There were partnerships which were intended to last, however, and one of the ways that certain couples chose to emphasise their co-dependence was by synchronising their sex-changes and at different points playing both parts in the sexual act. A couple would have a child, then the man would become female and the woman would become male, and they would have another child. A more sophisticated version of this was possible due to the amount of control over one’s reproductive system which still further historic genetic tinkering had made possible.
It was possible for a Culture female to become pregnant, but then, before the fertilised egg had transferred from her ovary to the womb, begin the slow change to become a man. The fertilised egg did not develop any further, but neither was it necessarily flushed away or reabsorbed. It could be held, contained, put into a kind of suspended animation so that it did not divide any further, but waited, still inside the ovary. That ovary, of course, became a testicle, but - with a bit of cellular finessing and some intricate plumbing - the fertilised egg could remain safe, viable and unchanging in the testicle while that organ did its bit in inseminating the woman who had been a man and whose sperm had done the original fertilising. The man who had been a woman then changed back again. If the woman who had been a man also delayed the development of her fertilised egg, then it was possible to synchronise the growth of the two fetuses and the birth of the babies.
To some people in the Culture this - admittedly rather long-winded and time-consuming - process was quite simply the most beautiful and perfect way for two people to express their love for one another. To others it was slightly gross and, well, tacky.
The odd thing was that until he’d met and fallen in love with Dajeil, Genar-Hofoen had been firmly of the latter opinion. He’d decided twenty years earlier, before he was even fully sexually mature and really knew his own mind about most things, that he was going to stay male all his life. He could see that being able to change sex was useful and that some people would even find it exciting, but he thought it was weak, somehow.
But then Dajeil had changed Byr’s mind.
They had met aboard the General Contact Unit Recent Convert.
She was approaching the end of a twenty-five-year Contact career, he just starting a ten-year commitment which he might or might not request to extend when the time came. He had been the rake, she the unavailable older woman. He had decided when he’d joined Contact that he’d try to bed as many women as possible, and from the first had set about doing just that with a single-minded determination and dedication many women found highly fetching just by itself.
Then on the Recent Convert he cut his usual swathe through the female half of the ship’s human crew, but was brought to a sudden stop by Dajeil Gelian.
It wasn’t that she wouldn’t sleep with him - there had been lots of women he’d asked who’d refused him, for a variety of reasons, and he’d never felt any resentment towards them or been any less likely to eventually count them as friends than the women he had made love to - it was that she told him she did find him attractive and ordinarily would have invited him to her bed, but wasn’t going to because he was so promiscuous. He’d found this a slightly preposterous reason, but had just shrugged and got on with life.
They became friends; good friends. They got on brilliantly; she became his best friend. He kept expecting that this friendship would as a matter of course include sex - even if it was just once - but it didn’t. It seemed so obvious to him, so natural and normal and right that it should. Not falling into bed together after some wonderfully enjoyable social occasion or sports session or just a night’s drinking seemed positively perverse to him.
She told him he was destroying himself with his licentiousness. He didn’t understand her. She was destroying him, in a way; he was still seeing other women but he was spending so much time with her - because they were such friends, but also because she had become a challenge and he had decided he would win her, whatever it took - that his usual packed schedule of seductions, affairs and relationships had suffered terribly; he wasn’t able to concentrate properly on all these other women who were, or ought to be demanding his attention.
She told him he spread himself too thinly. He wasn’t really destroying himself, he was stopping himself from developing. He was still in a sort of childish state, a boy-like phase where numbers mattered more than anything, where obsessive collecting, taking, enumerating, cataloguing all spoke of a basic immaturity. He could never grow and develop as a human being until he went beyond this infantile obsession with penetration and possession.
He told her he didn’t want to get beyond this stage; he loved it. Anyway, even though he loved it and wouldn’t care if he remained promiscuous until he was too old to do it at all, the chances were that he would change, sometime, eventually, over the course of the next three centuries or so of life which he could expect . . . There was plenty of time to do all this damned growing and developing. It would take care of itself. He wasn’t going to try and force the pace. If all this sexual activity was something he had to get out of his system before he could properly mature, then she had a moral duty to help him get rid of it as quickly as possible, starting right now . . .
She pushed him away, as ever. He didn’t understand, she told him. It wasn’t a finite supply of promiscuity he was draining, it was an ever-replenishing fixation that was eating up his potential for future personal growth. She was the still point in his life he needed, or at least a still point; he would probably need many more in his life, she had no illusions about that. But, for now, she was it. She was the rock the river of his turbulent passion had to break around. She was his lesson.
They both specialised in the same area; exobiology. He listened to her talk sometimes and wondered whether it was possible to feel more truly alien towards another being than it was to someone of one’s own species who ought to think in an at least vaguely similar way, but instead thought utterly differently. He could learn about an alien species, study them, get under their skin, under their carapaces, inside their spines or their membranes or whatever else you had to penetrate (ha!) to get to know them, get to understand them, and he could always, eventually, do that; he could start to think like them, start to feel things the way they would, anticipate their reactions to things, make a decent guess at what they were thinking at any given moment. It was an ability he was proud of.
Just by being so different from the creature you were studying you started out at a sufficiently great angle, it seemed to him, to be able to make that penetration and get inside their minds. With somebody who was ninety-nine per cent the same as you, you were too close sometimes. You couldn’t draw far enough away from them to come in at a steep enough angle; you just slid off, every time in a succession of glancing contacts. No getting through. Frustration upon frustration.
Then a post had come up on a world called Telaturier. A long-term situation, spending anything up to five years with an aquatic species called the ’Ktik which the Culture wanted to help develop. It was the sort of non-ship-based Contact post people were often offered at the end of their career; Dajeil was regarded as a natural for it. It would mean one, maybe two people staying on the planet, otherwise alone save for the ’Ktik, for all that time. There would be the occasional visit from others, but little time off and no extended holidays; the whole point was to establish a long-term personal relationship with ’Ktik individuals. It wasn’t something to be entered into lightly; it would mean commitment. Dajeil asked to be considered for the post and was accepted.
Byr couldn’t believe Dajeil was leaving the Recent Convert. He told her she was doing it to annoy him. She told him he was being ridiculous. And unbelievably self-centred. She was doing it because it was an important job and it was something she felt she’d be good at. It was also something she was ready for now; she had done her bit scudding round the galaxy in GCUs and enjoyed every moment, but now she had changed and it was time to take on something more long-term. She would miss him, and she h
oped he would miss her - though he certainly wouldn’t miss her for as long as he claimed he would, or even as long as he thought he would - but it was time to move on, time to do something different. She was sorry she hadn’t been able to stick around longer, being his still point, but that was just the way it was, and this was too great an opportunity to miss.
Later, he could never remember exactly when he’d made the decision to go with her, but he did. Perhaps he had started to believe some of the things she’d been telling him, but he too just felt that it was time to do something different, even if he had only been in Contact for a short while.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever done, harder than any seduction (with the possible exception of hers). To start with, he had to convince her it was a good idea. She wasn’t even initially flattered, not for a second. It was a terrible idea, she told him. He was too young, too inexperienced, it was far, far too early in his Contact stint. He wasn’t impressing her; he was being stupid. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t sensible, it wasn’t flattering, it wasn’t practical, it was just idiotic. And if by some miracle they did let him go along with her, he needn’t assume that just making this great commitment would ensure she’d sleep with him.
This didn’t prove anything except that he was as foolish as he was vain.
III
The General Contact Unit Grey Area didn’t hold with avatars; it spoke through a slaved drone. ‘Young lady--’
‘Don’t you “young lady” me in that patronising tone!’ Ulver Seich said, putting her hands on her suited, gem-encrusted hips. She still had the suit helmet on, though with the visor plate hinged up. They were in the GCU’s hangar space with a variety of modules, satellites and assorted paraphernalia. It looked like the space was fairly crowded at the best of times, but it was even more cluttered now with the small module that had belonged to the ROU Frank Exchange of Views sitting in it.
‘Ms Seich,’ the drone purred on, unaffected. ‘I was not supposed to pick up you or your colleague Dn Churt Lyne. I have done so because you were effectively adrift in the middle of a war zone. If you really insist--’
‘We weren’t adrift!’ Ulver said, waving her arms around and pointing back at the module. ‘We were in that! It’s got engines, you know!’
‘Yes, very slow ones. I did say effectively adrift.’ The ship-slaved drone, a casingless assemblage of components floating at head height, turned to the drone Churt Lyne. ‘Dn Churt Lyne. You too are welcome. Would it be possible for you to attempt to persuade your colleague Ms Seich--’
‘And don’t talk about me as if I’m not here either!’ Ulver said, stamping one foot. The deck under Genar-Hofoen’s feet resounded.
He had never been more glad to see a GCU. Release from that damned module and Ulver Seich’s abrasive moodiness. Bliss. The Grey Area had welcomed him first, he’d noticed.
Finally he was back on course. From here to the Sleeper, get the job done and then - if the war wasn’t totally fucking things up - off for some R&R somewhere while things were settled. He still found it hard to believe the Affront had actually declared war on the Culture, but assuming they really had then - once it was all over and the Affront had been put in their place - Culture people with Affront experience would be needed to help manage the peace and the Culturisation of the Affront. In a way he would be sorry to see it; he liked them the way they were. But if they were crazy enough to take on the Culture . . . maybe they did need teaching a lesson. A bit of enforced niceness might do them some good.
They weren’t going to like it though, because it would be a niceness that was enforced leniently, patiently and gracefully, with the sort of unflappable self-certainty the Culture couldn’t help displaying when all its statistics proved that it really was doing the right thing. Probably the Affront would rather have been pulverised and then dictated to. Anyway, whatever else happened between now and then, Genar-Hofoen was sure they’d give a good account of themselves.
Ulver Seich was doing not badly in that line herself. Now she was demanding she and the drone be put back in the module immediately and allowed to continue on their way. Given that the first thing she’d done when the Grey Area had contacted them was demand to be rescued and taken aboard at once, this was a little cheeky, but the girl obviously didn’t see it that way.
‘This is piracy!’ she hollered.
‘Ulver . . .’ the drone Churt Lyne said calmly.
‘And don’t you go taking its side!’
‘I’m not taking its side, I’m just--’
‘You are so!’
The argument went on. The ship’s slave-drone looked from the girl to the elderly drone and then back again. It rose once in the air fractionally, then settled back down again. It swivelled to Genar-Hofoen. ‘Excuse me,’ it said quietly.
Genar-Hofoen nodded.
The drone Churt Lyne was cut off in mid-sentence and floated gently down to the floor of the hangar. Ulver Seich scowled, furious. Then she understood. She turned on the slave-drone, whirling round and jabbing a finger at it. ‘How da--!’
The visor plate of her suit clanked shut; her suit powered down to statue-like immobility. The jewelled face plate sparkled in the hangar’s lights. Genar-Hofoen thought he could hear some distant, muffled shouting from inside the girl’s suit.
‘Ms Seich,’ the drone said. ‘I know you can hear me in there. I’m terribly sorry to be so impolite, but I regret to say I was finding these exchanges somewhat tedious and unproductive. The fact is that you are now entirely in my power, as I hope this little demonstration proves. You can accept this and pass the next few days in relative comfort or refuse to accept this and either be locked up, followed by a drone intervention team or drugged to prevent you getting into mischief. I assure you that in any other circumstance save that of war I would happily consign you and your colleague to your module and let you do as you wished. However, as long as I am not called upon to perform any overtly military duties, you are almost certainly much safer with me than you are drifting along - or even purposefully moving along - in a small, unarmed and all but defenceless module which, I would beg you to believe, could nevertheless all too easily be mistaken for a munition or some sort of hostile craft by somebody inclined towards the reconnaissance-by-fire approach.’
Genar-Hofoen could see the girl’s suit shaking; it started to rock from side to side. She must be throwing herself around inside it as best she could. The suit came close to overbalancing and falling. The little slave-drone extended a blue field to steady it. Genar-Hofoen wondered how strong the urge had been to just let it fall.
‘If I am called upon to lend my weight to the proceedings, I shall let you go,’ the ship’s drone continued. ‘Likewise, once I have discharged my duty to Mr Genar-Hofoen and the Special Circumstances section, you will, I imagine, be free to leave. Thank you for listening.’
Churt Lyne bobbed into the air and continued where it had left off. ‘--easonable for once in your pampered bloody life . . . !’ then its voice trailed away. It gave a wonderful impression of being confused, turning this way and that a couple of times.
Ulver’s face plate came up. Her face was pale, her lips compressed into a line. She was silent for a while. Eventually she said, ‘You are a very rude ship. You had better hope you never have cause to call upon the hospitality of Phage Rock.’
‘If that is the price of your acquiescence to my entirely reasonable requests, then, young lady, you have a deal.’
‘And you’d better have some decent accommodation aboard this heap of junk,’ she said, jabbing a thumb at Genar-Hofoen. ‘I’m fed up inhaling this guy’s testosterone.’
IV
He wore her down. There was a half-year wait between her being accepted for the post on Telaturier and actually taking it up. It took him almost all that time to talk her round. Finally, a month before the ship would stop at Telaturier to deposit her there, she agreed that he could ask Contact if he could go with her. He suspected that she only did so to get him to
shut up and stop annoying her; she didn’t imagine for a moment that he’d be accepted too.
He dedicated himself to arguing his case. He learned all he could about Telaturier and the ’Ktik; he reviewed the exobiological work he’d done until now and worked out how to emphasise the aspects of it that related to the post on Telaturier. He built up an argument that he was all the more suited to this sort of stoic, sedentary post just because he had been so frenetic and busy in the past; he was, well, not burnt-out, but fully sated. This was exactly the right time to slow down, draw breath, calm down. This situation was perfect for him, and he for it.
He set to work. He talked to the Recent Convert itself, a variety of other Contact craft, several interested drones specialising in human psychovaluation and a human selection board. It was working. He wasn’t meeting with unanimous approval - it was about fifty-fifty, with the Recent Convert leading the No group - but he was building support.
In the end it came down to a split decision and the casting vote was held by the GSV Quietly Confident, the Recent Convert’s home craft. By that time they were back aboard the Quietly Confident, hitching a lift towards the region of space where Telaturier lay. An avatar of the Quietly Confident, a tall, distinguished man, spoke at length to him about his desire to go with Dajeil to Telaturier. He left saying that there would be a second interview.
Genar-Hofoen, happy to be back on a ship with a hundred million females aboard, though not able to throw himself into the task of bedding as many of them as possible in the two weeks available, nevertheless did his best. His fury at discovering, one morning, that the agile, willowy blonde he had spent the night with was another avatar of the ship was, by all accounts, a sight to behold.
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