"Providing you can stay off the full names, yes," Gurgeh said.

"I shall be there directly."

Gurgeh snapped the screen shut. He tapped the pen-like terminal on the edge of the wooden table and looked out over the dark fjord, watching the dim lights of the few houses on the far shore.

He heard a roaring noise in the sky, and looked up to see a farside-lit vapour-trail overhead, steeply angled and pointing to the slope uphill from Ikroh. There was a muffled bang over the forest above the house, and a noise like a sudden gust of wind, then, zooming round the side of the house, came a small drone, its fields bright blue and striped yellow. It drifted over towards Gurgeh. The machine was about the same size as Mawhrin-Skel; it could, Gurgeh thought, have sat comfortably in the rectangular sandwich plate on the table. Its gunmetal casing looked a little more complicated and knobbly than Mawhrin-Skel's. "Good evening," Gurgeh said as the small machine cleared the terrace wall.

It settled down on the table, by the sandwich plate. "Good evening, Morat Gurgeh."

"Contact, eh?" Gurgeh said, putting his terminal into a pocket in his robe. "That was quick. I was only talking to Chamlis the night before last."

"I happened to be in the volume," the machine explained in its clipped voice, "in transit — between the GCU Flexible Demeanour and the GSV Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence, aboard the (D)ROU Zealot. As the nearest Contact operative, I was the obvious choice to visit you. However, as I say, I can only stay for a short time."

"Oh, what a pity," Gurgeh said.

"Yes; you have such a charming Orbital here. Perhaps some other time."

"Well, I hope it hasn't been a wasted journey for you, Loash…. I wasn't really expecting an audience with a Contact operative. My friend Chamlis just thought Contact might… I don't know; have something interesting which wasn't in general circulation. I expected nothing at all, or just information. Might I ask just what you're doing here?" He leant forward, putting both elbows on the table, leaning over the small machine. There was one sandwich left on the plate just in front of the drone. Gurgeh took it and ate, munching and looking at the machine.