sublimating her sexuality in all this Contact
nonsense.'
'Well I never knew that,' I said.
'Basically, what you want, Diziet, is to be fucked
by an entire civilization, an entire planet.I suppose
this makes you a good little Contact operative, if
that's what you want to be -'
'Li, of course, is only here for the different tan,'
Tagm interrupted.
'- but I would say,' Li continued, 'that it's better not
to sublimate anything.If what you want is a good
screw -' (Li used the English word)'- then a good
screw is what you ought to have, not a meaningful
confrontation with a backwater rockball infested
with slavering death-zealots on a terminal power
trip.'
'I still say it's you who wants the good screw,'
Roghres said.
'Exactly!' Li exclaimed, throwing his arms wide,
scattering more water drops, wobbling in the null
G. 'But I don't deny it.'
'Just Mr Natural,' Tagm nodded.
'What's wrong with being natural?' demanded Li.
'But I remember just the other day you were saying
that the trouble with humans is that they were too
natural, not civilized enough,' Tagm said, then
turned to me. 'Mind you, that was then; Li can
change his colours faster than a GCU going for a
refit record.'
'There's natural and natural,' Li said. 'I'm naturally
civilized and they're naturally barbarians, therefore
I should be as natural as possible and they should
do all they can not to be.But this is getting off the
subject.What I say is that Sma has a definite
psychological problem and I think that as I'm the
only person on this machine interested in Freudian
analysis, I should be the one to help her.'
'That's unbelievably kind of you,' I told Li.
'Not at all,' Li waved his hand.He must have
scattered most of his water drops towards us,
because he was gradually floating away from us,
towards the far end of the AG hall.
'Freud!' snorted Roghres derisively, a little high on
Jumble.
'You heathen,' said Li, eyes narrowed. 'I suppose
your heroes are Marx and Lenin.'
'Hell no; I'm an Adam Smith man myself,' muttered
Roghres.She started to tumble head over heels in
the air, doing slow foetal-spreadeagle exercises.
'Rubbish,' Li spat (literally, but I saw it coming
and doged).
'Li, you really are the horniest [*6*] human on this ship,' Tagm told him. 'You're the one who needs
the analyst.This obsession with sex, it's just not -'
' I'm obsessed with sex?' Li said, poking himself in the chest with a thumb, then throwing back his
head. 'HA!' He laughed. 'Listen;' he arranged
himself in what would have passed for a lotus
position on Earth, had there been a floor to sit on,
and put one hand on his hip while pointing the
other vaguely to his right; ' they're the ones
obsessed with sex.Do you know how many words
there are for prick in English?Or cunt ?Hundreds;
hundreds.How many have we got?One; one for
each, for --- [*7*] usage as well as for anatomical designation.Neither of them swear-words.All I do
is readily admit I want to put one in the
other.Ready, willing and interested.What's wrong
with that?'
'Nothing as such,' I told him. 'But there's a point
where interest becomes obsession, and I think most
people regard obsession as a bad thing because it
makes for less variety, less flexibility.'
Li, still floating slowly away from us, nodded
fiercely. 'I'll just say one thing; it's an obsession
with flexibility and variety that makes this so-
called Culture so boring.'
'Li started a Boredom Society while you were
away,' Tagm explained, smiling at me. 'Nobody
else joined though.'
'It's going very well,' Li confirmed. 'I've changed
the title to the Ennui League, by the way.Yes,
boredom is an underrated facet of existence in our
pseudo-civilization.While at first I thought it might
be interesting, in a boring sense, for people to be
together when they were extremely bored, I realize
now that it is a profoundly moving and deeply
average experience to do nothing whatsoever
entirely and completely by yourself.'
'You think Earth has a lot to teach us in this
respect?' Tagm said, then turned and said to the
nearest wall. 'Ship, put the air on medium, would
you?'
'Earth is a deeply boring planet,' Li said gravely,
as one end of the hall began to waft the air towards
us, and the other turned intake.We began to drift in
the breeze.
'Earth?Boring?' I said.The water was drying on my
skin.
'What is the point of a planet where you can hardly set foot without tripping over somebody killing
somebody else, or painting something or making
music or pushing back the frontier of science or
being tortured or killing themselves or dying in a
car crash or hiding from the police or suffering
from some absurd disease or -'
We hit the soft, porous intake wall ('Hey, this wall
sucks!' Roghres giggled), and the three of us