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The holo screen disappeared. ‘So what does all that mean?’ she asked.

‘. . . Good grief, Ulver,’ the drone said, giving a fair impression of spluttering. ‘It’s the Heavy Crew! It’s the Ghosts!’

‘What? The who?’ She swivelled in the seat to face the drone.

‘Child, there were names appearing there I hadn’t seen for five centuries. Some of those Minds are legends!’

‘This is the Interesting Times Gang we’re talking about, I take it?’

‘That’s obviously what they call themselves.’

‘Well, good for them, but I still want to know what all that was about.’

‘Well, a normal enough but pretty high-power Mind Incident Group gets together to discuss what’s going on, then - allowing for signal travel duration - within real-time seconds it’s taken over by probably the most respected not to mention enigmatic group of Minds ever assembled together in the same signal sequence since the end of the Idiran War.’

‘You don’t say,’ Ulver said, yawning a little and putting one black-gloved hand over her mouth.

‘Yes; in the case of the Not Invented Here, everybody I know thought the thing had been lost half a millennium ago! Then they dump the boring, pedantic GSV that happened to be on the Incident Coordinating Rota, agree to wait-and-see with the Excession itself while sending investigatory reinforcements, start a localised mobilisation - mobilisation! - and release a half-truth about the Excession when there’s some more exciting news breaking.’

Ulver frowned. ‘When did all this happen?’

‘Well, if you hadn’t turned off the date/time function . . .’ muttered the drone, colouring frosty blue. Ulver rolled her eyes again. ‘The Excession was discovered and that signal sequence plus comments dates from twelve days ago. The Excession’s discovery was announced through the standard channels the day before yesterday.’

The human shrugged. ‘I missed it.’

‘The headlines concerned the resolution of the Blitteringueh situation.’

‘Ah-hah. That would do it, I suppose.’

Most of the developed galaxy had been following that story for the past hundred days, as the aftermath of the short but bitter Blitteringueh-Deluger War played itself out on the CAM-bomb-mined Blitteringueh home planets and the Deluger fleets fleeing with their precious holy relics and Grand House captives. It had ended with relatively little loss of life, but in high drama, and with continuing, developing repercussions; little wonder anything else announced that day had slipped by almost unnoticed and stayed that way.

‘And what was that thing towards the end there, about “Calling our mutual friend”?’