The Hydrogen Sonata

Five (S -22)

The Caconym, a Culture Limited Offensive Unit of the Troublemaker class, spun slowly above the forest of writhing, wildly shining loops that was the surface of the orange-red star Sapanatcheon. The ship rotated gently in the midst of the blasts of radiation, charged particles and magnetic force coming swirling in from almost every direction, though mostly from below, where a sunspot the size of a gas giant planet was passing slowly beneath. The LOU was taking readings and collecting data, for what it was worth, but really it was just watching, admiring.

The LOU was a modern ship with an old Mind, part of an experiment of sorts to see how that would work. The theory was that pairing a capable new vessel with a wise old Mind would somehow present the best of both worlds, especially for one of the Culture’s relatively few warships, which would be fully expected to sit/drift/race around all its anticipated life doing nothing whatsoever, or at least nothing whatsoever to do with what it had been designed for. The trouble with this idea, as the Caconym had been amongst the first to point out, was that — simulations aside — you would never really know how your theory was standing up to reality until the shit hit the intractor, when it tended to be a bit too late for rethinks and refits.

Still, as one of the ship Minds that had been involved at the sharp end of the Idiran war a thousand years earlier and not gone into a profound retreat, a group-mind or the wilder shores of Eccentricity, the Mind within the Caconym understood that it constituted a kind of resource for the Culture, and grudgingly accepted that it had some sort of responsibility to play along.

Taking its mildly eccentric habits and interests with it into its new home, the Caconym’s Mind — the Caconym, basically — pursued its strange little hobbies and kept itself pretty much to itself, even while remaining on the sort of everlasting standby that Culture ships of its kind were expected to maintain, just in case.

It wasn’t a hermit — Culture warships were strongly counselled not even to think of becoming true hermits — it kept up, in a general sort of way, with what was happening in the galaxy, and there were always a few respected and responsible ships who knew how to contact it if they really needed to, but it had few acquaintances and fewer friends, none of whom expected any real degree of chattiness from it and who were quite used to hearing nothing from it for hundreds of days at a time.

So it was surprised when a message pinged in, from, apparently, somebody being so informal that even many of the usual signal protocols could be cheerfully dispensed with.

∞

Cac, chumlet, how are you?

∞

The sender was, according to a minimal ration of the usual embedded personal codings and eccentricities of glyph-expression, its old friend the MSV Pressure Drop. Though, of course, that sort of signal addenda could be copied.

It sent back along the same signal route:

PD?

∞

The same.

∞

Even without the normal protocols, it was possible to work out the other craft’s rough position through the beam direction and reply delay, even after only a couple of signals. It looked like the Pressure Drop was relatively close by; only five or six years off. Practically next door, and only a couple of systems away in this sparsely starred part of the galaxy.

Unless the other ship was introducing a deliberate delay into its replies, of course, in which case it could be almost on top of it. The Caconym immediately clicked on its track scanner and looked down the signal beam. Nothing there. A few of its internal systems — kicking in like an animal flight-or-fight response — flicked off again, winding back down.

∞

I am in every respect excellent, as you might expect, it replied. Shall I assume the same of you?

∞

Do. Still obsessed with them sparkly bits then?

∞

The Caconym relaxed a little more; the other party certainly expressed itself as though it was the Pressure Drop. Still, to get so close before announcing oneself was unusual. A more paranoid ship, the Caconym thought, would almost feel like it had been getting snuck up on.

The signals it was responding to had originally arrived via a beam spread wide enough to encompass the whole of the solar system it was within, with the implication that the Pressure Drop hadn’t known where within the system its friend was (though it might have guessed, near the sun — that was where the beam was focused now), but to be so discoverable, even by another Culture ship, was, if not alarming for a wandering war-craft, at least worthy of note.

∞

My interest in stars — their formation, development and death, ability to harbour and promote life, affect, empower and destroy all around them and so on — remains. Though obviously I struggle to couch it as poetically as you.

∞

Are you with our friends the field-liners?

∞

The Caconym had a long-standing interest in and relationship with various of the galaxy-wide outposts of the creatures who inhabited the magnetic field lines of certain stars.

∞

No. Holidaying, as of recently; magnetosphere-surfing for the most part. I intend to resume my studies of the inhabitants at a later date.

∞

Not talking to you, then?

∞

Of course they’re talking to me. We have a highly complex and mutually beneficial dialogue, when necessary. The question I might ask is why are you talking to me?

∞

Your oldest friend can’t say hello without occasioning such suspicion?

∞

Who’s suspicious? It’s been so long, and you’ve been so quiet. I thought perhaps you’d expired without telling me.

∞

If I’ve been quiet, it’s because I take my cue from you. But yes, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy. Well, indolent. The effect is the same. I’ve managed to whittle my population down to a framework crew of the like-minded, so all is harmonious.

∞

So, what brings you to this neck of the scrub?

∞

Technically, the serendipity of a tour — for pleasure; like yourself I have discovered a rich seam of auto-indulgence in myself — during which I had made swinging by your own current location, however out of the way, something of a priority, for reasons which are beginning to escape me.

∞

I shall endeavour to be more scintillating.

∞

However, there is something which has come to my attention which might interest you.

∞

And what would that be?

∞

A matter of potential thorniness. It involves the Tiny-wee Tucked-away. The vastness beyond vast.

∞

Oh fuck.

∞

Now, before you—

∞

I may have to overwrite those bits of myself. I tell you, I wish to have no more to do with the promise, process or result of Outloading, Instigating, Subliming, Enfolding or any other synonym relating to the activity or state of basically buggering off up one’s own or indeed anybody else’s fundament.

∞

The Sublime. The almost tangible, entirely believable, mathematically verifiable nirvana just a few right-angle turns away from dear boring old reality: a vast, infinite, better-than-virtual ultra-existence with no Off switch, to which species and civilisations had been hauling their sorry tired-with-it-all behinds off to since — the story went — the galaxy had still been in metaphorical knee socks.

The Sublime was where you went when you felt you had no more to contribute to the life of the great galactic meta-civilisation, and — sometimes more importantly, depending on the species — when in turn you felt that it had no more to offer you. It took a whole civilisation to do it properly, and it took a long, long time for most civilisations to come round to the idea, but there was never any hurry; the Sublime would always be there. Well, provided only that blind chance, your own stupidity or somebody else’s malevolence didn’t lead to your outright obliteration in the Real in the meantime.

Exactly what it was like in there was debatable: very, very few came back and none came back less than profoundly altered. These few returnees were also seemingly incapable of describing the realm they had left, however recently, in any detail at all.

It was wonderful; that was the general tone of the vague, dreamy reports that did come back. And almost beyond comparison, literally indescribable. The absolutely most splendid wonders, experiences and achievements of the Real and all those within it were as nothing to the meanest off-hand meanderings of the Sublime. The most soaring, magnificent, ethereal cathedrals to reason, faith or anything else were as mere unkempt and dilapidated hovels compared to the constructions — if they could even be described as such — within the Sublime. That was about all anybody had to go on, but at least the reports never varied in one respect; no one ever came back saying, shit, it’s horrible; don’t go.

Also, it wasn’t the only choice for a species approaching the end of its active life. Other species/civilisations retreated into Elderhood, becoming almost as dissociated from the normal day-to-day life of the galaxy and its vast rolling boil of peoples and societies as the Sublimed, yet staying in the Real. But that very continuance within the real galaxy — despite the powers and capabilities which everybody associated with Elderhood and which the Elder races rarely showed any desire to downplay — still left you at least theoretically vulnerable to whatever exciting new mix of power and aggression the matter-based galaxy was able to throw up. Plus, opting for Elderhood just looked like a sort of failure of nerve, given what the Sublime realm offered: a space of infinite flourishing without threat or danger.

As far as was known, nothing had ever evolved directly within the Sublime; everything there had started in the Real. And — again as far as anyone could tell — nothing that had ever entered the Sublime from the Real in any viable state had ever entirely disappeared from it. To enter the Sublime was to become near-as-dammit immortal, and while there was still talk of difference and dispute, and even some form of contention within the Sublime, there appeared to be no annihilation, no utter destruction, no genocide or speciescide or their equivalents.

To the deep and abiding frustration of those in the Real who would know more of its past, the peoples who seemed to have been in there the longest — from the first two billion years or so of the galaxy’s lifetime, say — were the least likely ever to reappear in the Real and spill any beans about what life had actually been like back then and what had really happened. Those who had entered the Great Enfold subsequently had scarcely been any more forthcoming, and the few not-totally-vague replies they had given to specific questions had often proved contradictory, one way or another, so as a research trove the Sublime was almost completely useless.

Nevertheless, whole civilisations had been making the one-way trip there for all that time, there was good proof that even the first to do so were still in some meaningful sense there, however much they might have changed, and — compared to the relative chaos, uncertainty and existential short-termism of the Real — that represented a fairly good option by most peoples’ reckoning.

So, a beguiling proposition and a field ripe for studying, too, if one was so inclined. The Mind in the Caconym, which had taken the ship’s name, had been so inclined, once. No longer. The whole enterprise had been exquisitely frustrating, and its friend the Pressure Drop knew this.

∞

I understand. I could, of course, just shut up, withdraw and say no more about it.

∞

No, my interest is piqued, as I’m sure you anticipated. What is it?

∞

Annoyingly — amazingly — the Caconym knew that as far as authorities on the Sublime went, it was one of the few assets the Culture — or anybody else — possessed. It kept hoping that some other brave, ambitious or just plain self-deluded souls would take up the Sublime-exploring baton and enquire further, look closer, delve deeper and make some breakthrough it had been unable to make, so taking the responsibility away from it, and it had tried to encourage informal associations of other Minds with similar interests to pursue such behaviour, but all such hopes had been dashed; almost nobody else was interested. It had even dared anticipate that the Contact section would form a specialist department to handle such matters and tackle the problem properly, but — despite having dropped a few heavy hints on the subject over the years — this too seemed as far away as ever.

The Gzilt, the Pressure Drop sent.

∞

Mm-hmm. Been talking about the Big Cheerie-O for some. They’re actually off, too; set a date and everything. See, I do listen to some news. Hmm. That’s quite close, now. Not having second thoughts are they?

∞

Not yet. But there’s been… a development.

∞

The Gzilt were a sort of cousin species/civilisation to the Culture. Nearly founders, though not quite, they had been influential in the setting up and design of the Culture almost ten thousand years earlier, when a disparate group of humanoid species at roughly the same stage of technological and societal development had been thinking about banding together.

Amiable enough, if somewhat martially uptight due to an unusual social set-up that basically meant everybody was presumed to be in a single society-wide militia — hence everybody had a military rank, from birth — they had made significant contributions to the establishment and ethos of the Culture while it was all still at the being-talked-about phase but then, almost at the last moment, and to pretty much everyone’s surprise, in a way including their own, they had decided not to join the new confederation.

They’d go their own way, they’d decided, wishing the Culture well and taking an interest in it, but keeping determinedly apart from it.

Relations had remained friendly throughout, and rumours persisted that the Gzilt had been helpful to the Culture in the Idiran war, despite a supposedly meticulous neutrality, but in essence they had stayed quietly, studiously apart from the Culture for all that time, observing the more rowdy, boisterous and interference-minded behaviour of their one-time associates with a mixture of emotions that might on occasion have included mild horror, gasping incredulity and simple shock, but also — and more consistently — a kind of envy, and a slowly increasing feeling that a great opportunity had been lost.

∞

A development. Odd. That word rarely dampens the spirits quite so comprehensively as your deployment of it just there has so thoroughly doused mine. What development?

∞

Hurry me onwards if I start to tell you too much of what you already know, but… there is this tradition that other civs settle-up, as it were, with any would-be Sublimers, shortly before the big event: messages of admiration, respect and sorry-to-see-you-go mixed in with the odd admission that actually we’re responsible for rubble-ising your moon while you guys were inventing the wheel but we were having big exciting space battles with the neighbours, or it was us what nicked your first space probe—

∞

Consider yourself hurried, the Caconym sent.

∞

Sorry. Also, a pity: my third example was particularly witty and amusing. But no matter. Anyway, the Gzilt have this relationship, one might as well call it, with the also departed Zihdren. This relationship capacitated, as it were, through the Gzilt Book of Truth.

∞

Yes, the holy book that only gained in credence as science developed.

∞

Indeed; unique.

∞

So contributing to the cult of pernicious exceptionalism as exhibited by the Gzilt.

∞

So caustic!

∞

Some truths hurt more than others. Frankly I thought I was being kind; the word “exemplified” might have replaced “exhibited” in the above without too great a stretch. I think I already dislike where we’re headed with this, by the way, but go on.

∞

One of the things that has always made the Gzilt feel so special, so marked out, has been the fact that their holy book, pretty much alone amongst holy books, turned out to be verifiable. At every stage of their development—

∞

—It predicted the future, the Caconym interrupted, watching carefully for how much overlap there was between the two signals. Only of technology, but even so. That was interesting; the signals from the Pressure Drop implied the ship was curving away, as though it had been heading almost straight towards the Caconym until not long before it sent its first message, but was now beginning what looked like a tight-as-possible high-speed turn after a period of significant acceleration.

∞

Are you gauging my speed and direction?

∞

Of course I am.

∞

You could just have asked. I’m running a max-min turn for Gzilt space.

∞

That’s sixty days away. Won’t it all be over by then?

∞

Fifty-five days away. I’ve up-ratioed my engines over the years. But the point is: you never know. Were you listening to all that stuff about the Gzilt holy book?

∞

Of course.

∞

The Book of Truth, the Gzilt holy book, had been delivered by meteorite during their dark ages, following the collapse of a great empire which had been laid low by a combination of barbarians, disease and economic and environmental collapse. A subsequent meteorite bombardment had made things worse and convinced many Gzilt that their gods — if they even existed — had turned against them.

It was during this time of tribulation that the Scribe — Briper Drodj, a disgraced, ruined trader from a fallen aristocratic family with classical military connections — allegedly found a set of inscribed slates inside a meteorite and published them, adding to them later as he had dreams that seemed to follow on from the texts. These slates were kept secret and either disappeared or were destroyed in a temple fire started by unbelievers.

This particular incident led to the militarisation and evangelicalisation of the Book of Truth religion. Briper Drodj and his generals then masterminded a series of spectacular conquests across the single great continent that made up almost all of the land area of Zyse, eventually subduing and converting all the other tribes, nations, peoples, kingdoms and empires until they had, effectively, taken over the world.

The Scribe Briper Drodj later disappeared in mysterious circumstances, allegedly when he was on the brink of announcing a whole new set of dream-revelations. There had been tensions within the hierarchy of the church by this time, and cynics would later maintain that the newly proliferating upper echelons of his supporters “disappeared” the Scribe to prevent these mooted, never-brought-to-light additions to the Word reducing their own power, though nothing was ever proved and by general consent there was a feeling that Briper had quite entirely done his bit, his place in history as the greatest ever Gziltian was absolutely assured, and in a sense it was time for him to enter legend rather than, say, stick around past his time and start making the sort of embarrassingly beside-the-point pronouncements old men were all to prone to coming out with.

Up to this point, the story of the Gzilt and their holy book was, to students of this sort of thing, quite familiar: an upstart part of a parvenu species/civ gets lucky, proclaims itself Special and waves around its own conveniently vague and multiply interpretable holy book to prove it. What set the Book of Truth apart from all the other holy books was that it made predictions that almost without exception came true, and anticipated phenomena that nobody of the time of Briper Drodj could possibly have guessed at.

At almost every scientific/technological stage over the following two millennia, the Book of Truth called it right, whether it was on electromagnetism, radioactivity, atomic theory, the cosmic microwave background, hyperspaciality, the existence of aliens or the patternings of the energy grid that lay between the nested universes. The language was even quite clear, too; somewhat opaque at the time before you had the technological knowledge to properly understand what it was it was talking about and you were reading, but relatively unambiguous once the accompanying technical breakthrough had been made.

There was, in addition, the usual mostly sensible advice on living properly and morally, along with various parables and examples to help keep the Gzilt on the right track, but nothing exceptional compared to other holy books, either those from the Gzilt’s own past or that of others; the predictions were what made it special and had the effect of causing the Book to become more convincing and remarkable as technological progress continued.

There was space stuff in there, too. Those behind all these imparted revelations were named the “Zildren” and described as “wraiths of light”. The Zihdren were a vacuum Basker species, and this was actually a fairly accurate portrayal of what they looked like to the humanoid eye. They were also described working through their “material mechanicals” — again, close enough to describing the reality of the robotic self-extensions the Zihdren used when they wanted to work within the material aspect of the Real.

More challengingly — and perhaps more the Prophet’s doing than anything he might have found on the original slates, had they ever really existed — the Book further insisted that the Gzilt were a people favoured by Fate, by the Universe itself, as part of an ongoing thrust towards a glorious, transcendent providence; they represented the very tip of a mystical spear thrown by the past at the future, the shaft of that spear being formed by a multitude of earlier species which existed before them and kept on serially handing on the baton of destiny to the next, slightly more exceptional people ahead of them.

The Zildren, the book declared, were the last handers-on of the baton, the final stage of this rocket ship to the sky that would put the actual payload — the Gzilt — into the glory of eternal orbit.

Even after the Gzilt achieved genuine space travel, artificial intelligence, insight into hyperspace and contact with the rest of the galactic community — and discovered that there had indeed been a species called the Zihdren around at the time the Book of Truth had come to light, though they had since Sublimed — that belief in their own predestined purpose and assured distinctiveness had persisted, and it was, arguably, that imperturbable sense of their own uniqueness that had prevented them from joining the Culture all those thousands of years ago.

So, the Pressure Drop sent, the BoT provably gets so much right, insists that the Gzilt are Special — destined for something singular, fabulous and epoch-shaping — yet once the Gzilt get to a certain stage of development the Book effectively falls silent, with nothing further to predict, and becomes just another dusty text to be filed with the rest, while the suspicion grows amongst those not utterly credulous that while the Zihdren may indeed have had a part in the Book and were certainly a reputable and constructive part of the galactic community of their time, they were hardly exceptional; just another banally evolved species hustling along as best they could within the convection cells of the galactic soup cauldron — if exotic in their immaterial nature, by humanoid standards — who eventually ended up in the great retirement home of the Sublimed like everybody else.

∞

Maybe the Gzilt should have swallowed their pride and joined the Culture when they had the chance. Or perhaps they seek their own Subliming as a consolation.

∞

I hadn’t finished. You interrupted again.

∞

You were wittering again.

∞

Anyway, there is indeed evidence that the Gzilt believe their own presence amongst the Sublime will somehow change things dramatically for the better there…

∞

Ha!

∞

… I thought that might precipitate a response. However, to continue: also that they — wilfully, against all evidence — regard Subliming not as retirement but as promotion.

∞

Ha, again.

∞

So, matters are set up as they are, and the Gzilt are on the very brink of the Big Outloading, when along comes a Zihdren-Remnanter ship with a guest for the festivities bearing a message that is basically a confession.

∞

Of what exactly?

∞

Of exactly what, I have not been told, but I think we can guess.

∞

Mistake, accident, prank, deliberate interference?

∞

Something like that. Only the message does not get through, the human-ish guest-entity is never delivered, the ship is intercepted. The Remnanter ship is destroyed.

∞

Destroyed?

∞

Profoundly so.

∞

That is… bold. Or desperate. And how do you know all this? There’s been nothing in any report.

∞

It’s recent, few people know and none of them thought it in their interests to go public. Our Remnanter friends asked me to contact you as somebody they’ve had dealings with in the past regarding the Sublimed, especially the Zihdren.

∞

Even so, to what end? What am I supposed to do?

∞

Two things. One, form part of an advisory group, with myself, to handle whatever may come of this from our point of view. Two, use some of your contacts to help clear up what’s going on here.

∞

Have we been asked by the Gzilt to do this?

∞

Good grief no! For now, it’s best they know nothing, given that they or some faction within them appear to have instigated hostilities.

∞

Then why are we even thinking of getting involved?

∞

Well, arguably we owe the Gzilt some care and attention just on general principles, not to mention consideration due to their honorary fellow-traveller Culture status, but, more to the point, the Zihdren message to the Gzilt mentioned an individual, a human from the first generation to think of themselves as Culture citizens. He was around ten thousand years ago, at the time of the negotiations which gave rise to the Culture in the first place. This individual was named as perhaps being able to help provide proof that what was claimed in the message to the Gzilt was actually true.

∞

So, not long dissolved in some group-mind, then. Stored, I take it?

∞

Not Stored. In fact, never Stored. Still with us, still alive, still extant and functioning, twenty-five to thirty full lifetimes after you’d have expected any ordinary humanoid mortal to have decently abandoned the corporeal. Indeed, longer-living than any known still independent Mind or even high-level AI from the time. Like the fucker’s decided to outlive everybody or set a record or something. But alive, somewhere, probably still within the Culture.

∞

Seriously?

∞

No kidding.

∞

No. I refuse to accept this. This is a myth. One of our myths. Romantic, nonsensical. A wish; desired but for ever without proof.

∞

Nevertheless, our Remnanter chums seem to think this geriatric geezer is still with us.

∞

Being loosely attached to a civ long-Sublimed does not make the Zihdren-Remnanter infallible. Or even necessarily reliable.

∞

Their record in such matters is good, though. I’ve spoken with a few fellow Minds about all this and it is reckoned the information must be taken seriously. Also, that you should be a member of any advisory group, part of the tactical-strategic oversight team. What do you say?

∞

I imagine I’m meant to be flattered, being so invited, but why don’t these few fellow Minds of yours perform this function?

∞

They feel more comfortable in the wise village elder role, advising, not the positions you and I are being offered, suggesting actual courses of action. I imagine some energetic and very intense simming is going on. I’ve already started my own.

∞

And who are they, anyway?

∞

Not yet at liberty to say. I’ll tell you if you sign up. Promise.

∞

What really is at stake here? And what are the chances that — should this prove important or just interesting — we wouldn’t get bounced by some other collective — the ITG, to name but one?

∞

At stake is the smooth Subliming of a cousin species/civilisation and the potential chaos of a part-Sublime complicated by the presence of a variety of Scavenger species, not to mention the Culture’s good name as an honest broker.

As for the Interesting Times Gang, they have been silent for nearly half a millennium. Several are believed to be in Retreat and at least one has itself joined the Enfolded. There is a feeling amongst the Minds taking a particular interest in these matters that the ITG has stepped down, or at least back. The whole Excession thing nearly went very badly wrong and only just came out okay in the end as much through good luck as good guidance, and anyway was still arguably a failure: a catastrophe was averted but an opportunity was squandered, and in the end we are no further forward regarding insights into travel or even communication between concentric universes.

They may have decided to quit while they were ahead, or to bow out gracefully after an at best modest achievement that in certain lights might even be regarded as an embarrassment. Maybe they just felt they were getting old and out of touch.

In any event, no new standing ensemble appears to have replaced them, and only ad-hoc groups have handled unusual matters since. It’s our move, old chum.

∞

The Caconym was silent for a few moments. It watched a small solar flare erupt from near one side of the sunspot over which it had stationed itself. Another tendril of the star’s gaseous shrapnel, ejected by an earlier outburst of the furious energies erupting for ever beneath it, and thousands of kilometres across and tens of thousands long, washed over and around it, bathing its outer field structure in radiation and delivering a distinct physical blow.

It allowed itself to be gently buffeted by the impact, using its engine fields to adjust its apparent mass and so increasing its inertia so that the effect would fall within acceptable parameters, while observing the outermost elements of its field structure deform inwards by a few micrometres under the weight of the blast. The effect of the colliding gust of plasma was to send it drifting very slightly across the face of the sunspot, spinning slowly. Finally it sent,

Why do we bother with this sort of bio-tangling stuff in the first place? We could live lives of such uncomplicated joy if we left them to their own sordid, murderous devices.

∞

Because it pleases us. It’s a challenge. We could Sublime, too, but we don’t do that either. Come on; we have a reputation for enlightened interference to protect here.

∞

Yeah, that’s us: first amongst the Altruists; the emperors of nice. We’re not competitive about it, but — if we were — by fuck we’d be the best.

∞

Most amusing.

∞

Yes, my fields expand at the mirth of it all. Very well. I may regret this, but; all right. I’ll take part.

∞

And use those contacts with the Sublimed?

∞

If I have to, even more reluctantly, yes.

∞

Hurrah! Welcome aboard. Here’s a diaglyph with the situation. Any thoughts?

∞

The data was lush with detail, a fact-crammed welter of information leavened with analysis and speculation. There were pointers towards standard concise histories of all species/civs involved for those who hadn’t been paying attention earlier, more incisive, less polite, Contact-produced essays on the societies and personalities involved, plus a comprehensive summary of all recent developments, their possible explanations, a statistical breakdown of multiple already-simmed likely futures and an exhaustive, minutely annotated multi-dimensional comparison of this situation with those of any pressing similarity in the past, with another spread of likely outcomes relating thereto, plus the positions and specifications of all known capital and other major ships in the volume or inbound.

This did have the look of something blowing up alarmingly quickly, the Caconym thought. The Mistake Not… had been the first to flag up something amiss when it had spotted the weapon-blink from Ablate, communicating this to its home GSV, the Kakistocrat, which had been cautious enough to pass this on to a select few of its peers including the Pressure Drop rather than broadcast the news.

The message from the Zihdren-Remnanters had gone straight to the Pressure Drop less than an hour later. No hint of who or what had been responsible for the destruction of the Remnanter ship. Two principal Scavenger species present: the Liseiden and the Ronte. It would be tidiest and least alarming for all concerned if one of those had been responsible for the attack on the Remnanter ship, but that looked impossible; even if the Remnanter ship had been unarmed, the tech levels were just too far apart.

The Caconym didn’t pretend to take any appreciable time to review the totality of what it had been sent.

The old Desert class currently hanging around Zyse, it sent.

∞

Yes, the venerable MSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In. There to represent us guys until the cultural big guns get there in the humungous shape of the System-class Empiricist, currently Zyse-bound, though delayed by a smatter outbreak en route. The Passing By… has been informed there might be a minor situation developing, though no action yet required; the Empiricist is still in a state of blissful ignorance.

∞

The Passing By… has two Thugs with it as escorts, DMVs.

∞

DeMilitarised Vessels is such old terminology, dear thing. They’ve been called Fast Pickets or Very Fast Pickets for a long time now. But, yes: the ex-Thug-class Rapid Offensive Units Refreshingly Unconcerned With The Vulgar Exigencies Of Veracity and Value Judgement. If you’re thinking about those as immediately available military assets, though, I must disappoint you. They both really have been fully de-fanged. They’re not that just-pretend kind of OU described as weapon-free to keep the locals happy while actually toting gear of serious cloutage, sadly.

∞

Still, have a word. Those three ships have a long association, a lot of the Desert class were discomfited at being demoted from General to Medium and — like myself — the Mind in the Passing By… is old. Also, the Thug de-weaponing was done aboard it.

∞

Keep going.

∞

Old equals sneaky. And prideful, sometimes. Tell the Passing By… what has happened. Suggest to it that if it did just happen to have the weapon clusters taken out of its escorting Thugs to hand, it should get both ships back aboard and fully re-tooled immediately.

∞

Just checked. That stuff’s not aboard the Desert; absent from both the relevant cargo manifests and registered materiel declarations.

∞

Ask it all the same. It might be hiding the gear.

∞

That’d be a bit cheeky. And anyway, on a Desert class? They’re tiny! That’s why they got demoted.

∞

They’re over three klicks long and boxy, and the principal weapon cluster on a Thug is less than thirty metres in diameter. Also, there isn’t a Desert class extant that hasn’t altered its internal layout umpteen times, over the millennia, just to suit operational happenstance or to amuse itself. I bet most of them could find places aboard themselves to hide sufficient ordnance to equip a fleet, if they looked hard enough or could be bothered.

∞

Signal duly sent.

∞

The Beats Working, with the Ronte; genuinely civilian?

∞

Completely. And genuinely tiny. Eighty metres. We had missiles bigger, back in ye olden days.

∞

And this Eccentric-erratic, the Mistake Not…; is there any data on its throw-weight? I can’t find anything official.

∞

Seemingly not. That’s sort of the idea, apparently.

∞

Estimates of its puissance by enthusiastic amateurs vary wildly, but indicate something close to my own disclosed capabilities. (The Caconym had resorted to consulting documentation drawn up by the sort of people who took an informed interest in Culture ships.)

∞

I’m sure one of you ought to be flattered.

∞

Hmm. I think even by our relaxed standards it is a little absurd that one warship needs to look up what are essentially fan-sites for an estimate of a comrade vessel’s clobbering capacity. Think it could be SC?

∞

Possibly Special Circumstances, possibly just congenitally inscrutable. SC’s ongoing attempts to corner the market in deviousness have yet to come to fruition.

∞

Let’s try to find out how on board it is, and ask what it’s toting.

∞

Agreed. Its contact is the GSV Kakistocrat, which certainly used to be SC, though it claims it long since settled for a quieter and more contemplative life. Signal sent.

∞

There are these Delinquent-class GOU twins, the Headcrash and the Xenocrat, aboard the Empiricist; let’s give them a sniff of potential action in Gzilt and suggest it might be worth a little engine degradation to get there asap.

∞

They’re engaged with this smatter outbreak at Loliscombana. It’s all gone a bit target-rich. Could be hard dragging them away from the fun.

∞

Target-rich but challenge-light. They’ll be bored by now. Swear them to secrecy and tell them somebody’s seen fit to waste a Remnanter ship. That should get their attention.

∞

And hint the situation is unlikely to stop there?

∞

No need; they’ll draw their own conclusions. Better to let them persuade themselves than feel they’re being manipulated. Copy in the Empiricist; can’t have it getting upset.

∞

Contacting. We do, ah, seem to be concentrating very much on the military side of things thus far.

∞

I’m a warship. I always was. Why, what else did you have in mind?

∞

Talking to somebody relevant might be a good idea.

∞

This Banstegeyn fellow looks to be the player with the power at the moment. The regiments would appear to contain almost all the potential energy, with the politicians providing the dynamic.

∞

Gzilt society had cohered millennia ago into a stable democratic system that formalised a purely ceremonial president at the top with no real power, a few almost equally figurehead people immediately beneath him or her, then successive layers of exponentially greater numbers and increasing political power until you reached the general mass of the population — individual people.

This power structure lay alongside the Gzilt’s universal militia, a-rank-for-all military structure without apparent discord. Commentators and analysts, especially in the Culture, seemed to find this mystifying but pleasing; the consensus was that the ubiquitous military had no problem always conceding to civilian command because in a sense there were no civilians. It seemed perverse to some, but for all their apparent militarism the Gzilt had remained peaceful over many millennia; it was the avowedly peaceful Culture that had, within living memory, taken part in an all-out galactic war against another civilisation.

Military aside, in practice, over time, the balance of effective political power had settled somewhere between the one hundred and twenty-eight septames, the third level down, and the four-thousand-plus degans immediately beneath them, with the balance tipping towards the septames over the last few generations as the idea of Subliming had taken hold.

No machines involved in all this nominal, rather limited democracy, the ship noted. Minds and AIs in the Gzilt dominion were regarded either as mere tools, without rights, or as housing for the uploaded personalities of ex-humans. Even their warships were commanded not by true individual Minds but by virtual crews of deceased or copied bio-personalities running on highly sophisticated and very fast substrates.

It seemed to work, and Gzilt ships were highly regarded — approximately equiv-tech by Culture standards — but it was a roundabout way to get to a desired state of ability, and if there was ever a proper fight between otherwise equally matched Gzilt and Culture craft (perish the thought), Culture Minds were in no doubt it would be a very lucky Gzilt craft that prevailed. (Though, doubtless, the Caconym would be prepared to concede, the Gzilt would have a rather different take on the subject.)

∞

Of the regiments, it sent, the Fifth and Fourteenth seem to have been the most dissenting regarding Subliming, even though they are officially both fully on board now. If we accept the attack on the Remnanter ship was an act underwritten by those within the Gzilt majority establishment wishing to ensure Subliming takes place, might one or both of those regiments be involved on the other side in some way? This might tie in with the sighting reported by the Passing By… of something speeding off from Zyse fifteen hours ago, Izenion bound, where the Fourteenth has its HQ, if it’s going direct.

∞

Even at the best of times, the society’s internal tensions are largely sublimated into highly complex and rule-restricted turf wars between the Regiments: high-level internal-diplomatic games, essentially. Most likely, this single sighting is part of those continual manoeuvrings.

∞

There’s been no hint that anybody else within Gzilt knows about the attack on the Remnanter — beyond those who might have set it in motion?

∞

None that I can see. You?

∞

Hmm. No, none. Though we might ask the Passing By… to be a little more nosy regarding Gzilt military comms traffic, and any other unusual ship movements. Prioritising discretion above zeal, of course. And, as we have the Desert class in Gzilt with its two Thugs, and the Delinquent twins incoming — with any luck — then, if there is nothing else to go on, it might be worth getting something to Izenion before, or as soon as possible after, whatever left Zyse for Izenion arrives. See if the Passing By… can extract more data from its readings.

∞

I’ll have a word.

∞

Also, that smatterage at Loliscombana, delaying the Empiricist. Was there any hint or precursor of it before the GSV published the part of its course schedule letting everybody know it would be passing that way?

∞

None mentioned; I’ll investigate. It’s a System-class, of course; those behemoths usually schedule years in advance, so there’d be plenty of time to set something up. You think the smatter’s not a coincidence? Some things just are, you know.

∞

I do know. It depends on whether this is something being extemporised as unexpected events unfold, or a long-thought-out plan being unrolled. But what one might call “natural” smatter outbreaks almost invariably have precursor events. If there are none for this one then eyebrows, amongst those who possess them, might need to be raised. Time will tell; it usually does. I think that’s all for now. Though you did promise me the names of the other ships you’ve been talking to about all this.

∞

Of course: the GSVs Contents May Differ and Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry, and the GCU Displacement Activity.

∞

Thank you. All sound, in my estimation, though whether they would return the compliment is another matter.

∞

My pleasure. I’ll let you know any more there is to know as it comes in. Till later.

∞

Yes, later, the Caconym sent.

∞

The connection clicked to silent and the ship was left alone with its own thoughts again.

It felt and watched the buffeting wisps of the solar flare as they washed past it. Staring down into the vast slow pulsing storm of the sunspot, already half lost in its wild and stately beauty, it thought about the framework crew of the Pressure Drop. The Caconym had no bio-crew of its own — Culture warships rarely did these days — but the Mind had had, once, in another incarnation, as another ship.

Those on the Pressure Drop would be humans, mostly, it imagined. Mongrel-Culture; the result of a hundred centuries of species-mixing, serial amendment, augmentation, uploading, downloading, simple autonomous choice-directed breeding and — after all that time — perhaps even some genuine evolution. The usual bizarre bio-mix of who-knew-how-many planetary-original blood-lines, all tangled inextricably together with those from an equally unfathomable number of others, boosted with genetech, aug., dashes of chimeric and a hint of some machine in there too, depending.

And it didn’t doubt that every single one of them would find it absolutely fascinating to stare into a fire, even if that was one thing they were unlikely ever to encounter on a ship. The urge would still be there, though; stored inside, waiting. Shown the stuff, they’d stare, mesmerised.

The entirely standard, human-basic fascination with fire; bog-ordinary flames for them — just an oxygen reaction lasting minutes or hours — while, for it, it was the multi-billion-year-lasting thermonuclear fury of a planet-swallowing star burning off a million tons of matter a second… but still.

Shit, the ship thought. Most ship epithets, like almost all bio-epithets, involved bodily functions.

It started elongating one long loop of its external bump-field and expanding the outer reaches of its main field enclosure at the same time, so that it was both pushing against the mass of solar material beneath it and using the blast of radiation and charged particles as the wind in a sail that quickly grew to the size of a respectably proportioned moon.

The ship rose spinnakering away from the star, already gaining speed in real space as it flexed its engine fields and reached deftly out to the energy grid in the space between this universe and the slightly smaller one, only a few seconds or so younger, nested within it.

You had to be careful engaging engines so far within a gravity well as pronounced as that around a sun, but the Caconym was confident that it knew what it was doing. It spun slowly about while it drifted — then gradually powered — away from the star, snapping its external fields tight and preparing for extended deep-space travel as its engines powered up further and increasingly bit harder into the grid that separated the universes.

I suppose I ought to follow, it sent. Just in case, like you say.

A tiny, dark speck against the vast ocean of fire that was the star, it set a course for Gzilt space, pitching and yawing until it was pointed more or less straight there, continuing to ramp up its engines as it flew away from the light.

Race you! the Pressure Drop sent.

The Caconym could already feel drag — the effect of its velocity in real space. Observed external time was starting to drift away from what its own internal clocks were telling it, and its mass was increasing. Both effects were minute, but increasing exponentially. Elements of its field enclosure were already poised for the transition to hyperspace and release from such limitations.

I’ll win, it replied.

It vanished from the skein of real space less than a second later, hurtling into a quickness beyond night.