down on top of the first one. 'Scumpouch alien!' he shouted theatrically. 'You imply that a measly two hundred is a fit bet for an officer of my standing? Two-fifty!'
'Five hundred!' Genar-Hofoen yelled, slapping down his other arm.
'Six hundred!' Fivetide hollered, thumping down a third limb. He looked at the others, exchanging knowing looks and sharing in the general laughter; the human had been out-limbed.
Genar-Hofoen twisted in his seat and brought his left leg up to stamp its booted heel onto the table surface. 'A thousand, damn your cheap hide!'
Fivetide flicked a fourth tentacle onto the limbs already on the table in front of Genar-Hofoen, which was starting to look crowded. 'Done!' the Affronter roared. 'And think yourself lucky I took pity on you to the extent of not upping the bet again and having you unseat yourself into the debris-pit, you microscopic cripple!' Fivetide laughed louder and looked round the other officers near by. They laughed too, some of the juniors dutifully, some of the others — friends and close colleagues of Fivetide's — overloudly, with a sort of vicarious desperation; the bet was of a size that could get the average fellow into terrible trouble with his mess, his bank, his parents, or all three. Others again looked on with the sort of expression Genar-Hofoen had learned to recognise as a smirk.
Fivetide enthusiastically refilled every nearby drinking bulb and started the whole table signing the Let's- bake-the-pit-master-over-a-slow-fire-if-he-doesn't-get-a-move-on song.
— Right, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Module; you were saying?
— That was a rather intemperate bet, if I may say so, Genar-Hofoen. A thousand! Fivetide can't afford that sort of money if he loses, and we don't want to be seen to be too profligate with our funds if he wins.
Genar-Hofoen permitted himself a small grin. What a perfect way of annoying everybody. - Tough, he thought. So; the message?
— I think I can squirt it through to what passes as a brain in your suit-
— I heard that, said the suit.
— without our friends picking it up, Genar-Hofoen, the module told him. ~ Ramp up on some quicken and-
— Excuse me, said the suit. ~ I think Byr Genar-Hofoen may want to think twice before glanding a drug as strong as quicken in the present circumstances. He is my responsibility when he's out of your immediate locality, after all, Scopell-Afranqui. I mean, be fair. It's all very well you sitting up there-
— Keep out of this, you vacuous membrane, the module told the suit.
— What? How dare you!
— Will you two shut up! Genar-Hofoen told them, having to stop himself from shouting out loud. Fivetide was saying something about the Culture to him and he'd already missed the first part of it while the two machines were filling his head with their squabble.
'… can be as exciting as this, eh, Genar-Hofoen?'
'Indeed not,' he shouted over the noise of the song. He lowered the gelfield utensil into one of the food containers and raised the food to his lips. He smiled and made a show of bulging his cheeks out while he ate. Fivetide belched, shoved a piece of meat half the size of a human head into his beak and turned back to the fun in the animal pit, where the fresh pair of scratchounds were still circling warily, sizing each other up. They looked pretty evenly matched, Genar-Hofoen thought.
— May I speak now? said the module.
— Yes, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Now, what is it?
— As I said, an urgent message.
— From?
— The GSV Death And Gravity.
— Oh? Genar-Hofoen was mildly impressed. ~ I thought the old scoundrel wasn't talking to me.
— As did we all. Apparently it is. Look, do you want this message or not?
— All right, but why do I have to gland quicken?
— Because it's a long message, of course… in fact it's an interactive message; an entire semantic-context signal-set with attached mind-state abstract capable of replying to your questions, and if you listened to the whole thing in real time you'd still be sitting there with a vacant expression on your face by the time your jovial hosts got to the hunt-the-waiter course. And I did say it was urgent. Genar- Hofoen, are you paying attention here?
— I'm paying fucking attention. But come on; can't you just tell me what the message is? Precis it.
— The message is for you, not me, Genar-Hofoen. I haven't looked at it; it'll be stream- deciphered as I transmit it.
~ Okay, okay, I'm glanded up; shoot.
— I still say it's a bad idea… muttered the gelfield suit.
— Shut UP! the module said. ~ Sorry, Genar-Hofoen. Here is the text of the message:
— from GSV Death And Gravity to Seddun-Braijsa Byr Fruel Genar- Hofoen dam Ois, message begins, the module said in its Official voice. Then another voice took over:
— Genar-Hofoen, I won't pretend I'm happy to be communicating with you again; however, I have been asked to do so by certain of those whose opinions and judgement I respect and admire and hence deem the situation to be such that I would be derelict in my duties if I did not oblige to the utmost of my abilities.
Genar-Hofoen performed the mental equivalent of sighing and putting his chin in his hands while — thanks to the quicken now coursing through his central nervous system — everything around him seemed to happen in slow motion. The General Systems Vehicle Death and Gravity had been a long-winded old bore when he'd known it and it sounded like nothing had happened in the interim to alter its conversational style. Even its voice still sounded the same; pompous and monotonous at the same time.
— Accordingly, and with due recognition of your habitually contrary, argumentative and wilfully perverse nature I am communicating with you by sending this message in the form of an interactive signal. I see you are currently one of our ambassadors to that childishly cruel band of upstart ruffians known as the Affront; I have the unhappy feeling that while this may have been envisaged as a kind of subtle punishment for you, you will in fact have adapted with some relish to the environment if not the task, which I assume you will dispatch with your usual mixture of off-handed carelessness and casual self-interest-
— If this signal is interactive, interrupted Genar-Hofoen, ~ can I ask you to get to the fucking point?
He watched the two scratchounds tense together in slo-mo on either side of the pit.
— The point is that your hosts will have to be asked to deprive themselves of your company for a while.
— What? Why? Genar-Hofoen thought, immediately suspicious.
— The decision has been made — and I hasten to establish that I had no part in this — that your services are required elsewhere.
~ Where? For how long?
— I can't tell you where exactly, or for how long.
— Make a stab at it.
— I cannot and will not.
— Module, end this message.
— Are you sure? asked Scopell-Afranqui.
— Wait!, said the voice of the GSV. ~ Will it satisfy you if I say that we may need about eighty days of your time?
— No it won't. I'm quite happy here. I've been bounced into all sorts of Special Circumstances shit in the past on the strength of a Hey-come-and-do-one-little-job-for-us come-on line. (This was not in fact perfectly true; Genar-Hofoen had only ever acted for SC once before, but he'd known — or at least heard of — plenty of people who'd got more than they'd expected when they'd worked for what was in effect the Contact section's espionage
