— Genar-Hofoen, I won't pretend I'm happy to be communicating with you again; however, I have been asked to do so by certain of those whose opinions and judgement I respect and admire and hence deem the situation to be such that I would be derelict in my duties if I did not oblige to the utmost of my abilities.

Genar-Hofoen performed the mental equivalent of sighing and putting his chin in his hands while — thanks to the quicken now coursing through his central nervous system — everything around him seemed to happen in slow motion. The General Systems Vehicle Death and Gravity had been a long-winded old bore when he'd known it and it sounded like nothing had happened in the interim to alter its conversational style. Even its voice still sounded the same; pompous and monotonous at the same time.

— Accordingly, and with due recognition of your habitually contrary, argumentative and wilfully perverse nature I am communicating with you by sending this message in the form of an interactive signal. I see you are currently one of our ambassadors to that childishly cruel band of upstart ruffians known as the Affront; I have the unhappy feeling that while this may have been envisaged as a kind of subtle punishment for you, you will in fact have adapted with some relish to the environment if not the task, which I assume you will dispatch with your usual mixture of off-handed carelessness and casual self-interest-

— If this signal is interactive, interrupted Genar-Hofoen, ~ can I ask you to get to the fucking point?

He watched the two scratchounds tense together in slo-mo on either side of the pit.

— The point is that your hosts will have to be asked to deprive themselves of your company for a while.

— What? Why? Genar-Hofoen thought, immediately suspicious.

— The decision has been made — and I hasten to establish that I had no part in this — that your services are required elsewhere.

~ Where? For how long?

— I can't tell you where exactly, or for how long.

— Make a stab at it.

— I cannot and will not.

— Module, end this message.

— Are you sure? asked Scopell-Afranqui.

— Wait!, said the voice of the GSV. ~ Will it satisfy you if I say that we may need about eighty days of your time?

— No it won't. I'm quite happy here. I've been bounced into all sorts of Special Circumstances shit in the past on the strength of a Hey-come-and-do-one-little-job-for-us come-on line. (This was not in fact perfectly true; Genar-Hofoen had only ever acted for SC once before, but he'd known — or at least heard of — plenty of people who'd got more than they'd expected when they'd worked for what was in effect the Contact section's espionage and dirty tricks department.)

— I did not -

— Plus I've got a job to do here, Genar-Hofoen interrupted. ~ I've got another audience with the Grand Council in a month to tell them to be nicer to their neighbours or we're going to think about slapping their paddles. I want details of this exciting new opportunity or you can shove it.

— I did not say that I am speaking on behalf of Special Circumstances.

— Are you denying that you are?

— Not as such, but -

— So stop fucking around. Who the hell else is going to start hauling a gifted and highly effective ambassador off — ?

— Genar-Hofoen, we are wasting time here.

— We?, Genar-Hofoen thought, watching the two scratchounds launch themselves at each other slowly. ~ Never mind. Go on.

— The task required of you is, apparently, a delicate one, which is why I personally regard you as being utterly unsuited to it, and as such it would be foolish to entrust the full details either to myself, to your module, your suit or indeed to you until all these details are required.

— There you are; that's exactly what you can shove; all that SC need-to-know crap. I don't care how fucking delicate the task is, I'm not even going to consider it until I know what's involved.

The scratchounds were in mid-pounce now, both of them twisting as they leapt. Shit, thought Genar-Hofoen; this might be one of those scratchound bouts where the whole thing was decided on the initial lunge, depending entirely on which beast got its teeth into the neck of the other first.

— What is required, said the message, with a fair approximation of the way the Death And Gravity had always sounded when it was exasperated, is eighty days of your time, ninety-nine to ninety-nine point nine-plus percent of which you will spend doing nothing more onerous or demanding than being carried from point A to point B; the first part of your journey will be spent travelling, in considerable comfort, I imagine, aboard the Affronter ship which we will ask (or rather pay, probably) them to put at your disposal, the second part will be spent in guaranteed comfort aboard a Culture GCU and will be followed by a short visit aboard another Culture vessel whereupon the task we would ask of you will actually be accomplished — and when I say a short visit, I mean that it may be possible for you to carry out what is required of you within an hour, and that certainly the assignment should take no longer than a day. Then you will make the return journey to take up wherever you left off with our dear friends and allies the Affront. I take it all that doesn't sound too much like hard work, does it?

The scratchounds were meeting in the air a metre above the centre of the bait-pit, their jaws aimed as best they could at each other's throats. It was still a little hard to tell, but Genar-Hofoen didn't think it was looking too good for Fivetide's animal.

— Yeah yeah yeah, well I've heard all this sort of thing before, D and G. What's in it for me? Why the hell should I-? Oh, fuck…

— What? said the Death And Gravity's message.

But Genar-Hofoen's attention was elsewhere.

The two scratchounds met and locked, falling to the floor of the bait-pit in a tangle of slowly thrashing limbs. The blue-collared animal had its jaws clamped around the throat of the red-collared one. Most of the Affronters were starting to cheer. Fivetide and his supporters were screaming.

Shit.

— Suit? Genar-Hofoen thought.

— What is it? said the gelfield. ~ I thought you were talking to-?

— Never mind that now. See that blue scratchound?

— Can't take my or your eyes off the damn thing.

— Effectorise the fucker; get it off the other one.

— I can't do that! That would be cheating!

~ Fivetide's arse is hanging way out the merry-go-round on this, suit. Do it now or take personal responsibility for a major diplomatic incident. Up to you.

— What? But-!

~ Effectorise it now, suit. Come on; I know that last upgrade let you sneak it under their monitors. Oh! Look at that. Ow! Can't you just feel those prosthetics round your neck? Fivetide must be kissing his diplomatic career goodbye right now; probably already working out a way to challenge me to a duel. After that, doesn't really matter if I kill him or he kills me; probably come to war between-

— All right! All right! There!

There was a buzzing sensation on top of Genar-Hofoen's right shoulder. The red scratchound jerked, the blue one doubled up around its midriff and loosened its grip. The red-collared beast wriggled out from underneath the other and, twisting, turned on the other beast and immediately reversed the situation, fastening its prosthetic jaws around the throat of the blue-collared animal. At Genar-Hofoen's side, still in slow motion, Fivetide was starting to rise into the air.

— Right, D and G, what were you saying?

— What was the delay? What were you doing?

— Never mind. Like you said, time's a wasting. Get on with it.