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sending it on immediately, he abstracted it and pondered the contents: a long-lost Human colony discovered in the middle of the Huvuun Deepzone with the Imisil in one corner, the Brolturans in the other, and the Hegemony looming over it all - hmm, a risky place to be, without a doubt, and fascinating. The Kiskashin did not know any Humans, but if any contacted him with a lucrative proposal in mind he would certainly-be open-minded about it.
    And just in case some of his other clients might be interested in this little morsel, he slotted the report into one of the slower outgoing queues. That would give him time to examine it later and assess its resale potential. After all, business is business.
     

4
    CHEL
     
    Every time he stepped aboard a Human vehicle, Chel found himself having to learn forbearance anew. They were hard, hollow things, completely lacking in the vitality of organic life yet endowed with cunning engines that drove them along their way. When the government zeplin set down at Port Gagarin, Chel breathed more easily as he hurried down the gantry to the hard ground of the sunken landing bay. It was difficult to trust to a thing that neither breathed nor had a beating heart, a thing that had no lifesong.
    Yet we must have been very different in the long-distant past, he thought, gazing back up at the dirigible. Once, the Uvovo worked with cold, dead stone and built places like the temple on Waonwir. What kind of people were we then?
    The short nightflight from Waonwir, which the Humans called Giant's Shoulder, to Port Gagarin was only the first stage of his journey. He was met at the landing bay exit by a breathless, harried-looking young Human female who introduced herself as Oxana as she quickly guided him along enclosed walkways to one of the big loading bays. There they boarded a large, ponderous freighter named Skidhbladnir, its appearance so battered and grimy as to make the government zeplin seem pristine by comparison.
    Once inside, Oxana apologised for the rush, blaming incompetent couriers, and gave him his tickets for the rest of the journey.
    'It should not take more than six or seven hours, and there are five stops along the way before you reach Invergault, where you will be met by someone from Ibsenskog. When you are ready to return, simply send us a message from the monitor office in the town.'
    'I shall remember, Oxana,' Chel said. 'My thanks.'
    'Think nothing of it, Scholar,' she said. 'Safe journey.'
    After she was gone, Chel sought out the padded shelf that was his accommodation while the thuds and shouts of loading continued down in the main hold. A short while later the hold door was finally raised and the cargo zeplin lurched as its moorings were uncoupled. Engines droned and the shelf vibrated faintly beneath him, then a swaying sensation told him that they were aloft and under way.
    However, Oxana's six or seven hours turned into nearly nine. As the freighter flew through the night and on into the morning, Chel managed to doze for a span, once he had grown accustomed to the dead hollowness of the Human craft. He almost grew used to the rattle of the hawser drums, the cries of the hefter crews, and the sounds of cargo being shifted. But by the time the Skidhbladnir arrived at Invergault it was an undeniable relief to clamber down to the zeplin station's small platform, with the cargo dirigible hanging overhead, creaking on taut cables.
    Invergault was a small town sitting upslope from i pebbly cove near the end of a steep-sided sea loch. Like most of the Eastern Towns, it was a meeting point and marketplace for hunters, fishers and trappers. As he descended from the platform, he noticed that almost all roofs now carried windspinners, as well as large afftcg roots affixed to their chimneys and flues, absorbing the ash and fumes from hearth and cooking fires, channelling heat into other uses rather than letting it escape Chel knew from his teachers that, before the Humans sent their craft up