He gestured around. Seria Mau saw that they were standing in the magic-shop window, a little-girl cultivar in a wedding dress and a tall thin man with a thin moustache and lively blue eyes. All around them were stacked the things she had seen in her dreams—retro things, conjuror’s things, children’s things. Ruby-coloured plastic lips. Feathers dyed bright orange and green. Bundles of silk scarves that would go into the top hat and hop out as live white pigeons. There were hanks of fake liquorice. There was a valentine’s heart which lit itself up by means of loving diodes within. There were “X-Ray Specs” and elevator shoes, trick eternity rings and handcuffs you couldn’t take off. They were all the things you wanted when you were a child, when it seemed there would always be more in the world and always more after that.

“Choose anything you want,” invited Dr. Haends.

“All these things are fake,” said Seria Mau stubbornly.

Dr. Haends laughed.

“They’re all real too,” he said. “That’s the amazing thing.”

He let go of her hand and danced elegantly about, shouting, “Yoiy yoiy yoiy!” Then he said:

“You could have anything you wanted.”

Seria Mau knew it was true. Full of panic, she fell away from this idea in all possible directions, as if from the highest ledge in the universe. “Leave me alone!” she screamed. The ship’s mathematics—which had been Dr. Haends all along, or half of him at least—sent her to sleep. It had a quick look at some of the other parts of its project (this involved some travel in ten spatial and, especially, four temporal dimensions). Then, having reorganised the White Cat a little more to its satisfaction, it took the shortest possible route to Sigma End and threw itself down the wormhole. There was a lot left to do.

Sigma End.

Uncle Zip watched, his eyes narrowed.

“Get after them,” he said.

“Too late, Unc. They’re already in.”

Uncle Zip was silent.

“They’re dead,” the pilot said. “We’re dead too if we go in there.”

Uncle Zip shrugged. He waited.

“This isn’t a place for human beings,” the pilot said.

“But don’t you want to know?” said Uncle Zip softly. “Isn’t that really why you came?”

“Oh fuck it, yes.”