“Perhaps she finds me attractive,” I suggested, smiling. It was, if nothing else, a more sincere smile than Madame d’Ortolan’s.

She leaned closer. A swirl of breeze brought a hint of her perfume to my nose; something flowery but cloying. “Do you mean,” she said, “sexually?”

“Or just attracted to my sunny character in general.”

“Or attractive in the sense that she thought you one of those more likely to go over to her cause,” Madame d’Ortolan suggested, smile gone now, head tipped to one side, evaluating. Her expression was not unkind, but it was intent.

“I can’t imagine why she would have thought that,” I said, drawing myself up. In her heels, Madame d’O was as tall as me. “I would not expect or appreciate to be under any sort of suspicion just because that lady chose to approach me.”

“You can’t think why she did?”

“No. For all I know she’s working her way through whatever group she’s chosen alphabetically.”

Madame d’Ortolan looked to be about to say something, then didn’t. She snorted and turned. We resumed walking. For a while, nothing was said. A jet stroked a double strand of white across the sky, ploughing heaven.

“You are one of the first,” she told me as we approached the landing stage where the Palazzo Chirezzia’s launch waited. “We think she is targeting transitioners alone. We have people and techniques able to predict her movements and we have, we believe, been able to prevent her doing any real mischief so far. We shall need the full cooperation of all concerned to propagate that fortunate trend onwards into the future, as I’m sure you are entirely able to appreciate.”

“Of course,” I said. I left a pause, then said, “If the lady’s cause is so arcane and her threat so trifling, why is it necessary to oppose her with such force?”

She stopped suddenly and we turned, facing each other. Our eyes never truly flash, of course; we are not the luminously grotesque inhabitants of the deep sea (well, I certainly wasn’t. I wouldn’t vouch for Madame d’Ortolan). However, evolution has left us primed to notice when somebody’s eyes widen suddenly, showing more white, due to surprise, fear or anger. Madame d’Ortolan’s eyes flashed. “Mr Oh,” she said, “she opposes us. Therefore she must be opposed in return. We cannot let such dissent go unchallenged. It would look weak.”

“You could try ignoring her,” I suggested. “That might look more confident. Stronger, even.”

An expression crossed her face that might have been exasperation, then she smiled briefly and patted my arm as we resumed walking. “I dare say I could tell you more of the lady’s corrupting theories and you would be both more horrified at her and more understanding of our position,” she told me, with what sounded like forced amusement. “Her accusations are more alarming and damaging than it is necessary to reveal, but centre, as far as we can gather, on the whole course and purpose of the Concern’s activities. She fantasises some vast ulterior motive in all we do, and so takes issue with us existentially. Such madness absolutely requires treatment. We cannot let it pass. Her charges against us must be defended, her argument broken.” She flashed, this time, a smile. “You must trust us, as your superiors – those with a broader, more knowledgeable and encompassing view – to do the right thing in this.”

She was watching me as we walked. I smiled at her. “Where would we be,” I asked, “if we did not trust our superiors?”

Her eyes might have narrowed a tiny fraction, then she smiled in return and looked away. “Very well,” she said, sounding like somebody who had just made her mind up about something. “There may be another debriefing.” (There was not.) “You may be under moderately enhanced surveillance for a short time.” (It was occasionally highly intrusive enhanced surveillance and it lasted a long time; a couple of years at least.) “Your career, which we are happy to note has already met with some success – precocious success, in the eyes of some of my more conservative colleagues, though I hope we may dismiss their opinions – is still at its beginning. I hope and would expect that this incident has not harmed it in any way. It would be such a tragedy if it did.” (It was harmed. I harmed it. Still I became the best and most used of my peers.)

We reached the jetty, coming out of the shadow of the island’s encircling walls. Madame d’Ortolan accepted the hand of the boatman as he helped her into the launch. We sat down in the open rear well of the launch. “We hope that our trust in you is both well-founded and reciprocated,” she said, smiling.

“Entirely, ma’am,” I said. (This was a lie.)

As the boat gunned away from the isle of the dead, Madame d’Ortolan detached the flower from her lapel. “They say these things are unlucky, outside of a cemetery,” she said, and let the gelded blossom fall into the restless waters of the lagoon.

We change things. For the better, we would hope, obviously. What would be the point of trying to change things for the worse? We do what we can. We do all that we can. We do our very, very best. I cannot see how anyone could disagree. And yet still we encounter disagreement. People take issue with us. Our views and prescriptions are not accepted as being definitive, and correct, and desirable, by certain people.

This has to be regarded as their right, and yet it does seem also to be their conceit, perhaps even their indulgence.

I suppose we have to take these things and these people and their views into account. We are not, however, obliged to indulge them.

We work to make the many worlds better.

There. That’s the official line.

The saying goes that Aspherje would be a great city even without the University of Practical Talents, but then so would the UPT without Aspherje. To me, coming from the background I came from, it looked like a crunched, piled-together collection of several dozen cathedrals; all domes, spires, elongated windows and flying buttresses, with the great central dome – extravagantly clothed in gold leaf so that even in dull weather it seemed to shine like something not entirely of that or any other world – plonked on the rough summit of the whole chaotic frozen storm of brick, stone, concrete and clad steel like a gloriously irrelevant yet sublimely triumphant afterthought.

There we learned our trade. First, though, we had to learn ourselves, discover where the mother-lode of our talent truly lay. The Transitionary Office had developed its techniques for detecting likely candidates for training at the UPT over many centuries, and one of the talents that it found most useful was that of rapidly and reliably identifying those with any sort of talent that might prove of subsequent use to itself.

So spotters, as they were generally called, travelled amongst the many worlds, looking for those who might be recruited to the cause. A few could take themselves there; the vast majority could not.

The most widespread talent, or at least the one that it was easiest to find, was the ability to transition, that is, to shift oneself, preferably with a high degree of willed accuracy, between the many worlds. It was unheard of to find somebody already doing this; only the signs of a potential future proficiency were obvious to somebody attuned to such indicators, not naturally occurring instances of the applied talent itself. As far as we knew, that came only once the subject had been trained generally in the techniques of transitioning and instructed specifically in the use of the drug septus.

Beyond that extraordinary but in a sense basic skill, the most useful additional talent was that of being able to take somebody else with you when transitioning. A tandemiser could do that. This meant that the ability to flit became separated from any other talent that it might have been deemed would be useful on the target world.