"Your "Mr Adequate" seems remarkably unconcerned about the liberties we're taking with his train-set," the drone observed.

Horza looked round at the wreckage and debris scattered near the train, then shrugged and went back to tinkering with the helmet. "Maybe he's indifferent," he said.

"Of could it be he's enjoying all this?" Unaha-Closp said. Horza looked at it. The drone went on, "This place is a monument to death, after all. A sacred place. Perhaps it is as much an altar as a monument, and we are merely carrying out a service of sacrifice for the gods."

Horza shook his head. "I think they left the fuse out of your imagination circuits, machine," he said, and looked back at the helmet.

Unaha-Closp made a hissing noise and went to watch Wubslin, poking around inside the mass sensor.

"What have you got against machines, Horza?" Balveda said, interrupting her pacing to come and stand near by. She rubbed her hands on her nose and ears now and again. Horza sighed and put down the helmet.

"Nothing, Balveda, as long as they stay in their place."

Balveda made a snorting noise at that, then went on pacing. Yalson spoke from further up the ramp:

"Did you say something funny?"

"I said machines ought to stay in their place. Not the sort of remark that goes down well with the Culture."

"Yeah," Yalson said, still watching the Idiran. Then she looked down, at the scarred area on the front of her suit where it had been hit by a plasma bolt. "Horza?" she said. "Can we talk somewhere? Not here."

Horza looked up at her. "Of course," he said, puzzled. Wubslin replaced Yalson on the ramp. Yalson walked to where Unaha-Closp floated over Neisin, its lights dim; it held an injector in one hazy field extension.

"How is he?" she asked the machine. It turned its lights up.

"How does he look?" it said. Yalson and Horza said nothing. The drone let its lights fade again. "He might last a few more hours."

Yalson shook her head and headed for the tunnel entrance which led to the transit tube, followed by Horza. She stopped inside, just out of sight of the others, and turned to face the Changer. She seemed to search for words but could not find them; she shook her head again and took off her helmet, leaning back against the curved tunnel wall.

"What's the problem, Yalson?" he asked her. He tried to take her hand, but she crossed her arms. "You having second thoughts about going on with this?"

She shook her head. "No; I'm going on. I want to see this goddamned super-brain. I don't care who gets it, or if it gets blown up, but I want to find it."

"I didn't think you regarded it as that important."

"It's become important." She looked away, then back again, smiling uncertainly. "Hell, I'd come along anyway — just to try and keep you out of trouble."

"I thought maybe you'd gone off me a little lately," he said.

"Yeah," Yalson said. "Well, I haven't been… ah…" she sighed heavily. "What the hell."

"What?" Horza said. He saw her shrug. The small, shaved head dropped again, silhouetted against the distant light.

She shook her head. "Oh, Horza," she said, and gave a small, grunting laugh. "You're not going to believe this."

"Believe what?"

"I don't know that I should tell."

"Tell me," he said.

"I don't expect you to believe me; and if you do, I don't expect you to like it. Not all of it. I'm serious. Maybe I just shouldn't…" She sounded genuinely troubled. He laughed lightly.

"Come on, Yalson," he said. "You've said too much to stop now; you just said you weren't one for turning back. What is it?"

"I'm pregnant."

He thought he'd misheard at first, and was going to make a joke about what he thought he'd just heard, but some part of his brain played the sounds her voice had made back, double-checking, and he knew that that was exactly what she'd said. She was right. He didn't believe it. He couldn't.

"Don't ask me if I'm sure," Yalson said. She was looking down again, fiddling with her fingers and staring at them or the floor beyond in the darkness, her ungloved hands protruding nakedly from the suit arms and pressing against each other. "I'm sure." She looked at him, though he couldn't see her eyes, and she wouldn't be able to see his. "I was right, wasn't I? You don't believe me, do you? I mean, it is by you. That's why I'm telling you. I wouldn't say anything if it… if you weren't… if I just happened to be." She shrugged."… I thought maybe you'd guess when I asked about how much radiation we'd all absorbed… But now you're wondering how, aren't you?"

"Well," Horza said, clearing his throat and shaking his head, "it certainly shouldn't be possible. We're both… but we're from different species; it ought not to be possible."

"Well, there is an explanation," Yalson sighed, still looking at her fingers as they picked and kneaded at each other, "but I don't think you'll like that, either."

"Try me."

"It's…it's like this. My mother… my mother lived on a Rock. A travelling Rock, just one of the many, you know. One of the oldest; it had been… just tramping around the galaxy for maybe eight or nine thousand years, and-"

"Wait a minute," Horza said, "one of whose oldest?"

"… My dad was some… some man from a place, a planet the Rock stopped off at one time. My mother said she'd be back some time, but she never did go back. I told her I'd go back some time just to see him, if he's still alive… Pure sentimentalism, I guess, but I said I would and I will some time; if I live through this lot." She gave that same small half-laugh, half-grunt, and turned away from her picking fingers for a second to glance round the dark spaces of the station. Then her face again turned to the Changer, and her voice was suddenly urgent, almost pleading. "I'm only half Culture, by birth, Horza. I left the Rock soon as I was old enough to aim a gun properly; I knew the Culture wasn't the place for me. That's how I inherited the genofixing for trans-species mating. I never thought about it before. It's supposed to be deliberate, or at least you've got to stop thinking yourself into not getting pregnant, but it didn't work this time. Maybe I let my guard slip somehow. It wasn't deliberate, Horza, it really wasn't; it never occurred to me. It just happened. I-"

"How long have you known?" Horza asked quietly.

"Since on the CAT. We were still a few days out from this place. I can't remember exactly. I didn't believe it at first. I know it's true, though. Look" — she leaned closer to him, and the note of pleading was in her voice again — "I can abort it. Just by thinking about it I can get rid of it, if you want. Maybe I'd have done that already, but I know you've told me about not having any family, nobody to carry on your name, and I thought… well, I don't care about my name… I just thought you-" She broke off and suddenly put her head back and ran her fingers through her short hair.

"It's a nice thought, Yalson," he said. Yalson nodded silently and went back to picking her fingers again.

"Well, I'm giving you the choice, Horza," she said without looking at him. "I can keep it. I can let it grow. I can keep it at the stage it's at now… It's up to you. Maybe I just don't want to have to make the decision; I mean, maybe I'm not being all noble and self-sacrificing, but there it is. You decide. Fuck knows what sort of weird cross-breed I might have inside me, but I thought you ought to know. Because I like you, and… because… I don't know — because it was about time I did something for somebody else for a change." She shook her head again, and her voice was confused, apologetic, resigned, all at once. "Or maybe because I want to do something to please myself, as usual. Oh…"

He had started to put his arms out to her and edge closer. She suddenly came towards him, wrapping her arms tight round him. Their suits made the embrace cumbersome, and his back felt tight and strained, but he held her to him, and rocked her gently backwards and forwards.