about. It was clear now that some of the units, coloured grey-blue and shown fuzzily and in less detail than the rest, must represent the enemy. “It’ll take you to Syaungun,” Hyrlis said. “That’s a Morthanveld Nestworld, one of the main transfer ports between the Morthanveld and the Culture.” His gaze roamed the huge globe, never resting. “Should find a ship there’ll take you to the Culture.”
“I am grateful,” Ferbin said stiffly. He found it difficult to be anything other than formally polite with Hyrlis after being rejected by him, though Hyrlis himself seemed barely to notice or care.
The display halted, then flickered, showing various end-patterns in succession. Hyrlis shook his head and waved one arm. The great round map flicked back to its starting state again and there was much sighing and stretching amongst the uniformed advisers or generals clustered around him.
Holse nodded at the map. “All this, sir. Is it a game?”
Hyrlis smiled, still looking at the great glowing bubble of the display. “Yes,” he said. “It’s all a game.”
“Does it start from what you might call reality, though?” Holse asked, stepping close to the balcony’s edge, obviously fascinated, his face lit by the great glowing hemisphere. Ferbin said nothing. He had given up trying to get his servant to be more discreet.
“From what we call reality, as far as we know it, yes,” Hyrlis said. He turned to look at Holse. “Then we use it to try out possible dispositions, promising strategies and various tactics, looking for those that offer the best results, assuming the enemy acts and reacts as we predict.”
“And will they be doing the same thing as regards you?”
“Undoubtably.”
“Might you not simply play the game against each other then, sir?” Holse suggested cheerily. “Dispensing with all the actual slaughtering and maiming and destruction and desolating and such like? Like in the old days, when two great armies met and, counting themselves about equal, called up champions, one from each, their individual combat counting by earlier agreement as determining the whole result, so sending many a frightened soldier safely back to his farm and loved ones.”
Hyrlis laughed. The sound was obviously as startling and unusual to the generals and advisers on the balcony as it was to Ferbin and Holse. “I’d play if they would!” Hyrlis said. “And accept the verdict gladly regardless.” He smiled at Ferbin, then to Holse said, “But no matter whether we are all in a still greater game, this one here before us is at a cruder grain than that which it models. Entire battles, and sometimes therefore wars, can hinge on a jammed gun, a failed battery, a single shell being dud or an individual soldier suddenly turning and running, or throwing himself on a grenade.”
Hyrlis shook his head. “That cannot be fully modelled, not reliably, not consistently. That you need to play out in reality, or the most detailed simulation you have available, which is effectively the same thing.”
Holse smiled sadly. “Matter, eh, sir?”
“Matter.” Hyrlis nodded. “And anyway, where would be the fun in just playing a game? Our hosts could do that themselves. No. They need us to play out the greater result. Nothing else will do. We ought to feel privileged to be so valuable, so irreplaceable. We may all be mere particles, but we are each fundamental!”
Hyrlis sounded close to laughing again, then his tone and whole demeanour changed as he looked to one side, where no one was standing. “And don’t think yourselves any better,” he said quietly. Ferbin tsk-ed loudly and turned his head away as Hyrlis continued, “What is the sweet and easy continuance of all things Cultural, if not based on the cosy knowledge of good works done in one’s name, far away? Eh?” He nodded at nobody and nothing visible. “What do you say, my loyal viewers? Aye to that? Contact and SC; they play your own real games, and let the trillions of pampered sleepers inhabiting all those great rolling cradles we call Orbitals run smoothly through the otherly scary night, unvexed.”
“You’re obviously busy,” Ferbin said matter-of-factly to Hyrlis. “May we leave you now?”
Hyrlis smiled. “Yes, prince. Get to your own dreams, leave us with ours. By all means be gone.”
Ferbin and Holse turned to go.
“Holse!” Hyrlis called.
Choubris and Ferbin both turned to look back.
“Sir?” Holse said.
“Holse, if I offered you the chance to stay here and general for me, play this great game, would you take it? It would be for riches and for power, both here and