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