“Conditions of Passage,” the left side of Quercer Janath intoned.
The other side of the truetwin made a whistling noise.
“Oh, yes! Those Conditions of Passage; they’ll get you every time.”
“Can’t be helpful with them.”
“Can’t use the tube without “em.”
“Don’t — What? — You — Condi — !” Y’sul spluttered.
“Ah,” Fassin said, signalling to Y’sul to let him speak. “Yes. I’d like to ask you some questions about, ah, tube travel, if you don’t mind.”
“Absolutely.”
“Ask away.”
“Make the questions good, though; the answers may well be baloney.”
“…Never heard anything so disgraceful in all my…’ Y’sul was muttering, drifting over to a set of medium-range scanner holo tanks and tapping them as though this would aid the locating of Leisicrofe’s ship.
Fassin had known they’d been under for more than an hour or two. His own physiology, and the amount of cleaning-up and housekeeping the shock-gel and gillfluid had had to do had told him that. Finding out that it had been twenty-six days left him more relieved than anything else. Certainly losing that amount of time when you hadn’t been expecting to and hadn’t been warned about it was disconcerting and left one feeling sort of retrospectively vulnerable (and would it be the same on any way back?) but at least they hadn’t said a year, or twenty-six years. Fate alone knew what had happened in Ulubis during that time — and of course, with all his gascraft’s systems switched off, Fassin had no way of checking whether this really was the amount of time they had spent unconscious — but it looked like at least one small part of the Dweller List legend was true. There were secret wormholes. There was one, for sure, and Fassin thought it unlikely in the extreme that the one between Ulubis and Aopoleyin was the only one. It was well worth losing a couple of dozen days to find that out.
Fassin felt himself try to draw a breath inside the little gascraft. “We did come through a wormhole?” he asked.
“Excellent first question! Easily answerable in every sense! Yes.”
“We did. Though we call them Cannula.”
“Where is the Ulubis end — the Nasqueron end — of the worm-hole, the Cannula? Where is the Adjutage?” Fassin asked.
“Ah! He knows the terminology.”
“Most impressive.”
“And a very good question in one sense.”
“Couldn’t agree more. Phenomenally hopeless in another.”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Security.”
“Sure you understand.”
“Of course I understand,” Fassin said. Getting a straight answer to that one would have been too good to be true. “How long has the wormhole existed?” he asked.
The truetwin was quiet for a moment, then said,
“Don’t know.”
“For sure. Billions of years, probably.”
“Possibly.”
“How many others are there like it?” Fassin asked. “Imean wormholes; Cannula?”
“Ditto.”
“Ditto?”
“Ditto as in — again — don’t know.”
“No idea.”
“Well, some.”
“All right, some idea. But can’t tell. Conditions of Passage again.”
“Drat those Conditions of Passage.”
“Oh yes, drat.”
“Are there any other wormholes from Ulubis — from anywhere near Ulubis system, say within its Oort radius — to anywhere else?”
“Another good question. Can’t tell you.”
“More than our travelcaptaincy’s worth.”
“This one, to Aopoleyin; does it link up with a Mercatoria wormhole? Does one of their wormholes have a portal, an Adjutage, here too?”
“No.”
“Agree. Straight answer. What a relief. No.”
“And from here, from Aopoleyin,” Fassin said. “Are there other wormholes?”
Silence again for a moment. Then, “Seems silly, but can’t tell you.”
“Like anybody’s going to have just one stupid tube to this place.”
“But still.”
“Can’t say.”
“And that’s official.”
Fassin signalled resignation. “Conditions of Passage?” he asked.
“Catching on.”
“But why me?” Fassin asked. “Why you?”
“Why you what?”
“Why have I been allowed to travel here, to use the worm-hole?”
“You asked.”
“More to the point, Valseir, Zosso and Drunisine asked on your behalf.”
“How could we refuse?”
“So I couldn’t just have asked on my own behalf?” Fassin said. “Oh, you could have asked.”
“Best leave that hanging.”
“Attempt not to insult passengers.”
“Unwritten law.”
“Do you know of any other humans who’ve been allowed to use Dweller wormholes?”
“No.”
“No, indeed. Not that we’d know, necessarily.”
“Any other Seers?”
“Not to our knowledge.”
“Which is admittedly vague.”
“Okay,” Fassin said. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest, deep inside the little gascraft. “Do you make journeys through the wormhole often?”
“Define ‘often’.”
“Let me rephrase: how many times have you used the worm-hole in the last ten years standard?”
“Easy question.”
“To sidestep.”
“But — say — a few hundred.”
“Excuse our vagueness. Conditions of Passage.”
“A few hundred?” Fassin asked. Good grief, if that was true these guys were running round the galaxy in their hidden worm-hole system like subway trains under a city.
“No more, assuredly.”
“Are there many other ships like… ? No, let me rephrase: how many other ships in Nasqueron make regular wormhole journeys?”
“No idea.”
“Haven’t the haziest.”
“Not even roughly? Would there be dozens, hundreds?”
The left side of Quercer Janath briefly turned its shiny overalls transparent and flashed a pattern of high amusement over its signal skin.
The right side made the whistling noise again.
Fassin gave them time for a spoken answer, but it didn’t appear. “Are there a lot?” he asked.
Silence a while longer.
“There are a few.”
“Not a few.”
“Make what you will.”
“Again, vagueness to be excused. Conditions of Passage.”
“Thousands?” Fassin asked. No response from the truetwin Dweller. He felt himself gulp. “Tens of—?”
“No point going pursuing numbers uppage.”
“See last answer given above.”
He had no idea. There just couldn’t be all that many ships, could there? No matter how impressive your stealth tech, surely out of hundreds or thousands of ship movements within a system every year a few had to betray itself on some sort of sensor, now and again. No system was perfect, no technology never failed. Something had to show up. How far out did portals have to be? Fassin wasn’t an expert on the physics, but he was fairly certain that you needed relatively flat space, well away from a gravity gradient as steep as that round a gas-giant. Could their portals be as near to the planet as a close-orbit moon?
“And Nasqueron?” he asked. “Would it be a typical sort of Dweller planet in this regard?”
“All Places of Dwelling are special.”
“Nasqueron — Nest of Winds — no less special than any.”
“But yes.”
Yes. Fassin felt that if he’d been standing up in normal gravity asking these questions and getting these answers, he’d have had to sit down some time ago. Or just plain fallen over.