"No," the avatar said, shaking its head. "Does this refer to the ruse that brought you here?"

The man's eyes had closed briefly. They opened again. "Yes, I suppose so," he said. His shoulders seemed to have slumped, the avatar thought. "So," he asked, "did you make up the story about Zreyn Enhoff Tramow, or did they?"

The avatar looked thoughtful. "Gart-Kepilesa Zreyn Enhoff Tramow Afayaf dam Niskat," it said. "She was a mind-state Storee. There's quite an interesting story associated with her, but not one I ever suggested be told to you."

"I see," he said, nodding. "So, why?" he asked.

"Why what?" the creature said, looking puzzled.

"Why the ruse? Why did you want me here?"

The avatar looked at him for a moment. "You're my price, Genar-Hofoen," it told him.

"Your price? he said.

The avatar smiled suddenly and put out one hand to touch one of his. Its touch was cool and firm. "Let's throw stones," it said. And with that it walked down towards the waves breaking on the slope of shingle.

He shook his head and followed the creature.

They stood side by side. The avatar looked along the great sweep of shining, spray-glistened stones. "Every one a weapon," it muttered, then stooped to pick a large pebble from the beach and threw it quickly, artlessly out at the heaving waves. Genar-Hofoen selected a stone too.

"I've been pretending to be Eccentric for forty years, Genar-Hofoen," the avatar said matter-of-factly, squatting again.

"Pretending?" the man asked, chucking the stone on a high arc. He wondered if it was possible to hit the far force wall. The stone fell, vanishing into the tumbling "scape of waves.

"I have been a diligent and industrious component of the Special Circumstances section for all that time, just awaiting the call," the ship told him through the avatar. It glanced over at him as he bent, choosing another stone. "I am a weapon, Genar-Hofoen. A deniable weapon. My apparent Eccentricity allows the Culture proper to refuse any responsibility for my actions. In fact I am acting on the specific instructions of an SC committee which calls itself the Interesting Times Gang."

The creature broke off to heave a stone towards the false horizon. Its arm was a blur as it threw; the air made a burring noise and Genar-Hofoen felt the wind of the movement on his cheek. The avatar's momentum spun it round in a circle, then it steadied itself, gave a brief, almost childish grin, and peered out at the stone disappearing into the distance. It was still on the upward part of its arc. Genar-Hofoen watched it too. Shortly after it started to drop, the stone bounced off something invisible and fell back into the waters. The avatar made a contented noise and looked pleased with itself.

"However," it said, "when it came to it, I refused to do what they wanted until they delivered you to me. That was my price. You." It smiled at him. "You see?"

He weighed a stone in his hand. "Just because of what happened between Dajeil and me?"

The avatar smiled, then stooped to choose another stone, one finger to its lips, childlike. It was silent for a while, apparently concentrating on the task. Genar-Hofoen continued to weigh the stone in his hand, looking down at the back of the avatar's head. After some moments, the creature said, "I was a fully functioning throughput-biased Culture General Systems Vehicle for three hundred years, Genar-Hofoen." It glanced up at him. "Have you any idea how many ships, drones, people — human and not human — pass through a GSV in all that time?" It looked down again, picked a stone and levered itself upright once more. "I was regularly home to over two hundred million people; I could, in theory, hold over a hundred thousand ships. I built smaller GSVs, all capable of building their own ship children, all with their own crews, their own personalities, their own stories.

"To be host to so much is to be the equivalent of a small world or a large state," it said. "It was my job and my pleasure to take an intimate interest in the physical and mental well-being of every individual aboard, to provide — with every appearance of effortlessness — an environment they would each find comfortable, pleasant, stress-free and stimulating. It was also my duty to get to know those ships, drones and people, to be able to talk to them and empathise with them and understand however many of them wished to indulge in such interactions at any one time. In such circumstances you rapidly develop, if you don't possess it originally, an interest in — even a fascination with — people. And you have your likes and dislikes; the people you do the polite minimum for and are glad to see the back of, the ones you like and who interest you more than the others, the ones you treasure for years and decades if they remain, or wish could have stayed longer once they've gone and subsequently correspond with regularly. There are some stories you follow up into the future, long after the people concerned have left; you trade tales with other GSVs, other Minds — gossiping, basically — to find out how relationships turned out, whose careers flourished, whose dreams withered…"

Amorphia leant back and over and then threw the stone almost straight up. The creature jumped a half-metre or so into the air as it released the missile, which climbed on into the air until it bounced off the invisible roof, high above, and fell into the waves twenty metres off shore. The avatar clapped its hands once, seemingly happy.

It stooped again, surveying the pebbles. "You try to keep a balance between indifference and nosiness, between carelessness and obsession," it went on. "Still, you have to be ready for accusations of both types of failure. Keeping them roughly in numerical accord, and within the range experienced by your peers is one measure of success. Perfection is impossible. Additionally, you have to accept that in such a large collection of personalities and stories, there will be some loose ends, some tales which will fizzle out rather than conclude neatly. Those don't matter so long as there are some which do work out satisfactorily, and especially so long as the ones you have taken the greatest interest in — and have been personally particularly involved with — work out."

It looked up at him from where it squatted. "Sometimes you take a hand in such stories, such fates. Sometimes you know or can anticipate the extent to which your intervention will matter, but on other occasions you don't know and can't guess. You find that some chance remark you've made has affected somebody's life profoundly or that some seemingly insignificant decision you've come to has had profound and lasting consequences."

It shrugged, looked down at the stones again. "Your story — yours and Dajeil's — was one a little like that," it told him. "It was who was instrumental in deciding that you ought to be allowed to accompany Dajeil Gelian to Telaturier," it said, rising. It held two stones this time; one larger than the other. "I could see how finely balanced the decision was between the various parts of the committee concerned; I knew the decision effectively rested with me. I got to know you and I made the decision." It shrugged. "It was the wrong decision." It threw the larger stone on a high trajectory, then looked back at the man as it hefted the smaller stone. "I've spent the last forty years wishing I could correct my mistake." It turned and threw the other pebble low and fast; the stone flew out over the waves and struck the larger rock about two metres before it plunged into the water; they burst into whizzing fragments and a brief cloud of dust.

The avatar turned to him again with a small smile on its face. "I agreed to pretend to become Eccentric; suddenly I had a freedom very few craft ever have, able to indulge my whims, my fantasies, my own dreams." It flexed one eyebrow. "Oh, in theory, of course, we can all do that, but Minds have a sense of duty, and a conscience. I was able to become very slightly Eccentric by pretending to be very Eccentric — while knowing that I was in fact being more martially responsible than anybody else — and, in appearing to enjoy such Eccentricity with a clear conscience — even enhance my Eccentric reputation. Other craft looked on and thought that they could do what I was doing but not for long, and therefore that I must be thoroughly thoroughly weird. As far as I know, not one guessed that my conscience was kept clear by having a purpose serious enough to compensate for even the most clown-like disguise and regressively obsessive behaviour."