It was Genar-Hofoen's turn not to say anything. He found the whole idea of drone sex — even if it was entirely of the mind, with no physical component whatsoever — quite entirely bizarre! Ah well, each to his own, he thought.
"Mr Genar-Hofoen?" said a stunningly, heart-stoppingly beautiful woman in the post-Entity Reception Area, Human. She was tall, perfectly proportioned, her hair was long and red and extravagantly curled and her eyes were a luminous green just the right side of natural. Her loose, plain tabard exposed smoothly muscled, glossily tanned skin. "Welcome to Tier; my name's Verlioef Schung." She held out a hand and shook his, firmly.
Skin on skin; no suit, at last. It was a good feeling. He was dressed in a semi-formal outfit of loose pantaloons and long shirt, and enjoying the lushly sensual sensation of the glidingly smooth materials on his body.
"Contact sent me to look after you," Verlioef Schung said with a hint of ruefulness. "I'm sure you don't need it, but I'm here if you do. I, ah… I hope you don't mind." Her voice… her voice was something to immerse yourself in.
He smiled broadly and bowed. "How could I?" he said.
She laughed, putting one hand over her mouth — and, of course, her perfect teeth — as she did so. "You're very kind." She held out a hand. "May I take your bag?"
"No, that's all right."
She raised her shoulders and let them drop. "Well," she said, "you've missed the Festival, of course, but there's a whole gang of us who did, too, and we've sort of decided to have our own over the next few days and, well, frankly we need all the help we can get. All I can promise you is luxurious accommodation, great company and more delectable preparations than you can shake a principle at, but if you care to make the sacrifice, I promise we'll all try to make it up to you." She flexed her eyebrows and then made a mock-frightened expression, pulling down the corners of her succulently perfect mouth.
He let her hold the look for a moment, then patted her on the upper arm. "No, thank you," he said sincerely.
Her expression became one of hurt sadness. "Oh… are you sure?" she said in a small, softly vulnerable voice.
"Fraid so. Made my own arrangements," he said, with genuine but determined regret. "But if there was anyone who was likely to tempt me away from them, it would be you." He winked at her. "I'm flattered by your generous offer, and do tell SC I appreciate the trouble they've gone to, but this is my chance to cut loose for a few days, you know?" He laughed. "Don't worry; I'll have some fun and then I'll be ready to ship on out when the time comes." He fished a small pen terminal out of one pocket and waved it in front of her face. "And I'll keep my terminal with me at all times. Promise." He put the terminal back in his pocket.
She gazed intently into his eyes for a few moments, then lowered her eyes and then her head and gave a small shrug. She looked back up, expression ironic. When she spoke, her voice had changed as well, modulating into something deeper and more considered, almost regretful. "Well," she sighed, "I hope you enjoy yourself, Byr." She grinned. "Our offer stands, if you wish to reconsider." Brave smile. "My colleagues and I wish you well." She looked furtively round the busy concourse and bit her bottom lip, frowning slightly. "Don't suppose you fancy a drink or something anyway, do you?" she said, almost plaintively.
He laughed, shook his head, and bowed as he backed off, hoisting his hold-all over his shoulder.
Genar-Hofoen had arrived a few days after the end of Tier's annual Festival. There was an air of autumnal desuetude mixed with high-summer torpor about the place when he arrived; people were cleaning up, calming down, getting back to normal and generally behaving themselves. He'd signalled ahead and succeeded in booking the services of an erotroupe as well as reserving a garden penthouse in the View, the best hotel on Level Three.
All in all, entirely worth passing up the rather too obvious advances of his perfect woman for (well, no it wasn't… except it was when your perfect woman was almost certainly a Special Circumstances agent altered to look like the creature of your fantasies and sent to look after you, keep you happy and safe, when what you actually wanted was a bit of variety, some excitement and some un-Culture-like danger; his perfect partner certainly looked like the very splendid Verlioef Schung, but she was even more positively not SC, not Contact, and probably not even Culture either. It was that desire for strangeness, for apartness, for alienness they probably couldn't understand).
He lay in bed, pleasantly exhausted, the odd muscle quivering now and again of its own accord, surrounded by sleeping pulchritude, his head buzzing with the after-effects of some serious glanding and watched the Tier news (Culture bias) channel on a screen hanging in the air in front of the nearest tree. An ear-pip relayed the sound.
Still leading with the Blitteringueh-Deluger saga. Then came a feature on the increase in Fleeting in Culture ships. Fleeting was when two or more ship Minds decided they were fed up being all by themselves and only being able to exchange the equivalent of letters; instead they got together, keeping physically close to each other so that they could converse. Operationally most inefficient. Some older Minds were worried it represented their more recently built comrades going soft and wanted the premise-states of Minds which would be constructed in the future to be altered to deal with this weak, overly chummy decadence.
Local news; there was a brief follow-up report basically saying that the mysterious explosion which had happened in dock 807b on the third day of the Festival was still a mystery; the Affronter cruiser Furious Purpose had been lightly damaged by a small, pure energy detonation which had done nothing more than locally burn off a layer of its scar-hull. An over-enthusiastic Festival prank was suspected.
Not quite so locally, the arguments were still going on about the creation of a new Hintersphere a few kiloyears anti-spinward. A Hintersphere was a volume of space in which FTL flights were banned except in the direst of emergencies, and life generally moved at a slower pace than elsewhere in the Culture. Genar-Hofoen shook his head at that one. Pretentious rusticism.
Nearer home again, back-up craft were only a day away from the location of the possible anomaly near Esperi. The discovering GCU was still reporting no change in the artifact. Despite requests from Contact section, various other Involved civilisations had sent or were sending ships to the general volume, but Tier itself had forgone dispatching a craft. To the surprise of most observers, the Affront had criticised the reaction of those who had decided to be nosy and had stayed severely away from the anomaly, though there were unconfirmed reports of increased Affront activity in the Upper Leaf Swirl, and just today four ships-
"Off," Genar-Hofoen said quietly, and the screen duly vanished. One of the erotroupe stirred against him. He looked at her.
The girl's face was the very image of that belonging to Zreyn Tramow, one-time captain of the good ship Problem Child. Her body was different from the original, altered in the direction of Genar-Hofoen's tastes, but subtly. There were two like her and three who looked exactly like famous personalities — an actress, a musician and a lifestyler. Zreyn and Enhoff, Shpel, Py and Gidinley. They had all been perfectly charming as well as being quite plausible impersonators, but Genar-Hofoen thought you had to wonder at the mentality of people who actually chose to alter their appearance and behaviour every few days just to suit the tastes — usually though not always sexual — of others. But maybe he was just being a bit fuddy-duddyish. Perhaps they were slightly boring people otherwise, or perhaps they just liked a deal more variety in such matters than other people.