The address Kuwale had given me was a baker’s shop. Imported luxuries aside, all the food on Stateless came from the sea – but the proteins and starches in the nodules of the engineered seaweeds which flourished at the borders of the reefs were all but identical to those in any grain of wheat – and so was the smell they produced on baking. The familiar aroma made me light-headed with hunger – but the thought of swallowing a single mouthful of fresh bread was enough to make me nauseous. I should have known, by then, that there was something physically wrong with me – beyond the after-effects of the flight, beyond broken melatonin sleep, beyond my sadness over losing Gina, beyond the stress of finding myself in at the deep end of a story which showed no sign of bottoming out. But I didn’t have my pharm to pronounce the illness real, I didn’t trust the local doctors, I didn’t have time to be sick. So I told myself that it was all in my head – and the only possible cure was to try to ignore it.

Kuwale appeared, sans clown suit, just in time to save me from either passing out or throwing up. Ve walked past without even glancing at me, radiating nervous energy; I followed – and started recording – resisting the urge to shout out vis name and deflate the implied cloak-and-dagger solemnity.

I caught up, and walked alongside ver. “What does ‘mainstream AC’ mean, anyway?”

Kuwale glanced at me sideways, edgy and irritated, but ve deigned to answer. “We don’t know who the Keystone is. We accept that we may never know, for certain. But we respect all the people who seem to be likely candidates.”

That all sounded obscenely moderate and reasonable. “Respect, or revere?”

Ve rolled vis eyes. “The Keystone is just another person. The first to grasp the TOE completely – but there’s no reason why a billion others can’t do the same, after ver. Someone has to be first – it’s as simple as that. The Keystone is not – remotely – a ‘god’; the Keystone need not even know that ve’s created the universe. All ve has to do is explain it.”

“While people like you stand back and explain that act of creation?”

Kuwale made a dismissive gesture, as if ve had no time to waste on metaphysical nit-picking.

I said, “So why are you so concerned about Violet Mosala, if she’s nothing so cosmically special after all?”

Ve was bemused. “Does a person have to be some kind of supernatural being, to deserve not to be killed? Do I have to get down on my knees and worship the woman as Mother Goddess of the Universe, in order to care whether she lives or dies?”

“Call her Mother Goddess of the Universe to her face, and you’d soon wish you were dead, yourself.”