Consider Phlebas

'Aren't you going to look at the island?' he said. He was very thin and light looking. His skin was a deep, almost golden yellow. There was a sheen about it which made Fal think of a hologram because it looked somehow deeper than his skinny arms and legs were thick.

'I don't feel like it,' Pal said. She hadn't wanted the boy to talk to her earlier and she didn't want to talk to him now. She was sorry she'd agreed to come on the cruise.

'Why not?' the boy said. She couldn't remember his name. She hadn't been paying attention when he started talking to her, and she wasn't even sure he had told her his name, though she assumed he had.

'I just don't.' She shrugged. She wasn't looking at him.

'Oh,' he said. He was silent for a while. She was aware of the sunlight reflecting from his body, but she still didn't turn to look at him. She watched the distant trees, the waves, the ruddy bodies of the ceerevells hump- backing on the surface of the water as they rose to vent and then dive again. The boy said, 'I know how you feel.'

'Do you?' she said, and turned to look at him. He looked a little surprised. He nodded.

'You're fed up, aren't you?'

'Maybe,' she said, looking away again. 'A little bit.'

'Why does that old drone follow you about everywhere?'

She darted a glance at the boy. Jase was below decks just then, getting a drink for her. It had come aboard at the port with her and had stayed not too far away all the time — the hovering, protective way it usually did. She shrugged again and watched a flock of birds rise from the interior of the island. They called and dipped and wheeled in the air. 'It looks after me,' she said. She stared at her hands, watching the sunlight reflect from her nails.

'Do you need looking after?'

'No.'

'Then why does it look after you?'

'I don't know.'

'You're very mysterious, you know,' he said. She wasn't looking, but she thought she heard a smile in his voice. She shrugged soundlessly. 'You're like that island,' he said. 'You're strange and mysterious like it is.'

Fal snorted and tried to look scathing; then she saw Jase appearing from a doorway, carrying a glass. She got up quickly, followed by the boy, walked down the deck, and met the old drone, taking the glass from it and smiling at it gratefully. She buried her face in the container and sipped at the drink, looking out through the glass at the boy.

'Well, hello, young man,' Jase said. 'Aren't you going to have a look at the island?' Fal wanted to kick the machine because of its hearty voice and the way it had said almost what the boy had said to her.

'I might,' the boy said, looking at her.

'You should,' Jase said, starting to float towards the stern. The old machine extended a curved field, like a shadow without something to cast it, out from its casing and round the boy's shoulders. 'By the way, I couldn't help overhearing you when you were talking earlier,' it said, gently guiding the boy down the deck. His golden head turned over his shoulder to look at Fal, who was still drinking her drink very slowly, and just starting to follow Jase and the boy, a couple of paces behind. The boy looked away from her and towards the drone at his side, which was saying, 'You were talking about not getting into Contact…'

'That's right.' The boy's voice was suddenly defensive. 'I was talking about that, so?' Fal continued to walk behind the drone and the boy. She smacked her lips. Ice in the glass clinked.

'You sounded bitter,' Jase said.

'I'm not bitter,' the boy said quickly. 'I just think it isn't fair, that's all.'

'That you weren't picked?' Jase asked. They were approaching the seats round the stern where Fal had sat a few minutes earlier.

'Well, yes. It's all I've ever wanted, and I think they made a mistake. I know I'd be good. I thought with the war and all that they would need more people.'

'Well, yes. But Contact has far more applicants than it can use.'

'But I thought one of the things that they considered was how much you wanted to get in, and I know nobody could have wanted to get in as much as I do. Ever since I can remember I've wanted…' The boy's voice trailed off as they came to the seats. Fal sat down; so did the boy. Fal was looking at him now but not listening. She was thinking.

'Perhaps they don't think you're mature enough yet.'

'I am mature!'

'Hmm. They very rarely take people so young, you know. For all I know they're looking for a special sort of immaturity when they do take people your age.'

'Well, that's silly. I mean, how do you know what to do if they don't tell you what they want? How can you prepare? I think it's all really unfair.'

'In a way I think it's meant to be,' Jase replied. 'They get so many people applying, they can't take them all or even just take the best because there are so many of them, so they choose at random from them. You can always reapply.'

'I don't know,' the boy said, sitting forward and putting his elbows on his knees and his head into his hands, staring at the polished wood of the deck. 'Sometimes I think they just tell you that so you won't feel bad when they reject you. I think they do maybe take the very best. But I think they've made a mistake. But because they won't tell you why you've failed, what can you do about it?'

… She was thinking about failure too.

Jase had congratulated her on her idea about finding the Changer. Only that morning, when they were on the ancient steam funicular down from the lodge, they had heard about the events at Vavatch, when the Changer called Bora Horza Gobuchul had appeared and escaped on the pirate ship, taking their agent Perosteck Balveda with him. Her hunch had been right, and Jase was effusive in its praise, making the point that it wasn't her fault the man had got away. But she was depressed. Sometimes being right, thinking the correct thing, predicting accurately, depressed her.

It had all seemed so obvious to her. It hadn't been a supernatural omen or anything silly like that when Perosteck Balveda suddenly turned up (on the battle-damaged but victorious GCU Nervous Energy, which was towing most of a captured Idiran cruiser), but it had seemed so… so natural that Balveda ought to be the one to go in search of the missing Changer. By that time they'd had more information about what had been going on in that volume of space when that particular duel had been going on; and the reported, possible and probable movements of various ships had pointed (again, she thought, fairly obviously) to the privateer craft called the Clear Air Turbulence. There were other possibilities, and they were followed up, too, as far as the already stretched resources of Contact's Special Circumstances section would allow, but she was always certain that if any of the branching possibilities was going to bear fruit it would be the Vavatch connection. The captain of the Clear Air Turbulence was called Kraiklyn; he played Damage. Vavatch was the most obvious site for a full Damage game in years. Therefore the most likely place to intercept the vessel — apart from Schar's World if the Changer already had control — was Vavatch. She had stuck her neck out by insisting that Vavatch was the most likely place, and that the woman agent Balveda should be one of those to go there, and now it had all come true and she realised it wasn't really her neck she had stuck out at all. It was Balveda's.

But what else could be done? The war was accelerating throughout an immense volume; there were many other urgent missions for the few Special Circumstances agents, and anyway Balveda was the only really good one within range. There was one young man they'd sent in with her, but he was only promising, not experienced. Fal had known all along that if it came to it, Balveda would risk her own life, not the man's, if infiltrating the mercenaries was the only chance of getting to the Changer and through him to the Mind. It was brave but, Fal suspected, it was mistaken. The Changer knew Balveda; he might well recognise her, no matter how much she'd altered her own appearance (and there hadn't been time for Balveda to undergo radical physical change). If the Changer realised who she was (and Fal suspected he had), Balveda had far less chance of completing her mission than even the most callow and nervous but unsuspected rookie agent. Forgive me, lady, Fal thought to herself. I'd have done better by you if I could…

She had tried to hate the Changer all that day, tried to imagine him and hate him because he had probably killed Balveda, but apart from the fact that she found it hard to imagine somebody when she had no idea what he