The obvious places to look were the relevant Trojan or Lagrange points, the gravitationally stable locations dotted around and between the orbits of the various planets in the named systems. However, these had all long since been eliminated. After that it got much more tricky. In theory a worm-hole mouth could be left in any stable orbit anywhere in a system and never be found unless you practically tripped over it. Working portals were anything up to a kilometre wide and had an effective mass of several hundred thousand tonnes, whereas a portal shrunk and stabilised and set up to keep itself that way with relatively simple automatics systems could lie in an orbit as far out as a system’s Oort cloud with a gravitational footprint of less than a kilogramme more or less indefinitely. The problem was how to describe where it was.

Allegedly there was some extra set of coordinates, or even a single mathematical operation, a transform, which, when applied to any given set of coordinates in the original list, somehow magically derived the exact position of that system’s portal. The obvious objection to this was that after four hundred million years, minimum, there was no known coordinate system ever devised capable of reliably determining where something as small as a portal was. (Unless the holes had all somehow automatically kept themselves in the same relative position all that time. Given the haphazard and cavalier attitude that Dwellers tended to display towards anything especially high-tech, this was regarded as highly unlikely.)

“So,” the image hovering above the dark device in the centre of the audience chamber said, “if I may assume we are all happy we know what we’re talking about…’ It looked around them again. Nobody demurred.

“The Dweller List,” the hologram said, “supposedly giving the approximate location of two million ancient portals dating from the time of the Third Diasporian Age, has been dismissed as an irrelevance, a lie or a myth for over a quarter of a billion years. The so-called Transform, supposed to complete the information required to access this secret network, has proved as elusive as it is unlikely to work if it does exist. Nevertheless. Some new information has come to light, thanks to Seer, now Major, Taak.” Fassin was aware that he was being looked at again. He just kept staring at the hologram.

“A little under four hundred years ago,” the hologram said, “Seer Taak took part in an extended expedition — a ‘delve’ as it is known — which took him amongst the Dwellers of Nasqueron, and specifically into the company of a group of Dweller youngsters called the Dimajrian Tribe. While with them, he encountered an antique Dweller who — in a fit of generosity unusual in his kind — granted Seer Taak access to a small library of information, part of a still larger hoard.”

(This was the wrong way round — the myth, not the fact. Fassin had been with Valseir for centuries and the Dimajrian Tribe for less than a year. He hoped that the rest of the Admiral’s information was more reliable. All the same, he had a sudden, vivid memory of choal Valseir, huge and ancient, accoutred with rags, draped in life-charms, floating absently within his vast nest-bowl of a study, deep in the lost section of abandoned CloudTunnel on the rim of a giant, dying storm which had long since broken up and dissipated. “Clouds. You are like clouds,” Valseir had told Fassin. At the time he hadn’t understood what the ancient Dweller had meant.)

“The raw data containing this information was passed on to the Shrievalty for analysis,” the image hovering above the black device said. “Twenty years later, after the usual analysis and interpretation and, you’d imagine, with plenty of time for second thoughts, re-evaluations and sudden inspirations, it was shared with the Jeltick under the terms of an infotrade agreement.”

The Jeltick were an arachnoid species, eight-limbed — 8ar, in the conventional shorthand of the galactic community. Obsessive cataloguers, they were one of the galaxy’s two most convincing self-appointed historian species. Timid, cautious, deliberate and very inquisitive (at a safe remove), they had been around for much longer than Quick species usually lasted.

“Somehow, the Jeltick contrived to notice something the Shrievalty had missed,” the hologram continued. (Now, Fassin noticed, it was Colonel Somjomion’s turn to look awkward and aggrieved.) “Heads have rolled due to this incompetence,” the image told them. It smiled. “Ido not speak figuratively”

Colonel Somjomion compressed her lips and rechecked something on the machine she was in charge of.

“Within months,” the hologram said, “the Jeltick sent their best excuse for a battle fleet to the Zateki system — unexplored for millennia — which lies about eighteen years from the portal at Rijom; they got there in twenty years, so they were not exactly dawdling. It ought to be pointed out that the Jeltick would never normally try anything so dynamic, or risky.

“Something at Zateki seriously chewed up the Jeltick ships and what is assumed to have been the sole survivor was later found by a Voehn craft. The surviving ship was fleeing, all upon it were dead and its biomind was deranged, invoking the mercy of an unknown god and babbling for forgiveness for what had been its mission, which had been to search for the remains of something called the Second Ship and, therein, the Dweller List Transform.”

Ah, thought Fassin. The Second Ship Theory. That was a sub-fallacy of the whole Dweller List delusion. The further you looked into the List myth, the more complicated it got and the more possibilities appeared to open up. All nonsense, of course, or so everybody had thought.

“Somehow, we assume through spies, the Beyonders and — possibly through the Beyonders — the E-5 Disconnect got to hear about this. The Beyonders attacked the Ulubis portal less than a month later and the E-5 Discon’s sudden interest in Ulubis also dates from this point. When the Jeltick realised the secret was no longer theirs alone,” the image said, “they broadcast-leaked it, to avoid accusations of partiality and maintain their reputation for disinterestedness.” The projection gave a sour look. “This has not gone down too well with the Ascendancy, either — one imagines the Jeltick will be made to pay somewhere down the line. In any event, five full squadrons of the Summed Fleet — over three hundred capital ships — retraced the Jeltick fleet’s route to Rijom and Zateki, but found nothing. Under full disclosure it has turned out that the information concerned was in any case incomplete; the lead is, as it were, only half-formed. The Jeltick move was a gamble, reckoned even by themselves at having a less than twelve per cent likelihood of success. For such a cautious species to make such a wild wager with their reputation and future alone indicates the value of the prize they sought.”

The hologram brought its gloved hands together, producing an audible clap. “So, now almost everybody who wants to know about the new Transform lead — such as it may be — does know, and this would appear to include the Disconnect of the Starveling Cult, and — quiet though they may have seemed recently — the Beyonders, who may or may not be in league with the E-5 Discon. Hence the most recent attacks on Ulubis, and the coming invasion.

“But be aware,” the image said, growling, eyes narrowing, “that behind this terrible threat lies a fabulous prize. If we can discover where the hidden portals lie — assuming that they are indeed there to be discovered — we may well be able to intervene in the Ulubis system before the Starveling Cult invasion force arrives. It would be entirely worth the most supreme effort and sacrifice for that result alone. Even more importantly, however, this is a prize that could, that just might, that can unlock the galaxy and usher in a new golden age of prosperity and security for the Mercatoria, for all of us.” The projection paused once more. “Our strategists estimate that even with the best result from those actions we shall ask you to undertake, the chances of success remain below fifty per cent.” The projection appeared to draw breath. “But that is not the point. The smallest chance of the greatest reward, when so few may compete for it, makes the contention compulsory. All that matters is that we may have been presented with an extraordinary, utterly unprecedented opportunity. We would all be in serious, even ultimate dereliction of duty if we did not do everything in our power to seize that opportunity, not just on our own behalf but for the good of all our fellow creats, and for those generations yet unborn.”