Flere-Imsaho floated in the centre of the room. The screen was on, showing an apex and a male copulating. Background music surged; the setting was plush with cushions and thick drapes. "This is an Imperial Select channel," the drone said. "Level One, mildly scrambled." The scene switched, then switched again, each time showing a slightly different mix of sexual activity, from solo masturbation through to groups involving all three Azadian sexes.
"This son of thing is restricted," the drone said. "Visitors aren't supposed to see it. The unscrambling apparatus is available for a price on the general market, however. Now we'll see some Level Two channels. These are restricted to the Empire's bureaucratic, military, religious and commercial upper echelons."
The screen went briefly hazy with a swirl of random colours, then cleared to show some more Azadians, mostly naked or very scantily clad. Again, the emphasis was on sexuality, but there was another, new element in what was happening; many of the people wore very strange and uncomfortable-looking clothes, and some were being tied up and beaten, or put into various absurd positions in which they were sexually used. Females dressed in uniforms ordered males and apices around. Gurgeh recognised some of the uniforms as those worn by Imperial Navy officers; others looked like exaggerations of more ordinary uniforms. Some of the apices were dressed in male clothes, some in female dress. Apices were made to eat their own or somebody else's excreta, or drink their urine. The wastes of other pan-human species seemed to be particularly prized for this practice. Mouths and anuses, animals and aliens were penetrated by males and apices; aliens and animals were persuaded to mount the various sexes, and objects — some everyday, some apparently specially made — were used as phallic substitutes. In every scene, there was an element of… Gurgeh supposed it was dominance.
He'd been only mildly surprised that the Empire wanted to hide the material shown on the first level; a people so concerned with rank and protocol and clothed dignity might well want to restrict such things, harmless though they might be. The second level was different; he thought it gave the game away a little, and he could understand them being embarrassed about it. It was clear that the delight being taken in Level Two was not the vicarious pleasure of watching people enjoying themselves and identifying with them, but in seeing people being humiliated while others enjoyed themselves at their expense. Level One had been about sex; this was about something the Empire obviously thought more of but could not disentangle from that act.
"Now Level Three," the drone said.
Gurgeh watched the screen.
Flere-Imsaho watched Gurgeh.
The man's eyes glittered in the screen-light, unused photons reflecting from the halo of iris. The pupils widened at first, then shrank, became pinpoints. The drone waited for the wide, staring eyes to fill with moisture, for the tiny muscles around the eyes to flinch and the eyelids to close and the man to shake his head and turn away, but nothing of the sort happened. The screen held his gaze, as though the infinitesimal pressure of light it spent upon the room had somehow reversed, and so sucked the watching man forward, to hold him, teetering before the fall, fixed and steady and pointed at the flickering surface like some long-stilled moon.
The screams echoed through the lounge, over its foamseats and couches and low tables; the screams of apices, men, women, children. Sometimes they were silenced quickly, but usually not. Each instrument, and each part of the tortured people, made its own noise; blood, knives, bones, lasers, flesh, ripsaws, chemicals, leeches, fleshworms, vibraguns, even phalluses, fingers and claws; each made or produced their own distinctive sounds, counterpoints to the theme of screams. The final scene the man watched featured a psychotic male criminal previously injected with massive doses of sex hormones and hallucinogens, a knife, and a woman described as an enemy of the state, who was pregnant, and just before term.
The eyes closed. His hands went to his ears. He looked down. "Enough," he muttered.
Flere-Imsaho switched the screen off. The man rocked backwards on his heels, as though there had indeed been some attraction, some artificial gravity from the screen, and now that it had ceased, he almost over-balanced in reaction.
"That one is live, Jernau Gurgeh. It is taking place now. It is still happening, deep in some cellar under a prison or a police barracks."
Gurgeh looked up at the blank screen, eyes still wide and staring, but dry. He gazed, rocked backwards and forwards, and breathed deeply. There was sweat on his brow, and he shivered.
"Level Three is for the ruling elite only. Their strategic military signals are given the same encrypting status. I think you can see why.
"This is no special night, Gurgeh, no festival of sado-erotica. These things go out every evening…. There is more, but you've seen a representative cross-section."
Gurgeh nodded. His mouth was dry. He swallowed with some difficulty, took a few more deep breaths, rubbed his beard. He opened his mouth to speak, but the drone spoke first.
"One other thing. Something else they kept from you. I didn't know this myself until last night, when the ship mentioned it. Ever since you played Ram your opponents have been on various drugs as well. Cortex-keyed amphetamines at least, but they have far more sophisticated drugs which they use too. They have to inject, or ingest them; they don't have genofixed glands to manufacture drugs in their own bodies, but they certainly use them; most of the people you've been playing have had far more «artificial» chemicals and compounds in their bloodstream than you've had."
The drone made a sighing noise. The man was still staring at the dead screen. "That's it," the drone said. "I'm sorry if what I've shown you has upset you, Jernau Gurgeh, but I didn't want you to leave here thinking the Empire was just a few venerable game-players, some impressive architecture and a few glorified night-clubs. What you've seen tonight is also what it's about. And there's plenty in between that I can't show you; all the frustrations that affect the poor and the relatively well-off alike, caused simply because they live in a society where one is not free to do as one chooses. There's the journalist who can't write what he knows is the truth, the doctor who can't treat somebody in pain because they're the wrong sex… a million things every day, things that aren't as melodramatic and gross as what I've shown you, but which are still part of it, still some of the effects.
"The ship told you a guilty system recognises no innocents. I'd say it does. It recognises the innocence of a young child, for example, and you saw how they treated that. In a sense it even recognises the «sanctity» of the body… but only to violate it. Once again, Gurgeh, it all boils down to ownership, possession; about taking and having." Flere-Imsaho paused, then floated towards Gurgeh, came very close to him. "Ah, but I'm preaching again, aren't I? The excesses of youth. I've kept you up late. Maybe you're ready for some sleep now; it's been a long night, hasn't it? I'll leave you." It turned and floated away. It stopped near the door again. "Good night," it said.
Gurgeh cleared his throat. "Good night," he said, looking away from the dark screen at last. The drone dipped and disappeared.
Gurgeh sat down on a formseat. He stared at his feet for a while, then got up and walked outside the module, into the roof-garden. The dawn was just coming up. The city looked washed-out somehow, and cold. The many lights burned weakly, brilliance sapped by the calm blue vastness of the sky. A guard at the stairwell entrance coughed and stamped his feet, though Gurgeh could not see him.
He went back into the module and lay down on his bed. He lay in the darkness without closing his eyes, then closed his eyes and turned over, trying to sleep. He could not, and neither could he bring himself to secrete something that would make him sleep.
At last he got up and went back to the lounge where the screen was. He had the module access the game-channels, and sat there looking at his own game with Bermoiya for a long time, without moving or speaking, and without a single molecule of glanded drug in his bloodstream.