From Huunos it was a hundred and thirty Dopplers to Mylamon and thence to Vivavaldi and Quia. Donald Souveroon kept his promise to Le Grant and just before they reached Quia delicately broached the issue of Vega with his captain. It was a difficult matter for both of them. The navigator seemed to regret raising the subject almost from the moment he first spoke. Without losing her temper or offending her colleague Quella in effect, coolly told him to mind his own business. Donald was really rather relieved. He had made his point and now it was her responsibility. He wished her luck and hoped she knew what she was doing…

From Quia they began to cut galactic north, trailing and rimward. Thus Quia to Esichra, Esichra to Lirito (and in the transit slipping out of the Gaftiz nebula). With the strip engines tuned once more for normal running at standard galactic Confederacy densities the captain and her navigator were happier. Lirito to Zanavaktim - Zanavaktim to the dust world of Soop. Soop to Xex. Xex to Moute where the endless casinos offered the ultimate gambling experience by accepting any stake up to and including life itself. Moute to Dyviss, heading all the while for the current heart of the Confederacy - the populations of lambda, sigma and iotans steadily decreasing as epsilon, omicron, zeta and regulars became the principal races, with the odd beta colony. Dyviss to Tomokon. Tomokon to Avarance.

It was at Avarance that the third death hit the Kalindy XII. The victim this time was Zaralova-Justa and it happened like this...

Avarance was a gas giant which had been colonised by the Mu. It was roughly the size and composition of Jupiter in the Sol system (their colonisation of which had commenced and then been aborted some one and a half thousand standard years before the regulars Emerged) and it was thus ideal territory for the floating sentient whale sized balloons whose natural habitat was the middle depth temperate belts of these enormous planets. For once, when Kalindy reached the high orbit dock, she wasn’t the largest craft. In fact by comparison with the huge vessels used by the Mu she was a small fish in a very big pond, but there were facilities here capable of handling regular ships because Avarance was used to tourists. They came from all over the Confederacy to sky surf.

Conditions were almost ideal for the sport. A high density, fast and heavy organic stream undercut the relatively calm methane dominated atmospheric layer where the Mu cities were stabilised. The weather systems of Avarance were such that for over three quarters of its year (nearly thirteen standard years) the wind blew with a steady and undiminished velocity, ripping and cutting in predictable but interesting tides that were stirred up by its seven large moons.

Sky surfing was a recent innovation of the regulars and it was only for the very rich. It bore a nebulous relationship to the sort of water surfing that had been practised on Old Earth for centuries but almost any child of that planet would have recognised its real origins. The were closer to a more humble pastime; skipping stones.

This was how it worked. Participants in sky surfing rode in specially designed craft called ‘boards’ for historical reasons. They were circular in outline and very thin in section with a raised bubble cockpit at the centre and were driven by jets of super compressed gas capable of delivering short but high powered bursts of acceleration. From the propeller balloons which the Mu of Avarance used for cargo transport between their aerial cities, the heavy boards were cut free and pancake flat at a height of several hundred metres above the rapid underflow. Once clear of the superstructure of the transport the pilot could open up his limited drive to maximum and by using a subtle control system of flaps and ailerons try to add as large a component of horizontal velocity as possible before hitting the heavy clouds. It was very important to strike the organic layer at precisely the right attitude and part of the etiquette of the sport demanded that the power be cut just before contact. If everything went well, the ship would bounce on the dense gas, cut through the thin air and bounce again. The object was to travel as far between bounces as possible and to achieve the maximum number of bounces. Two variants of the sport were recognised by sky surfers. In the easier and more popular form the pilot was allowed to use power to sustain his flight, but the purists preferred the more exacting skills demanded by ‘dry running’. All the heroes of the sport boasted of their longest flights made without touching the jets.

Quella was sitting in the Western Viewing Lounge of Centre 6 with Le Grant and Ulman, enjoying a brief drink and looking out over the cloud steams where the tourists were about to practice sky surfing themselves. Behind them the huge open room was tiered in twenty gradually rising steps where scattered tables were sparsely occupied by a sprinkling of omicron, sigma, epsilon and regulars. The ceiling was supported by thick columns of pink quartz which fan vaulted out into obscure cavernous ribbing. Dancing shadows cast by the flame lights made occasional bold forays down from their roof recessed nests to explore the mirror black stone floor. Everything was suffused in a dull orange glow barely bright enough to count as a dim twilight to regular eyes. The gravitational field was a numbing 2.1 g which despite the training they had all been putting in could never be comfortable for the Kalindy’s crew. Beyond the tall clear doors at the back of the lounge, great grey vaults gave hints of the truly vast Mu city. Occasionally massive silent black shapes would glide past - most probably members of the race that had built this Brombadnigian metropolis. Everything on Avarance was on an enormous scale with very little concession to regular perceptions of decent proportion. Even in this hospitality room, ostensibly designed for small world intelligences, the Mu just couldn’t build an intimate environment. It was exciting but daunting and energy draining.

In front of the crews table there was a huge window which sloped upwards and outwards. It was very thick and reinforced with an osmium fibre lattice to withstand the atmospheric pressure differential; not just as it was now but in deeper tropical layers the city could descend to. A bright flare outside alerted them to the drop of the first board. Falym was about to surf.

Below them a regular rippling in the gas flow travelled to the murky horizon. Occasionally a dark occlusion seemed about to surface or a quick movement ran counter to the ferocious current for a few seconds before dispersing. Quella shuddered briefly. She had been informed that there were species of animals native to Avarance which even the Mu were wary of. Some of the most dangerous lived in the organic pressure belt the sportsmen skimmed over. All the tourists had signed wavers aboard Kalindy. The indulged here entirely at their own risk.

The prince made a bad approach, almost belly flopping onto the crest of a wave. If he’d struck a trough like that he might have broken his board. As it was his craft flipped over and started to sink sickeningly fast towards the crushing depths of the planet. A waiting pickup propeller quickly closed and hauled the board ignominiously out of trouble before it could knife into the depths. ‘That’ll teach him to pay attention to his instructors’, the captain thought, not without a little pleasure. As the cruise had progressed her initial dislike of Falym had grown. There was a kind of sly arrogance and immature posturing he exhibited which barely concealed even nastier features of his personality she suspected lurked underneath.

There was another flare. Vega was dropping.

The subsonic and threshold frequency conversations of the Mu boomed unheard about the humans, only occasionally breaking into audible low intensity groans that rumbled duly after prolonged decays into profound silence. Like mice in the cathedral choir of some titanic angels they watched the waves outside roll slowly and vent their wispy spumes of high density organic gas. A secret place. Hypnotic, slow and ponderous, the ocean crests passed under the drifting city and skip, skip, skip, skip in agonising frame by frame dream motion, Vega achieved a spectacular five point bounce over the insubstantial surface. Tension relaxed and Quella joined in the clapping which Souveroon had led. “You’d think he’d done this before,” the young navigator remarked.

This was the third level of Avarance. If that ocean was the fourth, who knew just how many immiscible current density zones were driven round the planet by its star, internal heat and moons - five, six, seven? And the Mu only lived in the third, Quella though as she watched them retrieve Vega’s board.

There were patterns in the sea. Every eighth or ninth wave was almost twice the height of the others. Longer frequency semi regular periodicities suggested themselves but remained tantalisingly unanalysable. They watched in renewed suspense as Zaralova-Justa dropped from the bottom of the Mu balloon. Her performance was unexceptional but safe.

After a while, dramatic though the scene in front of them was, they gradually tired of it as is always the way with spectacular views no matter how arresting they may be initially. Drink flowed and the crew began enjoyable conversation - Vital Void cross ship gossip, Confederacy affairs and what they might see on the rest of the trip. Thus it was that they were only half watching the fatal incident at the start. Muffled by Centre 6 superstructure and the Western Viewing Lounge’s reinforced windows a relatively high pitched siren had been lowing a warning for some minutes. Later they learned that it was the II, IV tidal conjunction which would make surfing dangerous for the next half hour.

Zaralova-Justa dropped. The choppy gasses of the preliminary disturbance were already building their own rhythms into the waves but the tsunami caught all of the tourists unaware. And it caught Zaralova-Justa’s board broadside with jets firing frantically. Tumbling over like a last tiddlywinks counter flicked by a disgruntled child it arced and pancaked heavily into the succeeding trough in a stomach turning inversion. As they watched in horror it wallowed heavily for a couple of seconds before it was swallowed by the backup wave which was only slightly smaller. Although the Mu moved quickly it was too late. The creatures of the deep didn’t need long and they were used to catching third level native species surprised by the tidal dance of Avarance’s moons. When the board was momentarily visible on the other side of the wave, two black tentacles were wrapped firmly around it and in three seconds it had vanished into the pressures of the fourth density zone. The depths of Avarance had claimed their greatest victim; one of the Twenty Seven with her orb of office.

Ironically enough when the spirit if the deceased might most have appreciated the ceremonies of the nu, Zaralova-Justa’s Fellows had no way of bringing down the house of the dead. Avarance had demolished her board with its inhabitant in the crushing grip of its atmosphere far more effectively than they could have done.

There was no one to blame but the victim herself. Although an immediate enquiry was held by the Mu and a more extensive investigation was later conducted by a Confederacy delegation, no fault could be found with the warning system or with the victim’s knowledge of the dangers. Vital Void was absolved of all responsibility. Ship Law and the contracts that the passengers had signed before Sky Surfing proved sufficient for a complete defence. Certain facts gave the captain some cause for unease, however. Mainly she wondered what Vega had said to Zaralova-Justa when he had been the last to speak to her over the closed interboard intercom. To the investigators he’d consistently maintained that he’d only warned the nu to return to the city but with Mr. Big Eye’s suspicions in her mind the captain thought differently. She had no evidence though and no real idea just what she was looking for in any case.

The shock waves that ran through the ship seemed to be transmitted through the very fabric of space. Fast messenger drones were dispatched immediately and interest in the Kalindy which had recently subsided in the Gossip and Scandal Sheets was renewed and brought to the attention of the quality editors of ‘Big News’.

‘Ship of Death Arrives!’, the headlines bawled ahead of them as they phased into system after system. Lurid articles stressed that only half of the original tourists who had set out on the extravagant tour remained alive to enjoy the remaining stops; that one of them was a Vital Void Centrum member and that the loss of a member of the Twenty Seven so close to the coming Conclave had shaken Confederacy politicians across the known galaxy.

The normal practice would have been to elect a replacement at the slow rate of the tri annual Cross Confederacy Interchange from the Candidate Pool which the Twenty Seven updated and monitored continually. Custom demanded, however, that a Conclave have the full Twenty Seven representatives on the Alta-Tsey right from the start so a vote had to be organised immediately. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that many of the Twenty Seven were already in transit to Earth. To reach them all with the news and gather their registered votes, therefore, took some time.

Kalindy XII had travelled from Avarance to New Market II, the long haul of 368 Dopplers to Pirri-Pirri, to Shriek, to Liq, to Lost I (and out of the cloak of light the dying Gaftiz cast about it) to Norm, to Zibbuton (where the jungle fish played their coral harps) to Apotheosis and to Heton before the news reached the ship that the ruling body of the Confederacy was once more complete.

A small complement of Nu had remained aboard Kalindy when most of their Fellows left at Pirri-Pirri. Some of them were due to attend the Conclave anyway as official observers and others wanted to visit relatives in Nu colonies on their route. Vital Void, anxious to recover some public relations had of course agreed to let them continue the journey aboard the liner (which was in any case paid for). They received the news of the appointment with some satisfaction for another Nu had been elected - one Amparova-Kesta who was said to be from an even more liberal family than Zaralova-Justa had been. Not all agreed that she would make a good leader but she was considered the best of the Northern candidates. In general the Nu remained subdued without their erstwhile leader. They kept themselves to themselves and added no gaiety to an increasingly empty and disquieted vessel. Falym’s fellows seemed more raucous in the greater expanses of new estate land and harder for the stewards to control. That worried Quella and Le Grant.

But it was Theodore Vega who secretly worried the captain more. ‘He’s not a murderer,’ she kept telling herself whenever she talked to him. ‘It’s not in him.’

Yet perhaps Donald was right when he’d warned her against her own feelings after Huunos. There was no denying that she found Vega’s company attractive. He was no ordinary Waterweed Harvester. He was intelligent, well educated and witty with a strange mixture of empathic compassion for the alien worlds they passed through. Try as she might she could not get to the bottom of the mystery. Was she falling in love?

It was sixteen Dopplers to Cova where the glass beaches ringed the Acid Sea and a further twelve to Posaminion. Between Cova and Posaminion there was an ugly incident which left another death against the Ship’s name, but this time it wasn’t one of the tourists who was to perish.

Quella was woken from a deep sleep by the warning signal at her wrist. Vis Ulman had just finished a periodic psychological readjustment of the house and for a few seconds she stumbled round unfamiliar walls. One of Le Grant’s immediate deputies answered the acknowledgement from her personal terminal.

“The chief steward thinks you ought to see him. He’s at Karallel House.”

“This had better be worth it,” she grumbled to herself as she quickly threw on a black Kimono and began a fast paced walk to the rapid transit system. The gravel was damp beneath her feet from a recent sprinkling but she hadn’t bothered to don shoes or sandals. Like a warm yellow womb, the capsule took her half way down the hull integrity zone in a little over a minute and she emerged at the Lake Neriad stop reborn alert and confident.

A light breeze ruffled the lake and stirred little waves up to tongue the shore with the passionate sound of soft kisses. The heavy scent of rhododendrons drifted across the perfumed waters.

A steward was waiting at the driveway and he quickly ushered his commanding officer into a crimson curtained saloon on the ground floor of the ornate mansion. Inside all was far from peaceful. A small team of medical orderlies were clustered round a couch which had been turned into a makeshift operating table. A metabolic system monitor displayed the status of an unseen patient in holographic curves of green and red. The men and women conveyed a sense of anxious desperation which broke through their professional routine and did not auger well.

“How much longer?” someone asked.

“Perhaps four or five minutes,” came the reply.

Quella stood to one side as two more orderlies arrived pushing a protein detoxification synthesiser which was quickly hooked in to the fluid feed and the monitor. By edging round to the far side of the room she could see the patient’s face. It was bloodless and rigid but she recognised Rulla Louge. Le Grant entered the room from a narrow corridor to the left hung with tapestries of the waterfalls of Prymark IV.

“It appears there was a hunting accident,” he said. “Falym and his merry men were engaged in one of their periodic sporting exercises. Rulla got in the way of a stray shot from one of the men. The dart was tipped with corsindine. They say there is virtually no chance of saving her.”

“Cellular energy systems indicator down five points!” someone said.

“Better put in the retranque”

“Five or Ten?”

“Make it Ten”

“I take it we have the incident on record,” Quella said to Le Grant as they watched.

“I’d like to look over the visuals.”

“Unfortunately it seems there was an internal watch systems failure at the time. We’ve lost the log for the period in question. I’m more than a little suspicious it isn’t a coincidence.”

“I want to see Tyndal in the reference bridge at the start of the next watch then,” Quella said. “The chances are, this thing is a deliberate assault. If the loss of those records had to be arranged, someone had prepared this ‘accident’ and we must have a leak in security. I’ll want to know exactly who was on logging control at the time.”

“Of course it could be Tyndal himself whose been bribed to lose the records,” Le Grant murmured.

“Let me be the judge of that,” Quella answered firmly. Rumour and suspicion were natural but shouldn’t appear to be sanctioned by command. And of course there was always the thought that spreading false rumours might be of advantage to a real agent…. Whoever was responsible for this attempted killing (if that’s what it truly was) must have known that the loss of visual records would be highly suspicious. They must also realise that it would be the subject of a detailed investigation. Therefore they must either be very confident of their ability to conceal their tracks, or must simply not care. Although there was no obvious motive for anyone on board Quella had a pretty good idea who might have a hidden one. Rulla had been associating a little too closely with Falym and he was a dangerous man to cross…

“Vital signs below critical!”

“She’s gone”

The technicians voice was flat as he turned away from the monitor. Quella went over to the table to talk to the disheartened orderlies then turned away. There would be time for an hour or so of sleep before meeting her security chief. She was sure that now it was murder.

The reference bridge was suffused with the low level hum of technicians and machines at work. Quella found the ambience reassuring, reminding her that the business of the ship transcended the deaths of individuals. As horrible as the facts of the current case were, her duty was to the ship above all else and in that she could take some comfort.

Gary Tyndal was in his late thirties - a veteran of Core World Interplanetary Security where he had had an unblemished, if not exactly sparkling, career record. He was blonde and tanned and Quella knew that he fancied himself as a smooth operative, especially with his female colleagues. Now he seemed nervous and contrite but the psychological antennae which Quella had developed and trained in command gave no indication that he was guilty of anything more than carelessness in the execution of his duties.

“We know how he did it now,” he said, “and I shall identify the technician responsible before we reach Posaminion.”

“Good,” Quella said, “because that is where they will be getting off this ship.”

There was a pause

“I think I know what the motive was.”

Tyndal seemed almost diffident as he spat out this last sentence, a reaction she would not normally have associated with him. Quella sensed a conscious decision to carry on despite nervous reservations and his next words caught her by surprise.

“Our stewards pick up a lot of gossip from Falym’s fellows. Rulla was becoming something of an embarrassment to the prince. You see she was becoming jealous of you… She thought Falym was more interested in you than in her.”

He swallowed before continuing.

“She may have been right.”

And when it was laid out flat in front of her the idea was not completely preposterous… But it was not one she had seriously entertained before. It left her feeling curiously violated as though a malevolent surgeon had opened her up and placed a cold needle of disgust to some precise point in her heart. Falym might well be playing a very old game but it was not one in which he had received (or would receive) any encouragement from her.

“Thank you Gary,” she said dryly “I appreciate your candid appraisal and I shall bear it in mind.”

There were certain watch guard systems in Kalindy’s management protocols of which only the captain and the original programmers were aware. After Tyndal had left she signed on to main system control and passed through several secret command interfaces. It took nearly thirty minutes to establish a set of sophisticated backup trace logs. It would be interesting to see if anyone was caught in their web.

From Posaminion they travelled to the red giant star known to its epsilon dominated population as Illowa, the Fire God in one of their ancient myths. There were four separate habitable planets in the system : to have so many around one star was something of a rarity. On the second planet a deltan colony had been established some two hundred standard years ago. With their gamman servants they tended the scent gardens of Nâm-Kitrool which were famous throughout the Confederacy.

The deep red orb of Illowa filled half the sky. Quella sat on a granite rock next to Mr. Big Eye. Wide terraces covered in the thin wiry scrub of unta bushes and loopol stems descended in sculptured steps to the broad curves of the river Gyllu on which three black flat bottomed barges struggled slowly against the current, pulled by gamman rowers. No vehicle powered by a combustion engine was allowed within fifty kilometres of the garden border. The trace elements given off by the exhaust system would pollute the delicate air of the scent gardens. Gamman gardeners dressed in thin blue togas and white skull caps were scattered over the land. They dug round the bushes with their long claw like arms, weeding and mulching with a contemplative patience. All across the landscape, deltans were sprawled in orange and yellow splashes, like the droppings of some legendary gigantic and diseased bird.

“There gardens are a supreme experience for any one of my race fortunate enough to be able to cope with the climate,” Mr. Big Eye said. “Not all of us can, you know. The uplands of Freya are cooler than Nâm-Kitrool. This relentless heat can be somewhat uncomfortable after a while.”

“What do you think of the philosophy of artistic equivalence?”

Quella considered the question.

“I don’t think it stands up to much scrutiny”, she said.

“Nor me”, the deltan replied, “but I’ve seen it said that a trip to the scent gardens for a race sensitively equipped to detect direct chemical volatiles is akin to listening to a symphony for a regular. There is a rich undercurrent of crelua and thessalym odours, subtly counter pointed in this location by tones of hissamak and plenys."

Looking again at the surrounding terraces, Quella could see that they were not all uniformly cultivated. Here and there, amidst the unta and loopol, were low mounds of that heavy grey red earth which enriched the continent, each one planted with an alien species. Illowa seemed to slowly cook the juices out of them in a heavy but not quite windless air. The strange thing was that to Quella’s untrained nose the aroma of the place was not over strong. It smelt faintly of peppermints and camphor with perhaps just a suggestion of lemon.

“I think I would prefer the more visually dominated portions of the garden,” Quella said. The scent gardens covered an area of more than five hundred square kilometres from the ragged west coast of the continent, over the rolling chalk hills of Skine in the north, and south to the delta lands of the Gyllu. Each part of the garden had been skilfully planted with species which were suited to the particular locale, but they had also been chosen to emphasise the artistic and philosophical themes of their deltan designers. Because the deltans favoured sight as well as scent some regions were marked by marvellous palates of mixed foliage and subtle shades of flower.

“We shall move to the Oronion Arbour Zone tomorrow,” Mr. Big Eye said. “You will find that more to your taste. I am told that the sight of the purple flowering irrudel creepers inspired your regular poet, Christopher Hunter to write his famous sonnet ‘Elizabeth Waking’. We are lucky : they are in season.”

For some minutes Mr. Big Eye added nothing and Quella grew drowsy. She was on the point of leaving to rejoin a small party of the crew who were sitting in the shade of a wooden Rest Station, half a kilometre to the east when a new pattern of bright GalCon colours crossed its surface.

“Have you ever wondered why there has never been a major war between galactic races in the known history of the Confederacy?”

The question puzzled Quella.

“What about the Xarctic, Hamarath war?”

“Not part of recorded history,” Mr. Big Eye answered. “It’s more of a legend really. No one can identify either race or grouping today. Do you know when that war is supposed to have happened?”

Quella tried to think back. On Pyritt the tourists had been shown round some ruins which were reputed to be Hamarath hives abandoned for many millennia.

“Three quarters of a million standard years ago?”

“Some think that, but I believe the Huunos Academics who say that at least eight hundred thousand years have passed since the end of the Final Conflict. That’s an awfully long time to be at peace.”

“And since the legends also hint that the Confederacy was founded after the war I suppose that answers your question," Quella said. “The Confederacy keeps the peace.”

“Hmm”

Mr. Big Eye’s reply was the GalCon equivalent of qualified agreement. Without warning he changed the subject again. What’s he driving at, Quella wondered?

“Have you ever heard of the Slerrick Death Contract?”

“No,” Quella signalled, puzzled.

“Neither had I until ten standard days ago. I’ve been doing some research into the more obscure customs of the omicrons. Let me explain.

"Before the omicrons Emerged, they were a fiercely competitive species and they had to develop a number of sophisticated social checks to moderate an otherwise unbridled lust for power. Nowadays they are perhaps a little ashamed of this history and they seek to suppress it. But they can’t - at least not completely.

"The Slerrick Death Contract originated on the small island of Kuum and rapidly spread to the rest of the planet in the three centuries before Emergence. It was a method for raising finance which the most right wing of your old fashioned capitalists could never have openly endorsed. The deal was simple. Promises (or their omicron equivalent) were loaned to the debtor only on the understanding that if certain defined conditions could not be met within a specified time their life would be forfeit. Protocol demands that an omicron presented with the indisputable evidence of failure to meet the terms of a Slerrick Death Contract must commit suicide immediately, in the presence of the messenger. By doing so they would redeem the honour of their family and spare them from pursuit of the debt.

"In modern omicron society the Slerrick Death Contract has been outlawed but rumours persist that wealthy individuals have used it recently. I would make you aware of only two more facts. Firstly, suicide as a result of a Slerrick Death Contract is traditionally marked by the so called ‘carnivores teeth’. The tattoos of surrender to an even more ancient ancestral enemy are carved by the victim on his own torso before death.

"L’Rrantora was marked with the ‘carnivores teeth’. We have it on camera even though his fellows didn’t want to admit it. Once I’d seen the historical records I knew what it was.

"And secondly Vega was the last one to see L’Rrantora alive.”

“But surely. L’Rrantora was amongst the most successful of his species… I mean Corrin Pharmaceuticals are fantastically wealthy!”

“That’s not the point though,” Mr. Big Eye answered. “The terms of a Slerrick Death Contract cannot necessarily be settled in simple monetary terms. They must be met precisely as agreed. L’Rrantora had to take many risks to achieve the position he held in omicron society. I believe he took one risk too many.”

“But I can’t see what Vega would have to do with this,” Quella protested.

“Neither can I… Yet.”

It was one hundred and sixteen Dopplers from Nâm-Kitrool to New Squarrit where the ship was replenished and the tourists took a trip on the famous Tin Mountain railway. One hundred and fifty eight Dopplers ‘Closer In’ took them to Wesswathatryne and the sinister ‘singing statues’ of the frost forests. The giant grey stone caricatures of Confederacy races were covered in pale green lichens, dark green hanging mosses and spider web patterns of rime. In the cold southern mists near the pole of the tiny planet they would cry out from time to time with unprovoked eldritch moans. Quella found the experience not a little disturbing although she knew that many epsilon and etans considered it the epitome of High Art. Perhaps that was what disturbed her.

Another seventy Dopplers brought them to the Cradle World of Yverance.
Yverance was interdicted by Confederacy Law. Mr. Big Eye had arranged special permission for the Kalindy XII to visit, a feat of politics which must have been very difficult to pull off and which indicated that Vital Void had some powerful friends in the Twenty Seven.

Donald Souveroon passed control of the helm to the captain for the final approach to the system. The Guardians had insisted that the ship come no closer than the second moon of Gelm, a substantial gas giant at the edge of the Yverance system. Cutting the pseudo velocity to 0.05 Dopplers per hour, Quella finally allowed the automatics to drop them out of the last NoSpace transition within five million kilometres of Gelm, close to the safety margin for a planet of that mass. When the Kalindy had achieved a stable orbit about the pock marked rock which was to be its mooring, the passengers were transferred by shuttle to one of the Guardian’s own Stealth Observation ships.

The Guardians were alphans of course. The Confederacy had not always had Guardians but it had certainly had them for a very long time: and history recorded that for as long as there had been Guardians they had always been alphans. The Twenty Seven had delegated the important task of nurturing and protecting promising new worlds and races to the oldest known species within its community. Designated Cradle Worlds were protected by a permanently stationed fleet of Observation and Monitoring vessels from a Protection Commune (known informally to regulars as a PC)

The alphans (and the alphans alone) decided when a world was to be interdicted and when it was to be opened up (usually only after local Emergence but sometimes for other inscrutable reasons).

From the shuttle window the Stealth Observation ships glowed a deep red. They were shaped like the classical flying saucers in some old Earth nineteen fifties science fiction B movie. They were the classical flying saucers of Earth. An alphan Protection Commune had kept watch over the troubles of Earth for sixty thousand years after they declared it a Cradle World and evicted a small colony of Thrumb from India (a now extinct race already in descendency). By a nearly invariable precedent of history it was the alphans who were the first to contact human kind when they Emerged (and as a result acquired their regular name). It was the alphans who explained the structure of the Confederacy to humans and who taught them GalCon B. But the alphan mind is hard to fathom. Within twenty years they opened up Freya which had been interdicted by a PC for forty five thousand regular years, allowing human beings to be the first to contact gammans and deltans before they emerged. No one really understood this; least of all, humans, gammans or deltans.

All the surviving tourists and a hand full of fellows were treated as honoured guests on the alphan ship. Most regulars found the insect like morphology of the alphans disconcerting. Their body plan could hardly have been better designed to fit in with those wildly xenophobic alien invasion movies which were popular when their craft were most active in the nineteen fifties. Stubby residual membrane wings and multiply jointed teams of legs projected from a segmented exo skeleton. But beneath lustrous black pseudo chitin their hooded arc eyes shone with a sympathetic intelligence like burning sapphires or blue super giants at the centre of some Stellar Birthing cluster. In the dark corridors of their ships, alphan eyes made strange constellations as they rustled about their business.

It took ten hours for them to reach Yverance ‘proper’, the Cradle World at the centre of the interdiction.

“I get the impression you’re avoiding me.”

Falym was sitting next to Quella on the flight. The captain thought about what to say. It was true of course but maybe she had to play a bit of politics now.

“My work keeps me busy.”

“You should get out more,” he said, his voice carrying just a hint of mockery.

“Seriously, captain you must visit me more often on my estate. I know that you find time for Vega….I shall begin to believe soon that you are neglecting your duties as our host.”

Quella remembered Gary Tyndal’s warning. There was something deeply horrible about Prince Falym - a predatory sexual intent which lay not so much in the words as in the eyes and the smile. He had been brought up in a society where from earliest childhood, nothing had been denied him. It gave him a sinister self confidence overlying a swaggering brutality beneath. Quella’s training had taught her to acknowledge and confront her feelings and in the presence of Falym she had to acknowledge that she was a little afraid. But at the same time that she despised him, Quella could see why some women found him so attractive. There must have been many with the urge to tame or to surrender to that macho assurance. And in the same spirit of honesty with which she admitted her fear she also admitted that this power did not leave her entirely unaffected.

She held his gaze of a few cool and challenging seconds. At the same time she knew that some of the crew considered her liaison with Vega to be dangerously unprofessional. Souveroon had said nothing since Quia but his unspoken thoughts were always there and even Vis Ulman seemed to disapprove. Four deaths to deal with and this. Life was getting a little too complicated…

“You must dine with me”, she said. “A formal dinner.” And as he began to smile in triumph,… “I shall invite Mr. Big Eye and Theodore Vega as well. You are quite right. I must not neglect my duties.”

Before Falym could frame a reply they were interrupted by an alphan whose name in GalCon B translated roughly as ‘Significant Meridian’.

He, she or it, Quella didn’t know which gender was correct, had been engaged in conversation with Mr. Big Eye but now the creature had come to explain something of what they were going to see to the regulars.

“You may count yourself extremely fortunate to be granted the privilege of this visit,” Significant Meridian began with none of the usual fawning obsequiousness to which the tourists had become accustomed. “It has been three thousand standard years since anyone outside the Protection Commune has been allowed to visit Yverance. The Ylluma are at a finely balanced stage of their history as a sentient species. Even we only monitor them with great care and at a lower rate than we would like.”

The alphan went on to tell them that Ylluma society was currently fractured into a number of clans rather like “your nation states used to be.” The regulars learned something of the complicated politics of the planet : on the whole less interesting than its unusual culture which sprang from an amphibious biology. The phi were the only contemporary Confederacy species to have once filled a similar ecological niche. As Significant Meridian finished explaining the peculiar customs of Earth Married Ylluma and Water Married Ylluma the Stealth Observation ship began to descend into the clouds of an electric blue world and they were ready to see for themselves.
Seventy five percent of Yverance was covered by a shallow, salty ocean with the remainder being occupied by the large single continent of Macelle. Macelle was roughly rectangular, with its long axis running east to west and the southern most latitudes just crossing the equator. The eastern coast line was dominated by a range of low mountains which rose above a deep ocean trench where the planet had faulted. It sank slowly to the west through a number of gradually descending series of hills to finish in a long relatively flat region of river run out which the Ylluma called Osivia.

Macelle was a land of nearly continuous rain. In the east this fed a system of hundreds of rivers, giving rise to a complicated patch work of small lakes nestling in the hills. To the west, in Osivia, these lakes spread out to occupy almost all the lowland. The alphan captain allowed the base of his ‘flying saucer’ to become transparent from the inside. As the tourists crossed from west to east they could see the topography below them through the floor of the observation craft. The thin ridges of high land which separated the beautiful lakes reminded her of the roots of a gnarled old greater yew tree which had grown outside the Vital Void offices on Soor. These roots were rich with their own green vegetation.

They skirted the northern edge of a large body of water which Significant Meridian explained was the home of the San-eloath, probably the most powerful of the lake states of Osivia.

“Their crystal city covers half of the lake bed,” the alphan said. “They are technologically sophisticated. We listen to their radio broadcasts and we believe their language will probably become a universal standard amongst the Water Married Ylluma within a hundred standard years.”

“How close are they to Emergence?”, Quella asked. The alphan said nothing but flicked a switch which brought to light an indicator panel in the dark ribbed roof. Quella had once heard that the Protection Communes kept constant track of the E.T.E - the Estimated Time to Emergence - but she didn’t realise that it was always so readily available for display. This single variable was the focus of the Commune’s whole existence. All their data gathering went in to its calculation as though Yverance were some gigantic egg waiting to hatch…. She did a quick translation from the GalCon. With an error margin of plus or minus one hundred standard years the figure gave the Ylluma another seven hundred standard years before they would discover the Strip Engine and join the Confederacy. It was very close.

But Quella also knew that these last stages were the most critical, just as their host had said. Sometimes societies went bad and collapsed right at the end.

“We’re going into a remote region of the mountains not too far from an isolated community of Earth Married Ylluma,” Significant Meridian said. “We always keep a few contacts on the ground : natives who are told something of the truth and who we can interview for information. Sometimes we can even apply very subtle pressure to help to steer the Culture closer to Emergence. But we are their Guardians not their Teachers. It is very important that they learn for themselves.”

“What happens if your contacts announce you to the world at large?” Falym asked.

“Then nobody believes them of course. There’s always the possibility of some agents going bad but it just isn’t a problem. They can never prove anything.
I believe there were incidents such as this in your own history. UFO cultists and the like. Amidst a background of contradictory claims no one took any notice - they were all equally discredited, the true with the false.”

The Stealth Observation craft descended into a green landing field in the bowl of a high altitude Glen. The mountains of Macelle didn’t rise above five kilometres and they were cloaked in vegetation nearly all the way to the top.

All the aliens could breath the air of Yverance without assistance and they left the interplanetary craft to take great gasping lungfuls.

“It will take a while for you to get used to the relatively low oxygen content,” Significant Meridian said, “but you’ll all be perfectly all right. We’re expecting a delegation of Un-poind. The Un-poind are one of the lesser clans of Earth Married Ylluma and our contacts are fringe elements of Un-poind society but they provide us with much useful information. You see it isn’t necessarily the major political powers we’re most interested in - it’s the subtle social shifts at the base of society that can be more important.”

Quella tasted the bright metallic wind and stared at the wispy white clouds in the darkest of blue skies until she felt dizzy and had to look down. In the sward at her feet, bright white stars of mountain flowers were scattered into the distance. It was very beautiful, as, she reflected, were so many of the worlds of this galaxy. But each one was unique and special. This tiny mountain flower had no exact duplicate in all the mighty cosmos. It was part of the Yverance’s gift to the universe.

Vega walked over to stand beside her and touched her arm gently. She looked up.
There were five of them. They had climbed up a steep and narrow trail between two tall rough rock walls. Quella caught her breath. The Ylluma were bipedal, only a metre or so tall, with cream and brown mottled skin, broad flat heads and clearly visible gill markings fluttering below the neck. They wore complicated suits, all the same colour of dark wine red and decorated with metallic bangles.

One of the alphans who was called something like ‘Unexpected Eclipse’ had gone over to talk to them. For these conversations the alphans used translation machines of great sophistication which they had been able to develop as they had observed their listeners language develop over several thousand years. The machines could mimic perfectly the guttural stops and odd little gulping noises which characterised the Un-poind language. The Ylluma would not be introduced to GalCon until they Emerged.

There was something strangely moving in the scene. The giant alphan was considerably larger than a human being and at first sight seemed like some terrifying predator about to devour the five tiny gnome like supplicants before it. But the angle of the alphans front legs and the inclined attitude of its head suddenly reminded Quella of a picture book she had shared in the crèche. ‘The Gentle Giant’ had been human in the engaging drawings of the artist but he too had crouched to listen in a similar way.

At some unseen signal from Unexpected Eclipse, Significant Meridian motioned them forward. The tourists couldn’t understand what the Ylluma were saying and the alphans didn’t translate it but their presence clearly made a strong impression on the natives. Their skin flushed a deep pink before blanching again and they turned to one another in fierce debate. Close up, long slits in their suits were revealed as gaps for webbed fins which they could extend with a folding rib like fan.

“It is important for these River Wardens to see that we are not the only species in the galaxy. They had begun to develop an unhappy attitude and before it hardened to the point where they distrusted us we wanted to demonstrate our good faith by showing them some representatives of the race which currently rules the galaxy.”

So, Quella realised, whilst it was still true that it was a great honour to see Yverance and the Ylluma, the wily alphans had not admitted the whole truth, which was that the tourists were serving the Guardians, every bit as much as the Guardians were serving the tourists. She was pleased at the thought. It made a change not to feel like a rich parasite.

To claim that human beings ruled the galaxy verged on the outrageous but in the technical terms of the Alta-Tsey, perhaps they did. Quella was not used to thinking in these terms. The change in the glow in Significant Meridian’s eyes might have been humour or irony but it might have been nothing of the kind. Who could tell with the alphans?

“We would like Earth Married Ylluma and Water Married Ylluma to mix more freely. At this stage the cultural trappings of the two groups are no more than the preferences of those who favour Land and Lake. Both can breath freely in each other’s chosen home and some of their clans are balanced mixtures of the two. But so often with intelligent amphibians they go one way or the other. Or they may split into two species. We would like the Ylluma to retain their dual nature. It would be a shame if they were to sacrifice a nearly unique ability.”

Quella fell asleep in the Stealth Observation craft as it returned to Gelm. She dreamt of the Ylluma and in her dreams seven hundred years had passed and those River Wardens were navigating strange watery star ships shaped like frogs. And their Emergence was the wonder of the Confederacy…

But she woke to a real memory like a sour taste at the back of her mouth which would not go away. As Vega had taken her arm after the rendezvous she had caught a glimpse of Falym’s expression. The prince was momentarily unaware of her scrutiny and his murderous smile held such a measure of petulant jealously that she knew he had killed Rulla Louge; and she knew how dangerous it might be to disappoint him.

Mr. Big Eye, its GalCon much better than the regulars, noted something else with amusement on the return voyage. For some reason possibly not unconnected with their visit, the E.T.E figure on the alphans display board had been reduced by five years.

From Yverance it was eighty two Dopplers to Catch Caryon, then forty six to Old Rock and only nineteen to Luth. The ‘formal dinner’ was organised between Yverance and Catch Caryon and held as they travelled to Old Rock. Le Grant and Ulman pulled out all the stops and managed to produce some culinary surprises which the jaded tourists had not yet experienced. But Quella wasn’t really concerned with the quality of the food. She saw the occasion more as a way to remind everyone (in the subtlest way) of her pivotal role and to defuse Falym on her own territory. She was polite with everyone and warm to no-one. To the extent that Falym remained uncharacteristically pensive throughout the occasion she thought she had succeeded.

Luth was the first of those systems loosely called the Core Worlds because of their proximity to the Confederacy Capital and their dominant regular culture. The Core Worlds made up an informal group with their own local taxation arrangements and an independent currency (which was still closely tied to the Confederacy standard).

From Luth to Weld, Weld to Stole, Stole to Tharquon and Tharquon to Gollom II was a total of three hundred and ninety three Dopplers then a mere eighteen brought them to JaParys where the remaining tourists took a shuttle to Landfall.

Low hills cradle Port Xavier in a loose semi circle behind the bay. On the landward side they subside gradually into the grain fields and pastures of the rich Vale of Chesham. From the high heather moorlands on the ridge tops you can look East out to sea and on a clear day make out the island of Tyndar, whilst looking West the glory of the Vale is spread out under sunshine and cloud shadow until the far hills of Hinterland become visible as a thin blue smoke on the horizon.

Quella and Vega had driven from Landfall on a twisting road through the hills. They had stopped to admire the view where the route passed over a spare but beautiful windy bog lightened by bright green breaking bracken. Then following the road into a pass beneath ‘Old Barrel’ they descended through temperate spring woodland to arrive at the outskirts of Port Xavier sometime just before lunch.

The Quatres Rivières district began half way down the hills. Discrete but opulent houses were tucked away in four major and a number of minor ravines which hosted a tumbling set of streams cloaked under old deciduous woodland. Oak and beech were mixed with native trees; the silver trunks of Gylponon and the ebony black of Krytia. In the autumn, Quatres Rivières would be a mellow patchwork of yellow, orange and red leaves that were famous throughout the continent, with a rich variety of spectacular fungi fruiting beneath. But today the branches were bare or budding sharp lime green leaves. A fresh wind blew from the sea with a hint of salt but it was pleasantly warm as they drove through the woods. The open topped car had a powerful petrol combustion engine and a fashionable driving interface which required the driver to use a clutch and gear stick. Quella had learned how to drive vehicles like these on Soor and it gave her a nostalgic pleasure to experience again the response of engine to pedal and the grip of tyre on tarmac.

The road looped through a set of descending switch backs and across two pretty little wooden bridges, arching over deep rocky gorges. Other tracks and ways began to branch from the route leading to small enclaves or isolated dwellings. The primula yellow sun cut military shadows from the trunks and branches which criss-crossed the road. Quella took deep breaths from the press of the pure, high oxygen breeze in her face. Rhododendron bushes flowered by the road side in the common purple of Ponticum and the white and deep reds of sub species who found these hillsides congenial. They spoke very little but Quella was content just to enjoy the quiet undercurrent of the engine and the wind. Forgetting for the day the responsibilities of command she imagined that today’s experiences could somehow be isolated from the string of events that had led up to them and from whatever would follow. The twin yokes of consequence and cause lay lightly on her shoulders. A flock of scarlet wastrel birds arced through the branches above their heads like sparks across the clear blue sky. She realised that she was simply happy.

At length the trees began to give way to more densely populated land but although the white stone houses predominated, generous copses of hornbeam and avenues of horse chestnut had been allowed to break up the artificial lines of human dwelling. They reached the Rue de St. Germain and turning left passed a row of elegant and expensive shops before coming to Pantomime Park. Another turning took them off the main road and onto a minor thoroughfare bordering the park. Quella drove more slowly now as the land on their right dropped away in an open green expanse to the heart of the town. On the left a row of sober classical buildings commanded an imposing outlook but half way down the road they came to ‘Le Jardin’, a surprising structure which seemed to possess the flamboyant attitude of a carefree spendthrift at a bankers convention. The architect had been strongly influenced by the great Spaniard, Gaudi who had designed so many spectacular buildings in Barcelona. White columns twisted like barley sugars supporting an organically curved portico on which an aquamarine and green tiled freeze displayed a non repeating abstract pattern. They descended a spiral ramp into the small private underground car park which was as artfully designed as the rest of the building, lit by concealed blue lamps and with pools, fountains and painted murals that made it look like some fantastic grotto or the hall of a mountain king.

“Just in time for Lunch,” Quella smiled. “We have a table booked.”

A uniformed functionary took their hats and coats and directed them to a glass lift which rose through the kitchens and a first floor dining room to the top storey. Once there they were led to a balcony table laid with crisp white linen and silverware. Le Jardin had a high reputation in Port Xavier and the other diners were wealthy. Because few people had been given advance knowledge of the visit from Kalindy, the arrival of the captain and the tourist had not been expected and they remained relatively anonymous. This in itself made a pleasant change.

It was warm enough to eat in the sunshine and the view was delightful. Quella and Vega sipped their drinks and looked out over Pantomime Park. The tendency of the land to fall away was interrupted by an irregular set of drumlin like hillocks. About a dozen figures strolled or cavorted through the open grass. On one of the far hummocks two children were flying a bright red kite which danced and swerved in the luminous blue sky, a boy ran down the hill chased by his dog and a pair of lovers walked hand in hand across the top of the soft green turf. Beyond them all a distant line of dark laurels marked the end of the park and the beginning of the town. A square white tower circled by pigeons and petty birds pointed up from an irregular scattering of buildings and trees where the land sloped on to the harbour. Small white shapes at the limits of resolution were yachts on the dark cerulean ocean.

“Do you like JaParys?” Quella asked.

“There is something strangely attractive about the planet,” Vega answered. “I feel at home here somehow but I don’t know why.”

His searching gaze didn’t leave Quella’s face as she answered and it was rewarded with an unguarded smile that seemed more genuine than anything he had experienced so far as a Galactic Tourist. Vega nearly missed the content of her voice. The smile and the tone has suspended his heart in a disconcerting weightlessness.
“They say that it is remarkably similar to Earth,” she replied. “I’m probably repeating history you already know but it was colonised largely by members of the Old Earth nations of France, Algeria and England, during the Post Contact millennium when the home planet still retained distinct country and language barriers. A lot of Old Earth flora and fauna were imported and adapted well to the native soil and climate.”
Vega breathed deeply.

“I guess we really are still galactic new comers,” he said. “I does seem a pretty silly theory to think that we can have any race memory of home and to think that some long discarded ecosystem elements which we’ve never personally seem before can have such a powerful emotional appeal. But they do!

“The Mu say that evolution breeds deep longings. They say that millions of years bound to a single planet can only be overcome by many thousands of years scattered throughout the galaxy. But then they would wouldn’t they? As the second oldest contemporary confederacy species they’ve got a vested interest in humbling the rests of us!”

Quella laughed.

“What will you do when the voyage is over?” Vega asked her, suddenly more serious.

“I’ll take a short break on Earth and then we’ll see,” she answered thoughtfully. “I’m not sure how Vital Void are going to react to this voyage. I’m not sure if the Kalindy will be making a second voyage and if she does I don’t know if they’ll want me to be Captain. And I’m not even sure if I want the job. Life was certainly easier on the freight runs! But I expect I’ll probably ship out again one way or another.”

“Don’t you have anyone waiting for you?” Vega probed.

Quella thought of Malchior and to her surprise found that the thought left her with an unexpected ache of emptiness.

“No,” she said, “No one. What about you?”

“Oh I’ll go back to Cascoll. There’s plenty more water weed to be harvested,” Vega answered, choosing to interpret her question as a response to his own first question rather than the more dangerous second. For a moment he seemed to hesitate on the point of continuing. A waiter arrived with the first course. The moment passed.

There are ten continents on JaParys; Syran, Fetis, Thennona, Quithpatris, Tobla and Jen (the largest and most powerful in decreasing order of importance) and Kryn, Coppata, Dysis and Loob (also in order of size and governed in part or by agents from Thennona, Quithpatris, Syran and Jen). The politics of JaParys has been largely peaceful (in recent historical times) but is nevertheless complex and fiercely competitive in economic terms.

Prince Falym had gone to Kryn with a party of his fellows and a small contingent of stewards supervised by Le Grant. He wanted to see the infamous ‘creeping enclaves’ on the cold northern plains. Quella was glad to be free of him for a while. After lunch she strolled down Pantomime Park with Vega, heading for the centre of town. As if he had read her thoughts he suddenly said, “What do you think of Prince Falym? I get the impression he’s not your favourite person.”

“I hate him!” Quella said, somewhat astonished at the vehemence of her own reaction. She began to analyse it.

“He’s complacent, self important and he hasn’t got the slightest empathy for the places and peoples he sees. This whole tour is just one gigantic game for him. He doesn’t listen. It’s all talk with him and he loves nothing so much as the sound of his own voice.

"The Iron Suns ought to have a revolution. It would do them good.”

“Let’s talk of other things, then,” Vega said lightly but he frowned and was silent for a few minutes afterwards.

They stayed for three days in Port Xavier and after lunch on the third day (for which they returned to Le Jardin) took the western ring road out of town and travelled south to Ceremon. It would have been an hour by helicopter to the fabled ‘Temple City’ but in the car it took them the rest of the day so that they crossed the Blue Mountains just before sunset and saw the first lights come on as they descended towards the town. Vega had suggested that they take a more leisurely route to their next destination and Quella was quite happy to comply. She enjoyed driving and the views of the ocean as the coast road wound round the foothills of the Blue Mountains were quite dramatic.

Ceremon, like Port Xavier, was part of the PanSyran League. On the lower slopes of the Blue Mountains they grew vines and olives. The famous red wine known (somewhat strangely) as Bleu Vin was bottled locally and Ceremon cuisine was celebrated throughout the Core Worlds. But much of the wealth of the town came from visiting pilgrims attending the Shrines.

The Pilgrim Houses were set high on the outskirts, just after the road crossed a saddle back ridge and began a steep descent into Ceremon proper. In keeping with the spontaneity which had characterised their visit Quella had decided not to book any accommodation before hand. They would take what they found. She stopped at a roadside information point and called up the details. It seemed that their arrival had coincided with a local festival and nearly everywhere was full but luckily there had been a late cancellation in the highest white painted Pilgrim House nearest to them. There were magnificent views over the sea but they would have to share a room. Vega grinned when Quella diffidently explained the situation : that was quite all right by him. He kissed her.

On a balcony of ebony and rosewood Quella drank jasmine tea and watched the sun rise over the ocean. Vega was sleeping inside on the low pallets that were customary in Ceremon. Last night they had made love with leisurely delight as the stars came out in the clear sky and the sounds of the early evening revels came faintly up the hill from town. Then they had showered and dressed, gone down to experience the press of the festival, to eat on the fourth floor of a floodlit pagoda and to return after midnight when they had resumed their intimate pleasures. Quella smiled at the memory.

Gulls called over the sea but the town was still quiet, recovering from the night before. It was early but Quella wanted to be up and about. She felt an urge to experience everything this town had to offer - a tourists urge, she realised. She went over to Vega and poked him playfully under the ribs.

“Wake up! They only have twenty two hours in a day on JaParys!”

Ceremon was founded by ‘La Garrineau’, the followers of a twenty sixth century artist of some repute. The old quarter was built according to their rigorous codes of architecture but to the unenlightened it looked merely quaint. Steep alleyways, wynds and steps descended between white mushroom shaped stone houses and shops. The buildings branched in a pseudo organic manner, sometimes merging to form archways and bridges. From the heights looking down to the temple district, the convex and concave roofs could be seen to open into the centre of the buildings down hollow stems. Formal gardens of statues, fountains, small shrubs and pools, were artfully arranged on the bright stone caps. Everywhere there were cherry trees. The narrow streets were crowded with their pale pink blossom which fell in drifts over the cobbles. On a table outside a corner café they stopped to drink a bitter rich expresso (Coffee was imported from Earth but was enormously popular here) and Quella was lost briefly in meditation as she gazed at a tall example rising above a low stone wall across the street. The delicate Japanese blooms were etched against a bright blue sky and danced lightly in the refreshingly chill spring breeze. The sharp lemon tang of cantal perfume drifted up in hints and suggestions from the burning incense of the temples. As they watched, a group of blue robed monks came down the street preceded by a scaly old epsilon abbot wielding wind chimes and cymbals.

They followed the holy beings down to the Silver Shrine, only one of many such temples. Vaulting open limestone arches had been decorated with inlaid silver in patterns which seemed to mix elements of traditional Japanese script and Mayan characters. They passed through three such progressively smaller gateways before they came to the entrance. The building itself was designed according to the strict dictates of La Garrineau; flowing rivers of stone seemed to cascade over angular pentagonal ribs. Inside the dark cavernous interior of the temple, candles had been lit which gave off a blue glow like gas. There were absolutely no windows. They took their shoes off at the entrance and walked barefoot to one of the epsilon seers who was meditating on a floating metal disk they called a chamchuck.

They knelt before him and he blessed them. On the high wall behind, Quella could see the three faces of the major pantheon of Epsilon Saints of the Spiritual Manifestation and two from the regular canon, illuminated by the flickering blue light. St. Heq was facing the traditional wall of cloud which marked the start of the Storm Season when he had delivered his famous sermon.

“Hold us fast in the time of storm and let not the lightning cleave us, the thunder shatter our shelter, nor the rain wash us away,” ran the traditional prayer.

Afterwards Quella would think back to the time on JaParys as the last place where she had been truly happy. Ahead of her lay the Storm Season. And after that, nothing would ever be the same…