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“Why did Dortmund want an audience with the stones?” Kee asked.

Again the delay before Fhen spoke, “Knowledge. Darius Dortmund’s motivation in everything he does is solely the acquisition of knowledge.”

“So when Matt announced the exhibition, Dortmund must have been…” I considered whether to say pleased that he would at last be able to commune with the stones, or put out that someone else had managed the coup of bringing the stones to the universe at large.

Fhen explained, “When Mr Dortmund heard about the exhibition and expressed his intention of attending, I contacted him and offered my services as his aide, as I had the confidence of the Ambassador.”

“But why would Dortmund need an aide, Fhen?” Hawk asked.

“It was judged wise that he should be… accompanied,” Fhen said.

I said, “Can you tell us why?”

Fhen hesitated, blinking his massive eyes. “It was the wish of the Ambassador.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

Next to me, Hannah pointed, “Here’s Matt and Maddie…” I followed the direction of her finger and saw the pair step across the lawn, accompanied by the Elan Ambassador, who was in deep discussion with Matt.

Fhen rose slowly, his legs seeming to telescope as he reached his full height. “It has been a pleasure conversing with you,” he said, and moved off.

The Ambassador left Matt and Maddie and stepped into the crowd. Our friends looked around, saw us and hurried over.

They grabbed drinks on the way and collapsed beside us. Maddie said, “I was about to drive down to Mackinley myself and drag him up here.”

“Everything okay with the exhibition?” Hannah wanted to know.

Matt took a sip of wine and wiped his lips. “Well, it’s not as bad as I feared.”

“What happened?” Hawk asked.

Matt shook his head. “Wish I knew. Yesterday a few people complained that the stones seemed to be losing their effect, becoming weaker. We actually closed the exhibition down for a couple of hours and checked everything.”

“And?” Kee said.

“Just over half the stones did seem to be diminished,” Matt said. “It wasn’t a technical fault. The mechanical side of things were working fine.”

“So?” I prompted.

“Apparently this… fading… isn’t uncommon on Epiphany when the stones have undergone what’s called heavy communion. So we’re monitoring things and limiting the opening times.”

I detected, from having known Matt over the years, that he was being economical with the truth, holding something back. I didn’t press him.

“Anyway, I just want to forget the exhibition for a while, sit back and enjoy myself.” He smiled. “Hannah, great to see you again. David treating you well?”

She smiled and took my hand. “We drove to the falls yesterday,” she said, “and David showed me all the sights.” We exchanged a complicit glance.

Kee piped up, “And today I showed everyone around the dry garden, Matt. And look, a hleth spike. I told the story.”

Matt asked to see the murderous barb and examined its spike. “Ouch,” he said, having tested its point on the ball of his thumb.

Kee laughed as she tucked the spike back into her belt. “My people say when you draw blood with the hleth spike, you bring yourself extra-special luck.”

Matt laughed, licking the tiny jewel of blood beading on the end of his thumb. “Let’s hope you’re right, Kee.”

We chatted as the sinuous mood music wound around us and the sun moved slowly through the sky towards the oceanic horizon. At one point waiters circulated with plates of barbecued food, the scent of cooked meats permeating the lawn. We ate, still seated, enjoying the luxury of being waited on at the expense of the off-worlder.

Later, as the sun went down and a relative chill came on with the night breeze, Dortmund threw open the French windows to a comfortable lounge and invited us inside. By now the catering pantechnicons had loaded up and left, and along with them the platoon of waiters and the orchestras. The majority of guests had departed too, leaving only our group, Ambassador Heanor, Fhen and Dortmund to enter the lounge and take the sumptuous armchairs arranged around an imitation log fire.

The off-worlder himself poured whiskies and beers, then sat in an armchair more like a throne with what looked like a quadruple scotch in a cut-glass tumbler.

From something in his demeanour, his air of ostentatious haughtiness, I gained the impression that he was about to hold forth.

I wasn’t wrong.

“I have”, he began, “come a long way since we were students together in Bonn, Matt.”

Matt raised his glass in ironic salute. “About twenty light years, I’d say, Dortmund.”

The off-worlder’s lips stretched, but the movement could not be described as a smile. “Quite. You always did have a rapier wit.”

The Ambassador leaned forward. “A long way, Mr Dortmund? The meaning of the expression eludes me.”

“I mean”, Dortmund said, “that I have achieved more in my lifetime than I◦– and I dare say my acquaintances◦– thought possible. Isn’t that right, Matt?”

Mat pursed his lips, considering his reply. “I would think, Dortmund, that in artistic terms you’ve come about as far as I, at least, expected.”

I could not help but smile to myself, and cast a quick glance at Maddie. She grinned at me. In Matt, Dortmund was picking the wrong victim to bait: the artist might have been laid-back and mild-mannered, but his mind was as sharp as the hleth barb, a lethal combination when allied to his manifest dislike of the off-worlder.

“I was not,” Dortmund continued, “referring to artistic endeavour.” He pursed his lips around a large mouthful of whisky and glanced at each of us in turn. “As far as I’m concerned, artistic achievement is limited to the narrow range of human consciousness, circumscribed by the limited perceptions of the human mind.”

Matt gestured with his glass. “Limited it might be, but it’s all we have with which to make sense of the universe we inhabit. Which isn’t to say that science doesn’t fulfil the same purpose, but both are bound◦– as you say◦– by the limits of our perceptions.”

Dortmund smiled, like an alligator knowing it had snared prey. “And what would you say if I claimed that there are ways and means of transcending paltry human consciousness and attaining some measure of universal knowledge?”

Matt paused, staring at his beer. A fraught tension filled the air. I know that I, for one, feared that Matt had talked himself into a corner. I guessed where Dortmund was leading, and I didn’t like it a bit.

Matt’s reply though, when it came, was brilliant. “I don’t doubt for a minute that you think you have gained some superior powers of perception, Dortmund. But what facilitated that leap of perception did not in any essence originate within you◦– it was through the psionic processes granted you by your government: a machine-enhancement, if you like. Also,” he swept on, “a superior perception you might claim for yourself, but when all is said and done, what is an exalted perception if it doesn’t lead to some result, some breakthrough or insight, either artistic or scientific, which might be communicated to an audience who would thus be enlightened or educated by one’s insights?”

“Very clever, Sommers, very articulate. But your diagnosis pre-empts my eventual breakthrough.”

Matt laughed at this, mocking. “Dortmund, you sound just like your twenty-year-old self, always making great claims never to be substantiated.”

Dortmund finished his scotch in one gulp, reached out with an unsteady hand and poured himself another.

“If I could only have you apprehend what I have experienced”, he said, “and achieved…”