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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.