Genar-Hofoen looked at the lumps of flesh lying on Fivetide's trencher. "Why can't I just harpoon stuff off your plate?" he asked.

Fivetide jerked upright. "Your neighbour's plate?" he bellowed. "That's cheating, Genar-Hofoen, or a particularly insulting invitation to a duel! Bugger me, what sort of manners do they teach you in that Culture?"

"I do beg your pardon," Genar-Hofoen said.

"Given," Fivetide said, nodding his eye stalks, re-winding his harpoon cable, lifting a piece of meat from his own plate to his beak, reaching for a drink and drumming one tentacle on the table with everybody else as one of the scratchounds got another on its back and bit its neck out. "Good play! Good play! Seven; that's my dog! Mine; I bet on that! I did! Me! You see, Gastrees? I told you! Ha ha ha!"

Genar-Hofoen shook his head slightly, grinning to himself. In all his life he had never been anywhere as unequivocally alien as here, inside a giant torus of cold, compressed gas orbiting a black hole — itself in orbit around a brown dwarf body light years from the nearest star — its exterior studded with ships — most of them the jaggedly bulbous shapes of Affront craft — and full, in the main, of happy, space-faring Affronters and their collection of associated victim-species. Still, he had never felt so thoroughly at home.

— Genar-Hofoen; it's me, Scopell-Afranqui, said another voice in Genar-Hofoen's head. It was the module, speaking through the suit. ~ I've an urgent message.

— Can't it wait? Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ I'm kind of busy here with matters of excruciatingly correct dining etiquette.

— No, it can't. Can you get back here, please? Immediately.

— What? No, I'm not leaving. Good grief, are you mad? I only just got here.

— No you didn't; you left me eighty minutes ago and you're already on the main course at that animal circus dressed up as a meal; I can see what's going on relayed through that stupid suit-

— Typical! the suit interjected,

— Shut up, said the module. ~ Genar-Hofoen; are you coming back here now or not?

— Not.

— Well then, let me check out the communication priorities here… Okay. Now the current state of the-

"— bet, human-friend?" Fivetide said, slapping a tentacle on the. table in front of Genar-Hofoen.

"Eh? A bet?" Genar-Hofoen said, quickly replaying in his head what the Affronter had been saying.

"Fifty sucks on the next from the red door!" Fivetide roared, glancing at his fellow officers on both sides.

Genar-Hofoen slapped the table with his hand. "Not enough!" he shouted, and felt the suit amplify his translated voice accordingly. Several eye stalks turned in his direction. "Two hundred on the blue hound!"

Fivetide, who was from a family of the sort that would describe itself as comfortably off rather than rich, and to whom fifty suckers was half a month's disposable income, flinched microscopically, then slapped another tentacle down on top of the first one. "Scumpouch alien!" he shouted theatrically. "You imply that a measly two hundred is a fit bet for an officer of my standing? Two-fifty!"

"Five hundred!" Genar-Hofoen yelled, slapping down his other arm.

"Six hundred!" Fivetide hollered, thumping down a third limb. He looked at the others, exchanging knowing looks and sharing in the general laughter; the human had been out-limbed.

Genar-Hofoen twisted in his seat and brought his left leg up to stamp its booted heel onto the table surface. "A thousand, damn your cheap hide!"

Fivetide flicked a fourth tentacle onto the limbs already on the table in front of Genar-Hofoen, which was starting to look crowded. "Done!" the Affronter roared. "And think yourself lucky I took pity on you to the extent of not upping the bet again and having you unseat yourself into the debris-pit, you microscopic cripple!" Fivetide laughed louder and looked round the other officers near by. They laughed too, some of the juniors dutifully, some of the others — friends and close colleagues of Fivetide's — overloudly, with a sort of vicarious desperation; the bet was of a size that could get the average fellow into terrible trouble with his mess, his bank, his parents, or all three. Others again looked on with the sort of expression Genar-Hofoen had learned to recognise as a smirk.

Fivetide enthusiastically refilled every nearby drinking bulb and started the whole table signing the Let's-bake-the-pit-master-over-a-slow-fire-if-he-doesn't-get-a-move-on song.

— Right, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Module; you were saying?

— That was a rather intemperate bet, if I may say so, Genar-Hofoen. A thousand! Fivetide can't afford that sort of money if he loses, and we don't want to be seen to be too profligate with our funds if he wins.

Genar-Hofoen permitted himself a small grin. What a perfect way of annoying everybody. - Tough, he thought. So; the message?

— I think I can squirt it through to what passes as a brain in your suit-

— I heard that, said the suit.

— without our friends picking it up, Genar-Hofoen, the module told him. ~ Ramp up on some quicken and-

— Excuse me, said the suit. ~ I think Byr Genar-Hofoen may want to think twice before glanding a drug as strong as quicken in the present circumstances. He is my responsibility when he's out of your immediate locality, after all, Scopell-Afranqui. I mean, be fair. It's all very well you sitting up there-

— Keep out of this, you vacuous membrane, the module told the suit.

— What? How dare you!

— Will you two shut up! Genar-Hofoen told them, having to stop himself from shouting out loud. Fivetide was saying something about the Culture to him and he'd already missed the first part of it while the two machines were filling his head with their squabble.

"… can be as exciting as this, eh, Genar-Hofoen?"

"Indeed not," he shouted over the noise of the song. He lowered the gelfield utensil into one of the food containers and raised the food to his lips. He smiled and made a show of bulging his cheeks out while he ate. Fivetide belched, shoved a piece of meat half the size of a human head into his beak and turned back to the fun in the animal pit, where the fresh pair of scratchounds were still circling warily, sizing each other up. They looked pretty evenly matched, Genar-Hofoen thought.

— May I speak now? said the module.

— Yes, Genar-Hofoen thought. ~ Now, what is it?

— As I said, an urgent message.

— From?

— The GSV Death And Gravity.

— Oh? Genar-Hofoen was mildly impressed. ~ I thought the old scoundrel wasn't talking to me.

— As did we all. Apparently it is. Look, do you want this message or not?

— All right, but why do I have to gland quicken?

— Because it's a long message, of course… in fact it's an interactive message; an entire semantic-context signal-set with attached mind-state abstract capable of replying to your questions, and if you listened to the whole thing in real time you'd still be sitting there with a vacant expression on your face by the time your jovial hosts got to the hunt-the-waiter course. And I did say it was urgent. Genar-Hofoen, are you paying attention here?

— I'm paying fucking attention. But come on; can't you just tell me what the message is? Précis it.

— The message is for you, not me, Genar-Hofoen. I haven't looked at it; it'll be stream-deciphered as I transmit it.

~ Okay, okay, I'm glanded up; shoot.

— I still say it's a bad idea… muttered the gelfield suit.

— Shut UP! the module said. ~ Sorry, Genar-Hofoen. Here is the text of the message:

— from GSV Death And Gravity to Seddun-Braijsa Byr Fruel Genar-Hofoen dam Ois, message begins, the module said in its Official voice. Then another voice took over: