Genar-Hofoen felt the Diplomatic Force officer’s kiss through the few millimetres’ thickness of the gelfield suit as a moderately sharp impact on his jaw followed by a powerful sucking that might have led someone less experienced in the diverse and robust manifestations of Affronter friendliness to conclude that the being was either trying to suck his teeth out through his cheek or had determined to test whether a Culture Gelfield Contact/Protection Suit, Mk 12, could be ripped off its wearer by a localised partial vacuum. What the crushingly powerful four-limbed hug would have done to a human unprotected by a suit designed to withstand pressures comparable to those found at the bottom of an ocean probably did not bear thinking about, but then a human exposed without protection to the conditions required to support Affronter life would be dying in at least three excitingly different and painful ways anyway without having to worry about being crushed by a cage of leg-thick tentacles.
“Fivetide; good to see you again, you brigand!” Genar-Hofoen said, slapping the Affronter about the beak-end with the appropriate degree of enthusiastic force to indicate bonhomie.
“And you, and you!” the Affronter said. He released the man from its grasp, twirled with surprising speed and grace and — clasping one of the human’s hands in a tentacle end — pulled him through the roaring crush of Affronters near the nest space entrance to a clearer part of the web membrane.
The nest space was hemispherical in shape and easily a hundred metres across. It was used mainly as a regimental mess and dining hall and so was hung with flags, banners, the hides of enemies, bits and pieces of old weapons and military paraphernalia. The curved, veined-looking walls were similarly adorned with plaques, company, battalion, division and regimental honour plaques and the heads, genitals, limbs or other acceptably distinctive body parts of old adversaries.
Genar-Hofoen had visited this particular nest space before on a few occasions. He looked up to see if the three ancient human heads which the hall sported were visible this evening; the Diplomatic Force prided itself on having the tact to order that the recognisable trophy bits of any given alien be covered over when a still animate example of that species paid a visit, but sometimes they forgot. He located the heads — scarcely more than three little dots hidden high on one sub-dividing drape-wall — and noted that they had not been covered up.
The chances were this was simply an oversight, though it was equally possible that it was entirely deliberate and either meant to be an exquisitely weighted insult carefully contrived to keep him unsettled and in his place, or intended as a subtle but profound compliment to indicate that he was being accepted as one of the boys, and not like one of those snivellingly timid aliens who got all upset and shirty just because they saw a close relative’s hide gracing an occasional table.
That there was absolutely no rapid way of telling which of these possibilities was the case was exactly the sort of trait the human found most endearing in the Affront. It was, equally, just the kind of attribute the Culture in general and his predecessors in particular had found to be such a source of despair.
Genar-Hofoen found himself grinning wryly at the three distant heads, and half hoping that Fivetide would notice.
Fivetide’s eye stalks swivelled. “Waiter-scum!” he bellowed at a hovering juvenile eunuch. “Here, wretch!”
The waiter was half the size of the big male and childishly unscarred unless you counted the stump of the creature’s rear beak. The juvenile floated closer, trembling even more than politeness dictated, until it was within a tentacle reach. “This thing,” roared Fivetide, flicking a limb-end to indicate Genar-Hofoen, “is the alien beast-human you should already have been briefed on if your Chief is to avoid a sound thrashing. It might look like prey but it is in fact an honoured and treasured guest and it needs feeding much as we do; rush to the animals’ and outworlders’ serving table and fetch the sustenance prepared for it. Now!” Fivetide screamed, his voice producing a small visible shockwave in the mostly nitrogen atmosphere. The juvenile eunuch waiter vented away with suitable alacrity.
Fivetide turned to the human. “As a special treat for you,” he shouted, “we have prepared some of the disgusting glop you call food and a container of liquid based on that poisonous water stuff. God-shit, how we spoil you, eh!” He tentacle-slapped the human in the midriff. The gelfield suit absorbed the blow by stiffening; Genar-Hofoen staggered a little to one side, laughing.
“Your generosity near bowls me over.”
“Good! Do you like my new uniform?” the Affronter officer asked, sucking back a little from the human and pulling himself up to his full height. Genar-Hofoen made a show of looking the other being up and down.
The average fully grown Affronter consisted of a mass the shape of a slightly flattened ball about two metres in girth and one and a half in height, suspended under a veined, frilled gas sac which varied in diameter between one and five metres according to the Affronter’s desired buoyancy and which was topped by a small sensor bump. When an Affronter was in aggressive/defensive mode, the whole sac could be deflated and covered by protective plates on the top of the central body mass. The principal eyes and ears were carried on two stalks above the fore beak covering the creature’s mouth; a rear beak protected the genitals. The anus/gas vent was positioned centrally under the main body.
To the central mass were attached, congenitally, between six and eleven tentacles of varying thicknesses and lengths, at least four of which normally ended in flattened, leaf-shaped paddles. The actual number of limbs possessed by any particular adult male Affronter one encountered entirely depended on how many fights and/or hunts it had taken part in and how successful a part in them it had played; an Affronter with an impressive array of scars and more stumps than limbs was considered either an admirably dedicated sportsman or a brave but stupid and probably dangerous incompetent, depending entirely on the individual’s reputation.
Fivetide himself had been born with nine limbs — considered the most propitious number amongst the best families, providing one had the decency to lose at least one in duel or hunt — and had duly lost one to his fencing master while at military college in a duel over the honour of the fencing master’s chief wife.
“It’s a very impressive uniform, Fivetide,” Genar-Hofoen said.
“Yes, it is rather, isn’t it?” the Affronter said, flexing his body.
Fivetide’s uniform consisted of multitudinous broad straps and sashes of metallic-looking material which were crisscrossed over his central mass and dotted with holsters, sheaths and brackets — all occupied by weapons but sealed for the formal dinner they were here to attend — the glittering discs Genar-Hofoen knew were the equivalents of medals and decorations, and the associated portraits of particularly impressive game-animals killed and rivals seriously maimed. A group of discreetly blank portrait discs indicated the females of other clans Fivetide could honourably claim to have successfully impregnated; the discs edged with precious metals bore witness to those who had put up a struggle. Colours and patterns on the sashes indicated Fivetide’s clan, rank and regiment (which was what the Diplomatic Force, to which Fivetide belonged, basically was… a point not wisely ignored by any species who wished to have — or just found themselves having — any dealings with the Affront).
Fivetide pirouetted, gas sac swelling and buoying him up so that he rose above the spongy surface of the nest space, limbs dangling, taking hardly any of his weight. “Am I not… resplendent?” The gelfield suit’s translator decided that the adjective Fivetide had chosen to describe himself should be rendered with a florid rolling of the syllables involved, making the Affronter officer sound like an overly stagey actor.