It was an airlock. Jainan realized they must be next to the hull of the station.

The Resolution hadn’t installed themselves on Carissi; they’d just docked their ship and stayed there.

The airlock yawned open. The impression behind it was one of relative darkness; Carissi kept most public spaces brightly lit. Jainan cleared his face of expression and stepped through it.

The first thing he noticed was that the Resolution ship had dispensed with station gravity. Or no—not exactly. Jainan nearly overbalanced in his first step beyond the airlock, but managed to land his foot on the polished black floor and ground himself. Each movement felt supported, as if something had anticipated where he was going to go and was helping him. The air felt treacly around him.

Past the airlock, the passage sloped upward at a sharp angle. Jainan used the odd gravity to help him up, each stride much longer than it would have been on the station. The walls around him lit up gradually as he climbed, glowing a pale, featureless pearl. The slope seemed endless. Every few meters he would pass a closed, arched doorway. He could not see the end of the passage.

As he passed one door, it sprang open, falling downward into the floor. Jainan stopped short. Behind it was the Auditor.

The narrow chamber beyond was set up in a disturbingly staggered way—not completely zero-grav, but furniture hovered at different levels, or was attached to the hull halfway up the wall. The Auditor sat at a desk suspended at the height of Jainan’s shoulders, surrounded by streams of light with no meaning to Jainan.

The light-streams dissipated and gradually faded away as the Auditor looked down at him in the doorway.

“Come in,” the Auditor said. He opened a hand to a chair on roughly the same plane as him.

Jainan considered the problem then gently tested to see if the oddly helpful gravity would get him all the way up. It wouldn’t, quite, but a careful step took

him to a rug floating at waist height, and from there it was a fairly easy step up to the chair.

The chair was the same pearly shade as the walls outside. As Jainan sat in it, it reformed itself underneath him, holding him gently in place. Jainan lifted a knee experimentally, and it released him. He settled back down.

The Auditor smiled, the last of the light-streams fading around him. “You’re a hard person to disquiet, Count Jainan.”

Jainan, who felt disquieted most of the time, chose not to answer that. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“I assume you have something relevant,” the Auditor said. “If not, this will be a waste of both our time.”

It would have helped if Jainan could have seen his eyes. “Has Iskat told you what has come to light about Taam?”

The Auditor’s lack of reaction just strengthened his feeling that they hadn’t.