Excession Page 5

  ‘I see,’ Genar-Hofoen said, still slowly re-coiling the harpoon cable from his last attempt. He sat to Fivetide’s right in a Y-bracket place modified simply by placing a board across its prongs. His feet dangled over the debris trench which circled the perimeter of the table, and which the suit assured him was reeking in the manner approved by Affronter gourmets. He flinched and dodged to one side, nearly falling off the seat, as a harpoon sailed by to his left, narrowly missing him.

  Genar-Hofoen acknowledged the laughter and exaggerated apologies from the Affronter officer five along the table who had been aiming at Fivetide’s plate, and politely gathered up the harpoon and cable and passed it back. He returned to picking at the miniature pieces of indifferent food in the pressurised containers in front of him, transferring them to his mouth with a gelfield utensil shaped like a little four-fingered hand, his legs swinging over the debris trench. He felt like a child dining with adults.

  ‘Nearly got you there, eh, human? Ha ha ha!’ roared the Diplomatic Force colonel his other side from Fivetide. He slapped Genar-Hofoen on the back with a tentacle and threw him half off the seat and onto the table. ‘Oops!’ the colonel said, and jerked Genar-Hofoen back with a teeth-rattling wrench.

  Genar-Hofoen smiled politely and picked his sunglasses off the table. The Diplomatic Force colonel went by the name of Quicktemper. It was the sort of title which the Culture found depressingly common amongst Affronter diplomats.

  Fivetide had explained the problem was that certain sections of the Affront Old Guard were slightly ashamed their civilisation had a Diplomatic service at all and so tried to compensate for what they were worried might look to other species suspiciously like a symptom of weakness by ensuring that only the most aggressive and xenophobic Affronters became diplomats, to forestall anybody forming the dangerously preposterous idea the Affront were going soft.

  ‘Go on, man! Have another throw! Just because you can’t eat the damn stuff, you shouldn’t let that keep you from joining in the fun!’

  A harpoon thrown from the far side of the table sailed over the pit towards Fivetide’s trencher. The Affronter intercepted it deftly and threw it back, laughing uproariously. The harpoon’s owner ducked just in time and a passing drinks waiter got it in the sac with a yelp and a hiss of escaping gas.

  Genar-Hofoen looked at the lumps of flesh lying on Fivetide’s trencher. ‘Why can’t I just harpoon stuff off your plate?’ he asked.

  Fivetide jerked upright. ‘Your neighbour’s plate?’ he bellowed. ‘That’s cheating, Genar-Hofoen, or a particularly insulting invitation to a duel! Bugger me, what sort of manners do they teach you in that Culture?’

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ Genar-Hofoen said.

  ‘Given,’ Fivetide said, nodding his eye stalks, re-winding his harpoon cable, lifting a piece of meat from his own plate to his beak, reaching for a drink and drumming one tentacle on the table with everybody else as one of the scratchounds got another on its back and bit its neck out. ‘Good play! Good play! Seven; that’s my dog! Mine; I bet on that! I did! Me! You see, Gastrees? I told you! Ha ha ha!’

  Genar-Hofoen shook his head slightly, grinning to himself. In all his life he had never been anywhere as unequivocally alien as here, inside a giant torus of cold, compressed gas orbiting a black hole - itself in orbit around a brown dwarf body light years from the nearest star - its exterior studded with ships - most of them the jaggedly bulbous shapes of Affront craft - and full, in the main, of happy, space-faring Affronters and their collection of associated victim-species. Still, he had never felt so thoroughly at home.

  ~ Genar-Hofoen; it’s me, Scopell-Afranqui, said another voice in Genar-Hofoen’s head. It was the module, speaking through the suit. ~ I’ve an urgent message.

  ~ Can’t it wait? Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ I’m kind of busy here with matters of excruciatingly correct dining etiquette.

  ~ No, it can’t. Can you get back here, please? Immediately.

  ~ What? No, I’m not leaving. Good grief, are you mad? I only just got here.

  ~ No you didn’t; you left me eighty minutes ago and you’re already on the main course at that animal circus dressed up as a meal; I can see what’s going on relayed through that stupid suit--

  ~ Typical! the suit interjected.

  ~ Shut up, said the module. ~ Genar-Hofoen; are you coming back here now or not?

  ~ Not.

  ~ Well then, let me check out the communication priorities here ... Okay. Now the current state of the--

  ‘--bet, human-friend?’ Fivetide said, slapping a tentacle on the table in front of Genar-Hofoen.

  ‘Eh? A bet?’ Genar-Hofoen said, quickly replaying in his head what the Affronter had been saying.

  ‘Fifty sucks on the next from the red door!’ Fivetide roared, glancing at his fellow officers on both sides.

  Genar-Hofoen slapped the table with his hand. ‘Not enough!’ he shouted, and felt the suit amplify his translated voice accordingly. Several eye stalks turned in his direction. ‘Two hundred on the blue hound!’

  Fivetide, who was from a family of the sort that would describe itself as comfortably off rather than rich, and to whom fifty suckers was half a month’s disposable income, flinched microscopically, then slapped another tentacle down on top of the first one. ‘Scumpouch alien!’ he shouted theatrically. ‘You imply that a measly two hundred is a fit bet for an officer of my standing? Two-fifty!’

  ‘Five hundred!’ Genar-Hofoen yelled, slapping down his other arm.

  ‘Six hundred!’ Fivetide hollered, thumping down a third limb. He looked at the others, exchanging knowing looks and sharing in the general laughter; the human had been out-limbed.

  Genar-Hofoen twisted in his seat and brought his left leg up to stamp its booted heel onto the table surface. ‘A thousand, damn your cheap hide!’

  Fivetide flicked a fourth tentacle onto the limbs already on the table in front of Genar-Hofoen, which was starting to look crowded. ‘Done!’ the Affronter roared. ‘And think yourself lucky I took pity on you to the extent of not upping the bet again and having you unseat yourself into the debris-pit, you microscopic cripple!’ Fivetide laughed louder and looked round the other officers near by. They laughed too, some of the juniors dutifully, some of the others - friends and close colleagues of Fivetide’s - overloudly, with a sort of vicarious desperation; the bet was of a size that could get the average fellow into terrible trouble with his mess, his bank, his parents, or all three. Others again looked on with the sort of expression Genar-Hofoen had learned to recognise as a smirk.

  Fivetide enthusiastically refilled every nearby drinking bulb and started the whole table singing the Let’s-bake-the-pit-master-over-a-slow-fire-if-he-doesn’t-get-a-move-on song.

  ~ Right, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Module; you were saying?

  ~ That was a rather intemperate bet, if I may say so, Genar-Hofoen. A thousand! Fivetide can’t afford that sort of money if he loses, and we don’t want to be seen to be too profligate with our funds if he wins.

  Genar-Hofoen permitted himself a small grin. What a perfect way of annoying everybody. - Tough, he thought. So; the message?

  ~ I think I can squirt it through to what passes as a brain in your suit--

  ~ I heard that, said the suit.

  ~ without our friends picking it up, Genar-Hofoen, the module told him. ~ Ramp up on some quicken and--

  ~ Excuse me, said the suit. ~ I think Byr Genar-Hofoen may want to think twice before glanding a drug as strong as quicken in the present circumstances. He is my responsibility when he’s out of your immediate locality, after all, Scopell-Afranqui. I mean, be fair. It’s all very well you sitting up there--

  ~ Keep out of this, you vacuous membrane, the module told the suit.

  ~ What? How dare you!

  ~ Will you two shut up! Genar-Hofoen told them, having to stop himself from shouting out loud. Fivetide was saying something about the Culture to him and he’d already missed the first part of it while the two machine
s were filling his head with their squabble.

  ‘. . . can be as exciting as this, eh, Genar-Hofoen?’

  ‘Indeed not,’ he shouted over the noise of the song. He lowered the gelfield utensil into one of the food containers and raised the food to his lips. He smiled and made a show of bulging his cheeks out while he ate. Fivetide belched, shoved a piece of meat half the size of a human head into his beak and turned back to the fun in the animal pit, where the fresh pair of scratchounds were still circling warily, sizing each other up. They looked pretty evenly matched, Genar-Hofoen thought.

  ~ May I speak now? said the module.

  ~ Yes, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Now, what is it?

  ~ As I said, an urgent message.

  ~ From?

  ~ The GSV Death And Gravity.

  ~ Oh? Genar-Hofoen was mildly impressed. ~ I thought the old scoundrel wasn’t talking to me.

  ~ As did we all. Apparently it is. Look, do you want this message or not?

  ~ All right, but why do I have to gland quicken?

  ~ Because it’s a long message, of course . . . in fact it’s an interactive message; an entire semantic-context signal-set with attached mind-state abstract capable of replying to your questions, and if you listened to the whole thing in real time you’d still be sitting there with a vacant expression on your face by the time your jovial hosts got to the hunt-the-waiter course. And I did say it was urgent. Genar-Hofoen, are you paying attention here?

  ~ I’m paying fucking attention. But come on; can’t you just tell me what the message is? Précis it.

  ~ The message is for you, not me, Genar-Hofoen. I haven’t looked at it; it’ll be stream-deciphered as I transmit it.

  ~ Okay, okay, I’m glanded up; shoot.

  ~ I still say it’s a bad idea . . . muttered the gelfield suit.

  ~ Shut UP! the module said. ~ Sorry, Genar-Hofoen. Here is the text of the message:

  ~ from GSV Death And Gravity to Seddun-Braijsa Byr Fruel Genar-Hofoen dam Ois, message begins, the module said in its Official voice. Then another voice took over:

  ~ Genar-Hofoen, I won’t pretend I’m happy to be communicating with you again; however, I have been asked to do so by certain of those whose opinions and judgement I respect and admire and hence deem the situation to be such that I would be derelict in my duties if I did not oblige to the utmost of my abilities.

  Genar-Hofoen performed the mental equivalent of sighing and putting his chin in his hands while - thanks to the quicken now coursing through his central nervous system - everything around him seemed to happen in slow motion. The General Systems Vehicle Death and Gravity had been a long-winded old bore when he’d known it and it sounded like nothing had happened in the interim to alter its conversational style. Even its voice still sounded the same; pompous and monotonous at the same time.

  ~ Accordingly, and with due recognition of your habitually contrary, argumentative and wilfully perverse nature I am communicating with you by sending this message in the form of an interactive signal. I see you are currently one of our ambassadors to that childishly cruel band of upstart ruffians known as the Affront; I have the unhappy feeling that while this may have been envisaged as a kind of subtle punishment for you, you will in fact have adapted with some relish to the environment if not the task, which I assume you will dispatch with your usual mixture of off-handed carelessness and casual self-interest--

  ~ If this signal is interactive, interrupted Genar-Hofoen, ~ can I ask you to get to the fucking point?

  He watched the two scratchounds tense together in slo-mo on either side of the pit.

  ~ The point is that your hosts will have to be asked to deprive themselves of your company for a while.

  ~ What? Why? Genar-Hofoen thought, immediately suspicious. ~ The decision has been made - and I hasten to establish that I had no part in this - that your services are required elsewhere.

  ~ Where? For how long?

  ~ I can’t tell you where exactly, or for how long.

  ~ Make a stab at it.

  ~ I cannot and will not.

  ~ Module, end this message.

  ~ Are you sure? asked Scopell-Afranqui.

  ~ Wait!, said the voice of the GSV. ~ Will it satisfy you if I say that we may need about eighty days of your time?

  ~ No it won’t. I’m quite happy here. I’ve been bounced into all sorts of Special Circumstances shit in the past on the strength of a Hey-come-and-do-one-little-job-for-us come-on line. (This was not in fact perfectly true; Genar-Hofoen had only ever acted for SC once before, but he’d known - or at least heard of - plenty of people who’d got more than they’d expected when they’d worked for what was in effect the Contact section’s espionage and dirty tricks department.)

  ~ I did not--

  ~ Plus I’ve got a job to do here, Genar-Hofoen interrupted. ~ I’ve got another audience with the Grand Council in a month to tell them to be nicer to their neighbours or we’re going to think about slapping their paddles. I want details of this exciting new opportunity or you can shove it.

  ~ I did not say that I am speaking on behalf of Special Circumstances.

  ~ Are you denying that you are?

  ~ Not as such, but--

  ~ So stop fucking around. Who the hell else is going to start hauling a gifted and highly effective ambassador off--?

  ~ Genar-Hofoen, we are wasting time here.

  ~ We?, Genar-Hofoen thought, watching the two scratchounds launch themselves at each other slowly. ~ Never mind. Go on.

  ~ The task required of you is, apparently, a delicate one, which is why I personally regard you as being utterly unsuited to it, and as such it would be foolish to entrust the full details either to myself, to your module, your suit or indeed to you until all these details are required.

  ~ There you are; that’s exactly what you can shove; all that SC need-to-know crap. I don’t care how fucking delicate the task is, I’m not even going to consider it until I know what’s involved.

  The scratchounds were in mid-pounce now, both of them twisting as they leapt. Shit, thought Genar-Hofoen; this might be one of those scratchound bouts where the whole thing was decided on the initial lunge, depending entirely on which beast got its teeth into the neck of the other first.

  ~ What is required, said the message, with a fair approximation of the way the Death And Gravity had always sounded when it was exasperated, is eighty days of your time, ninety-nine to ninety-nine point nine-plus per cent of which you will spend doing nothing more onerous or demanding than being carried from point A to point B; the first part of your journey will be spent travelling, in considerable comfort, I imagine, aboard the Affronter ship which we will ask (or rather pay, probably) them to put at your disposal, the second part will be spent in guaranteed comfort aboard a Culture GCU and will be followed by a short visit aboard another Culture vessel whereupon the task we would ask of you will actually be accomplished - and when I say a short visit, I mean that it may be possible for you to carry out what is required of you within an hour, and that certainly the assignment should take no longer than a day. Then you will make the return journey to take up wherever you left off with our dear friends and allies the Affront. I take it all that doesn’t sound too much like hard work, does it?

  The scratchounds were meeting in the air a metre above the centre of the bait-pit, their jaws aimed as best they could at each other’s throats. It was still a little hard to tell, but Genar-Hofoen didn’t think it was looking too good for Fivetide’s animal.

  ~ Yeah yeah yeah, well I’ve heard all this sort of thing before, D and G. What’s in it for me? Why the hell should I--? Oh, fuck . . .

  ~ What? said the Death And Gravity’s message.

  But Genar-Hofoen’s attention was elsewhere.

  The two scratchounds met and locked, falling to the floor of the bait-pit in a tangle of slowly thrashing limbs. The blue-collared animal had its jaws clamped around the throat of the red-collared one. Most of the Affronters were starting to cheer. Five
tide and his supporters were screaming.

  Shit.

  ~ Suit? Genar-Hofoen thought.

  ~ What is it? said the gelfield. ~ I thought you were talking to--?

  ~ Never mind that now. See that blue scratchound?

  ~ Can’t take my or your eyes off the damn thing.

  ~ Effectorise the fucker; get it off the other one.

  ~ I can’t do that! That would be cheating!

  ~ Fivetide’s arse is hanging way out the merry-go-round on this, suit. Do it now or take personal responsibility for a major diplomatic incident. Up to you.

  ~ What? But--!

  ~ Effectorise it now, suit. Come on; I know that last upgrade let you sneak it under their monitors. Oh! Look at that. Ow! Can’t you just feel those prosthetics round your neck? Fivetide must be kissing his diplomatic career goodbye right now; probably already working out a way to challenge me to a duel. After that, doesn’t really matter if I kill him or he kills me; probably come to war between--

  ~ All right! All right! There!

  There was a buzzing sensation on top of Genar-Hofoen’s right shoulder. The red scratchound jerked, the blue one doubled up around its midriff and loosened its grip. The red-collared beast wriggled out from underneath the other and, twisting, turned on the other beast and immediately reversed the situation, fastening its prosthetic jaws around the throat of the blue-collared animal. At Genar-Hofoen’s side, still in slow motion, Fivetide was starting to rise into the air.

  ~ Right, D and G, what were you saying?

  ~ What was the delay? What were you doing?

  ~ Never mind. Like you said, time’s a wasting. Get on with it.

  ~ I assume it is reward you seek. What do you want?

  ~ Golly, let me think. Can I have my own ship?

  ~ I understand that to be negotiable.

  ~ I’ll bet.

  ~ You may have whatever you want. There. Will that do?

  ~ Oh, of course.

  ~ Genar-Hofoen, please. I beg you; say you will do this thing.