"Why's he "Emperor-Regent"?" Gurgeh asked the sweating apex.

"Their Royal Highness had to take up the Royal Chain after the Emperor Molsce sadly died two years ago. As second-best player during the last games, Our Worship Nicosar was elevated to the throne. But I have no doubt they will remain there!"

Gurgeh, who'd read about Molsce dying but hadn't realised Nicosar wasn't regarded as a full Emperor in his own right, nodded and, looking at the extravagantly accoutred people and beasts surrounding the imperial dais, wondered what additional splendours Nicosar could possibly merit if he did win the games.

"I'd offer to dance with you but they don't approve of men dancing together," Shohobohaum Za said, coming up to where Gurgeh stood by a pillar. Za took a plate of paper-wrapped sweetmeats from a small table and held it out to Gurgeh, who shook his head. Za popped a couple of the little pastries into his mouth while Gurgeh watched the elaborate, patterned dances surge in eddies of flesh and coloured cloth across the ballroom floor. Flere-Imsaho floated near by. There were some bits of paper sticking to its static-charged casing.

"Don't worry," Gurgeh told Za. "I shan't feel insulted."

"Good. Enjoying yourself?" Za leant against the pillar. "Thought you looked a bit lonely standing here. Where's Pequil?"

"He's talking to some imperial officials, trying to arrange a private audience."

"Ho, he'll be lucky," snorted Za. "What d'you think of our wonderful Emperor, anyway?"

"He seems… very imperious," Gurgeh said, and made a frowning gesture at the robes he was wearing, and tapped one ear.

Za looked amused, then mystified, then he laughed. "Oh; the microphone!" He shook his head, unwrapped another couple of pastries and ate them. "Don't worry about that. Just say what you want. You won't be assassinated or anything. They don't mind. Diplomatic protocol. We pretend the robes aren't bugged, and they pretend they haven't heard anything. It's a little game we play."

"If you say so," Gurgeh said, looking over at the imperial dais.

"Not much to look at at the moment, young Nicosar," Za said, following Gurgeh's gaze. "He gets his full regalia after the game; theoretically in mourning for Molsce at the moment. Black's their colour for mourning; something to do with space, I think." He looked at the Emperor for a while. "Odd set-up, don't you think? All that power belonging to one person."

"Seems a rather… potentially unstable way to run a society," Gurgeh agreed.

"Hmm. Of course, it's all relative, isn't it? Really, you know, that old guy the Emp's talking to at the moment probably has more real power than Nicosar himself."

"Really?" Gurgeh looked at Za.

"Yes; that's Hamin, rector of Candsev College. Nicosar's mentor."

"You don't mean he tells the Emperor what to do?"

"Not officially, but" — Za belched — "Nicosar was brought up in the college; spent sixty years, child and apex, learning the game from Hamin. Hamin raised him, groomed him, taught him all he knew, about the game and everything else. So when old Molsce gets his one way ticket to the land of nod — not before time — and Nicosar takes over, who's the first person he's going to turn to for advice?"

"I see," Gurgeh nodded. He was starting to regret not having studied more on Azad the political system rather than just Azad the game. "I thought the colleges just taught people how to play."

"That's all they do in theory, but in fact they're more like surrogate noble families. Where the Empire gains over the usual bloodline set-up is they use the game to recruit the cleverest, most ruthless and manipulative apices from the whole population to run the show, rather than have to marry new blood into some stagnant aristocracy and hope for the best when the genes shake out. Actually quite a neat system; the game solves a lot. I can see it lasting; Contact seems to think it's all going to fall apart at the seams one day, but I doubt it myself. This lot could outlast us. They are impressive, don't you think? Come on; you have to admit you're impressed, aren't you?"

"Unspeakably," Gurgeh said. "But I'd like to see more before I come to any final judgement."

"You'll end up impressed; you'll appreciate its savage beauty. No; I'm serious. You will. You'll probably end up wanting to stay. Oh, and don't pay any attention to that dingbat drone they've sent to nursemaid you. They're all the same those machines; want everything to be like the Culture; peace and love and all that same bland crap. They haven't got the" — Za belched — "the sensuality to appreciate the" — he belched again- "Empire. Believe me. Ignore the machine."

Gurgeh was wondering what to say to that when a brightly dressed group of apices and females came up to surround him and Shohobohaum Za. An apex stepped out of the smiling, shining group, and, with a bow Gurgeh thought looked exaggerated, said to Za, "Would our esteemed envoy amuse our wives with his eyes?"

"I'd be delighted!" Za said. He handed the sweetmeat tray to Gurgeh, and while the women giggled and the apices smirked at each other, he went close to the females and flicked the nictitating membranes in his eyes up and down. "There!" He laughed, dancing back. One of the apices thanked him, then the group of people walked away, talking and laughing.

"They're like big kids," Za told Gurgeh, then patted him on the shoulder and wandered off, a vacant look in his eyes.

Flere-Imsaho floated over, making a noise like rustling paper. "I heard what that asshole said about ignoring machines," it said.

"Hmm?" Gurgeh said.

"I said — oh, it doesn't matter. Not feeling left out because you can't dance, are you?"

"No. I don't enjoy dancing."

"Just as well. It would be socially demeaning for anybody here even to touch you."

"What a way with words you have, machine," Gurgeh said. He put the plate of savouries in front of the drone and then let go and walked off. Flere-Imsaho yelped, and just managed to grab the falling prate before all the paper-wrapped pastries fell off.

Gurgeh wandered around for a while, feeling a little angry and more than a little uncomfortable. He was consumed with the idea that he was surrounded by people who were in some way failed, as though they were all the unpassed components from some high-quality system which would have been polluted by their inclusion. Not only did those around him strike him as foolish and boorish, but he felt also that he was not much different himself. Everybody he met seemed to feel he'd come here just to make a fool of himself.

Contact sent him out here with a geriatric warship hardly worthy of the name, gave him a vain, hopelessly gauche young drone, forgot to tell him things which they ought to have known would make a considerable difference to the way the game was played — the college system, which the Limiting Factor had glossed over, was a good example — and put him at least partly in the charge of a drunken, loudmouthed fool childishly infatuated with a few imperialist tricks and a resourcefully inhumane social system.

During the journey here, the whole adventure had seemed so romantic; a great and brave commitment, a noble thing to do. That sense of the epic had left him now. All he felt at this moment was that he, like Shohobohaum Za or Flere-Imsaho, was just another social misfit and this whole, spectacularly seedy Empire had been thrown to him like a scrap. Somewhere, he was sure, Minds were loafing in hyperspace within the field-fabric of some great ship, laughing.

He looked about the ballroom. Reedy music sounded, the paired apices and luxuriously dressed females moved about the shining marquetry floor in pre-set arrangements, their looks of pride and humility equally distasteful, while the servant males moved carefully around like machines, making sure each glass was kept full, each plate covered. He hardly thought it mattered what their social system was; it simply looked so crassly, rigidly over-organised.