Fivetide turned on the waiter. ‘Well?’ he shouted. ‘Don’t just float there, you moron; take the rest to the Savage-Talker Battalion table!’ He flicked a tentacle towards the waiter, who flinched spectacularly. Its gas sac deflated and it ran across the floor membrane for the banqueting area of the nest space, dodging the Affronters gradually making their way in that direction.

Fivetide turned briefly to acknowledge the greeting slap of a fellow Diplomatic Force officer, then rotated back, produced a bulb of fluid from one of the pockets on his uniform and clinked it carefully against the flask Genar-Hofoen held. ‘To the future of Affront-Culture relations,’ he rumbled. ‘May our friendship be long and our wars be short!’ Fivetide squeezed the fluid into his mouth beak.

‘So short you could miss them entirely,’ Genar-Hofoen said tiredly, more because it was the sort of thing a Culture ambassador was supposed to say rather than because he sincerely meant it. Fivetide snorted derisively and dodged briefly to one side, apparently attempting to stick one tentacle-end up the anus of a passing Fleet Captain, who wrestled the tentacle aside and snapped his beak aggressively before joining in Fivetide’s laughter and exchanging the heartfelt hellos and thunderous tentacle-slaps of dear friends. There would be a lot of this sort of stuff this evening, Genar-Hofoen knew. The dinner was an all-male gathering and therefore likely to be fairly boisterous even by Affronter standards.

Genar-Hofoen put the flask’s nozzle to his mouth; the gelfield suit attached itself to the nozzle, equalised pressures, opened the flask’s seal and then - as Genar-Hofoen tipped his head back - had what for the suit’s brain was a good long think before it permitted the liquid inside to wash through it and into the man’s mouth and throat.

~ Fifty-fifty water/alcohol plus traces of partially toxic herb-like chemicals; closest to Leisetsiker spirit, said a voice in Genar-Hofoen’s head. ~ If I were you I’d by-pass it.

~ If you were me, suit, you’d welcome inebriation just to mitigate the effects of having to suffer your intimate embrace, Genar-Hofoen told the thing as he drank.

~ Oh, we’re in tetchy mode are we? said the voice.

~ I don it with your good self.

‘It is good, by your bizarre criteria?’ Fivetide inquired, eye stalks nodding at the flask.

Genar-Hofoen nodded as the drink warmed its way down his throat to his stomach. He coughed, which had the effect of making the gelfield ball out round his mouth like silvery chewing gum for a moment - something which he knew Fivetide thought was the second funniest thing a human could do in a gelfield suit, only beaten for amusement value by a sneeze. ‘Unhealthy and poisonous,’ Genar-Hofoen told the Affronter. ‘Perfect copy. My compliments to the chemist.’