Iain Banks - Matter by Banks Iain

Author:Banks, Iain
Language: eng
Format: epub

"I might call it any or all, sir, I'm none the wiser at those words."

"Holse, if you can't conduct yourself like a gentleman," Ferbin said firmly, "you'll eat with the other servants." Ferbin looked at Hyrlis. "I may have been too indulgent with him, sir. I apologise on his behalf and my own."

"No apology required, prince," Hyrlis said smoothly. "And this is my table, not yours. I'd have Holse here for what you call his

impertinence in any event. I am surrounded by too many people unwilling to call me on anything at all; a dissident voice is welcome."

Ferbin sat back, insulted.

"I believe that I am watched, Holse," Hyrlis said, "by devices too small to be seen with the human eye, even ones like mine, which are quite keen, if not as keen as they once were."

"Enemy spies, sir?" Holse asked. He glanced at Ferbin, who looked away ostentatiously.

"No, Holse," Hyrlis said. "Spies sent by my own people."

Holse nodded, though with a deep frown.

Hyrlis looked at Ferbin. "Prince, your own matter is of course of far greater importance; however, I think I ought to digress a little here, to explain myself and my situation."

Ferbin gave a curt nod.

"When I was...with you, amongst you, on the Eighth—advising your father, Ferbin..."

Hyrlis said, glancing to the prince but generally addressing both men, "I was employed—at the behest of the Nariscene—by the Culture, the mongrel pan-human and machine civilisation which is one of what you term the Optimae, those civilisations in the first rank of the unSublimed, non-elder groupings. I was an agent for the part of the Culture called Contact, which deals

with...foreign affairs, you might say. Contact is charged with discovering and interacting with other civilisations which are not yet part of the galactic community. I was not then with the more rarefied intelligence and espionage part of Contact coyly called Special

Circumstances, though I know that SC

thought at the time the specific part of Contact I represented was, arguably,

encroaching on their territory." Hyrlis smiled thinly. "Even galaxy-spanning anarchist Utopias of stupefying full-spectrum

civilisational power have turf wars within their unacknowledged militaries."

Hyrlis sighed. "I did, later, become part of Special Circumstances, a decision I look back on now with more regret than pride." His smile did, indeed, look sad. "When you leave the Culture—and people do, all the

time—you are made aware of certain

responsibilities you are deemed to have, should you venture into the kind of

civilisation that Contact might be interested in.

"I was missioned to do what I did by Contact, which had modelled the situation on the Eighth exhaustively, so that, when I passed on some strategic plan to King Hausk, or

suggested sabots and rifling to the royal armourers, it was with a very good and highly reliable idea of what the effects would be. In

theory, a reasonably well-read Culture citizen could do the same with no control, no

back-up and no idea what they were really doing. Or, worse, with a very good idea; they might want to be king, or emperor, or

whatever, and their knowledge would give them a chance of succeeding.

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