The State of the Art(59)

and mellow and sipping on our brandies and

whiskies, we got Li's campaign speech plus a

dainty dish to set before the Culture.

I was a little drowsy.Li had come round with huge

Havana cigars, and I'd taken one, and let the drug

get to me.I was sitting there, puffing determinedly

on the fat drug-stick, surrounded by a cloud of

smoke, wondering what the natives saw in a

tobacco high, but otherwise feeling just fine, when

Li banged on the table with the pommel of the light

sword and then climbed up and stood where his

place setting had been (bang went one of the

Sultan's plates, but I suspect the ship managed to

repair it).The lights went out, leaving one spot on

Li.

I used some snap to clear the sleepiness and

stubbed the cigar out.

[*11*] 'Ladies and gentlemen,' Li said in a passable English, before continuing in Marain. 'I

have gathered you here this evening to talk to you

about Earth and what should be done with it.It is

my hope and wish that after you've heard what I

have to say you will agree with me on the only

possible course of action but first of all, let me say

a few words about myself.' There were jeers and

cat-calls as Li bent and took up his glass of

brandy.He drained the glass and threw it over his

shoulder.A drone must have caught it in the

shadows because I didn't hear it land.

'First of all,' Li rubbed his chin, stroking the long

hair.'Who am I?' He ignored a variety of shouts

telling him 'a total fucking idiot', and the like, and

continued. 'I am Grice-Thantapsa Li Erase 'ndane

dam Sione; I am one hundred and seventeen years

old, but wise beyond my years.I have been in

Contact only six years, but I have experienced

much in that time, and so can speak with some

authority on Contact matters.I am the product of

perhaps eight thousand years of progress beyond

the stage of the planet that lies beneath our feet.'

(Cries of 'Not much to show for it, huh?', etc.) 'I

can track my ancestry back by name for at least that

amount of time, and if you went back to the first

dim glimmerings of sentience and you could end up

going back -' ('last week?' 'your mother') '- through

tens of thousands of generations.

'My body is altered, of course; tuned to a high pitch

of efficiency in terms of survivability and pleasure,

-' ('don't worry, it doesn't show') '- and just as I

inherited that alteration, so shall I pass it on to any

children of my own.' ('please, Li; we've just

eaten.') 'We have remade ourselves just as we

have made our machines; we can fairly claim to be

largely our own work.

'However; in my head, literally inside my skull, in

my brain, I am potentially as stupid as the most

recently born babe in the most deprived area on

Earth.' He paused, smiling, to let the cat-calls

subside. 'We are who we are as much because of

what we experience and are taught as we grow -

the way we are brought up, in other words - as we

are because we inherit the general appearance of

pan-humanism, the more particular traits

associated with the Culture meta-species, and the

precise genetic mix contributed by our parents,

including all those wonderful tinkered-with bits.'

('tinker with your own bits, laddy.')

'So if I can claim to be morally superior to some

denizen of those depths of atmosphere beneath us,

it is because that is the way I was brought up.We

are truly raised; they are squashed, trimmed,

trained, made into bonsai. Theirs is a civilization of deprivation; ours of finely balanced satisfaction

ever teetering on the brink of excess.The Culture

could afford to let me be whatever it was within

my personal potential to become; so, for good or

ill, I am fulfilled.

'Consider; I think I can truthfully claim to be a

more-or-less average Culture person, as can all of

us here.Certainly, we're in Contact, so we might be a little more interested in travelling abroad and

meeting people than the mean, but in general terms

any one of us could be picked at random and

represent the Culture quite adequately; the choice

of who you would pick to represent Earth fairly I

leave to your imagination.

'But back to me; I am as rich and as poor as

anybody in the Culture (I use these words because

it's to Earth I want to compare our present

position).Rich; trapped as I am on board this

uncaptained, leaderless tub, my wealth may not be

very obvious, but it would seem immense to the

average Earther.At home I have the run of a

charming and beautiful Orbital which would seem

very clean and uncrowded to somebody from

Earth; I have unlimited access to the free, fast, safe

and totally dependable underplate transport

system; I live in a wing of a family home of

mansion proportions surrounded by hectares of

gorgeous gardens.I have an aircraft, a launch, the

choice of mount from a large stable of aphores