They told me their decision: they aren't going to report me yet, but they will if my 'condition' gets worse. Sergei asked if I'd had any other unusual experiences. I didn't mention Bob. I told him I'd sleepwalked last night and picked something up somewhere. I took the tiny device out of my pocket and passed it to him.

He took it clumsily with his left hand. His right is still heavily bandaged. Apparently, the device is a flux detector. It has electronic circuits with different levels of sophistication, each one controlling a small speaker. In theory, when you move between two areas with different strengths of mal, the sound coming from the device should change, as different circuits are affected. I'd never heard about these devices. Sergei said that was because they don't work very well. They break easily, and give false positives. He switched it on; it made a continuous high-pitched sound. He waved it in the air in front of him. The sound changed. He said, "see?", and threw it to me. I tried it. The sound from the device stayed the same as I waved it around. Sergei said that showed the device was unreliable. I switched it off and pocketed it.

The three of us are going out tomorrow. Despite Xi's earlier misgivings, we're going in a single Jeep. They don't trust me.