Free Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

and fifteen high, plus - on top of the rear hull - a ten-metre-high tail. On either side of the hull the warp units bulged, like small versions of the hull itself, and connected to it by stubby wings in the middle and thin flying pylons swept back from just behind the craft’s nose. The CAT was streamlined, and fitted with sprinter fusion motors in the tail, as well as a small lift engine in the nose, for working in atmospheres and gravity wells. Horza thought its accommodation left a lot to be desired.
    He had been given Zallin’s old bunk, sharing a two-metre cube - euphemistically termed a cabin - with Wubslin, who was the mechanic on the ship. He called himself the engineer; but after a few minutes’ talk trying to pump him for technical stuff on the CAT, Horza realised that the thickset white-skinned man knew little about the craft’s more complex systems. He wasn’t unpleasant, didn’t smell, and slept silently most of the time, so Horza supposed things could have been worse.
    There were eighteen people on the ship, in nine cabins. The Man, of course, had one to himself, and the Bratsilakins shared one rather pungent one; they liked to leave the door to it open; everybody else liked to close the door as they went past. Horza was disappointed to find that there were only four women aboard. Two of them hardly ever showed themselves outside their cabin and communicated with the others mostly by signs and gestures. The third was a religious fanatic who, when not trying to convert him to something called the Circle of Flame, spent her time wired up in the cabin she shared with Yalson, spooling fantasy head-tapes. Yalson seemed to be the only normal female on board, but Horza found it difficult to think of her as a woman at all. It was she, however, who took on the job of introducing him to the others and telling him the things about the ship and its crew which he would need to know.
    He had cleaned up in one of the ship’s coffin-like wash-points, then followed his nose as Yalson had suggested to the mess, where he was more or less ignored, but some food was shoved in his direction. Kraiklyn looked at him once as he sat down, between Wubslin and a Bratsilakin, then didn’t look at him again and continued talking about weapons and armour and tactics. After the meal Wubslin had shown Horza to their cabin, then left. Horza cleared a space on Zallin’s bunk, hauled some torn sheets over his tired, aching, old-looking frame, and fell into a deep sleep.
    When he woke he bundled up Zallin’s few possessions. It was pathetic; the dead youth had a few T-shirts, shorts, a couple of little kilts, a rusty sword, a collection of cheap daggers in frayed sheaths and some large plastic micropage books with moving pictures, repeating and repeating scenes from ancient wars for as long as they were held open. That was about all. Horza kept the youth’s leaky suit, though it was far too big and non-adjustable, and the badly maintained and ancient projectile rifle.
    He carried the rest, wrapped in one of the more tatty bed sheets, down to the hangar. It was as it had been when he’d left it. Nobody had bothered to roll the shuttle back. Yalson was there, stripped to the waist, exercising. Horza stood in the doorway at the bottom of the steps, watching the woman work out. She spun and leapt, did backflips and somersaults, kicked her feet out and jabbed punches at the air, making small grunting noises with each sharp movement. She stopped when she saw Horza.
    ‘Welcome back.’ She stooped and picked up a towel from the deck, then started to rub it over her chest and arms, where sweat glistened in the golden down. ‘Thought you’d croaked.’
    ‘Have I been asleep long?’ Horza asked. He didn’t know what sort of time system they used on the ship.
    ‘Two days standard.’ Yalson towelled her spiky hair and draped the damp towel over her lightly furred shoulders. ‘You look better for it, though.’
    ‘I feel better,’ Horza