Others travelled amongst the rest of the Involved and Aspirant species, existing — when they encountered societies shockingly unenlightened enough not to have cast off the last shackles of monetary exchange — through inter-civilisational co-supportive understandings, or by using some vanishingly microscopic fraction of the allegedly infinite resources the Culture commanded to pay their way.
Some cast their adventures wider still, which was where problems sometimes occurred. The mere presence of such a person in a sufficiently undeveloped society could change it, sometimes profoundly, if that person was blind to what their being there might be doing to those they had come to live among, or at least look at. Not all such people agreed to be monitored by Contact during their travels, and even though Contact was perfectly unabashed when it came to spying on travellers who strayed into vulnerable societies whether they liked it or not, it did sometimes miss individuals. There was a whole section of the organisation devoted to watching developing civilisations for signs that some so-called Wanderer had — with prior intent, opportunistically or even accidentally — turned into a local Mad Professor, Despot, Prophet or God. There were other categories, but these four formed the most popular and predictable avenues people’s fantasies took them along when they lost their moral bearings down amongst the prims.
Most Wanderers caused no such problems, however, and such itinerants normally found somewhere to call home eventually, usually back in the Culture. Some, though, never settled anywhere, roaming all their lives, and of these a few — a surprisingly large proportion compared to the rest of the Culture’s population — lived, effectively, for ever. Or at least lived until they met some almost inevitably violent, irrecoverable end. There were rumours — usually in the form of personal boasts — of individuals who had been around since the formation of the Culture itself, nomads who’d drifted the galaxy and its near infinitude of peoples, societies, civilisations and places for thousands upon thousands of years.
Trust me, he had said. “I think I do not,” she told him at last, narrowing her eyes a little.
“Really?” he asked, looking hurt. “I’m telling the truth,” he said quietly. He seemed half small boy and half untroubled ancient, darkly self-possessed.
“I’m sure it appears so to you,” she said, arching one eyebrow. She drank some more; she had ordered a Za’s Revenge, but said concoction was unknown to the bar machine, which had made its own speciality. It served. Quike took another pipe of incense herb.
“And you’re from the Eighth?” Quike said, coughing a little, though with a broad smile wreathed in violet smoke.
“I am,” she said. He smiled shyly and hid behind some smoke. “You’re well informed,” she told him.
“Thank you.” He suddenly mugged an expression of what might have been pretended fear. “And an SC agent too, yes?”
“I wouldn’t get too excited,” she told him. “I have been demilitarised.”
He grinned again. Almost cheekily. “All the same.”
Djan Seriy would have sighed if she had felt able to. She had a feeling she was being set up here — Mr Quike was so handsome and attractive it was positively suspicious — she just wasn’t sure yet by whom.
They left Puonvangi at the 303rd in the company of a riotous party of Birilisi conventioneers. The Birilisi were an avian species and much given to excessive narcoticism; they and Puonvangi were guaranteed to get on. There was much fluttering.
They suited up and went to a place Quike knew where the aquaticised gathered. These were humanoids fully converted to water-dwelling. The space was full of what looked like every kind of watergoing species — or at least those below a certain size. The warm, hazy water was full of skin scents, incomprehensible sounds of every appreciable frequency and curious, musical pulsations. They had to stay suited up and laughed bubbles as they tried drinking underwater, using smart cups and self-sealing straws. They talked via what was basically a pre-electricity speaking tube.
They got to the end of their drinks together.
She was looking away from him, watching two thin, flamboyantly colourful, fabulously frilled creatures three metres tall with great long, expressionless but somehow dignified heads and faces. They were floating a short distance away from her, poised facing each other just out of the touching range of their frills, which waved so fast they flickered. She wondered were they talking, arguing, flirting?
Quike touched her arm to attract her attention. “Shall we go?” he asked. “There’s something you’ve got to see.” She looked down, at his hand still resting on her arm.
They took a bubble car through the enclosed galaxy of the Great Ship’s main internal space to where his quarters were. They were still suited up, sat side by side in the speeding car, communicating by lace as the gaudily bewildering expanses of the ship’s interior swept around them.
You really must see this, he said, glancing at her.
No need to overstate, she told him. I am already here, going with you. She had never been very good at being romantic. Wooing and seduction, even played as a kind of game, seemed dishonest to her somehow. Again, she blamed her upbringing, though she wouldn’t have argued the point too determinedly if pressed on it; ultimately she was prepared to concede that maybe, at some level beyond even childhood indoctrination, it was just her.
His living space was a trio of four-metre spheres bunched in with thousands of others on a kilometres-long string of alien habs situated near the vast curved wall of the main space’s outer periphery. The room was entered by entirely the stickiest, slowest-working gel field lock she’d ever encountered. Inside it was rather small and brightly lit. The air tasted clean, almost sharp. Nothing in it looked personalised. Furniture or fittings of debatable utility lay scattered about the floor and wall. The general colour scheme was of green components over cerise backgrounds. Not, to Djan Seriy’s eye, a happy combination. There was a sort of glisteny look to a lot of the surfaces, as though a film or membrane had been shrink-wrapped around everything.
“Another drink?” he suggested.
“Oh, I suppose so,” she said.
“I have some Chapantlic spirit,” he said, digging in a small floor chest. He saw her run a finger along the edge of what appeared to be a sponge-covered seat, frowning as her skin encountered something slick and smooth coating it, and said, “Sorry. Everything is sort of sealed in; covered. All a bit antiseptic. I do apologise.” He looked embarrassed as he waved a couple of glittering goblets shaped like inverted bells and a small bottle. “I picked up some sort of weird allergy thing on my travels and they can only fix it back in the Culture. Wherever I live I need it to be pretty clean. I’ll get it dealt with, but for now, well…”
Djan Seriy was not at all convinced this was true. “Is it in any way infectious?” she asked. Her own immune system, still fully functioning and well into the comprehensive end of the spectrum of congenital Culture protection, had signalled nothing amiss. After a couple of hours in such close proximity to Mr Quike there would have been at least some hint of any untoward virus, spore or similar unpleasantness.
“No!” he said, motioning her to sit down. They sat on opposite sides of a narrow table. He poured some of the spirit; it was brown and highly viscous.