Use of Weapons (43 page)

'...
It is in layers,' the alien replied to his question. 'A tiny core of Special
Circumstances, a shell of Contact, and a vast chaotic ecosphere of everything
else. Bit like a... you come from a planet?'

He
nodded. The creature glanced at its amulet for a translation of the gesture
the man had used - it was not what the Culture called nodding - then said,
'Well, it is like a planet, only the core is tiny; very tiny. And the ecosphere
is more disparate and less distinct than the wrapping of atmosphere round a
globe; a red giant star might even be a better comparison. But in the end, you
will never know them, because you will be like me, in Special Circumstances,
and only ever know them as the great, irresistible force behind you; people
like you and I are the edge; you will in time come to feel like a tooth on the
biggest saw in the galaxy, sir.' The alien's eyes closed; it waggled all its
limbs very energetically, and its mouth parts crackled. 'Ha ha ha!' the amulet
said, primly.

'How
did you know I was actually involved with Special Circumstances?' he asked,
sitting back.

'Ah!
How much my vanity wishes me to claim I simply guessed, so clever I am... but I
heard there was a new recruit coming aboard,' the alien told him. 'And that it
was a fairly human-basic male. You... smell right, if I may use that turn of
phrase. And you... have just been asking all the right questions.'

'And
you're in SC too?'

'For
ten standard years now.'

'Think
I should do it? Work for them?'

'Oh
yes; I imagine it's better than what you left, no?'

He
shrugged, remembering the blizzard and the ice. 'I suppose.'

'You
enjoy... fighting, yes?'

'Well...
sometimes,' he admitted. 'I'm good at it, so they say. Not that I'm necessarily
convinced of that myself.'

'No-one
wins all the time, sir,' the creature said. 'Not through skill, anyway, and the
Culture does not believe in luck, or at the very least does not believe it is
transferrable. They must like your attitude, that's all. Hee hee.'

The
alien laughed quietly.

'To
be good at soldiering,' it said, 'is a great curse, I think sometimes. Working
for these people at least relieves one of some of the responsibility. I have
never found cause to complain.' The alien scratched its body, looked down,
picked something from the hairs around where he would have guessed its belly
might be, and ate it. 'Of course, you must not expect to be told the truth all
the time. You can insist that they do, always, and they will do so, but they
may not be able to use you as often as they might like to; sometimes they need
you not to know you are fighting on the wrong side. My advice would be to just
do as they ask; much more exciting.'

'Are
you in it for the excitement?'

'Partly,
and partly because of family honour; SC did something for my people once, and
we could not let them steal our honour by accepting nothing in return. I work
until that debt is paid off.'

'How
long's that?'

'Oh,
for life,' the creature said, sitting back in a gesture he felt reasonably
justified in translating as surprise. 'Until I die, of course. But who cares?
As I say; it's fun. Here.' It banged its drink-bowl on the table to attract a
passing tray. 'Let's have another drink; see who gets drunk first.'

'You
have more legs.' He grinned. 'I think I might fall over more easily.'

'Ah,
but the more the legs, the bigger the tangle.'

'Fair
enough.' He waited for a fresh glass.

To
one side of them was a small terrace and the bar, to the other a gulf of airy
space. The ship, the GSV, went on beyond its apparent boundaries. Its hull was
pierced multitudinously by terraces, balconies, walk-ways, open windows, and
open bay doors. Surrounding the vessel proper was an immense ellipsoid bubble
of air, held inside dozens of different fields, which together made up the
Vehicle's real - though insubstantial - hull.

He
took up the recharged glass when it arrived, and watched a puttering,
piston-engined, paper-winged hang-glider zip past the terrace; he waved at the
pilot, then shook his head.

'To
the Culture,' he said, raising his glass to the alien. It matched his gesture.
'To its total lack of respect for all things majestic.'

'Agreed,'
the alien said, and together they drank.

The
alien was called Chori, he found out later. It was only due to a chance remark
that he discovered Chori was a female, which at the time seemed hilariously
funny.

He
woke up the next morning lying soaked as well as soused half underneath a small
waterfall in one of the ace section valleys; Chori was suspended from a nearby
railing by all eight leg-hooks, making a sporadic clattering noise that he
decided was snoring.

The
first night he spent with a woman, he thought she was dying; he thought he'd
killed her. She seemed to climax at almost the same time as he did, but then -
apparently - had a seizure; screaming, clutching at him. He had an awful,
sickening idea that despite the seeming similarity of their physiology, his
race and the mongrel-species that was the Culture were somehow quite different,
and for a few ghastly moments entertained the idea that his seed was like acid
inside her. It felt like she was trying to break his back with her arms and
legs. He tried to pull himself away from her, calling her name, trying to see
what was wrong, what he had done, what he could do.

'What's
wrong?' she gasped.

'What?
With me; nothing! What's wrong with
you
?'

She
made a sort of shrugging motion, looked puzzled. 'I came; that's all; what's
the... Oh.' She put one hand to her mouth, eyes wide. 'I forgot. I'm sorry.
You're not... Oh dear.' She giggled. 'How embarrassing.'

'
What
?'

'Well,
we just... you know; it takes... it goes on... longer, you know?'

He
didn't think he had quite believed what he had heard about the Culture's
altered physiology until then. He hadn't accepted that they had changed
themselves so. He had not believed that they really had chosen to extend such
moments of pleasure, let alone breed into themselves all the multifarious drug
glands that could enhance almost any experience (not least sex).

Yet
- in a way - it made sense, he told himself. Their machines could do everything
else much better than they could; no sense in breeding super-humans for
strength or intelligence, when their drones and Minds were so much more
matter- and energy-efficient at both. But pleasure... well, that was a
different matter.

What
else was the human form good for?

He
supposed such single-mindedness was admirable, in a way.

He
took the woman in his arms again. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Quality not quantity.
Let's try that again, shall we?'

She
laughed and took his face in her hands. 'Dedication; that's a good quality in a
man.'

(The
cry in the summerhouse that had attracted; 'Hello, old chap.' Tanned hands on
the pale hips...)

He
was away five nights, just wandering. As far as he could tell, he never crossed
his own trail, and never visited the same section twice. He ended up with
different women on three of those nights, and politely turned down one young
man.

'Any
more at your ease, Cheradenine?' Sma asked him, stroking up the pool ahead of
him. She turned on her back to look at him. He swam after her.

'Well,
I have stopped offering to pay for things in bars.'

'That's
a start.'

'It
was a very easy habit to break.'

'Par
for the course. That all?'

'Well...
also, your women are very friendly.'

'So
are the men,' Sma arched one eyebrow.

'The
life here seems... idyllic.'

'Well,
you have to like crowds, perhaps.'

He
looked round the almost deserted pool complex. 'That's relative, I suspect.'

(And
thought: the garden; the garden. They have made their life in its image!)

'Why,'
Sma smiled. 'Are you tempted to stay?'

'Not
even slightly.' He laughed. 'I'd go crazy here, or slip forever into one of
your shared dream-games. I need... more.'

'But
will you take it from us?' Sma said, stopping, treading water. 'Do you want to
work with us?'

'Everybody
seems to think I should; they believe you're fighting the good fight. It's just
that... I get suspicious when everybody agrees about something.'

Sma
laughed. 'How much would it matter if we weren't fighting the good fight,
Cheradenine? If all we were offering was pay and excitement?'

'I
don't know,' he admitted. 'It would make it even harder. I'd just like... I'd like
to believe, to finally
know
, to
finally be able to prove that I was...' He shrugged, grinned. '... doing good.'

Sma
sighed. In the water, this meant that she bobbed up then sank down a little.
'Who knows, Zakalwe? We don't know that; we think we're right; we even think we
can prove it, but we can never be sure; there are always arguments against us.
There is no certainty; least of all in Special Circumstances, where the rules
are different.'

'I
thought the rules were meant to be the same for everybody.'

'They
are. But in Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black
holes, where the normal laws - the rules of right and wrong that people imagine
apply everywhere else in the universe - break down; beyond those metaphysical
event-horizons, there exist... special circumstances.' She smiled. 'That's us.
That's our territory; our domain.'

'To
some people,' he said, 'that might sound like just a good excuse for bad
behaviour.'

Sma
shrugged. 'And perhaps they would be right. Maybe that is all it is.' She shook
her head, pulled one hand through her long wet hair. 'But if nothing else, at
least we need an excuse; think how many people need none at all.'

She
swam off.

He
watched her stroke powerfully away through the water for a moment. One of his
hands went, without him really realising it, to a small puckered scar on his
chest, just over where his heart was, and rubbed it, while he frowned, staring
at the glittering, unsteady surface of the water.

Then
he swam after the woman.

He
spent a couple of years on the
Size Isn't
Everything
, and on a few of the planets, rocks, habitats and orbitals it
stopped at. He was being trained, and learning to use some of the new abilities
he had let them give him. When he eventually left the craft, to go on his first
tour of duty for the Culture - a series of missions which culminated in him
taking the Chosen to the Perfumed Palace on the cliff - it was on a ship just
starting its second tour of duty; the General Contact Unit
Sweet and Full of Grace.

He
never saw Chori again, and heard that she'd been killed on active service some
fifteen years later. He was told this news while they were regrowing his body
on the GSV
Congenital Optimist
after
he'd been beheaded on - and then rescued from - a planet called Fohls.

Eleven

He
crouched behind the parapet, at the far edge of the old observatory from the
single approaching plane. Behind him, down a steep slope, were bushes and trees
and a collection of roofless, overgrown buildings. He watched the aircraft come
closer, checked for more coming from other directions, but couldn't find any.
Inside the suit, watching the transmitted view, he frowned as the aircraft came
closer, slowing all the time, its obese arrowhead shape silhouetted against the
sunset as it approached.

He
watched it drop slowly towards the observatory platform; a ramp hinged from
the craft's belly; three legs flexed out. He took some effector readings from
the machine, then shook his head, ducked and ran back down the slope.

Tsoldrin
was sitting in one of the ruined buildings. He looked surprised when the suited
figure entered through the creeper-choked doorway.