2
The Hand of God 137
Outside the palace, in the sharp cold of a winter’s afternoon, the clear sky was full of what looked like glittering snow.
Horza paused on the warshuttle’s ramp and looked up and around. The sheer walls and slim towers of the prison-palace echoed
and
reflected with the booms and flashes of continuing firefights, while Idiran gun-platforms cruised back and forth, firing
occasionally. Around them
on the stiffening breeze blew great clouds of chaff from anti-laser mortars on the palace roof.
A gust sent some of the fluttering, flickering foil
toward the stationary shuttle, and Horza found one side of his wet and
sticky body suddenly coated with reflecting plumage.
“Please. The battle is not over yet," thundered the Idiran soldier behind him, in what was probably meant to be a quiet whisper.
Horza turned
round to the armored bulk and stared up at the visor of the giant’s helmet, where he could see his own, old man’s
face reflected. He breathed
deeply, then nodded, turned and walked, slightly shakily, into the shuttle. A flash of light threw
his shadow diagonally in front of him, and the craft
bucked in the shock wave of a big explosion somewhere inside the palace
as the ramp closed.
By their names you could know them, Horza thought as he showered. The Culture’s General Contact Units, which until now had
borne the brunt
of the first four years of the war in space, had always chosen jokey, facetious names. Even the new warships
they were starting to produce, as
their factory craft completed gearing up their war production, favored either jocular, somber
or downright unpleasant names, as though the
Culture could not take entirely seriously the vast conflict in which it had embroiled
itself.
The Idirans looked at things differently. To them a ship name ought to reflect the serious nature of its purpose, duties and
resolute use. In the
huge Idiran navy there were hundreds of craft named after the same heroes, planets, battles, religious
concepts and impressive adjectives. The
light cruiser which had rescued Horza was the 137th vessel to be called
The Hand of God
, and it existed concurrently with over a hundred other
craft in the navy using the same title, so its full name was
The Hand of God 137.
Horza dried in the airstream with some difficulty. Like everything else in the spaceship it was built on a monumental scale
befitting the size
of the Idirans, and the hurricane of air it produced nearly blew him out of the shower cabinet.
The Querl Xoralundra, spy-father and warrior priest of the Four Souls tributory sect of Farn-Idir, clasped two hands on the
surface of the table. It
looked to Horza rather like a pair of continental plates colliding.
“So, Bora Horza," boomed the old Idiran, “you are recovered."
“Just about," nodded Horza, rubbing his wrists. He sat in Xoralundra’s cabin in
The Hand of God 137,
clothed in a bulky but comfortable
spacesuit apparently brought along just for him. Xoralundra, who was also suited up, had
insisted the man wear it because the warship was still
at battle stations as it swept a fast and lowpowered orbit around the
planet of Sorpen. A Culture GCU of the Mountain class had been
confirmed in the system by Naval Intelligence; the
Hand
was in on its own, and they couldn’t find any trace of the Culture ship, so they had to be
careful.
Xoralundra leaned toward Horza, casting a shadow over the table. His huge head, saddle-shaped when seen from directly in front,
with the
two front eyes clear and unblinking near the edges, loomed over the Changer. “You were lucky, Horza. We did not come
in to rescue you out of
compassion. Failure is its own reward."
“Thank you, Xora. That’s actually the nicest thing anybody’s said to me all day." Horza sat back in his seat and put one of
his old-looking
hands through his thin, yellowing hair. It would take a few days for the aged appearance he had assumed to
disappear, though already he could
feel it starting to slip away from him. In a Changer’s mind there was a self-image constantly
held and reviewed on a semi-subconscious level,
keeping the body in the appearance willed. Horza’s need to look like a Gerontocrat
was gone now, so the mental picture of the minister he had
impersonated for the Idirans was fragmenting and dissolving, and
his body was going back to its normal, neutral state.
Xoralundra’s head went slowly from side to side between the edges of the suit collar. It was a gesture Horza had never fully
translated,
although he had worked for the Idirans and known Xoralundra well since before the war.
“Anyway. You are alive," Xoralundra said. Horza nodded and drummed his fingers on the table to show he agreed. He wished the
Idiran
chair he was perched on didn’t make him feel so much like a child; his feet weren’t even touching the deck.
“Just. Thanks, anyway. I’m sorry I dragged you all the way in here to rescue a failure."
“Orders are orders. I personally am glad we were able to. Now I must tell you why we received those orders."
Horza smiled and looked away from the old Idiran, who had just given him something of a compliment; a rare thing. He looked
back and
watched the other being’s wide mouth—big enough, thought Horza, to bite off both your hands at once—as it boomed
out the precise, short
words of the Idiran language.
“You were once with a caretaker mission on Schar’s World, one of the Dra’Azon Planets of the Dead," Xoralundra stated. Horza
nodded.
“We need you to go back there."
“Now." Horza said to the broad, dark face of the Idiran. “There are only Changers there. I’ve told you I won’t impersonate
another Changer. I
certainly won’t kill one."
“We are not asking you to do that. Listen while I explain." Xoralundra leaned on his backrest in a way almost any vertebrate—or
even
anything like a vertebrate—would have called tired. “Four standard days ago," the Idiran began—then his suit helmet,
which was lying on the