It wasn’t a hermit — Culture warships were strongly counselled not even to think of becoming true hermits — it kept up, in a general sort of way, with what was happening in the galaxy, and there were always a few respected and responsible ships who knew how to contact it if they really needed to, but it had few acquaintances and fewer friends, none of whom expected any real degree of chattiness from it and who were quite used to hearing nothing from it for hundreds of days at a time.
So it was surprised when a message pinged in, from, apparently, somebody being so informal that even many of the usual signal protocols could be cheerfully dispensed with.
∞
Cac, chumlet, how are you?
∞
The sender was, according to a minimal ration of the usual embedded personal codings and eccentricities of glyph-expression, its old friend the MSV Pressure Drop. Though, of course, that sort of signal addenda could be copied.
It sent back along the same signal route:
PD?
∞
The same.
∞
Even without the normal protocols, it was possible to work out the other craft’s rough position through the beam direction and reply delay, even after only a couple of signals. It looked like the Pressure Drop was relatively close by; only five or six years off. Practically next door, and only a couple of systems away in this sparsely starred part of the galaxy.
Unless the other ship was introducing a deliberate delay into its replies, of course, in which case it could be almost on top of it. The Caconym immediately clicked on its track scanner and looked down the signal beam. Nothing there. A few of its internal systems — kicking in like an animal flight-or-fight response — flicked off again, winding back down.
∞
I am in every respect excellent, as you might expect, it replied. Shall I assume the same of you?
∞
Do. Still obsessed with them sparkly bits then?
∞
The Caconym relaxed a little more; the other party certainly expressed itself as though it was the Pressure Drop. Still, to get so close before announcing oneself was unusual. A more paranoid ship, the Caconym thought, would almost feel like it had been getting snuck up on.
The signals it was responding to had originally arrived via a beam spread wide enough to encompass the whole of the solar system it was within, with the implication that the Pressure Drop hadn’t known where within the system its friend was (though it might have guessed, near the sun — that was where the beam was focused now), but to be so discoverable, even by another Culture ship, was, if not alarming for a wandering war-craft, at least worthy of note.
∞
My interest in stars — their formation, development and death, ability to harbour and promote life, affect, empower and destroy all around them and so on — remains. Though obviously I struggle to couch it as poetically as you.
∞
Are you with our friends the field-liners?
∞
The Caconym had a long-standing interest in and relationship with various of the galaxy-wide outposts of the creatures who inhabited the magnetic field lines of certain stars.
∞
No. Holidaying, as of recently; magnetosphere-surfing for the most part. I intend to resume my studies of the inhabitants at a later date.
∞
Not talking to you, then?
∞
Of course they’re talking to me. We have a highly complex and mutually beneficial dialogue, when necessary. The question I might ask is why are you talking to me?
∞
Your oldest friend can’t say hello without occasioning such suspicion?
∞
Who’s suspicious? It’s been so long, and you’ve been so quiet. I thought perhaps you’d expired without telling me.
∞
If I’ve been quiet, it’s because I take my cue from you. But yes, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy. Well, indolent. The effect is the same. I’ve managed to whittle my population down to a framework crew of the like-minded, so all is harmonious.
∞
So, what brings you to this neck of the scrub?
∞
Technically, the serendipity of a tour — for pleasure; like yourself I have discovered a rich seam of auto-indulgence in myself — during which I had made swinging by your own current location, however out of the way, something of a priority, for reasons which are beginning to escape me.
∞
I shall endeavour to be more scintillating.
∞
However, there is something which has come to my attention which might interest you.
∞
And what would that be?
∞
A matter of potential thorniness. It involves the Tiny-wee Tucked-away. The vastness beyond vast.
∞
Oh fuck.
∞
Now, before you—
∞
I may have to overwrite those bits of myself. I tell you, I wish to have no more to do with the promise, process or result of Outloading, Instigating, Subliming, Enfolding or any other synonym relating to the activity or state of basically buggering off up one’s own or indeed anybody else’s fundament.
∞
The Sublime. The almost tangible, entirely believable, mathematically verifiable nirvana just a few right-angle turns away from dear boring old reality: a vast, infinite, better-than-virtual ultra-existence with no Off switch, to which species and civilisations had been hauling their sorry tired-with-it-all behinds off to since — the story went — the galaxy had still been in metaphorical knee socks.
The Sublime was where you went when you felt you had no more to contribute to the life of the great galactic meta-civilisation, and — sometimes more importantly, depending on the species — when in turn you felt that it had no more to offer you. It took a whole civilisation to do it properly, and it took a long, long time for most civilisations to come round to the idea, but there was never any hurry; the Sublime would always be there. Well, provided only that blind chance, your own stupidity or somebody else’s malevolence didn’t lead to your outright obliteration in the Real in the meantime.
Exactly what it was like in there was debatable: very, very few came back and none came back less than profoundly altered. These few returnees were also seemingly incapable of describing the realm they had left, however recently, in any detail at all.
It was wonderful; that was the general tone of the vague, dreamy reports that did come back. And almost beyond comparison, literally indescribable. The absolutely most splendid wonders, experiences and achievements of the Real and all those within it were as nothing to the meanest off-hand meanderings of the Sublime. The most soaring, magnificent, ethereal cathedrals to reason, faith or anything else were as mere unkempt and dilapidated hovels compared to the constructions — if they could even be described as such — within the Sublime. That was about all anybody had to go on, but at least the reports never varied in one respect; no one ever came back saying, shit, it’s horrible; don’t go.
Also, it wasn’t the only choice for a species approaching the end of its active life. Other species/civilisations retreated into Elderhood, becoming almost as dissociated from the normal day-to-day life of the galaxy and its vast rolling boil of peoples and societies as the Sublimed, yet staying in the Real. But that very continuance within the real galaxy — despite the powers and capabilities which everybody associated with Elderhood and which the Elder races rarely showed any desire to downplay — still left you at least theoretically vulnerable to whatever exciting new mix of power and aggression the matter-based galaxy was able to throw up. Plus, opting for Elderhood just looked like a sort of failure of nerve, given what the Sublime realm offered: a space of infinite flourishing without threat or danger.
As far as was known, nothing had ever evolved directly within the Sublime; everything there had started in the Real. And — again as far as anyone could t
ell — nothing that had ever entered the Sublime from the Real in any viable state had ever entirely disappeared from it. To enter the Sublime was to become near-as-dammit immortal, and while there was still talk of difference and dispute, and even some form of contention within the Sublime, there appeared to be no annihilation, no utter destruction, no genocide or speciescide or their equivalents.
To the deep and abiding frustration of those in the Real who would know more of its past, the peoples who seemed to have been in there the longest — from the first two billion years or so of the galaxy’s lifetime, say — were the least likely ever to reappear in the Real and spill any beans about what life had actually been like back then and what had really happened. Those who had entered the Great Enfold subsequently had scarcely been any more forthcoming, and the few not-totally-vague replies they had given to specific questions had often proved contradictory, one way or another, so as a research trove the Sublime was almost completely useless.
Nevertheless, whole civilisations had been making the one-way trip there for all that time, there was good proof that even the first to do so were still in some meaningful sense there, however much they might have changed, and — compared to the relative chaos, uncertainty and existential short-termism of the Real — that represented a fairly good option by most peoples’ reckoning.
So, a beguiling proposition and a field ripe for studying, too, if one was so inclined. The Mind in the Caconym, which had taken the ship’s name, had been so inclined, once. No longer. The whole enterprise had been exquisitely frustrating, and its friend the Pressure Drop knew this.
∞
I understand. I could, of course, just shut up, withdraw and say no more about it.
∞
No, my interest is piqued, as I’m sure you anticipated. What is it?
∞
Annoyingly — amazingly — the Caconym knew that as far as authorities on the Sublime went, it was one of the few assets the Culture — or anybody else — possessed. It kept hoping that some other brave, ambitious or just plain self-deluded souls would take up the Sublime-exploring baton and enquire further, look closer, delve deeper and make some breakthrough it had been unable to make, so taking the responsibility away from it, and it had tried to encourage informal associations of other Minds with similar interests to pursue such behaviour, but all such hopes had been dashed; almost nobody else was interested. It had even dared anticipate that the Contact section would form a specialist department to handle such matters and tackle the problem properly, but — despite having dropped a few heavy hints on the subject over the years — this too seemed as far away as ever.
The Gzilt, the Pressure Drop sent.
∞
Mm-hmm. Been talking about the Big Cheerie-O for some. They’re actually off, too; set a date and everything. See, I do listen to some news. Hmm. That’s quite close, now. Not having second thoughts are they?
∞
Not yet. But there’s been… a development.
∞
The Gzilt were a sort of cousin species/civilisation to the Culture. Nearly founders, though not quite, they had been influential in the setting up and design of the Culture almost ten thousand years earlier, when a disparate group of humanoid species at roughly the same stage of technological and societal development had been thinking about banding together.
Amiable enough, if somewhat martially uptight due to an unusual social set-up that basically meant everybody was presumed to be in a single society-wide militia — hence everybody had a military rank, from birth — they had made significant contributions to the establishment and ethos of the Culture while it was all still at the being-talked-about phase but then, almost at the last moment, and to pretty much everyone’s surprise, in a way including their own, they had decided not to join the new confederation.
They’d go their own way, they’d decided, wishing the Culture well and taking an interest in it, but keeping determinedly apart from it.
Relations had remained friendly throughout, and rumours persisted that the Gzilt had been helpful to the Culture in the Idiran war, despite a supposedly meticulous neutrality, but in essence they had stayed quietly, studiously apart from the Culture for all that time, observing the more rowdy, boisterous and interference-minded behaviour of their one-time associates with a mixture of emotions that might on occasion have included mild horror, gasping incredulity and simple shock, but also — and more consistently — a kind of envy, and a slowly increasing feeling that a great opportunity had been lost.
∞
A development. Odd. That word rarely dampens the spirits quite so comprehensively as your deployment of it just there has so thoroughly doused mine. What development?
∞
Hurry me onwards if I start to tell you too much of what you already know, but… there is this tradition that other civs settle-up, as it were, with any would-be Sublimers, shortly before the big event: messages of admiration, respect and sorry-to-see-you-go mixed in with the odd admission that actually we’re responsible for rubble-ising your moon while you guys were inventing the wheel but we were having big exciting space battles with the neighbours, or it was us what nicked your first space probe—
∞
Consider yourself hurried, the Caconym sent.
∞
Sorry. Also, a pity: my third example was particularly witty and amusing. But no matter. Anyway, the Gzilt have this relationship, one might as well call it, with the also departed Zihdren. This relationship capacitated, as it were, through the Gzilt Book of Truth.
∞
Yes, the holy book that only gained in credence as science developed.
∞
Indeed; unique.
∞
So contributing to the cult of pernicious exceptionalism as exhibited by the Gzilt.
∞
So caustic!
∞
Some truths hurt more than others. Frankly I thought I was being kind; the word “exemplified” might have replaced “exhibited” in the above without too great a stretch. I think I already dislike where we’re headed with this, by the way, but go on.
∞
One of the things that has always made the Gzilt feel so special, so marked out, has been the fact that their holy book, pretty much alone amongst holy books, turned out to be verifiable. At every stage of their development—
∞
—It predicted the future, the Caconym interrupted, watching carefully for how much overlap there was between the two signals. Only of technology, but even so. That was interesting; the signals from the Pressure Drop implied the ship was curving away, as though it had been heading almost straight towards the Caconym until not long before it sent its first message, but was now beginning what looked like a tight-as-possible high-speed turn after a period of significant acceleration.
∞
Are you gauging my speed and direction?
∞
Of course I am.
∞
You could just have asked. I’m running a max-min turn for Gzilt space.
∞
That’s sixty days away. Won’t it all be over by then?
∞
Fifty-five days away. I’ve up-ratioed my engines over the years. But the point is: you never know. Were you listening to all that stuff about the Gzilt holy book?
∞
Of course.
∞
The Book of Truth, the Gzilt holy book, had been delivered by meteorite during their dark ages, following the collapse of a great empire which had been laid low by a combination of barbarians, disease and economic and environmental collapse. A subsequent meteorite bombardment had made things worse and convinced many Gzilt that their gods — if they even existed — had turned against them.
It was during this time of tribulation that the Scribe — Briper Drodj, a disgraced, ruined trader from a fallen aristocratic family with classical military connections — allegedly found a set of inscribed slates inside a meteorite
and published them, adding to them later as he had dreams that seemed to follow on from the texts. These slates were kept secret and either disappeared or were destroyed in a temple fire started by unbelievers.
This particular incident led to the militarisation and evangelicalisation of the Book of Truth religion. Briper Drodj and his generals then masterminded a series of spectacular conquests across the single great continent that made up almost all of the land area of Zyse, eventually subduing and converting all the other tribes, nations, peoples, kingdoms and empires until they had, effectively, taken over the world.
The Scribe Briper Drodj later disappeared in mysterious circumstances, allegedly when he was on the brink of announcing a whole new set of dream-revelations. There had been tensions within the hierarchy of the church by this time, and cynics would later maintain that the newly proliferating upper echelons of his supporters “disappeared” the Scribe to prevent these mooted, never-brought-to-light additions to the Word reducing their own power, though nothing was ever proved and by general consent there was a feeling that Briper had quite entirely done his bit, his place in history as the greatest ever Gziltian was absolutely assured, and in a sense it was time for him to enter legend rather than, say, stick around past his time and start making the sort of embarrassingly beside-the-point pronouncements old men were all to prone to coming out with.
Up to this point, the story of the Gzilt and their holy book was, to students of this sort of thing, quite familiar: an upstart part of a parvenu species/civ gets lucky, proclaims itself Special and waves around its own conveniently vague and multiply interpretable holy book to prove it. What set the Book of Truth apart from all the other holy books was that it made predictions that almost without exception came true, and anticipated phenomena that nobody of the time of Briper Drodj could possibly have guessed at.
At almost every scientific/technological stage over the following two millennia, the Book of Truth called it right, whether it was on electromagnetism, radioactivity, atomic theory, the cosmic microwave background, hyperspaciality, the existence of aliens or the patternings of the energy grid that lay between the nested universes. The language was even quite clear, too; somewhat opaque at the time before you had the technological knowledge to properly understand what it was it was talking about and you were reading, but relatively unambiguous once the accompanying technical breakthrough had been made.
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