And it seemed a sufficiently tall order to have to grow your own universe to wrap yourself in: your own ancestors (needed to explain your own existence), your own billions of human cousins (an unavoidable logical consequence – as would be more distant relatives, animal and plant), your own world to stand on, sun to orbit – and other planets, suns, and galaxies, not obviously essential for survival … but possibly allowing a relatively simple TOE (which could fit in one mind) to be traded for a trickier version which was more economical with cosmic real estate. Explaining all that into existence would be hard enough; you wouldn’t want to be obliged to create the power to create it , as well – to have to explain into being the Anthrocosmology which allowed you to explain things into being.

A wise separation of powers. Leave the metaphysics to someone else.

I boarded the tram. A couple of the passengers smiled and greeted me, and chatted for a while – without anyone drawing a weapon and demanding money.

Walking up the street toward the hotel, I scrolled through a few documents on my notepad, just to check that nothing had been lost in the blackout. I’d made a list of the questions I’d planned to ask the Anthrocosmologists; I checked through them, to see how I’d done. I’d only missed one point; not bad for someone used to a permanent electronic crutch, but it was still an irritation.

Kuwale had said that ve was “mainstream AC.” So if all of the wild metaphysics which Conroy had just fed me was the mainstream of Anthrocosmology … what did they believe out on the fringe?

My complacency was beginning to unravel. All I’d heard was one version of the ACs’ doctrine. Conroy had taken it upon herself to speak for all of them – but that didn’t prove that they all agreed. At the very least, I needed to speak to Kuwale again … but I had better things to do than stake out the house in the hope that ve would turn up there.

Back in my room, I had Hermes scan the world’s communications directories. There were over seven thousand Kuwales listed, with primary addresses in a dozen countries – but no Akili. Which meant it was probably a nickname, a diminutive, or an unofficial nom de asex. Without even knowing what country ve came from, it was going to be impossible to narrow the search.