A good view reveals nothing more than clear sky, or perhaps a faint outline, far below, of lesser nature. My view was dominated by a gang of almost identical buildings, the dim outlines of scurrying salaryfolk visible through the seldom-washed windows. You needed to be on a much higher floor than mine before you could begin to ignore the petty grasping of lower personhood.

  Only the rare, determined sunbeam made it as far as us on the third floor. The only light we knew was that which emitted from the buzzing brose lamps that adorned every ceiling and wall in the building. The lamps blazed even on the upper floors, where true, unencumbered sunlight was presumably abundant. We were a combustibles company after all. We could not cede our responsibilities to the sun.

  Fopeen was not the most monied or respected quarter in Severas – here we merely manufactured and sold products. Our illustrious neighbours in the Peen district, by contrast, managed to coax wedges of currency into their pockets in return for mere advice. The not-quiteness of our status here meant that solidarity was in short supply. We leaned on each other like boys hoping to be the first chosen for the turning team.

  I was scanning an old report, the kind that some resourcer had produced following an assignment, detailing how worthwhile it might be to begin mining operations in some shit-covered outpost. I spent most mornings interrogating the sparse responses to questions about flammability testing and flash points. None of the reports ever seemed to recommend the implementation of full-scale mining. Or scraping, digging, what have you – I had not yet mastered the vocabulary.

  The door swung open and Nuparm shuffled in. Our shift began at nine bells, but the ten were due to strike any moment. A dank, invisible cloud accompanied him, clinging to his smock, indicating a heavy night spent ingesting snootfuls of tare.

  ‘Well Honrick, what’s the number today?’ he asked, throwing his satchel on his desk.

  ‘Nine,’ I replied. He was asking me the number of ‘CNC’ responses on the report. This stood for ‘conditions not conducive,’ which indicated that the resourcer had been unable to conduct the requisite test to determine the combustibility of a potential resource. When I first started at Renard, the meagreness of the information had shocked me, but it was only when I was sent out on my first assignment, twenty-one days of dabbing at the Garrow rockface with identifier swabs, chilled to the marrow, that I came to understand inconclusiveness.

  ‘I told you, Honrick, we’ll all be out of a job in a year,’ he said, polishing his glasses with the hem of his jacket. ‘We have hollowed out the Morrinn. There isn’t a scrap of undiscovered material left. Even if there was, how are we supposed to know? We don’t have the means to test in the field.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, knowing that part of Nuparm’s passion on this topic was due to his aversion to prep work, fieldwork, any kind of work.

  ‘Now if we could find an easier way to get beyond the Crash, that’s when things would get interesting,’ he said, leaning back against his desk. ‘Think of all the undiscovered caches there must be on the other landmasses!’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But then, once you get off the island, how would you get back?’

  ‘That’s the appeal to an adventurer,’ said Nuparm. ‘Setting off with empty pockets, with no idea how you’ll get back? Some people love that!’

  I closed the report and set it to one side.

  ‘Some people would prefer to see old age,’ I said.

  ‘I’m with you Honrick,’ he said, his fingers brushing something from the front of his smock. ‘If they ever reach a thousand successful returns, then I would consider climbing into one of those launchers.’

  ‘We’re a long way from that,’ I said.

  He pulled at the drawer on his desk and produced a half-empty bag of sweet cakes.

  ‘Any sign of Colgan?’ he asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen him, but today’s Orbital is over there, so he must have been in,’ I said.

  ‘Not everyone can be as productive as you and me, what?’ he said, removing a yellow cake from its wrapper and throwing it into his mouth. He flipped the red card on his desk, so that the ‘present’ side was showing, then walked over to the broad shelf where the folio-gilla deposited copies of New Surveyor, Kade Science and Elemental Combustion every week. It was Colgan who brought in the Severas Orbital. A daily newsfolio, densely covered with the lurid details of celebrity love affairs and Bardas intrigues, it was the only publication examined by all of us in detail.

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  ‘Just off to the conveniences, here,’ he said, grabbing its flimsy pink sheets. ‘Tell Sodan I’ll be back smartly if he’s nosing about.’ I didn’t expect to see him again until after lunch.

  I undid and retightened my queue, then arranged it on my shoulder. When I was in academics, it was the style to keep it short, the better to cram it underneath the magan, the ceremonial hat. This longer hair was a chore, constantly trapping itself in hastily closed doors and carelessly wound scarves. But it was befitting a salaryman to wear his queue longer, so I accommodated, keen to show Cruse that I was making the effort. It was he who had leveraged his contacts to find me this position, when my moping and self-indulgence had begun to affect the comfortable running of his home.

  The door hissed open, and someone spoke my name. My back straightened. It was Sodan.

  ‘Honrick, please come and join me in my workspace,’ he said, then disappeared from the doorway before I could respond. I scrambled from my seat to catch up, bustling the purring flames on the wall lamp as I passed.

  When I reached his office, he was already seated, his head lowered into some document, as if he had never left, the sheen on his bald head the only indication of his exertion.

  ‘What can I help you with, Sir?’ I said, finally.

  ‘Honrick. Yes. Good to see you.’ He didn’t look up.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, for some reason.

  ‘Some sojourn papers have come to me today and I thought you might be the person to ask,’ he said, now scribbling something with a pencil.

  His workspace was small for someone of his grade. But his grade was only high relative to my own. He was still based on one of the lower floors, where the corner lamps growled all day to chase away the darkness.

  ‘A sojourn?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. There is a sector that was overlooked during the trip to Mather.’

  ‘Overlooked?’ I tried to think of something interesting to say, but I was struggling to settle into the formalities. I sometimes forgot that my talents had won me a place in Appalatis. That I had been destined for the Academy, and a lifetime of adventure and inquiry. Never had I imagined I would end up at the Renard Combustibles Company, among these line drawers and ledger readers.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sodan, now looking at me. ‘The tubers in Development didn’t think to ask us for our advice when they scrutinised the place, and of course, they made a hash of it. They didn’t secure the samples properly and they were a soggy mess when they got them back to the lab. At least they acknowledge it, I suppose.’

  Sodan was always dismissive of the work of other departments, seemingly unaware of the failings of his own. It was how you got ahead in Renard.

  Barely a year had passed since my upward journey had been abruptly stopped, when the examiners, unimpressed by my Declaration, dismissed me from the Crom track, and from my destiny. I was now moulding myself into a combustibles man. I was making it my business to learn how things burn.

  ‘Of course, normally I’d push it back to them, but’ - here he lifted a demonstrative arm - ‘you’re here. Our young Crom scholar. The precocious one. Perhaps you might like the assignment.’

  I fought the urge to correct him, to tell him I was not a Crom scholar. That I was barely a scholar at all.

  ‘There will be nothing there, of course,’ he said. ‘They would go back themselves if they thought they had anything of worth. But it’s there if you want it, Preeb.’ He arranged a sheaf of documents into a folder. ‘A trip to Mather?’

  Mather is a place very few in Severas had the opportunity to visit. It was the site of a horrific snow disaster some three cycles back, during the Chiram era, after which access to the mountain became

  tightly restricted.

  Acker Dub had just come to power as First Citizen, and he had closed the northern gate of the city to all except those with the highest of governmental clearances. Acker would not be shy of imposing restrictions, as we would quickly learn. The same restrictions were still more or less in place now, long after the end of Acker’s reign and years since our last recorded snowfall.

  Renard could send employees there because, now that it was clear that our supply of brose was not infinite, the combustibles industry had been deemed vital to the smooth running of government. Even

  inquiring Cromholders did not yet have access, and this single advantage I enjoyed over them warmed my frigid ego.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Thank for the opportunity.’

  ***

  A week passed. The only guidance I received in preparation for my trip was in a meeting with a single junior member of the Development team, who had perhaps only learned about the existence of Mather that day. It had taken him a mere ten minutes to stammer through his presentation, his face growing redder and redder as he progressed. When he was finished, he had asked me if I had any questions, and I did - very many in fact - but, fearing that any further effort on his part might reduce him to a nervous puddle, I had answered no. He had handed me his frantically annotated notes as I left and wished me good fortune.

  Since brose did not burn at altitudes of higher than 300 treeks, no vehicle could be taken up the mountain. I would have to hike, following the overgrown tracks on an antique map. I looked forward

  to spending time in clear mountain air, drinking from pristine mountain streams, the belching foundries of the city distant beneath me.

  My role would be as discovery-gilla, the person who made contact with the area in question and wrote up the survey, taking measurements and describing the major features, how easily they could be accessed, the combustible potential, and so on. Although it was very unlikely that anything interesting would be found – combustibles were almost always found at lower altitudes – the position of discovery-gilla was a relatively important one, which could lead to advancement. An advantageous posting, for someone of my minimal experience.

  The information folio said that the altitude at Upper Mather was beyond 900 treeks. On even ground, you could start walking by the beating of the dawn drum, and have covered 900 treeks before

  suppertime. I was sure I could manage that, despite the softness of my scholarly backside. Had I thought to ask anyone with meaningful knowledge of the subject, I would have been concerned.

  ‘Honrick Preeb,’ said the guard at the city gate as I was leaving, scanning my license. ‘You’re going to walk up the mountain?’ he asked, smothering a smile. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My employment requires it.’ He gave me a surveying look. All manner of gadgets and trinkets bulged in my pockets, and my overstuffed bag teetered high on my shoulders.

  ‘You must be well used to this type of journey,’ he said finally. ‘Very fit, you folk in the combustibles business.’ I’m sure I saw his eyes descend towards my midriff.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, folding an arm across my stomach. ‘We are accustomed to life under the elements. That is correct.’

  The officer stamped my pass then stepped aside to allow me to walk through the rectangular doorway that had been carved out of the wooden gate. I had expected more of an interrogation, but I supposed that the guard had known all about the purposes of my trip, perhaps even before I had.

  ‘Call in on your way back,’ he said. ‘I’d like to hear an experienced hand talk about life in the mountains.’

  ‘Yes Mister,’ I said, hunkering down, trying not to catch my luggage on the edges of the narrow entry.

  The paved pathway of the city quickly narrowed and gave way to loose, sandy earth. Jagged brown weeds swayed wildly at the edges of the path and tall stalks stood along its unperturbed middle.

  Anything that grew along the side of the path owed its existence to the obscure, complex ecosystems of nature. Hard to fathom that such wilderness existed at a mere stone’s casting from the city gate.