The Player of Games (Culture, #2)

by Iain M. Banks

Also, in our society, it is possible to control people. It is possible to make somebody, or even several people, do things they might not want to do. We can offer you, here, the sort of experience which by your own admission would be impossible on your own world.”

“Even there, though,” Hamin said, “you are missing something. You see, we gain a great deal of pleasure from knowing at what cost this music is bought. You see the stringed instrument; the one on the left with the eight strings?” Gurgeh nodded. Hamin said, “I can tell you that each of those steel strings has strangled a man. You see that white pipe at the back, played by the male?” “The pipe shaped like a bone?” Hamin laughed. “A female’s femur, removed without anesthetic.” “Naturally,” Gurgeh said, and took a few sweet-tasting nuts from a bowl on the table. “Do they come in matched pairs, or are there a lot of one-legged lady music critics?”

One can be the player, or one can be… played upon.”

have to tell you, Gurgeh, that no matter how you do in the first game on Echronedal, it will be announced that you have been defeated. We have unequivocal control of the communications- and news-services on the Fire Planet, and as far as the press and the public will be concerned, you will be knocked out in the first round there. We will do whatever has to be done to make it appear that that is exactly what has in fact happened. You are free to tell people I’ve told you this, and free to claim whatever you want after the event; you will be ridiculed, though, and what I have described will happen anyway. The truth has already been decided.”

Shohobohaum Za had said; that it was a gem, however vicious and indiscriminate its cutting edges might be. It was not so difficult to understand the warped view the Azadians had of what they called “human nature”—the phrase they used whenever they had to justify something inhuman and unnatural—when they were surrounded and subsumed by the self-created monster that was the Empire of Azad, and which displayed such a fierce instinct (Gurgeh could think of no other word) for self-preservation.

I’m going to be consistent, however. I haven’t told you who I am so far, and I’m not going to tell you now, either. Maybe later. Maybe.

What was unique, in the experience of the Culture as well as the Empire, was to discover a wave of fire forever moving round the planet on the continental landmass.

The blaze remained little more than a large, continuous bush-fire for eleven revolutions. On the twelfth, it changed.

Their own chemistry then produced first the Oxygen Season, and then the Incandescence.

The apex was unusual not just because he was standing but because he seemed to be encased in a set of gunmetal bones, worn outside his Navy uniform.

Emperor wouldn’t want to lose the services of one of his best commanders for six years. Nicosar did use the veto, but only to have Yomonul incarcerated in that device he’s wearing, rather than shut away in a prison cell.

“Good grief, man; the Culture’s been a spacefaring species for eleven thousand years;

Eächic was an ordinary, evolved language, with rooted assumptions which substituted sentimentality for compassion and aggression for cooperation.

A comparatively innocent and sensitive soul like Gurgeh was bound to pick up some of its underlying ethical framework if he spoke it all the time.

Gurgeh assumed, showed that the landscape of Chiark was Orbital, not planetary.

Amalk-ney showed him Ikroh, and Gurgeh found himself angered at the fact that people came and stayed there every now and again.

there ought to have been a table. The screen blanked out. Chamlis said, “Our little friend. But quite lifeless. I’ve scanned it, and I had… [cut] send down its bugging team to take a look too. It’s dead. Just a casing with no mind; like an intact human body with the brain neatly scooped out. There’s a small cavity in the center, where its mind must have been.”

Traff had orders from his star marshal that the library had to be destroyed. Nicosar himself had commanded this as one of his first edicts after coming to power; subject races had to understand that once they displeased the Emperor, nothing could prevent their punishment.

We were deeply hurt to discover that the leading conspirator was our life-long mentor and guide, the rector of Candsev College.” “Ham—” Gurgeh began, but stopped. Nicosar’s face was a study in displeasure. The old apex’s name died in Gurgeh’s throat. “I—” Gurgeh started again.

Culture. You know no glory, no pride, no worship. You have power; I’ve seen that; I know what you can do… but you’re still impotent. You always will be. The meek, the pathetic, the frightened and cowed… they can only last so long, no matter how terrible and awesome the machines they crawl around within. In the end you will fall; all your glittering machinery won’t save you. The strong survive. That’s what life teaches us, Gurgeh, that’s what the game shows us. Struggle to prevail; fight to prove worth. These are no hollow phrases; they are truth!”

“First things first,” Flere-Imsaho said. “Allow me to introduce myself properly; my name is Sprant Flere-Imsaho Wu-Handrahen Xato Trabiti, and I am not a library drone.”

“You’ve been used, Jernau Gurgeh,” the drone said matter-of-factly. “The truth is, you were playing for the Culture, and Nicosar was playing for the Empire. I personally told the Emperor the night before the start of the last match that you really were our champion; if you won, we were coming in; we’d smash the Empire and impose our own order. If he won, we’d keep out for as long as he was Emperor and for the next ten Great Years anyway.

“That’s why Nicosar did all he did. He wasn’t just a sore loser; he’d lost his Empire. He had nothing else to live for, so why not go in a blaze of glory?”

You’ve spent all your life learning games; there can’t be a rule, move, concept or idea in Azad you haven’t encountered ten times before in other games; it just brought them all together. These guys never stood a chance. All you needed was somebody to keep an eye on you and give you the occasional nudge in the right direction at the appropriate times.” The drone dipped briefly; a little bow. “Yours truly!”

“Not his real name; not Culture-born at all. Yes, he’s what you’d call a ‘mercenary.’ Just as well, too, or the secret police would have shot you outside that tent. Remember timid little me nipping out of the way? I’d just shot one of your assailants with my CREW; on high X-ray so it wouldn’t register on the cameras. Za broke the neck of another one; he’d heard there might be some trouble. He’ll probably be leading a guerrilla army on Eä in a couple of days from now, I imagine.”

“Not a lot, indeed. I was too busy keeping you from baking to go in search of your belongings. Anyway, the only thing you seem to be fond of is that tatty old jacket. Did you get that bracelet thing? I left it on your chest when I went exploring.”

“One thing; when Nicosar fired that gun, and the ray came off the mirror-field and hit him; was that coincidence, or did you aim it?” He thought it wasn’t going to answer him, but just before the door closed and the wedge of light thrown over it disappeared with the rising craft, he heard the drone say: “I am not going to tell you.”

“You know,” he said, as though talking to his own reflection in the glass, “I asked the ship yesterday exactly what they did do about the Empire in the end; how they went in to sort it out. It said they didn’t even bother. Fell apart all on its own.”