you're not doing it right. That's what the Hole's for; fun. Fun and games. Cools down a bit during the day, but it can get pretty wild, too. The drink festivals are usually the worst. Shouldn't be any trouble tonight though. Fairly quiet.'
The crowd shrieked; the woman was holding the dwarfish alien's face under the mud; it struggled desperately.
Gurgeh turned round to watch. The alien's movements weakened slowly as the naked, mud-slicked woman forced its head into the bubbling red liquid. Gurgeh glanced at Za. 'So they were fighting.'
Za shrugged again. 'We may never know.' He looked down too, as the woman forced the now limp alien's body further into the ochre mud.
'Has she killed it?' Gurgeh asked. He had to raise his voice as the crowd screamed, stamping feet and beating fists on tables.
'Na,' Shohobohaum Za said, shaking his head. 'The little guy's a Uhnyrchal.' Za nodded down, as the woman used one hand to keep the alien's head submerged, and raised the other in triumph in the air, glaring bright-eyed at the baying audience. 'See that little black thing sticking up?'
Gurgeh looked. There was a little black bulb poking up through the surface of the red mud. 'Yes.'
'That's his dick.'
Gurgeh looked suspiciously at the other man. 'How exactly is that going to help him?'
'The Uhnyrchal can breathe through their dicks,' Za said. 'That guy's fine; he'll be fighting in another club tomorrow night; maybe even later this evening.'
Za watched the waitress place their drinks on the table. He leant forward to whisper something to her; she nodded and walked off. 'Try glanding
'Wonder why the Culture's never genofixed that,' Za said, staring into his glass.
'What?'
'Being able to breathe through your dick.'
Gurgeh thought. 'Sneezing at certain moments could be messy.'
Za laughed. 'There might be compensations.'
The audience behind them went 'Oooo'. Za and Gurgeh turned round to see the victorious woman pulling her opponent's body up out of the mud by its penis; the alien being's head and feet were still under the glutinous, slowly slopping liquid. 'Ouch,' Za muttered, drinking.
Somebody in the crowd tossed the woman a dagger; she caught it, stooped, and sliced off the alien genitals. She brandished the dripping flesh aloft while the crowd went wild with delight and the alien sank slowly beneath the cloying red liquid, the woman's foot on its chest. The mud gradually turned black where the blood oozed, and a few bubbles surfaced.
Za sat back, looking mystified. 'Must have been some sub-species I haven't heard of.'
The low-G mud-tub was trundled away, the woman still shaking her trophy at the baying crowd.
Shohobohaum Za rose to greet a party of four dramatically beautiful and stunningly dressed Azadian females who were approaching the cupola. Gurgeh had glanded the body-drug Za had suggested, and was just beginning to feel the effects of both that and the liquor.
The women looked, he thought, quite the equals of any he'd seen the night of the welcoming ball, and much more friendly.
The acts went on; sex acts, mostly. Acts which, outside the Hole, Gurgeh was told by Za and two of the Azadian females (Inclate and At-sen, sitting on either side of him), would mean death for both participants; death by radiation or death by chemicals.
Gurgeh didn't pay too much attention. This was his night out and the staged obscenities were the least important part of it. He was away from the game; that was what mattered. Living by another set of rules. He knew why Za had had the women come to the table, and it amused him. He felt no particular desire for the two exquisite creatures he sat between — certainly nothing uncontrollable — but they made good company. Za was no fool, and the two charming females Gurgeh knew they would have been males, or even apices had Za discovered Gurgeh's preferences lay in that direction — were both intelligent and witty.
They knew a little about the Culture, had heard rumours about the sexual alterations Culture people possessed, and made discreetly roguish jokes about Gurgeh's proclivities and abilities compared to their own, and to both the other Azadian genders. They were flattering, enticing and friendly; they drank from small glasses, they sipped smoke from tiny, slender pipes — Gurgeh had tried a pipe too, but only coughed, much to everyone's amusement — and they both had long, sinuously curling blue-black hair, silkily membraned with near-invisibly fine platinum nets and beaded with minute, glinting AG studs, which made their hair move in slow motion and gave each graceful movement of their delicately structured heads a dizzyingly unreal quality.
Inclate's slim dress was the ever-shifting colour of oil on water, speckled with jewels which twinkled like stars; At-sen's was a videodress, glowing fuzzy red with its own concealed power. A choker round her neck acted as a small television monitor, displaying a hazy, distorted image of the view around her — Gurgeh to one side, the stage behind, one of Za's ladies on the other side, the other directly across the table. Gurgeh showed her the Orbital bracelet, but she was not especially impressed.
Za, on the other side of the table, was playing small games of forfeit with his two giggling ladies, handling tiny, almost transparent slice jewel-cards and laughing a lot. One of the ladies noted the forfeits down in a little notebook, with much giggling and feigned embarrassment.
'But Jernow!' At-sen said, from Gurgeh's left. 'You must have a scar-portrait! So that we may remember you when you have gone back to the Culture and its decadent, many-orificed ladies!' Inclate, on his right, giggled.
'Certainly not,' Gurgeh said, mock-serious. 'It sounds quite barbaric.'
'Oh yes, yes, it is!' At-sen and Inclate laughed into their glasses. At-sen pulled herself together, put her hand on his wrist. 'Wouldn't you like to think there was some poor person walking around on Ea with your face on their skin?'
'Yes, but on which bit?' Gurgeh asked.
They thought this hilariously funny.
Za stood; one of his ladies packed the tiny slivers of the game-cards away in a little chain purse. 'Gurgeh,' Za said, knocking back the last of his drink. 'We're off for a more private chat; you three too?' Za grinned wickedly at Inclate and At-sen, producing gales of laughter and small shrieks. At-sen dipped her fingers in her drink and flicked some liquor at Za, who dodged.
'Yes, come, Jernow,' Inclate said, taking hold of Gurgeh's arm with both hands. 'Let's all go; the air is so stuffy here, and the noise so loud.'
Gurgeh smiled, shook his head. 'No; I'd only disappoint you.'
'Oh no! No!' Slim fingers tugged at his sleeves, curled round his arms.
The politely mocking argument went on for some minutes, while Za stood, grinning, ladies draped on either side, looking on, and Inclate and At-sen tried their hardest either to physically lift Gurgeh to his feet, or, by pouting protestations, persuade him to move.
All failed. Za shrugged — his ladies imitated the alien gesture, before dissolving into laughter — and said, 'Okay; just stay there, all right, game-player?'
Za looked at Inclate and At-sen, who were temporarily subdued and petulant. 'You two look after him, right?' Za told them. 'Don't let him talk to any strangers.'
At-sen sniffed imperiously. 'Your friend declines all; strange or familiar.'
Inclate snorted despite herself. 'Or both in one,' she blurted. Whereupon she and At-sen started laughing again and reaching behind Gurgeh to slap and pinch each other's shoulders.
Za shook his head. 'Jemau; try and control those two as well as you control yourself.'
Gurgeh ducked a few flicked drops of drink while the females squealed on either side of him. 'I'll try,' he told Za.
'Well,' Za said, 'I'll try not to be too long. Sure you won't join in? Could be quite an experience.'
'I'm sure. But I'm fine here.'
'Okay. Don't wander. See you soon.' Za grinned at the giggling girls on either side of him, and then they turned together, walked away. 'Ish!' Za shouted back over his shoulder. 'Soon-
