Beychae nodded. "I've been thinking about it. I believe this is the Srometren Observatory, in Deshal Forest."
"How far is that from Solotol?"
"Oh; different continent. Good two thousand kilometres."
"Same latitude," he said glumly, looking up at the chill grey skies.
"Approximately, if this is the place I think it is."
"Who's in charge here?" he asked. "Whose jurisdiction? Same lot as in Solotol; the Humanists?"
"The same." Beychae said, and got up, brushing the seat of his pants and looking around the flattened hill-top at the curious stone instruments that covered its flagstones. "Srometren Observatory!" he said. "How ironic we should happen to come down here, on our way to the stars!"
"Probably not just chance," he said, picking up a twig and brushing a few random shapes in the dust at his feet. "This place famous?"
"Of course," Beychae said. "It was the centre of astronomical research for the old Vrehid Empire for five hundred years."
"On any tourist routes?"
"Certainly."
"Then it probably has a beacon nearby, to guide aircraft in. Capsule may have made for it when it knew it was crippled. Makes us easier to find." He gazed up at the sky. "For everybody, unfortunately." He shook his head, went back to scratching in the dust with the twig.
"What happens now?" Beychae said.
He shrugged. "We wait and see who turns up. I can't get any of the communication gear to work, so we don't know if the Culture knows all that's happened or not… for all I know the Module's still coming for us, or a whole Culture starship's on its way, or — probably more likely — your pals from Solotol…" He shrugged, threw down the twig and sat back against the stonework behind him, glancing skyward. They might be watching us right now."
Beychae looked up too. "Through the clouds?"
"Through the clouds."
"Shouldn't you be hiding, then? Running off through the woods?"
"Maybe," he said.
Beychae stood looking down at the other man. "Where were you thinking of taking me, if we'd got away?"
"The Impren System. There are space Habitats there," he said. "They're neutral, or at least not as pro-war as this place."
"Do your… superiors really think war is so close, Zakalwe?"
"Yes," he sighed. He already had the suit's face-plate hinged up; now, with another look at the sky, he took the whole helmet off. He put one hand up over his forehead and through his drawn-back hair, then reached back and took the pony-tail out of its little ring, shaking his long black hair down. "It might take ten days, might take a hundred, but it's coming." He smiled thinly at Beychae. "For the same reasons as last time."
"I thought we'd won the ecological argument against terra-forming," said Beychae.
"We did, but times change; people change, generations change. We won the battles for the acknowledgement of machine sentience, but by all accounts the issue was fudged after that. Now people are saying, yes, they're sentient, but it's only human sentience that counts. Plus, people never need too much of an excuse to see other species as inferior."
Beychae was silent for a while, then said, "Zakalwe, has it ever occurred to you that in all these things the Culture may not be as disinterested as you imagine, and it claims?"
"No, it never occurred to me," he said, though Beychae got the impression the man hadn't really thought first before answering.
"They want other people to be like them, Cheradenine. They don't terraform, so they don't want others to either. There are arguments for it as well, you know; increasing species diversity often seems more important to people than preserving a wilderness, even without the provision of extra living space. The Culture believes profoundly in machine sentience, so it thinks everybody ought to, but I think it also believes every civilisation should be run by its machines. Fewer people want that. The issue of cross-species tolerance is, I'll grant, of a different nature, but even there the Culture can sometimes appear to be insistent that deliberate inter-mixing is not just permissible but desirable; almost a duty. Again, who is to say that is correct?"
"So you should have a war to… what? Clear the air?" He inspected the suit helmet.
"No, Cheradenine, I'm just trying to suggest to you that the Culture may not be as objective as it thinks it is, and, that being the case, its estimation concerning the likelihood of war may be equally untrustworthy."
"There are small wars on a dozen planets right now, Tsoldrin. People are talking war in public; either about how to avoid it, or how it might be limited, or how it can't possibly happen… but it's coming; you can smell it. You should catch the newscasts, Tsoldrin. Then you'd know."
"Well then, perhaps war is inevitable," Beychae said, looking away over the wooded plains and hills beyond the observatory. "Maybe it's just… time."
"Crap," he said. Beychae looked at him, surprised. "There's a saying: "War is a long cliff." You can avoid the cliff completely, you can walk along the top for as long as you have the nerve, you can even choose to leap off, and if you only fall a short way before you hit a ledge you can always scramble back up again. Unless you're just plain invaded, there are always choices, and even then, there's usually something you've missed — a choice you didn't make — that could have avoided invasion in the first place. You people still have your choices. There's nothing inevitable about it."
"Zakalwe," Beychae said. "You surprise me. I'd have thought you —»
"You'd have thought I'd be in favour of war?" he said, standing, a sad small smile on his lips. He put one hand on the other man's shoulder. "You've had your nose buried in books for too long, Tsoldrin." He walked away past the stone instruments. Beychae looked down at the suit helmet, lying on the flagstones. He followed the other man.
"You're right, Zakalwe. I have been out of the flow of things for a long time. I probably don't know who half the people in power are these days, or exactly what the issues are, or the precise balance of the various alliances… so the Culture cannot be so… desperate they think I can alter whatever's going to happen. Can they?"
He turned round. He looked into Beychae's face. "Tsoldrin, the truth is I don't know. Don't think I haven't thought about this. It might be just that you, as a symbol, really,would make all the difference, and maybe everybody is desperate to find an excuse not to have to fight; you could be that excuse if you come along, uncontaminated by recent events, as though from the dead, and provide a face-saving compromise.
"Or maybe the Culture secretly thinks a small short war is a good idea, or even knows there's nothing it can do to stop a full-scale one, but has to be seen to be doing something, no matter how long a shot it might be, so that people can't say later "Why didn't you try this?"" He shrugged. "I never try to second-guess the Culture, Tsoldrin, let alone Contact, and certainly not Special Circumstances."
"You just do their bidding."
"And get well paid for it."
"But you see yourself on the side of good, do you, Cheradenine?"
He smiled and sat on the stone plinth, legs swinging. "I have no idea whether they're the good guys or not, Tsoldrin. They certainly seem to be, but then who knows that seeming is being?" He frowned, looked away. "I have never seen them be cruel, even when they might have claimed they had an excuse to be so. It can make them seem cold, sometimes." He shrugged again. "But there are folks that'll tell you it's the bad gods that always have the most beautiful faces and the softest voices. Shit," he said, and jumped off the stone table. He went to stand by the balustrade which marked one edge of the old observatory, looking to where the sky was starting to redden above the horizon. It would be dark in an hour. "They keep their promises and they pay top rates. They make good employers, Tsoldrin."