“You can’t say?” she said, frowning, turning further round towards him, lifting and repositioning one dark breast on his light brown chest as she did so. There was something, he thought, not for the first time, about an aureola more pale than its surroundings… “Oh, Fass,” Jaal said, sounding annoyed, “it’s not a girl, is it? Not a servant girl? Fucking forfend, not before we’re married, surely?”

She was smiling. He grinned back. “Nuisance, but has to be done. Sorry.”

“You really can’t say?” She shifted her head, and blonde hair spilled over his shoulder. It felt even better than it looked.

“Really,” he said.

Jaal was staring intently at his mouth. “Really?” she asked.

“Well.” He licked his teeth. “I can say it’s not a girl.” She was still staring intently at his mouth. “Look, Jaal, have I got some sort of foreign matter lodged in there?”

She pushed her mouth slowly up towards his. “Not,” she said, “yet.”

“You are Fassin Taak, of the Seer Sept Bantrabal, ’glantine moon, Nasqueron gas-giant planet, Ulubis star and system?”

“Yes, I am.”

“You are physically present here and not any sort of projection or other kind of representation?”

“Correct.”

“You are still an active Slow Seer, domiciled in the seasonal houses of Sept Bantrabal and working from the satellite-moon Third Fury?”

“Yes, yes and yes.”

“Good. Fassin Taak, everything that will pass between you and this construct is in strictest confidence. You will respect that confidence and communicate to others no more of what we shall talk about than is absolutely necessary to facilitate such conduct as will be required of you in furtherance of whatever actions you will be asked to perform and whatever goals you will be asked to pursue. Do you do understand that and agree?”

Fassin thought about this. Just for an instant as the projection had started talking it had suddenly occurred to him that the glowing orb looked a lot like a Plasmatic being (not that he’d ever met one, but he’d seen images), and that moment of distraction had been sufficient for him to miss the full meaning of what had been said. “Actually, no. Sorry, I’m not trying to be—”

“To repeat…”

Fassin was in the main audience chamber at the top of the Autumn House, a large circular space with views in every horizontal direction and a dramatic transparent roof, all blanked out. For now its contents consisted of a single seat for him and a stubby, metallic-looking cylinder supporting a globe of glowing gas hovering above its centre. A fat cable ran from the squat cylinder to a floor flap in the middle of the chamber.

The gas sphere repeated what it had just said. It spoke more slowly this time, though happily with no trace of irritation or condescension. Its voice was flat, unaccented, and yet still seemed to contain the hint of a personality, as though the voice of a particular individual had been sampled and used as a template, from which most but not all expression had been removed.

Fassin heard it out, then said, “Okay, yes, I understand and agree.”

“Good. This construct is an emissarial projection of the Mercatorial Administrata, sub-Ministerial level, with superior-rank authority courtesy of the Ascendancy, Engineer division, Senior Engineer level, Eship Est-taun Zhiffir, portal-carrying. It is qualified to appear sentient while not in fact being so. Do you understand this?”

Fassin thought about this too and decided that he did, just. “Yep,” he said, then wondered if the projection would understand colloquial affirmatives. Apparently it did.

“Good. Seer Fassin Taak, you are hereby seconded to the Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary rank—”

“Hold on!” Fassin nearly jumped out of his seat. “The what?”

“The honorary rank of—”

“No, I mean I’m seconded to the what?”

“The Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary—”

“The Shrievalty?” Fassin said, trying to control his voice. “The Ocula?”

“Correct.”

The baroque, intentionally labyrinthine power structures of the latest, Culmina-inspired Age, incorporating the aspirations of and enforced limitations on at least eight major subject species and whole vast subcategories of additional Faring races as well as (by its own claim) “contextualising’ various lesser civilisations of widely varying scope and ambitions and, peripherally at least, influencing entire alien spectra of Others, held many organisations and institutions whose names the utterance of which people — or at least people who knew of such things — tended to greet with a degree of respect shading into fear.

The Shrievalty was probably the least extreme example; people might respect it — many would even find its purpose rather boring — but few would fear it. It was the paramilitary Order\discipline\faculty of technicians and theorists in charge of what had once been called Information Technology, and so it was also, though less exclusively, concerned with the acceptably restricted remnants of Artificial Intelligence technologies still extant in the post-War epoch.

The Machine War had wiped the vast majority of AIs out of existence throughout the galaxy over seven thousand years ago, and the Culmina-inspired — and enforced — peace which followed had stabilised around a regime which both forbade research into AI tech and demanded the active help of all citizens in hunting down and destroying what few scattered vestiges of AI might still exist. Organised on military lines with a bracing infrastructure of religious dogma, the Shrievalty was charged with the running, administration and maintenance of those IT systems which were anywhere near being sufficiently complex to be in danger of becoming sentient, either through accident or design, but which were considered too vital to the running of their various dependent societies to be shut down and dismantled.

Another Order, a rather more fear-inspiring one, the Lustrals of the Cessoria, had been formed to hunt down and destroy both AIs themselves and anybody who attempted to create new ones or protect, shelter or otherwise aid existing examples. But that had not prevented the formation within the Shrievalty of an Intelligence section — the Shrievalty Ocula — whose duties, methods and even philosophy significantly overlapped with those of the Lustrals. It was the Ocula, this somewhat shadowy, slightly grim-sounding unit which Fassin was being ordered to become part of, for no reason that he could immediately fathom.

“The Ocula?” Fassin said. “Me? Are you absolutely sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Technically, he had no choice. To be allowed to do what they did, the Seers had to be an officially recognised profession within the Miscellariat, the catch-all term for those useful to the Mercatoria who did not fit inside the more standard subdivi-sional categories, and as such all Seers were subject to full Mercatorial discipline and control, committed to obeying any order issued by anybody properly authorised and of a sufficiently superior rank.

Yet this virtually never happened. Fassin couldn’t remember anyone from Sept Bantrabal ever being seconded by order in peacetime, not in nearly two thousand years of Sept history. Why now? Why him?

“May this briefing continue?” the glowing orb asked. “It is important.”

“Well, yes, all right, but I do have questions.”

“All relevant questions will be answered where possible and prudent,” the orb told him.

Fassin was thinking, wondering. Did he really have to accept this? What were the punishments for disobeying? Demotion? Forced resignation? Banishment? Outlaw status? Death?

“To resume, then,” the gas globe said. “Seer Fassin Taak, you are hereby seconded to the Shrievalty Ocula. You will have the honorary rank of provisional acting captain for security clearance purposes, with exceptions made as required by authorised superiors, the principal honorary rank of major for seniority and disciplinary purposes, the honorary rank of general for reward purposes and the honorary rank of field marshal for travel-priority purposes. This construct is unable to negotiate regarding the aforesaid. Do you find the foregoing acceptable?”