Ximenyr laughed. “Well,” he said, arching his back and stretching – all the penises gave a little jerk, as though they were separate tiny animals just waking – “this has all been very interesting; however, things have recharged and there is, frankly, pleasure to be secured. You may have to excuse me, shortly.” He looked at Cossont and Berdle, as all the animal- and beast-headed people joined him on the bed, kneeling by him and reaching out to stroke and caress him. All the phalluses dotted over Ximenyr’s body started, very slowly, to fatten and lever themselves upright. Wavy lines like veins that probably did not all carry blood were beginning to show all over his body, bulging and rippling beneath his ruby-red skin. “Unless you’d like to join in, of course?” he said brightly. “Both, either of you? You’d be very welcome. Plenty of time, plenty of places. We’ll turn the AG on shortly, I’ll start my last heart and we can get things going on my back …”

“I would,” Pyan said in Cossont’s earbud.

Cossont looked down at the creature. “Okay. I could just leave you here,” she told it.

“Never mind.”

“Thank you,” she said to Ximenyr. “But we’d best be on our way.”

“Mr Berdle,” Ximenyr said, taking one hand from between the legs of one of the girls stroking him. He detached the little scout missile from his neck-chain. “You may have this back. Excuse the, ah …”

Berdle had to kneel one-legged on the bed between Ximenyr’s legs and two naked bodies to retrieve the scout missile. “Thank you,” he said.

“Always keep on the right side of the Culture,” Ximenyr murmured dreamily, his face just becoming obscured by a young man straddling him. Very little of his body was visible now, though what was was clearly quite excited.

“You really are no fun,” Pyan said, petulant, as they descended the alarmingly long and steep escalator with the soup-faced person leading the way. In the cavernous space above and in front of them, an energetic game of sorball had begun, with people in transparent spherical suit-spheres leaping about in a zero-G volume, pinging off the inside walls of a giant diamond glass sphere forty metres across.

“Tough,” Cossont said, then turned to Berdle, but could only get to the point where she opened her mouth to speak before he turned to her and said,

“Later.”

“So?” she said. They were back aboard the module. It had met them on a landing platform which cantilevered out from the mass of the Girdlecity like a round tray on an outstretched arm. The craft started to pull away, going astern to avoid some overhanging architecture a few kilometres above.

“Mr Ximenyr has access to some surprisingly sophisticated tech,” Berdle said, lowering himself onto a lounge couch and examining the scout missile. “And some 4D shielding, of course, which is why we had to get in there.”