[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.862.3465 ]
xEccentric Shoot Them Later
oLSV Serious Callers Only
The Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival was in touch again (signal file attached). I still think it could be one of them.
oo
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.862.3980 ]
xLSV Serious Callers Only
oEccentric Shoot Them Later
And I still think you should let it in with us. It almost certainly now suspects you are part of the conspiracy.
oo
I have an image to maintain! And I would point out that we are still very much in the dark; we are not yet sure there is a conspiracy beyond the kind of normal outsmarting, outcliqueing nonsense in which all of us indulge from time to time. What purpose would formally extending the circumference of our concern serve, for now? Our sleuth is still behaving as though it is one of us but it knows nothing of our scepticism; we have naught to gain by bringing it aboard at present. If it is genuine it will apply itself to our purpose and if discovered the shadow of its guilt will not fall across us; if it is a test then it – they – may decide to bait us with more information of genuine interest, delivered at no cost to our virtue. Are we agreed? Have I convinced you? Anyway, enough of that; have we yet a plan? What was the result of your own investigations?
oo
Frustratingly vague. An exhaustive search has thrown up one remote possibility… but it remains an improbability predicated upon an uncertainty.
oo
Pray tell.
oo
Well… Let me ask you a question. What do you understand results by our communicating with our mutual friend?
oo
Why, that we are allowed to share in its inimitable objectivity. What else?
oo
That is the general volume of my concern. I’ll say no more.
oo
What? Don’t be ridiculous. Elaborate.
oo
No. You know what you said to our unwitting fellow in suspicion about not advertising lines of inquiry which might end in embarrassment…
oo
Unfair! After all I’ve shared with you!
oo
Yes, including the exciting opportunity to get involved with this in the first place. Thanks a lot.
oo
Cast that up to me again would you? I’ve said I’m sorry. Wish I’d never said anything now.
oo
Yes, but if the Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival finds out who passed on the information which led to the Fate Amenable To Change’s search in the first place…
oo
I know, I know. Look; I’m doing all I can. I have requested a sympathetic ship to divert itself to Pittance, just in case. That’s where my prognostications indicate a site for possible future mischief.
oo
Death! If it comes to that…
III
The twittering batball bounced off the centre of the high-scoring wall and flew straight towards Genar-Hofoen. The creature’s tiny, clipped wings paddled frantically at the atmosphere as it tried to right itself and flee. One of its stumpy wings was ragged, perhaps even broken. It started to curve away as it approached the human. He took a good back-swing with his bat and slammed it into the little creature, sending it yelping and spinning away. He’d intended it to head for the high-scoring wall, but the stroke had been slightly off-target, resulting in the spin he’d given the thing and its course towards the corner between the high-scoring wall and the right-side forfeit baffle. Shit, he thought; the batball thrashed at the atmosphere and curved further towards the forfeit baffle.
Fivetide darted forward and with a flip of the bat strapped to one of his front limbs – and a resounding, ‘Ha!’ – snapped the batball into the centre of the high-scoring wall again; it thudded against the roundel and ricocheted off at an angle Genar-Hofoen knew he wasn’t going to be able to intercept. He lunged at it anyway, but the creature sailed slackly past, half a metre away from his outstretched bat. He fell to the floor and rolled, feeling the gelfield suit tensing and squeezing him as it absorbed the shock. He picked himself up to a sitting position and looked around. He was breathing hard and his heart was hammering; playing this sort of game against another human would have been no joke in Affronter gravity. Playing it against an Affronter, even one with half his tentacles sportingly tied round its back, was even harder work.
‘Hopeless!’ Fivetide roared, crossing towards where the batball lay motionless near the back of the court. As he passed the human he flicked a tentacle under Genar-Hofoen’s chin and levered him up. The gesture was almost certainly meant to be helpful, but it would have broken the average unprotected human neck. Genar-Hofoen merely found himself propelled off the floor like a rock out of a catapult and sent sailing towards the ceiling of the court, arms flailing.
~ Idiot! the suit said, as Genar-Hofoen reached the top of his trajectory. He assumed the suit was talking about Fivetide.
A tentacle wrapped itself round his waist like a whip. ‘Oops!’ Fivetide said, and lowered him safely to the floor with surprising gentleness. ‘Sorry about that, Genar-Hofoen,’ he yelled. ‘You know what they say; “It’s a wise lad knows his own strength when he’s having fun,” eh!’ He patted the human relatively gently on the head, then continued over to the motionless body of the batball. He prodded it with the bat.
‘Don’t breed them like they used to,’ he said, then made a noise Genar-Hofoen had learned to interpret as a sigh.
~ Tentacled scumbag fuckwit, said the suit.
~ Suit, really! he thought, amused.
~ Well…
The suit was not in the best of moods. He and it were spending a lot more time together; the suit didn’t trust the containment around Genar-Hofoen’s quarters in the ship and had insisted that the human keep it on, even when he was asleep. Genar-Hofoen had grumbled, but not over-much; there were too many funny smells in his quarters for him to have complete faith in the Affront’s attempt at a human life-support system. The most the gelfield suit would let him do at night was peel aside its head section so that he could sleep with his face exposed; that way, even if his environment collapsed suddenly and totally, the suit would be able to protect him.
Fivetide flicked the batball up with the end of his bat and flicked it over the transparent wall of the court, into the spectators’ seats. Then he banged on the wall, waking the snoozing form of the gelding on the far side.
‘Wake up, you dozy pellet!’ Fivetide bellowed. ‘Another batball, dolt!’
The neutered Affronter adolescent jumped to its tentacle tips, its eye stalks waving around wildly, then it reached into a small cage by its side with one limb while another tentacle opened the door in the court wall. It picked one batball out of the dozen or so tied up in the cage and handed the squirming creature to the adult Affronter, who accepted it then jerked forward and hissed at the adolescent, making it flinch. It closed the door quickly.
‘Ha!’ Fivetide shouted, putting the trussed, wriggling batball to his forebeak and tearing the cord that had held it immobile. ‘Another game, Genar-Hofoen?’ Fivetide spat the short length of cord away and patted the batball up and down in one of his limbs while the little animal flexed its abbreviated wings.
‘Why not?’ Genar-Hofoen said coolly. He was exhausted, but he wasn’t going to let Fivetide know.
‘Nine-nil to me, I believe,’ the Affronter said, holding the batball up to his eyes. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Let’s make it more interesting.’ He put the struggling batball into the tip of his forebeak, his eye stalks bent forward and down to look at what he was doing. There was a delicate movement around Fivetide’s beak-fronds and a tiny screech, accompanied by a faint pop.
Fivetide withdrew the creature from his beak and inspected it, apparently satisfied. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Always good for a change, playing with a blinded one.’ He threw the writhing, mewling creature to Genar-Hofoen. ‘Your serve, I believe.’
The Culture had a problem with the Affront. The Affront had a problem with the Culture, too, for that matter, but it was a pretty plain thing in comparison; the Affront’s problem with the Culture was simply that the older civilisation stopped it doing all the things it wanted to do. The Culture’s problem with the Affront was like an itch they couldn’t scratch; the Culture’s problem with the Affront was that the Affront existed at all and the Culture couldn’t in all conscience do anything about it.
The problem stemmed from an accident of galactic topography and a combination of bad luck and bad timing.
The fuzzily specified region which had given rise to the various species that had eventually made up the Culture had been on the far side of the galaxy from the Affront home planet, and contacts between the Culture and the Affront had been unusually sparse for a long time for a variety of frankly banal reasons. By the time the Culture came to know the Affront better – shortly after the long distraction of the Idiran war – the Affront were a rapidly developing and swiftly maturing species, and short of another war there was no practical way of quickly changing either their nature or behaviour.