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  Their one-word names, meanwhile, were typical of the no-nonsense Gogoni: individuals on the planet were assigned a random designation at birth that was guaranteed to be unique. It was a system she had some admiration for.

  Whatever Emchek said, it appeared to placate the Delegate a little. Sorabai placed Palianche's chair back on its feet, and the Delegate sat. He fixed his unblinking glare upon her. She had to be wary of falling into the prejudice of seeing the Gogoni as simply hot-headed predators from a sun-blasted world. Their need for mineral resources was not primarily military: mainly, in her view, their expansionism was driven by their rapidly growing population, a situation that Coronade and the other Minds were keen to facilitate. Expanding cultures were considered highly desirable in a galaxy where habitable planets vastly outnumbered the civilisations to live on them. Space was, to all intents and purposes, infinite – although, sometimes there was a need for balance, for potentially warring worlds to grow at similar speeds.

  “Your claims over Forge will, of course, be discussed at length once the talks begin,” she said. “Your objections to me are noted, but I ask that you give me some time. If you still feel the same in, say, a week, then we can look for another Conciliator. There are many of us on Coronade. The protocol for my replacement is very simple: you will need agreement from the other delegates, or at least a majority of them.”

  There was, in truth, no such protocol. But if she could at least get two of the worlds co-operating, it might be a start. The danger was that the Gogoni and the Aranians might set aside their bitter military differences and agree to carve up Forge over the objections of Sejerne. The Gogoni considered the Sejerne to be credulous fools, although they also considered the leader of the delegation from Arianas, Fleet General Pannax Ro, to be a war criminal. Gogon and Arianas would never form friendly ties, but they might at least understand each other.

  Palianche glowered at her for a few more seconds, the flesh around his nasal openings pulsing as he breathed in and out. “A week, then,” he said. “You will have that time.”

  “I am grateful,” she replied, and rose to leave. As she crossed to the door, she expected to sense something like relief from the Gogoni, a lowering of his guard. Perhaps satisfaction at a small victory won. Instead she felt that fear in him mounting a notch.

  Interesting, interesting.

  She'd arranged to meet Ambassador Vol Velle at the Temple of Countless Spires rather than at his living quarters or the Congress Hall, thinking that a more spiritual setting might put him at his ease. She took her time to stroll there, thinking about Palianche and the solution she intended to steer the three warring parties towards. The streets of Suri were always busy – Coronade was a magnet for tourists – but the throng became denser than normal as she approached the temple district, to the point where she had to start pushing her way through the crowds. She began to hear raised voices, too: the repeated, amplified chant of a ringleader and the response of a crowd. Something was going on.

  Demonstrations and marches were a common sight on Coronade, but generally they were aimed at one embassy or another, or at the delegates attending some specific conference. This was the first time she'd witnessed one in the temple district. Whatever it was that the crowd were objecting to, her main concern was for Vol Velle: if he was caught up in the trouble it might make him wary, and that in turn would make compromise all the more difficult.

  She contacted him directly, her bead seeking out his on the planetary mesh and politely enquiring if he was contactable. She made the connection low-priority, not wanting to intrude if he was attempting to hide from the trouble or quietly at prayer somewhere. He might also have chosen to go off-network, making him untraceable. Most people on Nexus worlds rarely bothered to conceal themselves, but she knew it was more common on less connected worlds like his.

  Despite that, Vol Velle responded immediately, reporting that he was inside the Temple and looking forwards to meeting her. He sounded calm. She pushed through the jostle and reached a line of City Marshalls forming a cordon around the temple. The Coronade equivalent of a local police force, they existed mainly to corral and control the growing numbers of offworlders who visited the planet. The Marshalls had no power over a member of the planet's diplomatic staff such as herself. Still, it made no sense to take any undue risk. She pinged her ID to the nearest officer as she approached, making it clear that she wished to enter the temple. The crowd around her was visibly angry, building up to something, an edge of fear to them as they shouted abuse at the Temple and the Marshalls – although neither, presumably, were at fault.

  The Marshall looked wary, eyes darting left and right beneath his helmet as he battled to maintain the cordon, arms linked through those of the two officers next to him. In truth, he was in no real danger. In an emergency, he could issue executive control overrides to the mob's brain beads and coerce them into moving away. It was a rarely-used power, superficially at odds with the freedoms visitors to Coronade were allowed, but it was effective, making everyone more relaxed about allowing displays of public dissent. Whatever happened, the situation would not be allowed to get out of hand.

  The Marshall unlinked his arm for a moment to let Magdi through. He didn't otherwise respond to her. As she passed, she felt the faint wash of resentment from him – the Marshalls disliked the fact that people like Magdi were immune from their authority – but it was soon replaced by his watchful wariness of the angry crowd.

  The interior of the temple was a cool, airy space, light slanting down from high windows to spotlight floor slabs worn smooth by the passage of many feet. Every step echoed off the hard surfaces, and dust motes floated in the still air like a scatter of faint white stars. Although she followed no religion, saw no reason to follow any religion, she often came in here. A place to sit and think and wonder. She'd once walked all around, numbering the supposedly countless spires. She'd reached a total of twenty-seven before deciding that she was missing the point.

  She found the Ambassador in a shadowy corner, seemingly unconcerned by the trouble outside. He was studying a triptych of abstract paintings, each perhaps representing a face, each an aspect of Ambidon, the Triple God of the Myrcin League. Their names, she noted, were Wisdom, Fury and Adoration.

  “My apologies for the inconvenience of the current situation,” she said as she approached. “If I'd known there was going to be crowd trouble, I'd have arranged to meet you elsewhere.”

  She'd expected Vol Velle to be a grim, austere figure, the product of a world with a strong puritanical streak. Before becoming an ambassador, he'd been a leading light in the One World Brotherhood, amongst the planet's larger religious denominations, and he was still a committed devotee of the faith. His appearance immediately confounded her: his shock of springy grey hair and his open smile gave him the air of a man who'd seen and heard it all and managed to find the humour and the humanity throughout. He had the easy amiability, the charisma, that would allow him to hold a congregation – or an ambassadorial delegation – in the palm of his hand.

  He looked amused rather than affronted at her words. “You'd be surprised at the minutiae of religious debate that have inspired much worse on Sejerne; our ancestors once fought three wars over the interpretation of a single word in a religious text. To be honest with you, all this has made me feel rather at home. If I'd known Coronade was going to be so interesting, I might have come sooner.”

  He was adorned neck to knees in the simple, sky-blue robes of his order. She wasn't taken in by his display of penury: the robes were artfully tailored, their seams apparently hand-stitched with fine threads of gold. Elaborate jewelled rings of office adorned his fingers. She made a mental note of the fact: he was, perhaps, a man who might be seduced by the luxuries of life, despite his avowed asceticism.

  “Are you aware of their reasons for demonstrating?” she asked, keen to engage him in conversation upon matters of interest to him.

  “Aren't you?” he asked, raising one grey eyebrow. �
��I thought you here on Coronade knew everything about everyone's lives.”

  He was gently teasing her. That was fine; anything to build bridges.

  “I'm no expert when it comes to ecclesiastical matters,” she said. “My specialism is in concrete issues of resource competition. This is an area where I would undoubtedly benefit from your knowledge.”

  He smiled, either out of pleasure at her words, or because he knew she was attempting to flatter him.

  “So far as I can tell, it is a rather more profane matter,” he replied. “They are afraid, and fear all too often spills over into anger, does it not?”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “They are troubled by what they have heard of the Magellanic Cloud. This temple is a focus for religious feeling in this city, and although the Cult of Omn has no presence here that I can find, people naturally gravitate here to protest. The Temple of Countless Spires is dedicated to all faiths, yes?”

  The Cult of Omn. Until the rumours came to her ears, she'd never heard of it. “People see this Omnian religion as a threat? So far as I know it is a minor faith, followed by few people across a scatter of Orion Spur worlds.”

  “A number of the crew of the Magellanic Cloud were known to be followers, and they were the missing ones when the ship returned to known space. There is talk that they have somehow allied with whatever has been encountered. Or, even, that they have found the omnipotent entity long-foretold by their sacred texts.”

  “Do you give such stories any credence?”

  His ready smile filled his whole face. “I don't; they sound regrettably like another excuse for religious persecution to me, a thing we on Sejerne are not unfamiliar with. And, speaking of that, I believe you have met with Delegate Palianche already?”

  Her attempts at keeping her meetings a secret had clearly failed. She wondered how Vol Velle had discovered the truth of it. She reverted to the white lie she'd invented in case she needed it. “A greeting rather than a meeting, just as this is. I am merely introducing myself to the delegations in the physical order of the planets: Gogon, then Sejerne, and then Arianas.”

  Again, the amused look on his features. Her boosted empathic sense sometimes gave her a synaesthetic visual crossover, so that she perceived people's emotional state as bands of colours around their heads, like an aura or a halo. With Vol Velle she saw rich oranges and golds. His good nature appeared to be utterly genuine, although the bands of bright colour were also shot-through, occasionally and briefly, with Fraunhofer lines of pure black. As if dark and troubling thoughts were flashing through his mind.

  He held up his hand as though he was blessing her. “Please, I am not affronted. My delegation has issued stern objections for public show, of course, but it is all part of the game. The Gogoni are the main obstacle to peace here.”

  Was that true? No doubt Palianche saw matters differently, and with what she'd learned overnight, Pannax Ro might yet prove to be the biggest obstacle to peace. But Vol Velle was a skilled diplomat; he was positioning himself, offering arguments and establishing his credentials while pretending to do nothing of the sort.

  Fair enough. She'd do exactly the same. “I'm intrigued by the religious underpinnings of your world's claim to Amon. Would you fill me in on some background detail that might be of use once the discussions start?”

  Faintly through the great walls, the voice of the crowd outside could be heard, rising and falling like the roar of some great beast. Vol Velle looked utterly unconcerned. “I'd be delighted to help, but I'm sure you know the essence of it. To many people on Sejerne, simply, the planet is the abode of the gods and the place that the souls of the virtuous travel to after death. It is our sacred realm.”

  She probed him gently, wary of angering him. “But, forgive me, you have sent ships there; you must know the truth of it.”

  Again, he found her objections amusing rather than insulting. “Some on Sejerne would refuse to listen to statements like that, believing them to be the lies and conspiracies of Gogon. The more literalist Sejerne insist that it is physically impossible to visit Amon, that it does not reside within normal space. Most of us, I would say, have retreated into metaphor a little. Amon is sacred ground and represents our notion of a heaven, even if our ships reveal it to be a planet. It is possible to believe two contradictory things at once, is it not? I can utterly lose myself in a book or an opera while still knowing, on one level, that it is a fabrication.”

  He was calm, enjoying the conversation. She pushed him a little further. “You're surely not calling the tenets of your religion a fabrication?”

  “Not in the least; I would simply say that there are ways of looking at the universe other than through the lenses of a telescope. Have you heard of Amon's Grace?”

  She'd come across the phrase a few times but hadn't bothered to explore its meaning. “Please, tell me.”

  “As Amon lies outside the orbit of Sejerne, we often see the planet displaying retrograde motion against the background stars, appearing briefly to stop in its movement and go backwards. Astronomically, of course, it is only Sejerne overtaking Amon in its orbit of the sun, but to our ancestors it was clear proof: Amon had paused in its wanderings through the stars and was going back to pick up the soul of some great or virtuous figure who had recently died. Even now, it is considered very auspicious to pass over just as such an event is observed. I might understand why this phenomenon occurs in physical terms, but I can still find it wondrous to behold, a source of hope and inspiration. Does that make sense?”

  “A little. We all employ, if you'll excuse the phrase, magical thinking at times.”

  “I would say, we all see higher truths at times. The main point is that one form or another of this belief unites the great majority of people on Sejerne. Whichever of our factions is right is, to a degree, irrelevant. If the planet is not respected as our sacred realm, inviolate, set apart, then Sejerne will fall into war: internal civil war as the sects fight over how best to respond, but also war with whatever species has sullied the planet. It may make little sense to one such as you who sees the universe only through the sensors of science, but that is the truth of it. It would be total war; Sejerne would unleash its revenge with all the might available to it. My people would feel they were fighting for their very souls.”

  “Any exploitation of Amon's resources, even if it was invisible, would be unacceptable?”

  “Absolutely; it would be enough that we knew it was taking place. There can be no compromise on this point, it is a simple, binary distinction. Either Amon is left untainted, or it is not.”

  She nodded. There was the crux of the issue. She believed Vol Velle, too. He portrayed himself as outward-looking, liberal by the standards of his world, but most of the people he represented would accept no concession or retreat whatsoever.

  He must have seen the troubled look on her features. He said, “We have a saying on Sejerne: Fire on one side, ice on the other. Do you know it?”

  She'd come across the idiom in her reading. “It suggests that there is only a narrow path to be followed between two great dangers.”

  “Something of the sorts, although some might say it simply describes the position of Sejerne, caught as we are between the fire of Gogon and the ice of Arianas. The point is, your task is an immensely difficult one, with no obvious solution. I do not envy you, but I do thank you for trying.”

  “Do you think there is a path between the fire and the ice?”

  “The Gogoni and the Aranians will say what they need to say, do what they need to do. They will threaten and rage, and eventually, hopefully, they will listen to reason. We are all children floundering around in the dark, trying to make sense of the situations we find ourselves in, trying to do the right thing for those we love. Acceptance of our limitations and imperfections is central to Sejerne belief. We are blessed and we are cursed sentient creatures, aware that one day we will die, and, worse, aware that we find ourselves alive. I sometimes envy those lower creatur
es who live in the moment, oblivious to their fate. I even envy the Minds, effectively immortal as they are.”

  He smiled at his own imperfections. “You see, I am not a very good believer. There are many on my planet who live with the certainty of an unshakeable faith. I envy them, too. It must be a comfort. I have only my hope.”

  A carefully-planned speech or the words of a humble man? She wasn't sure. The black absorption lines continued to flicker in his aura, but otherwise the colours remained constant; orange-red and bronze. He was either a very good actor, or he, at least, believed what he was saying.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I will consider everything you have told me. You are prepared for the opening meeting tomorrow?”

  “We shall be there. Let us hope our friends from Gogon and Arianas are as well.”

  She left him to his studies of the artwork of the temple. But as she was stepping away, he spoke again. “Conciliator Magdi, you might like to know that, on Sejerne, Amon's Grace is being observed at this very moment.”

  “It is an auspicious time for someone to die?”

  His smile remained as warm as ever. “Let us hope it is simply an auspicious time for our disagreements to be solved.”

  Pannax Ro met her, as agreed, inside Suri's subarctic biome, one of a circle of eight domes in the alien environment complex. The site was thirty kilometres from the edges of the city, erected upon a natural stone plateau within the great sands and linked to Suri by a four-line underground QuantLev. Each dome was five kilometres in diameter, filled with fauna and flora from all corners of the galaxy. There were numerous microbiomes dotted around, too, providing isolated or bio-secure environments, but it was a surprise, to Magdi at least, just how compatible plant-life from distant, disparate worlds was.