“This Universe’s God?” Carlyle repeated.

“What of Him?”

“You always say ‘This Universe’s God,’ as if there were some need to specify.”

In that instant, two fast knocks rang out against the door. “I’m coming in.”

At last, Mycroft! Thou and thy Providence are tardy rescuers indeed.

It is not I, reader. Providence chose a nobler instrument here to slide the bolts back and let freedom’s air into that cell: Voltaire Seldon, his bright Utopian coat breaking the cell’s dim blankness with its vista of ruins baked in sparkling sunset. “Where’s the Traceshifter Artifact?”

Dominic’s eyes twinkled. “French or English, please, I don’t speak Moonman.”

“Where’s the Canner Device?”

Dominic pointed to a bookcase. “On top of Maimonides.”

The Utopian lifted a cloth sack from its seat on top of the old volume, and checked the deadly tool humming away within. “How long have you had it?”

“Three days,” Dominic answered. “I found it by one of the emergency exits from the understructure of the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’house. Whoever used it to deliver the Seven-Ten list knew you’d catch them if they used it again, so they dropped it then and there. Our thief expected you Utopians to be called in, and they were willing to sacrifice such an expensive toy just to plant that little piece of paper in Ockham Saneer’s trashcan. Whatever this enemy is that we’re hunting, it is a rare bird that I look forward to tasting.”

Carlyle rose now, as if the new figure looming over her made her suddenly realize she was still slumped on the floor. “That’s the Canner Device? The Canner Device? From the Canner Murders? The one that tricks the trackers?”

Dominic chuckled. “You must’ve switched it on yourself, Carlyle, when you knocked against the bookcase, and our pet Utopian tracked it.” He flashed a smile at a volume of Seneca on the desk beside him. “How Providentially improbable.”

Carlyle gaped, and the digital eyes shown by the Griffincloth surface of Voltaire’s Utopian vizor seemed to lock on her. “Who is this Cousin?” the Utopian asked. “They’re not in the client registry.”

“The Saneer-Weeksbooth bash’s sensayer,” Dominic answered. “Carlyle Foster. Carlyle, may I introduce one of the Emperor’s Familiares Candidi, Voltaire Seldon.”

Voltaire frowned. “You know this is a warded zone, Dominic, inside the defense orbit for the Alphas present. Variables are pandoras. Foster, you will let me shuttle you to the exit.”

A playful smile on Dominic’s face always seems monstrous, like those nightmare fish of the deep sea that lure prey with their false, sweet lights. “Foster is not an outsider, she’s my parishioner, which makes her a member of the household. Isn’t that right, Foster?”

Carlyle had one second here to think, facing those strange digital eyes, before she had to choose: remain or go? “Yes. Yes, Dominic’s my sensayer.”

“This is a session?” Voltaire asked.

Dominic made Carlyle be the one to answer. “Yes.”

“It’s private,” Dominic added, “so kindly take your toy and leave.”

Voltaire spirited the device into the sunset depths of his long coat. “You should have given this to us as soon as you found it.”