TWENTY-FOUR

Rupert Venables concluded

The room was full of soldiers in grey and blue. Some were efficiently herding men in armour or folk in robes among the disordered chairs to stand in little huddles, each guarded by two soldiers. Others were on guard at all the doors. I wondered how many corners the troops at the far doors had had to turn in order to get there. I could feel the node whirling wildly about us. The first thing I did was to slow it down. I was too weak to do more. Then I looked round at Dakros. He was just beside us, slowly holstering the handgun that had undoubtedly saved our bacon.

“Oh God!” I said idiotically. “You have your dinner in the middle of the day!”

He shot me a look as sarcastic as that of the thorn goddess. “Of course. When else would one have it? Where is Gramos Albek?”

I pointed. “Against that far wall there. Or he was.” There was no sign of White there now.

Dakros unhitched his communicator and spoke into it briefly, keeping the sarcastic look and one raised eyebrow on me while he did so. Across the hall, a captain waved acknowledgement and a posse of soldiers moved in among the chairs there, guns at the ready. Dakros turned to face me. “Well, Magid, I promised to take action and I have. When I didn’t hear from you, I brought a troop carrier up Naywards as soon as Jeffros could get a gate open. And don’t tell me this isn’t Intended. I don’t want to hear.”

“I’m very glad you came,” I said humbly.

“Yes, it does rather look as if you might be,” he agreed. His eyes flicked over Will, registering him as a Magid, and then on to Nick and Maree. He looked at Nick with considerable satisfaction. I could see him thinking that Nick made a fine, tall, handsome heir. “I believe,” he said, “that I address the Imperial Highnesses Nichothodes and Sempronia.”

Nick nodded and then looked down again at Janine’s body. You would have said there was no expression at all in his face, except that the corners of his eyes had pulled into wrinkles, like an old man’s. Maree’s face had gone orange-red with embarrassment. “Please,” she said. “At least call me Marina.”

“My pleasure, Highness,” answered Dakros. “I’m very glad to see you restored to health. We’ve a troop carrier waiting to escort you both back to your rightful home. Prince Nichothodes, you are aware, are you, that you will shortly be crowned Emperor?”

“All right. If that’s what you want,” Nick said.

Oh well, I thought. I suppose this is what had to happen. Nick, for a moment, almost had me fooled. Then I remembered the smoothness with which he had three times ducked out and evaded Janine, and I realized that he intended to do it again. From the Empire this time. It was his placid, agreeable manner that gave it away. Goodness knew what he meant to do. Probably he did not know himself how he would manage it yet. But, somehow, I knew that when it came to the coronation of the new Emperor Nick was going to be missing. The way Maree came and gripped my arm warningly only confirmed it. Maree knew too.

I risked a major row with Maree. I shook her hand off my arm. “You just can’t do that!” I said to Nick.

“I realize you don’t think he’s Intended to be our Emperor,” Dakros said, misunderstanding me, “but he’s the only male heir I’ve got, Magid, and I’m damn well going to get him crowned!”

“I don’t think my brother meant that,” Will said. “Did he, Nick?”

“Didn’t he?” Nick said guilelessly.

“It takes one to catch one,” Will said. “When Rupert was your age, we used to call him Houdini.”

“I don’t follow—” Dakros was beginning, rather irritably, when two things interrupted him, almost simultaneously. From across the hall came the snarl and flare of a beam-gun—aimed, I think, in the air as a threat—and some shouting. Soldiers were dragging a struggling robed figure out from under the chairs there. Dakros had scarcely time for an “Ah!” of satisfaction before he found himself confronted with Ted Mallory.

“You!” said Mallory. He was still pale, but firm and angry. “Yes, you, sir! What do you mean by shooting my wife?”

“It was necessary,” Dakros said.

“That’s a bare-faced admission of murder, if ever I heard one!” Mallory said.

“The woman was a murderess,” Dakros explained, “and a sorceress.”

“I bear witness to that,” I said.

Ted Mallory stared at us both, blankly. I was wondering what else one could say, when Maree seized her uncle by his arm. “You do know!” she said. “Come on, Uncle Ted. You didn’t even like her! Admit what you saw her do. Admit it, just for once in your life, Uncle Ted! Come on.”

Mallory looked down at her. “Admit to…” he said. “Oh all right. I do admit I thought I saw Janine as a most unpleasant—she was part of a most unpleasant sort of bush, I think.”

“Bravo!” said Maree. “Well done, Uncle Ted. Nick, you’re going to have to look after him rather after this.”

“I can’t if I’ve got to be this emperor, can I?” Nick said hopelessly.

“Take him with you, I meant,” said Maree.

“He’d go mad,” Nick said.

I was inclined to agree with Nick, and I was again wondering what I could say, when the soldiers arrived with their struggling prisoner. His beard was jutting. His robe was half off and being used to wrap his arms in by his captors, and he was yapping, “I tell you I am not Gram White! You have no business laying hands on me! Let me go this instant! I am an eminent writer!” I must say I was glad to see Mervin Thurless having a bad time, even though it was evident that Gram White had done a quick substitution as a prelude to a quick bunk.

Will and I exchanged looks. With those troops guarding the doors, White had to be in the hall still. He must have done the classic thing and hidden himself among the other people dressed just like him. We set off at a run towards the nearest grey huddle. Thurless screamed after us, “Stop those two! Stop them, I tell you! They are trying to rule the world!”

There were disarranged chairs and frightened people all over the place. Will and I had only made it as far as the central aisle when a trumpet pealed out from behind us. It was a strong fanfare, incredibly loud, and joyous, and ceremonial. It meant something. It heralded things. We spun round. Every one did, people of Earth and troops of Koryfos alike. Every one of us stared.

The trumpeter was Rob.

He was alive after all—or more than alive: triumphantly and vibrantly alive. He had that same glow to his eyes and his coat that I had seen in my quacks when they returned, and that poise to his body, full of life and health. More than that, he gave you that sense that he was now filling his true outlines, the same way as Maree and even Nick now did. Rob’s outlines were unequivocally the outlines of a prince. His mass of black hair was formally tied back. He had on a royal blue uniform coat, braided with gold, evidently borrowed from someone in the élite troops, and it sat on him like a royal robe. He looked magnificent. As far as I could see, there was no sign of the wound in his side now.

He finished blowing the fanfare and brought the trumpet smartly down to rest against his right flank. “Silence!” he called out. “Silence for the Emperor Koryfos the Great!”

One forgets what lungs centaurs have. Rob’s ringing shout caused every movement and murmur to stop—except for the irrepressible Kornelius Punt, who was hugging himself and muttering, “A centaur now! A centaur! Now I have really seen it all!”

More soldiers entered the room behind Rob. They wore the uniforms I had always associated with an Empire honour guard, the royal blue and gold of Rob’s jacket, and bore themselves very smartly and formally. I heard one of the troops holding Thurless whisper, “They’re from the Twenty-Ninth! I thought we’d left them holding down Iforion!” They were followed by four splendidly dressed people. Zinka in her green velvet was one. Next to her was Lady Alexandra in full court dress, train, fan, coronet and all, and beside her was Jeffros as a Mage of the Empire in full panoply, and the flared cloak with Infinity shining on it in gold. The fourth was a Magid in ceremonial robes: white damask, fluttering purple bands, everything. Infinity shone on his breast too. Will and I both exclaimed as we recognized our brother Simon.

Following them, the Emperor came in.

There was no question he was Koryfos the Great. He was exactly like every statue I had ever seen, in the palace or around Iforion. There was also no question that he was my neighbour Andrew as well. His hair was maybe yellower and his face a touch browner, but I was nevertheless astonished that I had never seen the likeness before. The distrait and unassuming bearing of Andrew must have misled me. There was no question now that he was indeed Emperor. He came in wearing, like Rob, a borrowed uniform and he even had his customary vague and modest look. And you realized you had never seen majesty before. People on Earth, particularly, are not used to real kings any more. But this was such a real king that your throat caught with awe.

At least three-quarters of the people in that room acknowledged his royalty by bowing. I saw fat Wendy thump to her knees in an utterly sincere attempt to curtsey. She looked very ashamed of the mess she had made of it.

My erstwhile neighbour stopped and looked round at the confusion of tumbled chairs and beam burns. “I’m looking for General Commander Dakros,” he said.

Dakros hastened between two crooked rows of chairs, and when he reached the space formed by Rob and the honour guard, he went down on one knee. It looked perfectly natural. “Here, sire,” he said. “Forgive me. I would never have forced you to come Naywards if I—”

“I have heard the facts. You needed to be here,” Koryfos said. “I am here to confirm your actions and to reappoint you as General-in-Chief of the Empire. But we must finish this business quickly. I need a second coronation, General. And this centaur is my heir. His status must be ratified as well. So please stand up and then tell me whether you have found the criminals you came to catch.”

Dakros got up quickly. “Jaleila was found and put to death,” he said, “but Gramos Albek is probably hiding—”

The new Emperor stopped him with a small gesture. “Thank you. Where is Gramos Albek?”

He looked across the scattered groups of awed people and the force of it literally dragged Gram White out of hiding. I have never seen anything like it. I wish I had half that much power as a Magid. Gram White came out of his hiding place under a row of chairs, scrambling, toppling the chairs, and utterly unwilling, but he came. He came shuffling along the rows of seats and among people who all backed away from him, with his head bent and protest in every motion and line of his body, but he was quite unable to resist the desire of Koryfos. About halfway, he managed to put his hand in his robes for his gun. Koryfos simply shook his head slightly. White’s face puckered with fury, but he took his hand away. He came stumbling unwillingly on until he was level with me. There, with an effort that made veins bulge beside his eyes, he stopped and glared at me.

I saw what he was thinking. I said, “Don’t be a fool!”

White had nothing to lose, I suppose. Trembling with the effort it took to stand there and not walk towards Koryfos, he tried, once again, to open a gate and strip me. The geas took instant effect. It looked like a massive coronary to me. The man’s face turned bluish-purple, lips and all, his arms jerked and then he clutched at his chest as if the pain was so bad he could not help it. He doubled up slightly. But he managed to keep his eyes on me, staring at me tauntingly. “See?” his look said. “See what you made me do!” He hoped I would carry the guilt of his death for years. Sometimes I have to work very hard not to. But he did it to himself really. Besides, I noticed that Koryfos did nothing to prevent him. It was, in its manner, an execution.

White pitched down by my feet. While I stared at him, thinking what a small thing—and how absolute a one—separates a live person from a dead one, I heard the Emperor say, “Both bodies are to be taken to the further carrier and incinerated. I shall be talking to the necessary people in the nearer carrier. Rupert.”

I looked up to see my sometime neighbour looking at me, with the same courtesy he used when he came to borrow sugar, but with all the difference in the multiverse. It was a politeness strong enough to stun.

“I want to see you shortly,” he said. “For the moment I’ll just say thank you.”

He turned and left. The hall seemed dimmer without him. As the others, including Dakros, followed him, Rob touched my arm and said quietly, “Thank you,” too. I could not think what on Earth or elsewhere either of them should thank me for. I had done nothing but blunder about. In the end, I concluded that Koryfos meant all the driving about I used to do for him. The power of Koryfos was still apparent two hours later. The convention—probably—was still going on. At least the armed men, along with Fisk and Thurless, had vanished to take part in various events, to my great relief. But somehow all those who might have business with the Empire were drawn towards the hotel entrance, where Odile still worked, with her fair head down, resolutely ignoring all the strange activity around her.

The foyer was less bright than usual because of the great shiny bulk of the troop carrier outside. Behind it, you could just glimpse the second carrier in which Koryfos had arrived, further down the market square. But Koryfos was now in the nearer one and the foyer became his waiting room. We all sat or stood about in there. Lady Alexandra was there most of the time, acting as a sort of Emperor’s aide, soothing or explaining to those who felt they had waited long enough, or else simply walking about talking to Tina Gianetti. From what I overheard, the two of them were comparing notes, ardently and inwardly, on what it really felt like to be a public figure. Meanwhile, as further aides, Jeffros, Zinka and Simon were moving people in and out of the carrier.

Zinka spared a moment to lean down to Will and me. “Do forgive me for not turning up to help,” she said. “I’d just got loose from the manager when Si came through on my portable phone, saying he’d got a centaur and someone he was sure was Koryfos asking him for help, and saying if I didn’t get myself to Iforion to help him sort it out he was in serious danger of screaming. And of course I had to go belting off there at once. It was all a huge rush after that.”

“How did they end up in Iforion?” Will wanted to know.

“I wish I knew!” Zinka said and hastened away.

Will and I sat on in the foyer. Various members of the hotel staff kept coming there to stare wonderingly out of the glass doors at the carrier. “Is it a UFO?” most of them almost invariably asked me.

“Yes, you might say that,” I told them. It always seemed to make them happier. “Why is it,” I asked Will, after the seventh or eighth time, “that they see a thing and don’t know what it is, and I tell them that it’s an unidentified flying object, and they go away perfectly satisfied?”

Nick laughed. “Everyone knows what a UFO is!”

This was shortly after Ted Mallory had come away from the carrier, looking bewildered, and saying, “I don’t get it. I’ve just been offered a chance to live in this Empire, wherever it is. Of course I said I couldn’t. I have Nick to care for after—now that … as things are.”

Nick, at this, looked much happier. He had seen Koryfos among the first, just after Maree, and I gathered from the way he looked after Mallory said this, that Nick too had declined to live in the Empire and had been wondering quite what he would do if Ted Mallory did not want him.

Maree, sitting between Will and me, was very quiet. She just sat there with her chin mutinously bunched.

Soon after that, Will was called to see Koryfos. Maxim Hough came in through the glass doors from the carrier with his arm bandaged and sat down next to me. “People!” he said. “Can you believe this? The Southampton Convention committee have just asked me where I hired the soldiers and the troop carriers. They want them for their con too! And that idiot Punt keeps getting himself thrown off both carriers. I suppose he’s harmless. But he must be the nosiest man in this world. He’s going to live in my mind as part of a con I shall never forget!”

“Bad memories?” I asked. I felt responsible, particularly for his arm.

“Well,” Maxim said, considering, “I’ve never seen anyone die before. Perhaps one should. It’s part of life, after all. But if you had told me a week ago that any of this could happen at a convention, I’d have laughed in your face.”

“I didn’t know it was going to happen,” I protested.

Here my brother Simon came up and said I was needed. I got up and followed him out of the glass doors and up the enormous, clanging ramp to the entry near the front of the carrier. Inside, it was all rather like a submarine. There were lots of narrow metal passages with curt groups of letters and numbers stencilled at every corner in various colours, colour-coded, I gathered. Simon took me by the red codes, deep into the murmuring heart of the great vehicle, and finally to a little steel cubby-hole open at one side of a corridor. We sat on a narrow steel bench at the end of it. The bench was designed, I think, to keep a sentry awake. It was certainly darned uncomfortable.

“Waiting room?” I said.

“After a fashion,” said my brother and sprawled his legs, robes and all. Simon is the most restless man I know. He looks more like Will than me, since he is tall and sturdy, but fairer than both of us, with sharp cheekbones. “I wanted to have a word with you first, because I seem to have got pitchforked into a business that ought to be yours.”

“Yes, how did you get mixed up in it?” I said.

“Zinka phoned me in the middle of last night,” Simon said. “And I’d been getting a feeling anyway that you, or Will, were in a bit of trouble. So, as she’d woken me up, I thought I might as well come here and see what I could do. And I was in transit and quite near the Empire when I came across a centaur and somebody who was obviously Koryfos the Great, blundering about on a hillside, not quite sure whereabouts in the Empire they needed to go. Things had changed a bit since Koryfos was last there. So I took them in tow and led them along to Iforion and then found myself having to organize the restoration of Koryfos as Emperor.”

“As was Intended,” I said.

“I’m afraid so,” Si said, tossing legs and robes about as he sat. “I need to talk to you because of that. I seem to have got your job with the Koryfonic Empire now. Sorry about that. Koryfos will tell you about how it happened. But there’s no doubt that that’s Intended too. The Upper Room has been in touch. You’ll be getting confirmation from Senior Magid any time now. She’ll be confirming that, and that you’ve selected Maree Mallory as the newest Magid.”

“I hadn’t actually quite—” I began.

“The Upper Room seems quite clear that you have,” said Si. “They say you can sponsor her, but they want her to come to the Empire for now so that I can teach her.”

My stomach sank. “In other words,” I said dismally, “I’m being relieved of all my responsibilities, pending reprimand. Am I suspended for incompetence, or something else?”

“It’s not really like that.” Simon surged to his feet, having sat still for actually slightly longer than he usually did. “You talk to them,” he said, roving around in front of me, “and you’ll see. I think they may even be slightly ashamed of themselves—anyway, they were discussing giving you something slightly easier after this.”

“Like a violently science-ridden world Naywards of here,” I said bitterly.

Simon paused in his roving and tried to pick some of the trim off the doorway of the cubby-hole. It was firmly fixed, so he left it and roved about again. I knew that if he had got it loose he would have played with it for an hour and then tried to weave it into the ceiling grating. I smiled, in spite of my growing depression. It was good to see Si again. “No. Don’t talk nonsense,” he said. “You see, what seems to have gone on is that they were Intending to work the Empire round to the point where all the prophecies said Koryfos would return, and as far as they knew, that meant more or less destroying it first. Koryfos says he doesn’t think that was right, but there you go. The Upper Room do this sometimes. Anyway, Will says and Rob says that you thought they Intended to get the Empire saddled with a boy Emperor and then let it collapse around him. Rob’s sure you worried about that and tried to keep Nick away from Dakros because you were so worried. But in actual fact, Rupert, you were the Upper Room’s boy Emperor yourself. You were the one it was supposed to all fold up around.”

“Thank you very much!” I said.

“Well, you have only been a Magid for just over two years,” Si said. “I think you’ve done damn well, considering you had the Upper Room working against you most of the way. I think it’s only thanks to you encouraging Dakros that there’s still an Empire for Koryfos to rule, frankly.”

“I haven’t done well,” I said. “I can see any world that’s offered me as Magid in charge in future screaming, ‘No! Not R. Venables! Anyone but R. Venables! He lets all those people die! He lets children get their throats cut!’”

“They Intended that,” my brother said. “You know how ruthless they can be. They’re not going to blame you for that, or let it give you a bad name. They’re fair, as well as ruthless. I think they’re really quite pleased with you.”

“So why aren’t they letting me instruct Maree?” I said.

“Oh that’s different.” Simon came and plunged down on to the bench again. “They wouldn’t let me instruct Zinka—Zinka says I just confused her with long explanations anyway. They never let you teach someone you’re married to, and they seem sure you’re likely to marry Maree—”

“Hang on,” I said. “Are you and Zinka married?”

“These last three years,” Si said, grinning merrily. “It’s nice.”

“But—” I said, in some consternation.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “She may draw sexy pictures of alien life forms, but I make damn sure it’s only Art.”

“Sure,” I said, though that was not what I had in mind at all.

Luckily, Will came striding down the corridor just then and fetched up with a clang against the cubby-hole doorway. “Family reunion,” he said. “Wow, that was an interview and a half! Koryfos seems to think I reformed Rob overnight.”

“Well you did shout a few home truths at him,” I said. “Rob needed someone to do it.” I stood up nervously. “Does he want to talk to me yet? Or not?”

“Oh yes,” said Will. “Show him, Si. I’ll wait for you here.”

Simon showed me up the rest of a short passage to a steel door heavily stencilled in red. It slid aside to let me in and slid closed again behind me, shutting me in a big steel box with the almost overwhelming presence of my one-time neighbour.

He was sitting on a bench rather like the one I had just left, but he got up to meet me. “Forgive me keeping you waiting so long, Rupert,” he said. “I wanted to get the other things sorted out so that I could talk to you properly.”

He had somehow contained his kingliness, pushed it down to a more domestic level, but he was still not an ordinary man. You know how thunderclouds produce those shining white towers above the main cloud, full of energy? What he was showing me was like that, a smaller energy pile above the main one. Being in the same room with a thunderhead is a fairly stunning experience.

I was feeling fairly dejected one way and another. I said, “Thanks.”

He smiled at me, in the way that had always astonished me. This time it astonished me by making me feel more like a viable human being again. “I want to thank you,” he said.

“I don’t understand why,” I said. “A bit of driving. A tin of beans and a bag of sugar or so…”

“Yes, but you see you did those kindnesses to a person who was, on a rough estimate, only a twentieth part of me,” he said. “Most people would have avoided me as plain mad. Let me explain.

“At the end of my last reign, I was in your world, in a city called Babylon which no longer exists, trying to negotiate an alliance with the ruler there. The ruler refused any kind of treaty, so I meant to leave. But the Babylonians attacked as I left with my party and the Magid with us tried to open a gate for us in too much of a hurry. And he accidentally opened it right through me.”

I was glad to hear that some Magids besides me made mistakes. “You were stripped?”

He nodded. “And assumed dead, and buried on both sides of the gate. That area, as you know, is a mass of nodes. The gate had been opened at a node. The stripping was very violent and it took me a good many years to come round from it. When I did, I found I was having practical experience of part of your Babylon secret. Changes had occurred in the worlds on both sides and worlds had divided and multiplied. As I had been buried at the point of division, I had multiplied also.” He laughed slightly, making the room electric. “There were ten of me in normal Infinity and another ten existing as anti-matter. I’ve spent all this time trying to come together again.”

“But I don’t see how you—” I began. Koryfos shook his head slightly and I stopped.

“This is where you come in,” he said. “I was always, without understanding why, trying to settle near a Magid. I had a sense that Magids knew something about nodes that I didn’t and that I needed a node to help me in some way. You would hardly believe how many times, in this world and in others, I achieved proximity to a Magid, only to have that Magid realize that there was something strange about me and move away in a hurry.”

“I moved in after you, in Weavers End,” I said. “You’d been there six months when I bought my house. That was pure luck.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but it was not pure luck that you were unfailingly kindly and helpful. You drove me to one node after another, even though neither of us knew what we were doing, until you brought me to the extremely powerful node here in Wantchester. And I would not have understood how to use this node, any more than any of the others, if you had not happened to include me in your fateline working.”

“How did that happen?” I said.

“I sensed the working,” he said. “I always sensed any powerful working and I always came along to them, like a hungry animal, not knowing what I needed. Every Magid before you promptly turned me out. You let me stay. And I half consciously linked my fateline in as you worked. Believe me, it was like a revelation. Quite suddenly I felt and knew four times as much. I knew I had to come to this powerful node here and I knew what to do when I got here. For nearly three days, I was collecting the other parts of myself. I’m afraid I disturbed the node somewhat.”

“Yes, you did rather,” I said. “But other people were at it too. And you got all the pieces?”

“No,” he said. “Some were dead, and those who had become anti-matter were impossible to reach on this plane of Infinity. In order to become complete, I found I had to go outside the material planes entirely, to the place that is another part of your Babylon secret. No doubt this was Intended. For while I was on my way there, I encountered three heirs to the Empire and learnt more or less what was going on there. Rob came with me. He asked for his birthright, you know. He said that you and your brother had made him ashamed to be without it. He told me a great deal on the way back.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Our Rob likes to talk. So you’ll be followed by a line of centaurs as Emperor? Good idea. Centaurs have never been the force they should be in any world.”

“I’m glad you agree,” Koryfos said. “But I feel I have deprived you of your office. Rob and I got lost on the way back. We were trying to do two incompatible things, trying to get home and to find you. And we found your brother instead. The Powers Above promptly installed your brother as our adviser instead of you.”

“Si’s a good deal more competent than me,” I said ruefully. “He seems to have got you recognized as Emperor in no time at all.”

“He knew just what to do, certainly,” said Koryfos. “And he tells me that he is Intended to become Magid to the Empire from now on. But I would have preferred you. Your brother’s habit of striding about and fiddling with things perturbs me.”

“You mean even you can’t make him sit still!” I exclaimed.

“I doubt if anyone could,” Koryfos admitted. “It seems to be part of the way your brother functions.”

I could not help smiling. Nothing is ever perfect. Koryfos was obviously an exceptional man, but all the same … All the same, one thing about Koryfos was plain impossible. “How is it,” I asked him, “that you managed to get stripped so often and still be alive after more than two thousand years?”

He looked at me with his golden head tipped to one side and a slight smile on one corner of his mouth. In that pose, he looked exactly like all the statues of himself. He answered me with a question that shook me to the core. “How many members of the Upper Room are there?”

“You know I can’t tell you that!” I said. “You shouldn’t even know there is an Upper Room!”

“Precisely,” he said. “So I will tell you. There are presently seventy-one. There should be seventy-two, but there are not, because I am missing.”

“Oh!” I said. No one but an Archon could have Koryfos’s sort of vitality, or choose a centaur as his heir, for that matter. “Then greetings, great Archon.”

“Greetings to you too, Magid,” he replied. “I had to come here to do something that would stop Infinity drifting entirely Naywards. The Empire was supposed to do that. But I had not established it properly when I was stripped. I must now finish what I started. Because of this, can I ask you to do two things for me?”

“Probably,” I said. “As a neighbour, or as a Magid?”

“One of each,” he said. “Sadly, I must desert my house and my inventing. Would you, Magid, consent to become the owner of my house, to look after or to sell as you see fit?”

I thought of my quacks and Maree’s notion, of me standing in Andrew’s pond and I was filled with pleasure. His house is bigger than mine too. “I’d be delighted. What was the other thing?”

“I would like,” he said, “if it is not too difficult, that when you make your report for the Upper Room, you give a copy to me for the archive I shall found in Iforion.”

I considered. He was asking me something much dodgier here. I could see by his head-on-one-side hopeful look that he knew perfectly well he was. It is not just that the Upper Room do not like the reports of Magids to go anywhere but to them: they also take steps to make sure of this. It would take a bit of contriving to get round their usual methods. And I would need to add a few explanations for lay readers. Still, it could probably be done. It could be regarded as a challenge. “Yes, all right,” I said. “But don’t be too disappointed if you don’t get it.”

“I have every faith in you,” he said.

Our interview was over with that. He gave me a strong, electrical handshake and I wandered forth into the metal passageways again. Will and Simon seemed to have gone from the cubby-hole. I walked on, with the steel resonating faintly around me, to the entrance and down the great ramp. I did not feel like going back into the hotel. I went to the staff car park instead, thinking of how to tell Stan about all this.

I unlocked the bent driver’s door on the faintest tinkle of Scarlatti. “Stan?” I said.

There was nothing. No one. My tape-deck was still going, but the car inside was without a presence. Stan had gone. The Upper Room, with customary brusqueness, had decided that Stan’s job was now done and recalled him. I rested my forehead against the roof of the car, near tears.

“I don’t know whether your car or mine is more of a mess,” Maree said, with the gloomy sob prominent in her voice. “If you think this is bad, you should see what Janine did to mine.”

I looked up to find her with her chin resting on the other side of the roof. “I thought you’d gone to the Empire!”

“Not yet. Not permanently,” she said. “I stuck out for going twice a week for lessons, and I’m not seeing that other brother of yours until the end of this week anyway. And I’ve made it clear that it’s not going to interfere with my vet’s degree. No way. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise?” I said.

“There’s all this week and then a lot of time round the edges,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t there.” I felt a great deal better.