"Not seriously; I stayed in the car until…"
"No, please." The hand waved up from the indistinct mass of the chair, tiredly, "I have no head for details."
He said nothing; he pursed his lips.
"I understand your driver was not so lucky," the man said.
"Well, he's dead." He leant forward in his seat. "Actually, I thought you people might have arranged the whole thing."
"Yes," said the woman from the mass of the chair, her voice floating up like the smoke, "Actually we did."
"I find frankness so appealing, don't you?" The man looked admiringly at the knees, breasts and head of the woman, the only parts of her still showing above the furry arms of the seat. He smiled. "Of course, Mr Staberinde, my companion jests. We would never do such a terrible thing. But we might be able to lend you some assistance in finding the real culprits."
"Really?"
The man nodded. "We think now we might like to help you, you see?"
"Oh, sure."
The man laughed. "Who exactly are you, Mr Staberinde?"
"I told you; I'm a tourist." He sniffed the bowl. "I wandered into a little money recently, and I always wanted to visit Solotol — in style — and that's what I've been doing."
"How did you get control of the Vanguard Foundation, Mr Staberinde?"
"I thought direct questions like that were impolite."
"They are," the man smiled. "I beg your pardon. May I guess your profession, Mr Staberinde? I mean before you became a gentleman of leisure, of course."
He shrugged. "If you like."
"Computers," the man said.
He had started to raise his glass to his lips, just so he could hesitate, as he now did. "No comment," he said, not meeting the man's eyes.
"So," the man said. "The Vanguard foundation is under new management, is it?"
"Damn right. Better management."
The man nodded. "So I heard, just this afternoon." He sat forward in his chair and rubbed his hands together. "Mr Staberinde; I don't want to pry into your commercial operations and future plans, but I wonder if you'd give us even a vague idea in what direction you see the Vanguard Foundation going, over the next few years. Purely as a matter of interest, for now."
"That's easy," he grinned. "More profits. Vanguard could have been the biggest corp of the lot if it had been aggressive with its marketing. Instead it's been run like a charity; relied on coming up with some new technological gizmo to restore its position each time it falls behind. But from now on it fights like the other big boys, and it backs winners." (The man nodded wisely.) The Vanguard Foundation's been too… meek until now." He shrugged. "Maybe that's just what happens when you leave something to be run by machines. But that's over. From now on the machines do what I tell them to, and the Vanguard Foundation becomes a competitor; a predator, yeah?" He laughed, not too harshly, he hoped, conscious he might overdo this.
The man smiled slowly but broadly. "You… believe in keeping machines in their place, yes?"
"Yeah." He nodded vigorously. "Yeah, I do."
"Hmm. Mr Staberinde, have you heard of Tsoldrin Beychae?"
"Sure. Hasn't everybody?"
The man raised his eyebrows liquidly. "And you think…?"
"Could have been a great politician, I suppose."
"Most people say he was a great politician," the woman said from the chair's depths.
He shook his head, looking into his drug bowl. "He was on the wrong side. It was a shame, but… to be great you have to be on the winning side. Part of greatness is knowing that. He didn't. Same as my old man."
"Ah…" said the woman.
"Your father, Mr Staberinde?" the man said.
"Yeah," he admitted. "He and Beychae… well, it's a long story, but… they knew each other, long ago."
"We have time for the story," the man said easily.
"No," he said. He stood up, putting down the bowl and glass, and taking up the suit helmet. "Look; thanks for the invitation and all, but I think I'll head back now; I'm a little tired, and I took a bit of a battering in that car, you know?"
"Yes," the man said, standing too. "We're really sorry about that."
"Oh, thanks."
"Perhaps we can offer something in compensation?"
"Oh yeah? Like what?" He fiddled with the suit helmet. "I got lots of money."
"How would you like to talk to Tsoldrin Beychae?"
He looked up, frowning. "I don't know; should I? Is he here?" He gestured out towards the party. The woman giggled.
"No." The man laughed. "Not here. But in the city. Would you like to talk to him? Fascinating fellow, and no longer actively on the wrong side, as it were. Devoted to a life of study, these days. But still fascinating, as I say."
He shrugged. "Well… maybe. I'll think about it. It crossed my mind to leave, after the craziness this morning."
"Oh, I beg you to reconsider that, Mr Staberinde. Please; sleep on it. You might do a great deal of good, for all of us, if you would talk to the chap. Who knows; you might even help make him great." He held out one hand towards the door. "But I can tell you want to go. Let me see you to the car." They walked to the door. Mollen stood back. "Oh. This is Mollen. Say hello, Mollen." The grey-haired man touched a small box at his side.
"Hello," it said.
"Mollen can't speak, you see. Hasn't said a word in all the time we've known him."
"Yes," said the woman. She was completely submerged in the chair now. "We decided he needed to clear his throat; so we took out his tongue." She either giggled or belched.
"We've met." He nodded to the big man, whose face contorted strangely under the scars.
The party in the boat-house cellar went on. He almost collided with a woman who had her eyes on the back of her head. Some of the revellers were exchanging limbs now. People sported four arms, or none (begging for drinks to be brought to their mouths), or an extra leg, or had arms or legs of the wrong sex. One woman was parading around with a man in tow who wore a sickly stupid grin; the woman kept lifting her skirt and displaying a complete set of male sexual equipment.
He hoped they all forgot who had what at the end of the evening.
They passed through the tame party, where fireworks were showering everybody with cool sparks; they were all laughing at that and — he could think of no other word — cavorting.
He was wished farewell. It was the same car that took him back, though it had a different driver. He watched the lights and the city's calm expanses of snow, and thought about people at parties and people at war; he saw the party they had just left, and he saw the grey-green trenches with mud-caked men waiting nervously; he saw people dressed in shiny black, whipping each other and being tied up… and he saw people shackled to bed frames or chairs, shrieking, while the uniformed men applied their particular skills.
He sometimes had to be reminded, he realised, that he still possessed the capacity to despise.
The car powered its way through the silent streets. He took the dark glasses off. The empty city swept past.
VI
Once — between the time he'd taken the Chosen across the badlands and the time he'd ended up broken like an insect in the flooded caldera, scratching signs in the dirt — he had taken some leave, and for a while had entertained the idea of giving up his work for the Culture, and doing something else instead. It had always seemed to him that the ideal man was either a soldier or a poet, and so, having spent most of his years being one of those — to him — polar opposites, he determined to attempt to turn his life around and become the other.
He lived in a small village, in a small, rural country on a small, undeveloped, unhurried planet. He stayed with an old couple in a cottage in the trees in the dales beneath the high tors. He rose early and went for long walks.