‘Well, if you’re going to look at it that way, we should be charging you for… patent infringement? Giving those old guys their youth back using our technology.’
‘Don’t knock it. You don’t know what it’s like getting that old that early.’
‘Yeah, but it applies to everybody; you were giving it only to the most evil, power-mad bastards on the planet.’
‘They were top-down societies! What do you expect? Anyway; if I’d given it to everybody… think of the population explosion!’
‘Zakalwe, I thought about that when I was about fifteen; they teach you that sort of stuff in early school, in the Culture. It was all thought through long ago; it’s part of our history, part of our upbringing. That’s why what you did would look insane to a school-kid. You are like a school-kid, to us. You don’t even want to get old. Nothing more immature than that.’
‘Whoo!’ he said, stopping suddenly and taking something from an open shelf. ‘What’s this?’
‘Beyond your ken,’ Skaffen-Amtiskaw said.
‘What a beauty!’ He gripped the stunningly complicated weapon and twirled it. ‘What is this?’ he breathed.
‘Micro Armaments System, Rifle,’ the drone narrated. ‘It’s… oh, look, Zakalwe; it has ten separate weapon systems, not including the semi-sentient guard facility, the reactive shield components, the IFF-set quick-reaction swing-packs or the AG unit, and before you ask, the controls are all on the wrong side because that’s the left-hand bias version, and the balance – like the weight and the independently variable inertia – are fully adjustable. It also takes about half a year’s training just to learn how to use it safely, let alone competently, so you can’t have one.’
‘I don’t want one,’ he said, stroking the weapon. ‘But what a device!’ He put it back with the rest. He glanced at Sma. ‘Dizzy; I know the way you people think; I respect it, I guess… but your life isn’t my life. I live in unsafe ways in dangerous places; always have done, always will do. I’ll die soon enough anyway, so why should I suffer the additional burden of getting old, even slowly?’
‘Don’t try and hide behind necessity, Zakalwe. You could have changed your life; you don’t have to live the way you do; you could have joined the Culture, become one of us; at least lived the way we do, but -‘
‘Sma!’ he exclaimed, turning to her. ‘That’s for you; it isn’t for me. You think I’m wrong to have my age stabilised; even the chance of immortality is… wrong, to you. Okay; I can see that. In your society, the way you live your lives, of course it is. You have your three-fifty, four hundred years, and know you’ll get right to the end of them; die with your boots off. For me… that won’t work. I don’t have that certainty. I enjoy the perspective from the edge, Sma; I like to feel that up-draft on my face. So sooner or later I’ll die; violently, probably. Maybe even foolishly, because that’s often the way of it; you avoid nukes and determined assassins… and then choke on a fish bone… but who cares? So; your stasis is your society, and mine… is my age. But we are both assured of death.’
Sma looked at the floor, hands clasped behind her back. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But don’t forget who gave you that perspective from the edge.’
He smiled sadly. ‘Yes; you saved me. But you’ve also lied to me; sent – no, listen – sent me on damn fool missions where I was on the opposite side from the one I thought I was on, had me fight for incompetent aristos I’d gladly have strangled, in wars where I didn’t know you were backing both sides, filled my balls full of alien seed I was supposed to inject into some poor damn female… nearly got me killed… very nearly got me killed a dozen times or more…’
‘You’ve never forgotten me for that hat, have you?’ Skaffen-Amtiskaw said, with fake bitterness.
‘Oh, Cheradenine,’ Sma said. ‘Don’t pretend it hasn’t been fun, too.’
‘Sma, believe me; it has not all been “fun”.’ He leant against a cabinet full of ancient projectile weapons. ‘And, worse than all that,’ he insisted, ‘is when you turn the goddamn maps upside-down.’
‘What?’ Sma said, puzzled.
‘Turning the maps upside down,’ he repeated. ‘Have you any idea how annoying and inconvenient it is when you get to a place and find that they map the place the other way up compared to the maps you’ve got? Because of something stupid like some people think a magnetic needle is pointing up to heaven, when other people think it’s just heavier and pointing down? Or because it’s done according to the galactic plane or something? I mean, this might sound trivial, but it’s very upsetting.’
‘Zakalwe, I had no idea. Let me offer you my apologies and those of the entire Special Circumstances Section; no, all of Contact; no: the entire Culture; no: all intelligent species.’
‘Sma, you remorseless bitch, I’m trying to be serious.’
‘No, I don’t think you are. Maps…’
‘But it’s true! They turn them the wrong way up!’
‘Then there must,’ Diziet Sma said, ‘be a reason for it.’
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘Psychology,’ Sma and the drone said at the same time.
‘Two suits?’ Sma said later, when he was making his final equipment selection. They were still in the armoury mini-bay, but Skaffen-Amtiskaw had gone off to do something more interesting than watch a kid shop for toys.
He heard the accusatory tone in Sma’s voice, and looked up. ‘Yes; two suits. So what?’
‘Those can be used to imprison somebody, Zakalwe; I know that. They’re not just for protection.’
‘Sma; if I’m lifting this guy out of a hostile environment, with no immediate help from you guys because you have to stand off and be seen to be pure – fake though that might be – I have to have the tools to do the job. Serious FYT suits are numbered among those tools.’
‘One,’ Sma said.
‘Sma, don’t you trust me?’
‘One,’ Sma repeated.
‘Goddamn it! All right!’ He dragged the suit away from the pile of equipment.
‘Cheradenine,’ Sma said, suddenly conciliatory. ‘Remember; we need Beychae’s… commitment, not just his presence. That’s why we couldn’t impersonate him; that’s why we couldn’t tamper with his mind…’
‘Sma, you’re sending me to tamper with his mind.’
‘All right,’ Sma said, suddenly nervous-looking. She clapped her hands once softly, looked a little embarrassed. ‘By the way, Cheradenine, ah… what exactly are your plans? I know better than to ask for a mission profile or anything formal, but how do you mean to get to Beychae?’
He sighed. ‘I’m going to make him want to come to me.’
‘How?’
‘Just one word.’
‘A word?’
‘A name.’
‘What, yours?’
‘No; mine was supposed to be kept a secret when I was advisor to Beychae, but it must have leaked out by now. Too dangerous. I’ll use another name.’
‘Ah hah.’ Sma looked expectantly at him, but he went back to choosing between the various bits of equipment he’d picked out.
‘Beychae’s in this university, right?’ he said, not turning to look at Sma.
‘Yes; in the archives, almost permanently. But there are a lot of archives and he moves around a lot, and there are always guards.’
‘Okay,’ he told her. ‘If you want to do something useful, try finding something that the university might want.’
Sma shrugged. ‘It’s a capitalist society. How about money?’
‘I’ll be doing that myself…’ he paused, looked suspicious. ‘I will be allowed plenty of discretion in that area, won’t I?’
‘Unlimited expenses,’ Sma nodded.
He smiled. ‘Wonderful.’ He paused. ‘What source? A tonne of platinum? Sack of diamonds? My own bank?’
‘Well, more or less your own bank, yes,’ Sma said. ‘We’ve beea building up something called the Vanguard Foundation since the last war; commercial empire, comparatively ethical, expanding quietly. That’s where your unlimited expenses will come from.’
‘Well, with my unlimited expenses I’ll probably try offering this university lots of money; but it would be better if there was some actual thing we could tempt them with.’
‘All right,’ she said, nodding. Then her brow wrinkled. She indicated the combat suit.’ What did you call that thing?’
He looked puzzled, then said, ‘Oh; it’s an FYT suit.’
‘Yes; a serious FYT suit; that’s what you said. But I thought I knew all the nomenclature; I’ve never heard that acronym before. What does it stand for?’
‘It stands for a serious fuck-you-too suit.’ He grinned.
Sma made a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘Should have known better than to ask, shouldn’t I?’
Two days later, they stood in the hangar of the Xenophobe. The very fast picket had left the GSV a day earlier, slung at the Voerenhutz cluster. It had accelerated hard, and now it was braking hard. He was packing the gear he would need into a capsule that would take him down to the surface of the planet where Tsoldrin Beychae was; the initial stage of his in-system journey would be on a fast three-person module; it would loiter in the atmosphere of a nearby gas-giant planet. The Xenophobe itself would wait in interstellar space, ready to provide support if needed.