Use of Weapons

different.'

'I thought the rules were meant to be the same for everybody.'

'They are. But in Special Circumstances we deal in the moral equivalent of black holes, where the normal laws — the rules of right and wrong that people imagine apply everywhere else in the universe — break down; beyond those metaphysical event-horizons, there exist… special circumstances.' She smiled. 'That's us. That's our territory; our domain.'

'To some people,' he said, 'that might sound like just a good excuse for bad behaviour.'

Sma shrugged. 'And perhaps they would be right. Maybe that is all it is.' She shook her head, pulled one hand through her long wet hair. 'But if nothing else, at least we need an excuse; think how many people need none at all.'

She swam off.

He watched her stroke powerfully away through the water for a moment. One of his hands went, without him really realising it, to a small puckered scar on his chest, just over where his heart was, and rubbed it, while he frowned, staring at the glittering, unsteady surface of the water.

Then he swam after the woman.

He spent a couple of years on the Size Isn't Everything, and on a few of the planets, rocks, habitats and orbitals it stopped at. He was being trained, and learning to use some of the new abilities he had let them give him. When he eventually left the craft, to go on his first tour of duty for the Culture — a series of missions which culminated in him taking the Chosen to the Perfumed Palace on the cliff — it was on a ship just starting its second tour of duty; the General Contact Unit Sweet and Full of Grace.

He never saw Chori again, and heard that she'd been killed on active service some fifteen years later. He was told this news while they were regrowing his body on the GSV Congenital Optimist after he'd been beheaded on — and then rescued from — a planet called Fohls.

Eleven

He crouched behind the parapet, at the far edge of the old observatory from the single approaching plane. Behind him, down a steep slope, were bushes and trees and a collection of roofless, overgrown buildings. He watched the aircraft come closer, checked for more coming from other directions, but couldn't find any. Inside the suit, watching the transmitted view, he frowned as the aircraft came closer, slowing all the time, its obese arrowhead shape silhouetted against the sunset as it approached.

He watched it drop slowly towards the observatory platform; a ramp hinged from the craft's belly; three legs flexed out. He took some effector readings from the machine, then shook his head, ducked and ran back down the slope.

Tsoldrin was sitting in one of the ruined buildings. He looked surprised when the suited figure entered through the creeper-choked doorway.

'Yes, Cheradenine?'

'It's a civilian craft,' he said, pushing the face-plate up. He was grinning. 'I don't think it's looking for us after all. Might still provide an escape route, though.' He shrugged. 'Worth a try.' He gestured back up the slope. 'You coming along?'

Tsoldrin Beychae looked through the dusk at the matt black figure in the doorway. He had been sitting here wondering what he ought to do, and had not yet come up with any answers. Part of him just wanted to get back to the peace and quiet and certainty of the university library, where he could live happily, without fuss, ignore the world, and immerse himself in the old books, trying to understand ancient ideas and histories, hoping to make sense of them, one day, and perhaps explain his own ideas, try to point out the lessons of these elder histories, perhaps make people think again about their own times and ideologies. For a time — for a long time, there — it had seemed entirely and definitely the most worthwhile and productive thing he could do… but he was not sure of that any longer.

Perhaps, he thought, there were more important things to be done which he could have a hand in. Perhaps he ought to go with Zakalwe, as the man — and the Culture — wanted.

Could he just relapse back into his studies, after this?

Zakalwe coming back from the past, as rash and brash as ever; Ubrel — could she really have been? — just acting a part, making him feel very old and foolish, now, but angry as well; and the whole Cluster drifting rudderless towards the rocks, all over again.

Did he have any right not to try and do something, even if the Culture was wrong about his stature in the civilisation? He didn't know. He could see that Zakalwe had tried to appeal to his vanity, but what if even half of what he said was true? Was it right to sit back and just let things happen, however much it might be the easiest, least stressful course? If there was a war, and he knew he'd done nothing, how would he feel afterwards?

Damn you, Zakalwe, he thought. He stood up. 'I'm still thinking,' he said. 'But let's see how far you can get.'

'Good man.' The suited figure's voice betrayed no obvious trace of emotion.

'… Extremely sorry for the delay, gentlepeople; it really wasn't within our control; some sort of traffic control panic, but do let me apologise again on behalf of Heritage Tours. Well; here we are, a bit later than we expected (but isn't that a pretty sunset?); the very famous Srometren Observatory; at least four and a half thousand years of history have been played out beneath your feet here, gentlepeople. I'm going to have to fairly rattle through it to tell it all to you in the time we have here, so listen close…'

The aircraft hovered, AG field buzzing, just above the western edge of the observatory platform. Its legs hung, dangling in mid-air, apparently extended merely as a precaution. About forty people had disembarked from it down the belly-ramp, and now stood around one of the stone instrument plinths while an eager young tour guide talked to them.

He watched through the stone balustrade, scanning the group with the suit's built-in effector and watching the results on the visor-screen head-up. Thirty plus of the people were carrying what were in effect terminals; links to the planet's communications net. The suit's computer covertly interrogated the terminals through the effector. Two of the terminals were switched on; one receiving a sports broadcast, another receiving music. The rest were on stand-by.

'Suit,' he whispered (not that even Tsoldrin, right beside him, could have heard him, let alone the people in the tourist group). 'I want to disable those terminals, quietly; to stop them from transmitting.'

'Two receiving terminals are transmitting location code,' the suit said.

'Can I disable their transmit function without altering their present location code function, or their present reception?'

'Yes.'

'Right; the priority being preventing any further new signals, disable all the terminals.'

'Disabling all thirty-four non-Culture personal commnet terminals within range; confirm.'

'Confirmed, dammit; do it…'

'Order carried out.'

He watched the head-up alter as the internal power-states of the terminals sank back to near zero. The tour guide was leading the people across the stone plateau of the old observatory, towards where he and Beychae were, and away from the hovering aircraft.

He shoved the suit face-plate up, looked round at the other man. 'Okay; let's go. Quietly.'

He went first, through the undergrowth, between the crowding trees; it was quite dark under the half-fallen foliage, and Beychae stumbled a couple of times, but they made relatively little noise as they trod the carpet of dead leaves round two sides of the observatory platform.

When they were under the aircraft, he scanned it with the suit effector.

'You beautiful little machine,' he breathed, watching the results come up. The aircraft was automatic, and very stupid. A bird probably had a more complicated brain. 'Suit; patch into the aircraft; assume control without