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heading for the river. People in the street paid Dwllis no attention, but their heads were turned by the sight of the gnostician. Dwllis followed Crimson Boney’s every step. After almost half an hour of wandering, the gnostician began to slow and look about him, forcing Dwllis to hide more than once. The affair was provoking in him an intense curiosity.
    They crossed the river. Crimson Boney picked up Marjoram Street, took an alley off Broom Street, then loped south. Dwllis followed, pushing aside cables and ducking under pipes, tripping over the wasted legs of sleeping outers, crunching across heaps of glass. At length, the speed of his flight reduced to a walk, the gnostician scanned an alley both ways – Dwllis was hiding in a doorway – then darted into a passage. Dwllis almost missed it, for here the ground perspex was dim, dead, and there were no house lights. In fact, Dwllis was not entirely sure where he was.
    He crept up to the passage and looked around its corner. Crimson Boney, if that shadow amongst shadows was the gnostician, seemed to be standing in front of a door. It was impossible to hear anything through the earmuffs. But then there came a flash of light as somebody opened the door from the inside, and the gnostician was illuminated for brief moments before he leaped inside the building. The door was shut.
    After a minute, Dwllis walked up to the door. Above it there lay inscribed a luminous crescent moon.
    It was the sigil of the Archive of Selene. This must be the rear of that place. Not a little appalled at what he had discovered, Dwllis walked back to the alley and followed it around to Onion Street. The broad vinyl steps at the front of the Archive of Selene were bustling with those beholden to the moon. Dwllis, waiting at the lower step, found himself studying the arcane designs of luminous plastic stapled to the Archive’s fascia: crescents, circles, even some faces. Mythical stuff, of course, to be taken lightly. Above these he saw the tips of telescopes poking out from the roof.
    One of the last to enter, he sat at the back of the public auditorium – a chamber a hundred yards in diameter with a lunar dais at the front and rows of chilly seats to the rear – where he was forced to endure a discourse about the moon changing shape. Dwllis, by nature a follower of traditional tenets, yawned and scanned the galleries, chambers and doors around him for signs of gnosticians, but he saw nothing. When Lord Archivist Querhidwe finished her speech, moving out of the sickly light of Selene’s orb, be tried to slip away before the crush began, but he was stopped by a pyuton who had been standing behind him.
    ‘You are a new face to our Archive,’ she said.
    Dwllis bowed to her. ‘Good evening. Yes, I have never been here before.’
    ‘We are always glad to entertain new citizens. I could take you to a quiet chamber and give you leaflets, books – maybe a plastic moon on a stick to take home.’
    The exits were crowded, offering no chance of escape. ‘That is a most generous offer,’ Dwllis temporised, ‘but I need time to think about it.’
    ‘But you must be inclined to the lunar to have come here.’
    ‘The moon is interesting.’
    The pyuton smiled. ‘Selene is changing shape. Soon the streets will be choked with excited citizens.’
    Dwllis nodded, eyeing the exit. He had heard this statement many times before. ‘How remarkable.’
    ‘You do not believe me?’ The pyuton whipped out some laminated documents from the pocket at the front of her white gown. ‘This is Selene thirty years ago, full face. And this is Selene ten years ago.’
    ‘Exactly the same,’ Dwllis said, glancing at the pictures.
    ‘But this is Selene last year. Do you not see how the face is becoming compressed?’
    Dwllis did not.
    ‘And this is Selene last night, waxing. Look now for the compression, and the extension and division of one of the cusps.’
    Dwllis took the picture, and there did seem to be changes.