Excession

voiced objections to the Affront's membership of the informal association of other space-faring species that having to be nice to other, lesser species — rather than giving the brutes a chance to prove their mettle against the glorious force of Affront arms — had resulted in a distinct dulling of the average society dinner.

Still, on really special occasions these days the fights would be between two Affronters with a dispute of a suitably dishonourable nature, or between criminals. Such contests usually required that the protagonists be hobbled, tied together, and armed with sliver-knives scarcely more substantial than hat pins, thus ensuring that the fights didn't end too quickly. Genar-Hofoen had never been invited to one of those and didn't expect he ever would be; it wasn't the sort of thing one let an alien witness, and besides, the competition for seats was scarcely less ferocious than the spectacle everyone desired to witness.

For this dinner — held to commemorate the eighteen hundred and eighty-fifth anniversary of the Affront's first decent space-battle against enemies worthy of the name — the entertainment was arranged to bear some relationship to the dishes being served, so that the first fish course was accompanied by the partial flooding of the pit with ethane and the introduction into it of specially bred fighting fish. Fivetide took great pleasure in describing to the human the unique nature of the fish, which were equipped with mouth parts so specialised the fish could not feed normally and had to be raised leeching vital fluids from another type of fish bred specially to fit into their jaws.

The second course was of small edible animals which to Genar-Hofoen appeared furry and arguably even cute. They raced round a trench-track set into the top of the pit at the inner edge of the circular table, pursued by something long and slithery looking with a lot of teeth at each end. The cheering, hooting Affronters roared, thumped the tables, exchanged bets and insults, and stabbed at the little creatures with long forks while shovelling cooked, prepared versions of the same animals into their beaks.

Scratchounds made up the main course, and while two sets of the animals — each about the size of a corpulent human but eight-limbed — slashed and tore at each other with razor-sharp prosthetic jaw implants and strap-claws, diced scratchound was served on huge trenchers of compacted vegetable matter. The Affronters considered this the highlight of the whole banquet; one was finally allowed to use one's miniature harpoon — quite the most impressive-looking utensil in each place setting — to impale chunks of meat from the trenchers of one's fellow diners and — with the skilful flick of the attached cable which Fivetide was now trying to teach the human — transfer it to one's own trencher, beak or tentacle without losing it to the scratchounds in the pit, having it intercepted by another dinner guest en route or losing the thing entirely over the top of one's gas sac.

'The beauty of it is,' Fivetide said, throwing his harpoon at the trencher of an Admiral distracted by a failed harpoon strike of his own, 'that the clearest target is the one furthest away.' He grunted and flicked, snapping the piece of speared scratchound up and away from the other Affronter's place an instant before the officer to the Admiral's right could intercept the prize. The morsel sailed through the air in an elegant trajectory that ended with Fivetide barely having to rise from his place to snap his beak shut on it. He swivelled left and right, acknowledging appreciative applause in the form of whip-snapped tentacles, then settled back into the padded Y-shaped bracket that served as a seat. 'You see?' he said, making an obvious swallowing motion and spitting out the harpoon and its cable.

'I see,' Genar-Hofoen said, still slowly re-coiling the harpoon cable from his last attempt. He sat to Fivetide's right in a Y-bracket place modified simply by placing a board across its prongs. His feet dangled over the debris trench which circled the perimeter of the table, and which the suit assured him was reeking in the manner approved by Affronter gourmets. He flinched and dodged to one side, nearly falling off the seat, as a harpoon sailed by to his left, narrowly missing him.

Genar-Hofoen acknowledged the laughter and exaggerated apologies from the Affronter officer five along the table who had been aiming at Fivetide's plate, and politely gathered up the harpoon and cable and passed it back. He returned to picking at the miniature pieces of indifferent food in the pressurised containers in front of him, transferring them to his mouth with a gelfield utensil shaped like a little four-fingered hand, his legs swinging over the debris trench. He felt like a child dining with adults.

'Nearly got you there, eh, human? Ha ha ha!' roared the Diplomatic Force colonel his other side from Fivetide. He slapped Genar-Hofoen on the back with a tentacle and threw him half off the seat and onto the table. 'Oops!' the colonel said, and jerked Genar-Hofoen back with a teeth-rattling wrench.

Genar-Hofoen smiled politely and picked his sunglasses off the table. The Diplomatic Force colonel went by the name of Quicktemper. It was the sort of title which the Culture found depressingly common amongst Affronter diplomats.

Fivetide had explained the problem was that certain sections of the Affront Old Guard were slightly ashamed their civilisation had a Diplomatic service at all and so tried to compensate for what they were worried might look to other species suspiciously like a symptom of weakness by ensuring that only the most aggressive and xenophobic Affronters became diplomats, to forestall anybody forming the dangerously preposterous idea the Affront were going soft.

'Go on, man! Have another throw! Just because you can't eat the damn stuff, you shouldn't let that keep you from joining in the fun!'

A harpoon thrown from the far side of the table sailed over the pit towards Fivetide's trencher. The Affronter intercepted it deftly and threw it back, laughing uproariously. The harpoon's owner ducked just in time and a passing drinks waiter got it in the sac with a yelp and a hiss of escaping gas.

Genar-Hofoen looked at the lumps of flesh lying on Fivetide's trencher. 'Why can't I just harpoon stuff off your plate?' he asked.

Fivetide jerked upright. 'Your neighbour's plate?' he bellowed. 'That's cheating, Genar-Hofoen, or a particularly insulting invitation to a duel! Bugger me, what sort of manners do they teach you in that Culture?'

'I do beg your pardon,' Genar-Hofoen said.

'Given,' Fivetide said, nodding his eye stalks, re-winding his harpoon cable, lifting a piece of meat from his own plate to his beak, reaching for a drink and drumming one tentacle on the table with everybody else as one of the scratchounds got another on its back and bit its neck out. 'Good play! Good play! Seven; that's my dog! Mine; I bet on that! I did! Me! You see, Gastrees? I told you! Ha ha ha!'

Genar-Hofoen shook his head slightly, grinning to himself. In all his life he had never been anywhere as unequivocally alien as here, inside a giant torus of cold, compressed gas orbiting a black hole — itself in orbit around a brown dwarf body light years from the nearest star — its exterior studded with ships — most of them the jaggedly bulbous shapes of Affront craft — and full, in the main, of happy, space-faring Affronters and their collection of associated victim-species. Still, he had never felt so thoroughly at home.

— Genar-Hofoen; it's me, Scopell-Afranqui, said another voice in Genar-Hofoen's head. It was the module, speaking through the suit. ~ I've an urgent message.

— Can't it wait? Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ I'm kind of busy here with matters of excruciatingly correct dining etiquette.

— No, it can't. Can you get back here, please? Immediately.

— What? No, I'm not leaving. Good grief, are you mad? I only just got here.

— No you didn't; you left me eighty minutes ago and you're already on the main course at that animal circus dressed up as a meal; I can see what's going on relayed through that stupid suit-

— Typical! the suit interjected,

— Shut up, said the module. ~ Genar-Hofoen; are you coming back here now or not?

— Not.

— Well then, let me check out the communication priorities here… Okay. Now the current state of the-

'— bet, human-friend?' Fivetide said, slapping a tentacle on the. table in front of Genar-Hofoen.

'Eh? A bet?' Genar-Hofoen said, quickly replaying in his head what the Affronter had been saying.

'Fifty sucks on the next from the red door!' Fivetide roared, glancing at his fellow officers on both sides.

Genar-Hofoen slapped the table with his hand. 'Not enough!' he shouted, and felt the suit amplify his translated voice accordingly. Several eye stalks turned in his direction. 'Two hundred on the blue hound!'

Fivetide, who was from a family of the sort that would describe itself as comfortably off rather than rich, and to whom fifty suckers was half a month's disposable income, flinched microscopically, then slapped another tentacle