The day had been perfect, but the night threatened to be as rough as they come. The evening sky was already darkening to a muddling purple as Atlanta navigated to her office, and the stones cried out underfoot as she turned into Chadlin Jo. As she entered the Daffodil Burk, a disembodied eye materialized in mid-air, stared at her, turned bloody red, then vanished.
         Atlanta was totally unphased by all this activity. The lurid nights of Lombok can be singularly unsettling, for it is then that the activity of Chalakanesia's metapsychic faultline peaks. But the faultline's epiphenomena mostly fall into two classes: harmless ones, and those so overwhelmingly catastrophic that there is no point worrying about them.
        "Any messages?" said Atlanta, entering the Daffodil Burk.
         She was given a handful, and sat down to read them with a cup of coffee.
         Chalakanesia has no telephone system, since a prohibitive amount of gold would be needed to shield handsets and wiring from the metapsychic faultline. Radio phones are out of the question, since the metapsychic field garbles the radio bands. At the time which our history deals with, La Lantis had recently begun experimenting with melagram sets — but even melagram communications got washed out by the emotional weather of Lombok.
         Hence Atlanta's clients left messages for her at the coffee bar. Or, if they were really in a hurry to contact her, they would send messenger boys to roust her out of the House Jubiladilia, the Hot and Cold, or the Glorious Blue Feathers Cockfighting Den.
        "Junk, junk, junk, junk," said Atlanta, trashing her messages into the wastepaper basket.
         Then she drained her coffee and repaired to her office.
        (Repaired? She repaired? You may think "repair" to be a rather formal, old-fashioned verb, a verb too weightily pretentious to be used in this context. But it is apt, for Atlanta made a regular procession of the ascent to her office. Atlanta, then, repaired, full of a well-nourished sense of her own dignity, and the weighty majesty of the profession she practiced).
         Inside Atlanta's office, which was on the fourth floor of the Ul Den Ul, a little of the day's sunlight lingered, caught by a vial of lightwine which burnt brighter than the fullest moon. Atlanta closed the shutters on the rattling night, unclasped her pearls, shed her silk — glad to be rid of it, for silk was part of the slavery of society's normative roles — then changed to the sacred grey of the law's uniform. The legal grey belonged to the life she had made for herself by her own conscious choice, choosing to devote herself to something sacred.
         What was it, exactly, that sacred holy thing? The service of the law? The administration of justice? The preservation of the weak? The discipline of the strong? The cybernetic regulation of society?
         Atlanta was young; the young are commonly idealistic; and so you may think Atlanta's great ambition was to serve society. You may think she saw the law as a feedback mechanism designed to rebalance society's machinery when its intrinsically self-serving parts failed in their duty to the whole. Contemplating Atlanta's youth, you may suspect that she wished to be a secular saint, and set the ills of the world to right.
         But you would be wrong.
         Atlanta's office was a shrine to something holy, but that which was holy to Atlanta was her career, the transcendent center of her self-serving life. Atlanta was supremely conscious of having created herself in the image of her own ambition through an act of free will. This self-creation was to her a source of great and entirely legitimate pride, and she bolstered her pride and determination with every means available.
         In keeping with current intellectual fashion, Atlanta prided herself on her selfishness; and shunned altruism; and praised ruthlessness; and construed daily life to be a continuation of war by other means.
         Atlanta had read all the usual success books ("The Self-Serving Self", "Taking Care of Number One", "The Center of the Universe", "Let the Dead Bury the Dead", "Tutoring Your Assassin", "Shedding the Family", "Butting Heads", and so forth). She did her best to trust to the selfishness of her genes ("your best personal counselors", as futurologist Tolbert puts it), and ever endeavored to follow the advice of Goat the Guru (as given in those passages in which he advises us to "think like a cannibal, and live within your skin").
         But sentiment still occasionally subverted the impeccable logic of ruthlessness, and tonight Atlanta was more troubled than she cared to admit about the turmoil which had descended upon her Family. (In Chalakanesia, turmoil is always thought of as descending, as if it came down from out of the sky like a metapsychic whirlwind. Chalakanesians look up more often than other peoples, checking for metapsychic purple in the sky, and so, in Chalakanesian metaphor, malignity descends).
         Of course, her mother's hysterical fuss was all a nonsense, really. So Panjalo had run away? So what! The girl was twenty-one, an adult by law if a child by fact. Anyway, what was the worst case outcome? Well, death, maybe.
        "We all have to die sometime," said Atlanta, trying to reassure herself that death was no big deal, that it was a mere technicality, a piece of punctuation, an inconvenient fullstop which she could finesse with an ampersand. "Andif she gets pregnant, well, the next generation has to come from somewhere."
         So saying, Atlanta tried to settle to her work, to massacre her backlog before Yulius arrived. Would the people at La Lantis have so much as given him the time of day? Distracting images assailed her brain. Yulius the vug! Yulius, his body ensconced in the vug machine at La Lantis, his head and hands floating across the ocean as he tries -
        "Enough!" said Atlanta, speaking to her fantasies with judicial sternness.
         And the building shook as a buffet of wind took it hard and fast, and she realized the weather outside must already have shocked up to storm, and then came a knock at the door.
        "It's open!" yelled Atlanta, expecting Yulius.
         But it was her grandfather Zinjanthrop who came staggering in, red with blood from head to toe, a slaughterhouse refugee, a horrorhouse apparition.
        "Are you hurt?" said Atlanta, with reluctant concern.
        "Hurt?" said Zinjanthrop. Then, realizing what she was on about: "Oh, no, no. It was just the rain. It's raining blood outside, or was."
        "That's come up suddenly," said Atlanta.
        "Sudden?" said Zinjanthrop, pushing his way into the office. "What do you expect? This is Lombok."
         His clothes were sodden with blood. His skin was dripping with it. Atlanta stood well clear, protective of her legal grey.
        "The merry sport of mass murder," she murmured.
        "Look like a comic book, do I?" said Zinjanthrop. "May I sit? I'm here to talk."
        "Talk?" said Atlanta. "About Yulius, you mean?
         Automatically, she went on the defensive, as if Yulius was a child who needed to be sheltered, to be protected. Certainly the boy lacked the strength of will to do battle with Zinjanthrop unaided. Atlanta had more than once had nightmares in which Zinjanthrop dragged Yulius down beneath the sea and drowned him -for Yulius was a mere normative human, and lacked the gills and water-lung of one born to the sealines.
        "Yulius?" said Zinjanthrop. "Your squeeze? Atlanta, my child, if that little boy gives you pleasure, then that's your business, not mine."
         Atlanta was amazed at the ease with which Zinjanthrop discovered her vulnerabilities, and the studied brutality with which he lacerated her.
        "You're horrible," said Atlanta, reminding herself she was a lawyer, a professional, a fully-grown adult, beyond her grandfather's reach or reprimand. "And look at this! Bloody footprints everywhere."
        "Blood, yes," said Zinjanthrop, licking his lips.
         His eyes, as seen by the illumination of Atlanta's prize vial of lightwine, were gimlet-bright, suddenly ablaze, gleeful. "What is the meaning of blood, Atlanta?"
        "Keep your obsessions to yourself," said Atlanta.
        "I'm an old man," said Zinjanthrop. "Gone in the head, wits addled, tongue twisted. I can't help myself."
        "What's next?" said Atlanta. "Incontinence pants?"
         Zinjanthrop cackled as Atlanta stooped to the lowest of her hideaway lockers and bundled out an old curtain, which she threw over a guest-chair.
        "The Family Ul will have five fits and a jackknife," said Atlanta. "There must be blood all the way up the stairs. Sit!"
        "Worse things happen at sea," said Zinjanthrop, settling himself with a creaking care which confessed the ravages of age. "Besides, if the Family Ul can countenance the business that operates downstairs, then they can live with a slaughterhouse just as easily."
        "There's a business in this building that you don't like, is there?" said Atlanta. "And from where did you pick up your knowledge of that kind of business?"
        "From drinking with judges and dining with senators," said Zinjanthrop, winking. "Speaking of senators, there's something I've got to consult you about."
        "Dry yourself," said Atlanta, throwing him a handtowel old enough to be written off. "You want a coffee?"
        "Please," said Zinjanthrop.
        "Then go downstairs and get it yourself."
        "Ho!" said Zinjanthrop. "Playing tough, are we? What was the last book you read, Atlanta darling? The Girl's Book of Toughing it Out?"
         Rattling on like this, Zinjanthrop scabbed away at the blood on his face, hands and hair, restoring himself to something fractionally more like his normal appearance. Paulinus Petronius Puck Niftik Dan Zinjanthrop, Puck to all his friends, but old man Zinjanthrop to the greater part of the world (his friends being exceedingly few in number) was a man of lean and wiry build, his body seamed and pitted by the suns of generations. His ape-hanging arms fell clear to his knees, tufted with yellowish-whitish hair, and sparse rags of the same hair sprouted from the scalp of his skull. There were no vultures on the island of Islam Demaxus, but, even so, Atlanta tended to think of her grandfather as just such an animal.
        "Is this about Panjalo?" said Atlanta.
        "No, no," said Zinjanthrop, tossing the handtowel in the direction of Atlanta's desk.
         Atlanta fielded the towel neatly, dumped it into her wastepaper basket.
        "If not Panjalo," said Atlanta, "then what?"
        "The affair of the unfortunate Panjalo Pantaline has driven me from the house — your mother's as bad as a pair of bagpipes -but that's not what I'm here for. I'm here to consult."
        "Pardon?" said Atlanta.
        "Consult. You heard me. That's your business, isn't it?"
        "You!" said Atlanta. "Consulting me! You want me as your lawyer, do you?"
        "Yes," said Zinjanthrop. "Why not? Your my granddaughter. If I can't make use of you, who can?"
         Such insolence! The old man had opposed her career-drive bitterly, and she was still embittered by his opposition.
         However -
        "Speak," said Atlanta, putting her feet on her desk for maximal insolence. "But make it quick. I've got a client coming."
        "A client?" said Zinjanthrop. "A client, by night? By night in the month of Lombok? In competition with Lady Jane, are we?"
         The Lady Jane in question ran a notorious School of Body Painting on the second floor of the Ul Den Ul. It was the lair of certain women, usually floridly dressed and heavily perfumed, who worked late hours and slept from dawn till lunchtime. If Atlanta had still been wearing her pearls and silks, she might have blushed. But she was wearing the uniform of the law — and once dressed in her legal grey she was virtually unshockable.
        "Shark up or shut up," said Atlanta. " I don't have all night."
         Her style was a close imitation of the snappishness, the impatience, the intolerant pushiness of Clerk Crocus, the waspish elderly clerk who did most of the speaking (and, it was rumoured, most of the decision-making) in the court of the semi-senile Judge Metatron. To her surprise, her grandfather reacted to her rudeness with something suspiciously like tolerant reasonableness.
        "I don't need all night," said Zinjanthrop, turning conciliatory. "This is a, a simple matter. A tad-touch of Family business. Atlanta, my dear, I know you're overburdened as it is, but I'd be very pleased if you could give a little of your attention to this very simple bit of business."
         What was this? Diplomacy? From Zinjanthrop? Since when did Zinjanthrop ever essay the placatory? Maybe he was playing comic book games of tough guy and soft guy, himself both players, seeking the combination which would allow him to manipulate his granddaughter with the greatest economy of effort.
        "A simple bit of Family business," repeated Zinjanthrop.
        "A contradiction in terms," said Atlanta, making no effort to conceal her suspicions. "Jubiladilia affairs may be many things, but never simple. Does this, uh, alleged tad-touch concern my sister Panjalo?"
        "As I've told you," said Zinjanthrop, with a patient calmness which was entirely alien to his known nature, "this has nothing to do with your sister."
        "Then," said Atlanta, "why not take this, this, uh, Family business to the Family lawyer?"
        "I've seen old Randylegs," said Zinjanthrop, using a nickname which its owner was ever at pains to disavow, "but he says he can't help me."
        "Why not?" said Atlanta. "You're not paying your bills?"
        "He can't help me," said Zinjanthrop, studying the blood on his fingernails, "because he also represents Gorkindachina. Conflict of interest, that's what he says."
         Vignis Vo Gorkindachina was the leading timber merchant of the city of Lexis, and had long been at odds with the Family Jubiladilia. Gorkindachina had a seat on the senate of Islam Demaxus, and Zinjanthrop wanted it. Not for himself, but for his grandson Heineman — Atlanta's somewhat unbeloved brother.
         On Zinjanthrop's initiative, the Jubiladilias had bought up many of Gorkindachina's debts. They now even held a mortgage over the House Gorkindachina itself, and Zinjanthrop was manoeuvering to force Gorkindachina into bankruptcy, thus compelling him to resign from the senate. But, so far, Vignis Vo had been able to meet the necessary monthly payments on every debt, including the mortgage.
         As far as Atlanta was concerned, this dry and tedious manoeuvering was a remote and distant battle of accountants. As Zinjanthrop was as good an accountant as any, and as she herself had trouble enough just doing her tax returns, she was at a loss to know what her grandfather thought she could possibly advise him about.
        "There are other lawyers, of course," said Zinjanthrop, impatient with Atlanta's silent consideration, "but I want you to represent me because — "
         A perishing ghost came wailing through the shutters, screaming into their conversation. It whirled round the room thrice, clutched at the vial of lightwine with substanceless hands, and then vanished.
        "Really!" said Atlanta, taking her feet down from her desk. "This is no night for the practice of law."
         She had a point.
         Thanks to metapsychic upset, which makes all probabilities problematical throughout the far-flung archipelago of the Federated States of Chalakanesia, the month of Lombok is no time for meetings. With its onslaught of ghosts, golems and transitory doppelgangers of all descriptions, it is a month better suited to penance and repentance, or (depending on your tastes) to drunken beer parties and the telling of horror stories.
        "I was saying," said Zinjanthrop. "I want you to represent me because — "
        "Take it as read," said Atlanta, who suddenly wanted to get this meeting over with. It had been a long day, and she realized she was crushingly fatigued. Besides, she did not want Zinjanthrop still on the premises when Yulius arrived. "Take it as read. You want me. Okay. Let's get to the marrow. How do things stand with Gorkindachina?"
        "There is a rumour," said Zinjanthrop.
         Then he paused, biting his lip, as if trying to stop a tremor. Zinjanthrop was not given to such petit betrayals, even when he was under intense stress, so Atlanta didn't know how to read this sign. Was he playing with her head, indulging in some kind of weird and wonderful psychological gamesmanship?
        "I haven't heard of any rumour which I would think germane to our Family's dealings with Vignis Vo," said Atlanta.
        "Germane," said Zinjanthrop, chewing the syllables ruminatively, as a cow chews its cud. "Now there's a word for you. But what does it mean? A special kind of eye-bean soup with fishbones? Or a bean pie baked with marbles, and served with a tofu salad on the side?"
        "Sharkfin soup," said Atlanta. "That's what it means, if you really want to know."
         The people of Chalakanesia are proud plain speakers, but Atlanta loved to regurgitate the several dictionaries she had swallowed in her legal training. She was totally shameless about it, even though she regularly slapped down Heineman for using long words. But then, it was her guess that Heineman had nothing but the vaguest knowledge of the true meaning of the more abstruse words in his vocabulary. Besides, she was a lawyer. Freedom of vocabulary was a professional privilege — and why should her grandfather pretend to talk like an illiterate fishermen when he knew just as many words as she did?
        "There is a rumour," said Zinjanthrop, seeing that his grand-daughter was not going to rise to the bait, "there is a rumour that Gorkindachina has been shunted."
         Well! This was a massive anticlimax, particularly after such a powerful buildup! If Vignis Vo Gorkindachina had been shunted -displaced in time and place by the action of the metapsychic faultline — then the Family Jubiladilia might benefit from his disappearance in due course. But Atlanta couldn't imagine why her grandfather had come trooping through a bloodstorm if that was all he wanted to discuss.
        "Now that you mention it," said Atlanta, "I do remember hearing someone claim that our friend Vignis Vo has been spatio-temporally displaced."
        "Shunted," said Zinjanthrop.
        "If we must trade vulgar terms, then, yes, shunted it is."
        "Well, then," said Zinjanthrop, "if he has been shunted, what do the law books say? Does he lose his senate seat or doesn't he?"
        "You came here to ask me that?" said Atlanta. "You stomped your bloody boots all over my office just to ask me that? One would have thought you could have opened a lawbook yourself."
        "Oh, I can open it all right," said Zinjanthrop. "But I can hardly read it. I'm illiterate, like my father, yes, and my father's father before him."
         Zinjanthrop had often claimed illiteracy, but Atlanta was sure he was joking, or was twisting the facts simply because he hated to tell the truth. She didn't imagine for a moment that shriveled old monster truly was illiterate.
        "One would have thought that Heineman could have done your reading for you," said Atlanta, playing along with her grandfather's illiteracy claim. "After all, he's the one who wants that senate seat so badly."
        "I want him in the senate more than he wants it himself," said Zinjanthrop. "Anyway, he has read the books, as much as an accountant can read. He says they don't make much sense."
        "He means he can't make sense of them," said Atlanta, "which isn't quite the same thing."
        "And you can?" said Zinjanthrop. "Then let me ask you straight: is a shunted person dead?"
        "Yes and no," said Atlanta.
        "Now there's a lawyer's answer for you!" said Zinjanthrop. "It has to be one or the other."
        "Technically," said Atlanta, "a person who's been shunted is potentially dead. But the potential doesn't become the actual, not legally, until the Court of Justice declares the man dead."
        "What about the senate?" said Zinjanthrop.
        "What about it?" said Atlanta.
        "Couldn't they give him the kick? If he'd been shunted, that is. Couldn't they just say he's a fit and proper person, because, you know, you have to be strong to be a senator. and all that. If you ghost, you're weak. Weakness of character, unfit to be a senator. If you get shunted, that's worse."
        "Is it?" said Atlanta. "The question is, is shunting under volitional control? Is it something you can fight?"
        "You can fight ghosting," said Zinjanthrop.
        "Certainly," said Atlanta, who never ghosted, not ever. "But nobody knows about shunting."
        "I've heard otherwise," said Zinjanthrop.
        "A fish has five sizes," said Atlanta, quoting a proverbial Chalakanesian phrase which sums up the fatuity of educating yourself in the gossip mode. "Ask the senate. But you know as well as I do, it's bribes which vote in the senate."
        "They can't be bald about it," said Zinjanthrop.
         Atlanta found herself getting impatient. She wanted to scuttle this business before Yulius put in an appearance.
        "So," said Atlanta. "We're getting into politics. That's your field, not mine. So: think politics. Are they going to vote Gorkindachina out of the senate? If he ghosts all over the place and gets labeled as a child molester, then, well, maybe. But just because he's got shunted, well, I'd be surprised."
         Atlanta suddenly realized her grandfather was sitting up very straight and blinking very rapidly. All in all, he gave the impression of a man who has just been burnt by a poker, and is trying hard to pretend that nothing has happened.
        "Is something wrong?" said Atlanta.
        "What made you say that?" said Zinjanthrop.
        "About shunting?" said Atlanta. "Face facts. If Gorkindachina gets knocked from this week to next, then so what? It's a black mark, doubtless. But would the senate kick him out just because he got shunted? Could they live with that precedent? I doubt it. That's my opinion, and if you don't like it then go buy another one."
         Zinjanthrop swallowed hard, then massaged his throat.
        "Shunting, then," he said. "Let's talk about shunting."
        "That's what I've just done," said Atlanta, wondering if her grandfather had just had a minor stroke.
        "So," said Zinjanthrop. "So, a court order will make Gorkindachina dead. Then he has to lose his seat. Surely. I mean, the senate can't have a dead man on their rollbook."
        "Technically, yes," said Atlanta. "But you're grasping at straws. Sure, you might wangle a declaration out of the court. Sure, the senate might give him the kick. If he was legally dead, they might have to. But they wouldn't like it. As soon as Gorkindachina showed up again, he'd get resurrected by the court. And then? Then the senate puts him back on the rollbook. It's an empty exercise. Besides, even to get started, first you have to prove Gorkindachina was shunted."
        "I have just such proof," said Zinjanthrop. "He's been missing from Lexis for the last ten days."
        "Which proves what?" said Atlanta.
        "It proves he's shunted!" said Zinjanthrop, betraying an uncharacteristic desperation. "Or dead for real!"
        "Or up in the north, looking at his cedar forests," said Atlanta. "Absence proves nothing. Find someone who saw him get shunted, or forget it."
        "Are you counseling me to fabricate evidence?" said Zinjanthrop.
         Atlanta snorted in exasperation.
        "I think you're kicking the mongoose," she said, using a Chalakanesia phrase indicating an enterprise of utter futility. "Either find real witnesses to a real shunting, or forget it."
         The Ul Den Ul shook heavily as it was slammed by a gigantic backslap from the buffeting wind. Floor, shutters, door, roof -the entire timbered building trembled and creaked, like a sailing ship shocked aback by a fluke of the wind. Then a more focused hammering announced an arrival.
        "Come in!" yelled Atlanta, stalwartly storm-voiced. "It's open!"
         If the door creaked when it opened, then the sound was lost in the generalized timber-flex. But it opened of a certainty, admitting Yulius Epoktatima, Atlanta's boyfriend, tall and dark, and meticulously attired into the bargain. (Shorter than Atlanta, yes — pedantry must be served! — but tall enough to suit her tastes, for she had no yearning for the looming of a hulking dominator, and preferred a man she could swat at need).
        "Zinjanthrop!" said Yulius, in startlement.
         Climbing the stairs in darkness, Yulius Epoktatima had failed to see the old man's bloody footprints, and so had not been forewarned. Muttering apologies, which were utterly lost in the wind, Yulius backed off, closing the door. But Atlanta's bloodstained grandfather rose from his chair, and hit full stride so quickly he caught Yulius on the landing. Atlanta went to her boyfriend's aid.
        "Don't play the snake with me, young man," said Zinjanthrop. "I want to know more about you. Who you are, and what. Come, let's go to the Vampire's Feast."
         The Vampire's Feast was an all-night eatery on the corner of Qin Sistock Maruka and the Alkaline Bill, and, when Yulius consented to be coerced in that direction, Atlanta had no option but to follow.
        "A great night for eating!" said Zinjanthrop, leading the way out of the Ul Den Ul, and nimbling his way over the puddle of blood which lay directly outside the front door.
         Atlanta's office was on the uppermost floor of the tallest building in Lexis, hence fully exposed to the wind, but down at street level it was more sheltered. It had stopped raining, though puddles of blood lay everywhere in the street. And, blood aside, it was not a pleasant night. Atlanta took Yulius by the hand, seeking to reassure him, for she knew he hated the nights of Lombok. This one was typical. The night sky was a heavy oppression of dull and sullen purple, the streets were alive with crawling purple light, and ghosts went mourning down the streets at intervals, crying their dissolution to the night.
        "Come on!" said Zinjanthrop, and hastened them down the street.
         They could have eaten at the Daffodil Burk, the ever-open coffee shop right next door to the Ul Den Ul. But the Vampire's Feast was usually much busier, and Atlanta thought Zinjanthrop chose it deliberately to maximize the pressure on Yulius, who was fearfully conscious of Zinjanthrop's well-known propensity for staging rows of heroic proportions in public places.
         When they got to Hodokyo De, the intersection where Qin Sistock Maruka meets the Alkaline Bill, Yulius stopped dead.
        "Gods!" he said.
         He pointed. There was a corpse hanging by a rope from the gauntness of the Hodokyo.
        "Don't worry," said Zinjanthrop, with a malicious chuckle. "It's only another ghost. I checked it earlier."
         A ghost, then. But, even so, it was a singularly desolating sight.
        "Pox and fishheads!" said Atlanta, squeezing Yulius's hand, hoping he would not disgrace himself in front of her grandfather by any unpardonable display of weakness. As their relationship had developed, she had prided herself on being the stronger partner. But now, just for once, she wished that Yulius could be a little stronger than he was.
         Hodokyo De, normally the busiest place in the Lexis, was deserted. Only a single building showed commercial lights: the rest were lit only by a the purple of the coffin-lid clouds, by a gangrenous green marshlight luminescence which made the Hodokyo itself gleam dimly with the colors of seasickness, and by the occasional passage of a self-illuminating ghost.
         Galactic Rage, the pachinko parlour at the intersection's north-west corner, was closed and shuttered. So was the Tilnus Building, which lay east and opposite. Betina Lilibet's House of Sin was black and barred up. To Atlanta's surprise, even the Haridjakarta Moskovola was closed. But the Vampire's Feast — that one building showing commercial lights — was open and ready for business.
        "I really should be going," said Yulius, having second and third thoughts about daring Zinjanthrop's company. "My family will be expecting me home."
         Did Atlanta hear panic trembling in his voice? She hoped not.
        "Expecting you?" said Zinjanthrop. "On a night like this? Oh, I don't think your family will be expecting you, young Yulius. You're probably home already. Why, there's probably a dozen doppelgangers competing for your place already."
         Yulius shuddered. They did not have ghosts, golems and doppelgangers in Barth Banchup Bakchakris, the city of his birth; and, though he had lived most of his life in Lexis, he was not yet fully reconciled to the notion of ghosting. But his true fear, as Atlanta knew well, was that Zinjanthrop would seek to put him down in public.
        "Come on," said Atlanta, squeezing his hand the harder. "We can't stay out here, it's not safe. Let's go inside."
         And, with that, she positively dragged Yulius into the Vampire's Feast — which, fortunately, proved to be deserted but for its chef.
         Atlanta parked the cold perfection of her milksilver graces on a barstool. She wiped the counter with the tattered remains of someone's comic book, then tossed that bar-wipe to the floor. She flicked some dried ketchup from the menu, frowned, squinted at the health-food section — the light was bad, and someone had spilt coffee on the page — then announced her choice.
        "I'll have the tofu with the seaweed salad."
        "That's off," said the chef.
        "Then," said Atlanta, "I'll have the fried chicken with the side-serving of eggplant."
        "That's off too."
        "Then what do you have?" said Atlanta, throwing down the menu in exasperation.
        "The special," said the chef.
        "Then give us three specials, two coffees, and a glass of cold milk for my grandfather."
        "The grandfather will have liquor if you have it," said Zinjanthrop, who was not going to sit still for Atlanta's insolence. "But if you don't, he'll have a coffee like the others."
        "Coffee it is, then," said the chef.
         Then served up three coffees, which were lukewarm, and three specials. The special was a bowl of chunked orange carrot, which had been steamed to the point where it was starting to go mushy; a few cubes of cold boiled potato; and the legs of a whiplash squid, which had turned to a virulent purple on being cooked.
         Zinjanthrop ignored both his coffee and his special, but Yulius began to consume his with a studiousness which owed more to politeness than to appetite. Atlanta picked at her meal with a pair of chopsticks, trying not to pay attention to the ghost of a cat which stalked from one end of the bar counter to the other, howling horribly all the time. The cat was all transparent colorlessness, but for a marmalade-yellow streak of fur which ran the length of its back.
         The chef tried to hit the cat with a saucepan, but this implement of culinary destruction passed right through the malignant beast, cracked the edge of a heaped-up ashtray, and flipped its contents through the air.
        "Germane," said Zinjanthrop, speaking apropos of nothing as he brushed away some cigarette ash. "Now there's a word for you." He looked at Yulius. "Your pretty little Atlanta used that word tonight. You wouldn't happen to know what it means, would you?"
         In the presence of her Yulius, Atlanta had often made use of her internalized dictionaries, so knew full well that he would not be disconcerted by such a trifling word as "germane". Indeed, the fact that Yulius both understood and tolerated her more unusual words was one of the attractions of the relationship.
         Chalakanesians are, by and large, a literate lot who have no objection to arcane words when they find them embedded in a crossword puzzle. But many words permitted in print are damned as pretension when encountered in speech. As Atlanta had no wish to cut her aspirations down to the size of the petty island of her birth, she welcomed the foreign-born Yulius as her boyfriend. For he acknowledged no limits to the intellect's ambition: and, in his presence, Atlanta felt free to enlarge beyond those parochial boundaries which were implicitly or explicitly policed by her friends, her Family and her professional peers.
         Doubtlessly Yulius knew the word "germane".
         But he was slow to answer Zinjanthrop's question.
        "Germane," said Zinjanthrop, flicking a cigarette butt in the direction of the chef, who had turned to minister to a steaming pot of something which looked like over-boiled seaweed. "Do you know it or don't you?"
         Atlanta began to fear that Zinjanthrop was going to make a fool of her Yulius. At times — if truth be told — she was perilously afraid that Yulius was truly a fool. Though she hoped it wasn't so, because if he really was an idiot it would reflect badly on her for having chosen him.
        "Germane," said Yulius, ruminating on the word in close imitation of Zinjanthrop's own manner. "Germane, now. Why, Atlanta is a lawyer, and the function of lawyers is to make money through extending the meaning of words, so I'd say it probably means you owe her ten dollars."
         At this, Zinjanthrop laughed, and Atlanta smiled. While Zinjanthrop's laughter suggested genuine amusement, Atlanta's smile was consequent upon relief. She had feared her Yulius would fall flat on his face. But he had held his own, turning away the old man's sally with a display of wit, albeit a wit that was painfully slow to crank itself into action.
         It had to be admitted that Yulius did not think quickly on his feet. His jokes, his apothogems, his sallies in wit — all were predicated on preparation. Once you got to know him, you could easily pick the times at which he started to talk around a subject, saying nothing of consequence, verbally marking time while he secretly elaborated a pun or some other linguistic prank, in due course bringing it out triumphantly as if it had just tripped spontaneously to the tip of his tongue.
         Yulius, then, did not sparkle. But his mind was sound. To assure herself of that, Atlanta had begged a set of IQ tests from La Lantis, and had compelled her Yulius to prove himself in performance. The results? Good on statistics, and skilled also at divining sequences of numbers, and in picking the odd one out in lists like "nail, pen, orange, goldfish, raven". Intelligent, then. Hence Atlanta was prepared to marry him, even if the readiness of his wit was sometimes be called into question.
         Eugenic considerations were of the greatest importance to Atlanta, since she wanted the children from her intended marriage to be a credit to both herself and her Family. A son who was dull, like Yulius, but good with strings of figures and sound on statistical analysis, would no doubt make an excellent accountant. A daughter who inherited her own love of linguistic combat would surely become a lawyer, and (perhaps) the leader who would bring liberating victory to Chalakanesian womanhood (who were as yet but second-class citizens, proof of this being found easily in the fact that the Federation had no female judges or senators).
         Even while Atlanta made these plans, she was fully conscious of the fact that practical genetics is very much a lottery. Smart people often have stupid children, and vice versa; and genetics plays funny tricks, as evidence by the fact that Panjalo Pantaline, Atlanta's sister, looked nothing like either of her parents, or like Atlanta, but looked very much like Beth Shablis Rack, her second cousin twice removed.
          But, despite such knowledge, Atlanta saw no reason why she should not try to stack the odds in favor of her ambitions. Therefore she had made her Yulius do his IQ tests; and had sounded him out about hereditary diseases; and had queried the incidence of alcoholism and insanity in his family; and monitored his behavior rigorously, as she did so now.
        "Ten dollars," said Zinjanthrop, speaking at length into a silence with Yulius had done nothing further to fill. "He's a witty boy, your boyfriend. But he is but a boy at best."
        "If I'm a boy then she's a girl," said Yulius. "For our ages are almost equal. We can't all be skinny and bald, for all that your mirror tells you it's a virtue. You've out-lived the whale and have gone into competition with the tortoise, but your strength at living can't put aside the fact that you're probably short of all strength for breeding."
         Given Yulius's customary reticence, Atlanta had to presume that this fluency had been rehearsed: that Yulius, in anticipation of some ultimate confrontation with Zinjanthrop, had been practicing speeches in advance. She knew he did just that, for, early in their courtship, she had discovered a set of speech cards hidden away in his drawer amongst his socks.
         Atlanta had kept silent about the speech cards (just as she had said nothing about the manual on the seduction of women which she had found in the same drawer, but thereafter she had listened to Yulius with care, inwardly smiling whenever he amused her by bringing out one of his painfully memorized exercises in spontaneous eloquence.
        "Past breeding!" said Zinjanthrop. "Past breeding, am I? A tortoise, am I?"
         Was Zinjanthrop really angry? Or just feigning displeasure? Either way, Atlanta would have been inclined to back off and apologize. But Yulius was surprisingly unabashed.
        "Read it as you will," said Yulius. "You're old. I'm young. So's she. Age has its wisdom, but so has the blood."
         At these last words, Zinjanthrop stopped dead. From the shock which was writ clear on Zinjanthrop's face, Atlanta knew that Yulius had hit on something.
        "Excuse me," said Zinjanthrop, getting up abruptly. "I have to go to the toilet."
        "There's no toilet here," said the chef, still busy doctoring various pots of animal organs and edible sludge.
         Zinjanthrop made no answer, but banged out of the Vampire's Feast. The chef turned with a cry:
        "Hey, you! The bill!"
        "Three dollars," said Atlanta, who had figured the bill already. She slapped a three-dollar coin onto the counter, full payment gleaming bright. The chef claimed it with a hand smelling of seaweed, caked with wet dough, inscrutably stained with an octopus blue. Atlanta saw his nails were black. She was good at such details. She hit the counter with a nine-dollar coin, saying: "And this. Leave us. We want to be alone."
         The chef, who was not used to being ordered out of his own kitchen, looked askance at the coin, as if he might throw it right back. Then he took it, turned down the heat beneath a couple of pots, and pushed through a slap-trap screen door, vanishing into the backworks of his establishment.
        "Well," said Atlanta, when she was alone with Yulius. "What did you say to Zinjanthrop?"
         Yulius glanced around. They were quite alone, but for the ghost of a cat, which had given up pacing the counter and had taken to walking upside down on the ceiling.
        "I quoted him a line from a sermon," said Yulius. "A sermon which your dear darling grandfather wrote, wrote way back when, wrote in the days when he was a priest."
        "A priest!" said Atlanta.
         This was so weirdly improbable as to boggle her imagination. Zinjanthrop? A priest? No chance! Her grandfather was a deep sea diver, a skinmaster, a businessman, a politician. But a priest? Never!
        "You don't know about that?" said Yulius, with smug self-satisfaction. "No, of course you wouldn't. But he was, you know. A priest. Age has its wisdom, but so has the blood. He wrote that. Self-justification, you know. Self-justification given in advance, because he wrote it before he was caught."
        "Caught?" said Atlanta, who didn't like the air of superiority which Yulius adopted when he thought himself in possession of hidden knowledge.
        "Your grandfather," said Yulius, with all the heaviness of a doctor announcing a diagnosis of terminal cancer, "committed a grave indiscretion. It was many years ago, but it happened. Back in the days when your grandfather was a priest, he made a habit of ... well, we're into the territory of child molestation. And he got caught."
        "There was a court case?" said Atlanta. "Yulius, have you been smoking something?"
        "You think I'm making this up, don't you?" said Yulius. "Then why do you think your grandfather ran away?"
        "He didn't run away," said Atlanta. "He just left."
        "Oh, sure," said Yulius. "He just left. So call me liar. I that's what makes you feel better. Hit me, punch me, kick me, boot me down. Rip my hair out, if you choose to. What do I care?"
         Atlanta was taken aback by the ferocity of this response. Then, slowly, she realized it must been enormously difficult for Yulius to take on her grandfather Zinjanthrop, to tackle him head to head. That had taken courage. Yulius's angry outburst was the natural consequence of great stress. He was — surely! — entirely off beam in his mad allegation. But he believed what he was saying. And maybe he had got hold of some fraction of some ugly truth about her grandfather.
        "It seems you've got something to tell me," said Atlanta, slipping off her bar stool and ducking under the counter. "A trial, you say. More coffee?"
        "Please," said Yulius. "Oh yes, there was a court case all right. But the trial was held in camera. Afterwards, the senate suppressed the records. The whole thing was covered up, censored, expunged, sealed, forgotten. Your grandfather was a senator back then. He had influence. The records are gone. But I found them."
        "Where?" said Atlanta, unlidding saucepans, looking for some clean boiling water.
        "La Lexis monitored the whole thing," said Yulius. "There's a detailed account in the Yalta-Notornis Religious Research Library in Barth Banchup Bakchakris. I was there last year. I'd heard a hint, so I was looking. I sought. I checked. I found. Last year."
         Now Atlanta remembered. The year before, shortly after Yulius had introduced Atlanta to his parents (she remembered the occasion well, for she had got to inspect his bedroom, and had managed to undertake the search on which she had found his speech cards, his manual on the seduction of women, and certain other things), Yulius had departed from Chalakanesia, and had made the westward voyage to the Chasms of Hell, there to visit his home city of Barth Banchup Bakchakris.
        "Barth Bakris, eh?" said Atlanta.
        "We never call it that," said Yulius. "Only outsiders do that. The full name or nothing."
        "Yes," said Atlanta, "I remember you telling me that."
         On his return, Yulius had told Atlanta much of his visit to Barth Banchup Bakchakris. He had gone to attend his great-grandmother's 120th birthday party, but had arrived to find that that venerable matriarch had passed away after overdosing on scorpion soup. At the funeral, there had been a riot as priests from three different religions had fought over the corpse; and the riot police had arrived; and Yulius had been kicked in the shins by a policeman, then thrown into jail, where he had languished for a week before a kindly uncle had liberated him with a hefty bribe.
         Of all that, Yulius had told, and in detail.
         But he had said nothing about any visit to any Research Library: and, indeed, since Atlanta had made the error of passing judgment on Barth Banchup Bakchakris on the basis of its reputation alone, it had never occurred to her that such a city would have any kind of library, let alone a Religious Research Library.
        "Coffee," said Atlanta, putting two fresh cups of the stuff on the counter. She resumed her stool, still thinking about what Yulius had said. Zinjanthrop — a molester of little girls? That didn't bear thinking about. But the idea that he might have been a priest was interesting. "So my grandfather was a Gardener, was he?" said Atlanta, picking up on the question of Zinjanthrop's priesthood.
         The Gardeners are the priests of Chalakanesia, the functionaries who supervise the maintenance of the mirarilusistans, the Gardens of the Dead which are the focus of Chalakanesia's institutionalized ancestor worship. The main Gardens of the Dead are on the island of Zachalacharo, but smaller mirarilusistans are to be found throughout Chalakanesia, as every household maintains its own garden-in-miniature.
        "Your grandfather," said Yulius, still in his cancer-pronouncing mode of absolute heaviness, "was not a Gardener. He preached his own religion. He preached of the Garden of the Flesh. Need I spell out the rest?"
         Atlanta tried to work out what he was getting at.
        "I would have thought," said Atlanta, picking her words with care, "that you've already spelt out your beliefs, and have done so in the most brutal style of absolute clarity. My grandfather, a molester of little girls? I hear what you say."
        "You don't understand, do you?" said Yulius, plainly enjoying the superiority of lecturehood. "Your grandfather, dearest heart, was a precursor of Lox."
         Atlanta was astounded at the audacity of this accusation.
        "Are you trying to imply that Guru Lox is some kind of child molester? Are you trying to say that Lox is teaching the — the — "
        "The molestation of children?" said Yulius. "Oh no, Atlanta dearest. Lox preaches a doctrine of adult on adult, a doctrine which he appears to have inherited from your grandfather. That was the thing, you see. Your grandfather preached one thing to his congregation, but practiced quite another in private."
        "He — he had a congregation?" said Atlanta.
         This was getting more extraordinary by the moment! It sounded as if Yulius had let his imagination run totally amok. But how could he? He might have a mind, but he certainly didn't have an imagination.
        "Of course your grandfather had a congregation," said Yulius. "He was a priest. He preached. He didn't just stand there talking to his shadow. He wasn't a lone lunatic, you know. He was very popular, for a while. But the whole thing fell apart once the scandal broke. Your grandfather was discredited, even in the eyes of his own followers. Because, you see, he always preached that children were a sacred trust. Nothing discredits like discrepancy."
         Atlanta was silent, trying to absorb all this. Yulius appeared to believe every word of what he was saying. Either he was hopelessly deluded, or else, or else — but he had to be deluded!
        "After your grandfather was found out," said Yulius, continuing regardless of Atlanta's scrutinary silence, "his congregation fell away, his Garden of the Flesh was closed down. Zinjanthrop himself, well, after the trial he went away to Zachalacharo, went there for twenty years, to labour on the Garden for the Dead. A penance, you see."
        "Twenty years?" said Atlanta. "I can't believe that. I'd sooner believe that sharks would sing, the mongoose weed the garden."
         This recourse to childhood's idiom was a retreat from the threat of the truth. The things Yulius was saying were not, could not, must not be true!
        "How much do you really know about your grandfather?" said Yulius. "What was he doing thirty years ago? Forty? Fifty? This scandal goes back beyond then, goes back way before. How much do you know about your grandfather's past? Year by year, month by month, day by day? Has he ever told you, Atlanta darling? Has he sat you on his knee to tell you of the ancient days? How much does your darling grandfather gab about the past?"
         A good question. Zinjanthrop was close-mouthed when it came to personal matters. He wasn't given to intimate disclosure: rather, his every conversational enterprise was likely to be in the mode of battle. When Atlanta sat and thought about it — what did she know of her grandfather? She had always known that he had been a senator; that he had handed his senate seat to his son Kansko Chansko (who had thereafter lost that seat through scandal); and that his ruling ambition in life was to see the seat reclaimed by his grandson Heineman Yakaskam.
         But had she charted the chronology of her grandfather's life, year by year, decade by decade? No. Nor had anyone else, to her knowledge. And Zinjanthrop was so very, very old that he had outlived the greater number of his peers. So, supposing his life's great scandal to have been deliberately hushed up by the very senate itself, and the records sealed, and all people forbidden to talk about, and the scandal itself being the kind of thing most people would rather not talk about in any case — why, one could see how the thing could become secret.
         Atlanta realized she had more or less conceded to herself that there might be some solid ground to the claims Yulius was making. After all, Zinjanthrop had fled from the Vampire's Feast, and she had never seen him run like that before.
        "Are you thinking of blackmailing him?" said Atlanta.
        "He'd kill me," said Yulius.
         This was said as a flat statement of fact.
        "He probably would," said Atlanta.
        "So," said Yulius, "blackmail is out of the question. But I think, under the circumstances, it's reasonable for us to ask him to leave us alone. I wouldn't call that blackmail."
        "Leave us alone?" said Atlanta.
        "Don't you see?" said Yulius. "He's trying to play with us, with our relationship. Your Family, well, that's his toy, his pleasure. His game. He wants the Family powerful. Money isn't enough. He wants that senate seat and more. He wants you married -to whom, I don't know. But someone with more political clout. I'm not going to blackmail him. But I'm warning him off. That's all."
         Yulius fell silent, looking at Atlanta as if he expected comment. But she didn't quite know what to say. She was vacillating between accepting the accusations he had made against Zinjanthrop and rejecting them totally. She was making and remaking her mind on the matter by the moment. Furthermore, she was intensely disturbed by the thought of Yulius leading some kind of  autonomous, independent life of which she was ignorant. Hearing hints. Researching scandals. How? How had he got onto the matter in the first place? He must have talked to someone, an old man, drunk, maybe. Someone who had been in the senate, one of Zinjanthrop's peers. Or the child, maybe, the abused child grown to full maturity, grown beyond maturity, remembering or discovering, and ready to denounce.
         Or -
         What did Guru Lox know about this scandal? Yulius had mentioned Lox. Maybe Guru Lux was the one who had got Yulius on the research path.
         Really ....
         Atlanta sipped her coffee, finding it lukewarm, almost cold. The door banged open behind her, and she turned, expecting to see her grandfather. But it was not Zinjanthrop but Gorkindachina, Vignis Vo Gorkindachina, bloody and shaken, a nimbus of blue-green light burning in cold phosphorescence about him.
         The ghost of a cat took one look at Gorkindachina then fled, howling, passing straight through the nearest wall without so much as a whisker's-worth of hesitation. Gorkindachina himself swayed, stumbled, then fell face-first to the floor, crumpling with a crash which shook the whole building. Atlanta and Yulius got to their feet in too much of a hurry, upsetting their bar stools, and the chef came out from the rear of the establishment to see what all the trouble was about.
         After waving away the chef, Atlanta did her best to attend to Gorkindachina, and soon ascertained that he was not seriously hurt. He looked a mess, and a ugly mess at that, particularly since a great bubble of yellow wax was swelling out of his righthand nostril, and another such bubble was slowly broiling out of the back of his left hand, like a weird species of volcanic wart.
        "Shunted!" said Yulius, who was more or less gloating over the fallen Gorkindachina.
        "No such thing," mumbled Gorkindachina.
         Since neither Atlanta nor Yulius had seen Gorkindachina materialize out of nothingness, there was no proof positive that he had been spatio-temporally displaced.
        "We'd better take him home," said Atlanta.
         With Yulius assisting her, she helped a stumbling Gorkindachina quit the Vampire's Feast. Fortunately it was not far to the House Gorkindachina, which had the distinction of being the very first of the mansions fronting onto Qin Sistock Maruka. If it had been much further, then they would never have made the distance, for, even though Gorkindachina was supporting most of his own weight, what remained seemed a truly monstrous burden.
         At the House Gorkindachina, the master of the mansion was claimed by his servants, sullen-mouthed creatures of the Gan, who took the man away, leaving Atlanta and Yulius alone in the front lounge.
         A very curious room was that lounge, for it was carpeted in red velvet; its walls and ceilings were of padded leather; its furniture. was a series of bean-bags, uncouth and shapeless things entirely alien to Atlanta's experience; and it was decorated with fanciful holograms showing, variously, a tiger's head, a threat-pointing blasting gun, and a munch-crunching shark,the holographic teeth of which almost reached the center of the room.
         "I suppose he really was shunted," said Yulius.
        "I suppose so," said Atlanta. "But we can't prove it."
        "Why would you want to?" said Yulius.
        "If shunting is proof of moral weakness," said Atlanta, "and if we can prove that Gorkindachina got shunted, then we might be able to persuade the senate to kick him out, which would free a seat for my brother Heineman."
        "Politics!" said Yulius, speaking in such a dismissive way that Atlanta was offended.
         After all, even if Yulius was not personally interested, he was going to marry her, which would mean marrying into her Family, so he should take some interest in Heineman's career.
         The room smelt musty, reminding Atlanta of the cases of insects which Heineman used to keep as a child. Heineman had killed them, and, supposedly, preserved them — but he had got it wrong, and in the end the smell had got so bad that his mother had made him throw out the whole lot.
         Could you trust a senate seat to a man whose boyhood had proved him incompetent even to keep dead insects? But then, could you trust a senate seat to anyone? They were a singularly unprepossessing lot, these politicians, once you got a good look at them.
        "We ought to be going," said Yulius. "I don't think Gorkindachina's coming back. He looked pretty much out for the count. I think we should get out of her, before we get thrown out."
        "I'd like to know a bit more, first," said Atlanta. "A bit more about what you were talking about."
        "About Zinjanthrop?" said Yulius. "I've told you the most important part."
        "These documents," said Atlanta, "these documents you saw in — what was the name of the place?"
        "Yalta-Notornis," said Yulius. "The Yalta-Notornis Religious Research Library."
        "Well," said Atlanta, "did you get a copy?"
         She thought she really should take a look at exactly what Yulius had found. But -
        "No," said Yulius.
         Atlanta was sure he was lying.
        "I'm sure," said Atlanta, "I'm sure you at least made sure you could find those documents again. You'll have a reference, won't you? A catalogue number? File number? Title? Designation?"
        "Title record," said Yulius.
        "Then let's have it!" said Atlanta.
         She was sure he would have something so important with him, and she was right.
         Yulius produced and unzipped a waterproof wallet, from which he extracted a notebook in which was written the title record. His handwriting had the painstaking exactitude of that of an anxiously over-scholarly child. Atlanta brought out a notebook of her own in which she meticulously tracked her cumulative expenses in an effort to keep to her budget — and copied out the title record.
         What Atlanta wrote down was this:
        "549-3-(2276)-10-4-QF4466-nabla-zom-delakus-Zinjanthrop-KK2266-A4-234876-1/A".
        "I should explain," said Yulius. "They have a file system at the library, the Yalta-Notornis, I mean, and — "
        "Thanks but no thanks," said Atlanta, cutting off his explanation. "I have all I need, thank you."
         She did not either need or want any further explanations. It was all clear enough to her, except for the terminal alphanumeric string, which was probably the Yalta-Notornis catalogue number.
         Atlanta closed her notebook and led the retreat from the House Gorkindachina.
        "Well," said Yulius, when they were out on the road, "shall I walk you home?"
        "No," said Atlanta, who felt that she wanted to be alone to think this over. "I think you'd better be going to your own home."
         Yulius looked disappointed, but allowed himself to be thus dismissed.
         So Yulius turned north, while Atlanta headed south down Qin Sistock Maruka toward the House Jubiladilia.
         As Atlanta trod that coral road, fat caterpillars of purple lightning writhed slowly through the torrid sky, and it began raining blood.
         Walking home along Qin Sistock Maruka, Atlanta saw servants emerging from the mansions of the great and grand to disconnect downpipes from household water tanks. The sky's bloody flux was allowed to spew to the lawns, or was fed into blood barrels, later to be used to make sausages.
        (On investigating the rain of blood which falls from the skies of Chalakanesia during the month of Lombok, researchers from La Lantis have discovered this blood to be useless for purposes of transfusion, as it is more like pig blood than human blood. They have confirmed, however, that it is fit enough for cookery).
         So much had happened that Atlanta scarcely gave a thought to the rain. She brooded on the history of her grandfather, Zinjanthrop. Zinjanthrop the priest, preaching heresy, preaching a doctrine contrary to that of the mirarilusistans. Zinjanthrop, molesting little girls. What girls? How many? Had he paid for them? Seduced them? Had their parents been worshippers of his - what was it? Temple of the Flesh?
        "I must have that file," muttered Atlanta, intensely annoyed at Yulius for keeping its full secrets from her.
         And she resolved to pressure Yulius until he gave it to her.