Restlessness invades Hissune now. The mischievousness that is never far from the surface in him wells up and overflows.

Close by the dusty little office in the House of Records where Hissune sifts and classifies his mounds of tax reports is a far more interesting place, the Register of Souls, which is closed to all but authorized personnel, and there are said to be not many authorized personnel. Hissune knows a good deal about that place. He knows a good deal about every part of the Labyrinth, even the forbidden places, especially the forbidden places — for has he not, since the age of eight, earned his living in the streets of the great underground capital by guiding bewildered tourists through the maze, using his wits to pick up a crown here and a crown there? "House of Records," he would tell the tourists. "There's a room in there where millions of people of Majipoor have left memory-readings. You pick up a capsule and put it in a special slot, and suddenly it's as if you were the person who made the reading, and you find yourself living in Lord Confalume's time, or Lord Siminave's, or out there fighting the Metamorph Wars with Lord Stiamot — but of course hardly anyone is allowed to consult the memory-reading room." Of course. But how hard would it be, Hissune wonders, to insinuate himself into that room on the pretext of needing data for his research into the tax archives? And then to live in a million other minds at a million other times, in all the greatest and most glorious eras of Majipoor's history — yes!

Yes, it would certainly make this job more tolerable if he could divert himself with an occasional peek into the Register of Souls.

From that realization it is but a short journey to the actual attempting of it. He equips himself with the appropriate passes — he knows where all the document-stampers are kept in the House of Records — and makes his way through the brightly lit curving corridors late one afternoon, dry-throated, apprehensive, tingling with excitement.