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most determinedly and committedly corporeal of humans quite forget that the
experience they were having wasn t authentic, and the very ubiquity of this
common- place conviction was a ringing tribute to the tenacity, intelligence,
imagination and determination of all those individuals and organ- isations
down the ages who had contributed to the fact that, in the Culture, anybody
anytime could experience anything anywhere for nothing, and never need worry
themselves with the thought that actually it was all pretend.
Naturally, then, there was, for almost everybody occasionally and for some
people pretty well perpetually, an almost ines- timable cachet in having seen,
heard, smelled, tasted, felt or generally experienced something absolutely and
definitely for real, with none of this contemptible virtuality stuff getting
in the way.
The avatar gave a snort. They re really doing it. It laughed with surprising
heartiness, Kabe thought. It was not the sort of thing you expected a machine,
or even the human-form representative of a machine, to do at all.
Doing what? he asked.
Reinventing money, the avatar said, grinning and shaking its head.
Kabe frowned. Would that be entirely possible?
No, but it s partially possible. The avatar glanced at Kabe. It s an old
saying.
Yes, I know. They d reinvent money for this , Kabe quoted. Or something
similar.
Quite. The avatar nodded. Well, for tickets to Ziller s concert, they
practically are. People who can t stand other people are invit- ing them to
dinner, booking deep-space cruises together -
good grief - even agreeing to go camping with them. Camping! The avatar
giggled. People have traded sexual favours, they ve agreed to pregnancies,
they ve altered their appearance to accommodate a partner s desires, they ve
begun to change gender to please lovers; all just to get tickets. It spread
its arms. How wonderfully, bizarrely, romantically barbaric of them! Don t
you think?
Absolutely, Kabe said. Are you sure about romantically ?
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And they have indeed, the avatar continued, come to agree- ments that go
beyond barter to a form of liquidity regarding future considerations that
sounds remarkably like money, at least as I
understand it.
How extraordinary.
It is, isn t it? the silver-skinned creature said. Just one of those weird
flash-fashions that jumps out of the chaos for an instant every now and again.
Suddenly everybody s a live symphonic music fan. It looked puzzled. I ve
made it clear there s no real room to dance. It shrugged, then swept an arm
round to indicate the view. So. What do you think?
Most impressive.
The Stullien Bowl was practically empty. The preparations for that evening s
concert were on schedule and under way. The avatar and the Homomdan stood on
the lip of the amphitheatre near a battery of lights, lasers and effects
mortars each of which quite dwarfed Kabe and, he thought, looked a lot like
weapons.
The crisp blue day was a couple of hours old, the sun rising at their back.
Kabe could just make out the tiny shadows he and the avatar were casting
across a pattern of seats four hundred metres away.
The Bowl was over a kilometre across: a steeply raked coli- seum of spun
carbon fibres and transparent diamond sheeting whose seats and platforms
focused around a generously circular field which could adapt itself to
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accommodate various sports and a variety of concert and other entertainment
configurations. It did have an emergency roof, but that had never been used.
The whole point of the Bowl was that it was open to the sky, and if the
weather had to be of a certain type, well then Hub would do something it
almost never did, and interfere meteorologically, using its prodigious energy
projection and field-management capabilities to manipulate the elements until
the desired effect was arrived at. Such meddling was inelegant, untidy and
blunderingly coercive, but it was accepted that it had to be done to keep
people happy, and that was, ultimately, Hub s whole reason for being.
Technically, the Bowl was a giant specialised barge. It floated within a
network of broad canals, slowly flowing rivers, broad lakes and small seas
which stretched across one of Masaq s more varied continent-Plates and along,
through and across which it could - albeit rather slowly -
navigate itself, so providing a wide choice of external backgrounds visible
through the supporting structure and above the stadium s lip, including
jagged, snow- strewn mountains, giant cliffs, vast deserts, carpeting jungles,
towering crystal cities, vast waterfalls and gently swaying blimp tree
forests.
For a particularly wild event, there was a rapids course; a giant, quickly
flowing river the Bowl could descend like a monstrous inflatable riding the
world s biggest flume, monu- mentally spinning, tipping and bobbing until it
encountered the vast cliff-encircled whirlpool at the bottom, where it simply
revolved atop a swirling column of spiralling water being sucked plunging into
a set of colossal pumps capable of emptying a sea, until one of Hub s
Superlifters came to hoist it bodily back up to its normal elevation among the
waterways above.
For tonight s performance the Bowl would be staying where it was, at the point
of a small peninsula on the shores of Bandel Lake, Guerno Plate, a dozen
continents to spinward from Xaravve.
The peninsula s point housed a collection of underground access points,
various elegantly disguised storage and support buildings, a broad concourse
lined with bars, cafes, restaurants and other entertainment venues, and a
giant bracket-shaped dock where the Bowl underwent any necessary maintenance
and repair.
The Bowl s in-built strategic tactile, sound and light systems, even without
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