The man in the bed frowned. “Sculption; now there’s a word I haven’t heard for a while. Technically correct, I guess. Used to be called plastic surgery or bodily amendment or, well, lots of things.” He waved one arm again. “Anyway, I’m afraid that’s a private matter, Mr Berdle; I can neither confirm nor deny, and … all that shit.”

“May we simply ask why was he here, then?” Berdle asked.

“Still not going to tell you, fella,” Ximenyr said, shaking his head. “QiRia and I are old pals, that’s all I can say. Met him a few times, last time just as the Party was starting. But he was friends with my mother, and with her father before her, so I guess he’s pretty ancient even by Culture standards – and I won’t be giving away too much if I say he’s sort of a profound throwback physiologically anyway, by true Culture genetech criteria. I don’t know what sort of weird congenital mixture of geriatric blood-lines he draws his particular bucketful of the vital fluids from, but it’s pretty end-spectrum whatever it is, I can tell you that.”

“Did he leave anything with you?” Cossont asked.

The Master of the Revels shrugged. “Nothing important, maybe a present or two. He was sort of … intermittently generous. Anyway, why? Is he in some sort of trouble?” Ximenyr looked from Cossont to Berdle. “How … official is this visit?”

Cossont leaned forward. “He didn’t leave you a mind-state device or anything?”

Ximenyr laughed. “Why on Zyse, Xown or anywhere would he do that?”

“He …” Cossont began, about to say that QiRia had given her such a device, then remembering that she hadn’t told Berdle this was what she was looking for at the Ospin Dataversities. She’d nearly given that away. She wondered how much she already had.

Berdle had already cut in. “He might have wanted to back himself up.”

Ximenyr shook his head. “Doubt that. He was always kind of resistant regarding that sort of duplicated soul stuff.”

“Do you know where else he might have gone when he was in Gzilt?” Cossont asked.

“No,” Ximenyr said. “Secretive old boy. How about you, Vyr, did he come to visit you?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Oh, feeling jilted?” Ximenyr said softly, with a look of exaggerated sympathy.

“We were never friends like that.”

“You don’t have to be. You just have to care what people think of you.” He brought his blue irises rolling down for a moment, looked at her, then let them roll back up again to be replaced by the red ones. “If it’s any consolation, I know he visited Gzilt at least once without bothering to come see me. Didn’t even call.” He looked at Berdle. “We never did settle how official this visit is.”

Berdle nodded. “Officiality is a slippery concept, in the Culture.”