They were in the outer gallery of Iphetra, a long reception area lined with windows and old paintings; it looked out to the formal gardens and Interior Space One beyond. A couple of traveltubes waited beyond doors set into the wall full of portraits. She’d told everybody to rendezvous here. She’d missed the noon deadline by over an hour, but there were certain things about one’s toilet that simply couldn’t be rushed, and - as she’d told a briefly but fetchingly incandescently furious Churt Lyne from her milk-bath - if she was really that important to all these top-secret plans, SC had no choice but to wait. As a concession to the urgency of the situation she had left her face unadorned, tied her hair back into a simple bun and slipped into a conservatively patterned loose pants and jacket combination; even choosing her jewellery for the day had taken no more than five minutes.

The gallery had got quite busy; her mother was here, tall and tousled in a jellaba, three cousins, seven aunts and uncles, about a dozen friends - all house-guests and a little bleary-eyed after the Graduation party - and a couple of house-slaved drones attempting to control the animals; a brace of tawny speytlid hunters looking about at everybody and snuffling and slavering with excitement and her three hooded but still restless alseyns which kept stretching their wings and giving their piercing, plangent cry. Another drone waited outside the nearest window with Brave, her favourite mount, saddled up and pawing the ground, while the three drones she’d decided were the minimum she could manage with were taking care of her luggage trunks, which were still appearing from the house lift. A tray floated at her side with breakfast; she’d just started munching on a chislen segment when the drone had told her she had to make this journey alone.

Churt Lyne didn’t reply in speech. Instead - astonishingly - it spoke through her neural lace:

~ Ulver, for pity’s sake, this is a secret mission for Special Circumstances, not a social outing with your girlfriends.

‘And don’t secret-talk me!’ Ulver hissed through clenched teeth. ‘Grief, that’s so rude!’

‘Quite right, dear,’ muttered her mother, yawning.

A couple of her friends laughed lightly.

Churt Lyne came right up to her until it was almost touching her, and then the next thing she knew there was a sort of grey cylinder around her and the machine; it stretched from wooden floor to stone-carved ceiling and it was about a metre and a half in diameter, neatly enclosing her, Churt and the tray carrying breakfast. She stared at the drone, her mouth open, eyes wide. It had never done anything like this before! Its aura field had disappeared. It hadn’t even had the decency to square the field and put the field on a mirror finish; at least she could have checked her appearance.