Miranda paused only an instant, to ask: "If she's sick do you still want her to dance?"

"No, of course not! Just find her. I'll wait here in case she shows up."

Miranda ran off. Five minutes later she returned.

"Sessily is not in the dressing room, and the maid says she hasn't been there. She's nowhere along the way."

"Could she have gone home? Where is your mother?"

"She's stepping the pavane with my father. Glawen, I'm frightened. Where can she be?"

"We'll find out. How are your parents dressed?"

"Mother's the Sea Queen: see her there in green? Father is the Dombrasian Knight."

Glawen went out on the dance area, and accosted Carlus and Felice Veder where they performed the ritual measures of the pavane. Addressing Carlus Veder, Glawen said: "Sir, I'm sorry to bother you, but we can't find Sessily. She was to step the pavane with me, but she never came out from backstage, and she's not there now."

"Come, let's go look!"

A search revealed no trace of Sessily, nor was she discovered later, even though the grounds were carefully examined. Sessily was gone, without a trace of her going.

An aura of tragic glamour surrounded the disappearance of Sessily Veder. Standing high on the pedestal, face exalted, body taut, wings and arms raised in farewell salute, the girl-butterfly became an image of primordial glory, and never would anyone present recall the occasion without feeling an eerie thrill along the nerves of his or her back.

A frantic search revealed no trace of Sessily; it was as if she had been whisked away into another dimension. Araminta Station was then examined again, more thoroughly, with no better result.

Everyone immediately supposed that she had been carried away in a flyer, but records at the spaceport revealed that neither flyer nor space vehicle had used the sky above Araminta Station during the critical period.

Perhaps, then, a boat or a surface vehicle had been used to carry her away? A similarly explicit assurance could not be made; still, when cars, trucks, vans and power wagons were checked, all were found to^e in their accustomed places, and no one reported suspicious movements. As for boats, such employment downstream of the Or- pheum--which was to say, parallel to Wansey Way--would have been instantly conspicuous, and could be ruled out upstream by reason of the reeds which fringed the riverbank. Forcing a boat to shore through the reeds or the transport of a body out to a boat would have left obvious and unmistakable traces. The same could be said for the possibility of carrying a body into the river, so that it might drift downstream and out to sea.

Mysteries of this son were rare at Araminta Station though not unknown. The typical victim might be a Yip girl who had resisted a conventional seduction, with unhappy consequences." The perpetrator, upon definite identification, was forthwith hanged, or, at his own option, dropped into the ocean a hundred miles offshore.

Crimes at Araminta Station, or anywhere about Deucas, were invea";

tigated by agents of Bureau B, an IPCC affiliate.2 Director of Bureaff||

' Almost any Yip girl would willingly perform sexual services if the remuneratioilt^ were adequate.

(Knowledgeable consensus held the money to be wasted, by reason tffc'H apathy.) In Yipton, a place called Pussycat Palace had been set aside for the amuse nit l|| of tourists;

here the girls (and boys) were trained to simulate at least the rudimen^^ of enthusiasm, in order to encourage return trade. " 2 IPCC: the Interworld Police Coordination Company, ages before a private ccm, now a semiofficial police organization operating across the length and of the Gaean Reach.

B was the septuagenarian Bodwyn Wook, who was small, thin, mercurial and something of a martinet. He was bald as a stone, with darting blue eyes, a bony chin and a long inquisitive nose. His captains were Ysel Laverty, Rune Offaw and Scharde Clattuc. These four senior officers were discreetly known by the junior staff as the Zoo, through a fancied resemblance to illustrations in a famous old Earthly bestiary. Scharde: a gray wolf; Ysel Laverty: a boar; Rune Offaw: a stoat; and Bodwyn Wook: a small bald orangutan.

The entire Zoo applied itself to the Sessily Veder case, along with as many sergeants, ordinaries and cadets as could be spared from routine duties.

The search of Araminta Station and its environs was conducted with meticulous care. Every structure was inspected, as well as the ground surface within a reasonable perimeter. Each day a chemist tested river water for traces of decomposing flesh, again without result. Sessily Veder had dissolved into nothingness, leaving behind no clues and very few theories.

One such theory, to the effect that Sessily, becoming deranged, had run wildly away to hide in the wilderness, was scoffed at as nonsense, but if insane flight, submersion in the river and kidnap by aircraft were all ruled out--what, then? At Bureau B it was recognized that the general bafflement must be a source of comfort to the criminal.

Every person who had been present during the Phantasmagoria-tourist, wine buyer, resident, collateral, guest, worker. Mummer, musician--all were questioned and asked to describe the movements both of themselves and of anyone else of whom they had knowledge. Such information was collated in the Bureau A computer, and the readout allowed a large number of visitors to depart Araminta Station. Another set of investigators tried to trace Sessily's movements immediately after her descent from the pedestal. Her route should have taken her across the backstage area to a door leading out into a passageway. Here she would have turned to the left, walked some twenty feet and out upon a loading dock, then to the left and to the dressing room annex, past the corner of the Orpheum proper: an inconvenient arrangement frequently cited by Floreste during his pleas for a new Orpheum.

Sessily had been assisted down from the pedestal by Drusilla coLaverty, a Mummer girl two or three years older than Sessily. Drusilla and several other Mummers had seen Sessily depart the backstage and go out into the passageway.

Thereafter no one admitted to knowledge regarding her movements. The two wardrobe maids asserted that she had never arrived in the dressing room. Somewhere between backstage

and dressing room Sessily had disappeared which meant from th loading dock.

At this hour the dock was deserted and poorly illuminated, whil< the service area beyond was not illuminated at all.

Kitchen worker had access to the dock through a storage pantry, but all, whei questioned, declared that they had been busy serving the banquet an had not gone out on the dock, including Zamian, a Yip scullion.

Because of their proximity to the dock, the kitchen workers well questioned in careful detail. The statements, when digested by thi computer, revealed discords in the testimony of Zamian. He wa;

immediately brought to the Bureau B offices for questioning.

Schardi Clattuc ushered him into the presence of Bodwyn Wook, then well to sit quietly in the shadows.

Bodwyn Wook leaned back in his massive high-backed chair an fixed Zamian with a minatory gaze.

Zamian, slender and erect, with regular features and close-croppec tawny golden curls, responded to the scrutiny with a nod of gravi courtesy.

"Sir, how may I oblige you in your desires?"

Bodwyn Wook waved a paper in the air.

"You made a state men regarding your movements on the last night of Parilia. Do you rem em her this?"

Zamian smilingly nodded his head.

"Yes, quite so! Your inform an was utterly truthful, and you may trust his word. I am happy to haw been of help to you. May I go now?"

"I am not quite done yet," said Bodwyn Wook.

"A few trifle remain. First, do you know the meaning of the word 'truth'?"

Zamian raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Of course, sir, and will willingly explain the word to you as best I can; but would yol not prefer to learn the precise and official definition from th dictionary?"

Bodwyn Wook coughed.

"I suppose you are right. I'll take can of the matter a bit later ... No, don't go yet; I am not quite dow with you. In this statement, you claim that during the timi which was specified to you, roughly from the end of the Phantasmagoria to the start of the Grand Masque, you did not leave thi kitchen."

"Naturally not, sir! I had my important duties which were entruste< to me. How could I do them, and do them well, if I were some when else, such as down near the beach, or walking by the river? I an surprised that you ask this question, since you know that the dutie! were done expertly."

Bodwyn Wook raised a handful of other papers.

"These are statements which assert that you left the kitchen on several occasions in order to hide bags of stolen food. What of that?"