"His poor slave soul is at rest, then," Xoxarle boomed. "His tribe can ask for no more."

Horza refused to pause until they were halfway to station seven.

They sat in the foot tunnel, resting. The Idiran sat furthest down the tunnel, Horza across the tunnel from him and roughly six metres away, gun ready. Yalson was by his side.

"Horza," she said, looking at his suit and then at her own, "I think we could take the AG of my suit; it does detach. We could rig it up to yours. It might look a bit untidy, but it would work." She looked into his face. His eyes shifted from Xoxarle for a moment, then flicked back.

"I'm all right," he said. "You keep the AG." He nudged her gently with his free arm and lowered his voice. "You're carrying a bit more weight, after all." He grunted, then rubbed the side of his suit in faked pain when Yalson elbowed him hard enough to move him fractionally across the floor of the tunnel. "Ouch," he said.

"I wish I hadn't told you, now," Yalson said.

"Balveda?" Xoxarle said suddenly, turning his huge head slowly to look up the tunnel, past Horza and Yalson, over the pallet and the drone Unaha-Closp, past Wubslin — watching the mass sensor — and Aviger to where the Culture agent sat, her eyes closed, silent, against the wall.

"Section Leader?" Balveda said, opening her calm eyes, looking down the tunnel to the Idiran.

"The Changer says you are from the Culture. That is the part he has cast you in. He would have me believe you are an agent of espionage." Xoxarle put his head on one side, looking down the dark tube of tunnel at the woman sitting against the curved wall. "You seem, like me, to be a captive of this man. Do you tell me you are what he says you are?"

Balveda looked at Horza, then at the Idiran, her slow gaze lazy, almost indolent. "I'm afraid so, Section Leader," she said.

The Idiran moved his head from side to side, blinked his eyes, then rumbled, "Most strange. I cannot imagine why you should all be trying to trick me, or why this one man should have such a hold over all of you. Yet his own story I find scarcely credible. If he really is on our side then I have behaved in a way which may hinder the great cause, and perhaps even aid yours, woman, if you are who you say. Most strange.

"Keep thinking about it," Balveda drawled, then closed her eyes and put her head back against the tunnel wall again.

"Horza's on his own side, not anybody else's," Aviger said from further up the tunnel. He was speaking to the Idiran, but his gaze shifted to Horza at the end of his sentence, and he dropped his head, looking down at a container of food at his side and picking a last few crumbs from it.

"That is the way with all of your kind," Xoxarle said to the old man, who wasn't looking. "It is how you are made; you must all strive to claw your way over the backs of your fellow humans during the short time you are permitted in the universe, breeding when you can, so that the strongest strains survive and the weakest die. I would no more blame you for that than I would try to convert some non-sentient carnivore to vegetarianism. You are all on your own side. With us it is different." Xoxarle looked at Horza. "You must agree with that, Changer ally."

"You're different all right," Horza said. "But all I care about is you're fighting the Culture. You may be God's gift or plague in the end result, but what matters to me is that at the moment you're against her lot." Horza nodded at Balveda, who didn't open her eyes, but did smile.

"What a pragmatic attitude," Xoxarle said. Horza wondered if the others could hear the trace of humour in the giant's voice. "Whatever did the Culture do to you to make you hate it so?"

"Nothing to me," Horza said. "I just disagree with them."

"My," Xoxarle said, "you humans never cease to surprise me." He hunched suddenly, and a crackling, booming noise like rocks being crushed came from his mouth. His great body shuddered. Xoxarle turned his head away and spat onto the tunnel floor. He kept his head turned away while the humans looked at each other, wondering how badly injured the Idiran really was. Xoxarle became silent. He leaned over and looked at whatever he had spat up, made a distant, echoing sort of noise in his throat, then turned back to Horza. His voice was scratchy and hoarse when he spoke again. "Yes, Mr Changer, you are a strange fellow. Allow a little too much dissention in your ranks, mind you." Xoxarle looked up the tunnel to Aviger, who raised his head and glanced at the Idiran with a frightened expression.

"I get by," Horza told the section leader. He got to his feet, looking round the others and stretching his tired legs. "Time to go." He turned to Xoxarle. "Are you fit to walk?"

"Untie me and I could run too fast for you to escape, human," Xoxarle purred. He unfolded his huge frame from its squatting position. Horza looked up into the dark, broad V of the creature's face and nodded slowly.

"Just think about staying alive so I can take you back to the fleet, Xoxarle," Horza said. "The chasing and fighting are over. We're all looking for the Mind now."

"A poor hunt, human," Xoxarle said. "An ignominious end to the whole endeavour. You make me ashamed for you, but then, you are only human."

"Oh shut up and start walking," Yalson told the Idiran. She stabbed at buttons on her suit control unit and floated into the air, level with Xoxarle's head. The Idiran snorted and turned. He started to hobble off down the foot tunnel. One by one, they followed him.

Horza noticed the Idiran starting to tire after a few kilometres. The giant's steps became shorter; he moved the great keratinous plates of his shoulders more and more frequently, as though trying to relieve some ache within, and every so often his head shook, as if he was trying to clear it. Twice he turned and spat at the walls. Horza looked at the dripping patches of fluid: Idiran blood.

Eventually, Xoxarle stumbled, his steps veering to one side. Horza was walking behind him again, having had a spell on the pallet. He slowed down when he saw the Idiran start to sway, holding one hand up to let the others know, as well. Xoxarle made a low, moaning noise, half turned, then with a sideways stagger, the wires on his hobbled feet snapping tight and humming like strings on an instrument, he fell forward, crashing to the floor and lying still.

"Oh…" somebody said.

"Stay back," Horza said, then went carefully towards the long, inert body of the Idiran. He looked down at the great head, motionless on the tunnel floor. Blood oozed from under it, forming a pool. Yalson joined Horza, her gun trained on the fallen creature.

"Is he dead?" she asked. Horza shrugged. He knelt down and touched the Idiran's body with his bare hand, at a point near the neck where it was sometimes possible to sense the steady flow of blood inside, but there was nothing. He closed then opened one of the section leader's eyes.

"I don't think so." He touched the dark blood gathering in its pool. "Look's like he's bleeding badly, inside."

"What can we do?" Yalson said.

"Not a lot." Horza rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"What about some anti-coagulant?" Aviger said from the far side of the pallet, where Balveda sat and watched the scene in front of her with dark, calm eyes.

"Ours doesn't work on them," Horza said.

"Skinspray," Balveda said. They all looked at her. She nodded, looking at Horza. "If you have any medical alcohol and some skin-spray, make up an equal solution. If he's got digestive tract injuries, that might help him. If it's respiratory, he's dead." Balveda shrugged at Horza.

"Well, let's do something, rather than stand around here all day," Yalson said.

"It's worth a try," Horza said. "Better get him upright, if we want to pour the stuff down his throat."