“Vol, you got anything’ll make me sick as a lubber?”

“Sick as a lubber?” he said, looking puzzled.

“Yes!” she whispered, glancing out at the others. “Filthy gut-grenaded,throat-scouring, turned inside-out sick!”

Vol shrugged. “Too much drink usually does the trick,” he said.

“No!” she hissed. “No, something else!”

“Stick your fingers down your throat?”

She shook her head quickly. “Tried that as a kid; got it to work on my half-sister, but never on me. What else?” She glanced at the others again. “Quickly!”

“Very salty water,” Vol said, spreading his hands.

She slapped him on the shoulder. “Fix me enough for two.”

She turned and walked towards the door, hesitated, then bit her lip and put her hand into a trouser pocket. She pulled out a coin and clutched it in her hand as she went out to the others. They looked up at her. Miz was still scraping her jacket pocket clean of sauce; the comm set lay on the table covered in red, like something butchered.

She spread her arms. “Well, they still haven’t sorted out the situation, guys,” she told them. There were various mutters, mostly of disapproval. “They’re still talking,” she said. “But meanwhile the festivities continue; looks like another tour at least. We’re overdue at Embarkation Asshole now.” She sighed. “I’ll go phone a truck.” She hesitated, then went up to Miz and presented the coin in her hand to him. “Toss that,” she told him.

Miz looked round the others. He shrugged, tossed the coin. She looked at how it landed on the table. She nodded and turned to go.

“Yes?” Miz said pointedly.

“Tell you later,” she told him, and went back into the bistro.

“Thanks, Vol,” she said, taking the glass of cloudy water from him and heading for the toilet. “Phone us a military truck, will you?” she called. She took a preparatory sip of the salted water. “Yech!”

“Commander Sharrow!” Vol called after her. “You said make enough for two; is that all for you?”

She shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“Bleurghch! Aauullleurch! Hooowwerchresst-t-t!” she shouted down the toilet-hole, and for a few moments, as her stomach clenched again (and she thought, Hell, maybe this’s doing the little bastard more harm than the booze would have), she listened to the noises she was making, and remembered the game they’d been playing, and actually found it all ridiculously funny.

Zefla watched Sharrow looking at the facade of what had been the Bistro Onomatopoeia, and which was now an antique bookshop.

Sharrow shook her head.

“Oh well,” she said. She looked down at a coin she held in her hand. “Guess that proves it.” She put the coin back in her pocket. “You never can go back.” She turned and walked away.

Zefla looked a moment longer at the bookshop sign, then hurried after Sharrow.

“Hey,” she said. “Look on the bright side; we’re looking for a book, and what do we find in one of our old drinking haunts? A bookshop!” She slapped Sharrow across the shoulders. “It’s a good omen, really.”

Sharrow turned to Zefla as they walked. “Zef,” she said, tiredly. “Shut up.”

11 Deep Country

She sat at the window of the gently rocking train, watching the Entraxrln roll past outside, the airily tangled, cable-curved vastness of it and the sheer size of the twisting, fluted nets of the composite trunks making her feel tinier than a doll; a model soldier in a train set laid out on the floor of a quiet, dark forest that went on forever.

Here the Entraxrln seemed much more mysterious and alien than it did in Malishu; it imposed itself, it seemed to exist in another plane of being from mere people, forever separated from them by the titanic, crushing slowness of its inexorably patient metabolism.

From this window she had watched hours of it pass slowly by; she had seen distant clouds and small rainstorms, she had watched herds of tramplers bound away across the floor-membrane, she had gazed at trawler-balloons and their attendant feaster birds cruising the high membranes, she had caught sight of the high, dark freckles on the lofted membranes that were glide-monkey troupes, peered dubiously at herds of wild jemers loping across open spaces with a strange, stiff-legged gait, knowing that they would be riding the tamed version of the awkward-looking animals, and she had seen a single great stom black, somehow ferocious even as little more than a speck, and with a wingspan great as a small plane-wheeling around far above, effortlessly weaving its way between the hanging strings and ropes of growing cables.

Zefla sat opposite Sharrow, one elbow on the opened window-ledge, a hand supporting her head. The warm breeze blew in, disturbing the blonde fall of her hair. Her other hand held a portable screen. Her head rocked slightly from side to side in time with the creaking, flexing carriage.

The compartment door opened squeakily and Cenuij looked in.

“Welcome to nowhere,” he said, smiling brightly. “We just left the comm net.” He withdrew and closed the door.

Zefla looked vaguely surprised, then went back to her novel. Sharrow pulled out her little disposable phone. Its display flashed Transception Problem. She clicked a few buttons experimentally, then shrugged and put the phone away in her satchel.

Sharrow glanced at her watch. Another four hours on this train, another day on a second train, then two days after that they might just be in Pharpech if all went according to plan.

She looked out the window again.

“And this is the view from the back of the Castle; that’s looking south. No; north. Well, more north-east, I suppose. I think.” Travapeth handed the holo print to Zefla, who glanced at it and smiled again.

“Enchanting,” she said. Zefla passed the print across the conference table to Sharrow, who hardly bothered to glance at it.

“Hmm,” she said, stifling a yawn. She passed the print to Cenuij, sitting round the table from her. He looked at it. There was a sour, disgusted look on his face. He studied the holo as if trying to decide whether to tear it up, spit on it or set it on fire. Eventually he put it face down on a large pile of prints lying on the table.

They had hired a small office in a modern block in the city centre; Travapeth-clad in an ancient and grubby professorial robe that had probably once been maroon-had visited two days in a row, drinking large amounts of trax wine on each occasion and holding forth at some length-and with gradually increasing volume-on any and every aspect of the Kingdom of Pharpech that Zefla, Sharrow or Cenuij could think of.

Miz and Dloan, meanwhile, were tracking down any further information they could find on the Kingdom in data bases and publications; they were also completing the travel arrangements.

Zefla and Sharrow had been worried Cenuij would take exception to Travapeth’s bombastic demeanour; with Cenuij, things could always go either way when he met people who had as high an opinion of themselves as he did of himself. They had waited until Cenuij was in a particularly good mood before they introduced the two men to each other. It had worked; Cenuij seemed almost to have warmed to the old scholar, but today, after lunch in a private booth in a nearby restaurant, Travapeth had insisted on showing them the flat and holo photographs he had taken on his visits to the Kingdom, from the first time he’d gone there as a student fifty years earlier, up to his last visit, five years ago.

“Ah,” Travapeth said. He brought another carton of prints up from the floor at his side, depositing the carton on the table and delving inside. “Now, these are especially interesting,” he said, plonking the thick wad of prints on the polished bark table. Dust puffed out from between the holos. Sharrow sighed. Cenuij, a look of horror on his face, glanced beneath the table to see how many more cartons Travapeth had down there.