He was, it is fair to say, already weary of Gershom when the curiosity came to light. Seven years is a long time in any man’s career, seven years living and working in grubby tenements, backwater hostels and frontier habs all over the planet. Long enough to feel like a native, and certainly to look like one, although he had been born forty-two years and many million AU distant. The patched worsted suit with shiny, calloused elbows, the slate-grey weathercoat, fingerless leather gloves, wire-framed spectacles, the skin of his face etiolated from too many short, wintry days, his thin hair unnaturally black from a biweekly chemical treatment that he purchased and applied himself.

This insipid and forlorn figure stared at his reflection in the smoked glass screen of the demograph booth.

‘Present papers. State name and occupation,’ the indistinct form behind the screen said. As he spoke, the words appeared in glowing, block-capital holos on the glass.

He put his crumpled documents into the metal drawer below the screen and it gobbled them away with an un-oiled clatter. Hunching low, he aimed his mouth helpfully at the vox-grille, and said, ‘Valentin Drusher, magos biologis.’

‘Purpose of travel?’ the voice said, subtitled as before.

‘I am a magos biologis, as I said. You’ll see I have a permit for travel to Outer Udar stamped by the office of the Lord Governor. He is my patron.’

The shape behind the tinted glass panel paused, and then the legend ‘please wait’ appeared on the screen. Doing as he was told, Drusher stood back, rubbing his hands together briskly to chafe warmth into them. It was a miserably early morning in the last few days of autumn and the terminal was vacant. Outside, it was not yet light; the sky was a patchy blue, the colour of a Tarkoni tarkonil’s winter plumage, and the orange glare of sodium lamps reflected in the puddles on the rain-slicked concourse. Drusher studied the reflections, and they reminded him of the fluorescent banding on the abdomen of the southern latitude glowmoth, Lumenis gershomi.

The air held the bitter foretaste of another hard Gershom winter closing in. He consoled himself with the thought that he would be long gone before winter came. Just a few more days to tidy up this annoying loose end, and then he would be done at last.

The drawer slot clacked open again, his refolded papers laid inside.

‘Proceed,’ said the voice.

Drusher retrieved his papers, gathered up his bags and equipment cases, and walked into the boarding yard to find himself a seat on the interprovince coach.