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the front bench, where he had a good view through the one-way fuselage.
    â€œHotel Buckingham.”
    He frowned as the capsule dived back up into the broad stream circling around the dark expanse of park. Had that instruction come from him or his u-shadow?
    At the first junction they whipped around and headed deeper into the urban grid. The tree-lined boulevards a regulation hundred meters below actually had a few ground cars driving along the concrete. People rode horses among them. Bicycles were popular. He shook his head in bemusement.
    The Hotel Buckingham was a thirty-story pentagon ribbed with balconies, sharp pinnacles soaring up out of each corner. It glowed a lambent pearl-white except for its hundreds of windows, which were black recesses. The roof was a small strip of lush jungle. Tiny lights glimmered among the foliage as patrons dined and danced in the open air.
    Aaron’s taxi dropped him at the arrivals pad in the center. He had a credit coin in his pocket that activated to his DNA and paid for the ride. There was a credit code loaded in a macrocellular storage lacuna that he could have used, but the coin made the ride harder to trace. Not impossible by any means, just out of reach of the ordinary citizen. As the taxi took off, he glanced up at the tall monochromatic walls fencing him in, feeling unnervingly exposed.
    â€œAm I registered here?” he asked his u-shadow.
    â€œYes. Room 3088. A penthouse suite.”
    â€œI see.” He turned and looked directly at the penthouse’s balcony. He’d known its location automatically. “And can I afford that?”
    â€œYes. The penthouse costs fifteen hundred Ellezelin pounds per night. Your credit coin has a limit of five million Ellezelin pounds a month.”
    â€œA month?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œPaid by whom?”
    â€œThe coin is supported by a Central Augusta Bank account. The account details are secure.”
    â€œAnd my personal credit code?”
    â€œThe same.”
    Aaron walked into the lobby. “Nice to be rich,” he told himself.
    The penthouse had five rooms and a small private swimming pool. As soon as Aaron walked into the main lounge, he checked himself out in the mirror. He had a face older than the norm, approaching thirty, possessing short black hair and, oddly, eyes with a hint of purple in their gray irises. Slightly Oriental features, but with skin that was rough and a dark stubble shadow.
    Yep, that’s me.
    The instinctive response was reassuring but still did not give any clues to his identity.
    He settled into a broad armchair that faced an external window and turned down the opacity to stare out across the nighttime city toward the invisible heart Inigo had built. There was a lot of information in those mock-alien structures that would help him find his quarry. It was not the kind of data stored in electronic files; if it were that easy, Inigo would have been found by now. No, the information he needed was personal; which brought some unique access problems for someone like him, an unbeliever.
    He ordered room service. The hotel was pretentious enough to employ human chefs. When the food arrived, he could appreciate the subtleties of its preparation; there was a definite difference from culinary unit produce. He sat in the big chair, watching the city as he ate. Any route to the senior Clerics and Councillors would not be easy, he realized. But then, this Pilgrimage had presented him with a unique opportunity. If they were going to fly into the Void, they would need ships. That gave him an easy enough cover. It left just the problem of who to try to cultivate.
    His u-shadow produced an extensive list of senior Clerics, providing him with gossip about who was allied with Ethan and who, post-election, was going to be scrubbing Council toilets for the next few decades.
    It took him half the night, but the name was there. It was even featured on the city news web as Ethan began