something'
'So I take my chances.'
'Well what about what they'd call the security
aspect?What if you're only injured and they take
you to hospital?You'll never get out again; they'll
take one look at your guts or your blood and they'll
know you're alien.You'll have the military all over
you.They'll dissect you.'
'Not very likely.But if it happens, it happens.'
I sat down again.I was reacting just the way the
ship had known I would.I thought Linter was mad
just the way the Arbitrary did, and it was using me to try and talk some sense into him.Doubtless the
ship had already tried, but equally obviously the
nature of Linter's decision was such that the
Arbitrary was the last thing that was going to have any influence.Technologically and morally the ship
represented the most finely articulated statement
the Culture was capable of producing, and that
very sophistication had the beast hamstrung, here.
I have to admit I felt a degree of admiration for
Linter's stand, even though I still thought he was
being stupid.There might or might not be a local
involved, but I was already getting the impression
it was more complicated - and more difficult to
handle - than that.Maybe he had fallen in love, but
not with anything as simple as a person.Maybe he'd
fallen in love with Earth itself; the whole fucking
planet.So much for Contact screening; they were
supposed to keep people out who might fall like
that.If that was what had happened then the ship
had problems indeed.Falling in love with
somebody, they say, is a little like getting a tune
into your head and not being able to stop whistling
it except much more so, and - from what I'd heard -
going native the way I suspected Linter might be
was as far beyond loving another person as that
was beyond getting a tune stuck in your head.
I felt suddenly angry, at Linter and the ship.
'I think you're taking a very selfish and stupid risk
that's not just bad for you, and bad for the for us;
for the Culture, but also bad for these people.If you
do get caught, if you're discovered they are going to get paranoid, and they might feel threatened and
hostile in any contact they are involved, in or
ex.You could send them make them crazy.Insane.'
'You said they were that already.'
'And you do stand a less chance of living your full term.Even if you don't; so you live for
centuries.How d'you explain that?'
'They may have anti-geriatrics themselves by that
time.Besides, I can always move around.'
'They won't have anti-geriatrics for fifty years or
more; centuries if they relapse, even without a
Holocaust.Yeah; so move around, make yourself a
fugitive, stay alien, stay apart.You'll be as cut off
from them as you will be from us.Ah hell, you
always will be anyway.' I was talking loudly by
now.I waved one arm at the bookshelves. 'Sure
read the books and see the films and go to concerts
and theatre and opera and all that shit; you can't
become them.You'll still have Culture eyes,
Culture brain; you can't just can't deny all that,
pretend it never happened.' I stamped one foot on
the floor. 'God dammit , Linter, you're just being ungrateful!'
'Listen, Sma,' he said, rising out of the seat,
grabbing his beer and stalking about the room,
gazing out of the windows. 'Neither of us owes the
Culture anything.You know that Owing and being
obliged and having duties and responsibilities and
everything like that that's what these people have to worry about.' He turned round to look at me.
'But not me, not us.You do what you want to do, the
ship does what it wants to do.I do what I want to
do.All's well.Let's just leave each other alone,
yes?' He looked back at the small courtyard,
finishing his beer.
'You want to be like them, but you don't want to
have their responsibilities.'
'I didn't say I wanted to be like them.To to
whatever extent I do, I want to have the same sort
of responsibilities, and that doesn't include
worrying about what a Culture starship thinks.That
isn't something any of them normally tend to worry
about.'
'What if Contact surprises us both, and does come
in?'
'I doubt that.'
'Me too, very much; that's why I think it might
happen.'
'I don't think so.Though it is we who need them, not
the other way round.' Linter turned and stared at
me, but I wasn't going to start arguing on a second
front now. 'But,' he said after a pause, 'the Culture
can do without me.' He inspected his drained glass.
'It's going to have to.'
I was silent for a while, watching the television
flip through channels. 'What about you though?' I
asked eventually. 'Can you do without it?'
'Easily,' Linter laughed. 'Listen, d'you think I
haven't -'
'No; you listen.How long do you think this place is
going to stay the way it is now?Ten years?Twenty?