Huignar had not long returned to his small, shabby hotel room in the Din'l quarter of the city when the wall-comm switched to vid mode and sounded the sonorous note that indicated urgency. The wall-comm was stolen human technology. The Din'l did not encumber themselves with such inconveniences. That humans did explained much about their disposition.

 He swiveled his eye towards the screen and barked, "Connect."

 The vid screen remained dead: properly encrypted video feed was too memory intensive for this old, semi-portable unit. But Lybrylla's voice came through clearly. "Huignar, the Council of Cursed has met."

 "Ah." Huignar's wide jaw went slack for a moment, in the Din'l equivalent of a sigh. On his last visit to the Halls of Infinity, he had sensed that his fellow immortals were growing impatient. Never mind that they were Din'l, never mind that they had lived with the curse of endless life for a hundred generations, this must all end *now.* "And what hasty course has commended itself to their collective wisdom?"

 Lybrylla's distress was obvious in the uncharacteristically high tone of her voice. "The Council believes we risk losing the Totem we have by leaving it in the hands of the humans until they have obtained the second. The Council believes the second Totem has moved beyond the reach of your human contacts, who continue to feed our hopes solely to profit from our desperation."

 "The evidence does not support that conclusion," Huignar said tautly. As he'd listened, his six arms had slowly wound tighter and tighter about his body, until his elbow joints gleamed white. "Were they born yesterday, to act in such haste?"

 "We do not talk about evidence! But about what the Council believes. Your human contacts are no longer considered germane to the recovery of the second Totem, and you are instructed to use any means to get the first Totem away from them."

 Huignar's jaw dropped, another sigh. Humans were very attached to profit, and did not willing give it up. There would be violence, threats, blame, ultimately the humans would resort to blackmail. They knew perfectly well that ordinary, short-lived Din'l considered the Cursed to be abominations, and while the short-lived could not kill the Cursed, they did consign those they caught to the nearest volcanic vent: an agonised eternity of burning. So the humans would have to die. You would think the Council, so conscious of the precious nature of death, would not be so profligate in handing it out.

 "Very well," he said, "tell the Council I will finalise our arrangement with the humans immediately and return to the Halls with the first Totem as soon as possible." With calculated abruptness he instructed the wall-comm to disconnect.

 Immortality wasn't the curse, he thought, it was who you had to spend it with.

 "Who are you?" Natalie asked, knowing a meaningful answer was unlikely, but just as aware that winning sometimes made amateurs sloppy. "Who do you work for?"

 He shrugged. His grip on the blaster tightened. Not used to killing, she thought, but working himself up to it. So keep him talking. "Not Gino. obviously. And you look a bit low rent for one of Delbarre's." That made him angry. Natalie tensed, tried to keep it out of her body language. Don't let him know you're ready to be a victim. Her mind scrambled for something to say.

 From the package came a muted clink. A furtive clink. What was the damned thing up to?

 The man frowned and raised the parcel to his ear, his right ear, Natalie noted, which was pierced with a Dalekanium stud. Like an over-eager kid on Christmas morning, he shook the package to see what sound it would make. He tried to big-note himself by giving out a little information as he shook the package again.

 "Let's just say I work for people who don't think you should have to sell your soul to any damned god just to live forever."

 His words made no sense to Natalie at all. They were, however, his final words. The package in his hands seemed almost to explode. Bits of paper, cardboard and adhesive tape flew everywhere. He shrieked, and warm droplets of blood spattered Natalie's lips and chin.

 The remains of the package dropped from the man's fingers. Coldly, Natalie saw that the Totem, in the human form it had adopted after revealing itself to her, had extruded a silver dagger and thrust it into the man's ear. She swallowed, hard. No vomiting. No body fluids left at the scene. She could hear her own breathing, as if she'd just run here from the spaceport.

 The words, *in too deep, in too deep* played an endless loop at the back of her mind.

 The dead guy crumpled to the sidewalk. There was a scrabbling, scratching sound, and the Totem hauled itself over the rim of the skimmer's open window and dropped into Natalie's lap. It had absorbed the dagger back into its body. With one of its tiny silver fists and punched Natalie below the ribs.

 "Drive, fool," the second Din'l Totem snarled. "Ever heard of the police?"

 Benny drawled, "I don't see how you people expect us to find anything if you keep abducting us."

 "Yes," he said, "yes, it's, it's outrageous."

 Realising he had managed to sound both pompous and slightly ridiculous, he turned to look out the window to conceal a blush. He noticed that the skimmer had left the blocky, planned regularity of the city's human sector behind for the squat, brown chaos of the Din'l quarter, where mucky bacterial streams threaded between buildings that looked like sun-baked animal droppings, and insects swarmed over everything. Miles remembered the awful stench of the place, and how intensely he'd hated his previous time on Din-el.

 The sudden opaquing of the windows made Miles start. The driver said, "Hey, Mr Bain, please. The scenery is pretty but it doesn't have a gun pointed at you." Miles blushed furiously but forced himself to turn to the driver and meet her eyes.

 "Oh, leave him alone," Benny said. Miles hated it that he felt grateful. "And get on with it. I have another kidnapping penciled in for this afternoon, and I'd hate to be late ..."

 Having thumbed the skimmer to autopilot, the driver rotated her seat so that she faced her captives. Miles could see, now, that she was older than he'd first thought, perhaps fifty-five, perhaps sixty. She had the slightly distorted features of someone who'd undergone one too many face lifts.

 "Okay," she addressed Benny, clearly having dismissed Miles as unimportant, "I'll be brief. You're here looking for the Din'l Totems, working for Delbarre. Kendle, he's a minor cog in a human group working for the Cursed, a highly organised and dangerous sect of immortal Din'l."

 Miles spoke before he could help himself, "The Cursed? Don't be absurd." He turned to Benny. "She's lying or mad. The Cursed are referred to occasionally in Totemic texts, but they're myth, externalised Din'l fears like our vampires or demons. The Din'l are *terrified* of immortality--"

 The driver cleared her throat, waggled the blaster to get Mile's attention. He shut up, but he seethed inside. He was an important man, in his own field, a great man, not someone to be terrorised, dismissed, humiliated.

 He decided to prove it.

 The Din'l Totems, though she hadn't known, then, that's what they were, had been in a secure transport container, the only one in the cargo hold where Natalie had hidden. Hey, she was only human: one ship's night, with no one around to disturb her, she'd cracked the container and found two small silver statues of some alien species she hadn't recognised. Silver wasn't worth much, but it was better than nothing. She'd picked one up. It had been colder than it should have been, and heavier than it looked.

 If someone hadn't come into the hold, making Natalie run for it, she'd have grabbed the second one. But someone had come, and found the open container, and *stolen* the remaining statue before calling security. There'd been an uproar. The ship had been turned upside-down and back again. Natalie had been lucky to make it undiscovered to the next planet, Phrace, and safely skip ship.

 Afterwards, when she'd looked in her bag, she'd found a small, cold, exceptionally heavy silver statue of a human male.

 It had spoken to her.

 It had been very angry.

 Miles regarded Benny. She was leaning forward, listening to the driver with a serious intensity which implied belief. He'd always considered her a second rate mind. Too unfocused, too facetious, too open. She said, "So these Cursed, why are they so nuts about getting the Totems back? Is it just your bog standard religious fixation?"

 The driver looked at Benny. Miles noticed that when she did, the blaster's aim drifted slightly. Between Benny and Miles rather than at either of them. It gave him an idea. He would stay silent for a short while, allow Benny to hold their captor's attention while he became -- forgotten.

 "It was the Totems that made the Cursed immortal, thousands of years ago, Ms Summerfield. They want them back so they can end the Curse. They want to die."

 "And Delbarre?"

 "Ah, well, that's a long story. I work for a cartel of extravagantly rich men and women who have, apart from their wealth, one thing in common. They're dying, oh, not of any disease, but for no better reason than the simple passage of time. We don't see immortality as a curse. Mr Delbarre was, until recently, one of us."

 "He decided to strike out on his own then, get the Totems himself, steal endless life, gain eternal dominion over every living thing."

 Benny sighed. "I should have guessed, he just seemed the type..."

 "Troy Delbarre is insane. That's why we think you should be working for us, instead. We'll give you any amount of money that interests you, of course, but we also offer you an equal share in eternal life. A better deal than Delbarre put on the table, yeah?"

 The driver, having made her offer, focused entirely on Benny, weighing her up, Miles imagined, trying to judge her response. Miles was completely forgotten. Perfect.

 Miles hurled himself onto the wretched woman's gun arm. She tried to push him away, but he was stronger. Her free hand clawed at his face. Benny cried out, "Miles, what the hell are you--" And blaster fire exploded inside the skimmer.

 She had taken the skimmer into the air, pointed in some random direction. Away from the murder. Her hand shook on the control stub. Bugs started thudding against the front window as they crossed over into the Din'l quarter of the city.

 The Totem had clambered onto the front passenger's seat. It was furious that its attempt at being handed over to the thieves of its other half had been pre-empted. It wanted Natalie to try again.

 "No? I think you're forgetting, Natalie, that I only have friends and enemies. Nothing in between. The mangled lump back there on the sidewalk, he was my enemy. What are you?"

 "I steal, I don't kill. Look, I got you back to Din-el, didn't I? Tracked down the people who have the other Totem, didn't I? For God's sake, look at you, you've got all these powers, finish it yourself!"

 "Take us back to the house of your original contact," the Totem repeated. His little silver hands were balled into fists.

 "No." A decision crystallised in her mind. It was over. She would get away before the police came looking for her. She banked the skimmer towards the spaceport.

 "Where are you going?"

 "The spaceport. I'm leaving Din-el. I don't know what the hell you are, but you're on your own."

 The Totem's furious roar was impossibly loud. Natalie cried out, despite herself. It leaped for her. She tried to bat it away with her free arm, but it locked its fingers into her flesh, wrapped its legs about her wrist and held on. The Totem sunk its teeth into her and tore out a thumbnail-sized chunk of flesh, and Natalie screamed again at the pain.

 She let go of the control stub and tore helplessly at the Totem. It seemed stronger than her. The skimmer, left to its own devices, started a long, slow descent.

 The driver seized her opportunity and shoved Miles back into his seat. She aimed the blaster at his face. He was choking too hard to stop her from firing. Benny slapped the control stub, and the driver's seat rotated to the front. A blast of energy tore a hole in the front window, letting in a stinking torrent of Din-el air.

 Benny and the driver were wrestling now. Miles tried to clamber forward to help. The pair rolled into the control stub and forced the skimmer into a dive, and Miles was thrown face first into the back of the driver's seat. Hot agony burst in his nose, and his face was suddenly drenched in blood.

 In the midst of all this, the control stub started wailing, a sound so high and loud that Miles clapped his hands over his ears.

 The driver shouted, "Get off me, you idiot. That's the proximity alarm. We're going to crash--"

 She cried, "Alright, alright, stop it, please."

 But the Totem continued savagely tearing into her. Natalie was crying now, from the pain and fear. She could hardly see. When the skimmer's proximity alarm started wailing, she was so scared she screamed.

 Another skimmer seemed to drop into view from nowhere. Natalie reached for the control stub, milliseconds too late.

 A terrible crunching roar filled her ears as the two skimmers smashed together and plummeted from the sky.

 To be continued ...