The Little Rascal was what Contact termed a throughput GSV; it acted as a kind of marshalling point for humans and material, picking people up and assembling them into crews for the units, LSVs, MSVs and smaller classes of GSVs which it constructed. Other types of large GSVs were accommodation biased, and effectively self-sufficient in human crews for their offspring craft.
Gurgeh spent some days in the park on top of the vessel, walking through it or flying over it in one of the real-winged, propeller-driven aircraft which were the fashion on the GSVat the time. He even became a proficient enough flyer to enter himself in a race, during which several thousand of the flimsy planes flew figures-of-eight over the top of the Vehicle, through one of the cavernous accessways that ran the length of the craft, out the other end and underneath.
The Limiting Factor, housed in one of the Mainbays just off a Way, encouraged him in this, saying it provided Gurgeh with much needed relaxation. Gurgeh accepted none of the offers to play people at games, but did take up a trickle from the flood of invitations to parties, events and other gatherings; he spent some days and nights off the Limiting Factor, and the old warship was in turn host to a select number of young female guests.
Most of the time, though, Gurgeh spent alone inside the ship, poring over tables of figures and the records of past games, rubbing the biotechs in his hands, and striding over the three great boards, gaze flickering over the lay of land and pieces, his mind racing, searching for patterns and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses. He spent twenty days or so taking a crash course in Eächic, the imperial language. He had originally envisaged speaking Marain as usual and using an interpreter, but he suspected there were subtle links between the language and the game, and for that reason alone learned the tongue. The ship told him later it would have been desirable anyway; the Culture was trying to keep even the intricacies of its language secret from the Empire of Azad.
Not long after he'd arrived, he'd been sent a drone, a machine even smaller than Mawhrin-Skel. It was circular in plan and composed of separate revolving sections; rotating rings around a stationary core. It said it was a library drone with diplomatic training and it was called Trebel Flere-Imsaho Ep-handra Lorgin Estral. Gurgeh said hello and made sure his terminal was switched on. As soon as the machine had gone again he sent a message to Chamlis Amalk-ney, along with a recording of his meeting with the tiny drone. Chamlis signalled back later that the device appeared to be what it claimed; one of a fairly new model of library drone. Not the old-timer they might have expected, but probably harmless enough. Chamlis had never heard of an offensive version of that type.
The old drone closed with some Gevant gossip. Yay Meristinoux was talking about leaving Chiark to pursue her landscaping career elsewhere. She'd developed an interest in things called volcanoes; had Gurgeh heard of those? Hafflis was changing sex again. Professor Boruelal sent her regards but no more messages until he wrote back. Mawhrin-Skel still thankfully absent. Hub was piqued it appeared to have lost the ghastly machine; technically the wretch was still within the Orbital Mind's jurisdiction and it would have to account for it somehow at the next inventory and census.
For a few days after that first meeting with Flere-Imsaho, Gurgeh wondered what it was that he found disturbing about the tiny library drone. Flere-Imsaho was almost pathetically small — it could have hidden inside a pair of cupped hands — but there was something about it which made Gurgeh feel oddly uncomfortable in its presence.
He worked it out, or rather he woke up knowing, one morning, after a nightmare in which he'd been trapped inside a metal sphere and rolled around in some bizarre and cruel game… Flere-Imsaho, with its spinning outer sections and its disc-like white casing, looked rather like a hidden-piece wafer from a Possession game.
Gurgeh lounged in an envelopingly comfortable chair set underneath some lushly canopied trees and watched people skating in the rink below. He was dressed only in a waistcoat and shorts, but there was a leakfield between the observation area and the icerink itself, keeping the air around Gurgeh warm. He divided his time between his terminal screen, from which he was memorising some probability equations, and the rink, where a few people he knew were sweeping about the sculpted pastel surfaces.
"Good day, Jernau Gurgeh," said the drone Flere-Imsaho in its squeaky little voice, settling delicately on the plump arm of the chair. As usual, its aura field was yellow-green; mellow approachability.
"Hello," Gurgeh said, glancing at it briefly. "And what have you been up to?" He touched the terminal screen to inspect another set of tables and equations.
"Oh, well, actually I've been studying some of the species of birds which live here within the interior of the vessel. I do find birds interesting, don't you?"
"Hmm." Gurgeh nodded vaguely, watching the tables change. "What I haven't been able to work out," he said, "is when you go for a walk in the topside park you find droppings, as you'd expect to, but inside here everything's spotless. Does the GSV have drones to clean up after the birds, or what? I know I could just ask it, but I wanted to work it out for myself. There must be some answer."
"Oh that's easy," the little machine said. "You just use birds and trees with a symbiotic relationship; the birds soil only in the bolls of certain trees, otherwise the fruit they depend on doesn't grow."
Gurgeh looked down at the drone. "I see," he said coldly. "Well, I was growing tired of the problem anyway." He turned back to the equations, adjusting the floating terminal so that its screen hid Flere-Imsaho from his sight. The drone stayed silent, went a confused medley of contrite purple and do-not-disturb silver, and flew away.
Flere-Imsaho kept itself to itself most of the time, only calling on Gurgeh once a day or so, and not staying on board the Limiting Factor. Gurgeh was glad of that; the young machine — it said it was only thirteen — could be trying at times. The ship reassured Gurgeh that the little drone would be up to the task of preventing social gaffes and keeping him informed on the finer linguistic points by the time they arrived at the Empire, and — it told Gurgeh later — reassured Flere-Imsaho that the man didn't really despise it.
There was more news from Gevant. Gurgeh had actually written back to a few people, or recorded messages for them, now that he felt he was finally coming to grips with Azad and could spare the time. He and Chamlis corresponded every fifty days or so, though Gurgeh found he had little to say, and most of the news came from the other direction. Hafflis was fully changed; broody but not pregnant. Chamlis was compiling a definitive history of some primitive planet it had once visited. Professor Boruelal was taking a half-year sabbatical, living in a mountain retreat on Osmolon Plate, terminal-less. Olz Hap the wunderkind had come out of her shell; she was already lecturing on games at the university and had become a brilliant regular on the best party circuits. She had spent some days staying at lkroh, just to be better able to relate to Gurgeh; she'd gone on record as claiming he was the best player in the Culture. Hap's analysis of the famous Stricken game at Hafflis's that night was the best-received first work anybody could remember.
Yay sent to say she was fed up with Chiark; she was off, away; she'd had offers from other Plate building collectives and she was going to take up at least one of them, just to show what she could do. She spent most of the communication explaining her theories on artificial volcanoes for Plates, describing in gesticulatory detail how you could lens sunlight to focus it on the undersurface of the Plate, melting the rock on the other side, or just use generators to provide the heat. She enclosed some film of eruptions on planets, with explanations of the effects and notes on how they could be improved.