“…The eighteenth of November, AD 4034, rHuman,” the glowing orb concluded. “Transport will be provided. Baggage allowance is one large bag, carryable, plus luggage required to transport full formal court dress for your presentation to the Hierchon. A gee-suit should be worn for the outgoing journey. Any further questions?”

Verpych thought for a moment. “Military-grade hysteria.” Slovius shifted in his tub-chair. “Explain, please?”

“They are likely over-correcting for earlier dismissiveness, sir.”

“Somebody’s been telling them there’s a problem, they’ve been pooh-poohing it, then suddenly woken up to the threat and panicked?” Fassin suggested. Verpych nodded once.

“The decisional dynamics of highly rigid power structures make an interesting study subject,” Tchayan Olmey said. Fassin’s old tutor and mentor smiled across at him, a calm, gauntly grey presence. The four of them sat at a large round table in Slovius’s old study, Slovius himself supported in a large semi-enclosed device that looked like a cross between an ancient hip bath and a small flier. Fassin thought his uncle’s tusked, whiskered face looked more animated, and even more human, than it had for years. Slovius had announced at the start of the meeting that for the duration of whatever emergency they might be involved in, his slow demise was being halted; he was fully back in charge of Sept Bantrabal. Fassin had been appalled to find that there was some small, mean, self-aggrandising part of him which felt disappointed and even slightly angry that his uncle wasn’t going to keep slipping into the hazy, woozily uncaring senility that led to death.

“The phrase the projection used was ‘profound and imminent threat’,” Fassin reminded them. That was what had spooked him, he supposed, that was why he’d suggested this meeting, told them what he had. If there really was a threat to Ulubis system, he wanted, at the very least, Sept Bantrabal’s senior people to know about it. The only person missing from the conference was Fassin’s mother, who was on a year-long retreat in a Cessorian habitat somewhere in the system’s Kuiper belt, ten light days away and therefore profoundly out of the discussion. They had discussed whether she should be contacted and warned that there was some sort of system-wide threat, but without details this seemed premature and possibly even counter-productive.

Olmey shrugged. “The overreaction might well extend to the language used to describe the perceived problem,” she said.

“There has been a recent increase in Beyonder attacks,” Verpych said thoughtfully.

For the two centuries after the loss of its portal, the sporadic Beyonder assaults on Ulubis — as a rule against the system’s outskirts and military targets — had declined to such an extent they were barely even of nuisance value. Certainly there were far fewer attacks than there had been in the years before the wormhole’s destruction. For millennia, almost every system in the Mercatoria had been getting used to these generally irritating, rarely devastating raids — they tied up ships and materiel and kept the whole meta-civilisation slightly on edge but they had yet to produce any real atrocities — and it had come as something of a relief to the people of Ulubis, a kind of unlooked-for bonus, that for some perverse reason the system’s temporary isolation had so far been a time when the direct military pressure on it had seemed to decrease rather than been cranked up.

Over the last year or so, however, there had been a slight increase in the number of attacks — the first time in two centuries that the yearly number had risen rather than fallen — and those assaults had been of a slightly different nature compared to those that people had more or less got used to. The targets had not all been military units or items of infrastructure, for one thing: a comet-cloud mining co-op had been destroyed, some belt and cloud ships had disappeared or been discovered drifting, empty or slagged, one small cruise liner had just disappeared between Nasqueron and the system’s outermost gas-giant, and a single heavy-missile ship had appeared suddenly in the mid-system half a year ago, travelling at eighty per cent light speed and targeted straight at Borquille. It had been picked off with ease, but it had been an alarming development.

Slovius wobbled in his tub-chair again, slopping a little water onto the wooden floor. “Is there anything that you are not allowed to tell us, nephew?” he asked, then made a sound that sounded disturbingly like a chortle.

“Nothing specific, sir. I’m not supposed to talk to anybody about any part of this except to… further my mission, which at the moment consists of getting to Borquille by Fifteen tomorrow. Obviously, I’ve chosen to interpret this as allowing me to talk to you three. Though I would ask that it goes no further.”

“Well,” Slovius said, with a noise like a gargle in his throat, “you shall have my own suborbship to take you to Pirrintipiti for transfer.”

“Thank you, sir. However, they did say that transport was being provided.”

“Navarchy’s filed an outgoing from here for half-Four tomorrow morning,” Verpych confirmed. “Going to have to shift if they’re getting you to Sepekte for Fifteen tomorrow,” he added, with a sniff. “You’ll need to suffer five or six gees the whole way, Fassin Taak.” Major-Domo Verpych smiled. “I suggest you start adjusting your water and solids intake accordingly now.”

“We shall have my vessel standing by in any case,” Slovius said, “should this transport fail to turn up, or be overly crude in form. See to this, major-domo.” Verpych nodded. “Sir.”

“Uncle, may I have a word?” Fassin asked as the meeting broke up. He’d hoped to catch Slovius before they’d begun, but his uncle had arrived with Verpych, Slovius looking energised and triumphant, Verpych appearing troubled, even worried.

Slovius nodded to his major-domo and Olmey. In a few moments Fassin and his uncle were left alone in the study.

“Nephew?”

“This morning, sir, when you were asking me about my most recent delves, while the emissarial projection was being downloaded—”

“How much did I know of the matter?”

“Well, yes.”

“I had had a simple, if highly encrypted, signal from the Eship myself, to tell me that the projection was following. It was in the form of a personal message from a First Engineer on the ship, an old friend. A Kuskunde — their bodily and linguistic nuances formed part of my collegiate studies, many centuries ago. They did not say so, nevertheless, I formed the impression that all this might be the result of a delve of yours.”

“I see.”

“Your emissarial projection gave no hint whether this might be correct or not?”

“None, sir.” Fassin paused. “Uncle, am I in trouble?”

Slovius sighed. “If I had to guess, nephew, I would surmise that you are not in direct trouble as such. However, I will confess to the distinct and unsettling feeling that very large, very ponderous and most momentous wheels have been set in motion. When that happens I believe the lessons of history tend to indicate that it is best not to be in their way. Even without meaning harm, the workings and progress of such wheels are on a scale which inevitably reduces the worth of individual lives to an irrelevance at best.”

“At best?”

“At best. At worst, lives, their sacrifice, provide the oil required to make the wheels move. Does my explanation satisfy you?”

“That might be one word for it, sir, yes.”

“Well then, it would appear we are equally in the dark, nephew.” Slovius consulted a little ring embedded in one of his finger stubs. “And in the dark, sleep can be a good idea. I suggest you get some.”

“Well, Fassin Taak,” Verpych said briskly, waiting for him outside the door. “Finally you’ve done something that I find impressive. Thanks to you, not only do we appear to be about to start living in interesting times, you have succeeded in bringing us to the attention of people in high places. Congratulations.”