Veppers hated the Culture. He hated it for existing and he hated it for — for far too damned many credulous idiots — setting the standard for what a decent society ought to look like and so what other peoples ought to aspire to. It wasn’t what other peoples ought to aspire to; it was what machines had aspired to, and created, for their own inhuman purposes.
It was another of Veppers’ deeply held personal beliefs that when you were besieged or felt cornered, you should attack.
He marched into the Culture ambassador’s office in Ubruater and threw the remains of the neural lace down on her desk.
“What the fuck is this?” he demanded.
The Culture ambassador was called Kreit Huen. She was a tall, statuesque woman, slightly oddly proportioned for a Sichultian but still attractive in a haughty, formidable sort of way. It had crossed Veppers’ mind on more than one occasion to have one of his impersonator girls change to look just like the Culture woman, so he could fuck her conceited brains out, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to; he had his pride.
When Veppers burst in she was standing at a window of her generously proportioned penthouse office looking out over the city to where, in the hazy sunlight of early afternoon, a large, dark, sleek ship was hovering over the massive Veprine Corporation tower, at the heart of Ubruater’s central business district. She was drinking something steaming from a cup and was dressed like an office cleaner; a barefoot office cleaner. She turned and looked, blinking, at the tangle of silvery-blue wires lying on her desk.
“Afternoon to you too,” she said quietly. She walked over, peered more closely at the thing. “It’s a neural lace,” she told him. “How bad are your techs getting?” She looked at the other man just entering the room. “Good afternoon, Jasken.”
Jasken nodded. Behind him, floating in the doorway, was the drone which had chosen not to get in Veppers’ way when he’d come storming through. They’d known Veppers was heading in their direction for about three minutes, as soon as his flier had left the Justice Ministry and set course for their building, so she had had plenty of time to decide exactly how to appear when he arrived.
“Ki-chaow! Ki-chaow!” a reedy voice sang out from behind one of the room’s larger couches. Veppers looked and saw a small blond head duck back down.
“And what is that?” he asked.
“That is a child, Veppers,” Huen said, pulling her chair out from the desk. “Really, what next?” She pointed at the window. “Sky. Clouds. Oh look; a birdy.” She sat down, picked up the lace. The drone — a briefcase-sized lozenge — floated nearby. Huen frowned. “How did you come by this?”
“It’s been in a fire,” the drone muttered. The machine had been Huen’s servant (or master — who knew!) for the three years she had been there. It was supposed to have a name or a title or some thing and Veppers had been “introduced” to it but he refused to remember whatever it was supposed to be called.
“Ki-chaow!”
The blond child was standing behind the couch, only its head and one hand — formed into a pretend gun — showing. The gun was pointing at Jasken, who had brought his Oculenses down from over his head and was frowning like a stage villain and pointing his own finger at the child, sighting carefully down it. He jerked his hand back suddenly, as though in recoil. “Urk!” the child said, and disappeared, flopping onto the couch with a small thud. Veppers knew Huen had a child; he hadn’t expected to find the brat in her office.
“It was found in the ashes of one of my staff,” Veppers told Huen, knuckles on her desk, arms spread, leaning over her. “And my extremely able techs reckon it’s one of yours, so my next question is, what the fuck is the Culture doing putting illegal espionage equipment into the heads of my people? You are not supposed to spy on us, remember?”
“Haven’t the foggiest idea what it was doing there,” Huen said, handing the lace to the outstretched maniple field of the drone, which teased it out to its maximum extent. The remains of the lace took on the rough shape of a brain. Veppers caught a glimpse and found the sight oddly unsettling. He slammed one palm on Huen’s desk.
“What the hell do you think gives you the right to do something like this?” He waved one hand at the lace as it glowed in the drone’s immaterial grasp. “I have every right to take this to court. This is a violation of our rights and the Mutual Contact Agreement we signed in good faith when you communist bastards first arrived.”
“Who had it in their head anyway?” Huen asked, sitting back in her seat and putting her hands behind her head, one shoeless foot over her other knee. “What happened to them?”
“Don’t evade the question!” Veppers slammed the desk again.
Huen shrugged. “All right. Nothing in particular gives us — whoever ‘us’ might be here — the right to do something like this.” She frowned. “Whose head was it in?”
The drone made a throat-clearing noise. “Whoever they were they either died in a fire or were cremated,” it said. “Probably the latter; high-temperature combustion, probably few impurities. Hard to tell — this has been cleaned and analysed. At first quite crudely and then only a little clumsily.” The machine swivelled in the air as though looking at Veppers. “By Mr. Veppers’ techs and then by our Jhlupian friends, I’d guess.” The barely visible haze around the machine had turned vaguely pink. Veppers ignored it.
“Don’t try to wriggle out of it,” he said, pointing one finger at Huen. (“Ki-chaow!” said a small voice from the other side of the room.) “Who cares who ‘us’ is? ‘Us’ is you; ‘us’ is the Culture. This thing is yours so you’re responsible. Don’t try to deny it.”
“Mr. Veppers has a point,” the drone said reasonably. “This is our tech — quite, ah, high tech — if you know what I mean, and I imagine it — or the seed that became it, as it were — was emplaced by somebody or something who might reasonably be described as belonging to the Culture.”
Veppers glared at the machine. “Fuck off,” he told it.
The drone seemed unruffled. “I was agreeing with you, Mr. Veppers.”
“I don’t need this thing’s agreement,” Veppers told Huen. “I need to know what you intend to do about this violation of the terms of the agreement that lets you stay here.”
Huen smiled. “Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do.”
“That’s not good enough. And that thing leaves with me,” he said, pointing at the lace. “I don’t want it conveniently disappearing.” He hesitated, then snatched it from the drone’s grasp. The sensation was unsettling, like plunging one’s hand into a warm, cloying foam.
“Seriously,” Huen said. “Whose head was it in? It’ll help with our investigations if we know.”
Veppers pushed himself upright with one fist, folded his arms. “Her name was L. Y’breq,” he told the Culture woman. “A court authorised ward of mine and the subject of a commercial Generational Reparation Order under the Indented Intagliate Act.”
Huen frowned, then sat forward, looked away for a moment. “Ah, the Marked woman?… Lededje? I remember her. Talked to her, a few times.”
“I’m sure you did,” Veppers said.
“She was… okay. Troubled, but all right. I liked her.” She looked at Veppers with what he felt sure was meant to be profound sincerity. “She’s dead?”
“Extremely.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that. Please pass on my condolences to her family and loved ones.”