"Not bad," it said. "Not bad at all. I can't tell just yet what you're glanding, but that's a very impressive degree of control. Everything parameter-centred, near as damn. Except your neuron function-state; that's even less like normal than usual, but then your average civilian drone probably couldn't spot that. Well done."
"Don't let me detain you, Mawhrin-Skel," Gurgeh said coldly. "I'm sure you can find something else to amuse you besides watching me play a game." He continued up the broad steps.
"Nothing currently on this Orbital is capable of detaining me, dear Mr Gurgeh," the drone said matter-of-factly, tearing the last of the petals from the nightflower. It dropped the husk in the water channel which ran along the top of the balustrade.
"Gurgeh, good to see you. Come; sit down."
Estray Hafflis's party of thirty or so people sat round a huge, rectangular stone table set on a balcony jutting out over the falls and covered by stone arches strung with nightflower vines and softly shining paper lanterns; there were music-players at one end, sitting on the edge of the great slab with drums and strings and air instruments; they were laughing and playing mostly for themselves, each trying to play too fast for the others to follow.
Set into the centre of the table was a long narrow pit full of glowing coals; a kind of miniaturised bucket-line trundled above the fire, carrying little meat and vegetable pieces from one end of the table to the other; they were skewered on to the line at one end by one of Haftlis's children, and removed at the other end, wrapped in edible paper and thrown with a fair degree of accuracy to anybody who wanted them, by Hafflis's youngest, who was only six. Hafflis was unusual in having had seven children; normally people bore one and fathered one. The Culture frowned on such profligacy, but Hafflis just liked being pregnant. He was in a male stage at the moment, however, having changed a few years earlier.
He and Gurgeh exchanged pleasantries, then Hafflis showed the game-player to a seat beside Professor Boruelal, who was grinning happily and swaying in her seat. She wore a long black and white robe, and when she saw Gurgeh kissed him noisily on the lips. She attempted to kiss Mawhrin-Skel too, but it flicked away.
She laughed, and speared a half-done piece of meat from the line over the centre of the table with a long fork. "Gurgeh! Meet the lovely Olz Hap! Olz; Jernau Gurgeh. Come on; shake hands!"
Gurgeh sat down, taking the small, pale hand of the frightened-looking girl on Boruelal's right. She was wearing something dark and shapeless, and was in her early teens, at most. He smiled with a slight frown, glancing at the professor, trying to share the joke of her inebria with the young blonde girl, but Olz Hap was looking at his hand, not his face. She let her hand be touched but then withdrew it almost immediately. She sat on her hands and stared at her plate.
Boruelal breathed deeply, seeming to gather herself together. She took a drink from a tall glass in front of her.
"Well," she said, looking at Gurgeh as though he'd only just appeared. "How are you, Jernau?"
"Well enough." He watched Mawhrin-Skel manoeuvre itself beside Olz Hap, floating over the table beside her plate, fields all formal blue and green friendliness.
"Good evening," he heard the drone say in its most avuncular voice. The girl brought her head up to look at the machine, and Gurgeh listened to their conversation at the same time as he and Boruelal talked.
"Hello."
"Well enough to play a game of Stricken?"
"Mawhrin-Skel's the name. Olz Hap, am I right?"
"I think so, Professor. Are you well enough to invigilate?"
"Yes. How do you do."
"Fuck me, no; drunk as a desert spring. Have to get somebody else. Suppose I could come down in time but… naa…"
"Oh, ah, shake fields with me, eh? That's very sweet of you; so few people bother. How nice to meet you. We've all heard so much."
"How about the young lady herself?"
"Oh. Oh dear."
"What?"
"What's wrong? Have I said something wrong?"
"Is she ready to play?"
"No, it's just—"
"Play what?"
"Ah; you're shy. You needn't be. Nobody'll force you to play. Least of all Gurgeh, believe me."
"The game, Boruelal."
"Well, I—"
"What, do you mean now?"
"I wouldn't worry, if I were you. Really."
"Now; or any time."
"Well I don't know. Let's ask her! Hey, kid…"
"Bor—" Gurgeh began, but the professor had already turned to the girl.
"Olz; want to play this game, then?"
The young girl looked straight at Gurgeh. Her eyes were bright in the glare of the line of fire running down the centre of the table. "If Mr Gurgeh would like to, yes."
Mawhrin-Skel's fields glowed red with pleasure, momentarily brighter than the coals. "Oh good," it said. "A fight."
Hafflis had loaned his own ancient Stricken set out; it took a few minutes for a supply drone to bring one from a town store. They set it up at one end of the balcony, by the edge overlooking the roaring white falls. Professor Boruelal fumbled with her terminal and put in a request for some adjudicating drones to oversee the match; Stricken was susceptible to high-tech cheating, and a serious game required that steps be taken to ensure nothing underhand went on. A drone visiting from Chiark Hub volunteered, as did a Manufactury drone from the shipyard under the massif. One of the university's own machines would represent Olz Hap.
Gurgeh turned to Mawhrin-Skel, to ask it to be his representative, but it said, "Jernau Gurgeh; I thought you might like Chamlis Amalk-ney to represent you."
"Is Chamlis here?"
"Arrived a while ago. Been avoiding me. I'll ask it."
Gurgeh's button terminal beeped. "Yes?" he said.
Chamlis's voice spoke from the button. "The fly-dropping just asked me to represent you in a Stricken adjudication. Do you want me to?"
"Yes, I'd like you to," Gurgeh said, watching Mawhrin-Skel's fields flicker white with anger in front of him.
"I'll be there in twenty seconds," Chamlis said, closing the channel.
"Twenty-one point two," Mawhrin-Skel said acidly, exactly twenty-one point two seconds later, as Chamlis appeared over the edge of the balcony, its casing dark against the cataract beyond. Chamlis turned its sensing band to the smaller machine.
"Thank you," Chamlis said warmly. "I had a bet on with myself that I'd have you counting the seconds to my arrival."
Mawhrin-Skel's fields blazed brightly, painfully white, lighting up the entire balcony for a second; people stopped talking and turned; the music hesitated. The tiny drone seemed almost literally to shake with dumb rage.
"Fuck you!" it screeched at last, and seemed to disappear, leaving only an after-image of sun-bright blindness behind it in the night. The coals blazed bright, a wind whipped at clothes and hair, several of the paper lanterns bucked and shook and fell from the arches overhead; leaves and nightflowers drifted down from the two arches immediately over where Mawhrin-Skel had been floating.
Chamlis Amalk-ney, red with happiness, tipped to look up into the dark sky, where a small hole appeared briefly in the cloud cover. "Oh dear," it said. "Do you think I said something to upset it?"
Gurgeh smiled and sat down at the game-set. "Did you plan that, Chamlis?"