An abrupt gear shift occurred then with, "How do Polity citizens entertain themselves? Do they like music?"

Weird, but I was beginning to sense how Consensus thinking outside this room swayed the questions they posed, and realised that such abrupt changes resulted from the speakers here catching up moment by moment with Consensus opinion. It reassured me to learn that the Brumallians, as a whole, had now become bored with the subject of war and instead wanted to know about music. There followed a long question and answer session about the arts. The sciences next, with many attempts to obtain hard facts from me, which led on into medical technology. But then the questioning abruptly segued into history and the Prador War. It all now seemed more like general conversation than interrogation. By the time I started fidgeting in the chair and was looking round to see if there was a toilet nearby, the session came to an abrupt end with a single question.

"Why should Brumallians want to join the Polity?"

I had been waiting for that. "Because there are now no wars in the Polity, and very little crime. Every citizen is wealthy beyond measure and our medical technology is such that everyone there has a good chance of living forever."

They fell silent for a very long time, then Rhodane stood up. "Thank you, Consul Assessor David McCrooger. The quofarl will conduct you to your accommodation. We have much to consider now."

And so I was escorted away.

Gneiss—on Corisanthe Main

The station OCTs came here to the Blister to relax, as did security personnel and researchers. But that separation by definition of the groups within the station was something imposed by Orbital Combine and never really adhered to here aboard Corisanthe Main. This nil-gee area seemed a microcosm of the entire station, visibly displaying its oddities. The furniture within the Blister had been transformed beyond the exigencies of gravity and turned into baroque tangled sculptures in which the personnel lolled while drinking, eating, smoking strug and occasionally coupling. This exotic environment all surrounded a vaguely globular central swimming pool at the juncture of numerous cables, which also bound together the surrounding chaotic tangle. In the mass of water, naked figures swam, their features obscured by masks and breathers. People occasionally drowned there—a strange way to die aboard a space station—but Director Gneiss, who stood at the door viewing the scene, had never contemplated closing it down. He calmly surveyed the occupants of this area, and defined them, but not by their Combine titles. There the first-stage Exhibitionists, there second- and third-stagers. There Suffocant Supplicants, Endurers and Indolants. And over there was Dalepan, who had once been an Exhibitionist and had moved on to become a Cognisant. Of course, Gneiss had often felt the pressure to fall too easily into one of these groups. He resisted this and in the end his classification had remained simply 'Station Director'—a seeming subcult all its own.

The Director launched himself from the grav floor of the corridor, rising up into the tangled and comfortable chaos. He grabbed a curved strut resembling the horn of some ancient beast, pushed himself through a structure seemingly fashioned of a giant's bones, then settled down beside Dalepan, hooking his legs around the curving beam on which the Cognisant OCT rested with a hexagonal glass drinking cell, like a section from a large quartz crystal, clutched in his hand.

"Director," said Dalepan lazily. "I would offer you alcohol but I know you'd never take anything likely to soften that shell you live inside."

"I thought Cognisants avoided that poison too?" Gneiss observed.

"I'm a neophyte, so I'm allowed my lapses."

"How generous of them."

"Yes." Dalepan rolled his eyes. "But returning to the subject of your shell, Director, how can any of us know if there is anything inside it?"

Gneiss did not reply, that being a question he often posed to himself. He was also thoroughly aware that the drink Dalepan had been imbibing contained intoxicants beyond mere alcohol. He gazed steadily and coldly at the man, wondering if he would still be able to get any sense out of him, or even if he might be able to obtain more than sense.

"What can I do for you, Director?" Dalepan asked, finally sobering up a little under Gneiss's wintry gaze.

"The Polity is sending a Consul Assessor here," Gneiss replied.

Dalepan pushed himself upright, as best he could in relation to the curving beam, set his drink cell spinning weightlessly beside his head, and obviously made some effort to return himself to a more sober state. This struck Gneiss as very unlikely to happen, since he had now recognised the seared plastic smell of a particularly powerful hallucinogen based on a combination of strug extract and a cortical stimulant. Dalepan probably even thought he was hallucinating both Director Gneiss and this conversation.

"We use a slightly altered form of coconut oil on the surface of our pool." Dalepan pointed to where a swimmer frog-kicked his way through blue water. "It cuts down on evaporation and also increases refractivity." He gestured to a nearby cable. "Some of these are hollow, and through them water is removed, then cleaned and returned. If we left it untended and prevented swimmers from using it, this pool would soon turn stagnant."

Stagnant? Gneiss analysed the unfamiliar usage of the word, and shortly realised why it was unfamiliar. Pools never grew stagnant on Sudoria, for they evaporated long before that could occur. The Sudorian language still contained a lot of words like that, because they derived from Earth languages: words that now seemed surplus to requirements. Of course, such a word would find much use on Brumal, where pools lasted longer.

"And why do you think this is of any interest to me?"

"We are submersed in a stagnant pool, drowning, trapped." Dalepan fixed a pinpoint pupil gaze on Gneiss. "You more so than the rest of us."

"Someone to stir the water?" suggested Gneiss.

Dalepan nodded sagely then grabbed his drink from the air and took a pull from it. For a short while he seemed to be utterly unaware of the Director's presence.

"Do we need the water stirring?" Gneiss wondered. "Many in Combine definitely want further contact with this Polity, but what about us here…and our charge? Should I contest this? Should I fight for the status quo?"

Dalepan's gaze wandered back to him. "Of course not—we're suffocating in here and we need to find the way out." He focused on the Director completely. "We need to break our stasis—find a way to become fluid again."

Gneiss nodded and felt something ease inside him. It suited him that by doing nothing, by allowing those others in Orbital Combine to get what they wanted, he might at last be given the opportunity to become freely himself rather than have himself defined by a stubborn resistance to a manipulation he barely comprehended. He smiled to himself—a rare occurrence in itself. It seemed that things might be about to change, quite possibly in a radical manner.