“Don’t doubt,” Ximenyr said. “But you did invade my privacy.” There was some muffled spluttering and laughing at this from the people looking on, and Ximenyr’s face split into a smile again. He glanced round some of the animal-headed people. “Hey, you know what I mean.” He looked back at Berdle, grinning. “Anyway. Might let you have this back. But you need something from me, I’m sort of supposing, otherwise why, in an entirely cogent sense, would you be here in the first place? Hmm?” He set the tiny missile back where it had been, resting on his chest between what looked like an android’s thumb and a thick crystal cylinder, striped with encrusted jewels.

“It’s about Ngaroe QiRia,” Cossont said, glancing at Berdle.

“Gathered.” Ximenyr nodded at her. “Like the arms, incidentally. Who did that for you?”

“Frex Gerunke.”

“Know him. Helped teach him. Nice work? All working fine?”

“Perfectly.”

“And a Lords jacket. You really into them?”

“I played with them,” she confessed. “Briefly.” She really might have to change out of the Lords of Excrement jacket at some point, she realised.

“Really? You’re not mentioned in the playgraphy.” He seemed to think. “Unless you’re Sister Euphoria.”

Cossont sighed. “Guilty.”

Ximenyr smiled broadly. “Estimable, Ms Cossont. I’ve played tenser, a little sling, never the volupt. Hear it’s harder.”

“A little.”

“Four arms make it easier?”

“No; that’s for the elevenstring.”

“Ha! The Undecagonstring? I’ve heard they’re fucking insane.”

“No, that’s just those who play them.”

Ximenyr laughed. “Nobody’s played an elevenstring for the Party; you could audition while you’re here. That would help round things off.”

“Thank you, but we have more urgent business,” she told him.

“Yes, my friend Mr QiRia.”

“My friend too,” Cossont said.

“Really?” Ximenyr looked sceptical. “Can’t recall him mentioning you.”

Cossont sighed again. “That does not surprise me.”

Ximenyr grinned, stroked his chin. “Well, his memories are a little … compartmentalised. How do you know him?”

“I met him twenty years ago, just after he’d been a leviathid – a sea monster – for decades, on a place called Perytch IV. We only met up for a few days, but we talked a lot. How about you?”

“Oh, I knew him before then, back when I was horribly young and doing …” he held up one arm and stroked a couple of the penises on it “… this kind of thing for what passes for a living, amongst us.” He shrugged. “Rather than a profound artistic statement both exploring and interrogating the prospect of a willed self-extinctive event being sold as a civilisational phase-change cum level upgrade.”

“When he was here five years ago,” Berdle said, “was Mr QiRia having some sculption carried out?”