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"All I wanted to know was that there was a way out."
(Again the delay, the weight of time while his beamed words lanced beneath the matter-dimpled surface that was real space.)
"But I could have helped you," said the ship. "I thought it was a bad sign when you refused my aid. I began to think you had given up in your mind, if not on the board."
"I didn't want help, ship." He played with the Orbital bracelet, wondering absently if it portrayed any particular world, and if so, which. "I wanted hope."
"I see," the ship said, eventually.
"I wouldn't accept it," the drone said.
"You wouldn't accept what?" Gurgeh asked, looking up from a holo-displayed board.
"Za's invitation." The tiny machine floated closer; it had discarded its bulky disguise now they were back inside the module.
Gurgeh looked coldly at it. "I didn't notice it was addressed to you too." Shohobohaum Za had sent a message congratulating Gurgeh and inviting him out for an evening's entertainment.
"Well, it wasn't; but I'm supposed to monitor everything—"
"Are you really?" Gurgeh turned back to the holospread before him. "Well you can stay here and monitor whatever you like while I go out on the town with Shohobohaum Za tonight."
"You'll regret it," the drone told him. "You've been very sensible, staying in and not getting involved, but you'll suffer for it if you do start gallivanting."
" "Gallivanting"?" Gurgeh stared at the drone, realising only then how difficult it was to look something up and down when it was just a few centimetres high. "What are you, drone; my mother?"
"I'm just trying to be sensible about this," the machine said, voice rising. "You're in a strange society, you're not the most worldly-wise of people, and Za certainly isn't my idea of—"
"You opinionated box of junk!" Gurgeh said loudly, rising and switching off the holoscreen.
The drone jumped in mid-air; it backed off hastily. "Now, now, Jernau Gurgeh…"
"Don't you "Now, now" me, you patronising adding machine. If I want to take an evening off, I will. And quite frankly the thought of some human company for a change is looking more attractive all the time." He jabbed a finger at the machine. "Don't read any more of my mail, and don't bother about escorting Za and me this evening." He walked quickly past it, heading for his cabin. "Now, I'm going to take a shower; why don't you go watch some birds?"
The man left the module's lounge. The little drone hovered steadily in mid-air for a while. "Oops," it said to itself, eventually, then, with a shrug-like wobble, swooped away, fields vaguely rosy.
"Have some of this," Za said. The car swept along the city streets beneath the erubescent skies of dusk.
Gurgeh took the flask and drank.
"Not quite grif," Za told him, "but it does the job." He took the flask back while Gurgeh coughed a little. "Did you let that grif get to you at the ball?"
"No," Gurgeh admitted. "I bypassed it; wanted a clear head."
"Aw heck," Za said, looking downcast. "You mean I could have had more?" He shrugged, brightened, tapped Gurgeh on the elbow. "Hey; I never said; congratulations. On wi
"Thanks."
"That showed them. Wow, did you give them a shock." Za shook his head in admiration; his long brown hair swung across his loose tunic top like heavy smoke. "I had you filed as a prime-time loser, J-G, but you're some kind of showman." He winked one bright green eye at Gurgeh, and gri
Gurgeh looked uncertainly at Za's beaming face for a moment, then burst out laughing. He took the flask from Za's hand and put it to his lips.
"To the showmen," he said, and drank.
"Amen to that, my maestro."
The Hole had been on the outskirts of the city once, but now it was just another part of one more urban district. The Hole was a set of vast artificial caverns burrowed out of the chalk centuries ago to store natural gas in; the gas had long since run out, the city ran on other forms of energy, and the set of huge, linked caves had been colonised, first by Groasnachek's poor, then (by a slow process of osmosis and displacement, as though — gas or human — nothing ever really changed) by its criminals and outlaws, and finally, though not completely, by its effectively ghettoised aliens and their supporting cast of locals.
Gurgeh and Za's car drove into what had once been a massive above-ground gas-storage cylinder; it had become the housing for a pair of spiralling ramps taking cars and other vehicles down into and up out of the Hole. In the centre of the still mostly empty, ringingly echoing cylinder, a cluster of variously sized lifts slid up and down inside ramshackle frameworks of girders, tubing and beams.
The outer and i
They quit the car in a long, low, crowded tu
"What d'you think so far?" Za shouted back to Gurgeh.
"Crowded, isn't it?"
"You should see it on a holiday!"
Gurgeh looked round at the people. He felt ghostlike, invisible. Until now he'd been the centre of attention; a freak, stared and gawped and peered at, and kept entirely at arm's length. Now suddenly nobody gave a damn, hardly sparing him a second glance. They bumped into him, jostled him, shoved past him, brushed against him, all quite careless.
And so varied, even in this sickly, sea-green tu
They went down the warm tu
"This way," Za said. They wove their way through the narrow streets of the gallery surface until they came to the far wall, climbed some broad but rickety wooden steps, and approached a heavy wooden door guarded by a metal portcullis and a pair of lumberingly large figures; one Azadian male and another whose species Gurgeh couldn't identify. Za waved and, without either guard appearing to do anything, the portcullis rose, the door swung ponderously open, and he and Za left the echoing cave behind for the relative quietness of a dim, wood-lined, heavily carpeted tu