Just matter, switching energy of one sort or another.
Switches. Memory. The random element that is chance and that is called choice: common denominators, all.
I say again; you is what you done. Dynamic (mis)behaviorism, that’s my creed.
Gurgeh? His switches are working funny. He’s thinking differently, acting uncharacteristically. He is a different person. He’s seen the worst that meatgrinder of a city could provide, and he just took it personally, and took his revenge.
Now he’s spaceborne again, head crammed full of Azad rules, his brain adapted and adapting to the swirling, switching patterns of that seductive, encompassing, feral set of rules and possibilities, and being carted through space toward the Empire’s most creakily symbolic shrine: Echronedal; the place of the standing wave of flame; the Fire Planet.
But will our hero prevail? Can he possibly prevail? And what would constitute winning, anyway?
How much has the man still got to learn? What will he make of such knowledge? More to the point, what will it make of him?
Wait and see. It’ll work itself out, in time.
Take it from there, maestro…
Echronedal was twenty light-years from Eä. Halfway there the Imperial Fleet left the region of dust that lay between Eä’s system and the direction of the main galaxy, and so that vast armed spiral was spread over half the sky like a million jewels caught in a whirlpool.
Gurgeh was impatient to get to the Fire Planet. The journey seemed to take forever, and the liner he was making it on was hopelessly cramped. He spent most of the time in his cabin. The bureaucrats, imperial officials and other game-players on the ship regarded him with undisguised dislike, and apart from a couple of shuttle trips over to the battlecruiser Invincible—the imperial flagship—for receptions, Gurgeh didn’t socialize.
The crossing was made without incident, and after twelve days they arrived over Echronedal, a planet orbiting a yellow dwarf in a fairly ordinary system and itself a human-habitable world with only one peculiarity.
It was not unusual to find distinct equatorial bulges on once fast-spinning planets, and Echronedal’s was comparatively slight, though sufficient to produce a single unbroken continental ribbon of land lying roughly between the planet’s tropics, the rest of the globe lying beneath two great oceans, ice-capped at the poles. What was unique, in the experience of the Culture as well as the Empire, was to discover a wave of fire forever moving round the planet on the continental landmass.
Taking about half a standard year to complete its circumnavigation, the fire swept over the land, its fringes brushing the shores of the two oceans, its wave-front a near-straight line, its flames consuming the growth of the plants which had flourished in the ashes of the previous blaze. The whole land-based ecosystem had evolved around this never-ending conflagration; some plants could only sprout from beneath the still-warm cinders, their seeds jolted into development by the passing heat; other plants blossomed just before the fire arrived, bursting into rapid growth just before the flames found them, and using the fire-front’s thermals to transport their seeds into the upper atmosphere, to fall back again, somewhere, onto the ash. The land-animals of Echronedal fell into three categories; some kept constantly on the move, maintaining the same steady walking pace as the fire, some swam round its oceanic boundaries, while other species burrowed into the ground, hid in caves, or survived through a variety of mechanisms in lakes or rivers.
Birds circled the world like a jetstream of feathers.
The blaze remained little more than a large, continuous bush-fire for eleven revolutions. On the twelfth, it changed.
The cinderbud was a tall, skinny plant which grew quickly once its seeds had germinated; it developed an armored base and shot up to a height of ten meters or more in the two hundred days it had before the flames came round again. When the fire did arrive, the cinderbud didn’t burn; it closed its leafy head until the blaze had passed, then kept on growing in the ashes. After eleven of those Great Months, eleven baptisms in the flames, the cinderbuds were great trees, anything up to seventy meters in height. Their own chemistry then produced first the Oxygen Season, and then the Incandescence.
And in that sudden cycle the fire didn’t walk; it sprinted. It was no longer a wide but low and even mild bush-fire; it was an inferno. Lakes disappeared, rivers dried, rocks crumbled in its baking heat; every animal that had evolved its own way of dodging or keeping pace with the fires of the Great Months had had to find another method of surviving; running fast enough to build up a sufficient lead on the Incandescence to still keep ahead of it, swimming far out into the ocean or to the few mostly small islands off the coasts, or hibernating, deep in great cave-systems or on the beds of deep rivers, lakes and fjords. Plants too switched to new survival mechanisms; rooting deeper, growing thicker seed-cases, or equipping their thermal-seeds for higher, longer flight, and the baked ground they would encounter on landing.
For a Great Month thereafter the planet, its atmosphere choked with smoke, soot and ash, wavered on the edge of catastrophe as smoke clouds blocked out the sun and the temperature plummeted. Then slowly, while the diminished small fire continued on its way, the atmosphere cleared, the animals started to breed again, the plants grew once more, and the little cinderbuds started sprouting through the ashes from the old root complexes.
The Empire’s castles on Echronedal, extravagantly sprinklered and doused, had been built to survive whatever terrible heat and screaming winds the planet’s bizarre ecology could provide, and it was in the greatest of those fortresses, Castle Klaff, that for the last three hundred standard years the final games of Azad had been played; timed to coincide, whenever possible, with the Incandescence.
The Imperial Fleet arrived above Echronedal in the middle of the Oxygen Season. The flagship remained over the planet while the escorting battleships dispersed to the outskirts of the system. The liners stayed until the Invincible’s shuttle squadron had ferried the game-players, court officials, guests and observers down to the surface, then left for a nearby system. The shuttles dropped through the clear air of Echronedal to land at Castle Klaff.
The fortress lay on a spur of rock at the foot of a range of soft, well-worn hills overlooking a broad plain. Normally it looked out over a horizon-wide sweep of low scrub punctuated by the thin towers of cinderbuds at whatever stage they’d reached, but now the cinderbuds had branched and blossomed, and their canopy of rippling leaves fluttered over the plain like some rooted yellow overcast, and the tallest trunks rose higher than the castle’s curtain wall.
When the Incandescence arrived it would wash around the fortress like a livid wave; all that ever saved the castle from incineration was a two-kilometer viaduct leading from a reservoir in the low hills to Klaff itself, where giant cisterns and a complicated system of sprinklers ensured the secured and shuttered fortress was drenched with water as the fire passed. If the dousing system ever broke down, there were deep shelters in the rock far underneath the castle which would house the inhabitants until the burning was over. So far, the waters had always saved the fortress, and it had remained an oasis of scorched yellow in a wilderness of fire.
The Emperor—whoever had won the final game—was traditionally meant to be in Klaff when the fire passed, to rise from the fortress after the flames died, ascending through the darkness of the smoke clouds to the darkness of space and thence to his Empire. The timing hadn’t always worked out perfectly, and in earlier centuries the Emperor and his court had had to sit out the fire in another castle, or even missed the Incandescence altogether. However, the Empire had this time calculated correctly, and it looked as though the Incandescence—due to start only two hundred kilometers fireward of the castle, where the cinderbuds changed abruptly from their normal size and shape to the huge trees that surrounded Klaff—would arrive more or less on time, to provide a suitable backdrop for the coronation.
Gurgeh felt uncomfortable as soon as they landed. Eä had been of just a li
ttle less than what the Culture rather arbitrarily regarded as standard mass, so its gravity had felt roughly the equivalent of the force Chiark Orbital had produced by rotating and the Limiting Factor and the Little Rascal had created with AG fields. But Echronedal was half as massive again as Eä, and Gurgeh felt heavy.
The castle had long since been equipped with slow-accelerating elevators, and it was unusual to see anybody other than male servants climbing upstairs, but even walking on the level was uncomfortable for the first few of the planet’s short days.
Gurgeh’s rooms overlooked one of the castle’s inner courtyards. He settled in there with Flere-Imsaho—who gave no sign of being affected by the higher gravity—and the male servant every finalist was entitled to. Gurgeh had voiced some uncertainty about having a servant at all (“Yeah,” the drone had said, “who needs two?”), but it had been explained it was traditional, and a great honor for the male, so he’d acquiesced.
There was a rather desultory party on the night of their arrival. Everybody sat around talking, tired after the long journey and drained by the fierce gravity; the conversation was mostly about swollen ankles. Gurgeh went briefly, to show his face. It was the first time he’d met Nicosar since the grand ball at the start of the games; the receptions on the Invincible during the journey had not been graced by the imperial presence.
“This time, get it right,” Flere-Imsaho told him as they entered the main hall of the castle; the Emperor sat on a throne, welcoming the people as they arrived. Gurgeh was about to kneel like everybody else, but Nicosar saw him, shook one ringed finger and pointed at his own knee.
“Our one-kneed friend; you have not forgotten?”
Gurgeh knelt on one knee, bowing his head. Nicosar laughed thinly. Hamin, sitting on the Emperor’s right, smiled.
Gurgeh sat, alone, in a chair by a wall, near a large suit of antique armor. He looked unenthusiastically round the room, and ended up gazing, with a frown, at an apex standing in one corner of the hall, talking to a group of uniformed apices perched on stoolseats around him. The apex was unusual not just because he was standing but because he seemed to be encased in a set of gunmetal bones, worn outside his Navy uniform.
“Who’s that?” Gurgeh asked Flere-Imsaho, humming and crackling unenthusiastically between his chair and the suit of armor by the wall.
“Who’s who?”
“That apex with the… exoskeleton? Is that what you call it? Him.”
“That is Star Marshal Yomonul. In the last games he made a personal bet, with Nicosar’s blessing, that he would go to prison for a Great Year if he lost. He lost, but he expected that Nicosar would use the imperial veto—which he can do, on wagers which aren’t body-bets—because the Emperor wouldn’t want to lose the services of one of his best commanders for six years. Nicosar did use the veto, but only to have Yomonul incarcerated in that device he’s wearing, rather than shut away in a prison cell.
“The portable prison is proto-sentient; it has various independent sensors as well as conventional exoskeleton features such as a micropile and powered limbs. Its job is to leave Yomonul free to carry out his military duties, but otherwise to impose prison discipline on him. It will only let him eat a little of the simplest food, allows him no alcohol, keeps him to a strict regimen of exercise, will not allow him to take part in social activities—his presence here this evening must mark some sort of special dispensation by the Emperor—and won’t let him copulate. In addition, he has to listen to sermons by a prison chaplain who visits him for two hours every ten days.”
“Poor guy. I see he has to stand, as well.”
“Well, one shouldn’t try to outsmart the Emperor, I guess,” Flere-Imsaho said. “But his sentence is almost over.”
“No time off for good behavior?”
“The Imperial Penal Service does not deal in discounts. They do add time on if you behave badly, though.”
Gurgeh shook his head, looking at the distant prisoner in his private prison. “It’s a mean old Empire, isn’t it, drone?”
“Mean enough.… But if it ever tries to fuck with the Culture it’ll find out what mean really is.”
Gurgeh looked round in surprise at the machine. It floated, buzzing there, its bulky gray and brown casing looking hard and even sinister against the dull gleam of the empty suit of armor.
“My, we’re in a combative mood this evening.”
“I am. You’d better be.”
“For the games? I’m ready.”
“Are you really going to take part in this piece of propaganda?”
“What piece of propaganda?”
“You know damn well; helping the Bureau to fake your own defeat. Pretending you’ve lost; giving interviews and lying.”
“Yes. Why not? It lets me play the game. They might try to stop me otherwise.”
“Kill you?”
Gurgeh shrugged. “Disqualify me.”
“Is it worth so much to keep playing?”
“No,” Gurgeh lied. “But telling a few white lies isn’t much of a price, either.”
“Huh,” the machine said.
Gurgeh waited for it to say more, but it didn’t. They left a little later. Gurgeh got up out of the chair and walked to the door, only remembering to turn and bow toward Nicosar after the drone prompted him.
* * *
His first game on Echronedal, the one he was officially to lose no matter what happened, was another ten game. This time there was no suggestion of anybody ganging up on him, and he was approached by four of the other players to form a side which would oppose the rest. This was the traditional way of playing ten games, though it was the first time Gurgeh had been directly involved, apart from being on the sharp end of other people’s alliances.
So he found himself discussing strategy and tactics with a pair of Fleet admirals, a star general and an imperial minister in what the Bureau guaranteed was an electronically and optically sterile room in one wing of the castle. They spent three days talking over how they would play the game, then they swore before God, and Gurgeh gave his word, they would not break the agreement until the other five players had been defeated or they themselves were brought down.
The lesser games ended with the sides about even. Gurgeh found there were advantages and disadvantages in playing as part of an ensemble. He did his best to adapt and play accordingly. More talks followed, then they joined battle on the Board of Origin.
Gurgeh enjoyed it. It added a lot to the game to play as part of a team; he felt genuinely warm toward the apices he played alongside. They came to each other’s aid when they were in trouble, they trusted one another during massed attacks, and generally played as though their individual forces were really a single side. As people, he didn’t find his comrades desperately engaging, but as playing partners he could not deny the emotion he felt for them, and experienced a growing sense of sadness—as the game progressed and they gradually beat back their opponents—that they would soon all be fighting each other.
When it came to it, and the last of the opposition had surrendered, much of what Gurgeh had felt before disappeared. He’d been at least partially tricked; he’d stuck to what he saw as the spirit of their agreement, while the others stuck to the letter. Nobody actually attacked until the last of the other team’s pieces had been captured or taken over, but there was some subtle maneuvering when it became clear they were going to win, playing for positions that would become more important when the team-agreement ended. Gurgeh missed this until it was almost too late, and when the second part of the game began he was by far the weakest of the five.
It also became obvious that the two admirals were, not surprisingly, cooperating unofficially against the others. Jointly the pair were stronger than the other three.
In a way Gurgeh’s very weakness saved him; he played so that it was not worth taking him for a long time, letting the other four fight it out. Later he attacked the two admirals when they had grown strong enough to threaten a complete takeover, but w
ere more vulnerable to his small force than to the greater powers of the general and the minister.
The game toed and froed for a long time, but Gurgeh was gaining steadily, and eventually, though he was put out first of the five, he’d accumulated sufficient points to ensure he’d play on the next board. Three of the other original five-side had done so badly they had to resign from the match.
Gurgeh never really fully recovered from his mistake on the first board, and did badly on the Board of Form. It was starting to look as though the Empire would not need to lie about him being thrown out of the first game.
He still talked to the Limiting Factor, using Flere-Imsaho as a relay and the game-screen in his own room for the display.
He felt he’d adjusted to the higher gravity. Flere-Imsaho had to remind him it was a genofixed response; his bones were rapidly thickening and his musculature had expanded without waiting to be otherwise exercised.
“Hadn’t you noticed you were getting more thick-set?” the drone said in exasperation, while Gurgeh studied his body in the room mirror.
Gurgeh shook his head. “I did think I was eating rather a lot.”
“Very observant. I wonder what else you can do you don’t know about. Didn’t they teach you anything about your own biology?”
The man shrugged. “I forgot.”
He adjusted, too, to the planet’s short day-night cycle, adapting faster than anybody else, if the numerous complaints were anything to go by. Most people, the drone told him, were using drugs to bring themselves into line with the three-quarters standard day.
“Genofixing again?” Gurgeh asked at breakfast one morning.