Perosteck Balveda

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Perosteck Balveda is a character in the science fiction novel Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks.

Balveda, as she is usually addressed, is a member of the Culture, an anarchic yet high-tech humanoid civilization. She has chosen to work in the faction known as Contact, specializing in interactions with other cultures, and especially the select group calling itself Special Circumstances, dealing in covert operations, assassinations, etc.

Balveda is an active participant in the Culture's war against a non-humanoid race, the Idirans. Deeply ambivalent about the methods employed by her faction in the war, she meets Horza, a humanoid fighting with the Idirans who is as passionate about his opposition to the Culture as Balveda is about the rightness of its objectives, if not its methods.

After the end of the war, Balveda's experience during a mission to Schar's World (where she accomplishes her objective at the cost of almost all other lives, including Horza's) causes her to elect to be put in suspended animation until such a time as the entire war can be justified in terms of eventual benefits. However, like most who take this course after the war, she chooses to euthanize herself a few months after being awakened.