“Do you remember this?” Berdle said softly, and when Cossont opened her eyes again the screen was showing a view that looked familiar, though at first she couldn’t quite place it. It was of a man looking slightly lost in what might have been a transit lounge. Then he left, following a modest amount of luggage on a float-trolley.

Of course: QiRia, arriving on Xown, five years ago. Then a similar set of images which seemed to show him in the same place, dressed similarly but wearing big dark glasses. If anything, he looked even less sure about where he was going this time. The images faded away and the screen went dark.

“And this?” The screen shone out again to show Ximenyr, the man with the many penises on the airship Equatorial 353, in the Girdlecity. It was almost exactly the view she recalled having at the time, though then the view flicked round and showed Cossont’s own face, before flicking back to the man in the bed again. So this had been Berdle’s point of view. This was the sight through his eyes, recorded.

“Mr Berdle, Ms Cossont,” Ximenyr said in his deep, thick voice. “Pleased to meet you.” He opened his mouth and a long tongue snaked out and delicately licked at first one eyebrow then the other, shaping them both neatly into place. The tongue disappeared again. He opened his eyes wide; he had bright, pale blue irises. His eyeballs went back into their sockets, the blue irises disappearing. They were replaced from below by dark red irises which rolled into place and steadied. “Excuse me,” he said. “These pupils work better in daylight.” He smiled widely, showing very white teeth.

Cossont was nodding now. “Mr Ximenyr, the body-amendment specialist,” she said.

This would be why QiRia had looked like he had, the second time in the transit lounge; wearing big dark glasses, seemingly – perversely – less sure of his surroundings than before: he’d been blind.

The screen view now was doing something she hadn’t done at the time, zooming in to a close-up of Ximenyr’s face; the teeth and the eyes at first, then down, to the necklace of trinkets adorning his neck.

The view came to rest and freeze on the tiny – at the time deactivated – scout missile that the ship had sent into the man’s bed-chamber. It was resting on Ximenyr’s chest between what looked like an android’s thumb and a thick crystal cylinder, striped with encrusted jewels.

The frozen image jerked to one side, zoomed in further on the cylinder, showing a hazy view of what looked like semi-transparent crystal with what might have been a pair of berries inside. They were pale green, and looked like they were floating in some sort of off-white surround.

“What colour were Mr QiRia’s eyes?” Berdle asked.