“Prepping, they call it,” he said, maybe to himself or maybe to the picnic table. “Bloody kidnapping.” He snorted. “Putting people in their place, holding them there. Letting us build our dreams then puncturing them.” He shook his head, and drank from his shiny glass.

“Prepping?” Fass asked, to make sure he had the word right.

“Hmm? Oh, yes.”

“Well, it’s something that’s gone on for as long as anybody can remember,” Uncle Slovius said. He sounded gentle, and Fass wasn’t sure if Uncle Slovius was talking to him or to Great-uncle Fimender. He sort of half-listened while he pulled out one of the flier’s screens. If he’d been allowed to bring any toys he’d definitely have brought his BotPal and just asked, but now these damn adults were making him use a screen. He stared at the letters and numbers and things (Uncle Slovius and Great-uncle Fimender were still talking).

He didn’t want to have to talk, he wanted to tap-in like adults did. He tried a few buttons. After a while he got a lots-of-books symbol with a big kid standing next to it and an ear symbol. The big kid looked scruffy and was holding a drug bowl and his head was surrounded with lines and little moving satellites and flying birds. Oh well.

“Prepping,” he said, but pressed Text. The screen said:

Prepping. A very long-established practice, used lately by the Culmina amongst others, is to take a few examples of a pre-civilised species from their home world (usually in clonoclastic or embryonic form) and make them subject species\slaves\mercenaries\mentored so that when the people from their home world finally assume the Galactic stage, they are not the most civilised\advanced of their kind (often they’re not even the most numerous grouping of their kind). Species so treated are expected to feel an obligation to their so-called mentors (who will also generally claim to have diverted comets or otherwise prevented catastrophes in the interim, whether they have or not). This practice has been banned in the past when pan-Galactic laws (see Galactic Council) have been upheld but tends to reappear in less civilised times. Practice variously referred to as Prepping, Lifting or Aggressive Mentoring. Local-relevant terminology: aHuman rHuman (advanced and remainder Human).

And that was just the start. He scratched his head. Too many long words. And this wasn’t even an adult pedia. Maybe he should have found the not-so-big kids’ site.

They were landing. Wow! He hadn’t even noticed they were near the ground. The desert was covered with fliers of different sizes and there were lots in the air too and lots of people.

They got out and walked across the sand though a lot of people stayed in their fliers. He got to go on Uncle Slovius’s shoulders again.

Away in the distance in the centre of a big circle was a tower with a big blob on top and that was where the bad machine was which had been found hiding in a cave in the mountains and caught by the Cessoria. (The Cessoria and the Lustrals caught bad machines. He’d tried watching Lustral Patrol a few times but it was too much for old people with talk and kissing.)

The bad machine in the blob on top of the big tower was allowed to make a speech but it was too full of long words. He was getting bored and it was very hot. No toys! Uncle Slovius said “Shush’ at him, twice. He sort of tried to pretend-strangle Uncle Slovius with his thighs and knees to get back at him for going “Shush’ twice, but Uncle Slovius didn’t seem to notice. Mum and Dad were still talking quietly, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads at each other as usual. Great-uncle Fimender and the two old-lady girlfriends had stayed in the flier.

Then Lustrals in a flier — humans and a whule like a big grey bat — said things, then at last it was time and the bad machine was killed but even that wasn’t very good, the blob on top of the tower just went red and made lots of smoke and then there was a big bright flash but not that big or bright and then there was a bang and bits fell down, with smoke, and some people cheered but mostly there was silence, just the bang being an echo round the mountains.

When they got back to the flier Great-uncle Fimender had very red eyes and said in his opinion they had just seen a terrible crime committed.

* * *

“Ah, young Taak. Now then, what is this nonsense about not being able to delve properly, by which of course one means remotely?”

Braam Ganscerel, Chief Seer of Sept Tonderon and therefore the most senior Seer of all — and Fassin’s future paterfamilias-in-law — was tall and thin and maned in white hair. He looked younger than he was, but then he was nearly seventeen hundred years old by the most obvious way of reckoning such matters. He had a sharp, angular face with a large nose, his skin was pale, waxy and translucent and his fingers and hands were long and fragile-seeming. He habitually walked and stood with his head back and chest out, as though he had long ago vowed not to appear stooped as he grew into great old age and had gone too far in the other direction. This curious stance meant that his head was angled so far back on his neck that he had no choice but to look down his splendidly monumental nose at those he talked with, to or at. He held two long shining black staffs as though just returned from — or about to set off for -some particularly fashionable ski slopes.

With his long, bunned white hair, pale complexion and simple but elegantly cut Seer robes — black puttees, pantaloons and long jacket — he contrived to look appealingly frail, sweetly elderly, breathtakingly distinguished and only a little less authoritative than a supreme deity.

He swept into the senior officers’ mess of the heavy cruiser Pyralis in a clatter of clicks from his twin staffs and boot heels, attended by a pale train of half a dozen junior Seers — half of them men, half of them women, all of them greyly deferential — and, bringing up the rear, the gangly, smiling form of Paggs Yurnvic, a Seer whom Fassin had helped teach but who, having spent less time subsequently in the slowness of actual delving than Fassin had, was now older in both adjusted time and appearance.

“Chief Seer,” Fassin said, standing and executing a formal nod that just avoided being a bow. The heavy cruiser was taking their party to Third Fury, the close-orbit moon of Nasqueron from which they would delve — either all remotely, or, if Fassin had his way, through a combination of remote and direct presences.

Braam Ganscerel had insisted that his years and frailty made a high-gee journey to the moon out of the question — esuits, life-pods and shock-gel notwithstanding — and so the ship was making a gentle standard one gee, creating what felt like about twice ’glantine’s gravity and a fraction less than Sepekte’s. Even this standard gee, Braam Ganscerel let it be known, necessitated that he use both his staffs to support himself. This was, however, in the current grave circumstances, a sacrifice he felt it was only right and proper and indeed required that he make. Fassin thought it made him look like a stilter, like a whule.

“Well?” the Chief Seer demanded, stopping in front of Fassin. “Why can’t you remote delve, Fassin? What’s wrong with you?”

“Fear, sir,” Fassin told him.

“Fear?” Braam Ganscerel seemed to experiment with putting his head even further back than it already was, found it was possible, and left it there.

“Fear of being shown up by you, sir, as a merely competent Slow Seer.”

Braam Ganscerel half-closed one eye. He looked at Fassin for a while. “You’re mocking me, Fassin.”