Contents
Six
Overview
Zakalwe, Sma, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw reunite aboard a GSV, where Zakalwe tests antiquated weapons and negotiates mission parameters. A vivid recovery memory after his beheading reveals his choice to regrow a new body awake and his sense of loss. In the armoury, he sets a minimalist, self-reliant plan to lure Beychae using a name, accepts funding via the Vanguard Foundation, and limits coercive tools. He launches alone toward Beychae’s desert city, setting the operation in motion.
Summary
In a GSV smallbay, Zakalwe practices with an ancient plasma rifle, angrily firing at a black ice cube because the ship refuses to provide “rubbish.” After Skaffen-Amtiskaw clears the bay’s explosion-trapdoor system, the rifle obliterates the target, illustrating Culture safety protocols that frustrate Zakalwe’s taste for real risk.
A memory intrudes of ten years earlier: after being beheaded on Fohls, Zakalwe awakens on the GSV Congenital Optimist under Diziet Sma’s care. Offered options during a 200-day body regrowth, he chooses to stay awake, declining drug-glands but requesting occasional inebriation. Medic Stod Perice outlines the sedation spectrum. Skaffen-Amtiskaw sends a macabre “hat,” prompting grim humor. Alone, Zakalwe realizes that regrowth will erase the scar above his heart and symbolically sever the inner companionship of a long-held memory, and he weeps.
Back in the present, in the armoury, Zakalwe selects gear amid banter with Sma and the drone about weapons, aging, and Culture ethics. He rejects advanced systems he cannot master quickly, keeps his old plasma rifle, and debates immortality versus risk. Sma restricts him to one FYT combat suit, stressing that Beychae’s commitment matters more than mere capture.
They refine the plan: Zakalwe will make Beychae come to him using a single name, while Sma arranges “unlimited expenses” via the Culture-built Vanguard Foundation and seeks a tangible lure for the university. Zakalwe refuses drone or knife-missile support, insisting on autonomy.
Transferred from GSV to very fast picket Xenophobe, to atmospheric module, then a lobbed capsule, Zakalwe lands at dusk on a plateau near the great desert chasm containing Beychae’s city. Encased in his combat suit, he prepares to begin the extraction, resolved to proceed on his own terms.
Who Appears
- Cheradenine ZakalweOperative and protagonist; tests weapons, recalls beheading and awake body regrowth, sets a self-reliant plan to lure and extract Beychae, then departs planetside.
- Diziet SmaCulture handler; steadies Zakalwe during recovery memory, debates ethics and tools, secures funding, restricts coercive gear, and launches him toward the mission.
- Skaffen-AmtiskawAcerbic drone; facilitates safe firing, teases Zakalwe, explains systems, catalogs weapons, and sends a grim joke “hat.”
- Stod PericeMedic on the GSV; outlines regrowth and sedation options, agrees to occasional intoxication during Zakalwe’s recovery.
- Tsoldrin BeychaeTarget statesman-scholar; offstage focus of the mission. Zakalwe plans to draw him out with a specific name.