I said, “ Why? Why is she here?”

“Hadn’t you heard? But you were probably traveling; I saw it on the net just before I left. One of the murdochs hired her as a special correspondent to cover the Einstein Conference. Planet News , I think.”

“ Janet Walsh is going to report on progress in Theories of Everything?” Even for Planet Noise , that was surreal. Sending members of the British royal family to cover famines, and soap opera stars to cover summit meetings, didn’t come close.

Lee said dryly, “‘Report’ may not be quite the word for it.”

I hesitated. “Can I ask you something? I … never really had a chance before I left to look into the cults’ response to the conference.” Sisyphus would have picked up any relevant stories – but I’d requested a briefing pared down to the essentials. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard whether or not they’re … taking much interest?”

Lee regarded me with amazement. “They’ve been chartering direct flights from all over the planet for the past week. If Walsh is coming the long way, at the last minute, it’s only to keep up appearances for her employer’s sake – to maintain a veneer of non-partisanship. Stateless will be swarming with her supporters.” She added gleefully, “ Janet Walsh! Now that makes the trip worthwhile!”

I felt a stab of betrayal. “You said you weren’t—”

She scowled. “Not because I’m a follower! Janet Walsh is a hobby of mine. By day I study the rationalists. By night I study their opposites.”

“How very … Manichean.” Walsh bought the scarf and started walking away from the stall, not quite toward us. I turned so my face was hidden from her. We’d met once, at a bioethics conference in Zambia; it hadn’t been pleasant. I laughed numbly. “So this is going to be your ideal working holiday?”

Lee was puzzled. “And yours, too, surely? You must have been hoping desperately for something more than a few sleepy seminars to film. Now you’ll have Violet Mosala versus Janet Walsh. Physics versus the Ignorance Cults. Maybe even riots in the streets: anarchy comes to Stateless, at last. What more could you possibly ask for?”

#

Denied access to Australian, Indonesian and Papua-New-Guinean airspace, the (Portuguese-registered) plane headed south-west across the Indian ocean. The waters looked wind-swept, gray-blue and threatening, though the sky above was clear. We’d curve right around the continent of Australia, and we wouldn’t sight land again until we arrived.

I was seated beside two middle-aged Polynesian men in business suits, who conversed loudly and incessantly in French. Mercifully, their dialect was so unfamiliar to me that I could almost tune them out; there was nothing on the plane’s headset worth listening to, and without a signal the device made a poor substitute for earplugs.