“But, Doctor Braäst, surely no matter whose version of this tragic story you believe, there is no reason to carry this blood-feud on into the present.”

“But we did not,” the white-haired man said reasonably. “This confused and unfortunate woman swore eternal antipathy to our faith; swore, indeed, that she would murder the next Prophet Incarnate, should He appear in her lifetime, and furthermore bound all her line to the same oath; that she had been raped, and then indoctrinated by the Dascen tribe in an atmosphere of hatred and atheist lies might help to explain such an abomination, but it cannot excuse it.

“Our Patriarch was at first determined to ignore this outrage, but God himself, in a visitation of a kind that occurs less than once in a generation, spoke to him and told the blessed Patriarch that he had but one course of action; blood had to be met with blood. By all means meet tolerance with tolerance, but equally one must meet intolerance with intolerance.

“The Messiah can not be born until the threat has been lifted or the desecration ameliorated. The oath has been made, the vendetta instituted, and all by the Dascen female line. They might think that they can rescind their rash and sacrilegious curse-indeed I perfectly understand that they want to do so now-but I’m afraid God’s word is not to be so trifled with. What must be done must be done. Even if we don’t get the Passports-though I am confident we shall-this is not a matter for compromise.”

“Of course, Doctor Braist, cynics might say that the real object of all this is to secure the return of what is now the very last Lazy Gun, which was the chief treasure taken from-”

“The exact nature of the treasure is irrelevant, Keldon, but it was as an act of mercy that God, through the Patriarch, allowed that the return of this device-never at any time used by the Huhsz, I might point out, and of purely ceremonial value would signal an end to this tragic feud, from our side at least.”

“But, Doctor, what it all boils down to is this; can any amount of this sort of reasoning, historical or otherwise, really justify this sort of barbaric practice in this day and age? Briefly, please.”

“Barbarism is always with us, Keldon. Lip City suffered an act of unparalleled barbarity eight years ago. What we have been forced to do is not barbaric; it is the will and the mercy of God. We can no more ignore this duty than we can neglect the adoration of Him. The Lady Sharrow-though we may feel sorry for her on a human level-represents a living insult for all those of the True and Blessed Belief. Her fate is not a matter for debate. She is the last of her line; a sad, barren and disabled figure whose misery has gone on too long. Her spirit, when it is finally released, will sing for joy that we were the ones who rescued her from her torment. I look forward to the eternal instant when her voice joins those of the Blessed whose conversion occurs after death; hers will be a muted exaltation, but it will be exaltation nevertheless, and eternal. Surely we should all wish her that.”

“Doctor Braäst, we’re out of time. Thank you for those words.”

“Thank you, Keldon.”

“Well,” the presenter said, turning to face the camera again with his eyebrows raised and just the suggestion of a shake of his head. “The war in Imthaid, now-”

Zefla switched the screen off. Dloan turned back to the jet’s controls. The Log-jam was a vast metallic ice crystal, glittering in the distance at the margin of the land and sea.

Zefla turned to Sharrow, slinging one long leg over her seat. “Buncha religious fuckwits.” She shook her head, blonde hair swinging. “You’re going to be a fucking heroine at the end of this, Shar, and they’re going to look like the humourless hysterical dickshits they are.”

Sharrow looked disconsolately at the darkened screen, nodding. “Only if they don’t get me,” she said, turning away and looking out of the window, where the outlying sections of the Log-jam rose towards the dropping plane like a set of enormous, gleaming fingers.

The plane landed without incident on Carrier Field.

When the state of Piphram had been on the way downhill after its era of grandeur and wealth, centuries earlier, many of the seaships that had comprised its merchant fleet had been sold, many more had been scrapped, and hundreds had been mothballed. The mothballed ships-everything from megatonne bulk carriers to the most delicate and exquisite repossessed private yacht-had mostly been brought home, to lie in a broad lagoon on the coast of Piphram’s Phirarian province and await better trading conditions.

Subsequently a modest land boom on the nearby coastal strip, between the Snowy Mountains and the lagoon-dotted coast pushed property prices up and Piphram’s historically punitive real-estate taxes exaggerated the effect. Then somebody-spotting a loophole in the tax status of the lagoons-thought of using a couple of old car ferries as temporary floating dormitories.

The two down-at-stern ferries, or rather their marginal situation, had proved to be a seed-point; within the chaos of Goltei’s furiously complicated economic ecology, finance-along with its relevant material manifestations-tended to concentrate and crystallise almost instantaneously around any region where the conditions for profit-making were even one shade more promising than elsewhere.

Thus, the Log-jam had grown from a few rusty hulks to a fully-fledged city in less than a hundred years; at first the ships were moored together in clumps and people moved between them on small craft, then later the vessels were joined together. Some were welded to each other and some had secondary housing, office and factory units built upon and between them until the individual identity of the majority of the ships began to disappear in the emerging topology of the conglomerative city.

The Log-jam now comprised many thousands of ships and a new one was added every few weeks; it had spread to the limits of the first lagoon, then spread out to sea and taken over three other lagoons along the coast, to become home to over two million people. Its main airport-which could be moved as one unit so that it was always on the outskirts of the city-was composed of forty old oil tankers joined side by side, their decks stripped, smoothed and strengthened to take the strats and transport aircraft. Its largely mothballed space port was a collection of ancient oil production platforms, towering at the southernmost end of the city; its docks were a few dozen dry docks, crane-carrying bulk carriers and militarily obsolete fleet auxiliary vessels.

Eight old aircraft carriers, remnants of a commercial navy, jointly made up Carrier Field, where the V-winged executive jet landed.

The little plane was quickly towed away and down-lifted to be stored in the bowels of one of the adjoining ex-supertankers which now served as supplementary hangars to the antique carriers.

Sharrow, Zefla and Dloan looked around the deck of the old ship while a tall, stooped steward with a full beard loaded their baggage onto a whining trolley. The weather was warm and humid and the sun high in a slightly hazy sky.

“Mornin t’yez,” wheezed the steward, nodding to them. “This your first time t’the jam, hm?”

“No,” said Sharrow, scowling.

“It is mine,” Zefla said brightly.

“Almost a crime, lovely lady like yerself not visitin the jam till now, if ye don’t mind me sayin so, ma’am,” the steward told Zefla. He took the control stick at the front of the cart and started to walk away, the cart whining behind him. “Been a good few years an more since we ad the priv’lege of welcomin two such beautiful ladies such as yourselves to the old jam. Makes the day a better one just seein two such enchantin zamples of the fair sex, it do, an it were a pretty fine day t’begin with. But made the better now with your presence, lovely ladies, like I says. An no mistake.”