“It does look a bit long,” I said.

Sirin spluttered. “The length? Are you looking at the same pages I am? The length is not really the issue. I mean, certainly, the length is an issue, but not the issue. Have you read it?”

“Only the parts Duncan read aloud to me.”

Sirin sat back in his chair, a look of disgust on his face.

“Everything I hate about AFTOIS is in this manuscript, and then some, Janice. Every old wives’ tale, every fear, every paranoia. He even tries to tie your father’s death into his web of gray cap conspiracy theories.”

“Is it really that bad?”

“Janice, not only that, but he attributes any number of insane theories to James Lacond that sound beyond the pale even for that old rogue.”

I didn’t bother to tell him that this was intentional. Duncan had disclosed to me that Lacond’s reputation had been so compromised by his obsessions that he found it useful to let others use his name as cover for those theories that might discredit them, while he wrote under his own pseudonyms. (“James Lacond” became a house name at the newsletter. It got out of control, but it felt good, too. A kind of self-destructive impulse embedded in it, a way of acknowledging our own irrelevance, but reveling in it. It embodied Lacond’s self-deprecating manner. I merely played off this in the Early History. Ultimately, Sirin ignored it and left it in, much to our delight.)

“You can’t edit it into shape?” I said instead, already knowing the answer.

“No, I can’t,” Sirin said. “I can’t save this.” A pause, a calculating stare. “Why? Do you think you can?”

“Maybe,” I said, knowing the real trick would be to get Duncan to agree to change even one comma of it. (How little you understood me, Janice.)

I met Duncan at the Spore again, in this room. As I approached the door, the flickering light within played a trick. I thought I saw his shadow, impossibly vast, curled around the edges, snap into a more human shape. A gurgle and whine that coalesced into a human voice.

“Janice,” came a throaty greeting, then, “Janice,” in my brother’s true voice.

I hadn’t entered the room yet. He couldn’t have seen me. (Not with my own eyes.)

When I did enter, I found him pale and shrunken, folding and unfolding his arms.

“You’ve come from Sirin,” he said. It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“So you’ve seen … you’ve seen my early history?”

“Yes.”

“And he has read it.”

“Yes.”

He looked up at me, his gaze suddenly desperate.

“Does he like it?”

“Does he like it?” I echoed. “No, Duncan—he loves it. He absolutely loves it. He asked for a travel guide version of an early history of Ambergris and you gave him a tome large enough to contain every Truffidian hymn ever sung—and half of it in footnote form. He absolutely despises it.”