"The fish that first ventured ashore had considerable practical problems."

Dominic Flandry – "Now then, let us settle down to the serious business of getting drunk."

Cheradenine Zakalwe – "Why do we do this, Dominic? Not the drinking, but the shadows, the trickery, the violence, the mind-blowing weirdness, the moral ambiguity, living most of our lives as far from the light as we can get?"

Flandry - "Because a man isn't really alive till he has something bigger than himself and his own little happiness, for which he'd gladly die?"

Zakalwe - "Magnificent health care. Lots of money and a new body last time."

Flandry – "Wait, you get paid? I thought the Culture didn't do money?"

Zakalwe - "They don't, but I'm not really Culture. Anyways, I think I know the real reason."

Flandry - "Which is?"

Zakalwe - "Alcohol in the dust clouds. Goddamn stuff is everywhere. Any lousy species ever invents the telescope and the spectroscope and starts looking in between the stars, what do they find? Loads of stuff, but much of it alcohol. Humanoids are the galaxy's way of trying to get rid of all that alcohol."

Flandry – "Zakalwe, you will go far indeed, if no one shoots you first."

Zakalwe – "Far? I spent the second half of a very long life in the service of a magical land where they had no kings, no laws, no money and no property, but where everybody lived like a prince, was very well-behaved (if you don't count hedonism) and lacked for nothing. And these people lived in peace, but they were bored, because para dise can get that way after a time, and so they started to carry out missions of good works; charitable visits upon the less well-off, but who needed someone to collect on the penalty clause when some ethnarch who confuses pissant for puissant goes backsies on the deal."

Flandry – "At least you were ultimately part of making things better. I spent my whole life in the service of an empire that was corrupt, exploitative, brutal, and had been basically doomed for centuries before I was born, and I knew that's what it was the whole time, but it kept me happy with wine, women and song so I kept shoveling against the tide. But, I knew the whole time that eventually, no matter what I did, the Merseians and the other wolves of space would come creeping in and the lights would go out for the Long Night….

Zakalwe – "A guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody's either for it or against it, we're against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. Oh, and pass me the nuts."

Flandry - "Cynicism is boringly fashionable. I didn't think you would be afraid to say mankind is worth fighting for."

Zakalwe - Is it?

Flandry – "We're mortal! Which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?"

Zakalwe – "Ask for? Dominic... I need to win something. Do you know what I really am? I'm a professional loser. I've turned losing into an art form, or as near an exact science as I can. SC drops me into a critical situation and my job is to cause the side I'm on…. To lose! To lose in a precisely-calculated way, for the maximum long-term benefit. And if I screw up and actually start to win…. They step in and make sure I lose!"

Flandry - "There is an old, old Terran saying, you know—"born to lose, live to win." It's either Lemmy Kilmister or Thomas Aquinas, I can't remember which. Or maybe it was Lenin."

Zakalwe - "To some people, that might sound like just a good excuse for bad behavior."

Flandry – "Isn't bad behavior sometimes the point? Supple young women clad in sunlight, blooded horses stamping on the plains of Ilion, smoke curling fragrant about coffee and cognac on Terra? Paradise or not, your Culture must still savor such things."

Zakalwe – "That makes no sense. I need to be more drunk for this."

Flandry – "I know, but it's all I could stand to do. A man can do but little. Enough if that little be right."

Zakalwe – "The last right I did was go back after this Ethnarch the Culture had tried to flip, a real rectal polyp who scavenged organs out of his prisoners to extend his life. We gave him a chance at being better, but he welched on the deal, so on my own I went back, snuck into the guy's bedroom, told him why I was there and straight-up killed him."

Flandry - "A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort."

Zakalwe – "No, really, you don't shovel against the tide. You can't shovel water. You swim against the tide."

Flandry – "My first mission, as an ensign right out of the academy, got me marooned on a planet where I couldn't breathe the air, on the front line of a cold war about to go hot, and two embassies, one disastrous black bag op and one minor fleet action later I'm stuck on part of a blown-apart battleship for a month before rescue arrives, with a smoking hot tiger-woman, and we can't do anything to …ah….. pass the time because we couldn't breathe the same atmosphere….and all the time we knew her home planet was doomed and I couldn't even tell anyone about it."

Zakalwe – "Special Circumstances sent me out to a place called Trantor to deal with a civilization that thought they had worked out how to predict the future based on looking at aggregate human responses to stimuli, to the point where they predicted the end of their own civilization and created a foundation to survive the fall. I pretended to be a psychic mutant warlord. They never saw me coming, and I still eventually lost."

Flandry – "I was prepared to sell out a planet full of honest, decent, competent would-be rebels, whose ruler's daughter I was madly in love with, on behalf of an emperor I completely despised, because if the rebels had tried to topple the emperor the barbarians and Merseians would have pounced amid the chaos, and the whole thing would have come tumbling down. Actually, I did that a couple of times, now that I think about it. Oh, and inflicted xenocide on a fairytale kingdom because they were bothering some settlers."

Zakalwe – "I spent years, YEARS trying to help this group called the Church Militant on this stupid backwards planet win a hopeless—HOPELESS! war, and I WAS winning, too….and then they tell me I've been leading the wrong side and everything I've built will need to be destroyed in five months!"

Flandry - "We've all been on the wrong side…. Once as a young fellow I found myself supporting the abominable Emperor Josip against McCormac–Remember McCormac's Rebellion? He was infinitely the better man. Anybody would have been. But Josip was the legitimate Emperor; and legitimacy is the root and branch of government. How else, in spite of the cruelties and extortions and ghastly mistakes it's bound to perpetrate–how else, by what right, can it command loyalty? If it is not the servant of law, then it is nothing but a temporary convenience at best. At worse, it's raw force."

Zakalwe - "The good soldier does as he was told, and if he had any sense at all volunteered for nothing, especially promotion."

Flandry - "That statement is more bitter than this alleged beer. Yours is empty—another round? Landlord? Same again, both of us? Anyways, I wouldn't think much of a youngster who never felt an urge to kick the God of Things As They Are in his fat belly."

Zakalwe – "This beer really is fieldsphere sex…."

Flandry – "Fucking close to nothingness?"

Zakalwe - "Yup. So, like I was saying, I was assigned to defend a virtual Hell in order to destroy the virtual Hell, because some unspeakable bastards were getting unspeakably rich off of them and using them for social coercion to maintain a corrupt theocracy."

Flandry – "Hell? Well, you are a wicked man….."

Zakalwe – "Thank you. It's taken years of diligent practice."

Flandry – "If you want diligent wickedness, I spent so much time lying to everyone I met that I discovered how to lie to a telepath. A centuries-old expert telepath from a whole race of expert telepaths."

Zakalwe – "I made a chair out of my girlfriend's bones."

Flandry – "I caught my own son in a treasonous conspiracy and because he wouldn't rat out his co-conspirators I had him mind-probed for information until he was a vegetable, then because he was dead, when I got too old for wet work I recruited my clueless illegitimate daughter as my replacement and immediately sent her on a near-suicide mission."

Zakalwe – "I made a chair out of my girlfriend's bones. It's a thing I did."

Flandry – "I had an entire planet bombarded into radioactive slag to kill one guy who was the last member of his species, out of personal revenge after he killed the only woman I ever loved."

Zakalwe – "Oh, that Kathryn woman you keep whingeing about?"

Flandry – "No, this was one of the other ones. I never had a ghost of a chance with Kathryn."

Zakalwe – "You've had a few only women you ever loved, by my count. Or you're chronically indecisive. I drove my childhood friend and mortal enemy to suicide BY MAKING A CHAIR OUT OF MY GIRLFRIEND'S BONES, and then spent most of the rest of my life passing myself off as him. And THEN I started working for a bunch of fully automated luxury communit… commuunur…hippies as a traveling atrocity carnival and interstellar societal saboteur."

Flandry – "You know, the way you keep bringing that business of the cadaverous joinery up every time we do this, tells me that you have some unresolved stuff to work out."

Zakalwe – "It's important to me."

Flandry – "I know, it's your defining moment, when you simultaneously hit both zenith and nadir."

Zakalwe — "I didn't kill anyone named Zenith and Nadir blew himself up by accident. And you know that."

Flandry – "The last time we played chess, you stole my queen, lied about it, carved the piece into a tiny chair, and then snuck her back onto the board right as I was about to say 'mate.' The tiny chair was made out of tiny bones. You may have a bit of a fixation there."

Zakalwe – "The one time they needed someone to win, they had this star empire who run—ran- their whole society based on a strategy game. But my own supervisor passes me up for some civilian whose only qualifications are that he's good at games and left himself wide-open to blackmail. I'm not just an assassin, I can run an entire planetary society, take it apart from the inside and put it back together … why couldn't they have given me that job?

Flandry – "Certainly a missed opportunity on their part, you could have done something magnificent there… maybe a credenza or a whole dining room set."

Zakalwe – *morose sigh "My boss is a spaceship and my knife is a robot."

Flandry – ""Alas poor Zakalwe, a life in service to the great and worthy cause of hedonism has given him a case of produced anhedonia…..Also, last time you said your robot was a knife. Which is it?"

Zakalwe – "I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk."

Flandry – "You know, you might possibly be the most stubborn man I've ever met. The way you got your battleship got stuck and you decided to just announce it was now a fort probably should have clued me in on that."

Zakalwe – "I'm stubborn? What about that story you always tell about your first space battle, when you were a passenger on a battleship that got blown up, but you kept shooting from the wreckage?"

Flandry - "I won't lie down and die gracefully. I'm far too cowardly for that."

Zakalwe - "Dominic, most people are not prepared to have their minds changed, and I think they know in their hearts that other people are just the same, and –BUUURP—excuse me- one of the reasons people become angry when they argue is that they realize just that, as they trot out their excusesesessses. Empthap—emthath… agree with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot yourself."

Flandry – "We came here to hoist pints, my friend, not petards. And yours just went kablammo."

Zakalwe – "…..At least I still have a civilization to defend."

Flandry – "Low blow, that man. Ah well, you're right, though- you're big and bad, I'm just old, thirsty and sad. You win, but it's still your shout because I bought dinner. Your civilization is defended, mine is just defunded… and defunct, too. If nothing else, we today need a reminder that we must never take civilization for granted."

Zakalwe – "I am called Cheradennininine Zakalwe…. And you are called…."

Flandry – "Sir Dominic or just plain Flandry, usually. Dominic to my friends, when I had some… Elethiomel. You're a weapon, but I'm a spy, remember? "

Zakalwe – "…."

Flandry – "Zak?" *poke poke*

Zakalwe - *long gurgling burp followed by a snore*

Flandry – "Faking passing out to get out of buying your round isn't a new trick for you, Zakalwe you self-confessed wicked man. You tried that twice last year."

Zakalwe - *slides off barstool and lands in a messy, flatulent heap on the floor. Flandry drags him back onto the seat and props him on the bar.

Flandry – "Aaah, here we go again. Damn lightweight. Landlord, another liter of the MacAllan 189-year, please?"

Landlord – "Sir, I can't sell you single malt by the liter."

Flandry – "Well somebody obviously can, because I've already had two."

Landlord – "Liters of whisky aren't, as they say, a thing, sir. A thing, a phenomenon, a concept, a ding-an-sich, or a noumenon, or even a theoretical possibility."

Flandry – "Then, my erudite and learned wielder of the beer-tap, just give me two point one one three three eight pints of the water of life and we'll call it shipshape, and oh look I seemed to have accidentally dropped this large and presumably very expensive gold ring right plonk into the drip edge."

Landlord – "…..very good, sir, coming right up."

Flandry – "Thanks Terry. And some haggis pakora if there's any?" (Looking at a somnolent and drooling Zakalwe) "I didn't know they still made Babycham. Thanks for the ring, by the way. Cheers."

(sips)

"Oh, and thanks also for Diziet Sma's direct contact number. Lovely girl. We're going on holiday to Eroticon-Six next month. She told me about the zero-gravity naked paintball, says it doesn't hurt now since they've fixed something. And hello, my little panini-press, I see you there."

Skaffen-Amtiskaw – "You know we're going to need that ring back. It's Culture tech, you could level this building with it."

Flandry – "For industrial-scale hedonists, you Culture types do make some remarkable instruments of destruction. Like you."

Skaffen-Amtiskaw – "It's easier to be a hedonist when you don't have any enemies, and there's only two ways not to have enemies."

Flandry – "True. Those who most complain about decadence are historical philosophers who never had to do any of the actual fighting. But tell me, my brave little toaster, do you know who it was who said that the device every conqueror, yes, every altruistic liberator should be required to wear on his shield... is a little girl and her kitten, at ground zero?"

Skaffen–Amtiskaw – "We need it back."

Flandry – "I said that, and I keep saying it, but nobody ever seems to listen. Including you. You radicals are all alike. You think everything springs from one or two unique causes, and if only you can get at them, everything will automatically become paradisical! History doesn't go that way. Read some and see what the result of every resort to violence by reformists has been. So you go do that thing, o conquering microwave, why don't you? And leave the landlord alone, he's a very nice man who sells single malt by the pint to thirsty and sad old murderers, and he deserves a nice holiday with his family. Who aren't furniture. Besides, you owe me for introducing you to that cheerful Friday lass with the interesting…..serial port. Oh no no no, don't lie, don't lie, don't lie, my suave old appliance, I saw your status lights blink when I said her name."

Skaffen-Amtiskaw – "And I thought Zakalwe was a piece of work."

Flandry – "Says you. He wasn't wearing that ring on a finger."

George Smiley – "My word, you chaps talk a lot, it's amazing you have time to get anything done. Here's your ring back, and there's a whisky of mine on your tab for my trouble. And I'll just steal one of those pakoras if you don't mind. Oh dear, your friend in the dinner jacket must have had too many vodka martinis." [George Smiley is played by Denholm Elliott, as in A Murder of Quality]

Flandry – "It's all right, George, he fought to the end in a valiant last stand against Babycham, but I think the air fryer will get him home, shaken, stirred, or otherwise. [to Zakalwe, sadly] "Well my friend, that was as ludicrous a case of mutual ineptitude as the gods of slapstick ever engineered. We both deserve to be tickled to death by small green centipedes. If you keep quiet about it, I will too. These lands are not always calm. We may well have more adventures ahead of us. But we shall meet them with high hearts." Flandry ended this by sinking the rest of his scotch.

Deanna Troi – "Excuse me, I'm sorry to intrude, I couldn't help but overhear…. mostly because you two were being quite loud until he passed out…. But you said you've learned how to lie to a telepath?"

Flandry – "Indeed I did. But it came with quite a cost."

Deanna Troi (with meaningful eye contact) – "Do you think you could manage to lie with a half-Betazoid empath?"

Flandry (with raised eyebrow) – "Well my dear….. I'm certainly willing to try."