Iain Banks: The Player of Games

Mawhrin-Skel was a more recent acquaintance. The irascible, ill-mannered little machine had arrived on Chiark Orbital only a couple of hundred days earlier; another untypical character attracted there by the world’s exaggerated reputation for eccentricity.

Mawhrin-Skel had been designed as a Special Circumstances drone for the Culture’s Contact section; effectively a military machine with a variety of sophisticated, hardened sensory and weapons systems which would have been quite unnecessary and useless on the majority of drones. As with all sentient Culture constructs, its precise character had not been fully mapped out before its construction, but allowed to develop as the drone’s mind was put together. The Culture regarded this unpredictable factor in its production of conscious machines as the price to be paid for individuality, but the result was that not every drone so brought into being was entirely suitable for the tasks it had initially been designed for.

Mawhrin-Skel was one such rogue drone. Its personality — it had been decided — wasn’t right for Contact, not even for Special Circumstances. It was unstable, belligerent and insensitive. (And those were only the grounds it had chosen to tell people it had failed on.) It had been given the choice of radical personality alteration, in which it would have had little or no say in its own eventual character, or a life outside Contact, with its personality intact but its weapons and its more complex communications and sensory systems removed to bring it down to something nearer the level of a standard drone.

It had, bitterly, chosen the latter. And it had made its way to Chiark Orbital, where it hoped it might fit in.

“Meatbrain,” Mawhrin-Skel told Chamlis Amalk-ney, and zoomed off towards the line of open windows. The older drone’s aura field flashed white with anger and a bright, rippling spot of rainbow light revealed that it was using its tight-beam transceiver to communicate with the departing machine. Mawhrin-Skel stopped in mid-air; turned. Gurgeh held his breath, wondering what Chamlis could have said, and what the smaller drone might say in reply, knowing that it wouldn’t bother to keep its remarks secret, as Chamlis had.

“What I resent,” it said slowly, from a couple of metres away, “is not what I have lost, but what I have gained, in coming — even remotely — to resemble fatigued, path-polished geriatrics like you, who haven’t even got the human decency to die when they’re obsolete. You’re a waste of matter, Amalk-ney.”

Mawhrin-Skel became a mirrored sphere, and in that ostentatiously uncommunicable mode swept out of the hall into the darkness.

“Cretinous whelp,” Chamlis said, fields frosty blue.

Boruelal shrugged. “I feel sorry for it.”

“I don’t,” Gurgeh said. “I think it has a wonderful time.” He turned to the professor. “When do I get to meet your young Stricken genius? Not hiding her away to train her, are you?”

“No, we’re just giving her time to adjust.” Boruelal picked at her teeth with the pointed end of the savoury stick. “From what I can gather the girl had rather a sheltered upbringing. Sounds like she hardly left the GSV; she must feel odd being here. Also, she isn’t here to do game-theory, Jernau Gurgeh, I’d better point that out. She’s going to study philosophy.”

Gurgeh looked suitably surprised.

“A sheltered upbringing?” Chamlis Amalk-ney said. “On a GSV?” Its gunmetal aura indicated puzzlement.

“She’s shy.”

“She’d have to be.”

“I must meet her,” said Gurgeh.

“You will,” Boruelal said. “Soon, maybe; she said she might come with me to Tronze for the next concert. Hafflis runs a game there, doesn’t he?”

“Usually,” Gurgeh agreed.

“Maybe she’ll play you there. But don’t be surprised if you just intimidate her.”

“I shall be the epitome of gentle good grace,” Gurgeh assured her.

Boruelal nodded thoughtfully. She gazed out over the party and looked distracted for a second as a large cheer sounded from the centre of the hall.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I think I detect a nascent commotion.” She moved away. Chamlis Amalk-ney shifted aside, to avoid being used as a table again; the professor took her glass with her.

“Did you meet Yay this morning?” Chamlis asked Gurgeh.

He nodded. “She had me dressed up in a suit, toting a gun and shooting at toy missiles which ‘explosively dismantled’ themselves.”

“You didn’t enjoy it.”

“Not at all. I had high hopes for that girl, but too much of that sort of nonsense and I think her intelligence will explosively dismantle.”

“Well, such diversions aren’t for everybody. She was just trying to be helpful. You’d said you were feeling restless, looking for something new.”

“Well, that wasn’t it,” Gurgeh said, and felt suddenly, inexplicably, saddened.

He and Chamlis watched as people began to move past them, heading towards the long line of windows which opened on to the terrace. There was a dull, buzzing sensation inside the man’s head; he had entirely forgotten that coming down from Sharp Blue required a degree of internal monitoring if you were to avoid an uncomfortable hangover. He watched the people pass with a slight feeling of nausea.

“Must be time for the fireworks,” Chamlis said.

“Yes… let’s get some fresh air, shall we?”

“Just what I need,” Chamlis said, aura dully red.

Gurgeh put his glass down, and together he and the old drone joined the flow of people spilling from the bright, tapestry-hung hall on to the floodlit terrace facing the dark lake.

Rain hit the windows with a noise like the crackling of the logs on the fire. The view from the house at Ikroh, down the steep wooded slope to the fjord and across it to the mountains on the other side, was warped and distorted by the water running down the glass, and sometimes low clouds flowed round the turrets and cupolas of Gurgeh’s home, like wet smoke.

Yay Meristinoux took a large wrought-iron poker from the hearth and, putting one booted foot up on the elaborately carved stone of the fire surround and one pale brown hand on the rope-like edge of the massive mantelpiece, stabbed at one of the spitting logs lying burning in the grate. Sparks flew up the tall chimney to meet the falling rain. Chamlis Amalk-ney was floating near the window, watching the dull grey clouds.

The wooden door set into one corner of the room swung open and Gurgeh appeared, bearing a tray with hot drinks. He wore a loose, light robe over dark, baggy trousers; slippers made small slapping noises on his feet as he crossed the room. He put the tray down, looked at Yay. “Thought of a move yet?”

Yay crossed over to look morosely at the game-board, shaking her head. “No,” she said. “I think you’ve won.”

“Look,” Gurgeh said, adjusting a few of the pieces. His hands moved quickly, like a magician’s, over the board, though Yay followed every move. She nodded.

“Yes, I see. But” —she tapped a hex Gurgeh had repositioned one of her pieces on, so giving her a potentially winning formation— “only if I’d double-secured that blocking piece two moves earlier.” She sat down on the couch, taking her drink with her. Raising her glass to the quietly smiling man on the opposite couch, she said, “Cheers. To the victor.”

“You almost won,” Gurgeh told her. “Forty-four moves; you’re getting very good.”

“Relatively,” Yay said, drinking. “Only relatively.” She lay back on the deep couch while Gurgeh put the pieces back to their starting positions and Chamlis Amalk-ney drifted over to float not-quite-between them. “You know,” Yay said, looking at the ornate ceiling, “I always like the way this house smells , Gurgeh.” She turned to look at the drone. “Don’t you, Chamlis?”