The Player of Games (Culture, #2)

by Iain M. Banks

“Before you ask our friend what we’re passing over now,” Flere-Imsaho said, hovering and buzzing at Gurgeh’s elbow, “that’s called a shantytown, and it’s where the city draws its surplus unskilled labor from.” Gurgeh frowned at the bulkily disguised drone. Lo Pequil was standing beside Gurgeh on the rear ramp of the module, which had opened to make a sort of balcony. The city unrolled beneath them. “I thought we weren’t to use Marain in front of these people,” Gurgeh said to the machine. “Oh, we’re safe enough here; this guy’s bugged, but the module can neutralize that.” Gurgeh pointed at the shantytown. “What’s that?” he asked Pequil. “That is where people who have left the countryside for the bright lights of the big city often end up. Unfortunately, many of them are just loafers.” “Driven off the land,” Flere-Imsaho added in Marain, “by an ingeniously unfair property-tax system and the opportunistic top-down reorganization of the agricultural production apparatus.”