“And how did that end?”
Sensia shrugged. “Not too badly. Could have been a bit better, could have been an awful lot worse.”
Lededje thought a little more. “Then I think I’ll just have to accept your judgement.” She turned and smiled smoothly at the avatar. “I don’t accept that it’s necessary, but I’ll… acquiesce.” Sensia wore an expression of regret, and a small frown. “Though you should know,” Lededje said, fighting to keep her voice under control, “that there is no possibility of the man who killed me being brought to justice for what he did to me, let alone suffering any punishment for it. He is a very charming, very powerful but completely evil man. He is utterly selfish and self-centred, and due to his position he can and does get away with anything — anything at all. He deserves to die. It would absolutely be the correct moral thing to do to kill Joiler Veppers, my personal grievance against him set entirely aside. If I am going back to my home with murder in my heart, as you put it, then you are making exactly the wrong moral choice in deciding to protect him.”
“I understand how you feel, Lededje,” the avatar said.
“I doubt it.”
“Well, I certainly understand the force of what you’re saying; please accept that at least. It’s just not my place to pass judgement at such a remove on somebody I have no conceivable moral jurisdiction over.”
“The Culture never interferes in other societies?” Lededje said, trying to sound scornful. It was one of the few things she could recall having heard about the Culture back in Sichult: its people were hopelessly effeminate, or unnaturally aggressive females (the story changed according to exactly which aspect of the Culture’s alleged demeanour the Sichultian press and establishment wanted to portray as shocking, depraved or despicable), it didn’t use money and it was ruled by its giant robot ships that interfered in other civilisations. Despite herself, she could feel tears welling up behind her eyes.
“Good grief, yes, we’re interfering all the time,” the avatar admitted. “But it’s all carefully thought out, long-term managed and there’s always got to be some strategic goal that’ll benefit the people being interfered with.” Sensia looked away for a moment. “Well, usually. That’s not to say things don’t go awry on occasion.” She looked back at Lededje. “But that’s all the more reason to take care. Especially when this is a person of such importance, with such a degree of fame, notoriety or whatever, and with control over so much of your civilisation’s productive—”
“So his position, his money protects him even here?” Lededje protested, trying hard not to cry now.
“I’m sorry,” Sensia said. “That’s the reality of the situation. We don’t make your rules. As an alien being he has as much right as anybody else has not to have me collude in any plot against his life; as a focus of power within your society, anything that happens to him matters more than it does to almost anybody else. It would be irresponsible not to take that into account even if I did share your desire to kill him.”
“What chance would I have anyway,” Lededje said, sniffing and looking away. “I’m no assassin. I could happily kill him but I’ve no particular skill in such matters. My only advantage is I know something of his estates and houses and the people who surround him.” She raised her hand, studied its back and front. “And I don’t look like I used to look, so I might have a chance of getting close to him.”
“I imagine he’s well protected,” Sensia said. She paused for a moment. “Yes, I see that he is. Your news services seem most taken with these cloned people, the Zei.”
Lededje thought to say something to the effect that Jasken was the real bodyguard, Veppers’ true last line of defence, but then thought the better of it. Best not be seen to be thinking in such terms. She sniffed some more, wiping her nose on her hand.
“You don’t have to go back, Lededje,” Sensia said gently. “You could stay here, make a new life in the Culture.”
Lededje used the heels of her hands to dry round her eyes. “You know, for almost as long as I can remember that was the one thing I wanted?” she said. She glanced at Sensia, who looked puzzled. “All those years, all those times I tried to run away, the one thing nobody ever asked me was where I might be running to.” She smiled a small, thin smile at the avatar, who looked surprised now. “If they had asked,” Lededje told her, “I might even have told them: I was running away to the Culture, because I’d heard they’d escaped the tyranny of money and individual power, and that all people were equal here, men and women alike, with no riches or poverty to put one person above or beneath another.”
“But now you’re here?” Sensia offered, sounding sad.
“But now I’m here I find Joiler Veppers is still deferred to because he is a rich and powerful man.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “And I find I need to return because that is my home, like it or not, and I must make my peace with it somehow.” She looked sharply at Sensia. “Then I might come back. Would I be allowed to come back?”
“You’d be allowed.”
Lededje nodded once and looked away.
They were both silent for a few moments. Then Sensia said, “Slap-drones can be quite useful companions, anyway; willing and obedient servants — bodyguards, too — so long as you don’t try to kill or injure somebody. I’ll choose you a good one.”
“I’m sure we’ll get on just fine,” Lededje said.
She wondered how easy it would be to lose a slap-drone. Or to kill it, too.
Yime Nsokyi stood in the main room of her apartment, her stance upright, her booted feet together, her head slightly back, her hands clasped behind her back. She was dressed formally in long dark grey boots, grey trousers, a light blouse and a plain grey jacket with a stiff, high collar. She had a pen terminal in the breast pocket of the jacket and a back-up terminal in the shape of an earbud attached to the lobe of her left ear. Her hair was very neatly combed.
“Ms. Nsokyi, hello.”
“Good day.”
“You look very… poised. Wouldn’t you rather sit?”
“I prefer to stand.”
“Okay.” The avatar of the GCU Bodhisattva, OAQS had appeared, Displaced apparently, in front of her a moment earlier, its coming heralded half an hour before by the call she’d received. She had had time to dress and compose herself. The avatar took the form of an old-looking drone, nearly a metre long, half that across and a quarter-metre in height. It floated at eye level. “I shall take it we may dispense with any pleasantries,” it said.
“That would be my choice,” Yime agreed.
“I see. In that case, are you ready to…?”
Yime flexed her knees, picked up a small soft bag at her feet and stood again. “Fully,” she said.
“Okay then.”
The avatar and the human female disappeared inside two silver ellipsoids which had hardly appeared before they shrank to two points and vanished, not quite fast enough to create two tiny claps of thunder, but sufficiently quickly to cause a draught that ruffled the leaves of nearby plants.
Prin awoke from the long and terrible real nightmare of his time in Hell and found Chay, his true love, gazing over at him as he lay, blinking, on the clinic bed. He was on his side, looking at her; she was on her other side on a bed a metre away, facing him. Her eyes blinked slowly.