Fassin felt himself try to draw a breath inside the little gascraft. “We did come through a wormhole?” he asked.

“Excellent first question! Easily answerable in every sense! Yes.”

“We did. Though we call them Cannula.”

“Where is the Ulubis end — the Nasqueron end — of the worm-hole, the Cannula? Where is the Adjutage?” Fassin asked.

“Ah! He knows the terminology.”

“Most impressive.”

“And a very good question in one sense.”

“Couldn’t agree more. Phenomenally hopeless in another.”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Security.”

“Sure you understand.”

“Of course I understand,” Fassin said. Getting a straight answer to that one would have been too good to be true. “How long has the wormhole existed?” he asked.

The truetwin was quiet for a moment, then said,

“Don’t know.”

“For sure. Billions of years, probably.”

“Possibly.”

“How many others are there like it?” Fassin asked. “Imean wormholes; Cannula?”

“Ditto.”

“Ditto?”

“Ditto as in — again — don’t know.”

“No idea.”

“Well, some.”

“All right, some idea. But can’t tell. Conditions of Passage again.”

“Drat those Conditions of Passage.”

“Oh yes, drat.”

“Are there any other wormholes from Ulubis — from anywhere near Ulubis system, say within its Oort radius — to anywhere else?”

“Another good question. Can’t tell you.”

“More than our travelcaptaincy’s worth.”

“This one, to Aopoleyin; does it link up with a Mercatoria wormhole? Does one of their wormholes have a portal, an Adjutage, here too?”

“No.”

“Agree. Straight answer. What a relief. No.”

“And from here, from Aopoleyin,” Fassin said. “Are there other wormholes?”

Silence again for a moment. Then, “Seems silly, but can’t tell you.”

“Like anybody’s going to have just one stupid tube to this place.”

“But still.”

“Can’t say.”

“And that’s official.”

Fassin signalled resignation. “Conditions of Passage?” he asked.

“Catching on.”

“But why me?” Fassin asked. “Why you?”

“Why you what?”

“Why have I been allowed to travel here, to use the worm-hole?”

“You asked.”

“More to the point, Valseir, Zosso and Drunisine asked on your behalf.”

“How could we refuse?”

“So I couldn’t just have asked on my own behalf?” Fassin said. “Oh, you could have asked.”

“Best leave that hanging.”

“Attempt not to insult passengers.”

“Unwritten law.”

“Do you know of any other humans who’ve been allowed to use Dweller wormholes?”

“No.”

“No, indeed. Not that we’d know, necessarily.”

“Any other Seers?”

“Not to our knowledge.”

“Which is admittedly vague.”

“Okay,” Fassin said. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest, deep inside the little gascraft. “Do you make journeys through the wormhole often?”

“Define ‘often’.”

“Let me rephrase: how many times have you used the worm-hole in the last ten years standard?”

“Easy question.”

“To sidestep.”

“But — say — a few hundred.”

“Excuse our vagueness. Conditions of Passage.”

“A few hundred?” Fassin asked. Good grief, if that was true these guys were running round the galaxy in their hidden worm-hole system like subway trains under a city.

“No more, assuredly.”

“Are there many other ships like… ? No, let me rephrase: how many other ships in Nasqueron make regular wormhole journeys?”

“No idea.”

“Haven’t the haziest.”

“Not even roughly? Would there be dozens, hundreds?”

The left side of Quercer Janath briefly turned its shiny overalls transparent and flashed a pattern of high amusement over its signal skin.

The right side made the whistling noise again.

Fassin gave them time for a spoken answer, but it didn’t appear. “Are there a lot?” he asked.

Silence a while longer.

“There are a few.”

“Not a few.”

“Make what you will.”

“Again, vagueness to be excused. Conditions of Passage.”

“Thousands?” Fassin asked. No response from the truetwin Dweller. He felt himself gulp. “Tens of—?”

“No point going pursuing numbers uppage.”

“See last answer given above.”

He had no idea. There just couldn’t be all that many ships, could there? No matter how impressive your stealth tech, surely out of hundreds or thousands of ship movements within a system every year a few had to betray itself on some sort of sensor, now and again. No system was perfect, no technology never failed. Something had to show up. How far out did portals have to be? Fassin wasn’t an expert on the physics, but he was fairly certain that you needed relatively flat space, well away from a gravity gradient as steep as that round a gas-giant. Could their portals be as near to the planet as a close-orbit moon?

“And Nasqueron?” he asked. “Would it be a typical sort of Dweller planet in this regard?”

“All Places of Dwelling are special.”

“Nasqueron — Nest of Winds — no less special than any.”

“But yes.”

Yes. Fassin felt that if he’d been standing up in normal gravity asking these questions and getting these answers, he’d have had to sit down some time ago. Or just plain fallen over.

“Have you ever been here before, to Aopoleyin?” he asked.

Silence. Then, “No.”

“Or if yes, can’t remember.”

Fassin got something like Swim, that feeling of intense disconnection when the sheer implicatory outlandishness of a situation suddenly hit home to the unprepared human.

“And if — when — we go back to Nasqueron, am I free to just tell people where I’ve been?”

“If you remember.”

“Then yes.”

“Is there a reason I might not remember?”

“Cannula travel plays strange tricks, Seer Taak.”

“You’d try to remove the memory from my brain?” Fassin felt his skin crawl. “Human brains are difficult to do that sort of thing to without harming them.”

“We’ve heard.”

“Working on assumption nobody will believe you.”

“Don’t distress.”

“Might believe me!” Y’sul said, suddenly turning away from the screens he’d busied himself with earlier.

Quercer Janath bobbed dramatically, like they’d forgotten he was there.

“You’re not serious!”

“Not serious!” they yelped, nearly together.

Y’sul snorted and flashed high amusement. ‘Course not.” He turned back to the screens, muttering while chuckling, “What you take me for. Like life too much anyway. Hang on to my memories, thank you…”

* * *

The search went on. Fassin tried interrogating the Velpin’s systems to discover if it carried its own Dweller List, its own map of the unknown wormhole network, or even just the location of the portal they’d entered in Ulubis system to get here. The ship’s computers — easily accessed, barely shielded — seemed completely free of anything but the most basic star charts. The greater galaxy was mapped down to a scale that showed where all the stars and major planets should be, and that was it. No habs and no traces of megastructures were shown, and only the vaguest indications of Oort and Kuiper bodies and asteroid belts were given. It wasn’t like a proper star-chart set at all, it was more like a school atlas. The little gascraft had a more detailed star map. Fassin searched the ship electronically as best he could without making it too obvious, but found nothing else more detailed.

He supposed the real stuff must be hidden away somewhere, but had an odd, nagging feeling that it wasn’t. The Velpin seemed a well-built ship — by Dweller standards exceptionally well-built — with relatively sophisticated but elegantly simple engines and lots of power, no weapons and some carrying capacity. No more. The rudimentary star data somehow fitted.

Fassin tried to work out a way to commandeer the ship, just take it over. Could he hijack the Velpin? He’d spent enough time in the cluttered sphere of the ship’s command space to see how Quercer Janath controlled the vessel. It didn’t look difficult. He had, even, just asked.