‘Who died without ever knowing why. Maybe there’s a moral there, but I’ve been drinking too much of this tasty malt liquor to work out what it might be,’ Landers said, and reached for the stone bottle and poured another measure into his cup.

Landers and the D&W staff were still drinking and talking when Ysbel bowed out. She rose early the next morning and pulled on her running gear and found the demographist, Ting Shanlingsdaughter, standing at the kitchen counter, paring the rind from a piece of paddle cactus. A middle-aged woman with a neat bowl of black hair and a calm, deliberate manner, dressed in a blue and white short-sleeved skinsuit, she told Ysbel that she had seen Landers heading out to the beach with two of the staff.

‘I apologise if he was too talkative last night,’ Ysbel said.

‘Oh, I enjoyed some of his stories. Yours was interesting, also,’ Ting said, and handed Ysbel a slice of cactus and pushed a dish of honey towards her. ‘Try dipping it in this.’

The smoky heat of the honey tingled on Ysbel’s tongue, yielding to sweet undertones as it mingled with the cactus juices.

‘This is good,’ she said.

‘The honey is local. Not only is it tasty, it’ll get you nice and high if you eat too much. Something in the pollen of certain desert plants, apparently. The natives use it to reach a meditative state, but it just makes us silly drunk,’ Ting said.

‘Probably best that I don’t tell my colleague that,’ Ysbel said.

‘Is he always as lively as that?’

‘He claims to have only one mode.’

‘Good in small doses, I imagine. Like that honey. Would you mind if we ran together? I’m probably a little slower than you, but I know a good route.’

They jogged into the dry hills beyond the burrow, following a path that wound through a litter of rocks, acacia bushes dotted with flowers like balls of orange fluff, and stands of a species of stumpy grey cactus that, according to Ting, obtained its moisture from sea fret.

A little later, she said, ‘You carefully didn’t mention the name of the woman involved in that speedboat race. But it was Trina Mersdaughter, wasn’t it?’

‘How did you hear about her?’

‘It’s become something of a legend inhouse.’

‘You’re with Survey and Surveillance.’

‘It depends on your definition of “with”,’ Ting said, with a glancing smile.

Ysbel decided that she wouldn’t poke into that nest of snakes. She said, ‘Do you know what happened to Trina, afterwards?’

‘See that ridge? We can take a break when we reach the top,’ Ting said, and kicked up a spurt of speed.