“Would they have been devastated about Mahalia, too?” I said.

“I doubt any of them knew her, to be frank.”

“One of the guards seemed to. Made a point of asking us about her. About Mahalia. I thought he might be her boyfriend or something.”

“One of the guards? Absolutely not. Sorry, that sounded a bit peremptory. What I mean is that I’d be amazed. Knowing what I do of Mahalia, I mean.”

“Which isn’t much, you said.”

“No. But, you know, you pick up on who’s doing what, which students do what. Some of them—Yolanda’s one—hang out with the Ul Qoman staff, but not Mahalia. You will tell me if you find anything out about Yolanda? You have to find her. Or even if you just have theories about where she is, please, this is terrible.”

“You’re Yolanda’s supervisor?” I said. “What’s her PhD on?”

“Oh.” He waved. “‘Representing Gender and the Other in Precursor Age Artefacts.’ I still prefer ‘pre-Cleavage’ but it makes an unfortunate pun in English, so Precursor Age is the newly preferred term.”

“You said she’s not smart?”

“I did not say that. She’s perfectly intelligent enough. It’s fine. She’s just … There aren’t that many people like Mahalia in any postgraduate program.”

“So why weren’t you her supervisor?”

He stared at me as if I was mocking him.

“Because of her bullshit , Inspector,” he said at last. He stood and turned his back, seemed to want to walk around the room, but it was too small. “Yes, these were the tricky circumstances under which we met.” He turned back to us. “Senior Detective Dhatt, Inspector Borlú. Do you know how many PhD students I have? One. Because no one else wanted her. Poor thing. I have no office at Bol Ye’an. I have no tenure nor am I on tenure track. Do you know what my official title is, at Prince of Wales? I’m a Corresponding Lecturer . Don’t ask me what that means. Actually, I can tell you what it means—it means We are the world’s leading institution for Ul Qoma, Besźel and Precursor Age studies, and we need all the names we can get, and we may even entice a few rich kooks onto our program with your moniker, but we are not so stupid as to give you a real job.”

“Because of the book?”

“Because of Between the City and the City . Because I was a stoned young man with a neglectful supervisor and a taste for the arcane. No matter that you turn around a little later and say ‘Mea culpa, I messed up, no Orciny, my apologies.’ No matter that eighty-five percent of the research still holds up and is still used . Hear me? No matter what else you do, ever. You can never walk away from it no matter how hard you try.

“So when, as happens regularly, someone comes to me and tells me that the work that fucked things up is so  great, and that she’d love  to work with me—and this is what Mahalia did at the conference over in Besźel where I first met her—and that it’s such a travesty  that the truth is still banned in both cities, and that she’s on my side  … Did you know by the way that when she first arrived here she not only smuggled a copy of Between  into Besźel but told me she was going to shelve it in the history section of the University Library, for Christ’s sake? For people to find? She told me that proudly. I told her to get rid of it immediately or I would set the policzai  on her. Anyway, when she tells me all that, yes, I got shirty.

“I meet these people pretty much every conference I go to. I tell them I was wrong  and they think either that I’ve been bought off by the Man, or that I’m afraid for my life. Or that I’ve been replaced by a robot or something.”

“Did Yolanda ever talk about Mahalia? Wasn’t it hard, you feeling like that about her best friend …”

“Feeling like what? There was nothing, Inspector. I told her I wouldn’t supervise her; she accused me of cowardice or capitulation or something, I can’t remember; that was the last of it. I gathered that she’d more or less shut up about Orciny in the years since she’d been on the program. I thought good , she’s grown out of it. That was it. And I heard she was clever.”

“I got the impression Professor Nancy was a bit disappointed with her.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. She wouldn’t be the first person to be a letdown in writing, but she still had a reputation.”

“Yolanda wasn’t into Orciny stuff? That’s not why she was studying with you?”

He sighed and sat down again. It was unimpressive, his lacklustre up-down.

“I thought not. I wouldn’t have supervised her. And no, not at first… but she’d mentioned it recently. Brought up dissensi , what might live there, all that. She knew my feelings, so she was trying to act as if it was all hypotheticals. It sounds ridiculous, but it honestly hadn’t even occurred to me that it was because of Mahalia’s influence. Was she talking to her about it? Do you know?”

“Tell us about the dissensi,”  Dhatt said. “Do you know where they are?”

He shrugged. “You know where some are, SD. There’s no secret about lots of them. A few paces of back yard here, a deserted building there. The central five metres or so of Nuistu Park? Dissensus . Ul Qoma claims it; Besźel claims it. They’re effectively crosshatched or out of bounds in both cities while the bickering goes on. There’s just not that much exciting about them.”

“I’d like a list from you.”

“If you want, but you’ll get it quicker via your own department, and mine is probably twenty years out of date. They do get resolved, time to time, and new ones emerge. And then you might hear of the secret ones.”

“I’d like a list. Hang on, secret? If no one knows they’re disputed, how can they be?”

“Quite. They’re secretly  disputed, SD Dhatt. You have to get your head into the right mindset for this foolishness.”

“Doctor Bowden …” I said. “Do you have any reason to think anyone might have anything against you?”

“Why?” He was very abruptly alarmed. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing, only …” I said, and paused. “There’s some speculation that someone is targeting people who’ve been investigating Orciny.” Dhatt made no move to interrupt me. “Perhaps you should be careful.”

“What? I don’t  study Orciny, I haven’t for years …”

“As you say yourself, once you’ve started this stuff, Doctor… I’m afraid you’re the doyen whether you like it or not. Have you received anything that could be construed as a threat?”

“No …”

“You were burgled.” That was Dhatt. “A few weeks ago.” We both looked at him. Dhatt was unembarrassed by my surprise. Bowden’s mouth worked.

“But that was just a burglary,” he said. “Nothing was even taken …”

“Yes, because they must’ve got startled—that was what we said at the time,” Dhatt said. “Could be it was never their intent to take anything.”

Bowden, and more surreptitiously I, looked around the room, as if some malevolent gris-gris or electronic ear or painted threat might jump suddenly to light.

“SD, Inspector, this is utterly absurd; there is no Orciny …”

“But,” Dhatt said, “there are such things as nutters.”

“Some of whom,” I said, “for whatever reason are interested in some of the ideas being explored by yourself and Miss Rodriguez, Miss Geary …”

“I don’t think either of them were exploring ideas  …”

“Whatever,” Dhatt said. “The point is they got someone’s attention. No, we’re not sure why, or even if there is  a why.”

Bowden was staring absolutely aghast.