“Thanks, anyway," he told her.

“For what."

“I think you just reinforced my faith in the ultimate outcome of this war."

“Oh, just go away, Horza." Balveda sighed and looked down to the floor.

Horza wanted to touch her, to ruffle her short black hair or pinch her pale cheek, but guessed it would only upset her more.

He knew too well

the bitterness of defeat to want to aggravate the experience for somebody who was, in the end, a fair and

honorable adversary. He went to the

door, and after a word with the guard outside he was let out.

“Ah, Bora Horza," Xoralundra said as the human appeared out of the cell doorway. The Querl came striding along the companionway.

The

guard outside the cell straightened visibly and blew some imaginary dust off his carbine. “How is our guest."

“Not very happy. We were trading justifications and I think I won on points." Horza grinned. Xoralundra stopped by the man

and looked

down.

“Hmm. Well, unless you prefer to relish your victories in a vacuum, I suggest that the next time you leave my cabin while

we are at battle

stations you take your—"

Horza didn’t hear the next word. The ship’s alarm erupted.

The Idiran alarm signal, on a warship as elsewhere, consists of what sounds like a series of very sharp explosions. It is

the amplified

version of the Idiran chest-boom, an evolved signal the Idirans had been using to warn others in their herd

or clan for several hundred thousand

years before they became civilized, and produced by the chest-flap which is the Idiran

vestigial third arm.

Horza clapped his hands to his ears, trying to shut out the awful noise. He could feel the shock waves on his chest, through

the open neck of

the suit. He felt himself being picked up and forced against the bulkhead. It was only then that he realized

he had shut his eyes. For a second he

thought he had never been rescued, never left the wall of the sewercell, that this was

the moment of his death and all the rest had been a

strange and vivid dream. He opened his eyes and found himself staring

into the keratinous snout of the Querl Xoralundra, who shook him

furiously and, just as the ship alarm cut off and was replaced

by a merely painfully intense whine, said very loudly into Horza’s face, “HELMET!"

“Oh shit!" said Horza.

He was dropped to the deck as Xoralundra let him go, turned quickly, and scooped a running medjel off the floor as it tried

to get past him.

“You!" Xoralundra bellowed. “I am the spy-father Querl of the fleet," he shouted into its face and shook

the six-limbed creature by the front of its

suit. “You will go to my cabin immediately and bring the small space helmet lying

there to the port-side stern emergency lock. As fast as

possible. This order supersedes all others and cannot be countermanded.

Go!" He threw the medjel in the right direction. It landed running.

Xoralundra flipped his own helmet over from its back-hinged position, then opened the visor. He looked as though he was about

to say

something to Horza, but the helmet speaker crackled and spoke, and the Querl’s expression changed. The small noise

stopped and only the

continuing wail of the cruiser’s alarm was left. “The Culture craft was hiding in the surface layers

of the system sun," Xoralundra said bitterly,

more to himself than to Horza.

“In the

sun.

" Horza was incredulous. He looked back at the cell door, as though somehow it was Balveda’s fault. “Those bastards are

getting

smarter all the time."

“Yes," snapped the Querl, then turned quickly on one foot. “Follow me, human." Horza obeyed, starting after the old Idiran

at a run, then

bumping into him as the huge figure stopped in its tracks. Horza watched the broad, dark, alien face as it

swiveled round to look over his head

at the Idiran trooper still standing stiffly at the cell door. An expression Horza could

not read passed over Xoralundra’s face. “Guard," the Querl

said, not loudly. The trooper with the laser carbine turned. “Kill

the woman."

Xoralundra stamped off down the corridor. Horza stood for a moment, looking first at the rapidly receding Querl, then at the

guard as he

checked his carbine, ordered the cell door to open, and stepped inside. Then the man ran down the corridor after

the old Idiran.

“Querl!" gasped the medjel as it skidded to a stop by the airlock, the suit helmet held in front of it. Xoralundra swept the

helmet from its grasp

and fitted it quickly over Horza’s head.

“You will find a warp attachment in the lock," the Idiran told Horza. “Get as far away as possible. The fleet will be here

in about nine standard

hours. You shouldn’t have to do anything; the suit will summon help on a coded IFF response. I, too—"

Xoralundra broke off as the cruiser

lurched. There was a loud bang and Horza was blown off his feet by a shock wave, while

the Idiran on his tripod of legs hardly moved. The

medjel which had gone for the helmet yelped as it was blown under Xoralundra’s

legs. The Idiran swore and kicked at it; it ran off. The cruiser

lurched again as other alarms started. Horza could smell

burning. A confused medley of noises that might have been Idiran voices or muffled

explosions came from somewhere overhead.

“I too shall try to escape," Xoralundra continued. “God be with you, human."

Before Horza could say anything the Idiran had rammed his visor down and pushed him into the lock. It slammed shut. Horza

was thrown

against one bulkhead as the cruiser juddered mightily. He looked desperately round the small, spherical space for

a warp unit, then saw it and

after a short struggle unclamped it from its wall magnets. He clamped it to the rear of his suit.

“Ready." a voice said in his ear.

Horza jumped, then said, “Yes! Yes! Hit it!"

The airlock didn’t open conventionally; it turned inside out and threw him into space, tumbling away from the flat disc of

the cruiser in a tiny

galaxy of ice particles. He looked for the Culture ship, then told himself not to be stupid; it was

probably still several trillion kilometers away. That

was how divorced from the human scale modern warfare had become. You

could smash and destroy from unthinkable distances, obliterate

planets from beyond their own system and provoke stars into

novae from light-years off… and still have no good idea why you were really

fighting.

With one last thought for Balveda, Horza reached until he found the control handle for the bulky warp unit, fingered the correct

buttons on it,

and watched the stars twist and distort around him as the unit sent him and his suit lancing away from the

stricken Idiran spacecraft.

He played with the wrist-set for a while, trying to pick up signals from

The Hand of God 137,

but got nothing but static. The suit spoke to him

once, saying “Warp/unit/charge/half/exhausted." Horza kept a watch on the

warp unit via a small screen set inside the helmet.

He recalled that the Idirans said some sort of prayer to their God before going into warp. Once when he had been with Xoralundra

on a ship

which was warping, the Querl had insisted that the Changer repeat the prayer, too. Horza had protested that it meant

nothing to him; not only

did the Idiran God clash with his own personal convictions, the prayer itself was in a dead Idiran

language he didn’t understand. He had been

told rather coldly that it was the gesture that mattered. For what the Idirans

regarded as essentially an animal (their word for humanoids was

best translated as “biotomaton"), only the behavior of devotion

was required; his heart and mind were of no consequence. When Horza had

asked, what about his immortal soul. Xoralundra had

laughed. It was the first and only time Horza had experienced such a thing from the old

warrior. Whoever heard of a mortal

body having an immortal soul.

When the warp unit was almost exhausted, Horza shut it off. Stars swam into focus around him. He set the unit controls, then

threw it away

from him. They parted company, he moving slowly off in one direction, while the unit spun off in another; then

it disappeared as the controls

switched it back on again to use the last of its power leading anybody following its trace

away in the wrong direction.