He shrugged with exaggerated slowness. “Still, don’t be alarmed, Ms Demri,” he said. “I am just a humble functionary. Indeed technically I am still a student.” He smiled, still holding her gaze. “Two years ago they asked me to lecture; last year they began to call me professor, and now people come to me and ask for my help, and some invite me to visit them and advise them… oh, all over the Ghost.” He smiled. “But I am still a student; still learning.”

“Next year, the system?”

He looked puzzled, then favoured her with another broad, ravishing smile. “At least!” he laughed.

She couldn’t help laughing too, still gazing at him.

He wouldn’t look away. She held his gaze, drinking it in.

Eventually she started to consider being the one to break off because otherwise they might sit here like this for the rest of the day. Then the elderly guard approached again. He stood to one side and coughed.

“Yes?” Girmeyn said, laughing a little as he looked at the other man.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the elderly guard said, glancing at her. “The dinner this evening; the train is waiting.”

Girmeyn looked genuinely annoyed. He held his hands palms up towards her. “I must go, Ms Demri. Can I persuade you to accompany me? Or wait for me here? I would love to talk longer with you.”

“I think it would be best if I left,” she said. “I have to leave the Ghost very soon.” There was a voice inside her screaming, Yes! Yes! Say yes, you idiot! But she ignored it.

He sighed. “That’s unfortunate,” he said, rising. She got up too. They shook hands. He held her hand while he said, “I hope we shall meet again.”

“So do I,” she said. She smiled, still holding his hand. “I don’t know why I’m saying this,” she said, feeling her face, neck and chest go warm, “but I think you’re the most remarkable person I’ve ever met.”

He made a small, snorting laugh and looked down. She let his hand go and he put them both behind his back. He looked up at her again. “And you are the first person to make me blush in about ten years.” He bowed formally. “Till the next time, Ms Demri,” he said.

She nodded. “Till then.”

He started to turn away, then said, “Oh, you may have your records.”

“Thank you.”

He turned and began to walk away. She watched him stop, a couple of steps away. He turned back to look at her, his hands still clasped behind his back. “Why did you really come here, Ms Demri?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Something I just couldn’t get out of my head,” she told him.

He considered this, then shook his head once and walked away through a door set in the wall behind the desk, followed by his functionaries and attendants.

She stood there for a while, wondering exactly what it was she was feeling. Then the elderly guard approached, handed her a data chip, the HandCannon’s magazine and extra round, and saw her to the exit. As she walked towards the doors she looked out at the silent, glittering cavern on the far side of the glass.

For a few minutes she had quite forgotten it existed.

She caught the next tube to Trench City and sat on the train with a big grin on her face, awash with a strange, exhilarating feeling that she had just experienced something consummately important whose meaning was still hidden from her, but growing. It took an act of will to run the data chip she’d been given through her wrist-screen.

The records told her nothing. If there had been anything exceptional about the hospital where she’d been treated, or its staff or systems, she couldn’t find it. The First Cut mine itself had been just another mining complex, owned by the usual anonymous Corp which rented the shafts and remaining deposits out to the smaller cooperatives, collectives and entrepreneurs.

She gave up on the chip and just sat there, thinking of that enormous cavern and its mysterious, time-encrusted machines, the dark subniveal space they inhabited resonating in her like some awesome chord.

She dragged her all-girl ship crew out of an all-boy sex-show joint in Trench and left for Golter that evening.

“Hi, doll. Just replying to your message. Sure got us beat. We’ve made some inquiries into this Keep agency and got precisely nowhere. Looks brand new; no previous jobs, contracts… nothing. Best set of commercial references you’ve ever seen, but no pattern to them. Rumour is they put in a loss-leader tender for the book contract; had the other agencies changing their underwear on the hour, but nothing’s been heard of them since. No physical address and no record of who’s working for them, either. How the grisly twins you met in the tanker came to be on the pay-roll, we can’t work out. Can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t ask the Sad Brothers why they employed that particular agency, like you suggested, but something tells me you won’t get any joy there. Whole thing stinks. Much like the Sea House, come to think of it.

“None of us had heard of this Girmeyn guy or the Commonwealth Foundation. The public access records all look innocuous enough. I’ve started a legal look-see, but so far it’s coming drier than a bar in Temperance City.

“The info chip they gave you; if it’s that data-dense and unsorted, the only thing we can think of is hand it over to an AI; hire one or ask your cousin for a favour… though I guess you’d have to tell them what you’re looking for, which might not be so smart. Suppose you’ve already thought of that, though.

“Sorry this is all so unhelpful. Umm… We’re all fine; there doesn’t seem to be any monk-like activity nearby. We’ll be leaving soon. See you at the arranged place. Love from all. Well, apart from Cenny, maybe. Ah, shit…” Zefla made a pained face then shook her head. “Just call me Ms Tactful. What the hell; have a safe voyage. See ya, doll.”

The image faded inside the holo-screen. Sharrow realised she’d tensed up a little as she’d watched the signal; she let go of the seat’s arms, letting her body float within the chair.

The control and data-screens of the Charter Spaceship Wheeler Dealer glowed gently around her. The bridge, like the rest of the ship, was unusually quiet; the vessel was just past the mid-point of its journey to Golter, in free-fall a couple of hours before it would turn its engines back on to begin braking. Equally conducive to the relative hush was the fact that the ship’s two crew-women, who favoured heavy-duty industro-thrash music, were both soundly asleep in their bunks.

Sharrow stared into the unreal grey depths of the holo-screen for a while, then sighed.

“Ship?”

“Ready, client Lady Sharrow,” the computer toned.

“You’re not an AI, are you?”

“I am not an Artificial Intelligence. I am a semi-”

“Never mind. Okay; thanks, I’m finished here.”

A TROPHY OF A PAST DISPUTE

17 Conscience Of Prisoners

A warm rain fell on Ikueshleng. The private spacecraft Wheeler Dealer buttoned down through the darkness of Outer Jonolrey towards the fifty-kilometre diameter patch of sunlight that presided over the port. The ship lanced through the encircling clouds of drizzle, its dull-red glowing hull leaving a trail of steam behind it in the dark air, then glinting watery gold as it entered the cloud-filtered shaft of reflected sunlight beamed down onto the enclave from the orbiting mirrors.

The craft puffed vapour as it adjusted its fall and flexed stubby legs. It thumped onto and rolled along a concrete runway on the outskirts of the port. It braked and turned, trundling towards a slowly pulsing holo showing continually descending red and green horizontal lines, stopping when it was in the centre of the holo.

The square of concrete beneath dropped slowly away, taking the ship with it.

“Shit,” Tenel said, glancing at the screen beside the lock door. “Spot check.”