Free The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

about than is absolutely necessary to facilitate such conduct as will be required of you in furtherance of whatever actions you will be asked to perform and whatever goals you will be asked to pursue. Do you do understand that and agree?’
    Fassin thought about this. Just for an instant as the projection had started talking it had suddenly occurred to him that the glowing orb looked a lot like a Plasmatic being (not that he’d ever met one, but he’d seen images), and that moment of distraction had been sufficient for him to miss the full meaning of what had been said. ‘Actually, no. Sorry, I’m not trying to be –’
    ‘To repeat…’
    Fassin was in the main audience chamber at the top of the Autumn House, a large circular space with views in every horizontal direction and a dramatic transparent roof, all blanked out. For now its contents consisted of a single seat for him and a stubby, metallic-looking cylinder supporting a globe of glowing gas hovering above its centre. A fat cable ran from the squat cylinder to a floor flap in the middle of the chamber.
    The gas sphere repeated what it had just said. It spoke more slowly this time, though happily with no trace of irritation or condescension. Its voice was flat, unaccented, and yet still seemed to contain the hint of a personality, as though the voice of a particular individual had been sampled and used as a template, from which most but not all expression had been removed.
    Fassin heard it out, then said, ‘Okay, yes, I understand and agree.’
    ‘Good. This construct is an emissarial projection of the Mercatorial Administrata, sub-Ministerial level, with superior-rank authority courtesy of the Ascendancy, Engineer division, Senior Engineer level, Eship Est-taun Zhiffir, portal-carrying. It is qualified to appear sentient while not in fact being so. Do you understand this?’
    Fassin thought about this too and decided that he did, just. ‘Yep,’ he said, then wondered if the projection would understand colloquial affirmatives. Apparently it did.
    ‘Good. Seer Fassin Taak, you are hereby seconded to the Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary rank--’
    ‘Hold on!’ Fassin nearly jumped out of his seat. ‘The what?’
    ‘ The honorary rank of--’
    ‘No, I mean I’m seconded to the what?’
    ‘The Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary--’
    ‘The Shrievalty?’ Fassin said, trying to control his voice. ‘The Ocula?’
    ‘ Correct.’
    The baroque, intentionally labyrinthine power structures of the latest, Culmina-inspired Age, incorporating the aspirations of and enforced limitations on at least eight major subject species and whole vast subcategories of additional Faring races as well as (by its own claim) ‘contextualising’ various lesser civilisations of widely varying scope and ambitions and, peripherally at least, influencing entire alien spectra of Others, held many organisations and institutions whose names the utterance of which people - or at least people who knew of such things - tended to greet with a degree of respect shading into fear.
    The Shrievalty was probably the least extreme example; people might respect it - many would even find its purpose rather boring - but few would fear it. It was the paramilitary Order\discipline\faculty of technicians and theorists in charge of what had once been called Information Technology, and so it was also, though less exclusively, concerned with the acceptably restricted remnants of Artificial Intelligence technologies still extant in the post-War epoch.
    The Machine War had wiped the vast majority of AIs out of existence throughout the galaxy over seven thousand years ago, and the Culmina-inspired - and - enforced - peace which followed had stabilised around a regime which both forbade research into AI tech and demanded the active help of all citizens in hunting down and destroying what few scattered vestiges of AI might still exist. Organised on military lines with a bracing