‘Tersono,’ he said. ‘Yes. Well, you did invite me.’
‘Indeed I did. Do you know, it occurred to me only later that you might misinterpret my invitation as some sort of summons, even as an imperious demand. Of course, once these things are sent …
‘Ho-ho. You mean it wasn t a demand?’
‘More of a petition. You see, I have a favour to ask you.’
‘You do?’ This was a first.
‘Yes. I wonder if we might talk somewhere we’d have a little more privacy?’
Privacy, thought Kabe. That was a word you didn’t hear very often in the Culture. Probably more used in a sexual context than any other. And not always even then.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Lead on.’
‘Thank you,’ the drone said, floating towards the stern and rising to look over the heads of the people gathered in the function space. The machine turned this way and that, making it clear it was looking for something or someone. ‘Actually,’ it said quietly, ‘we are not yet quite quorate … Ah. Here we are. Please; this way, Ar Ischloear.’
They approached a group of humans centred on the Mahrai Ziller. The Chelgrian was nearly as long as Kabe was tall, and covered in fur that varied from white around his face to dark brown on his back. He had a predator’s build, with large forward-facing eyes set in a big, broad-jawed head. His rear legs were long and powerful; a striped tail, woven about with silver chain, curved between them. Where his distant ancestors would have had two middle-legs, Ziller had a single broad midlimb, partially covered by a dark waistcoat. His arms were much like a human’s, though covered in golden fur and ending in broad, six-digit hands more like paws.
Almost as soon as he and Tersono joined the group around Ziller, Kabe found himself engulfed by another confusing babble of conversation.
‘of course you don’t know what I mean. You have no context.’
‘Preposterous. Everybody has a context.’
‘No. You have a situation, an environment. That is not the same thing. You exist. I would hardly deny you that.’
‘Well, thanks.’
‘Yeah. Otherwise you’d be talking to yourself.’
‘You’re saying we don’t really live, is that it?’
‘That depends what you mean by live. But let’s say yes.’
‘How fascinating, my dear Ziller,’ E. H. Tersono said. ‘I wonder—’
‘Because we don’t suffer.’
‘Because you scarcely seem capable of suffering.’
‘Well said! Now, Ziller—’
‘Oh, this is such an ancient argument …
‘But it’s only the ability to suffer that—’
‘Hey! I’ve suffered! Lemil Kimp broke my heart.’
‘Shut up, Tulyi.’
`you know, that makes you sentient, or whatever. It’s not actually suffering.’
‘But she did!’
‘An ancient argument, you said, Ms Sippens?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ancient meaning bad?’
‘Ancient meaning discredited.’
‘Discredited? By whom?’
‘Not whom. What.’
‘And that what would be .
‘So there we are. Statistics. Now then, Ziller, my dear friend—’
‘You are not serious.
‘I think she thinks she is more serious than you, Zil.’
‘Suffering demeans more than it ennobles.’
‘And this is a statement derived wholly from these statistics?’
‘No. I think you’ll find a moral intelligence is required as well.’
‘A prerequisite in polite society, I’m sure we’d all agree. Now, Ziller—’
‘A moral intelligence which instructs us that all suffering is bad.’
‘No. A moral intelligence which will incline to treat suffering as bad until proved good.’
‘Ah! So you admit that suffering can be good.’
‘Exceptionally.’
‘Ha.’
‘Oh, nice.’
‘What?’
‘Did you know that works in several different languages?’
‘What? What does?’
‘Tersono,’ Ziller said, turning at last to the drone, which had lowered itself to his shoulder level and edged closer and closer as it had tried to attract the Chelgrian’s attention over the past few moments, during which time its aura field had just started to shade into the blue-grey of politely held-in-check frustration.
Mahrai Ziller, composer, half outcast, half exile, rose from his crouch and balanced on his rear haunches. His midlimb made a shelf briefly and he put his drink down on the smoothly furred surface while he used his forelimbs to straighten his waistcoat and comb his brows. ‘Help me,’ he said to the drone. ‘I am trying to make a serious point and your compatriot indulges in word play.’
‘Then I suggest you fall back and regroup and hope to catch her again later when she is in a less trenchantly flippant mood. You’ve met Ar Kabe Ischloear?’
‘I have. We are old acquaintances. Ambassador.’
‘You dignify me, sir,’ the Homomdan rumbled. ‘I am more of a journalist.’
‘Yes, they do tend to call us all ambassadors, don’t they? I’m sure it’s meant to be flattering.’
‘No doubt. They mean well.’
‘They mean ambiguously, sometimes,’ Ziller said, turning briefly to the woman he had been talking to. She raised her glass and bowed her head a fraction.
‘When you two have entirely finished criticising your determinedly generous hosts . . .‘ Tersono said.
‘This would be the private word you mentioned, would it?’ Ziller asked.
‘Precisely. Indulge an eccentric drone.’
‘Very well.’
‘This way.’
The drone continued past the line of food tables towards the stern of the barge. Ziller followed the machine, seeming to flow along the polished deck, lithely graceful on his single broad midlimb and two strong rear legs. The composer still had his crystal full of wine balanced effortlessly in one hand, Kabe noticed. Ziller used his other hand to wave at a couple of people who nodded to or greeted him as they passed.
Kabe felt very heavy and lumbering in comparison. He tried drawing himself up to his full height so as to appear less stockily massive, but nearly collided with a very old and complicated light fitting hanging from the ceiling.
The three sat in a cabin which extended from the stern of the great barge, looking out over the ink-dark waters of the canal. Ziller had folded himself onto a low table, Kabe squatted comfortably on some cushions on the deck and Tersono rested on a delicate-looking and apparently very old webwood chair. Kabe had known the drone Tersono for all the ten years he had spent on Masaq’ Orbital, and had noticed early on that it liked to surround itself with old things; this antique barge, for example, and the ancient furniture and fittings it contained.
Even the machine’s physical make-up spoke of a sort of antiquarianism. It was a generally reliable rule that the bigger a Culture drone appeared, the older it was. The first examples, dating from eight or nine thousand years ago, had been the size of a bulky human. Subsequent models had gradually shrunk until the most advanced drones had, for some time, been small enough to slip into a pocket. Tersono’s metre-tall body might have suggested that it had been constructed millennia ago when in fact it was only a few centuries old, and the extra space it took up was accounted for by the separation of its internal components, the better to exhibit the fine translucency of its unorthodox ceramic shell.
Ziller finished his drink and took a pipe from his waistcoat. He sucked on it until a little smoke rose from the bowl while the drone exchanged pleasantries with the Homomdan. The composer was still trying to blow smoke rings when Tersono finally said, ‘… which brings me to my motive in asking you both here.’
‘And what would that be?’ Ziller asked.
‘We are expecting a guest, Composer Ziller.’
Ziller gazed levelly at the drone. He looked round the broad cabin and stared at the door. ‘What, now? Who?’
‘Not now. In about thirty or forty days. I’m afraid we don’t know exactly who quite yet. But it will be one of your people, Ziller. Someone from Chel. A Chelgrian.’
Ziller’s face consisted of a furred dome with two large, black, almost semicircular eyes positioned above a grey-pink, furless nasal area and a large, partially prehensile mouth. There was an expression on it now that Kabe had never seen before, though admittedly he had known the Chelgrian only casually and for less than a year. ‘Coming here?’ Ziller asked. His voice was, icy, was the word, decided Kabe.
‘Indeed. To this Orbital, possibly to this Plate.’
Ziller’s mouth worked. ‘Caste?’ he said. The word was more spat than pronounced.
‘One of the . .. Tacted? Possibly a Given,’ Tersono said smoothly.
Of course. Their caste system. At least part of the reason that Ziller was here and not there. Ziller studied his pipe and blew more smoke. ‘Possibly a Given, eh?’ he muttered. ‘My, you are honoured. Hope you get your etiquette exquisitely correct. You’d better start practising now.
‘We believe this person may be coming here to see you,’ the drone said. It turned frictionlessly in the webwood seat and extended a maniple field to work the cords which lowered the gold cloth drapes over the windows, cutting off the view to the dark canal and the snow-enfolded quays.