The classic (and, according to many, the best) novel from the series about Culture - in a new translation! The only collection in the bibliography of the famous Scot (including a large title story about Culture) - for the first time in Russian! Cheradenin Zakalve was born and raised outside of Culture and already at a fairly mature age became an agent of Special Circumstances of the “cultural” service of Contact. Like most of Banks' heroes, he has an eerie secret hidden in his past that determines his course of action. A brilliant military leader, Zakalve works as a kind of provocateur, preparing the ground for progressors from Contact in backward worlds. Unlike the natives of Culture, he has something to fight for and something to prove, both to himself and to those around him. Dizzying courage, contempt for risk, inability to lose - all these are consequences of a powerful mental trauma that Zakalve experienced many years ago and which will be revealed only in the finale.