'I'll consult my charts and my navigator. Who knows?' He sat forward and looked at me. 'This book. This Malus Codicium. May I see it?'
Why?'
'Because I appreciate unique and priceless objects/
I took it from my jacket and passed it to him. He studied it with reverence, a smile on his face.
'Not much to look at, but beautiful for what it is. Thank you for the opportunity to hold it.' He handed it back to me.
'I can't believe I'm going to say this/ he added, 'me of all people. But… I'd destroy it, if I were you,'
'I think you're right. I believe I will.'
I put down my empty glass and walked to the doors. Maxilla evaporated the privacy field.
Thank you for your time and hospitality, Tobias. I think I'll turn in now.'
'Sleep well'
'One last thing,' I said, turning back in the doorway. 'You said you break the rales to get what you want. That you serve no one but yourself and everything you do is for your own ends.'
'I did.'
Then why do you help me so often?'
He smiled. 'Good night, Gregor.'
The Essene put in at Hubris four days later. Hubris was an outlying world in the Helican sub-sector and Fischig, Bequin, Maxilla and I had all met there for the first time in 240.
Indirectly, that's where we'd first stumbled across Pontius Glaw too. Everything was turning full circle in the strangest way.
I had rerouted Fischig here as a convenient and out of the way meeting place, but it seemed apt. He'd been a chastener in the local arbites when he'd first crossed my path. It was his homeworld.
For eleven out of every twenty-nine months, Hubris orbits so far beyond its star that the population are forced to hibernate in massive cryogenic tombs to survive the blackness and the cold. Those winters of eternal night are called Dormant and I had experienced one on that last visit.
But now we arrived at the start of Thaw, the middle season between Dormant and Vital.
The tombs had emptied and the great cities were waking under a pale sun. The population was engaged in a frenzied jubilee of feasting and dancing and general excess that lasted three weeks and was supposed to celebrate the society's rebirth, but which probably had deep rooted origins in the traditional methods of recovery from extended cryogenic suspension such as forced physical activity and high-calorie intake.
I offered to travel to the surface to meet him, partly because I thought Crezia, Eleena and Medea could do with the relaxation of a festival and Maxilla had never been one to turn down a party.
But Fischig answered he would as soon come up to the