Beychae looked up too. "Through the clouds?"

"Through the clouds."

"Shouldn't you be hiding, then? Running off through the woods?"

"Maybe," he said.

Beychae stood looking down at the other man. "Where were you thinking of taking me, if we'd got away?"

"The Impren System. There are space Habitats there," he said. "They're neutral, or at least not as pro-war as this place."

"Do your… superiors really think war is so close, Zakalwe?"

"Yes," he sighed. He already had the suit's face-plate hinged up; now, with another look at the sky, he took the whole helmet off. He put one hand up over his forehead and through his drawn-back hair, then reached back and took the pony-tail out of its little ring, shaking his long black hair down. "It might take ten days, might take a hundred, but it's coming." He smiled thinly at Beychae. "For the same reasons as last time."

"I thought we'd won the ecological argument against terra-forming," said Beychae.

"We did, but times change; people change, generations change. We won the battles for the acknowledgement of machine sentience, but by all accounts the issue was fudged after that. Now people are saying, yes, they're sentient, but it's only human sentience that counts. Plus, people never need too much of an excuse to see other species as inferior."

Beychae was silent for a while, then said, "Zakalwe, has it ever occurred to you that in all these things the Culture may not be as disinterested as you imagine, and it claims?"

"No, it never occurred to me," he said, though Beychae got the impression the man hadn't really thought first before answering.

"They want other people to be like them, Cheradenine. They don't terraform, so they don't want others to either. There are arguments for it as well, you know; increasing species diversity often seems more important to people than preserving a wilderness, even without the provision of extra living space. The Culture believes profoundly in machine sentience, so it thinks everybody ought to, but I think it also believes every civilisation should be run by its machines. Fewer people want that. The issue of cross-species tolerance is, I'll grant, of a different nature, but even there the Culture can sometimes appear to be insistent that deliberate inter-mixing is not just permissible but desirable; almost a duty. Again, who is to say that is correct?"

"So you should have a war to… what? Clear the air?" He inspected the suit helmet.

"No, Cheradenine, I'm just trying to suggest to you that the Culture may not be as objective as it thinks it is, and, that being the case, its estimation concerning the likelihood of war may be equally untrustworthy."

"There are small wars on a dozen planets right now, Tsoldrin. People are talking war in public; either about how to avoid it, or how it might be limited, or how it can't possibly happen… but it's coming; you can smell it. You should catch the newscasts, Tsoldrin. Then you'd know."

"Well then, perhaps war is inevitable," Beychae said, looking away over the wooded plains and hills beyond the observatory. "Maybe it's just… time."

"Crap," he said. Beychae looked at him, surprised. "There's a saying: "War is a long cliff." You can avoid the cliff completely, you can walk along the top for as long as you have the nerve, you can even choose to leap off, and if you only fall a short way before you hit a ledge you can always scramble back up again. Unless you're just plain invaded, there are always choices, and even then, there's usually something you've missed — a choice you didn't make — that could have avoided invasion in the first place. You people still have your choices. There's nothing inevitable about it."

"Zakalwe," Beychae said. "You surprise me. I'd have thought you —»

"You'd have thought I'd be in favour of war?" he said, standing, a sad small smile on his lips. He put one hand on the other man's shoulder. "You've had your nose buried in books for too long, Tsoldrin." He walked away past the stone instruments. Beychae looked down at the suit helmet, lying on the flagstones. He followed the other man.

"You're right, Zakalwe. I have been out of the flow of things for a long time. I probably don't know who half the people in power are these days, or exactly what the issues are, or the precise balance of the various alliances… so the Culture cannot be so… desperate they think I can alter whatever's going to happen. Can they?"

He turned round. He looked into Beychae's face. "Tsoldrin, the truth is I don't know. Don't think I haven't thought about this. It might be just that you, as a symbol, really,would make all the difference, and maybe everybody is desperate to find an excuse not to have to fight; you could be that excuse if you come along, uncontaminated by recent events, as though from the dead, and provide a face-saving compromise.

"Or maybe the Culture secretly thinks a small short war is a good idea, or even knows there's nothing it can do to stop a full-scale one, but has to be seen to be doing something, no matter how long a shot it might be, so that people can't say later "Why didn't you try this?"" He shrugged. "I never try to second-guess the Culture, Tsoldrin, let alone Contact, and certainly not Special Circumstances."

"You just do their bidding."

"And get well paid for it."

"But you see yourself on the side of good, do you, Cheradenine?"

He smiled and sat on the stone plinth, legs swinging. "I have no idea whether they're the good guys or not, Tsoldrin. They certainly seem to be, but then who knows that seeming is being?" He frowned, looked away. "I have never seen them be cruel, even when they might have claimed they had an excuse to be so. It can make them seem cold, sometimes." He shrugged again. "But there are folks that'll tell you it's the bad gods that always have the most beautiful faces and the softest voices. Shit," he said, and jumped off the stone table. He went to stand by the balustrade which marked one edge of the old observatory, looking to where the sky was starting to redden above the horizon. It would be dark in an hour. "They keep their promises and they pay top rates. They make good employers, Tsoldrin."

"That does not mean we ought to let them decide our fate."

"You'd rather let those decadent dickheads in Governance do it instead?"

"At least they're involved, Zakalwe; it isn't just a game to them."

"Oh, I think it is. I think that's exactly what it is to them. The difference is that unlike the Culture's Minds, they don't know enough to take games seriously." He took a deep breath and watched the wind stir the branches beneath them; leaves fell away. "Tsoldrin; don't say you're on their side."

"The sides were always strange," Beychae said. "We all said that all we wanted was the best for the Cluster, and I think we all meant it, mostly. We all still want that. But I don't know what the right thing to do is; I sometimes think I know too much, I've studied too much, learned too much, remembered too much. It all seems to average out, somehow; like dust that settles over… whatever machinery we carry inside us that leads us to act, and puts the same weight everywhere, so that always you can see good and bad on each side, and always there are arguments, precedents for every possible course of action… so of course one ends up doing nothing. Perhaps that's only right; perhaps that's what evolution requires, to leave the field free for younger, unencumbered minds, and those not afraid to act."

"Okay, so it's a balance. All societies are like that; the damping hand of the old and the firebrand youth together. It works out through generations, or through the set-up of your institutions, and their change and even replacement; but Governance, the Humanists, combine the worst of both approaches. Ancient, vicious, discredited ideas backed with adolescent war-mania. It's a crock of shit, Tsoldrin, and you know it. You've earned the right to some leisure; nobody's arguing. But that won't stop you feeling guilty when — not if — the bad stuff comes. You have the power, Tsoldrin, whether you like it or not; just doing nothing is a statement, don't you understand that? What is all your studying worth, all your learning, all your knowledge, if it doesn't lead to wisdom? And what's wisdom but knowing what is right, and what is the right thing to do? You're almost a god to some of the people in this civilisation, Tsoldrin; again, whether you like it or not. If you do nothing… they'll feel abandoned. They'll feel despair. And who can blame them?"