Classic (and, according to many, the best) novel from the cycle 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, born and raised outside the Culture and already at a fairly mature age became an agent of the Special Circumstances of the "cultural" Contact Service. Like most of Banks's heroes, in the past he has a creepy secret that determines the line of behavior. A brilliant military leader, Zakalve works as a kind of provocateur, preparing the ground for progressives from Contact in backward worlds. Unlike the natives of Culture, he has something to fight for and what to prove, both to himself and to others. 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 open only in the final.