Where has she been that she can do that? Lee’s own ascent was markedly less graceful, but then they were over and hurrying for the cathedral-like gothic of the building itself. “Thing is,” Mal cast back at her as they hurried towards the gothic entrance, “why here, in particular, is a bit of a misunderstanding, really. Bit embarrassing. The Nissa thought the same as you, see? Took one look at all that concentrated junk from the past and assumed, yes, this is where the people of this world access the wider universe, or some such.”

“They didn’t understand what the word ‘museum’ meant over the door?” Lee said.

“Not from round ’ere, are they, guv?” Even after all this time, Mal’s fake cockney was still terrible. “Anyway.” They pushed at the door and were greeted by none other than Kay Amal Khan, wearing a grey uniform jacket and carrying a torch.

“I told you—” she started. “Oh, it’s you, love. I just saw off a policeman. Told him we were all fine, burglars fled. I’m ‘security,’ see. Get inside before they come back and arrest you.”

She trotted them past the desk and into the great hall, beneath the whale exhibit and flanked by a miscellany of dead relics from the past hundred million years. There were a fair number of Stigs there. Lee watched as they went through the motions of setting something up, striding between invisible workstations, reaching into the air as though trying to shape their dreams into reality. And there was reality beneath their hands, she saw. There was a blue-white depth to the air that fell away into chasms uncharted. Their breath plumed; the air was icy, though they didn’t seem to care.

A Mrs. Stig stomped up to stare at Mal; Lee thought it might have been the woman from the rail tunnels.

“So, you brought her,” she said, not pleased.

“I said I would. It’s my price. It was always my price,” Mal told her rebelliously. “We’re getting out with you, when it all lights up in here.”

“And if she doesn’t want to stay, on the far side?” Mrs. Stig said, with a glower at Lee.

“Then I’ll speak to the Fishnet and it’ll find a door back, sooner or later. Only, if the universe is going to pop like a soap bubble, what does it matter which world we’re on? Or you save them all and we have all the time in all the worlds.” She was speaking rapidly, angrily. Defensively, Lee recognized. This was the Mal of old, caught with her hand in the cookie jar, aggressively trying to talk her way out of trouble.

But apparently it worked, because Mrs. Stig looked pointedly elsewhere. She went to help with the ephemeral set-up, dismissing both of them.

“Do you…not get on with these Nissa?” Lee said.