Consider Phlebas

2. The Hand of God 137

Outside the palace, in the sharp cold of a winter’s afternoon, the clear sky was full of what looked like glittering snow.

Horza paused on the warshuttle’s ramp and looked up and around. The sheer walls and slim towers of the prison-palace echoed and reflected with the booms and flashes of continuing fire-fights, while Idiran gun-platforms cruised back and forth, firing occasionally. Around them on the stiffening breeze blew great clouds of chaff from anti-laser mortars on the palace roof. A gust sent some of the fluttering, flickering foil towards the stationary shuttle, and Horza found one side of his wet and sticky body suddenly coated with reflecting plumage.

“Please. The battle is not over yet,” thundered the Idiran soldier behind him, in what was probably meant to be a quiet whisper. Horza turned round to the armoured bulk and stared up at the visor of the giant’s helmet, where he could see his own, old man’s face reflected. He breathed deeply, then nodded, turned and walked, slightly shakily, into the shuttle. A flash of light threw his shadow diagonally in front of him, and the craft bucked in the shock wave of a big explosion somewhere inside the palace as the ramp closed.

By their names you could know them, Horza thought as he showered. The Culture’s General Contact Units, which until now had borne the brunt of the first four years of the war in space, had always chosen jokey, facetious names. Even the new warships they were starting to produce, as their factory craft completed gearing up their war production, favoured either jocular, sombre or downright unpleasant names, as though the Culture could not take entirely seriously the vast conflict in which it had embroiled itself.

The Idirans looked at things differently. To them a ship name ought to reflect the serious nature of its purpose, duties and resolute use. In the huge Idiran navy there were hundreds of craft named after the same heroes, planets, battles, religious concepts and impressive adjectives. The light cruiser which had rescued Horza was the 137th vessel to be called The Hand of God, and it existed concurrently with over a hundred other craft in the navy using the same title, so its full name was The Hand of God 137.

Horza dried in the airstream with some difficulty. Like everything else in the spaceship it was built on a monumental scale befitting the size of the Idirans, and the hurricane of air it produced nearly blew him out of the shower cabinet.

The Querl Xoralundra, spy-father and warrior priest of the Four Souls tributory sect of Farn-Idir, clasped two hands on the surface of the table. It looked to Horza rather like a pair of continental plates colliding.

“So, Bora Horza,” boomed the old Idiran, “you are recovered.”

“Just about,” nodded Horza, rubbing his wrists. He sat in Xoralundra’s cabin in The Hand of God 137, clothed in a bulky but comfortable space suit apparently brought along just for him. Xoralundra, who was also suited up, had insisted the man wear it because the warship was still at battle stations as it swept a fast and low-powered orbit around the planet of Sorpen. A Culture GCU of the Mountain class had been confirmed in the system by Naval Intelligence; the Hand was in on its own, and they couldn’t find any trace of the Culture ship, so they had to be careful.

Xoralundra leaned towards Horza, casting a shadow over the table. His huge head, saddle-shaped when seen from directly in front, with the two front eyes clear and unblinking near the edges, loomed over the Changer. “You were lucky, Horza. We did not come in to rescue you out of compassion. Failure is its own reward.”

“Thank you, Xora. That’s actually the nicest thing anybody’s said to me all day.” Horza sat back in his seat and put one of his old-looking hands through his thin, yellowing hair. It would take a few days for the aged appearance he had assumed to disappear, though already he could feel it starting to slip away from him. In a Changer’s mind there was a self-image constantly held and reviewed on a semi-subconscious level, keeping the body in the appearance willed. Horza’s need to look like a Gerontocrat was gone now, so the mental picture of the minister he had impersonated for the Idirans was fragmenting and dissolving, and his body was going back to its normal, neutral state.

Xoralundra’s head went slowly from side to side between the edges of the suit collar. It was a gesture Horza had never fully translated, although he had worked for the Idirans and known Xoralundra well since before the war.

“Anyway. You are alive,” Xoralundra said. Horza nodded and drummed his fingers on the table to show he agreed. He wished the Idiran chair he was perched on didn’t make him feel so much like a child; his feet weren’t even touching the deck.

“Just. Thanks, anyway. I’m sorry I dragged you all the way in here to rescue a failure.”

“Orders are orders. I personally am glad we were able to. Now I must tell you why we received those orders.”

Horza smiled and looked away from the old Idiran, who had just given him something of a compliment; a rare thing. He looked back and watched the other being’s wide mouth — big enough, thought Horza, to bite off both your hands at once — as it boomed out the precise, short words of the Idiran language.

“You were once with a caretaker mission on Schar’s World, one of the Dra’Azon Planets of the Dead,” Xoralundra stated. Horza nodded. “We need you to go back there.”

“Now?” Horza said to the broad, dark face of the Idiran. “There are only Changers there. I’ve told you I won’t impersonate another Changer. I certainly won’t kill one.”

“We are not asking you to do that. Listen while I explain.” Xoralundra leant on his back-rest in a way almost any vertebrate — or even anything like a vertebrate — would have called tired. “Four standard days ago,” the Idiran began — then his suit helmet, which was lying on the floor near his feet, let out a piercing whine. He picked up the helmet and set it on the table. “Yes?” he said, and Horza knew enough about the Idiran voice to realise that whoever was bothering the Querl had better have a good reason for doing so.

“We have the Culture female,” a voice said from the helmet.

“Ahh…” Xoralundra said quietly, sitting back. The Idiran equivalent of a smile — mouth pursing, eyes narrowing — passed over his features. “Good, Captain. Is she aboard yet?”

“No, Querl. The shuttle is a couple of minutes out. I’m withdrawing the gun-platforms. We are ready to leave the system as soon as they are all on board.”

Xoralundra bent closer to the helmet. Horza inspected the aged skin on the back of his hands. “What of the Culture ship?” the Idiran asked.

“Still nothing, Querl. It cannot be anywhere in the system. Our computer suggests it is outside, possibly between us and the fleet. Before long it must realise we are in here by ourselves.”

“You will set off to rejoin the fleet the instant the female Culture agent is aboard, without waiting for the platforms. Is that understood, Captain?” Xoralundra looked at Horza as the human glanced at him. “Is that understood, Captain?” the Querl repeated, still looking at the human.

“Yes, Querl,” came the answer. Horza could hear the icy tone, even through the small helmet speaker.

“Good. Use your own initiative to decide the best route back to the fleet. In the meantime you will destroy the cities of De’aychanbie, Vinch, Easna-Yowon, Izilere and Ylbar with fusion bombs, as per the Admiralty’s orders.”

“Yes, Qu—” Xoralundra stabbed a switch in the helmet, and it fell silent.

“You got Balveda?” Horza asked, surprised.

“We have the Culture agent, yes. I regard her capture, or destruction, as of comparatively little consequence. But only by our assuring the Admiralty we would attempt to take her would they contemplate such a hazardous mission ahead of the main fleet to rescue you.”

“Hmm. Bet you didn’t get Balveda’s knife missile.” Horza snorted, looking again at the wrinkles on his hands.

“It destructed while you were being put aboard the shuttle which brought you up to the ship.” Xoralundra waved one hand, sending a draught of Idiran-scented air across the table. “But enough of that. I must explain why we risked a light cruiser to rescue you.”

“By all means,” Horza said, and turned to face the Idiran.

“Four standard days ago,” the Querl said, “a group of our ships intercepted a single Culture craft of conventional outward appearance but rather odd internal construction, judging by its emission signature. The ship was destroyed easily enough, but its Mind escaped. There was a planetary system near by. The Mind appears to have transcended real space to within the planetary surface of the globe it chose, thus indicating a level of hyperspatial field management we had thought — hoped — was still beyond the Culture. Certainly such spaciobatics are beyond us for the moment. We have reason to believe, due to that and other indications, that the Mind involved is one from a new class of General Systems Vehicles the Culture is developing. The Mind’s capture would be an intelligence coup of the first order.”

The Querl paused there. Horza took the opportunity to ask, “Is this thing on Schar’s World?”

“Yes. According to its last message it intended to shelter in the tunnels of the Command System.”

“And you can’t do anything about it?” Horza smiled.

“We came to get you. That is doing something about it, Bora Horza.” The Querl paused. “The shape of your mouth tells me you see something amusing in this situation. What would that be?”

“I was just thinking… lots of things: that that Mind was either pretty smart or very lucky; that you were very lucky you had me close by; also that the Culture isn’t likely to sit back and do nothing.”

“To deal with your points in order,” Xoralundra said sharply, “the Culture Mind was both lucky and smart; we were fortunate; the Culture can do little because they do not, as far as we know, have any Changers in their employ, and certainly not one who has served on Schar’s World. I would also add, Bora Horza,” the Idiran said, putting both huge hands on the table and dipping his great head towards the human, “that you were more than a little lucky yourself.”

“Ah yes, but the difference is that I believe in it.” Horza grinned.

“Hmm. It does you little credit,” observed the Querl. Horza shrugged.

“So you want me to put down on Schar’s World and get the Mind?”

“If possible. It may be damaged. It may be liable to destruct, but it is a prize worth fighting for. We shall give you all the equipment you need, but your presence alone would give us a toe-hold.”

“What about the people already there? The Changers on caretaker duty?”

“Nothing has been heard from them. They were probably unaware of the Mind’s arrival. Their next routine transmission is due in a few days, but, given the current disruption in communications due to the war, they may not be able to send.”

“What…” Horza said slowly, one finger describing a circular pattern on the table surface which he was looking at, “…do you know about the personnel in the base?”

“The two senior members have been replaced by younger Changers,” the Idiran said. “The two junior sentinels became seniors, remaining there.”

“They wouldn’t be in any danger, would they?” Horza asked.

“On the contrary. Inside a Dra’Azon Quiet Barrier, on a Planet of the Dead, must rank as one of the safest places to be during the current hostilities. Neither we nor the Culture can risk causing the Dra’Azon any offence. That is why they cannot do anything, and we can only use you.”

“If,” Horza said carefully, sitting forward and dropping his voice slightly, “I can get this metaphysical computer for you—”

“Something in your voice tells me we approach the question of remuneration,” Xoralundra said.

“We do indeed. I’ve risked my neck for you lot long enough, Xoralundra. I want out. There’s a good friend of mine on that Schar’s World base, and if she’s agreeable I want to take her and me out of the whole war. That’s what I’m asking for.”

“I can promise nothing. I shall request this. Your long and devoted service will be taken into account.”

Horza sat back and frowned. He wasn’t sure if Xoralundra was being ironic or not. Six years probably didn’t seem like very long at all to a species that was virtually immortal; but the Querl Xoralundra knew how often his frail human charge had risked all in the service of his alien masters, without real reward, so perhaps he was being serious. Before Horza could continue with the bargaining, the helmet shrilled once more. Horza winced. All the noises on the Idiran ship seemed to be deafening. The voices were thunder; ordinary buzzers and bleepers left his ears ringing long after they stopped; and announcements over the PA made him put both hands to his head. Horza just hoped there wasn’t a full-scale alarm while he was on board. The Idiran ship alarm could cause damage to unprotected human ears.

“What is it?” Xoralundra asked the helmet.

“The female is on board. I shall need only eight more minutes to get the gun—”

“Have the cities been destroyed?”

“…They have, Querl.”

“Break out of orbit at once and make full speed for the fleet.”

“Querl, I must point out—” said the small, steady voice from the helmet on the table.

“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 suppose 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!”

“Oh shit!” said Horza.

He was dropped to the deck as Xoralundra let him go, turned quickly, and scooped a running medjel off the floor as it tried to get past him. “You!” Xoralundra bellowed. “I am the spy-father Querl of the fleet,” he shouted into its face and shook the six-limbed creature by the front of its suit. “You will go to my cabin immediately and bring the small space helmet lying there to the port-side stern emergency lock. As fast as possible. This order supersedes all others and cannot be countermanded. Go!” He threw the medjel in the right direction. It landed running.

Xoralundra flipped his own helmet over from its back-hinged position, then opened the visor. He looked as though he was about to say something to Horza, but the helmet speaker crackled and spoke, and the Querl’s expression changed. The small noise stopped and only the continuing wail of the cruiser’s alarm was left. “The Culture craft was hiding in the surface layers of the system sun,” Xoralundra said bitterly, more to himself than to Horza.

“In the sun?” Horza was incredulous. He looked back at the cell door, as though somehow it was Balveda’s fault. “Those bastards are getting smarter all the time.”

“Yes,” snapped the Querl, then turned quickly on one foot. “Follow me, human.” Horza obeyed, starting after the old Idiran at a run, then bumping into him as the huge figure stopped in its tracks. Horza watched the broad, dark, alien face as it swivelled round to look over his head at the Idiran trooper still standing stiffly at the cell door. An expression Horza could not read passed over Xoralundra’s face. “Guard,” the Querl said, not loudly. The trooper with the laser carbine turned. “Kill the woman.”

Xoralundra stamped off down the corridor. Horza stood for a moment, looking first at the rapidly receding Querl, then at the guard as he checked his carbine, ordered the cell door to open, and stepped inside. Then the man ran down the corridor after the old Idiran.

“Querl!” gasped the medjel as it skidded to a stop by the airlock, the suit helmet held in front of it. Xoralundra swept the helmet from its grasp and fitted it quickly over Horza’s head.

“You will find a warp attachment in the lock,” the Idiran told Horza. “Get as far away as possible. The fleet will be here in about nine standard hours. You shouldn’t have to do anything; the suit will summon help on a coded IFF response. I, too—” Xoralundra broke off as the cruiser lurched. There was a loud bang and Horza was blown off his feet by a shock wave, while the Idiran on his tripod of legs hardly moved. The medjel which had gone for the helmet yelped as it was blown under Xoralundra’s legs. The Idiran swore and kicked at it; it ran off. The cruiser lurched again as other alarms started. Horza could smell burning. A confused medley of noises that might have been Idiran voices or muffled explosions came from somewhere overhead. “I too shall try to escape,” Xoralundra continued. “God be with you, human.”

Before Horza could say anything the Idiran had rammed his visor down and pushed him into the lock. It slammed shut. Horza was thrown against one bulkhead as the cruiser juddered mightily. He looked desperately round the small, spherical space for a warp unit, then saw it and after a short struggle unclamped it from its wall magnets. He clamped it to the rear of his suit.

“Ready?” a voice said in his ear.

Horza jumped, then said, “Yes! Yes! Hit it!”

The airlock didn’t open conventionally; it turned inside out and threw him into space, tumbling away from the flat disc of the cruiser in a tiny galaxy of ice particles. He looked for the Culture ship, then told himself not to be stupid; it was probably still several trillion kilometres away. That was how divorced from the human scale modern warfare had become. You could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate planets from beyond their own system and provoke stars into novae from light-years off… and still have no good idea why you were really fighting.

With one last thought for Balveda, Horza reached until he found the control handle for the bulky warp unit, fingered the correct buttons on it, and watched the stars twist and distort around him as the unit sent him and his suit lancing away from the stricken Idiran spacecraft.

He played with the wrist-set for a while, trying to pick up signals from The Hand of God 137, but got nothing but static. The suit spoke to him once, saying “Warp/unit/charge/half/exhausted.” Horza kept a watch on the warp unit via a small screen set inside the helmet.

He recalled that the Idirans said some sort of prayer to their God before going into warp. Once when he had been with Xoralundra on a ship which was warping, the Querl had insisted that the Changer repeat the prayer, too. Horza had protested that it meant nothing to him; not only did the Idiran God clash with his own personal convictions, the prayer itself was in a dead Idiran language he didn’t understand. He had been told rather coldly that it was the gesture that mattered. For what the Idirans regarded as essentially an animal (their word for humanoids was best translated as “biotomaton”), only the behaviour of devotion was required; his heart and mind were of no consequence. When Horza had asked, what about his immortal soul? Xoralundra had laughed. It was the first and only time Horza had experienced such a thing from the old warrior. Whoever heard of a mortal body having an immortal soul?

When the warp unit was almost exhausted, Horza shut it off. Stars swam into focus around him. He set the unit controls, then threw it away from him. They parted company, he moving slowly off in one direction, while the unit spun off in another; then it disappeared as the controls switched it back on again to use the last of its power leading anybody following its trace away in the wrong direction.

He calmed his breathing down gradually; it had been very fast and hard for a while, but he slowed it and his heart deliberately. He accustomed himself to the suit, testing its functions and powers. It smelled and felt new, and looked like a Rairch-built device. Rairch suits were meant to be among the best. People said the Culture made better ones, but people said the Culture made better everything, and they were still losing the war. Horza checked out the lasers the suit had built in and searched for the concealed pistol he knew it ought to carry. He found it at last, disguised as part of the left forearm casing, a small plasma hand gun. He felt like shooting it at something, but there was nothing to aim at. He put it back.

He folded his arms across his bulky chest and looked around. Stars were everywhere. He had no idea which one was Sorpen’s. So the Culture ships could hide in the photospheres of stars, could they? And a Mind — even if it was desperate and on the run — could jump through the bottom of a gravity-well, could it? Maybe the Idirans would have a tougher job than they expected. They were the natural warriors, they had the experience and the guts, and their whole society was geared for continual conflict. But the Culture, that seemingly disunited, anarchic, hedonistic, decadent mélange of more or less human species, forever hiving off or absorbing different groups of people, had fought for almost four years without showing any sign of giving up or even coming to a compromise.

What everybody had expected to be at best a brief, limited stand, lasting just long enough to make a point, had developed into a wholehearted war effort. The early reverses and first few megadeaths had not, as the pundits and experts had predicted, shocked the Culture into retiring, horrified at the brutalities of war but proud to have put its collective life where usually only its collective mouth was. Instead it had just kept on retreating and retreating, preparing, gearing up and planning. Horza was convinced the Minds were behind it all.

He could not believe the ordinary people in the Culture really wanted the war, no matter how they had voted. They had their communist Utopia. They were soft and pampered and indulged, and the Contact section’s evangelical materialism provided their conscience-salving good works. What more could they want? The war had to be the Minds’ idea; it was part of their clinical drive to clean up the galaxy, make it run on nice, efficient lines, without waste, injustice or suffering. The fools in the Culture couldn’t see that one day the Minds would start thinking how wasteful and inefficient the humans in the Culture themselves were.

Horza used the suit’s internal gyros to steer himself, letting him look at every part of the sky, wondering where, in that light-flecked emptiness, battles raged and billions died, where the Culture still held and the Idiran battle fleets pressed. The suit hummed and clicked and hissed very quietly around him: precise, obedient, reassuring. Suddenly it jolted, steadying him without warning and jarring his teeth. A noise uncomfortably like a collision alarm trilled violently in one ear, and out of the corner of his eye Horza could see a microscreen set inside the helmet near his left cheek light up with a holo red graph display.

“Target/acquisition/radar,” the suit said. “Incoming/increasing.”