Harald acknowledged that with a slight tilt of his head, then added, "Though not entirely. We have both been subject to rather patronising supervision. I at least found the Fleet command structure so much easier to accept than did Yishna her regular psychological assessments."

"Oh that." Rhodane grinned. "She's on her fourth counsellor now. I wonder how long this latest one will last?"

"And I wonder what complete change of career she'll convince this one to make. The first two returned planetside to study physics, but I'm not quite sure what happened to the third one. Apparently he irritated her immensely, and that was about the last I heard."

"We'll be able to ask her directly—her comlink is now establishing."

The display before Rhodane divided so that it now showed Harald and Yishna both.

"Happy Assumption Day," said Rhodane.

"Yes, equally," Harald added.

Yishna smiled seductively. "It's a happy day now that I can apply myself completely and without interference to my research. My last psyche report was very good, apparently. I necessarily helped in writing it since my counsellor appears to be suffering a nervous breakdown. They're shipping him planetside soon and I suspect that, after a long rest, he will be taking an inordinate interest in cell biology…One for you, Rhodane."

"We are curious," said Harald. "What happened to your third counsellor—the one before this one? Didn't she seriously annoy you or something?"

"She suggested my intelligence was not as high as I myself rated it since it was undermined by my being emotionally retarded. It seems I made the mistake of becoming too involved in my research and not paying sufficient attention to her. She was therefore preparing to recommend to the Director that I be sent to the Threel Asylum, where corrective measures could be undertaken."

"What happened to her?" Rhodane asked.

"She's now a permanent resident of the Threel Asylum herself. My explanations to her of the nature of reality convinced her that there was no further point in her existing. She tried walking out of an airlock without a spacesuit, but since our mother's day the safety procedures developed have made that a difficult option."

"As if the asylums aren't full enough," muttered Rhodane.

"True," said Yishna, looking slightly discomfited. "What of yourself, Rhodane? How goes it?"

Rhodane replied, "Now that I am officially an adult, I can freely accept one of the offers that have been made to me. Standing at the head of the list thus far are researching bioweapons with Fleet, or pharmacology and xenobiology with Orbital Combine. There are numerous positions being offered planetside, but as you must know, they don't interest me."

"Which will you go for?" asked Harald. "I hope you realise that bioweapons is not only concerned with new and interesting ways of killing Brumallians."

"You would say that," interrupted Yishna.

Before this turned into an argument, Rhodane continued, "Whichever of those will get me to Brumal quicker. I have made them all fully aware of my main interest."

"What fascinates you so?" asked Harald.

"Filling the gulf in my head, Harald. But what fascinates you so much with Fleet, and you, Yishna, with the Worm?"

Harald shrugged, and Yishna replied, "We could always take the view that all life is empty, and so try to end it. We do what we do because we have interests beyond just our own personal existence. Why question this?"

"Because it is the one question we don't ask," came a new voice.

The display divided again and Rhodane and the others now looked upon the ravaged features of their brother Orduval.

"Happy Assumption Day," he added brightly. The shadows around his eyes had grown deeper since Rhodane last saw him, and his face appeared horribly thin, almost skeletal.

"Orduval," said Yishna in acknowledgement, but no more than that. None of them bothered to enquire after his health. Why ask about the blatantly obvious and force him to tell comforting lies? She knew that Harald and Rhodane felt as she did, both guilty and relieved. It was ridiculous really: Orduval had fulfilled the mental illness demographic for them of one in four being committed to an asylum, but that did not mean they were now immune.

"They are happening closer together now, aren't they," Harald pointed out succinctly.

"Three or four fits every day," Orduval concurred. "They won't tell me here, but it's not difficult to work it out. If the fits continue at their present rate of increase, and with their present adverse effects on my health, I'll be dead within a year, either from heart failure or a cerebral haemorrhage…But let us return to the questions we don't ask."

"Those being?" Rhodane asked, though reluctantly.

"Why are we what we are?" asked Orduval.

Rhodane felt the gulf in her mind widen, a sudden anger suffuse her, then pity. Orduval's mind was weak, though the impulse that drove them all to excellence lay as strong in him as in the other three of them. It was like strapping a rocket engine to a sand sledge: now this sledge was breaking up. Also, it could not have helped that his consuming interest lay in subjects with no certainty, no definition, which led to existential angst and pointless speculation. Rhodane now felt contemptuous, considering her brother ripe for plucking by one of the planetside cults or the dominant religion down there, the Sand Church.

"It has been interesting talking to you all," Harald was staring distractedly to one side, "but I have fusion-pellet injectors to strip and lengthy diagnostics to run. Stay well." His image blinked out.

"I too have much I must attend to, though I cannot detail it over public com," said Yishna, turned glassy-eyed. Her image also blinked out.

"And you next, Rhodane?" asked Orduval. "Some urgent need to go out and study skirls, or to clip your toenails?"

So easy for him to say such things while confined there in that asylum. She really did have things she needed to attend to. There were those research offers from Combine and Fleet… Rhodane suddenly found herself hot and sweating copiously. "I don't know what you mean."

"You do, because of the gulf in yourself, and because sometimes you ask those questions that hurt you."

Rhodane hesitated with her hand poised over the cut-off switch. With an effort of will she drew the hand back but, almost concurrent with that motion, the blackness in her head expanded. "I can't… Orduval."

"No, you can't, because you are constrained. You have no choice but Brumal, Rhodane. Once you get there, will you do something for me?"

"What… I…"

"Look into your gulf and admit to yourself what you see there."

Rhodane's hand slapped down on the cut-off switch, and it seemed that same switch operated simultaneously inside her head.

Now, back to those offers from Combine and Fleet…

McCrooger

Viral slippage…

Down on its side the pod moved in a way I recognised at once. Water slopping through the hole where I'd removed the hatch below the nose cone, now down beside me, confirmed that this had been a splashdown rather than a dustdown. I felt horribly sick but could not throw up, and feverish, while pain rolled through my body, yet was not centred around my greatest injury. I damned Iffildus and Earth Central, wondering if this was enough to finally tip the balance, then decided I must just continue without any expectation of death.

Iffildus was a haiman—a human highly augmented with computer hardware—an Earth Central agent and brilliant biophysicist who went rogue. Though the Spatterjay virus makes us practically immortal, as well as very strong and dangerous, on Spatterjay itself there is a natural substance, extracted from the bile ducts of large oceanic leeches, which can kill the virus. It is called sprine and is our get-out clause, our easy way out should the prospect of endless life become unbearable. The investigators supposed Iffildus did what he did because he felt hoopers to be a danger to the Polity. He mutated the virus using advanced nanotech to create a strain he called IF21. I received it in a bite from one of the leeches in his laboratory when I went to find him. Call it a mirror of the Spatterjay virus: it unravels where the original binds, it deconstructs, it produces sprine to kill the original virus, and it grows irrevocably. It is not yet certain that it will kill me, but then it is not certain that walking through the fusion flame of an interplanetary shuttle will kill; it's just very very probable.