"On your feet, lad," he said. "I'm Pondicherry, your father's successor. You've made quite a mess of things, haven't you?" He had a clipped, British accent, with a hint of something else. I remembered Mr Johnstone saying he'd been in India. He wore a standard unisex jumpsuit, with his ambassadorial sash overtop of it. He looked ridiculous. "Sorry to have disturbed you, sir," I said. "I'm sure you are," he said. "Come along, we'll see about fixing this mess." He used the station's teleporter to bring me to his apartment. It was as ridiculous as his uniform, and in the same way. He'd taken the basic elegant simplicity of a standard 1975 unit and draped all kinds of silly trophies and models overtop of it: lions' heads and sabers and model ships and framed medals and savage masks and dolls. "You may look, but not touch, do you understand me?" he said, as we stepped out of the teleporter. "Yes, sir," I said. If anyone else had said it, I would have been offended, but coming from this puffed-up pigeon, it didn't sting much. He went to a vid and punched impatiently at the screen while I prowled the apartment. The bookcase was full of old friends, books by the Frenchman, of course, and more, with strange names like Wells and Burroughs and Shelley. I looked over a long, stone-headed spear, and the curve of an elephant's tusk, and a collection of campaign ribbons and medals under glass. I returned to the bookcase: something had been bothering me. There, there it was: "War of the Worlds," the book that Mr Adelson had given me for Christmas. But there was something wrong with the spine of this one: instead of _Jules Verne_, the author name was _H.G. Wells_. I snuck a look over my shoulder; Pondicherry was still stabbing at the screen. I snuck the book off the shelf and turned to the title page: "War of the Worlds, by Herbert George Wells." I turned to the first chapter: The Eve of the War No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. It was just as I remembered it, every word, just as it was in the Verne. I couldn't begin to explain it. A robutler swung out of its niche with a sheaf of papers. I startled at the noise, then reflexively stuck the book in my jumpsuit. The roboutler delivered them to Pondicherry, who stuffed them in a briefcase. "The embassy will be able to return you home by courier route in three hours. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of waiting around here until then. I have an important meeting to attend -- you'll have to come along." "Yes, sir," I said, trying to sound eager and helpful.