SLARVATHOffice of Off-World Correspondence

Bureau of Returning Persons — area sheet

Issun

Issun in watercolour: a small level pool of pale fog lying in a shallow dip in open green grassland with a little mist lifting off it, nine poured and carved dwellings standing in a ring round it with their windows to it, two of them tall spires ridged like corkscrews, two low star-shaped masses, one with a low bay open at the ground; a single track coming in from the top right, standing stones, and low hazy hills behind.
Cf. FilmThe ground the plate is drawn from.
Cf. FilmThe same ground, another day.
ISSUN

a pool with houses at it

Issun is a pool with houses at it. The pool determined the town, and it is the only thing at Issun that has determined anything.

You came in from the Belt, eighty kadd, and there is no other way in that the Bureau records. The houses stand round the pool with their doors to it. Everything at Issun faces the pool, and the pool has nothing to face back with.

The pool is fed from underneath. It does not run. It is the same size before the count as after it, and nobody at Issun has known it otherwise. It is not large. It is enough.

The Road is near. The Bureau’s figure for it is one sull, as it is from anywhere, and the Road is not on the way to anything from Issun, because the Road is not on the way to anything.

The houses have their doors to the pool and their hollows at their feet. Everything grown at Issun is grown facing it.

FrameA small closed oval. It is the pool’s own shape, and nothing else at Issun has one. ViewpointDrawn from above, as inhabited areas are.
Key
  1. 19 Issun a pool with houses at it
  2. 20 The pool fed from underneath. It does not run
From here

How far is not recorded. How long is.

Office annotationIssun is the nearest place the Office holds to the Road. The Correspondent was asked how long it takes. He said the night. The Office has entered one sull, which it cannot convert, and has laid no track.