His first game on Echronedal, the one he was officially to lose no matter what happened, was another ten game. This time there was no suggestion of anybody ganging up on him, and he was approached by four of the other players to form a side which would oppose the rest. This was the traditional way of playing ten games, though it was the first time Gurgeh had been directly involved, apart from being on the sharp end of other people's alliances. So he found himself discussing strategy and tactics with a pair of Fleet admirals, a star general and an imperial minister in what the Bureau guaranteed was an electronically and optically sterile room in one wing of the castle. They spent three days talking over how they would play the game, then they swore before God, and Gurgeh gave his word, they would not break the agreement until the other five players had been defeated or they themselves were brought down. The lesser games ended with the sides about even. Gurgeh found there were advantages and disadvantages in playing as part of an ensemble. He did his best to adapt and play accordingly. More talks followed, then they joined battle on the Board of Origin. Gurgeh enjoyed it. It added a lot to the game to play as part of a team; he felt genuinely warm towards the apices he played alongside. They came to each other's aid when they were in trouble, they trusted one another during massed attacks, and generally played as though their individual forces were really a single side. As people, he didn't find his comrades desperately engaging, but as playing partners he could not deny the emotion he felt for them, and experienced a growing sense of sadness - as the game progressed and they gradually beat back their opponents - that they would soon all be fighting each other. When it came to it, and the last of the opposition had surrendered, much of what Gurgeh had felt before disappeared. He'd been at least partially tricked; he'd stuck to what he saw as the spirit of their agreement, while the others stuck to the letter. Nobody actually attacked until the last of the other team's pieces had been captured or taken over, but there was some subtle manoeuvring when it became clear they were going to win, playing for positions that would become more important when the team-agreement ended. Gurgeh missed this until it was almost too late, and when the second part of the game began he was by far the weakest of the five. It also became obvious that the two admirals were, not surprisingly, cooperating unofficially against the others. Jointly the pair were stronger than the other three. In a way Gurgeh's very weakness saved him; he played so that it was not worth taking him for a long time, letting the other four fight it out. Later he attacked the two admirals when they had grown strong enough to threaten a complete takeover, but were more vulnerable to his small force than to the greater powers of the general and the minister. The game to-ed and fro-ed for a long time, but Gurgeh was gaining steadily, and eventually, though he was put out first of the five, he'd accumulated sufficient points to ensure he'd play on the next board. Three of the other original five-side had done so badly they had to resign from the match. Gurgeh never really fully recovered from his mistake on the first board, and did badly on the Board of Form. It was starting to look as though the Empire would not need to lie about him being thrown out of the first game. He still talked to the
Limiting Factor
, using Flere-Imsaho as a relay and the game-screen in his own room for the display. He felt he'd adjusted to the higher gravity. Flere-Imsaho had to remind him it was a genofixed response; his bones were rapidly thickening and his musculature had expanded without waiting to be otherwise exercised. 'Hadn't you
noticed
you were getting more thick-set?' the drone said in exasperation, while Gurgeh studied his body in the room mirror. Gurgeh shook his head. 'I did think I was eating rather a lot.' 'Very observant. I wonder what else you can do you don't know about. Didn't they teach you anything about your own biology?' The man shrugged. 'I forgot.' He adjusted, too, to the planet's short day-night cycle, adapting faster than anybody else, if the numerous complaints were anything to go by. Most people, the drone told him, were using drugs to bring themselves into line with the three-quarters standard day. 'Genofixing again?' Gurgeh asked at breakfast one morning. 'Yes. Of course.' 'I didn't know we could do all this.' 'Obviously not,' the drone said. 'Good grief, man; the Culture's been a spacefaring species for eleven thousand years; just because you've mostly settled down in idealised, tailor-made conditions doesn't mean you've lost the capacity for rapid adaptation. Strength in depth; redundancy; over-design. You know the Culture's philosophy.' Gurgeh frowned at the machine. He gestured to the walls, and then to his ear. Flere-Imsaho wobbled from side to side; drone shrug.
Gurgeh came fifth out of seven on the Board of Form. He started play on the Board of Becoming with no hope of winning, but a remote chance of getting through as the Qualifier. He played an inspired game, towards the end. He was starting to feel quite thoroughly at home on the last of the three great boards, and enjoyed using the elemental symbolism the play incorporated instead of the die-matching used in the rest of each match. The Board of Becoming was the least well-played of the three great boards, Gurgeh felt, and one the Empire seemed to understand imperfectly, and pay too little attention to. He made it. One of the admirals won, and he scraped in as Qualifier. The margin between him and the other admiral was one point; 5,523 against 5,522. Only a draw and play-off could have been closer, but when he thought about it later, he realised he hadn't for one moment entertained the slightest doubt he'd get through to the next round. 'You're coming perilously close to talking about destiny, Jernau Gurgeh,' Flere-Imsaho said when he tried to explain this. He was sitting in his room, hand on the table in front of him, while the drone removed the Orbital bracelet from his wrist; he couldn't get it over his hand any more and it was becoming too tight, thanks to his expanding muscles. 'Destiny,' Gurgeh said, looking thoughtful. He nodded. 'That's what it feels like, I suppose.' 'What next?' exclaimed the machine, using a field to cut the bracelet. Gurgeh had expected the bright little image to disappear, but it didn't. 'God? Ghosts? Time-travel?' The drone drew the bracelet off his wrist and reconnected the tiny Orbital so that it was a circle again. Gurgeh smiled. 'The Empire.' He took the bracelet from the machine, got up easily and walked to the window, turning the Orbital over in his hands and looking out into the stony courtyard.
The Empire
? thought Flere-Imsaho. It got Gurgeh to let it store the bracelet inside its casing. No sense in leaving it around; somebody might guess what it represented.
I do hope he's joking.
With his own game over, Gurgeh found time to watch Nicosar's match. The Emperor was playing in the prow-hall of the fortress; a great bowled room ribbed in grey stone and capable of seating over a thousand people. It was here the last game would be played, the game which would decide who became Emperor. The prow-hall lay at the far end of the castle, facing the direction the fire would come from. High windows, still unshuttered, looked out over the sea of yellow cinderbud heads outside. Gurgeh sat in one of the observation galleries, watching the Emperor play. Nicosar played cautiously, gradually building up advantages, playing the game in a percentage-wary way, setting up profitable exchanges on the Board of Becoming, and orchestrating the moves of the other four players on his side. Gurgeh was impressed; Nicosar played a deceptive game. The slow, steady style he evinced here was only one side of him; every now and again there would come, just when it was needed, exactly when it would have the most devastating effect, a move of startling brilliance and audacity. Equally, the occasional fine move by an opponent was always at least matched, and usually bettered, by the Emperor. Gurgeh felt some sympathy for those playing against Nicosar. Even playing badly was less demoralising than playing sporadically excellently but always being crushed. 'You're smiling, Jernau Gurgeh.' Gurgeh had been absorbed in the game and hadn't seen Hamin approach. The old apex sat down carefully beside him. Bulges under his robe showed he wore an AG harness to partially counteract Echronedal's gravity. 'Good evening, Hamin.' 'I have heard you qualified. Well done.' 'Thank you. Only unofficially, of course.' 'Ah yes. Officially you came fourth.' 'How unexpectedly generous.' 'We took into account your willingness to cooperate. You will still help us?' 'Of course. Just show me the camera.' 'Perhaps tomorrow.' Hamin nodded, looking down to where Nicosar stood, surveying his commanding position on the Board of Becoming. 'Your opponent for the single game will be Lo Tenyos Krowo; an excellent player, I warn you. Are you quite sure you don't want to drop out now?' 'Quite. Would you have me cause Bermoiya's mutilation only to give up now because the strain's getting too much?' 'I see your point, Gurgeh.' Hamin sighed, still watching the Emperor. He nodded. 'Yes, I see your point. And anyway; you only qualified. By the narrowest of margins. And Lo Tenyos Krowo is very, very good.' He nodded again. 'Yes; perhaps you have found your level, eh?' The wizened face turned to Gurgeh. 'Very possibly, rector.' Hamin nodded absently and looked away again, at his Emperor.
On the following morning, Gurgeh recorded some faked game-board shots; the game he'd just played was set up again, and Gurgeh made some believable but uninspired moves, and one outright mistake. The part of his opponents was taken by Hamin and a couple of other senior Candsev College professors; Gurgeh was impressed by how well they were able to mimic the game-styles of the apices he'd been playing against. As had, in effect, been foretold, Gurgeh finished fourth. He recorded an interview with the Imperial News Service expressing his sorrow at being knocked out of the Main Series and saying how grateful he was for having had the chance to play the game of Azad. The experience of a lifetime. He was eternally in the debt of the Azadian people. His respect for the Emperor-Regent's genius had increased immeasurably from its already high starting point. He looked forward to observing the rest of the games. He wished the Emperor, his Empire and all its people and subjects the very best for what would undoubtedly be a bright and prosperous future. The news-team, and Hamin, seemed well pleased. 'You should have been an actor, Jernau Gurgeh,' Hamin told him. Gurgeh assumed this was intended as a compliment.
He sat looking out over the forest of cinderbuds. The trees were sixty metres high or more. At their peak rate, the drone had told him, they grew at nearly a quarter-metre per day, sucking such vast quantities of water and matter from the ground that the soil dropped all around them, subsiding far enough to reveal the uppermost levels of their roots, which would burn in the Incandescence and take the full Great Year to regrow. It was dusk, the short time in a short day when the rapidly spinning planet left the bright yellow dwarf dropping beyond the horizon. Gurgeh breathed deeply. There was no smell of burning. The air seemed quite clear, and a couple of planets in the Echronedal system shone in the sky. Nevertheless, Gurgeh knew there was sufficient dust in the atmosphere to forever block out most of the stars in the sky and leave the huge wheel that was the main galaxy blurred and indistinct; not remotely as breathtaking as it was when viewed from beyond the planet's hazed covering of gas. He sat in a tiny garden near the top of the fortress, so that he could see over the summits of most of the cinderbuds. He was level with the fruit-bearing heads of the tallest trees. The fruit pods, each about the size of a curled-up child, were full of what was basically ethyl-alcohol. When the Incandescence arrived some would drop and some would stay hanging there; all would burn. A shiver ran through Gurgeh when he thought about it. Approximately seventy days to go, they said. Anybody sitting where he was now when the fire-front arrived would be roasted alive, water-sprays or not. Radiated heat alone would cook you. The garden he was sitting in would go; the wooden bench he was sitting on would be taken inside, behind the thick stone and the metal and fireglass shutters. Gardens in the deeper courtyards would survive, though they would have to be dug out from some of the wind-blown ash. The people would be safe, in the drenched castle, or the deep shelters… unless they had been very foolish, and were caught outside. It had happened, he'd been told. He saw Flere-Imsaho flying over the trees towards him. The machine had been given permission to fly off by itself, as long as it told the authorities where it was going and agreed to be fitted with a position monitor. Obviously there wasn't anything on Echronedal the Empire considered especially militarily sensitive. The drone hadn't been too happy with the conditions, but reckoned it would go mad cooped up in the castle, so had agreed. This had been its first expedition. 'Jernau Gurgeh.' 'Hello, drone. Bird-watching?' 'Flying fish. Thought I'd start with the oceans.' 'Going to take a look at the fire?' 'Not yet. I hear you're playing Lo Tenyos Krowo next.' 'In four days. They say he's very good.' 'He is. He's also one of the people who know all about the Culture.' Gurgeh glared at the machine. 'What?' 'There are never fewer than eight people in the Empire who know where the Culture comes from, roughly what size it is, and our level of technological development.' 'Really,' Gurgeh said through his teeth. 'For the last two hundred years the Emperor, the chief of Naval Intelligence and the six star marshals have been appraised of the power and extent of the Culture. They don't want anybody else to know; their choice, not ours. They're frightened; it's understandable.' 'Drone,' Gurgeh said loudly, 'has it occurred to you I might be getting a little sick of being treated like a child all the time? Why the hell couldn't you just
tell
me that?' 'Jernau, we only wanted to make things easier for you. Why complicate things by telling you that a few people
did
know when there was no real likelihood of your ever coming into any but the most fleeting contact with any of them? Frankly, you'd never have been told at all if you hadn't got to the stage of playing against one of these people; no need for you to know. We're just trying to help you, really. I thought I'd tell you in case Krowo said something during the course of the game which puzzled you and upset your concentration.' 'Well I wish you cared as much about my temper as you do about my concentration,' Gurgeh said, getting up and going to lean on the parapet at the end of the garden. 'I'm very sorry,' the drone said, without a trace of contrition. Gurgeb waved one band. 'Never mind. I take it Krowo's in Naval Intelligence then, not the Office of Cultural Exchange?' 'Correct. Officially his post does not exist. But everybody in court knows the highest placed player who's the least bit devious is offered the job.' 'I thought Cultural Exchange was a funny place for somebody that good.' 'Well, Krowo's had the intelligence job for three Great Years, and some people reckon he could have been Emperor if he'd really wanted, but he prefers to stay where he is. He'll be a difficult opponent.' 'So everybody keeps telling me,' Gurgeh said, then frowned and looked towards the fading light on the horizon. 'What's that?' he said. 'Did you hear that?' It came again; a long, haunting, plaintive cry from far away, almost drowned by the quiet rustling of the cinderbud canopy. The faint sound rose in a still quiet but chilling crescendo; a scream that died away slowly. Gurgeh shivered for the second time that evening. 'What