Iain Banks: The Hydrogen Sonata

Scavenger species, it was fair to say, were not universally liked or respected by all their galactic cohabitees, and that could lead to trouble, especially within the heightened emotional atmosphere surrounding a Subliming, and all the more so when there were other, competing Scavenger species in the vicinity sharing the same predatory intentions, which, here, there were. The Mistake Not… was part of a distributed meta-fleet of Culture and other craft invited into their until-now jealously guarded space by the Gzilt to help keep matters as friendly and civilised as possible while they got ready to do the Big Disappear.

Normally the martially inclined though generally peaceful Gzilt would have had plenty of their own ships to enforce any degree of compliance they wanted within their own sphere of influence, especially against people toting the sort of bow-and-arrow tech a level five/six civ like the Liseiden could muster, but these were not normal times; the Gzilt had chosen to send many of their best ships into the Sublime first, as though to reconnoitre. It wasn’t unknown for about-to-Sublime species to do this, but it was unusual, possibly a little paranoid, and arguably dangerous, a little like you had already taken your eye off the target…

Happily, according to the galaxy-wide gossip web that passed as an intelligence network between Culture ships, there had lately been local rumours of a last-minute deal between the Gzilt and at least one of the circling Scavenger species — probably the Liseiden — to legitimise and formalise the scavenging process.

The Liseiden were definitely learning. These days they went actively looking for this sort of mutually agreed understanding with species about to Sublime, rather than just piling in like piratical scrappers every time. On this occasion they’d even thought to get representation: they’d hired a people called the Iwenick to be their humanoid face at negotiations with the Gzilt. This was, by general assent, a Smart Move.

So the Liseiden would get the contract, as it were, and be expected to conduct themselves with the decorum befitting their presence anywhere near such a momentous event, as well as behaving with the sort of studied calmness that only came from knowing that what you were engaged in was a dignified and conscientious clearing-up and recycling process, and not some childishly desperate rule-free scramble for whatever loot could be scooped before the adults stepped in to re-impose order.

Sadly, an equally plausible rumour held that — perhaps thanks to the pride of the Gzilt, for too long reluctant even to think of lesser civs pawing over their remains following their departure for better things — this had all been left far too late, and the other Scavenger species, already in place within or around Gzilt space, would refuse to honour any such agreement.

There was, as a result, a distinct chance that things might get interesting.

The ship watched the Liseiden fleet crawl closer.

Much further off than they’d ever have imagined possible, it had already begun to monitor some of their comms traffic.

“…deal with the Culture ship?”

“…well, I—”

“Got a name for this thing yet?”

“…um—”

“The Mistake Not…, apparently.”

“The Mistake Not… ?”

“Affirmative.”

“ Mistake Not what?”

“That’s all we’ve got, sir.”

“That’s not really good enough, is it?”

“Not really, sir. I—”

“Nyomulde; you’re supposed to be the Culture fan-child of the Fleet; what have you… do you have?”

“Ah, sir. The form, um, the ellipses after the words ‘Mistake Not’ imply there’s more, but it’s redacted; hidden. I’ve had the AI scan the relevant databases and there’s… there is no more. I mean, there is sort of generally understood to be more, but it’s like, ah, it’s not for public… it’s sort of a private joke between the Culture ships, the Minds.”

“A joke?”

“It’s what they’re like, sir.”

“Ridiculous. How’d this bunch of effete spawnsuckers ever get to where they are?”

“Well—”

“Class? How about…? What class is it? What are we dealing with here? Have they deigned to tell us that or is that redacted too?”

“I’ve got it down as a non-defined ‘U’ open brackets ‘e’ close brackets, sir.”

“Keep going, officer.”

“Well, ‘non-defined’ sort of speaks for itself, ‘U’ just means ‘Unit’ and ‘e’… Hmm. I thought that meant Eccentric, to be honest, sir, but some sources hold that it stands for erratic. Strictly speaking the ‘e’ should be upper case if it stands for—”

“Size? What size is it?”

“In the order of a couple of kilometres, though that’s just the outer field envelope.”

“‘In the order of.’”

“Best we’ve got, sir.”

“I see. Do we have any idea what it looks like?”

“Um, not really, sir. No record of its appearance within the field complex boundary. There are various guesses but they’re all very speculative. One or two—”

“Spare me, officer. It’s a Culture ship but we don’t know what sort.”

“In a pebbleshell, yes, sir.”

There was a lot more like this, all in the Liseiden tongue, which was made up of a not inharmonious series of bubbly water-belches. The ship added the name Nyomulde to the Culture’s intelligence archive of known Liseiden officers, immediately transmitting this to a variety of its comrade craft both near and far.

The Liseiden hadn’t been forthcoming regarding the identity of the approaching fleet’s commanding officer, or even which ships would make up the fleet in the first place, but from the largest ship’s warp signature — hideously obvious from light years away — the Mistake Not… had determined hours earlier that it was the Gellemtyan-Asool-Anafawaya , a Collective Purposes Vessel (First Class) and fleet flagship representing the last word in what the Liseiden were capable of building.

Much more satisfyingly, from the tone and word choice of one of the individuals talking — referencing earlier notes compiled by other Culture ships — the Mistake Not… was becoming increasingly certain that one of the voices it was listening to was a senior Liseiden officer called Ny-Xandabo Tyun, a male who held the rank of Salvage and Reprocessing Team Principal. Admiral, in other words.

But what babble ! What to-ing and fro-ing over such simple operational matters! A bunch of dim-witted, slow-thinking bios swimming in a tub clouded with their own effluent, trying to work out what was going on around them by staring through portholes probably. It was hard for a ship, a Mind, not to feel at least a degree of contempt.

And they were still talking, out there between the stars, as the little flock of ships scraped slowly, slowly closer. (The fleet was already having to decelerate, the Mistake Not… noted, with some exasperation. This would draw the whole process out even further.) It was only a meet-and-greet anyway; almost as soon as it got here the Liseiden fleet would be breaking up again, most of the ships heading off singly or in small groups to individual places of interest within the Gzilt sphere; only the flagship and a few smaller vessels would remain as any sort of substantive unit.

This was something Admiral Tyun himself didn’t know yet; there were sealed orders in the flagship’s AI detailing all this dispositional stuff which were only to be accessed on the fleet’s arrival at the clinker star but which the Culture already knew about through a piece of deft signal interception by some other ship or ships tens of days earlier.