“First thing I did with the full name was plug it into all the data I’ve been soaking up since I’ve been here; Gzilt stuff,” Berdle said. “All the Gzilt stuff; everything not officially private, anyway. And in amongst the passenger manifests for people making a trip to Xown five years ago a name popped out; Yutten Turse. Claimed to be Peace Faction Culture and to have come all the way from somewhere called Neressi, which, on closer inspection, is somewhere that doesn’t exist, or is perhaps a colloquial name for a place nobody’s catalogued properly.” Berdle glanced at her, grinning. “Tut, tut.”

The Girdlecity really did fill the screen now. Cossont had to crane her neck to see anything that wasn’t the vast, dark mass of it. Right at the top she could see the sky, speckled with stars and orbiting sats, but it was just a thin band above the striated black curtain of the structure. Below, there were waves; the Girdlecity was crossing sea. She knew it did, in two places. Here, its colossal architecture was even more mind-boggling than anywhere else on its circuit of the planet. It extended undersea, still growing in girth, descending an extra kilometre beneath the waves if this was the Hzu Sea, an extra two and half thousand metres if this was Ocean.

“Doesn’t that count as an amateur mistake if he’s trying to keep off everybody’s sensors?” Cossont asked.

Berdle shrugged. “I suppose, but in the end he’s just an old guy trying to stay out of the limelight, not some SC super-agent on a mission. Not the end of the world for him if he is discovered, anyway; not like he’s going to get slung into prison or have his memories wiped. He’d become the object of some unwanted media attention for a while and there’d be a bunch of Minds who’d love to talk to him, but he’d be able to disappear again fairly quickly with the cooperation of a Mind and ship or two.” Berdle paused, looked quizzically at her. “You’ve met him; maybe he’d like to get caught briefly, just to get to feel important, like he’s not been forgotten.”

“Maybe.” Cossont crossed all four of her arms, forming a cage across her chest. “Are you saying he really is the age he says he is?”

Berdle nodded. “Looks like it.”

“And you think this is going to be him. Have been him. This Yutten Turse guy?”