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Who Does What in Semester 3

Jool Diamant returns to Transit. The summer recess is long, and she’s back early. She has friends here, a boyfriend, a whole new life to get to grips with…
    Well, her boyfriend Jelly Stalwart, her employer Bart at Bart’s Bar, and Chloe – the fellow tenant with, it seems, yet more kids – are there. But landlady Mrs McGurgle and friends Matt, Aino and Manny, plus Matt’s girlfriend Savy, are all away. Utsuku is very busy, having taken up a post at the law firm Allimac Biel. And Vicky has abandoned her studies and left for the Ultima Mountains. Not much chance of a welcome party. At least others are also out of luck. One of the clients of Katch ’Em Kwik Detectives has been arrested.
    The summer is still here and the weather is good. Jool joins Chloe and her two younger kids for a break at the open air pool in Passing Park. Utsuku is there, taking time out to watch her boyfriend, Slim Dunk, as he joins an impromptu water basketball game in the pool. The crowd seem to be enjoying it, and Slim is single-handedly sweeping his team to a wipe-out of the opposition.
    But then a dolphin leaps from the river and into the pool. It’s a bottomless dolphin, a creature which usually lives in the sea, but this one obviously likes to swim the Perflux. And play in the swimming pool. The crowd are thrilled.
    And they get a show. The dolphin takes on Slim Dunk, and Slim and the dolphin go head to head. The dolphin obliterates its human opponent. Slim proves a gracious loser. The dolphin is less diplomatic. Chloe – a translator with wide skills – can make sense of the creature’s whistles. Its remarks aren’t flattering.
    Aino and Manny are getting their new enterprise ready for business. It’s a postal system, a rival to the City’s established ExoSet Cruisemailer company. There’s a mass of work and a lot of decisions to make. Fortunately they have the advice of consultant, Ced Ricman. They absolutely have to decide on a name, and the name is going to be – Gafup. And they need someone to help out with the routine cleaning and maintenance – a site manager. Their one and only applicant is a bot by the name of Rinsaid. He’s a window cleaner with some experience as a tourist guide. He needs to get away from the window cleaner job. Rinsaid once fell off his cradle, and worse still, he’s the bot who was blown on top of Jool’s taxi in the Vita Prolonga explosion. Gafup is his big break.
    Jool’s teacher this semester is Professor Maria Clausa, the Transit Studies specialist for urban history. She’s a little difficult to get along with. And Jool’s big assignment for this semester? The sewers. Oh, joy. And there’s a catch – in keeping with the University’s interdisciplinary ethos, she has to find a student from another faculty to join her in the assignment. As the sewers are a miracle of hidden urban engineering, Vicky would be the obvious person to ask. But Vicky isn’t available.
    Jool calls on Professor O’Brane. He’s very supportive – the sewers will be interesting, Professor Clausa will look after her. Any other worries? Well – yes. Jool has been wondering about the number of transient manifestations she’s been involved in over the past two semesters. Professor O’Brane, a specialist in the study of transient phenomena, is reassuring – she shouldn’t let herself be spooked by pure coincidences.
    Utsuku continues her higher studies while gaining practical experience. She’s junior to Allimac Biel partner Stilter, and gets to do routine things like appearing on behalf of Stilter’s client in a bail hearing. The client is a bot by the name of Boltman, who is charged with robbery and assault. The hearing isn’t routine, though. Idiosyncratic defence champion Lowpmore appears – for the prosecution. Lowpmore doesn’t oppose bail. That’s surprise enough. But then, right in the middle of the hearing, a test mailing from Gafup arrives for Utsuku…
    Manny and Aino are in trouble for that from their backer Utsuku, but have more important things to worry about – they have the entire business to get off the ground. They have a site manager, and two new technicians are due to start, but they desperately need a PA before the pressure of endless details overwhelms them. At least the actual postal system is working. Another test delivery, this time to a surprised Jool, works – though the brief appearance of the tiny postbots puts Mrs McGurgle in fear of an infestation of ants.
    Vicky, meanwhile, is ready for her planned enterprise in the mountains. She takes a holiday flat at the Bergbauer farm on the outskirts of Branden. It’s to be her base for the winter. It’s also the place where she can safely hide her own creation, the android Andy. Everything is ready. It’s time to softly and silently slip away…

Utsuku begins to get the measure of Lowpmore – he isn’t a pleasant person, but he’s certainly worth watching and worth learning from. Gafup gets its logo and a slogan Gafup gets there! The two company managers also have a PA in the person of no-nonsense Hortensa. All they need now is their delivery permit.
    Matt is gradually getting used to Savy’s unusual appetites. He still isn’t sure, but he’s also very aware of how much he likes her, and how much he values her acceptance of him – and of Thing. He’d like to talk it through with Vicky, but Vicky isn’t here, and he can’t really broach the subject with Jool. The chat with Jool centres on her sewers assignment. And no – Matt definitely isn’t interested.
    Jool goes on a Transit Studies trip to Citrus Volley in the south. Professor Clausa for Transit Studies, and Dr Parthena for the specialist Polybiology interest, are in charge. Along for the trip, fulfilling her own Tapas Faculty’s interdisciplinary requirements, is Davincia Codex. A self-declared special friend of Matt’s, she latches onto Jool. She’s not all that bad – until, unfortunately, she causes the local citrus crop to do its very spectacular thing…
    Vicky’s adventure begins with a practice walk along the Hardy Trail from Talltales to Lonesome Pine. She needs to prove to herself that she can take the rigours of backpacking in the Mountains as autumn advances towards winter. The weather is dismal and walking the Trail takes several more days than she planned. But, crucially – she does it! She meets no one on the off-season Trail – but she does see a solitary figure in a distant clearing in Laurel Forest. While fruitlessly searching for the figure, she gets lost and wastes three days in Laurel Forest.
    Gafup gets its authorisation to act as a mail carrier within the City. Its first customer is Jelly Stalwart, who sends an anniversary card to Jool. It arrives as Jool is trying to help out her translator neighbour. Chloe has received a job to translate a legal document. The trouble is, the document is in the repto language, which is very difficult, and Chloe also has no information at all about the legal status of repto documents in Transit. Does Jool, a student, know anyone who might help with the legal aspect? The only name Jool can think of is Utsuku.
    Jool learns from Professor Clausa that her search for a companion for her sewers assignment might be ended – Davincia Codex has expressed an interest. Oh, no – not her! Anyone would be better. Jool tries to get advice from the Enree Faculty. She tries Dr Zoid, who feels that Vicky should have specialised in robotic engineering, and Dr Catenary, who regrets Vicky’s absence but hopes for her safe return. Neither of them can help.

The Boltman case remains stalled though Boltman has pleaded guilty. The prosecution doesn’t schedule its case and Utsuku’s leader, Stilter, doesn’t advance the defence. Utsuku meets Lowpmore, the prosecuting counsel. The dislike seems mutual. Ferus Lowpmore, by nature a defence lawyer rather than a prosecutor, has his own agenda. He contacts private detective Rudolf Slink and asks him to see what he can find. The police and the Prosecution Service, of course, were never interested in anything that might support the defendant.
    Jool tries again – and fails again – to interest Matt in the sewers assignment. She’s contacted by Utsuku, who has been asked to help with the repto translation by Chloe. There’s very little the solicitor can do, but she’ll do what she can when she can. Utsuku has a huge amount of work, much of it coming from her leader, Stilter. The top Allimac Biel lawyer, a bot who exudes high-earning success, explains his defence plan for the Boltman case. He’s going to concentrate on getting the sentence reduced as far as he can. Stilter is contemptuous of the prosecution inactivity emanating from that old-fashioned lawyer, Lowpmore.
    Jool, meanwhile, has a surprise. Poor Dr Acula died, and now Mrs McGurgle has found a replacement tenant – Rinsaid, the bot who fell on Jool’s tax. It’s a very awkward moment.
    Vicky continues with her mountain quest. Her cover is that she’s researching old stories and gossip that capture aspects of life in the Ultima Mountains. What she’s really looking for, thought, is information woven into such stories and gossip. She has her own special agenda. Back in the City, Aino is having difficulty with the loss of his agenda. The demands of the business world are okay for Manny, but they just do not satisfy Aino’s adventurous search for new ideas. Oh, well, he’ll get used to it. Gobspeed, wandering patiently in constant search of a fortuitous, is used to having no agenda and no surprises. And then he runs into something he’s never met before in his life – another dog, a big and scary dog, who speaks!
    Matt has been having persistent trouble with his drains. Savy solves the problem by asking her Brandy’s colleague Shortbus to fix it. She’s pleased that Matt has no intention of going on the sewers trip. She has other plans for Matt, plans related to her – unusual – food tastes. The world outside is moving into deeper autumn. Walking through the world – the Sans Souris part of the world where Transit’s few reptos live – goes Zish Bill, carrying its child. Zish Bill is a musician, but at the moment the repto is concerned only with parenthood. It is a bitter delight, because Transit can never be home. Transit is an alien world, and all reptos in Transit are refugees.
    Vicky’s journey takes her ever deeper into the Ultimas and closer to the Extremities. People here are thin on the ground, and as winter approaches she needs to make progress before it’s time to close down her quest until the spring. High up on the course of the Perflux, at the last significant habitation of Breeyan before the wild lands really begin, she finds what she wants. She meets a pair of dragon hunters…
    Utsuku meets Professor O’Brane, her tutor for the Transit Studies component of her doctoral law course. He invites her to join him in Heroes Garden, a virtual leisure facility for University employees. The professor’s avatar is a surprise. The real professor has been cyborgised to the point where he is just a brain supported by a machine. In Heroes Garden he is a short and apparently highly sexed barbarian. The compensatory nature of the avatar is obvious, but it wouldn’t draw Utsuku. She prefers her sexual relationships to be real – though her partner Slim Dunk is proving a little disappointing. The purpose of the meeting, though, is to chat about Jool Diamant. And the professor’s reason? A specialist in transient phenomena, he’s noticed that Jool has been involved in transient phenomena far more frequently that is usual. So, too, has the professor’s friend Thelma-Louise Erinnyes, the police commissioner in charge of VIP Management.

Jool’s sewers assignment – the first phase of it – is a tour through the system beneath the centre of the City. These sewers are an engineering marvel created by the great civil engineer Isambard, and the central wonder is the magnificent Isambard Arterial Cascade. Jool has given in to the inevitable and accepted Davincia Codex as her partner. Davincia turns out to be less unbearable than expected. Their guide Sam Mullog, though, is a drains operative with a disconcerting set of beliefs. Here they are in the tunnels beneath the City – where, it so happens, adherents of the Infernalist religion believe the underworld to be located. And Sam Mullog is an Infernalist.
    Professor Clausa isn’t concerned by Mullog’s religion, but is amused. Mullog will also be their guide on the second stage of the assignment, which is to be a visit to the older sewers beneath Sharries in the Rambles – and among Infernalists, Sharries is the favoured site for the buried capital of the underworld.
    At Gafup, Manny and Aino decide to advertise for two more staff. Gafup also as a blocked drains issue, but that’s what you’d expect with old drains in Sharries. Meanwhile, private detective Rudolf Slink has found something of possible use to Lowpmore, the lawyer. Lowpmore’s prosecution target, Boltman, was employed – unofficially – by the Katch ’Em Kwik detective agency. Now why didn’t the police or the Prosecution Service pick up on that when searching for a motive for the bot’s crime?
    Vicky has spent her time getting to know the area around Breeyan, and getting to know the two dragon hunters she’s met at the local inn. Her hope is to gain their confidence so that she can join them once the winter is over. A dragon hunt is her goal.
    In the meantime, she needs to get back to the little holiday flat in Branden. Instead of returning along the Perflux valley, she takes the direct route across the mountains, a final training march before the season turns. But she’s miscalculated. The first winter storm catches her high among the peaks. Alone, battered by the wind, frozen by the flying snow, slowed by the treacherous conditions, she begins to run out of food, and she begins to tire. And that’s when she realises the wolves are on her trail…
    Winter arrives in the City, too. At the bar, Jool worries about the impending sewers trip – she isn’t happy with Sam Mullog as guide, not without anyone better than Davincia to protect her. Bart tells her to ask Matt one more time, and to use her feminine wiles. Appeal to his sense of chivalry. Unconvinced, Jool tries it. And it works.
    Utsuku wants to get a few days skiing, well away from her huge workload. Just as she’s getting ready to leave, her bot leader, Stilter, gives her yet another task – not urgent, but not to be ignored. It’s the famously insoluble Bling House case, which has finally made the rounds to the modern, go-getting Allimac Biel law firm. Utsuku puts it aside, and escapes while she can.
    The wolves pursuing Vicky are patient, cautious hunters, in no hurry to close on a human quarry. But Vicky is exhausted and alone. High on a snow blanketed mountainside, as the light fades, the wolves begin their move. But something, out there in the gloom, spooks them. They melt away. Vicky, given a last desperate chance, struggles on, crossing a mountain pass in the snow-choked darkness. In the night around her, perhaps, the wolves are gathering again. Sliding, crawling and hurrying as fast as she dare, she keeps going until dawn. Dizzy with fatigue, disoriented, confused and afraid, she looks back towards the pass she has left…
    She never really knows whether the strange little figures pursuing her are real, or the figments of an exhausted imagination. She fires a rescue flare towards them, and flees.
    Utsuku finds her in the end. She’s been skiing in the new snow and has noticed a set of footprints out on the far side of the Hardy Trail. With Facto’s help, she calls for a rescue team from the Unheimlichhaus in Ringsumdell. Vicky’s unplanned nightmare is over.

Jool begins the second part of her sewers assignment, guided again by Sam Mullog and accompanied by Davincia and – this time – a reluctantly supportive Matt. Winter has taken over the City as they go underground in Sharries. They head through the old, cramped tunnels until they reach the course of the local Bilge River where it is diverted underground. The footbridge across the tunnel there has collapsed. Mullog leads them on a different route to get around the obstacle. Unfortunately, the weather in the above-ground world has turned unexpectedly to rain. The badly maintained sewers begin to flood. They are pushed into deeper, older levels Mullog doesn’t know so well. And then he loses them.
    They stay lost, without food or any idea of where they are, for two days. The alarm is raised, of course. Savy has missed Matt, Jelly has missed Jool, University faculties have missed their students. A major search and rescue operation begins, run by the emergency services, with VIP Management on hand just in case it turns out to include any element of transient manifestation. Jelly is there, watching it all and helpless, unable to assist in the hunt for Jool. In the end, Gafup finds the three students, locating them by means of their go-anywhere-find-you system. Given the location, the rescuers can go in and get them. Only Mullog is still missing. Wandering round and watching the excitement, Gobspeed meets that huge, scary, talking dog again. And it’s the mysterious dog, searching everywhere for any hint of unusual scents emanating from the sewers, who locates the drains operative.
    The rescued students are kept in hospital for observation, but there are no injuries. Mullog refuses to talk about whatever happened to him after he was separated from the others – he’s a very upset and disconcerted Infernalist believer. There will, of course, be consequences once the investigation gets under way. Possibly Mullog, and also his employers, are going to be in trouble over the affair.
    There are other spin-offs, welcome and unwelcome. The hospital was puzzled by Matt – specifically, by Thing – and asks for advice from the University. Dr Parthena, specialist in aberrant biology, finally gets her chance to pick up some information on Matt. Utsuku, who started the idea that led Gafup to locating the whereabouts of the missing students, receives explicit thanks from Savy – which is something of a breakthrough for the rich, beautiful, talented and generally resented lawyer. Aino and Manny receive a request from the Transit Authority – they want to talk about the use of the Gafup system in further search and rescue situations. Gobspeed manages to track down a possible haunt of that scary, impressive dog. Savy, who’s been worried for some time that Matt is going to end their affair, is reassured that no, he definitely is not. And Jelly Stalwart is asked by his boss, Inspector Scorta, to consider keeping a quiet eye on his girlfriend Jool in light of the fact that she tends to get into trouble – including transient manifestation trouble – far more frequently than anyone would expect.
    At Branden, meanwhile, Vicky is recovering from her own ordeal. She’s had, from her point of view, the humiliation of being rescued by Utsuku and having to be thankful to Utsuku, and now Utsuku has even arranged a winter-season job for her at the nearby Ripoffdeal Casino. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Utsuku’s insufferable butler, Facto, has to call round asking about her – well-meaning, yes, but not at all welcome. And then the inevitable disaster strikes. Facto notices something. His employer returns to the mountains and calls in person on Vicky. The lawyer knows about the secret hidden in Vicky’s holiday flat.