"You are a throwback," Chamlis told him. "The game's the thing. That's the conventional wisdom, isn't it? The fun is what matters, not the victory. To glory in the defeat of another, to need that purchased pride, is to show you are incomplete and inadequate to start with."

Gurgeh nodded slowly. "So they say. So everybody else believes."

"But not you?"

"I…" The man seemed to have difficulty finding the right word. "I… exult when I win. It's better than love, it's better than sex or any glanding; it's the only instant when I feel…" — he shook his head, his mouth tightened "… real," he said. "Me. The rest of the time… I feel a bit like that little ex-Special Circumstances drone, Mawhrin-Skel; as though I've had some sort of… birthright taken away from me."

"Ah, is that the affinity you feel?" Chamlis said coldly, aura to match. "I wondered what you saw in that appalling machine."

"Bitterness," Gurgeh said, sitting back again. "That's what I see in it. It has novelty value, at least." He got up and went to the fire, prodding at the logs with the wrought-iron poker and placing another piece of wood on, handling the log awkwardly with heavy tongs.

"This is not a heroic age," he told the drone, staring at the fire. "The individual is obsolete. That's why life is so comfortable for us all. We don't matter, so we're safe. No one person can have any real effect any more."

"Contact uses individuals," Chamlis pointed out. "It puts people into younger societies who have a dramatic and decisive effect on the fates of entire meta-civilisations. They're usually «mercenaries», not Culture, but they're human, they're people."

"They're selected and used. Like game-pieces. They don't count." Gurgeh sounded impatient. He left the tall fireplace, returned to the couch. "Besides, I'm not one of them."

"So have yourself stored until a more heroic age does arrive."

"Huh," Gurgeh said, sitting again. "If it ever does. It would seem too much like cheating, anyway."

The drone Chamlis Amalk-ney listened to the rain and the fire. "Well," it said slowly, "if it's novelty value you want, Contact — never mind SC — are the people to go to."

"I have no intention of applying to join Contact," Gurgeh said, coming back to the couch. "Being cooped up in a GCU with a bunch of gung-ho do-gooders searching for barbarians to teach is not my idea of either enjoyment or fulfilment."

"I didn't mean that. I meant that Contact had the best Minds, the most information. They might be able to come up with some ideas. Any time I've ever been involved with them they've got things done. It's a last resort, mind you."

"Why?"

"Because they're tricky. Devious. They're gamblers, too; and used to winning."

"Hmm," Gurgeh said, and stroked his dark beard. "I wouldn't know how to go about it," he said.

"Nonsense," Chamlis said. "Anyway; I have my own connections there; I'd—"

A door slammed. "Holy shit it's cold out there!" Yay burst into the room, shaking herself. Her arms were clenched across her chest and her thin shorts were stuck to her thighs; her whole body was quivering. Gurgeh got up from the couch.

"Come here to the fire," Chamlis told the girl. Yay stood shivering in front of the window, dripping water. "Don't just stand there," Chamlis told Gurgeh. "Fetch a towel."

Gurgeh looked critically at the machine, then left the room.

By the time he came back, Chamlis had persuaded Yay to kneel in front of the fire; a bowed field over the nape of her neck held her head down to the heat, while another field brushed her hair. Little drops of water fell from her drenched curls to the hearth, hissing on the hot flag stones.

Chamlis took the towel from Gurgeh's hands, and the man watched as the machine moved the towel over the young woman's body. He looked away at one point, shaking his head, and sat down on the couch again, sighing.

"Your feet are filthy," he told the girl.

"Ah, it was a good run though," Yay laughed from beneath the towel.

With much blowing and whistling and "brr-brrs', Yay was dried. She kept the towel wrapped round her and sat, legs drawn up, on the couch. "I'm famished," she announced suddenly. "Mind if I make myself something to-?"

"Let me," Gurgeh said. He went through the corner door, reappearing briefly to drape Yay's hide trous over the same chair she'd left the waistcoat on.

"What were you talking about?" Yay asked Chamlis.

"Gurgeh's disaffection."

"Do any good?"

"I don't know," the drone admitted.

Yay retrieved her clothes and dressed quickly. She sat in front of the fire for a while, watching it as the day's light faded and the room lights came up.

Gurgeh brought a tray in loaded with sweetmeats and drinks.

Once Yay and Gurgeh had eaten, the three of them played a complicated card-game of the type Gurgeh liked best; one that involved bluff and just a little luck. They were in the middle of the game when friends of Yay's and Gurgeh's arrived, their aircraft touching down on a house lawn Gurgeh would rather they hadn't used. They came in bright and noisy and laughing; Chamlis retreated to a corner by the window.

Gurgeh played the good host, keeping his guests supplied with refreshments. He brought a fresh glass to Yay where she stood, listening with a group of others, to a couple of people arguing about education.

"Are you leaving with this lot, Yay?" Gurgeh leant back against the tapestried wall behind, dropping his voice a little so that Yay had to turn away from the discussion, to face him.

"Maybe," she said slowly. Her face glowed in the light of the fire. "You're going to ask me to stay again, aren't you?" She swilled her drink around in her glass, watching it.

"Oh," Gurgeh said, shaking his head and looking up at the ceiling, "I doubt it. I get bored going through the same old moves and responses."

Yay smiled. "You never know," she said. "One day I might change my mind. You shouldn't let it bother you, Gurgeh. It's almost an honour."

"You mean to be such an exception?"

"Mmm." She drank.

"I don't understand you," he told her.

"Because I turn you down?"

"Because you don't turn anybody else down."

"Not so consistently." Yay nodded, frowning at her drink.

"So; why not?" There. He'd finally said it.

Yay pursed her lips. "Because," she said, looking up at him, "it matters to you."

"Ah," he nodded, looking down, rubbing his beard. "I should have feigned indifference." He looked straight at her. "Really, Yay."

"I feel you want to… take me," Yay said, "like a piece, like an area. To be had; to be… possessed." Suddenly she looked very puzzled. "There's something very… I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You've never changed sex, have you?" He shook his head. "Or slept with a man?" Another shake. "I thought so," Yay said. "You're strange, Gurgeh." She drained her glass.

"Because I don't find men attractive?"

"Yes; you're a man!" She laughed.

"Should I be attracted to myself, then?"

Yay studied him for a while, a small smile flickering on her face. Then she laughed and looked down. "Well, not physically, anyway." She grinned at him and handed him her empty glass. Gurgeh refilled it; she returned back to the others.

Gurgeh left Yay arguing about the place of geology in Culture education policy, and went to talk to Ren Myglan, a young woman he'd been hoping would call in that evening.

One of the people had brought a pet; a proto-sentient Styglian enumerator which padded round the room, counting under its slightly fishy breath. The slim, three-limbed animal, blond-haired and waist-high, with no discernible head but lots of meaningful bulges, started counting people; there were twenty-three in the room. Then it began counting articles of furniture, after which it concentrated on legs. It wandered up to Gurgeh and Ren Myglan. Gurgeh looked down at the animal peering at his feet and making vague, swaying, pawing motions at his slippers. He tapped it with his toe. "Say six," the enumerator muttered, wandering off. Gurgeh went on talking to the woman.