The Player of Games (Culture, #2)

by Iain M. Banks

“Jernau Morat Gurgeh?”

Sharp Blue was a game-player’s secretion, a product of standard genofixed Culture glands sitting in Gurgeh’s lower skull, beneath the ancient, animal-evolved lower reaches of his brain.

Sharp Blue was one of the least used because it brought no direct pleasure and required considerable concentration to produce. But it was good for games. What seemed complicated became simple; what appeared insoluble became soluble; what had been unknowable became obvious. A utility drug; an abstraction-modifier; not a sensory enhancer or a sexual stimulant or a physiological booster.

Stricken was one of the more complex games in his repertoire. It was also one of his

Mawhrin-Skel had been designed as a Special Circumstances drone for the Culture’s Contact section; effectively a military machine with a variety of sophisticated, hardened sensory and weapons systems which would have been quite unnecessary and useless on the majority of drones.

“But you see? If somebody wanted a house like this they’d already have had one built; if they wanted anything in the house”—Gurgeh gestured round the room—“they’d have ordered it; they’d have it. With no money, no possessions, a large part of the enjoyment the people who invented this game experienced when they played it just… disappears.”

The better I do the worse things get because the more I have to lose.” “You are a throwback,” Chamlis told him. “The game’s the thing. That’s the conventional wisdom, isn’t it? The fun is what matters, not the victory. To glory in the defeat of another, to need that purchased pride, is to show you are incomplete and inadequate to start with.”

Culture’s real cities were its great ships, the General Systems Vehicles.

Orbitals were its rustic hinterland, where people liked to spread themselves out with plenty of elbow room. In terms of scale, when compared to one of the larger GSVs containing billions of people, Tronze was barely a village.

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.

invigilate?”

Also, there was an SC Mind, that of the Limited Offensive Unit Gunboat Diplomat, which had supported Mawhrin-Skel’s appeal against the decision which had removed the drone from Special Circumstances.

He had a sudden, paranoid idea. He turned to Chamlis urgently. “These friends of yours are ships.” “Yes,” Chamlis said. “Both of them.” “What are they called?” “The Of Course I Still Love You and the Just Read the Instructions.” “They’re not warships?” “With names like that? They’re GCUs; what else?”

“The Gunboat Diplomat, our game-player. Its location.” His heart pounded and his throat seemed to close up. “Yes,” he said, struggling to get the word out. “And?” “Well, it didn’t reply direct; it sent via its home GSV Youthful Indiscretion and got it to confirm its location.” “Yes, well? Where is it?” “In the Altabien-North cluster. Sent coordinates, though they’re only accurate to—” “Never mind the coordinates!” Gurgeh shouted. “Where is that cluster? How far away is it from here?” “Hey; calm down. It’s about two and a half millennia away.” He sat back, closing his eyes. The car started to slow down.

“The Greater and Lesser Clouds,” the drone Worthil said. “Each about one hundred thousand light-years away from where we are now. No doubt you’ve admired them from Ikroh in the past; they’re quite visible, though you’re on the under-edge of the main galaxy relative to them, and so looking at them through it.

is unusual for us to discover an imperial power-system in space. As a rule, such archaic forms of authority wither long before the relevant species drags itself off the home planet, let alone cracks the lightspeed problem, which of course one has to do, to rule effectively over any worthwhile volume.

“That game is called ‘Azad’ by the natives. It is important enough for the empire itself to take its name from the game. You are looking at the Empire of Azad.”

Generally, the males are used as soldiers and the females as possessions. Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea?”

me explain something to you, Jernau Gurgeh,” the drone said. “The game of Azad is a gambling game, frequently even at the highest levels. The form these wagers take is occasionally macabre. I very much doubt that you’d be involved on the sort of levels you’d be playing at if you did agree to take part, but it is quite usual for them to wager prestige, honors, possessions, slaves, favors, land and even physical license on the outcome of games.” Gurgeh waited, but eventually sighed and said, “All right… what’s ‘physical license’?” “The players wager tortures and mutilations against each other.”

“An old ‘Murderer’ class GOU left over from the Idiran war; been in deep storage about six decades from here for the last seven hundred years.

(Demilitarized) General Offensive Unit Limiting Factor had arrived under Ikroh that afternoon. Gurgeh had gone down to the transit gallery to inspect it. The craft was a third of a kilometer long, very sleek and simple looking;

GSV Little Rascal,

Marain, the Culture’s quintessentially wonderful language

Does Gurgeh really understand what he’s done, and what might happen to him? Has it even begun to occur to him that he might have been tricked? And does he really know what he’s let himself in for? Of course not! That’s part of the fun!

Although it was only four kilometers in height, the Plate class General Systems Vehicle Little Rascal was fully fifty-three in length, and twenty-two across the beam. The topside rear park covered an area of four hundred square kilometers, and the craft’s overall length, from end-to-end of its outermost field, was a little over ninety kilometers. It was ship-construction rather than accommodation biased, so there were only two hundred and fifty million people on it.

language and the game, and for that reason alone learned the tongue. The ship told him later it would have been desirable anyway; the Culture was trying to keep even the intricacies of its language secret from the Empire of Azad.

The ship cleared the top of the GSV, rising beside the cloud-speckled topside park. It rose on into the thinner air above, met with the Superlifter Prime Mover, and together they gradually dropped back and to the side of the GSV’s inner atmospheric envelope.

mean, you can mention blister-free callousing and that sort of thing, that isn’t important; but even the gross re-plumbing involved in your own genital design would cause something of a furor if they found out about it.”

“The thing to remember, Gurgeh,” the ship interrupted quickly, “is that their society is based on ownership. Everything that you see and touch, everything you come into contact with, will belong to somebody or to an institution; it will be theirs, they will own it.

the women giggled and the apices smirked at each other, he went close to the females and flicked the nictitating membranes in his eyes up and down.

things which they ought to have known would make a considerable difference to the way the game was played—the college system, which the Limiting Factor had glossed over, was a good example—and put him at least partly in the charge of a drunken, loud-mouthed fool childishly infatuated with a few imperialist tricks and a resourcefully inhumane social system.

The apex chattered during the journey, enthusing about some recent conquest the Empire had made in a distant region of space; a glorious victory.

right up to Nicosar himself, those twelve thousand people faced that day knowing

Thinking that perhaps he’d missed something, he played a couple of more exploratory cards, and only then did the priest start to play for the end. Gurgeh resumed, and when the game finished before midday he held more points than anybody else.

Three days later, just as play was closing after the early-evening session, Gurgeh looked at the Board of Origin and realized he was going to be put out of the game.

“Oh, but you must!” Pequil protested. “Everybody will want to see you! You don’t seem to realize what you’ve done; even if you lose the match you’ve established a new record! Nobody has ever come back from being so far behind! It was quite brilliant!”

He found his place in the draw; his name appeared on the screen beside that of Lo Wescekibold Ram, governing director of the Imperial Monopolies Board. He was ranked as Level Five Main, which meant he was one of the sixty best game-players in the Empire.

“You asshole, Gurgeh!” the drone said in Marain as soon as they were back in the module. “First you ask me two words you already know, and then you use both of them and the—” Gurgeh was shaking his head by this time, and interrupted. “You really don’t understand very much about game-playing, do you, drone?” “I know when people are playing the fool.” “Better than playing a household pet, machine.”

“Well, anyway… at least you don’t have to worry about your Premises now.” It gave a rather forced-sounding chuckle. “They’re as frightened of you telling the truth as you are!”

But how can you have a secret policeman? I thought one of the points of having a uniform for the police was so that they could be easily identified and act as a deterrent.” “Good grief,” Za said, covering his face with his hands. He put them down and gazed at Gurgeh. He took a deep breath. “Right… well; the secret police are people who go about listening to what people say when they aren’t being deterred by the sight of a uniform. Then if the person hasn’t actually said anything illegal, but has said something they think is dangerous to the security of the Empire, they kidnap them and interrogate them and—as

“Hmm,” Za said, coughing a little. “You’re learning, Jernau Gurgeh. Shit, I thought a game-player would have a bit more… natural deviousness about him… you’re a babe among the carnivores out here… anyway, yes, somebody in a position of power wants you dead.”

The just invaded locals—hairy quadrupeds with prehensile lips—were shown lying down tied up in the mud, or on their knees before a portrait of Nicosar.

He picked up Shohobohaum Za’s discarded bowl at one point, discovering there were still a few mouthfuls of drink left inside. He sniffed it, then shook his head, and told a tray to tidy the debris up.

Gurgeh finished Lo Wescekibold Ram off the next day with what the press described as “contempt.”

But there was no starting again. He was going to be taken out of here and taken to hospital and spayed; he was going to lose that which made him what he was, and he would never be allowed to have it back; gone forever. Forever.

And saw nothing. No pity, no compassion, no spirit of kindness or sorrow. He looked into those eyes, and at first he thought of the look criminals had sometimes, when they’d been sentenced to a quick death. It was a look of indifference; not despair, not hatred, but something flatter and more terrifying than either; a look of resignation, of all-hope-gone; a flag hoisted by a soul that no longer cared.

Then he knew. And suddenly, for the first time in his life, he understood what it was for the condemned to look into his eyes.

Pequil stood amazed. He had never thought he would see an imperial judge break down like that. And in front of the alien! He had to run after the dark man; he was striding back out of the hall as quickly and quietly as he’d arrived, ignoring the hisses and shouts from the public galleries around him. They were in the aircar before

“Here we have many rules, and try to live according to the laws of God, Game and Empire. But one of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh.” Hamin waved the pipe-stem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!”

I am only sorry that innocent people, such as those bystanders who were shot instead of you, and Lo Prinest Bermoiya, had to be hurt. As you have no doubt guessed, we would like you to go no further in the game. Now, the Imperial Office has nothing to do with the Games Bureau, so there is little we can do directly. We do have a suggestion though.”