He put his hands over his ears. That worked for a moment. But then the ship, set in stone, near the centre of the battered city, fired its great guns, gouting black and flashing yellow-white, and he knew what was coming, and tried to scream to cover the noise, but when it arrived it was the name of the ship that the guns had spoken, and it shattered the boat, demolished the castle, and resounded through the bones and spaces of his skull, like the laughter of an insane god, forever.

The light went out then, and he sank gratefully away from the awful, accusing sound.

Light. Staberinde said a calm voice from somewhere inside. Staberinde. It's only a word.

The Staberinde. The ship. He turned away from the light, back into the darkness.

Light. Sounds, too; a voice. What was I thinking about, earlier? (He recalled something about a name, but ignored that.) Funeral. Pains. And the ship. There was a ship. Or there had been. Maybe still is, for all… but there was something about a funeral. The funeral is why you are here. That was what confused you before. You thought you were dead, in fact you were only living. He remembered something about boats and oceans and castles and cities, but could not actually see them any more.

Now, from somewhere, comes touch, touch coming in from out there. Not pain but touch. Two different things…

The touch, again. It feels like the touch of a hand; a hand touching his face, causing more pain, but still a touch, and distinguishably a hand. His face felt terrible. He must look terrible.

Where am I again? Crash. Funeral. Fohls.

Crash. Of course; my name is…

Too hard.

What do I do, then?

That's easier. You are a paid agent of the most advanced — well, certainly the most energetic — humanoid civilisation in the… Reality? (No.) Universe? (No.) Galaxy? Yes, galaxy… and you were representing them at a… a… funeral, and you were coming back on some stupid aircraft to be picked up and taken away from all this, when something happened on board the aircraft and it went… and he'd seen flames and… and there had been that old jungle floating right… then nothing and pain, and nothing but pain. Then drifting and floating in and out of it.

The hand touched his face again. And this time there was something to see. He thought it looked like a cloud, or like a moon through a cloud, itself unseen but shining through.

Possibly the two were connected, he thought. Yes; here it comes again, and yes, there we are; sensation, feeling; the hand on the face again. Throat, swallowing, water or some liquid. You are being given something to drink. From the way it goes down there seems to be… yes, upright, we are upright, not on our back. The hands, own hands, they are… an open feeling, feeling very open, very vulnerable, naked.

Thinking about his body was bringing the pain back again. He decided to give up on that. Try something else.

Try the crash again. Back from the funeral and the desert coming right up… no, mountains. Or was it jungle? He couldn't remember. Where are we? Jungle, no… desert, no… what then? Don't know.

Asleep, he thought suddenly; you were asleep in the aircraft in the night, and had just enough time to wake up in the darkness and see flames and begin to realise before light detonated inside your head. After that, pain. But you didn't see any sort of terrain floating/rushing up to meet you, because it was very dark.

The next time he came round, everything had changed. He felt vulnerable and exposed. As his eyes opened and he tried to remember how to see, he slowly made out dusty streaks of light in a brown gloom, and saw earthenware pots near a mud or earth wall, and a small fireplace in the centre of the room, and spears leaning against a wall, and other blades. Straining his neck to bring his head up, he could see something else; the rough wooden frame he was tied to.

The wooden frame was in the shape of a square; two diagonals made an X inside the square. He was naked, his hands and feet lashed, one to each corner of the frame, which was propped against a wall at about forty-five degrees. A thick hide strap secured his waist to the centre of the X, and all over his body were markings of blood and paint.

He relaxed his neck. "Oh shit," he heard himself croak. He didn't like the look of this.

Where the hell was the Culture? They ought to be rescuing him; that was their job. He did their dirty work, they looked after him. This was the deal. So where the hell were they?

The pain came back, like an old friend by now, from almost everywhere. Straining his neck like that had hurt. Sore head (maybe concussion); broken nose, cracked or broken ribs, one broken arm, two broken legs. Maybe internal injuries; his insides felt pretty sore too; the worst, in fact. He felt bloated and full of decay.

Shit, he thought, I might actually be dying.

He shifted his head, grimacing, (pain poured in as if some protecting shell on his skin had been cracked by the movement) and looked at the ropes lashing him to the wooden frame. Traction was no way to treat a fracture, he told himself, and laughed very briefly, because with the first contraction of his stomach muscles his ribs pulsed suddenly, as though they were at red heat.

He could hear things; distant noises of people shouting now and again, and children yelling, and some sort of animal baying.

He closed his eyes, but heard nothing more distinct. He opened them again. The wall was earth, and he was probably underground, for there were thick sawn-off roots sticking into the space around him. The light was composed of two nearly vertical shafts, slightly angled beams of direct sunlight, so… near midday, near the equator. Underground, he thought, and felt sick. Nice and hard to find. He wondered if the plane had been on course when it crashed, and how far from the crash site he'd been carried. No point in worrying about it.

What else could he see? Crude benches. A coarse cushion, dented. It looked like somebody had sat there, facing him. He assumed it was the owner of the hand he had felt, if there had been one. There was no fire in a circle of stones set underneath one of the holes in the roof. Spears leant against the wall, and other weaponish things were strewn about the place. They were not battle-weapons; ceremonial, or maybe torture. He caught a whiff of something awful, just then, and knew it was gangrene, and knew it must be him.

He began to slip over the edge again, uncertain whether he was falling asleep or really going unconscious, but hoping for one or the other, willing either, because all this was more than he could handle just now. Then the girl came in. She had a jug in her hand, and set it down before looking at him. He tried to speak, but couldn't. Maybe he hadn't really spoken earlier when he'd thought he said, "Shit." He looked at the girl and attempted a smile.

She went out again.

He felt somehow heartened, seeing the girl. A man would have been bad news, he thought. A girl meant things might not be so bad after all. Maybe.

The girl came back, with a bowl of water. She washed him, rubbing away the the blood and the paint. There was some pain. Predictably nothing happened when she washed his genitals; he'd have liked to show signs of life, just for form's sake.

He tried to speak, but failed. The girl let him sip some water from a shallow bowl, and he croaked at her, but nothing distinguishable. She left again.

The next time she came back with some men. They wore many strange clothes, like feathers and skins and bones and wooden tiles of armour laced with gut. They were painted too, and they brought pots and small sticks with them, and used them to paint him again.

They finished and stood back. He wanted to tell them he didn't suit red, but nothing came out. He felt himself falling away, out into the darkness.