Matter

mists in the hazy distance, and saw their final short siege and shorter attack on Rasselle, the Deldeyn capital city.

That seemed to be all; a proper news report or docu-feature would have included victory celebrations in Pourl, tyl Loesp accepting the surrender of the Deldeyn commander, piles of dead bodies consigned to pits, banners going up in flames or the tears of the inconsolable bereaved, but the Oct hadn’t thought to get even remotely artistic or judgemental.

Just the sort of enthrallingly primitive, barbaric but dashing war comfortably positioned people liked to hear about, Anaplian thought. It was almost a pity nobody had thought to record it in all its gory detail.

A rapidly expanding but almost entirely vapid cloud of comment, analysis, speculation and exploitation was attached to the Oct recording through the news and current affairs organisations which took an interest in such events. Many Shellworld and Sursamen scholars — there were even people who regarded themselves as Eighth scholars, Sarl scholars — bemoaned the lack of decent data, leaving so much to speculation. For others, this lack of detail seemed to be merely an opportunity; offers to play war games based on the recent events were appended. Entertainments inspired by the recent thrilling events were also in preparation, or indeed already available.

Djan Seriy shivered in her couch by a fragrant poolside (splashing, laughter, the warmth of light on her skin) as she lay there, eyes closed, watching, experiencing all of this. She felt suddenly as she had right at the start of her involvement with the Culture, back in the shockingly confusing early days when everything seemed like bedlam and clash. This was all just too much to take in; at once far too close to home and utterly, horribly, invasively alien compared to it.

She would leave her agents running within the dataverse, in case there was some more directly observed stuff, and it was just well hidden.

Welcome to the future, she thought, surveying all this wordage and tat. All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths, our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness.

She was being melodramatic, she decided. She checked there was no more of use to watch, clicked out, stood up and went to join in a noisy game of pool tag.

* * *

One ship, another ship. From the Seed Drill she was passed on to the GCU You Naughty Monsters. Another baton-like transmissal took her to the Xenoglossicist, an Air-class Limited System Vehicle. On her last night aboard there was an all-crews dance party; she threw herself into the wild music and wilder dancing like one abandoned.

The last Culture ship to carry her before she entered the Morthanveld domain was called You’ll Clean That Up Before You Leave, a Gangster-class Very Fast Picket and ex-Rapid Offensive Unit.

She still hated the silly names.

17. Departures

Oramen woke to the sound of a thousand bells, blown temple horns, manufactury sirens, carriage hooters and just-audible mass cheering and knew immediately that the war must be over, and won. He looked about. He was in a gambling and whore house known as Botrey’s, in the city’s Schtip district. There was a shape in the bedclothes beside him which belonged to the girl whose name he would remember shortly.

Droffo, his new equerry, who was newly married and determinedly faithful, chose to turn a blind eye to Oramen’s whoring so long as it was carried out in gambling or drinking houses; an honest bordello he would not even contemplate entering. His new servant, Neguste Puibive, had, before he’d left the farm, promised his mother he would never pay for sex and was dutifully honouring this commitment to the letter, though not beyond; he had been modestly successful in persuading some of the more generous girls to extend their favours to him out of simple kindness, as well as sympathy for one who had made such a well-meant if hopelessly naive promise.

Oramen’s absences from court had not gone unnoticed or unremarked. Just the morning before, at a formal late breakfast reception given by Harne, the lady Aelsh, to welcome her latest astrologer — Oramen had already successfully forgotten the fellow’s name — Renneque, accompanied by and arm-in-arm with Ramile, the pretty young thing Oramen remembered from Harne’s earlier party with the various actors and philosophisers, had scolded him.

“Why, it’s that young fellow!” she had exclaimed upon seeing him. “Look, Ramile! I recall that pretty face, if not the name after so long apart. How d’you do, sir? My name’s Renneque. Yours?”

He’d smiled. “Ladies Renneque, Ramile. How good to see you again. Have I been remiss?”

Renneque sniffed. “I’ll say. Most unfathomably. I declare there are those absent at the war who’re more often at court than you, Oramen. Are we so boring you avoid us, prince?”

“Absolutely not. On the contrary. I determined myself to be so ineffably tedious I thought to remove myself from our most quotidian conduct in the hope of making myself seem more contrastedly interesting to you when we do meet.”

Renneque was still thinking this through when Ramile smiled slyly at Oramen but to Renneque said, “I think the prince finds other ladies more to his liking, elsewhere.”

“Does he, now?” Renneque asked, feigning innocence.

Oramen smiled an empty smile.

“It may be we are not wanted,” Ramile suggested.

Renneque raised her delicate chin. “Indeed. Perhaps we are not good enough for the prince,” she said.

“Or it may be we are too good for him,” Ramile mused.

“How could that be?” Oramen asked, for want of anything better.

“It’s true,” Renneque agreed, taking a tighter hold of her companion’s arm. “Some prize availability over virtue, I’ve heard.”

“And a tongue loosened by money rather than moved by wit,” Ramile offered.

Oramen felt his face flush. “While some,” he said, “trust an honest harlot over the most apparently virtuous and courtly of women.”

“Some might, out of sheer perversity,” said Renneque, whose eyes had widened at the word “harlot”. “Though whether a man of judgement and honour would term one of those females ‘honest’ in the first place might give rise to some controversy.”

“One’s values, like so much else, might become infected in such company,” Ramile suggested, and tossed her pretty head and long flow of tight blonde curls.

“I meant, ladies,” Oramen said, “that a whore takes her reward there and then, and seeks no further advancement.” This time, as he said “whore”, both Renneque and Ramile looked startled. “She loves for money and makes no lie of it. That is honest. There are those, however, who’d offer any favour seemingly for nothing, but would later expect a very great deal of a young man with some prospect of advancement.”

Renneque stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. Her mouth opened, perhaps to say something. Ramile’s expression changed the most, altering quickly from something like anger back to that sly look, then taking on a small, knowing smile.

“Come away, Renneque,” she said, drawing the other woman back with her arm. “The prince mistakes us grievously, as though in a fever. We’d best withdraw to let the blush subside, and lest we catch it too.”

They turned away as one, noses in the air.

He regretted his rudeness almost immediately, but too late, he felt, to make amends. He supposed he was already a little upset; that morning’s mail had delivered a letter from his mother, all the way from far-distant Kheretesuhr, telling him that she was heavily pregnant by her new husband and had been advised by her doctors not to travel great distances. So to voyage all the way to court, to Pourl, was unthinkable. A new husband? he’d thought. Pregnant? Heavily pregnant, so that it was no recent thing? He’d heard nothing of this, nothing of either. She had not thought to tell him anything. The date on the letter was weeks past; it had suffered some serious delay in finding him, or had lain unposted.

He felt hurt, cheated somehow, as well as jealous and oddly spurned. He still was not sure how to respond.