The Player of Games

knew were sweeping about the sculpted pastel surfaces.

'Good day, Jernau Gurgeh,' said the drone Flere-Imsaho in its squeaky little voice, settling delicately on the plump arm of the chair. As usual, its aura field was yellow-green; mellow approachability.

'Hello,' Gurgeh said, glancing at it briefly. 'And what have you been up to?' He touched the terminal screen to inspect another set of tables and equations.

'Oh, well, actually I've been studying some of the species of birds which live here within the interior of the vessel. I do find birds interesting, don't you?'

'Hmm.' Gurgeh nodded vaguely, watching the tables change. 'What I haven't been able to work out,' he said, 'is when you go for a walk in the topside park you find droppings, as you'd expect to, but inside here everything's spotless. Does the GSV have drones to clean up after the birds, or what? I know I could just ask it, but I wanted to work it out for myself. There must be some answer.'

'Oh that's easy,' the little machine said. 'You just use birds and trees with a symbiotic relationship; the birds soil only in the bolls of certain trees, otherwise the fruit they depend on doesn't grow.'

Gurgeh looked down at the drone. 'I see,' he said coldly. 'Well, I was growing tired of the problem anyway.' He turned back to the equations, adjusting the floating terminal so that its screen hid Flere-Imsaho from his sight. The drone stayed silent, went a confused medley of contrite purple and do-not-disturb silver, and flew away.

Flere-Imsaho kept itself to itself most of the time, only calling on Gurgeh once a day or so, and not staying on board the Limiting Factor. Gurgeh was glad of that; the young machine — it said it was only thirteen — could be trying at times. The ship reassured Gurgeh that the little drone would be up to the task of preventing social gaffes and keeping him informed on the finer linguistic points by the time they arrived at the Empire, and — it told Gurgeh later — reassured Flere-Imsaho that the man didn't really despise it.

There was more news from Gevant. Gurgeh had actually written back to a few people, or recorded messages for them, now that he felt he was finally coming to grips with Azad and could spare the time. He and Chamlis corresponded every fifty days or so, though Gurgeh found he had little to say, and most of the news came from the other direction. Hafflis was fully changed; broody but not pregnant. Chamlis was compiling a definitive history of some primitive planet it had once visited. Professor Boruelal was taking a half-year sabbatical, living in a mountain retreat on Osmolon Plate, terminal-less. Olz Hap the wunderkind had come out of her shell; she was already lecturing on games at the university and had become a brilliant regular on the best party circuits. She had spent some days staying at lkroh, just to be better able to relate to Gurgeh; she'd gone on record as claiming he was the best player in the Culture. Hap's analysis of the famous Stricken game at Hafflis's that night was the best-received first work anybody could remember.

Yay sent to say she was fed up with Chiark; she was off, away; she'd had offers from other Plate building collectives and she was going to take up at least one of them, just to show what she could do. She spent most of the communication explaining her theories on artificial volcanoes for Plates, describing in gesticulatory detail how you could lens sunlight to focus it on the undersurface of the Plate, melting the rock on the other side, or just use generators to provide the heat. She enclosed some film of eruptions on planets, with explanations of the effects and notes on how they could be improved.

Gurgeh thought the idea of sharing a world with volcanoes made floating islands look like not such a bad idea after all.

'Have you seen this!' Flere-Imsaho yelped one day, floating quickly up to him in the pool's airstream cabinet, where Gurgeh was drying off. Behind the little machine, attached to it by a thin strand of field still coloured yellow-green (but speckled with angry white), there floated a large, rather old-fashioned and complicated-looking drone.

Gurgeh squinted at it. 'What about it?'

'I've got to wear the damn thing!' Flere-Imsaho wailed. The field strand joining it to the other drone flicked, and the old-looking drone's casing hinged open. The old body-shell appeared to be completely empty, but as Gurgeh — puzzled — looked closer, he saw that in the centre of the casing there was a little mesh cradle, just the right size to hold Flere-Imsaho.

'Oh,' Gurgeh said, and turned away, rubbing the water from his armpits, and grinning.

'They didn't tell me this when they offered me the job!' Flere-Imsaho protested, slamming the body-shell shut again. 'They say it's because the Empire isn't supposed to know how small us drones are! Why couldn't they just have got a big drone then? Why saddle me with this … this …'

'Fancy dress?' Gurgeh suggested, rubbing a hand through his hair and stepping out of the airstream.

'Fancy?' the library drone screamed. 'Fancy? Dowdy's what it is; rags! Worse than that, I'm supposed to make a «humming» noise and produce lots of static electricity, just to convince these barbarian dingbats we can't build drones properly!' The small machine's voice rose to a screech. 'A «humming» noise! I ask you!'

'Perhaps you could ask for a transfer,' Gurgeh said calmly, slipping into his robe.

'Oh yes,' Flere-Imsaho said bitterly, with a trace of what might almost have been sarcasm, 'and get all the shit jobs from now on because I haven't been cooperative.' It lashed a field out and thumped the antique casing. 'I'm stuck with this heap of junk.'

'Drone,' Gurgeh said, 'I can't tell you how sorry I am.'

The Limiting Factor nosed its way out of the Mainbay. Two Lifters nudged the craft round until it faced down the twenty kilometre length of corridor. The ship and its little tugs eased their way forward, exiting from the body of the GSV at its nose. Other ships and craft and pieces of equipment moved inside the shell of air surrounding the Little Rascal; GCUs and Superlifters, planes and hot-air balloons, vacuum dirigibles and gliders, people floating in modules or cars or harnesses.

Some watched the old warship go. The Lifter tugs dropped away.

The ship went up, passing level upon level of bay doors, blank hull, hanging gardens, and whole jumbled arrays of opened accommodation sections, where people walked or danced or sat eating or just gazing out, watching the fuss of airborne activity, or played sports and games. Some waved. Gurgeh watched on the lounge screen, and even recognised a few people he'd known, flying past in an aircraft, shouting goodbye.

Officially, he was going on a solo cruising holiday before travelling to the Pardethillisian Games. He had already dropped hints he might forgo the tournament. Some of the theoretical and news journals had been interested enough in his sudden departure from Chiark — and the equally abrupt cessation of his publications — to have representatives on the Little Rascal interview him. In a strategy he'd already agreed with Contact, he'd given the impression he was growing bored with games in general, and that the journey — and his entry in the great tournament — were attempts to restore his flagging interest.

People seemed to have fallen for this.

The ship cleared the top of the GSV, rising beside the cloud-speckled topside park. It rose on into the thinner air above, met with the Superlifter Prime Mover, and together they gradually dropped back and to the side of the GSV's inner atmospheric envelope. They went slowly through the many layers of fields; the bumpfield, the insulating, the sensory, the signalling and receptor, the energy and traction, the hullfield, the outer sensory and, finally, the horizon, until they were free in hyperspace once more. After a few hours of deceleration to speeds the Limiting Factor's engines could cope with, the disarmed warship was on its own, and the Prime Mover was powering away again, chasing its GSV.

'… so you'd be well advised to stay celibate; they'll find it difficult enough taking a male seriously even if you do look bizarre to them, but if you tried to form any sexual relationships they'd almost certainly take it as a gross insult.'

'Any more good news, drone?'

'Don't say anything about sexual alterations either. They do know about drug-glands, even if they don't know about their precise effects, but they don't know about most of the major physical improvements. I mean, you can mention blister-free callousing and that sort of thing, that isn't important; but even the gross re-plumbing involved in your own genital design would cause something of a furore if they found out about it.'

'Really,' Gurgeh said. He was sitting in the Limiting Factor's main lounge. Flere-