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.

∞