Read The State Of The Art for Free Online

mostly unsmoked.
    'And if they blow the place up?'
    'Mmm.'
    'Well?'
    'Well what?' he demanded.
    A siren sounded on the St Germain, dopplering. 'Might be what they're heading for. Want to see them moth themselves in front of their own -'
    'Ah, bullshit.' His face crinkled with annoyance.
    'Bullshit yourself,' I told him. 'Even the ship's worried. The only reason they haven't made a final decision yet is because they know how bad it'll look short term if they do.'
    'Sma, I don't care. I don't want to leave. I don't want to have any more to do with the ship or the Culture or anything connected with it.'
    'You must be crazy. As crazy as they are. They'll kill you; you'll get crushed under a truck or mangled in a plane crash or ... burned up in some fire or something ... '
    'So I take my chances.'
    'Well ... what about what they'd call the “security” aspect? What if you're only injured and they take you to hospital? You'll never get out again; they'll take one look at your guts or your blood and they'll know you're alien. You'll have the military all over you. They'll dissect you.'
    'Not very likely. But if it happens, it happens.'
    I sat down again. I was reacting just the way the ship had known I would. I thought Linter was mad just the way the Arbitrary did, and it was using me to try and talk some sense into him. Doubtless the ship had already tried, but equally obviously the nature of Linter's decision was such that the Arbitrary was the last thing that was going to have any influence. Technologically and morally the ship represented the most finely articulated statement the Culture was capable of producing, and that very sophistication had the beast hamstrung, here.
    I have to admit I felt a degree of admiration for Linter's stand, even though I still thought he was being stupid. There might or might not be a local involved, but I was already getting the impression it was more complicated - and more difficult to handle - than that. Maybe he had fallen in love, but not with anything as simple as a person. Maybe he'd fallen in love with Earth itself; the whole fucking planet. So much for Contact screening; they were supposed to keep people out who might fall like that. If that was what had happened then the ship had problems indeed. Falling in love with somebody, they say, is a little like getting a tune into your head and not being able to stop whistling it ... except much more so, and - from what I'd heard - going native the way I suspected Linter might be was as far beyond loving another person as that was beyond getting a tune stuck in your head.
    I felt suddenly angry, at Linter and the ship.
    'I think you're taking a very selfish and stupid risk that's not just bad for you, and bad for the ... for us; for the Culture, but also bad for these people. If you do get caught, if you're discovered ... they are going to get paranoid, and they might feel threatened and hostile in any contact they are involved, in or ex. You could send them ... make them crazy. Insane.'
    'You said they were that already.'
    'And you do stand a less chance of living your full term. Even if you don't; so you live for centuries. How d'you explain that?'
    'They may have anti-geriatrics themselves by that time. Besides, I can always move around.'
    'They won't have anti-geriatrics for fifty years or more; centuries if they relapse, even without a Holocaust. Yeah; so move around, make yourself a fugitive, stay alien, stay apart. You'll be as cut off from them as you will be from us. Ah hell, you always will be anyway.' I was talking loudly by now. I waved one arm at the bookshelves. 'Sure read the books and see the films and go to concerts and theatre and opera and all that shit; you can't become them. You'll still have Culture eyes, Culture brain; you can't just ... can't deny all that, pretend it never happened.' I stamped one foot on the floor. 'God dammit, Linter, you're just being ungrateful!'
    'Listen, Sma,' he said, rising out of the seat,