“The connection here is good,” she said, as though it was no more complex than Wi-Fi—a facility that, Julian realized, he also didn’t particularly understand. “The Cousins have been working with the Ice Mind for a long time. There are…established diplomatic channels. Just like they have with this Wayfarer, though I think that’s more recent and a lot more tentative. The Cousins are on sufferance with that latest lot, just as we are with them. And there’s more, other links, other places.” She laughed suddenly, and it was a welcome enough sound to warm Julian’s heart a little. “A new woman arrived at the hut, by the way, Auruthmer; she flew in to meet us.”

“Us? Why would they need to…” He thought about that. “Don’t tell me, she’s an anthropologist.”

“She studies us, right. They’ve been hanging about in our world for a while. I get the impression they have whole symposiums and whatnot about these wacky humans and their junk food and cat memes. But she speaks English better than Stig, or at least she’s chattier; speaks about nineteen other human languages too, as far as I can gather. So if you wanted to get answers about all of this, she’s your woman.”

Julian nodded, finding the idea didn’t appeal. “So who’s this other Murther character?”

“Mission control, far as I can gather,” Alison said. “She’s a top scientist, specialist in not letting the universe get destroyed.”

“And she lives in a hut in the middle of nowhere.” That should be London, all his memories screamed to him.

“They have a completely decentralized society. I can…I can’t roam around in their data archives, but I can see the shape of things through my Ice Mind link. It’s very good at taking an ungodly amount of information and remodelling it in a way I can understand.” She took a deep breath. “Spiker, we need to talk.”

“We are talking.”

“Kay wants to go. We don’t have the right—”

“Yes, yes.” He cut her off more sharply than he’d intended. “Look, I am way beyond my job description right now. I have no power to go against the Cousins and drag Kay kicking and screaming back to Whitehall. And yes, duty to Queen and Country aside, it’s her call. She wants to go, she goes.”

Alison was quiet for a while. He could practically see her next words in letters of fire over her head, but he was damned if he was going to prompt them.

At last, and with a slightly aggrieved look—because he wasn’t making this easy—she said, “I want to go too.”

“That would be a terrible idea,” he said.