Consider Phlebas

They had set up a target screen at one end and put their lasers onto practice. The screen's built-in projector flashed images for them to shoot at. Horza looked at the woman.

'He was your leader.'

Yalson laughed. 'He was a manager; how many of them are liked by their staff? This is a business, Horza, and not even a successful one. Kraiklyn managed to get most of us retired prematurely. Shit! The only person you needed to fool was the ship.'

'There was that,' Horza said, aiming at a human figure darting across the distant screen. The laser spot was invisible, but the screen sensed it and flashed white light where it hit. The human figure, hit in the leg, stumbled but did not fall: half marks. 'I did need to fool the ship. But I didn't want to risk somebody being loyal to Kraiklyn.'

It was Yalson's turn, but she was looking at Horza, not the screen.

The ship's fidelities had been bypassed, and now all that was needed to command it was a numeric code, which only Horza knew, and the small ring he wore, which had been Kraiklyn's. He had promised that when they got to Schar's World, if there was no other way off the planet, he would set the CAT's computer to free itself of all fidelity limitations after a given time, so that if he didn't come back out of the tunnels of the Command System the Free Company would not be stranded. 'You would have told us,' Yalson said, 'wouldn't you, Horza? I mean you would have let us know eventually.'

Horza knew she meant, would he have told her? He put his gun down and looked her in the eyes. 'Once I was sure,' he said, 'sure about the people, sure about the ship.'

It was the honest answer, but he wasn't certain it was the best one. He wanted Yalson, wanted not just her warmth in the ship's red night, but her trust, her care. But she was still distant.

Balveda lived; perhaps she wouldn't still be alive if Horza hadn't wanted Yalson's regard. He knew that, and it was a bitter thought, making him feel cheap and cruel. Even knowing that it was a definite thing would have been better than being uncertain. He couldn't say for sure whether the cold logic of this game dictated that the Culture woman should die or be left alive, or even if, the former being comfortably obvious, he could have killed her in cold blood. He had thought it through and still he didn't know. He only hoped that neither woman had guessed that any of this had gone through his mind.

Kierachell was another worry. It was absurd, he knew, to be concerned about his own affairs at such a time, but he couldn't stop thinking about the Changer woman; the closer they came to Schar's World, the more he remembered of her, the more real his memories became. He tried not to build it up too much, tried to recall the boredom of the Changers' lonely outpost on the planet and the restlessness he had felt there even with Kierachell's company, but he dreamt about her slow smile and recalled her low voice in all its fluid grace with some of the heartache of a youth's first love. Occasionally he thought Yalson might sense that, too, and something inside him seemed to shrink with shame.

Yalson shrugged, hoisted her gun to her shoulder and fired at a four-legged shadow on the practice screen. It stopped in its tracks and dropped, seeming to dissolve into the line of shady ground at the bottom of the screen.

Horza gave talks.

It made him feel like some visiting lecturer at a college, but that's what he did. He felt he had to explain to the others why he was doing what he was, why the Changers supported the Idirans, why he believed in what they were fighting for. He called them briefings, and ostensibly they were about Schar's World and the Command System, its history, geography and so on, but he always (quite intentionally) ended up talking about the war in general, or about totally different aspects of it unrelated to the planet they were approaching.

The briefing cover gave him a good excuse to keep Balveda confined to her cabin while he paced up and down on the deck of the mess talking to the members of the Free Company; he didn't want his talks turning into a debate.

Perosteck Balveda had been no trouble. Her suit and a few items of harmless-looking jewellery and other bits and pieces had been jettisoned from a vactube. She had been scanned with every item the CAT's limited sick-bay equipment could provide and had come up clean, and she seemed quite happy to be a well-behaved prisoner, confined to the ship as they all were and, apart from at night, locked in her cabin only occasionally. Horza didn't let her near the bridge, just in case, but Balveda showed no signs of trying to get to know the ship especially well — the way he had done when he came on board. She didn't even try to argue any of the mercenaries round to her way of thinking about the war and the Culture.

Horza wondered how secure she felt. Balveda was pleasant and seemed unworried; but he looked at her sometimes and thought he saw, briefly, a glimpse of inner tension, even despair. It relieved him in one way, but in another it gave him that same bad, cruel feeling he experienced when he thought about exactly why the Culture agent was still alive. Sometimes he was simply afraid of getting to Schar's World, but increasingly as the voyage dragged on he came to relish the prospect of some action and an end to thought.

He called Balveda to his cabin one day, after they had all eaten in the mess. The woman came in and sat down on the same small seat he had sat in when Kraiklyn had summoned him just after he had joined the ship.

Balveda's face was calm. She sat elegantly in the small seat, her long frame at once relaxed and poised. Her deep dark eyes gazed out at Horza from the thin, smoothly shaped head, and her red hair — now turning black — shone in the lights of the cabin.

'Captain Horza?' she smiled, crossing her long-fingered hands on her lap. She wore a long blue gown, the plainest thing she had been able to find on the ship: something that had once belonged to the woman Gow.

'Hello, Balveda,' Horza said. He sat back on the bed. He wore a loose gown. For the first couple of days he had stayed in his suit, but while it stayed commendably comfortable, it was bulky and awkward in the confines of the Clear Air Turbulence, so he had discarded it for the voyage.

He was about to offer Balveda something to drink, but somehow, because that was what Kraiklyn had done with him, it didn't seem the right thing to do.

'What was it,' Horza?' Balveda said.

'I just wanted to… see how you were,' he said. He had tried to rehearse what he would say; assure her she was in no danger, that he liked her and that he was sure that this time the worst that would happen to her really would be internment somewhere, and maybe a swap, but the words would not come.

'I'm fine,' she said, smoothing her hand over her hair, her eyes glancing around the cabin briefly. 'I'm trying to be a model captive so you won't have an excuse for ditching me.' She smiled, but again he thought he sensed an edge to the gesture. Yet he was relieved.

'No,' he laughed, letting his head rock back on his shoulders with the laugh. 'I've no intention of doing that. You're safe.'

'Until we get to Schar's World?' she said calmly.

'After that, too,' he said.

Balveda blinked slowly, looking down. 'Hmm, good.' She looked into his eyes.

He shrugged. 'I'm sure you'd do the same for me.'

'I think I… probably would,' she said, and he couldn't tell whether she was lying or not. 'I just think it's a pity we're on different sides.'

'It's a pity we're all on different sides, Balveda.'

'Well,' she said, clasping her hands on her lap again, 'there is a theory that the side we each think we're on is the one that will triumph eventually anyway.'

'What's that?' he grinned. 'Truth and justice?'

'Not either, really,' she smiled, not looking at him. 'Just…' She shrugged. 'Just life. The evolution you talked about. You said the Culture was in a backwater, a dead end. If we are… maybe we'll lose after all.'

'Damn, I'll get you on the good guys' side yet, Perosteck,' he said, with just a little too much heartiness. She smiled thinly.

She opened her mouth to say something, then thought the better of it and closed it again. She looked at her hands. Horza wondered what to say next.

One night, six days out from their destination — the system's star was fairly bright in the sky ahead of the