Dosa to Vandereekin was thirty two Dopplers, but about ten Dopplers out of Dosa they crossed the boundaries of the Gaftiz nebula. This was an awkward piloting problem. The radical increase in the local mean density of the ‘vacuum’ rendered the previous phase change calculations invalid. The super string at the heart of the Strip Engine had to be retuned to a subtly different oscillation frequency about the central singularity and the computers reprogrammed both within the space of one quantum jump and the next; a real and imaginary duration of less than one nanosecond.

Quella and Souveroon were both on the Reference Bridge for this manoeuvre and there was a sigh of relief all round when it was accomplished successfully. A minor error would have resulted in the loss of pseudo velocity and a forced drop into E L space for however long it took their engineers to retune the Strip Engine. A major error would have left the ship smattered in a spray of unexpected virtual photons all over the target area (a local increase in the vacuum energy density of no interest to anyone but a theoretical physicist) and its real energy translated outside this space and time. A major error was highly unlikely but highly unlikely things were already happening on this ship...

Vandereekin to Ohm, Ohm to Ahyrax, Ahyrax to Huunos. That was about as far as they could go towards Gaftiz. They were within sixteen Dopplers of the heart of the nebula and the pulsar at the centre was already beginning to distort the geometry of space close to the limits of tolerance for Kalindy’s Strip Engine. The effects of such a strong gravitational sink were more extreme at greater distances when performing mesh/intermesh calculations than for simple general relativistic purposes. Going into a powerful gravitational sink at pseudo velocities in excess of 1.0 c was like climbing an increasingly steep hill with the added danger that if you fell off it would be into oblivion. In effect, the heart of the Gaftiz nebula was a no go area for interstellar ships.

But Huunos was a fitting and interesting terminus - a lesson in its own right in Confederacy history and the dangers of ignorance, even to the very mighty. Long before the pharaohs ordered the construction of the first pyramids on Old Earth, Huunos became the capital of the Confederacy and when the Americas were first plundered by the eastern continent on the same planet it was at the very height of its powers. At that time, no fewer than eighteen of the Alta-Tsey were lambda, with eleven alone living on Huunos. Only five worlds in recorded Confederacy history had dominated the galaxy to the extent that their home species provided more than thirteen of the Twenty Seven. These were the fabled ‘Major Worlds’; the true Capitals amongst Capitals. Before Huunos; Veremon, before Veremon; Goot, before Goot; Wochyruma and earliest of all; Taeki. The locations of Goot, Wochyruma and Taeki were unknown. Even the races who had descended from Wochyruma and Taeki were forgotten. Just less than fifty thousand standard years had passed between the fall of Veremon and the ascendancy of Huunos. As for Huunos itself, it was already in decline when the hammer blow that drove it from power and swept the lambda from dominance along with their home world struck the system with the force of a violent revolution that never was. Their nemesis was, of course, the Gaftiz supernova.

Quella fastened the fibrous black belt that pulled the green rain cloak tighter about her waist and drew the long square hood over her head. Before her the street dropped gentle, wide and smooth, trickling in the gutters, to a high stone bridge across the grid stream. Peter Josen (one of the winter shift stewards), Lara Zith (an off duty engineer) and Karintil osi (a lambda cultural expert) accompanied her. Theodore Vega completed the captains party but other crew members were with Prince Falym and Zaralova Justa who had chosen to strike out in different directions. The tourists were visiting Imne ti Soré, the largest city on Huunos.

The famous name was one to roll around the tongue. It was a place which Quella had always wanted to visit to gauge the measure of its legendary stature. Once Imne ti Soré had been the centre of the known galaxy - the most powerful populous and important concentration of sentient life for as many thousand Dopplers as the Confederacy knew and governed. Once Imne ti Soré had provided the Twenty Seven with a permanent chamber and a suite of glorious buildings for the greatest civil service they had controlled in a hundred thousand standard years. Once Imne ti Soré had provided inspiration for the cycle of the ‘Passing Plays’, the Casine Collage (the original of which still hung here) and at least four lesser imitation cities on Mylamon, Otha, Staal and Sirie u Lye. No more.

The late afternoon light was already gloaming with the threat of night but it was still comfortably warm as they reached the bridge. Surprisingly few inhabitants were abroad, although a standard hour or so remained before the day trading districts would shut down. Across the sky, low grey clouds were marched meticulously forward by a dower and disciplined military wind like the ragged banners of a puritan army. You could stare up into those clouds and discern layer upon layer of detail as the lower ranks crossed the higher but no trace of open heaven was ever uncovered. A continuous light drizzle wet the face and lubricated the byways of the city. Some early lights began to shine behind grey blue and black stone to cheer the heavy gothic facades of the tall buildings which lined the street in this district. The five of them stood for two minutes watching the rapidly rushing water in the deep geometric ‘V’ beneath their feet. They crossed over and turned right to walk up a narrower street which paralleled the stream, heading against the current.

“It’s about twenty minutes from here to the plaza,” Josen said.

“Then another ten minutes to the Soré Pool,” Karintil osi warned.

The dark masses of the diamond hills to left and right were still largely unlit and gave the impression that the tourists were walking at the bottom of some deep stone gorge or valley. Behind them the city did fall away although they were too low to observe anything more than the second row hill where the grid streams met; but ahead a more open prospect drew them. A savoury aroma came from the stall fronts on their left and yellow light splashed onto the street from under a communal awning. Squat sigma, looking like hairy trolls, were serving shell platta with a smell of bitter limes, bruised bananas, fried university fish, roast almonds and baked crinkle crabs. To keep out of the persistent rain which was slowly soaking through their clothing, the tourists walked under the canopy and at a particularly large establishment where a large board spelt in crude letters ‘English Spoken’, Vega stopped.

“Can we eat these?” he asked a thick set sigma wearing a black tabard. It was hard to understand the guttural reply but it was certainly a form of English.

“Your stomachs will love them! Two promises each.”

“Five plattas please,” Vega passed the stall holder a thin round red pellet from his capacious pockets. It was an indication of how far Huunos had declined in Confederacy circles that it could now only trade in middle tech promises, the more prestigious delights of electronic trading barred to the system because of its distance from the main trade routes and because it lacked the natural technology now to maintain the high tech currency network. The sigma turned to confirm the transaction at a battered CashCheck, an old Dyzak Instruments model that had obviously seem a lot of use. Slipping the disk into a round funnel at the top he watched as the machine oriented the money, weighed it, sampled it from a random location and ran an infrared spectroscopic analysis on the minute grain it had abstracted. Across a blue rectangle a wavy trace of light flashed out and was matched with patterns held in memory for all of the currently valid compounds. Vega’s coin was ninety nine percent pure. A quick GalCon flicker at the readout told the trader he had not been duped and stored his ten promise coin. The entire verification process had taken less than ten seconds.

“They’re all right,” Karintil osi confirmed as Quella looked at him in query. “Quite safe for regular digestion.” The steaming shells certainly looked delicious and tasted as good.

“Lucky I remembered the local currency value. We’re still low tech on Cascoll,” Vega smiled.

CashCheck machines were more common in the Confederacy than GalCon generators and had a history that was probably not much shorter. Middle tech currency ran on the assumption that the manufacture of certain obscure organic chemicals could only be legally carried out by Confederacy central banks and that such chemicals could be easily identified on any reasonably advanced world (even non equilibrium Emergent) through infrared analysis. It was difficult and uneconomic for any criminal organisation to forge such a currency except in the sort of large quantities which would alert the authorities suspicions because of the requirement to buy large quantities of the components on the synthetic pathway. Even so, no one middle tech compound could last as legal tender forever. Sooner or later it generally followed that organisations outside the legitimate framework began to mint their own coins and then a change was required. Any proposed new compound must be reasonably stable, hard to synthesise and most of all, easy to identify with the infrared spectroscopic range that existing CashCheck machines could handle. One of the motions to be discussed at the coming Conclave of the Twenty Seven on Earth was, in fact, just such a change in middle tech currency. As a by product of their search for artificial invicerine, Corrin Pharmaceuticals had found a chemical they claimed was ideal. L’Rrantora would have been lobbying on their behalf after the trip was over: if he had lived.

The tourists ate their spiced sea food hungrily as they strode on at an increased pace. Passing lambda were lean ghosts, strutting rapidly about as though they were the liberated noon day shadows of their buildings, haunting the city with perfect freedom now this sickly wet sky left every tone and texture not otherwise lit, flat and mellow as a grainy old photograph. In another two hundred metres the road angled through a three hundred and thirty degree bend to leave the tourists at the apex of the diamond hill they had been skirting. Behind them it rose gently like the back of a giant turtle, but ahead of them the ground opened up into a large flat triangular plaza, placed point to point with their hill. In turn, this plaza was bordered by the edges of two further diamond hills which dropped down in height and width to a point at the far end where a curtain wall crossed the plaza at the same level they were now standing. Although it was over a kilometre away the rain had eased up slightly and the wall could be seen to be overhung with green vines and flowers. The flanking hills were one of Imne ti Soré’s residential districts; tier upon tier of pale pink stone matched row for row in the construction of formal archways, columns, buttressed steps and circular roof walls to produce an effect that was almost Escheresque. It was an oddly disconcerting uniformity in a style of architecture not usually seen that way. It was very beautiful. The foot of each diamond hill dropped sharply to the ground at the height of the wall and two rapid little streams emerged from the base of the wall and flowed underneath to clearly mark the limits of the plaza. These streams met five metres below the tourists at a ‘splashing’ rock where a great standing wave was cast up, before they again divided to pass to either side in boundary channels. A gracefully curved transparent bridge arched out over the watery cross-roads and descended in a broad sweep of shallow steps to the plaza below. Four of the tourists gazed beneath their feet as they stood over the dynamic equilibrium of the stream where the water exerted all the hypnotic fascination that water has always held for regulars. Lara was more fascinated as an engineer by the material the lambda had used to construct this crossing point. It was amazingly durable and had retained its clear see through properties against the feet of countless citizens who would have scratched a less effective surface and rendered it opaque. No doubt it was a sophisticated lattice plastic of some sort but she had never seen one quite like it.

The wind picked up as they walked towards the wall and for the first time it began to seem that it might march some of the clouds away, though the growing chill it brought was a less pleasant prospect. The plaza was laid out in the manner of a formal garden; straight paths, high narrow hedges, raised stone platforms and carved geometric follies - the platonic solids, spheres and inclined planes - were designed to give variety to the vista. A group of five lambda and two sigma were pushing a heavy granite (?) ball around a raised track with the low whistling calls so typical of their hybrid language common on Huunos (and indeed throughout this part of the Confederacy). They were a ‘septa’ group on ‘city walk’, Karintil osi said, explaining that it was a kind of ritual holiday performing a series of tasks and relaxations prescribed by the ‘Suburban Elders’. Other than that the park was deserted. On a sunny day it might have been lovely but on this day it was simply dreary. Quella was glad to reach the base of the wall where a stone ladder made the five metre ascent to the great traverse road amidst a profusion of some white flowered and sweetly scented vine. It was not difficult for the regulars to fit their feet into the recessed stone slits, use their hands to reach the hollows above and quickly scramble up the worn wall. For any lambda it would have been even easier, but no sigma could ever hope to climb this way.

At last they stood on a broad brick highway, stretching in either direction for kilometre after kilometre and straight as light. To either side, gateways from the diamond hills gave access to the road, but in front was a really magnificent sight. The Soré Pool, dammed by this enormous wall, spread out for over a kilometre to a parallel wall which was the technical eastern limit of the city. Beyond that, the land dropped away sharply into a shadowy rain soaked vale, the grey green of sodden vegetation waving slightly where it fell into a moving mist that lost most of the detail. Beyond that was the true glory of the city. Heard faintly over the wind and more clearly when it dropped the rushing cry of the Soré Falls boasted of its cataract in the distance like a white curtain over the yellow and red cliffs of the huoti edge. Flanking the great waterfall, two pale violet pillars of light, tinged white at the top, stood tall and more prominent as the gloom of the evening grew. The river limit signs were clear markers to the great ships which plied the wide waters of the Upper Soré that they must follow the current no further. To the people of Imne-ti-Soré they were the eastern beacons; the gateway to the inland provinces above them. To the tourists they were magnificent.

Only from the air could the structure of the famous city be truly appreciated. Before they departed Huunos, Le Grant had arranged for the tourists to over fly Imne-ti-Soré but for the moment they were getting their first taste of its distinctive geography. If you flew up from the Laerados air quay in the east you would first pick up the easy course of the Soré river (the longest and broadest on Huunos) draining as it did the entire Veva plateau. Along its fertile banks, Laerados and Carikal, to name but two, were amongst the most important cities on Huunos. The huoti edge struck rudely across the Soré’s course, scarce forty kilometres from the sea and forced from it that magnificent waterfall that was the lower limit of navigation. The continent sloped across a steadily descending plane angled at about five degrees to the horizontal until it sloped under the sea. Thus far as nature had made it, but the lambda were not content and had used their great engineering skills to redesign the landscape; the stamp of intelligence creating beauty by will, force and perception.

At the foot of the Soré Falls they had built a sink hole, a second waterfall a short swirl from the first, dropping underground to an aqueduct which channelled the river into vast artificial caverns beneath a green valley they called the Soré Falls park. The park rose steeply towards the city and ended in a wall. Flying over it, you would see a huge rectangular pool, one kilometre wide and ten kilometres long, bounded by wide marble and brick highways at the top of its containing walls. The nearest equivalent to such a structure could perhaps be found at Versailles on Old Earth, but the ponds and pools of France’s most grandiose designs were mere puddles when compared to the Soré Pool. It was fed from the upwelling of that water held under the park, a giant artificial spring kept out of balance with the gravity that would otherwise have flooded the valley by specially designed valves and a series of high volume pumps, part of the power supply for which came from water mills at the underground falls with a much larger fraction being supplied by the wave and wind turbine network that provided the rest of the city with electricity. The system made an extravagant demand on energy resources but the lambda who had built it considered the ultimate effect worthwhile.

The languid surface was ornamented with a hundred fountains, three artificial islands and four bridges which crossed it from east to west. Water lilies were cultivated in raised bowls and pale lights spread silently over stretches of dark water. The great traverse road which was its western side marked the start of the city proper. Moving above the capital it could be seen that it was built on a tessellation of regular diamond shaped hills and level areas, each clearly divided from the next by the silver glimmer of a deeply cut grid stream. These grid streams were fed from the Soré Pool, their outflow controlled by the Suburban Elders to balance the influx of water into the pool. They crossed and re crossed at a multitude of ‘splashing’ stones as the city fell away to the west. At the heart of the city, more intersecting geometrical games were played with the lattice. The Citadel at the centre where the Twenty Seven had once held permanent Conclave was actually an octahedral ‘island’ of larger dimensions. Continuing west the diamond grid was restored and finally tapered, braiding more and more of the grid streams together in deeper and wider channels with a consequent reduction in the area of the city land in proportion. Finally the river was reunited with itself and within ten kilometres reached the sea where the SaltPort clustered about its estuary. Thus did Imne-ti-Soré live up to its name, which in literal translation meant ‘the cutter of the Soré’.

The travellers were making for South Wire Bridge, which together with its northern twin made an isosceles triangle, its base the central sector of the great traverse road, its apex Speaker’s Island. As they crossed the pool the wind made the thin metal strings sing, humming too with the passage of their feet. The sky was now half clear and the Pool ruffled by the wind and the lightest of dying drizzles was, from time to time, mirror calm as it reflected the blue evening. The first stars were coming out with a faint vale in front of them, the fiery tracery that was the Gaftiz Nebula seen from the inside.

On Speaker’s Island a great stone bowl of an amphitheatre crowned and surrounded by greenish blue trees and fertile green creepers faced towards the city. On a pillar of rock rising from the ground a huge throne was held at the focus. Across the pool it commanded a fine view of Imne-ti-Soré’s largest open space, an uncluttered triangular plaza at the same level as the great transverse road which was called the Eastern Forum.

“Whenever there was important public news that affected the inhabitants of the city it was traditional for the Mirra (the governor of the Suburban Elders) to announce it from here and to give the city’s oath and response. The lambda would fill the Eastern Forum and the Keel Hills to listen.” Karintil-osi pointed out the two diamond hills to either side of the Forum.

“I want you to imagine the mood of the fateful spring of 3134 secadoona (that is 3134 Huunos years after the lambda Emerged - about seven hundred standard years ago). The Twenty Seven had been debating widening trade imbalances since 3070 at least. A recent increase in Alta-Tsey representation for the iotans was disliked by the off Huunos lambda colonists in particular. There were problems integrating the newly Emerged etans on the trailing limb of the Confederacy and a plague affecting rho and phi populations was having a debilitating effect on the worlds to spinward and coreward. All in all, it was a less than happy time for those in government. The Confederacy was too centralised for the age and the lambda were perhaps already starting their descendency.

"The first rumours of a major disaster were no more than whispers - awful hints that dawned into dreadful apprehension as coincidence piled on coincidence. These ‘coincidences’ were absent ships; a succession of scheduled arrivals where the vessels just failed to turn up. The orbital docks and loading shuttles of Huunos were equipped to deal with several interstellar craft on any given day and the company Bookers had a full program when, with no warning ,there was a period of ten days with not a single ship coming through. After the third day the Twenty Seven took the unusual step of directly intervening in planetary affairs and stopped all departures. On the sixth day, the physicists at Carikal institute (and orbital) announced that they wee measuring unexpected state gradients in imaginary space. On the tenth day the ‘Cheeva’ made port, followed two days later by a special express research courier from Ohm. The news was out and there could be no doubt. The Mirra formally announced it here. As a result of the figures correlated from the ‘Cheeva’, Ohm and the system’s own scientists they now knew that the neighbouring blue supergiant Gaftiz (which they had always called the sapphire of the south) had gone supernova.

"In Confederacy records you will still find seventy two ships officially listed as lost at the instant of that stellar explosion; vessels of all types and designs, plying the interstellar lanes at distances of up to five hundred Dopplers from Gaftiz. More than half of the seventy two were on route to, or from, Huunos. More than half of the seventy two were within two hundred Dopplers of Gaftiz. Of these, the majority must have been destroyed instantly. One real instant they were here - a phase change and they came back virtual, the energy pattern below the reconstruction threshold and their matter thus never to be restored to this space and time. Of the rest, some would have been translation blurred into a heap of rubble, some would have collapsed when the singularities in their Strip Engines were mass boosted over the safety limits, and some would simply have been dumped into Einstein-Lorentz space with their Strip Engines so badly tuned that there was no chance of achieving pseudo velocity again. One of this last class was found only fifty standard years ago - the ‘sky prince’ out of Sirie-u-Lye. Her crew had starved to death more than half a millennia before. Without a Strip Engine it would have taken fifty thousand years at sub c velocities to reach Ahyrax. Twenty nine of Vital Void’s own ships just went missing, including the premier cargo ship ‘Wor II’, the largest single company involved. There was a total loss to the company of two hundred and two employees, one thousand three hundred and seventeen passengers and two hundred and fifty eight million promises.

"But when the Mirra spoke, that tally was not yet in and the people of Imne-ti-Soré were understandably more concerned about their own fate. He warned them that they had about three standard years to get ready. Then the light would reach them....and the gamma rays...It was certainly possible to hide from the primary radiation and over a few short tens of days it would decline sharply, but behind the electromagnetic rays would come the vanguard of hard particle radiation - deadly secondary products of the nuclear core reaction. There could be no escape from this high energy bombardment the Mirra warned the lambda. They already knew.”

The tourists had reached Speaker’s Island as Karintil-osi talked and they stood at the bottom of the stone pillar supporting the throne. Three recessed ladders climbed to the top but no one was keen to ascend these ladders. The height of the platform was too daunting and the sense of history sleeping, too profound. They would not be welcome where the Mirra must speak.

“When the sapphire of the south broke open, a new sun shone on Huunos. It was brighter than the native sun and more fierce. At its curse the planet withered.

"Fortunately for Imne-ti-Soré, Gaftiz never rises at this latitude and it was the southern hemisphere of Huunos that got the worst of the climatic fall out. The Veva plateau remained relatively unscathed. But when the hail of protons stripped the magnetic field, tumbled down to the poles, shot through the atmosphere and transfixed the world, no one could escape completely. The meteorology was violently affected. Titanic winds and seas tore round the planet and whole regions were blasted scorched and irradiated.

"Amid the mutterings of discontent it had been asked many times why the scientists had not known about the fate of Gaftiz and done something to stop it exploding or at least to provide better warning. The politicians were blamed, although in truth they could have done little except perhaps evacuate a somewhat larger fraction than the small numbers who did flee Huunos before the blossoming Nebula embraced the system and isolated it. Any mass exodus would have been completely impractical.

"When the Mirra arose to announce new rationing, three of his bodyguard followed him to the top of the throne. They cast him down in front of the crowd and that plaque marks the spot where he struck the ground.

"After the coup things went from bad to worse. Huunos was declared an emergency zone by a special Conclave of the Twenty Seven on Zairn. The days of the permanent Conclave at Imne-ti-Soré were over for good. Most of the Twenty Seven had left before the radiation storms arrived. Those that didn’t were replaced. The declaration was of no immediate use. Once the gas fronts started swirling about the former capital no Confederacy ship could get in or out for seventy standard years. And when at last the density of the surrounding space was uniform enough to permit safe operation of the strip engine and the nebula front calm enough to cross, the first relief ships found Huunos in a sorry state. The population had been drastically reduced by famine, war and pestilence. With the social structure reduced to the level of city states, Imne-ti-Soré had fought with Gaeverdon (successfully) and Laerados (unsuccessfully) - this last battle resulting in the sack of the city, the draining of the Soré pool and the flood of the Soré valley park.

"Only at great expense was the course of the river restored and the slow reconstruction of Huunos completed. Yes, Huunos is a civilised world once again but it has fallen from grace too recently to be anything other than aware of its own frailty. It is at the end of a difficult trade route where once it was at the heart of the Confederacy. Few ships come here now. They say that the city of Imne-ti-Soré is a beautiful and proud woman brought low by shame and poverty, but in her heart she still dreams of past glories. You will find Huunos a strange mixture of the cosmopolitan and the parochial. It still draws a variety of races to its shores even after all its troubles; lambda, sigma, rho and iotans are more likely at ease with one another than lambda with lambda if they hail from Imne-ti-Soré and Laerados. The old city wars are still remembered with pain here. But they don’t speak of them in public.”

By the time the tourists had finished exploring Speaker’s Island and returned to the great traverse road across the north wire bridge it was quite dark. The clouds which had seemed so permanent earlier in the day had been completely blown away. The beautiful sky web of red from the nebula was very clear and provided a low illumination which, whilst not completely adequate for surveying the city, at least relieved the absolute blackness of the night. On board Kalindy the travellers had been running a twenty three hour day but the rotation period of Huunos was only a little over eighteen hours. When the shuttle had brought them to mass they had just started a light cycle and with all the party on day shift none of them felt tired. Accordingly, Quella suggested that they visit the night markets.

A circuit monorail platform ascended from the gateway street not fifty metres west of the great traverse road and feeling somewhat footsore the tourists were glad to request a ride from the automatic machinery. When the driverless tram came into view Quella was not quite so keen. The vehicle was a gold and white transparent cylinder about thirty metres long, slumped round the rail almost half way to its central axis and cushioned internally by a series of silver coloured magnetic bumpers. If these had any effect it seemed to be a slight one for it rocked alarmingly about the rail, rumbling and clanking at the more acute angles as though to break clean through the track. From the thin high voltage wire above the vehicle, sharp little tungsten blue, electric white and plasma purple sparks cascaded over its flanks to earthing cilia which trailed behind. Heavily insulated doors popped open and the tourists were soon whisked away, bouncing back into amorphous foam seats that were soft at low force but hardened up rapidly as they adjusted for the shape and weight of the passengers. “It’s memory plastic,” Lara explained to Peter. “It’ll deform only within limits then pop back to a rest state when the pressure is off. Very useful in designing seats for different races.”

“The ride’s free,” Karintil-osi was saying to the captain, “courtesy of the Suburban Elders. Imne ti Soré has a large public transport network paid for purely from business tithes bound to the Mirra.”

There were no other passengers in the tram which rattled along at a remarkably fast pace. They climbed diamond hills in one way zigzags and whipped down the other side as though the rail were a roller-coaster. At other times they looped round high ground and on a couple of occasions took the line of a grid stream for a kilometre. Dull red lights over the windows made no reflections to hinder the view but apart from the occasional yellow glow the city was remarkably dark. Vega remarked on the fact to Quella and she in turn queried Karintil-osi.

“It’s the effect of having a world where the two distinct circadian cycles must be kept in harmony. The sigma and lambda are primarily diurnal, though no more so than any regular. The iotans are basically nocturnal but will still venture out in daylight. As a matter of courtesy each species tries not to impinge on the other any more than they need to. The city can function easily without artificial ‘shifts’ to keep it rolling by night and day. It’s a better natural balance if iotans do the night work.”

The tram lights automatically dimmed as they rode over a splashing stone, the red ones fading out to be replaced by weaker insipid purple strips.

“We’re now in one of the shadow suburbs of Imne ti Soré. This is a quarter mainly frequented by iotans. The lighting regulations here proscribe a maximum illumination and they only endorse this one frequency. Its the colour of a certain luminescent tree fungus common on Tharèva and you’ll recognise it as the GalCon frequency which designates the iotans.”

At the next stop three lambda and a sigma boarded the tram, each carrying a purple lantern. Two minutes later it halted at the Heavenly Season Night Market. The platform which ran for ten metres to either side of the door and five metres in front was a wooden deck of planks hanging out into a dark forest of scaffolding. As soon as it detected that all the passengers had disembarked the vehicle went rushing off down the dim monorail. This was one of the points on the track where it spanned a grid stream.

The local geography was rather novel here.

The Heavenly Season Night Market completely occupied a diamond sector of the city grid which dipped down into a bowl that was an inverted image of the usual hills. Only because they were contained in V shaped stone channels which projected like gutters from the surrounding sectors, were the grid streams prevented from flowing to the bottom. From the valley rose a complicated open lattice work of girders, poles, planks, stages, ladders, stairs and landings which stretched up to the grid streams and higher, until at its tapering ‘crows nest’ it equalled the height of the peaks of the neighbouring diamond hills. Packed loosely in the dark it held an exciting vibrancy of three dimensional life more active than any they had yet seen on Huunos which made the Night Market a city within a city.

There was a rho at the principle gangway into the market, the fixed grin reminding Quella of Parchy, Smiler and the colleagues. The tourists had seen no rho since Vrondit. This one wanted to sell them lanterns at five promises each.

“Take them,” was Karintil-osi’s advice. “You’re going to need them in there.”

Pleased at making five sales so easily the trader bowed as his CashCheck machine chimed confirmation of their currency. Karintil-osi drew them to one side before proceeding.

“A word of caution. This night market was designed ninety percent with iotans in mind, with ten percent of concessions to lambda and no concessions to regulars. The iotans are, in origin, an arboreal race who make a virtue of maintaining much of their civilisation in forest structures like these which mimic their first developed communities. You will find the walkways here narrow; sometimes frighteningly so. The iotans are quick and agile with an exceptional sense of balance. Remember that local gravity is over two times what we’ve been used to on Kalindy (though slightly less than that of Tharèva) so things fall fast. If you go ‘overboard’ drop your lantern and grab for a catch pole. You’ll have time to stop yourself if you’re aware of the danger because there are always convenient struts not far below each trading road. Don’t leave the main trading roads! If you fell there we’d have to go down to the scavenger levels to collect you and its not very nice under the root poles.”

Quella cut in. “If we get separated we’ll meet back here in a couple of standard hours. It may be impossible to keep together.”

Karintil-osi led the way into the matrix with Vega following, but the captain kept Josen and Zith back a moment. “I want you to keep an eye on Vega. Be discrete but don’t let him out of your sight. We can’t afford another accident amongst the passengers.”

The walkway the tourists set out upon was wide enough at the start for the five of them to have marched side by side had they so chosen. After ten metres, however, it divided into two equally broad pathways, the left one angling down and the right up. Karintil-osi took them up. They crossed a small landing that was part of a long and busy road running up to an open platform at their left and another further to their right, but continued up. Iotans danced down between and past them, growing more numerous as they crossed another landing. Eventually they reached a crowded plaza where a GalCon projector underneath a banner of iotan script announced ‘cut cloth’ for ale. This was a simple GalCon noun that should have been the same in GalCon and GalCon B but although she guessed what it said she couldn’t read the GalCon. Karintil-osi reminded her.

“GalCon is the exception in the lighting regulations but they use a muffled version; a dialect shifted 917 Å to the violet and with its absolute intensity halved. You could call it GalCon C.”

“I remember,” Quella answered. “It’s really only used by the iotans themselves isn’t it?

“That’s right. There are so many variants of their primary language and so many secondary languages on Tharèva that they prefer to communicate in the form of GalCon between worlds.”

Rows of ornate stalls were hung with silks, cottons, kovas, nylon, xeryals, polyesters, hemps, jethairs and wools. The stall owners had wide faces, thick black hair slicked back at the top, dark eyes as huge as pools and ringed with white fur and long thin noses flared astonishingly at the end. They chattered to one another and to the droves of customers who thronged the square, but most of their talk was inaudible. Quella knew that the frequency range to which iotan ears were most sensitive was above the regular audible threshold. This gave the Heavenly Season Night Market a curious feeling of suppressed energy. It was obvious that a vast activity was happening all around. Above and below, to left and right, in front and behind, (as though they were in the centre of a new born cluster of stars), the purple lights which reminded their owners of a tree fungus, flickered and glided over the open voids and sky alleyways of the market. Yet apart from the inevitable mechanical noises, the expected sounds of a busy regular market were absent. There was no crowd swell and mutter. Only an occasional high trill (which was a low note for the being who voiced it) gave some sound of life.

The air was lukewarm; the occasional cool breath of wind through the open framework relieving the faint stale smell of lambda and iotan. Moving on from the cloth market they turned right up a wide ladder, poles set far enough apart to let five regulars (and many iotans) climb in parallel, and reached a platform where liquors and drinks of various sorts were the main items for sale. A troupe of iotan jugglers were performing a nine part dance, throwing boomerangs between the members of the team as they cavorted on the boards. The tourists did split up then, Quella going alone across a narrow catwalk to a plaza selling a light orange fruit she didn’t recognise, then further down a set of wooden steps leading to a broad alley were some sort of electric circuits were being bought and sold. It was here that she witnessed a mugging. Down to the left on a parallel but lower alley an iotan woman was carrying a large closed bamboo cage, an oval pod almost as big as she was. Inside, six huge greko moths from Tocan could be seen fluttering restlessly against the bars as her awkward progress banged them around. Suddenly, two robbers swung down from ropes in the darkness beyond. The taller iotans struggled against fierce resistance from the lawful owner and as others rushed to join in the catch of the cage was accidentally released. In an audible whirr of broad wings, five of the moths made a successful bid for freedom before the door could be closed. At once, the focus of the trouble spread as frantic efforts were made to recapture the moths. Instinctively rising upwards, their metre wide wing spans were white cools symbols of panic as they circled round seeking gaps in the structure. Eager hands reached out to pluck the delicate creatures from the air at all levels. One passed within half a metre of Quella, its sad compound eyes transfixing her for a second before it soared higher. Four were recaptured, including that one, but one found a free passage to higher levels. Watching it recede, Quella entertained an unprofessional sentimental hope that it would escape the market altogether.

By the time the two hours were up the captain had had more than enough of the stifling atmosphere of the place. She found it a curious mixture of the claustrophobic and agoraphobic and longed for a pale blue dawn to wash the air and pierce through the web of black tatters sending its multitudinous inhabitants to sleep.

Somewhat to her surprise, when Quella reached the train station again she found that she was the last to arrive. Not that she regarded that as anything but lucky. The prospect of hunting for a missing regular in the Heavenly Season Night Market didn’t appeal. Vega was engaged in conversation with Karintil-osi. He was carrying a small mobile - jet black moebius strips linked in a topological curiosity with interpenetrating crystalline solids of revolution generated from truncated parabola and hyperbola. The whole was delicately balanced in a magnetic cradle and coursed through with red sparks of light. Karintil-osi was laughing. “You’ve encountered a band of Para Cavans. I’m afraid they’ve duped you but it’s quite an amusing trick.”

“What’s the matter?” Quella interrupted. Her colleague explained the story Theodore Vega had just recounted concealing his mirth at their puzzlement.

“You say that you found a stall of lambda and zeta,” he said to Vega, “who proclaimed themselves to be representatives of the Shrine of St. Janna. They sold you this model which they said was a talisman representing the shape of the universe as it is perceived by the Physical Manifestation and as it was revealed to St. Janna. I take it you aren’t familiar with the Cavans sect? Or the Para Cavans? No. Well its important locally but not well known throughout the Confederacy. The faith is core iso spiritual under a dictate of the Conclave of Tho. Its rather austere and mathematical in origin, particularly with regard to geometry and the physical revelation. It stresses the construction and contemplation of ever more perfect geometric forms on the chapels of many planets. The Para Cavans are a sub sect; not exactly a heresy but outside the orders and mainstream organisation of the Cavans. There is in theory an OverSeer who technically unifies the two aspects of the faith but for almost all practical purposes they’re independent. The Para Cavans have the task of mocking the Cavans.

"Now in all the various Cavans orders there is no more central tenet of the faith than the manner of the spatial definition of the cosmos. According to St. Janna, the universe comes into being and exists because it must. The Cavans believe this is necessary because it is the only shape which cannot contain a smaller copy of itself - it is in no way contingent upon the disposition of its components. In other words the proportions of the universe are uniquely and perfectly defined by its existence and cannot be similar (in a strict geometric sense) to anything else. Do you understand? Its a joke I’ve not encountered before though its such a good one I’d imagine the Para Cavans use it a lot. To Cavan followers of St. Janna this model is a logical impossibility and an attempted representation inherently insulting. What a blasphemy!”

“It’s beautiful,” Quella said. “And if beauty vexes truth, must truth always win the argument?” she quoted. Theodore Vega smiled.

Kalindy XII held orbit around Huunos for fifteen standard days. For most of that time the tourists continued their exploration of Imne ti Soré, with occasional extended visits to Laerados and Carikal, but on their last natural day a small party travelled to Ke e vy a. Heavy steam gliders took them over the Veva plateau from Laerados, curving this time away from Carikal and south of the Soré. They crossed the ‘broken mountain slope’ which fell away on the eastern edge of the Veva plateau for forty kilometres of rocky pinnacle and deep canyon until it gave way to the old plain. The dark red river Somb led them further south over wild lands where small communities of lambda were rebuilding the husks of an earlier generation of cities. As they got closer to the equator, a local guide explained, they were crossing the regions which had suffered more heavily from the indirect effects of the supernova.

They put down only once to refuel the steam gliders at a city called Wromich; a wide white sprawl of a million souls on the tongue of land between the great confluence of the Somb and the Tintreen. The giant yellow palms that lined the oily streets were mutants whose lineage came out of the days of the burning. Then it was over the flat lands and towards the Somb estuary.

Ke e vy a was a sub equatorial continent separated from the greater northern land mass by a wide strip of ocean they called the crystal sea. It had suffered some of the worst climatic excesses on Huunos; a land once teeming with life irradiated and lashed by storms which left most of the surface desert and waste. The tourists were visiting Caracitawill - literally ‘the plain of the exiles’. Their steam gliders grounded on the long rough runways of the eastern strips and they topped a low rise to overlook the wind blown dusty grey expanses of the outer township. This was the home of the ‘children of the jewel’ or as they were sometimes known, the ‘læma of the burning’. Karintil-osi explained that in one strand of lambda cultural folklore the læma were supernatural entities not precisely akin to angels or demons but with a similar power to test and judge mortals.

Low houses of stone made shanty streets which despite the slow expansion of several centuries still seemed strangely temporary, erected without love and unsatisfactorily makeshift. They walked down the lanes, coughing where the bare dry soil churned in the still, hot air. It was a daunting sight for the inhabited expanse of Caracitawill stretched beyond the limits of the highest rise. Only in the distance could some sign of variation be perceived - a group of tall dun spires and broad squat towers which presumably performed some central function. Groups of lambda emerged from the rude dwellings to follow their steps with curious patience before dropping back. They were quite quiet, haunting the tourists like polite ghosts. And in a way they were; ghosts of a future yet to come. Each one bore a thin red mark dividing their flat upper skull across the line that ran between their sparse black quills. It was a feature found in some of the lambda of the northern continent, grotesque to human eyes, like some ugly weal.

The tourists knew something of the history of Caracitawill and it had been at Vega’s request that they visit, but their excitable guide now reinforced earlier words with actual examples.

“You see that line! You see it! Until Gaftiz spewed on us there were no lambda like these. Its a mutation which must have been latent in our genes because although most of it happened here, when the radiation bathed the neighbouring systems it broke out on several other worlds in similar fashion. All of those whose ancestors were born ‘children of the jewel’ are from families sent here by order of the Mirra. And any new mutations are sent here too. It is the law. From Ahyrax, Otha, Ohm and Sirie-u-Lye they came here and from all over Huunos to the ‘plain of the exiles’. It is a genetically dominant change and we don’t want it spread.”

“Then you’ll speciate eventually,” Quella said but the guide only gave the GalCon equivalent of a shrug.

Theodore Vega and Quella accompanied their lambda guide roughly fifty paces ahead of the rest of the party. The captain was unaware that behind her Donald Souveroon was watching the three of them with some concern. He addressed Colin Le Grant who was walking with him.

“I think you should know that I have recently had an audience with Mr. Big Eye.”

If Le Grant was surprised he didn’t show it.

“The captain has no doubt told you that she is paying particular attention to Mr. Vega in connection with our recent unfortunate deaths. That’s on the advice (or perhaps insistence) of Mr. Big Eye.”

“She has briefed me.”

“Yes, but what she doesn’t know is that Mr. Big Eye is worried about her own integrity.”

“He thinks she might be responsible?”

“Of course not. He thinks she might be forming some sort of undesirable relationship with Mr. Vega. Under the necessity of observation she has seen a lot of him and she likes him. This may (in Mr. Big Eye’s words, I hasten to add) be having the unfortunate side effect of biasing her judgement along sexual lines.”

Le Grant laughed. “Old fungus face itself is a real expert in that field!” He laughed again. “And what do you think?”

“I’ve been speaking to Vis Ulman.”

“You have, have you?” Le Grant hadn’t guessed that Kalindy’s second in command had overridden the usual channels of authority. Vis Ulman being a steward it would have been standard practice for Souveroon to approach Le Grant before interviewing the crewman.

“My apologies,” the young navigator said, “but an opportunity presented itself to speak when I called on the captain and I thought these things were perhaps best handled delicately and unofficially as it were.”

Le Grant just nodded slowly. “No apologies necessary. It’s your right to talk to anyone. What did you find out?”

“Ulman agrees with Mr. Big Eye.”

Le Grant looked ahead. Quella and Theodore Vega were now hand in hand.

“In short, he thinks they are falling in love”, Souveroon continued.

“Then we had better be careful. Professional relationships are sometimes endangered in circumstances like this. I remember once on the Magog.... For her own sake you must warn the captain,” Le Grant said. “These things are much more important on a passenger ship than the sort of craft she commanded before.”

“That’s what I thought,” Souveroon said.

It took about half an hour to reach the central squares of the ancient camp. A native lambda met them as arranged by the Mirra. It had been a delicate diplomatic negotiation because there was no regular formal contact between Imne ti Soré and Caracitawill but the great city still dominated the plain of the exiles both economically and politically. Still, the fact that they had to try showed both the decline of Huunos and the importance of the tourists.

They went through a rough archway into a thick walled pale grey tall cylinder, giving welcome shade from the red gaping sun which had become oppressively hot. “This is a church of the vacant thought,” the red skulled lambda said. The floor was several steps down, the interior open to a high ceiling lost in the shadows. Scattered around the room were several circular stone tables with recessed low blue lights embedded in the tops. They were angled to point to a fountain of some clear liquid which gushed and fell from a well at the centre of each table. Seated around on low stools, lambda talked in soft southern accents, a language incomprehensible even to their northern guide. From time to time, one would press a button concealed under each stool. This diverted the liquid stream in their direction and with deft movements the individual concerned would intercept the flow with an open mouth, swallowing for a couple of seconds before allowing the fountain to be restored. There was some intoxicating effect which showed in a transitory change in the aliens’ expressions.

Zaralova-Justa and Prince Falym, although they hadn’t initiated this trip had taken the opportunity to come along and with the accompanying presence of four other stewards to look after them there were eleven ‘tourists’ in Caracitawill (including the lambda from Imne ti Soré). Two tables were needed to accommodate them all. Quella and Vega sat at the one where the ‘child of the jewel’ had taken his seat. Falym had started clowning with the drink dispenser immediately. In the dappled shade the GalCon was harsh but suddenly the representative of the exiles broke into English.

“You’d be surprised by what we know,” he said. “Or perhaps you wouldn’t. But he would.” The lambda indicated the other guide. “How they despise us!” It was uncomfortable. “Why did you come here?”

“We came here to learn,” Vega said. “Or at least I did. What would you have us do? Do you want tourists to gawk at every simple wonder in the capital and be content at that? I accept that we’ll never know what it’s like to be an inhabitant of the plain of exiles. At least we’ll have seen something of it. The universe is too big and life too short for anything else.”

“Then learn!” An old crone crossed the church of vacant thought. Her joints were warped in a way which quickly told the regulars she was in pain, even though their experience of lambda physiology had been previously limited to their recent observations on Huunos and the few systems before.

“How old do you think she is?”

The regulars shook their heads.

“Thirty standard years! You are shocked. They didn’t tell you that? Our genetic misfortune has lowered our life span by more than fifty percent. I’m astonished that they didn’t cite that as a quick reason not to be infected by interbreeding with us. We haven’t the time or vision to complete this camp properly. Multi lifetime projects are all very well but apathy is easier in our situation. Ars very longa, Vita very brevis,” he paraphrased.

“But surely...”

“There’s no surely about it! I’ll tell you the real reason why we’re exiled now and this is something I can guarantee your guide won’t have informed you of. You tourists find us pretty repulsive eh? Don’t deny it! I’ve seen regulars before (how do you think I learned English?) and I know what they think.”

“And that’s why you’re exiled?” Quella asked diplomatically trying to defuse the bitterness.

“Ask him!” the lambda pointed to his northern cousin. “Go on ask him!”

His harsh accents were punctuated by an irregular hacking cough they had difficulty in recognising as laughter. Whether it was spontaneous or an affected imitation Quella could never afterwards decide, her knowledge of the natural reactions of these aliens being very limited.

“Are we ugly?” the red skulled one asked. His voice was loud and only the fact that he had spoken in English to the foreigner prevented most of the natives from understanding. Even so they looked round curiously. There was a definite pause.

“No... Oh no!”

Later as they retreated to the steam gliders they extracted the truth from the Imne ti Soré guide, though not without difficulty. It was the shame of the lambda race that the ‘læma of the burning’ were fantastically attractive to the ‘pure’ stock. Seeing the mutants they were often drawn to their doom like sailors who had heard the sirens. Even if it was a racial/evolutionary doom rather than a personal one it still set up an enormous guilt complex in the species. Interbreeding invariably produced more of the short lived ‘children of the jewel’. That was the reason for the exile.

Flying north over the crystal sea, Vega had a conversation with Quella which stuck in her mind for a long long time. Grey white smoke brushed over the dull bronzed wings as they cut through the westerly cross winds. Apart from an occasional low roar of the booster engine the ride was silent. The craft quivered lightly as it fought for updrafts. To their left there was a high keening from two white birds circling far above them in an azure clear sky.

“He’s wrong you know.”

“Who?”

“The master of the læma. I feel sorry for him because he’s so angry but you can hardly blame the mainstream lambda can you? The intellect is protecting the race when instinct has let it down. That’s a noble thing, however futile it might be in the end.

"You have to live with what you’ve got, though, in your own life. I know that for sure.”

“What do you mean”, she’d interrupted.

“That there’s a big difference between descendency in a race and collapse in an individual. The one may be desirable - the other is only surrender to old age at best or at worst a perversion of personality.” He shivered suddenly as though he were cold then pulled himself together.

“Remember that Quella, whatever happens. Descendency is for races not for people.”

There was a peculiar intensity about his words; crude diamonds mined from deep strata of hard rock.

“What could happen?” she asked, “What do you know?”

But the hard edged compassion was gone from his voice and the bland screen was back. “It’s just a figure of speech,” he said and she knew he regretted that little he had revealed of himself. What she didn’t know was why. And no matter what she said, she couldn’t find out.