Again, this story is only a little bit of a story - but here, some of the various bits that have been laid out in the previous Vulland shorts start to come together. The courier is exploring the lost city, and finds some strangely engraved and notched spheres. She retrieves one, and manages to figure out how to open it up - into a gun sort of thing, which makes a small version of the membrane between the upper and lower worlds. What else can it do? Was this how the membrane was originally made - not these (too small) but something on the same principles? She needs a student of ancient texts (oh, so that's what the book story was about) and... So some of the threads set up in earlier stories start to connect with this one. I do want to know what's up with Vulland, but having them as individual stories is still annoying. ( )