“Look after yourself,” Cal said, elevating a hand in Janequin’s direction. “And good luck with the peacocks.”

Janequin’s surprise was evident. “You know about my little project?”

Calvin smiled without answering; Janequin’s question had been superfluous after all, Sylveste thought.

The old man shook his hand—the environment ran to full tactile interaction—and then stepped out of range of his imaging suite.

The two of them were left alone on the balcony.

“Well?” Cal asked.

“I can’t afford to lose control of the colony.” Sylveste had still been in nominal command of the entire Resurgam expedition, even after Alicia’s defection. Technically, those who had chosen to stay behind on the planet rather than return home with her should have been his allies, meaning that his position should have been strengthened. But it had not worked like that. Not everyone who was sympathetic to Alicia’s side of the argument had managed to get aboard the Lorean before it left orbit. And amongst those who had stayed behind, many previously sympathetic to Sylveste felt he had handled the crisis badly, or even criminally. His enemies said that the things the Pattern Jugglers had done to his head before he met the Shrouders were only now emerging into the light; pathologies that bordered on madness. Research into the Amarantin had carried on, but with slowly lessening momentum, while political differences and enmities widened beyond repair. Those with residual loyalty to Alicia—chief among them Girardieau—had amalgamated into the Inundationists. Sylveste’s archaeologists had become steadily embittered, a siege-mentality setting in. There had been deaths on both sides which were not easily explained as accidents. Now things had reached a head, and Sylveste was in nowhere like the right place to resolve the crisis. “But I can’t let go of that, either,” he said, indicating the obelisk. “I need your advice, Cal. I’ll get it because you depend on me absolutely. You’re fragile; remember that.”