“Well, thanks,” Fassin said.

“Nothing,” Y’sul said with a wave. He popped the giant pill.

· With your permission, colonel, Fassin sent to Hatherence.

· Granted. Take care.

“Excuse me,” Fassin said as he rose from his dent-seat. Y’sul didn’t hear; two of the leading GasClippers were having a private duel, swerving dangerously close, weaving in and out of each other’s course, trying to tangle field lines, steal wind and so eddy-wake the other into dropping behind or crashing out, and Y’sul was floating high up out of his seat, shouting and whooping with all the other spectators not yet in their own little narcotic world.

The Dweller — a youth by his simple clothing and certainly looking at least that young — intercepted Fassin on the broad central corridor of the Dzunda, falling into pace with him as he made his way towards the rear of the ship. Fassin turned fractionally towards his sudden companion, kept on going.

“Seer Taak?” the youth said.

“Yes.”

“Would you come with me, please?”

Fassinfollowed the young Dweller not to the stern viewing restaurant but to a private box slung low beneath the Blimper. The captain of the Dzunda was there, talking to an old Dweller who looked to be at least early Sage in years. The captain turned when Fassin and the youth entered, then — with a small bow to Fassin — left with the youth, leaving Fassin alone in the round, diamond-bubble space with the aged Dweller. A few screens showed silent views of the race. A float tray to one side carried a large narcincenser, grey-blue smoke uncoiling from it, filling thecabin with haze and scent.

“Is it you, old one?”

“I am still me, young Taak,” the familiar voice said.

The Dweller floated up to him. If it was Valseir, he was no more shrunken but rather more dark than the last time Fassin had seen him. He had lost all the life charms and decorations and was dressed now in severely formal, almost monastic yellow part-robes.

“You have the token I sent?”

Fassin handed over the little image-leaf. The Dweller looked at it, rim mantle rippling in a smile. “Yes, you still wear us away, don’t you?” He handed it back. “Take good care of that. And so, how was Oazil? I take it he found you at the house and you’re not here by coincidence.”

“He was well. Eccentric, but well.”

The old Dweller’s smile grew, then faded. “And the house? My libraries?”

“They are sinking into the Depths. What’s left.”

“What’s left?”

“A bit was missing.”

“Ah. The study”

“What happened to it?”

“The CloudTunnel started to get too heavy to maintain. I had the house decoupled. I cleared the study first. The tunnel section fell into the Depths.”

“And the contents?”

The old Dweller roted back a fraction, creating small roils of smoke in the haze. “You are still testing me, aren’t you, Fassin Taak? You are still not prepared to trust me that I am who you think I am.”

“Who do I think you are?”

“Your — I thought — old friend, Valseir, once choal, now acting like a Sage-child and hoping for the confirmation of my peers if I ever get to come out of hiding. Do you think I will ever get to come out of hiding, Seer Taak?”

“That depends.” Beyond the old Dweller, the GasClipper race continued, well ahead of the labouring Blimper. Screens relaying signals from camera jets showed the action in close-up. The sounds of distant cheers came through the open diamond-pane windows of the private box. “Why did you go into hiding?”

The Dweller switched to signal-whispering. — Because I thought to skim through what I’d traded you for the Expressionist paintings you had brought. I read a certain note at the end of a certain volume. Which reminds me that I must apologise. It was not my intention to seem to fob you off with three different translations of the same volume instead of all three parts of the one work. However, read that note I did, and came to the conclusion that what was being referred to was the sort of information that people die for, and most certainly will kill for. I decided to disappear. I became dead.

“Sorry I doubted you, Valseir,” Fassin said, moving forward and holding out two manipulators towards the old Dweller.

“Suspicious to the last,” sighed Valseir, ignoring the left manipulator and shaking the right with his own extended right hub-arm. “There; how humans greet. Are you satisfied now, Seer Taak?”

Fassin smiled. “Entirely. Good to see you again.”

— You must feel emotional pain, then. I feel sorry for you.

— I am trying not to feel too sorry for myself. Which is helped by getting on with what needs to be done.

Fassin had told Valseir about the attacks on Third Fury and Sept Bantrabal. Valseir had related his life since they had last met, a time dominated by the Dweller List in a way that even Fassin’s hadn’t been until recently. Most of that period he had spent in hiding, after arranging what looked like his own death with the help of Xessife, the Dweller captain whom Fassin had seen briefly earlier. He was an old StormSailor, a Jammerhand and Clipperine with a collection of trophies and medals that outweighed him. Retired now, pursuing a more contemplative course, content to take charge of a Blimper now and again just to stay part of the whole StormSailing scene.

· And what needs to be done, Seer Taak?

· I think we need to find that third volume. Do you still have it?

· I do not. However, it is not the third volume itself that is of consequence in this matter.

· Then what is?

· A note, a brief appendix.

— Do you have that?

— No.

— Do you know where it is?

— No.

· Then we may all, to use a human term, be fucked.

· I do know the direction it went in.

· That could help.

· You agree that it may be that important? That we may all be “fucked’ without it?

· Oh, we may very well all be thoroughly fucked with it, but without it, while people think this thing exists, they will do terrible things to anybody who gets in their way or isn’t being what they regard as a hundred per cent helpful. My minder here, an oerileithe Ocula colonel, tells me there’s a fleet of Mercatoria warships over Nasqueron. The excuse is they’re here to help pick up me and her, but I think they might have another purpose.

· Military intervention?

· The instant they think there might be a firm lead towards the List.

· Well, we must try not to furnish them with one. I must also try not to furnish my fellow Dwellers with an excuse for regarding me as the most terrible traitor for even thinking of passing on anything to do with the thing in question to alien powers, even if my own studies and those of many others indi-cate that the data being sought is hopelessly out of date or a fantasy, or both. However, I do need to tell somebody which direction to point in, or I may have to stay dead for ever.

· Fate seems to dictate that it’s me you tell. Where do I go?

· Ah. Now then. I must explain. When I realised what was being referred to in the note in the first volume, I naturally looked for volume three. Well, at least I did so after spending some days in a state of horror and rage, realising that through no fault of my own — save the usually harmless hobby of biblio-philia — I had potentially unleashed something capable of destroying much, starting with my own quite happy and content life. This episode over, I devoted myself to my search and discovered the volume eventually. I have never had such cause to curse my own lackadaisical approach to cataloguing. The relevant piece was in the form of a separate folder attached within the appendices. I myself took the original of the folder to a friend and fellow collector in the city of Deilte, in the South Polar Region, contained within a safekeep box which I asked him to look after for me, and not to open. In the event of my death, he was to hand the safekeep box on to somebody he in turn would trust not to open the box. A family member or some other trusted person would appear in due course carrying an image-leaf with a particular image in it. The one you now carry. They were to be given the box.