The State of the Art(48)

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