"For now, sir. I'll look at it later. But you really shouldn't go leaving it lying about. Don't do it again."

"Right! Right! Thank you!" Horza laughed and went off at a quick walk, onto the circular walkway and then to a toilet, just in case he was being watched. He washed his face and hands, listened to a drunk woman singing somewhere in the echoing room, then left by another exit and walked round to another terrace, where he got something else to eat and had a drink. He bribed his way into a different terrace again, this one even more expensive than the one he had been on originally, because it was next to the one which held Wilgre's concubines. A soft wall of shining black material had been erected at the rear and sides of their terrace to keep out the nearer eyes, but their body scent wafted strongly over the terrace Horza now found himself on. Genofixed before conception not only to be stunningly attractive to a wide variety of humanoid males, the females in the harem also had highly accentuated aphrodisiac pheromones. Before Horza knew what was happening he had an erection and had started to sweat again. Most of the men and women around him were in a state of obvious sexual arousal, and those not plugged into the game on some sort of exotic double-fix were engaged in sexual foreplay or actual intercourse. Horza made his immune glands start up again, and walked stiffly to the front of the terrace, where five couches had been vacated by two males and three females, who were rolling around on the ground in front, just behind the restraining barrier. Clothes lay scattered on the terrace floor. Horza sat on one of the five free couches. A female head, beaded with sweat, appeared from the tangle of heaving bodies long enough to look at Horza and breathe, "Feel free; and if you would like to…" Then her eyes rolled upwards and she moaned. Her head disappeared again.

Horza shook his head, swore and made his way out of the terrace. His attempt to recover the money he had spent bribing his way in was met with a pitying laugh.

Horza ended up sitting on a stool in front of a combined bar and betting stall. He ordered a drug bowl and made a small bet on Kraiklyn to win the next hand, while his body gradually freed itself of the effects of the concubines" doctored sweat glands. His pulse lowered and his breathing shallowed; perspiration stopped rolling down his brow. He sipped his drug bowl and sniffed the fumes, while watching Kraiklyn lose first one and then another hand, though in the first one he pulled out early enough not to lose a Life. Nevertheless, he was down to one Life now. It was possible for a Damage player to gamble his own life if he had no other remaining behind him, but it was a rare thing, and in games where the very best met hopefuls, as in this one, the Ishlorsinami tended to forbid it.

The captain of the Clear Air Turbulence was taking no chances. He dropped out of every game before he could lose a Life, obviously waiting for a hand that would be almost unbeatable before gambling for what might be the last time in the game. Horza ate. Horza drank. Horza sniffed. Sometimes he tried to look over at the terrace he had been on at first, where the bored-looking woman was, but he couldn't see for the lights. Now and again he looked up at the fighting animals on the trapezes. They were tired now, and injured. The elaborate choreography of their earlier movements was gone, and they were reduced to hanging grimly onto their trapeze with one limb and striking out at each other with the other clawed arm whenever they happened to come close enough. Drops of white blood fell like sparse snow and settled on an invisible force field twenty metres beneath them.

Gradually the Lives died. The game went on. Time, according to who you were, dragged or flashed by. The price of drinks and drugs and food went up slowly as the destruction time crept closer. Through the still transparent dome of the old arena the lights of departing shuttles blazed now and again. A fight broke out between two punters at the bar. Horza got up and moved away before the security guards came to break it up.

Horza counted his money. He had two Aoish credit Tenths left, plus some money credited to the negotiable cards, which were becoming harder and harder to use as the accepting computers in the Orbital's financial network were closed down.

He leant on a restraining bar on a circular walkway, watching the game progress on the table below. Wilgre was leading; the Suut was just behind. They had both lost the same number of Lives, but the blue giant had more money. Two of the hopefuls had left the game, one after trying unsuccessfully to persuade the officiating Ishlorsinami that he could afford to gamble with his own life. Kraiklyn was still in there; but, from the close-up of his face which Horza caught on a monitor screen in a drug bar he passed, the Man was finding the going hard.

Horza toyed with one of the Aoish credit Tenths, wishing the game would end, or at least that Kraiklyn would get put out. The coin stuck to his hand, and he looked down into it. It was like looking into a tiny, infinite tube, lit from the very bottom. By bringing it up to your eye, with the other closed, you could experience vertigo.

The Aoish were a banker species, and the credits were their greatest invention. They were just about the only universally acceptable medium of exchange in existence, and each one entitled the holder to convert a coin into either a given weight of any stable element, an area on a free Orbital, or a computer of a given speed and capacity. The Aoish guaranteed the conversion and never defaulted, and although the rate of exchange could sometimes vary to a greater extent than was officially allowed for — as it had during the Idiran-Culture war — on the whole the real and theoretical value of the currency remained predictable enough for it to be a safe, secure hedge against uncertain times, rather than a speculator's dream. Rumour — as ever, contrary enough to be suspiciously believable — had it that the group in the galaxy which possessed the greatest hoard of the coins was the Culture; the most militantly unmoneyed society on the civilised scene. Horza didn't really believe that rumour either, though; in fact he thought that it was just the sort of rumour the Culture would spread about itself.

He pushed the coins away into a pocket inside his blouse as he saw Kraiklyn reaching to the centre of the game table and toss some coins into the large pile already there. Watching carefully now, the Changer made his way round to the nearest money-changer's bar, got eight Hundredths for his single Tenth (an exorbitant rate of commission, even by Vavatch standards) and used some of the change to bribe his way into a terrace with some unoccupied couches. There he plugged into Kraiklyn's thoughts.

Who are you? The question leapt out at him, into him.

The sensation was one of vertigo, a stunning dizziness, a vastly magnified equivalent of the disorientation which sometimes affects the eyes when they fasten on a simple and regular pattern, and the brain mistakes its distance from that pattern, the false focus seeming to pull at the eyes, muscles against nerves, reality against assumptions. His head did not swim; it seemed to sink, foundering, struggling.

Who are you? (Who am I?) Who are you?

Slam, slam, slam: the sound of the barrage falling, the sound of doors closing; attack and incarceration, explosion and collapse together.

Just a little accident. A slight mistake. One of those things. A game of Damage, and a high-tech impressionist… unfortunate combination. Two harmless chemicals which, when mixed-… Feedback, a howl like pain, and something breaking…

A mind between mirrors. He was drowning in his own reflection (something breaking), falling through. One fading part of him — the part which didn't sleep? Yes? No? — screamed from down the deep, dark pit, as it fell: Changer… Changer… Change-… (eee)…