So late. The session really had gone on far too long.
A handful of aircraft drifted above M’yon, lights winking; not long ago there would have been hundreds. Banstegeyn had long thought of the old Ceremonial Capital as an open-air museum, with the parliament its dustiest exhibit. It was just that now it truly looked like it. Anyway, M’yon was not where the real power lay at all — that was in the teeming habs, the great ships, the orbiting manufacturies and the Regimental HQs — but rather where it had to look like it lay.
On the terrace, the principal knot of people surrounded the president: the usefully useless president, her cohort of effete trimes, a few of his fellow septames and a smattering of junior degans who must have ridden in on somebody more senior’s coat-tails. Secretaries, AdCs, advisors, a few Military Outright bigwigs and a smattering of accredited aliens made up the rest; some of the aliens were humanoid, some disconcertingly not.
The ambassadorial party from the Ronte — the insectiles who were one of the two Scavenger civs the Gzilt were actually talking to — existed inside heavy-looking exo-suits like tiny, complicated spaceships, all alarmingly sharp joints and angles and the occasional hiss and stink of some escaping gas. Their translators didn’t work as well as they seemed to think and it could be confusing to talk to them. They tended to huddle on the outskirts of gatherings like this, lucky to have a Gzilt military attaché to talk to, and even then only because the unfortunate officer had been ordered to do so. Four of the six suited Ronte were resting on their spindly-looking suit legs; the other two were floating over a pond, humming. Oh, and a few journalists and media people, he noted with some distaste; even the body politic had parasites.
It was the last day of the Gzilt Parliament. The very last day; it would never meet again. Anything relevant that needed dealing with from now on would be handled by transitional committees or temporary cabinets. The various representatives, having made their final farewells, would shortly be departing. A handful of those local to Zyse itself would head off in fliers, but all the rest would take ship to be with their families and/or loved ones, the great majority of them in conveniently distant systems where, Banstegeyn devoutly hoped, they’d be unable to cause any trouble if any difficult decisions had to be made over the next twenty-odd days.
Banstegeyn had made sure that he was chair of several of the most important committees, and that his people chaired or controlled almost all the rest; plus it was tacitly accepted that he would be in charge if there was need of an emergency temporary cabinet.
Which there might be, now, of course. Only a very few people knew this at the moment (very few, but, patently, at least one fucker too many), though it was looking increasingly likely. It gave him stomach contractions just thinking about it; Go! he wanted to scream at all of the other parliamentarians. Hurry up! Just go. Be gone! Leave him and the people he trusted to make the decisions that had to be made.
It had all got far too close for comfort, time-wise, over the last day or two. The Remnanter ship had appeared earlier than they’d been expecting and then what had happened out at Ablate had already leaked, it seemed. How the fuck had that happened so quickly? If he ever found out who’d been responsible… Bad news upon bad news; things crowding in, happening much faster than he’d anticipated.
It could all be handled — things could always be handled — but the handling might get rough. Well, that couldn’t be helped. The goal was what it had always been; a successful Sublime, his reputation and place in history assured.
He turned and looked up at the parliament building, where the Presence hung. He could hardly see it in the darkness.
The Presence was dark grey, shaped like some high-altitude balloon before it ascended; a slightly flattened semi-sphere curving down via a long, pendulous, narrowing tail to a point that looked to be aimed straight at the pinnacle of the parliament building’s central cupola. It was about sixty metres across near the top and nearly three hundred metres in height. That spike-like tip hovered silently just a few metres above the cupola’s spire; it looked as though somebody tall, balanced on the very top of the spire, could have reached up and touched it. A few of the parliament’s floodlights reflected dully off the bulbous near-black curve beneath its summit.
It had appeared twelve years earlier, on the day the parliament had passed the Act that confirmed the results of the Final Subliming Plebiscite, setting in train all the preparations for the event. A manifestation from the Sublimed Realm, a symbol from those who had already gone before. No more than a signpost, really; not animate or intelligent, as far as was known; just a reminder that the decision had been made and the course of the Gzilt was set. It was unmoved and unaffected by wind, rain, whatever, and barely there at all according to the military’s technical people; only just more than a projection. Real but unreal, like a shadow falling from another world.
They’d been expecting it; the Presence hadn’t come as a surprise — these things always appeared when a people, a civilisation, was preparing for and committed to Subliming — but, somehow, actually seeing it there had still come as a shock.
Banstegeyn remembered watching the poll figures wobble; parliament, the media and his own people were canvassing the general population all the time back then, and the commitment levels had dipped significantly when the Presence had appeared. He’d worried. This was so much what he wanted, what he believed in and knew was right, what he himself had spent his life working towards and staked his reputation on; this would be his legacy and his name would live for evermore in the Real, no matter what lay ahead in the Sublime. It was utterly the right thing to do; he had known this and still knew this with absolute certainty, and yet still he’d worried. Had he been too bold? Had he tried to make everybody go too soon: a decade early, a generation, even?
But then the figures had rallied. And only grown since. The commitment was still there. It would all happen.
He looked away, past Jevan’s handsome but slightly vacant face, and Solbli’s pleasantly matron-like look of admiration and pride, sparing them both a quick smile, then turned as he heard footsteps hurrying up towards him.
“Septame Banstegeyn! A historic day!”
“Another step closer,” President Geljemyn said as the group around her parted to admit him. Banstegeyn glanced at various faces, distributing quick smiles and curt nods of his own. There were three trimes: Yegres, Quvarond and Int’yom; the full extant set, basically, given that the rest were Stored, awaiting the pre-waking before the Sublime. Quvarond counted as an opponent, Int’yom was a geriatric nonentity but he was his geriatric nonentity, and Yegres did as Int’yom told him.
Six of his fellow septames were also present; five his, one neutral. An only slightly better than average for/against ratio, amongst those left. Two generals, an admiral, no press. Quite a lot of puffiness and glistening skin all round, he noticed; signs of drunkenness.
The president still wore her vulgarly cheap little time-to on a band round her wrist, he observed. It was the sort of thing retailers had given away, back in the day. She’d been gifted many far more elegant, tasteful and expensive time-tos since, but had made a point of sticking with this one. It cycled between showing the number of hours left, and the days. Currently it was on days, reading “S -22”. His own example, displayed on his chest like a small but important honour, was delicately beautiful, purely mechanical, exquisite in its workmanship and eye-poppingly expensive.