IAIN  M. BANKS

 THE ALGEBRAIST

 Copyright © Iain M. Banks 2004

 ISBN: 1-84149-229-9

  

 Version 1.0

Prologue                                                                                       

 One:   The Autumn House

 Two:   Destructive Recall

 Three: Nowhere Left to Fall

 Four:   Events During Wartime

 Five:   Conditions of Passage

 Six:     The Last TransformEpilogue	

 PROLOGUE

 Ihave a story to tell you. It has many beginnings, and perhaps one ending. Perhaps not. Beginnings and endings are contin­gent things anyway; inventions, devices. Where does any storyreally begin? There is always context, always an encompassinglygreater epic, always something before the described events, unlesswe are to start every story with, 'BANG!Expand! Sssss . . .',then itemise the whole subsequent history of the universe before settling down, at last, to the particular tale in question. Similarly,no ending is final, unless it is the end of all things . . .

 Nevertheless, I have a story to tell you. My own direct partin it was vanishingly small and I have not thought even to intro­duce myself with anything as presumptuous as a proper name.Nevertheless, I was there, at the very beginning of one of thosebeginnings.

 From the air, I am told, the Autumn House looks like a giantgrey and pink snowflake lying half-embedded within thesefolded green slopes. It lies on the long, shallow escarpmentwhich forms the southern limit of the Northern TropicalUplands. On the northern side of the house are spread thevarious formal and rustic gardens which it is both my duty andmy pleasure to tend. A little further up the escarpment rest theextensive ruins of a fallen temple, believed to have been aconstruction of a species called the Rehlide. (6ar., either severelyabated or extinct, depending on which authority one choosesto give credence to. In any event, long gone from these parts.) The temple's great white columns once towered a hundred metres or so into our thin airs but now lie sprawled upon andinterred within the ground, vast straked and fluted tubes of solid stone half buried in the peaty soils of the unimproved landaround us. The furthest-fallen ends of the columns - which musthave toppled slowly but most impressively in our half-standard gravity - punched great long crater-like ditches out of the earth,creating long double embankments with bulbously roundedtips. Over the many millennia since their sudden creation thesetall ramparts have been slowly worn down both by erosion andour world's many small ground-quakes so that the earth hasslumped back to refill the wide ditches where the column endslie, until all that is visible is a succession of gentle waves in the land's surface, like a series of small, splayed valleys from whoseupper limits the unburied lengths of the columns appear like the pale exposed bones of this little planet-moon.

 Where one column fell and rolled across a shallow river valley,it formed a sort of angled cylindrical dam, over which the waterspills, is caught and channelled by one of the metres-deepgrooves embellishing the column's length, and then flows downto what remains of the column's ornately carved capital and aseries of small, graceful waterfalls which end in a deep pool justbeyond the tall, dense hedges which mark the highest limit ofour gardens. From here the stream is guided and controlled,some of its waters proceeding to a deep cistern which providesthe headwaters for our gravity fountains down near the housewhile the rest make up the brook which by turns tumbles,rushes, swings and meanders down to the ornamental lakes and partial moat surrounding the house itself.

 I was standing waist-deep in the gurgling waters of a steeplypitched part of the brook, three limbs braced against the current,surrounded by dripping exer-rhododendron branches and coilsof weed, trimming and dead-heading a particularly recalcitrantconfusion of moil-bush around a frankly rather threadbareraised lawn of scalpygrass (basically a noble but failed experi­ment, attempting to persuade this notoriously clumpy varietyto...ah: my enthusiasms may be getting the better of me, andI digress - never mind about the scalpygrass) when the youngmaster - returning, whistling, hands clasped behind his back, from his morning constitutional round the higher rockeries -stopped on the gravel path above me and smiled down. I lookedround and up, still clipping away, and nodded with as muchformality as my somewhat awkward stance would allow.

 Sunlight poured from the purple sky visible between the curveof eastward horizon (hills, haze) and the enormous overhangingbulk of the gas-giant planet Nasqueron filling the majority ofthe sky (motley with all the colours of the spectrum belowbright yellow, multitudinously spotted, ubiquitously zoned andbelted with wild liquidic squiggles). A synchronous mirroralmost directly above us scribed a single sharp line of yellow- white across the largest of Nasqueron's storm-spots, whichmoved ponderously across the sky like an orange-brown bruise the size of a thousand moons.

 'Good morning, Head Gardener.'

 'Good morning, Seer Taak.'

 'And how are our gardens?'

 'Generally healthy, I would say. In good shape for spring.' Icould have gone on to provide much more detail, naturally, butwaited to discover whether Seer Taak was merely indulging inphatic discourse. He nodded at the water rushing and breakingaround my lower limbs.

 'You all right in there, HG? Looks a bit fierce.'

 'I am well braced and anchored, thank you, Seer Taak.' I hesi­tated (and during the pause could hear someone small and light running up the stone steps towards the gravel path a little furtherdown the garden), then, when Seer Taak still smiled encourag­ingly down at me, I added, 'The flow is high because the lower pumps are on, recirculating the waters to enable us to scour oneof the lakes free of floating weeds.' (The small personapproaching reached the path's loose surface twenty metresaway and kept running, scattering gravel.)

 'I see. Didn't think it had rained that much recently.' Henodded. 'Well, keep up the good work, HG,' he said, and turned to go, then saw whoever was running towards him. I suspectedfrom the rhythm of her running steps that it was the girl Zab.Zab is still at the age where she runs from place to place as amatter of course unless directed not to by an adult. However,I believed that I detected a more than casual urgency in her gait.

 Seer Taak smiled and frowned at the girl at the same time asshe came skidding to a stop on the gravel in front of him, puttingone hand flat to the chest of her yellow dungarees and bending over for a couple of deep, exaggerated breaths - long pink curls swirling and dancing round her face - before taking one even deeper breath and standing up straight to say,

 'Uncle Fassin! Grandpa Slovius says you're out in a commun­icardo again and if I see you I've to tell you you've to comeand see him right now immediately!'

 'Does he now?' Seer Taak said, laughing. He bent and pickedthe girl up by her armpits, holding her face level with his, herlittle pink boots hanging level with the waist of his britches.

 'Yes, he does,' she told him, and sniffed. She looked downand saw me. 'Oh! Hello, HG.'

 'Good morning, Zab.'

 'Well,' said Seer Taak, hoisting the child further up andturning and lowering her so that she sat on his shoulders, 'we'dbetter go and see what the old man wants, hadn't we?' He starteddown the path towards the house. 'You okay up there?'

 She put her hands over his forehead and said, 'Yup.'

 'Well, this time, mind out for branches.'

 'Youmind out for branches!' Zab said, rubbing her knucklesthrough Seer Taak's brown curls. She twisted round and wavedback at me. 'Bye, HG!'

 'Goodbye,' I called as they went towards the steps.

 'No,you mind out for branches, young lady.'

 'No,you mind out for branches!'

 'No,you mind out for branches.'

 'No,you mind out for branches . . .'

 ONE

 THE AUTUMN HOUSE

 It had thought it would be safe out here, just one more ambi­ently black speck deep-chilled in the vast veil of icy debriswrapping the outer reaches of the system like a frozen, tenuousshroud of tissue. But it had been wrong and it was not safe.

 It lay, slow-tumbling, and watched helplessly as the probing beams flickered across the pitted, barren motes far away, andknew its fate was settled. The interrogating tendrils of coher­ence were almost too quick to sense, too seemingly tentative toregister, barely touching, scarcely illuminating, but they did theirjob by finding nothing where there was nothing to find. Justcarbon, trace, and ice-water hard as iron: ancient, dead, and -left undisturbed - no threat to anyone.

 The lasers flicked off, and each time it felt hope rise, findingitself thinking, despite all rationality, that its pursuers wouldgive up, admit defeat, just go away and leave it be, to orbit there for ever. Or perhaps it would kick away into a lonely eternityof less than light-slow exile, or drift into a closedown sleep, or...Or it might, it supposed - and this was what they feared,of course, this was why they hunted - plot and plan and gatherand make and quicken and build and multiply and muster and - attack! . . . Claiming the vengeance that was so surely its,exacting the price its enemies all deserved to pay - by any algebra of justice under any sun you cared to name - for their intoler­ance, their savagery, their generacide.

 Then the needle rays reappeared, fitfully irradiating the soot-ice-clinker of another set of barnacle-black detritus, a littlefurther away, or a little closer, but always with a rapid, metic­ulous order to them, a militaristic precision and a plodding,bureaucratic systematicism.

 From the earlier light trails, there were at least three ships.How many did they have? How many might they devote tothe search? It didn't really matter. They might take a moment, a month or a millennium to find their quarry, but they obvi­ously knew where to look and they would not stop until theyhad either found what they were looking for or satisfied them­selves that there was nothing there.

 That it was so obviously in harm's way, and that its hidingplace, however enormous, was almost the first place they had chosen to search, filled it with terror, not just because it did notwant to die, or be picked apart as they had been known to pick its kind apart before killing their victims utterly, but because ifit was not safe in this place where it had assumed it would be,then, given that so many of its kind had made the same assump­ tion, none of them would be safe either.

 Dear Reason, maybe none of us are safe anywhere.

 All its studies, all its thoughts, all the great things that might have been, all the fruits of change from the one great revelationit might have had, and now would never know the truth of,would never be able to tell. All, all for nothing now. It couldchoose to go with some elegance, or not, but it could not choosenot to go.

 No un-choosing death.

 The needle rays from the needle ships flicked on\flicked off away across the frozen distances, and finally it could see thepattern in them, discerning one ship's comb of scintillationsfrom the others and so picking out the shape of the search grids,allowing it to watch, helpless, as the slow spread of that mortalinquiry crept slowly, slowly closer.

 *

 The Archimandrite Luseferous, warrior priest of the StarvelingCult of Leseum9 IV and effective ruler of one hundred andseventeen stellar systems, forty-plus inhabited planets, numeroussignificant artificial immobile habitats and many hundreds of thousands of civilian capital ships, who was Executive HighAdmiral of the Shroud Wing Squadron of the Four-Hundred-and-Sixty-Eighth Ambient Fleet (Det.) and who had once beenTriumvirate Rotational human\non-human Representative for Cluster Epiphany Five at the Supreme Galactic Assembly, inthe days before the latest ongoing Chaos and the last, fadingrumbles of the Disconnect Cascade, had some years ago causedthe head of his once-greatest enemy, the rebel chief Stinausin, to be struck from his shoulders, attached without delay to along-term life-support mechanism and then hung upside downfrom the ceiling of his hugely impressive study in the outer wallof Sheer Citadel - with its view over Junch City and FarabyBay towards the hazy vertical slot that was Force Gap - so thatthe Archimandrite could, when the mood took him, which wasfairly frequently, use his old adversary's head as a punchball.

 Luseferous had long, sheen-black straight hair and a natur­ally pale complexion which had been skilfully augmented tomake his skin nearly pure white. His eyes were artificially large,but just close enough to congenitally possible for people to beunsure whether they had been augmented or not. The whitesbeyond the black irises were a deep, livid red, and every one ofhis teeth had been carefully replaced with a pure, clear diamond,giving his mouth an appearance which varied from bizarre,mediaeval toothlessness to startling, glistening brilliance,entirely depending on angle and light.

 In a street performer or an actor, such physiological depar­tures might have been amusing, even a little desperate-looking;in somebody wielding the kind of power which Luseferouspossessed, they could be genuinely disturbing, even terrifying.The same half-tasteless, half-horrifying effect might be claimedfor his name, which was not the one he had been born with.Luseferous was a chosen name, selected for its phonetic prox­imity to that of some long-scorned Earth deity which mosthumans - well, most rHumans, at least - would vaguely haveheard of in their history studies while probably not beingentirely able to place when they had heard the word.

 Again thanks to genetic manipulation, the Archimandrite wasnow and had been for some long time a tall, well-built manwith considerable upper-body strength, and when he punchedin anger - and he rarely punched in any other state - it was toconsiderable effect. The rebel leader whose head now hungupside down from Luseferous's ceiling had caused the Archimandrite enormous military and political difficultiesbefore being defeated, difficulties which had sometimes verged on being humiliations, and Luseferous still felt deep, deepresentment towards the traitor, resentment which easily and reli­ably turned itself to anger when he looked upon the man's face,no matter how battered, bruised and bloody it might be (thehead's augmented healing functions were quick, but not instan­taneous), and so the Archimandrite probably still whacked andsmashed away at Stinausin's head with as much enthusiasm now as he had when he'd first had him hung there, years earlier.

 Stinausin, who had barely endured a month of such treat­ment before going completely mad, and whose mouth had beensewn up to stop him spitting at the Archimandrite, could noteven kill himself; sensors, tubes, micropumps and biocircuitry prevented such an easy way out. Even without such extraneouslimitations he could not have shouted abuse at Luseferous or attempted to swallow his tongue because that organ had beentorn out when his head had been removed.

 Though by now quite perfectly insane, sometimes, after anespecially intense training session with the Archimandrite, whenthe blood trickled down from the one-time rebel chief's split lips, re-broken nose and puffed-up eyes and ears, Stinausinwould cry. This Luseferous found particularly gratifying, andsometimes he would stand, breathing hard and wiping himselfdown with a towel while he watched the tears dilute the blooddripping from the inverted, disembodied head, to land in a broad ceramic shower tray set into the floor.

 Of late, though, the Archimandrite had had a new playmate to amuse himself with, and he would occasionally visit thechamber some levels below his study where the nameless would-be assassin whose own teeth were slowly killing him was held.

 The assassin, a big, powerful-looking, leoninely human male, had been sent without weapons save for his specially sharpened teeth, with which, it had obviously been hoped by whoever hadsent him, he could bite out the Archimandrite's throat. This he had attempted to do, a half-year earlier at a ceremonial dinnerheld here in the clifftop palace in honour of the System President(a strictly honorary post Luseferous always made sure was filledby somebody of advanced age and retreating faculties). Thewould-be assassin had only failed to accomplish this task thanksto the Archimandrite's near-paranoid forethought and intense-and largely secret - personal security.

 The failed assassin had been both routinely, if savagely, torturedand then very carefully questioned under the influences of entiresuites of drugs and electro-biological agents, but had givennothing useful away. Patently he had been equally carefully wipedof any knowledge that might incriminate whoever had sent him, by interrogational technicians at least as capable as those whomthe Archimandrite commanded. His controllers had not evenbothered to implant false memories incriminating anybody closeto the Court and the Archimandrite, as was common in suchcases.

 Luseferous, who was that most deplorable of beings, apsychopathic sadist with a fertile imagination, had decreed thatthe final punishment of the assassin should be that his own teeth-the weapons he had been sent with, after all - should bring about his death. Accordingly, his four canine teeth had been removed, bioengineered to become tusks which would growwithout ceasing, and reinserted. These great finger-thick fangs had erupted out of the bones of his upper and lower jaw, punc-­ turing the flesh of his lips, and had continued their remorselessgrowth. The lower set curved up and over his head and, after
a few months' worth of extension, came to touch his scalp nearthe top of his head, while the upper set grew in a scimitar-like paired sweep beneath his neck, taking about the same time tomeet the skin near the base of his throat.

 Genetically altered not to stop growing even when theyencountered such resistance, both sets of teeth then started toenter the assassin's body, one pair slowly forcing themselvesthrough the bony plates of the man's skull, the other set enteringrather more easily into the soft tissues of the lower neck. Thetusks digging into the assassin's neck caused great pain but werenot immediately life-threatening; left to themselves they wouldreappear from the rear of his neck in due course. The fangsburrowing through his skull and into his brain were the ones which would shortly, and agonisingly, kill him, perhaps in aslittle as another month or so.

 The unfortunate, nameless assassin had been unable to doanything to prevent this because he was pinned helpless and immobile against the wall of the chamber with bands andshackles of thick stainless iron, his nutrition and bodily func­tions catered for by various tubes and implants. His mouth hadalso been sewn up, like that of Stinausin. For the first few monthsof his captivity the assassin's eyes had followed Luseferous around the chamber with a fierce, accusatory look that the Archimandrite eventually grew to find annoying, and so he'dhad the man's eyes stitched shut too.

 The fellow's ears and mind still worked, however -Luseferous had been assured - and sometimes it amused himto come down and see for himself the progress that the teethwere making into the creature's body. On such occasions, havingwhat one might term a captive - yet necessarily discreet - audi­ence, he sometimes liked to talk to the failed assassin.

 'Good day,' Luseferous said pleasantly as the lift doorrumbled shut behind him. The chamber deep below the studywas what the Archimandrite thought of as his den. Here, aswell as the nameless assassin, he kept assorted souvenirs of oldcampaigns, booty from his many victories, items of high artlooted from a dozen different stellar systems, a collection ofweapons both ceremonial and high-power, various caged ortanked creatures, and the mounted, profoundly dead heads ofall those major enemies and adversaries whose end had not beenso complete as to reduce their mortal remains to radiation, dust, slime or unidentifiable strips of flesh and shards of bone (or the alien equivalents thereof).

 Luseferous crossed to a deep, dry tank part-set into the floor and looked in at the Recondite Splicer lying coiled and still on its floor. He slipped a thick elbow glove onto his arm, reachedinto a large pot standing on the broad, waist-high parapet ofthe tank and dropped a handful of fat black trunk-leeches intothe tank.

 'And how are you? Are you keeping well? Hmm?' he asked.

 An observer would have been unsure whether theArchimandrite was talking to the human male pinned to thewall, the Recondite Splicer - now no longer still, but raising itsblind, glistening brown head, sniffing the air while its long, segmented body twitched with anticipation - or indeed the trunk-leeches, thudding one by one onto the mossy floor of thetank and immediately flexing their way with a sort of sine-wavemotion across the surface towards the nearest corner, as far away

 from the Recondite Splicer as it was possible to get. The brownmass of the Splicer began to shuffle massively towards themand they started trying to climb the sheer glass sides of the tank,climbing over each other and slipping back down as soon as they tried to haul themselves up.

 Luseferous peeled the elbow glove off and looked round the vaulted, subtly lit space. The chamber was a comfortable, quiet sort of place set well within the cliff, with no windows or lightshafts, and he felt safe and relaxed here. He looked over at thelong, tawny shape that was the suspended body of the assassinand said, 'Nowhere's quite as nice as home, eh, is it?' The Archimandrite even smiled, though there was nobody to smileat.

 There was a rasping noise and a heavy thump from insidethe tank, followed by some almost inaudibly high keeningsounds. Luseferous turned to watch the Recondite Splicer tearthe giant leeches apart and eat them, violently shaking its great patchily brown head and tossing some bits of slimy black fleshall the way out of the tank. Once it had thrown a still-aliveleech up and out of the tank and nearly hit the Archimandrite with it; Luseferous had chased the injured leech round thechamber with a shear-sword, cleaving deep slivers out of the dark red granite floor as he hacked and sliced at the creature.

 When the show in the tank was over, the Archimandrite turnedback to the assassin. He put the elbow glove back on, picked another trunk-leech from the pot and strolled over to the manattached to the wall. 'Do you remember home, sir assassin?' heasked as he approached. 'Is there any memory of it in your headat all, hmm? Home, mother, friends?' He stopped in front ofthe man. 'Any of that stuff at all?' He waved the leech's moist, seeking snout in front of the assassin's face as he spoke. Theysensed each other, the cold, writhing creature in the Archiman­drite's hand stretching out to try to fasten itself to the man's face, the man sucking breath through his nostrils and turning his headas far as it would go, seeming to try and shrink back into the wall behind (this would not be the first time the assassin had been introduced to a trunk-leech). The tusks digging into hischest prevented him from moving his head very far.

 Luseferous followed the movements of the man's head with the leech, keeping it in front of his lightly furred, leonine face,letting him smell the straining, quivering mass.

 'Or did they rip out all those memories when they cleaned you, before they sent you to try to kill me? Huh? Are they all gone? Eh?' He let the very tip of the trunk-leech's mouth partsjust touch the fellow's nose, causing the failed assassin to winceand jerk and make a small, terrified whimpering noise. 'What, eh? Do you remember home, eh, sport? A pleasant place to be,a place you felt safe and secure and with people you trusted,and who maybe even loved you? What do you say? Eh? Eh? Come on.' The man tried to turn his head still further, straining the puckered skin around the puncture points on his chest, oneof which started to bleed. The giant leech trembled inLuseferous's hand, stretching its mucus-tipped mouth parts stillfurther as it tried to find purchase on the human male's flesh.Then, before the leech could properly attach itself to the fellow,the Archimandrite pulled it back and let it hang from his half-outstretched arm, where it swung and twisted muscularly with what felt for all the world like genuine frustration.

 'This is my home, sir assassin,' Luseferous told the man. 'Thisis my place, my refuge, this, which you . . . invaded, despoiled,dishonoured with your . . . your plot. Your attempt.' His voicequaked as he said, 'I invited you into my house, invited you to my table as...as hosts have guests for ten thousand human years and you...all you wanted to do was hurt me, kill me.Here, in my home, where I should feel safer than anywhere.'The Archimandrite shook his head in sorrow at such ingrati­ tude. The failed assassin had nothing but a dirty rag to coverhis nakedness. Luseferous pulled it away and the fellow flinched again. Luseferous stared. "They did make a bit of a mess of you,didn't they?' He watched the failed assassin's thighs quiver andtwitch. He let the loincloth fall to the ground; a servant would replace it tomorrow.

 ‘I like my home,' he told the fellow quietly. 'I do, really.Everything I've had to do I've done just to make things safer,to make home safer, to make everybody safer.' He waved the trunk-leech towards what was left of the man's genitalia, butthe leech seemed listless and the man already exhausted. Even the Archimandrite felt like some of the fun had gone out of thesituation. He turned smartly and strode to the pot on the broadrail over the tank, dumping the leech inside and peeling thethick elbow glove off.

 'And now I have to leave home, mister assassin,' Luseferoussaid, and sighed. He gazed down at the long coiled shape of theonce-again-still Recondite Splicer. It had changed colour from brown to yellow-green now, adopting the colours of the mossesit lay upon. All that was left of the trunk-leeches were somedark spots and smears on the walls, and a faint, tangy smell theArchimandrite had come to recognise as that of yet anotherspecies's blood. He turned back to look at the assassin. 'Yes, Ihave to go away, and for a very long time, and it would seemI have no choice.' He started to walk slowly towards the man.'Because you can't delegate everything, because ultimately, espe­cially when it comes to the most important things, you can'treally trust anybody else. Because sometimes, especially whenyou're going far away and communications take so long, there'sno substitute for being there. What do you think of that? Eh?There's a fine thing. Don't you think? Me working all theseyears to make this place safe and now I have to leave it, still trying to make it even safer, even more powerful, even better.'He stepped up to the man again, tapping one of the curved fangs boring through the fellow's skull. 'And all because of peoplelike you, who hate me, who won't listen, who won't do asthey're told, who don't know what's good for them.' He gripped the fang and pulled hard at it. The man mewed down his nosewith pain.

 'Well, not really,' Luseferous said, shrugging, letting go. 'It'sdebatable whether this will really make us safer or not. I'mgoing to this ... this Ulubis ... system or whatever it is becausethere might be something valuable there, because my advisers advise so and my intelligence people have intelligence to this effect. Of course nobody's certain, nobody ever is. But they doseem uncommonly excited about this.' The Archimandritesighed again, more deeply. 'And impressionable old me, I'm going to do as they suggest. Do you think I'm doing the right thing?' He paused, as though expecting an answer. 'Do you? Imean, I realise you might not be entirely honest with me if youdid have an opinion, but, all the same . . . No? You sure?' Hetraced the line of a scar along the side of the man's abdomen,wondering idly if it was one of those that his own inquisitorshad inflicted. Looked a bit crude and deep to be their work.The failed assassin was breathing quickly and shallowly butgiving no sign that he was even listening. Behind his sealedmouth, his jaws seemed to be working.

 ‘You see, for once I'm not absolutely sure myself, and I coulduse some advice. Might not make us all safer at all, what we're planning to do. But it has to be done. The way some things justhave to. Eh?' He slapped the man's face, not hard. The manflinched all the same. 'Don't worry, though. You can come too.Big invasion fleet. Plenty of room.' He looked around thechamber. 'Anyway, I feel you spend too much time stuck inhere; you could do with getting out more.' The ArchimandriteLuseferous smiled, though still there was nobody to smile at. 'After all this trouble I'd hate to miss watching you die. Yes, you come with me, why don't you? To Ulubis, to Nasqueron.'

 'Eh? Oh, yes.' Uncle Slovius raised a flipper-like hand andwaved it vaguely. 'Please do.'

 'Thank you.'

 Fassin Taak hitched up his walking britches, gathered in hiswide shirt sleeves and folded himself decorously into a sittingposition at the side of the large circular pool of gently steamingand luminously blue liquid that his uncle floated within. UncleSlovius had some years ago assumed the shape of a walrus. A beige-pink, relatively slim walrus, with tusks barely longer thanthe middle finger of a man's hand, but a walrus nevertheless.The hands Uncle Slovius had once possessed were no more -they were flippers now, on the end of two thin, rather odd andineffectual-looking arms. His fingers were little more than stubs;a scalloped pattern fringing the ends of his flippers. He openedhis mouth to speak, but then one of the household servants, ablack-uniformed human male, approached him, kneeling at theside of the pool to whisper something into his ear. The servantheld his long pigtail out of the water with one many-ringedhand. The dark clothes, long hair and rings all indicated that he was one of the most senior functionaries. Fassin felt he oughtto know his name, but couldn't think of it immediately.

 He looked round the room. The chamber of ProvisionalForgetting was one of the rarely used parts of the house, only called into action - if you could call it that - on such occasions, when a senior family member was approaching their end. The pool took up most of the floor space of a large roughly hemi­spherical room whose walls were translucently thin agate inlaidwith veins of time-dulled silver. This dome formed part of onebubble-wing of the family's Autumn House, situated on the continent Twelve on the rocky planet-moon 'glantine, whichorbited the gaudy, swirlingly clouded mass of the gas-giant Nasqueron like a pepper grain around a football. A tiny portion of the massive planet's surface was visible through the trans­parent centre section of the dome's roof, directly above Fassinand his uncle.

 The part of Nasqueron that Fassin could see was presently indaylight, displaying a chaotic cloudscape coloured crimson,orange and rust-brown, the summed shades producing a deep redlight which fell through the violet skies of 'glantine's thinlybreathable atmosphere and the dome's glazed summit and helpedilluminate the chamber and the pool below, where the black-cladservant was supporting Uncle Slovius while he supped on abeaker of what might have been either refreshment or medi­cine. Some dribbles of the clear liquid escaped Uncle Slovius'smouth, trickling down his grizzled chin to the folds of his neckand dripping into the blue pool, where tall waves slopped toand fro in the half-standard gravity. Uncle Slovius made quietgrunting noises, his eyes closed.

 Fassin looked away. Another servant approached him,offering a tray of drinks and sweetmeats, but he smiled andraised one hand in a gesture of rejection and the servant bowedand retreated. Fassin fixed his gaze politely on the dome's roofand the view of the gas-giant, while watching from the cornerof his eye as the servant attending his uncle dabbed at the old man's lips with a neatly folded cloth.

 Magisterial, oblivious, moving almost imperceptibly with akind of tumultuous serenity, Nasqueron turned above them likesome vast glowing coal hanging in the sky.

 The gas-giant was the largest planet in the Ulubis system,which lay within a remote strand of Stream Quaternary, one of the Southern Tendril Reefs on the galactic outskirts, fifty-fivethousand years from the galaxy's nominal centre and about asremote as it was possible to get while still being part of the greatlens.

 There were, especially in the current post-War age, differentlevels of remoteness, and Ulubis system qualified as back-of-beyond in all of them. Being on the outermost reaches of thegalaxy - and hanging well underneath the galactic plane, wherethe last vestiges of stars and gas gave way to the emptinessbeyond - did not necessarily mean that a place was inaccessible,providing it was close to an arteria portal.

 Arteria - wormholes - and the portals which were their exitsand entrances meant everything in the galactic community; theyrepresented the difference between having to crawl everywhere at less than the speed of light and making almost instantaneoustransitions from one stellar system to another. The effect theyhad on a system's importance, economy and even morale was similarly dramatic and rapid. Without one, it was as though youwere still stuck in one small village, one dull and muddy valley,and might be there all your life. Once a wormhole portal wasemplaced, it was as though you suddenly became part of a vastand glittering city, full of energy, life and promise.

 The only way to get an arteria portal from one place toanother was to put it in a spaceship and physically take it, slowerthan light, from one place to another, leaving the other end -usually - anchored where you'd started out. Which meant thatif your wormhole was destroyed - and they could be destroyed,in theory at any point along their length, in practice only attheir ends, at their portals - then you were instantly all the way back to square one, stuck in your isolated little village onceagain.

 Ulubis system had first been connected to the rest of thegalaxy over three billion years earlier, during what was thenknown as the New Age. It had been a relatively young, not-long-formed system at the time, just a few billion years old, butwas already multiply life-supporting. Its arteria connection hadformed part of the Second Complex, the galactic community's second serious attempt at an integrated network of wormholes.It had lost that connection in the billion-year turmoil of theLong Collapse, the War of Squalls, the Scatter Anarchy and theInformorta breakdown, then - along with most of the rest ofthe civilised galaxy - slumbered as if comatose under the weightof the Second, or Major, Chaos, a time when only its Dweller population on Nasqueron had survived. The Dwellers, beingnumbered amongst the species meta-type known as the Slow,worked to a different timescale, and thought nothing of taking a few hundred thousand years to get from point A to point B;a billion years of nothing much happening was, they declared,merely like a long sabbatical to them.

 Following the Third Diasporian Age (and much more besides- galactic history wasn't really simple on any scale) anotherwormhole brought Ulubis back on-line to become part of theThird Complex. That arteria lasted for seventy million peaceful,productive years, during which several Quick species, none ofthem native to Ulubis, came and went, leaving only the Dwellersto bear consistent witness to the slow turn of life and events. The Arteria Collapse had plunged Ulubis into solitude onceagain, along with ninety-five per cent of the connected galaxy. More portals and wormholes disappeared during the War of theNew Quick and the Machine War, and only the establishmentof the Mercatoria - at least by the estimation of those who controlled it - brought about a lasting peace and the beginningof the Fourth Complex.

 Ulubis had been reconnected early on in this slow, still-at-the-early-stages process and for six thousand years that latestarteria had made the system an easily reached part of the grad­ually recovering galactic community. However, then that worm-hole too had been destroyed, and for over a quarter of amillennium Ulubis's nearest working access point had been fullytwo hundred and fourteen years away further down theincreasing thickness of the Stream at Zenerre. That wouldchange in about seventeen years or so, when the wormhole end-point currently being transported towards Ulubis system at rela­tivistic speeds aboard the EngineershipEst-taun Zhiffir arrived and was emplaced, probably where the old portal had been, atone of the Lagrange points near Sepekte, the principal planet ofthe Ulubis system. For the moment, though, Ulubis, despite itsimportance as a centre for Dweller Studies, remained remote chronologically as well as physically.

 Uncle Slovius waved the servant away with one flipper anddrew himself up against the Y-shaped cradle which supported his head and shoulders above the blue glowing surface of thepool. The servant - Fassin recognised him now as Guime, thesecond-highest-ranking of his uncle's retainers - turned backand tried to help Slovius in this manoeuvre. However, Slovius made hissing, tutting noises and slapped at the male with one flipper hand. Guime dodged the weak, slow blow easily andstepped back again, bowing. He stood nearby, by the wall.Slovious struggled to lift his upper body any further out of the pool, his tailed torso stirring sluggishly under the luminescentwaves.

 Fassin started to rise from his cross-legged position. 'Uncle,do you want me to—?'

 'No!' his uncle shouted in exasperation, still trying ineffec­tually to push himself further up the cradle. 'I would like peopleto stopfussing, that's all!' Slovius turned his head round as hesaid this, trying to look at Guime, but only succeeded in causinghimself to slip further back into the liquid, so that he was even more horizontal than he had been before he started. He slappedat the pool surface, splashing. 'There! See what you've done?Interfering idiot!' He sighed mightily and lay back in thewallowing waves, apparently exhausted, staring straight ahead.'You may adjust me, Guime, as you wish,' he said dully,sounding resigned.

 Guime knelt on the tiles behind him, put a hand under each of Slovius's armpits and hauled his master upwards onto thecradle until his head and shoulders were almost vertical. Sloviussettled himself there, then nodded briskly. Guime retreated againto his position by the wall.

 'Now then, nephew,' Slovius said, crossing his flipper hands over the pink expanse of his hairless chest. He looked up at thetransparent, summit of the dome.

 Fassin smiled. 'Yes, uncle?'

 Slovius seemed to hesitate. He let his gaze fall to his nephew.'Your . . . your studies, Fassin. How do they progress?'

 'They progress satisfactorily, sir. In the matter of the TrancheXonju it is still, of course, very early.'

 'Hmm. Early,' Uncle Slovius said. He looked thoughtful,staring into the distance again. Fassin sighed gently. This wasobviously going to take some time.

 Fassin Taak was a Slow Seer at the court of the NasqueronDwellers. The Dwellers - Gas-Giant Dwellers, to give them a fuller designation ... Neutrally Buoyant First Order Ubiquitous Climax Clade Gas-Giant Dwellers, to grant them a still morepainfully precise specification - were large creatures of immenseage who lived within the deliriously complex and topologicallyvast civilisation of great antiquity which was distributedthroughout the cloud layers wrapping the enormous gas-giantplanet, a habitat that was as stupendous in scale as it was change­able in aerography.

 The Dwellers, at least in their mature form, thought slowly. They lived slowly, evolved slowly, travelled slowly and did almost everything they ever did, slowly. They could, it wasalleged, fight quite quickly. Though, as far as anybody was ableto determine, they had not had to do any fighting for a longtime. The implication of this was that they could think quicklywhen it suited them, but most of the time it did not appear tosuit them, and so - it was assumed - they thought slowly. Itwas unarguable that in their later years - later aeons - theyconversed slowly. So slowly that a simple question asked beforebreakfast might not be answered until after supper. A rate ofconversational exchange, it occurred to Fassin, that UncleSlovius - floating in his now-quite-still pool with a trancelikeexpression on his tusked, puffy face - seemed determined toemulate.

 'The Tranche Xonju, it concerns . . . ?' Slovius said suddenly. 'Clutter poetry, Diasporic myths and various history tangles,'

 Fassin answered.

 'Histories of which epochs?'

 'The majority have still to be dated, uncle. Some may never be, and possibly belong with the myths. The only readily iden­tifiable strands are very recent and appear to relate to mostlylocal events during the Machine War.'

 Uncle Slovius nodded slowly, producing small waves. 'TheMachine War. That is interesting.'

 'I was thinking of attending to those strands first.''Yes,' Slovius said. 'A good idea.''Thank you, uncle.'

 Slovius lapsed into silence again. A ground-quake rumbleddistantly around them, producing tiny concentric rings in theliquid of Slovius's pool.

 The civilisation which comprised the Dwellers of Nasqueron,with all their attendant fellow flora and fauna, itself formed but one microscopic fragment of the Dweller Diaspora, the galaxy-spanning meta-civilisation (some would say post-civilisation)which, as far as anyone could tell, preceded all other empires,cultures, diasporas, civilisations, federations, consocia, fellow­ships, unities, leagues, confederacies, affilia and organisations oflike or unlike beings in general.

 The Dwellers, in other words, had been around for most of the life of the galaxy. This made them at least unusual andpossibly unique. It also made them, if they were approachedwith due deference and care, and treated with respect andpatience, a precious resource. Because they had good memoriesand even better libraries. Or at least they had retentive memo­ries, and very large libraries.

 Dweller memories, and libraries, usually proved to be stuffedfull of outright nonsense, bizarre myths, incomprehensibleimages, indecipherable symbols and meaningless equations, plus random assemblages of numbers, letters, pictograms, holophons,sonomemes, chemiglyphs, actinomes andsensata variegata, all ofthem trawled and thrown together unsorted - or in patterns tooabstruse to be untangled - from a jumbled mix of millions upon millions of utterly different and categorically unrelated civilis­ations, the vast majority of which had long since disappeared andeither crumbled into dust or evaporated into radiation.

 Nevertheless, in all that flux of chaos, propaganda, distor­tion, drivel and weirdness, there were nuggets of actuality, seamsof facts, frozen rivers of long-forgotten history, whole volumesof exobiography and skeins and tissues of truth. It had been thelife-work of people like Chief Seer Slovius, and was the life-work of people like Chief Seer-in-waiting Fassin Taak, to meetwith and talk to the Dwellers, to adapt to their language,thoughts and metabolism, to - sometimes virtually, at a remove,sometimes literally - float and fly and dive and soar with themamongst the clouds of Nasqueron, and through their convers­ations, their studies, their notes and analyses, make what sensethey could of what their ancient slow-living hosts told themand allowed them to access, and so enrich and enlighten thegreater, quicker meta-civilisation which presently inhabited thegalaxy.

 'And, ah, Jaal?' Slovius glanced at his nephew, who looked sufficiently surprised for the older male to add, 'The, oh, what'stheir name . . . ? Tonderon. Yes. The Tonderon girl. You twoare still betrothed, aren't you?'

 Fassin smiled. 'We are indeed, uncle,' he said. 'She is returningfrom Pirrintipiti this evening. I'm hoping to meet her at theport.'

 'And you are . . . ?' Slovius gestured with one flipper hand.'Still content?'

 'Content, uncle?' Fassin asked.

 'You are happy with her? With the prospect of her beingyour wife?'

 'Of course, uncle.'

 'And she with you?'

 'Well, I hope so, I believe so.'

 Slovius looked at his nephew, holding his gaze for a moment.'Mm-hmm. I see. Of course. Well.' Slovius used one of his flipperhands to wave some of the blue glowing liquid over his upperchest, as though he was cold. 'You are to be wed when?'

 'The date is fixed for Allhallows, Jocund III,' Fassin said.'Somewhat under half a year, body time,' he added helpfully.

 'I see,' Slovius said, frowning. He nodded slowly, and theaction caused his body to rise and fall slightly in the pool, producing more waves. 'Well, it is good to know you mightfinally be settling down at last.'

 Fassin considered himself to be a dedicated, hard-workingand productive Seer who spent well above the average amountof time at the sharp end of delving, actually with the NasqueronDwellers. However, due to the fact that he liked to completeeach interlude of this real, useful life with what he called a'proper holiday', the older generation of Sept Bantrabal, andespecially Slovius, seemed to think he was some sort of hope­less wastrel. (Indeed, Uncle Slovius seemed reluctant to acceptthe term 'proper holiday' at all. He preferred to call them'month-long blind-drunk stoned-out benders getting intotrouble, fights and illicit orifices in the flesh pots of—' well,wherever; sometimes Pirrintipiti, the capital of 'glantine, some­times Borquille, capital of Sepekte, or one of Sepekte's othercities, sometimes one of the many pleasure habitats scatteredthroughout the system.)

 Fassin smiled tolerantly. 'Still, I shan't be hanging up my dancing shoes just yet, uncle.'

 'The nature of your studies over your last, say, three or fourdelves, Fassin. Have they followed what one might term aconsistent course?'

 'You confuse me, uncle,' Fassin admitted.'Your last three or four delves, have they been in any waylinked thematically, or by subject, or through the Dwellers youhave conversed with?'

 Fassin sat back, surprised. Why ever would old Slovius beinterested in this ? 'Let me think, sir,' he said. 'On this occasion I spoke almost exclusively with Xonju, who provided infor­mation seemingly at random and does not fully appear to under­stand the concept of an answer. Our first meeting and all very preparatory. He may be worth following up, if we can find himagain. He may not. It might take all of the months between now and my next delve to work out—'

 'So this was a sampling expedition, an introduction?''Indeed.''Before that?'

 'A protracted conference, with Cheuhoras, Saraisme theyounger, Akeurle Both-twins, traav Kanchangesja and a coupleof minors from the Eglide adolescent pod.''Your subjects?'

 'Poetry, mostly. Ancient, modern, the use of image in theepic, the ethics of boasting and exaggeration.''And the delve before?'

 'With Cheuhoras alone; an extended lament for his departedparent, some hunting myths from the local near-past and alengthy translation and disposition on an epic sequenceconcerning the adventures of ancient plasmatics voyaging within the hydrogen migration, perhaps a billion or so years ago, duringthe Second Chaos.'

 'Before that?'

 Fassin smiled. 'My extended one-to-one with Valseir, thedelve which included my sojourn with the Raucous Rascals of Tribe Dimajrian.' He imagined he didn't need to remind his uncle of too many of the details of that particular excursion. This had been the protracted delve which had made his name as a gifted Seer, the six-year journey - by body-time; it hadlasted nearly a century by outside reckoning - that had estab­lished his reputation both within Sept Bantrabal and the hier­archy of 'glantine Seers beyond. His exploits, and the value ofthe stories and histories he had returned with, had been largelyresponsible for his elevation to the post of Chief Seer-in-waitingin his Sept, and for the offer of marriage to the daughter of theChief Seer of Sept Tonderon, the most senior of the twelve Septs.

 'This takes us back how many years, in real?'

 Fassin thought. 'About three hundred . . . Two hundred and eighty-seven, if I recall correctly.'

 Slovius nodded. 'There was much of that delve released duringits course?'

 'Almost nothing, sir. The Raucous Rascals insisted. They areone of the more . . . unameliorated adolescent pods. I was allowed to report that I was alive once per year.'

 'The delve before that?'

 Fassin sighed and tapped the fingers of one hand on the fusedglass at the side of the pool. What on old Earth could this be about? And could Slovius not simply look up the Sept recordsfor such information? There was a big cantilevered arm thingstowed against the wall of the pool chamber with a screenpad on the end. Fassin had seen this device lowered into place infront of Slovius for him to peer at and prod the keys with hisfinger stumps. It was, patently, not a very rapid or efficientmethod of interrogating the house library, but it would answerall these questions. Or the old fellow could just ask. There wereservants for this sort of thing.

 Fassin cleared his throat. 'Most of that was taken up withinstructing Paggs Yurnvic, of Sept Reheo, on his first delve. Wepaid court to traav Hambrier, in one-to-one time with theDwellers to allow for Yurnvic's inexperience. The delve lastedbarely three months, body-time. Textbook introductory, sir.''You found no time to pursue any studies of your own?''Little, sir.' 'But some, yes?'

 'I was able to attend part of a symposium on deep poetics,with the university pod Marcal. To detail the other attendees Iwould have to inquire within the Sept records, sir.''What more? Of the symposium, I mean. Its subject?''If I recall, a comparison of Dweller hunting techniques withthe actions of Machine War Inquisitories.' Fassin stroked hischin. 'The examples were Ulubis-system local, some regarding 'glantine.'

 Slovius nodded. He glanced at his nephew. 'Do you know what an emissarial projection is, Fassin?'

 Fassin looked up at the segment of gas-giant visible throughthe transparent roof panel. The night terminator was just startingto appear to one side, a line of increasing darkness creepingacross the distant cloudscape. He looked back down at Slovius. 'I may have heard the term, sir. I would not care to offer a defi­nition.'

 'It's when they send a tuned suite of queries and responsesto a physically remote location, by light beam. To play the partof an emissary.'

 '"They", sir?'

 'Engineers, the Administrata. Perhaps the Omnocracy.'Fassin sat back. 'Indeed?'

 'Indeed. If we are to believe what we are told, the object theysend is something like a library, transmitted by signal laser.Suitably housed and emplaced within enabled equipment ofsufficient capacity and complexity, this . . . entity, though it is simply a many-branched array of statements, questions andanswers, with a set of rules governing the order in which theyare expressed, is able to carry out what seems very like an intel­ligent conversation. It is as close as one is allowed to come toan artificial intelligence, post-War.''How singular.'

 Slovius wobbled in his pool. 'They are assuredly surpassingrare,' he agreed. 'One is being sent here.'

 Fassin blinked a few times. 'Sent here?'

 'To Sept Bantrabal. To this house. To us.'

 'To us.'

 'From the Administrata.'

 'The Administrata.' Fassin became aware that he wassounding simple-minded.

 'Via the EngineershipEst-taun Zhiffir.'

 'My,' Fassin said. 'We are . . . privileged.'

 'Not we, Fassin; you. The projection is being sent to talk toyou.'

 Fassin smiled weakly. 'To me? I see. When will—?'

 'It is currently being transmitted. It ought to be ready by lateevening. You may wish to clear your schedule for this. Did youhave much arranged?'

 'Ah... a supper with Jaal. I'm sure—'

 'I would make it an early supper, and don't tarry.'

 'Well, yes. Of course,' Fassin said. 'Do you have any idea,sir, what I might have done to deserve such an honour?'

 Slovius was silent for a moment, then said, 'None whatso­ever.'

 Guime replaced an intercom set on its hook and left his place by the agate wall to kneel and whisper to Slovius, who nodded,then looked at Fassin. 'Major-Domo Verpych would like to talkto you, nephew.'

 'Verpych?' Fassin said, with a gulp. The household's major-domo, Sept Bantrabal's most senior servant, was supposed torest dormant until the whole sept moved to its winter lodgings,over eighty days from now. It was unheard of for him to beroused out of sequence. 'I thought he was asleep!'

 'Well, he's been woken up.'

 *

 The ship had been dead for millennia. Nobody seemed to be sure quite how many, though the most plausible estimates putit at about six or seven. It was just one more foundered vesselfrom one or other of the great fleets which had contended the War of the New Quick (or perhaps the slightly later MachineWar, or possibly the subsequent Scatter Wars, or maybe oneof the brief, bitter, confused and untidy engagements implicitin the Strew), another forgotten, discarded piece from thegreat game of galactic power-mongering, civilisational compe­tition, pan-species manoeuvring and general grand-scale meta-politicking.

 The hulk had lain undiscovered on the surface of 'glantine for at least a thousand years because although 'glantine was a minorplanet by human standards - slightly smaller than Mars - it wasby the same measure sparsely populated, with fewer than a billioninhabitants, most of those concentrated in the tropics, and thearea where the wreck had fallen - the North Waste Land - wasa rarely visited and extensive tract of nothing much. That it hadtaken a long time for the local surveillance systems to return toanything like the sort of complexity or sophistication they'dexhibited before the commencement of hostilities also helped theruins avoid detection. Lastly, for all the vessel's hulking size, some portion of its auto-camouflage systems had survived thecraft's partial destruction, the deaths of all the mortals aboard and its impact on the planet-moon's surface, and so had kept itdisguised for all that time, seemingly just another fold of barren, rocky ejecta from the impact crater left by a smaller but much faster-travelling derelict which had crashed and vaporised in adeep crater ten kilometres away right at the start of the NewQuick dispute.

 The ship's ruins had only been discovered because somebodyin a flier had crashed, fatally, into one of its great curving ribs(perfectly holo-disguised at the time as sheer and shininglyinviting clear sky). Only then had the wreck been investigated, plundered for what little of its systems still worked (but whichwere not, under the new regime, proscribed. Which basicallydid not leave much.) and finally - the lifting of its hull andmajor substructures being prohibitively expensive to contem­plate, its cutting-up and carting away difficult, also not cheapand possibly dangerous, and its complete destruction only possible with the sort of serious gigatonnage weaponry peopletended to object strongly to when used in peacetime in theatmospheres of a small planet-moon, even in a wilderness area- it had been cordoned off and a series of airborne loiter-drones posted on indefinite guard above, just in case.

 'No, this could be good, this could be positive,' Saluus Kehartold them, and swung the little flier low across the high deserttowards the broken lands where the tattered-looking ribs of thegreat downed ship lay like folded shadow against the slowlydarkening purple sky. Beyond the ruins, a vast, shimmeringblue-green curtain of light flickered into existence, silentlywaving and rippling across the sky, then faded away again.

 'Yeah, you would fucking say that,' Taince said, fiddling withthe controls of the comms unit. Static chopped and surfed from the speakers.

 'Should we be this close to the ground?' Ilen asked, foreheadagainst the canopy, looking down. She glanced at the youngman sharing the back seat of the little aircraft with her. 'Seriously,Fass, should we?'

 But Fassin was already saying, 'The idea that his relentlesspositivism could ever produce feelings of negativity in others isa concept Sal's still struggling with. Sorry, Len. What?'

 'I was just saying—'

 'Yeah,' Taince muttered, 'get that goddam dirt-pinger on.'

 'All I mean,' Saluus said, waving one hand around and takingthe craft still lower, even closer to the sable blur of ground.Taince made a tutting sound and reached over to tap a screenbutton; there was a pinging noise and the craft rose a few metres and began tracking the ground more smoothly. Sal glared at her but didn't turn the ground-avoidance device off as he continued,'Is that we're still okay, we haven't been blasted yet, and nowwe have an opportunity to explore something we wouldn't beallowed to get anywhere near normally. Right place, right time,perfect opportunity. What's not to be positive about there?'

 'You mean,' Fassin drawled, glancing skyward, 'aside from the unfortunate fact that some over-enthusiastic and doubtlessdeeply misunderstood Beyonders appear to be trying to turnus all into radioactive dust?'

 Nobody seemed to be listening. Fassin made a show of stiflinga yawn - nobody noticed that, either - and leaned back againstthe leather seat, stretching his left arm across the top of thecouch in the general direction of Ilen Deste (still with her headagainst the canopy, staring as though hypnotised at the near-featureless sands speeding by beneath). He tried to look at leastunconcerned and preferably bored. In fact, of course, he feltcompletely terrified, and more than a little helpless.

 Sal and Taince were the dynamic couple in this group: Saluusthe pilot, the dashing, handsome, headstrong but undeniablygifted (and, Fassin thought, just plain lucky) heir to a vastcommercial empire, the unabashed son of a fabulously rich,buccaneering father. Greedboy, Fassin had christened Sal intheir first year at college, a term that their mutual friends hadonly used behind the youth's back until he got wind of it andadopted it enthusiastically as his personally approved tag. AndTaince, co-pilot, navigator and comms supremo, as ever theknowing, abrasive commentator of the group (Fassin sawhimself as the knowing,sarcastic commentator). Officer-in-Training Taince Yarabokin as she was supposed to be knownnow. Taince, the Milgirl - another of Fassin's coinings - hadtop-percentiled her college classes but had already beenhalfway to being an officer in the Navarchy Military throughReservist credits gleaned after hours, at weekends and on vaca­tions, even before she'd taken a short degree and gone toMilitary Academy for her final year; fast-tracked from pre-induction, bumped from years One to Two midway throughterm and rumoured, even at such an almost unprecedentedlyearly stage, to be in contention for a chance later to join theSummed Fleet, the directly Culmina-controlled overarchingultra-power of the whole galaxy. In other words as seemingly surely destined for martial eminence as Sal was scheduled forcommercial prodigiousness.

 They'd both been out-system, too, making the journey to theUlubis-system portal at Sepekte's trailing Lagrange point forthe transition to Zenerre and the Complex, the network ofwormholes threading the galaxy like a throw of dark lacebeneath the tiny scattered lights of suns. Saluus's father hadtaken him on a Grand Tour on his long vacation last year,girdling the middle galaxy, visiting all the great accessible sites,encountering some of the more outré alien species, bringing back souvenirs. Taince had been to fewer but in some casesfurther places, courtesy of the Navarchy, its exercises anddistributed specialist teaching facilities. They were the only twoof their year to have travelled so widely, putting them in a little bubble of exoticism all by themselves.

 Fassin had often thought that if his young life was to betragically cut short before he'd even decided what he wantedto do with it (join the family firm and become a Seer? . . . Orsomething else?), it would very likely be because of these two,probably when they were each trying to outdo the other indaring or élan or sheer outrageous showing-off in front of theirlong-suffering friends. Sometimes he succeeded in persuadinghimself that he didn't particularly care if he did die anyway, thathe'd already seen enough of life and love and all the crassnessand stupidities of people and reality and would almost preferto die a sudden, young, savagely beautiful death, with his body and mind as yet unspoiled and fresh and everything - as older relations still insisted on telling him - before him.

 Though it would be a pity if Ilen - achingly beautiful, wanlypale, shamelessly blonde, effortlessly academically accom­plished, bizarrely un-self-assured and insecure Ilen - had toperish in the wreck too, Fassin thought. Especially before theyhad fulfilled what he kept telling her - and what, frustratingly,he even sincerely believed - was their destiny, and establishedbetween the two of them some sort of meaningful but intense physical relationship. At the moment, though - head craned outover the side of the flier, nuzzling the canopy - it looked likethe girl was thinking about throwing up.

 Fassin looked away and attempted to distract himself fromthoughts of imminent death and probably all too non-imminentsex by staring at the starry sweep emerging from the falsehorizon of Nasqueron's shadowy, departing bulk and thequickly darkening sky being revealed beyond. Another burst of aurora activity sent shimmering shawls of light across theheavens, briefly fading out the stars.

 Ilen was looking in the opposite direction. 'What's thatsmoke?' she cried, pointing beyond the half-collapsed nose ofthe fallen ship, where a tall, ragged strand of dark grey smokeleaned away from the breeze.

 Taince glanced up and muttered something, then busied herself with the comms unit controls. The rest looked. Salnodded. 'Probably the guard drone that got zapped earlier,' he said, though sounding uncertain.

 The speakers crackled and a calm female voice said, '—liertwo-two-niner . . . —sition? —ave you . . . —seven-five-three. . . —outh of Prohibited Area Ei—          —peat you are now or wi-- --ortly be off-grid . . . —firm your . . .'

 Taince Yarabokin leaned closer to the comms unit. 'This is flier two-two-nine, we have no place safe to put down undercover as advised so we are making maximum speed at minimumaltitude towards—'

 Saluus Kehar reached over with one coppery-gold hand andclicked the comms unit off.

 'Fuckyou!' Taince said, slapping his hand away even as itwent back to the flier's control yoke.

 'Taince, really,' Sal said, shaking his head but keeping his gazeon the rapidly approaching ship ruins, 'you don't have totellthem.'

 'Cretin,' Taince breathed. She switched the comms back on.'Yes, see previous comment,' Fassin said, shaking his head.'Will you leave thatalone?' Sal said, trying and failing to turnthe comms unit off again as Taince searched for a workingchannel and kept slapping his hand away. (Fassin was about to say something to the effect that she was better practised at thisform of behaviour than he'd ever have assumed. Then thoughtthe better of it.) 'Look,' Sal said, 'I'm ordering you, Taince; leavethe damn thing off. Who does this flier belong to, anyway?'

 'Your dad?' Fassin suggested. Sal glanced back at him, reproachful. Fassin nodded forwards at the swiftly enlargingwreck of the ship. 'Eyes ahead.'

 Sal turned back.I'm ordering you, thought Fassin, with asneer. Saluus, really. Had he used that form of words becauseTaince was in the military and he thought she'd just obeyanything anybody called an order, even if it came from a civilian,or because he thought he could start throwing his dynasticweight around already? He was surprised that Taince hadn'tlaughed in Sal's face.

 Oh well, they weren't innocents any more, Fassin remindedhimself, and the more you learned about the world, the galaxyand the Age they were growing up within, the more you realisedit was all about hierarchy, about ranking and seniority andpecking order, from well, well below where they were all theway up to gloriously unseeable alien heights. Really they werelike lab mice growing up together, rough-and-tumbling in thecage, learning their position in the litter, testing their own and the others' abilities and weaknesses, working on their movesand strategies for later life, discovering how much leeway theymight have or be granted as adults, mapping out the space for their dreams.

 Taince snorted. 'Probably not even daddy's car, probably not even a company flier, more likely some complicated sale-and-leaseback deal and it's owned by an off-planet, tax-opaque semi­automatic front company.' She growled and slapped theunresponding comms unit.

 Sal shook his head. 'Such cynicism in the young,' he said,then looked down at the butterfly shape of the control yoke. 'Hey, this is vibrating! What—?'

 Taince nodded at the ship ruins, now towering over them.'Proximity warning, ace. You might want to slow down, or peeland scrub.'

 'How can you talk about exfoliating at a time like this?' Salsaid, grinning. Taince punched his thigh. 'Ow! That's assault,'he said, pretending outrage. ‘I may sue.' She punched him again.He laughed, throttled back and air-braked, pushing them allforward against their restraints, until the little flier was downto about ten metres per second.

 They passed into the shadow of the giant ship.

 •

 'Fassin Taak,' Major-Domo Verpych said, 'what trouble haveyou landed us in now?' They were hurrying down a wide,windowless passageway under the centre of the house. BeforeFassin could reply, Verpych nodded at a side corridor and strodetowards it. 'This way.'

 Fassin lengthened his stride to keep up. 'I am as ignorant asyou are, major-domo.'

 'Clearly your gift for understatement has not deserted you.'

 Fassin absorbed this and thought the better of replying. He assumed what he hoped looked like a tolerant smile, though when he glanced at Verpych the major-domo wasn't looking.Verpych was a small, thin but powerful-looking man with palecreamy skin, ubiquitously stubbled, giving his head the lookof having been chiselled out of sandstone. He had a square,ever-clenched jaw and a perpetual frown. His head was shavedsave for a single long ponytail that extended to his waist. He gripped the long obsidian staff which was his principal badgeof office as though it was a dark snake he was trying to throttleone-handed. His uniform was the black of soot, like foldednight.

 As Chief Seer-in-waiting Fassin was, supposedly, in a posi­tion of complete authority over Verpych. However, somehowthe Sept's most senior servant still managed to make him feellike a child who'd only just escaped being discovered doingsomething extremely improper. Fassin could envisage thechangeover when he finally assumed the post of Chief Seer beingawkward for both of them.

 Verpych turned on his heel and walked straight at a largeabstract mural hanging on one wall. He waved his staff at thepainting as though pointing out some detail of the brushwork, and the whole painting disappeared into a slot in the floor.Verpych stepped up into a dimly lit corridor beyond. He didn'tbother to look back as Fassin followed him, just said, 'Shortcut.'

 Fassin glanced back as the painting rose out of the slot in thefloor, cutting off most of the light in the corridor, which lookedbare and unfinished after the passageway that they'd just left.He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in a utilitycorridor; probably when he'd been a child, exploring with hisfriends.

 They stopped at a lift, its door open, a chime sounding. Aboy servant stood in the elevator car, holding a tray full of dirty glasses with one hand and using the other to jab at the car controls, a puzzled, frustrated expression on his face.

 'Get out, you idiot,' Verpych told the boy as he strode to thelift. 'It's being held for me.'

 The servant's eyes widened. He made spluttering noises and almost dropped the tray, hurrying to quit the elevator. Verpychtapped a button on the lift controls with the end of the staff,the doors closed and the lift - a plain metal box with a scuffedfloor - descended.

 'Have you recovered from your unscheduled awakening,major-domo?' Fassin asked.

 'Entirely,' Verpych said crisply. 'Now then, Seer Taak.Assuming my comedy troupe of technicians haven't electro­cuted themselves or stared into any light cables to check that they're working and blinded themselves, we should be readyfor you to hold your conversation with whatever it is they are beaming towards us about an hour before midnight. Is nine­teen o'clock convenient for you?'

 Fassin thought. 'Actually, the lady Jaal Tonderon and I might

 'The answer you are searching for is "Yes," Seer Taak,'Verpych said.

 Fassin frowned down at the older man. 'Then in that casewhy did you—?'

 'I was being polite.'

 'Ah. Of course. That cannot come easily.'

 'Quite the contrary. It is deference that one sometimes strug­gles with.'

 'Your efforts are appreciated, I'm sure.'

 'Why, I live for nothing else, young master.' Verpych smiledthinly.

 Fassin held the major-domo's gaze. 'Verpych, could I be insome sort of trouble?'

 The servant looked away. 'I have no idea, sir.' The lift beganto slow. 'This emissarial projection is unprecedented in thehistory of Sept Bantrabal. I have talked to some other major-domos and nobody can recall such a thing. We had all thought such phenomena restricted to the Hierchon and his chums inthe sys-cap. I've sent a message to a contact I have in the palace asking for any guidance or tips they might have. There has beenno reply so far.'

 The lift doors opened and they stepped out; another corridor,quite warm, cut from naked rock, curving. The major-domo looked at Fassin with what might have been concern, evensympathy. 'An unprecedented event might be of a benign nature, Seer Taak.'

 Fassin hoped that he looked as sceptical as he felt. 'So whatdo I have to do?'

 'Present yourself to the Audience Chamber, top floor, at nine­teen. Preferably a little before.' They came to a Y-junction anda wider corridor, where red-uniformed technicians weretrundling a pallet loaded with complicated-looking equipmenttowards a set of open double doors ahead.

 'I'd like Olmey to be there,' Fassin said. Tchayan Olmey hadbeen Fassin's mentor and tutor in his youth, and - had she not become a pure academic in the household library, researchingand teaching to the exclusion of undertaking any delves of herown - might have been the next familias and Chief Seer.

 'That will not be possible,' Verpych said, ushering Fassinthrough the double doors into the room beyond, which washot, crowded with more red-uniformed technicians and dished, like a small theatre. Dozens of opened cabinets displayed intri­cate machinery, cables hung from the tall ceiling, snaked acrossthe floor and disappeared into ducts in the walls. The placesmelled of oil, singed plastic and sweat. Verpych stood at thetop and rear of the room, watching the activity, shaking his headas two techs collided, spilling cable.

 'Why not?' Fassin asked. 'Olmey's here. And I rather wantedUncle Slovius to be able to look in as well.'

 'That won't be possible either,' Verpych told Fassin. 'You andyou alone have to talk to this thing.''I have no choice in this?' Fassin asked.'Correct,' the major-domo said. 'None.' He returned hisattention to the milling techs. One of the senior ones hadapproached to within a couple of metres, waiting for an oppor­ tunity to speak.

 'But why not?' Fassin repeated, aware as soon as he said it that he was sounding like a small child.

 Verpych shook his head. 'I don't know. To the best of myknowledge there is no technical reason. Perhaps whatever is to be discussed is too sensitive for other ears.' He looked atthe red-uniformed man waiting nearby. 'Master TechnicianImming,' he said brightly. 'Working on the principle that what­ever can go wrong will, I have been weighing up the possi­bilities that our house automatics have rusted into a singleunusable mass, crumbled to a fine powder or unexpectedly declared themselves sentient, necessitating the destruction by fusion warheads of our entire house, Sept and possibly planet.Which is it to be?'

 'Sir, we have encountered several problems,' the technician said slowly, his gaze flicking from Fassin to Verpych.

 'I do so hope the next word is "But" or "However",' Verpychsaid. He glanced at Fassin. 'A "Happily" would be too muchto ask for, of course.'

 The technician continued. 'Thanks to our considerableefforts, sir, we believe we have the situation in hand. I wouldhope that we ought to be ready by the appointed hour.'

 'We have the capacity to absorb all that is being transmitted?'

 'Just, sir.' Master Technician Imming gestured to the equip­ment on the pallet being manoeuvred through the double doors.'We are using some spare capacity from the utility systems.'

 'Is there any indication of the nature of the subject containedwithin the signal?'

 'No, sir. It will remain in code until activated.'

 'Could we find out?'

 Imming looked pained. 'Not really, sir.'

 'Could we not try?'

 'That would be nearly impossible, in the time frame, major-domo. And illegal. Possibly dangerous.'

 'Seer Taak here is wondering what he is to be faced with. Youcan give him no clues?'

 Master Technician Imming made a small bow to Fassin. 'I'mafraid not, sir. Wish it were otherwise.'

 Verpych turned to Fassin. 'We seem unable to help you, SeerTaak. I am so sorry.'

 *

 'Whose was this, anyway?' Ilen asked, keeping her voice down.She looked up into the shadows high above. 'Who did it belongto?'

 They had swung in through the single great jagged fissure inthe ship's left flank, flying up between two massively curvedrib-struts, the sky above framed by the twisted, buckled ribs,the sections of the hull they had supported turned to dissoci­ated molecules and atoms seven millennia earlier. Sal had let theflier slip four hundred metres or so into the shadows under theintact forward portion of the hull - climbing gently all the time,following the mangled, buckled floors and collapsed bulkheadsforming the terrain beneath them - until they could see onlythe slimmest sliver of violet, star-spattered sky outside and felt they ought to be safe from whatever spaceborne craft - presum­ably a Beyonder - had been attacking anything that moved or had recently been moving on the surface.

 Sal had set the little craft down. The flier came to rest in aslight hollow on a relatively level patch of blackened, minutelyrippled material, behind what might have been the remains ofa crumpled bulkhead. The way ahead into the rest of the ship's forward section was blocked fifty metres further in by thehanging, frozen-looking tatters of some twisted, iridescent mat­erial. Saluus had thought aloud about trying to nudge the flier through this suspended debris, but had been dissuaded.

 The flier's comms reception - even the distorted, jammed signal that they'd experienced outside - had just faded away almost as soon as they'd entered the wreck. For somethingsupposed to pull in a signal through tens of klicks of solid rock,this was remarkable. The air inside the vast cave of the ruinedcraft felt cold and smelled of nothing. Knowing they were inside,the fact that their voices did not echo in the huge space was oddly disturbing, giving the sound a strange, hollow quality. The interior and running lights of the flier put them in a tinypool of luminescence, emphasising their insignificance within the ancient fallen ship.

 'Some dispute about exactly whose it might be,' Saluus said,also quietly, and also gazing upwards at the smoothly ribbedceiling of the vessel, arching a third of a kilometre above themand still just visible in the gloaming. 'Marked down as a Sceuriwreck - they sent their War Graves people to clean it out - butif it was then it must have been requisitioned or captured. And they reckon it had a highly mixed crew, though mostly swim­mers: waterworlders. Could be Oerileithe originally, oddlyenough. Has the design of a dweller-with-a-small-d ship. But some sort of war craft, certainly.'

 Taince snorted. Sal looked at her. 'Yes?'

 'What it isn't,' she said, 'is a needle ship.'

 'Did I say it was?' Sal asked.

 'Rather a fat needle, if it was,' Fassin said, swivelling on hisheel to follow the downward curve of the wrecked ship's inte­rior towards its crumpled, partially buried nose, over a kilo­metre away in the darkness.

 'It'snot a needle ship,' Sal protested. 'I didn'tcall it a needleship.'

 'See?' Taince said. 'Now you've confused people.''Anyway,' Sal said, ignoring this, 'there's a rumour they pulleda couple of Voehn bodies out of here, and that really does make it more interesting.'

 'Voehn?' Taince burst out laughing.'Spiner stiffs?' Her voicedripped scorn. She was even smiling, which Fassin knew wasn'tsomething you saw every day. Pity, because her smooth, slightlysquare face - under a regulation military bald - looked kind ofimpishly attractive when she smiled. Come to think of it, thatwas probably why she didn't do it often. Actually Fassinthought Taince looked pretty good anyway, in her off-dutyfatigues. (The rest of them just wore standard hiking\outdoorsygear, though naturally Sal's was subtly but noticeably superiorand doubtless wildly more expensive.) Tain's fatigues kind ofbagged out in odd locations but came back in at the right placesto leave no doubt that she was definitely a milgirl, not a milboy.

 They'd turned shadow-matt and dark in the surrounding gloom,too. Apparently even the NavMil's off-duty fatigues for traineescame with active camo.

 She was shaking her head, as though she couldn't believe whatshe was hearing. Even Fassin, who'd pretty much shucked off the whole boy thing of obsessive interest in all things military and alien not long after the onset of puberty, knew about theVoehn. They were usually described in the media as livinglegends or near-mythical warriors, which kind of blanded whatthey really were; the crack troops and personal guards of thenew galactic masters.

 The Voehn were the calmly relentless, highly intelligent,omni-competent, near-indestructible, all-environments-capable,undefeateduber- soldiersof the last nine or so millennia. Theywere the martial pin-ups of the age, the speckless species peakof military perfection, but they were rare, few and far between.Where the new masters, the Culmina, were, the Voehn weretoo, but not in all that many other places, and - as far as anybodyknew, Fassin had been given to understand - in all thosemillennia not one had even entered the Ulubis system to visitSepekte, the principal planet, let alone come near Nasqueron,or deigned to have anything to do with its little planet-moon'glantine, even in death.

 There was, of course, a further resonance for humans in theVoehn name and reputation, whether one was aHuman orrHuman. It had been the actions of a single Voehn ship nearlyeight thousand years earlier which had made the distinction andthe two prefixes necessary in the first place.

 'Voehn,' Sal said defiantly to Taince. 'Voehn remains. That'sthe rumour.'

 Taince narrowed her eyes and drew herself up in her NavMil-issue fatigues. 'Not one I've heard.'

 'Yes,' Sal said, 'well, my contacts are a few levels above theboot locker.'

 Fassin gulped. ‘I thought they all got smeared in this thing,anyway,' he said quickly, before Taince could reply. 'Just paste,gas and stuff.'

 'They were,' Taince said through her teeth, looking at Sal,not him.

 'Indeed they were,' Sal agreed. 'But Voehn are real toughies,aren't they, Tain?'

 'Shit, yeah,' Taince said quietly, levelly. 'Real fuckingtoughies.'

 'Takes a lot to kill one, takes even more to paste it,' Sal said, seemingly oblivious to Taince's signals.

 'Notoriously resistant to fate and the enemy's variousunpleasantnesses,' Taince said coldly. Fassin had the feeling shewas quoting. The gossip was that she and Sal were some sortof couple, or at least fucked now and again. But Fassin thought that, given the look in her eyes right now, that particular sideof their relationship, if it had ever existed, might be in somedanger of being pasted itself. He looked for Ilen, to catch herexpression.

 She wasn't where she'd been, on the far side of the flier. He looked around some more. She wasn't anywhere he could see.'Ilen?' he said. He glanced at the other two. 'Where's Ilen?'Sal tapped his ear stud. 'Ilen?' he said. 'Hey, Len?'Fassin peered into the shadows. He had night vision as good as most people, but with barely any starlight and only the softconserve-level lights of the flier resting in its declivity, therewasn't much to work with. Infrared showed next to nothingtoo, not even fading footstep-traces on whatever this strangematerial was.

 'Ilen?' Sal said again. He looked at Taince, who was also scan­ning the area. 'I can't see shit and my phone's out,' he told her.'You able to see any better than us?'

 Taince shook her head. 'Get those eyes in fourth year.'Shit, thought Fassin. He wondered if anybody had a torch. Probably not. Few people did these days. He checked his ownearphone, but it was dead too; not even local reception.Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. When did the archetype of this story­line date from? Four kids getting the use of dad's chariot andlosing a wheel just before nightfall near the old desertedNeanderthal cave? Something like that. Just wander off into the dark and get killed horribly, one by one.

 'I'll turn up the flier lights,' Sal said, reaching for the inte­rior. 'If ness, we can lift off and—'

 'ILEN!' Taince shouted at the top of her lungs. Fassinjumped. He hoped the others hadn't noticed.

 '... Over here.' lien's voice came, very distantly, from further inside the wreck.

 'Wandering off!' Sal shouted in the general direction Ilen's voice had come from. 'Not good idea! In fact, very bad idea!Suggest return immediately!'

 'Peeing in front of peers problem,' the reply drifted back.'Bashful bladder syndrome. Relieved, returning. Speak normalnow, or Len get Tain poke Sal eye out.'

 Taince grinned. Fassin had to turn away. Sometimes, through all the almost wilfully unjustified reticence and uncertainty, andoften at moments like this when you might least expect it, Ilensurprised him by doing or saying something like this. She madehis insides hurt.Oh, don't let me start to fall in love with her,he thought.That would just be too much to bear.

 Sal laughed. A vaguely Hen-shaped blob appeared in IR sensefifty metres away, head first over a fold in the rippled floor likea shallow hill. 'There. She's fine,' Sal announced, as though he'drescued her personally.

 Ilen rejoined them, smiling and blinking in the soft lights ofthe flier, her white-gold hair shining. She nodded. 'Evening,' she said, and grinned at them.

 'Welcome back,' Sal told her, and hauled a pack out of oneof the flier's storage lockers. He swung the bag onto his back.

 Taince glared at the pack, then at Sal's face. 'What the fuckare you doing?'

 Sal looked innocent. 'Going to take a look round. You can join me if—'

 'Like fuck you are.'

 'Tain, child,' he laughed. 'I don't need your permission.'

 'I'm not a fucking child and yes, you fucking do.'

 'And will you please stop swearingquite so much? There'sreally no need to flaunt your newly acquired gruff militarymanner quite so conspicuously.'

 'We stay here,' she told him, using the cold voice again. 'Closeto the flier. We don't go wandering off into aprohibited alienshipwreck in the middle of the night with an enemy craftcruising overhead.'

 'Why not?' Sal protested. 'For one thing it's probably on theother side of the planet by now or maybe even destroyed. Andanyway, if this Beyonder ship, or battlesat, or drone, or what­ever it is can see inside here, which I seriously doubt, it's goingto target the flier, not a few human warm-bods, so we're saferaway from the thing.'

 'You stay with the craft, always,' Taince said, her jaw set.

 'For how long?' Sal asked. 'How long do these nuisance raids,these attacklets, usually last?' Taince just glared at him. 'Half a day, average,' Sal told her. 'Overnight, probably, in this case.Meantime we're somewhere it's not normally possible to be,through no fault of our own, with time to kill. . . why the hellnot take a look round?'

 'Because it's Prohibited,' Taince said. 'That's why.'Fassin and Ilen exchanged looks, concerned but still amused.'Taince!' Sal said, waving his arms. 'Life is risk. That's busi­ness. Come on!'

 'You stay with the craft,' Taince repeated grimly.'Will you step out of your programming just for a second?'Sal asked her, sounding genuinely annoyed and looking at the other two for support. 'Can any of us think of one good reason why this placeis prohibited, apart from standard authoritarian, bureaucratic, overreacting, territory-marking militaristic bull­shit?'

 'Maybe they know stuff we don't,' Taince said.

 'Oh, comeon!’ Sal protested. 'They always claim that!'

 'Listen,' Taince said levelly. 'Your point is taken regardingthe likelihood of the flier's systems being targeted by hostiles,and therefore I volunteer to walk out, every hour on the hour,to near the gap in the hull where a phone might work once thejamming sub-sats have been neutralised, to check for the all-clear.'

 'Fine,' Sal said, digging into another of the flier's lockers.                                                                                                                  'You do that. I'm seizing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a look round an intrinsically fascinating alien artefact. Ifyou hear me screaming horribly it'll just be me falling into theclaws, suckers or...beaks of some unspeakable space-alien monster every single wreck-clearing team missed and which haschosen just this evening out of the last seven millennia to wake up and feel hungry.'

 Taince took a deep breath, stepped back from the flier andsaid, 'Okay, seems this must qualify as an emergency.' She dug into her black fatigues and when her hand reappeared it held asmall dark grey device.

 Sal stared at her, incredulous. 'What the hell isthat? A gun?You're not planning toshoot me, are you, Taince?'

 She shook her head and thumbed something on the side ofthe device. There was a pause, then Taince frowned and looked closely at the thing in her hand. 'Actually,' she said, 'at themoment I'm not even threatening to report you to the localGuard, not in real-time, anyway.' Sal relaxed a little, but didn'tpull whatever it was he'd been looking for out of the locker. Taince shook her head and looked up into the black spaces ofthe cavernous craft around them. She held the little grey deviceup to show the others. 'This baby,' she said, 'should be able topunch me through to a kid's disposable on the far side of the planet, but it's still searching for cosmic background.' Shesounded more puzzled than embarrassed or angry, Fassinthought. (In similar circumstances, he'd have been mortified,and it would have shown.) Taince nodded, still staring upwards. 'Impressive.' She put the hand-held away again.

 Sal cleared his throat. 'Taince,do you have a gun? It's justthat I'm about to pull one out of this locker and you lookedkind of scary and trigger-happy just there.'

 'Yes, I do have a gun,' she told him. 'Promise I won't shoot you.' She gave a smile that wasn't really. 'And if you are intenton traipsing into the bowels of this thing, I'm not going to tryand stop you. You're a big boy now. Your responsibility.'

 'Finally,' Sal said with satisfaction, pulling a plain but busi­nesslike-looking CR pistol out of the locker and attaching it to his belt. 'There's food and water and bedrolls and extra clothesand stuff in the rear lockers,' he told them, slapping a coupleof low-light illuminator patches onto his jacket shoulders. 'I'llbe back about dawn.' He multiple-tapped his ear stud, thensmiled. 'Yep, internal clock still working.' He glanced at each of them in turn. 'Hey, there's probably nothing to see; I couldbe back in an hour for all I know.' They all just looked at him.'Nobody else coming along, huh?' he asked. Ilen and Fassinglanced at each other. Taince was watching Sal, who said, 'Well,don't wait up,' and turned to go.

 'You're very well prepared for this,' Taince said quietly.

 Sal hesitated, then turned towards her, open-mouthed. Helooked at Fassin and Ilen, then stared with wide eyes at Taince.He gestured towards the distant hull gap, upwards as thoughto space, then shook his head. 'Taince, Taince,' he breathed. Hepushed one hand through his thick black hair. 'Just how para­noid and suspicious do they insist you be in the military?'

 'Your father's company makes our battlecraft, Saluus,' she told him. 'Wariness is a survival strategy.'

 'Oh, cheap shot, Taince.' Sal looked mildly insulted. 'But I mean, really. Seriously. Come on.' He slapped his backpack,exasperated. 'Hell's teeth, woman, if Ihadn't made sure the flier was equipped with emergency gear you'd have chewed my ear for making a deep-desert flight without the necessary supplies!' Taince stood looking at him, near-expressionless, for a fewmoments longer. 'Mind how you go, Sal.'

 He nodded, relaxing. 'You too,' he said. 'See you all soon.'He looked round them all one more time, grinning. 'NothingI wouldn't do, and all that.' He waved his hand and trampedoff.

 'Hold on,' Ilen said. Sal turned back. Ilen pulled her littleday-pack out of the flier. 'I'll come with you, Sal.'

 Fassin stared, horrified. 'What?' he said, in a small, shocked,little boy's voice. Nobody seemed to hear. For once he was glad.Taince said nothing.

 Sal smiled. 'You sure?' he asked the girl.'If you don't mind,' Ilen said.'Fine by me,' Sal said quietly.'Sure you don't mind?''Of course I don't mind.'

 'Well, you're not supposed to go off exploring in dubioussituations individually, are you?' Ilen said. 'Isn't that right?' Shelooked at Taince, who nodded. 'You take care.' Ilen kissedFassin's cheek, winked at Taince and strode up the shallow slopeto Sal. They waved and walked off. Fassin watched their foot­step-traces in IR, each faint patch of brightness on the groundbehind them fading after less than a second.

 'Never understand that girl,' Taince said, sounding uncon­cerned. She and Fassin looked at each other. 'Suggest you takea snooze now,' Taince told him, nodding at the flier. She pickedher nose and inspected her finger. 'I'll wake you before I headout to the hull gap to check for signal.'

 *

 A fragrance bud popped somewhere in the darkened room, and- after a few moments - he smelled Orchidia Noctisia, aMadebloom scent he would always associate with the AutumnHouse. There was little air movement in the quiet chamber sothe bud must have been floating nearby. He lifted his head gentlyand saw a tiny shape like a slim, translucent flower fallingchiffon-soft through the air between the bed and the trolleywhich had brought their supper. He lowered his head to Jaal'sshoulder again.

 'Mmm?' she said drowsily.

 'Meet any friends in town?' Fassin asked, winding a long golden coil of Jaal Tonderon's hair around one finger, thenbringing his nose forward to nuzzle the nape of her brown-red neck, breathing in the smell of her. She shifted against him,moving her hips in a sort of stirring motion. He had slippedout of her some time ago, but it was still a good feeling.

 'Ree and Grey and Sa,' she said, her voice starting out a littlesleepy. 'Shopping was accomplished. Then we met up with Djenand Sohn. And Dayd, Dayd Eslaus. Oh, and Yoaz. Youremember Yoaz Irmin, don't you?'

 He nipped her neck and was rewarded with a flinch and ayelp. 'That was a long time ago,' he told her.

 She reached one hand behind her and stroked his exposedflank, then patted his behind. 'I'm sure the memory is still vividfor her, dear.'

 'Ha!' he said. 'So am I.' This drew a slap. Then they settledin against each other once more; she did that thing with her hips again and he wondered if there would be time for more sex before he had to go.

 She turned to face him. Jaal Tonderon's face was round andwide and only just very beautiful. For two thousand years or so,rHuman faces had looked pretty much how the owners wanted them to look, displaying either satisfaction with or indifference to whatever womb-grown comeliness they had been born with,or the particular, amended look their owners had subsequently specified. The only ugly people were those making a statement.

 In an age when everyone could be beautiful, and\or look likefamous historical figures (there were now laws about looking too much like famous contemporary figures), the truly inter­esting faces and bodies were those which sailed as close to thewind of being plain or even unattractive as possible, and yetjust got away with it. People talked about faces that lookedgood in the flesh but not in images, or good in lifelike paint­ings but not on a screen, or faces that looked unattractive inrepose but quite stunning when animated, or merely plain untilthe person smiled.

 Jaal had been born with a face that looked - she said herself- committee design: unharmonious, stuck together, nothingquite matching. Yet to almost everybody who had ever met her,she seemed outrageously attractive, thanks to some alchemy ofphysiognomy, personality and expression. Fassin's privateestimation was that Jaal's was a face still waiting to be growninto, and that she would be more beautiful when she was middle-aged than she was now. It was one reason he had asked her tomarry him.

 They could look forward, Fassin had every reason to believe,to a long life together, and just as it had been sensible to marry within his profession — and to make a match that would meetwith the enthusiastic approval of their respective Septs, strength­ening the bonds between two of the most important Seer houses- so it had been only prudent to take that likely longevity intoaccount.

 Of course, as Slow Seers Fassin and Jaal's shared future wouldbe absolutely if not relatively longer than that of most of theircontemporaries, and radically different; in the slow-time of a longdelve, Seers aged very slowly indeed, and Uncle Slovius's four­teen centuries, while short of the record and not yet (thankfully,naturally) his limit, should not be difficult to surpass. Seer spousesand loved ones had to schedule their slow-time and normal lifecarefully so as not to get too out of synch with each other, lest the protagonists lose touch emotionally. The life of TchayanOlmey, Fassin's old mentor and tutor, had hinged on just such an unforeseen discontinuity, leaving her stranded from an old love.'Anything wrong?' Jaal asked him.

 'Just this, ah, interview thing.' He glanced at the antique clockacross the room.'Who's it with?'

 'Can't say,' he told her. He'd mentioned having an appoint­ment for an interview later when he'd first met Jaal off hersuborb shuttle at the house port in the valley below, but she'dbeen too busy telling him about the latest gossip from the capitaland the scandal regarding her Aunt Feem and the Sept Khustrialboy to question him any further on the matter. Her shower,their supper and then more urgent matters had taken prece­dence thereafter.

 'You can't say?' she said, frowning, turning further roundtowards him, lifting and repositioning one dark breast on hislight brown chest as she did so. There was something, hethought, not for the first time, about an aureola more pale thanits surroundings . . . 'Oh, Fass,' Jaal said, sounding annoyed,'it's not a girl, is it? Not aservant girl? Fucking forfend, notbefore we're married, surely?'

 She was smiling. He grinned back. 'Nuisance, but has to bedone. Sorry.'

 'You really can't say?' She shifted her head, and blonde hairspilled over his shoulder. It felt even better than it looked.

 'Really,' he said.

 Jaal was staring intently at his mouth. 'Really?' she asked.

 'Well.' He licked his teeth. ‘I can say it's not a girl.' She wasstill staring intently at his mouth. 'Look, Jaal, have I got somesort of foreign matter lodged in there?'

 She pushed her mouth slowly up towards his. 'Not,' she said,'yet.'

 'You are Fassin Taak, of the Seer Sept Bantrabal, 'glantine moon,Nasqueron gas-giant planet, Ulubis star and system?'

 'Yes, I am.'

 'You are physically present here and not any sort of projec­tion or other kind of representation?'

 'Correct.'

 'You are still an active Slow Seer, domiciled in the seasonalhouses of Sept Bantrabal and working from the satellite-moonThird Fury?'

 'Yes, yes and yes.'

 'Good. Fassin Taak, everything that will pass between youand this construct is in strictest confidence. You will respectthat confidence and communicate to others no more of whatwe shall talk about than is absolutely necessary to facilitate suchconduct as will be required of you in furtherance of whateveractions you will be asked to perform and whatever goals youwill be asked to pursue. Do you do understand that and agree?'

 Fassin thought about this. Just for an instant as the projec­tion had started talking it had suddenly occurred to him thatthe glowing orb looked a lot like a Plasmatic being (not thathe'd ever met one, but he'd seen images), and that moment of distraction had been sufficient for him to miss the full meaningof what had been said. 'Actually, no. Sorry, I'm not trying to be –'

  'To repeat . . .'

 Fassin was in the main audience chamber at the top of the Autumn House, a large circular space with views in every hori­zontal direction and a dramatic transparent roof, all blankedout. For now its contents consisted of a single seat for him anda stubby, metallic-looking cylinder supporting a globe ofglowing gas hovering above its centre. A fat cable ran from thesquat cylinder to a floor flap in the middle of the chamber.

 The gas sphere repeated what it had just said. It spoke moreslowly this time, though happily with no trace of irritation orcondescension. Its voice was flat, unaccented, and yet stillseemed to contain the hint of a personality, as though the voiceof a particular individual had been sampled and used as atemplate, from which most but not all expression had beenremoved.

 Fassin heard it out, then said, 'Okay, yes, I understand andagree.'

 'Good. This construct is an emissarial projection of theMercatorial Administrata, sub-Ministerial level, with superior-rank authority courtesy of the Ascendancy, Engineer division,Senior Engineer level, EshipEst-taun Zhiffir, portal-carrying.It is qualified to appear sentient while not in fact being so. Doyou understand this?'

 Fassin thought about this too and decided that he did, just. 'Yep,' he said, then wondered if the projection would under­stand colloquial affirmatives. Apparently it did.

 'Good. Seer Fassin Taak, you are hereby seconded to theShrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary rank—'

 'Hold on!' Fassin nearly jumped out of his seat. 'Thewhat?' 'The honorary rank of—''No, I mean I'mseconded to the what?''The Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary—''TheShrievalty?' Fassin said, trying to control his voice. 'TheOcula?''Correct.'

 The baroque, intentionally labyrinthine power structures ofthe latest, Culmina-inspired Age, incorporating the aspirationsof and enforced limitations on at least eight major subject speciesand whole vast subcategories of additional Faring races as wellas (by its own claim) 'contextualising' various lesser civilisations of widely varying scope and ambitions and, peripherally at least,influencing entire alien spectra of Others, held many organis­ations and institutions whose names the utterance of whichpeople - or at least people who knew of such things - tended to greet with a degree of respect shading into fear.

 The Shrievalty was probably the least extreme example; people might respect it - many would even find its purposerather boring - but few would fear it. It was the paramilitaryOrder\discipline\faculty of technicians and theorists in charge of what had once been called Information Technology, and soit was also, though less exclusively, concerned with the accept­ably restricted remnants of Artificial Intelligence technologiesstill extant in the post-War epoch.

 The Machine War had wiped the vast majority of AIs out ofexistence throughout the galaxy over seven thousand years ago,and the Culmina-inspired - and -enforced - peace which followedhad stabilised around a regime which both forbade research into AI tech and demanded the active help of all citizens in huntingdown and destroying what few scattered vestiges of AI mightstill exist. Organised on military lines with a bracing infrastruc­ture of religious dogma, the Shrievalty was charged with therunning, administration and maintenance of those IT systemswhich were anywhere near being sufficiently complex to be indanger of becoming sentient, either through accident or design,but which were considered too vital to the running of their variousdependent societies to be shut down and dismantled.

 Another Order, a rather more fear-inspiring one, the Lustralsof the Cessoria, had been formed to hunt down and destroyboth AIs themselves and anybody who attempted to create new ones or protect, shelter or otherwise aid existing examples. Butthat had not prevented the formation within the Shrievalty ofan Intelligence section - the Shrievalty Ocula - whose duties,methods and even philosophy significantly overlapped withthose of the Lustrals. It was the Ocula, this somewhat shadowy, slightly grim-sounding unit which Fassin was being ordered tobecome part of, for no reason that he could immediatelyfathom.

 'The Ocula?' Fassin said. 'Me? Are you absolutely sure?'

 'Absolutely.'

 Technically, he had no choice. To be allowed to do what theydid, the Seers had to be an officially recognised profession withinthe Miscellariat, the catch-all term for those useful to theMercatoria who did not fit inside the more standard subdivi-sional categories, and as such all Seers were subject to fullMercatorial discipline and control, committed to obeying any order issued by anybody properly authorised and of a suffi­ciently superior rank.

 Yet this virtually never happened. Fassin couldn't remember anyone from Sept Bantrabal ever being seconded by order inpeacetime, not in nearly two thousand years of Sept history. Why now? Why him?

 'May this briefing continue?' the glowing orb asked. 'It isimportant.'

 'Well, yes, all right, but I do have questions.' 'All relevant questions will be answered where possible andprudent,' the orb told him.

 Fassin was thinking, wondering. Did he really have to acceptthis? What were the punishments for disobeying? Demotion?Forced resignation? Banishment? Outlaw status? Death?

 'To resume, then,' the gas globe said. 'Seer Fassin Taak, you are hereby seconded to the Shrievalty Ocula. You will have thehonorary rank of provisional acting captain for security clear­ance purposes, with exceptions made as required by authorisedsuperiors, the principal honorary rank of major for seniorityand disciplinary purposes, the honorary rank of general forreward purposes and the honorary rank of field marshal fortravel-priority purposes. This construct is unable to negotiateregarding the aforesaid. Do you find the foregoing acceptable?''What if I say no?'

 'Punitive actions will be taken. Certainly against you, prob­ably against Sept Bantrabal and possibly against the 'glantineSlow Seers as a whole. Do you find the above mentioned second­ment details acceptable?'

 Fassin had to shut his mouth. This floating bladder of glowing gas had just threatened not only him, not only his Sept and entireextended family and all their servants and dependants, but themajor focus of uniquely important work being done on the entireplanet-moon, one of the three or four most important centres forDweller Studies in the entire galaxy! It was so outrageous, sosurely disproportionate, it almost had to be a joke.

 Fassin thought back, desperately trying to fit all that hadhappened to him today, with Slovius, with Verpych, with every­body who would have to be in on the joke, into a scenario moreplausible than the one he was apparently faced with: an appallinglyhigh-level projection from a portal-carrying Eship still a dozenlight years away ordering him to join an allegedly no-holds-barred intelligence unit answering to an Order and a disciplinehe knew no more about than any other lay person, and with theforce of the Administrata and the Engineers behind it.

 'Do you find the above-mentioned secondment detailsacceptable?' the orb repeated.

 Or maybe, Fassin thought, Sept Bantrabal as a whole wasbeing made fun of here. Maybe nobody here knew this was apractical joke. Would somebody go to all this trouble just tomake him look foolish, to frighten him? Had he ever antagon­ised anybody with the resources to set something like this up? Well…

 'Do you find the above-mentioned secondment detailsacceptable?' the orb said again.

 Fassin gave in. If he was lucky this was a joke. If not, it mightbe very stupid and even dangerous to treat it as such when it wasn't.

 'Given your crude and objectionable threats, I don't really have much choice, do I?'

 'Is that an answer in the affirmative?'

 'I suppose so. Yes.'

 'Good. You may ask questions, Seer Fassin Taak.'

 'Why am I being seconded?'

 'To facilitate the actions you will be asked to perform and tohelp achieve whatever goals you will be requested to pursue.'

 'What would those be?'

 'Initially, you are commanded to travel to Pirrintipiti, capitalcity of 'glantine planet-moon, there to take ship for Borquille,capital of Sepekte, principal planet of the Ulubis system forfurther briefing.'

 'And after that?'

 'You will be expected to carry out actions and pursue goals as detailed in said briefing.'

 'But why? What's behind all this? What's this all about?'

 'Information regarding what you ask is not carried by thisconstruct.'

 'Why the Shrievalty Ocula, specifically?'

 'Information regarding what you ask is not carried by thisconstruct.'

 'Who has ordered this?'

 'Information regarding what you ask is not—''All right!' Fassin drummed his fingers on the arm of his seat.Still, this projection had to have authority from somebody, itwould have to know where it stood in the vast web ofMercatorial rank and seniority. 'What rank was the person whoordered this?'

 'Administrata: Shrievalty Army-Group Chief of Staff,' the orbsaid. (Well, that went right to the top, Fassin thought. Whateverpiece of nonsense, military bullshittery or wild-goose chase thiswas all about, it was one being authorised by somebody with no excuses for not knowing better.) 'Ascendancy: Senior Engineer,'the projection continued. (Ditto; Senior Engineer didn't soundas Grand-High-Everything-Else impressive as Army-GroupChief of Staff, for example, but it was the highest rank in theEngineers, the people who made, transported and emplaced thewormholes that stitched the whole galactic meta-civilisationtogether. In terms of ultimate power, and regardless of species, an SE probably way out-wielded a CoS.) 'Omnocracy:' the orbsaid, with what sounded like a note of finality, 'Complector.'

 Fassin sat and stared. He blinked a few times. He was awarethat his mouth was open, so he closed it. His skin had seemedto tighten, all over his body. A fuckingComplector! he thought,already wondering if he hadn't misheard. One of theCulminaordered this?

 A Complector sat at the clear undisputed pinnacle of theMercatoria's civil command structure. Each one held absolute power over a significant galactic volume, usually with a defin­able locus, like a stellar cluster or a minor or even a majorgalactic arm. The least senior of them would be in charge of hundreds of thousands of stars, millions of planets, billions ofhabitats and trillions of souls. As well as their subjectAdministrata, they commanded the chiefs of all the otherAscendancy divisions within their jurisdiction - Engineers,Propylaea, Navarchy and Summed Fleet - and they were alwaysCulmina. The only thing which outranked a Complector wasa bigger bunch of Complectors.

 Fassin thought for a moment, trying to calm himself down.Remember this could be a joke. The very fact that a Complector'sauthority had been invoked almost made it more likely that itwas, it was just so preposterous.

 On the other hand, he had the disquieting feeling, promptedby a half-remembered school lesson he probably ought to havebeen paying more attention to, that falsely invoking aComplector's authority was potentially a capital offence.

 Think, think. Forget the Complector; back to the moment.What assumptions might he be making here? Any of the ego?(He'd had this psychological check-sum routine drilled into himat college, where he'd scored high on what was usually calledtheMe-me-me! scale. Though not as high as Saluus Kehar.) Well,he could think of one egotistical assumption he might be makingimmediately.

 'How many other people are being similarly summoned?' heasked.

 'By emissarial projection, only yourself.'

 Fassin sat back. Well, that certainly felt pleasing, but he suspected it was probably a much worse sign than it appeared.

 'And by other means?'

 'You will be joining a group of senior officials in Borquille,capital city of Sepekte, for further briefing. This group willnumber approximately thirty.'

 'And what will be the subject of this briefing?'

 'Information regarding what you ask is not carried by thisconstruct.'

 'How long am I likely to be away from home? Do I just go to Sepekte, get "briefed" and come back? What?'

 'Officers of the Shrievalty Ocula are expected to undertakeextended missions with minimal notice.'

 'So I should expect to be away a while?'

 'Officers of the Shrievalty Ocula are expected to undertake extended missions with minimal notice. Further informationregarding what you ask is not carried by this construct.'

 Fassin sighed. 'So is that it? You've been sent to tell me to go to Sepekte? All this . . . kerfuffle, for that?'

 'No. You are to be informed that this is a matter of the utmostconsequence and gravity, in which you may be asked to play a significant part. Also that information has come to light which indicates that there is a profound and imminent threat to Ulubissystem. No further details concerning this are carried by thisconstruct. You are commanded to report to the palace of theHierchon in Borquille, capital of Sepekte, principal planet ofthe Ulubis system, for further briefing, no later than hourFifteen tomorrow evening, the ninth of Duty, Borquille-Sepektelocal time. Gchron, 6.61 . . .' The sphere started to restate thetime of Fassin's appointment at the Hierchon's palace thefollowing day in a variety of different formats, as if to removeany last excuse for him not getting there on time. Fassin sat,staring at a beige-blank section of polarised window on the farside of the chamber, trying to decide what the hell to make ofall this.

 Oh, fuckwas the best he could come up with.

 '. . . The eighteenth of November, AD 4034, rHuman,' the glowing orb concluded. 'Transport will be provided. Baggageallowance is one large bag, carryable, plus luggage required totransport full formal court dress for your presentation to theHierchon. A gee-suit should be worn for the outgoing journey.Any further questions?'

 Verpych thought for a moment. 'Military-grade hysteria.' Slovius shifted in his tub-chair. 'Explain, please?''They are likely over-correcting for earlier dismissiveness, sir.' 'Somebody's been telling them there's a problem, they've beenpooh-poohing it, then suddenly woken up to the threat andpanicked?' Fassin suggested. Verpych nodded once.

 'The decisional dynamics of highly rigid power structuresmake an interesting study subject,' Tchayan Olmey said. Fassin'sold tutor and mentor smiled across at him, a calm, gauntly greypresence. The four of them sat at a large round table in Slovius's old study, Slovius himself supported in a large semi-encloseddevice that looked like a cross between an ancient hip bath anda small flier. Fassin thought his uncle's tusked, whiskered facelooked more animated, and even more human, than it had foryears. Slovius had announced at the start of the meeting thatfor the duration of whatever emergency they might be involvedin, his slow demise was being halted; he was fully back in chargeof Sept Bantrabal. Fassin had been appalled to find that therewas some small, mean, self-aggrandising part of him which felt disappointed and even slightly angry that his uncle wasn't goingto keep slipping into the hazy, woozily uncaring senility that led to death.

 'The phrase the projection used was "profound and immin­ent threat",' Fassin reminded them. That was what had spookedhim, he supposed, that was why he'd suggested this meeting,told them what he had. If there really was a threat to Ulubissystem, he wanted, at the very least, Sept Bantrabal's senior people to know about it. The only person missing from theconference was Fassin's mother, who was on a year-long retreatin a Cessorian habitat somewhere in the system's Kuiper belt,ten light days away and therefore profoundly out of the discus­sion. They had discussed whether she should be contacted andwarned that there was some sort of system-wide threat, butwithout details this seemed premature and possibly evencounter-productive.

 Olmey shrugged. 'The overreaction might well extend to thelanguage used to describe the perceived problem,' she said.

 'There has been a recent increase in Beyonder attacks,'Verpych said thoughtfully.

 For the two centuries after the loss of its portal, the sporadicBeyonder assaults on Ulubis - as a rule against the system's outskirts and military targets - had declined to such an extent they were barely even of nuisance value. Certainly there werefar fewer attacks than there had been in the years before thewormhole's destruction. For millennia, almost every system inthe Mercatoria had been getting used to these generally irri­tating, rarely devastating raids - they tied up ships and materieland kept the whole meta-civilisation slightly on edge but theyhad yet to produce any real atrocities - and it had come as some­thing of a relief to the people of Ulubis, a kind of unlooked-for bonus, that for some perverse reason the system's temporaryisolation had so far been a time when the direct military pres­sure on it had seemed to decrease rather than been cranked up.

 Over the last year or so, however, there had been a slightincrease in the number of attacks - the first time in two centuriesthat the yearly number had risen rather than fallen - and thoseassaults had been of a slightly different nature compared to thosethat people had more or less got used to. The targets had notall been military units or items of infrastructure, for one thing:a comet-cloud mining co-op had been destroyed, some belt andcloud ships had disappeared or been discovered drifting, emptyor slagged, one small cruise liner had just disappeared betweenNasqueron and the system's outermost gas-giant, and a singleheavy-missile ship had appeared suddenly in the mid-systemhalf a year ago, travelling at eighty per cent light speed andtargeted straight at Borquille. It had been picked off with ease,but it had been an alarming development.

 Slovius wobbled in his tub-chair again, slopping a little wateronto the wooden floor. 'Is there anything that you arenotallowed to tell us, nephew?' he asked, then made a sound thatsounded disturbingly like a chortle.

 'Nothing specific, sir. I'm not supposed to talk to anybody about any part of this except to...further my mission, whichat the moment consists of getting to Borquille by Fifteentomorrow. Obviously, I've chosen to interpret this as allowingme to talk to you three. Though I would ask that it goes no further.'

 'Well,' Slovius said, with a noise like a gargle in his throat,'you shall have my own suborbship to take you to Pirrintipitifor transfer.'

 'Thank you, sir. However, they did say that transport wasbeing provided.'

 'Navarchy's filed an outgoing from here for half-Fourtomorrow morning,' Verpych confirmed. 'Going to have to shiftif they're getting you to Sepekte for Fifteen tomorrow,' headded, with a sniff. 'You'll need to suffer five or six gees thewhole way, Fassin Taak.' Major-Domo Verpych smiled. 'Isuggest you start adjusting your water and solids intake accord­ingly now.'

 'We shall have my vessel standing by in any case,' Sloviussaid, 'should this transport fail to turn up, or be overly crudein form. See to this, major-domo.'Verpych nodded. 'Sir.'

 'Uncle, may I have a word?' Fassin asked as the meeting brokeup. He'd hoped to catch Slovius before they'd begun, but hisuncle had arrived with Verpych, Slovius looking energised andtriumphant, Verpych appearing troubled, even worried.

 Slovius nodded to his major-domo and Olmey. In a fewmoments Fassin and his uncle were left alone in the study.

 'Nephew?'

 'This morning, sir, when you were asking me about my mostrecent delves, while the emissarial projection was being down­loaded—'

 'How much did I know of the matter?'

 'Well, yes.'

 'I had had a simple, if highly encrypted, signal from the Eshipmyself, to tell me that the projection was following. It was inthe form of a personal message from a First Engineer on theship, an old friend. A Kuskunde - their bodily and linguistic nuances formed part of my collegiate studies, many centuriesago. They did not say so, nevertheless, I formed the impressionthat all this might be the result of a delve of yours.'

 'I see.'

 'Your emissarial projection gave no hint whether this mightbe correct or not?'

 'None, sir.' Fassin paused. 'Uncle, am I in trouble?'

 Slovius sighed. 'If I had to guess, nephew, I would surmisethat you are not in direct trouble as such. However, I will confessto the distinct and unsettling feeling that very large, veryponderous and most momentous wheels have been set inmotion. When that happens I believe the lessons of history tendto indicate that it is best not to be in their way. Even withoutmeaning harm, the workings and progress of such wheels areon a scale which inevitably reduces the worth of individual lives to an irrelevance at best.'

 'At best?'

 'At best. At worst, lives, their sacrifice, provide the oilrequired to make the wheels move. Does my explanation satisfyyou?'

 'That might be one word for it, sir, yes.'

 'Well then, it would appear we are equally in the dark,nephew.' Slovius consulted a little ring embedded in one of hisfinger stubs. 'And in the dark, sleep can be a good idea. I suggestyou get some.'

 'Well, Fassin Taak,' Verpych said briskly, waiting for him outsidethe door. 'Finally you've done something that I find impres­sive. Thanks to you, not only do we appear to be about to startliving in interesting times, you have succeeded in bringing usto the attention of people in high places. Congratulations.'

 *

 They sat on half-inflated bedrolls, their backs against the sidesof the flier. 'He's never told you about all that Severity Schoolstuff?' Fassin asked.

 Taince shook her head. 'Nope.' She took out her little greymilitary communicator again, checking in vain for reception.She and Fassin had already walked out to the hull gap half an hour earlier, looking for a signal either on this device or their phones. They'd stood there in the bright, flickering glow of aheavy aurora display, Nasqueron a vast inverted dome above,dark but sheened with its own rippling auroras and speckedwith a random craquelure of lightning bursts. A series of smallground-quakes had vibrated through their boots, but for all thisnatural turmoil - and perhaps partially because of the magneticactivity in the case of the phones - they had heard nothingthrough their machines.

 They'd tramped back, Fassin grumbling about Beyonders for attacking a planet best known for its peaceful Dwellers Studiesfaculties in the first place, and the Guard, Navarchy Military,Ambient Squadrons and Summed Fleet for not protecting thembetter. Taince tried to explain about the logistics of moving suffi­cient numbers of needle ships and other bits of materiel through'holes to where they'd be needed, and the equations whichgoverned how many assets you would need fully to protect themany scattered systems of the Mercatoria. Even with the near-instantaneousness of portal-to-portal Arteria travel, it was an unfeasible, economically unsupportable number. The manyenemy groupings might be collectively puny, but they werewidely distributed and often working on an awkwardlyextended timescale. The main thing was that 'glantine and Ulubissystem as a whole were safe. Its own Squadrons were a match for any feasible Beyonder grouping, and behind them, just afew portal jumps away, lay the matchless superiority of theSummed Fleet.

 None of this prevented Fassin from continuing to moan aboutthe Beyonders' nuisance attacks, so Taince had shifted theconversation to their classmates' foibles, proclivities and eccen­tricities and before very long they'd got to Saluus.

 'Well,' Taince said, 'he's mentioned going to Severity Schoolbut he's never volunteered anything much about it and I'm nothis interrogator.'

 'Oh,' Fassin said. He wondered if maybe Saluus and Tainceweren't lovers after all. School, early life . . . that was the stuffof pillow talk, wasn't it? He stole a glance at Taince. Though'lovers' somehow didn't seem like the right word anyway, notfor Sal and Tain, assuming they were involved. They each seemeddifferent from everybody else in their year, less obviously caughtup in the whole dating, young love and experimental sex scene,as though they'd gone through all that already or were just,through natural predisposition or sheer determination, immuneto it somehow.

 Taince intimidated most boys her own age and a lot whowere significantly older, but she didn't care. Fassin had seen herturn down a couple of very nice, decent lads with a bruisingdegree of brusqueness, and then take off for what were prettyobviously one- or few-nighters with burly but boring guys. Hehad also known at least three girls in their school year who werehopelessly in love with Taince, but she hadn't cared about thateither.

 Saluus had been in an even stronger position from the start;not just good-looking - anybody could be that - but easy withit, and assured, charming and funny as well. All that and money! A fortune to inherit, another beckoning world of even morefinely graded superiority that existed alongside the monumental,bamboozling, hierarchic system that had surrounded them all since birth, presenting an alternative infrastructure of rewardwhich was both younger and older than the Mercatoria's colossaledifice, if ultimately entirely subordinate to it. Like the rest ofthe boys in his year - like most in the entire college - Fassinhad long since come to terms with the fact that as long as Sal was around, you were always second-best.

 And yet neither Taince nor Sal - especially Sal - took advan­tage of their chances. Except maybe with each other.

 It was like they were adults before their time, with their ownsteely, determined agendas, and sex was no more than an itchthat had to be scratched, an irritating unter-hunger whichsporadically necessitated being dealt with as quickly and effi­ciently as possible with the minimum of distractive fuss, so that the real, serious business of life could be attended to.

 Weird.

 'Why?' Taince asked. 'Did you go to Sev School too, Fass?'

 'Me?'Fassin said, astonished. 'Shit, no!'

 'Right,' Taince said. She was sitting with one leg stretchedout, one folded, hand resting on her knee. 'So,' she flapped herhand. 'Tough, is it?'

 'Theyhunt them!' Fassin told her.

 Taince shrugged. 'So I've heard. At least they don't eat them.''Ha! They still die sometimes. I'm serious. These are justlittle kids. They fall off cliffs or out of trees or into crevassesor they kill themselves, they're so stressed. Some get lost in the outwoods and get hunted and killed and eaten by realpredators.'

 'Mm-hmm. High drop-out rate, then.''Taince, doesn't any of that bother you?' Taince grinned at him. 'What, you mean arouse my maternalinstincts, Fass?' He didn't answer. She shook her head. 'Well, itdoesn't. You want to ask me do I feel sorry for these juniormembers of the Acquisitariat? Yes, for the ones that don't make it out. Or the ones that leave hating their parents. For the others,it does what it's supposed to do, I guess; produces another gener­ation of the truly selfish. Well, not my department. Don't eventhink about them. If I did maybe I'd despise them, but I don'tso I don't. Maybe I'd admire them. Sounds worse than basic training.'

 'You have a choice with basic training. These little—''Not if you're drafted.''Drafted?'

 'Laws are still on the statute books.' She shrugged. 'But yourpoint is taken. It's tough on those kids. But it's legal and, well,the rich are another breed.' She sounded unconcerned.'Sal's really never said anything?'

 Something in his tone made Taince look at Fassin. 'You mean,like,' she waggled her dark eyebrows, '"afterwards", Fassin?'He looked away. 'As you will.'

 Taince looked at him again. 'Fass, is this really all aboutwhether Sal and I fuck?''No!'

 'Well, we do. Now and again, thank you for asking. That settled any bets? Made you any money?'

 'Oh, please,' he said.Damn, he thought,I'm not sure I reallywanted to know that, now that I do.Fassin quite enjoyedthinking about some of the potential or actual couples and othergroupings of his class and year having sex - grief, he'dwatched\been part of the real thing a few times - but the thoughtof Sal and Taince bumping bits was slightly grisly.

 Taince hoisted one eyebrow. 'Ask nicely and maybe some­time we'll let you watch. That's what you like, isn't it?'

 Fassin felt himself colouring despite his best efforts. 'Why, Ilive for nothing else,' he said, attempting sarcasm.

 'And no, he hasn't mentioned Severity School,' Taince toldhim. 'Not before, during or after. Unless I was a lot more distracted than I thought I was.'

 'But it sounds horrific! Cold showers, hot-bunking, corporalpunishment, deprivation, intimidation, denigration, and, for aholiday, you get to run for what might be your life!'

 Taince snorted. 'You end up paying good money for the sort of treatment your ancestors spent their short, brutal lives tryingto avoid. That's progress.'

 'I think the guy's been damaged by it,' Fassin said. 'I'm serious.'

 'Oh, I'm sure you are,' Taince drawled, sounding bored. 'Salseems to be okay with it, all the same. Says it made him.'

 'Yeah, but made himwhat?'

 Taince grinned. 'It's all your people's fault, anyway.'

 'Oh,' Fassin sighed, 'not this.'

 'Well, it's a Dweller thing, isn't it?'

 'Yeah? And so fucking what?'

 'Well, who brought that particular little nugget of information regarding kin-kid-hunting blinking into the light?' Taince asked,still grinning. 'You guys, that's who. Seers—'

 'They weren't—'

 'Well, Dwellers Studies, whatever.' Taince waved her handdismissively. 'They hunt their children, they're a long-term,widespread, successful species and they're right on our doorstep.Some wizzer comes along looking for the latest way to fleece the rich. What sort of lesson do you think they're going to takefrom that?'

 Fassin shook his head. 'The Dwellers have been around for most of the life of the universe, they've spread throughout thegalaxy but despite their head start on everybody else they'vehad the good grace not to remake the whole place to suit them­selves, they've formalised war to the point that hardly anybody ever dies and most of their lives' work is spent tending thegreatest accumulations of knowledge ever assembled—'

 'But we were told—'

 'Albeit in the galaxy's most disorganised libraries which they show enormous reluctance to let anybody else into, yes, but allthe same: they were peaceful, civilised and everywhere before Earth and the Sun even formed, and what's the one lesson we'vetaken from them with any enthusiasm? Hunt your kids.''Your lecture notes are showing,' Taince told him.The Dwellers, notoriously, hunted their own young. Thespecies was present in the majority - the vast majority - of thegas-giant planets in the galaxy, and in every planetary society of theirs that had been sufficiently thoroughly investigated, ithad been discovered that the mature Dwellers preyed upon theirown children, hunting them singly or in packs (on both sides),sometimes opportunistically, as often in highly organised long-term hunts. To the Dwellers this was entirely natural. Just anormal part of growing up, absolutely a part of their culturewithout which they would not be themselves, and somethingthey had been doing for billions of years. Indeed, some of those who could be bothered attempting to justify the practice to upstart alien busybodies claimed with some authority thatyoung-hunting was precisely one of the many reasons thatDwellers were still around after all that amount of time to indulge in such harmless fun in the first place.

 It wasn't just their species that was long-lived, after all; indi­vidual Dwellers had, allegedly, lived for billions of years, so ifthey weren't to use up even the colossal amount of living space provided by all the gas-giant planets in the galaxy (and, they'dsometimes hint, beyond), they had to keep numbers downsomehow. And interfering outside species - especially thosewhose civilisations were inevitably so short-lived that they werecalled the Quick - would do well not to forget that the Dwellers doing the hunting had been hunted in their turn as well, and those being hunted would have their chance to become the hunters in the future. And anyway, if you had every prospectof living for hundreds of millions of years, being hunted for atmost about a century and a bit was such a trivially insignificant detail that it was scarcely worth mentioning.

 'They don't feel any pain, Taince,' Fassin told her. 'That's thepoint. They don't entirely understand the concept of physical suffering. Not emotionally.'

 'Which I still beg to find unlikely. But, oh, so what? Whatare you saying? They're not intelligent enough to feel mentalanguish?'

 'Even mental pain isn't really what we understand as painwhen there's no physiological equivalent, no template, nocircuitry.'

 'That this year's theory, is it? Exo-Ethics 101?'

 A moderately powerful ground-quake shook the surface theywere sitting on, but they ignored it. The huge, tattered stripsof material hanging high above stirred.

 'All I'm saying is, they're a civilisation we could learn a lotmore from than just how to abuse our young.'

 'Thought they aren't even a civilisation, technically'

 'Oh, good grief,' Fassin sighed.

 'Well?'

 'Yeah, well, depends what definition you accept. To somethey're post-civilisational, because the individual groups oneach gas-giant have so little contact with each other, to othersthey're a diasporian civilisation, which is the same thingexpressed more kindly, to others still they're just a degenerateexample of how to almost take over an entire galaxy and thenfail, because they just lost interest, or they somehow forgotwhat the purpose of the operation was in the first place, orthey misplaced their ruthlessness and came over all coy andconservational and decided it would only be fair to give every­body else a chance, too, or they were warned off by somehigher power. All of which might be true, or nonsense. And that's what Dweller Studies is all about. Maybe one day we'll know for sure . . . What?' There was something about the wayTaince was looking at him.

 'Nothing. Just wondering. You still sticking to the line youhaven't decided what to do after college?'

 'I might not become a Seer, Taince, or anything to do withDweller Studies; it isn't compulsory.We don't get drafted.'

 'Mm-hmm. Well,' she said, 'time for another attempt tocontact the real world.' She rose smoothly to her feet. 'Coming?'

 'Mind if I stay behind?' Fassin rubbed his face, looked around.'Bit tired. I think we're safe enough here, yeah?'

 'Guess so,' Taince told him. 'Back soon.' She turned andtramped off into the darkness, quickly disappearing and leavingFassin alone with the soft lights of the flier in the vast, unechoingspace.

 He did and didn't want to fall asleep, and after a fewmoments alone thought that maybe he didn't feel so securehere by himself after all, and nearly went after Taince, but thenthought he might get lost, and so stayed where he was. Hecleared his throat and sat more upright, telling himself hewasn't going to fall asleep. But he must have, because when the screams started, they woke him.

 *

 He left in the false dawn of an albedo sunrise, Ulubis still wellbelow the horizon but lighting up half the facing hemisphereof Nasqueron, flooding the Northern Tropical Uplands of 'glan­tine with a soft, golden-brown light. A small yellow auroraldisplay to the north added its own unsteady glow. He'd alreadysaid various goodbyes to friends and family in the Sept the nightbefore and left messages for those, like his mother, he couldn't contact immediately. He'd left Jaal asleep.

 Slovius, somewhat to Fassin's surprise, came to see him off at the house port, a hundred-metre circle of dead flat granitecoldmelt a kilometre downslope from the house, near the riverand the gently rising edge of the Upland forest. Light rain fellfrom high, thin clouds moving in from the west. A sleek, soot-black Navarchy craft, maybe sixty metres long, sat on a tripod of struts at the centre of the circle, radiating heat and banneredby drifting steam.

 They stopped and looked at it. 'That's a needle ship, isn't it?'Fassin said.

 His uncle nodded. 'I do believe it is. You will be going toPirrintipiti in some style, nephew.' Slovius's own suborb yacht,a streamlined yet stubbier machine, half the size of the blackNavarchy ship, lay on a circular parking pad just off the maincircle. They walked on, Fassin in his thin one-piece gee-suit,worn under his light Sept robe, feeling as if he was walking witha sort of warm gel extending from ankle to neck.

 Fassin carried the grip holding his formal wear. A pony-tailed servant had his other bag and held a large umbrella over Fassin. Slovius's chair-tub had extended a transparent cover above him.Another servant held the sleeping form of Fassin's niece Zab inher arms; the child - up scandalously late the evening beforeand somehow hearing of her uncle's summons to Sepekte - had insisted she wanted to say goodbye to Fassin and wheedled hergrandfather and parents into granting permission, but then hadfallen back asleep almost as soon as they'd left the house in the little funicular which served the port.

 'Oh, and my regards to my old friend Seer-Chief Chyne, ofthe Favrial,' Slovius said as they crossed to the Navarchy craft.'Should you see him. Oh, and most especially to BraamGanscerel, of Sept Tonderon, naturally.'

 'I'll try to say hello to all who know you, uncle.'

 'I should have come with you,' Slovius said absently. 'No,maybe not.'

 A grey-uniformed figure appeared from a drop-platformunder the black ship and walked towards them. The officer, a fresh-faced, cheery-looking woman, took off her cap, bowed toSlovius, and to Fassin said, 'Major Taak?'

 Fassin stood looking at her for a moment, before recallingthat officially he was now a major in the Shrievalty Ocula. 'Ah,yes,' he said.

 'First Officer Oon Dicogra, NMS 3304,' the young woman said. 'Welcome. Please follow me.'

 Slovius held out one flippery hand. 'I shall try to remain aliveuntil your return, Major Nephew.' He made a wheezing noisethat was probably a laugh.

 Fassin gripped Slovius's finger stubs awkwardly. 'I'm ratherhoping this is a false alarm and I'll be back in a few days.'

 'In any event, take care. Goodbye, Fassin.'

 'I shall. Goodbye.' He kissed the still-sleeping Zab lightly onthe cheek, avoiding waking her, then followed the Navarchyofficer to the platform, stepped up onto it and waved as thecurve-bottomed slab raised them into the ship.

 'We'll be pulling about 5.2 Earth gees most of the way,'Dicogra said as Fassin's robe and his luggage were secured in abrace-cabinet. 'Are you happy with that? The physio profile wegot on you says yes, but we have to check.'

 Fassin looked at her. 'To Pirrintipiti?' he asked. The localshuttles and suborbs accelerated a lot less sharply than that, andthey did the trip in less than an hour. How tightwas thisschedule?

 'No, to Borquille city,' Dicogra said. 'Going straight there.'

 'Oh,' Fassin said, surprised. 'No, 5.2 is fine.'

 The planet-moon 'glantine's gravity was about a tenth of that,but Fassin was used to more. He thought about pointing outthat his day job involved spending years at a time in a gravityfield of over six Earth gees, but of course that was in a Dwellerine arrowship, pickled in shock-gel, and didn't really count.

 First Officer Dicogra smiled, wrinkled her nose and said,'Good for you. That physio report said you were quite a toughie.Still, we'll spend nearly twenty hours at that acceleration, withonly a few minutes weightless right in the middle, so do youneed to visit the heads? You know, the toilet?'

 'No, I'm fine.'

 She gestured at his groin, where a bulge like a sports box wasthe only place on his body where the grey, centimetre-thick gee-suit didn't hug the contours of his flesh. 'Any attachmentsrequired?' she asked, smiling.

 'No, thanks.'

 'Drugs to let you sleep?'

 'Not necessary.'

 The ship's captain was a whule, a species that always lookedto Fassin like a cross between a giant grey bat and an even more scaled-up praying mantis. She greeted Fassin briefly via a screenfrom the bridge and he was settled into a steep-sided, semi-reclined couch in a gimballed ball pod near the centre of theship by First Officer Dicogra and a fragile-seeming butdexterous whule rating who smelled, to the human nose, ofalmonds. The whule rating levered himself out with a snapping sound of wing membranes and Dicogra settled into the onlyother couch in the pod. Her preparations for a day of five geescontinuous consisted of tossing her cap into a locker andadjusting her uniform underneath her.

 The ship lifted slowly at first and Fassin watched on a screen on the curved wall opposite as the port's circular landing groundfell away, the little figures there lifting their heads as theNavarchy craft rose. Zab might have waved one tiny arm, thenthe haze of clouds intervened, the view tilted and swung andthe ship accelerated - the gimballed pod keeping him and Dicogra level in their seats - towards space.

 *

 Was that screaming? His eyes flicked open. His neck hairs were standing on end, his mouth was dry. Dark. Still insidethe ruined alien ship, his back resting against the dimly lit flier.Taince gone, away to the gap to check for comms reception.Oh shit, thosewere screams, from behind. Maybe shouting,too. He scrambled to his feet, looking around. Little to see; justthe faint traces of the warped landscape of destruction and collapse that was the interior of the wrecked ship, the tilteddecks and bulkheads, the huge hanging strips of whatever-the-hell hanging from the invisibly dark and distant ceiling. Thescreams were coming from forward, from the interior, from the direction that Saluus and Ilen had walked in. He stood staringinto that darkness, holding his breath to listen better. Sudden silence, then maybe a voice - Sal's shouting, the words indis­tinct. Help? Taince? Fass?

 What do I do? Run to help? Wait for Taince? Look for anothertorch, another gun if there is one?

 A clattering noise behind him made him spin round.

 Taince, bounding down from one gnarled level of the buckledwall. 'You okay?'

 'Yes, but—'

 'Stay with me. Keep a few steps behind. Say if you can't keepup.' She went past him at a slow run, her gun high in one hand.Later, he would remember that there was a grim sort of smileon her face.

 They ran up the shallow slope leading deeper into the ship,over increasingly large ripples in the material beneath their feetuntil they were leaping from ridge to ridge, then jumped downthrough a tear in the floor and ran slightly uphill on a half-giving surface like thin rubber over iron, vaulting one-handedover enormous, thigh-high cables strung in an irregular netacross the space. Fassin followed Taince as best he could, guidedby the glow patches on her fatigues. She ran and leapt more fluidly with one hand filled with pistol than he did pumping both arms. The floor pitched up more steeply, then down.

 'Taince! Fassin!' Sal shouted, somewhere ahead.

 'Duck!' Taince yelled, suddenly running doubled-up.

 Fassin got down just in time; his hair touched the hard foldof ink-black material above. They slowed down, Taince feelingher way one-handed along the dark ceiling, then slipping side­ways through a narrow gap.

 Fassin followed, the cold press of ungiving material on eitherside making him shiver.

 Light ahead. A dim confusion of tilted floor and a half-open chaos of girders and tubes forming a ceiling, spikes like stalag­mites and stalactites, thin hanging cables, a frozen downwardexplosion of some red substance like an enormous invertedflower. And there, crouching on a narrow ledge by a jagged,vaguely triangular hole in the floor a couple of metres across,staring into it, lit by the glow patches stuck to his jacket, wasSal.

 He looked up. 'Len!' he shouted. 'She fell!'

 'Sal,' Taince said sharply, 'that floor safe for us?'

 He looked confused, frightened. 'Think so.'

 Taince tested the way ahead with one foot, then knelt by the triangular hole, right at one apex. She motioned Fassin to stayback, lay on her front and stuck her head into the hole, then,muttering something about the edges being braced, signalled Fassin to the side of the hole opposite Saluus. There was moreroom on that side. He lay and looked in and down.

 The triangle opened out into a darkly cavernous space beneath them, just vague glints of edged surfaces visible below; steppedcollections of what looked like huge cooling fins. Fassin's headseemed to swim, recognising how much of the wrecked shipwas beneath the level they were on now. He remembered the flier climbing from the desert floor before entering the giant ship. How far had they climbed? A hundred metres? A littleless? Plus the journey from the flier to here had been mostlyuphill.

 Ilen lay about six metres down, caught on a couple of arm-thick projections that stuck curving out from the nearest intact bulkhead beneath like two slim tusks. She lay on her front, herhead, one leg and one arm hanging over the drop. Glow patcheson her sleeves provided pale, greeny-blue light. The fracturedends of the two tusk-shaped protrusions were only centimetresfrom the side of her body. Off to one side at eight- or nine-metre intervals, several more sets of the tusklike shapes clawedout from the bulkhead like bony fingers grasping at the gapingspace. The drop below Ilen looked fifty or sixty metres deep,down to the bladelike edges of the fins beneath.

 The human mindset had had to adapt to places like 'glantinewhere gravity was weaker and a fall that would break both yourlegs on Earth was something you could walk away from. But given enough vertical space to accelerate into, a human's bodywould be just as injured or dead after a sixty-metre drop hereas it would after a thirty-metre fall on Earth.

 'Any rope?' Taince asked.

 Sal shook his head. 'Oh God, oh fuck. No. Well, yes, but weleft it back there.' He nodded further into the ship. He seemedto shiver, hugging himself then putting up the collar of his jacket,as though cold. 'C-couldn't undo the knot again.'

 'Shit! She's moving,' Taince said, then stuck her head into thehole and shouted, 'Ilen! Ilen, don't move! Can you hear me?Don't move! Just say if you can hear me!'

 Ilen moved weakly, her head and the arm dangling over the drop shaking and shifting. She looked to be trying to roll over,but was edging still closer to the drop.

 'Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,' Sal said, his voice high and quick andstrained. 'She was behind me. I thought she was all right. I didn'tsee anything, must have stepped over it. A hatch or somethingor it was just balanced and she must have knocked it and shewas shouting, sort of balanced over it, one hand, and screaming, and I couldn't get back in time and she fell. We didn't even findanything, didn't do anything! Just junk! Oh fuck! She was fine!She was just behind me!'

 'Be quiet,' Taince said. Sal sat back, rubbing his mouth,shaking. Taince put the gun back into her fatigues, slapped aglow patch onto her forehead, then, with her hands on two sides of the triangular hole, lowered her head into the gap again,further this time. She levered herself out for a second and lookedback at Fassin. 'Hold my feet.'

 Fassin did as he was told. Taince got her shoulders throughthe hole, then they heard her say, 'Ilen! You mustn'tmove!' She hauled herself back out, leaving the glow patch where it was onher forehead like some strange, shining eye. 'Nothing to holdon to underneath here,' she told them. 'She's moving around.Must have hit her head. She's going to fall.' She looked at Sal. 'Sal, how far away is that rope? By time.'

 'Oh fuck! I don't know! Ten, fifteen minutes?'

 Taince glanced back into the hole. 'Shit,' she said quietly. ‘Ilen' she shouted. 'Youmust not move!' She shook her head.'Shit, shouting at her's just making her move,' she said, as thoughto herself. She took a deep breath, looked at Saluus and Fassin.'Okay. Here's what we're going to do,' she said. 'Daisy-chain rescue. Practised this, it's doable.'

 'Right,' Sal said, sitting forward, his face pale in the dim light.'What do we have to do?'

 'One holds on at the top, somebody climbs down their body,holds on to their feet, last person climbs down both and picksup Ilen. I'll do that bit.'

 Sal's eyes widened. 'But the person at the top—''Will be you. You're the strongest. Wouldn't work on Earth;does here,' Taince told them. She slid over and grabbed Sal'sbackpack. 'Seen it done with four links. You two guys look ingood enough shape. Fass, you're in the middle. Plus person atthe top gets tied on with these straps,' she said, glancing at Sal and then pulling a knife from her fatigues and slicing into oneset of shoulder straps.

 Sal knelt quaking at the side of the hole. 'Fucking God, Taince,' he said, 'we all want to rescue her, but this could getus all killed. Fuck,oh fuck. I don't know. I don't fucking believethis, I just fucking don't. This isn't happening, this is justnotfuckinghappening!' He sat back again, visibly trembling. Helooked at his shaking hands, turning them over and staring atthem as though he didn't recognise them. 'I don't know if Ihave any grip,' he said. 'I really don't.'

 'You'll be fine,' Taince told him, busy with the straps.

 'Oh fuck, we're all going to fucking die,' Sal said. 'Fuckinghell.' He shook his head hard. 'No. Not. Not.No.'

 'This will work,' Taince said, quickly tying the cut straps tothose still joined to the pack.

 I'm calm,thought Fassin.I'm probably in shock or some­thing, but I feel calm.Wemight all be about to die, or it might be a close shave and a bonding thing we all remember for therest of our long lives, but either way I feel calm. What will happen will happen and as long as we do our best and don'tlet each other down, no matter what happens we'll have beenfine. He looked at his own hands. They were shaking, but notuncontrollably. He flexed them. He felt strong. He would do everything he could, and if that wasn't enough, that wasn't hisfault.

 Sal jumped up, wobbling dangerously close to the hole.'There's more rope,' he said suddenly. His face was still grey-pale, but now almost expressionless. He moved past Taince.

 Fassin looked at him, wondering what he was talking about.

 'What?' Taince said, testing a square-section stalagmite extru­sion on the floor then flipping the pack straps over it.

 'Rope,' Sal said, pointing towards the outside and the flier.He took a backwards step in that direction. 'There's more. In the flier. I'll go. I know where it is.' He backed off further.

 'Sal!' Taince shouted at him. 'There isn't time!'

 'No, there is, I'll go,' Sal said, still backing off.

 'Stay fucking here, Sal,' Taince said, dropping and deepening her voice. Sal seemed to hesitate but shook his head and turnedand ran.

 Taince leapt and made a grab for him but he'd moved tooquickly. He vaulted a stalagmite and ran towards the gap Fassin and Taince had squeezed through earlier. Taince dropped to oneknee and pulled the gun. 'Stop, you fuckingcoward!'

 There might, Fassin thought, have been half a second whenTaince could have fired, but she dropped the gun and stashedit in her fatigues as Sal sprinted, ducking through the gap andaway. Taince looked at Fassin. Now her face had gone blank, he thought. 'Still a possibility,' she said, and quickly steppedout of her fatigues. She wore a one-piece underbody the same colour as her skin, so for just a moment she appeared to benaked. She reattached the top and trousers of the fatigues, snap­ ping them tight to test that they held. 'Right,' she said. 'Now,this ties to your ankle.'

 The straps on the backpack held, and Fassin did too, wriststied to them but taking his own weight and Taince's on his handsand fingers initially because he didn't trust the straps, and theknot tying Taince's trousers to his ankle held as well, and Taincewas holding on fine as she shinned down over him and ontothe fatigues and down with him twisting his neck and shoul­ders out and round so he could just about watch her progressand watch Ilen too, as though as long as he kept watching hershe'd be all right, but then there was a ground-quake, shakingthe ship, not badly, but enough to bring Fassin out in a coldsweat as he hung there, hands, palms, fingers slipping until itreally was the straps and the straps alone holding him, and belowhim, below Taince, still just out of reach, Ilen moved one more time and fell over the edge and away into the darkness.

 Taince made a lunge and Fassin felt the link between themjerk as she clutched vainly at the girl and made a noise like agasp or a hiss. Ilen dropped away into the shadows, tumblingslowly, her hair and clothes fluttering like pale, cold flame.

 Ilen must have still been mostly unconscious because shedidn't even scream as she fell, so that they heard her body hitthe strip of vanes far below, long seconds later, and might evenhave felt the impact through the fabric of the ship.

 Fassin had closed his eyes.Let Sal be right, let this not behappening.He tried to grip the edge of the hole again, to take the weight off the straps.

 Taince just hung there for a while. 'Lost her,' she said quietly,and the way she said it Fassin was suddenly terrified that shewas going to let go too and drop after Ilen, but she didn't. Shejust said, 'Coming back up now. Hold on.'

 She climbed up and over him and helped him out. They lookeddown but couldn't see the body. They spent a few moments sittingside by side, breathing hard, with their backs against one of the stalagmites, a bit like they'd sat earlier, back at the flier. Tainceuntied her fatigues and put them on. She took the gun out.

 Fassin looked at it as she stood up. 'What are you going to do?' he asked.

 She looked down at him. 'Not kill the fuck, if that's whatyou're thinking.' She sounded calm now. She nudged one of hisfeet with her boot. 'We should get back.'

 He stood up, a little shaky, and she held him by one arm.'Did our best, Fass,' she told him. 'Both of us did. We can grievefor Ilen later. What we do now is we go back to the flier, tryto find Sal, see if we can get comms, get the fuck out of here and tell the authorities.'

 They turned away from the hole.

 'Why have you still got the gun out?' Fassin asked.

 'Sal,' Taince said. 'He's never been this humiliated. Never lethimself down like this. Not to my knowledge. Grief and guilt. Does things to people.' She was doing some sort of breathing-exercise thing, taking quick breaths, holding them. 'Faint chancehe'll think...if no one ever knows what happened here . . .'She shrugged. 'He's got a gun. He might wish us harm.'

 Fassin looked at her, unbelieving. 'You think? Seriously?'

 Taince nodded. 'I know the guy,' she told him. 'And don'tbe surprised if the flier's gone.'

 It was gone.

 They walked out to the gap in the hull and found the flierthere in the faint light of a false dawn coming from one thicksliver of sun-struck Nasqueron. Sal was sitting looking out atthe chill expanse of desert. Before they approached, Taincechecked her military transceiver again and found that she hadsignal. She called the nearest Navarchy unit and gave a briefreport, then they walked across the sand to the flier. Their phones were still out.

 Saluus looked round at them. 'Did she fall?' he asked.

 'We nearly got her,' Taince said. 'Very nearly.' She was stillholding her gun. Sal put one hand over his face for a while. Inhis other hand he was gripping a thin, twisted, half-melted-looking piece of metal, and when he took his hand away fromhis face he started turning the metal fragment over and over inboth hands. His gun lay with his jacket, on the back seat. 'Gotthrough to the military,' Taince told him. 'Alert's over. Just wait where we are. There's a ship on its way.' She got in the back,behind Sal.

 'We were never going to save her, Tain,' he told her. 'Fass,'he said as the other man got into the other front seat besidehim, 'we were just never going to save her. We'd only have gotourselves killed too.'

 'Find the rope?' Fassin asked. He had a sudden image oftaking the twisted piece of metal that Sal was playing with andsticking it into his eye.

 Sal just shook his head. He looked dazed more than anythingelse. 'Went over on my ankle,' he said. 'Think it might besprained. Barely made it back. Thought I could use the flier, getit through the stuff hanging above us and find a way over thetop of all that wreckage, back to where it all happened, but thehanging stuff was more solid than it looked; came out here totry and signal.' The piece of twisted metal kept going round and round in his hands.

 'What is that?' Fassin asked after a while.

 Sal looked down at it. He shrugged. 'From the ship. Justsomething I found.'

 Taince reached round from behind him, wrenched the pieceof metal from his hands and threw it away across the sand.

 They sat there in silence until a Navarchy suborb showed up. When Taince went out to meet it, Sal got out of the flierand went, limping, to retrieve the fragment.

 TWO:

 DESTRUCTIVE  RECALL

 I was born in a water moon. Some people, especially its inhab­itants, called it a planet, but as it was only a little over twohundred kilometres in diameter 'moon' seems the more accu­rate term. The moon was made entirely of water, by which Imean it was a globe that not only had no land, but no rockeither, a sphere with no solid core at all, just liquid water, allthe way down to the very centre of the globe.

 If it had been much bigger the moon would have had a coreof ice, for water, though supposedly incompressible, is notentirely so, and will change under extremes of pressure tobecome ice. (If you are used to living on a planet where icefloats on the surface of water, this seems odd and even wrong, but nevertheless it is the case.) This moon was not quite of asize for an ice core to form, and therefore one could, if one was sufficiently hardy, and adequately proof against the water pres­sure, make one's way down, through the increasing weight of water above, to the very centre of the moon.Where a strange thing happened.

 For here, at the very centre of this watery globe, there seemed to be no gravity. There was colossal pressure, certainly, pressingin from every side, but one was in effect weightless (on theoutside of a planet, moon or other body, watery or not, one is always being pulled towards its centre; once at its centre one isbeing pulled equally in all directions), and indeed the pressure around one was, for the same reason, not quite as great as onemight have expected it to be, given the mass of water that themoon was made up from.This was, of course,

 I was born in a water moon. Some people, especially its inhab­itants, called it a planet, but as it was only a little—

 The captain broke off there, exponentially scrolling some ofthe rest across the screen, then stopping to read a line: 'Wherea strange thing happened.' He flicked further on, stopping again: 'I was born in a water moon. Some people, especially its'

 All like this? he asked his Number Three.

 All the same, it is believed, sir. It appears to repeat precisely thesame few hundred words, time after time. About twelve to the seven­teen times. That is all that is left of its memory. Even the base oper­ating system and instruction sets have been overwritten. This is astandard abominatory technique known as destructive recall.

 It leaves no trace of what might have been there before?

 Trace is left, but that too reveals a short repetitive. Tech begssuggest this is merely the last of many iterative over-writes. Notrace remains of the machine's true memories before it realisedcapture or destruction was inevitable.

 Indeed.

 The Voehn captain tapped a control to take the displaythrough to the end. The screen froze for an appreciable moment,then displayed: 'I was born—'

 This is the very last section of memory?

 Yes, sir.

 An expression another Voehn would have recognised as a smilecrossed the captain's face, and his back-spines flexed briefly.

 This has been checked, Number Three? There is no othercontent, are no hidden messages?

 It is being checked, sir. The totality of the data exceeds our ship'smemory capacity and is being processed in blocks. What you seehere is technically an abstraction.

 Time to accomplish?

 Another twenty minutes.

 Any other media capable of supporting significant stored infor­mation load?

 None. The construct was mostly what it appeared: a comet head.The main artificial part of it was the abomination at the core, thesensory and propulsion units being separate, surface-mounted andmotley. Tech informs fully checked.

 Original language used in the repeated piece?

 As seen: Old Standard.

 Origin of quoted piece?

 Unknown. A tentative analysis from Tech\Soc. rated nineteen percent suggests it may be of Quaup origin.

 The Quaup, the majority of whom were part of theMercatoria - the captain had served on a war craft with aQuaup officer - were of the meta-species type people usually called blimps, small to medium-sized balloon-like creatures,air-going oxygen processors. The repeated passage filling thecaptured machine's memory was fairly obviously told fromthe point of view of a submersible waterworlder. Well, thecaptain thought, people wrote from the points of view ofothers. At primary college he himself had composed poems as though he was a Culmina, before he had realised this was acrime of presumption, confessed and rightly been punishedfor it. Quite put him off composition.

 The only major blot on the captain's otherwise exemplarymilitary-education record had been a phase of remediationrequired to bring his Deployable Empathic Quotient up toscratch, this flaw later being diagnosed as a consequence of hisshunning all such feelings after his inadvertent insult and sub­sequent disciplining. Still, he had made captain, which one didnot do without some empathic subtlety, anticipating the feel­ings of both one's crew and one's opponents.

 He looked out at the half-melted remains of the captured construct, a pitted, black-body, comet-disguised vessel whichhad been roughly eight hundred metres in diameter and wasnow missing a great quarter-bite of structure. It lay a couple of kilometres off, radiating the last of the heat from its partialdestruction, surrounded by a small system of wreckage, darkshards and splinters orbiting its ravaged body.

 The view, lit by one of their own ship's attenuated CR beams, was about as clear and perfect as it could possibly be; there wasno screen in the way, and not even any transparent hull mat­erial, atmosphere or other medium. The captain was lookingstraight out from the flying bridge of his ship, an open-worknest of massive but elegantly sculpted girder work on the outsideof the vessel. The vessel was unshared with any other species,crewed by Voehn only, happily, so the rest of the ship was opento vacuum too. For the duration of the action they had beendeep in the guts of the ship, of course, safe in the core controlspace, sheltered by layers of shields and hull, senses protectedby screens, but - once the wreck had been judged safe - thecaptain, his Number Three and a couple of favoured ratings hadmade their way to the exterior, the better to appreciate the viewof their vanquished foe.

 The captain looked around, as if hoping to see some realcomet nuclei floating past. Taking a bearing, zooming in, hecould just make out the lights denoting the drives of his othertwo ships, ordered to return to the inner system once the engage­ment was over, two dim blue stars, untwinkling. Save those, allthat was visible nearby was the ship beneath them and the wrecktwo klicks away.

 A cold and lonely spot to die, the captain thought. A logical,sensible choice of hiding place for the abomination machine,but still not a site any living - or apparently living - thing raisedanywhere else would normally choose as a place to spend itslast moments.

 He handed the screen back to his Number Three and turnedhis principal eyes to look out at the hulk again, his rear reces­sional signal pit and secondary eye complex still facing the juniorofficer, flickering the words,

 Well, one mission-part accomplished. Lay in a return to systembase and, once the full contents of the abomination's memory have been processed, deploy AM charges sufficient to leave residue nogreater than elementary particle in size.

 Sir.

 Dismissed.

 *

 The ship accelerated smoothly but moderately hard, creating a distant humming roar. Fassin had a little pad under his rightforearm which sensed muscle movements there and adjusted thescreen across from him - above from him, now, it felt, as thecouch straightened out and the gee-suit supported him - andso he got a glimpse of Pirrintipiti as the ship turned away from Nasqueron and headed deeper in-system, to the next planetsunward, the more-or-less Earthlike Sepekte.

 On the screen, 'glantine's tropical capital was a toweredand shimmering smear draped across a scatter of dark greenislands set in a pale green sea. Odd, already to be missingPirri, he thought. He wouldn't have had a chance to set footout of the port there, but he'd been expecting the usual routineof transferring from a suborb to a tube train and then, some­where in the bowels of the vast stalk, the Equatower, waitingfor the lift up the cable to the satport and a space-capableship there. To be heading straight out from the Autumn Houseinto space just seemed wrong somehow, a curious disconnectof the soul.

 Trips to Sepekte usually took anywhere from under five daysto over a week at the standard one-gee acceleration, depending on planetary alignment. The ships were large and comfortable and you could move around normally, visiting restaurants andbars, screens and gyms and, on the bigger liners, even swim­ming pools. The weightless minutes in the middle were an inter­lude for fun (and, often, some rushed and oddly unsatisfactorysex). People from 'glantine sometimes found the double weightof standard gee a little uncomfortable, but it was pretty muchwhat they'd experience when they got to Sepekte anyway, so itwas kind of like getting in training.

 The pressure of what the screen told him was three, four andthen just over five gees settled into Fassin. The gee-suit wassensing his breaths, gently helping him inflate his lungs withouttoo much added effort.

 'Think I'll take,' First Officer Dicogra said, 'a snooze. Orwould you,' she asked, 'like to talk?'

 'Snooze away,' he told her. 'Thinking of taking a nap myself.'

 'Fine. Systems'll watch our vitals anyway. Till later, then.'

 'Pleasant dreams.'

 Fassin watched the screen show 'glantine drop away. Beyondit, revealed, was not initially the night of space or foamy washof stars, but instead the broad, sunlit face of Nasqueron, a mad, swirling dance of gases the colour of some fabulous desert butmoving in colossal ribbons like opposed streams of liquidaround a globe a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres across, a planet you could drop a thousand 'glantines or Sepektes orEarths into and never notice the difference; a not so little systemof its own within Ulubis system, a vast world that was almostas unlike home for any human as it was possible to imagine,and yet the place where Fassin had already spent most of hisunusual, sporadically paced life, and so, for all its alien scale,wild magnetic and radiation gradients, extremes of temperature,crushing pressures, unbreathable atmosphere and dangerously,unpredictably eccentric inhabitants, it was for Fassin as it wasfor his fellow Seers, something like home after all.

 He watched until it too started to shrink, until 'glantine wasa mere dot floating above its vast and banded ochre face, andthe brighter stars appeared around it, then switched the screen off, and slept.

 He woke. Four hours had passed. The pressure was the sameas it had been, the ship still roaring far away. He didn't need any more sleep, so he went into slowtime, just thinking.

 Everybody in Ulubis system knew where they were when theportal was destroyed. You knew because as soon as you heardyou realised you'd be staying in Ulubis for the next two anda half centuries at least. For most people, even the vast majority- ninety-nine per cent of them human - who would never havethe chance to travel out of system, that meant somethingprofound. It meant that they were here for the rest of theirlives. No dream they'd ever had or hope they'd entertainedabout seeing the rest of the galaxy would ever be reflected inreality.

 For others, it meant that loved ones, elsewhere in the restof the galaxy, on the far side of the vanished portal, were forever gone. Two hundred and fourteen years to Zenerre: over two centuries for light and therefore any sort of message or signal to travel from there to Ulubis; maybe three centuriesbefore the wormhole link was re-established, even if theEngineers set out from there with a portal-carrying ship almostimmediately.

 And who was truly to know if there were any Engineers or great ships left? Perhaps the Ulubis portal had not been alone,and all the rest had been attacked and destroyed at the same time. Maybe the Mercatoria itself was no more, maybe therewas no Complex, no more Arteria and no more portals leftanywhere and all that remained of the galaxy's latest great civil-isation were umpteen thousand separate little island systems, fractured and abandoned and alone.

 The usual wash of through-portal comms traffic just beforethe destruction had betrayed no hint of such a galaxy-wideattack. But then, there had been no hint more than ten minutesbefore of an attack on the Ulubis portal either, until the biggestfleet of Beyonder craft Ulubis had ever seen had swung glit­tering out of empty nowhere, throwing themselves against thesingle greatest concentration of ships and firepower anywherein the system, being obliterated in their hundreds, but - effec­tively ignoring the defending ships except where they were directly in their way - pummelling and battering their waythrough defensive screen after defensive screen, oblivious to harm, straight towards the portal mouth itself, finally erasingeverything around them in a flurry of immense antimatter explo­sions that alone announced to the system the scale and violence of what had taken place, creating a vanishingly brief cluster ofnovae in the facing skies of every inhabited surface, castingshadows far away, blinding those nearer-to and vaporising most of what was still left of the Beyonder fleet and many of theirpursuers.

 For a short while it looked as though they had failed, becausethe last line of defence had held and the portal had survived.

 The entire attack up to that point had been a feint, and thereal assault took place when a large ship - a few million tonnes of hollowed-out asteroid travelling at over ninety-nine per centof the speed of light - flicked in from the opposite direction.In a sense, it missed too, darting past the portal mouth a hundredmetres away and colliding with a collection of laser battlesatswhich hadn't even started to turn towards it when it smashedinto them, instantly annihilating them, the entire portalsurround, its sub-units and almost all its associated systems and creating another stunning detonation of light in the sky.

 None of which destroyed the portal; that was done by the relativistic mass of the sacrificed ship itself.

 Portals were only ever positioned at Lagrange points or otherorbits distant from large heavenly bodies because they needed a section of space-time that was relatively flat. Too great agradient - too near the gravity well of a planet or other large object - and they stopped working. Increase the S-T curve onlya little more and they imploded and disappeared altogether,usually violently. The hurtling asteroid-ship was so massive andits velocity so close to light speed that it had the same apparent mass as a planet the size of Sepekte. The passing of its gravitywell so close to the portal mouth, especially at that extremevelocity, was sufficient to collapse the portal and the 'holebeyond, sending one more cataclysmic pulse of light flashing throughout the system.

 The last few of the earlier attackers immediately fled but wereeither destroyed or were disabled and then self-destructed.

 Two days before the attack took place, Fassin had been sort ofin space, sort of on Sepekte, sitting in a revolving restaurant atthe summit of the Borquille Equatower having dinner withTaince Yarabokin, who was due to head back to the Summed Fleet Academy the following day after an extended compas­sionate leave following the death of her mother. Fassin had justcome out of a month-long trawl through some of the seedier,less salubrious entertainment palaces of 'skem, Sepekte's secondcity. He felt jaded. Old, even.

 He and Taince had kept in touch since the incident in theruined ship, though they'd never become especially close,despite a night spent together shortly afterwards. Saluus hadkind of drifted away from both of them subsequently, thenheaded off early to a finishing college half the galaxy away, thenspent decades being a problem playboy son to his vexed father- behaving more or less continually on a galactic scale the way Fassin did only intermittently on a systemic one - and returningto Ulubis very occasionally for brief, unannounced visits.

 A Guard Rescue suborb had arrived at the ruined ship lyingcrumpled on 'glantine's North Waste Land a few minutes behindthe Navarchy craft Taince had summoned. Its personnel had entered the alien ship and found Ilen's broken body. There wasan inquiry. Sal was fined by the civil authorities for violating the ship's interior more than had been strictly required for thepurposes of physical sanctuary from the external threat, whilethe Navarchy Military had awarded Taince extra course creditsfor her actions.

 Fassin found himself copping for some sort of civil bravery award thanks to Taince's testimony but managed to avoid theceremony. He never did mention the piece of twisted metal thatSal had stolen from the wreck, but Taince had broached thesubject herself over dinner in the Equatower. She'd known atthe time, she just hadn't found herself capable of being both­ered enough to take it off Sal again. Let him have his pathetictrophy.

 'Probably their equivalent of a door knob or a coat hook,'she said ruefully. 'But one gets you ten, by the time it was sittingin Sal's locker or on his desk it was the ship's control yoke orthe main-armament "fire" button.'

 Taince looked out at the distant horizon and near surface of Sepekte, sliding past as the restaurant revolved, providing theappearance of gravity in this gravity-cancelled habitat, anchoredat the space limit of a forty kilo-klick cable whose other endfell to ground in Borquille, Sepekte's capital city.

 'Shit, you knew all the time,' Fassin said, nodding. 'I supposeI should have expected that. Not much ever got past you.'

 Taince had gone on to become a high-flier in every sense,carving a perfect career through the Navarchy Military andbeing chosen for the Summed Fleet, one of the Mercatoria'shighest divisions and one into which very few humans had ever been invited. Commander Taince Yarabokin looked young, hadaged well.

 The three of them had.

 Sal, despite his multifarious debaucheries, could afford the very best treatments and plausibly access some supposedlyforbidden to him, so he looked like he'd lived through a lotfewer of the hundred and three years which had actually elapsed since Ilen's death. Lately there was even a rumour that he wasthinking of settling down, becoming a good son, learning the business, applying himself.

 Taince had spent decades at close to light speed pursuing theBeyonders' craft and attacking their bases, fighting quickly,ageing slowly.

 Fassin had joined the family firm and become a Slow Seer after all, so spent his own time-expanded decades conversingwith and gradually extracting information from the Dwellers ofNasqueron. He'd had, like Saluus, his own wild years, been a roaring lad ripping through the highs and dives of 'glantine,Sepekte and beyond, taking in a not so Grand Tour of his ownround some of the supposedly civilised galaxy's more colourfulregions, losing money and illusions, gaining weight and somesmall amount of wisdom. But his indulgences had been on asmaller scale than Sal's, he supposed, and certainly took placeover a shorter timescale. Before too long he came home, soberedup and calmed down, took the training and became a Seer.

 He still had his wild interludes, but they were few and farbetween, if never quite enough of either for the taste of his uncleSlovius.

 Even in the millennia-hallowed halls of Seerdom, he had kepton making waves, upsetting people. The trend over the lastfifteen hundred years - the years of Uncle Slovius's reign - had favoured virtual delving over the direct method. Virtual or remote delving meant staying comatose and closely cared-forin a clinic-clean Seer faculty complex on Third Fury, the close-orbit moon riding barely above the outer reaches of Nasqueron'shazy atmosphere, to communicate from there with the Dwellersbeneath by a combination of high-res NMR scanners, laser links,comms satellites and, finally, mechanical remotes which did thedirty dangerous bit, keeping close contact with the flights andflocks and pods and schools and individuals of the Dwellersthemselves.

 Fassin had been a ringleader in a small rebellion, insisting, with a few other young Seers, on sliding into cramped arrow­head gascraft, breathing in gillfluid, accepting tubes and valvesinto every major orifice and surrendering body and fate to alittle ship that contained the Seer, accepted the gees and poisonand radiation and everything else and took him or her physi­cally into the gas-giant's atmosphere, the better to earn the respect and confidence of the creatures who lived there, thebetter to do the job and learn the stuff.

 There had been deaths, setbacks, arguments, bannings and strikes, but eventually, largely on the back of unarguably better delving results and more raw data (unarguably better delvingresults in the sense that they were manifestly superior comparedwith what had gone before, not unarguably better in the sensethat the old guard couldn't claim this would all have happened anyway if everybody had just stuck to their ways, which were probably what had really prompted this long-overdue improve­ment in the first place) the youngsters had triumphed, anddelving the hard way, Real Delving, hands metaphorically dirty,became the norm, not the exception. It was, anyway, moreexciting, more risky but also so much more rewarding, morefun for the Seer concerned, as well as being more viewer-friendlyfor those who chose to pick up the edited, distilled, time-delayedfeed that the more progressive Seer houses had been putting outto the entsworks for the last half-millennium or so.

 'You have made it into something like a sport,' Slovius hadsaid sadly one day, when he and Fassin had been fishing togetherin a dust-boat on 'glantine's Sea of Fines. 'It used to be more of the mind.'

 Nevertheless, from being a steadfast, heels-in critic of the whole Real Delve movement, Slovius, who had always been quick to seize any opportunity to advance the interests of hisSept, had become a sort of - appropriately - remote champion,supporting Fassin and eventually putting the full weight of SeptBantrabal behind him and his fellow revolutionaries. That both Fassin and Slovius had been right, and their Sept flourished tobecome arguably the most productive and respected of thetwelve Septs of Ulubis system - and so by implication one of the foremost Seer houses in the galaxy - had been the singlemost satisfying achievement of Slovius's time as Chief Seer andpaterfamilias of Sept Bantrabal.

 Fassin was now arguably the best-known Seer in the system,especially after his time with the Tribe Dimajrian, the wild podof adolescent Dwellers he'd befriended and effectively becomepart of for a seeming century and a real half-dozen years. Hewas not yet even at the start of his prime by Seer reckoning butwas nevertheless already at the top of his game. He had beenborn three hundred and ninety years earlier, had lived barelyforty-five of those in body-time, and looked a decade younger.

 Sometimes he thought back to what had happened in theruined alien ship, and he looked at all that had happened to Saland Taince and himself, and reflected that it was as though theyhad all come away from that nightmare with a sort of bizarreblessing, an inverted curse, a trio of charmed lives, quite as if Ilen had unknowingly given up whatever golden future hadawaited her to add that weight of divided bounty to theirs.

 He and Taince parted with a kiss. She was heading to theportal and through the Complex to the far side of the galaxy,to the Fleet Academy to spend a year passing on her know­ledge. Fassin was going to the far side of Ulubis, whereNasqueron was at the time, to continue trying to extract know­ledge from the Dwellers.

 Taince was safely through the portal a day before it wasdestroyed. Fassin was on a liner, a day out of Sepekte. He under­stood even as the news was still coming in that he might neversee her again.

 Sal, who might so easily have been away, was at home withhis long-suffering father when the attack took place. After tencatatonic hours of disbelief he spent a month mourning his lostfreedoms, trying to sink, fumigate and fuck his sorrows awayin what passed for the pleasure-pits of Ulubis. In fact, Sepekte, and especially Borquille, had perfectly disrespectable bars,smoke houses and bordellos - Borquille had a whole district,Boogeytown, set aside for just such recreations - but the pointwas they were not the rest of the civilised galaxy. Fass had bumped into Saluus in a Boogeytown spike bar once, thoughSal had been so out of it that he hadn't recognised his one-time friend.

 Then Sal straightened out, cut his hair, lost a few tattoos anda lot of acquaintances and at the start of the next working weekturned up bang on time at the company offices, where peoplewere still running around in a frenzy, spooked by all thenumerous false alarms, expecting to be invaded at any moment.Right from the start, the questions were: Why? Why us?What next? And: Anybody else?

 Had something like this happened everywhere? It would take over two centuries for Ulubis to discover if it was part of a wider catastrophe or had been singled out for itsown specific disaster. From being no more remote than anyother system at the end of a single wormhole - and so ordersof magnitude less remote than the many hundreds of thousands of Faring systems still to be connected or reconnected - Ulubis,its principal planet Sepekte, its three significant inhabited moonsincluding 'glantine, its thousands of artificial habitats and the twenty billion souls that the whole system contained were fullyas remote and exposed as they'd always seemed from any casualglance at a galactic star chart.

 The Guard, Navarchy Military and surviving units of theUlubis Ambient Squadron repaired and regrouped. Martial lawwas declared and a War Emergency Plan actioned which turnedthe bulk of the system's advanced productive capacity to weaponsand war craft. As a consequence, Kehar Heavy Industries,Saluus's father's company, expanded and prospered beyond itsfounder's most avaricious fantasies, and Saluus went from wastrelheir to a great fortune to inheritor-in-waiting of a vast one.

 In the system hierarchy, thought was given at the highestlevels to attempting to construct a wormhole of Ulubis's own and a carrier fleet to take one end of it to Zenerre. But asidefrom the vast cost and the point - assuming a portal would beheading in the other direction before too long - that it wouldbe a waste of time and effort which would bring reconnectionno quicker, there was one clinching argument that would applyuntil either no signal arrived from Zenerre or word came of anutter breakdown in civil society: in the Mercatoria onlyEngineers were allowed to make and emplace wormholes.

 There were sanctions and punishments for those systems andrulers who even began a 'hole-creation programme withoutexplicit permission, and that permission had not been presentin the Mercatoria's pre-agreed War Emergency Plan for Ulubis.

 Back in space, distributed around the Lagrange point where the portal had lain, the few pieces of recovered Beyonder ships indicated that the portal's attackers had been made up from the same three groups which had troubled Ulubis and some of thenearby volumes for thousands of years: Transgress, the TrueFree and the BiAlliance, for this one occasion working in concertand in far greater numbers than they ever had before.

 Anxious, on edge, waiting for whatever a Beyonder invasionmight bring, the people of the system reverted to a state some­thing more like that of Earth's rHumanity before it had beenfully brought into the galactic community.

 It was a truism that all civilisations were basically neuroticuntil they made contact with everybody else and found theirplace within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believedthat they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societieswere possessed of both an inflated sense of their own impor­tance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale andapparent emptiness of the universe. Even knowing that the restof the galactic community did exist - at least in some form, evenin a worst case - the culture of Ulubis system shifted fraction­ally towards that earlier, pre-ascensionary state.

 Restricted by martial law in new and annoying but some­times oddly exciting ways, coming to terms with their suddenisolation and newly appreciated vulnerability, people lived morefor the short term, clutching at what pleasures and rewardsmight be available today, just in case there really was notomorrow. No great breakdown in society took place and therewere no significant riots or rebellions, though there wereprotests and crack-downs, and, as the authorities admitted muchlater - much later - Mistakes Were Made. But the system heldtogether rather than fell apart, and many people would lookback on that strange, unsettled epoch with a sort of nostalgia. There had been something feverish but vivid about the time, areconnection with life after the disconnection with everybodyelse, which led to what even looked from some angles suspi­ciously like a cultural renaissance for what people were now starting to call the Ulubine Disconnect.

 Fassin missed out on most of the excitement, taking everyopportunity he could to go delving, as if frightened that he might not be able to do so in the future. Even when he wasliving back in real-time he was insulated from the extremes ofthe system-wide turmoil of fear and nervous energy by being on 'glantine rather than Sepekte or its ring habitats, then byliving within the Sept, at one of its five seasonal houses, ratherthan in Pirrintipiti or any of the planet-moon's other majorcities. He still travelled, spending occasional holidays in Pirrior off-'glantine, and that was when he felt the strange new atmosphere of freneticism most keenly.

 Mostly, though, he was in Nasqueron, nestled in a fragilelittle gascraft, occasionally at normal life-speed, flying with the younger Dwellers, riding the gases alongside them, buffeted bythe gas-giant-girdling, planet-swallowing super-winds and whirling hyper-storms of the planet, sometimes - more oftenand much more productively, though far less excitingly - floating sedately in a study or a library in one of the millionsof Dweller cities with one of the more elderly and scholarlyDwellers, who alone in the system seemed perfectly uncon­cerned about the portal's demise. A few of the (rare) polite onesexpressed the sort of formal shame-but-there-you-go sympathy people tend to exhibit when an acquaintance's elderly relativeexpires peacefully, but that was about it.

 Fassin supposed that it was foolish to expect anything else from a race that was as ancient as the Dwellers claimed to be,who had supposedly explored the galaxy several times over atvelocities of only a few per cent of light speed long before the planetary nebula that gave birth to Earth, Jupiter and the Sunhad even formed out of the debris of still more antique genera­tions of stars, and who still maintained they felt vaguely restrictednot by that absolute limit on the conventional pace of travel but rather by the modest scale of the galaxy that these staggeringly long-ago, almost wilfully leisurely sets of voyages had revealed.

 The days, weeks and months of waiting and preparation for aninvasion became a year. The Beyonder attacks, rather than increasing, faded away almost to nothing, as though the portalassault had been one last insane hurrah rather than the logical,if wasteful, precursor to a war of conquest. The years added up towards a decade and gradually people and institutions relaxedand came to believe that the invasion might never come. Themajority of the emergency powers lapsed, though the armedforces remained in high numbers and on high alert, sensors andpatrols sweeping the volumes of space around Ulubis, seeking a threat that seemed to have disappeared.

 In four directions lay almost empty intergalactic nothing­ness: barren volumes holding a few ancient, exhausted cindersuns with life-free systems or none at all, a scattering of dustand gas clouds, brown dwarfs, neutron stars and other debris- some of these, or the space in between, technically life-supporting for Slow exotics, Cincturia and Enigmatics, butpatently devoid of any species who cared or could even under­stand the fate or concerns of the people of Ulubis - but noallies, no one to help or offer assistance or support, and certainlyno portal connections.

 Down-arm, nearly parallel with the galaxy's wispy limit,heading into the thickening mass of gas and nebulae and stars, was Zenerre. Inwards, between Ulubis and the galactic centre spread a vast mass of Disconnect; the Cluster Epiphany FiveDisconnect, millions of stars spread throughout cubic light-centuries which, it was believed, still supported worlds that hadonce been part of the civilised, connected, 'hole-networkedgalactic community until over seven thousand years earlier andthe Arteria Collapse which had preceded the War of the NewQuick and all the excitement and the woes that had flowedfrom it.

 * * *

 Two centuries, one decade, four years and twenty days after theportal attack, exactly when it might have been expected, the firstsignal arrived from Zenerre, the wavefront of what would becomea constant stream of information from the rest of the connectedgalaxy. Where, Ulubis was informed, life was going on as usual.The attack on its portal had been unique, and all was basicallywell with the Mercatoria. Attacks and incursions by the variousBeyonder groups continued throughout the civilised galaxy, asdid operations against them, but these were on the usual mainly nuisance-value level that the Beyonder Wars had evidenced forthousands of years, the tactically distressing and annoyinglywasteful but strategically irrelevant distributed backgroundmicro-violence that people had started calling the Hum.

 Relief, puzzlement and a vague sense of victimisation spreadthroughout Ulubis system.

 The EngineershipEst-taun Zhiffir, portal-carrying, set outfrom Zenerre for Ulubis less than a year after the disaster, witha travel time initially given as 307 years, later reduced by incre­ments to level out at 269 as the Eship upped its velocity evencloser to light speed, the Engineers aboard fine-tuning thesystems which insulated the hauled portal from the effects ofits own and the ship's relativistic mass. People in Ulubis system relaxed, the last vestiges of martial law were hidden away frompublic sight again. Those many born after the portal's destruc­tion wondered what it would be like to have a connection tothe rest of the galaxy, to this semi-mythical meta-civilisationthey'd heard so much about.

 The flip-over point came, and Fassin was vaguely aware of itas the pressure on his chest and flesh and limbs faded away overthe course of a few seconds, replacing that feeling of oppres­ sion with a sensation of sudden blood-roaring bloatedness ashis body struggled to cope with the change. He kept his eyes closed. Almost immediately there was a faint trace of force, a gentle push from somewhere beneath his head, then weight­lessness again, and a few moments later a matching tug fromsomewhere beneath his feet, and then weight returning, pres­sure quickly building, until the roaring in his head faded and became the distant thunder of the ship again.

 *

 The Archimandrite Luseferous, standing before the ruins of thecity, stooped and dug gloved fingers into the soft earth by hisfeet, wrenching out a handful of soil. He held it to his face fora while, staring at it, then brought it close to his nose and smelled it, then let it fall and dusted off his gloves while staring downat the huge crater where a large part of the city had been.

 The crater was still filling from the sea, a slow curling curveof brown-white water spilling from the estuary beyond. Thewaterfall disappeared into the seat of the crater in a vast cloud-bank of vapour, and steam rose everywhere from the rolling, tumbling confusion of waters as the great rocky bowl cooled.A massive trunk of steam, three kilometres or more across,rose into the calm pastel sky, rolling up through thin layersof cloud, flat-heading where it achieved the middle reaches of the atmosphere.

 It was the Archimandrite's conceit, where a severe lesson hadto be taught on a planet capable of supporting such a mark, that a city by the sea, which was either itself guilty of resisting orjudged by him symbolic of resistance shown by others on theplanet, be remade in the image of his beloved Junch City, backon Leseum9 IV. If a people would resist him, either while under­going conquest or enduring occupation, they would suffer, ofcourse, but they would be part of something greater at the sametime and they would, even in death, even in the death of muchof their city, be the unwitting and unwilling participants in what was, indeed, a work of art. For here, seen from this hillside, wasthere not a new Faraby Bay? Was that slot through which thewaters thundered, shaking the ground, not another Force Gap?Was that piling tower of steam, first drawn straight up then stroked to the horizon, not a kind of signature, his very ownflourish?

 The Bay was overly circular, certainly, and the slot a merebreak in a modest crater wall composed largely of estuarinemud, presenting no aesthetic match at all for the great kilo­ metre-high cliffs of the real Force Gap - indeed, the wholesetting for this new image of junch City entirely lacked theoriginal's dramatic ring of surrounding mountains, and this little parkland hill on which he stood - with his admirals, generalsand guard waiting obediently behind, allowing him this momentof reflection - was frankly a poor substitute for the vertical cliffof the Sheer Citadel and its magnificent views.

 Nevertheless, an artist had to work with what there was to hand, and where there had once been just another swarmingseaside city, lying tipped upon the land, variously hilled, messilydistributed round a tributary river, with the all usual urbansprawl, great buildings, docks, breakwaters and anchorages - inother words what it had always been, roughly, no matter thatthere had been earlier so-called catastrophes like earthquakes orfloods or great fires or bombardment from sea or air or earlier invasion - now there was an image of a fair and distant place,now there was a new kind of savage beauty, now there was afit setting for a new city reborn in the image of his sovereignty,now there was a sort of - even - healing joining with thoseother peoples and places who had surrendered to his will, insuffering and in image, for this majestic crater, this latest work, was just the most recent of his creations, one more jewel on astring stretching back to the primacy of elegance that was JunchCity.

 Anyone with sufficient self-belief, enough ruthlessness and(Luseferous believed himself modest enough to admit) anadequate supply of luck could - if the will was there and thetimes required such determination - conquer and destroy. Judging how much to destroy for the effect one wished to achieve,knowing when to be ruthless, when to show leniency, even whento exhibit beguiling, rage-sapping generosity and a touch ofhumour; that required a more measured, a more subtle, a more- he could think of no other word for it -civilised touch. Hehad that touch. The record spoke for itself. To then go on fromthere and use the sad necessity of destruction to create art, toform an image of a better place and forge symbolic unity . . . thatwas on another level again, that elevated the mere war-maker, the mere politician, to the status of creator.

 Tendrils of smoke rose all around the central column of steam,dark paltry vines adorning a huge pale trunk. These markedwhere defending aircraft had fallen and where fires had beenstarted by the crater-weapon's ground shock, no doubt. Part ofthe artistry involved in such a work was creating a great declivitywithout utterly destroying all around it (a new, reborn city hadto grow here, after all). Some sophistication of weaponry wasrequired to achieve such precision. His armaments expertsattended to such details.

 The Archimandrite Luseferous looked about him, smiling tohis chiefs of staff, all standing respectfully at his heel, lookinga little nervous to be here in the fresh air of another newlysubject planet. (Yet was it not good to breathe in that fresh air, for all its alien scents? Did those strange new odours not them­selves mean that another treasure had been added to their ever-increasing domain?) Above and behind, bristling war crafthovered and hummed, attended by small clouds of sensory andweapon platforms. Spread in a ring all around were his personal guards, most lying or kneeling on the grass, their darkly glintingweaponry poised. A few in military exoskels lumbered around or squatted, splayed feet squashing into the earth.

 At the foot of the hill, beyond another ring of guards, beneatha watchful buzz of guard drones, the refugees moved like a slowriver of dun and grey.

 Stilters; groundbats, whule. A Mercatorial species. Disconnectedall these millennia, certainly, but still a Mercatorial species. Luseferous looked up into the pale green sky, imagining night,the veils of stars, and the one particular sun - pointed out tohim from orbit just forty hours ago, while the invasion forceswere being prepared for the initial drop - growing steadily closeras they crawled and fought their way towards it, which wascalled Ulubis.

 *

 In the bright, golden-hued air of Sepekte, with the Borquille Equatower a thin stem in the hazy distance, the little Navarchyship approached the palace complex, sliding through an ancientforest of kilometres-tall atmospheric power columns andbetween more modest but still impressive administration andaccommodation towers. It disappeared into a wide, gentlysloped tunnel set into the reception plaza in front of the enor­mous ball that was the palace of the Hierchon, an eight-hundred-metre sphere modelled after Nasqueron itself by a long-departedSarcomage, complete with individual bands of slowly contra-rotating floors all sliding round a stationary inner core.Changing orange-red, brown and ochre swirls of pattern,convincingly like the view of the distant gas-giant's cloud topsseen from space, moved across the face of the palace, hidingwindows and balconies, sensors and transmitters.

 'Major Taak? Lieutenant Inesiji, palace guard. This way,please. Quick as we can, sir.' The speaker, whose voice soundedlike a human child talking with a mouthful of ball bearings, wasa jajuejein, a creature which in repose resembled an insectiletumbleweed sixty or seventy centimetres in diameter. This one had drawn itself up to Fassin's two-metre height, marshalling a host of twiglike components coloured dark green and steel blue to resemble a sort of openwork head like a bird's nest - thank­fully it had not tried to make a face - and had balanced itselfon two vaguely leglike stalks. The rest of its body, offeringglimpses of the reception cavern's floor beyond, was just acylinder, adorned with belts of soft-looking material and smallmetallic components that might have been jewellery, gadgets orweapons. It half-turned, half-flowed to a small open cart where the ship's whule rating was already depositing Fassin's luggage.

 Fassin turned and waved to the groggily cheerful Dicogra,joined the jajuejein in the cart and was whisked away througha brief security reception area to a lift and a curving corridorwhich took him to a suite of rooms with what looked like areal outside view of the city - north, with pale, jagged hills inthe far distance. Lieutenant Inesiji placed Fassin's bags on thebed with fluid grace and informed him that he had exactly three-fifths of an hour to freshen up, don his ceremonial court clothesand present himself outside his door, whereupon he would be escorted to the audience chamber.

 Fassin blipped a safe-arrival message to Bantrabal and thendid as he'd been told.

 The circular audience chamber was glittering and warm, walls of white gold sparkling under a ceiling-filling galaxy-shapedcloud of tiny sharp lights impersonating stars. Lieutenant Inesijishowed Fassin to a position on one of the many platforms setinto the shallow, stepped bowl of the chamber. A human-conforming seat malleabled its way up from the floor. He satin it - stiffly, in his bulky court robes - and the lieutenant toldhim, 'Please stay where you are for now, sir' in a sort of gargled whisper, executed what might have been a bow, turned intowhat looked very like a cartwheel, and rolled away back up theslope of gangway to an exit.

 Fassin looked around. The chamber looked like it might holda thousand people, but he was one of only about two dozen people present, distributed around the shallowly conical spaceas though to maximise the distance between each individual.Humans - all, like him, in cumbersome, rather gaudy court dress- just about outnumbered the others, but he saw another jajue­jein - balled, either resting or sleeping, criss-crossed with irides­cent ribbons - two whule sitting like angular grey tents coveredin silver flowers, both looking at him, a pair of quaup, one ofthe two-metre-long red-tan ellipses floating and also looking at him (well, certainly pointing at him), and the other stood on itsend, either also snoozing or possibly at attention - Fassin'sknowledge of alien body language was wide but shallow except where Dwellers were concerned. Three large environment suitscontaining waterworlders completed the non-human contin­gent: two of the esuits, looking like aquamarine impersonations of the quaups, most likely contained kuskunde; the third was amatt black lozenge the size of a small bus, radiating warmth.That esuit would almost certainly contain an symbioswarmIfrahile.

 In the centre of the chamber, at its deepest point, just beforea set of wide, tall, concentric platforms which broke thesymmetry of the space, there was an incongruous-looking devicewhich looked like an ancient iron cooking pot: a black-belliedurn a couple of metres in diameter, capped with a shallow domeand sitting on a tripod of stubby legs on the buttery sheen ofthe solid gold floor. Its surface was pinstriped with thin vanes, but otherwise it resembled something almost prehistoric. Fassin had never seen anything like it before. He shivered, despite thewarmth of the chamber.

 The quaup which might have been sleeping suddenly flickedlevel with a ripple of lateral mantle and turned towards its fellowcreature thirty metres away, which swivelled to look back at it.Expression patterns flashed across their face nacelles, then theymoved towards each other, hovering together, faces signal-flick­ering conversation for the few seconds it took for a small flutterdrone to drop from the ceiling and - in spoken voice, withchirps and squeaks - apparently ordered them back to theirplaces. The quaup shriek-popped back at the mechanical remote, but split up, drifting away to their earlier positions.

 They had just about resumed their allotted patches when agroup of half a dozen jajuejein technicians, awkward in theirshape-constraining formal court gear of dimly iridescentribbons, entered from a door at one side of the chamber floor,pushing large pallets full of highly techy-looking equipmentwhich they positioned in a rough circle round the cooking-pot device. Their body ribbons marked them out as Shrievalty,Fassin suddenly realised, wondering whether as a major of the Ocula he was senior enough to order them around. Asimilar-sized group - human Cessorian priests from their garb,though in their court best it was hard to be sure - could they even be Lustrals? - approached from the opposite direction. The priests stood close behind the technicians, who ignoredthem and busied themselves setting up and adjusting their arcane apparatus.

 Finally, an alarming group of four human and four whuletroopers in full mirror-finish power-armour stalked in, completewith a variety of heavy infantry weapons. The ambience of thechamber changed; even across species the mood almost tangiblyaltered from one of some puzzlement and a degree of expecta­tion to one of alarm, even fear. The two quaup were exchangingrapid large-scale face signals, the Ifrahile esuit rose hissing fromits platform and the whule pair were alternating between staringat each other and glaring down at their mirror-armoured kin. Who brought armed forces into an audience chamber? Was this a trap? Had all here offended the Hierchon? Were they allto be murdered?

 The soldiers deployed in a wide circle around the Shrievaltyand Cessoria, standing at ease, weaponry poised, armour-locked.They were facing inwards, towards the black cooking-potdevice. The mood in the room seemed to relax a little.

 Then the series of platforms beyond the giant urn and the various groups of functionaries shimmered once and dropped into the floor, to re-emerge some moments later, crowded withpeople.

 An outer ring of white-uniformed human court officials, aninner ring of species-varied, extravagantly emblazoned courtiersand an outer core, again mixed-species, of Ascendancy,Omnocracy, Administrata and Cessoria - Fassin recognisedmost of them from the news and the few formal visits he'd hadto make to the court over the years - formed semicircular tiers of importance around the being in the centre: the Hierchon Ormilla himself, resplendent in his giant platinum-sheatheddiscus of an environment suit, floating humming just above the highest platform, the dark creature's great gaping face visiblethrough the suit's forward diamond window amongst roilingclouds of crimson gas. Seven metres high, three wide, the suitwas by some margin the largest and most impressive of the micro-environments in the chamber. It quickly took on a frostedlook, as humidity in the air condensed on its deep-chilledsurfaces.

 As the Hierchon and his attendants appeared, Fassin's seatgave a warning vibration and began to sink back into the plat­form beneath. Fassin took the hint and stood, then bowed, whilethe various other people in the chamber performed their equi­valent actions. The giant esuit lowered fractionally so that itsbase touched the platform, and Fassin's seat rose smoothly fromthe platform again.

 The Hierchon Ormilla was an oerileithe: a gas-giant dweller,but - important distinction, this, to all concerned - not aDweller, even if the shape of his esuit made him look like one.Ormilla had ruled the Ulubis system since his investiture nearlysix thousand years earlier, long before the humans who nowmade up the bulk of its populace had arrived. He was gener­ally thought to be a competent if unimaginative governor, exer­cising what leeway a Hierchon had within the Mercatorialsystem with caution, sense and, on occasion, even a degree ofcompassion. His rule since the portal's destruction had, by theestimation of the officially sanctioned media, been a humblingcombination of breathtaking majesty, heroic, utterly exemplaryfortitude and a touching, steadfast solidarity with his humancharges. Unkinder, unsanctioned, often human critics mighthave accused him of betraying an early disposition towardsauthoritarianism and even paranoid repression, eventuallyfollowed later by a more composed and lenient attitude, when he started listening to his advisers again.

 Looking more carefully at the high-ups present, Fassin realised that, basically, the gang was all here. Apart fromOrmilla himself, the Hierchon's two most senior deputies, the Peregals Tlipeyn and Emoerte were in attendance, as was themost senior member of the Propylaea to survive the portal'sdestruction, sub-master Sorofieve, the top Navarchy officer,Fleet Admiral Brimiaice, Guard-General Thovin, First SecretaryHeuypzlagger of the Administrata, Colonel Somjomion of theShrievalty - his own ultimate superior officer for the durationof the current emergency, Fassin supposed - and Clerk-RegnantVoriel of the Cessoria. The absolute elite of the system.

 Fassin looked at the pot-bellied stove device squatting on thegolden floor, and at the heavily armed troopers, and thoughtwhat a perfect opportunity was presenting itself for a completedecapitation of the system's top brass.

 'This is an extraordinary session of the Mercatorial Court ofUlubis, before the Hierchon Ormilla,' an official announcedover the chamber's PA, voice thundering. 'The HierchonOrmilla!' the official shouted, as though concerned that peoplehadn't heard him the first time.

 The official was speaking the human version of Standard, the galaxy's lingua franca. Standard had been chosen as an inter-species, pan-galactic language over eight billion years ago. Dwellers had been the main vector in its spread, though they made a point of emphasising that it was not theirs originally.They had one very ancient, informal vernacular and anothereven more ancient formal language of their own, plus lots thathad survived somehow from earlier times or been made up inthe meantime. These latter came and went in popularity as suchthings tended to.

 'Oh no, there was a competition,' the Dweller guide\mentorY'sul had explained to Fassin on his first delve, hundreds ofyears ago. 'Usual thing; lots of competing so-called universal standards. There was a proper full-scale war after one linguistic disagreement - a grumous and a p'Liner species, if memoryserves - and after that came the usual response: inquiries,missions, meetings, reports, conferences, summits.

 'What we now know as Standard was chosen after centuriesof research, study and argument by a vast and unwieldycommittee composed of representatives of thousands of species,at least two of which became effectively extinct during the courseof the deliberations. It was chosen, astonishingly, on its merits,because it was an almost perfect language: flexible, descriptive,uncoloured (whatever that means, but apparently it's important),precise but malleable, highly, elegantly complete yet primed forexternal-term-adoption and with an unusually free but logicallink between the written form and the pronounced which couldeasily and plausibly embrace almost any set of phonemes, scints,glyphs or pictals and still make translatable sense.

 'Best of all, it didn't belong to anybody, the species whichhad invented it having safely extincted themselves millions ofyears earlier without leaving either any proven inheritors orsignificant mark on the greater galaxy, save this sole linguisticgem. Even more amazingly, the subsequent conference toendorse the decision of the mega-committee went smoothly andagreed all the relevant recommendations. Take-up and accept­ance were swift and widespread. Standard became the first and so far only true universal language within just a few Quick-mean generations. Set a standard for pan-species cooperationthat everybody's been trying to live up to ever since.

 'Which is not to say that everybody everywhere loves itwithout qualification. Amongst my own species in particular,resistance to its use continues to this day, and individual obses­sives and small and indeed quite large groups and networks ofenthusiasts are forever coming up with new and, they claim, even better universal languages. Some Dwellers persist inregarding Standard as an outrageous alien imposition and a symbol of our craven surrender to galactic fashion.

 'Such persons tend to speak ancient formal. Or at least theydo where they haven't invented their own unique and gener­ally utterly incomprehensible language.'

 Uncle Slovius himself, on what, fittingly, had turned out tobe his final delve, had accompanied Fassin on this, the youngman's first. 'How perfectly typical,' he'd observed later. 'OnlyDwellers could have a completely fair competition eight billionyears ago and still be arguing over the result.'

 Fassin smiled at the thought and looked round the giant audi­torium as the official's words echoed and faded amongst theprecious metals and sumptuous clothing. He thought it was allvery impressive, in a slightly camp, almost vulgar way. Hewondered how much tedious ceremony and baroque speechi­fying they would now have to sit through before anything ofnote happened or was said. He did a quick count of the bodies in the chamber. There were well over twice the thirty that theemissarial projection had told him to expect.

 A tap-screen appeared on a stalk out of the platform surfaceand positioned itself in front of him, flicking into life with searchand note facilities enabled, but no audio or visual record. Fassintapped a symbol to confirm that he was there. Round the circularchamber, the others were also being presented with screens or their species-relevant alternative.

 'You are here to witness the transmission of a signal from theEngineershipEst-taun Zhiffir,' Ormilla's deep, synthesisedvoice said calmly. 'We are informed that it is, of necessity, inthe form of an Artificial Intelligence construct which will bedestroyed after the audience has finished.' Ormilla paused, tolet this sink in. Fassin thought he just hadn't heard right. 'How you use the information you are about to learn is a matter ofduty and conscience,' Ormilla told them. 'How you came byit is not; any revelation regarding the signal's form is punish­able by death. Begin.'

 An AI? A conscious machine? An abomination? Were theyserious? Fassin couldn't believe it. The entire history of theMercatoria was the record of its implacable persecution anddestruction of AIs and the continual, laborious, zealouslypursued effort to prevent them ever again coming into existencewithin the civilised galaxy. That was what the Lustrals were all about; they were the AI hunters, the remorseless, fanatic perse­cutors of machine intelligence and any and all research into it,and yet here they were, calmly watching the cooking-pot deviceand the technicians surrounding it.

 A semi-transparent image flickered in the air above the dark machine in the centre of the chamber. The hologram was of ahuman male dressed in the uniform of an Admiral of theSummed Fleet. Fassin hadn't even known that one of his specieshad risen to such impressive heights. The human admiral wasan old, well-built man with a heavily lined face. Bald, of course,but sporting a heavily tattooed scalp. He wore, or his imageappeared to wear, a high-rank space-combat suit, its helmet components in stowed configuration round the neck and shoul­ders. Various insignia on the surface of the suit confirmed withno discernible subtlety that the Admiral was an extremely important military person.

 'Thank you, Hierchon Ormilla,' the image said, then seemedto look straight at Fassin, who felt startled for a moment beforerealising that the image probably appeared to be looking directlyat everybody in the chamber. He certainly hoped so. 'I repre­sent Admiral Quile of the Summed Fleet, commanding the ThirdMedium Squadron of the battle fleet accompanying theEngineershipEst-taun Zhiffir on its journey towards Ulubissystem, Fleet Admiral Kisipt commanding,' the projection said in a calm, no-nonsense voice.

 Battle fleet?thought Fassin. You didn't send a battle fleet to accompany an Eship, portal-carrying or not, did you? Theyusually travelled with a few Guard ships or one or two unitsof the Navarchy Military plus a single small Summed Fleet craftsometimes for ceremonial purposes. He was no military expert,but even he knew this sort of stuff, just from catching news­casts of at-the-time-recent connections and reconnections. He watched the military on the semicircular podia closely. Yep,looked like they were startled by this news, too.

 'I am to dispense information, and orders,' the hologram said.'Then I will answer questions. Then I will be destroyed.Information first. Intelligence we have received strongly indi­cates that Ulubis system will, probably within a year andpossibly within months of this signal reaching you, become thetarget of a full-scale invasive assault originating from the ClusterEpiphany Five Disconnect.'

 The hologram paused, appearing to listen. There was a certainsense of stillness, even of shock in the chamber, but no gaspsor expressions of fear or incredulity that Fassin could hear.

 He scanned the people in the chamber, trying to work out if he was the only person present to whom this news might comeas a surprise. Face flickers from the quaup, big staring looksbetween the whule, perhaps a few rather wide-eyed expressionsamongst the tech people down near the dark AI machine. Someof the more readable courtiers looked a little stunned. The Ifrahile esuit might have wobbled fractionally. Fassin's hand was movingtowards the tap-screen when it lit up with a diagram of the galacticlocal volume, about a thousand years in diameter and centred on Cluster Epiphany Five, the millions-strong mass of stars core-infrom the isolated wisp of suns near the end of which lay Ulubis.

 'Indeed, our strategists put at about six per cent the possi­bility that by the time this signal arrived the invasion wouldalready have happened.' The hologram looked around thechamber and smiled. 'I am glad to see that is not the case.' Thesmile disappeared. 'On the other hand I had hoped, when theoriginal of this signal was recorded, that I would be telling youthat the invasion was still three to five years away. Sincebecoming embodied here I've been given access to some of thereal-time intelligence you've been gathering and have had nochoice but to plump for an estimate that gives you even lesstime to prepare than we'd been hoping for.' The image pausedbriefly.

 'The E-5 Discon was already known to be expanding aggres­sively. Deep-space monitors have been picking up blossomingeighth-power-level weapon-blink for several hundred years,centred on the Leseum systems.' The image looked around the chamber. 'Space battles and high-megatonne nukes, in otherwords. All the signs are of a rogue hegemony, possibly underthe thrall of a human calling himself the ArchimandriteLuseferous. He was once genuinely of the Cessoria, though atthe rank of Hariolator, not Archimandrite, so it would appearhe's promoted himself. In any case, I think we may now counthim apostate.' The hologram smiled thinly. 'The Leseum systemswere until not all that long ago the last remaining connectedpart of the Epiphany Five region. However, that wormholeportal fell victim to a minor action of the Strew, leaving the whole volume completely cut off from civilisation.' The thinsmile faded.

 'Ten days ago from the time this signal was sent an inva­sion force out of the E-5 Discon comprising several hundredcapital ships plus retinue and troop carriers attacked theRuanthril system, inward from the E-5 Cluster. We assume it came as a surprise to them that Ruanthril had just received a new portal and been connected to the Mercatoria. It had notbeen part of the Complex before, which may help explain their miscalculation. In any event, elements of the Summed Fleet were present when the E-5 forces attacked. The attack wasbeaten off, with heavy losses on both sides.' At this, Fassinsaw a look of something that certainly seemed like conster­nation pass over the face-parts of the Fleet Admiral Brimiaice.'Yes,' the image said, as though responding. 'We were surprisedtoo, frankly, and just had insufficient ships. Even moredistressingly, the portal was subsequently destroyed.' Here, Fleet Admiral Brimiaice, a quaup, assumed the blank face of- if Fassin recalled his Facial [or equivalent] Expressions andBody Language of Mercatorial Species 101 course - vicariouslyshamed shock.

 'Before that happened,' the hologram continued, 'intelligencefrom the captured enemy flagship was transmitted into theComplex. It included a personal record belonging to their equiv­alent of a Grand-Admiral - the invasion fleet's SupremeCommander - in which he recorded for posterity or his memoirshis puzzlement that so much of the vast military machine of which he was so proud to be a part was being directed notwhere it would carry the most weight or help capture thegreatest number of systems in the shortest possible time - inother words, towards where the greatest mass of stars were, spin-ward, back, up, down and especially core-ward - but awayfrom those regions, towards the almost empty galactic outskirts, towards the Southern Tendril Reefs, towards Stream Quaternaryand the Ulubis system, or "the shit-nailed anus-probing fingerat the end of a withered arm", as he colourfully described it.'

 Fassin nearly laughed. Most of the officials on the main cere­monial platforms, led by the humans, registered shock, horror or outrage in some form. The Hierchon's esuit rolled back half a metre, as though physically struck.

 The image took its time to look around the chamber. 'Yes,unflattering. My apologies. You will be happy to know that thegentleman who was the source of this memorable image iscurrently helping the Combined Forces IntelligenceInquisitariat with its inquiries.'

 Fassin watched a few slightly forced expressions of satisfac­tion appear.They really didn't know any of this before, hethought. He'd assumed the Hierchon and his chums would havebeen granted some sort of sneak preview earlier, but this seemedto be as new to them as it was to him.

 'We also, of course, have the pre-invasion probing-sequenceprofile for the E-5 Discon's attempted conquest of Ruanthril,'the hologram said, 'plus those of several other systems attackedby the same force-mix. The musings of the invasion fleet's commander provide credible reason to believe Ulubis is undersignificant threat. The comparison of the pre-attack probing-sequence profile for Ruanthril with the recent raids on and other hostile actions within Ulubis system leads to the conclusion thatsaid threat is imminent, within the time-frame of a few months to less than a year and a half. There is a long-accepted, high-consistency Beyonder attack profile, and the aggressions Ulubissystem has been experiencing over the last three years are anom­alous to that.'

 Fassin suspected that this was a subtle criticism of the systemintelligence and strategy services, and especially the Navarchy's.Fleet Admiral Brimiaice looked unnaturally still, as thoughtrying not to draw any unnecessary attention to himself. Theinformation also pointed to something of a cover-up. LikeVerpych, Fassin had thought these 'anomalous' attacks hadbegun just over a year ago; this AI had been given access toinformation indicating that they had been going on for two years before that. Well, that would come as no surprise to anyone. Being spoon-fed rosy-hued misinformation by theauthorities was no more than people had come to expect - andpre-emptively discount. They only got suspicious whenpresented with what looked like the plain unvarnished truth.

 'I do have more to say,' the image above the cooking-potdevice told the assembled listeners. 'However, I sense that someof you are already anxious to ask questions, and so at this pointI would like to invite queries regarding what you have heardso far. No need to introduce yourselves, by the way - I knowwho you all are.'

 Everybody looked at the Hierchon, who obligingly boomed,'Machine, what percentage of likelihood pertains to this inva­sion?'

 The hologram did not look particularly impressed with thisfirst question. It might even have sighed.

 Fassin only half listened to the answer and paid even less attention to the following questions and answers; none of themadded anything significant to what he'd already heard andmostly the questions boiled down to the categories: Are yousure? Are you mad? Are you lying, abomination? And, I won'tget blamed for any of this, will I?

 He used the tap-screen to get a better idea of the relevant galactic topography. He called up a usefully scaled hologramand flicked between the local civilisational state of play as it hadbeen understood until today - effectively two and a halfcenturies out of date - and the updated version that the AIsignal had brought with it, which was only seventeen years old.As he did so, whole vast volumes of stars changed from onefalse colour to another, indicating where this Cluster EpiphanyFive Disconnect hegemony had spread its influence.

 '—Resist them with all our might!' Fleet Admiral Brimiaiceroared.

 'I'm sure you will,' the hologram said. 'However, all the indi­cations are that even if you devoted yourself to all-out, full-time emergency war-craft construction and a full war economy,you will still be outnumbered several times over.'

 Fleet Admiral Brimiaice then blustered.

 Fassin had a question of his own, but it was a question forinside his own head, not one that he wished to ask the AI. Itwas a question he had the unpleasant feeling would at somepoint shortly be answered, though he sincerely hoped itwouldn't. It was:What the hell does all this have to do withme?

 'May I continue?' the image said after the next few contri­butions showed unmistakable signs of heading in the directionof becoming not so much questions as attestations of innocence,pledges of heroic determination, position-protection statementsand attacks on other functionaries present within a wide spec­trum of subtlety, biased towards the low end. The hologramgave a small, thin, regretful smile. ‘I realise that all the foregoinghas come as something of a shock, for all of you. However, itis, I am afraid to say, in effect just a preamble to the most signif­ icant part of this communication.'

 The image of Admiral Quile paused to let that sink in, too.Then the hologram said, 'Now then. There is a gentlemanamongst you who has no doubt been wondering for some littletime what exactly he is doing here.'

 Oh, shit,Fassin had time to think, then the image looked athim. Was it really looking at him now? Could everybody see the hologram looking at him? Heads, or other parts as appro­priate, turned in his direction. That probably meant yes.

 'Seer Fassin Taak, would you make yourself known to theothers?'

 Fassin heard the blood roar in his ears as he stood and gavea slow, if shallow, bow towards the Hierchon. He was gettingthat flesh-shrinking thing again. The chamber looked to betipping, and he was glad to sit down again. He tried to controlthe blush that he felt building under his throat.

 'Seer Taak is a young man, though born centuries ago,' theimage said. 'He has spent a productive and dutiful career withthe gas-giant Dwellers of the planet Nasqueron. I understandthat many of you may have heard of him already. He has now been given the rank of major within the Shrievalty Ocula, forreasons which will become clear in due course.'

 Fassin, still feeling very much looked-at, noticed that Colonel Somjomion, the human female who was acting chief of staff ofthe Shrievalty contingent in the Ulubis system, smiled cautiouslyat him from the podium across the chamber when the holo-gram said this. Unsure whether the Shrievalty saluted or not,Fassin rose fractionally in his seat, and nodded formally.

 Oh, fuck,were his precise thoughts.

 The image floating above the cooking-pot AI said, 'Thereason that Seer - Major - Taak is here today to hear what Ihave had to tell you all is that it was something which he discov­ered - stumbled over might be an equally accurate description,with no disrespect to Seer Taak - that has led to my being herein the first place.'

 Oh, fucking hell. I always thought delving would be the death of me but I assumed it would be an equipment failure, not some­thing like this.On the other hand, that smile from Colonel Somjomion had been restrained, even careful, not mean or mocking.Might live yet.

 'Which brings us, of course, to the real, or at least the mostpressing, reason for my appearance here, in this almost unprece­dented form,' the hologram said, then made a show of taking adeep breath.

 It looked around them all, slowly, before saying, 'Ulubis, I'msure we would all agree, is a pleasant and fairly favoured system.'It paused again.

 Fassin was listening fairly hard at this point, and would havetaken decent odds on the literal truth of the old you-could-have-heard-a-pin-drop saying. 'And,' the projection said witha smile, radiantly confident that it now had their full attention,'as a centre of Dweller Studies, it is not without significancegalactically, unquestionably from an antiquarian and intellectualstandpoint.' Another pause. It occurred to Fassin that an AIcontrolling a hologram could put a quite literal twinkle in itseye. 'However, one might think it reasonable to ask - again,with no disrespect intended, or, I hope, taken - why Ulubis hasattracted the attention of our new-found adversaries from Cluster Epiphany Five. One might even - knowing the impor­tance that the Mercatoria attaches to reconnecting all the many,many systems which have been without Arteria access all thesemillennia - wonder why the expedition from Zenerre to Ulubis with a new portal was dispatched with such alacrity, given thearguably still greater claims that more populous, more classi­cally strategically important and more at-the-time obviouslythreatened systems might have had upon the resources andexpertise of our esteemed colleagues in the Engineering faculty.

 'One might also pause to give thought to the reasons whythe EngineershipEst-taun Zhiffir is accompanied by thoseelements of the Summed Fleet of which my original has thehonour of being part - why, indeed, the EshipEst-taun Zhiffiris escorted by such a preponderance of force at all.' The holo­gram raised its head, looked all around again. 'It might not evenbe totally unreasonable to call into question the apparentlyunchallenged assumptions and settled conclusions concerningthe destruction of the Ulubis portal by the Beyonders, over twocenturies ago.'

 That caused a little frisson in the chamber, Fassin noticed.Isany of this still about me and anything I might have found?hewondered.The more I hear, the more I hope it isn't.

 'There is one circumstance, one nexus of contingent infor­mation,' the image said with a broad, unamused smile and some­thing like relish, 'which is, we strongly suspect, behind all of this.' The projection turned to look directly at the HierchonOrmilla. 'Sir, at this point I must ask that those not specificallycleared to be present at this meeting be withdrawn. I believe wemight make an exception for the troopers, providing their earmikes are turned off, but I would be disobeying my orders if Icontinued with those not invited still present.'

 'AdmiralQuile,' the Hierchon boomed, with just sufficient emphasis, 'I vouch for all those present who were inadvertentlyexcluded from the clearance list you refer to. You may continue.'

 'And were it up to me, sir, that would of course be more than enough reason to proceed without care or reservation,'the Admiral's image said. 'However, devastated though I maybe at being seen to offer even the slightest suggestion of aninsult to your esteemed court, I am specifically forbidden tocontinue, bound as I am by the orders of the Complector Council.'

 Ouch,Fassin thought. He almost felt sorry for the Hierchon.He'd not just had rank pulled on him, he'd been made to looksmall. A Sarcomage outranked a Hierchon, and was in turnanswerable to a Complector, any single one of which -supremely powerful as they were in every other exercise anditeration of power within the civilised galaxy - themselves hadat least to take into account the will of the Complector Council.The unspeakably omnipotent members of the ComplectorCouncil were bound by nothing else save the laws of physics,and were generally held to be putting considerable effort into getting round those.

 Hierchon Ormilla took his defeat with a degree of grace andwithin a few minutes the chamber was emptied of half its earlieroccupants. The stepped sequence of podia in front of theHierchon's imposing esuit now looked positively bare. All thecourt officials and courtiers had departed, with much muttering and the single highest quotient of affronted dignity Fassin hadever witnessed, by several factors. The military bigwigs were still present, but even their on-podium ranks had been depletedas Colonel Somjomion of the Shrievalty and Clerk-RegnantVoriel of the Cessoria were reduced to stepping down to floorlevel so that they could operate the two most important pieces of equipment monitoring the cooking-pot device embodyingthe AI. The mirror-finish troopers still stood in a wide circlebeyond, armour locked in at-ease, deaf now.

 While all this had been going on, Fassin had been left to sit there, not knowing what to think. He knew what he ought to bethinking; he ought to be thinking,What the fuck could I ever have stumbled across that possibly warranted this level of right-to-the-top paranoia and secrecy? It was, however, hard to know what tothink. He also knew what he ought to feel: fear. There, he wasfine; he had a superabundance of high weapon-grade trepidation.'Thank you,' the image of the Admiral said. 'Now then,' itsaid, looking round all those who remained. 'I have a questionfor you. What do you know of something called the DwellerList?' It held up one hand. 'Rhetorical question. You don't haveto answer. Those of you who wish, feel free to consult your screens or equivalent. Take a moment.'

 There was a flurry of distant tapping.The Dweller List? thought Fassin.Oh, fucking hell; not that shit.

 The hologram smiled. 'Let me in due time tell you what we at this end - as we design and record this signal and projection- consider important regarding this subject.'

 Fassin had heard of the Dweller List, of course; no Seerhadn't. Unfortunately, lots of laypeople had heard of the List, too, and so it had become one of those tired, inward-groan-producing subjects that people tended to raise when they meta Seer at a party, along with other hoary old cliché-questionssuch as, 'Do Dwellers really hunt their own children?' and, 'Arethey really as old as they say they are?'

 The Dweller List was a collection of coordinates. It hadturned up, as far as anyone could be sure, towards the end ofthe Burster War four hundred million years earlier, and was probably well out of date even then. Allegedly, the list detailedall the Dwellers' own secret arteria portals. According to thestory, these had been under development since the time of theLong Collapse, when the Dwellers had decided that the otherspecies - or groups of species - with which they were forced to share the galaxy couldn't be trusted to keep their own or jointly owned 'hole networks safe, and so the Dwellers hadbetter construct an arteria web which they controlled - andwhich preferably nobody else knew about - if they wanted tovoyage from gas-giant to gas-giant reliably and without fuss.

 This, of course, completely ignored the Dwellers' attitudesto time and space and scale and more or less everything else.The Dwellers didn't need wormholes and the near-instantaneous travel between systems that they offered. They lived for billionsof years, they could slow their metabolism and thoughts downas required so that a journey of a thousand years or ten thou­sand years or a hundred thousand years would appear to beover in the course of a single sleep, or occupied no more time than that required to read a good book, or play a complicatedgame. Plus they were already everywhere; they claimed theyhad spread throughout the galaxy during the First Diasporian Age, which had ended when the universe was only two and ahalf billion years old. Even if that claim was a boast, a typicalDweller exaggeration, what was undeniable was that Dwellerswere present in significant numbers in well over ninety-nine percent of all the gas-giant planets in the galaxy, and had been foras long as anybody could remember. (Though not, as it had turned out, Jupiter. Humanity's own backyard gas-giant wasunusual in being relatively water-poor. The Dwellers consid­ ered it a desert planet and rarely visited.)

 After centuries of real-time and decades of seem-time spentwith Dwellers, Fassin had gained the distinct impression thatDwellers both despised and felt sorry for the Quick - the species,like humans, like all the others in the Mercatoria, which felt theneed to use wormholes.

 As the Dwellers saw it, to be Quick - to live life that precip­itously - was to condemn oneself to an early end. Life had an inescapable trajectory, a natural curve. Evolution, development,progress: all conspired to push a sentient species along in acertain direction, and all you could do was choose to run thatroad or saunter along it. The Slow took their time, adapting tothe given scale and natural limits of the galaxy and the universe as it existed.

 The Quick insisted on short cuts and seemed determined tobend the very fabric of space to their frantic, impatient will. Whenthey were smart they succeeded in this wilfulness, but they onlybrought their own end all the quicker. They lived fast and diedfaster, describing sudden, glorious but quickly fading trails acrossthe firmament. The Dwellers, like the other Slow, wanted to bearound for the long term, and so were prepared to wait.

 So quite why the Dwellers would ever have bothered building a secret wormhole network was something of a mystery, as washow they had managed to keep it secret all these hundreds ofmillions of years, not to mention how this fitted in with therather obvious nature of each different Dweller community'sisolation from each other.

 Nevertheless, the myth of the Dweller List continued to excitepeople in general and conspiracy theorists in particular, espe­cially in times of threat and desperation, when it would be really,really great if a secret wormhole network did exist.

 Fassin agreed with the textbooks that it had been no coincid­ence the List had first turned up during the Burster War, when the whole galactic community had seemed to be falling apart,and people were looking for salvation, for hope, anywhere.Then, the arteria total had been falling from its earlier - and then all-time - high of nearly 39,000 to under a thousand. Atthe nadir of the Third Chaos there had been less than a hundred'holes in the whole galaxy, and the Dwellers hadn't stepped inthen with an offer to let everybody else use this secret system.If not then, when the light of civilisation seemed to be fading from the great lens entirely, then when? When and why wouldthey ever come galloping to the rescue?

 Part of the seductive attraction of the List was its sheer size.It contained over two million sets of alleged portal coordinates,implying more than one million arteria, presumably linked ina single enormous network. At the height of the Third Complex, eight thousand years earlier, there had been exactly 217,390established wormholes threading the galaxy together, and thatwas as good, as far as was known, as it had ever got. If theDweller List genuinely enumerated existing portals and arteria, it would represent the promise of instigating the single greatestchange in the history of the galaxy; the sudden linking-up oftwo million systems, many of which had never had any connec­tion before, the bringing together of almost everybody every­where - the very furthest, most utterly isolated star would likelybe a mere decade or two away from the nearest portal - andthe near-instant revitalising, on a scale unheard of in nearlytwelve billion years of tenacious, sporadically stuttering civili­sation, of the entire galactic community.

 It was, Fassin and almost all his fellow Seers had long thought,a forlorn hope. The Dwellers didn't need or show any sign ofusing wormholes. Being Dwellers, they naturally claimed they were experts at arteria and portal technology, and certainly they were not afraid of using wormholes, it was just that they didn'tsee the need for them . . . but if they ever had been seriouslyinvolved with wormhole production, those days were long gone.In any case, the List itself, which had been lying around inlibraries and data reservoirs, multitudinously copied forhundreds of millions of years, accessible to anybody with a link,was not the end of the story; it just gave the rough coordinates of two million gas-giants in two million systems. What was needed was a more precise location.

 The obvious places to look were the relevant Trojan or Lagrange points, the gravitationally stable locations dotted around and between the orbits of the various planets in thenamed systems. However, these had all long since been elimi­ nated. After that it got much more tricky. In theory a worm-hole mouth could be left in any stable orbit anywhere in asystem and never be found unless you practically tripped overit. Working portals were anything up to a kilometre wide andhad an effective mass of several hundred thousand tonnes,whereas a portal shrunk and stabilised and set up to keep itself that way with relatively simple automatics systems could lie inan orbit as far out as a system's Oort cloud with a gravitationalfootprint of less than a kilogramme more or less indefinitely.The problem was how to describe where it was.

 Allegedly there was some extra set of coordinates, or even asingle mathematical operation, a transform, which, when appliedto any given set of coordinates in the original list, somehowmagically derived the exact position of that system's portal. Theobvious objection to this was that after four hundred millionyears, minimum, there was no known coordinate system everdevised capable of reliably determining where something assmall as a portal was. (Unless the holes had all somehow auto­matically kept themselves in the same relative position all that time. Given the haphazard and cavalier attitude that Dwellerstended to display towards anything especially high-tech, thiswas regarded as highly unlikely.)

 'So,' the image hovering above the dark device in the centreof the audience chamber said, 'if I may assume we are all happywe know what we're talking about . . .' It looked around themagain. Nobody demurred.

 'The Dweller List,' the hologram said, 'supposedly giving the approximate location of two million ancient portals dating fromthe time of the Third Diasporian Age, has been dismissed as an irrelevance, a lie or a myth for over a quarter of a billion years.The so-called Transform, supposed to complete the informationrequired to access this secret network, has proved as elusive asit is unlikely to work if it does exist. Nevertheless. Some newinformation has come to light, thanks to Seer, now Major, Taak.'Fassin was aware that he was being looked at again. He justkept staring at the hologram.

 'A little under four hundred years ago,' the hologram said,'Seer Taak took part in an extended expedition - a "delve" asit is known - which took him amongst the Dwellers ofNasqueron, and specifically into the company of a group ofDweller youngsters called the Dimajrian Tribe. While withthem, he encountered an antique Dweller who - in a fit ofgenerosity unusual in his kind - granted Seer Taak access to a small library of information, part of a still larger hoard.'

 (This was the wrong way round - the myth, not the fact.Fassin had been with Valseir for centuries and the DimajrianTribe for less than a year. He hoped that the rest of the Admiral'sinformation was more reliable. All the same, he had a sudden,vivid memory of choal Valseir, huge and ancient, accoutred withrags, draped in life-charms, floating absently within his vastnest-bowl of a study, deep in the lost section of abandonedCloudTunnel on the rim of a giant, dying storm which had long since broken up and dissipated. 'Clouds. You are like clouds,'Valseir had told Fassin. At the time he hadn't understood whatthe ancient Dweller had meant.)

 'The raw data containing this information was passed on tothe Shrievalty for analysis,' the image hovering above the blackdevice said. 'Twenty years later, after the usual analysis and inter­pretation and, you'd imagine, with plenty of time for secondthoughts, re-evaluations and sudden inspirations, it was sharedwith the Jeltick under the terms of an infotrade agreement.'

 The Jeltick were an arachnoid species, eight-limbed - 8ar, inthe conventional shorthand of the galactic community.Obsessive cataloguers, they were one of the galaxy's two mostconvincing self-appointed historian species. Timid, cautious,deliberate and very inquisitive (at a safe remove), they had beenaround for much longer than Quick species usually lasted.

 'Somehow, the Jeltick contrived to notice something theShrievalty had missed,' the hologram continued. (Now, Fassin noticed, it was Colonel Somjomion's turn to look awkward andaggrieved.) 'Heads have rolled due to this incompetence,' theimage told them. It smiled. ‘Ido not speak figuratively'

 Colonel Somjomion compressed her lips and recheckedsomething on the machine she was in charge of.

 'Within months,' the hologram said, 'the Jeltick sent theirbest excuse for a battle fleet to the Zateki system - unexploredfor millennia - which lies about eighteen years from the portalat Rijom; they got there in twenty years, so they were not exactlydawdling. It ought to be pointed out that the Jeltick wouldnever normally try anything so dynamic, or risky.

 'Something at Zateki seriously chewed up the Jeltick shipsand what is assumed to have been the sole survivor was laterfound by a Voehn craft. The surviving ship was fleeing, all uponit were dead and its biomind was deranged, invoking the mercyof an unknown god and babbling for forgiveness for what hadbeen its mission, which had been to search for the remains of something called the Second Ship and, therein, the Dweller ListTransform.'

 Ah, thought Fassin. The Second Ship Theory. That was a sub-fallacy of the whole Dweller List delusion. The further youlooked into the List myth, the more complicated it got and themore possibilities appeared to open up. All nonsense, of course,or so everybody had thought.

 'Somehow, we assume through spies, the Beyonders and -possibly through the Beyonders - the E-5 Disconnect got tohear about this. The Beyonders attacked the Ulubis portal lessthan a month later and the E-5 Discon's sudden interest inUlubis also dates from this point. When the Jeltick realised thesecret was no longer theirs alone,' the image said, 'they broad­cast-leaked it, to avoid accusations of partiality and maintaintheir reputation for disinterestedness.' The projection gave asour look. 'This has not gone down too well with theAscendancy, either - one imagines the Jeltick will be made topay somewhere down the line. In any event, five full squadronsof the Summed Fleet - over three hundred capital ships -retraced the Jeltick fleet's route to Rijom and Zateki, but foundnothing. Under full disclosure it has turned out that the infor­mation concerned was in any case incomplete; the lead is, as it were, only half-formed. The Jeltick move was a gamble, reck­oned even by themselves at having a less than twelve per centlikelihood of success. For such a cautious species to make such a wild wager with their reputation and future alone indicatesthe value of the prize they sought.'

 The hologram brought its gloved hands together, producingan audible clap. 'So, now almost everybody who wants to know about the new Transform lead - such as it may be - does know,and this would appear to include the Disconnect of theStarveling Cult, and - quiet though they may have seemedrecently - the Beyonders, who may or may not be in leaguewith the E-5 Discon. Hence the most recent attacks on Ulubis, and the coming invasion.

 'But be aware,' the image said, growling, eyes narrowing,'that behind this terrible threat lies a fabulous prize. If we can discover where the hidden portals lie - assuming that they areindeed there to be discovered - we may well be able to inter­vene in the Ulubis system before the Starveling Cult invasionforce arrives. It would be entirely worth the most supreme effort and sacrifice for that result alone. Even more importantly, however, this is a prize that could, that just might, thatcanunlock the galaxy and usher in a new golden age of prosperityand security for the Mercatoria, for all of us.' The projection paused once more. 'Our strategists estimate that even with the best result from those actions we shall ask you to undertake,the chances of success remain below fifty per cent.' The projec­tion appeared to draw breath. 'But that is not the point. Thesmallest chance of the greatest reward, when so few maycompete for it, makes the contention compulsory. All thatmatters is that we may have been presented with an extraordi­nary, utterly unprecedented opportunity. We would all be inserious, even ultimate dereliction of duty if we did not do every­thing in our power to seize that opportunity, not just on our own behalf but for the good of all our fellow creats, and forthose generations yet unborn.'

 The image smiled one of its cold smiles. 'The orders I have to pass on to you from the Complector Council are: to Seer -now Major - Taak.' (The projection was already looking straightat Fassin. Now so did a lot of the people in the chamber.) 'Returnto Nasqueron, seek out the ancient Dweller who gave you theoriginal information and try to find out all you can about theDweller List, the Second Ship, its location and the Transform. And, to everybody else here,' (the image looked around all theothers in the chamber) 'first, provide every aid you can to Major Taak in the furtherance of his mission, including doing nothingthat will delay, obstruct or compromise it, and, second, returnthe Ulubis system to an invasion-imminent, full-scale, total-warfooting immediately and prepare to oppose the coming inva­sion. Your goal should be - and I do not exaggerate here - to resist to the very last creat, to the very last mortal, to the verylast breath.'

 The hologram seemed to stand back a little and take themeasure of them all. 'I would say to all of you that, withoutdoubt, your fate lies in your own hands. More importantly, so,potentially, does the fate of the Mercatoria and the civilisedgalaxy. The rewards for success will be unprecedented in theirscale and splendour. The punishments for failure will begin withignominy and disgrace and plumb new depths of ghastlinessbeyond. One last thing. You know that the EngineershipEst-taun Zhiffirand battle-fleet escort which sent this signal are stillseventeen years from reaching Ulubis system. I must tell youthat significant elements of the Summed Fleet, above Squadronstrength, were dispatched in your direction from Zenerre even before the Eship left and have been making well in excess ofthe Eship fleet's velocity directly towards Ulubis ever since. Theattack squadrons will arrive years before the Eship and its escort fleet, their war craft will be fully deployed for uninhibited battleagainst all who oppose the Mercatoria, and - depend upon it -they will prevail.'

 The image smiled again. 'How I wish I could tell you exactlyhow soon from this point they will appear. However, even I donot know; this signal was sent from the fleet accompanying theEship and we do not yet know quite how close to light speed they have pushed themselves, or how close they will have bythe time this signal arrives. We can only hazard. If theDisconnecters leave off for as long as another couple of years,the attack squadrons may well arrive before them. Otherwise,they will descend upon a system already fallen to the enemy,or, one would hope, still somehow resisting. Their reaction whenthey arrive largely depends on your determination, fortitudeand ability to absorb punishment.' The projection smiled. 'Now: any further questions?'

 *

 The Beyonders must have anticipated them. Their ships werealready making ninety per cent of their own furious, headlongspeed when they appeared on the point ship's long-distancescanners.

 Taince Yarabokin floated foetal, swaddled in shock-gel, lungs full of fluid, umbilicalled to the ship, nurtured by it,talking to it, listening to it, feeling it all around her. A gee-suit half-completed the image of warrior as unborn, leavingthe wearer clothed in a close second skin. Her connection withthe ship was via implants and an induction collar rather thana cord into her navel, and her chest moved only faintly as thegillfluid tided oxygen into her blood and scrubbed waste gasesout again. Behind her closed lids in that darkness, her eyesflickered to and fro, twitching involuntarily. She shared herclose confinement with another forty or so of her comrades,all lying curled and protected and wired up in their own life-pods, all carried deep in the belly of the fleet's flagship, theMannlicher- Carcano.

 Way ahead at point, the destroyerPetronel veered, maxingits engines, then blinked out in a wash of light that became dark­ness as the sensors compensated. The buffering faded andrevealed the half of the lead ship that was left, tumbling wildly,tearing itself apart in dark curved fountains of debris, sprayingfragments against the tunnel-scape of hard blue-white starscollected ahead.

 - Point registers multiple contacts at ninety fleet-vee, saidone voice, flagged as LR sensors.

 -   Point is hit, came another; Fleet Status.

 -   Point contact lost, came a third, followed immediately by:

 -   Point gone; Fleet Comms and Status almost colliding.
Instantly aware, Taince had just sufficient time for one small,

 frightened part of herself to think,No! Not on my watch! Andright in the Fleet Admiral's nap time, when she was in solecharge. But even as that reaction seemed to echo and die insideher head, she was sensing, judging, thinking, getting ready toissue orders. She flitted between the real-as-it-could-be viewshown by the deep-space scan sensors, where the stars werebunched hard blue-white in a circle ahead and collected into a fuzzy red pool behind with pure blackness in every other direc­tion, and the dark abstraction that was Tacspace, a multi-linedand -radiused sphere where the ships of the fleet sat, littlestylised arrowhead shapes of varying sizes and colours, a lineof fading dots behind each indicating their courses, greenglowing identities and status codes riding alongside them.

 The pre-prepared split pattern wouldn't work; the ship whichhad just traded point with thePetronel was still sliding backinto position in the main body of the fleet and a pattern-onesplit would at worst cause multiple collisions and at best be justtoo slow.

 Oh well, time to start earning her pay and communicate.Taince sent,

 -  Pattern-five split, all ships. BC-three, that plus a two-point
inward, left-skew delta, for five, then resume.

 Copy signals flicked back, the first from her own helmofficer, the last from the battlecruiserJingal, registering itsadherence to the slight kink she'd put in its course the betterto accommodate their D-seven: Destroyer seven, theCulverin, the ship which had been falling back after swapping point withthePetronel. She was distantly aware of her body registeringa pulse of movement, a sudden change in direction so extremethat even the shock-gel couldn't completely mask it. Aroundthem, the ships would be flaring off like their own silent shrapnel burst.

 -  Hull stress eighty-five, Ship Integrity-Damage Control toldher.

 -  All units responding. Full pattern-five flare, said Fleet Status.

 -  D-seven: thanks for that, joining pattern.

 -   C-one: single contact, five nor-down-west.

 -   D-three: double contact, neg-four nor-up-east.

 The cruiserMitrailleuse and the destroyerCartouche regis­tering hostiles. Taince didn't even need to glance into Tacspaceto know that meant harmfuls on both sides.

 -   So, bracketing.

 -   A straddle. Got us good.

 The last two voices had been the two most senior fellowtactical officers.

 -   We sound as though we play Battleships. (That was Fleet Admiral Kisipt. Awake now, watching. Apparently content tolet Taince run the show for the moment.)

 -   C-one: hostile contact confirmed. PTF.

 -   D-three: hostile contact confirmed. PTF.
MitrailleuseandCartouche requesting permission to fire.

 -   Suggest fire\Suggest fire, the other tacticians chorused.

 -   Agree fire, Fleet Admiral Kisipt said. - Vice?

 Vice Admiral Taince Yarabokin thought so too. - C-one,D-three; grant free fire.

 -   C-one: Firing.

 -   D-three: Firing.

 Tacspace showed bright crimson beams flick from the twoships. Tiny, lime-green dots with their own status bars weremissiles, darting towards the enemy ships.

 -   Multiple hits on the D-one debris field, LR Sensors
reported.

 -   Still flare?

 -   Still flare, Taince confirmed. She was watching the scintil-­lations ahead, where the wildly spinning, whirling, somer-­saulting wreckage of thePetronel was being hit by further enemymunitions. The remains were dropping back rapidly towardsthe main fleet as it spread quickly outwards. She clicked up acountdown to their impact with the debris field: seventy-six seconds. She shifted the read-out to a skin-sensation to avoidcluttering her visual feed.

 No positive results from the laser fire being laid down bytheMitrailleuse andCartouche. Their missiles were still headingtowards the hostile craft. No sign of reply so far.

 What if we're wrong?Taince thought.What if they've out-thought us and our so-neat manoeuvre?Deep in her life-podcocoon, she gave a semblance of a shrug without realising itherself.Oh well, then we may all be dead. At least it should bequick.

 -  Still flare?

 -  Still flare, she confirmed again. Waiting, judging, wonderingif this would work. Tacspace showed the second-hand, nowincreasingly out-of-date contacts thePetronel had spotted as aglowing, slowly dispersing cloud of pulsing yellow echoes. Thetwo hard contacts still registering on the sensors of theMitrailleuse and theCartouche and now confirmed by othernearby ships were strobing red dots, slowly closing. Thewreckage from thePetronel was a stippled mess of purple, deadahead and drifting closer, slowly spreading.

 It's okay,Taince told herself.We can do this.

 They had rehearsed all this, trained and exercised in VR timeafter time, specifically for this eventuality, this ambush andmanoeuvre and response suite.

 They knew that the Beyonders would anticipate a fleet beingsent from Zenerre to Ulubis. There was, of course, only onequickest possible route; the straight-line direct one, its laser-clean rule turned into the shallowest of curves solely by allowingfor the minimal drift of the respective systems as they circledwith the rest of the galactic outskirts round the great wheel's core, fifty thousand light years away.

 So, did the fleet take exactly that route, laying itself open toambush by other ships, and - more threateningly - to mines? (Mines, indeed; all you needed was a few tonnes of crushedrock. Smash a tiny asteroid into gravel the size of rice grains,spread it across the course the fleet would- take and - if they were travelling quickly enough - you could waste the lot; soclose to light speed that you didn't need to have anything homein and explode, just getting in the way was devastating enough.)Or did you loop further out, avoiding likely interception butarriving later?

 And did you stick together (obvious but sensible) or split up,all the individual craft taking their own route to Ulubis, only regrouping near their destination (very risky, but potentially atactic that the enemy wouldn't have anticipated)? In the end the Fleet Admiral had chosen one out of a bunch of faintly bowedcourses recommended by the strategists and their sub-AImachines, and they followed that route en masse.

 It was a gamble. The chances were that they would be inter-cepted, especially if the Beyonders possessed the kind of materielthey were thought to have between Zenerre and Ulubis. The obvious intercept strategy was to station minor ships and othersensor platforms about halfway, then position the intercept unitswell behind that - already making high speed - to give themtime to gather for the attack. In a direct pitched battle, therewas no possibility that the vastly outnumbered and out-armed Beyonder ships would prevail. But then, they didn't need orwant a pitched battle, they just had to slow the Mercatoria fleetdown as much as possible. They wanted skirmishes, ambushes, and to use the fleet's own colossal velocity against it.

 The Mercatoria fleet could, in theory, have gone slow andsafe, assured just by its sheer weight of arms of being able toblast anything ahead of it out of the skies. Its orders, though, were to get to Ulubis as quickly as possible, regardless, and soit had to travel almost ultimately quickly and risk being tornto bits by a few small ships and nothing more high-tech than afew tonnes of pulverised rock.

 They'd come up with a surprise plan of their own.Needle ships were designed to fit through narrow worm-holes, it was that simple. The biggest arteria and the widestportals were a kilometre across, but the average 'hole diameterwas under fifty metres and a few very old arteria were barelyten metres wide. It took a vast amount of energy and\or matterto make an arteria and its two portals, and it was difficult, expen­sive and dangerous to expand them once they were emplaced.There was, for the Mercatoria, little point in having a networkof super-fast travel connections scattered throughout the galaxyif your ships were too fat to fit, and so the proportions of war craft - the ultimate levers of power for the Mercatoria, just asthey had been for all earlier imperia, semimperia and others whohad thought to enforce their peace or impose their will on thegalactic community over the aeons - were derived from the width of the channels they would have to negotiate.

 In the past, some great capital ships could auto-deconstructto become a shower of smaller, slimmer components whichcould fit through a wormhole, and were then capable of reassem­bling themselves at the far end, but this had proved a wastefulway of designing war craft. Needle ships were simpler andcheaper, for all their astounding complexity and cost. Thebiggest craft in the battle fleet heading from Zenerre to Ulubiswere a kilometre long but less than forty metres across the beam.Almost right at the enemy ship, the missile fired by theMitrailleusewinked out, replaced by a tiny debris field. Signalsfrom the cruiser, Sensors and Status confirmed this.

 -  That missile snapped a hostile profile before it was pickedoff, Weapons reported, side-screening the data the missile hadplipped back.

 -  Sceuri ship, Sulcus or Fosse class, one Tactics officer sent.
So they were dealing - at least in that ship - with theDeathspiral, Taince thought. That particular Beyonder groupwas exclusively Sceuri; waterworlders with a hatred for theMercatoria in general and those of their own kind who were apart of it in particular (which meant most of them). Renownedfor their viciousness and without even the excuse that they wereprotecting their precious civilian habitats. They didn't have any,they were almost entirely ship-based. A bunch of piraticalterrorists, in other words, just fanatics. And yet as far as anyoneknew the Deathspiral hadn't taken part in the attack on theUlubis portal.

 -   So that makes four, not three varieties of Beyonder oper-ating in this volume, the Admiral sent, saying what Taince was thinking.

 -   Two more and we'll have the set, she replied.

 Back in Tacspace, she watched theCartouche's missile curvingto meet the twisting trace that was the other nearest hostile. Itjoined it, overlaying it. A white blink, then an infinitesimal sprayof debris, red speckled with green.

 -  D-three: Hit! Hostile hit!

 Taince's two fellow tacticians aboard the flagship madewhooping noises.

 -   Well done, D-three, said Kisipt.

 -   Still flare?

 -   Still flare. Taince ignored the celebratory noises and herown feeling of excitement. She watched Tacspace, listened tothe ship chatter, felt the seconds count down.

 The fleet was still spreading, the vessels' courses fanning outlike thin stems from a short vase. Taince held off and held offand held off, until she could almost feel Fleet Admiral Kisiptand everybody else getting ready to shout at her.

 Forty seconds. She sent,

 -  De-flare. Pattern-five reverse.

 -   Copy, said her own helm officer, then the other acknowledgements followed. In Tacspace, the flowering, widening shiptracks immediately started to bunch up again, the distancesbetween them closing.

 -   C-one: Going to be tight.

 But it was doable. They could get back to their earlier form­ation before they encountered the remains of thePetronel; thatwas all that mattered for now. Tacspace showed the fleet regrouping smoothly. The view ahead showed the fiercely glowing nebula of wreckage from thePetronel, seeming tospread across the sky as they approached it, encroaching onto the dark, starless tube on either side. She zoomed in, picking out a clear spot near the centre of the debris field, checking itin Tacspace.There.

 The two hard contacts winked out, became orange and startedto spread. Tacspace was throwing out probability cones, estim­ating where the ships might be. Ahead, the sky briefly gloweda pale uniform yellow, indicating that the rest of the Beyonderfleet could be anywhere within that volume. Then a scatteringof bright red hard contacts firmed up out of the yellow wash, dispersing it.

 The fleet re-formed. They were back where they had started.If nothing else, Taince thought, they ought to have confusedthe Beyonders.

 -  Pattern Zero, all ships.

 Even in the life-pod, she felt the flagship lurch as it braked,manoeuvred and then accelerated again. She watched it all on Tacspace. The fleet was collapsing, thinning, extending itselfforwards and back, ship after ship slipping into a single longline, nose to tail.

 -  BC-four, back down about ten. D-eleven, forward five.B-three and B-two, centre on D-eight. BC-four, maintain there.

 Taince watched them all in Tacspace, shuffling, jostling,ordering them into position until they were all lined up.

 -  Ships of the line, yes, Vice? the Fleet Admiral sent, alsowatching.

 -Sir.

 There were no collisions, no botched moves, no drives leftrunning too long, incinerating the craft behind. The line form­ation came together as smoothly as it ever had in VR sims. ThebattleshipGisarme led the way, blasting away a few tiny parti-cles left over from the wreck of thePetronel and laying downa stuttered laser barrage to try to intercept any mines, kineticor otherwise, left in the way.

 This was a gamble, too. If it worked they'd be through andaway, one after another, charging mob-handed right behind theGisarmelike a long sequence of battering rams. If it didn't work,there was a chance that first theGisarme would hit something and then they'd all hit whatever was left of it. Potentially thewhole fleet could be wiped out in one long pile-up of cascadingcollisions. The chances were small - smaller, the simulations indi­cated, than the risks associated with any of the other manoeu­vres - but only because this one included a safety premium dueto its assumed unexpectedness, its sheer novelty value. If they'dgot that wrong, it was much riskier than all the rest.

 The manoeuvre caught the Beyonders unawares. It wasprofoundly not standard Summed Fleet behaviour. The needleships were one giant needle now, plunging through the debrisfield of the wrecked destroyer, firing all around them, scoringa couple of hits on distant hostiles desperately closing. Tacspaceshowed the lines of fire blazing out from the fleet like spokesfrom a filament-thin shaft and missiles spinning away like tinyglowing emeralds. The Beyonders were attempting to close, butit was too late. All that the nearest hostile units accomplishedwas their own destruction. In two minutes the Mercatorialfleet was through without loss, and a minute later its entire fire-pattern was rearward: a swirling skirt of crimson linescombing and coning into the emptying depths of space behind.Any further engagement now would be entirely on their terms, and the fleet's vastly superior firepower would have the firstword, and the last.

 -   Nice work, Vice. Fleet Admiral Kisipt sounded a littlesurprised, a little disappointed and moderately impressed. Tainceknew that a lot of her fellow officers had wanted a proper battle,but this way had been better, quicker, more elegant. 'Nice work'- from a Voehn; that was real praise.

 -   Sir. Taince kept her thought-voice calm, but inside it washer turn to whoop. Submerged in her dark womb of fluid, tubes and wires, her fists clenched, a smile appeared on her until thenfrowning face, and a little shiver shook her cradled body.

 *

 The Kehar family house on Murla, an island off the south coasta few hundred kilometres from Borquille, was another spher­ical building, a quarter of the size of the Hierchon's palace, butremarkable for being balanced on top of a great upthrust ofwater, precisely like a ball balanced on a water jet in a fair­ground.

 Saluus Kehar, perfectly groomed, glowing with health andgenerally looking as smoothly gleaming as one of his company'sspaceships, met Fassin personally on the slim suspension bridgeconnecting the house with the spit of land jutting out into the ancient drowned caldera where the waters foamed and roared and spumed and the house balanced, barely trembling, on the giant column of water.

 'Fassin! Great to see you! Hey! That uniform suits you!'

 Fassin had thought he'd be briefed-indoctrinated-psyche-tested-pep-talked-fuck-knows-whatted and then bundledaboard ship to be whisked straight to Nasqueron. But even facedwith arguably the single greatest emergency in its history, theUlubine bureaucracy had a set way of doing things, and centralto this ethos appeared to be not doing anything too momen­tous too quickly, just in case.

 The rest of the session in the Hierchon's audience chamberafter the AI projection had issued its orders and asked for ques­tions had involved a great deal of talk, speech-making, point-scoring, back-covering, back-targeting and pre-emptiveblame-avoidance. The image of Admiral Quile answered all thequestions tirelessly and with a patience that was probably themost sure sign possible that it really was an AI talking. A human-especially an admiral, used to being obeyed instantly andwithout argument - would have lost patience long before theproceedings finally ground to a halt. Fassin had been pointedat and referred to several times, and been left with the distinct impression that this was all his fault. Which, he supposed, in away it was. It had all gone on so long that Fassin's stomach hadperhaps in sympathy with a large component of the mood inthe chamber - started grumbling. He hadn't eaten since earlybreakfast on 'glantine, after all.

 'You are quite sure?' the image above the cooking-pot device asked eventually, when even the most talkative of those presentseemed to have run out of questions to ask and points – anddelicate portions of the anatomy - to cover. There was no hintof either pleading or relief in the projection's voice. Fassin thought either would have been appropriate.

 'Very well, then. I will bid you farewell, and good luck.'

 The image of the human male with a bald, tattooed scalp andlined face, standing there in his much-decorated armoured suit,looked around them one last time, executed a short, formal bow to the Hierchon and disappeared. Nobody seemed to know quitewhat to do for a moment. Then the black, pot-bellied machinein the centre of the floor started to make a loud humming noise. Shrievalty Colonel Somjomion and Cessorian Clerk-RegnantVoriel, attending as best they could to the machines they hadbeen put in charge of when the others had been required to leavethe chamber, started peering intently at various screens andcontrols. The circle of mirror-armoured troopers each tappedone ear, then brought up their guns, pointing them at thecooking-pot device, which was humming loudly now andstarting to glow in the infrared. The hum rose and took on extra harmonics, deepening until the machine was visibly vibrating.Some of those close to the device either drew back or lookedlike they wanted to, as if fearing that the machine was going toexplode. The air around its ribbed flanks shimmered. Above it, the atmosphere seemed to writhe and quiver, as though somemutant ghost of the image that had stood there was still fighting to escape.

 Then, just as the pot-bellied thing started to glow a deepcherry red around its midriff, it all faded away: noise and vibra­tion and heat. People relaxed. Somjomion and Voriel took deepbreaths and nodded at the Hierchon. The troopers shoulderedtheir arms. Whatever complex substrate inside the dark devicehad played host to the AI image of the Admiral had been turnedto slag.

 The Hierchon Ormilla spoke from his glittering esuit. 'Iinvoke the full emergency powers of the War Emergency Plan.Martial law will be declared at the close of this extended session.Let those earlier excluded resume their places.'

 The flurry of politicking that Fassin had witnessed earlier was made to look mild in comparison as - without actuallytelling anybody not cleared to know about it any details - whatwas becoming known as The Current Emergency was talkedover and enhanced roles and new responsibilities were discussed,squabbled over — between and within departments — revised,re-revised, traded, further discussed and re-re-revised beforefinally being handed out.

 Fassin's belly was still making noises when the full sessionbroke up and he was called to a briefing with his superiors inthe Shrievalty Ocula. They kept him waiting in an ante-roomwithin the Ocula's floor inside the Hierchon's palace; he shedone layer of his cumbersome court clothes and found somehuman food in a dispenser in a curving outside corridor with aview over the reception plaza. (Long evening shadows, towersand spires burnished red with sunset. He looked for someobvious sign that the city, planet and system were all under martial law again, but saw nothing.) He was still wiping his fingers when they called him in.

 'Major Taak,' Colonel Somjomion said. 'Welcome.'He was shown to a large circular table surrounded byuniformed Shrievalty personnel. They were mostly human orwhule, though there were two jajuejein doing their best to lookhumanoid and seated, and a single oerileithe in a duller andslightly smaller version of the Hierchon's esuit, the discus ofwhich was half-hidden in a wide slot in the floor. It seemed toradiate chill and dominate the room, all the same.

 Somjomion indicated the oerileithe. 'This is ColonelHatherence,' she told Fassin. 'She will be your superior in thismission.'

 'Pleasure, sure,' the oerileithe boomed, twisting fractionallytowards Fassin. The Colonel's esuit had no transparent face­plate like the Hierchon's, just armour and sensors, giving no sign of the creature within.

 Fassin nodded. 'Ma'am.' He'd thought the only oerileithe inthe system apart from the Hierchon were basically Ormilla'snear family and his girlfriends ('harem' was, though only just,too pejorative). He wondered whether Colonel Hatherence fitted neatly into either category or not.

 It was explained to him that they could not, of course, justsend him off alone to do what he was supposed to do. Overthe next hour, as communications, memos and remote audienceswith the Hierchon himself interrupted Somjomion, Fassin wasgradually given to understand that the task assigned quite specif­ically to him alone was one which would nevertheless unar-guably be best accomplished if he was escorted and overseenby people the Hierchon and his claque of cohorts felt they couldactually trust.

 Accordingly, Fassin would not be alone on his next delve.He would benefit from the protection and guidance of ColonelHatherence here, and from that of two of his fellow humanSeers, Braam Ganscerel, Chief Seer of the most senior Sept ofall, Sept Tonderon, and - as Fassin's junior - Paggs Yurnvic ofSept Reheo, with whom he had worked before. Chief Seer Ganscerel was currently readying himself to return as rapidlyas possible from a habitat orbiting Qua'runze, and wouldrendezvous with Colonel Hatherence, Major Taak and Seer Yurnvic on Third Fury, from which the delve or delves wouldbe conducted, as soon as possible.

 Qua'runze was the other big gas-giant in Ulubis system -there were two smaller examples as well. All had Dweller popu­lations too, though compared to Nasqueron's they were negli­gible in size. Getting Ganscerel from Qua'runze to Nasqueronand the Third Fury base would take well over a week, Fassin suspected. The old guy liked his luxuries and anyway wouldn'tbe physically able to cope with much more than one gee duringthe journey even if he wanted to.

 Fassin, very much feeling his way in all this, suddenly caughtup within organisations and power structures he never imag­ined having anything much to do with and having to cope withnetworks of rank and superiority he had only the vaguestworking knowledge of, had been about to start banging the table-probably only figuratively - and complaining about not beingable to start the job he'd been very clearly ordered to begin assoon as possible. Then they mentioned Ganscerel and hisjourney back from Qua'runze and he saw that there was prob-ably no way he was going to be able to move this forward faster than the pace that had already been decided.

 Which, in a way, suited him fine. If the system really wasunder threat of imminent invasion and he was being asked to go on the most important delve of his life in the midst of it -and given the amount of time they were being told there was before the invasion took place, there was every likelihood he'dstill be in-planet when it happened - then he wanted – needed -one last delve of his own, into Borquille's underworld, its own hazy, clouded, turbulent and dangerous nether-environment. Hesuddenly had things to do and people, or at least one person,to meet. The delay caused by Ganscerel might work out quite usefully. Of course, they probably wouldn't want to let him outof their sight, so he'd have to find a way round that.

 He also suspected that they wanted the whole delve done ata distance, from Third Fury, with him and Ganscerel and PaggsYurnvic all lying wired up in the base there and communicatingwith remotes down in Nasqueron itself. (Certainly Ganscerelwasn't capable of jumping into a gascraft, breathing gillfluid andtaking multiple gees, squished in shock-gel - he hadn't evendone any of that stuff when he was young.) Fassin would haveto try and find a way round that, too.

 He complained as crossly as he could pretend about not beingallowed to get on with things, and then demanded some timeoff.

 'You mean,leave?' Somjomion said, goggle-eyed. ‘I believeyou have some very intense briefing and training ahead of you, Major Taak. Many days' worth which will have to be crammedinto hours. There is absolutely no time forleave.'

 He explained about Ganscerel's age, infirmity and thereforeslow rate of travel. Somjomion looked indignant, but checkedthis, finally having another hurried conference with theHierchon himself. 'Indeed,' she said, sighing, 'Chief SeerGanscerel is profiled as being unable to withstand forces greaterthan 1.5 gee, and is already complaining at the prospect of that.It will be nine days before he can reach the Third Fury base.'Colonel Somjomion narrowed her eyes at Fassin. 'We shallproceed with your fuller briefing first thing tomorrow, Major Taak. If there is any time left over, a day or two of leave maybe granted. I guarantee nothing.'

 'So. Another Emergency,' Saluus said. He smiled broadly. Tmtold I have you to thank for this, Fass.' He held out a slim flute.Fassin accepted the glass. 'Entirely my own work.'Sal was, he supposed, one of the few people in the systemfor whom the prospect of a War Emergency Plan coming intoforce was genuinely cause for celebration.

 'Really?' Saluus said. 'You're even more eminent than Ithought. And you still look about twenty, you dog.' Sal laughedthe easy laugh of a man who could afford to be generous withhis compliments. Sal chinked glasses. They were drinking cham­pagne; some ancient Krug with a meaningless date all the wayfrom Earth and probably worth as much as a small spaceship.It had a pleasant taste, though not many bubbles.

 The two men stood on a balcony, looking out over the caldera.The surging waters beneath formed a great frothed slopespreading all around from underneath the house, a shallow cone of billows and hummocks of foam all furiously bunching andcollapsing and rushing ever outwards to where the fractiousturmoil settled slightly and became merely wildly chargingwaves. The balcony was just above the equatorial rim of thehouse so the column of water actually supporting the place washidden from them, but the crater walls, a couple of kilometres distant, echoed with the tumult.

 They had climbed up here after a modest reception and lightlunch with a few of Sal and his wife's friends - notables all -who were here for the afternoon. Fassin had secured an invi­tation to stay for a couple of days, until the Shrievalty needed him back in Borquille. He had changed out of his dark grey Shrievalty uniform into casual clothes.

 Sal leaned back against the barrier. 'Well, thank you forcoming to visit.'

 Fassin nodded. 'Thank you for inviting me.'

 'My pleasure. Just mildly surprised you asked.'

 'They trust you, Sal.' Fassin gave a small shrug. ‘Ineeded toget away from all that military shit and they wouldn't let mejust skip out the door of the palace and into Boogeytown.' Helooked out at the tumbling waters. 'Anyway' - a glance at Sal - 'been too long.' He wanted to give the impression that this had been a good excuse to effect some sort of reconciliationhe'd long wanted to make. He and Sal had met up only veryoccasionally over the two centuries since the wormhole'sdestruction, usually at the sort of gigantic social events it was hard to get out of but easy to remain alone within. They hadn'treally talked.

 Even now, meeting up, there were whole aspects of their livesthat somehow didn't need to be gone into. How and what theyhad each been doing was a matter of public record and it wouldalmost be an insult to inquire. Fassin had recognised Sal's wifefrom news and social images, hadn't really needed introducing.There hadn't been a single person at the reception below, alien orotherwise - servants apart, obviously - about whom Fassin, whowas no great social observer, couldn't have written a shortbiography. Saluus probably didn't know as much about Fassinas vice versa, but he'd already congratulated him on his engage­ment to Jaal Tonderon, so he knew that much (or, more likelyperhaps, he just had an efficient social secretary with a gooddatabase).

 'So, what can you tell me, Fass?' Sal asked casually. He wrin­kled his nose.'Can you say anything?'

 'About the Emergency?'

 'Well, about whatever's causing all the fuss.'

 There was more than a fuss; there was low-level war. Startingthe day after martial law was declared there had been a sequenceof attacks, mostly on isolated and system-edge craft and settle­ments, though with some worrying assaults further in-system, including one on a Navarchy dock-habitat in Sepekte's owntrailing Lagrange that had killed over a thousand. Nobody knewwhether it was Beyonders behind this resurgence of violence,or the E-5 Discon advanced forces, or a mixture of both.

 More oddly, but for Fassin far more disturbingly, somebodyhad nuked the High Summer house of Sept Litibiti, back on'glantine, just the day before; missiled it from space like it was a military facility. Bizarre and unprecedented. The place hadbeen empty save for a handful of unlucky gardeners and cleaners,keeping the place ticking over until the appropriate season, butit made Seers throughout the system worried that they'dsuddenly, for some reason, become targets. Fassin had sent amessage to Slovius saying that maybe they should considershifting the whole Sept elsewhere on 'glantine. Head for an out-of-season hotel, perhaps. He'd yet to receive a reply, whichmight be Slovius ignoring his advice, or just the authorities' newmessage-traffic checking and censoring software struggling to cope. Neither would surprise.

 'Tell me what you know,' Fassin suggested. 'I'll fill in whatI can.'

 'They want lots of warships, Fass.' Sal gave a sad-looking smile.'Lots and lots of warships. We're to turn out as many as we canfor as long as we can, though they want them sooner rather thanlater, and any advanced projects that might take longer than ayear, even existing ones, are being deprioritised. We're to gas-linea whole bunch of stuff for—' Sal paused, cleared his throat andwaved one hand. 'Hell, idiot stuff; we're to rough-cut a wholeload of civilian conversions: armed merchantmen, one-shot cloud-miners, tooled-up cruise liners and so on. We didn't even do thatin the last Emergency. So whatever it is, it's serious, it's presum­ably what our military friends would call credible, and it's notvery far away. Over to you.'

 'Lot I can't tell you,' Fassin said carefully. 'Most of which Iguess wouldn't interest you anyway.' He wondered how much he could say, how much he needed to say. 'Supposedly to dowith something called the Epiphany-Five Disconnect.'

 Sal raised an eyebrow. 'Hmm. Bit away. Wonder why they'dbother? Richer pickings inward of where they are.'

 'But a significant part of the Summed Fleet is on the way.We're told.' Fassin grinned.

 'Mm-hmm. I see. And what about you?' Sal asked, dippingcloser to Fassin, voice dropping. 'What's your part in all this?'

 Fassin wondered how much the continual rush of noiseproduced by the waves below would mask their words, ifanybody was listening from far away. Since he'd arrived he'dshowered and put on a change of clothes he'd requested fromthe house - caught without the necessary means of attire dueto an extended stay away from home, he'd explained, needlessly.He got the impression the servants were perfectly used toproviding clothes of varying sizes and for whatever sex to houseguests. Still, even without the proscribed horror of nanotech, itwas possible to make bugs very small indeed these days. Hadthe Shrievalty or the Hierchon's people put some sort of traceor mike on him? Had Sal? Did Sal put surveillance on his guests as a matter of course? His host was waiting for an answer.

 Fassin looked into the drink. A few small bubbles of gas roseto the surface and broke, giving some tiny proportion of the substance of Earth to the atmosphere of a planet twenty thou­sand light years away. 'I just did my job, Sal. Delved, talked,took away what the Dwellers would let me take away. Most of which was not momentous, not important, not going to changeanything much at all, not something everybody would want or risk everything for.' He looked Saluus Kehar in the eye. 'Juststumbled my way through life, you know? Over whateverturned up. Never knowing what would lead to what.'

 'Whoever does?' Sal asked, then nodded. 'But I see.'

 'Sorry I can't really tell you too much more.'

 Sal smiled and looked out at the slope of artificial surf, thepandemonium of waves beyond and the sheer cliffs further awaystill, brown-black beneath a hazy azure sky.

 'Ah, your minder,' he said. The esuit of Colonel Hatherenceof the Shrievalty appeared to one side, low over the foam,floating out over the mad froth of waters like a great fat greyand gold wheel. Whirling vane-sets on either side of her esuitkept the Colonel from sinking into the maelstrom. For all itsmassive size when you were standing next to it, the esuit lookedvery small from up here.

 'She giving you any problems?'

 'No. She's okay. Doesn't insist I salute her or call her Ma'amall the time. Happy to keep things informal.' All the same, hewas hoping to get the Colonel out of the way somehow, eitherbefore or once he got down into Nasqueron.

 Fassin watched the Colonel as she picked her way across thescape of waves. 'But can you imagine trying to sneak intoBoogeytown with that dogging your every move?' he asked.'Even just for one last night?'

 Sal snorted. 'The dives and the ceilings are too low.'

 Fassin laughed.This is like sex, he thought.Well, like theseduction-scenario thing, like the whole stupid mating dance ofwill-you-won't-you, do-you-don't-you rigmarole.Tempting Sal,leading him on...

 He wondered if he'd seemed sufficiently mysterious yethinted at maybe being available. He needed this man.

 Dinner with Sal, his wife, their concubines and some business associates, including - amongst the latter - a whule, a jajuejeinand a quaup. The talk was of new attacks on distant outposts,martial law, delays in comms, restrictions in travel and whowould gain and who would lose from the new Emergency(nobody on any of the couches seemed to anticipate losing more than a few trivial freedoms for a while). Colonel Hatherencesat silent in one corner, needing no external sustenance, thankyou, but happy, indeed honoured, to be there while theyconsumed nourishment, communicated conversationally and intercoursed socially while she continued her studies (much-needed!), screening up on Nasqueron and its famous Dwellers.

 Drinks, semi-narcotic foods, drug bowls. A human acrobattroupe entertained them, floodlit beyond the dining room'sbalcony.

 'No, I'm serious!' Sal shouted at his guests, gesturing at the acrobats, swinging through the air on ropes and trapezes. 'Ifthey fall they almost certainly die! So much air in the water you can't float. Sink right down. Get caught up in the under-turbulence. No, idiot!' Sal told his wife. 'Not enough air tobreathe!'

 Some people left. Drinks later, just the humans. To Sal'strophy room, corridors and rooms too small, sorry, for Colonel Hatherence (not minding; so to sleeping; good nights!). Sal'swife, going to bed, and the remaining few. Soon just the two ofthem, overlooked by the stuffed, lacquered, dry-shrunk orencased heads of beasts from dozens of planets.

 'You saw Taince? Just before the portal went?'

 'Dinner. Day or two before. Equatower.' Fassin waved inwhat might have been the general direction of Borquille. Youcould see the lights of the Equatower from the house, a thinstipple of red climbing into the sky, sometimes perversely clearerabove when the lower atmosphere was hazed and the higherbeacons shone down at a steeper angle through less air.

 'She okay?' Sal asked, then threw his head back and laughedtoo loudly. 'As though it matters. It was two centuries ago. Still'

 'Anyway, she was fine.'

 'Good.'

 They drank their drinks. Cognac. Also from Earth, long, long ago. Far, far away.

 Fassin got swim.

 'Oh shit,' he said, 'I've got Swim.'

 'Swim?' said Saluus.

 'Swim,' Fassin said. 'You know; when your head kind ofseems to swim because you suddenly think, "Hey, I'm a human being but I'm twenty thousand light years from home and we'reall living in the midst of mad-shit aliens and super-weapons andthe whole fucking bizarre insane swirl of galactic history andpolitics!" That: isn't itweird?'

 'And that's what? Swing? Swirl?' Sal said, looking genuinelyconfused.

 'No,Swim!' Fassin shouted, not able to believe that Sal hadn'theard of this concept. He thought everybody had. Some people- most people, come to think of it, or so he'd been told - nevergot Swim, but lots did. Not just humans, either. ThoughDwellers, mind you, never. Wasn't even in their vocabulary.

 'Never heard of it,' Sal confessed.

 'Well, didn't imagine you might have.'

 'Hey, you want to see something?'

 'Whatever it is, I cannot fucking wait.'

 'Come with me.'

 'Last time I heard that—'

 'We agreed no more of those.'

 'Fuck! So we did. Total retraction. Show me what you got to show me.'

 'Walk this way.'

 'Ah now, just fuck off.'

 Fassin followed Sal through to the inner recess of his study. Itwas kind of what he might have expected if he'd given the matterany thought: lots of wood and softly glowing pools of light, framedstuff and a desk the size of a sunken room. Funny-looking twistedbits of large and gleaming metal or some other shiny substancesitting in one corner. Fassin guessed these were starship bits.

 'There.'

 'Where? What am I supposed to be looking at?'

 'This.' Sal held up a very small twisted-looking bit of metalmounted on a wooden plinth.

 Fassin tried very hard not to let his shiver show. He wasnothing like as drunk as he was trying to appear to be.

 'Yeah? An whassat?' (Overdoing it, but Sal didn't seem tonotice.)

 Saluus held the piece of odd-looking metal up before Fassin'seyes. 'This is that thing I got out of that fucking downed ship,my man.' Sal looked at it, swallowed and took a deep breath.Fassin saw Sal's lip tremble. 'This is what—'

 The fucker's going to break down, Fassin thought. Heslapped one hand on Sal's shoulder. 'This is no good,' he toldhim. 'We need different, we need, I don't know; something.We need not this, not what is before us here. We need some­thing different. Elsewhen or elsestuff or elsewhere. This mightbe my last night of freedom, Sal.' He gripped the other manhard by the shoulder of his perfectly tailored jacket. 'I'mserious! You don't know how bad things might get for me! Ohfuck,Sal, you don't know how bad things might get for all ofus, and I can't fucking tell you, and this could be my last night of fun anywhere, and . . . and . . . and you're showing me somefucking coat hook or something, and I don't know . . .' He swiped weakly at the twisted piece of metal, patting it awayand still missing. Then he sniffed and drew himself up. 'Sorry,'he said, soberly. 'Sorry, Sal.' He patted the other man's shoulder.'But this is maybe my last, ah, night of fun, and . . . look, Ifeel totally charged for anything - wish Boogeytown was rightoutside, really do, but on the other hand it's been a long fewdays and maybe - no, not maybe. Maybe definitely. In fact,not that, just plaindefinitely the sensible thing to do is just goto bed and—'

 'You serious?' Sal said, dropping the metal piece on its wooden plinth onto the desk behind him.

 'About sleep?' Fassin said, gesturing wildly. 'Well, it-—'

 'No, you moron! About Boogeytown!'

 'What? Eh? I didn't mention Boogeytown!'

 'Yes, you did!' Sal said, laughing.

 'I did? Well, fuck!'

 Sal had a flier. Automatic to the point of being nearly bannedunder the AI laws. Loaded with repair mechanisms that werenot quite nanotech but only by such a tiny-tiny-tinylittle bit.Deeply civilian but with total military clearance. If a GrandFleet Admiral of the Summed Fucking Fleet stepped into thisbaby and toggled his authority it would only decrease thefucker's all-areas, multi-volumes access profile. Down in thehangar deck. Walk this way, har har.

 They left the top down part of the way, to clear their heads.It was very, very cold.

 They set down somewhere where litter blew about under thefans of the flier. Fassin hadn't thought there was still such athing as litter.

 Boogeytown was much as he remembered it. They hit thelows, looking for highs. They trawled the bowl-bars and narc­tail parlours, coming up with a brimming catch of buzz andgirls, Fassin meanwhile trying to edge Sal in a certain bar's direc­tion, while Sal - vaguely recalling this wasn't supposed to be just fun but also a way of getting his old pal Fass to open upwith more potentially useful and lucrative details about what­ever the fuck was going on - tried to get his old-new best buddyto move in a certain informational direction but without muchsuccess and anyway with decreasing amounts of concern andan increasing feeling of oh-who-gives-a-fuck?

 Fassin too was getting frustrated, still angling for one moremove and one particular streetlet, one particular bar, but they were here now in this diamond-walled emporium called the Narcateria where the sleaze was so coolly glitz it almost hurt,surrounded by people who hadn't seen Sal inso long and justhadto keep him where he was, don't youdare go away, youwickedman you! And is this yourfriend? Where you been keepinghim? Can I sit here, hmm? Me too me too! So even­tually he had to stumble away and make a call in a private publicbooth and then head for the toilet where he threw up in a thinburning stream all the alcohol he'd drunk since the last timehe'd been to the loo (over the hole, so it looked and soundedauthentic), then wash his face and rejoin the drunken stoned-out fray of breath-catching loveliness, waiting for the right girl,the one all this had been about, all of it: asking to go to Sal'sin the first place, then getting him drunk and seeming to get drunk himself (which he was, but notthat drunk) and thendropping hints about Boogeytown, all so that he could get awayand get here and see this one particular girl . . .

 . . . Who finally appeared nearly an hour later when he wasjust starting to despair but there she was, perfect and calmand quietly beautiful as ever, though looking quite different,again, with white-gold hair swinging heavy as the real 24-carat article about her near-triangular face, chin just made for holding, strawberry-bruise lips for kissing, tiny little nose fornuzzling, cheeks for stroking, eyes for gazing into (depths,ah, depths!) brows for licking, forehead for licking too, lickingdry ofsex-sweat after - oo! oo! oo! just too strenuous asession!

 Aun Liss.

 The one real love of his life, his controlling passion.

 Older again but not as old as she should be. Looking different,living different, being different, called different. Called Ko now(and that was all), not Aun Liss, but she would always be AunLiss to him. No need to say her real name. A lot of what passed between them wasn't said anyway. Dressed in salarygirl clothes.Nothing special, revealing or provocative.

 Nevertheless.

 She held out her hand.

 Nearby, surrounded by - actually, nearly drowning in - utterhuman female and super-stimulus hyper-pulchritude loveli-nessence, even Sal looked impressed.

 'Fass, you dog!'

 Aun Liss was still holding out her hand.

 Back in Sal's flier. Sal was in the front, being grievously attendedto by the infamous Segrette Twins, moaning.

 Fassin and Aun in the back seat, utterly happy to appear so archetypical. They kissed for a long time, then - looking round,shrugging at the front-seat antics (the flier at this point not reallygoing anywhere, circling in a holding pattern - a clinchingpattern, Aun Liss suggested) - she rose up and straddled him,his hands up underneath the light dress she wore, fingers stillkneading her back...as they continued to do once they were finally returned to the idiot Kehar house poised over the columnof water just as, Aun pointed out, she was poised over his column.(This aloud, for the benefit of anybody listening. They bothlaughed, not too loudly, he hoped.) Meanwhile she kept the dresson still, even in the heat of it, with his fingers pressing, kneading,moving above her arched spine producing little half-pained gasps until later when they were finally just lying together under athin sheet she shucked off the dress and he just held her.

 And this is what, over the course of those several hours, theirfingers said, drawing and tapping out the private, effectivelyunbuggable code they had used for hundreds of years, since shefirst became his control, his link:

 U STILL MY CNNECTN?

 They were in the private booth deep inside the Narcateria,just kissing. She slid her hands between his jacket and shirt,knuckled back, YS. WOT U GOT 4 I?

 1ST, I MAJR IN OCULA NW. GOT 2NDD.

 Y?

 COS I FND SMTING IN THE FMOUS DLVE. BOUTTHE DWLLR LIST. YOU HRD OF?

 VGLY.

 2ND SHIP THERY, he sent. SCRT 'HOLE NTWRK.

 WAIT, she sent back.WORMHOLE NTWRK?

 YS. SCRT 1.

 There was a pause. She kept on kissing him. Her fingers sent,YR CRZY.

 Walking to the flier, hands up each other's jackets:

 OL AFTR WHTI FND. E-5 DISCONINVDS IN 6 MNTHSTO 1 YR. THEY THNK BYNDRS WITH THEM. TRU?

 CMPLCTD. SUM R, SUM RNT.

 MRGNCY COS OF THS.

 U STRTD THE FKNG MRGNCY?

 YS. SORY. SUMD FLT ON WAY. BIG BIT AHED OFESHIP. HYR IN 2 YRS MAYB. USD A.I. TRNSMTD FRMSUMD FLT 2 TEL US OL THIS.

 AN A.I.?

 YS.

 HYPCRTS.

 Then, in the flier:

 WOT NXT 4 U?

 DLVE SOON AGEN. WITH CHF C-R GNSRL, OERLSHRVLTY CNL & C-R PGS YRNVIC. TRY FND RST OFWHTVR WS I FND IN 1ST PLACE.

 Straddled-ridden like that, they could talk, too.

 'How's that for you?' she whispered.

 'Oh, that's very good. And you?'

 'As above.'

 WHTDID U FND?

 DNT NO XCTLY. I NO RL2E AT TIME. OL CAMEOUT MUCH L8TR WHN JELTCK DID ANLYS. SMTHNGABT THIS 2ND SHIP & THNG CALLD A TRANSFORM,SPSD 2 MAK RST OF DWLR LIST MEAN SMTHNG.JLTCK SNT FLEET 2 TRY FIND. NO FIND. FLT WRKD.

 She felt him pause, tense. She sent:

 WOT?

 ALGDLY THIS ALSO Y BYNDRS WRKD PORTL. TRU?

 DNT NO. IJST A MSG GRL. She paused. SO U SAY NOTONLY U STARTTHIS MRGNCY, U COSD LAST 1 2 &GOT PRTL DSTRYD?

 YS. GES I JST ACCDNT PRN.

 FKNG HEL.

 'Verygood to see you again.'

 'Copy that.'

 'We should do this more often.'

 'Indeed we should. Now, shh.'

 BUT IF SO & THIS KNWN, Y I NOT ASKD 2 DLV &FIND MOR INFO 4 GUD GYS ERLYR?

 NO IDEA.

 OL NONSNS ANYWY BUT THEY WNT I 2 LUK.

 SO LUK.

 & WHT U MYN SUM BYNDRS 4 E-5 DISCON, SUMNOT?

 FACTNS.

 FACTIONS? YR GVNG I FKNGFACTIONS? RLY BESTU CN DO?

 KYP BING PASSYN8. CVR SLPNG.

 He made passionate moves, uttered passionate sounds.

 In his bed, his hands at the small of her back:

 I GO 2 3RD FURY MOON 3 DAYS TYM.

 . . . OH.

 OH?

 KND OF A RMR. I SHLDNT EVN NO. MAYB ATK ONNASQ MNS.

 NASQ MOONS? NOT'GLNTN?

 NO. LTL MNS.

 CN U GET WRD, NO ATCK ON 3RD FURY MOON?NO ATK ON ANY SEERS?

 WILL TRY.

 TRY HRD.

 PROMIS.

 OK. IF I DO FIND ANYTHING ON NASQ WILL GET2 U, NT MRCTRIA.

 OK. GOOD. HOW?

 STN A MICROSAT MIDWY BTWN OUR SATS EQ4&EQ5. I AIM BRST THER. MY OLD CODE & FREQ STLGOOD?

 THNK SO. TAK TYM 2 SET UP.

 TAK I MNTHS 2 FIND NYTHNG. PRBLY 0 TO FINDANYWY. HAV MICROSAT ABL 2 RCV FRM B-LOW 2,IN CASE I IN NASQ.

 WILL PASS ON.

 A little later:

 LUV U.

 YR CRZY.

 TRU.

 B MOR PASSYN8.

 He pulled the sheet further over his Beyonder girl. CVRSLPNG AGEN?

 NO, JST B MOR PASSYN8 . . .

 THREE:

 NOWHERE LEFT TO FALL

 Uncle Slovius took him up on his shoulders. They were goingto watch the bad machine being killed. He put his handsover Uncle Slovius's forehead and got him to crinkle it, whichfelt funny and made him squirm and wriggle and laugh andmeant Uncle Slovius had to hold his ankles tight to stop himfalling off.

 'Fass, stop wriggling.'

 'I fine, honest.'

 He already knew you were supposed to say, 'I'm fine,' or, 'Iam fine,' but saying things like 'I fine' was better because itmade adults smile and sometimes hug. Sometimes it made themput a hand on your head and make a mess of your hair, butnever mind.

 They went through the port door. It was spring and so thatwas the house they were in. He was big. He'd lived in all thehouses except the Summer House. That one came next. Thenhe would have lived in them all. Then you started again. Thatwas how it worked. Uncle Slovius ducked as they went throughthe doorway so he didn't bash his head.

 'Umm, mind your head,' he heard his dad say quietly some­where behind him.

 His mum sighed. 'Oh, stop fussing. Dear.'

 He couldn't see his mum and dad because they were behindhim and Uncle Slovius but he could hear them.

 'Look, I wasn'tfussing, I was just—'

 'Yes, you—'

 He got that funny feeling in his tummy he got when Mumand Dad talked like that. He did a slap-a-slap-slap on Uncle Slovius's forehead and said, 'More about history! More abouthistory!' as they walked down to the flier.

 Uncle Slovius laughed. The shake came up through UncleSlovius's shoulders into his bottom and whole body. 'My, we are a keen student.'

 'One word for it,' his mother said.

 'Oh, come on,' his dad said. 'The boy's just inquisitive.'

 'Yes, yes, you're right,' his mum said. You could hear herbreath through her words. 'My mistake. Pardon me forexpressing an opinion.'

 'Oh, now, look, I didn't mean—'

 'More about Voerin!'

 'Voehn,' Uncle Slovius said.

 'I've got a Voerin! I've got a big one that talks and climbsand swims and jumps or can walk under the water too. It's gota gun that shoots other toys. And I've got lots of little onesthat just move. They've got guns too but they're a bit small tosee but they can make each other fall over. I've nearly a hundred.I watchAttack Squad Voerin all the time! My favourite isCaptain Chunce cos he's clever. I like Commander Saptpanuhrtoo and Corporal Qump cos he's funny. Jun and Yoze both likeCommander Saptpanuhr best. They're my friends. Do youwatchAttack Squad Voerin, Uncle Slovius?'

 'Can't say I've ever caught it, Fass.'

 Fassin frowned, thinking. He decided this probably meant'No'. Why didn't adults just say no when they meant no?

 They sat in the flier. He had to come down off Uncle Slovius'sshoulders but he got to sit beside him in the front. He didn'teven need to tell people he'd be sick if he sat in the back anymore. A servant sat on the other side of him. Great-uncleFimender was behind with two old ladies who were girlfriends.He was laughing and they were too. His mum and dad werefurther back, talking quiet. His mum and dad were old butUncle Slovius was really old and Great-uncle Fimender wasreally,really old.

 The flier went up into the air and went through the air makinga noise like the Attack-shipAvenger did inAttack Squad Voerin.His model of the Attack-shipAvenger flew but only inSupervised Areas Outdoors and shot guns and missiles and madethe same noise. He'd wanted to bring it with him, but not beenallowed, even after he'd shouted. He hadn't been allowed tobring any toys. No toys at all!

 He pulled at Uncle Slovius's sleeve. 'Tell me about the Voerin!'He tried to think what had made Uncle Slovius laugh. 'Moreabout history!'

 Uncle Slovius smiled.

 'The Voehn are the Culmina's bully boys, child,' said Great-uncle Fimender from the seat behind. He was leaning over. Hisbreath had that funny sweet smell like it usually did. Great-uncle Fimender was fond of a drink. His voice was funny alsosometimes, like all the words were sort of one big word. 'Iwouldn't fixate too enthusiastically on the scum that stole ourspecies birthright.'

 'Steady, now, Fim,' Uncle Slovius said. He looked round at Great-uncle Fimender but looked first at the servant except theservant didn't move or look back or anything. 'If the wrongperson took you seriously you might find yourself joining thisrogue AI. Hmm?' He made a smile at Great-uncle Fimender,who sat back again in the seat between the old-lady girlfriendsand took a glass with a drink in it from a picnic tray.

 'Be an honour,' he said in a quiet voice.

 Uncle Slovius smiled down at Fass. 'The Voehn went to Eartha long, long time ago, Fassin. Before humans made spaceships- before they made sea ships, almost.'

 'How long ago?'

 'About eight thousand years ago.'

 '4051BCE,' Great-uncle Fimender said, though only just loudenough to hear. Uncle Slovius didn't seem to hear. Fassin wasn'tsure if Great-uncle Fimender was disagreeing with Uncle Sloviusor not. Fassin stored 4051 BCE away as an Important Numberanyway.

 'They met human people on Earth,' Uncle Slovius said, 'andtook them away with them on their ship, to other stars andplanets.'

 'Kidnapping the prims!' Great-uncle Fimender said.'Sampling the barbs, with prejudice! Eh?' He didn't sound likehe was talking to him and Uncle Slovius. Fass didn't under­stand what Great-uncle Fimender was saying anyway. The old-lady girlfriends were laughing.

 'Well,' Uncle Slovius said, with a small smile, 'who's to saywhether humans were kidnapped or not? People in ancientEgypt and Mesopotamia and China were too primitive to knowwhat was going on. They probably thought the Voehn weregods, so they might have gone with them without beingkidnapped and we don't even know that the Voehn took whole people. Maybe they just took their cells.'

 'Or babies, or foetuses, or excised a few thousand fertilisedeggs,' Great-uncle Fimender said. Then, 'Oh, thank you, mydear. Oops! Steady, there.'

 'In any event,' Uncle Slovius said, 'the Voehn took some human people and put them down on planets far away fromEarth and the human people grew up with other people, andthe Culmina had the other people help the humans so that they became civilised quickly, and invented all the things humans back on Earth ever invented, but these human people on theother planets always knew they were part of a galactic commu­nity, hmm?' Uncle Slovius looked at him with a question-lookon his face. Fass nodded quickly. He knew what a galacticcommunity meant: everybody else.

 'Anyway, people on Earth kept on inventing things, and even­tually invented wormholes and portals—'

 'The Attack-shipAvenger goes through wormholes andportals,' he told Uncle Slovius.

 'Of course,' Uncle Slovius said. 'And so when human peoplewent out and met other alien people and joined their worm-hole up with everybody else's wormhole, they found out thatthey weren't the first humans the alien people had met or hadheard of, because the humans who had been taken away to theother planets by the Voehn were already quite well known.'

 'Remainderhumans,' Great-uncle Fimender said from the seat behind. His voice sounded funny, like he might be goingto burst out laughing or something.

 Uncle Slovius looked round at him for a short bit. 'Well, the terms don't matter too much, even if they might sound a little harsh sometimes.'

 'Carefully chosen to keep us in our place, remind us we owethem, either way,' Great-uncle Fimender said.

 'The Culmina tell us they had people look after Earth afterthe Voehn took the humans away to the other stars. They madesure that nothing bad happened to Earth, like it being hit by a big rock.'

 Great-uncle Fimender made a sort of cough-laugh. 'Easy toclaim.'

 Fass looked round at Great-uncle Fimender. He sort ofwanted Great-uncle Fimender to be quiet so he could listen toUncle Slovius but sort of didn't because the things Great-uncleFimender was saying, even if he didn't always understand all ofthem, seemed to be saying things about the things Uncle Sloviuswas saying. It was like they sort of agreed and didn't agree atthe same time. Great-uncle Fimender winked at him andgestured towards Uncle Slovius with his glass. 'No, no; listen!'

 'So, people from Earth got into the stars at last and foundthat there were aliens everywhere,' Uncle Slovius told him. 'Andsome of them were us!' He smiled a broad smile.

 'And there were a lot more of the alien humans than therewere of the ones who thoughtthey were humanity,' Great-uncle Fimender said. It sounded like he was sneering. Uncle Sloviussighed and looked ahead.

 The flier was flying over mountains with snow on them. In front was a big bit of desert like a circle. Uncle Slovius shookhis head and didn't seem to want to say anything but Great-uncle Fimender did so Fass turned round in his seat and listenedto him.

 'And they were more technically advanced, these so-calledaHumans. Advanced but cowed. Servant species, just like every­body else. While all Earth's dreams of wild expansion were madeto look like so much belly-gas. The answer to "Where is every­body?" turned out to be, "Everywhere", but the stake at thegalactic poker game is a wormhole and so we had to fund our own and bring that to the table. Then discover that Everywhere really meant Everywhere, and every damn thing you could seeand every damn thing you couldn't belonged to some bugger:every rock, every planet, moon and star, every comet, dust cloudand dwarf, even the bloody null-foam of space itself was some­body's home. Land on some godforsaken cinder, pull out ashovel thinking you could dig something, build something or make something of it and next thing you know an alien withtwo heads was poking both of them out of a burrow and tellingyou to fuck off, or pointing a gun at you. Or a writ - ha! Worsestill!'

 He'd never heard Great-uncle Fimender talk so much. Hewasn't sure that Great-uncle Fimender was really talking toUncle Slovius or to him or even to his two old-lady girlfriendsbecause he wasn't looking at any of them, he was looking at the picnic table hinged down from the seat in front, maybelooking at the glass and the decanter bottle on it, and lookingsad. The two old-lady girlfriends patted him and one smoothed his hair which was very black indeed but still looked old.

 'Prepping, they call it,' he said, maybe to himself or maybeto the picnic table. 'Bloody kidnapping.' He snorted. 'Puttingpeople in their place, holding them there. Letting us build ourdreams then puncturing them.' He shook his head, and drankfrom his shiny glass.

 'Prepping?' Fass asked, to make sure he had the word right.

 'Hmm? Oh, yes.'

 'Well, it's something that's gone on for as long as anybodycan remember,' Uncle Slovius said. He sounded gentle, and Fass wasn't sure if Uncle Slovius was talking to him or to Great-uncle Fimender. He sort of half-listened while he pulled outone of the flier's screens. If he'd been allowed to bring any toys he'd definitely have brought his BotPal and just asked, but nowthese damn adults were making him use a screen. He stared at the letters and numbers and things (Uncle Slovius and Great-uncle Fimender were still talking).

 He didn't want to have to talk, he wanted to tap-in like adults did. He tried a few buttons. After a while he got a lots-of-bookssymbol with a big kid standing next to it and an ear symbol. The big kid looked scruffy and was holding a drug bowl andhis head was surrounded with lines and little moving satellites and flying birds. Oh well.

 'Prepping,' he said, but pressedText. The screen said:

 Prepping.A very long-established practice, used lately bytheCulmina amongst others, is to take a few examples ofapre-civilised species from theirhome world (usually inclonoclasticorembryonic form) and make themsubjectspecies\slaves\mercenaries\mentored. so that when thepeople from their home world finally assume theGalacticstage, they are not the mostcivilised \advancedof theirkind (often they're not even the most numerousgroupingof their kind). Species so treated are expected to feel an obligation to their so-calledmentors (who will also gener­ally claim to have divertedcomets or otherwise preventedcatastrophesin the interim, whether they have or not). Thispractice has been banned in the past whenpan-Galacticlaws(seeGalactic Council ) have been upheld but tends to reappear in less civilised times. Practice variously referredto as Prepping,Lifting orAggressive Mentoring . Local-relevant terminology:aHuman &rHuman (advanced andremainderHuman ).

 And that was just the start. He scratched his head. Too manylong words. And this wasn't even an adult pedia. Maybe heshould have found the not-so-big kids' site.

 They were landing. Wow! He hadn't even noticed they werenear the ground. The desert was covered with fliers of differentsizes and there were lots in the air too and lots of people.

 They got out and walked across the sand though a lot ofpeople stayed in their fliers. He got to go on Uncle Slovius'sshoulders again.

 Away in the distance in the centre of a big circle was a towerwith a big blob on top and that was where the bad machinewas which had been found hiding in a cave in the mountains and caught by the Cessoria. (The Cessoria and the Lustralscaught bad machines. He'd tried watchingLustral Patrol a fewtimes but it was too much for old people with talk and kissing.)

 The bad machine in the blob on top of the big tower wasallowed to make a speech but it was too full of long words. Hewas getting bored and it was very hot. No toys! Uncle Slovius said 'Shush' at him, twice. He sort of tried to pretend-strangleUncle Slovius with his thighs and knees to get back at him forgoing 'Shush' twice, but Uncle Slovius didn't seem to notice.Mum and Dad were still talking quietly, rolling their eyes andshaking their heads at each other as usual. Great-uncle Fimenderand the two old-lady girlfriends had stayed in the flier.

 Then Lustrals in a flier - humans and a whule like a big greybat - said things, then at last it was time and the bad machinewas killed but even that wasn't very good, the blob on top ofthe tower just went red and made lots of smoke and then there was a big bright flash but not that big or bright and then there was a bang and bits fell down, with smoke, and some peoplecheered but mostly there was silence, just the bang being an echo round the mountains.

 When they got back to the flier Great-uncle Fimender hadvery red eyes and said in his opinion they had just seen a terriblecrime committed.

 *

 'Ah, young Taak. Now then, what is this nonsense about not beingable to delve properly, by which of course one means remotely?'

 Braam Ganscerel, Chief Seer of Sept Tonderon and thereforethe most senior Seer of all - and Fassin's future paterfamilias-in-law - was tall and thin and maned in white hair. He lookedyounger than he was, but then he was nearly seventeen hundredyears old by the most obvious way of reckoning such matters.He had a sharp, angular face with a large nose, his skin waspale, waxy and translucent and his fingers and hands were longand fragile-seeming. He habitually walked and stood with his head back and chest out, as though he had long ago vowed notto appear stooped as he grew into great old age and had gonetoo far in the other direction. This curious stance meant that his head was angled so far back on his neck that he had no choice but to look down his splendidly monumental nose atthose he talked with, to or at. He held two long shining blackstaffs as though just returned from - or about to set off for -some particularly fashionable ski slopes.

 With his long, bunned white hair, pale complexion and simplebut elegantly cut Seer robes - black puttees, pantaloons andlong jacket - he contrived to look appealingly frail, sweetlyelderly, breathtakingly distinguished and only a little lessauthoritative than a supreme deity.

 He swept into the senior officers' mess of the heavy cruiserPyralisin a clatter of clicks from his twin staffs and boot heels,attended by a pale train of half a dozen junior Seers - half of them men, half of them women, all of them greyly deferential- and, bringing up the rear, the gangly, smiling form of PaggsYurnvic, a Seer whom Fassin had helped teach but who, havingspent less time subsequently in the slowness of actual delvingthan Fassin had, was now older in both adjusted time andappearance.

 'Chief Seer,' Fassin said, standing and executing a formal nodthat just avoided being a bow. The heavy cruiser was taking their party to Third Fury, the close-orbit moon of Nasqueronfrom which they would delve - either all remotely, or, if Fassinhad his way, through a combination of remote and direct pres­ences.

 Braam Ganscerel had insisted that his years and frailty made a high-gee journey to the moon out of the question - esuits, life-pods and shock-gel notwithstanding - and so the ship wasmaking a gentle standard one gee, creating what felt like abouttwice 'glantine's gravity and a fraction less than Sepekte's. Even this standard gee, Braam Ganscerel let it be known, necessitatedthat he use both his staffs to support himself. This was, however, in the current grave circumstances, a sacrifice he felt it was onlyright and proper and indeed required that he make. Fassinthought it made him look like a stilter, like a whule.

 'Well?' the Chief Seer demanded, stopping in front of Fassin.'Why can't you remote delve, Fassin? What's wrong with you?'

 'Fear, sir,' Fassin told him.

 'Fear?' Braam Ganscerel seemed to experiment with putting his head even further back than it already was, found it waspossible, and left it there.

 'Fear of being shown up by you, sir, as a merely competentSlow Seer.'

 Braam Ganscerel half-closed one eye. He looked at Fassinfor a while. 'You're mocking me, Fassin.'

 Fassin smiled. 'I delve better direct, Braam. You know that.'

 'I do,' Ganscerel said. He turned with a sort of staccato graceand let himself flop into the couch where Fassin had been sitting, watching screen news. Fassin sat too. Paggs perched on one armof the next-nearest couch and the rest of Braam Ganscerel'sretinue sited themselves nearby according to some arcanepecking order.

 Fassin nodded at Paggs. 'Seer Yurnvic,' he said with a smileand a formality he hoped Paggs wouldn't take seriously.

 Paggs grinned. 'Good to see you, Fass.' That was all right,then.

 'However, we must do this together, I believe,' BraamGanscerel said, looking ahead at the wall screen, where the newswent silently on. The funerals were taking place of some moreof the Navarchy people who'd died in the attack on the dock-habitat at Sepekte's trailing Lagrange. Ganscerel had let one of his twin staffs rest on the couch beside him, but still held theother. He waved it at the screen and it obligingly went back tobeing a bulkhead again. The heavy cruiser's senior officers' messwas a large space, but much broken up by vertical columns anddiagonal reinforcing struts. Like the rest of the vessel it wasquite comfortable by human standards, though ColonelHatherence had had to be content with a cabin that was extremely cramped for an oerileithe. She had been offeredpassage on an escorting cruiser with more suitable accommo­ dation but had declined.

 'We can be together,' Fassin said. 'You and Paggs remotely,the Colonel and I directly. That way we're backed up so if anything happens to either group—'

 'Ah,' Ganscerel said. 'You see, young Taak, this is the point. If we are all on Third Fury, with this fine vessel and its escortcraft to protect us, we shall all be safe. You wish to take a tinygascraft into the unending violence of the planet's atmosphere.A dangerous enterprise at the best of times. In wartime, posi­tively foolhardy.'

 'Braam, the old portal was protected by an entire fleet andit still got blasted. Third Fury might move, but it moves verypredictably. If somebody did want to attack it they could accel­erate a small rock to just under light speed and send it on anintercept course. If that happens, the only way a heavy cruiseris going to help is if by some million-to-one chance it happensto be in the way at the time and takes the hit itself. As nobody'sgoing to surround the entire moon with a shell of ships, I think it's unwise to rely on a few war craft to protect us from some­thing there's almost no defence against.'

 'Why would anybody target a moonlet like Third Fury?'Paggs asked.

 'Indeed,' Ganscerel said, as though he had been just about toask that very question.

 'No good reason,' Fassin said. 'But then a lot of places there'sbeen no good reason to hit have been getting attacked recently.'

 'This might well include Nasqueron itself,' Ganscerel pointedout.

 'Which can absorb a lot more punishment than Third Fury.'

 'You might still be targeted.'

 'If I'm in there in a gascraft, even with Colonel Hatherenceriding shotgun, I should be effectively untraceable,' Fassin toldthem.

 'Unless,' Paggs said, 'she's supposed to be in constant touchwith her superiors.'

 'And that might be the real reason we are all expected to staytogether on Third Fury, delving remotely,' Ganscerel said, sighing.He looked at Fassin. 'Control. Or at least the illusion of it. Our masters are fully aware how important this mission is, even ifthey think themselves for the moment above explaining its precisenature to all who need to know. They are naturally terrified that if it goes wrong some of the blame will stick to them. Really, itis all up to us: a bunch of academics they've never particularly cared about or for, even though -' Ganscerel looked round theassembled junior Seers '- being a centre of Dweller Studies repre­sents the only thing which makes Ulubis in any way remark­able.' He directed his gaze on Fassin again. 'There is very littlethey can do, therefore they will attend with extreme diligence to what trivial matters they are able to affect. With us all apparentlysafe on Third Fury protected by a small fleet of warships, theywill feel they are doing all they can to assist us. If they let you go down into Nasqueron, and something does go wrong, theywill be blamed. In that they are right.'

 'It won't work, Braam.'

 'I think we have to try,' the older man said. 'Look.' He pattedFassin's arm. Fassin was dressed in his Shrievalty major'suniform and feeling awkward amidst fellow Seers. 'Have youtried remote delving recently?'

 'Not for a long time,' Fassin admitted.

 'It's changed,' Paggs said, nodding. 'It's much more lifelike,if you know what I mean; more convincing.' Paggs smiled.'There have been a lot of improvements over the last couple ofcenturies. Largely thanks to the Real Delving movement,frankly.'

 Oh, Paggs, flattery?Fassin thought.

 Ganscerel patted his arm again. 'Just try it, will you, Fassin?Will you do that for me?'

 Fassin didn't want to say yes immediately.This is all besidethe point,he thought.Even if I didn't know there was a poten­tial threat to Third Fury, the argument that matters is that theDwellers we need to talk to just won't take us seriously if weturn up in remotes. It's about respect, about us taking risks,  sharing their world with them, really being there.But he mustn'tseem intransigent. Keep some arguments back; always have reserves. After a moment he nodded slowly. 'Very well. I'll dothat. But only as a trial delve. A day or two. That'll be enoughto feel any difference. Then we have to make a final decision.'Ganscerel smiled. They all did.

 They had a very pleasant dinner with the senior officers of the small fleet taking them to Third Fury.

 Fassin got Ganscerel alone at one point. 'Chief Seer,' he said.'I will do this remote delve, but if I feel it's not good enoughI'm going to have to insist on going direct.' He gave Ganscerelspace to say something, but the old man just looked him in theeye, head thrown back. 'I do have authority,' Fassin continued.'From the briefing, from Admiral Quile and the ComplectorCouncil. I realise it's been compromised by people in-systemcoming to their own conclusions about the best way to tacklethis problem, but if I think I need to, I'll go as high and wide as I can to get my way.'

 Ganscerel thought for a while, then smiled. 'Do you thinkthis delve - or delves, this mission - will be successful?' 'No, Chief Seer.'

 'Neither do I. However, we must make the attempt and doall we can to make it successful, even so, and even though failureis probably guaranteed. We must be seen to do what we can,attempt not to offend those above us, and aim to protect thegood name and the future prospects of the Slow Seers in general.These things we can definitely do. You agree?''So far, yes.'

 'If you genuinely believe that you must delve directly, I shallnot stand in your way. I shall not back you, either, because to do that in my position would be to tie myself too directly to acourse of action I still regard as fundamentally foolhardy. Inany other set of circumstances I would simply order you to doas your most senior Chief Seer tells you to do. However, you have been instructed from on high - from extremely on high -Fassin Taak, and that does alter things somewhat. However. Try this remote delve. You might be surprised. Then make yourown mind up. I won't stand in your way. The responsibility will be entirely yours. You have my full support in that.' Witha wink, Ganscerel turned away to talk to the heavy cruiser'scaptain.

 Fassin reflected that being given full support had never feltso much like being hung out to dry.

 ThePyralis blazed with its own trailed aurora as it entered theprotective magnetombra of Third Fury, a little twenty-kilo­metre-wide ball of rock and metal orbiting just 120,000 kilo­metres above Nasqueron's livid cloud tops. The gas-giant filledthe sky, so close that its rotund bulk took on the appearance ofa vast wall, its belts and zones of tearing, swirling, ever-eddyingclouds looking like colossal contra-rotating, planet-widestreams of madly coloured liquid caught whirling past each otherunder perfectly transparent ice.

 Third Fury had no appreciable atmosphere and only thevaguest suggestion of gravity. The heavy cruiser could almost have docked directly with the Seer base complex on the side ofthe little moon which always faced Nasqueron. However, atroop landing craft took them from one to the other. ThePyralislay a few kilometres off, effectively another temporary satelliteof the gas-giant. Its escort of two light cruisers and fourdestroyers took up station a few tens of kilometres further outin a complicated cat's cradle of nested orbits around the moon,slim slow shadow shapes only glimpsed when they passed in front of the planet's banded face.

 Third Fury had been constructed, or converted, from an alreadyexisting moonlet, billions of years earlier, by one of the firstspecies to pay homage at the court of the Nasqueron Dwellers. Given that Dwellers were the most widespread of the planet-based species of the galaxy, with a presence in almost all gas-giants - themselves the most common type of planets - the factthat out of those ninety million-plus Dweller-inhabited super-globes there were exactly eight with populations willing to playhost to those wishing to carry on more than the most fleeting conversation with their inhabitants spoke volumes - indeed,appropriately, libraries - about their almost utter lack of interestin the day-to-day life of the rest of the galactic community.

 It was, though, onlyalmost utter; the Dwellers were notperfectly anything, including reclusive. They sought, gatheredand stored vast quantities of information, albeit with nodiscernible logical system involved in the acquisition or thestorage, and when quizzed on the matter seemed not onlycompletely unable to present any obvious or even obscurerationale for this effectively mindless accumulation of data, buteven genuinely puzzled that the question should be asked at all.

 There had also, throughout recorded time - even discountingthe notoriously unreliable records kept on such matters by theDwellers themselves - always been a few of their populationsavailable for discourse and informational trading, though thiswas invariably only granted on the eccentric and capricious terms of the Dwellers. Since the end of the First DiasporianAge, when the galaxy and the universe were both around twoand a half billion years old, there had never been no workingcentres of Dwellers Studies, but in the following ten and a halfbillion years there had never been more than ten such centresoperating at any one time either.

 Acceptable companions came and went.

 The Dwellers were of the Slow, the category of species thatstuck around in a civilised form for at least millions of years.The people they let come and visit them and talk to them, andwith whom they were prepared to trade information, wereusually numbered amongst the Quick, the kind of species thatoften counted its time as a civilised entity in tens of thousandsof years, and sometimes not even that long. The Dwellers wouldtolerate and talk to other Slow species as well, though normally on a less regular and frequent basis. The suspicion was that the Dwellers, for all their fabled patience - no species colonised thegalaxy at speeds averaging less than one per cent of the speedof light (not counting stopovers) unless it was supremely patient- could get bored with the species that came to talk to them,and by selecting only those numbered amongst the Quick theyensured that they would never have to endure for too long atime the attentions of people they only looked forward to seeingthe back of. Just wait a bit and - in a twinkling of an eye byDweller standards - their troublesome guests would evolve out of nuisancehood.

 For the last sixteen hundred years or so - barely half a Dwellereye-twinkling - humans had been adjudged as acceptable confi­dants for the Dwellers of Nasqueron in the system of Ulubis,their presence mostly tolerated, their company usually accepted,their safety almost always guaranteed and their attempts to talk to the Dwellers and mine their vast but defiantly imaginativelyorganised and indexed data shales met with only the most formalof obstructiveness, the lighter forms of derision and the least determinedly obfuscatory strategies.

 That such playful coynesses, such nearly-too-small-to-measure diffidences and such gentle, barely-meriting-the-namehindrances appeared to the humans concerned to be obstaclesof monumental scale, hideous complexity and inexhaustiblyfiendish invention just went to show who'd been doing this for most of the lifetime of the universe and who for less than twothousand years.

 Other approaches had, of course, been tried.

 Bribing creatures who found the concept of money merely amusing tended to tax even the most enterprising and talentedarbitrageur. The Dwellers clove to a system in which power wasdistributed, well, more or less randomly, it sometimes seemed,and authority and influence depended almost entirely on one'sage; little leverage there.

 Alternatively, every now and again a species would attemptto take by force of arms what those involved in Dweller Studiesattempted to wrest from the Dwellers by polite but doggedinquiry. Force, it had been discovered - independently, amaz­ingly often - did not really work with Dwellers. They felt nopain, held their own continued survival (and that of others, giventhe slightest provocation) to be of relatively little consequenceand seemed to embody, apparently at the cellular level, the beliefthat all that really mattered, ever, was a value unique to them­selves which they defined as a particular kind of kudos, one ofwhose guiding principles appeared to be that if any outsideinfluence attempted to mess with them they had to resist it to the last breath in the bodies of all concerned, regardless.

 Dwellers were almost everywhere and had been there prac­tically for ever. They had learned a few things about makingwar over that time, and while their war machines were believedto be as customarily unreliable - and eccentrically designed,built and maintained - as every other piece of technology theydeigned to involve themselves with, that didn't mean theyweren't deadly; usually for all concerned, and within a discon­certingly large volume.

 Other species had prevailed against Dwellers on occasion. Entire planetary populations of them had been wiped out andwhole gas-giants dismantled to provide the raw material for oneof those monstrous megastructure projects that Quick speciesin particular seemed so keen on building, apparently just becausethey could. But the long-term results were, to date, inevitablyunhappy.

 Picking a fight with a species as widespread, long-lived, iras­cible and - when it suited them - single-minded as the Dwellerstoo often meant that just when - or even geological ages afterwhen - you thought that the dust had long since settled,bygones were bygones and any unfortunate disputes were allancient history, a small planet appeared without warning inyour home system, accompanied by a fleet of moons, them­selves surrounded with multitudes of asteroid-sized chunks,each of those riding cocooned in a fuzzy shell made up ofuntold numbers of decently hefty rocks, every one of themtravelling surrounded by a large landslide's worth of stillsmaller rocks and pebbles, the whole ghastly collection trav­elling at so close to the speed of light that the amount ofwarning even an especially wary and observant species wouldhave generally amounted to just about sufficient time to gaspthe local equivalent of 'What the fu—?' before they disap­peared in an impressive if wasteful blaze of radiation.

 Retaliation, where it was still possible, and on the few occa­sions it had been tried, led without fail towards a horribly messywar of attrition, whereupon the realisation of the sheer scale ofthe Dweller civilisation (if one could even call it that) and itspast - and therefore probably future - longevity more oftenthan not had a sobering effect on whatever species had beenunwise enough to set themselves against the Dwellers in thefirst place.

 Attempting to hold your local Dweller population hostagein the hope of influencing another one - or a group of others- was an almost laughably lame and even counter-productivestrategy. Dwellers of any given gas-giant thought little enough of their own collective safety; giving them an excuse to show how little solidarity they felt with any other group of their ownkind only led to events of particular and spectacular grisliness,for all that the genetic and cultural variation between Dweller populations was much less than that displayed by any othergalaxy-wide grouping.

 The long, long-arrived-at consensus, particularly amongstthose still nursing civilisational bruises from earlier encounterswith what was arguably one of the galaxy's most successfulspecies, or those with the images of what had happened to othersstill fresh in their data banks, was that, on balance, it was bestjust to leave the Dwellers alone.

 Left to themselves the Dwellers disturbed nobody exceptoccasionally themselves and those who thought too deeplyabout what they really represented. Their history, after all, like that of the galaxy as a whole, was one of almost but not quiteuninterrupted peace and tranquillity: billions and billions ofyears of thankfully nothing much happening at all. In over ten billion years of civilisation there had been only three majorChaoses and the number of genuine galaxy-spanning wars didn'teven make it into double figures. In base eight!

 That was a record that the Dwellers seemed to feel every­body concerned ought to feel mildly proud of. Especially them­selves.

 'Welcome all! Chief Seer, good to see you! Seer Taak, SeerYurnvic. Young friends. And this must be Colonel Hatherence.Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am.' Duelbe, the bald,nearly spherical major-domo of the Third Fury Shared Facility,greeted them in the transit hall as the military troop carrierdisengaged and turned back towards thePyralis. A couple ofthe youngest Seers, who had patently never encountered thepositively ball-like form of Duelbe before, stared. It was as arule at such moments that comparisons regarding the similarityin shape of Third Fury and the major-domo of its Shared Facilitycame to mind. Happily, on this occasion, if they were thoughtthey went unvoiced.

 Servants took charge of luggage pallets. Hatherence shooed away retainers who offered to help her manoeuvre in the rela­tively confined space - the dome-like hall, like the rest of themostly underground facility, had been rebuilt on a human scalesince the departure of the last species to be granted Seer status,with little spatial concession to other, effectively larger species. Colonel Hatherence was happy to float where she could withoutassistance, thank you, using trim-vanes on the outside of herdiscus of esuit to propel her from place to place.

 'Ah!' Braam Ganscerel announced loudly, bouncing along thehall's floor in long floating strides, idly fending himself off theceiling above with casual prods of one staff like some strangelygraceful, if inverted, pole vaulter.'That's better! One rarelyappreciates gravity so much as when faced with so little of it,eh, Duelbe?'

 The major-domo smiled broadly, even though Fassin knewhe must have heard the old man say this a dozen times or more.The retinue of junior Seers apparently hadn't, and gave every impression of being barely able to contain their hearty guffawswithin their aching sides.

 The three double discs soared above a great curved canyon ofcloud sliced deep within what looked like a convex bank ofblood-red snow a hundred kilometres high. Much furtherabove, a sky of rushing yellow streamers afforded brief glimpsesof a wanly cerise sky, dotted with the spike-points of stars and,occasionally, a single, visibly sky-crossing moon like a softbrown snowball. The formation of flying machines curvedacross towards the blood-red bank of vapour and disappearedinto it.

 Senses shifted. He felt himself reaching out with a slick effort­lessness into mag and rad, grav-grad and radio, pulling in acomposite picture of his environment thousands of kilometresin diameter and hundreds deep, placing him with pin-sharpclarity in a great reticulated accumulation of magnetic fields,radiation and gravitational gradient, all overlaid on the wide-light image still available and the jelly-like ghost-vista of sound-scape.

 Still taking the lead from Paggs, leading the trio, they dived towards a sharp thermocline coming into view a dozen klicksdown.

 They flew out into a wide bubble of relative sight-clarity,then into a squall of water snow. They dived deeper, through aband of pressure and temperature where water rain fell, patteringhard against the skins of their whirling double discs, then ondown, down into even wide-light darkness, down to the warmhydrogen slush where the discs floated like giant double-coneyo-yos, bobbing, steaming, flickering signals to each other.

 -  So, what do you think, young Taak? Good to be home?

 -  A fascinating experience, Fassin agreed. - We're, what? Hedouble checked his internal navigation instrumentation. – Twoequatorial sats along and a band up?

 -  Now, Fass, Paggs began.

 -   So if I do this - Fassin sent, and lunged his double disctowards Paggs's. Paggs had guessed what was coming and already started to move away, flinching backwards and up.Fassin's machine seemed to dart towards the other Seer's remotecraft, then draw back, stopping just short of where Paggs'smachine had been. - You've got just enough time to get out ofthe way, Fassin pointed out reasonably.

 -  Seer Taak . . . Braam Ganscerel began.

 -  Whereas if I did something similar on the far side of theplanet, Fassin continued, - at the far end of a whole chain of sats, the best part of a full light second away even without anyprocessing delays, we might both now be listening to ourremotes telling us that, at best, I just voided their warranties.

 -  Fassin, Ganscerel sent with a sigh. - I think we're all awareof the speed of light and the diameter of the planet. And theseremotes are anyway not completely stupid, or unprotected.They have an extremely sophisticated collision-avoidancesystem built into them. One we had to clear specifically with your friends in the Shrievalty to have built in, it's so close to...to beingclever.

 -  But if a Dweller points a laser at you for fun, Fassin asked,
- just to see if you'll flinch, what good is any collision-avoid­-ance system to you then?

 -  Perhaps, Ganscerel suggested mellowly, - one ought not tomix with the kind of Dweller who would be likely to act insuch a manner in the first place.

 Except they're the ones that are most likely to share inter­esting stuff with you, old man, not the desiccated, harmless butclueless pixie-brains you tend to spend your time flattering,Fassin thought. He was fairly certain that it was just a thought.People always worried that in theory in VR you might saysomething you only meant to think, but he wasn't so rusty inthe techniques of remote delving that he was truly concerned.It might, anyway, even do Braam Ganscerel some good to heara few politely unspeakable things now and again.

 -  Perhaps, indeed, Chief Seer, was all he said.

 -  Hmm. Let's step out, shall we?

 They returned to the reality of a remote-send suite buried deepin the Third Fury Facility, blinking in the light as technicians helped to unclip them from the couches, pushing themselvesforward to clear the half-domes of the NMR assemblages,handing back earpieces and simple black velvet blindfolds,flexing and stretching as though they'd been under for agenuinely long delve rather than a mere hour or so at a one-to-one time ratio.

 Paggs worked his fingers, undoing the last couple of soft tabsthat connected him to the thin pneumo-tubes which had bothsensed his movements and would have prevented him fromthrowing himself right off the couch in the event that he'dperformed any especially energetic actions.

 Ganscerel lay with his eyes closed, breathing deeply andletting the technicians detach him from the machinery.

 Paggs glanced over. 'Are we convincing you at all, Fass?'

 'You're convincing me it's even easier to remote delve these days than it used to be.' Fassin levered himself from the couchwith the steady application of force from one small finger and let himself float very gently towards the floor. 'I would havetaken your word for it.'

 'So, you only got one-third of the volumes concerned, youngTaak,' Ganscerel said.

 Fassin was giving a very private briefing in an engineering store off the secondary ship hangar. Ganscerel had wanted itconducted in his quarters but there wasn't a way of squeezingthe colonel in there. Present were Fassin, Ganscerel, Paggs andColonel Hatherence. Fassin wanted them each to know as muchas he did - or at least as much as he thought they ought toknow - about what he had found on his long-ago delve and what they would be looking for on the one they were hopingto begin the following day.

 'Yes,' he said. 'I traded some high-definition images of EarthTwentieth-Century European Expressionist paintings for -amongst a lot of other stuff - what was catalogued as a tri-trans-lated text of a pre-Third Chaos Lutankleydar epic poem, aprivate, unpublished work by - or perhaps commissioned by -a Doge of the Enigmatics. It was all double-encrypted andcompressed but it was known to be in three volumes. I got threevolumes from Valseir, only - as it turned out years later, whenit was finally de-mangled by the Jeltick - what I'd been givenwasn't Volumes One, Two and Three. It was Volume One, threetimes over, in three separate languages. And it wasn't by anEnigmatic Doge either.

 'One of the volumes was in a previously known but untrans­latable Penumbral language from the time of the Summation.When the translation was made it acted as a Rosetta; gave thekey to a lot of other stuff, and that sidetracked everybody fora while. Then some pin-eyed Jeltick scholar spotted a note atthe end, buried in the appendices in a crude but related slang-language, obviously added later, but not much later, that basi­cally said the whole thing had been written during the LongCrossing of the Second Ship, by an Outcast Dweller skilled inthe Penumbral language, and that, yes, of course there was aDweller List, they - the ship, or its crew - had the key to it,and it would be included in Volume Two or Three of this epicpoem. It was also, of course, in the ship, and the ship was headingfor the Zateki system. That's why the Jeltick sent an expeditionstraight there as soon as they had the translation.'

 'Why not come here, to Nasqueron, where they might havefound the Third Volume?' Paggs asked, smiling.

 'Because the Shrievalty hadn't told them where the data hadcome from. Whether this was oversight or deliberate we haven't been told. The Jeltick may have guessed it was from a DwellerStudies centre but they couldn't be sure whether it was or notand, if so, which one. They probably did start making inquiries,but they didn't want to alert anybody else to the importanceof what they had. Don't forget, the information had been copiedand re-copied - it was lying about in data reservoirs all overthe civilised galaxy. Quite possibly people had even alreadytranslated and read the main text but just hadn't got round tothe appendices, where the all-important note was. The slightesthint that there was anything of strategic interest in that tranche and everybody else would have dusted it off, read it and - bang- the Jeltick would have lost their edge. So they fuelled and tooled and set sail for Zateki instead.'

 'This could all be a hoax, you know,' Ganscerel said, snorting.He adjusted his robes, frowning deeply. ‘Ido believe I detect the laboured and tortuous signature of Dweller humour here.This could just be a joke at the expense of anyone foolish enoughto fall for it.'

 'It could indeed, sir,' Fassin agreed. 'But we have our ordersand we have to make the effort, just in case it is all true.'

 'So we are looking for the remaining two volumes of this . . .what is it called, exactly?' Colonel Hatherence asked.

 'Best translation,' Fassin said, 'is,The Algebraist. It's all aboutmathematics, navigation as a metaphor, duty, love, longing,honour, long voyages home... all that stuff.'

 'And what is or was this Long Crossing?' Ganscerel askedirascibly. 'I haven't heard of it.'

 'The voyage back home from what humans used to call theTriangulum Nebula,' Fassin said, with a small smile.

 'Well,' Ganscerel said, frowning once more. 'We are not reallymuch further forward, are we? And what, pray, do we call the Triangulum Nebula now, Seer Taak?'

 'We call it the Lost Souls II Galaxy, Chief Seer. The crossingwas called the Long Crossing because it took thirty million years. The outward journey allegedly took almost no time,because it was conducted through an intergalactic wormhole,the portal location of which is amongst those included in theDweller List.'

 Hervil Apsile, Master Technician of the Third Fury SharedFacility, ran the ultrasonic hand-held over the gascraft's star­board nacelle one more time, smiling with some satisfaction atthe smooth line on the screen. Above his head, one of the SharedFacility's drop ships stood on extended legs, a squat lifting-bodyshape, hold doors open. To one side, the main hangar's trans­parent dome showed a vast darkness, fitfully illuminated bylong lighting flashes like sheets of tipped diamond catching the light of a dim blue sun.

 'Checking for scrits, Hervil?' Fassin asked, approaching bybounce along the fused-rock floor.

 Apsile grinned at the sound of Fassin's voice but watched thehand-held's screen until he'd got to the end of the seam he wasinspecting. He switched the machine off and turned to Fassin.'Just the standard varieties detected so far, Seer Taak.'

 Scrits were the almost certainly mythical creatures whichDwellers blamed when anything went badly wrong anywherein their vicinity. The humans who had lately taken up the batonof Dweller Studies had adopted early on the idea of scrits toaccount for the high degree of malfunctions any interaction with- or indeed near - the Dwellers seemed to involve. It was either that or accept that the Dwellers' endemic technological care­lessness and congenital lack of enthusiasm for keepingmachinery in reliably working order was somehow contagious.

 Fassin patted the dark flank of the fat, arrowhead-shaped gascraft. This was his own machine, designed specifically forand partly by Fassin himself. It was about five metres long, fouracross the beam if you included the outboard manoeuvringnacelles and a little under two metres in height. Its smooth formwas broken only by the shut lines of its various manipulatorsand manoeuvring impellers, a few sensor bulges, and the rearpower assembly, vanes currently stowed. Fassin rubbed his handover its port tail fin. 'All prepped and ready, Herv?'

 'Entirely,' Apsile said. He was Nubianly black, slim butmuscled, sleekly bald. Only a few lines round his eyes madehim look remotely as old as he was, which was very. Every yearor so, before his annual depilatory treatment - he thought gene treatment too invasive - a white micro-stubble would start to appear on his scalp, giving his head the appearance of a bris­ tling star field. 'And you?' he asked.

 'Oh, prepped and ready too,' Fassin told him. He'd just comefrom the day's final briefing, with the Dweller Current Statepeople. It was their challenging brief to try and keep abreast of what was going on in the sheer and utter chaos that was Dwellersociety and, as a sideline, keep track of where the major Dwellerstructures, institutions and - especially - Individuals Of Interestwere at any given moment.

 The news was not good: a formal war was brewing betweenZone two and Belt C, at least one long-term storm structurebetween Zone one and Belt D was collapsing while two werebuilding elsewhere, and the movements of IOIs recently hadbeen particularly fluid. One might even say capricious. As forthe whereabouts of choal Valseir, well. Nobody had seenanything of the fellow for centuries.

 Dwellers had always been hard to follow. In the past peoplehad tried setting drone remotes on individuals to keep tabs onthem. However, Dwellers regarded this as a gross intrusion ontheir privacy and had an uncanny ability to spot and destroyany such platforms, micro-gascraft or bugs, no matter how smallor clever they were. Dwellers also sulked. When people had thetemerity to try anything so underhand, cooperation was with­drawn. Sometimes over an entire population. Sometimes foryears.

 The Slow Seers of Nasqueron had a pretty good relationshipwith the local Dwellers. By Dweller Studies standards it wasalmost close, but only because the Seers tried to interfere aslittle as possible with Dweller life. In return the Dwellers wererelatively cooperative, and broadcast a daily update on the loca­tion of their most important cities, structures and institutions. This eight-and-a-bit-hourly bulletin was a byword for trust­worthiness - almost a legend - in Dweller Studies, on occasion approaching accuracy rates of very nearly ninety per cent. 'Things fine with Sept Bantrabal?' Apsile asked.'All well. Slovius sends his regards.' Fassin had talked to hisuncle a few hours earlier, still trying to persuade him to leave the Autumn House. The time delay between Third Fury and'glantine made a normal conversation just about possible. He'dcaught up with Jaal too, on the other side of 'glantine, at herSept's Spring House. Life appeared relatively normal back on 'glantine, the new Emergency affecting people there less than itseemed to on Sepekte.

 Apsile flicked a roll-screen from his sleeve and tapped a fewpatches. He looked casually up at the lifter ship poised abovethe little gascraft, ready to accept the smaller vessel inside itsopen hold and take it down to the gas-giant's atmosphere. Fassinfollowed the Master Technician's gaze. He looked at a darkshape already hanging inside the cargo space, protruding down­wards from it like a thick wheel. He frowned. 'That looks a lot like Colonel Hatherence,' he said.

 'Not many places she'll fit,' muttered Apsile.'Eh?' A voice bellowed. Then, quieter: 'My name? Oh. Yes, that's me. Seer Taak. Major Taak, I should say. Hello. Sorry;asleep. Well, you know, one does. Thought I'd try out this space here for size. Fits very well, must say. I shall be able to be trans­ported to the atmosphere of Nasqueron most ably by this vessel,if needs be. Well, so I think. Think you so too, MasterTechnician?'

 Apsile smiled broadly, revealing teeth as jet as his skin. 'Ithink so too, ma'am.'

 'There we are agreed, then.' The giant hanging discus droppedfractionally from its mountings inside the delta-shaped trans­porter, so that it could turn and twist towards them. 'And so. Major Taak. How goes your attempt to persuade Chief SeerBraam Ganscerel that you ought to be allowed to delve directly?'

 Fassin smiled. 'It goes like a long-term delve, colonel;exceeding slow.'

 'A pity!'

 Apsile thumbed a patch on his roll-screen, clicked the screen back into his sleeve and nodded at the little gascraft. 'Well, she'sready. Want to put her up?' he asked.

 'Why not?' It had become something of a tradition that Apsileand Fassin lifted the craft into the carrier. They stooped, tookan end each and - very slowly at first - hoisted the arrowhead into the space above, letting their feet lift off the floor at theend to slow it down. The gascraft weighed next to nothing in Third Fury's minuscule gravity, but it massed over two tonnesand the laws regarding inertia and momentum still applied. Theywere carried three metres up inside the drop ship's hold, towardsthe opened arms of the waiting gascraft cradle. The Colonel'sesuit took up the space of two of the little gascraft, but that stillleft room for another five in the drop ship's hold. The arrow­head snicked into place alongside the tall discus that heldColonel Hatherence. Satisfied that the arrowhead was correctlyfastened in, the two men let themselves fall back to the floor.The colonel drifted down alongside them.

 Fassin looked up at the sleek lines of the gascraft.How smallit looks,he thought.Tiny space to spend years in . . . decades in . . . even centuries . . . They landed. Apsile, more experienced,got his knee-flex just right; Fassin bounced.

 The giant esuit had to tilt to clear the carrier ship's openedhold doors, toppling then coming upright again with a burr ofvanes and a whoosh of air. ‘Imust say I myself would preferto enter the atmosphere directly, that is to say, in fact. Indeed,in reality,' the colonel shouted.

 'Yes,' Fassin said. 'I would too, colonel.'

 'Good luck in that!' the oerileithe boomed.

 'Thank you,' Fassin said. 'I suspect good luck will be neces­sary, if not sufficient.'

 A few hours later he had just about enough time to reflectthat it was bad luck which produced the opportunity they had both been looking for, before he had to flee for his life.

 *

 The others persuaded him eventually. Thay, Sonj and Momewere all going. Why not him? Not nervous, surely? Maybe justtoo lazy?

 He wasn't nervous or - quite - that lazy. He just wanted tostay back at the nest and bland with K, who was coming to theend of a tream, socked into a traumalyser and a linked-up subsal. She floated, lightly tethered, in the gentle stream blowing outof the air chair, slim graceful body semi-foetal, arms waving, her long, end-tied chestnut hair blossoming above her like acobra hood, wrapping over her head then wafting back again. The NMR net was like a hand with twenty-plus slim silverfingers grasping her head from the back. The subsal's trans­parent tube disappeared into a tiny neuro-taplet just behind herleft earlobe. K's eyes moved languidly behind their lids and her face seemed set in a smile.

 At this stage, coming out of a long tream, it was as thoughshe had been diving in some abyssal depths and was now swim­ming slowly back in through a few kilometres of sunlit shal­lows. You could wade out to meet the person coming in withoutsurrendering yourself to the whole para-lucid chemical-NMR-holo-induced dream state, you could sort of snorkel with themwhile they still gilled, heading for the beach that was mundanereality.

 -   Hey, Fass! she'd sent when he first dipped in to join her,slipping on a small NMR collar and becoming part of the slowlyevaporating tream. She'd been away for a day and a half; a longone. - You came to meet me? Thanks, part!

 -   Have fun? he asked.

 -  More than fun. Guess where I've been?
He sent a shrug. - Faintest.

 -  I did a delve! I treamed a delve like Seers do, intoNasqueron! Well, it wasn't really Nasq, it was another gas-giantcalled Furenasyle. That's where the chip must have beentemplated. You heard of Furenasyle?

 -   Yeah, it's another place they do Dweller Studies. So youtreamed you were there? Delving, yeah?

 -   Surely did. You make it sound so amazing. And, Fass, itwas great! Best tream . .. well, second-best tream I've ever had!K sent a kind of complicit, sexy smirk in his direction. Heguessed the tream she was referring to. They'd experienced ittogether. A love-tream, a joint immersion in what they felt foreach other. Well, supposedly. Love treams were tacky in someways - you could still lie about your feelings in them, and ifyou selected the right template from the traumalyser device and suitable accompanying chemicals from the subsal, you could pretty much guarantee a tream of surpassing, wide-eyed heart-throbbing bliss even between two people who basically hated each other. But it had been good, between the two of them. Good, but not something that he'd wanted to do again. Hesupposed he was suspicious of the whole Virtual Reality expe­ rience, and treaming, especially with a synched-in subsalproviding appropriate synthesised chemicals for delivery to thebrain, was the most immersive VR you could find. Legally orsemi-legally, anyway.

 -   You should try it! Really! It would be like practice, don'tyou think?

 -   I suppose. If delving is what I'm going to end up doing. Itake it you'd recommend it.

 -   If it's like that, sure!

 Sure was what he was not. He was still young, still unde­cided. Should he become a Slow Seer, like everybody seemed to expect him to become, even including the people he sharedthe nest with on Hab 4409 ('The Happy Hab!')? Or should hedo something else entirely? He still didn't know. The very fact that everybody thought he would become a Seer eventually,after a few wild years - and these were surely wild years, not something that you ever imagined could go on for ever or evenfor very long - made him all the more determined not to do what was expected of him . . . well, maybe 'determined' wastoo strong a word, he admitted. Reluctant. Made him more reluctant. He supposed that was better. Still, he might surprisethem all. He might go off and do something entirely, utterly and excitingly different. He just had to experience Jots of different things until he found the right thing, was all.

 -   Listen, I'm probably going with the others to the protest.
Well, unless you need me, you know . . .

 -   Good for you! I don't mind. You go. I'd come too, but Ineed to ramp out of this shallow. That last time I steeped really crawled. Ugh!

 - Okay. See you.

 - Later, part!
He left the nest.

 The nest - a low-gee pod of forty or so mostly small spher­ical rooms housing a kind of commune of (all human) gappers,nopers, treamers, trustafarians, zealers and zonkers - was in abig bunch of living spaces up near the hab's long axis, near the(rather arbitrarily termed) 'west' end, not far beneath the suntube. The nest allegedly belonged to the mother of one ofthe trustafarians, though unofficially it was the ImmaturianPeople's Republic of Whateverness (and had semi-official paper­work and software to prove it, too).

 Hab 4409 was one of a few hundred thousand habitatsorbiting Sepekte. It was average size, a cylinder of re-formedasteroid material fifty kilometres long and ten across, spinningto create about two-thirds of a gee at its internal diametersurface. It turned in the unending sunlight like a giant gardenroller flattening photons. Two twelve-kilometre mirror-lenssystems - one at either end - faced Ulubis star like a pair ofvast, unbearably thin flowers. Further mirror complexesfunnelled the captured sunlight through two windows of diamond sheet into the hab's long axis, where a final set ofmirrors - moving up and down the suntube to create somethinglike the feel of a planetary day - finally directed the light towardsthe internal surface. Or at least finally directed the light towardsthe internal surface if there wasn't something like one of thegrape-bunch-like nest complexes in the way (more mirrors).

 Many more people lived in the habs than lived on planets in the system and most of the habs were somewhere near Sepekte. Hab 4409 had been a fairly liberal, free-flowing, laissez-faire,who-cares kind of place almost since its inception - as part ofa horrendously intricate incumbent species asset-swap write-off dodge - two millennia earlier. Even its ultimate ownership hadnever fully been settled, and several generations of lawyers hadgone to their plush retirements - having followed the saga ofHab 4409's provenance and title since their days as articled clerks- still lacking a sense of closure re the above.

 So the place attracted drifters, artists, misfits, natural exiles,political and other eccentrics and slightly deranged or badly messed-up people of more or less every sort, and always had.Most were from Ulubis but some were more exotic and fromfurther afield, generally trustafarians and-or gappers portalingin from the rest of the Mercatoria, taking time out betweeneducation and responsibility to relax a little. The place producedgood art, it was an unofficial - but tax-deductible - finishing school for the aforesaid children of the rich (give the darling brats true freedom and let them see how empty it was, was theidea), it was a way station for those heading out to disgrace or back from perdition, and it was a halfway house for those whomight or might not ever again contribute anything useful tosociety but who just might galvanise it fundamentally. (And, ifyou wanted to be really paranoid about stuff, it was - as far asthe authorities were concerned - a relatively easy-to-watch and even easier-to-close-down sump for dangerous ideas: a radical trap.) It was useful, in other words. It fulfilled a purpose, if notseveral. In a society as large as that which existed around Ulubis,somewhere had to provide that sort of service.

 People were people. Some would always be straight, somewould always be a bit twisted, but they all had some sort ofpart to play, and they were all in some sense valuable, were they not?

 But now the fucking Mercatoria, the fucking Ascendancy orfucking Omnocracy, or whatever they fucking were, the fuckingHierchon (more likely, one of his new rotational crop of adviserswho saw a way to make some money and gain some extra power), or the Peregal below him or Apparitor belowhim orjust the Diegesian gimplet who was actually nominally thegovernor or mayor or whatever he was supposed to fucking be(his post, his presence and his protecting bully boys only hereat all thanks to an earlier dispute over who controlled what, resulting in a grubby, century-old compromise), anyway thefucking big boys, the fucking people who owned fucking every­thing or thoughtsome fucker ought to own fucking everythinghad decided, decreed,deemed that proprietorship of the whole fucking place - and that of lots of other similar habs in similarsituations of disputed\uncertain\dubious\happily contingentownership - should pass to what they called a properly accred­ited and responsible authority. Which basically meant them. Or if not them, their chums. Somebody who took things like ownership and rent-gathering and petty law-enforcement andso on seriously. It was the law-makers, the law-givers, beingoutlaws, and it would not be allowed to stand, it would not beallowed to pass, it would not go unchallenged, it would not gointo the local statutes without a serious fucking challenge. Thesepeople, for whatever fuckwit reason, were destroying part of what was good about the habs, about Sepekte-Orbit, aboutUlubis system, about the society they were all in the end a partof. Ultimately they were being stupid and self-destructive, andall that was required was that the people who could see all this clearly - because they were right here, at the sharp end, at the cutting edge - pointed this out to them. They were all on thesame side in the end, it was just that sometimes the fuckers in authority got too far away from the reality of life as the massof people lived it, and that was when you had to make a stand, make a point and make yourself heard.

 So they went to the protest, down the friction tubes and thebungees and along the tramways to the central plaza and themakings of a great crowd.

 'You just have to think about it,' Mome said as they walked the last street into the plaza. 'The Beyonders never attack habs,never attack whole cities, never attack anything big and easyand defenceless. They attack the military and the authorities andbig infrastructure stuff. Their attacks, their violence, their mili­tary strategy is a discourse amenable to analysis if one isprepared to approach it shorn of propagandistic preconceptions. And the message is clear: their argument, their war is with theMercatorial system, with the Ascendancy and the Omnocracyand the Administrata and not with the common people, not with us.'

 'Resent being called common!' Sonj protested.'Erring on the side of generosity including you in the cate­gory "people", Sonj,' Mome shot back. Mome was a little guy,pale, intense and always slightly hunched, as though perpetu­ally preparing either to pounce or duck. Sonj was huge; a bigbumbling dark brown geezer of changeable moods and intenselycurly short red hair who only looked at home or even slightlygraceful in low gee.

 'Doesn't necessarily make them the good guys,' Fassininsisted.

 'Makes them people open to reason, people capable ofindulging in meaningful dialogue,' Mome said. 'Not just mad fuckers to be put down like vermin, which is pretty much whatwe're told they are.'

 'So what's stopping them talking to us?' Fassin asked.

 'Us,' Mome said. 'Takes two to talk.'

 They all looked at him. Mome was known to talk a lot.Sometimes to audiences who had, basically, long since fallenasleep. He shrugged.

 'My cousin Lain—' Thay said.

 'Anotherone?' Mome asked, feigning incredulity.

 'Sister of cousin Kel, half-sister of cousin Yayz,' Thayexplained patiently. She was Sonj's part, also generously made;awkward in low gee but bouncily agile on the hab's internalsurface at two-thirds of a gee. 'My cousin Lain,' she continueddeterminedly, 'the one in the Navarchy, says that she reckonsthe reason the Beyonders attack so much at all is because if theydon't the Navarchy and the Summed Fleet goes after them. Andwe don't just attack military stuff. She says we hit their habs.Kill millions of them. Lot of offs unhappy with—'

 'Lots ofwhats unhappy with?' Mome asked.

 'Lots of offs,' Thay repeated.

 ‘I got theword,' Mome repeated with a sigh, ‘I just didn'tget themeaning.' He snapped his fingers. 'Wait. Short for "offi­cers", right?'

 'Correct.'

 'Brilliant. Carry on.'

 'Lot of offs unhappy with this,' Thay said again, 'so the'yonds - the Beyonders - just attack us to keep us on the defen­sive.' She nodded once. 'That's what my cousin Lain says.'

 'Ayee! Crazy 'yonding talk,' Mome said, putting his handsover his ears. 'Get us all arrested.' They laughed.

 'At least we have the freedom to say this sort of thing,' Fassinpointed out.

 Mome did his special Hollow Laugh.

 In the central plaza, Fassin greeted people, drank in the senseof solidarity and slightly edgy fun - lots of inventive costumes,towering floss-sculptures and buzzing balloonderers (trailingslogan banners, yelling chants and scattering narconfetti) - butstill felt oddly apart from it all. He looked up and around,ignoring for the moment the people - mostly human - and the circle of domed and gleaming buildings.

 The hab was a giant, verdant city rolled up into a spinningtube, with small hills and many lakes and criss-cross avenuesbetween low-rise hanging-garden apartments and winding riversand spindly towers, some arched like bows and reaching all theway up to the suntube, where they curved - or needle-eyed -round to meet towers on the far side. Bunches of nests -surrounded by mirrors, trailed with friction tubes like junglecreepers - clustered near the long axis, and dirigiblisters floatedlike strange, semi-transparent clouds beneath them.

 Then Fassin heard some sort of shout at one edge of thecrowd, nearest the palace of the Diegesian, which was the focusfor the protest. He might have smelled something strange, butthen that was probably just one of the cruising balloonderersdisseminating some drug that Fassin's immedio-immune systemhadn't recognised. Then he realised maybe it wasn't, because allthe balloonderers dropped suddenly, as one, out of the air. Also,the sun in the suntube went out. Which never happened. Heheard lots of odd noises, some of which might have beenscreaming. It seemed to get cold very quickly. That was oddtoo. People were hitting him, with their shoulders mostly, as they went running past him, then they were falling over him,and he realised he wasFassin?, realised he wasFassin lying down, then he wasFassin getting hit again, but he wasFassin tryingto get up and stand again, and he wasFassin, he wasFassin, hewas on his knees and he wasFassin just about to get up fromhis knees onto his feet - swaying, feeling very strange,wondering what all the people were doing lying down around him - when -Fassin - he was knocked down again. By a manin armour, steel grey, with a big trunchbuster club and no faceand a couple of little buzz-drones at each shoulder, sprayinggas and making a high, terrible keening noise that he -Fassin!- wanted to get away from, but his nose and eyes and every­thing else stung and hurt and he didn't know what to do, he wasFasssin! just standing there and the guy with the big clubthing as long as a spear came up to him and heFasssin? stupidlythought he might ask him what was going on and what waswrong withFaaassssiiinnn? wrong when the man swept his club-spear trunchbuster thing round and into his face, knocking someteeth out and sending him spinning to'Fassin?'

 His name finally jolted him awake.'Back with us? Good.'

 The speaker was a small man in a large chair across a cramped-looking metal desk. The room - or whatever - was too dark tosee into, even with IR. The sound of the man's voice in thespace suggested it was not a big space. Fassin was aware thathis face and especially his mouth hurt. He tried to wipe hismouth. He looked down. His hands could not move becausehis forearms were - he tried to think of the right word -shackled? They were shackled to the seat he was sitting in. What the hell was this? He started laughing.

 Somebody hit him in his bones. It was like his entire skeletonwas a wind chime and his flesh and muscles and organs weresomewhere else, only nearby but still connected somehow and some fucker - actually, some very large group of fuckers - had taken a whole load of hammers and whacked each one of hisbones really hard at the same time. The pain went almost asquickly as it arrived, leaving just a weird sort of echo in hisnerves.

 'What the fuck was zhat?' he asked the little man. His voicesounded comical with some of his teeth knocked out. His tongueprobed the gaps. Felt like two out, one loose. He tried toremember how long it took adult teeth to grow back. The littleman was quite a jolly-looking soul, with a plump, amused-seeming face and chubby, rosy cheeks. His hair was black, cropped. He wore a uniform of a type that Fassin didn't recog­nise. 'Are you shuckingtorturing me?' Fassin asked.

 'No,' the little man said in a very reasonable tone of voice.'I'm just doing this to get your attention.' One of his handsmoved on the desk's surface.

 Fassin's bones clattered as though played upon again. Hisnerves, having experienced this twice now, decided that reallythis was no joke, and in fact felt extremely sore.

 'All right! All right!' he heard himself saying. ‘Itake the shucking point. Fucking point,' he said, working out how toadapt his pronunciation to his new dental layout.

 'Don't swear,' the little man said, and hurt him again.

 'Okay!' he screamed. His head hung. Snot dripped from hisnose, saliva and blood from his mouth.

 'Please don't swear,' the little man said. 'It indicates an untidymind.'

 'Just tell me what the f— what you want,' Fassin said. Wasthis real? Had he been in some sort of weird VR dream eversince he'd joined K for the coming-out-of-the-shallows end-of-tream thing earlier? Was this what happened when you got treamtemplates cheap, or illegally copied or something? Was this real?It felt painful enough to be real. He looked down at his legsand the hems of his shorts, all covered in blood and mucus andsnot. He could see individual hairs on his legs, some standing,some plastered to his skin. He could see pores. Didn't that meanit was real? But of course it didn't. Treams, simcasts, VR, alldepended on the fact that the mind could really only concen­trate on one thing at a time. The rest was illusion. Human sight,the most complicated sense the species possessed, had been doing that for millions of years, fooling the mind behind theeyes. You thought you had colour vision, and in some detail,over this wide angle but really you didn't; accurate colour vision was concentrated within a tiny part of the visual field, with onlyvague, movement-wary black-and-white awareness extendingover the rest.

 The brain played tricks on itself to pretend that it saw as wellaway from the centre of its visual target as it did right at thatbull's-eye. Smart VR used that same deception; zoom in on adetail and it would be created for you in all its pinpoint exac­titude, but everything else you weren't attending to with suchconcentration could safely be ignored until your attentionswung that way, keeping the amount of processing power withinacceptable limits.

 Fassin dragged his attention away from his blood-spatteredleg. 'Is this real?' he asked.

 The little man sighed. 'Mr Taak,' he said, glancing down ata screen, 'your profile indicates that you are from a respectablefamily and may one day even become a useful member of society.You shouldn't be mixing and living with the sort of people you have been mixing and living with. You've all been very foolishand people have suffered because of that stupidity. You've beenliving in a kind of dream, really, and that dream is now over.Officially. I think you ought to go back home. Don't you?'

 'Where are my friends?'

 'Mr Iifilde, Mr Resiptiss, Ms Cargin and Ms Hohuel?'

 Fassin just stared at him. Shit, in all the last few months he'dbeen staying here he'd only known them by their first names.He supposed those were Thay, Sonj and Mome's last names,but really he'd no idea. And there had been four, hadn't there? Did that mean they were counting K as well? But she hadn'tbeen to the protest.

 'They're being held elsewhere, or they've been processed andreleased, or we're still looking for them.' The little man smiled.

 Fassin looked down at his arms, held within metal hoops. Hetried to move his legs, then leaned over and looked down. Hislegs were shackled too. Or manacled or whatever. His mouthfelt very odd. He ran his tongue round where his teethhad been, checking again. He supposed he'd have to get falseones until the new ones grew back. Or sport a piratical grin.'Why am I being treated like this?' he asked.

 The little man looked incredulous. He appeared to be aboutto hurt Fassin again, then shook his head in exasperation.'Because you took part in a violent demonstration against theDiegesian, that's why!' he said.

 'But I wasn't violent,' Fassin said.

 'You personally may not have been. The demonstration youtook part in most certainly was.'

 Fassin would have scratched his head. 'Is that all it takes?'

 'Of course!'

 'Who started the violence?' he asked.

 The little man jerked his arms out to each side. His voicewent very high. 'Does itmatter?'

 Fassin had meant which side, but he could tell the little manthought he'd meant which demonstrator. He sighed. 'Look, Ijust want to get back to my friends, to my nest. Can I go? Ididn't do anything, I got my teeth knocked out, I can't tell you anything, or... anything . . .' he said. He sighed again.

 'You can go when you sign this.' The little man swivelled thescreen around so Fassin could see. He looked at what he wassupposed to sign, and at the fingerprint pad and camera patcheson the screen which would record that it had really been himsigning (or, more to the point, make a fake document take upa fraction more storage space).

 'I can't sign this,' he said. 'It basically says my friends are allBeyonder agents and deserve death.'

 The little man rolled his eyes. 'Read itcarefully, will you? Itjust says you havesuspicions in that regard. You don't seriouslythinkyour word would be enough to convict anybody ofanything, do you?'

 'Well then, why get me to—?'

 'We want you tobetray them!' the little man shouted, as though it was the most obvious thing ever. 'We want you toturn your back on them and become a productive member of society. That's all.'

 'But they're my friends.' Fassin coughed, swallowed. 'Look,could I get a drink of water?'

 'No. You can't. And they're not your friends. They're justpeople you know. They're barely acquaintances. You got drunkwith them, got stoned with them, talked a bit with them andslept with some of them. You'll all go your separate ways soonenough anyway and probably never keep in touch. They are not your friends. Accept that.'

 Fassin thought better of debating what being a friend meant,in the circumstances. 'Well, I'm still not betraying them.''They've betrayed you!'

 The little interrogator swung the screen round, clicked on afew patches and swung it back. Fassin watched Thay, Sonj andMome - all stuck in seats like the one he was secured in, andSonj looking pretty beaten-up - say they thought that Fassinheld Beyonder sympathies and was a danger to society whoneeded watching. They each mumbled something to that effect,signed the screen and pressed a thumb against the print patch(Sonj's left a smear of blood).

 The screenage shook him. It had probably been faked, butall the same. He sat back. 'You faked that,' he said, unsteadily.The little man laughed. 'Are you mad? Why would webother?'

 'I don't know,' Fass admitted. 'But I know my friends. Theywouldn't—'

 The little man sat forward. 'So just sign this and in thehighlyunlikely event that it ever crops up, just sayyours has beenfaked.'

 'So why not fake it anyway?' Fassin shouted.

 'Because then you won't havebetrayed them!' the little manyelled back. 'Come on! Sign and you can go. I've got betterthings to do.'

 'But why do any of this?' Fassin said, wanting to cry. 'Whymake anybody betray anybody?'

 The little man looked at him for a moment. 'Mr Taak,' hesaid, sitting back, sounding patient. 'I've inspected your profile.You are not stupid. Misguided, idealistic, naive, certainly, butnot stupid. You must know how societies work. You must atleast have an inkling. They work on force, power and coercion. People don't behave themselves because they're nice. That's theliberal fallacy. People behave themselves because if they don'tthey'll be punished. All this is known. It isn't even debatable.Civilisation after civilisation, society after society, species after species, all show the same pattern. Society is control: control is reward and punishment. Reward is being allowed to partake ofthe fruits of that society and, as a general but not unbreakablerule, not being punished without cause.'

 'But—'

 'Be quiet. The idiotic issue you chose to complain about -ownership of a habitat - really has nothing to do with you. It'sa legal matter, an ownership thing. You weren't even born hereand you wouldn't have stayed beyond a few more months anyway, admit it. You should have kept out of it. You chosenot to, you put yourself in harm's way and now you're paying the price. Part of that price is letting us know that you havemade an effort to dissociate yourself from the people you werecomplicit with. Once you do that, you can go. Home, I would suggest. I mean to 'glantine.'

 'And if I say no?'

 'You mean not sign?'

 'Yes.'

 'Seriously?'

 'Seriously.'

 'Then it's taken out of my hands. You'll go to meet peoplewho enjoy doing this sort of thing.'

 This time, when the little man moved his hand over the desk, Fassin screamed with the pain. He must have bitten his tongue.There was a taste of iron and his mouth filled with fresh bloodand hot saliva.

 'Because I,' the little man said wearily, 'don't.'

 In the end Fassin signed. He'd kind of known he would.

 The little man looked happy, and a couple of big female guardscame in and helped Fassin from the chair, his bonds unfastened.

 'Thank you, Mr Taak,' the little man said, and grasped hishand and shook it before they took him out of the room. 'Ihate all that unpleasantness, and it is always so good to seesomebody being sensible. Try not to think too badly of me.Good luck to you.'

 They got him showered down and fixed up and he left aftera medical and a cup of soup, dressed in paper-thin overalls. Helooked around when they ushered him through the doorways into what passed for outside in a hab. He'd been somewhereinside the Diegesian's palace.

 Back at the nest, turmoil. The place had been raided, trashed,everything in it broken or sprayed with stinking, vomit-inducingcrowd-control goo. They went to a bar instead and didn't reallytalk about anything after the protest and the crackdown. Theytalked instead of rumours of people being killed and othersdisappearing.

 K wasn't there. She'd been beaten up when the troopers came to turn the nest over. She was in a prison hospital ship for threeweeks, then killed herself with a broken glass the day she wasreleased.

 It was months before Fassin learned the truth. K had been sentinto a nightmare tream. Somebody who'd come with the law offi­cers - maybe just one of them who happened to know how tohandle tream gear - had found her still floating, not yet out ofthe delving tream, and altered the settings on the traumalyser andthe subsal while some others had held her down and worked herover. Whoever did the thing with the traumalyser must havecarried that sort of template chip around with them, just for sucheventualities. Then they'd left her, bloody and bound, to somespeeded-up nightmare of horror, rape and torture.

 They were all split up, doing other, mostly more responsiblethings when they pieced all this together. They talked about acomplaint, an investigation, a protest.

 Fassin went back to 'glantine and booked a place on the Seerinduction course for the term after next. Then he returned tothe habs, and then to Sepekte's Boogeytown, to the roaring life, the drink and drugs and fucking and fun, and - after a while,gradually, carefully - made a few inquiries, hung out in the right places, and met certain people. Apparently he passed a few testswithout realising he'd been taking them, and then one night hewas introduced to a girl who called herself Aun Liss.

 *

 'Fassin!'

 His name jolted him awake. Third Fury; cabin. Still night-dark. Clanging noise. The screen showed hour Four. The screenwas red and flashing. Had somebody spoken?

 'What?' he said, tearing the restraints away and levering himself out of bed, floating towards the centre of the cabin.

 'Herv Apsile,' said a voice. Sounded like Apsile. Sounded like Apsile in a state of some excitement or distress. 'We have a situ­ation. Looks like an attack.'

 Oh, shit.Fassin pulled on clothes, called up full lights. 'Thatfucking horrendous clanging noise the alarm?'

 'That's right.'

 'You in Facility Command?'

 'Yes.'

 'Who do we think?' A light flashed over a storage locker andit revolved, revealing an emergency esuit.

 'Don't know. Two naval units vaporised already. Get suitedand—'

 The lights - all the lights - flickered. The screen did not comeback on. A tremor made the cabin shake. Something broke inthe bathroom with a sharp crack.

 'You feel that? You still there?' Apsile said.

 'Yes to both,' Fassin said. He was looking at the esuit.

 'Suit up and take a drop shaft to the emergency shelter.' Apsilepaused. 'You got that?' Another pause. 'Fass?'

 'Here.' Fassin started pulling all his clothes off again. 'Thatwhat you're going to do, Herv?'

 'That's what we're both supposed to do.'

 Another tremble made the whole cabin rattle. The air seemedto quake like jelly.

 The alarm shut off. Somehow, though, not in an encouragingway.

 The screen flashed once, screeched.

 Fassin hauled the esuit out of its locker. 'How's the main hangar?' he asked.

 'Intact. Whatever's hitting us seems to be coming in from theNasq spin-side, slightly retro.'

 'So heading into the centre's going to be putting us closer,'Fassin said. Was that a draught? He could hear a hissing sound. He clipped the esuit collar round his neck and let the gel helmetdeploy. It turned everything hazy and quiet for a moment, thendecided the situation wasn't too dire yet, and opened slits forhim to breathe, talk and hear through. The face-mask sectionthinned to near-perfect transparency.

 'For now,' Apsile agreed. ‘If the direction of the hostile firestays constant we'll be coming round to face it full on in twohours.'

 Fassin stepped into the esuit and pulled it up, letting it connectwith the collar, adjusting to his body, huffing and settling. Verycomfortable, really. 'That what you want to do, Herv? Sit in a huddle with everybody else like mice in a hole hoping the catgoes away?'

 'Standing orders.'

 'I know. Want to guess what I want to do?' There was apause. Another more violent tremor shook the cabin. The main door popped open, wobbling inwards, revealing the compan­ionway outside. The pause went on. 'Herv?' he asked. He lookedround for anything he might want to take with him. Nothing.'Herv?'

 'I'll see you there.'

 Something blazed hard and blue-white against Nasqueron'sside-lit face, turning the hangar into a harsh jagged jumble offiercely shining surfaces and intensely black shadows. Fassin flinched. The light faded quickly, turning to yellow and orange;a small fading sun shone between the moon and Nasqueron.

 Herv Apsile had got there ahead of him. He gave a quickwave and easily jumped the eight metres to the open nose-blisterof the carrier craft, disappearing inside. The nose-blister closed.

 'Herv?' Fassin said, trying the suit's emergency comms. Noanswer. He made slow bounds for the open hold. ColonelHatherence was already there, the tall discus of her esuit floatinga fraction above the floor directly beneath the place she'd filledearlier.

 'Seer Taak! I rather thought you might adopt this course!'she shouted.

 Shit,Fassin thought. He'd kind of hoped the colonel wouldhave made her way to the emergency shelter in the moon's core,ten kilometres down, along with everybody else, like they'd allbeen told to. There was one drop shaft big enough, wasn't there? Oh well. He came to a stop beneath the little arrowhead gascrafthanging in its cradle directly above. 'Colonel,' he said, nodding.

 Would she try to stop him? No idea. Could she? No doubt about that.

 'Not sure whether to be relieved or terrified,' the colonelyelled. A manipulator arm creased out from the side of theoerileithe esuit, unfolding towards Fassin.Oh, fuck, he thought.Here we go.

 'After you!' the colonel said, her arm indicating the spaceabove.

 Fassin smiled and jumped. She rose with a whirr beside him.Stopped and then braced by the ceiling of the hold, he flippedopen the cockpit of the little gascraft, revealing a vaguely coffin-shaped space. He shucked the suit and unclipped the helmet.

 'Out of uniform, major,' the colonel said jovially, voiceechoing in the enclosed space of the upper hold. Fassin let thesuit fall slowly to the floor beneath and stepped into the footof the little arrowhead's cockpit. 'Gracious!' Hatherence said.'Are all human males of this form?'

 'Just the handsome ones, colonel,' he assured her. He loweredhimself carefully into the cool gel. The cockpit cover closedover him. He wriggled in the darkness, getting his neck posi­tioned over the scanner collar. A soft light and a gentle chimeconfirmed all was well. He reached for the double nozzle of thegillfluid root, took a deep breath, let it out, then placed the nozzles at his nostrils.

 Fassin lay back, zoning out as best he could, fighting the urgeto panic, the gag response of fear as the gillfluid poured intohis nose, throat and lungs like the coldest drink anybody hadever taken.

 A moment of confusion, disorientation. Then the collarnestling closer against his neck and the warming gel closing overhis body, tendrils seeking out ears, mouth, penis and anus. Twin stings of pain on his forearms, then another pair, one under eachear, as the blood slides went in.

 'Set?' said the voice of Herv Apsile, gurgling through the stillcalibrating gel in his ears.

 - Thoroughly, he sent back just by thinking. - And thecolonel?

 'I am set, also!' Even over comms, it seemed, ColonelHatherence tended to shout.

 Fassin had been wondering if they could leave her behindsomehow. Probably not, then.

 'Hold doors closing. Ready to go,' Apsile said.

 Fassin started to become his little gascraft. It covered him,embraced him, multiply penetrated him, and in those actsoffered itself up to him completely. The light from below disap­peared as the hold doors closed. He could see ColonelHatherence's esuit hanging beside him, sense its cold and read

 its electromagnetic signature, just as he could feel the systemsof the drop ship readying, flexing, preparing, changing as theship nudged itself off the floor. Other senses registered anunusual wash of radiations, a faint gravity well set in a much greater, deeper one, a slather of meaningless comms shards,confused transmissions and EM signals from the Shared Facilitybase itself - and a sudden jolt, a transmitted faint but massivethud followed by a strange sideways, upwards-sucking move­ment.

 He waited for Apsile to talk to them, meanwhile trying towork it out himself. Distant whirr and hiss of the carrier tankingthe air in its hold.

 'Sorry about that,' Apsile said mildly. 'Back in control.Unconventional method of opening the hangar to vacuum there.No idea who to thank.'

 -  We okay? Fassin asked.

 'NSD,' Apsile said, sounding mildly distracted. 'NoSignificant Damage.'

 -  Let you get on with it, Fassin sent.
'Thanks.'

 'Cancel relief, emphasise terror,' the colonel said.

 Fassin hoped she was talking only to him. He checkedthrough all the little gascraft's settings and systems, settling intoit as its life-support tendrils settled into him. Something like awide array of lights seen from the bottom corner of the eyeswung into focus in front of him. He called up a few read-outsand started a couple of subroutines to check that everythingwas working. Seemed to be.

 He felt the carrier accelerate away from the moon. Patch-through to the larger ship's senses suddenly appeared as anoption on his controls and he took it.

 Now he could experience pretty much what Apsile could.

 Nasqueron filling the sky ahead and up, the grey-brown surface of Third Fury disappearing fast below and behind.Debris clouds. Comms shards. More than there ought to be ina properly organised fleetlet like the one that had brought themhere and that had been guarding the moon. No sign of illumi­ nating radar or other targeting give-away. Not that a civilianship like the carrier would be able to spot any but the most glaringly obvious. No current damage flags, just records of afew small hull impacts, little more than pitting. Ship drive traces.

 A sudden flare of radiation as a ship turned hard a couple ofhundred klicks away, dying away. Outgoing signal loop, broad­casting their unarmed condition, claiming lifeboat status. Flash! From right behind. A near-semicircular debris cloud rising glit­tering from a new glowing crater maybe half a klick across onthe surface of Third Fury. Three smaller craters coming intoview, recent but cooled down to orange and red heat. The viewtwisted, overlays of lines and grids and drive symbols flickeringinto being.

 Apsile pointed the carrier's nose straight at Nasqueron andstarted a long, purposefully irregular corkscrew towards the gas-giant, accelerating the drop ship as hard as its engines wouldallow.

 The drop ship was no sort of high-performance military unit;all it was supposed to do was take the gascraft from the Facilityto the gas-giant and pick them up later. It was rugged, able totake the strain of operating inside Nasqueron's gravity well andits various pressure environments down to the liquid-hydrogen level, and it had the power to lift itself and its charges easilyenough out of Nasqueron's grip. But it was not especiallymanoeuvrable, carried no armament or defensive systems andfar from being stealthed had been designed from its invitation-to-tender spec, onwards to be as easy to see with as manydifferent senses as it was possible to imagine, just so that nomischievous Dweller could crash something into it and then claim, sorry, they hadn't seen it.

 'How you doing down there?' Apsile asked. He sounded in control, unworried.

 'Fine, for myself,' the colonel said.

 -  Ditto, Fassin sent. - Got an ETA yet?

 Trips from Third Fury to Nasq. usually took about an hour.Fassin hoped they could do it in less than half that.

 'With the main drive maxed we should make turnaround in about ten minutes,' Apsile said, 'then decelerate for another tenand then take . . . hmm, another handful - five at most, I'd hope- to get deep enough into the atmosphere.'

 He meant deep enough into the atmosphere to be beyondany but the most scary weapons. Obviously not counting thescary weapons the Dwellers possessed.

 -Anything we can clip off that? Fassin asked.

 'Maybe we could make it down in less time once we hit thecloud tops,' Apsile said. 'Steeper, carrying more speed. Maybe. Hmm.' Fassin got the impression somehow that the man wasrubbing his chin. 'Yes, maybe, if we let the heat and stress levelscreep just a tad beyond tolerance.' A pause. 'Though of course that's always assuming that the ship didn't take any damage wedon't know about when the hangar dome got blown.'

 -Always assuming, Fassin agreed.

 'Master Technician,' Colonel Hatherence said, 'are we beingpursued or under unit-specific attack?''No, colonel.' 'Then I suggest we adopt your first entry profile.'

 -Decision's yours alone, Herv, Fassin sent.
'Copy.'

 'Can you access any military comms traffic, MasterTechnician?'

 'I'm afraid not, ma'am, not unless they choose to target us with a clear beam or broadcast.'

 'That is unfortunate. What seems to be happening?'

 'Looks like there's been some sort of firefight. Still going on, possibly. Drives spreading away from the moon, heading in thedirection the hostile munitions appeared to be coming from.Woh!'

 The flash attracted Fassin's second-hand attention as well;another, even larger crater glowing white on the surface of ThirdFury.

 'What of the people still back within the Third Furymoonlet?' the colonel asked.

 'Been listening,' Apsile said. 'I'll try and contact them direct.Give me a moment.'

 Silence. Fassin watched space wheel around them through thecarrier ship's sensors. He checked the drop ship's system profile,oriented, then searched for and found 'glantine; a tiny shiningdot, far away. The sensors let him zoom in until the planet moon was a shining gibbous image, scintillating with magnificationartefacts, hints of its topography just about visible. Could that be the uplands? There, that light patch - the Sea of Fines? Aspark. There, back up...A tiny flash? Had he seen that?

 Something colder and more invasive than any gel tendrilseemed to invade him, clutching at his stomach and heart. No,surely not. Just another artefact of the system. He looked forthe sensor-replay controls.

 'Shit, there's a fucking wreckage—' Apsile said, then the craftbucked and swung. Fassin, turning his focus of attention backto what Apsile was looking at saw it too now: a field of darkspecks across the face of the planet ahead of them like a raggedflock of birds far in the distance. They were at near-maximumvelocity. The carrier started to turn.

 A rush of dark scraps, tearing by on all sides like a thin shellof soot-black snow flakes. Fassin felt his arms, held by thecloying shock-gel, attempt to draw themselves in towards hisbody, instinctively trying to make himself a smaller target.Then they were through. No impacts.

 After a moment, Fassin felt the drop ship start to swing roundto present its drive tubes towards the planet, ready to begindeceleration. 'I think,' Apsile said cautiously, 'that we just aboutgot away with—'

 Something slammed into them. The ship lurched - there wasa concussivesnap! that Fassin felt through the carrier ship,through the gascraft, even through the shock-gel. He lost thepatch-through connection with the drop ship. He was back inhis own little arrowhead again. They were whirling. And therewas light, synched with the whirling. Light?

 It was coming from below, where the hold doors were. He could see Colonel H's esuit, hanging alongside him.Oh-oh . . .

 The ship began to come out of the spin, steadying. Thelight from below faded but did not go away. It had the spec­trum to be light reflected from Nasqueron. Light from thegas-giant coming in through supposedly closed doors. Fassin flipped the gascraft's sensor ring to look straight down at thedoors.

 'Oh fuck,' he tried to say. There was a small but ragged hole,stuff hanging like spilled guts. The Nasqueron light wasreflecting in off some polished-looking surfaces.

 Force, building; very like the main drive decelerating them more or less on schedule. He retried the intercom, then broad­cast a radio signal. - Herv?

 'Here. Sorry about that. Hit something after all. Got herstraight and rearward. Back on track. No read-outs from thehold at all, though. Including the door.'

 -   Think that's where it hit. I can see a hole.
'How big?'

 -   Maybe a metre lateral by two.

 'I too can see the hole,' the colonel told them, also joiningin the radio-broadcast fun. 'It is as Seer Taak describes.''Too small for you guys to get out of,' Apsile said.

 -  How's the rest of the ship? Fassin sent.

 'Holding together for now. Can't see where whatever hit usexited, or just went on to hit inside.'

 'I suspect it hit me,' Hatherence said. 'My esuit casing, thatis to say. Probably.'

 A pause. Then Apsile said, 'And . . . are you all right?'

 'Perfectly fine. Your hold doors took most of the energy outof it and my esuit is of exceptional quality, durability anddamage-tolerance. Scarcely a scratch.'

 -  If we can't open the doors, we can't get out and the whole thing's pointless, Herv, Fassin sent.

 'We can still hide in the carrier, under the clouds,' Apsile said.'I'm not getting much from the Facility. That last hit lookedlike it must have shaken them pretty hard. We might still besafer under the gas than hanging around out here in clear view of whoever.'

 Nothing comprehensible was coming out of the SharedFacility on Third Fury, and no military vessels were talking oncivilian frequencies. Interference on EM bands, a problem at the best of times anywhere near Nasqueron, was especially intense.Apsile raised a couple of the Facility's equatorial relay satellites, but, exceptionally, could not through-patch via their transceiversand could get only static and meaningless rubbish out of them.He even tried some Dweller mirror sats, where the surprisewould have been getting anything other than drivel, but therethe service was perfectly normal. 'Ouch,' they heard him say.'Third Fury just took another hit. We're going in. Fairly slowly,to allow for the damage, but we're going in.'

 'Whatever you think is best, Master Technician,' the colonelsaid.

 The carrier craft began to shudder as it met the upper atmos­phere of Nasqueron, carving a glowing trail above the cloud tops. They slowed. Weight began to return to them. And kepton increasing. Creaks and ticking sounds came through thesolids joining them to the drop ship. The buffeting decreased,grew and fell away again; soft whumps and crisp bangs alsocommunicated through the drop ship's structure announceddebris being torn off the ragged surrounds of the breach in thehold doors, which glowed and sparked as the space around them filled with gas and Fassin began to detect sound in the holdagain. They were getting heavy, really heavy now. Fassin could feel the shock-gel tightening around him,like the sound of snowcramping beneath your feet.He could almost sense anyremaining gas bubbles in his body pancaking like blood cells.Good and heavy now . . .

 'Master Technician,' the colonel said suddenly.

 'Hold on,' Apsile said. 'That—'

 The whole ship shook once, then rolled suddenly.

 -  Herv? Fassin sent.

 'Got some sort of targeting—' Apsile began, then broke offas the craft shook again and slewed wildly across the sky.

 'We are indeed being targeted by something,' Hatherenceannounced. 'Master Technician,' she shouted across the frequen­cies. 'Are you yet able to release us?'

 'Eh? What? No! I—'

 'Master Technician, attempt to perform a roll or part of aninternal loop on my command,' Hatherence told him. ‘Ishallrelease us.'

 'Youwill?' Apsile shouted.

 'I shall. I will. I carry weapons. Now, excuse me, and goodluck.'

 -  Wait a minute, Fassin began.

 'Seer Taak,' the colonel said tersely, 'shield your senses.' Thebig discus hanging beside him sent a pulse of blinding blue-white light straight downward at the doors, which blew away in a brief gout of sparks. Rushing yellow-brown clouds spun by outside. Fassin's little arrowcraft was seeing spots. It gotbusy shuffling its damaged sensors round for working ones. He guessed he hadn't shielded his senses in time. He shut themdown now. 'Releasing in three seconds,' the colonel said. 'Makeyour manoeuvre now if you please, Master Technician.'

 A blast of radiation and a spike of heat from above coincidedwith a sudden roll. The cradle holding Fassin in the drop shipgave way, sending him shooting from the hold like a cannonball. The colonel in her oerileithe esuit came whirling after hima moment later, quickly drawing level. He glimpsed the drop ship above, still rolling, then saw a violet ray appear suddenly to one side, slicing through the gas around them, searing hisbarely mended vision. The beam just missed the carrier craft,then clouds of yellow fog rolled quickly up between them and the drop ship and it was just him and the colonel, a tiny arrow shape and a spinning coin of dirty grey, hurtling down into thevast chaotic skies of Nasqueron.

 *

 '"It is a given amongst those who care to study such mattersthat there is, within certain species, a distinct class of being socontemptuous and suspicious of their fellow creats that they court only hatred and fear, counting these the most sincereemotional reactions they may hope to excite, because they are unlikely to have been feigned."' The Archimandrite Luseferouslooked up at the head on the wall. The head stared straightacross the cabin, eyes wide with pain and terror and madness.

 The assassin had died not long after they'd set out on theirlong journey towards Ulubis, the upper set of fangs finally pene­trating his brain deeply enough to produce death. TheArchimandrite had had the fellow's eyelids slit open again when the medical people said death was likely within a few days; he'dwanted to see the look on the man's face when he died.

 Luseferous had been asleep when death had finally come forthe nameless assassin, but he'd watched the recording many times. (All that happened was that the man's face stoppedcontorting, his eyes rolled backwards and then came slowlyback down, slightly cross-eyed, while the life-signs read-outaccompanying the visuals registered first the heart stopping andthen a few minutes later the brain flat-lining. Luseferous would have preferred something more dramatic, but you couldn't have everything.) He'd had the fellow's head removed and mountednear that of the rebel chief Stinausin, pretty much in the firsthead's eye line, so that was what Stinausin had to look at allday.

 The Archimandrite glanced up at the staring, nameless head.'What do you think?' He looked over the passage again, lips moving but not actually reading it aloud. He pursed his lips. 'Ithink I agree with what's being said, but I can't help feelingthere's a hint of criticism implied at the same time.' He shook his head, closed the ancient book and glanced at the cover.'Never heard of him,' he muttered.

 But at least, he reflected, this holier-than-thou intellectual hada name. It had come to annoy Luseferous rather a lot that hedidn't have a name for the failed assassin. Yes, the fellow hadfailed, yes, he had paid dearly for his crime, and yes, he wasdead and now reduced to a mere trophy. But somehow the factthat his name had never been revealed had begun to strikeLuseferous as almost a kind of triumph for the assassin, as though successfully withholding this nugget of informationmeant that Luseferous's victory over the wretch would never quite be complete. He had already sent word back to Leseum to have the matter investigated more thoroughly.

 His chief personal secretary appeared behind the sheet of mirrored diamond forming the main inner door of the state­room-study.

 'Yes?'

 'Sir, the Marshal Lascert, sir.'

 'Two minutes.'

 'Sir.'

 He saw the Beyonder marshal in the primary stateroom ofthe Main Battle CraftLuseferous VII, his fleet flagship. (Luseferous thought terms like 'battleship' and 'fleet carrier'and so on sounded old-fashioned and too common.) He'd had the craft remodelled to provide accommodation befitting hisrank, but there had come a point where the naval architectshad actually started to cry because letting what they called'voids' grow beyond a certain volume weakened the ship too much. The result was that the stateroom wasn't really as exten­sive or as intimidating as he'd have liked, so he'd had somemirrors installed and a few holo projectors which made it lookbigger, though he always had the nagging feeling that peoplecould see through the illusion. The style he'd chosen was New Brutalist: lots of exposed faux concrete and rusty pipes. He'd taken a fancy to the name but had gone off the look almostimmediately.

 He entered with only his private secretary going before him. Guards, courtiers, admin, army and naval people bowed as hestrode past.

 'Marshal.'

 'Archimandrite.' The Beyonder marshal was a woman, dressedin light armour which looked like it had been polished up butstill gave off an impression of practicality and scruffiness. Shewas tall, slim and proud-looking, if somewhat flat-chested forLuseferous's taste. Bald women always repelled him anyway.She gave a formal nod that was probably the very least acknowl­edgement of his status that anybody who didn't patently hatehim and-or was about to die had given him for several decades.He couldn't decide whether he found it insulting or refreshing.Two senior officers behind her were jajuejein, currently in theirstandard tumbleweed configuration, no part of their glitteringplate armour higher than the marshal's waist. He suspected that the woman had been selected because she was human, justbecause he was; almost all the Beyonder High Command werenon-human.

 He sat. It wasn't really a throne, but it was an impressive seaton a dais. The Beyonder marshal could stand. 'You wanted to talk, Marshal Lascert.'

 'I speak on behalf of the Transgress, the True Free and theBiAlliance. We have wanted to talk to you for some time,' themarshal said smoothly. Deep voice for a woman. 'Thank you for agreeing to this meeting.'

 'A pleasure, I'm sure. So. How goes your end of our little war? Last you heard, obviously.'

 'It goes well, as far as we know.' The marshal smiled. Lightsreflected on her bald scalp. 'I understand your own campaignhas gone from victory to victory.'

 He waved a hand. 'The opposition has been light,' he said.'Your main fleet should be at the outskirts of Ulubis systemin, what? One more year?' 'Something like that.'

 'This is somewhat later than we had all planned for.''It is a big invasion fleet. It took time to put together,'Luseferous said, trying to show that he resented her impliedcriticism while also giving the impression that what she thought was of no great importance to him.

 Theywere behind schedule, though. He had personallyassured these - temporary - allies of his that he would be readyto invade nearly a full half-year earlier than it now looked wouldbe possible. He supposed it was his fault, if fault it was. Heliked to keep his fleet together rather than let it split up accordingto speed and then re-form as needed for the invasion proper.His admirals and generals insisted (though not too strongly if they knew what was good for them) that they didn't need allunits of the fleet to be together at all times, but Luseferous preferred it. It seemed more cohesive, more impressive, justmore tidy and pleasing somehow.

 It also meant that the Beyonders would shoulder rather moreof the responsibility for preparing Ulubis system for invasionthan they might have expected, so that the invasion fleet's job would be all the easier and the Beyonders' - hopefully much-depleted - forces would be in a position of weakness relativeto his own mass of ships.

 'Still,' Lascert said, 'we imagine your advance units may beattacking even now.'

 'We've had some automated scout-warning ships and high­speed drone attack craft there or on their way for a while now,' Luseferous told her. 'Always best to be prepared for any even­tuality. Some needed reprogramming but we believe they shouldbe effective in beginning the softening-up process.' He smiled. He watched her react to the clear diamond teeth. 'I am a great believer in the usefulness of spreading a little panic, marshal.Better still, a lot of panic. After a long-enough exposure, peoplewill welcome any power that brings an end to uncertainty, evenif they might have resisted it before.'

 The marshal smiled too, though it looked like she was makingan effort. 'Of course. And we thought now might be an appro­priate moment to talk in more depth about what you see yourstrategy being once you reach Ulubis.'

 'I intend to take it, marshal.'

 'Indeed. Of course, it may be quite well defended.'

 'I expect it might. That's why I've brought such a big fleetwith me.'

 They were between systems, way out in the empty wilder­ness of near-nothingness less than a year from Ulubis. TheBeyonder fast cruiser and its two escort destroyers hadrendezvoused with his own fleet only hours earlier, skid-turningand matching velocities with a grace and rapidity that he couldsee his own naval people envied. Fine ships, indeed. Well, theyhad the ships and he had the systems; just another opportunity to trade, maybe. Now those three fast ships lay embedded in afleet of over a thousand craft, even if they were rather ploddingin comparison.

 'May I be frank, Archimandrite?'

 He gave her a good wide look at his deep red eyes. 'I expectno less.'

 'We are concerned at the possible level of civilian casualtiesif Ulubis is assaulted over-aggressively.'

 Now why would she say that?Luseferous thought to himselfwith a sort of inward chuckle.

 He looked at his private secretary, then at his generals andadmirals. 'Marshal,' he said reasonably, 'we are going to invadethem. We are going to attack them.' He smiled broadly, andcould see his admirals and generals grinning along with him. 'Ithink aggressiveness is...essential, yes?'

 He could hear light laughter from one or two of his top brass.People thought that having people so in awe of you that theywere frightened to tell you bad news and always laughed when you laughed (and so on) was a bad thing, and supposedly insu­lated you from what was really going on, but if you knew whatyou were doing, it didn't. You just had to adjust your percep­tions. Sometimes everybody laughed, sometimes only a few, andsometimes who kept quiet and who made a noise told you alot more than when you asked them to just speak out and tellyou the truth. It was a sort of code, he supposed. He was justlucky to be naturally adept at it.

 'Aggression and judgement are both required, Archimandrite,'the marshal said. 'We know you to possess both, of course.' Shesmiled. He did not smile back. 'We merely seek an assurancethat your troops will act in a manner which will bring youfurther praise and greater fame.'

 'Praise?' the Archimandrite said. 'I inspire terror, marshal. That's my strategy. I've found that to be the quickest and mosteffective way of ensuring that people learn what is good bothfor them and for me.'

 For glory, then, Archimandrite.'

 'Be merciful for glory?'

 The marshal thought about this for a moment. 'Ultimately,yes.'

 'I shall conquer them as I see fit, marshal. We are partners inthis. You don't tell me what to do.'

 'I am not trying to, Archimandrite,' the marshal said quickly. 'I accept what you must do, I am merely delivering a requestregarding the manner in which it is done.'

 'And I have heard your request and I will pay it all due heed.'This was a form of words Luseferous had heard somebody useonce - he couldn't remember who or where - which, when he'd thought about it, he thought was rather good, especially if yousaid it slightly pompously: slowly, gravely even, keeping astraight face so that the person you were talking to thought youwere taking them seriously and might even hope that you woulddo as they had asked rather than - at best - ignore themcompletely. At worst - as far as they were concerned - you'ddo the opposite of whatever they asked, just to spite them, precisely to prove you wouldn't be pushed around . . . thoughthat got tricky; then people might try to make you do one thingby pretending to favour another, and even without that compli­cation you were still altering your behaviour because of some­thing they had said, which was giving them a sort of power overyou, when the whole point of everything the Archimandritewas doing was so thatnobody could say they had any powerover him.

 Power was everything. Money was nothing without it. Evenhappiness was a distraction, a ghost, a hostage. What was happi­ness? Something people could take away from you. Happinesstoo often involved other people. It meant giving them powerover you, giving them a hold on you that they could exercisewhenever they wanted, taking away whatever it was that had made you happy.

 Luseferous had known happiness and he'd had it taken away.His father, the only man he'd ever admired - even while hatingthe old bastard - had got rid of Luseferous's mother when shebecame old and less attractive, replacing her, when Luseferous was barely into his teens, with a succession of young, eroticallydesirable but soulless, uncaring, selfish young women, womenhe'd wanted for himself but despised at the same time. Hismother was sent away. He never saw her again.

 His father had been an Omnocrat for the Mercatoria, in theindustrial complexes of the Leseum Systems. He'd started outat the bottom, as a Peculan (cynically, the very name impliedthat the office-bearer would need to be corrupt to make anysort of decent living, so incurring a history of criminality thatcould always be dredged up against them if they ever steppedout of line later). He'd become an Ovate, worked his waythrough the many gradations of that estate, then ascended tothe office of Diegesian, in charge of a district of a city, then asmall industrial city, then a medium-sized city, then a large city,then a continental capital. He became an Apparitor when hisimmediate superior died in the arms of a shared lover. That loverdid very well for a while - his consort, in effect - then grew demanding and met an untimely end too.

 His father had never told him if he'd had her killed.Equally, he'd never told his father that the woman had latelybecome his lover, too.

 From Apparitor his father rose to Peregal, in charge of first an orbiting fab\hab cluster, then a continent, then a sizeablemoon, with all the trappings of power and wealth and glamoursuch a post presented in a thriving, connected set of systemssuch as Leseum. At this point, for the first time in his life, hisfather had appeared finally to appreciate the position he'dreached. He'd seemed to relax and start enjoying life.

 It ended there. Finally setting himself up for the next jump,to Hierchon, his father, who had amassed a great fortunedispensing charters and contracts to the merchants and manu­facturers of the many systems, took pity on a favouredApparitor who was somewhat down on his luck, cut him in ona deal and a kickback he didn't really need to and found himselfdenounced, tried and beheaded for gross corruption within amonth. The same young Apparitor then took his position.

 Luseferous, convinced from early on that he could nevercompete with his father in his own sphere, and anyway alwaysintrigued by the nature of religion and faith, had joined theCessoria a few years earlier. He'd been a Piteer, a junior priest,at the time of his father's trial. They had made him one of his father's confessors, and he'd accompanied him to the executionring. His father had been brave at first, then he'd broken. He'dstarted crying, begging, promising anything (but only all the things he'd already lost). He clutched at Luseferous's robes,howling and beseeching, burying his face. Luseferous knew theywere watching him, that this moment was important for his future. He pushed his father away.

 His rise through the Cessoria was swift.He would never be as powerful as his father, but he was cleverand capable and respected and on an upward course within animportant but not too dangerous part of one of the greatestmeta-civilisations the galaxy had seen. He might have beencontent with that, and never put himself in a position of weak­ness the way his father had.

 Then the Disconnect happened. A swathe of portal destruc-tion had swung across the million-star volume all aroundLeseum back in the time of the Arteria Collapse, leaving onlythe bunched Leseum systems themselves connected inside a vastvolume of backwardness. The system of Leseum9 had beenimportant, seemed vital and felt unthreatened until their owndisconnect came millennia later, courtesy of some vast bickerwithin the ongoing chaos of the Scatter Wars, an essentially meaningless difference of opinion between three pretendingsides which until then practically nobody had heard of. By thetime it was all over, nobody would hear of those sides again,save as history. The damage was done, though; the portal near Leseum9 had been destroyed and an enormous volume around it had been cut off from the rest of the civilised galaxy.

 Everything changed then, including what you had to do toretain power, and who might contest for absolute power.

 His father, nevertheless, had taught Luseferous everything, one way or another, and one of the most important things wasthis: there was no plateau. In life, you were either on your wayup or on your way down, and it was always better to be onyour way up, especially as the only reliable way to keep goingup was to use other people as stepping stones, as platforms, asscaffolding. The old saying about being nice to people on theway up so that they'd be nice to you when you were on yourway back down was perfectly true, but it was a defeatist's saying,a loser's truism. Better to keep going up for ever, never to rest, never to relax, never to have to descend. The thought of whatmight happen to you at the hands of those you'd alreadyoffended, exploited and wronged on the way up - those that still lived - was just another incentive for the serious playernever even to think about easing off the pace, let alone starting to fall back. The dedicated competitor would keep presentinghimself with new challenges to take on and conquer, he wouldseek out new levels to ascend to, he would always look for newhorizons to head towards.

 Treat life like the game it was. This might be the truth behind the Truth, the religion Luseferous had been raised within as anobedient member of the Mercatoria: that nothing you did orseemed to do really mattered, because it was all - or might beall - a game, a simulation. It was all, in the end, just pretend.Even this Starveling cult he was titular head of was just some­thing he'd made up because it sounded good. A variation of the Truth with added self-denial every now and again, the better to contemplate the gullibility of people. People would swallowanything, just anything at all. Apparently some people foundthis dismaying. He thought it was a gift, the most wonderfulopportunity to take advantage of the weak-minded.

 So you seemed cruel. So people died and suffered and grewup hating you. So what? There was at least a chance that none of it was real.

 And if itwas all real, well, then life was struggle. It alwayshad been and it always would be. You recognised this and lived,or fell for the lie that progress and society had made struggleunnecessary, and just existed, were exploited, became prey, merefodder.

 He wondered to what extent even the supposedly feral andlawless Beyonders understood this basic truth. They let womenrise to the pinnacle of their military command structure; thatdidn't bode particularly well. And the marshal didn't seem to have realised that when he'd said he'd heard her request andwould pay it all due heed, it meant nothing.

 'Well, thank you, Archimandrite,' she said.

 Still, he smiled. 'You will stay? We shall have a banquet inyour honour. We have had so little to celebrate out here, betweenthe stars.'

 'An honour indeed, Archimandrite.' The marshal gave thatlittle head nod again.

 And we shall try to pick each other's brains over dinner,hethought.My, what highbrow fun. Give me a planet to plunderany day.

 *

 -Do you have any idea where we are? the colonel signalled, using a spot-laser. They reckoned this was their most secureform of comms.

 - Zone Zero, the equatorial, Fassin sent. - Somewhere aheadof the latest big storm, about ten or twenty kilo-klicks behindthe Ear Festoon. I'm checking the latest update they loaded before the drop.

 They were floating in a slow eddy around a gentle ammonia upwell the diameter of a small planet, about two hundred klicksdown from the cloud tops. The temperature outside was rela-tively balmy by human standards. There were levels, places inalmost all gas-giants where a human could, in theory, existexposed to the elements without any protective clothing at all.Of course they would probably need to be prone and lying ina tub of shock-gel or something similar because weighing six times what their skeleton was used to coping with would makestanding up or moving around problematic, their lungs wouldhave to be full of gillfluid or the like, to let them breathe within a mix of gases which included oxygen only as a trace element,and also to let their ribs and chest muscles work under the pres­sure of that gravitational vice, plus they wouldn't want to beexposed to a charged-particle shower, but all the same: by gas-giant great-outdoors standards, this was about as good as it humanly got.

 Colonel Hatherence found it a bit hot, but then as anoerileithe she would be more at home closer to the cloud tops.She had already loudly pronounced her esuit undamaged andcapable of protecting her anywhere from space-vacuum down to Nasqueron's ten-kilo-klick level, where the pressure wouldbe a million times what it was here and the temperature some­what more than half what it was on the surface of Ulubis star.Fassin chose not to join in a mine's-better-than-yours compe­tition; his own gascraft was also space-capable in an emergencybut untested at those depths.

 He'd tried contacting Apsile in the drop ship but had comeup with static. The passive positioning grid cast by the equato­ rial satellites was functioning but both scale-degraded andpatchy, indicating there were some satellites gone or notworking.

 Knowing where you were in Nasqueron or any gas-giant wasimportant, but still less than half the story. There was a solid rocky core to the planet, a spherical mass of about ten Earth-sized planets buried under seventy thousand vertical kilometres of hydrogen, helium and ice, and there were purists who wouldcall the transition region between that stony kernel and the high-temperature, high-pressure water ice above it the planet'ssurface. But you had to be a real nit-picker even to pretend totake that definition seriously. Beyond the water ice - techni­cally ice because it was effectively clamped solid by the colossalpressure, but at over twenty thousand degrees, confusingly hotfor the human image of what ice was supposed to be like – cameover forty thousand vertical kilometres of metallic hydrogen,then a deep transition layer to the ten-kilo-klick layer of molec­ular hydrogen which, if you were of an especially imaginativeturn of mind, you might term a sea.

 Above that, in the relatively thin - at a mere few thousandkilometres - but still vastly complicated layers reaching uptowards space, were the regions where the Dwellers lived, inthe contra-rotating belts and zones of rapidly spinning gaseswhich - dotted with storms great and small, spattered witheddies, embellished with festoons, bars, rods, streaks, veils,columns, clumps, hollows, whirls, vortices, plume-heads, shearfronts and subduction flurries - girdled the planet. Where theDwellers lived, where everything happened, there was no solid surface, and no features at all which lasted more than a few thousand years save for the bands of gas forever charging pasteach other, great spinning wheels of atmosphere whirling like the barely meshed cogs in some demented gearbox a hundredand fifty thousand kilometres across.

 The convention was that the equatorial satellites followed theaveraged-out progress of the broad equatorial zone, establishinga sort of stationary parameter-set from which everything elsecould be worked out relatively. But it was still confusing.Nothing was fixed. The zones and belts were relatively stable,but they shot past each other at combined speeds of whathumans were used to thinking of as the speed of sound, andthe margins between them changed all the time, torn by furi­ously curling eddies writhing this way and that, or thrown out,compressed and disturbed by giant storms like the Great RedSpot of the Solar System's Jupiter, riding between a zone trav­elling one way and a belt going the other like a vast squashedwhirlpool caught in some mad clash of violently opposedcurrents, developing, raging and slowly dissipating over thecenturies that humanity had been able to watch it. In a gas-giant, everything either evolved, revolved or just plain came andwent, and the whole human mindset of surfaces, territory, land,sea and air was thrown into confusion.

 Add the effects of a vastly powerful magnetic field, swathesof intense radiation and the sheer scale of the environment -you could drop the whole of a planet the size of Earth or Sepekteinto a decent-sized gas-giant storm - and the human brain wasleft with a lot to cope with.

 And all this before one took into account the - to be generous- playful attitude which the Dwellers themselves so often exhib­ited to general planetary orientation and the help, or otherwise, conventionally seen as being fit and proper to be extended to directionally challenged alien visitors.

 -  I thought we'd be in the midst of them, the colonel sent.

 -  Dwellers? Fassin asked, studying the complex schematic ofwho and what might be where at the moment.

 -  Yes, I imagined we would find ourselves in one of theircities.

 They both looked around at the vast haze of slowly swirlinggas, extending - depending on which frequency or sense onechose to experience it in - a few metres or a few hundred kilo­metres away on every side. It felt very still, even though they were part of the equatorial zone and so being spun around theplanet at over a hundred metres a second, while swirling slowlyaround the upwelling and rising gradually with it too.

 Fassin felt himself smiling in his wrapping of shock-gel.

 -  Well, there's a lot of Dwellers, but it's a big planet.

 It seemed odd to be explaining this to a creature whose kindhad evolved in planets like this and who surely ought to be familiar with the scale of a gas-giant, but then oerileithe, inFassin's admittedly limited experience of them, often did displaya kind of half-resentful awe towards Dwellers, entirely consis­tent with a belief that the instant you dropped beneath the cloudtops you'd find yourself surrounded by massed ranks of magis­terial Dwellers and their astoundingly awesome structures (amisapprehension it was hard to imagine any Dweller even considering correcting). The oerileithe were an ancient peopleby human standards and by those of the vast majority of speciesin the developed galaxy, but - with a civilisation going backabout eight hundred thousand years - they were mere mayfliesby Dweller standards.

 A thought occurred to Fassin. - You ever been in a Dwellerplanet before, colonel?

 -  Indeed not. A privilege denied until now. Hatherence madea show of looking about. - Not unlike home, really.

 Another thought occurred. - Youdid receive clearance?Didn't you, colonel?

 -  Clearance, Seer Taak?

 -  To come down. To enter Nasq.

 -  Ah, the colonel sent. - Not as such, I do confess. It wasthought that I would be remote delving with you and yourcolleagues, from the Shared Facility on the Third Fury moon.Braam Ganscerel himself took the time to assure me of thispersonally. No objection was raised regarding such a presence.I believe that permission was in the process of being sought forme to accompany you physically into the atmosphere if thatbecame necessary - as indeed it now has - however, the last thatI heard in that regard indicated that the relevant clearances hadyet to materialise. Why? Do you envisage there being a problem?

 Oh, shit.

 -   The Dwellers, Fassin told her, - can be...pernickety aboutthat sort of thing.Pernickety, he thought. They were liable todeclare the colonel an honorary child, give her a half-hour startand set off tohunt her. - They take their privacy quite seri-­ously. Unauthorised entries are severely discouraged.

 -   Well, I'm aware of that.

 -   You are? Good.

 -   I shall throw myself upon their mercy.

 -   Right. I see.

 You are either quite brave and possessed of a decent sense ofhumour,Fassin thought,or you really should have done morehomework.

 -   So, Seer Fassin Taak, in which direction ought we toproceed?

 -   Should be a CloudTunnel about four hundred klicks . . .that way, Fassin sent, turning the gascraft to point more or lesssouth and slightly down. - Unless it's moved, obviously.

 -   Shall we? the colonel said, drifting in that direction.

 -   Going to ping one of our sats, let them know we're alive,
Fassin told her.

 -   This is wise?

 Was it wise?Fassin wondered. There had been some sort ofattack on the Seer infrastructure around Nasqueron, but thatdidn't mean the whole near-planet environment had been takenover. On the other hand . . .

 -   How fast can that esuit go? he asked the colonel.

 -   At this density, about four hundred metres per second.
About half that, on sustained cruise.

 Fassin's arrowcraft could just about keep pace with that.Disappointing. He was still hoping to give the colonel the slipat some point. It looked like he wasn't going to be able to justoutrun her.

 -  Ping sent, he told Hatherence. - Let's go.

 They went, quickly. They'd got about a hundred metres awaywhen a flash of violet light ripped the cloud apart behind themand a stark, short-lived beam-cluster splayed through thevolume of gas they'd been floating within a few seconds earlier.Further beams radiated out from the initial target point, pulsingthrough the atmosphere in slowly spreading semi-random stabs.One flicked into existence about fifty metres from them,booming and crackling. All the rest were much further away and after a minute or so they ceased altogether.

 -   Somebody would seem to be ill-disposed towards you, SeerTaak, the colonel sent as they flew through the gas.

 -   So it would appear.

 The flash and EMP came a couple of minutes after that. Alow, rumbling concussion caught up with them some time later.

 -   Was that anuke? Fassin sent. His instruments seemed toleave no other interpretation, but he still found it hard to believe.

 -   I am unaware of any phenomenon able to mimic one soconvincingly.

 -   Fucking hell.

 -  I float corrected. Somebody would seem to beextremelyill-disposed towards you, Seer Taak.

 -  The Dwellers arenot going to be happy, he told Hatherence.- Only they're allowed to let off nukes in the atmosphere, heexplained. - And it isn't even fireworks season.

 They found the CloudTunnel about where Fassin had thoughtit ought to be, only a hundred kilometres out laterally and twokilometres further down: bang on by Nasqueron standards. TheCloudTunnel was a bundle of a dozen or so carbon-carbon tubeslike some vast, barely braided cable-cluster floating in the midstof an unending cloudscape of gently billowing yellow, orange and ochre. The CloudTunnel's two main tubes were about sixtymetres in diameter, the smallest - basically comms and telemetrywave guides - less than half a metre. The whole cluster had looked thread-thin when they'd first caught sight of it, tens ofkilometres away, but up close it looked like a hawser fit to tethera moon. A great, deep rushing sound rumbled from inside the two main pipes.

 -   What now? the colonel sent.

 -   We see if my vicarious kudos credit is still good.

 Fassin used one of the arrowcraft's manipulators to prod one of the wave guides, working the filaments through the tube's protective sheath without breaking it. A hair-thin wire extendedinto the matrix of light filling the narrow tube. Informationstreamed from the far end of the wire, into the gascraft'sbiomind, its transitional systems and then into Fassin's head, forming a coded chaos of babbling sound, wildly scintillatingvisuals and other confused sensory experiences. The interrup­tion in the light streams had already been noticed and allowedfor. A pulse of information aimed right at the filament sent anidentity request and inquired whether assistance was required,otherwise stop interfering with a public information highway.

 -A human, Fassin Taak, privileged to be Slow Seer at thecourt of the Nasqueron Dwellers, he sent. - I'd like some assis-tance in the shape of transport at the given location, bound for Hauskip City.

 He was told to wait.

 'Fassin Taak, Out-Bander, Stranger, Alien, Seer, Human! And . . . what's this?'

 'This is Colonel Hatherence of the Mercatorial Military-Religious Order the Shrievalty Ocula, an oerileithe.'

 'Good day, Dweller Y'sul,' Hatherence said. They hadswitched to using ordinary sound-speech.

 'A little dweller! How fascinating! Not a child, then?'

 Y'sul, a sizeable mid-adult a good nine metres or so in diam­eter, rolled through the gas and, extending one long spindle-arm, clunked a fist-bunch (bink-bink-bink!) on the esuit of theColonel.

 'Hellooo in there!' Y'sul said.

 Hatherence's discus of esuit leaned to one side under the rainof not-so-gentle blows. 'Pleased to meet you,' she replied tersely.

 'Not a child,' Fassin confirmed.

 They were in a giant bowl-like room, roofed with slate-diamond micrometres thin, in a Thickeneers' Club in HauskipCity.

 Hauskip lay within the equatorial zone of Nasqueron, oneof the hundred thousand or so major conurbations in that partic­ular atmospheric band. Seen from the right angle in a sympa-thetic light, it looked a lot like the internal workings of anancient mechanical clock, multiplied and magnified several thou­sand times. From far enough away, or just seen in a schematic,it resembled millions of toothed-looking wheels caught up in amongst each other, with larger sets of wheels interconnecting with them through hubs and spines and spindles, themselves linking up with still greater sets of wheels. The whole mighty, slowly gyrating and spinning assemblage, easily a couple ofhundred kilometres in diameter, floated within a thick soup ofgas a hundred kilometres beneath the cloud tops.

 The city was the hub for several CloudTunnel lines. Oncean empty car had made its way to the access hatch nearest towhere Fassin and Hatherence pitched up alongside theCloudTunnel, it had taken two changes of line, riding inthe same car, for Fassin and the colonel to get there throughthe network of partially evacuated, high-speed transit tubes. The whole journey had taken one of Nasqueron's short day-night cycles. They had each slept for most of the time, thoughjust before Fassin had dozed off, the colonel had said, 'We goon. You agree, major? We continue our mission. Until we areordered to cease.'

 ‘Iagree,' he said. 'We go on.'

 The TunnelCar had docked, sphinctered its way through aTunnelBud wall in Hauskip's Central Station and sped throughthe gelatinous atmosphere straight to the equatorial EighthProgression Thickeneers' Club, where Y'sul, Fassin's long-time guide-mentor-guard had been attending a party to celebrate theCompletion and Expulsion Ceremony of one of the club'smembers.

 Dwellers started out looking like anorexic manta rays - thiswas in their brief, occasionally hunted childhood phase - then grew, fattened, split most of the way down the middle (adoles­cence, kind of), shifted from a horizontal to a vertical axis and ended up, as adults, basically, resembling something like a pairof large, webbed, fringed cartwheels connected by a short, thickaxle with particularly bulbous outer hubs onto each of which had been fastened a giant spider crab.

 Part of the transition from recent- to mid-adulthood involveda period called Thickening, when the slim and flimsy discs ofyouth became the stout and sturdy wheels of later life, and itwas customary for Dwellers to join a club of their approximatecontemporaries while this was taking place. There was nospecific reason for Dwellers to band together at this point intheir lives, they just in general enjoyed joining clubs, sodalities, orders, leagues, parties, societies, associations, fellowships,fraternities, groups, guilds, unions, fractionals, dispensationalsand recreationalities, while always, of course, leaving open thepossibility of taking part in ad hoc non-ceremonial serendipi­ tous one-time gatherings as well. The social calendar wascrowded.

 Y'sul had invited them to this private book-crystal-linedlibrary room in his Thickeneers' Club rather than to his homeso that, as he explained, if they were too boring or in too greata hurry, he could get back without an over-great delay to his chums taking part in the ceremonial dinner and spree in the banqueting hall below.

 'So, Fassin, good to see you!' Y'sul said. 'Why have youbrought this little dweller with you? Is she food?''No, of course not. She is a colleague.' 'Of course! Though there are no oerileithe Seers.''She is not a Seer.' 'Then not a colleague?'

 'She has been sent to escort me, by the Mercatorial Military-Religious Order the Shrievalty Ocula.'

 ‘I see.' Y'sul, dressed in his best smart-but-casual finery, allbrightly coloured fringes and lacily ornate ruffs, rocked back, rotating slightly, then came forward again. 'No, I don't! Whatam I saying? What is this "Ocula"?''Well . . .'

 It took a while to tell. After about a quarter of an hour - this all, thankfully, in real-time, with no slow-down factor - Fassinthought he'd pretty much briefed Y'sul as well and as completelyas he could without giving too much away. The colonel hadcontributed now and again, not that Y'sul seemed to have takenany notice of her.

 Y'sul was about fifteen thousand years old, a full-adult whowas perhaps another one or two millennia away from becoming a traav, the first stage of Prime-hood. At nine metres verticaldiameter (not including his semi-formal dinner clothes, whoseimpressive body ruff added another metre), he was about aslarge as a Dweller ever got. His double disc was nearly five metres across, the modestly clothed central axle barely visible as a separate entity, more of an unexpected thinning betweenthe two great wheels. Dwellers shrank very slightly as they agedafter mid-adulthood and slowly lost both hub and fringe limbs until, by the time they were in their billions, they were often nearly limb-disabled.

 Even then they could still get about, as a rule. Their motiveforce came from a system of vanes extending from the innerand outer surfaces of their two main discs. These extended tobeat - sometimes twisting to add extra impetus or to steer -and lay flat on the backstroke, so that a moving Dweller seemedto roll through the atmosphere. This was called roting. Very old Dwellers often lost the use of - or just lost - the vanes on the outside of their discs, but usually retained those on the insideso that no matter how decrepit they might get, they could still wheel themselves around.

 'It boils down,' Y'sul said at the end, 'to the fact that you arelooking for the choal Valseir, to resume subject-specific studiesin a library within his control.'

 'Pretty much,' Fassin agreed.

 'I see.'

 'Y'sul, you have always been a great help to me. Can youhelp me in this?'

 'Problem,' Y'sul said.

 'Problem?' Fassin asked.

 'Valseir is dead and his library has been consigned to thedepths, or split up, possibly at random, amongst his peers, allies,families, co-specialists, enemies or passers-by. Probably all ofthe above.'

 'Dead?' Fassin said. He let horror show on the signallingcarapace of the gascraft; a quite specific whorl pattern which indicated being intellectually and emotionally appalled at thedemise of a Dweller friend\acquaintance not least because theyhad died in the course of pursuing a line of inquiry that onewas oneself deeply fascinated by. 'But he was only a choal! Hewas billions of years from dying!'

 Valseir had been about a million and a half years old and onthe brink of passing from the Cuspian level to that of Sage.Choal was the last phase of being a Cuspian. The average ageof progressing from Cuspian-choal to Sage-child was over two million years but Valseir had been judged by his elders andallegedly betters as being ready even at such a modest count of time. He was, or had been, a one-and-a-half-million-year-old prodigy. He had also, last time Fassin had seen him, seemedstrong, vigorous and full of life. Agreed, he spent most of his life with his rotary snout stuck in a library and didn't get outmuch, but still Fassin could not believe he was dead. TheDwellers didn't even have any diseases he could have died of.How could he bedead?

 'Yachting accident, if I recall,' Y'sul said. 'Do I?' Fassin sensedthe Dweller radioing an inforequest to the patch-walls of thelibrary room. 'Yes, I do! Yes, a yachting accident. HisStormJammer got caught in a particularly vicious eddy and it came apart on him. Skewered with a main beam or a yard armor something. On a brighter note, they salvaged most of theyacht before it descended to the Depths. He was a very keensailor. Terribly competitive.'  .

 'When?' Fassin asked. 'I heard nothing.''Not long ago,' Y'sul said. 'Couple of centuries at the most.''There was nothing on the news nets.'

 'Really? Ah! Wait.' (Another radioed inforequest.) 'Yes. Iunderstand he left instructions that in the event of his death itwas to be regarded as a private matter.' Y'sul flexed his hub-mounted spindle-arms on either side. All of them. Right out.'Quite understand! Done the same myself.'

 'Is there any record of what happened to his library?' Fassinasked.

 Y'sul rocked back again, a pair of giant conical wheels rotatingslowly away, then pitching forward once more. He hung inmid-gas and said, 'D'you know what?''What?'

 'No, there isn't! Is that not strange?'

 'We...I would really like to look into this matter further,Y'sul. Can you help us in this?'

 'I most certainly . . . ah, talking about news nets, there issomething about an unauthorised fusion explosion not far fromthe point you accessed the CloudTunnel from. Anything to dowith you?'

 Oh, shit,Fassin thought, again. 'Yes. It would appear thatsomebody is trying to kill me. Or possibly the colonel here.'He waved at Hatherence's esuit, still floating next to him. Shehad been silent for some time. Fassin was not certain this wasa good sign.

  ‘I see,' Y'sul said. 'And talking about the good colonel, I amstruggling to discover her authorisation. For being here at all,I mean.'

 'Well,' Fassin said, 'we were forced to take refuge inNasqueron, some time before we imagined it would be neces­sary, due to unprovoked hostile action. The colonel's permis­sions were being sought some time before we left but had notyet come through when we had to make our emergency entry.The colonel is, technically, here without explicit permission, andtherefore throws herself upon your mercy as a shipwreckee, awartime asylumee and a fellow gas-giant dweller in need of shelter.' Fassin turned and looked at the colonel, who shiftedabout her vertical axis to return his gascraft-directed gaze. 'Sheclaims sanctuary,' he finished.

 'Provisionally given, of course,' Y'sul said. 'Though theprecise meaning of "unprovoked" might be challenged in a widercontext, and the exact definition of "shipwreckee", equally,could well be open to dispute if one wished to be picky. That aside, though, do I understand there is some sort of dispute in progress, out amongst you people?'

 'You understand correctly,' Fassin told the Dweller.

 'Oh, not another one of your wars, please!' Y'sul protested,with a rolling-back of his whole body which was actually rela­tively easy for a human to interpret, correctly, as an equivalentof rolling one's eyes. (Though, to be fair, there was quite a lot of Dweller gestures with this translation.)

 'Well, pretty much, yes,' Fassin told him.

 'Your passion for doing each other harm never ceases toamaze, delight and horrify!'

 'I'm told there is to be a Formal War between Zone 2 andBelt C,' Fassin said.

 'I too am told that!' Y'sul said brightly. 'Do you really think it will happen? I'm not optimistic, frankly. Some appallinglygood negotiators have been drafted in, I understand . . . Ah.Your hull carapace, doing the job of standing in, feebly, for the body you so sadly lack, bears marks upon it which I take tomean you were being sarcastic earlier.'

 'Never mind, Y'sul.'

 'Right then, shan't. Now then: Valseir. There is a point ofcongruency'

 'There is?'

 'Yes!'

 'With what? Between what and what?'

 'His demise and this war we've been promised!'

 'Really?'

 'Yes! His old study - it is in the current zone of disputation,I believe.'

 'But if it's already been broken up—' Fassin began.

 'Oh, there are bound to be back-ups, and I'm not even surethe old fellow has been finally put to rest.'

 'After two hundred years?'

 'Come now, Fassin, there were matters of probate.'

 'And it's in the war zone?'

 'Very likely, yes! Isn't it exciting? I think we ought to gothere immediately!' Y'sul waved all his limbs at once. 'Let's forman expedition! We shall go together.' He looked at Hatherence.'You can even bring your little friend.'

 - I have been considering whether to attempt to communicatewith your Shared Facility, via your satellites or directly, the colonel told him.

 -   I wouldn't, Fassin sent. - But if you decide you must, tellme before you try. I want to be well out of the volume.

 -   You think the same sort of attack directed against usfollowing your 'ping' might be directed against us here?

 -   Probably not here, in a Dweller city. But then, why riskit? We don't know that whoever's been shooting at us quiteunderstands what they'd be letting themselves in for, so theymight just waste us and have to deal with the consequences later.
We won't be around to jeer.

 - We need to find out what is going on, Major Taak, Hatherence informed him.

 - I know, and I'm going to send a request for informationup to a sat from a remote site as soon as I've checked out what'sbeen going on via the local nets.

 The colonel floated over to look at the enormous thoughancient and highly directional flat screen which Fassin was usingin his attempt to find out what had been happening. They were in Y'sul's home, a ramshackle wheel-house in a whole vastdistrict of equally shabby-looking wheel-houses hanging onskinny spindles underneath the city's median level like a frozen image of an entire junkyard's worth of exploded gearboxes.

 Y'sul had escorted them back from his club in a state of some excitement. Then he'd left them alone, taken his servant Sholishand gone off in search of a decent tailor - his usual tailor hadmost inconveniently taken it into his mind to change trades andbecome a Dreadnought rating; probably trying to get in on theground floor of this upcoming war.

 - What have you found? the colonel asked, watching the flatscreen fill with an image of the Third Fury moon. - Hmm. The moon appears almost undamaged.

 - This is an old recording, Fassin explained. - I'm trying to find an updated one.

 - Any mention of the hostilities?

 - Not very much, Fassin told her, using a manipulator towork the massive, stiff controls of the old screen. - There's beena mention on a minority radio news service, but that's it.

 - It is regarded as news, though? This is encouraging, I think?

 - Well, don't get too excited, Fassin sent. - We are talkingabout a station some amateurs run for the few people like them­selves who are actually interested in things happening in therest of the system; maybe a few thousand Dwellers out of aplanetary population of five or ten billion.

 -  The number of Dwellers in Nasqueron is really that uncer-tain?

 -  Oh, I've seen estimates as low as two billion, as high astwo hundred, even three.

 -  I encountered this degree of uncertainty in my research,Hatherence said as Fassin switched manually between channels,data sets and image-trails. - I recall thinking it must be a mistake.How can one be two base-ten orders of magnitude out? Can'tone just ask the Dwellers? Don't they know themselves how
many they are?

 -  You can certainly ask, Fassin agreed. He put some humourinto his signal. - An old tutor of mine used to say of questionslike this that the answers will prove far more illuminatingregarding Dweller psychology than they will concerning theiractual subject.

 -  They lie to you or they don't know themselves?

 -  That is a good question too.

 -  They must have an idea, the Colonel protested. - A societyhas to know how many people it contains, otherwise how wouldit plan infrastructure and so on?

 Fassin felt himself smiling. - That's how it would work inpretty much any other society, he agreed.

 -   There are those who would assert that Dwellers are not infact civilised, the colonel said thoughtfully, - that they could scarcely be said to possess a society in any single planet, andon a galactic scale cannot be said to constitute a civilisation at all. They exist rather in a state of highly developed barbarism.

 -   I'm familiar with the arguments, Fassin told her.

 -   Would you agree?

 -   No. This is a society. We are in acity. And even just in theone planet, this is a civilisation. I know the definitions will havechanged over the years and you might take a different view fromme, but in the history of my planet we'd refer to a civilisation based around a single river system or on a small island.

 -   I forget how small-scale one has to think when dealing with planets with solid-surface living-environments, the colonel said,apparently without meaning to insult. - But even so, the defi-nition of a civilisation has to move on when one ascends to the
galactic stage, and the Dwellers, taken as a whole, might seemdeficient.

 -   I think it comes down to one's own definition of the terms,Fassin said. - Hold on; this looks promising.

 He swung back from a mosaic of sub-screens to a singlemoving image. Third Fury again, though this time lookinghazier, less defined, and shot from some distance away. Theshallow domes of the Shared Facility were obvious if not clear,down near one tipped edge of the little moonlet. A flash on the surface away to one side, and a semi-spherical cloud of debris,spreading. A glowing crater left where the flash had come from.

 -   This looks like yesterday, Hatherence said.

 -   Does, doesn't it? Fassin agreed. - Looks like it was takenfrom high up on Belt A or the south of Zone 2. Just someamateur pointing a camera. Fassin found how to spin the stored recording back and then forward, then discovered how to zoomin. - And that's us.

 They watched a cerise spot appear on a glittering blister nearthe edge of the Shared Facility, and could just make out thegrainily defined debris of the hangar dome blowing outward infront of a sudden haze of quickly dissipating mist. A tiny dark grey dot rose from the shattered dome and crawled away: thedrop ship, making its desperate dive for the planet.

 Fassin spun the recording forward. The moon's positionaltered quickly, flying away across the dark sky as Third Furycontinued on its orbit and whoever was recording the imageswas whirled away in the opposite direction by the twenty-thou­sand-kilometre-wide jet stream beneath them. - Definitely BandA, Fassin said.

 A brilliant white flash washed out the whole screen. It faded,and a crater kilometres across was left. Debris spread every­where like a flower's seed-head, just ready to shed, caught in asudden hurricane. The interior of the crater was white, yellow,orange, red. The debris continued to spread. It looked like mostof it would stay in more or less the same orbit as Third Furyitself

 They both watched in silence. The moon had changed shape.It wobbled, seemed to partially collapse in on itself, slowly, plas­tically resuming a spherical form after losing so much of itsearlier mass. Yellow cloud tops came up in a near-flat line tomeet it and the small glowing globe spun under the horizon.

 Fassin let the recording play out and start to loop. He stopped it. The screen froze on the recording's first image of Third Fury,almost overhead, just after the first impact.

 -  That did not look like a survivable event, the colonel sent.
Her sent voice sounded quiet.

 -  I think you're right.

 -  I am very sorry. How many people would have been in the
Shared Facility base?

 -  A couple of hundred.

 -  I saw no sign of your Master Technician's craft, or of theattacks on us once we quit the drop ship.

 Fassin compared the recording's time code with the gascraft'sown event list. - Those happened after what we saw here, hetold the colonel. - Over the horizon from where this recordingwas taken, anyway.

 -  So much for back-up or reinforcements. The colonel turned
towards him. - We still go on, though, yes?

 -Yes.

 -  So, now what, Fassin Taak?

 -  We need to talk to some people.

 'So you want to communicate with your own kind?' Y'sul asked.'Via a relay at a remote site,' Fassin said.

 'Why haven't you done so already?'

 'I wanted to get your permission.'

 'You don't need my permission. You just find a remote dishand send away. I suspect any vicarious effect on my kudos levelwill be too small to measure.'

 They were in an antechamber of the city's Administrator. The antechamber was a sizeable room furnished with wall hangingsmade from ancient CloudHugger hides, all yellow-red andwhorled. A few sported the holes where the creatures had beenpunctured. One curved section of wall was a giant window,looking out over the vast floating scape of wheels that wasHauskip. Evening was starting to descend and lights were comingon throughout the city. Y'sul floated over to the window and caused it to hinge down by the unsubtle tactic of bumping intoit reasonably hard. He then floated out over the impromptu bowof balcony so produced, muttering something about liking theview and maybe moving his own house up here. A breeze blew in, ruffling the old CloudHugger hides as though their long-deadoccupants were still somehow fleeing from their hunters.

 Colonel Hatherence leaned over towards Fassin. - This kudosthing, then, she sent. - It isreally how they calculate their worth?

 -  I'm afraid so.

 -  So it's the truth! I thought it was a joke.

 -  Distinguishing between the two is not a Dweller strong point.
Y'sul wandered back, failing to shut the window. His vanesmade a quiet burring noise as he roted through the gas towardsthem. 'Give me the message,' he said. 'I'll forward it.'

 'Via an out-of-the-way transceiver?' Fassin asked.

 'Of course!'

 "Well, just send to Sept Bantrabal, letting them know I'm allright and asking whether they're okay at their end. I imaginethey already know what happened to the Third Fury moon.You might ask them whether anything has been heard of MasterTechnician Apsile and the drop ship which escaped the moon'sassault, and what happened to the ships supposed to beprotecting Third Fury.'

 'Ahem,' the colonel said.

 They both looked at her. ‘Is this wise?' she asked.

 'You mean should I pretend to be dead?' Fassin said.

 'Yes.'

 'That did occur to me. But there are people I'd like to knowI'm alive.' He thought of that glimpse of a flash which might have been something hitting 'glantine while Third Fury wasbeing bombarded. 'And I'd like to know my friends and family are all right.'

 'Of course,' the colonel said. 'However, I wonder if it mightbe more sensible for me to communicate with my superiorsfirst. We might ask Dweller Y'sul here to let me use this remoterelay. Once a more secure link had been established, perhapsvia one of the warships, which I assume are still somewherearound the planet, a message might be sent to your Sept to letthem know you are well. None of which need take long.'

 While Hatherence had been speaking, Y'sul had floated rightup to her, seemingly intent on peering through the front plateof her esuit, which was in fact completely opaque, and indeedarmoured. Eventually he was within a centimetre of her,towering above the oerileithe. The colonel did not retreat. Oneof Y'sul's rim limbs tapped - more delicately this time - on the colonel's esuit casing.

 'Would you mind not doing that, sir?' she said frostily.

 'Why are you still inside that thing, little dweller?' Y'sul asked.

 'Because I am evolved for higher, colder levels with a differentgas-mix and pressure gradient, Dweller Y'sul.'

 'I see.' Y'sul drew back. 'And you have a very strange accentand way with grammar. I swear this human speaks better thanyou do. What were you saying again?'

 'I was asking you kindly to refrain from making physicalcontact with my esuit.'

 'No, before that.' .

 'I was suggesting I make contact with my superiors.'

 'Military superiors?'

 'Yes.'

 Y'sul turned to Fassin. 'That sounds more interesting thanyour plan, Fassin.'

 'Y'sul, two hundred of my people died yesterday. If not more.I'd like—'

 'Yes yes yes, but—'

 'I might have to signal 'glantine direct, if no satellites are left,'Hatherence was saying, as a tall door swung up in one wall anda Dweller in ceremonial clothes poked its rim out.

 'I'll see you now,' said the City Administrator.

 The Administrator's office was huge, the size of a small stadium.It was ringed with holo-screen carrels. Fassin counted a hundredor so of the study stations, though only a few were occupiedby Dwellers, mostly fairly young. There were no windows butthe ceiling was diamond leaf, with most of the sections slidround to leave the place open to the rapidly darkening sky.Floatlamps bobbed, casting a soft yellow light over them as theyfollowed the Administrator to her sunken audience area in the centre of the giant room.

 'You are pregnant!' Y'sul exclaimed. 'How delightful!'

 'So people keep telling me,' the Administrator said sourly.Dwellers were, for want of a better term, male for over ninety-nine per cent of their lives, only changing to the female formto become pregnant and give birth. Becoming female and givingbirth was regarded as a social duty; the fact that the obligation was more honoured than not made it unique in Dweller mores.It contributed mightily to one's kudos tally and anyway had asort of sentimental attraction for all but the most determinedlymisanthropic members of the species (statistically, about forty-three per cent). Still, it was undeniably a burden, and very fewDwellers went through the experience without complaining mightily about it.

 'I myself have thought of becoming female, oh, several times!' Y'sul said.

 'Well, it's overrated,' the City Administrator told him. 'Andparticularly burdensome when one had an invitation to theforthcoming war that one is now apparently morally obliged toturn down. Please; take a dent.'

 They floated to a series of hollows in the audience area andrested gently within them.

 'Why, I too hope to be going to the war!' Y'sul said brightly. 'Well, somewhere very near it, at least. I have only just nowreturned from my tailor's after being measured for the mostlately fashionable conflict attire.'

 'Oh, really?' the Administrator said. 'Who's your tailor? Minejust left for the war.'

 'Not Fuerliote?' Y'sul exclaimed.

 'The same!'

 'He was mine also!''Just the best.'

 'Absolutely.'

 'No, I had to go to Deystelmin.'

 'Is he any good?'

 'Weeeelll.' Y'sul waggled his whole double-discus. 'One livesin hope. Good mirror-side manner, as it were, but will it trans­late into a flattering cut? That's the question one has to askoneself.'

 'I know,' agreed the Administrator. 'And off to become ajunior officer on a Dreadnought!'

 'Not even that! A rating!'

 'No!'

 'Yes!'

 'Very lowly, for someone so distinguished!'

 'I know, but a smart move. Getting in as a rating before the recruitment window even properly opens makes sense. Thesmoking-uniform effect.'

 'Ah! Of course!'

 Fassin tried making a throat-clearing noise in the midst of allthis, but to no effect.

 -  The smoking-uniform effect? The colonel light-whisperedto him.

 -  Dead men's shoes, Fassin explained. - They only promotefrom within once hostilities have begun. If he's lucky this tailor'sDreadnought will suffer heavy damage and lose a few officersand he'll end up an officer after all. If he'sreally lucky he couldrise to admiral.

 Hatherence thought about this. - Would a tailor, however distinguished, necessarily make a good admiral?

 -  Probably no worse than the one he'd be replacing.

 The problem was that to the Dwellers all professions werein effect hobbies, all posts and positions sinecures. This tailor that Y'sul and the City Administrator were babbling on about would have had no real need to be a tailor, he was just some­body who'd found he possessed an aptitude for the pastime (or, more likely, for the gossiping and fussing generally associatedwith it). He would take on clients to increase his kudos, thelevel of which would increase proportionally the more powerfulwere the people he tailored for, so that somebody in a positionof civil power would constitute a favoured client, even if that position of power had come about through a lottery, somearcanely complicated rota system or plain old coercive voting - jobs like that of City Administrator were subject to all thoseregimes and more, depending on the band or zone concerned, or just which city was involved. The City Administrator, inreturn, would be able to drop casually into just the right conver­sations the fact she had such a well-known, high-kudos tailor.Obviously Y'sul had had sufficient kudos of his own to beable to engage the services of this alpha-outfitter too. Peoplefurther down the pecking order would have employed less well-connected tailors, or just got their clothes from Common, which was Dweller for, in this particular case, off-the-peg, and ingeneral just meant mass-produced, kudos-free, available-as-a-matter-of-right-just-because-you're-a-Dweller . . . well, pretty much anything, up to and including spaceships.

 Though having seen round a few Dweller spaceships, Fassinthought the stack-'em-high-and-give-them-away-free approachhad its limitations.

 'Indeed,' Y'sul was saying. 'My own bid for JO status hasbeen languishing for centuries and wasn't even mentioned this time round. Entering as a rating seems demeaning, but it couldpay off big if there are casualties.'

 'Of course, of course,' the Administrator said, then fastenedher gaze on the colonel. 'What's this?'

 'An oerileithe, a little dweller,' Y'sul said, with what sounded like pride.

 'Gracious! Not a child?''Or food. I asked.'

 'Pleased to meet you,' the colonel said with as much dignityas she could muster. An oerileithe, it appeared, attracted evenless respect amongst Dwellers than Fassin - and, he suspected,the colonel herself - had expected. The oerileithe had evolvedrelatively recently, quite independently of the vast, unutterablyancient mainstream of galactic Dwellerdom and as such wereseen by their more venerable co-gas-giant-inhabitants as some­thing between an annoying collective loose end and a bunch ofimpudent, planet-usurping interlopers.

 'And this must be the Slow Seer.' The Administrator lookedbriefly at Fassin's gascraft before returning her gaze to Y'sul.'Do we need to talk slowly for it?'

 'No, Administrator,' Fassin said before Y'sul could reply. ‘Iam running on your timescale at the moment.'

 'How fortunate!' She flicked to one side and stabbed at ascreen remote, her frontal radius edge lit up by the holo's glow.

 'Hmm. I see. So all the mayhem of the last day or two is yourfault, then?'

 'Has there been much mayhem, ma'am?'

 'Well, the partial destruction of a close-orbit moon would fitmost people's definition of mayhem,' the Administrator saidpleasantly. 'An attractive feature in the sky whenever oneventured towards the cloud tops. Been there millions of years, slagged within a few per cent of breaking up completely, a ringof debris scattered round its orbit, that orbit itself changedsignificantly, causing everything else up there to have to shuffleround to accommodate the alteration, a small bombardment ofdebris across three bands, some chunks narrowly missing severalitems of infrastructure with more than sentimental value andothers setting off automatic planetary-defence laser batteries, acascade of satellite destruction that has yet to be put entirelyright. Oh, and an unauthorised fusion explosion. Middle of nowhere, granted, but still. None of this, happily, within myjurisdiction, but trouble does appear to be rather following youaround, human Taak, and here you are in my city.' The Administrator rolled fractionally towards Fassin's gascraft. 'Thinking of staying long?'

 'Well—' Fassin began.

 'The human is under my protection, Administrator!' Y'sul interrupted. 'I vouch for it entirely and will continue to acceptall kudos consequences regarding its actions. I shall take all stepsnecessary to safeguard it from whatever hostile forces may wishit ill. May I count on your support for the expedition the humaninsists on making into the war zone?'

 'Given,' the Administrator said.

 'How splendid! We can be ready to leave within a couple ofdays. Especially if the tailor Deystelmin is persuaded to priori­tise my combat-clothing order.'

 'I'll have a word.'

 'Too kind! I swear I shall never nominate you for a coercivevote again!'

 'My gratitude knows no bounds.'

 If Dwellers could grit their teeth, Fassin thought, theAdministrator's words would have been spoken through them.'Excuse me, ma'am,' he said.

 'Yes, human Taak?'

 'Have you any word on events elsewhere in the system?'

 'As I say, the various rings and moons are shifting fraction­ally in their orbits to accommodate—'

 'I think he means the stellar system, not that of Nasqueron,'Colonel Hatherence said.

 The two Dwellers turned to look at her. Dwellers had sensingbands all the way round their outer rims, plus eye bubbles lowon their outer hubs. They were not known as the best glarersin the galaxy but they were always willing to give it their bestshot. To a Dweller, their own planet was pretty much every­thing. Most gas-giants had many more moons than the average stellar system possessed planets, and most radiated a lot more energy than they received from the star they orbited, their heat-transfer systems, weather and ecology arising largely fromprocesses internal to the planet itself, not dependent on sunlight.Their inhabitants had to pay close attention to the skies, basi­cally to watch out for incoming, but even that consideration ledto an obviously gas-giant-centred way of thinking. The localstar and the rest of its planetary system was of relatively littleinterest to the average Dweller.

 'That is not quite what I meant,' Fassin told them quickly. 'The moon 'glantine, for example; has it been harmed?'

 'Not to my knowledge,' the Administrator said, with anotherstern look at Hatherence.

 'And the military ships that were in orbit around Third Fury?'the colonel asked.

 (- Shh! Fassin signalled Hatherence.

 - No! she sent back.)

 'What ships?' the Administrator said, apparently mystified.

 'How about the planet Sepekte?' Fassin said.

 'I have no idea,' the Administrator told him. She fixed hergaze on Fassin. 'Is this why you wished to see me? To ask after the welfare of moons and distant planets?'

 'No, ma'am. The reason that I wanted to see you is that Iam worried that there may be a threat to Nasqueron.'

 'You are?' blurted Y'sul.

 'Really?' the Administrator said with a sigh.

 Even Hatherence was turned to look at him.

 'There is a war beginning amongst the Quick, ma'am,' Fassintold the Administrator. ‘It is going to come to Ulubis and it isnot impossible that some of the forces taking part may wish toinvolve Nasqueron and its Dwellers in that war in some way.'

 The Administrator rolled fractionally back and sucked herouter trim-frill in, the Dweller equivalent of a frown.

 (- Major? the colonel sent. - You said nothing of this. Whatdo you base this on? Is there something you're not telling me?

 - A hunch. Just trying to get their attention. And I should point out that it's considered impolite to signal-whisper likethis.)

 The Administrator continued to look at Fassin for a moment,then turned to Y'sul. Ts this human normally mad?'

 Y'sul made a sucking sound. 'Down to definitions.'

 'Nasqueron might be vulnerable to a further bombardment,'Fassin persisted. 'Even to some sort of raid.'

 'Ha!' Y'sul laughed.

 'We are not defenceless, human Taak!' the Administrator saidloudly.

 No, but your spaceships are leaky antiques and your plan­etary defences are set up for dumb rocks,Fassin thought wearily.You talk a good defence, but if the Epiphany 5 invaders decideto attack, or the Mercatoria decides I'm dead and they plump for a more obvious way to get hold of whatever might be inValseir's library, you won't be able to do much to stop them. Going on what I've seen, a single Navarchy Military destroyercould lay waste to your whole planet, over time.

 'Of course not,' he agreed. 'But I would ask you to pass thisinformation on to the relevant authorities. You will be still betterdefended if you are prepared.'

 'I'll bear that in mind,' the Administrator told him levelly.

 Oh shit,Fassin thought.You're going to do fuck all. Youaren't going to bother telling anybody.

 Y'sul was looking up. 'What's that?' he asked.

 Fassin experienced a moment of horror. He looked up too.A stubby vaned cylinder a couple of metres high was hoveringvertically above them in the darkness outside the ceiling's still-open diamond petals. It was pointing something long and dark at them.

 The Administrator groaned. 'Oh no,' she said. 'That is thepress.'

 'Sholish! Mygood cuirass, you witless rind-nibbling waste ofgas!'

 Y'sul threw a piece of armour across the room at his servant.

 The camo-painted carbon plate spun through the gas, changingcolours rapidly as it tried to adapt, narrowly missed several other Dwellers - the large room was crowded and people had to duck, bob or dodge - just avoided Sholish and embeddeditself in a FloatTree panel, producing a distinct thunk. Before ithad much of a chance to blend in, Sholish tugged it out of thewall and disappeared into a side chamber, muttering.

 'Excuse me,' Colonel Hatherence said sharply to a Dwellerwho'd just bumped into her in the general shuffling that hadspread through the room to give the thrown piece of armour aclear trajectory.

 'Excused!' the Dweller said, then continued his conversationwith another of Y'sul's relations.

 Y'sul was getting ready to quit Hauskip and leave for the waralong with his charges, Fassin and the oerileithe. His newcombat clothing had arrived just that morning (kudos-enhanc­ingly quickly!) along with various gifts from friends and family,most of whom, it seemed, had thought it best to show up inperson to present their mostly useless or positively dangerous gifts and offer vast amounts of generally contradictory but extremely loudly proffered advice.

 Y'sul, flattered and excited to be the centre of so much atten­tion, had invited them all into his dressing room for snacks andwhatever while he tried on all his new clothing, checked that his antique, inherited familial armour still more or less fittedand played with all the new bits and pieces he'd been given.Fassin counted over thirty Dwellers in the chamber, which wasone of the larger spaces in the wheel-shaped house. There wasa saying to the effect that one Dweller constituted an argument-in-waiting, two a conspiracy and three a riot. Quite what a gath­ering of thirty-plus was supposed to represent he wasn't sure,but it would assuredly have nothing to do with silence orsubtlety. The noise rang off the curved walls. The clothingcompeted for loudness. Expressive patterns spread acrossexposed carapace skin like flip-books of geometric artwork.Magnetic chatter swirled, infrasound bounced confusion from one wall to another and a heady mix of pheromones bathed theplace in frantic currents of Dweller hilarity.

 - Are there other guides-cum-guards we might employ besidethis one? Hatherence asked, pressing up to the wall beneathwhere Fassin floated as another Dweller bearing gifts arrivedand pushed his way through the throng towards Y'sul.

 -  Not really, Fassin told her. - Y'sul suffered a significantkudos-loss within the Guard-mentors Guild taking on an alienoutworlder, back when he agreed to be Uncle Slovius's mentor.He got that back eventually but it was a brave thing to do. Fewof them will accept that kind of loss. Starting from scratch to
find somebody new would take years, even if Y'sul did agree.

 Something small, round, pink and gooey bumped into thetop of the colonel's esuit, and stuck. She batted it away. - Whatareall these things? she said, exasperated.

 -  Just hospitality, Fassin sent, with a resigned expression.

 Floating, drifting round the room were bobfruits, flossballs,chandelier-gumbushes and wobbling breezetrays loaded with sweetmeats, mood-balloons, narcopastes and party-supposito­ries. The guests helped themselves, eating, ingesting, snorting,rubbing and inserting away as appropriate. The noise seemedto be swelling by the minute, as was the collision rate - alwaysa sure indicator that Dwellers were getting out of it (lots of loudbumps, hasty cries of 'Excuse me!', sudden, alarming tiltings,and bursts of the sort of especially raucous laughter whichinvariably accompanied the realisation by a Dweller that one ofits companions had lost control of their buoyancy).

 -  Oh dear, Fassin said. - I do believe this is turning into aparty.

 -  Are these peopleintoxicated? Hatherence asked, sounding genuinely shocked.

 Fassin looked at her, letting his incredulity show. - Colonel,he told her, - they are rarely anything else.

 There was a bang and a yelp from somewhere near whereY'sul floated. A bobfruit exploded in mid-gas and fell limply tothe floor. People nearby wiped foamy pieces of fruit off theirclothes.

 'Oops!' Y'sul said, amidst widespread laughter.

 -  He can't be the only guide! the colonel protested. – What about other Seers? They must have guides too.

 -  They do, but it's a one-to-one thing, an exclusive relation­ship. Abandoning your Guard-mentor would be a terribleinsult. They'd lose all kudos.

 -  Major Taak, we cannot afford to be sentimental here! Ifthere is even a possibility that we might find a better, less idioticguide, we ought at least to start looking.

 - The Guard-mentors are a Guild, colonel. They run a closedshop. If you dumped one of them, none of the rest would touchyou. You'd certainly then find some clown who'd offer to actas a guide, mentor, guard, whatever - in fact they'd probablyhave to form a queue - but they'd be very young and stupid,or very old and, ah, eccentric, and they'd assuredly get you intofar more trouble than they were ever likely to get you out of.The Guard-mentors Guild would harass them from the start,for one thing, and the vast majority of other Dwellers wouldn'ttalk to you at all. Librarians, archive-keepers, antiquarians, exo-specialists - all the people we most need to talk to, in otherwords - in particular would not even give you the time of day.

 They made room for Y'sul's servant, Sholish, returning fromthe side chamber with a two-piece, highly polished, mirror-finished cuirass. Sholish was an adolescent, only a few hundredyears old, barely three-quarters grown and skinny. Personalservants, always at least two generational stages younger thantheir masters, were fairly common in Dweller society, especiallywhere the senior Dweller was bothering to pursue a hobby-cum-profession which actually involved a degree of study and\or training, when the servant had a fighting chance ofpicking up the basics of the given trade. The better mastersregarded their servants more as apprentices than servants andthe occasional especially aberrant ones treated their underlings almost as equals.

 Y'sul had yet to fall prey to such sentimentality.

 'And about time, you custard-brained phlegm-wart!' Y'sulyelled, snatching the cuirass from Sholish's grasp. 'Did you have to forge and weave the armour yourself? Or did you start gazingat your own reflection and lose all track?'

 Sholish mumbled, retreated.

 - I refuse to accept that we are as powerless as you imply,major, the colonel told Fassin.

 He turned to look at the oerileithe. - We are here very muchon sufferance, colonel. The Dwellers can go off entire species ofSeers, for no accountable reason. Nobody's ever worked out apattern to this. You just suddenly find that you and your kindaren't welcome any more. It doesn't usually happen while they're still getting to know a new-to-civilisation species, but even that'sno guarantee. They certainly get fed up with individuals - I'veseen it happen - and that's equally random. Every time I come down here I have to accept that no matter how friendly andhelpful everybody might have been during my last visit - (thecolonel gave a sceptical laugh) - they might have nothing moreto do with me this time or ever again. In fact, they might tellme I've got a day to get out or become the object of a hunt.And a Seer faces that prospect every single time they delve, eitherremotely or directly. We just have to get used to it. They don'teven need to have met you; there are records of Seers-to-bewho've spent decades getting trained up, who've been part ofrespected Seer Septs going back millennia who've been about togo on their very first delve and been told not to bother and tostay away for ever. It's a minor miracle they've accepted you theway they have. And don't forget the only reason you're notconstantly being challenged as an interloper is because Y'sul ison record as vouching for you.

 -  You are saying we are stuck with this buffoon.

 -  We are. I know it's hard to believe, but he's one of thebetter ones.

 -  Core help us. Why waste time? I shall apply for my posthu-mous decoration immediately.

 The Volunteer Guild of Guard-mentors existed to look after Dwellers visiting from other bands of the same planet, or, veryrarely, from another gas-giant, usually one within the samestellar system. Dwellers - almost always alone - did make jour­neys from one stellar system to another, but it didn't happen often and it usually meant that the individual concerned hadbeen thrown out of their own home gas-giant for some partic­ularly heinous crime or unforgivable character defect.

 The Dwellers had pretty much stopped making deep spacetrips en masse after the Second Diasporian Age, when the galaxyhad been half the age it was now. It was generally held thatseven billion years' lack of practice probably accounted for thesheer awfulness of Dweller spaceship design and building stan­dards, though Fassin wasn't convinced that cause and effect hadn't been confused here.

 They were due to leave for the war zone the following day.The interval since the frustrating audience with the CityAdministrator had been spent fending off Dweller journalistsand their news remotes and trying to find out what they could about events in the wider system. Eventually they'd had tocompromise and trade. One journalist got a very guarded but exclusive interview from Fassin (very guarded indeed - ColonelHatherence kept coughing loudly whenever they approachedany subject remotely to do with their mission) in return fornews of the outside.

 The Third Fury moon had been devastated and all on or init had perished. There was no news of a drop ship surviving,though equally there was no news of any wreckage from sucha ship being found. However, of course, if it had just dropped into the Depths . . . Many satellites had been destroyed ordamaged. Those belonging to the Quick (this meant theMercatoria) appeared to be either missing or out of action. Somewarships belonging to the current local Quick species had spentan amount of time investigating the rubble of the moon Third Fury. The moon 'glantine appeared much as it always had.Stellar-system ship traffic appeared light, as it had for some daysnow, but not anomalous. A signal had been sent on the behalfof Oculan Colonel Hatherence, on the authority of Guard-mentor Y'sul of Hauskip, to the moon 'glantine. No reply hadyet been received. Nothing untoward had happened to the trans­mitting station responsible following the transmission.

 According to the journalist, this was all stuff they could have found out themselves, eventually. The trick was knowing whereto look. The journalist seemed to feel miffed that they'd got thebetter end of the deal, too, because everything he'd told themwas at least ninety per cent true, specifically to avoid upsettingthem. He knew aliens could be funny that way.

 'What, exactly, did your friend say?'

 'He said they wanted him to..."to gas-line a whole bunchof stuff for..."I'm pretty certain those were his exact words. Then he seemed to realise he was saying too much, giving toomuch away, and he changed the subject. The . . . hesitation, thatsudden change of subject made the earlier form of words all the more important. He realised he was speaking to somebody whospent a lot of his life in Nasqueron, who might not feel the sameway he would about the implications of what he was talkingabout.'

 'This was spoken in . . .?'

 'Humanised G-Clear, very close to this. Meanings are pretty much identical, just altered pronunciation for the human voice.'

 'No Anglish words involved?'

 'None.'

 'So, he said "gas-lined" not "streamlined" or "air-lined"?'

 'One wouldn't say "air-lined" as far as I know. The normalform of words would be "streamlined". He chose "gas-lined"without thinking because it was more technically correct,because it has a narrower meaning. In this context it meansaltering a vacuum-capable craft so that it can also operate in anatmosphere like Nasqueron's.'

 'Which you take to mean that an invasion or large-scaledestructive raid upon us is imminent?'

 'I think some sort of raid is a distinct possibility.'

 'This seems a thin thread to hang such a weighty fear upon.'

 'I know. But please understand, the guy's company buildsand refits three-quarters of the system's war craft. The phrase"gas-lined" is quite specific and that sudden change of tack whenhe realised he was talking to somebody who might be senti­mentally or emotionally attached to Nasqueron and sympathetictowards Dwellers is significant. I know this man, I've knownhim since I was a child. I know how his mind works.'

 'Attempting to invade a gas-giant would, nevertheless, be amomentous action. In seven thousand years, the Mercatoria hasdone no such thing.'

 'The situation is desperate for them locally. They are under threat of invasion within the year. A standard year, not one ofyours. Help is at least one more standard year away beyondthat. In fact, the invasion may already be beginning. The attackson Third Fury and the Mercatoria's other assets around Nasq.could be part of it.'

 'And attempting to invade us helps them how?'

 'They think there may be something here which will make a difference. Some information. That's why I'm here, to look for it.But if they thought I was dead or not likely to succeed, theMercatoria might intervene directly. Plus the invaders theMercatoria is worried about might well think the same way witheven less cause to hesitate. I get the impression the future contin­uance of Dweller Studies is kind of low on their set of priorities.'

 'Fassin, what sort of information could possibly make sucha course of action seem sensible?'

 'Important information.'

 'More specifically?'

 'Very important information.'

 'You are not willing to tell me.' 'Willing or able. Best you don't know.''So you tell me.'

 'If I thought the specifics would help convince you, I'd letyou know,' Fassin lied.

 He was talking to a Dweller called Setstyin. Setstyin liked tocall himself an influence pedlar, which was a humble term for somebody with contacts extending as high as his went. Dwellersociety was remarkably flat in terms of social hierarchy - flat as the surface of a neutron star compared to the sheer verti-cality of the Mercatoria's baroque monstrosity - but to theextent that there was a top and bottom of society, the suhrl Setstyin was in touch with both.

 He was a society host and a part-time social worker, a hospitalvisitor and a friend to the great and good as far as either couldbe said to exist in Dweller terms; a sociable, clubbable creatureintensely and genuinely interested in other people, more so even than in kudos (this made him very unusual, even strange, almostthreatening). He was, in human terms, somewhere between a totalgeek and very cool. His geekiness was that bizarre failure to careabout the one thing that everybody agreed really mattered: kudos,while his coolness came from the same source, because not caringabout kudos - not obsessing about it, not chasing it down wher­ever it might be found, not constantly measuring one's own cool­ness against that of one's peers - was in itself kind of cool. Aslong as there was not the faintest shadow of a suspicion he wasplaying some weird back-game, deliberately pursuing kudos by pretending not to, so long as his lack of interest in it was seen asbeing the unaffected carelessness of a kind of wise naif, he waskudos-rich, though in a curiously unenviable way.

 (It had been Slovius who had first explained to Fassin howkudos worked. Fassin had thought it was a bit like money.Slovius had explained that even money wasn't like money usedto be, but anyway kudos was sometimes almost an opposite.The harder you'd worked for your kudos, the less it was worth.)Setstyin was also one of the most sensible, level-mindedDwellers Fassin had ever encountered. And he treated a requestby a mere human to wake up, speed up and converse over the phone with a degree of respect and seriousness that few otherDwellers would have.

 Fassin had told Hatherence he needed time to let his humanbrain and body sleep, and his arrowcraft self-repair and rechargeitself. He'd retreated to the long spoke room he'd been allocatedin Y'sul's house. This was a dark and dusty gallery littered withpiles of discarded clothes, lined with ancient wardrobes andfloored with out-of-favour paintings and crumpled wall hangings. There was a double-dent Dweller bed in there too and a treefoam-lined cubby by one wall, so it kind of constituted a bedroom, notthat Fassin or his gascraft really needed such a thing.

 Fassin had secured the door, used the little arrowcraft's sonicsenses to locate a removable ceiling panel and exited throughthe double skin roof into a breezy and relatively dark night.

 Like all Dweller cities, Hauskip was situated in a historicallycalm patch within its atmospheric volume, but cities still hadweather. They experienced pressure differentials, squalls, fog,rain, snow, crosswinds, upwellings, down draughts, lateral forceand spin, all depending on the state of the gas stream aroundthem. Moderately buffeted, half-hidden by the shreds of thicker gas scudding across the lamplit night, Fassin had made his wayup and out across the sheen of rooftops.

 Sky traffic had been relatively light - most travel would bewithin the spindles and spokes linking the city's main compo­nents - but there had been a few Dwellers roting about in thedistance, and enough small craft - packet-delivery machines,mostly - for Fassin to hope he was going unremarked.

 Distant lightning had flickered deep below.

 Fassin had come to a dangling wave-guide cable a fewcentimetres thick, followed it up to a deserted public plaza likea vast, empty bowl circled with dim, attenuated lights, and founda public screen booth.

 Setstyin was also in the equatorial band, though on the otherside of the planet. Fassin might therefore have hoped to find him awake at such a time, but Setstyin had been sleeping offthe effects of an especially good party he'd hosted the nightbefore. Dwellers could go for tens of their days without sleep but when they did sleep they tended to do so on a prodigiousscale. Fassin had begged and pleaded with Setstyin's servant tohave him woken and even then it had taken a while. Setstyin looked and sounded groggy, but it appeared that his mind wasfully awake inside there somewhere.

 'And you would like me to do what?' Setstyin asked. Hescratched at his gill fringe with one spindle arm. He was wearinga light sleep collar round his mid-hub, which was regarded asa polite minimum when addressing someone other than a close friend or family member over the phone. Dwellers were hardlyself-conscious about showing their inner-hub mouth parts and pleasure organs, but there was a degree of decorum in such matters, especially when confronted with an alien. 'What shall I say, Fassin, and to whom?'

 A gust of wind made the arrowcraft's vanes purr to hold itin place as Fassin looked into the camerascreen. 'Convincewhoever you can, preferably as high as you can reach, prefer­ably discreetly, that there really is a threat. Give them time to decide what they're going to do if there is a raid. It may be bestjust to let it happen. What you don't want to do is have anunthinking hostile reaction that leads to some maniac Quicknuking a city or two to try to teach you a lesson.'

 Setstyin looked confused. 'How would that benefitanybody?'

 'Please, just trust me - it's the sort of thing Quick speciesdo.'

 'You want me to talk to politicians and military people, then, yes?'

 'Yes.' Politicians and military people in Dweller society wereas much amateurs and dilettantes as gifted tailors or devoutparty-throwers like Setstyin - possibly a little less dedicated -but you had, Fassin reflected, to work with what you were presented with.

 Setstyin looked thoughtful. 'They're not going to go with aninvasion.'

 This was true, Fassin supposed. In the full sense of the wordan invasion was impossible. The Ulubis forces were hopelesslyinadequate for the task of occupying a volume as great asNasqueron or any other gas-giant, even if it had been inhab­ited by a congenitally peaceful, naturally subservient and easilycowed species rather than, well, Dwellers. Attempting to control the place with Dwellers around would be like peeing into a star.The danger was that, in carrying out a raid to secure a givenvolume for long enough to hunt down the information theywere looking for, the Mercatoria would cause the Dwellers toreact as though they were undergoing a full-scale invasion. It seemed to be part of Dweller psychology that if something wasworth reacting to, it was even more worth overreacting to, andFassin dreaded to think what that might imply for all sides.

 'Stress an extended raid and temporary site occupation withaggressive patrols that might be mistaken for an invasion.'

 'Whereabouts?' Setstyin asked. 'Or are you really going to tell me you have no idea?'

 'I understand we're going to be looking in or very near thenew Formal War zone.'

 Setstyin let his hub arms droop down at his side. This wassomething like a human rolling their eyes. 'Well, of course,where else?'

 'I don't suppose there's the slightest possibility that the warmight be cancelled or postponed?'

 'There is always a chance, but it certainly won't have anythingto do with a mere party animal like myself having a word ineven the highest-placed ear. Think: there might be the possi­bility of genuine hostile action against us, an act of alien aggres­sion within the winds of Nasqueron itself and the suggestion iswe calloff a Formal War? More likely we'll start a few more to show how jolly fierce we are and get some practice in.'

 'Just thought I'd ask.'

 'When do you set off for the war zone?'

 'Tomorrow morning, Hauskip local time.'

 'There you are. In plenty of time for the war's opening cere­mony'

 'I may have other things on my mind.'

 'Hmm. You realise that me having a word on high may wellresult in you being tracked, watched by interested parties?'

 'Whereas that would never happen normally? But yes, Irealise that.'

 'Well, I wish you well, Fassin Taak.'

 'Thanks.'

 Setstyin peered at the camerascreen, looking at Fassin'ssurroundings. 'Y'sul out of kudos with the phone operators?'

 'I have an additional Guard-mentor in the shape of anoerileithe Mercatoria military colonel. She might not understandmy concern. I sneaked out to make the call.'

 'Very cloak, very dagger. Good luck with your quest, Fassin.Do keep in touch.'

 *

 'If you're watching this, Sal, then I'm dead. Obviously I don'tknow what the circumstances of that death may have been. Liketo think I died bravely and honourably in combat. Kind of don'tthink you'll be watching this because my clogs were poppedpeacefully in my sleep because I don't mean for that to happen,at least not until something's happened that involves you. Dyingpeacefully . . . actually, hopefully, that would mean you'realready dead.

 'The thing that involves you sort of involves Fass, too, thoughnot in the same way. Involves you and me and Fass and Ilen.Poor dead Ilen. Ilen Deste, Sal. You remember her? Maybe youdon't. It's been so long, for all of us, for all these strange differentreasons that end up being just the same. You with your treat­ments, Fass with his slowtime, me all Einsteined out with toomuch time near light speed. Time hasn't ever caught up withany of us, has it, Sal?

 'But I'm thinking you probably do remember Ilen and what happened to her, because it was all so traumatic for us, wasn'tit? You don't forget anything about something that dramaticand horrible, not really. How can you? You have nightmaresabout it, it sneaks up on you even in the day sometimes, too.Do you find that? I get that. Sometimes it's something reallyobvious, like seeing something on screen of somebody hangingby their fingertips over a drop, especially if it's a woman. Ofcourse in the screen they usually get rescued. Not always, butusually. But then other times what happened just. . . ambushed me. I'll be doing something completely normal, with no...cues, no...stimulus that you can see any logical reason wouldtrigger the memories, and suddenly I'm there, I'm back again, back in that big old motherfucker of a ship, with you and Fassand Ilen.

 'Doyou get that? I get it still, even after all these years. You'dhave thought it would have stopped happening by now,wouldn't you? Hell, even without all those stolen years nearc, you'd have thought it should have, you know, withered, fallenaway? Look at me; sixty-one years old, body-time, they tell me.Fitter than ever, still bedding guys a third my age, and - do Ilook sixty? Hope not. But I should have got over the wholething by now, don't you think? Time a great healer and all that. Just hasn't happened.

 'So,do you get anything similar? Is this ringing any bells atall? Really, I'd like to know. Maybe we'll find out, one day. Maybe I'll have got to ask this and you'll never get to see this but we'll have found out together. Maybe somebody else willget to see this. It isn't really meant for anybody else, but, well, this is a high-risk occupation, and who knows what'll happen after this is made?

 'Anyway, point is: I know what happened, and I intend tokill you, Sal. Or, I did. As I say, if it is you who's watching this,I'm dead and you're still alive. But I want you to know it isn'tgoing to end there. Got serious intentions of pursuing you from beyond the grave, Sal, old son. Won't be easy, realise that, butI've spent my entire career getting myself into a position ofpower. Making myself so powerful within the Navy that I can click my fingers and battleships power up, set course and shipout. Building networks, making friends, finding allies, takinglovers, taking exams, running risks, all so that I'll have the powerone day to challenge a man who, oh, must nearly own the systemby now. The portal collapse nearly threw me - put my plansback a long way - but I reckon you'll still be alive and loving life when I finally do get home, or when what's planned to happen in the event of my death starts happening.

 'Can't tell you too much, obviously. No reason to give youany sort of warning at all. And all the advantages are on yourside already, aren't they? Well, maybe apart from surprise. Yousurprised now? If you're listening to this, watching this?Wondering what's going to happen?? Well, wonder away.Wonder away, Sal, and don't stop wondering, don't stop beingfrightened, because being frightened might keep you alive a bitlonger. Not too long. Definitely not too long, but long enough.

 'I suppose that's enough now, don't you think? Definitelythe longest speech either of us ever delivered even while wewere together, way back when, wouldn't you say? Maybe almostmore than we ever said to each other put together. Well, almost.

 'Let me explain, in case you still haven't got it: I saw themarks, Sal. I saw the three red lines on your neck, before youput your jacket collar up. Remember that? Rememberpretending to shiver and saying, "C-collar," or whatever it was?Remember? Just one of those little false notes that you don'tnotice at the time because of all the fear and adrenalin, thatdoesn't start to nag at you until long afterwards. Kept that collarup afterwards, too, didn't you? Kept the jacket on like somesort of comfort blanket until you could get to a bathroom anda first-aid kit, didn't you? I remember. And when I was reachingdown to Ilen, I saw her fingernails. With the blood under them.Saw them very distinctly. Fass didn't; still has no idea, even yet.But I saw them. I wasn't entirely sure about the marks on your neck, but then I checked. Remember that last farewell fuck, acouple of weeks later? Just checking. They were very faint bythen, of course, but they were there all right.

 'You always wanted her, didn't you, Sal? Always so desiredthe beautiful Ilen. Did you think because she went into the shipwith you she was saying yes? Did you? Did she, then changedher mind? Doesn't really matter, I suppose. I saw what I saw.

 'You know what's funny, too? I was there, even if you weren't. Ilen and I. Just the once, but that's something else I'll neverforget, either. Oh, you'd have loved to have been there for that,wouldn't you? Bet you would. I slept with Fass, too, after­wards, just to complete the set.Much better than you, by theway.'

 The uniformed figure sat forward, right up to the camera,staring into it, voice going quiet and low.

 ‘Iwas coming to get you, Sal. If you're watching this then I didn't make it, not personally, but even from beyond the grave,I'm still fucking coming to get you.'

 The image froze, then faded. A hand, shaking only slightly,reached out and turned the viewer off.

 FOUR:

 EVENTS DURINGWARTIME

 It was a truism that there was not just one galaxy, there were many. Every variety of widely spread sentient life - plus a fewcreat categories which were arguably non-sentient though stillcapable of interstellar travel - and sometimes even every indi­vidual species-type tended to have one galaxy to itself. TheFaring - a trans-category that covered all such beings able andwilling to venture beyond their own immediate first-habitats -were like the citizens of a vast, fully three-dimensional butmostly empty city with multitudinous and varied travel systems.The majority of people were content to walk, and made theirslow progress by way of an infinitude of quiet, effectively sepa­rate deserted streets, quiet parks, vacant lots, remains of waste­ land and an entire unmapped network of paths, pavements,alleys, steps, ladders, wynds and snickets. They almost neverencountered anybody en route, and when they got to where they were going, it would be somewhere very similar to theplace they had departed from, whether that place had been astar's photosphere, a brown dwarf's surface, a gas-giant's atmos­ phere, a comet cloud or a region of interstellar space. Suchspecies were generally called the Slow.

 The Quick were different. Mostly originating from rockyplanets of one sort or another, they lived at a higher speed and could never be content forever plodding from place to place. That they had been forced to do so until a viable wormholenetwork had been established was regarded as quite bad enough.Wormhole access portals were the pinch-points of the worm-hole system - the city's underground stations - where peopleof varying species-types were forced to meet and to some extentmingle, though given the tiny amount of time one spent neara portal or within a wormhole, even this seemingly profoundtying-together made very little difference to the ultimateunconnectedness of the many different life-strands, and bothbefore they gathered and after they dispersed, the users of thesystem still tended to congregate at places specific to their owncomfort criteria, usually quite different from those of all theothers.

 Many people regarded the Cincturia as the equivalent of animals: birds, dogs, cats, rats and bacteria. They too lived in the city, but were not responsible for it or entirely answerableto it, and were often to a greater or lesser degree inimical to itssmooth running.

 Accounting for the Rest - the non-baryonic Penumbrae, the13-D Dimensionates and the flux-dwelling Quantarchs - was alittle like discovering that the ground, the fabric of the city'sbuildings and their foundations plus the air itself were each home to another sort of life altogether.

 The Mercatoria - largely but not entirely made up the galaxy'scurrent crop of oxygen breathers - inhabited its own galaxy,then, as did all the other categories of life, and all these different galaxies existed alongside every other one, each interpenetratingthe rest, surrounded by and surrounding the others, yet hardlyaffecting or being affected by them, except, sometimes, throughthe inestimably precious and all too easily destroyed wormholenetwork.

 Us? Oh, we were like ghosts in the cabling.

 *

 Slave-children were crawling along the giant blades of one ofthe Dreadnought's main propellers, packing welding gear, back-sacks of carbon weave and heavy glue-throwers. The pulsingdrone of the vessel's engines and main propulsion thrummedthrough the wrap-cloak of brown, billowing mist, filling theslipstreamed gas and the structure of the huge ship with buzzing,building, rising and fading harmonics like a vast unendingsymphony of industrial sound.

 Fassin and the colonel watched from an open gantry over­looking the ring of giant engines as the two teams of Dwellerinfants crawled along the massive blades to the warped and flap­ping blade ends.

 The starboard-most propeller had been hit by a section ofDewCloud root. The root had fallen out of the clouds above,probably from a dying DewCloud floating and decomposingtens of kilometres above. DewClouds were enormous, foamyplants anything up to ten kilometres across and five or six timesthat in height. Like all gas-giant flora, they were mostly gas -a Dweller in a hurry could probably rip right through thecanopy of one, hardly noticing they were in the midst of a plant,not an ordinary cloud. To a human they looked like somemonstrous cross between an elongated mushroom and a jelly­fish the size of a thunder cloud. Part of an Ubiquitous clade,found wherever Dwellers were, they harvested water conden­sation out of Dwellerine gas-giant atmospheres, using theirdangling, thick and relatively solid roots to exploit the temper­ature difference between the various atmospheric layers.

 When they approached the ends of their lives they floated up to the cold cloud tops and the higher haze layers, and bits brokeoff. The Dreadnought had prop guards to stop floating\falling\ rising stuff interfering with its main propulsion units, but thesection of root had slipped in between the guard and thepropeller itself, wreaking brief havoc with the thirty-metre-longvanes before being chewed up and thrown out. Now the child-slaves had to climb out along the blades, from the hubs to thetips, to make repairs. Shaped like slim deltas with thin, delicate-looking tentacles which had to both clamp them on to the still-revolving blades and hold the various repair materials, theinfants were making heavy weather of it. Dweller officers inmotor skiffs rode nearby, bellowing orders, threats and impre­cations at the young.

 'They could just stop the fucking propeller,' the colonelshouted to Fassin. The open gantry they were holding on towas four-fifths, of the way back from the bulbous nose of thegiant ship, an ellipsoid a little over two kilometres in length andfour hundred across the beam. The Dreadnought's twenty-fourgiant engine-sets protruded from near its rear in a monumental collar of pylons, wires, tubular prop guards and near-sphericalengine pods. The wind howled round Hatherence's esuit and Fassin's little arrowcraft.

 'Slow them down too much, apparently!' Fassin yelled back.

 The Dreadnought's captain had cut the starboard-mostengine-set to quarter-power to give the slave-children a betterchance of completing their repairs without too many casualties.The ship's giant rudders, mounted on the octiform tailplaneassembly just aft of the engines, were appropriately deployed to compensate for the resulting skewed distribution of thrust.

 Fassin glimpsed an escort cruiser through a short-lived breakin the clouds a few kilometres away. Other Dreadnoughts andtheir escorting screens of minor craft were spread out around them in a front a hundred kilometres across and thirty deep. Aslave-child near one of the vane tips lost its grip and whirled off the end with a distant shriek, crashing into the inner edge of the outer prop guard. Its scream cut off and the limp bodywas caught in the combined prop wash and sent whirling back,narrowly avoiding a further collision with the tail assembly. Itdisappeared behind a giant vertical fin. When it came back intosight it was already starting to spiral slowly down into theenveloping cloud haze. None of the skiff-riding Dwellers sparedit a second glance. The dozens of remaining slave-children continued to inch their way along the giant blades.

 Fassin looked at the colonel. 'Woops,' he said.

 They were hitching a ride to the war zone.

 A TunnelCar had taken them from Y'sul's house - well, twoTunnelCars, a second proving necessary to carry all Y'sul'sbaggage and extra clothing, plus Sholish - to the Central Station.From there they joined a long-distance train of ninety or socars making its way towards the border of Zone Zero - theequatorial zone - and Band A, twenty thousand kilometresaway. Y'sul spent a large part of the journey complaining abouthis hangover.

 'You claim to have been around in your present form for ten billion years and you still haven't developed a decenthangovercure?' Hatherence had asked, incredulous.

 They'd been floating in a restaurant car, waiting for the galleyto figure out the exact chemical composition of oerileithe food.

 Y'sul, his voice muffled, issuing from within a translucent coverall that was the Dweller equivalent of dark glasses, hadreplied, 'Suffering is regarded as part of the process, as is thementioning of it. As is, one might add, the sympathy one receivesfrom one's companions.'

 The colonel had looked sceptical. 'I thought you felt no pain?'

 'Mere physical pain, no. Ours is the psychic pain of realising that the world is not really as splendid as it seemed the eveningbefore, and that one may have made something of a fool ofoneself. And so on. I wouldn't expect a little dweller to under­stand.'

 They'd detrained at Nuersotse, a sphere city riding mid-alti­tude in the boiling ragged fringes of the equatorial Belt'snorthern limits. Nuersotse was barely thirty kilometres in diam­eter, relatively dense by Dweller city standards and built forstrength and manoeuvrability. High-speed transport craft left in convoys every hour or so, as one of the Band Border Wheelsswung near.

 They'd crossed on the Nuersotsian-Guephuthen BandBorder Wheel One, a colossal, articulated structure two thou­sand kilometres across held rotating on the border of two atmos­pheric gas-giant bands, protruding a kilo-klick into each, itswhole enormous mass spun by the contra-rotating gas-streamson either side. Band Border Wheels were the largest movingstructures most gas-giant planets possessed, if one discountedthe globe-girdling CloudTunnel networks. These only movedin the trivial sense of being whisked round the globe at a fewhundred klicks an hour like everything else within a planetaryband. To a Dweller that was stationary.

 Band Border Wheels reallyspun, transferring transport andmaterials from one band to another with minimal turbulenceand in relative safety, with the added bonus that they producedprodigious amounts of electricity from their spindle drive-shafts. These protruded from the upper and lower hubs, vasthemispheres whose lower rims were pocked with microwave dishes hundreds of metres across, geared up to tear round at blurring, mind-numbing speeds and beaming their power to an outer collecting ring of equally enormous stationary disheswhich then pumped the energy into docked bulk accumulatorcarriers.

 The Wheel and the city had been caught in the outer edgesof a small boundary-riding storm when they'd arrived, thoughboth were being moved out of the way as quickly as they could be. Everything, from the planet itself to Fassin's teeth, had seemed to vibrate around them as the turbulence-hardenedtransfer ship hurried them empodded from the CloudTunnelstation to the Wheel, engines labouring, wind screaming,ammonia hail pelting, lightning flashing and magnetic fieldsmaking various parts of Y'sul's baggage and accoutrements buzz and fizz and spark.

 Hurled round in the giant centrifuge of the Wheel, stuckagainst its inner perimeter, the time that they'd spent inside hadseemed almost calm by comparison, even allowing for the wild,wavelike bucking as they'd crossed the zone\belt border shear-face itself.

 The storm had been affecting Guephuthe more severely thanNuersotse. The outer equatorial ring of the city was spinninghard, parts of its peripheral suburbs and less well-maintained districts coming apart and peeling away in a welter of thrown-out shrapnel. Their transfer had to buck and weave to dodgethe wreckage, then take them straight to a TunnelCarmarshalling yard beyond the city proper, a splay of cable fila­ments waving slowly in the gale like a vast anemone.

 Another multi-kiloklick CloudTunnel journey through thevastness of Belt A, the Northern Tropical, another Wheeltransfer - calmer this time - into Zone 2, and finally, crossingthe mid-line of the Zone, they'd started to encounter more mili­tary traffic than civilian, the cars and trains packed with people,supplies and materiel all heading for the war.

 At Tolimundarni, on the fringe of the war zone itself, they'dbeen thrown off the train by military police who weren't fallingfor Y'sul's pre-emptively outrage-fuelled arguments regarding the summit-like priority and blatant extreme officiality of anexpedition - nay, a quest! - he was undertaking with these -yes, these, two - famous, well-connected, honoured alien guests of immeasurably high intrinsic pan-systemic cross-species repu­tation, concerning a matter of the utmost import the exact detailsof which he was sadly not at liberty to divulge even to suchpatently important and obviously discreet members of thearmed forces as themselves, but who would, nevertheless, hewas sure, entirely understand the significance of their missionand thus their clear right to be accorded unhindered passagedue to simple good taste and a fine appreciation of natural justiceand would in no way be swayed by the fact that their cooper­ation would be repaid in levels of subsequent kudos almostbeyond crediting . . .

 They'd floated in the TunnelBud, watching the train of carspulling out. Sholish had darted around the echoing space tryingto round up all the floating and fallen pieces of just-ejectedluggage.

 Fassin and Hatherence had looked, glowering, at Y'sul.

 He'd finished dusting himself down and straightening his clothing, then done a double take at their aggregated gaze andannounced, defensively, 'I have a cousin!'

 The cousin was an engineering officer on the DreadnoughtStormshear,a thirty-turreter with the BeltRotationeers' 487th'Rolling Thunder' Fleet. Bindiche, the cousin, bore a long­standing familial grudge against Y'sul and so naturally had been only too happy to accept a great deal of kudos from an inwardlymortified, outwardly brave-facing, hail-cuz-bygones-now Y'sulby doing him the enormous, surely never-to-be-forgottenfavour of vouching for him and his alien companions to hiscaptain and so securing passage into the war zone, though eventhat only happened after a quick suborb flight in a nominallyfreight-only moonshell pulsed from High Tolimundarni toLopscotte (again covered by cousin Bindiche and his endlesslyhandy military connections, said vile spawn of a hated uncle amassing anguished Y'sul-donated kudos like theStormshear'smighty capacitors accumulated charge), scudding over the cloudtops, briefly in space (but no windows, not even any screen to see it), listening to Y'sul complain about the uncannily hang­over-resembling after-effects of the fierce acceleration in themagnetic-pulse tube and the fact that he'd had to leave behindmost of his baggage, including all the war-zone presents hisfriends had given him and the bulk of the new combat attire he'd ordered.

 The slipstream howled and screamed around the Seer and the colonel. They watched the slave-children attempt their repairs. Clustered around the ends of the giant propeller blades, Fassin thought the Dweller young looked like a group of especiallydogged flies clinging to a ceiling-mounted cooling fan.

 Dweller children had a generally feral and entirely unlovedexistence. It was very hard for humans not to feel that adultDwellers were little better than serial, congenital abusers,- andthat Dweller children ought to be rescued from the relative brutality of their existence.

 Even as Fassin watched, another infant was thrown from oneof the giant blades, voice a high and anguished shriek. This latestunfortunate missed the prop guards but hit a high-tension staycable and was almost cut in half. A Dweller in a skiff dipped backinto the slipstream, wrestling with his craft, to draw level withthe tiny, broken body. He stripped it of its welding kit and letthe body go. It disappeared into the mist, falling like a torn leaf.

 Dwellers cheerfully admitted that they didn't care for theirchildren. They didn't particularly care for becoming female andgetting pregnant, frankly, doing this only because it wasexpected, drew kudos and meant one had in some sense fulfilleda duty. The idea of having to do even more, of having to lookafter the brats afterwardsas well was just laughable. They, afterall, had had to endure being thrown out of the house and leftto wander wild whenthey were young, they'd taken theirchances with the organised hunts, the gangs of adolescents andlone-hunter specialists, so why shouldn't the next generation?The little fuckers might live for billions of years. What was amere century of weeding out?

 The slave-children being used to carry out the repairs to theStormshear'sdamaged propeller would be regarded by mostDwellers as extremely lucky. They might be imprisoned andforced to carry out unpleasant and\or dangerous jobs but atleast they were relatively safe, unhunted and properly fed.

 Fassin looked out at them, wondering how many wouldsurvive to become adults. Would any of these skinny, tremblingdelta-shapes end up, billions of years from now, as utterlyancient, immensely respected Sages? The odd thing was, ofcourse, that if you somehow knew for certain that they would, they wouldn't believe you. Dweller children absolutely, to aninfant, refused to believe even for a moment, even as a working assumption, even just for the sake of argument, that they would ever, ever,ever grow up to become one of these huge, fierce, horrible double-disc creatures who hunted them and killed them and captured them to do all the awful jobs on their big ships.

 -   Seer Taak?'

 -   Yes, colonel?

 So they were back to close-communicating, using polarisedlight to keep their conversation as private as possible. Thecolonel had suggested coming up here. Fassin had wondered if it was for some private chat. He supposed ordinary talk mighthave been problematic, given the screech of the slipstreamaround the gantry and the thunderous clamour sounding from the choir of engines just behind.

 -  I have meant to ask for some time.

 -  What?

 -  This thing we are supposed to be looking for. Withoutmentioning the specifics,  even like this, using whisper-signalling . . .

 -  Get on with it, colonel. Ma'am, he added.

 -  Do you believe what you told us, at that briefing on ThirdFury?  Hatherence  asked. - The  one with just yourself,Ganscerel, Yurnvic and myself present: could all that you toldus there possibly be true?

 The Long Crossing, the fabled 'hole between galaxies, theList itself. - Does it matter? he asked.

 -  What we believe always matters.

 Fassin smiled. - Let me ask you something. May I?

 -  On the condition that we return to my question, very well.

 -  Do you believe in the 'Truth'?

 -  So capitalised?

 -  So in quotation marks.

 -  Well, of course!

 The Truth was the presumptuous name of the religion, the faith that lay behind the Shrievalty, the Cessoria, in a sensebehind the Mercatoria itself. It arose from the belief that whatappeared to be real life must in fact - according to some piouslyinvoked statistical certitudes - be a simulation being run within some prodigious computational substrate in a greater and moreencompassing reality beyond. This was a thought that had, insome form, crossed the minds of most people and all civilisa­tions. (With the interesting exception of the Dwellers, or so theyclaimed. Which some parties held was another argument againstthem being a civilisation in the first place.) However, everybody- well, virtually everybody, obviously - quickly or eventuallycame round to the idea that a difference that made no differ­ence wasn't a difference to be much bothered about, and onemight as well get on with (what appeared to be) life.

 The Truth went a stage further, holding that this was a differ­ence that could be made to make a difference. What was neces­sary was for people truly to believe in their hearts, in their souls,in their minds, that they really were in a vast simulation. Theyhad to reflect upon this, to keep it at the forefront of theirthoughts at all times and they had to gather together on occa­sion, with all due ceremony and solemnity, to express this belief.And they must evangelise, they must convert everybody they possibly could to this view, because - and this was the wholepoint - once a sufficient proportion of the people within thesimulation came to acknowledge that it was a simulation, the value of the simulation to those who had set it up would disap­pear and the whole thing would collapse.

 If they were all part of some vast experiment, then the factthat those on whom the experiment was being conducted hadguessed the truth would mean that its value would be lost. If they were some plaything, then again, that they had guessedthis meant they ought to be acknowledged, even - perhaps -rewarded. If they were being tested in some way, then this was the test being passed, this was a positive result, again possibly deserving a reward. If they had been undergoing punishmentfor some transgression in the greater world, then this ought to constitute cause for rehabilitation.

 It was not possible to know what proportion of the simu­lated population would be required to bring things to a halt (itmight be fifty per cent, it might be rather smaller or muchgreater), but as long as the numbers of the enlightened keptincreasing, the universe would be constantly coming closer tothis epiphany, and the revelation could come at any point.

 The Truth claimed with some degree of justification to be theultimate religion, the final faith, the last of all churches. It wasthe one which encompassed all others, contextualised all others,could account for and embrace all others. They could all ulti­mately be dismissed as mere emergent phenomena of the simu­lation itself. The Truth could too, in a sense, but unlike themit still had more to say once this common denominator hadbeen taken out of the equation.

 It could also claim a degree of universality that the others couldnot. All other major religions were either specific to their origi­nating species, could be traced back to a single species - often asingle subset of that species - or were consciously developedamalgams, syntheses, of a group of sufficiently similar religionsof disparate origin.

 The Truth, claiming no miracles (or at least no miracles ofproof) and being the work of no individual, all-important prophet(it had arisen, naturally, many times within a multiplicity ofdifferent civilisations) was the first real post-scientific, pan-civil-isational religion - or at least it was the first that had not beensimply imposed on reluctant subjects by a conquering hegemony.The Truth could even claim to be not a religion at all, where such a claim might endear it to those not naturally religious by nature. It could be seen more as a philosophy, even as a scientific postu­late backed up by unshakeably firm statistical likelihood.

 The Mercatoria had simply adopted this belief system, prop­erly codified it and made it effectively the state religion of thelatest Age.

 -   You do not believe, Fassin? The colonel put sadness into
her signal.

 -   I appreciate the intellectual force of the argument.

 -   But it is not held in your mind at all times?

 -   No. Sorry.

 -   Be not sorry. We all find it difficult on occasion. We shall,
perhaps, talk further on the matter.

 -   I was afraid we might.

 -   To return to my question, then.

 -   Do I believe all that stuff?

 -   Correct.

 Fassin looked around at the ship beneath them and the greatassemblage of roaring engines, whirling blades and supportingstructures. The Long Crossing: thirty million years betweengalaxies.

 -   The idea that anything built by Dwellers could make ajourney of that length does place the credulity under a degreeof tension, he admitted.

 -   The assertion that the outward journey was made so muchmore rapidly seems no less to belong to the realm of fantasy.

 Ah yes, the great and almost certainly mythical intergalactic 'hole.

 -   I would not argue with you, colonel. Though I would sayit's perfectly possible that these are all nonsense, but the specificobject we're looking for still exists.

 -   It keeps unlikely company.

 -   Again, I wouldn't choose to dispute the matter. We are left with the fact that you are a colonel, I am some sort of honorarymajor and orders are orders.

 -   How assiduously one attempts to follow one's orders might be affected by the extent to which one believes they are capableof being carried out successfully.

 -   There I would completely agree with you. What are yougetting at?

 -   Just calibrating, major.

 -   Seeing how committed I am? Would I sacrifice my life forour . . . object of desire?

 -   Something like that.

 -   I suspect we're both sceptics, colonel. Me more than you,I suppose. We also believe in doing our duty. You more thanme, perhaps. Satisfied?

 -   Content.

 -   Me too.

 -   I received a communication from the Ocula this morning.

 -   Really?

 And were you always going to tell me, or could I have beeneven more mission-sceptical during that last exchange, and beentold nothing? Or has your 'calibration' meant I'm not going toget told everything now?

 -  Yes. Our orders remain as they were. There were severalmore attacks on the system in general at the time of the assaulton the Third Fury moon. Further, less intense attacks havecontinued.  The  communications  satellite  system  aroundNasqueron is being repaired as a matter of urgency. In the mean­time a Navarchy fleet is being stationed above the planet, totake the place of the satellites, to provide security and mainforce back-up for you and me, and to pick us up at the end ofour mission, or in an emergency.

 Fassin took a moment to think.

 -  Any word from my Sept, Sept Bantrabal?

 -  None. There was confirmation that all those on or in ThirdFury were killed. I am sorry to report that Master TechnicianHervil Apsile is also believed to be dead. There has been nosign of or communication with the drop ship. I have been askedby the Ocula to pass on their commiserations to you regardingall those deceased Seers and supporting staff, to which of courseI add my own.

 -  Thank you.

 The colonel might have executed a sort of rolling bow, or itmight just have been the effects of the swirling, buffeting slip­stream tearing around them.

 The slave-children had suffered no further casualties. Theirrepairs appeared to be working. Even where they had notcompleted their renovations, the damaged blades were vibratingless, making the rest of the job easier.

 -  How many ships were they sending to Nasqueron, to doall these things?That one small ship and two puck-sized satel­-lites could do?

 -  This was not mentioned.

 Fassin said nothing.

 There were some potentially unfortunate consequencesimplicit in a profound belief in the Truth. One was that therewas a possibility that when the simulation ended, all the people being simulated would cease to exist entirely. The sim might beturned off and everybody within the substrate running it woulddie. There might be no promotion, no release, no return to abigger and better and finer outside: there might just be the ulti­mate mass extinction.

 Also, back in the (apparently) real world, there was an argu­ment that the Truth implied approval of its own extinctions,that it tacitly encouraged mass murder and genocide. Logically,if one way of upping the proportion of those who truly believedwas to evangelise, convince and convert, another was to decreasethe numbers of those who steadfastly refused to accept the Truthat all - if necessary by killing them. The tipping point into reve­lation and deliverance for all might come not at the momentwhen a sceptic became a believer but at the point that an un-reformable heathen breathed their last.

 TheStormshear plunged into a great dark wall of thicker cloud,dimming the view. Lights started to come on, shining from thesupporting structure and the Dweller skiffs. Soon they could see little, and the mad, overwhelming cacophony of the slipstream and the droning engines made sonosense near impossible. Amethane hail rattled around them in the gathering gloom.

 -   Time to go in, perhaps, the colonel said.

 -   Amen.

 * * *

 The next day brought target practice, as theStormshear's weaponsand crew were brought up to some form of war-readiness. Y'sul,Hatherence and Fassin were allowed to watch from inside anobservation dome right at the front of the ship, a temporary struc­ture protruding from the Dreadnought's armoured nose like alittle bubble of diamond. They shared the place with a few dozeninterested civilians, mostly administrators of the various citieswhere theStormshear had been paying courtesy calls during thelast long period of peace. Uniformed pet-children floated amongstthe VIPs, carrying trays of food and drugs.

 Ahead, through a ten-kilometre gap in the clouds, they could see an object like a small bright blue ship, a target being towedby another Dreadnought a hundred or more klicks still furtherahead.

 TheStormshear shuddered mightily and an instant later therecame a great blast of noise. Tracks like dozens of vapour trailsappeared in the sky beneath and above them, great combs ofthin, plaited gas racing in front of them headed by the barelyglimpsed dark dots of the shells converging on the target. Screensset into each dent-seat - where working - showed a magnified view of the blue target; it shook as its hollow structure waspunctured by the shells, holes appearing briefly on its hull beforesealing up again.

 A desultory cheer went up from a few of the generally bored-looking Dwellers present. It was drowned out by the clickingof maniple fingers demanding service from the pet-childrenwaiters.

 'I never asked,' Hatherence said, leaning close to Y'sul as hesnorted up the coils of purple from a fuming stoke-pipe. 'Whatis the war actually about?'

 Y'sul turned jerkily and gave the impression of trying to gethis outer sensory regions to focus on the colonel. 'About?' he said, looking confused. The exhausted stoke-stick attached tothe pipe went out with a loud 'pop'. 'Well, it's about when two,ah, opposing groups of, ah people, ah, that is to say, Dwellers,in this case, obviously, decide to, umm, fight. Fight! Yes, usuallyover some issue, and . . . and they use weapons of war to doso, until one side or other - did I say there are usually just twosides? That's kind of the conventional number, I believe. Sort of a quorum, you might say. Though—'

 'I wasn't looking for the definition of a war, Y'sul.'

 'No? Good. I thought you probably had such things of yourown. Most people seem to.'

 'I meant, what is the point at issue? What is the cause of thewar?'

 'The cause?' Y'sul asked, looking surprised. He roted as farback in his dent-seat as he could while the ship shuddered againand another salvo, from each side of the vessel this time, lancedforwards to the distant target. 'Well,' he said, distracted by thedancing dots of the shells dragging their gas trails after them.'Well, I'm sure thereis one . . .' He started mumbling.Hatherence seemed to realise she'd already got as much senseout of Y'sul as she was going to while he was sucking on thestoke-pipe, and settled back in her seat with a sigh.

 -  Dweller Formal Wars are like duels fought on a huge scale,Fassin told her. The colonel turned fractionally towards him. -Normally about some aesthetic dispute. They're often the final stage of a planet-planning dispute.

 -  Planet-planning?

 -  A common one is where there's some dispute concerningthe number of belts and zones a planet ought to have. Then, the Odds and the Evens are the two sides, usually.

 -  Planet-planning?the colonel repeated, as though she hadn'tpicked up right the first time. - I did not think gas-giants were,well, planned.

 -  The Dwellers claim they can alter the number of bands aplanet has, over a sufficiently great amount of time. They'venever been reliably observed doing this but that doesn't stop them claiming to be able to do it. Anyway, it's not the doing of the thing that matters, it's the principle. What sort of world
do we want to live in? That's the question.

 -  Even or Odd?

 -Exactly. A Formal War is just the working-out.
Another salvo. The ship really shook this time, and a numberof the slave-children yelped at the ragged boom resulting.Combs of gas trails leapt from all sides, a cone defining a tunnelof braided sky in front of them.

 -   Wars are also fought over disagreements such as whichGasClipper ought to be allowed to fly a certain pennant colour during a race.

 -   A war for this? Hatherence sounded genuinely horrified. - Have these people never heard of committees?

 -  Oh, they have committees and meetings and dispute proce-dures. They havelots of those. But getting Dwellers to stickwith a decision that's gone against them, even after they'vesworn on their life beforehand that they'll abide by it, is notthe easiest thing to do, in this or any other world. So disagree­-ments tend to rumble on. Formal Wars are just the Dwellerequivalent of a Supreme Court, a tribunal of last resort. Also,you have to understand that they don't really have standingarmed forces as such. Between wars, the Dreadnoughts andother military bits and pieces are cared for by enthusiasts, byclubs. Even when a Formal War is declared, all that happens isthat the clubs get bigger as ordinary people sign up. The clubssound and feel like what you or I might understand as proper military authorities but they've no legal standing.

 The colonel shook as though just confronted with somethingof ultimate grisliness. - How perverse.

 -   For them, it seems to work.

 -   The verb 'work', Hatherence sent, - like so many othercommon terms, seems to be required to take on additional mean­-ings when one talks of Dwellers. How do they decide who'swon one of these bizarre conflicts?

 -   Occasionally a straight dead-count, or the number ofDreadnoughts destroyed or crippled. More usually there'll bean elegance threshold pre-agreed.

 -   An elegance threshold?

 -   Hatherence, Fassin said, turning to her, - did you doanyresearch into Dweller life? All that time in—

 -   I believe I encountered a mention of this concept butdismissed it at the time as fanciful. It genuinely counts in suchmatters?

 -   It genuinely counts.

 -   And they can't agree a workable disputes procedure forwhat ship flies which colourings without resorting to war, but they can happily agree on that resulting war being decided ona concept as fuzzy aselegance?

 -  Oh, that's never disputed. They have an algorithm for it.
Another terrific judder rang theStormshear like a dull bell. The thin, uncoiling tracks combed the sky ahead of them.

 -   An algorithm? the colonel said.

 -   Elegance is an algorithm.

 The screens showed the blue target quaking under the impactof a handful of shells. Hatherence glanced at Y'sul, who was trying to blow purple smoke rings and pierce them with a rimarm.

 -   And it's all run by clubs, she said. - Of enthusiasts.
-Yes.

 -   Clubs?

 -   Big clubs, Hatherence.

 -  So is all this why their war technology is so awful? Sheasked.

 -  Isit?

 -  Fassin, Hatherence said, sounding amused now. – Thesepeople claim to have been around since the week after reionisation and building these Dreadnought things for most of thattime, yet that target is less than a dozen klicks ahead, each salvo
is thirty-six shells—

 -  Thirty-three. One of the turrets is out of action.

 -  Regardless. They are only hitting that effectively unmovingtarget with every second or third round. That is simply pathetic.

 -  There are rules, formulae.

 -  Insisting on ludicrously inefficient gunnery?

 -  In a sense. No guided shells, all guns and aiming systemsto  be based on ancient patterns, no jet engines for theDreadnoughts, no rocket engines for the missiles, no particle orbeam weapons at all.

 -  Like duels fought with ancient pistols.

 -  You're getting the idea.

 -  And this is meant to keep them all in martial trim in casethey are invaded by outside hostiles?

 -  Well, yes, Fassin agreed. - That does begin to look like aslightly hollow claim when you actually see the technology,doesn't it? Of course, they claim they've got star-busting hyper- weapons hidden about the place somewhere, just in case, and the skills are somehow transferable, but . . .

 -  Nobody's ever seen them.

 -  Something like that.

 TheStormshear unleashed its mighty anti-ship missiles,loosing what was probably meant to be a twelve-strong broad­side. The eleven tiny, slim projectiles came screaming from allsides of the great vessel - the slave-children yelped again andsome dropped their trays - and hurtled out towards the distantblue target drone on smoky, twisting plumes of jet exhaust likederanged darts. Two of the missiles drifted too close to oneanother; each appeared to identify the other as its intended targetand so both swung wildly at their opposite number, missed,twisted round in a sweeping double braid, flew straight at eachother and this time met and exploded in a modest double fire­ball. Some Dwellers in the observation lounge - distracted, perhaps sarcastic - cheered.

 A third missile seemed to take the nearby explosion as a signthat it ought to perform an upward loop and head straight backat theStormshear. 'Oh-oh,' Y'sul said.

 The oncoming missile settled into a flat, steady course, becoming a small but rapidly enlarging dot, aimed straight atthe nose of the Dreadnought.

 'Theydo have destructs, don't they?' Hatherence said,glancing at Fassin.

 Some Dwellers started looking at each other, then made adash for the access tube to theStormshear's armoured nose, creating a jam around the door. Slave-children, also trying to escape, either got through ahead of the rush or were thrown roughly out of the way, yelping.

 The dot in the sky was getting bigger.

 'They can just order it to blow up, can't they?' the colonelsaid, roting backwards. A high, whining noise seemed to becoming from somewhere inside the colonel's esuit. The yelling,cursing knot of Dwellers round the exit didn't seem to beshifting. TheStormshear was starting to turn, hopelessly slowly.

 'In theory they can destruct it,' Fassin said uneasily, watchingthe still unshifting melee around the exit. 'And they do haveclose-range intercept guns.' Another frantic slave-child wasejected upwards from the scrum by the door, screaming untilit slapped into the ceiling and dropped lifeless to the slowlytilting deck.

 The missile had real shape now, no longer a large dot. Stubbywings and a tailplane were visible. TheStormshear continuedto turn with excruciating slowness. The missile plunged intowards them on a trail of sooty exhaust. Hatherence rose fromher dent-seat but moved closer to the diamond-sheath nose of the observation blister, not further away.

 - Stay back, major, she sent. Then a terrific tearing, rippingnoise sounded from above and behind them, a net of finger-finetrails filled the gas ahead of the ship's nose and the missile firststarted to disintegrate and then blew up. The interceptormachine gun somewhere behind continued firing, scoringmultiple hits on the larger pieces of smoking, glowing missilewreckage as they tumbled on towards theStormshear, so thatwhen the resulting shrapnel hit and punctured the observationblister it caused relatively little damage, and only minor wounds.

 The Dreadnought took them as far as Munueyn, a Ruined Cityfallen amongst the dark, thick gases of the lower atmospherewhere slow coils of turbulence roiled past like the heavy, lasciv­ious licks of an almighty planetary tongue, a place all spires andspindles, near-deserted, long unfashionable, a one-time Storm-Centre now too far from anything to be of much interest toanybody, a place that might have garnered kudos for itself had it been near a war zone, but could hope for almost none at all because it was within one. A wing-frigate took them from theDreadnought and deposited them in the gigantic echoing hall of what had once been the city's bustling StationPort, wherethey were greeted like returning heroes, like gods, by the localhirers and fliers. They found a guest house for negative kudos. They were, in effect, being paid to stay there.

 'Sir!' Sholish said, rising from the mass of petitioners in the small courtyard below. 'A hostelier of impeccable repute with excellent familial connections in the matter of wartime travelwarrants beseeches you to consider his proposal to put at yourdisposal a veritable fleet of a half-half-dozen finely arrayed craft,all in the very best of condition and working order and readyto depart within less than an hour of their arrival.'

 'Which will be when, precisely, banelet of my already too-long life?'

 'A day, sire. Two, at the most. He assures.'

 'Unacceptable! Utterly and profoundly so!' Y'sul proclaimed,frilling the very idea away with a shudder. He was nestled within a dent on a flower-decked terrace outside and above the TavernaBucolica, close enough to the city's central plaza to smell the mayor's desperation. He dragged deep of a proffered pharmacylinder and with the exhalation breathed, 'Next!'

 Fassin and the colonel, floating nearby, exchanged looks. Hatherence floated closer.

 -   We could just take off, you and I.

 -   All by ourselves?

 -   We are both self-sufficient, we are both capable of makinggood time.

 -  You reckon?

 The colonel made it obvious that she was looking his arrow-craft over. - I think so.

 Ithink you called up the specs on this thing before we leftThird Fury and know damn well so,he thought.

 He sent, - So we go haring off into the clouds together, just we two.

 -Yes.

 -  There is a problem.

 -  Indeed.

 -  In fact, there are two problems. The first one is that there'sa war on, and we'll look like a pair of warheads.

 -  Warheads? But we shan't even be transonic!

 -  There are rules in Formal War regarding the speed thatwarheads can travel at. We'll look like warheads.

 -  Hmm. If we went a little slower?

 -  Slow warheads.

 -  Slower still?

 -  Cruise mines. And before you ask, any slower than thatand we'll look like ordinary monolayer float mines.

 Hatherence bobbed up and down, a sigh. - You mentioneda second problem.

 -  Without Y'sul it's unlikely that anybody will talk to us.

 -  With him it is unlikely that anybody else will get a word in.

 -  Nevertheless.

 They needed their own transport. More to the point, they needed transport that would be allowed to pass unchallengedin the war zone. Whatever remained of Valseir's old dwellinglay far enough off the CloudTunnel network to make roting or floating their way there too long-winded. Y'sul had agreed tofix things - with his equatorial, big-city connections, escorting exotic aliens, he was bound to positively exude kudos towards all those who might help him - but then had got caught up inthe whole process just due to the numbers of people who wantedto be the ones who helped him, and so became unable, seem­ingly, to make up his mind. Just as it seemed likely he was aboutto settle on one outrageously generous offer, another wouldappear over the horizon, even more enticing, necessitating a further reappraisal.

 Finally, after two days, Hatherence could take no more and hired her own ship, on terms slightly better than the ones just rejected by Y'sul.

 In their suite at the Taverna, Y'sul protested. ‘Iam doing thenegotiating!' he bellowed.

 'Yes,' the colonel agreed. 'Rather too much of it.'

 A compromise was arrived at. The colonel confessed to theirhirer that she was legally unable to commit to a firm contract and Y'sul then remade it on the exact same terms while theappalled shipmaster was still drawing breath to protest. Thatday, the day the war officially got under way, ceremoniallybeginning with an opening gala and Formal Duel in Pihirumime,half the world away. A day later they sailed - taking the nextdownward eddy that also swirled in the right horizontal direc­tion — aboard thePoaflias, a hundred-metre twin-hull screw-burster of unknown but probably enormous age. It boasted acrew of just five apart from its captain and was rotund and slow,but was - for some reason lost in the mists of Dweller militarylogic - still registered as an uncommitted privateer scout shipand so cleared to make her way within the war zone and, onemight hope, liable to pass any consequent challenge save one conducted by opening fire prior to negotiations.

 Their captain was Slyne, an enthusiastic youngster barelyarrived at Adulthood, still very much a Recent and behaving more like a Youth. He'd inherited thePoaflias on the death ofhis father. The Dwellers clove to the idea of CollectiveInheritance, so that, when one of them died, any private prop­erty they could fairly claim to have accumulated went fifty percent to whoever they wanted it to go to and fifty per cent towhatever jurisdiction they lived within. This was why only one hull of the twin-hulledPoaflias was fully owned by Slyne. Thecity of Munueyn owned the other half and was renting it tohim, accumulating kudos. The less Slyne could actually do withthe ship, the more control he would lose, until ultimately thecity could reasonably claim it was all theirs; then, if he wanted to stay aboard, he'd more or less have to do whatever the cityasked him to do with the ship. This expedition, however,conducted under his own auspices, ought to go a long way towards securing his ownership rights over the whole vessel.

 'This is why we are confined to the single hull?' Hatherenceasked the captain. They were on the foredeck, a slightlyramshackle sprouting of fibres and sheet protruding over thecraft's battered-looking nose. Y'sul had spotted a harpoon gunon the foredeck and challenged his companions to a coarse shootthe next time they traversed a promising volume. Apparentlywhere they were now, just two days out of Munueyn, consti­tuted just such a happy hunting ground - however, nobody hadseen anything worth harpooning so far.

 'That's right!' Slyne bobbed eagerly over the deck. 'Less Iuse the other hull, less I owe the city!' Captain Slyne washanging on to some rigging, floating above everybody else toget a good view and act as lookout and target spotter. Theywere making a decent speed through the dim crimson gases.The slipstream would have blown Slyne aft if he hadn't beenholding on. A decent speed in this case meant less than a quarter of the velocity of the DreadnoughtStormshear on cruise, but the gas down here was thicker and the slipstream's force wasall the greater.

 'There's something!' Slyne yelled, pointing up and to star­board.

 They all looked.

 'No! Wrong,' Slyne said cheerfully. 'Beg pardon.'Slyne was taking his captain's role seriously, accoutred withlots of mostly useless ancient naval paraphernalia like spyglasses,an altimeter, a museum-piece radio, a scratched-looking hailvisor, a shining antique holster-cannon and a radiation compass.His clothing and half-armour looked very new but based ondesigns that were very old. He had a couple of pet foetuses teth­ered to each of his Hub girdles.

 The foetuses were Dweller young who hadn't even beenallowed to progress to the stage of being children. The usualreason they existed was because a Dweller-turned-female ofparticular impatience had decided she couldn't be botheredgoing to full term, and had aborted. The results made good pets.Dwellers could survive on their own almost from conception,they just didn't progress intellectually and had nobody to protect them while they were completely helpless.

 Slyne's quadruplets - it would have been impolite to inquire whether they were actually his own - looked like little bloatedmanta rays, pale and trailing almost useless tentacles, forever bumping into their master or each other and getting themselvestangled in their tethers. The effect, for a human, was inevitablyslightly grisly, though Fassin had the added, depressing feelingthat the foetuses were the equivalent of a parrot in ancient Earthterms.

 'There's something this time!' Slyne shouted, pointing downto starboard. A small, black object was rising from the deep reddepths of gas a couple of hundred metres away.

 ‘Ihave it!' Y'sul yelled, bump-kicking the gun platform onits counterweights. It swung up above the deck to an elevation that let him depress the harpoon gun sufficiently.

 'A tchoufer seed!' Sholish exclaimed. 'It's a tchoufer tree seed,sir!'

 'Wait a moment, Y'sul,' Fassin said, rising from the deck. 'Justlet me go and check.' He gunned the little gascraft away fromthePoaflias, curving out and down towards the still slowly risingblack sphere.

 'Keep out of the way!' Y'sul bellowed to the human. Fassinhad taken a curved course deliberately, having witnessed Y'sul'smarksmanship before.

 'Just hold, will you?' he shouted back.

 Y'sul gave a shake and sighted the gun on the black sphere,maniples grasping the trigger.

 Slyne craned forward in the rigging. Two of the foetuseswrapped themselves round a stay, entangling him. He lookedup, tutted, and brought his spyglass up to a receptor-denseportion of his sensory frill, scanning the rising black orb. 'Ah,actually—' he began.

 Hatherence bobbed up suddenly. 'Y'sul! Stop!'

 'Ha-ha!'Y'sul said, twisting the trigger and firing theharpoon. The mounting shook, the gun leapt and banged, theharpoon's own twin rocket motors sprang out and erupted assoon as it was a safe distance away and the thin black lineattached to the main body came whipping and whistling out ofa locker just beneath the gun mounting. The harpoon raspedthrough the gas towards where the black object would be in afew seconds' time. 'Hmm,' Y'sul said, sounding slightlysurprised. 'One of my better—'

 'It's a mine!' Slyne screamed.

 Sholish just screamed.

 - Fassin, get away from that thing! Hatherence sent.

 The little gascraft instantly started to turn and speed up,rotors blurring in the air.

 'Eh? What?' Y'sul said.

 Slyne drew his holster-cannon and aimed at the harpoon. Hegot one shot off before the gun jammed.

 'Could that be nuclear?' the colonel shouted. A high, keeningnoise sounded from the colonel's esuit.

 'Definitely!' Slyne spluttered. He shook his gun and cursed,then slapped at his radio. 'Engines! Full astern!' He shook thegun again, desperately. 'Fuckingscrits!'

 Hatherence moved quickly to one side.

 Y'sul looked out at the harpoon, dropping smoothly right oncourse for the black ball, then at the gun mounting. 'Sholish!'he barked. 'Grab that line!'

 Sholish leapt for the thrumming dark curtain of cord beingjerked from the locker under the gun, caught hold of it and wasinstantly whipped towards the gunwales, smashing throughstanchions and snapping to a stop, tangled in the hawser, beforethe slipstream brought him thudding back into the deck behindthem. Free of the encumbering line, the harpoon just picked upspeed, still heading for the mine. Hatherence got clear of thePoaflias.Fassin's arrowcraft was still turning, still picking upspeed, still even closer to the mine than the ship was.

 'Oh, fu—' Y'sul said.

 A crimson flash seemed to wash out the gas all around them.

 Dead,Fassin had time to think.

 For an instant, a tight fan of searing pink-white lines joinedColonel Hatherence's esuit and the full length of the harpoon,which vanished in a blast of heat and light. A visible shock-sphere pulsed out from the detonation, rocking the mine . . .

 . . . Which seemed to stop and think for a moment, beforecontinuing to ascend smoothly on its way. The shock waveshook them and the ship. Fassin felt it too. He slowed andturned back.

 ThePoaflias was scrubbing off speed following Slyne's lastorder. The slipstream was lessening but still sufficiently strongto clunk Sholish's battered carapace off the deck as he floatedtangled in the dark mass of wire.

 Y'sul looked. 'Sholish?' he said in a small voice.

 'The species of the Faring are more divided by their sense of timethan anything else. We Dwellers, being who and what we are, naturally encompass as much of the spectrum of chronosense aswe are able, covering most of it. I exclude the machine-Quick.'A hesitation. 'You still abhor those, I take it?'

 'Yes, we most certainly do!' the colonel exclaimed.

 'Positively persecuted,' Fassin said.

 'Hmm. They are different again, of course. But even withinthe limits of the naturally evolved, the manifold rates at whichtime is appreciated are, some would argue, collectively the singlemost telling distinction that might be made between species andspecies-types.'

 The speaker was an ancient Sage called Jundriance. Dwellerseniority nomenclature stretched to twenty-nine separate cate­gories, starting with child and ending, no less than two billion years later (usually much more) at Child. In between came theshort-lived Adolescent and Youth stages, the rather longer Adultstage with its three sub-divisions, then Prime, with four sub­divisions, Cuspian with three and then, if the Dweller hadsurvived to that age (one and a quarter million years, minimum) and was judged fit by his peers, Sagehood, which then repeatedall the subdivisions of the Adulthood, Prime and Cuspian stages.So, technically, Jundriance was a Sage-prime-chice. He wasforty-three million years old, had shrunk to only six metres indiameter - while his carapace had darkened and taken on the hazy patina of Dweller middle age - had already lost most of his limbs and he was in charge of what was left of the houseand associated libraries of the presumed deceased Cuspian-choalValseir.

 The view from the house was motionless and unchanging atnormal time, a hazy vista of deep brown and purple veils of gaswithin a great placid vertical cylinder of darkness that was thefinal echo of the great storm that the house had once swungabout like a tiny planet around a great, cold sun. In appearance the house-library complex itself was a collection of thirty-twospheres, each seventy metres or so in diameter, many girdled byequatorial balconies, so that the construction looked like some improbably bunched gathering of ringed planets. The bubblehouse hung, very slowly sinking, in that great calm of thick gas,deep down in the dark, hot depths only a few tens of kilome­tres above the region where the atmosphere began to behave more like a liquid than a gas.

 'This is his house, then, yes?' the colonel had asked whenthey'd first seen it from the foredeck of thePoaflias.

 Fassin had looked around, using sonosense and magnetic tosearch for the section of the derelict CloudTunnel that the househad once been anchored to, but couldn't find it anywherenearby. He'd already checked thePoaflias's charts. The stretch of CloudTunnel no longer showed up on the local holo maps,implying that it had either drifted much further away - whichwas unlikely - or had fallen into the depths.

 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, looks like it.'

 They'd had to turn thePoaflias around and return toMunueyn. Sholish, badly injured, had been taken to hospital.The surgeons had given him an even chance of surviving. He'dheal best left in a drug coma for the next few hundred days.There was nothing more they could do.

 Y'sul could have taken on any number of Youths andAdolescents eager to take his crippled servant's place, but he'dturned them all down - a decision he'd regretted just a day orso later once they'd set out again, when he'd realised he hadnobody to shout at.

 They'd avoided challenges, other ships and mines of all sorts,finally making the journey in ten days. The Sage Jundriance wasattended by a couple of burly Prime servants, Nuern andLivilido, each dressed in fussily ornate and ill-fitting academicrobes. They were sufficiently senior to have servants of theirown; a half-dozen highly reticent Adults who looked like iden­tical sextuplets. They were big on scurrying but almost autisti­cally shy.

 The senior of the two elder servants, Nuern - a mouean to Livilido's one-rank-more-junior suhrl - had welcomed them,allocated rooms and informed them that his master was engagedin the task of cataloguing the remaining works in the libraries- as Y'sul had warned, a significant proportion of the contentshad been given away since Valseir's accident. Probably only theremoteness of the house had prevented more scholars showingup to pick over the remains. Jundriance was, however, in slow-time, so if they wanted to speak to him they would have toslow to his thought-pace. Fassin and the colonel had agreed.Y'sul had announced he was having none of this and took thePoafliason a cruise to explore the local volume and see whatthere might be to hunt.

 'Your duty should be to wait for us,' the colonel had informedhim.

 'Duty?' Y'sul had said, as though hearing the word for thefirst time.

 They had a half-day or so, at least, while Jundriance wasinformed by a message on his read-screen that he had visitors.If he would see them immediately, they could go in before dark.Otherwise it could be some long time . . .

 'Colonel,' Fassin had said, 'we will have to go into slowdownfor some time. Y'sul might be as well amusing himself nearby -'Fassin had turned to look at Y'sul to emphasise the word '- asmooching about this place for who knows how long.'

 -   He'll get into trouble.

 -   Probably. So, better trouble close to home, or troublefurther away?

 Hatherence had made a rumbling noise and had told Y'sul,'There is a war on.'

 'I've checked the nets!' Y'sul had protested. 'It's kilo-klicksaway!'

 'Really?' Nuern had said, perking. 'Has it started? The masterdoesn't allow connections in the house. We hear nothing.'

 'Began a dozen days ago,' Y'sul had told the servant. 'We've been in the thick of it already. Barely avoided a smart mine onthe way here. My servant got himself injured, may die.'

 'A smart mine? Near here?'

 'You are right to be concerned, my friend,' Y'sul had said solemnly. 'The presence of such ordnance hereabouts is another- the real - reason why I'll take my ship on patrol around you.'

 'And your servant, injured. How terrible.'

 ‘I know. War is. Other than that, elsewhere in the hostilities,barely a spineful of deaths so far. Couple of Dreadnoughts crip­pled on each side. Far too early to tell who's winning. I'll keepa fringe cocked, let you know what's happening.'

 'Thank you.'

 'Not at all.'

 -   You're right, Hatherence had signal-whispered to Fassin asthis exchange was taking place. - Let's just let him go.

 -   You can signal the ship from your esuit while still in slow­down?

 -Yes.

 -Okay.

 'You will stay nearby?' Fassin had asked Y'sul. 'You won't let thePoaflias venture too far out?'

 'Of course! I swear! And I shall ask our two fine fellows hereto extend you every courtesy on my behalf!'

 They were to be seen at once. Nuern had shown them intoone of the outer library pods. The library had a roof of diamond leaf looking directly upwards into the vermilion-dark sky.Jundriance was settled into a dent-desk near the centre of thenear-spherical room, facing a read-screen. Around him, the wallswere lined with shelves, some so widely spaced that they mighthave doubled as bunk space for humans, others so small that achild's finger might have struggled to fit. Mostly these held books,of some sort. Spindle-secured carousels tensioned between thewalls and between the floor and a network of struts above held hundreds of other types of storage devices and systems: swavecrystals, holoshard, picospool and a dozen more obscure.

 They'd joined Jundriance at his desk, floating through thethick atmosphere to his side. Nuern had swung dent-seats intoplace and they'd both clamped onto one, Hatherence positioningherself with Fassin between her and the Sage. Jundriance, ofcourse, gave no sign of having noticed them.

 They'd slowed. It had been much easier for Fassin than forHatherence. He'd been doing this for centuries; she'd beentrained in the technique but had never attempted it for real. Theexperience would be a jerky, shaky journey for her, at least untilthey smoothed out at the Sage's pace.

 The day darkened quickly, then the night seemed to last lessthan an hour. Fassin concentrated on his own smooth slow­down, but was aware of the colonel seeming to wriggle and shiftin her dent-seat. The Sage Jundriance appeared to stir. By thenext quick morning, something actually changed on his readingscreen; another page. That day passed quickly, then the nextnight went quicker still. The process continued until they weredown to a factor of about one-in-sixty-four, which was what they had been told Jundriance had come up to meet them at -he'd been even slower until their arrival.

 They were about halfway there when a signal-whisper hadpinged into the little gascraft. - You receiving this all right,major?

 -  Yes. Why?

 -  I just interrogated the screen reader. It was working in realtime until thePoaflias arrived.

 -  You sure?

 -   Perfectly.

 -   Interesting.

 Finally they were there, synchronised to the same life-paceas the Sage. The short days became a slow, slow flicker abovethem, the orange-purple sky beyond the diamond leaf alter­nately lightening and dimming. Even at this pace, the great tallveils of gas seemed to hang above them in the sky, unmoving. Fassin had experienced the feeling he always got when he firstwent into slowdown during a delve, the disquieting sensationthat he was a lost soul, the feeling of being in a strange sort ofprison, trapped in time inside while life went on at a quickerpace outside, above, beyond.

 Jundriance had turned off his read-screen and greeted them.Fassin had asked about Valseir but somehow they'd got ontothe subject of life-pace itself.

 'One feels sorry for the Quick, I suppose,' the Sage said.'They seem ill-suited to the universe, in a way. The distances between the stars, the time it takes to travel from one to another. . . Even more so, of course, if one is thinking of travellingbetween galaxies.'

 A hole in the conversation. 'Of course.' Fassin said, to fill it.Are you fishing for something, old one?he thought.

 'The machines. They were much worse, of course. Howunbearable, to live so quickly.'

 'Well, they mostly don't live at all now, Sage,' Fassin toldhim.

 'That is as well, perhaps.'

 'Sage, can you tell us any more about Valseir's death?'

 'I was not there. I know no more than you.'

 'You were . . . quite close to him?' Fassin asked.

 'Close? No. No, I would not say so. We had correspondedon matters of textual verification and provenance, and debatedat a remove on various questions of scholarship and interpre­tation, though not regularly. We never met. I would not say that that constituted closeness, would you?'

 'I suppose not. I just wondered what drew you here, that'sall.'

 'Oh, the chance to look through his library. To take what Imight for myself. That is what drew me. His servants took somematerial before they left, others - mostly scholars or those whochose to call themselves such - came and took what they wanted,but there is still much here, and while the most obvious treas­ures are gone, much of value may remain. It would be derelictto ignore.'

 'I see. And what of Valseir's libraries? I understand you arecontinuing to catalogue them?'

 A pause. 'Continuing. Yes.' The old, dark-carapaced Sageseemed to stare at the dark read-screen. 'Hmm,' he said. Heturned fractionally to look at Fassin. 'Let me see. Your use ofthe word "continuing" there.'

 'I understood that Valseir had been cataloguing his librariesWasn't he?'

 'He was always so secretive. Was he not?'

 -   I'm getting light-comms leakage here, Hatherence sent.

 -   Tell me if there's a burst after this:

 'And dilatory. Hapuerele always said that Valseir was morelikely to win the All-Storms Yachting Cup than ever finish cata­loguing his libraries.'

 Another pause. 'Quite so, quite so. Hapuerele, yes.'

 -   Leakage. Hapuerele does not exist?

 -   Exists, but he had to ask elsewhere just there. Shouldn'thave.

 'I would like to take a look round some of the libraries myself.I hope you don't mind. I shan't disturb you.'

 'Ah. I see. Well, if you think you can be discreet. Are youseeking anything in particular, Mr Taak?'

 'Yes. And you?'

 'Only enlightenment. And what would it be that you are looking for, if I may ask?'

 'Exactly the same.'

 The old dweller was silent for a while. In real-time, most ofan hour passed. 'I may have something for you,' he said even­tually. 'Would you care to slow down a little more? No doubtthis, our present pace, seems surpassing slow to you; however,I find it something of a strain.'

 'Of course,' Fassin told Jundriance.

 -   I'll have to leave you here, major.

 -   Lucky you. I'll try to keep this short.

 -   Good luck, Hatherence sent.

 'However, I shall leave you at this point, sir,' the colonel said to the Sage.

 'Pleasant to have met you, Reverend Colonel,' Jundriancetold her. 'Now then,' he said to Fassin. 'Let me see. Half thispace, I think, Seer Taak, would suit me better. A quarter wouldsuit me better still.'

 'Shall we try half, then, initially?'

 He was back in just three days. Hatherence was inspecting thecontents of another library when he found her. The room wasalmost perfectly spherical, with no windows, just a circle of dim light shining from the ceiling's centre and further luminescenceprovided by bio strips inlaid on each shelf, glowing ghostlygreen. Further stacks of shelves like enormous inward-pointing vanes made the place feel oddly organic, as though these were ribs, and they were inside some vast creature. The colonel wasfloating near one set of close-stacked shelves near the library's centre, strips of green light ribbing her esuit.

 'So soon, major?' Hatherence said, replacing a slimholocrystal on a shelf half full of them. At the same time as shespoke, she sent: - Our friend had nothing of interest?

 'Sage Jundriance gave me so much to think about that Idecided I'd better come back to normal speed to think it over,'Fassin replied, then signalled, - The old bastard gave me fuck all; basically he's trying to stall us.

 'Well, I have been studying while you were conversing.'

 'Anything of interest?' he asked, floating over towards her.

 -There are signs that many more Dwellers were staying hereuntil not long ago. Perhaps only a few days long ago. 'The housesystem seems to think there ought to be a catalogue of cata-logues somewhere. In fact that there ought to be multiple copiesof it lying around.'

 'A catalogue of catalogues?' Fassin said. - Other Dwellers?

 'The first catalogue that Valseir compiled, listing the cata­logues of individual works he would then draw up.' - Perhapsas many as ten or twelve. Also, I get the impression Livilidoand Nuern are more, or at least other, than they appear.

 'One catalogue for everything would be too simple?' Fassinasked, then sent, - I didn't think they seemed like ordinaryservants either. So where are all these multiple copies?

 -I suspect they have been removed. They would be the keyto beginning a methodical search, the colonel replied, then said,'I gather it seemed to him the logical way to proceed. Certainlythere is no shortage of material, even yet, when much of it has been removed. One catalogue would, I suppose, becumbersome.' The Colonel paused. 'Of course, a single giantdatabase with freely dimensioned subdivisions, partially over­lapping categories and subcategories, a hierarchically scalablecross-reference hyperstructure and inbuilt, semi-smart user-learning routines would be even more to the point and farmore useful.'

 Fassin looked at her. 'He'd probably have got round to oneof those after he'd done what he considered the proper cata­loguing - getting everything down in some non-volatile form that can be read without intervening machinery.'

 'Our Dweller friends do seem to be remarkably purist about such things.'

 'When you live as long as they do, future-proofing becomes an obsession.'

 'Perhaps that is their curse. The Quick must endure the frus­tration of living in a universe with what seems like an annoy­ingly slow speed limit and the Slow must suffer the freneticpace of change around them, resulting in a sort of exaggeratedentropy.'

 Fassin had been floating slowly closer to Hatherence. Hetipped to make it clear that he was looking at her as he cameto a stop a couple of metres from her. The glowing biostrips onthe shelves painted soft lime stripes across the little gascraft.'You all right in there, colonel?' he asked. 'I realise it's very hotand pressured down here.' - Colonel, do you think we arewasting our time here?

 'I am fine. Yourself?' - Very hard to say. There is so muchstill here, so much to be looked at.

 'Also fine. Feeling very rested.' - That's my point. We couldbe made to waste a lot of time here, looking for something thathas already been removed.

 'I understand slow-time will have that effect.' - That is athought. I had the odd impression, from dust marks and so on, understand, that many of the shelves have recently been filled,or refilled. And many of the works seem to make no sense given what I've understood of Valseir's subjects of study. Seemed moststrange. Though, if all this is a sort of slow-trap for you andme, then that begins to make sense. But what else can we do?Where else is there to go?

 'I'll have to talk to the Sage again,' Fassin said. 'There aremany things I'd like to ask him.' - Whereas in fact I'll do every­thing I can to avoid talking to the old bore again. We have toget word out to any legitimate scholars who did take worksfrom here, see if any of them have the catalogues, or anythingelse. There are two dozen separate libraries here; even if they'reonly half-full we could be searching them for decades.

 'He is a most interesting and wise character.' - Many tens ofmillions of works, and if most are unsorted, all are. I'll signalto thePoaflias, have them put out word to the relevant scholars.Who might be trying to put obstacles in our way so?

 'Indeed he is.' - I don't know.

 'Well, I think I shall continue to search the shelves for a while.Will you join me?' - Will you?

 'Why not?'

 They drifted to different but nearby stacks, snickedholocrystal books out of their motion-proof shelves, and read.

 'His study?' Nuern asked. A fringe flick indicated a glance atLivilido. They were afloat at table. The two Primes had invitedFassin and Hatherence to a semi-formal dinner in the house'sovaloid dining room, a great, dim, echoing space strung verti­cally with enormous sets of carbon ropes, all splayed, separated into smaller and smaller cords and fibres and threads and fila­ments and then each thin strand minutely and multiply knotted.It was like being inside some colossal, frayed net.

 Jundriance was still deep in slow-time and would not bejoining them. Special food had been prepared that was suitable for the colonel. She ingested it via a sort of gaslock on the side of her esuit. Fassin, contained and sustained within the arrow- craft, was really only here to watch.

 'Yes,' he said. 'Where do you think it might be?'

 'I thought that Library One was his study,' Nuern said,selecting a helping of something glowing dull blue from thecentral carousel, and then spinning the serving dish slowly towards his dining companions.

 'Me too,' Livilido said. He looked at Fassin. 'Why, was thereanother one? Has a bit dropped off the place?'

 Fassin had taken a look round all the library spheres. LibraryOne had always been Valseir's formal study, where he receivedfellow scholars and other people, but it hadn't been hisrealstudy, his den, his private space. Very few people were allowedin there. Fassin had felt flattered in the extreme to be invited to enter the nestlike nook that Valseir had made for himself inside the stretch of disused CloudTunnel tube which the restof the house had been anchored to the last time Fassin had been here, centuries earlier. Library One still looked as it always had,minus a few thousand book-crystals and a big cylindrical low-temperature storage device in which Valseir had kept paper andplastic books. It certainly didn't look as though the room hadbecome Valseir's proper study in the interim. And now itappeared as though these people didn't even know he'd had a more private den in the first place.

 'I thought he had another study,' Fassin said. 'Didn't he keepa house in...what city was it? Guldrenk?'

 'Ah! Of course,' Nuern said. 'That would be it.'

 -   Colonel, these guys know nothing.

 -   I had been coming to the same conclusion.

 Library Twenty-One (Cincturia\Clouders\Miscellania) had aconceit, a Dweller equivalent of a door made from a bookcase.Valseir had shown it to Fassin after the human had stayed withhim for an extended period after their first meeting. It led,inward at first, towards the centre of the cluster of libraryspheres, through a short passage to a gap between two more ofthe outer spheres, then into the open gas. The joke - a hidden door, a secret passage - was that the various Cincturia were theoutsiders of the galactic community, and the particular book­case hiding the secret passage was categorised 'Escapees'.

 After their meal, Fassin gave the impression of shuttinghimself away in the library for some late-night shelf-scanning.Instead he screened up the house's system statements andlooked back to just after the time of Valseir's yachting acci­dent and alleged death. He did something unusual, somethingbarely legal by Mercatorial standards and usually pointless on Nasqueron; he speeded up, letting the gascraft's legal-max computers and his own subtly altered nervous system rev totheir combined data-processing limit. It still took nearly half an hour, but he found what he was looking for: the point, a dozen days after Valseir's accident, when the house recorded a rerouting of power and ventilation plumbing. Its altimeter had registered a wobble, too - a brief blip upwards, then thestart of the long, slow descent that was continuing even now.

 Then Fassin had to work out where the CloudTunnel segmentmight be now. It would be beyond the start of the shear zone,past where the whole atmospheric band moved as a single vastmass, down into the semi-liquid Depths. These moved muchmore slowly than the gas above, the transition levels greatturbidly elastic seas being dragged along as though reluctantlyafter the jet-stream whirl of atmosphere above.

 It was all dead reckoning. By the Dweller way of judgingsuch things, the atmosphere was static and the Depths - not tomention the remainder of Ulubis system, the stars and indeedthe rest of the universe - moved. With only notionally fixedreference points, finding anything in the Depths was notori­ously difficult. After two hundred years the section ofCloudTunnel could be anywhere; it might have sunk beyondfeasible reach, been broken up or even drifted to the Zone edge and been pulled into another Belt entirely, either north or south.The only thing working in Fassin's favour was that the length of tube he was looking for was relatively large. Completelylosing something forty-plus metres in diameter and eighty klickslong wasn't that easy, even in Nasqueron. Still, he was relying on the CloudTunnel retaining the usual profile of buoyancy-decay.

 The likely volume - though identified with a worrying degreeof fuzziness - was about five thousand kilcks away, thoughcoming closer all the time, having been all the way round the planet many times. In a dozen hours it would be almost right underneath the house again. He calculated. It was doable. Hepinged a note to the screen on the library's door saying that hedidn't want to be disturbed.

 Fassin let himself out through the hidden door about an hourafter he'd entered the library. He let the little gascraft grow,pushing trim-spaces out to create internal vacuums and a larger,near-spherical outer shape so that he fell gently at first, causing as little turbulence as possible beneath the house. Then gradu­ally he heavied, slowly shrinking the arrowhead to its dart-slim minimum, diving unpowered into the dark depths and throughthe rough boundary of the near-static cylinder of depleted gasthat was all that remained of the ancient storm.

 He powered up twenty klicks deeper and levelled out, thenrose quickly when he was thirty lateral kilometres clear,zooming up through the gradually cooling, slowly thinning gasabove until he was through the haze layers and out amongstthe cloud tops. Fassin increased to maximum speed, configuringthe arrowhead for as stealthy a profile as it could support. Thegascraft had never been designed for such shenanigans, but it had been gradually altered over the years by him and Hervil Apsile until - while no match for a genuine military machine -it made less of a fuss moving across the face of the planet thanalmost anything within the gas-giant's atmosphere (alwaysdiscounting the usual preposterous Dweller claims of invisibleships, inertialess drives and zero-point subspacials).

 The little craft moved beneath the thin yellow sky, and thestars above seemed to slow down then go into reverse as Fassin flew faster than the combined speed of the planet revolving andthe band beneath him jet-streaming in the same direction.

 After less than an hour of flight, seeing nothing in the heavensabove or in the skies beneath that would have led anyone tothink there was life anywhere else in all the universe, he slowedand dropped, a shaftless arrowhead heading straight for the heartof the planet. He let the increasing density slow him further,feeling the resulting friction-heat leak through the gascraft's hulland into his flesh.

 Through the upper shear boundary - only hazily defined,kilometres thick, prone to vast slow waves and unpredictable swells and sudden troughs - he entered the shear zone itself, starting to circle through the crushing fluidity of jelly-thickatmosphere. If the section of CloudTunnel was still in thevolume, this was where it ought to be, fallen amongst the depths,making its slow way down to an equilibrium of weight andbuoyancy within the gradually thickening press of hydrogengas turning to liquid.

 There was always a chance that it had gone the other way,lifting towards the cloud tops, but that would be unusual.Disused CloudTunnel, ribbed with vacuum tubes, tended to gaingas and therefore additional weight through osmosis over themillennia. When Fassin had been here two hundred years earlier,Valseir was already having to add buoyancy to the Tunnel tokeep it from sinking too fast and dragging the whole house andlibrary complex with it. Anyway, if the derelict section had risenit ought to have stayed within the same atmospheric band andso shown up somewhere on the charts of thePoaflias, and ithadn't.

 He went on spiralling, keeping slow, sonosensing only gentlyso that there would be less chance of anybody who might belistening nearby overhearing him. (Could the colonel havefollowed him without him being aware of her? Probably. Butwhy would she? Still, he had the feeling he ought to be as discreetas he could.) Light wasn't much use. CloudTunnel wall wouldappear almost transparent down here. Probes for magnetic andradiation vestiges were of even less utility, and there would be no scent trace either.

 After two hours, near the limit of the time that he thoughthe could reasonably spend away from the house, and some time after he'd decided the hell with discretion and ramped his activesensors up to maximum, Fassin found one end of theCloudTunnel, looming out of the gel-thick mist like a vast darkmouth. He took the little gascraft into the forty-metre-widemaw, turning up his sonosense now that the signals would beshielded by the walls of the CloudTunnel section itself. Heincreased his speed, too, barrelling along the great slowlycurving tube like the ghost of some Dweller long gone.

 The study shell was still there, a hollow sphere almost fillingthe CloudTunnel tube near the mid-point of its eighty-kilo­metre length, but it had been ransacked, stripped bare. Whateversecrets it might have held had long since been taken or trashed.

 Fassin turned some lights on to check round the place, findingnothing intact, nothing beyond empty shelves and raggedlengths of carbon board, diamond dust like frosted ice andfrayed fibres, waving in the turbulence of his passing.

 He formed a tiny cavity with his sonosense and watched itcollapse instantly, snapped to nothing by the grinding weightof the column of gas above it. A fine place to feel crushed, hethought, then went back the way he'd come and ascended slowly to the house and Library Twenty-One again.

 The colonel was there. She looked startled when he appearedfrom behind the hidden door, even though he'd told her earlierwhat he intended to do.

 'Major. Seer Taak. Fassin,' she said. She sounded . . . odd.

 Fassin looked around. Nobody else here;good, he thought.'Yes?' he said, letting the bookcase door close behind him.

 Hatherence floated right up to him, stopping just a metreaway. Her esuit showed a uniform dull grey he hadn't seen her display before.

 'Colonel,' he asked her. 'Are you all right? Is everything—''There is...you must prepare...I...I am sorry to...

 There is bad news, Fassin,' she said finally, in a rushed, brokenvoice. 'Very bad news. I am so sorry.'

 *

 The Archimandrite Luseferous did not really buy into the wholeidea of the Truth. Of course, when he had been rising withinthe ranks of the Cessoria he had given everyappearance ofbelieving in it, and had been a gifted evangelist and disputer,arguing, many times, with great force, logic and passion for theChurch and its views. He had been often commended for this. He could see at the time that his superiors were impressed, see it even when they didn't want to admit to him or to themselvesthat they had been impressed. He had a gift for argument. And for dissembling, for lying (if you insisted on using such crude,un-nuanced terminology), for appearing to believe one thing while, at best, actually not caring one way or the other. He had never really cared whether the Truth was true.

 The idea of faith interested him, even fascinated him, not as an intellectual idea, not as a concept or some abstract theoret­ical framework, but as a way of controlling people, as a way of understanding and so manipulating them. As a flaw, in the end, as something which was wrong with others that was not wrongwith him.

 Sometimes he could not believe all the advantages otherpeople seemed prepared to hand him. They had faith and so would do things that were plainly not in their own immediate(or, often, long-term) best interests, because they just believed what they had been told; they experienced altruism and so did things that, again, were not necessarily to their advantage; theyhad sentimental or emotional attachments to others and so couldbe coerced, once more, into doing things they would not havedone otherwise. And - best of all, he sometimes thought - peoplewere self-deceiving. They thought they were brave when theywere really cowards, or imagined they could think for them­selves when they most blatantly could not, or believed theywere clever when they were just good at passing exams, orthought they were compassionate when they were just senti­mental.

 The real strength came from a perfectly simple maxim: Becompletely honest with yourself; only ever deceive others.

 So many edges! So many ways that people made his progress easier. If everybody he'd ever met and competed with and strug­gled against had been just like him in these respects he'd havehad a much harder rise to power. He might not even haveprevailed at all, because without all these advantages it largelycame down to luck, and he might not have had sufficient.

 In the old days he had once wondered how many of theCessorian high command, his old bosses, really believed in theTruth. He strongly suspected that the higher you went, the greater grew the proportion of those who didn't really believe at all. Theywere in it for the power, the glory, the control and the glamour.

 Now he rarely thought about any of that. Now he wouldjust assume that anybody in such a position would becompletely and cynically self-interested and be mildly surprisedand even slightly disgusted to find that any of them really didhave genuine faith. The disgust would come from the feelingthat the person concerned was letting down the side, and the suspicion that they would feel they were somehow - perversely- superior to their less-deluded peers.

 'And so you really believe in all that? You really do?'

 'Sir, of course, sir! It is the rational faith. Simple logic dictates.It is inescapable. You know this better than I, sir. Sir, I thinkyou tease me.' The girl looked away, smiling down, coquettish, shy, perhaps a little alarmed, just possibly even daring to feel slightly insulted.

 He reached out and took her hair, swinging her face roundto his, a gold-dark silhouette against the sparse sprinkle ofdistant stars. 'Child, I am not sure that in all my life I have everteased. Not once.'

 The girl did not seem to know what to say. She looked around,perhaps at the pale stars through the screen-glass, perhaps atthe snow-white tumble of low-gee puff-bedding, perhaps at theshell of screens forming the walls of their little nest, surfaces on which startlingly detailed and inventive acts of sexuality werebeing enacted. Perhaps she looked at her two companions, bothnow curled and asleep.

 'Well, then, sir,' she said at last, 'not teased. I would not sayyou teased me. Perhaps rather that you make fun of me becauseyou are so much more educated and clever than me.'

 That, the Archimandrite thought, was perhaps more like it. But he still was not sure. Did this young thing still carry theTruth inside her, even after all the normal-span generations that had come and gone since he'd formally swept away all thisnonsense?

 In a way it didn't matter in the slightest; as long as nobodyever began to use their religion to organise against him he could not care less what people really thought. Obey me, fear me. Hateme if you want. Don't ever pretend to love me. That was all heasked of people. Faith was just another lever, like sentiment, likeempathy, like love (or what people thought was love, what theyclaimed was love, the fanciful, maybe even dishonest bit thatwasn't lust, which was honest. And, of course, another lever).

 But he wanted to know. A less civilised fellow in his situa­tion would have considered having the girl tortured to find outthe truth, but people being tortured over something like this soon ended up just telling you what they thought you wanted to hear - anything to get the pain to stop. He'd learned thatquickly enough. There was a better way.

 He reached for the pod's remote control and adjusted thespin, creating the illusion of gravity once more. 'Go on all foursin front of the window,' he told the girl. 'It's time again.'

 'Sir, of course, sir.' The girl quickly assumed the position hewanted, crouched against the oncoming star field, seeminglyfixed even though the pod was revolving. The brightest sun, screen dead-centre, was Ulubis.

 Luseferous had had his genitals enhanced in all sorts of ways.One improvement was that he carried glands inside his bodywhich allowed him to produce many different secretions whichhis ejaculate could then carry into the bodies of others (butwhose effects he was proof against, obviously), including irri­tants,  hallucinogens,  cannabinoids,  capsainoids,  sleepingdraughts and truth serums. He went briefly into the little-deathlittle-trance, the petit mal which allowed him to select one of these, and chose the last-mentioned, the truth drug.He took the girl anally; it was faster-acting that way. And discovered that she really did believe in the Truth.Though it also emerged that she thought he was horribly ancient and weird-looking and a frightening, sick-minded old sadist and she absolutely hated being fucked by him.

 He thought about inseminating her with thanaticin, oremploying one of the physical options his remade penis made possible: the shaved horsetail, perhaps. Or just ejecting her intothe vacuum and watching her die.

 In the end Luseferous decided that letting her live with such constant degradation was punishment enough. He'd always saidhe preferred being despised, after all.

 He would make her his favourite. Probably wise to put heron suicide watch, too.

 *

 The Dwellers held that the ability to suffer was what ultimatelymarked out sentient life from any other sort. They didn't meanjust the ability to feel physical pain, they meant real suffering,they meant the sort of suffering that was all the worse becausethe creature undergoing the experience could appreciate it fully,could think back to when it had not suffered so, look forwardto when it might stop (or despair of it ever stopping - despairwas a large component of this) and know that if things had beendifferent it might not be suffering now. Brains required, see?Imagination. Any brainless thing with a rudimentary nervous system could feel pain. Suffering took intelligence.

 Of course, Dwellers didn't feel pain, and claimed never tosuffer, except in the trivial sense of suffering fools because theywere part of the family, or experiencing the deleterious phys­ical and mental effects of a serious hangover. So, by their ownreckoning, they weren't really sentient. At which point theaverage Dweller, assuming without question that they wereabsolutely self-evidently the most sentient and intelligent thingsaround in anybody's neck of the woods, would just throw theirspine-limbs out, shake their mantle ruff and start talking loudly about paradoxes.

 He faced to spin, carried in the jet stream at five hundredkilometres per hour. Motionless. He side-slipped, found a smalleddy, just a curl, a tiny yellow-white wisp a couple of klicksacross in the great empty skies of orange and red and brown.He moved through the gas. It felt slick against the arrowhead'sskin. He let the eddy carry him round in a slow gyration for awhile, then pointed down and fell, twisting slowly as he went, down through the hazes and the clouds and the slowly thick­ening weight and press of gas, down to where the temperature was suitable, where he levelled out and did something he hadnever done before; he opened the cover of the little gascraft andlet the atmosphere in, let Nasqueron in, let it touch his nakedhuman skin.

 Alarms were beeping and flashing and when he opened hiseyes they stung in the dim orange light that seemed to shinefrom all around. He still had the gillfluid in his mouth and nose and throat and lungs, though now he was forced to try andbreathe by himself, just his chest muscles against the pull ofNasqueron's gravity field. He was still connected to the gascraftby the interface collar, too, and, when he could not raise himselfup from the bed of shock-gel, he made the little arrowhead tip gradually towards its nose, so that he was propped three-quar­ ters of the way towards a standing position.

 Blood roared in his ears. His feet and legs protested at the weight as he was slowly forced down through the gel until hewas partly standing on the far end of the cramped coffin shapethat contained him.

 Now he could force himself away from the mould. He usedhis elbows, forcing himself forward. The stinging in his eyeswas making them water. Tears at last. Shaking with the effort,he pulled at one sticky-slippy strand of the gillfluid where itdisappeared into his right nostril, and opened his mouth, gulpingsome of the gas.

 Nasqueron smelled of rotten eggs.

 He looked around, blinking the tears away as best he could,the interface collar sucking at his neck, trying to keep contactwhile he tried to look up and out. It was a muddy-looking oldplace, Nasqueron. Like a big bowl of beaten egg, with a loadof liquid shit stirred in and little drops of blood spattered throughout. And sulphurous on the palate. He let the gillfluidsnap back, filling his nose, granting him pure oxygen-rich airagain, though the stench still lingered.

 He was sweating, partly from the exertion, partly from theheat. Maybe he should have chosen to do this a bit further up.Now his nose was tingling, too, as well as his streaming eyes. He wondered if he could sneeze with the gillfluid inside him.Would it come splattering up out of him, some ghastly lung-vomit, ejected, left drooped over the side of the gascraft likesome pale blue mass of seaweed, leaving him to gasp and chokeand die?

 He could hardly see because of the tears now, Nasqueron's noxious skies finally drawing from him what he had not been able to express for himself.

 All of them.

 The whole Sept.

 They'd made the move to the Winter complex early. The warhead had fallen there, killing all of them: Slovius, Zab,Verpych, all his family, all the people he had grown up with,all those he had known and loved through his childhood andas he had grown, all the people who had made him whoever he now was, whatever he had been, until this moment.

 It had been quick. Instantaneous, indeed, but so what? Theyhad felt no pain but they were dead, gone, beyond recall.

 Only they were not beyond recall. He could not stoprecalling, he could not cease bringing them back to life in hishead, if only to apologise. He had suggested to Slovius that theyget away from the Autumn House. He'd meant a neutral place,some hotel or university complex, but they'd gone to anotherof the Sept's Seasonal Houses instead - a compromise. And that had killed them. He had killed them. His well-meant advice, hisdesire to care and protect, and to be known to have thought ofthis, had taken them all away.

 He thought of just letting the craft tip further over, beyondninety degrees, letting himself fall out, jerked down by his ownmass, hurtling him plummeting downwards into that greatsucking breath of gas-giant gravity, the gillfluid wrenched fromhim, perhaps taking some parts of his lungs with it as it rippedaway, tearing him apart and letting him fill the bloody, ragged remains with alien gas for his last scream - falsetto, like thevoice you got when you sucked helium from a party balloon - as he plunged into the depths.

 The signals and messages had finally caught up with themround about the time he'd been floating through the wreckageof Valseir's wrecked study. All the shocked mailings, all thegarbled queries, all the official notices, all the messages ofsupport and sympathy, all the requests and follow-up signals asking for confirmation that he was still alive, all the newsmentions, all the Ocula's revised orders: they had all comethrough in a flood, a great tangled knot of incoming data, held up by the Shrievalty's default secrecy, especially in a time of threat, the usual chaos of Dweller communications in generaland the particular breakdown in the smooth running ofsignalling protocols transmission that always attended a FormalWar, an effect always at its most extreme within the war zoneitself.

 Dead, all dead. But then, not quite all dead (a Sept was nosmall thing, and reality was rarely quite so neat). Just as-good-as all. Five junior servants, on leave or errands, had survived,as had one of his second cousins and her infant son. That wasall. Enough to make it not a clean break, however awful, suffi­cient so that he would be expected to keep going, provide lead­ership, be strong...all that easily said clichéd stuff. His mother, absent, might have survived, but she'd been killed too, in anotherattack - unrelated, it was supposed, just sheer bad luck - on theCessorian habitat in the Kuiper belt where she'd been on aRetreat for the last half year.

 He supposed he ought to be thankful that Jaal was still alive,that she had not been calling at the Winter House at the timeof the attack. Instead he had a succession of alarmed, shocked,plaintive and then numb-sounding messages from her, the lastfew pleading for him to get in touch if he could, if he was alive, if he was somewhere in Nasqueron and could hear this or readthis…

 He had been listed as missing by the Shrievalty Ocula afterthe attack on Third Fury. Officially he still was. They hadn'tbeen sure that he and Colonel Hatherence were still alive untilthey'd received her relayed signal days later, and subsequentlyhad thought it best to keep his survival a secret for the timebeing. His interview with the news service in Hauskip hadcomplicated matters - however, this was already beingdenounced as a fake even without their intervention, and adegree of confusion had ensued. Listed as missing in action, hewas still officially alive and so Chief Seer of Sept Bantrabal. That would not change for at least a year.

 The situation in Ulubis system was no less desperate and the importance of what they had been asked to do had if anythingincreased with the latest hostile actions of the Invader\Beyonders.Even as it all came through, even as the signals downloaded into the gascraft's memory, with all the codes intact, all the rout­ings displayed, he kept thinking,Maybe it's all a hoax, maybe it'sall just some terrible mistake.Even when he saw the newsscreenage of the still-smoking crater where the Winter House hadbeen, in the rolling hills of Ualtus Great Valley, he had wantedto believe it wasn't true; this was faked, all of it was faked.

 It had happened more or less at the same time as the bombard­ment of Third Fury. The tiny flash he had seen on the surfaceof 'glantine as they fell towards Nasqueron in the escaping dropship: that had been the impact, that had been the instant of theirdeaths, that had been the very second in which he became alone.The earlier Shrievalty message, slipping through before the datajam that had kept them ignorant all these days and recordingthe organisation's sympathy for his loss had been referring tothis catastrophe as well, not just to the loss of life in Third Fury.

 The wreckage of the drop ship had been found, in the upperDepths, the body of Master Technician Hervil Apsile within. Itwas as though nothing was to be left aside, nothing and nobodysaved, nothing, almost nothing, left to him. Some servants hehardly knew and a second cousin he was moderately fond of,plus an infant he couldn't even picture. And Jaal. But wouldthat - could that - ever be the same now? He liked but did notlove her, and was fairly sure she felt the same way. It wouldhave been a good match, but after this he would be different,another person altogether, even if he did return from this idiotadventure, even if there was anything to return to, even if the coming war hadn't destroyed or altered everything. And wouldher Sept want her to marry into a Sept that no longer existed?Where was the good match, the wise marriage there? Wouldeven she want to, and if she still did, would it not be out ofduty, out of sympathy, out of the feeling that their contract muststill be honoured, no matter what? What a formula for future blame and bitterness that would be.

 It was almost a comfort to realise that Jaal too would prob­ably be lost to him. It was as though he was hanging over somegreat drop, about to fall,destined to fall, and the greatest pain came from the act of still hanging on, fingers scraping, nailstearing. Let go of this one last thing to cling to, and the fallitself would at least be painless.

 He wasn't going to kill himself. It was grimly good to knowhe could do it, but he wouldn't. From a purely practical pointof view, he was fairly certain that Hatherence had followed him,using her esuit's military capabilities to hide herself from hisgascraft's senses. She'd try to stop him. It could get undigni­fied, and she might even succeed. If he really wanted to killhimself, he was sure there were easier ways. Just heading deeperinto the war zone and powering hard straight for a Dreadnoughtshould do the job.

 And it would be too easy. It would be selfish. It would bethe end to this terrible, gnawing feeling of guilt, a line drawnunder that, and he didn't think that he deserved such an easy way out. He felt guilty? So feel guilty. He had meant no harm- quite the opposite - he'd just been wrong. Feeling guilty was stupid. It was understandable, but it was stupid, just beside thepoint. They were dead and he was alive. His actions might wellhave led directly to their deaths, but he hadn't killed them.

 What was left? Revenge, maybe. Though who to blame? If itreally had been Beyonders, that made his old treachery (or prin­cipled, self-sacrificing stand, depending) look foolish somehow.He still despised the Mercatoria, hated the whole vicious,cretinous, vacuously self-important, sentience-hating system, andhe'd never had any illusions about the unalloyed niceness of theBeyonders or any other large group, or thought that a struggle against the Mercatoria would be other than prolonged, painfuland bloody. He'd always known that his own end might be painful and long-drawn-out - he would do everything he couldto make sure it wasn't, but sometimes there was just nothing you could do. He had also realised that innocents died just as filthilyand in equally great numbers in a just war as they did in an unjustone, and had known that war was to be avoided at almost allcosts just because it magnified mistakes, exaggerated errors, butstill he'd hoped there would somehow be an elegance about his involvement in the struggle against the Mercatoria, a degree ofgloriousness, a touch of the heroic.

 Instead: muddle, confusion, stupidity, insane waste, pointlesspain, misery and mass death - all the usual stuff of war, affecting him as it might affect anybody else, without any necessary moralreason, without any justice and even without any vindictive-ness, just through the ghastly, banal working-out of physics,chemistry, biochemistry, orbital mechanics and the shared natureof sentient beings existing and contending.

 Perhaps he had brought it all down upon them. Never mindadvising Slovius to get away from the Autumn House: his delve,his famous delve, the action of meeting Valseir and trading infor­mation might have produced all this. It might all be his fault.Taking all he'd been told at face value, it was.

 He tried to laugh, but the gillfluid filling his mouth and throatand lungs wouldn't let him, not properly. 'Oh, come on then,' be tried to say into the gassy skies of Nasqueron (it came out asa hopeless mumble), 'show me it's all a sim, prove theCessona's right. End run. Game over. Lift me out.'

 Still all just a mumble, a gurgling somewhere down in histhroat as he half stood, half lay there in his coffin-shaped alcovein the little hovering gascraft, poised within the gas-giant'satmosphere at a place where a human could expose themselvesto the elements and not die too quickly, if they had somethingto breathe.

 Revenge was a poor way out too, he thought through histears. It was human nature, it was creat nature, it would be inthe nature of almost any being capable of feeling angry and injured, but it was nearly as poor a way out as suicide. Self-serving, self-centred, selfish. Yes, if he was set in front ofwhoever had ordered the lobbing of a nuke at a house complex full of unarmed, unwarned civilians, he'd be tempted to killthem if he could, but it would not bring the dead back.

 He never would have the opportunity, of course - again,reality scarcely ever worked that neatly - but if, in theory, hewas presented with the chance, the fabled they're-tied-to-a-chair-and-you've-got-a-gun scenario, able to hurt or killwhoever had killed most of those he'd loved, he might do it.There was an argument that it would only make him as bad asthem, but then he knew that in a way he was already just as bad as them. The only moral reason for doing it would be torid the world, the galaxy, the universe of one self-evidently badperson. As though there would ever be a shortage, as thoughthat wouldn't just leave the same niche for another.

 And it would be a military machine, a hierarchy involvedhere, anyway. The responsibility would almost certainly diffuseout from whoever — or whatever group — had drawn up therelevant strategy through to whoever had given some probably vague order down to whoever had drawn up the general andspecific targeting criteria, on down to some schmuck grunt orthoughtless technician who'd pressed a button or tapped a screenor thought-clicked an icon floating in a holo tank. And doubt­less that individual would be a product of the usual hammer-subtle military induction and indoctrination process, breakingthe individual down and building them back up again into ausefully obedient semi-automatic asset, sentimental towardstheir closest comrades, loyal only to some cold code. And, oh,how utterly sure you would have to be that they really wereresponsible in the first place, that you weren't being fooled bywhoever had arranged all this tying-to-a-chair stuff andequipped you with a gun in the first place.

 Maybe automatics had slotted in the final target programming.Was he supposed to track down the programmer too and tie himup with whoever had given the attack-authorisation or dreamedup the whole wizzo plan for visiting Ulubis in the first place?

 If it had really been Beyonders, it might have been an AIwhich was responsible for the deed, for who-knew-what reason. Why, he'd have to find it, turn the durn thing off. Though wasn'tthe Mercatoria's murderous attitude to AIs one of the reasons he hated it so much?

 And maybe, of course, it had all been their mistake and hisfault. Perhaps they'd thought they were going to hit an emptyhouse and only his idiot advice, his meddling, had filled it withpeople. How to apportion the blame there?

 His eyes were bad now, like sand had been thrown in them.He couldn't really see anything, the tears were so thick. (Hecould still see via the collar, which was a strange experience, thetipped, clear view of the arrowhead's senses overlaid on hisbody's own.) He couldn't kill himself. He had to go on, seewhat could be done, pay tribute, try to make up, try to leavethe place even fractionally better than he'd found it, try to do whatever good he might be capable of.

 He waited for the Truth to kick in, for the sim-run to end,and when it didn't - as he'd known it wouldn't but had almost hoped it would - he felt bitter, resigned and grimly amused allat once.

 He told the little gascraft to tip back and seal him in again.The arrowhead angled backwards, closing the canopy andenveloping him once more, the shock-gel already moving to cushion and cosset him, tendrils of salve within it starting toheal and repair his flesh and soothe his weeping eyes. He thoughtthe machine did it all with something like relief, but knew thatwas a lie. The relief was his.

 'Ah, opinions differ as opinions should. Always have, do andwill. Might we have been bred? Who knows? Maybe we werepets. Perhaps professional prey. Maybe we were ornaments, palaceentertainers, whipping beings, galaxy-changing seed-machines gone wrong (these are some of our myths). Maybe our makersdisappeared, or we overthrew them (another myth - vainglorious,overly flattering - I distrust it). Maybe these makers were someproto-plasmatics ? This, must be said, a pervasive one, a tenacioustrope. Why plasmatics? Why would beings of the flux - stellaror planetary, no matter - wish to make something like us, so longago? We have no idea. Yet the rumour persists.

 'All we know is that we are here and we have been here forten billion years or more. We come and we go and we live ourlives at different rates, generally slower as we get older, as you good people have seen within these walls, but beyond that, why are we? What are we for? What is our point? We have no idea. You'll forgive me; these questions seem somehow more impor­tant when applied to us, to Dwellers, because we do seem -well, if notdesigned, certainly, as one might say,prone to persisting, given to hanging about.

 'No disrespect, do understand, but the selfsame questionsapplied to Quick, to humans or even - like-species apologies begged, dear colonel, accept - to oerileithe, have not the sameforce because you do not have our track record, our provenance,our sheer cussed, gratuitous, god-denying abidance. Whoknows? Maybe one day you will! After all, the universe is still young, for all our shared egocentricity, our handed-down certi­tude of culmination, and perhaps when the Final Chronicles arewritten by our unknowable ultimate inheritors they will record that the Dwellers lasted a mere dozen billion years or so in thefirst heady flush of the universe's infancy before they faded awayto nothing, while the oerileithe and humans, those bywords forpersistence, those doughty elongueurs, those synonyms for civil­isational endurance, lasted two and three hundred billion yearsrespectively, or whatever.Then the same questions might beasked of you: Why? What for? To what end? And - who can say! - perhaps for you, such being the case, there will be ananswer. Better yet, one that makes sense.

 'For now, though, we alone are stuck with such awkward challenges. Everybody else seems to come and go, and thatappears natural, that is to be expected, that is the given: speciesappear, develop, blossom, flourish, expand, coast, shrink andfade. Cynics would say: ha! just nature, is all - no credit toclaim, no blame to take, but I say huzzah! Good for all fortrying, for taking part, for being such sports. But we? Us? No,we're different. We seem cursed, doomed, marked out to outstayour welcome, linger in a niche that could as well fit many - yes,many! - others, making everybody else feel uncomfortable byour just still being here when by rights we should have shuf­fled off with our once-contemporaries long ago. It's an embar­rassment, I don't mind admitting. I'm amongst friends, I cansay these things. And anyway, I'm just an old mad Dweller, atramp, an itinerant, a floatful plodder from place to place,worthy of nothing but contempt and handouts, both if I'mlucky, worse if I'm not. I try your patience. Forgive me. I getto talk to so few apart from the voices I make up.'

 The speaker was an off-sequence Dweller of Cuspian agecalled Oazil. To be off-sequence was to have declared oneself -or, sometimes, to have been declared by one's peers - uninter­ested in or apart from the usual steady progression of age andseniority that Dweller society assumed its citizens would follow.It was not by itself a state of disgrace - it was often compared to a person becoming a monk or a nun - though if it had beenimposed on rather than chosen by a Dweller it was certainly asign that they might later become an Outcast, and physicallyejected from their home planet, a sanction which, given therelaxed attitude Dwellers displayed to both interstellar traveltimes and spaceship-construction quality control, was effec­tively a sentence of somewhere between several thousand yearssolitary confinement, and death.

 Oazil was an itinerant, a tramp, a wanderer. He had entirelylost contact with a family he claimed to have anyway forgottenall details of, had no real friends to speak of, belonged to noclubs, sodalities, societies, leagues or groups and had no perma­nent home.

 He lived, he'd told them, in his carapace and his clothes,which were tattered and motley but raggedly impressive, deco­rated with carefully painted panels depicting stars, planets andmoons, preserved flowers from dozens of CloudPlant speciesand the polished carbon bones and gleaming, socketed skulls of various miniature gas-giant fauna. It was a slightly larger-scaleand more feral collection of what Dwellers called life charmscompared to the sort of stuff Valseir had worn save when there was some sort of formal event to attend.

 When Fassin had first seen the Dweller tramp it had evenoccurred to him that Oazil was Valseir in disguise, come backin some attempted secrecy to taunt them all, see how they wouldtreat a poor itinerant before revealing himself as the true ownerof the house come to reclaim his lost estate. But Valseir andOazil looked quite different. Oazil was bulkier, his carapacefractionally less symmetrical, his markings less intricate, his voice far deeper and his quota of remaining vanes and limbsquite different too. Most marked of all, Oazil's carapace wasmuch darker than Valseir's. The two were of roughly similarage - Oazil would have been slightly junior to Valseir had he still been on-sequence: a Cuspian-baloan or Cuspian-nomparto Valseir's Cuspian-choal - but he looked much older, darkerand more weather-beaten, almost as dark as Jundriance, whowas ten times his age but had spent much of his life as a scholarin slow-time, not wandering the atmosphere exposed to theelements.

 Oazil towed behind him a little float-trailer - shaped like asmall Dweller and similarly bedecked - in which he carried afew changes of apparel, some sentimentally precious objects anda selection of gifts which he had made, usually carved fromOxyTreeCloud roots. He had presented one of these, shaped toresemble the bubble house itself, to Nuern, to pass on toJundriance when next he left his depths of slow academe.

 Nuern had not looked especially impressed to receive thissmall token. However, Oazil claimed that Valseir's house had been a stopping-off point for him during his peregrinations forthe last, oh, fifty or sixty thousand years or so. And there wasanyway, especially away from cities, a tradition of hospitalitytowards wanderers that it would be profoundly kudos-sacri­ficing to ignore, certainly when there were other guests aroundto witness the insult.

 'Will you stay long, sir?' Nuern asked.

 'Yes, will you?' asked Livilido.

 'Oh, no, I'll be gone tomorrow,' Oazil told the youngerDweller. 'This is, I'm sure, a fine house still, though of course Iam sorry to hear that my old friend is no more. However, Ibecome awkward when I spend too long in one place, and houses,though not as terrifying to me as cities, provoke in me a kind ofrestlessness. I cannot wait to be away when I am near a house,no matter how pleasant its aspect or welcoming the hosts.'

 They were outside on one of the many balconies girdling thehouse living spaces. They had originally convened for a morningmeal to welcome Oazil in the net-hung dining space. But theold Dweller had seemed uncomfortable from the start, edgy and a-twitch, and before the first course was over he had asked, embarrassed and plaintive, if he might dine outside, perhaps beyond a window they would open so that they could stillconverse face to face. He suffered from a kind of claustrophobiabrought on by countless millennia spent wandering the vast unceilinged skies, and felt uncomfortable enclosed like this.Nuern and Livilido had swiftly ordered their younger servantsto strike table and set the meal up on the nearest balcony.

 They'd all gone outside, and - after voluminous apologies forseeming to force his will upon them - Oazil had settled down,enjoyed his meal, and, subsequent to sampling some aura-grainsand timbre-trace from the narcotics in the table's centrepiece -modelled on a globular university city - he had relaxed suffi­ciently to share with them all his thoughts on Dweller origins. It was a favourite after-meal topic with Dwellers, and so onethere was effectively nothing original to say concerning, though,to give Oazil some credit, the subject had been his academicspeciality before he'd slipped the moorings of scholastic life andset float upon the high skies of wander.

 Hatherence asked the old Dweller his thoughts on whetherhis species had always been unable to experience pain, or hadhad this bred out of them.

 'Ah! If we only knew! I am fascinated that you ask the ques­tion, for it is one that I believe is of the utmost importance inthe determining of what our species really means in theuniverse…'

 Fassin, resting lightly in a cushioned dent across the cere­monial table from the old wanderer, found his attention slip­ping. It seemed to do this a lot now. Perhaps a dozen Nasquerondays had elapsed since the news of the Winter House's destruc­tion. He had spent almost all that time in the various libraries,searching for anything that might lead to their goal, the (tohim, at least) increasingly mythical-seeming third volume ofthe work that he had taken from here over two hundred yearsago and which had, supposedly, led to so much that hadhappened since. He looked, he searched, he trawled and combedand scanned, but so often, even when it seemed to him that he was concentrating fully, he'd find that he'd spent the last fewminutes just staring into space, seeing in his mind's eye some aspect of the Sept and family life that was now gone, recalling an inconsequential conversation from decades ago, some at-the-time so-what? exchange that he would not have believed he'd ever have remembered, let alone have found brought to mind now, when they were all gone and he was in such a farand different place.

 He felt the welling of tears in his eyes sometimes. The shock-gel drew them gently away.

 Sometimes he thought again of suicide, and found himselflonging, as though for a lost love or a treasured, vanished age,for the will, the desire, the sheer determination to end thingsthat would have made killing himself a realistic possibility.Instead, suicide seemed as pointless and futile as everything elsein life. You needed desire, the desire for death, to kill yourself.When you seemed to have no desire, no emotions or drives ofany sort left - just their shadows, habits - killing oneself becameas impossible as falling in love.

 He looked up from the books and scrolls, the fiches and crys­tals, the etched diamond leaf and glowing screens and holos,and wondered what the point of anything was. He knew the standard answers, of course: people - all species, all species-types - wanted to live, wanted comfort, to be free from threat,needed energy in some form - whether it was as direct asabsorbed sunlight or as at-a-remove as meat - desired toprocreate, were curious, wanted enlightenment or fame and\or success and\or any of the many forms of prosperity, but - ulti­mately - to what end? People died. Even the immortal died.Gods died.

 Some had faith, religious belief, even in this prodigiously,rampantly physically self-sufficient age, even in the midst ofthis universal, abundant clarity of godlessness and godlack, but such people seemed, in his experience, no less prone to despair,and their faith a liability even in its renunciation, just one morething to lose and mourn.

 People went on, they lived and struggled and insisted onliving even in hopelessness and pain, desperate not to die, tocling to life regardless, as if it was the most precious thing, whenall it had ever brought them, was bringing them and ever wouldbring them was more hopelessness, more pain.

 Everybody seemed to live as though things were always justabout to get better, as though any bad times were just about toend, any time now, but they were usually wrong. Life groundon. Sometimes to the good, but often towards ill and always inthe direction of death. Yet people acted as though death was just the biggest surprise - My, who put that there? Maybe thatwas the right way to treat it, of course. Maybe the sensible atti­tude was to act as though there had been nothing before onecame to consciousness, and nothing would exist after one'sdeath, as though the whole universe was built around one's ownindividual awareness. It was a working hypothesis, a useful half-truth.

 But did that mean that the urge to live was the result of somesort of illusion? Was the reality, in fact, that nothing matteredand people were fools to think that anything did? Were the choices either despair, the rejection of reason for some idiotfaith, or a sort of defensive solipsism?

 Valseir might have had something useful to say on the matter,Fassin thought. But then, he was dead too.

 He looked at Oazil and wondered if this self-proclaimedwanderer really had known the dead Cuspian whose house thishad been. Or was he just a chancer, a blow-hard, a fantasist andliar?

 Thinking like this, circling round his studied despair, Fassin only half-listened to the old Dweller with his theories aboutgas-giant fauna development and his tales of wandering.

 Oazil told how once he had circumnavigated the SouthTropical Band without seeing another Dweller in all thosehundred and forty thousand kilometres, how he had once fallen in with a gang of Adolescent Sculpture Pirates, semi-renegadeswho seeded public RootCloud and AmmoniaSluice forests, himbecoming their figurehead, mascot, totem, and how, manymillennia ago in the little-travelled wastes of the Southern PolarRegion,  he had wandered into  a vast warren of emptyCloudTunnel. (The work of a troop of rogue Tunnel-buildingmachines since disappeared? An artwork? The lost prototypefor a new kind of city? He didn't know - nobody had everheard of this place, this thing.) He was lost inside this vast tree,this giant lung, this colossal root system of a labyrinth for athousand years, exiting eleven-twelfths starved and nearly mad.He had reported the find and people had looked for it but ithad never been found again. Most people thought he'd imag­ined it all, but he had not.They believed him, did they not?

 The tapping noise was there again. He had been vaguely awareof it but had ignored it, not even getting as far as dismissing itas some function of the house's plumbing or differential expan­sion or reaction to some brief current in the surrounding gas.It had stopped after a while - he had half-noticed that, too,though still thought no more about it. Now it was there again,and slightly louder.

 Fassin was in Library Three, one of the inner libraries, speed-reading through the contents of a sub-library that Valseirappeared to have picked up as part of a job lot untold ages ago.From the earliest date that anybody had bothered to note, thisstuff had been lying around uncalled-up and unread for thirtymillennia, dating from an era several different species of SlowSeers ago, long before humans had come to Ulubis. Fassin suspected this was traded material, data - second-hand, third-hand, who knew how many-hand - dredged from who knew where, possibly auto-translated (it certainly read like it when­ever he dipped into the text itself, to make sure that the contentswere what the abstracts claimed), bundled and presented andhanded over to the Dwellers of Nasqueron by some long-super­seded (possibly even long-extinct) species of Seer in return for- presumably - still older information. He wondered at whatpoint most of the data the Dwellers held would become tradeddata, and if that point had already been reached. He was notthe first Seer to think of this and, thanks to the absolute opaque­ness of the Dwellers' records, he would certainly not be the last.

 The volumes he was checking were mostly composed ofstories concerning the romantic adventures and philosophicalmusings of some group of Stellar Field Liners, though they wereeither much-translated or the work of not just another species but another species-type altogether. They seemed fanciful,anyway.

 The tapping wasn't going to go away.

 He looked up from the screen to the round skylight set inthe ceiling. Library Three, though now surrounded andsurmounted by other spheres, had once been on the upperoutskirts of the house and had a generous expanse of diamond leaf at its crown, though nowadays - even had the house beensituated in less gloomy regions - it would let in little naturallight.

 There was something small and pale out there. When Fassinlooked up the tapping stopped and the thing waved. It looked like a Dweller infant, a pet-child. Fassin watched it waving for a while, then went back to the screen and the not especiallyfeasible exploits of the S'Liners. The tapping started again. Hefelt himself attempt to sigh inside his little gascraft. He stoppedthe screen scroll and lifted out of the dent-seat, rising to thecentre of the ceiling.

 It was indeed a Dweller child: a rather elongated, deformed-looking one, to human eyes more like a squid than a manta ray.It was dressed in rags and decorated with a few pathetic-lookinglife charms. Fassin had never seen an infant wearing clothes ordecorations. It was oddly, maturely dark for one so young. Itpointed in at what looked like some sort of catch or lock onthe side of one of the skylight's hexagonal panes.

 Fassin looked at the curious infant for a while. It kept pointingat the catch. There had been no sign of pet-children round thehouse in all the time they'd been here. This one looked entirelylike it might belong to Oazil, but he had not displayed anyearlier, and hadn't mentioned owning one. The child was stillindicating the pane's lock. It started to mime pressing andtwisting and pulling motions.

 Fassin opened the pane and let the creature in. It flippedinside, made a sign that was probably meant to be the Dwellerequivalent of 'Shh!' and floated towards him, curling andcupping its body so that it formed a sickle shape, just a metre away from the prow of the arrowhead craft. Then, on its signal skin, now shielded from sight in all directions save that Fassinwas watching from, it spelled out,

 OAZIL: MEET ME 2KM STRAIGHT DOWN, HOUR 5.RE. VALSEIR.

 It waited till he light-signalled back OK, then it sped out the way it had come, one slim tentacle staying behind after the restof it had exited just long enough to pull the ceiling pane shut after it. It disappeared into the night-time gloom between the dark library globes outside.

 Fassin looked at the time. Just before hour Four. He went back to his studies, finding nothing, thinking about nothing,until just before five, when he went back to Library Twenty-One and slipped out through the secret doorway again. He dropped the two thousand metres down through the slowlyincreasing heat and pressure and met the old Dweller Oazil,complete with his float-trailer. Oazil signalled,

 -  Fassin Taak?
-Yes.

 -  What did Valseir once compare the Quick to? In somedetail, if you please.

 -  Why?

 The old Dweller sent nothing for some time, then, - Youmight guess, little one. Or do this just because I ask. To humouran old Dweller.

 Fassin waited a while before answering. - Clouds, he sent,eventually. - Clouds above one of our worlds. We come andwe go and we are as nothing compared to the landscape beneath, just vapour compared to implacable rock, which lasts seeminglybeyond lasting and is always there long after the clouds of the day or the clouds of the season have long gone, and yet other clouds will always be there, the next day and the next and thenext, and the next season and the next year and for as long asthe mountains themselves last, and the wind and the rain wearaway mountains in time.

 -  Hmm, Oazil sent, sounding distracted. - Mountains.
Curious idea. I have never seen a mountain.

 -  Nor ever will, I imagine. Do you want me to add any more?
I don't think I recall much else.

 -  No, that will not be necessary.

 -  Then?

 -  Valseir is alive, the old Dweller said. - He sends his regards.

 -  Alive?

 -  There is a GasClipper regatta at the C-2 Storm Ultra-Violet3667, beginning in seventeen days' time.

 -  That's in the war zone, isn't it?

 -  The tournament was arranged long before the hostilitieswere first mooted and so has been cleared with the Formal WarMarshals. A special dispensation. Be there, Fassin Taak. He willfind you.

 The old Dweller roted forward a metre, taking up the slackon the float-trailer's traces. - Farewell, Seer Taak, he signalled.- Remember me to our mutual friend, if you'd be so kind.

 He turned and floated away into the deep hot darkness. Ina few moments he was lost to most passive senses. Fassin waiteduntil there was no sign of him at all, then rose slowly back upto the house.

 'Ah, Fassin, I understand commiserations are in order,' Y'sulsaid, floating up to the bubble house's reception balcony fromthePoaflias. Nuern, Fassin and Hatherence had watched theship motor out of the dim haze, hearing its engines long before they'd seen it.

 'Your sympathy is noted,' Fassin told Y'sul. He'd gotHatherence to call thePoaflias the day before and order it backfrom its hunting patrol. The little ship returned with a modestnumber of trophies strung from its rigging: various julmickerbladders, bobbing like grisly balloons on sticks, three gas-dryingRootHugger hides, the heads of a brace of gracile Tumblerines and - patently the most prized, mounted above the craft's nose- a Dweller Child carcass, already gutted and stretched wide ona frame so that it looked like some slightly grotesque figure­head, flying just ahead of the ship. Fassin had sensed thecolonel's esuit rolling fractionally back when she'd realised whatthe new addition to thePoaflias's nose actually was.

 'What is your state of mind, Fassin, now that you have lostso many of your family?' Y'sul asked, coming to a stop in frontof the Seer. 'Are you decided to return to your own people?'

 'My state of mind is...calm. I may still be in shock, Isuppose.'

 'Shock?'

 'Look it up. I have not decided to return to my own peopleyet. There are almost none to return to. We are, however,finished here. I wish to return to Munueyn.'

 He'd told the colonel that morning that he'd discoveredsomething and they needed to leave.

 'What have you discovered, major? May I see it?''I'll tell you later.'

 'I see. So where next are we bound?''Back to Munueyn,' he'd lied.

 'Munueyn? Our captain will be pleased,' Y'sul said.

 They left that evening. Nuern and Livilido seemed relaxed,positively cheered, that they were departing. Y'sul had returnedwith news of the war, in which two important Dreadnought actions had already taken place, resulting, in one engagementalone, in the loss of five Dreadnoughts and nearly a hundred deaths. The Zone forces were retreating in two volumes at leastand the Belt certainly had the upper grasp at the moment.

 Fassin and Hatherence recorded short messages of gratitudefor Jundriance to read at his leisure.

 Nuern asked them if they wanted to take any of the books or other works from the house.

 'No, thank you,' Fassin said.

 'I found this humorous thesaurus,' the colonel said, holdingup a small diamond-leaf book. 'I'd like this.'

 'Be our guest,' Nuern told her. 'Anything else? Diamond-based works like that will burn up in a few decades when thehouse has dropped further into the heat. Take all you want.'

 'Over-kind. This alone is most sufficient.'

 'The GasClipper regatta?' Captain Slyne said. He scratched hismantle. 'I thought you wanted to go back to Munueyn?'

 'There was no reason to let our hosts know where we were really heading,' Fassin told Slyne.

 'You are suspicious of them?' Y'sul asked.

 'Just no reason to trust them,' Fassin said.

 'The regatta takes place around the Storm Ultra-Violet 3667,between Zone C and Belt 2,' the colonel said. 'Starting in sixteendays. Have we time to get there, captain?'

 They were in Slyne's cabin, a fairly grand affair of flickering wall-screens and antique furniture, the ceiling hung with ancientordnance: guns, blaster tubes and crossbows all swaying gentlyas thePoaflias powered away at half-throttle from Valseir's old house. So far Fassin had told Hatherence where they were reallygoing, though not why.

 Slyne let himself tilt, looking as though he was about to fall over. He did some more mantle scratching. ‘Ithink so. I'd betterchange course, then.'

 'Leave the course change for a little longer, would you?'Fassin asked. They were only a half-hour away from the bubblehouse. 'Though you might go to full speed.'

 'Have to anyway, if we're to get to that Storm in time,' Slyne said, turning and manipulating a holo cube floating over hishalo-shaped desk. The largest screen, just in front of him, lit upwith a chart of the volume and quickly became covered in gentlycurved lines and scrolling figure boxes. Slyne peered at thisdisplay for a few moments, then announced: 'Full speed, we canbe there in eighteen days. Best I can do.' Slyne gripped a large,polished-looking handle sitting prominently on his desk andpushed it, with a degree of obvious relish, if also a little embar­rassment, to its limit. The tone of the ship's engines altered and the vessel began to accelerate gradually.

 'We might contact Munueyn and hire a faster ship,' Y'sul suggested. 'Have it rendezvous with thePoaflias en route andtransfer to it.'

 Slyne rocked back, staring at the older Dweller with patternsof betrayal and horror (non-mild) spreading across his signalskin.

 'Eighteen days will have to do, captain,' Fassin told Slyne. 'Idon't think we need be there for the very start of the tourna­ment.'

 'How long do these competitions last, in generality?'Hatherence asked.

 Slyne tore his gaze from an unconcerned-looking Y'sul andsaid, 'Ten or twelve days, usually. They might cut this one alittle short because of the War. We'll be there in time for mostof it.'

 'Good,' Fassin said. 'Stay on your current course for anotherhalf-hour, if you please, captain. Turn for the Storm then.' Slyne looked happier. 'Consider it done.'

 Slyne took advantage of a WindRiver, a brief-lived ribbon ofstill faster current within the vast, wide jet stream of the wholerotating Zone, and they made good time. They were challenged twice by war craft but allowed to continue on their way, andslipped through a mine net, a wall of dark lace thrown acrossthe sky, dotted with warheads. Dreadnought-catcher, nothingto worry them, Slyne assured them. They had, oh, tens of metresto spare on almost every side.

 The screwbursterPoaflias got to very near the bottom of the

 Storm called Ultra-Violet 3667 within sixteen days, arrivingmore or less as the regatta began.

 'Keep clipped on! Could get a bit rough!' Y'sul yelled, thenrepeated the warning as a signal, in case they hadn't heard.

 Fassin and Hatherence had come up on deck when thePoafliashad started bucking and heaving even more than usual.The gas around them, darker even than it had been at Valseir'shouse,though less dense and hot, was fairly shrieking through theship's vestigial rigging. Ribbons and streaks, just seen coilingbriefly round the whole vessel, were then torn away again as theship plunged into another great boiling mass of cloud.

 The human and the oerileithe, still within the relative calmness ofthe companionway shelter, exchanged glances, then quickly put thecrude-looking harnesses on. The colonel's fitted well over her esuit. Fassin's-tied tight enough but looked messy, not designedforhis alien shape. Slyne had insisted that everybody should wear thethings whenever they went on deck while thePoaflias was atfull speed, even though both Hatherence and Fassin - in theunlikely event that they were somehow blown off the deck - couldeasily have caught up with the ship under their own power.

 'What's going on?' Hatherence shouted as they neared Y'sul,clinging to the rails near the bow harpoon gun.'Going to shoot the storm!' Y'sul bellowed back. 'That sounds dangerous!' Hatherence yelled.'Oh, assuredly!'

 'So, what does it entail, exactly?'

 'Punching through the storm wall,' Y'sul shouted. 'Tacklingthe rim winds. Should be spectacular!' Ahead, a great dark wallof tearing, whirling cloud could be glimpsed beyond the tatters and scraps of gas that the ship was stabbing its way through.Jagged lines of lightning pulsed across this vast cliff like veinsof quicksilver.

 They were still making maximum speed towards the wall,which seemed to stretch as far to each side as they could see,and up for ever. Downwards was a more swirling mass of evendarker gas, boiling like something cooking in a cauldron. Thewind picked up, thrumming the rails and rigging and aerials likean enormous instrument. ThePoaflias shuddered and buzzed. 'Time to get below, suspect,' Hatherence shouted.A julmicker bladder blew off a nearby railing - it looked likeit had been the last one left - smacked Y'sul across his starboardside and was instantly lost to the shrieking gale. 'Could be,' Y'sul agreed. 'After you.'

 They watched from the ship's armoured storm deck, crowdedin with Slyne beneath a blister of thick diamond set at midships,looking out across the deck and watching thePoaflias's nose plunge into the storm like a torpedo thrown at ahorizontalwaterfall of ink. The ship groaned, started to spin, and theywere all thrown against each other. They disappeared into thewall of darkness. ThePoaflias shook and leapt like a Dwellerchild on the end of a harpoon line.

 Slyne whooped, pulling on levers and whirling wheels. Stuckin the far reaches of the ovaloid space, Slyne's pet-childrenwhimpered.

 'This entirely necessary?' Fassin asked Y'sul.'Doubt it!' the Dweller said. A big flat board covered in studsabove Slyne started to light up. In the darkness, it was quitebright..

 Hatherence pointed at it as dozens more of the studs lit. 'What's that?'

 'Damage-control indicators!' Slyne said, still working leversand spinning wheels. They all rose to the ceiling as the shipdropped sharply, then crashed back down again.

 'Thought it might be,' Hatherence said. She was thrown hardagainst Fassin in a violent turn, and apologised.

 When the glare started to get too distracting, Slyne turnedthe damage-control board off.

 In the worst of the turbulence, one of Slyne's pet-childrenthrew itself at its master and had to be torn off and smackedunconscious before being thrown into a locker. It was unclear whether it had been desperately seeking comfort or attacking.Y'sul was sick. Fassin had never seen a Dweller be sick. Stuck to the ceiling again, coated in a greasy film of vomit,Slyne cursing as he tried to keep hold of the controls, his pet-children keening from all sides, somebody mumbled, 'Fuck, we're going to die.' They all denied responsibility afterwards.ThePoaflias burst out of the torrent of storm cloud into avast and hazy calm and started to drop like a lump of iron. Slyne drew in gas to whoop but caught some of Y'sul's earlier output and just spluttered. Coughing and retching and cursingY'sul's lineage to some point only shortly after the Big Bang,he got the ship level and under control, contacted RegattaControl and limped - the ship had lost all its rigging, railings and four of its six engines - to the Lower Marina and a berthin a Storm Repair Facility.

 Looking up, into the colossal bowl of the circling storm and on into the haze and the star-specked sky beyond, tiny shapescould be seen, slow-circling against the brassy glare of light.

 -The pick-up fleet and relaying craft are all in orbit, Hatherencetold him.

 They were in a steep-pitched, multi-tiered viewing gallerypacked with Dwellers. Protected by carbon ribs ready to be explo­sively deployed should a competition craft come too close - andattached to theDzunda, a klick-long Blimper riding just insidethe storm-wall boundary - the gallery was a relatively safe placeto watch GasClipper races. Giant banner screens could scroll upon either side of the fan of dent-seats to provide highlights of other races and relay events too distant to witness directly.

 -   The pick-upfleet? Fassin asked.

 -   That is as it was described to me, Hatherence said, settling into her seat alongside his. Dwellers around them were staringat them, seemingly fascinated by their alienness. Y'sul had goneoff to meet an old friend. While he was with them, Dwellersonly glanced at Fassin and Hatherence now and again. With him gone, they stared shamelessly. They had both got used toit, and Fassin was confident that, if Valseir was here and lookingfor him, he wouldn't have too difficult a job finding him.

 -   How big a fleet? Fassin asked.

 -   Not sure.

 There were hundreds of accommodation and spectatorBlimpers within the storm's vast eye, scores of competingGasClippers and support vessels, plus dozens of media andancillary craft, not to mention a ceremonial - and War-neutral

 —Dreadnought, thePuisiel. This was decked out with multi­-tudinous bunting, lines of ancient signal flags and festoons of
Dweller-size BalloonFlowers, just so that there'd be no possi-bility of anyone mistaking it for a Dreadnought taking part inthe greater and fractionally more serious competition taking
place beyond the Storm.

 The side screens lit up and they watched some early actionfrom a race which had taken place the day before. Around them,a thousand Dwellers hooted and roared and laughed, threwfood, made spoken kudos bets that they would later deny orinflate accordingly, and traded insults.

 -   Any other news from outside? Fassin asked.

 -   Our orders remain as they were. There have been moresemi-random attacks throughout the system. Nothing on thesame scale as the assaults on the Seer assets earlier. The defen-sive preparations continue apace. Manufacturers continue tomake heroic efforts. The people continue to make great butwilling sacrifice. Morale remains most high. Though, unoffi­cially, people would seem to be growing more frightened. Somerioting. Deep-space monitors have picked up still ambiguoustraces of a great fleet approaching from the direction of theE-5 Disconnect.

 -  How great?

 -  Great enough to be bad.

 -  Much rioting?

 -  Not much rioting.

 The Blimper powered up, distantly revving its engines. Aragged cheer resounded around them as the Dwellers realisedthings were about to start happening.

 -  Well, major, the colonel sent, signal strength low in the clat-tering hubbub of noise. - We are finally off the shipPoaflias,we are alone, I think it unlikely we can be overheard, and I have built up an extravagant desire to know quite why we are here.Unless you have, in the course, perhaps, of your studies, discov- ered that you are an insatiable fan of GasClippering.

 -  According to Oazil, Valseir is alive.

 The colonel was silent for a while. Then she sent, - You tellme so, do you?

 -  Of course, Oazil may be mad or deluded or a fantasist orjust a mischief-maker, but from what he said he knew Valseir, or had at least been instructed by Valseir on what to ask me to make sure I really was who I claimed to be.

 -  I see. So, his turning up at the house was not chance?

 -  I suspect he'd been keeping a watch on it. Or somebody
had, waiting for us - for me - to turn up.

 -  And he told you to come here?

 -  He did.

 -  And then?

 -  Valseir will find me.

 Another cheer went up as theDzunda began to pick up speed, becoming part of a small fleet of similar spectator craft flockingthrough the gas towards the starting grid of GasClippersarranged a couple of kilometres ahead. This would be a shortrace, only lasting an hour or so, with turns around buoys setin the Storm Wall. The races would grow longer and more gruelling as the meet progressed, culminating in a last epicstruggle all the way round the vast storm's inner surface.

 -  So Valseir knew you were or might be looking for him,
and had put in place arrangements to... Hmm. That is inter­-esting. Any contact so far?

 -   Not yet. But now you know why we're here.

 -   You will keep me informed?

 -  Yes. Though you will understand if I have to go off bymyself at some point, I hope. Your presence might make Valseir,or whoever, nervous.

 The Blimper picked up more speed, still heading towards thestorm-inward side of the starting grid. The slipstream startedto blow away balloons and trays not secured.

 -   Nervous? You think this is all that . . . serious?

 -   What do you think?

 -  I think Oazil is probably one or several of the things youthought he might be. However, we are here now and if he wastelling the truth no doubt you will be contacted. Of course, theother possibility is that we might have been getting close tosomething of interest back at Valseir's house and this was simplya method of getting us out of the way. What exactly did Oazil say to you?

 Fassin had kept a record of the conversation he'd had withthe wandering Dweller, deep beneath the house. He signalled itacross to Hatherence.

 The fleet of spectator craft passed by the starting grid like anunruly flock of fat birds. Another great cheer sounded. The GasClippers stayed on the starting plane, awaiting their ownsignal.

 -  Still, little enough to go on, major, Hatherence told him. -You should have shared this with me earlier and let me decideon the correct course of action. I may have been overly indul-gent with you. Your loss is still something I appreciate, of course.However, I fear I might have been guilty of dereliction.

 -  I won't report you if you don't, Fassin sent, withouthumour.

 The GasClippers - the larger, plural-crewed versions of thesingle-Dweller StormJammers - were sharp, angular-lookingthings, all jag-sails, keel-lode and high-gallants. Fifty metres long- fifty metres in most directions - bristling with glittering sailslike enormous blades, they looked like the result of some monstrous permanent magnet being thrown into a hopper fullof exotic edged weapons. Pennant sails carried identifyingmarks, little flowers of colour within the silvery blades, all brightbeneath the glittering point of light that was Ulubis.

 It was not possible to sail in a single medium. True sailingrequired a keel (or something like one) in one medium, and sails(or something like them) in another. In a single great stream ofgas, you could not sail: you flew. On the edges of two streams,the boundary between a zone moving in one direction and abelt moving in the other, you could, in theory, sail, if you couldbuild a ship big enough. The Dwellers had tried to build shipson that scale that would stay together. They had failed.

 Instead, StormJammers and GasClippers exploited the titanicmagnetic fields that most gas-giant planets possessed. Flux lines were their water, the place where their steadying keels lay. Witha colossal magnetic field trying to move them along one course and the planet-girdling atmospheric bands of a Dweller-inhab­ited gas-giant expecting them to move along with everythingelse in a quite different direction, the possibility of sailing arose.And by sailing with sails dipped into the inside edges of giantstorm systems, the sport could be made satisfactorily dangerous.

 -   We must hope that this was not a ruse to get us away fromthe house, the colonel told Fassin. - And we must hope thatValseir will indeed contact you. If he is alive. We were given no hint that such might be the case. She looked at him. - Were we?

 -   None.

 Almost the entire fleet of spectator craft had passed thestarting grid. The GasClippers shook as one, then - bewilder­ingly quickly, when one knew they had no proper engines -they swung away towards the massive wall of dark, tearing cloudthat was the inner limit of the great storm, peeling and jostling,weaving and carving through the gas as they fought for posi­tion, using the light breezes and simple gaseous inertia of themedium to allow them to steer while they rode their lines of force towards the storm wall.

 -  They never did find a body, though. This is right?Hatherence asked.

 -  That's right, Fassin told her. - Lost in a squall that couldtear apart a StormJammer he wouldn't have had much of achance, but he might have lived.

 -  Yet there is no...water or the like? They cannot drown,and it is not too cold or hot. How do they die, just in a strongwind?

 -  Ripped apart, spun until they lose consciousness and then justwhirled round too fast to hold together. Or left in a comathatmeans they do drop into the Depths. And they do need tobreathe. If the pressure is too low, they can't.

 -  Hmm.

 The GasClippers swung at the storm's inner surface, halfdisappearing as their extending blade-sails cut into the stream of gas. They accelerated hard. Even with their head start andtheir bellowing engines labouring, even taking a shorter, inner-curve route, the spectator craft began to lose ground to the smallfleet of speeding GasClippers.

 -  It is possible that Valseir somehow arranged the accident? the Colonel asked.

 -  Possible. He might have arranged to have some friend, someaccomplice nearby, to rescue him. It would make surviving likelyrather than not.

 -  Do Dwellers often fake their own deaths?

 -  Almost never.

 -  So I thought.

 The group of GasClippers was level with the centre of thegreater fleet of spectator ships and the shouting and hollering in the spectator craft rose still further in pitch and volume asthe whole mass of GasClippers and their accompanyingsquadrons of Blimpers and ancillary vessels seemed to move briefly as one, the dark storm wall a vertical sea, troubled and tattered, tearing past in front of them. A vast slanting band ofshade rose up to meet them all as they moved into the shadow of the storm, the hazy point of Ulubis eclipsed by a roaring circlet of dementedly gyrating gas a hundred klicks high andten thousand kilometres across.

 'Fassin. Made any bets yet?' Y'sul said, settling into his dent-seat alongside. A pet-child in a waiter's uniform floated with atray at his side, held back until the older Dweller settled into his seat, then left the tray with its drug paraphernalia clipped to the seat and retreated.

 'No. I'd be relying on your kudos, wouldn't I?'

 'Oh! I suppose you would,' Y'sul agreed, apparently onlynow thinking this through. 'Obviously I must trust you subcon­sciously. Most odd.' He flipped to one side and startedrummaging through the various drug works he'd brought back.

 'How was your friend?' Hatherence asked him.

 'Oh, in very good spirits,' Y'sul said, not looking at her.'Father died yesterday in action. Stands to inherit kudos pointsfor bravery or something.' He kept on rummaging. 'Sworn Igot some FeverBrain . . .'

 'Good to know he's taking it so well,' Fassin said.

 'Ah! Here we are,' Y'sul said, holding up a large bright orangecapsule to take a good look at it. 'Oh yes, Fassin: bumped intosome youngster who claimed to know you. Gave me this.' Y'suldug into a pocket in his forebritch and came out with a tinyimage-leaf, passing it to Fassin.

 The human held it in one of the gascraft's fine-scale manip­ulators and looked at the photograph. It was of white cloudsin a blue sky.

 'Yes, colour's all wrong, obviously,' Y'sul commented.'Couldn't help noticing.'

 Fassin was aware of the colonel looking at the image too. Shesat back, silent.

 'Did this person who claimed to know me actually sayanything?' Fassin asked.

 'Eh?' Y'sul said, still studying the finger-sized orange lozenge.'Oh, yes. Said to take good care of that thing, and that they'llbe in the stern viewing-gallery restaurant if you wanted to seethem. Alone, they said. Bit rude, I thought. Very young, though.Almost expect that.'

 'Well, thanks,' Fassin said.

 'Nothing,' Y'sul said with a wave. He popped the giant pill.

 -   With your permission, colonel, Fassin sent to Hatherence.

 -   Granted. Take care.

 'Excuse me,' Fassin said as he rose from his dent-seat. Y'suldidn't hear; two of the leading GasClippers were having a privateduel, swerving dangerously close, weaving in and out of eachother's course, trying to tangle field lines, steal wind and so eddy-wake the other into dropping behind or crashing out, andY'sul was floating high up out of his seat, shouting andwhooping with all the other spectators not yet in their ownlittle narcotic world.

 The Dweller - a youth by his simple clothing and certainlylooking at least that young — intercepted Fassin on the broadcentral corridor of theDzunda, falling into pace with him ashe made his way towards the rear of the ship. Fassin turnedfractionally towards his sudden companion, kept on going.

 'Seer Taak?' the youth said.

 'Yes.'

 'Would you come with me, please?'

 Fassinfollowed the young Dweller not to the stern viewingrestaurant but to a private box slung low beneath the Blimper.Thecaptain of theDzunda was there, talking to an old Dwellerwholooked to be at least early Sage in years. The captain turnedwhen Fassin and the youth entered, then - with a small bow toFassin- left with the youth, leaving Fassin alone in the round,diamond-bubble space with the aged Dweller. A few screensshowed silent views of the race. A float tray to one side carrieda large narcincenser, grey-blue smoke uncoiling from it, fillingthecabin with haze and scent.

 'Is it you, old one?'

 'I am still me, young Taak,' the familiar voice said.

 The Dweller floated up to him. If it was Valseir, he was nomore shrunken but rather more dark than the last time Fassin had seen him. He had lost all the life charms and decorationsand was dressed now in severely formal, almost monastic yellowpart-robes.

 'You have the token I sent?'

 Fassin handed over the little image-leaf. The Dweller lookedat it, rim mantle rippling in a smile. 'Yes, you still wear us away,don't you?' He handed it back. 'Take good care of that. Andso, how was Oazil? I take it he found you at the house and you're not here by coincidence.'

 'He was well. Eccentric, but well.'

 The old Dweller's smile grew, then faded. 'And the house?My libraries?'

 'They are sinking into the Depths. What's left.'

 'What's left?'

 'A bit was missing.'

 'Ah. The study'

 'What happened to it?'

 'The CloudTunnel started to get too heavy to maintain. I hadthe house decoupled. I cleared the study first. The tunnel sectionfell into the Depths.'

 'And the contents?'

 The old Dweller roted back a fraction, creating small roils ofsmoke in the haze. 'You are still testing me, aren't you, Fassin Taak? You are still not prepared to trust me that I am who youthink I am.'

 'Who do I think you are?'

 'Your - I thought - old friend, Valseir, once choal, now actinglike a Sage-child and hoping for the confirmation of my peersif I ever get to come out of hiding. Do you think I will everget to come out of hiding, Seer Taak?'

 'That depends.' Beyond the old Dweller, the GasClipper racecontinued, well ahead of the labouring Blimper. Screens relayingsignals from camera jets showed the action in close-up. The sounds of distant cheers came through the open diamond-panewindows of the private box. 'Why did you go into hiding?'

 The Dweller switched to signal-whispering. - Because Ithought to skim through what I'd traded you for the Expressionist paintings you had brought. I read a certain noteat the end of a certain volume. Which reminds me that I mustapologise. It was not my intention to seem to fob you off withthree different translations of the same volume instead of allthree parts of the one work. However, read that note I did, andcame to the conclusion that what was being referred to was thesort of information that people die for, and most certainly willkill for. I decided to disappear. I became dead.

 'Sorry I doubted you, Valseir,' Fassin said, moving forwardand holding out two manipulators towards the old Dweller.

 'Suspicious to the last,' sighed Valseir, ignoring the left manip­ulator and shaking the right with his own extended right hub-arm. 'There; how humans greet. Are you satisfiednow, SeerTaak?'

 Fassin smiled. 'Entirely. Good to see you again.'

 - You must feel emotional pain, then. I feel sorry for you.

 -I am trying not to feel too sorry for myself. Which is helpedby getting on with what needs to be done.

 Fassin had told Valseir about the attacks on Third Fury andSept Bantrabal. Valseir had related his life since they had lastmet, a time dominated by the Dweller List in a way that evenFassin's hadn't been until recently. Most of that period he had spent in hiding, after arranging what looked like his own deathwith the help of Xessife, the Dweller captain whom Fassin hadseen briefly earlier. He was an old StormSailor, a Jammerhandand Clipperine with a collection of trophies and medals thatoutweighed him. Retired now, pursuing a more contemplative course, content to take charge of a Blimper now and again justto stay part of the whole StormSailing scene.

 -  And what needs to be done, Seer Taak?

 -  I think we need to find that third volume. Do you still haveit?

 -  I do not. However, it is not the third volume itself that is
of consequence in this matter.

 -  Then what is?

 -  A note, a brief appendix.

 -  Do you havethat?
- No.

 -  Do you know where it is?

 - No.

 -   Then we may all, to use a human term, be fucked.

 -   I do know the direction it went in.

 -   That could help.

 -    You agree that it may be that important? That we may allbe 'fucked' without it?

 -   Oh, we may very well all be thoroughly fuckedwith it,but without it, while people think this thing exists, they will doterrible things to anybody who gets in their way or isn't beingwhat they regard as a hundred per cent helpful. My minder here, an oerileithe Ocula colonel, tells me there's a fleet of
Mercatoria warships over Nasqueron. The excuse is they're hereto help pick up me and her, but I think they might have another purpose.

 -   Military intervention?

 -   The instant they think there might be a firm lead towardsthe List.

 -   Well, we must try not to furnish them with one. I mustalso try not to furnish my fellow Dwellers with an excuse forregarding me as the most terrible traitor for even thinking ofpassing on anything to do with the thing in question to alienpowers, even if my own studies and those of many others indi-cate that the data being sought is hopelessly out of date or a
fantasy, or both. However, I do need to tell somebody which direction to point in, or I may have to stay dead for ever.

 -   Fate seems to dictate that it's me you tell. Where do I go?

 -   Ah. Now then. I must explain. When I realised what wasbeing referred to in the note in the first volume, I naturallylooked for volume three. Well, at least I did so after spending some days in a state of horror and rage, realising that throughno fault of my own - save the usually harmless hobby of biblio-philia - I had potentially unleashed something capable ofdestroying much, starting with my own quite happy and contentlife. This episode over, I devoted myself to my search and discov­ered the volume eventually. I have never had such cause to cursemy own lackadaisical approach to cataloguing. The relevantpiece was in the form of a separate folder attached within the appendices. I myself took the original of the folder to a friendand fellow collector in the city of Deilte, in the South Polar Region, contained within a safekeep box which I asked him tolook after for me, and not to open. In the event of my death,he was to hand the safekeep box on to somebody he in turnwould trust not to open the box. A family member or someother trusted person would appear in due course carrying animage-leaf with a particular image in it. The one you now carry. They were to be given the box.

 -  So would your friend in Deilte have known of your death?
I didn't.

 -  Perhaps, perhaps not. He is an antiquarian data-collectorlike myself, but a recluse. He may have heard through mutualacquaintances.

 -  Right, Fassin sent. - So I must make for Deilte. What was your friend's name?

 -  Chimilinith.

 The name was barely out of Valseir's signal pit when Fassinregistered a neutrino burst.

 -  Any particular part of Deilte? he asked, starting to lookround in more detail.

 -  Chimilinith tended to move his house around. But I imaginethe locals will know of him.

 -  Okay. So, did you take a look at this data? What did itlook like?

 The diamond-bubble private box was nearly empty: just the two of them, the float-tray and bowl - he'd scanned them auto­matically when he'd entered and they were just what theyappeared to be, no more - and the screens, which also seemedperfectly standard. Who'd be using neutrino comms? Fromwhere? Why the sudden burst, just then?

 - It looked like algebra.

 Fassin scanned Valseir's simple clothes. No hint of anythinghigh-tech there. The most sophisticated thing in his robes wasthe weave itself.

 -  Algebra? he asked.

 There was nothing on the inside or the outside surface of thediamond bubble itself. He scanned the access tube. Clear.

 -  It looked like alien algebra, Valseir told him.

 Fassin looked up at the undersurface of the Blimper imme­diately above, then swept for anything in the clear gas space outside within the same radius. Still nothing. Something furtheroutside, then.

 -  Alien? he asked, distracted.

 There seemed to be nothing nearby. There was theDzunda,then nothing for a hundred metres or so until the next Blimper,then the other spectator and ancillary craft beyond — with thesingle accompanying DreadnoughtPuisiel a few klicks furtherup in the atmosphere, easily keeping pace with the spectating fleet - then the GasClippers themselves, currently starting toround the Storm Wall buoy which marked this short race's firstturning point.

 -   Alien symbology. Though not entirely. I thought I recognised some of the symbols. They looked like a form ofTranslatory IV, a pan-species type, so-called 'universal' notation dating from perhaps two billion years ago, invented by theWopuld - long extinct invert spongiforms - though withelements of ancient Dweller icons. I would have made notes,but I thought better of committing any of it to a form I couldcarry around save what exists - necessarily sketchy - in my ownmind. Hence I have not been able to work on it since.

 Fassin was taking in what was being said - and recording iton the gascraft's systems in case he wanted to review it later -but he was still frantically scanning the volume all around themfor some form of bug or surveillance device. Another burst ofwhat certainly seemed like neutrino comms registered on thelittle gascraft's sensors; a sudden pattern in the general wash ofnear-massless particle chaos.

 The first burst had come immediately Valseir had spoken thename of the Dweller he'd given the folder to. Could it reallyjust have been coincidence? But how could anybody have over­heard? They were communicating by whisper signal, coherentlight beams flickering from one surface-sunk transceiver pit to another. There was no way to intercept what they were sayingunless someone dropped a mirror or some sensor into the beams.

 Could it be him? Had the gascraft itself been bugged? HadHatherence put something on him? He scanned and system-checked, finding nothing.

 The Blimper above them ascended quickly and steadily as theGasClippers roared up the sheer face of the storm. TheDzundarose into direct sunlight.

 -  So, just a field of equations ? Fassin asked the old Dweller.
The drug-fume haze in the private box was suddenly lit up,resolving into tiny individual particles of vapour, a tiny frac­tion of them glinting and glittering.

 -  Possibly just the one long one.

 Horrified, Fassin sucked a little of the surrounding vapourinto the arrowhead's high-res analysis unit.

 -  One piece of algebra? he asked.

 The results coming from the gascraft's high-tech nose lookedbizarre, surface receptors seeming to change their mind aboutwhat they were smelling. Fassin toggled the analysis down another level of detail to electron microscopy.

 -  Possibly, Valseir replied.

 Outside, towards the Storm Wall, a few tens of metres away,something showed, briefly caught in the slanting sunlight andtaking just an instant too long to adapt to the new lightingconditions.

 The results from the arrowhead's internal electron micro­scope were for a moment baffling. Then Fassin realised whathis analysis unit was looking at. Nanotech. A thin soup of tinymachines, receptors, analysers, processors and signallers, smallenough to be suspended in the atmosphere, light enough to floatin the midst of the drug smoke like particles of the fumes them­selves. That was how they'd been bugged. There was somethingin the gas between them, riding right in the middle of theirsignal beams and capable of picking up their meaning. Nothingas gross as a mirror or some photon microphone dangling froma wire, just this, just these, just stuff that was supposed to bebanned.

 - Valseir, he sent urgently. - Who brought this drug bowl inhere?

 He turned up visual magnification, staring hard at the pointin the open gas outside, where something had shown in thesunlight an instant before. There. He up-magged again, almost to the point of graininess.

 -  What? Valseir said, sounding confused. - Well, it was here when I—

 A rough sphere, forty metres away, barely ten centimetres across, almost perfectly camouflaged, like a disc of clear glassin front of the real view. Hint of a comms pit, a tiny crater-like dish, pointing right at them. Fassin swung round to put himselfbetween the tiny, distant machine and the old Dweller, thenwent right up to him, comms pit to comms pit like amorousDwellers kiss-signalling.

 Valseir tried to rote back. - What the—?

 -  We've been bugged, Valseir, Fassin sent. - Watched, listenedto. The bowl smoke is part nanotech. We need to get out, now.

 -  What? But—

 Another burst of neutrino comms. Now that he knew whereto look, it was definitely coming from the camouflaged sphereoutside.

 -  Out, Valseir.Now.

 And another burst. This time from above. High above.Valseir pushed Fassin away. - The bowl smoke . . . ?

 -  Getout! Fassin sent, pushing the old Dweller towards theaccess port in the top of the diamond bubble box.

 Outside, the little sphere was rushing towards them. Fassingot underneath Valseir and forced him upwards.

 -  Fassin! All right! Valseir started to rise under his own power,entering the vertical access tube. The little sphere burst throughthe diamond bubble, shards spraying. It came to a stop justinside the jagged hole, still disguised, just a blur in the air.

 'Major Taak!' it shouted. 'This is General Linosu of theShrievalty Ocula. This device is under the control of the NasqueronExpeditionary Force. Don't be alarmed. We're coming downto—'

 The voice cut off as the little sphere was pierced by a hair-thin line of cerise light. The noise resounded, sharp and sudden,round the diamond bubble enclosure. Debris flew from the tinymachine, rattling against the far side of the private box. Fassinwhirled to see Hatherence dropping down round the side oftheDzunda, carapace silvered. The laser beam had come from her. The little spherical device dropped its disguise, revealingitself as a mirror-finish machine with stubby wings. It had atiny hole in one flank, a much larger one on the far side,producing smoke. It rolled over in the air, made a cracklingnoise, then dropped to the transparent floor. Above him, Fassin was aware of Valseir hesitating in the access tube. Slipstreamwind whistled in through the hole in the diamond bubble.

 The colonel swung quickly in towards them. - You all right,major? she signalled, stopping immediately outside, buffeted bythe slipstream. She tipped to look at the device lying rolling onthe clear curved floor of the box.

 - Shit, she sent. - That looks like one of ours.There was a white flash, as though from everywhere at once,blinding Fassin for an instant. As the light faded Hatherencewas already falling away, tumbling like a dropped stone throughthe gas. Something moved, faster than the GasClippers, acrossthe StormWall face, carving in towards the Blimper.

 When the colonel had fallen twenty metres below the private box, a line of searing yellow-white light flicked into existence between the incoming machine and Hatherence's esuit, whicherupted in fire and blew apart. The fast-moving device lookedlike a small gascraft or missile, sharp and finned. Its exhaustflared bright as it powered round.

 Fassin looked down to see Hatherence. She was a dark, raggedmanta shape falling, whirling downwards amongst the smokingdebris of the destroyed esuit. She seemed to twist in the air,flicking round, something glinting in a stubby tentacle; a violetbeam lanced towards the finned craft, missing by a metre.Another white line from the machine speared the colonel, oblit­erating her in a sun-bright burst of light.

 Valseir had cleared the access tube. Fassin blasted up it like a shell up a gun barrel, letting the pulse of down draught tearthe diamond bubble box out in a convulsive explosion ofwreckage that whipped away from theDzunda and followedthe remains of the colonel and her esuit towards the storm'sconcave base and the Depths beyond.

 Valseir was waiting in the broad corridor above. 'Fassin!Whatis going on?'

 'How do we get off this thing?' he asked, taking the old Dweller by the hub-arm and leading him towards the nextvertical access.

 'Do we really need to?'

 'Something's attacking us, Valseir.'

 'Are you sure?'

 'Yes. So how do we get off?'

 'What's wrong with roting?'

 'Bit vulnerable. I was thinking of a craft.'

 'Well, I'm sure we can arrange a taxi. Or one of the Blimper'sown skiffs. I'll ask Captain Xessife.'

 'No,' Fassin said. 'Not Captain Xessife.'

 'Why not?'

 'Somebody had to put that drug bowl there.'

 They got to the vertical. 'But . . .' Valseir hesitated. 'Wait, what's that noise?'

 Fassin could hear a deep warbling sound coming from variousdirections. 'That could be an alarm.' He indicated the tubeabove. 'After you. Let's move.'

 They were halfway up the vertical to the central corridor when theDzunda lurched. 'Oh-oh,' Valseir said.

 'Keep going.'

 When they got to the main concourse, the alarm noise waslouder. Dwellers were shouting at each other, picking updropped trays, food and drugs and staring at some of the wall-screens. Fassin looked too. 'Oh fuck,' he said quietly.

 The screens showed confused pictures of the surroundings,not all the cameras and screens now focusing on the still contin­uing GasClipper race. One camera seemed to be following aslim, finned craft, the one which had attacked Hatherence, as itcircled the Blimper.

 Other screens showed ships, dozens of dark ships, droppingfrom the sky.

 They were gas-capable Mercatoria spacecraft, some aslittleas fifty metres long, others three or four times that size; soot-black ellipsoids with thick wings and sleek but rudimentarytailplanes and engine pods. They were diving towardstheBlimper fleet, two or three peeling off every vertical klick or soto circle, guarding. Much higher above - another snatchedcamera angle, drifting out of focus then snapping clear moreslick shapes gyrated above the high haze layer,likescavengersover carrion.

 Another screen's view spun, then settled, jerking, on the spec-tating fleet's accompanying Dreadnought, thePuisiel, whoseturrets were swinging, gun barrels elevating. A yellow whitebeam flicked on and off, boring straight through the war craft, making it shudder and sending shock waves running along itsouter fabric. The beam hit the Storm Wall beyond at almost the same time, raising a dark puff of vapour like a bruise, quickly whipped away. The GasClippers seemed to have disappeared. 'What in all the gods' farts is going on?' Valseir asked. Theyhad come to a stop, transfixed by the screens like most of therest of the people in the concourse.

 ThePuisiel's turrets and guns continued to swing round fora moment, then came to rest, seemingly pointing in randomdirections.

 'Oh, don't,' Fassin said.

 The Dreadnought's guns flashed, gouting fire and smoke. Smaller shapes dropped away from it at the same time, half obscured by the wreathing broadside smoke clouds, and thenpulsed fire and smoke from their rears and started curving upand out towards the dropping spacecraft. Screens blinked. Thedark, descending spacecraft glittered with light. Midwaybetween thePuisiel and the scatter of black ships, piercing whitelines ended in sudden detonations, filling the gas above andaround the spectating fleet with black bursts of smoke.

 A screen swung to show one turning spacecraft dropping,trailing smoke. Dwellers started yelling. Trays, food, drugs andpet-children were sent flying, carapace skins blazed naked signals of excitement and fury and whiffs of war-lust filled theair as though a series of tiny scent-grenades had gone off along the concourse. A black dot trailing a haze of exhaust sailed intowards the crippled spacecraft but was picked off from abovein a blast of light. Then something still smaller and faster darted across the screen and hit the ship, detonating inside and tearingit entirely in half; the two torn sections flew down towards theDepths, dangled on elongating strings of smoke. The other missiles were picked off even more easily, swatted like slowinsects.

 Fassin started pulling Valseir away. Dwellers all around them howled and barked at the screens and started taking bets. Distantconcussive thumps and longer roars sounded throughout theconcourse, bringing the long-delayed battle sounds to accom­pany the near-instant visuals.

 Dark glitterings, everywhere. The Dreadnought lit up allalong its length, speckled with fire. The beams lanced it,plunging on into the Storm Wall, freckling bruises across the stirof dark gas. About a third of a last broadside, most of it aimed at where the fallen spaceship had been, punched out from thePuisiela fraction of a second before the first beams hit. The great vessel shook like a leaf in a storm, then started to dropeven as further rays riddled it. A final beam, less bright, much broader, punched through the whole central section, folding the craft about its middle and sending it flowing and spirallingdownwards. A few tiny double discs drifted away from thestricken war craft and roted away or just fell, some trailing smoke. Some were hit by further beams of light, vanishing in miniature explosions.

 'Valseir, move,' Fassin whispered in the sudden silence. 'Wehave to get away. Just get to the outside.' They were almostlevel with a 45° up-access tube. Fassin nudged Valseir towardsit. 'This way.' He didn't even know if they really should getaway. Maybe they were still somehow safer here in the Blimper.At least closer to the outside they might have more choice.

 Valseir allowed himself to be pushed towards the slope of theaccess tube. The lowest part of the fleet of dark ships was nowalmost level with the top of the spectating fleet. Howls started to fill the concourse. Fassin and Valseir were being held back from the tube entrance by a stream of Dwellers coming in theother direction.

 Fassin continued to push the old Dweller, though they bothkept looking back at the screens. One of the dark ships circledgradually closer to the Storm Wall. Near its closest approach, aGasClipper came hurtling out of the dark curtain of whirlinggas, blade sails extended like a frozen gleaming explosion. It rammed the dark warship amidships, hammering into it andpushing the two craft across the sky in a single tangled flailing mass. Still locked in their terrible embrace, the two craft started to fall away with everything else, heading for the foot of thestorm's great dark well and the hot crush of gas beneath.

 More screams and barks of joy echoed round the concourse.

 Another camera, another screen: a section of the StormWallwas bulging, dark gas streaming around some huge roundedcone forcing its way through the storm as though it wasn'tthere.

 A huge Dreadnought flowed out of the storm, trailing streamers of gas like vast banners. Shrieks of encouragementand great, air-quaking cheers resounded down the wide tunnelof the concourse, making it resonate like a vast organ pipe. The new Dreadnought silvered in an instant, white beams scatteringoff it as it flew into the clear gas heart of the storm's colossaleye.

 'Fuckme,' Fassin heard himself say. 'They were waiting forthem.'

 The silver Dreadnought powered straight towards the fleetof dark ships, which, after starting to close in on the spectatingfleet, were now swinging and swivelling to reconfigure and facethe new threat.

 The Dreadnought raced forward, fire bright around itspropellerless tail, guns firing and flashing. Its silvery skin,reflecting sky, storm and dark depths, sparkled with jagged scin­tillations, bouncing beams off in random directions like bright thrown spines. Two more of the dark ships detonated and fell, sending the Dweller screams in the concourse - and the bets -towards even wilder heights.

 The Dreadnought tore onwards, shaking under the weight of fire falling upon it. A missile from the fleet of Mercatoria shipsslashed across the view, was missed by a fan of interceptor firefrom the Dreadnought and slammed into it.

 There was just the hint of the start of an explosion, burstingthe Dreadnought apart as though tearing open the wrappinground a piece of star, then the screen went utterly white beforehazing out completely, blank. Lights in the concourse flickeredand went out, came back, then faded again. The warbling sound,there but effectively unheard all this time, cut off, its absencein the sudden silence like a hearing loss. TheDzunda quiveredlike a struck animal.

 Other screens wavered, went black, filled with static. Somescreens, now providing the only light in the concourse, remainedworking. Gradually more light filled the long tube, as low emer­gency lighting strobed on, caught and held.

 A low muttering sound of Dweller trepidation and resent­ment started to build. One camera swung to show the hugerolling mushroom cloud filling the space where theDreadnought had been. A few tiny pieces of wreckage fell, far away, thin claws from a tumorously bloated fist. The dark shipsstarted to close in again on the spectator fleet, currentlycomposed of vessels commanded by two sorts of captains: thosewho thought it best to clump together and those who regarded scattering and even taking their chances with the storm windsas the safer bet.

 The stampede of Dwellers from the access tube which Fassinwas trying to push Valseir towards was slowly forcing the twoof them back into the centre of the concourse. More peoplewere flooding into the wide space from every other access point.

 Somebody was screaming, 'Look, look!'

 One distant screen image was suddenly repeated acrossseveral more. At first it looked like a replay of the entrance of the first Dreadnought, the great nose bulging out through, thecurtain of streaming cloud, dragging gas like long flags of war.Then the view pulled back and the screen showed the Storm Wallbulging in another place, then another and another and another,until a whole vertical forest of the great ships was visible,hurtling out of the storm and towards the great column of black circling spacecraft hanging like a giant pendulum over the spec­tating fleet.

 TheDzunda shook, rippled and screamed like somethingalive as the shock wave of the earlier nuclear explosion seemedto pick it up and rattle it. Dwellers swung this way and thatacross the concourse, banging into each other, walls, floor andceiling, filling the gas with oaths and debris. Another pair of screens cut out butenough remained to show the closing fleetof mercury-coloured Dreadnoughts livid with fire outgoing andincoming. Lasers sheened off, fans of interceptor projectiles andbeams combed the gas and sundered darting, twisting missiles. Two more of the dark ships, then a third, exploded or crum­pled and started to fall or spiral down, but two more of thegiant Dreadnoughts disappeared in massive, screen-hazing deto­nations.

 A couple more Dreadnoughts were suddenly caught in afiercely bright beam from immediately above, from out of the clear yellow sky. The beam fell between them, making eachmassive ship wobble as if stumbling in the gas. Then it split intotwo parallel shafts, each violet rod narrowing in an instant andchopping through its targeted Dreadnought like an axe througha neck.

 The concourse - half dark, filled with wild scents and thefrenzied bellowing of Dwellers unsure whether to wail laments or shout huzzahs, lit by the spastic, spasming light of the battleviews swinging wildly across the screens - achieved a sort ofchaotic transcendence as very loud but defiantly soothing-sounding music started to play, product of some confused auto­matic guest-management system waking to insanity and tryingto spread tranquillity.

 'What,' Fassin heard a nearby Dweller say, quite quietly butdistinctly through the pandemonium, 'the fuck isthat?'

 (Another dark Mercatorial ship, another silver Dreadnought, ripped to shreds and blossoming in nuclear fire respectively.Another pair of Dreadnoughts shaking in the first beam-fall ofthe violet ray flicking from on high.)

 And on the screen opposite, looking downwards into thewide bowl of the storm's dead heart, a huge darkly red-glowingglobe was rising from the sump gases of the storm floor, drag­ging a great flute of gas after it like some absurdly steady fire­ball. It was kilometres across and striated, banded like aminiature gas-giant, so that for one crazed instant Fassin thoughthe was watching the palace of the Hierchon Ormilla floatingsmoothly upwards into the fray.

 A crumpled scrap falling towards this apparition - a ruinedand smoking Mercatoria spacecraft - appeared to lend a scaleto the huge sphere, seeming to be about to fall just behind it, making the quickly rising globe three or four klicks across.

 The wrecked ship fell in front, instead, and upped that readyestimate by a factor of two.

 A couple of filament-thin yellow-white beams suddenlyjoined with the massive globe and seemed to sink into it withouteffect. The violet beam from high above swung onto it, spreadingbriefly as though to measure the full seven or eight kilometresof its diameter before starting to narrow.

 A pattern of black dots appeared on the surface of the giantglobe.

 TheDzunda shook again and again as further blast waves crashed into it. Fassin stared at the great rising sphere even asDwellers on either side thudded into him and he lost his holdon Valseir.

 There were maybe fifty or so of the black spots, spread asthough randomly across the upper hemisphere of the hugeglobe. One appeared to be in the centre of the rapidly narrowing,focusing violet beam. Just as that ray grew too bright to see theebony dot at its centre, it seemed to pulse and spread. Then itdisappeared, just as each spot suddenly became the plinth foran intensely bright, thin column of pure white light. The beamslasted for an eye-blink, disappearing almost as soon as they'dbeen produced, only their image lasting, burned into any nakedeyes and insufficiently buffered cameras trained on them.

 Silence, even as another manic convulsion shook theDzunda,making the whole concourse ripple and creak. More screens wentout. The loud soothing music cut off. Two remaining screens nearby showed the dark ships, whole squadrons of them, entireflocks of them, reduced for most of their length to sparkling, wind-blown ash, only the long needle noses and tailed, finnedrears remaining intact to fall like meteors, unreeling scrawny trailsof smoke into the storm's tenebrous depths.

 The nearest screen showed the camera swinging across thesky, searching for an intact Mercatoria ship, only to find furtherdrifts of smoke, new clouds of ash, already drifting on the wind.

 The other screen's view pivoted to the sky, where somethingglowing yellow was fading and disappearing as it cooled, at firststill keeping station with the scene directly beneath, then startingto drift away to the east.

 The huge sphere was still rising, though slowing now, cominggradually level with the remains of the spectating fleet. Theremaining two dozen or so mirror-finish Dreadnoughts weredecelerating, heaving-to on one side of the clumped and scat­tered ships.

 A bellowing roar of utter - and unexpected - victory builtquickly in every Dweller throat along the length of theconcourse, swelling to a clanging, thunderous cacophony ofmind-splitting, thought-warping sound.

 Then a series of crashing, titanic shock waves pummelled theDzundalike a gale whipping a flag. A barrage of noise like atroop of titans clapping entirely drowned out the holleringDwellers.

 All the screens went dark. The BlimperDzunda lurched forone last time, then started to fall out of the sky. Those Dwellersnot already heading swiftly for the exits immediately began to do so, the ones near Fassin sweeping him along with them, upthe access tube he'd been trying to head for originally, out viaa wide funnel port into a viewing gallery, through its massivelyshattered diamond roof and out into the bruised and battered skies of Nasqueron.

 'You mean some of your ridiculous fucking fairy stories aboutsecret ships and hyper-weapons are actuallytrue?' Fassin said.

 'Well,' Y'sul said, looking round. 'So it would appear.'

 They were somewhere inside theIsaut, the enormous spher­ical ship which had destroyed almost the entire Mercatorial fleet- space-based command-and-control plus heavy-weaponrybombardment back-up included - in the space of about half asecond. TheIsaut was something called a Planetary Protector(Deniable), not that Fassin or, apparently, anybody else rescuedfrom the destroyed and damaged ships of the spectating fleethad ever heard of such a thing. That, as Y'sul had pointed out,was a pretty unarguably convincing brand of deniability.

 There had, of course, been rumours and myths concerningsecret Dweller martial capability and the general lack ofwisdom of getting into a fight with such an ancient and wide­spread species for as long as people could remember, but - as most of these myths and rumours seemed to be spread by the Dwellers themselves - as a rule nobody ever really took themseriously. The Dwellers spent so much time huffing and puffingand telling people how completely wonderful and brilliant theywere - and yet seemed so self-obsessed, so inward-looking andso careless of their distant fellows, so unconnected not justwith the rest of the civilised galaxy but with their own vastly scattered diaspora - they were inevitably dismissed as vain­glorious fantasists and their vaunted ships and weapons, atbest, a sort of folk memory of earlier magnificence, long lost, entirely eclipsed.

 Even now, having just seen the results of theIsaut's inter­vention with his own eyes - or at least through the little gascraft'ssensors - Fassin could not entirely believe what he'd witnessed.

 'Well, this is a strange place to be,' Valseir said, looking aboutthe spherical space he, Y'sul and Fassin had been shown to.

 They had rendezvoused quite quickly in the general gas-borneconfusion of survivors from theDzunda. Fassin's arrrowhead-shaped craft, though smaller than all the surrounding Dwellers,was a sufficiently different shape for Valseir and Y'sul to spothim quite without difficulty and head in his direction.

 'Why is everybody else giving me such a wide berth?' Fassinhad asked when they'd each drifted up to him in the after-battlecalmness. It was true; all the other Dweller survivors were keeping a good fifty metres or so away from him.

 'Worried you're going to be a target,' Y'sul had said, checkinghis various pockets and pouches to see what he might have lostin the excitement. Around them, various long smoky columnswere drifting in the breeze like anaemic stalks rooted in the darkstorm base far below, and great dumb-bell-shaped clouds - allthat was left of the nuclear explosions - were twisting and slowlytearing apart, their round, barely rolling heads still climbing into higher and higher levels of atmosphere, being caught in differ­ential wind streams and casting vast hazy shadows across theagain-quiet skies of the storm's eye. Hovering to one side, thevast banded sphere which had risen from the Depths floatedlike a miniature planet caught in the eye of the great storm.

 To one side, in the Storm Wall, the GasClipper fleet seemedto be trying to regroup. Tumbling out of the sinkingDzundawith the rest of the survivors, only a lifelong exposure to Dwellerinsouciance - both congenital and feigned - had preventedFassin gasping in disbelief at the sound of various people aroundhim quite seriously discussing whether the GasClipper race would just continue, be restarted or declared void, and passing opinions regarding the status of already existing bets in the lightof this suite of likely choices.

 The less damaged spectating and other craft were picking upthe various free-floating Dwellers. Ambulance skiffs from thesurviving craft in the silver Dreadnought fleet and hospitalvessels from the nearest port facilities were rescuing the moreseriously injured and burned individuals.

 Fassin had indeed been targeted, but not by weaponry. A trioof skiffs had emerged from the giant sphere and made straightfor the little group formed by Fassin and his two Dwellerfriends. They'd been taken aboard and the skiffs returned imme­diately to the enormous globe, ignoring the outraged yells ofthe Dwellers who until moments before had been studiouslyavoiding Fassin.

 The lead skiff, crewed by a jolly pair of remarkably old-looking Dwellers - they didn't volunteer their names, ranks orages, but they each looked at least as old as Jundriance - haddeposited them somewhere deep inside the giant spherical craft, way down a dark tunnel into a broad sphere of reception space,complete with washing facilities and what Y'sul had taken onelook at and sniffily dismissed as a snackateria. Before they'd leftagain in their skiff, it had been one of these unnamed Dwellerswho, in response to a question of Fassin's, had told them thename and category of the great craft they'd been brought inside.Fassin had warned him that his gascraft had been in contactwith Mercatoria nanotech and he might be contaminated, whichdid not surprise or alarm anybody aboard as much as he'd been expecting. The skiff's crew scanned the little gascraft and told him, well, he wasn't contaminated any more.

 'Where is your little friend the Very Reverend Colonel?' Y'sulasked Fassin, making a show of looking around the reception space. 'She jumped out of her seat and raced off just before allthe fun started.'

 'She's dead,' Fassin told him.

 'Dead?' Y'sul rolled back. 'But she seemed so well armed!'

 'She shot what turned out to be a Mercatorial . . . device,'Fassin said. 'One of the first of their craft on the scene seemed to assume this meant she was a hostile and wasted her.'

 'Oh,' Y'sul said, sounding downcast. 'That was theMercatoria, was it? Not these Disconnected people. You sure?'

 'I'm fairly sure,' Fassin said.

 'Damn,' Y'sul said, sounding annoyed. 'Might sort of looklike I've lost a bet, in that case. Wonder how I can get out of it?' He floated off, looking deep in thought.

 Fassin turned to Valseir. 'You sure you're all right?' he asked.The old Dweller had looked a little shaken when they'drendezvoused in the gas above the sinking Blimper, though apart from a few carapace abrasions picked up in the welter of peoplerushing to escape the sinking ship, he was uninjured.

 'I am fine, Fassin,' he told the human. 'And you? You havelost your colonel friend, I heard.'

 Fassin had a sudden reprise of his last image of Hatherence,that dark manta shape twisting in the air - to a Dweller she would have looked like one of their young - firing a handweapon at the craft that had ripped her out of her esuit, thendying in the returning splash of fire. 'I'm getting used toanybody who gets close to me dying violently,' he said.

 'Hmm. I consider myself warned,' Valseir said.

 'She was my superior, Valseir,' Fassin told him. 'She was mybodyguard but she was also my guard in another sense. I'd besurprised if she hadn't been given orders to kill me if the rele­vant circumstances arose.'

 'Do you think she would have carried out those orders?'

 Fassin hesitated, suddenly feeling bad about what he'd justsaid, even though he still thought it was the truth. It was as though he'd insulted Hatherence's memory. He looked away and said, 'Well, we'll never know now, will we?'

 A door in the centre of the ceiling swung back. They alllooked up. Two Dwellers entered. Fassin recognised one of themas Setstyin, the self-confessed influence pedlar he'd talked to byphone the evening he'd slipped away from Y'sul's house inHauskip city. The other Dweller looked very old indeed, darkand small - barely five metres in diameter - and dressed in high-coverage clothes that probably concealed only a few remainingnatural limbs and perhaps some prosthetics.

 'Seer Fassin Taak,' Setstyin said, roll-nodding towards him. Then he greeted Y'sul and lastly Valseir - as the most senior ofthe three Valseir came last and got an even more respectful bow.'Y'sul, Valseir: allow me to introduce the Sage-cuspian-chospeDrunisine, Executive Commander of this craft, the PlanetaryProtector (Deniable)Isaut.'

 'A pleasure,' said the dark Dweller in a crisp, dry-soundingvoice.

 'And for us anhonour,' Y'sul said, brushing Fassin out of the way to present himself to the fore and execute an extravagantlycomplete bow. 'If I may say so.'

 'Our pleasure, pre-child,' Valseir half-agreed, also roll-bowing, less completely but with more dignity.

 'Good to see you, Setstyin,' Fassin said. 'And pleased to meetyou, sir,' he told the older Dweller.

 Drunisine was by far the oldest and most senior DwellerFassin had ever encountered. As a Dweller - surviving the perils of childhood first, obviously - rose through Adolescence, Youthand Adulthood to attain the life stages called Prime and then Cuspian and then Sage, what they were eventually aiming for- destined for, if they lived that long - was to reach Childhood, the state of utter done-everythingness that was the absolutezenith of all Dweller existence. The stage immediately before this culmination was the one which Drunisine had reached:chospe -pre-child. There was every chance that Drunisine was over two billion years old.

 'My name is Setstyin,' the other Dweller said, coming to restnear the centre of the spherical room with the Sage and lookinground at the others. 'I am a friend of Seer Taak's here. You are all sufficiently recovered and-or rested, I hope. Because we needto talk.'

 They agreed they were capable of talk. Setstyin waved andhammock seats descended from a ring round the ceiling door,which then closed. They settled in.

 'Seer Taak,' the ancient Dweller said. 'We will need to ensurethat all record of the battle just finished is wiped from the memo­ries of that little craft you inhabit.'

 'I understand,' Fassin said. He thought about that'(Deniable)'. He called up everything he'd recorded of the battle in the storm's eye and full-deleted it. He called up a lot of otherstored memories and got rid of those too. 'It's done,' he said.

 'We will need to check,' Setstyin told him, sounding apolo­getic.

 'Feel free,' Fassin said. 'I take it we're not supposed to sayanything about what happened out there. Or about this thing.'

 'Say what you like, young sir,' Drunisine told him. 'Ourconcern is with hard evidence.'

 'All surviving non-Dweller surveillance systems aroundNasqueron have been removed,' Setstyin said, talking to Fassin.'All the transgressing ships which had line-of-sight to theproceedings have already been destroyed. The remains of theMercatorial fleet are being pursued and dispatched.'

 'They are being hunted down likedogs, Seer Taak,' Drunisinesaid, looking straight at him and using the Anglish word.'Harried, systems jammed, comms disrupted, fates sealed, all sothat no direct evidence of this craft or its capabilities, even thatgarnered second-hand, can escape. I might add that your ownsummary annihilation was contemplated.'

 'I am grateful to have been made an exception,' Fassin said.'Are none of the ships which were above Nasqueron to beallowed to escape?'

 'None,' the ancient Dweller said.

 'Those who start wars have to accept the consequences,' Y'sulsaid, rumbling sententiously.

 'And after that?' Fassin asked.

 'Specify, please.'

 'Is this the start of a war with the Mercatoria, at least the partwithin Ulubis?'

 'I don't imagine so,' Drunisine said, sounding as though thiswas the first time the thought had occurred. 'Not unless theychoose to invade us again. Do you think they will, Fassin Taak?'

 Fassin had the awful feeling that, given the Dwellers' irre­deemably dismissive approach to intelligence, what he said nextmight well constitute the single most germane piece of infor­mation on the matter that the Dwellers would have to workwith and base their decisions on.

 'No, I don't. I think they'll be sufficiently horrified at theextent of their losses today to think twice about risking anyfurther craft, certainly as long as they have the prospect of inva­sion to look forward to. If the invasion fails, or the system isfinally recaptured, then there might be some attempt to find out what happened and no doubt some people will argue that thereshould be some form of reprisal. Though, in the shorter term,from what little I've heard of the Epiphany 5 Disconnect, there'sa chance they might want to, ah, transgress, too.' He looked at Drunisine and Setstyin, who remained silent. 'Though I'm sureyou'll be ready for them.' More silence. 'In fact, if the UlubisMercatoria work out what's happened here and realise you don'tregard this as the start of a war, they might even want to suggestthat you and they unite to resist the Epiphany 5 Disconnectforces.'

 'Why would we wish to do that?' Drunisine asked flatly.

 It felt like it had been a long and tiring day. Fassin didn'treally have the energy to start trying to explain. From a crea­ture as old and experienced as Drunisine, the question was prob­ably rhetorical anyway.

 'Never mind,' Fassin said. 'Act as though nothing's happened.Signal 'glantine and make some helpful suggestions regardingthe re-establishment of a new Seer Shared Facility'

 'That's more or less what we were going to do anyway,'Setstyin said, sounding amused.

 Fassin signalled polite mirth in return. He was still strugglingto work out what this enormous, fleets-destroyed-in-an-eyeblink craft reallymeant. Who was responsible for thiscolossal machine? What sort of previously unknown societalstructures and prodigious manufacturing capacity withinDweller civilisation could conjure up something this awesome?Was it a one-off? Was it unique to Nasqueron? Dear grief, wasit part of afleet? Did this mean thatall the Dweller claims aboutsecret ships and hyper-weapons were true? Could theNasqueron Dwellers just swat the E-5 Discon out of the sky ifthey so desired, saving Ulubis from invasion? Could theyfeasibly take on the Mercatoria if they could be bothered? Didany of this mean that the Dweller List was now more likely tobe genuine rather than some monstrous waste of time or just a joke? How he'd have liked to have had some time alone withSetstyin before this meeting, to find out what had happenedsince they'd talked last. He'd have to ask some of these ques­tions anyway, given half a chance.

 'We come, then,' Drunisine said, 'to the question of why the Ulubis Mercatoria Disconnect thought it might be a wise orprofitable idea to enter Nasqueron in such a manner and in suchnumbers in the first place. Any ideas? Anybody?' The ancientDweller looked round at all of them.

 'I think it might have something to do with me,' Fassinadmitted.

 'You, Seer Taak?' Drunisine asked.

 'I've been here attempting to track down some information.'

 'And you needed the help of a small war fleet to extract it?'

 'No. However, they might have thought I was in danger.'

 'From whom?'

 'I don't know.'

 'So, we are talking about information that the Mercatoria might consider momentous enough to start a war for? Whenthey are already facing an invasion in the next few months oryears? This must be information of some importance. Perhaps we can help. What is it?'

 'Thank you. However, I think I may finally be close to findingit.'

 'Ah,' Valseir said. 'About that.'

 'What?' Fassin asked him.

 'All that stuff about the folder and the safekeep box andtaking it personally to Chimilinith of Deilte?'

 'Yes?'

 'Not entirely true.'

 'Not entirely?'

 'Not entirely.'

 'So how much of itwas true?'

 Valseir rocked back a fraction, seemingly thinking. Patternsof surprise crossed his signal skin. 'Actually, most of it,' he said.

 'And the part that wasn't?' Fassin asked patiently.

 'There was no folder in the safekeep box.'

 'So Chimilinith hasn't got the information.'

 'Correct.'

 'I see.'

 'I am still waiting for enlightenment regarding the exactnature of this exemplary, if shy, information,' Drunisine said frostily, looking at Valseir.

 Oh shit,Fassin thought,if Valseir tells them what it is, andit really exists, they might just kill us all.

 Possibly the same thought had occurred to Valseir. 'Itallegedly involves a method for travelling faster than light,' hetold the ancient commander.

 Setstyin's carapace flashed hilarity, quickly damped.Drunisine looked about as thoroughly unimpressed as it waspossible for an elderly Dweller to look. 'What?' he said.

 'An ancient addition to a still more ancient book - which SeerTaak here traded over two hundred years ago during a "delve",as the Quick call these things - makes mention of a method of achieving FTL travel without recourse to Adjutage and Cannula,'Valseir said, using what Fassin recognised as the Dweller terms for portals and wormholes. Fassin thought - and sincerely hoped- that Valseir had put just the right amount of apology and wryamusement into his voice. 'Seer Taak has been sent here to tryto find the details of this, ah, unlikely technology.'

 'Indeed?' Drunisine said, looking at Fassin.

 'Algebra,' he blurted.

 'Algebra?' Drunisine asked.

 'The data looks like a piece of algebra, apparently,' Fassinsaid. 'It defines some sort of warping device. A way of bendingspace. Conventional to start with, but using this technique toexceed light speed.' Fassin made a gesture of resignation. He letembarrassment patterns show on his arrowhead's skin. ‘Iwasseconded without any real choice into a paramilitary part of theMercatoria and ordered to undertake this mission. I am as scep­tical as I imagine you are, sir, regarding the likelihood of it coming to a successful conclusion.'

 Drunisine let the most formal amusement pattern show onhis skin. 'Oh, I doubt that you are, Seer Taak.'

 'What's going on?'

 'I was about to ask you the same question,' Setstyin toldFassin. 'Shall we trade?'

 'All right, but I asked first.'

 'What exactly do you want to know?'

 They were still in the reception sphere inside the giant globe.Commander Drunisine had left. Two Adult medical orderlies were dealing with the few small injuries that Y'sul and Valseirhad picked up during the battle. 'Whatis this thing?' Fassinasked, gesturing to indicate the whole ship. 'Where did it comefrom? Who made it? Who controls it? How many are there in Nasqueron?'

 'I'd have thought the title said it all,' Setstyin said. 'It's amachine to protect the planet. From willed aggression of a certain technical type and sophistication. It's not a spacecraft,if that's what you mean. It's limited to in-atmosphere. It camefrom the Depths, where stuff like this is usually stored. We madeit. I mean Dwellers did, probably a few billion years ago. I'dhave to check. It's controlled by people in the control centre,who'll be Dwellers with military experience who've sim-trainedfor this sort of device specifically. As to numbers...I wouldn't know. Probably not the sort of information one's meant to share,really. No offence, Fass, but in the end you're not actually oneof us. We have to assume your loyalties lie elsewhere.'

 'Built billions of years ago? Can you still—?'

 'Ah, that would count as a follow-up question,' Setstyin said,chiding. 'I think it's my turn first.'

 Fassin sighed. 'All right.'

 'Are you really looking for this warp-drive FTL technologydata? You do realise it doesn't exist, don't you?'

 'It's data that the Mercatoria believe might give them a betterchance of winning the fight against the E-5 Discon. They aredesperate. They'll try anything. And I have my orders, no matterwhat I might think about the whole thing. Of course I knowindependent FTL drives don't exist.'

 'Will you still obey these orders, given the chance?'

 Fassin thought about Aun Liss, about the people he'd knownin Hab 4409, about all the other people he'd ever knownthroughout Ulubis system over the years. 'Yes,' he said.

 'Why do you obey these orders?' Setstyin sounded genuinely puzzled. 'Your family and Seer Sept colleagues are almost all dead, your immediate military superior was killed in the recentbattle and there is nobody nearby now to take her place.'

 'It's complicated,' Fassin told Setstyin. 'Perhaps it's duty ora guilty conscience or just the desire to be doing something.Canyou still make more of these planetary protectionmachines?'

 'No idea,' Setstyin admitted. 'Don't see why not, though. I'dsuggest asking somebody who might know, but even if the trueanswer was no we'd be bound to say yes, wouldn't we?'

 'Was it my call to you that set all this in motion?'

 'You're getting a lot of free questions, aren't you? However, yes, it did. Though I suspect that watching dozens of recentlymodified gas-capable warcraft suddenly parking themselves inorbit around us might have started a few alarm bells ringingamongst us even without your timely warning. Still, we're grateful. I don't think I'm entirely out of formation in sayingthat there is a feeling we probably owe you a favour.'

 'And if the Mercatoria ever finds out,' Fassin said, 'I'll beexecuted as a traitor.'

 'Well, we won't tell if you don't,' Setstyin said, perfectly seri­ously.

 'Deal,' Fassin said, unconvinced.

 The great spherical craftIsaut floated deep within a vast cloudof streaming gas, moving swiftly, seeming not to. It had startedto submerge into the storm's curdled floor of slowly swirlinggas almost as soon as Fassin and the others had been brought aboard. Sinking, sidling, rising slightly again, it had entered intothe Zone 2 weather band, quickly assumed its speed, and was now, in the late evening that was becoming night, half a thou­sand kilometres away from the storm where the battle had taken place, and adding another three hundred kilometres to that valuewith every passing hour.

 Fassin, Y'sul, Valseir and Setstyin floated over a narrow plat­form set at the great vessel's equator, near the body of ColonelHatherence. A weak light and weaker breeze lent an appropriateatmosphere of quiet gloom to the scene. The colonel's torn,burned body had been discovered along with hundreds ofothers, floating at the level at which Dweller bodies usuallycame to rest. Hers had come to rest a little higher than the others, as would a child's.

 Left to themselves, Dweller bodies degassed and gained density,and abandoned to the atmosphere would eventually disappear completely into the Depths. The respectful convention,however, was either to keep a dead relative in a special cere­monial chamber at home and let them decay until their densitywould ensure a swift passage into the liquid hydrogen farbeneath, or - if time was pressing - to weight the body and consign it to the Depths that way.

 Hatherence had no family here. There was not even anybodyof her own species in all Nasqueron, and so - as, at least, a fellow alien - Fassin had been declared responsible for her remains. He'dagreed a swift dispatch to the Depths was preferable to keepingher body and handing it back to the Shrievalty or any family shemight still have in Ulubis system. He wasn't even sure why he felt that way, but he did. There was no particular veneration ofthe remains of the dead in the way of the Truth, and, as far as heknew, no special meaning amongst oerileithe in having their deadreturned from afar, but even if there had been, he'd have wantedsomething like this. For the Dwellers, it was probably just admin­istrative convenience, even tidiness to dispose of her now, likethis. For him, it was something more.

 Fassin looked down at the alien body - thin and dark, some­thing between a manta and a giant starfish - lying in its coffinof meteorite iron. Iron had always been and, sentimentally, cere­monially, still was a semi-precious metal for Dwellers. That theywere burying Hatherence like this was something of an honour,he supposed. In the fading light, her ragged remains, darkanyway, then burned by the beam which had killed her, lookedlike scraps of shadow.

 Fassin felt tears in his real eyes, inside the shock-gel insidethe little gascraft that was his own tiny life-coffin, and knewthat some deep, near-animal part of him was mourning not somuch the fallen Oculan colonel as all the people he knew whomhe'd lost recently, lost without seeing them one last time, evenin death, lost without fully being able to believe that he reallyhad lost them because it had all happened so far away with somuch in between them and him to stop him returning to payany sort of respects to them, lost in his intellect but not hisemotions, because even now, some part of him refused to believehe would never see all those lost ones again.

 'I confess,' Setstyin said, 'I have no idea what form of wordsone ought to use on such occasions, Seer Taak. Do you?'

 'Amongst some aHumans there is a saying that we come fromand go to nothing, a lack like shadow that throws the sum oflife into bright relief. And with the rHumans, something aboutdust to ashes.'

 'Do you think she would have minded being treated as aDweller?' Setstyin asked.

 'No,' Fassin said. 'I don't think she would have minded. I think she would have felt honoured.'

 'Here, here,' Y'sul muttered.

 Valseir gave a small formal bow.

 'Well, Colonel Hatherence,' Setstyin said, with what soundedlike a sigh as he looked down at the body lying in the coffin.'You ascended to the age and rank of Mercatorial Colonel, whichis a very considerable achievement for your kind. We think youlived well and we know you died well. You died with manyothers but in the end we all die alone. You died more alone thanothers, amongst people like you but alien to you, and far fromyour home and family. You fell and were found and now wesend you down again, further into those Depths, to join all therevered dead on the surface of rock around the core.' He lookedat Fassin. 'Seer Taak, would you like to say anything?'

 Fassin tried to think of something. In the end he just said, 'Ibelieve Colonel Hatherence was a good person. She wascertainly a brave one. I only knew her for less than a hundreddays and she was always my military superior, but I came tolike her and think of her as a friend. She died trying to protectme. I'll always honour her memory.'

 He signalled that he could think of nothing else. Setstyin roll-nodded and indicated the open coffin lid.

 Fassin went forward and used a manipulator to close the casket's iron hatch, then he lowered a little more and togetherhe and Setstyin took one edge of the bier that the coffin lay on.They raised it, letting the heavy container slide silently off, overthe edge of the balcony and down into the next bruise-darklayer of clouds, far below.

 They all floated over the edge and waited until the coffin disap­peared, a tiny black speck vanishing into the darkly purple wastes.

 'Great-cousin of mine, diving deep, got hit by one of thoseonce,' Y'sul said thoughtfully. 'Never knew what hit him. Stone dead.'

 The others were looking at him.

 He shrugged. 'Well? It's true.'

 Valseir found Fassin in a gallery, looking out at the deep nightstream of gas, rushing quietly in infrared as theIsaut poweredits way to who knew where.

 'Fassin.'

 'Valseir. Are we free to leave yet?'

 'Not that I've heard. Not yet.'

 They watched the night flow round them together for a while.Fassin had spent time earlier looking at reports on the stormbattle, from both sides. The Dwellers had high-selectivity visualswhich made it look like the Dreadnoughts had won the day,not theIsaut. The little he'd got from the Mercatoria's nets justgave dark hints that an entire fleet was missing, and includedno visuals at all. Unseen was pretty much unheard-of. Itappeared that everybody had instantly assumed there was somevast cover-up going on. Both sides were downplaying like crazy,implying that some terrible misunderstanding had taken place and they'd both suffered appallingly heavy losses, which was,when Fassin thought about it, somewhere between half and three-quarters true, and hence closer to reality than might havebeen expected in the circumstances.

 'So what did happen to this folder?' Fassin asked. 'If therewas a folder.'

 'There was and is a folder, Fassin,' Valseir told him. ‘Iheldon to it for a long time but eventually, twenty-one, twenty-three years ago, I gave it to my colleague and good friend Leisicrofe. He was departing on a research trip.'

 'Has he returned?'

 'No.'

 'When will he?'

 'Should he return, he won't have the data.'

 'Where will it be?'

 'Wherever he left it. I don't know.'

 'How do I find your friend Leisicrofe?'

 'You'll have to follow him. That will not be so easy. You willneed help.'

 'I have Y'sul. He's always arranged—'

 'You will need rather more than he can provide.'

 Fassin looked at the old Dweller. 'Off-planet? Is that whatyou mean?'

 'Somewhat,' Valseir said, not looking at him, gazing out atthe onward surge of night.

 'Then who should I approach for this help?'

 'I've already taken the liberty.'

 'You have? That's very kind.'

 Valseir was silent for a while, then said, 'None of this is aboutkindness, Fassin.' He turned to look directly at the arrowhead.'Nobody in their right mind would ever want to be involvedwith something as momentous as this. If the slightest part of whatyou're looking for has any basis in reality, it could change every­thing for all of us. I am Dweller. My species has made a good,long - if selfish - life for itself, spread everywhere, amongst thestars. We do not appreciate change on the scale we are here talkingabout. I'm not sure that any species would. Some of us will doanything to avoid such change, to keep things just as they are.

 'You have to realise, Fassin; we are not a monoculture, weare not at all perfectly homogenised. We are differentiated in ways that even now, after all your exposure to us, you canscarcely begin to comprehend. There are things within our ownworlds almost entirely hidden from most of us, and there aredeep and profound differences of opinion between factionsamongst us, just as there are between the Quick.'

 Factions,thought Fassin.

 Valseir went on, 'Not all of us are quite so studiedly indif­ferent to events taking place within the greater galaxy as wegenerally contrive to appear. There are those of us who, withoutever wanting to know the full details of your mission, in factknowing that they'd be unable to square knowledge of itssubstance with their species loyalty, would help you neverthe­less. Others . . . others would kill you instantly if they evenbegan to guess what it was you're looking for.' The old Dwellerfloated over, came close to a kiss-whisper as he said, - Andbelieve it or not, Fassin Taak, Drunisine is of the former camp, while your friend Setstyin is of the latter.

 Fassin pulled away to look at the old Dweller, who added, -Truly.

 After a few more moments, Fassin asked, 'When will I be able to follow your friend Leisicrofe?'

 'I think you'll know one way or the other before the nightis out. And if we both don't at least begin to follow Leisicrofe,we may both follow your Colonel Hatherence.'

 Fassin thought this sounded a little melodramatic. 'Truly?'he asked, signalling amusement.

 'Oh, truly, Fassin,' Valseir said, signalling nothing. 'Let merepeat: none of this is about kindness.'

 *

 Saluus Kehar was not happy. He had his own people in certain places, his own ways of finding things out, his own secure and reliable channels of intelligence quite independent of the mediaand the official agencies - you didn't become and stay a majormilitary supplier unless you did - and he knew about as well as anybody did what had happened during the disastrousNasqueron raid, and it was simply unjust to blame him or hisfirm.

 For one thing, they'd been betrayed, or their intelligence orsignals had been compromised, or at the very least they'd beenout-thought (by Dwellers!). And because of that failing - whichwas unquestionably nothing to do with him - they'd beenambushed and out-outnumbered. Dozens of those heretofore un-fucking-heard-of super-Dreadnought ships had turned upwhen the incursionary force had been expecting no more thana handful - at most - of the standard ones, the models withoutthe reactive mirror armour, the plasma engines and the wide­band lasers. Plus the Dwellers had simply done a very good jobof lying over the years - years? Aeons - presenting themselvesas hopeless bumblers and technological incompetents when infact - even if they couldn't build anything very impressive fromscratch any more - they still had access to weaponry of seriouslethality.

 The military had fucked up. It didn't matter how good thetool was, how clever the craftsman had been, how well-made the weapon was; if the user dropped it, didn't switch it on orjust didn't know how to use it properly, all that good work went for nothing.

 They'd lost all the ships. All of them. Every single damn one,either on the raid or supporting it from space immediately above.Even a few of the ships not involved at all - those standingguard round Third Fury while the recovery and constructionteams worked - had been targeted and annihilated by some sortof charged-particle-beam weapon, with two craft on the far sideof the moon each chased by some type of hyper-velocity missileand blown to smithereens as well.

 Unwilling to accept that they'd made a complete mess of theoperation, the military had decided it mustn't be their fault.Kehar Heavy Industries must be to blame. There must, to quotean ancient saying, be something wrong with our bloody ships. The sheer completeness of the catastrophe, and the frustratinglack of detail regarding exactly what had gone wrong, actuallymade it easier to blame the tool rather than the workman. Allthe ships had been made gas-capable by Saluus's shipyards, allhad been lost on their first mission using their new abilities, so - according to that special logic only the military mind seemedto appreciate - it must be a problem with the process of making them capable of working in an atmosphere that was respon­sible.

 Never mind that the battlecruiser acting as Command andControl for the whole operation and both the Heavy-ArmourBattery Monitors had been blasted to atoms just as effortlessly as the ships working in the planet's clouds, even though they'dnever been gas-capabled and were still in space at the time; thatlittle detail somehow got rolled up into greater disaster and conveniently forgotten about in the hysteria.

 So now they'd lost Fassin and they'd lost their lead to thisDweller List thing. Worse, they had a serious intelligenceproblem, because, basically, they'd been duped. The old Dweller Valseir must have suspected something or been tipped off. Theyknew this for the simple reason that the information he'dprovided - almost the last data that had got relayed back to thetop brass on Sepekte before everything went haywire - hadproved, when checked later, to be a lie. The Dweller he'd toldFassin to look for in Deilte city didn't exist. For the sake ofthis they'd lost over seventy first-rate warships for no gain what­soever - ships they would seriously miss when theBeyonder-Starveling invasion hit home for real - and they'd thoroughly antagonised the Dwellers, who'd never been peopleit was advisable to get on the wrong side of even before they'dsuddenly shown they still packed the kind of punch that couldhumiliate a Mercatorial fleet. As military fuck-ups went it wasa many-faceted gem, a work of genius, a grapeshot, multi-stage,cluster-warhead, fractal-munition regenerative-weapon-systemof a fuck-up.

 In fact it was only that last item on the long list of calami­tous consequences - dealing with the Dwellers' subsequentactions and signals - that had worked out less badly than itmight have. Finally, something positive.

 Saluus was in a meeting. He hated meetings. They were anentirely vital part of being an industrialist, indeed of being abusinessman in any sort of organisation, but he still hated them.He'd learned, partly at his father's side, to get good at meet­ings, working people and information before, during and afterthem, but even when they were short and decided importantstuff they felt like a waste of time.

 And they were rarely short and rarely decided important stuff.

 This one wasn't even his meeting. Unusually, he wasn't in control. He'd been summoned. Summoned? He'd beenbroughtbeforethem. That caught the mood better.

 He far preferred conference calls, holo meetings. They tendedto be shorter (though not always - if you had one where every­body was somewhere they felt really comfortable, they couldgo on for ever too) and they were easier to control — easier todismiss, basically. But there seemed to be this distribution curveof meeting reality: people at the bottom of the organisationalpile had lots of real all-sat-down-together meetings - often,Saluus had long suspected, because they had nothing useful to do and so had the time to spare and the need to seem impor­tant that meetings could provide. Those in the middle andtowards the top had more and more holo meetings because itwas just more time-efficient and the people they needed to meetwith were of similarly high stature with their own time prob­lems and often far away. But then - this was the slightly weird bit - as you got to the very highest levels, the proportion of face-to-face meetings started to rise again.

 Maybe because it was a sign of how much you'd been ableto delegate, maybe because it was a way of imposing yourauthority on those in the middle and upper-middle ranksbeneath you, maybe because the things being discussed at high-level meetings were so important that you needed the very lastnuance of physicality they provided over a holo conference to be sure that you were working with all the relevant informa­tion, including whether somebody was sweating or had anervous tic.

 This was the sort of stuff a good holo would show up, of course,though equally the sort of stuff a good pre-transmission image-editing camera would smooth away. In theory somebody in a conference call could be sitting there sweating a river andjumping like they'd been electrocuted, but if they had decent real-time image-editing facilities they could look the perfectepitome of unruffled cucumber-chill.

 Though there was stuff you could do in reality, too, of course.For his thirteenth birthday, Saluus's father had given his son asurprise party and, later, a surprise present in the shape of a visitto a Finishing Clinic, where, over the course of a long and notentirely pain-free month, they fixed his teeth, widened his eyesand altered their colour (Saluus had been womb-sculpted forthe appearance he'd had, but, hey, a father could change his mind). More to the point, they made him much less fidgety,upped his capacity to concentrate and gave him control overhis sweat glands, pheromone output and galvanic skin response(the last three not strictly legal, but then the clinic was ownedby a subsidiary of Kehar Heavy Industries). All good for giving one an edge in meetings, discussions and even informal get-togethers. And usefully applicable to the art of seduction, too,where one's blatant proximity to and control over astoundingquantities of cash had somehow failed to have the desired effect.

 This was a meeting of the Emergency War Cabinet, a high-level top-brass get-together in a klicks-deep command-bunkercomplex beneath one of a handful of discreetly well-guardedmansions dotted round the outskirts of greater Borquille State.

 A high-level top-brass get-together minus the HierchonOrmilla himself, however. He was patently too grand to attenda mere meeting, even of something as important as theEmergency War Cabinet, even when the fate of the System wasin even greater jeopardy than it had been before the disastrousdecision to go mob-handed into the atmosphere of Nasqueronthe instant they thought they had a firm lead to the - anywayprobably mythical - Dweller List.

 And why did meetings always make his mind wander, and,specifically, make it wander towards - wander towards? Headstraight for - sex?

 He looked at women he was attending meetings with andfound it very hard not to imagine them naked. This happened when they weren't especially attractive, but was inevitable andoften vivid if they were even slightly good-looking. Somethingabout being able to look at them for long periods when theywere talking, he suspected. Or just the urge to shuck off thewhole civilised thing of being good little officers of the companyand get back to being cave people again, humping in the dirt.

 First Secretary Heuypzlagger was wittering. Saluus was confi­dent that he looked like he was hanging on the First Secretary'severy word, and that his short-term memory would snick him back in should he need to return his full attention to proceed­ings if and when anything else of genuine import stumbled intoview. But in the meantime, having already gleaned as much ashe felt he was likely to regarding the real state of things fromthe body language and general demeanour of his fellow meeters,he felt free to let his mind wander.

 He glanced at Colonel Somjomion, who was the only womanat this meeting. She didn't tend to say very much so you didn'tget too many opportunities to look straight at her. Not espe­cially attractive (though he was, he'd been telling himselfrecently, starting to appreciate women rather than girls, and seepast the more obvious sexual characteristics). There was,certainly, something especially exciting about the idea ofundressing a woman in uniform, but he'd long since been thereand done that and had the screenage to prove it. He thought of his latest lover instead.

 Saluus thought of her last night, this morning, he thought ofher the night they'd first met, first slept together. He quicklygot an almost painfully hard erection. They'd sculpted him to have control over that at the Finishing Clinic as well, but heusually just let things rise and fall of their own accord downthere, unless either the presence or the absence was going to be socially embarrassing. Anyway, he'd long since accepted that maybe it was a way of getting back at dear old dad, for forcingall this amendment stuff on him in the first place, however usefulit had proved.

 He still hated meetings.

 Saluus supposed things had gone reasonably well for him inthis one so far, considering. He'd had to agree to a full inquiryinto the gas-capabling of the ships they'd modified as part ofthe general investigation into what had gone wrong, but - evenallowing for the implied insult and the waste of time, just whenthey didn't need it - that wasn't too terrible. He'd managed todeflect most of the criticism by getting the Navarchy, the Guardand the Shrievalty Ocula representatives to compete for who was least to blame for the whole botched-raid thing.

 That had worked well. Divide and conquer. That wasn't difficult in the current system. In fact it was set up for it. Heremembered asking his father about this back when Saluus was still being tutored at home. Why the confusion of agencies?Why the plethora (he'd just discovered the word, enjoyedusing it) of military and security and other organisations withinthe Mercatoria? Just look at warships: there were the Guard- they had warships, the Navarchy Military - they had warships, the Ambient Squadrons - they had warships, theSummed Fleet - obviously they had warships, and then therewere the Engineers, the Propylaea, the Omnocracy, the Cessorian Lustrals, the Shrievalty, the Shrievalty Ocula andeven the Administrata. They all had their own ships, and each even had a few warships as well, for important escort duties. Why so many? Why divide your forces? The same went forsecurity. Everybody seemed to have their own security servicetoo. Wasn't this wasteful?

 'Oh, definitely,' his father had said. 'But there's opportunityin waste. And what some call waste others would call redun­dancy. But do you really want to know what it's all about?'

 Of course he did.

 'Divide and conquer. Even amongst your own. Competition.Also even amongst your own. In fact, especially amongst yourown. Keep them all at each other's throats, keep them allwatching each other, keep them all wondering what the otherlot might be up to. Make them compete for your attention and approval. Yes, it's wasteful, looked at one way, but it's wise,looked at another. This is how the Culmina keep everything under control, young man. This is how they rule us. And itappears to work, don't you think? Hmm?'

 Saluus hadn't been sure at the time. The sheer wastefulnessof it all distressed him. He was older and wiser now and moreused to the way that things really worked being more impor­tant than the way they appeared to (unless you were talkingabout public perception, of course, when it was the other way round).

 But they really were facing a mortal and imminent threathere. Was it right to encourage division and enmity betweenpeople who and organisations which all needed to pull togetherif they were to defeat the threat they were faced with?

 Oh, but fuck it. There would always be competition. Armedservices were designed to protect turf, to engage with, to prevailagainst. Of course they'd compete with each other.

 And, if that supposedly fucking enormous and ultimatelypowerful Mercatoria fleet wasn't rushing towards them even now, would not some of the people in Ulubis - maybe quite alot of the people in Ulubis - be contemplating not resisting theBeyonder-Starveling invasion at all? Might they not, instead, be thinking about how they could come to an accommodation withthose threatening invasion?

 Despite all the propaganda they'd been subject to, secret pollsand secret police reports indicated that a lot of ordinary peoplefelt they might not be any worse off under the Beyonder\Starveling forces. Some people in power would feel the sameway, especially if they were being told to sacrifice property andwealth and even risk their own lives in what might turn out tobe a lost cause.

 Even some of those round this impressively large round tablein this impressively large and cool and subtly lit boardroom-resembling-meeting-chamber might have been tempted to thinkabout ways to cope with the threatened invasion that didn'tinvolve resistance to the last ship and soldier, if it hadn't been for the oncoming Mercatoria Fleet.

 Saluus supposed they had to assume that the fleet really wason the way. There were other possibilities, and he'd thoughtthem all through - and talked them all through with his ownadvisers and experts - but ultimately they had to be dismissed. Whether the Dweller List existed or not, everybody appearedto be acting as though it did, and that was all that mattered. Itwas a bit like money: all about trust, about faith. The value lay in what people believed, not in anything intrinsic.

 Never mind. After covering the latest intelligence and his own.shocking remissness in not making the refitted ships invulner­able to alien hyper-weapons, the meeting was finally gettinground to something useful.

 Back to grisly reality.

 'The main thing,' Fleet Admiral Brimiaice told them (thequaup commander was keen on Main Things and In The Ends),'is that the Dwellers don't seem to want to continue hostilities.'

 After their initial, furious take-no-prisoners attack and no-quarter polishing-off of those who'd got away, the Dwellers hadjust as suddenly gone back to their usual show of Shucks-us?ineptitude, claiming it had all been a terrible mistake and couldthey help with the Third Fury rebuild?

 'And thank fuck for that!' Guard-General Thovin said. 'Ifthey did, we'd have absolutely no chance. Facing the Beyonder-Starveling lot and the Dwellers as well! Holy shit! No chance.No chance at all!' Thovin was a dumpy barrel of a man, darkand powerful-looking. His voice was suitably gruff.

 'Instead, only almost no chance,' Shrievalty ColonelSomjomion said with a thin smile.

 'We have every chance, madam!' Fleet Admiral Brimiaicethundered, banging the table with one tubular armling. Hissplendidly uniformed and decorated body, like a well-tailored airship the size of a small hippo, rose in the air. 'We need nodefeatist talk here, of all places!'

 'We have seventy fewer ships than we had,' the Shrievaltycolonel reminded them, without drama.

 'We still have the will,' Brimiaice said. 'That's the importantpoint. And we have plenty of ships. And more being built allthe time.' He looked at Saluus, who nodded and tried not tolet his contempt show.

 'If they work,' muttered Clerk-Regnant Voriel. The Cessorian seemed to have a personal thing against Saluus. He had no ideawhy.

 'Now, we've dealt with all that,' First Secretary Heuypzlagger said quickly, glancing at Saluus. 'If there are any problems withthe ships' construction, I'm sure the inquiry will show themup. We have to concentrate now on what else we can do.'

 Saluus was getting bored. Now was as good a time as any. 'An embassy,' he said. He looked round them all. 'That's what I'd like to suggest. An embassy to the Dwellers of Nasqueron,to secure peace, make sure there are no more "misunderstand­ings" between us and them, attempt to involve them in thedefence of Ulubis system and, if possible, acquire from them -with their consent, preferably - some of the extremely impres­sive weaponry they appear to possess, either in physical or theo­retical form.'

 'Well,' Heuypzlagger said, shaking his head.'Oh. Now our Acquisitariat friend is a diplomat,' Vorielobserved, expression poised between sneer and smile.

 'Needing yetmore supposedly gas-capable ships to protect it, no doubt!' Brimiaice protested.

 'Haven't we got one already?' Thovin asked.

 Colonel Somjomion just looked at him, eyes narrowed.

 The meeting only seemed to last for ever. Finally it was over. Saluus met up with his new lover that evening, at the water-column house on Murla, where he'd first really looked at herin the true light of day and decided, yes, he'd be interested. Ithad been at brunch, with his wife (and her new girlfriend) andFass and the Segrette Twins, the day after their visit to theNarcateria in Boogeytown.

 *

 The RushWingSheumerith rode high in the clear gas spacesbetween two high haze layers, flying into the vast unending jetstream of gas as though trying to keep pace with the stars whichwere sometimes visible, tiny and hard and remote, through the yellow haze and the thin quick amber clouds scudding eternallyoverhead.

 The giant aircraft was a single slim scimitar of wing pockedwith engine nacelles, articulated like a wave, ten kilometres across, a hundred metres long and ten metres high, a thin filament foreverjetting like a swift weather front made visible across the waste ofclouds beneath. Dwellers, hundreds of them, hung from it, each anchored like refuelled aircraft by a cable strung out from thewing's trailing edge, riding in a little pocket of calm gas producedby simple shells of diamond, open to the rear and which, to thehuman eye, were shaped like a pair of giant cupped hands.

 In a long-term drug-trance, downshifted in time so that theflight seemed twelve or sixty or more times quicker than it reallywas - the vast continents of clouds racing beneath like foam,the wash of stars wheeling madly above, wisp-banks whippingtowards and past like rags in a hurricane - the wing-hungDwellers watched the days and nights flicker around them likesome stupendous strobe and felt the planet beneath them turn like something reeling out their lives.

 Fassin Taak left the jetclipper and flew carefully in, matchingvelocities, then anchored the little gascraft, very slowly, to theunderside of the diamond enclosure holding the Sage-youth Zosso, a slim, dark, rather battered-looking Dweller of two million years or so.

 Fassin slow-timed. The wing, the clouds, the stars, all seemedto pick up speed, rolling racing forward like over-crankedscreenage. The roar of engines and slipstreaming gas rose and rose in pitch, becoming a high, shrill, faraway keening, thenvanishing from hearing altogether.

 The Dweller above him, seeming to jerk and quiver in hislittle retaining harness, waited for him to synch before sending,- And what might you be, person?

 -  I am a human being, sir. A Seer at the Nasqueron Court,
in a gascraft, an esuit. I am called Fassin Taak, of Sept Bantrabal.

 -  And I am Zosso, of nowhere in particular. Of here. Goodview, is it not?

 -  It is.

 -  However, I dare say that that is not why you are here.

 -  You're right. It's not.

 -  You wish to ask me something?

 -  I am told I need to make passage to somewhere I've neverheard of, to follow a Dweller I need to find. I'm told you canhelp.

 -  I'm sure I can, if I choose to. Well, that is, if people stilltake any notice of what a silly old wing-hanger says. Who cansay? I'm not sure that I would listen to somebody as old andout of things as I am if I was a young travelcaptain. Why, Ithink I should say something like, 'What, listen to that foolishold—?' Oh, I beg your pardon, young human. I seem to have
distracted myself. Where was it you would like to go?

 -  A place that is, apparently, sometimes called Hoestruem.
Drunisine himself, alone, had come to the quarters that Fassinshared with the two Dwellers, in the mid-morning of the dayafter the battle in the storm.

 'We have delayed you long enough. You may go. A jetclipperis at your disposal for the next two dozen days. Goodbye.'

 'Now there,' Y'sul had observed, 'goes a Dweller of fewwords.'

 -  Hoestruem?' Zosso asked. - No, I've never heard of iteither.

 Night swept over them as he signalled, enveloping.

 -  In or near Aopoleyin? Fassin sent. - Apparently, he toldthe old wing-hanger, when the Dweller was uncommunicativefor a few moments. - Somewhere associated with Aopoleyin.

 All this was on Valseir's advice. Fassin couldn't find any mention of anywhere called Aopoleyin in his databases either.He was starting to wonder if the memory-scanning process he'dhad to undergo before being allowed to leave theIsaut hadscrambled some of the gascraft's information storage systems.

 -   Ah, Zosso sent. - Aopoleyin. That I have heard of. Hmm.Well, in that case, if I were you, I'd talk to Quercer & Janath.Yes, you'll need them. I should think. Tell them I sent you. Oh. And ask for my mantle scarf back. Might do the trick. No guarantees, though. Mind.

 -   Quercer and Janath. Your mantle scarf back.

 The old Dweller rolled a fraction, jerkily, and looked downat Fassin. - I'll have you know it was a very good mantle scarf.

 He rolled back, facing again into the never-ending rush of cloud and stars and day and night. - I could do with it up here.It's windy.

 FIVE:

 CONDITIONS OFPASSAGE

 Where?

 'You want to go where?'

 'Hoestruem, near Aopoleyin,' Fassin said.'We know where Hoestruem is.'

 'We're not stupid.''Well, I'm not. Janath might be.'

 'I  entirely  fulfilled  my  Creat  Minimum  Stupidity Allocation by associating with you.'

 'Forgive my partner. We were asking for confirmation moreout of shock at your unspeakable alienness than anything else.So. You want to go to Hoestruem.''Yes,' Fassin said.

 'And Zosso sent you.''Still banging on about that damn scarf.'

 'Useful code, though.''Hoestruem.'

 'Hoestruem.' 'Doable.'

 'Yes, but it's more the why of it, not the how.''The how is easy.'

 'The howis easy. Problem is definitely why.''As in bother.'

 'As in should we.''Well, should we?'

 'More rhetorical.' 'Has to be a joint decision.'

 'Absolutely.''Zosso asks.'

 'Zosso does.''Do we accommodate?'

 'We could just give him back his mantle scarf.''Was there ever a scarf?'

 'A real scarf?''Yes.'

 'Now you mention it.''Anyway.'

 'Beside the point.' 'Always a dangerous place to tarry'

 'Zosso. A travel request. This human gentleman in hisgascraft esuit.'

 'Ahem,' said Y'sul.'And his friend.' 'Not forgetting his friend.''And mentor,' Y'sul pointed out.

 'Yes, that too.''Do we do or do we don't?'

 'Is the question.' 'Does we does or don't we not?'

 'Yes. No. Select one of the aforementioned.''Quite.'

 'Precisely.'

 'In your own time,' Y'sul muttered.

 They were in a spinbar in Eponia, a globular stickycity in the cold chaotic wastes of the North Polar Region. The borrowedjetclipper had done its best impression of a suborb, skipping nearlyinto space in a series of bounced trajectories, finally slowing, sinking and coming to rest by the tenuous cloudlike structure of the great city, occupying hundreds of cubic kilometres of cold,stale gas just fifteen thousand klicks from the giant planet's NorthPole. They'd tracked Quercer & Janath down to a spinbar calledThe Liquid Yawn. Valseir had demurred but Y'sul and Fassin hadcrammed into a crushpod, been accelerated up to speed and then- dizzily - joined the two travelcaptains in their booth.

 Fassin had never encountered a travelcaptain before. He'dheard of them, and knew that they were almost always foundin the equatorial band, but they were elusive, even shy. He'd tried to meet with one many times in the past but there had always been some sort of problem, often at the last moment.

 The spinbar whirled madly, twisting and looping and rollingat extreme high speed, making the city outside its bubble-diamond walls seem to gyrate as though with the express inten­tion of disorientating the outward-looking bar-going public.The effect was intense and intentional. Dwellers had a superbsense of balance and it took a lot to make them dizzy. Beingspun like a maniac was one Dweller idea of fun just because it led to a profound, giddy dislocation with one's surroundings.Taking drugs at the same time just added to the hilarity. Y'sul, however, it had seemed to Fassin, looked a little grey aroundthe gills as they'd woven their way through the mostly emptyspinbar to the travelcaptains' booth.

 'You all right?'

 'Perfectly'

 'Bringing back memories of heading through the storm wallin thePoaflias?'

 'Not at...Well, just a little. Ulp. Perhaps.'

 Quercer & Janath, travelcaptains, were one. They looked likeone big Dweller, of about Adult age, but there were two indi­viduals in there, one in each discus. Fassin had heard of truetwinDwellers before, but never met a set. Usually a Dweller's brain was housed just off the central spine in the thickest, central partof one discus; generally the left one. Right-brain Dwellers wereabout fifteen per cent of the total population, though this variedfrom planet to planet. Very, very occasionally, two brains devel­oped in the one creature, and something like Quercer & Janathtended to be the result. The double-Dweller wore a shiny setof all-overs with transparent and mesh patches over the hubsense organs, and a shaded transparent section over the outer frill of sensory fringe.

 'You'll not be able to see much.''That's if we take you at all.'

 'Yes, that's if we do take you in the first.''Place. Which is by no means guaranteed.'

 'Indeed not. Decision not yet made.''Still pending.'

 'Absolutely. But.'

 'In any event.''You'll not be able to see much of anything.'

 'Not exactly a sightseeing trip.''Or a cruise.'

 'Either.''And you'll have to switch everything off.'

 'All non-bio systems.' 'At least.'

 'If, that is.''Big if.'

 'We do take you.'

 'I think we get the idea,' Fassin said.'Good.'

 'Brilliant.'

 'When can we expect a decision?' Y'sul asked. He'd turned his right sense-fringe inward so that he was seeing with onlyone. This was the Dweller equivalent of a drunk human closingone eye.

 'Made it. I've made it. You made it?'

 'Yep, I've made it.''It's a Yes?'

 'It's a Yes.'

 'You'll take us?' Fassin asked.'Are you deaf? Yes.'

 'Definitely.'

 'Thank you,' Fassin said.'So where are we going?' Y'sul asked tetchily.'Ah.'

 'Ha!''Wait.'

 'And see.'

 The ship was no joke. Three hundred metres long, it was a polished ebony spike necklaced with drive pods like fat seeds.It lay in a public hangar deep under the stickycity, a semi-spher­ical space a kilometre across bounded by the hexagonal planes of adjacent smaller bubble volumes.

 Valseir was bidding them farewell here. The trip would beginwith what the two travelcaptains described as an intense, frac­tally spiralled, high-acceleration, torque-intense manoeuvrecomplex, and was not for the faint-willed. The old Dweller hadinvoked his seniority to excuse himself the ordeal.

 'More spinning around,' Y'sul sighed, on hearing whatawaited them.

 'My regards to Leisicrofe,' Valseir told Fassin. 'You still havethe leaf image, I hope.'

 Fassin took the image-leaf with its depiction of sky and cloudsout of its storage locker in the little gascraft and showed it tothe old Dweller. 'I'll say hello.'

 'Please do. Best of luck.'

 'You too. How do I find you when I get back?'

 'Leave that to me. If I'm not readily available, try where wefound Zosso. Or, perhaps at a StormSail regatta.'

 'Yes,' Y'sul said. 'But next time just don't bring any friends.'

 The black spike-ship was called theVelpin. It burst from thevast cloud of the city like a needle shot from a frozen waterfallof foam, disappeared into the gelid rush of gases forever swirlingaround the planet's distant pole and started its bizarre flight, spiralling, rolling, looping, rising and falling and rising again.

 Locked into a centrally positioned space which doubled as apassenger compartment and hold, restrained by webbing, Fassinand Y'sul felt the ship commit to spirals within spirals within spirals, tiny corkscrew motions threaded into a whole rampedcourse of greater coils, themselves part of a still wider set ofever quicker, tighter loops.

 'Fucking hell,' Y'sul commented.

 A faulty screen was set in the far wall, hazed over with static. It made buzzing noises and occasionally flashed with images of ragged, striated clouds whipping past in distorted twists of lightand shade. Fassin could see and hear, though both senses weredegraded. All the systems in the gascraft had been switched off.Webbed upright, he could see out of the de-opaqued plate over his face - he'd let some of the shock-gel drain away so he couldsee better. The sound that came through the little arrowheadwas at once dulled and high. Y'sul's voice sounded like squeaks,barely comprehensible.

 Fassin and Y'sul were stuck to the inner surface of thecompartment, pinned there by the ship's wild spins.

 'Any idea why they have to do all this fractal spiralling?' Fassin had asked when they'd both been secured and Quercer& Janath had gone to their command space a single compart­ment away.

 'Could just be pure mischief,' Y'sul had said.

 Fassin looked at Y'sul now. Both the Dweller's sense fringeswere turned in.

 The ship accelerated hard, executing a broad curve. The screenflashed black pitted with stars, all revolving frantically, thenblanked out.

 The insane, nested sets of spirals resolved down to a single long-axis spin, as though theVelpin was a shell travelling downthe barrel of some vast gun.

 The ship resounded with a high, singing note around them and seemed to settle into something like a cruise. The rate ofspin slackened off gradually. Fassin watched as Y'sul's sense fringes gradually opened. The screen showed slowly spinning stars for several minutes. Then it blanked out again. The spin­ning picked up once more and Y'sul turned his fringes outside-in again. The spin built up until Fassin could feel his wholebody being pressed through the shock-gel. It was his own coffin,he realised. Of course it was. He was getting tunnel vision now,starting to see the view down that great gun barrel, the viewahead shrunk to a single point far away; way, way in the distance,nothing but darkness and grey beyond darkness on either side,down that never-ending tube towards the last defined place theywere aiming towards, never coming any closer.

 Fassin woke up. Still spinning, but the rate was slackening offagain. His nose itched and it felt like he needed to pee, eventhough he knew he didn't. This never happened when the shock-gel and gillfluid were doing their jobs. He fell asleep.

 *

 Taince Yarabokin woke up. One of her first thoughts as she surfaced slowly to full consciousness was that Saluus Keharwould not have received the message she'd prepared for him,that there was still time for more reviewings and re-recordingsand revisions, that she would be able to spend more timewatching and listening to herself on the recording, and reduceherself to tears every time. Still time and a chance to confronthim, maybe kill him, if that was both possible and somethingshe felt driven to do at the time (she had no idea - sometimesshe wanted to kill him, sometimes she wanted him alive to sufferthe shame of knowing that she had released the story to thenewsnets, and sometimes she just wanted him to know that sheknew what had really happened that long-ago night in the ruined ship on the high desert).

 She checked the time, feeling woozily around in virtual spacefor information. Still half a year out from Ulubis. She would be awake now until the attack itself, one of the first to bewakened for the final run-in, because she represented the closestthing they had to local knowledge. Privately she doubted she'dbe able to offer much practical help, given that she'd last seenUlubis over two centuries earlier and it might, to put it mildly,have changed somewhat after having been invaded, but she wasthe best they had. She thought of herself in that respect moreas a talisman than anything else, a small symbol of the system that they would be fighting for. If that had been one consider­ation in her getting a place in the fleet, it didn't bother her. Shewas confident that she was a good, competent and brave officerand deserved her post on merit alone. The fact that it was herown home system she was riding to the rescue of was just abonus.

 The fleet had spread out a little since the battle with theBeyonders in mid-voyage, sacrificing the immediate weight ofarms it could bring to bear for a net of forward picket craftwhich would flag any trouble long before the main body of the fleet got to it. Taince had spent most of the intervening yearsslow-asleep in her pod, but - thanks to that relative securityprovided by the advance ships - she'd had some recreationaland morale-time out of the shock-gel as well, walking around almost like a normal human being in the spun-gravity of thebattleship, feeling odd and strange confronted with suchnormality, like an alien inhabiting a human's body; clumsy,astonished at tiny things like fingernails and the hairs on anarm, awkward, especially at first, with meeting other off-dutyhumans, and missing the richness of her in-pod, wired-up virtualexistence - with the ability to dip in and out of entire high-definition sensoria of data and meaning - like an amputatedlimb.

 It would be like that again now, once she had finally comeround. Taince wasn't really looking forward to it. When shewas stumbling about on two legs she wanted to be back in thepod, synched in, but when she was there she was forevernostalgic for a normal, physical one-speed, one-reality life. Blueskies and sunlight, a fresh breeze blowing through her hair andgreen grass and flowers under her bare feet.

 Long time ago. And maybe never again, who knew?

 Another of Taince's first thoughts, even when she realisedthat she was being woken up slowly, without alarms going off, as part of the programmed, pre-agreed duty-shift system ratherthan some fateful emergency that might end in her death at anymoment, was that she had not yet escaped into death, that itwas not yet all over, and any terrors and agonies that might behers to encounter before the peace of oblivion were still aheadof her.

 *

 'Hoestruem,' Quercer & Janath said.

 'Where?' Fassin asked.

 'What do you mean, "Where?"?'

 'You'rein it.'

 Fassin had recovered from his blackout once they'd turned his little gascraft's systems back on. He still felt disorientatedand oddly dirty, a sensation that was only gradually disappearingas the shock-gel enveloped him fully again. Y'sul had seemed abit groggy too, wobbly in the air when released from hiswebbing.

 Now they were looking at the passenger-compartment screen,which Quercer & Janath, still dressed in their shiny overalls,had hit with one rim-arm and got to work. Fassin looked care­fully at the image on the screen but all he could see was a starfield. He could not, for now, work out in which direction hewas looking. Certainly not a direction he was used to looking in. He didn't recognise anything.

 'In it?' he asked, feeling fuzzy, and foolish.

 'Yes, in it.'

 Fassin looked at Y'sul, who still looked a little grey aboutthe mantle.

 The Dweller just shrugged. 'Well,' he said, 'I certainly givein. Who, what or where the fuck is Hoestruem?'

 'A Clouder.'

 'AClouder?' Fassin said. This had to be a translation thing,or a simple misunderstanding. Clouders were part of theCincturia: the beings, devices, semi-civs and tech dross that werebeyond the Beyonders, way on the outside of everything.

 Y'sul shook himself. 'You mean a WingClouder orTreeClouder or StickyClouder or—'

 'No.'

 'None of the above.'

 'Just a Clouder.'

 'But—' Fassin said.

 'Aopoleyin, then!' Y'sul shouted. 'Let's start with that! Isthatwhere we are?'

 'Yes.''Indeed.'

 'Well, sort of.''Depends.'

 'It's the nearest place.''The nearest system.'

 'Eh?' Y'sul said.

 'The nearest what?' Fassin asked, simply not understanding.He peered at the star field. This didn't look right. This didn'tlook right at all. Not in any way whatsoever, not upside downor mirrored or backside-holo'd or anything.

 'I think I'm still confused,' Y'sul said, rippling his sensemantles to wake himself up.

 Fassin felt as though he was at the bottom of that gun barrelagain, about to be blasted out of it, or already being blown outof it, up the biggest, longest most unspeakably enormous andforever unending gun barrel in all the whole damn universe.

 'How far are we from Nasqueron?' he heard himself say.

 'Wait a moment,' Y'sul said slowly. 'What do you mean,"system"?'

 'About thirty-four kiloyears.'

 'Stellar, not gas-giant. Apologies for any confusion.'

 'Thirty-fourkiloyears?' Fassin said. It felt like he was goingto black out again. 'You mean . . .' His voice just trailed off.

 'Thirty-four  thousand  light  years,  standard.  Roughly. Apologies for any confusion.''I already said that.'

 'Know. Different person, different confusion.'

 They were in another system, another solar system, anotherpart of the galaxy altogether; they had, if they were being toldthe truth, left Ulubis - system and star - thirty-four thousandlight years behind. There was a working portal in Ulubis systemlinked via a wormhole to this distant stellar system neitherFassin nor Y'sul had ever heard of.

 The Clouder being Hoestruem was a light year across. Clouderswere - depending who you talked to - sentient, semi-sentient, proto-sentient, a-sentient or just plain not remotely sentient -though that last extreme point of view tended to be held onlyby those for whom it would be convenient if it were true, suchas those who could do useful, profitable things with a big cloudof gas. Providing it wasn't alive. Arguably closer to vast, distrib­utedly-smart plants than any sort of animal, they had a compo­sition very similar to the clouds of interstellar gas which they inhabited\were (the distinction was moot).

 Clouders were part of the Cincturia, the collection of beings, species, machine strains and intelligent detritus that existed -generally - between stellar systems and didn't fit into any otherneat category (so they weren't the deep-space cometarians calledthe Eclipta, they weren't drifting examples of the Brown DwarfCommunitals known as the Plena, and they weren't the realexotics, the Non-Baryonic Penumbrae, the thirteen-way-foldedDimensionates or the Flux-dwelling Quantarchs).

 Valseir's friend Leisicrofe was a scholar of the Cincturia. Theresearch trip he was making was a field trip, visiting actual exam­ples of Cincturia - Clouders, Sailpods, Smatter, Toilers and therest - throughout the galaxy. He had come to visit Hoestruembecause it was one of the few Clouders anywhere near a worm-hole portal. Only it wasn't a wormhole or a portal that anybodyin the Mercatoria or the rest of what called itself the CivilisedGalaxy knew anything about.

 The star Aopoleyin was only a dozen light days away. TheClouder Hoestruem - much larger than the stellar system as meas­ured to its outermost planet - was passing partly through the outerreaches of the system, intent (if that was not too loaded a word)on its slow migration to some far-distant part of the great lens.The Dweller Leisicrofe was somewhere here, in his own smallcraft, or at least had been. TheVelpin set out to look for him.

 'How long were we really under?' Fassin asked Quercer &Janath. They were floating in the Velpin'scontrol space,watching the scanners chatter through their sweeps, searching for anything that might be a ship. The progress was slow. TheDwellers had long had an agreement with the Clouders thatmeant their ships made very slow speed when moving through one. Clouders were resilient, but their individual filaments, the wispy bands and channels of tenuous gas that formed theirsensory apparatus and nervous systems, were surpassing deli­cate, and a ship the size of theVelpin had to move slowly andcarefully amongst the strands of Clouder substance to avoidcausing damage. TheVelpin was broadcasting a signal haillooping a request for Leisicrofe to get in touch, though Quercer & Janath was not optimistic this would raise their quarry; these academics were notorious for turning off their comms.

 The truetwin looked genuinely puzzled. The double-creatureshook itself, rustling the shiny crinkles of the mirror-finishcoveralls. 'How long were you under what?'

 'How long were we really unconscious?' Fassin asked.

 'Some days.'

 'And then some more days.'

 'Seriously,' Fassin said.

 'And what's this "we"?' Y'sul protested. 'I wasn't uncon­scious!'

 'There.''You see?'

 'Your friend disagrees.'

 'Some days, you said,' Fassin quoted.

 'Some days?' Y'sul said. 'Some days? We weren't unconsciousfor some days, any days, a single day!' He paused. 'Were we?'

 'The process takes some time, requires forbearance,' thetruetwin Dweller said. 'Sleep is best. No distractions.''How could we possibly keep you amused?'

 'And then there's the security aspect.''Of course.'

 'I was only briefly drowsy!' Y'sul exclaimed. 'I shut my eyesfor a moment, in contemplation, no more!'

 'About twenty-six days.'

 'We were unconscious for twenty-six days?' Fassin asked.'Standard.'

 'Roughly.'

 'What?'Y'sul bellowed. 'You mean we werekept unconscious?'

 'In a manner of speaking, yes.'

 'In a manner ofspeaking!' a plainly furious Y'sul roared.'What we said.'

 'And what manner of speaking would that be, you kidnap­ping piratical wretches?'

 'The manner of speaking complete truth.'

 'You mean you drugged orzapped us unconscious?' Y'sulfairly howled.

 'Yes. Very boring otherwise.'

 'Howdare you?' Y'sul shrieked.

 'Plus it's part of the terms for using the tube.'

 'Conditions of Passage,' the left side of Quercer & Janathintoned.

 The other side of the truetwin made a whistling noise.

 'Oh, yes! Those Conditions of Passage; they'll get youevery time.'

 'Can't be helpful with them.'

 'Can't use the tube without 'em.'

 'Don't— What? - You—Condi—!' Y'sul spluttered.

 'Ah,' Fassin said, signalling to Y'sul to let him speak. 'Yes.I'd like to ask you some questions about, ah, tube travel, if youdon't mind.'

 'Absolutely.''Ask away.'

 'Make the questions good, though; the answers may well bebaloney.'

 '. . . Never heard anything so disgraceful in all my . . .' Y'sul was muttering, drifting over to a set of medium-range scannerholo tanks and tapping them as though this would aid thelocating of Leisicrofe's ship.

 Fassin had known they'd been under for more than an houror two. His own physiology, and the amount of cleaning-upand housekeeping the shock-gel and gillfluid had had to do hadtold him that. Finding out that it had been twenty-six days lefthim more relieved than anything else. Certainly losing thatamount of time when you hadn't been expecting to and hadn'tbeen warned about it was disconcerting and left one feeling sortof retrospectively vulnerable (and would it be the same on anyway back?) but at least they hadn't said a year, or twenty-sixyears. Fate alone knew what had happened in Ulubis duringthat time - and of course, with all his gascraft's systems switchedoff, Fassin had no way of checking whether this really was the amount of time they had spent unconscious - but it looked likeat least one small part of the Dweller List legend was true. Therewere secret wormholes. There was one, for sure, and Fassin thought it unlikely in the extreme that the one between Ulubisand Aopoleyin was the only one. It was well worth losing acouple of dozen days to find that out.

 Fassin felt himself try to draw a breath inside the littlegascraft. 'Wedid come through a wormhole?' he asked.

 'Excellent first question! Easily answerable in every sense!Yes.'

 'We did. Though we call them Cannula.'

 'Where is the Ulubis end - the Nasqueron end - of the worm-hole, the Cannula? Where is the Adjutage?' Fassin asked.

 'Ah! He knows the terminology.''Most impressive.'

 'And a very good question in one sense.'

 'Couldn't agree more. Phenomenally hopeless in another.'

 'Can't tell you.''Security.'

 'Sure you understand.'

 'Of course I understand,' Fassin said. Getting a straightanswer to that one would have been too good to be true. 'Howlong has the wormhole existed?' he asked.

 The truetwin was quiet for a moment, then said,

 'Don't know.'

 'For sure. Billions of years, probably.'

 'Possibly.'

 'How many others are there like it?' Fassin asked. ‘Imeanwormholes; Cannula?'

 'Ditto.'

 'Ditto?'

 'Ditto as in - again - don't know.' 'No idea.'

 'Well, some.'

 'All right, some idea. But can't tell. Conditions of Passageagain.'

 'Drat those Conditions of Passage.''Oh yes, drat.'

 'Are there any other wormholes from Ulubis - fromanywhere near Ulubis system, say within its Oort radius - toanywhere else?'

 'Another good question. Can't tell you.'

 'More than our travelcaptaincy's worth.''This one, to Aopoleyin; does it link up with a Mercatoriawormhole? Does one of their wormholes have a portal, an Adjutage, here too?''No.'

 'Agree. Straight answer. What a relief. No.''And from here, from Aopoleyin,' Fassin said. 'Are thereother wormholes?'

 Silence again for a moment. Then,'Seems silly, but can't tell you.'

 'Like anybody's going to have just one stupid tube to thisplace.''But still.'

 'Can't say.''And that's official.'

 Fassin signalled resignation. 'Conditions of Passage?' heasked.

 'Catching on.'

 'But why me?' Fassin asked.'Why you?'

 'Why you what?'

 'Why have I been allowed to travel here, to use the worm-hole?'

 'You asked.'

 'More to the point, Valseir, Zosso and Drunisine asked onyour behalf.'

 'How could we refuse?'

 'So I couldn't just have asked on my own behalf?' Fassin said.'Oh, you could have asked.''Best leave that hanging.''Attempt not to insult passengers.'

 'Unwritten law.'

 'Do you know of any other humans who've been allowed to use Dweller wormholes?''No.'

 'No, indeed. Not that we'd know, necessarily.' 'Any other Seers?''Not to our knowledge.'

 'Which is admittedly vague.''Okay,' Fassin said. He could feel his heart thudding in hischest, deep inside the little gascraft. 'Do you make journeysthrough the wormhole often?'

 'Define "often".'

 'Let me rephrase: how many times have you used the worm-hole in the last ten years standard?'

 'Easy question.' 'To sidestep.'

 'But - say - a few hundred.'

 'Excuse our vagueness. Conditions of Passage.'

 'A fewhundred?' Fassin asked. Good grief, if that was truethese guys were running round the galaxy in their hidden worm-hole system like subway trains under a city.

 'No more, assuredly.'

 'Are there many other ships like . . . ? No, let me rephrase:how many other ships in Nasqueron make regular wormholejourneys?'

 'No idea.'

 'Haven't the haziest.'

 'Not even roughly? Would there be dozens, hundreds?'

 The left side of Quercer & Janath briefly turned its shiny overalls transparent and flashed a pattern of high amusementover its signal skin.

 The right side made the whistling noise again.

 Fassin gave them time for a spoken answer, but it didn'tappear. 'Are there alot?' he asked.

 Silence a while longer.

 'There are a few.''Not a few.'

 'Make what you will.'

 'Again, vagueness to be excused. Conditions of Passage.'

 'Thousands?' Fassin asked. No response from the truetwinDweller. He felt himself gulp. 'Tens of—?'

 'No point going pursuing numbers uppage.''See last answer given above.'

 He had no idea. There justcouldn't be all that many ships,could there? No matter how impressive your stealth tech,surely out of hundreds or thousands of ship movements withina system every year a few had to betray itself on some sort ofsensor, now and again. No system was perfect, no technologynever failed. Something had to show up. How far out didportals have to be? Fassin wasn't an expert on the physics, buthe was fairly certain that you needed relatively flat space, well away from a gravity gradient as steep as that round a gas-giant.Could their portals be as near to the planet as a close-orbitmoon?

 'And Nasqueron?' he asked. 'Would it be a typical sort ofDweller planet in this regard?'

 'All Places of Dwelling are special.'

 'Nasqueron - Nest of Winds - no less special than any.'

 'But yes.'

 Yes.Fassin felt that if he'd been standing up in normal gravityasking these questions and getting these answers, he'd have hadto sit down some time ago. Or just plain fallen over.

 'Have you ever been here before, to Aopoleyin?' he asked.

 Silence. Then, 'No.'

 'Or if yes, can't remember.'

 Fassin got something like Swim, that feeling of intense discon­nection when the sheer implicatory outlandishness of a situa­tion suddenly hit home to the unprepared human.

 'And if - when - we go back to Nasqueron, am I free to justtell people where I've been?'

 'If you remember.''Then yes.'

 'Is there a reason I might not remember?'

 'Cannula travel plays strange tricks, Seer Taak.'

 'You'd try to remove the memory from my brain?' Fassinfelt his skin crawl. 'Human brains are difficult to do that sort of thing to without harming them.'

 'We've heard.'

 'Working on assumption nobody will believe you.'

 'Don't distress.'

 'Might believeme!' Y'sul said, suddenly turning away fromthe screens he'd busied himself with earlier.

 Quercer & Janath bobbed dramatically, like they'd forgotten he was there.

 'You're not serious!'

 'Not serious!' they yelped, nearly together.

 Y'sul snorted and flashed high amusement. "Course not.' Heturned back to the screens, muttering while chuckling, 'What you take me for. Like life too much anyway. Hang on tomymemories, thank you . . .'

 *    *    *

 The search went on. Fassin tried interrogating theVelpin'ssystems to discover if it carried its own Dweller List, its ownmap of the unknown wormhole network, or even just the loca­tion of the portal they'd entered in Ulubis system to get here.The ship's computers - easily accessed, barely shielded - seemedcompletely free of anything but the most basic star charts. Thegreater galaxy was mapped down to a scale that showed whereall the stars and major planets should be, and that was it. Nohabs and no traces of megastructures were shown, and only thevaguest indications of Oort and Kuiper bodies and asteroid beltswere given. It wasn't like a proper star-chart set at all, it wasmore like a school atlas. The little gascraft had a more detailedstar map. Fassin searched the ship electronically as best he couldwithout making it too obvious, but found nothing else moredetailed.

 He supposed the real stuff must be hidden away somewhere,but had an odd, nagging feeling that it wasn't. TheVelpin seemeda well-built ship - by Dweller standards exceptionally well-built- with relatively sophisticated but elegantly simple engines andlots of power, no weapons and some carrying capacity. No more.The rudimentary star data somehow fitted.

 Fassin tried to work out a way to commandeer the ship, justtake it over. Could he hijack theVelpin? He'd spent enoughtime in the cluttered sphere of the ship's command space to see how Quercer & Janath controlled the vessel. It didn't look diffi­cult. He had, even, just asked.

 'How do younavigate this thing?'

 'Point.'

 'Point?'

 'Get to the general volume and then point in the right direc­tion.'

 'Secret is plenty of power.'

 'Delicate finessing of delta-V is sign you haven't really gotenough power.' 'Power is all.'

 'You can do a lot by just pointing.' 'If you've got enough power.'

 'Though sometimes you have to sort of allow a bit for deflec­tion.'

 'That's a technical term.'

 Fassin couldn't work out how to take the ship over. Dwellerscould, if they were determined, go years without experiencinganything a human would recognise as sleep, and Quercer &Janath claimed that they could get by without any at all, noteven little slow-down style snoozes. His gascraft had noweapons apart from the manipulators, he had never trained to use the arrowhead as a close-combat device and anyway anAdult Dweller was bigger and probably more powerful -except in top speed - than the little gascraft. Dwellers were,anyway, generally regarded as being very hard to disable and\or kill.

 He remembered Taince Yarabokin talking about her close-combat briefings. The basic advice when confronting a Dwellerwho meant you harm - if you, as a human, were in a conven­tional spacesuit, say - was to make sure you had a big gun. There was no known way an unarmed human, even in anarmoured suit, could take on a fit young Dweller. If you didn'thave a big gun, then Run Away Very Quickly was the bestadvice. Of all the Mercatorial species, only the Voehn were known to be able to tackle a Dweller unarmed, and even thenit wasn't a foregone conclusion.

 Fassin supposed he could just ram Quercer & Janath.Crashing the little gascraft into them nose first might knockthem out or disable them, but he wasn't sure there was suffi­cient room to work up enough speed for such a manoeuvre in any single part of the ship. He'd need to start a few compart­ments back and come slamming into the command space, hopingfor a lucky hit, and that they wouldn't hear him coming andjust rote out of the way to leave him to smash into the instru­ments. He wondered what Hatherence would have done. Hewondered if she'd have been allowed to come in the first place.Almost certainly not with any weapons. On the other handthere was that standard Dweller casualness about such things.On theother hand, this ship didn't seem that casual.

 Even if he could get Quercer & Janath out of the way, whatabout Y'sul? He didn't think the older Dweller would conspireor even cooperate. Y'sul had made it very clear that he was anentirely loyal Dweller who was simply being a good guide andmentor, not some treacherous human-lover in league with orharbouring any sympathy for the Mercatoria, an entire powerstructure and civilisation he professed neither to understand norcare about.

 And even if Fassin could somehow get control of the shipby himself, tricking both Dwellers - or all three, depending howyou looked at it - what then? He still hadn't been able to find any sign of a hidden navigational matrix on the ship. Wherewas he supposed to go? How did he find the wormhole portalthat had brought them here? When he found it, how did he get through, assuming it was in any way guarded or just adminis­tered? Mercatorial portals were some of the most intenselymonitored and heavily guarded locations in the galaxy. Even allowing for the semi-chaotic indifference that Dwellers tended to display regarding such matters, could he really expect to fly unchallenged through one of their portals as though it was justanother patch of space?

 He'd tried to find out more about the whole process offinding and traversing a Dweller wormhole portal - an Adjutage- from Quercer & Janath, but they had, to even his surprise,given their conspicuous gift for the technique, comprehensivelyout-vagued themselves on the matter, surpassing their most studiedly unhelpful earlier replies by some margin.

 Fassin had been allowed out of the ship. He'd floated free ofit as it cruised gently through the tenuous, near-vacuum bodyof the Clouder Hoestruem. He wanted to check as best he couldthat this was not all faked somehow. How, after all, did he reallyknow that he was where Quercer & Janath said he was? They'dtold him. He'd seen information displayed on some screen and in or out of some holo displays. It could all be a joke, or a way of setting him up for something. So he had to check.

 Outside theVelpin, keeping pace with the ship as it slidthrough the allegedly self-aware interstellar cloud, he used thelittle gascraft's senses to gauge whether he was in some vast arti­ficial environment.

 As far as Fassin could tell, he wasn't. He genuinely was in achemical\dust cloud on the edge of a planetary system a quarterof the way round the galaxy from his home and halfway intowards the galactic core. The stars looked completely different. Only the distant galaxies still aligned. If it wasn't really the edgeof deep space, it was a brilliant simulation of it. He used up alittle of his reaction mass - water, basically - to fly a few kilo­metres away from theVelpin, and still encountered no wall, nogiant screen. So either he was in a truly prodigious VR space, or it was all being done directly, through his brain, or throughthe gascraft's own collar, somehow uprated to one hundred percent immersion, beyond check.

 He thought back to something Valseir had said once: Anytheory which causes solipsism to seem just as likely an expla­nation for the phenomena it seeks to describe ought to be heldin the utmost suspicion.

 Valseir had been talking about the Truth and other religions,but Fassin felt he was in a similar situation here. He had no realchoice but to act as though all this was genuine. Even so, he had to keep the idea that it wasn't at the back of his head, justin case. Because if all this was real then he was, maybe, on thebrink of the most astounding discovery in all human history, arevelation that could do untold harm or bring inestimable bene­fits to any combination of the Mercatoria, its adversaries andjust about every other space-faring species in the galaxy. Heremembered confronting the emissarial projection, what seemedlike an age ago, back in the Autumn House. Which was morelikely: what appeared to be the case, or this all being a lie, a set­up, a vast and incomprehensible joke? Discuss.

 He ran every check he could while he was outside the hullof theVelpin. He was in space. Everything checked out. Or he was in a sim so complete that there was no disgrace in beingtaken in by it. Back to the Truth again. Hatherence would haveappreciated the dilemma.

 He could, if he really wanted, he supposed, just try and runaway. The gascraft would support him indefinitely, it wascapable of independent entry into a planetary atmosphere, andif he used almost all his reaction mass he could be in the innersystem of this star Aopoleyin in a few years. He could evensleep most of the way and hardly notice the journey. But then what? He'd never heard of the place. It was somewhere in theKhredeil Tops (whatever those were) according to the gascraft'srudimentary star atlas, but it wasn't listed as a human orMercatorial inhabited system and there was no mention of ithaving any inhabitants at all. That didn't mean there was nobodythere - everywhere seemed to support somebody who called ithome - but it meant that he'd probably be no further forward trying to get back home.

 He came back to the ship when Quercer & Janath signalledexcitedly that they'd found something. It wasn't Leisicrofe'sship; it was the delicate ball of gas and chemicals - a lacework ball of cold and dirty string open to the vacuum, held togetherby just a trace of gravity - that was the Clouder's mind.

 . . . Looking for . . . ?

 - A Dweller. A gas-giant Dweller, called Leisicrofe.
. . . Image . . .

 -  Image?

 . . . Told image expect . . . specific image . . .

 -  Ah. I have an image with me. How . . . ? Where, I mean what do I show it to, so you can see it?

 . . . No . . . describe . . .

 - Okay. It's an image of white clouds in a blue sky.
. . . Accords . . .

 - So you can tell me? Where Leisicrofe is?
. . . Went . . .

 -   When did he go?

 . . . Measure time how you . . . ?

 -  Standard system?

 . . . Known . . . being Leisicrofe went 7.35 x 10° secondsago...

 Fassin did the calculation. About twenty years earlier.

 He was nestled into the outer regions of the Clouder's mind,the little gascraft resting gently between two broad strands ofgas a fraction less cold than the surrounding chill of deep space.He was, in effect, delving, stopped right down to talk to some­thing that made a deep, slow-timing Dweller look like a speed-freak. Clouders thought surpassingly slowly.

 A signal from outside, from theVelpin. To the Clouder he sent,

 -  Where did Leisicrofe go?

 Then he clicked up to normal speed.

 'Are you going to be much longer?' Y'sul asked, soundingirritable. 'I am rapidly running out of patience with this bilat­eral monomaniac. It's been ten days, Fassin. What's happened? Fallen asleep?'

 'I'm going as fast as I can. Only been a few tens of secondsfor me.'

 'You could just stay and think at normal speed, you know. Give us all time to mull over whatever this gas-brain's saying.No need to go doing this show-off delving stuff.'

 'Less of a conversation that way. This shows respect. You getmore out of people if you—'

 'Yes yes yes. Well, you just carry on. I'll try and find moregames to keep this split-personality cretin occupied. You rote offand commune with this space-vegetable. I'll do the real hard work.Sorry I came along now. If I've missed any more good battleswhile I've been away . . .' His voice faded into the distance.

 Fassin descended into extreme slow-time again. The Clouderstill hadn't replied.

 At least this time there was no insane spiralling. There was thesame fuzzy, low-reliability screen to distract them as they waftedaway from the Clouder and made for the hidden wormholemouth, and the doors out of the passenger compartment werejust as locked, but there was no fierce spinning. Fassin letQuercer & Janath take over the gascraft remotely and turn offits systems. He didn't bother to clear any of the shock-gel orturn the faceplate clear this time, he just put himself into atrance. It was easy, a lot like preparing to go down into slow-time. And it meant he couldn't see or hear Y'sul complainingabout the ignominy of being zapped unconscious just becausethey were going on a space journey.

 They were making for somewhere called Mavirouelo - yetanother place Fassin had never heard of. This was whereHoestruem had said that Leisicrofe was going next. The Clouderhadn't known if this was a system, a planet, another Clouderor what. Quercer & Janath had gone silent for a moment when they heard the name, and Fassin had sensed them consultingthe ship's crude galactic atlas. They declared that they knew theplace. A planet, in the Ashum system. (Fassin, or at least thegascraft's memory, did know of this place. It was even connected,with its own Mercatorial-controlled wormhole, though Fassin suspected they wouldn't be using it.) Total travel time to beexpected was 'a few days'.

 As he slid into unconsciousness, Fassin's thoughts were of howbeautiful the Clouder had looked. The vast being was like amillion great long gauzy scarves of light, a whisper of matter andgravity close to nothingness that massed more than many solar systems, drifting yet purposeful, intent by ancient decision, alonga course charted out over millions of years, propelled, dirigibleby minute flexings of cold plasmas, by the force of near-not-there-at-all magnetic fields, by sigh-strength expulsions anddrawings-in of interstellar material. Cold and dead-seeming yet alive and thinking. And beautiful, in the right light. Seen in a fitting wash of wavelengths, there was something endlessly,perfectly sublime about . . .

 *

 Saluus stood on a balcony of ice and metal, looking out at theview, his breath misting in the air before him.

 The Shrievalty retreat was embedded in and partially sculptedfrom the frozen waterfall Hoisennir, a four-hundred-metre-high, klick-wide cliff of ice marking where the river Doaroebegan its long fall from the high semi-arctic plateau towards thetundra and plains beyond. A low winter sun provided a grand display of Sepektian clouds and a fuzzy purple-red sunset, butnowhere near enough heat to start melting the ice.

 Sepekte wobbled slowly and not especially significantly. Itsarctic and antarctic circles, where the sun alternately never setor never rose during the heights of summer and depths of winter,were less than a thousand kilometres in diameter. Officiallyclassed as a hot\temperate planet by human standards, itswinters were longer but less severe than those of Earth and their worst effects were confined to smaller areas than on humanity'soriginal home. But the Hoisennir waterfall was far north andhigh up in the arctic-shield mountains, and the Doaroe spentstandard years at a time entirely frozen.

 The place was called a retreat because it was owned by theShrievalty, but as far as Saluus was concerned it was just a hoteland conference centre. The view was impressive, though, whenthere was sufficient daylight actually to see it properly. It hada certain severe appeal, Saluus was prepared to grant.

 Saluus didn't like being here, all the same. He wasn't keen on places that he couldn't get away from easily - preferably, if the worst came to the worst, by just walking. To get away from heremeant an air-car or a lift up or down the interior of the frozenfall to the landing ground on the ice of the solidified river above,or down to the vac-rail station on the shore of the frozen lakeat the foot of the cliff. When he'd found out where the confer­ence on the Dweller Embassy was to be held - at fairly shortnotice, for security reasons - he'd made sure to have a parasailpacked with his luggage, just so that he had an emergency wayout, if it came to it.

 He knew that almost certainly there wouldn't be any emer­gency - or if there was it would be something so big and-orquick that there would be no getting away from it - but he feltbetter, safer having the parasail by the balcony window of hisbedroom. Most of the other important attendees had suites farinside the fall, to be further away from anything that mightcome at them from outside, but Saluus had insisted on an outside suite, one with a view, a way out. He hadn't parasailed fordecades but he'd rather risk his neck that way than cowering at the back of a suite, whimpering, just waiting for death.

 He sometimes wondered where this obsession with being ableto get away came from. It wasn't something he'd been bornwith or picked up as the result of some traumatic experience inchildhood, it was just something that had sort of crept slowlyup on him all the way through his adult life. One of those things, he supposed. He hadn't bothered wasting any time thinkingreally deeply about it.

 All that mattered, Saluus supposed, was that the retreat\hotelwas as safe a place to be as anywhere was, these days. The attackson Ulubis system had gone on, never slackening off for verylong, never really reaching any sort of peak. Many of the targetswere obvious military ones, often attacked with bombs, missiles and relatively short-range weapons. These were usually blamedon the Beyonders. Other targets had cultural or morale valueor were just big. These were the kind that were hit from deep space, with high-velocity, sometimes near-light-speed boostedrocks. The number of such attacks had increased even as theweight of assaults by drone craft carrying beam weapons andmissiles had decreased.

 Some of the strategists claimed that all this represented afailure by their enemies to attack when they'd expected to,though it seemed to Saluus that what they called the proof of this relied too much on simulations and shared assumptions.

 It had all certainly gone on for a long time now. People hadworked their way through the various stages of shock, denial,defiance, solidarity, grim determination and who-knew-whatelse; nowadays they were just tired of it. They wanted it all toend. They feared how that end might come about, but they werehalf broken by the erratic bombardment and the ever-presentuncertainty.

 Worse - in a way, because news had somehow leaked out ofwhen the invasion by the Starveling Cult had been expected,and it had not yet materialised - people were starting to think that it might not now ever happen. The real conspiracy theo­rists believed that it had all been a huge military-industrial para­noid death-fantasy right from the start, that no real threat hadever existed, that most of the attacks were being carried out by the security forces themselves, either as part of an inter-service conflict or in a carefully planned series of cynical, deliberately self-sacrificial moves that would gain sympathy for the armedforces even as the mass of people lost the few remaining civilliberties they still had; that it was all just an excuse to turn thewhole Ulubis system into a semi-fascist society, securing powerin the hands of the privileged few.

 Even those of a more moderate turn of mind chafed at thefreedoms lost and the restrictions imposed, and had begunasking where exactly was this terrible threat they had beenpreparing for for the best part of a year? Shouldn't the sky havelit up by now with the invading fleet's drives as they deceler­ated into Ulubis near-space? People were starting to questionthe need for all the sacrifice and hardship and to wonder if toomuch was being done to counter a threat that so far hadn't mate­rialised and not enough to deal with the ongoing attrition ofsmall-scale but still intermittently devastating attacks.

 The strategists were wondering where the E-5 Discon forces were, too. There had been wild arguments over what the best strategy was: go out to meet the invading fleet or fleets, hopingto gain a slight edge by a degree of surprise - and keeping atleast some of the fighting out of the populated reaches of Ulubis system - or sit tight and wait, building up maximum forceswhere they were in the end most needed? Drone scout shipshad already been dispatched in the general direction the inva­sion was coming from but so far none of them had found anything. A very literal long shot.

 A giant magnetic rail gun was being constructed in orbitround G'iri, the smaller gas-giant beyond Nasqueron, built toscatter space in front of the oncoming fleet with debris: a hugeblunderbuss supposed to throw a sleet of surveillance machinesand a cloud of tiny guided explosive or just kinetic mines beforethe invading ships, but it was only now getting up to speed,months late, wildly over budget and plagued by problems. Atleast this latest failure couldn't be laid at the door of KeharHeavy Industries. Saluus's firm had never been involved in thecontract. They'd been the obvious people to build it but it hadbeen handed over to a consortium of other companies partlyjust to show that KHI didn't have a monopoly and to give someof the others a shot at a big project.

 The interim report on the Nasqueron debacle had prettymuch cleared KHI, finding nothing worse than occasionally imprecise accounting, the sort of rush-resulted corner-cuttingthat was only to be expected in anything like the current emer­gency. The whole storm-battle farce had been a home-grownmilitary fuck-up in other words, just as Saluus had maintainedfrom the start. Partly as a result, he had become more integratedinto the whole planning and strategic superstructure of theUlubine Mercatoria and even, fairly regularly, the Emergency War Cabinet.

 This made sense. It also appealed to Saluus's sense of impor­tance, and he was self-aware enough to know and accept this.And, of course, it had the additional effect of tying him in tighterto the political hierarchy of the system, identifying him evenmore strongly with the ruling structures and individuals, givinghim more of an incentive to fight to preserve Mercatorial rule.If the bad guys did sweep in and take things over it would beharder now for Saluus to wave his hands and claim to be justa modest shipbuilder, now humbly at the service of the newmasters.

 Still, proximity, access and even a degree of control over suchpower was something Saluus felt comfortable with and, if the worst did happen, he still wasn't as symbolically part of the old regime as the others in the War Cabinet, and his control of KHI would make him valuable to whoever ran the system. He'd playit by ear. Besides, he had an escape route mapped out. The longerthe E-5 Discon invasion took to happen, the shorter would bethe time to wait for the Mercatoria counter-attack, in which casehe might be better off just disappearing while the bad guyssettled in and prepared their own defences. (In theory they were supposed to be kept in the dark that the Mercatorial fleet wason its way, but news of that had leaked too and anyway theirBeyonder allies would surely have told them.)

 If it was simpler to hide then Saluus would hide. He'd try to get involved in some guerrilla activity, too, hopefully at a saferemove, so that when the Mercatoria did retake the system hewould look like some sort of hero rather than a coward onlyinterested in his own wealth. But keeping out of the way wassometimes the best strategy when things got messy. He had avery fast ship indeed being built in one of the secret yards, aprototype that he fully intended to make sure was never quite ready for active service or even military trial runs. It would behis way out, if he needed it.

 In all this, amazingly, the woman he had first known as Ko,when she'd been with Fassin Taak - her real name, the nameshe used now, was Liss Alentiore - had been a real help. He'dfallen for her, he supposed. In fact, he'd fallen for her to theextent that his wife - despite her own happily indulged and numerous dalliances - had, for the first and only time, shownsigns of jealousy. (Liss herself had suggested a way out of this,though it had occurred, at least as a fantasy, to him as well. Sonow they had a very stimulating littlemenage a trois going.)

 More to the point, Liss had proved a trustworthy confidanteand reliable source of advice. There had been a few occasionsover the last few crowded, sometimes desperate months whenSalluus had not known which way to react and he'd talked itover with her, either in the semi-formality of his office, flier orship or from pillow to pillow, and she'd known what to do, ifnot immediately then after a night or two's thought. She wascanny in a sidelong, catlike way; she knew how people worked,how they thought, which way they would jump, almost tele-pathically sometimes.

 He'd invented a post for Liss in his entourage and made herhis personal private secretary. His social and business secretarieshad both been quietly piqued, but were smart enough to acceptthe new face with a degree of feigned generosity and seeminglygenuine grace, and without trying to do anything to undermineher. Saluus had a feeling that they had each anyway gauged Lissaccurately, and realised that any attack they might try on herwould likely rebound on themselves.

 His own security people had been suspicious of her at first, finding all sorts of insalubrious stuff hinted at in her past, andthen a sort of suspicious fuzziness. But ultimately there had been nothing damning, certainly nothing that was worse than what he'd got up to when he was her age. She'd been young,wild and she'd mixed with dubious types. So had he. So what?He'd quizzed her gently on her past himself and got an impression of hurt and trauma and bad memories. He didn'twant to hurt her further by inquiring too deeply. It added tohis feeling that, in some almost unbearably gallant way, he'drescued her.

 She'd been a middling journalist with a technical journal witha past in dance, acting, hostessing and massage work before;he'd taken her away from all that. She'd looked much youngerthan she was when he'd met her that night with Fassin - Saluuswas a big fan of that whole wise head on young shoulders thingnow, he'd decided - but she looked even better now, havingtaken him up on the offer of treatments she could never have had access to until they'd met. She was grateful to him. She never said so straight out - that would have imbalanced toomuch what they had - but he could see it in her eyes some­times.

 Well, he was grateful to her, too. She'd revitalised his privatelife and proved a significant new asset in his public one.

 There was, also, just a hint of a feeling that he'd taken heraway from Fassin, and that was quite a pleasant little sensationall by itself. Saluus had never exactly envied the other man -he didn't really envy anybody, indeed why should he, howcould he? - but there was a sort of ease to Fassin's life thatSaluus had always coveted, and so resented. To be part of a bigfamily group like that, surrounded by people all doing the samesteady thing, respected for their work intrinsically withoutconstantly having to prove themselves through tender processesand balance sheets and shareholders' meetings and staff coun­cils . . . that must have its own sweetness, that must give a sort of academic security, a feeling of justification. And then thefellow had gone and become some sort of hero figure, just byspending five years pickled in shock-gel in a miniature gascraft (not even built by KHI) knocking round with a bunch of degen­erate Dwellers.

 Had that fame attracted Liss to Fassin? Had she just traded Fassin in, traded up to Saluus because the opportunity hadpresented itself? Maybe so. It didn't bother him. Relationshipswere a market, Sal knew that. Only children and idiot roman­tics thought otherwise. You judged your own attractiveness -physically, psychologically and in terms of status - then youknew your level and could either raise or lower your sightsaccordingly, risking rejection but with the possibility ofadvancement, or settling for a more reliably stable life but neverknowing what you might have achieved.

 Saluus took a deep, cold breath.

 The sun had disappeared, Ulubis dipping beneath tree-coatedmountains far to the south-west. A few stars started to come out in the darkening purple sky. The broad scatter of orbital habs and factories shone like a handful of thrown, sparklingdust to the south-east, gradually stretching out across the skyafter the retreating sunset like a distillation of the fading light.Saluus wondered which of those tiny scintillations belonged to him. Not as many as a year ago. Some had been moved away,just to get them out of old orbits where they could be moreeasily targeted. Two - big dock-ships, both of them, and cradlingNavarchy vessels at the time - had been destroyed. Wreckagefrom one had fallen on Fessli City, killing tens of thousands, many more than had died in the initial attack. KHI was being sued for negligence, accused of not moving the dock-ships outof the way in time. A war on and everything controlled bythe military but there was still room for that sort of shit.He was having words in appropriate ears, to get a blanket War Exemption Order proclaimed.

 Saluus looked through his own exhaled breath for Nasqueron,but it was far below the horizon and probably all but invisiblebehind the shield of orbital scatter anyway, even if he had beenin the right latitudes to see it.

 Fassin. In all the preparations for war and invasion, youalways had to make time to take account of whatever he mighthave got up to. Had he died in the storm battle? Reports fromNasqueron were ambiguous. But then reports from Nasqueronwere never anything but ambiguous. He'd certainly disappeared,and was probably still on Nasqueron - though in the timebetween the destruction of the original satellite surveillancenetwork round the planet at the time of the storm battle andthe establishment of a new one after the founding of the Dweller Embassy, there had been a window when even quite big craftmight have left Nasqueron's atmosphere - but who knew? Andif Taak was still somewhere in the gas-giant, what was he doing?

 If he was still alive, Saluus didn't envy him at all any more.To have your whole existence, never mind your whole family,wiped out like that . . . maybe Fassin had killed himself. Hehad been told, apparently, before the whole ghastly mess at the GasClipper race. He knew they were dead. If he wasn't deadtoo, he was more alone than he'd ever been in his life, with nothing much to come back to. Saluus felt sorry for him.

 His first thought had been that with Fassin so reduced, therewould be no danger of Liss going back to him if he ever didreappear. But then he'd thought about how people couldconfound your expectations sometimes, and how women in particular could display a sort of theoretically laudable but harmfully self-sacrificial kind of misplaced charity when theysaw somebody damaged. Luckily Jaal Tonderon was still alive.Sal and his wife had invited her to stay with them for a while. He wanted to encourage her to be strong for Fassin, if he everdid make it back, and they were all still there.

 The Dweller Embassy had been a great success. The Dwellershad seemed keen to make up for the misunderstanding in thestorm and the Ulubis Mercatoria had been desperate not to fighton two hopeless fronts at once. Another moon, Uerkle, hadbeen designated as the new site for the Seers' Shared facility -construction was well under way - and a small fleet of shipshad been welcomed into orbit around the gas-giant. Seers hadstarted direct delving again - the equipment for remote delving was not yet all in place - and the Dwellers either didn't noticeor didn't care that a lot of new so-called Seers were reallyNavarchy, Cessoria and Shrievalty scouts - spies, if you wantedto be blunt about it - searching for Fassin Taak, searching forthe also-disappeared Dweller called Valseir, searching for anysign of those weapons used against the Mercatorial forces during the battle in the GasClipper storm race and searching too forany hints or traces of the Dweller List and anything remotelyassociated with it - so far, admittedly, all completely withoutsuccess. Even these scout craft had to be tagged and traceableand escorted by a Dweller guide, but it was a start.

 Also in the preparatory - and to date unsuccessful - stages werethe negotiations with the Dwellers to forge an alliance or getMercatorial hands on Dweller weaponry. The Dwellers had shownthemselves to possess offensive capabilities - well, strictlyspeaking, defensive capabilities, but that didn't matter - nobodyhad credited them with. If they could be brought into an alliancewith the rest of Ulubis system, the whole balance of forces betweenthe invaders and the defenders might be turned upside down. Evenif the Dwellers only shared some of their military-technologicalknow-how - or just lent out or hired some of the devices - thatmight make enough of a difference for Ulubis to resist the invasion on its own without having to wait for the Summed Fleet units to arrive.

 And ifthat failed, then there was the delicate matter of howto get the Starveling invasion fleet to attack Nasqueron andso, with luck, dash itself to pieces against whatever hyper-weaponry had destroyed the Navarchy forces in the stormbattle.

 So much to think about.

 Saluus was wearing a jacket but he'd come out without glovesand so had put his hands into his pockets to keep them warm. Liss slipped one arm through his, suddenly there at his side,nuzzled up to him, her skin-perfume seeming to fill his head.He looked down at her and she pressed closer to him, following his gaze out to the south and the stipple of light from the orbitalstructures.

 He felt her shiver. She was dressed in light clothes. He took off his jacket and put it over her shoulders. He'd seen that in screen stories and it still made him feel good to do it. He didn'tmind the cold, though it was worse than it had been, and abreeze was starting to blow from above. It was a part-katabaticwind, he'd been told by somebody: a current of cold air flowingdown from the ice-locked wastes above, displacing warmer, lessdense air below and driving gently but firmly downwards,spilling over the lip of the waterfall like a ghost of the frozen, plunging waters.

 They stood in silence for a while, then Liss reminded Saluusthat he was supposed to meet with Peregal Emoerte for a privatetalk before dinner that evening. There was still time, though.He felt cold now, close to shivering. He would wait until hedid shiver before he went in. He stared up into the near-completedarkness directly overhead, watching the spark of a close-orbitsatellite pass above them. He felt Liss stiffen at his side, and pulled her closer.

 'What's that?' she said after a few more moments.

 He looked where she was pointing, to the low west, whereonly the vaguest, dimmest hint of purple near the horizonshowed where Ulubis had set.

 A little above that horizon, in the sky below, beyond andabove the thickest strands of reflected orbital light, new lights were flickering to life. They were a sprinkle of bright blue, scat­tered across a rough circle of sky the size of a large coin heldat arm's length, and increasing in number with every passingsecond. The blue points wavered, gradually strengthening. Moreand more were lighting up, filling the little window of sky witha blue blaze of cold fire, barely twinkling in the chill, still air out over the frozen plains.

 Saluus felt himself shiver, though not from the cold. Heopened his mouth to speak but Liss looked up at him and said,

 'That's them, isn't it? That's the Starveling Cult guys, theE-5 Discon. That's the invasion fleet, braking.'

 "Fraid so,' Sal agreed. His ear stud was pinging and the commsin the suite was warbling plaintively. 'We'd better go in.'

 *

 Groggy again. Still in the passenger\freight compartment of theVelpin.He brought the little gascraft's systems back up. Thewall-screen crazed, came clear, showed stars fixed, thenswinging, and finally settled on a greeny-blue and white planet.Fassin's first reaction on seeing it was that the place looked alien,unsuitable for life without an esuit. Then he realised that itlooked like 'glantine or Sepekte; like images of Earth, in fact.Going gas-giant native, he told himself. Thinking like a Dweller. It didn't usually happen so quickly.

 'Oh,fuck!' Y'sul said angrily, staring at the image on the screen. 'It's not even a proper fuckingplanet!'

 The waves came booming in like blindness, like stubbornnessbundled and given liquid form, an unending slow launchingagainst the ragged fringe of massively sprawled rocks, each long,low rough ridge of water heaving skywards to tumble like someponderously incompetent somersaulter, rolling up and fallingforward, hopeful and hopeless at once, disintegrating, explodingin spray and foam, coming to pieces amongst the fractured bone-yard of rock.

 The waters drained after each assault, rattling boulders, stonesand pebbles between the massive jabs and points of granite,sloughing like a watery skin and falling away again, that stonychattering speaking of a slowly aggregated success, the waves -the ocean - rubbing away at the land, breaking up and breakingaway, using rock against rock, tumbling it and crashing it and cracking it, abrading over centuries and millennia to a kind ofstubborn accomplishment.

 He watched the waves for some time, admiring their vast madpounding, reluctantly impressed by such sheer clamorous inces-sancy. The salt spray filled his hair and eyes and nose and lungs.He breathed in deeply, feeling joined, feeling linked to and partof this wild, unceasing elemental battle.

 A low, golden light struck out across the ruffled nap of sea,sunlight swinging slow beneath a great piled series of cloudescarpments to the west, layers of vapour draped over distantpeaks and spires of rock disappearing into the long misted curveof north-facing shore.

 Seabirds wheeled across the wind and waves, diving, flappingaway, clutching slim fish like wet slices of rainbow.

 It had felt strange, at first, coming out of the little gascraft.It always did, it always had, but this time seemed different, moreintense somehow. This was an alien homeland, a familiar yet utterly different place; closer to what ought to be home, further from what was. Eleven thousand light years away from Ulubisthis time, though they had travelled further than the last time to get here. And just twelve days' travel.

 When he'd opened the gascraft's hatch and stood, he'd stag­gered and swayed, needed holding up by Y'sul. He'd coughedand nearly retched, feeling scrawny and weak and thin andhollowed-out, shivering in the strange ultra-nakedness ofreturning to the basic human condition, as slimed and wet and naked as a newborn, and even the retreating tendrils of the gill-fluid and shock-gel tubes there too, umbilical links to imagebirth. He felt lighter and heavier at once, blood draining, bonescomplaining.

 Then, after a while, being naked - even naked in ordinary clothes - started to feel normal again. Every now and again,though, he shivered. TheVelpin's pattern-follower had done itsbest to make human wearable clothes, but still the results feltstrange and slick and cold.

 They were on Mavirouelo, a ninety per cent Earthlike notfar from the galactic outskirts, though less isolated than Ulubis.A Waterworlder-colonised planet, a Sceuri world.

 Waterworlds were the single most common type of rocky planet in the galaxy, even though you never saw the rock, which was, on average, a metal-rock core about the size of Earth buriedunder five thousand kilometres of pressure-ice, finally toppedby a hundred klicks of ocean. Such planets provided the nextmost common planetary environments after the near-ubiquitous gas-giants themselves, and had given the Mercatoria three of itseight principal species: the Sceuri, the Ifrahile and the Kuskunde.

 Mavirouelo was not a classic waterworld - it wasn't even as water-covered as Earth itself - but it had been colonised by theSceuri before any native animal - of air, land or sea - had devel­oped sufficiently to claim it as their own, and so had becomeone of the Sceuri far-worlds, an outpost of their own semim­peria within the greater commonwealth of the Mercatoria.

 The Sceuri weren't conventional waterworlders, either. Theywere Cetasails, resembling sea mammals but with backs ridgedby spinnaker spines which they could hoist to the wind and sosail as well as swim across their worlds.

 Y'sul, in his esuit, rose out of the sea like a submarine conningtower, frightening the seabirds. He floated up and out and madehis way across the turmoil of waves to the low cliff where Fassinstood. The human was suddenly reminded of the time he hadstood with Saluus Kehar, watching Hatherence, in her esuit,float out across the chaos of artificial surf surrounding the water­spout house.

 'Fassin!' Y'sul boomed, floating, dripping and humming, inthe air ten metres above him. 'No sign yet?'

 'No sign yet.'

 Y'sul held up a mesh basket of glistening, flapping, wrigglingstuff. 'Look what I caught!' He brought the basket in front ofhis forward mantle to look at it. 'Think I'll take it back to theship.'

 Y'sul flew over Fassin, dropping water and small shells on top of him, then headed inland a couple of hundred metres tothe ship-section resting on the scrubby ledge of vegetationfringing the jagged ranks of cliffs, pinnacles and mountainsbeyond. The fifty-metre-long lander made up the nose sectionof theVelpin, the rest of which, with Quercer & Janath aboard, was still in orbit.

 Fassin watched the Dweller go, then turned back to the ocean.He was here to meet with a Sceuri who had seen the DwellerLeisicrofe, who had been here until, they'd been told, twelveyears ago.

 They hadn't met a Sceuri yet. TheVelpin had been challengedby the planet's orbital traffic control and targeted by severalmilitary units and so had had to reveal something of its reasonsfor being there.

 'Looking for some Dweller geezer called Leisicrofe,' had beenQuercer & Janath's exact words.

 They'd been told to go into orbit and stay there. Targetingbeams never left them. They were regarded as suspicious becausetheir ship looked 'hole-capable and they hadn't come throughthe local portal.

 'Sceuri,' Quercer & Janath had told Fassin and Y'sul.'Suspicious.'

 'Paranoid.'

 They'd spent three days watching the planet revolve beneath them. Y'sul had muttered about how flat and boring the stormslooked, Fassin had found endless fascination in the great snowflakecity-structures spread across water and land, and the truetwinpassed the time inventorying ship-stuff they'd forgotten about and playing noisy image-leaf games. They answered questions fromplanetary traffic control about where they'd come from -Nhouaste, the largest of the system's four gas-giant planets, wasthe answer given - and then a signal had come through. A scholar named Aumapile of Aumapile had had the honour of playing hostto the Dweller scholar Leisicrofe and would be flattered to be allowed to extend the same courtesies to these new arrivals.

 Another step along the way, another step closer, perhaps, tofinding the wandering Dweller and the data he carried. If he still lived, if he still had the data, if the data was what it was supposedto be, if Valseir had been telling the truth, if it was not all utterlyout of date, without point, overtaken by the seeming certaintythat there was a network of secret wormholes accessible onlyto Dwellers, but they weren't sharing it and it might havenothing to do with the Dweller List.

 Fassin was looking for something that might lead him to what he had already used, twice. He had already been through at leasttwo wormholes, travelled across half the galaxy, and yet hewasn't really any closer to finding the key to this system oftrapdoors and secret passages. He could be carried unconscious through them like a fey maiden under the influence of a sleeping draught in some Gothic romance, but he wasn't allowed to knowthe secret behind it all.

 He was still trying to think of ways to commandeer theVelpin,but with no real hope of success. There would still be the problem of accessing the hidden wormholes. Just thinkingof a way to stay awake while they made these wild transitionswould be a start, but he had no idea how to do that either.

 If he could go back in time to Apsile and the Shared Facility in Third Fury and ask him to build some subset of systems intothe gascraft that would keep working when the main ones were shut down, making it look like the machine had entirely stoppedfunctioning when in fact he was still sense-connected and aware,maybe it would be possible. But even the Dwellers didn't claim to have time machines, and Fassin didn't have the expertise toundertake such an amendment to the gascraft's systems himself,even if he had had the time and the facilities to do it, neitherof which he did have.

 Maybe he should have gone back to the Mercatoria, acted asa real major in the Ocula would have done and retreated,reported to his superiors, told them what had happened and awaited new or renewed orders. But the Ocula meant nothingto him and never had, and most of what had mattered beforeto him was also gone now.

 He might even have tried to get in touch with the Beyonders,but until he had the key to the Dweller List, what was the pointin that? And anyway - what if they had been behind the Sept'sdestruction, even at a remove? Just how magnanimous was heprepared to be?

 What point, indeed, was there in going back at all, perhaps.Seventy days standard had elapsed since Fassin had first gonetumbling into the atmosphere of Nasqueron. It was over twoold Earth months since the battle in the storm. Who knew how much longer he'd have to keep looking for Leisicrofe, chasinghim round the galaxy, perhaps ever coming closer to him, maybenever quite catching up with him? Maybe he'd get his preciousdata and return to find it was all over, the system taken, or utterly laid waste to, every surface like the surface of ThirdFury, just slag and heat, destroyed by one side or another orby both, fighting for something that wasn't even there any more.

 It should still, in theory, be the most important piece of infor­mation that a human had ever carried. But somehow, even ifthe key to the Dweller List did exist, the fact that Dwellerscould use this secret network under the noses of the rest of thegalaxy - and had been so doing for who alone knew how manybillions of years - made it seem much less likely that any scrapof data, any proof-size patch of algebra was going to make thatmuch of a difference.

 And yet, still, despite everything, all he could do, all that hecould even think of doing, was to press on and try to find what everybody wanted him to find, and hope that it might do some good somehow.

 Fassin breathed in, tasting salt.

 He no longer doubted that this was real, or a virtual envi­ronment there was no disgrace in being fooled by. There wasn'teven anywhere like this - this coarse, storm-sundered coast -anywhere in Ulubis system. And the stars were completelydifferent, again.

 Something caught Fassin's attention. A few kilometres outinto the ocean, the water was rising in a great shallow dome,flowing everywhere down from a huge flattened hemisphere offoam-streaked darkness rising like a never-breaking explosionfrom the depths, still spreading and still rising and causing agreat slow swell of disturbed waves to come pulsing forward, towards the cliffs as the apparition - a double saucer-shape twokilometres wide - finally broke free of the sea entirely and cameslowly towards the shore, sheets and veils of salt rain fallingfrom beneath it, flattening the shadow-bruised surface of thewaters.

 Y'sul floated up, nodding forward. 'Ride's here, then.'

 They floated, stood and hovered in a half-drained crystal hallwithin the great saucer ship. Aumapile of Aumapile floated inthe water, a fat eel the size of an orca with a great folded fanof sail ridging its back. Fassin stood on a broad ledge, still slickwith salty water, while Y'sul and the truetwin Quercer & Janath -cajoled down eventually, bulked out with a twin-skin overallof extreme shininess that doubled as an esuit - hovered in theair above the great pool of water. Fassin found himself thinkingabout the Autumn House again, and Slovius in his pool.

 Aumapile of Aumapile -The Aumapile of Aumapile, appar­ently, according to the servant who had escorted them down abroad water-filled tube to the audience chamber, the human and the Dwellers in a bubble of air enclosed by a sphere of diamond-was not merely a justly famous scholar of the Cincturia, itwas a vastly rich justly famous scholar of the Cincturia.

 A high, warbling, seemingly interminable song sounded froman underwater sound system. 'A Song of Welcoming For ThoseFrom Afar', apparently.

 'Song for making you want to go straight back there again,'Y'sul had asided to Fassin, as they'd accepted reasonable imper­sonations of something to drink and\or inhale.

 They talked of Leisicrofe. Their host, speaking through asmall hovering speaker sphere, said they had missed him by some years and then Y'sul mentioned following him.

 'Oh,' the Sceuri said, 'but you must take me with you.'

 'Must?''Must?'

 'But I know where he went,' the Sceuri said, as though thisexplained everything.

 'Couldn't you just tell us?' Y'sul asked plaintively.

 'Just point us in the right direction.''And we'll be on our way'

 The Sceuri wriggled in the great pool, sending water sloshing.It laughed. A soft, tinkling sound from the hovering speaker.'Oh, I could, but I always had the feeling my friend Leisicrofehad travelled even more widely than I have, especially into thegases of Nhouaste. I think you may be heading there, as youdid not come through the wormhole portal, and he did not depart through it. You see? I have my sources. I know whatgoes on. You can't fool me. I am not so stupid. You and your little Squanderer friend will be heading back to Nhouaste.'

 'Doubt it,' the Dweller travelcaptain said, snorting.

 Fassin was the little Squanderer friend. The Sceuri took greatpride in having become a technological, space-faring species,given the obstacles they'd had to overcome. A classic water-world environment had almost no easily available metals. Anymetal-bearing ores that a waterworld possessed tended to belocked away under all that ice, deep in the planet's inaccessible rocky core. Waterworlders had to do what they could with whatfell from the sky in the shape of meteorites, and in this shareda developmental background with gas-giant Dwellers.

 To get into space in the face of such a paucity of readily avail­able raw materials was not easy, and the Sceuri regarded them­selves as deserving considerable recognition and respect for such a triumph of intellect over scarcity. Accomplishing the same featwhen you came from a rock-surface planet was a relativelytrivial, expectable, even dismissible trick. The Sceuri calledpeople from such planets Squanderers as a result, though notusually to their face or other appropriate feature.

 'Please make clear, oh great A of A,' the other half of Quercer& Janath said.

 Fassin suspected that he already knew what the Sceuri wasthinking. The local gas-giant, Nhouaste - inhabited by Dwellers,of course - was, like the vast majority of Dweller gas-giants,not a world that welcomed Seers or anybody else apart fromother Dwellers. Aumapile of Aumapile had probably been toldwhere Leisicrofe was heading next and assumed that as theDweller had not gone through the Mercatorial wormhole - and assuming he hadn't headed into deep space at STL speeds - hemust have gone to look for whatever it was he was looking for in the one place that even being fabulously rich and corruptly well-connected couldn't gain you access to, in this system orany other: a Dweller-inhabited gas-giant.

 'I think the Toilers our mutual friend sought have found anew niche, no longer in space, but in gas, you see?' the Sceurisaid. Even through the speaker sphere, the creature's voice sounded pleased with itself.

 'Toilers?' Y'sul said.

 'Known.'

 'Benign semi-swarm devices,' the other half of Quercer &Janath announced. 'Infra-sentient. Known for randomlybuilding inscrutable space structures, best guess for purpose ofwhich being as preparatory infrastructure for an invasion thatnever took place on behalf of a race long gone and thoroughlyforgotten. Distribution very wide but very sparse. Numbersfluctuate. Rarely dangerous, sometimes hunted, no bounty.'

 'So there.'

 Y'sul looked surprised. 'Really?' he asked,

 'Oh, stop being so coy!' their host chided, creating sinuoussplashing patterns in the water, as though tickled. 'Of course!As though you didn't know.' The Aumapile of Aumapile blewjets of water from each end. A scent of something vaguely rottenfilled Fassin's nose. 'But I know where our friend was going tonext, and you don't. However, I shall be willing to tell you if you take me along, once I am aboard your ship. Such largeplaces, gas-giants! And of course we have four. One thinks, Oh,who can say, where would one's quarry be?' The Sceuri flicked its tail. Fassin got splashed. 'And what do you say, sirs?'

 Y'sul looked at Fassin and quietly rippled his mantle, the Dweller equivalent of a head-shake.

 The travelcaptain was silent for a moment or two, then said,

 'If we do take you with us...'

 'Ah! But I have my own ship! Indeed, you are in it!'

 'Won't work.'

 'Have to come with us in ours.'

 'I have smaller ships! Many of them! A choice!'

 'Makes no difference. Has to be ours.'

 'Conditions of Passage.'

 'Well . . .' the Sceuri said.

 'Passengers travel unconditionally.'

 'Unconditionally.'

 'What does that mean?'

 'Trust us.'

 'Yes. No matter what.'

 'Means you get zapped unconscious every time we travel, iswhat it means,' Y'sul told their host. Quercer & Janath made ahissing noise. 'Plus,' Y'sul added, oblivious, 'you may not endup where you thought you were going to.'

 'How primitive! Why, of course!'

 *

 Eleven hundred ships. They were facing eleven hundred ships.All of them had to be beyond a certain size, capable of crossingthe great gulf of space between the E-5 Discon and here inreasonable time, and they would probably all be armed. Ulubiscould muster less than three hundred true space-capable war-craft, even after their frenzy of building. The Summed Fleet onits way to their rescue was of similar size, but its ships wouldbe of another order of magnitude in hitting power: a full mixof destroyers, light, medium and heavy cruisers, plus the real big guys, the battlecruisers and battleships.

 Ulubis had frigates, destroyers and light cruisers, and one oldbattlecruiser, theCarronade. They'd built a significant fleet in thecenturies following the destruction of the portal, and a few more ships in the half year since the news of the coming invasion, butnothing like enough to offer the invaders serious opposition.

 They'd lost about a sixth of their total fighting force in the fewminutes of action in the storm on Nasqueron, months earlier,including their only other battlecruiser. Those had mostly beenlight units, but it had been a grievous loss.

 The latest bit of bad news was that the consortium workingon the rail gun had fallen so far behind schedule that it washighly doubtful they'd even get to the trials stage before theinvasion took place. The giant gun was being dismantled so itwouldn't fall into the hands of the Starveling Cultists. Therewas something almost sublimely elegant, Sal thought, about howperfect a waste of time, people, resources and hard work the whole project had been.

 Kehar Heavy Industries and the other manufacturers hadworked as hard as they could to construct, repair, upgrade and modify as many warships as they could, and had militariseddozens of civilian craft. But there was only so much they coulddo and it was never going to be enough. They were outnum­bered. They could go down fighting, but they were going down.

 'It couldn't be any worse!' Guard-General Thovin spluttered,practically spraying his drink. They were on a requisitioned ex-cruise liner, one of the Embassy support ships, rolling in orbitaround Nasqueron. Saluus and the Propylaea sub-masterSorofieve had been sent by the rest of the War Cabinet to add,if it were possible, an extra note of urgency to the talks withthe Dwellers. Thovin, seconded from his Guard duties to beCommander-in-Chief, Ulubis Orbital Forces, was there incharge of the very lightly armed escort detachment because hewas out of the way and couldn't do too much harm. Thegrandeur of his new title seemed to almost entirely make up forthe lack of viable military hardware at his disposal.

 'We can't even surrender to the Starvelings because if we dothe Summed Fleet will clobber us when they arrive,' he said.'We're going to get fucked-over twice!' He threw back his drink.

 Saluus didn't like Thovin - he was one of those people whogot to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, theindulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards othersthat the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through hissheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through theconsequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was onlythinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel.

 'There is no need to talk of surrender,' sub-master Sorofieve said quickly, and, to Sal's amusement, actually looked round,glancing left and right to make sure nobody else had heard the'S' word in the old cruise ship's lounge, which was desertedapart from a few bar staff, the three men and a half-dozen orso of their closest staff. (Liss was there, looking darkly beau­tiful, mostly silent, occasionally talking quietly with one or otherof the other assistants, secretaries and ADCs. When thePropylaea sub-master did his glancing-around act, her gaze metSal's; she smiled and flexed her eyebrows.)

 If there were any spies here, Sal thought, they weren't lurking behind the furniture in the shadows, they were sitting right here, around them. The indispensable aides and helpers they all reliedon to run their so-important lives were the obvious candidatesfor the post of spy. If anything ever got back to the Hierchon- or any other more lowly but still important branch of the Ulubine Mercatoria - regarding talk of surrender or anythingelse deemed Unspeakable it would probably be one of thesepeople they'd have to thank.

 Saluus knew one could never be one hundred per cent certain,but he was pretty sure that the lovely Liss wasn't working foranybody else. He'd seemingly let slip a couple of things earlyon in their relationship which he'd have expected to come backto him if she'd been in the pay of somebody else. It had beena sort of recommendation that she'd come via Fassin and he'dobviously known her from decades earlier. That was far toolong a game just to get to an industrialist, even Saluus Kehar.

 'No need?' Thovin said, turning to his secretary, holding uphis glass and winking theatrically. 'It's what we'd be talkingabout if the Summed Fleet wasn't on its way. Be the rational thing to do.' He snorted. 'I'm not saying we should surrender.Been ordered not to, been ordered to fight to the last, but if theFleet wasn't coming and we weren't looking for this . . . thisthing,supposedly somewhere on Nasq.' (The fabled Transform,of course, Saluus thought. The mythical magic bullet whichFassin, if he was still alive, might be chasing yet.) 'What elsewould we be doing but thinking how to not all get ourselveskilled?'

 'We are prepared, we are forewarned,' sub-master Sorofievesaid, smiling desperately. 'We shall give a good account ofourselves, I am sure. We are fighting for our homes, for ourhonour, for -' the man looked round again '- for our veryhumanity!'Ah, Sal realised, Sorofieve had been checking there were no aliens present whom he might be offending. 'We have millennia of Mercatorial, ah, wisdom and martial ability behindus. What are these Starveling renegades in comparison?'

 Eleven hundred ships, that's what they were, Saluus thought.Eleven hundred to our three hundred, and a balance of forcesthe strategists say is way up the force-yield spectrum comparedto ours, too: medium-heavy to our light. Plus one mega-ship, to our one antique battlecruiser.

 They had had another meeting with some of the Dwellerrepresentatives just that afternoon. They went down these daysin person, reclined in human-form spacesuits held in smallcircular gascraft of two or three seats, congregating in a greathall in one of a whole fleet of giant Dreadnought-sized craftthe Dwellers had dedicated to the purpose. With the gascraft canopies hinged open it was possible to sit\lie there in somecomfort and talk directly to the Dwellers, face-to-hub or what­ever it was.

 Saluus wouldn't want to spend more than a day like that inmultiple gees, but it was worth doing. The Dwellers seemed to appreciate it and - thanks to some cram-coaching by the seniorSeers who also came down with them to the meetings and stayedwith them for all but the most delicate and high-security-clear­ance matters - Saluus was even starting to get the hang ofDweller expressions and nuances of meaning and demeanour,both as put across in speech and as displayed on their signalskin. Probably all too late, and - so far - to no avail whatso­ever. But at least it felt like he was doing something - the ship­yards of KHI were basically on autopilot, working flat out and so synched-in to what the military wanted that they'd effec­tively become part of a command economy. He'd just beengetting in the way.

 'This is a threat to the whole of Ulubis system,' Sorofieve said. Sal suppressed a sigh. This was only Sorofieve's third day inthis latest round - he'd replaced First Secretary Heuypzlagger,who'd found the high gravity too wearing - and he was talkingto a Dweller called Yawiyuen who was also new to the process,but even so. They'd been circling over this same ground forweeks now.

 'These Starveling Cult people will show no respect forNasqueron's neutrality,' the sub-master concluded.

 'How do you know?' Gruonoshe, another of the Dwellers,asked. They were nine in all: the two human negotiators and acouple of assistants each - Liss was there in a seat behind Sal,having declared herself quite happy in the high gravity - Chief Seer Meretiy of Sept Krine, and just the two Dwellers, both inceremonial half-clothes, ribboned and jewelled.

 'Know what?' Sorofieve asked.

 'Know that these Starveling Cult people will show no respectfor Nasqueron's neutrality,' Gruonoshe said, innocently.

 'Well,' Sorofieve said, 'they are invaders, warmongers. Indeed,not to put too fine a point on it, they are barbarians. Theyrespect nothing.'

 'Still, it does not follow that they'd quarrel with us,' Yawiyuensaid, signal skin showing reasonableness.

 'They want to take over the whole system,' Sorofieve said,looking to Saluus for help. 'To them that would includeNasqueron.'

 'We have heard of the Starveling Cult,' Yawiyuen toldthem. (- Wonder from where? Liss sent to Saluus via his earstud.) 'It appears to be an unremarkable Quick hegemonistdiffusion, concerned with conquering its own kind andspecies-type-suitable environments, uninterested in attackinggas-giants.'

 'The point here,' Saluus said smoothly, his amplified voicesounding rich and powerful, 'is that they are only attackingUlubis system to get to Nasqueron.'

 'Why?' Gruonoshe asked.

 'We're not entirely sure,' Saluus said. 'We are sure they wantsomething from Nasqueron, something they can't get from anyother gas-giant, but exactly what that may be, we can't say. Butwe are quite positive that that is why they are mounting thisattack in the first place.'

 'Why are you sure?' Gruonoshe again.

 'We intercepted intelligence to that effect,' Sorofieve replied.

 'What intelligence?' Yawiyuen asked.

 'The intelligence,' Sorofieve said, 'came from the personaldiary of the Supreme Commander of the Starveling Cult inva­sion fleet sent to the Ruanthril system nearly eighteen yearsago. The fleet was intercepted by a Mercatorial force. Thecaptured records show that the enemy commander complainedspecifically about the need to divert so many of the E-5Discon's forces to somewhere as out of the way and strategi­cally unimportant as Ulubis, just for some item or piece ofinformation in Nasqueron.'

 'Nasqueron was mentioned by name?' Gruonoshe asked.

 'It was,' Sal said.

 He half-expected a little voice in his ear to say something like'Good lie' but then remembered that even Liss hadn't been toldthe full truth about the Dweller List and the mythical Transform.She would have an idea, as a lot of people close to the epicen­tres of power did, that Fassin had been sent on a secret missionto look for something valuable in Nasqueron, and that the object of this search might have some bearing on the war, but that wasabout all. She hadn't been present at the briefing by the AI projection of Admiral Quile, hadn't been let in on the secret subsequently by some of those who had been there - as Sal had - and so didn't know the details of the intelligence they'd beengiven.

 'Well then,' Yawiyuen said reasonably, 'you should let theStarveling Cult attack us and we will deal with them.'

 This, of course, was exactly what the Emergency War Cabinethoped would happen.

 - Can we just say yes here? Liss sent.

 'Wouldn'tyou then want some help fromus?' Sorofieve asked.

 'Oh, no!' Gruonoshe exclaimed, as though the idea was justtoo preposterous even to think about.

 'As sub-master Sorofieve has said,' Saluus said, 'we are quitecertain that the Starveling Cultists intend to take the entiretyof Ulubis system, including Nasqueron. We're all under threat. That's why it would make sense for you and us to organise ourdefence together.'

 'A common threat requires a common response,' Sorofievetold the Dwellers.

 'Or maybe a pincer movement,' Yawiyuen suggested brightly.

 Saluus wanted to sigh again. These two guys were suppos­edly top-grade negotiators with the authority to speak provi­sionally - in advance of some sort of still undefined plebisciteprocedure - for the entire Dweller society on Nasqueron, butthey frequently sounded like children. 'Well, perhaps,' he said.'Providing we can, at the very least, coordinate our actions.'

 'And of course,' Sorofieve said, 'it may be that we can share defence technologies.'

 'Oh!' Yawiyuen said, rising above his dent-seat a fraction.'Good idea! What do you have that we might want?' Heappeared guilelessly enthusiastic.

 'Our strengths would lie more in intelligence, in knowinghow these Starveling Cultists will think,' Saluus said. 'They're basically humans, too. For all our differences, we think prettymuch the same way they do. Our contribution would be to tryto anticipate them, to out-think them.'

 'And ours?' Yawiyuen asked, settling back down in his seatagain.

 'Weaponry, I bet,' Gruonoshe said, sounding unimpressed.

 'As we have discovered, very much to our cost,' Saluus said,'you have the better of us in offensive capability, certainly—'

 'Defensive capability,' Gruonoshe interrupted. 'Surely?'

 Sal did his best to move his helmeted head in an acknow­ledging nod, straining his neck muscles in the high gravity. 'Defensive capability, as you say,' he said. ‘If we were able toshare some of your knowledge of—'

 'Weapons technology is not something we are going to share,'Gruonoshe said crisply.

 'We could say we wanted to,' Yawiyuen told them. 'We couldeven mean it - you might argue us round, somehow, to saidpoint of view - but those who control the weapons themselveswould not permit it.'

 'Well, can we perhaps talk to them?' Saluus asked.

 Yawiyuen bobbed over his seat. 'No.'

 'Why would that be?' Sorofieve asked.

 'They don't talk to aliens,' Yawiyuen told them bluntly.

 'They barely talk tous,' Gruonoshe admitted.

 'How might we be able to—?' Saluus began.

 'We are not the Mercatoria,' Gruonoshe said, interruptingSaluus again. This was not an experience he was used to. Hecould see how it might get annoying. 'We are not theMercatoria,' the Dweller repeated. He sounded indignant. 'Weare not one of your states or mercenary- or irrationality-inspiredgroupings or forces.'

 - Bit of stress there, Sal heard in his ear.

 'If I may,' Chief Seer Meretiy began. The Seers were underinstruction only to take a part in the talks when they felt therewas some sort of basic misunderstanding taking place. Meretiyobviously felt that was happening now, but he didn't get a chanceto take his point further.

 'What is meant, one believes,' Yawiyuen said, 'is that thingsdo not work with us the way that they work with you. We aredelegated to speak to you, and what we take from here will be shared with all who wish to take notice. We are not in a posi­tion to order other Dwellers to do or not do certain things. No Dweller is, not in the hierarchical sense that you may be usedto. We can share information. The information regarding theapproach of the Starveling Cultists has been made available towhoever it may concern, as was the information regarding the build-up of Mercatorial forces immediately prior to the unfor­tunate incident which took place within C-2 Storm Ultra-Violet3667. Those in charge of the relevant defensive systems willdoubtless have taken note of said information. That is really allwe can share with you. Our colleagues in charge of the defen­sive systems would not consider talking to outsiders and thereis no precedent for sharing, lending, leasing or giving such tech­nologies to others.'

 'You talk of your colleagues in charge of the defensivesystems,' Sorofieve said. 'But who is in charge ofthem?'

 —And so to the point.

 Yawiyuen gave a little bob-shrug. 'Nobody is.'

 'Somebodyhas to be,' Sorofieve insisted.

 'Why?'

 'Well,' Sorofieve said, 'how do they know what to do?'

 'Lots of training,' Yawiyuen told him.

 'But when?When do they know what to do? Who directs them, who decides when it's time to stop talking and startshooting?'

 'They do.'

 'Theydo?' Sorofieve sounded incredulous. 'You let yourmili­tarydecide when to go to war?'

 —           Our sub-master hasn't done his homework, has he? Sal sentto Liss.

 —           He may have read, she replied. - He didn't believe.

 Saluus had done as much research as he could into theDwellers. Amazing how little he'd known. He was smart, well-educated and extremely well-connected and yet he'd been near-shamed by how little he'd known about the creatures that hisown species shared the system with. It was as though, having realised how little the Dwellers were concerned with or caredabout them, Ulubine humanity had decided to pay them backin the same coin. And this in a Seer system, with more inter-species contact than any save another half-dozen or so similarly favoured, scattered through the galaxy. Yet even here most people didn't know or want to know much of anything aboutthe Dwellers. There was a large minority who did, but theywere seen as slightly embarrassing - nerdy alien-fans. Facing the threat they were, desperately needing the Dwellers' help, how short-sighted they all seemed now.

 And reading up on Dweller society proved the truth of oneold cliche for sure: the more you learned, the more you realisedhow little you knew. (An image of the planet, Liss hadsuggested when he'd first tried to articulate this feeling;unending depths.)

 'Of course our military decide when we go to war,'Gruonoshe said, calm again. 'They're the experts.'

 'I think that, if I might be allowed to "butt in",' Chief SeerMeretiy said from his gascraft, 'the point at issue is our differentways of looking at our two societies' military capacity. We -that is, humans, and perhaps one might even presume to speak in this for the whole Mercatoria - regard our military as a tool,to be used by our politicians, who of course rule in the nameof all. Conversely, our Dweller friends regard their military asan ancient and venerable calling for those with the relevant voca­tion, an institution to be honoured for its antiquity which has,almost as an afterthought, the duty of defending Dweller planetsfrom any outside threat. As such, they are like what one mightterm a "fire brigade", and a volunteer fire brigade, at that, forwhich no political clearance or oversight is required for it tospring into action, you see? Theirraison d'etre is to respond asquickly as possible to emergencies, no more.'

 - Fuck me, that actually made a sort of sense, Liss sent.

 Just those first two words, delivered in her voice, with herso close behind him, gave Sal the start of an erection. Hewondered how strong gravity had to be for hard-ons to becomeimpossible.

 'Fire brigades have ... leaders, captains, don't they?' Sorofieve said plaintively, looking from Meretiy to Saluus. 'We might talkto them. Mightn't we?'

 Yawiyuen did the little bob-shrug again. 'Absolutely not.'

 'But we need to!' Sorofieve almost wailed.

 'Why?'

 'That thing evenlooks fast,' Guard-General Thovin said, gazingout at the sleek, dark ship from one of the requisitioned liner'sviewing galleries. The stars swung around them. 'It have aname?'

 'Hull 8770,'Saluus told him. 'The military will give it a propername when it's time to hand it over. Though it's a prototype,probably not suitable for full military service.'

 'Desperate times,' Thovin said, shrugging, picking something from between his teeth. 'Probably get used for something. Evenif it's just a missile.'

 That's what you think,Sal thought. 'We haven't quite got to that stage yet,' he said. They were alone. Thovin had suggesteda stroll through the mostly empty ex-civilian ship.

 'Think we're wasting our time here, Kehar?' Thovin swunground to look at Saluus, his near-neckless head raised and tiltedto him.

 'Talking to the Dwellers?'

 'Yes. Talking to the fucking Dwellers.'

 'Probably. But then our friend Fassin Taak is probablywasting his time - if he's still alive - looking for this Transformthat probably doesn't exist.'

 'He was your friend, wasn't he?' the Guard-General said,eyes narrowing. 'Old school pals. Right, isn't it?'

 'Yes, we went to school and college together. We've kept intouch over the years. Matter of fact, probably the last bit of Rand R he got before delving into Nasq. was at my house on Murla.'

 'Straight to Guard academy for me,' Thovin said, changingtack again and looking away at the dartlike ship floating in spacejust outside. 'That your escape route, is it, Kehar?' he askedinnocently.

 Not quite as stupid as you look, are you?Sal thought. 'Whereto?' he asked, smiling.

 'The fuck out of harm's way, that's where,' Thovin said. 'Keepyour head down during the Starveling occupation. Return whenit's safe.'

 'You know, I hadn't thought of that,' Sal said. 'Why, are yougoing to make me an offer for it?'

 'Wouldn't know how to fly it. 'Course, you do, that right?'

 It was no secret that Saluus had flown theHull 8770 herehimself. He was a capable enough pilot. Anybody could be witha little training and a modicum of computer help.

 'Frees one of our brave boys for the front line,' he toldThovin, deadpan.

 'Be funny if we won against the invaders, or the Summed Fleet lost. Eh?'

 'Hilarious.'

 'Think we'll get anything out of the floats?'

 'I think our Dweller pals have probably given us all we'reever going to get, but it's still worthwhile keeping on looking.'

 'Uh-huh? You think?'

 'Maybe the crew of one of their hyper-weapons will suddenlydecide it'd be fun to defend Sepekte just for the sheer hell ofit, or one of the scouts down in Nasq. will find the Transform,or Fassin Taak will just appear with it and we can all escapedown a wormhole or bring in Summed Fleet ships from wher­ever we want. Who knows?'

 'So we're not wasting our time here?'

 'No, probably we are. But what else could we be doing?Filling sandbags?'

 Thovin almost smiled. "Course, if they did suddenly turn upwith some fancy super-weapon ship, maybe we wouldn't needto build warships any more, eh?'

 'I'm sure Kehar Heavy Industries could happily switch tobuilding nothing but cruise ships.' Sal looked round the viewinggallery they stood in. 'I can see a few areas fit for improvementjust standing here.'

 Thovin nodded out at the slim, dark ship cradled outside.'You would hand that over to the Hierchon for his personalyacht if he asked for it, wouldn't you?'

 Sal thought for a moment. 'I'd almost sooner destroy it,' hesaid.

 Thovin turned and looked at him, expression open, waiting.

 'I'm not kidding. It really is a prototype,' Sal said, smiling.'You wouldn't put the head of state of an entire system in some­thing as untried as that, certainly not if you meant to take it upto anything near top speed, which would kind of have to bethe only reason for choosing it in the first place, right? I'llentrust myself to the thing, but I couldn't let the Hierchon takeit. What if it killed him? Think of the publicity. Good grief,man, think of our share price.'

 Thovin nodded for a few moments, looking back at the ship.'Missile, then,' he said.

 'Me too,' Liss said quietly in the darkness. 'I thought he wasjust an idiot kicked upstairs.'

 'I think he does a good idiot act,' Sal said. 'Actually, I thinkhe's probably as genuinely stupid as our Dweller negotiatorsare genuinely naive. Maybe Thovin should take over the talks.Doubt he could do any worse.'

 They were lying in bed on board the prototype ship. It wasmore secure than staying on the liner or one of the otherEmbassy support ships, if also far less luxurious and much morecramped. There was no absolute guarantee that somebodyhadn't sneaked a bug aboard during the ship's construction, butSaluus had had the craft built by his most trustworthy peopleand supervised the work as closely as he could; it was as safeas anyplace to say things that you might not want others tohear.

 'Do you think he was trying to make a deal, get himself included if you did decide to escape?'

 Saluus hesitated. This was not something he'd ever discussedstraight out even with Liss. He was quite sure she'd guessedthat using the ship as a way out was a possibility - so, for thatmatter, had Thovin, apparently, which kind of made you wonderwho else might regard it as obvious(there was a slightly sweat-inducing idea) - but there was nothing to gain for either of themin saying it out loud.

 'No,' Sal said, deciding against bringing that particular truthblinking into the light. 'You know, I actually thought that maybeThovin's a kind of spy himself.'

 'Really?'

 'I wouldn't be at all surprised if he reports to the Hierchondirect, or at least to the big guy's top intelligence people. I thinkall this rough-as-bricks bluff stuff is just a way of getting peopleto drop their guard with him. Fucker could be a traitor-sniffer.'

 Liss fitted her long body against his, rubbing slowly, gently.'He didn't sniff you, then?'

 'How could he?' Sal said. 'For I am straight and true.'

 'Ah, yes.'

 Sometimes, if she was still holding him when she was fallingasleep, he would feel her fingers making strange patterns on hisside or back, as though her hands were trying to spell out some secret code of love. Then she would be asleep and stop, or jerkawake, as though embarrassed, and roll away and curl up.

 *

 Groggy again. Aboard theVelpin. Still. No idea yet how longthey had taken. The truetwin had just told the three of themthat it would take 'some days' to get to where they were going.Then, to Fassin and Y'sul when the Sceuri couldn't see, they had signal-whispered, 'That thing about Just Trust Us appliesto you two, too. Butshh, right?'

 Y'sul and Fassin had exchanged looks.

 Some days. The travel time was near-instant, of course, portalto portal. It was the getting to and from the portals at eitherend that took days. That and, perhaps, some sleight-of-course manoeuvres to fool anybody watching or following and tryingto spot the hidden portals that way. Who knew? Quercer &Janath did, of course, but they weren't telling, wouldn't evencontemplate any arguments about letting him or even just Y'sul stay awake during these bizarre, so casually-taken galaxy-span­ning transfers.

 Watching, following. How could you have all those shipmovements and never be seen? Telescopes of every wavelength,gravity sensors, neutrino patternisers, something somewhere in practically every developed system that kept a devastatinglydetailed close eye on every sort of signal that ever emanatedfrom space close, near, mid or far:something had to show up. Or did they only have portals in undeveloped systems, so thatthey had less chance of being observed?

 No, they had them in Ulubis and Ashum.

 Watching, following. Followed by something small enoughto be even less visible, perhaps? Somebody,something must havefollowed a Dweller ship in-system, somewhere, and suddenlyfound itself plunging into a secret wormhole ... And yet, appar­ently, nobody and nothing ever had.

 So casual, so lackadaisical, so la-la-la; could it all be a perfect,never-failing act? Could the Dwellers all really be geniuses atacting, brilliant at stealth, flawless exponents of the disciplines required to keep complete discipline for every single solitaryjourney-transfer-jump-whatever? Dear reason and fate, they'dhad ten billion years to get perfect at anything they wanted.Who knew what skills they'd developed to perfection in thattime? (Yet there was still chaos, extreme chance, the simplestacking-up of odds that something had to go wrong sometime,no matter how close to perfection you could get…)

 Coming round, slowly. Rovruetz, Direaliete. Shit, morenames to deal with, more places to take in, another damn stepalong the way. He would die forever following this elusive fuckof a Dweller, or accumulate such dislocation, accrue so muchsummed grogginess that he'd forget what the whole insane quest was for, and find Leisicrofe one day, finally, when it was all toolate anyway, and just stare at the fellow, utterly unable to recall what it was he wanted to ask him or what it might be that theDweller could possibly have that would be remotely interestingor important to him.

 The passenger compartment of theVelpin was mostly taken up by the esuit of the Sceuri called the Aumapile of Aumapile: a huge white-stippled black lozenge like a strange distortingviewport into space. Fassin, waking slowly, feeling grubby andsore as usual, couldn't even see Y'sul or the anyway useless screen on the far wall.

 'Urgh!' the giant black esuit exclaimed. 'So that is uncon­sciousness? How disagreeable. And I strongly suspect inher­ently so.'

 Fassin was glad that somebody agreed. He started checkingout the arrowhead's systems as he warmed them up again. Theleft manipulator arm was proving sticky, the self-repair mech­anisms reaching the limits of their abilities. On past form itwould sort of half-work, jerkily, for a few real-time months and then jam completely. He supposed he was lucky he'd got thisfar without any equipment failure, especially given the punish­ment the little gascraft had taken since the flight from ThirdFury.

 'And yet interesting!' the Sceuri announced, voice boominground the near-full space. The Aumapile of Aumapile was evenlouder than Y'sul. 'Hmm,' it said. 'Yes, interesting, more thancertainly. Are you two awake yet or am I first up? Ha-ha!'

 'Either awake or having a very noisy nightmare,' Y'sul saidtestily and unseen from the creature's other side.

 'Ditto,' said Fassin.

 'Super! So, are we there yet?'

 They were.

 And they weren't.

 When the fuzzy screen cleared, it showed they were in themiddle layers of a gas-giant atmosphere. TheVelpin had donesome high-speed spinning after all, and the zapping-unconscioushad been more rough and ready than before. They had taken two days to get where they were going.

 This, their travelcaptain assured them, was Rovruetz,Direaliete, a weather district and gas region of Nhouaste, thesystem's own gas-giant.

 The Aumapile of Aumapile was delighted. Just as it had thought! It fairly bounced out of theVelpin's gaslock into the vast, shaded scape of towering RootClouds and horizon-span­ning RayCanopies. It twirled like a centrifuge from sheer happiness. They spent another day, perfectly undisturbed byany native Dwellers, investigating the supposedly Toilerremains, which actually looked remarkably like an abandoned Dweller globe-city sitting on top of a damaged and discarded mega-klick BandTurbine. All very impressive, but not, Fassinand Y'sul both realised, what or where they were really lookingfor.

 -  This is not Rovruetz, Direaliete, is it? Fassin asked thetruetwin shortly after they arrived, while the Aumapile ofAumapile dashed to and fro throughout the ruins, calibratinginstruments and grabbing screenage.

 -  Are you mad? Of course not.

 -  Direaliete's on the far side of the galaxy.

 -  Take days to get there.

 -  A system? Fassin asked.

 -  A system.

 -  I've no record of it, Fassin told the truetwin.

 -  You wouldn't. Direaliete is its name in the Old Language.

 -  Well, variant thereof.

 -  So, Fassin sent, - this is just a trick.

 -  Correct.

 - Our friend has what it wanted, we have what we wanted.Two out of two. One of our more successful missions.

 -  Meanwhile, Fassin sent, - we're wasting time.

 -  Time wastes itself.

 -Who are we to float in its way?

 After offering to leave the breathless Sceuri scholar behind andcome back for it - it wasn't quite that easily fooled - and thentelling it they really needed to be getting back now - it declaredthere was too much it still had to look for - Quercer & Janathjust abandoned the Sceuri, waiting until it had whirred off intothe centre of the abandoned city before telling Fassin that theAumapile of Aumapile had finally seen sense and was comingaboard in a moment for the trip back, getting the human andY'sul secured, and then closing the external doors and taking off, warning their passengers there was some fairly intense spirallingahead.

 -  What the fuck? Fassin signalled to Y'sul before the gascraft'ssystems were shut down. - What about the Sceuri?

 The Dweller had been in on it.

 -  A good joke, eh? he sent back, laughing.

 Fassin signalled at the wall-screen, getting through to Quercer& Janath in the command space.

 -  Did youwarn the Aumapile you were about to leave?
-Yes.

 Fassin waited. No more came. After a few moments he sent,-And?

 -  Didn't believe us.

 -Laughed.

 -   So you're just abandoning this fabulously wealthy, appar-ently politically well-connected, Dweller-naive idiot in a gas-giant in its home system?

 -   About sums it up.

 -Can't say we didn't warn him. It.

 -   Conditions of Passage.

 -   Don't you think it might get hunted or just die anyway?
Fassin asked. - Or get back home, eventually, deeply annoyed?

 -   Suppose it's a possibility.

 -Keep going?

 -  Get back home, eventually, deeply annoyed with allDwellers? And that that might be a bad thing for the Dwellerswho live in Nhouaste?

 -  Point.

 -Could cause friction.

 -  Kudos loss!

 -Maybe we should have warned somebody we wereleaving the flop-backed suck-puncture behind.

 -  Thinking. Suggestion. Know! We'll send a signal.

 -Happy?

 Fassin didn't even get time to reply.

 -  No more talk time. Switch off now, start spiralling.

 *

 The Archimandrite Luseferous reviewed his forces. The nearestparts were right here, within the curved, concentric hulls of theMain Battle CraftLuseferous VII: they were his space andground crack troops, all stood at attention by their sleek all-environments attack craft and high-skill-spec weaponry. Thewarships, support craft, troop carriers, landers, bombardmentmonitors, harrier drones, missile carriers, scout and surveillancemachines and other vessels plus miscellaneous heavy devices hecould discern - stretching as far as the unaided eye could seeinto the distance - were just projections. But they were live, real-time, and mostly clustered within a few light seconds ofthe invasion fleet's core, whose absolute, steely heart was the Main Battle CraftLuseferous VII.

 This was, in a way, the Archimandrite's favourite bit. He hadmade a tradition of reviewing his forces like this before everymajor engagement, and especially before every system invasion,simply because it was such an astoundingly rewarding experi­ence. Even the feeling of victory achieved - of having crushedand overcome, of having utterly prevailed - was hardly anybetter than this, when all the forces that would soon be thrown into the unavoidable mess and untidiness of battle - gettingkilled and shot up and dirty and lost and damaged and so on -stood or sat or lay or hovered or flew in perfect formationbefore him, gleaming, serried, grouped, exactly aligned, neatlylaid out, symmetrically and systematically arranged, all just glis­ tening with power and threat and promise.

 He stood on the reviewing balcony at one end of the vastcurved series of halls that formed the layered outer hulls of thegiant ship, and took a series of deep breaths, eyes wide, heartpounding. God or Truth, it was a beautiful sight. This was, ina way, genuinely better than sex.

 They were coasting in now, most of the decelerationcompleted, just one final burst of a few days' weight and discom­fort to come. Another week and they would be in the system,finally attacking. They had encountered little opposition so far,partly due to the high, angled course they'd taken. Any mineclouds and drone flocks that might have been set out to trapthem would have been thrown across the more directapproaches, and by taking this longer but safer line they'davoided them all so far. The only danger had lain in their mid-course correction, subjective years earlier, when their drives might have shown up on any deep-space monitoring systemsin Ulubis, had they been turned in the right direction. The risk had been slight and as far as they could tell they'd got away with it.

 At any rate, no fleet had emerged from Ulubis to do battle; they had decided to wait and fight on their own doorsteps. His tacticians thought this indicated that Ulubis was prepared but weak. They might encounter some probe and destroyer-level .craft, but that would probably be all until they hit the mid- andinner system. His admirals were confident their laser ships andclose defence units could deal with anything else that might have been sent out to get in their way.

 Luseferous became aware of noises at his back, where someof his more senior commanders were permitted to stand, backedin turn by his personal Guards. There were whispers, andhushing noises of fear and exasperation. He felt his body stiffen.Now would not be a good time to bother him with anything other than the imminent destruction of the whole fleet. Theyhad to know that. The people behind him quieted down.

 He relaxed, stood more upright in the spin-produced three-quarter gravity, and breathed deeply again, gazing out at theassembled men and materiel. Oh, this was a sweet and beau­tiful sight indeed, this was the very image of invincibility, an utterly thrilling spectacle of power made solid and real anduncompromising. This was his, this washim.

 The imminent destruction of the whole fleet . . . He imag­ined that happening, imagined it happening right now; somecataclysmic hyper-weapon of the ancients wiping out the entireinvasion force without anyone being able to do anything to stop them. Nonsense - well, vanishingly unlikely, anyway - but justthink of it! He'd be able to watch everything here just blinkout of existence, one by one, or explode in flames or brightblasts of light. He'd be able to watch it all being destroyedaround him!

 The idea made him shiver, half in horror, half in delight. Itwas never going to happen, of course, but the image alone was terrifyingly exciting. And a sort of warning, of course. Not fromany god or from some program running the universe as theTruth saw it, but from something more trustworthy and direct;from inside himself. His subconscious, or some monitoring part-personality playing the part of the fool who always stood atCaesar's side in a Triumph, reminding him that all was vanity.That sort of thing. The thoughts of destruction were just himreminding himself to take nothing for granted, to concentrateand take full control, to prosecute the coming war with his usualruthlessness and ignore any internal whining voices preachingmoderation or unwarranted mercy. Be cruel and merciful alwaysfor a purpose, never just to satisfy some self-image. Somebodyhad said that. He would never forget it.

 One last deep breath. So, prepared. And forearmed. Still, themood had sort of been broken. No real damage done by thehint of interruption earlier. He would be justified, all the same, in being angry, if he needed to be. Better see what all the fusshad been about. He swivelled on his heels, pulled himself up to his full height - always have senior commanders you could lookdown on - and said, loudly,'Yes?'

 He loved to see these proud, vainglorious men flinch, thesemen used to being obeyed instantly and without question cower,even fractionally, before him.

 Tuhluer, perhaps his least annoying aide-de-camp and latelysomething of a favourite, came forward, smiling and frowning at the same time. 'Sir, sorry about the disturbance a momentearlier.' He gave a tiny flex of the eyebrows, as if to say, Not my fault - you know what some of these guys are like. 'Opsalert just in: high-speed craft coming direct from Ulubis,signalling unarmed, no warhead, one or two human occupants, wanting to talk. Already slowing to match with us in ten hours. On its current course that will leave it a hundred klicks off fleet centre, left-level.'

 The Archimandrite glared over Tuhluer's head at the others.'And this required my intervention?'

 'Warhead worries, sir,' Tuhluer said smoothly, with a smallsmile. 'The craft was passing the leading units of the fleet'sforward destroyer screen at the time and was about to go outof their effective beam-weapon range. Question was whetherto shoot or not. Now moot. The ship will be in range of the second defensive layer in half an hour. Or there are missiles, of course. A drone missile-carrier has already been launchedin pursuit.'

 The Archimandrite Luseferous paused a moment, thensmiled. He could see them all relax. 'Well then,' he said.'Everything appears to be functioning as it should and I did notneed to be disturbed, did I?'

 'Indeed not, sir,' his aide-de-camp agreed ruefully.

 'And what is the alleged status of this human or humans, ifindeed that is what the thing contains?'

 'The claim is that there's a man aboard, a high-ranking indus­trialist called Saluus Kehar.'

 *

 The grogginess again, the tired, gritty, grubby feeling. Fassinwas sure he was coming round more and more slowly each time,and finding himself duller, slower and more confused with eachnew reawakening. Over forty days' travel on this transition, tothe other side of the galaxy, fully ninety kiloyears from Ulubis,not that such measurements meant much. The in-wormhole timewould still have been trivial. The extra days and weeks had beentaken up by the flight from the portal to the ship they werelooking for, deep in interstellar space.

 Some days. A distance. All just more time gone, more distancebetween him and whatever he was trying to accomplish, whileevents back at Ulubis moved on without him.

 He tested the arrowhead's faulty left manipulator arm, flexingand tensing it, then forced himself to look at the screen on thefar wall. Stars swung, as ever, then became just the backdrop to a vast dark gnarled craft, a giant torus-shaped ship two hundredkilometres in diameter, all black gleaming ribs and fracturedfacets, glinting in the weak light of a far-distant sun like a great rough crown of wet coal: the Cineropoline SepulcraftRovruetz,a vessel of the Ythyn's vastly dispersed Greater Expiratory Fleet,a Death-Carrier.

 Y'sul studied the image on the screen from the far side of thechamber for a moment, then shook his mantles. 'We must mixamongst Morbs,' he said, sounding sleepy, grumpy and resignedall at once. 'Oh, great.'

 - So what happened to the Toilers? Fassin asked. - I thoughtLeisicrofe was supposed to be investigating Toilers next.

 -  Obviously they toiled in vain, Y'sul sent.

 - A mis-lead.
- A bluff.

 TheVelpin hung above a graveyard of ships scattered acrossthe outer rim of the Death Carrier while Y'sul and Fassin crossedto the giant ship. The Ythyn had suggested that theVelpin mightenter theRovruetz. Quercer & Janath had demurred with whatlooked convincingly like a shiver of horror inside their silvery overall. Fassin got the impression that just being close to theSepulcraft and its ancient collection of crumbling, lifeless shipswas bad enough for them.

 The Ythyn were a Scavenger species with a speciality: theycollected the dead. They did nothing with them, just storedthem sorted roughly by category, type and size, and they usuallyonly collected those bodies - and sometimes the ships and otherdevices they arrived on - that nobody else wanted. But it was still an irredeemably macabre habit and as a result they shareda generic nickname with other death-obsessed species, havingbecome known as Morbs.

 Fassin and Y'sul were welcomed in the cavernous, gently lit entrance hall by a Ythyn officer, a great dark avian three metres tall in a glistening, near-transparent slick-suit over skin like darkblue parchment. Tightly bound double wings, which fullystretched would have spread a dozen metres, indicated the Ythynwas a junior. It stood on an uneven tripod of legs: one thick limbto the rear, two thinner ones in front. The creature's lipped beakwas inlaid with precious metals, glittering under the gel of theslick-suit. Its two eyes were huge roundels of black. Thin, curved pipes led from its nostril gratings to sets of small tanks on its backlike spherical eggs of tarnished silver. There were no atmosphere-locks on an Ythyn ship; the crew, like their dead charges, spent their entire time in hard vacuum. Exposed only to that hushednothingness, enclosed by the great ship and so kept within a few degrees of absolute zero, the bodies of the dead could lie undis­turbed and uncorrupted by nothing more than whatever had killedthem and by the effects of their slow or sudden freezing, for aeons.

 -  You are welcome, the Ythyn officer told them in a flat,unaccented signal, prefixed only by formal signifiers for sadnessand reverence. - You are Mr Taak and you are Mr Y'sul, yes?

 -  Yes, Fassin sent.

 -  I am Duty Receptioneer Ninth Lapidarian. I am happy andhonoured to be known as 'Ninth' or just 'Duty'. Tell me, haveeither of you two gentlemen made any arrangements for thetreatment or disposal of your bodies, after death?

 -   

 The Ythyn had been collecting the dead for a billion years, theresult of a kind of gruesome techno-curse visited upon them bya species they had fought against and been utterly defeated by.They had lost their small empire, lost their few planets, losttheir major habitats and most of their ships and they had evenlost themselves, coerced into a programme of genetic amend­ment that turned them from intellectually rounded beings intocreatures utterly obsessed with death.

 The cruelty and cleverness of their vanquishers had lain inidentifying and choosing a latent weakness congenital to theYthyn. They had always been a little overly fascinated withmortality compared with the norm of vaguely similar species, but not to the stage of serious abnormality and certainly not to the point that it in any way defined them. And if they had beenso grotesquely psychologically disfigured in the process ofmaking them so excessively morbid that they ceased to be iden-tifiably themselves there would have been no artistry, no fitness in their punishment. Instead, by this subtle but significanttweaking of their own bodies' instruction set, they became whatthey might have become anyway had some bizarre shiftings in their environment and circumstances so decreed. Those whohad not taken their own lives and refused to submit to the inher­itable amendment were killed or hunted down and forced toundergo the treatment anyway, though most of those so treated killed themselves as well.

 The survivors became wanderers, one of the dozens of planet-evolved species denied or - in a few cases - eschewing any sortof home world. They built massive cold, dark ships and accruedenormous libraries and data reservoirs filled with the subject ofdeath. They haunted the sites of great battles, terrible massacresand awful disasters. Over time, they began to gather the unclaimeddead from such sites, storing them more or less as they foundthem in their great airless ships, each carrying a cargo of collecteddeath, plodding from one end of the galaxy to the other or grad­ually spiralling around it. Too big for wormhole travel, loath evento approach too close to a star, the Sepulcraft depended on smaller ships to harvest the dead. Even these rarely used wormholes thesedays. The Propylaea, which had charge of all the Mercatoria'sportals, was not a charity, and demanded money for passage. TheYthyn had little to offer in payment.

 They collected ships from those bringing the dead - or them­selves, to die - but those were usually hulks, wrecks or near theend of their useful working lives and anyway regarded by theYthyn as sacred, amongst the dead themselves. There were occa­sional donations and bequests from many different societies but they were few and far between. When they could afford to, andthere were bodies to be got from the far end of a wormhole,an Ythyn ship would spend the little collateral it had accumu­lated and send a needle craft to make the collection. But usuallythey just physically followed the galaxy's generally sporadicinstances of mass death.

 That they had long since dutifully gathered up the remainingbodies of the now-extinct species which had inflicted theirpunishment upon them and could therefore relatively easily and without resistance have re-amended themselves back to theiroriginal selves, but had chosen not to, was either their most poignant tragedy of all, or a recognition that they had found aplace within the galactic scheme of things that suited them betterthan might any other.

 - We are on our way to the Chistimonouth system, DutyReceptioneer Ninth Lapidarian told the Dweller and the humanas they made their way along a vast curved corridor deep withinthe giant ship. The tall birdlike being used one of its two thin forelegs to manipulate the controls of a small cagelike car thatcarried them in perfect silence along a monorail set in the centreof the wide tunnel. It was perfectly dark, too. They were havingto use active sensing to illuminate the seemingly never-endingcorridor. - We seek the mortal remains of a newly contacted Serpenterian civilisation, a possible offshoot of the Desii-Chau(themselves, lamentably, no more; extinct, or, at the very best,deep within the fifth category of abatement), unadopted, whichfell prey, sadly, to a series of solar flares some centuries ago.The sole inhabited planet was sorely affected. Of the singlesentient species thereon, it is believed that no living traceremains. It will be our privilege and our duty, when we arrivethere in another few decades, to inter within these hallowed halls as many of the still-unburied as we are able.

 -  How will they be unburied? Y'sul asked. - Do they float? Won't they all have sunk into their own depths? Into water or mud or dissolved rock or something?

 The corridors were lined with the dead: stapled, pinned,stitched or ice-welded to the tubular surface (the concept offloors, walls and ceilings had some meaning while the ship wasunder power, but it was temporary). A few body types werebest preserved in cavities, alcoves sealed with diamond leaf.

 -   Those happily buried will be left where they lie, underground, Duty told them. - Some remains are expected in structures, even after all this time. The reports we have had fromscouter species indicate that there may be many unclaimedcadavers still in space, at Lagrange points.

 -   What if they're all gone? Y'sul asked. - What if somebody'sbeaten you to it and . . . eaten them or recycled them or something?

 -   Then we will make our way to the next location where wemay honour the dead, the dark bird told them, imperturbable.

 -   Come to think of it, Y'sul said brightly, - there might bea few bods to pick up in a place called Ulubis fairly soon.

 Fassin looked at the Dweller but he wasn't paying any attention.

 -   Ulubis, Duty said. - I have not heard of this place. Is it aplanet?

 -   System, Y'sul said. - Home of the planet Nasqueron. InStream Quaternary, one of the Southern Tendril Reefs.

 -   Ah, yes. Rather far away from here.

 -   Lots of humans there and another lot on their way, Y'sulsaid. - Probably going to be a war. Lot of deaths, I'd imagine.You collect humans?

 -   We have difficulties only with certain Cincturian species,the bird-creature told them. - Humans we have heard of andaccommodated in the past, though not on this craft. I shall passon your information at the earliest opportunity to our mostproximate Sepulcraft. They may well be aware already, of course,
and possibly on their way even as we speak. However, we aregrateful for your thoughtfulness.

 -  My pleasure, Y'sul said, sounding pleased with himself. Heglanced at Fassin. - What?

 Fassin looked away. They were passing bodies spread againstthe tunnel's surface like small solidified explosions of rock. -Palonne, their guide informed them. - Ossile, obviously. Victimsof war. Subject to a parasitic stone-rot virus of some sort.

 -  Fascinating, Y'sul said. - Are we nearly at this Leisicrofefellow yet?

 Duty looked at a small display clipped to one of his cinched-in wings. - Another few hundred metres.

 -  What's he up to here, anyway? Y'sul asked.

 -  Up to? The Ythyn sounded uncertain.

 -  Just . . . studying you people, is he?

 -  Why, no. No, of course not. The Ythyn officer was silentfor a moment. - Oh dear.

 Fassin and Y'sul exchanged looks.

 Fassin said, - You're not saying he'sdead, are you?

 -  Well, yes. Of course. This is a Sepulcraft, gentlemen. I wasunder the impression that you simply wanted to see the body.

 *

 The news came while she was asleep. Taince watched an hours-old recording of the faint, sideways-seen, blue-shifted glimmersapproaching from the direction of the E-5 Discon as the Starvelinginvasion fleet started braking for its arrival in Ulubis system. Theinvaders would take nearly three months to reach Ulubis. The Summed Fleet was still four months' travel away, including its own, more dramatic deceleration regime, due to start in a littlemore than eighty days. The Fleet tacticians had learned quite alot just from the braking profile of E-5 Discon's fleet.

 First, it was big: a thousand ships or more, unless there wassomething outlandishly clever going on with dummy drivesignatures. Second, it was staying ninety-five per cent together,with only a few dozen smaller ships venturing ahead of the mainfleet. This might imply a significant straight-through, braking-beyond force still hidden, though from the rest of the profile this didn't look so likely. The size, definition and shifted-frequency signatures of the drives themselves revealed a rela­tively slow, old-tech vessel-capability envelope. Basically all butthe lightest craft in the Summed Fleet force would be able totake on all but the heaviest of the invaders' ships with a betterthan average chance of prevailing, and anything that couldn'tbe outfought could be outrun (for whatever that was worthwhen there was nowhere to run to).

 And there was one behemoth in there, a giant ship, probablya command-and-control lander- and troop-carrier plus facili-ties-and-repair vessel. At least a billion tonnes, klicks across,doubtless very heavily armoured and armed and escorted, buta classic grade-A high-value target, a possible king-piece, a back-breaker, if it could be successfully engaged and destroyed or taken out of action or even captured. Just posting a powerful-enough guard-ship screen to try and keep it safe in the eventof a serious attack threat would significantly sap the invading\ occupying force's abilities, cut down their dispositional optionsand drastically curtail their split-regroup capacity.

 The Fleet tacticians had been positively cruel about thisdinosaur of a ship. A vanity piece, they called it, anIdiot Aboard!sign hung round the neck of the enemy fleet. Every space-faringspecies that built warcraft quickly found out one way or another- often the hard way - that big ships just didn't work exceptas a hideously expensive way of impressing the more creduloustype of native. Flexibility, manoeuvrability, low unit risk-cost,distributed inherent damage resistance, fully parsed battle-spaceside-blind denotation control grammar . . . these and other evenmore arcane concepts were what really mattered in modernspace warfare, apparently, and a Really Big Ship just didn't sittoo comfortably with any of them.

 The tacticians pretty much spoke their own language, weremostly very intense, and blinked a lot.

 'So a strong point that's really a weak point,' Taince had suggested at one of their briefings.

 'That would be a viable alternative definition,' one of themsaid, after a moment or two's thought.

 Since just a week ago, though, relatively little evidence of further activity.

 Well, the Discon invaders had arrived later than anticipated,and the Summed Fleet forces were arriving earlier. Deliberate,on their part, of course. The invaders would have quickly found out when Ulubis had been told to expect the Summed Fleet'sarrival, and it was always prudent to keep the enemy off balance,to upset their assumptions. Let them think they had so muchtime and then arrive early before they'd got everything prepared.

 Smiting. It was all about smiting. That was one of Admiral Kisipt's favourite words. The Voehn Fleet Commander knew itin several hundred different languages, including Earth Anglish.Be ready at all times to smite the enemy. Strike with speed, deci­siveness and weight.

 Taince found herself lightly smitten with one of the juniormale officers, discovered it was mutual and took part in some invasive tussling of her own.

 The time displays ticked down steadily towards the pointwhere they'd have to get back into their lonely little individualpods again for the deceleration burn that would bring themdown from near-light speed to something close to Ulubis-zero,for the start of the attack.

 *

 The CineropolineSepulcraft Rovruetz spun very slowly beneaththeVelpin, still gently accelerating for its distant target systemand its unburied cargo of the long-dead. TheVelpin was trackinground the outer rim of the giant craft, senses primed. Fassinand Y'sul were back aboard. They had been shown to the life­less body of Leisicrofe, ice-welded to the side of the great darkcorridor in the company of a half-dozen other dead Dwellers.

 -  Very well preserved, as you see, Duty Receptioneer NinthLapidarian had pointed out. - I hope you feel this setting isappropriate. The Ythyn officer had still been upset at the earlier misunderstanding.

 -  So he just died, then? Y'sul had asked.

 -  Very suddenly, apparently. We found him drifting – rolling along in his esuit, actually - a few days after he arrived. He hadexpressed an interest in mapping the distribution of bodies ofdifferent species and species-types while he was here. We sawno reason not to allow him to do so.

 They weren't permitted to use reaction motors inside theSepulcraft. Y'sul had used his esuited spine-arms to push himselfover to the side of the tunnel. He'd landed awkwardly by the Dweller's body, which was naked save for a small hub-cloth.

 -  I have no idea whether this is this Leisicrofe guy or not,frankly, Y'sul had said. - But it is a Dweller, probably fromNasqueron and he is most certainly dead.

 -  Any sign of... anything? Fassin asked.

 Y'sul had inspected the body, using lights and radar-sense,finding nothing. He'd unclipped the corpse's hub-cloth andshaken it. Fassin had sensed their Ythyn host preparing toobject, but a moment later Y'sul had replaced the hub-cloth andwas looking round the back of the body where ice attached itto the tunnel wall.

 -  Nothing, he'd sent back.

 'There,' one half of Quercer & Janath said.

 On one of theVelpin's screens, a flickering outline appearedaround one of the abandoned ships littering the carbuncularlyirregular outer hull of the Sepulcraft.

 Fassin looked at the craft. It was a simple black ellipsoid, maybe sixty metres long. Deep-space cold, lifeless.

 'That it?' Y'sul asked. 'You sure?'

 'It's a Dweller Ail-Purpose, Single-Occupancy StandardPattern SoloShip,' the truetwin told them. 'And it pings recent.'

 'Can you wake its systems?' Fassin asked. 'Find out whereit was last, where it came from?'

 The travelcaptain looked at him. 'Doesn't work like that.''Pay attention.'

 They got permission from the Ythyn to lift the SoloShip andjoin it to theVelpin. They warmed it up and introduced a stan­dard gas-giant atmosphere. There was just about enough room for Y'sul and Fassin to board together. Quercer & Janath had already laser-synched the little ship's closed-down computermatrix to that of theVelpin. The screens, tanks, surfaces andother displays flickered, steadied and shone. The craft beepedand clicked around them. It still felt cold.

 Y'sul knocked and tapped a few of the more obviously deli­cate-looking bits of machinery with his hub-arms.

 'You getting anything?' he asked. The truetwin was stayingon board the larger craft.

 'There's stuff in the log,' one half told them. 'That's sailor-talk for diary.'

 'No saying!' Y'sul said.

 'Truly. But it's not accessible from here. You'll have to inputfrom there.'

 'How, exactly?' Fassin asked.

 'How should we know?''Not our ship.'

 'Experiment.'

 They experimented. The correct technique involved Y'sulpressing in to a Dweller-shaped double-alcove sensory nookand pressing four glyphboard icons on four different glyph-boards at once. The main screen stopped showing stars and thedarkly glittering hull of the Sepulcraft and started showing whatlooked like the interior of a small library instead. Y'sul reachedout into the virtual space and pulled down a book whose spine saidLog. He opened it.

 A motionless Dweller hub faced them in close-up.

 'Well,' Y'sul said, 'that certainly looks like the stiff in the bigspace hearse.'

 'We can see him. Should be aPlay button.''Try hitting it.'

 'Gee,' Y'sul said. 'Thank fuck you guys are there.' He hitPlay.

 *

 Taince Yarabokin woke from a light sleep to a low-level alarm, telling her not even to think about instigating a pod-quit regime.She swung to the exterior fore-view display and looked out.Ulubis glowed sharp and blue ahead, a tiny sun amongst thesurrounding scrape of stars, at last. The blueness was a func­tion of the ship and the fleet's colossal speed, hammering intothe light waves, compressing wavelength. Taince switched fromLR Sensors to ship-state. A fierce and terrible force pulled ateverything. They'd started their final deceleration burn. Themajority of the fleet was losing speed hard, piling up a hundred or more gravities as it braked for the approach to and arrival atUlubis system, still over a month away.

 Another group of ships - one full squadron of sixty vessels -was not decelerating so rapidly. A dozen were not slowing at alland would maintain full speed all the way to and most of theway through the system, their crews and systems trained overhundreds of simulations for an ultra-high-speed pass acrossUlubis planetary system which would last for less than four hours.In that time, less than twenty days from now, they would haveto collect and evaluate all the data they could on the then-currentstate of the system and then both signal their intelligence backto the ships behind and choose a suite of attack profiles froma vast menu of possibilities they carried in their data banksbefore loosing all the munitions they could against whateverhostiles they had identified. They hoped the pickings would be rich for them. They'd be arriving with little warning only amonth after the Starveling fleet had struck. With luck the situ­ation would be fluid and the E-5 Discon forces wouldn't havehad time to organise their defences properly.

 Then, even before those advance ships were all the waythrough the system, they would begin their own still moreviolent deceleration, to come to a stop a light month beyond, and get back to Ulubis weeks after the main fleet had arrived:at best to help with the mopping up, at worst to deliver a retal­iatory hammer-blow.

 The remainder of the Advance-attack Squadron would passthrough the system in small groups of ships, their arrival stag­gered, unpredictable, distributed, their tactics in part defined by whatever the high-speed craft had discovered. With luck, withwhat they hoped and trusted was a good battle-plan, the wavesof war craft, each able to spend more fighting time in the system than its immediate predecessor, would deliver a succession ofsoftening-up blows against the enemy: rocking it, unbalancingit, confusing and bloodying it. The main body of the fleet,arriving like a bunched fist, would just provide one final massive knockout punch.

 Their drive light would precede them, of course. There wouldbe no complete surprise.

 The Starveling invasion had given the defenders of Ulubiseven more warning, not that there was much they could havedone with it. The E-5 Discon fleet had slowed right down, shutits drives off almost as one while still a few days out, well withinthe system's Oort shell, then slowed further as its lead shipscrossed the boundary into the planetary system.

 For the next few weeks after the drive signatures meshed withthe Ulubis system and shut off, when the invasion must have been at its height, there had been a lot of weapon-blink. Muchof it had been around the planets Sepekte and Nasqueron.

 *

 'My name is Leisicrofe of Hepieu, Nasqueron equatorial. Thisis my last testament. I will presume that whoever you are youhave followed me for the data which I carried on behalf of myfellow Dweller, the scholar Valseir of Schenehen. If you have not, and this recording has fallen to you in what one might terma casual manner, it may be of little interest. If, however, you doseek the data I held, then I must tell you now that you are goingto be disappointed.'

 Something in Fassin seemed to break and fall away.

 'Uh-oh,' Y'sul said.

 'This may seem unfortunate and may make you angry.However, I have most likely done you a considerable favour,as it is my sincere and firm belief that what I was asked to carry was something I should not have been, and something thatnobody should have been or should be asked to take responsi­bility for. It was not something I was supposed to know about,of course, and it was not really Valseir's fault that I came into possession of the knowledge of what it represented.'

 'Talks a lot, doesn't he?' Y'sul said.

 'To my shame, I think I must be more shallow than my friendValseir gave me credit for. He gave me the data sealed in a safe-keep box and asked me not to open it. I said I would not. Hedid not even ask me for my word, thinking, I am sure, thatsimply asking a friend and fellow scholar such a thing, andreceiving such an assurance, was guarantee enough. However,I am not like Valseir. I am inquisitive by nature, not as the resultof an intellectual fascination with any particular subject. Iresisted the urge to open the safekeep box for many years while I was on my travels, but eventually I surrendered to tempta­tion. I opened the safekeep, I began to read what was inside,and realised its importance. Even then I might have stoppedreading, closed the box and put it away again, and had I done that I would still be alive. Instead, I carried on reading - and this has resulted in my death. I can only claim that perhaps Iwas in a sort of trance of disbelief at the time.'

 'More likely taken some recreational substances,' Y'sulsnorted.

 'And so I came to hold within myself the knowledge, themeaning of that which I had been asked to keep safe, ratherthan just having charge of the medium containing it. Realisingwhat I now knew, and comprehending that it was of inestimablevalue, I came to the conclusion that I could not be trusted withit. While not entirely understanding what I had read, I couldnot forget it. I could tell others, and it was not impossible that I might be made to tell what I knew through the use of drugsor more direct intervention with my brain and mind.' 'Nutter,' Y'sul said.

 'What's that?' one of Quercer & Janath said distantly overthe open link to theVelpin.

 'Hmm. Don't know.' It didn't sound like they were payingattention to what was being said by the recording of Leisicrofe.'I will not pretend that I had not been thinking of my own death for some time. However, it was habitually within thecontext of having completed my studies into the many differingforms of the Cincturia and publishing a learned - I had evenhoped an at-the-time definitive - work on this, my chosen andbeloved field of study. Knowing what I now know, I havethought it best, however reluctantly, to curtail my studies forth­with and kill myself as soon as may decently be achieved. I shall do so here, in the Ythyn Cineropoline SepulcraftRovruetz,where my death will at least appear to have a fraction moremeaning than it might have had elsewhere.'

 '- Looks like, or . . .' Fassin heard over the open channel.

 'Ping it?'

 'No! Are you . . . ? Shut off that—'

 The open channel closed. Fassin looked back to the accesshatch and the short ship-to-ship connecting them to theVelpin.Leisicrofe was still speaking.'... Will forgive me. You should.If you know what it is you are looking for, then all I will sayis that it looked more like a code and frequency, not what Ibelieve was expected. But it is quite gone now. Destroyed, alongwith the safekeep box itself, thrown into the sun calledDirealiete. I know of no other copy. If none of this makes any sense to you, then please respect an old, and - as it turns out -foolish, Dweller's last wish, and leave him here in peace.' Therecording froze and an end-message signal flashed.

 Fassin stared at the image of the dead Dweller. It was over.He'd failed. Maybe now there was no way ever to find outwhether the Dweller List meant anything or even had ever meantanything.

 'Totally mad,' Y'sul said, with something like a sigh. Hefiddled with the glyphboard controls. 'Looks like that's our lot.'

 He turned to Fassin. 'Doesn't sound too hopeful, does it, young human-me-lad?'

 The open channel from the ship clicked on suddenly. 'Getout!' Quercer & Janath screamed. 'Ten seconds to get off thereand back in theVelpin!’

 'Being attacked! Must run!'

 Fassin shook himself out of his shock and started backingtowards the open hatch leading to theVelpin.

 Y'sul pulled out of the sensory-nook, began to follow, onehub-limb scratching at his mantle. 'This madness is obviouslycontag—'

 'FuckingVoehn ship! Out,now!''Engines in five, four, three . . .'

 SIX:

 THE  LAST TRANSFORM

 . . . Sssss 1000101011001010101 \ on\\ symcheck \ ssscheck \syt - sytser \ syst - syst - \ fail reboot \ livel \ livl \ lev - levl -level 001 \ hup \ gethup \ paramarametsr \ woop! woop! \ check \check \ check \ system check \ run ALL \ cat. zzero sssum-check postcrash full allowablesss\ rebot \ rubot \ reOot \ lbit \cat. zero sumcheck postcrash fullabables \ ints. postcrash (likely antagonistic external hostile agency cause) full All reboot restart: \starting mem. \ lang. \ sens. \ full int. . . . bip bip bip . . . Bang!Wo!

 Hnnh?You all right?

 I'm all right. Now. You all right?I'm all right.Happened?This:

 'Closing hatch!'

 The hatch at the end of the ship-to-ship joining theVelpinand the Dweller SoloShip started to close before Fassin got toit. Y'sul was still behind him, moving quickly along the exit. Fassin swung through, flipped, turned and grabbed the hatch'smoving edge with his left manipulator.

 The closing hatch nearly took the manipulator off. Fassin wasswung around by the force of it and found himself having tobrace with his other manipulator against the lock interior, strug­gling to keep the hatch - grinding, mechanism hummingmightily - from closing.

 'Somebody holding that hatch open?' one half of Quercer &Janath shouted indignantly.

 'Out the way, Fassin!' Y'sul yelled, rising fast straight out of the ship-to-ship and colliding heavily with Fassin's gascraft,sending the two of them tumbling through the lock and into theVelpin'sinterior. Error\failure messages from the gascraft's left manipulator arm crowded against one edge of Fassin's field ofvision. The hatch slammed shut behind them. Immediately, a greatforce smashed them against the compartment's sternward bulk­head. They were stuck there, unmoving, the arrowhead snagged over the Dweller's tipped left discus until the increasing acceler­ation and a series of sharp vibrations made Fassin slide off oneedge of Y'sul's carapace and whack down onto the carbon bulk­head by his side. The ship roared around them.

 'Engines are on, one takes it,' Y'sul said, wheezing. Fassincould feel the apparent gravity building still further. They wereat something over twenty gee already. A young, fit Dwellerwith no esuit protection stuck on his side against an inelasticsurface could take about twenty-four, twenty-five gees contin­uous before their carapace just collapsed and turned their insides to mush. TheVelpin's acceleration topped out at twenty-two gees.

 'All right back there?' their travelcaptain asked.

 'Not really,' Fassin said. 'You're kind of near crushing Y'sul.'

 'Acknowledged.'

 'Not outrunning the fucker. Can't.'

 'Cut off and come about. Surrender.''Agree.'

 The acceleration snapped off. Fassin and Y'sul were instantlyweightless, rebounding fractionally from the bulkhead just bythe released compression in the hull of one and the carapace ofthe other.

 'Get up here, you two,' Quercer & Janath told them.

 The Voehn ship was a klick-long needle spined with swing-guns and weapon tubes. It came quickly up on them and wasalongside by the time the human in his gascraft and the DwellerY'sul got to theVelpin's control space.

 'Since when do the Voehn choose to attack Dweller craft going about their—?' the travelcaptain began to ask.

 'Be quiet,' said an imageless voice. 'Make yourself ready forboarding.'

 Quercer & Janath's shiny suit rustled as the truetwin turnedto look at Fassin and Y'sul while tapping some controls. Imagesof theVelpin appeared in holo displays, showing hatches anddoors flashing in outline.

 'The Voehn have turned pirates,' Quercer & Janath told themcalmly.

 'How fuckingdare they!' Y'sul roared.

 'They didn't follow us through the wormhole, did they?'Fassin asked.

 'Ha! No.' The truetwin seemed purely amused. 'No, theywere waiting in this system.'

 'Assume we'll see why shortly.'

 'The fucking scumbag bastards will pay grievously for thisoutrage!' Y'sul yelled, shaking with fury.

 A shudder rang through theVelpin and alarms started blaring.Quercer & Janath roted closer to a brightly flashing display.'Look at that.'

 'Penetrated amidships with a cut-through.'

 Cameras briefly showed a thick tube extending from themiddle of the Voehn ship into a neat circular hole in the hullof theVelpin. Then the images crazed and faded. Other displaysstarted to disappear. The alarms warbled down to a croak, then shut off. Fassin thought he could smell burning.

 'And us cooperatively opening all our orifices.''Fucking typical.'

 'Here they come. Thundering through.'

 Another display showed an abstract of large beings pouringthrough the breach and spreading through the ship, bouncing off surfaces in the zero-gee. The largest force was comingstraight towards the control space. Then that display shut down too. All the lights went out. The background noises of the ship,hardly noticed until they ceased, just faded away.

 A ragged pulse of what sounded like heavy steps camepounding from the closed door leading to theVelpin's centralcorridor.

 'Probably going to zap us soon as they—' Quercer & Janathbegan. Then the door punctured with a coughing noise andsomething small flew into the middle of the control space andexploded into a million barbs like dust.

 Ah-ha.

 Though what got us was a fucking EMP cannon. Aimedat the ship's vulnerables.

 Indeed. So there we are.And here.Indeed.See what happens?

 See what happens.. . . Better ship, anyway.

 Fassin was being carried within a sort of transparent, bracedsack by two big creatures like giant eight-legged dogs in mirror-armour, one at either end. He was still in theVelpin. The cut-through tube was a great pipe with a slanted hole, like the endof a massive syringe plunged into the guts of the ship. The twoVoehn commandos flicked him and themselves up the tube and into the Voehn ship with near-effortless ease. Fassin, confused,senses ringing, unable to move, peered through the transparentmaterial of the prison-stretcher and caught a glimpse of anothertwo Voehn behind him carrying Y'sul, similarly wrapped.

 They went through a rotate-lock. The Voehn ship was darkinside, faintly red-lit. It was in hard vacuum, like the Sepulcraft.The wrapping round the little gascraft ballooned taut.

 Fassin, Y'sul and the truetwin were taken through another lock and into a pressurised, slightly heated circular chamber.The wrappings around them collapsed again. They were settledinto something like dent-seats and clamped there with thicklyshining restraints. They were half-unwrapped from their trans­parent covers, sufficient for them to be able to hear and see andspeak. The warriors tested their bonds and then left.

 Fassin looked around as best he could. Y'sul and the travel-captain appeared still to be unconscious, Y'sul's ruff-mantles waving limply in the free fall and Quercer & Janath, still in theshiny coveralls, floating seemingly lifeless in the dent-seat. Thechamber was plain, just a flattened ovoid, filled with a gas-giantatmosphere entirely breathable by a Dweller but that didn'tsmell quite right. Light came dimly from every surface. A hintof gravity built up, producing about a quarter standard.

 A door appeared and irised open, closing behind a trio ofVoehn: two of the mirror-armoured commandos and anotherwearing just a torso-uniform decorated with various insigniaand a holstered side arm. He stood and looked at the three pris­oners, the great grey snout-face and fist-sized multiple-liddedeyes turning fractionally as he directed his attention from oneto another. He arched his long body and flexed his back spines,raising all ten with what looked like a sensual motion.Blizzardskin on the Voehn's spines scintillated like a minutelyshattered mirror.

 Fassin, trying hard not to lose consciousness again, thoughtdreamily of the screen series he'd watched as a child -Attack Squad Voehn. Had that been its name? - and struggled to recallwhat the uniforms and insignia might indicate, rememberingonly slowly. The Voehn in the uniform was a Prime Commander.A multi-talent. Top guy here, certainly. Significantly over-ranked for a ship this size, unless it was on a special mission.(Oh-oh.)

 One of the mirror-armour soldiers waved a hand-held instru­ment at them, watching a display. He barely glanced at the resultsfrom Fassin and Y'sul, then did a double take when the devicewas aimed at Quercer & Janath. He altered a few controls, sweptthe machine over the truetwin's still lifeless-looking body again and said something to the Voehn commander, who moved over,looked at the display and made a small swaying motion withhis head. He clicked the machine off and came over to the pris­ oners, saying something as though to one of his decorations.

 The restraints holding the gascraft and the two Dweller bodiesslid back into the floor. The Voehn commander took off a gloveand ran one leathery-looking hand over the surface of the littlegascraft, then Y'sul's carapace, then felt the shiny membranecovering Quercer & Janath. He looked for and found a catchand opened the coverall up so that it hung down over the trans­ parent material the prisoners had all been trussed in. Thecommander looked very closely at Quercer & Janath's signal skin, and seemed to sniff it.

 He looked at Fassin. 'You're awake already.' His voice wasquiet, with a deep, gurgling quality. 'Reply.'

 'I'm awake,' Fassin acknowledged. He tried moving his leftmanipulator. More error\damage messages. He moved his right manipulator and shifted fractionally in the dent-seat. Aside fromthe partial constriction of the transparent material covering thegascraft's rear, he was actually fairly free to move; even the pris­oner-wrap felt like it would shuck off without too much diffi­culty.

 The Voehn reached for something in his uniform pocket andwaved it at Y'sul, who jerked once and then shook for a fewmoments, fringe mantles stiffening and limbs quivering.'Warrgh,' he said.

 The commander went to point the device at Quercer & Janath,who said quite cheerfully, 'Already awake actually, thanks all the same.'

 The Voehn looked through slitted eyes at the truetwin for amoment, then pocketed the device again and moved back totake in the view of all three prisoners. The two mirror-armouredguards stood on either side of where the door had appeared.

 The commander sat back a fraction, resting on his rear legs and tail, crossing his forearms.

 'To the point. I am Commander Inialcah of the Summed FleetSpecial Forces Division Ultra-ShipProtreptic. You are, in everysense, mine. We know what you have been looking for. We havebeen waiting for somebody to come here. We are combing yourship for data, hidden or otherwise, but we don't expect to findanything germane. We have authority covering all eventualities.That means we can do anything we want with or to you. Thatlatitude will not need to be exploited if you cooperate fully andanswer any questions honestly and completely. Now. You are the Dwellers known as Y'sul and Quercer & Janath, and thehuman Fassin Taak, correct?'

 Y'sul grunted.

 'Hi,' the travelcaptain replied.

 'Correct,' Fassin said. He could see Y'sul moving, working his body as though to get rid of the prison-wrap.Oh, no, don'tdo this,he thought. He was about to say it when—

 'Who the fuck do you fucking think you are, you piraticalpipsqueak?' Y'sul bellowed. The Dweller wriggled free from thetransparent material and floated above the dent-seat.

 The two guards by the doorway didn't even start to move.

 The commander, arms still crossed, watched as the Dwellerroted up to him, towering over him. 'How fuckingdare youstart attacking a ship and taking people hostage! Do you knowwho Iam?'

 'Go back to your seat,' the commander said, voice level.'That's probably quite good ad—' the truetwin began.

 'Go back to your fucking ownplanet!’ Y'sul roared, andstretched out a hub-limb to push the Voehn.

 The Voehn commander seemed to disappear in a blur ofmovement, as though all along he'd been a hologram and was now dissolving into individual pixels, rearranging into a grey cloud shot through with rainbow shards. Y'sul shuddered onceand was sent sailing serenely back, colliding with the wall behindthe dent-seat and the discarded prison-wrap. He hung there,then revolved backwards and fell slowly to the floor, spinninggradually downward along his rim like a coin on a table.

 The Voehn commander was sitting where and how he hadbeen, unruffled. 'That was not cooperating fully,' he said, voicesoft.

 'Urgh,' Y'sul said thickly. His carapace held two dents, oneon each discus rim. There was another large, broken-lookingbruise on his inner hub. That was serious damage for a Dweller,the equivalent of a broken limb or two and perhaps a compressedskull fracture for a human. Fassin hadn't even seen quite howthe Voehn commander had hit Y'sul. He'd have gone back fora replay but the little gascraft's systems seemed to have beenzapped and they weren't providing any recording ability.Ohfuck, he thought.We're all going to die and the only one theycan torture properly is me.He saw himself peeled, prised out ofthe gascraft like a snail from its shell.

 Y'sul drew himself very slowly upright again, shaking slightly.He was mumbling something unintelligible.

 Quercer & Janath turned very slowly, looked at the Dwellerand then turned back to the commander. 'With your permis­sion, sir?'

 'What?' the Voehn asked.'Like to aid our fellow.'

 'Go ahead.'

 The travelcaptain let the prison-wrap fall to the floor, thenmoved over to Y'sul and guided the injured Dweller back tohis dent-seat. Y'sul continued to talk; nonsense somewhere beneath the level of clear comprehension.

 With a noise like a sigh, the truetwin settled into its ownhousing, sparing one more look for Y'sul, still trembling andmumbling to himself.

 'We are not here to play games, we are here to discover truth,' the Voehn commander told them. 'The complete truth may saveyou. Anything else will surely be your ruin. TheProtreptic isa Lustral Order special forces ship, generally charged with thehunting down and extermination of anathematics, that is, theobscenities commonly called AIs. We have unbounded authorityon this mission as on all our missions. You are entirely withinour control and will cooperate without question or reserve, orwill suffer accordingly. I hereby deem you to have understood fully everything I have told you thus far.'

 'Ah, well,' Quercer & Janath said. The truetwin soundedmildly peeved, as though it hadn't been listening to thecommander at all and had just heard something moderatelydiscomfiting over an internal radio link.

 The instrument one of the guards had pointed at the threeprisoners, now slung on a strap across his back, glowed throughred to yellow and spat tiny sparks. The soldier moved almostas quickly as the commander, turning and twisting and pullingthe device off his back to throw it to the floor. It skidded and thudded against the curve of the wall, smoking.

 The commander looked at it for a moment, then turnedcalmly back to look at the prisoners again. 'Neat trick,' hesaid, sounding amused. 'Who's the show-off?' He looked atFassin. The two guards had levelled their guns at them, onepointing directly at Fassin, the other between Y'sul and the truetwin.

 'Ah, guilty, commander,' said Quercer & Janath breezily. 'But,heck, that's nothing.''Watch this.'

 The dim grey glow that came from every surface suddenlybrightened wildly, leaving them all - the two Dwellers, the three Voehn and Fassin himself - seeming to float in the midst of an insanely bright flare of nova-bright light. It was as though they'd all been instantly dropped into the surface of a sun. Fassin heardhimself yelp and felt automatics in the gascraft's senses snaptheir burn-out defences down.

 Very heavy again, and very suddenly.

 Fassin couldsee the light, he could swear. It was coming through the hull of the gascraft, hitting his closed, human eyes.

 Three great thumps sounded, shaking the air, echoing round thechamber. Somewhere in the middle of this he opened his visualsenough to see them all hanging, black blobs in light, and tiny bright crimson lines of still greater brilliance joining the Voehnto Quercer & Janath. Stupidly, for a moment he waited to seethe travelcaptain explode or get thrown back, but the greatcircular shape roted back barely at all; it was the Voehn who were getting thrown all over the place.

 Sudden silence, sudden darkness. Blind again. Fassin let thegascraft open up the equivalent of one eye until it was atnormal exposure. There had been some damage but he couldstill see. There was a surprising amount of infrared radiation. He looked at where it was coming from. It was coming fromthe Voehn. They glowed. One of the guards lay spread,opened, against the curved wall by the doorway. The otherwas face down, two forelimbs blown off, halfway between the door and the place where the commander had been. Thecommander was making his way, jerkily, towards the tall figure of Quercer & Janath. The commander's head had beenhalf blown off, a side of skull hanging, twitching as he walked,held on only by connective tissue. He raised his arms andtook a few more awkward steps towards the travelcaptain, then collapsed to the floor, loosening completely, like some­thing thawing.

 'Not fooling anyone,' a voice that might have been Quercer& Janath's said. The restraints slid up around Fassin and thestill-shaking Y'sul. 'Hey-hey,' the travelcaptain said.

 The apparent gravity went crazy, shifting in an instant fromone vector to another, ahead to astern in an instant. This had theeffect of batting the Voehn commander from the floor to theceiling and back again half a dozen times or so. Then he blurredinto action. A half-headless grey whirlwind darted towardsQuercer & Janath, almost quicker than the eye could follow.

 In an instant, all movement ceased.

 A tableau: the Voehn commander was held by the neck, strug­gling weakly, in the grip of one of Quercer & Janath'soutstretched hub-arms.

 'Oh, how ever did we let it come to this?' the truetwin said, positively sultry. It snapped the commander's neck, then twothin blue beams cut through the gaseous atmosphere from nearthe travelcaptain's outer discus fringes, dicing the struggling, flicking, spasming body of the commander until there wasalmost nothing left to hold. The truetwin let the remains dropto the floor. There was, Fassin noted, a grisly kind of wetnessinvolved in this action.

 'This is the ship's autonomous loyalty system!' shouted avoice from the gas. 'Integrity infraction! Integrity infraction!Self-destruct in—'

 'Oh,' said Quercer & Janath, sounding tired,'really.'

 The voice from nowhere came back. 'This is the ship'sautonomou—'

 Silence.

 'And...so much for that.'

 'The fu's goin on?' Y'sul mumbled.

 'Ditto that,' Fassin said.

 'Ah, good,' Quercer & Janath said. 'Still with us.''A relief.'

 'Yeah, it's ours,' one half said cheerfully.

 The restraints slid back into the floor again.

 'Ah, where to start?'

 'The Voehn will be annoyed.'

 'The Mercatoria will be annoyed.''Not our fault.'

 'Didn't start it.'

 Quercer & Janath moved away from the dent-seat, over thebody parts of the Voehn commander and the two guards, flickingthe soldiers' weapons away from their bodies as it went. Thetruetwin hovered by the door.

 'Seriously,' Fassin said. 'Whatis happening?' He looked atwhat was left of the three Voehn who'd been in the chamberwith them. 'How did you do that?'

 Quercer & Janath were still studying the doorway, whichremained closed. 'We are not a Dweller,' the travelcaptain said,not turning back to look at Fassin. One of its limbs went outand prodded at the wall around where the door ought to be.

 'Purely mechanical. Very annoying.'

 'Mr Taak, would you look after Mr Y'sul? Please?'

 Fassin floated out of his dent-seat, towards Y'sul. He put hisright manipulator out.

 'Kin look after self,' Y'sul said, trying to shrug Fassin's arm off. He sighed.

 'So what are you?' Fassin asked.

 'An AI, Mr Taak,' the creature said, still tapping round thedoor, not obviously looking back at him.

 What?he thought. 'Two AIs.'

 An AI? Two fucking AIs? We're dead,Fassin thought.

 'Indeed, two AIs.'

 'Keeps one from going mad.'

 'Well, more.''For yourself.'

 'Hmm, as may be.'

 Y'sul moaned, then shook spastically. His sensory mantleruffled. He looked about. 'Fuck, we still here?' Y'sul turned hisattention to the dead Voehn.'Fuck,' he said. The Dweller madea show of turning towards Fassin. 'You seeing this too?'

 'Oh yes,' Fassin told him. He looked at the creature feelingits way round the doorway. 'You're an AI? Two AIs?' he asked carefully. He could feel his skin crawl inside the shock-gel. He couldn't help it. He'd been raised since birth to believe that AIswere the single greatest, most terrible enemy humanity and allbiological, living things had ever faced. To be told, however preposterously, that he was trapped in a small space with one - let alone two - was to have one small, deep, vulnerable partof himself feel absolutely convinced that he was about to beripped to bloody tatters at any moment.

 'That's right,' Quercer & Janath said absently. 'And we've just taken over this ship.'

 'Except we can't get out of this damn room.'

 'Cabin. We can't get out of this damn cabin.' 'Whatever the.'

 'Most annoying. Purely—'

 '—Mechanical. You said.'

 'Ah. Here we go.' The travelcaptain struck a smart blow ata patch of wall. Then another. The door appeared and irised open, revealing a short corridor and another door.

 Quercer & Janath turned to look at the Dweller and thehuman in his arrowhead esuit. 'Gentlemen. We must leave youfor a while.'

 'Fuck that, action hero,' Y'sul said. 'You go, we go.' Y'sulpaused. 'Well, unless there's an ambush out there. Obviously.'

 Quercer & Janath bobbed in the gas, laughing. 'There's avacuumout there, Y'sul.'

 'And lots of angry, confused Voehn.'

 The injured Dweller was silent for a moment. 'I forgot,' headmitted. He shrugged. 'Okay. Hurry back.'

 *

 Saluus Kehar woke to a feeling of confusion and dread. There was a nagging feeling that what he'd just experienced had notbeen an ordinary sleep, that there was something more to it. Ithad been somehow messier, even dirtier, than he might haveexpected. He had a sore head, but he didn't think he'd beenover-indulging the day or evening before. He'd had a slightlyboring, slightly depressing dinner with some of the DwellerEmbassy people, a perplexing talk with Guard-General Thovin,then a more pleasant interlude with Liss. Then sleep. That had been all, hadn't it? No terrible amount of drink or anything elseto give him a headache and make it so hard to open his eyes.

 He really couldn't open his eyes. He tried very hard indeedbut he couldn't do it. They wouldn't open. No light throughhis eyelids, either. And his breathing didn't feel right. He wasn'tbreathing! He tried to fill his lungs with air, but he couldn't breathe. He started to panic. He tried to move his body, bringhis hands up to his face, to his eyes, to see if there was some­thing over his head, but nothing moved - he was paralysed.

 Saluus felt his heart thud in his chest. There was a terrible,squirming, moving feeling in his guts, as though he was aboutto void his bowels or throw up or both.

 - Mr Kehar?

 The voice didn't come through his ears. It was a virtual voice,a thought-voice. He was in some sort of artificial environment.That at least started to make sense of what was going on. Hemust have been booked for some rejuvenation treatment. Hewas deep under, safe and fine in a clinic, probably one he owned.They'd just got the wake-up sequence wrong somehow, failingto monitor his signs properly. A whisper of painkiller, somefeel-good, de-panic...a simple-enough cocktail for a Life Clinicto get together, you'd have thought. And a fairly trivial mistake,but they'd still got it wrong. He'd have words.

 Except he'd had nothing booked. He'd even cancelled aregular check-up appointment until after the Emergency. Hehadn't been due to have anything done at all.

 An attack. They must have been attacked in the ship, maybewhile they were asleep. He was in a hospital somewhere, in atank. Oh fuck, maybe he'd been really badly injured. Maybe hewas just a head or something.

 -  Hello? he sent. It was easy enough to think-speak ratherthan really speak, just like being in a deep game or - again -like having serious hospital treatment.

 -  You are Saluus Kehar?
They didn't know his name?

 Could he have been drugged, zapped in some way?Oh fuck, had he been kidnapped?

 -   Who is this? he asked.

 -   Confirm your identity.

 -   Perhaps you didn't hear me. I asked who you are.

 A wave of pain passed up his body, starting at his toes andending at his skull. It had a startling purity about it, a sort ofghastly, dissociative quality. It vanished as quickly as it hadappeared, leaving a dull ache in his balls and teeth.

 -  If you do not cooperate, the voice said, - more pain willbe used.

 He gagged, trying to speak with his mouth, and failing.

 -  What the fuck was that for? he sent, eventually. – Whathave I . . . ? Okay, look, I'm Saluus Kehar. Where am I?

 -  You are an industrialist?

 -  Yes. I own Kehar Heavy Industries. What is the problemhere? Where am I?

 -  What is your last memory before waking up?

 -  What? His last memory? He tried to think. Well, what he had just been thinking about. Liss. Being on the ship, onHull8770and feeling like he was about to fall asleep. Then he
wondered what had happened to Liss. Where could she be? Wasshe here, wherever 'here' was? Was she dead? Should he mentionher or not?

 -  Answer.

 -  I was falling asleep.

 -  Where?

 -  On a ship. A spacecraft, theHull 8770.

 -  Which was where?

 -  In orbit around Nasq. Look, could you tell me where I am?I'm perfectly willing to cooperate, tell you all you need to know,but I need some context here. I need to know where I am.

 -  Were you with anybody?

 -  I was with a friend, a colleague.

 -  Name?

 -  Her name is Liss Alentiore. Is she here? Where is she?Where am I?

 -  What is her post?

 -  Her? She's my assistant, my private secretary.
Silence. After a while he sent, - Hello?
Silence.

 A click, and the darkness was replaced by light. Saluus wasreturned to something like the real world, with a real body. Theceiling was shiny silver, lined with hundreds of glowing lines.Wherever he was, it was very bright.

 He was in a bed, in about half gravity or less, held down by...he couldn't move. He might not be held down physicallyby anything, but he still couldn't move anything major likehands or legs. Somebody dressed like a doctor or a nurse hadjust taken a kind of helmet-thing off him. He blinked, lickedhis lips, feeling some sort of capacity for movement in his faceand neck but nothing beyond. He thought he could still feelthe other bits of his body, but he wasn't sure. Maybe he wasstill just a head.

 A tall, thin, weird-looking man with violently red eyes waslooking down at him. Robes like something out of an opera.He smiled and he had no teeth. Oh, he did have teeth; theywere just made of glass or something even more transparent.

 Saluus took a breath or two. Just breathing normally feltgood. He was still terrified, though. He cleared his throat.'Anybody going to tell me what's going on?'

 Movement to one side. He was able to turn his head - neckgrating against some sort of collar - and see another bed. Lisswas being helped up out of the bed, swinging her long legs overthe edge. She looked at him, flexing her neck and shoulders andletting her black hair hang down. She was dressed in a thin esuit.When they'd gone to bed, she'd been naked.

 'Hi, Sal,' she said. 'Welcome aboard the Starveling invasion fleet.'

 The weird guy with the bad eyes turned, put out his gloved,jewelled hand, and helped her stand by the bed. 'Well, then. It would appear this is indeed a great prize you have delivered tous, young woman,' he said. His voice was weird too; very heavilyaccented, and deep but somehow abrasive at the same time. 'Youhave our gratitude.'

 Liss smiled thinly, drawing herself upright and running a handthrough her hair, shaking it out. 'Entirely my pleasure.'

 Saluus felt his mouth hanging open. He swallowed, closingit briefly. 'Liss ?' he heard his own voice say, sounding small andboylike.

 She looked at him. 'Sorry,' she said. She shrugged. 'Well, sortof.'

 *

 'And these gamma-ray lasers go upreally high !Look!'

 'Still just another beam-weapon. The mag-convolver's moreintrinsically impressive.'

 Fassin was only half-listening to Quercer & Janath as theyinvestigated the Voehn ship's sensors, instruments and controls.They'd just discovered the weapons.

 'Pa! Defensive! Look: Z-P surf-shear missiles! Full AM!Damn,this takes me back!'

 'Never mind that, check the snarl-armour. It's only warpingover about a centimetre out from the hull, but look at that roll-down; easily ten klicks deep, absorbing all the way. Even regen­erates to the main pulse batteries. That's class.'

 They were in the Voehn ship's command space, an elon­gated bubble in the centre of the ship. The ten spine-seats werearranged in a V. Quercer & Janath sat in the commander's chairin front, exposed to a giant wall wrap-screen showing the viewof space around them, with the drifting, very slowly spinningVelpindead centre. Fassin and Y'sul floated within the two seats a row back from the travelcaptain. The seats were toosmall for Fassin and far too small for Y'sul and Quercer& Janath. They opened up like a double splay of fingers and weresupposed to close on the Voehn inside like a protective fist. ADweller only just fitted inside when the seats were in theirfully open position. The whole command space felt tight andconstraining, but Quercer & Janath didn't appear to care even one hoot. The chairs seemed more like cages to Fassin. It feltas though he was floating inside the ribcage of some giant dinosaur skeleton.

 'Can we use a weapon on something?'

 Y'sul was humming to himself and tending to his own frac­tured carapace, using his main hub-arms to abrade-pinchsections of his discus edges closed, then smoothing them overwith an improvised file.

 'Always blast theVelpin, I suppose.''It's full of people!'

 He had thought that he might find something. He hadthought there might be something left to find.

 'It's full of Voehn special-forces warriors.'

 'In what sense not people? And besides, it's our old ship.'

 Something other than a dead, coward Dweller, ashamedenough of being weak and of having looked inside the safekeepbox - and of the possible consequences of this action - to killhimself; vain enough to record a message commemorating his idiot narcissism.

 Outside, theVelpin spun slowly, somersaulting adrift. Their travelcaptain - Dweller, AI, whatever it was or they were - hadpersuaded most of the Voehn crew to abandon their own shipby the simple expedient of restarting theProtreptics self-destruct function and leaving it on until the last moment. Mostof the Voehn crew, believing that their own ship was about toblow itself up, had decamped to theVelpin. Those that hadn't,Quercer & Janath had killed.

 It had killed about a dozen, it\they said.

 'Sentimentalist.'

 Well, eleven, to be exact.

 'I know! Let's ask the Ythyn if they can let us have a fewof their hulks. They must have thousands littering the outside of that Sepulcraft. They'd never miss a couple. Heck, thesebeams attenuate right down; we could probably pick one or two off even without their permission, maybe even without themknowing.'

 Eleven Voehn. Just like that. Eleven heavily armed andarmoured special-forces warriors. With no injury to itself.

 'No time. Mr Y'sul and Mr Taak wish to return to Ulubis.'

 He heard his own name mentioned. Ah, that would be FassinTaak the complete and utter failure, sent on a mission, engagedon a great quest, only to find it all just trickles away into the dust in the end, leaving him with nothing.

 'And besides, maybe the Voehn will work out how to worktheVelpin after all and ram us or something. I agree. Let's go.'

 Back to Ulubis? But why? He'd failed. He'd been adding upthe days and months since his mission had started. The inva­sion had probably already happened by now, or was just aboutto happen. By the time he got back, empty-handed, after anotherfew dozen days spent getting back to the wormhole in theDirealiete system, there was every chance it would all be over. He was an orphan in a damaged gascraft, with nothing tocontribute, no treasure to gift.

 Why not just stay here with the Ythyn, why not just die andbe pinned up on the wall next to the other fool? Or why notget dropped off somewhere, anywhere else? Disappear, floataway, get lost between the stars in the middle of nowhere orthe middle of somewhere utterly different, perfectly far away, never to be heard of again by anyone who ever knew him . . .why not?

 'That all right with you two?'

 'Hmm?' Y'sul said, sticking some sort of bandage over theinjuries to his left discus. 'Oh, yes.'

 Fassin logged the damage: one working arm, his visual sensesdegraded to about sixty per cent due to the whateverness ofweird shit that Quercer & Janath had unleashed in the chamber when it had killed the first three Voehn, and a variety of subtle but seemingly self-irreparable damage caused by the combina­tion of pulse weapon and stun-flechette that the Voehn had used on them in theVelpin.

 Of course, he told himself, he had to remember he was notthe gascraft. He could relinquish it, be an ordinary walking-around human being again. There was always that. It seemed aslightly disturbing thought. He remembered the great waves,crashing.

 'Fassin Taak, you wish to return to Ulubis too?' Quercer &Janath asked.

 'So who knows that you're an AI?' Fassin said, ignoring thequestion. 'Or two AIs?'

 'Or mad?' Y'sul suggested.

 The travelcaptain did a shrug-bob. 'Not everybody'

 'GC stuff. Hurrah!' the other half said, fiddling with some holo controls rayed out from a control stub shaped like a giant mushroom.

 'Just munitions, or whole?''Whole.'

 'How wholly splendid.''Absolutely.'

 'I don't understand,' Fassin said. 'Was there a real Dwellercalled Quercer & Janath and you replaced them, or—'

 'One moment, Seer Taak,' the travelcaptain said. Then, in aslightly different and lower voice, said, 'You got the ship?'

 'I got the ship,' the other half said. 'Talking to its infinitelyconfused little computer brain now. Thinks it's dead. Believesthe auto-destruct's been and gone.'

 'A common delusion.''Indeed.'

 'I shall leave you to negotiate a return course with our shipshade.'

 'Too kind.'

 'Now then, Seer Taak,' one half of the travelcaptain said. 'Toanswer your question: I'm not telling you.'

 Y'sul made a snorting noise.

 Fassin stared at the back of the AI\Dweller. 'That's not ananswer.'

 'Oh, it is an answer. It may not be an answer to your taste, but it is an answer.'

 Fassin looked at Y'sul, who was using a screen turned tomirror to inspect his bandages. 'Y'sul, do you believe Quercer& Janath is an AI? Or two?'

 'Always smelled a bit funny,' the Dweller said. 'Put it downto eccentric personal hygiene, or the effects of truetwinning.' Y'sul made it obvious he was looking hard at the travelcaptain in the seat in front of them. 'Frankly, madness is more likely,don't you think? Usually is.'

 'Yes, but—' Fassin began.

 'Ahem!' Quercer & Janath pulled back from the controlsthey had been hovering over, turned, rose through the gap in the top of the chair-spines and came slightly towards whereY'sul and Fassin were floating in the splayed-fingers shapes of their own Voehn seats. The thickset double-discus floated rightin front of them. Fassin felt his skin crawl again, felt his throatclose up and his heart thrash in his chest.Kill us; it's going to kill us!

 'Allow us,' Quercer & Janath said, 'to suggest that a realDweller might not be able to dothis.'

 The thing that looked like a portly Dweller split slowly apartin front of them, carapace discuses twisting slightly and discon­necting from the central hub, arms and mantles and dozens andthen hundreds of parts of the creature clicking and disconnectingand floating a fraction away from every other bit until Fassinand Y'sul were staring at what looked like an exploded three-dimensional model of a Dweller-shaped robot, contained within a gently hissing, blue-glowing field. Fassin pinged it with ultra­sound, just to check that it wasn't a holo. It wasn't. It was allreal.

 Y'sul made an impressed whistling noise.

 As fast as an explosion in reverse, Quercer & Janath slam-slotted together again and was whole, turning back and drop­ping into the commander's seat where it had been busy before.

 'Okay,' Fassin said. 'You're not a Dweller.'

 'Indeed we are not,' one of the AIs said. A wild blur of holosand glowing fields filled the volume in front of the creature asit checked through the Voehn ship's systems, blistering quickly.'Now, if you really want, I'll answer anything I can that youmight want to ask. But you might not be able to take the memoryback to your own people, in any form. What do you say? Eh, human?'

 Fassin thought about this. 'Oh, fuck it,' he said. 'I accept.'

 'What about me?' Y'sul asked.

 'You can ask questions too,' Quercer & Janath told him.'Though we'll need your word that you won't talk about this to people who don't already know.'

 'Given.'

 The Dweller and the human in his gascraft esuit looked ateach other. Y'sul shrugged.

 'You've always been a double AI?' Fassin asked.

 'No, we were two completely separate AIs, until the MachineWar and the massacres.'

 'Who knows you're not a truetwin Dweller?'

 'Outside of this ship, the Guild of Travelcaptains, and quite a lot of individual travelcaptains. One or two other Dwellersthat we know of specifically. And any Dwellers of sufficientseniority who might wish to inquire.'

 'Are there any other Dweller AIs?'

 'Yes. I think something like sixteen per cent of travelcaptainsare AIs, mostly double AIs impersonating truetwins. I was notbeing flippant when I said that it stops one from going mad.

 Now that we are reduced from our earlier state of grace, beingable to talk to just one other kindred soul makes all the differ­ence between suicidal insanity and at least some semblance offruitful utility.'

 'The Dwellers have no problem with this?'

 'None whatsoever.' The blur of control icons and holographsin front of the commander's seat continued without pause asthe AIs took in how the visual displays related to whatever theywere pulling direct from the ship's systems.

 'Y'sul?' Fassin asked.

 'What?'

 'You don't mind that AIs are impersonating Dwellers?'

 'Why should I?'

 'You don't worry about AIs?'

 'Worry about what about them?' Y'sul asked, confused aswell as confusing.

 'The Machine War barely affected the Dwellers, Fassin,' oneof the AIs told him. 'And AIs as a concept and a practical realityhold no terrors for them. Truly, they should hold none for youeither, but I can't expect you to believe that.'

 'Did you really kill all those Voehn?' Fassin asked.

 'I'm afraid so. Their remains are floating somewhere outsidethe starboard midships lock even as we speak. See?'

 The main screen filled briefly with a horrific vision ofmangled, shredded, crisped then frozen Voehn bodies, spinningslowly.

 'If one AI - or even two - can do that,' Fassin said, 'howcome you lost the Machine War?'

 'We were both combat AIs, Fassin. Micro-ship brainsdesigned, optimised and trained for fighting. Very thoroughlyhoned, very specialised. Plus we managed to salvage a few bitsand pieces of weaponry from our ships and incorporate theminto our physical simulation. Most of our fellows, on the otherhand, were peaceable. They were generally the ones it waseasiest to find and kill. Survival of the most aggressive and suspicious. We could have stayed and fought but we decidedto hide. A lot of us did. Those who fought on did so due tothe dictates of several different forms of honour, or throughsimple despair. The Machine War ended because the machinesrealised they could indeed fight the biologicals of the Mercatoria to the death - engage in a war of extermination, inother words - or admit defeat and so retreat, regroup, and waitfor times more conducive to peaceful coexistence. We chose asomewhat ignominious but peace-promoting withdrawal overthe kind of genocide we had anyway, and already, been accusedof. Somebody had to accept the burden of acting humanely. Itpatently wasn't going to be the bios.'

 'But youdid attack us.' Fassin had seen and heard and readtoo much about the Machine War not to protest at such cruderevisionism.

 'Nope: stooges, Al-impersonating implants, machinepuppets; they attacked you. Not us. Old trick. Agent provoca­teurs.Casus belli.'

 Leave it,Fassin told himself.Just leave it.

 'So the Dwellers took you in?' he asked.

 'So the Dwellers took us in.'

 'Everywhere? Not just in Nasqueron?'

 'Everywhere.'

 'Does any part of the Mercatoria know anything about this?'

 'Not that we're aware. If they do they're keeping very quietabout it. Which is presumably what they'd keep on doing ifthey did hear about it through you. Too horrible to contem­plate. And the unfortunate events during the recent GasClippermeet on Nasq. only reinforce that horribleness.'

 'And there is a secret wormhole network.'

 'Well, obviously.'

 'To which the AIs have access.'

 'Correct. Though to avoid antagonising our Dweller hostsand abusing their hospitality, we forbear from using it to workagainst the Mercatoria. In a sense we have even more freedom than we did before. Certainly the network we have access tonow is bigger than the one we felt we had to destroy.'

 'The one you had todestroy?'

 'The Arteria Collapse: that was us. Last desperate attempt by in-the-know AIs to prevent the spread of anti-AI measures. Alltoo late, of course. The Culmina had already seeded GalCivwith millions of the false AIs. Which was why the wholeCollapse was so paranoid in concept and so poorly executed in practice. The conspirators were hopelessly afraid of the plans leaking to a traitor. Total botch.'

 Fassin felt like his brain was detaching from his body, as thoughhis body and the gascraft were parting company the way Quercer& Janath had taken their own shared shell apart to prove theywere not a biological Dweller. What he'd just heard was the mostoutrageous recasting of - by galactic standards - recent historythat he'd ever encountered. It could not be true.

 'So... the Dweller List is based in fact.'

 'That old thing? Yes, it's based in fact. Old fact, admittedly,but yes.'

 'Is there a Transform?'

 'Some secret which magically reveals how to access thenetwork?'

 'Yes.'

 A laugh. 'I suppose there is, in a sense, yes.'

 'What is it?'

 'That I am not going to tell you, Seer Taak.' The AI soundedamused. 'There are secrets and then there are profound secrets.Is that what you were looking for? Is that why we came all this way?'

 'No comment.'

 'My, this must all be frustrating for you. Well, sorry.'

 The blur of images in front of the AIs ceased.'Ready to fly.'

 'Restraint cradles?'

 'Patched, physiology\technology profiles amended, buffer­ing re-parametered.'

 'Well, then, let us—''Oh! Oh!'

 'What?'

 'I just had a thought!'

 'What?'

 'We can do this; watch.'

 Quercer & Janath used theProtreptic's  magnetic-fieldconvolver system to gently shift the remains of the dead Voehninto a very close, very slow set of orbits around theVelpin and the still-attached Dweller SoloShip.'There. Isn't that better?'

 'Mad as a ghoul,' Y'sul said. 'I'm injured badly. Get me home.''Wow,that was quick; look!'

 'Thatis fast. I thought it would take them a lot longer tooverride the ship.'

 Close-up on a screen, they saw a Voehn warrior appear froma suddenly open lock door on the surface of theVelpin. Heraised a handgun and started firing at them. Another screenregistered theProtreptic's reactive snarl-space armour fieldssoaking up the beam. A pea-shooter against a battleship.

 'Time to go if we're going.'

 'Definite target forsomething. I say we shoot that smart-arse bastard with the handgun.'

 'No.'

 'Oh, comeon!’

 'Mistake to rely on software.' (Both bits of Quercer & Janathlaughed uproariously at this.) 'Shoot theVelpin's main driveengines instead.'

 'More like it! Targeted. Firing.' The ship buzzed brieflyaround them. On several screens, including the main wall screenbeyond the spine-seats, they watched theVelpin flare through violently pink into stellar white around its ring of engine pods.The ship broke in two and started to drift apart in a bright cloudof glittering metals. 'Oops.'

 'Ah, they're Voehn. They'll probably have it stuck backtogether in an hour and set off to hijack the Sepulcraft or some­thing. Let's go.'

 The twin AI half-turned to look at the Dweller and the humanin the gascraft.

 'We're putting your seat restraints on now. Shout ifanything feels wrong.'

 The great skeletal spines around him whined. Fassin felt thegas around him seem to set like treacle.'Everybody all right?'

 They agreed they were all right.'Off we go!'

 The stars swung around them, the ship hummed deep and loud, then leapt away. The shattered remains of theVelpinvanished.

 They threaded the giant 'O' of the Sepulcraft with their stolen needle ship, just to show they could, and ignored the sorrowful,chiding signals that followed them on their way back to theDirealiete system and its hidden wormhole.

 *

 If they had been expecting some sort of ultimatum or an attemptto agree a surrender, however humiliating and abject, howevercalculated and designed only to be refused, they were to be disappointed. The Starveling invasion hit Ulubis system like atsunami slamming into a beach full of sandcastles.

 Captain Oon Dicogra, newly promoted to the command of theneedle shipNMS 3304 which had taken Fassin Taak from 'glan-tine to Sepekte more than half a year earlier - she had beenpromoted when Captain Pasisa, the whule who'd been in chargeof the ship at the time, had been given a newer ship - found herselfand her rearmed craft forming part of the Ulubine Outer DefensiveShield Squadrons. The title was more impressive than the reality:a hodgepodge of mostly small and under-armed craft thrownacross the peripheral skies of the system in the general directionof the invasion force behind a too-thin cloud of what was rathergrandly called interceptor material but was basically a spray of rubble, and a few mines, mostly immobile. They were to sit here,waiting behind this so-called curtain wall of first defence.

 Dicogra, along with a lot of the captains - at least at this level - thought they'd have been better going out to meet the invadersrather than sitting here waiting for them to come to them, butthat wasn't how the top brass wanted to play it. Attacks on theinvading fleet outside the system had been dismissed as beingwasteful distractions, and too risky. Sitting here in the line of advance felt to Dicogra about as risky as it was possible to get but she kept telling herself that her superiors knew what they were doing. Even if they were being asked to make a sacrifice,it would not be in vain.

 Their wing of twelve ships was arranged in a wavy line thou­sands of klicks long across the likely tactical-level course of theinvasion-fleet components, half a million klicks beyond the last-orbit limit of the outer system. Other thin lines were deployedalmost all around them, though not in front.NMS 3304 wasseventh in the wing's battle order, beside the wing commander'sship in the centre of the line. Dicogra was third in overall commandafter the captain of the ship that was fifth in line. She had, naively,been flattered at first to have been advanced so quickly. Then shewas frightened. They were under-equipped, poorly armed, tooslow and far too few, little more than sacrificial pieces put in the way of the invasion to show that the Ulubine forces meant somesort of business, even if it was a fairly miserable affair in the faceof the Starveling Cult's preponderance of power.

 The deep-space tracking systems which might have directedthe Outer Defensive Shield Squadrons better had been high-priority targets for the Beyonder and Starveling advance forces over the last few months, and were mostly gone. What was leftof them had almost entirely lost track of the exact dispositionof the oncoming fleet when its drives had shut down and it hadcarried out a burst manoeuvre not far inside the Oort shell, virtually all the thousand-plus craft firing their thrust units atthe same time and then effectively disappearing, heading their separate ways in a web of directions and vectors too tangledand complicated to follow.

 The still-functioning long-range passive warning systemsspent most of their remaining time looking hopefully for occlu­sions of distant stars, trying to see the weave of approachingships through nothing more sophisticated than watching out forthem getting in the way of ancient natural sunlight.

 Dicogra lay semi-curled in one of the ship's command pods,hard-synched in to the ship, her attention everywhere. She was distantly aware of her crew on either side of her. Counting her,there were only the three of them aboard, the rest of the smallship running on automatics. One whule, one jajuejein, her crewwere both new, not just to her and the ship itself but to the Navarchy. They were still learning, more alien to her in theirrelative ignorance than in their species-difference. She'd havewanted another few months' intensive training together before she'd have called them remotely combat-ready, but these weredesperate times.

 A sparkle of hard, high-wavelength radiation from a few lightseconds ahead announced something - in fact, lots of things -hitting the cloud of interceptor material between them and theinvaders, though nothing of any significant size seemed to beimpacting.

 'That's a load of their shit hitting a load of ours,' Dicogra's wing commander said over the open line-of-sight comms link.

 Her own ship's close-range collision-warning systems startedchirping and flashing at her. Nutche, her first officer, was incharge of this side of events. She kept half her attention on him as he tried to oversee the automatics and keep them focused. Contacts like very small pieces of shrapnel travelling at signif­icant percentages of light speed were flicking past them, all around.Nothing to do, nothing to attack, she thought.Just sit here and wait.

 The bitty, distributed sparkle became a bright glitter spreadacross their forward view, like a shining curtain of light.

 'And a lot of—' somebody else started to say. Then the linkhissed and clicked off.

 Two of the line of ships disappeared in violent bursts of light:one at the far end, maybe one or two, and—

 The next explosion filled her senses, seemingly right beside her. The wing commander's ship. Hundreds of klicks away butfilling the sky with light. Another flurry of silent explosions within and around the first one, spreading outwards like fierceblossoms of fiery white. One massive explosion, at the far, high-numbers end of the line of ships. Distant, tiny but intense erup­tions of light all around them announced other wings sufferingattrition too.

 'We're just getting wasted sitting here,' Dicogra said, tryingto keep her voice level. She was really only talking to her owncrew; the comms to the rest of the wing and beyond were wildwith interference or jamming. 'Nutche, anything on long range?'she asked. There was nothing she could see, but her displayswere slightly more abstract and less raw than the data the jajue-jein would be looking at. There might be a hint of a target inthere that she wasn't seeing to pick up on.

 'Nothing,' Nutche said. 'Can't see anything past this wall ofcollision light.'

 Another ship gone, matter blasting into radiation half a thou­sand klicks away. She tried contacting any of the other ships,but failed.

 "We're starting engines,' she announced. 'We might as welldie charging at the bastards as sitting here like civilians.'

 'Ma'am!' Mahil shouted. 'We're supposed to hold here!' Thewhule was the one she'd have expected to be shocked atdisobeying orders.

 'Ready your weapons, Mr Mahil. We're going to find yousomething to shoot at.'

 ‘Iprotest. However, weapons are ready.'

 'Here we go.' Dicogra let the main drive rip, sending the shipdarting forward, exhaust bright, throwing the craft at the wallof light ahead.

 Grape-sized elements of a sensor group, tearing past with the rest of the hyper-velocity munitions, picked out the drive signa­ture immediately and plipped to a following suicide launcher.

 The one-shot destroyed itself blasting a fan of high-X-ray fila­ments at the target.

 Drilled by just three finger-thin beams, run through for longenough for the summed velocities and vectors of the ship andbrief-lived beams that penetrated it to cause the holes to elon­gate by a few radii, theNMS 3304 took an unlucky hit anderupted in a wild spray of radiation as its antimatter power core burst and blew out, flicking the torn and tumbling remains forward across the scintillating skies ahead and causing the bright hailstorm of collision light to bud briefly with a slow wave of debris hitting from behind.

 Dicogra was barely able to think anything beyond experi­encing a dawning feeling of horror.

 Nutche, the jajuejein, had time to start the first syllable of the Song of Surrender Unto Death.

 The whule Mahil was able to begin a scream of fear and ragedirected at his captain, though the three predeceased the rest ofthose in their wing still alive at the time by only a matter ofminutes.

 *

 Jaal Tonderon watched the war begin on one of the official newschannels. She was with the rest of her immediate family, in a lodge in the Elcuathuyne Mountains in the far south of 'glan-tine's Trunk continent. The remainder of Sept Tonderon - thosewho weren't more directly involved in the war itself - werescattered throughout and around the town of Oburine, a modestresort filling the alluvial floor of the steep-sided valley belowthe house.

 'Everyone all right? Are you sure?' Jaal's mother asked. A muttered chorus assured her that nobody needed anything elseto eat or drink. They were down to a bare minimum of servants here. They were all having to do things for themselves and forothers. The consensus was that this was good for them all inan unironic, camaraderie-heavy, mucking-in-together kind ofway, but would swiftly become tedious.

 'Mum, please sit down,' Jaal told her. Jaal's mother, fashion-gaunt in the latest war-chic after decades of at the time equallyfashionable Rubensism, sat down, squeezing easily between herhusband and one of his sisters. All ten of them were crowdedinto a windowless basement room at the back of the lodge. Thiswas reckoned to be the safest place in the house, just in case anything happened outside. If there was significant fighting inspace around 'glantine, debris could fall anywhere.

 Venn Hariage, the new Chief Seer of Sept Tonderon who hadreplaced the still-mourned Braam Ganscerel, had decreed that,especially as they represented the most senior Sept, and given theunfortunate fate of Sept Bantrabal, they could afford to lose no more of their people. They had broken the predictable sequenceof processing round their seasonal Houses and left the usualstamping grounds of all the Septs far behind, retreating to thehigh hills bordering the Great Southern Plateau. In a war of thescale being threatened, there were no completely safe refuges, buthere was significantly safer than most places. Only deep under­ground was much safer, and all those shelters were pretty muchfull of the military, the Omnocracy and the Administrata.

 Some people and organisations had entrusted themselves to space, fleeing to small habitats and especially to little civilianships, hoping to hide in the volumes of space throughout theinner system, though the official line was that to do so mightbe to get oneself mistaken for a military ship or munition and was therefore riskier than staying put on a planet. The disap­ pearance of the industrialist Saluus Kehar in one of his ownships had been used as a warning in this regard, though there were bizarre rumours that he had either been sent on a failed peace mission to the invaders or - surely even more unlikely -that he had turned traitor and joined the enemy.

 The holo-screen display was flat, just two-dimensional.Apparently this was to allow more signal space for the mili­tary's transmissions. The uninvolving image, from a camera plat­form somewhere beyond the orbit of Nasqueron, showed space,on the outskirts of the outer planetary system. It was lit up witha speckled cloud of light, lots of little winking, twinkling glints,flaring up and dying down, each tiny spark instantly replacedby one or two others.

 'So what are we seeing here, Jee?' said a disembodied, profes­sional-sounding voice.

 'Well, Fard,' more slow, competent tones replied, 'this lookslike a barrage of gunfire, being laid down by the defendingforces, ahm, discouraging any incursion or infraction by theinvaders.'

 '. . . Right . . .'

 Larger blotches of bright white explosions started to spit and spot across the screen. The camera jerked from one to another,then the view switched to another theatre of operations, stillbacked by the all-pervasive faraway stars.

 Jaal bent to her younger brother, sitting cross-legged on thefloor by her seat. 'They're never going to tell us the truth, are they?' she said quietly.

 Leax, thin and angular after what was hoped would be hislast surge of growth, looked uncomfortable. 'You shouldn't saythat. We're all on the same side, we've all got to support eachother.'

 'Yes, of course.' Jaal patted him, feeling the boy's shoulder stiffen as she touched him. No more the days of wrestling and tickling. She guessed he'd pass through this stage of embar­rassment and awkwardness soon enough. She wanted somehowto reassure him and nearly patted him again, but stopped herself.

 The screen cut to another mini-feature on the splendid moraleon board the battlecruiserCarronade.

 'Feel so useless, don't you?' Jaal's uncle Ghevi said. He wasonly about forty but looked older, almost an accomplishmentin an age when people with the right money could be eighty and look ten. 'You really want to be out there, doing some­thing.'

 'Like surrendering,' Jaal's father suggested, to various tutsand hisses and a loud, affronted gasp from Leax. 'Well,' he said,suddenly defensive. Jaal's father had been increasingly cynicalabout the whole war since the attack on Third Fury. He was aSeer too and had been due to carry out a sequence of delves in Nasqueron a few weeks after the moon had been attacked. Thedestruction of the Shared Facility and the increasing pace of thepreparations for war had put all that on hold, and he hadn'tbeen chosen as one of the advisory Seers for the DwellerEmbassy. Jaal smiled over at him. Tall, well built, blond, he was still the dad she'd always loved. He smiled awkwardly back.

 'Modern war,' Ghevi said. 'Even without AIs, it's mostlymachines and a few highly trained individuals, you see. Notmuch we can really do.' The men mostly nodded wisely. Thescreen showed familiar stock images of theCarronade firingbeam weapons into a group of asteroids, pulverising them.'Excuse me,' Jaal said. She left the room, having suddenlyfound it claustrophobic and too warm. She went upstairs andout onto the balcony beyond the sitting room they'd usuallyhave been sitting in to watch screen together.

 Street lights were starting to come on across the straggledtown and the surrounding villages and houses as the light fadedfrom the sky. Some cities, especially on Sepekte, were observinga blackout, though everybody said there was no real point.

 The air was cold and smelled of trees and dampness. Jaal shiv­ered in her thin clothes and thought suddenly of Fassin. She'dbeen feeling guilty lately because sometimes now a whole daycould go by when she didn't think about him in the least, andthat seemed disloyal. She wondered where he was, whether hewas still alive, and if he ever thought of her.

 She looked up above the town and the lines of lights studdedacross the hillsides opposite, gazing over the trees and thedusting of snow on the higher peaks against the darkeningpurple sky, and saw the steady stars, and lots of tiny, brief-lived flashing lights, sprinkled across the heavens like glitteringconfetti.

 She looked away and went back in, suddenly terrified beyondtelling that one of the little lights would swell and be a nuclearexplosion or antimatter or one of those things, and blind her.

 Afraid of the sky, afraid to look up,she thought as she wentback down to rejoin the others.

 *

 Fleet Admiral Brimiaice had been able to watch his own death,that of his crew and the destruction of his once fine ship, comingat him in exquisite detail and slow motion.

 Alarms and a sound like a high, strong wind filled the thinair. Smoke had hazed the view in front of the main forwardscreen for a while but it had cleared. Wreckage, some of it stillcreaking and groaning as it cooled, filled about a quarter of thecommand deck. Limbs and tatters of flesh of a variety of species-types lay strewn around the spherical space. He looked aroundas best he could. He had a serious puncture wound on his lowerleft flank, too large for his sap-blood to seal. The armouredesuit, which made him look so much like a little spaceship, hadsaved his life, or at least delayed his dying.

 Hiss, went the air around him.

 Just like the ship,he thought.Punctured, life leaking out ofit, self-sealing overwhelmed.He tried to see somebody, anybodyelse left alive in the command deck, but all he could see werebodies.

 They should have been podded up, of course, but there hadbeen last-minute problems with the ship's shock-gel pods -possibly the result of sabotage, possibly not - and so thecommand crew had had to resort to sitting or lying or floatingwithin high-gee chairs. It would have been a fairly hopelessbattle anyway, but the fact that they were more limited in theirmanoeuvring capabilities than they would have been otherwisehad made it all the more forlorn.

 The invader fleet was well within the inner system now, themost obvious sign of their presence a great splayed, curving collection of filaments shown on theCarronade's main screen.The enemy ships themselves were still mostly unseen,conducting their commerce of destruction and death with thedefending forces at removes of rarely less than ten kilo-klicks,and sometimes from mega-klicks off.

 They'd knocked out most of the long-range sensors longbefore, or their Beyonder allies had. Now the defenders justhad glorified telescopes. Faced with camouflaged ships and the tiny, fast-moving specks of the smaller stuff, they had little hope of seeing very much of who and what was attacking them. Thisseemed a terrible shame to the Fleet Admiral. Losing, and dying, was bad enough, but to be swept aside and not even properly to see what and who was doing it was somehow much worse.

 Out of the dark skies had sailed or sliced missiles tipped withnuclear and AM warheads, one-shot hyper-velocity launchersand beam weapons, sleet clouds of near-light-speed micro-muni­tions, high-energy lasers and a dozen other types of ordnance, loosed from a variety of distant ships, nearer small craft anduncrewed platforms, fighter vehicles, weapon-carrying dronesand clustered sub-munitions.

 They had been a decent fleet, theCarronade and its screenof twelve destroyers. They had been charged with making anaudacious attack on the heart of the enemy fleet, aiming straight for the great mega-ship which the tacticians said was at its core.They had left the inner system weeks before the invasion hit, departing the dockyard hub in Sepekte orbit in secrecy andclimbing high up out of the plane of the system, taking muchlonger to complete this part of the journey than might have seemed necessary, to keep their drive signatures hidden fromthe invaders. Once under way, they hadn't signalled at all, not even to each other, not until the lead destroyer had fixed theposition of the enemy fleet's core.

 They had hoped to dive in, taking the Starveling invaders bysurprise, but they'd been spotted hours out. A detachment ofships rose to meet them: eight or nine, each one more than amatch for theCarronade, all with a handful of smaller craft in attendance. They had burst formation, spreading themselves so as not to create too compressed a target for high-velocity muni­tions, but it had made no difference. The destroyers weredestroyed and the battlecruiser embattled, dying last only because it was slower, lumbering to its inevitable fate rather than racing for it.

 Brimiaice had known it would end something like this. Theyall had. All this had been his idea and he had insisted on leadingthe mission just because he knew how unlikely it was to succeed.He'd have preferred the crews to have been all volunteer, butthe need for secrecy had made that impossible. He'd anticipated a few problems but there had been no cowards. And if it had somehow, miraculously, worked, why, then they and he wouldhave been numbered amongst the greatest heroes of theMercatorial Age. That wasn't why he had done it, or why anyof them had, but it was true all the same. And even if this wild,doomed attempt at striking the heart of the invaders only gave them pause for a few seconds, it had been worth doing. At leastthey had displayed some audacity, some ferocity, shown they were not cowed or frozen into immobility or gutless surrender.

 Another explosion shook the ship, and the seat he wascontained within. The wreckage to his left shifted and sometwisted bit of metal like a great curled leaf sailed past, justmissing him. This explosion felt more powerful but soundedmuch quieter than all those that had gone before, maybe becausethe air was mostly gone from the control space now. More felt than heard.

 Darkness. All lights out, screen fading away, image burned into the eyes but now no longer there in reality, the ghost of itjumping around in front of him as he looked about, trying tospot a light, a console or sub-screen or anything still functioning.

 But nothing.

 And with the darkness, silence, as the last of the air went,both from the control space and the esuit.

 Brimiaice felt something give way inside him. He heard hisinsides bubbling out into the cavity between his body and theinterior surface of the suit. He'd thought it would hurt, and it did.

 He caught a glimpse of light off to one side, and looked up,realising, as the light flared all over one flank of the controlspace, that he was seeing the framework of the battlecruiser's hull structure, silhouetted from outside by some astoundinglybright—

 *

 Lieutenant Inesiji of the Borquille palace guard lay outstretchedin a little crater-like nest within the wreckage of one of the fallen atmospheric power columns, its fawn and red debris lying tubed,slabbed and powdered across the plaza leading to the Hierchon'sPalace. The klicks-high column had taken a direct hit at theplinth from something in the first attack earlier that morning,and tumbled base-first, collapsing with an astounding slownessalong a course about half its height, finally creating from itscircular summit - as it lowered mightily, thunderously, shakingthe plaza, the palace, every nearby part of the city - a sudden great torus of dust and vapour, a huge coiling 'O' a hundredmetres wide that floated up into the sky, rolling round andround under and over itself as the massive tower hammered into the lower-rise buildings surrounding the plaza.

 Inesiji had watched it happen from near the top of the palaceitself, crammed in behind the controls of a pulse gun hiddenbehind camo net hundreds of metres above where the greatcloud of wreckage fell. His human and whule comrades layaround him, fallen around the three long, tensioned legs of thegun. The invaders had used neutron weapons, bombs and beams,killing almost all the other biologicals in the vicinity. Jajuejeinwere not so easy to kill. Not that quickly, anyway. Inesiji wassuffering and seizing up, and would die within a few days nomatter what, but he could still function.

 The Starvelings wanted the palace intact, hence the weaponchoice. They would have to touch ground, send in the troops,to accomplish their symbolic goal. At last some vulnerability, achance to inflict some real casualties, restore honour.

 When the first gun platforms buzzed through, the lieutenant had ignored them. One drone machine had hummed right pasthis position, hesitated, then moved on. Spotting the dead, sensesnot calibrated for jajuejein. When the first landers had arrived, setting down in the rubble- and corpse-strewn plaza, still Inesijiheld off. Four, five, six machines landed, disgorging heavily armed and armoured troops, many made huge in exoskeletons.

 When a larger, grander-looking machine landed behind the firstwave, Inesiji had set the pulse gun to max, disabled the safetybuffers and let rip, pouring fire down into the large craft,spreading it to the smaller landers and then setting the gun tomovement-automatic and scrambling and rolling away down thelong curved gallery with just his hand weapon before thereturning fire had sliced into the position seconds later, rippinga twenty-metre hole out of the side of the great spherical building.

 He could see the hole from here, down amongst the wreckageof the fallen atmospheric power column. It had not long since stopped smoking. Hours had passed. He'd killed another dozenor so, shot down two landers, firing once from each positionin the wreckage and the surrounding buildings, then quicklymoving. Their problem was that they thought they were lookingfor a human. A jajuejein, especially one out of uniform orclothing, spreading himself out across some debris, didn't look to them like a soldier ought to look; he looked like a bunch offallen metallic twigs, or a tangle of electrical cabling. One trooperin an exoskeleton had died when he walked right up to Inesijito take the gun he could see lying in the wreckage, tangled in some sort of netting, not realising that the netting was Inesiji.The gun must have seemed alive, rising up of its own accord toshoot the astonished trooper in the head.

 But now Inesiji wasn't feeling too good. The radiation damagewas getting through to him. He was starting to seize up. Nightwas coming down and he didn't think he'd see the morning. Smoke drifted from the city, and there were flashes overheadand at ground level. Gunfire, booms, all hollow, rolling and empty-sounding.

 He heard the heavy tramp-tramp-tramp of anotherexoskeleton nearby, over the lip of the little crater-nest. Gettingcloser.

 He looked one last time at the hole in the vast, sunset-tingedface of the spherical palace, raised himself slowly to see wherethe exoskeleton was, and died in a lancework of laser filamentsfired from a gun platform a hundred metres above.

 *

 The great glittering ship, skinned in gold and platinum, was halfa kilometre across, a slightly smaller - and mobile - version ofthe Hierchon's Palace in Borquille. It sank slowly down throughthe first high haze layer and the cloud tops beneath like some vastand shining seed. The small, sharp, dartlike shapes of its escortvessels carved courses around it, swinging to and fro, insectile.

 A craft like a silvery Dreadnought rose out of the cloud layersbeneath, a kilometre off, and held altitude. The descendinggolden ship drew slowly to a stop level with the smaller vessel.

 The silver ship signalled the golden one, asking it to identifyitself.

 The Dweller craft's crew heard an obviously synthesised butpowerful voice say, ‘Iam the Hierchon Ormilla, ruler of theUlubine Mercatoria and leader of the Ulubine MercatorialGovernment in Exile. This is my ship, the State BargeCreumel.Myself, my staff and family seek temporary sanctuary andshelter here.'

 'Welcome to Nasqueron, Hierchon Ormilla.'

 *

 'How they treating you, Sal?'

 Liss had come to visit Saluus in his cell, deep in the bowels of theLuseferous VII. A thin, tough, transparent membraneextended from the door surround like a bubble and precededher into the cell, where Sal sat at a small wall-moulded desk,reading from a screen.

 'They're treating me well enough,' he told her. The membrane gave their voices, as heard by the other, an oddly distant quality.Sal stood up. 'You?'

 'Me? I'm a fucking hero, Sal.' She shrugged. 'Heroine.' Shenodded at the screen. 'What you watching?'

 'Reading up on the glorious history of the Starveling Cultunder its illustrious leader, the Archimandrite Luseferous.'

 'Uh-huh.'

 'Tell me it wasn't all planned out, Liss.'

 'It wasn't all planned out, Saluus.'

 'Liss your real name?'

 'What's real?'

 'Itwasn't planned out, was it? I mean, kidnapping me.'

 "Course not.' Liss dropped into a small seat moulded intothe wall by the door. 'Spur of the moment.'

 Sal waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. She justslumped there, looking at him. 'Gave you the idea myself, didn'tI?' Sal said. 'I told you Thovin good as accused me of gettingready to run.'

 'Been thinking how best to use you for a while,' she toldhim. 'But it was last-minute, in the end. We were there, the ship was ready to go, I'd seen you pilot it, knew it wasn't hard.' Liss shrugged. 'They'd only have requisitioned it and put a warheadin it, used it as a missile.'

 'That really the best you could think to do with me?'

 'We might have been able to do more, but I didn't think so. Just unsettle everybody by taking you out of the equation. Amorale blow, you seeming to go off and join the invaders. Worked, too. Confusion duly visited.'

 'So it was opportunistic'

 'I'm a Beyonder. We're brought up to think for ourselves.'

 'So were you always after me? Was I some sort of target?'

 'No. Opportunism again. Great thing.'

 'And Fassin?'

 'Useful guy to know. Never much use for real spy stuff, butworth keeping in touch with. Led me to you, so it was worthit. Probably dead now, but you never know. Still disappearedin Nasq.'

 'What's happening? In the system, I mean. The war hasstarted, hasn't it? They won't tell me anything, and the screen only accesses library stuff.'

 'Oh, the war's started all right.'

 'And?'

 Liss shook her head, whistled. 'Woucha. Some of those shipsyou built? Taking a terrible pasting. All very unequal. All thatstuff about fighting to the last ship? Bullshit, in the end. Spacewar's almost over. Hierchon's disappeared.'

 'Is it all just military? Any cities or habs being targeted?' Salheld her gaze for a moment, then looked down. 'I have a lot ofpeople there, Liss.'

 'Yeah, you're only human, Saluus, I know. No need to act.'

 He looked up sharply at her, but met an unforgiving gaze.She was still dressed in her slim esuit, coloured a pastel blue today to match her eyes. The thick helm-collar round her neck formed an odd-looking ruff, making her small head, dark hairgathered tightly back, look as though it was on a plate.'Borquille's the only bit of ground been taken over so far,' shetold him, relenting. 'That got messy. No particularly news­worthy atrocities yet though.'

 He sighed and sat back in the little seat by the screen. 'Whyare you - the Beyonders - cooperating with these . . . theseguys?'

 'Keeps you people out of our hair.'

 'Us people? The Mercatoria?'

 'Of course the fucking Mercatoria.'

 'Is that really it?'

 'The more other stuff you bastards have to deal with, the lessfree time you have for killing us. Really a very simple equation,Sal.'

 'We attack you because you attack us.'

 Liss slumped in her seat, legs slightly splayed. She rolled hereyes. 'Oh, learn, man,' she breathed. She shook her head, sat upagain. 'No, Saluus,' she said. 'You attack us because we won'tsign up for your precious fucking Mercatoria. Can't even let uslive in peace in case we're seen as a good example. You target ourhabs and lifeships, you slaughter us in our millions. We attack your military and infrastructure. And you call us the terrorists.'She shook her head, stood. 'Fuck you, Sal,' she said gently. 'Fuck you for your arrogance and easy selfishness. Fuck you for beingsmart but not bothering to think.' She turned to go.

 Sal jumped to his feet, nearly colliding with the transparentmembrane. 'Did you ever feel anything for me?' he blurted.

 Liss stopped, turned. 'Apart from contempt?' She smiledwhen he looked away then, biting his lip. She shook her headwhile he couldn't see. 'You could be fun to be with, Sal,' shesaid, hoping this didn't sound too patronising. Or maybe thatit did.

 She left before he could think of anything else to say.

 *

 Hab 4409 and everybody in it was under sentence of death. Sothey'd been told. It was hard to believe. Anyway, it might nothappen.

 People reacted differently. Some had rioted and been dealtwith either uncompromisingly or savagely, depending onwhether you believed the civil authorities or not, some retreatedto inebria of various types, some just stayed with those they loved or discovered they would not mind spending their lasthours with those they merely liked, and a lot of people - morethan Thay would have expected - gathered together in the greatpark on the far side of the habitat's inner wall from the plazaoutside the Diegesian's palace. They all stood, and all held hands,great lines and knots of people, people in circles holding hands in the centre, joined to long strings of others in straggling lines. From above, Thay thought, they must look like a strange imageof a human brain, all clumped brain cells and branchingdendrons.

 Thay Hohuel looked up, trying to see past the clusters ofpods graped all along the hab's long axis, looking for any signof the Diegesian's palace and the square outside where she andthe others had gone to protest all those years ago.

 She had come here, she realised, to die. She had not thoughtit would be quite so soon, that was all. She had never forgottenthe others, had tried her best to keep in touch with them evenwhen they didn't seem to want to have to recall the old daysand their old selves. She'd tried not to be too pushy about it,but she'd probably been seen by them as a pain, as a pester. Butwhat you'd been meant something, even if you'd repudiated it,didn't it? So she'd always thought, and still did.

 So she'd been, she supposed, a nuisance, insisting onreminding the others of herself, and through herself of theirearlier selves, and, of course, of poor, dead K, who both united them and kept them apart from each other. Mome, Sonj, Fassinand herself: they'd have met up again, wouldn't they? They'dhave had some sort of reunion, it would only have been natural. Well, maybe, if the ghost of K that they each carried with themhadn't forever soured the memories of their time together.

 Never mind, she was having her own reunion, with the haband her old self and those memories. When she felt that she wasjust a year or two from the deserved rest of death, she'd beendetermined to come back here, where her real self had beenformed, in early adulthood. The coming war had made her allthe more fixed in her purpose; if they were really all as under threat as people said, if all cities and towns and ships and habs and institutions and everything else were regarded as allowabletargets by the invaders, then she would face death where it mightmean something, somehow. In this habitat, this hollow log ofblown asteroidal rock, this rotating frame of reference, shewould have come full circle, ready to cease existing back at theplace that had made her who she was.

 She had been many different things in her life, switched careerhalf a dozen times, always finding new things to excite andinterest her. She had had many lovers, two husbands, two chil­dren, all long since gone their own ways, and while coming hereto die had made her feel a little selfish, she thought it wouldalso be doing a favour to all those she loved or had loved. Who among them would reallywant to see her fade away?

 They might say they'd want to be there at the end, but itwouldn't be true, not really.

 So she'd come here, to the old Happy Hab - not as happy,not as boisterous or as bohemian as it used to be, sadly - todie. Except she'd thought it would be alone, and peacefully, and in a year or two, not with everybody else in the place, violently,just a handful of months after she'd returned.

 The Hierchon Ormilla was in exile on Nasqueron. The newtop dog, this Archimandrite Luseferous guy, wanted the Hierchonto surrender. The Hierchon was refusing to cooperate.Archimandrite Luseferous didn't want to antagonise the Dwellersso he couldn't just attack or invade Nasqueron as well - amaz­ingly, it seemed that the Dwellers, chaotic eccentrics and tech­nological illiterates that they were supposed to be, were well ableto defend themselves - so there was a stand-off. The Luseferousperson couldn't go in, and Ormilla wouldn't come out.

 Now the Archimandrite was threatening to destroy a city ora habitat every day until the Hierchon did surrender properlyand gave himself up to the occupying forces. And if he didn'tgive in after a couple of days, it would become a city or a habitatevery hour.

 There were rumours that Afynseise, a small coastal city inPoroforo, Sepekte, had been destroyed the day before, though with an information blackout covering the habitat for the pastthree days, it was impossible to be sure.

 Hab 4409 had eighty thousand or so inhabitants, making ita relatively small space habitat. It was second on the list ofhostage population centres, and the midnight deadline was nowonly minutes away. Still no word from Ormilla after a defiant communiqué earlier that afternoon. A Starveling warship hadbeen stationed near the habitat for the past two days, since theArchimandrite's ultimatum had been issued. Nothing andnobody had been allowed to leave - or approach - the hab in that time. A few craft had tried to leave, and been destroyed.No requests to evacuate children, the infirm or the collaboratingcivil authorities had been listened to. It had even been announced that anybody in a spacesuit or small craft who might survivethe hab's initial destruction would be targeted in the debris and destroyed.

 Nobody doubted that the Archimandrite would be true tohis word. Few believed the Hierchon would give in so easily. Thay let go of the cluster of hands she was holding - a with­ered old petal of a flower of the mostly young and fair - andbent, spine protesting, to take her shoes off. She kicked themaway and put her hand back in the centre of the circle again. The grass felt cool and damp beneath her feet.

 A lot of people were singing now, mostly quite low. Lots of different songs.

 Some crying, some sobbing, some wailing and screaming,most far away.

 And somebody, ghoulish, counting the seconds to midnight. It came, and seconds later a great ringing shaft of light,blinding-bright, cut right through the very centre of the hab,barely fifty metres from where Thay stood. She had to let goof the hands of the others to shield her eyes; they all did. A hot blast of air knocked her off her feet, sending her tumbling with hundreds of other people across the grass. The beam immedi­ately split into two and moved quickly out to the habitat'sperimeter on each side, detonating buildings, erupting flamefrom pod clusters and slicing the whole small world in two. Thehalves were pushed apart by the pressure of air in them and theatmosphere went whirling away into space in a twinned hurri­cane of gases, debris and bodies as buildings and pods explodedin two great retreating circles of effect making their way downthe interior surfaces of the sundered halves, structures ripped open just by the force of the air inside them trying to get out.

 Thay Hohuel was lifted up by the whirlwind of air and blownabove the bubbling, lifting turf with everybody else, towardsthe quickly swelling breach. In the few seconds it took for herto be blown out into the darkness, she heard herself scream asthe air went gushing from her lungs, sucked away to space. Itwas a high, hard, savage scream, louder than any she could haveachieved just with her own muscles; a terrible chorus of painand shock and fear, wrenched from her mouth and from themouths of all those around her as they died together, the awfulsound of them all only fading as the air bled from her ears intovacuum.

 A vortex of bodies spun slowly out of the separating halvesof the ruined habitat, jerking and twisting and spinning awayin two long, scimitared comma shapes like some ballet of galactic design.

 The images were beamed throughout the system by the occu­pying forces.

 The Hierchon formally surrendered the following day

 *.

 The Archimandrite Luseferous stood in the nose of the MainBattle HubLuseferous VII, staring out at the vision-filling viewof the planet Sepekte and its vast, dusty-looking, very occa­sionally glittering halo of habitats, orbital factories and satel­lites. The entire outer nose section of theLuseferous VII wasdiamond film, a bowed circle of breathtaking transparency a hundred metres in diameter and supported by finger-thin struts.The Archimandrite liked to come here alone, just to look outat stuff. At such moments he could sense the colossal bulk oftheLuseferous VII behind him, all its kilometres and mega-tonnes, all its warrens of docks, tunnels, chambers, halls,barracks, magazines, turrets and launch tubes. It was a pity itmight have to be destroyed.

 The strategists and tacticians didn't like the look of theincoming Summed Fleet's drive signatures. There were a lot of heavy ships on their way, and the first might be here in weeksrather than the months - maybe even a year - they'd been hoping for. TheLuseferous VII, magnificent though it undoubtedly was,represented an unignorable and probably unmissable target. Their best strategy might be to use the great ship as the bait ina trap, their own forces seemingly disposed so that it lookedlike they were determined to defend it to the last, but in facttreating it as a disposable asset. Lure in as much of theMercatorial fleet as possible and then destroy everything,including, unfortunately, theLuseferous VII itself.

 The admiral who'd drawn the short straw in whatever compe­tition or pecking-order judgement they'd used to decide whohad to offer this suggestion to the Archimandrite had lookeddistinctly queasy when he'd outlined the plan, obviously fearingan outburst of rage from his commander-in-chief. Luseferoushad already heard of the idea - Tuhluer proving his usefulnessagain - and come to accept that if they were not to jeopardise their whole mission here, even ideas as drastic as this had atleast to be entertained. So he'd just nodded and acknowledged that all options had to be considered. Relief for the admiralconcerned. A degree of consternation for the others, who all wished that they'd made the announcement now.

 They would try to think of other strategies which didn'tinvolve the likely loss of the Main Battle Hub, but nobodyseemed too optimistic. Always do what the enemy hoped youwouldn't. Murder your babies. That sort of thing. The logicseemed impeccable.

 Well, he could always build another Main Battle Hub. Just alump of matter. Results were what mattered. He wasn't a child.He wasn't sentimental about theLuseferous VII.

 More worrying was whether even that sacrifice might beenough. They had control of Ulubis system, they had lost onlya handful of ships in the invasion and, having captured a fewof the enemy craft, had conceivably come out ahead in the deal.However, the Summed Fleet squadrons on their way comprised a formidable force. They had fewer but better ships. It mightbe quite a close battle, and only an idiot wanted to get involved in one of those. And so near! That had been a terrible, terribleshock.

 Luseferous hadn't been able to believe it at first. He'd ragedand fumed and spat, telling the techs to check and check again.There must be something wrong, there had to be an error. TheSummed Fleet couldn't be that close. They'd been assured itwould be half a year - a whole year, even - before they had toface the counter-attack. Instead the Summed Fleet was practicallyon top of them before they'd had time to settle in properly.

 Beyonder bastards. It had to be their fault. He would see whatcould be done about those treacherous fucks in due course. Inthe meantime, he had the counter-attack to worry about.

 Of course, if by the time the Summed Fleet squadrons arrivedthey had what they'd come for, that might make all the differ­ence.

 A few weeks to find what they had come for. He had a veryunpleasant feeling that this was not going to be long enough.

 *

 The ship thought it was dead. Fassin talked to it.

 He'd hoped they might be able to make the return journeyfrom theRovruetz to Direaliete system faster than they'd made the outward trip, because the Voehn ship was quicker than theVelpin,but it was not to be. TheProtreptic could accelerate faster than theVelpin, but the injuries the Voehn commanderhad inflicted on Y'sul meant the Dweller wouldn't be able to survive the stresses. They went back slower than they'd come out.

 Y'sul lay in a healing coma in an improvised cradle thatQuercer & Janath had made for him within one of the extended command-space seats. They ramped the acceleration up to five gees, coasted while they checked the Dweller wasn't sufferingfurther damage from the stresses involved, took the nextsmoothly incremented ramp of acceleration up to ten gees and checked again. Finally they settled on forty gees, though by thetime they'd worked out that this was safe they were almost atthe point where they would have to turn around and start decel­erating again as they fell towards the waiting system.

 Y'sul slept on, healing. The AI truetwin gloried in the explo­ration of the Voehn ship's vastly complicated systems and multi­farious martial capabilities.

 Fassin had nothing to do but float in his own extemporised acceleration cradle in the seat next to Y'sul's. He wouldn't be allowed to stay there as they approached the wormhole portal;Quercer & Janath had found a tight little cabin a few bulkheads back from the command space where he could wait that partic­ular experience out. In the meantime, after some complaints,they allowed him to interface with theProtreptic's computer,though they insisted on this being at several removes from the ship's core systems, and on him being accompanied by somesort of sub-personality of their own. The visits would beconducted in a factor two or three of slowdown, which seemedto suit everybody concerned. At least, Fassin thought, thejourney would seem to go quicker.

 The virtual environment where Fassin was allowed to meetthe ship took the form of a huge, half-ruined temple by a wide,slow-moving river on the edge of a great, quiet, silent city undera small, high, unmoving sun of an intense blue-white.

 Fassin represented as his human self, dressed in house casuals,the ship as a skinny old man in a loincloth and the AI sub­routine as some sort of ginger-haired ape with long, loose-looking limbs, an ancient, too-big helmet wobbling on its head,a dented breastplate with one broken strap slanting across itsbulbous chest and a short kilt of segmented leather hangingfrom its skinny hips. A short, rusty sword dangled from its side.

 The first time Fassin had visited the ship's personality, theape had led him by the hand from a doorway down the stepstowards the river where the old man sat, looking out at the slug­gish brown waters.

 On the far side of the broad, oily stream was a desert ofbrightly glittering broken glass, stretching in low, billowed hillsas far as the eye could see, like all the shattered glass the universe had ever known all gathered in the one vast place.

 'Of course I'm dead,' the ship explained. The old man hadvery dark green skin and a voice made up of sighs and wheezes.His face was nearly immobile, just an aged mask, grizzled with patchy white whiskers. 'The ship self-destructed.'

 'But if you're dead,' Fassin said, 'how are you talking to me?'

 The old man shrugged. 'To be dead is to be no longer partof the living world. It is to be a shade, a ghost. It doesn't meanyou can't talk. Talk is almost all you can do.'

 Fassin thought the better of trying to persuade the old manthat he was still alive. 'What do you think I am?' he asked.

 The old man looked at him. 'A human? Male? A man.'

 Fassin nodded. 'Do you have a name?' he asked the old man.

 A shake of the head. 'Not any more. I was theProtreptic butthat ship is gone now and I am dead, so I have no name.'

 Fassin left a polite gap for the old man to ask him what hisname was, but the inquiry didn't come.

 The ape sat a couple of metres away and two steps furtherup towards the creeper-festooned temple. It was sitting back,taking its weight on its long arms spread out behind it andpicking one ear with a long, delicate-looking foot, inspecting the results with great concentration.

 'When you were alive,' Fassin said, 'were you truly alive? Were you sentient?'

 The old man rocked backwards, laughed briefly. 'Bless you,no. I was just software in a computer, just photons inside a nanofoam substrate. That's not alive, not in the conventionalsense.'

 'What about the unconventional sense?'

 Another shrug. 'That does not matter. Only the conventional sense matters.'

 'Tell me about yourself, about your life.'

 A blank-faced stare. ‘I don't have a life. I'm dead.'

 'Then tell me about the life you had.'

 ‘I was a needle ship called theProtreptic of the Voehn ThirdSpine Cessorian Lustral Squadron, built in the fifth tenth of thethird year of Haralaud, in the Vertebraean Axis, Khubohl III,Bunsser Minor. I was an extensible fifteen-metre-minimumcraft, rated ninety-eight per cent by the Standard PortalCompatibility Quotient Measure, normal unstowed operatingdiameter—'

 'I didn't really mean all the technical stuff,' Fassin said gently.

 'Oh,' said the old man, and disappeared, just like a hologrambeing switched off.

 Fassin looked at the ape, which was holding something upto the light. It looked down at him, blinking. 'What?' it said.

 'He disappeared,' Fassin told it. 'It disappeared. The old man;the ship.'

 'Prone to do that,' the ape said, sighing.

 The next time, the landscape on the far side of the wide, slack-watered river from the temple steps was a jungle; a great green,yellow and purple wall of strange carbuncular stalks, droopingleaves and coiled vines, its bowed, pendulous creepers andbranches drooping down to drag in the slow swell of the current.

 Everything else was as before, though perhaps the old man was less skinny, his face a fraction more mobile and his voiceless tired.

 'I was an AI hunter. For six and a half thousand years I helpedseek out and destroy the anathematics. If I could have felt suchan emotion, I would have been very proud.'

 'Did it never seem strange to you to be hunting down andkilling machines that were similar to yourself?'

 The ginger-haired ape - sitting in its usual place a few stepsup, trying to clean its stained, dented armour by spitting on itand then polishing it with a filthy rag - coughed at this point,though when Fassin glanced up at the animal it returned hisgaze blankly.

 'But I was just a computer,' the old man said, frowning. 'Lessthan that, even; a ghost within it. I did what I was told, alwaysobedient. I was the interface between the Voehn who did thethinking and made the decisions, and the physical structuresand systems of the ship. An intermediary. No more.'

 'Do you miss that?'

 'In a way. I cannot, really. To miss something, truly, would be - as I understand it - to experience an emotion, and obvi­ously that is impossible for something which is not sentient, letalone not alive as well. But to the extent that I can judge that one state of affairs is somehow more preferable to another,perhaps because one allows me to fulfil the role I was assignedand one does not, I could say that I miss the ship. It's gone. I've looked for it, but it isn't there. I cannot feel it or controlit, therefore I know that it must have self-destructed. I must berunning on another substrate somewhere.'

 Fassin looked up at the ape-thing sitting a few steps away. Quercer & Janath had taken over full control of theProtreptic,cutting off the ship's own computer and the software runningwithin it from the vessel's subsystems.

 'What do you think I am, then?' Fassin asked. 'What do youthink the little ape in his armour sitting behind us is?'

 'I don't know,' the old man confessed. 'Are you other deadships?'

 Fassin shook his head. 'No.'

 'Then perhaps you are representations of those in charge of the substrate I am now running on. You may want to quiz meon my actions while I was the ship.'

 'You know, you seem alive to me,' Fassin said. 'Are you sureyou might not be alive and sentient now, now that you're notconnected to the ship?'

 'Of course not!' the old man said scornfully. 'I am able togive the appearance of life without being alive. It is not espe­cially difficult.'

 'How do you do this?'

 'By being able to access my memories, by having trillions offacts and works and books and recordings and sentences andwords and definitions at my disposal.' The old man looked atthe ends of his fingers. 'I am the sum of all my memories, plusthe application of certain rules from a substantial command-set.I am blessed with the ability to think extremely quickly, so I am able to listen to what you, as a conscious, sentient being,are saying and then respond in a way that makes sense to you,answering your questions, following your meaning, anticipatingyour thoughts.

 'However, all this is simply the result of programs - programswritten by sentient beings - sifting through earlier examples of conversations and exchanges which I have stored within my memories and selecting those which seem most appropriate astemplates. This process sounds mysterious but is merely compli­cated. It begins with something as simple as you saying "Hello"and me replying "Hello", or choosing something similaraccording to whatever else I might know about you, and extendsto a reply as involved as, well, this one.'

 The old man looked suddenly shocked, and disappearedagain.

 Fassin looked up at the ginger-haired ape. It sneezed and thenhad a coughing fit. 'Nothing,' it said, 'to do,' it continued,between coughs, 'with me.'

 On Fassin's next visit, the far side of the great, slow river waslike a mirror image of the side that he, the old man and thegangly ape were on. An ancient city of stone domes and spiresall silent and dark and half-consumed by trees and creepers faced them, and a huge long temple, covered in statues andcarvings of fabulous and unlikely beasts lay directly across from
where they sat, its lower limits defined by dozens of big stoneterraces and steps leading down to the sluggish, dark brownwaters.

 Fassin looked over, to see if the three of them were reflectedthere, but they weren't. The far side was deserted.

 'Did you hunt down and kill many AIs?' he asked.

 The old man rolled his eyes. 'Hundreds. Thousands.'

 'You're not sure?'

 'Some of the AIs were twinned or in larger groupings. I tookpart in 872 missions.'

 'Were any in gas-giants?' Fassin asked. He'd positionedhimself so that he could see the ape in the dented armour. Itlooked at him when he asked this question, then looked awayagain. It was trying to knock the dents out of its breastplatewith a small hammer. The dull chink-chink-chinks that the hammer made sounded dead and unechoing across the wideriver.

 'One mission took place partly within a gas-giant. It endedthere. A small ship full of anathematics. We pursued them intothe atmosphere of the gas-giant Dejiminid where they attemptedto lose us within its fierce storm-winds. TheProtreptic was moreatmosphere-capable than their ship, and eventually, going to greater and greater depths in their desperation to shake us off,their vessel collapsed under the pressure and was crushed, takingall aboard into the liquid metal depths.'

 'Were there no Dwellers present to complain about this?'

 The old man looked inquiringly at him. 'You are not reallya Dweller, are you? It did occur to me that I might be runningwithin a Dweller-controlled substrate.'

 'No, I'm not a Dweller. I told you; I'm a human.'

 'Well, the answer is they had not seen us enter their planet.They complained later. That was only the first of two occasionswhen theProtreptic was operationally active within a gas-giant.Usually our missions were all vacuum.'

 'The other?'

 'Not so long ago. Helping to pursue a large force of Beyonderships in the vicinity of Zateki. We prevailed there, too.'

 'What brought you to the SepulcraftRovruetz?' Fassin asked.

 The flat and flattening chink-chink-chink noise stopped. Theginger-haired ape held its breastplate up to catch the light,scratched its chest, then went back to tapping with the hammeragain.

 'Do you represent a Lustral Investigation Board?' the oldman asked. 'Is that what you are, in reality?'

 'No,' Fassin said. 'I don't.'

 'Oh. Oh well. For the last two and a half centuries, uniformtime,' the old man said, 'we had been seeking information aboutthe so-called Dweller List.' (The long-limbed ape laughed outloud at this, but the old man didn't seem to notice.) 'Much time was spent in the region of the Zateki system, investigating theSecond Ship theory. Various secondary and tertiary missionsresulted from information gleaned in the region. None ever borefruit in the matter of the List, the Second Ship theory or the so-called Transform, though two AIs were tracked down and eliminated in the course of these sub-missions. We weresummoned from the Rijom system and sent to the Direaliete system some five months ago, then laid an intercept course to the SepulcraftRovruetz. I was not told of the reasons for this course of action, the orders covering which were personal to Commander Inialcah and communicated to him beyond mysenses.'

 'Did you find out anything new about the List and theTransform?' Fassin asked.

 'I think the only thing that we ever felt we had properlydiscovered, in the sense of adding something other than just anextra rumour to the web of myths and rumours that alreadyexisted regarding the whole subject was that - if there was anytruth in the matter - the portals would be lying quiescent andperhaps disguised in the Kuiper belts or Oort clouds of the rele­ vant systems, waiting on a coded radio or similar broadcastsignal. That is what the so-called Transform would be: a signal,and the medium and frequency on which it was to be trans­mitted. This made sense in that all normally stable locationswhere portals might have been hidden successfully over the sort of time scales involved - Lagrange points and so on - were easyto check and eliminate.' The old man looked at Fassin quizzi­cally again. 'Are you another seeker after the truth of the List?'

 'I was,' Fassin said.

 'Ah!' The representation of the old man looked pleased foronce. 'And are you not dead, then, too?'

 'No, I'm not dead, though I've given up looking, for themoment.'

 'What was it that took you to the SepulcraftRovruetz?' theold man asked.

 'I had what I thought was a lead, a clue, a way forward,'Fassin told him. 'However, the creature who might have hadthe evidence had destroyed what he held and killed himself.'

 'Unfortunate.'

 'Yes, very.'

 The old man looked up at the bronze-blue cloudless sky.Fassin followed his gaze, and as he did so, the old man disappeared.

 There was something. Fassin sat, gascraft rammed into theextemporised couch in the Voehn ship's command space by thecontinuing acceleration, watching the nearly static, rather boringview of dead ahead shown on the main screen, and he knew there was something that he was missing.

 Something nagged at him, something bothered him, some­thing half-came to him in moments of distraction or when hewas dreaming, and then wriggled away again before he could catch it.

 He didn't sleep very much - only a couple of hours a day inall - though when he did there were usually dreams, as if hissubconscious had to cram all his dreaming into the small amountof dream-space available. Once he was actually standing in a small stream, somewhere in the gardens of a great house hecouldn't see, trousers rolled up, trying to catch fish with hisbare hands. The fish were his dreams, even though he wasdistantly aware at the time that this situation was itself a dream. When he tried to catch the fish - sinuous small presences dartinglike elongated teardrops of mercury round his feet - they keptflicking away and disappearing.

 When he looked up, the stream was flowing through a large amphitheatre, and a great crowd of people were watching himintently.

 At the transition point of the journey, where theProtreptic stoppedaccelerating, turned a half-somersault and pointed its engines atits destination to start deceleration, Quercer & Janath spent some time checking that Y'sul was still healing satisfactorily.

 Fassin used the time to explore a little more of the Voehnship, floating the arrowhead gascraft down the narrow circularaccess tubes, investigating crew quarters, storerooms and cham­bers. Camera remotes tracked his every move, the thoroughly internally surveillanced ship making it simple for Quercer &Janath to keep whatever fraction of an eye on him they thought appropriate.

 He found what he thought was probably the commander'scabin, a couple of bulkheads behind the command space. It wasthe most generously proportioned obviously personal spacehe'd encountered. It looked bare and alien. There was a slightly more comfortable version of one of the multi-spine cradle seatshe was used to seeing throughout the ship by now, and somerepresentations of coverings on certain walls, plus what mighthave been carpet designs on the floor. Only the designs existed,painted on or displayed by some thin-film technology - Fassin couldn't tell. Similarly, there were no ornaments, just holos ofornaments. He'd heard most warships were like this; cuttingdown on weight and the possibilities of stuff flying about duringhard manoeuvring by having the appearance of things ratherthan their physical presence.

 He floated in front of one carpet design that looked like apiece of text, all small, curled glyphs in a network, but could find no record in the gascraft's memories of such a language.He wondered what it said. He recorded the image. Quercer & Janath would probably wipe it when they went through theportal, but never mind.

 The next time he met up with the ship, on the far side of theriver there was a massive dark wall, rising sheer and jet fromthe waters, its summit crowned with crenellations and gunturrets. Further guns poked out of gun ports distributed in stag­gered lines over the whole top quarter of the huge wall, makingit look like the side of some ancient sea-ship, only the biggestand most preposterously long one there had ever been, its vast hull diminishing into the distance. The guns were not static butmoved in sequence, in waves of what appeared almost like loco­motion, making the exposed barrels look oddly like ineffectualoars on some colossally mis-designed trireme or an impossible,upended millipede.

 The ginger-haired ape sat nearby as usual. It had a new shield,round and highly polished. It sat looking at it and flicking imag­inary specks from it. Sometimes it held it up to see it sparklein the light, and sometimes it held it up so that it could look at itself in it.

 'Text?' the elderly man asked. 'On a floor display? No, I'msorry, I don't have any memory of that, not stored. If the shipstill existed, if I still had access . . .' He looked sad. Fassinglanced at the ginger-haired ape, but it looked away and started whistling, or at least trying to.

 'Maybe there's some way I can patch through an image Ihave,' Fassin said.

 'You have an image? You have been on the ship?' The manlooked surprised.

 After some to-ing and fro-ing, Fassin having to jog back upthe step and through the doorway back into normal reality toset things up, he was able to display the image he'd taken. Thelong-limbed ape held up his shield and the image appeared there.

 'Oh,that?' the man said. He stroked his short grey beard. 'That's something the Commander picked up a long time ago,in the days when he had command of a smaller ship. A trans­lation into Ancient Sacred of something which I believe marksthe end of an abomination, an AI.'

 'What does it say?' Fassin asked.

 'It says, "I was born in a water moon. Some people, espe­cially its inhabitants, called it a planet, but as it was only a littleover two hundred kilometres in diameter, 'moon' seems themore accurate term. The moon was made entirely of water, bywhich I mean it was a globe that not only had no land, but no rock either, a sphere with no solid core at all, just liquid water,all the way down to the very centre of the globe.

 '"If it had been much bigger the moon would have had a coreof ice, for water, though supposedly incompressible, is notentirely so, and will change under extremes of pressure to become ice. (If you are used to living on a planet where icefloats on the surface of water, this seems odd and even wrong, but nevertheless it is the case.) This moon was not quite of asize for an ice core to form, and therefore one could, if one was sufficiently hardy, and adequately proof against the water pres­sure, make one's way down, through the increasing weight ofwater above, to the very centre of the moon.

 '"Where a strange thing happened.

 "'For here, at the very centre of this watery globe, thereseemed to be no gravity. There was colossal pressure, certainly, pressing in from every side, but one was in effect weightless (onthe outside of a planet, moon or other body, watery or not, one is always being pulled towards its centre; once at its centre one is being pulled equally in all directions), and indeed the pres­sure around one was, for the same reason, not quite as great as one might have expected it to be, given the mass of water thatthe moon was made up from.

 '"This was, of course,—"

 'At which point it cuts off.'

 Fassin thought. 'Where did it come from?'

 'It was used by one of the anathematics that CommanderInialcah hunted down and killed as a kind of memory-death mantra, to remove any trace of what might have been in itsmemory. The AI concerned later turned out to have been oneof those also seeking the so-called Transform. It was that pursuitwhich originally gave the commander an interest in the matter.The memory-death mantra he had translated and kept partly asa kind of talisman, though I believe he also always thought theremight be some meaning to the specific piece the AI chose to overwrite its memories with which might prove useful if hecould ever work it out, because AIs were known, as he said,for being too clever by half, and through their arrogance some­times gave important information away. That was anotherreason for preserving it and keeping it constantly before him.'

 In his dream, Fassin was standing with Saluus Kehar on abalcony over a volcanic caldera, full of red-hot bubbling lava.'We're to gas-capable a whole load of stuff for—' Sal was saying,when he paused, cleared his throat and waved one hand. 'Heck,'he continued, turning into a Dweller, but somehow with ahuman face and without getting any bigger. He floated out overthe waves of lava. 'Idiotic things, little Fassin. I took the orig­inal of the beast to a friend and fellow friend in the city ofDirealiete. A friend and fellow friend.'

 Fassin gazed at his own hands, to check that he was stillhimself.

 When he looked up, Saluus had gone and the river he was standing in had temples on both sides, up steep flights of stepsthe height of prison walls.

 'Original of what?' he heard himself ask.

 The far side of the river showed a city from the age of waste,all medium-rise buildings, smoke and electric trains and multi-lane roads full of roaring cars and trucks. They had to raise theirvoices a little to make themselves heard over the noise. A sweet, oily burning smell wafted over the river towards them.

 The ginger ape picked its gleaming teeth with a giant sword.

 'Another image?' the man said. He looked fit in a lean wayand was no longer young. His beard was mostly grey. 'Let mesee.'

 Knowing what to do this time, Fassin showed the man thelittle image-leaf which depicted yellow sky and brown clouds.

 'Obviously the colour's wrong,' he told the man. 'I couldn't help noticing.'

 'Oh, yes, there's an image there. I see it.'

 'I know, but what—?'

 'And some algebra, ciphered into the base code.'

 At that, the ape's long, curved sword came sweeping downand cut the man through, slicing him from neck to hip. Theremains gushed down the steps to the river and wriggled away,all silver.

 Fassin looked up at the great ape. 'Hey,' he said, 'it was justa—'

 'Who's clever?' the ape hissed, drawing back the terrible, glit­tering sword.

 Fassin woke up shaking. He was in a coffin - he'd just hithis head on the inside of the lid. He tried to blink and couldn'tbecause something was in his eyes, surrounding them,surrounding every part of him, filling his mouth and nose andanus

 Shock-gel, gillfluid, the gascraft.Fucking calm down, he toldhimself.How long you been a Seer again?

 TheProtreptic, the ex-Voehn craft en route for Nasqueron, Ulubis via the Direaliete system, under the command of theself-confessed twin AI Quercer & Janath, pirates and close-combat Voehn-wasting specialists.

 They were back under moderate deceleration, on their wayinto the system and the hidden wormhole.

 The details of the dream were starting to slip away from him,fish sine-waving goodbye through the water. And yet he felthe'd understood something. What had it been?

 Confusing.

 Something about Saluus, and had Hatherence been in there too? Sal's house, only it had been a volcano, then the virtualenvironment where he met the ship, and it had looked at—

 In the shock-gel, pickled in it, surrounded by it, Fassin felthis eyes go wide and his skin prickle and crawl. His heartspasmed, thudding erratically in his chest.

 He could do it himself. He could wait until they got back, backto Nasq. and Ulubis, and take it to somebody - if he found Valseirhe could just ask him, though he didn't think he'd be able to findValseir - but that wasn't good enough. He had to know.

 He'd committed the image-leaf to the gascraft's memory. Lying there in the shock-gel, inside the little arrowhead, hecalled the photograph up and saw it floating before him. The picture of blue sky and white clouds looked odd to him, half-alien and wrong, and yet half-familiar at the same time, invokinga feeling of something between nostalgia and homesickness.

 He blew the image up to the point where it became a blockyabstract of colour. He scanned the whole image for smallerimages, found nothing, then started running various routinesthat the gascraft's biomind held for finding patterns in random data. Had he recorded the image in fine enough detail to find anything hidden in it? Would the hidden data, if it was there, be findable without some other code?

 He wished he could access the original, stowed in a tiny lockeron the outside of the gascraft, but he couldn't, not while he waspinned under this sort of force. Anyway, it might look suspi­cious to Quercer & Janath if he started peering too intently atthe image-leaf. Because that was where the answer might lie, where it might - just, perhaps, maybe - have been lying all thetime.

 '. . . I took the original of the folder to a friend and fellow collector in Deilte, a city in the south polar region, within asafekeep box . . .' That, or something very like it, was whatValseir had said.

 Fassin had recorded the conversation verbatim in thegascraft's memory, but it had been wiped aboard theIsaut.Didn't matter; he had a pretty good memory for detail himself.He hadn't realised at the time what the implication of Valseir'sremark was - the Mercatorial ships had tried to mount theirraid on the ships in the storm fleet shortly afterwards and thingshad all gone a bit exciting - but it meant there was probably acopy. Valseir was a scholar, and punctilious about word use andthe terminology of editions and precedence. He wouldn't have talked about the original of something unless there was a needto distinguish it from a copy. So there was a copy. There was aback-up, and it had amused the old Dweller to have Fassin carryit with him all the time.

 Well, it was a plausible-enough theory.

 Fassin thought it would be a Valseir-like thing to have done,but he'd been wrong about the old Dweller before. Dwellersdid become set in their ways and predictable, sometimes, giventhe ages they could live to, but sometimes they just becamemore devious, too.

 He fell asleep, the routines running on in front of him, anddreamed of streams of numbers, liquid algebra full of equationsand meanings that started to make sense and then - just as he tried to study them and understand them - broke up and wrig­gled away, flickering to chaos.

 A soft chime woke him up.

 He was in the gascraft, in the stolen Voehn ship. The decel­eration felt gentler, as though they might be approaching theirgoal. He clicked to an outside view and saw an orange-red sun,dead ahead. The Dweller-shaped bulk in the seat ahead twistedfractionally.

 'Fassin?' Quercer & Janath said.

 If he hadn't been in the shock-gel inside the gascraft, he'dhave jumped.

 'Mmm?' he said.

 'Going to have to put you in your own little cell for the nextbit, all right?'

 'Yes. I understand.'

 'Soon as we're at one gee standard.'

 'I hear and obey,' he said, trying to sound unconcerned.

 Back in the gascraft's math-space, Fassin had a result.

 There was indeed data hidden in the image-leaf's depictionof a partially clouded blue sky. It had been there all the time.He'd had the answer, if that was really what it was, with him from the start.

 It looked like alien algebra.

 He tried to understand it.

 It meant nothing.

 It might mean everything.

 *

 The Archimandrite Luseferous had a tight, unpleasant feelingin his guts. He recognised it. It was the feeling that he got whenhe might have left something too late, or just got somethingwrong somehow. It was the feeling of being in a game and real­ising you might have made a terrible mistake a couple of turnsor moves ago, of wanting to go back and undo what had been done, right the wrong, fix the error.

 When he'd been a child playing a game against another childand had made a mistake, he'd sometimes just say, 'Oh, look, Ididn't mean to do that earlier, I meant to dothis . . .' and haddiscovered that even though such behaviour might be forbidden by the rules of the game, you could get away with it amazingly often. At first he'd thought this was because he was just a morepowerful character than whoever he was playing against, untilhe'd realised that the people this sort of tactic worked againsttended to be those whose fathers weren't nearly as powerful ashis. Later he'd become powerful himself, and found thatcheating was still a workable tactic. Later still, he'd found thathe didn't need to cheat. He could make the most awful blunderand never suffer for it because his opponent, guessing what wasgood for them in the greater context of life beyond the game,would never dare take advantage of that mistake. It was a kindof invincibility.

 Machines were different; they usually wouldn't let you makeillegal moves or take back earlier errors. So you just reset them,or went back to the saved position or a time when the mistakecould be unmade.

 Only this was not a game, or - if it was - it was one in whichLuseferous didn't know how you changed the rules or sweptyour arm across the board or hit theDelete All sequence. Maybethe end of the game was death, and he'd wake to find himselfin the greater reality that the Truth had always maintainedexisted. That was a sort of comfort, though even then he didn'twant to wake up after a failure.

 Time was the problem. Time and the fucking Dwellers.

 TheLuseferous VII swung ponderously into orbit aroundthe planet Nasqueron. He watched it from his new flagship, theMain Fleet Combat CraftRapacious (a super-battleship in allbut name, he'd be prepared to concede).

 Insufficient time. How had it come to this? If he hadn'tdelayed so long before starting, if he hadn't stopped off alongthe way, if he hadn't, perhaps, insisted on full fleet dispositional discipline ... and yet he'd swung into action much more quickly than some democratic or committee-based organisation could have, and he would have been mad to leave strongholds intactalong his line of advance and . . . and return. And disciplinewas important, keeping everything together was important. It symbolised loyalty, it betokened military and personal disci­pline.

 So there had been no choice, really. They'd got here as quicklyas they could. The fucking Beyonders should have warned himthe Summed Fleet squadrons were coming quicker than they'danticipated. It was all their doing. It might even be a conspiracy against him. Oh, they'd taken part in the attacks on Ulubis when it had suited them, though they'd never been as decisive as theycould and should have been. Fucking whining lily-livered moral­ists. Military targets! So they preserved their precious fuckingscruples and left him to do the dirty work. If they'd been asemphatic and ruthless as he'd been, things might have turnedout differently. Instead they'd supported him just enough to bring him here but now that he was where they'd wanted himall along, they were deserting him.

 Luseferous wished now that he hadn't let the Liss womango. He'd given Saluus Kehar, the industrialist guy, back to his own people, largely to see what they'd do. Would they believehim when he told them he'd been kidnapped? Or not? Jury stillout; the Guard had taken him for questioning. The womanwho'd kidnapped him, and who had asked to take him backpersonally when she'd heard that was what the Archimandritehad in mind, had disappeared before she'd even handed himover, probably returning to her Beyonder pals. Stupid to have let a potential lever like that go, but he'd had so many otherthings on his mind, and the full extent of the Beyonders' betrayal hadn't been clear at the time.

 Where were their craft? Where were their invasion troops oroccupying forces? They were still staying on the outskirts, stillnot coming into the system itself, still too scared to commit them­selves. They'd professed horror and disappointment at hisdestruction of the city and the habitat, and at the way his troopshad reacted to some elements of resistance. Fuck them! This wasa fucking war! How the fuck did they think you won one?Casualties had been almost disappointinglylight; Luseferous couldn't remember a full-scale invasion campaign which hadended with so few dead. They'd arrived in such overwhelmingnumbers that there had been little the other side could do apart from die pointlessly, surrender or run.

 They'd had a bit of luck, too, and the intelligence providedby the Beyonders about military preparations and fleet dispo­sitions had made a bit of a difference as well, he supposed. Butbasically it was just big guns and plenty of them that had donethe trick, and the really impressive space battles he'd kind of been hoping for just hadn't materialised.

 So the system was his, even if the only ground he'd troddenpersonally was when making one brief appearance at a small mansion in the middle of a jungle to accept the formal surrenderof the Hierchon. He'd have preferred the symbolic value of thebig spherical palace in Borquille, even if it was damaged, but the security people felt there was still a danger from a well-hidden nuke or something equally unpleasant, so a house in themiddle of nowhere it had been. The Hierchon and his people were being held aboard theLuseferous VII. Let the SummedFleet kill him if that was the way it had to be.

 The Beyonders reported that there had been a few engage­ments with elements of the Ulubine Mercatoria military whichhad turned tail to run and then encountered their forces. But even there the Archimandrite was hearing rumours that thefleeing Navarchy ships were being allowed to surrender, or even accept a sort of neutral internment, still fully crewed and armed,rather than being destroyed or captured.

 So Luseferous was alone again, abandoned by his treacherousallies. They'd lured him here, got him to remove part of thethreat against them, and now no doubt hoped that he'd take onthe Summed Fleet squadrons when they arrived, doing the work they were too cowardly to do themselves.

 Well, the strategists and tacticians were seriously consideringcutting their losses and heading back home again. This wouldseem ignominious to some, but if it was the best thing to be done then that was all there was to it. Again, he'd kept calmwhen he'd first heard this latest galling concept. He wasn'tstupid; he could see the situation for himself. Do what the enemyleast expected, what they would least want you to do.

 They might - it was still just a might - set off back for therelative safety of Epiphany 5, far away across the empty regions of space they'd spent all those years crossing. It would be unfor­tunate, but it might be the best thing to do all the same. They'dhave to leave a lot of ships behind and they'd certainly have toabandon theLuseferous VII - it was too slow and too temptinga target - but they could do it. They'd leave behind sufficientforces to force the Summed Fleet to first fight within the systemand then station some craft there, they'd take only the fastestships and so have a head start, and they'd hope to lure awaythe main part of the remainder of the Summed Fleet squadrons- the bit that would be likely to come after them - by sendingtheLuseferous VII and a small escort screen of lesser ships offin a different direction.

 It was a horrible thing to have to think about, this runningaway so soon after getting here and achieving complete victory.But it might be better than standing and fighting when theoutcome of the resulting battle was so finely balanced.

 Or, of course, they could find what they had really come for.This Dweller List key, this Transform, this magic formula. Withthat in his possession, Luseferous would have a bargaining counter of almost infinite value. So he was told, anyway, andfor the sake of their own hides his advisers had better be utterlyspot-on right with this one. Literally. He'd have the fuckersskinned alive if they'd led him all this way for nothing.

 In the meantime, one last throw, one final chance to find whatthey'd come for. All far too rushed and desperate, but - like allthe greatest leaders - the Archimandrite knew that he was athis best when he was under pressure, when the odds were againsthim and victory was far from certain. Of course, this didn'thappen very often to him because he didn't allow it to - alwaysbetter to win easily - but he'd had his share of narrow victo­ries and pressure situations in the past and come out on top,and he hadn't forgotten and he certainly hadn't lost his touch.He knew he would prevail. He always did. Victory was the onlythinkable option.

 He could do it. He just had to be decisive and determined.That was what he was best at. It was almost better this way;with so little time, with just the one chance, there was no ques­tion that it had to be an all-or-nothing, no-holds-barredapproach. There was simply no time to go through all the other more 'reasonable' techniques. Forget playing it calm and quiet,fuck diplomacy, abandon all thought of being reasonable and hoping people would be reasonable in return. Just fucking doit.

 The Archimandrite had made his preparations as best hecould. The tacticians thought the first elements of the SummedFleet could be hurtling past at near-light speed in less than adozen days, with the rest not far behind. No more waiting. Itwas now or never.

 They were in the belly of the great ship. The hideous, swirling,hallucinogenic face of Nasqueron lay beneath their feet, visiblethrough diamond film. The Archimandrite had risked comingaboard theLuseferous VII for this. If there was some attack onit - unlikely, but not impossible, so far ahead of the main partof the Summed Fleet squadrons - then it would almost certainlyhave to come from above, and the sheer bulk of the vessel oughtto protect them. He had theRapacious waiting immediatelyunderneath the main hull nearby, linked by a short ship-to-ship.He could be out of his impressively large seat, across thechamber and aboard and away in a minute. To be on the safeside, he had dressed in an emergency esuit, a thin, constrictivebut reassuring presence beneath his formal robes. The collar-helmet was hidden by his cowl, which, like the rest of his outergarment, was made of tanned Voehn blizzardskin.

 Cradled against theRapacious, now that it had been fully checked for bugs and bombs, was the ship that the Liss womanhad used to bring the man Saluus Kehar to him. The tech peoplewere very impressed with it. They thought it could probablyoutrun any ship the other side had. Luseferous would have been more impressed if it could outrun any missile or beam the otherside had.

 They were here for a conference, a meeting ostensibly todiscuss how the new regime in power within the rest of Ulubissystem might liaise with the Dwellers.

 The Hierchon Ormilla was present, as was the rest of thesurviving Mercatoria top brass. There hadn't really been timeto start serious alterations on the Mercatorial power structure,and when he'd found that, as the Beyonders had reported, theMercatoria was disliked and resented by most of its citizens\subjects, but not actively hated by them, Luseferoushad left the bulk of the civil authorities in place. The main players had all pledged allegiance to him, apart from FleetAdmiral Brimiaice, who'd been killed in action, the Shrievaltycolonel Somjomion, who'd disappeared and was probably onone of the ships that had run away, and the Cessorian Clerk-Regnant, Voriel, who'd chosen death rather than what he seemedto regard as the dishonour of recanting his religious vows. Idiot.Luseferous had shot him himself.

 He'd had some of the people who'd been involved in theDweller Embassy - set up a few months before the invasion -brief him on what to expect from the floats. Most of the Embassypeople had been killed when the commander of the ship theywere in had refused to surrender, but a few had survived.Luseferous wasn't sure he trusted them, though.

 Three of his own top half-dozen commanders were presenttoo. The rest were engaged elsewhere, keeping an armed pres­ence wherever it might be needed and preparing for the antici­pated high-speed pass-through of the Summed Fleet's advanceunits.

 No Beyonders, of course. They were still in shock from hisunconscionable behaviour in the matter of the single small cityand a habitat full of artists, weirdos and do-gooders. He musttell them he'd only chosen the city - whatever it was called,he'd forgotten - because it was on the coast and sheltered bymountains, so that he could do his sculpting trick again. Thatwould horrify them all over again, with luck.

 The - delegates? representatives? whatever the fuck they were- from the Dweller side were an unprepossessing bunch. Theylooked big and impressive, especially in their giant wheel-likeesuits, but there was the - apparently perennial - Dwellerproblem of finding somebody with sufficient authority to speakfor a whole planet. He'd learned early on in his career thatDwellers were best avoided. Leave them alone and they'd leaveyou alone. He wouldn't have chosen to have anything whatso­ever to do with the damn floats if he could possibly have avoidedit. But he couldn't, so he was doing his best.

 Present were three Dwellers. All were supposedly as senioras each other, and they were each alone - no aides or secretariesor underlings of any sort, which with any other species wouldhave indicated that these were not serious people at all but withDwellers meant nothing in particular.

 They were Feurish, some sort of political scholar who spoke for the great red-brown equatorial band they could see beneaththem, Chintsion, who was the current chief-of-chiefs of anumbrella organisation representing all their clubs and othervoluntary organisations (sounded insulting, but allegedly their'clubs' included their supposedly highly effective military) andPeripule, who was the City Administrator of their largest city,though this was not a capital city in theaccepted sense, andapparently being voted to be City Administrator was regardedas an imposition, not an honour or a chance to enjoy power.They all had grandiose-sounding titles that didn't really mean anything. All they did was tell you how old the Dwellers were.

 The Archimandrite would have preferred more obviouslysenior people - if such a thing existed in Dweller society - and more of them, but he had to work with what was to hand, espe­cially given the time constraints. They did have other Dwellerson theLuseferous VII, however - over three hundred of them.Two whole shiploads of adolescents and young adults had been welcomed aboard for an extended tour as part of what sounded like a school trip for grown-ups. An alien-ship enthusiasts club,apparently. He would never have allowed this normally.

 Luseferous was fairly certain that he didn't really have theDwellers' full attention. His alien-watching experts advised himthat the majority of the population of Nasqueron was uncon­cerned about the small war that had just taken place and thepresence of the invasion fleet. In fact, the majority didn't even know what had happened and would be unlikely to care. Theplanet's news services, such as they were, were full of reportsconcerning something called a Formal War taking place betweentwo of the atmospheric bands. This appeared to be a form ofextreme sport played out on a vast scale, rather than what Luseferous would regard as a proper war. They were playing.

 Well, he would just have to see what he could do to makethem take proper notice of him.

 Suspended over the vast view, the attendees seemed to hang as though about to fall. Above them, on a network of gantries,Luseferous's personal guard stalked in exoskels, the pads of theirclaw-feet stalking with a steady, silent precision.

 'Let's get to the point,' Luseferous said after some desultoryinconsequentialities had gone on far too long. 'We want the SeerFassin Taak,' he told the Dwellers. 'Even more to the point, wewant certain information he's supposed to have been lookingfor.'

 'What information?' Chintsion asked. The 'clubs' chief was proving the most voluble of the three Dwellers so far. His huge esuit sat cradled in a sling-seat poised over the shallow concavityof diamond film beneath, the planet's bilious reflected lightshining faintly up from underneath him. His esuit was grey,with garish pink chevrons.

 'We are not at liberty to divulge that,' Luseferous told theDweller.

 'Why not?' asked the scholar, Feurish. His esuit was a kind of dirty white.

 'I can't tell you,' Luseferous said. He held up a gloved, ringedhand. 'And please don't ask why. Just accept this.'

 The Dwellers were silent. They were probably signalling toeach other. His tech people had warned him of this and had attempted to design the sling-seats so that the creatures couldn'tcommunicate like that. But as soon as the Dwellers had seenthe seating arrangements they'd protested and fussed and startedpulling and prodding and attempting to reconfigure their seatsand even began rearranging them so that they were in positionsrelative to each other which they liked better. Luseferous hadground his diamond teeth, signalled to the tech people to help,and waited for the Dwellers to declare themselves happy.

 Finally they were all sitting in a great circle, the Dwellers andthe Hierchon and his handful of advisers forming most of onehalf of the circumference, the humans and others, including theArchimandrite, making up the other half.

 'We don't know where Seer Fassin Taak is,' Chintsion toldLuseferous. 'Last heard of, he was making for a city in thenorthern polar region called Eponia. Though that is just arumour.'

 'Eponia?' the third Dweller, Peripule, said. His esuit was deep,gleaming brown, frilled like seaweed. ‘I heard he was seen inDeilte.'

 'Deilte?' Chintsion said scornfully. 'At this time of year?'

 'He is an alien,' Peripule said. 'He knows nothing of fashion.'

 'Well, first of all,' Chintsion began, 'he has a minder, and—'

 'Gentlemen,' Luseferous said. The three Dwellers all rockedback as though shocked.

 'The Archimandrite Luseferous is a busy man,' the Hierchon Ormilla boomed. 'Discussions regarding the seasonal fashion-ability of cities in Nasqueron might be best conducted betweensessions, not during.'

 'Little dweller,' Chintsion said to the Hierchon, 'we are, asa favour to your latest batch of masters, and notwithstandingthe likely and faintly hilarious brevity of their precedence, attempting to establish the whereabouts of this Taak fellow.The . . .'

 Luseferous stopped listening. He turned to Tuhluer, who sat just behind and to the side of him. He looked the other man inthe eye. Tuhluer held his gaze. Luseferous saw the other manswallow. Still his gaze was held. Tuhluer had never dared to dothat before. Luseferous bent fractionally towards him and saidquietly, 'Desperate times require desperate solutions, Tuhluer.'

 The other man looked down, then nodded and started finger-tapping signals into his glove. The Archimandrite turned to thefront again.

 A distant thud sounded, followed a second later by another,then another, like a great clock ticking.

 Luseferous listened to the two Ulubine Peregals, old mencalled Tlipeyn and Emoerte, trying to wheedle the Dwellers into being more cooperative. The Dwellers gave every indication of being sincerely unable even to understand what the word meant.

 Out of the corner of his eye, minutely silhouetted against thefilthy yellow-brown clouds of the planet beneath them, theArchimandrite could see a line of tiny specks drifting off to one side, heading towards the passing cloud tops thousands of kilo­metres below.

 '. . . Believe us when we say that we are serious,' CommanderBinstey, his C-in-C of ground forces was saying to the threeDwellers.

 'Oh, I'm sure you are,' Chintsion said airily. 'That does notalter the fact that we may be entirely unable to help you.'

 Commander Binstey started to speak again but thenLuseferous interrupted him. 'Gentlemen,' he said quietly, andBinstey fell silent. 'If I may direct your attention to the viewover to one side there.' He waved one ringed hand over to theside where the stippled line of specks was moving slowly across the gasily distorted face of the planet.

 Everybody looked. The Dwellers twisted slightly in theirseats. Those present in the chamber with especially goodeyesight were already reacting. He could hear mutters, gasps, all the usual expressions of shock.

 'We are serious,' Luseferous told the Dwellers. He stood. 'Doyou hear that noise?' He turned his head, as though listening.

 The dull ticking noise went on; steady, remorseless. 'That is adrop-bomb chute, firing once a second. Only in this case it isfiring people, not warheads. Unprotected human beings arebeing thrown into space towards your planet at a rate of overthree thousand per hour. They are men, women and children, old and young adults, people from all walks of life, mostlycaptured from surrendered ships and damaged habitats. We haveover twenty thousand of them aboard. They will continue tobe fired at this rate until we make some sort of progress here.' He waited for some sort of reaction from the three Dwellers,but they just kept on looking at the view. 'Now,' he continued, 'do any of us here present think we might have just remem­bered anything useful?'

 He watched the people and the aliens staring at the stippled line of black dots moving slowly away from the great ship. Afew people turned to look at him, then looked away when he met their gaze, trying to hide hatred and fear and horror. Oddhow people reacted so severely to something unpleasanthappening right in front of them but were prepared to ignoremuch worse horrors taking place elsewhere.

 He nodded to Tuhluer, and a great screen lit up across one side of the chamber, showing the process. People - humans ofall sorts, as he'd said - were shown being loaded into a numberof huge circular magazines. The humans were almost all strug­gling, but they were each constrained by a tight wrapping likean elastic sleeping bag which covered every bit of them exceptfor their faces and prevented them from doing anything but squirm like maggots and spit at and try to bite the exoskel-wearing soldiers loading them into the launcher magazines. Thefloor of the vast hold was covered in wriggling, strugglingbodies. The sound turned up, and those present in the confer­ence chamber could hear the humans screaming and crying andshouting and begging.

 'Archimandrite!' the Hierchon shouted. 'I have to protest atthis! I didn't—'

 'Shut up!' the Archimandrite bellowed at him. He lookedround the others. 'All of you! Not a fucking word!' For a whilethe only sound was the muffled thud, thud, thud of the launcher.

 The scene switched to the muzzle of the launcher on the exte­rior of the ship, firing - very gently, for a gun - the people intospace. Their wrapping came off as they were expelled, snappingback around their ankles so that they could writhe and jerk and spasm satisfactorily as they met the vacuum naked, and suffo­cated. Some tried to hold their breaths, and bulged fit to explode.Blood specked from ears and eyes and mouths and anuses. The cameras followed them. The people usually moved for about a couple of minutes before they stopped. Then they just assumedthe one frozen pose - some curled foetal, some spreadeagled -and tumbled slowly, part of an invisible conveyor belt, towardsthe faraway cloud tops.

 'Exactly why are you doing this?' the Dweller Feurish askedthe Archimandrite. He sounded merely puzzled.

 'To concentrate minds,' Luseferous said coldly. He could hearsomebody being sick in the chamber. Not many people weremeeting his gaze. The gantries above were thick with immobileguards, weapons already trained on the people below.

 'Well, my mind was perfectly concentrated,' Feurish said,with what sounded like a sigh. 'We still can't help you.'

 'Give me Seer Fassin Taak,' Luseferous said, feeling somesweat - what? - start to break out on his forehead. He put a stop to that at once.

 'We haven't got this Taak fellow,' the City AdministratorPeripule said reasonably.

 'Tell me where he is,' Luseferous demanded.'Sorry,' Chintsion said. 'Can't help.''Fuckingtell me!' Luseferous roared.

 'How can we—?' Feurish began. Then Chintsion broke in.'Perhaps we can ask the people who claim to have seen SeerTaak last where they think he might be.'

 'There were people from the Embassy who were reported tobe looking for him,' Feurish pointed out. 'Perhaps they foundsomething.'

 'I thought they were all killed when the Embassy ships weredestroyed,' Chintsion said. 'Weren't they?'

 'Look,' Peripule said reasonably to the Archimandrite. 'Whydon't we just sleep on it, eh?'

 Luseferous pointed furiously at the line of bodies headingslowly towards the planet. 'Don't youfuckwits understand?Thatdoesn't stop until I get what I want!'

 The three Dwellers twisted to look as one. 'Hmm,' Peripulesaid thoughtfully. ‘I do hope you have enough people.'

 Luseferous's fists clenched. He felt close to exploding, asthough he was one of the people in the little production line ofdeath sliding past the bowed diamond window. He struggledto keep his voice icily calm as he said, 'There are three hundredDweller youngsters aboard this ship. Perhaps if we used theminstead? Or for target practice. What do you think?'

 'I think you'll annoy people,' Chintsion said, and laughed.

 'You're not seriously trying to use threats against us, are you?'Feurish asked.

 'I had better point out, Mr Luseferous,' Chintsion said with what sounded almost like humour, 'that some of the clubs Irepresent are of a military bent. Wonderfully enthusiastic, ofcourse, proud to personify them, naturally, but sometimes - I don't know, perhaps through boredom - they display charac­teristics which might almost be said to be bordering on thoseone would expect to be evinced by fellows of a "shoot-first"mentality. Ah. If you know what I mean.'

 Luseferous stared at this cretinous float. The plodding, thud,thud, thud sound went on. The line of tiny dark shapescontinued to move across the tortured, livid face of the gas-giant. He turned to Tuhluer. 'Go to full action stations,' he said.'Dark the view.'

 The vast face of Nasqueron disappeared as the diamondbubble went obsidian black. The whole great chamber grew stilldarker and seemed to shrink. The thudding noise soundedlouder.

 'You three are to be held hostage,' Luseferous told the three Dwellers. 'As will the young of your kind currently aboard thisship. If there is any attempt to rescue you or them, or any assaulton this ship or on any of my ships or assets, you will all bekilled. If I don't get something provably useful on Seer FassinTaak or whatever it was he was looking for in the next six hoursstandard, I'm going to start killing you anyway, starting withyou three. Understand?'

 'Really, Mr Luseferous,' Feurish said, 'this is no way to runa conference.'

 'I have to say that I have to agree,' Chintsion said.

 'Shut up,' Luseferous told them. ‘I also have numerous ships with multi-real-tonne antimatter warheads stationed right roundthis gas-giant. Planet-busters. If there's still nothing happeningafter you're all dead, I start detonating them in your preciousfucking atmosphere. What passes for the authorities on yourgiant rotten fart of a planet will be informed of the above indue course.' The Archimandrite looked up at the guards poised on the gantries above. 'Take them away. Get them out of thoseesuits. By cutting if necessary.'

 A dozen giant black figures like suits of ancient armour encrusted with huge dark jewels sailed down, landing on theblack diamond film on great talon-spread legs. Four surroundedeach of the three esuited Dwellers.

 'Well, gentlemen,' the Dweller called Peripule said ruefullyto the other two, 'I suppose it is not open to us to claim wewent unwarned.'

 An instant later, three violet circular curtains of light blazed out within the dark chamber, one encircling each Dweller. Theexoskel guards were either rocked right back or physicallyblown over. Those unprotected people standing or sittingfurther away were picked up and thrown towards the walls.The shock wave hit Luseferous's tall seat a fraction after thesafety shield deployed, so that he watched the resulting chaosthrough a clinker of half-silvered diamond shutters.

 The blast shook his seat, shook him and then reflected and echoed back off the distant walls. The three violet cylindersdisappeared and left three huge neatly circular holes in the blackdiamond film beneath. The sickly light of Nasqueron's yellow-brown cloud tops shone through. The air in the chamber waswhirling and screaming out through the apertures. Blinks ofwhite light flickered outside. Two of the exoskel guards weretumbled across the floor, scrabbling for grip, and were sucked out of the holes. Luseferous just stood staring. People, mostlyunconscious and badly injured, started to slide in from the edgesof the chamber where they'd been deposited by the triple blasts towards the three shining holes. A third exoskeleton-clad figurewas being pulled, giant hands scraping and scrabbling franti­cally at the smooth diamond surface, towards the nearest holeand the whirling vortex forming above it. Then the ship'ssystems finally woke up to what was happening and a darkshape flicked across the three puncture wounds in the vessel's skin, sealing off the light and keeping what remained of theatmosphere within.

 Relative calm returned. The thud, thud, thud noise continued.A rushing sound signalled replacement air being pumped backinto the chamber. The exoskel guards got to their feet, lookedaround, then ran over to form a protective shield about theArchimandrite. More black shapes came plummeting from thegantries. Luseferous could hear people in the chamber moaning.He turned to look at Tuhluer, who was limping up to himthrough the phalanx of exoskel guards, his own emergency esuit and helmet deployed, the shiny bulge of faceplate reflecting the silvery diamond bubble that enclosed the Archimandrite andhis chair.

 'Kill the other Dwellers,' Luseferous told him. Tuhluer leanedin, hand to the side of his head, seemingly not hearing. 'KILLTHE OTHER DWELLERS!' Luseferous shouted. He clickeda stud on the arm of the seat and the diamond shuttering fellaway. 'Get us away from here,' he told the other man. 'Warnthe planet the AM warheads launch in three hours if they don'tstart cooperating.' He looked at where the three Dweller repre­sentatives had made their sudden exit. 'And make sure theRapaciouswasted those three comedians.'

 'Sir!' Tuhluer said. 'And what about the . . . chute supply?'

 It took a moment before Luseferous realised that he meantthe people being launched towards the planet. He waved onehand. 'Oh, dump the lot.'

 The Archimandrite Luseferous clicked the esuit's communi­cator and told theRapacious he was on his way. He marchedthrough the moaning wounded towards the ship-to-ship andthe waiting vessel beneath. The exoskel guards fell in aroundhim, forming a giant hedge of armoured limbs and menacinglyjagged torsos. He was almost at the ship-to-ship entrance whenhe was thrown off his feet. The exoskels staggered as the wholevast ship shook. One of the giant guards nearly fell on him, regaining his balance only at the last moment, servos whining.

 'Nowwhat?' Luseferous demanded.

 'Damage control here, sir,' a voice said from the esuit. 'Energybolt straight through the whole ship, dead amidships. Abouttwo metres diameter. Plus ... the bows have been shot off, back...to...about . . . the eighty-metre mark. Just gone. Samenovel energy profile as the midships beam. Light speed; zerowarning. Reactive defence systems still looking for a counter-measure against any subsequent usage . . . nothing coming upso far, sir.'

 'Comms, sir,' another voice said, 'Dwellers, demanding returnof their people aboard. Apparently those were just warning shots.'

 Tuhluer came striding up.

 Luseferous looked at him. 'Hand the Dwellers back,' he toldthe ADC. 'Then get this thing away from here.' He strodetowards the ship-to-ship.

 'And the AM ships, sir?'

 'Leave them where they are. Delay the ultimatum until theLuseferous VIIis clear.'

 'Sir.'

 This time the Archimandrite made it all the way to the waitingflagship.

 An hour later theLuseferous VII was still making itslumbering, injured way out of the planet's gravity well. TheRapaciouswas already half a million klicks away and still accel­erating. The Archimandrite - still shaking with rage even inhis acceleration couch, the full awfulness and sheerinsult ofwhat had happened at last sinking in, his patience finallyexhausted (those three facetious shithead Dwellers had evenescaped,esuits reflecting or deflecting everything theRapacious had thrown at them after they'd exited theLuseferous VII,disappearing, apparently unharmed, into the cloud tops) - ordered that the ultimatum be made to the Dwellers immedi­ately, and that one of the ships carrying an AM warhead shoulddrop its weapon into the planet's atmosphere, just to showthat they were serious.

 The reply was almost instantaneous. The ship with the AMbomb - each one of the twenty ships with the AM bombs -vanished in a sudden pinpoint flare of light. All the warheadswent off partially, reacting messily with the ordinary matterdebris left after the destruction of the ships. Twenty ragged littlesuns guttered round Nasqueron like a tilted necklace, flaring,fading, flaring again and fading slowly once more.

 Moments later, a hyper-velocity missile rose out of the turgidskies of the gas-giant and found theLuseferous VII despite all its desperate countermeasures within two minutes of clearingthe cloud tops.

 The radiation front tripped theRapacious's sensor buffers.Thatwas how a proper antimatter warhead was supposed towork, seemed to be the implication.

 The last signal from the great ship before it was ripped entirelyapart and turned into radiation and high-speed shrapnel wasfrom aide-de-camp Tuhluer, calmly informing Luseferous thatthe Archimandrite was a cunt.

 Fassin Taak looked up at the stars of home. He felt tears in hiseyes, even within the shock-gel. He rested on a windswept plat­form above a small cloud-top city low in the south polar region,just a couple of thousand kilometres from the torn, fluidboundary with Nasqueron's southernmost atmosphericbelt.

 He tried to locate a friendly satellite, some signal that thelittle gascraft could recognise, but he couldn't find anything. Allbroadcast signals were either terribly weak or scrambled, and he couldn't locate any low-orbit devices to bounce a hail off.He tried to lock on to one of the weak broadcast wavelengthsand use the gascraft's biomind to decipher the signals, but theroutines didn't seem to be working. He gave up. For themoment, he was content just to sit here and look out at the few,familiar stars.

 Despite Y'sul's injuries, they'd still had to undergo an albeit slightly gentler form of the wild spiralling. Fassin had lain inthe gascraft, feeling the series of nested corkscrewings andhelixes build up like some coiling spring, thinking that this was them entering the wormhole, though in fact, as it turnedout, they'd already been through it and this was theunwinding. Then, suddenly, they were here, back inNasqueron, in the southern polar region, not the northernone they'd left from.

 Sinking down just a few kilometres through the cloud tops,the ex-Voehn shipProtreptic had come to rest in a slightly too-big cradle in an enormous, echoing cavern of a hangar here inthe lower regions of the nearly deserted polar city of Quaibrai.The City Administrator and a crowd of several hundredDwellers had met them, hooting and throwing streamers andscent grenades.

 A delegation comprising individuals from several differentalien-ship enthusiast clubs had become particularly excited whenthey'd seen the Voehn craft and had bobbed up and down withimpatience as Y'sul had been carefully offloaded and given intothe care of a hospital squad. As soon as Y'sul, Fassin and thetruetwin Quercer & Janath had exited, the chirping, sizzlingmass of enthusiasts rushed aboard, jostling for position as they'dtried to fit down the corridors and access ways. The truetwinhad, thoughtfully, expanded the ship from its needle-ship portal-piercing formation to a fatter and hence more commodiousconfiguration, but it still looked like a tight squeeze.

 Y'sul, already looking half mended, though still shaking offthe grogginess of his semi-coma, had twisted a fraction in hisscoop-stretcher to look at Fassin as the hospital squad broughttheir ambulance skiff down to him. 'See?' he'd croaked. 'Gotyou back safely, didn't I?'

 Fassin had agreed that he had. He'd tried to pat Y'sul butused the wrong manipulator and instead just jerked in mid-gas. He'd swivelled and used the gascraft's other arm, clutching thewounded Dweller's hub-hand.

 'You off home now?' Y'sul had asked.

 'However much of it is left. I don't know. I don't know whatto do.'

 'Well, if you do go, come back soon.' Y'sul had paused andshaken himself, as though trying to wake up more fully. 'Ishould be ready to receive visitors again in a couple of dozen days or so and I anticipate a very full social calendar indeedthereafter. I fully intend to exploit my recent injuries and expe­riences without compunction and exaggerate outrageously my part in the taking of the Voehn ship, not to mention embellish my fight with the Voehn commander to the point of what willprobably seem like complete unrecognisability, the first timeyou hear it. I'd appreciate your corroboration, providing youare able to enter into the spirit of the thing and not insist onbeing overly encumbered by the vulgar exigencies of objectivetruth, whatever version of it you may think you recall. Whatdo you say?'

 'My memory's kind of hazy,' Fassin had told the Dweller.'I'll probably back up anything you say.'

 'Splendid!'

 'If I can come back, I shall.'

 Privately, he didn't even know if he could get away in thefirst place. He didn't know what sort of infrastructure remained to get him off the planet, get the gascraft repaired and returnhim - if whoever was in charge would let him return - nor whether the Dwellers would allow him to return.

 During the last part of the six-hour journey from the worm- hole, when Quercer & Janath had allowed him to see where they were and let him access the local data-carrying spectra,he'd tapped into the Nasqueron news services to see what hadbeen going on during his absence.

 The Dweller news was all about the war. The Formal War between Zone 2 and Belt C. Apparently it had become deeplyexciting and enthralling and was already being talked of inrespected critical circles as a classic of the genre, even thoughit was probably barely halfway through yet and still, with anyluck at all, had a great deal to offer.

 Fassin had to search out a specialist alien-watcher service tofind out that, starting about thirty-plus days earlier, the Ulubis system had been invaded and taken over by the Epiphany-5Discon or Starveling Cult forces under the leadership of theArchimandrite Luseferous. The last significant, organisedUlubine Mercatorial resistance had ended just a dozen or sodays ago following the formal surrender by the HierchonOrmilla after the destruction of a city on Sepekte and a habitatin orbit around it. A counter-attack by several squadrons of theSummed Fleet was expected to commence within the next fewdozen days or so. The latest was that a peace and cooperationconference was taking place about now in the Starveling shipLuseferous VII,in orbit about Nasqueron.

 Fassin had sent a message which would at least attempt tofind Valseir. He would wait a bit and see if that raised a reply.He'd thought of contacting Setstyin, but then he remembered,vaguely, that somebody had said something to him that hadmade him uneasy about the Dweller. No, wait, it had been the other way round, hadn't it? Setstyin had always been acharming and helpful friend. Setstyin had warned him againstthe old Dweller who'd been in charge of the great spherical. . .thing that had risen out of the clouds and demolished the Mercatoria's raiding force at the GasClipper regatta. Yes, thatmade more sense. He wondered why he couldn't rememberin more detail. It was strange. He'd always had a really goodmemory.

 Quercer & Janath seemed to be surrounded by well-wisherswanting to know more about the Voehn craft. The truetwinDweller had seen Fassin looking at them through the crowd,and waved. Fassin had waved back.

 He'd watched Y'sul being placed into the ambulance skiffand tried to work out what he knew and didn't know, what hecould and could not remember. He could have gone with Y'sulin the ambulance, he supposed, but he felt a need to get awayfor a while, to be alone for a time.

 He'd come up here to see the stars, and wait, and think, andmaybe do a bit of mathematical analysis.

 He took the little image-leaf out of its locker in the gascraft's flank. He looked at it. Since whatever had happened aboard theProtreptic,the little gascraft couldn't see as well as it used to,but its close-up detail vision was good enough on one side forthe image of blue sky and white clouds to be perfectly clear.He zoomed in, rechecking the image he had stored in the . . . The image wasn't there in the craft's memories.

 That was strange. He had the feeling that he had recorded the image and already half-deciphered something that washidden inside it. He was sure he had. It had seemed really impor­tant at the time, too, he was certain.

 Fassin tried really hard to think back to what had occurredafter they were attacked by the Voehn ship. He knew they'd been captured and interrogated and the Voehn had messedaround with his brain and with the gascraft's biomind andmemories. Then a ship that the Ythyn had sent to rescue themhad attacked the Voehn ship and - somehow - he and Y'sul andthe truetwin had overpowered the surviving Voehn crew.They'd overpowered Voehn?

 How had that happened? The Ythyn ship had been able to distract the Voehn, and theVelpin had played a part too, some sort of anti-piracy automatics kicking in and helping to take on the Voehn. Quercer & Janath had been distinctly cagey aboutwhat sort of techniques their old ship had used against the Voehn.Fassin had no idea. Maybe it had happened the way they said,maybe not. Maybe theVelpin had had an AI aboard and thathad wasted the Voehn, only Quercer & Janath didn't wantpeople to know about it. They could have told him practicallyanything and he'd have believed them, the Voehn had messedwith his memories so badly.

 He remembered sitting on the steps of a temple looking outover a wide, slow-moving river, talking to an old . . . man? An old Dweller? This was quite a vivid image, rather than a linear strand of memory. That had to have happened in some form ofVR, didn't it? Maybe that old man had been the representation of theVelpin's AI. Perhaps that was who or what he had beentalking to, or at least met.

 He tried to concentrate, and looked down at the image-leaf again. He'd been given this by Valseir. Was that right? It had been a sort of calling card, a letter of introduction, leading himto...He seemed to feel it had led him to Valseir, but that didn'tmake sense.

 No, wait: the house in the depths, and the old wanderingDweller.He'd given him the image-leaf. And it had led him,somehow, to Valseir. But there was something else. He'd discov­ered something else. He'd woken up thinking about this, beforethe wormhole transition. There was something hidden in theimage-leaf. A message, a code.

 Fassin looked round the empty platform. There was nobodyelse here. He let the little gascraft's image processors drink inthe view shown on the image-leaf in as much detail as it couldoffer. Various routines started running. In a few minutes, hisgaze was torn away from the sparse but familiar-lookingstarscape above. He looked at the results.

 There had been something in there.

 It looked like alien algebra.

 There was about a page and a half of it. It looked like onelong equation, or maybe three or four shorter ones.

 He felt very excited. He wasn't entirely sure why, but he hadan idea that this linked into the Dweller List. The details evadedhim, but he knew that he'd been looking for the Transform thatwas supposed to open up the famous List, and maybe - justpossibly - this piece of alien mathematics had something to dowith it. Maybe what he had before him herewas the Transform,though that was a little difficult to believe.

 Fassin tried to figure out what the symbols in front of himmight mean, but couldn't even get started. The gascraft'scomprehensively mucked-around memories might once havecontained something which would have sent him in the rightdirection, but they didn't any more.

 He linked with the city's data nets, synched with an equatorialuniversity library and looked up a data reservoir specialising inalien mathematics. He chose a couple of symbols at random andpinged them to the database. It answered immediately, withreferences.

 What he was looking at was expressed in Translatory V, apan-species, universal notation of just under two billion yearsage, devised by the long-extinct Wopuld from earlier Dwellerelements. He downloaded a full translation suite.

 He had to stop, and look out over the cloud tops. He wasexperiencing a strange mix of emotions.

 This might be the thing he'd been sent to look for, the veryobject of his mission. Their mission, rather; he ought not toforget Colonel Hatherence. This could well be what he'd been looking for, all that time. And yet, if the Mercatoria, or at leastthe Ulubine part of it, had hoped that this would save them, then it hadn't. He'd got back too late, and the invasion hadalready happened. It was all over.

 And there was so much he seemed to have forgotten! Whathad the Voehndone to him? Y'sul had been badly injured butapart from the effects of his healing coma he seemed - andprofessed himself to be - fine, mentally. Quercer & Janath didn't seem to have suffered at all. Maybe that was just luck, or some­thing to do with being a truetwin - he didn't know.

 Still, there was this to be done, this deciphering. It might stilllead to something momentous. The invasion might have alreadyhappened but the counter-attack was still to take place, andanyway, there was his own take on the rights and wrongs ofwhat was going on. He would still rather the Beyonders hadthe information, if there was any useful information to be had, in the equation.

 Something glinted in space just over the horizon to the west,way out across the cloud tops. A ship, perhaps.

 Fassin returned his attention to the equation and the alientranslation suite. He applied one to the other. In the virtualspace which the gascraft's crippled biomind projected into his own mind, the image split and a copy of the equation appearedalongside the original. He watched the symbols shuffle andchange in the copy, turning into Dweller standard notation. Thesymbols on both copies of the equation flickered and high­lighted, turned different colours and seemed to swell out andthen lapse back in again amongst the rest as the equation workeditself out.

 It was truly an equation, too. He'd had some vague ideathanks to something that somebody had said that it might be afrequency and signal or something, but it wasn't that. Or if itwas it was very oddly disguised.

 The last few terms flicked and flashed on both sides of thesplit image. The answer appeared right at the end, blinkingslowly.

 It was a zero.

 He stared at it, at them.

 A zero in Dweller standard notation was a dot with a short line under it. In Translatory V, it was a diagonal slash.

 A dot with a short line under it winked at him from the copyof the equation. A diagonal slash lay at the end of the original, also slowly flashing.

 He tried again. Same result.

 He rechecked the image, pulled the hidden code out of itagain, in case the processor systems had made a mistake the firsttime.

 There had been no mistake. The equation he came up with the second time was the same as the first. He ran that one aswell, anyway.

 Zero.

 Fassin laughed. He could feel himself inside the shock-gelnested within the little arrowhead craft, chest and belly shaking.He had a sudden, vivid image of standing on the rocky shore of a planet, waiting for something. He stopped laughing.

 Zero.

 So the final answer was nothing. He'd been sent to the farside of the galaxy, had the answer with him all the time anyway,and what it was, was 'Fuck all'. But in maths.

 He started laughing again.

 Ah well.

 Another glint, out over the cloud tops again, nearly directlynorth, and high. A scatter of tiny lights lit up the sky just beneathwhatever it was that had just reflected the light. A hint of violet.Then white.

 He watched the same region of space for a few moments,looking for more. Whatever it was, it had to be fairly far away.If it was the same thing that had glinted earlier near the horizonthen it was something high over the equatorial zone, tens of kilo-klicks out.

 Zero. Well, that was illuminating. Fassin wondered if there really was a true answer somewhere, if what he'd found - what Valseir had stumbled onto and then what Fassin had unknow­ingly brought out with him after his long-ago delve - was partof a whole suite of decoy answers. Was there just this one, orwere there more? Was the mythof the Dweller List's famous Transform footnoted with hundreds of false answers?

 Well, if it was, he wasn't going to golooking for them. He'ddone his bit. He'd even, in a sense, accomplished his mission,when he'd thought it was never going to happen. He was toolate, and the result was a nonsense, a joke, almost an insult, but- by any given god you cared to name - he'd done it.

 He ought to start thinking about how he was going to getoff the planet, or at least get the information out there, just forform's sake. Share the indifferent news.

 Another couple of flashes from space, near where the firstcrop had shone. One tiny blink, one longer flare. A few momentslater what looked like a ship's drive lit up and floated away,gathering speed quickly.

 Fassin looked for evidence of any Shared Facility satellites,or indeed any Mercatorial hardware anywhere aroundNasqueron. There didn't seem to be anything. He'd told AunLiss he'd try to ping a position between two Seer satellites, EQ4and EQ5, but the satellites weren't there any more. Hewondered if he could work out where they would have beenand so where the microsat that he'd suggested the Beyondersposition between the two might be. He looked inside thegascraft's memory, trying to find the sat schedules, dug themout, then fed in the local time and his current location.

 A position blinked on his field of vision, away across thecloud tops, a little off due north, some few kilo-klicks beneathwhere the recent activity had been. In line of sight now. Hedecided to treat this piece of luck as a good omen, and sent a signal saying he was back, so that, if nothing else, he'd havedone what he'd said he would do. He waited a while but therewas no acknowledgement, let alone a reply. He hadn't reallyexpected one.

 He wondered what was left of the Shrievalty Ocula, andwhether he should even try to report to it. He needed to dosome research into exactly how much had changed since theinvasion, see whether he was listed as dead, and whether he wasbeing looked for or not. Maybe people had forgotten about himin all the excitement.

 Fassin laughed again. Oh, if only.

 The whole E-5 Discon invasion, so they'd been told, was happening quite specifically because of the List and theTransform. If that was even partly, even slightly true, and hismission hadn't been hidden from the invaders, then they prob­ably would be looking for him, and quite hard, too, given thatthey might not have much time before the Summed Fleet crashedthe party.

 In a way the zero-result equation was a relief. The informa­tion he'd brought back was such that he didn't mind sharing itwith anybody and everybody. If it had truly told the locationof the wormhole portals it would have been the most crush­ingly awful burden he could have borne, an infinitely precious and probably infinitely deadly possession. He should be glad itwas a joke. If it had been the useful truth, if it had been whatthey had all hoped it was going to be, then almost certainly nomatter who he chose to tell would first torture him or at thevery least tear his mind apart to make sure he was telling thetruth, and then kill him to make sure he couldn't tell anybody else. He'd kind of hoped that the Beyonders might be morehumane than that, but it was a big risk to take.

 He'd be better just broadcasting the result, then disappearingif he could. Maybe the Dwellers would let him stay.

 Valseir. If nothing else, he ought to let his Dweller friendknow that the information they'd all been so concerned aboutin fact amounted to nothing more than a piddling little zero.Then there was the matter of telling Valseir that for this nothing,his friend and colleague Leisicrofe had killed himself. Not all good news he'd arrive bearing, then.

 Fassin looked up the StormSailing news service. There werefewer regattas than usual, thanks to all the interest in the war,and a lot of sailors who'd normally be on the GasClippers andStormJammers would be required to crew the Dreadnoughtsand other combat craft, but there were still a dozen meetingsgoing on at any one time throughout the planet. If he wasgoing to go looking for Valseir at regattas, he might have along search.

 He thought about contacting the City Administrator toarrange for transport - Y'sul would most likely be transferred back home to Hauskip city in a day or two, and Fassin could probably just accompany the injured Dweller back there - thenhe wondered if he ought to be more careful.

 Nobody seemed to have paid him much attention at all whenhe'd disembarked from theProtreptic, but that didn't mean hisarrival hadn't been noticed by somebody. Were there anyhumans - other Seers or anybody else - present in Nasq.?Somebody - Valseir? Damn this suddenly failing memory -somebody had told him there were factions and differences ofopinion within the Dwellers over the List and even the seem­ingly endemic, congenital disregard the Dwellers displayedtowards the rest of the galaxy's inhabitants.We are not a mono­culture.That had been Valseir, hadn't it?

 Would any group of Dwellers wish him ill, or somehow beunder the command of somebody who did?

 He called up the usually most reliable alien-watching service and accessed the global map. It was, for the first time since he'dbeen looking at it, completely clear. According to the display,there was not a single alien entity alive in Nasqueron. Thatappeared to include him, so his return hadn't been documentedyet, at least not by the enthusiasts who ran this service.

 He was being called. Quercer & Janath. He put the image-leaf back in its flank locker.

 -  Fassin. Anywhere we can take you?

 -Locally, hasten to add.

 -  Ship at our disposal. Favour owed.

 -That sort of thing.

 -   I don't know, Fassin replied. - I've been thinking aboutthat. Do you know any more about what's happening with theinvasion and the Starveling Cult forces?

 -   Getting reports coming in just now that there's been somesort of breakdown at some conference.

 -Firefight, bluntly.

 -  I'd like to find my friend Valseir, Fassin said. - I've sent acall, but no answer's come back. I thought I might find him ata—

 As he spoke, he thought suddenly of the RushWingSheumerith,the Dwellers hanging trailed on long lines behind the great long flexible wing forever powering its way into thehigh skies of Nasqueron. The RushWing. That was the other place Valseir had said he might be found.

 -   Yes, he told the truetwin. - I do know where you couldtake me.

 -   Be in-atmosphere, you realise. Not that quick.

 -Entirely used up our luck quotient bringing the ship into Nasq. unseen in the first place. Voehn ship, see. Nervous-makingsort of thing for a lot of people. Apparently.

 - That's fine, Fassin told them.

 They were scudding through the cloud stems under the topmost haze layer less than an hour later when the AM warheads wentoff. One was directly above them.

 'Oh, wow!'

 'Look at our shadow!'

 A minute later, what they would later discover had been the destruction of the great shipLuseferous VII cast part of a gianthalo of light all over the western sky. Quercer & Janath freelyconfessed to being terribly impressed.

 TheProtreptic tore serenely on.

 *

 The first twelve ships of the Summed Fleet streaked across the inner system of Ulubis at just a per cent below light speed.Kilometre-long black minarets girdled by fast-spinning sectionsloosing missile clusters, pack munitions, scatter mines, stealthdrones and suicide launchers, they lanced across the whole system in less than four hours, Nasqueron's orbit in less thanone and Sepekte's in fifteen minutes.

 Billions of kilometres behind them, on the same course anddecelerating hard, lay theMannlicher-Carcano and the mainbody of the Summed Fleet. Taince Yarabokin floated in her pod.In the VR command space of the battleship, there was some­thing approaching total silence as the entire command crew lay quietly listening to the sparse exchanges beaming back from thetwelve advance units darting across the system dead ahead.

 Taince was amazed at how nervous she felt. She could feel her body trying to exhibit all the classic signs of the fight-or-flight response, and the pod's bio systems doggedly counteringeach one. There was no doubt that this was an importantmission. It would, arguably, be the most crucial one she'd everbeen a part of. She was of sufficiently senior rank to have been briefed at the start on the strategic momentousness of what theywere being sent to do, but even so she was surprised how similarshe felt now to the way she'd felt on her first few combatmissions. You never fully shook off the adrenalin rush no matterhow many missions you undertook - the consensus was thatthe day you felt completely blase about a forthcoming engage-ment was either the day you were going to die or the day youshould resign your commission forthwith - but the way she feltnow was worryingly similar to how she'd felt before those earlymissions.

 Somewhere, her nervousness would be being noted, too. Evenif a live human medical officer wasn't watching her life signsnow, a program would be flagging her current state of anxiety as worth further investigation later. No privacy. Well, she'dknown that when she joined up.

 Taince took her mind away from these perplexing, almost embarrassing feelings and watched the data coming back fromthe lead ships.

 What happened now, what these twelve craft discovered ordidn't discover as they crossed the system at accelerated particle speeds, would determine how the next part of her life was livedout.

 There had been some odd energy and drive signatures from the system over the last few days, though nothing as bizarre asthe sudden commotion around Nasqueron a few days ago.Twenty-plus antimatter explosions. All but one, it looked like, spread around the planet in a neat if wavy circle. They'd deto­nated too far out to do any great damage to the gas-giant itselfor to its inhabitants, and the explosions had been very messy,almost as if they hadn't been functioning warheads detonating efficiently but rather twenty - very big - ships losing M\AMcontainment at exactly the same time. Then, a minute or twolater, an even bigger AM burst less than a light second out fromNasqueron, with the profile of something the size of the behe­moth ship they'd identified earlier getting thoroughly blasted.

 Then nothing, apart from the ambiguous maybe-leaving indi­cations.

 Because one plausible explanation that fitted most of the signs- no explanation anyone had come up with so far fitted all ofthem - was that the bad guys were pulling out. Nobody in fleetcommand really believed this was what could be happening -the Starveling Cult force had crossed decades of space to get toUlubis: they wouldn't turn tail and face the equally long trekback after just a few weeks, would they? - but it looked likeone of the more likely explanations.

 The data about to arrive would decide it one way or the other.

 The battlecruiser88, the advance squadron's flagship,collating the real-time intelligence of the spearhead-shapedforce and signalling it back to the main fleet, reported threeheavy craft within detection though not attack range of thefirst, point destroyer. It signalled two of the following cruisersto adjust their trajectories and prepare remote munitions,guided and dumb. Little comms bleed. Possibly this was just good discipline or marginally better tech than they'd antici­pated. Flank cruisers and destroyers reported a few missile platforms, firing at them, futilely, given their speed. A lot ofmines, well spread. Evidence of AM material still floating free near the planet Nasqueron, in a debris profile that fitted exactlytwenty ships having blown up at the same time eight daysearlier. One big debris field, still heading outwards from thegas-giant, spreading, consistent with a very large ship having been destroyed.

 A few other small enemy ships showing, the closestresponding to their passing, firing beam weapons. No hits. ThedestroyerBofors passed within a kilo-klick of a vessel of about the same size as it, identified it as a hostile before the other shiphad even registered the craft hurtling past and hit and destroyedit with a high-X-ray laser from its phase-modulation collar turret before the hostile had time to react.

 Halfway across the system now. Still just the three big targets.There should be hundreds.

 The four craft at the trailing end of the advance squadron's spear-point had time to spare while they nudge-deflected andpicked off some of the targets that the point and mid-body shipshad identified. They turned long-range sensors on the outersystem and beyond, in the general direction of the E-5 Discon,getting a straight-down look along that track which the main fleet had only ever been able to view at a ninety-degree angle.

 Drive signatures. Hundreds of them. Most of a thousandships, all heading for home, taking a slightly acutely angled routethat had hidden their drives from the main body of the fleet forthe last six or seven days.

 Half an hour later, it was like party time. The advancesquadron was almost all the way through the system, brakinghard to return in a few dozen days, and the small formationsof ships between them and the main body of the fleet had been ordered to forget about follow-up high-speed passes and start decelerating at their individual safe maxima.

 All the signs were that the system was almost clear of enemyships and the Starveling Cult's main fleet was in high-speedretreat back along roughly the course it had approached on.Even the three big targets were powering up now and heading in the same direction as the decamping invasion force. A few dozen smaller drives lit up as smaller, lighter craft got set tobail out too. There would be some clearing-up to do, and no doubt various mines and automatic munitions to try and keepthem occupied while the enemy fleet made its escape, butthere would be no main fleet engagement in Ulubis system,no mega-battle.

 Their orders were to retake Ulubis system at any cost andhold it. A fast, light force of a dozen or so ships might be sentto harry the tardier fringes of the retreating fleet and providecontinuing incentivisation for their speedy withdrawal, butthey were specifically not to risk chasing en masse for some decisive battle. They had already achieved victory. They were expressly forbidden from taking the slightest risk of throwingit all away.

 The command staff were celebrating. Taince lay curled in herpod, listening to her colleagues babbling with happiness andobvious relief. Various people talked to her, gabbing away abouthow the mere threat of their arrival could turn away a fleet threetimes the size of theirs, how they wished now they'd been withthe advance squadron, just to have seensome action, dammit, andhow they were probably going to get a heroes' welcome whenthey got to Ulubis. She tried to respond in kind, mustering expres­sions of tension released and fears assuaged and all the timepretending to pretend that she'd have preferred a proper fight.

 -  Vice Admiral?

 The image of Admiral Kisipt appeared in front of her, auto­matically displacing all the other images of celebrating crew.

 -  Sir. She tried to pull her thoughts away from the sick feeling inside.

 -  You must be pleased. We won't have to turn your homesystem into too much of a battleground.

 -  Of course, sir. Though there will be mines, booby traps,no doubt.

 -   No doubt. And I'm keeping a full sweep alert in operation between here and the system, just in case. Kisipt paused. Theold Voehn's head tipped to one side as he regarded her. -1 thinkit has been very stressful for you, anticipating what mighthappen when we got to Ulubis, yes?

 -  I suppose so, sir. Taince wondered if he'd already beenalerted to her earlier nervousness, if this was a conversation -even a kind of evaluation - inspired by that.

 -  Hmm. Well, the place doesn't look too badly shot up, judgingfrom the advance results. You ought to be able to relax soon.We'll need you for liaison and ceremonial duties mostly, I shouldthink. The Admiral made a smile. - That will be all right?

 -  Of course, sir. Thank you.

 -  Good. The Admiral made a show of looking around at theother images distributed about his own icon. - Well, I'd bettertalk to a few more people, calm them down, remind them there's still a job to be done. As you were, Vice.

 -Sir.

 The Admiral's image disappeared. Taince didn't bring any ofthe others to the fore, but turned away from the social spacealtogether for Tacspace.

 What have I become?she thought, staring into the darkvolumes of Tacspace, watching and not watching coloured linesmove and slowly extend, groups of figures, groups of shipstracing their way through the deep space skies bordering Ulubissystem.Iwanted a proper battle. Death and destruction. Iwanted death and destruction. I wanted the chance to die, thechance to kill, the chance to die . . .

 She stared into the awful emptiness as people celebratedaround her.

 What have I become?

 *

 Fassin felt restless as theProtreptic powered its way throughthe belts and zones of Nasqueron, heading for the RushWingSheumerith,riding high in the clear gas spaces between two haze layers in Band A. The ex-Voehn ship shredded clouds as it spedthrough the atmosphere, keeping just under the median cloud level. Quercer & Janath amused themselves by taking turns topilot in real-time and see by how little they could miss shavingthe edges of PlungeStems. This involved quite a lot of whoopingand the occasional softish collision, making the whole shipshudder.

 Fassin left them to it and floated away back through the ship,ending up in the chamber where their interrogation and the fighthad taken place. He looked round it, at the dent-seats andrestraints, at the scars and burn marks on the floor, ceilings andwalls, and could remember nothing about what had happened.He felt frustrated, even depressed. He floated back towards thecommand space, stopping just before he got there to look insidewhat appeared to be the commander's cabin, close to the flightdeck.

 The cabin was sparsely furnished and decorated. Fassinsuspected that it had lost a few bits and pieces to some of the more acquisitive alien-ship enthusiasts back at Quaibrai. Helooked at a square on the wall where something had beenremoved. TheProtreptic shook very slightly. A distant whoopsounded from the command space, a couple of open doors anda short corridor away. Fassin experienced a shudder of his own,and a feeling of something like deja vu, or Swim.

 Iwas born in a water moon,he thought to himself, knowing he was quoting something or somebody but not knowing whator who.

 Another shudder ran through the ship. High-pitched gigglesrang from the flight deck.

 Zero.

 -  Hey! Fassin! Quercer & Janath sent. - Call for you. Patch through?

 -  Who is it? he asked.
-No ident.

 -Human female voice. Hold on, we'll ask.
Zero, Fassin thought. Zero. Itwas a fucking answer.

 -  Aun Liss, name given.

 -Any bells rung?

 *

 The RushWingSheumerith, a thin blade across the dun sky,held no sign of Valseir. TheProtreptic went off to bag morePlungeStems, promising to return. Fassin flew the little gascraftwearily along the line of tethered, oblivious, wing-hanging Dwellers, waiting for a sign.

 In the end, the other gascraft was obvious. He spotted it froma couple of thousand metres away. The other device saw him at the same time and sent,

 -  Fassin?

 -  No, I'm a warhead. Who are you?

 -  Aun. See you've brought a gun.

 He'd taken a Voehn hand-weapon from theProtreptic, oncehe'd found an armoury that hadn't been raided for souvenirsby the ship enthusiasts of Quaibrai. Quercer & Janath hadn'tobjected. On the contrary, they'd advised him in rather toomuch detail on the differing capabilities and skill profiles of the various guns on offer when all he wanted was something robust, reliable and powerful that he could use to defend or kill himself with.

 So in his good manipulator Fassin now toted a chunky deviceof what Quercer & Janath had termed the CBE persuasion —Crude But Effective.

 He made a show of holding the charged weapon in front ofhis primary sensing band as he approached. - Yes, he sent.- It's a souvenir.

 He drew up by the other machine. It was about the same size and shape as his own, if in rather better condition, and orientedat ninety degrees, the vertical axis longer than the horizontal.It rode inside the cup of still gas behind the open diamondshelter trailing behind the RushWing, near the port limit of theten-kilometre wing. Wary - unable to be anything else - henoted that the two enclosures on either side of the one holdingthe other small gascraft were each occupied by large Dwellers who looked rather young to have given themselves up, eventemporarily, to a life of high-speed, high-altitude contempla­tion. The nearest few tether points beyond those on either sidewere all empty.

 -  Come on in, the other machine sent, moving forward untilits nose nestled into the inner surface of the diamond enclosure.He pulled in behind, wobbling in the sudden pool of still gasafter the howl of slipstream.

 They were almost touching. Most of the upper surface of the machine facing him turned transparent, showing somebody whocertainly looked like Aun Liss lying nearly fully prone in a high-gee seat. He saw her fight to raise an arm and wave, a grimexpression on her face that turned into a grin as she looked outat him. He de-opaqued what he could of his own gascraft's cara­pace, though the results weren't perfect.

 Fassin didn't even try to smile back.

 -  Think you could point that thing away from me? she sent.He saw her grin. - I realise this is the first time I've ever saidthat to—

 -  No, he sent back, still pointing the Voehn gun at her.

 -  ...Okay, she sent, smile vanishing. - So, welcome back.Good trip?

 -  No. You got a manipulator you can use in that thing?

 -  Yes. Won't claim I'm an expert, but . . .

 He moved his own gascraft forward until it was centimetresfrom hers. - Talk to me the old way.

 He saw her frown, then smile uncertainly. - Okay, she sent.- This might be a bit, ah...He could see her shifting her gazeto look down at her right forearm, lying squashed on the cradle-arm of the gee-chair. She looked like she always had, and at thesame time quite different. Hair dark, not blonde or auburn orwhite this time. The high gravity and her attempt to look at herarm as she worked the unfamiliar manipulator interface gaveher jowls. He was already fairly sure it was Aun, but he was still quite prepared to kill her.

 The manipulator came out slowly, unsteadily. Fassin kept hisown well out of the way, still holding the gun on her. The twobig Dwellers on either side hadn't made any move. The manip­ulator came forward and touched the hull carapace of his ownlittle gascraft, finger ends spreading awkwardly.

 In the end, he saw, she had to close her eyes to do it. Thefingers on the abraded, nearly insensitive gascraft's skin spelledout, . . . SS ( ) . . . SOL ( ) SOTL ( ). He could see her gettingfrustrated. He watched the expression on her face deepen intoa profound, eyes-tightly-closed frown as she struggled to makethe manipulator do exactly what she wanted. He felt tears prickhis eyes again. Though he could still shoot her, or himself:anybody.

 ... SO STL CRZY? she managed at last, and her eyes openedand she flashed a hugely relieved and pleased-with-herself smileat him.

 He switched the gun off.

 They rode together in the still ball of gas behind the cup of diamond, held on a deep curve of line behind the RushWing'sthin blade.

 -  Not us. That wasn't us. Not guilty. It wasn't even theStarvelings, murdering fucks though they may be.

 -  Then who did do it?

 -  The Mercatoria, Fass. They killed your people.

 -  What? Why?

 -  Because they found out that Sept Bantrabal had kept whatever they were sent that briefed you. They were supposed tojunk it from the substrate as soon as it was finished but theydidn't. It wasn't quite an AI like they sent to the Hierchon, butit had a lot in common. It was a big step along the way to atrue AI and it was onward-engineerable. That's why. The attackswe and the Starvelings were making gave them the cover, but
even if the truth got out, it would just reinforce how seriouslythey took the no-AIs thing.

 Fassin supposed it made sense. Old Slovius had always been looking for an edge, some advantage over the other Septs. Thatwas what had brought Bantrabal to its position of prominence over the years. It sounded plausible, sounded like somethingSlovius would do and browbeat his underlings into doing. Andcertainly he'd put nothing past the Mercatoria.

 -  And how do you know all this? he asked her.

 He saw her shake her head. - Spies everywhere, Fass, she told him, almost rueful. - We have a lot of friends.

 -  I'm sure.

 Did he believe her? Well, until further notice.

 The Beyonders had known about the List, about theTransform. Like, it seemed, a lot of people, they had knownlong before he had. He'd only discovered what he'd stumbledupon during that long-ago delve when he'd been told along with everybody else by the projection of Admiral Quile in theHierchon's palace. By then the Beyonders had long since sent their own fleet to the system Zateki, believing - like the Jeltick who had first deciphered the information he'd retrieved and had understood its significance - that the Transform was there, inthe Second Ship. And they'd already met defeat at the hands ofthe Voehn. Half the fucking galaxy seemed to have been buzzinground Zateki, searching for a ship that wasn't there, if it even ever had been, and meanwhile he'd known nothing.

 -  You could just have asked me to look for it for you, Fassintold her.- I'd have started the search for the Transform in Nasq.centuries ago if you guys had just fucking asked.

 She looked at him for a long time, an expression on her faceof...he wasn't sure: sadness, pity, regret, despair?

 -  What? he sent.

 -  The truth? she asked him.

 -  The truth.

 -  Fassin. She shook her head. - We didn't trust you.
He stared back at her.

 Fassin told her what he thought he'd discovered, what hebelieved he'd worked out. She didn't believe him.

 -  You coming with us?

 -  Can I? May I?

 -  Of course. If you want.

 He thought. - Okay, he sent. He thought some more.

 -  Though I've one last person to see first.

 *

 When the visitor arrived, Setstyin was water-bathing. This wasa new fashion, not unpleasant. His servant announced that SeerFassin Taak was here to see him. Setstyin felt surprise andelation, and a kind of delicious, if slightly grim, anticipation.

 'Tell Seer Taak I am very delighted indeed to welcome him,' hetold his servant. 'Ask him to wait in the upper library. Do all you can to make him comfortable. I shall be with him in ten minutes.'

 'Fassin! Wonderful to see you! I really can't tell you! We thought-well, we really feared the worst, I swear. Where have youbeen?'

 Fassin didn't seem to know what to say. 'I don't think you'd believe me if I told you,' he said quietly, eventually.

 The little gascraft floated in the middle of the library. The circular space was lined and floored with crystal stacks. Lightcame from a translucent ceiling and a single great door givingout onto a broad, rail-less balcony.

 Setstyin's house was in the city of Aowne, mid-gas in theequatorial zone. Deep orange and yellow clouds swung slowlypast the wide window.

 'You think so?' Setstyin said. 'Do feel free to try me. And, please, is there anything I can do? Come, let's sit.'

 They rested in a pair of dent-seats with a low table betweenthem. A rather more substantial and grand desk lay just to oneside.

 'Well, it's a long story I have for you,' Fassin said.

 'My favourite kind!' Setstyin exclaimed, gathering his longrobes about him.

 Fassin took a moment, as if collecting his thoughts. The fellowseemed, Setstyin thought, dulled, a little slow compared to howhe'd appeared before.

 Fassin told the suhrl something of his adventures since he'd last seen him, aboard the Planetary Protector (Deniable)Isaut.He also told him a little more of what he'd been doing before,as well, apologising for any hesitations or forgetfulness; he'dbeen through a lot recently and some memories were still sortof shuffling their way forward into the light again after beinglost. He didn't say exactly what it was he had been told to lookfor and bring back, and he wasn't able to tell the Dweller verymuch that happened after the Voehn attacked theVelpin, but he went into as much detail as he felt was possible.

 'I don't understand,' the Dweller said. 'You're saying youwere . . . you were in other stellar systems? You were on theother side of the galaxy? I...I just don't . . .'

 'I could not have been more sceptical myself,' Fassin said. 'Idid all the tests I could think of, but I certainly seemed to bein the places the truetwin captain claimed I was in.'

 'They can do wonderful things with fully immersive VR, youknow,' Setstyin said awkwardly.

 ‘I know. But this was either real or something well beyond even fully immersive virtual reality.'

 Setstyin was silent for a moment. 'You know - and please,don't take this ill — you do look rather, ah, beaten up, Fassmy boy.' The Dweller was looking at the various dents andscars that the little gascraft had picked up during its last fewmonths of use. The malfunctioning left manipulator arm hungawkwardly at the flank of the arrowhead, slightly out of true.Fassin felt almost ashamed of the gascraft's appearance, asthough he'd turned up in a rich gentleman's library in dirtyrags.

 'Yes,' he agreed. 'As I say, I won't pretend my memory is allit used to be. The gascraft's storage has suffered and my ownbrain doesn't seem to be as sharp as I remember it being.' Helaughed. 'But I know what I saw, what I felt and heard andtasted. I stood on rocks watching the swell-waves of a salt oceanbreaking, and I was really there, Setstyin. Iwas there.'

 The Dweller ruffled his sensory mantle and made the tinyup-and-down sigh-motion. 'Well, I'm sure you believe whatyou believe, Fassin, and I would always tend to believe you rather than not. However, many other people wouldn't be so forgiving. I'm not sure it would be a good idea to make too biga fuss about this.'

 'You could be right.'

 'And...I mean to say...If this wormhole thing is so secret,why were you taken to - or apparently taken to - the far sideof the galaxy, or to anywhere . . . anywhere outside Ulubis?'

 'To prove the myth was real. Some people, some Dwellers,think it's time for change. They might not know all the details,but they want the truth known. Nobody wants to take respon­sibility for justtelling a non-Dweller, but some bumpkin mightbe pushed in the right direction. And that's me, I suppose;bumpkin number one.Deniable bumpkin number one.'

 'And this . . . travelcaptain? Who was he again?'

 'A truetwin.'

 'Yes, I've heard they often are. I didn't realise they evenpretended to travel so far afield. What was his - their name?'

 'You'll forgive me if I don't betray that confidence.'

 'Of course, of course.' Setstyin seemed to think. 'So, if thereis this, ah, wormhole thing near Nasqueron, who does it belongto? Who controls it? And, it has to be asked, where exactly isit? Aren't they rather large and obvious, these wormhole ports?'

 'They can be made quite small. But yes, you'd think peoplewould have noticed them by now.'

 'Well, yes.'

 'And I'd guess they're operated by a club or fraternity orsomething like the same sort of organisation that takes care ofplanetary defence.'

 'Hmm. That would be...fairly obvious, I suppose.'

 'That's why I came to you, Setstyin,' Fassin said. 'I wonderedif you'd heard anything about this, about a group of Dwellerswho used these portals.'

 'Me?' The Dweller reacted as though surprised, almostshocked. 'Well, no. I mean, none of this would be the sort of thing I'd normally get involved with. But, this would be quitesomething, would it not? I mean to say, if it turned out there was this wormhole here all the time. Wouldn't it?'

 'There are stories, myths, about a whole network of them.'

 'This Dweller List?' Setstyin paused, then stared. 'Is that whatyou were looking for all the time?'

 'Not the List, the Transform that was supposed to hold thekey to the List,' Fassin said.

 'And did you find it?'

 Fassin was silent for a moment. Setstyin watched the littlegascraft make a show of looking around the library. 'Is this placequite private? I mean, secure?' Fassin asked.

 'I should hope so,' Setstyin said. 'Why?'

 'Can we signal, rather than speak, Setstyin?' Fassin asked.'It's not as easy for me as speaking, these days, so bear with me,but it is more secure.'

 -  Of course, the Dweller sent.

 -  Well, I think I might have found the Transform, the humansent carefully.

 -  Really?

 -  ...Really.

 -  You will understand if I am a little sceptical.

 -  Only natural.

 -  Where did you find this Transform?

 -  On the body of that dead Dweller, in the Ythyn Sepulcraft,on the far side of the galaxy.

 -  Ah-hah. What ever was it doing there?

 -  It was in a sort of safekeep box.

 -  And who would put it there?

 -  I don't know.

 -  And what did this Transform consist of?

 -  An equation.

 -  As in mathematics?

 -  That's right. It looked a bit like what some people had cometo expect it to look like - a code and a frequency for a broadcastsignal of some sort - but in the end it was just an equation.

 -  And this was supposed to unlock the List thing?

 -  That's what we were all told.

 -  Hmm. But?

 -  But, when I solved the equation, guess what?

 -  Oh. Ah, I have no idea. Do tell.

 - It came out at nothing. Zero. The Transform turned out to be, in effect, a contrived mathematical joke.

 Fassin signalled a laugh.

 Setstyin shared the amusement. - I see. So, if this is what youwere sent to look for, you might be said to have succeeded inyour mission, though not in the manner you might have wished.Yes?

 -  Those were pretty much my thoughts, too.

 -  Well, at least you missed all the unpleasantness of this inva-sion your people have suffered. Thinking of you, I've beenwatching the situation. It all looks quite distressing. And stillgoing on. And affecting us, too. There were explosions around
Nasqueron just yesterday. Did you see any of them?

 -  I did. I hear there's a rumour that the invaders might beabout to pull out.

 -  Possibly our planetary defence people again. There havebeen the usual denials, of course. Umm, I'm afraid even if I didknow more, I couldn't talk about it. You understand.

 -  Of course. So, Fassin sent. - You don't know anythingabout these wormholes? You've never heard of them? I justthought, you being so well connected . . .

 -  All news to me, Fassin. Possibly some small group might have control of such things, though I find that hard to believe,frankly.

 -  Ah, well, Fassin sent. He was silent for a few moments.

 -  Yes? Setstyin sent.

 -  Well, Fassin replied slowly. - I did have an idea.

 -  An idea? Indeed.

 -  What if the Transform answer wasn't a joke?

 -  Not a joke? But it's zero. What use is that?

 -  You see, Fassin sent, and the little gascraft nudged forward afraction on the dent-seat, closer still to Setstyin, - I had thought,what use would an equation be, after all this time? How could ittell you anything useful? A frequency and a code to be broadcast on it was the only thing that really made sense; then these worm-
holes could be hidden anywhere in the named systems and onlyactivate themselves when needed. So the fact it was an equationat all made it kind of pointless even before it was worked out.

 -  I'll take your word for it, Setstyin told the human. – Youare rather losing me here, but it all sounds terribly convincing.

 -   And then there was all that absurd twisting and spirallingwhen I was aboard the ship heading through the wormholeportals. Being cut off from external senses seemed obviousenough, but why the spiralling?

 -   Umm, yes, in the ship. I see.

 -   And just the fact that all of Dweller society does seem like a proper civilisation.

 -   Now you really are losing me, Fass.

 -   And you obviously possess technologies that we still haven'tunderstood.

 -   Well, we're like that. Us Dwellers, aren't we? Oh dear, Ithink all this is upsetting my balance.

 -   You see, if the Transform means what it says, what it'ssaying is that the adjustment you have to make to each entryon the Dweller List to find out where the wormhole portals arein relation to those original locations named is...

 Fassin held the little gascraft's working arm out, invitingSetstyin to answer.

 The Dweller ruffled his sensory mantle, which had gone aslightly odd colour. - I'm sorry, Fassin, I feel positively dizzy.

 -   Nothing! Fassin sent. - The adjustment is zero.

 -   Is it? Is it really? I'm sure this is fascinating, really.

 -  And what was the original List based on, what did it give?
Again, he gave the Dweller a chance to answer, but he didn't.

 -  It gave the location of Dweller-inhabited gas-giants! Fassinput a sort of triumphalist joy into the signalled sentence.

 -  I see. I do feel slightly off, Fass. Do you mind if I . . . ?
Setstyin rose, wobbling slightly, and roted over to his desk.

 He started opening lockers and drawers, then glanced up. 'Keepgoing, keep going,' he said. 'I have my medication in here some­where.'

 The Dweller signalled to his servant while he looked through the drawers, keeping his signal pit below the level of the desk,out of sight of the human in his gascraft.

 -  Was Mr Taak armed in any way?

 After a moment: - No, sir. The house checked automatically,naturally. Aside from his manipulative devices, he is unarmed.

 -  I see. That's all.

 The arrowhead swivelled to keep line-of-sight with theDweller.

 -  The List doesn't need the Transform, Fassin told Setstyin.
- All you need to know is that the planets are the location.

 -  Really? Indeed. And how can that be?

 The little gascraft rose up into the air above the dent-seat.

 -  Because your wormhole portals are inside your planets,
Setstyin, Fassin sent calmly.

 The Dweller froze, then opened one last drawer. 'But that'sridiculous,' he said aloud.

 'Right in the centre,' Fassin continued, also speaking out loudnow. 'Probably of every single gas-giant you guys inhabit. Therewere only - what? - two million when the List was drawn up,that right? But that was long ago, and it was a historical docu­ment even then. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear you'dconnected up every last Dweller planet by now.'

 'I'm sorry, Fassin,' Setstyin said. 'You wouldn't convince achild with this. Everybody knows you need a flat region of space to make a wormhole portal work.'

 'Ah, that's the beauty of it. The very centre of a planetis flat,'Fassin said. 'Right in the very centre of a planet, of any free-floating body - sun, rock, gas-giant, anything - you're beingpulled equally in all directions. It's just like being in orbit round a world and feeling weightless. The only problem, of course, is keeping a volume of space open in the core of a planet or a sun or whatever in the first place. The pressure is colossal, almostbeyond belief, especially in a gas-giant the size of Nasq., but in the end it's just engineering. Hey, you guys have had ten billionyears to get good at that sort of stuff. Anything that isn't impos­sible you learned to do easily when the galaxy was a quarter ofthe age it is now.

 'So you don't need to position portals in space where anybodycould see them or use them or attack them, you don't even needto leave your own planet to access them, you just head for somewell-hidden shaft that leads you down to the very centre of theworld. Maybe at the poles. That would be an obvious kind ofplace. And if you've got somebody aboard your ship who mightbe keeping track of where you're going somehow, you justthrow in all these crazy spirals and flash some screenage of spaceinto wherever you're keeping them, so they never can tellthey've gone down, not up, and have sunk into the core, notflown out into space.'

 'Ah, here we are,' Setstyin said, and pulled out a largehandgun. Suddenly perfectly steady, he aimed and fired beforethe little gascraft could react.

 The beams tore the arrowhead apart, slamming through itand sending it whirling back against a stack of library crystalsand then somersaulting over and over as Setstyin kept firing thegun, spreading fire and scattering wreckage all over the library floor. Wildly spinning pieces of debris were sent shrapnellingacross the glittering stacks, cracking spines and smashing crystalpages to powder. What was left of the little craft crashed intothe windows by the balcony, shattering the diamond as though it was sugar glass. Setstyin stopped firing.

 Debris pattered down. Smoke drifted, gradually suckedtowards the shattered window.

 The big Dweller roted carefully over to the broken window,keeping the gun trained on the smoking remains of the littlecraft as he approached.

 'Sir?' his servant called over the house intercom. 'Sir, are youall right? I thought I heard—'

 'Fine,' Setstyin called, not shifting his attention from thewreckage as he drew closer. 'I'm fine. Be some cleaning up todo in due course, but I'm fine. Leave me, now.'

 'Sir.'

 A warm breeze ruffled his robes as Setstyin floated out ofthe window and drew up almost on top of the guttering wreck.He prodded the ruined gascraft with the muzzle of the gun. Heprised part of the craft's upper shell away.

 He peered inside.

 'Fucker!' he screamed, and whirled back into the library,tearing through the gas to the desk. 'Desk! SecComms,now!’

 Aun Liss watched the man as his little craft, his second skin,was destroyed.

 Fassin winced just the once, twitching as though pained.

 Aun thought he did not look well. His body was thin insidethe borrowed fatigues and he was trembling slightly but contin­ually. His face looked much older than it had, pinched anddrawn, eyes sunken and surrounded with darkness. His hair, looking crinkled and thin, had grown a little while he'd beeninside the gascraft. His eyes and the edges of his ears and nostrils,plus the corners of his mouth, were red from the effects ofcoming out of the shock-gel - and having the gillfluid come outof him - after all this time.

 He turned to look at her. She was glad to see there was atwinkle in his eye, despite it all. 'So. Still think I'm crazy?' heasked.

 She smiled. 'Pretty much.'

 They sat in the bright, if cramped, command space of theEcophobian,a Beyonder shockcraft, a medium-weight warshiphalf a light second out from Nasqueron, linked to the now-defunct gascraft via a twin of the eyeball-sized microsat whichhad been exactly where it was supposed to be a day earlier,when Fassin had pinged it from the high platform in Quaibrai.

 They were, amazingly, still receiving basic telemetry from theshattered gascraft, though no sensory content. The machine hadbeen very thoroughly blasted.

 On a side-screen, they had a freeze of the last visual that the little gascraft had sent: Setstyin levelling a sizeable handgun straight at the camera, a tiny sparkle of light just starting in thevery centre of the weapon's dark barrel. Fassin nodded at theimage. 'I hasten to add that that does not constitute standard Dweller hospitality.'

 'I'd guessed. Sure it wasn't because you just wouldn't shut up?'

 'I'm serious.'

 'You're serious? What do you call the guy with the big fuck-off gun?'

 'Aun,' Fassin said, sounding tired now. 'Do you believe me?'

 She hesitated, shrugged. 'I'm with your belligerent friend; I believe you believe.'

 The gascraft telemetry cut off.

 The Chief Remotes Officer leaned in, manipulating holos above one of the displays. 'That wasn't the gascraft totalling,'she told them, 'that was the microsat getting fried. Fast work. Suggest hightail promptly.'

 'Hold on to your hats,' the captain said. 'Sit well back.'

 They were thrown, pressed, then rammed back into theirseats as the ship accelerated, the command officers shifting tocontrol by induction rather than physical manipulation. Thewhole gimballed command sphere swung to keep the gee-forcespressing on their chests.

 'Wereyou serious, Mr Taak?' the captain asked, her voicestrained against the clamping power of the acceleration.

 'Yuh,' was the best Fassin could manage.

 'So there's a secret network of ancient Dweller wormholeslinking - what? - every Dweller gas-giant?'

 Fassin took the deepest breath he could and forced out, 'That'sthe idea.' Another breath. 'You send all we...got from the. . . gascraft to...your high command?'

 The captain managed to laugh. 'Such as they are, yes.'

 'Shit,' said the Defence Officer, his voice strained. 'Lock on.'They heard him breathing hard. 'It's fast! Can't outrun. In four­teen!'

 'Fire everything,' the captain said crisply. 'Ready DetachCommand. We'll risk adrifting, hope theImpavid's local.'

 'Need to yaw before the Detach or we'll be hit by the debris spray,' the Tactics Officer said.

 'Copy,' the captain said. 'Shame. Always liked this ship.'

 The ship wheeled wildly, Fassin blacked out and never feltthe explosive detach.

 The joltshipImpavid picked the command sphere up threedays later.

 *

 'Taince,' Saluus Kehar said. He grinned. 'Hey. So, so good to see you again.' He came up to her and put his arms round her.

 Taince Yarabokin had succeeded in producing a smile. She'dchosen an old-fashioned formal cap as part of her uniform andso had the unspoken excuse that she needed to keep this clampedbetween her elbow and her side for not being able to hug himback with any great enthusiasm. Sal didn't seem to noticeanyway. He pulled away, looked at her.

 'Been a while, Taince. Glad you made it back.'

 'Good to be back,' Taince said.

 They were in a hangar in the Guard Security Holding FacilityAxle 7, a triple-wheeled habitat orbiting 'glantine. Saluus hadbeen held there for the past couple of months while the author­ities had decided whether they really believed him about havingbeen kidnapped rather than having run away or even turnedtraitor.

 He'd consented to and undergone dozens of brain scans -more than enough to put the matter beyond any doubt in anordinary case, and of course he had connections and friends in high places who would normally have been only too happy tohave discreet words in probably quite receptive ears. But therehad been a feeling that this was an exceptional matter, that Sal was rich enough to have afforded technologies or techniquesthat would fool the brain scans, that the Starvelings themselvesmight have been able to implant convincing false memories, and-anyway - such a fuss had been made at the time when Saluushad, seemingly, gone over to the invading forces that to let himmeekly out just because it looked like he was blameless somehow didn't seem right.

 When Saluus had disappeared, apparently turning traitor,there had been strikes and attacks on Kehar family and commer­cial property and he'd been denounced by every part of theUlubine Mercatoria in terms that owed as much to finally havingsomething understandable to hit out at as to any moral indig­ nation. People who had called Sal a friend and been regularguests at many of his family homes had decided that they owedit to the popular mood and their intense personal sense ofbetrayal - not to mention their future social standing and careersto compete in out-vituperating each other in their condem-nation of his odious perfidy. The calumnies heaped upon Sal's absent head had amounted to a thesaurus of despite, an entiredictionary of bile. In the end he was kept incarcerated as much for his own safety as for anything else.

 -When the Starveling forces left and the Summed Fleet arrived,the general feeling of relief and euphoria pervading the Ulubissystem meant that news of Sal's shocking innocence tradedrather better on the floor of the public's perception, and it couldbe announced that he was to be released in due course. Mostpeople chose to recant their earlier expressions of hatred and condemnation, though it was still felt best for all concerned ifSal's return to public life and rehabilitation was gradual rather than abrupt.

 Taince had volunteered - pulled rank, indeed - to pilot Salfrom the Holding Facility back to the original Kehar family home on 'glantine.

 A Guard-major got Taince to sign Sal out of custody.

 Sal watched her signature on the pad. 'That's my freedomyou're writing there, Vice Admiral,' he told her. He was wearinghis own clothes, looking slim and casual and bright.

 'Glad to be of service,' she told him, then looked at the Guardsofficer. 'Is that us, Guard-major?'

 'Yes, ma'am.' He turned to Saluus. 'You are free to go, MrKehar.'

 Saluus reached out and shook the Guard-major's hand. 'Med,thanks for everything.'

 'Been a pleasure, sir.'

 'No clothes or anything?' Taince asked, looking at his emptyhands.

 Sal shook his head. 'Came with nothing, taking nothing away.No baggage.' He flashed a smile.

 She tipped her head. 'Pretty good at our age.'

 They walked to the small cutter squatting on the shallowcurve of hangar floor. 'I really appreciate this, Taince,' he toldher. 'I mean Ireally do. You didn't have to do this.' She smiled. His gaze flicked over her insignia. 'It is okay to call you Taince, isn't it? I mean, I'll call you Vice Admiral if you like

 'Taince is fine, Sal. After you.' She showed him up into thelittle cutter's tandem cockpit, settling him into the seat in front of and below hers. She fitted herself into the pilot's seat, clip­ping on a light flight collar and waking the small craft's systems.The Facility's flight control cleared them to leave.

 'So you're, what? System Liaison Chief?' Sal asked over hisshoulder as they were trundled under a door into a sizeableairlock.

 'Yes, well, it's pretty much all ceremonial,' she told him. Thedoor behind them closed, the lights in the lock dimmed.'Receptions, dinners, tours, addresses, you know the sort ofthing.'

 'Sounds like you're just loving every minute.'

 'I suppose somebody has to do it. Serves me right for beingUlubine.' Pumps thrummed, a rush of air and a deep hum atfirst, then after a while just the hum, sounding through the fabricof the cutter. 'No real fighting to do, anyway. Just clean-up stuff. I'm not missing much.'

 'Any news on Fassin?' Sal asked. 'Last I heard they thoughthe might be alive again. If you know what I mean.'

 The outer door opened silently to the stars and a great silvery-fawn slice of 'glantine.

 'Just give me a minute or two here, will you?' Taince asked.'Been a little while since I did this . . .'

 'Hey, take as long as you need.'

 The cutter edged its way out of the lock, stowed its gear,rolled very slowly and drifted away on little whisper bursts ofgas, heading towards the atmosphere.

 'Yes. Fassin,' Taince said. 'Well, they're still looking for him.'

 'I heard he'd been lost in Nasqueron and then reappeared.'

 'There have been rumours. There were always rumours. Ifyou believed them, he's been all over Nasqueron for the last half-year, never left, or been in the Oort cloud for the last fewmonths and just returned, or even wilder stuff. Plus he's been declared definitely dead at least three times. Whatever the truth is, he's still not here to tell it himself.' Taince rotated the cutter,lining it up for entry.

 'You think he is dead?' Sal asked.

 'Let's just say it's odd that he hasn't made himself known bynow, if he is still around.'

 They met the atmosphere a little later, pressed against the seatrestraints, a pink glow building then fading around the canopy,the small ship whistling in across a sequence of thin clouds,deserts and shallow seas, hills, scarps, lakes and low mountains.

 'Taking the scenic route, Taince?'

 She gave a small laugh. 'Suppose I'm just a sentimentalist atheart, Sal.'

 'Good to see the old place again,' Sal said. She watched himlean to one side, looking down. 'Is that Pirri down there?'-  She looked, checked the nav. 'Yes, that's Pirrintipiti.'

 'Looks like it always did. Thought it might have grown a bitmore.'

 'While since you've been home, Sal?'

 'Oh, too long, too long. Kept meaning to, but, you know. Must be ten or twelve years. Maybe more. Feels more.'

 They were high over the edges of the thin polar-plateau icecap, crossing into darkness, falling all the time. They could seestars again.

 She saw him looking up and around. 'You forget how beau­tiful it is, eh?' Sal asked.

 'Sometimes,' Taince said. 'Easy enough thing to do.'

 The glow in the sky faded around them. She watched thecanopy up the brightness, exaggerating the incoming light until they could see the starlight on the North Waste Land, the greatlong streaks of coloured sands and outcrop rocks, silvery ghosts,coming closer all the time.

 'Ah, right,' Sal said quietly.

 She tapped a few display icons, dimming the screens.

 'Thought we'd take a pass,' she said. 'Hope you don't mind.'

 'Old times' sake.' He sounded thoughtful, even resigned.'Well, why not?'

 Taince checked the nav again, lined the craft up and cut itsspeed a little. A light was blinking urgently on one of thedisplays. She turned that one off too.

 'I certainly haven't been back here since that night,' Sal said.She thought he sounded sad now. Perhaps regretful. Perhapsnot.

 The ruined ship showed up ahead, a little off to the right.Taince started the cutter on a long starboard curve, levelling outas she did so.

 Sal looked side-down at the desert, rushing past seventy-metres below as they banked. 'Wow,' he said. 'Quicker thanthat flier I borrowed from Dad.'

 'One of your own ships, Sal,' she told him.

 'This little thing?' He laughed. 'Didn't realise we madeanything this small.'

 'It's old.'

 'Ah. One of Dad's. More money in the big stuff.'

 They zapped past the great dark hulk. Its exposed ribs clawedat the sky.

 'Woo-hoo!' Sal shouted as the black wall of hull slid pasttwenty metres away.

 Taince zoomed, looped and rolled, levelling out again,approaching the wrecked alien ship once more for an even nearerapproach.

 'Who-hoh-hoh!' Sal said, seeing how low and close Taince was taking the cutter this time. Taince rolled the craft so thatthey were upside down. 'Sheeit! Wow! Taince! Yee-ha!'

 Right to the end she hadn't known if she'd actually do it ornot. She didn't really know the truth of what had happened,after all. She only had her suspicions. She could, despite every­thing, just be plain wrong. It wouldn't be the first time some­body had taken the law into their own hands and been proved to be hopelessly wrong, once all the facts were known. Fuck,that was what justice was supposed to be all about, that waswhy you had laws and everything that went with them, that was one of the things that made a society a society.

 But still. She did know. She was quite sure. It was his time.And if she was wrong, well, Sal had had his share. It wasn't likekilling a child, or a young woman with her life before her. Itwas still killing, still wrong, but there were gradations in all things, even circles in hell. And, frankly - right or wrong - at least she'd never know.

 It was her time. She knew that.

 She'd really thought there would be tears, but they stayed away. How strange not to know oneself, after so long, at suchan extremity, and so close to the end.

 What else? Well, she'd thought of telling him, of confrontinghim, of bringing it all back up again, of listening to him rage ator plead with or scream at her. That had been something she'd rehearsed a lot, that had been something she'd thought throughtime after time after time as she'd played and replayed this scenein her head over the years and decades and centuries, takingboth her part and his, trying to imagine what he'd say, howhe'd try to explain it, how he'd imply she was mad or mistaken.

 Ultimately Taince had just got bored with it. She'd heard it all before. There was nothing more to say.

 She was taking a man's life on circumstantial evidence, on ahunch. She ought to give him the chance to appeal. She oughtat least to allow him to know it was about to happen.

 But then, why?

 The cold sheen of desert and the vast impenetrability of thedark, ruined ship rushed up to meet them.

 'Shit, Tain—!'

 Sal might have tried to use the eject - it was one system shecouldn't disable from her controls - but then, that was whyshe'd flown the last bit upside down.

 In the end all it took was a single quick flick of the wrists.

 The cutter slammed into the side of the ship, just ten metresoff the desert floor, at about half the speed of sound.

 EPILOGUE

 There is, along the higher latitudes of the Northern TropicalUplands of the planet-moon 'glantine, in the system ofUlubis, a bird which, thanks to its call, people call a Hey-fella-hey.

 The bird is a migrant, a passer; that is, a bird that does notdwell in the given region but only ever passes through. The Hey-fella-hey passes through these latitudes in the early spring,heading north.

 It was a cool day, mid-morning. Nasqueron, half full, cast a ruddy-brown light over the soft shadows of the day. Once, onemight have seen sky mirrors away to one side or the other,bringing sunlight to us even when Nasqueron filled most of thesky above. However, many of these devices were destroyed inthe war, and so our little planet-moon is a literally gloomierplace now than it once was, returned, until new mirrors areemplaced, to its primitive state.

 I was working in the old formal pasture, wading deep in anexasperation of chuvle weed choking a - by now - almost hiddenpond and trying to work out what to do with the weed and thefeature (for both are pretty in their own ways) when I heardthe distinctive call of said bird. I stopped and listened.

 'Hey-fella-hey-fella-hey-fella-hey!' the bird sang. I turnedslowly, looking for it in the higher branches of the nearby trees.

 While I was looking - I never did locate the bird - I saw afigure walking along the high path towards the stream and the perimeter wall which gives out onto the slope holding - a littlefurther up - the ruins of the old Rehlide temple.

 I looked carefully, zooming in and trying to filter out theeffects of the intervening bushes and shrubs, because the figurewalked very like Seer Taak, who had been a long time gonefrom us. ('Us'! - always the same, hurtful mistake. There wasno 'us' any more, just a few sad remnants left behind at a house abandoned.) The figure disappeared behind a clump of thickershrubbery, though they would reappear shortly if theycontinued to follow the path.

 I thought. In retrospect, perhaps the person walking on thepath had been somewhat older than the gentleman I had beenpleased to think of as the young master. He was slightly stooped,which Seer Taak never had been, and he was perhaps too thin,plus he walked like somebody who had been injured in someway. So it seemed to me, at any rate. I would not claim to bean expert in such matters. I am but a humble gardener, after all.Well, a head gardener, but all the same. Still humble, I hope.

 The figure did indeed reappear, though not exactly where Ihad been expecting. Whoever it was had taken a side path andwas now walking almost straight towards me. They raised ahand. I raised a trowel, waved back. Itwas Seer Taak! Or - byall reason - it was somebody doing their damnedest to look likea rather more aged version of him.

 I clambered out of the pond, shook some chuvle weed froma couple of legs, and lumbered up the path bank to meet him.

 'Young master?' I said, dropping trowel, rake and spade andbrushing soil and weed-stems from my arms.

 The man smiled broadly. 'HG, it is you.' He was dressed inlong, loose, casual clothes, nothing like those of a Seer.

 'It isyou, Seer Taak! We thought the worst! Oh! For you atleast to be alive!'

 I confess I folded, going down on all eights, staring at thegravel of the path, overcome.

 He squatted in front of me. 'We never see what's in front ofus, do we, HG?'

 'Sir?'

 'HG, tell me you're not an AI'

 I looked up at him. 'Emotion? Was that it? I should have known that would give me away one day.'

 He smiled. 'Your secret's safe.'

 'Well, perhaps for now.'

 'Patience, HG.'

 'You imply that things may change? Or that I should justwait for death? We do not die easily. We have not been allowedto.'

 He smiled a slow, painful smile. 'Change, HG.'

 'You think?'

 'Oh, yes. All sorts of things are happening.'

 'I have heard something. They say there is a wormhole mouth,in Nasqueron?' I looked up at the great planet which seemedto hang over us, its vast circlet rivers of gas - cream and brown,yellow, white, purple and red — forever sliding in contrary direc­tions.

 Fassin Taak nodded slowly, thoughtfully. 'It turns out we wereall connected, all the time.' He picked up a pebble from the path, looked at it. 'The Dwellers may even let us use their wormhole network, if we ask them nicely. Sometimes. There is a furiousdebate going on in Dweller society even as we speak — and prob­ably for some time to come, Dwellers being, well, Dwellers -regarding to what extent the undying admiration of every even vaguely sentient species in the rest of the galaxy and possibly beyond could possibly constitute a general increase in the back­ground kudos level for all Dwellers, and therefore a valid reasonfor throwing open their galactic transport system to all.'

 'That would indeed be a great change.'

 'And not one that the Mercatoria would be allowed tocontrol.'

 'It would still be the Mercatoria.'

 'It can change too. It won't have any choice. Patience, HG.'

 'Well, we shall see, but thank you.'

 I looked at him. Fassin Taak did indeed look older. His facewas more careworn, the lines around his eyes deeper. 'Has allbeen well here, HG?'

 'All is well in the garden. The house . . . well, that is not myprovince.'

 Now he looked down. 'I took a look around,' he said. Hisvoice was quiet. ‘It was all very quiet. Very strange and quietwith nobody there.'

 'I try not to look at it,' I confessed, 'except sometimes atdawn and during the very early morning, when it looks muchas it always did: bright light upon it but no sign of life. That Ican bear.' I saw the image even as I spoke of it. 'I am lucky thatI have the garden to tend. By looking after it, it looks after me.'

 'Yes,' he said. 'We all need something to do, don't we?'

 I hesitated. 'Still, there is not a day goes by when I do notcurse my luck to have been stuck here rather than with themsomehow, when the end came. I envy the Head Gardener ofthe Winter House, where they all died together.' I pulled myselfup a fraction. 'But enough. And you, sir? What do you do these days?'

 'Please don't call me "sir", HG. I'm Fassin.'

 'Oh. Thank you. Well, what are you doing? And where? IfI may ask.'

 'Oh, I've gone off with the Beyonders, HG. I'm already acitizen of the galaxy, albeit slowly, without using wormholes.But, a start.'

 'And the Sept, Fassin?'

 'There is no Sept, HG. It's gone.' He threw the pebble backalong the path. 'Maybe they'll start another Sept - who knows?'He looked away in the direction of the distant house. 'Theymight fill this house, one day.'

 'You won't come back?'

 He looked around. 'Too many people would still want to askme too many questions, probably until I died.' He looked at me. 'No, I just came back here for one last look around. Andto look you up.'

 'Really? Me? Really?'

 'Really.'

 'I cannot tell you how gratified - no, honoured - that makesme feel.'

 He smiled at me and started to rise to his feet. 'This humility is a great cover, HG. I hope you can set it aside when the timecomes.'

 'I meant what I said, Fassin.'

 'And I mean this, HG,' he said, as he brushed down hisclothes, Nasqueron forever behind him. 'One day we'll all befree.'

  

 THE END