Soon it wouldn’t matter anyway. She was still going to Sublime, wasn’t she? Everybody else was. She supposed she’d sort of have to go if everybody else did.
Personally, she wasn’t sure it really mattered whether the Book of Truth had been based on a lie; a lot of people had long half assumed that.
How much did it matter to others though? Perhaps a lot — perhaps enough. Would that knowledge — if it was true — stop people Subliming? Maybe it would. So much of the whole process of deciding to make this final civilisational transition had been about mood, relying on an atmosphere that involved a kind of gradually growing, shared, blissful, resignation. A feeling of inevitability had settled over the Gzilt somehow, self-propagating and self-reinforcing, making Subliming look like just the next, natural step.
People had been talking seriously about Subliming for centuries, but it was really only in the generation or two before hers that the idea had started to traverse the spectrum of likelihood in the popular imagination, beginning at unthinkable, progressing to absurd, then going from possible but unlikely to probable and likely, before eventually arriving — round about the time of her birth — at seemingly inevitable.
And anticipated, and desirable.
Would all that change if it was discovered the Book of Truth had been some sort of alien trick and the hallowed, semi-worshipped Zihdren no better than charlatans?
Some people thought the Gzilt were going rather early, that most species/civs waited a little longer, entered a lengthier period of etiolation before taking the plunge… but then every species was different, and the Gzilt believed themselves especially different, exceptionally different, partly because of the Book and what it had told them. Would its message being brought into doubt kick away the foundations of that self-satisfaction and make people question the wisdom of Subliming at all?
Maybe — just embarrassed, if nothing else — they’d want to escape the shame and uncertainty involved by hurrying into Subliming with even more determination. Maybe only half the Gzilt would go, or just a fraction; enough still to be viable within the Sublime but leaving larger numbers behind, perhaps to make their own decision at some later date. So a schism, beyond healing, in the Sublime, and chaos, perhaps, back in the Real.
Even if the Subliming still took place as planned, in full, would the knowledge of that last-moment counter-revelation about the Book somehow colour the Gzilt experience once they had Enfolded?
If she recalled correctly all the books and articles she’d read and the programmes and discussions she’d seen, it would make little or no difference, but nobody — not even Elder species who’d been studying exactly this kind of stuff for aeons — could be entirely sure, because so little detail ever came back out of the Sublime.
She didn’t know; all she could do was what she’d been asked/ordered.
What she did know was that it really shouldn’t be her responsibility how this panned out. She was just a musician, a civilian in the reserve who’d once, briefly, bumped into an old guy that suddenly everybody wanted to talk to.
She just wasn’t that special. She was no idiot, and she would happily accept that she was a very gifted musician, but it ought not to be falling to her to work out any important part of this society-wide, alien-involving, end-of-days mess.
Maybe she should just leave QiRia in peace. Ask the ship to take her home, or to wherever or whatever had become the new HQ for the regiment, make her report there and then get taken back to Xown, the Girdlecity and her apartment, or just a place — anywhere — where she was less likely to be inside something getting shot at with hi-tech weaponry.
But she’d promised Reikl she would do as she’d been asked/ordered. She had been re-commissioned, too, so even with the Subliming coming up and all the usual rules and disciplines seemingly evaporating around everybody, there was still duty, self-respect, honour. You did what you felt you had to do so as not to feel bad about yourself when you looked back later. And memories, the recollection of past deeds, certainly survived into the Sublime. You were what you’d done, as QiRia had said, all those years ago. And as long as you had your context, you were still yourself within the great Enfolded.
She turned over, closed her eyes and hoped you could still sleep in the Sublime.
Septame Banstegeyn was able to make a great show of being utterly horrified to discover that there had been some sort of attack on the regimental HQ of the Socialist-Republican People’s Liberation Regiment #14. News of the outrage came in shortly after the vote that handed Preferred partner status to the Ronte and he found it easy to channel all the rage and fury he felt at that debacle into his reaction to the later, even more serious news. He was still angry about it when he met up with Chekwri again, in the special chamber deep under the parliament.
“Two thousand people, Chekwri, in the Prophet’s name…”
“Normally there would be between four and six thousand aboard,” the marshal said calmly. “Plus there were five hundred virtual souls aboard the Gelish-Oplule. But in any event, Septame, what were you expecting of an attack to destroy a regimental HQ?”
“I thought you’d destroy the — the thing, the place, the AIs, but to kill so many, and that ship, everybody on it too — I mean, it’s just terrible…”
“The AIs, and the High Command when they’re aboard, are in the best protected bits of the HQ, Septame, located right in the heart of the moon, or ship; whatever you want to call it.” Chekwri sounded as unbothered as she looked. She might even, it occurred to Banstegeyn, be enjoying this. He was aware that he was laying on a bit of an act himself, even though there was some truth in there too; he’d been genuinely horrified when he’d heard that, as far as was known, nobody had survived the attack. (Another part of him had felt triumphant that the attack had gone so well and the information so treacherously relayed to the Fourteenth had been so surgically excised, but that part had to stay as secret as possible; he kept that suppressed as best he could, worried that if he thought about it too much it would somehow show in his face or be readable in his body language.) “To get to them you pretty much have to destroy the HQ completely,” Chekwri concluded.
“Anyway,” Banstegeyn said, “they’re military. They’ll have been backed-up, won’t they? They can be reactivated, can’t they? Some of them?”
“Most will have been backed-up within the HQ itself,” the marshal said. “Maybe some elsewhere. Not that any military or civilian court would let that influence their view regarding the culpability of the action or the severity of any punishment.”
“There should be no trial, no court, though, should there?” Banstegeyn said. “We — you — got away with it. Didn’t we? I mean, there’s not enough time, and I’m sure I could get… I could pull a string or two…”
According to the marshal, the most recent signal from the 7*Uagren had indicated that it had managed to slip away from the Izenion system without being detected, after dealing with the last known survivors of the HQ’s destruction; it had pursued them to the star Izenion itself, contained their attempts to signal, and ensured their swift termination.
“Yes, we got away with it,” Marshal Chekwri said, with a small, humourless smile. “And in theory without leaving behind too obvious an attack profile. A disinterested observer would probably still conclude it had been fratricidal, but it could be argued otherwise, and there are only eighteen days remaining to do the arguing. And the string-pulling.”