He turned back.

There was a hiss of superheated air as something passed his face and struck the tower. Where it hit the frozen wall the heat blossomed into a flower of ice crystals.

Dom dived instinctively, rolled over and over and was up and running. A second blast passed him and a dry seed head in front of him exploded into a shower of sparks.

He stifled the urge to look round. Korodore had schooled him unmercifully in assassination drill. Knowing who was the assassin was small reward for being assassinated. Korodore said, 'The price of curiosity is a terminal experience. '

At the edge of the lagoon Dom gathered himself and dived. As he hit the water the third blast seared across his chest.

Great bells rang, far out to sea or maybe in his head. The cool greenness was soothing, and the bubbles...

Dom awoke. With an inculcated instinct he kept his eyes closed and tentatively explored his environment.

He was lying on the mixture of sand, ooze, dry reed stems and snail shells that passed for soil on most of Widdershins. He was in shade, and the thunder of surf was very near. And the soil rocked, gently, to the beat of the waves. The air smelled and tasted of salt, mingled with marsh ooze, reed pollen and... something else. It was dank and musty, and very familiar.

Something was sitting a few inches away. Dom opened one eye a fraction and saw a small creature watching him intently. Its dumpy body was covered in pink hair which sprouted from a scaly hide. A snout was a bad compromise between a beak and a prehensile nose. It had three pairs of legs, no two exactly alike. It was almost a Widdershins legend.

Behind Dom someone lit a fire. He tried to sit up and it felt as though a red-hot bar had been laid across his chest.

'O juvindo may psutivi,' said a gentle voice.

A face out of a nightmare appeared above him. The skin was grey and hung in folds under eyes four times the proper size in which small irises stared out like beads in milk. Great flat ears were turned towards Dom. The musty smell was overpowering. The face was set off by a pair of large sungoggles.

The phnobe was trying to speak Janglic. Dom summoned his resources and answered him in jaw-breaking phnobic.

'A sscholar,' said the phnobe , dryly. 'My name is Fff-Shs. And you are Chairman Sabalos.'

'Not till tomorrow,' moaned Dom. He winced as the pain came again.

'Ah. Yess. Do not on any account make ssudden movementss. I have treated the burn. It iss superficial.'

The phnobe stood up and walked out of Dom's vision. The small creature still watched him intently.

Dom turned his head slowly. He was lying in a small clearing in the centre of one of the floating islands that thronged the marsh rhines. It was moving slowly and, remarkably, against the wind. From somewhere below the reed mat came the occasional deep pulse of an antique deuterium motor.

A coarse woven net was slung across the clearing, hiding it effectively from airborne eyes. With the motor and the ancillary mechanisms that must be hidden under the thick reed mat the little island would not hold its secret long against even unsophisticated search equipment. But there were several hundred thousand islands in the marsh. Who could search them all?

A conclusion began to form in Dom's mind.

The phnobe passed in front of him and he saw he was holding a double-bladed tshuri knife lightly, tossing it thoughtfully from hand to hand. Dom was mother-naked, except where dry salt rimed his black skin.

The phnobe was embarrassed by his presence. Occasionally he stopped juggling with the knife and stared at him intently.

They both heard the distant swish-swish of a flyer. The phnobe dived sideways, flipped back a section of reed and killed the island's speed, then on the rebound flung himself down by Dom with the knife pressed against his throat.

'Not to utter a sound,' he said.

They lay still until the flyer had faded into the distance.

The phnobe was a pilac smuggler. The dagon fishermen under licence from the Board of Widdershins rode out by the hundred when the big bivalves rose up from the deep, to snatch the pearls of nacreous pilac by the light of the moon. They used lifelines, leather body armour and elaborate back-up procedures - like the factory float which included a hospital where a missing hand was merely a minor mishap and even death not always fatal.

There were other fishers. They traded safety for an odd conception of excitement and accepted as the price of an illegal fortune the complete lack of any opportunity to spend it. By nature they worked alone and were highly-skilled. What they snatched from the sea was theirs alone, including death. Occasionally the Board launched a campaign against them and made half-hearted attempts to stop the pilac being smuggled offworld. Captured smugglers were not killed now - that would certainly be against the One Commandment - but it occurred to Dom that to those of their nature the alternative punishment was far worse than the death they courted nightly. So the smuggler would kill him.

The phnobe stood up, still holding the knife by the heavier, forward-facing blade.

'Why am I here?' asked Dom, meekly, 'The last I remember...'

'You were floating among the lilies sso peacefully, with a stripper burn across your chest. The ssecurity has been out ssince dawn. It seemed they were searching, for a criminal maybe, so I am jusst a little curiouss and pick you up.'

'Thank you,' said Dom, easing himself into a sitting position.

The smuggler shrugged, a strangely expressive gesture in a high-shouldered bony body.

'How far are we from the Tower?'

'I found you forty kilometres from the Sky Pillar. We have travelled maybe two kilometres ssince.'

'Forty! But someone shot at me at the Tower.'

'Maybe you swim well for a drowned man.'

Dom lifted himself gradually to his feet, his eyes on the twisting knife.

'Do you gather much pilac?'

'Eighteen kilos in the last twenty-eight years,' said the phnobe, watching the sky absently. Despite himself, Dom did a quick calculation.

'You must be very skilful.'

'Many times I die. On other time lines. Maybe this universe is my chance in a million and the other thousands of selves are dead. What is skill then?'

The knife continued its brief flights from hand to hand. Overhead the sun shone like a gong. Dom felt dizzy and was briefly sick but managed to stay upright, waiting for his chance.

The phnobe blinked.

'I seek an omen,' he said.

'What for?'

'To see, you understand, if I am to kill you.'

A flock of blue flamingoes flapped slowly overhead. Dom gasped for air and readied himself.

The knife was thrown faster than he could follow it. It flashed once, high in the air. A flamingo dipped out of the flock as if coming into land, and crashed heavily among the reeds. The tension in the air snapped like a finely-drawn wire.

Ignoring Dom, the smuggler loped across to it, drew his knife from its breast and began to pluck it. He paused after a minute and glanced up sharply, pointing with the knife.

'A word of advice. Do not ever again even think of a heroic leap at any person holding a tshuri knife. You have about you the air of one with many lives to wasste. Maybe therefore you rissk your life easily. But foolish gestures towards a knife end sadly.'

Dom let the tension flow out of him, aware that a fraught moment had passed and gone.

'Besides,' the smuggler went on, 'doesn't gratitude count for anything? Soon we will eat. Then we will talk, maybe.'

'There's a lot I want to know,' said Dom. 'Who shot at ...'

'Tssh! Questions that can't be answered, why ask them? But do not rule out b a ter.'

'Bater?'