‘You’ve lost me.’
‘We’re all lost. We are found dead.’
‘…Are you really a professor of divinity?’
‘Of course I am! You mean it isn’t obvious?’
‘Mr Ziller! You met the other Chelgrian yet?’
‘I’m sorry, have we met?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.’
‘No, I meant have you and I met?’
‘Trelsen Scofford. We met at the Gidhoutan’s.’
‘Did we?’
‘You said what I said about your stuff was “singular” and “uniquely viewpointed”.’
‘I think I hear myself in there somewhere.’
‘Great! So, you met this guy yet?’
‘No.’
‘No? But he’s been here twenty days! Someone said he only lives-’
‘Are you really as ignorant as you appear, Trelsen, or is this some sort of bizarre act, perhaps even meant to be amusing?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You should be. If you paid more than the most passing-’
‘I just heard there was another Chelgrian-’
‘-attention to what’s going on you’d know that the “other Chelgrian” is a feudal tough, a professional bully come to attempt to persuade me to go back with him to a society I despise. I have no intention of meeting the wretch.’
‘Oh. I didn’t realise.’
‘Then you’re simply ignorant rather than malevolent. Con- gratulations.’
‘So you’re not going to meet him at all?’
‘That’s right; not at all. My plan is that after keeping him waiting for a few years he’ll either get fed up and slope home to be ritually chastised or he’ll gradually become seduced by Masaq’ and its many attractions in particular and by the Culture and all its wonderful manifestations in general, and become a citizen. Then I might meet him. Brilliant strategy, don’t you think?’
‘You serious?’
‘I’m always serious, never more so than when I’m being flippant.’
‘Think it’ll work?’
‘I neither know nor care. It’s just amusing to contemplate, that’s all.’
‘So why do they want you to go back?’
‘Apparently I’m the true Emperor. I was a foundling swapped at birth by a jealous godmother for my long-lost evil twin, Fimmit.’
‘What? Really?’
‘No, of course not really. He’s here to deliver a summons for a minor traffic violation.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Drat, you guessed. No, the thing is I have this secretion that comes from my anterior glands; every Chelgrian clan has one or two males in each generation who produce this sub- stance. Without it the males of my clan can’t pass solids. If they don’t lick the appropriate spot at least once per tidal j~ month they start to experience terrible wind. Unfortunately my cousin Kehenahanaha Junior the Third recently suffered a bizarre grooming accident which left him unable to produce the vital secretion, so they need me back there before all the males in my family explode from compressed shit. There is a surgical alternative, of course, but sadly the medical patent rights are held by a clan we haven’t acknowledged for three centuries. Dispute over a mistimed bid caused by an involuntary eructation during a bride-bidding auction, apparently. We don’t like to discuss it.’
‘You … you’re not serious?’
‘I really can’t get a thing past you, can I? No, it’s really about an unreturned library book.’
‘You really are just kidding me now, aren’t you?’
‘Yet again you’ve seen right through me. It’s almost as though I needn’t be here.’
‘So you really don’t know why they want you back?’
‘Well, what reason could there possibly be?’
‘Don’t ask me!’
‘That’s just what I was thinking!’
‘Hey; why not just ask?’
‘Better still, as it’s you who seems to care, why don’t you ask the one you charmingly call the Other Chelgrian to tell you why they want me back?’
‘No, I meant ask Hub.’
‘Well, it does know everything, after all. Look, there’s its avatar over there!’
‘Hey, right! Let’s… Oh. Ah, see you, then, ah… Oh, hi. You must be the Homomdan.’
‘Well spotted.’
‘So, what does this woman actually do?’
‘She listens to me.
‘She listens? Is that it?’
‘Yes. I talk and she listens to what I say.’
‘Well? So? I mean, I’m listening to you now. What does this woman do that’s so special?’
‘Well, she listens without asking the sort of question you’ve just asked, frankly.’
‘What do you mean? I was just asking-’
‘Yes, but don’t you see? You’re already being aggressive, you’ve made up your mind that somebody just listening to somebody else is-’ ‘But is that all she does?’
‘More or less, yes. But it’s very helpful.’ ‘Haven’t you got friends?’ ‘Of course I have friends.’
‘Well, isn’t that what they’re for?’
‘No, not always, not for everything I want to talk about.’ ‘Your house?’
‘I used to talk about things with my house, but then I realised I was just talking to a machine that not even the other machines pretend to think is sentient.’
‘What about your family?’
‘I especially do not want to share everything with my family. They figure largely in what I need to talk about.’
‘Really? That’s terrible. You poor thing. Hub, then. It’s a good listener.’
‘Well, I understand, but there are those of us who think that it only seems to care.
‘What? It’s designed to care.
‘No, it’s designed to seem to care. With a person you feel that you’re communicating on an animal level.’
‘An animal level?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And that’s supposed to be a good thing?’
‘Yes. It’s sort of instinct to instinct.’
‘So you don’t think Hub cares?’
‘It’s just a machine.’ ‘So are you.’
‘Only in the widest sense. I feel better talking to another human. Some of us feel that Hub controls our lives too much.’
‘Does it? I thought if you wanted to have nothing to do with it, you could.’
‘Yes, but you still live on the 0, don’t you?’
‘So?’
‘Well, it runs the Orbital, that’s what I mean. ‘Yeah, well, somebody’s got to run it.’ ‘Yes, but planets don’t need anybody to run them. They’re just sort of. . . there.’
‘So you want to live on a planet?’
‘No. I think I’d find them a bit small and weird.’
‘Aren’t they dangerous? Don’t they get hit by stuff?’
‘No, planets have defence systems.’
‘So those need running.’
‘Yes, but you’re missing the point-’
‘I mean, you wouldn’t want a person in charge of stuff like that, would you? That’d be scary. That would be like the old days, like barbarism or something.’
‘No, but the point is, wherever you live you can accept that something has to be minding the infrastructure, but it shouldn’t run your life as well. That’s why we feel we need to talk amongst ourselves more, not to our houses or to Hub or drones or any- thing like that.’ ‘That’s deeply weird. Are there a lot of people like you?’ ‘Well, no, not many, but I know a few.’
‘Do you have a group? Do you hold meetings? Have you got a name yet?’
‘Well, yes and no. There have been a lot of ideas for names. There was a suggestion we call ourselves the fastidians, or the cellists, or the carboniphiles, or the rejectionists or the spokists, or the rimmers or the planetists or the wellians or the circumfer- locuans or circumlocuferans, but I don’t think we should adopt any of those.’
‘Why not?’ ‘Hub suggested them.’
…Sorry.’ Who was that?’
‘The Homomdan ambassador.’
‘Bit monstrous, don’t you think? … What? What?’
‘They have very good hearing.’
‘Hey! Mr Ziller! I forgot to ask. How’s the piece?’ Trelsen, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘What piece?’
‘You know. The music.’
‘Music. Oh yes. Yes, I’ve written quite a lot of that.’
‘Oh, stop joshing. So, how’s it coming along?’
‘Do you mean generally, or did you have a particular work in mind?’ ‘The new one, of course!’
‘Ah yes, of course.’
So?’
‘You mean at what stage of preparation is the symphony?’
‘Yes, how’s it coming along?’
‘Fine.’
‘Fine?’
‘Yes. It’s coming along fine.’
‘Oh. Great! Well done. Look forward to hearing it. Great. Right.’
…. Yes, fuck off through the crowd, you cretin. Hope I didn’t use too many technical terms… Oh, hello, Kabe. You still here? How are you, anyway?’
‘I am well. And yourself?’
‘Beset by idiots. Good job I’m used to it.’
‘Present company excepted, I hope.’
‘Kabe, if I suffered only one fool gladly, I assure you it would be you.
‘Hmm. Well, I shall take that as I hope you meant it rather than as I suspect; hope is a more pleasing emotion to the spirit than suspicion.’
‘Your reservoir of graciousness astonishes me, Kabe. How was the emissary?’
‘Quilan?’
‘I believe that’s what he answers to.’
‘He is resigned to a long wait.’
‘I heard you took him walking.’
‘Along the coastal path at Vilster.’
‘Yes. All those kilometres of path and not a single slip. Almost beggars belief, doesn’t it?’
‘He was a pleasant walking companion and seems a decent sort of person. A little dour, perhaps.’
‘Dour?’
‘Reserved and quiet, quite serious, with a sort of stillness in him.’