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silent but unconvinced.
    “Those you will find there may need waking.”
    “They are asleep?”
    “So the records say,” Micca took something from the worker ant which stood patiently by them. She handed it to Calistrope.
    Calistrope felt his eyebrows climb upward. “How did you get this…” he applied his thumb to the end of it, nothing happened. “This isn’t mine. It is identical but not mine.”
    “I did not say it was. It is a human memory vault though. Is that correct?”
    “Yes,” Calistrope turned the ceramo-metallic cylinder over and over. There were no identifying marks of any kind. “An old one, a very old one—like my own.”
    “It was owned by a human who came this way once, from the place you now seek; Schune.”

Chapter 2
    Ponderos picked up a half dozen canapés from the plate he had brought back with him from the buffet table and crammed them into his mouth. “I could do with something a little more solid than this stuff,” he complained. A swallow of red wine from his goblet washed them down and he was able to speak once more. “Too airy-fairy. I don’t know where he trawls for it but sorcerous food is all the same, too gassy. Voss’ parties don’t appeal to me,” Ponderos belched.
    Calistrope flinched. “I see what you mean. However, it salves Voss’ conscience. He has blackmailed me into fulfilling a task for him. A dangerous task for which I am certainly not the right person. I mean, I am no explorer.”
    Ponderos was silent for a moment. They were on a balcony about halfway up the College Tower and the view over the Concourse and across the lake Mal-a-Merrion into the haze-shrouded north was quite breathtaking. “I think you underrate yourself my friend,” he said at last. “You have many qualities which your fellows lack. Which I… I admit it, which I lack.”
    Calistrope made a derogatory noise.
    “It is the truth. You are older than me, Calistrope. I know that is a trivial matter when none of us who are sorcerers can remember our formative years, but you are older than me by an order of magnitude.”
    Calistrope was silent. What Ponderos said was true… as far he knew without consulting his memories. But then, what difference did it make?
    “Your point of view is different than ours; you see solutions to problems which we don’t or different solutions than those we do see,” Ponderos turned and leaned back against the wall of the Tower behind the balcony. “Who are the best engineers you know of?”
    Calistrope did not even stop to think. “The Ants of course.” Despite his antipathy to their works, there was still no doubt that the Ants were born builders and constructors.
    Ponderos raised his goblet high, sloshing some of its contents over his jacket. “Exactly. And in some ways, you think in the same manner.”
    Is this so? Calistrope wondered. Are my thought processes really so different to those of my fellow Sorcerers? And if so, will it give me an advantage? He thought about it for some time. No, he decided. It gives all of us an advantage.
    “Let’s go back to the others,” he said, and made a mental note: must review my early memories before I leave on this journey. It was a mental note he had made like every one of the Mages, a hundred, a thousand times before. And had he ever looked at those memories edited from his brain? Not as far as Calistrope could remember.
    The event was drawing to its close. All those present were pleasantly overfilled with rich food; they had been lulled by too much wine into a mellow and comradely spirit. The windows to this chamber were tall and the sunlight was augmented by long vertical lamps which emitted restful lavender light.
    Voss chose his moment carefully. He struck the iron gong and conversation died, all looked towards the Archmage. “We have a final matter to settle,” he told them. Calistrope has agreed to set out upon this quest on our behalf. It is only proper that we help him where we can.”
    There were a