Use of Weapons

'Ah! How much my vanity wishes me to claim I simply guessed, so clever I am… but I heard there was a new recruit coming aboard,' the alien told him. 'And that it was a fairly human-basic male. You… smell right, if I may use that turn of phrase. And you… have just been asking all the right questions.'

'And you're in SC too?'

'For ten standard years now.'

'Think I should do it? Work for them?'

'Oh yes; I imagine it's better than what you left, no?'

He shrugged, remembering the blizzard and the ice. 'I suppose.'

'You enjoy… fighting, yes?'

'Well… sometimes,' he admitted. 'I'm good at it, so they say. Not that I'm necessarily convinced of that myself.'

'No-one wins all the time, sir,' the creature said. 'Not through skill, anyway, and the Culture does not believe in luck, or at the very least does not believe it is transferrable. They must like your attitude, that's all. Hee hee.'

The alien laughed quietly.

'To be good at soldiering,' it said, 'is a great curse, I think sometimes. Working for these people at least relieves one of some of the responsibility. I have never found cause to complain.' The alien scratched its body, looked down, picked something from the hairs around where he would have guessed its belly might be, and ate it. 'Of course, you must not expect to be told the truth all the time. You can insist that they do, always, and they will do so, but they may not be able to use you as often as they might like to; sometimes they need you not to know you are fighting on the wrong side. My advice would be to just do as they ask; much more exciting.'

'Are you in it for the excitement?'

'Partly, and partly because of family honour; SC did something for my people once, and we could not let them steal our honour by accepting nothing in return. I work until that debt is paid off.'

'How long's that?'

'Oh, for life,' the creature said, sitting back in a gesture he felt reasonably justified in translating as surprise. 'Until I die, of course. But who cares? As I say; it's fun. Here.' It banged its drink-bowl on the table to attract a passing tray. 'Let's have another drink; see who gets drunk first.'

'You have more legs.' He grinned. 'I think I might fall over more easily.'

'Ah, but the more the legs, the bigger the tangle.'

'Fair enough.' He waited for a fresh glass.

To one side of them was a small terrace and the bar, to the other a gulf of airy space. The ship, the GSV, went on beyond its apparent boundaries. Its hull was pierced multitudinously by terraces, balconies, walk-ways, open windows, and open bay doors. Surrounding the vessel proper was an immense ellipsoid bubble of air, held inside dozens of different fields, which together made up the Vehicle's real — though insubstantial — hull.

He took up the recharged glass when it arrived, and watched a puttering, piston-engined, paper-winged hang-glider zip past the terrace; he waved at the pilot, then shook his head.

'To the Culture,' he said, raising his glass to the alien. It matched his gesture. 'To its total lack of respect for all things majestic.'

'Agreed,' the alien said, and together they drank.

The alien was called Chori, he found out later. It was only due to a chance remark that he discovered Chori was a female, which at the time seemed hilariously funny.

He woke up the next morning lying soaked as well as soused half underneath a small waterfall in one of the ace section valleys; Chori was suspended from a nearby railing by all eight leg-hooks, making a sporadic clattering noise that he decided was snoring.

The first night he spent with a woman, he thought she was dying; he thought he'd killed her. She seemed to climax at almost the same time as he did, but then — apparently — had a seizure; screaming, clutching at him. He had an awful, sickening idea that despite the seeming similarity of their physiology, his race and the mongrel- species that was the Culture were somehow quite different, and for a few ghastly moments entertained the idea that his seed was like acid inside her. It felt like she was trying to break his back with her arms and legs. He tried to pull himself away from her, calling her name, trying to see what was wrong, what he had done, what he could do.

'What's wrong?' she gasped.

'What? With me; nothing! What's wrong with you?'

She made a sort of shrugging motion, looked puzzled. 'I came; that's all; what's the… Oh.' She put one hand to her mouth, eyes wide. 'I forgot. I'm sorry. You're not… Oh dear.' She giggled. 'How embarrassing.'

' What?'

'Well, we just… you know; it takes… it goes on… longer, you know?'

He didn't think he had quite believed what he had heard about the Culture's altered physiology until then. He hadn't accepted that they had changed themselves so. He had not believed that they really had chosen to extend such moments of pleasure, let alone breed into themselves all the multifarious drug glands that could enhance almost any experience (not least sex).

Yet — in a way — it made sense, he told himself. Their machines could do everything else much better than they could; no sense in breeding super-humans for strength or intelligence, when their drones and Minds were so much more matter- and energy-efficient at both. But pleasure… well, that was a different matter.

What else was the human form good for?

He supposed such single-mindedness was admirable, in a way.

He took the woman in his arms again. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Quality not quantity. Let's try that again, shall we?'

She laughed and took his face in her hands. 'Dedication; that's a good quality in a man.'

(The cry in the summerhouse that had attracted; 'Hello, old chap.' Tanned hands on the pale hips…)

He was away five nights, just wandering. As far as he could tell, he never crossed his own trail, and never visited the same section twice. He ended up with different women on three of those nights, and politely turned down one young man.

'Any more at your ease, Cheradenine?' Sma asked him, stroking up the pool ahead of him. She turned on her back to look at him. He swam after her.

'Well, I have stopped offering to pay for things in bars.'

'That's a start.'

'It was a very easy habit to break.'

'Par for the course. That all?'

'Well… also, your women are very friendly.'

'So are the men,' Sma arched one eyebrow.

'The life here seems… idyllic.'

'Well, you have to like crowds, perhaps.'

He looked round the almost deserted pool complex. 'That's relative, I suspect.'

(And thought: the garden; the garden. They have made their life in its image!)

'Why,' Sma smiled. 'Are you tempted to stay?'

'Not even slightly.' He laughed. 'I'd go crazy here, or slip forever into one of your shared dream-games. I need… more.'

'But will you take it from us?' Sma said, stopping, treading water. 'Do you want to work with us?'

'Everybody seems to think I should; they believe you're fighting the good fight. It's just that… I get suspicious when everybody agrees about something.'

Sma laughed. 'How much would it matter if we weren't fighting the good fight, Cheradenine? If all we were offering was pay and excitement?'

'I don't know,' he admitted. 'It would make it even harder. I'd just like… I'd like to believe, to finally know, to finally be able to prove that I was…' He shrugged, grinned.'… doing good.'

Sma sighed. In the water, this meant that she bobbed up then sank down a little. 'Who knows, Zakalwe? We don't know that; we think we're right; we even think we can prove it, but we can never be sure; there are always arguments against us. There is no certainty; least of all in Special Circumstances, where the rules are