The ship itself, though much slowed for its erratic transit of the system, hadn’t paused as it passed Bokri. It had already taken a wild, almost jagged route through the cloud of habitats and dataversities, pinging from one to another like a ball down a nail-board, just to confuse anybody following; having got Cossont and the others to their destination, and feeling fairly sure that it had indeed shaken off any pursuing craft, it raced off to continue its eccentric join-the-dots loop through the system.

It had promised to be back within the hour; that ought to be long enough.

“Still not getting anything?” Cossont asked the avatar.

Berdle shook his head. “Pinging away merrily,” he said quietly, “but nothing’s answering.”

The avatar and the various pieces of gear the ship had Displaced into and around the facility were trying to locate the device with QiRia’s mind-state inside it by sending out signals it might respond to, assuming it possessed any normal Culture processing. The Mistake Not … had tried to contact the Warm, Considering – the ship believed to have helped QiRia encode his mind-state within the cube – to get whatever technical details about the device it could, but the other ship had yet to reply. From what it could gather, nobody willing to tell even knew where the Warm, Considering was.

“Why exactly are we here?” the android Parinherm asked, looking round the pleasantly wide, softly carpeted and very slightly curving corridor they’d found on exiting the lift. The corridor’s white-with-a-hint-of-blue walls glowed very gently with the fake daylight of a lightly overcast day and were covered in thin grooves, some of which indicated doorways with hermetic-quality shut-lines.

“You are here to protect Ms Cossont,” the ship’s avatar explained, also looking round. “She is here because she is looking for something.”

“May I help?” the android asked brightly. Like Cossont and Berdle, it wore well-cut if nondescript civilian clothes. Cossont wore a thick necklace of what looked like brushed silver.

“Just be prepared to step in to protect Ms Cossont,” Berdle told it patiently, “in case I am unable to.”

Parinherm stared at the avatar. “You are remarkably opaque to my senses,” he remarked. “What are you?”

“An avatar, Parinherm,” Berdle said, smiling. “Surely you guessed that?”

“Yes,” Parinherm said, nodding. “Good to have it confirmed. Would this be a joint Culture–Gzilt scenario?”

Berdle nodded. “Feel free to treat it as such.”

“And I,” Cossont said, “am a human. With a low boredom threshold. I’m almost starting to regret leaving Pyan back on the ship.” She spread all four arms. “Can we … do something?”

Berdle nodded. “We’re going to have to,” it said. “There’s nothing coming back.” He smiled at Cossont. “This will require you to make an official request to locate and retrieve your property from the facility.”

“Yippee. Do I have to fill out a form?”

“You have to submit a formal application five days in advance,” Berdle told her.