One of the quofarl remained by the boat, while the other one, dropping down onto all fours in the disconcerting way of these people, accompanied the third figure as she headed towards us. She proved to be a Sudorian woman clad in some kind of tight-fitting envirosuit.

Halting within a pace of me she inspected me from head to foot from behind a flat visor, then said in Sudorian, "Remain standing right there until I come back for you." At her beck my four companions followed her to the edge of the forest. I couldn't hear what was being said, nor could I see any sign language, for the quofarl stood directly in the way, glaring at me. Even when I tried to shuffle to one side to see more, he shuffled across to block my view.

"How are you?" I signed to him.

"I have a headache and it makes me tetchy," he immediately replied.

"Is she a Consensus Speaker?"

"She is," he replied.

"I couldn't help noticing she's Sudorian," I signed.

"You got a problem with that?" he asked.

"Why should I have a problem?"

"Just checking."

The woman returned, while the other four headed down to their boat and climbed in. Tozzler leapt in last, lying across the laps of the two sitting in the rear seats. The fan started and they pulled away. I raised a hand and four hands were raised in return. Strange people, these Brumallians, but I felt I could get along with them.

"Consul Assessor David McCrooger," said the woman, "I am to take you to the ReconYork. Meanwhile I would like you to explain to me how you came to arrive on Brumal."

"You're what they describe as a Consensus Speaker, yet you're Sudorian," I countered.

A hint of a wry smile crossed her features. "My race has not prevented me becoming a member of Brumallian society. Are things very different in your Polity?"

"No," I admitted.

She led the way down to the boat, the quofarl falling in behind us. "Perhaps if you would continue?"

"Well," I began, "my intended destination was Sudoria…" and then related to her the events resulting in my presence here on Brumal, though omitting Tigger's part in it all, merely saying that the escape-pod had washed into the shallows. As our boat pulled away, the fan became too noisy for me to be heard, so I then tried Brumallian signing, to which she responded easily. I had finished relating my story by the time we approached the far shore, where the quofarl at the helm shut off the fan, then turned on some grumbling electric motor within the boat's hull to chug us into the mouth of a canal.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Rhodane," she replied.

"You already knew my name when you met me, so I'm presuming you know a fair amount more about me and where I come from. Perhaps you can tell me what you've learned so far, and I can fill in the gaps?" I suggested.

"We've known for some time that my former people have been communicating with the Polity, but we learnt only recently that a Consul Assessor was being sent. Only within the last day did we hear what you've now confirmed."

"Your former people? Do you now consider yourself a Brumallian?"

"I do."

"That's…unusual."

"Not as much as you might think. Many Sudorians have come here, abandoning their old allegiances to join the Brumallians. This place is an oasis of sanity. Now, perhaps you could explain the exact purpose of a Consul Assessor?"

On considering my own experiences before arriving here, I wondered if 'oasis of sanity' might be more than just a throw-away comment.

The canal cut its way through land cloaked with tough thorny bushes of gnarled grey twigs laden with red and green spheroids which were either berries or something equivalent to leaves. Ahead squatted two pylons, rising either side of where the watercourse cut through a ridge. They were topped with elliptical structures rimmed with windows—likely either watchtowers or weapons platforms. To my right something suddenly rose squalling from the bushes. It looked like a huge headless bat with a whip tail and light blue skin. I briefly glimpsed a folded-in mouth pouting horribly from its forequarters, before it dropped from sight again.

"The title 'Consul Assessor'," I told Rhodane, "is an amalgam. I'm ostensibly here to set up a Consulate on Sudoria, though it is quite possible I won't manage that very quickly. During the interim I am to assess the situation here, and report on it back to the Polity."

"How will you report to the Polity?"

"Through the comlink established on Sudoria."

"You could have set up a Consulate here, so why there?"

It was a rather silly question, but I have known for longer than I care to think that even silly questions can elicit useful information. I decided to be brutally honest. "Because the Sudorians nearly bombed the Brumallians back into the Stone Age and" — I glanced at her—"your new compatriots are no longer a power in this planetary system. To establish a Consulate here, the Polity would need Sudorian permission, which we would not get." I studied her for a reaction, but behind that visor her expression remained opaque to me. "Were we to establish a Consulate here without Sudorian permission, that would only lead to conflict." I left it at that, not adding that conflict was something we wanted to avoid, because I did not want this conversation to lead to questions about what circumstances might provoke us not to avoid conflict.

We passed on through the ridge below the two pylons, and slowed to a halt in the first of a system of locks. Below us lay an area forested on its further rim and circled by the distant jut of pylons like those behind us. Within this lower area were many mounds of spill, chimneys belching smoke or steam, and large oblate buildings muscling from the ground like fungi. Canals and roads, busy with barges and wheeled transport, networked all of this, in places disappearing underneath some of the buildings, or spearing off into the forest. I saw all of this only briefly, as once the first set of gates closed behind us, the water inside the lock began to drain, quickly raising twenty-foot lock gates to cut my view. These eventually opened to allow us into the next lock, from where I now noticed huge earth movers working the spill piles down below, before my view was again cut off. Another three locks followed before the system finally released us out onto the canals I had spied from above.

"Tell me about the Polity," Rhodane instructed.

This I did, though not painting the Polity in too glowing colours. The general populace of Sudoria must still resent the Brumallians, so I did not want this Consensus Speaker—and adopted Brumallian—enthusiastically advocating further contact with us, since that might cause just the opposite reaction from her 'former people'.

The canal cut straight through a muddy landscape on which grew fungal growths like those I had first encountered beside the forest river, but here speared through with stands of plants similar to horsetails. The bleach reek became stronger, but there were other odours as well: a farmyard smell consisting of decaying excrement and warm animal bodies on a winter morning; something resinous as in a pine forest, probably from those horsetails; and other astringent odours usually associated with some sort of chemical plant. The air was also noticeably warmer—the temperature having risen by at least five degrees—which of course tends to make things smellier.

We finally drew into the shadow of one of the oblate buildings glimpsed earlier, chugged through an arch into the interior, which was lit by the pale sunlight shining through thin translucent walls. The building was filled with the sloshing, sucking racket of water being shifted. Great clams opened and closed rhythmically, spilling foot-wide pipes like a vomit of spaghetti, and all exterior smells were soon drowned out by one I recognised from home: the meaty smell of open molluscs. Our craft motored to a halt in a circular pool, more gates closed behind us, and the water level began to drop fast. Then down a mile-deep pipe we descended into the organic gloom and cacophony of the hive city ReconYork.