The girl was thin and blonde and sat quietly on the padded edge of the central pool in the personnel module’s circular main lounge area as it sped out to meet the still decelerating Resistance Is Character-Forming. She wore a pair of deep purple shorts and a loose jacket of vivid yellow. Her feet were dangling in the water, where long red fish swam amongst artfully arranged rocks and beds of gravel. They eyed the child’s waggling toes with leery curiosity and were gradually approaching.
The others stood – or in Tersono’s case floated – in a group in front of the lounge’s forward screen section. The screen extended right round the circular wall of the lounge so that when it was all activated it looked as if you were riding through space standing on one large disc with another suspended over your head (the ceiling could act as a screen too, as could the floor, though some people found the full effect unsettling).
The tallest, deepest part of the screen faced directly forwards and it was there that Kabe glanced now and again, but all it showed was the star field, with a slowly flashing red ring showing the direction the ship was approaching from. Two broad bands of Masaq’ Orbital traversed the screen from floor to ceiling, and there was a big storm system of whorled clouds visible on one mostly oceanic Plate, but Kabe was more distracted by the sinuously swimming fish and the human child.
It was one of the effects of living in a society where people commonly lived for four centuries and on average bore just over one child each that there were very few of their young around, and – as these children tended to stick together in their own peer groups rather than be found distributed throughout the society – there seemed to be even fewer than there really were. It was more or less accepted in some quarters that the Culture’s whole civilisational demeanour resulted from the fact that every single human in the society had been thoroughly, comprehensively and imaginatively spoiled as a child by virtually everyone around them.
‘It’s all right,’ the child said to Kabe when she noticed him looking at her. She nodded at the slowly swimming fish. ‘They don’t bite.’
‘Are you sure?’ Kabe asked, squatting trefoil to bring his head closer to the child’s. She watched this manoeuvre with what looked like wide-eyed fascination, but seemed to think the better of commenting.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They don’t eat meat.’
‘But you have such very tasty-looking little toes,’ Kabe said, meaning to be funny but instantly worrying that he might frighten her.
She frowned briefly, then hugged herself and snorted with laughter. ‘You don’t eat people, do you?’
‘Not unless I’m terribly hungry,’ Kabe told her gravely, and then silently cursed himself again. He was starting to recall why he’d never been very good with children of his own species.
She looked uncertain about this, then – after one of those vacant expressions you got used to when people were consulting a neural lace or other implanted device – she smiled. ‘You’re vegetarians, Homomdans. I just checked.’
‘Oh,’ he said, surprised. ‘Do you have a neural implant?’ He’d understood that children didn’t usually possess them; as a rule they had toys or avatar companions who fulfilled that sort of role. Being fitted with your first implant was about as close as some bits of the Culture got to a formal adult initiation rite. Another tradition was to move smoothly from a cuddly talking toy via other gradually less childish devices to a tasteful little pen terminal, brooch or jewel stud.
‘Yes, I do have a lace,’ she said proudly. ‘I asked.’
‘She pestered,’ Estray Lassils said, coming to stand by the poolside.
The girl nodded. ‘Well beyond the established limit that any normal and reasonable child would have given up at or before,’ she said, in gruff tones that were probably meant to impersonate a man s voice.
‘Chomba is seeking to redefine the term “precocious”,’ Estray Lassils told Kabe, ruffling the child’s short blonde curls. ‘With considerable success, so far.’ The girl ducked away under Estray’s hand, tutting. Her feet splashed in the water, driving the circling fish further away.
‘I hope you said hello properly to Ambassador Kabe Ischloear,’ Estray told the child. ‘You were uncharacteristically shy when I introduced you earlier.’
The girl sighed theatrically and stood up in the water, putting out one tiny hand and taking the massive slab of hand that Kabe offered. She bowed. ‘Ar Kabe Ischloear, I’m Masaq’-Sintriersa Chomba Lassils dam Palacope, how do you do?’
‘I do well,’ Kabe said, inclining his head. ‘How do you do, Chomba?’
‘As she pleases, basically,’ the older female said. Chomba rolled her eyes.
‘Unless I’m mistaken,’ Kabe said to the child, ‘your precocity hasn’t extended to nominating a middle name yet.~
The girl smiled with what was probably meant to be a sly expression. Kabe wondered if he’d used too many long words.
‘She informs us she has,’ Estray explained, looking at the child through narrowed eyes. ‘She’s just not telling us what it is yet.
Chomba turned her nose up and looked away, smirking. Then she grinned widely at Kabe. ‘Do you have any children, Ambassador?’
‘Sadly, no.’
‘Are you just here by yourself, then?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘Chomba,’ Estray Lassils chided gently.
‘It’s all right. No, I don’t get lonely, Chomba. I know too many people to become lonely. And I have so much to do.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I study, I learn and I report.’
‘What, about us?’
‘Yes. I set out many years ago to try to understand humans, and perhaps, therefore, people in general.’ He spread his hands slowly and tried to make a smile. ‘That quest continues. I write articles and essays and pieces of prose and poetry which I send back to my original home, seeking, where I can and my modest talents allow, to explain the Culture and its people more fully to my own. Of course both our societies know everything about the other in terms of raw data, but sometimes a degree of interpretation is required for sense to be extracted from such information. I seek to provide that personal touch.’
‘But isn’t it funny, being surrounded by us?’
‘Just say when this all starts to get too much, Ambassador,’ Estray Lassils said apologetically.
‘That’s quite all right. Sometimes it’s funny, Chomba, some- times baffling, sometimes very rewarding.’
‘But we’re completely different, aren’t we? We have two legs. You’ve got three. Don’t you miss other Homomdans?’
‘Only one.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Somebody I once loved. Unfortunately she did not love me.
‘Is that why you came here?’
‘Chomba…’
‘Perhaps it is, Chomba. Distance and difference can heal. At least here, surrounded by humans, I need never see somebody I might mistake, even for an instant, for her.’
‘Wow. You must have loved her a lot.’
‘I suppose I must.’
‘Here we are,’ the Hub’s avatar said. It turned to face the rear of the lounge. On the curve of screen-wall, the stubby cylinder of the Resistance Is Character-Forming was sliding across the dark- ness, from ahead to astern. There were hints of the craft’s field complex becoming briefly visible, like layers of gauze the module seemed to be slipping through as it closed with the larger vessel.
The module went astern, floating towards the accommodation unit near the front of the ex-warship, where a rectangle of hull was picked out in small lights. There was an almost imperceptible thud as the two craft connected. Kabe watched the water in the pool; it didn’t even ripple. The avatar walked up to the rear of the lounge, with the drone floating just behind its left shoulder. The view astern disappeared to show the module’s wide rear doors.
‘Dry your feet,’ Kabe heard Estray Lassils tell her niece.
‘Why?’
The module’s doors jawed open, revealing a plant-lined ves- tibule and a tall Chelgrian dressed in formal grey religious robes. Something that looked like a large tray floated at his side, carrying two modest bags.
‘Major Quilan,’ the silver-skinned avatar said, walking for- ward and bowing. ‘I represent Masaq’ Hub. You are very welcome.’
‘Thank you,’ the Chelgrian said. Kabe smelled something tangy as the atmospheres of the module and the ship mingled.
The introductions were made. The Chelgrian seemed polite but reserved, Kabe thought. He spoke Marain at least as well as Ziller – and with the same accent – and, like Ziller, really had learned the language rather than chosen to rely on an interpretation device.
Last to be presented was Chomba, who recited her almost full name to the Chelgrian, dug into a jacket pocket and presented the male with a small posy of flowers. ‘They’re from our garden,’ she explained. ‘Sorry they’re a bit crushed but they were in my pocket. Don’t worry about that; it’s just dirt. Do you want to see some fish?’