The image switched to yet another press conference and a senior policeman flanked by two First Regiment Intelligence and Security officers. Somebody’s face was shown on an insert on the screen. Cossont knew she knew the person for about half a second before she realised; it was her own face. “We would be very interested in interviewing Ms Cossont,” the head cop was saying. “And, yes, she is a contributory suspect in the matter of the destruction of the regimental headquarters of the Fourteenth Regiment, on Eshri.”

“WHAT?” Cossont yelled, jumping to her feet. Pyan had to hang on tight to stay round her shoulders.

“Told you you wouldn’t like it,” Berdle said.

“Oh, Vyr, are you an outlaw?” Pyan said, sounding excited.

“But I haven’t done anything!” Cossont shouted.

Berdle looked at her, head tipped. “My, you really are naive, aren’t you?”

The ship dance of triumph that had been ‘The Approaching Eclipsing of One Sun by Another’ was abandoned in mid-final formation. On confirmation of the humanoid treachery, all ships somersaulted about, went to full power and simultaneously began a maximally tight zooming loop, twisting as they turned so that at all points throughout the manoeuvre their drives were presented towards their earlier destination, the planet Zyse in the system of Gzilt.

The drone Jonsker Ap-Candrechenat, representative of the Culture ship Beats Working, was accepted again within the command space of the Interstitial/Exploratory vessel Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph – arriving by the quicker though most alarming method of Displacement – and made a show of prostrating itself before the Swarmprince and Sub-Corporation Divisional Head.

Ossebri 17 Haldesib regarded the Culture machine for some time before saying, “Device, there are those amongst my officers who would have us attack you, believing you to have been complicit in a deception upon us. They believe that you were both leading and hurrying us into a trap, and that, as such, neither you nor your ship should be suffered to live.”

“If the Swarmprince so desires, I shall absent myself immediately, return to my ship and depart along with it. The Swarmprince should know, however, that we have engaged in no such deception at any point, and have at all times done all we could to cooperate with and to aid the Ronte fleet and squadron. Had we been engaged in any plot to deliver the squadron to a place of jeopardy, all those complicit would surely have brought the squadron further into the Gzilt system, where the threat to it would have been by that measure enhanced, before the trap was sprung, instead of timing matters such that the squadron has – happily – had time to deflect from its earlier course and instigate its current re-disposition.”

“‘Deflect from its earlier course and instigate its current re-disposition’,” Ossebri 17 Haldesib quoted. “Does the Culture machine possess any other especially pretty ways of saying ‘run away’ or ‘escape like a shamed, pursued prey’?”