29
A QUICKENING TIDE
be?”
There was a silence. Serendipidam brought his long, blue-black face close to Durante’s and resumed: “This is the real world not fiction. Sometimes in our line of business there are explanations, proofs, truths and resolutions we can believe in with certainty. But very rarely. More often, it’s all smoke and shadows and we grope our way through as best we can. Right-thinking folk in this Fleet face many hazards—criminals, politicians, megalomaniacs, incompetents, opportunists, alien idiots, viruses, ruddy great lumps of rock in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know which combination of these is to blame for what happened on the planet. I do know it wasn’t me, or Yerzuk, or you. I know that we—and certain others you’ll meet later—are opposed to such hor-
