‘Not quite. There are a few loose ends. They might lead to something or nothing, but I’d like to be sure.’

Zaquil had told Ysbel that he had looked everywhere and failed to find any surveys of bear cities before First Contact, but she had good reason to mistrust the helper and wanted to follow it up herself. And she didn’t want to tell Ilan the whole sorry story about the camp and Seven and Zaquil’s betrayal, or how the map and the slab missing from the stacks of the Library of All People, and the old tale about ghost lights, might mean that there was some kind of conspiracy to erase evidence of meetings between humans and bears. It was best that he knew as little as possible, in case Special Operations found out what she was up to and everything came crashing down around her, and she felt a stupid rush of gratitude when he didn’t push her for more details, asking instead which bear cities was she interested in.

‘The first is somewhere in the Andes. I’m not sure exactly where, but it’s in the vicinity of a native town, Tall Trees, and the survey was done just before First Contact.’

‘You mean a satellite survey.’

‘I mean on-site topographical mapping. Using the kind of laser grid I’ve seen your team use.’

‘There weren’t any on-site surveys of any kind of bear city before First Contact,’ Ilan said. ‘New or old.’

‘I have a native associate who claims otherwise.’

‘Your associate must be mistaken,’ Ilan said. ‘There were satellite surveys of the ruins of bear cities back then, of course there were. Mother and her little helpers mapped the whole planet. And there were excavations of the remains of human cities in Europe and Asia and Africa, and studies of post-Burn Line sites associated with extinct intelligent species. But the Union and the New Territories were off limits to everyone except agents preparing the ground for First Contact. There weren’t any boots-on-the-ground surveys of bear cities or any other sites.’

‘Could you look anyway?’ Ysbel said. ‘And also, check if anyone ever visited that new city you located for me. The one that was drowned by an earthquake.’

‘In case there are images of the original of that map?’

‘Or other carvings like it. I know it’s a long shot, but I’d like to be sure, one way or the other.’

‘I can tell you now there was nothing like that in the master file,’ Ilan said. ‘Just an aerial survey and a preliminary density contour map. Done several years after First Contact, as I recall. Certainly not before.’

‘But if it wasn’t a proper dig. Someone paying a quick visit, perhaps very recently. Checking out a bear city for the fun of it. Perhaps taking a few artefacts.’