The almost normal-looking Ambassador Mierbeunes was there from the Iwenick, representing the Liseiden, as was the Culture’s current most senior representative to Gzilt; Ziborlun. This silver-skinned creature was an avatar of the ancient Systems Vehicle that was currently gracing the skies of somewhere not too far away, no doubt. There was a bigger, grander, much more flattering GSV on its way for the formal ceremonies in the days immediately preceding the Subliming, allegedly, but they’d yet to see any sign of it.
Banstegeyn was also aware of Orpe, the president’s beautiful AdC, looking at him as he joined the huddle round Geljemyn. The girl was trying not to smile too much, looking away from him now and again. He didn’t return the look. Doubtless many already guessed, but there was no need to make things easy for people.
“Another step closer, Madame President,” he agreed, accepting a soft drink from a steward and holding it aloft.
“Eternity here we come,” Trime Yegres said, raising his glass. “We go to our Reward.”
Drunk, Banstegeyn decided.
The president looked amused. Much seemed to amuse her. It was one of her faults. “The Subliming makes all of us sound like religious zealots,” she said.
Yegres swallowed, looked at the silver-skinned being across from him and said, “I’m sure our Culture friends think we’ve always sounded like religious zealots.”
Ziborlun made a small bow. Its silver skin looked less unnatural in lamp light. “Not at all,” it said.
Yegres frowned at it. “You’re very… diplomatic,” he told the creature, slurring his words. “Are you sure you’re Culture?”
“In all seriousness,” Ambassador Mierbeunes said, meaning he was about to say something fatuous, flattering or both, “I have never entirely understood why the Book of Truth is regarded as a religious work at all.” He looked round, blandly suave as ever, smiling. “It would seem more like—”
“That would be because it is the basis of our religion,” Trime Quvarond informed him curtly. Banstegeyn didn’t bother repressing his smile; he’d found the Iwenick male annoying while they’d been conducting negotiations; now they’d concluded them he was insufferable.
“Well, in that sense,” Mierbeunes said smoothly, still smiling, “obviously and completely a religious work, of course, without question…” He continued to witter.
Banstegeyn had just become aware of a uniform at his side.
“Marshal Chekwri,” Solbli whispered softly in his ear, overriding the earbud cancel. She rarely got this wrong.
“Marshal Chekwri!” Banstegeyn said loudly, mostly to shut the Iwenick up, and turned to greet the Commander in Chief of the Home System Regiment.
The marshal of the First bowed to all, clapped her hands gently in front of her. “May I drag you away?” she asked him. She looked at Geljemyn. “Madame President?”
Geljemyn nodded. “If you must,” she said.
“All yours!” Yegres said merrily. “Don’t hurry bringing him back! Ha ha!”
“Excuse me,” Banstegeyn said. He beamed a smile round all of them, though it soured a little when it got to Yegres.
He suspected only Orpe would be truly sad to see him go.
He followed the marshal back up the steps, trailed by Jevan and Solbli. When they got inside, the marshal turned to his AdC and secretary and smiled as she said, “Thank you.”
Jevan and Solbli looked at Banstegeyn, who gave the tiniest of nods. They looked forlorn as he and the marshal stepped into an elevator.
When the lift started to drop, he looked at the marshal and said, “What?”
The marshal just looked at him with her tired old eyes in her tired old face, and smiled thinly.
He hoisted one eyebrow, then nodded. “Hmm,” he said, more to himself than her.
There were places under the parliament building few people ever got to see, or even knew were there. This was one. The room was round with concave black walls but was otherwise unremarkable, holding a round table and some seats; Banstegeyn’s office was bigger. And had a better view, obviously. More of note had been the three metre-thick doors they had had to negotiate to get here, each of which had swung closed behind them.
“Now?” Banstegeyn asked the marshal after the room’s own massive door had thudded shut.
“Now,” the marshal confirmed.
“How bad is it?”
Chekwri nodded. “It is within what was expected. We just have more detail, choices for action.” She glanced towards the centre of the room. “Shall we?”
They sat. “Scavengers? The other thing? What?”
“The other thing,” Marshal Chekwri confirmed.
Banstegeyn sighed. Chekwri was one of only a handful of people who knew — not counting whoever knew who wasn’t supposed to; he shivered to think how many of them there might be. “What detail, what choices?” he asked her.
“The leak was only to the Fourteenth,” the marshal told him.
He nodded. One regiment. That wasn’t so bad. Still bad enough. “Would be, wouldn’t it?” he said. The Fourteenth — the Socialist-Republican People’s Liberation Regiment, 14, to give it its full title — had been the most sceptical regarding Sublimation from the start, even if it too had finally — at least apparently — come onside. “Who was responsible?”
“Nobody,” the marshal told him.
He looked at her. “Somebody is always responsible,” he told her.
She shook her head. “This was something generated within the Mind-set or the subsidiary substrate mechanisms of the Churkun itself. The ship had a one-off spy… you’d have to call it a program, it was so old and tiny; a virus, sitting in its computational matrix. Whatever it was — it deleted itself immediately — it had been in there since before the ship itself was constructed, while the Mind-set was still in virtual form, being test-run by the shipyard’s Technology and Processing Department, four hundred and seventy years ago. Even then, it might not have required anybody within the Tech Department to plant it; could be done from outside.”
“And it was doing nothing all that time?”
“Just waiting for something to come along sufficiently game-changing to be worth betraying its presence for.”
“And nobody found it?”
“Obviously.”
“Or nobody who wasn’t also a traitor, at least,” Banstegeyn said, glancing away.
The marshal frowned. “I think if we start assuming there might be traitors within the fleet’s virtual crews we make traitors of ourselves. Saboteurs, at the very least. This was something so small, in a set of substrates so vast, it was possible for it to hide. Once it was in there, no further—”
Banstegeyn’s eyes went wide. “What about the other ships?” he blurted.
The marshal sat back fractionally at being interrupted, but said, calmly, “All those still with us are checking. Now they have a rough idea what they’re looking for, it’s hoped they can either find anything similar or give themselves a clean bill of health within days.”
Banstegeyn was appalled. “Days?”
“Impossible to do any quicker. The fleet, such as it is, these days, remains fully operational in every other respect; the techs — the ships too — maintain there is absolutely zero possibility of anything similar taking over any part of the running of the vessels; stuff like this can watch and wait and signal if it finds a way, but it can’t affect.”
“And the Churkun?” Banstegeyn asked. “What’s it — is it returning to—?”