“Honest of you to admit.”
“Disarmingly so, I hope.”
The Zoologist’s avatoid pulled its arms in tighter to its body, seemed to think for a moment. “I still have some contact, though it’s all very… inchoate. Inexplicable. Hard — impossible — to translate back into here, the here-and-now.”
“Try.”
The Zoologist sighed, put its long-fingered hands to its face and made a sort of patting motion. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
“What? How intrinsically ungraspable it all is?”
“Pretty much. See that insect?” The Zoologist nodded, indicating to one side of where the Caconym sat. The Caconym turned its attention to a wooden workbench whose edge was centimetres from one of its avatoid elbows. A tiny six-legged insect small enough to fit on a baby’s fingernail was making its erratic, zigzaggy way along the very edge of the table, antennae waving. The Caconym zoomed in on the creature, evaluating it utterly, down to the code it was constructed from.
“Yes,” it sighed, coming back to the virtual macro. “Let me guess: does it understand what the equipment on the bench is for? Or even what a bench is?”
“I was thinking more of, how would you explain a symphony to it? Or a—?”
“Before we over-focus on my own and my kind’s hopeless inability to understand the unutterable fabulousness of the Sublime, can I run the present situation back here in the Real past you?”
The Zoologist’s avatoid smiled. “If you like.”
It took the best part of an hour, subjectively. In the Real, on the way towards Gzilt space, light years were traversed during the time. To the rest of the hyper-busy Mind of the Caconym, it felt like years had passed by the end.
Just before the summing-up part of this impromptu briefing, the ship contacted the Pressure Drop, to make sure it had everything up to date.
Good timing, the other ship replied. You coincide with a signal from our friend the Contents May Differ. Take a look at this:
∞
Signal Sequence excerpt, GSV Contents May Differ / Zihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance:
∞
xGSV Contents May Differ
oZihdren-Remnanter Adjunct Entity Oceanic-Dissonance
So, to get to the point: are you saying that despite the fact you lost a ship to unprovoked enemy action, and have asked myself and colleagues to investigate, you don’t want this made public?
∞
Essentially, yes. Kindly keep all matters, information and actions pertaining thereto as confidential as possible.
∞
And you intend to make no attempt to resend the information carried by the entity aboard the Exaltation-Parsimony III?
∞
That would be correct. Despite transmitting news of the event at Ablate and what we can only presume was the unfortunate misunderstanding regarding the Exaltation-Parsimony III to our Enfolded brethren, we have received no further instructions from them thus far, and therefore continue to follow the previously transmitted instructions. In essence, these consist of (1): Send a Ceremonial Entity to take part in the festivities marking the entry of the Gzilt into the Sublime, said Ceremonial Entity to carry information regarding the provenance of the work known to the Gzilt as the [detail redacted], said information to be transmitted to the Gzilt at the appropriate point in said festivities. (2): In the event of any problematic phenomenon or phenomena pertaining thereto judged by us to be in excess of our resources, contact should be made with sympathetic elements within the Culture, on conditions to be determined by ourselves as the responsible remnant representation of said Enfolded brethren, the Zihdren, of blessed memory. Instructions end. Our conditions, referred to above, principally concern your keeping information re said events and actions as confidential as possible, in perpetuity until further notice.
∞
All of which might make things a little difficult operationally.
∞
Understood. Life is limitations.
∞
And glibness, patently, on occasion, too. Your pardon, but I sense motions being gone through.
∞
On occasion, a superfluity of assiduousness can be vulgar.
∞
I understand. What can I possibly say? We’ll see what we can do.
∞
Our gratitude is a given.
(Signal Sequence excerpt ends.)
Pusillanimous legalistic fucks, eh? the Pressure Drop sent. So we get to do their dirty work and they’ll be quite happy for no more to come of this whatsoever, because it’d all be embarrassing to the memory of their Enfolded fucking brethren.
∞
I suppose legacies may be expressed in various ways, the Caconym replied. Assuming the truth of the claim that the Remnanters have contacted their Sublimed forebears and yet received no further instruction, aforesaid forebears may be presumed to be relatively happy with the present situation. Which does raise the remote possibility that this could have been even more of a set-up, from the start.
∞
You mean the Remnanter boyos conspired to have their own ship blown out of the sky?
∞
The thought had already occurred, though it was so far down the list of possibilities I thought it not worth getting to. However this reaction on the part of the Remnanters shifts it up the table somewhat, tagged less for paranoia and more with justifiable suspicion, however cynical.
∞
Still a remote likelihood. You’d think.
∞
Agreed. Makes no difference so far. And how do things fare in Gzilt space?
∞
The Mistake Not… is making its dash. The Passing By…’s two Thugs are being gunned-up as we speak. It is proving harder than expected to prise the Empiricist’s Delinquent twins Headcrash and Xenocrat away from the smatter outbreak at Loliscombana; they’d turned it into a competition about who bagged the greatest amount of smatter but then there was a dispute over whether the criterion ought to be tonnage or processing power. This has been settled by a compromise but both desire more time to stock up on the criteria they had earlier discounted. The Empiricist has agreed to give them another couple of hours to enjoy themselves before shouting at them. However, talking of talking with refugees/remainders/rejects from/of/expelled from the Big S, have you been in touch with your contact/s?
∞
Doing so even as we speak. Taking the opportunity provided by the glacial pace involved to get an update from your good self. Elevate not your hopes though; nothing useful so far or on the horizon.
∞
Well, best of luck. By the by, have you passed me? The delays on these signals—
∞