“Sharrow; cuz! Hello!”

The bar of the hotel was packed; Geis had to fight his way through the crowds to her and shout above the music thundering from the speakers to make himself heard. He was dressed in shorts and a light summer shirt that looked odd amongst the ski-suits and heavy winter clothes everybody else was wearing. He was tanned and looked fitter and better proportioned than Sharrow remembered.

“Hello, Geis. Geis; Miz,” Sharrow said, nodding from one man to the other. She saw Breyguhn moving through the press of people towards them. “Shit,” Sharrow breathed, looking away as she took her coat off. It was two years to the day since she’d last seen Geis, that night in the gold mine turned vault deep under the Blue Hills of Piphram. The last time she’d seen Brey had been even longer ago, at their father’s funeral.

“Mister Kuma,” Geis was saying, smiling thinly and drawing himself up. He nodded.

“Delighted,” Miz said.

“Sharrow,” Geis said, pushing between her and Miz. “Season’s greetings!” She turned her head, letting him kiss her cheek. “Great party!” he shouted. “Yours?”.

“No,” she said. “Just the hotel’s.”

Geis gestured to Breyguhn as she approached then turned to Sharrow. “Haven’t seen you since before the war,” he bellowed. “Had us sick with worry when we heard you’d been hurt. Why didn’t you answer my calls?”

“We were on opposite sides, Geis,” she reminded him.

“Well,” Geis laughed. “That’s all forgotten now…”

“Hello, Sharrow.”

“Brey; hi. How are you?”

“Fine. Enjoying yourself here?” Breyguhn wore a filmy white summer dress; her hair was up and artfully wisped and curled. She was carefully made-up and her face looked elegantly narrow. Sharrow wondered if she’d had surgery, or some grey-area genetic treatment.

“Yes,” Sharrow told her. “It’s been a good holiday. What brings you here?”

Breyguhn shrugged. “Oh,” she said, “a whim.” She glanced at Geis, who was smiling broadly at Miz while gesturing at the bar. “Not my idea,” Brey continued. “There was a family party in Piph and Geis suddenly decided it would be amusing to drop in on you and your friends and wish you Happy New Year. Nobody else wanted to come, but I thought I’d keep Geis company.” She shrugged. “It was a very boring party.”

“Piphram,” Sharrow nodded. “So that’s why you’re in your summer threads.”

“Like I say, it was all very spur-of-the-”

“Ordered some drinks,” Geis shouted, moving to shepherd them towards one corner of the packed bar. “Should be a booth over here for us…”

Breyguhn looked Sharrow down and up as best she could in the crush. “Anyway, you look well. Fully recovered from your war wounds?”

“Near as dammit,” Sharrow nodded.

“And how is the Antiquities business?” Breyguhn asked Sharrow as they moved amongst the merry, jostling warmth of the revellers.

“Pays the bills, Brey,” Sharrow said. They came to a booth being held vacant for them by a very large man in a formal suit and mirrored night-glasses who bowed to Geis and stood to one side. Miz winked at the bodyguard. They sat in the booth.

“Should be space for another three,” Geis said. “Your other team-mates are here, aren’t they?” he asked Sharrow, pouring from a huge pitcher of wine.

“They’re around,” Sharrow said, putting her coat, gloves and hat on the bench beside her. “Zef’s probably dancing. I’ll go and find her.”

“No, really,” Geis said. “There’s no-”

Sharrow slid out of the booth, past the bodyguard and away through the crowds towards the ballroom.

“Oh,” Sharrow said. She stared down at the message in the dust.

Miz looked too. “Very droll,” he said. He crossed the hotel room to the bar; he opened the cooler and surveyed the contents. “Very fucking droll indeed.”

Cenuij had gone pale. Sweat glistened amongst the hairs on his top lip. His hands shook as he touched the interior of the casing. “No!” he whispered hoarsely. He put one hand into the dust, stirring it as though searching for something else underneath, then raised the same quivering hand to his brow, and stared at the words engraved on the shining stainless steel. He shook his head. Zefla took his shoulders as he backed away and sat down, collapsing into a seat. He stared straight ahead. Zefla squatted at his side, patting his shoulders. He put his still shaking hands down into his lap. The dust left a mark on his temple.

Dloan shrugged and started packing away the equipment he and Miz had used to check and then open the lock on the book’s casing.

Sharrow turned back the frontispieces and the inside cover of the casing.

The Universal Principles, said the engraved legend on the titanium-foil cover in an antique version of Golter Standard script.

By The Command Of The Widow Empress Echenestria,

The Blessed Of Jonolri And Golter, To The Greater Glory

Of The True God Thrial, This Solar Year Six Thousand

Three Hundred And Thirty Seven, This Book Is Offered,

Being The Collected Dispositions Of The First And Second

Post-Schismatic Intervarsital Convocations (Historical,

Philosophical, Theological, Cosmological), Also The Last

Summation By The Condemned Un-Godly Machine

Parsemius, The Life-Elegies Of The Esteemed Imperial Poets

Folldar And Creedsunn The Younger, And The Presiding

Commentary Of The Court Sage System.

By Court Decree Maximal Made Perpetually Unique In The

Image Of The Single God-Head, These Are The Universal Principles.

The engravings on the four following pages of diamond leaf showed, firstly, a symmetrically spotted Thrial, followed by a diagram of the whole system, then a magnified nebula and finally a view of thin, bubble-like filaments and membranes; lines of tiny pits freckling the smooth hard sheet of cold diamond. Sharrow ran her fingers over the scratches of the second page.

“It might still be here,” she said. “Somewhere. Recorded somehow.”

Cenuij was silent.

Miz shook his head as he took a bottle from the cooler. “I doubt it, somehow.”

“Yes.” Sharrow sighed. “Actually,” she said, putting her hand into the book’s empty casing and lifting a little of the paper-dust in the bottom. “So do I” She let the dust run through her fingers.

“What about the message Gorko’s supposed to have left?” Zefla asked quietly, stroking Cenuij’s shoulder. “Has that gone too, if it was ever there?”

Sharrow shifted her focus from the lines her fingers made against the grey-brown dust to the three engraved words beneath.

“Oh, it’s here,” she said, staring at the sentence. “It was always here. It just wasn’t a message until Gorko used it somewhere else. But I think I know where he’s pointing us now.”

“You do?” Miz asked, looking surprised and pleased. “Where?”

“Vembyr,” she said. “The city where the androids are.” She let the case slam shut.

Zefla and Dloan were both involved in a complicated groupdance in the ballroom; Sharrow left them to it. She found Cenuij at the bar and steered him towards the booth.

Cenuij stumbled and almost fell over a table as they squeezed through the crowd. He laughed cruelly and told the people at the table it shouldn’t be where it was; how dare they move a table? Who gave them authority? So what if it was bolted to the floor?

She dragged him away. “You got drunk fast,” she said.

“Tell you the secret if you buy me a drink.”

“We have an early start tomorrow, remember?”

“But that’s why I started early this evening!” Cenuij said, gesturing wildly and knocking somebody’s drink. “Do you mind?” he snarled at the woman he’d bumped into. “People have to clean this floor, you know!”

“Sorry,” Sharrow said to the woman with a smile, pushing Cenuij onwards and then following him.