ears ringing long after they stopped; and announcements over the PA made him put both hands to his head. Horza just hoped there wasn't a full-scale alarm while he was on board. The Idiran ship alarm could cause damage to unprotected human ears.
'What is it?' Xoralundra asked the helmet.
'The female is on board. I shall need only eight more minutes to get the gun-'
'Have the cities been destroyed?'
'… They have, Querl.'
'Break out of orbit at once and make full speed for the fleet.'
'Querl, I must point out-' said the small, steady voice from the helmet on the table.
'Captain,' Xoralundra said briskly, 'in this war there have to date been fourteen single-duel engagements between Type 5 light cruisers and Mountain class General Contact Units. All have ended in victory for the enemy. Have you ever seen what is left of a light cruiser after a GCU has finished with it?'
'No, Querl.'
'Neither have I, and I have no intention of seeing it for the first time from the inside. Proceed at once.' Xoralundra hit the helmet button again. He fastened his gaze on Horza. 'I shall do what I can to secure your release from the service with sufficient funds, if you succeed. Now, once we have made contact with the main body of the fleet you will go by fast picket to Schar's World. You will be given a shuttle there, just beyond the Quiet Barrier. It will be unarmed, although it will have the equipment we think you may need, including some close-range hyperspace spectographic analysers, should the Mind conduct a limited destruct.'
'How can you be certain it'll be 'limited'?' Horza asked sceptically.
'The Mind weighs several thousand tonnes, despite its relatively small size. An annihilatory destruct would rip the planet in half and so antagonise the Dra'Azon. No Culture Mind would risk such a thing.'
'Your confidence overwhelms me,' Horza said dourly. Just then the note of background noise around them altered. Xoralundra turned his helmet round and looked at one of its small internal screens.
'Good. We are under way.' He looked at Horza again. 'There is something else I ought to tell you. An attempt was made, by the group of ships which caught the Culture craft, to follow the escaped Mind down to the planet.'
Horza frowned. 'Didn't they know better?'
'They did their best. With the battle group were several captured chuy-hirtsi warp animals which had been deactivated for later use in a surprise attack on a Culture base. One of these was quickly fitted out for a small-scale incursion on the planet surface and thrown at the Quiet Barrier in a warp-cruise. The ruse did not succeed. On crossing the Barrier the animal was attacked with something resembling gridfire and was heavily damaged. It came out of warp near the planet on a course which would take it in on a burn-up angle. The equipment and ground force it contained must be considered defunct.'
'Well, I suppose it was a good try, but a Dra'Azon must make even this wonderful Mind you're after look like a valve computer. It's going to take more than that to fool it.'
'Do you think you will be able to?'
'I don't know. I don't
'Good. We shall have a fuller briefing when we rejoin the fleet. For now we must pray that our return is without incident. You may want to speak to Perosteck Balveda before she is interrogated. I have arranged with the Deputy Fleet Inquisitor that you may see her, if you wish.'
Horza smiled, 'Xora, nothing would give me greater pleasure.'
The Querl had other business on the ship as it powered its way out of the Sorpen system. Horza stayed in Xoralundra's cabin to rest and eat before he called on Balveda.
The food was the cruiser autogalley's best impression of something suitable for a humanoid, but it tasted awful. Horza ate what he could and drank some equally uninspiring distilled water. It was all served by a medjel — a lizard-like creature about two metres long with a flat, long head and six legs, on four of which it ran, using the front pair as hands. The medjel were the companion species of the Idirans. It was a complicated sort of social symbiosis which had kept the exosocio faculties of many a university in research funds over the millennia that the Idiran civilisation had been part of the galactic community.
The Idirans themselves had evolved on their planet Idir as the top monster from a whole planetful of monsters. The frenetic and savage ecology of Idir in its early days had long since disappeared, and so had all the other homeworld monsters except those in zoos. But the Idirans had retained the intelligence that made them winners, as well as the biological immortality which, due to the viciousness of the fight for survival back then — not to mention Idir's high radiation levels had been an evolutionary advantage rather than a recipe for stagnation.
Horza thanked the medjel as it brought him plates and took them away again, but it said nothing. They were generally reckoned to be about two thirds as intelligent as the average humanoid (whatever that was), which made them about two or three times dimmer than a normal Idiran. Still, they were good if unimaginative soldiers, and there were plenty of them; something like ten or twelve for each Idiran. Forty thousand years of breeding had made them loyal right down to the chromosome level.
Horza didn't try to sleep, though he was tired. He told the medjel to take him to Balveda. The medjel thought about it, asked permission via the cabin intercom, and flinched visibly under a verbal slap from a distant Xoralundra who was on the bridge with the cruiser captain. 'Follow me, sir,' the medjel said, opening the cabin door.
In the companionways of the warship the Idiran atmosphere became more obvious than it had been in Xoralundra's cabin. The smell of Idiran was stronger and the view ahead hazed over — even seen through Horza's eyes — after a few tens of metres. It was hot and humid, and the floor was soft. Horza walked quickly along the corridor, watching the stump of the medjel's docked tail as it waggled in front of him.
He passed two Idirans on the way, neither of whom paid him any attention. Perhaps they knew all about him and what he was, but perhaps not. Horza knew that Idirans hated to appear either over-inquisitive or under- informed.
He nearly collided with a pair of wounded medjel on AG stretchers being hurried along a cross-corridor by two of their fellow troopers. Horza watched as the wounded passed, and frowned. The spiralled spatter-marks on their battle armour were unmistakably those produced by a plasma bolt, and the Gerontocracy didn't have any plasma weapons. He shrugged and walked on.
They came to a section of the cruiser where the companionway was blocked by sliding doors. The medjel spoke to each of the barriers in turn, and they opened. An Idiran guard holding a laser carbine stood outside a door; he saw the medjel and Horza approaching and had the door open for the man by the time he got there. Horza nodded to the guard as he stepped through. The door hissed shut behind him and another one, immediately in front, opened.
Balveda turned quickly to him when he entered the cell. It looked as though she had been pacing up and down. She threw back her head a little when she saw Horza and made a noise in her throat which might have been a laugh.
'Well, well,' she said, her soft voice drawling. 'You survived. Congratulations. I did keep my promise, by the way. What a turn-around, eh?'
'Hello,' Horza replied, folding his arms across the chest of his suit and looking the woman up and down. She wore the same grey gown and appeared to be unharmed. 'What happened to that thing around your neck?' Horza asked.
She looked down, at where the pendant had lain over her breast. 'Well, believe it or not, it turned out to be a memoryform.' She smiled at him and sat down cross-legged on the soft floor; apart from a raised bed-alcove, this was the only place to sit. Horza sat too, his legs hurting only a little. He recalled the spatter-marks on the medjel's armour.
'A memoryform. Wouldn't have turned into a
'Amongst other things.' The Culture agent nodded.
