Gurgeh looked over the crowd to where all the noise was coming from. "Really?" he said. "What, causing all the rumpus?"

"I really don't know why you find it so appealing," the old drone said. It picked up Boruelal's glass again and poured the pale gold wine out into an outstretched field, so that the liquid lay cupped in mid-air, as though in an invisible glass.

"It amuses me," Gurgeh replied. He looked at Chamlis. "Boruelal said something about finding a match for me. Was that what you were talking about earlier?"

"Yes it was. Some new student they've found; a GSV cabin-brat with a gift for Stricken."

Gurgeh raised one eyebrow. Stricken was one of the more complex games in his repertoire. It was also one of his best. There were other human players in the Culture who could beat him — though they were all specialists at the game, not general game-players as he was — but not one of them could guarantee a win, and they were few and far between, probably only ten in the whole population.

"So, who is this talented infant?" The noise on the far side of the room had lessened.

"It's a young woman," Chamlis said, slopping the field-held liquid about and letting it dribble through thin strands of hollow, invisible force. "Just arrived here; came off the Cargo Cult; still settling in."

The General Systems Vehicle Cargo Cult had stopped off at Chiark Orbital ten days earlier, and left only two days ago. Gurgeh had played a few multiple exhibition matches on the craft (and been secretly delighted that they had been clean sweeps; he hadn't been beaten in any of the various games), but he hadn't played Stricken at all. A few of his opponents had mentioned something about a supposedly brilliant (though shy) young game-player on the Vehicle, but he or she hadn't turned up as far as Gurgeh knew, and he'd assumed the reports of this prodigy's powers were much exaggerated. Ship people tended to have a quaint pride in their craft; they liked to feel that even though they had been beaten by the great game-player, their vessel still had the measure of him, somewhere (of course, the ship itself did, but that didn't count; they meant people; humans, or 1.0 value drones).