After millennia, or perhaps seconds, the subsidence stabilized. Track disengaged himself from the King's arms, spat, and rubbed his eyes.

'The whole bloody Snort's come down on top of ns,' he suggested.

Veronica bared his yellow teeth in the gloom.

'I don't think so, Captain. But someone — inadvertently, perhaps — has made sure that West Central won't hold spacers for some time to come, and we seem to be safe for the Moment. Look!'

At the further end of the tunnel, a blue light glowed. They walked toward it, brushing ineffectively at the filth on their clothes.

'If s a pusher's Galaxy, Captain Truck,' said the King complacently, eating white iced cakes and applying the traditional tourniquet to his upper arm with a stained silk necktie four centuries old.

The Party ebbed and flowed desultorily around them like a thick, landlocked sea as they sat in quaint inflatable chairs (vinyl gone yellow as a junkie's face with age, its transparency clouded) beneath the Renfield Street silos.

'Each in our own way, IWG and UASR, myself, even poor mad Grishkin and the masters of his idiotic religion, we keep people from remembering that they hurt, or that they are made puzzled and miserable by the immensity of the Galaxy, the irreversibility of their own humanity. It isn't a state that can last of course — ' He snickered at himself, licked pale crumbs from his blue, anoxic lips. 'Still, we never close, Captain. We make you feel nice.'

Fat worms of cable ran the floor of the abandoned cistern — one of the four that served Veronica's trade — to power the drying plants and chemical vats; and batteries of floodlights slung fifty feet up in a network of girders poured out a devastating heat. The King's court moved slowly and amiably, drenched with warmth, sleepy with it; the party had become introspective, like a frog in the sun.

'A pusher's market, and you're a prime commodity now. Alice Gaw needs you, so the Arabs must have you — oh, yes! Don't avoid the issue, Captain! Why else would Gadaffi ben Barka, nobody's fool and an astute commando, lead an absurd strike on an obsolete prison in a cold country? He's innovative, but not given to adventures.'

Truck was appalled by the speed of the King's intelligence operation. Eighteen hours had passed since the escape from West Central, and he had slept most of them away. Now he sucked on a knickerbocker glory, sweating a little, and meditated on price — the King being the King and information being another pusher's market.

'I hope they wiped each other up,' he said.

Veronica closed his eyes sleepily. 'It's unlikely. Both are survivors. Whoever exploded himself down there, it wasn't Colonel ben Barka. And remember: it was Alice Gaw's aide-de-camp who got caught in the "accidental" bombardment of Weber II; she'd been off-planet for five hours or more — ' He tapped his fingers to the sluggish tune in his blood. 'I wonder about Grishkin. If he was there as you say — '

'Grishkin!' Truck sneered.

'Ah.' The King opened his eyes again. 'Even he wants you, Captain. It was him who unearthed the — property — which makes you so valuable; among Openers, I'm told, the feeling is that this gives them prior right. Who's to gainsay them?' He sniggered slyly. 'The old lunatic has already built a myth about it. They're calling it the Ark of the Covenant, Captain. How does that strike you for Romance? The One Entrail of the Living God, brought from Earth during some ancient migration.

'As to whether Grishkin was mad before he entered the bunker on Centauri, I have no reliable intelligence.

'But don't underestimate him. He is as fanatical as the other two, he has as much to gain (if less to lose), and the Opener net catches odd fish on half a dozen planets.' His eyelids drooped, but failed to close. He watched Truck from two thin bright slits. 'A demented archaeologist,' he mused, 'and a strange device. And you with a gift of tongues. Could you lead an Opener crusade, Captain? Can you imagine yourself interpreting the Word for Dr Grishkin?'

His eyes snapped open suddenly.

'Oh, they all want you. Captain, but you're safe with me.'

Truck couldn't bear his cunning old gaze, or think of anything to say. He interested himself in the murmuring guests instead. Silence stretched out, white skin over junk bones. 'I suppose I'll have to leave soon,' he said, finally. No answer. 'I think that's somebody I know over there. It's been quite a party, though.' But the lizard's eyes were closed once more. Opiates being opiates, the King had fallen into a light doze.

He got up and hovered around indecisively for a minute or two. Nobody had taken any notice of his exchange with Veronica. He bit his nails, regarding unwillingly the King's withered limbs and pinched, evil old mouth in case the audience wasn't over; but it was, and he wandered off, feeling safe no longer.

Oddly enough, he had seen someone that he knew: Tiny Skeffern, squatting on the floor with an instrument he had stolen somewhere, while an electrically thin port lady with eyes like a surprised squirrel smiled possessively down at him.

'West Central?' he said when Truck asked him. He shook his head. 'Wait a minute, there was — No — I suppose I must have been there.' A smile spread hesitantly over his face. 'Eventually, you only remember the party,' he told himself, confronting with wonder the ineffable. 'But if you say so, Truck.'

The port lady was warning Truck off with a green, implacable stare. He cringed politically at her and led Tiny away, checking furtively over his shoulder for eavesdroppers. The lights had begun to poke consistently at one sore spot at the edge of his field of vision. His sense of discomfort and distrust grew moment by moment.

'Look, I don't think Veronica's going to let me leave. I'm not sure I know what to do. If he uses me to make a deal with the General — '

'Oh, he's a decent enough old boy,' said Tiny politely, yearning back toward his lady (who threw Truck a glance that would have debilitated a planet and stalked off, even her shoulder blades spiky with malice). 'Now look what you've done. Oh well.'

In the event, it proved harrowing but not too difficult. Truck hung back, convinced of his vulnerability but afraid to commit himself to the attempt to leave, for an hour or more. Then Tiny Skeffern drew his attention to a peculiar phenomenon. The fuel cistern was becoming unbearably oppressive, the party turgid and still, lifeless, tideless; a Dead Sea of humanity in which blank sweating faces floated obstinately, determined not to drown. The music faded, stopped on an unresolved chord; people shifted their feet and stared at one another. Truck detected profound swelling undercurrents; hot, irritated interfaces.

'My God,' whispered Tiny, 'I really think it's ending this time.' He studied the sluggish waves. 'He's misjudged it. Down here — ' He nudged Truck excitedly. 'It couldn't be stopped from outside. But down here the system's closed. Look at those faces! Truck, they're bored!'

The breakdown was quick and cruel. Aimless patterns developed as the guests blundered about the cistern to the invisible rhythms of their ennui; the heat poured down unceasingly, settled in the hollows of their collarbones; their party clothes became adhesive, rumpled. Silence, but for the shuffle of feet. Some of them lay down, the rest carefully trod on them, eyes fixed elsewhere. In the face of the overwhelming quiet, they condensed like a spiral Galaxy, tracking in to the center of the room.

'The port exit, if you want to go,' said Tiny. 'Over there.' And they set out to push their way through the congealing clot of flesh. Someone gripped Truck's shoulders: Horst-Sylvia, the biological sculptress, with her heaving coloratura bosom; yellow, motionless eyes stared into his own in passive, mute interrogation. Her jewels glittered. He dragged himself away.