The official version was that when one of the three Minds had decided it wanted to quit the Culture the other two Minds had argued with it and then made the unusual decision to leave the structure of the GSV to the single dissenting Mind, rather than, as would have been more normal, just giving it a smaller ship.

The perhaps more plausible and certainly more interesting rumour was that there had been a good old-fashioned wing-ding battle between the Minds, two against one, and the two had lost, very much against the odds. The two losing Minds had been kicked out, taking to commandeered GCUs like officers given life boats after a mutiny. And that was why, this version went, the whole of the Quietly Confident - which promptly renamed itself the Sleeper Service, had been turned over to the single dissident Mind; it hadn’t been some gentlepeople’s agreement; it had been a revolution.

Whatever version you chose to believe, it was no secret that the Culture proper had chosen to dedicate another, smaller, GSV to the task of following the Sleeper Service wherever it went, presumably to keep an eye on it.

Following its renaming, and paying no apparent heed to the craft now tailing it, the Sleeper Service’s next step was to evacuate everybody else remaining aboard. Most of the ships had already gone, and the rest were asked to leave. Then the drones, aliens and all the human personnel and their pets were deposited on the first Orbital it came to. The only people left aboard were those in Storage.

After that the ship went in search of others (and one other in particular), and let it be known throughout the Culture, through its information network, that it was willing to travel anywhere to pick up those who might wish to join it, so long as they were in Storage and happy to be set amongst one of its tableaux.