Attan Ze Kosh's favorite image was a panoramic photograph taken by the Corleroys in Swallow's flight, showing Nelatte, from above. At first glance, it looked like a view of some kind of cocoon, clear and translucent in the glancing light, robust in the middle and tapering almost to nothing at the ends, suspended, floating above the uniform blue-gray background of Faspath's unfathomable depths.

  He liked it for that very reason. It looked like an abstract figure, the work of a visionary artist; it took some time to make out the place they were in this shape, deceptively small in its outline. The city was at least a mile wide at its center, the thickest point.

  The mayor liked the photo, too, because it emphasized how small they all were in reality, how little they mattered from up there. A creature who had flown by might not even have imagined that that strange openwork shape in the middle of the Rift, like lace abandoned by an absent-minded goddess, was home to myriads of teeming beings in full swing.

  But, of course, not even this magnificent and evocative vision was enough to distract him, on these splendid sun-filled days, from the need to open the porthole and contemplate reality on its scale—a small world for his small eyes. Work piled up on his desk, officials kept calling, citizens demanded to be heard. All that was unbearable without being able to relieve the tension with a breath of fresh air now and then.

  Now it seemed that no one was coming. Lunch break! Attan Ze was already putting down his pen, dabbing at the line he had just written, looking forward to those few minutes of leisure...

  Another knock.

  Attan Ze huffed, thumping the table in exasperation.

  “Do you want my death? Come in if you must, but be brief!”

  He retrieved the name badge that had fallen forward in the recoil, the plaque that qualified him as the fifty-eighth Mayor of the Web City, pushed the rosette aside, and brushed with his fingers the chitinous, hair-thin extroversions that formed a mane of sensors around his neck.

  He had prepared a neutral smile, good for any eventuality, but when he caught a clear glimpse of the creature crawling through the door, his satisfaction became genuine. Real sparks shone in his eyes, like stars on the transparent, smooth shell that surrounded the midsection of Seluma's body, which she affectedly insisted on calling corset.

  “Your Excellency,” she greeted, bending into a semblance of a bow.

  The subtle, pungent scent of his friend, or rather the secretions she emitted as she moved and which dried on the red tiles of the study, immediately permeated the entire room. Attan Ze swirled the sensors in the air to capture it all.

  “I'm bothering you, I know,” the Lumacid added.

  “But not at all!” the mayor, already on his feet, hastened to reassure her. He walked around the desk to get closer to her. “I should scold you because you haven't contacted me since the last time I proposed a deal. Are you considering it or not?”

  “It's been a very busy few days. One of my aides left me without warning and I wasted time choosing another person.”

  “From Boirughi's gardens come at least twelve carts a week, each with two handlers; they may not be the best clientele, but a convention with them is not to be disregarded! Have you thought about that?” he pressed her.

  But what was there to gain by challenging Seluma? Usually only insults.

  Attan Ze Kosh grew more cautious, his voice velvety and his tone thoughtful. He expressed his regret for the missed opportunity with a long sigh.

  “I still can't believe you turned down that juicy deal with the singing sand merchants...”

  “Do you know where they get them? Do you know how they get them?” blurted Seluma, making herself wider and thinner. “These people disturb places that shouldn't even be looked at from a distance. They desecrate the Center! And no, thank you, I don't want anything to do with them. You shouldn't either!”

  The mayor bowed his head.

  “One should not go down into the crater! One should not go near... the place. It is not meant to be seen, it is not meant to be—”

  “Come on, Seluma!”

  “Show some respect! The Lord of the Nine Gates should punish them! If the Plant would turn his thoughts around here once in a while...”

  Attan Ze Kosh felt his sensors stand up like thorns, his tone turning icy even before he realized he was speaking, uttering words that came out of their own volition.

  “Do you claim to know what the gods should do?” he shushed her.

  The Lumacid blinked dumbly, taken aback.

  “Sand mining, in precise locations and with appropriate systems, is legal. The rest is hearsay.”

  The moment of severity had passed. Attan Ze Kosh smiled again.

  His gaze wandered eagerly beyond the porthole, already lost in the immensity of the sky and the empty space of Faspath that awaited him there. He pinched his thigh to force himself to remember the present that demanded his attention.

  “A rumor, huh? Like the one the idiots chatter about so much these days to cause worry and distress?” Seluma snapped, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  The mayor found himself much closer to the porthole than was advisable if he wanted to stay focused. With difficulty, he turned away from the opening and returned to his seat.

  “We'll have some answers soon. But in the meantime, please tell me your story properly.”

  With a broad gesture, he invited her to sit across from him, before remembering that she did not have to sit down. But the nod was still a courtesy, and Seluma settled down as she saw fit.

  “First of all, there is no story of mine,” she warned him. “This very damaged and obviously defective cart broke into my restaurant, crashed, and uttered disjointed words. That's it. The rest is an invention of the gossips.”

  “You have no way of knowing how damaged it was before it crashed,” Attan Ze said.

  “It must have been very much so, at least in the brain, if it had the idea to grind all this way instead of sounding the alarm to his superiors, who would have immediately relayed the message here through the long-range transmitters, if that was the case.”

  He had turned the name tag upside down. He grabbed it, running it over the sleeve of his robe to polish it. He scratched away a few specks of dust with the tip of his fingernail.

  “This is the kind of alarm that should be given to the living, not to the supervisors who are automata themselves.”

  “There is a chain of command...”

  “Which can be bypassed under certain circumstances.”

  “But that doesn't make sense, because—”

  “We also can't contact the mine in any way.”

  This silenced Seluma, but did not give Attan Ze any satisfaction. On the contrary, it filled him with bitterness. Why did he have to fight with her? He did not disdain a playful verbal battle now and then, but this was not the time. His friend was not having any fun.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  The Lumacid's antennae vibrated, her telescopic eyes curved in opposite directions before turning back to him.

  “It seems obvious to me what might have happened,” she said. “Without the need to imagine catastrophic events.”

  Attan Ze waited for the explanation.

  “Zerafia, of course!”

  “Zerafia?”

  Seluma became irritated, as if she thought he was deliberately playing dumb to mock her.

  “Kosh, you're not trying to tell me that only old people like me remember the historic rivalry between Zerafia and Nelatte for possession of those mines? According to these albino larvae, they belong to their territory, even though their horrible, lopsided city was founded two centuries after we came to dig!”

  Attan Ze spread his arms wide with a smile.

  “I appreciate that you are the historical memory of this city, Seluma. You are valuable, we all know that. But sometimes your broad view of events makes you lose your sense of perspective.”

  His eyes searched for Nelatte's photograph. He pointed to it with a nod of his head.

  “Seen like this, it all looks the same, don't you think? But the enmity you speak of is an event for the history books. For more than a hundred years our relations with the Zerafians have been entirely friendly. They even helped us set up the new base for monitoring the automata when the old one was flooded.”

  The Lumacid's antennae suddenly shortened.

  “And isn't this great generosity suspicious? Not even a little?”

  “For the love of Water, Seluma! Do you never believe anyone or anything? Do you never give the benefit of the doubt?” He sighed sadly.

  “No.”

  Not even to yourself, Attan Ze concluded quietly.

  “The contaminated dust accident is not a hundred years old. It must be no more than a dozen. And people died.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that it might have been an accident?”

  A soft pattering and knocking preceded by a few moments the entrance of one of the technicians, so disheveled and agitated that he could not even follow the normal formalities. The scientist had already entered with his mouth open to say something, and literally froze in mid-air when he realized the presence of the guest. One foot lifted in mid-step, his arm extended.

  With a wave of his hand, the mayor motioned for him to wait a moment, perhaps in the small chair that Seluma had not taken.

  Seluma, for her part, had pierced the newcomer with one of her most predatory gazes, greedy for information. She seemed to want to suck the information out of the technician's brain, perhaps even physically, squeezing it like a fruit. What a female. It was not advisable to cross her path... no matter how slowly she moved.

  The conversation did not continue. Attan Ze invited the technician, still as erect as a post, to speak. He obeyed, nervous to the point of stuttering.

  “We have the results… about the pink heart and more.”

  Attan Ze was well aware of the sidelong glances the technician threw at Seluma as he interjected. He was not wrong, no. Certain matters had to be discussed behind closed doors. But Seluma was a special case.

  “Explain the 'more' to me,” he demanded, believing he was taking a safer route.

  He immediately discovered he was wrong.

  “The trolley controls have been tampered with.”

  “A-ah!” the Lumacid gurgled, gloating.

  °°°

  She felt a pang of remorse at the expression on his face, his elongated eyes shadowed with violet, his small mouth tightened. The wreath of sensors around his neck, which until a moment before had swayed softly to the rhythm of his movements and speech, remained soft and inert for long moments, like the petals of a withered flower.

  But the relief —could she admit that she felt it?— had been too great to remain silent.

  “What did I tell you?”

  Attan Ze Kosh recovered with difficulty and had to look away from her with an irritated look.

  “Meaning?” he asked in a harsher tone this time.

  The shy technician seemed frightened. Did he really think the mayor was angry with him?

  “The command line... there's a deviation, a malfunction,” he muttered, shaking all over.

  He fell silent again.

  “Do you need to be paid by the word?” said Attan Ze, angrily. “Will you please explain everything properly and in full? She can hear.”

  The scientist swallowed with an audible pop. But for all the deference the young man showed the mayor, disgust flashed in his amber eyes when his gaze landed on her.

  Gray-skinned idiot.

  “They inserted themselves in a very subtle way, it has to be said. There was a deflection line in the short-range transmitter that forced the trolley to repeat any information intended for the supervisors... well, to someone else too. An almost invisible modification that would have escaped routine inspection, nothing more than a tiny clamp and a piece of cable that—”

  “Could this be Zerafia's work?”

  The man rolled his eyes as if the identity of the saboteur was a question he would never ask himself.

  “Oh, sure, I suppose so. But it was only espionage, Your Excellency.”

  The sensors tensed again, this time all straight out like a collar of quills.

  “That is?” he asked for confirmation, but his smile already showed how safe he felt again.

  “They just listened, sir. That's all they could do.”

  “Certainly they couldn't make the trolley carry out crazy orders or implant false facts in its memory!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

  “Oh, no, Your Excellency. The memory is intact. Then there is the pink heart—I imagine you will want to see it for yourself.”

  Again those oblique, dramatic looks that Seluma had already noticed. The one that said: when is this one leaving?

  Drown yourself, technician, she wished him without further ado. I'll be here as long as I like. I have every right to.

  Yes, drown yourself! She laughed to herself at the unintended irony. Just the right curse for a Samavorian. Maybe those suckers really did melt in the water like the witches of certain old legends, dissolving screaming in a cloud of steam, sizzling. Maybe the Samavorians were the witches of certain old legends.

  “They did something more,” she intervened, calm and composed. “Didn't you wonder why he came to me? I did, I thought about it for two days. Wouldn't it have been more logical to come here to you, Kosh? Or to the firemen? Or the engineers or whatever? Why my restaurant?”

  She had finally gotten their attention. The scientist had decided to deign to look at her face, albeit with a grimace of disgust. Attan Ze seemed to be begging her not to spoil his fun again.

  “I am the oldest inhabitant of Nelatte. It is not our custom to elect the eldest as head of the community. We use other systems.”

  She hoped that the vague gesture she had made with the excrescence she had waved like an arm at the mayor's address was expressive enough of her opinion of the systems in question.

  “We don't, but elsewhere they do.”

  Attan Ze seemed on the verge of sulking at her like a wayward child.

  “In Zerafia,” he finished the sentence for her in a sepulchral tone.

  “What a funny coincidence.”