Use of Weapons (Culture, #3)

by Iain M. Banks

He walked for days, stopping at bars and restaurants whenever he felt thirsty, hungry or tired; mostly they were automatic and he was served by little floating trays, though a few were staffed by real people. They seemed less like servants and more like customers who’d taken a notion to help out for a while. ‘Of course I don’t have to do this,’ one middle-aged man said, carefully cleaning the table with a damp cloth. He put the cloth in a little pouch, sat down beside him. ‘But look; this table’s clean.’ He agreed that the table was clean. ‘Usually,’ the man said. ‘I work on alien - no offence - alien religions; Directional Emphasis In Religious Observance; that’s my speciality . . . like when temples or graves or prayers always have to face in a certain direction; that sort of thing? Well, I catalogue, evaluate, compare; I come up with theories and argue with colleagues, here and elsewhere. But . . . the job’s never finished; always new examples, and even the old ones get re-evaluated, and new people come along with new ideas about what you thought was settled . . . but,’ he slapped the table, ‘when you clean a table you clean a table. You feel you’ve done something. It’s an achievement. ’ ‘But in the end, it’s still just cleaning a table.’ ‘And therefore does not really signify on the cosmic scale of events?’ the man suggested. He smiled in response to the man’s grin, ‘Well, yes.’ ‘But then, what does signify? My other work? Is that really important, either? I could try ...