"Thank you!" Fivetide said, sinking down again so that his eye stalks were level with the human's face. The stalks" gaze rose and dipped, looking the man up and down. "Your own apparel is… different, at long last, and, I'm sure, most smart by the standards of your own people."
The posture of the Affronter's eye stalks indicated that he found something highly pleasing in this statement; probably Fivetide was congratulating himself on being incredibly diplomatic.
"Thank you, Fivetide," Genar-Hofoen said, bowing. He thought himself rather overdressed. There was the gelfield suit itself of course, so much a second skin it was possible to forget he wore it all. Normally the suit was nowhere more than a centimetre thick and averaged only half that, yet it could keep him comfortable in environments even more extreme than that required for Affronter life.
Unfortunately, some idiot had let slip that the Culture tested such suits by Displacing them into the magma chambers of active volcanoes and letting them pop out again (not true; the laboratory tests were rather more demanding, though it had been done once and it was just the sort of thing a show-off Culture manufactory would do to impress people). This was definitely not the kind of information to bandy about in the presence of beings as inquisitive and physically exuberant as Affronters; it only put ideas into their minds, and while the Affront habitat Genar-Hofoen lived within didn't re-create conditions on a planet to the extent that it had volcanoes, there had been a couple of times after Fivetide had asked the human to confirm the volcano story when he'd thought he'd caught the Diplomatic Force officer looking at him oddly, exactly as though he was trying to work out what natural phenomena or piece of apparatus he had access to he could use to test out this remarkable and intriguing protectivity.
The gelfield suit possessed something called a node-distributed brain which was capable of translating with seeming effortlessness every nuance of Genar-Hofoen's speech to the Affronters and vice versa, as well as effectively rendering any other sonic, chemical or electromagnetic signal into human-meaningful information.
Unhappily, the processing power required for this sort of technical gee-whizzery meant that according to Culture convention the suit had to be sentient. Genar-Hofoen had insisted on a model with the intelligence fixed at the lower limit of the acceptable intellectual range, but it still meant that the suit literally had a mind of its own (even if it was "node-distributed', - one of those technical terms Genar-Hofoen took some pride in having no idea concerning the meaning of). The result was a device which was almost as much a metaphorical pain to live with as it was in a literal sense a pleasure to live within; it looked after you perfectly but it couldn't help constantly reminding you of the fact. Typical Culture, thought Genar-Hofoen.
Ordinarily Genar-Hofoen had the suit appear milkily silver to an Affronter over most of its surface while keeping the hands and head transparent.
Only the eyes had never looked quite right; they had to bulge out a bit if he was to be able to blink normally. As a result he usually wore sunglasses when he went out, which did seem a little incongruous, submerged in the dim photochemical fog characteristic of the atmosphere a hundred kilometres beneath the sun-lit cloud-tops of the Affront's home world, but which were useful as a prop.
On top of the suit he usually wore a gilet with pockets for gadgets, gifts and bribes and a crotch-cupping hip holster containing a couple of antique but impressive-looking hand guns. In terms of offensive capability the pistols provided a sort of minimum level of respectability for Genar-Hofoen; without them no Affronter could possibly allow themselves to be seen taking so puny an outworlder seriously.
For the regimental dinner, Genar-Hofoen had reluctantly accepted the advice of the module in which he lived and dressed in what it assured him was a most fetching outfit of knee boots, tight trousers, short jacket and long cloak — worn off the shoulder — and (in addition to an even bigger pair of pistols than usual) had slung over his back a matched pair of what the module assured him were three-millimetre-calibre Heavy Micro Rifles, two millennia old but still in full working order, and very long and gleamingly impressive. He had balked at the tall, drum-shaped much betassled hat the module had suggested and they'd compromised on a dress/armoured half-helm which made it look as though something with six long metallic fingers was cradling his head from behind. Naturally, each article in this outfit was covered in its own equivalent of a gelfield, protecting it from the coldly corrosive pressure of the Affronter environment, though the module had insisted that if he wanted to fire the micro rifles for politeness" sake, they would function perfectly well.
"Sire!" yelped the eunuch juvenile waiter, skittering to a stop on the nest-space surface at Fivetide's side. Cradled in three of its limbs was a large tray full of transparent, multi-walled flasks of various sizes.
"What?" yelled Fivetide.
"The alien guest's foodstuffs, sir!"
Fivetide extended a tentacle and rummaged around on the tray, knocking things over. The waiter watched the containers topple, fall and roll on the tray it held with an expression of wide-eyed terror Genar-Hofoen needed no ambassadorial training to recognise. The genuine danger to the waiter of any of the containers breaking was probably small — implosions produced relatively little shrapnel and the Affronter-poisonous contents would freeze too quickly to present much of a danger — but the punishment awaiting a waiter who made so public a display of its incompetence was probably in proportion to that conspicuousness and the creature was right to be concerned. "What is this?" Fivetide demanded, holding up a spherical flask three-quarters full of liquid and shaking it vigorously in front of the eunuch juvenile's beak. "Is this a drink? Is it? Well?"
"I don't know, sir!" the waiter wailed. "It — it looks like it is."
"Imbecile," muttered Fivetide, then presented the flask gracefully to Genar-Hofoen. "Honoured guest," he said. "Please; tell us if our efforts please you."
Genar-Hofoen nodded and accepted the flask.
Fivetide turned on the waiter. "Well?" he shouted. "Don't just float there, you moron; take the rest to the Savage-Talker Battalion table!" He flicked a tentacle towards the waiter, who flinched spectacularly. Its gas sac deflated and it ran across the floor membrane for the banqueting area of the nest space, dodging the Affronters gradually making their way in that direction.
Fivetide turned briefly to acknowledge the greeting slap of a fellow Diplomatic Force officer, then rotated back, produced a bulb of fluid from one of the pockets on his uniform and clinked it carefully against the flask Genar-Hofoen held. "To the future of Affront-Culture relations," he rumbled. "May our friendship be long and our wars be short!" Fivetide squeezed the fluid into his mouth beak.
"So short you could miss them entirely," Genar-Hofoen said tiredly, more because it was the sort of thing a Culture ambassador was supposed to say rather than because he sincerely meant it. Fivetide snorted derisively and dodged briefly to one side, apparently attempting to stick one tentacle-end up the anus of a passing Fleet Captain, who wrestled the tentacle aside and snapped his beak aggressively before joining in Fivetide's laughter and exchanging the heartfelt hellos and thunderous tentacle-slaps of dear friends. There would be a lot of this sort of stuff this evening, Genar-Hofoen knew. The dinner was an all-male gathering and therefore likely to be fairly boisterous even by Affronter standards.
Genar-Hofoen put the flask's nozzle to his mouth; the gelfield suit attached itself to the nozzle, equalised pressures, opened the flask's seal and then — as Genar-Hofoen tipped his head back — had what for the suit's brain was a good long think before it permitted the liquid inside to wash through it and into the man's mouth and throat.
— Fifty-fifty water/alcohol plus traces of partially toxic herb-like chemicals; closest to Leisetsiker spirit, said a voice in Genar-Hofoen's head. ~ If I were you I'd by-pass it.
— If you were me, suit, you'd welcome inebriation just to mitigate the effects of having to suffer your intimate embrace, Genar-Hofoen told the thing as he drank.
— Oh, we're in tetchy mode are we! said the voice.
— I don it with your good self.
"It is good, by your bizarre criteria?" Fivetide inquired, eye stalks nodding at the flask.
Genar-Hofoen nodded as the drink warmed its way down his throat to his stomach. He coughed, which had the effect of making the gelfield ball out round his mouth like silvery chewing gum for a moment — something which he knew Fivetide thought was the second funniest thing a human could do in a gelfield suit, only beaten for amusement value by a sneeze. "Unhealthy and poisonous," Genar-Hofoen told the Affronter. "Perfect copy. My compliments to the chemist."
"I'll pass them on," Fivetide said, crushing his drinking bulb and flicking it casually at a passing servant. "Come now," he said, taking the human by the hand again. "Let's to table; my stomach's as empty as a coward's bowels before battle."
"No no no, you have to flick it, like this, you stupid human, or the scratchounds'll get it. Watch…"
Affronter formal dinners were held round a collection of giant circular tables anything up to fifteen metres across, each of which looked down into a bait-pit where animal fights took place between and during courses.
In the old days, at banquets held by the military and within the higher reaches of Affront society, contests between groups of captured aliens had been a particular and reasonably regular highlight, despite the fact that mounting such fights was often hideously expensive and fraught with technical complications due to the different chemistries and pressures involved. (Not to mention frequently presenting a very real danger to the observing dinner guests; who could forget the ghastly explosion at the Deepscars" table five back in "334, when every single guest had met a messy but honourable end due to the explosion of a highly pressurised bait-pit domed to simulate the atmosphere of a gas-giant?) Indeed, amongst the people who really mattered it was one of the most frequently voiced objections to the Affront's membership of the informal association of other space-faring species that having to be nice to other, lesser species — rather than giving the brutes a chance to prove their mettle against the glorious force of Affront arms — had resulted in a distinct dulling of the average society dinner.
Still, on really special occasions these days the fights would be between two Affronters with a dispute of a suitably dishonourable nature, or between criminals. Such contests usually required that the protagonists be hobbled, tied together, and armed with sliver-knives scarcely more substantial than hat pins, thus ensuring that the fights didn't end too quickly. Genar-Hofoen had never been invited to one of those and didn't expect he ever would be; it wasn't the sort of thing one let an alien witness, and besides, the competition for seats was scarcely less ferocious than the spectacle everyone desired to witness.
For this dinner — held to commemorate the eighteen hundred and eighty-fifth anniversary of the Affront's first decent space-battle against enemies worthy of the name — the entertainment was arranged to bear some relationship to the dishes being served, so that the first fish course was accompanied by the partial flooding of the pit with ethane and the introduction into it of specially bred fighting fish. Fivetide took great pleasure in describing to the human the unique nature of the fish, which were equipped with mouth parts so specialised the fish could not feed normally and had to be raised leeching vital fluids from another type of fish bred specially to fit into their jaws.
The second course was of small edible animals which to Genar-Hofoen appeared furry and arguably even cute. They raced round a trench-track set into the top of the pit at the inner edge of the circular table, pursued by something long and slithery looking with a lot of teeth at each end. The cheering, hooting Affronters roared, thumped the tables, exchanged bets and insults, and stabbed at the little creatures with long forks while shovelling cooked, prepared versions of the same animals into their beaks.
Scratchounds made up the main course, and while two sets of the animals — each about the size of a corpulent human but eight-limbed — slashed and tore at each other with razor-sharp prosthetic jaw implants and strap-claws, diced scratchound was served on huge trenchers of compacted vegetable matter. The Affronters considered this the highlight of the whole banquet; one was finally allowed to use one's miniature harpoon — quite the most impressive-looking utensil in each place setting — to impale chunks of meat from the trenchers of one's fellow diners and — with the skilful flick of the attached cable which Fivetide was now trying to teach the human — transfer it to one's own trencher, beak or tentacle without losing it to the scratchounds in the pit, having it intercepted by another dinner guest en route or losing the thing entirely over the top of one's gas sac.
"The beauty of it is," Fivetide said, throwing his harpoon at the trencher of an Admiral distracted by a failed harpoon strike of his own, "that the clearest target is the one furthest away." He grunted and flicked, snapping the piece of speared scratchound up and away from the other Affronter's place an instant before the officer to the Admiral's right could intercept the prize. The morsel sailed through the air in an elegant trajectory that ended with Fivetide barely having to rise from his place to snap his beak shut on it. He swivelled left and right, acknowledging appreciative applause in the form of whip-snapped tentacles, then settled back into the padded Y-shaped bracket that served as a seat. "You see?" he said, making an obvious swallowing motion and spitting out the harpoon and its cable.
"I see," Genar-Hofoen said, still slowly re-coiling the harpoon cable from his last attempt. He sat to Fivetide's right in a Y-bracket place modified simply by placing a board across its prongs. His feet dangled over the debris trench which circled the perimeter of the table, and which the suit assured him was reeking in the manner approved by Affronter gourmets. He flinched and dodged to one side, nearly falling off the seat, as a harpoon sailed by to his left, narrowly missing him.
Genar-Hofoen acknowledged the laughter and exaggerated apologies from the Affronter officer five along the table who had been aiming at Fivetide's plate, and politely gathered up the harpoon and cable and passed it back. He returned to picking at the miniature pieces of indifferent food in the pressurised containers in front of him, transferring them to his mouth with a gelfield utensil shaped like a little four-fingered hand, his legs swinging over the debris trench. He felt like a child dining with adults.
"Nearly got you there, eh, human? Ha ha ha!" roared the Diplomatic Force colonel his other side from Fivetide. He slapped Genar-Hofoen on the back with a tentacle and threw him half off the seat and onto the table. "Oops!" the colonel said, and jerked Genar-Hofoen back with a teeth-rattling wrench.
Genar-Hofoen smiled politely and picked his sunglasses off the table. The Diplomatic Force colonel went by the name of Quicktemper. It was the sort of title which the Culture found depressingly common amongst Affronter diplomats.
Fivetide had explained the problem was that certain sections of the Affront Old Guard were slightly ashamed their civilisation had a Diplomatic service at all and so tried to compensate for what they were worried might look to other species suspiciously like a symptom of weakness by ensuring that only the most aggressive and xenophobic Affronters became diplomats, to forestall anybody forming the dangerously preposterous idea the Affront were going soft.
"Go on, man! Have another throw! Just because you can't eat the damn stuff, you shouldn't let that keep you from joining in the fun!"
A harpoon thrown from the far side of the table sailed over the pit towards Fivetide's trencher. The Affronter intercepted it deftly and threw it back, laughing uproariously. The harpoon's owner ducked just in time and a passing drinks waiter got it in the sac with a yelp and a hiss of escaping gas.
Genar-Hofoen looked at the lumps of flesh lying on Fivetide's trencher. "Why can't I just harpoon stuff off your plate?" he asked.
Fivetide jerked upright. "Your neighbour's plate?" he bellowed. "That's cheating, Genar-Hofoen, or a particularly insulting invitation to a duel! Bugger me, what sort of manners
do they teach you in that Culture?"
"I do beg your pardon," Genar-Hofoen said.
"Given," Fivetide said, nodding his eye stalks, re-winding his harpoon cable, lifting a piece of meat from his own plate to his beak, reaching for a drink and drumming one tentacle on the table with everybody else as one of the scratchounds got another on its back and bit its neck out. "Good play! Good play! Seven; that's my dog! Mine; I bet on that! I did! Me! You see, Gastrees? I told you! Ha ha ha!"
Genar-Hofoen shook his head slightly, grinning to himself. In all his life he had never been anywhere as unequivocally alien as here, inside a giant torus of cold, compressed gas orbiting a black hole — itself in orbit around a brown dwarf body light years from the nearest star — its exterior studded with ships — most of them the jaggedly bulbous shapes of Affront craft — and full, in the main, of happy, space-faring Affronters and their collection of associated victim-species. Still, he had never felt so thoroughly at home.
— Genar-Hofoen; it's me, Scopell-Afranqui, said another voice in Genar-Hofoen's head. It was the module, speaking through the suit. ~ I've an urgent message.
— Can't it wait? Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ I'm kind of busy here with matters of excruciatingly correct dining etiquette.
— No, it can't. Can you get back here, please? Immediately.
— What? No, I'm not leaving. Good grief, are you mad? I only just got here.
— No you didn't; you left me eighty minutes ago and you're already on the main course at that animal circus dressed up as a meal; I can see what's going on relayed through that stupid suit-
— Typical! the suit interjected,
— Shut up, said the module. ~ Genar-Hofoen; are you coming back here now or not?
— Not.
— Well then, let me check out the communication priorities here… Okay. Now the current state of the-
"— bet, human-friend?" Fivetide said, slapping a tentacle on the. table in front of Genar-Hofoen.
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