“The further ya travel away from Sol,” Vidhan says, “the more Normals are aware of Pathfinders. Ares wars aren’t only fought between Pathfinder factions, but the Normals who hate them all. And, in Venetia, Pathfinders are vilified and idolised.”

“What about the seventh?” I ask, pointing at the epicentre, when he offers no further comment.

“Ah, yeah. Kronos. Some say it’s perfect, without fault. Others that it’s as dark as oil and filled with horror beyond imagining. I tend to the former. I reckon it’s a panacea at the end of time.”

“What…like an ultimate universe?”

“Nirvana, the masters say. Valhalla. Avalon. Shambhala. Whatever name ya wanna call it. But nobody really knows.”

“Why not?”

He shrugs. “There’s no bloody way in. According to Pathfinder legend, the only way to access Kronos is through something called the Seventh Gate. But we don’t know where that is or even what it is. There’s an old prophecy that says one day a key will open the Seventh Gate and establish a pathway to Kronos and all the wonders and powers they say lie there. But nobody’s found the key either.”

“But…if no one’s been, how do people know it’s perfect?”

“Science. Religion. Philosophy. Myth. Ancient Egyptian scrolls. They’ve all got an opinion. I mean, where d’ya think the phrase Seventh Heaven comes from?”

“C’mon!” I give the arm of the leather chair a futile thump. “All these secrets within secrets. And why seven worlds, anyway? Why not an infinite number?”

“Why is blue, blue?” he answers calmly. “It simply is. But think about it, seven is magical. Seven chakras. Seven colours in the rainbow. Seven days of the week. Seven sins. Seven seas. Seven continents. Seven layers of muscle in the heart…”

He licks the salt from his finger and falls silent.

I look at his sketch on the table. A vast multiverse, straddling time and space. Seven worlds, layered one over the other. Interlinked.

“So does that mean…are there seven versions of me out there?”

“Could be,” he says. “If some of them ain’t dead.”

“And these other versions of me—they’re all identical to me?”

“Nah. Time ain’t the same in every world. And time changes things.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Lemme spin it this way then. Imagine you were cloned when you were ten years old, and your clone was taken away and, say, forced to grow up back in Oz. Today, she’d be seventeen years old, right? So, you’d have the exact same DNA, but different personalities, because you’d have experienced different things. And everything you experience changes ya, right? Leaves a mark.”

“So, they’re me…but not me.”

“More or less.”

“And, if I’m a Pathfinder…are they Pathfinders too?”

“Never,” he says. “There can be only one.”

“And you had to hide me from my other self. Why?”