General Systems Vehicles were like encapsulated worlds. They were more than just very big spaceships; they were habitats,

universities,

factories, museums, dockyards, libraries, even mobile exhibition centers. They represented the Culture—they

were the Culture. Almost anything

that could be done anywhere in the Culture could be done on a GSV. They could make anything

the Culture was capable of making, contained

all the knowledge the Culture had ever accumulated, carried or could construct

specialized equipment of every imaginable type for every

conceivable eventuality, and continually manufactured smaller ships:

General Contact Units usually, warcraft now. Their complements were

measured in millions at least. They crewed their offspring

ships out of the gradual increase in their own population. Self-contained, self-

sufficient, productive and, in peacetime at

least, continually exchanging information, they were the Culture’s ambassadors, its most visible

citizens and its technological

and intellectual big guns. There was no need to travel from the galactic backwoods to some distant Culture home-

planet to

be amazed and impressed by the stunning scale and awesome power of the Culture; a GSV could bring the whole lot right up to

your

front door….

Horza followed the brightly dressed crowds through the bustling reception area. There were a few people in uniform, but they

weren’t

stopping anybody. Horza felt in a daze, as though he was only a passenger in his own body, and the drunken puppeteer

he had felt in the

control of earlier was now sobered up a little and guiding him through the crowds of people toward the

doors of another elevator. He tried to

clear his head by shaking it, but it hurt when he did that. His hearing was coming

back very slowly.

He looked at his hands, then sloughed the imprinter-skin from his palms, rubbing it on each of the lapels of the daysuit until

it rolled off and

fell to the floor of the corridor.

When they got off the second elevator they were in the starship. The people dispersed through broad, pastel-shaded corridors

with high

ceilings. Horza looked one way then another, as the elevator capsule swished back up toward the reception sphere.

A small drone floated

toward him. It was the size and shape of a standard suit backpack, and Horza eyed it warily, uncertain

whether it was a Culture device or not.

“Excuse me, are you all right." the machine said. Its voice was robust but not unfriendly. Horza could just hear it.

“I’m lost," Horza said, too loudly. “Lost," he repeated, more quietly, so that he could hardly hear himself. He was aware

that he was swaying

a little as he stood there, and he could feel water trickling into his boots and dripping off the sodden

cloak onto the soft, absorbent surface

under his feet.

“Where do you want to go." the drone asked.

“To a ship called…" Horza closed his eyes in weary desperation. He didn’t dare give the real name. “…

The Beggar’s Bluff.

"

The drone was silent for a second, then said, “I’m afraid there is no such craft aboard. Perhaps it is in the port area by

itself, not on the

Ends.

"

“It’s an old Hronish assault ship," Horza said tiredly, looking for somewhere to sit down. He spotted some seats set into

the wall a few

meters away and made his way over there. The drone followed him, lowering itself as he sat so that it was still

at his eye level. “About a hundred

meters long," the Changer went on, no longer caring if he was giving some sort of game

away. “It was being repaired by some port

shipbuilders; had some damage to its warping units."

“Ah. I

think

I have the one you want. It’s more or less straight down from here. I have no record of its name, but it sounds like the

one you

want. Can you manage to get there yourself, or shall I take you."

“I don’t know if I can manage," Horza said truthfully.

“Wait a moment." The drone stayed floating silently in front of Horza for a moment or two; then it said, “Follow me, then.

There is a traveltube

just over here and down a deck." The machine backed off and indicated the direction they should head

in by extending a hazy field from its

casing. Horza got up and followed it.

They went down a small open AG lift shaft, then crossed a large open area where some of the wheeled and skirted vehicles used

on the

Orbital had been stored; just a few examples, the drone explained, for posterity. The

Ends

already had a Megaship aboard, stored in one of its

two General bays, thirteen kilometers below, in the bottom of the craft.

Horza didn’t know whether to believe the drone or not.

On the far side of the hangar they came to another corridor, and there they entered a cylinder, about three meters in diameter

and six long,

which rolled its door closed, flicked to one side and was instantly sucked into a dark tunnel. Soft lights lit

the interior. The drone explained that

the windows were blanked out because, unless you were used to it, a capsule’s journey

through a GSV could be unsettling, due both to its

speed and to the suddenness of the changes of direction, which the eye

saw but the body didn’t feel. Horza sat down heavily in one of the

folding seats in the middle of the capsule, but only for

a few seconds.

“Here we are. Smallbay 27492, in case you need it again. Innerlevel S-10-right. Goodbye." The capsule door rolled down. Horza

nodded to

the drone and stepped out into a corridor with straight, transparent walls. The capsule door closed, and the machine

vanished. He had a brief

impression of it flickering past him, but it happened so fast he could have been wrong. Anyway, his

vision was still blurred.

He looked to his right. Through the walls of the corridor he looked into clear air. Kilometers of it. There was some sort

of roof high above,

with just a suggestion of wispy clouds. A few tiny craft moved. Level with him, far enough away for the

view to be both hazy and vast, were

hangars: level after level after level of them. Bays, docks, hangars—call them what you

wanted; they filled Horza’s sight for square kilometers,

making him dizzy with the sheer scale of it all. His brain did a

sort of double take, and he blinked and shook himself, but the view did not go

away. Craft moved, lights went on or off, a

layer of cloud far below made the view further down still more hazy, and something whizzed by the

corridor Horza stood in:

a ship, fully three hundred meters long. The ship passed along the level he was on, swooped, and far far away did a left

turn,

banking gracefully in the air to disappear into another bright and vast corridor which seemed to pass by at right angles to

the one Horza

stood staring at. In the other direction, the one that the ship had appeared from, was a wall, seemingly blank.

Horza looked closer and rubbed

his eyes; he saw that the wall had an orderly speckle of lights in a grid across it: thousands

and thousands of windows and lights and balconies.

Smaller craft flitted about its face, and the dots of traveltube capsules

flashed across and up and down.

Horza couldn’t take much more. He looked to his left and saw a smooth ramp leading down underneath the tube the capsule traveled

in. He

stumbled down it, into the welcomingly small space of a two-hundred-meter-long Smallbay.

Horza wanted to cry. The old ship sat on three short legs, square in the center of the bay, a few bits and pieces of equipment

scattered around

it. There was nobody else in the bay that Horza could see, just machinery. The

CAT

looked old and battered, but intact and whole. It appeared

that repairs were either finished or not yet started. The main

hold lift was down, resting on the smooth white deck of the bay. Horza went over to

it and saw a light ladder leading up into

the brightness of the hold itself. A small insect landed briefly on his wrist. He flapped a hand at it as it

flew off. How

very

untidy

of the Culture, he thought absently, to allow an insect on board one of their sparkling vessels. Still, officially at least,

the

Ends

was no longer the Culture’s. Wearily he climbed the ladder, hampered by the damp cloak and accompanied by the squelching

noises

coming from his boots.

The hold smelled familiar, though it looked oddly spacious with no shuttle in it. There was nobody about. He went up the stairs

from the hold

to the accommodation section. He walked along the corridor toward the mess, wondering who was alive, who was

dead, what changes had

been made, if any. It had only been three days, but he felt as though he had been away for years. He

was almost at Yalson’s cabin when the

door was quickly pulled open.

Yalson’s fair-haired head came out, an expression of surprise, even joy, starting to form on it. “Haw—" she said, then stopped,

frowned at