“Easy out. Yeah, we know.” A woman’s voice; the nice one. Horza was aware of light now. Pink in front of his eyes. His head was still sore but he was coming to. He checked out his body, consciously calling on the feedback nerves to gauge his own physical readiness. Below normal, and it wouldn’t be perfect until the last effects of his geriatric appearance had faded away, in a few days — if he lived that long. He suspected they thought he was already dead.
“Zallin,” the Man said, “dump that weed.”
Horza opened his eyes with a start as footsteps approached. The Man had been talking about him!
“Aah!” somebody cried nearby. “He’s not dead. His eyes are moving!” The footsteps suddenly halted. Horza sat up shakily, narrowing his eyes in the glare. He was breathing hard and his head swam as he raised it. His eyes focused.
He was in a brightly lit but small hangar. An old, weather-beaten shuttle craft filled about half of it. He was sitting almost against one bulkhead; near the other stood the people who had been talking. Halfway between him and the group stood a large, ungainly youth with very long arms and silver hair. As Horza had guessed, the suit he had been wearing lay prone on the floor at the feet of the group of humans. He swallowed and blinked. The youth with the silver hair stared at him and scratched nervously at one ear. He wore a pair of shorts and a frayed T-shirt. He jumped when one of the taller men in the group, in the voice Horza had decided was that of the captain, said, “Wubslin,” (he turned to one of the other men) “isn’t that effector working properly?”
Don’t let them talk about you as though you aren’t here! He cleared his throat and spoke as loudly and as determinedly as he could. “There’s nothing wrong with your effector.”
“Then,” the tall man said, smiling thinly and arching one eyebrow, “you should be dead.”
They were all looking at him, most with suspicion. The youth near him was still scratching his ear; he appeared puzzled, even frightened, but the rest just looked as though they wanted rid of him as quickly as possible. They were all humans, or close to; male and female; mostly dressed in either suits or bits of suits, or T-shirts and shorts. The captain, now moving through the group, closer to Horza, looked tall and muscular. He had a mass of dark hair combed back from his brow, a sallow complexion and something feral about his eyes and mouth. The voice suited him. As he came closer Horza saw that he was holding a laser pistol. The suit he wore was black, and its heavy boots rang on the naked metal deck. He advanced until he was level with the young man with the silver hair, who was fiddling with the hem of his T-shirt and biting his lip.
“Why aren’t you dead?” the Man asked Horza quietly.
“Because I’m a lot fucking tougher than I look,” Horza said. The Man smiled and nodded.
“You must be.” He turned round and looked briefly back at the suit. “What were you doing way out here in that?”
“I used to work for the Idirans. They didn’t want the Culture ship to catch me, and they thought they might be able to rescue me later, so they threw me overboard to wait for the fleet. It’ll be here in about eight or nine hours, by the way, so I wouldn’t hang around.”
“Will it, now?” the captain said quietly, raising his eyebrow again. “You seem very well informed, old man.”
“I’m not that old. This was a disguise for my last job — an agatic drug. It’s wearing off. A couple of days and I’ll be useful again.”
The Man shook his head sadly. “No you won’t.” He turned and started back towards the other people. “Dump him,” he told the youth in the T-shirt. The youth started forward.
“Now wait a goddamned minute!” Horza shouted, scrambling to his feet. He backed against the wall, hands out, but the youth was coming straight at him. The others were looking either at him or at their captain. Horza swung forward and up with one leg, too fast for the young man with the silver hair. He caught him in the groin with his foot. The youth gasped and fell to the deck, clutching at himself. The Man had turned. He looked down at the youth, then at Horza.
“Yes?” he said. Horza got the impression he was enjoying it all. Horza pointed to the now kneeling youth.
“I told you — I can be useful. I’m pretty good in a fight. You can have the suit—”
“I’ve got the suit,” the captain said drily.
“So at least give me a chance.” Horza looked around them. “You’re mercenaries or something, right?” Nobody said anything. He could feel himself starting to sweat; he stopped it. “Let me join. All I’m asking for’s a chance. If I louse up first time, dump me then.”
“Why not dump you now and save the hassle?” The captain laughed, spreading his arms wide. Some of the others laughed too.
“A chance,” Horza repeated. “Shit, it isn’t much to ask.”
“I’m sorry.” The Man shook his head. “We’re overcrowded already.”
The silver-haired youth was looking up at Horza, his face twisted with pain and hate. The people in the group were smirking at Horza or talking quietly to each other and nodding at him, grinning. He was suddenly aware that he looked like just a skinny old man in the nude.
“Fuck it!” he spat, glaring right at the Man. “Give me five days and I’ll take you on anytime.”
The captain’s eyebrows went up. For a second he might have looked angry, then he burst out laughing. He waved the laser at Horza. “All right, old man. I’ll tell you what we’ll do.” He put his hands on his waist and nodded at the youth still kneeling on the deck. “You can fight Zallin here. You feel up to a rumble, Zallin?”
“I’ll kill him,” Zallin said, looking straight at Horza’s throat. The Man laughed. Some of his black hair spilled out of the back lip of his suit.
“That’s the idea.” He looked at Horza. “I told you we’re already overcrowded. You’ll have to produce a vacancy.” He turned round to the others. “Clear a space. And somebody get this old guy some shorts; he’s putting me off my food.”
One of the women threw Horza a pair of shorts. He put them on. The suit had been lifted from the deck, and the shuttle rolled a couple of metres sideways until it clanged against the hull on the far side of the hangar. Zallin had finally risen from the deck and gone back to the others. Somebody sprayed anaesthetic on his genitals. Thank goodness for non-retractables, Horza thought. He was resting against the bulkhead, watching the group of people. Zallin was taller than any of them. His arms seemed to reach to his knees and they were as thick as Horza’s thighs.
Horza saw the captain nod towards him, and one of the women walked over. She had a small, hard-looking face. Her skin was dark, and she had spiky fair hair. Her whole body looked slim and hard; she walked, Horza thought, like a man. As she got closer Horza saw she was lightly furred on her face, legs and arms, which the long shirt she wore revealed. She stopped in front of him and looked at him, from his feet to his eyes.
“I’m your second,” she said, “whatever good that’s supposed to do you.”
She was the one with the nice voice. Horza was disappointed, even through his fear. He waved one hand. “My name’s Horza. Thanks for asking.” Idiot! he told himself. Tell them your real name, that’s it. Why not tell them you’re a Changer as well?
“Yalson,” the woman said abruptly, and stuck her hand out. Horza wasn’t sure if the word was a greeting or her name. He was angry with himself. As though he didn’t have enough problems, he’d tricked himself into giving his real name. Probably it wouldn’t matter, but he knew too well that it was the small slips, the seemingly inconsequential mistakes, that often made the difference between success and failure, even life and death. He reached out and clasped the woman’s hand when he realised that was what he was supposed to do. Her hand was dry and cool, and strong. She squeezed his. She let go before he had time to squeeze back. He had no idea where she came from, so he didn’t read too much into it. Where he came from that would have been a fairly specific sort of invitation.