Illusion.

Ig was keening. Dom opened his eyes and blinked. He was soaked in sweat. One arm ached.

At the far end of the cabin Hrsh-Hgn had been thrown like a doll across the gear locker.

'Isaac?'

The robot let go of the handrail that ringed One Jump's cabin.

'Rough, huh?' he asked.

'I feel like someone just hit me with something large, like a planet,' said Dom. 'Or a large asteroid. What's happened?'

'We're between stars. It looks as though the sundog dropped out rather clumsily.'

Dom floated up, trying to quieten his stomach. It appeared to be knotted. His head ached.

Hrsh-Hgn groaned and woke. 'Frghsss—' he swore.

'Sundog?' said Dom to the empty air.

Apologies. Journey interrupted owing to circumstances beyond control. Disturbance in interspace matrix space-frame. We must detour in datum space.

Isaac was glued to the deep radar.

'It's still several million kilometres away - it must be throwing one hell of an interspace shadow. It's taking its time. It's a cone - oh, my, will you look at that!'

They stared into the screen. On maximum magnification it showed a pyramid tumbling deceptively slowly through space, flashing faintly as starlight caught its polished faces. There was no mistaking the outline of a Joker tower.

Dom swam into the pilot seat and asked the sundog to take them in closer. In a few minutes they were a few kilometres away. The tower hung steady against a starfield that spun like a mad planetarium.

'The Institute of Joker Studies pays a million standards bounty for details of new towers,' said Dom, 'I want to catch it.'

'In a pig's eye,' said Isaac. 'That mass at that speed? It's a job for twenty sundogs.'

Right.

'Well, we can plot its course. There's a reduced bounty for that sort of information. We could split it three ways.'

Four ways.

'Okay, four—'

Dom struggled for breath. Something had caught him in a vice, and was squeezing hard.

He sensed the ship. He was acutely aware of the convoluted atomic structure of the hull. The little deuterium pile in the matrix computer sparkled like a witch ball left over from Hogswatchnight. Isaac was a coruscation of currents flowing over coiled alloy wire, suffused with the sickening feel of metallic hydrogen. The sundog brain throbbed dull purple with vague semi-thoughts.

Beyond the ship, beyond the tumbling Tower, he felt the other ship. It was waiting for him. Someone had known that he would pass under this area. He felt metallic hydrogen again - the feel of a robot mind.

He felt inside the sundog's mind. There was a jolt as its field polarized and the Tower receded instantly against the stars. For a moment he felt the rage of the mind in the other ship. Then it was gone, lost in the static as the dog sank gratefully into interspace.

And something withdrew from his mind, gently. He had time for a very brief feeling of loss, of the unfair restriction of a mere five senses ... then the reaction hit him.

He didn't fall, because there was no 'down'. But he hung bewildered, listening to the puzzled protests from the dog. Hrsh-Hgn and Isaac were staring at him. Then the phnobe took him gently in one bony hand and hauled him down to the bunk.

'I saw everything,' muttered Dom, 'Something was looking through me, there was an assassin waiting at that tower, you know...'

'Ssure,' murmured Hrsh-Hgn. 'Ssure.'

'Believe me!'

'Ssure.'

'He had a molecule stripper!' shouted Dom.

'Something made the sundog get the hell out of there,' admitted Isaac. 'Was it you?'

Dom nodded violently, and then added slowly: 'I think so. But—but just before, I saw... Would you believe I saw probabilities? I saw us powdered by that stripper. But that was in another universe. We escaped, in this one. Chel, I can't describe it. We haven't got the right words!'

6

'We have given this case a great deal of thought. We do, of course, find nothing to argue with in the purely geophysical reports put before us. We note that this world known as the First Sirian Bank is a planet with a diameter of seven thousand miles and a crust consisting almost entirely of crytalline silicon and some associated elements. We have also heard some delightful evidence from Dr Al Putachique of Earth, its import being that over the billenia earthquakes and so forth have caused the formation of billions of transistor junctions within that crust, forming by natural means the largest computer in the galaxy. We are of course aware that the Bank has for many years been used as the accounting-house and general information repository of most of the Human and near-Human races, and is officially Treasurer of the Star Chamber of Commerce.

'The appellant has asked for the legal status of Human. He wishes to be accorded the status of living creature. Is the Bank alive? By every definition he is not. That, at least, is what we have been told.

'But we disagree. It has been impossible for the Bank to be physically present here today, Roche limits being what they are, but this Chamber has spoken with him at length. Towards the end of this unusual interlude my colleague from Earth made a reference, I understand it to be from some kind of theatrical entertainment, to the fact that it seemed unfair that the merest virus should have Life while the Bank had none at all.

'We find it nowhere stated that an entire world may not be accorded the status of a living creature, or even of Human. It may be a trifle unusual, a little irregular. Nevertheless, let it be recorded that we find the First Sirian Bank not only alive, but possessed of a universe-view sufficiently advanced to call him Human. And may his orbit never grow less.'

His Furness CrAAgh 456°, Mediator, the Star Chamber, 2104. (See also Life: A Legal Definition by His Furness 456°.)

Dom dodged into a booth and waited a minute before glancing out through the clear crystal panel of the door. There were two or three thousand people in the central hall, but none seemed to have noticed him.

In front of him was a black crystal wall, studded with innumerable pinpoints of red light. They clustered thickly around a plain copper disc, set flush with the crystal. It hummed, said: 'Please state your business.'

Dom relaxed.

'Are you the Bank?' he asked.

'No, sir. I am a Teller, merely a comparatively simple servo-mechanical sub-unit.'

'Uh, okay. Then please transfer seventeen standards to the sundog racial account,' he said, while invisible eyes tactfully examined his retinal patterns, voice inflections, DNA helix and teeth.

'Transaction completed.'

'And I wish to notify the Joker Institute that I have located a Joker building, description and position as noted.'

He pressed a copy of the One Jump's log into a recess below the disc.

'Bounty will be paid on verification.'

Dom wondered if the assassin lurking at the tower had also registered discovery. He knew there had been an assassin. Somewhere in totality was a universe where Dom Sabalos was dead. But of course, there would be many such universes. According to p-math there was at least one universe for every probability, even the unthinkable ones.

'Business completed?' asked the disc.

Dom frowned. It was his first visit to the Bank, although it was officially his Godfather. The Bank sent him greetings on the appropriate ceremonies, like his minor 28th-year birthdays, and small, interesting presents like the gravity-sandals he was still wearing. The gifts suggested a thoughtful personality. The greetings cards told nothing at all, except that they were generally signed in crescive High-Degree Creapii IV, a favourite script for multi-dextral amateur calligraphers. The problem now was making contact.