘The Mind weighs several thousand tonnes, despite its relatively small size. An annihilatory destruct would rip the planet in half and so antagonise the Dra’Azon. No Culture Mind would risk such a thing.’
‘Your confidence overwhelms me,’ Horza said dourly. Just then the note of background noise around them altered. Xoralundra turned his helmet round and looked at one of its small internal screens.
‘Good. We are under way.’ He looked at Horza again. ‘There is something else I ought to tell you. An attempt was made, by the group of ships which caught the Culture craft, to follow the escaped Mind down to the planet.’
Horza frowned. ‘Didn’t they know better?’
‘They did their best. With the battle group were several captured chuy-hirtsi warp animals which had been deactivated for later use in a surprise attack on a Culture base. One of these was quickly fitted out for a small-scale incursion on the planet surface and thrown at the Quiet Barrier in a warp-cruise. The ruse did not succeed. On crossing the Barrier the animal was attacked with something resembling gridfire and was heavily damaged. It came out of warp near the planet on a course which would take it in on a burn-up angle. The equipment and ground force it contained must be considered defunct.’
‘Well, I suppose it was a good try, but a Dra’Azon must make even this wonderful Mind you’re after look like a valve computer. It’s going to take more than that to fool it.’
‘Do you think you will be able to?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think they can read minds, but who knows? I don’t think the Dra’Azon even know or care much about the war or what I’ve been doing since I left Schar’s World. So they probably won’t be able to put one and one together – but again, who knows?’ Horza gave another shrug. ‘It’s worth a try.’
‘Good. We shall have a fuller briefing when we rejoin the fleet. For now we must pray that our return is without incident. You may want to speak to Perosteck Balveda before she is interrogated. I have arranged with the Deputy Fleet Inquisitor that you may see her, if you wish.’
Horza smiled, ‘Xora, nothing would give me greater pleasure.’
The Querl had other business on the ship as it powered its way out of the Sorpen system. Horza stayed in Xoralundra’s cabin to rest and eat before he called on Balveda.
The food was the cruiser autogalley’s best impression of something suitable for a humanoid, but it tasted awful. Horza ate what he could and drank some equally uninspiring distilled water. It was all served by a medjel – a lizard-like creature about two metres long with a flat, long head and six legs, on four of which it ran, using the front pair as hands. The medjel were the companion species of the Idirans. It was a complicated sort of social symbiosis which had kept the exosocio faculties of many a university in research funds over the millennia that the Idiran civilisation had been part of the galactic community.
The Idirans themselves had evolved on their planet Idir as the top monster from a whole planetful of monsters. The frenetic and savage ecology of Idir in its early days had long since disappeared, and so had all the other homeworld monsters except those in zoos. But the Idirans had retained the intelligence that made them winners, as well as the biological immortality which, due to the viciousness of the fight for survival back then – not to mention Idir’s high radiation levels – had been an evolutionary advantage rather than a recipe for stagnation.
Horza thanked the medjel as it brought him plates and took them away again, but it said nothing. They were generally reckoned to be about two thirds as intelligent as the average humanoid (whatever that was), which made them about two or three times dimmer than a normal Idiran. Still, they were good if unimaginative soldiers, and there were plenty of them; something like ten or twelve for each Idiran. Forty thousand years of breeding had made them loyal right down to the chromosome level.
Horza didn’t try to sleep, though he was tired. He told the medjel to take him to Balveda. The medjel thought about it, asked permission via the cabin intercom, and flinched visibly under a verbal slap from a distant Xoralundra who was on the bridge with the cruiser captain. ‘Follow me, sir,’ the medjel said, opening the cabin door.
In the companionways of the warship the Idiran atmosphere became more obvious than it had been in Xoralundra’s cabin. The smell of Idiran was stronger and the view ahead hazed over – even seen through Horza’s eyes – after a few tens of metres. It was hot and humid, and the floor was soft. Horza walked quickly along the corridor, watching the stump of the medjel’s docked tail as it waggled in front of him.
He passed two Idirans on the way, neither of whom paid him any attention. Perhaps they knew all about him and what he was, but perhaps not. Horza knew that Idirans hated to appear either over-inquisitive or under-informed.
He nearly collided with a pair of wounded medjel on AG stretchers being hurried along a cross-corridor by two of their fellow troopers. Horza watched as the wounded passed, and frowned. The spiralled spatter-marks on their battle armour were unmistakably those produced by a plasma bolt, and the Gerontocracy didn’t have any plasma weapons. He shrugged and walked on.
They came to a section of the cruiser where the companionway was blocked by sliding doors. The medjel spoke to each of the barriers in turn, and they opened. An Idiran guard holding a laser carbine stood outside a door; he saw the medjel and Horza approaching and had the door open for the man by the time he got there. Horza nodded to the guard as he stepped through. The door hissed shut behind him and another one, immediately in front, opened.
Balveda turned quickly to him when he entered the cell. It looked as though she had been pacing up and down. She threw back her head a little when she saw Horza and made a noise in her throat which might have been a laugh.
‘Well, well,’ she said, her soft voice drawling. ‘You survived. Congratulations. I did keep my promise, by the way. What a turn-around, eh?’
‘Hello,’ Horza replied, folding his arms across the chest of his suit and looking the woman up and down. She wore the same grey gown and appeared to be unharmed. ‘What happened to that thing around your neck?’ Horza asked.
She looked down, at where the pendant had lain over her breast. ‘Well, believe it or not, it turned out to be a memoryform.’ She smiled at him and sat down cross-legged on the soft floor; apart from a raised bed-alcove, this was the only place to sit. Horza sat too, his legs hurting only a little. He recalled the spatter-marks on the medjel’s armour.
‘A memoryform. Wouldn’t have turned into a plasma gun, by any chance, would it?’
‘Amongst other things.’ The Culture agent nodded.
‘Thought so. Heard your knife missile took the expansive way out.’
Balveda shrugged.
Horza looked her in the eye and said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d be here if you had anything important you could tell them, would you?’
‘Here, perhaps,’ Balveda conceded. ‘Alive, no.’ She stretched her arms out behind her and sighed. ‘I s
uppose I’ll have to sit out the war in an internment camp, unless they can find somebody to swap. I just hope this thing doesn’t go on too long.’
‘Oh, you think the Culture might give in soon?’ Horza grinned.
‘No, I think the Culture might win soon.’
‘You must be mad.’ Horza shook his head.
‘Well . . .’ Balveda said, nodding ruefully, ‘actually I think it’ll win eventually.’
‘If you keep falling back like you have for the last three years, you’ll end up somewhere in the Clouds.’
‘I’m not giving away any secrets, Horza, but I think you might find we don’t do too much more falling back.’
‘We’ll see. Frankly I’m surprised you kept fighting this long.’
‘So are our three-legged friends. So is everybody. So are we, I sometimes think.’
‘Balveda,’ Horza sighed wearily, ‘I still don’t know why the hell you’re fighting in the first place. The Idirans never were any threat to you. They still wouldn’t be, if you stopped fighting them. Did life in your great Utopia really get so boring you needed a war?’
‘Horza,’ Balveda said, leaning forward, ‘I don’t understand why you are fighting. I know Heidohre is in—’
‘Heibohre,’ Horza interjected.
‘OK, the goddamn asteroid the Changers live in. I know it’s in Idiran space, but—’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it, Balveda. I’m fighting for them because I think they’re right and you’re wrong.’
Balveda sat back, amazed. ‘You . . .’ she began, then lowered her head and shook it, staring at the floor. She looked up. ‘I really don’t understand you, Horza. You must know how many species, how many civilisations, how many systems, how many individuals have been either destroyed or . . . throttled by the Idirans and their crazy goddamned religion. What the hell has the Culture ever done compared to that?’ One hand was on her knee, the other was displayed in front of Horza, clawed into a strangling grip. He watched her and smiled.
‘On a straight head count the Idirans no doubt do come out in front, Perosteck, and I’ve told them I never did care for some of their methods, or their zeal. I’m all for people being allowed to live their own lives. But now they’re up against you lot, and that’s what makes the difference to me. Because I’m against you, rather than for them, I’m prepared—’ Horza broke off for a moment, laughing lightly, self-consciously. ‘. . . Well, it sounds a bit melodramatic, but sure – I’m prepared to die for them.’ He shrugged. ‘Simple as that.’
Horza nodded as he said it, and Balveda dropped the outstretched hand and looked away to one side, shaking her head and exhaling loudly. Horza went on, ‘Because . . . well, I suppose you thought I was just kidding when I was telling old Frolk I thought the knife missile was the real representative. I wasn’t kidding, Balveda. I meant it then and I mean it now. I don’t care how self-righteous the Culture feels, or how many people the Idirans kill. They’re on the side of life – boring, old-fashioned, biological life; smelly, fallible and short-sighted, God knows, but real life. You’re ruled by your machines. You’re an evolutionary dead end. The trouble is that to take your mind off it you try to drag everybody else down there with you. The worst thing that could happen to the galaxy would be if the Culture wins this war.’
He paused to let her say something, but she was still sitting with her head down, shaking it. He laughed at her. ‘You know, Balveda, for such a sensitive species you show remarkably little empathy at times.’
‘Empathise with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot,’ muttered the woman, still not looking at Horza. He laughed again and got to his feet.
‘Such . . . bitterness, Balveda,’ he said.
She looked up at him. ‘I’ll tell you, Horza,’ she said quietly, ‘we’re going to win.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. You wouldn’t know how to.’
Balveda sat back again, hands spread behind her. Her face was serious. ‘We can learn, Horza.’
‘Who from?’
‘Whoever has the lesson there to teach,’ she said slowly. ‘We spend quite a lot of our time watching warriors and zealots, bullies and militarists – people determined to win regardless. There’s no shortage of teachers.’
‘If you want to know about winning, ask the Idirans.’
Balveda said nothing for a moment. Her face was calm, thoughtful, perhaps sad. She nodded after a while. ‘They do say there’s a danger . . . in warfare,’ she said, ‘that you’ll start to resemble the enemy.’ She shrugged. ‘We just have to hope that we can avoid that. If the evolutionary force you seem to believe in really works, then it’ll work through us, and not the Idirans. If you’re wrong, then it deserves to be superseded.’
‘Balveda,’ he said, laughing lightly, ‘don’t disappoint me. I prefer a fight . . . You almost sound as though you’re coming round to my point of view.’
‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I’m not. Blame it on my Special Circumstances training. We try to think of everything. I was being pessimistic.’
‘I’d got the impression SC didn’t allow such thoughts.’
‘Then think again, Mr Changer,’ Balveda said, arching one eyebrow. ‘SC allows all thoughts. That’s what some people find so frightening about it.’
Horza thought he knew what the woman meant. Special Circumstances had always been the Contact section’s moral espionage weapon, the very cutting edge of the Culture’s interfering diplomatic policy, the elite of the elite, in a society which abhorred elitism. Even before the war, its standing and its image within the Culture had been ambiguous. It was glamorous but dangerous, possessed of an aura of roguish sexiness – there was no other word for it – which implied predation, seduction, even violation.
It had about it too an atmosphere of secrecy (in a society that virtually worshipped openness) which hinted at unpleasant, shaming deeds, and an ambience of moral relativity (in a society which clung to its absolutes: life/good, death/bad; pleasure/good, pain/bad) which attracted and repulsed at once, but anyway excited.
No other part of the Culture more exactly represented what the society as a whole really stood for, or was more militant in the application of the Culture’s fundamental beliefs. Yet no other part embodied less of the society’s day-to-day character.
With war, Contact had become the Culture’s military, and Special Circumstances its intelligence and espionage section (the euphemism became only a little more obvious, that was all). And with war, SC’s position within the Culture changed, for the worse. It became the repository for the guilt the people in the Culture experienced because they had agreed to go to war in the first place: despised as a necessary evil, reviled as an unpleasant moral compromise, dismissed as something people preferred not to think about.
SC really did try to think of everything, though, and its Minds were reputedly even more cynical, amoral and downright sneaky than those which made up Contact; machines without illusions which prided themselves on thinking the thinkable to its ultimate extremities. So it had been wearily predicted that just this would happen. SC would become a pariah, a whipping-child, and its reputation a gland to absorb the poison in the Culture’s conscience. But Horza guessed that knowing all this didn’t make it any easier for somebody like Balveda. Culture people had little stomach for being disliked by anybody, least of all their fellow citizens, and the woman’s task was difficult enough without the added burden of knowing she was even greater anathema to most of her own side than she was to the enemy.
‘Well, whatever, Balveda,’ he said, stretching. He flexed his stiff shoulders within the suit, pulled his fingers through his thin, yellow-white hair. ‘I guess it’ll work itself out.’
Balveda laughed mirthlessly. ‘Never a truer word . . .’ She shook her head.
‘Thanks, anyway,’ he told her.
‘For what?’
‘I think you just reinforced my faith in the ultimate outcome of this war.’
‘
Oh, just go away, Horza.’ Balveda sighed and looked down to the floor.
Horza wanted to touch her, to ruffle her short black hair or pinch her pale cheek, but guessed it would only upset her more. He knew too well the bitterness of defeat to want to aggravate the experience for somebody who was, in the end, a fair and honourable adversary. He went to the door, and after a word with the guard outside he was let out.
‘Ah, Bora Horza,’ Xoralundra said as the human appeared out of the cell doorway. The Querl came striding along the companionway. The guard outside the cell straightened visibly and blew some imaginary dust off his carbine. ‘How is our guest?’
‘Not very happy. We were trading justifications and I think I won on points.’ Horza grinned. Xoralundra stopped by the man and looked down.
‘Hmm. Well, unless you prefer to relish your victories in a vacuum, I suggest that the next time you leave my cabin while we are at battle stations you take your—’
Horza didn’t hear the next word. The ship’s alarm erupted.
The Idiran alarm signal, on a warship as elsewhere, consists of what sounds like a series of very sharp explosions. It is the amplified version of the Idiran chest-boom, an evolved signal the Idirans had been using to warn others in their herd or clan for several hundred thousand years before they became civilised, and produced by the chest-flap which is the Idiran vestigial third arm.
Horza clapped his hands to his ears, trying to shut out the awful noise. He could feel the shock waves on his chest, through the open neck of the suit. He felt himself being picked up and forced against the bulkhead. It was only then that he realised he had shut his eyes. For a second he thought he had never been rescued, never left the wall of the sewercell, that this was the moment of his death and all the rest had been a strange and vivid dream. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the keratinous snout of the Querl Xoralundra, who shook him furiously and, just as the ship alarm cut off and was replaced by a merely painfully intense whine, said very loudly into Horza’s face, ‘HELMET!’