The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void are works of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey eBook Edition

The Dreaming Void copyright © 2007 by Peter F. Hamilton
The Temporal Void copyright © 2009 by Peter F. Hamilton
The Evolutionary Void copyright © 2010 by Peter F. Hamilton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

Del Rey and the House colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

The novels contained in this omnibus were each published separately by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York, in 2007, 2009, and 2010.

eBook ISBN 9780804180665

www.delreybooks.com

v3.1

The following time line gives an overview of
events that take place in the 1,500 years between the
Commonwealth Saga (Pandora’s Star and Judas
Unchained) and the Void Trilogy.

2384—First “lifeboat” (a Brant Dynasty starship) leaves to found human colony outside Commonwealth.

2384—Firewall project concluded; no further outposts of Prime aliens detected.

2385—Barsoomians advocate Advancer genetic concept, declare Far Away politically independent from Commonwealth.

2403—Paula Myo wins final appeal in Senate Supreme Court to have Gene Yaohui serve a 1,100-year suspension sentence.

2413—Last (twenty-third) original dynasty lifeboat departs on colony-founding flight.

2518—End of post–Starflyer War economic recession as New47 worlds approach completion, resettlement taxes reduced.

2520—CST forms starship exploration division to scout new H-congruous worlds.

2520–2532—Second47 populations emerge onto their new worlds.

2545–onward—Use of large starships to establish Commonwealth “External” worlds in phase 3-5 space, extending approximately 500 light-years out from Earth.

2547—The Cat establishes her Knights Guardian movement on Far Away.

2550—Commonwealth Navy Exploration fleet founded to explore the galaxy beyond Phase 5 space.

2552–3450—Contact made with forty-seven sentient (physical-stage) species across the galaxy.

2560—Commonwealth Navy ship Endeavor circumnavigates galaxy, captained by Wilson Kime; discovery of the Void.

2603—Navy discovers seventh High Angel–type ship.

2620—Raiel confirm its status as ancient galactic race that lost a war against the Void, builders of High Angel ships, which are transgalactic arks.

2652—Paula Myo arrests the Cat; riots on Far Away.

2653—The Cat sentenced to 5,000 years in suspension.

2833—Completion of ANA first stage on Earth; Grand Family members begin memory download into ANA rather than to SI.

2856—ANA begins to contact other postphysical entities in the galaxy.

2867—Sheldon Dynasty gigalife project partially successful; first human body biononic supplements for regeneration and general iatrics.

2872—Start of Higher humans, biononic supplements allowing a culture of slow-paced long life, rejection of commercial economics and old political ideologies.

2880—Development of weapons biononics.

2913—Earth begins absorption of “mature” humans into ANA; the inward migration begins.

2934—Knights Guardian adopt Higher biononic technology.

2955—Phase one worlds now predominantly Higher culture.

2958—Contact with Hancher homeworld (Tochee species) 8,640 light-years away, on the other side of the Eagle nebula (7,000 light-years).

2967—First Knights Guardian downloads memory into ANA.

2973–3060—Commonwealth Navy helps defend Hancher homeworld against the Ocisen Empire expansion waves.

2984—Formation of Radical Highers, who wish to convert the human race to Higher culture.

2991—Establishment of the Protectorate, an anti-Higher movement, on External worlds.

3001—Ozzie produces uniform neural entanglement effect known as the gaiafield.

3040—Commonwealth Navy exploration fleet joins Centurion Station, the Void observation project supervised by Raiel, a joint enterprise among over thirty alien species.

3084—Nonincursion treaty agreed to between Hancher homeworld and Ocisen Empire.

3088—Military assistance agreement inaugurated between Hancher homeworld and Commonwealth Navy, enforcing nonincursion.

3120—ANA officially becomes Earth’s government; planetary population fifty million (activated bodies) and falling.

3150—Ellezelin settled, 420 light-years from Earth; procybernetic capitalist Advancer culture.

3255—Radical angel arrives on Anagaska; Inigo’s conception.

3290—Ellezelin opens wormhole to Tari, 15 light-years away; start of Ellezelin Free Market Zone.

3320—Inigo goes to Centurion star system.

3324—Inigo settles on Ellezelin, founds Living Dream movement, begins construction of Makkathran2.

3338—Ellezelin opens wormhole to Idlib.

3340—Ellezelin opens wormhole to Lirno.

3378—Ellezelin opens wormhole to Quhood.

3407—Ozzie departs Commonwealth for the Spike to build a “galactic dream.”

3456—Living Dream movement has over five billion followers in the External worlds, very strong across Ellezelin Free Market Zone.

3466—Ellezelin opens wormhole to Agra (last planet to be joined to the Core of the Free Market Zone).

3478—Living Dream becomes majority party in Ellezelin Parliament (72 percent); converts planet to hierocracy; Makkathran2 becomes the planetary capital.

3520—Inigo “rests” from public life; Cleric Council assumes guidance of Living Dream.

3587—Fragments of Second Dream appear in the gaianet.

3589—Ethan elected as Cleric Conservator; announces Pilgrimage.

The Dreaming Void is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Peter F. Hamilton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in Great Britain by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd., London, in 2007.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hamilton, Peter F.
The dreaming void / Peter F. Hamilton.
p.                           cm.
I. Title.
PR6058.A5536D74 2008
823'.914—dc22                                                                                                                                       2007029244

www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50467-8

v3.0_r2

CONTENTS

Master - Table of Contents

The Dreaming Void

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter One

   Inigo’s First Dream

Chapter Two

   Inigo’s Second Dream

Chapter Three

   Inigo’s Third Dream

Chapter Four

   Inigo’s Fourth Dream

Chapter Five

   Inigo’s Fifth Dream

Chapter Six

   Inigo’s Sixth Dream

Chapter Seven

   Inigo’s Seventh Dream

The starship CNE Caragana slipped down out of a night sky, its gray and scarlet hull illuminated by the pale iridescence of the massive ion storms that beset space for light-years in every direction. Beneath the deep-space vessel, Centurion Station formed a twinkling crescent of light on the dusty rock surface of its never-named planet. Crew and passengers viewed the enclave of habitation with a shared sensation of relief. Even with the hyperdrive powering them along at fifteen light-years an hour, it had taken eighty-three days to reach Centurion Station from the Greater Commonwealth. This was about as far as any human traveled in the mid-thirty-fourth century, certainly on a regular basis.

From his couch in the main lounge, Inigo studied the approaching alien landscape with detached interest. What he was seeing was exactly what the briefing files had projected months earlier: a monotonous plain of ancient lava rippled with shallow gullies that led nowhere. The thin argon atmosphere stirred the sand in short-lived flurries, chasing wispy swirls from one dune to another. It was the station that claimed his real attention.

Now they were only twenty kilometers from the ground, and the lights began to resolve into distinct shapes. Inigo easily could pick out the big garden dome at the center of the human section on the northernmost segment of the inhabited crescent: a lambent emerald circle playing hub to a dozen black transport tubes that ran out to large accommodation blocks that could have been transplanted from any exotic environment resort in the Commonwealth. From there, the tubes carried on across the lava to the cubelike observatory facilities and engineering support modules.

The pocked land to the south belonged to the alien habitats: shapes and structures of various geometries and sizes, most of them illuminated. Next to the humans were the silver bubbles of the hominoid Golant, followed by the enclosed grazing grounds where the Ticoth roamed amid their food herds; then came the mammoth interconnecting tanks of the Suline, an aquatic species. The featureless Ethox tower rose up ten kilometers past the end of the Sulines’ metal-encased lakes, dark in the visible spectrum but with a surface temperature of one hundred eighty degrees Centigrade. They were one of the species that did not interact with their fellow observers on any level except for formal exchanges of data concerning the probes that orbited the Void. Equally taciturn were the Forleene, who occupied five big domes of murky crystal that glowed with a mild gentian light. They were positively social compared to the Kandra, who lived in a simple metal cube thirty meters to a side. No Kandra ship had landed there since the humans had joined the observation two hundred eighty years earlier; not even the exceptionally long-lived Jadradesh had seen one of the aliens. The Raiel had invited the boulderlike swamp dwellers to join the project seven thousand years earlier.

A small smile flickered on Inigo’s face as he took in the diverse zones. It was impressive to see so many aliens gathered in one place, a collection that served to underline the importance of their mission. However, as his view strayed to the shadows thrown by the station, he had to admit that the living were overshadowed completely by those who had passed before them. Centurion Station’s growth and age could be measured loosely in the same way as any humble terrestrial tree. It had developed in rings that had been added to over the centuries as new species joined the project. The broad circle of land along the concave side of the crescent was studded with ruins, crumbling skeletons of habitats abandoned millennia before as their sponsoring civilizations fell, moved on, or evolved away from mere astrophysical concerns. At the very center the ancient structures had decayed to simple mounds of compacted metal and crystal flakes that were beyond the ability of an archaeologist to decipher. Dating expeditions had established that this ancient heart of the station had been constructed over four hundred thousand years earlier. Of course, as far as the time scale of the Raiel observation was concerned, that was not long ago.

A ring of green light was flashing on the lava field that served as a spaceport for the human section, calling down the CNE Caragana. Several starships were sitting on the drab rock beside the active landing zone: two hefty deep-space vessels of the same class as the Caragana and some smaller starships used for placing and servicing the remote probes that constantly monitored the Void.

There was a slight judder as the starship settled, and then the internal gravity field switched off. Inigo felt himself rise slightly on the couch’s cushioning as the planet’s seventy percent gravity took over. It was silent in the lounge as the passengers took stock; then a happy murmur of conversation broke out to celebrate their arrival. The chief steward asked them all to make their way down to the main airlock, where they would suit up and walk over to the station. Inigo waited until his more eager colleagues had left before climbing cautiously to his feet and making his way out of the lounge. Strictly speaking, he did not need a spacesuit; his Higher biononics could cocoon his body in perfect safety, protecting it from the thin malignant atmosphere and even from the cosmic radiation that sleeted in from the massive stars of the Wall five hundred light-years away. But he’d traveled all this way in part to escape his unwanted heritage; this was not the time to show it off. He started suiting up along with the rest.

The handover party was a long tradition at Centurion Station. Every time a navy ship arrived bringing new observers, there was a short overlap before the previous group departed. It was celebrated in the garden dome as a sunset gala with the best buffet the culinary unit programs could produce. Tables were laid out under ancient oaks that glittered with hundreds of magic lanterns, and the dome overhead wore a halo of gold twilight. A solido projection of a string quartet played classical mood music on a little stage surrounded by a brook.

Inigo arrived quite early, still adjusting the sleeves of his ultrablack formal evening suit. He did not really like the jacket’s long square-cut tails—they were a bit voguish for his taste—but had to admit the tailor back on Anagaska had done a superb job. Even today if one wanted quality clothes, one needed a human in the style-and-fitting loop. He knew he looked good in it, in fact, good enough that he didn’t feel even remotely self-conscious.

The station’s director was greeting all the arrivals personally. Inigo joined the end of the short line and waited his turn. He could see several aliens milling around the tables: the Golant, looking odd in clothes that approximated the ones worn by humans. With their gray-blue skin and tall narrow heads, their polite attempt to blend in only made them appear more out of place. There were a couple of Ticoth curled up together on the grass, both the size of ponies, though there any resemblance ended. These were very obviously predator carnivores, with dark green hide stretched tight over powerful muscle bands. Alarmingly big and sharp teeth appeared every time they growled at one another and the group of humans with whom they were conversing. Inigo instinctively checked his integral force field function, then felt ashamed for having done so. Several Suline were also present, floating about in big hemispherical glass tanks like giant champagne saucers that were held up by small regrav units. Their translators babbled away while they looked out at the humans, their bulbous bodies distorted and magnified by the curving glass.

“Inigo, I presume,” the director’s overloud voice proclaimed.

“Glad to meet you, and you’re bright and early for the party; most commendable, laddy.”

Inigo smiled with professional deference as he shook the tall man’s hand. “Director Eyre,” he acknowledged. The briefing file’s curriculum vitae had told him very little about the director other than claiming his age was over a thousand years. Inigo suspected corrupted data, although the director’s clothing was certainly historical enough: a short jacket and matching kilt with a very loud amethyst and black tartan.

“Oh, please, call me Walker.”

“Walker?” Inigo queried.

“Short for LionWalker. Long story. Not to worry, laddy. Won’t bore you with it tonight.”

“Ah. Right.” Inigo held his gaze level. The director had a thick stock of brown hair, but something glittered underneath it, as if his scalp were crawling with gold flecks. For the second time in five minutes Inigo held off using biononics. A field scan would have revealed what kind of technology the director was enriched with; it certainly wasn’t one he recognized. He had to admit that the hair made LionWalker Eyre look youthful, just like the majority of the human race these days, no matter what branch. Higher, Advancer, or Natural, vanity was pretty much uniform. But the thin gray goatee lent him an air of distinction, and that was very deliberate.

LionWalker waved his whiskey tumbler across the darkened parkland, ice cubes chittering at the movement. “So what brings you to our celebrated outpost, then, young Inigo? Thinking of the glory? The riches? Lots of sex? After all, there’s not much else to do here.”

Inigo’s smile tightened slightly as he realized how drunk the director was. “I just wanted to help. I think it’s important.”

“Why?” the question snapped out, accompanied by narrowed eyes.

“Okay. The Void is a mystery that is beyond even ANA to unravel. If we can ever figure it out, we will have advanced our understanding of the universe by a significant factor.”

“Huh. Do yourself a favor, laddy: Forget ANA. Bunch of decadent aristos who’ve been mentally taxidermied. Like they care what happens to physical humans. It’s the Raiel we’re helping, a people who are worth a bit of investment. And even those galumphing masterminds are stumped. You know what the navy engineers found when they were excavating the foundations for this very garden dome?”

“No.”

“More ruins.” LionWalker took a comfortable gulp of whiskey.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. They were practically fossilized, nothing more than dust strata, over three quarters of a million years old. And from what I’ve picked up, looking at the early records the Raiel deign to make available, the observation has been going on a lot longer than that. A million years pecking away at a problem. Now, that’s dedication for you. We’d not be able to manage that, far too petty.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Ah, I might have known; a believer.”

“In what?”

“Humanity.”

“That must be common among the staff here, surely.” Inigo was wondering how to disengage himself. The director was starting to irritate him.

“Damn right, laddy. One of the few things that keeps me all cheered up out here all by my wee lonesome. Och  …  here we go.” LionWalker tipped his head back and stared out across the dome, where the low layer of hazy light faded away. Overhead the crystal was completely transparent, revealing the vast antagonistic nebulae that washed across the sky. Hundreds of stars shone through the glowing veil, spikes of light so intense that they burned toward violet and into indigo. They multiplied toward the horizon as the planet spun slowly to face the Wall, the vast barrier of massive stars that formed the outermost skin of the galactic core.

“We can’t see the Void from here, can we?” Inigo asked. He knew it was a stupid question; the Void was obscured on the other side of the Wall, right at the very heart of the galaxy. Centuries earlier, before anyone had ventured out of Earth’s solar system, human astronomers had thought it was a massive black hole. They’d even detected X-ray emissions from the vast loop of superheated particles spinning around the event horizon, which helped confirm their theories. It was not until Wilson Kime had captained the Commonwealth Navy ship Endeavor in the first successful human circumnavigation of the galaxy in 2560 that the truth was discovered. There was indeed an impenetrable event horizon at the core, but it did not surround anything as natural and mundane as a superdense mass of dead stars. The Void was an artificial boundary guarding a legacy billions of years old. The Raiel claimed there was an entire universe inside, one that had been fashioned by a race that had lived during the dawn of the galaxy, and that they had retreated into it to consummate their journey to the absolute pinnacle of evolution. In the wake of their departure, the Void was now slowly consuming the remaining stars in the galaxy. In that it was no different from the natural black holes found anchoring the center of many galaxies, but while they employed gravity and entropy to pull in mass, the Void actively devoured stars. It was a process that was accelerating slowly yet inexorably. Unless it was stopped, the galaxy would die young, maybe three or four billion years before its allotted time, far enough in the future that Sol would be a cold ember and the human race not even a memory. But the Raiel cared. This was the galaxy they had been born in, and they believed it should be given the chance to live its full life.

LionWalker gave a little snort of amusement. “No, of course you can’t see it. Don’t panic, laddy; there’s no visible nightmare in our skies. DF7 is rising, that’s all.” He pointed.

Inigo waited, and after a minute an azure crescent drifted up over the horizon. It was half the size of Earth’s moon, with a strangely regular black mottling. He let out a soft breath of admiration.

There were fifteen of the planet-size machines orbiting within the Centurion Station star system: nests of concentric lattice spheres, each one possessing a different mass property and quantum field intersection, with the outer shell roughly the same diameter as Saturn. They were a Raiel-built “defense system” in case a Void devourment phase broke through the Wall. No one had ever seen them in action, not even the Jadradesh.

“Okay. That is impressive,” Inigo said. The DFs were in the files, of course, but a machine on that scale and head-on real was awesome.

“You’ll fit in,” LionWalker declared happily. He slapped a hand on Inigo’s shoulder. “Go find yourself a drink. I made sure we had the very best culinary programs for alcohol synthesis. You can take that as a challenge.” He moved on to the next arrival.

Keeping one eye on DF7, Inigo made his way to the bar. LionWalker had not been kidding; the drinks were top quality, even the vodka that fountained up through the mermaid ice sculpture.

Inigo stayed at the party longer than he had expected to. There was something about being thrown together with a bunch of like-minded devoted people that instinctively triggered his normally dormant social traits. By the time he finally got back to his apartment, his biononics had been deflecting alcohol infiltration of his neurons for several hours. Even so, he permitted some to percolate through his artificial defenses, enough to generate a mild inebriation and all the associated merits. He was going to have to live with these people for another year. No advantage in appearing aloof.

As he crawled into bed, he ordered a complete desaturation. That was one superb benefit of biononics: no hangover.

And so Inigo dreamed his first dream at Centurion Station. It wasn’t his.

Aaron spent the whole day mingling with the faithful of the Living Dream movement in Golden Park’s vast plaza, eavesdropping on their restless talk about the succession, drinking water from the mobile catering stalls, trying to find some shade from the searing sun as the heat and coastal humidity rose relentlessly. He thought he remembered arriving at daybreak; certainly the expanse of marble cobbles had been virtually empty as he had walked across it. The tips of the splendid white metal pillars surrounding the area had been crowned with rose-gold light as the local star rose above the horizon. He had smiled appreciatively at the outline of the replica city, matching the topography surrounding Golden Park with the dreams he had gathered from the gaiafield over the last … well, for quite some time. Golden Park had started to fill up rapidly after that, with the faithful arriving from the other districts of Makkathran2 across the canal bridges, ferried in by a fleet of gondolas. By midday there must have been close to a hundred thousand of them. All faced the Orchard Palace, which sprawled possessively like a huddle of high dunes over the Anemone district on the other side of the Outer Circle Canal. There they waited with badly disguised impatience for the Cleric Council to come to a decision—any sort of decision. The Council had been in conclave for three days now. How long could they possibly take to elect a new Conservator?

At one point that morning he had edged his way right up to the Outer Circle Canal, close to the central wire-and-wood bridge that arched over to Anemone. It was closed, of course, as were the other two bridges in that section. Although in ordinary times anyone from the ultradevout to curious tourist could cross over and wander around the vast Orchard Palace, this day it had been sealed off by fit-looking junior Clerics who had undergone a lot of muscle enrichment. Camped out to one side of the temporarily forbidden bridge were hundreds of journalists from all over the Greater Commonwealth, most of them outraged by the stubborn refusal of Living Dream to leak information their way. They were easily identifiable by their chic modern clothes and by faces that obviously were maintained at peak gloss by a membrane of cosmetic scales. Not even Advancer DNA produced complexions that good.

Behind them the bulk of the crowd buzzed about, discussing their favorite candidates. If Aaron was judging the mood correctly, just about ninety-five percent of them were rooting for Ethan. They wanted him because they were done with waiting, with patience, with the status quo preached by all the other lackluster caretakers since the Dreamer himself, Inigo, had slipped away from public life. They wanted someone who would bring their whole movement to that blissful moment of fulfillment they had been promised from the moment they had tasted Inigo’s first dream.

Some time in the afternoon Aaron realized that the woman was watching him. Instinct smoothly clicked his awareness to her location—which was an interesting trait to know he had. From then on he was conscious of her: how she casually wandered in order to keep an easy distance between them, how she never had her eyes in his direction when he glanced at her. She wore a simple short-sleeved rusty-orange top and knee-length blue trousers of some modern fabric. A little different from the faithful—who tended to wear the more primitive rustic clothes of wool, cotton, and leather favored by Makkathran’s citizens, but not contemporary enough to be obvious. Nor did her looks make her stand out, though she had a flattish face and a cute button nose; some of the time her slim copper shades were across her eyes, but often she had them perched in her short dark hair. Her age was unknowable; her appearance was locked into the biological mid-twenties like that of everyone in the Greater Commonwealth. He was certain, with no tangible proof, that she was well past her first couple of centuries.

After they had played the orbiting-satellites game for forty minutes, he walked over, keeping his smile pleasant. There were no pings coming off her that his macrocellular clusters could detect, no active links to the unisphere or any active sensor activity. Electronically, she was as stone age as the city.

“Hello,” he said.

She pushed her shades up with the tip of a finger and gave him a playful grin. “Hello yourself. So what brings you here?”

“This is a historic event.”

“Quite.”

“Do I know you?” His instinct had been right, he saw; she was nothing like the placid faithful shuffling around them. Her body language was all wrong; she could keep tight control of herself, enough to fool anyone without his training—training?—but he could sense the attitude coiled up inside.

“Should you know me?”

He hesitated. There was something familiar about her face, something he should know about her. He could not think what for the simple reason that he did not have any memories to pull up and examine. Not of anything, now that he thought about it. He didn’t seem to have had a life prior to this day. He knew that was all wrong, yet that did not bother him, either. “I don’t recall.”

“How curious. What’s your name?”

“Aaron.”

Her laughter surprised him.

“What?” he asked.

“Number one, eh? How lovely.”

Aaron’s answering grin was forced. “I don’t understand.”

“If you wanted to list terrestrial animals, where would you start?”

“Now you’ve really lost me.”

“You’d start with the aardvark. Double A; it’s the top of the list.”

“Oh,” he mumbled. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Aaron.” She chuckled. “Someone had a sense of humor when they sent you here.”

“Nobody sent me.”

“Really?” She arched a thick eyebrow. “So you just sort of found yourself at this historic event, did you?”

“That’s about it, yes.”

She dropped the copper band back down over her eyes and shook her head in mock dismay. “There are several of us here, you know. I don’t believe that’s an accident, do you?”

“Us?”

Her hand gestured around at the crowd. “You don’t count yourself as one of these sheep, do you? A believer? Someone who thinks they can find a life at the end of these dreams Inigo so generously gifted to the Commonwealth?”

“I suppose not, no.”

“There’s a lot of people watching what happens here. It’s important, after all, and not just for the Greater Commonwealth. If there’s a Pilgrimage into the Void, some species claim it could trigger a devourment phase which will bring about the end of the galaxy. Would you want that to happen, Aaron?”

She was giving him a very intent stare. “That would be a bad thing,” he temporized. “Obviously.” In truth he had no opinion. It was not something he thought about.

“Obvious to some, an opportunity to others.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” She licked her lips with mischievous amusement. “So, are you going to try for my unisphere code? Ask me out for a drink?”

“Not today.”

She pouted fulsomely. “How about unconditional sex, then, any way you like it?”

“I’ll bank that one, too, thanks.” He laughed.

“You do that.” Her shoulders moved up in a slight shrug. “Goodbye, Aaron.”

“Wait,” he said as she turned away. “What’s your name?”

“You don’t want to know me,” she called out. “I’m bad news.”

“Goodbye, Bad News.”

There was a genuine smile on her face as she looked back at him. A finger wagged. “That’s what I remember best,” she said, and was gone.

He smiled at the rear of her rapidly departing head. She vanished quickly enough amid the throng; after a minute he couldn’t even spot her. He had seen her originally because she had wanted him to, he realized.

Us, she’d said. There are a lot like us here. That didn’t make a lot of sense. But then she’d stirred up a lot of questions. Why am I here? he wondered. There was no solid answer in his mind other than it was the right place for him to be; he wanted to see who was elected. And the memories. Why don’t I have any memories of anything else? It ought to bother him, he knew—memories were the fundamental core of human identity—yet even that emotion was lacking. Strange. Humans were emotionally complex entities, yet he didn’t appear to be. But he could live with that; something deep inside him was sure he would solve the mystery of himself eventually. There was no hurry.

Toward late afternoon the crowd began to thin out as the announcement remained obstinately unforthcoming. Aaron could see disappointment on the faces moving past him, a sentiment echoed by the whispers of emotion within the local gaiafield. He opened his mind to the surrounding thoughts, allowing them to wash in through the gateway that the gaiamotes had germinated inside his cerebellum. It was like walking through a fine mist of specters, bestowing the plaza with flickers of unreal color, images of times long gone yet remembered fondly; sounds were muffled, as if experienced through fog.

His recollection of when he had joined the gaiafield community was as hazy as the rest of his time before this day: it didn’t seem like the kind of thing he would do—too whimsical. Gaiafield was for adolescents who considered the multisharing of dreams and emotions to be deep and profound or fanatics like Living Dream. But he was proficient enough with the concept of voluntarily shared thoughts and memories to grasp a coherent sensation from his exposure to the raw minds in the plaza. Of course, if it could be done anywhere, it would be here in Makkathran2, which Living Dream had made the capital of the Greater Commonwealth’s gaiafield, with all the contradictions that entailed. To the faithful, the gaiafield was almost identical to the genuine telepathy the citizens of the real Makkathran possessed.

Aaron felt their sorrow firsthand as the day began to wind down, with several stronger undercurrents of anger directed at the Cleric Council. In a society where one shared thoughts and feelings, so the consensus went, an election really should not be so difficult. He also perceived their subliminal wish slithering through the gaiafield: Pilgrimage, the one true hope of the whole movement.

Despite the regret gusting around him, Aaron stayed where he was. He didn’t have anything else to do. The sun had fallen almost to the horizon when there was some movement on the broad balcony along the front of the Orchard Palace. All across the plaza, people suddenly smiled and pointed. There was a gentle yet urgent movement toward the Outer Circle Canal. Security force fields along the side of the water expanded, cushioning those shoved up against the railings as the pressure of bodies increased behind them. Various news company camera pods zoomed through the air like glitter-black festival balloons, adding to the thrill. Within seconds the mood in the plaza had lifted to fiery anticipation; the gaiafield suddenly crackled with excitement, its intensity rising until Aaron had to withdraw slightly to avoid being deluged by the clashing storms of color and ethereal shouts.

The Cleric Council marched solemnly out onto the balcony, fifteen figures wearing full-length scarlet-and-black robes. In their center was a lone figure whose robe was a dazzling white edged in gold, the hood pulled forward to obscure the face inside. The dying sun glowed against the soft cloth, creating a nimbus around him. A huge cheer went up from the crowd. Camera pods edged in as close to the balcony as their operators dared; palace force fields rippled in warning, keeping them back. As one, the Cleric Council reached out into the gaiafield with their minds; unisphere access followed swiftly, making the grand announcement available across the Greater Commonwealth to followers and nullifidians alike.

In the middle of the balcony, the white-robed figure reached up and slowly pushed back the hood. Ethan smiled beatifically out across the city and its adulating faithful. There was a kindness about his thin solemn face that suggested he was attuned to all their fears; he sympathized and understood. Everyone could see the dark bags under his eyes that could come only from the burden of accepting such a terribly high office, of carrying the expectations of every Dreamer. As his face was exposed to the rich sunlight, the cheering down in the plaza increased. Now the other members of the Cleric Council turned toward the new Cleric Conservator and applauded contentedly.

Without conscious intervention, the ancillary thought routines operating inside Aaron’s macrocellular clusters animated his ocular zoom. He scanned along the faces of the Cleric Council, designating each image with an integral code as the ancillary routines slotted them into macrocellular storage lacunae ready for instant recall. Later he would study them for any betraying emotion, an indicator of how they had argued and voted.

He had not known he had the zoom function, which piqued his curiosity. At his request the secondary thought routines ran a systems check through the macrocellular clusters enriching his nervous system. Exoimages and mental icons unfolded from neutral status to standby in his peripheral vision, lines of shifting iridescence bracketing his natural sight. The exoimages were all default symbols generated by his u-shadow, the personal interface with the unisphere that instantly would connect him to any of its massive data, communication, entertainment, and commerce functions. All standard stuff.

However, the mental icons he examined represented a great deal more than the standard physiological enrichments that Advancer DNA had placed at the disposal of a human body; if he was reading their summaries correctly, he was enriched with some extremely lethal biononic field function weaponry.

I know something else about me, he thought. I have an Advancer heritage. It was hardly a revelation; eighty percent of Greater Commonwealth citizens had had similar modifications sequenced into their DNA thanks to the long-ago genetic visionaries on Far Away. But having biononics as well narrowed the scope fractionally, putting Aaron closer to his true origin.

Ethan raised his hands in an appeal for silence. The plaza fell quiet as the faithful held their breath. Even the babble from the media pack was stilled. A sensation of serenity coupled with steely resolution issued out of the new Cleric Conservator into the gaiafield. Ethan was a man who was sure of his purpose.

“I thank my fellow Councillors for this magnificent honor,” Ethan said. “As I begin my tenure, I will do what I believe our Dreamer wanted. He showed us the way—nobody can deny that. He showed us where life can be lived and changed until it is perfect, however you choose to define that as an individual. I believe he showed us this for a reason. This city he built. The devotion he engendered. It was for one purpose: to live the Dream. That is what we will now do.”

There was cheering out on the plaza.

“The Second Dream has begun! We have known it in our hearts. You have known it. I have known it. We have been shown inside the Void again. We have soared with the Skylord.”

Aaron scanned the Council again. He no longer needed to review and analyze their faces for later. Five of them already looked deeply uncomfortable. Around him the cheering was building to an inevitable climax, as was the speech.

“The Skylord awaits us. It will guide us to our destiny. We will Pilgrimage!”

Cheering turned to a naked, violent roar of adulation. Inside the gaiafield it was as though someone were setting off fireworks fueled by pleasure narcotics. The burst of euphoria surging through the artificial neural universe was awesome in its brightness.

Ethan waved victoriously to the faithful, then gave a last smile and went back inside Orchard Palace.

Aaron waited as the crowd wound down. So many cried with joy as they departed, he had to shake his head in dismay at their simplicity. Happiness here was universal, obligatory. The sun crept down below the horizon, revealing a city where every window glowed with warm tangerine light, just as they did in the true city. Songs drifted along the canals as the gondoliers gave voice to their delight in traditional fashion. Eventually even the reporters began to drift away, chattering among themselves; those with doubts were keeping their voices low. Out in the unisphere, news anchors and political commentators on hundreds of worlds were beginning their somber doomsday predictions.

None of it bothered Aaron. He was still standing in the plaza as the civic bots emerged into the starlight and began clearing away the rubbish the excitable crowd had left behind. He now knew what he had to do next; the certainty had struck him as soon as he had heard Ethan speak. Find Inigo. That was why he was here.

Aaron smiled contentedly around the dark plaza, but there was no sign of the woman. “Now who’s bad news?” he asked, and walked back into the jubilant city.

Looking out from the balcony along the front of Orchard Palace, Ethan watched the last rays of the sun slide over the crowd like a translucent gold veneer. Their cries of near-religious approval echoed off the thick walls of the palace; he could feel the vibration in the stone balustrade in front of him. He had experienced no inner doubts during his long difficult progress, but the response of the faithful was profoundly comforting. He knew he was right to push for his own vision, to haul the whole movement out of its slothful complacency. That was evolution’s message: Go forward or die. It was the reason for the Void’s existence.

Ethan closed his mind to the gaiafield and strode off the balcony as the sun finally sank below the horizon. The others of the Council followed respectfully, their scarlet cloaks fluttering in agitation as they hurried to keep up.

His personal secretary, Chief Cleric Phelim, was waiting at the top of the broad ebony stairs that curved down to the cavernous Malfit Hall on the ground level. Phelim wore the gray-and-blue robes that indicated a rank just below that of a full Councillor, a status that Ethan was going to elevate in the next couple of days. His hood hung down his back, allowing the soft orange lighting to glimmer off the black skin of his shaved scalp. It gave him a formidable skeletal appearance that was unusual amid Living Dream members, who followed the fashion of long hair that was prevalent in Makkathran. When he fell in beside Ethan, he was almost a head taller. That height, along with a face that could remain unnervingly impassive, had been useful for unsettling a great many people; he could talk to anyone with his mind fully open to the gaiafield, yet his emotional tone was completely beyond reach—again, not something the politely passive community of Living Dream was accustomed to. To the Council hierarchy, Phelim and his mannerisms were an uncomfortable intruder. Privately, Ethan rather enjoyed the consternation his utterly loyal deputy generated.

The giant Malfit Hall was full of Clerics who began applauding as soon as Ethan reached the bottom of the stairs. He took the time to bow at them as he made his way across the sheer black floor, smiling thanks and occasionally nodding in recognition. The images on the arching ceiling mimicked the sky of Querencia; Malfit Hall was perpetually locked in dawn, producing a clear turquoise vault, with the ocher globe of the solid world Nikran circling gently around the edge, magnified to an extent where mountain ranges and a few scudding clouds were visible. Ethan’s procession moved on into Liliala Hall, where the ceiling hosted a perpetual storm, its seething mantle of glowing clouds haloed in vivid purple lightning. Intermittent gaps allowed glimpses of the Mars Twins belonging to the Gicon’s Bracelet formation, small featureless planets with a deep, dense red atmosphere that guarded whatever surface they might have from any inquiry. Senior Clerics were gathered beneath the flashing clouds. Ethan took longer there, muttering several words of thanks to those he knew, allowing his mind to radiate a gentle pride into the gaiafield.

At the arching door into the suite of rooms which the Mayor of Makkathran used to hold office, Ethan turned to the Councillors. “I thank you once more for your confidence in me. To those who were reluctant in their endorsement, I promise to double my efforts to gain your support and trust in the years ahead.”

If any of them were vexed with their dismissal, they shielded such thoughts from the openness of the gaiafield. He and Phelim alone passed into the private quarters. Inside was a series of grand interconnecting chambers. The heavy wooden doors were as intrusive here as they were in Makkathran; whatever species had designed and built the original city clearly did not have the psychology for enclosing themselves. Through the gaiafield, he could sense his staff moving about within the reception rooms around him. His predecessor’s team was withdrawing, their frail emotions of disgruntlement leaking into the gaiafield. Handover was normally a leisurely good-spirited affair. Not this time. Ethan wanted his authority stamped on the Orchard Palace within hours. Before the conclave began, he had prepared an inner circle of loyalists to take charge of the main administrative posts of Living Dream. And as Ellezelin was a theocracy, he also was faced with endorsing a new cabinet for the planet’s civil government.

His predecessor, Jalen, had furnished the Mayor’s sanctum in paoviool blocks resembling chunks of stone that shaped itself as required, a state intuited from the gaiafield. Ethan settled into the seat that formed behind the long rectangular slab of desk. Dissatisfaction manifested itself as small emerald sparkles erupting like an optical rash on the paoviool surfaces around him.

“I want this modern rubbish out of here by tomorrow,” Ethan said.

“Of course,” Phelim said. “Do you want Inigo’s furnishings restored?”

“No. I want this as the Waterwalker showed us.”

Phelim actually smiled. “Much better.”

Ethan glanced around the oval sanctum with its plain walls and high windows. Despite his familiarity with the chamber, he felt as if he’d never seen it before. “For Ozzie’s sake, we did it!” he exclaimed, letting out a long breath of astonishment. “I’m sweating. Actually sweating. Can you believe that?” When he brought his hand up to his brow, he realized he was trembling. Despite all the years he had planned and worked and sacrificed for this moment, the reality of success had taken him completely by surprise. It had been a hundred fifty years since he had infused the gaiamotes in order to experience the gaiafield, and on his very first night of communion he had witnessed Inigo’s First Dream. A hundred fifty years, and the reticent adolescent from the backwater External world of Oamaru had reached one of the most influential positions in the Greater Commonwealth still available to a simple Natural human.

“You were the one they all wanted,” Phelim said. He stood slightly to one side of the desk, ignoring the big cubes of paoviool where he could have sat.

“We did it together.”

“Let’s not fool ourselves here. I would never be considered even for the Council.”

“Ordinarily, no.” Ethan looked around the sanctum again. The enormity was starting to sink in. He began to wonder what the Void would look like when he could see it with his own eyes. Once, decades earlier, he had met Inigo. He had not been disappointed exactly, but the Dreamer had not quite been what he had expected. Not that he was sure what the Dreamer should have been like—more forceful and dynamic, perhaps.

“You want to begin?” Phelim asked.

“I think that’s best. The Ellezelin cabinet are all faithful Living Dream members, so they can remain as they are, with one exception. I want you as the Treasury Secretary.”

“Me?”

“We’re going to build the starships for Pilgrimage. That isn’t going to be cheap; we’ll need the full financial resources of the whole Free Market Zone to fund construction. I need someone in the Treasury I can depend on.”

“I thought I was going to join the Council.”

“You are. I will elevate you tomorrow.”

“Two senior posts. That should be interesting when it comes to juggling schedules. And the empty seat on the Council I shall be filling?”

“I’m going to ask Corrie-Lyn to consider her position.”

Phelim’s face betrayed a hint of censure. “She’s hardly your greatest supporter on the Council, admittedly, but I think she’d actually welcome Pilgrimage. Perhaps one of our less progressive colleagues …?”

“It’s to be Corrie-Lyn,” Ethan said firmly. “The remaining Councillors who oppose Pilgrimage are in a minority, and we can deal with them at our leisure. Nobody will be challenging my mandate. The faithful wouldn’t tolerate it.”

“Corrie-Lyn it is, then. Let’s just hope Inigo doesn’t come back before we launch the starships. You know they were lovers?”

“It’s the only reason she’s a Councillor.” Ethan narrowed his eyes.

“Are we still looking for Inigo?”

“Our friends are,” Phelim told him. “We don’t quite have those sorts of resources. There’s been no sign of him that they’ve reported. Realistically, if your succession to Conservator doesn’t bring him back within the first month or so, I’d say we are in the clear.”

“Badly phrased. That makes it sound like we’ve done something wrong.”

“But we don’t know why Inigo was reluctant to Pilgrimage.”

“Inigo is only human; he has flaws like the rest of us. Call it a failure of nerve at the last moment if you want to be charitable. My own belief is that he’ll be watching events from somewhere, cheering us on.”

“I hope so.” Phelim paused as he reviewed the information accumulating in his exoimages; his u-shadow was balancing local data with a comprehensive overview of the election. “Marius is here, requesting an audience.”

“That didn’t take long, did it?”

“No. There are a lot of formalities required of you tonight. The Greater Commonwealth President will be calling to congratulate you, as will the leaders of the Free Market planets and dozens of our External world allies.”

“How is the unisphere coverage?”

“Early days.” Phelim checked the summaries his u-shadow was providing. “Pretty much what we were expecting. Some hysterical anti-Pilgrimage hotheads saying you’re going to kill all of us. Most of the serious anchors are trying to be balanced and explain the difficulties involved. The majority seem to regard Pilgrimage as a politician’s promise.”

“There are no difficulties in accomplishing Pilgrimage,” Ethan said with annoyance. “I have seen the Skylord’s dream. It is a noble creature; it will lead us inside the Void. We just have to locate the Second Dreamer. Any developments on that today?”

“None. Thousands are coming forward claiming to be dreaming the Skylord. They don’t help our search.”

“You must find him.”

“Ethan … it took our best dream masters months to assemble the existing fragments into the small dream we have. We believe in this case there is no firm link such as Inigo had with the Void. These fragments could be entering the gaiafield in a number of ways. Unaware carriers. Directly from the Void? Perhaps it’s Ozzie’s galactic field. Then there’s a possible overspill from the Silfen Motherholme or some other postphysical sentient having fun at our expense. Even Inigo himself.”

“It’s not Inigo. I know that. I know the feel of his dreams; we all do. This is something different. I was the one who was drawn to those first few fragments, remember. I realized what they were. There is a Second Dreamer.”

“Well, now that you are Conservator, you can authorize a more detailed monitoring of the gaiafield’s confluence nests, track down the origin that way.”

“Is that possible? I thought the gaiafield was beyond our direct influence.”

“The dream masters claim they can do this, yes. Certain modifications can be made to the nests. It won’t be cheap.”

Ethan sighed. The conclave had been mentally exhausting, and that had been just the beginning. “So many things. All at once.”

“I’ll help you. You know that.”

“I do. And I thank you, my friend. One day we’ll stand in the real Makkathran. One day we will make our lives perfect.”

“Soon.”

“For Ozzie’s sake, I hope so. Now, ask Marius in, please.” Ethan stood courteously to receive his guest. That it should be the ANA faction representative he saw first was a telling point. He did not relish the way he and Phelim had relied on Marius during his campaign to be elected Conservator. In an ideal universe they would have needed no outside aid, certainly not one with so many potentially worrying strings attached. Not that there was ever any suggestion of a quid pro quo from Marius. None of the factions inside the near-postphysical intelligence of Earth’s Advanced Neural Activity system would ever be so blunt.

The representative smiled courteously as he was shown in. Of average height, he had a round face with sharp green eyes emphasized by wide irises. His thick auburn hair was flecked with gold, no doubt the outcome of some Advancer ancestor’s vanity. There was nothing to indicate his Higher functions. Ethan was using his internal enrichments to run a passive scan, and if any of the representative’s field functions were active, they were too sophisticated to perceive. He wouldn’t be surprised by that; Marius would be enriched with the most advanced biononics in existence. The representative’s long black toga suit generated its own surface haze, which flowed about him like a slim layer of mist, the faintest tendrils slithering behind him as he walked.

“Your Eminence,” Marius said, and bowed formally. “My most sincere congratulations on your election.”

Ethan smiled. It was all he could do not to shudder. Every deep-honed primitive instinct he possessed had picked up on how dangerous the representative was. “Thank you.”

“I’m here to assure you we will continue our support of your goals.”

“So you’re not concerned about the media’s reaction to my announcement—that our Pilgrimage is going to trigger the end of the galaxy?” What he desperately wanted to ask was: Who is we? But there were so many factions inside ANA constantly making and breaking alliances that it was virtually a null question. It was enough that the faction Marius represented wanted the Pilgrimage to go ahead. Ethan no longer cared that their reasons were probably the antithesis of his own or whether they regarded him as a simple political tool, not that he would ever know. Pilgrimage was what mattered, delivering the faithful to their promised universe—all that mattered, in fact. He did not care if he assisted someone else’s political goal as long as it did not interfere with his own.

“Of course not.” Marius grinned as if they were sharing a private joke about how stupid the rest of humanity was compared with themselves. “If that was the case, then those already in the Void would have triggered that event.”

“People need to be educated. I would appreciate your help with that.”

“We will do what we can, of course. However, we are both working against a considerable amount of mental inertia, not to mention prejudice.”

“I am very conscious of that. The Pilgrimage will polarize opinion across the Greater Commonwealth.”

“Not just that of humans. There are a number of species who are showing an interest in this development.”

“The Ocisen Empire.” Ethan spit it out with as much contempt as possible.

“Not to be entirely underestimated,” Marius said. It wasn’t quite chiding.

“The only ones I concern myself with are the Raiel. They have publicly stated their opposition to anyone trying to enter the Void.”

“Which is of course where our assistance will be most beneficial to you. Our original offer still stands; we will supply ultradrives for your Pilgrimage ships.”

Ethan, a scholar of ancient history, guessed this was what the old religious icon Adam had felt when offered the apple. “And in return?”

“The status quo which currently reigns in the Greater Commonwealth will be over.”

“And that benefits you how?”

“Species survival. Evolution requires progression or extinction.”

“I thought you would be aiming for transcendence,” Phelim said flatly.

Marius did not look in his direction; his eyes remained fixed on Ethan. “And that isn’t evolution?”

“It’s a very drastic evolution,” Ethan said.

“Not unlike your hopes of Pilgrimage.”

“So why not join us?”

Marius answered with a mirthless smile. “Join us, Conservator.”

Ethan sighed. “We’ve dreamed what awaits us.”

“Ah, so it boils down to the old human problem. Risk the unknown or go with the comfortable.”

“I think the phrase you want is ‘better the devil you know.’ ”

“Whatever. Your Eminence, we still offer you the ultradrive.”

“Which no one has ever really seen. You just hint at it.”

“ANA tends to be somewhat protective toward its advanced technologies. However, I assure you it is real. Ultradrive is at least equal to the drive used by the Raiel, if not superior.”

Ethan tried not to smile at the arrogance.

“Oh, I assure you, Conservator,” Marius said. “ANA does not make that boast lightly.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t. So when can you supply them?”

“When your Pilgrimage ships are ready, the drives will be here.”

“And the rest of ANA—the factions which don’t agree with you—they’ll just stand by and quietly let you hand over this supertechnology?”

“Effectively, yes. Do not concern yourself with our internal debates.”

“Very well, I accept your most generous offer. Please don’t be offended, but we will also be building our own more mundane drive units for the ships just in case.”

“We expected nothing else.” Marius bowed again and left the room.

Phelim let out a soft whistle of relief. “So that’s it; we’re just a trigger factor in their political wars.”

Ethan tried to sound blasé. “If it gets us what we want, I can live with it.”

“I think you are wise not to rely on them exclusively. We must include our own drives in the construction program.”

“Yes. The design teams have worked on that premise from the beginning.” His secondary routines started to pull files from the storage lacunae in his macrocellular clusters. “In the meantime, let us begin with some simple appointments, shall we?”

Aaron walked across the red marble bridge that arched over Sisterhood Canal, which linked Golden Park with the Low Moat district. It contained a strip of simple paddock land that had no city buildings, only stockades for commercial animals and a couple of archaic markets. He strode along the meandering paths illuminated by small oil lanterns hanging from posts and on into the Ogden district. This was also grassland, but it contained the majority of the city’s wooden-built stables where the aristocracy kept their horses and carriages. It was where the main city gate had been cut into the wall.

The gates were open wide when he went through, mingling with little groups of stragglers heading back to the urban expanse outside. Makkathran2 was surrounded by a two-mile-wide strip of parkland separating it from the vast modern metropolis that had sprung up around it over the last two centuries. Greater Makkathran2 now sprawled over four hundred square miles, an urban grid that contained sixteen million people, ninety-nine percent of whom were devout Living Dream followers. It was now the capital of Ellezelin, taking over from the original capital city of Riasi after the 3379 election had returned a Living Dream majority to the planetary senate.

There was no powered transport across the park: no ground taxis or underground train or even pedwalk strips. Of course, no capsule was allowed into Makkathran2’s airspace. Inigo’s thinking had been simple enough: The faithful would never mind walking the distance; that was what everyone did on Querencia. He wanted authenticity to be the governing factor in his movement’s citadel. Riding across the park was permissible; Querencia had horses. Aaron smiled at that notion as he set off past the gates. Then an elusive memory flickered like a dying hologram. There was a time when he had clung to the neck of some giant horse as they galloped across an undulating terrain. The movement was powerful and rhythmic yet strangely leisurely. It was as if the horse were gliding rather than galloping, bounding forward. He knew exactly how to flow with it, grinning wildly as they raced onward, air blasting against his face, hair wild. An astonishingly deep sapphire sky was bright and warm above. The horse had a small, tough-looking horn at the top of its forehead, tipped with the traditional black metal spike.

Aaron grunted dismissively. It must have been some sensory immersion drama he had accessed on the unisphere. Not real.

The midpoint of the park was a uniform ridge. When Aaron reached the crest, it was as though he were stepping across a rift in time. Behind him the quaintly archaic profile of Makkathran2 bathed in its alien orange glow; in front were the modernistic block towers and neat district grids, producing a multicolored haze that stretched over the horizon. Regrav capsules slipped effortlessly through the air above it in strictly maintained traffic streams, long horizontal bands of fast motion winding up at cycloidal junctions that knitted the city together in a pulsing kinetic dance. In the southeastern sky he could see the brighter lights of starships as they slipped in and out of the atmosphere far above the spaceport. A never-ending procession of big cargo craft provided the city with economic bonds to planets outside the reach of the official Free Market Zone wormholes.

When he reached the outer rim of the park, he told his u-shadow to call a taxi. A glossy jade-colored regrav capsule dropped silently out of the traffic swarm above and dilated its door. Aaron settled on the front bench, where he had a good view through the one-way fuselage.

“Hotel Buckingham.”

He frowned as the capsule dived back up into the broad stream circling around the dark expanse of park. Had that instruction come from him or his u-shadow?

At the first junction they whipped around and headed deeper into the urban grid. The tree-lined boulevards a regulation hundred meters below actually had a few ground cars driving along the concrete. People rode horses among them. Bicycles were popular. He shook his head in bemusement.

The Hotel Buckingham was a thirty-story pentagon ribbed with balconies, sharp pinnacles soaring up out of each corner. It glowed a lambent pearl-white except for its hundreds of windows, which were black recesses. The roof was a small strip of lush jungle. Tiny lights glimmered among the foliage as patrons dined and danced in the open air.

Aaron’s taxi dropped him at the arrivals pad in the center. He had a credit coin in his pocket that activated to his DNA and paid for the ride. There was a credit code loaded in a macrocellular storage lacuna that he could have used, but the coin made the ride harder to trace. Not impossible by any means, just out of reach of the ordinary citizen. As the taxi took off, he glanced up at the tall monochromatic walls fencing him in, feeling unnervingly exposed.

“Am I registered here?” he asked his u-shadow.

“Yes. Room 3088. A penthouse suite.”

“I see.” He turned and looked directly at the penthouse’s balcony. He’d known its location automatically. “And can I afford that?”

“Yes. The penthouse costs fifteen hundred Ellezelin pounds per night. Your credit coin has a limit of five million Ellezelin pounds a month.”

“A month?”

“Yes.”

“Paid by whom?”

“The coin is supported by a Central Augusta Bank account. The account details are secure.”

“And my personal credit code?”

“The same.”

Aaron walked into the lobby. “Nice to be rich,” he told himself.

The penthouse had five rooms and a small private swimming pool. As soon as Aaron walked into the main lounge, he checked himself out in the mirror. He had a face older than the norm, approaching thirty, possessing short black hair and, oddly, eyes with a hint of purple in their gray irises. Slightly Oriental features, but with skin that was rough and a dark stubble shadow.

Yep, that’s me.

The instinctive response was reassuring but still did not give any clues to his identity.

He settled into a broad armchair that faced an external window and turned down the opacity to stare out across the nighttime city toward the invisible heart Inigo had built. There was a lot of information in those mock-alien structures that would help him find his quarry. It was not the kind of data stored in electronic files; if it were that easy, Inigo would have been found by now. No, the information he needed was personal; which brought some unique access problems for someone like him, an unbeliever.

He ordered room service. The hotel was pretentious enough to employ human chefs. When the food arrived, he could appreciate the subtleties of its preparation; there was a definite difference from culinary unit produce. He sat in the big chair, watching the city as he ate. Any route to the senior Clerics and Councillors would not be easy, he realized. But then, this Pilgrimage had presented him with a unique opportunity. If they were going to fly into the Void, they would need ships. That gave him an easy enough cover. It left just the problem of who to try to cultivate.

His u-shadow produced an extensive list of senior Clerics, providing him with gossip about who was allied with Ethan and who, post-election, was going to be scrubbing Council toilets for the next few decades.

It took him half the night, but the name was there. It was even featured on the city news web as Ethan began reorganizing Living Dream’s hierarchy to suit his own policy. Not obvious, but it had a lot of potential: Corrie-Lyn.

The courier case arrived at Troblum’s apartment an hour before he was due to make his presentation to the navy review panel. He wrapped a cloak around himself and walked out to the glass elevator in the lobby as the emerald fabric adjusted itself to his bulk. Ancient mechanical systems whirred and clanked as the elevator slid smoothly downward. They were not totally original, of course; technically, the whole building dated back over 1,350 years. During that time there had been a lot of refurbishment and restoration work. Then, five hundred years ago, a stabilizer field generator had been installed, which maintained the molecular bonds inside all the antique bricks, girders, and composite sheets comprising the main body of the building. Essentially, as long as there was power for the generator, entropy was held at arm’s length.

Troblum had managed to acquire custodianship over a hundred years earlier, following a somewhat obsessional twenty-seven-year campaign. Nobody owned property on Arevalo anymore; it was a Higher world, part of the Central Commonwealth—back when the building had been put up, they had called it phase one space. Persuading the previous tenants to leave had taken all his energy and mass allocation for years, as well as his meager social skills. He had used mediator Councillors, lawyers, and historical restitution experts, even launching an appeal against the Daroca City Council, which managed the stabilizer generator. During the campaign he had acquired an unexpected ally that probably had helped swing the whole thing in his favor. Whatever the means, the outcome was that he now had undisputed occupancy rights for the whole building. No one else lived in it, and very few had been invited in.

The elevator stopped at the entrance hall. Troblum walked past the empty concierge desk to the tall door made of stained glass. Outside, the courier case was hovering a meter and a half above the pavement, a dull metal box with transport certificates glowing pink on one end, shielded against field scans. His u-shadow confirmed the contents and directed it into the hall, where it landed on his cart. The base opened and deposited the package: a fat silvered cylinder half a meter long. Troblum kept the door open until the case departed, then closed it. Privacy shielding came up around the entrance hall, and he walked back into the elevator. The cart followed obediently.

Originally, the building had been a factory, and each of the five floors had a very tall ceiling. Then, as was the way of things in those early days of the Commonwealth, the city had expanded and prospered, pushing industry out of the old center. The factory had been converted into high-class apartments. One of the two penthouse loft apartments that took up the entire fifth floor had been purchased by the Halgarth Dynasty as part of its massive property portfolio on Arevalo. The other apartments had all been restored to a reasonable approximation of their 2380 layout and decor, but Troblum had concentrated his formidable energies on the Halgarth one, where he now lived.

In order to get it as near perfect as possible he had extracted both architect and interior designer plans from the city’s deep archive. Those plans had been complemented by some equally ancient visual recordings from the Michelangelo news show of that era. But his main source of detail had been the forensic scans from the Serious Crimes Directorate that he had obtained directly from ANA. After combining the data, he had spent five years painstakingly recrafting the extravagant vintage decor, the end result of which had given him three en suite bedrooms and a large open-plan lounge that was separated from a kitchen section by a marble-topped breakfast bar. A window wall had a balcony on the other side, providing a grand view out across the Caspe River.

When the City Council’s historical maintenance officer made her final review of the project, she was delighted with the outcome, but the reason for Troblum’s dedication completely eluded her. He had expected nothing else; her field was the building itself. What had gone on inside at the time of the Starflyer War was his area of expertise. He would never use the word “obsession,” but that whole episode had become a lot more than a hobby to him. He was determined that one day he would publish the definitive history of the war.

The penthouse door opened for him. Solidos of the three girls were sitting on the blue leather settee by the window wall. Catriona Saleeb was dressed in a red and gold robe, its belt tied loosely so that her silk underwear was visible. Long curly black hair tumbled chaotically over her shoulders as she tossed her head. She was the smallest of the three, the solido’s animation software holding her image as that of a bubbly twenty-one-year-old, carefree and eager. Leaning up against her, sipping tea from a big cup, was Trisha Marina Halgarth. Her dark heart-shaped face had small dark green butterfly wing OC-tattoos flowing back from each hazel eye, the antique technology undulating slowly in response to each facial motion. Sitting just apart from the other two was Isabella Halgarth. She was a tall blonde, with long straight hair gathered into a single tail. The fluffy white sweater she wore was a great deal more tantalizing that it strictly ought to have been, riding high above her midriff, and her jeans were little more than an outer layer of blue skin running down long athletic legs. Her face had high cheekbones, giving her an aristocratic appearance that was backed up with an attitude of cool disdain. While her two friends called out eager hellos to Troblum, she merely acknowledged him with a simple nod.

With a regretful sigh, Troblum told his u-shadow to isolate the girls. They had been his companions for fifty years, and he enjoyed their company a great deal more than that of any real human. And they helped anchor him in the era he so loved. Unfortunately, he could not afford distractions right now, however delightful. It had taken him decades to refine the animation programs and bestow a valid I-sentient personality on each solido. The three of them had shared the apartment during the Starflyer War, becoming involved in a famous disinformation sting run by the Starflyer. Isabella herself had been one of the alien’s most effective agents inside the Commonwealth, seducing high-ranking politicians and officials and subtly manipulating them. For a while after the war, to be “Isabella-ed” was a Commonwealth-wide phrase meaning to be screwed over, but that infamy had faded eventually. Even among people who routinely lived for over five hundred years, events lost their potency and relevance. Today the Starflyer War was simply one of those formative incidents at the start of the Commonwealth, like Ozzie and Nigel, the Hive, the Endeavor’s circumnavigation, and cracking the Planters’ nanotech. When he was younger, Troblum certainly had not been interested; then, purely by chance, he had discovered that he was descended from someone called Mark Vernon who apparently had played a vital role in the war. He had started to research his ancestor casually, wanting nothing more than a few details, to learn a little chunk of family background. That was a hundred eighty years ago, and he was as fascinated by the whole Starflyer War now as he had been when he had opened those first files on the period.

The girls turned away from Troblum and the cart that had followed him in, chattering brightly among themselves. He looked down at the cylinder as it turned transparent. Inside, it contained a strut of metal a hundred fifteen centimeters long; at one end there was a node of plastic where the frayed ends of fiber-optic cable stuck out like a straggly tail. The surface was tarnished and pocked; it was also kinked in the middle, as if something had struck it. Troblum unlocked the end of the cylinder, ignoring the hiss of gas as the protective argon spilled out. There was nothing he could do to stop his hands from trembling as he slid the strut out, nor was there anything to be done about his throat muscles tightening. Then he was holding the strut up, actually witnessing the texture of its worn surface against his skin. He smiled down on it the way a Natural man would regard his newborn child. Subcutaneous sensors enriching his fingers combined with his Higher field scan function to run a detailed analysis. The strut was an aluminium-titanium alloy with a specific hydrocarbon chain reinforcement; it was also 2,400 years old. He was holding in his own hands a piece of the Marie Celeste, the Starflyer’s ship.

After a long moment he put the strut back into the cylinder and ran the atmospheric purge, resealing it in argon. He would never hold it physically again; it was too precious for that. It would go into the other apartment, where he kept his collection of memorabilia. A small stabilizer field generator would maintain its molecular structure down the centuries, as was fitting.

Troblum acknowledged the authenticity of the strut and authorized his quasi-legal bank account on Wessex to pay the final instalment to the black-market supplier on Far Away who had acquired the item for him. It wasn’t that having cash funds was illegal for a Higher. Higher culture was based on the tenet of individuals being mature and intelligent enough to accept responsibility for themselves and to act within the agreed parameters of societal norms. “I am government” was the culture’s fundamental political kernel. However, quiet methods of converting a Higher citizen’s energy and mass allocation (EMA), the so-called Central Dollar, to actual hard cash acceptable on the External worlds were well established for those who felt they needed such an option. EMA didn’t qualify as money in the traditional sense; it was simply a way of regulating Higher citizen activity, preventing excessive or unreasonable demands being placed on communal resources, of whatever nature, by an individual.

As the cart headed back out of the apartment, Troblum hurried to his bedroom. He barely had time to shower and put on a toga suit before he had to leave. The glass elevator took him down to the basement garage where his regrav capsule was parked. It was an old model, dating back two centuries, a worn chrome-purple in color and longer than modern versions, with the forward bodywork stretching out like the nose cone of some External world aircraft. He clambered in, taking up over half of a front bench that was designed to hold three people. The capsule glided out of the garage and tipped up to join the traffic stream overhead.

The center of Daroca was a pleasing blend of modern structures with their smooth pinnacle geometries, pretty or substantial historical buildings like Troblum’s, and the original ample mosaic of parkland that the founding council had laid out. Airborne traffic streams broadly followed the pattern of ancient thoroughfares. Troblum’s capsule flew northward under the planet’s bronze sunlight, heading out over the newer districts where the buildings were spaced farther apart and big individual houses were in the majority.

Low in the western sky he could just make out the bright star that was Air. It was the project that had attracted him to Arevalo in the first place: an attempt to construct an artificial space habitat the size of a gas giant planet. After two centuries of effort the project governors had built nearly eighty percent of the spherical geodesic lattice that would act as both the conductor and the generator of a single encapsulating force field. Once it was powered up, siphoning energy directly from the star via a zero-width wormhole, the interior would be filled with a standard oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere harvested from the system’s outer moons and gas giants. After that, various biological components, both animal and botanical, would be introduced, floating around inside to establish a biosphere life cycle. The end result, a zero-G environment with a diameter greater than that of Saturn, would give people the ultimate freedom to fly free, adding an extraordinary new dimension to the whole human experience.

Critics, of whom there were many, claimed it was a poor and pointless copy of the Silfen Motherholme that Ozzie had discovered, an entire star wrapped by a breathable atmosphere. Proponents argued that it was just a stepping-stone, an important, inspiring testament that would expand the ability and outlook of Higher culture. Their rationale won them a hard-fought Central worlds referendum to obtain the EMAs they needed to complete the project.

Troblum, who was first and foremost a physicist, had been attracted to Air by just that rationalization. He had spent a constructive seventy years working to translate theoretical concepts into physical reality, helping to build the force field generators that studded the geodesic lattice. At that point his preoccupation with the Starflyer War had taken over, and he had gained the attention of people running an altogether more interesting construction project. They made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. It often comforted him how that episode of his life mirrored one from the life of his illustrious ancestor, Mark.

His capsule descended into the compound of the Commonwealth Navy office. It consisted of a spaceport field lined by two rows of big hangars and maintenance bays. Arevalo was primarily a base for the navy’s exploration division. The starships sitting on the field were either long-range research vessels or more standard passenger craft; the three matte-black towers looming along the northern perimeter housed the astrophysics laboratories and scientific crew training facilities. Troblum’s capsule drifted through the splayed arches on which the main tower stood and landed directly underneath it. He walked over to the base of the nearest arch column, toga suit surrounding him in a garish ultraviolet aurora. There were not many people about: a few officers on their way to regrav capsules. His appearance drew glances; for a Higher to be so big was very unusual. Biononics usually kept a body trim and healthy; it was their primary function. There were a few cases in which a slightly unusual biochemical makeup presented operational difficulties for biononics, but that normally was remedied by a small chromosome modification. Troblum refused to consider it. He was what he was and did not see the need to apologize for it to anyone in any fashion.

Even the short distance from the capsule to the column made his heart race. He was sweating when he went into the empty vestibule at the base of the column. Deep sensors scanned him, and he put his hand on a tester globe, allowing the security system to confirm his DNA. One of the elevators opened. It descended for an unnerving amount of time.

The heavily shielded conference room reserved for his presentation was unremarkable: an oval chamber with an oval rockwood table in the middle, ten pearl-white shaper chairs with high backs arranged around it. Troblum took the one opposite the door and started running checks with the navy office net to make sure all the files he needed were loaded properly.

Four navy officers walked in, three of them in identical toga suits whose ebony surface effect rippled in subdued patterns. Their seniority was evidenced only by small red dots glowing on their shoulders. He recognized all of them without having to reference their u-shadows: Mykala, a third-level captain and the local faster-than-light (FTL) drive bureau director; Eoin, a captain who specialized in alien activities; and Yehudi, the Arevalo office commander. Accompanying them was First Admiral Kazimir Burnelli. Troblum had not been expecting him; the shock of seeing the commander of the Commonwealth Navy in person made him stand up quickly. It wasn’t just his position that was fascinating. The Admiral was the child of two very important figures from the Starflyer War and famous for a man his age: 1,206 years old, seven or eight centuries past the time most Highers downloaded themselves into ANA.

The Admiral wore a black uniform of stylishly cut old-fashioned cloth. It suited him perfectly, emphasizing broad shoulders and a lean torso, the classic authority figure. He was tall with olive skin and a handsome face. Troblum recognized some of his father’s characteristics—the blunt jaw and jet-black hair—but his mother’s finer features were there also: a nose that was almost dainty and pale friendly eyes.

“Admiral!” Troblum exclaimed.

“Pleased to meet you.” Kazimir Burnelli extended a hand.

It took Troblum a moment before he realized what to do and put out his own hand to shake, suddenly very pleased that his toga suit had a cooling web and that he no longer was sweating. The social formality file his u-shadow had pushed into his exovision was withdrawn abruptly.

“I’ll be representing ANA: Governance for this presentation,” Kazimir said. Troblum had guessed as much. Kazimir Burnelli was the essential human link in the chain between ANA: Governance and the ships of the navy deterrent fleet, a position of trust and responsibility he had held for over eight hundred years. Something in the way he carried himself was indicative of all those centuries he had lived, an aura of weariness that anyone in his presence couldn’t help being aware of.

There were so many things Troblum was desperate to ask, starting with: Have you stayed in your body so long because your father’s life was so short? And possibly: Can you get me access to your grandfather? But instead he meekly said: “Thank you for coming, Admiral.” Another privacy shield came on around the chamber, and the net confirmed that they were grade-one secure.

“So what have you got for us?” the Admiral asked.

“A theory on the Dyson Pair generators,” Troblum said. He activated the chamber’s web node so that the others could share the data and projections in his files and began to explain.

The Dyson Pair were stars three light-years apart that were confined within giant force fields. The barriers had been established in AD1200 by the Anomine for good reason: to contain the Prime aliens, who already had spread from their homeworld around Alpha to Beta and were pathologically hostile to all biological life except their own. The Starflyer, a Prime that had escaped imprisonment, had manipulated the Commonwealth into opening the force field around Dyson Alpha, resulting in a war that killed in excess of fifty million humans. The navy had kept an unbroken watch on the stars ever since.

Centuries later, when the Raiel invited the Commonwealth to join the Void observation project at Centurion Station, human scientists had been startled by the similarity between the planet-sized defense systems deployed throughout the Wall stars and the generators that produced the Dyson Pair force fields.

Until now, Troblum said, everyone assumed the Anomine had a technology base equal to that of the Raiel. He disputed that. His analysis of the Dyson Pair generators showed they were almost identical in concept to the Centurion Station DF machines.

“Which proves the point, surely?” Yehudi said.

“Quite the opposite,” Troblum replied smoothly.

The Anomine homeworld had been visited several times by the navy’s exploration division. As a species they had divided two millennia earlier. The most technologically advanced group had elevated to postphysical sentience, and the remainder had retroevolved to a simple pastoral culture. Although they had developed wormholes and sent exploration ships ranging across the galaxy, they had settled only a dozen or so nearby star systems, none of which had massive astroengineering facilities. The remaining pastoral societies had no knowledge of the Dyson Pair generators, and the postphysicals had long since withdrawn from contact with their distant cousins. An extensive search of the sector by successive navy ships had failed to locate the assembly structure for the Dyson Pair generators. Until now human astro-archaeologists had assumed that the abandoned machinery had decayed into the vacuum or was simply lost.

Given the colossal scale involved, Troblum said, neither was truly believable. First, however sophisticated they were, it would have taken the Anomine at least a century to build such a generator from scratch, let alone two of them. Look how long it was taking Highers to construct Air, and that was with nearly unlimited EMAs. Second, the generators had been needed quickly. The Prime aliens of Dyson Alpha already were building slower-than-light starships, which was why the Anomine sealed them in. If there had been a century gap while the Anomine beavered away at construction, the Primes would have expanded out to every star within a fifty-light-year radius before the generators were finished.

“The obvious conclusion,” Troblum said, “is that the Anomine simply appropriated existing Raiel systems from the Wall. All they would need for that would be a scaled-up wormhole generator to transport them to the Dyson Pair, and we know they already possessed the basic technology. What I would like is for the navy to start a detailed search of interstellar space around the Dyson Pair. The Anomine wormhole drive or drives could conceivably still be there, especially if it was a ‘one shot’ device.” He gave the Admiral an expectant look.

Kazimir Burnelli paused as the last of Troblum’s files closed. “The Primes built the largest wormhole ever known in order to invade the Commonwealth across five hundred light-years,” he said.

“It was called Hell’s Gateway,” Troblum said automatically.

“You do know your history. Good. Then you should also know it was only a couple of kilometers in diameter. Hardly enough to transport the barrier generators.”

“Yes, but I’m talking about a completely new manifestation of wormhole drive technology. A wormhole that doesn’t need a correspondingly large generator; you simply project the exotic matter effect to the size required.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“It can be achieved easily within our understanding of wormhole theory, Admiral.”

“Easily?” Kazimir Burnelli turned to Mykala. “Captain?”

“I suppose it may be possible,” Mykala said. “I’d need to reexamine exotic matter theory before I could say one way or another.”

“I’m already working on a method,” Troblum blurted.

“Any success?” Mykala queried.

Troblum suspected she was being derisive but lacked the skill to interpret her tone. “I’m progressing, yes. There’s certainly no theoretical block to diameter. It’s all a matter of the amount of energy available.”

“To ship a Dyson barrier generator halfway across the galaxy you’d need a nova,” Mykala said.

Now Troblum was sure she was mocking him. “It needs nothing like that much energy,” he said. “In any case, if they built the generators on or near their home star, they would still have needed a transport system, wouldn’t they? If they built them in situ, which is very doubtful, where is the construction site? We’d have found something that big by now. Those generators were moved from wherever the Raiel had originally installed them.”

“Unless it was produced by their postphysicals,” she said. “Who knows what abilities they have or had.”

“Sorry, I’m going to have to go with Troblum on that one,” Eoin said. “We know the Anomine didn’t elevate to postphysical status until after the Dyson barriers were established approximately a hundred and fifty years later.”

“Exactly,” Troblum said triumphantly. “They had to be using a level of technology effectively equal to ours. Somewhere out there in interstellar space is an abandoned drive system capable of moving objects the size of planets. We need to find it, Admiral. I’ve already compiled a search methodology using current navy exploration craft which I’d like—”

“Let me just stop you there,” Kazimir Burnelli said. “Troblum, what you’ve given us so far is a very convincing hypothesis. So much so that I’m going to immediately forward your data to a senior department review committee. If they give me a positive verdict, you and I will discuss the navy’s investigation options. And believe me, for this day and age, that’s being fast-tracked, okay?”

“But you can sanction the exploration division to begin the search right away; you have that authority.”

“I do, yes, but I don’t exercise it without a good reason. What you’ve shown us is more than sufficient to start a serious appraisal. We will follow due process. Then, if you’re right—”

“Of course I’m fucking right,” Troblum snapped. He knew that he was acting inappropriately, but his goal was so close. He had assumed that the Admiral’s unexpected appearance that day meant the search could begin right away. “I don’t have the EMAs for that many starships myself; that’s why the navy has to be involved.”

“There would never be an opportunity for an individual to perform a search,” Kazimir replied lightly. “Space around the Dyson Pair remains restricted. This is a navy project.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Troblum mumbled. “I understand.” Which he did. But that didn’t quell his resentment at the bureaucracy involved.

“I notice you haven’t included your results on this ‘one shot’ wormhole drive idea,” Mykala said. “That’s a big hole in the proposal.”

“It’s at an early stage,” Troblum said, which was not quite true. He had held back on his project precisely because he was so close to success. It was going to be the clinching argument if the presentation did not go well, which in a way it hadn’t. But … “I hope to be giving you some positive results soon.”

“That I will be very interested in,” Kazimir said, finally producing a smile that lifted centuries away from him. “Thank you for bringing this to us. And I do genuinely appreciate the effort involved.”

“It’s what I do,” Troblum said gruffly. He kept silent as the shielding switched off and the others left the chamber. What he wanted to shout after the Admiral was: Your mother made her decisions without any committee to hold her hand, and as for what your grandfather would say about getting a consensus … Instead he let out a disgruntled breath as he sealed the files back into his storage lacuna. Meeting an idol was always such a risk; so few of them ever lived up to their own legends.

The Delivery Man was woken by his youngest daughter just as a chilly dawn light was rising outside. Little Rosa once again had decided that five hours of sleep was quite sufficient for her; now she was sitting up in her crib wailing for attention. And milk. Beside him, Lizzie was just starting to stir out of a deep sleep. Before she could wake, he swung himself out of bed and hurried along the landing to the nursery. If he wasn’t quick enough, Tilly and Elsie would be woken up, and then nobody would get any peace.

The pediatric housebot floated through the nursery door after him, a simple ovoid just over a meter high. It extruded Rosa’s milk bulb through its neutral gray skin. Both he and his wife, Lizzie, hated the idea of a machine, even one as sophisticated as the housebot, caring for the child, so he settled her on his lap in the big chair at the side of the crib and started feeding her out of the bulb. Rosa smiled adoringly around the nozzle and squirmed deeper into his embrace. The housebot extended a hose that attached to the outlet patch on her sleepsuit’s diaper and siphoned away the night’s wee. Rosa waved contentedly at the housebot as it glided out of the nursery.

“Goobi,” she cooed, and resumed drinking.

“Goodbye,” the Delivery Man corrected her. At seventeen months, Rosa had a vocabulary that was just starting to develop. The biononic organelles in her cells were effectively inactive other than reproducing themselves to supplement her new cells as she grew. Extensive research had shown that it was best for a Higher-born human to follow nature’s original development schedule until about puberty. After that the biononics could be used as intended; one of their functions was to modify the body however the host wanted. He still wasn’t sure that was such a good idea; handing teenagers unrestrained power over their own physiology frequently led to serious self-inflicted blunders. He always remembered the time when he was fourteen and had a terrible crush on a seventeen-year-old girl. He had tried to “improve” his genitals. It had taken five hugely embarrassing trips to a biononic procedures doctor to sort out the painful abnormal growths.

When Rosa finished, he carried her downstairs. He and Lizzie lived in a classic Georgian town house in London’s Holland Park district. It had been restored three hundred years before, using modern techniques to preserve as much of the old fabric as possible without having to resort to stabilizer fields. Lizzie had overseen the interior when they moved in, blending a tasteful variety of furniture and utility systems that dated from the mid-twentieth century right up to the twenty-seventh, when ANA’s replication facilities effectively halted human design on Earth. Two spacious subbasements had been added, giving them an indoor swimming pool and a health spa, along with the tanks and ancillary systems that supplied the culinary cabinet and household replicator.

He took Rosa into the large iron-framed conservatory where her toys were stored in big wicker baskets. February had produced its usual icy morning outside, sending broad patterns of frost worming up the outside of the glass. For now, the only true splash of color to enjoy in the garden came from the winter-flowering cherries on the curving bank behind the frozen fishpond.

When Lizzie came downstairs an hour later, she found him and Rosa playing with glow blocks on the conservatory’s heated flagstone floor. Tilly, who was seven, and Elsie, their five-year-old, followed their mother in and shouted happily at their younger sister, who ran over to them with outstretched arms, babbling in her own incomprehensible yet excited language. The three girls started to build a tower out of the blocks; the higher they stacked, the faster the colors swirled.

He gave Lizzie a quick kiss and ordered the culinary cabinet to produce some breakfast. Lizzie sat at the circular wooden table in the kitchen. An antiquities and culture specialist, she enjoyed the old-fashioned notion of a room specifically for cooking. Even though there was no need for it, she’d had a hefty iron range cooker installed when they had moved in ten years earlier. During winter its cozy warmth turned the kitchen into the house’s engine room, and they always gathered there as a family. Sometimes she even used the range to cook things that she and the girls made out of ingredients produced by the culinary cabinet. Tilly’s birthday cake had been the last.

“Swimming for Tilly this morning,” Lizzie said as she sipped at a big china cup of tea that a housebot delivered to her.

“Again?” he asked.

“She’s getting a lot more confident. It’s their new teacher. He’s very good.”

“Good.” The Delivery Man picked up the croissant on his plate and started tearing it open. “Girls,” he shouted. “Come and sit down, please. Bring Rosa.”

“She doesn’t want to come,” Elsie shouted back immediately.

“Don’t make me come and get you.” He avoided looking at Lizzie. “I’m going to be away for a few days.”

“Anything interesting?”

“There’s been allegations that some companies on Oronsay have gotten hold of level-three replicator tech,” he said. “I’ll need to run tests on their products.” His current vocation was to monitor the spread of Higher technology across the External worlds. It was a process the Externals got very sensitive about, with hard-line Protectorate politicians citing it as the first act of cultural colonization, deserving retribution. However, industrialists on the External worlds constantly were seeking to acquire ever-more-sophisticated manufacturing systems to reduce their costs. Radical Highers were equally keen to supply it to them, seeing it precisely as that first important stage for a planet converting to Higher culture. What he had to do on ANA: Governance’s behalf was determine the intent behind supplying replicator systems. If Radical Highers were supporting the companies, he would disable the systems subtly and collapse the operation. His main problem was making an objective decision; Higher technology inevitably crept out from the Central worlds in the same way that the External worlds were always settling new planets around the edge of their domain. The boundary between Central and External was ambiguous, to say the least, with some External worlds openly welcoming the shift to Higher status. Location was always a huge factor in his decision. Oronsay was over a hundred light-years out from the Central worlds, which effectively negated the chance that this was simple technology seepage. If there were replicators there, it was either Radicals or a very greedy company pushing them.

Lizzie’s eyebrows lifted. “Really? What sort of products?”

“Starship components.”

“Well, that should come in handy out there right now; very profitable, I imagine.”

He appreciated her guarded amusement. The last few days had seen a rush of starship company officials to Ellezelin, eager to do deals with the new Cleric Conservator.

The girls scuttled in and settled at the table; Rosa clambered onto the twenty-fifth-century suede mushroom that was her tiny-tot seat. It morphed around her, gripping firmly enough to prevent her from falling out, and expanded upward to bring her level with the tabletop. She clapped her hands delightedly to be up with her family.

Elsie solemnly slid a bowl of honey pops across, which Rosa grabbed. “Don’t spill it today,” Elsie ordered imperiously.

Rosa just gurgled happily at her sister.

“Daddy, will you teleport us to school?” Tilly asked, her voice high and pleading.

“You know I’m not going to,” he told her. “Don’t ask.”

“Oh, please, Daddy, please.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Elsie chipped in. “Please t-port. I like it. Lots and lots.”

“I’m sure you do, but you’re getting on the bus. Teleport is a serious business.”

“School is serious,” Tilly claimed immediately. “You always say so.”

Lizzie was laughing quietly.

“That’s diff—” he began. “All right, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you behave yourselves while I’m gone, and only if, then I’ll teleport you to school on Thursday.”

“Yes, yes!” Tilly exclaimed. She was bouncing up and down on her chair.

“But you have to be exceptionally good. And I will find out; your mother will tell me.”

Both girls immediately directed huge smiles at Lizzie.

Half an hour later the bus slipped down out of the sky, a long turquoise regrav capsule that hovered just above the greenway outside the house where the road had been centuries before. The Delivery Man walked his daughters out to it, both of them wearing cloaks over their red blazers, the protective gray shimmer warding off the cold damp air. He checked one last time that Tilly had her swimwear, kissed them both goodbye, and stood waving as the bus rose quickly. The whole idea of riding to school together was intended to enhance the children’s sense of community, an extension of the school itself, which was little more than an organized play and activities center. Their real education would not begin until their biononics became active. But it still gave him an emotional jolt to see them vanishing into the gloomy horizon. There was only one school in London these days, south of the Thames in Dulwich Park. With a total population of barely a hundred fifty thousand, the city did not need another. Even for Highers the number of children was low, but then, Earth’s natives were notoriously reserved. The first planet to become truly Higher, it had been reducing its population steadily ever since. Right at the beginning of Higher culture, when biononics became available and ANA went online, the average citizen’s age was already the highest in the Commonwealth. The elderly downloaded, and the younger ones who were not ready for migration to a postphysical state emigrated out to the Central worlds until they chose to conclude their biological lives. The result was a small residual population with an exceptionally low birth rate.

The Delivery Man and Lizzie were a notable exception in having three kids. But then, they had registered a marriage as well and had had a ceremony in an old church with their friends witnessing the event; a Christian priest had been brought in from an External world that still had a working religion. It was what Lizzie had wanted; she adored the old traditions and rituals. Not enough to actually get pregnant, of course; the girls had all been gestated in a womb vat.

“You be careful on Oronsay,” she told him as he examined his face in the bathroom mirror. It was, he acknowledged, rather flat with a broad jaw and eyes that crinkled whenever he smiled or frowned no matter how many anti-aging techniques were applied to the surrounding skin areas, Advancer or Higher. His Advancer genes had given his wiry muddy-red hair a luxuriant growth rate that Elsie had inherited. He had modified his facial follicles with biononics so that he no longer had to apply shaving gel twice a day, but the process wasn’t perfect; every week he had to check his chin and dab gel on recalcitrant patches of five o’clock shadow. More like five o’clock puddles, Lizzie claimed.

“I always am,” he assured her. He pulled on a new toga suit and waited until it had wrapped around him. Its surface haze emerged, a dark emerald shot though with silver sparkles. Rather stylish, he felt.

Lizzie, who never wore any clothes designed later than the twenty-second century, produced a mildly disapproving look. “If it’s that far from the Central worlds, it’s going to be deliberate.”

“I know. I will watch out, I promise.” He kissed Lizzie in reassurance, trying to ignore the guilt that was staining his thoughts like a slow poison. She studied his face, apparently satisfied with his sincerity, but that only made the lie worse. He hated these times when he couldn’t tell her what he actually did.

“Missed a bit,” she announced spryly, and tapped her forefinger on the left side of his jaw.

He peered into the mirror and grunted in dismay. She was right, as always.

When he was ready, the Delivery Man stood in the lounge facing Lizzie, who held a squirming Rosa in her arms. He held a hand up to wave as he activated his field interface function. It immediately meshed with Earth’s T-sphere, and he designated his exit coordinate. His integral force field sprang up to shield his skin. The awesome, intimidating emptiness of the translation continuum engulfed him, nullifying every sense. It was this infinite microsecond that he despised. All his biononic enrichments told him he was surrounded by nothing, not even the residual quantum signature of his own universe. With his mind starved of any sensory input, time expanded excruciatingly.

Eagles Harbor flickered into reality around him. The giant station hung seventy kilometers above southern England, one of a hundred fifty identical stations that together generated the planetary T-sphere. ANA: Governance had fabricated them in the shape of mythological flying saucers three kilometers in diameter, a level of whimsy it wasn’t usually associated with.

He emerged into a cavernous reception center on the station’s outer rim. There were only a couple of other people using it, and they paid him no attention. In front of him, a vast transparent hull section rose from the floor to curve away above, allowing him to look down on the entire southern half of the country. London was almost directly underneath, clad in slowly moving pockets of fog that oozed around rolling high ground like a white slick. The last time he and Lizzie had brought the kids up there had been a clear sunny day when they’d all pressed up against the hull while Lizzie pointed out historical areas and narrated the events that made them important. She had explained that the ancient city was now back down to the same physical size it had been in the mid-eighteenth century. With the planet’s population shrinking, ANA: Governance had ruled there were simply too many buildings left to maintain. Just because they were old didn’t necessarily make them relevant. The ancient public buildings in London’s center were preserved, along with others deemed architecturally or culturally significant. But as for the sprawl of suburban housing, there were hundreds of thousands of examples of every kind from every era. Most of them were donated or sold off to various individuals and institutions across the Greater Commonwealth, and those which were left simply were erased.

The Delivery Man took a last wistful look down at the mist-draped city, feeling guilt swell to a nearly painful level. But he could never tell Lizzie what he actually did; she wanted stability for their gorgeous little family, and rightly so.

Not that there was any risk involved, he told himself as each assignment began. Really. At least, not much. And if anything ever did go wrong, his faction probably could re-life him in a new body and return him home before she grew suspicious.

He turned away from London and made his way across the reception center’s deserted floor to one of the transit tubes opposite it. It sucked him in like an old vacuum hose, propelling him toward the center of Eagles Haven, where the interstellar wormhole terminus was located. The scarcity of travelers surprised him. He had expected to find more Highers on their inward migration to ANA. Living Dream certainly was stirring things up politically among the External worlds. The Central worlds regarded the whole Pilgrimage affair with their usual disdain. Even so, their political councils were worried, as demonstrated by the number of people joining them to offer their opinion.

It was a fact that with Ethan’s ascension to Cleric Conservator, the ANA factions were going to be maneuvering frantically for advantage, trying to shape the Greater Commonwealth to their own visions. He couldn’t work out which of them was going to benefit most from the recent election; there were so many, and their internal allegiances were all so fluid, not to mention deceitful. It was an old saying that there were as many factions as there were ex-physical humans inside ANA, and he never had encountered any convincing evidence to the contrary. That resulted in groupings that ranged from those who wanted to isolate and ignore the physical humans (some antianimal extremists wanted them exterminated altogether) to those who sought to elevate every human, ANA or physical, to a transcendent state.

The Delivery Man took his assignments from a broad alliance that was fundamentally conservative, following a philosophy that was keen to see things keep running along as they were, although opinions on how that should be achieved were subject to a constant and vigorous internal debate. He did it because it was a view he shared. When he eventually downloaded, in another couple of centuries or so, that would be the faction with which he would associate himself. In the meantime he was one of its unofficial representatives to the physical Commonwealth.

The station terminus was a simple spherical chamber containing a globe fifty meters in diameter whose surface glowed with the lambent violet of Cherenkov radiation emanating from the exotic matter used to maintain the wormhole’s stability. He slipped through the bland sheet of photons and immediately was emerging from the exterior of a corresponding globe on St. Lincoln. The old industrial planet was still a major manufacturing base for the Central worlds and had maintained its status as a hub for the local wormhole network. He took a transit tube to the wormhole for Lytham, which was one of the Central worlds farthest from Earth; its wormhole terminus was secured at the main starport. Only the Central worlds were linked by a long-established wormhole network. The External worlds valued their cultural and economic independence too much to be connected to the Central worlds in such a direct fashion; with just a few exceptions travel between them was by starship.

A two-seater capsule ferried the Delivery Man out to the craft to which he’d been assigned. He glided between two long rows of pads where starships were parked. They ranged in size from sleek needle-like pleasure cruisers to hundred-meter passenger liners capable of flying commercial routes as far as a hundred light-years. There were no cargo ships; Lytham was a Higher planet and did not manufacture or import consumer items.

The Artful Dodger was parked toward the end of the row. It was a surprisingly squat chrome-purple ovoid, twenty-five meters high, standing on five tumorlike bulbs that held its wide base three meters off the concrete. The fuselage surface was smooth and featureless, with no hint of what lay underneath. It looked like a typical private hyperdrive ship belonging to some wealthy External world individual or company or to a Higher council with a diplomatic prerogative. An ungainly metal umbilical tower stood at the rear of the pad, with two slim hoses plugged into the ship’s utility port, filling the synthesis tanks with baseline chemicals.

The Delivery Man sent the capsule back to the rank in the reception building and walked underneath the starship. His u-shadow called the ship’s smartcore and confirmed his identity, a complex process of code and DNA verification, before the smartcore finally acknowledged he had the authority to take command. An airlock opened at the center of the ship’s base, a dint that distended upward into a tunnel of darkness. Gravity eased off around him and then slowly inverted, pulling him up inside. He emerged into the single midsection cabin. Inert, it was a low hemisphere of dark fabric that felt spongy to the touch. Slim ribs on the upper surface glowed a dull blue, allowing him to see. The airlock sealed below his feet. He smiled as he looked around at the blank cabin, sensing the power contained behind the bulkheads. The starship plugged into him at some animal level, circumventing all the wisdom and cool of Higher behavior. He relished the power that was available, the freedom to fly across the galaxy. This was liberation in the extreme.

How the girls would love to ride in it.

“Give me something to sit on,” he told the smartcore. “Turn the lights up and activate flight control functions.”

An acceleration couch bloomed up from the floor as the ribs brightened, revealing a complex pattern of black lines etched on the cabin walls. The Delivery Man sat down. Exoimages flipped up, showing him the ship’s status. His u-shadow cleared him for flight with the spaceport governor, and he designated a flight path to Ellezelin, two hundred fifteen light-years away. The umbilical cables withdrew into their tower.

“Let’s go,” he told the smartcore.

Compensator generators maintained level gravity inside the cabin as the Artful Dodger rose on regrav. At fifty kilometers altitude, the limit of regrav, the smartcore switched to ingrav, and the starship continued to accelerate away from the planet. The Delivery Man began to experiment with the internal layout, expanding walls and furniture out of the cabin bulkheads. The dark lines flowed and bloomed into a great variety of combinations, allowing up to six passengers to have tiny independent sleeping quarters that included a bathroom formation, but for all its malleability, the cabin was basically variations on a lounge. If you were traveling with anyone, he decided, let alone five others, you’d need to be very good friends.

A thousand kilometers above the spaceport, the Artful Dodger went FTL, vanishing inside a quantum field interstice with a photonic implosion that pulled in all the stray electromagnetic radiation within a kilometer of its fuselage. There were no differences perceptible to ordinary human senses: he might have been in an underground chamber, the gravity remaining perfectly stable. Sensors provided him with a simplified image of their course as it related to large masses back in spacetime, plotting stars and planets by the way their quantum signatures affected the intersecting fields through which they were flying. Their initial speed was a smooth fifteen light-years per hour, near the limit for hyperdrive, which the sophisticated Lytham planetary spacewatch network could track out to a couple of light-years.

The Delivery Man waited until they were three light-years beyond the network and told the smartcore to accelerate again. The Artful Dodger’s ultradrive pushed them up to a phenomenal fifty-five light-years per hour. It was enough to make the Delivery Man flinch. He had been on an ultradrive ship only twice before; there were not many of them, as ANA had not released the technology to the Central worlds. Exactly how the Conservative Faction had gotten hold of it was something he studiously avoided asking.

Two hours later he reduced speed back to fifteen light-years an hour and allowed the Ellezelin traffic network to pick up their hyperspatial approach. He used a TransDimensional (TD) channel to the planetary datasphere and requested landing permission for Riasi spaceport.

Ellezelin’s original capital was situated on the northern coast of Sinkang, with the Camoa River running through it. He looked down on the city as the Artful Dodger sank down toward the main spaceport. It had been laid out in a spiderweb grid with the planetary parliament at the heart. The building was still there, a grandiose structure of towers and buttresses made from an attractive mixture of ancient and modern materials. But the planet’s government now was centered in Makkathran2. The senior bureaucrats and their departments had moved with it, leading a migration of commerce and industry. Only the transport sector remained strong in Riasi. The wormholes that linked the planets of the Ellezelin Free Trade Zone together were all here, incorporated into the spaceport, making it the most important commercial hub in the sector.

The Artful Dodger landed on a pad little different from the one it had departed from barely three hours before. The Delivery Man paid a parking fee for a month in advance with an untraceable credit coin and declined an umbilical connection. His job here was finished. His u-shadow called a taxi capsule to the pad. While he was waiting for it, the Conservative Faction called him.

“Marius has been seen on Ellezelin.”

It was the second time that day the Delivery Man flinched. “I suppose that was inevitable. Do you know why he’s here?”

“To support the Cleric Conservator. But as to the exact nature of that support, we remain uncertain.”

“I see. Is he here in the spaceport?” he asked reluctantly. He wasn’t a frontline agent, but his biononics had very advanced field functions in case he stumbled into an aggressive situation. They ought to be a match for anything Marius could produce—although any aggression would be most unusual. Faction agents simply did not settle their scores physically. It wasn’t done.

“We don’t believe so. He visited the Cleric Conservator within an hour of the election. After that he dropped out of sight. We are telling you simply so that you can be careful. It would not do for the Accelerators to know our business any more than they want us to know theirs. Leave as quickly as possible.”

“Understood.”

The taxi capsule took him over to the spaceport’s massive passenger terminal. He checked in for the next United Commonwealth Starlines flight back to Akimiski, the closest Central world. All the time he waited in the departure lounge overlooking the huge central concourse, he kept his scan functions running, checking to see whether Marius was in the terminal. When the passengers boarded forty minutes later, there had been no sign of him or any other Higher agent.

The Delivery Man settled into his first-class compartment on the passenger ship with a considerable sense of relief. It was a hyperdrive ship that would take fifteen hours to get to Akimiski. From there he would make a quick trip to Oronsay to maintain his cover. With any luck he’d be back on Earth in less than two days. It would be the weekend, and they’d be able to take the girls to the southern sanctuary park in New Zealand. They would enjoy that.

The Rakas bar occupied the whole third floor of a round tower in Makkathran2’s Abad district, just as the same building in Makkathran itself had a bar on the third floor. From what he had seen in Inigo’s dreams, Aaron suspected the furniture here was better, along with the lighting, not to mention the lack of the general dirt that seemed so pervasive in the original city. Rakas was patronized by a lot of visiting faithful who perhaps were a little disappointed by how little space the nucleus of their movement took up in comparison to the prodigious metropolises of the Greater Commonwealth.

There was also a much better selection of drinks than the archetype boasted. Aaron presumed that was the reason ex-Councillor the Honorable Corrie-Lyn kept returning there. This was the third night he had sat at a small corner table and watched her knocking back an impressive amount of alcohol at the counter. She wasn’t a large woman, though at first glance her slender figure made her seem taller than she was. Ivory skin was stippled by a mass of freckles whose highest density was in a broad swath across her eyes. Her hair was the darkest red he had ever seen: depending on how the light caught her, it varied from shiny ebony to gold-flecked dark auburn. It was cut short, which, given how thick it was, made it curl heavily; the way it framed her dainty features made her appear like a particularly diabolic teenager. In reality she was a three-hundred-seventy-year-old. He knew she wasn’t Higher, so she must have a superb Advancer metabolism, which presumably was how she could drink any bad boy under the table.

For the fourth time that evening, one of the faithful but not terribly devout went over to try his luck. After all, the good citizens of Makkathran had very healthy and active sex lives; Inigo showed that. The group of guys he was with, sitting at the big window seat, watched with sly grins and minimal sniggering as their friend claimed the empty stool beside her. Corrie-Lyn was not wearing her Cleric robes; otherwise he never would have dared to go within ten meters. A simple dark purple dress slit under each arm to reveal alluring amounts of skin wound up the lad’s courage. She listened without comment to his opening lines, nodded reasonably when he offered to buy a drink, and beckoned the barkeeper over.

Aaron wished he could go over and draw the lad away. It was painful to watch; he had seen this exact scene play out many times over the last few nights. The barkeeper came over with two heavy shot glasses and a frosted bottle of golden Adlier 88Vodka; brewed on Vitchan, it bore no real relation to original Earth vodka except for the kick. Adlier produced a liqueur that was eighty percent alcohol and eight percent tricetholyn, a powerful narcotic. The barkeeper filled both glasses and left the bottle.

Corrie-Lyn lifted hers in salute and downed it in one shot. The hopeful lad followed suit. As he winced a smile against the burn of the icy liquid, Corrie-Lyn filled both glasses again. She lifted hers. Somewhat apprehensively, the lad did the same. She tossed it down straightaway.

There was laughter coming from the group at the window now. Their friend slugged back the drink. There were tears in his eyes; an involuntary shudder ran along his chest as if he were suppressing a cough. Corrie-Lyn poured them both a third shot with mechanical precision and downed hers in a single gulp. The lad gave a disgusted wave with one hand and backed away to jeering from his erstwhile pals. Aaron wasn’t impressed; the previous night one of the would-be suitors had kept up for five shots before retreating, hurt and confused.

Corrie-Lyn slid the bottle back along the countertop, where the barkeeper caught it with an easy twist of his wrist and deposited it back on the shelf. She turned back to the tall beer she’d been drinking before the interruption, resting her elbows on either side of the glass, and resumed staring at nothing.

Watching her, Aaron acknowledged that cultivating Corrie-Lyn was never going to be a subtle play of seduction. There was going to be only one chance, and if he blew that, he would have to waste days finding another angle. He got to his feet and walked over. As he approached, he could sense her gaiafield emission, which was reduced to a minimum. It was like a breath of polar air, cold enough to make him shiver; her silhouette within the ethereal field was black, a rift into interstellar space. Most people would have hesitated at that alone, never mind the Adlier 88 humiliation. He sat on the stool the lad had vacated. She turned to give him a dismissive look, eyes running over his cheap suit with insulting apathy.

Aaron called the barkeeper over and asked for a beer. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t go through the ritual degradation,” he said. “I’m not actually here to get inside your panties.”

“Thong.” She took a long drink of her beer, not looking at him.

“I … what?” That was not quite the answer he was prepared for.

“Inside my thong.”

“I suddenly feel an urge to get ordained into your religion.”

She grinned to herself and swirled the remains of her beer around.

“You’ve had enough time; you’ve been hanging around here for a few days now.”

His beer arrived, and Corrie-Lyn silently swapped it for her own.

Aaron raised his finger to the barkeeper. “Another. Make that two.”

“And it’s not a religion,” she said.

“Of course not; how silly of me. Priest robes. Worshipping a lost prophet. The promise of salvation. Giving money to the city temple. Going on Pilgrimage. I apologize; easy mistake to make.”

“Keep talking like that, offworlder, and you’ll wind up headfirst in a canal before dawn.”

“Headfirst or headless?”

Corrie-Lyn finally turned and gave him her full attention, her smile matching her impish allure. “What in Ozzie’s great universe do you want?”

“To make you very rich indeed.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“So I can make myself even richer.”

“I’m not very good at bank heists.”

“Yeah, guess it doesn’t come up much at priest school.”

“Priests ask you to have faith. We can take you straight to heaven; we even give you a sneak preview so you know what you’re getting.”

“And that’s where we come in.”

“We?”

“FarFlight Charters. I believe your not religion is currently in need of starships, Councillor Emeritus.”

Corrie-Lyn laughed. “Oh, you are dangerous, aren’t you?”

“No danger, just an aching to be rich.”

“But I’m on my way to our heaven in the Void. What do I need with Commonwealth money?”

“Even the Waterwalker used money. But I’m not going to argue that case with you, or any other for that matter. I’m just here to make the proposition. You have contacts I need, and it is my belief you’re none too happy with your old friends on the Cleric Council right now. Might be willing to bend a few ethics here and there—especially here. Am I speaking the right of things, Councillor Emeritus?”

“Why use the formal mode of address? Be bold, go the whole way; call me shitlisted. Everyone else does.”

“The unisphere news clowns have many labels for all of us. That doesn’t mean you haven’t got the names I need up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “And I suspect there’s enough residual respect for you in Orchard Palace to open a few doors for me. Isn’t that the way of it?”

“Could be. So what’s your name?”

“Aaron.”

Corrie-Lyn smiled into her beer. “Top of the list, huh?”

“Number one, Councillor Emeritus. So how about I buy you dinner, and you either have fun stringing me along or give me your private bank account code so I can fill it up. Take your time to decide.”

“I will.”

FarFlight Charters was a legitimately registered company on Falnox; anyone searching its datacore would have found it brokered for several spacelines and cargo couriers on seven External planets, not a huge operation but profitable enough to employ thirty persons. Luckily for Aaron it was a simple front that had been put in place should he need it, he did not know by whom. But if it had been real, his expenses would have had serious implications for this year’s profitability. This was the third night he’d wined and dined Corrie-Lyn, with much emphasis on the wine. The meals had all been five-star gourmet as well. She liked Bertrand’s, in Greater Makkathran, a restaurant that made the Hotel Buckingham look like a flophouse for yokels. He didn’t know if she was testing his resolve; given the state she was in most nights, she probably didn’t know herself.

She did dress well, though. Tonight she wore a simple little black cocktail dress whose short skirt produced a seductive hem of mist that swirled provocatively every time she crossed or uncrossed her legs. Their table was in a perfectly transparent overhanging alcove on the seventy-second floor, providing an unenhanced view out across the huge nighttime city. Directly below Aaron’s feet, capsules slid along their designated traffic routes in a thick glare of navigation strobes. Once he’d recovered from the creepy feeling of vertigo, the view was quite invigorating. The seven-course meal they were eating was a sensory delight, each dish accompanied by a wine the chef had selected to complement it. The waiter had given up offering a single glass to Corrie-Lyn; now he just left the bottle each time.

“He was a remarkable man,” Corrie-Lyn said when she finished her gilcherry leaf chocolate torte. She was talking about her favorite topic again. It was not difficult to get her started on Inigo.

“Anyone who can create a movement like Living Dream in just a couple of centuries is bound to be out of the ordinary.”

“No, no.” Corrie-Lyn waved her glass dismissively. “That’s not the point. If you or I had been given those dreams, there would still be Living Dream. They inspire people. Everyone can see for themselves what a beautiful simple life can be lived in the Void, one you can perfect no matter how screwed up or stupid you are, no matter how long it takes. You can only do that inside the Void, so if you promise to make that ability available to everyone, you can’t not gather a whole load of followers, now, can you? It’s inevitable. What I’m talking about is the man himself. Mister Incorruptible. That’s rare. Give most people that much power and they’ll abuse it. I would. Ethan certainly fucking does.” She poured the last of a two-and-a-half-century-old Mithan port into an equally ancient crystal glass.

Aaron smiled tightly. The alcove to the main restaurant floor was open, and Corrie-Lyn had downed her usual amount.

“That’s why Inigo set up the movement hierarchy like an order of monks. Not that you couldn’t have lots of sex.” She sniggered. “You just weren’t supposed to take advantage of the desperate faithful; you just screw around among your own level.”

“So far, so pretty standard.”

“ ’Course, I wasn’t very pure. We had quite a thing going, me and Inigo. Did you know that?”

“I do believe you mentioned it once or twice.”

“ ’Course you did; that’s why you hit on me.”

“This isn’t hitting on you, Corrie-Lyn.”

“Slim and fit.” She licked her lips. “That’s what I am. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Very much so.” Actually, he didn’t want to admit how physically attractive she was. It helped that any sexual impulse he might have felt was effectively neutralized by her drinking. After the first hour of any evening, she was not a pleasant person to be around.

Corrie-Lyn smiled down at her dress. “Yeah, that’s me, all right. So … we had this thing, this fling. I mean, sure, he saw other women. For Ozzie’s sake, the poor shit had a billion females willing and eager to rip their clothes off for him and have his babies. And I enjoyed it, too. I mean, hell, Aaron, some of them made me look like I’d been hit hard by the ugly stick.”

“I thought you said he was incorruptible.”

“He was. He didn’t take advantage is what I’m saying. But he’s human. So am I. There were distractions, that’s all. The cause. The vision. He stayed true to that; he gave us the dreams of the Void. He believed, Aaron; he believed utterly in what he was shown. The Void really is a better place for all of us. He made me believe, too. I’d always been a loyal follower. I had faith. Then I actually met him. I saw his belief, his devotion, and through that I became a true apostle.” She finished the port and slumped back in her chair. “I’m a zealot, Aaron, a true zealot. That’s why Ethan kicked me off the Council; he doesn’t like the old guard, those of us who remain true. So you, mister, you just keep your snide patronizing to yourself, you bastard. I don’t fucking care what you think; I hate your smart-ass weasel words. You don’t believe, and that makes you evil. I bet you haven’t even experienced one of the dreams. That’s your mistake, because they’re real. For humans, the Void is heaven.”

“It could be heaven. You don’t know for sure.”

“See!” She wagged a finger in his direction, barely able to focus. “You do it every time. Smart-ass words. Not stupid enough to agree with me, oh, no, but enough to make me preach at you. Setting it up so I can save you.”

“You’re wrong. This is all about the money.”

“Ha!” She held up the empty bottle of port and scowled at it.

Aaron hesitated. He could never tell how much control she had. He took a risk and pushed. “Anyway, if the Void is salvation, why did he leave?”

The result wasn’t quite what he had expected. Corrie-Lyn started sobbing.

“I don’t know!” she wailed. “He left us. Left all of us. Oh, where are you, Inigo? Where did you go? I loved you so much.”

Aaron groaned in dismay. Their quiet meal was now a full-blown public spectacle. Her sobs were increasing in volume. He hurriedly called the waiter and shuffled the seats to sit next to Corrie-Lyn, putting himself between her and the curious patrons. “Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s go.”

There was a landing platform on the thirtieth floor, but he wanted her to get some fresh air, so they took an elevator straight down to the skyscraper’s lobby. The boulevard outside was almost deserted. A slim road running down the middle was partially hidden behind a long row of tall, bushy evergreen trees. The footpath alongside it was illuminated by slender glowing arches.

“Do you think I’m attractive?” Corrie-Lyn slurred as he encouraged her to walk. Past the skyscraper there were a couple of apartment blocks, all surrounded by raised gardens. Local night birds swooped and flittered silently through the arches. It was a warm air, with the smell of sea ozone accompanying the humid gusts coming in from the coast.

“Very attractive,” Aaron assured her. He wondered if he should insist that she take the detox aerosol he had brought along for this eventuality. The trouble with drinkers of this stature was that they didn’t want to sober up that quickly, especially when they were burdened with as much grief as Corrie-Lyn was.

“Then how come you don’t want me? Is it the drink? Do you not like me drinking?” She broke away to look at him, swaying slightly, her eyes blurred from tears, hauntingly miserable. With her light coat undone to show off the exclusive cocktail dress, she presented a profoundly unappealing sight.

“Business before pleasure,” Aaron said, hoping she would accept that and shut the hell up. He should have caught a taxi from the skyscraper’s platform. As if she finally were picking up on his exasperation, she turned fast and started walking.

Someone appeared on the path barely five meters in front of them, a man in a one-piece suit that still had the remnants of its black stealth envelope swirling like water in low gravity. Aaron scanned around with his full field functions. Two more people were shedding their envelopes as they walked up behind him. His combat routines moved smoothly to active status, accessing the situation. They designated the first of the group to confront them: One. Eighty percent probability he was the commander. The subordinates were tagged Two and Three. His close-range situation exoimage showed all three of them glowing with enrichments. He actually relaxed: By confronting him, they had taken away all choice; with that accepted, there could only be one outcome now. He simply waited for them to present him with the maximum target opportunity.

Corrie-Lyn blinked in mild bewilderment, peering forward at the first man as she clutched her small scarlet bag to her belly. “I didn’t see you. Where were you?”

“You don’t look too good, Your Honor,” One replied. “Why don’t you come along with us.”

Corrie-Lyn pressed back into Aaron’s side, degrading his strike ability by a third. “No,” she moaned. “No, I don’t want to.”

“You’re bringing the Living Dream into disrepute, Your Honor,” One said. “Is that what Inigo would have wanted?”

“I know you,” she said wretchedly. “I’m not going with you. Aaron, don’t leave me. Please.”

“Nobody is going anywhere they don’t want to.”

One did not even look at him. “You. Fuck off. If you ever want a sales meeting with a Councillor, be smart now.”

“Ah, well, now, here’s the thing,” Aaron said affably. “I’m so stupid, I can’t afford an IQ boost come regeneration time. So I just stay this way forever.” Behind him, Two and Three were standing very close. They both drew small pistols. Aaron’s routines identified their hardware as jelly guns, which had been developed a century and a half earlier as a lethal short-range weapon that acted exactly as specified on human flesh. He could feel accelerants slipping through his neurons, quickening his mental reaction time. Biononic energy currents synchronized with them, upgrading his physical responses to match. The effect dragged out spoken words, so much so that he easily could predict what was going to be said long before One finished his sentence.

“Then I’m sorry for you.” One sent a fast message to his subordinates that Aaron intercepted; it was nothing more than a simple code. He did not even need to decrypt it. Both of them raised their weapons. Aaron’s combat routines already were moving him smoothly. He twisted Corrie-Lyn out of the way as he bent down. The first shot from Two’s jelly gun seared through the air where Aaron’s head had been less than a second before. The beam struck the wall, producing a squirt of concrete dust. Aaron’s foot came up fast, smashing into the knee of Three. Their force fields clashed with a screech, electrons flaring in a rosette of blue-white light. The velocity and power behind Aaron’s kick were enough to distort his opponent’s protection. Three’s leg shattered as it was punched backward, throwing his whole body sideways. Aaron’s energy currents formatted a distortion pulse that slammed into One. He was flung back six meters into the garden wall, hitting it with a dull thud. His straining force field pushed out a dangerous bruised purple nimbus as another of Aaron’s distorter pulses pummeled him, trying to shove him through the wall. His back arched at the impact, his force field close to outright failure.

Two was trying to swing his pistol around, tracking a target that was moving with inhuman speed. All his enriched senses revealed was a blurred shape as Aaron danced across the path. He never got a lock. Aaron’s hand materialized out of a dim streak to chop across his throat, overloading the force field. His neck snapped instantly, and his corpse flew through the air. Aaron snatched the jelly gun from Two’s hand at the same time, wrenching the fingers off with a liquid crunching sound. It took Aaron a fraction of a second to spin around again. His force field expanded into the ground, an anchor snatching away inertia, allowing him to stop instantly, the pistol aligned on One as the dazed man was clambering unsteadily to his feet. Blood from the severed fingers dripped down onto the path. One froze, sucking down air as he stared at the nozzle of the jelly gun. Aaron opened his grip, allowing the fingers to slither away. “Who are they?” he yelled at Corrie-Lyn, who was lying on the sodden grass where she’d landed. She was giving One a bewildered look. “Who?” Aaron demanded.

“The … the police. That’s Captain Manby, special protection division.”

“That’s right,” Manby wheezed as he flinched against the pain.

“So you just put that fucking gun down. You’re already drowning in shit so deep that you’ll never see the universe again.”

“Join me at the bottom.” Aaron pressed the trigger on the jelly gun, holding it down on continuous-fire mode. He added his own distortion pulse to the barrage. Manby’s force field held out for almost two seconds before collapsing. The jelly gun pulses struck the exposed body. Aaron turned and fired again, overloading Three’s force field.

Corrie-Lyn threw up as waves of bloody sludge from both ruined corpses cascaded across the ground. She was wailing like a wounded kitten when Aaron hauled her to her feet. “We have to go,” he shouted at her. She shrank back from his hold. “Come on, now! Move!” His u-shadow already was calling down a taxi.

“No,” she whimpered. “No, no. They didn’t … you just killed them. You killed them.”

“Do you understand what this is?” he growled at her, his voice loud and aggressive; he was using belligerence to keep her off balance. “Do you understand what just happened? Do you? They’re an assassination squad. Ethan wants you dead. Permanently dead. You can’t stay here. They’ll keep coming after you. Corrie-Lyn! I can protect you.”

“Me?” she sobbed. “They wanted me?”

“Yes. Now come on; we’re not safe here.”

“Oh, sweet Ozzie.”

He shook her. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered. By the way she was shaking, Aaron thought she was going into mild shock. “Good.” He started to walk toward the descending taxi, hauling her along, heedless of the way she stumbled to keep up. It was hard not to smile. He could not have delivered a better result to the evening if he had planned it.

Inigo’s First Dream

When Edeard woke, his dream was already a confused fading memory. The same thing happened every morning. No matter how hard he tried, he never could hold on to the images and sounds afflicting him every night. Akeem said not to worry; his dreams were made from the gentle spillage of other sleeping minds around him. Edeard did not believe that the things he dreamed of came from anywhere like their village; the fragments he occasionally managed to cling to were too strange and fascinating for that.

Cool predawn light was showing up the cracks in the window’s wooden shutters. Edeard lay still for a while, cozy under the pile of blankets that covered his cot. It was a big room with whitewashed plaster walls and bare floorboards. The rafters of the hammer-beam roof above were ancient martoz wood that had blackened and hardened over the decades until they resembled iron. There was not much by way of furniture; two-thirds of the floor space was completely empty. Edeard had shoved what was left down to the end that had a broad window. At the foot of the cot was a crude chest where he kept his meager collection of clothes; there was a long table covered in his enthusiastic sketches of possible genistar animals, several chairs, and a dresser with a plain white bowl and a pitcher of water. Over in the corner opposite the cot, the fire had burned out sometime in the night, with a few embers left glimmering in the grate. It was difficult to heat such a large volume, especially in winter, and Edeard could see his breath as a fine white mist.

Technically, he lived in the apprentice dormitory of Ashwell village’s Eggshaper Guild, but he was the only occupant. He had lived there for the last six years, ever since his parents had died when he was eight years old. Master Akeem, the village’s sole remaining shaper, had taken him in after the caravan they had joined to travel through the hills to the east had been attacked by bandits.

Edeard wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and hurried over the cold floor to the small brick-arch fireplace. The embers still were giving off a little heat, warming the clothes he had left on the back of a chair. He dressed hurriedly, pulling up badly worn leather trousers and tucking an equally worn shirt into the waist before struggling into a thick green sweater. As always, the fabric smelled of the stables and their varied occupants, a melange of fur and food and cages, but after six years at the guild he was so used to it that he hardly noticed. He sat back on the cot to pull his boots on; they really were too small for him now. With the last eighteen months seeing more genistars in the stables and Edeard taking on official commission duties, their little branch of the Eggshaper Guild had seen a lot more money coming in. Hardly a fortune, but sufficient to pay for new clothes and boots; it was just that he never had time to visit the cobbler. He winced slightly as he stood up, trying to wriggle his toes, which were squashed together. It was no good; he definitely was going to take an hour out of his busy day to visit the cobbler. He grinned. But not today.

Today was when the village’s new well would be finished. It was a project in which the Eggshaper Guild was playing an unusually large part. Better than that: For him it was an innovative part. Edeard knew how many doubters there were in the village: basically everybody. But Master Akeem had quietly persuaded the elder council to give his young apprentice a chance. They had said yes only because they had nothing to lose.

He made his way downstairs, then hurried across the narrow rear yard to the warmth of the guild dining hall. Like the dormitory, it was a sharp reminder that the Eggshaper Guild had known better times, a lot better. There were still two rows of long bench tables in the big hall, enough to seat fifty shapers and their guests on feast nights. At the far end the huge fireplace had iron baking ovens built into the stonework on either side, and the roasting spit was large enough to handle a whole pig. This morning, the fire was just a small blaze tended by a couple of ge-monkeys. Normally, people did not let the genistars get anywhere near naked flames—they were as skittish as any terrestrial animal—but Edeard’s orders were lucid and embedded deeply enough that the ge-monkeys could manage the routine without panicking.

Edeard sat at the table closest to the fire. His mind directed a batch of instructions to the ge-monkeys by using simple telepathic longtalk. He used a pidgin version of Querencia’s mental language, visualizing the sequence of events he wanted in conjunction with simple command phrases, making sure that the emotional content was zero (so many people forgot that and then could not understand why the genistars did not obey properly). The ge-monkeys started scurrying around; they were big creatures, easily the weight of a full-gown human male, with six long legs along the lower half of the body and six even longer arms on top, the first two pairs so close together that they seemed to be sharing a shoulder joint, while the third pair was set farther back along a very flexible spine. Their bodies were covered in a wiry white fur, with patches worn away on joints and palms to reveal a leathery cinder-colored hide. The head profile was the same as in all the genistar variants: a plain globe with a snout very close to that of a terrestrial dog; the ears were situated on the lower part of the head back toward the stumpy neck, each one sprouting three petals of long creased skin thin enough to be translucent.

A big mug of tea was placed in front of Edeard, swiftly followed by thick slices of toast, a bowl of fruit, and a plate of scrambled eggs. He tucked in heartily enough, already running through the critical part of the day’s operation at the bottom of the well. His farsight picked up Akeem when the old man was still in the lodge, the residence for senior shapers annexed to the hall. Edeard already could perceive through a couple of stone walls, sensing physical structures as if they were shadows, while minds buzzed with an iridescent glow. That vision was of a caliber that eluded a lot of adults; it made Akeem inordinately proud of his apprentice’s ability, claiming his own training was the true key to developing Edeard’s potential.

The old shaper came into the hall to find the ge-monkeys ready with his breakfast. He grunted favorably as he gave Edeard’s shoulder a paternal squeeze. “Did you sense me getting up in my bedroom, boy?” he asked, gesturing at his waiting plate of sausage and tomato.

“No, sir,” Edeard said happily. “Can’t manage to get through four walls yet.”

“Won’t be long,” Akeem said as he lifted his tea. “The way you’re developing, I’ll be sleeping outside the village walls by midsummer. Everyone’s entitled to some privacy.”

“I would never intrude,” Edeard protested. He mellowed and grinned sheepishly as he caught the amusement in the old shaper’s mind. Master Akeem had passed his hundred-eightieth birthday several years back, so he claimed, though he was always vague about the precise year that had happened. Life expectancy on Querencia was supposed to be around two hundred years, though Edeard did not know of anyone in Ashwell or the surrounding villages who actually had managed to live that long. However, Akeem’s undeniable age had given him a rounded face with at least three chins rolling back into a thick neck. A lacework of red and purple capillaries decorated the pale skin of his cheeks and nose, producing a terribly wan appearance. The thin stubble left behind after his perfunctory daily shave was now mostly gray, which didn’t help the careworn impression everyone received on seeing him for the first time. Once a week the old man used the same razor on what was left of his silver hair.

Despite his declining years, he always insisted on dressing smartly. His personal ge-monkeys were well versed in laundry work. Today his tailored leather trousers were clean, his boots polished, a pale yellow shirt washed and pressed. He wore a jacket woven from magenta and jade yarn with the egg-in-a-twisted-circle crest of the Eggshaper Guild on the lapel. The jacket might not be as impressive as the robes worn by guild members in Makkathran, but in Ashwell it was a symbol of prestige, earning him respect. None of the other village elders dressed as well.

Edeard sheepishly realized he was fingering his own junior apprentice badge, a simple metal button on his collar; the emblem was similar to Akeem’s, but with only a quarter circle. Half the time he forgot to pin it on in the morning; after all, nobody showed him any respect, ever. But if all went well today, he would be entitled to a badge with half a circle. Akeem said he could never remember anyone attempting a shaping so sophisticated for a senior apprentice assessment.

“Nervous?” the old man asked.

“No,” Edeard said immediately. Then he ducked his head. “They work in the tank, anyway.”

“Of course they do. They always do. Our true skill comes in determining what works in real life. From what I’ve seen, I don’t believe there will be a problem. That’s not a guarantee, mind. Nothing in life is certain.”

“What did you shape for your senior apprentice assessment?” Edeard asked.

“Ah, now, well, that was a long time ago. Things were different back then, more formal. They always are in the capital. I suspect they haven’t changed much.”

“Akeem!” Edeard pleaded. He loved the old man dearly, but oh, how his mind wandered these days.

“Yes, yes. As I recall, the assessment required four ge-spiders, functional ones, mind; they had to spin drosilk at the Grand Master’s presentation, so everyone wound up shaping at least six or seven to be safe. We also had to shape a wolf, a chimp, and an eagle. Ah.” He sighed. “They were hard days. I remember my master used to beat me continually. And the larks we used to get up to in the dormitory at night …”

Edeard was slightly disappointed. “But I can do ge-spiders and all the rest.”

“I know,” Akeem said proudly, and patted the boy’s hand. “But we both know how gifted you are. A junior apprentice is normally seventeen before taking the kind of assessment you’re getting today, and even then a lot of them fail the first time. This is why I’ve made your task all the harder. A reshaped form that works is the standard graduation from apprenticehood to practitioner.”

“It is?”

“Oh, yes. Of course, I’ve been dreadfully remiss in the rest of the guild teachings. It was hard enough to make you sit down long enough to learn your letters. And you’re really not old enough to take in the guild ethics and all that boring old theory no matter how precise they are when I gift them to you, though you seem to grasp things at an instinctive level. That’s why you’re still only going to be an apprentice after this.”

Edeard frowned. “What kind of ethics could be involved in shaping?”

“Can’t you think?”

“No, not really. Genistars are such a boon. They help everyone. Now that I’m helping you sculpt, we can produce more standard genera than before; the village will grow strong and rich again.”

“Well, I suppose as you’re due to become a senior apprentice, we should start to consider these notions. We’d need more apprentices if that were to truly come about.”

“There’s Sancia, and little Evox has powerful longtalk.”

“We’ll see. Who knows? We might prove a little more acceptable after today. Families are reluctant to offer their children for us to train. And your friend Obron doesn’t help matters.”

Edeard blushed. Obron was the village’s chief bully, a boy a couple of years older than he who delighted in making Edeard’s life a misery outside the walls of the guild compound. He hadn’t realized Akeem had known about that. “I should take care of him.”

“The Lady knows you’ve had enough provocation of late. I’m proud you haven’t struck back. Eggshapers are always naturally strong telepaths, but part of that ethics course you’re missing is how we shouldn’t abuse our advantage.”

“I just haven’t because …” He shrugged.

“It’s not the right thing to do, and you know that,” Akeem concluded. “You’re a good boy, Edeard.” The old man looked at him, his thoughts a powerful mixture of pride and sadness.

Proximity to emotional turmoil made Edeard blink away the water unexpectedly springing into his eyes. He shook his head as if to disentangle himself from the old man’s mind. “Did you ever have someone like Obron ragging you when you were an apprentice?”

“Let’s just say one of the reasons I came to stay in Ashwell was because my interpretation of our guild ethics differed from that of the masters of the Blue Tower. And please remember, although I am your master and tutor, I also require guild standards to be fulfilled. If I judge you lacking, you will not get your senior apprentice badge today. That includes taking care of your ordinary duties.”

Edeard pushed his empty plate away and downed the last of his tea. “I’d better get to it, then—Master.”

“I also fail anyone who shows disrespect.”

Edeard pulled on a woolly hat against the chilly air and went out into the guild compound’s main courtyard. It was unusual in that it had nine sides: seven made of stable blocks, then a large barn and the hatchery. None of them was the same size or height. When he first had moved in, Edeard had been impressed. The Eggshaper Guild compound was the largest collection of buildings in the village; to someone who had been brought up in a small cottage with a leaky thatch roof, it was a palatial castle. Back then he’d never noticed the deep cloak of kimoss staining every roof a vivid purple or how pervasive and tangled the gurkvine was, covering the dark stone walls of the courtyard with its ragged pale-yellow leaves while its roots wormed their way into the mortar between the blocks, weakening the structure. This morning he just sighed at the sight, wondering if he’d ever get around to directing the ge-monkeys on a cleanup mission. This would be a good time; the gurkvine leaves had all fallen to gather in the corners of the courtyard in great moldering piles, and the moss was soaking up the season’s moisture, turning into great spongy mats that would be easy to peel off. Like everything else in his life, it would have to wait. If only Akeem could find another apprentice, he thought wistfully. We spend our whole lives running to catch up. Just one extra person in the guild would make so much difference.

It would take a miracle granted by the Lady, he acknowledged grudgingly. The village families were reluctant to allow their children to train at the Eggshaper Guild. They appreciated how dependent they were on genistars, but they couldn’t afford to lose able hands. The guild was just like the rest of Ashwell, struggling to keep going.

Edeard hurried across the courtyard to the tanks where his new reshaped cats were kept, silently asking the Lady why he bothered to stay in this backward place on the edge of the wilds. To his right were the largest stables, where the defaults shuffled around their stalls. They were simple beasts, unshaped egg-laying genistars the same size as terrestrial ponies, with six legs supporting a bulbous body. The six upper limbs were vestigial, producing bumps along the creature’s back; in the female over thirty percent of the internal organs were ovaries, producing an egg every fifteen days. The males, of which there were three, lumbered around in a big pen at one end, and the females were kept in a row of fifteen separate stalls. For the first time since Akeem had taken him in, the stalls were all occupied; that was a source of considerable satisfaction to Edeard. Not even a master as accomplished as Akeem—and despite his age he was a singular talent—could manage fifteen defaults by himself. Shaping an egg took a long time, and Edeard had had as many grotesque failures as he’d had successes. First of all, the timing had to be right. An egg needed to be shaped no earlier than ten hours after fertilization and no later than twenty-five. How long it took depended on the nature of the genus required.

Edeard often had spent half the night sitting in a stall’s deep-cushioned shaper chair with his mind focused on the egg. Eggshaping, as Akeem so often had described it, was like sculpting intangible clay with invisible hands. The ability was a gentle combination of farsight and telekinesis. His mind could see inside the egg, and only those who could do that with perfect clarity could become shapers. Not that he liked to boast, but Edeard’s mental vision was the most acute in the village. What he saw within the shell was like a small exemplar of a default genistar made of gray shadow substance. His telekinesis would reach out and begin to shape it into the form he wanted, but slowly, so frustratingly slowly. There were limits; he could not give a genistar anything extra: seven arms, two heads … What the process did was activate the nascent structures inherent within the default physiology. He also could define size, though that was determined partially by what type of genus he was shaping. Then there were subfamilies within each standard genus, chimps as well as monkeys, a multitude of horse types—big, small, powerful, fast, slow. A long list that had to be memorized perfectly.

Shaping was inordinately difficult, requiring immense concentration. Shapers had to have a lot more than eldritch vision and manipulation; they had to have the feel of what they were doing, know instinctively if what they were doing was right, see potential in the embryonic genistar. In the smaller creatures there would be no room for reproductive organs, so they had to be disengaged; other organs, too, had to be selected where appropriate. But which ones? Small wonder even a Grand Master produced a large percentage of invalid eggs.

Edeard walked past the default stables, his farsight flashing through the building, checking that the ge-monkeys were getting on with their jobs of mucking out and feeding. Several were becoming negligent and disorderly, so he refreshed their instructions with a quick longtalk message. A slightly deeper scan with his farsight showed him the state of the gestating eggs inside the defaults. Of the eleven that had been shaped, three were showing signs that indicated that problems were developing. He gave a resigned sigh; two of them were his.

After the defaults came the horse stables. There were nine foals currently accommodated, seven of which were growing up into large sturdy brutes that would pull plows and carts on the surrounding farms. Most of the commissions given to Ashwell’s Eggshaper Guild were for genistars that could be used in agriculture. The custom of using domestic ge-monkeys and chimps was in decline; Edeard knew that had happened because people didn’t take the time to learn how to instruct them properly. Not that they were going to come here and take lessons from a fourteen-year-old boy. It annoyed him immensely; he was certain the village economy could be improved fourfold at least if they just listened to him.

“Patience,” Akeem always counseled when he raged against the shortsighted fools who were their neighbors. “Often to do what’s right you first have to do what’s wrong. There will come a time when your words will be heeded.”

Edeard didn’t know when that would be. Even if today was successful, he did not expect a rush of people to congratulate him and seek his advice. He was sure he was destined to remain forever the freaky boy who lived alone with batty old Akeem. A well-matched pair, they all said when they thought he couldn’t farsight them.

The monkey and chimp pen was on the other side of the horses. It had only a couple of infant monkeys inside, curled up in their nest. The rest were all out and about, performing their duties around the guild compound. They didn’t have any commissions for ge-monkeys on their books; even the smithy who worked five did not want any extras. Perhaps I should bring people to the guild buildings, Edeard thought, show them what the ge-monkeys can do if they’re ordered correctly. Or Akeem could show them, at least. Just something that would break the cycle, make people more adventurous. The freaky boy’s daydream.

After the monkey pen came the kennels. Ge-dogs remained in high demand, especially the kind used for herding cattle and sheep. Eight pups were nursing from the two milk-bitches he’d shaped himself. They allowed the defaults to go straight back to egg production without an extended nursing period. It had taken twelve invalid eggs before he had succeeded in shaping the first. The innovation was one he had introduced after reading about the milk-bitch in an ancient guild text. Now he was keen to try to extend it across all the genistar types. Akeem had been supportive when the first one had hatched, impressed as much by Edeard’s tenacity as by his shaping skill.

The compound’s main gateway was wedged between the dog kennels and the wolf kennels. There were six of the fierce creatures maturing. Always useful outside the village walls, the wolves were deployed as guards for Ashwell and all its outlying farmhouses; they also were taken on hunts through the forests, helping to clear out Querencia’s native predators as well as the occasional bandit group. Edeard stopped and looked in. The ge-wolves were lean creatures with dark gray fur that blended in with most landscapes; their long snouts were equipped with sharp fangs that could bite clean through a medium-size branch, let alone a limb of meat and bone. The large pups mewled excitedly as he hung over the door and patted them. His hand was licked by hot serpentine tongues. Two of them had a pair of arms. It was another of his innovations; he wanted to see if they could carry knives or clubs. That was something else he had found in an old text, another idea the villagers had shaken their heads in despair at.

Out of the whole courtyard, he liked the aviary best. It was a squat circular cote with arched openings twenty feet above the ground, just below the eaves. There was a single doorway at the base. Inside, the open space was crisscrossed by broad martoz beams. Over the years the wood had been heavily scarred by talons, so much so that the original square cut was now rounded out on top. There was only a single ge-eagle left, as big as Edeard’s torso. The bird had a double-wing arrangement, with two limbs supporting the large front wing and giving it remarkable flexibility; the rear wing was a simple triangle for stability. Its gold and emerald feathers cloaked a streamlined body with a long slender jaw where the teeth had merged into a single serrated edge very similar to a beak.

Trisegment eyes blinked down at Edeard as he smiled up. He so envied the ge-eagle, how it could soar free and clear of the village and all its earthbound drudgery and irrelevance. It had an unusually strong telepathic ability, allowing Edeard to experience wings spread wide and the wind slipping past. Often, whole afternoons would pass with an enthralled Edeard twinned with the ge-eagle’s mind as it swooped and glided over the forests and valleys outside, providing an intoxicating taste of the freedom that existed beyond the village.

It rustled its wings, enthused by Edeard’s appearance and the prospect of flight. Not yet, Edeard had to tell it reluctantly. Its snout was shaken in disgust, and the eyes shut, returning it to an aloof posture.

The hatchery came between the aviary and the cattery. It was a low circular building, like a half-size aviary. Its broad iron-bound wooden door was closed and bolted. It was the one place in the compound where ge-monkeys were not permitted to go. Edeard had the task of keeping it clean and tidy. A sheltered stone shelf to the right of the door had nine thick candles alight, traditionally one for each egg inside. He swept his farsight across them all, happy to confirm that the embryos were growing satisfactorily. After they had been laid, the eggs took about ten days to hatch, cosseted in cradles that in winter months were warmed by slowly smoldering charcoal in a massive iron stove. He would have to rake out the ashes and add some more lumps before midday. One of the eggs was due to hatch tomorrow, he judged, another horse.

Finally, he went into the cattery, the smallest of the buildings walling the courtyard. Standard genistar cats were small semiaquatic creatures with dark oily fur and broad webbed feet, devoid of upper limbs. Guild convention had them as one of the seven standard genera, though nobody outside the capital, Makkathran, ever found much use for them. It was the gondoliers who kept a couple on each boat, using them to keep the city’s canals clean of weeds and rodents.

The cattery was a rectangular room taken up by big knee-high stone tables. Light came in through windows set into the roof. As a testament to how prolifically the kimoss had spread, Edeard now always supplemented his ordinary sight with farsight as he shuffled along the narrow aisles between the tables. From inside, the windows had been reduced to narrow slits that provided a meager amethyst radiance.

Glass tanks sat along the tables. They were ancient basins the size of bulky coffins, dating back to when the whole compound had been built. Half of them had cracked sides, with dried and dead algae staining the glass; the bottoms were filled with gravel and desiccated flakes of mud. Edeard had refurbished five to hold his reshaped cats, with another three modified to act as crude reservoirs. The pipes he used to test their ability were strewn across the floor in a tangled mess. All five reshaped cats lay on the gravel bed of the tanks, with just a few inches of water rippling sluggishly around them. They resembled fat lozenges of glistening ebony flesh, half the size of a human. There were no limbs of any kind, just a row of six circular gills along their flanks dangling loose tubes of thick skin. The head was so small, it looked undeveloped to the point of being misshapen; there were no eyes or ears. It was all Edeard’s farsight could do to detect any sparkle of thought within the tiny brain.

He grinned down cheerily at the unmoving lumps, searching through them for any sign of malady. When he was satisfied that their health was as good as possible, he stood perfectly still, taking calm measured breaths they way Akeem had taught him. He focused his telekinesis—the “third hand,” as most villagers called it—on the first cat. He could feel the black flesh within his incorporeal grip and lifted it off the bed of mucky gravel.

Half an hour later, when Barakka the village cartwright drove his wagon into the courtyard, he found Edeard and Akeem standing beside five tarpaulins with the reshaped cats lying on them. He wrinkled his face in disgust at the bizarre creatures and shot the old Guild Master a questioning look.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked as he swung himself off the bench. The cartwright was a squat man, made even broader by eight decades of hard physical labor. He had a thick, unruly ginger beard that made his gray eyes seem even more sunken. His hand scratched at his buried chin as he surveyed the ge-cats, doubt swirling openly in his mind for Edeard to see. Barakka didn’t care much about the feelings of young apprentices.

“If they work, they will bring a large benefit to Ashwell,” Akeem said smoothly. “Surely it’s worth a try.”

“Whatever you say,” Barakka conceded. He gave Edeard a sly grin. “Are you aiming to be our Mayor, boy? If this works, you’ll get my blessing. I’ve been washing in horse muck these last three months. ’Course, old Geepalt will have his nose right out of joint.”

Geepalt, the village carpenter, was in charge of the existing well’s pump and by rights should have built a new pump for the freshly dug well. He was the chief naysayer on allowing Edeard to try his innovation; it didn’t help that Obron was his apprentice.

“There are worse things in life than an annoyed Geepalt,” Akeem said. “Besides, when this works, he’ll have more time for profitable commissions.”

Barakka laughed. “You old rogue; it is your tongue, not your mind, which shapes words against their true meaning.”

Akeem gave a small, pleased bow. “Thank you. Shall we begin loading?”

“If Melzar’s team is ready,” Barakka said.

Edeard’s farsight flashed out, surveying the new well and the crowd gathering around it. “They are. Wedard has called the ge-monkey digging team out.”

Barakka gave him a calculating stare. The new well was being dug on the other side of the village from the Eggshaper Guild compound. His own farsight could not reach that far. “Very well, we’ll put them on the wagon. Can you manage a third of the weight, boy?”

Edeard was very pleased that he managed to stop any irony from showing amid his surface thoughts. “I think so, sir.” He caught Akeem’s small private smile; the master’s mind remained calm and demure.

Barakka gave the reshaped cats another doubting look and scratched his beard once more. “All right, then. On my call. Three. Two. One.”

Edeard exerted his third hand, careful not to boost more than he was supposed to. With the three of them lifting, the reshaped cat rose smoothly into the air and floated into the back of the open wagon.

“They’re not small, are they?” Barakka said. His smile was somewhat forced. “Good thing you’re helping, Akeem.”

Edeard did not know if he should protest or laugh.

“We all play our part,” Akeem said, giving Edeard a warning stare.

“Second one, then,” Barakka said.

Ten minutes later they were rolling through the village, Barakka and Akeem sitting on the wagon’s bench while Edeard made do with the rear, one arm resting protectively over a cat. Ashwell was a cluster of buildings in the lee of a modest stone cliff that had sheared out of the side of a gentle slope. Almost impossible to climb, the cliff formed a good defense, with a semicircular walled rampart of earth and stone completing their protection from any malign forces that might ride in from the wild lands to the northeast. Most of the buildings were simple stone cottages with thatch roofs and slatted shutters. Some larger buildings had windows with glass panes that had been brought in from the western towns. Only the broad main street running parallel to the cliff was cobbled; the lanes running off it were little more than muddy ruts worn down to the stone by wheels and feet. Although the Eggshaper compound was the biggest collection of buildings, the tallest was the church of the Empyrean Lady, with its conical spire rising out of the north side of the low dome. Once upon a time the stone church had been a uniform white, but many seasons of neglect had seen the lightest sections molder to a drab gray, with kimoss pullulating in the slim gaps between the big blocks.

The road down to the village gate branched off midway along the main street. Edeard looked along it, seeing the short brick-lined tunnel that cut through the sloping rampart; at the far end the massive doors were open to the outside world. On the top of the wall, twin watchtowers stood on either side of the door, with big iron bells on top. They would be rung by the guards at any sign of trouble approaching. Edeard had never heard them. Some of the older villagers claimed to remember their sound when bandit gangs had been spotted crossing the farmlands bordering the village.

As Edeard looked at the top of the rampart wall with its uneven line and many different materials, he wondered how hard it actually would be to overcome their fortifications. There were places where crumbling gaps had been plugged by thick timbers, which themselves were rotting beneath swaths of kimoss. Even if every man and woman in the village carried arms, they could not stretch along more than a third of the length. In reality, their safety depended on the illusion of strength.

A sharp prick of pain in his left shin made him wince. It was a telekinetic pinch, which he warded off with a strong shield over his flesh. Obron and two of his cronies were flanking the wagon, mingling with the other villagers who were heading up to the new well. There was a sense of carnival in the air as the wagon made its slow procession through Ashwell, with people abandoning their normal work to tag along and see the innovation.

Now that Edeard had been jerked away from his daydreaming, he picked up on the bustle of amusement and interest filling the ether through the village. Very few people were expecting his reshaped cats to work, but they were looking forward to witnessing the failure. Typical, he thought. This village always expects the worst. It’s exactly the attitude that’s responsible for our decline; not everything can be blamed on bad weather, poor crops, and more bandits.

“Hey, Egg-Boy,” Obron jeered. “What are those abortions? And where are your pump genistars?” He laughed derisively, a cackling that quickly was duplicated by his friends.

“These are—” Edeard began crossly. He stopped as their laughter rose, wishing the wagon could travel faster. There were smiles on the faces of the adults walking alongside as they witnessed typical apprentice rivalry, remembering what it had been like when they were young. Obron’s thoughts were vivid and mocking. Edeard managed to keep his temper. Revenge would come as soon as the cats were in place. There would be respect for the Eggshaper Guild, with a corresponding loss of status for the carpenters.

He was clinging smugly to that knowledge when the wagon rolled up beside the new well. It had been four months since the village’s old well had collapsed partially. Rubble and silt had been sucked up into the pump, a large contraption assembled by the carpentry guild, with big cogwheels and leather bladders that were compressed and expanded by three ge-horses harnessed to a broad-axle wheel. They walked around and around in a circle all day long, producing gulps of water that slopped out of the pipe into a reservoir trough for everyone to use. As no one had noticed the sludge at first, the ge-horses kept walking until the pump started to creak and shudder. It had been badly damaged.

Once the extent of the damage to the well had been assessed, the elder council had decreed that a new well should be dug. This time it was at the top of the village, close to the cliff where the water percolating down from the slopes above should be plentiful. There were also ideas that a simple network of pipes could carry fresh water into each house. That would have required an even larger pump to be built. At that point Akeem had brought his apprentice’s idea to the council.

The crowd that had gathered around the head of the new well was good-natured enough when the wagon stopped. Melzar, who listed Water Master among many other village titles, was standing beside the open hole, talking to Wedard, the stonemason who had overseen the team of ge-monkeys that had performed the actual digging. They both gave the reshaped cats an intrigued look. Edeard was not really aware of them; he could hear a lot of sniggering. It came mostly from the gang of apprentices centered on Obron. His cheeks flushed red as he struggled to keep the anger from showing in his surface thoughts.

“Have faith in yourself,” someone whispered into his mind, a skillfully directed longtalk voice directed at him alone. The sentiment was threaded with a rosy glow of approval.

He looked around to see Salrana smiling warmly at him. She was only twelve, dressed in the blue and white robe of a Lady’s novice. A sweet, good-natured child, she had never wanted to do anything other than join the church. The Lady’s Mother of Ashwell, Lorellan, had been happy to start her instructions. Attendance was never high in the village church apart from the usual festival services. Like Edeard, Salrana never quite fit into the mainstream of village life. It made them feel kindred. She was like a younger sister. He grinned back at her as he clambered down from the wagon. Lorellan, who was standing protectively to one side of her, gave him a bland smile.

Melzar came over to the back of the wagon. “This should be interesting.”

“Why, thank you,” Akeem said. The cold air was turning the blood vessels on his nose and cheeks an even darker shade than normal.

Melzar inclined his head surreptitiously toward the surrounding crowd. Edeard did not turn around; his farsight revealed Geepalt standing in the front row, feet apart and arms folded, a glower on his thin features. Contempt scudded across his surface thoughts, plain for everyone to sense. Edeard was adept enough to detect the currents of concern underneath.

“What’s the water like?” Barakka asked.

“Cold but very clear,” Melzar said contentedly. “Digging the well this close to the cliff is a boon. There is a lot of water filtering through the rock from above us, and it’s wonderfully pure. No need to boil it before we make beer, eh? Got to be good news.”

Edeard shuffled closer to the hole, half expecting Obron’s third hand to shove at him. His feet squelched on the semifrozen mud around the flagstones, and he peered over the rim. Wedard had done a good job of lining the circular shaft; the stones were perfectly cut and were fixed better than a lot of cottage walls. This well would not crumble and collapse as the last one had. Darkness lurked ten feet below the rim like an impenetrable mist. His farsight probed down, reaching the water over thirty feet below ground level.

“Are you ready?” Melzar asked. His voice was sympathetic. Without the Water Master’s support, the council never would have allowed Edeard to try the cats.

“Yes, sir.”

Edeard, Akeem, Melzar, Barakka, and Wedard extended their third hands to lift the first cat off the wagon. All the people in the crowd used their farsight to follow it into the gloomy shaft. Just as it reached the water, Edeard tensed. Suppose it sinks?

“And release,” Akeem said so smoothly and confidently that Edeard had no alternative but to let go. The cat bobbed about, completely unperturbed. Edeard realized he had been holding his breath, anxiety scribbled across his mind for everyone to sense, especially Obron. His relief was equally discernible to the villagers.

It was not long before all five cats were floating on the water. Melzar lowered the thick rubber hose, unwinding it slowly from the cylinder it was spooled around. The end was remarkably complicated, branching many times as if it had sprouted roots. Edeard lay flat on the flagstones around the rim, heedless of the freezing mud soaking into his sweater. Warm air gusted up from the shaft to tickle his face. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to concentrate solely on his third hand as it connected the hose ends to the cats’ gills. Simple muscle lips closed around the rubber tubes on his command, forming a tight seal. A standard genistar cat had three big flotation bladders, giving it complete control over its own buoyancy as it swam, allowing it to float peacefully or dive down several yards. It was those bladders which Edeard had shaped the new cats around, expanding them to occupy eighty percent of the total body volume, surrounding them with muscle so that they were crude pumps, like a heart for water. His longtalk ordered them to start the muscle squeeze sequence, building up an elementary rhythm.

Everyone fell silent as he stood up. Eyes and farsight were focused on the giant stone trough that had been set up next to the well. The hose end curved over it. For an achingly long minute nothing happened, and then it emitted a gurgling sound. Droplets of water spit out, the prelude to a foaming torrent that poured into the trough. It began to fill up remarkably quickly.

Edeard remembered the flow of water from the old well pump; this had several times the pressure. Melzar dipped a cup into the water and tasted it. “Fresh and pure,” he announced in a loud voice. “And better than that: abundant.” He stood in front of Edeard and started clapping, his eyes ranging around the crowd, encouraging them. Others joined in. Soon Edeard was at the center of a storm of applause. His cheeks were burning again, but this time he didn’t care. Akeem’s arm went around his shoulder, his mind aglow with pride. Even Geepalt was acknowledging the success, albeit grudgingly. Of Obron and his cronies there was no sign.

There was the tidying up, of course. Sacks of the oily vegetable mush that the cats digested were filled and positioned beside the well, valves adjusted so that they dripped a steady supply down slender tubes. Edeard connected the far end of each tube to the mouth of a cat, instructing them to suckle slowly. Wedard and his apprentices fastened the hose to the side of the well. The ground was cleared. Finally, the huge stone capping slab was moved over the shaft, sealing the cats into their agreeable new milieu. By that time apprentices and household ge-monkeys were lining up at the trough with large pitchers.

“You have a rare talent, my boy,” Melzar said as he watched the water lapping close to the top of the trough. “I see we’re going to have to dig a drain to cope with the overspill. Then no doubt the council will soon be demanding that mad pipe scheme to supply the houses. Quite a revolution you’ve started. Akeem, I’d be honored if you and your apprentice would join us for our evening meal.”

“I will be happy to liberate some of the wine you hold prisoner,” Akeem said. “I’ve heard there are whole dungeons full under your guild hall.”

“Ha!” Melzar turned to Edeard. “Do you like wine, my boy?”

Edeard realized that the question was actually genuine; for once he wasn’t simply being humored. “I’m not sure, sir.”

“Best find out, then.”

The crowd had departed, creating a rare atmosphere of satisfaction pervading the village. It was a good way to start the new spring season, ran the feeling, a good omen that times were getting better. Edeard stayed close to the trough as the apprentices filled their pitchers. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but they seemed to be treating him with a tad more approbation than before. Several even congratulated him.

“Haunting the site of your victory?”

It was Salrana. He grinned at her. “Actually, just making sure the cats don’t keel over from exhaustion or the hoses don’t tear free. Stuff like that. There’s a lot that can go wrong yet.”

“Poor Edeard; always the pessimist.”

“Not today. Today was …”

“Glorious.”

He eyed the low clouds that were blocking the sun from view.

“Helpful. For me and the village.”

“I’m really pleased for you,” she exclaimed. “It takes so much courage to stand up for your own convictions, especially in a place like this. Melzar was right; this is a revolution.”

“You were eavesdropping! What would the Lady say?”

“She would say: ‘Well done, young man. This will make everyone’s life a little better. Ashwell has one less thing to worry about now.’ The people need that. Life is so hard here. From small foundations of hope, empires can be built.”

“That has to be a quote,” he teased.

“If you attended church, you’d know.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t get much time.”

“The Lady knows and understands.”

“You’re such a good person, Salrana. One day you’ll be the Pythia.”

“And you’ll be Mayor of Makkathran. What a grand time we’ll have together, making all of Querencia a happy place.”

“No more bandits. No more drudgery—especially not for apprentices.”

“Or novices.”

“They’ll talk about our reign until the Skylords return to carry us all into the Heart.”

“Oh, look,” she squealed, and pointed excitedly at the trough. “It’s overflowing! You’ve given us too much water, Edeard.”

He watched as the water began to spill over the lip of the trough. Within seconds it had become a small stream frothing across the mud toward their feet. They both ran aside, laughing.

Justine Burnelli examined her body closely before she put it on. After all, it had been over two centuries since she’d last worn it. During the intervening years it had been stored in an exotic matter cage that generated a temporal suspension zone so that barely half a second had passed inside.

The cage looked like a simple sphere of violet light in ANA’s New York reception facility, a building that extended a hundred fifty stories below Manhattan’s streets. Her cage was housed on the ninety-fifth floor, along with several thousand identical radiant bubbles. ANA normally maintained a body for five years after the personality downloaded out of it in case there were compatibility problems. Such an issue was unusual; only about one in eleven million rejected a life inside ANA and returned to the physical realm. Once those five years were up, the body was discontinued. After all, if a personality really wanted to leave ANA after that, a simple clone could be grown, a process not dissimilar to the old-fashioned re-life procedure that was still available in the External worlds.

However, ANA: Governance considered it useful to have physical representatives walking the Greater Commonwealth in certain circumstances. Justine was one of them. It was partly her own fault. She had been over eight hundred years old when Earth had built its repository for Advanced Neural Activity, the ultimate virtual universe where everyone supposedly was equal in the end. After so much life she was very reluctant to see her body “discontinued” in much the same way she’d never quite acknowledged that re-life was true continuation. For her, clones force-fed on a dead person’s memories were not the same person, no matter that there was no discernible difference. That early twenty-first-century upbringing of hers was too hard to shake off, even for someone as mature and controlled as she had become.

The violet haze faded away to reveal a blond girl in her biological mid-twenties. Rather attractive, Justine noted with a little tweak of pride, and very little of that had come from genetic manipulation down the centuries. The face she was looking at was still recognizable as the brattish party It girl of the early twenty-first century who had spent a decade on the gossip channels as she dated her way through East Coast society and soap actors. Her nose had been reduced, admittedly, and pointed slightly. Now that she regarded it critically, it was possibly a little too cutesy, especially with cheekbones that looked like they were made from avian bone, they were so sharp yet delicate. Her eyes had been modified to a pale blue, matching Nordic white skin that tanned to honey gold and hair that was thick white-blond, falling below her shoulders. Her height was greater than her friends from the twenty-first century would have remembered; she’d surreptitiously added four inches during various rejuvenation treatments. Despite the temptation, she had not gained all that length only in her legs; she had made sure her torso was in proportion, with a nicely flat abdomen that was easy to maintain thanks to a slightly accelerated digestive system. Happily, she’d never gone for ridiculous boobs—well, except that one time when she was rejuving for her two hundredth birthday and did it to find out what it was like having a Grand Canyon cleavage. And yes, men did gape and come out with even more stupid opening lines, but as she could always have whoever she wanted anyway, there was no real advantage and it wasn’t really her, so she’d gotten rid of them at the next rejuvenation session.

So there she was, in the flesh and still in good shape, just lacking a mind. With the monitor program confirming her visual review, she poured her consciousness back into her brain. The memory reduction was phenomenal, as was the loss of all the advanced thought routines that comprised her true personality these days. Her old biological neuron structure simply did not have the capacity to hold what she had become in ANA. It was like being lobotomized, actually feeling one’s mind wither away to some primitive insect faculty. But only temporary, she told herself—so sluggishly.

Justine drew her first breath in two hundred years, her chest jerking down air as if she were waking from a nightmare. Her heart started racing. For a moment she did nothing—not actually remembering what to do—then the reliable old automatic reflexes kicked in. She drew another breath, getting a grip on her panic, overriding the old Neanderthal instincts with pure rationality. Another regular breath. Exoimages flickered into her peripheral vision, bringing up rows of default symbols from her enrichments. She opened her eyes. Long ranks of violet bubbles stretched out in all directions around her like a bizarre artwork sculpture. Somehow her meat-based mind was convinced she could see the shapes of people inside. That was preposterous. Inside ANA she’d obviously allowed herself to discard the memory of how fallible and hormone-susceptible a human brain was.

A slow smile revealed perfect white teeth. At least I’ll get to have some real sex before I download again.

Justine teleported out of the New York reception facility right into the center of the Tulip Mansion. Stabilizer fields had maintained the ancient Burnelli family home through the centuries, keeping the building’s fabric in pristine condition. She gave a happy grin when she saw it again with her own eyes. If she was honest with herself, it was a bit of a monstrosity, a mansion laid out in four “petals” whose scarlet-and-black roofs curved up to a central tower stamen that had an apex anther made from a crown of carved stone coated in gold foil. It was as gaudy as it was striking, falling in and out of fashion over the decades. Justine’s father, Gore Burnelli, had bought the estate in Rye County just outside New York, establishing it as a base for the family’s vast commercial and financial activities in the middle of the twenty-first century. It had remained a center for them while the Commonwealth was established and had expanded outward until its social and economic uniformity was shattered by biononics, ANA, and the separation of Higher and Advancer cultures. The family still had a prodigious business empire spread across the External worlds, but it was managed in a corporate structure by thousands of Burnellis, none of whom was over three hundred years old. Gore and the original clique of close relatives, including Justine, who used to orchestrate it all had long since downloaded into ANA, though Gore had never formally and legally handed over ownership to his impatient descendants. It was, he assured them, purely a quirk for their own benefit, ensuring that the whole enterprise could never be broken up, thus giving the family a cohesion that so many others lacked. Except Justine knew damn well that even in his enlightened, expanded, semiomnipotent state within ANA, Gore was not about to hand anything over he had spent centuries building up. Quirk, my ass.

She had materialized in the middle of the mansion’s ballroom. Her bare feet pressed down on a polished oak floor that was nearly as shiny as the huge gilt-edged mirrors on the wall. A hundred reflections of her naked body grinned sheepishly back at her. Deep-purple velvet drapes curved around the tall window doors that opened onto a veranda dripping with white wisteria. Outside, a bright low February sun shone across the extensive wooded grounds with their massive swaths of rhododendrons. There had been some fabulous parties held in there, she recalled, with fame, wealth, glamour, power, notoriety, and beauty mingling in a fashion that would have made Jane Austen green with envy.

The doors were open, leading into the broad corridor. Justine walked through, taking in all the semifamiliar sights, welcoming the warm rush of recognition. Alcoves were filled with furniture that had been antique even before Ozzie and Nigel had built their first wormhole generator; as for the artwork, one could buy a small continent on an External world with just one of the paintings.

She padded up the staircase that curved through the entrance hall and made her way down the north petal to her old bedroom. Everything was as she’d left it, maintained for centuries by the stabilizer fields and maidbots; a comforting illusion that she or any other Burnelli could walk in at any time and be given a perfect greeting in his or her ancestral home. The bed was freshly made, with linen taken out of the stabilizer field and freshened as soon as she and ANA had agreed to the reception. Several items of clothing were laid out. She ignored the modern toga suit and went for a classical Indian-themed emerald dress with black boots.

“Very neutral.”

Justine jumped at the voice. Irritation quickly supplanted perturbation. She turned and glared at the solido standing in the doorway. “Dad, I don’t care how far past the physical you claim to be, you do not come into a girl’s bedroom without knocking. Especially mine.”

Gore Burnelli’s image did not show much contrition. He simply watched with interest as she sat on the bed and laced up her boots. He had chosen the representation of his twenty-fourth-century self, which was undoubtedly the image by which he was most known: a body whose skin had been turned to gold. Over that he wore a black V-neck sweater and black trousers. The perfect reflective surface made it difficult to determine his features; without the gold sheen he would have been a handsome twenty-five-year-old with short-cropped fair hair. His face, which at the time he had had it done had been nothing more than merged organic circuitry tattoos, was all the more disconcerting thanks to the perfectly ordinary gray eyes peering out of the gloss. That Gore looked out on the world from behind a mask of improvements was something of a metaphor. He was a pioneer of enhanced mental routines and had been one of the founders of ANA.

“Like it matters,” he grunted.

“Politeness is always relevant,” she snapped back. Her temper was not improved by the way her fingers seemed to lack dexterity. She was having trouble tying the bootlaces.

“You were a good choice to receive the ambassador.”

She finally managed to finish the bow and lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “Are you jealous, Dad?”

“Of becoming some kind of turbo version of a monkey again? Yeah, right. Thinking down at this level and this speed gives me a headache.”

“Turbo monkey! You nearly said ‘animal,’ didn’t you?”

“Flesh and blood is animal.”

“Just how many factions do you support?”

“I’m a Conservative; everyone knows that. Maybe a few campaign contributions to the Outwards.”

“Hmm.” She gave him a suspicious look. Even in a body, she knew the rumors that ANA gave a special dispensation to some of its internal personalities. ANA: Governance denied it, of course, but if anyone could manage to be more equal than others, it would be Gore who had been there right at the start as one of the founding fathers.

“The ambassador is nearly here,” Gore said.

Justine checked her exoimages and started to reorder her secondary thought routines. Her body’s macrocellular clusters and biononics were centuries out of date but perfectly adequate for the simple tasks this day would require. She called Kazimir. “I’m ready,” she told him.

As she walked out of her bedroom, she experienced a brief chill that made her glance back over her shoulder. That’s the bed where we made love. The last time I saw him alive. Kazimir McFoster was one memory she had never put into storage, never allowed to weaken. There had been others since, many others, both in the flesh and in ANA, wonderful, intense relationships, but none ever had the poignancy of dear Kazimir, whose death had been her responsibility.

Gore said nothing as his solido followed her down the grand staircase to the entrance hall. She suspected that he suspected.

Kazimir teleported into the marbled entrance hall, appearing dead center on the big Burnelli crest. He was dressed in his Admiral’s tunic. Justine had never seen him wear anything else in six hundred years. He smiled in genuine welcome and gave her a gentle embrace, his lips brushing her cheek.

“Mother. You look wonderful as always.”

She sighed. He did look so like his father. “Thank you, darling.”

“Grandfather.” He gave Gore a shallow bow.

“Still holing up in that old receptacle, then,” Gore said. “When are you going to join us here in civilization?”

“Not today, thank you, Grandfather.”

“Dad, lay off,” Justine warned.

“It’s goddamn creepy, if you ask me,” Gore grumbled. “No one stays in a body for a thousand years. What’s left for you out there?”

“Life. People. Friends. True responsibility. A sense of wonder.”

“We got a ton of that in here.”

“And while you look inward, the universe carries on around you.”

“Hey, we’re very aware of extrinsic events.”

“Which is why we’re having this happy family reunion today.” Kazimir gave a small victory smile.

Justine wasn’t listening to them anymore; they always ran through this argument as if it were a greeting ritual. “Shall we go, boys?”

The doors of the mansion swung open, and she walked out onto the broad portico without waiting for the others. It was cold outside; frost still was cloaking the deeper hollows in the lawn where the long shadows prevailed. A few clouds scudded across the fresh blue sky. Pushing its way through them was the Ocisen Empire ship sliding in from the southeast. Roughly triangular, it was nearly two hundred meters long. There was nothing remotely aerodynamic about it. The fuselage was a dark metal mottled with aquamarine patches that resembled lichen. Its crinkled surface was cratered with indentations that sprouted black spindles at the center, with long boxes that looked as though they had been welded on at random. A cluster of sharp radiator fins emerged from the rear section, glowing bright red.

Gore gave a derisive chuckle. “What a monstrosity. You’d think they could do better now that we’ve given them regrav.”

“We took five hundred years to get from the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk to the Second Chance,” Justine pointed out.

Gore looked up as the alien starship slowed to a halt above the mansion’s grounds. “Do you think it’ll have jets of dry ice gushing out when it lands? Or maybe they’ve mounted a giant laser gun that’ll blast the White House to smithereens.”

“Dad, be quiet.”

The ship descended. Two rows of hatches along its belly swung open.

“For fuck’s sake, haven’t they even heard of malmetal?” Gore complained.

Long fat landing legs telescoped out. The movement was accompanied by a sharp hissing sound as high-pressure gas vented through grilles in the undercarriage bays.

Justine had to suck in her lower lip to stop herself from giggling. The starship was ridiculous, the kind of contraption Isambard Brunel would have built for Queen Victoria.

It touched down on the lawn, its landing pads sinking deep into the grass and the soft soil. Several radiator fins sliced down into silver birch trees, their heat igniting the wood. Burning branches dropped to the ground.

“Wow, the damage it causes. How will our world survive? Quick, you kids flee to the woods; I’ll hold them off with a shotgun.”

“Dad! And cancel your solido; you know what the Empire thinks of ANA personalities.”

“Stupid and superstitious.”

His solido vanished. Justine watched his icon appear in her exoimage. “Now behave,” she told him.

“That ship is leaking radiation all over the place,” Gore commented. “They haven’t even shielded their fusion reactor properly. And who uses deuterium, anyway?”

Justine reviewed the sensor data, scanning the ship’s hotspots. “It’s hardly a harmful emission level.”

“The Ocisens aren’t as susceptible to radioactivity as humans are,” Kazimir said. “It’s one reason they were able to industrialize space in their home system with what equates to our mid-twenty-first-century technology. They simply didn’t require the shielding mass we would have needed.”

Halfway down the starship’s fuselage a multisegment airlock door unwound. The ambassador for the Ocisen Empire floated out, sitting on top of a hemispherical regrav sled. Physically, the alien was not impressive: a small barrel-shaped torso wrapped in layers of flaccid flesh that formed overlapping folds. Its four eyes were on serpent stalks curving out from the crest, while four limbs were folded up against the lower half of its body. They were encrusted in cybernetic systems, amplifying its strength and providing a number of manipulator attachments that ranged from delicate pliers up to a big hydraulic crab pincer. Further support braces ran up its body, resembling a cage of chrome vertebrae that ended in a collar arrangement just below the base of the eye stalks. Patches of what looked like copper moss were growing across various sections of its flesh; they sprouted small rubbery stalks covered in minute sapphire flowers.

Justine bowed formally as the sled stopped in front of her, floating half a meter off the ground, which put the ambassador’s eye stalks above her. Even with the regrav unit and the physical support, it was obvious the ambassador had come from a low-gravity world. It sagged against the metal and composite structures holding it up. Two of the eye stalks bent around so that they were aligned on her.

“Ambassador, thank you for visiting us,” Justine said.

“We are pleased to visit,” the ambassador answered, its voice a whispery burble coming from a slender vocalizer gill between the eye stalks. Translated into English, the sled processors used a speaker on the rim to boom the reply to Justine.

“My home welcomes you,” she said, remembering the formalites.

Another of the ambassador’s eye stalks curved around to stare at Kazimir. “You are the human navy commander.”

“That is correct,” Kazimir said. “I am here as you requested.”

“Many of my nest ancestor cousins fought in the Fandola assault.” Thin droplets of spittle ran out of the ambassador’s gill, to be absorbed by drain holes in its support collar.

“I am sure they fought with honor.”

“Honor be damned. We would have enjoyed victory over the Hancher vermin if you had not intervened that day.”

“We are friends with the Hancher. Your attack was ill advised; I warned you we would not abandon our friends. That is not our way.”

The fourth eye stalk turned on Kazimir. “You in person warned the Empire, Navy Commander?”

“That is correct.”

“You live so long. You are no longer natural.”

“Is this why you are here, Ambassador, to insult me?”

“You overreact. I state the obvious.”

“We do not hide from the obvious,” Justine said. “But we are not here today to dwell upon what was. Please come in, Ambassador.”

“You are kind.”

Justine walked into the entrance hall with the ambassador’s sled gliding along behind her. Somehow it managed to keep a distance that was not so close as to be blatantly rude but close enough to be disconcerting.

Kazimir’s icon blinked up beside Gore’s in her peripheral vision. “You know,” he said, “the Ocisens only started painting their sleds black after they found out humans are unsettled by darkness.”

“If that’s the best they can come up with, it’s a wonder their species ever survived the fission age,” she replied.

“We shouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to mock them,” Gore replied. “However much we sneer, they do have an empire, and they would have obliterated the Hancher if we hadn’t stepped in.”

“I’d hardly consider that to be an indicator of their superiority,” Justine told them. “And they’re certainly not a threat to us; their technology level is orders of magnitude below Higher culture, let alone ANA.”

“Yes, but right now they only have one policy: to acquire better technology, especially weapons technology. A sizable percentage of the Emperor’s expansion budget is diverted to building long-range exploration ships in the hope they’ll come across a world whose inhabitants have gone postphysical and they can help themselves to whatever’s left behind.”

“Let’s hope they never encounter a Prime immotile.”

“They’ve made seventeen attempts to reach the Dyson Pair,” Kazimir told her. “And they currently have forty-two ships searching for an immotile civilization beyond the region of space we firewalled.”

“I didn’t know that. Is there any danger they’ll find a rogue Prime planet?”

“If we can’t find one, they certainly won’t be able to.”

Justine led their little party into the McLeod room and sat at the head of the large oak table running down the middle. Kazimir took the chair at his mother’s side while the ambassador hovered at the other end. Its eye stalks bent around slowly, as if it were having trouble with what it saw as it scanned the walls. The room’s decor was Scottish-themed, surrounding the alien with tartan drapes, ancient Celtic ceremonial swords, and solemn marble mannequins dressed in clan kilts. Several sets of bagpipes were displayed in glass cases. A fabulous pair of stag antlers hung above the stone mantel that had been imported from a Highland castle.

“Ambassador,” Justine said formally. “I represent the human government of Earth. I am physical, as you asked, and I am empowered to negotiate on the government’s behalf with the Ocisen Empire. What do you wish to discuss?”

Three of the ambassador’s eyes curved around to stare at her. “Although we disapprove of living creatures placing themselves subordinate to the mechanical, we consider your planetary computer to be the true ruler of the Commonwealth. That is why I required this direct meeting rather than with the Senate as usual.”

Justine was not about to start arguing about political structures with an alien who saw everything in black and white. “ANA has considerable influence beyond this planet. That is so.”

“Then you must work with the Empire to avert a very real danger.”

“What danger is that, Ambassador?” As if none of us knew.

“A human organization is threatening to send ships into the Void.”

“Yes, our Living Dream movement wants to send its followers on a Pilgrimage there.”

“I am familiar with human emotional states after being exposed to your kind for so long, so I am curious why you do not react to this event with any sense of distress or concern. It is through humans that we know of the Void; therefore, you know what effect your Living Dream is proposing to trigger.”

“They do not propose anything; they simply wish to live the life of their idol.”

“You are deliberately denying the implication. Their entry to the Void will provoke a massive devourment phase. The galaxy will be ruined. Our Empire will be consumed. You will kill us and countless others.”

“That will not happen,” Justine said.

“We are reassured that you intend to stop the Living Dream.”

“That’s not what I said. It is not our belief that their Pilgrimage will cause a devourment phase of any size. They simply do not possess the ability to pass through the event horizon which guards the Void. Even the Raiel have trouble doing that, and Living Dream does not have access to a Raiel ship.”

“Then why are they launching this Pilgrimage?”

“It is a simple political gesture, nothing more. Neither the Ocisen Empire nor any other species in the galaxy has anything to worry about.”

“Do you guarantee that your Living Dream group cannot get through the event horizon? Other humans have crossed over into the Void. They are the cause of this desire to Pilgrimage, are they not?”

“Nothing is certain, Ambassador; you know that. But the likelihood—”

“If you cannot guarantee it, then you must prevent the ships from flying.”

“The Greater Commonwealth is a democratic institution, complicated in this case by Living Dream being both transstellar and the legitimate government of Ellezelin. The Commonwealth constitution is specifically designed to protect every member’s right to self-determination on an individual and governmental level. In other words, we don’t actually have the legal right to prevent them from embarking on their Pilgrimage.”

“I am familiar with human lawyers. Everything can be undone; nothing is final. You play with words, not reality. The Empire recognizes only power and ability. Your computer government has the physical power to prevent this Pilgrimage, am I not correct?”

“Ability does not automatically imply intent,” Justine said. “ANA: Governance has the ability to do many things. We do not do them because of the laws which govern us, both legal and moral.”

“It is not part of your morality to destroy this galaxy. You can prevent this.”

“We can argue strongly against it,” she said, wishing she did not agree quite so much with the Ocisen.

“The Empire requires a tangible commitment. The Pilgrimage ships must be neutralized.”

“Out of the question,” Justine said. “We cannot interfere with the lawful activities of another sovereign state; it goes against everything we are.”

“If you do not prevent the launch of this atrocity, then the Empire will. Even your lawyers will agree we have the right to species self-preservation.”

“Is that a threat, Ambassador?” Kazimir asked quietly.

“It is the course of action you have forced upon us. Why do you not see this? Are you afraid of your primitive cousins? What can they threaten you with?”

“They do not threaten us; we respect each other. Can you make the leap to understand that?”

Justine tried to read the ambassador’s reaction to the jibe, but it seemed unperturbed. Spittle continued to dribble from its vocalizer gill while its arms flopped like landed fish inside their cybernetic casings. “Your laws and their hypocrisy will always elude us,” the ambassador said. “The Empire knows you always include extraordinary powers within your constitutions to impose solutions in times of crisis. We require you to invoke them now.”

“ANA: Governance will be happy to introduce a motion in the Senate,” Justine said. “We will ask that Living Dream desist from reckless action.”

“Will you back this by force if they refuse?”

“Unlikely,” Kazimir said. “Our navy exists to protect us from external enemies.”

“What is the Void devourment if not an enemy? Ultimately it is everyone’s enemy. The Raiel acknowledge this.”

“We do understand your unease, Ambassador,” Justine said. “I would like to reassure you we will work to prevent any catastrophe from engulfing the galaxy.”

“The Raiel could not prevent devourment. Are you greater than the Raiel?”

“Probably not,” she muttered. Did it understand sarcasm?

“Then we will prevent your ships from flying.”

“Ambassador, I have to advise the Ocisen Empire against such a course of action,” Kazimir said. “The navy will not permit you to attack humans.”

“Do not think you can intimidate us, Admiral Kazimir. We are not the helpless species you attacked at Fandola. We have allies now. I represent many powerful species who will not allow the Void to begin its final devourment phase. We do not stand alone. Do you think your navy can defeat the whole galaxy?”

Kazimir seemed unperturbed. “The navy acts only in defense. I urge you to allow the Commonwealth to solve an internal problem in our own way. Humans will not trigger a large-scale devourment.”

“We will watch you,” the ambassador boomed. “If you do not prevent these Pilgrimage ships from being built and launched, then we and our new—powerful—allies will act in self-defense.”

“I do understand your concern,” Justine said. “But I would ask you to trust us.”

“You have never given us a reason to,” the ambassador said. “I thank you for your time. I will return to my ship; I find your environment unpleasant.”

Which is quite subtle for an Ocisen, Justine thought. She stood and accompanied the ambassador back to its ship. Gore materialized beside her as the hulking machine rose into the sky.

“Allies, huh? You know anything about that?” he asked Kazimir.

“Not a thing,” Kazimir said. “They could be bluffing. Then again, if they are serious about stopping the Pilgrimage, they will need allies. They certainly can’t do it alone.”

“Could it be the Raiel?” Justine asked in surprise.

Kazimir shrugged. “I doubt it. The Raiel don’t go sneaking around doing deals to pitch one species against another. If the Empire had approached them, I feel confident they would have told us.”

“A postphysical, then?”

“Not impossible,” Gore conceded. “Most of them regard us as vulgar little newcomers to an exclusive club. Those that talk to us, anyway. Most can’t even be bothered to do that. But I’d be very surprised if one had. They’d probably be quite interested in observing the final devourment phase.”

“How about you?” Justine inquired lightly.

Gore smiled, snow-white teeth shining coldly between gold lips. “I admit it would be a hell of a sight. From a distance. A very large distance.”

“So what do you recommend?” Justine asked.

“We certainly need to start the motion in the Senate,” Kazimir said. “The ambassador was quite right. I don’t think we can allow the Pilgrimage to launch.”

“Can’t stop ’em,” Gore said with indecent cheerfulness. “It’s in the constitution.”

“We do have to find a solution,” Justine said. “A political one. And quickly.”

“That’s my girl. Are you going to address the Senate yourself? You carry a lot of weight out there: history in the flesh.”

“And it would be helpful to get confirmation from the Raiel,” Kazimir said. “You do have the personal connection.”

“What?” Justine’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, hellfire. I wasn’t planning on leaving Earth.”

“I expect the Hancher ambassador would like some reassurance, as well,” Gore added maliciously.

Justine turned to give her father a level stare. “Yes, there’s a lot of people and factions we need to keep an eye on.”

“I’m sure Governance knows what it’s doing. After all, you were its first choice. Can’t beat that.”

“Actually, I was second.”

“Who was first?” Kazimir asked curiously.

“Toniea Gall.”

“That bitch!” Gore spit. “She couldn’t get laid in a Silent World house the day after she rejuved. Everyone hates her.”

“Now, Dad, history decided the resettlement period was a minor golden age.”

“Fucking minuscule, more like.”

Justine and Kazimir smiled at each other. “She was a good President as I recall,” Kazimir said.

“Bullshit.”

“I’ll go and visit the Hancher embassy on my way to the Senate,” Justine said. “It would be nice to know about the Empire’s military movements.”

“I’ll start reassigning our observation systems inside the Empire to see if we can get a clearer picture of what’s going on,” Kazimir said.

As Justine’s body teleported out of the Tulip Mansion, Gore’s primary consciousness retreated to his secure environment within the vastness of ANA. As perceptual reality locations went, it was modest. Some people had created entire universes for their own private playgrounds, setting up self-governing parameters to maintain the configurations. The bodies, or cores, or focal points they occupied within their concepts were equally varied, with abilities defined purely by the individual milieu. Quite where such domains extended to was no longer apparent. ANA had ceased to be limited to the physical machinery that had birthed it. The operational medium was now tunneled into the quantum structure of spacetime around Earth, fashioning a unique province in which its manifold posthuman intelligences could function. The multiple interstices propagated through quantum fields with the tenacity and fragile beauty of a nebula, an edifice forever shifting in tandem with the whims of its creators. It was no longer machine or even artificial life; it had become alive. What it might evolve into was the subject of considerable and obsessive internal debate.

The factions were not openly at war over ANA’s ultimate configuration, but it was a vicious battle of ideas. Gore had not been entirely truthful when he had claimed to be a Conservative. He did support the idea of maintaining the status quo, but only because he felt the other, more extreme factions were being far too hasty in offering their solutions. Apart from the Dividers, of course, who wanted ANA to fission into as many parts as there were factions, allowing each to go its own way. He did not agree with them, either; what he wanted was more time and more information. That way, he believed, the direction they should take would become a lot more evident.

He appeared on a long beach with a rocky headland a few hundred meters ahead of him. Perched on top was an old stone tower with crumbling walls and a white pavilion structure attached to the rear. The sun was hot on his head and hands; he was wearing a loose short-sleeved shirt and knee-length trousers. His skin was ordinary, without any enrichments. The self-image and surroundings were taken from the early twenty-first century, back when life was easier even without sentient machines. This was Hawksbill Bay, Antigua, where he used to come with his yacht, Moonlight Madison. There had been a resort clustered along the shore in those days, but in this representation the land behind the beach was nothing more than a tangle of palm trees and lush grass with brightly colored parrots zipping between the branches. It did not have the wind that blew constantly through the real Caribbean, either, although the sea was an astonishingly clear turquoise where fish swam close to shore.

There was a simple dirt path up the headland, leading to the tower. The pavilion with its fabric roof covered a broad wooden deck and a small swimming pool. There was a big oval table at one end with five heavily cushioned chairs around it. Nelson Sheldon was sitting there, a tall drink resting in front of him.

In the days before ANA, Nelson had been the security chief for the Sheldon Dynasty, the largest and most powerful economic empire that had ever existed. When the original Commonwealth society and economy split apart and reconfigured as the Greater Commonwealth, the dynasty retained a great deal of its wealth and power, but things weren’t the same. After Nigel Sheldon left, it lost cohesion and dispersed out among the External worlds; it was still a force to be reckoned with politically and economically, but it lacked true clout.

Over two centuries spent looking after the dynasty’s welfare had turned Nelson into a pragmatist of the first order. That meant he and Gore saw the whole ANA evolution outcome in more or less the same terms.

Gore sat at the table and poured himself an iced tea from the pitcher. “You accessed all that?”

“Yeah. I’m interested who the Empire has as an ally or even allies.”

“Probably just a bluff.”

“You’re overestimating the Ocisens. They lack the imagination for a bluff. I’d say they’ve managed to dig up some ancient reactionary race with a hard-on for the good old days and a backyard full of obsolete weapons.”

“ANA: Governance is going to have to give that one some serious attention,” Gore said. “We can’t have alien warships invading the Commonwealth. Been there, done that. Ain’t going to let it happen twice. It was one of the reasons we started building ANA, so that humanity is never at a technological disadvantage again. There’s a lot of very nasty hardware lying around this galaxy.”

“Among other things,” Nelson agreed sagely. “We are going to have to give the Void some serious attention soon—just as the Accelerators wanted.”

“I want us to give the Void serious attention,” Gore said. “We can hardly claim to be masters of cosmological theory if we can’t even figure it out. It’s only the analysis time scale which everyone disagrees on.”

“And the method of analysis, but yes, I’ll grant you that we do need to know how the damn thing is generated. It’s one of the reasons I’m with you on our little conspiracy.”

“Think of us as a very small faction.”

“Whatever; I stopped screwing round with semantics a long time ago. Purpose is absolute, and if you can’t define it: tough. And our purpose is to undo the damage the Accelerators have caused.”

“To a degree, yes. The Conservatives will be most active on that front; we can trust them to do a decent job. I want to try to think a couple of steps ahead. After all, we’re not animals anymore. We don’t just react to a situation; we’re supposed to be able to see it coming. Ultimately, something has to be done about the Void problem. Understanding its internal mechanism is all very well, but it cannot be allowed to continue threatening the galaxy.”

Nelson raised a glass to his lips and smiled in salute. “Way to go, tough guy. Where the Raiel failed …”

“Where the Raiel tell us they failed. We have no independent confirmation.”

“Nothing lasts long enough, apart from the Raiel themselves.”

“Bullshit. Half the postphysicals in the galaxy have been around for a lot longer.”

“Yeah, and those that were don’t bother to communicate anymore. They’re all quiet, or dead, or transcended, or retroevolved. So unless you want to go around and poke them with a big stick, the Raiel are our source. Face it, ANA is good, great even. We’re damn nearly proto-gods, but in terms of development we are still behind the Raiel, and they plateaued millions of years ago. The Void defeated them. They converted entire star systems into defense machines, they invaded the fucking place with an armada, and they still couldn’t switch it off or kill it or blow it to hell.”

“They went at it the wrong way.”

Nelson laughed. “And you know the right way?”

“We have an advantage they never did. We have insider knowledge, a mole.”

“The Waterwalker? In Ozzie’s name, tell me you’re joking.”

“You know who paid the most attention to Inigo’s dreams right at the start? The Raiel. They didn’t know what was inside. They built ships which could theoretically withstand any quantum environment, yet not one of them ever returned. We’re the ones who showed them what’s in there.”

“It’s a very small glimpse, a single city on a standard H-congruous planet.”

“You’re missing the point.” His arm swept around Hawksbill to point at the thick pillar of black rock protruding from the water several hundred meters out to sea. Small waves broke apart on it, churning up spume. “You bring any humans prior to the twenty-fifth century into here and they’d think they were in a physical reality. But if you or I were to observe the environment through them, we’d soon realize there were artificial factors involved. The Waterwalker gives us the same opportunity. His telepathic abilities have provided a very informative glimpse into the nature of the universe hiding inside that bastard event horizon. For all that it looks like our universe with planets and stars, it most definitely is not. This Skylord of the Second Dream confirms that. The Void has a Heart which is most distinctive, even though we haven’t been shown it yet.”

“Knowing it’s different in there doesn’t give us any real advantage.”

“Wrong. We know nothing can be achieved on a physical level. You can’t use quantumbusters against it; you can’t send an army in to wipe out the chief villain’s control room. The Void is the ultimate postphysical in the galaxy and probably all the other galaxies we can see. What we have to do is communicate with it if we ever want to achieve any resolution to the problem it presents to our stars. I don’t believe the Firstlife ever intended it to be dangerous; they didn’t know there was anything left outside that it could ever threaten. That’s our window. We know humans can get inside even though we’re not sure how they did it that first time. We know there are humans in there who are attuned to its fabric. Through them we may be able to effect change.”

“The Waterwalker is dead. He has been for millennia of internal time.”

“Even if he were unique, which I don’t believe for a minute, time is not a problem, not in there. We all know that. What we have to do is get inside and forge that tenuous little link to the Heart. That’s the key to this.”

“You want to visit the Void? To fly through the event horizon?”

“Not me. Much as my ego would love being the union point, there’s no empirical evidence that I would have the telepathic ability inside. Even if we took ANA inside, there’s no certainty it could become the conduit. No. We have to employ a method that has a greater chance of success.”

Nelson shook his head in dismay and a bit of disappointment. “Which is?”

“I’m working on it.”

It was not an auspicious start to the day. Araminta had not overslept, not exactly. She had an Advancer heritage that gave her a complete set of macrocellular clusters, all functioning efficiently; she could order her secondary thought routines competently. So naturally she had woken up on time with a phantom bleeping in her ears and synchronized blue light flashing along her optic nerve. It was just after that wake-up spike that she always had difficulty. Her flat had only two rooms: a bathroom cubicle and a combi main room. That was all she could afford on her waitress’s pay. Despite the fact that it was cheap, the expanded bed with its a-foam mattress was very comfortable. After the spike she lay curled up in her cotton pajamas, cozy as a nesting frangle. Hazy morning sunlight stole around the curtains, not bright enough to be disturbing; the room maintained itself at a comfortable warmth. If she bothered to check the flat’s management programs, everything was ready and waiting: the day’s clothes washed and aired, a quick light breakfast in the cuisine cabinet.

So I can afford to laze for a bit.

The second alarm spike jerked her awake again, vanquishing the weird dream. This spike was harsher than the first, deliberately so, as it was an urgent order to get the hell up—one she never needed. When she canceled the noise and light, she assumed she’d messed up the secondary routines, somehow switching the order of the spikes. Then she focused on the timer in her exoimages.

“Shit!”

It became a struggle to pull on her clothes while drinking the Assam tea and chewing some toast. A leisurely shower was replaced by spraying on some travel-clean, which never worked the way the ads promised, leaving busy glamorous people fresh and cleansed as they zipped between meetings and clubs. Instead she hurried out of the flat with her mouse-brown hair badly brushed, her eyes red-rimmed and stinging slightly from the travel-clean, and her skin smelling of pine bleach.

Great. That should earn me some big tips, she thought grouchily as she hurried down to the big building’s underground garage. Her trike pod purred its way out into Colwyn City’s crowded streets and joined the morning rush of commuters. In theory the traffic should have been light; most people these days used regrav capsules, floating in serene comfort above the wheeled vehicles except when they touched down on dedicated parking slots along the side of the road or on a rooftop pad. But at this early hour the city’s not so well off were all on their way to work, filling the concrete grid close to capacity with pods, cars, and bikes and jamming the public rail cabs.

Araminta was half an hour late when her pod pulled up at the back of Niks. She rushed in through the kitchen door and got filthy looks from the rest of the staff. “Sorry!” The restaurant was already full of the breakfast crowd, midlevel executives who liked their food natural, prepared by chefs rather than cuisine units and served by humans, not bots.

Tandra managed to lean in close as Araminta fastened her apron. She sniffed suspiciously and winked. “Travel-clean, huh. I guess you didn’t get home last night.”

Araminta hung her head, wishing she did have an excuse like that. “I was up late last night; another design course.”

“Honey, you’ve got to start burning the candle at both ends. You’re real young and a looker; get yourself out there again.”

“I know. I will.” Araminta took a deep breath and went over to Matthew, who was so disgusted that he didn’t even rebuke her. She lifted three plates from the ready counter, checked the table number, cranked her mouth open to a smile, and pushed through the doors.

The breakfast session at Niks usually lasted about ninety minutes. There wasn’t a time limit, but by a quarter to nine the last customers were heading for the office or store. Occasionally, a tourist or two would linger or a business meeting would run overtime. Today there were not many lagging behind. Araminta did her penance by supervising the cleaning bots as the tables were changed, ready to serve morning coffee to shoppers and visitors. Niks had a good position in the commercial district, five blocks from the docks down on the river.

Tables started to fill up again after ten o’clock. The restaurant had a curving front wall with a slim terrace running around it. Araminta went along the outside tables, adjusting the flowers in the small vases and taking orders for chocolettos and cappuccinos. It kept her out of Matthew’s way. He still had not said anything to her, a bad sign.

Some time after eleven the woman appeared and started moving along the tables, talking to the customers. Araminta could see that several of them were annoyed, waving her away. Since Ethan had declared Pilgrimage ten days earlier, Living Dream disciples from the local fane had been coming in and pestering people. It was starting to be a problem.

“Can I help you?” Araminta asked, keeping the tone sharp; this was a chance to earn redemption points with Matthew. The woman was dressed in a charcoal-gray cashmere suit, old-fashioned but expensive, with a long flowing skirt, the kind of thing Araminta might have worn before the separation, back in the days when she had money. “We have several tables available.”

“I’m collecting signature certificates,” the woman said. She had a very determined look on her face. “We’re trying to get the council to stop ingrav capsule use above Colwyn City.”

“Why?” It came out before Araminta really thought about it.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “Regrav is bad enough, but at least they’re speed- and altitude-limited inside the city boundary. Have you ever thought what would happen if an ingrav drive failed? They fly semiballistic parabolas; that means they’d plummet down at half orbital velocity.”

“Ah, yes, I see.” She also could see Matthew giving them a wary look.

“Suppose one crashed onto a school at that speed. Or a hospital. There’s just no need for them. It’s blatant consumerism without any form of responsibility. People are buying them only to show off. And there are studies that suggest the ingrav effect puts a strain on deep geological faults. We could have an earthquake.”

Araminta was proud she did not laugh out loud. “I see.”

“The city traffic network wasn’t designed with those sorts of speeds in mind, either. The number of near-miss incidents logged is rising steadily. Will you add your certificate? Help us keep our lives safe.”

A file was presented to Araminta’s u-shadow. “Yes, of course. But you’ll have to order a tea or coffee; my boss is already cross with me this morning.” She flicked her gaze toward Matthew as she added her signature certificate to the petition, confirming she was a Colwyn City resident.

“Typical,” the woman grunted. “They never think of anything but themselves and their profit.” But she sat down and ordered a peppermint tea.

“What’s her problem?” Matthew asked as Araminta collected the tea.

“The universe is a bad place; she just needs to unwind a little.” She gave him a sunny smile. “Which is why we’re here.”

Before he could say anything else, she skipped back to the terrace.

At half past eleven Araminta’s u-shadow collated the morning property search it had run through the city’s estate agencies and shunted the results into one of her storage lacunae. She was on her break in the little staff lounge beside the kitchen. It did not take long to review them all; she was looking for a suitable flat or even a small house somewhere in the city. There were not many that fit her criteria: cheap, in need of renovation, near the center. She tagged three agency files as possibles and checked on how the previous day’s possibles were doing. Half of them already had been snapped up. One really had to be quick in today’s market, she reflected wistfully. And have money or at least some decent credit. A renovation was her dream project: buying a small property and refurbishing it in order to sell it at a profit. She knew she could be good at it. She had taken five development and design courses in the last eight months since separating from Laril, as well as studying every interior decorating text her u-shadow could pull out of the unisphere. Property development was a risky proposition, but every case she had accessed showed that the true key was dedication and hard work as well as a lot of market research. And from her point of view she could do it by herself; she wouldn’t depend on anyone. But first she needed money.

Araminta was back in the restaurant at twelve, getting the table settings ready for lunch, learning the specials the chef was working on. The anti-ingrav crusader had gone, leaving a good tip, and Matthew was treating her humanely again. Cressida walked in at ten past twelve. She was Araminta’s cousin on her mother’s side of the family, a partner in a midsize law firm, one hundred twenty-three years old and spectacularly beautiful with flaming red hair and skin maintained to silky perfection by expensive cosmetic scales. She was wearing a two-thousand-Vpound emerald and platinum toga suit. Just by walking in to Niks she was raising the whole tone of the place. She was also Araminta’s lawyer.

“Darling.” Cressida waved and came over for a big hug; air kissing had never been part of her style. “Well, have I got news for you,” she said breathlessly. “Your boss won’t mind if I steal you for a second, will he?” Without bothering to check, she grabbed Araminta’s hand and pulled her over to a corner table.

Araminta winced as she imagined Matthew’s stare drilling laser holes in her back. “What’s happened?”

Cressida’s grinned broadly, her liquid scarlet lip gloss flowing to accommodate the big stretch. “Dear old Laril has skipped planet.”

“What?” Araminta could not quite believe that. Laril was her ex-husband in a marriage that had lasted eighteen utterly miserable months. Everyone in her immediate family had objected to Laril from the moment she had met him. They had had cause. She could admit that now; she’d been twenty-one while he was three hundred seven. At the time she’d thought him suave, sophisticated, rich, and her ticket out of boring, small and small-minded, agricultural Langham, a town over on the Suvorov continent, seven thousand miles away. They thought he was just another filthy Punk Skunk; there were enough of them kicking around the Commonwealth, especially on the relatively unsophisticated planets that made up the outer fringes of the External worlds, jaded old folks who had the money to look flawlessly adolescent but still envied the genuinely youthful for their spirit and exuberance. Every partner they snagged was centuries younger in a futile hope that the brio would transfer over magically. That was not quite the case with Laril. Close, though.

Her branch of the family on her father’s side had a business supplying and maintaining agricultural cybernetics, an enterprise that was the largest in the county and one in which Araminta was expected to work for at least the first fifty years of her life. After that apprenticeship, family members were considered adult and wealthy enough to take off for new pastures (a depressing number set up subsidiaries of the main business across Suvorov), leaving gaps for the latest batch of youngsters to fill, turning the cycle. It was a prospect Araminta considered so soul-crushing, she would have hired out as a love slave to a Prime motile to escape it. Meeting Laril, an independent businessman with an Andribot franchise among other successful commercial concerns, was like being discovered by Prince Charming. And given that these days an individual’s age was not a physical quantity, her family’s objection to the three-century difference was so bourgeois. It certainly guaranteed the outcome of the affair.

The fact that they had been more or less right about him using her only made her postseparation life worse. She could never go back to Langham now. Fortunately, Cressida was not judgmental, considering Araminta’s colossal mistake as part of life’s rich experience. “If you don’t screw up,” she had told a weeping Araminta at their first meeting, “you haven’t got a base to launch your improvement from. Now, what does the separation clause in the marriage contract entitle you to?”

Araminta, who had overcome a mountain of shame even to go to a family member, however distant, for legal help at the start of the divorce, had to admit theirs had been an old fashioned wedding of the till-death-do-us-part variety. They’d even sworn that to the licensed priest in the Langham chapel. It was all very romantic at the time.

“No contract?” an amazed and horrified Cressida had asked. “Gosh, darling, you are headed for a Mount Herculaneum of improvement, aren’t you?”

It was a mountain that Laril’s lawyers were doing their very best to prevent her from ever setting foot on; their countersuit had frozen Araminta’s own assets, all seven hundred thirty-two Vpounds she had in her savings account. Even Cressida with all her firm’s resources was finding it hard to break through Laril’s legal protection, and as for his commercial activities, they had proved even more elusive to pin down. All his early talk of being the center of a dynasty-like network of profitable companies was either a lie or a cover-up for some astonishing financial irregularities. Intriguingly, Viota’s National Revenue Service had no record of his paying tax at any time in the last hundred years and was showing a healthy interest in his activities.

“Skipped. Departed. Left this world. Gone vertical. Uprooted.” Cressida grasped Araminta’s hands and gave them a nearly painful squeeze. “He didn’t even pay his lawyers.” Her happiness at that eventuality was indecent. “And now they’re just another name on the list of fifty creditors after his ass.”

Araminta’s brief moment of delight suddenly darkened. “So I get nothing?”

“On the contrary. His remaining solid assets—that’s his town house and the stadium food franchise, which we did manage to freeze right at the start—are rightfully yours. Admittedly, they don’t quite add up to the kind of assets that will sway a naive young girl’s head.”

Araminta blushed furiously.

“But not to be sneered at. Unfortunately, there is the question of back taxes, which I’m afraid amounts to three hundred thirty-seven thousand Viotia pounds. And if the NRS could ever prove half of Laril’s ventures that you told me about, they’d claim the rest, too. Bloodsucking fiends. However, they can’t prove a damn thing thanks to the excellent encryption and strange lack of records your slippery ex has muddled his life with. Then there’s my fee, which is ten percent seeing as how you’re family and I admire your late-found pride. So the rest is yours, clear and free.”

“How much?”

“Eighty-three thousand.”

Araminta could not speak. It was a fortune. Agreed, nothing like the corporate megastructure Laril had claimed he owned and controlled, but more than she had expected and asked for in the divorce petition. Ever since she had walked into Cressida’s office, she had allowed herself to dream that she might, just might, come out of this with thirty or forty thousand, that Laril would pay just to be rid of her. “Oh, great Ozzie, you are kidding,” she whispered.

“Not a bit. A judge friend of mine has allowed us to expedite matters on account of the circumstances of the truly tragic hardship I claimed you’re suffering. Your savings are now unfrozen, and we’ll transfer Laril’s money into your account at four o’clock this afternoon. Congratulations. You’re a free and single woman again.”

Araminta was horrified that she was crying; her hands seemed to flap about in front of her face of their own volition.

“Wow!” Cressida put her arm around Araminta’s shoulders, rocking her playfully. “How do you take bad news?”

“It’s over? Really over?”

“Yep. Really. So what say you and I go celebrate. Tell your manager where to stick his menu, go pour soup over a customer’s head, then we’ll hit the coolest clubs in town and ruin half the male population. How about it?”

“Oh.” Araminta looked up, wiping tears with the back of her hand; the mention of Matthew made her realize she was supposed to be serving. “I need to get back. Lunch is really busy. They rely on me.”

“Hey, calm down, take a minute. Think of what’s happened here.”

Araminta nodded her head sheepishly, glancing around the restaurant. Her co-workers were all trying not to glance in her direction; Matthew was annoyed again. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s going to take a while to sink in. I can’t believe it’s all over. I’ve got to … Oh, Ozzie, there are so many things I want to do.”

“Great! Let’s get you out of here and bring on the serious partying. We’ll start with a decent meal.”

“No.” Araminta could see Tandra staring anxiously and gave her a weak thumbs-up in return. “I can’t just walk out; that’s not fair to everyone else here. They’ll need to get a replacement. I’ll hand in my notice properly and work the rest of the week for them.”

“Damnit, you are horrendously sweet. No wonder your filthy ex could take advantage so easily.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Too bloody true it won’t.” Cressida stood up, smiling proudly.

“From now on I’m vetting anyone you date. At least come out for a drink tonight.”

“Um, I really do need to go home after this and work things out.”

“Friday night, then. Come on! Everyone goes out Friday night.”

Araminta couldn’t keep the grin off her face. “All right. Friday night.”

“Thank Ozzie for that. And get yourself some serious bad girl clothes first. We’re going to do this properly.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay, I will.” She actually could feel her mood changing, like some warm liquid invading her arteries. “Uh, where do I go for clothes like that?”

“Oh, I’ll show you, darling; don’t you worry.”

Araminta did work the lunch shift, then told Matthew she was quitting but was happy to stay on as long as he needed her. He completely surprised her by giving her a kiss and congratulating her on finally breaking free of Laril. Tandra got all teary and affectionate while the others gathered around to hear the news and cheer.

By half past three in the afternoon she had put on a light coat and walked out. The cool late spring air sobered her up, allowing her to think clearly again. Even so, she walked the route she so often walked in the afternoon. Along Ware Street, take a left at the major junction, and head down the slope along Daryad Avenue. The buildings on either side were five or six stories tall, a typical mix of commercial properties. Regrav capsules slid silently overhead, and the metro track running down the center of the avenue hummed with public cabs. The roads had few vehicles, yet Araminta still waited at the crossings for the traffic solidos to change shape and color. She barely noticed her fellow pedestrians.

The Glayfield was a bar and restaurant at the bottom of the slope, occupying two stories of an old wood and composite building, part of the original planet landing camp. She made her way through the dark deserted bar to the stairs at the back and went up to the restaurant. That, too, was virtually empty. Up at the front it boasted a sheltered balcony where in her opinion the tables were too close; waitresses would have trouble squeezing between them when they were full. She sat at one next to the rail, which gave her an excellent view along Daryad Avenue. This was where she came most afternoons to wind down after her shift at Niks, sitting with a hot orange chocolate and watching the people and the ships. Over to her right the avenue curved upward into the bulk of the city, producing a wall of tall buildings expressing the many construction phases and styles that had come and gone in Colwyn’s hundred-seventy-year history. To her left the river Cairns cut through the land in a gentle northward curve as it flowed out to the Great Cloud Ocean twenty miles away. The river was half a mile wide in the city, the top of a deep estuary that made an excellent natural harbor. Several marinas had been built on both sides, providing anchorage to thousands of private yachts ranging from little sailing dinghies up to regrav-assisted pleasure cruisers. Two giant bridges spanned the water, one a single unsupported arch of nanotube carbon and the other a more traditional suspension bridge with pure white pillars a flamboyant three hundred meters tall. Capsules slid along beside them, but ground traffic was almost nonexistent these days and they were used mainly by pedestrians. They led over to the exclusive districts on the south bank, where the city’s wealthier residents flocked amid long green boulevards and extensive parks.

On the northern shore, barely half a mile from the Glayfield, the docks were built into the bank and out into the mud flats: two square miles of cargo-handling machinery and warehouses and quays and landing pads and caravan platforms. It was the hub from which the Izyum continent had been developed, the second starport on the planet. There was no heavy industry on Viotia; major engineering systems and advanced technology were all imported. With Ellezelin only seventy-five light-years away, Viotia was on the fringe of the Free Trade Zone, a market that the local population grumbled was free for Ellezelin companies all right, but disadvantaged everyone else caught in its commercial web. There wasn’t a wormhole linking Viotia to Ellezelin yet. But talk was that in another hundred years, when Viotia’s internal market had grown sufficiently, one would be opened, allowing the full range of cheap Ellezelin products to flood through, turning them into an economic colony. In the meantime, starships from External worlds came and went. She watched them as she sipped her orange chocolate: a line of huge freighters, their metal hulls as dull as lead, heavy and ungainly, drifting down vertically out of the sky. Behind them, the departing ships rose away from the planet, brushing through Viota’s legendary pink clouds, accelerating fast once they reached the stratosphere. Araminta gave them a mild grin, thinking of the anti-ingrav woman. If she was right, what would the starships’ field effect be doing to the geology beneath the city? Maybe a simple wormhole would be the answer; she rather liked the idea, a throwback to the First Commonwealth era of genteel and elegant train travel between star systems. It was a shame that the External worlds rejected such links out of hand, but they valued their political freedom too much to risk a return to a monoculture, especially with the threat of Higher culture overwhelming their hard-won independence.

Araminta stayed at the table long after she usually packed up and went home. The sun began to fall, turning the clouds a genuine gold-pink as the planet’s hazy mesosphere diffused the dying rays of the K-class star. Transocean barges shone brightly out on the Cairns, regrav engines keeping their flat hulls just above the slowly rippling water as they nosed out of the dock and headed for the open sea and the islands beyond. She always was soothed by the sight of the city, a huge edifice of human activity buzzing along efficiently, a reassurance that civilization did actually work, that nothing could kick the basics out from under her. And now, finally, she could begin to take an active part, to carve out a life for herself. The files from the property agencies floated gently through her exoimage display, allowing her to plan what she might do in more detail than she ever had bothered with before. Without money such reviews had been pointless daydreams, but this evening they took on a comfortable solidity. Part of her was scared by the notion. If she made a mistake now, she would be back to waitressing tables for the next few decades. She had only one shot. Eighty-three thousand was a tidy sum, but it had to be made to work for her. Despite the trepidation, she was looking forward to the challenge. It marked her life’s true beginning.

The sun set amid a warm scarlet glow, seeming to match Araminta’s mood. By then the first customers of the evening were starting to fill up the restaurant. She left a big tip and went downstairs. Her usual routine had her walking back to Niks, maybe doing some shopping on the way, and taking the trike pod home. But there was nothing usual about this day. There was music blasting through the bar. People were leaning on the counter, ordering drinks and aerosols. Araminta glanced down at her clothes. She was wearing a sensible skirt, navy blue, that came down below her knees, and a white top with short sleeves made from a fabric that was specifically wipe-clean so that she could cope with spills. Around her, people had made an effort to smarten up for the evening; she felt slightly downmarket by comparison.

But then, who are they to judge me?

It was a liberating thought of the kind she had not entertained since leaving Langham back when the future was full of opportunity, at least in her imagination.

Araminta sidled her way up to the bar and studied the bottles and beer taps. “Green Fog, please,” she told the barman. It earned her a slightly bemused smile, but he mixed it perfectly. She drank it slowly, trying not to let the smoldering mist get up her nose. Sneezing would blow away any remaining credibility.

“Haven’t seen anybody drink one of those for a while,” a man’s voice said.

She turned and looked at him. He was handsome in that precise way everyone was these days, with features aligned perfectly; she guessed that meant he had been through at least a couple of rejuve treatments. Like the rest of the bar’s clientele, he had dressed up, a simple gray and purple toga jacket that cloaked him in a gentle shimmer.

And he’s not Laril.

“Been awhile since I was let out,” she retorted. Then she smirked at her own answer, the fact she was bold enough to say it.

“Can I get you another? I’m Jaful, by the way.”

“Araminta. And no, not a Green Fog; that’s a nostalgia thing for me. What’s current?”

“They say Adlier 88Vodka is going down in all the wrong places.”

She finished her Green Fog in a single gulp, tried not to grimace too hard, and pushed the empty glass across the bar. “Best start there, then.”

“Are you awake?”

Araminta stirred when she heard the question. She wasn’t awake exactly, more like dozing pleasantly, content in the afterglow of a night spent in busy lovemaking. Her mind was full of a strange vision, as if she were being chased through the dark sky by an angel. Her slight movement was enough for Jaful. His hands slid up her belly to cup her breasts. “Uh,” she murmured, still drowsy as the angel dwindled. Jaful rolled her onto her front, which was confusing. Then his cock was sliding up inside her again, hard and insistent. It was not a comfortable position. Each thrust pushed her face down into the soft mattress. She wriggled to try to get into a more acceptable stance, which he interpreted as full acceptance. Heated panting became shouts of joy. Araminta cooperated as best she could; the pleasure was minimal at best. Out of practice, she thought, and tried not to laugh. He wouldn’t understand. At least she was doing her best to make up for lost time, though. They had coupled three or four times after going back to his place.

Jaful climaxed with a happy yell. Araminta matched him. Yep, remember how to do that bit as well. Eighteen months with Laril had made faking orgasms automatic.

Jaful flopped onto his back and let out a long breath. He grinned at her. “Fantastic. I haven’t had a night like that for a long time, if ever.”

She dropped her voice a couple of octaves. “You were good.” It was so funny, as if they were reading from a script.

Picked up in a bar. Back to his place for a one-night stand. Compliment each other. Both of them playing their part of the ritual to perfection.

But it has been fun.

“I’m going to grab a shower,” he said. “Tell the culinary unit what you want. It’s got some good synthesis routines.”

“I’ll do that.” She watched him stroll across the room and into the en suite. Only then did she stare in curiosity. It was a chic city bachelor pad; that much was evident by the plain yet expensive furniture and contemporary art. The wall opposite the bed was a single window covered with snow-white curtains.

Araminta started hunting for her clothes as the spore shower came on. Underwear—practical rather than sexy, she acknowledged with a sigh—close to the bed. Skirt halfway between bed and door. Her white top in the living room. She pulled it on, then looked back at the bedroom. The shower was still on. Did he always take so long, or was he sticking with the part of the script that gave her a polite opportunity to exit? She shrugged and let herself out.

There wasn’t anything wrong with Jaful. She certainly had enjoyed herself in his bed most of the time. It was just that she couldn’t think what they could say to each other over breakfast. It would have been awkward. This way she kept the memory agreeable. “More practice,” she told herself, and smiled wickedly. And why not? This is real life again.

The building had a big lobby. When she walked out into the street, she blinked against the bright pink light; it was twelve minutes until she was supposed to start the morning shift at Niks. Her u-shadow told her she was in the Spalding district, which was halfway across the city, so she called a taxi down. It took about thirty seconds until the yellow and purple capsule was resting a couple of centimeters above the concrete, three meters in front of her. She watched in bemusement as the door opened. In all her life she’d never called a taxi herself; it had always been Laril who ordered them. After the separation, of course, she couldn’t afford them. Another blow for freedom.

As soon as she arrived at Niks, she rushed into the staff toilets.

Tandra gave her a leery look when she came out, tying her apron on. “You know, those look like the very same clothes you wore when you left yesterday.” She sniffed elaborately. “Yep, travel-clean again. Did something happen to your plumbing last night?”

“You know, I’m really going to miss you when I leave,” Araminta replied, trying not to laugh.

“What’s his name? How long have you been dating?”

“Nobody. I’m not dating; you know that.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I need coffee.”

“Not much sleep, huh?”

“I was reviewing property files, that’s all.”

Tandra gave her a malicious sneer. “Sweetie, I ain’t never heard it called that before.”

After the breakfast shift was over, Araminta ran her usual review. This time it was different. This time her u-shadow contacted the agencies, which gave her virtual tours of the five most promising properties, using a full sense relay bot. On that basis, she made an appointment to visit one that afternoon.

As soon as she walked through the door, she knew it was right for her. The flat was the second floor of a converted three-story house in the Philburgh district. A mile and a half north of the dock and three blocks back from the river, with two bedrooms, it was perfect for someone working in the city center on a modest salary. There was even a balcony from which one could just see the Cairns if one leaned out over the railing.

She went through the official survey scan with the modern analysis programs recommended by half a dozen professional property development companies. It needed redecorating; the current vendor had lived there for thirty years and had not done much to it. The plumbing needed replacing; it would require new domestic units. But the structure was perfectly sound.

“I’ll take it,” she told the agent.

An hour negotiating with the vendor gave her a price of fifty-eight thousand, more than she would have liked, but it did leave her with enough of a budget to give the place a decent refurbishment. There would not be much left over to live on, but if she completed the work within three or four months, she would not need a bank loan. It would be tough; looking around the living room, she could see the amount of work involved. That was when she experienced a little moment of doubt. Come on, she told herself. You can do this. This is what you’ve waited for; this is what you’ve earned.

She took a breath and left the flat. She needed to get back to her place and grab a shower. Travel-clean could cope for only so long. Then she might get changed and go out again. There were a lot of bars in Colwyn City she had heard about and never visited.

Troblum double woke in two of the penthouse’s bedrooms. His actual self lay on a bed made from a special foam that supported his large body comfortably, providing him with a decent night’s sleep. It had been Catriona’s room, decorated in excessively pink fabrics and ornaments; a lot of the surfaces were fluffy, a very girly girl’s room that he was now used to. His parallel sensorium was coming from a twinning link to the solido of Howard Liang, a Starflyer agent who had been part of the disinformation mission. Howard was in the penthouse’s main bedroom, sharing a huge circular bed with the three girls. It was another aspect of the solidos that Troblum had spent years refining; now, whenever he wanted sex, the four characters would launch themselves eagerly into a mini-orgy. The permutations their supple young bodies could combine into were almost endless, and they could keep going as long as Troblum wanted. He immersed himself for hours, his body drinking down the pleasure that Howard’s carefully formatted neural pathways experienced, as much the puppet as the puppeteer. The four of them together was not, strictly speaking, a historical reality. At least he’d never found any evidence for it. But it wasn’t impossible, which sort of legitimized the extrapolation.

The image and feeling of the beautiful naked bodies draped across him faded as his actual body reasserted itself, canceling the twinning with Howard. After the shower had squirted dermal freshener spores over him, he walked through into the vast lounge, bronze sunlight washing warmly across his tingling skin. His u-shadow reported that there was still no message from Admiral Kazimir, which he chose to interpret as good news. The delay at least meant it was still being considered. Knowing the navy bureaucracy, he suspected that the review committee still hadn’t formally met. His theory was struggling against a lot of conventional beliefs. Briefly, he considered calling the Admiral to urge him along, but his personal protocol routines advised against it.

He wrapped one of his cloaks around himself, then took the lift down to the lobby. It was only a short walk down to the Caspe River, where his favorite café was situated on the edge of the quiet water. The building was made from white wood and sculpted to resemble a folgail, a bird even more sedate than a terrestrial swan. His usual table underneath a wing arch was free, and he sat himself down. He gave his order to the café network and waited while a servicebot brought him a freshly squeezed apple and gonberry juice. The chef, Rowury, spent several days every week in the café, cooking for his enthusiastic clientele of foodies. For a culture that prided itself on its egalitarian ethos, Highers could be real snobs about some traditions and crafts, and “proper” food was well up the list. There were several restaurants and cafés in Daroca set up as showcases for their gastronomic patrons.

Troblum had finished a dish of cereal and started on his tea when someone sat down in front of him. He looked up in annoyance. The café was full, but that was no excuse for rudeness. The rebuke never made it past his lips.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Marius said as he settled in the chair, his black toga suit trailing thin wisps of darkness behind him as if he were time-lapsed. “I’ve heard good reports about this place.”

“Help yourself,” Troblum said grouchily. He knew he should not show too much resentment at Marius’s appearance; after all, the faction representative had channeled the kind of EMA funds to Troblum’s private projects that normally were available only to huge public enterprises. It was the demands placed on him in return that he found annoying. Not the challenges themselves—they were intriguing—but the fact that they always took so much time. “Oh, you already have.”

The servicebot delivered a second china cup for Marius. “How are you keeping, Troblum?”

“Fine. As you know.” His field functions detected a subtle shielding unfurling around the table, originating from Marius, not obvious but enough to prevent anyone from hearing or scanning what they were saying. He’d never liked the representative, and it was unusual to meet in person. An unarranged meeting was unheard of; it made Troblum worry about the reason. Something they consider very important.

Marius sipped the tea. “Excellent. Assam?”

“Something like that.”

“Those left on Earth do take a lot of pride in maintaining their ancient heritages. I doubt they actually go out and pick the leaves themselves, though. What do you think?”

“I couldn’t give a fuck.”

“There are a lot of things that elude you, aren’t there, my friend?”

“What do you want?”

Marius fixed his green eyes on Troblum, the faintest shiver of distaste manifesting in his expression. “Of course, bluntness to the fore. Very well. The briefing you gave to the navy concerning the Dyson Pair.”

“What about it?”

“It’s an interesting theory.”

“It’s not a theory,” Troblum said in irritation. “That has to be the explanation for the origin of the Dark Fortress.”

“The what?”

“Dark Fortress. It’s what the Dyson Alpha generator was originally called. I think it was Jean Douvoir who named it that first. He was on the original Second Chance exploration mission, you know. It was meant ironically, but after the war it fell out of fashion, especially with the firewall campaign. People just didn’t—”

“Troblum.”

“Yeah?”

“I couldn’t give a fuck.”

“I’ve got the unabridged logs from the Second Chance stored in my personal secure kube if you’d like to check.”

“No. But I believe your theory.”

“Oh for Ozz—”

“Listen,” Marius snapped. “Seriously, I believe you. It was excellently argued. Admiral Kazimir thought well enough of your presentation to order a full review, and he is not easily won over. They are taking you seriously.”

“Well, that’s good, then. Isn’t it?”

“In the greater scheme of things, I’m sure it is. However, you might like to consider where your comprehensive knowledge of the Dark Fortress came from.”

“Oh.” Now Troblum was really worried. “I never mentioned I was there.”

“I know that. The point is that we really don’t want ANA: Governance to be aware of the detailed examination you and your team made of the Dark Fortress. Not right now. Understand?”

“Yes.” Troblum actually ducked his head, which was ridiculous, but he did feel contrite; maybe he should have realized that his presentation would draw a little too much attention to him. “Do you think the navy will review my background?”

“No. They have no reason to right now. You’re just a physicist petitioning for EMA funds. It happens all the time. And that’s the way we’d like it to remain.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Good. So if the review committee advises the Admiral that no further action should be taken, we’d prefer you not to kick up a fuss.”

“But what if they favor a proper search?”

“We’re confident they won’t.”

Troblum sat back, trying to work out the politics. It was difficult for him to appreciate the motivation and psychology of other people. “But if you have that much influence on the navy, why worry?”

“We can’t affect the navy directly, not with Kazimir as the safeguard. But your advisory review committee is mostly external. Some of them are sympathetic to us, as you are.”

“Right.” Troblum could feel despair starting to cloud his mind. “Will I be able to put it forward again after the Pilgrimage?”

“We’ll see. Probably, yes.”

It was not exactly good news, but it was better than a flat refusal. “And my drive project?”

“That can continue providing you don’t publicize what you’re doing.” Marius smiled reassurance, but it didn’t belong on his face. “We do appreciate your help, Troblum, and we want to keep our relationship mutually beneficial. It’s just that events are entering a critical stage right now.”

“I know.”

“Thank you. I’ll leave you alone to enjoy your food now.”

With suspicious timing, the servicebot arrived as Marius departed. Troblum stared at the plate it deposited in front of him, a tower of thick buttered pancakes layered with bacon, yokcheese, scrambled garfoul eggs, and black pudding, topped with strawberries. Maple syrup and afton sauce ran down the sides like a volcanic eruption. The edges of the plate were artistically garnished with miniature hash browns, baked vine salfuds, and roasted golden tomatoes.

For the first time in years, Troblum didn’t feel remotely hungry.

Inigo’s Second Dream

Edeard had been looking forward to the trip for months. Every year in late summer the village elders organized a caravan to trek over to Witham, the closest medium-size town in Rulan province, to trade. By tradition, all the senior apprentices went with it. This was part of their landcraft training, of which they had to have a basic knowledge before they could qualify as practitioners. They were taught how to hunt small animals, how to clear farmland ditches, which fruit to pick, how to handle a plow, and what berries and roots were poisonous, along with the basics of making camp in the wild.

Even the fact that Obron would be a traveling companion for three weeks had not lessened Edeard’s enthusiasm. He finally was going to get out of Ashwell. Sure, he had been to all the local farms, but never farther than half a day’s travel. The caravan meant he would see a lot more of Querencia: the mountains, people other than the villagers he’d lived among for fifteen years, forests. It was a chance to see how others did things, explore new ideas. There was so much waiting for him out there. He was convinced it was going to be fantastic.

The reality almost lived up to his expectations. Yes, Obron was a pain, but not too much. Ever since Edeard’s success with the ge-cats, the constant hassle had not ended, but it certainly had eased off. They did not speak as friends, but on the journey out Obron had been almost civil. Edeard suspected that was partially because of Melzar, who was the caravan master and had made it very clear before they left that he would not tolerate any trouble.

“It might seem like this is some kind of holiday,” Melzar told the assembled apprentices in the village hall the night before they departed. “But remember, this is part of your formal education. I expect you to work hard and learn. If any of you cause me any problems, you will be sent back to Ashwell right away. If any of you slack off or do not reach what I consider a satisfactory level of landcraft, I will inform your Master and you will be dropped back a year from qualification. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the apprentices muttered grudgingly. There were a lot of smirks hidden from Melzar as they filed out.

They had taken five days to reach Witham. There were seventeen apprentices and eight adults in the caravan. Three big carts carried goods and food; over thirty farm beasts were driven along with them. Everyone rode ge-horses; for some apprentices, it was the first time they’d ever been up on the animals. Melzar quickly assigned Edeard to help tutor them. That allowed him to open up conversations with lads who had ignored him before; after all, he was the youngest senior apprentice in Ashwell. But out on the road they began to accept him as an equal rather than the freaky boy about whom Obron always complained. Melzar also entrusted him with controlling the ge-wolves they used to keep guard.

“You’re better than all of us at guiding those brutes, lad,” he said as they made camp the first night. “Make sure they do their job properly. Keep three of them with us, and I want the other four patrolling around outside.”

“Yes, sir, I can do that.” It wasn’t even a boast; those were simple orders.

Talk that night among the apprentices was of bandits and wild tribes, each of them doing their best to tell the most horrific stories. Alcie and Genril topped everyone with tales of the cannibal tribe that supposedly lived in the Talman Mountains. Edeard did not mention that his own parents had been killed while on a caravan, but everyone knew that, anyway. He was thrown a few glances to check how he was reacting. His nonchalance earned him quiet approval.

Then Melzar came over and told them all not to be so gruesome; bandits weren’t half as bad as legend had it. “They’re basically nomad families, nothing more. They’re not organized into gangs. How could they be? If they were a real threat, we’d call the militia from the city and go after them. It’s just a few bad ’uns that give the rest a lousy rep. No different from us.”

Edeard wasn’t so sure. He suspected Melzar was just trying to reassure them. But the conversation moved on, quieting as they gossiped about their Guild Masters. Judging by their talk, Edeard was convinced he’d gotten a saint in Akeem. Obron even claimed that Geepalt would beat the carpentry apprentices if they messed up.

Witham might have been five times the size of Ashwell, but it had the same air of stagnation. It was set in rolling, heavily cultivated farmland, with a river running through the middle; unusually, it had two churches for the Lady. Edeard bit back any disappointment as they rode through the big gates. The buildings were stone or had thick timber frames supporting plaster paneling. Most of the windows were glass rather than the shutters used in Ashwell, and the streets were all stone cobble. He found out later that water was delivered into houses through buried clay pipes and that the drains worked.

They spent two days in the central market square, negotiating with merchants and locals and then stocking up with supplies, such as glass, that were not made in Ashwell. The apprentices had been allowed to bring examples of their work to sell or trade. Edeard was surprised when Obron brought out a beautifully carved box made from martoz wood polished to an ebony luster. Who would have thought an ass like that could create something so charming? Yet a merchant gave him four pounds for it.

For himself, Edeard had brought along six ge-spiders. Always the trickiest of the standard genera to sculpt, they were highly valued for the drosilk they spun. And these had only just hatched; they would live for another eight or nine months, and during that time they would spin enough silk to make several garments or armor jackets. Three ladies from the Weavers’ Guild bid against one another for them. For the first time in his life Edeard’s farsight could not discern how eager they were when they haggled with him; they covered their emotions with steely calm, the surface of their minds as smooth as a genistar egg. He hoped he was doing the same thing when he agreed to sell them for five pounds each. Surely they could sense his elation. It was more money than he’d seen in his life, let alone held in his hands. Somehow he did not manage to hang on to it for very long. The market was huge, with so many fabulous items, as well as clothes of a quality rarely found in Ashwell. He felt almost disloyal buying there, but he did need a decent full-length oilskin coat for the coming winter and found one with a quilted lining. Farther on there was a stall selling knee-high boots with sturdy silkresin soles that surely would last for years—a good investment, then. They also sold wide-brimmed leather hats. To keep the sun off in summer and the rain in winter, the leatherworker apprentice explained. She was a lovely girl and seemed genuinely eager for him to have the right hat. He dragged out the haggling as long as he dared.

His fellow apprentices laughed when he returned dressed in his new finery, but they had spent their own money, too. And few had been as practical as he.

That evening Melzar allowed them to visit the town’s taverns unchaperoned, threatening horrifying punishments if anyone caused trouble. Edeard joined with Alcie, Genril, Janene, and Fahin. He spent the evening hoping to catch sight of the leatherworker apprentice, but by the time they reached the third tavern, the town’s unfamiliar ales had rendered them incapable of anything other than drinking more ale and singing. The rest of the evening was forever beyond recollection.

When he woke up, slumped under one of the Ashwell carts, Edeard knew he was dying. He’d obviously been poisoned and then robbed. Too much of his remaining money was missing, he could barely stand, he couldn’t eat, and he stank worse than the stables. It was also the first night he could not remember being troubled by his strange dreams. Then he found out it was a mass poisoning. All the apprentices were in the same state, and all the adults found it hilarious.

“Another lesson learned,” Melzar boomed. “Well done. You all should graduate in record time at this rate.”

“What a swine,” Fahin grunted as Melzar walked away. He was a tall boy, so thin that he looked skeletal. As a doctor’s apprentice he’d managed to get one of the few pairs of glasses in Ashwell to help his poor vision. They were not quite right for him, magnifying his eyes to a disturbing degree for anyone standing in front of him. At some time during the night he had lost his jacket. Now he was shivering, and not entirely from the cold morning air. Edeard had never seen him looking so pale before.

Fahin was searching through the leather physick satchel that he always carried; it was full of packets of dried herbs, small phials, and rolled linen bandages. The satchel had made him the butt of many jokes in the taverns the previous night, yet he had refused to abandon it.

“Do you think they’ll let us ride in the carts?” Janene asked mournfully as she looked at the adults, who were huddled together chortling. “I don’t think I can take riding on a ge-horse this morning.”

“Not a chance,” Edeard said.

“How much money have you got left?” Fahin asked. “All of you.”

The apprentices began a reluctant search through their pockets. Fahin managed to gather two pounds in change and hurried off to the herbalist stall. When he came back, he started brewing tea, emptying in several packets of dried leaves and adding the contents of a phial from the satchel.

“What is that?” Alcie asked as he sniffed the kettle and stepped back, his eyes watering. Edeard could smell it, too: something like sweet tar.

“Growane, flon seed, duldul bird eyes, nanamint.” Fahin squeezed some limes into the boiling water and started stirring.

“That’s disgusting!” Obron exclaimed.

“It’ll cure us; I promise on the Lady.”

“Please tell us you rub it on,” Edeard said.

Fahin wiped the condensation from his glasses and poured himself a cup. “Gulp it down in one, that’s best.” He swallowed. His cheeks bulged as he grimaced. Edeard thought he was going to spew it up.

The other apprentices gave the kettle a dubious look. Fahin poured the cup full again. Edeard could sense the doubt in their minds; he felt for Fahin, who was trying to do his best to help and be accepted. He put his hand out and took the cup. “One gulp?”

“Yes.” Fahin nodded.

“You’re not going to—” Janene squealed.

Edeard tossed it back. A second later the taste registered, kind of what he imagined eating manure would be like. “Oh, Lady! That is … Urrgh.” His stomach muscles squeezed up, and he bent over, thinking he was going to be sick. A weird numbness was washing through him. He sat down as if to catch his breath after a winding blow.

“What’s it like?” Genril asked.

Edeard was about to tell Fahin off something rotten. “Actually, I can’t feel anything. Still got a headache, though.”

“That takes longer,” Fahin wheezed. “Give it fifteen minutes. The flon seed needs to get into your blood and circulate. And you need to drink about a pint of water to help.”

“So what was the lime for?”

“It helps mask the taste.”

Edeard started laughing.

“It actually works?” an incredulous Alcie asked.

Edeard gave him a shrug. Fahin poured another cup.

It turned into a ritual. Each of the apprentices gulped down the vile brew. They pulled faces and jeered and cheered one another. Edeard quietly went to fetch a bottle of water from the market’s pump. Fahin was right; it did help clear his head. After about a quarter of an hour he was feeling okay again, not a hundred percent, but the brew definitely had alleviated the worst symptoms. He could even consider some kind of breakfast.

“Thanks,” he told Fahin. The tall lad smiled in appreciation.

Afterward, when they packed the carts and got the ge-horses ready, the apprentices were all a lot easier around one another, and the joshing and pranks weren’t as hard-edged as before. Edeard imagined that this was what it would be like from now on; they had shared together, made connections. He often envied the casual friendships between the older people in the village, the way they got on with one another. It was outings like this that saw such seeds rooting. In a hundred years’ time, maybe it would be he and Genril laughing at hungover apprentices. Of course, that would be a much bigger caravan, and Ashwell would be the same size as Witham by then.

Melzar led the caravan on a slightly different route back, curving westward to take in the foothills of the Sardok mountain range. It was an area of low valleys with wide floors, mostly wooded, home to a huge variety of native creatures. There were few paths other than those carved out by the herds of chamalans that grazed on the pastures between the forests. Farsight and the ge-wolves also sniffed out drakken pit traps that would have swallowed a ge-horse and rider. The drakken were burrowing animals the size of cats, with five legs in the usual Querencia arrangement of two on each side and a thick, highly flexible limb at the rear that helped them make their loping run. The front two limbs had evolved into ferociously sharp claws that could dig through soil at a phenomenal rate. They were hive animals, digging their vast warrens underground, with populations over a hundred strong. Singly they were harmless, but they attacked in swarms that even a well-armed human had trouble fighting off. Their ability to excavate big caverns just below the surface provided them with the means to trap their prey; even the largest native creatures were susceptible to the pit traps.

A biannual hunt had eliminated the drakken from the lands around Ashwell, but in the wild they were prevalent. Watching for them heightened Edeard’s senses as they passed through the endless undulating countryside. On the third day out of Witham they reached the fringes of the foothills and entered one of the massive forests there, parts of which reached across to the base of the Sardoks themselves.

Edeard had never been in a forest this size before; according to Melzar, it predated the arrival of humans on Querencia two thousand years before. The sheer size of the trees seemed to back up his claim; they were tall and tightly clustered, their trunks dark and lifeless for the first fifty feet until they burst into a thick interlaced canopy where branches and leaves struggled against one another for light. Little grew on the floor beneath, and in summer when the leaves were in full bloom, not much rain dripped through. A huge blanket of dead crisped leaves covered the ground, hiding hollows from sight, requiring the humans to use their farsight to guide the ge-horses safely around cervices and snags.

It was quiet in the gloom underneath the verdant living awning, the still air amplifying the mildest whisper to a shout that reverberated the length of the plodding caravan. The apprentices slowly abandoned their banter, becoming silent and nervous.

“We’ll make camp in a valley I know,” Melzar announced after midday. “It’s an hour away, and the forest isn’t as wretched as it is here. There’s a river as well. We’re well past the trilan egg season, so we can swim.”

“We’re stopping there?” Genril asked. “Isn’t that early?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, my lad. This afternoon you’re going galby hunting.”

The apprentices immediately brightened. They had been promised hunting experience but had not expected it to be galbys, which were large canine equivalents. Edeard often had heard experienced adults tell of how they thought they’d gotten a galby cornered only to have it jump to freedom. A galby’s hind limb was oversized and extremely powerful, sometimes propelling the animal as much as fifteen feet in the air.

True to Melzar’s word, the forest began to change as they reached a gentle downhill slope. The trees were spread out and shorter, allowing pillars of sunlight to swarm down. Grass grew again, swiftly becoming an unbroken stratum. Bushes grew in the long gaps between trees, their leaves ranging from vivid green to dark amethyst. Edeard could not name more than a handful of the berries he could see; there must have been dozens of varieties.

As the light and humidity increased, the yiflies and bitewings began to appear; soon they were swirling overhead in huge clumps before zooming down to nip all the available human skin. Edeard constantly was using his third hand to ward them off.

They stopped the carts by a small river and corralled the genistars. That was when Melzar finally distributed the five revolvers and two rifles he had been carrying. The majority belonged to the village, though Genril had his own revolver, which he said had been in his family since the arrival. Its barrel was longer than that of the others and made of a whitish metal that was a lot lighter than the sturdy gun-grade steel produced by the Weapons Guild in Makkathran.

“Carved from the ship itself,” Genril said proudly as he checked the mechanism. Even that snicked and whirred with a smoothness that the city-made pistols lacked. “My first ancestor salvaged some of the hull before the tides took the ship down into the belly of the sea. It’s been in our family ever since.”

“Crap,” Obron snorted. “That would mean it’s over two thousand years old.”

“So?” Genril challenged as he squeezed some oil out of a small can, rubbing it onto the components with a soft linen cloth. “The ship builders knew how to make really strong metal. Think about it, you morons. They had to have strong metal; the ship fell out of the sky and still survived, and in the universe they came from ships flew between planets.”

Edeard did not say anything. He’d always been skeptical about the whole ship legend, though he had to admit it was a great legend.

Melzar slung one of the rifles over his shoulder and came around with a box of ammunition. He handed out six of the brass bullets to each of the apprentices who had been given a revolver. “That’s quite enough,” he told them when there were complaints about needing more. “If you can’t hit a galby after six shots, it’s either jumped back out of range or it’s happily eating your liver. Either way, that’s all you get.”

Only five apprentices had been given a gun, including Genril. Edeard was not one of them. He looked on enviously as they slid the bullets into the revolving chamber.

Melzar crouched and began to draw lines in the earth. “Gather around,” he told them. “We’re going to split into two groups. The shooters will be lined up along the ridge back there.” His hand waved into the forest where the land rose sharply. “The rest of us will act as the flushers. We form a long line with one end there, which will move forward in a big curve until we’re level with the first shooter. That should force anything bigger than a drakken out in front of us and hopefully into the firing line. Under no circumstances does anyone go past the first shooter. I don’t care if you’re best friends and using longtalk, you do not walk in front of the guns. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” they all chorused.

“Okay, then; after the first sweep we’ll change over the guns and move to a new location.” He glanced up at the sky, which was starting to cloud over. “There’ll be enough light to do this three times this afternoon, which will give everyone a chance to use a pistol.”

“Sir, my father said only I can use our pistol,” Genril said.

“I know,” Melzar said. “You get to hang on to it but not the ammunition when you’re in the flusher line. Now, if you’re a part of the flusher line, you must keep within farsight perception of the people on either side. So in reality that means I want you spaced no more than seventy yards apart. Orders to start, stop, and group together will be issued vocally and in longtalk; you will relay both along the line. You will obey them at all times. The flusher line will use three ge-wolves to help encourage the galbys to run. This time, Edeard and Alcie will control one each and I will take the third. No one else is to order them; I don’t want them confused. Any questions? No? Good. Let’s go, and the Lady smile on us.”

Edeard called one of the ge-wolves over and set off in the group following Melzar. Toran, one of the farmers, led the pistol carriers up toward the stony ridge.

“I don’t see the point of this,” Fahin complained grimly as he hiked beside Edeard. “We’ve all done pistol shooting at the targets outside the walls, and galbys aren’t edible.”

“Don’t you listen to anything?” Janene said. “This is all about experience. There’s a world of difference between firing at a target and being out here in the woods with dangerous animals charging. The elder council needs to know they can rely on us to defend the village in an emergency.”

Except Melzar told us the nomad families aren’t threatening, Edeard thought. So what is the village wall actually for? I must ask Akeem when I get back.

“What if the galbys don’t go toward the shooting line?” Fahin asked. “What if they come at us?” He gripped his satchel tighter, as if it could shield him from the forest’s animals.

“They won’t,” Edeard said. “They’ll try to avoid us because we’re a group.”

“Yeah, in theory,” Fahin grumbled.

“Quit whining, for the Lady’s sake,” Obron said. “Melzar knows what he’s doing; he’s done this with every caravan for the last fifty years. Besides, galbys aren’t all that dangerous. They just look bad. If one comes at you, use your third hand to shield yourself.”

“What if we flush out a fastfox?”

The apprentices groaned.

“Fastfoxes live down on the plains,” an exasperated Alcie said.

“They’re not mountain animals. You’re more likely to get one in Ashwell than here.”

Fahin pulled a face, not convinced.

As they approached the edge of the forest again, Melzar used his longtalk to tell them: “Start to spread out. Remember, keep the people on both sides within your farsight. If you lose contact, longtalk them.”

Edeard had Obron on one side and Fahin on the other. He was not too happy about that; if anyone was going to screw up, it would be Fahin—the lanky boy really wasn’t an outdoors type—and Obron wasn’t likely to help either of them. But the worst thing Fahin can do is fall behind; it’s not like he’s got a pistol. And he’ll yell hard enough if he can’t see us. He sent the ge-wolf ranging from side to side. The mood of excitement was filling his farsight, the minds of everyone in the flusher line twinkling with anticipation.

They moved forward, slowly spreading out as Melzar directed until they had formed the line. The trees were growing tall again, their dark green canopy insulating the apprentices from the cloudy sky.

“Move forward,” Obron ordered. Edeard smiled and repeated the instruction to Fahin, who grimaced.

Edeard was pleased that he had kept his new boots on. The forest floor was littered with sticks among rotting clumps of grass, uneven ground with plenty of sharp stones. His ankles were sore where the new leather pinched, yet the boots protected his feet well enough.

With his farsight scouring the land ahead, he kept a slow pace, making sure the line stayed straight. Melzar told them to start making a racket. Obron was shouting loudly, and Fahin let out piercing whistles. For himself, Edeard picked up a thick stick and thwacked it against the tree trunks as he passed by.

There were more bushes in this part of the forest: big zebrathorns with their monochrome patterned leaves and oozing, highly poisonous white berries and coaleafs that were like impenetrable black clouds squatting on the earth. Small creatures were exposed to his farsight, zipping out of the way of the humans: nothing big enough to be a drakken, let alone a galby. The ground became soft under his feet, wet loam that leaked water from every footprint. The scent of moldering leaf was strong in his nose. He was sure he could smell fungus spores.

Obron was out of eyesight now, somewhere behind the bushes. Edeard’s farsight picked him up on the other side of dense trunks.

“Close up a little,” he longtalked.

“Sure, sure,” Obron replied casually.

A ripple of excitement went down the line. Somewhere up toward Melzar’s end a galby sped away, not quite in the direction of the shooting line. Edeard’s heart started to beat quickly. He knew he was smiling and didn’t care. This was the kind of thing he had wanted ever since he had learned he was going on the caravan. There were galbys here! He would get a chance to flush one and, if he was really lucky, maybe take a shot later on.

Something squawked above him. Edeard flicked his farsight focus upward in time to see a couple of birds dart up through the canopy. There was a thicket up ahead, a dense patch of zebrathorn, just the kind of place for a galby to nest in. His farsight swept through it, but there were dark zones and steep little gullies he could not be sure about. He sent the ge-wolf slinking in through the bushes as he skirted the outside. Now he couldn’t see Fahin either, but his farsight registered the boy’s mind.

Apprehension hit him like a solid force, the mental equivalent of being doused in icy water. Suddenly all his delight deserted him. His fingers actually lost their grip on the stick as his legs seized up. Something terrible was happening. He knew it.

“What?” he gasped. He was frightened and, worse, frightened that he was frightened. This makes no sense.

In the middle of the thicket, the ge-wolf he was directing lifted its head and snarled, responding to the turmoil bubbling along his tenuous longtalk contact.

“Edeard,” Fahin called. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t …” Edeard pulled his arms in by his sides as his knees bent, lowering him to a crouch. He instinctively closed his third hand around himself to form the strongest shield he was capable of. Lady, what’s the matter with me? He pushed his farsight out as far as he could and swept around as if it were some kind of illuminating beam. The tree trunks were too dense to get any kind of decent picture of anything beyond his immediate vicinity.

“What is the matter with you?” Obron asked; his mental tone was scathing.

Edeard could sense both apprentices hesitating. The ge-wolf was wriggling around, trying to get out of the thicket and back to him. Dry leaves rustled, and he whirled around, raising the stick protectively. “I think someone’s here.” He directed his farsight where he thought the sound had come from, pushing its focus as hard as he could. There were a few tiny rodent creatures scuttling along the forest floor. They could have made the noise.

“What do you mean, someone?” Fahin demanded. “Who?”

Edeard was gritting his teeth with the effort of extending his farsight to the limit. “I don’t know. I can’t sense them.”

“Hey, we’re falling behind,” Obron longtalked impatiently. “Come on, get moving.”

Edeard stared back into the forest. This is stupid. But he could not get rid of his dread. He took a last look at the forest behind, then turned. The arrow came out of the empty trees on his left, moving so fast that he never saw it; only his farsight caught the slightest ripple of motion. His shield tightened as he gasped, his mind clamoring its shock.

The arrow hit his left pectoral muscle. His telekinetic shield held, but the force of impact was sufficient to knock him backward. He landed on his ass. The arrow tumbled down in the loam and weeds beside him, a long blackened shaft with dark green needlehawk feathers and a wicked barbed metal tip dripping a thick violet liquid. Edeard stared at it in horror.

“Edeard?”

His mind was swamped by the telepathic voices. It seemed as if the entire flusher line was shouting mentally at him, demanding an answer.

“Arrow!” he broadcast back at them as forcefully as he could. His eyes did not move from the arrow lying beside him, showing everyone. “Poison arrow!”

A mind materialized thirty yards away, sparkling vivid sapphire amid the cluttered gray shadows that comprised Edeard’s ethereal vision of the forest.

“Huh?” Edeard jerked his head around. A man stepped out from behind a tree, dressed in a ragged cloak that was almost the same color as the tree trunks. His hair was wild, long and braided, filthy with dark red mud. More mud was smeared across his face and caked his beard. He was snarling, anger and puzzlement leaking out of his mind. One hand reached over his shoulder and pulled another arrow from his quiver. He notched it smoothly into the biggest bow Edeard had ever seen, leveling it as his arm pulled back.

Edeard screamed with voice and mind, a sound he could hear replicated along the flusher line. Even his assailant winced as he let fly.

Edeard thrust his hands out, a motion he followed with his third hand, using his full strength. The arrow burst into splinters before it had covered half the distance between them.

This time it was the forest man who radiated shock into the ether.

“Bandits.” Melzar’s call echoed faintly around Edeard, spoken and telepathic. “It’s an ambush. Group together, everyone; combine your strength. Shield yourselves. Toran, help us!”

Edeard was scrambling to his feet, vaguely aware of other shouts and adrenaline-boosted emotional pulses reverberating across the forest. More bandits were emerging from concealment. Arrows were being fired. His mind reached for the ge-wolf, directing it with frenzied urgency. There was not going to be time. The forest man had slung his bow to the ground and was charging. A knife glinted in his hand.

A telekinetic shove nearly knocked Edeard back to the ground. He countered it easily, feeling the force slither over his skin like icy fingers. The bandit was trying for a heartsqueeze, an attack method that apprentices talked about in nervous awe when they gathered in Ashwell. Using telekinesis inside someone else’s body was the ultimate taboo. Anyone found to have committed the act was exiled forever.

Now a bandit was thundering toward Edeard, knife ready and death lust fevering his mind. His third hand was scrabbling to assail vulnerable organs.

His earlier fear had left Edeard. He wasn’t even thinking about the others. A maniac was seriously trying to kill him. That was the whole universe. And as Akeem had explained during their all-too-brief sessions on defensive telekinetic techniques, there was no such thing as a disabling blow.

Edeard stood up and let his arms drop to his side, closing his eyes. He shaped his third hand. Waiting. The pounding of the bandit’s bare feet on the forest floor reached his ears. Waiting. The man’s berserker cry began. The knife rose, gripped by white knuckles. Wait … judge the moment. Edeard’s farsight revealed the man in perfect profile; he even perceived the leg muscles exerting themselves to the limit as they began the leap. Any second—

The attempted heartsqueeze ended; telekinesis was channeled to assist the attack leap, to strengthen the knife thrust.

—now.

The bandit left the ground. Edeard pushed his third hand underneath the airborne figure and shoved, the effort forcing a wild roar from his throat. He’d never exerted himself so much before, not even when Obron’s torment was at its worst.

In an instant the bandit’s semitriumphant scream turned to pure horror. Edeard opened his eyes to see a pair of mud-encrusted feet sail over his head. “FUCK YOU!” he bellowed, and added the slightest corrective sideways shove to the trajectory. The bandit’s head smashed into a bulky tree four yards above the ground. It made a horrible thud. Edeard withdrew his third hand. The man dropped like a small boulder, emitting a slight moan as he struck the ground. The ge-wolf pounced.

Edeard turned away. All his emotions returned with tidal-wave power as the ge-wolf began tearing and clawing at the inert flesh. He had forgotten just how fierce the creatures were. His legs were threatening to collapse under him, they were shaking so bad, while his stomach heaved.

The loud crack of shots ripped across the forest. They made Edeard spin around in alarm. That has to be us. Right?

There were shouts and cries all around. Edeard did not know what to do. One of the cries was high-pitched: Janene.

“Lady, please!” Obron wailed. His mind was pouring out dread like a small nova.

Edeard’s farsight flashed out. Two fastfoxes were racing straight at the weeping apprentice. He had never seen one before but knew instantly what they were. Only just smaller than a ge-wolf but faster, especially on the sprint, it was a streamlined predator with a short ebony fur stiff enough to act like armor. It head was either fangs or horns, and way too many of both. Its hindlimb was thick and strong, allowing it a long sprint-jump motion as the ultimate lunge at its prey.

They had collars on.

Edeard started running toward them and reached out with his third hand. They were forty yards away, yet he still felt their metal-hard muscles flexing in furious rhythm. He didn’t even know if they had hearts like humans and terrestrial beasts, let alone where they were. So forget a heartsqueeze. His telekinesis penetrated the brain of the leading one and simply shredded all the tissue he found there. It dropped in midbound, its flaccid body plowing a furrow through the carpet of dry leaves. The remaining fastfox lurched aside, its demon head swinging around to try to find the threat. It stopped, growling viciously as Edeard trotted up, limbs bent as it readied itself to pounce.

“What are you doing?” Obron bawled.

Edeard knew he was acting crazy but did not care. Adrenaline was powering him recklessly. He snarled back at the fastfox, almost laughing at it. Then, before the creature could move, he closed his third hand on it and lifted it clean off the ground. The fastfox screeched in fury. Its limbs ran against nothing, pumping so fast that they were a blur.

“Are you doing that?” an incredulous Obron asked.

“Yeah.” Edeard grinned.

“Oh, crap. Look out!”

Three bandits were running toward them. They were dressed the same as the one who had attacked Edeard: simple ragged camouflage cloaks and belts with several dagger sheaths. One of them carried a bow.

Edeard sent out a single longtalk command, summoning the ge-wolf.

The bandits were slowing. Consternation began to glimmer in their minds as they saw the furious fastfox scrabbling uselessly in midair. More gunshots rang through the forest.

“Protect yourself,” Edeard ordered sharply as the bandit with a bow notched an arrow. Obron’s shield hardened.

The three bandits came to a halt, still staring disbelievingly at the writhing fastfox. Edeard rotated the predator slowly and deliberately until it was pointing directly at them. He was studying the animal’s thoughts, noting the simple motivational currents. It was similar to a genistar mind, although the strongest impulses seemed to be fear-derived. Some kind of punishment/reward training, probably. The bandit with the bow shot his arrow. Obron yipped as Edeard confidently swiped it aside.

There was another pause as the bandits watched it clatter against a tree. Telekinetic fingers skittered across Edeard’s skin, easily warded off. All three bandits drew short swords. Edeard slammed an order into the fastfox’s mind, sensing its original compulsions changing. It stopped trying to run and snarled at the bandits. One of them gave it a startled look. Edeard dropped it lightly on the ground.

“Kill,” he purred.

The fastfox moved with incredible speed. Then its hindlimb slapped the earth and powered it forward in a low arc. Telekinetic shields hardened around the bandits. Against one demented predator they might have stood a chance, but the ge-wolf hit them from the side.

“Ho, Lady.” Obron shuddered as the screaming began. He paled at the carnage yet could not pull his gaze away.

“Come on.” Edeard caught his arm. “We have to find Fahin. Melzar said to join up.”

Obron stumbled forward. A burst of pistol fire reverberated through the trees. It must be from the shooting line, Edeard thought. They’ve come to help. The turbulent shouting was turning into distinct calls. Edeard heard several apprentice names yelled. Longtalk was hysterical snatches of thought mostly overwhelmed with emotional outpourings; a few raw visions threatened to overwhelm him. Pain twinned with blood was pumping out from a long gash in Alcie’s thigh. An arrow stuck out of a tunic, numbness from its entry point spreading quickly. Mud-caked faces bobbed as punches were thrown. Impact pain. A camouflaged bandit was sprinting between trees as the rifle barrel tracked. A fastfox was a streak of gray-black. Blood was forming a huge puddle around a torn corpse.

Edeard ran around to the side of the zebrathorn thicket. “Fahin! Fahin, it’s us. Where are you?” He could not see anyone. There was no revealing glimmer of thought in his farsight. “Fahin!”

“He’s gone,” Obron panted. “Did they get him? Oh, Lady!”

“Is there any blood?” Edeard was scanning the leaves and soil.

“Nothing. Oh—”

Edeard followed Obron’s gaze and caught sight of a bandit running through the woods. The man had a sword in his hand that was dripping with blood. Anger surged through Edeard, and he reached out with his third hand, yanking at the man’s ankle, then pushing him down hard. As the bandit fell, Edeard twisted the sword, bringing the blade vertical. The bandit’s agonized bellow as he was impaled made Edeard recoil in shock. The man’s dying mind wept with frustration and anguish. Then the glimmer of thought was extinguished.

“He was fifty yards away,” Obron whispered in astonishment and no small measure of apprehension.

“Fahin,” Edeard called. “Fahin, can you hear me?” His farsight picked out a tiny iridescent glow that suddenly appeared inside the thicket. “Fahin?”

“Edeard?” the lanky boy’s longtalk asked fearfully.

“Yes! Yes, it’s me and Obron. Come on, come out. It’s safe, I think.”

They both watched as Fahin crawled out of the bushes. His face and hands had been scratched mercilessly; his loose woolen sweater was missing completely. Tacky berry juice was smeared into his hair and over his glasses, which hung from one ear. Amazingly, he was still clutching his physick satchel. Obron helped him up and abruptly found himself being hugged.

“I was so frightened,” Fahin mumbled piteously. “I fled. I’m sorry. I should have helped.”

“It’s okay,” Obron said. “I wasn’t much use, either.” He turned and gave Edeard a long thoughtful look, his mind tightening pensively.

“Edeard saved me. He’s killed a score of them.”

“No,” Edeard protested. “Nothing like that …” He trailed off as he realized he really had killed people that day. His guilty glance stole back to the bandit impaled on his own sword. A man was dead, and he had done it. But the sword had been slick with blood. And the other bandits … would have killed them. I didn’t have a choice.

Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong in order to do what’s right.

“Can anyone still see or sense bandits?”

Edeard’s head came up as he received Melzar’s weak longtalk. Obron and Fahin also were looking around.

“Anyone?” Melzar asked. “Okay, then please make your way toward me. If anyone is injured, please help bring them along. Fahin, are you here?”

Somehow, Melzar being alive made the world a little less intimidating for Edeard. He even managed a small grin. Obron let out a whistle of relief.

“Yes, sir, I’m here,” Fahin replied.

“Good lad. Hurry up, please; we have injured.”

“Oh, Lady,” Fahin groaned. “I’m just an apprentice. The doctor won’t even let me prepare some of her leaves.”

“Just do the best you can,” Edeard said.

“But—”

“You cured our hangovers,” Edeard said. “Nobody will start mouthing off at you for helping the injured. We’re not expecting you to be as good as old Doc Seneo. But Fahin, you have to do something. You can’t turn your back on wounded people. You just can’t. They need you.”

“He’s right,” Obron said. “I think I heard Janene scream. What would her parents say if you walked away?”

“Right, yes,” Fahin said. “You’re right, of course. Oh, Lady, where are my glasses? I can’t do everything by farsight.” He turned back to the thicket.

“They’re here,” Edeard said. His third hand lifted them gently into place, at the same time wiping the berry goop from them.

“Thank you,” Fahin said.

They hurried through the forest toward Melzar. Other figures were moving with them in the same direction. Several apprentices sent panicky hellos via longtalk. Edeard remembered an image of Alcie and the wound in his thigh. It had looked bad.

Toran and the apprentices with pistols had gathered into a defensive group with Melzar. Edeard exchanged a relieved greeting with Genril, who was all jitters. He said he had one bullet left in his revolver and he was sure he had hit at least one bandit. “I got really scared when the fastfoxes charged us. Toran killed one with his rifle. Lady! He’s a good shot.”

“You should see what Edeard did,” Obron said flatly. “He doesn’t need guns.”

“What?” Genril asked. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” Edeard said. “I know how to deal with animals, that’s all. You know that.”

“Just how strong are you?” Obron asked.

“Yeah,” Genril said. “We heard your longtalk right over on the ridge. It was like you were next to me, screaming into my skull. Lady, I almost ducked when that arrow came at you.”

“Does it matter?” Edeard asked. He was looking around, wondering where the others were. Out of the twelve apprentices and four adults in the flusher line, only five had made it back so far, including the three of them. Then Canan the carpenter arrived, carrying an unconscious Alcie. Fahin gave his friend a worried look, seeing the crudely wrapped wound already soaked in blood. His mind started to get agitated.

“Go,” Edeard directed with quiet longtalk. “Do as much as you can.”

“P-p-put him down,” Fahin said. He knelt beside Alcie and started rummaging through his satchel.

Edeard turned back to the forest, sending his farsight ranging out. Where are the others? His heart quickened as he detected some movement. A couple of apprentices came running through the trees.

“It’s all right,” Melzar said soothingly. “You’re safe now.”

“We left Janene,” one of them wailed. “We tried to save her, but she took an arrow. I ran—” He collapsed on the ground, sobbing.

“Nine,” Edeard whispered as he kept his vigil. “Nine out of twelve.”

Melzar’s hand came down on his shoulder. “It would have been none without you,” he said quietly. “Your warning saved us. Saved me, in fact. I owe you my life, Edeard. We all do.”

“No.” Edeard shook his head sadly. “I didn’t warn you. I was terrified. That was all. You heard my fear.”

“I know. It was powerful. What happened? What tipped you off?”

“I …” He frowned, remembering the sensation of fear that had gripped him. There was no reason for it. “I heard something,” he said lamely.

“Whatever, I’m glad.”

“Why couldn’t we sense them? I thought I had good farsight. They were closer to me than Obron and Fahin, and I never knew.”

“There are ways you can eclipse your thoughts, bend them away from farsight. It’s not a technique we’re very familiar with in Ashwell, and I’ve never seen it practiced so well as today. The Lady knows where they learned it. And they tamed fastfoxes, too. That’s astonishing. We’ll have to send messengers out to the other towns and warn them of this new development.”

“Do you think there are more of them out there?” Edeard could imagine whole armies of bandits converging on their little caravan.

“No. We put them to flight today. And even if there were others lurking about, they have pause for thought now. Their ambush failed—thanks to you.”

“I bet Janene and the others don’t think it’s failed,” Edeard said bitterly. He didn’t care that he was being rude to Melzar. After this, nothing much seemed to matter.

“There’s no answer I can give you to that, lad. I’m sorry.”

“Why do they do this?” Edeard asked. “Why do these people live out here hurting others? Why don’t they live in the villages, in a house? They’re just savages.”

“I know, lad. But this is all they know. They’re brought up in the wild, and they’ll bring their children up the same way. It’s not a cycle we can break. There are always going to be people living beyond civilization.”

“I hate them. They killed my parents. Now they’ve killed my friends. We should wipe them out. All of them. It’s the only way we’ll ever be allowed to live in peace.”

“That’s anger talking.”

“I don’t care; that’s what I feel. That’s what I’ll always feel.”

“It probably is. Right now I almost agree with you. But it’s my job to get everyone home safely.” Melzar leaned in close, studying Edeard’s expression and thoughts. “Are you going to help me with that?”

“Yes, sir. I will.”

“Okay, now call back our ge-wolves.”

“Right. What about the fastfox?” Edeard was still aware of the animal prowling at the limit of his farsight. It was confused, missing its original master.

“The fastfox?”

“Edeard tamed it,” Obron said. “His third hand scooped it up, and he made it attack the bandits.”

The other apprentices turned to look at Edeard. Despite the exhaustion and apprehension dominating their thoughts, a lot of them were registering surprise and even some concern.

“I told you,” Edeard said sullenly. “I know how to deal with animals. It’s what my whole guild does.”

“Nobody’s ever tamed a fastfox,” Toran said. Melzar flashed him an annoyed glance.

“The bandits did,” Genril said. “I saw the collars on them.”

“They’d already learned to obey,” Edeard explained. “My orders were stronger, that’s all.”

“All right,” Melzar said. “Call the fastfox in. If you can control it, we’ll use it to guard the caravan. If not, well …” He patted his rifle. “But I’ll warn you now, lad. The village elders won’t allow you to keep it.”

In Aaron’s opinion, Riasi had benefited from being stripped of its capital city status. It retained the grand structures intrinsic to any capital as well as the expansive public parks, a well-financed transport grid, and excellent leisure facilities, yet with the ministries and their bureaucrats decamped across the ocean to Makkathran2, the stress and hassle had been purged from everyday life. So had exorbitant housing costs. What was left was a rich city with every possible amenity; consequently, its residents were kicking back and enjoying themselves.

It made things a lot easier for Aaron. The taxi flight from Makkathran2 had taken nine hours; they had landed at the spaceport, one of hundreds of identical arrivals. Mercifully, Corrie-Lyn had spent most of the journey asleep. When she did wake up, she placidly did whatever he told her. So they moved through the vast passenger terminus on the pedwalks, visiting just about every lounge. Only then did he go back to the taxi rank and take a trip to the old Parliament building at the center of the city. It was late morning by then, with a lot of activity in the surrounding district. They swapped taxis again and then again. Three taxis later they finally touched down in a residential zone on the east bank of the Camoa River.

During the flight from Makkathran2 Aaron had rented a ground-floor apartment in a fifteen-story tower. It was anonymous enough; a safe house he called it. To Corrie-Lyn it probably seemed secure. Aaron knew his multiple taxi journeys and untraceable coin payment for the apartment were strictly amateur stuff. Any half-decent police officer could track them down within a day.

For two days he did nothing. It took Corrie-Lyn the entire first day just to sober up. He allowed her to order anything she wanted by way of clothes and food but forbade any alcohol or aerosols. For the second day she just sulked, a state exacerbated by a monster hangover. He knew there was plenty of trauma involved, too, as she reconciled what had happened with Captain Manby’s squad. That night he heard her crying in her room.

Aaron decided to go all out with breakfast the next morning to try and reach through her mood. He combined the culinary unit’s most sophisticated synthesis with items delivered fresh from a local delicatessen. The meal started with Olberon bluefruit, followed by French toast with caramelized banana; the main course was buckwheat crepes with fried duck eggs, grilled Uban mushroom, and smoked Ayrshire bacon, topped by a delicate omelette aux caviar. The tea was genuine Assam, which was all he could ever drink in the morning; it was not his best time of day.

“Wowie,” Corrie-Lyn said in admiration. She had wandered in from her bedroom all bleary-eyed, dressed in a fluffy blue toweling robe. When she saw what was being laid out, she perked up immediately.

“There’s sugar for the bluefruit,” he told her. “It’s refined from Dranscome tubers, best in the galaxy.”

Corrie-Lyn sprinkled some of the silvery powder over the bluefruit and tried a segment. “Umm, that is good.” She spooned out some more.

Aaron sat opposite her and took his first sip of tea. Their table was next to a window wall, giving them a view across the river. Several big oceangoing barges were coasting along just above the rippling water; smaller river traffic curved around them. He didn’t see them; his eyes were on the loose front of her robe, which revealed the slope of her breasts. Firm and excellently shaped, he admired cheerfully. She certainly had a great body, his gaze tracking down to her legs to confirm it. There were no mental directives either way on having sex with her, so he suspected the hormonal admiration was all his own. It made him grin. Normal, after all.

“You’re not a starship leasing agent,” Corrie-Lyn said abruptly, her face pulled up in a peeved expression.

He realized he was allowing some of his feelings to ooze out into the gaiafield. “No.”

“So what are you?”

“Some kind of secret agent, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Not really.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simple enough. If I don’t know anything, I can’t reveal anything. I just have things I know I have to do.”

“You mean you haven’t got any memories of who you are?”

“Not really, no.”

“Do you know who you’re working for?”

“No.”

“So how do you know you should be working for them?”

“Excuse me?”

“How do you know you’re not working for the Ocisen Empire, that you’re not helping bring down the Greater Commonwealth? Or what if you’re a leftover Starflyer agent? They say Paula Myo never did catch all of them.”

“Unlikely, but admittedly I don’t know.”

“Then how can you live with yourself?”

“I think it’s improbable that I’m doing something like that. If you asked me to do it now, I wouldn’t. So I wouldn’t have agreed to do it before my full memory was removed.”

“Your full memory.” Corrie-Lyn tasted the idea with the same care with which she had sampled the bluefruit. “Anyone who agrees to have their memory taken out just to get an illegal contract has got to be pretty extreme. And you kill people, too. You’re good at it.”

“My combat software was superior to theirs. And they’ll be re-lifed. Your friend Captain Manby is probably already walking around looking for us. Think how much improved his motivation is now thanks to me.”

“Without your memories you can’t know what your true personality is.”

Aaron reached for his French toast. “And your point is?”

“For Ozzie’s sake, doesn’t that trouble you?”

“No.”

She shook her head in amazement. “That’s got to be an artificial feeling.”

“Again, so what? It makes me efficient at what I do. Personality trait realignment is a useful procedure in re-life. If you want to be a management type, then have your neural structure altered to give yourself confidence and aggression.”

“Choose a vocation and mold yourself to fit. Great; that’s so human.”

“Now, then, what’s your definition of human these days? Higher? Advancer? Originals? How about the Hive? Huxley’s Haven has kept a regulated society functioning for close to one and a half thousand years, every one of them proscribed by genetic determination, and they’re still going strong, with a population that’s healthy and happy. Now you tell me plain and clear: Which of us won the human race?”

“I’m not arguing evolution with you. Besides, it’s just a distraction from what you are.”

“I thought we’d agreed that neither of us knows what I am. Is that what fascinates you about me?”

“In your pervert dreams!”

Aaron grinned and crunched some toast.

“So what’s your mission?” Corrie-Lyn asked. “What do you have to do, kidnap Living Dream Councillors?”

“Ex-Councillors. But no, that’s not the way of it.”

“So what do you want with me?”

“I need to find Inigo. I believe you can help.”

Corrie-Lyn dropped her spoon and stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No.”

“You expect me to help you? After what you just said?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“But …” she sputtered.

“Living Dream is trying to kill you. Understand this: They’re not going to stop. If anything, the other night will only make them more determined. The only person left in the galaxy who can put the brakes on your dear new Cleric Conservator is Inigo himself.”

“So that’s who you’re working for: the anti-Pilgrimage lobby.”

“There’s no guarantee that Inigo will stop the Pilgrimage if he comes back. You know him better than anybody, do I speak the right in that?”

She nodded forlornly. “Yeah. I think you might be.”

“So help me find him.”

“I can’t do that,” she said in a low voice. “How can you ask when even you don’t know what you’ll do to him if we find him?”

“Anyone who has hidden himself this well is never going to be taken by surprise even if we do manage to track him down. He knows there are a lot of serious people looking for him. Besides, if I wanted to kill him, why would I take the trouble of hunting him down? If he’s off the stage, he can’t direct any of the actors, now, can he? So if I want him back, I must want him back intact.”

“I don’t know,” she said weakly.

“I saved your life.”

Corrie-Lyn gave him a sly smile. “The software running you saved my life. It did it because you needed me. I’m your best hope, remember.”

“You’re my number one choice.”

“Better get ready to schmooze number two.”

“Not even my liver could take another night in Rakas. I do need you, Corrie-Lyn. And what about you? What do you need? Don’t you want to find him? Don’t you want to hear why he upped and left you and all the billions who believed in him? Did he lose faith? Was Living Dream just that all along, nothing more than a dream?”

“Low blow.”

“You can’t do nothing. You’re not that kind of person. You know Inigo must be found before the Pilgrimage leaves. Somebody will find him. Nobody can stay hidden forever, not in this universe. Politics simply won’t allow it. Who do you want to find him?”

“I … I can’t,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“I understand. I can wait, at least for a little while longer.”

“Thanks.” She put her head down and started to eat her French toast, almost as if she were ashamed of the decision.

Aaron did not see her for nearly three hours after breakfast. She went back into her bedroom and stayed there. His u-shadow monitored a small amount of unisphere use; she was running through standard information files from the Living Dream fanes in the city. He had a shrewd idea what she was looking for—a friend she could trust, which meant things could well be swinging his way. If they set foot outside, it would not be long before Manby or his replacement was racing up behind them, guns flaring.

When she came out, she was wearing a loose-neck red sweater and tight black trousers; a silver necklace made a couple of long loops around her neck before wrapping around her hips. She had fluffed her dark hair neatly and infused it with purple and green sparks that glimmered on a long cycle. He gave her an appreciative smile, which she ignored.

“I need to talk to someone,” she announced.

Aaron tried to make his smirk not too obvious. “Sure thing. I hope you’re not going to insist on going alone. There are bad people out there.”

“You can come with me, but the conversation is private.”

“Okay. Can I ask if you’ve already set up a meeting?”

“No.”

“Good. Don’t call anyone. The Ellezelin cybersphere has government monitors in its nodes. Manby’s team will fall on you like a planet-killer asteroid.”

Her expression flickered with worry. “I already accessed the unisphere.”

“That’s okay. They probably can’t trace your u-shadow access,” he lied. “Do you know where this person is likely to be?”

“The Daeas fane. That’s over on the south side of the city.”

“Right, then; we’ll take a taxi to that district and land a couple of blocks away. Once we’re at the fane, we’ll try to get a visual on your friend.”

“He’s not a friend,” she said automatically.

Aaron shrugged. “Whoever the person is. If we find him, then you can have your chat in private. Calling him is our last resort, and please let me do that; my u-shadow has fixes available that should circumvent the monitor systems.”

She nodded agreement, picked up her scarlet bag, and wrapped a long fawn-colored scarf around her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

Aaron was perfectly relaxed in the taxi flight over the city. He spent it looking down on the buildings, enjoying the vertical perspective as the towers flipped past underneath. The inhabitants certainly enjoyed their roof gardens; nearly half of them had some kind of terrace fenced in by greenery, and swimming pools were everywhere.

He did not know what the outcome of Corrie-Lyn’s meeting would be, nor did he really care. His only certainty was that he would know exactly what to do when the time came. There was, he reflected, a lot of comfort to be had in his unique level of ignorance.

They landed on an intersection at the edge of the Daeas district. It was a commercial area dominated by the monolithic buildings that had been the Ellezelin Offworld Office, the ministry that had masterminded the Free Market Zone and Ellezelin’s subsequent commercial and diplomatic domination of neighboring star systems. The structures had been turned into hotels, casinos, and exclusive malls. They walked along the ornate stone facades toward the fane, with Aaron making sure they didn’t take a direct route. He wanted time to scan and check for possible hostiles—make that probable hostiles.

“Did you know he was leaving before he actually went?” Aaron asked.

Corrie-Lyn gave him an unsettled glance. “No.” She sighed. “But we’d cooled off quite a while back. I hadn’t been excluded exactly, but I wasn’t in the inner circle anymore.”

“Who was?”

“That’s the thing. No one, really. Inigo had been getting more and more withdrawn for a long time. Years. Because we were so close, it took time for me to notice how distant he was growing. You know what it’s like.”

“I can imagine,” he said, which earned him a frown. “So there was no one event, then?”

“Ah, you’re talking about the fabled Last Dream, aren’t you? No, not that I was aware. But then, that rumor had to come from somewhere.”

Even before they won a majority in Parliament, the Living Dream’s Chief Councillor of Riasi had boasted that one could never travel more than a mile in the city without encountering a fane. The buildings did not have a specific layout; anything that had a hall large enough to accommodate the faithful, along with office space and living quarters, would do. Given the inherent wealth of the Daeas district, it was inevitable that the local fane should be impressive: a contemporary Berzaz cube with horizontal stripes twisted at fifteen degrees to each other, their fluid-luminal surfaces shining with an intensity that automatically matched the sunlight, delineating each floor in a spectromatic waterfall. The overall effect was of a city block that was trying to screw itself into the ground. It was surrounded by a broad plaza with a fountain at each point. Tall jets squirted out from the center of inclined rings that were ticked out with ingrav to make the water flow upslope.

Aaron scanned the bustling plaza, performing a meticulous assessment of the locale, allowing his combat software to plot escape routes. His u-shadow was busy extracting the civic plans for the neighboring buildings, along with utility tunnels and traffic routes. Directly opposite the fane’s main entrance was an arcade with a curving crystal roof sheltering fifty high-class shops and boutiques on three levels; it had multiple entrances onto three streets and five underground cargo depots as well as seven cab platforms and ten rooftop landing pads. That would be difficult to cover even for a large surveillance team. Next to it was a staid old ministry building that now housed several financial institutions and a couple of export merchants. There weren’t as many ways in and out, but it did have a large subterranean garage full of expensive regrav capsules. The boulevard running alongside it was lined with shops and entertainment salons mixed in with bars and restaurants, with the tables outside playing host to a vibrant café culture. Aaron’s u-shadow called down three taxis and parked them on public pads nearby, paying for them to wait with three independent and genuinely untraceable coin accounts.

“Do you want me to go in and try to find him?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

Aaron studied the fane’s main entrance, a truncated archway that the fluid-luminal flowed around on either side, presenting it as a dark passageway. Plenty of people were coming and going, the majority dressed in the kind of clothes found on Querencia. Brightly colored Cleric robes were easy to spot.

“I’m assuming this somebody is a Living Dream Cleric, quite a senior one given your own rank.”

She gave him a short nod. “Yves. He’s still the deputy here. I’ve known him for fifty years. Completely devoted to Inigo’s vision.”

“Old guard, then.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, not likely to bump into him running errands around the place, then. He’s going to stay put in his office.”

“That’s on the fourth floor. I can probably get up there. I do have some clearance. I’m not sure I can take you with me.”

“Any clearance you had will be revoked by now. And if you interface with a Living Dream network, it’ll send up an alert they can see back on Old Earth.”

“So what do you want to do, then?”

“If honesty doesn’t pay, I have a few tricks that should be able to get us up to his office without drawing attention to ourselves. All you have to do is pray he doesn’t turn us in the minute we say hello.”

“I say hello,” she emphasized.

“Whatever.” His software had identified three probable hostiles amid the bustle of pedestrians across the plaza. Looking at the shimmering building, he got the distinct sensation of a trap waiting to snap shut. His trouble was that pointing out the three suspects wouldn’t be anything like enough to convince Corrie-Lyn that she should be doing her utmost to help him. That would require a genuine scare on the same scale as the one Captain Manby had provided back in Greater Makkathran, the difference being this time she would be awake, sober, and clean. She had to realize that Living Dream was her enemy on every level.

“We’ll go in by the front door,” he said. “No sense drawing attention to ourselves by trying to sneak in the back.”

“Each side of the fane has an entrance which leads to the main reception hall. They’re all open; we welcome everyone.”

“I was speaking metaphorically,” he said. “Come on.” His u-shadow told him the Riasi metropolitan police had just received an alert that two known political activists known to be aggressive had been seen in the city. “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis is well and truly back in the building,” he muttered without really knowing why.

Corrie-Lyn let out a hiss of exasperation at his nonsense and headed off toward the fane’s entrance. Aaron followed, smiling at her attitude. The thoughts within the plaza’s gaiafield were pleasurable and enticing, a mélange of sensations that made the hair along his spine stand up. It was almost as if the inside of his skull were being caressed. Something wonderful resided inside the fane, the gaiafield promised him. He just had to step inside …

Aaron grinned at the crudity of the allure. It was the mental equivalent of freshly baked bread on a winter morning. He imagined it would be quite an attraction to any casual passerby; the problem he had with that was the lack of any such specimen, as the majority of Ellezelin’s population were all Living Dream devotees. But this fane, like all the others in the Greater Commonwealth, housed a gaiafield confluence nest. It was inevitable that the lure effect would be at its peak in the plaza.

No one looked at them as they walked into the archway with its moiré curtain of luminescence. Aaron’s level-one field scan showed him that the three suspects outside had started to move toward the fane. He hoped they couldn’t detect such a low-power scan; they certainly did not appear to be enriched with biononics.

There were sensors built into the entrance, standard systems that were recording their faces and signatures, making sure they had no concealed weapons, the kind every public building was equipped with. Aaron’s biononics deflected them easily enough.

Inside, the siren call within the gaiafield slacked off, to be replaced by a single note of harmony. Decor and ether blended to give a sense of peaceful refuge; even the air was pleasantly cool. The reception hall was a replica of the main audience chamber in the Orchard Palace where the Mayor greeted honored citizens. Here, Clerics talked quietly to small groups of people. Aaron and Corrie-Lyn walked through the hall and into the cloister that led to the eastern entrance. A corridor on the right had no visible barrier. Aaron’s biononic fields manipulated the electronics guarding it, and the force field disengaged. He paused, checking the building network, but there was no alarm.

“In we go,” he told her quietly.

An elevator took them up to the fourth floor, opening into a windowless corridor narrower than the one downstairs. As they stepped out, his u-shadow informed him that the three waiting taxis had all just had their management programs examined. Aaron was undecided at what point to tell her that they were being targeted again. The longer he left it, the more difficult it would be to extricate them from the fane. He needed her just rattled enough to sign up for his mission but not so scared that she lost all sense.

With activity in the fane still at a minimum, he walked with her along several corridors until they reached Yves’s office. The room had an active screen, but Aaron’s field scan could cut right through it. There was just one person inside, no enrichments showing.

Corrie-Lyn put a hand lightly on Aaron’s chest. “Just me,” she said. Her voice had dropped to a husky tone. He couldn’t tell if she was being playful or insistent. Either way, there did not seem to be a threat in the office, so he smiled gracefully and gestured at the door.

Once she was inside, he walked down the rest of the corridor, checking the other rooms. A woman in plain brown-and-blue Cleric robes came out of one after he had passed. She frowned and said: “Can I help—”

Aaron shot her with a low-power stun pulse from the weapons enrichment in his left forearm. His scrambler field severed her connection with the unisphere as she crumpled to the floor, blocking the automatic call for help to the police and city medical service emitted by her multicellular clusters. He didn’t bother scooping her up and shoving her inside an empty room. That simply was not the kind of time scale he was looking at.

When he started back to Yves’s office, all the elevators began to descend to the ground floor. By expanding his level-one field scan to its limit, he could just detect weapons powering up down there. He walked straight into Yves’s office. “We have to go,” he began, then cursed silently.

Corrie-Lyn was sitting on the edge of a long leather couch, with Yves slumped at the other end. Her red bag was open, an aerosol in her fist, moving hurriedly, guiltily, from her face. A blissful expression weighed down her eyelids and mouth. Aaron couldn’t believe that he had not checked her bag while she had been sleeping. It was completely unprofessional.

“Oh, hi,” she slurred. “Yves, this is the guy I was telling you about, my savior. Aaron, this is Yves. We were just catching up.”

Yves waved his hand at Aaron, producing a dreamy smile. “Cool.”

“Fuck!” Aaron shot the man with a stun pulse. He was shifting the weapon toward Corrie-Lyn when his tactical programs interrupted the action. In her current state it would be a lot easier for him to evacuate her if she was unconscious and inert; however, she had to be aware of the danger she was in to make the right choice and confide in him.

Yves tumbled backward over the end of the couch and landed on the floor with a soft thud. His legs were propped up by the end of the couch, shoes pointing at the ceiling. Corrie-Lyn stared at her old friend as his feet slowly slithered sideways.

“What are you doing?” she wailed.

“Putting my ass on the line to save yours. Can you walk?”

Corrie-Lyn hauled herself along the couch to peer down at the crumpled body. “You killed him! Yves! Oh, Ozzie, what are you, you bastard?”

“He’s stunned, which gives him the perfect alibi. Now, can you walk?”

She turned her head to peer at Aaron; it was clearly an action that required a lot of effort. “He’s all right?”

“Damnit!” He didn’t have time to waste being her shrink. “Yep, he’s fine. Forget him. We have to get out of here right now.” He pulled her off the couch and slung her over his shoulder.

Corrie-Lyn wailed again, “Put me down.”

“You can’t even stand up, let alone walk. And we need to run.” The field medic sac in his thigh opened and ejected a drug pellet. Aaron slapped it against Corrie-Lyn’s neck, above the carotid. “That should straighten you out in a minute.”

“No, no, no,” she protested. “Leave me alone.”

Aaron ignored her and went out into the corridor. She was hanging over his shoulder, arms beating ineffectually at his buttocks as she cursed him loudly. Several Clerics opened their doors to see what the commotion was. Aaron stunned each one as he appeared.

“What’s happening?” Corrie-Lyn slurred.

“Getting out of here. Your old friends have found us.”

Her arms stopped flailing, and she started to weep. Aaron shook his head in dismay; he had thought she was more capable than this. He reached the elevator, and his biononics produced a small disrupter effect. The elevator doors cracked, their glossy surface darkening as if he were watching them age centuries in every second. They crumbled away into dust and flakes, pouring down the shaft, where they pattered onto the top of the elevator as it stood waiting on the ground floor. Aaron tightened his grip on Corrie-Lyn and jumped down the shaft. She screamed as the darkness rushed past her, a genuine terrified-for-her-life bellow of fear.

His integral force field expanded, cushioning their landing. Another disrupter pulse flashed out from his biononics, and the top of the elevator disintegrated beneath his feet. Two very startled police officers were looking up as he fell through on top of them. Both had force field webbing, which protected them from the impact. The weapons enrichment in Aaron’s forearm had to increase its power level by two orders of magnitude to puncture the webbing with a stun pulse. He walked out, still carrying a silent Corrie-Lyn. There were several police officers in the corridor between the elevator and the welcome hall. They shouted at him to stop, which he ignored. A barrage of energy shots smacked across his force field, encasing him and Corrie-Lyn in a screeching purple nimbus. It didn’t slow him down. He emerged into the welcome hall to see Clerics and visitors running for cover, yelling for help vocally and digitally. Police were taking cover in the archways to three corridors, their weapons peppering him with shots. He fired several low-power disrupter pulses at the hall’s ceiling. Thick clouds of composite fragments plummeted down, filling the air with cloying particles; steel and carbon girders sagged, emitting dangerous groans. Police officers flinched, retreating from the collapsing hall. Aaron walked on toward the main entrance while Corrie-Lyn gasped and moaned in martyred dismay at the chaos raging around them.

Outside, the city cybersphere was broadcasting distress and warning messages to anyone within two blocks of the fane. People were scurrying out of the plaza, an exodus that Aaron’s tactical programs decided was working against him. Sentient police software was downloading into the district’s cybersphere nodes, taking charge, safeguarding the local network from any subversion he might try to activate, suspending capsule and ground traffic, monitoring sensors, sealing him in.

Aaron’s u-shadow went for the unguarded systems managing the plaza’s fountains, changing the direction of the ingrav effect on the angled rings. The tall jets began to waver, then suddenly swung down until they were horizontal. They slashed from side to side, hosing everyone in the plaza like giant water cannons. People went tumbling across the stone floor, buffeted by thick waves of spray. Aaron reached the fane’s entrance and began sprinting across the plaza, partially obscured from the police by the seething spume clouds. His biononics strengthened his leg muscles, the field effect amplifying and quickening every movement. He covered the first hundred meters in seven seconds. Flailing bodies washed past him as the jets continued to play back and forth. Police officers were singled out for merciless drubbing. Their force fields did little to protect them from the powerful deluge, and they toppled easily from the soaking punches. Those who did fire energy shots into the furious spray simply created crackling vortices of ions that spit out curlicues of scalding steam. Victims on the ground scrabbled desperately out of the way as the dangerous vapor stabbed out, screaming at them to stop shooting.

The fountains began to run out of water when Aaron was two-thirds of the way across the plaza. Two energy shots hit his force field, throwing off a plume of sparks. The strike made him skid on the wet stone.

“Slow down,” Corrie-Lyn yelped as he regained his footing. “Oh, Ozzie, NO!”

Aaron’s sensory field scanned the area. The fane was starting to collapse, folding in on itself and twisting gently, as if in mimicry of the pattern of its fluid-luminal surfaces. “I must have damaged more than I realized,” he grunted. Dust and smoke were flaring out of the entrances like antique rocket engine plumes, billowing over the plaza.

He reached the entrance to the arcade. People had crowded around, watching the spectacle in the plaza. When Aaron had appeared out of the chaos and started charging toward them, they had backed away fast. Now they scattered like frightened birds; no one in the Commonwealth was accustomed to civil trouble, let alone Riasi’s residents. As he paused on the threshold, at least five police officers were given a clear line of sight. Energy slammed into his force field, producing a fearsome starblast of photons, its screeching loud enough to overwhelm Corrie-Lyn’s howls. Unprotected surfaces around him started to blister and smolder. He fired three bolts of his own, hidden in the melee, targeting structural girders around the archway. The crystal ceiling began to sag; huge cracks ripped through the thick material. Behind them the fane finally crumpled, the process accelerating. Chunks of debris went scything across the plaza to impact the surrounding buildings. Tens of thousands of glass fragments created a lethal shrapnel cloud racing outward. The police officers stopped shooting as they sought cover.

Corrie-Lyn was sobbing hysterically at the sight; then the arcade’s archway started to disintegrate. She froze as giant daggers of the crystal roof plunged down around them. Fire alarms were yammering, and bright-blue suppressor foam started to pour down from the remaining nozzles overhead. Aaron dived into the third store, which sold handmade lingerie. A slush of foam rippled out across the floor as it slid off his force field. Two remaining assistants saw him and sprinted for a fire exit.

“Can you walk?” he asked Corrie-Lyn. His u-shadow was attacking the police programs in the arcade’s nodes, interfering with the building’s internal sensors, and trying to cut power lines directly. It sent out a call to one of the parked taxis, directing it to land at the back of the arcade.

When he pulled Corrie-Lyn off his shoulder, all she could do was cross her arms and hug her chest. Her legs were trembling, unable to hold her weight.

“Shit!” He shunted her over his shoulder again and went into the back of the store. There was a door at the top of the stairs that led down into the basement stockroom, and he descended it quickly. His field scan showed a whole flock of police regrav capsules swooping low over the plaza while a couple of hardy officers were making their way over the tangle of archway girders. They seemed to be carrying some very high-powered weaponry.

It was cooler in the stockroom, the air dry and still. Overhead lights came on to reveal a rectangular room with smooth concrete walls filled with ranks of metal shelving. The far end was piled up with old advertising displays. His u-shadow reported that it was having some success in blocking the police software from nearby electronics. They would know he was there but not what he was doing.

The big malmetal door to the loading bay furled aside, and he went out into the narrow underground delivery road that served all the stores. It was empty; the police prohibition on all traffic was preventing any cargo capsules from using it. Ten meters away on the other side was a hatchway into a utility tunnel. His u-shadow popped the lock, and it swung open. He sprinted across the delivery road and clambered inside, pushing an unresisting Corrie-Lyn ahead of him. The hatch snapped shut.

Aaron scanned again. There was no light in the tunnel other than a yellow circle glowing around the hatch’s emergency handle. It was not high enough for him to walk along; he would have to stoop. Corrie-Lyn was sitting slumped against the wall just beside the hatch.

“There are no visual sensors inside the tunnel,” his u-shadow reported. “Only fire and water alarms.”

“Water?”

“In case of flooding. It is a city regulation.”

“Typical bureaucratic overkill,” he muttered. “Corrie-Lyn, we have to keep going.”

She did not acknowledge his words. Her limbs still were trembling uncontrollably, but she moved when he pushed at her. Together they shuffled along the tunnel, hunched over like monkeys. There were hatches every fifty meters. He stopped at the sixth one and let his field scan function review the immediate vicinity outside. It did not detect anyone nearby. His u-shadow unlocked it, and they crawled out into the base of a stairwell illuminated by blue-tinged polyphoto strips on the wall.

“The building network is functioning normally,” his u-shadow said. “The police sentients are currently concentrating their monitor routines on the fane and the arcade.”

“That won’t last,” he said. “They’ll expand outward soon enough. Crack one of the private capsules for me.”

He pulled Corrie-Lyn to her feet. With one arm under her shoulder to support her, they went up a flight of stairs. The door opened into the underground car park of the old ministry building. His u-shadow had infiltrated the control net of a luxury capsule and brought it right over to the stairwell.

The capsule slid up out of the park’s chuteway at the back of the building and zipped up into the nearby traffic stream. Police sentients queried it, and Aaron’s u-shadow provided them with a genuine owner certificate code. Corrie-Lyn stared down at the sluggish mass of boiling dust behind them. Her limbs had stopped trembling. He was not sure if that was the mild suppressor drug he had given her finally flushing the aerosol out of her system or if a deeper level of shock was setting in.

A small fleet of civic emergency capsules and ambulances was heading into the fane.

“They just shot at us,” she said. “They didn’t warn us or tell us to stop first. They just opened fire.”

“I had jumped down an elevator shaft to try to get out,” he pointed out. “That’s a reasonable admission of guilt.”

“For Ozzie’s sake, if you didn’t have a force field web, we’d be dead. That’s not how the police are supposed to act. They were police, weren’t they?”

“Yeah. They’re the city police, all right.”

“But we did get out.” She sounded puzzled. “There were how many, ten of them? Twenty?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“You just walked out like nothing could stop you. It didn’t matter what they did.”

“That’s Higher biononics for you. The only way standard weaponry can gain an advantage is overwhelming firepower. They weren’t carrying that much hardware.”

“You’re Higher?”

“I have weapons-grade biononics. I’m not sure about the culture part of it. That way of life seems slightly pointless to me, sort of like the pre-Commonwealth aristocracy.”

“What’s that?”

“Very rich people living a life of considerable ease and decadence while the common people slaved away into an early grave, with all their labor going to support the aristocrats and their way of life.”

“Oh. Right.” She did not sound interested. “Inigo was Higher.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Aaron said automatically.

“Actually, he was, but he kept that extremely quiet. Only a couple of us ever knew. I don’t think our new Cleric Conservator is aware of his idol’s true nature.”

“Are you—”

“Sure? Yes, I’m sure.”

“That’s remarkable. There’s no record of it; that’s a hell of an achievement these days.”

“Like I said, he kept it quiet. No one would have paid any attention to a Higher showing them his dreams, not out here on the External worlds. He needed to appear as ordinary as possible. To be accepted as one of us.”

Aaron gave an amused grunt. “Highers are people, too.”

“Some of them.” She gave him a meaningful glance.

“Was Yves the other cleric who knew about Inigo?”

“No.” She drew a short gasp and glanced back. “Oh, Ozzie, Yves! He was unconscious when the fane collapsed.”

“He’ll be all right.”

“All right?” she yelled, finally becoming animated. “All right? He’s dead!”

“Well, he’ll probably need re-lifing, yeah. But that’s only a couple of months of downtime these days.”

She gave him an incredulous snort and leaned against the capsule’s transparent fuselage to gaze down on the city.

Shock, anger, and fright, he decided. Mostly fright. “You need to decide what to do next,” he told her as sympathetically as he could. “Team up with me or …” He shrugged. “I can give you some untraceable funds; that should help keep you hidden.”

“Bastard.” She wiped at her eyes, then looked down at herself. Her red sweater had large damp patches, and the lower half of her trousers were caked in blue foam. Her knees were grazed and filthy from the inside of the utility tunnel. Her shoulders slumped in resignation. “He used to go somewhere,” she said in a quiet emotionless voice.

“Inigo?”

“Yes. This isn’t the first time he took off on a sabbatical and left Living Dream covering up for his absence. But none of the other times were for so long. A year at most.”

“I see. Where did he go?”

“Anagaska.”

“That’s his birthworld.”

“Yes.”

“An External world. One of the first. Advancer through and through,” he said significantly.

“I’m not arguing with you.”

“Did he ever take you?”

“No. He said he was visiting family. I don’t know how true that was.”

Aaron reviewed the files on Inigo’s family. There was very little information; they did not seek publicity, especially after he founded Living Dream. “His mother migrated inward a long time ago. She downloaded into ANA in 3440, after first becoming …”

“Higher. Yes, I know.”

He didn’t follow the point, but for someone to convert to Higher without leaving any record was essentially impossible. Corrie-Lyn must have been mistaken. “There’s no record of any brothers or sisters,” he said.

Corrie-Lyn closed her eyes and let out a long breath. “His mother had a sister, a twin. There was something … I don’t know what, but some incident long ago. Inigo hinted at it; the sisters went through this big trauma together. Whatever it was drove them apart; they never really reconciled.”

“There’s nothing in the records about that. I didn’t even know he had an aunt.”

“Well, now you do. So what next?”

“Go to Anagaska. Try to find the aunt or her children.”

“How do we get there? I imagine the police will be watching the spaceports and wormholes.”

“They will eventually. But I have my own starship.” He stopped in surprise as knowledge of the starship emerged into his mind from some deep memory.

Corrie-Lyn’s eyes opened in curiosity. “You do?”

“I think so.”

“Sweet Ozzie, you are so strange.”

Seventeen minutes later the capsule slid down to land beside a pad in Riasi’s spaceport. Aaron and Corrie-Lyn climbed out and looked up at the chrome-purple ovoid that stood on five bulbous legs.

She whistled in admiration. “That looks deliciously expensive. Is it really yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Odd name,” she said as she walked under the curving underbelly of the fuselage. “What’s the reference?”

“I’ve no idea.” His u-shadow opened a link to the Artful Dodger’s smartcore, confirming his identity with a DNA verification along with a code he abruptly remembered. The smartcore acknowledged his command authority.

“Hang on,” Aaron told Corrie-Lyn, and grabbed her hand. The base of the starship bulged inward, stretching into a dark tube. Gravity altered around them, and they slid up inside the opening.

Sholapur was one of those Commonwealth planets that did not quite work. All the ingredients for success and normality were there: a standard H-congruous biosphere, G-type star, oceans, big continents with great landscapes of deserts, mountains, plains, jungles, and vast deciduous forests, handsome coastlines, and long meandering archipelagoes. The local flora had several plants humans could eat, and the wildlife was not wild enough to pose much of a threat. Tectonically it was benign. The twin moons were small, orbiting seven hundred thousand kilometers out to produce the kinds of tides and waves that satisfied every kind of marine sports enthusiast.

Physically, there was nothing wrong with it. That left the people.

Settlement began in 3120, the year ANA officially became Earth’s government. It was the kind of incentive that flushed a lot of the remaining political, cultural, and religious malcontents out of the Central worlds. The greatest machine ever built was obviously taking over, and Higher culture was now so dominant, it never could be revoked. They left in the millions to settle the farthest External worlds. At four hundred seventy light-years from Earth, Sholapur was an attractive proposition for anyone looking for a distant haven.

To begin with everything went smoothly. There was commercial investment, the immigrants were experienced professionals, cities and industrial parks sprang up, and farms were established. But the groups that arrived from the Central worlds weren’t just dissatisfied with Higher culture; they tended to be insular, intolerant of other ideologies and lifestyles. Petty local disputes had a way of swelling to encompass entire ethnic or ideological communities. Internal migration accelerated, transforming urban areas into miniature city-states, all with massively different laws and creeds. Cooperation between them was minimal. The planetary parliament was “suspended” in 3180 after yet another debate ended in personal violence between senators, and that more or less marked the end of Sholapur’s economic and cultural development. It was regarded as hermetic by the rest of the Commonwealth; even the External worlds with their attitude of forthright independence viewed it as a kind of embarrassing dropout cousin. The nearest settled worlds called it Planet of the Hotheads and had little contact. Despite that, a great many starships continued to visit. Some of the micronations had laws—or a lack of laws—that could be advantageous to certain types of merchants.

Five thousand kilometers above the planetary surface, the starship Mellanie’s Redemption fell out of hyperspace amid a collapsing bubble of violet Cherenkov radiation. There was no single planetary traffic control Troblum could contact; instead he filed an approach request with Ikeo City and received permission to land.

Mellanie’s Redemption measured thirty meters long, with a sleek flared cone shape with forward-curving tail fins that looked functionally aerodynamic. In fact, they were thermal radiators added to handle the extensively customized power system. The cabin layout was a central circular lounge ringed by ten sleeping cubicles and a washroom. Hyperdrive ships did not come much bigger; they simply were not cost-effective to build. Starline companies used them almost exclusively for passengers wealthy enough to pay for fast transport. Most starships used a continuous wormhole drive; they were slower but could be built to any size and carried the bulk of interstellar trade around the External worlds.

Originally, Mellanie’s Redemption had been a specialist craft built to carry priority cargo or passengers between the External worlds—a risky proposition at the best of times. The company that had commissioned her had lurched from one financial crisis to another until Troblum made them an offer for their superfast lame duck. He claimed she would be refitted as a big personal yacht, which was a white lie. It was her three large cargo holds that made her perfect for him; their volume was ideal for carrying the equipment he was working on to re-create the Anomine “one shot” wormhole. Marius had agreed to the acquisition, and the additional EMAs materialized in Troblum’s account. Although the ship was supposed to remain on Arevalo until Troblum was ready to move the project to its test stage, he found it indispensable for some of the transactions in which he was involved. The addition of a navy-grade stealth field was especially beneficial when it came to slipping away from Arevalo without Marius being aware of anything untoward.

“City” was a somewhat overzealous description for Ikeo, which comprised a fifty-mile stretch of rugged subtopical coastline with a small town in the middle and a lot of mansions spread along the cliff tops on either side. Ideologically, the province could best be described as a free trade area, with several individuals specializing in artifact salvage. It did have a resident-funded police force, which its poorer neighboring states referred to as a strategic defense system.

Mellanie’s Redemption descended at the focal point of several ground-based tracking sensors. She landed on Pad 23 at the city’s spaceport, a two-kilometer circle of mown grass with twenty-four concrete pads, a couple of black dome-shaped maintenance hangars, and a warehouse owned by an intersolar service supply company. There were no arrival formalities. A capsule drew up beside the starship as Troblum walked down the short airstair, puffing heavily from the rush of heat and humidity that hit him as soon as the airlock opened.

The capsule took him several miles out of town to a Romanesque villa atop a low cliff. Three sides of the single-story building surrounded an elaborate pool and patio area festooned with colorful plants. Several waterfalls spilled down large strategically positioned boulders to splash into the pool. The view down onto the white beach was spectacular, with a needle-profile glide-boat anchored just offshore.

Stubsy Florac was waiting for him by the bar at the side of the pool. Not that anyone called him Stubsy to his face; Florac was sensitive about his height, sensitive that he didn’t get it changed during rejuvenation therapy because to do that would be to admit that he was a head shorter than most adults and that it bothered him enough to do something about it. He wore knee-length sports trousers and a simple pale blue shirt open to the waist to reveal a chest covered in hair and a stomach that was starting to bulge. When Troblum appeared, he smiled broadly and pushed his oversize sunglasses onto his forehead. His hairline was a lot higher and thinner than Troblum was used to seeing even on External world citizens.

“Hey! My man,” Florac exclaimed loudly. He held his arms out and shifted his hips from side to side. “You been dieting or what?” He laughed loudly at his own joke. All his companions smiled.

There were seven of them visible in the pool area, either lying on sunloungers or sitting at the table in the shallow end of the pool, sipping drinks that were mostly fruit and ice. Troblum was always slightly uncomfortable about the girls Stubsy kept at the villa—not quite clones, but there were standard requirements. For a start they were all a lot taller than their boss; two were even taller than Troblum. Naturally they were beautiful, with long silken hair, bodies toned as if they were part of some ancient Olympic athlete squad, and wearing tight bikinis—dressing for dinner here meant putting on a pair of shorts and sandals. A low-level field scan revealed them to be enriched with several advanced weapons systems; half the muscle ridges etched beneath their taut skin were actually force field webbing. If they ganged up on Troblum, they probably could overwhelm his biononic defenses. They acted like a hybrid between floozies and executive assistants. Troblum knew the image the arrangement was supposed to convey but didn’t understand why. Stubsy must have had a lot more insecurities than his height.

Troblum’s worn old toga suit rippled around his vast body as he raised his arms. “Do I look smaller?”

“Hey, come on, I’m just fucking with you. What I got, it entitles me.”

“What you claim you’ve got.”

“Man, just shove that stake in a little farther; I don’t think it went right through my heart. How are you, man? It’s been a while.” Stubsy gave Troblum a hug, arms reaching almost a third of the way around, squeezing like he was being reunited with a parent.

“Too long,” Troblum suggested.

“Still got your ship. Sweet ship. You Higher guys, you live the life, all right.”

Troblum looked down on Stubsy’s head. “So come and join us.”

“Wowa there! Not quite ready for that. Okay? Man, don’t even joke about it. I’d need to spend a decade wiping all my bad memories before they’d let me set foot on the Central worlds. Hey, you want a drink? Couple of sandwiches, maybe? Alcinda, she knows how to boss a culinary unit around.” He lowered his voice and winked. “Not the only thing she knows her way around, huh?”

Troblum tried not to grimace in dismay. “Some beer, maybe.”

“Sure, sure.” Florac gestured to some chairs beside a table. They sat down while one of the girls brought over a large mug of light beer. “Hey, Somonie, bring the case out for my man, will you.”

A girl in a vivid pink bikini gave a short nod and went inside.

“Where did you find it?” Troblum asked.

“A contact of mine. Hey, have I been retrofitted without a brain and somebody not tell me? If I tell you about my people, what’s left for me in this universe?”

“Quite.”

“You know I’ve got a network pumping away down there in the civilized Commonwealth. This week it’s some guy; next it’s another. Who knows where shit is going to appear? You want to stab me in the back, first you got to build your own network.”

“I already have.”

Florac blinked, his best-friends smile fading. “You have?”

“Sure. Hundreds of guys like you.”

“You kill me, you know that?” He laughed too loudly and raised his glass. “People like me. Ho, man!”

“I meant, what planet was it recovered from? My record search confirmed Vic Russell handed it back in to the Serious Crimes Directorate when he returned from the Boongate relocation. It was obsolete by then. The SCD would have disposed of it.”

“Beats me,” Florac said with a shrug. “Guess there were people like you and me around even back in those days.”

Troblum said nothing. The salvager could be right. For all his personality faults and distasteful lifestyle, he had always provided bona fide items. A large number of artifacts in Troblum’s museum had come from Florac.

Somonie returned from the villa carrying a long stable-environment case. It was heavy; her arm muscles were standing proud. She put it on the table in front of Troblum and Stubsy.

“Before we go any further,” Troblum said, “I have the SCD serial code. The genuine one. So do you still want to open the case?”

“I don’t give a shit what fucking number you think you got, man. This is for real. And hey, guess what, you aren’t the only asshole in the Commonwealth that creams himself over this shit. I come to you first because I figure we got a friendship going by now. You want to call me out, you want to crap all over my reputation, and you know what, fat boy, you can roll all the way back to your ship and fuck the hell off this world. My fucking world.”

“We’d better look at it, then,” Troblum said. “I’d hate to lose your friendship.” He did not care about Stubsy Florac; there were dozens of scavengers just like him. But it was an interesting claim; he’d never really thought there were other collectors outside museums. He wondered idly if they could be persuaded to sell. Perhaps Florac could inquire.

Florac’s u-shadow gave the case a key, and the top unfurled to reveal an antique ion rifle. A protective shield shimmered faintly around it, but Troblum could clearly see the meter-long barrel that ended in a stubby black metal handle that had several attachment points and an open induction socket on the bottom.

“Yeah, well,” Stubsy said with a modest grimace that almost could have been embarrassment. “The other bit is missing. Obviously. But what the fuck, this is the business end, right? That’s what counts.”

“There is no ‘other bit,’ ” Troblum said. “This is designed to be used by someone in an armor suit; it clips onto the lower arm.”

“No shit?”

It was an effort for Troblum to speak calmly. The weapon certainly looked genuine. “Would you turn off the field, please.”

The shimmer vanished. Troblum’s field function swept across the antique rifle. Deep in the barrel’s casing were long chains of specifically arranged molecules spelling out a unique code. He licked the sweat from his upper lip. “It’s real,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Yo!” Stubsy slapped his hands together in victory. “Do I ever let you down?”

Troblum couldn’t stop staring at the weapon. “Only in the flesh. Would you like payment now?”

“Man, this is why I love you. Yes. Yes, please. I would very much like payment now, please.”

Troblum told his u-shadow to transfer the funds.

“You want to stay for dinner?” Stubsy asked. “Maybe party with some of the girls?”

“Put the protective field back on, please. This humidity is inimical.”

“Sure thing. So which one do you like?”

“You don’t have any idea how important this artifact is, do you?”

“I know its value, man; that’s what counts. The fact some policeman shot an alien with it a thousand years ago doesn’t exactly ding my bell.”

“Vic Russell worked with Paula Myo. And I know you’ve heard of her.”

“Sure, man, this planet’s living nightmare. Didn’t know she was around in those days, too.”

“Oh, yes, she was around even before the Starflyer War. And it wasn’t an alien Vic shot, it was Tarlo, a Directorate colleague who had been corrupted by the Starflyer and betrayed Vic and his wife. Tarlo is one of the most arguably important Starflyer agents there ever was.”

“Ozzie, now I get it: This was the gun that killed him. That connects you.”

“Something like that.”

“So are you interested in genuine alien stuff as well?”

“Anything that is part of the Starflyer’s legacy. Why, have you located another section of its ship?”

Stubsy shook his head. “ ’Fraid not, man. But one of my neighbors, she specializes in weird alien technology and other interesting little chunks. You know, the odd sample that crews on pathfinder missions pick up, stuff you never get to hear about in the unisphere, stuff ANA and the navy like to keep quiet. You want I should put you in touch, I got a unisphere code. She’s very discreet. I’ll vouch for her.”

“Tell her if she ever comes across any Anomine relics, I’ll be happy to talk,” he said, knowing she would not. “Apart from that, I’m not interested.”

“Okay, just thought I’d ask.”

Troblum raised himself to his feet, quietly pleased that he did not need his biononics to generate a muscle reinforcement field. But then, this world had a point-eight standard gravity. “Could you call your capsule for me, please.”

“Money’s in, so sure. This is another reason I like you, man. We don’t have to screw around making small talk.”

“Exactly.” Troblum picked up the stable-environment case. It was heavy; he could feel a mild sweat break out on his forehead and across his shoulders as he lifted it into the crook of his arm. Hadn’t Stubsy ever heard of regrav?

“Hey, man, you’re the only Higher I know, so I’ve got to like ask you this. What’s ANA’s take on this whole Pilgrimage thing? Is it a bunch of crap, or are we all going to get cluster-fucked by the Void?”

“ANA: Governance put out a clear statement on the unisphere. The Pilgrimage is regrettable, but it does not believe the actions of Living Dream pose any direct physical threat to the Greater Commonwealth.”

“I accessed that, sure. Usual government bullshit then, huh? But what do you think, man? Should I be stocking up my starship and heading out?”

“Out where, exactly? If the anti-Pilgrimage faction is right, the whole galaxy is doomed.”

“You are just one giant lump of fun, aren’t you? Come on, man, give it to me straight. Are we in the shit?”

“The contacts I have inside ANA aren’t worried, so neither am I.”

Stubsy considered that seriously for a moment before reverting to his usual annoyingly breezy self. “Thanks, man. I owe you one.”

“Not really. But if I find a way to collect, I’ll let you know.”

Troblum puzzled over Stubsy’s question in the capsule on the way back to his ship. Perhaps he had been unwise to admit to contacts inside ANA, but it was a very general reference. Besides, he didn’t really consider Stubsy to be some kind of agent working for Marius’s opponents, of whom there were admittedly many. Of course the Starflyer had procured agents a lot more unlikely than Stubsy. But if Stubsy was an agent for some ANA faction, they were playing a long game, and from what Troblum understood, the Pilgrimage situation would be resolved sooner rather than later. Troblum shook his head and shifted the case slightly. It was an interesting theory, but he suspected he was overanalyzing events. Paranoia was healthy, but he wouldn’t like to report that particular suspicion to Marius. More likely it was a genuine concern on Stubsy’s part, one born of ignorance and popular prejudice. That was a lot easier to believe.

The capsule arrived back at Mellanie’s Redemption, and Troblum carefully carried the stable-environment case into the starship. He resisted the impulse to open it for one last check but did stow it in his own sleeping cabin for the flight back to Arevalo.

The first thing Araminta knew about the failure was when a shower of sparks sizzled out of the bot’s power arm, just above the wrist multisocket where tools plugged in. At the time she was on her knees beside the Juliet balcony door, trying to dismantle its seized-up actuator. The unit had not been serviced for a decade at least; when she got the casing open, every part of it was covered in grime. She wrinkled her nose in dismay and reached for the small all-function electrical tool kit she had bought from Askahar’s Infinite Systems, a company that specialized in recycled equipment for the construction trade. Her u-shadow grabbed the user instructions from the kit’s memory and filtered them up through her macrocellular clusters into her brain; supposedly they gave her an instinctive ability to apply the little gizmos. She couldn’t even work out which one would stand a chance of cleaning away so much gunk. The cleanser utensils were intended for delicate systems with a light coating of dust, not this compost heap.

Then, as she peered closer at the actuator components, bright light flashed across them. She turned just in time to see the last cascade of sparks drizzle down on the pile of sealant sheets stacked up in the corner of the flat’s lounge. Wisps of smoke began to wind upward. The bot juddered to a halt as the whole lower segment of its power arm darkened. As she watched, its pocked silvery casing tarnished rapidly from the heat inside.

“Ozzie’s mother!” she yelped, and quickly started stamping on the sheets, trying to extinguish the glowing points the sparks had kindled. Her u-shadow could not get any access to the bot; it was completely dead, and now there was a definite hot-oil smell in the air. Another bot slid away and retrieved an extinguisher bulb from the kitchen. It returned and sprayed blue foam on the defunct bot’s arm. Araminta groaned in dismay as the bubbling fluid scabbed over and dripped onto the floorboards, soaking in. The whole wood look was coming back in vogue; that was was why she had ordered the bot to abrade the original floorboards down to the grain. As soon as they were done, she was going to spread the sealant sheets while the rest of the room was decorated and fitted; then she would finish the boards with a veneer polish to bring out the wavy gold and rouge pattern of the native antwood.

Araminta scratched at the damp stain with her fingernail, but it did not seem too bad. She’d just have to get another bot to abrade the wood further. There were five of the versatile machines performing various tasks in the flat, all second- or thirdhand; again bought from Askahar’s Infinite Systems.

Now that the immediate danger of fire was over, her u-shadow called Burt Renik, proprietor of Askahar’s Infinite Systems.

“Well, there’s nothing I can do,” he explained after she told him what had happened.

“I only bought it from you two days ago!”

“Yes, but why did you buy it?”

“Excuse me! You recommended it.”

“Yes, the Candel 8038; it’s got the kind of power level you wanted for heavy-duty attachments. But you came to me rather than a licensed dealer.”

“What are you talking about? I couldn’t afford a new model. The unisphere evaluation library said it was dependable.”

“Exactly. And I sell a lot of refurbished units because of that. But the one you bought had a manufacturer’s decade warranty that expired over a decade ago. Now, with all the goodwill in Ozzie’s universe, I have to tell you that you get what you pay for. I have some newer models in stock if you need a replacement.”

Araminta wished she had the ability to trojan a sensorium package past his u-shadow filters, one that would produce the painburst he would get from a good smack on the nose. “Will you take part exchange?”

“I could make you an offer on any components I can salvage, but I’d have to bring the bot into the workshop to analyze what’s left. I can come out, oh … middle of next week, and there would have to be a collection charge.”

“For Ozzie’s sake, you sold me a dud.”

“I sold you what you wanted. Look, I’m only offering to salvage parts as a goodwill gesture. I’m running a business; I want return customers.”

“Well, you’ve lost this one.” She ended the call and told her u-shadow never to accept a call from Burt Renik again. “Bloody hell!” Her u-shadow quickly revised her refurbishment schedule, adding an extra three days to the expected completion date. That assumed she would not buy a replacement for the 8038. It was a correct assumption. The budget was not working out as she’d originally planned. Not that she was overspending, but stripping out all the old fittings and démodé decorations was taking a lot longer than her first estimate.

Araminta sat back on the floor and glared at the ruined bot. I’m not going to cry. I’m not that pathetic.

The loss of the 8038 was a blow, though. She’d just have to trust that the remaining bots would hold out. Her u-shadow began to run diagnostic checks on them while she tried to detach the abrader mat from the 8038’s foam-clogged multisocket. The attachment was expensive and, unlike the bot, brand-new. Her mood was not helped by the current state of the flat. She had been working on it for five days solid now, stripping it down to the bare walls and gutting the ancient domestic equipment. The place looked terrible. Every surface was covered in fine particles, with sawdust enhancing the dilapidated appearance. Sounds echoed around the empty rooms. After tidying things today, she could start the refurbishment stage. She was sure that would refire her enthusiasm. There had been times over the last week when she had had moments of pure panic, wondering how she could have been so stupid as to have gambled everything on this ancient cruddy flat.

The abrader attachment came free, and she pulled it out. With her u-shadow controlling them directly, two of the remaining bots hauled their broken sibling out of the flat and dumped it in the commercial refuse casket parked outside. She winced every time it bumped on the stairs, but the other occupants were out; they’d never know how the dents got there.

With the abrader plugged into another bot—a Braklef 34B only eight years old—she turned her attention back to the balcony door actuator. She knew that if she started moping over the broken bot, she’d just wind up feeling sorry for herself and never get anything done. She could not afford that.

The simplest thing, she decided, was to break the actuator down and clean the grime off manually; after that she could use the specialist tools to get the systems up to the required standard. Her other toolbox, the larger one, had a set of power keys. She set to with more determination than she had any right to without resorting to aerosols.

As she worked, her u-shadow skimmed the news, local and intersolar, and summarized topics she was interested in, feeding them to her in a quiet neural drizzle. Now that she had bought the flat, she had canceled the daily review of city property. It would be too distracting, especially if something really good appeared on the market. Debbina, the firstborn daughter of the billionaire Sheldonite Likan, had been arrested once again for lewd conduct in a public place. Hansel Industries, one of Ellezelin’s top companies, was discussing opening a manufacturing district just outside Colwyn; the details were accompanied by economic projections. She could not help scanning the effect on property prices.

As far as intersolar political news was concerned, the only item was the new Senate motion introduced by Marian Kantil, Earth’s Senator, that Living Dream desist from reckless action in respect to its Pilgrimage. Ellezelin’s Senator responded to the motion by walking out. He was followed by the Senators from Tari, Idlib, Lirno, Quhood, and Agra—the Free Trade Zone planets. Araminta was not surprised to find that Viotia’s Senator had abstained from the vote, as had seven other External worlds, all on the fringe of the zone and with large populations of Living Dream followers. The report went on to show the huge manufacturing yard on the edge of Greater Makkathran, where the Pilgrimage ships would be assembled. Araminta stopped cleaning the actuator to watch. An armada of civic construction machinery was laying down the field, flattening fifteen square miles of countryside to get it ready for its cladding of concrete. The Pilgrimage fleet was to be made up of twelve cylindrical vessels, each a mile long and capable of carrying two million pilgrims in suspension. Already Living Dream was talking about them being merely the “first wave.”

Araminta shook her head in mild disbelief that so many people could be so stupid and switched to local reports of business and celebrities.

Two hours later Cressida arrived. She frowned down at the prints her shiny leather pumps with their diamond-encrusted straps made in the thick layer of dirt coating the hall floor. Her cashmere fur dress contracted around her to save her skin from exposure to the dusty air. One hand was raised to cover her mouth, with gold-and-purple nail-print friezes flowing in slow motion.

Araminta smiled up uncertainly at her cousin. She suddenly was very self-conscious standing there in her filthy overalls, hair wound up and tucked into a cap, hands streaked with black grease.

“There’s a dead bot in your casket,” Cressida said. She sounded annoyed.

“I know,” Araminta sighed. “Price of buying cheap.”

“It’s one of yours?” Cressida’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you want me to call the supplier and have it replaced?”

“Tempting. Ozzie knows it wasn’t actually that cheap relative to my budget, but no, I’ll fight my own battles from now on.”

“That’s my family. Stupidly stubborn to the last.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m here for two reasons. One, to look around. Okay, done that. Came a month too early, obviously. Two, I want all the frightful details of Thursday night. You and that rather attractive boy Keetch left very early together. And darling, I do mean all the details.”

“Keetch is hardly a boy.”

“Pha! Younger than me by almost a century. So tell your best cousin. What happened?”

Araminta smiled bashfully. “You know very well. We went back to his place.” She proffered a limp gesture at the dilapidated hallway. “I could hardly bring him here.”

“Excellent. And?”

“And what?”

“What does he do? Is he single? What’s he like in bed? How many times has he called? Is he yearning and desperate yet? Has he sent flowers or jewelry, or is he all pathetic and gone the chocolates route? Which resort bedroom are you spending the weekend in?”

“Whoa, just stop there.” Araminta’s smile turned sour. In truth Keetch had been more than adequate in bed, and he had even tried to call several times since Thursday, calls she had no intention of returning. The thrill of liberation, of playing the field, of experimenting, of answering to no one, of making and taking her own choices, of just plain having fun—that was all she wanted right now. A simple life without commitments or attachments. Right now was what she should have been doing instead of being married. “Keetch was very nice, but I’m not seeing him again. I’m too busy here.”

“Now I am impressed. Hump ’em and dump ’em. There’s quite a core of raw steel hidden inside that ingenue facade, isn’t there?”

Araminta shrugged. “Whatever.”

“If you ever want a career in law, I’ll be happy to sponsor you. You’ll probably make partner in under seventy years.”

“Gosh, there’s an enticement.”

Cressida dropped her hand long enough to laugh. “Ah, well, I tried. So are we on for Wednesday?”

“Yes, of course.” Araminta enjoyed their girls’ nights out. Cressida seemed to know every exclusive club in Colwyn City, and she was on all their guest lists. “So what happened to you after I left? Did you catch anyone?”

“At my age? I was safely tucked up in bed by midnight.”

“Who with?”

“I forget their names. You know, you really must go up a level and join an orgy. They can be fantastic, especially if you have partners who know exactly what they’re doing.”

Araminta giggled. “No thanks. Don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet. What I’m doing is pretty adventurous for me.”

“Well when you’re ready …”

“I’ll let you know.”

Cressida inhaled a breath of dust and started coughing. “Ozzie, this place is bringing back too many memories of my early years. Look, I’ll call later. Sorry I’m not much practical help, but truthfully, I’m crap with design programs.”

“I want to do this by myself. I’m going to do this by myself.”

“Hell, make that partner in fifty years. You’ve got what it takes.”

“Remind you of you?” Araminta asked sweetly.

“No. I think you’re sharper, unfortunately. Bye, darling.”

Lunch was a sandwich in her carry capsule as she flew across the city to the first of three suppliers on her list. The carry capsule, like her bots, had seen better days; according to the log, she was the fifth owner in thirty years. Perfectly serviceable, the sales manager had assured her. It did not have the speed of a new model, and if the big rear cargo compartment was filled to the rated load, it would not quite reach its maximum flight ceiling. But she had a lot more confidence in the capsule than in the 8038 bot; because of its age, it had to pass a strict Viotia Transport Agency flightworthiness test every year, and the last one had been two months before she bought it.

The capsule settled on the lot of Bovey’s Bathing and Culinary-ware, one of eight macrostores that made up a small touchdown mall in the Groby district. She walked into the store, looking into the open display rooms that lined a broad aisle with many branches. Bathrooms and kitchens alternated, promoting a big range of sizes, styles, and prices, though the ones by the door tended to be elaborate. She looked enviously at the larger luxury units, thinking about the kind of apartment she would develop one day in which such extravagance was a necessity.

“Can I help you?”

Araminta turned around to see a man dressed in the store’s blue and maroon uniform. He was quite tall, with his biological age locked in around the late twenties, dark skin offset by sandy-blond hair. Nice regular features, she thought, without being too handsome. His eyes were light gray, revealing a lot of humor. If they were meeting in a club, she definitely would let him buy her a drink; she might even offer to buy him one first.

“I’m looking for a kitchen and a bathroom. Both have to look and feel high-grade yet cost practically nothing.”

“Ah, now that I can understand and provide for. I’m Mr. Bovey, by the way.”

She was quite flattered the owner himself would come down on the floor and single her out to help. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Araminta.”

He shook her hand politely. She thought he was debating with himself about whether he should try for a platonic greeting kiss. It was one of those times when she wished she had a connection to the gaiafield, which would enable her to gauge his emotions, assuming he would broadcast them, which, as the owner of the store and therefore a professional, he would not. Damn. Come on, girl. Focus.

“What sort of dimensions can you give me to play with?” he asked.

Araminta gave him a slightly cheeky grin, then stopped. Perhaps it wasn’t a double entendre; certainly sounded like one, though. “Here you go,” she told him as her u-shadow produced the blueprint file. “I would appreciate some help on price. This is my first renovation project. I don’t want it to be my last.”

“Ah.” His eyes strayed to her hands, which still had lines of grime etched on the skin. “Boss and workforce. I can relate to that.”

“Depleted workforce today, I’m afraid. One of my bots blew up. I can’t afford any more expensive mistakes.”

“I understand.” He hesitated. “You didn’t get it from Burt Renik, did you?”

“Yes,” she said cautiously. “Why?”

“Okay, well, for future reference—and I didn’t tell you this—he’s not the most reliable of suppliers.”

“I know he’s not the gold standard, but I checked on the evaluation library for that model. It was okay.”

This time he did wince. “Next time you buy something in the trade, including anything from me, I’d recommend some research on Dave’s Coding.” His u-shadow handed over the address. “The evaluation library, all those ‘independent’ reports on how the product worked—well, the library is financed and managed by corporations; that’s why there’s never really a bad review. Dave’s Coding is truly autonomous.”

“Thank you,” she said meekly as she filed the address in one of her storage lacunae. “I’ll take an access sometime.”

“Glad to help. In the meantime, try aisle seven for a kitchen. I think we can supply your order from there.”

“Thanks.” She walked off to aisle seven, more than a little disappointed that he did not accompany her. Perhaps he had a policy of not flirting with customers. Shame.

The man waiting in aisle seven had an identical blue and maroon uniform. He was perhaps five years older than Mr. Bovey but even taller, with a slender marathon runner’s frame. His skin was Nordic pale with ginger hair cut short except for a slender ridge right at the crest of his skull. Strangely, his green eyes registered the same kind of general amusement at the world as Mr. Bovey’s.

“I’d recommend these two kitchen styles,” he said in greeting, and gestured at a small display area. “They’re a good fit to your dimensions, and this one is an end-of-the-line model. I’ve got two left in the warehouse, so I can give you a sweet deal.”

Araminta was slightly nonplussed. Mr. Bovey obviously had passed on her file to this employee, but that was no reason for him to start off as if they already were on familiar terms. “Let’s take a look,” she said, lowering the temperature of her voice.

It turned out the end-of-the-line model was quite satisfactory, and it was a good deal. As well as a midrange culinary unit with a range of multichem storage tanks, she got a breakfast bar and stools and ancillaries such as a fridge, a food prepper, a maidbot, shelving, and cupboards. The style was chaste white with black and gold trim. “If you throw in delivery, I’ll take it,” she told him.

“Anytime you want it, I’ll get it to you.”

She ignored the flirty overture and told her u-shadow to pay the deposit.

“Bathrooms: aisle eleven,” he told her with unabashed enthusiasm.

The salesman waiting for her in aisle eleven had allowed himself to age into his biological fifties, which was unusual even for Viotia. His ebony skin was just starting to crinkle, with his hair graying and thinning. “I’ve got four that I think will suit your aesthetics,” was his opening gambit.

“Hello,” she snapped at him.

“Ah … yes?”

“I’m Araminta; pleased to meet you. And I’m looking for a bathroom for my flat. Can you help me?”

“What …?”

“This whole relay thing you’ve got going here really isn’t polite. You could at least say ‘hi’ to me first before you access the file you’re all shooting around here. I am a person, you know.”

“I think … ah.” His surprised expression softened. Araminta found it a lot more disconcerting than his initial smug chumminess.

“You do know what I am, don’t you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I am Mr. Bovey. We are all Mr. Bovey in this store. I am a multiple human.”

Araminta was certain she was turning bright red with embarrassment. She knew what a multiple was, of course: one personality shared among several bodies through an adaptation of the gaiafield technology. This, its practitioners claimed, was the true evolutionary leap for humanity that everyone else was pursuing down futile dead ends. A multiple human could never die unless every body was killed, which was unlikely in the extreme. In a quiet nonevangelical way they believed that everyone would become multiple one day. Perhaps after that the personalities would start fusing, leaving one consciousness with a trillion bodies, a much better outcome than downloading into the artificial sanctity of ANA.

It was a human heresy, their detractors claimed, a long-term conspiracy to imitate the Prime aliens of Dyson Alpha. More vocal opponents accused the multiple lifestyle of being started by leftover Starflyer agents trying to continue their dead master’s corrupting ideology.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shamefaced. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s okay. Partly my fault in assuming you did. Most people in the trade know.”

Araminta gave a wry grin. “I guess continuity of service is a big plus.”

“I’ve got to be better than Burt Renik.”

“Definitely!”

“All right, then. So are you and I good to go and look at bathrooms?”

“Of course we are.”

Araminta wound up buying the third suite the older Mr. Bovey showed her. It wasn’t out of guilt. He was genuinely offering a good deal, and the plain gold-and-green style was perfect for the flat. And once she’d let her awkwardness subside, he was fun to talk to. She could not quite throw off the weird feeling of disconnection talking to his older body and knowing he was exactly the same person who had greeted her, and that body probably was smiling privately at her while dealing with another customer.

“Just let us know when you want it delivered,” he said when her u-shadow handed over the deposit.

“Do you … that is, some of you, handle delivery as well?”

“Don’t worry. Tense hasn’t caught up with us multiples yet. And yes, I’ll be the one in the carry capsule and helping the bots when they get stuck on the stairs. Not necessarily this body, given its age, but me.”

“I’ll look forward to seeing the rest of you.”

“There’s a couple of mes who are young and handsome. Call it vanity if you like; I’m not immune to all the usual human flaws. I’ll try and schedule thems for the delivery.”

“As handsome as you?”

“Hey, there’s no more discount. You’ve squeezed me dry already.”

She laughed. “I’d better get back to work, then.”

Araminta smiled during the whole flight back to the flat. Mr. Bovey really had been charming. All his versions. She suspected it was more than good client relations. And was he joking about the young and handsome bodies? Actually, even the last one she had seen, the older one, had been quite distinguished. And what if he did ask her out for a date? Would it be just her and twenty of him sitting at a table?

If he asks.

And if he does, what am I going to answer?

The whole idea was unusual, which made it very interesting.

And what if the evening goes well? Do I ask twenty of him back to my place?

Oh, stop it!

She was still smiling when she walked back up the stairs and opened the front door. Then her mood came down at the sight of the flat. The bots had made some progress cleaning up, but the one with a vacuum attachment was all clogged up. None of the bots had self-maintenance capacity, so she would have to clear that out manually. And she still had not put the balcony door actuator back together. It could be quite a while before Mr. Bovey delivered her new kitchen and bathroom and she got around to finding out how well she had read their encounter.

Late in the afternoon when the place was finally getting straightened out, she started spreading the sealant sheets over the lounge’s floorboards. That was when her u-shadow told her there was a call from Laril. “Are you sure?” she asked it.

“Yes.”

She debated with herself if she should call Cressida; maybe the Revenue Service would pay a reward. “Where’s he calling from?”

“The routing identity originates on Oaktier.” A summary slid into her peripheral vision.

“A Central Commonwealth world,” she read. “What’s he doing there?”

“I do not know.”

“Right.” She sat on the cube that was her portable bed and took her gloves off, wiped her forehead, took a breath. “Okay, accept the call.” His image appeared in her exovision’s primary perspective, making it seem as if he was standing right in front of her. If he were providing a real representation, he had not changed much: thin brown hair cut short, round face with a chubby jaw and a wide neck, as always thick dark stubble longer than she liked. It was scratchy, she remembered. He never gelled it down smooth no matter how many times she asked.

“Thanks for taking the call,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Neither was I.”

“I hear you’re doing okay; you got the money.”

“I was awarded the money by the court. Laril, what are you doing? Why are you on Oaktier?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

That took a few seconds to register and even longer to accept. It had to be some stunt, some scam. “You’re migrating inward?” she asked, incredulous.

He smiled the same carefree smile he’d used when they’d first met. It was very appealing, warm, and confident. She had not seen it much after they married.

“Happens to all of us in the end,” he said.

“No! I don’t believe it. You are going Higher? You?”

“My first batch of biononics has been in a week. They’re starting to integrate some basic fields. It’s quite an experience.”

“But—” she sputtered. “For Ozzie’s sake. Higher culture would never take you. What did you do, erase half your memories?”

“That’s a pretty common myth. Higher culture isn’t the old Catholic Church, you know; you don’t have to confess and recant your past sins. It’s current attitude which counts.”

“I know they don’t take criminals. There was that case centuries ago: Jollian thought that he could escape from what he had done with a memory wipe and a migration to the Inner worlds. Paula Myo caught up with him and had his biononics removed so that he could face trial on the External worlds as the type of human he had been when he committed his crime. I think he got a couple of hundred years’ suspension.”

“That’s what you think of me, that I qualify for the Jollian precedent? Well, thanks a whole lot, Araminta. A couple of things you might want to consider. One, Paula Myo isn’t after me. And the reason she isn’t is that I haven’t committed any crime.”

“Have you told the Viotia Revenue Service that?”

“My business economics were a mess, sure. I’m not hiding from that. I even told my Higher initiator about my finances. You know what she said?”

“Go on.”

“Higher culture is about rejecting the evil of money.”

“How very convenient for you.”

“Look, I just wanted to call and apologize. I’m not asking for anything. And I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

“A bit late for that, isn’t it?” She bridled. “I’m not part of some therapy session you have to complete before they’ll take you.”

“You’re misunderstanding this, perhaps with anger leading you away from what I’m actually saying.”

“Ozzie! This is your therapy session.”

“We don’t need therapy to become Higher; it is inevitable. Even you will migrate eventually.”

“Never.”

His image produced a fond lopsided smile. “I remember thinking that once. Probably when I was in my twenties. I know it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to someone your age when every day is fresh, but after a few centuries living on the External worlds, you begin to get bored and frustrated. Every day becomes this constant battle; politicians are corrupt and crap, projects never get finished on time or on budget, bureaucrats delight in thwarting you, and then there’s the eternal fight for money.”

“Which you lost.”

“I fed myself and my families for over three centuries, thank you very much. Even you came out ahead with the residue of that work. But face it, I didn’t achieve much, now, did I? A few tens of thousands of dollars to show for three and a half centuries. That’s not exactly leaving your mark on the universe, is it? And it’s not just me; there are billions of humans who are the same. The External worlds are fun and exciting with their market economy and clashing ideologies and outward urge. Youth thrives on that kind of environment. Then there comes a day when you have to look back and take stock. You did that for me.”

“Oh, come on! You’re blaming me for the dog’s dinner you made of your affairs?”

“No, I’m not blaming you. Don’t you get it? I’m thanking you. I was old; it took you to reveal that to me. The contrast between us was so great, even I couldn’t close my eyes to it forever. There really is no fool like an old fool, and part of that foolishness came from deluding myself. I was tired of that life and didn’t want to admit it. Turning Punk Skunk and taking a young wife was just another way of trying to ignore what I’d become. Even that didn’t work, did it? I was making both of us miserable.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” she muttered. In a way, though, it was gratifying hearing him admit it was all his fault. “I left my whole family behind because of you.”

He showed her a sly smile. “And that was a bad thing?”

“Yeah, all right.” She grinned puckishly. “You did me a favor there. I’m not really cut out for two centuries of selling agricultural cybernetics.”

“I knew that the minute I set eyes on you. So how’s the world of property development coming on?”

“Harder than I thought,” she admitted. “There are so many stupid little things that bug me.”

“I know. Well, imagine today’s frustration multiplied by three hundred years. That’s how I wound up feeling.”

“And now you don’t?”

“No.”

“I don’t believe Higher culture is free of bureaucracy, or corruption, or idiots, or useless politicians. They might not be so blatant, but they’re there.”

“No, they’re not. Well … okay, but nothing like as bad as they are in the External worlds. You see, there’s no need for any of that. So many of the social problems the External worlds suffer from are born out of markets, capital, and materialism. That’s what old-style economics produces; in fact, trouble is just about all it produces. The cybernated manufacturing and resource allocation procedure which Higher culture is based on takes all those difficulties out of the equation. That and taking a mature sensible perspective. We don’t struggle for the little things anymore; we can afford to take the longer, intellectual view.”

“You talk like you’re one of them already.”

“Them. That’s perspective for you. Higher culture is mainly a state of mind, but backed up by physical affluence.”

“You are what the External worlds strive to be: Everyone’s a millionaire.”

“No. Everyone has equal access to resources; that’s what you lack. Though I’d point out that External worlds always convert to Higher culture in the end. We are the apex of human social and technological achievement. In other words, this is what the human race has been aiming for since proto-humans picked up a club to give us an advantage against all the other predators competing for food on the African plains. We improve ourselves at every opportunity.”

“So why didn’t you go straight to ANA and download? That’s how Highers improve themselves, isn’t it?”

“Ultimately, I will, I suppose. But Higher is the next stage for me. I want a time in my body which isn’t such an effort, a couple of centuries where I can just relax and learn. There are so many things I want to do and see which I never could before. The opportunities here are just astounding.”

Araminta laughed silently; that sounded like the old Laril. “Then I suppose I wish you good luck.”

“Thank you. I really didn’t want to leave things the way they were between us. If there’s anything you ever need, please call, even if it’s just a shoulder to cry on.”

“Sure. I’ll do that,” she lied, knowing she never would. She felt indecently content when he ended the call. Closure obviously worked both ways.

The people had no faces, at least none that he was aware of. There were dozens of them: men, women, even children. They were in front of him. Running. Fleeing like cattle panicked by a carnivore. Their screams threatened to split his eardrums. Words rose, struggling out of the sound wall. Mostly they were pleas for help, for pity, for sanctuary, for their lives. However hard they ran, he kept up with them.

The bizarre melee was taking place in some kind of elaborate hall with crystal grooves running across its domed ceiling. Rows of curving chairs hindered the frantic crowd as they raced for the exit doors. He would not or could not turn around. He did not know what they were trying to escape from. Energy weapons screeched, and the people flung themselves down. For himself, he remained standing, looking down at their prone bodies. Somehow he was remote from the horror. He did not know how that could be. He was there with them; he was a part of whatever terror was happening there. Then some kind of shadow slid across the floor like demon wings unfolding.

Aaron sat up in bed with a shocked gasp. His skin was cold, damp with sweat. His heart was pounding. It took a moment for him to recognize where he was. The lights in the sleeping cabin were brightening, showing him the curving bulkhead walls. He blinked at them as the dream faded.

Somehow he knew the strange images were more than a dream. They must be some memory of his previous life, an event strong enough to cling on inside his neurons while the rest of his identity was wiped. He was curious and daunted at the same time.

What the hell did I get myself mixed up in?

As he thought about it, whatever the affray was, it did not look any worse than anything this mission had generated so far. His heart had calmed without any help from his biononics. He took a deep breath and climbed off the cot.

“Where are we?” he asked the Artful Dodger’s smartcore.

“Six hours out from Anagaska.”

“Good.” He stretched and rolled his shoulders. “Give me a shower,” he told the smartcore. “Start with water; shift to spores when I tell you.”

The cabin began to change, the cot flowing back into the bulkhead, the floor hardening to a black and white marble finish. Gold nozzles extruded from each corner, and warm water gushed out.

Even given the ship’s obvious Higher origin, it had come as a wondrous surprise to discover it was equipped with an ultradrive. Aaron had thought such a thing to be nothing more than rumor. That was when he realized he had to be working for some ANA faction. It was an idea he found more intriguing than the drive. It also meant the Pilgrimage was being taken a lot more seriously than people generally realized.

After the spores cleaned and dried his skin, he dressed in a simple dark purple one-piece suit and went out into the main lounge. His small cabin withdrew into the bulkhead, providing a larger floor space. Corrie-Lyn’s cabin was still engaged, a simple blister shape protruding into the hemispherical lounge. His suggestion the previous day that they share a bunk had been met by a cold stare and an instant “Good night.”

She probably would not come out again until they touched down.

The culinary unit provided an excellent breakfast of fried benjiit eggs and Wiltshire dry-cured bacon with toast and thick English marmalade. Aaron was nothing if not a traditionalist. So it would seem, he mused.

Corrie-Lyn emerged from her cabin while he was munching on his third slice of toast. She had dressed in a demure—for her—turquoise and emerald knee-length cashmere sweater dress that the ship’s synthesizer had produced. Her cabin sank back into the bulkhead, and she collected a large cup of tea from the culinary unit before sitting down opposite Aaron.

Recognizing a person’s emotional state was an important part of Aaron’s assessment routine. But this morning Corrie-Lyn was as unreadable as a muted solido.

She stared at him for a while as she sipped her tea, apparently unperturbed by the awkwardness of the situation.

“Something on your mind?” he asked mildly, breaking the silence. That he was the one who broke it was a telling point. There were not many people who could make him socially uncomfortable.

“Not my mind,” she said a little too earnestly.

“Meaning? Oh, come on, you’re an attractive woman. I was bound to ask. You’d probably be more insulted if I didn’t.”

“Not what I’m talking about.” She waved her hand dismissively. “That was some dream you had.”

“I … Dream?”

“Did you forget? I didn’t become a Living Dream Councillor just because I’ve got a great ass. I immerse myself in people’s dreams. I explore their emotional state and try to help them come to terms with what they are. Dreams are very revealing.”

“Oh, shit! I leaked that into the gaiafield.”

“You certainly did. I’d like to tell you that you are one very disturbed individual. But that would hardly be a revelation, now, would it?”

“I’ve seen my fair share of combat. Hardly surprising my subconscious throws up crap like that.”

She gave a small victory smile. “But you don’t remember any combat, do you? Not previous to this particular incarnation. That means that whatever event you participated in was truly epochal for it to have survived in your subconscious. Wipe techniques are generally pretty good these days, and I suspect you had access to the very best.”

“Come off it. That was too weird to be a memory.”

“Most dreams are engendered by memory, except Inigo’s, of course. They have their roots in reality, in experience. What you see is the event as your real personality recognizes it. Dreams are very truthful things, Aaron. They’re not something you can ignore or take an aerosol to ward off. Unless you face that which you dream, you will never truly be at peace with yourself.”

“Do I cross your palm with silver now?”

“Sarcasm is a very pitiful social defense mechanism, especially in these circumstances. Both of us know how disturbed you were. You cannot shield yourself and your emotions from someone as experienced as myself. The gaiafield will show you for what you are.”

Aaron made very sure the gaiamotes were completely closed, allowing nothing to escape from inside his skull. “Okay, then,” he grumbled. “What was I dreaming?”

“Something in your past.”

“Hey, wow. Surely I am in the presence of a truly galactic master of the art.”

Unperturbed, Corrie-Lyn took another drink of tea. “More relevantly, a darkness from your past. In order to have survived erasure and to manifest so strongly, I would evaluate it as a crux in your psychological development. Those people were very frightened, terrified even. For so many to be running so fearfully, the threat must have been lethal. That is rare in the Commonwealth today, even among the outermost External worlds.”

“So I was running an evacuation mission out of some disaster. Rare but not unfeasible. There’s a lot that goes on among the External worlds that the more developed planets turn a blind eye to.”

Corrie-Lyn gave him a sad smile. “You were above them, Aaron. Remember? Not running with them. You were what they feared. You and what you represented.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Men. Women. Children. All fleeing you. All hysterical and horror-struck. What were you going to do to them? I wonder. We established back at the fane that you have no conscience.”

“Very clever.” He sneered. “I pissed you off, and now you come gunning for a little psychological payback. Lady, I have to tell you, it takes a great deal more than anything you’ve got to spook me out, and that’s Ozzie’s honest truth.”

“I’m not trying to spook you anywhere, Aaron,” she said with quiet earnestness. “That’s not what Living Dream, the true Living Dream, is about. We exist to guide human life to its fulfillment. The promise of the Void is a huge part of that, yes, but it is not the only component to understanding what you are, your basic nature. I want to liberate the potential inside you. There is more than senseless violence lurking inside your mind; I can sense that. You can be so much more than what you are today if you’d just let me help. We can explore your dreams together.”

“Call me old-fashioned, but my dreams are my own.”

“The darkness you witnessed at the end interests me.”

“That shadow?” Despite himself, Aaron was curious she’d picked up on it.

“A winged shadow, which has a strong resonance for most humans no matter which cultural stream they come from. But it was more than a simple shadow. It held significant meaning for you. A representation of your subconscious, I think. After all, it didn’t surprise you. If anything, you felt almost comfortable with it.”

“Whatever. We have more important things to concentrate on right now. Touchdown is in five and a half hours.” Something in his mind was telling him to close this conversation now. She was trying to distract him, to throw him off guard. He could not allow that; he had to remain completely focused on his mission to locate Inigo.

Corrie-Lyn raised an eyebrow. “Are you seriously saying you’re not interested? This is the real you we’re talking about.”

“I keep telling you: I’m happy with what I am. Now, you said Inigo came to Anagaska to visit his family.”

She gave him a disheartened gaze. “I said he visited his homeworld on occasion, when everything got too much for him. All I know is that he had family. Any further inference is all your own.”

“His mother migrated inward, then downloaded into ANA. What about the aunt?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did the aunt have children? Cousins he would have grown up with?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was there a family estate? A refuge he felt secure in?”

“I don’t know.”

He sat back and just about resisted glaring at her. “His official biography says he grew up in Kuhmo. Please tell me that isn’t a lie.”

“I’d assume it was correct. That is, I have no reason to doubt it. It’s where Living Dream built his library.”

“Central worship point for your living god, huh?”

“I’m not surprised you don’t want to know yourself. You’re a real shit. You know that?”

The good ship Artful Dodger slipped back into real space a thousand kilometers above Anagaska. Aaron told the smartcore to register with the local spacewatch network and request landing permission at Kuhum spaceport. The request was granted immediately, and the starship began its descent into the middle of the cloud-smeared eastern continent.

When it was confirmed as H-congruous and assigned for settlement by Compression Space Transport back in 2375, Anagaska was an unremarkable world in what then was called phase three space, destined for a long slow development. Then the Starflyer plunged the Commonwealth into war against the Prime aliens, and its future changed radically.

Hanko was one of the forty-seven planets that had been wrecked during the Prime’s last great assault against the Commonwealth, its sun pummeled by flare bombs and quantumbusters, saturating the defenseless planet’s climate and biosphere with a torrent of lethal radiation for weeks on end. Its hundred-fifty-million-strong population was trapped under city force fields on a dying world whose very air was now deadly poison. Evacuation was the only possible option. And thanks to Nigel Sheldon and the CST company operating Hanko’s wormhole link, its citizens were shunted across forty-two light-years to Anagaska.

Unfortunately, Anagaska at the time was nothing more than wild forest, native prairie, and hostile jungle, with a grand total of five pre-settlement research stations housing a few hundred scientists. Nigel had a solution even to that. The interior of the wormhole transporting Hanko’s population to their new home was given a different, very slow temporal flow rate relative to the outside universe. With the war over, trillions of dollars was poured into creating an infrastructure on Anagaska and the other forty-six refuge worlds. It took over a century to complete the basic civic amenities and housing, producing cities and towns that were nearly Stalinist in their layout and architecture. But when the wormhole from Hanko finally opened on Anagaska, all those who came through were provided with a roof over their heads and enough food to sustain them while they built up their new home’s agriculture and industry.

It was perhaps inevitable that after such a trauma the refuge worlds were slow to develop economically. Their major cities progressed sluggishly in an era when the rest of the Commonwealth was undergoing profound change. As to the outlying towns, they became nearly stagnant backwaters. Nobody starved, nobody was particularly poor, but they lacked the dynamism that was sweeping the rest of humanity as biononics became available, ANA came online, and new political and cultural blocs were formed.

Kuhmo was such a town. Little had changed in the seven centuries between the day its new residents arrived, stumbling out of giant government transporters, and the time Inigo was born. When he was a child, the massive hexagonal arcology built to house his ancestors still dominated the center of the civic zone, its uninhabited upper levels decaying alarmingly while its lower floors offered cheap accommodation to underprivileged families and third-rate businesses. In fact, it was still there sixty years later when he left, a monstrous civic embarrassment to a town that did not have the money to refurbish or demolish it.

A hundred years later, the arcology’s upper third finally had been dismantled with funds from Anagaska’s federal government made available for public safety. Then Living Dream made the town council a financial offer it couldn’t really refuse. The arcology finally was razed, and its denizens rehoused in plush new suburbs built expressly for them. Where it had stood, a new building emerged, nowhere near as big but far more important. Living Dream had constructed what was to be Anagaska’s primary fane with a substantial library and a free college attached. It attracted the devout from across the planet and a good many nearby star systems, many of them staying, changing the nature of Kuhmo forever.

Aaron stood under the tall novik trees that dominated the fane’s encircling park and looked up at the tapering turrets with their bristling bracelets of stone sculptures, his nose wrinkling in dismay. “The arcology couldn’t have been worse than this,” he declared. “This is your leader’s ultimate temple, his statement to his birthplace that he’s moved onward and upward? Damn! He must have really hated his old town to do this to it. All this says to me is beware of Kuhmoians bearing gifts.”

Corrie-Lyn sighed and shook her head. “Ozzie, but you are such a philistine.”

“Know what I like, though. And lady, this ain’t it. Even the old Big15 worlds had better architecture than this.”

“So what are you going to do, hit it with a disrupter pulse?”

“Tempting, I have to admit. But no. We’ll indulge in a little data mining first.”

The Inigo museum, in reality a shrine, was every bit as bad as Aaron had expected it to be. For a start, they couldn’t just wonder around. They had to join the line of the devout outside the main entrance and were assigned a “guide.” The tour was official and structured. Each item was accompanied by a full sense recording and corresponding emotional content radiating out into the gaiafield.

He gritted his teeth and put on a passive smile as they were led around Inigo’s childhood home, which had been uprooted diligently from its original location two kilometers away and lovingly restored using era-authentic methods and materials. Each room contained a boring yet worshipful account of his childhood days. There were solidos of his mother, Sabine; cute dramas of his grandparents, whose house it was; a sad section devoted to his father, Erik Horovi, who left Sabine a few short months after the birth; and a reconstruction of the local hospital’s maternity ward.

Aaron gave the solido of Erik a thoughtful stare and sent his u-shadow into its public datastore to extract useful information. Erik had been eighteen years old when Inigo was born. Aaron checked: Sabine had been a month short of her eighteenth birthday when she gave birth.

“Didn’t they have a contraception program here in those days?” he asked the guide abruptly.

Corrie-Lyn groaned and flushed a mild pink. The guide’s pleasant smile flickered slightly, returning in a somewhat harder manifestation. “Excuse me?”

“Contraception? It’s pretty standard for teenagers no matter what cultural stream you grow up in.” He paused, reviewing the essentially nonexistent information on Sabine’s parents. “Unless the family was old-style Catholics or initiated Taliban or Evangelical Orthodox. Were they?”

“They were not,” the guide said stiffly. “Inigo was proud that he did not derive from any of Earth’s appalling medieval religious sects. It means his goals remain untainted.”

“I see. So his birth was planned, then?”

“His birth was a blessing to humanity. He is the one chosen by the Waterwalker to show us what lies within the Void. Why do you ask? Are you some kind of unisphere journalist?”

“Certainly not. I’m a cultural anthropologist. Naturally I’m interested in procreation rituals.”

The guide gave him a suspicious stare but let it pass. Aaron’s u-shadow had been ready to block any query the man shot into the local net. They had managed to get through the museum’s entrance without any alarm, which meant Living Dream had not issued a Commonwealth-wide alert yet. But they’d certainly respond swiftly enough to any identity file matching himself and Corrie-Lyn no matter what planet it originated from. And the fact that it came from Anagaska barely two days after the Riasi incident would reveal exactly what type of starship they were using. He could not allow that.

“Hardly a ritual,” the guide sniffed.

“Anthropologists think everything we do is summed up in terms of rituals,” Corrie-Lyn said smoothly. “Now tell me, is this really Inigo’s university dorm?” She waved her hand eagerly at the drab holographic room in front of them. Various shabby and decayed pieces of furniture that resembled those shown in full 3Dcolor were on display in transparent stasis chambers.

“Yes,” the guide said, returning to equilibrium. “Yes, it is. This is where he began his training as an astrophysicist, the first step on the path that took him to Centurion Station. As an environment, its significance cannot be overstated.”

“Gosh,” Corrie-Lyn cooed.

Aaron was impressed that she kept a straight face.

“What was that all about?” Corrie-Lyn asked when they were in a taxi capsule and heading back for the spaceport hotel.

“You didn’t think it was odd?”

“So two horny teenagers decided to have a kid. It’s not unheard of.”

“Yes, it is. They were both still at school. Then Erik vanishes a few months after the birth. Plus you tell me Inigo had an aunt who has been very effectively written out of his family. And you claim Inigo is Higher, which must have happened either at birth or early in his life, that is, prior to his Centurion mission.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because as you said, he took extreme care to hide it from his followers; it’s not logical to assume he’d acquire biononics after he began Living Dream.”

“Granted, but where does all this theorizing get you?”

“It tells me just what a load of bullshit his official past is,” Aaron said, waving a hand back at the museum. “That farce is a perfect way of covering up his true history; it provides a flawless alternative version with just enough true points touching verifiable reality as to go unquestioned. Unless of course you’re like us and happen to know some awkward facts which don’t fit. If he was born Higher, then one of his parents had to be Higher. Sabine almost certainly wasn’t, and Erik conveniently walks out on his child a few months after the birth.”

“It was too much for the boy, that’s all. If Inigo’s birth was an accident like you think, that’s hardly surprising.”

“No. That’s not it. I don’t think it was an accident. Quite the opposite.” He told his u-shadow to review local events for the year prior to Inigo’s birth, using non–Living Dream archives. They’d almost reached the hotel when the answer came back. “Aha, this is it.” He shared the file with her. “Local news company archive. They were bought out by an intersolar two hundred years ago and the town office downgraded to closure, which is why the files were deep cached. The art block in Kuhmo’s college burned down eight and a half months before Inigo was born.”

“It says the block was the center of a gang fight,” Corrie-Lyn said as she speed reviewed. “A bunch of hothead kids duking out a turf war.”

“Yeah, right. Now launch a search for Kuhmo gang culture, specifically for incidents with weapons use. Go ahead. I’ll give you thousand-to-one odds there aren’t any other files, not for fifty years either side of that date. Look at the history of this place before Inigo built his monstrosity. There was nothing here worth fighting over, not even for kids on the bottom of the pile. The council switched between three parties, and they were all virtually indistinguishable. Their policies were certainly the same: low taxes, cut back on official wastage, attract business investment, and make sure the parks look pretty. Hell, they didn’t even manage to get rid of the arcology by themselves. That thing stood there for nearly nine hundred years. Nine hundred, for Ozzie’s sake! And they couldn’t get their act together for all that time. Kuhmo is the ultimate middle-class dead end, drifting along in the same rut for a thousand years. Bad boys don’t want a part of that purgatory; it’s like a suspension sentence but with sensory torture thrown in. They just want to leave.”

“All right, all right, I submit. Inigo has a dodgy family history. What’s your point?”

“My theory is a radical infiltration; it’s about the right time period. And that certainly won’t be on any news file, deep cached or otherwise.”

“So how do we find out what really happened?”

“Only one way. We have to ask the Protectorate.”

Corrie-Lyn groaned in dismay, dropping her head into her hands.

The maintenance hangar was on the edge of Daroca’s spaceport, one of twenty-three identical black-sheen cubes in a row, the last row in a block of ten. There were eighteen blocks in total. It was a big spaceport, much larger than the navy compound on the other side of the city. Daroca’s residents were a heavily starfaring folk, and the Air project had added considerably to the numbers of spaceships in recent centuries. Without any connection to the unisphere’s guidance function, a person could wander around the area all day and not be able to distinguish among any of the hangars. A subtle modification to the spaceport net management software provided a nearly identical disorientation function to any uninvited person who was using electronic navigation to find Troblum’s hangar. While the other structures were always opening their doors to receive or disgorge starships, Troblum’s was kept resolutely shut except for his very rare flights. When the doors did iris back, a security shield prevented any visual or electronic observation of the interior. Even the small workforce that loyally turned up day after day parked their capsules outside and used a little side door to enter. They then had to pass through another three shielded doors to enter the hangar’s central section. Nearly two-thirds of the big building was taken up by extremely sophisticated synthesis and fabrication machinery. All the systems were custom-built; the current layout had taken Troblum over fifteen years to refine. That was why he needed other people to help him. Neumann cybernetics and biononic extrusion were magnificent systems for everyday life, but for anything beyond the ordinary one first had to design the machinery to build the machines that fabricated the devices.

Troblum had no trouble producing the modified exotic matter theory behind an Anomine planet-shifting FTL engine and even describing the basic generator technology he wanted. But turning those abstractions into physical reality was tough. For a start, he needed information on novabomb technology, and even after nearly twelve hundred years the navy kept details of that horrendously powerful weapon classified. That was where Emily Alm came in.

It was Marius who had put the two of them in touch. Emily once had worked for the navy weapons division on Augusta. After three hundred years she had simply grown bored.

“There’s no point to it anymore,” she had told Troblum at their first meeting. “We haven’t made any truly new weapons for centuries. All the lab does is refine the systems we have. Any remotely new concept we come up with is closed down almost immediately by the top brass.”

“You mean ANA: Governance?” he had asked.

“Who knows where the orders originate from? All I know is that they come down from Admiral Kazimir’s office, and we jump fast and high every time. It’s crazy. I don’t know why we bother having a weapons research division. As far as I know, the deterrence fleet hasn’t changed ships or armaments for five hundred years.”

The problem he had outlined to her was interesting enough for her to postpone downloading into ANA. After Emily, others had joined his motley team: Dan Massell, whose expertise in functional molecular configuration was unrivaled; Ami Cowee, who helped with exotic matter formatting. Several technicians had come and gone over the years, contributing to the Neumann cybernetics array and then leaving as their appliance constructed its required successor. But those three had stuck with him since the early years. Their age and Higher-derived patience meant they were probably the only ones who could tolerate him for so long, that and their shared interest in the nature of the project.

When Troblum’s aging capsule landed on the pad outside the hangar, he was puzzled to see just Emily’s and Massell’s capsules sitting on the concrete beside the glossy black wall. He had been expecting Ami as well.

Then, as soon as he was through the second little office, he knew something was wrong. There was no quiet vibration of machinery. As soon as the shield over the third door cut off, his low-level field could detect no electronic activity beyond it. The hangar had been divided in half, with Mellanie’s Redemption parked at one end, a dark bulky presence very much in the shade of the assembly section. Troblum stood under the prow of the ship and looked around uncomprehendingly. The Neumann cybernetic modules in front of him were bigger than a house, joined into a lattice cube of what looked like translucent glass slabs the size of commercial capsules, each one glowing with its individual primary light. It was as if a rainbow had shattered only to be scooped up and shoved into a transparent box. At the center, three meters above Troblum’s head, was a scarlet and black cone, the ejector mechanism of the terminal extruder. It should have been wrapped in a fiercely complex web of quantum fields, intersecting feeder pressors, electron positioners, and molecular lock injectors. He could not detect a glimmer of power. If all had gone well over the last few days, the planet-shift engine would have been two-thirds complete, assembled atom by atom in a stable matrix of superdense matter held together by its own integral coherent bonding field. By this time the cylinder would be visible within the extruder, glimmering from realigned exotic radiation as if it contained its own galaxy.

Instead, Emily and Massell were sitting on a boxlike atomic D-K phase junction casing at the base of the cybernetics, drinking tea. Both silent with mournful faces, they flashed him a guilty glance as he came in.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“Some kind of instability,” Emily said. “I’m sorry, Troblum. The bonding field format wasn’t right. Ami had to shut it down.”

“And she didn’t tell me!”

“Couldn’t face you,” Massell said. “She knew how disappointed you’d be. Said she didn’t want to be responsible for breaking your heart.”

“That’s not—arrrgh.” He groaned. Biononics released a flood of neural inhibitors as they detected his thoughts growing more and more agitated. He shivered as if he had been caught by a blast of arctic air, but his focus was perfectly clear. A list of social priorities flipped up into his exovision. “Thank you for waiting to tell me in person,” he said. “I’ll call Ami and tell her it wasn’t her fault.”

Emily and Massell exchanged a blank look. “That’s kind of you,” she said.

“How big an instability?”

Massell winced. “Not good. We need to reexamine the whole effect, I think.”

“Can we just strengthen it?”

“I hope so, but even that will be a domino on the internal structure.”

“Maybe not,” Emily said with weak confidence. “We included some big operating margins. There’s a lot of flexibility within the basic parameters.”

Troblum fell silent with a dismay that even the inhibitors could not overcome. If Emily was wrong, if they needed a complete redesign, then the Neumann cybernetics would need to be rebuilt. It would take years. Again. And this drive generator had been his true hope; he genuinely had thought he would have a functional device by the end of the week. It was the only way to get people to agree with his theory. Marius would see that the navy never backed a search; he was sure of that. This was all that was left to him, his remaining shred of proof.

“You can get the resource allocation, can’t you?” Massell said in an encouraging voice. “I mean, you’ve managed to push your theory to this level.” His gesture took in the silent hulk of Neumann cybernetics. “You’ve got to have some powerful political allies on the committees. And this wasn’t a setback as such; only one thing was out of alignment.”

Troblum deliberately avoided looking in Emily’s direction. Massell had not been one of Marius’s candidates. “Yes, I can probably get the EMA for a rebuild.”

“Okay, then! Do you want to get on it right away or leave it a few days.”

“Give it a few days,” Troblum said, reading from his social priority list. “We’ll all need a while to recharge after this. I’ll start going over the telemetry and give you a call when I think I know what the new bonding field format should be.”

“Okay.” Massell gave him an encouraging smile as he slid off the casing. “There’s a certain Air technician I’ve been promising a resort time-out with. I’ll let her know I’m free.” He gave Emily a blank gaze, then left.

“Will there be the resources to carry on?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe not from our mutual friend.” At the back of his mind was a nasty little thought that this had been the result that benefited Marius best. Just how far would the Accelerator Faction’s representative go to achieve that? “But I’ll carry on one way or another. I still have some personal EMAs left.”

Her expression grew skeptical as she looked around the huge assemblage of ultrasophisticated equipment. “All right. If you need any help reviewing the data, let me know.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Troblum’s office wasn’t much, just a corner in one of the annex rooms big enough for a large wingback chair in the middle of a high-capacity solido projection array. He slumped down into the worn cushioning and stared through the narrow window into the hangar’s assembly section. Now that he was alone and the neural chemicals were wearing off, he did not have the heart to begin a diagnostic review. The drive engine should have slid smoothly out of the extruder and into the modified forward cargo hold of Mellanie’s Redemption. He would have been ready to show the Commonwealth he was right by the end of the week, to open up a whole new chapter in galactic history. Highers were not supposed to become frustrated, but right now he wanted to kick the shit out of the Neumann cybernetics.

Sometime later that afternoon the hangar security net informed Troblum that a capsule had landed on the pad outside. Frowning, he flipped the sensor image out of his peripheral vision and watched as the capsule’s door flowed open. Marius stepped out.

Troblum actually feared for his life. The warning at the restaurant had been awful enough. But Troblum had been so sure the design for the drive engine was valid, he could not stop thinking that the whole manufacturing process somehow had been knocked deliberately out of kilter, sabotaged, in other words. There was only one person who could have had that done. He gave the Mellanie’s Redemption a calculating glance. Even with his faction-supplied biononics, Marius would not be able to shoot through the ship’s force field.

It wasn’t going to happen. Troblum did not have anywhere to run to; he certainly did not have a friend—not one, not anywhere. And if Marius was there to eliminate him, it was on orders from the Accelerators. Hiding inside the starship would only postpone the inevitable.

I must start thinking about this, about a way out.

Reluctantly, he ordered the hangar net to open the side door.

Marius came into the office, gliding along in his usual smoothly imperturbable fashion. He glanced around, not bothering to hide his distaste. “So this is where you spend your days.”

“Something wrong with that?”

“Not at all.” Marius gave him a thin smile. “Everyone should have a hobby.”

“Do you?”

“None you’d appreciate.”

“So what are you here for? I did as you asked; I haven’t pressed the navy.”

“I know. And that hasn’t gone unnoted.” He studied the huge stack of Neumann cybernetics through the office window. “My commiserations. You put a lot of effort into today.”

“How did you know?”

The representative’s eerie green eyes turned back to stare at Troblum. “Don’t be childish. Now, I’m here because you need more funds and we have another little project which might interest you.”

“A project?” Since he did not seem to be in danger of immediate slaughter, Troblum couldn’t help the tweak of interest.

“One you’ll find difficult to refuse once you know the details. It’s an FTL drive which we’re putting into production. Who knows, perhaps there will be some overspill into this which you can take advantage of.”

Troblum really could not think what type of drive the ANA faction might want, especially after the last ultraclassified project he had worked on for Marius. “And you’ll help me acquire extra EMAs for a rebuild here?”

“Budgets are tight in these uncertain times, but a swift and successful conclusion to our drive program would probably result in some unused allocation we can divert your way. However, we also have something else you might be interested in—a bonus if you like.”

“What’s that?”

“Bradley Johansson’s genome.”

“What? Impossible. There was nothing left of him.”

“Not quite. He rejuvenated several times at a clinic on an Isolated world. We had an access opportunity several centuries ago.”

“Are you serious?”

Marius simply raised an eyebrow.

“That sounds good,” Troblum said. “Really good. I almost don’t have to think about it.”

“I need an answer now.”

Once again Troblum was uncertain what would happen if he said no. He could not detect any active embedded weapons in the representative, but that did not mean death wouldn’t be sudden and irrevocable. Talk about carrot and stick. “All right. But first I have to spend a couple of days analyzing what happened here.”

“We would like you to fly to our assembly station immediately.”

“If I can’t settle this problem to my own satisfaction, I won’t be any good to you. I think you know that.”

Marius hardened his stare, his eyes darkening from emerald to near black. “Very well, you can have forty-eight hours, no more. I expect you to be on your way by then.” He transferred a flight plan file to Troblum’s u-shadow.

“I will be.” It took a lot of biononic intervention to prevent Troblum from shaking as the representative left the office. There was nothing he could do about the sweat staining his suit along his spine. When the sensors showed him the representative’s capsule lifting off the pad, he turned to gaze back into the assembly section. It was all far too neat: the problem on the verge of success, the generous offer to help pay for a solution, plus the unbelievable promise of being able to clone Bradley Johansson. Troblum let his biononic field sweep out to flow through the inert cybernetics. “What did that bastard do?” he murmured. Around him the solido projectors snapped on, filling the air with a multicolored blizzard of fine equations that sparkled as they interacted. Somewhere there had to be a flaw in the blueprint that had taken him fifteen painstaking years to devise, a deliberate glitch. The only person who could have put it there was Emily. He called up the sections with which she was directly involved. There was an emotion tugging at him as he started to review the data. It took awhile, but he eventually realized it was sadness.

From the office he was visiting in the hangar five down from Troblum’s, the Delivery Man could just see Marius’s capsule as it took to the air again. All he used was his eyes; there was no way the Accelerator representative could know he was under direct observation. “He’s gone,” he reported. “And that hangar has distorted the spaceport’s basic guidance protocols—you can’t get there unless you’re invited. It’s definitely a nest for some bad boy activity. Do you want me to infiltrate?”

“No, thank you,” the Conservative Faction replied. “We’ll use passive observation for the moment.”

“What about this Troblum character it’s registered to?”

“Records indicate he’s some kind of Starflyer War enthusiast. His starship flight plan logs are interesting; he visits some out-of-the-way places.”

“Do you think he’s another representative?”

“No. He’s a physicist with some high-level navy contacts.”

“He’s involved with the navy?”

“Yes.”

“In what regard?”

“Leftover artifacts and actions from the Starflyer War. His interest verges on the fanatical.”

“So why would Marius pay him a personal visit?”

“Good question. We will research him further.”

“I can go home now?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” If he got to Arevalo’s interstellar wormhole terminus in the next ten minutes, he could be back home in time for tea with the girls.

Inigo’s Third Dream

It was a glorious summer evening, the bright sun tinting to copper over the Eggshaper Guild compound while Edeard walked across the main nine-sided courtyard. He took a contented breath as he watched the team of five ge-chimps cleaning the last patch of kimoss off the kennel roof. Their strong little claw hands were tearing up long dusty strips of the thick purple vegetation, exposing the pale slate. The kennels were the last of the courtyard buildings to be spruced up. Roofs and gutterings all around the other sides were clean and repaired. There were no more leaks down onto the young genistars, no more drains overflowing every time it rained. The walls also had benefited from the new chimp team renovating the guild compound. The mass of gurkvine had been pruned back to neat fluttering yellow rectangles between doors and windows, allowing the apprentice stonemasons to restore the mortar joins in the walls. An additional benefit of the long-neglected pruning was a bumper crop of fruit this year, with dangling clusters of succulent claret-colored berries hanging almost to the ground.

Edeard stopped to allow Gonat and Evox to herd the ge-horse foals into the stables for the night. “All brushed down and ready?” he asked the two young apprentices. He cast his farsight over the animals, checking their short rough fur for smears of dirt.

“Of course they are,” Evox exclaimed indignantly. “I do know how to instruct a ge-monkey, Edeard.”

Edeard grinned good-naturedly, struck by the way he now sounded like Akeem as he presided over the guild’s three new apprentices. He could sense Sancia in a stall over in the default stables, sitting quietly in a chair as her third hand flowed around an egg, subtly sculpting the nature of the embryonic genistar. The youngsters were talented: impatient, naturally, but eager to learn. Two of the new ge-horses had been sculpted by Evox, who was inordinately proud of the foals.

Taking on the apprentices had been a real turning point for Akeem and Edeard. Evox had joined them barely a week after the fateful Witham caravan the previous year. Sancia and Gonat had moved into the apprentice dormitory before winter set in, and now two more farmers were discussing sending children to the guild, at least for the coming winter months. After a hectic six months of initiation and adjustment, things had settled down in the compound. Edeard even found that he had some of that most luxurious commodity: spare time. And that was on top of having the compound’s ge-chimp team start the desperately needed renovation. With the apprentices honing their instructional skills, the chimps had performed some internal restoration: whitewashing walls, cleaning floors, and even preserving food in jars and casks. This coming winter season would not be as bleak as those in the past.

“How are the cats?” Gonat asked.

“Just going to inspect them,” Edeard said. So successful had the ge-cats been at extracting water, the council had commissioned a second well to be dug at the other end of the cliff face behind the village. As well as producing replacements for the existing well, Edeard now had to supervise a whole new nest. In truth, they did not last as long as he had hoped—barely two years—and they were still inordinately difficult to sculpt. “Don’t forget we have a delivery from Doddit farm in the morning. Make sure there’s enough room in the stores.”

“Yes.” Gonat and Evox groaned. They mentally pushed and goaded the frisky foals into their stable before Edeard could heap any more tasks on them. The whole courtyard resonated to the hoots, snarls, bleating, and barks of various genera. With the apprentices now capable of basic sculpting, the guild had suddenly doubled its hatching rates. There were a full twenty defaults in the stables; Akeem had consulted with Wedard on building more. The majority of the animals still went out to the farms, but most houses in the village had cleaned out their disused nests and asked for a ge-chimp or a monkey. The demand for ge-wolves since the Witham caravan had increased dramatically. It was what Edeard had wanted, but he was still disheartened by the way the older villagers refused to let him give them a simple refresher course in instruction, gruffly informing him that they had been ordering genistars around since before his parents were born. True enough, but if one had been doing it wrong since then, nothing was going to change and they would wind up with a lot of badly behaved genistars cavorting around Ashwell, annoying everyone. Edeard surreptitiously tried to make sure that the village children had a decent grounding in the ability. The Lady’s Mother, Lorellan, helped in her own quiet way by allowing Edeard to sit in on her instructions to the village youth. Nobody dared to protest that.

Edeard reached the main hall and sped up the stairs, pleased to be away from the courtyard. A further side effect of their guild’s rising fortune and greater genistar numbers was the stronger smell seeping out from the stables. He had moved out of the apprentice dormitory the week Evox had arrived, taking over a journeyman’s room. “I can’t confirm you as a Master yet,” Akeem had said gravely, “no matter what you did beyond these walls or how proficient you are. Guild procedures must be followed. To be a Master, you must have served at least five years as a journeyman.”

“I understand,” Edeard had replied, secretly laughing at the formality. Lady help us from the way old people try to keep the world in order.

“And I’ll thank you to take the guild a little more seriously, please,” Akeem had snapped.

Edeard had wound down his amusement rapidly. Akeem seemed able to sense any emotion, however well hidden.

His new room actually had some furniture in it: a decent desk he had commissioned from the Carpentry Guild and a cupboard and chest of drawers he needed to store his growing new wardrobe. His cot had a soft mattress of goose down. After some gruesome disasters, he eventually had got the finer points of the laundry ritual over to his personal ge-monkey, so once a week he had fresh sheets scented with lavender from the herb bed in the compound’s small kitchen garden—also now properly maintained.

He washed quickly, using the big china jug of water. The guild compound wasn’t yet connected to the village’s rudimentary water pipe network, but Melzar had promised that would be done by the end of the month. Both he and the smithy were trying to design a domestic stove that would heat water for individual cottages, producing various ungainly contraptions with pipes coiled around them. So far the pipes had all burst or leaked, but they were making progress.

Edeard scraped Akeem’s ancient spare razor over his straggly chin hairs, wincing at the little cuts the jagged blade made. A new razor was next on his list of commissions—and a decent mirror. The ge-chimps had left a pile of newly washed clothes from which he chose a loose white cotton shirt, wearing it with his smart drosilk trousers. He had found several weaver women in the village who would make clothes for him in return for ge-spiders. Akeem called the unregistered trade enterprising, cautioning that it must not interfere with their official commissions. He still had the boots he had bought in Witham, a little worn after a year, but they remained comfortable and intact; the only problem was how tight they were becoming. He had put on nearly two inches of height in the last year, not that he had bulked out at all. His horror was that he would wind up looking like Fahin as he put on more height without the corresponding girth.

He opened the top of the small stone barrel in the corner opposite the fire and removed the leather shoulder bag. It was one place relatively immune from casual farsight. He checked that the bag’s contents had not been discovered by the other apprentices and slung the strap over his arm.

“Very dapper,” Akeem observed.

Edeard jumped, clutching the bag in an obviously guilty fashion. He had not noticed the old Master sitting in the main hall. Everyone had been trying to duplicate the way the bandits had shielded themselves, with varying degrees of success. Edeard was not sure how much mental effort Akeem put into the effect; he’d always had the ability to sit quietly and blend naturally into the background.

“Thank you,” Edeard replied. He self-consciously tugged at the bottom of his shirt.

“Off out, are you?” Akeem asked with sly amusement, he gestured at the long table set for five. He had made nothing of the bag.

“Er, yes. My tasks are complete. I’ll start sculpting the new horses and dogs for Jibit’s farm tomorrow. Three of the defaults are ovulating; the males are in their pens.”

“Some things are definitely easier for other species,” Akeem observed, and gave Edeard’s clothes another meaningful look. “So which of our town’s fine establishments are you gracing tonight?”

“Um, I can’t afford the tavern. It’s just me and some of the other apprentices getting together, that’s all.”

“How lovely. Are any of your fellow apprentices female by any chance?”

Edeard clamped down hard on his thoughts, but there was nothing he could do about his burning cheeks. “I guess Zehar will be there. Possibly Calindy.” He shrugged his innocence in such matters.

For once Akeem appeared awkward, though he had put a strong shield around his own thoughts. “Lad, perhaps sometime we should talk about such things.”

“Things?” Edeard muttered in alarm.

“Girls, Edeard. After all, you are sixteen now. I’m sure you notice them these days. You do know what to ask Doc Seneo for if uh … circumstances become favorable.”

Edeard’s expression was frozen into place as he prayed to the Lady for this horror to end. “I … er, yes. Yes, I do. Thank you.” Go to Doc Seneo and ask for a phial of vinak juice? Oh, dear Lady, I’d rather chop it off altogether.

Akeem sat back in his chair and let his gaze rise to the ceiling. “Ah, I remember my own youthful amorous adventures back in Makkathran. Oh, those city girls in all their finery; the ones of good family would do nothing else all day long but pamper and groom themselves for the parties and balls that were thrown at night. Edeard, I so wish you could see them. There isn’t one you wouldn’t fall in love with at first sight. Of course, they all had the Devil in them when you got their bodices off, but what a vision they were.”

“I have to go or I’ll be late,” Edeard blurted. Someone of Akeem’s age should not be allowed to use words like “amorous” and “bodice.”

“Of course.” The old Master seemed amused by something. “I have been selfish keeping you here.”

“I’m not that late.”

“And I don’t mean tonight.”

“Uh …”

“I’m not up to instructing you anymore, Edeard. You have almost outgrown your Master. I think you should go to Makkathran to study at the guild in their Blue Tower. My name may still be remembered; at the very least my title demands some prerogatives. I can write you a letter of sponsorship.”

“I … No. No, I can’t possibly go.”

“Why not?” Akeem asked mildly.

“To Makkathran? Me? It’s—no. Anyway, it’s … it’s so far away. I don’t even know how far. How would I get there?”

“Same way everyone does, my boy; you travel in one of the caravans. This is not impossible or remote, Edeard. You must learn to lift your eyes above the horizon, especially in this province. I would not see you stifled by Ashwell. For that is what surely will happen if you remain. I do not want your talent wasted. There is more to this world, this life, than a single village alone on the edge of the wilderness. Why, just traveling to Makkathran will show you that.”

“I will hardly waste my talent by staying here. The village needs me. Look what has happened already with more genistars.”

“Ah, really? This village is already nervous about you, Edeard. You are strong, you are smart. They are neither. Oh, don’t get me wrong; this is a pleasant place for someone like me to live out my remaining days. But it is not for you. Ashwell has endured for centuries before you; it will endure for centuries yet. Trust me. A place and people this stubborn and rooted in what they are will not vanish into the back heart of Honious without you. I will write your letter this week. The Barkus caravan is due before the end of the month. I know Barkus of old; he owes me some favors. You can leave with them.”

“This month?” he whispered in astonishment. “So soon?”

“Yes. There is no benefit in delay. My mind is clear on this matter.”

“The new ge-cats …”

“I can manage, Edeard. Please, don’t make this any more difficult for me.”

Edeard walked over to the old Master. “Thank you, sir. This is”—he grinned—“beyond imagination.”

“Ha. We’ll see how much you thank me in a year’s time. The Masters of the Blue Tower are not nearly as lax as I have grown. They will have a fine time beating obedience into you. Your bones will be black and blue before the first day is half-gone.”

“I will endure,” Edeard said. He laid a hand on the man’s shoulder, for once allowing the love he felt to shine in his mind. “I will prove you right to them. Whatever happens, I will endure it for you. I will never give them cause to doubt your pupil. And I will make you proud.”

Akeem gripped the hand, squeezing strongly. “I am already proud. Now come. You are dallying while your friends carouse. Leave now, and I will have yet another fine meal with our three juvenile dunderwits, listening to their profound talk and answering their challenging questions.”

Edeard laughed. “I am a bad apprentice, deserting my Master thus.”

“Indeed you are. Now go, for the Lady’s sake. Let me summon up what is left of my courage, else I shall flee to the tavern.”

Edeard turned and walked out of the hall. He almost stopped, wanting to ask what Akeem had meant by “they are already nervous about you.” He would inquire tomorrow.

“Edeard,” Akeem called.

“Yes, Master?”

“A word of caution. Stay silent that you are leaving, even to your friends. Envy is not a pretty blossom, and it has a custom of breeding resentment.”

“Yes, Master.”

The sun had dropped to the top of the rampart wall by the time Edeard hurried up a lane off the main street, heading for the granite cliff at the back of the village. Already the glowing colors of the night sky were emerging through the day’s blue like trees out of morning mist. Old Buluku was directly overhead, the vulpine serpent manifesting as a violet stream that slithered through the heavens in a fashion that none of Querencia’s few astronomers could ever fathom. It certainly did not shift with the seasons or even orbit around the sun. As Edeard watched, a sliver of electric-blue light rippled lazily along its length, a journey that would take several minutes, too weak to cast a shadow across the dry mud of the lane. Odin’s Sea already was drifting toward the northern horizon, a roughly oval patch of glowing blue and green mist that visited the summer nights. The Lady’s teachings were that it formed the heart of the Void, where the souls of men and women were carried by the Skylords so that they could dream away the rest of existence in quiet bliss. It was only the good and the worthy who were blessed with such a voyage, and the Skylords had not been seen in Querencia’s skies for so long, they were nothing but legend and a faith kept by the Lady’s followers. Protruding from the ragged edges of Odin’s Sea were the reefs, scarlet promontories on which Skylords carrying the souls of those less worthy were wrecked and began their long fall into Honious and oblivion.

Edeard often wondered if so many unworthy humans had been carried aloft by the Skylords that there were simply no more of the great creatures left. It would be so typical that humans should bring such casual destruction to this universe. Thankfully, the Lady’s teachings said that it was humans who had declined in spirit; that was why the Empyrean Lady had been anointed by the Firstlifes to guide humans back to the path that once again would lead them to the Heart of the Void. It was a sad fact that not many people listened to the Lady’s kind words these days.

“Calling to the Skylords?” a voice asked.

Edeard smiled and turned. His farsight had kept watch on her since she had stepped out of the church ten minutes earlier—one of the reasons he had chosen this particular route. Salrana emerged from the shadows of the marketplace. Behind the deserted stalls, the church curved up above the rest of the village buildings with quiet purpose. Its crystal roof glimmered in refraction from the altar lanterns.

“They didn’t answer,” he said. “They never do.”

“One day they will. Besides, you’re not quite ready to sail into the Heart yet.”

“No, I’m not.” Edeard could not quite match her humor. He might as well have been traveling into the Heart given the distance to Makkathran. How will she cope with me leaving?

He was not the only one growing up that summer. Salrana also had put on several inches over the last couple of years; her shoulders were broad as if she was growing into a typical sturdy farmer’s girl, but whereas her contemporaries were thickening out, ready for their century of toil on the land, she remained slim and agile. Her plain blue and white novice robe had grown quite tight, which always made Edeard glance at her in an inappropriate fashion. Not that there was any helping it; she was losing her puppy fat to reveal the sharpest cheekbones he’d ever seen. Everyone could see how beautiful she was going to be. Thankfully, she still suffered from pimples and her auburn hair remained wild and girlish; otherwise, being in her presence would be intolerable. As it was, he viewed her friendship with delight and dismay in equal measure. She was far too young to be wanting to bed, though he could not help wondering how long it would be before she was old enough. Such thoughts made him fearful that the Lady would strike him down with a giant lightning bolt roaring out from Honious itself, though of course Her priestesses did marry.

Irrelevant now. Even if I do come back, it won’t be for years. She’ll be with some village oaf and have three children.

“You’re in a funny mood,” Salrana said, all innocent and curious. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah. Actually, it is. I’ve had some good news. Great news.” He held up a hand. “And I will tell you later, I promise.”

“Gosh, a secret, and in Ashwell. Bet I find out by noon tomorrow.”

“Bet you don’t.”

“Bet me what?”

“No. I’m being unfair. It’s a private thing.”

“Now you’re just being cruel. I’ll pray to the Lady for your redemption.”

“That’s very kind.”

She stood close to him, still smiling sweetly. “So are you off up to the caves?”

“Er, yeah. One or two of the others said they might go in. I thought I’d see.”

“So when do I get asked?”

“I don’t think Mother Lorellan would want you in the caves at night.”

“Pha. There’s a lot of things the good Mother doesn’t know I do.” She shook her hair defiantly, squaring her shoulders. The aggressive pose lasted a couple of seconds before she started giggling.

“Well, I’ll pray she doesn’t find out,” he told her.

“Thank you, Edeard.” Her hand rubbed playfully along his arm. “Who’d have thought it just a few years ago? Both of us happy. And you, one of the lads now.”

“I was in a fight before they accepted me.” I killed people. Even now he could still see the face of the bandit before the man smashed into the tree, the astonishment and fear.

“Of course you were; that’s a typical boy thing. That’s why you’re going into the caves again tonight. We all have to find a way to live here, Edeard. We’re going to be in Ashwell for a long, long time.”

He could not answer, just gave her a fixed smile.

“And watch out for that Zehar. She’s already bragging how she intends to have you. She was very descriptive for a baker’s apprentice.”

“She. Is? She wants …?”

Salrana’s face was devilsome. “Oh, yes.” She blew him a kiss, giggling. “Let me know the details. I’m dying to know if you can really do such wicked things.” Then her back was to him, her skirt held high by both hands, and she went racing down the slope, giggling all the way.

Edeard let out a long breath. His emotions were as unsteady as his legs. If there was ever a reason to stay in Ashwell, he was looking at it. His farsight followed her long after she had turned a corner onto the main street, making sure she was safe as she ran along on her errand.

There were a number of caves burrowing into the cliffs behind Ashwell. A lot of them had been expanded over the decades, modified into storerooms for the long winter months, where the temperature and moisture hardly varied. Several of the larger ones were used as barns. Edeard was not interested in those. Instead, he headed for a small oddly angled fissure in the rock on the western end of the cliff only thirty yards from where the encircling wall began. He had to scramble up a pile of smoothed boulders to reach it, then grip the upper lip and swing himself into the darkness. Anyone larger than he would have real trouble passing through the gap; he’d be able to use it for only another year or so. Once he was inside, the passage opened up and the soft background babble of the village’s longtalk cut off abruptly. His immediate world contracted to a dank gloomy blackness; even his farsight ability could not perceive through such a depth of rock. All he could sense was the open cavity around him. Only after he had gone around a curve did he see a glint of yellow light ahead.

Seven apprentices were gathered in the narrow cave with its high crevice apex, sitting around a couple of battered old lamps whose wicks were chuffing out a lot of smoke. Their talk stopped as he entered, then their smiles bloomed in welcome. It was a gratifying sensation of belonging. Even Obron raised a cheery hand. Fahin beckoned him over. Edeard was very conscious of Zehar watching him with a nearly feline intent and gave her a nervous grin. Her answering smile was carnivorous.

“Didn’t think you were coming,” Fahin said.

“I got delayed slightly,” Edeard explained. He opened his bag and pulled out the large wine bottle, which earned him some appreciative whistles as he held it up.

Fahin leaned in closer. “Thought you were running scared of Zehar,” he murmured in a knowing whisper.

“Sweet Lady, has she told everyone but me?”

“I overheard it from Marilee. She was trying to get Kelina to take some vinak juice from Seneo’s pharmacology store. I assumed you were party to it.”

“No,” Edeard growled.

“Okay. Well, should the need arise, and I do mean rise, just ask me. I can get you a phial without anyone being any the wiser, especially Seneo.”

“I shall remember it well, thank you.”

Fahin nodded as if unconcerned, the attitude confirmed by his passive surface thoughts. He unbuckled his ancient physick satchel and took out some dried kestric leaves. The pair of them became the center of some not very subtle attention from the other apprentices in the cave.

Edeard shifted position and opened the wine. It was dark red, which Akeem always claimed was a sign of quality. Edeard was never certain; all the wine available in Ashwell had a strong taste that lingered well into the next day. He supposed he would get used to it eventually, but as for actually liking it … “Fahin, where do you see yourself in fifty years?”

The tall doctor’s apprentice glanced up from the little slate pestle he was preparing. “You’re very serious tonight, my friend. Mind you, she does have that effect on people.”

For an instant Edeard thought he was talking about Salrana. Then Fahin’s eyes glanced over at Zehar, a movement amplified by his oversize lenses.

“No,” Edeard said irritably. “Seriously, come on: fifty years’ time. What are you working toward?”

“Why, I’ll be the doctor, of course. Seneo is actually a lot older than most people realize. And she says I am her most promising apprentice in decades.” He began grinding the kestric leaves with smooth easy motions of the mortar.

“That’s it? Village doctor?”

“Yes.” Fahin was not looking at Edeard anymore. His thoughts took on an edge. “I’m not like you, Edeard; Honious take me, I’m not even like Obron. I’m sure you’re going to build our Eggshaper Guild to greatness over the next century. You’ll probably be Mayor inside thirty years. Ashwell’s name will spread, people will come, and this land will flourish once again. We all hope that from you. So given the circumstances, village doctor and your friend in such times is no small goal, after all.”

“You truly think I will do that?”

“You can do it.” Fahin mashed the last flakes of leaf into a thin powder. “Either that or you’ll lead a barbarian army to sack Makkathran and overthrow the old order. You have the strength to do either. I saw it. We all did. That sort of strength attracts people.”

“Don’t say that,” Edeard said. “Not even in jest.”

“Who’s jesting?” Fahin poured the kestric powder into a small white clay pipe, adding some tobacco.

Edeard stared at his friend in some alarm. Is this what people think? Is this why I make them nervous?

“You know the gate guards say they still farsight your fastfoxes at night sometimes,” Fahin said. “Do you keep them out there?”

“What? No! I sent it away when we got back. You were with me; you saw me do it. And how would the guards know that, the old fools? They’re asleep most of the night, anyway, and they can’t tell one animal from another at any distance.”

“These fastfoxes have collars.”

“They’re not mine!” he insisted. “Wait, there’s more than one? You know I only mastered one. When did they see them?”

Fahin struck a match and sucked hard on his pipe stem, pulling the flame down into the bowl. “I’m not sure,” he said as he puffed out some smoke. “A couple of months now.”

“Why did nobody tell me? I could find out if they are real.”

“Why indeed?” The match went out, and Fahin took a deep drag. Almost immediately, his eyes lost focus.

Edeard stared at his friend with growing dismay. They all gathered here for a drink and a smoke and talk, just as apprentices had done since Ashwell was founded. But lately Fahin was smoking on a nearly nightly basis. It was a habit that had grown steadily ever since they got back from the Witham caravan.

“Sweet Lady,” Edeard muttered as the other apprentices came over. Maybe leaving this place is the right thing to do. Fahin passed the pipe to Genril. A smiling Zehar held out a hand for Edeard’s wine. He deliberately took a huge swig before handing it over.

The first thing Edeard did when he woke up was retch horribly. When he tried to turn over, he banged his temple hard on cold floorboards. It took a moment to realize it, but he was not lying on his nice soft mattress; for some reason he was sprawled on the floor beside the cot, still fully dressed apart from one boot. And he stank!

He groaned again and felt the acid rising in his throat, gave up all attempts at control, and threw up spectacularly. As he did so, the fear hit, squeezing cold sweat from every pore. He was shaking as he wiped pitifully at the fluid dribbling from his lips, nearly weeping with misery. Hangovers he could take, even those from red wine, but this was more than just the payback for overindulgence. He had felt like this before: the forest, the bandit ambush.

His body was reacting to the alcohol and a couple of puffs on the pipe, but his mind was yelling at some deep instinctive level of the mortal danger closing in from the surrounding darkness. He forced himself to sit up. A thin pastel light from the night sky washed around the shutters, revealing his small room. Nothing was amiss apart from himself. He whimpered from the sheer intensity of fright pouring through him, expecting something terrible to envelop him at any second. The hangover made his head throb painfully. It was hard to concentrate, but he slowly managed to summon up some farsight and scan around himself.

The three apprentices were asleep in their dormitory. He forced the ability further, almost crying out from the pain sparking behind his eyes. Akeem, too, was asleep on his bed. Out in the courtyard, the young genistars dozed the night away, shuffling and shaking as was their style. A couple of cats trod delicately along the roofs as they tracked small rodents. By the gate, the ge-wolf in its traditional stone guard kennel lay curled up on its legs, big head swaying slowly as it obediently kept watch on the road outside.

Edeard groaned with the effort of searching so far and let his farsight wither to nothing. He was still shaking and cold. The front of his shirt was disgustingly sticky, and the smell was getting worse. Nausea threatened to return. He struggled out of the shirt and lurched over to the nightstand, where there was a glass of water, and took several large gulps. In the drawer at the bottom of the little stand was a pouch of dried jewn petals soaked in an oil that Fahin had prepared. He opened it, closed his eyes, and shoved one of the petals into his mouth. It tasted foul, but he took a final gulp from the glass, forcing it down.

In all his sixteen years he had never felt so wretched, and still the fear would not abate. Tears threatened to clog his eyes as he shivered again, hugging his chest.

What is wrong with me?

He wobbled over to the window and pushed the shutters open. Cool night air flowed in. Odin’s Sea had fallen nearly below the horizon; that meant it was no more than a couple of hours past midnight. The low thatched roofs of the village were spread out around him, pale in the wan flickering light of the nebulae. Nothing moved, but for whatever reason the sight of such serenity made the fear even worse. For an instant he heard screams, saw flames. His stomach churned, and he bent over the windowsill.

Lady, why do you do this to me?

When he straightened up, he instinctively looked at the village gate with its twin watchtowers. There was no sign of the guards, but they were nearly half a mile away and it was night. Edeard gathered his breath and gripped the side of the windows in grim determination. His farsight surged out. If they’re all right, I’m going straight back to bed.

The towers were built from smooth-faced stone; recent decades had seen them strengthened inside with thick timber bracing. Even so, there were no holes in the walls, just some alarmingly long cracks zigzagging up and down. Their parapets were large enough to hold ten guards who could fire a number of heavy weapons down on anyone foolish enough to storm the gate. This night the eastern tower was empty. A solitary man stood on the western parapet underneath the alarm bell. He was facing inward, looking across the village. Three bodies lay on the flagstones at his feet.

Edeard lurched in shock and tried to refocus his farsight. It swept in and out before centering back on the parapet. The lone man’s thoughts shone with a hue of satisfaction; Edeard felt a filthy mental smile.

“Greetings,” the man longtalked.

Edeard’s throat contracted, snagging his breath. “Who are you?”

Mental laughter mocked him. “We know who you are. We know all about you, tough boy. We know what you did to our friends. Because of that you’re mine tonight. And I promise you won’t die quickly.”

Edeard yelped in horror and dived away from the window. Even so he could still feel the tenuous touch of the other’s farsight upon him. He put as much strength as he had behind his longtalk and cried: “Akeem! Akeem, wake up. The bandits are here. They’re in the village.”

His mental shout was like some kind of signal. The soft glow of minds materialized in the alleyways and lanes that wound through the cottages and guild compounds. Edeard screamed. They were everywhere!

So many! Every bandit in the wilderness must be here tonight.

“What in the Lady’s name?” Akeem’s fuzzy thoughts came questioning.

“Bandits,” Edeard called again with voice and mind. “Hundreds of them. They’re already here.” He jabbed every ge-wolf in the compound with a mental goad, triggering their attack state. Loud, dangerous snarling rose from the courtyard.

Five bandits appeared in the street outside the guild, strong and confident, making no further attempt at cover. They did not have the muddy skin and wild hair of the ones in the forest; these bandits wore simple dark tunics and sturdy boots. There were no bows and arrows, either. Strangely, they wore two belts apiece, looped around their shoulders so that they crossed over the chest. Little metal boxes were clipped onto the leather, along with a variety of knives. Whispers spilled out of the ether as they longtalked. Then Edeard sensed the fastfoxes walking beside them; each had two of the tamed and trained beasts.

“Oh, sweet Lady, no,” he gasped. His mind registered Akeem longtalking the other elders, fast and precise thoughts raising the alarm.

It was too late. Flames appeared among Ashwell’s rooftops. Torches thick with oil fire spun through the air, guided by telekinesis to land full square on thatch roofs. The fire spread quickly, encouraged by the dry months of a good summer. A dreadful orange glow began to cover the village.

The ge-wolves were racing across the guild courtyard. Edeard extended his third hand with furious intent and slammed the gates open for them. That was when he heard the noise for the first time: an awful thunderous roar as if a hundred pistols were all firing at once. White light flashed across his open window, and his mind felt the dirty glee of the bandits’ thoughts coming from the street below. Ge-wolves fell in torment, their minds radiating terrible flares of pain as their flesh was shredded. Some of them managed to survive the strange weapons only to collide with fastfoxes. The metallic roaring abated as the animals fought, tearing at each other as they writhed and spun and jumped.

That was when Edeard heard a woman scream. There was too much turmoil, too much anguish storming across Ashwell, for his farsight to track her down, but he knew what the sound meant, what it would mean for every woman in the village caught alive—and every girl.

He sent a single piercing thought at the church. “Salrana!”

“Edeard,” her panicked longtalk barked back. “They’re here; they’re in the church.”

His mind found her instantly, farsight zooming in as if he were illuminating her with a powerful beam of light. She was cowering in her room in the Mother’s house that formed the back of the church. Inside the dome itself, three bandits were advancing along the empty aisles, radiating triumph and contempt as their fastfoxes stalked beside them. Mother Lorellan was already out of bed and heading for the church to deal with the desecrators. For a devout woman, her mind shone with inordinately strong aggression.

The bandits and their fastfoxes would cut her to ribbons, Edeard knew. “Get out,” he told Salrana. “Move now. Out of the window and into the garden. Stay ahead of them; keep moving. Head for the market. It’s cobbled; there’s no fire there. I’ll meet you at the corn measure station.”

“Oh, Edeard!”

“Do it. Do it now.”

He raced over to the window. It was not such a big jump to the street, and the carnage the fastfoxes were wreaking on the surviving ge-wolves was almost over. Whatever victors were left, he could take care of them. Flames were racing across the thatch of the terraced cottages opposite. Doors were flung open, and men charged out, shields firm around their bodies, knives held high. The bandits raised their weapons, and the noise began again. Edeard watched numbly as the squat guns spit a blue-purple flame. Somehow they were firing dozens of bullets, reloading impossibly fast. The villagers shook and flailed in agony as the bullets overwhelmed their shields.

“Bastards,” Edeard yelled, and jumped.

“No! Don’t.” Akeem’s longtalk was strong enough to make half the village pause. Even the guns were temporarily still.

Edeard landed, his bare heel shooting pain up his leg. He turned toward the nearest bandit, crouching as if he were about to go for a wrestling hold. Somehow he sensed Akeem and the bandit in the guardtower both holding their breath. The bandit in front of him lifted the dark gun, snarling with delight. Edeard reached out with his third hand, closing it around the gun. He was not sure if his shield could withstand so many bullets striking at him, but as with every gun, one first had to pull the trigger. The bandit’s eyes widened in surprise as his own shielding was unable to ward off Edeard’s power. Then the street was subject to an unnerved screech as the bandit’s fingers were snapped in quick succession. Edeard rotated the gun in front of the bandit’s numb gaze until the man was staring right into the muzzle, then pulled hard on the trigger. The discharge was awesome, even though it lasted barely a second before something snarled inside the gun’s mechanism. It blew the bandit’s head apart. Tatters of gore lashed down on the muddy street.

Three other bandits raised their guns. Edeard exerted himself, gripping their flesh tight with his third hand, preventing the slightest movement. “Get them,” he told the surviving villagers stumbling out of the blazing cottages.

“Oh, your death will be exquisite,” the bandit in the watchtower sent.

A gun roared behind Edeard. He turned, flinching, to see the fifth bandit falling on his own weapon, borne down by a swarm of ge-chimps that Akeem had instructed.

“I did say ‘don’t,’ ” Akeem’s longtalk chided.

“Thank you,” Edeard replied. The villagers were dispatching the bandits with a ferocity that he found disturbing. Edeard let go of the bloody corpses. Then everyone was turning to him, awaiting guidance.

“Get into the guild compound,” he told them, aware of how it became an eerie echo of Melzar’s instructions back in the forest. “Group together. That will give your shields real strength.”

“You, too, lad,” Akeem said as Edeard picked up one of the bandit’s guns. It was a lot heavier than he was expecting. A sweep with his farsight revealed an internal mechanism that was inordinately complicated. He did not understand anything about it other than the trigger. There did not seem to be many bullets left in the metal box in front of the stock. “I have to help Salrana.”

“No. All’s lost here. Get out. Live, Edeard, please. Just survive tonight. Don’t let them win.”

Edeard started running up the street, wincing every time his bootless foot touched the ground. “They won’t destroy this village.”

“They already have, lad. Take cover. Get out.”

He sent his farsight flowing out ahead, alert for any bandits, and saw a fastfox loping along an alley. When it emerged, Edeard was almost level with it; he pushed his third hand into the creature’s skull and ripped its brain apart. It fell in the evil wavering light of burning thatch. The street was a gully of leaping flame, as bright as any dawn. Screams, shouts, and gunfire split the harsh, constant flame growl.

“You are good, aren’t you?” the watchtower bandit taunted.

Edeard pushed his farsight into the tower, but the man was no longer there. A quick scan of the surrounding area revealed nothing except the broken main gates and dead village guards. “Where did he go?” Edeard asked fretfully. “Akeem, help. I can’t sense half of them.” He actually heard a gun mechanism snik smoothly and hardened his shield. The blast of bullets came from a cottage he’d just passed. He was lucky, he decided afterward. Not all of the bullets hit him; the bandit’s aim was off. That and his mind picked up a quiet longtalk: “No, not him.” Even so, the force of the shots that did hit was enough to send him sprawling backward, half-dazed. He instinctively lashed out with his third hand to the source of the shots. A bandit went staggering across the road, shaking his head. Edeard reached up to the furnace of thatch above and tugged hard. Dense waves of flame peeled off the disintegrating roof and splashed down over the bandit, driving him to his knees. His screams, thankfully, were muffled.

“Are you all right?” Akeem asked.

Edeard groaned as he rolled back to his feet, There were flames everywhere, their ferocity sending huge sparking balls of thatch high into the sky. Windows and doors were belching out twisting orange streamers. The heat was intense on his bare torso; he was sure he could feel his skin starting to crack and blister. “I’m here,” he replied. “But I can’t sense them; I don’t know where they are.” And he knew the watchtower bandit was coming, slipping stealthily through the swirling flames and sagging walls.

“Try this,” Akeem said. His longtalk voice became stretched as if rising to birdsong. It seemed to fill Edeard’s skull. It was a knowledge gift: thoughts and sometimes memories that explained how to perform a specific mental task. Edeard had absorbed hundreds of basic explanations on the art of sculpting, but this was far more complex. As the song ended, he began to shape his farsight and third hand together into a symbiotic force that wove darkness through the air around him. It was like standing in the middle of a thick patch of fog.

“Now, please,” Akeem pleaded. “Get out. Do not waste your life, Edeard. Don’t make some futile gesture. Please. Remember, the Blue Tower in Makkathran. Go there. Be someone.”

“I can’t leave you!” he cried into the terrible night.

“The village is already lost. Now go. Go, Edeard. Don’t let everything be wasted.”

Edeard wanted to shout out that his Master was wrong, that his valiant apprentice friends and strong Masters such as Melzar and Wedard were leading the fight. But looking at the fiery devastation around him, he knew it was not true. The screams still were filling the air, along with the snarl of fastfoxes and the deadly clamor of guns. Resistance was contracting to a few guild compounds and halls. The rest of the village was burning to ruin. There was nothing to be saved—except Salrana.

Edeard forced himself to his feet and started running toward the market again. Once a bandit hurried past him along the street, not five yards away. The man never knew how close they were. Edeard could have killed him easily, extracted some vengeance. But that would have shown the watchtower bandit where he was, and even through his anger and desperation Edeard knew he had neither the skill nor the strength to win that confrontation.

He sped past three more bandits before charging into the marketplace. The square was surrounded by a wall of flame, but it was cooler amid the stalls. Two bandits were holding down a woman, laughing while the third of their band raped her. Their fastfoxes prowled around the little group, keeping guard.

Edeard just could not ignore it. He even recognized the woman, though he did not know her name. She worked at the tannery, helping prepare the hides.

The first the bandits knew of anything amiss was when their fastfoxes suddenly stopped circling. All six beasts swung their heads around, huge jaws opening to ready fangs the size of human fingers.

“What—” one of the bandits managed to say. He brought his gun up, but it was too late. The fastfoxes leaped. More screams echoed out around the stalls.

“Ah, there you are,” a longtalk voice gloated. “I was worried you’d run away from me.”

Edeard snarled into the smoke-wreathed sky. Try as he might, he could not track where the longtalk was originating.

“Now, what are you doing there, apart from slaughtering my comrades? Oh, yes, I see.”

Edeard was aware of Salrana hunched up behind the counter in the corn measure stall, glancing upward with a puzzled expression. He started to sprint toward her.

“He’s in the marketplace,” the bandit announced across the whole village. “Close in.”

Edeard sensed bandits turning to head toward him.

“Oh, she is lovely. The very young one from the church, isn’t it? Yes, I recognize her. Well, congratulations, my tough little friend. Good choice. She’s certainly worth risking everything for.”

Edeard reached the corn measure stall and dropped his concealment. Salrana gasped in astonishment as he appeared in front of her.

“Got you.”

Edeard was only too well aware of the urgent satisfaction in the bandit’s longtalk. There was the tiniest flashover of pounding feet, leg muscles straining with effort to get there, to capture the feared boy.

“Right at the end I’m going to cut your eyelids off so you have no choice but to watch while I fuck her,” the bandit said, twining his longtalk with a burst of dark pleasure. “It’ll be the last thing you see before you die. But you’ll go straight to Honious knowing this: I’ll keep her for my own. She’s coming with me, tough boy. And I’ll put her to work every single night. Your girl is going to spend the next decade bearing my children.”

“Get up,” Edeard yelled, and tugged at Salrana’s arm. She was crying, her limbs limp and unresponsive. “Don’t let him get me,” she wept. “Please, Edeard. Kill me. I couldn’t stand that. I couldn’t. I’d rather spend eternity in Honious.”

“Never,” he said. His arms went around her, and he enfolded her within his concealment.

“Get the fastfoxes in the market,” the bandit ordered. “Track him. Find his scent.”

“Come on,” Edeard whispered. He started for the main entrance, then stopped. Over ten bandits with their fastfoxes were heading up the street toward him. They ignored the frantic chickens and gibbering ge-chimps that were running away from the swirl of lethal flames consuming the buildings. “Lady!” He searched, not daring to use his farsight in case the diabolical bandit could detect that.

“I don’t care if the fire’s making it hard to track. Find him!”

The bandit’s tone was angry, and that was the first piece of good news Edeard had encountered all night. Now he glanced around and saw just how awesome the fire had become. Every building was alight. A foul smoke tower billowed hundreds of feet over the village, blocking the constellations and nebulae. Below its dismal occlusion walls were collapsing, sending avalanches of burning furniture and broken joists across the lanes. Even the bandits were becoming wary as the smaller alleys were blocked. Of course, the blazing destruction also was closing off Edeard’s escape routes. What he needed was a distraction, and fast. His third hand shoved a pile of beer barrels, sending them toppling over. Several burst open. A wave of beer lapped across the cobbles, spreading wide. At the same time he grabbed the minds of as many genistars as he could reach and pulled them into the market, offering them sanctuary. The animals bounded over the stalls, stampeding down the narrow aisles. Flustered fastfoxes charged after them, shaking off their mental restraints to obey more basic hunter instincts.

“Almost clever,” the bandit announced. “You think that’ll cover your smell? Well, why don’t you avoid this, tough guy.”

The bandits in the market square formed a loose line and began firing, sweeping their blazing gun muzzles in wide arcs. Genistars howled and whimpered as the bullets chewed through their flesh. They jumped and sprinted for cover as lines of bullets swept after them. Fastfoxes snarled in hatred and distress as they, too, were hit. Dozens of animals tumbled lifeless onto the cobbles. Blood mingled with beer, washing down the slope.

Edeard and Salrana hunched down as bullets thudded into the stalls around them. Wood splinters whirled through the air. They started to crawl. It was not long before the guns stopped. Edeard waited for the next longtalk taunt, but it did not come. “Hurry,” he urged her. Holding hands, they ran for the alley that led around the back of the Carpentry Guild compound. Bandits and their fastfoxes were on patrol around the walls. The inside of the compound burned like a brazier as fire consumed the woodworking halls and timber stores, sending vast plumes of flame into the smoke-clotted sky. The slate roof of the main building already had collapsed. Edeard wondered if anyone was still alive inside, maybe sheltering in the cellars. Surely Obron would have found a way. He could not imagine a world without Obron.

They came to a crossroads, and Salrana made to turn right.

“Not that way,” he hissed.

“But that’s down to the wall,” she whispered back.

“They’ll be expecting that. The fastfoxes will scent us if we try to climb over the ramparts.”

“Where are we going, then?”

“Up toward the cliff.”

“But won’t they search the caves?”

“We’re not sheltering in the caves,” he assured her. He found a dozen genistars still alive nearby, mainly dogs, with a couple of chimps and even a foal, and ordered them to walk across and around the track they were leaving to lay false scents, though he suspected that not even fastfoxes would be able to track them with so much smoke and ash in the air.

It took a couple of minutes to reach the site where the new well was being dug. So far Wedard and his team had excavated only five yards down, with barely the top third lined in stone. “In you go,” Edeard told her. There was a small ladder leading down to the wooden framework at the bottom of the hole where ge-monkeys spent their days digging into the stone and clay.

“They’ll look in here,” Salrana said desperately.

“Only if it’s open,” Edeard said grimly, and gestured at the big stone cap that would seal the shaft once it was complete.

“You can move that?” she asked incredulously.

“We’ll find out in a minute. But I’m pretty sure no one can farsight through it.”

Salrana started down the crude ladder, her mind seething with fright. Edeard followed her, stopping when his head was level with the rim. This was the biggest gamble, the one on which both of their lives now depended, but he could not think of any way out of the village, not past the fastfoxes and alert bandits. He fired a longtalk query directly at the Eggshaper Guild compound. “Akeem?” he asked quietly. There was no reply. He still did not dare use his farsight. With a last furious look at the raging firestorm that was his home, he reached out with his third hand and lifted the huge slab of stone. It skimmed silently through the air, keeping a couple of inches off the ground before settling on the top of the well shaft with a slow grinding sound. The orange glow of the flames and the sound of collapsing masonry and human anguish were cut off abruptly.

Edeard waited for hours. He and Salrana clung to each other on the planking at the bottom of the pit, drawing what comfort they could from each other. Eventually she fell into a troubled sleep, twitching and moaning. He would not allow himself that luxury.

Is this all my fault? Were they seeking revenge for the ambush in the forest? But they started it. The worst guilt came from a single thought that nagged and nagged at his soul. Could I have done more? Now that he was sober and the worst of the hangover had abated, he kept thinking about the sensation that had woken him so abruptly. It was the same as the alarm he had felt in the forest, a foresight that something was wrong. The senior priestesses of the Empyrean Lady claimed to have a modest timesense granted, of course, by the Lady herself, so such a thing was possible. If I hadn’t been so stupid. If I hadn’t wasted the warning … 

He did not want to open the stone cap. The scene that he knew would greet them was almost too much to contemplate. My fault. All my fault.

A few hours after they took refuge, some slices of pale light seeped in around the edge of the cap where the stone rim was not quite level. Still Edeard waited. The rise of the sun was not going to make the bandits go away automatically. There was nothing left for them to fear for tens of miles. It would be the villages now that would wait for the fall of each night with dread.

“We never suspected they were so well organized,” Edeard said bitterly. “Me of all people; I should have realized.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. In the dark she reached out for him again, her slim arm going around his waist. “How could you have known? This is something beyond even the Mother to see.”

“Did Mother Lorellan have a timesense?”

“Not much of one, no. Yesterday evening she was concerned about something, but she couldn’t define it.”

“She couldn’t see her own murder? What kind of timesense is that?”

Salrana started sobbing again.

“Oh, Lady, I’m so sorry,” he said, and hugged her tight. “I didn’t think. I’m so stupid.”

“No, Edeard. You came to help me. Me, out of everybody in Ashwell. All your friends, your Master. Why? Why me?”

“I … All those years, it was like just me and you against the world. You were the only friend I had. I don’t think I would have made it without you. The number of times I thought about running off into the wild.”

She shook her head in dismay. “Then you’d have been a bandit. You would have been one of the invaders last night.”

“Don’t say that. Not ever. I hate them. First my parents, now …” He couldn’t help it; he hung his head and started weeping. “Everything. Everything’s gone. I couldn’t help them. Everybody was scared of how strong I am, and when they really needed me, I was useless.”

“Not useless,” she said. “You helped me.”

They spent a long time pressed together. Edeard’s tears dried after a while. He wiped at his face, feeling stupid and miserable. Salrana’s hands came up to cup his face. “Would you like me?” she whispered.

“Er … I. No.” It was a very difficult thing to say.

“No?” Her thoughts, already fragile, fountained a wave of bewildered hurt. “I thought—”

“Not now,” he said, and gripped her hands. He knew what it was. The shattering grief, the loneliness and fright—all so evident in her thoughts. She needed comfort, and physical intimacy was the strongest comfort of all. Given his own shaky emotional state, it would have been heartening for him, too. But he cared too much, and it would have felt like taking advantage. “I really would, but you’re young. Too young.”

“Linem had a child last year. She wasn’t quite as old as I am today.”

He could not help but grin. “What kind of example is that for a novice to set for her flock?”

“Flock of one.”

Edeard’s humor faded. “Yes, one.”

Salrana looked up at the stone cap. “Do you think any of ours are left?”

“Some, yes. Of course. Ashwell village is stubborn and resilient; that’s what Akeem always said. That’s how it’s resisted change so effectively for the last few centuries.”

“You really wanted to?”

“I—” He found it disconcerting the way she could jump between topics so lightly, especially when that was one of the subjects in question. “Yes,” he admitted cautiously. “You must know how beautiful you’re becoming.”

“Liar! I have to visit Doc Seneo three times a week to get ointment for my face.”

“You are growing up lovely,” he insisted quietly.

“Thank you, Edeard. You’re really sweet, you know. I’ve never thought of any other boy. It’s always been you.”

“Um. Right.”

“It would be terrible to die a virgin, wouldn’t it?”

“Lady! You are the worst novice in the whole Void.”

“Don’t be so silly. The Lady must have enjoyed a good love life. She was Rah’s wife. Half of Makkathran claims to be descended from them. That’s a lot of children.”

“This has to be blasphemy.”

“No. It’s being human. That’s why the Lady was anointed by the Firstlifes, to remind us how to discover our true nature again.”

“Well, right now we need to think survival.”

“I know. So how old do I have to be? Your age?”

“Um, probably, yes. Yes, that’s about right.”

“Can’t wait. Did you go with Zehar last night?”

“Not—Hey, that is not your concern.” For some stupid reason, he suddenly wished he had given in to Zehar’s advances. She’ll be dead now, quickly if she was lucky.

“You’re going to be my husband. I’m entitled to know all about your old lovers.”

“I’m not your husband.”

“Not yet,” she taunted. “My timesense says you will be.”

He threw up his hands in defeat.

“How long are we going to stay in here?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. Even if there’s nothing left to scare them off, they won’t want to stay too long. The other villages will know what’s happened by now. The smoke must have reached halfway to Odin’s Sea, and the farmers would have fled, longshouting all the way. I expect the province will raise the militia and give chase.”

“A militia? Can they do that?”

“Each province has the right to form a militia in times of crisis,” he said, trying to remember the details Akeem had imparted about Querencia’s constitutional law. “And this definitely qualifies. As to the practical details, I expect the bandits will be long gone before any decent force can get here, never mind chase them into the wilderness. And those guns they had—” He held up his trophy, frowning at the outlandish design. No doubting its power, though. “I’ve never heard of anything like these before. It’s like something humans owned from before the flight into the Void.”

“So that’s it? There’s no justice.”

“There will be. As long as I remain alive, they will curse their boldness of this day. It is their own death they have brought to our village.”

She clutched at him. “Don’t go after them. Please, Edeard. They live out there. It’s their wilderness; they know this kind of life, the killing and brutality; they know nothing else. I couldn’t stand it if they caught you.”

“I had no notion to do it right away.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay, I think it’s the afternoon now. Let’s take a look.”

“All right. But if they’re still there and they see us … I can’t be his whore, Edeard.”

“Neither of us will be caught,” he promised, and meant it. For emphasis he patted his gun. “Now let’s see what’s out there.” He started to apply his third hand to the cool stone. Lips touched his. His mouth opened in response, and the kiss went on for a long time.

“Just in case,” Salrana murmured, pressed up against him. “I wanted us both to know what it was like.”

“I … I’m glad,” he said sheepishly.

This time it was a lot harder to move the huge stone slab. It was only after he started that he realized how exhausted he was, and hungry, and scared. But he shifted the stone a couple of inches until a slim crescent of mundane gray sky was visible. There were no excited shouts or farsight probes down into the pit. He could not send his own farsight across much distance given the tiny gap and the fact that he was still below the ground. Instead his mind called out to the guild’s sole ge-eagle. His relief when the majestic bird replied was profound. It was perched up on the cliffs, distressed and bewildered. What it showed him when it took flight swiftly brought his mood down again.

There was nothing left. Nothing. Every cottage was a pile of smoldering rubble; the guild compounds with their sturdy stone walls had collapsed. He could barely make out the street pattern. A thin layer of grubby smog drifted slowly over the ruins.

When the eagle swooped in lower, he could see the bodies. Charred clothes flapped limply on blackened flesh. Worse still were the parts that stuck out of the debris. Motion caught the eagle’s attention, and it pivoted neatly on a wing tip.

Old Fromal was sitting beside the ruins of his house, head in his hands, rocking back and forth, his filthy old face streaked by tears. There was a small boy, naked, running around and around the wrecked market stalls. He was bruised and bleeding, his face drawn into a fierce rictus of determination, not looking at anything in the physical world.

“They’re gone,” Edeard said. “Let’s go out.” He dropped the hated gun and shoved the slab aside.

The stench was the worst of it, the cloying smell of the smoking wood remnants saturated with burned meat. Edeard almost vomited at the impact. It wasn’t only genistars and domestic animals that were roasting. He tore a strip of cloth from his ragged trousers, damped it in a puddle, and tied it over his face.

They halted the running boy, who was in a shock too deep for reason to reach. Led old man Fromal away from the hot coals that had been his home for a hundred twenty-two years. Found little Sagat cowering in the upturned barrels beside the working well.

Seven. That was how many they and the eagle found. Seven survivors out of a village numbering over four hundred souls.

They gathered together just outside the broken gates, in the shadow of the useless rampart walls, where the reek of the corpses wasn’t so bad. Edeard went back in a couple of times, trying to find some clothes and food, though his heart was never in the search.

That was how the posse from Thorpe-by-Water village found them just before dusk. Over a hundred men were riding horses and ge-horses, well armed, with ge-wolves loping beside them. They could barely believe the sight that awaited them, nor did they want to accept that it was organized bandits who were responsible. Instead of giving chase and delivering justice, they turned and rode back to Thorpe-by-Water in case their own loved ones were threatened. The survivors were taken with them. None of them ever returned.

Edeard used his longtalk to tell Salrana: “The caravan is here.”

“Where?” she answered. “I can’t sense them.”

“They’ve just reached Molby’s farm; they should be at the village bridge in another hour or so.”

“That’s a long way to farsee, even for you.”

“The ge-eagle helps,” he admitted.

“Cheat!”

Edeard laughed. “I’ll meet you in the square in half an hour.”

“All right.”

He finished instructing the flock of ge-chimps clearing out the stables and excused himself to Tonri, the senior apprentice. All he got for his courtesy was an indifferent grunt. Thorpe-by-Water’s Eggshaper Guild hadn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms. There was a huge question about his actual status. The Master hadn’t yet confirmed him as a journeyman. Edeard’s request that he be recognized as such had generated a lot of resentment among the other apprentices, who believed he should be the junior. It didn’t help the situation that his talent was so obviously greater than any of theirs, even the Master’s.

Salrana had been accepted a lot more readily into the Lady’s church by Thorpe-by-Water’s Mother, but she wasn’t happy, either. “This will never be our home,” she told Edeard sadly after the first week. Thorpe-by-Water’s residents did not exactly shun the refugees from Ashwell, but they were not made welcome. Rulan province now lived in fear of the bandits; if they could strike Ashwell, which was three days’ ride from the edge of the wilderness, they could strike anywhere in the province. Life had changed irrevocably. There were patrols out in the farmlands and forests constantly now; and craftsmen had to leave aside all nonurgent tasks to strengthen village walls. Everyone in the Rulan province was going to be poorer that winter.

Edeard walked into the market square to the same averted glances he had been getting every day for the last three weeks. With its stalls and cobbled floor, it was remarkably similar to the one in Ashwell. Larger, of course: Thorpe-by-Water was a bigger village, built in a fork of the river Gwash, which provided it with natural protection along two sides. A canal moat had been dug between the two fast-flowing watercourses, with a sturdy drawbridge in the middle completing the defenses. Edeard thought that might make them safer than Ashwell; there was only one real point of entry unless the bandits used boats. Where would bandits get enough boats from …?

His farsight was casually aware of Salrana hurrying toward him. They greeted each other in front of one of the many fish stalls. She was dressed in a Lady’s blue and white novice robe that was too large for her.

“Almost like before,” Edeard said, looking her up and down. He was quietly aware of the glances she was drawing from the other young men in the market.

She wriggled inside it, pulling at the long flared sleeves. “I’d forgotten how prickly this fabric is when it’s new,” she said. “I only ever had one new one before at Ashwell for my initiation ceremony; the rest were all secondhand. But the Mother here has had five made for me.” She gave his clothes an assessment. “Still not found a weaver?”

Edeard rubbed at his ancient shirt with its strange miscolored patches. His trousers were too short as well, and the boots were so old that the leather was cracked along the top. “You need money for a weaver to make a shirt. Apprentices are clothed by their guild. And apprentices without status get the pick of everything the others don’t want.”

“He still hasn’t confirmed your journeyman status?”

“No. It’s all politics. His own journeymen are totally inept, and that’s mostly thanks to his poor training. They lose at least six out of every ten eggs; that’s just pitiful. They’re also five years older than me, so putting me on their level would be an admission of how rubbishy he actually is. I didn’t appreciate what I had with Akeem.” He fell silent at the painful memory. They should have made time to recover the bodies, to give their village a proper funeral blessed by the Lady.

“You knew,” she said supportively.

“Yes. Thanks.” They wandered through the market, with Edeard looking enviously at the various clothes on display. As an apprentice he was not allowed to trade any eggs he sculpted; they all belonged to the guild. Akeem had been decently flexible about it, believing in a quiet reward system. But now Edeard found himself with no money, no friends, and no respect. It was like being ten years old again.

“One of the patrols came in last night,” Salrana said as they walked. “The Mother was at the meeting of village elders this morning; the patrol leader told them they’d found no sign of bandits, let alone a large group of them. Apparently there’s talk about cutting down the patrols.”

“Idiots,” Edeard grunted. “What were they expecting to find? We told them the bandits can conceal themselves.”

“I know.” Her expression turned awkward. “Our word doesn’t count for much.”

“What do they think destroyed Ashwell?”

“Give them some grace, Edeard; their whole world is being turned upside down right now. That’s never easy.”

“Whereas we’ve had a cozy ride.”

“That’s not nice.”

“Sorry.” He took a long breath. “I just hate this: After all we went through, we get treated as if we’re the problem. I really should have kept that gun.” He’d left it at the bottom of the well shaft, not wanting any part of a bandit legacy. The gun was pure evil. Ever since, he had been trying to draw the fidgety little components he had sensed inside. Thorpe-by-Water’s blacksmith had laughed when he had taken the sketches to him, telling him no such thing could be made. Now people were becoming skeptical about the whole repeat-shooting-gun story.

“You did the right thing,” she said. “How awful life would be if everyone had a weapon like that.”

“It’s pretty awful that the bandits have it and we don’t,” he snapped at her. “What’s to stop them from sweeping through the whole province? Then farther? How about the entire region?”

“That won’t happen.”

“No, it won’t, because the governor will raise an army. Thankfully, there are more of us than them, so we can win no matter how terrible their weapons are. But that will mean bloodshed on a scale we’ve never known.” He wanted to beat his fists against the nearest stall. “How did they get that gun? Do you think they found one of the ships we came in?”

“Maybe they never left the ship they came in,” she said in a small voice.

“Perhaps. I don’t know. Why will no one listen to us?”

“Because we’re children.”

He turned to snarl at her, then saw the deep worry in her thoughts, her tired face dabbed with greenish ointment. She was so lovely. Somehow he knew Akeem would approve his risking everything to save her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m taking it out on you.”

“Because I’m the only one who listens,” she told him.

“Lady, it’s worse here than Ashwell in some ways. The elders are so … backward. They must inbreed like dogs.”

Salrana grinned. “Keep your voice down,” she scolded.

“Okay.” He grinned back. “Not much longer now, I hope.”

People were gathering along the side of the market square to watch the caravan arrive. Edeard counted thirty-two wagons rolling along the road and over the drawbridge. Most had terrestrial beasts tethered to them: horses, donkeys, oxen, cows. Some had pens carrying huge pigs. Ge-wolves padded alongside. There were more outriders with pistols than Edeard remembered from before. The wagons were as large and impressive as he recalled, with their metal-rimmed wheels as tall as he was. Most of them were covered by curving canopies of dark oiled cloth, though several were clad in tarred wood, almost like tiny mobile cottages. Entire families sat on the driver’s bench, waving and smiling as they wound their way into the market. Every summer the caravans toured the district, trading animals, seeds, eggs, tools, food, drink, and fancy cloth from Makkathran itself. They did not always visit Ashwell, but Edeard could remember the excitement when they did.

Even before the wagons had stopped, villagers were shouting up at the traveling families, asking what they had brought. It was a good-natured crowd that had little time for the mayor’s welcoming speech to the caravan leader. Trading was already under way before the formalities were over. Samples of wine and beer were handed down, mostly to apprentices. Edeard chewed on some dried beef that had been flavored with a spice he never had tasted before. Salrana picked daintily at trays of fruit and pickled vegetables, though she was less restrained when it came to exotic chocolates.

As the evening sky began to darken, Edeard was in considerably better spirits. A lot of the villagers were making for home and supper before returning for the night’s traditional festivities. He and Salrana made their way to the lead caravan. The last remaining villagers were leaving, studiously ignoring the Ashwell pair as they did so.

Barkus, the caravan Master, was also as Edeard remembered, several decades into his second century but still hale. He had the largest sideburns Edeard had ever seen: white whiskers bristling around the curve of his jawbone, framing ruddy cheeks. His barrel torso was clad in a red silk shirt and an extravagant blue and gold waistcoat.

“And what can I do for you two?” he chortled as Edeard and Salrana edged in close to his wagon; his large family glanced at them and kept about their work, extending the awning on a frame of martoz wood to form an extensive tent. “I think we’ve run out of beer samples.” He winked at Edeard.

“I want to come with you to Makkathran; we both do.”

Barkus let out a booming laugh. Two of his sons sniggered as they pushed the awning pegs into the hard ground. “Very romantic, I’m sure. I admire your pluck, young sir, and you my Lady’s lady. But sadly we have no room for passengers. Now, I’m sure that if the two of you are to be ah … how shall we say, blessed by an addition, your parents won’t be as fearsome as you expect. Trust me. Go home and tell them what’s happened.”

Salrana drew her shoulders back. “I am not pregnant. I take my vows of devotion very seriously.”

That blatant lie almost deflated Edeard’s indignation. “I am Edeard, and this is Salrana; we’re the survivors from Ashwell.” He was very aware of the silence his statement caused. Barkus’s family members were all looking at them. Several strands of farsight emanating from the other side of the wagon swept across them. “I believe you knew my Master, Akeem.”

Barkus nodded sagely. “You’d best come inside. And the rest of you, get back to work.”

The wagon was one of those boasting a wooden cabin. The inside was fitted with beautiful ancient golden wood, intricately carved with a quality that would have eluded Geepalt and his apprentices. Every section of the walls and ceiling was made of doors, which came in sizes from some no bigger than Edeard’s fist to those taller than he. Barkus opened a pair of horizontal ones, and they folded down into long cushioned benches. Two of the small doors along the apex slid aside to expose misty glass panels. Barkus struck a match and pushed it through a small hole at the end of the glass, lighting a wick. The familiar cozy glow of a jamolar oil flame filled the cabin.

Edeard smiled, very impressed.

“I remember your Master with great fondness,” Barkus said, waving them onto the bench opposite himself. “He traveled out here with us a long time ago. I was barely your age at the time. Your Mother, too, Novice Salrana, always showed us kindness. Both will be missed and mourned. It was a terrible thing.”

“Thank you,” Edeard said. “I don’t wish to impose, but neither of us can stay in Thorpe-by-Water. We’re not very welcome, and in any case it’s too close to Ashwell.”

“I understand. The whole province is shaken by what happened, though I’ve heard a great many different versions already, including, I have to say, a couple which cast you in a less than favorable light, young man. I held my tongue at the telling of such tales because I remember you from our last visit, four summers ago. I also remember what Akeem said about you. He was impressed with your talent, and old Akeem was not easily swayed, especially by one so young.”

“Edeard risked his life to save me,” Salrana said.

“That also I have heard.”

“Before that night, Akeem said he wanted me to go to Makkathran to study at the Blue Tower of my guild. I would—no, I will—see his wish come true.”

Barkus smiled softly. “A worthy goal, young man.”

“We will work our passage,” Edeard said forcefully. “I will not freeload.”

“Nor I,” said Salrana.

“I would expect nothing less,” Barkus said. He seemed troubled. “However, it is a long way. We will not reach Makkathran until next spring, and that is if all goes well. Many caravans have already cut short their regular journey to leave this province. The stories of Ashwell’s fate are many, but they have unnerved all of us. As I remember, Akeem said you have a strong third hand.”

“That’s true. But my talent is in sculpting. There are many wild defaults in the woods and hills of this province. By the time winter falls, I can sculpt you a pack of ge-wolves that no bandit gang will ever get past no matter how strong their concealment. I can sculpt them with a stronger sense of smell than any you’ve used hitherto. I can also sculpt eagles which will circle for miles on every side of the convoy, searching out the slightest hint of treachery or ambush.”

“I’m sure you can.” Even now Barkus was unsure.

“I can also teach you and your families this,” Edeard said. He wove his concealment around himself. Barkus gasped, leaning forward and blinking. Edeard felt the caravan Master’s farsight whipping back and forth across the cabin. He quietly got up and sat next to the startled Barkus, then withdrew his concealment. “How could the bandits attack you if they can’t see you?”

“Dear Lady!” Barkus grunted. “I never knew such a thing.”

“Akeem gifted this to me.”

Barkus regained his composure quickly. “Did he, now? Akeem was right about you, and so I think are half the tales. Very well, my dear youngsters; I will accept you both as family tyros. You will come with us as far as Makkathran. And you will indeed work your passage. Let’s see if you think such nobility is worthwhile when we reach the Ulfsen Mountains. However, Edeard, this arrangement is conditional on you not teaching anyone your concealment trick. Do you concur?”

“I do, sir. I don’t understand why, though.”

“You haven’t taught it to anyone in Thorpe-by-Water, have you?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s a good political instinct you have there, my boy. Let’s just keep it that way, shall we. There’s enough trouble infecting our poor old world as it is without everyone sneaking around unseen. Though if you can find a way for farsight to uncover such trickery, I’d be grateful if you would inform me at once.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good lad. We leave with the dawn light in three days’ time. If you’re not here that morning, we still leave, though I don’t suppose your Master will object to your exodus.”

“I don’t believe he will, sir.”

“Makkathran!” Edeard said as they hurried away from the wagon. Now that Barkus had said he would take them, all his earlier worries and doubts had dried up. He had thought that he was running away, that he was being a coward for putting all the provinces between himself and the bandits, for allowing them to deal with the problem and endure their blood being spilled to safeguard the land while he lived a safe comfortable life in the city. But now they were going, and that was that. “Imagine it.”

“I can’t believe it.” Salrana’s smile was wide and carefree. “Do you think it will be as wonderful as the stories we’ve heard?”

“If it is only a tenth as fabulous as they say, it will be beyond anything I have dreamed.”

“And we’ll be safe.” She sighed.

“Yes.” He put his arm around her shoulder—in a brotherly fashion.

“We’ll be safe. And what splendid lives we’ll live in the capital of the world.”

The glitch had been surprisingly easy to find. But then Troblum supposed Emily Alm had not had a lot of time to insert it, nor would she suspect he’d come looking, at least not right away. She had made several modifications to the blueprint. In itself each one was relatively innocuous, and that made them even harder to spot; but the cumulative effect was enough to throw the binding effect out of kilter. It was less than an hour’s work for him to remove them. Then he restarted the production process.

With that under way, his u-shadow established a secure one-time link back to his apartment. Now he knew that Marius was trying to manipulate him and would go to any lengths to achieve what he wanted, Troblum needed an escape route. There was only one that would put him beyond even the representative’s reach: the colonies. After the Starflyer War, each of the old dynasties had been left with a fleet of redundant lifeboats, starships capable of evacuating the entire senior strata of each dynasty to the other side of the galaxy, where they would have been safe had the Prime alien won. Given the phenomenal amount of money poured into their construction, the dynasty leaders were never going to scrap them simply because the Commonwealth had been victorious. Instead, the lifeboats set off to found new worlds and cultures completely independent of the Commonwealth. Over forty ships had launched, though that figure was ambiguous; the dynasty leaders were reluctant to admit how much money they had poured into their own salvation at the expense of everyone else. In the following centuries, more colony ships had set forth. No longer exclusive to dynasties, they had carried an even broader selection of beliefs, families, and ideologies, seeking to break free to a degree that even the External worlds could never offer. The last major departure had been in AD3000, when Nigel Sheldon himself had led a fleet of ten starships, the largest craft ever built, to set up a “new human experience” elsewhere. It was strongly rumored at the time that the ships had a transgalactic flight range.

With the ultrasecure link to his apartment established, Troblum used a similarly guarded connection for his u-shadow to trawl the unisphere for the possible destinations of the colony ships within this galaxy. There were over a hundred departures listed and thousands of articles on each of them. A lot of those articles speculated on why not one colony had gotten back in touch, even if only to send a “so there” message. Certainly there was no record of any navy starship stumbling across a human world anywhere else in the galaxy, not that they had explored a fraction of a percent of the available H-congruous stars. It was the core of Living Dream dogma that most, if not all, such voyages had wound up inside the Void. However, a lot of genuine academic work had gone into estimating probable locations despite the best efforts of the dwindling dynasties to suppress such work. Even assuming the studies were correct, the areas that needed to be searched were vast, measuring hundreds of light-years across. But Mellanie’s Redemption was a fine ship. She should be able to make the trip out to the Drasix cluster, fifty thousand light-years away, where the Brandt Dynasty ships were said to have flown.

Troblum knew he would not miss the Commonwealth; there was nobody he had any attachment to, and most of the colony worlds would have a decent level of civilization. If he did find the Brandt world, they presumably would be glad to accept his knowledge of biononics, which had been developed long after their ships had departed. That left only the problem of what to do with his Starflyer War artifacts. He couldn’t bear to be parted from them, yet if he transported them to the hangar, Marius might notice. He began instructing the apartment net on shipping arrangements, then made a painful call to Stubsy Florac.

The Neumann cybernetics took thirty-two hours to produce a planet-shifting FTL engine. Troblum stood underneath the sparkling cylinder as the terminal extruder was finished, marveling at its elegance. His field functions reported a dense knot of energies and hyper-stressed matter all in perfect balance. So much exotic activity was present, it almost qualified as a singularity in its own right.

If the colony doesn’t want biononics, they’ll surely want this.

He watched in perfect contentment as force fields maneuvered the cylinder into Mellanie’s Redemption. The modified forward cargo hold closed, and Troblum sent the device into standby mode. Nobody would be able to break the command authority encryption, not even ANA, he suspected. The device was his and his alone.

Once it was safe and shielded, he went back into the office and restored Emily Alm’s glitches to the blueprint, then began adding some of his own, at a much deeper function level. Now the engine really was unique.

Marius called several hours later. “Have you finished your analysis yet?”

“Just about. I think I’m going to have to initiate a complete redesign of the exotic stress channels.”

“That sounds bad, and I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s not good, no.”

“I’m sure our funds will cover it. But for now I need a small favor.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to take a colleague to our station.”

“A passenger?” Troblum asked in alarm. If there was someone else on board, he would never be able to fly free. With a growing sense of dismay, he realized that was probably the whole idea. Had Marius detected something? He would have sworn nothing could get through his encryption, but then ultimately he was dealing with an ANA faction.

“Problem? Your ship can accommodate more than one person, and it’s a relatively short flight. We’re still inside the Commonwealth, after all.”

There was a definite implication in that. “Not a problem. I’ll need to do flight prep.”

“That shouldn’t take more than an hour. Bon voyage.”

There had been no polite inquiry as to whether he was ready; in fact, it was more like an order. Annoyance warred with a slight curiosity. What do they need me for so urgently?

“Troblum?”

“What?” Troblum twisted around as fast as his bulk would allow. There was a man standing in the office, a very tall man whose skeletal skull was frizzed by a stubble of ginger hair. He wore a simple gray suit that emphasized exceptionally long limbs. “Who the fuck are you?” Troblum’s biononics had cloaked him in a defensive force field instantly; now his weapons enrichment was active and targeting the intruder.

“I’m Lucken. I believe you’re expecting me.”

“You’re …”

“Your passenger, yes. Is the ship ready?”

“How did you get in?”

Lucken’s face remained completely impassive. “Do you require assistance to prepare for flight?”

“Ah, no.”

“Then please begin.”

Troblum adjusted the front of his old toga suit in angry reaction to the arrogant imposition. “The umbilicals are already attached. We’ll leave as soon as the tanks are full. Do you want to go to your cabin?”

“Are you embarking now?”

“No. I have important work here to complete.”

“I will wait. I will accompany you on board.”

“As you wish.” Troblum settled back in his chair and reactivated the solido projectors just to show how indifferent he was.

Lucken did not move. His eyes never left Troblum.

It was going to be a long flight.

The station was a real flight into nostalgia. It had been fifty years since Troblum had seen it last, and he never thought he would be back; in fact, he was rather surprised it was still intact. Mellanie’s Redemption took three days to fly from Arevalo to the unnamed red dwarf star. There were no planets, solid or gas, orbiting the weak speck of ruddy light, just a large disc of mushy hydrocarbon asteroids. There were fewer now than there had been when he first had come to work there. He smiled when he remembered that test sequence. It was the last time he had been genuinely drunk and had not cared what a fool he was making of himself.

Mellanie’s Redemption dropped out of hyperspace ten astronomical units (AUs) away from the star and eight thousand kilometers directly above their destination. Troblum accelerated in at seven gees, heading straight for the center of the dark toroid that measured five kilometers in diameter. A squadron of defense cruisers shed their stealth effect and soared around the starship in fast tight turns. They were over a hundred meters long, like quicksilver droplets frozen in middistortion to produce bodies of warped ripples sprouting odd pseudopod crowns. Their flight was so elegant and smooth, they resembled a shoal of aquatic creatures cavorting with a newcomer. However, there was nothing playful about the quantum-level probes directed at Mellanie’s Redemption. Troblum held his breath as he waited to see if the sophisticated shielding around his forward hold would deflect the scan. It did, but then, he had helped design the cruisers—seventy years ago now. He found it interesting that nothing new had been produced in the intervening decades. Human technology was edging ever closer to its plateau. Emily Alm was probably right about her time in the navy; given their knowledge base, there was nothing new in the universe, just innovative variants on that which already existed.

The cruisers escorted them into the station. Mellanie’s Redemption fell below the rim of the toroid and slid along the broad internal tube, which was almost as long as its diameter. Observing the structure through the starship’s modest sensor net, Troblum could see that vast sections had been reactivated. The titanium-black fuselage was covered in long slender spikes as if a sharp frost had settled across the whole station. The majority of spikes were translucent blue-white; in among them, seemingly at random, several of the smaller ones were glowing with a low crimson light, as if they had caged a few of the photons from the nearby sun.

Troblum piloted Mellanie’s Redemption to the base of a red spike that was nearly seven hundred meters long. A hangar door was open and waiting for them. When it closed, he could not help thinking of the door to an antique jail cell slamming shut.

“Thank you for flying Troblum Lines and have a pleasant day,” he said cheerily.

Lucken opened the airlock and went outside. The man had not spoken a single word since they had embarked. Hadn’t slept, either, had just sat in the central cabin the whole time. He had vanished by the time Troblum activated a small case and pulled on his emerald cloak. Mellanie’s Redemption looked small and inadequate inside the giant shiny white cavity. White tubes had wormed out of the floor to plug into her umbilical sockets. There was no sign of the external door or indeed a way into the station. As Troblum walked along the curving floor, gravity shifted to accommodate him so that he was always vertical. The whole effect was quite disorienting on a visual level.

A woman was waiting for him under the starship’s nose. She was his height, completely hairless, with large perfectly round eyes that dominated her flat face. Her neck was long, over twenty centimeters, but invisible behind a sheath of slim gold rings, as if it were some kind of segmented metallic limb. All of her skin had the surface shimmer of a toga suit tuned to steel-gray; Troblum assumed her skin had been biononically modified, the effect was so tight around her. A lot of Highers close to download chose to experiment with physiological modifications.

“Greetings,” she said in a pleasant, almost girlish voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Sadly, I can’t return the compliment,” he said, reading off the protocol behavior program showing in his exovision.

“I’m Neskia, I run the station. My predecessor was most favorable in his assessment of your abilities. Our faction would like to thank you for returning.”

As if I had a choice. “All very well, but why exactly am I here? Is the swarm malfunctioning?”

“Not at all.” She gestured gracefully, her neck curving in a fluidly serpentine motion to keep her face aligned with him as she started walking. Troblum followed her along the curve, his case hovering just behind his head. Above them, a circular door irised open. The station’s internal nature certainly had changed in seventy years.

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed,” she said, and hesitated by the door.

Troblum was not sure if the circle had flipped out of the curve to stand upright or if the local gravity manipulation was even weirder than his ordinary senses told him. He refused to verify with a field scan. Disorientation attempts were really very childish. “Not disappointed. I assume I’m here to inspect and validate the swarm just in case the worst-case Pilgrimage scenario proves true. There have been a few recent advances which could be used to upgrade.”

“The swarm has dispersed to its deployment point. It has been constantly upgraded. We don’t anticipate the Void’s expansion to pose any problem.”

“Really? So that’s why you kept this station going.”

“Among other things.” She stepped through the door and into a corridor that had an old simple gray-blue layout that Troblum recognized. They had not changed everything.

“I’ve assigned you a suite in sector 7-B-5,” Neskia said. “You can have it modified to your own tastes; just tell the station smartcore what you want.”

“Thank you. And the reason I’m here?”

“We are building twelve ultradrive engines to power the Pilgrimage fleet. Your experience in the assembly techniques we are using is unmatched.”

Troblum stopped abruptly, his case almost banging into the back of his head. “Ultradrive?”

“Yes.”

“You mean it’s real? I always assumed it was just a rumor.”

“It isn’t. You’ll be working with a small team; fifty or so experts have been recruited. The Neumann cybernetics that built the swarm will handle the actual fabrication.”

“Fascinating.” His bleak mood at being blackmailed and bullied actually began to lift. “I’ll need to see the theory behind the drive.”

“Of course.” Her huge eyes blinked once. “We’ll brief you as soon as you’ve settled in.”

“I’m settled right now.”

Araminta waited in the flat until Shelly arrived to take full legal possession. She did not have to do it; Cressida’s firm was tackling the sale registration, which meant nothing had gone wrong. But supervising the handover in person added that little professional touch, and in business, reputation was a commodity that could not be bought.

She watched from the balcony as Shelly’s capsule landed on the designated pad outside, followed by a larger cargo capsule that used the public pad. The flat seemed strangely unattractive now that Araminta had moved the dressing furniture out, all carefully chosen pieces that emphasized how spacious and contemporary the property was.

“Is everything all right?” Shelly asked as Araminta opened the door.

“Yes. I just wanted to check that you were happy.”

“Oh, yes. I can’t wait to get in.” Shelly already was walking past her, smiling contentedly at the empty rooms. She was a tall pretty girl who had her own salon business in the district. Araminta was slightly jealous about that, mainly because Shelly was a year younger than she and obviously successful. But then, she’s never made the Laril mistake.

Shelly caught sight of the big bouquet of flowers resting on the kitchen worktop. “Oh, thank you; that’s so sweet.”

“My pleasure.” Araminta’s u-shadow transferred the flat’s activation codes over to Shelly. “Now, if there are any problems, please call me.” She had to flatten herself against the wall as she made her way downstairs. A regrav lifter was hauling a big scarlet and black sofa up to the flat. It was not quite what Araminta would have chosen, but … She shrugged and left the house.

Her old carry capsule flew her across Colwyn City to the Bodant district, where it settled on a public parking pad. The morning was a dull one, with grubby ginger clouds darkening toward rain as the wind blew in from the sea. Araminta climbed out and smiled up at the six-story apartment block. It was a fairly standard layout, ribbed by white balconies that dripped with colorful vines and flowering creepers; the corners were black glass columns alive with purple and blue refraction stipples that swarmed up and down like rodent climbers. At night the effect was sharp and conspicuous, but under a dank daylight sky it lacked any kind of verve. There was a gold crystal dome on the roof, sheltering a communal pool and spa gym. A wide swath of elegantly maintained gardens along the front sat on top of the private underground garage.

Cressida’s sleek purple capsule slipped down out of the low clouds to land beside Araminta. “Well, darling, what a coup.” The lawyer was wrapped in a furry black and white coat that snuggled cozily around her with every move. She glanced up at the front of the building, eyes narrowing as she saw three balconies piled high with junked fittings. “I have the access codes and the owner certificates. So let’s go up, shall we?”

Araminta had bought the entire fourth floor, with all five apartments. The whole apartment block was undergoing redevelopment, presenting an opportunity she could not resist when Ikor, one of the original developers, had pulled out. Cressida walked into the first apartment and rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

“Why not? It’s a perfect opportunity for me.” Araminta grinned at her cousin’s dismay and walked over to the balcony doors. The glass curtained wide for her, and she stepped out. There was a faint sound of buzzing and drilling as the other developers prepared their floors for occupancy. “It’s ninety years old; it needs a makeover. And look at the view.”

Cressida pushed her sapphire-glossed lips together as she looked out across the Bodant district’s park to the Cairns beyond. There was a marina along the embankment directly opposite them, its curving Deco buildings radiant white, as if they had just been forged in some fusion furnace. “You got the wrong side of the park, darling; over there is where the action and the smart money is. Besides, here you’re only a few streets from the Helie district. Really!”

“Stop being such a grump. I’ve proved I can do this, and you know it.”

“I also know how much you paid for these hovels. Honestly, darling, a hundred K each. Were you kidnapped and held ransom?”

“They have three bedrooms each. They need a lot less work than the flat. The two largest ones have this view. And I cleared a forty-K profit on the flat.”

“I still can’t believe the bank gave you the money for this.”

“Standard commercial loan. They liked my business model,” Araminta said proudly.

“And Ozzie’s coming back to save us all. Go on, you can tell me. You slept with the entire staff of the local office, didn’t you?”

“It’s very simple economics.”

“Ha! That just proves you don’t know what you’re talking about. Economics is never simple.”

“I renovate one of them—this one probably—as the show apartment and sell the rest off plan, based on people seeing the quality of the finish. The deposits will pay off the mortgage while I refurbish them.”

“This is the best one? Oh, help me.”

“Yes, this one. And Helie is an up-and-coming area. Don’t be so negative. It’s annoying.” Her tone was more prickly than she had intended.

Cressida was instantly apologetic. “I’m sorry, darling, but my life is without risk now. Honestly, I admire you for taking this gamble, but you have to admit, it is a gamble.”

“Of course it’s a gamble. You never get anywhere in life without taking a gamble.”

“Well, well, whatever happened to the little farm girl from Langham?”

“She died. Nobody came to the funeral.”

A perfectly shaped eyebrow rose in surprise. “What have I unleashed on the world?”

“I thought you’d be happy to see me move forward like this.”

“I am. Are you going to do all the work yourself again?”

“Most of it, yes. I’ve got some new bots, and I know where to go for all my supplies and fittings now. This is going to be a prestige development; you’ll see. All the apartments will fetch a premium.”

“I’m sure they will. Did you know most of the hotels in town are fully booked?”

“Is that relevant?”

Cressida wiped the balcony rail with a hand and then leaned on it. “There’s a lot of Living Dream devotees flooding in. Rumor in the gaiafield is that the Second Dreamer is on Viotia.”

“Really, I didn’t know that, but then, I haven’t accessed a news show in weeks. I’m a working gal these days.”

“Keep it quiet, but the government is worried about the pressure that’s going to be put on housing, among other things, like public order.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Seriously. We’ve had over two million of the faithful arrive in the last seven weeks. Do you know how many have left again?”

“No.”

“None. And if they all apply for residency, that’s going to shift the political demographic.”

“So we’re receiving immigrants again; that’s how planets develop. There’s going to be a big demand for housing. I come out a winner.”

“All I’m saying is that in times of civil disturbance property values take a dive.”

“It’s that serious?” Araminta asked in sudden alarm; after all, Cressida was very well connected.

“You know there’s always been an undercurrent of resentment toward Ellezelin. If the Living Dream numbers keep rising at their current rate, then there could be trouble. Who wants to wind up living in a theocracy?”

“Yes, but there’s the Pilgrimage. That’ll call them back to Ellezelin, won’t it? And it’s not like they’re going to find this stupid Second Dreamer, least of all here. The whole thing’s a political stunt by the new Cleric Conservator. Isn’t it?”

“Who knows? But I’d respectfully suggest, darling, that you find a sucker who you can offload these apartments on to at very short notice.”

Araminta recalled how keen Ikor had been to sell to her. And it had been a good deal, or so it had seemed at the time. Am I the sucker? “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to look for one,” she said.

Mr. Bovey let loose a small chorus of swearing as four of hims tried to maneuver the old-fashioned stone bath along the hallway and through the bathroom door. It was an awkward angle, and the apartment’s rear hallway was not particularly wide.

“Can I help?” Araminta sang out from the kitchen, where she and three bots were making last-minute changes to the new utility connections to get them ready for the units she had ordered.

“I’m quite capable, thank you,” quadraphonic voices grunted back.

His hurtful insistence made her giggle. “Okay.” It was another twenty minutes before one of him walked into the kitchen. He was the Bovey she’d first encountered in his macrostore’s bathroom aisle, the one with ebony skin and an aging body. In his biological late middle age he may have been, but he did not shrink from hard work. His wrinkled forehead was smeared with sweat.

“I made some tea,” she said, gesturing at the kettle with its cluster of ancient cups. “You look like you need a break.”

“I do; my others are younger.” He smiled in admiration at the steaming cups and the packet of teacubes. “You really did make it, too, didn’t you?”

“Waiting for my culinary unit to arrive,” she said with a martyred sigh.

“It’s in the next load, I promise,” he told her, and picked up a cup. His eyes took in the packets of folded food and the hydrator oven.

“Are you actually living here?”

“Yeah. Not renting saves me a bucketload of money. I mean, what’s the point? I’ve got five apartments, and they’re not that bad—the roofs don’t leak, and the rest is just aesthetics. I can stick it out for a few months.”

“You know, I really admire your attitude. There’s not many your age who would take on a project like this.”

She batted her eyes. “And what’s my age?”

“Honestly? I’ve no idea. But you come across as a first life.”

“I’ll own up to that.”

“Can I offer you an alternative to hydrated food tonight? There’s a nice restaurant I know.”

She grinned, her hand curling around her mug of tea. “That would be lovely. Oh, I don’t like curry!”

“That’s okay; some of mes don’t, either.”

“Your tastes are different?”

“Sure. Taste is a matter of biochemistry, which is subtly different in every human body. And face it, I have quite a variety to choose from.”

“Okay,” she said, and dropped her gaze bashfully. “I have to ask. I’ve never been on a date with a multiple before. Do you all come and sit at the table with me?”

“Nah, I think that would be a little much for you, wouldn’t it? Besides, I have the macrostore to run, deliveries to be made, installation, that kind of thing. My life goes on the whole time.”

“Oh. Yes.” It was a strange notion. Not an objectionable one, though.

“Now, if you were another multiple, it might be different.”

“How?”

“We’d book the whole restaurant of romantic tables for two and take over the lot. Yous and mes everywhere having fifty different conversations simultaneously and trying out the entire menu and wine list all at once. It’s like speed dating in fast forward.”

She laughed. “Have you ever done that?”

“Tell you tonight.”

“Right. So which one of you do I get sitting at that romantic table for two?”

“You choose. How many of mes and which ones.”

“One, and you’ll do just fine.”

Araminta took a great deal of thought and care over what to wear and which cosmetic scales to apply. She dressed exactly to plan two hours early, then took a look at herself in the mirror and chucked the whole image. Fifty minutes later all the cases in her bedroom were hanging open. Every outfit she had bought in the last two months was draped over floor and furniture, leaving little space to walk. She had experimented with four different styles of scale membrane. Her hair had been sparkled and then damped, oiled and then fluffed, bejeweled with red scintillators, blue scintillators, green, blue-white …

In the end, with eleven minutes to go, she took an executive decision to go basic. Mr. Bovey was not the kind to concern himselfs with surface image.

His capsule landed on the pad outside, and she took an elevator down to the lobby. The doors opened to a dusty space piled with junk and newly delivered boxes. It was all illuminated by too-bright temporary lighting.

Mr. Bovey was dressed in a simple pale gray toga suit with minimal surface shimmer. He smiled as the doors opened and said: “A lady who is on time; now, that’s—oh, wow.”

She permitted herself the smallest nod of approval as he stared. In her mind was an image of his customers left unattended, installations stalled, delivery flights landing at the wrong addresses all over town.

“You look”—he swallowed as he tried to regain equilibrium—“fantastic. Absolutely amazing.”

“Why, thank you.” She held her hands behind her back and presented the side of her face for a formal greeting kiss like some ingenue. It was the right choice, then: a black sleeveless dress of plain silky fabric with a wide cleft down the front, barely held together by a couple of slim black emerald chains, making it look as if she was about to burst out. Her hair glossed pale auburn and brushed with just a couple of waves to hang below her shoulders. No scales other than lips slightly darker than her natural pigmentation and emerald eyelash sparkles on low radiance. Most important was the sly half smile guaranteed to befuddle the male brain totally—all of them.

Mr. Bovey recovered. “Shall we go?”

“Love to.”

The restaurant he’d booked was Richard’s. It was small but stylish, occupying two floors of an old white stone house in the Udno district. The owner was also the chef, and as Mr. Bovey explained, he had a small boat that he took out down the estuary a couple of times each week to catch fish for the specials.

“So do you date other multiples?” she asked once they had ordered.

“Of course,” he told her. “Not that there are a lot of us on Viotia.”

“What about marriage? Is that only with multiples?”

“I was married once. A multiple called Mrs. Rion. It was”—he frowned, as if searching for a memory—“pleasant.”

“That sounds pretty awful.”

“I’m being unfair to her. We had a good time while it lasted. Sex was great.” His smile was shameless. “Think on it: thirty of her, thirty of me. All of us at it every night. You singles can’t get that close to physical paradise even in an orgy.”

“You don’t know how good I am in an orgy.” As soon as she said it, she could feel her ears burning. But it was the second time she had startled him that evening, and they were not even an hour into the date. Cressida would be proud of me.

“Anyway,” he said, “we called time on the marriage after seven years. No hostilities; we’re still friends. Thankfully, we didn’t merge our businesses as well. Always sign a premarriage contract, no matter what you are.”

“Yes. I found that out the hard way.”

“You’ve been married?”

“Yeah. It was a mistake, but you were right: I’m young. My cousin says mistakes are the only way to learn.”

“Your cousin is right.”

“So are you going to try and convert me tonight?”

“Convert you?”

“Sell the whole multiple idea. I thought you believe multiples are inevitable.”

“I do. But I’m not an evangelical. Some of us are,” he admitted.

“And you date, uh …”

“Outside the faith? Of course I do. People are interesting no matter what type they are.”

“Highers seem quite boring. If that sounds bigoted, I should explain that my ex is currently migrating inward.”

“Not a wholly balanced opinion, then.”

Araminta raised a glass. “Ozzie, I hope not.”

“Going Higher is wrong; it’s a technocrat route. We’re a humanist solution to immortality and evolution.”

“You still rely on technology, though.”

“It’s a very small reliance. A few gaiamotes to homologize our thoughts. It’s a simple procedure.”

“Ah, hah! You are trying to convert me.”

He grinned. “You’re paranoid.”

“All divorcées are. So are any of you female?”

“No. Some multiples are multisexual, but that’s not for me. Too much like masturbation, I’d imagine.”

“I’ve just thought of something, and you have to answer because it’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair?”

“Well, you can see that I’m not with anyone else this evening—”

“Ah.” His smile turned devious. “So in among all the hard work the rest of mes are doing back at the macrostore, is there another of me in a different restaurant chatting to another woman? Right?”

“Yeah,” she admitted.

“Why would it have to be a different restaurant?” He gestured around extravagantly. “Be honest. How could you tell if one of them is me?”

The idea made her draw a breath and glance around.

Mr. Bovey was laughing. “But I’m not,” he assured her. “All I’m interested in tonight is you and you alone.” His gaze dropped to the front of her dress. “How could I not be?”

“That’s”—she took another drink of the wine—“very flattering, thank you.”

It got the evening back on more or less standard lines.

The mighty creatures fly free amid glorious colored streamers that glow strongly against the infinite dark of the outer reaches. They loop around the great scarlet promontories that extend for light-years, curving and swooping above the mottled webbing of faint cold gas. As they fly, the notions of what was brush against their bodies to tingle their minds as if they were traveling through the memories of another entity. Such a notion is not far from the truth, especially this close to the nucleus of their universe.

This one turns lazily along its major axis, aware of its kindred surrounding it. The flock is spread across millions of kilometers. Over a planetary diameter away, another of its own also is rolling, mountainsize elongated body throwing its vacuum wings wide, tenuous tissues of molecules as large as atmospheric clouds that shimmer delicately in the thin starlight. Somewhere out across the vast gulf it is aware of the whispers of thought arising once more from a solid world. Once more there are individual minds growing strong again, becoming attuned to the fabric of this universe. As it basks in the gentle radiance pouring out of the nebula, it wonders when the minds will have the strength truly to affect reality. Such a time, it agrees with its kindred, is sure to come. Then the flock will depart the great nebula to search out the newcomers and carry their completed lives back to the nucleus, where all life eventually culminates.

It was a pleasurable notion that made Araminta sigh contentedly even though the creature was slipping away into the darkness where it dwelled. Misty starlight gave way to a row of flickering candles. The gossamer breath of nebula dust firmed up into strong fingers sliding along her legs; more hands began to stroke her belly, and then another pair squeezed her breasts. Sweet oil was massaged into her skin with wicked insistence. Tongues licked with intimate sensuality.

“Time to wake up,” a voice murmured.

On the other side of her another voice encouraged: “Time to indulge yourself again.”

Amid a delicious drowsiness Araminta bent herself in the way the hands were urging. She blinked lazily, seeing the Mr. Bovey she had had dinner with standing beside the vast bed. He smiled down. As she grinned back up at him, she was impaled from behind. She gasped, startled and excited, seeing a look of rapture cross his face. A further set of hands started to explore her buttocks. She opened her mouth to receive the cock of a really young him, which was extremely bad of her.

She did not know how many hims she was accommodating this time. She did not know if it was nearly morning or still the middle of the night. She did not care. Flesh and pleasure was her here and now, her whole universe.

After the meal at Richard’s his capsule had brought them back to his place, a large house set above the city’s south bank with lawns that reached down to the river. It was not even midnight. Several of hims were in the lounge, a couple were cooking, and three were in the swimming pool. More were resting or sleeping upstairs, he told her.

It was like holding court: her sitting on a broad leather sofa, hims on either side, and more sprawled on cushions at her feet as they chatted away. She took a long time to fight down her instinct that they were all separate people. He enjoyed teasing her, switching speaker midsentence, even arguing among himselfs. But the simultaneous laughter his bodies came out with was endearing. It was a wonderfully languid seduction.

Then the one she had gone to dinner with leaned over and kissed her. By then the wine and the anticipation were making her heart pound and her skin burn.

“You choose,” he murmured silkily.

“Choose?”

“How many and which ones.”

She glanced around and saw identical expressions of delight and eagerness on each of him. For that long moment every one of him was completely indistinguishable; he could have been clones. That was when she accepted on a subconscious level that he truly was one.

“You, of course,” she told her dinner companion. “You did all the hard work getting me back here, after all.” Then she pointed. “You.” The handsome one. “You.” Young and very well muscled—she had seen that when he had climbed out of the pool.

The chosen three led her upstairs. Araminta thought that was daring enough, but the night swiftly evolved into a strenuous sexual adventure as Mr. Bovey began teaching her acts that could be performed only in a group. “Trust me,” one of hims said as he opened an aerosol in her face. “It’s a booster. It’ll amplify your pleasure, sort of even things up between you and mes.” Araminta breathed it down. It was potent.

They gathered around her, strong hands supporting her in different positions. She was made to climax with each of hims in turn, with the booster increasing the sensation each time as it gradually saturated her bloodstream. After the third one she flopped back on the mattress in a lovely warm fugue. That was when she saw that more of hims had arrived to wait silent and naked around the bed. She did not protest as they stared down excitedly. “Yes,” she told them. In unison the fresh bodies closed in.

More than once that night Araminta swooned from a combination of exhaustion and aerosol-fueled ecstasy. Each time he allowed her a small rest before rousing her again. Those were the occasions when she dreamed her strange dream.

She did not wake up until midmorning. When she did, the details of the night had merged together into a single strand of relentless animal behavior. She had surprised herself by yielding to everything he had demanded from her.

The dinner date Bovey was lying on the bed beside her. He was the only one left in the bedroom. “Good morning,” he said with soft politeness.

“Yeah,” Araminta said. She still felt hopelessly tired as well as unpleasantly sore. The aerosol had worn off, leaving her skin cool and slightly clammy.

“You look beautiful when you’re sleeping. Did you know that?”

“I … no one has told me that before.”

“How do you feel?”

“Uh, okay, I suppose.”

“All right,” he said in an understanding tone, and stroked some disheveled hair from her face. “Let me put it this way: Would you like another night like that?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and knew she was blushing. Despite the frequent outrages he had committed, it had been absolutely the best sex she’d ever had, exactly the kind of multiple-partner athleticism Cressida always boasted about and she had been too timid to try. But last night it technically had been only one man; this way she got the thrill without the emotional guilt—almost.

“I hoped you would. Not every single can cope with me like that. You’re very special, Araminta.”

“I …” She hesitated, unsure how much to confide. That is stupid. “It was like I was becoming part of you. Is that silly?”

“No. With an experience that acute, there’s always a merger through the gaiafield with anyone nearby, though you mostly remained closed to me. Was that by choice?”

“I don’t have gaiamotes.”

He gave her a curious look. “Interesting. I was sure … nah, skip it. The house is running a bath for you.”

“Thank you. So where do we go from here?”

“There’s a play on at the Broadway Empire, some kind of comedy, with real actors. I’ve booked for tonight.”

That was not quite what she wanted qualifying. “Lovely. And after?”

“I would like you to come back here, back to this bed. I’d really like that.”

Araminta nodded demurely. “I will.” She did not think it could ever be as exciting as last night had been; first times were always special. But if hes were just as randy tonight, it would still be the hottest sex in town. She eased herself off the bed, drawing a sharp breath as she straightened up. “Um, how many bodies have you got?”

It was his turn to seem reticent. “Over thirty.”

“How many … last night?”

“Six,” he said with a very male grin of satisfaction.

“Ozzie!” That’s it. I’m now officially a complete trollop. Can’t wait to see Cressida’s face when I tell her that. Six! She’ll be as jealous as hell.

“What do you want for breakfast?” he asked as she opened the door to the en suite bathroom.

“Orange juice, Bathsamie coffee strong, croissants with strawberry and hijune jam.”

“It’ll be ready when you are.”

The regrav capsule sped low over the scrub desert. Dead and desiccated bushes virtually the same color as the crumbling jaundiced mud from which they had grown merged to a speckle blur as Aaron looked down through the transparent fuselage. Their jumbled smear confused his visual perspective, making it difficult to tell if their altitude was one meter or a thousand. He often found himself searching for the capsule’s jet-black shadow slithering fast across the low undulations to provide a clue.

A couple of minutes before they reached the ranch, he saw a fence; posts of bleached wood were sticking up in a section of desert that appeared no different from the rest of the wretched expanse. Rusty spikewire sagged between them. More fences flashed past underneath as they drew closer. The fields they marked out were smaller, closer together. Eventually the clutter of buildings that comprised the ranch itself was visible, nestling at the center of a vast web of spikewire.

“What does he raise out here?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“Korrimues,” Aaron said.

“I can’t see anything moving.”

“Wrong season, I think.”

She gave the vast desert a disapproving look. “There are seasons out here?”

“Oh, yes. It rains every ten years.”

“Gosh, how do the ranchers stand the excitement?”

The capsule began to circle the ranch. He counted eight large outlying barn sheds, all built from an ancient ginger-colored composite; the house in the middle was a white stone structure surrounded by a big emerald garden. An outdoor swimming pool shimmered deep turquoise. Terrestrial horses cantered around a broad paddock.

“Okay, that actually looks rather nice,” Corrie-Lyn said grudgingly.

His field functions reported that the capsule was being given a broad-spectrum scan. “Not quite paradise,” he muttered. His own passive scan was registering some dense power clumps in the ground. They were arranged in an even circle around the perimeter: a defense ring of some kind.

The capsule settled on a designated zone just outside the garden.

“Can you …” he started to say to Corrie-Lyn, then saw her disinterested expression. “Just leave the talking to me, okay?”

“Of course I will. Shall I just stay in here? Or would you like to gag me? Perhaps you’d prefer me stuffed into a suspension pod?”

“Now there’s true tempting,” he told her cheerfully, ignoring the scowl.

Paul Alkoff was leaning on the five-bar gate that led to the paddock, dressed entirely in faded blue denim with a Stetson perched on his head. He was a tall man who finally was allowing his seven and a half centuries to show. His hair was snow-white, worn long at the back but perfectly brushed. His movements were noticeably slow, as if each limb were stiff. With skin that was tanned dark brown, his pale blue eyes seemed to shine out of his thin face. A neatly trimmed goatee added to his palpable air of distinction. Even Aaron recognized that he was in the presence of a formidable man; he immediately began to wonder just how much living had been crammed into those seven hundred fifty years. A great deal, if he was any judge.

“Sir, thank you for agreeing to see me.”

Corrie-Lyn shot him a surprised look at the respectful tone.

Paul gave a small smile, then lifted his Stetson an inch off his hair and inclined his head to Corrie-Lyn. “Ma’am. Welcome.”

“Um, hello,” a thoroughly confused Corrie-Lyn managed.

“Don’t normally allow your kind in my home,” Paul said directly to Aaron. “So you’ll understand if I don’t ask you in and break bread with you.”

“My biononics are for combat. I’m not Higher.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t suppose it makes no difference these days, son. That battle was fought a long time ago.”

“Did you win?”

“Planet’s still human, so I guess we did some good back then.”

“So you are Protectorate?”

“My old partners asked me to let you land. When I inquired, I heard they got leaned on by people high up in the movement, people we haven’t heard from in a long time. You made that happen, son, so I’d appreciate it if you don’t go all coy with me now.”

“Of course not.”

“What do you want?”

“Information.”

“Figured as much.” He turned and rested his elbows on the top of the gate. “You see Georgia out there? She’s the one with the dappled mane.”

Aaron and Corrie-Lyn walked over to the gate. “Yes, sir,” Aaron said.

“Frisky little thing, ain’t she? I can trace her bloodline right back to Arabians on Earth from the mid-nineteenth century. She’s as pure as they come. Not an artificial sequence in her whole genome; conceived naturally and born from her mother’s belly just as every one of her ancestors had been. To me, that is a thing of beauty. Sublime beauty. I do not wish to see that spoiled. No, indeed, I don’t want to see her foals improved. She and her kind have the right to exist in this universe just as she was intended to by the planet that created her.”

Aaron watched the horse as she cantered around, tossing her mane. “I can understand that.”

“Can you, now? And my hat.”

“Sir?”

Paul took his Stetson off and examined it before returning it to his head. “This is the real McCoy, I’ll have you know. One of the very last to come out of Texas, over two hundred fifty years ago, in a factory that manufactured them for damn near a millennium before ANA finally shut down what it regarded as an inconsequential irrelevance. The once-humans who live on that poor ole world these days don’t even make them as a hobby anymore. I bought a whole batch and keep them in stasis so every time I wear one out, I’ll have a fresh one. I have only two left now. That’s a crying shame. But then, I don’t expect to be around long enough to use that last one. It’ll sit right there on top of my coffin.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”

“So tell me, son, do you see what I am now?”

“Not quite, no.”

Paul fixed Aaron with a perturbingly intense stare. “If I can get all hot under the collar about the purity of a hat, just think what I’m like when human heritage is threatened with extinction.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. I’m Protectorate and proud of it. I’ve played my part in preventing those obscene perversions from spreading their sanctimonious bullshit supremacy across these glorious stars. Higher isn’t like some old-fashioned religion or ideology. With them, fellas who hold two different beliefs can argue and cuss about such notions all night long over a bottle of whiskey and laugh it off in the morning like gentlemen. But not Higher culture. I regard it as a physical virus to be exterminated. It will contaminate us and take away choice. If you are born with biononics infecting your cells, your choice is taken away from you. You will download your thoughts into ANA. That’s it. No option, no alternative. Your essence has been stolen from you before you are born. Humans, true humans, have free will. Highers do not. No indeed.”

“And the life they live between birth and download?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“Irrelevant. They’re the same as pets or, more likely, cattle, cosseted and protected by machines until the moment they’re ready to submit to their metal god in a final sacrifice.”

“So what’s the point in that god creating them?”

“Ultimately, there won’t be. Despite the years, this is early days yet. ANA believes it is our replacement. If it is allowed free rein, it will see us extinct.”

“A lot of species continue after their postphysical plateau,” Aaron said. “For most a singularity is a regeneration event. Those that don’t go postphysical diversify and spread across new stars.”

“Yes. But no longer what they were.” Paul gazed out at Georgia again. “Unless she is protected, the universe will never see her like again. That is wrong. It cannot be allowed.”

“The Radical Higher movement is almost extinct,” Aaron said. “There are no more infiltrations. ANA saw to that.”

Paul smiled thinly. “Yeah, and ain’t that an irony? Maybe the Good Lord is having a joke on his metal pretender over morals.”

“I need to ask you about your time as an active Protectorate member.”

“Go right ahead, son. I don’t know what you are, but I’m pretty sure what you’re not, and that’s the police or some version of them.”

“No, sir, I am not.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“I’m here about Inigo.”

“Ah. That was high up on my list. You two looking for him?”

“Did you know he was Higher?”

Paul’s reaction startled Aaron. The old man slapped his hand on the gate and produced a beaming smile. “Son of a bitch! I knew it, I goddamn knew it. Hell, he was a wily one. Do you know how long we watched him?”

“So you suspected?”

“Of course we suspected.”

“That means Erik Horovi was Higher?”

“Erik? Hell no. Poor kid. He was used just like the sisters by that bastard angel.”

“Sisters? Are you talking about Inigo’s aunt?”

“You don’t know so much, after all, do you, son?”

“No, sir. But I do need to learn. It is urgent.”

“Ha. Everything is urgent. The whole universe is in a hurry these days. I know it’s that way because I’m older, but damn—”

“Erik,” Aaron prompted gently.

“We’ll start with the angels. You know what they are?”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“The Radical Highers wanted to convert entire worlds to their culture. They didn’t want to give people a choice about it. Like I said, if you’re born with biononics, you don’t have any options in life, in what you become. So back then these angels would land on a planet and do their dirty work, starting the infection, which would spread across the entire population. Now, the Protectorate watched the spaceports for anyone with biononics and kept tabs on them while they were visiting; still do, so I gather. So the angels would land out in the wilds somewhere. They’d jump off ship while it was still in low orbit, and their force fields would protect them through aerobraking.” He gave Aaron a long look. “Could you do that?”

“Yes, I suppose so. It’s just a question of formatting. But back then it would have been cutting edge.”

“Oh, the bastards were that, for sure. The force fields were what earned them their name. They were shaped like wings and brought them down to the world amid a fiery splendor. A lot of them got through unnoticed. This time, though, we got lucky; a sympathizer out fishing saw the thermal trail it left over the ocean and called it in. Me and my team tracked the monster to Kuhmo. But we weren’t quick enough. By the time we got there, it had hooked up with Erik Horovi and Imelda Viatak, who were dating just like normal kids. Now, the thing with angels is they’re hermaphroditic, and they’re beautiful. I mean really beautiful. This one was exceptional even by their standards, either a pretty boy or a real humdinger of a girl, depending on your own gender. It was what you wanted it to be. So it made friends with Erik and Imelda and went to bed with both of them, Erik first. Now, that’s important. Its organs injected his sperm with biononics. Then it lay with Imelda and impregnated her with Erik’s altered sperm.”

“Contraception?” Aaron queried.

“No use. Angels can neutralize it faster than any medic. So the kids find they’re having a baby, and the DNA test proves it’s theirs, no question. Biononics are hellishly difficult to detect in an embryo even today. Back then it was near impossible. So bang, you’ve got a changeling in the nest without ever knowing it. Biononics don’t come active until puberty, so by then it’s too late. Plant enough of them in a population, and a few generations later most of the births are Higher. But we intercepted this little love triangle in time.”

“The college art block,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“Yes, ma’am. You might say the angel put up something of a fight. But we got it. All you really need to defeat biononics is a heavier level of firepower. The art block got in the way.”

“What about the baby?”

“We took Erik and Imelda back to our field headquarters. She was pregnant, about two weeks gone, as I recall, and it was infected.”

“I thought you couldn’t tell.”

Paul looked straight ahead at the horizon. “There are ways you can find out. You have to test the cells directly.”

“Oh, Ozzie,” Corrie-Lyn breathed. Her face had paled.

“We took it out of her and checked. No empryo can survive that kind of test. Fortunately, we were right that time; it was one of them.”

“You’re not human, no matter what you claim.”

Aaron gave her a furious look. She started to say something, then threw her hands up in disgust and walked away.

“Sorry about that,” Aaron said. “What happened?”

“Standard procedure in cases when the girl knows she’s pregnant, which Imelda did. We can’t wipe weeks from their memories; that would be detectable. So we took another ovum from her and fertilized it with Erik’s contribution and implanted it. Then they both got a memory wipe for the evening they spent with us. Next morning they wake up with a bad hangover and can’t remember what they did. Typical teenage morning after.”

“Did it go wrong, then?”

“No, son, everything worked perfectly. Nine months later they had a lovely little girl. A normal one.”

“So how was Inigo conceived?”

“Imelda had a sister.”

“Sabine.”

“Yes. They were twins. Identical twins.”

“Ah. I think this is starting to make sense.”

“I should have realized. It’s every teenage boy’s ultimate fantasy; plenty of men, too.”

“He slept with both of them.”

“Yes. Him and the angel. You just confirmed that for me. Finally. Part of the Protectorate’s whole cleanup procedure is to review the angel’s memories to find out who it has contaminated. Hacking into its brain is a terrible, terrible thing, one of the greatest abuses of medical technology possible. It takes days to break the protection which biononics provide for the neurons. I used to do it for the team, may God forgive me, but it was necessary. There’s no other way of discovering what those devil-spawned monsters have been up to. It’s not an exact science, now or then. Minds are not tidy little repositories like a memory kube. I had to merge my mind with its and endure its vile slippery thoughts inside my own skull. When I reviewed its recent memories, I actually experienced coupling with Imelda.” He closed his eyes, clearly pained by the fraudulent memory. “Her face was inches from me. She tasted so … sweet. But now, I don’t suppose it was all her. Rather, the memories weren’t just of her. I couldn’t tell the difference between the girls. Damnit, at the time I didn’t know there was a difference I should be searching for.”

“So Inigo was born as part of a radical Higher infiltration plan.”

“Yes. We were shocked when we found out Sabine was pregnant, but that was just before she was due. There were a lot of arguments within my team about what we should do.”

“Snatch the baby and test it.”

“That was one option. The mild one.” Paul looked over at Corrie-Lyn, who was sitting on a low concrete wall outside one of the barns.

“But intervention becomes progressively difficult as time winds away, especially once the child is born. We’re not … There’s a difference between abortion and infanticide—to me, anyway. And once it was born, it had a legal right of residency. Even if we took it away from the mother and shipped it back to the Central worlds, they’d just send it right back. Legally, it’s a mess. Which is why the Protectorate was formed: to stop the whole nightmare scenario before it gets politically complicated.”

“So what did you do?”

“I never really believed the girls having a kid two weeks apart was coincidence. In the event, we settled for observation. If Inigo was infected, he’d give himself away eventually; they all do.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No. We monitored him off and on for over twenty-five years. He never put a foot wrong. He was a straight-down-the-line normal human: school, university, girlfriends. Not exceptionally sporting. Got injured when he played football. Had to get a job. Kept out of local politics. Signed up with a rejuve finance company. When he took aerosols, he got high. Took a boring academic position in the state university cosmology department. There was nothing to indicate he had biononics. Right up until you arrived today I’d still have said he most probably didn’t. I had come to accept that his birth maybe was coincidence, after all. Believe me, son, if we’d confirmed it when he reached legal age, we would have made a quiet ultimatum.”

“Leave or die.”

“Yes. There’s no other way you can treat them.”

“Then he did leave, didn’t he? All the way to Centurion Station.”

“Yes. And what a goddamned pitiful mess that’s turned into. Half the aliens in the galaxy want to shoot us out of space. Who can blame them?”

“It’s only the Ocisen Empire.”

“You mean they’re the only ones who have declared themselves. Don’t tell me you think the others are just going to sit back and let us wreck the very stars themselves.”

“Who knows? If I can find him, maybe we can put a stop to the whole Pilgrimage.”

“I should have killed him in the womb when I had the chance.”

“Whatever he is, he’s not Higher.”

“He might not be polluted with their culture yet, but it will come to him eventually.”

“Apparently not. He found an alternative to a route you believed was set in stone. His destiny is inside the Void, not with ANA.”

Paul shrugged. “Whichever one it is, it’s not a human destiny.”

“Our destiny is what we decide to make it. Free choice, remember.”

“You’re wrong, son. I see you believe in yourself, and I wish you well in that. But you’re wrong.”

“Okay, we’ll just differ on that one. What happened to Erik?”

“Bodyloss.” Paul caught Aaron’s expression. “Not us; it was a genuine accident. He was working hard to support both girls. A decent lad, I guess. The farmer he was helping out didn’t do very good maintenance. The agribot chewed him up something bad. This was maybe six months after the kids were born. His insurance was all paid up, but he’d only just had his memorycell fitted. It’s always the same in cases like that. The new body has only a few months of memories, which is never enough to install a decent level of personality. In his re-life state he was very childlike, ironically, because his entire childhood was what he lacked. There was no real emotional connection with the sisters and his two children. Not immediately. Imelda worked hard at correcting that. She did well. They went off together. Sabine and little Inigo got left behind. It kicked off a huge family argument. The sisters never really spoke after that.”

“Which is why Aunt Imelda got written out of his official history.”

“That’s pretty much it. Yes.”

“I’ve never met a more despicable human,” Corrie-Lyn said as the regrav capsule lifted from the ranch. “And I include our dear Cleric Conservator in that statement.”

“Did you ever meet a Higher angel?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“That’s it?” she shouted angrily. “That’s your justification?”

“I’m not trying to justify anything. All I’m doing is pointing out that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. What he used to do was part of the era.”

“He’s a psychopath. Fuck knows how many babies he’s killed. He belongs in suspension for the rest of eternity.”

“Dead, you mean.”

“Whatever!” she snapped, and slumped down into the cushioning, her delicate features set in a furious sulk.

“I told you to leave the talking to me.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Well, at least he helped us.”

“How?”

“There, now. You see, if you hadn’t gone stomping off in a huff—”

“Screw you. I bet you were Protectorate before the memory wipe. It certainly fits.”

“No.”

“You can’t be certain, though. And how come you have such highly placed contacts in their filthy organization?”

“I simply know who to ask in such circumstances, that’s all. Information does not imply compliance, and I don’t know where my data originate from.”

“Pah!” She turned to watch the desert skim past.

Aaron waited a minute for her to relent. When she didn’t, he smiled quietly and said: “Inigo bought a rejuvenation policy.”

“So?” She managed to spit it out with more petulance than a tantrumming five-year-old.

“It was part of his attempt to fit in with a normal existence,” Aaron continued passively. “No one with biononics needs a rejuvenation treatment; that’s strictly for Advancers and normals. Biononics maintain human cells at an optimum state; the body doesn’t age biologically after you hit twenty-five. He did it to fool the Protectorate. After all, he knew what his heritage was, which means he knew what they would do to him if he made a slip.”

“And that helps us how?”

“It means he had a secure memory store. It probably dates right up to his assignment to Centurion Station.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were deaf. And that helps us how?”

“Somewhere on Anagaska there’s an electronic version of the young Inigo’s personality. Alkoff gave me the name of the company he bought the policy from.”

“That’s not going to—oh, dear Ozzie! You have got to be kidding.”

Aaron grinned cheerfully at her. “About time this planet saw a little excitement.”

Prior to the Starflyer War, when the Commonwealth was essentially one society comprising predominantly physical citizens, the government created a very senior committee named the ExoProtectorate Council whose brief was to evaluate the threat level presented by each new alien species as it was discovered. After ANA came online and took over design, manufacture, and operation of the Commonwealth Navy’s warships, “threat” became something of a nonterm. If the old Commonwealth could defeat the Primes, ANA with its nearly postphysical technology was unlikely to be menaced by anything less than a malevolent postphysical. That was not to say that the remaining physical sector of the Commonwealth could not encounter a whole load of grief out among the stars, and so the ExoProtectorate Council lived on in a modified form inside ANA, operating independently of ANA: Governance.

Its meetings were few and infrequent. Therefore, when Admiral Kazimir Burnelli called for one, every delegate appeared, suspecting the reason. They met in a neutral perceptual reality in a secure location within ANA: an old-fashioned conference room with rather extravagant white-and-orange furniture and a panoramic window showing them the Mollavian plains with their wall of hydrogen volcanoes. Sheets of ice-pebble meteorites sleeted downward, burning crimson contrails, with lightning forks rippling in their wake.

Kazimir activated the perceptual reality and materialized in the seat at the head of the table. Gore flicked in a millisecond later, sitting directly to Kazimir’s right. He was followed by Justine. Ilanthe was the next to appear, a delicate-looking woman dressed in a blue and gray leotard. Her dark hair had been cropped short and colored with purple streaks. They did not represent enrichments; they were just highlights—a style Kazimir thought he recognized but could not quite place without running a check through his enhanced neural structure. Ilanthe was not worth the effort; she was the Accelerator Faction’s appointment to the Council and enjoyed making mischief where she could. The trick with her was not to rise to the bait.

Crispin Goldreich arrived in the seat next to Justine. Over a thousand years ago, he had been a Senator sitting on the original ExoProtectorate Council; it was an appointment he had maintained ever since. Kazimir and ANA: Governance allowed him to remain because when it came to advising on the political angle of a crisis, there were few better short of a full Governance convocation. Unfortunately, his usefulness was limited by a somewhat xenophobic view of aliens; several members of his family had been lost on Nattavaara during the Starflyer War, and that had shaped his opinion ever since. As such, he was a strong advocate of both the Isolationist and Internalist factions.

The last two were Creewan and John Thelwell, who respectively put forward Custodian and Darwinist faction positions.

“Thank you for attending,” Kazimir said. “I have implemented this Council because the situation with regard to the Ocisen Empire has entered a new stage. The navy squadron deployed in the Hancher domain has detected a massive Empire fleet now in flight. Its trajectory is aimed directly at the Commonwealth, specifically the sector containing Ellezelin.”

“How many ships?” Justine asked.

“Two thousand eight hundred and seventeen,” Kazimir replied.

“Of which nine hundred are their Starslayer class, the biggest, most expensive warships they’ve ever built. The Empire’s economy has suffered a significant downturn over the last forty years in order to facilitate their production. They are armed with warheads similar to quantumbusters. They think we don’t know about them, but we detected the trials they conducted forty-five years ago.”

“They have quantumbusters?” Crispin asked.

“A variant of them, yes,” Kazimir said. “Such a development was inevitable. They make our atom-bomb-era species look like a bunch of pacifists.”

“And the navy hasn’t bothered to share this with us?”

“The Empire believes their advantage is that we don’t know. To make it public knowledge that the Empire possesses a device which the External worlds would regard as a doomsday weapon would be to give away our advantage, not to mention damaging public confidence.”

“They must be insane,” Creewan muttered. “The Emperor must realize how we’ll react to an assault of that nature. They know how strong we are.”

“Actually, they don’t,” Kazimir said. “Nobody outside ANA: Governance and myself knows the exact capability of the deterrence fleet.”

“Please tell me it is strong enough to deal with the Ocisen Empire.”

“Don’t concern yourself on that score. They do not pose any sort of threat.”

“Are they alone?” Gore asked. “The ambassador was quite adamant that they’d dug up some decent allies.”

“There were no non-Empire ships in the fleet which launched,” Kazimir said.

“We’ll make a politician out of you yet, my boy. So do we know for sure that the Starslayer class is armed only with quantumbusters, or have they found some nasty leftovers from someone who went postphysical?”

“We’d have to intercept a Starslayer and scan it to be certain of the precise contents,” Kazimir said. “I don’t advise that. In Ocisen terms that provocation would be a declaration of war. Plus, we’d tip our hand how powerful we are.”

“Well, what the hell do you advise?” Crispin asked. “They’re going to find out eventually.”

“I’d like to avoid that. What I’d like to see applied to the Ocisens is something along the lines of intense diplomatic persuasion that they turn the fleet around and go home.”

“Won’t happen,” Creewan said. “If the Empire has launched what is essentially its entire navy at us, it will be politically impossible for them to return until the Pilgrimage has been halted. Asking them nicely just won’t hack it. We’ll have to use force.”

“What about another, more immediate threat to the Empire?” Justine suggested. “Some unknown ships approaching from another direction? We could deliver that, surely.”

“Yes,” Kazimir said. “But it simply postpones the inevitable. We can manufacture what appears to be a threat, but if their fleet returns to challenge an intruder, then our bluff will be called. I cannot blow up star systems simply to maintain an illusion. No matter the morality, there is a considerable physical problem with radiation. Our firewall project showed that.”

“How long until they get here?” Ilanthe asked.

“Their flight time to Ellezelin is seventy-nine days,” Kazimir said. “A significant figure, because the Pilgrimage fleet will not be completed by then. It is reasonable to assume their aim is to hit the Pilgrimage ships while they’re still on the ground. If the Living Dream were to get its ships into space, they would be a lot harder to intercept, especially for the Empire.”

“Then I don’t understand your reluctance to create a diversion. Once the Pilgrimage ships are in space, the Empire fleet is effectively neutralized. You don’t have to do anything as dramatic as blow up a star on the other side of the Empire. Launch a thousand drones with a phantom signature so it appears a hostile fleet is heading to the Empire. Buy us some time for Living Dream.”

“They’d know,” Gore said. “It’s the timing again. They launch their fleet. We have to delay it—and oh, look, here’s an unknown threat coming at them from the other side of space. How about that for coincidence. Even the Ocisens aren’t that stupid.”

“Don’t count on it,” John Thelwell muttered.

“It would have to be a credible threat to divert them,” Kazimir said.

“So skulk around the Empire’s borders and wreck a couple of stars or at least planets.”

“We employ the word ‘Empire’ too glibly,” Justine said. “The most literal translation of their planets is ‘Worlds upon which we nest.’ I’m ashamed this committee is prepared to demonize the Ocisens to justify force. We must concentrate on peaceful solutions.”

Ilanthe gave Gore a small victory smile as he glowered at his daughter.

“If they weren’t sending a fleet toward us armed with enough quantumbusters to wipe out every Commonwealth planet, I might not refer to them as a bunch of psychopathic fuckheads,” Gore snapped. “As it is, we are here to advise the navy on how to respond. You met the ambassador. Exactly what sort of peaceful overture do you think the Empire will respond to?”

“We have to provide them with options,” Justine said. “Preferably ones which allow them to save face.”

“Like pressuring Living Dream not to launch its ridiculous Pilgrimage,” Creewan said.

“Outside this committee’s mandate,” Ilanthe said swiftly. “We advise the navy on its response.” She did not even turn to look at Creewan. “You want to push for something like that, bring it up at a political meeting or even Governance.”

“It is a valid option,” Justine said.

“Not here it isn’t. Here we decide on how many of their suns we turn nova in order to convince them to turn back.”

“Nobody is turning Empire suns nova,” Kazimir said. “As I said, their fleet does not pose a physical threat to any aspect of the Commonwealth. It can be effectively neutralized.”

“That’s quite a big claim,” Ilanthe said. “You sure about that?”

“Providing they do not possess an excess of stolen postphysical technology, yes.”

“Then do just that: neutralize them. Stop them cold in interstellar space. It’s not like they have a backup fleet to send if anything goes wrong.”

Kazimir glanced around the table. “Is that the recommendation of this committee?”

“It certainly is not,” Justine said.

“And your plan is …?” Ilanthe inquired archly.

“A warning,” John Thelwell said. “In all likelihood several warnings, considering who we’re dealing with. Followed by a demonstration of our capability and intent.”

“Would that be several demonstrations?” Justine asked acidly. “Just to get the point over how big and scary we are.”

“Once they see they cannot stop the Pilgrimage, they will turn back.”

“That implies a governing factor of logic and reason,” Crispin said. “This is the Ocisens we’re talking about. They’ve committed to stopping us. Even if it meant the death of every starship in their fleet, they’d keep coming.”

“The warships will be disabled, not destroyed,” Kazimir said. “I could not countenance such a loss of life.”

“Then I don’t even see what you convened us for,” Crispin said.

“Because Governance and I don’t want to reveal our true capability outside a genuine and serious threat, which this is not.”

“Rock and a hard place,” Gore grunted. “The only way to deal with them without huge loss of life all around is by using ANA’s technology, which in turn makes us frightening to all the physical aliens knocking around this section of the galaxy.”

“This is a morals debate?” Ilanthe mocked.

“It might get even the Raiel worried about us,” Justine said.

“Gets my vote,” Gore said. “Supercilious little turds. It’s about time someone gave their pedestal a good kicking.”

“Oh, stop it,” Justine told him.

Gore leaned forward. “Deliver a warning to the command ship,” he said. “If it is ignored, disable that ship. If they continue after that, take the lot of ’em down. Use the lowest level of technology we’ve got that will do the job, but do it.”

“Seconded,” Crispin said.

“I would point out that it will be a nestling of the Emperor in charge of the fleet,” Creewan said. “The political implications of the ruling nest being defeated are not good. The likelihood of subsequent instability is strong.”

“Which neither harms nor concerns us,” John Thelwell said. He gave the Custodian a dismissive glance. “We’ve given the Empire a beating before; they never learn.”

“Our position gives us an obligation,” Justine said.

“Only according to human morals,” Ilanthe said. “These are aliens.”

“I wish to remain true to myself, thank you,” Justine said primly.

“Of course you do.”

“I vote against any physical force being used against the Empire fleet, no matter how restrained. We need to seek an alternative.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Kazimir said. “Anyone else against the motion?”

Creewan raised his hand.

Kazimir looked around the table. “Then it is the majority vote that the navy deliver a warning to the command ship and subsequently disable it if that warning is ignored. I will initiate that immediately.”

“And what if they keep coming after the command ship is taken out?” Justine asked. “Which they will, and you all know it.”

“Then I will reconvene this committee,” Kazimir said.

She let out an exasperated hiss of breath and against all etiquette withdrew instantly. The others stared at the vacated space as the perceptual reality adjusted to her absence.

“That’s what being in a real body does for you,” Ilanthe muttered archly.

“I will, of course, provide a secure link to the navy ship delivering the ultimatum,” Kazimir said. “All of you will be able to access the event.”

“How long until the demand is made?” John Thelwell asked.

“I’d like to bring in a ship which I know has the ability to disable a Starslayer without loss of life,” Kazimir said. “We have that capability in the Hancher assistance squadron. Flight time will be within ten days. The warning will allow them one Earth day to turn around.”

“We’ll be back here in two weeks, then,” Gore predicted.

Less than a second after the meeting officially ended, Ilanthe requested access to Gore’s personal perceptual reality. He had been expecting it and permitted her entry as he ambled along the white sand beach below the headland. She walked up out of the water, wearing a blue and white bikini.

“Very Ursula Andress,” he said appreciatively. Gone was the spiky Cat hairstyle of the meeting; she was shaking droplets out of long honey-colored tresses.

“Thank you.” Ilanthe squinted up at the noon sun, holding a pale hand across her forehead. “The governors you have configuring this place are very crude. Am I likely to get sunburn?”

“They’re not crude, just strong. Prevents hostiles trojaning in nasty surprises. And no, you won’t get sunburn; just increase your skin pigmentation factor.”

“Ah.” She blinked as her skin darkened to a rich bronze. “It’s still a very earthy environment to me. Will you get me drunk and seduce me?”

“Sex is common enough between enemies.”

“Oh, Gore,” she said, pouting. “We’re not enemies. Besides, we both got what we wanted out of the meeting.”

“Did we?”

“We both voted for the same thing. Why, is dear Justine still sulking?”

He started walking along the shoreline again. “One word of genuine advice: Don’t ever underestimate my daughter. I still do occasionally. It’s a mistake.”

“Point taken. Do you think Kazimir will delay because of her?”

“Fuck, no. He’s the most Right Stuff human you’ll ever meet. Government gave him a clear order, so he clicks his boot heels, salutes, and presses the button.”

“You are so anachronistic. You really should update your references.”

“What? Haul myself all the way into the twenty-fifth century?”

“Well, one step at a time.”

“That’s when you were born, wasn’t it?”

She chuckled. “They’re right. You are pure evil.”

“Who’s they?”

“Just about everybody.”

“They’re probably right, then. So what can I do for you?”

“Can we deal?”

“On the Pilgrimage? Sure.”

“Interesting capitulation. Why do I not believe you?”

“It’s going to be a cusp event. Every faction knows it. Hell, even some of the animals outside are waking up to what’s going on. The Darwinists are wetting themselves with excitement. And your group isn’t much better while you run around pushing and prodding in places you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That ass Marius is clocking a lot of light-years.”

She pretended shock, her hand going to the base of her throat. “As is your Delivery Man.”

“True Conservatives are paranoid little creatures. They have good cause.”

“You claim you’re not one of them?”

“I have an affiliation.”

“Funny, according to our files, you’re the chairman of the board.”

“You really should update your references.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Look, do you want to deal or not?”

“You’re very hot in that pose, you know that?”

“Gore!”

“All right, what are you offering?”

“Some détente. A little less manipulation from both sides.”

“Let the animals decide, you mean. I don’t think I can buy that coming from you. In any case, we’ve both spent so long moving our pawns into place that they’ll just keep on going without us now.” He tilted his head to one side and smiled. “Or am I missing something?”

“No.”

“Really? Perhaps some critical event that you need to work smoothly?”

“Moments like that are made up by historians after the event to justify their own dreary existence. There’s no one thing which will make or break the Pilgrimage.”

“Really? Have you ever tried telling Ozzie or Nigel that the actions of an individual are historically invalid?”

“Nobody manipulated them. And this is a distraction. We simply want both sides to cool down.”

“So the Accelerator Faction wants to let galactic events be decided by animals. Hmm. No wonder you don’t like my environment; it doesn’t have any flying pigs.”

“Is that your answer?”

“No. But I am mildly curious. Unless either a faction or ANA: Governance itself intervenes, the Pilgrimage ships will launch. So what the fuck exactly is the Accelerator line on the galaxy being devoured by the Void, exterminating all life, including ourselves?”

“It won’t happen. This is why I’m here, to tell you we have taken precautions in the event of the worst-case scenario.”

Gore stopped and turned to stare at her, genuinely surprised. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If the Void’s boundary sweeps through this sector of space, Earth and ANA will be perfectly safe.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Oh, yes, we do.”

“I really, really hope you’re not basing your goals on some chunk of weapons technology you’ve managed to cobble together with a couple of old replicators. The Raiel cannot defeat the boundary. Even ANA: Governance can’t work out what will happen if and when the Void’s boundary washes across itself.”

“That level of expansion is extremely unlikely, to the point of sheer impossibility. First, the stars of the Wall have tremendous mass, enough to facilitate the wishes of every Living Dream pilgrim for centuries. It is an absolute fallacy that every star in the galaxy will be engulfed by the Void. It’s Raiel propaganda shouted in tedious repetition by the Ocisens. The Raiel are an ancient failed race, as changeless as the Void itself; they have no right to dictate to us. Even if the entire galactic core gets devoured, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing alive in there; the planets are radiation-saturated husks of rock. You even believe it yourself, always accusing us of wanting the devourment. Have I ever said that?”

“No. I know exactly what Accelerators want: fusion. Right? You want to merge ANA with the fabric of the Void continuum. You think that’s how we’ll achieve postphysical status.”

“You have accessed Inigo’s dreams. We know the Conservatives have analyzed them as thoroughly as everyone else. Inside the Void, the mind directly affects the fabric of the universe. We can take charge of our own destiny.”

“No, no, no,” Gore shouted. “The Void is not a fucking universe; it is a microverse, a tiny insignificant little speck of nothing. In cosmological terms, it doesn’t even register. You can play God in there, for sure; the Waterwalker does it. But you’re only God in there, nowhere else. It is an alien version of ANA, that’s all. That’s not transcendence; it’s being so far up your own ass that you can’t see what’s going on outside.”

“It is a huge opportunity for growth. The Void has stalled; it has been changeless for millions—billions—of years. We can reinvigorate it. Humans have already begun that process, ordinary pitiful animals that now have mental powers even we can only fantasize about. Imagine what will happen when ANA has full access to such a technology and begins to manipulate it in new directions.”

“Sweet Ozzie, you are pitiful. I’d be contemptuous if I considered you sentient, but you’re not even that.”

“We knew you would be opposed to the fusion. This is what our offer concerns.”

“Go on,” Gore said suspiciously.

“We will duplicate ANA. Those who wish to attain fusion with the Void can stay here; those who do not can transfer over and fly free.”

“That doesn’t solve a fucking thing, girlie. The Void can’t be allowed to fuse with a postphysical mind or even ANA, which, face it, isn’t there yet.”

Ilanthe’s expression hardened. “Your language betrays you. ‘Can’t be allowed’? You don’t have the right to make that judgment. Evolution will occur, triggered either by the Pilgrimage or by a more direct connection. For all you know, the Waterwalker himself may bring about expansion.”

“He happened a thousand years ago, ten thousand for all we know.”

“Time is irrelevant in there.”

“Shit! You’re not Accelerators, not anymore; you’ve seen the light and converted to Living Dream.”

“We have seen an opportunity to advance ourselves and taken it. We have never hidden our purpose from anyone.”

“Accelerators didn’t start out lusting after the Void.”

“Now you are betraying your age, your own changeless nature.”

“I should just get out of the way, then, should I? Maybe simply erase myself? Make it all nice and simple for the new order.”

“You are responsible for your own destiny.” She shrugged an elegant shoulder. “Your choice.”

“Okay, granted, and I will make it, believe me. But assuming you’re right and the Void doesn’t expand like a hyperspace tsunami when the Pilgrimage gets inside, how are you going to fuse ANA with it?”

“We don’t have to. Highers will travel with the Pilgrimage ships. They will study the true nature of the Void fabric and the mechanism which generates it.”

“If it can be built once,” Gore said quietly, “it can be built again.”

Ilanthe smiled. “Now you understand. We can build a second Void here in this solar system and bring about the fusion right away. ANA will evolve and transcend.”

“Nice science experiment. What happens if it doesn’t work? ANA is the core of Higher culture; Earth is the physical center of the Commonwealth. If you take that away, two cultures will suffer.”

“I never thought I’d hear that: Gore Burnelli, whining liberal. Normal, Higher, and Advancer humans will have to make their own way in the universe. That, too, is evolution.”

“In a galaxy that your arrogance will have given a very short future.”

“Our solution is one that will satisfy all factions. Both of us can carry on almost as before.”

“You weren’t even born on Earth. I was. It’s my home. And I’m not letting anyone fuck with it.”

“Then you are even less developed than we gave you credit for. Our offer stands. I expect the other factions will take us up on it when they see the inevitability of what is to come.”

“Are you planning to blow the Empire fleet out of space?”

Ilanthe looked genuinely indignant. “Of course not. They are an irrelevance. Kazimir will deal with them one way or another.” She smiled coldly. “Please consider our offer, Gore. It is made in the spirit of reconciliation. After all, if anyone can be said to be ANA’s father, it is you. Time perhaps to let go and allow your child to make its own way in life.” She trotted back into the waves and dived below the water.

Gore stared at the surf where she had disappeared, his mind tracing her withdrawal from his personal reality. “Fuck me,” he grunted.

When he walked along the dirt track that curved up around the headland, he found Nelson already sitting by the pool at the base of the tower. As usual, there was a tall drink on the table beside him.

“Did you get all that?” Gore asked as he sat down.

“I got it all. I just don’t think I believe much of it. For a start, she’s being very glib about the Pilgrimage ships actually getting inside. What are you going to do?”

“I knew they wanted the kind of abilities the Void fabric has—that’s a logical development on the way to becoming postphysical—but I’m concerned about their method of acquisition. I don’t believe a damn word about some bunch of selfless academics going with the Pilgrimage to study how the thing is put together. We’re going to have to root around a little harder to find out what they’re really up to out there. Find out what you can about that guy Marius was visiting on Arevalo, that physicist, Troblum.”

“Will do. And what if ANA does finally become capable of ascending to postphysical status?”

“I’ve always known it would right from the start. That was the whole point of it—well, that and giving ourselves the ability to defend the Commonwealth.”

“Are you going to try to stop it?”

“Of course not. I just don’t want the natural process hijacked. And that’s what’s going to happen if we’re not careful.”

It was already night when Aaron’s regrav capsule landed on the pad of St. Mary’s clinic, just outside the reception block. He stepped out and looked around. The clinic was set in four square miles of thick forest, with individual buildings scattered across the landscape. Tall gistrel trees formed a dark wall around the pad, their long feathery branches blocking any view of the villas, medical blocks, spas, and leisure domes he knew were out there. The only light came from the long windows of the reception block thirty meters away, shining through the black trunks.

Corrie-Lyn stood beside him, straightening her blouse. Her face was screwed up. “Gosh, I love the whole gloomy jungle-with-wild-creatures look they’ve gone for. Very welcoming.”

“Perhaps we could get your manic depression eradicated while we’re here.”

“Screw you.”

“Now remember, darling, happy faces.”

He gripped her hand and produced a big bright smile. She almost shook free, then remembered and drew a reluctant breath. “Okay, but this better be quick.”

The reception doors opened as they walked toward the low building. It was a plush interior that looked as if it had been carved out of pink and gold marble, with secluded grotto chambers recessed into the wall of the central hall. Most of the chambers had been utilized by exclusive retail outlets as display booths for their inordinately expensive designer clothes and products.

Their personal clinician was waiting to greet them: Ruth Stol, who clearly had been designed to promote the clinic’s expertise, with a body that resembled a teenage goddess draped in semitranslucent silver and pink fabric. Even Aaron, who was perfectly mission-focused, took a moment to admire and smile at the vision of vitality who extended her flawless hand in greeting. His field functions detected a discreet scan from the building security net, which he deflected easily enough, showing the sensors an image of a moderately overweight man. The additional volume around his torso was actually provided by a bandolier harness carrying an array of weapons.

Ruth Stol was devoid of all enrichments, though she had more macrocellular clusters than the average Advancer. Her nervous system shone with impulses operating at the kind of rate that normal humans could achieve only with a serious dose of accelerants.

“Thank you so much for choosing our clinic, Mr. Telfer,” she said. Her hand pressed against Aaron’s palm, squeezing flirtatiously. His biononics ran a check for pheromone infiltration. Paranoid! But her touch and voice were definitely arousing him; his exovision grid showed his heart rate up, his skin temperature rising.

“No infiltration,” his u-shadow reported. So it was all natural, then. Hardly surprising.

“You’re welcome,” Corrie-Lyn said in a voice so cold that it should have produced ice droplets.

“Er, yeah,” Aaron mumbled belatedly. He reluctantly withdrew his hand, enjoying the coy amusement in the clinician’s limpid green eyes. “Thanks for seeing us at such short notice.”

“We’re always happy to help couples achieve a more secure relationship,” Ruth Stol said. “I believe you said you wanted twins.”

“Twins?” Corrie-Lyn repeated blankly.

“That’s right.” Aaron put an arm around Corrie-Lyn’s shoulders, feeling the muscles locked rigid. “The best we can have.”

“Of course,” Ruth Stol said. “Boys or girls?”

“Darling?” Aaron inquired.

“Boys,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“Do you have an idea of their physiological status?”

“At least as good as you,” Aaron told her, which produced another smile. “And I’d like the pair of us to be advanced to that level, too. It’s about time I went cutting edge.” He patted his bulky stomach ruefully. “Perhaps a little metabolism tweaking to thin me down.”

“I’d be very grateful for that,” Corrie-Lyn said. “He’s so repugnant to look at right now. Never mind sex.”

“Oh, darling, you promised not to mention that,” Aaron said tightly.

She smiled brightly.

“It’s a wonderful step to acknowledge any problems right at the start,” Ruth Stol said. “You’ll be an enviable family. We can begin our appraisal tomorrow and review what we can offer you. Our premium service will fast-track your changes; I don’t expect this to take more than a couple of weeks. Were you intending to carry the twins yourself?” she asked Corrie-Lyn. “Or is it going to be a womb tank?”

“Haven’t decided.” Corrie-Lyn smiled back. “I love him enough to consider the physical burden, but you’ll have to show me what you can do to make pregnancy easier before I commit.”

“How sweet. I’ll have a simulated sensory package of the full pregnancy option ready for you to review in the morning, and remember, we can always reverse the changes afterward.”

“Lovely.”

“We’ve given you villa 163, which has its own pool, and it’s not far from block three, where you’ll receive your treatments.”

“Excellent,” Aaron said. “I think I’ll go check out the main pool and the restaurants first, especially that Singapore Grill I’ve heard about. What about you, dear?”

“It’s been a long day. I’ll go to the villa and organize that.” Corrie-Lyn eyed the various displays around the hall. “After some shopping. I really like some of these designs.”

“Don’t spend too much.” He gave her a farewell peck on the cheek and headed out the door. His u-shadow extracted the clinic map from the local net, which would give the appearance of normality for another few minutes. “Can you get into the vault?” he asked it.

“No. There are no data channels into the vault.”

Aaron took a path away from the landing pad that would lead to the main pool building, a large blue-tinted dome that housed a lush tropical environment, with the pool itself fashioned to resemble a lagoon. The path lit up like a strip of glowing yellow fog under his feet. “What about the security system?” he asked his u-shadow.

“I can only access the lower levels. All guests are under permanent surveillance of some kind; several are red-tagged.”

“Really? Are we red-tagged?”

“No.”

“Will they know if I leave the path?”

“Yes. Various passive sensors are feeding the smartcore.”

“Start some diversions, please. Trigger alerts and attack the security net in several places, well away from me. Nothing to warrant a police call-out.”

“Initiating.”

Aaron left the path and started to run through the trees. His suit spun a stealth effect around him. After a minute of slipping unseen through the forest, he arrived at the administration block. There were two stories aboveground, and his research had shown ten floors cut into the bedrock beneath the forest. The secure storage vault was on the bottom. His field function scan revealed a complex array of sensors guarding the walls and the surrounding swath of garden.

He began to sprint past the last trees, accelerating hard with field-reinforced muscles until he was at the edge of the lawn; then he jumped, extending his force field wide, shaping it into two long swept-back petals. Suspended between his invisible wings, he glided directly at a specific window on the upper floor like a silent missile. He grinned into the air that rushed against his face and rippled his suit. Excitement was starting to build, and his biononics could suppress it only so much. Even though he knew what he was going to have to do, he was still enjoying himself; this was what he existed for.

Aaron let out an em-pulse from his biononics, targeted to disable the sensors and power supply around the window. When he was five meters from the wall, he triggered a disrupter effect. Glass turned to white powder and blew inward with the sound of damp cloth being ripped. He canceled his force field wings and dropped through the hole, hitting the floor with a roll.

Inside was a long finance department office, deserted and dark. The door was locked. He did not use the disrupter effect but simply smashed it down with amplified muscle power. The corridor outside ran the length of the building. Orange emergency lighting produced strangely angled shadows across the walls. His scrambler effect knocked out the net across half of the building. He jogged to the emergency stairwell and burst through, vaulted over the rail, and landed with a loud thud on the concrete floor below, his integral force field absorbing the impact. He scanned the area.

Two security managers were sitting in the control center, both heavily enriched. They were motionless as their u-shadows interfaced them with the clinic’s security net and they struggled to make sense of what was happening across the forest.

The door broke apart as Aaron walked through it. Eight energy dumps flew out from the bandolier straps under his suit, hand-size black discs that zipped through the air like cybernetic hornets. They struck the security managers before either could fire a shot. Both of them were transformed into silhouettes of searing white light as their personal force fields were overloaded relentlessly; tendrils of electricity lashed out from the incandescent shapes, grounding through the desks and chairs next to them. Ribbons of smoke crept up from the carpet around their feet. They began to thrash about as the discharge of energy soared to an unbearable thunderclap screech. Light panels in the ceiling detonated into splinters of bubbling plastic.

Aaron drew a jelly gun from the bandolier harness as the nimbus of light on the first manager began to fade. The man’s force field flickered erratically into a purple and orange shroud. Dark shadows infiltrated the dying luminescence, exposing swaths of smoldering uniform. Aaron fired. The manager disintegrated in a spherical wave of gore that spattered across the room. After that, Aaron simply waited a few seconds until the energy dumps completed their work on the second manager and her force field sputtered out. The room was plunged into darkness as she fell to the floor in a sobbing heap, barely conscious.

He knelt beside her and took the surgical cutter from his pocket. The little black and silver gadget extended its eight malmetal arms as he placed it carefully on her head. Unlike Ruth Stol, the clinic had not designed any beauty into the security manager. She had a plain round face with dark enriched eyes; the skin on her cheeks was red and raw from the crackling electron currents. Tears were leaking across them as she gazed up at Aaron.

“Please,” she croaked.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “You won’t remember this night when you’re re-lifed.”

The cutter settled on the crown of her head like some vampiric creature, the arms tightening to obtain a better grip on her singed flesh. Microsurgery energy blades slid out and began to cut. Aaron waited with only the sound of gooey blood droplets drizzling down from the soot-caked ceiling to break the dark silence of the room.

“Procedure complete,” his u-shadow reported.

Aaron reached down and gently pulled the surgical cutter. It lifted upward with a slimy sucking sound, taking the top of her skull with it. A small amount of blood welled up around the edges of the severed bone, dribbling down through the matted hair. Her exposed brain glistened a pale gray in the weak emergency lighting shining in from the corridor outside.

He poised his left hand a couple of centimeters above the gory naked flesh. The skin on his palm puckered in seven little circles. Slender wormlike tendrils began to wriggle out of each apex. He brought the hand down on her brain and manipulated his force field to bond the two together, preventing his hand from sliding even fractionally. The tendrils insinuated themselves into her neuron structure, branching again and again like some plant root seeking moisture. Those tips were hunting out distinct neural pathways, circumventing conscious control over not just her body but her thoughts.

Synapses were violated and corrupted successfully. His mentallic software began to pull coherent strands out of the chaotic impulses.

Her name was Viertz Accu, one hundred seventeen years old, Advancer heritage, currently married to Asher Lel. Two children. The youngest, Harry, was two years old. She was upset that she had pulled another late shift; little Harry did so like her reading to him before bedtime.

Aaron’s software moved the acquisition focus up toward the present.

All earlier emotional content was superseded by sheer terror. Body’s sensory input was minimal, sinking below waves of pain from the force field collapse. One memory rose above all the others, bright and loud: the surgical cutter descending. Starting to repeat. Thoughts becoming incoherent as the memory degenerated into a psychosis loop. Limbs shaking as bodyshock commenced.

Forget that, Aaron’s thoughts instruct the brain he now rules. He has to concentrate, to exert his own thoughts to squash the terror memory. His influence is assisted by the flawless positioning of the neuron override tendrils, making it impossible for her to resist. A different kind of mental pressure then is exerted. Her conscious thoughts wither to insensate status, effectively sinking her into a coma.

Stand, he commands the puppet body.

It straightens up, and Aaron rises beside it. His hand remains locked in place on top of her ruined head by the mucilage force field.

Clinic security system review. Schematics flip up into their mutual exovision, showing alert points. His u-shadow ends its roguish electronic assaults as he accesses the clinic net through Viertz’s private secure link. False signals are generated within the administration building to replace the equipment he neutralized during his entry.

Codes. Up from Viertz’s own memory and her macrocellular clusters spill file after file of codes for every aspect of the clinic. He deploys them to damp down the security net, reducing it to a level-zero state. Another set of commands resets the smartcore’s alertness, convincing it that it was receiving malfunction warnings and that the security managers now have everything under control.

Several operatives across the forest are calling in.

It’s all right, he mouths, and Viertz sends on a secure link. There’s been a spate of glitches; those boogledamned glints have been getting into the cabling again. They were chewing on a node, little bastards. “Boogledamned” is a word Viertz is fond of. Glints are tiny native rodents infesting the forest and always causing problems to the clinic and its machinery despite two illegal attempts by the management to exterminate them.

Generally the explanation is accepted. Viertz exchanges a few more in-character comments with colleagues and signs off.

Vault.

They walk along the ground floor corridor side by side, Aaron’s hand still firmly in place on her head. Viertz’s code opens the elevator doors. Aaron extracts additional overrides that will clear him to accompany her down to the bottom.

The vault level poses more of a problem. It is covered in sensors, all of which are linked directly to the clinic smartcore through isolated protected circuits. There are no overrides he can utilize to smooth his passage. If it sees him, it will query his identity immediately.

The mission is now time-critical.

As the elevator reaches the vault level, Aaron uses an em-pulse to kill all power circuits and unguarded systems. His scrambler field disables the protected security network. The smartcore now knows something is wrong but cannot detect what. The entire floor is an electronic dead zone.

Aaron slides the elevator door open with his free hand. Metal provides considerable resistance. The activators emit a screech as they are buckled by the pressure he exerts. He steps into darkness. Field function scans and infrared imaging reveal the short, empty corridor ahead. He walks along it with the zombie Viertz marching beside him until they reach the large vault door of metabonded malmetal at the end. Both wall and door are guarded by a strong force field that is powered independently from within. His free hand strokes across the undefended corridor wall until his fingers are resting over the armored conduit carrying part of the security net’s cabling. He presses down. A small disrupter pulse disintegrates the concrete. Dust pours out, and he pushes his hand deeper into the hole. He has to excavate up to his elbow until he reaches the conduit. There is a brief clash of energy fields, and the conduit shatters, exposing the optical cables inside.

The fingertips of his hand extrude slender filaments that penetrate the optical cables, immersing themselves in the blaze of coherent light flashing along the interior. His enrichments are interfaced directly into the smartcore through an unprotected link. A torrent of destructive software is unleashed by his u-shadow, corroding the smartcore’s primary routines like acid on skin. In the first eight milliseconds of the assault, the smartcore loses over half of its intellectual processing capacity. Its default preservation routines withdraw its connections to the vault security system, allowing it to retreat and lick its wounds in isolation.

Aaron’s u-shadow turns its attention to the connections along the other end of the expropriated optical cable and examines the security network inside the vault. It takes less than a second to map the system’s nodes and kubes, allowing it to remove the smartcore’s control and safeguard procedures. The force field switches off, and the thick door opens with a low swish of retracting malmetal.

Aaron removes his hand from the ragged hole. He and Viertz walk forward in tandem, passing through the air/dust shield with a gentle buzzt. Independent lighting panels click on, revealing a shiny oblong chamber filled with floor-to-ceiling racks of translucent pink plastic kubes.

The registry is a simple slim pedestal of metal just inside.

Viertz accesses the dormant software within. She is asked for her DNA-based authority certificate.

As he passes the threshold, Aaron’s field scans reveal two strange energy signatures emerging from the walls on either side of the vault. It is the final fail-safe to protect the priceless half million secure memorycells within the vault: not listed anywhere in the security net inventory and quietly imported from a Central world where such technology is unexceptional. Two guards with heavy weapons enrichments are sealed within the temporal suspension zone of exotic matter cages. Their enrichments were fully powered up when they began their two-year duty period. They do not ask questions as they step back into real time; they simply open fire.

Aaron’s force field immediately is pushed close to overload as it struggles to protect him and Viertz. His disadvantage is terribly obvious as energy beams pummel him and the woman. Dense waves of scarlet photons ignite with blinding ferocity around his chest and arms. He staggers back half a step.

Send authority certificate.

But the pedestal uses non-military-grade hardware. It cannot receive and acknowledge any information in such a hostile electromagnetic environment.

“Shit!” His bandolier belts launch a flock of electronic countermeasure drones and five niling sponges. The guards twist away from the threat, ducking behind the racks. Aaron reaches out with his free hand and manages to grip the top of the pedestal as the last of the energy barrage drains away from his force field. The filaments emerge from his fingertips and try to burrow into the nodes and cables underneath the metal.

Both guards spin out from behind the racks and open fire again. The niling sponges cluster together and activate their absorption horizons. Energy beams from the weapons curve bizarrely through the hot air to sink harmlessly into the black-star blooms drifting sedately in front of Aaron. Their horizons start to expand significantly. The guards shift to kinetic carbines. Their hypervelocity projectiles are unaffected by the niling sponges and smash against Aaron and Viertz. The force field flares bright copper, shading up toward carmine. Aaron can feel the strain the impacts are punishing his body with; reinforcement fields are struggling to hold him upright.

On your knees.

Viertz sinks quickly to the shiny floor, presenting a smaller, more stable target. His filaments have penetrated the metal casing of the pedestal and begin to affiliate themselves with the fine mesh of optical strands beneath.

A couple of energy dumpers skim toward Aaron. He shoots them with a simple ion shot from an enrichment in his forearm. His force field has to reformat momentarily to allow the ions through. It is a weakness that the guards exploit ruthlessly, concentrating their fire. He feels the kinetic projectiles lance into his shoulder and upper torso. Combat software reports five direct hits. Field scans reveal the nature of the foreign projectiles. Number one is a straight explosive, which is countered by a damping field, turning it to a lump of white-hot metal. Two releases a pack of firewire tangles, which expand through his flesh, ripping it apart at a cellular level, incinerating as they go, wrecking biononic organelles. They can be staved off only by a specific frequency disrupter field that attacks their molecular structure; that has a debilitating effect on the biononics still functional in the area. Three dispenses a nerve agent in sufficient quantity to exterminate five hundred humans. Biononics converge quickly to counteract the deadly toxin. Four is another explosive, neutralized along with one. Five is a cluster of microjanglers, microbe-size generators that jam his nervous system, inhibiting biononic and enrichment operations; a secondary function is to induce pain impulses. They require a scrambler field to kill them.

Blood pumps out from the cratered flesh and torn suit, to be flattened back beneath the reformatted force field. The surrounding fabric of his suit is saturated quickly. Biononics congregate around the edge of the wounds, acting in concert to knit the damage back together, sealing up veins, arteries, and capillaries. Inside his body the firewire tangles halt their expansion as the disrupter sabotages their molecular cohesion. It is too slow; they are causing a massive amount of damage—damage that is amplified by the microjanglers.

Aaron flings his head back to scream in agony as the microscopic technology war is fought within his muscles and blood vessels. But still he keeps hold of both Viertz and the pedestal.

His biononics shut off a whole series of nerves, eliminating the pain and all sensation in his shoulder and arm. A disconcertingly large section of the medical status display in his exovision is flashing red. Nausea plagues him. Shivers run along his limbs. The field medic sac in his thigh pushes a dose of suppressants into his bloodstream.

Another wave of kinetics pounds him. He is in danger of falling backward. His biononics and enrichments are reaching maximum capacity. Countermeasure drones do their best to confuse the enemy targeting sensors, but the narrow confines of the vault make such systems almost irrelevant.

His filaments interface with the registry kube in the pedestal.

Send authority certificate.

The registry software acknowledges Viertz’s authority, and the u-shadow runs a search for Inigo’s secure store. It locates the memorycell. The physical coordinates are loaded into Aaron’s combat routines: a volume of eight cubic centimeters to be held inviolate. The rest of the vault’s structure is now expendable.

He lets go of the pedestal and Viertz. The woman slumps forward, a motion that jolts her unsecured brain. A fresh upwelling of blood bubbles out around the circle of cut bone. The protective swirl of niling sponges deactivates, their black horizons folding in on themselves. Aaron raises his head and smiles an animal snarl through the clear air at the guards. Their barrage has paused as they take stock.

“Payback time,” he growls enthusiastically.

The first disrupter pulse smashes out. Half the precious racks rupture in a maelstrom of molten plastic. Both guards stagger backward. Jelly gun shots hammer at their force fields. Energy dumpers zip about, launched by both sides. Black niling horizons expand and contract like inverse novas. Kinetic projectiles chew into the vault’s concrete-and-marble walls. More racks suffer, shattering like antique glass. The plastic catches fire, molten rivulets streaking across the floor, spitting feeble flames from their leading edges.

Aaron positions himself between the guards and Inigo’s memorycell, shielding it from any possible damage. He manages to puncture the force field of one guard’s leg and fires the jelly gun into the gap. The leg instantly transforms to a liquid pulp of ruined cells. The guard screams as he topples over. His force field reconfigures over the stump, allowing the blood and gore to splash across the ground, where it starts to steam softly. Energy dumpers attach themselves to him like predatory rodents. He thrashes about helplessly as his force field diminishes.

Now it is just Aaron and the remaining guard. They advance on each other, each trusting in his own weapons enrichments. This is no longer a battle of software or even human wits. It is brute strength only that will prevail now.

At the end they resemble two atomic fireballs colliding. A shock wave of incandescent energy flares out from the impact, vaporizing everything it touches. One fireball is extinguished abruptly.

Aaron stands over the clutter of charcoal that seconds before was his opponent. While still staring down, he extends his good arm sideways. An X-ray laser muzzle emerges from his forearm. Its beam slices through the head of the legless guard, curves up to annihilate the man’s memorycell. Aaron lets out a long sigh, then winces at the dull pain throbbing deep in his shoulder. When he glances at it, the bloodstain has spread across most of his chest. The hole torn and burned through the suit fabric reveals nothing but a mangled patch of blackened skin seeping blood. His medical monitors report that the firewire tangles have burrowed deep; the damage is extensive. Sharp stabs of pain from his left leg make him gasp. His knee almost gives way. Biononics act in concert to trace and eliminate the microjanglers that are cruising recklessly through his bloodstream. If they infiltrate his brain, he will be in serious trouble. The medical sac still is pumping drugs into him to counter shock. Blood loss will become a problem very soon unless he can reach a medical facility. However, he remains functional, though he will have to undergo decontamination for the nerve agent. His biononics are not satisfied they have located all the toxin. The field scan function fine-tunes itself and scans again.

Aaron walks over to the rack containing Inigo’s memorycell. Niling sponges flutter through the air and return to his bandolier, snuggling back into their pouches. His feet crunch on a scree of fragments before squelching on blood and plastic magma. Then the memorycell is in his hand, and the most difficult stage of the mission is over.

Flames are taking hold across Viertz’s uniform as he walks out of the vault. She has not moved from her kneeling position. Aaron shoots her through the head with the X-ray laser, an act of mercy in case her memorycell is still recording impulses. It is not like him, but he can afford to be magnanimous in the face of success.

Three minutes later Aaron made it out onto the roof of the administration block. He walked over to the edge, drawing breath in short gasps. The numb shoulder wound had started to coldburn, radiating out waves of dizziness that his medical enrichments could barely prevent from overwhelming him. A terrible burst of pain from his legs, stomach, and spine drilled into him, blinding him as he convulsed. Unseen in his exovision displays, the biononics reported progress in their quest to trace and eliminate the remaining elusive microjanglers still contaminating his blood.

Slowly, stiffly, he straightened up again, teetering close to a two-story fall. His u-shadow reconnected to the unisphere as soon as he clambered out of the elevator shaft and reported that the remnant of the smartcore was yelling for help on just about every link the clinic had with the unisphere.

“Police tactical troops are responding,” the u-shadow informed him. “Clinic security officers are arming themselves. Perimeter is sealing.”

“We’d better leave, then,” Aaron said with bravado. He winced again at a shiver of phantom pain from his collarbone and called Corrie-Lyn. “Let’s go. I’m at designated position one-A.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Are you finished already?”

For a moment he thought she was joking. “What?”

“I didn’t realize you’d be that quick.”

Anger swiftly turned him to ice. The schedule he had given her had been utterly clear-cut. Not even the unexpected guards and subsequent firefight had delayed him more than forty seconds. “Where are you?” His exovision was showing him a local map with the police cruisers closing on the clinic at Mach eight.

“Er … I’m still in the reception area. You know they have some really nice clothes here, and Ruth Stol has actually been quite useful with styling. Who’d have thought it? I’ve already tried on a couple of these lovely wool—”

“Get the fuck into the capsule! Right fucking now!” he screamed. Tactical software assessed the situation, corresponding with his own instinct. The roof was far too exposed. Another involuntary shudder ran up his legs, and he went with it, tumbling over the edge, totally reliant on his combat software. The program formatted his force field to cushion his landing. Even so, the pain seemed to explode directly into his brain as he thudded into the ground. He rolled over and stumbled to his feet—far too slowly.

“The doors won’t open,” Corrie-Lyn said. “I can’t get to the capsule. The alarm is going off. Wait … Ruth is telling me not to move.”

Aaron groaned as he staggered erratically across the band of lawn surrounding the administration block—not that the trees would provide the slightest cover, not against the kinds of forces heading for him. Seeking darkness was a simple animal instinct.

“Take the bitch out,” he told Corrie-Lyn.

“What?”

“Hit her. Here’s a combat program,” he said as his u-shadow shunted the appropriate file at her. “Go for a disabling blow. Don’t hesitate.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Hit her. And call the capsule over. It can smash through the doors for you.”

“Aaron, can’t I just get the capsule to break in? I’m really not comfortable hitting someone without warning.”

Aaron reached the tree line. His legs gave way, sending him sprawling in the dirt and spiky vines. Pain that had nothing to do with the microjanglers pulsed from his damaged shoulder. “Help,” he croaked. “Oh, fuck it, Corrie-Lyn, get the capsule here.” He started crawling. His exoimages were a blurred scintillation coursing around his constricting vision.

“Hey, she’s grabbed me.”

“Corrie-Lyn—”

“Cow!”

“I can’t make it.” He pushed against the damp sandy soil with his good arm, trying to lever himself back onto his feet. Two police capsules flashed silently overhead. A second later their hypersonic boom smashed him back down onto the ground. Tree branches splintered from the violence of the sound. Aaron whimpered as he rolled onto his back.

“Oh, Ozzie, there’s blood everywhere. I think I’ve broken her nose. I didn’t hit her hard, really.”

“Get me,” he whispered. He sent a single command thought to the niling sponges in his bandolier harness. The little spheres soared away into the night, arching away over the waving trees. Violet laser beams sliced through the air, as bright as lightning forks. He grinned weakly. “Wrong,” he told the unseen police capsules.

The niling sponges sucked down the energy that the capsules pumped into them. Theoretically, the niling effect could absorb billions of kilowatt-hours before reaching the saturation point. Aaron had programmed in a limit. When the police weapons pumped their internal levels to that limit, the absorption effect reversed.

Five huge explosions blossomed high over the forest, sending out massive clashing pressure waves. The police capsules could not be damaged by the blast; their force fields were far too strong for that. But the wave fronts sent them tumbling through the night sky, spinning and flailing out beyond the edge of the forest as the regrav drives fought to counter the force. Down below, trees tumbled before the bedlam as if they were no stronger than paper, crashing into one another to create a domino effect radiating out from the five blast centers.

A blizzard of splinters and gravel snatched Aaron off the ground and sent him twirling five meters to bounce badly. Amazingly, he was still holding the memorycell as he found himself flat on his back, gazing up into a sky beset with an intricate webbing of lambent ion streamers.

“Corrie-Lyn,” he called desperately.

Above him, the pretty sky was dimming to infinite black. There were no stars to be seen as the darkness engulfed him.

Inigo’s Fourth Dream

After breaking camp just after dawn, the caravan was on the road for three hours before it finally topped the last ridge and the coastal plain tipped into view. Edeard smiled down on it with an adrenaline burst of enthusiasm. With nearly a year spent traveling he finally was looking at his future. Riding on the ge-horse beside him, Salrana squealed happily and clapped her hands. Several pigs in the back of O’lrany’s cart grunted at the sudden noise.

Edeard ordered his ge-horse to stop. The caravan pushed on inexorably, wagon after wagon rolling down the stony road. Directly ahead of him the foothills of the Donsori Mountains fell away sharply to the awesome Iguru plain below. It stretched away for mile after long mile: a flat expanse of rich farmland, almost all of which was under cultivation, its surface marked out in huge regular fields filled with verdant crops. A massive grid of ditches fed into wide, shallow rivers delineated by protective earthen embankments. Forests tended to sprawl around the lower slopes of the odd little volcanic cones that broke the plain’s uniformity. As far as he could see, there was no pattern to the steep knolls. They were dotted purely at random.

It was a strange geography, completely different from the rugged surrounding terrain. He shrugged at the oddity and squinted toward the eastern horizon. Part imagination, part horizon haze, the Lyot Sea was just visible as a gray line.

No need to imagine the city, though. Makkathran bestrode the horizon like a sun-washed pearl. At first he was disappointed by how small it was, but then he began to appreciate the distance involved.

“Quite something, isn’t it?” Barkus said as he rode his aged ge-horse level with Edeard.

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said. Additional comment seemed superfluous. “How far away are we?”

“It’ll take at least another half a day for us to get down to the plain; this last stretch of road down the mountains is tricky. We’ll make camp at Clipsham, the first decent-size town on the Iguru. Then it’ll be near enough another day to reach Makkathran itself.” He nodded pleasantly and urged his ge-horse onward.

Almost two days away. Edeard stared, entranced at the capital city, allegedly the only true city on Querencia. The caravan had visited some fabulous towns on their route, large conurbations with wealthy populations; several had parks bigger than Ashwell. At the time he had thought them grand, sure that nothing could actually be larger. Lady, what a bumpkin I am.

“Doubts here of all places?” Salrana asked. “Those are some very melancholy thoughts you’ve got growing in your head there.”

“Just humbled,” he told her.

Her thoughts sparkled with amusement, producing a teasing smile. “Thinking of Franlee?”

“Not for months,” he answered with high dignity.

Salrana laughed wickedly.

He had met Franlee in Plax, a provincial capital on the other side of the Ulfsen Mountains. A spree of bad luck on the road, including broken wheels and sick animals, as well as unusually early autumn storms meant the caravan was late reaching Plax. As a consequence, they had been snowed in for over six weeks. That was when he had met Franlee, an Eggshaper Guild apprentice and his first real love affair. They had spent most of the awful cold weather together either in bed or exploring the town’s cheaper taverns. The Eggshaper Guild’s Master had recognized his talent, offering him a senior apprenticeship with the promise of journeyman status in a year. He had been this close to staying.

But in the end his last promise to Akeem gave him a stronger direction. Leaving had been so painful, he had been sullen and withdrawn for weeks as the caravan lumbered slowly along the snowy Ulfsen valleys. A misery to live with, the rest of the caravan had grumbled. It took the remainder of winter and putting the Ulfsens between himself and Plax before he recovered. That and Roseillin, in one of the mountain villages. And Dalice. And … well, several more girls between there and here.

“Look at it,” he said earnestly. “We did the right thing.”

Salrana tipped her head back, half closing her eyes against the bright morning light. “Forget the city,” she said. “I’ve never seen so much sky.”

When he glanced up, he understood what she meant. Their high vantage point gave them a view into the azure infinity that roofed the plain. Small bright clouds scudded far overhead, wisps so tenuous that they were almost sapphire themselves. They seemed to twist as they traced long arcs above the Iguru before hitting the mountain thermals, where they expanded and darkened. The wind above the city always blows in from the sea, he remembered Akeem saying, and when it turns around, watch out. “What’s that smell?” he asked, puzzled. The air was fresh, zingy almost, yet somehow tainted at the same time.

There was laughter from the wagon that rolled past. “You backward village boy!” Olcus, the driver, mocked. “That’s the smell of the sea.”

Edeard dropped his gaze back down to the horizon. He’d never seen the sea before. In truth, from this distance it did not look like much: a gray-blue smudge line. He supposed it would become more interesting and impressive as they drew nearer. “Thank you, old man,” he called back, and supplied a fast hand gesture. By now he was on good terms with just about every family in the caravan. Abandoning them in Makkathran was going to be at least as hard as leaving Plax.

“Come on,” Salrana said. She ordered her ge-horse forward. After a moment Edeard followed suit.

“I was talking to Magrith at breakfast,” Salrana said. “She told me this road was the same one Rah traveled on when he led his shipmates out of the strife that followed their landing on Querencia. He would have seen the city for the first time from this very spot.”

“Wonder what he made of the Iguru,” Edeard muttered.

“There are times when I really don’t understand you, Edeard. We’ve reached Makkathran, which I only ever half believed in anyway. Us two, Ashwell villagers no less, are here at the center of our whole world. And all you do is talk about the stupid farmland outside.”

“I’m sorry. It’s … this place is odd, that’s all. Look around; the mountains just end, like something cut them off.”

“I’m sure there’s a geography guild if you’re that interested,” she sniffed.

“Now that’s an idea,” he said with sudden apparent interest. “Do you think it would be hard to get into?”

“Oh!” she squealed in exasperation. Her third hand shoved against him, trying to push him off his saddle. He pushed back and sent her hunching down, tightening her grip on the reins. “Edeard! Careful.”

“Sorry.” It was a standing joke along the caravan that he did not know his own strength. He shook his head and concentrated on the phalanx of genistars walking alongside the caravan, making sure the ge-horses were pulling the wagons in a straight line, the ge-wolves kept close, and the ge-eagles spiraled wide. The surface of the road was excellent, laid with large flat stones and well maintained—it was almost like a town pavement. But then, it was the main road through the mountains and led directly to the capital. Both eyes and farsight picked out several wagons and small convoys wending their way up and down the broad switchbacks ahead of them. He also saw a group of men on horseback accompanied by ge-wolves who were picking their way leisurely up the road. They would reach the head of the caravan by noon, he reckoned.

With his senses open wide, he slowly grew aware of the city’s emanations. It was a quiet background burble, similar to the aura of any human settlement, except that this time he was too far away to be sensing Makkathran’s population, no matter how talented and receptive he was. Besides, this had a different tempo from human minds; it was slower and much more content. It was the essence of a lazy summer afternoon distilled into a single long harmonic, pleasant and relaxing. He yawned.

“Edeard!” Salrana called.

He blinked, the worry in her mind switching him to full alertness. His ge-horse was meandering close to the edge of the road, not that it was dangerous. There was no sheer slope until farther down the hill where the switchbacks began; here there was just uneven ground and the curving crest. A quick couple of instructions to the ge-horse’s mind corrected his direction.

“Let’s try and arrive intact,” she said scathingly. “Lady, but your riding is still terrible.”

He was too disquieted to try to correct her with their usual banter. He no longer could sense the city’s lumbering thoughts; too much adrenaline was pumping through his veins. Now that the city was in sight, he was getting genuinely excited. At last the dreadful past was well and truly behind them.

It was midday when the caravan drew to a gradual halt amid the groaning of wood and metal brakes, the snorting of animals, and the quiet grumbles of humans. They were strung out over half a mile, curving around one of the longer switchbacks, which made it awkward for anyone else trying to use the road. The captain of the militia patrol who made them stop was mildly apologetic but insistent nonetheless.

Edeard was only a couple of wagons behind the front as Barkus asked: “Is there a problem, sir? This is our annual trip; we are well known to all the civic authorities.”

“I know you myself, Barkus,” the captain said as he eyed the caravan’s ge-wolves. He was sitting on a midnight-black terrestrial horse, looking very splendid in a ceremonial blue and scarlet tunic with polished brass buttons gleaming down the jacket. Edeard used his farsight to examine the revolver in the man’s white leather holster. It was remarkably similar to the one that had belonged to Genril’s family. The rest of the militiamen were similarly armed; they certainly were not carrying anything like the fast-firing gun of the bandits. Edeard did not know if that was a good thing. If the city did possess such weapons, they probably would not be put out on show with a patrol like this.

“However, I don’t remember you having so many ge-wolves before,” the captain said.

“We were in the Rulan province last year. A village was sacked by bandits; farms suffered losses in raids. You can’t be too careful.”

“Damned savages,” the captain spit. “Probably just two tribes fighting over some whore. I don’t know why you venture out there, Barkus. They’re all bandits and ne’er-do-wells if you ask me.”

Edeard slowly sat up very straight, keeping his gaze fixed on the captain. He strengthened the shield around him.

“Do nothing,” Barkus shot at him in a longtalk whisper.

“Edeard,” Salrana hissed quietly. He could sense the rage in her thoughts, barely contained. All around him the minds of his friends were radiating dismay and sympathy.

“But profitable,” Barkus continued smoothly. “We can buy very cheaply indeed out there.”

The captain laughed, unaware of the emotional storm gathering around him. “For which my friends in the city will pay greatly, I suppose.”

“That’s the essence of trade,” Barkus said. “After all, we do travel at considerable risk.”

“Well, good luck to you, Barkus. But I am responsible for the safety of Makkathran, so I must request that you keep your beasts on a leash within the city walls. They won’t be used to civilization. We don’t want any unfortunate accidents.”

“Of course.”

“You might want to get them accustomed to the idea as soon as you reach the plain.”

“I’ll see to it.”

“Good. And no trading with the denizens of the Sampalok district, eh?”

“Absolutely not.”

The captain and his men turned around and rode off down the road, their pack of ge-wolves chasing along behind them.

Barkus saw the caravan start off again, then urged his ge-horse back to Edeard and Salrana. “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” he said.

“They’re not all like that in the city, are they?” Salrana asked anxiously.

“Sweet Lady, no. Officers in the militia are usually the younger sons of an old family, little idiots who know nothing of life. Their birth provides them with a great deal of arrogance but no money. The militia allows them the illusion of continuing status, while all they actually do is search for a wealthy wife. Thankfully, they can do no real harm patrolling out here.”

Edeard was almost shocked by the notion. “If they need money, why don’t they join a guild and develop their psychic talent or begin a new business?”

To his surprise, Barkus burst out laughing. “Oh, Edeard, for all the distance you’ve traveled with us, you still have so much further to go. A nobleman’s son earn a living!” He laughed again before ordering his ge-horse back to the next wagon.

After Clipsham, Edeard wanted to take a horse and gallop across the Iguru until he reached Makkathran. Surely it would take no more than a few hours. However, he managed to keep his impatience in check and dutifully plodded alongside the wagons, helping to soothe the ge-wolves, which were unused to being leashed.

It was warm down on the plain, a gentle constant wind blowing a sea-humid air that Edeard found strangely invigorating. Winter here was a lot shorter than he was used to in the Rulan province, Barkus explained, though those months could see some very sharp frosts and several snow blizzards. By contrast, summer in the city was very hot and lasted for more than five months. Most of the grand families kept villas in the Donsori Mountains, where they spent the height of the hot season.

The Iguru’s farmland reflected the climate, with luxuriant growth covering every field. The road was lined with tall slender palm trees cloaked in ribbons of cobalt moss and sprouting tufts of scarlet and emerald leaves right at the top. Crops were different from those Edeard was used to. There were few cereal fields here but plenty of citrus groves and fruit plantations, with acre after acre of vines and fruiting bushes. Some cane fields were being burned back, sending black smoke plumes churning high into the clear sky. It was volcanic soil underfoot, which contributed as much to the healthy verdant hue of the vegetation as did the regular rain and sun-soaked sky. Armies of ge-chimps bustled about over the land, tending to the plants, with supervisors riding among them on horses. The farmhouses were grand whitewashed buildings with red clay tile roofs, as big as the guild compounds back in Ashwell.

Despite all the hours they spent rolling forward that morning, the panorama on both sides of the straight road remained unnervingly similar. Only the volcanic cones offered landmarks by which to measure progress. Edeard could see veins of silver streams running down their slopes before vanishing into the dense skirts of dark jade trees. But there were no caldera crowns; they rose to simple rounded crests.

On many of them cottages had been built on narrow ledges, compact yet elaborate constructions that his friends explained were little more than pavilions in which the city’s wealthy spent languid days enjoying the fabulous view; it was common to install a favored mistress in one.

Traffic began to increase as they neared Makkathran. Terrestrial horses were now more common than ge-horses, with their riders wearing expensive clothes. Wagons piled high with produce from the farms and estates of the plain lumbered toward the markets and merchant warehouses. Fancy carriages with curtained windows rattled past. Edeard was surprised to find them shielded from casual farsight by a mild variant of his own concealment ability; their footmen radiated sullen anger, discouraging anyone from prying.

The final approach to the city walls was home to an astonishing variety of trees. Ancient black-and-gray trunks sentried the road on either side, sending gnarled boughs overhead to form twined arches that were centuries old. At first Edeard thought there had been some kind of earthquake recently. All the trees, no matter their age and size, leaned one way, their branches bowing in the same direction. Then it slowly dawned on him that the constant wind had shaped them, pushing their branches away from the shoreline.

For the last quarter of a mile, the ground was simple flat meadow, home to flocks of sheep. When they left the shelter of the trees, Edeard was awarded his first sight of the city since they had descended from the foothills. The crystal wall faced them, rising sheer out of the grass to a height of thirty yards. Although transparent, it had a gold hue, distorting the silhouettes of the buildings inside and making it impossible to gather a true impression of what lay within. It formed a perfect circle around the city, the same height all the way around except for the port on the eastern side, where it dipped down to allow the sea to wash against the quays. Querencia’s gentle tides had no visible effect on it; the stubborn crystal was as immune to erosion forces as it was to all other forms of assault. Neither bullets nor pickaxes could chip it; glue did not stick to it. As a defensive barrier it was nearly perfect.

Its only known susceptibility was to telekinesis, which could wear down its strength gradually. That was how Rah had opened the city to his people; a powerful telekinetic, he systematically cut through the crystal, shaping three gateways. Legend said that each one took him two years to carve out. His followers fixed the huge detached segments to giant metal hinges, transforming them into tightly fitting gates. In the two millennia since, they had been shut only eight times. For the last seven hundred years they had remained open.

The caravan passed through the north gate. It was seven yards wide at the base, arching up ten yards above Edeard’s head, and the passageway into the city was three yards long. The gate was hinged back flat against the wall on the inside. He found it hard to believe that the huge thing could move; the hinges seemed wondrously primitive contraptions, all bulbous iron joints and girders studded with rivets. Yet they had not corroded, and the pivots were kept oiled.

Directly inside to the left of the road was a broad swath of paddock land named the High Moat, which followed the wall’s curve around to the Upper Tail district next to the port. As horses were prohibited from the main districts, many families maintained stables there, simple wooden buildings that had been added to over the centuries; there were also stockades for cattle and traveler pens, even a couple of cheap markets. On the opposite side of the road, the similar crescent of Low Moat led around to the Main Gate. Running along the inner edge of the moats was the North Curve Canal, lined with the same whitish material from which the majority of the city had been fabricated, resembling icy marble yet stronger than any metal humans could forge on Querencia.

Edeard stared enchanted at the gondolas as they slid along the canal. He had seen boats before; Thorpe-by-Water had them in abundance, as did many other towns. Yet those were coarse workaday cousins compared with these elegant black craft. They had shallow keels with tall prows rising out of the water carved into elegant figures. The cushioned benches of the midsection were protected from the hot sun by white awnings, and the gondolier stood on a platform at the stern, manipulating a long punt pole with easy grace. Each gondola was home to at least a couple of ge-cats. Edeard smiled happily at the traditional genistar forms, which were swarming in and out of the salty water. Unlike the bloated creatures he had shaped back in Ashwell, these were streamlined aquatics with webbed feet and long sinuous tails. The surface of the canal was alive with ripples as they continually chased after nimble fil-rats and chewed on strands of trilan weed to keep the canal clear.

“Oh, my great Lady,” Salrana gasped, gawping out at the city.

“We did the right thing,” Edeard said with finality. “Yes, we did.” Now that he was inside the crystal wall, the true aura of the city was washing against him. He’d never sensed such vitality before, the kind of exhilarating emotional impact that could come only from so many people pursuing their hectic lives in close proximity. Individuality was impossible to distinguish, but the collective sensation was a powerhouse of animation. He felt uplifted simply by drinking in the sights and sounds.

The caravan turned off the road. Barkus had a quick conversation with a city Travel Master who assigned them three pens on High Moat where they could set up to trade. The wagons rumbled along the narrow track to their final destination.

Edeard and Salrana walked their ge-horses over to Barkus’s wagon. It was an act rich with association with that time back in Thorpe-by-Water when they had come to the caravan master for help. The old man’s family had been setting up the awnings on either side of the ancient wagon. They had all been strangers back then, curious and suspicious. Now Edeard knew them all and counted them as friends, which made this so very difficult. Salrana’s thoughts were subdued and morose as Barkus turned to face them.

The old caravan master eyed the packs they were carrying. “You’re really going to stay here, then?”

“Yes, sir.”

He hugged both of them. Salrana had to wipe tears from her eyes. Edeard was fighting to make sure the same thing did not happen to him.

“Have you got enough money?”

“Yes, sir, we’re fine.” Edeard patted the pocket inside his trousers. Along the route he had sold enough ge-spiders to pay for weeks in a lavishly appointed tavern, and he was dressed respectably again.

“If it doesn’t work out, we’ll be here for a week. You’re welcome to come with us, both of you. You’ll always have a home on the road with us.”

“I will never forget your kindness,” Edeard said.

“Nor I,” Salrana added.

“Go on, then; be off with you.”

Edeard could see in the old man’s agitated thoughts that this was just as painful for him. He gripped Barkus’s arm and squeezed it tightly before turning away. Salrana threw her hands around the caravan master’s neck and kissed him gratefully.

The road that had brought them into the city ended just short of the North Curve Canal. They walked beside the waterway for a little while until they found a bridge over it. It was made from a tough ocher-colored variety of the ubiquitous city material, a simple low arch to which wooden railings had been added on either side. There were so many people using it, bustling against him, that Edeard had to clutch his shoulder bag tightly. But there were no animals, he realized, not even ge-chimps. The bridge took them into the Ilongo district, which was made up of small boxlike buildings two or three stories high with vaulting lierne roofs and walls that often leaned away from perpendicular. Windows followed no pattern; there were angled slits, crescents, teardrops, circles, ovals, but never squares; they all had panes of a thick transparent crystal that grew, shaped, and replenished itself in the same slow fashion as the structures themselves. Entrances were simple arched oblongs or ovals cutting through ground floor walls; humans had added the wooden doors, fixing hinges into the structure with nails hammered into place with telekinesis. Over the years the pins would be ejected slowly by the city material as it repaired the puncture holes they had made, necessitating refixing every decade or so. The constant sedate renewal of the city’s fabric made the whole place look fresh, as if it had only just been completed.

The gap between the buildings was narrow. Sometimes, beside a canted corner, there was barely a couple of feet left between walls, forcing Edeard to turn sideways to squeeze through; other passages were broad pavements that allowed several people to walk side by side. They came across little squares and courtyards, all of which were provided with fountains of fresh water bubbling up through the top of a thick pillar.

“Does nobody work?” Salrana asked in puzzlement after they had been thoroughly jostled for ten minutes while negotiating the narrow pavements. “The whole city must be walking about.”

Edeard simply shrugged. The district was a confusing maze. It was also where he discovered that the city material was almost opaque to farsight. He could only sense the murkiest shapes on the other side of the walls, and he certainly could not perceive right through a building. He was not used to having his perception cut so short; it unnerved him slightly. Eventually he summoned his ge-eagle and sent it soaring above the roofs, mapping a way for them.

He wanted to get to the Tosella district, where the Eggshaper Guild had its Blue Tower. It was the district to the east of Ilongo, separated from it by the Hidden Canal. Despite it being so close, they took forty minutes to negotiate Ilongo before crossing the thin canal on a small wooden bridge.

Tosella’s buildings were on a much larger scale than the ones they had seen so far. They were long rectangular mansions with tall slit windows stacked on top of one another up to six stories high and topped with concentric ring domes that intersected like waves frozen in midswirl. The ground directly outside their walls was fenced off with high slender pillars, separating the public pavement from emblem mosaics of glittering primary-color flecks. Their ground floors were arched cloisters enclosing central quads where prim gardens grew in long troughs under the cool tinted light shining through the roof skylights high above. For the first time in the city, he sensed the minds of genistars. A ground floor in one of the mansions had been converted into stables for them. He even glimpsed apprentices and journeymen scurrying around the quads, their thoughts anxious and subdued as they tried to keep in their Masters’ good graces. It brought a smile to his face as he recalled some of Akeem’s more outrageous stories of an apprentice’s life in Makkathran.

“I know everyone asks this,” Salrana said as they tarried beside one of the huge mansions, admiring the subtle rainbow shades refracting off its glittering snow-white frontage. “But I wonder who built this place.”

“I thought it was the Firstlifes. Isn’t that what the Lady said?”

“It doesn’t actually say that in any of her teachings. All she says is that the city was left by Those Who Came Before.”

“They couldn’t have been humans, then.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Oh, we can use it well enough; the concept of shelter is universal, I suppose. But nothing here is quite right for us. For a start, there were no gates until Rah arrived.”

“So the builders sailed in and out via the sea; that certainly ties in with all the canals,” she answered with a smile.

“No.” He could not match her light humor. His gaze swept along the length of the mansion. The root of architecture was species-based, from the basic functionality to the aesthetic, and Makkathran just did not fit human sensibilities. He felt out of place there. “Humans never built this place; we just adapted to it.”

“Aren’t you the know-it-all, and we’ve only been here an hour.”

“Sorry.” He grinned. “But it is intriguing; you have to admit that.”

“They say Eyrie district is the really weird one. That’s where the Pythia has her church, which is the only building ever formed for humans. The city granted it to the Lady so her flock would be close to the towers when the Skylords finally return.”

“Towers?”

“Yes. That’s where the Skylords alighted the last time they were here, the day they took Rah’s spirit to its rest in Odin’s Sea.”

“Oh. Hey, wait. You mean humans designed the Lady’s church?”

She gave a mock sigh. “See? If you’d ever bothered to turn up to church, you’d have known that. It’s right there in the Lady’s scriptures.”

He gave the mansion another suspicious look. “That’s like shaping genistars, but with buildings. I wonder if the city builders brought the defaults to Querencia.”

“If the geography guild turns you down, you could always apply to the history guild.”

“Cheeky!” He took a swipe at her.

Salrana danced away laughing and stuck her tongue out. Several passersby gave her a curious look, unused to seeing a Lady’s novice behave in such a fashion. She pulled a contrite face and held her hands demurely behind her back, eyes and mind still sparkling with amusement.

“Come on,” he said. “The quicker we get to the Blue Tower, the quicker we get you locked up in the novice dormitory where you belong, out of harm’s way and not causing any trouble.”

“Remember our promise? I’m going to be Pythia, and you’re going to be Mayor.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “It might take a couple of years, but we’ll do it.”

Her smile faded as her thoughts grew sober. “Edeard, you won’t forget me, will you?”

“Hey, of course not.”

“I mean it, Edeard. Promise. Promise we’ll still talk each day, even if it’s just a longtalk hello.”

He held up a hand, palm toward her. “I swear on the Lady that I won’t forget you. Such a thing is just not possible.”

“Thank you.” Her impish smile returned. “Do you want to kiss me again before we both get locked up in separate dormitories each night?”

He groaned in dismay. “Maybe I should just leave with the caravan.”

It was Salrana’s turn to take a swipe at him.

The Blue Tower was in the middle of the Tosella district, standing at least twice the height of the biggest mansion they had seen so far. For its walls, the city material had shaded down to a dark azure that seemed to soak up the sunlight, as if the facade possessed its own nimbus of shadow. Standing at the base between flying buttresses that resembled ancient tree roots, Edeard felt intimidated by the heartland of his guild. Surely such a structure never had been intended to house a profession that existed to lighten the load of people’s lives. It was more like a fortress in which bandits would dwell.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Salrana asked uncertainly. She was just as daunted by the overpowering structure as he was.

“Er, yes. I’m sure.” He wished the vacillation in his thoughts wasn’t quite so blatant.

They walked in through a wide door whose resemblance to a giant mouth was uncomfortably obvious. Inside, the walls and floor changed to the darkest red with a surface sheen to match polished wood. Strong beams of sunlight from the high lancet windows cut through the gloom of the broad entrance hall.

Edeard did not know where to go; there did not seem to be any kind of official to direct visitors to the appropriate room. His determination was fading fast, leaving him stalled in the middle of the wide-open space.

“I somehow don’t think this is where the apprentices have their dormitories,” Salrana said from the side of her mouth. There were several groups of men in the hall, all talking quietly together. They wore fine clothes under flowing fur-lined gowns with the egg-in-a-twisted-circle crest of the guild embroidered in gold thread on the collars. Disapproving glances were cast at Salrana and Edeard, followed by a surprising number of people focusing their farsight on the youthful pair.

Edeard’s farsight alerted him to three guards armed with revolvers marching across the entrance hall. They wore light drosilk jackets over their immaculate white cotton tunics. The guild crest was prominent on their helmets.

The sergeant glowered at Edeard but was marginally less hostile to Salrana when he saw she was in her full novice dress. “You two,” he grunted. “What’s your business here?”

So much for the warm welcome to a fellow guild member from far away, Edeard thought dourly. Then he realized he was not at all intimidated by the guard; after bandits, the sergeant and his little squad seemed faintly ludicrous. “I am a journeyman of the guild,” Edeard said, surprising himself by how level and authoritative his voice was. “I’ve come from Rulan province to complete my training.”

The sergeant looked as if he had bitten into a rotten fruit. “You’re very young to be calling yourself a journeyman. Where’s your badge?”

“It’s been a long journey,” Edeard said, suddenly not wanting to explain what had happened to his village to someone who would never understand life beyond the city. “I lost it.”

“I see. And your letter?”

“Letter?”

The sergeant spoke slowly, contempt coloring his thoughts. “Your letter of introduction to the guild from your Master?”

“I have none.”

“Are you trying to take the piss, sonny? Your pardon, miss,” he said grudgingly to Salrana. “Leave now before we take you to the courts of justice for trespass and theft.”

“I have committed no theft,” Edeard protested loudly. “My Master was Akeem; he died before writing a letter of introduction.”

“The only reason to trespass here is to thieve something from us, you little country shit,” the sergeant snapped. “Now you’ve gone fucked me off, and that’s not good for you.” He reached for Edeard, then blinked in surprise as his hand slithered off an extremely strong telekinetic shield. “Oh, you asked for this.” His third hand tried to grab.

Edeard warded him off easily, then hoisted the sergeant off the ground. The man yelled in shock as his feet kicked about.

“Take the little shit down,” he cried at his men. Their third hands closed around Edeard to no avail. They went for their pistols, finding their arms moving slowly through impossibly thick air.

“Edeard!” Salrana squeaked.

Edeard could not quite comprehend how things had turned so crazy so fast.

“Enough,” a baritone voice commanded.

Edeard’s farsight showed him an old man walking across the hall toward them. Long robes flowed behind him as he strode forward. He wore ocher trousers cut high so that his curving belly did not overhang and a baggy shirt to continue the discreet disguise, but his weight was obvious from the pudgy fingers to the rolling neck and heavy jowls. Yet he carried himself with the vitality of a man half his age. Even without sensing his regimented thoughts, he was obviously a man of considerable authority.

“Put him down,” he ordered Edeard.

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said meekly. He knew this was a Master equal to Akeem. “I apologize. I was left little cho—”

“Be quiet.” The man turned to the sergeant, who was straightening his clothes, not making eye contact with anyone. “And you, Sergeant, need to keep your temper in check. I am not prepared to have the Blue Tower guarded by petty-minded paranoia. You will learn a more rational attitude or you’ll see your days out guarding a guild estate on the other side of the Donsori Mountains. Do I make myself clear?”

“Sir.”

“Away with you while I determine how big a threat this boy presents.”

The sergeant led his men away, but not before managing a last look at Edeard that promised dire vengeance.

“Your name, boy?”

“Edeard, sir.”

“And I am Topar, a Master of the guild council and deputy to Grand Master Finitan. That should give you an idea of how deep you just dipped yourself in default crap. My Lady’s novice, may I inquire your name?”

“Salrana.”

“I see. And I judge that both of you have only recently arrived in Makkathran. Correct?”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said. “I’m really sorry about—”

Topar waved an irritated hand. “I should be annoyed, but the name Akeem hasn’t been heard in our august tower for a considerable time. I am intrigued. Did I hear you say he is dead?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid he is.”

For a moment the gusto vanished from Topar’s stance. “A shame. Yes, a very great shame.”

“Did you know him, sir?”

“Not I, no. But I will take you to someone who did. He will want the details, I’m sure. Follow me.”

He led them to an archway at the rear of the hall and began to climb the broad stairs beyond. As he ascended, Edeard knew he had been right about whoever created the city not being human. The stairs were cumbrous, more like a slope of solidified ripples. They curved enough to provide an unsure footing, and their spacing was awkward for human legs. Edeard soon found himself sweating as they continued to climb around and around; his calf muscles were not used to such strenuous exercise.

At one point, when they must have been four or five stories above the hall, Topar turned around to smirk at the two youngsters. He grunted as if satisfied by their tribulation. “Just imagine how much rounder I would be if I didn’t have to negotiate these five times a day, eh.” He chuckled and carried on.

Edeard was panting heavily when they finally stopped in some kind of large anteroom. He had no idea how high they had climbed, but the top of the tower could surely be only a couple of feet above them. That altitude would explain how light-headed he had become.

“Wait here,” Topar said, and went through a wooden door bound with thick iron filigree.

The walls of the anteroom were still red but lighter than those of the lower floors. Overhead, the ceiling glowed a pale amber, turning Edeard’s skin an unpleasant shade of gray. He dumped his shoulder bag on the floor and sank into a large chair of curving wooden ribs. Salrana sat on one next to him, looking thoroughly bewildered. “Are we in trouble or not?” she asked.

“I don’t think I care anymore. That pig of a sergeant. He knew we were harmless.”

She smiled. “You’re not.”

He was too tired to argue. His farsight was all but blocked by the tower walls, but he could sense two minds behind the wooden door. There was very little to discern about their emotional composition, but then, walking through the districts, he had noticed how adept city people were at guarding their feelings.

Topar opened the door. “You can come in now, Edeard. Novice Salrana, if you would be so kind as to indulge us for a moment longer. Someone will be here to take care of you momentarily.”

Even before he went into the room, Edeard guessed he was being taken to Grand Master Finitan. As he went in, he nearly faltered as a farsight swept through him like a gust of cold air. The hair on the back of his arms stood up in reaction. A little thought occurred to him that if anyone could see through a psychic concealment, it would be this man.

Grand Master Finitan sat in a high-back chair behind a large oak desk, facing the door. His office must have taken up nearly a quarter of the tower at that level. It was huge but almost empty; there was no furniture other than the desk and chair. Two of the walls were covered by bookshelves containing hundreds of leather-bound tomes. Behind him, the wall was mostly crystal window with thin lierne ribs, providing a view clear across Makkathran. Edeard’s jaw fell open. He only just managed to stop himself from running over and gawping like a delighted child. From what he could see at this angle, the undulating rooftops swept away for miles, while the canals cut through them like blue-gray arteries. Looking at it like this, he knew for certain that the city was alive. Here, humans were nothing more than foreign bacteria living in a body they could never comprehend fully.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Grand Master Finitan said gently. In many respects he was the physical opposite of Topar: slim and tall, with thick hair down to his shoulders that was just beginning to gray. Yet his age was evident in the lines creasing his face. Despite that, his thoughts were tranquil; he was curious and affable rather than dismissive.

Edeard shifted his gaze back to the Grand Master. “Yes, sir. Er, I apologize again for what happened downstai—”

The Grand Master raised a finger to his lips, and Edeard fell silent. “No more of that,” Finitan said. “You’ve traveled a long way, yes?”

“From Rulan province, sir.”

Finitan and Topar exchanged a glance, smiling at some private joke. “A long way,” Finitan said sagely. “Some tea?” His mind sent out a fast longtalk instruction.

Edeard turned to see a door open at the base of one of the bookshelf walls; it was too small for a man, barely four feet high. Ge-chimps scampered out, bringing a pair of chairs and a tray. The chairs were positioned in front of the Grand Master’s desk while the tray with its silver tea service was placed on the desk beside a cradle that held a genistar egg.

“Sit down, my boy,” Finitan said. “Now, I understand you claim our colleague Akeem is dead. When did this happen?”

“Almost a year ago, sir.”

“Those are some very dark thoughts in your mind accompanying that memory. Please tell me the story in its entirety. I believe I’m old enough to endure the full truth.”

Embarrassed that his mind was so transparent, Edeard took a deep breath and began.

Both the Grand Master and Topar were silent when he finished. Eventually Finitan rested his chin on steepled forefingers. “Ah, my poor dear Akeem; for his life to end like that is an unforgivable tragedy. An entire village slaughtered by bandits. I find that extraordinary.”

“It happened,” Edeard said with a flash of anger.

“I’m not questioning your tale, my boy. I find the whole concept deeply disturbing: that there is some kind of society out in the wilds different from our own and one which is so implacably hostile.”

“They’re animals,” Edeard growled.

“No. That’s your instinctive reaction, and a healthy one it is, too. But to organize such a raid is quite an accomplishment.” He sat back and drank some tea. “Could there really be a rival civilization somewhere out there beyond our maps? They have concealment techniques and fanciful weapons. I’d always believed such things were the province of this city alone.”

“You have the repeat-fire guns?” Edeard asked. In all his travels, no one had ever heard of such a thing. A year of constant dismissal had made him doubt his memories of that terrible night.

Finitan and Topar exchanged another glance. “No. And that is more worrying than knowing how to conceal yourself. But how lovely that Akeem knew the technique which is supposed to be practiced only by Guild Masters.”

“He was a Master, sir.”

“Of course. I mean those of us who sit on the council. Sadly, Akeem never achieved that. It was politics, of course. I’m afraid to say, young Edeard, that you are going to learn life here in the city is all about politics.”

“Yes, sir. Did you know Akeem, sir?”

Finitan smiled. “Have you not worked it out yet, my boy? Dear me, I thought you were quicker. We share a bond, you and I. For he was my Master when I was a lowly young apprentice here.”

“Oh.”

“Which means you present me with a very unpleasant problem.”

“I do?” Edeard said anxiously.

“You have no formal letter of confirmation from your Master. Worse than that, with your village gone, we cannot ever confirm that you were taken in by the guild.”

Edeard smiled uncertainly. “But I know how to sculpt an egg.” His farsight swept through the egg on the Grand Master’s desk, revealing the folded shadows of the embryo inside. “You have sculpted a gedog. I don’t recognize some of the traits—you’re outside the traditional form—but it is a dog. Two days from hatching, I’d guess.”

Topar nodded in appreciation. “Impressive.”

“Akeem was the best Master,” Edeard said hotly.

Finitan’s sigh was heavier than before. “You have obviously received guild training, and you clearly have skill as well as strength. And that is the problem.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“You say Akeem made you a journeyman?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I cannot accept you into the guild at that level. I know this seems intolerably harsh, Edeard, but there are formalities which even I have to follow.”

Edeard was aware that his cheeks were burning. It was not quite anger, but all he could think of was the pettiness of the Guild Master back in Thorpe-by-Water. Surely the Grand Master, the leader of the whole Eggshaper Guild, could not be so small-minded; what he said was law to the guild. “I see.”

“I doubt it, but I do sympathize with the exasperation you must feel. I will be delighted to accept you into the guild here in Makkathran, Edeard, but it must be as a junior apprentice. I cannot make exceptions, especially not in your case.”

“What do you mean?”

“To acknowledge your journeymen status without a formal letter from your Master will lay me open to a charge of favoritism from others on the guild council.”

“Politics,” Topar said.

“I understand,” Edeard whispered. He was frightened that he was going to burst into tears in front of them. To get to Makkathran, to be in the presence of the Grand Master, and then to be told that all he had achieved was worthless because he lacked a piece of paper … “Pardon me, but that’s stupid, sir,” he said sullenly.

“It’s much worse than that. But I appreciate your politeness, my boy.”

Edeard sniffed and wiped his nose. “How long would it take me to get back to being a journeyman?”

“Here at the Blue Tower and assuming you have the appropriate talent: seven years. Appointing you a journeyman at your age was … ambitious even for Akeem, but at the same time so very typical of him.”

“Seven years,” Edeard repeated numbly. Seven years of repeating every lesson and knowledge gift he’d ever undergone, seven years of having to hold himself back, seven years of obedience to journeymen less able than himself. Seven years!

“I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not even using farsight,” Finitan said gently. “It is a terrible thing to ask you to undergo.”

“I’m not sure I can,” Edeard said. “I thought when I came here that I wanted nothing more than to be a part of the guild, but now … These formalities. Akeem always said I would find them difficult. I thought he was teasing.”

“Listen to me, Edeard,” Finitan said, “for I am about to say something which borders on the sacrilegious.”

“Sir?”

“The hierarchy we have in the guilds—not just ours but all guilds—exists for those who seek to further themselves within our political system. Talent in your chosen field plays a part, but always it is a matter of money and politics. That is the way things are here in the capital. If you were not born into a grand family and have ambition, then you join a guild and fight your way to the top. Now consider that very carefully because this is a choice that will decide the rest of your life for you: Is the Eggshaper Guild what you truly want? It is what I wanted, and I have achieved my goal. I am Grand Master. But look at the battles I have to fight on every level. I am surrounded with so many people seeking the same thing, seeking this seat in this office, that I cannot make an exception for someone as gifted as yourself because a hundred years ago I had a Master who went on to teach you. Is that sanity, Edeard? Is that the life you want for yourself? To have a dozen such considerations every day, to be unable to put a foot wrong, to continue a tradition no matter how dry and worthless it is because that is what supports you? To be unable to change, even though change was the one thing above all that used to drive you? That is what I am, Edeard; that is what Topar is. I despair of myself at times, of how helpless I have become, entrapped in the very system I once wanted to alter and improve.”

“But sir, if you can’t make changes, who can?”

“Nobody can, Edeard. Not now, not in these times. Our society is mature. Change is instability. That is why every institution we have resists change. To maintain the status quo is our sole objective in life.”

“That’s wrong.”

“Yes, it is. But what do you want to do about it? Do you want to spend seven years working your ass off to become a journeyman, to make that first real step toward receiving Master status, at which point your talent is irrelevant and the politicking begins in earnest? You build allies and make enemies on every council on which you sit in order to gain greater power and control. But it is only power and control over the councils. Ultimately it amounts to very little.”

“Are you saying I should go back and join the caravan?”

“No. My offer to admit you to the guild is genuine and remains open while I am Grand Master. Who knows? Maybe you will make a difference if you make it to this office. I should tell you now that nobody under a hundred years old has ever sat here.”

“I don’t know,” Edeard said helplessly.

“There is one alternative. You already know how to sculpt eggs. By joining the guild you would be acknowledging that your life is now oriented to a political goal. However, the city constables are always seeking recruits. It is a noble profession. My position on the Upper Council allows me to sponsor you into their ranks. They would delight in accepting someone with such a strong third hand. And this city desperately needs men of good stature to enforce the law. Without that we will all become nothing.”

“A constable?” He was not even sure what a constable was.

“Even a city as sophisticated as Makkathran has crime, Edeard. Decent people, especially those in the poorer districts, live in fear of gangs that roam the streets at night. Merchants suffer thefts and increase their prices accordingly, which injures everyone. You would be helping people directly—and immediately. Unlike the other guilds, constable apprentices are not tucked away out of sight toiling to make their Master’s life easy. The hierarchy of the constables is a lot less complex than that of any normal guild. The prospect for advancement is good. You’re smart and strong. I will not delude you that it is an easy life, for it is not. But you’ve even been in a real life-or-death fight, which is more than any other recruit has done. You should do well.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Of course not. I didn’t expect you to give me an answer immediately. You need time to think about your future. What you decide now determines the rest of your life. Why don’t you escort your friend to her church, then take a good look around. Get a feel for the city before you make up your mind. If you want to give the constables a try, longtalk Topar here, and we will arrange for your admission.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You are welcome. And Edeard.”

“Sir?”

“I’m glad Akeem had such a gifted pupil at the end. It wouldn’t have been easy for him in Ashwell; you must have helped enrich his life considerably.”

“Thank you.” Edeard rose from the seat, knowing his time was up.

“Sir? Why did Akeem leave the Blue Tower?”

Finitan smiled fondly. “He was like you, my boy. He wanted to make a difference, to help people. Here, he could do very little. Outside our crystal wall, in Ashwell, I suspect he had a profound effect on the lives of the villagers.”

“Yes, sir; he did.”

“What happened in there?” Salrana demanded when Edeard reappeared in the anteroom. “You don’t seem very happy.”

“I’m not,” he admitted, and picked up his shoulder bag. “Come on. We need to get you to the church before nightfall. I’ll tell you what happened on the way.”

“You can’t give up,” Salrana said as they crossed a bridge over Grove Canal into the Eyrie district, her voice pleading. “Not after so much.”

“Finitan was right, though. What’s the point? I can already shape eggs as well as just about anyone. If I join the guild, I’ll be doing it to climb up the hierarchy, nothing else. And what’s there even if I do become Grand Master? Sitting at the top of a tower organizing the guild while everyone else on the council waits for me to make a mistake. I’d have a million enemies and no friends, and nothing will change. I won’t be helping anyone. Remember Ashwell, what it was like before people accepted that the genistars could improve their life? Well, Makkathran is a thousand years along from that. You can’t shape better genistars; you can’t increase the amount in use here.”

“Then when you become Grand Master, you must push genistars out on people next to the wild lands. The Eggshaper Guild can still make a difference to everyone beyond the Iguru plain. You’ve seen what life’s like in the distant provinces. Make it better for them, Edeard; make their life as easy as it is for everyone here.”

“It’s too much,” he said. “I can’t do it, Salrana. Most of all, I can’t stand seven years as an apprentice again. I just can’t. I’ve learned the guild teachings; I’ve been on the road fending for myself for a year. Any position less than journeyman would be a huge step backward for me. I’m sorry.” He could see Akeem shaking his head in that weary way of his. The guilt was terrible.

She stroked his cheek, which brought astonished glances from passersby. “I’m not going to give up on you. And I’m certainly not going to let you give up on your own dream. Not after what we’ve been through.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said spryly.

He glanced up at the strangely twisted spires that jutted out of the ground like gigantic stalagmites. Even the smallest was higher than the Blue Tower. There were no windows or balconies, just a single entrance at ground level leading to a central spiral stair. Right at the tip, they flared out into broad platforms that looked terribly unstable, as if they would snap off at any second.

After the madcap bustle of the other districts they had experienced, Eyrie was almost deserted by comparison. With night falling, the devout were making their way to the central church of the Empyrean Lady for the evening service of prayer and thanksgiving. Light was beginning to shine out of crevices in the crinkled towers around them, washing the hard ground in a pale tangerine illumination. Edeard regarded it curiously, realizing it was the same glow that had lit his way up the stairs of the Blue Tower; somehow the city material emitted it without heat.

“Where will you go tonight?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Find a cheap tavern with a room, I suppose.”

“Oh, Edeard, you’ll be so lonely there. Why don’t you go back to the caravan? Anyone there will be happy to lend you a cot.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I won’t go back.”

She pressed her teeth together in dismay. “Your pride will be the end of you.”

He smiled. “Probably.”

The Lady’s central church was impressive: a large cloud-white dome with the top third made of the same crystal as the city wall. Three wings radiated out from the middle, lined with balconies.

“I’m here,” Salrana said in wonder. Tears glinted in her eyes, and her mind shone with happiness. “The Lady herself lived the last years of her life here. Can you feel how sacrosanct this ground is? It’s all real, Edeard; the Lady’s message to the word is real.”

“I know,” he said.

The main door to the church was wide open, shining a broad fan of rose-gold light across the broad plaza outside. Several Mothers dressed in splendid white-and-silver robes stood on the threshold to give a personal welcome to their congregation. Salrana straightened her shoulders and walked up to the first. There followed a long conversation on which Edeard did his best not to eavesdrop. It culminated with the Mother embracing Salrana. Another two Mothers hurried over at her longtalk call. They all began chattering excitedly around the suddenly overwhelmed girl.

Salrana turned, holding an arm out to Edeard. “They’ll take me in,” she said, her face suffused with delight.

“That’s good,” he said softly.

“Come, child,” said the first Mother, and put her arm protectively around Salrana. “Young man.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“We commend you for aiding our lost soul. May the Lady bless you for what you have done.”

He did not know what to say, so he just ducked his head gracelessly.

“Will you stay for the service?”

“I, er, have to get to my lodgings, thank you.” He backed away and turned, walking quickly across the plaza.

“Don’t forget,” Salrana’s longtalk voice chided him. “Talk to me first thing tomorrow. I want to know that you’re all right.”

“I will.”

Even with the cold orange light shining down from the twisted towers, he was unnerved walking through the empty district. The dark upper sections of the towers formed black silhouettes against the glowing night sky. His mind kept firmly focused on the warm aura of human minds on the other side of the Grove Canal. Before he reached any bridge, he came to a decision. His farsight strained to reach the Blue Tower. The sparks of minds were very hard to distinguish through its walls, but he persevered and eventually found one he recognized.

“Excuse me, sir,” he longtalked to Topar.

There was a small burst of surprise from the man, quickly smothered. “Where are you, Edeard?”

“In Eyrie, sir.”

“And you farsighted me through the walls of the Blue Tower from there?”

“Er, yes, sir.”

“Of course you did. So what can I do for you?”

“I know this probably seems sudden to you, sir, but I have thought over what the Grand Master said to me. I’d like to join the constables. There’s nothing else for me here.”

“Yes, we did make that promise to you, didn’t we? Very well. Report to the main constable station in the Jeavons district. By the time you get there, they will be expecting you. Your letter of sponsorship will be with the captain in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. Please thank the Grand Master for me, sir. I’ll not let him down.”

“Somehow, Edeard, I don’t think you will. One word of advice from a lifelong citizen of Makkathran.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t let your fellow constables realize how strong you are, not at first. It may attract the wrong kind of interest. Politics, remember?”

“I remember, sir.”

“Get up, you little turds!”

Edeard groaned, immensely tired, blinking against the orange light flooding into the dormitory. His thoughts were a confused whirl as reality intruded into the shrinking dream.

“Come on. Up! I haven’t got the time to nurse you pathetic tits. If you can’t even get up in the morning, what use are you? None. Which doesn’t surprise me in any respect. I want every one of you dressed and in the small hall in five minutes. Anyone who doesn’t make it before I close the doors can piss off right back home to your mummy again. Now move it.”

“Whaa—?” Edeard managed. Someone walked past the end of his bed and whacked his feet with a truncheon. “Ouch!”

“If you think that hurt, wait till I get to work on your feelings, farm boy.”

Edeard hurriedly pushed the blanket down and rolled out. There were six bed alcoves in the dorm room; only two were empty. He had met the other constable recruits the previous night at a quick session before Chae, their squad’s training sergeant, marched in and barked at them to shut up and get some sleep “because you’ve got an early start in the morning.”

As he struggled into his shirt, Edeard suspected it was Chae who’d just woken them. The voice was familiar.

“He’s got to be kidding,” said Boyd, a tall lad with lank blond hair and large ears. The fourth son of a baker in the Jeavons district not far from the station, he was in his early twenties, and as he had seen his older brother take on more and more of the bake house, he finally had acknowledged that he was not going to inherit any part of the family business. His sisters were married, and his other brothers all had left the district to forge their own way forward. He lacked their entrepreneurial streak, so decided the only way out was the guilds or signing up with either the militia or the constables. He did not have the money to buy into the militia, and his psychic talents were limited.

“Oh, no, he’s not,” Macsen said as he hurriedly pulled up his trousers. His story was similar to Boyd’s; he was the unrecognized son of a mistress to a grand family’s patriarch. Usually such a father would quietly buy such an offspring a minor commission in the militia or smooth the way for his entry into a professional guild such as the lawyers or clerks. Unfortunately, this patriarch chose to travel on one of his trading ships, voyaging south along the coast, where one of the Lyot Sea’s rare storms blew up. The wife and the eldest son threw Macsen and his mother out of their estate cottage on the Iguru even before the memorial service had been held.

Edeard shoved his bare feet into his boots. “We’d better do as he says, at least until we figure out how serious the officers are,” he said. He looked at the locker beside the cot where his shoulder bag was resting and briefly wondered if it would be safe. Not that there was much of value inside. And anyway, this is a constable station.

“Chae’s serious, all right,” Dinlay said. Their final roommate was also a youngest son, but his father was a constable. As such, Dinlay was the only one to have a uniform already. He was doing up the silver buttons on the front of his dark blue tunic. The little metal circles had been polished to a sheen, as had his black ankle-high boots. The trousers were pressed, showing a sharp crease down the front. It was not a new uniform, but one had to look carefully to see any wear. Dinlay had told them the previous night that it used to belong to his father when he had been a probationary constable. Of the four of them, he seemed to be the only one enthusiastic about their new profession. He used a longtalk whisper to tell them: “Father said Sergeant Chae is a heavy drinker. He was sent to this station because he’s screwed up everywhere else in the city.”

“So they put him in charge of training recruits?” Macsen exclaimed.

Dinlay winced, glancing about uncomfortably. “Not so loud. He doesn’t like being reminded he threw his career away.”

Boyd chuckled. “Career. In the constables. Aren’t you the comedian.”

Dinlay gave him an angry look before putting on his wire-rimmed glasses. There was something about him that reminded Edeard of Fahin: not just his short-sight problem but the way he was so dedicated to his life choice yet at the same time so obviously was not cut out for it.

Edeard shivered despite pulling on a thick woolen jumper. He had not thought of Fahin in a long time, and his disturbingly weird dream left the memory of resurrected skeletons lingering like a bad aftertaste. It was an unfortunate combination with which to be starting his first morning.

Not that it was morning yet, he noticed as they scurried down the station’s central stair to the small hall where they would spend the next six months learning their new craft. The glowing nebulae of Querencia’s night sky were still visible through the feathery curtain of cloud drifting in from the sea. Dawn was at least an hour away.

Edeard still was not used to the way Makkathran buildings blocked his farsight, so when they arrived in the hall, he was surprised that another probationary constable was already there along with Sergeant Chae. She was about his age, perhaps a little older, with dark hair cut shorter than he had ever seen on a girl before. Her face was rounded with chubby cheeks and what looked like a permanent scowl. Even by Makkathran standards, her thoughts were heavily veiled, allowing no hint as to her true feelings. Edeard tried not to be too obvious in the way he checked her out, but when his eyes switched from her legs—long but thighs rather too plump—to her chest, he suddenly realized she was watching him. She raised an eyebrow in scornful query. His cheeks reddened, and he turned away.

Chae was standing at the head of the room under one of the ceiling’s circular light patches. Thankfully, his anger seemed to have vanished. “Very good, boys and girls; almost on time. Now believe it or not, this early morning is not designed with the sole purpose of making your lives miserable, I’ll have plenty of opportunity for that over the next few months. No. Today I want us to get acquainted. That means we’ll be starting with some simple tests to discover the level—or lack of—your psychic abilities. This way we can combine you into a squad which together will perform a great deal better than the sum of its parts. And believe me, you will need to work together. There are gangs out there that will happily shred your flesh and feed you to the fil-rats if you try and interrupt their activities.”

Edeard was not quite sure he believed that and hoped his thoughts did not show his doubt. He concentrated on trying to achieve the same passivity that everyone else was displaying.

“Constable Kanseen, would you begin, please,” Chae said. He gestured at the bench in front of him. There were five metal balls resting on the ancient wood, the smallest was the size of a human fist, while the others were progressively larger. A sixth ball sat on the floor, a good eighteen inches in diameter.

“Which one?” Kanseen asked.

“You just show me what you can do, young lady,” Chae said. There was a strong note of contempt ringing through his voice. “That way I can assess what duties to assign you—if any.”

Kanseen’s face hardened into an even more disapproving scowl. She glared at the fourth ball. It slowly rose into the air.

Macsen whistled approvingly and clapped. The other probationary constables grinned appreciatively. Edeard took a moment and joined in the acknowledgment. He assumed someone had given her the same advice about not revealing her full strength.

“That it?” Chae asked.

“Sir,” Kanseen grunted.

“Okay, thank you. Boyd, let’s see what you’re made of.”

A grinning Boyd stepped forward. The fourth ball quivered and rose a couple of inches above the wood. Boyd’s brow glistened with perspiration.

Macsen managed to lift the fifth ball. Dinlay produced a confident grin and elevated the fifth and second balls, which drew a heavy round of applause. Even Kanseen joined in.

“All right, Edeard, show them how the countryside is so much better than the city.”

Edeard nodded slowly and moved forward. The others were watching eagerly. He was sorely tempted to fling the sixth ball right at the sergeant, but Topar’s caution was still fresh in his mind.

His third hand closed around the fifth ball and sent it bobbing up through the air until it was halfway to the ceiling. The others cheered. He lifted the second ball, then made a show of straining to lift the third, allowing it to hover a few inches above the wood.

The first ball shot off the table and streaked toward Edeard. His shield hardened, deflecting it easily enough. At the same time he dropped the three balls he was holding aloft.

All the probationary constables fell silent, staring at him and Chae.

“Very good, Edeard,” Chae drawled. “You almost convinced me. Little too much time between the hit and the drop, though. Work on that.”

Edeard gave the sergeant a sullen stare.

Chae leaned forward. In a stage whisper he said: “I have friends in the Eggshaper Guild guard, lad.”

Edeard reddened.

“Constables should be honest above all else,” Chae continued. “Especially with their own squadmates. Ultimately your lives may depend on each other. Now, do you want to try again?”

Edeard pulled the sixth ball into the air. He heard Boyd gasp in surprise.

“Thank you, Edeard,” Chae said. “Now, then, farsight. I have placed some markers around the district. Let’s see who can find what.”

Edeard let the sixth ball down gently. He wondered what Chae would have said if he had known how much more he could lift.

The psychic tests went on for another hour, measuring their various talents, until Chae declared he had had enough of them. Edeard was interested in the results. Kanseen had a farsight almost as good as his own, while Dinlay probably could longshout halfway across the Iguru plain, a capability of which he was inordinately proud. Macsen’s shield seemed disproportionaly stronger than his third hand; nothing Chae threw at him got through. Boyd was all-around unexceptional. It left Edeard wondering if he was above average or if his squadmates were distinctly below average. Sergeant Chae’s psychic ability was certainly powerful enough.

Chae told them to get some breakfast, then report for uniform fitting. “If any of you have money, I’d advise you to spend it on your tunic. Those without money will have the cost taken out of their pay for the next six months, and I assure you it won’t leave you with much at the end of the week.”

They trooped along to the station’s main hall, a long chamber with an arching ceiling and a big crystal window at the far end. Some of the benches already were occupied. A sergeant told them the bench at the far end would be theirs for the duration of their probationary period. The rest of the constables ignored them.

Ge-monkeys hurried out of the kitchen, bringing crockery. They were adept at receiving orders, Edeard found when he instructed one to bring tea and scrambled eggs. At least the station provided their food. He wondered if he should try to longtalk Salrana. The sun was just starting to rise outside.

“I’ve never seen anyone lift so much,” Boyd said. “You’ve got a lot of talent, Edeard.”

Edeard shrugged.

“I claim first rights to stand behind him when the shit starts flying,” Macsen said. “And the bullets.”

“You all look like you can handle yourselves if we get pushed into a corner,” Edeard said.

“Don’t have a lot of choice, do we?” Macsen said. “Not enough skill for a guild and not rich enough to buy into the militia. So here we are, all of us clinging to the ass end of life, and we’re only just starting out. One big long fall into the sewage from here on in, my fellow failures.”

“Ignore him,” Dinlay said. “He’s just bitter at the way he got treated by his father’s family.”

“Not as bitter as they’ll be when I’m through with them,” Macsen said with unexpected heat.

“Plans for revenge?” Kanseen asked.

“Don’t have to plan. Those arrogant turds break the law a dozen times a week. One day I’ll have the clout to have the whole lot of the bastards locked up and ruined.”

“Now, that’s what I like to see: ambition.”

“How come you didn’t join a guild, Edeard?” Macsen asked. “You have more psychic talent than the rest of us put together.”

“I don’t want to be ordered around for the next seven years,” he told them simply.

“Lady bless that,” Dinlay said. “We just have to grit our teeth for six months and we’ve made it.”

“That’s a curious definition of making it,” Kanseen said in a dismissive voice as a ge-monkey brought her a tray with a bowl of porridge and a tall glass of milk. “Being allowed out onto the streets by ourselves to be shoved around by gangs and get beaten up trying to stop tavern fights.”

“Then why are you here?” Macsen asked.

She took a long drink of milk. “Do you see me being a proper little wife to some oaf of a tradesman?”

“Not all tradesmen are oafs,” Boyd said defensively.

Macsen ignored him. “Good for you,” he told Kanseen.

Her head turned ponderously to stare at him. “Not interested, thanks.”

Edeard grinned while Dinlay and Boyd both laughed.

“Me, neither,” Macsen insisted, but he had lost the moment and sounded very insincere.

“So is Chae right about buying the uniform?” Edeard asked. He was conscious that he probably had more coinage in his pocket than the others.

“Depends,” Dinlay said. “If you’re definitely going to be a constable, then it doesn’t matter how you pay. But if you’re uncertain, then you’re best off having them take it from your wages. That way, when you leave after a couple of weeks, you hand the uniform back and you haven’t lost any of your own money.”

“Oh, face facts,” Macsen said. “If we’re here, it’s not because we’re uncertain; we’re plain desperate.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dinlay said. “This is my family profession.”

“Then I apologize. I don’t have the luxury of alternatives.”

“You could have joined the gangs,” Kanseen said lightly. “It probably pays better.”

Macsen showed her a fast hand gesture.

“How bad are they?” Edeard asked. “The gangs, I mean. I’d never heard of them before I reached town.”

“Lady, you really are from the countryside, aren’t you?” Macsen said. “When did you get here?”

“Yesterday.”

“Yesterday!” He said it in a voice so loud that several constables glanced curiously over at their table.

“Yesterday,” Edeard said firmly.

“Okay, well, too late now. The gangs are big in some districts and not in others; the majority are based in Sampalok. If you’re rich, they’re not much of a problem; if you’re poor, then it’s more difficult for you. They specialize in protection. Think of them as an alternative tax system to the Grand Council.”

“But with violence,” Dinlay said. “They’re murderous scum, and they should be wiped out.”

“After first being fairly found guilty in court,” Macsen said with a smile.

“They’re a real problem and getting worse,” Boyd said. “My brother is having to pay them to leave the bakery alone, and he’s only ten minutes away from this station, which puts him about as far from Sampalok as you can be. It used to be safe there; my father never used to have such trouble.”

“Why doesn’t he report them to the constables?” Edeard said.

Macsen gave a disrespectful snort. “Take a look around you, Edeard. Would you ask us to protect you from an organized gang that thinks it’s funny to throw your children or your mother into the canal with a rock tied to them? Are you going to stand outside a baker’s shop for twenty-four hours a day for ten years just to save them? Do you think Chae would let you? And if he did, what about everyone else in the district? No. They’re a fact of life in Makkathran now. The best the constables do is maintain an uneasy truce and stop us from falling into complete anarchy.”

“So young, so cynical,” Kanseen said. “Ignore them, Edeard. It’s nothing like as bad as they say.”

“I hope not,” he said in a subdued voice. Maybe he was still suffering from the shock of city life, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that Grand Master Finitan had not been entirely honest with him about life in Makkathran.

Investigator Second Level Halran stood in the vault’s open door and surveyed the chaos inside. Every surface—walls, floor, ceiling, corpses—had been covered in a thick carpet of blue-gray gossamer fiber, as if a million spiders had spent the night spinning their webs together. The slender strands were actually semiorganic filaments that had taken over three hours to neutralize the nerve toxin leaking from spent kinetic projectiles and damp down several other lethal energy surges coming from munitions left over from the firefight. Halran was mildly surprised that the St. Mary’s clinic would use nerve agents, but then, important people did like reassurance that their secure memory stores were truly secure. He had told the clinic manager that he would be inspecting their toxic armaments user certificate at noon—a time scale long enough for high-level calls to be placed and the correct licence to be procured. It was that kind of flexible interpretation of procedure that had earned Halran his last two promotions. He figured what the hell, the big boys ran the world, anyway; there was little capital to be made from annoying them. That was why the police commissioner had handed him this assignment. And as soon as he got it, the Mayor’s assistant was calling him to explain certain political considerations, foremost of which was that the complete destruction of half a million memorycells belonging to the wealthiest, most influential people in the state had not actually happened. If there was a temporary glitch in kube data retrieval due to the unfortunate accident with the clinic’s power generator, it was regrettable but not a cause for alarm or excessive media interest. Reporters could cover the damage to the forest; they were not to be permitted into the administration block and its sublevels.

Halran’s u-shadow completed its analysis of the gossamer and reported that decontamination was complete. “All right,” he told the eight-strong forensic team standing behind him in the corridor. “I want a full scene survey down to a molecular level. No budget limit; this is way way above our usual priority rating. Col, Angelo, you build the event sequence for me. Darval, see if you can get me the name of the memorycell that bastard Telfer was after.”

Darval peered over Halran’s shoulder; the emergency lighting projector that had been rigged up in the doorway was producing a silver-blue holographic glow throughout the vault, eliminating shadows. It made the gossamer shimmer softly, resembling a rippled moonlit lake as its undulations smothered the congealed splinters of half a million kubes. “How in Ozzie’s name am I going to do that, chief?”

Halran gave him an evil grin. “There should be one missing, so all you have to do is reassemble the fragments of those that are still here and tell me which one was taken.”

“Fuck me.”

“Good point. Plan B: Go through the names on the registry and assign them a probability of someone wanting to steal their memories. Start with political, criminal, and financial categories.”

Darval gave a reluctant nod.

“Force fields on at all times, please,” Halran ordered. “There were some very nasty munitions loose in here. I don’t want to take any chances.”

The forensic team moved cautiously into the vault. Examiners scurried in with them, bots like lead cockroaches scuttling along on black electromuscle legs, bristling with sensory antennae that wiggled though the gossamer to stroke the surfaces beneath. Over two thousand were released, streaming over the floor and up the walls to build a comprehensive molecular map of the vault.

Halran waited until the tiny bots had whirled around the corpse of Viertz Accu before he gave her a more detailed inspection. Her cocooned body was still in a kneeling position, spine curved forward as if she were at prayer. They had found the top of her skull upstairs while waiting for the gossamer to run its decontamination procedure. Halran knew what that implied—this was turning into a bad case from every angle.

His exovision overlaid the results of the examiners, showing him the narrow burn lines on her exposed brain. A lot of energy had been applied in a fashion he recognized. He applied a deep scan module, tracking the depth of the beam penetration. Her memorycell had been destroyed.

“I hope she backed up recently,” he muttered.

“What do you make of these, chief?” Angelo asked. He was standing in front of an exotic matter cage.

“Nice idea, I suppose. I haven’t seen one before. Telfer obviously didn’t know they were here.”

“Much good it did the clinic. Those guards didn’t exactly slow him down, did they?”

“No. His enrichments were off the scale.” Halran called up the main case file again. Telfer appeared in his exoimage, a picture taken in the main reception area showing a possible Oriental ethnicity, but with odd gray eyes. Age locked into his thirties, which was unusual, and with a dense stubble shadow. Completely unexceptional. Halran knew that was deliberate, not that visual features meant anything in this day and age; even DNA identification was inconclusive now, and they had enough of that from the blood trail back up to the roof. The picture showed him smiling as he greeted the beautiful young clinician. His accomplice, though, was a different matter. She certainly did not qualify as unexceptional; a real beauty with a freckled face and thick dark red hair. Cute nose, too, he thought admiringly. People would remember that face.

Everything about their arrival had been perfectly normal right up to the moment when the clinic security net had started glitching and Telfer had vanished from the smartcore’s passive surveillance. The raid, too, had been extremely professional apart from the exit. The woman had seemed almost surprised, as if she were improvising the whole thing. That did not make a lot of sense.

“Chief,” Darval called.

“Yep.”

“The registry was hacked.”

Halran started to walk over to where Darval was stooped over the registry pillar. Several examiners were crawling over its gossamer cloak, prodding the top with their antennae. “Has there been physical—” he began to say. The sentence was never finished. A woman walked into the vault. Halran gave her a surprised look, about to ask who the hell she was, suspecting another of the Mayor’s staffers because nobody else could get through the police cordon without his permission. Then her face registered, and Halran did not need to ask. He knew all about this living legend; everyone in law enforcement did. “Oh, sweet Ozzie,” he murmured, and an already bad case turned nightmare on him. She was shorter than most of the citizens of the contemporary Commonwealth, but the confidence she exuded was much greater than average. Harlan had encountered enough Highers in his time to recognize their slightly smug self-belief; she was on a level far above them, with a composure that rated glacial. Her face was enchanting, a combination of pre-Common-wealth Earth’s Filipino and European features framed by thick raven hair brushed straight and devoid of any modern cosmetics, a beauty he could only describe as old-fashioned. That was fair enough given the fact that she had not changed her appearance once in the last fourteen hundred years.

The whole forensic team had fallen into awed silence, staring at the woman.

Halran stepped forward, hoping he was concealing his nerves. She wore a conservative cream-colored toga suit over a figure that was as ideal as any created by St. Mary’s specialists. When he attempted to scan her using the most subtle probes his enrichments could produce, they were deflected perfectly. It was as if nothing were there; the only empirical proof he had that she existed was his own eyesight.

“Ma’am, I’m Investigator Halran, in charge of this case. I, er, that is, we are very flattered you’re here.”

“Thank you,” said Paula Myo.

“Can I ask what your interest is?”

“It’s not my interest; I am only ANA: Governance’s representative.”

“In this universe,” Darval whispered to Angelo.

Paula gave him a sweet smile. “The old jokes are always the best ones. And they don’t come much older.”

Darvel’s expression turned sickly.

“Okay,” Halran said. “So what’s ANA: Governance’s interest?”

“Mr. Telfer.”

“Is he Higher?”

“What do you think?”

“His weapons biononics are the most sophisticated we’ve ever seen on Anagaska. The vault guards were hired purely on the basis of their enrichments, and he took them both out in less than a minute. So if he’s not Higher, he has access to the best the Central worlds have to offer.”

“Very good,” Paula complimented him. “So?”

“He’s probably working for one of your factions.”

“Excellent rationale, Investigator. That’s exactly why I’m here: to see if that particular conclusion is correct. Now, I’d like first access to all your forensic results, please.”

“Er, I’ll see you get copies, of course.”

“Your planetary government has granted ANA: Governance full cooperation on this case. I’m sure you appreciate the politics involved. Please feel free to check with your Commissioner and even the city’s Mayor, but that’s not copies. I require first and unrestricted access to the raw data, thank you.”

Halran knew when he had lost a battle. “Yes, ma’am. First access. I’ll set that up right away.”

“Thank you. Now, who’s analyzing the registry?”

“That’s me,” Darval said awkwardly.

“Who do you think Telfer was after?”

Darval glanced at Halran, who gave a tiny nod. “Easy, actually. One of the secure stores belonged to Inigo.”

“Ah.” Paula smiled. She closed her eyes and drew a long breath through her nose. “When was the last update?”

“The year 3320.”

“The year he left on his Centurion Station mission,” she said. “And he didn’t return to Anagaska until 3415, correct?”

“Yes,” Halran said. “Living Dream’s central fane on Anagaska was built in Kuhmo; he was here to dedicate it.”

“Interesting,” Paula mused.

“You think someone’s going to full-clone him?”

“Why else would you steal his mind?” Paula said. “Thank you for your cooperation, Investigator. And I’d still like those results as they come in.” She turned and started to walk out of the vault.

“That’s it?” Halran asked.

Paula halted, tipping her head to fix the investigator with a level stare. “Unless you have something else to add.”

“What about Telfer?”

“Good luck hunting him down.”

“Are you going to help us?”

“I won’t put any obstacles in your way, political or otherwise.” She left the vault, leaving Halran staring at his team in confusion and indignation.

Paula walked out of the administration block and glanced at the forest. The air blasts had produced superficial damage. Most of the clinic’s buildings were still intact, and while the larger trees had been toppled, there were still enough younger ones to maintain the forest once the dead trunks had been cleared away. A police cordon extended for several hundred yards, with uniformed officers reinforcing the patrolbots. Members of the clinic ground staff were working with contractors and forestrybots to clear the worst of the damage. Little curls of smoke were drifting upward from the blackened ground where fires had burned for a couple of hours during the night before being extinguished.

She did not pause as her field effect scanned the area, but two of the contractor crew were red-tagged by her u-shadow. Both of them were shielded, utilizing sophisticated deflection techniques available only to high-grade biononics. Hers, of course, were even more advanced. They were keeping their distance from the cordon, but her eyes managed to zoom in and snatch a facial image. Her u-shadow produced a cross-reference for both of them in less than a second. Once upon a time, about a thousand years earlier, Paula would have confronted them there and then. These days she liked to think she had mellowed somewhat, although in truth it was more advantageous to let them think she had not spotted them.

Paula had been born on Huxley’s Haven, a unique world funded by the Human Structure Foundation, which genetically modified all citizens so that they would fit into a simple social structure framed within a low-technology civilization. To the horror and dismay of the rest of the Commonwealth, what they condemned as genetic slavery actually worked, producing a population that was mostly happy with their predetermined lot. The few malcontents were kept in order by police officers who received specific psychoneural profiling. Among other traits was a variant on obsessive-compulsive disorder to ensure that they never gave up the chase. The Foundation had created Paula to be one of them, but she had been stolen from a birthing ward by a group of Radical Liberals intent on liberating the poor slaves. She had grown up in the Commonwealth at large, first becoming an investigator in the Serious Crimes Directorate and then, for the last seven hundred years, acting as an agent for ANA: Governance.

Huxley’s Haven still existed, its society chugging quietly along on its ordained course without changing or evolving. The Greater Commonwealth had very little contact with it these days; Paula herself had not been back for over three hundred years, and that essentially had been nostalgia tourism. There was no need to keep an eye on it; ANA: Governance was very protective of non-Higher cultures. It was a policy that ironically gave Paula very little opportunity to return; her designated task of preventing the ANA factions from pursuing their illegal interference among the External Worlds kept her incredibly busy.

Her u-shadow established an ultrasecure link to Justine Burnelli. “I’m at the Anagaska clinic,” she said.

“And?”

“We were right; the raid was organized by a faction.”

“Any clues which one?”

“Well, Marius and the Delivery Man are hanging around outside, which implies they are as interested as we are.”

“Ergo, they didn’t do it.”

“Don’t be so sure. I’ve never known the Accelerators and the Conservatives to be so blatant before. More likely, one of them did it and the other is trying to expose or counter him. You know what they’re like.”

“Whose memorycell were they after?”

“Now that’s where it gets interesting: Inigo’s.”

“Oh, my. Really?” said Justine. “I’m surprised Inigo left himself open to that level of exposure.”

“To be exact, Inigo pre–Living Dream. This is an old store.”

“How does that help anyone?”

“I’m not sure. The Conservatives will benefit if he returns and stops the Cleric Conservator’s Pilgrimage project. But there’s no way of telling if he will. He might just applaud and join the Pilgrimage himself.”

“If one of the factions full-cloned him, they’d be in possession of a puppet messiah. Very useful for endorsing your own agenda.”

“Except this won’t be a full clone,” Paula said. “This is an early version.”

“I have a theory that might fit.”

“Go.”

“A full-clone early version would presumably be able to receive dreams from the Void just like the original, which would give its controllers a considerable advantage over their opposition.”

“You mean they’d be able to reach the supposed Last Dream?”

“More likely the new Skylord Dreams. Ethan still hasn’t found the Second Dreamer despite a phenomenal amount of effort. Did you know Living Dream is modifying every gaiafield confluence nest it sponsors? And that’s about eighty percent of the Greater Commonwealth. They’re getting desperate; the new dreams are increasing. They’re not just fragments anymore. Whole sequences are seeping into the gaiafield.”

“I don’t think Living Dream is behind the raid.”

“They’d benefit enormously,” Justine said.

“Yes, but my u-shadow has identified the woman assisting Mr. Telfer. It’s Living Dream’s ex-Councillor, Corrie-Lyn, now persona non grata to Living Dream and wanted for several bodyloss charges on Ellezelin. The Commonwealth warrants are quite extensive. They also list an accomplice called Aaron, who shares the facial features of Mr. Telfer.”

“Now that is interesting. Any idea about Aaron alias Mr. Telfer?”

“No. But the pair of them transferred to a starship immediately after the clinic raid. There’s only one starship unaccounted for on Anagaska right now, the Artful Dodger.”

“What’s the history?”

“Standard private yacht, registered on Sholapur.”

“Oh, now we’re getting somewhere. Sholapur. So in other words, we don’t know who it belongs to.”

“Indeed. There’s no real background available; however, the Artful Dodger was on Ellezelin until just after the ruckus at the Riasi fane.”

“Corrie-Lyn used to be Inigo’s lover. Could she be pining for him? A full clone would be one way of getting him back.”

“No. She’s a pawn. Telfer is using her to get to Inigo.”

“How does an out-of-date memorycell help them get closer to him? Enough people have tried to find him. He’s probably left the Commonwealth entirely. Either he set off to get into the Void by himself or he’s gone and joined Ozzie.”

“He hasn’t joined Ozzie. I checked that fifteen years ago.”

“I was always envious of the life you lead,” Justine said. “All that glamorous danger and travel; there’s something intoxicating about it to a sheltered little rich girl like me. How was Ozzie?”

“Like me, essentially unchanged.”

“Who do you think this Aaron character is working for?”

“As you say, there are a lot of factions and organizations that would benefit by finding Inigo. This raid simply tells us how urgent their pursuit is becoming. Nobody has been careless enough to show their hand until now.”

“So what’s your next step?”

“This raid is only one aspect of a much larger process of political events. I think it’s important to find the Second Dreamer before Living Dream does. That person will obviously play a huge part in determining the outcome of the Pilgrimage.”

“Wow. You still think big, don’t you?”

“I always believed that solving a case is a holistic process. It’s one of the few things I have remained true to in the last thousand years.”

“And what about Aaron and Corrie-Lyn?”

“That’s the aspect I’ll stay visible on. It won’t take Investigator Halran long to identify Corrie-Lyn, and things will become quite public after that. If I start inquiring after the Second Dreamer, it will create too much interest amid the factions.”

“Would you like me to start looking for the Second Dreamer?”

“No. You’re highly visible to the factions. Almost as much as myself. I think it would be best if you could keep an eye on the Delivery Man and Marius.”

“I’ll do that. Who gets to track down the Second Dreamer, then?”

Paula smiled broadly, knowing how the faction agents out in the forest would focus on that and wonder. “The last person anyone would suspect, of course.”

The condition of the utility feed pipes in the third apartment was a lot worse than Araminta had expected. She had spent three unscheduled hours that morning tracing them through the walls and floor, supervising the bots as they ripped out the corroded tubes. It all made a great deal of mess, which meant more cleanup, which meant more time not spent preparing the wall frames for the new fittings, which pushed completion back just that little bit further.

Her u-shadow told her when it was eleven o’clock; that barely gave her enough time for a spore shower in the fourth apartment, where she was living. Two of the old shower’s five nozzles were not working, and one of the remaining jets smelled funny. She just had time to apply some freshener and dress in smart trousers and jacket before the clients were due. The perfumed spray damping her skin gave her an unexpected flashback to the day she had found out that Laril had left Viotia and her liberal use of travel-clean back in those days. All of that gave her a guilty prod that she had not been back to Niks in ages.

She gritted her teeth against stupid sentiment and went into the vestibule as the elevator brought her new clients up from the lobby. Danal and Mareble were dressed strangely. She wore a long skirt of wide-weave ginger cotton topped by a suede waistcoat with brass buttons that was worn over a plain white blouse. Sturdy brown boots were just visible below her swirling hem. Her thick raven hair was brushed back, its waves bound in simple elastic cloth bands. He wore leather trousers and boots similar to hers. A yellow jacket was almost hidden beneath a brown overcoat made of an oiled fabric.

Despite their historical appearance, Araminta could not help smiling as the elevator doors opened. There was something irrepressibly enthusiastic about them: youthful grins and the eager way they glanced around, the way they held hands the whole time.

“Welcome,” she said. The golden wood door to the showcase apartment swung open.

She had dressed the apartment with a simple two-tone color scheme in each room and had kept the furniture minimalist. The floor of the open-plan living room was an expensive ebony parquet. Artfully positioned tables and the chairs and settee were all reproduction Herfal style with sharp curves and metal-moiré legs, a popular fad three centuries earlier. The balcony was open, and it was a warm clear day outside, showing the park off to great effect.

Mareble drew a breath as they walked in. “It’s fabulous,” she exclaimed. “Just what we’re looking for.”

Danal chortled. “Forgive my wife; she obviously doesn’t believe in showing our hand before negotiations.”

“I did the same thing with the original vendor,” Araminta confessed. “It’s easy to become devoted to these apartments very quickly. I’m actually thinking about keeping one for myself.”

Mareble stood in front of the balcony door. “Would the one we’re considering have the same view?”

“Apartment three is on the corner.” Araminta gestured along the balcony. “You get one aspect facing the park as well as a view westward across the city. The suspension bridge is visible that way.”

“How lovely.”

“Can we see it?” Danal asked.

“Not just yet. City health and safety codes won’t let me take people into an accredited construction site.” And it’s a complete shambles, which might put you off.

“Construction site? Are there structural problems?”

“Absolutely not. The structure is perfectly sound. An independent deep scan survey file is registered at City Hall if you’d like to verify it. I’m just refurbishing and remodeling. Unfortunately, the city chooses to class that as construction because I’m replacing the electrics and utility feeds. It’s just more filework for me, that’s all.”

Danal gave a sympathetic sigh. “That sounds just like Ellezelin. Dear Lady, the Waterwalker never had to put in requests to the Orchard Palace if he wanted to get things done. Try telling that to our government.”

“Now, darling.” Mareble squeezed his hand more tightly. “He has a thing about bureaucrats,” she explained.

“We all do,” Araminta assured them.

“Thank you,” Danal said.

“So are you moving here from Ellezelin?” Araminta asked.

“Oh, yes,” they chorused happily.

“I’m a confluence nest technician,” Danal said. “There’s a lot of work going on upgrading the whole gaiafield right now. It’s especially important on Viotia.”

“Why is that?” Araminta asked.

“The Second Dreamer is here,” Mareble said. “We’re sure of it. The last few dreams were so much more vivid than those first fragments. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t have gaiamotes,” Araminta said, keeping it light, as if it were some minor fault in an appliance she was going to get corrected, praying it would not make any difference to the deal. She needed their deposit on apartment three; they had not been as easy to sell as she had envisaged, and her suppliers were submitting payment demands.

Mareble and Danal both wore the same compassionate expression, as if they felt sorry for her, a concord that instantly reminded her of Mr. Bovey.

“The gaiafield is not something I could live without,” Mareble said quietly. “I can always sense Danal no matter where we are, even when we’re planets apart; that kind of permanent emotional connection is so satisfying and reassuring.”

“And of course we know Inigo’s Dreams. Intimately,” Danal said. He smiled with the placid bliss only the truly devout could achieve.

Araminta tried to replicate that mien of joy. “I didn’t know you could tell where a dream came from,” she said, hoping that would divert them from her tragic defect. There was nothing the devout of any sect or ideology enjoyed more than making the benefits of their belief obvious to outsiders.

“That’s the thing with the gaiafield,” Mareble explained earnestly. “It’s not all clear and precise like the unisphere. Human thoughts are not digital; they’re emotion. I had the feeling with the last few dreams of the Skylord; they were close to me. Now that the nests remember them, they’ve lost that aspect, not that they aren’t still wonderful. We’re all hoping that we’ll experience the Skylord flying to Makkathran to collect the Waterwalker’s soul. After everything he’s done for the people of Querencia—and us—he deserves to rest within Odin’s Sea.”

Something about Mareble’s evocation made Araminta pause, as if it connected with some old recollection. That was stupid. “I see,” Araminta said. Her knowledge of the whole Waterwalker epic was sketchy at best; she certainly did not know any details. “That’s why you want to live here?”

Mareble nodded eagerly. “I’m convinced the Second Dreamer is here. One day soon he’ll reveal himself, and then the Pilgrimage can begin.”

“Will you join it?”

They smiled at each other and clasped hands again. “We hope so.”

“Well, at the risk of being crass, you won’t find anywhere better to wait than here.”

“I think we can consider putting in an offer,” Danal said. “An uncomfortable number of our fellow followers are looking for property on Viotia. Living in a hotel is pleasant, but we’ll be happy to move into a real home.”

“That I can fully appreciate.”

“We’re prepared to offer you the full asking price, but we would need a guarantee that the apartment will be completed on time.”

“I can put my certificate on that file, yes.”

“And the virtual model we accessed; it was nice, but …”

“I want to make some changes,” Mareble said quickly. “The technology needs to be deemphasized, and the decor should be more naturalistic.”

“Naturalistic?”

“Less manufactured products, more wood. As it is on Querencia. We’re not against technology; we use it all the time, but it shouldn’t be featured. For instance, can you install a proper cooker in the kitchen? One with an oven and hob?”

“I’ll check city regulations and get back to you on that one.”

“So can you supply me with a proper cooker?” she asked Mr. Bovey that night over dinner. She was at his house, sitting at a small table on the balcony that overlooked the lawn. The river Cairns ran along the bottom edge where the mown grass gave way to shaggy reeds and a lengthy clump of coran twister trees that dangled chrome-blue fronds into the water. Bright lights in the buildings along the opposite bank glinted off the smooth black surface. It was a lovely relaxing ambience with a delicious meal several of hims had cooked and three of hims sitting with her, a pleasant end to an exasperating day.

“Actually, yes,” the handsome blond one said.

“You say that with such confidence.”

“Because I’ve already supplied three in the last ten days,” the shorter one with a dark complexion told her. “Living Dream fanatics do like their primitive comforts. They prefer water baths to spore showers, too.”

“Dear Ozzie, my cousin was right; they are taking over. I ought to raise the price on the last two apartments.”

“I don’t want to throw a damper on the evening, but I actually find that prospect quite disturbing. Mainly because it’s rapidly becoming true. There are a lot of them here now—millions.”

“I’d have thought the rush for housing will benefit you as much as me, probably more so.”

“Financially, yes,” the blonde said, holding up a kebab of spiced torkal and pork marinated in red honey. “But multiples don’t fit into the Living Dream ethos.” He bit into the meat and started chewing.

“We didn’t exist in Makkathran,” the Oriental one explained.

“Surely they’re not against your lifestyle, are they?” She had an unpleasant thought of how devoted Mareble and Danal were to their ideology, to the complete exclusion of just about everything else. That did not make them hostile, just unaccepting.

“Oh, never actively, no. Perish the thought. Their precious Waterwalker wanted everyone to live together and get along without conflict. But tell me this: How did your buyers react when they found out you weren’t sharing the glory that exists only within the gaiafield?”

“Surprised,” she admitted. “Then I think they wanted to convert me.”

“I bet they did.”

“It won’t last long,” she assured him. “As soon as the Pilgrimage starts, they’ll all flock away to join it. My couple told me that. They’re only here because they think this is where the Second Dreamer is hiding.”

“Which is equally disturbing.”

“Why?” she asked as she poured herself some more of the excellent rosé wine.

“If you’re the next chosen one, why hide? And more than that, why keep releasing the dreams that let everyone know you exist and are in hiding?”

“I don’t understand anything about Living Dream. The whole thing seems stupid to me.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘dangerous,’ ” the short one said. “Too many impossible promises, too many people believing. Bad combination.”

“You’re an old cynic.”

All three of hims at the table lifted their wineglasses. “Guilty and proud of it.”

“You have gaiamotes. Are these second dreams real?”

“Is a dream real?” Three mouths grinned in unison. “The dreams exist. Everything else is down to personal perspective. If you want to believe in them, then the Second Dreamer is somewhere out there receiving dreams from a Skylord somewhere inside the Void. If not …”

“I don’t know what to believe. I’m almost tempted to get gaiamotes just to find out.”

“Take it from me,” said the blonde, “it’s not worth it. The gaiafield is just another fad that got hijacked by a bunch of fanatics.”

“Why did Ozzie invent it?”

“He said so that people could understand each other better. If we had more empathy, we would be more peaceful. Nice theory. Haven’t seen it having much effect on human nature recently.”

“Yet you wouldn’t exist without it. And you think you’re the future.”

The Oriental Mr. Bovey produced a modest smile. “True. And I doubt Ozzie envisaged us, either.”

She held her wineglass close to her face and dropped her gaze demurely. “I never envisaged you.”

“There’s a lot of things we don’t know about until we encounter them.” The Oriental Mr. Bovey pressed up against her and plucked the glass from her hands. She liked the warmth of him against her. On her other side, the blond one stroked her cheek and turned her unresisting head for a kiss.

She closed her eyes. Hands stroked her spine. Hands stroked her legs. The kiss went on and on.

“Come with me,” one of hims instructed.

The kiss ended, and she saw all three of him smiling in that way, gentle and knowing, not bothering to conceal his anticipation.

The three hims escorted her to a warm second-floor bedroom where the lighting was a cozy candle-flame orange. She stood at the end of the bed while they stripped in front of her, just the way she liked, making her the center of attention, the center of desire. Then it was her turn, removing her clothes slowly, showing herself off, drinking in the admiration from hims, exultant with approval. When she was naked, hes began to explore her flesh with formidable intimacy. “Yes,” she finally shuddered in delight, and they lifted her onto the bed.

Rushing headlong through space, the creature could feel stray molecules kiss its broad vacuum wings as it stretched them wide. Scintillations from the tenuous impact dripped from its trailing edge, leaving a weak contrail of fluorescence through the empty gulf. Ahead, a star gleamed bright against the glorious background of an undulating turquoise nebula, creating a warm pressure of photons that so very slowly supplied its physical nourishment. The creature spun leisurely in the rich torrent of light as it listened to the thoughts grow stronger on the solid planet that was still light-years away.

One thought was exceptionally clear. “You see, you have to rest now; if you were multiple, another body could simply carry on. The ecstasy would continue for hours. More bodies could perform at the same time; imagine that pleasure you’ve just experienced doubled, quadrupled, increased tenfold. Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t your life be so much better, so much greater …” The thought dwindled away into the vastness as the solar wind cooled and dimmed.

There were only two of hims asleep on the bed when Araminta woke. She checked the time in her exovision and groaned in dismay. Five past seven already. There was so much to do in the third apartment today. The bots should have spent the night stripping the old tiles in the fifth apartment, but her u-shadow revealed that they had stopped work at three in the morning when they had encountered a problem their semisentient software could not cope with. She had two prospective buyers for apartment four arriving before noon.

“Great Ozzie,” she complained as she heaved herself out of bed. No time for a shower. She grabbed the clothes she had worn the previous night, which really were not everyday garments. Must bring a bag with some decent clothes for morning. Would he object to that?

She escaped the bedroom without waking the Mr. Boveys and scuttled down the stairs, raking fingers through awful strings of tangled hair. The smell of coffee and toast was permeating out of the big kitchen; it was sorely tempting given her body’s chill. I must ease off those booster aerosols. Surely a single minute spent with one cup of tea wouldn’t jeopardize the whole day.

She put her head around the archway to smile into the long open-plan kitchen diner. Five of hims were sitting at the breakfast bar, with another three lounging in the big old settee. “Hi—” The smile faded from her face. A woman was perched on the sixth stool at the breakfast bar, wearing a big fluffy toweling robe. One of hims had his arm around her, his hand lovingly massaging the base of her neck.

The woman glanced up from a big mug of steaming coffee and pulled a delinquent face. “Oh, hi there. I’m Josill. I guess I was being worn out by the half of hims you weren’t with last night. He’s good sex, huh? I managed four.” She grinned proudly at her entourage of Mr. Boveys.

Araminta managed to freeze her expression before she did anything petty like glare or pout or start shouting about what a useless pile of shit he was. “Right,” she said in a croak. “Got to go. People I’m honest with are coming to see me.” She headed for the front door as fast as she could without actually running, even managed to get outside. Her old carry capsule was resting on the gravel pad fifteen meters away.

“Just hold on.”

She turned. It was the body she had had that first dinner date with. He always used that one to talk to her when it was something serious, obviously working the whole age equals wisdom angle with maybe a little trust mixed in. “Drop dead,” she snapped. “All of you.”

“You knew I would date other women.”

“I—” She sputtered with indignation. “No! Actually, no, I didn’t! I thought we—” Some stubborn little part of her was trying desperately not to cry in front of him. What the point was with someone who knew her so completely eluded her. Still, she was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing how much she cared.

“Listen to me.” He stood in front of her, taking a moment to compose himself. “You are a lovely, fantastic person. I haven’t met someone I was this attracted to in years. And I think you know that.”

“Well this is a—”

“Funny way of showing it? No. No. That’s a single person’s line, not mine.”

“How ridiculous,” she shouted.

“Maybe you’ve been trying to hide from this; I don’t know. Adjusting to multiple life does take time. It isn’t easy, and you’re upset.”

“I’m not upset,” she announced haughtily.

“I have a great time with you every time no matter where we go and what we do, and that’s the problem. Think on this. You are a wonderful healthy, strapping girl with a huge sexual appetite. Every man’s dream. And I’m always amazed and excited by how many of mes you take on when we go to bed. But not even you can physically satisfy thirty-eight male bodies every night. We’ve been going out all this time, and there are still some mes you haven’t met, let alone had sex with, yet. You get me all hot and randy, and every time you do that, the majority of mes are left frustrated.”

“I … Oh. Really?” It was kind of obvious when he explained it like that. But he was right; it really was not something she wanted to think through.

“I can only take so much. Josill and the others help release the pressure you create.”

Others. Again, something she did not want to consider. This whole multiple thing was turning out to be a giant complication. She took a breath and stared at the gravel around her feet. “I’m sorry. You’re right; I didn’t consider that part of it. It’s been so good for me, I just assumed it was the same for you. Singles thinking, huh?”

“Yes.” He put a hand on her shoulder. It comforted her, that whole wise and sympathetic thing. “But I’m hoping, really hoping, we can work through this.”

She gave the door a guilty glance. “I’m not sure I can get around the idea of you having sex with her as well. Were you … no. I don’t want to know.”

He raised an eyebrow and waited patiently.

Araminta sighed. “Last night, were you having sex with both of us at the same time?”

“Yes.”

A particularly malicious thought crept out of her mind. “And she could only cope with four?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

“Poor girl.” Her little spike of humor withered away. “I don’t know about this. I’m not sure I can cope. There would need to be so many women. That’s not part of a long-term relationship.”

“Listen, I said you were special right at the start, and the more I get to know you, the more I know that I don’t want to lose you.”

“So what do you do? Get half of you neutered? I really can’t … not thirty-eight.”

He grinned. “That’s my Araminta, considering it even now. But there’s another option, isn’t there?”

“What?”

He did not answer right away. Instead his hand touched her chin, tipping her head back until she couldn’t avoid staring into his eyes. Eventually she gave a defeated little nod. “I get myself some extra bodies,” she said in a quiet voice.

“I’m not going to browbeat. I couldn’t do that to you; it would be wrong. The decision has to be yours alone. I just want you to think about it. You’ve seen all the practical benefits firsthand, and I reminded you about the sexual advantages again last night.”

She fixed him with a firm stare. “Tell me: If I do this, would you stop dating the other women? Would it be just you and me?”

“Yes, emphatically, just you. Yous in my life, yous in my bed. Cross my hearts. I want this, Araminta; I want this so much. I wish you had gaiamotes so I could show you just how serious I am. We’ll just have to settle for registering it at City Hall instead.”

“Ozzie! A marriage proposal and a lifestyle change in one. And it’s not even half past seven yet.”

“Sorry you had to run into it like this.”

“Not your fault. You’re right; I should have thought about this. So I’ll be a big girl and think about it properly now. Don’t expect an answer right away. This is a hell of a lot more than I’m used to dealing with in a day.”

His arms went around her, hugging tight as if he were the one seeking reassurance. “It’s momentous. I remember. So take all the time you need.”

He rode the gigantic horse for hour after hour, his young legs barely stretching over the saddle. In the distance were real mountains, their snowcapped peaks stabbing high into the glorious sapphire sky. He was leaving them behind, riding away from the forests that covered the foothills. It was wild veldt beneath the hooves now, lush tropical vegetation split by streams and small rivers. Trees from a dozen planets grew across the low slopes, their contrasting evolutions providing a marvelous clash of color and shape. Hot air gusted against him, heavy with alien pollen.

His friends rode beside him, the six of them shouting encouragement to one another as they wove around the knolls and ridges. None of them were yet adult, but they were finally old enough to be trusted out on their own. It was days like this, full of freedom and joy, that made sense of his life.

Then the cry went up. “The king eagles; the king eagles are here.”

He scoured the brilliant sky, seeing the black dots above the rumpled horizon. Then he, too, was yelling in welcome, his heart pounding with excitement. The horse ran faster as the noble lords of this world’s sky grew larger and larger.

Red lights flashed across the heavens. The king eagles elongated, black lines curving and twisting to form a gray rectangular shape. His horse had vanished, leaving him lying flat on his back. The red lights turned violet-blue and began to retreat as the top of the medical chamber opened. A face slid into view, peering down. He blinked it into focus. It was very pretty and heavily freckled, with a mass of dark red hair tied back.

“You okay?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“Urrgh,” Aaron told her.

“Here, drink this.” A plastic straw was eased into his mouth. He sucked some welcoming cool liquid down his sore throat.

“What?” he mumbled.

“What?”

“What happened?”

“You’ve been in the ship’s medical chamber for a couple of days.”

He winced as he tried to move his arms. His whole left side was stiff, as if the skin had shrunk. “A moment,” he told her. His u-shadow flipped medical records into his exovision. He skipped the details, concentrating on the major repairs. The damage had been more extensive that he had expected. The projectile entry wounds combined with firewire mutilation and toxin contamination meant the medical chamber had had to cut and extract a lot of ruined tissue and bone from his chest. Foreign meat had been inserted, neutral-function cells that could have their preactive DNA switched to mold them into whatever organ, bone, or muscle function they were replacing. He spotted a supplementary file and opened it. The foreign meat stored in the chamber actually was not so foreign. The DNA was his; it also had full-complement biononic organelles.

The repairs had been woven into his body by the chamber and his existing biononics. They were still integrating, and that was why he felt so awful. Estimated time for the biononics to complete the binding and the cells to acclimatize to their new function was a further seventy-two hours.

“Could have been better, could have been worse,” he decided.

“I was worried,” she said. “Your wound was huge. The blood …” Her face paled; even the freckles faded.

Aaron slowly shifted his arms back along the chamber padding, propping himself up, at which point he realized he did not have any clothes on. “Thank you.”

She gave him a blank look.

“I should be thanking you, shouldn’t I? What happened? The last thing I remember was you hitting Ruth Stol.”

“That little princess bitch.”

“So? What came next?” Aaron swung his feet over the lip of the capsule; his inner ears seemed to take a lot longer than usual to register the movement. Bulkheads spun around him, then twisted back. The starship’s cabin was in its lounge mode, with long couches extending out from the bulkhead walls. He hobbled over to the closest one as the medical chamber withdrew into the floor. Sitting down, he tentatively poked his chest with a forefinger. Half of his torso was a nasty salmon pink, covered with a glistening protective membrane.

“I did what you suggested,” Corrie-Lyn said. “The capsule smashed its way into the reception hall. I just got inside when there was this almighty explosion over the forest. It knocked the capsule around quite a bit, but I was caught by the internal safety field. We zipped over to the administration block. You were … a mess, but I managed to pull you inside. Then we rendezvoused with the Artful Dodger outside the clinic, the way you set it up. The starship put its force field around the capsule while we transferred in. Good job. The police were going apeshit with me. They were shooting every weapon they had at us; there were craters all over the place when we took off. I told the smartcore to get us out of the system, but it followed your preloaded flight plan. We’re just sitting in some kind of hyperspace hole a light-year out from Anagaska. I can’t make a unisphere connection. The smartcore won’t obey me.”

“I loaded a few options in,” he said. His u-shadow gave the smartcore an instruction, and a storage locker opened. “Do you think you could get me that robe, please?”

She frowned disapprovingly but pulled the robe out. “I was really worried. I thought I was going to be stuck here forever if you died. It was horrible. The medical chamber would rejuvenate me every fifty years, and I’d just sit in the lounge plugged into the sensory drama library, being drip fed by the culinary unit. That’s not how I want to spend eternity, thank you.”

He grinned at her drama queen outrage as he slipped on the robe. “If the chamber could rejuvenate you, it could certainly re-life me.”

“Oh.”

“In any case, if I die, the smartcore allows you full control.”

“Right.”

“But!” He caught hold of her hand. She jerked around, suddenly apprehensive. “None of this would have happened if you’d been ready to pick me up when I told you.”

“I haven’t seen any decent clothes in weeks,” she protested. “I just lost track of time, that’s all. I didn’t mean to be late. Besides, I thought you got wounded before the scheduled rendezvous.”

He closed his eyes in despair. “Corrie-Lyn, if you’re on a combat mission, you don’t call a fucking time-out to go shopping. Understand?”

“You never said combat. A quick raid sneaking into their vault, you said.”

“For future reference, a covert mission in which all sides are armed is a combat situation.”

She pulled a face. “ ‘Nothing they have will be a match for my biononics.’ ”

“I never said that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I …” He let out a breath and made an effort to stay calm. Yoga. She always made us do yoga. It was fucking stupid.

Corrie-Lyn was frowning at him. “You okay? You need to get back in the chamber?”

“I’m fine. Look, thank you for picking me up. I know this kind of thing is not what your life is about.”

“You’re welcome,” she said gruffly.

“Please tell me we still have the memorycell.”

Corrie-Lyn produced a minx smile and held up the little plastic kube. “We still have the memorycell.”

“Thank Ozzie for that.” His u-shadow told the smartcore to show him the ship’s log; he wanted to check how much effort had been made to try to track them. Since they had left Anagaska in a hurry, several starships had run sophisticated hysradar scans out to several light-years, but nobody could spot an ultradrive ship in transdimensional suspension. The log also recorded that Corrie-Lyn had managed to circumvent the lockout he had placed on the culinary unit to prevent it from making alcoholic drinks. This really wasn’t the time to make an issue of it.

“Okay,” he told her. “I don’t think anyone’s spotted us, though there were some mighty interesting comings and goings just after our raid. Several ships with unusual quantum signatures popped out of hyperspace above Anagaska; the smartcore thinks they might be ultradrives in disguise.”

“Who would they be?”

“Don’t know and don’t intend to hang around to ask. Let’s get going.”

“Finally.”

He held his hand out, carefully maintaining a neutral expression.

Corrie-Lyn gave the kube a sentimental look and took awhile to drop it into his palm. “I’m not sure I like the idea of you reading Inigo’s mind.”

“I’m not going to. Memory assimilation isn’t like accessing a sensory drama off the unisphere or accepting experiences through the gaiafield. A genuine memory takes a long time to absorb; you can compress it down from real time, but still this kube contains nearly forty years of his life. That would take months to shunt into a human brain; it’s one of the governing factors in creating re-life clones. If we’re going to find him before the Pilgrimage, we don’t have that much time to spare.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Take it to someone who can absorb it a lot quicker than I can and ask nicely.”

“You just said human brains can’t absorb stored memories that quickly.”

“So I did, which is why we’re setting course for the High Angel.”

Corrie-Lyn looked shocked. “The Raiel starship?”

“Yes.”

“Why would the Raiel help you?”

He smiled at the kube. “Let’s just say that we now have an excellent bargaining chip.”

Corrie-Lyn did not have the kind of patience for extensive research. Aaron had to fill in the decades and centuries she skipped through when she started to access the files her u-shadow trawled up on the Raiel. Humans had discovered the High Angel back in 2163, he explained, when a wormhole was opened in its star system to search for any H-congruous planets. CST’s exploratory division quickly confirmed that there was no world that humans could live on, but the astronomers did notice a microwave signal coming from the orbit of the gas giant Icalanise.

“What’s that got to do with angels?” she asked. “Were they all religious?”

“Not astronomers, no.”

When they focused their sensors on the microwave source, they saw a moonlet sixty-three kilometers long with what looked like wings of hazy pearl light: the wings of an angel.

“Sounds like they were religious to me if that’s the first thing they think of.”

Aaron groaned. With more sensors urgently brought online, the true nature of the artifact was revealed: a core of rock sprouting twelve stems that supported vast domes, five of which had transparent cupolas. Cities and parkland were visible inside.

It was a starship, a living creature or a machine that had evolved into sentience. Origin unknown, and it wasn’t telling. Several species lived in the domes. Only the Raiel consented to talk to humanity, and they did not say very much.

Several of the biggest astroengineering companies negotiated a lease on three of the domes, and the High Angel became a dormitory town for an archipelago of microgravity factory stations producing some of the Commonwealth’s most advanced and profitable technology. The workforce and their families soon grew large enough to declare autonomy (with High Angel’s approval) and qualify for a seat in the Senate.

With the outbreak of the Starflyer War, High Angel became the Commonwealth’s premier navy base while the astroengineering companies turned their industrial stations over to warship production. More domes were grown, or extruded, or magically manifested into existence to accommodate the navy personnel. Even today nobody understood the High Angel’s technology.

“Do we know more about it now?” she asked.

“Not really. ANA might; the Central worlds can duplicate some functions with biononics, but the External worlds haven’t managed to produce anything like it.”

Humans, he told her, had to wait for two hundred years after the war before the massive alien starship’s history became a little clearer. Wilson Kime’s epic voyage in the Endeavor to circumnavigate the galaxy revealed the existence of the Void to the Commonwealth, complete with Centurion Station and Raiel defense systems maintaining the Wall stars. Other navy exploration ships discovered more High Angel–class ships; the one species common to all of them was the Raiel.

Confronted with that evidence, the Raiel finally explained that they had created the High Angel class of ships over a million years earlier while their species had been at its apex. It was a golden age during which the Raiel civilization spread across thousands of planets; they mixed with hundreds of other sentients, guided and observed as dozens of species transcended to a postphysical state. They even knew the Silfen before their Motherholme dreamed its paths into existence.

Then the Void underwent one of its periodic expansion phases. Nothing the Raiel could do stopped the barrier from engulfing entire star clusters. Gravity shifted around the galactic core as stars were torn down into the event horizon. The effect on civilizations just outside the Wall stars was catastrophic. Stars shifted position as the core gravity field fluctuated; their planets changed orbits. Thousands of unique biospheres were lost before evolution had any chance to flourish. Whole societies had to be evacuated before storm fronts of ultra-hard radiation that measured thousands of light-years across came streaming out into the base of the galaxy’s spiral arms.

After it was over, after rescue and salvage operations that went on for millennia, the Raiel declared that the Void no longer could be tolerated. The Firstlifes who had created it while the galaxy was still in its infancy clearly had not recognized the horrendous consequences it would have on those who lived after their era. The Raiel created an armada of ships that could function in any quantum state that theoretically might exist within the Void, and they invaded. A hundred thousand ships surrounded the terrible barrier and flew inside, ready for anything.

None returned.

The Void remained unbroken.

What was left of the once-colossal Raiel civilization launched a rearguard action. A defense system to reinforce the Wall stars was built in the small hope that it might contain the next macroexpansion. More ships were created to act as arks for emergent species, carrying them away from the doomed galaxy across the greater gulf outside, where they could reestablish themselves on new worlds in peaceful star clusters. It was the last act of beneficence from a race that had failed its ultimate challenge; if they could not save the galaxy, the Raiel swore they would endure to the bitter end, shepherding entities less capable than themselves to safety.

“That’s not a version of history I can believe in,” Corrie-Lyn said softly as the file images shrank to the center of the cabin and vanished. “It’s very hard for me to accept the Void as something hostile when I know the beauty which lies within.” She took a sip of her hot chocolate and brandy, curling up tighter on the couch.

“That version?” Aaron queried from the other side of the cabin.

“Well, it’s not as if we can ever verify it, is it?”

“Unless I’ve got a false memory, you’ve got nearly six hundred years of human observations from Centurion Station to confirm the very unnatural way in which the barrier consumes star systems. And who was it, now, that took some of them? Oh, yes, that’s right: Inigo himself.”

“Yes, but this whole crusading armada claim? Come on. A hundred thousand ships with weapons that can crunch entire stars. Where are they? None of Inigo’s dreams showed the smallest relic.”

“Dead. Vaporized into component atoms and consumed like every other particle of matter that passes through the barrier.” He paused, slightly troubled. “Except for the human ship which got through and landed on Querencia.”

“Pretty crappy tactics for a species of self-proclaimed masterminds. Didn’t they think of sending a scout or two in first?”

“Maybe they did. You can ask when we get to the High Angel.”

She gave him a pitying look. “If they even let us dock.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

The Artful Dodger fell back into spacetime ten thousand kilometers from the High Angel. Icalanise was waxing behind the alien starship, a horned crescent of warring topaz and platinum storm bands. Four small black circles were strung out along the equator: the tip of the umbra cones projected by a conjunction cluster of its thirty-eight moons.

Several sensor sweeps flashed across the starship. High Angel still hosted a large Commonwealth Navy presence. The base admiral took security seriously. A fresh identity complete with official certification was already loaded into the smartcore for examination. Aaron’s u-shadow requested docking permission with the New Glasgow dome for the Alini. They received almost immediate approach authority.

The archipelago of industrial stations glided lazily along a thousand-kilometer orbit, forming a dense loop of silver specks around the High Angel. Service shuttles zipped between them and the human-inhabited domes, collecting advanced technology and materials for forward shipment to the External worlds, where such systems still were prized.

“How about that,” Aaron muttered appreciatively as he accessed the ship’s sensor imagery. “An angel with a halo.”

“You can take religious analogies too far,” Corrie-Lyn chided.

There were seventeen domes rising out of the core’s rocky surface now. The six occupied by humans all had crystal cupolas, allowing them to see the cities and parkland inside. Four of the remainder were also transparent to a degree; the spectra of alien suns shone out of them, following their own diurnal cycles. Strange city silhouettes could be seen parked on the landscapes within. At night they would shine with enticing colorful light points. One of them belonged to the Raiel. The remaining domes were closed to external observation, and neither High Angel nor the Raiel would discuss their residents.

Following Aaron’s instruction, the starship’s smartcore aimed a communication maser at the Raiel dome. “I would like permission to dock at the Raiel dome, please,” Aaron said. “There is a resident I wish to speak to.”

“That is an unusual request for a private individual,” the High Angel replied with the voice of a human male. “I can speak on behalf of the Raiel.”

“Not good enough. You’re aware of the nature of this ship?”

“I do recognize it. Very few of ANA’s ultradrive vessels have ever come into my proximity; the technology is extremely sophisticated. You must be one of its representatives.”

“Something like that, and I need to speak with a specific Raiel.”

“Very well. I am sending you a new flight path; please follow it.”

“Thank you. The Raiel I’d like to meet is Qatux.”

“Of course.”

The Artful Dodger changed course slightly, curving around the massive dark rock of the High Angel’s core toward the stem of the Raiel dome. Large dark ovals were positioned at the base, just before the point where the pewter-colored shaft fused with the rock crust. One of the ovals dematerialized, revealing a featureless white chamber beyond. The Artful Dodger nosed inside, and the outer wall rematerialized behind it.

“Please stand by for teleport,” the High Angel said.

Corrie-Lyn looked startled.

“Once again,” Aaron said, “and yet still without any hope of you paying the slightest attention, let me do the talking.”

Her mouth opened to answer.

The cabin vanished, immediately replaced by a broad circular space with a floor that glowed a pale emerald. If there was a ceiling, it was invisible somewhere in the gloom far above. An adult Raiel was standing right in front of them. Corrie-Lyn gasped and almost stumbled. Aaron hurriedly reached out and caught her arm. He did not have any memory of being on Earth and using the planetary T-sphere, but the abrupt translation was about what he had expected.

“Dear Ozzie,” Corrie-Lyn grunted.

“I hope you are not too shocked,” the Raiel said in its mellow whisper.

Aaron bowed formally. The Raiel was as big as all the adults of its species, larger than a terrestrial elephant, with gray-brown skin that bristled with thick hairs. Aaron was no expert, but this one looked like an exceptionally healthy specimen. From the front its bulbous head was surrounded by a collar of tentacle limbs, with a thick pair at the bottom, four meters long and tipped with segmented paddles that were intended for heavy work. The remaining limbs were progressively smaller up to a clump of slender manipulators resembling particularly sinuous serpents. Each side of its head had a cluster of five small hemispherical eyes that swiveled in unison. Below them on the underside of the head, the skin creased into a number of loose folds to form the mouth zone. When it spoke, Aaron could just glimpse deep wet crevices and a row of sharp brown fangs.

“No, that’s fine,” Corrie-Lyn stammered. She remembered her manners and dipped her head awkwardly.

“I have not met humans in the flesh for some time,” Qatux said in its sad-sounding whisper. “I was curious. I didn’t realize my name was still known to you.”

“I’m afraid I only know your name, nothing more,” Aaron said. “But I thank you for agreeing to see us.”

“My part in your history was brief. I took part in a human expedition during the Starflyer War. I had friends, human friends, which is unusual for a Raiel, then as now. Tell me, do you know of Paula Myo?”

Aaron was surprised when his heart did a little jump at the name. Must be the medical treatment. “I’ve heard of her.”

“I liked Paula Myo,” Qatux said.

“She is an ANA: Governance representative these days.”

“And you are not?”

“Not at her level.” Aaron prayed Corrie-Lyn would not start mouthing off.

“Why are you here?” Qatux asked.

“I have a request.” He held up the kube. “This is the memorycell of a human. I would like you to receive the memories. There are questions about his personality I need answered.”

Qatux did not respond. Its eyes swiveled from Aaron to Corrie-Lyn, then back again.

“Can you do that?” Aaron asked. He was aware that something was wrong but did not know what. His mind kept telling him that Qatux was the Raiel who was most likely to help in this fashion. So far on this mission all the intuitive knowledge loaded into his subconscious had been correct.

“I used to do that,” Qatux whispered. “At one time I was captivated by human emotional states. I married a human.”

“Married?” Corrie-Lyn blurted.

“A most nice lady by the name of Tiger Pansy. I had never known someone so emotionally reactive. We spent many happy years together on the planet you named Far Away. I shared her every thought, every feeling.”

“What happened?” Aaron asked, knowing it was not going to be good.

“She died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She died most horribly. A woman called the Cat prolonged her death for many days. Deliberately. I shared that time with my wife. I experienced human death.”

“Shit,” Aaron mumbled.

“I have not known human thought or emotion since. At the end, my wife cured me of this strange weakness. It was her last gift, however unwillingly given. I am Raiel again. I now hold high rank among my own kind.”

“We shouldn’t have asked you to do this,” Corrie-Lyn said humbly. “We didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

Aaron wanted to use a stunshot on her. “It’s Inigo,” he said, holding the kube up again. “The human who dreams the lives of humans inside the Void.”

Once again Qatux was perfectly still. This time its eyes remained focused on Aaron alone.

“Aaron!” Corrie-Lyn hissed through clenched teeth.

He could feel the anger powering out of her through the gaiafield and completely ignored it. “I’m looking for him,” he told the huge silent alien, staring straight into its multiple eyes. “He needs to be found before his Living Dream believers spark another devourment phase with their Pilgrimage. Will you help?”

“Inigo?” Qatux asked. The whisper had softened to near inaudibility.

“Yes. The kube holds his personality right up until he left for his Centurion Station mission. His formative years. Everyone knows his life since he founded Living Dream, even the Raiel. Or perhaps especially the Raiel. If you combined that knowledge with his formative years, I thought that you might be able to understand his motivations, that you could work out where he has gone for me.”

“The Raiel have wanted to know the inside of the Void for so long. It is all we exist for now; we are its nemesis as much as it is ours. For over a million years we were content with the role fate had given us. And then a human comes along and simply dreams what is in there. None of us is capable of that. The strongest of our race fell into that evil place, and no trace remains. Nothing.”

“It’s not evil,” Corrie-Lyn said sullenly.

“I would like to believe that. I cannot. We have known the Void from a time before your species achieved sentience. It is the destroyer of life, of hope. Nothing escapes it.”

“Millions of humans live inside the Void. They live lives full of hope and love and laughter; they live lives better than any of us out here.”

“To do so, to achieve their greater life you envy so much, they are killing you. They are killing this galaxy. And now you wish to join them, to increase the damage to a level you cannot imagine.”

“Will you stop the Pilgrimage?” Aaron asked.

“Not I. Not this arkship. That is not the purpose of this Raiel; we are custodians alone. However, there are other Raiel who serve a different purpose. They are the defenders of this galaxy. I do not know what they will do to your Pilgrimage.”

Aaron glanced at Corrie-Lyn. Her mouth was set in a purposeful line.

“Can you help us with Inigo’s memories? If I can find him, talk to him, there may be a chance he’ll stop the Pilgrimage.”

Qatux moved toward him, eight stumpy legs on either side of its underbelly tilting forward to move it in a smooth undulation. Aaron held his ground, though he was aware of Corrie-Lyn taking a small shuffle backward; her emotions seeping into the gaiafield were turning from pride to concern.

“I will do what I can,” Qatux said. It extended a medium-size tentacle.

Aaron exhaled in relief and handed over the memorycell. The tentacle tip coiled around it and withdrew, curling backward. Just behind the collar of tentacles, hanging off the equivalent of a Raiel neck, innumerable small protuberances of flesh dangled, each one crowned by a small heavy bulb that was technological in origin. The kube sank through the dark surface of a bulb like a pebble falling into water.

A long shudder ran along Qatux’s bulk, and the giant alien let out a sigh that seemed close to pain. “I will tell you when I have finished,” Qatux said.

Aaron and Corrie-Lyn were unceremoniously teleported back into the Artful Dodger.

The Mars Twins were an unusual turgid red as their upper-atmosphere hurricanes swirled and battled along thousand-kilometer fronts, obliterating the dark shadows that occasionally hinted at surface features. Their dour ambiance matched Cleric Conservator Ethan’s mood as he strode through the Liliala Hall. Above him the storms rampaging across the visionary ceiling flashed purple lightning and pummeled away at each other like waves assaulting a beach. They swirled together, veiling the two small planets. The silent vivid battle made for an impressive entrance as he swept through the arching door into the Mayor’s suite.

Rincenso and Falven, two of his staunchest supporters on the Council, were waiting for him in the first anteroom, their cautious expressions made more sinister by the amber lighting. All they allowed of themselves into the gaiafield was a polite radiance of expectation. Not even Ethan’s easily sensed mood could make them waver.

He beckoned them to follow as he pushed through into the oval sanctum. Strong sunlight shone in through the high Rayonnant-style windows, illuminating the grand wooden desk identical to the one the Waterwalker had sat behind when he had been Mayor of Makkathran. Five simple chairs were arranged before it. Councillor Phelim stood at the side of one, waiting for Ethan to sit behind his desk. He wore the simple everyday blue and green robe of a Councillor. It was meant to testify to an open and approachable person who would take time to solve someone’s problem. On Phelim it was off-putting, emphasizing his height and severe facial features.

“So the Skylord would seem to be on its way to Querencia,” Ethan said as he sat down.

Falven cleared his throat. “It is heading for some kind of planet. We have to assume it is Querencia. The prospect of another planet housing humans in the Void would open many complications for us.”

“Not so,” Rincenso said. “I don’t care how many other H-congruous planets there are or who lives on them. We are concerned only with Querencia and the Waterwalker. It is his example we wish to follow.”

“Too many unknowns to pronounce on,” Falven said.

“Not that many, surely,” Ethan said. “We cannot doubt the Second Dreamer is dreaming a Skylord. This creature is aware of the souls and minds of living sentient entities. It and its flock are flying toward a solid planet to collect those souls and carry them to Odin’s Sea. This flight fulfills every teaching of the Lady.”

“I wonder what life in Makkathran is like now,” Rincenso mused. “So much time has passed.”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Ethan said. “The hulls of our Pilgrimage ships are being fabricated. We will be ready to launch soon. Phelim?”

“We should have the hulls and internal systems finished by September,” Phelim said. “The cost is colossal, but the Free Market Zone has a considerable manufacturing capacity. Component construction is heavily cybernated; production is a simple process once the templates are loaded in. And of course, no matter how much criticism we face, External world companies are always eager for our money.”

“September,” Rincenso said. “Dear Ozzie, so close.”

Ethan did not look at Phelim. No one else had been told of the ultradrive engines Marius had promised to deliver. “The physical aspect goes well,” he said. “That just leaves us with our enigmatic Second Dreamer to deal with. We still don’t know why he hasn’t revealed himself, but it is significant that his dreams have become so much more substantial as the ships are built.”

“Why does he not come forward?” Falven said. The gaiafield revealed the flash of anger in his mind. “Curse him; are we never to find him?”

“He is on Viotia,” Phelim said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. The gaiafield confluence nests on Viotia were the first to receive his last dream. They disseminated it across the Greater Commonwealth gaiafield.”

“Do you know where on Viotia he is?”

“Not yet. But now that we have confirmed the planet, our efforts will be concentrated on determining the exact geographical location. Of course, people move about. And if he is actively seeking anonymity, he will simply relocate after every dream.”

“Which must be prevented,” Ethan said simply.

“How?” Rincenso asked.

“This is why I have asked you two here today, my dearest friends and allies on the Council. The Second Dreamer is crucial to Pilgrimage. He is the one who must ask the Skylords for guidance through the barrier and onward to Querencia. In the absence of Inigo, he is the one who will light our way.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Falven asked.

“There are several routes available to us,” Ethan said quietly. “I believe the one we will end up traveling along is to bring Viotia into the Free Market Zone.”

The two Councillors gave each other a puzzled look.

“It is part of our Free Market Zone,” Falven said.

“By treaty, yes,” Ethan said. “It is not one of our core planets—yet. We must be prepared to complete the admission process, culminating with Ellezelin opening a wormhole between our two worlds. Following that, Viotia’s government should adopt a more favorable stance toward Living Dream. Ultimately I would like to welcome them into our hagiocracy.”

Falven sat back, looking startled.

Rincenso merely smiled in appreciation. “There are a great many of our followers there already. Enough to tilt the demographic?”

“Possibly,” Phelim said.

“In which case I would be happy to raise the proposal in the Council.”

“I, too,” Falven said slowly.

“There is a degree of hostility and resentment currently being shown to our followers on Viotia,” Ethan said. “If a wormhole were to be opened, binding their economy to ours, that resentment will manifest itself in street violence. We would need to guarantee the security of all Living Dream adherents.”

“Do we have that ability?” Falven asked cautiously.

“There are enough national security forces spread across the core planets of the Free Market Zone to enforce the rule of law on Viotia,” Phelim said. “We have been recruiting additional personnel since Ethan’s ascension to Conservator.”

“Enough for this?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I regret any inconvenience this may cause to Viotia’s citizens,” Ethan said. “But we cannot afford to lose the Second Dreamer.”

“If we just knew why he’s refusing to reveal himself,” Rincenso said acrimoniously.

“Because he doesn’t yet know,” Ethan said with a weary sadness.

“How can he not know?”

“It took several weeks for Inigo to realize what was happening. At first he believed his dreams to be some kind of overspill from a full-sense drama that was leaking into the Centurion Station gaiafield. I believe that confusion is repeating again. To begin with, all we had were small fragments, glimpses of the Skylord which we edited together. Now that contact has been established, the length and strength of the dreams are increasing. As they did with Inigo. Soon they will reach a crescendo, and the Second Dreamer will realize what he has been chosen to do.”

Falven gave the others in the oval sanctum an uncomfortable look. “Then why do we need to incorporate Viotia?”

“What if the Second Dreamer isn’t an adherent of Living Dream?” Ethan asked mildly.

“But—”

“There’s a much worse scenario than that,” Phelim said. “If one of our opponents were to reach him first and use him to sabotage the Pilgrimage.”

“They’ll be looking,” Rincenso said.

“Of course they’ll be looking,” Ethan said. “But we have a huge advantage with our command of the gaiafield. Not even ANA’s despicable factions can intrude upon that. We must reach him first.”

“And if he refuses to help?” Falven inquired.

“Change his mind,” Phelim told them. “In a very literal sense.”

“I suppose that’s necessary,” Rincenso said uneasily.

“I would hope not,” Ethan said. “But we must be prepared for all eventualities.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“What I would like to do first is make a simple appeal to both the Second Dreamer and the Skylord,” Ethan said.

Falven’s thoughts rippled with surprise, which he made no effort to hide. “A unisphere declaration?”

“No. A direct intervention into the next dream.”

“How?”

“The Second Dreamer is issuing his dream into the confluence nests in real time,” Phelim said. “Right at the end of the last dream, as it fades away, there is an anomaly, a tiny one. It is extremely hard to spot; we believe it has escaped attention among the majority of our followers. But our dream masters have been reviewing those last moments. There is a human emotion intruding into the Skylord’s stream of consciousness: a weak sense of pleasure but one with considerable sexual connotations. In all probability we are witnessing postcoital satisfaction.”

“The Second Dreamer receives the Skylord’s dream when he’s having sex?” Rincenso asked incredulously.

“The human brain is most receptive when relaxed,” Ethan said. “The period immediately after sex certainly generates that state.”

“Did this happen to Inigo?” Falven was almost indignant.

Ethan’s lips twitched in amusement. “Not that I’m aware of. Inigo never issued his dreams in real time, so I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. But this anomaly is the strongest indicator we have that this is real-time dreaming, in which case we should be able to intervene, to converse with both the Second Dreamer and the Skylord. If we can successfully perform the latter intervention, we may be able to establish a direct connection without the Second Dreamer, in which case our problems will be solved. Viotia becomes an irrelevance, as does our elusive Second Dreamer. And we will be one step closer to the Void.”

“That would be … wonderful,” Falven said.

“Our dream masters are now monitoring Viotia’s confluence nests for the time the Second Dreamer starts to dream. When it happens, we will make the attempt.”

“And if that fails?”

“Then you will bring your proposal to the Council.”

Fourteen hundred years was a long time alive by anyone’s standards. However, there were Commonwealth citizens who had remained in their bodies for longer; Paula had even met a few of them. She did not enjoy their company. Mostly they were dynasty members who could not let go of the old times when their family empires used to run the Commonwealth. After biononics and ANA and Higher culture had changed the Central worlds forever, they had grabbed what they could of their ancient wealth and reestablished themselves on External worlds, where they had set about re-creating their personal golden age.

They had the money and influence to be bold and build new experimental societies: something different, something exciting. But for all their extraordinarily long life, they’d never experienced another way to live. And the longer they managed to maintain their own little empires around them, the more resistant to change they became. Nothing new was attempted; instead, they mined history for stability. On one planet in particular their social engineering had reached its nadir. A ruling Halgarth collective on Iaioud had founded and maintained a society that was even less susceptible to change than Huxley’s Haven by the simple expedient of prohibiting conception. At the end of a fifty-year life, all the citizens were rejuvenated and their memories wiped, except that the state knew who they were and what job they did best. On emerging fresh from their clinic treatment, they would be appointed to the same profession again and spend the next fifty years working as they had for the last fifty, hundred, three hundred years. It was the ultimate feudalism.

Three hundred years before, Paula had led an undercover team of agents there, infiltrating the clinics that performed the rejuvenation treatment and slowly corrupting them. Over the next few years memory wipes became incomplete, allowing people to remember what had gone before. Thousands of women discovered that their revitalized bodies had a functional uterus again. Underground networks were established, first to help the criminal outcasts who had given birth to children and then assuming a greater role in offering political resistance to the Halgarth regime.

Forty years after Paula and her team had finished their mission to sow dissent on Iaioud, a revolution overturned the Halgarth collective, using minimal force. It took a further hundred fifty years for the twisted world to regain its equilibrium and claw its way back up the socioeconomic index to something approaching the average for an External world.

At the time, Paula had worried that she still was not ready for that kind of mission. Change was a long time coming within herself. It was one thing to realize intellectually that she had to adapt mentally to keep up with the ever-shifting cultures of the Greater Commonwealth. But unlike everyone else, she had to make a conscious decision to alter herself physically in order for that evolution to manifest itself. Her carefully designed DNA hardwired her neurons into specific personality traits. In order to survive any kind of phrenic progression, she first had to destroy what existed, an action that came perilously close to individuality suicide. And in her, as in every human, vanity was not something bound to DNA; she considered her existing personality to be more than adequate—in short, she liked being herself.

But in slow increments, every time she needed to undergo rejuvenation, she modified a little more of her psychoneural profiling. At the end of the three-century process, she was still obsessive about a great many things, but now it was through choice rather than a physically ordained compulsion. One time long before, when she had tried to overcome mentally her need to apprehend a criminal in order to achieve a greater goal, the effort had put her body into a severe type of shock. By removing the Foundation’s physiological constraints, her mind now could flourish in ways her long-departed designers never had envisaged. She had been born with the intention of tracking down individual criminals, the kind who might plague the society of Huxley’s Haven, but now she had the freedom to take an overview. Yet none of the liberations she selected for herself ever touched the core of her identity; she always retained her intuitive understanding of right and wrong. Her soul was untainted.

Iaioud tested her new versatile self to the extreme. She accepted that the way in which the Halgarth collective had set up the constitution was intrinsically wrong, oppressing an entire population. In fact, she probably would have acknowledged that before. But the whole nature of Iaioud’s rigid society was uncomfortably close to that of Huxley’s Haven. After a while she decided that the difference was simple enough. On Iaioud people were being kept in line by a brutally authoritarian regime misusing Commonwealth medical technology. On Huxley’s Haven strictures and conformity came from within. Possibly there had been a crime back at the founding, when the Human Structure Foundation had started birthing an entire population with DNA modified for its grand scheme. The old liberal groups might have been right, a thought that would have finally pleased the radicals who had stolen her as a baby. But however great the sin committed at its genesis, the constraints placed on the population of Huxley’s Haven were internal. Its people now could not be changed without destroying what they were—by far the bigger crime.

So she convinced herself, anyway. These days she wrote it off as an argument between philosophies, interesting and completely disconnected from real life. The Commonwealth had enough real problems to keep her fully occupied, though even she had to admit that the whole Pilgrimage issue was creating some unique complications.

For once she couldn’t decide. Did Living Dream have the right to set off on Pilgrimage and possible consequences be damned? Her dilemma arose from the total lack of empirical evidence that the Void would consume the rest of the galaxy. She had to admit that a lot of pro-Pilgrimage factions and commentators were right to be skeptical. The assumption that Living Dream was courting annihilation was based entirely on information that came from the Raiel. The immense time scale since the last catastrophic macroexpansion phase would distort any information no matter how well stored; throw in aliens with their own agenda and she simply could not accept the claim at face value.

ANA: Governance was keen to acquire more information on the situation; that gave Paula a useful outlet for her energies and, thankfully, little time to brood over the politics involved. Her assignment, as always, was to stop the factions from engineering the physical citizens of the Commonwealth into actions they otherwise would not have performed.

She’d left the St. Mary’s clinic and returned to her ship, the Alexis Denken, a sleek ultradrive vessel that ANA: Governance had supplied and armed to a degree that would have alarmed any navy captain. She left the planet and then hung in transdimensional suspension twenty AU out from the star. It was a position that allowed her to monitor the FTL traffic within the Anagaska system with astonishing accuracy. Unfortunately, the one thing her ship’s sensors could not do was locate a cold trail. There was no trace of Aaron’s ship. Given the time between the raid on the clinic and her arrival, she suspected that he had an ultradrive ship. Marius certainly had one. Her u-shadow monitored him arriving back at the city starport and getting into a private yacht. Alexis Denken’s sensors tracked it slipping into hyperspace. For those in the know, the signature was indicative of an ultradrive.

An hour later the Delivery Man took off in his own ship, which had an equally suspicious drive signature. He flew away in almost exactly the opposite direction of Marius. Ten minutes later another starship dropped out of transdimensional suspension, where it had been waiting in the system’s cometary halo, and began to fly along the same course as the Delivery Man.

“Good luck,” Paula sent to Justine.

“Thanks.”

Paula opened an ultrasecure link to ANA: Governance. “It appears your ultradrive technology is completely compromised,” she reported.

“To be expected,” ANA: Governance replied. “It does not require my full capacity to derive the theory behind it. Most factions would have the intellectual resources. Once the equations are available, any Higher replicator above level five could produce the appropriate hardware.”

“I still think you should exert a little more authority. After all, the factions are all part of you.”

“Factions are how I remain integral. I am plural.”

“The way you say it makes it sound like you have the electronic version of bipolar disorder.”

“More like multi-billion-polar. But that is what I am. All individuals who join me do so by imprinting their personality routines upon me. I am the collective consciousness of all ANA inhabitants; that is the very basis of my authority. Once that essence is bequeathed, they are free to become what they want. I do not take their memories, too; that would be an annexation of individuality.”

“You have to pass through the eye of the needle to live in the playground of the gods.”

“One of Inigo’s better quotes,” ANA: Governance said with a cadence of amusement. “Shame about the rest of that sermon.”

“You don’t help make my job any easier.”

“Any and all of my resources are available to you.”

“But there’s only one of me, and I feel like I’m battling the Hydra out here.”

“This lack of self-confidence is unlike you. What is the matter?”

“The Pilgrimage, of course. Should it be allowed?”

“The humans of Living Dream believe it to be both their right and their destiny. They are billions in number. How can that much belief be wrong?”

“Because they might be endangering trillions.”

“True. This is not a question which has an answer. Not in the absolute terms you are demanding.”

“What if they do trigger the Void’s final devourment phase or at least a bad one?”

“Ah, now, that is the real question. It’s also one which I doubt we can have prior knowledge of. Neither I nor any of the postphysicals I have interacted with are aware of what happens inside the Void.”

“Inigo showed you.”

“Inigo showed us the fate of humans in the Void. Which incidentally isn’t too dissimilar to downloading yourself into me, though the Void has the advantage of quasi-mystical overtones to win over the technophobes among humanity. And you get to remain physical. What he did not show us is the nature of the Void itself.”

“So you’re prepared to take the risk?”

“At this moment I am prepared to let the players strut the stage.”

“Yes. That’s about as undefinitive as it gets.”

“If I were to forbid the Pilgrimage and enforce that decision, it would trigger a split within myself. Pro-Pilgrimage factions such as the Advancers would likely attempt to create their own version of myself. And kindly remember I am not a virtual environment. I am fully established within the quantum field intersections around Earth.”

“You’re scared of a rival?”

“The human race has never been so unified as it is today. It has taken our entire history to reach this congruity. People, all people, lead a good life filled with as much diversity as they wish to undergo. They migrate inward until they download into me. Within me they are free to transcend in any way imagination and ability can combine. One day, as a whole, I will become postphysical. Humans who do not wish to travel along that path will begin afresh. That is the vision of evolution which awaits us. A ‘rival’ focal point would distort that, possibly even damage or dilute the moment of singularity.”

“There can only be one god, huh?”

“There can be many. I simply wish to avoid engendering hostile ones. No one wants to see a war in heaven. Trust me, it would make a Void devourment seem trivial.”

“I thought diversity was our virtue.”

“It is one of them and, as such, flourishes within me.”

“But …”

“It is also a danger that can lead to our destruction. Opposing forces have to be balanced. That is my function.”

“And this is one instance where you’re going to fail if you’re not careful.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“So we have to find other options.”

“As people have sought since civilization began on Earth. That, I think, is a greater virtue.”

“Okay, then.” Paula took a moment to marshal her thoughts. “I’m uncertain who is behind the raid on the clinic. It is puzzling why the Advancers and Conservatives should both have their representatives there after the fact. Do you think a third faction is involved?”

“Very likely. I do not know which one. Many alliances are being formed and broken. However, you may soon be able to establish the identity. Admiral Kazimir is currently receiving a report from the base admiral at the High Angel. He will probably ask you to tackle it.”

“Ah.”

“If you need anything.”

“I’ll let you know.”

The link ended. Paula sat back on the deep curving chair the starship’s cabin had molded for her. Given her own uncertainty about the mission, she was feeling vaguely troubled by the lack of reassurance ANA: Governance could offer. She supposed she should be grateful it had been so honest with her.

Kazimir called less than a minute later. “How did the Anagaska inquiry go?” he asked.

“Positive result. It was definitely someone with advanced biononics and possibly an ultradrive ship. The target was Inigo’s old memorycell.”

“Interesting. And I’ve just had a report that the Alini, a private starship, docked at High Angel.”

“How is that relevant?”

“It docked at the Raiel dome. The navy sensors detected a drive signature, which could indicate an ultradrive.”

Paula was suddenly very interested. “Did it, now? There are very few humans the Raiel will allow into their dome. Who does the Alini belong to?”

“Unknown. It’s registered to a company on Sholapur.”

“I’m on my way.”

The Delivery Man landed at Daroca’s main starport, parking his ultradrive ship, the Jomo, on a pad connected to the third terminal building, which dealt with private yachts. Then he started walking across the field to the nearby hangar zone. Even knowing all about the diversion bug infiltrated into the ground navigation section of the starport’s smartcore did not help him. All the hangars were identical, the rows regimented. It was mildly confusing. Not that he would lose his way, not with all his enrichments and an instinctive sense of direction. But just to be on the safe side, his u-shadow snatched real-time images from a sensor satellite and guided him directly.

Eventually he was standing at the base of a glossy black wall where the small side door was protected by an excellent security shield. Not even his full field function scan could determine what lay inside. He smiled. This was more like it.

His biononics began to modify their field function, pushing a variety of energy patterns against the security shield, introducing small instabilities that quickly began to amplify. His u-shadow reached through the fluctuating gaps and launched a flurry of smart trojans into the hangar net.

The door irised open.

Ninety-seven seconds. Not bad.

Inside, his field function scanned, looking for possible guard armaments, while his u-shadow rifled through the hangar’s electronic systems. Troblum had set up a fairly standard defense network with concentric shielding around the main section of the hangar. The physicist was clearly more interested in maintaining privacy than in providing physical protection.

His scan did not reveal any human presence in the hangar. The first office was clearly just a reception area, cover for anyone who did make it past the diversion system. Beyond that was a second office with one of the biggest smartcores the Delivery Man had ever seen. It was not connected to the hangar network or the unisphere. His u-shadow established a link to its peripheral systems and began to probe the available files.

The Delivery Man went into the main hangar. He whistled softly at the vast array of Neumann cybernetic modules occupying half the space inside. The machine was powered down, but he was familiar enough with the technology to guess that its sophistication probably put it beyond a level-six replicator. That was not something an individual Higher citizen normally possessed. No wonder Troblum needed such a large smartcore; nothing else could operate such a rig.

“Can you access the main memory?” he asked his u-shadow.

“Not possible for me. I will need high-order assistance.”

The Delivery Man cursed and opened an ultrasecure link to the Conservative Faction. There was a small risk it could be intercepted by another faction or, more likely, ANA: Governance itself, but in light of what he had stumbled across, he considered it necessary. “I need help to gain access to Troblum’s smartcore. It should tell us what he’s been building with this machine.”

“Very well,” the Conservative Faction replied. With his u-shadow providing a link, the Delivery Man could almost feel the faction’s presence shift into the hangar. It began to infiltrate the smartcore. While it was doing that, he began to look through the mundane files in the hangar’s net to try to find delivery schedules. The individual components of the machine had to have come from somewhere, and the EMAs to obtain them went far beyond an individual’s resources. There was no court the Conservatives could use to confront the Accelerators with even if he established a data trail back to their representatives, but if he could find the proxy supplying Troblum with additional EMAs, there was a chance he could find other illicit EMA transfers from the same source. A whole level of Accelerator operations would be uncovered.

“There is only one design stored in the smartcore,” the Conservative Faction announced. “It would appear to be an FTL engine capable of transporting a planet.”

The Delivery Man swung around to stare at the dark machine looming above him, his gaze drawn to the circular extrusion mechanism in the center. “A whole planet?”

“Yes.”

“Would it work?”

“The design is an ingenious reworking of exotic matter theory. It could work if applied correctly.”

“And this built it?” he said, still staring at the machine.

“There have been two attempts at producing the engine. The first was aborted. The second appears to have been successful.”

“Why do they want to fly a planet at FTL speeds? And which planet?”

“We don’t know. Please destroy the machine and the smartcore.”

The Delivery Man put his hands on his hips to give the machine an appalled look. “What technology level can I go up to here?”

“Unlimited. Nobody must know it ever existed, least of all Highers.”

“Okay. Your call.”

The Conservative Faction ended the link, leaving the Delivery Man feeling unusually alone. Now that he knew the purpose of the machine, the silent hangar had the feel of some ancient murder scene. It was not a pleasant place to be, putting him on edge.

He called the Jomo’s smartcore and told it to fly over. The hangar’s main doors were open when it arrived, and it nosed through the security screen to settle on the cradles inside. Its nose almost touched the wall of Neumann cybernetics.

The Delivery Man made sure the hangar security screen was at its highest rating before he stood underneath the Jomo’s open airlock to be drawn up by an inverted gravity effect. Once inside, he used a tricertificate authorization to activate the Hawking m-sink stored in one of the forward holds. The little device was contained inside a high-powered regrav sled, which slipped out to hover in front of the Neumann cybernetics. With that in place, the Delivery Man aimed a narrow disrupter effect at the machine, just above the Hawking m-sink. A half-meter section of equipment vaporized, producing a horizontal fountain of hot ionized gas. It bent slightly in midair to pour into the Hawking m-sink, which absorbed every molecule. The Delivery Man tracked the disrupter effect along the front of the machine, with the Hawking m-sink following.

It took forty minutes to vaporize the entire machine. When it was over, the quantum black hole at the center of the Hawking m-sink had absorbed three hundred twenty-seven tons of matter, putting the regrav sled close to its weight lift limit as it edged back into the starship’s hold. The Delivery Man requested flight clearance from the starport, and the Jomo lifted into Arevalo’s warm summer skies.

Justine watched it go from the safety of her own ship, which was parked on a pad eight hangars down the row.

Twilight was bathing Hawksbill Bay with a rich gold hue that was so mild that strange constellations could twinkle merrily across the cloudless sky. The only sound around the pavilion’s swimming pool came from the waves breaking around the rocks of the headland below.

“An FTL engine that shifts planets,” Nelson said. “Got to admire them. They don’t think small.”

“They don’t think, period,” Gore grunted. “ANA is embedded in the local quantum fields. You can’t just rip it out and fling it across the galaxy on a blind date with the Void.”

“They obviously believe it. Troblum’s EMA came through one of their front committees. He built the engine for the Accelerators.”

“Don’t believe it,” Gore said, shaking his head. “He even made a presentation to the navy about the Anomine using something like this to haul the Dyson barrier generators into place. Asked Kazimir to fund a fucking search for them, for Christ’s sake. Why would Ilanthe allow him to go public with the idea? They’d atomize him before he even put in a call for a meeting with the navy. No, we haven’t got enough information yet.”

“Makes sense if it’s a diversion,” Nelson said reluctantly. “They wouldn’t build anything so critical to their plans on a Higher world. We don’t.”

“And he’s taken years to get it built on a fairly pitiful budget. Wrong priority level. We need to find Troblum and ask nicely what he’s really been doing for the Accelerators.”

“He left Arevalo a while back. Filed a flight plan to Lutain. Never showed up there or any other Commonwealth world, Central or External.”

“We need to find him,” Gore repeated firmly.

“That’s not going to happen. Either the Accelerators have him or he’s hiding, or more likely he’s plain and simple dead.”

“Then we find out which one it is.”

Justine stood in the middle of the weirdly empty hangar and called Paula.

“There’s something seriously wrong here.”

“In what way?” Paula asked.

“I think the Delivery Man just cleared the whole place out.” Justine slowly looked around the big empty space, opening her optical vision to Paula. “See that? There was something in here. My field scan shows those power cables were cut by a disruption effect; same goes for the support girders. Whatever it was, it was sizable and used up a great deal of power. But the Jomo is no bigger than my ship. Which only leaves one option for how he did it.”

“I thought the Hawking m-sink was even more secure than ultradrive technology. It would seem I’m wrong, which is disturbing.”

“Kazimir will have to be told,” Justine said. “If there are starships flying around the Commonwealth equipped with that kind of weapon, the navy should know about it. The factions don’t use the most principled people as their representatives.”

“I’ll leave that to you.”

“Great. Thank you. He’s still human enough to blame the messenger.”

“He’s a professional. You’ll be all right. Do you know where the Delivery Man is heading?”

“His direction indicated Earth when he left my sensor range. I imagine he’ll want to dump the mass stored in the Hawking m-sink first, and he’ll do that deep in interstellar space. Expelling it will produce a colossal gamma burst.”

“Leave him alone for now. The focus is shifting back to Living Dream.”

“Why?”

“Our sources in the movement are reporting an alarming development,” Paula said. “Living Dream is readying all the civil security forces on all the core worlds of the Free Market Zone. Leave has been canceled, and they’re undergoing martial law enforcement training.”

“Martial law? Where is that applied in the Free Market Zone?”

“It isn’t—yet. But if they were to annex Viotia, they would probably need that many police troopers to keep the populace under control.”

“Jesus! Are they planning that?”

“Ethan is becoming desperate to gain control over the Second Dreamer. Whoever that is, he’s the one person who could still stop this whole Pilgrimage in its tracks.”

“And everyone believes he’s on Viotia,” Justine said, appalled. “Dear heavens, an interstellar invasion. In this day and age it’s unthinkable. It’s left over from the Starflyer War.”

“Start thinking it. I made a mistake not giving this a higher priority. We really need to offer ANA: Governance’s protection to the Second Dreamer. That way no one will be able to pressure him into either helping or hindering the Pilgrimage.”

“But first we have to find him. How long before you can get your agent working on this?”

“Very soon now. I’m on my way to see him with one slight detour.”

Justine eyed the hangar’s inner office suspiciously. There was an empty space that three communications conduits led into, their ends cut off clean. “Whatever they were building here was clearly important, and the Delivery Man took quite a risk covering it up. I don’t think we have a lot of time left.”

“The Pilgrimage ships won’t be ready to fly until September.”

“And the Ocisen Empire fleet will be here in late August, which is less than three months away. I’d like to suggest a lead no one else seems to be following.”

“What’s that?”

“Inigo started to dream when he was at Centurion Station. Did anyone else?”

“If they did, we’d know about it.”

“That’s the point: Would we? Suppose the contact was a weak one that was never fully established. Or the recipient didn’t want any part of Inigo’s religion. A reluctant person just like the Second Dreamer has turned out to be.”

“I think I see where you’re going with this or, rather, intend to go.”

“I want to check out the confluence nest on Centurion Station, see if it has any memory of Void dreams or fragments of them. Maybe the Second Dreamer started his connection with the Skylord when he was there, just like Inigo.”

“You’re right. No one else has covered that angle.”

“If I leave now, my ship can get me there in five hundred hours.”

“You’re going to fly there? Why not use the navy’s relay link?”

“Too much chance of it being intercepted.”

“If you do find anything, it’ll take you another five hundred hours to get back. It’ll probably all be over by then.”

“If I find anything important, I’ll use the relay link to send you the name in the heaviest encryption we have.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

Troblum woke up slumped in the chair he had sat in reviewing various schematics all day. His exovision displays had paused at the point where he had fallen asleep. Colorful profiles of exotic mass density modulators floated like mechanical ghosts around him, each one beleaguered by shoals of blue and green analytical displays. Supposedly, those components would perform their designated function without any trouble; the designers simply had scaled up from existing ultradrives. Except nobody had ever built them that size before, which left Troblum with a mountain of problems when it came to the kind of precise power control they needed. And they hadn’t even gotten to the fabrication stage yet.

He stretched as best his thick limbs would allow and tried to get out of the chair. After two attempts that made him look like an overturned glagwi struggling to right itself, his u-shadow ordered the station to reduce the local gravity field. Now, when he pushed with his legs and back, he gave his body an impetus that propelled him right out of the clingy cushions. Gravity returned slowly, giving him time to straighten his legs before his feet touched the decking. He let out a wet belch as the falling sensation ended. His stomach still was churning, and his legs felt weak and stiff. He had a headache, too. The medical display in his exovision showed him that his sugar levels were all over the place. There was a load of crap about toxins and blood oxygen levels, too, which he canceled just as the nutrition and exercise recommendations came up. Stupid anachronism in the age of biononics.

He set off to the saloon that the ultradrive team used as its social and business center. It had the best culinary units on the station. When he arrived, several of the tables along the curving wall were occupied by groups of people discussing various aspects of the project. He saw Neskia with a couple of technicians he recognized from the team handling the drive’s hyperspace fluidity systems. They all stared at him as he sat down in the spare seat, wincing as his knees creaked. Both technicians registered mild disapproval. Neskia’s long metallized neck curved sinuously so that her flat face was aligned perfectly on him. “Thank you,” she said to the technicians. “We’ll go with that.”

They nodded thanks and left.

“Was there something you wanted?” she asked Troblum in a level voice.

“I need to change the design for the mass density modulator,” he said. A maidbot slid over with a tray of food his u-shadow had ordered from the culinary units. He started unloading the plates.

Neskia’s face tipped down; her large circular eyes regarded the food without any trace of emotion. “I see. Do you have the proposed new design?”

“No,” he mumbled around a mouthful of spaghetti. “I want you to okay the change before I waste a week on it.”

“What’s wrong with the existing modulator?”

“It’s a pile of crap. Doesn’t work. Your idiots didn’t take the power control requirements into account.”

“Do you have an analysis of the problem?”

Troblum could only nod as he chewed his hot floratts bread with mozzarella and herbs. His u-shadow sent the file over.

“Thank you. The review team will examine this. You will have a reply in an hour. That is the procedure.”

“Sure. Good.” He sighed. It was great that the tech problem had been sorted out, but the spaghetti with its balls of jolmeat and attrato sauce could have done with more black pepper. He reached for his tankard, only to find Neskia’s hand on top of his, preventing him from lifting the beer. Her skin shimmered between white and silver. He could not sense any temperature from her fingers, hot or cold. “What?”

Her eyes blinked slowly, turning the irises from black to deep indigo. “In future. In public. While you are here in my station. Please ensure that your social interaction program is running and that you follow its advice.”

“Oh. Okay.” He dipped his head toward the tankard.

“Thank you, Troblum.” She lifted her hand. “Was there anything else? The project seems to be absorbing most of your time.”

“Yeah, it’s interesting. I might get some crossover into one of my own projects. Ultradrive is a fascinating reworking of quantum dimensional theory. Who came up with it?”

“I believe it was ANA: Governance. Is it important?”

“No.” He pushed the spaghetti plate aside and started on the rack of lamb.

Neskia had not stopped looking at him. She was about to speak again when two people came over to stand beside their table. Troblum finished chewing before he glanced up; he knew that was the kind of thing the social program counseled. Marius was looking down at him with his usual rarefied contempt, but it was his companion who turned Troblum immobile. His limbs would not move. Thankfully, neither did his mouth, which stopped him from opening his jaw and grunting in shock. He could not breathe, either, as something like frost ripped down through his lungs.

“I’d introduce you,” Marius said coldly. “But of all the people on this station, Troblum, you are the one who doesn’t need it, now, do you?”

“Really,” the Cat said, and grinned. “Why’s that?”

Troblum’s very dark fascination kept his muscles locked tight. She was not easy to recognize; she did not have that trademark spiked hair out of all her history files. It was still short and dark, but today she wore it in a smooth swept-back style with a pair of slim copper shades perched above her forehead. She was dressed in a chic modern suit rather than the leather trousers and tight vest she used to favor. But that darkish complexion and wide amused grin veering on the crazy … There was no mistake. She was so much smaller than he imagined, it was confusing; she barely came up to his shoulders, yet he’d always visualized her as an Amazon.

“Troblum has a penchant for history,” Marius said. “He knows all sorts of odd facts.”

“What’s my favorite food?” the Cat asked.

“Lemon risotto with asparagus,” Troblum stammered. “It was the specialty dish at the restaurant you waitressed in when you were fifteen.”

The Cat’s grin sharpened. “What the fuck is he?” She turned to Marius for an explanation.

“An idiot savant with a fetish about the Starflyer War. He’s useful to us.”

“Whatever turns you on.”

“You’re in suspension,” Troblum said flatly; he couldn’t help the words coming out even though he was afraid of her. “It was a five-thousand-year sentence.”

“Aww. He’s quite sweet, actually,” the Cat told Marius. She gave Troblum a lewd wink. “I’ll finish it one day. Promise.”

“If you have a moment, please,” Marius said to Neskia. “We need to sort a proper ship out for our guest.”

“Of course.” She stood up.

“Oh yes,” Marius added, as though it were of no consequence. “Is Troblum behaving himself?”

Neskia looked from Marius to Troblum. “So far, so good. He’s been quite helpful.”

“Keep it up,” Marius said. He was not smiling.

Troblum bowed his head, unable to look at any of them. Too many people. Too close. Too intrusive. And one of them is the Cat! He wasn’t prepared for that kind of encounter today—or any day. But she was out of suspension somehow, walking around. She’s in this station!

His medical display flashed blue symbols down the side of his exovision, telling him his biononics were engaging, reanimating his chest muscles, calming them into a steady rhythm. It hadn’t registered with him the way he had started to suck his breath down as if his throat were constricted. A small cocktail of drugs was flushed out of macrocellular glands, bringing down his heart rate.

Troblum risked a glance up, his face pulled into a horrendously guilty expression. The three of them were gone, out of sight, out of the saloon. He was gathering an excessive number of curious looks from his colleagues who were still seated. He wanted to tell them, to shout: It’s not me you should be staring at.

Instead he felt the trembling start deep in his torso. He stood up fast, which made his head spin. Biononics reinforced his leg muscles, allowing him to hurry out of the saloon. In the corridor, his u-shadow diverted a trolleybot for him to sit on. It carried him all the way back to his quarters, where he flopped onto the bed. He loaded a nine-level certificate into the lock even though he knew how useless that was.

The Cat!

He lay on the bed with the cabin heating up, feeling the shock slowly ebbing. Release from the physical symptoms did nothing to alleviate the dread. Of all the megalomaniacs and psychopaths in history, the Accelerators had chosen to bring her back. Troblum lay in the warm darkness for hours, wondering what they were facing that was so terrible that they had no choice but to use her. He’d always been behind the whole Accelerator movement because it was such a logical one. They were nurturing an evolutionary lineage that had started with single-cell amoebas and would end with elevation to postphysical status—a necessity that could not be disputed. The other factions were wrong; it was that obvious—to him. Accelerator philosophy appealed to his physicist nature. That hurtful vicious bastard Marius was right: There was very little else in the way of personality.

Forget that. It’s not relevant.

Because anything that has to use the Cat to make it work can’t be right. It just can’t.

Inigo’s Fifth Dream

“… Thus, because the city is deemed to be a sole entity in its own right, no human can ‘own’ their residence in the traditional legal sense. However, in the fifteenth year after Rah’s arrival, the newly formed Upper Council passed the first Act of Registry. Essentially that means that any human can claim a residence within the city wall for their own usage. In order to register you simply have to find a house or maisonette or room which is unoccupied, stay in it for two days and two nights, then register your claim with the Board of Occupancy. This claim, once notarized, will allow you and your descendants to live there until such time as they choose to relinquish it. As there are no new buildings, and can never be, the most desirable and largest homes were claimed within ten years of Rah opening the first gate. These are now the palaces of our most ancient families, the District Masters, and as such can have up to five generations living in them, all of them first sons waiting to inherit the estate and seat on the Upper Council. The remaining available accommodation in the city today is small and badly configured for human occupation, and even this is diminishing rapidly. Thus, while districts such as Eyrie are basically uninhabitable …”

Edeard hoped he hadn’t just groaned out loud from the terrible boredom. He was now as adept as any Makkathran citizen at veiling his emotions from casual farsight, but if Master Solarin from the Guild of Lawyers used the word “thus” one more time … It was a mystery how the old man could talk so long without a break. Rumor at the station was that Master Solarin was over two hundred fifty years old. Edeard would be surprised if that were true; he certainly didn’t look that young. His white hair had receded so far that the top of his skull was completely bald, something Edeard had never seen before, though the remaining strands were long enough to reach down over his shoulders. And his limbs were horribly thin and frail, while his fingers had swollen to the point where he had trouble flexing them. His vocal chords, however, suffered no such malaise.

Along with his fellow probationary constables, Edeard was sitting at a bench in the small hall of the Jeavons station, listening to the weekly lecture on basic Makkathran law. In another two months they’d be facing a batch of exams on the subject, which they had to pass in order to graduate. Like all of them, he found Solarin a sore test of patience. A quick scan showed that Boyd was almost asleep. Macsen’s eyes were unfocused as he longtalked the girls in the dressmaker shop at the end of the street. Kanseen appeared to be paying polite attention, but Edeard knew her well enough now to see that she was as bored as he was. Dinlay, though, was sitting up with rapt attention and even taking notes. Somehow Edeard could not quite laugh at that. Poor old Dinlay had so much to prove to his father and uncles, he undoubtedly would pass his exams with high grades. That presented the rest of them with the very real danger that once they graduated, Dinlay would be appointed their squad leader. It would be something he took very seriously.

“… thus the precedent was set for the lower ancillary court to hear any application to evict when a civil malfeasance is suspected of taking place within the property itself. In practice a full hearing is unnecessary, and you may request a provisional eviction notice from the duty magistrate who acts as de facto high council to the lower court. And that, I’m afraid, brings this session to its successful conclusion. We will deal with the criteria for such application next week. In the meantime I’d like you all to read Sampsols Common Law, Volume Three, Chapters Thirteen through Twenty-seven, by the time I return. It covers the main parameters of weapons usage within the city wall. I might even enliven our time together with a small test. How exciting that will be, eh? Until then, I thank you for your interest and bid you farewell.” Solarin gave them a vague smile and removed his gold-rimmed glasses before shutting the big book he had covered with annotations. His ge-monkey placed it carefully in a leather shoulder bag along with the other books the lawyer used for his lecture.

Dinlay stuck his hand up. “Sir?”

“Ah, my dear boy; sadly I am in something of a rush today. If you could possibly write your question down and submit it to my senior apprentice at the guild, I’d be most grateful.”

“Yes, sir.” Dinlay’s hand came down, and his shoulders slumped with disappointment.

Edeard remained seated as the lawyer walked slowly out of the hall, assisted by two ge-monkeys, wondering what Solarin would actually look like rushing somewhere.

“Olovan’s Eagle tonight?”

“Huh?” Edeard shook himself out of his absurd daydream.

Macsen was standing over his desk, a smug expression on his face. “Clemensa will be going. Evala said she’s been asking about you. A lot!”

“Clemensa?”

“The one with the dark hair always tied up in a long tail. Big chest. Big legs, too, sadly, but hey, nobody’s perfect.”

Edeard sighed. It was another of the girls from the dressmakers. Macsen spent most of his time sweet-talking them or trying to set them up with his friends. Once he even tried to match Kanseen with a carpentry apprentice; he would not be doing that again. “No. No, I can’t. I am so far behind on my law texts, and you heard what Solarin said.”

“Remind me.”

“There’s going to be a test,” Edeard said wearily.

“Oh, right. It’s only the exam at the end which counts. Don’t worry. Listen, I’ve got a friend in the Lawyer’s Guild. A couple of gold shillings and he’ll gift us the whole Sampsols.”

“That’s cheating,” Dinlay said hotly.

Macsen put on a suitably wounded expression. “In what respect?”

“In all respects!”

“Dinlay, he’s just putting you on,” Kanseen said as she got up to leave.

“I’m being perfectly serious,” Macsen said, his face as innocent as a newborn’s.

“Ignore him,” she said, and gave Dinlay’s shoulder a gentle shove. “Come on, let’s find some lunch before we go out.”

Dinlay managed one last scowl before hurrying after Kanseen. He started to ask her something about the residency laws.

“Must be true love,” Macsen warbled cheerfully as they turned out of sight.

“You’re evil,” Edeard decided. “Pure evil.”

“Only thanks to years of practice and dedication.”

“You know he’s going to be our squad leader, don’t you?”

“Yes. He’ll get his appointment the day after the Eggshaper Guild announces its sculpted a ge-pig that can fly.”

“I’m serious. His grades will be way above ours, plus his father and a whole load of his family are already constables. Senior ones at that.”

“Chae isn’t stupid. He knows that’ll never work.”

Edeard wanted to believe that Macsen was right.

“Um, Edeard, are you really not interested in Clemensa?” Boyd asked.

“Ho, this is perfect,” Macsen said, rubbing his hands together. “Why, do you fancy your chances?”

“Actually, yes,” Boyd said with more courage than Edeard had credited him with.

“Good for you. She’s a lovely girl. As randy as a drakken in a blood frenzy, I just happen to know.”

Boyd frowned. “How do you know?”

“Evala told me,” Macsen said smoothly. “Her last boyfriend was dumped for not having enough stamina.”

Boyd gave Macsen a suddenly entranced look. “I’ll come with you tonight. But you have to get Evala to put in a good word for me.”

“Leave it to me, my fine friend. You’re as good as shagged senseless already.”

Edeard rolled his eyes and promised the Lady he’d be good forevermore if she’d just stop Macsen from being … well, Macsen. “Come on, let’s get something to eat before the constables grab it all again.”

“Oh, yes,” Boyd said. “Our helpful and welcoming colleagues. I hate the way they treat us.”

“Only for another two months, that’s all,” Macsen said.

“You really think they’ll show us any respect after we qualify? I don’t.”

“No, they won’t,” Macsen agreed. “But at least we can shovel shit onto the new probationers. I know it’ll make me feel better.”

“We’re not going to do that,” Edeard said. “We’re going to talk to them, help them with problems, and make them feel appreciated.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what I would have liked to happen with us. That way more people might be encouraged to join up. Haven’t you counted the numbers, not just at this station but citywide? There aren’t enough constables in the city. People are starting to organize themselves into street associations to take on the gangs. That’s going to undermine the rule of law.”

“Great Lady, you really mean it, don’t you?” Macsen said.

“Yes,” Edeard said forcefully, and let them sense his mental tone so they knew he wasn’t joking. “I know what happens when civil government means nothing. I’ve seen the violence that the barbarians use when a society leaves itself open to any bastard who knows how weak it is. And that’s not going to happen here. Makkathran can’t be allowed to tear itself apart from within.”

“I don’t know why you’re worried about Dinlay being squad leader,” Macsen said, equally serious. “You’re the one. Sir!”

Edeard was still slightly self-conscious about wearing the constable uniform in public. Only the white epaulets distinguished probationers from regular constables. The rest of it was “actually real,” as Macsen put it: a smart dark-blue tunic with silver buttons up the front, matching trousers, and a wide regulation leather belt containing a truncheon, two pepper-gas phials, a pair of iron handcuffs with a fiendishly tricky six-lever lock that was just about impossible to pick with telekinesis, and a small first aid pack. Under the tunic was a white shirt that Sergeant Chae made very sure was indeed an unblemished white each morning. Boots were up to the individual, but they had to be black and at least ankle-high, though not over the knee; they also had to shine from polishing. The dome helmet was made from an epoxied drosilk mesh, with padding on the inside to protect the wearer’s skull from a physical blow. Like the others, Edeard had bought his own drosilk waistcoat, which was supposedly tough enough to resist a bullet. Macsen had gone one step further and bought drosilk shorts.

In theory the cost was not too bad, but in practice every constable needed two tunics and at least three shirts. Then there was a constant supply of flaked soap for the dormitory’s ge-chimps to wash everything. Edeard gained considerable kudos when the others found how good he was at instructing the ge-chimps with laundry tasks. After the first week Chae stopped trying to find fault when they turned out in immaculate uniforms each morning.

The daily routine hardly varied. In the morning they would have various physical and telepathic teamwork training sessions, followed by lectures. In the afternoon they would be taken out on patrol under the alarmingly vigilant eye of Chae. Sometimes their division captain, Ronark, would accompany them. Evenings were theoretically all their own. Study was advised at least during the week.

Edeard always hated it when Ronark did come out with them to “check on progress.” The man was in his eighties and was never going to rise any higher than his current position. His wife had left him decades before, and his children had disowned him. That left him only the constables, which he believed in with a religious fervor. Everything was done according to regulations; variations were not permitted, and such infringements were subject to severe fines, restrictions, and demotions. Jeavons station had one of the lowest recruitment rates in the city.

Nobody paid any attention to them when Chae led them out of the station at one o’clock precisely. Ronark was standing at his curving fish-eye window above the big double gate, observing the shift change, clocking the patrols in and out on his ancient pocket watch. Out on the narrow pavement, a squad was double-timing back to the station, its corporal red-faced and panting as they tried to minimize their delay. Three ge-dogs scampered along beside them, happy at the run.

Probationary constables were not permitted genistar support. Thankfully, Chae kept a discreet silence about Edeard’s ge-eagle, which now lived with two others in the station’s rooftop aviary.

Jeavons was a pleasant enough district. It even had a small park in the center that a team of city ge-monkeys kept in good horticultural order. There was a big freshwater pond in the middle with exotic scarlet fish measuring a good two feet long; they always seemed sinister to Edeard, who disliked their fangs and the way they looked up at everyone who stood by the rail watching them. But the park had a football pitch marked out, and he occasionally joined the games on weekends when the local lads ran a small league. He enjoyed the fact that Jeavons did not house many grand families; its buildings were on a relatively modest scale, though the mansions along Marble Canal were regal enough. The carpenters, jewel smiths, and physicians all had their guild headquarters there. It was also the home of the astronomical association, which had been fighting for guild status for seven centuries and was always blocked by the Pythia, who claimed the heavens were a supernatural realm and astronomy verged on the heretical. Boyd, of course, was full of gossipy facts like that as they walked the winding streets; he probably knew the layout better than Chae did.

Chae led them over Arrival Canal and into the smaller Silvarum district. The buildings there were oddly curved, as if they used to be clusters of bubbles that somehow had been compressed. Squeezed-up insect hives, Boyd called them. None of them were large enough to be palaces, but they all belonged to wealthy families: the smaller merchants and senior Masters of professional guilds. The shops all sold goods far beyond Edeard’s dwindling coinage.

As they passed over the ornate wooden bridge, Edeard found himself walking with Kanseen.

“So you’re not going out tonight?” she inquired.

“Nah. I don’t have much money left, and I really need to study.”

“You’re serious, then, about turning this into a career?”

“Ask me again in a year’s time. In the meantime I’m not going to blow it by being stupid. I need to graduate.”

“All of us do,” she said.

“Hmm.” Edeard eyed Macsen, who was lingering at the end of the bridge, exchanging good-natured words with a gondolier passing by underneath. The gondola’s benches had been removed and replaced by a simple slatted platform carrying a pile of wooden crates. “For someone supposedly thrown penniless on the street, Macsen seems to have a lot of coinage.”

“Didn’t you hear?” she said with a superior smile.

“What?”

“His mother has been taken up by a notorious Master in the Musician’s Guild. She’s living in a nice little maisonette in the Cobara district. Apparently he’s a hundred and ten years older than her.”

“No!” Edeard knew he should not be interested in gossip, but such talk was Makkathran’s second currency. Everybody had some piece of hearsay or rumor about the District Master families that he or she couldn’t wait to share, and scandal was the greatest currency of all.

“Oh, yes. He used to be in one of the traveling bands which tour the Iguru and villages in the Donsori Mountains.” She leaned in closer to murmur, “Apparently he had to stop touring a while ago because there were so many offspring in those villages. Now he just tutors apprentices at the guild building and plays for the families.”

A little memory surfaced in Edeard’s thoughts: late-night talk in a tavern several months earlier that he wasn’t supposed to hear, and she had said “notorious.” “You’re not talking about Dybal?”

Kanseen’s smile was victorious. “I couldn’t possibly say.”

“But … wasn’t he caught in bed with two of the Lady’s novices?”

“That’s part of his myth. If he wasn’t so popular with his satire songs, they’d have thrown him out of the guild decades ago. Apparently they’re very upbeat. The younger members of noble families idolize him, while the older ones want him to wind up in the bottom of a canal.”

“Yeah, but … Macsen’s mother?”

“Yes.”

Kanseen seemed disturbingly pleased with herself, mainly because of his incredulous reaction. That was the way with her, always coming on just that little bit superior. He did not buy it; that was her way of coping with the probationary period, establishing a reasonable barrier around herself. It couldn’t be easy being a girl in the constables; there certainly were not many.

Chae started off by heading directly for the plaza where the Chemist Guild headquarters was situated. The pavements between the buildings were a reddish brown in color, with a central row of thick cones rising to waist height. They were filled with soil and planted with big saffcherry trees whose branches created a verdant roof between the bowed walls on either side. Pink-and-blue blossoms were starting to fall, forming a delicate carpet of petals. Edeard tried to keep searching the pedestrians for signs of criminal activity the way Chae kept telling them. It was hard. Akeem’s memory had remained crystal-clear and true on one aspect of city life: the girls. They were beautiful, especially those of the noble families, who seemed to use districts like Silvarum to hunt in packs. They took a great deal of care about how they appeared in public: dresses that had plunging necklines or skirts with surprising slits amid the ruffles; lace fabric that was translucent; hair styled to look carefree; makeup skillfully applied to emphasize smiles, cheekbones, huge innocent eyes; sparkling jewelry.

He passed one gaggle of maidens in their mid-teens who wore more wealth with the rings on one hand than he would earn in a month. They giggled coyly when they caught him staring. Then they taunted him:

“Can we help you, Officer?”

“Is that really your truncheon?”

“It’s a long truncheon, isn’t it, Gilliaen.”

“Will you use it to subdue bad people with?”

“Emylee is very bad, Officer; use it on her.”

“Hanna! She’s indecent, Officer. Arrest her.”

“Does he have a dungeon to throw her in, do you think?”

Third hands performed indecent tweaks and prods on private areas of his body. Edeard jumped in shock before hastily shielding himself and turning bright red. The girls shrieked amusement at his behavior and scuttled off.

“Little trollops,” Kanseen muttered.

“Er, absolutely,” Edeard said. He glanced back just to make sure they were causing no trouble. Two of them were still checking him out. More wild giggles rang down the street. Edeard shuddered and faced front, hardening his expression.

“You weren’t tempted, were you?” Kanseen asked.

“Certainly not.”

“Edeard, you’re really a great guy, and I’m glad to be in the same squad as you. But there’s still a lot of the countryside in you. Which is good,” she hastened to add. “But any family girl would eat you for breakfast and spit out the seeds before lunch. They’re not nice, Edeard, not really. They have no substance.”

Then how come they look so gorgeous? he thought wistfully.

“Besides,” Kanseen said. “They all want District Master first sons for husbands, or guildsmen, or, if they’re desperate, militia officers. Constables don’t come close, not in status or money.”

After the plaza they made their way along to the markets. There were three of them just a couple of streets away from the Great Major Canal that bordered Silvarum’s northern side. They were open areas not quite as big as the plaza, packed full with stalls. The still air was heavy with scents. Edeard stared at the piles of fruits and vegetables with mild envy as the stall holders called out their prices and promises of taste and quality. It had been a long time since he’d sat down to a truly decent meal like the kind he used to eat at the guild compound back in Ashwell. Everything at the station hall came wrapped in pastry, and none of the ge-chimps in the kitchen had been instructed in the art of making salad.

“Those are melancholy thoughts,” Kanseen said quietly.

“Sorry,” he said, and made an effort to be alert. Chae had said that markets were always rife with sneak thieves and pickpockets. He was probably right. Here, as always, the stall holders greeted them warmly with smiles and the odd gift: apples, pears, a bottle or two, pledges of a good deal if they came back off duty. They liked the constables to be visible; it discouraged pilfering.

Edeard had been dismayed by the reception they had received in some districts and streets as Chae led them across the city: sullen expressions and intimidating silences, unshielded emotions of enmity, people turning their backs on them, third hands jostling when they were close to canal banks. Chae, of course, had walked on undaunted, but Edeard had been unnerved. He did not understand why whole communities would be repelled by law and order.

They moved on to the second market, the one specializing in cloth and clothes. A dismaying number of young women strolled along, examining colorful fabrics and chattering happily among themselves. He kept a small shield up and did his best not to make eye contact, though there were some truly pretty girls that just begged for a second look. Macsen had no such inhibitions. He chatted happily to any girl who even glanced in his direction.

“You never said which district you come from,” Edeard said.

“I didn’t, did I?” Kanseen agreed.

“Sorry.”

“You need to stop saying that, as well,” she said, and smiled.

“Yes, I know. It’s just that all of you are used to this.” He gestured toward the crowd. “I’m not. There are more people here in this market than ever lived in Ashwell.” For a moment he was struck by real guilt. He thought about his home less and less these days. Some of the faces had faded from memory. Not Akeem’s; his never would. But Gonat, now; did he have red hair or was it dark brown? He frowned from the effort of remembering, but no clear image came.

“Bellis,” Kanseen said. “My family lives in Bellis.”

“Right,” he said. Bellis was on the eastern side of the city, close to the port and directly over the Great Major Canal from Sampalok. They had not patrolled there yet. “You’ve never been back to see them?”

“No. Mother didn’t approve of my becoming a constable.”

“Oh. I’m sor—Shame.”

“I think she would have preferred me to take the Lady’s vows.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“You really are from the countryside, aren’t you?”

“Is that bad?” he said stiffly.

“No. I guess that’s where the values this city used to have are kept alive, out there beyond the Donsori Mountains. It just gives me a shock to hear someone with convictions, that’s all. You’re rare in Makkathran, Edeard, especially in the constables. That’s why you make people uncomfortable.”

“I do?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yeah.”

“But … You must believe in values. Why else did you join?”

“Same as half of us. In a few years I’ll shift over to bodyguard work for a District Master family. They’re always desperate for people with a constable’s training and experience, particularly one like me; female constables are very thin on the ground. And the noble ladies need protection as much as their husbands and sons. I can just about name my own price.”

“Oh.” The notion surprised him; he’d never considered the constables as a route to anything else, let alone something better.

“Who do I make uncomfortable?”

“Well, Dinlay for a start. He believes in truth and beauty just like you, and he’s a lot noisier about it. But you’re stronger and smarter. Chae’s going to nominate you as squad leader.”

“You don’t know that.”

She smiled. It made him realize how attractive she actually was, something the uniform normally made him overlook. But that smile was a match for any of the silly family girls swanning around the market.

“Put money on it?” she challenged.

“Of course not,” he said with mock indignation. “That’s bound to be illegal.”

They both laughed.

“You two need a room?” Macsen called over his shoulder. “I know one that’ll give you cheap rates.”

Kanseen gave him a forceful hand gesture.

He pulled a face. “Wow, it’s true; you can take the girl out of Sampalok, but you can’t take Sampalok out of the girl.”

“Asshole,” she growled.

“We’re on patrol,” Chae snapped. “What does that mean?”

“Professionalism at all times,” the squad muttered dutifully.

“Then kindly remember that and apply it.”

Macsen, Kanseen, and Edeard grinned at one another as they moved on to the third market, which featured crafts. Stalls displayed small items of furniture, ornaments, cheap jewelry, and alchemic potions. There was even a section selling rare animals as pets. The awnings were a uniform orange-and-white-striped canvas arranged in hexagonal cones with center poles swamped by eaglevine. It was warm underneath, but the full power of the sun was held back.

Edeard stretched his farsight out across the Great Major Canal that ran the length of the city from the port district to the circle canals where the Orchard Palace was situated. Ysidro district was on the other side from Silvarum, wedged between the back of Golden Park and the Low Moat. It was where the Lady’s novistery was sited.

“This a good time?” his mind inquired.

“Hello,” Salrana replied with a burst of good cheer. “Yes, I’m fine. We’re in the garden, planting summer herbs. It’s so lovely in here.” A gentle image-gift came with her happiness. He saw a walled garden with conical yews marking out gravel paths. Vines and climbing roses painted the walls in bright colors. There was a broad lawn in the middle, which was unusual in Makkathran; it was trimmed so neatly, Edeard wondered what kind of genistar they used to chew it down. A snow-white statue of the Lady stood at one end, almost as high as the walls. She was smiling down on the novices in their white-and-blue robes as they skittered about with wicker baskets full of plants.

“Nice. Why don’t you use ge-chimps to plant the herbs?”

“Oh, Edeard, you have got to start reading more of the Lady’s teachings. The purpose of life is to achieve harmony with your environment. If you use genistars for everything, you establish a barrier between yourself and the world.”

“Okay.” He thought that was stupid but clamped down tight on the emotion for fear that Salrana would sense it. She was developing quite an acute empathy these days.

“Where are you?” she asked.

I’m patrolling Silvarum’s markets.” He let her see the bustle surrounding him, showing her the rich stall displays.

“Arrested anybody bad?”

“No. They all run in terror from us.”

“Oh, Edeard, you feel sad.”

“Sorry.” He caught himself and winced. “I’m not. It’s just boring, that’s all. You know, I’m actually looking forward to my exams. This’ll all be over after I take them. I can be a proper constable then.”

“I can’t wait to see your graduation ceremony.”

“I don’t think it’s that grand. The Mayor hands us a pair of dark epaulets, that’s all.”

“Yes, but it’s at the Orchard Palace, and all the probationary constables from the city are there, and their families are watching. It’s a big event, Edeard. Don’t knock it.”

“I wasn’t really. Do you think you’ll manage to get to it?”

“Of course I will. Mother Gallian approves of formal functions like that. I’ve already told her you’re graduating.”

“Hey, those exams aren’t easy, you know.”

“You’ll pass, Edeard. I asked the Lady to give you simple questions.”

“Thanks! Can you get out this weekend?”

“I’m not sure. It’s difficult with the main service on—”

Angry shouts up ahead made Edeard look around. His farsight could sense several minds inflamed with fury. Around them were minds blazing with sour determination; they began to move faster and faster.

Shouts reverberated under the awnings.

“Stop them!”

“Thieves. Thieves.”

“Kavine is hurt.”

“Thieves in the market!”

Identical longtalk cries flooded into the ether. Jerky image-gifts of faces clashed in Edeard’s mind: too many and too poor to make any sense.

His farsight swirled around the shifting commotion, contracting on the center. Men were running, their arms flailing as people swarmed. Hands gripped long metal blades, swiping wide, keeping everyone away. Overtones of fear bubbled into the clamor of longtalk.

“That’s us!” Sergeant Chae shouted. “Come on. Constables! Clear the way! Constables coming through.” His longtalk was directed to warn people sauntering between the stalls at the same time he shouted. He began to run. Edeard immediately followed, as did Macsen and Kanseen.

“Move! Move aside!”

After a moment of shock, Boyd took off after them. Dinlay had frozen, his mind radiating dismay.

Edeard was running hard, keeping close to Chae. People were jumping out of the way, pressing themselves against the stalls to open a path. Women were screaming. Children shouted, excited and fearful. The theft ahead was still kicking up a hurly-burly.

“Remember, act together,” Chae told them with remarkably calm longtalk. “Minimum of two at all times; don’t get separated. Keep your shields up.”

Edeard sent his ge-eagle streaking through the sky, heading toward the edge of the market, where the thieves surely would emerge. Every street beyond the rippled roof of canopies had a covering of pleasant saffcherry trees, their pink and blue blossom clotting any view of the pavement and people below. His farsight still was concentrating on the criminals as they sped from the scene of the robbery. There were four of them, three wielding the blades while the fourth was lugging some kind of box. From what Edeard could sense it was full of metal, and plenty of the stalls around him were displaying jewelry.

Chae drew his truncheon as they burst through a group of people gathered around a couple of overturned stalls. A man lay on the floor, groaning and thrashing, blood pooling beside him.

“Lady!” Chae exclaimed. “All right, stay back, give him air.” He scrambled for his medical pack and knelt beside the fallen stall holder.

“A doctor?” Chae’s longtalk demanded, rising over the general clamor. “Is there a doctor in the Silvarum craft market? Wounded man.”

Edeard’s farsight still was following the criminals. “Come on,” he yelled at Macsen and Kanseen.

“Where?” Macsen demanded. “I’ve lost them.”

“They’ve just reached the edge of the market. Albaric Street. I can still sense them.” He plowed through the clutter of bystanders.

“Edeard, no!” Chae yelled after him.

Edeard almost stopped at the command, but he could not ignore the fleeing thieves. We can still catch them. It would be their first real arrest. So far all they had done in their four probationary months was clear drunks off the streets and break up fights, never any real constable duty. He charged along a narrow passage between rows of stalls. Macsen and Kanseen were racing after him.

“Come back,” Chae bellowed.

Ignoring the sergeant sent a flash of wicked glee along Edeard’s nerves.

Stall holders were cheering the three probationary constables as they sped through the market. Edeard and Macsen were using their longtalk to order people aside. By and large it was working. They were closing the gap on the fleeing thieves.

Edeard’s ge-eagle swooped low over the saffcherry trees of Albaric Street, its wings skimming inches above the waving blossoms. The four thieves were pounding along the pavement underneath the trees, heading straight for the Great Major Canal. Their blades had been sheathed so as not to draw attention. Even so, the minds of people around them pulsed with curiosity and alarm.

“Where are they going?” Kanseen demanded.

“Got to be the canal,” Macsen replied. There was a lot of exhilaration flooding along his longtalk voice.

Edeard finally saw the end of the market ahead; the striped canvas roof gave way to the hazy radiance of blossom-filtered sunlight. “Can you locate any other constables?” he demanded.

“Lady, it’s all I can do to watch where I’m going,” Macsen complained.

“What are you planning on doing?” Kanseen asked, all apprehension and doubts.

“Stopping them,” Edeard said. Isn’t that obvious? What is wrong with her?

“There’s more of them. And they’ve got blades.”

“I’ll take them down,” he growled. Her uncertainty flowed away from him as if it were another landmark he had left behind.

They were closing fast now. Albaric Street was almost deserted compared with the busy market, allowing the constables to race onward, weaving around the occasional recalcitrant pedestrian.

The ge-eagle flashed over the last saffcherry tree. It showed Edeard the street ending abruptly at the edge of the Great Major Canal. The big waterway stretched away on both sides, cutting the city in half. Away to the west was the Birmingham Pool, intersecting the Outer Circle Canal; to the east the High Pool formed a junction with Flight Canal and Market Canal. There were only two bridges between Silvarum and the Padua district on the other side, one beside each pool. Like every bridge over the Grand Major Canal, they were narrow and steep; most people preferred to use a gondola to cross the hundred-fifty-yard width of water. Several were bobbing at a mooring platform where the street ended.

“Got them,” Edeard exclaimed. “They just ran out of street.” His jubilant mood suddenly dropped as the four criminals sped down the wooden steps to the platform and hopped onto a waiting gondola. It looked scruffy and badly maintained compared with the craft that normally slid along the city’s waterways, with dull scratched paint and a drab awning. There were two gondoliers standing at the back, each holding a pole. “Oh, Honious!”

“What?” Kanseen demanded. She was red-faced and breathing heavily but keeping up.

“Boat,” he gasped back at her. “Come on; we can still catch them.” Right in front of him a very grand-looking old lady in a billowing black and white dress and her entourage of younger handmaids were leaving one of Albaric Street’s high-class restaurants. His longtalk demands to move did not seem to be registering with any of them. He dodged around the old lady, cursing. A third hand swatted at him as one might strike at an annoying insect. He flashed her an exasperated look.

The ge-eagle spiraled up, watching the shabby gondola ease out from the mooring platform and into the multitude of craft flocking along the big canal. Downmarket the gondoliers might have been, but they knew their watercraft. With two punts available and working in harmony, they soon were moving a lot more quickly than anything else on the water. The four thieves flopped down on the benches and started laughing.

Edeard, Macsen, and Kanseen hurtled up to the canal bank, coming dangerously close to toppling down into the water as they stopped at the top of the mooring’s wooden steps.

“Bastards!” Macsen shouted at them.

One of the gondoliers raised his green and blue ribboned boater in a mocking salute. They were already twenty yards downstream. Edeard knew with grim certainty that they would be going all the way down to Sampalok, and the wounded stall owner would be ruined. “Help us,” he called down to the gondolier who was moored below. “Take us after them.” This gondola was a fancy craft, its black paintwork shining in the afternoon sun, the awning embroidered with a scarlet bird crest. Somehow Edeard knew it belonged to the old woman behind them.

“Not a chance, pal,” the gondolier called back. “This is Mistress Florell’s private gondola.”

For a moment Edeard considered shoving him into the canal and commandeering the craft to set off in pursuit. Except he didn’t have the first idea of how to use a punt pole.

“Somebody help,” he called with his voice and longtalk. That drew a few interested looks from the gondoliers out on the canal, but no one even asked what he wanted.

A chorus of jeering carried over the water. Thirty yards away, the criminals were leaning over the gunwales to wave and gesture. Edeard stared at his tormentors with a rage that chilled his blood. He smiled back savagely. Some hint of his fury must have flashed out. Macsen and Kanseen swayed back. The jeering stopped.

Edeard reached out with his third hand and plucked the box from the man holding it. Hands grasped empty air in futility as he lifted it ten feet above the gondola. The thieves exerted their own third hands, trying to prize it back. “Is that the best you can do?” Edeard taunted. They never even managed to unsettle his grip.

People on nearby gondolas watched in silence as the box drifted sedately through the air. Edeard’s smile turned malicious as it landed softly at his feet. He crossed his arms and gloated. “Don’t come back to our district,” he longtalked to the departing gondola. “Not ever.”

“You’re fucking dead, you little shit,” came the answer.

Edeard pressed his third hand down against the bow of the gondola, causing it to rock alarmingly. But it was too far away for him to capsize, and the six of them hurriedly erected a strong enough shield to deflect him.

Macsen started laughing. His hand came down hard on Edeard’s shoulder. “Oh, Lady, you are the greatest, Edeard, the absolute greatest. Did you see their faces!”

“Yeah,” Edeard admitted with a malign grin.

“They won’t forget today,” Kanseen said. “Heavens, Edeard, you must have frightened the life out of them.”

“Let’s hope, eh.” He smiled at his friends, very content with the way they had bonded that little bit more from the shared event. A frilly parasol hit the side of his arm. “Ow!”

It belonged to the old woman they had pushed past. “In future, young man, you will display the correct courtesy due to your elders and betters,” she snapped at him. “You could have knocked me over the way you were charging about with complete disregard for anyone else. At my age, too; I would never have gotten up again.”

“Er, yes, madam. Sorry.”

“Mistress Florell!” she said, her wavery voice rising an octave with indignation. “Don’t you pretend you don’t know who I am.”

Edeard could hear Macsen chortling behind him. It was muffled as if a hand were over his mouth. “Yes, Mistress Florell.”

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Edeard thought she looked at least as old as Master Solarin. “I shall be reporting you to my nephew,” she said. “There was a time in this city when the constabulary had decent people in its ranks. That time is clearly over. Now get out of my way.”

He wasn’t actually in her way, but he took a step back, anyway. She brushed past with a swirl of her tentlike skirt to descend the steps to the mooring platform. Her entourage followed with immaculately shielded minds. A couple of the handmaids flashed him amused grins. They all settled in the gondola.

“See,” Macsen said, sliding his arm around Edeard’s shoulders. “That’s our true reward, the respect of a grateful populace.”

“Who is that?” Edeard whined.

That set Macsen to laughing again.

“You really don’t know, do you?” Kanseen said incredulously.

“No.”

“Among other family connections, Mistress Florell is the Mayor’s aunt.”

“Oh. I suppose that’s not good, then.”

“No. Every Mayor for the last century is some relative or other to her. She basically decides who the Grand Council will elect.”

Edeard shook his head and checked the gondola below. Mistress Florell had vanished under the awning. The gondolier gave him a wink and cast off.

“Let’s get back,” Edeard said.

A cheerful Macsen bent over to pick up the box. He shot Edeard another look as he felt the weight. “I can sense a whole load of necklace chains in here. Must be gold.”

“I hope he’s all right,” Edeard said.

“Chae?” Kanseen asked. She sounded slightly nervous.

“No. The stall holder.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

High above the Grand Major Canal, the ge-eagle soared lazily on a thermal, keeping the shabby gondola in sight as it hastened toward Sampalok.

Most of the crowd had gone when Edeard and his companions returned to the scene of the crime. Several stall holders in their distinctive dark green aprons were fussing around the stalls they had righted, restoring the display of goods. Boyd and Dinlay were helping fix the awning directly overhead, which had ripped free when the stalls had been shoved over.

The wounded stall holder was still on the ground. A woman was tending to him, a doctor’s satchel open at her feet as she knelt beside her patient. Two young apprentices were aiding her. Between them they had bandaged the stall holder’s chest. Now the doctor was holding herself perfectly still, eyes closed, her hands pressed gently on the bandages as her telekinesis operated on the torn flesh underneath, manipulating blood vessels and tissue. Her distinguished face was puckered with intense concentration. Every now and then she would murmur some instruction to her apprentices, who would apply their telekinesis as she directed.

Edeard watched intently, trying to sense with his farsight as well. Old Doc Seneo never had used her third hand to operate with, though Fahin had always said the technique was in the Doctor’s Guild’s tuition books.

“You three okay?” Boyd’s longtalk asked.

“Of course,” Macsen retorted.

Boyd glanced over to where Sergeant Chae was talking to a group of stall holders. “Careful,” he mouthed.

Chae marched over, his face set in a furious mask. Edeard thought his boots were going to leave imprints in the gray-brown market pavement, he was stamping them down so heavily. By some process Edeard did not quite understand, he was now standing ahead of Macsen and Kanseen.

“I believe I gave you a direct order,” Chae said in a menacingly level tone.

All Edeard’s good humor at recovering the box faded; he’d never thought Chae would be quite this angry. For once the sergeant was making no attempt to shield his feelings. “But Sergeant—”

“Did I or did I not tell you to stop?”

“Well … yes. But—”

“So you heard me?”

Edeard hung his head. “Yes, Sergeant.”

“So you disobeyed me. Not only that but you put the safety of yourself and your colleagues in danger. Those men were gang members and armed. Suppose they had pistols.”

“We got it,” Macsen announced defiantly.

“What?”

“We got it back from the bastards,” Macsen said loudly. He turned slightly so that he was facing the gaggle of stall holders and held up the box.

The burst of amazement emanating from the market folk surprised Edeard. It also silenced Sergeant Chae, though he continued to glare at the constables. Macsen walked over to the people closest to the wounded man. “Here,” he said, and proffered the box.

One of the younger men in a green apron stepped forward. “I am Monrol; Kavine is my uncle. This is what they stole from him.” He turned the lock dial with several precise twists, and the lid popped open. “It’s all here,” he said with a smile. He showed the open box to the market. “All of it. They brought it back. The constables brought it back.”

Someone started clapping and soon was joined by the onlookers. Whistles of approval split the air, and then the three constables abruptly were surrounded by the men and woman in green aprons. Their hands were shaken; their backs were pummeled. A beaming Monrol gave Macsen a hug, then moved on to Kanseen. Edeard, too, was swept up in his embrace. “Thank you, thank you.”

“Sergeant Chae,” a deep voice boomed.

The stall holders fell quiet as Setersis came forward. Edeard had seen him a couple of times before, normally when he was complaining to Chae about the infrequency of constable patrols in the market. Setersis was the head of the Silvarum stall holders association and through that had a seat on the city traders council; he had almost as much political influence as a Guild Council Master.

“Did I hear right?” Setersis asked. “Did the constables finally come to our aid?”

For once Chae looked uncertain. “We were able to assist.” He stopped glaring at Edeard and produced an almost sympathetic expression. “I was about to ask the more reckless members of my patrol to report what happened on the chase.”

“Reckless members, eh?” Setersis grinned at the three probationary constables. “Yes, you are young, aren’t you? Good for you. If we had more constables with balls, we wouldn’t be in the sorry state we are. Your pardon, my girl.”

“Granted,” Kanseen said graciously.

“Come, then; tell me what happened on the chase. Did you manage to accidentally drop the scum into the canal?”

“No, sir,” Edeard said. “I’m afraid they got away on a gondola. They headed down toward the port.” Something made him hold back from mentioning that his ge-eagle was showing him that the thieves already had passed through Forest Pool and were approaching Sampalok.

“None of the gondoliers would help us,” Macsen blurted. “We asked them.”

“Ha! Fil-rats in human guise,” Setersis grunted. “Still, you did a good job. I can’t remember the last time a constable returned stolen goods.” He gave Chae a meaningful glance, and the sergeant’s lips tightened. “You have my thanks. I’m sure my fellow stall holders will show their appreciation next time your patrol ventures into the market.”

Edeard knew he was grinning like a fool. It didn’t matter; so were Macsen and Kanseen. Then he finally caught sight of Dinlay, who looked like his closest family had just died.

Once the doctor announced that Kavine would be all right, Chae declared that the patrol was over and they were going back to Jeavons station. He led them out of the market without another word. Edeard couldn’t work out if they were in serious trouble; the sergeant’s mind was perfectly shielded.

Macsen shot Boyd a direct longtalk query, which he shared with Edeard and Kanseen: “What did Chae say?”

“Nothing much,” Boyd replied, equally furtive. “He was yelling for you to stop. When none of you came back, he just concentrated on helping the stall holder. I had to hold the flesh together to slow the bleeding. Lady! I thought I was going to faint, there was so much blood. Monrol said they hacked him a couple of times with those blades to make him let go of the box. I wish I’d gone with you instead, but I just hesitated for that first second. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Edeard said. “The more I think about it, the more stupid I was. Chae was right.”

“What!” Macsen exclaimed out loud. He glanced at Chae, but the sergeant did not seem to notice.

“There was four of them, and they had blades; six if you count the gondoliers. We could have been killed, and it would be my fault.”

“We got the box back.”

“Luck. That’s all. Pure luck. The Lady smiled on us today. She won’t tomorrow. We have to act like proper constables—stay together, work as a team.”

Macsen shook his head in dismay. Edeard gave Kanseen an apologetic shrug.

“I went with you,” she told him quietly. “I got just as carried away. Don’t try to claim this is all your fault.”

He nodded. Up ahead, Chae was marching on, not looking around, his back rigid. Beside him, Dinlay was avoiding any communication with his friends. When they had walked back to the market from the Great Major Canal, the three of them had been triumphant; now that whole mood was badly inverted. Right there, Edeard felt like turning around and heading out of the city. It was going to be awful back at the station; he just knew it.

“That’s not the kind of attitude the returning hero is supposed to wear,” Salrana told him. Her longtalk conveyed a lot of concern.

Edeard tipped his head up to give the sky a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry. We did it, though. We actually chased off some thugs from a gang.”

“I know! I farsighted you the whole time. You were terrific, Edeard. I wish I’d chosen to be a constable.”

“Our sergeant doesn’t share your opinion. And what’s worse, he’s right. We didn’t behave properly.”

“Have you told the stall holder that?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Yes, it is, Edeard. You did a good thing today. It doesn’t matter how you did it. You helped someone. The Lady saw that, and she’ll be pleased.”

“Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing,” he mouthed silently. Some good cheer returned as he tried to imagine what Akeem would have to say about all Chae’s rules and procedures. It would be short and very succinct, he knew.

“What?” Salrana asked.

“Nothing. But thank you. I’m going to go back to the station now and do whatever it takes to put things right with my sergeant.”

“I’m always so proud of you, Edeard. Talk to me tonight; tell me what happens.”

“I will. Promise.”

When they got back to the station, Chae’s temper seemed to have vanished. Edeard was expecting to be shouted at as soon as they passed through the big gates. Instead, Chae stood there with a genuinely weary expression on his worn face; for once his shielding had slipped enough for Edeard to sense just how tired his thoughts were. “Small hall,” he told the squad.

The others dutifully trooped into the building. Edeard waited until they were through the doorway.

“It was my fault,” he told Chae. “I encouraged the others to follow me. I didn’t listen to you, and I ignored procedure.”

Chae studied him, his mind becoming inscrutable again. “I know. Now would you like to guess what will happen if Setersis hears I gave you all a chewing out?”

“Er, he’d probably take our side?”

“He would. Now grow up fast, lad; learn how things balance in this city. Come on, I need to talk to all of you.”

The other constables rose to their feet when Chae came into the small hall. Dinlay saluted smartly.

“Pack that in,” Chae said. His third hand shut the hall doors. “Sit down.”

The squad exchanged mildly perplexed looks, except for Dinlay, who was still keeping himself apart.

“So how do you think we did?” Chae said.

“Wrong procedure,” Kanseen ventured.

“Yeah, wrong procedure. But we saved a stall holder’s life. Some gang scum got a nasty surprise. And we recovered the stolen merchandise. Those are all the plus points. The constables will be popular in Silvarum’s markets for a couple of weeks. That’s good; there’s nothing wrong with that. I’d even go so far as to say the rule of law was upheld. Edeard?”

“Sir?”

“Did your eagle follow them back home?”

“Er, yes, sir. I watched them go into Sampalok. It’s a building not far from the Grand Major Canal. They haven’t come out yet.”

“So we know which building they probably live in. What do we do about that? Do we put together a big squad and go in and arrest them?”

“Probably not.”

“Why, they’ve broken the law. Shouldn’t they be brought before a court?”

“Too much effort for a minor crime,” Macsen said.

“That’s right. So bring the eagle back, please.”

“Sir.” He sent a command through the sky above Makkathran and felt the eagle turn around, dipping one wing vertically back to the ground. It began to flash back over the big canal.

Chae was giving him an odd smile. “And you really can longtalk that far, can’t you?”

“Sir?”

“All right. Now, I’m not mad at you, any of you. So just relax, and for the Lady’s sake, try to listen to what I’m about to tell you. What you did today was what you joined up for: preventing criminal activity and protecting the people of this city. That’s good; it shows you have a sense of duty and loyalty to each other. Technically, it’s my duty to get you all through the next two months; then you’re on your own, and I start with the next batch of hopeless youths. My responsibility to you ends then. But what I have got to try and instill in you before you go out by yourselves is a sense of proportion and maybe even some political awareness. Let’s think about this. Those gang members are going to be a little shaken by Edeard’s strength and furious that they came back empty-handed after taking so much risk. Next time they go out, they’ll want to make sure their crime produces some results. So they’ll go the extra mile to make sure. Boyd, what would you do in their shoes? How would you make certain?”

“Take a pistol?”

“Very likely. So whatever constable patrol tackles them is going to get shot at.”

“Hold on,” Edeard said. “We can’t let that stop us. If we become so afraid of cracking down on the gangs that we do nothing, they’ve won.”

“Correct. So?”

“Next time we chase them out, but that’s it,” Macsen said.

“Good option. Though actually your response was about right. I didn’t behave too well out there, myself, mainly because I was worried about you guys running off like that. There’s an old natural law that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If those gang members come into a market in broad daylight and use a blade on a stall holder, then they must expect a reaction from the constables. They were the ones who overstepped the mark on this occasion. But that still doesn’t mean three of you can go chasing off after four of them. With or without blades and pistols, you were outnumbered. That has tragedy written all over it. So that was wrong. It was also wrong to leave a member of the public injured and unattended. You didn’t stop to assess, which is the most critical thing to do; you also let raw instinct override my orders, which is the greater crime no matter how much you thought yourselves in the right. I’m supposed to be training you to respond to situations in a professional manner, and I clearly haven’t drilled it in hard enough. Now I’m quite prepared to write today’s lapses off to first-time excitement and the general confusion. You need experience more than you do theory, so nobody’s getting disciplined and there’ll be no recriminations. But understand this: It must not happen again. Next time we encounter a criminal act in progress, you follow procedure to the letter. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” they chorused.

“Then we understand each other. So take tonight off, get yourselves down to the Olovan’s Eagle for a drink or ten, and be back in this hall for another dose of theory first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll also go against my own policy to tell you something: Unless you completely screw up your graduation exams, you will all pass your probation.”

“I was useless,” Dinlay complained. “I just froze. I was just so useless.” He gulped down more of his beer.

Edeard looked over at Macsen, who simply shrugged. They had been in the Olovan’s Eagle for an hour, and Dinlay had said very little else. It was a small miracle they’d gotten him to join them in the first place. He had not said ten words since Chae had dismissed them from the small hall.

“You froze for a couple of seconds, that’s all,” Kanseen said. “That means you were close to Chae when he ordered us all to stop and help the stall keeper. You couldn’t do anything else.”

“I should have ignored him like you did. I didn’t. I failed.”

“Oh, sweet Lady,” Kanseen grumbled, and sat back in her chair. She was wearing a blue and white dress with orange flowers. It was not the most stylish garment Edeard had seen in Makkathran or the newest, but she looked good in it. Her short hair still set her apart from all the other girls, who wore theirs fashionably long. But he rather liked it this way; it suited her, setting off a flattish nose and dark green eyes. Now that he’d known her for a few months, she was not quite as intimidating as she had been at the start, not that he thought of her as anything other than a colleague and friend.

“Nobody failed,” Edeard said. “This afternoon was chaos, that’s all. And you helped Chae with the stall holder.”

“I froze,” Dinlay said wretchedly. “I let you all down. I let my family down. They expect me to be the station captain within ten years, you know. My father was.”

“Let’s have another drink,” Macsen said.

“Oh, yes, that’ll solve everything,” Kanseen said sourly.

Macsen gave her a wink, then shot a longtalk order to one of the tavern waitresses. Something else must have been said. Edeard caught her flashing him a mock-indignant smile.

How does he do that? It’s not what he says, it’s his whole attitude. And why can’t I do it? Edeard sat back to give his friend a critical examination. Macsen was sitting in the middle of a small couch with Evala on one side and Nicolar on the other. Both girls were leaning in toward him. They laughed at his jokes and gasped and giggled when he told them what had happened in the market, an extravagant tale of thrills and bravery Edeard didn’t recognize. He supposed Macsen was quite handsome with his light brown hair and flat jaw. His brown eyes were constantly filled with amusement that bordered on nefarious, which was an additional attraction. It helped that he always dressed well when they went out. This night he had pulled on fawn-colored trousers cut from the softest suede, belted by woven black strands of leather. His sky-blue satin shirt just showed under a dark emerald frock coat.

See, I’d never have the courage to wear a combination like that, but he carries it off perfectly. The epitome of a grand family’s junior son.

In fact, the rest of them looked quite drab in comparison. Edeard used to be quietly pleased with his own black jacket, tailored trousers, and knee-high boots. Now he had been relegated to the poor friend whom Macsen’s girls felt sorry for and tried to pair up with their own charity case girlfriend. On which note … Edeard tried not to stare at Boyd, who was sitting on the opposite side of their table, his face bewitched. Clemensa was next to him, chattering away about her day. She was easily the same height as Boyd, and must have been close in weight, too. Edeard could not help the way his eyes always slipped down to the front of her very low-cut dress every time she bent over, which was suspiciously frequent.

The waitress brought over the tray of beer Macsen had ordered. Dinlay immediately reached for his tankard. Edeard fumbled with the money pouch in his pocket.

“Oh, no, my round,” Macsen said. His third hand deposited some coins on the empty tray. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. The waitress smiled. Evala and Nicolar pressed in closer.

Edeard sighed. He’s always so polite, as well. Is that what does it?

“Boyd,” Macsen called out loudly. “Close your mouth, man; you’re drooling.”

Boyd snapped his jaw shut and glared at Macsen. A bright flush crept up his face.

“You pay him no heed,” Clemensa said. She brought a hand up to Boyd’s cheek, turned his head, and kissed him. “A girl likes it when a man pays attention.”

Edeard thought Boyd might faint with happiness.

“Got to go,” Dinlay muttered. “Back in a minute.” He stood up and swayed unsteadily, then headed for the archway at the back of the saloon where the washrooms were.

The fact that there were toilets on an upper floor was one of the many revelations about city buildings that had taken Edeard time to get used to. But then, a tavern that sprawled over many floors was also a novelty, as was the pale orange light radiating out of the ceiling that was nearly as bright as daylight. The first night they had visited the Olovan’s Eagle, he had wondered why there was no straw on the floor. Life in the city was so civilized. Sitting there in the warmth, with a window showing him the lights outside stretching all the way to the Lyot Sea, good beer, comfortable with his friends, he found it hard to fit this with the crime and gangs that cast such a shadow over the streets outside.

“What are you doing?” Kanseen hissed at Macsen. “He’s had too much to drink already.”

“Best thing for him. He’s not a fighting drunk. Another couple of pints and he’ll fall asleep. Next thing he’ll know, it’s tomorrow and we’ll be so busy, he won’t have time to brood. Tonight’s what we need to get him through.”

Kanseen looked like she wanted to protest but couldn’t think how. She looked at Edeard.

“Makes sense,” he admitted.

Macsen placed another order with the waitress.

“My liver has to sacrifice its life so we can get Dinlay through graduation,” Kanseen complained.

“In the constables we stick together,” Edeard said, and raised his tankard. “To the memory of our livers. Who needs ’em?”

They drank to that.

“Don’t worry,” Macsen said. “I’ve made arrangements. Our beer is watered. Dinlay’s has two shots of vodka in each pint.”

Even Kanseen had to laugh. She tipped her tankard to Macsen. “You’re so …”

“Beautifully evil?” Edeard suggested, giving his tankard a mortified stare. This is watered? I couldn’t tell; it tastes the same.

“Spot on,” she said.

“I thank you.” Macsen put his arms around the shoulders of the girls and pulled them in, kissing Evala first and then Nicolar.

“Not just tonight we’ve got to worry about,” Boyd said.

“Does our Boyd need to worry about tonight?” Macsen asked Clemensa.

She gave Boyd a hungry look. “He certainly doesn’t. After what you did today, you’re all heroes in my book. That needs a lot of rewarding.”

“He’s going to want to prove himself,” Boyd said. “Nothing the sergeant said is going to hold him back. Next time we come across a fight or a robbery, Dinlay will be at the front and aching to take on the bad guy.”

“I figured that, too,” Edeard said.

“We’ll have to be ready,” Kanseen said. “We can’t hold him back; that would make it worse. But we can be up there with him.”

“Everyone together,” Macsen said. He raised his tankard. “No matter what.”

“No matter what,” they toasted with a roar.

Edeard still couldn’t taste the water.

The four ge-monkeys from the Jeavons constable station walked slowly along the street, looking like pallbearers as they carried a comatose Dinlay home to his dormitory bed.

Kanseen kept looking back to check. “Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“Not really,” Edeard said. “If Macsen was serious about the vodka, he’s going to have the hangover from Honious tomorrow morning.” He turned to inspect the ge-monkeys. Using them wasn’t the ideal solution, but it was better than him and Kanseen hauling Dinlay along. Boyd and Macsen had stayed on at the tavern with the girls. There were private rooms upstairs that they no doubt would be using that night. Edeard was trying to keep his envy in check.

“Macsen!” she exclaimed.

“He’s not so bad. Actually, I’d rather have him by my side than Dinlay.”

“Some choice.”

“And you’re preferable to all of them.” All that beer and now the balmy night air were making him light-headed. That must have been why he had said it.

Kanseen said nothing for a while as they walked back along the long, nearly deserted street. “I’m not looking for anyone right now,” she said solemnly. “I just broke up with a man. We were engaged. It … ended badly. He wanted a nice traditional girl, one who knew her place.”

“I’m sorry. But I have to say it’s his loss.”

“Thank you, Edeard.”

They walked on a while, shadows shifting as they passed under the bright orange light patches on the outside of the buildings.

“I don’t know what it is about you,” she said quietly. “I’m not just talking about how strong your third hand is. You stand out. You’re what I imagine the sons of noble families are supposed to be like or were like before they got so rich and fat.”

“Nothing noble about me.”

“Nobility doesn’t come from a bloodline, Edeard; it comes from within. Where was your village?”

“Ashwell, in the Rulan province.”

“Doesn’t mean anything, I’m afraid. I don’t know any geography beyond the Iguru plain.”

“Ashwell was a long way past there, right on the edge of the wild lands. I’ll show you on a map if I can find one. It took a year for us to travel here.”

“Gift me.”

“What? Oh.” Edeard concentrated, trying to find a recollection that would do his home justice. Spring, he decided, when the trees were bursting into life, the sky was bright, and the winds were warm. He and some other children had gone outside the rampart walls and taken the long route to the top of the cliffs, where they looked down on the cozy buildings sheltering below.

He heard a soft pull of breath and realized how heavily involved in the memory he had become, lacing it with melancholy.

“Oh, Edeard, it’s so beautiful. What happened? Why did you leave?”

“It was attacked by bandits,” he said stiffly. In all the time he had spent in the station dormitory he never had told his new friends the truth about Ashwell. All they knew was that he’d lost his family to bandits.

“I’m sorry,” she said. For once she dropped the veil around her thoughts, allowing him to sense the sympathy. “Was it very bad?”

“Salrana and I survived. And five others.”

“Oh, Lady! Edeard.” Her hand held his arm.

“Don’t worry. I’ve come to terms with it. Except for losing my Master, Akeem. I still miss him.” The emotional currents welling up in his thoughts were both unexpected and alarmingly strong. He truly thought he had put all the sentiment and mourning behind him. Now all he’d done was picture his old home, and the feelings were rushing back, as strong as the day it had happened.

“You should talk to one of the Lady’s Mothers. They give excellent counsel.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” He made his legs work again. “Come on. I have a notion Chae isn’t going to be too gentle with us tomorrow.”

The ge-monkeys laid Dinlay out on his mattress and pulled a thin blanket over him. He never woke, just groaned and shuffled around a bit. Edeard could not be bothered to take his friend’s boots off; he was suddenly incredibly tired himself. He barely managed to remove his own boots and trousers. The dormitory’s ge-chimps scampered about, collecting his clothes for the laundry.

Of course, now that he actually was lying down, his mind was too restless to deliver the sleep his body craved. He sent a thought to the main ceiling’s rosette pattern of illumination, and it dimmed to a nebula glow. That was about the only reaction the city buildings ever had to human thought. The ge-chimps quieted down. Faint sounds from downstairs whispered through the big empty room, the usual comings and goings of the night shift officers. Edeard had never really gotten used to the way walls in the city curved. Back in Ashwell, walls were laid out in straight lines; the nine sides of his old guild courtyard were considered pretty adventurous architecture. Here in the dormitory, the oval bed alcoves were almost rooms in their own right, with arching entrances twice Edeard’s height. He liked to imagine that the dormitory was actually some kind of aristocratic bedroom and that maybe the race that had created Makkathran had more than two genders, hence the six beds. That would make the station an important building. He couldn’t quite assign a use for the honeycomb warren of little rooms below ground that were used as prisoner cells and storerooms.

As he thought about it, he let his farsight drift down through the translucent gray panorama of the station’s structure. The image was such that it seemed to surround him, engulf him. Gravity pulled at his mind, and he sank ghostlike through the floor of the basement. There were fissures in the ground beneath, smooth fissures that looped and bent as they wound deeper and deeper. Some were no wider than his fingers, whereas others were broad enough to walk through. They branched and intersected, forming a convoluted filigree that to his quixotic thoughts resembled the veins in a human body. He felt water pulsing through several of them while strong winds blew along others. Several of the smaller fissures contained threads of violet light that appeared to burn without ever consuming the fissure walls. He tried to touch them with his third hand, only for it to slide through as if he were grasping at a mirage.

His farsight expanded, becoming tenuous. The fissures spread away from the station, burrowing under the street outside, knitting with other extensive hollow filigrees that supported the surrounding buildings. Edeard gasped in wonder as his farsight grew and grew; the more he relaxed, the more he could perceive. Slivers of color shone through his mind, as if this shadow world were growing in texture. He couldn’t sense the dormitory anymore. The station was a small glowing jewel embedded in a vast whorl of similar multichromic sparks.

Makkathran.

Edeard experienced the wonder of its thoughts. Immersing himself in a melody where a single beat lasted for years, chords so grand they could shake the very ground apart if they ever gained substance. The city slept the long sleep of all giants, untainted by the pitiful frantic tempo of parasitic humans crawling through its physical extremities.

It was content.

Edeard bathed in its ancient serenity and slowly fell into a dreamless sleep.

“How long?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

Aaron growled again and ignored her. He was inside a gym cage that the starship’s cabin had extruded, testing the flexibility and strength of his restored upper torso, pulling weight, pushing weight, bending, twisting, working up a sweat as endurance was evaluated, measuring the oxygen consumption of the new flesh, blood flow rate, nerve speed.

“You knew Qatux could do it,” she whined. “So you must know how long it’ll take.”

Aaron gritted his teeth as gravity shifted off vertical and increased, forcing him to pull the handle he was gripping while stretching at the same time. Biononics reported that the tendons were approaching their tear limit.

His patience also was undergoing a strenuous workout. They had been back in the Artful Dodger for fifteen hours, a time Corrie-Lyn had devoted to drinking and moaning. She now considered handing over Inigo’s memories to be a terrible betrayal, not to mention a bad idea, a really bad idea. Stupid actually, as she kept saying.

“So it’ll have like a mini-Inigo hanging around inside its own brain?”

Aaron took a look at the oxygen usage in his shoulder muscles. The levels were only a couple of points off those of the original muscle. Not bad for a couple of days. Drugs and biononics had done what they could; the rest of it was the result of good old-fashioned exercise. A decent calisthenics program should see the levels equalize over the next week or so. He shut down the gym.

“Something like that,” he said.

Corrie-Lyn blinked at the unexpected answer. She rolled over on the couch and reached for the pitcher of tasimion margarita. “So you ask the mini-Inigo a question …”

“And Qatux answers it for us. Yes.”

“What a load of bullshit.”

“We’ll see.” He slipped his T-shirt off and examined his torso. The membrane was starting to peel off. Underneath, the new skin was tender, but at last the color was deepening to the same shade as the rest of him. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said.

“You’re shaping up good.” She giggled. “Need a hand in there?”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “No thanks.” He now had a strong theory of his own why Inigo had run away from Living Dream, and it wasn’t anything to do with Last Dreams or the pressure of being idolized by billions. Maybe she only turned into this after he left.

The gym sank into the wall, and there was a moment’s pause before the shower cubicle extended out from the same section. He slipped his shorts off and stepped in as Corrie-Lyn let out a wolf whistle. He must be recuperating; his cock was stirring. But if Qatux did come up with a notion of where the reluctant messiah was hiding out, his shipmate would be more necessary than ever. He turned the spore temperature down as low as it would go and thought of other things. Unfortunately, with a memory that did not reach back past Ethan’s appointment, he did not have much to mull over except his odd dreams. That horse ride … he’d been young. So it must have been his childhood. It seemed pleasant enough.

After he had showered, they carried on their research into the odd Raiel who had agreed to help them. Clued in by what it had said, they had sent their u-shadows into the unisphere to search for files on the history of Far Away during the Starflyer War. The first surprise was to find just over a million files on the period available. It took eight hours for them to filter it down to relevant and useful information. Even then, their was no direct evidence Qatux had been there.

There were endless documents on Bradley Johansson’s team of Guardians chasing the Starflyer back to its lair and how they joined up with an odd security team that Nigel Sheldon assigned to help them. Admiral Kime was one of them, of course; that was a common history text. His audacious hyperglider flight over Mount Herculaneum and subsequent rescue by Nigel himself. Anna the Judas. Oscar the martyr. Paula Myo and the navy interdiction squad: Cat’s Claws.

“I didn’t know it was Nigel who originally sent the Cat to Far Away,” Corrie-Lyn exclaimed. “What was he thinking of?” She was sober again after a meal and a couple of alcohol-binder aerosols. Aspects of the search seemed genuinely to interest her.

“Be fair. He couldn’t see the future.”

There were some appendixes that claimed the pursuit had been aided by an alien, but the context was strange. The Bose motile was known to be part of Nigel’s secret clique at the time. There were no references to a Raiel. One file said the Barsoomian group helped Johansson because he had brought their genetic holy grail to Far Away. Again, there was nothing about what that grail actually was.

“Let’s try another angle,” Aaron said. He told his u-shadow to find all files relating to a Commonwealth citizen called Tiger Pansy around the time of the Starflyer War.

The cabin’s portal projected a rather startling image.

“No way,” Corrie-Lyn said.

Aaron stared at the woman in equal disbelief. She was a complete mess: terrible hair; bad facial reprofiling ruining the symmetry of her eyes, nose, and lips, with appalling cosmetics making them appear worse; ridiculous breast enlargements; tight, short clothes that no girl over twenty could get away with wearing, let alone this one, who must have been close to rejuvenation time again.

“Signed to the Wayside Production Company on Oaktier,” Corrie-Lyn read off her exovision. “Appeared in a large number of their, aha, productions. Left them in the last year of the Starflyer War. No subsequent information. Nothing: no residency listing on any planetary cybersphere, no records of rejuvenation treatment, no bodyloss certificate. She simply dropped out of sight.”

Aaron shook himself and canceled the projection. “Easy enough at the time. There was a mass migration from the Lost23 worlds which the Primes had invaded. After that, it got even more chaotic.”

“Coincidence?”

“The Raiel are not known for their lies. Maybe Qatux did marry her. She certainly looks the emotional type.”

“That’s not quite how I’d describe her,” Corrie-Lyn muttered. “And how did she get to Far Away? The planet was virtually cut off for decades until the starlines started flying there.”

“She must have been with the Johansson team. I don’t think it’s relevant.”

“No, but it’s interesting. Why would a Raiel go there?”

“You want to ask?”

She shook her head. “Nah, too intimidated.”

“I’ll ask for you.”

“No. Let’s just drop it.”

“You’re right, though: It is interesting. I was obviously given the correct information. Qatux helps humans.”

“He said he used to. Until Tiger Pansy was killed.”

“By the Cat, no less. That’d be enough to shock anyone out of their dependency routine, no matter how delightful and ingrained.”

“Yes, well, thank Ozzie, Paula Myo finally caught her.”

“Yeah. And in about another four thousand years we can all share the joy of her coming out of suspension.”

“Urrgh. I won’t be around for that no matter what.”

“Qatux knew Paula Myo,” Aaron said. “I wonder if that’s relevant.”

“How could it be?”

He waited for a moment to see if his subconscious produced any clues. It didn’t. “No idea.”

The Artful Dodger’s smartcore told them the High Angel was calling. “Please prepare for teleport,” the alien starship told them.

“Oh, hell,” Corrie-Lyn said as she clambered to her feet. “I really don’t like this—”

The cabin vanished. Once again they were standing in the large circular chamber facing Qatux.

“—part.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste.

Aaron bowed to the Raiel. “Thank you for obliging us.”

“You are welcome,” the big alien whispered.

“Were you successful?”

“I have lived through Inigo’s early life. It was not that distinguished.”

Aaron looked straight at Qatux, avoiding Corrie-Lyn. His gaiamotes revealed the pique that the last remark had triggered in her mind. “Nonetheless, it must have provided you with an understanding of his behavior patterns.”

“Guilt drives him.”

“Guilt?”

“He spent his whole life hiding what he was from everyone: his family, those he loved, and his enemies.”

“Are you talking about the Protectorate?”

“Yes. He was aware of their constant surveillance. Toward the end he took a perverse enjoyment in maintaining the illusion that he was an ordinary Advancer, but such a lie weighed heavily on him. It was one of the main reasons he volunteered for duty at Centurion Station.”

“All right, I can buy into that scenario. Given the circumstances of his later life, where do you think he might have gone?”

“Hanko.”

Which wasn’t the kind of answer Aaron was bracing himself for. Not even close. “The Second47 world?”

“Yes.”

“I know that was where Anagaska’s population originated from, but they were forced off because it became uninhabitable after the Prime attack. There’s nothing there, not anymore.”

“Inigo was always fascinated by what he considered his true ancestral home,” Qatux said. “Remember, he did not belong in Anagaska’s Advancer culture. Hanko gave him a psychological ground point, amplified by an ancestor obsession rooted in his psyche due to the loss of his father so soon after his birth. Such a trauma affects any child, Higher as much as Advancer, especially when the event is regarded with such bitterness by his mother.”

“A wound she kept open, unintentionally or otherwise.”

“Correct. Hanko provided the perfect solution to someone as displaced as Inigo. A real place, yet at the same time unattainable. The illusion which could not be broken. He often contributed to charities which supplemented the official government Restoration teams. A telling point; he was never a wealthy man on Anagaska.”

“And you think he’s gone back there?”

“If he abandoned Living Dream due to his own uncertainty on the direction it was taking, I would assign it a very high possibility. He is Higher; the radiation and climate will have little physical effect on him.”

“There are a lot of unknowns in this assumption.”

“If you had certainties, you would not be here.”

“I apologize. I was expecting you to say he had fled the Commonwealth or there was some secret cabal devoted to helping him. But Hanko would certainly explain why no one has found him.”

“Will you go there?”

Aaron looked over at Corrie-Lyn, who looked very puzzled.

“Yes,” he said.

“Ambition and good intentions are always an excellent starting point,” Likan said. “Then, before you know it, you come right smack up against reality. You either adapt, become realistic, and respond in kind, or you founder along until you sink under the weight of your own capitulations. Now, I know those of you in this auditorium aren’t quitters; hell, quitters couldn’t afford these ticket prices.” He grinned at the murmur of dutiful amusement. “In life, either you get pressured or you apply pressure. Same for business—”

Three rows back from the small podium, Araminta glanced at her fellow entrepreneurs. It was like the gathering of a clone army, all eager young businesspeople, smartly dressed and sharply styled, hanging on to every word the richest man on the planet had to say about acquiring that wealth. Each one of them was desperate for a tiny hint about which way the market would go, a quip about financial trends, what new law to watch out for, a state project that was worth trying to bandwagon.

If they thought the Sheldonite would give them that, they were in for a big disappointment. Basic research: Likan was a ruthless man. He was in Colwyn City to give another of his how-I-made-it lectures for publicity and prestige, not to help fledgling rivals. A high profile helped his business, and in addition he got a buzz out of being adulated. This whole evening exemplified his favorite catchphrase: “win-win.”

Bovey would hate all this, she knew, and smiled secretively at the knowledge. When one was sitting amid the faithful, such thoughts were near sacrilege. But then Bovey had a bit of a hang-up about the genuinely rich and powerful. All politicians were worthless incompetents, all billionaires corrupt criminals. It was one of those quirks she was fond of. It could be quite funny hearing his youngest self, the biological fourteen-year-old, raging about the cabinet secretary for social affairs. Mr. Bovey had the true hatred of every self-employed person for bureaucracy and the taxes it demanded to keep functioning and, worse, expanding. In her mind, fourteen-year-olds did not have adult concerns like that; it was all angst and impossible aspirations at that age. She recalled it well.

Araminta sighed warmheartedly, more loudly than she intended. She saw Likan’s gaze flick in her direction, though his speech never faltered. Her lips pressed together in self-censure.

The speech was exactly what she had been expecting: plenty of motivational talk, a few anecdotes, a load of financial services product placement, and an excess of toothy smiles during the pauses for applause and laughter. Araminta even clapped along with the rest of them. It was all standard stuff, but there were some nuggets among the debris. She was interested in his early years, how to make the jump from a small operation like hers up to a more corporate level. According to Likan, advancement was all a matter of risk and how much of it one was prepared to take. He mentioned self-confidence a lot, along with determination and hard work. Araminta wondered if he’d ever met Laril. Now, that would be an interesting conversation.

Likan finished and was provided with a standing ovation. Araminta got to her feet with the rest of them and applauded halfheartedly. She wished he had been more specific, maybe given some case-study examples. The chairman of the Colwyn Small Business Association thanked their distinguished guest and announced that refreshments were available in the function room outside.

By the time Araminta made it out of the auditorium, her fellow small business owners were forming tight little groups to chatter away to one another while they gulped down the free drinks and canapés. From the snippets she overheard on her way to the bar, the majority ran virtual companies; talk was about expansion curves and cross-promotional market penetration and share options and when to merge. Men glanced at her as she walked past. There were welcoming smiles, even a few pings to her u-shadow, offering compliments and invitations. Her u-shadow did not respond; pings were so adolescent. If you want to take me out to dinner, have the courage to ask me to my face. She had chosen a deep turquoise dress that complemented her hair color. Strictly speaking, the neckline was low and the hem high for a business occasion, but she now had the confidence to buck convention, at least on a small level. Independence and all that exposure to Cressida had given her that.

“Pear water,” she told the barman.

“Interesting choice.”

She turned to find Likan standing behind her. For someone so rich, his appearance was puzzling. The skin on his face was slightly puffy, with flushed cheeks, as if he were permanently out of breath. His biological age was higher than usual, fixed in his late thirties rather than the mid-twenties everyone else favored. The clothes he wore were always expensive but never quite gelled, as if he got his dress sense from advertizements. His jacket with a sharkskin shimmer was chic, but not with that purple shirt and green neck twister. And the brown shoes were best worn when gardening.

“I have to work later tonight,” she said. “Can’t afford lack of judgment from alcohol.”

“Good self-control. I like that.”

“Thank you,” she said levelly.

“I got the impression you weren’t impressed tonight.”

People nearby were looking their way discreetly. Likan’s voice was as forceful as it had been on the podium. That at least gave the impression of a strong personality.

Araminta sipped her pear water, wondering how to play this. “I was hoping for more detail,” she told him.

“What kind of detail? Come on. You paid for your ticket; you’re entitled.”

“Okay, small company, doing well. Needs to step up a level. Do you reinvest profits and ride a gradual expansion with each project slightly larger than the last, or do you take a bank loan and jump ten levels.”

“How small a company?”

“One-woman band, supported by some bots.”

“Company product?”

“Property development.”

“Good choice for a start-up. High profitability relative to scale. There is a ceiling, though, especially with one person. After the first three properties there should be enough profit to take on more staff. With that you move on from one property at a time and start multiple developments. Timing for that has never been better; property is the hot item here today thanks to Living Dream.”

“Everything is relative. With that demand, a developer has to buy high.”

“Then this developer should buy a whole street that’s in decline. It’s a profit multiplier; the individual unit prices rise because you’ve taken the entire street upmarket and made it desirable.”

“That’s a big step.”

“The level of risk you are prepared to undertake is proportional to your growth potential. If you don’t take it, you are declaring: This far and no further. That will define your life. I don’t think you want that.”

“Question: Would you advise the staff expansion be accomplished by becoming multiple?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Going multiple only seems like a solution to a solo act. Ultimately it’s a lifestyle choice rather than a business one. Ask yourself what you can accomplish by being multiple that you can’t by good aggressive management. You came to listen to me tonight, so I know you’re already thinking ahead, thinking big. Property is a foundation stone for a corporate empire, a good one. I still have a vast property portfolio, but to achieve real market dominance you must diversify and interlock your interests. That’s what Sheldon did. He used his interstellar transport monopoly as a cash source to fund industrial, commercial, and financial enterprises on a hundred worlds. At the time of the Starflyer War he was effectively emperor of the Commonwealth.”

“Do you want to be our emperor?”

“Yes.”

Araminta was slightly shaken by his bluntness. She thought he was somehow calling her bluff. “Why?”

“Because it’s a position where you can do whatever you want. The ultimate freedom. Isn’t that what we all strive for?”

“With power comes responsibility.”

“That’s what politicians tell you when they want your vote. There’s a difference between political power and financial power, especially out here in the External worlds. I’d like to demonstrate that to you.”

“How would you do that?”

“Come and stay with me at my home for a weekend. See firsthand what I’ve achieved. Decide if that’s what you want for yourself.”

“What about your wives?” It was common knowledge how staunchly committed he was to replicating his idol’s ideology and life, including, or perhaps especially, the harem.

“What about them?”

“Won’t they mind my visit?”

“No. They’ll be joining us in bed.”

That’ll teach me; you can’t be more direct to my face than that. She was pleased with the way she kept her reaction in check: no startled expression, no giveaway body language—squaring the shoulders, straightening the back. In effect she was telling him she could hold her own against him any day. “I accept,” she said as if it were some kind of request to review financial statements.

“I knew I was right about you,” he said.

“In what way?”

“You know yourself; you know what you want. That’s always dangerous.”

“To whom?”

“To everyone else. That’s what makes you so desirable.”

“Win-win, then,” she mocked.

The Alexis Denken slid comfortably into the big airlock at the base of the Raiel dome stalk. Behind it, the stars vanished as the wall materialized again. Paula stood up, pulled wrinkles out of her suit jacket self-consciously, and straightened her spine. The High Angel teleported her into Qatux’s private chamber. Raiel homes traditionally were split into three sections: public, residence, and private. One had to be a very good friend indeed to be invited beyond the public. The circular chamber had a pale blue floor, and in keeping with tradition, the ceiling was invisible somewhere overhead. Around her, silver and gray walls rippled as if water were flowing down them, yet there was no sound, no dampness in the air. Beyond the cavorting surface, images of planetscapes and strange galaxies writhed insubstantially. However, one image remained firm and clear: a human face that Paula knew only too well.

She inclined her head to the big alien who occupied the center of the chamber.

“Paula, I rejoice that you are here.”

“It’s been a long time, Qatux. How are you?”

“I am well. If I were a human, I would be fit.”

“I am glad.”

“I have risen to the High Angel’s fifth echelon.”

“How many are there?”

“Five.”

Paula laughed. She had forgotten Qatux’s sly humor. “So you’re the captain, then.”

“I have that honor.”

“Congratulations.”

“And you, Paula; do you continue to prosper?”

“I continue to be very busy. For me that’s about the same thing.”

“That is to be expected. There are few of your species who remain in their bodies for as long as you have.”

“It’s also why I’m here. I need information.”

“Just like the good old days. How intriguing.”

Paula cocked her head to one side as she regarded the big alien. That phrase was slightly out of kilter. Qatux’s eye clusters remained steady on her. Long ago it never would have been so bold as to tease her. But then long ago it had been something of a wreck, until the Far Away mission had come along. Of course, she had been very different then, too. “The starship Alini has just visited the Raiel dome. Can you tell me if these people were on board?” Her u-shadow retrieved image files for Aaron and Corrie-Lyn.

“They were,” Qatux whispered.

“What did they want?”

“I believe their mission was confidential.”

She gave her old friend a shrewd glance, not liking the conclusions she was drawing. “It was you who saw them, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” The bottom set of tentacle limbs shivered slightly, the Raiel equivalent of a blush.

“Qatux, did you review Inigo’s memories?”

“I did.”

“Why?” she asked, genuinely concerned. “I thought that had stopped centuries ago. Tiger …” she could not finish. Her gaze was drawn to the face suspended behind the wall. Tiger Pansy’s silly carefree grin looked hauntingly back at her, obviously captured at a moment when the woman had been blissfully happy.

“I know,” the Raiel whispered. “It is not a return to my addiction, I assure you. There would be few Raiel indeed who could refuse the opportunity of experiencing Inigo’s mind. He dreams the Void, Paula. The Void! That evil enigma bedevils us to a degree which humans will never appreciate.”

“All right.” Paula ran her hand back through her hair, making an effort to ignore the uncomfortable personal side effects the case was kicking up. “Inigo’s memorycell was stolen from a clinic on Anagaska. Why did you help Aaron?”

“I did not know the memories were stolen. He arrived in an ultradrive starship. It was intimated that he was a representative of ANA: Governance. In truth, he never confirmed that. I am sorry. I believe I was had. How stupid; me of all Raiel. The deception was quite simple.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it. Happens to the best of us. So what did he want to know?”

“He asked me to guess where Inigo might be.”

“Clever man, which is curious in itself. There aren’t many humans who knew of your little problem. One of them must have joined up with a faction. So what did you tell him?”

“I guessed Inigo might be on Hanko.”

“Hanko? But it’s just a radioactive ruin.” She stopped, examining the idea. “But Earth aside, it is his ethnic birthworld. Still, an odd choice.”

“Are you aware he was born Higher?”

“No, I was not! That has never been on any file. Are you sure?”

Qatux’s biggest tentacles waved in agitation. “I am forty years of his early life, Paula. Through me you are talking to the young Inigo.”

“If ANA: Governance and I didn’t know, then its pretty certain very few other people did, either. That changes his whole profile. No wonder nobody could ever find him. As a Higher he has much greater personal resources.”

“Will you go after Aaron and Corrie-Lyn?”

“I’m not sure. I hadn’t envisaged Aaron being so close to finding Inigo. But even if he is on Hanko, it’ll take Aaron awhile to actually track him down. I need to consult with ANA: Governance on this. Thank you for helping, Qatux.”

“You are welcome, Paula. Always.”

She was on the verge of asking to be teleported back to her ship, but she hesitated. “What do the Raiel think of the Pilgrimage?”

“That it is incredibly foolish. Opening the Dyson Alpha barrier was one thing, but this takes your obduracy to a whole new level. Why does ANA: Governance allow it?”

Paula sighed. “I have no idea. Humans always want to test their boundaries; it’s an instinctive thing.”

“It is a stupid thing.”

“We’re not as old as you. We don’t have specieswide wisdom, let alone responsibility.”

“Higher humans do.”

“The tenet of universal responsibility is the root of their culture, but as individuals they have a long way to go. And as for ANA, it’s like the intellectual equivalent of primordial ooze in there. Who knows what’s going to come wiggling out triumphantly at the end of the day? I’m beginning to doubt ANA: Governance’s ability to keep order.”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “This whole event has me badly troubled. There are too many people playing with catastrophic unknowns. Part of me, the old part that worships order, wants to shut down the entire Pilgrimage project. It’s obviously a monstrous folly. Yet the liberal side of me agrees that these people have a right to seek happiness, especially when nothing in the Commonwealth appeals to them. It’s indicative of our cultural heritage that we cannot provide a home for everyone.”

“But Paula, their ‘right’ to seek the solution of perfection in the Void will endanger the rest of the galaxy. That right cannot be permitted.”

“Quite. And yet we don’t have conclusive proof that the Void will respond the way you claim.”

Qatux was silent, as if startled. “You doubt us, Paula?”

“Humans need to know things for themselves. It is our nature, Qatux.”

“I understand that. I am sorry for you.”

“We’re being too melancholy. I give you my word I’m working to try to sort out this mess.”

“As always you are honorable. I hope you succeed. I would not like to see our two species fall into conflict.”

“We won’t.”

The High Angel teleported Paula back into the cabin of the Alexis Denken. As in all modern starships, the cabin could provide her with every physical necessity, like a hotel room with a particularly bad view. She ordered a plain chair and took her guitar out of the storage locker. Music was something she had come to late in life. As her genetically ordained compulsions were erased slowly, she found her cultural horizons expanding. Art was a whole area she could never quite appreciate; she was always looking for rationalist explanation in every work. Literature was a lot more satisfactory; stories had a point, a resolution. Not that there were many books released into the unisphere these days; current writers tended to produce outlines and scripts for sensory dramas. But the classics were enjoyable enough; the only genre she tended to shy away from was crime and thrillers. Poetry she ignored as an absurd irrelevance. Music, though, had something for every mood, every place. She took a great deal of pleasure from it, listening to everything from orchestral arrangements to singer-songwriters, jazz to gaianature tonality, choral to starsphere dance. The Alexis Denken often would streak between star systems reverberating to the sounds of Rachmaninoff or Pink Floyd or Deeley KTC.

Paula sat back and started to pluck a few chords at random, then gradually dropped into Johnny Cash’s “The Wanderer.” She did not try to sing; there were some limits in life one just had to accept. Instead the smartcore projected the Man in Black into the cabin, and he started to croon along to her melody.

The song helped her think.

She knew she should be heading straight for Orakum or even Hanko, but she was feeling a lot more troubled by Qatux’s last comment than she ought to have been. It seemed as though this whole Pilgrimage situation was designed to disrupt her judgment and objectivity.

That, or I’m just getting lonely and uncertain in my old age.

Paula finished strumming. The Man in Black gave her a forlorn look, and she waved her hand dismissively. The smartcore canceled the projection.

Her u-shadow opened a link to Kazimir, someone who did have empathy for her position.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“I’m at the High Angel. Aaron gave Inigo’s memorycell to Qatux. Someone knew about our friend’s predilection.”

“Did Qatux review it?”

“Oh, yes. Qatux told Aaron that Inigo was probably hiding out on Hanko.”

“Interesting. Presumably that’s where the Artful Dodger, aka the Alini, is heading?”

“Yes.”

“Another ultradrive ship arrived in system just before the Artful Dodger departed. The navy commander at High Angel said it stood off in the cometary belt and left in hot pursuit.”

“Does every faction have ultradrive ships?” she asked indignantly. “Justine caught the Delivery Man using a Hawking m-sink on Arevalo.”

“So she told me. I consider it significant that the factions are openly using such technology. This whole Pilgrimage event could well be the trigger for an irreversible culture split within the human race.”

“Whose side will you take?”

“The navy was created by ANA to protect humans from stronger, hostile aliens. That is what it will continue to do until I am removed from my position. If ANA chooses to leave the physical universe, I will stay behind and ensure that whatever sections of us remain continue to receive that protection. Is that a side, do you think?”

“No. But it’s certainly a plan.”

“Are you going after Aaron?”

“Not immediately. Can you provide some protection for Hanko and Inigo if he’s there?”

“I will observe and advise you of developments, but you know the navy cannot intervene directly in the internal affairs of Commonwealth citizens. Despite the scale of the problem, that’s what this is.”

Paula was thrown by the answer. She was expecting Kazimir to be a lot more helpful. “A thousand years ago I stuck to the rules, too. No good comes of it. You need to bend a little, Kazimir.”

“You and other representatives exist so I don’t have to. You handle the gray areas, while I deal in black and white.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Nonetheless, I operate within a set of rules that I will not break.”

“I understand. Just do what you can, please.”

“Of course.”

The Artful Dodger dropped out of hyperspace five thousand kilometers above Hanko’s equator. Sensors examined the surrounding environment, bringing up several amber warning symbols and even a couple of red ones. The local star had an abnormally large number of sunspots chasing across its surface, producing a dangerously thick solar wind. Below the starship’s metallic purple hull, a global cloud blanket reflected the star’s sharp white glow back into space, its uniform glare broken only by the vast aural streamers that lashed across the stratosphere. Above the atmosphere monstrous arches of violet fluorescence soared far beyond geosynchronous orbit, engorged Van Allen radiation belts that choked the planet with a hurricane of high-energy particles. The Artful Dodger’s hull sparked with a corposant discharge as it slid across into a high inclination orbit.

“Welcome to hell,” Aaron muttered as he monitored the images from outside. The ship began to probe through the clouds with high-resolution hysradar sweeps, standard radar, magnoscan, quantum signature receptors, and electromagnetic sensors, revealing the lay of the frozen land underneath. Several com-beacon signals appeared on the emerging cartography, the only indication of activity on this bygone world. They broadcast the official channels of the Restoration team, asking all arriving ships to make contact.

Corrie-Lyn watched the images in the portal with a mournful face as the starship flew around and around the planet, building up a detailed survey of the surface. Twelve hundred years after the Prime attack, glaciers still were advancing out of the polar regions. “I can’t believe Inigo was ever attracted to this place,” she said.

“You heard Qatux; he enjoyed the idea of an ancestral homeworld.”

“Even if he came here, he’d take one look and leave. There’s nothing here.”

“There are Restoration teams down there, even today,” Aaron said, waving at the little scarlet lights dotted across the map. The beacons acted as crude relays across continents, the only communication net on the planet.

“That’s got to be the biggest lost cause in the galaxy,” she said.

“You’re probably right. Seventeen of the Second47 worlds have officially closed their Restoration projects, and the remainder are winding down. Budgets get reduced every year. Nobody kicks up a fuss about it anymore, not like the first couple of centuries after the war.”

After ten orbits, the smartcore had mapped all the exposed land lurking below the eternal cloud. Sensors had located twenty-three centers of dense electromagnetic activity. The largest was a force field dome in the center of Kajaani, the old capital city. All the others were little more than clumps of machinery and buildings scattered across the dead tundra of three continents. No thermal sensor could begin to penetrate the cloud, so he had no way of telling if any of the outposts were occupied. There didn’t seem to be any capsules in flight. Electrical activity in the air was strong, interfering with several sensor fields.

“No way of telling if he’s down there,” Aaron said. “Not from up here. I can’t even see what ships are parked under the force field.”

“What were you expecting?”

“Nothing more than this. I’m just scouting the territory before we go in to make sure there are no surprises.”

Corrie-Lyn rubbed her arms, as if the cold from the planet were seeping into the cabin. “So what’s our cover story this time?”

“No point in one. It’s not like the teams are heavily armed.”

“So you just shoot them one at a time until they give him up to us?”

He gave her an annoyed stare. “We’ll tell them that you’re searching for a former lover. He changed his name and profile to forget you, but you’ve tracked him down here. All very romantic.”

“That makes me look like a complete loser.”

“Oh, dear.” He sneered and told the smartcore to call the beacon at Kajaani.

It took several minutes to get a reply from the shielded base. Eventually a very startled Restoration project director called Ansan Purillar came online to give them landing authority.

The Artful Dodger sank deftly through the three kilometers of the upper cloud layer. Winds of two hundred kilometers per hour buffeted the hull with nearly solid clumps of gray mist while lightning clawed furiously at the force field. Eventually they cleared the base of the layer into a stratum of superclear air, and the outside temperature plummeted. A gloomy panorama opened beneath them. Black ice-locked land was smeared with long dunes of snow; denuded of vegetation, every geographical feature was shaded in stark monochrome. Long braids of grubby cloud chased across the dead features.

“It must have been terrifying,” Corrie-Lyn said sadly.

“The Primes dropped two flare bombs into the star,” Aaron told her. “The only way the navy could knock them out was by using quantumbusters on the corona. Between them, they produced enough radiation to slaughter every living cell a million times over. Hanko’s atmosphere absorbed the energy until it reached saturation point, which triggered a superstorm, which in turn threw up enough cloud to cover the planet and kick off an ice age. And the star still hasn’t stabilized. Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter; the radiation has completely destroyed the biosphere. According to the files, there’s some marine life that’s still alive in the deepest parts of the oceans, but that’s all. The land is as sterile as a surgical chamber. Check out those radiation levels—and we’re still five kilometers high.”

“I didn’t appreciate what a scale this war was fought on.”

“They were going to genocide us.” The words were almost painful to speak. It had been a fearful time. Aaron shuddered. How do I know what the war was like? A deeper instinct assured him he was not that old.

The Artful Dodger continued its descent through the rampaging lower clouds, blazing with solar brilliance as it sloughed off whiplike tendrils of electrical energy. At this altitude the wind speeds had dropped to a hundred fifty kilometers per hour, but the air density meant the ship’s ingrav units were straining to hold them stable against the pressure.

Corrie-Lyn tried not to look alarmed as the starship began to shake. High-velocity ice crystals shattered against the force field as an amok cloud braid hurtled around them. The crunch of disintegrating ice could be heard inside the cabin.

“Okay, then; this is why there aren’t any capsules flying down here,” Aaron muttered. His exovision was showing him the force field dome below altering its permeability index to allow them through. The wind speed was now less than a hundred kilometers.

Outside the dome, there was very little evidence of the city remaining. In its time, Kajaani had been home to three million people. Its force field had warded off the storms in the days following the Prime attack, protecting the wormhole station so that the planet’s population could be evacuated to Anagaska. The process had taken over a month, with government vehicles transporting refugees from outlying counties on every continent as the storms grew worse and vegetation withered and died. Seven weeks and three days after the planet’s Premier Speaker led the way, CST closed the Hanko wormhole. If there were people left on the planet, they were beyond contact. Every effort had been made, every known habitation and isolated farmstead searched.

With the people gone, the force fields protecting cities and towns failed one by one, allowing the winds to pound against the buildings and floodwater to scour the ground around them. Not even modern superstrong materials could resist such pummeling forever. The structures began to crumple and collapse. Eventually, with the climate spiraling down into its ice age, the rains chilled to become snow and then ice. Mushy scree piled up against the frozen ruins, obliterating yet more evidence that this once had been an inhabited world.

The Artful Dodger passed through the force field and into the calm bubble of warm air that was the Restoration team’s main base. It was centered on one of Kajaani’s old parks. Under the protective auspice of the force field, the ground had been decontaminated and replanted. Grass grew once again, as did a short avenue of trees. Clusters of airborne polyphoto spheres shone an imitation sunlight onto the lush greenery; irrigation pipes provided clean water; there were even native birds and insects humming about, oblivious to the dark sky with its subzero winds outside.

They landed on a small patch of concrete on the edge of the park that held just one other starship, a thirty-year-old commercial combi-freighter with a continuous wormhole drive that could carry a mix of cargo and passengers. The difference between the two ships was patent, with the Artful Dodger’s smooth chrome-purple hull seeming almost organic compared with the Restoration team’s workhorse with its carbon-bonded titanium fuselage and fading paintwork.

Aaron and Corrie-Lyn floated gently down out of the airlock to touch down among the five bulbous landing legs. Ten people had turned out to greet them, quite a crowd by the base’s standards; all were curious to see the unscheduled arrivals. Ansan Purillar stood at the head of the delegation, a slightly rotund man with fair hair cut short, dressed in a simple dark blue tunic with a Restoration logo on the arm.

“Greetings to both of you,” he said. “I’d like to know why you’re here. We’re pleased to see you, of course; don’t get me wrong. But we never have visitors. Ever.” His attitude was pleasant, but there was an underlying determination.

Aaron’s biononics performed a fast low-level field scan. Director Purillar was an ordinary Advancer human, as were his co-workers; none were Higher. “It’s rather awkward,” he said with a twisted smile. “Er, Corrie …”

“I’m looking for someone,” she said.

It was a low voice, hauntingly mournful. Aaron was impressed; she’d backed it up with a soft ache in the base’s tiny gaiafield. The team was suddenly all attention and sympathy.

“A man. Yigo. We were in love. Then it went bad. My fault. I was so stupid. I shouldn’t have … I don’t want to say …”

Aaron put his arm comfortingly around her shoulder as she sniffed convincingly, head bowed. “There, there,” he assured her. “They don’t want details.”

Corrie-Lyn nodded bravely and continued. “He left. It took me a long time before I realized what a mistake I’d made. But I’d hurt him really badly. I’ve been looking for him for three years. He changed his name and his profile, but his sister let slip that he’d come here.”

“Who is it?” Director Purillar asked.

“I don’t know. All I know was what his sister said, that he’d joined the Restoration project. I just had to come. If there is any chance …”

“Um, yes, sure.” Purillar glanced at his colleagues, who were busy checking one another out to see if any of them was going to own up to being the one. He waved an arm about. “Anyone look familiar?”

Corrie-Lyn shook her head despondently. “No. I probably won’t recognize him.” She faced her little audience. “Yigo, please, if it’s you, please just tell me. I just want to talk, that’s all. Please.”

Now nobody was meeting her gaze.

“You don’t have to do it in front of your friends,” she said. “Come to me later. I really, really miss you.” That was accompanied by a burst of sincere desperation into the gaiafield.

“All right, then,” a thoroughly embarrassed Purillar said to his team. “I’ll get this organized. We can meet up again at dinner.”

People broke away, heading back toward the main expanse of grass, keeping their smiles under tight control. As soon as they were a few paces away, couples went into deeply intense conversations, heads close together.

Aaron watched them go, keeping his face impassive. The base would be talking about this for the next twenty years.

Ansan Purillar was left standing in front of his two uninvited guests, one hand scratching at his fuzzy hair in some perplexity. His gaiamotes were leaking an equal amount of disquiet. “You’re welcome to use the accommodation here. There are plenty of spare rooms, a legacy of when the project was conducted on a grander scale. But quite frankly, I suspect your own ship would be more comfortable.” He eyed the Artful Dodger jealously. “Our living quarters haven’t been updated in a century.”

“That’s very kind of you, and of course we’ll use the ship,” Aaron said. “We have no intention of imposing.”

“Quite the contrary,” Purillar said sheepishly. “You are going to be excellent for morale. The only entertainment we get here is sensory dramas, and they tend to pall after a while. Whereas a quest like this … One of us dull old souls with a romantic past. Well!”

“How long have you been here?” Aaron asked.

“Myself? I will have notched twenty-five years in the last hundred and thirty.”

Aaron whistled. “That’s devotion. Do you mind telling me why?”

Purillar beckoned to them and set off across the grass. “I’m nearly three hundred years old, so in fact it’s a small portion of my life. I don’t mind donating the time because I can extend my life as long as I want to make up for it.”

“That sounds almost like Higher philosophy.”

“I suppose it does. I’ll probably migrate inward once the Restoration project ends. Higher culture appeals to me.”

“But why that first donation?”

“Simple enough: I met one of the Restored. She died just after the Prime attack, caught outside a force field when the storm struck. Seven hundred years later one of our teams found her corpse and extracted her memorycell. She was re-lifed in a clone and lived happily on Anagaska. It was her contentment which affected me. She had such a busy fulfilling life, there was a huge family, her involvement with the local community—I was struck by how much poorer the world, my world, would have been without her. So I signed up for a tour. Then, when you’re here, you get to see firsthand the people you find, follow them from excavation through assessment and DNA extraction, memorycell rehabilitation, right up to re-life. You understand? I meet the living individual after I dig up the corpse. Innocent people who were struck down, people who didn’t deserve to die, victims of a hideous war. Maybe it’s self-serving, but do you have any idea how good that makes me feel?”

“I can’t even imagine. I can see I’m going to have to make a financial contribution when I get back to Anagaska.”

They crossed the big grass field to the low buildings on the other side. Housing for the team members consisted of small individual cottages arranged in five neat circles, each with a central clump of community buildings. As they approached, Aaron saw an open-air swimming pool and several barbeque areas; a sports field had been marked out. Only two of the circles were in use. It was impossible to see what the cottages were made of; they were all covered by thick creepers with long brown leaves that dangled golden flowers from their tips. It was a pleasant arboreal contrast to the icy desolation outside the force field. A deliberate one, he suspected; the vines were nicely shaggy but pruned so as not to obstruct windows.

Behind the cottages were two modern functional blocks. One contained the project laboratories, Purillar explained, while the other housed their maintenance shops and garaged their equipment.

“We’re heavily cybernated,” he told them. “But even we need a few technicians to repair the bots now and again.”

“Could he be working as a technician?” Aaron asked Corrie-Lyn.

“Who knows?” she said lightly. “I just know he’s here. Probably. It is a long shot, after all.”

Aaron did not look at her. That hell-damned mouth of hers! He had managed to get into the starship’s culinary unit program, altering her patches on his original blocks so the drinks she ordered had only half the alcohol content she had designated. Her attitude hadn’t made any miraculous changes. “Can we meet everyone?” Aaron asked.

“Sure. I suppose. This is a civil outpost, after all. I’m not exactly a police commissioner, you know. I can’t compel anyone who doesn’t want to be introduced.” He gave Corrie-Lyn an apologetic shrug.

“Anyone who refuses is pretty likely to be him, don’t you think?” Aaron said.

“Sounds about right,” the director said. “You do realize that everyone on the planet will now know you’re here and why. This is a small operation.”

“How many people is that, exactly?”

“Four hundred and twenty-seven of us, of which a hundred and eighty are here in the base. Five hundred years ago, there were six thousand people involved.”

“How many people have you restored?”

“Two point one million in total,” Purillar said proudly.

Aaron whistled appreciatively. “I had no idea.”

“The bulk of them were in the early years, of course. But our techniques have improved dramatically since then—thankfully, because even with the cold helping preservation, entropy is our real enemy. Come on in; I’ll show you.” He stepped through the door of the laboratory block.

The assessment room was the first section they looked in: a big clean chamber with ten long medical tables surrounded by plyplastic limbs tipped with instruments and sensors. One of the tables had a recently discovered corpse on it. Aaron wrinkled his nose at the sight. It was hard to tell the thing had been human: a dark lump wrapped in shrunken cloth and smeared with grime. Its limbs were difficult to determine, showing as long ridges. Strings of hair at one end at least showed him where the head was. After a minute he realized the corpse was curled up in the fetal position.

Two of the recovery team were standing beside the table in sealed white overalls, peering down through their bubble helmets as they directed the wand-shaped sensors along various creases in the body’s surface. Their movements dislodged grains of snow, which were vacuumed carefully from the tabletop.

“We keep the temperature in there the same as outside,” Purillar said. “Any sudden change in environment could be catastrophic. As it is, we have to keep the assessment room sterile, too.”

“Why?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“The radiation has killed off Hanko’s microbial life. It’s another factor which helps the preservation process. If any bugs got in there, they’d have a feast, and we’d be left with slush.”

“They must be very delicate by now,” Aaron said.

“Yes. This one is almost intact. We normally deal with broken segments.”

“Don’t you use a stabilizer field?”

“Not if we can help it. We found the field actually has a detrimental effect on their memorycells. Don’t forget, back then the Commonwealth was still using crystal matrices. In some early cases we scrambled ten percent of the information.”

“Must be hard to remove the memorycell, then.”

“We don’t even try. Once we’ve extracted enough DNA samples to sequence a full genome, we deploy infiltrator filaments into the crystal. Even that can be hazardous. Powering up a memorycell after this long is fatal. It has to be read cold, which is done a molecular layer at a time. Each one takes about nine months.”

“I’d have thought that crystal memorycells would last longer than this.”

“They built them pretty robust, even back then. But consider what they’ve endured for twelve hundred years. It doesn’t help.”

“Who is he?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“She, actually, we think: Aeva Sondlin. We’ll know for certain when her genome has been read, but the location was right.”

“Location?”

“She was found four kilometers from her car. In itself that was hard to find. Washed downstream in a flash flood. We know from records that she lived in the house above the valley’s flood level. We think she was making a dash for the nearest town during a break in the storm. There was an official evacuation point set up there, and she informed the authorities she was coming. Never arrived. Must have gotten caught by the winds or the water. Maybe she’ll be able to tell us.”

“You knew she was missing?”

“Yes. The records of the time aren’t perfect, naturally, given the circumstances. But we have a full census, and of course everyone who arrived on Anagaska was fully documented. It’s our job to try to determine what happened to those who got lost. We have to handle each case separately. In Aeva’s case, we’ve been searching possible locations for seventy years.”

“You’re bullshitting me,” Aaron said.

“I assure you I’m not.”

“Sorry, but seventy years?”

“We start with the route she must have taken, pick the obvious danger points, and seed them with sensor bots. They spread out in a circle, trying to find some trace. Like all our equipment, the bots have improved considerably during the centuries we’ve been here. The majority are tunnelers, burrowing through the snow and surface soil layers. So much topsoil was displaced during the storms that the continent’s whole topology shifted, and now it’s all locked into place by the permafrost. Ninety-nine percent of the people we recover these days are buried. It means the bots operate in highly detrimental conditions even for this world. In total, the Restoration project has deployed four hundred and fifty million since it began. There are still eleven million active and searching. They’re not fast-moving, but they are thorough.”

“How many people are you still looking for?”

“A third of a million. I don’t hold out much hope. Most of them will have been washed into the sea.” He gestured at the wrinkled lump on the table. “Dear Aeva’s car was forty-seven kilometers from the road she used, and that was the easy find; she was deep under sediment. Persistence pays off. We still find about twenty or so each year, even now.”

They moved on into DNA sequencing. To Aaron it was just an ordinary office with five large smartcores. Even in ordinary circumstances, human DNA decomposed quickly; after twelve hundred years on Hanko, only the smallest fragments remained. But there were a lot of cells in a body, each with its own fragments. Piecing them together was possible with the right techniques and a vast amount of computing power. Once the main sequences had been established, the project could use family records to fill the gaps. In a lot of cases, there were full DNA records from clinics available. As soon as the body had been identified properly, a clone was grown for re-life.

“But not here,” Purillar said. “Clinics back on Anagaska handle that part. After all, who would want to wake up here? People have enough trouble adjusting to the present—their future—as it is. Most need specialist counseling.”

“Is life that different?”

“Essentially no, and most died hoping for rescue in the form of re-life. It is the amount of time involved which shocks them. None of their immediate family and friends remain. They are very much alone when they wake.”

After DNA there was the memory rehabilitation section, where they tried to reassemble the information read from memorycells. It was a process orders of magnitude more complex than DNA sequencing.

The history archive was for recovered people who could not be identified. It held all of Hanko’s civic records and memoirs of families with lost relatives, the logs and recollections of the evacuation teams, lists of people who may have been visiting Hanko when the attack started, and the intersolar missing persons list of the time.

There were laboratories specializing in analysis of molecular structures, identifying Baroque minute clues the bots had discovered as they wormed their way through Hanko’s frozen earth, trying to place flakes of paint with individual car models, tying scraps of cloth to specific clothes and from there to manufacturer, to retail outlet, to customer lists, to bank statements. There were items of jewelry and even pets. It was a long register of unknown artifacts, each one potentially leading to another lost corpse.

The case room had files on everyone still known to be missing.

The operations center monitored the sensorbots and the outpost teams that were excavating in terrible conditions.

After two hours, they had met everyone in the building. None reacted to Corrie-Lyn, and nobody tried to avoid her. Aaron quietly scanned all of them. No one was enriched with biononics.

“There are a few other people around,” Purillar said. “You’ll probably meet them tonight at the canteen. We tend to eat together.”

“And if he’s not there?” Aaron asked.

“Then I’m sorry, but there’s not much I can do,” the director said. He gave Corrie-Lyn an uncomfortable glance.

“Can we visit the outposts?” she asked.

“If he is here, he’ll know about you by now. He would have used the beacon net to call in. I guess he doesn’t want to get back with you.”

“Seeing me in the flesh might be the one thing he can’t resist,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Please.” Her outpouring of grief into the gaiafield was disturbing.

The director looked deeply unhappy. “If you want to venture outside, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. Technically, this is still a free Commonwealth world. You can go wherever you want. I’d have to advise against it, though.”

“Why?” Aaron asked.

“You’ve got a good ship, but even that would be hard-pressed to maneuver close to the ground. We can’t use capsules here; the winds are too strong, and the atmospheric energy content too high. The two times we tried to use our ship for an emergency rescue nearly ended in disaster. We aborted both and wound up having to re-life the team members.”

“My ship has an excellent force field.”

“I’m sure it does. But expanding the force field doesn’t help; you just give the wind a bigger surface area to push at. Down here it actually makes you more susceptible to the storm. The only stability you have in the air is what your drive units can provide.”

Aaron did not like it. The Artful Dodger was just about the best protection possible under normal circumstances. He could not forget the way the regrav units had approached their limits while bringing them down to the base’s force field dome, and that had been a big target. “How do your teams get about?” he asked.

“Ground crawlers. They weigh three tons apiece and move on tracks. They’re not fast, but they are dependable.”

“Can we borrow one? There must be some you’re not using. You said there used to be a lot more personnel here at one time. Just an old one will do.”

“Look. Really, he’s not here.”

“Whatever release document you want us to certify, we’ll do it,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Please. Give me this last chance.”

“I’ve got over twenty teams out there. Half of them aren’t even on this continent. We use the polar caps as a bridge to get to the other landmasses. It would take you a year to get around them all.”

“At least we can make a start. If Yigo hears we’re going around to everyone, he’ll know he’ll have to face me eventually. That might make him get in contact.”

Purillar rubbed agitated fingers across his forehead. “It will have to be the mother of all legal release claims. I can’t have any comeback against the project.”

“I understand. And thank you.”

After dinner Aaron and Corrie-Lyn made their way to the second block to inspect the ground crawler Purillar was reluctantly allowing them to use. Overhead the airborne lights were dimming to a gentle twilight. The effect was spoiled by constant flares of lightning outside the force field.

“He wasn’t at the canteen, then?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“No. I’ve scanned everyone in the base now. None of them have biononics, though quite a few have some interesting enrichments. It can’t be as tame here as the good director claims.”

“You always judge people, don’t you?”

“Quite the opposite. I don’t care what they do to each other in the privacy of their own cottage. I just need to make a threat assessment.”

The malmetal door of garage eleven rolled apart to show them the ground crawler. It was a simple wedge shape of metal on four low caterpillar tracks. With the bodywork painted bright orange, its slit windows made empty black gashes in the sides. Force field projectors were lumpy bulbs on the upper edges, along with crablike maintenancebots that clung to the surface like marsupial babies. When Aaron queried the vehicle’s net, he found it had a large self-repair function. A third of the cargo compartments were filled with spares.

“We should be all right in this,” he told her. “The net will drive it. All we have to do is tell it where we want to go.”

“And that is, exactly? You know, Purillar was right. If Inigo is here, then he knows I’m here looking for him. He would have contacted us. Me, at least.”

“Would he?”

“Oh, don’t,” she said, her face furrowed in disgust. “Just don’t.”

“He obviously doesn’t miss you as much as you miss him. He left, remember.”

“Screw you!” she screamed.

“Don’t hide from this. Not now. I need you functional.”

“Functional.” She sneered. “Well, I’m not. And if we find him, the first thing I’ll tell him is not to help you, you psychofuck misfit.”

“I never expected anything else from you.”

She glowered but didn’t walk away. Aaron smiled behind her back.

“If he’s here, the Pilgrimage will be long gone before we find him,” she said sulkily.

“Not quite. Remember, we have an advantage that lets us reduce the search field. We know he’s Higher.”

“How does that help?” There was disdain in her voice still, but it was warring with curiosity now.

“The field scan effect would be very useful out there, helping to track down bodies buried in the ground. I can use it to detect anomalies several hundred meters away. It’s a little more difficult through a solid mass, but the pervasive function is still capable of reaching a reasonable distance.”

“If he’s here, he’ll have a better success rate than the others,” she said.

“There are other factors, such as getting the location of a lost person reasonably accurate, which all depends on how well an individual case has been researched. But yes, it’s a reasonable assumption to say the team with the best success rate will be Inigo’s.”

“Is there one?”

“Yep. My u-shadow didn’t even have to hack any files. They’re all open to review. The team with the current highest recovery rate is working up at Olhava province. That’s on this continent, nine hundred kilometers southwest. If we start first thing tomorrow morning, we’ll be there in forty-eight hours.”

Oscar Monroe had fallen in love with the house the first moment he saw it. It was a plain circle with a high glass wall separating floor and ceiling that stood five meters off the ground on a central pillar that contained a spiral staircase. Both the base and the roof were made of a smooth artificial rock similar to white granite, and it shone like mountaintop snow in Orakum’s blue-tinged sunlight. The sprawling grounds outside resembled grand historical parkland that had fallen into disuse, with woolly grass overgrowing paths, lines of ornamental trees, and a couple of lakes with a little waterfall between them. There were even some brick Hellenic structures resting in deep nooks, swamped by moss and flowering creepers to add to the image of great age. That image was one that several dozen gardening bots worked hard at achieving.

He had lived there for nineteen years now. It was a wonderful home to return to every time his pilot shift was over, devoid of stress and the kind of bullshit politics that went in tandem with any corporate job. Oscar flew commercial starships for Orakum’s thriving national spaceline, which had routes to over twenty External planets. Piloting was the only job he had sought since he had been re-lifed.

Waking up in the clinic had been one hell of a surprise. The last thing he remembered was crashing his hyperglider into an identical one piloted by Anna Kime. Saving the Commonwealth—good. Killing the wife of his best friend—not so hot. Without Anna to wreck their flight, Wilson Kime should have managed to fly unimpeded on a mission that was pivotal in the Starflyer War. Oscar could remember the instant before the collision, a moment of complete serenity. He had not expected anyone to recover his memorycell, not after his confession that in his youth he had been involved in an act of politically motivated terrorism that had killed four hundred eight people, a third of them without memorycells, mostly children too young for the inserts. The fact that he’d never intended it, that the deaths had been a mistake, that they had missed their actual target—that should not have counted in his favor. But it seemed as though his service to the Commonwealth and his ultimate sacrifice had meant something to the judge. He wanted to think Wilson maybe had paid for a decent lawyer. They had been good friends.

“I guess this means we won, then,” were his first words. It even sounded like his own voice.

Above him, a youthful doctor’s face smiled. “Welcome back, Mr. Yaohui,” he said.

“Call me Oscar. I was that longer than I was ever Yaohui.” That was his new identity when he went on the run for over forty years.

“As you wish.”

Oscar managed to prop himself up on his elbows, a movement that surprised him. He had seen re-life clones several times: pitiful things with thin flesh stretched over bones and organs that had been force-grown to adolescence, unable to move for months while they painfully built up muscle mass. This body, though, seemed almost complete, which meant the technique had improved. There had been a lot of bodyloss in the war, tens of millions at least. He probably had been shoved down to the bottom of the list. “How long?”

“Please understand, er, Oscar; you were put on trial for your, uh, previous crime. It set quite a few legal precedents, given your, uh, state at the time.”

“What trial? What do you mean, ‘state’? I was dead.”

“You suffered bodyloss. Your memorycell survived the crash intact; legally, that is recognized by the Commonwealth as being your true self. It was recovered by one Paula Myo.”

“Uh …” Oscar suddenly was getting a very bad feeling about this. “Paula recovered me?”

“Yes. You and Anna Kime. She brought both of you back to Earth.”

“But Anna was a Starflyer agent.”

“Yes. Under the terms of the Doi amnesty, her Starflyer conditioning was edited out of her memories, and she was re-lifed as a normal human. Apparently she went on to have a long life and a successful marriage to Wilson Kime. She was certainly on the Discovery with him when it flew around the galaxy.”

Oscar’s shoulders were not so strong, after all; he sagged back onto the mattress. “How long?” he repeated; there was an urgency in his growl.

“You were found guilty at the trial. Your navy service record was a mitigating factor in sentencing, of course, but it couldn’t compensate for the number of people who were killed at Abadan station. The judge gave you suspension. But as the Commonwealth clinics were unable to cope with the sheer quantity of, uh, noncriminals requiring re-life at the time, he allowed you to remain as a stored memory rather than be re-lifed before the sentence began.”

“How long?” Oscar whispered.

“You were sentenced to one thousand one hundred years.”

“Fuck me!”

He was all alone. That was probably a worse punishment than suspension. After all, he was not aware of time passing during that millennium; he could not reflect and repent his wrongdoing. But in this present, life was different. Everyone he had known had either died or migrated inward—ridiculous phrase, a politically correct way of saying they had committed euthanasia with a safety net. Maybe that was the point of suspension, after all. It certainly hurt.

So with no friends, no family, knowledge and skills that even museums would not be interested in, Oscar Monroe had to start afresh.

The navy, understandably, did not want him. He explained that he didn’t expect to be part of the deterrence fleet and offered to retrain as a pilot for their exploration crews. They declined again.

Back before the Starflyer War he had worked in the exploration division at CST. Opening new planets, giving people a fresh start, was like a self-imposed penance except that he’d really enjoyed it. So he did train as a starship pilot. Fortunately, the modern continuous wormhole drive used principles and theories developed during his first life; he brought himself up to speed on its current technology applications quite rapidly.

Orakum SolarStar was the third company he had worked for since his re-life. It wasn’t much different from any other External world starline. In fact, it was smaller than most. Orakum was on the edge of the Greater Commonwealth, settled for a mere two hundred years. But that location made it a chief candidate from which to mount new exploration flights, opening up yet more worlds. They were rare events. The navy had charted every star system directly outside the External worlds. Expansion to new worlds was also at a historical low. The boundary between Central and External worlds had not changed much for centuries. The old assumption that Higher culture always would be extending outward and that ordinary humans would be an expanding wave in front of it was proving to be a fallacy. With inward migration, the number of Higher humans remained about constant, and the External worlds provided just about every kind of society in terms of ethnicity, ideology, technology, and religion; should any citizen feel disenfranchised on their own planet, they just had to take a commercial flight to relocate. There was very little reason to found a new world these days.

In the nineteen years he had been on Orakum, SolarStar had launched only three planetary survey flights. Two of them had been closer than the distance the company’s long-range commercial flights traveled, hardly breaking through to new frontiers. But he had seniority now. If another outward venture came along, he ought to be chosen. Like all pilots, he was an eternal optimist.

There was no hint of that elusive mission in the company offices when he filed his flight report. He’d just gotten back from a long haul flight to Troyan, seventy light-years away, a fifteen-hour trip with nothing to do other than talk to the smartcore and trawl the unisphere for anything interesting. One day soon, he was sure, people finally would chuck the notion that they had to have a fellow human in charge. He was sitting in the front of the starship only for public relations. In fact, there were probably people sitting in the passenger cabin who were better qualified than he if repairs were needed, not that they ever were.

But at least he got to visit new planets. The same ones—over and over again.

His regrav capsule sank out of the wispy clouds to curve sedately around the house and land on the grass beside the spinney of lofty rancata trees nearly twenty meters tall with reddish-brown whip leaves that swayed in the mild breeze. He climbed out and took a deep breath of the warm, plains-scented air. Out beyond the horizon, Orakum’s untamed countryside was carpeted by spiky wildflowers that budded most of the year. Another reason to choose Orakum was its benign climate.

Jesaral was walking out from underneath the house. The splendidly handsome youth did not quite have a welcoming smile on his face but definitely looked relieved to see Oscar. He was wearing only a pair of knee-length white trousers, showing off a tanned body that always got Oscar’s blood pumping a little faster. Jesaral was the youngest of his three life partners, barely twenty. That, Oscar suspected, probably qualified him as the worst Punk Skunk in the galaxy. A thousand-year-plus age gap: It was delightfully naughty.

The youth opened his arms wide and gave Oscar a big hug to accompany a long sultry kiss. Enthusiasm sprayed out heedlessly into the gaiafield.

“What’s the matter?” Oscar asked.

“Them,” Jesaral said, stabbing a thumb dismissively back at the house.

Oscar refused to sigh. He and his other partners, Dushiku and Anja, had been a stable trio for over a decade. They were both over a hundred and completely at ease with each other. At their age they understood perfectly the little accommodations necessary to make any relationship work. It was taking everyone longer than expected to accommodate and adjust to the newcomer, who did not have anything like their experience and sophistication. That was what made him so exciting in and out of bed.

“What have they done?”

“It’s a surprise for you. And I know how you hate surprises.”

“Not always,” Oscar assured him. “Depends if it’s good or bad. What’s this one?”

“Oh, no. I’m just telling you there is a surprise for you. I don’t want you to be upset that it’s there, that’s all.”

Oscar used a macrocellular cluster to connect to the house’s net. Whatever was waiting inside had been blocked skillfully. That would be Anja, who developed commercial neural routines. She was one of the best on the planet.

“You have the strangest logic I’ve ever known,” Oscar said.

Jesaral smiled broadly. “Come on! I can’t wait.” He tugged at Oscar’s arm, his outpouring of enthusiasm shining like sunrise.

They hurried to the base of the pillar and climbed the wide spiral staircase. It brought them out into a small vestibule planted with colorful bushes from several worlds, their flowers reaching for the open sky above. Ten doors opened off it. Jesaral led the way into the main lounge. In contrast to the exterior, the lounge was clad in caranwood, a local variety that was a rich gold-brown. The grain of the planks had been blended so skillfully, it looked as if they were inside a giant hollowed-out trunk. Its furniture was scarlet and gold, contributing to the sumptuous feel.

Dushiku was waiting in the middle of the big room, holding out a tumbler of malt whiskey with three ice cubes. He had a mischievous smile on his broad face. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks.” Oscar took the drink wearily.

“I see Jesaral’s restraint is as strong as ever.”

“I didn’t tell him,” Jesaral protested.

“So?” Oscar inquired.

Dushiku raised an eyebrow and half turned, indicating the balcony beyond the glass wall at the far end of the lounge. Anja was standing out there, leaning on the rail as she spoke about some aspect of the gardens below. Her laughter-filled voice was just audible through the open door. Oscar knew the tone well. She was playing the perfect hostess, marking her territory. Anja was astonishingly beautiful, a beauty that took a full third of her salary to maintain. Two visits to a clinic each year were considered an essential minimum, for beauty was fluid and fashions were treacherous ephemera even on Orakum. She’d returned three weeks earlier from her last treatments, showing off her reduced height and dark satin-texture skin. Her face was all gentle curves veiled by a mane of thick chestnut hair swishing down past her shoulders. Huge fawn-colored eyes peered innocently out of the shadows, projecting a girlish innocence complemented by a perpetual ingenue effervescence into the gaiafield. Her clothes were deceptively simple: a scarlet T-shirt and dark blue swirling skirt demonstrating her compact figure’s expensive femininity.

Yet for once Anja wasn’t impressing the person she was talking to. Oscar watched the other woman leaning on the rail. She was easily half a head shorter than Anja, wearing a stylish white dress with a slight surface shimmer and a rust-red short-sleeved jacket. She was not responding with the kind of attention Anja was used to extracting from everyone she came across. He could tell. After ten years, Anja’s body language and the tone of her voice were an open book. And the more she failed to impress, the more huffy she got. He even allowed some of his amusement to trickle out into the gaiafield.

Anja must have sensed it. Her full lips hardened into a rebuke as Oscar walked toward the balcony. “Oscar, darling, I’ve been talking to an old friend of yours.”

The other person on the balcony turned around, smiled shrewdly.

Oscar dropped the tumbler as his hands, along with every other part of his body, were shocked into loss of sensation. The crystal smashed, sending the ice cubes bouncing across the polished wood.

“Hello, Oscar,” Paula Myo said.

“Holy shit!”

“Long time, no see.”

Oscar couldn’t even grunt.

Alarm was starting to seep into the gaiafield as his life partners took in the tableau.

“You two …” Jesaral said, his finger rising to point accusingly at Paula. “I thought—”

“It’s all right,” Oscar managed to croak.

“What is this?” Jesaral said accusingly to Paula. “You said you were friends.”

“We used to be. A long time ago.”

“That old excuse. Again! Everything happened before I was born.”

“Everything did,” Oscar said. His u-shadow summoned a maidbot to clean up the broken tumbler. Only then did he finally manage a weak smile. “How are you doing, Paula?”

“Same as usual.”

“Yeah.” She had not changed, not physically. Nothing was different, except maybe her straight dark hair was a couple of centimeters longer. Unlike him, who had been given a great new Advancer body based on his own DNA and then enriched with all the macrocellular clusters and stronger bones, more efficient organs, and greater longevity. After eighty-six years, he still wasn’t anywhere near needing rejuvenation, although his face was starting to show signs of his newly lived years, as Anja never tired of pointing out. But her … He guessed she must be Higher now. Somehow he could not see her visiting clinics for vanity’s sake.

“You do know each other, then?” Dushiku asked uncertainly.

“Yes.” Oscar cleared his throat. “Could you give us a moment, please.”

His life partners exchanged troubled glances, flooding the gaiafield with concern and considerable irritation. “We’ll be outside,” Anja said, patting his arm as she went past. “Just yell.”

The maidbot waddled into the lounge and started sucking up the malt. Oscar backed up to a settee and sat down hard. The numbness was dissipating, replaced by a growing anger. He glared at Paula. “One thousand one hundred years. Thanks for that.”

“I recovered your memorycell.”

“You put it on trial!”

“You’re as alive now as the day you flew the hyperglider. That’s more than can be said for your victims at Abadan.”

“Jesus fucking wept! Will you stop persecuting me.”

“I can’t make you feel guilty. You do that to yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He sank deeper into the cushioning. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You live well.” She turned her head, studying the lounge. “Anja was quite proud of the house. I can see why.”

“My CST Retirement and Rejuve pension fund was paid over into a trust the day the trial ended, courtesy of Wilson. You want to know what one thousand one hundred years’ interest looks like? You’re standing in it. Bloody inflation! I should have been able to buy a planet.”

“And your life partners; they’re good people. Jesaral is rather young, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Oscar growled at her. “He’s also got a very big cock.”

Paula smiled. “Did you ever get in touch with Wilson when you were re-lifed?”

“He left a message. So did Anna. They both downloaded into ANA long ago, which frankly I don’t admire. Look, this is bullshit; what the fuck do you want?”

“I need you to do a job for me.”

Oscar would not have believed it possible; he was in the same room as Paula Myo and laughing at her. “Oh, boy, did you ever lose it over the centuries. You want me to do a job for you? You’ve got to be fucking joking.”

Paula’s answering smile veered toward the immoral. “Exactly.”

Oscar’s humor vanished abruptly, leaving him with a very queasy sensation heating his stomach. “Oh, shit; you’re not joking.”

“Of course not. It’s a perfect arrangement. Who would ever suspect such a thing?”

“No. No chance. Go and blackmail someone else. I’d rather go back into suspension.”

“Come on, Oscar; you’re not Jesaral, so stop acting like him. I’m not here to threaten; I’m here to ask because I know you and I know what you want.”

“You do not know me, lady!”

Paula leaned in toward him, her eyes shining. “Oh, yes, I do, Oscar. We spent the last few days of your life together. I nearly died, and you did. Don’t tell me we don’t understand each other. You martyred yourself so that the human race could survive. You are an honorable man, Oscar. Screwed up by guilt but honorable.”

Oscar was doing his best not to be intimidated by her. “That was a mad situation. It won’t ever happen again.”

“Oh, really? Who do you think I work for these days?”

“I’ll take a wild guess and say ANA. You never change.”

“You’re right about ANA but wrong about change. I am different.”

“Yeah, it looks it. The same job for thirteen hundred years. I barely recognized you. Paula, you can’t change; that is you.”

“Far Away altered me. It nearly killed me, but I understood I had to adapt. So I resequenced my DNA to edit out the compulsive behavior trait.”

“It shows.”

“Self-determination can overcome artificial nature.”

“I’m sure the old nature versus nurture philosophers will be delighted to hear it. Why don’t you call them and let them know. Oh, yes, right. They’re all dead for two thousand years.”

“You’re trying to avoid answering me, trying to justify your fright to yourself.”

“Wrong, lady. Utterly, totally wrong. The answer is no. No, I will not help you. Would you like that clarified? No.”

“How bad do you think it is, that I’m here to ask you?”

“Don’t care. I won’t help you.”

“It’s the Pilgrimage. Oscar, I’m worried about it. Really worried.”

He stared up at her, not sure if he could take many more shocks. “Look, I’ve followed the story closely enough. Who hasn’t? The navy will stop the Ocisen Empire dead in its tracks. ANA will halt the Pilgrimage ships. It’s not stupid. The Void will eat up half the galaxy if Inigo’s dumbass sheep ever get inside.”

“And you think that’s all there is to it? Oscar, you and I were there with Nigel before we traveled to Far Away. You know how complex that situation was, how many factors were in play. Well, this is worse, a lot worse. The Void is only a peripheral event, a convenient gadfly; this is the factions finally marching out to fight. This is a battle for the destiny of humanity. Our soul will be decided by the outcome.”

“I can’t help,” he said, mortified by the way his voice was nearly a wail. “I’m a pilot, for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh, Oscar.” Her voice was rich with sympathy. She knelt down in front of him and grasped his hands. Her fingers were warm to the touch. “Enough humility. It’s your character I desperately need help from. I know that once you agree, I don’t have to worry about the problem anymore. You won’t quit on me, and that’s what’s important.”

“This is a nostalgia trip for you. I’m just a pilot.”

“You were just a navy captain, but you saved us from the Starflyer. I’m going to tell you what I’m asking you to do. And then I’m going to tell you why you’ll do it. If you want to hate me for making you face reality, then that’s fine by me, too.”

He shook his hands loose from her grip. “Say your piece, then go.”

“The factions know me; they watch me as I watch their agents. So I can’t have them knowing that I am desperate to locate the Second Dreamer.”

Oscar laughed. It trailed off into a near whimper. “Find the Second Dreamer? Me?”

“Yes. And you know why that’ll work?”

“Because no one will be expecting it.” He made it sound like a school kid reciting a useless fact.

“Correct. And do you know why you’ll do it for me? And please don’t shoot the messenger.”

He braced himself. Surely there was nothing else in his life she could threaten him with. Did I erase a memory? My God, was there another Abadan? “What?”

“Because you’re bored shitless with this dreary monotonous life you sleepwalk through.”

Oscar opened his mouth to shout at her, tell her that she’d finally flipped, that she was so fantastically wrong, that his life was rich, that he had people who loved him, that every day was a joy, that he never wanted to go back to the crazy days of the Starflyer War, that he’d already endured all the terror and wild exhilaration one life could possibly contain, that such things were best left to the new generation. But for some reason his head had fallen into his hands, and he was sighing heavily. He could not look at her, and he certainly never could look at his life partners. “I can’t tell them that,” he whispered painfully. “How can I? They’ll believe it’s their fault.”

Paula stood up. A hand rested on his shoulder with gentle sympathy. “You want me to do it?”

“No.” He shook his head and wiped the back of his hand across his eyes to remove the annoying smears of moisture. “No. I’m not that much of a coward.”

“Whatever cover story you need, you’ve got it. I can arrange … anything, basically.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s a starship waiting for you at the local spaceport.” She smiled mischievously. “An ultradrive.”

Oscar smiled faintly, feeling the joy stirring deep inside him. “Ultradrive? Well at least you don’t think I’m a cheap whore.”

This was not how Araminta had expected to be returning to the Suvorov continent, sitting in an aging carry capsule as it flew across the Great Cloud Ocean, lower and slower than every other capsule on the planet. It didn’t exactly smack of style. She’d always promised herself she’d return to her birth continent only when she could step out of a swanky luxury capsule and smile condescendingly around at Langham and the family’s business.

Not there just yet.

Unfortunately, Likan’s estate was on Suvoro—understandably, as that was where Viotia’s capital, Ludor, was situated. Likan was not a provinces kind of person; he had to be near the action. So back across the ocean she went with a baggage hold packed with her best clothes and a deepening sense of anxiety.

She was genuinely interested in the Sheldonite’s abilities. To get to his level in under a hundred fifty years illustrated a phenomenal achievement. There was a lot she could learn from him, providing she could get him talking.

Then there was the whole Sheldonite culture thing: thousands of people on hundreds of External worlds trying to emulate their ancient hypercapitalist idol. It was an emulation dangerously close to blind worship, she thought. But she was willing to suspend judgment until she experienced it firsthand. Maybe this was the route she should be taking. Even Bovey could not deny that Sheldonism was the pinnacle of business culture. Successful Sheldonism, that was. There were enough failed adherents littering the External worlds.

And finally the harem. Typical male fantasy: a rich man making his dreams come true. Yet it was a lot more common than in Sheldon’s day; group-life-partner relationships were growing in popularity in the External worlds. And she was hardly in any position to criticize; what she’d enjoyed with Bovey was essentially the same arrangement. So here she was, technically free and single and still interested in experimenting sexually to see what suited her. She didn’t think this was going to be her, but she had surprised herself before with Bovey.

A last wild fling, then. So whatever I discover, this weekend will be win-win.

With that delinquent thought warming her, the capsule finally made land and began to fly over Likan’s estate. He owned an area of a hundred thousand square miles, taking in a long stretch of coastline developed with resort complexes. Massive tracts of farmland with square-mile fields were growing every imaginable luxury crop, the kind nobody produced in a culinary unit, tended by over a million agribots, all processed in immaculately hygienic cybernated factories and sold under his own brands.

Then there was Albany, his industrial complex. Set on a flat plain, it was eight miles to a side, with tall boxy buildings laid out in a perfect grid, every one a factory or processing plant. A spaceport spread out of one side, with long rows of landing pads stretching across the green meadows to a nearby river. Ocean barges clotted the water, and fat cargo starships formed nearly solid lines stretching up through the sky. No humans lived in Albany itself; the technicians who kept it running were housed in dormitory towns twenty miles away. She flew over one of them, surprised by how nice it looked, with large houses and plenty of green space, ornate civic buildings providing every amenity.

He owns it all. And more, he created it. Now, that is real vision.

Her capsule’s net was queried by local traffic control. She supplied her identity certificate and received a descent vector.

Likan’s home was actually three separate buildings. Two of them were on the shore of a lake ten miles long. One was a giant château made of stone that must have had five hundred rooms; Araminta had seen smaller villages. The second, almost opposite the first, was an ultramodern ovoid of shimmering opalescence that seemed to dip down into the water as it lay alongside it across the ground. The third was small by comparison, just a wooden lodge atop the cliffs of a rugged island.

The capsule landed outside the ovoid. Araminta was quietly grateful; she wanted to see what it was like inside, if there were any design concepts she could use.

Two of the harem women were waiting to greet her when she stepped out. Clemance, a slim teenager dressed in a simple white shirt and blue cotton shorts, had a fresh face, freckles on her nose and brow, an eager smile, and fair hair that was barely styled. She was not quite what Araminta had expected. The other one, Marakata, was tall and classically beautiful, with ebony skin that gleamed in the sunlight. Her scarlet gown probably cost more than every item Araminta had brought put together. And that’s what she wears in the middle of the afternoon? Subtle cosmetic scales highlighted jade eyes and a wide mouth. She did not smile; her whole attitude was one of cool amusement.

Clemance bounded forward, her smile growing even wider. She threw her arms around Araminta. “Likan has told us all about you. It’s so great to finally get to meet you.”

A mildly startled Araminta gave the girl a tentative hug back. “What did he say?”

“To be careful,” Marakata said. She raised an elegant eyebrow, observing Araminta’s response.

“He says you’re really ambitious, and smart, and attractive, and your own boss.” Clemance seemed to run out of breath. “Just all-around fabulous.”

Araminta finally managed to disentangle herself from the girl. “I didn’t realize I’d made such an impression.”

“Likan makes very fast assessments,” Marakata said.

“Do you?” Araminta asked as coolly as she could.

It actually drew a small smile from the imposing woman. “I take my time and get it absolutely right.”

“Good to know.”

Clemance giggled. “Come on, we’ll show you your room.” She grabbed Araminta’s hand and pulled like a five-year-old hauling her parent to the Christmas tree.

“The staff will get your bags,” Marakata said airily.

Araminta frowned, then saw she wasn’t joking. A couple of women in identical smart gray toga suits were heading for her capsule, followed by a regrav sled. “You have human staff?”

“Of course.”

“So Nigel Sheldon must have had them.”

“Hmm, you are quite quick, aren’t you?”

Clemance laughed and pulled harder. “Come on! I chose this one for you.”

They were right up against the scintillating surface. Araminta had not realized how big the ovoid was. It had to reach ten stories above her, though the curvature made it hard to tell. There were no discernible features, certainly no door. The entire base was surrounded by a broad marble path, as if it were resting on a plinth. A couple of thin gold lines had materialized underfoot, which Clemance had followed. She slipped through the torrent of multicolored light. Araminta followed. It was similar to walking through a pressure field or a spore shower. A slight tingle on the skin, a bright flash against the eye, and she was in a bubble chamber with transparent furniture delineated by glowing emerald lines like curving laser beams. Closets and drawers were all empty; chairs and couches contained a more diffuse glow inside their cushions, looking like faulty portal projections. The floor and cupola walls were a duller version of the external scintillations. Only the cream-and-gold sheets on the bed were what she thought of as tangible.

“The house smartnet is offering an operations program,” her u-shadow told her.

“Accept it.” Her exovision showed her the file opening into a storage lacuna.

Clemance already was sitting on the edge of the bed, bouncing up and down. “Like it?”

“The house’s main entrance opens into a guest bedroom?”

“Only when you need it to,” the girl said sprightly. “Tell your control program you want to see out.”

Araminta did, and the walls on one side lost their luster to show the gardens outside and her capsule with the regrav sled loading cases.

“Now, if you need the bathroom …” Clemance said. The whole room started to slide upward, following the curvature of the external wall. There must have been excellent gravity compensators hidden somewhere below the floor, because Araminta did not feel any movement. Then they were sliding horizontally into the center of the ovoid. Other bubble rooms flowed past them.

Araminta imagined this was the perspective corpuscles had as they raced through a vein. She smiled in delight. “How brilliant; the whole thing is protean.”

Her bedroom touched a bathroom, and the wall rolled apart to give her access. The design beyond the new door was more conventional, with a huge pool-bath, showers, and dryer chambers. It was bigger than the living rooms back in the apartments she was developing.

“You want to see someone, or go to the dining room for dinner, or just change the view, tell the house,” Marakata said.

“I will,” Araminta said positively.

A door opened opposite the bathroom, and Marakata stepped through. Araminta caught a glimpse of an all-white chamber with a long desk and gym apparatus. “I’ll see you later,” Marakata said, and the door swept shut behind her.

“Was that a threat?” Araminta muttered.

“Oh, ignore her,” Clemance said. “She’s always shy around new people. She’s a lot more fun in bed, honest.”

“I’m sure.” Araminta turned around, giving the room a more thorough inspection. The drawers began to fill up with her clothes. The process was like watching water bubble up into a glass. “Take me to Likan,” she told her u-shadow.

The room closed the door into the bathroom. Curving walls slipped past horizontally, then curved to vertical. “And opaque the walls.” Gravity might be perfectly stable, but the sight was strangely disorienting.

Likan’s room was huge. Araminta suspected that it didn’t move often because everything else in the house would be displaced. It was circular, with a polished oak floor that appeared to be a single giant segment. It had been vat-grown; she had read a file on the process in one of her design courses. The walls were pale pink and blue with a translucent eggshell texture. They slipped into transparency along a third of the length, providing a panorama across the lake.

Likan was walking toward her, dressed in a simple mauve sweatshirt and long green shorts. Small colored symbols were shrinking around him and then vanishing. The walls had to be portals, she thought, which gave them a vast projection capacity. This was probably his office. He smiled warmly, paused in front of her, and gave her a kiss, the kind of kiss that told her what he was expecting from her later.

“Great house,” she said.

“I knew you’d like it. The concept is an old one, but we’ve just gotten the manufacturing process down to an affordable level. Not easy without Higher replicators.”

“I’d like to have the Colwyn City franchise.”

He responded with a warm, admiring smile. “See, most developers would have made a crack about me putting them out of business. But you see how to adapt and move onward. That’s what makes you stand out.”

“Thank you.”

Clemance scampered over to a new door. “Catch you later.”

Likan waved dismissively as he led Araminta over to the transparent wall. “Drink? Food?” he asked.

“I’m good for a few hours.”

“Good. The Prime Minister and two cabinet ministers are coming for dinner.”

“Are you trying to impress me?”

“They were coming anyway. But it gives you an idea of the life I lead. To get this big you have to delve into politics.”

“Colwyn City Hall can be a beast about issuing permits.”

“Take the development officer for dinner. Loan your local councillor a high-end capsule. They’re all in it for what they can get. Wouldn’t be feeding from the public trough otherwise.”

“Unless they’re in it to clean up the corruption.”

“Yeah. Those ones are a problem. Fortunately, they don’t tend to last long.”

“You’re a cynic.”

“Pragmatist, if you don’t mind. I’m also a lot more experienced than you in every field. So trust me when I say politicians all have their weaknesses.”

“What’s yours?” she teased.

“One, I’m an easy lay. But you already know that. Two: risk. Risk is my weakness. The sensation when a risk pays off is like nothing else. I always take the risk. I enjoy the reward too much not to.”

“So what risk are you taking right now?”

“You’re smart; you’ve researched me. The finance files, at least. Tell me.”

“I accessed some background on my way over. Opinion is you’re dangerously overextended.”

“And those loans have grown significantly in the last couple of years. So why do you think that is?”

“You’re going to wipe out property companies with houses like this one? Flood the market.”

He grinned. “Small scale. I think big. Besides, it’ll take a decade for something like this to become fashionable and then generally accepted. Think. What’s the most pressing problem Viotia has today?”

“Living Dream?”

“Kind of. Ellezelin is always looming over us. Rightly so. The Free Trade Zone is a massive market; it’s not going away, and it’s always growing. Anyone already operating in it has a huge financial and production capacity advantage over some poor little Viotia company. The worry is that when they eventually open a wormhole here, all our companies will lose out to cheap imports. Trade will be one-way.”

Her mind went back to Albany, to the sheer scale of the place. “You’re going to undercut them.”

“Albany is as automated as anyone can be without replicators. I’ve spent a decade investing in the most advanced cybernated systems we can have to drive production costs down. To do that, to push each unit cost as low as it can physically go, you have to have massive volume production. That’s what’s killing me at the moment. The factories are barely ticking over. But when that wormhole finally opens …”

“It’s not going to be the financial massacre they expect.”

“They import. I export. But the quantity of those exports will be ten times greater than they assume.”

“You’d need a distribution network.”

His smile was triumphant as he turned to face the lake. “Certainly would.”

“Wow,” she said, and meant it. Likan’s ambition was so great, hers wouldn’t even register on the same scale. “Why tell me? You can’t be trying to impress me into bed. You’ve already got that.”

“Although I have an egotistical opinion of my own ability, I can’t actually manage every aspect by myself, even with an augmented mentality. Too many details. For an expansion phase on this level, I need people I can trust in senior management positions, especially offworld.”

“That’s very flattering.”

“Yes and no. You’d be capable management, I think; you have the right kind of drive and mind-set. You don’t have the experience to be top rank, but that will come.”

She frowned. “Why me?”

“How much research did you really do? On Sheldon himself?”

“None,” she admitted. “Just what I picked up in school.”

“The old dynasties were just that: family enterprises. The surest way humans have ever come up with to retain loyalty and control. Nigel used his own flesh and blood.”

“Ah.” It was as if the room suddenly was on the move: downward.

“All the senior positions were held by his own children,” Likan said. “That’s also what I do.”

A memory abruptly rushed to the forefront of her mind. “Debbina?” she said before she could stop it.

Likan actually winced. “What did I ever do to you? No, okay, not my beloved little girl. But a lot of my other children are running sections of my company.”

“And how do I fit into this?”

“How do you think?”

“Spell it out for me.”

“You become one of my wives. You have my children. They take their place in the company.”

“You really know how to romance a girl.”

He flashed her a wry smile. “Come on, we’re grown-ups. Every marriage today is half business. We’ll have a great time in bed. I can afford any lifestyle you want. Your children will grow up being part of the most dynamic company in this section of the Commonwealth. They’ll never want for anything, and they’ll be presented with virtually unlimited challenges. I know you well enough to know that appeals. Who wants trust fund brats, right? And the same goes for you. Stick with me for ten, fifteen years, then you can either continue with a post in the company, or you cut loose with a huge chunk of money and enough insider knowledge to run circles around everyone else.”

“Ozzie’s mother! Are you serious?”

“Perfectly.”

“It’s very flattering, but isn’t it a bit sudden?”

“You think Sheldon hesitated when he saw something he wanted? No way. He went out and got it. And this isn’t quite that sudden, now, is it? We had a connection back at my symposium; you’re not going to deny that, are you?”

“No,” she admitted.

“So. There’s physical attraction, which just leaves your abilities. I did some research.”

“Your fifth assistant’s coffee boy did some research.”

“Indeed,” he acknowledged wryly. “You’re the original kid from nowhere. Rejects the cozy family business route. Looking to get out. Failed marriage. Now on the bounce-back curve. You’re hungry. And capable. With the experience my organization can provide, you’ll flourish.” He sidled up close and put his arm around her, kissing her again, more gently this time. “I don’t want an answer this instant. This is why you’re here. Experience everything you can and you want, then take your time and decide.”

Araminta did not wear her own clothes to dinner. That was the first thing she learned about what membership in the harem would be like. A stylist called Helenna was waiting in her bedroom when it collected her from Likan’s airy office. She was a jovial woman, close to rejuvenation, whose age meant she had piled on a lot of weight in recent years. Genuinely friendly, she was keen to confide household gossip, most of which made no sense to Araminta, although there was a lot of it. She had been with Likan for fifty years. “So I know it all, honey, seen even more. I don’t judge anyone, and nothing you do here is going to surprise me. You want anything special for tonight, you just ask me for it.” Araminta was not sure what counted as special. It was tempting to ask what other girls had requested. One thing Helenna was sure of was that “Likan likes his women elegant. So we’ve got to get you spruced up, ready to stand your own ground against the others.”

That took hours. Her bedroom bounded all over the ovoid house to link up with various specialist rooms, the sauna to start with, to clear her pores. There was a massage by a man called Nifran, who was as brutal as he was skillful; afterward she sort of poured herself off the table with loose floppy limbs. Then there was the fitting room—A house that has a fitting room?—where she was measured for her evening dress.

She spiraled dawn to the salon, where Helenna finally was exposed as a sorceress. Layers of cosmetic membrane were applied, yet when Araminta looked in the mirror there was no sign of them. Instead, her nineteen-year-old self looked back at her. It was a nineteen that she’d never known but always wanted, with sharp cheekbones, absolutely no excess flesh, soft long eyelashes, perfectly clear skin, and eyes that sparkled. Another hour saw her hair “repaired,” as Helenna disapprovingly termed the first procedure. Then it was extended, thickened, softened, waved, and styled.

Clemance had the chair next to her as it was being done, and another member of the harem, Alsena, took the other side. They chatted comfortably enough, providing an insight into the kind of sisterhood the women had. She was given a rundown of Likan’s genealogy with emphasis on the wayward children, a saga for which she needed to open a new file in a storage lacuna so that she could keep track of it.

For all their friendliness, the girls were not quite engaged with the real world. That was a pretty bitchy observation but one that Araminta felt applied. If Likan wanted women like her, what was he doing with the others? They certainly did not aspire to run sections of his corporate empire.

“He likes variety,” Helenna told her as the salon rendezvoused with the fitting room.

The classic little black dress had never fallen out of style, and looking at the one the fitting room’s apprentice sorceresses had conjured up for her, Araminta could see why. She felt randy just slipping into it, so Ozzie alone knew what effect it would have on any male who crossed her path. It clung disgracefully yet allowed her breasts complete freedom of movement. She blushed the first time she walked in it. Somehow the high hem and silk-gloss microfabric sprayed on her legs made her calves and thighs slim down to that same nineteen-year-old ideal Helenna’s spell had blessed her face with for the night.

Predinner cocktails were served to the household and Likan’s guests in the music room, which had claimed his office’s lake view. Araminta walked in with her head held high, knowing how great she looked. Likan’s double take, the smiles from the harem, and Clemance’s little bounce as she clapped her hands excitedly were simply the accolades she was due. It all helped buoy her confidence close to levels of arrogance. When Likan introduced her to the Prime Minister and her husband, she was perfectly civil and treated them as if they were almost her equals.

All the while, as she made small talk and sampled weird-tasting canapés, she kept wondering how Bovey would behave if he were there. He enjoyed his culture and could be as snobbish about food and wine as anyone. But the company she mingled with—the world’s powerful and wealthy and a few merely famous—she just couldn’t get away from the idea of how he would turn his nose up at them.

Yet here I am, holding my own.

The evening did have a downside. The Prime Minister’s husband, whom she was seated next to at the dinner table, was fantastically boring. Thankfully, Eridal, one of Likan’s older sons, sat on her other side. As smart and charming as Likan, he ran a finance house in Ludor, but he lacked that bullish determination that drove his father. She dutifully tried to not spend the whole evening chatting to him.

When it was all over, after the dining hall had descended to ground level so the guests could walk to their capsules, there was just Likan and eight of his harem left. The door contracted, and the walls resumed their sparkle; everyone gave a spontaneous laugh of release that Araminta joined in wholeheartedly.

Likan gave her a congratulatory kiss. “Damnit, I’d forgotten how awful that dickhead was,” he told her. “I wanted to smack him one, and he wasn’t even talking to me. Thanks for putting up with him.”

Doors were opening into various bedrooms around the dining hall. The harem was vanishing through them. Of all the women at the dinner, they were undeniably the most beautiful, most of them astonishingly so. Despite all Helenna’s efforts, Araminta could not help but feel like the poor relation in their presence.

“Go and get ready,” Likan told her. “We’ll be waiting.”

He turned and left through a door into a small darkened room. Araminta stared after him for a moment, then summoned her bedroom. That whole alpha male issuing orders thing just didn’t do it for her. For one, he didn’t have the charisma to pull it off, not with his dress sense and throwback physical appearance. On the other hand, to have accomplished so much was darkly compelling. She grinned at her own inner argument. What the hell; at least Clemance will be fun.

“Dress me the way he’ll enjoy,” she told the waiting Helenna. It was a process that turned out to be more elaborate than she had anticipated. For a start it involved Nifran again, who chided her about lack of proper exercise and how he could not relax her enough. What he did with her legs was virtually sex in itself.

Helenna applied some fabulously scented oil that acted in conjunction with Nifran’s pummeling to make her flesh glow.

“He’s not into sadism or anything, is he?” Araminta asked. The preparations were all very detailed. Her usual idea of getting ready for a hot night was to wear something a man could remove quickly.

“Not to worry, sweetie. He enjoys sex the way he enjoys his women: tasteful.”

Pondering that, Araminta allowed Helenna to dress her. The white negligee was mostly straps yet perversely managed to cover more of her body than the black dress had. She checked herself out in the mirror. So his idea of tasteful is a slut princess? How very male.

Her bedroom whisked her away to Likan’s boudoir—no other word for it; vast bed in the middle, naughty-shaped furniture, low rose-gold lighting. The harem was in attendance and, yes, dressed elegantly in silk and satin, with open gowns swirling, lounging on couches sipping champagne as they watched two of their number make love on the bed.

Araminta strolled in, trying not to appear too apprehensive. Likan greeted her, wearing a black robe. “Champagne?” he offered.

“Thank you.” She took a crystal flute from Marakata, who gave her a detailed appraisal. There was something alarmingly erotic about the way the aloof woman seemed able to look right through the negligee.

“You two should kiss,” Likan said.

Araminta pressed herself against the statuesque woman, enjoying the sensual touch. Marakata certainly knew how to kiss.

When they had finished, Araminta took a sip of the champagne as Likan took her hand and led her slowly over to the couch where Alsena was waiting. Araminta knelt down and began the kiss.

As she went on to kiss all the other women as he instructed, Araminta decided the experience was not so much tasteful as formulaic. Likan had ritualized his lovemaking. Finally she kissed him. After that she was taken over to the bed. There was a specific way of kneeling he wanted her to assume, very sex kittenish. One of the harem women helped arrange her hair decoratively over her shoulder.

Clemance removed Likan’s gown. Araminta stared at his huge erection.

“I have a gift for you.”

“Yes,” she said emphatically. “I see that.”

“A program.”

“Huh?”

“A mélange I’ve composed myself over several years. It allows you deeper access to your own mind, opening levels that verge on the subconscious in the way the old yogis achieved through meditation.”

“Right,” she said dubiously. Talk about killing the mood.

He smiled fondly and stroked her cheek. “I use it myself to focus. It helps clean your mind of extraneous thought. You can revert to the animal basics which form our core identity.” His face came close to hers. “There are no inhibitions to be had in such a state. Whatever you pursue is unashamedly pure.”

“No inhibitions?”

“Clarity is a helpful tool for business. But also for lovemaking. You can concentrate on the sensations of your body to the exclusion of anything else. It helps amplify even the smallest nerve signal.”

“You mean I can make a climax stronger?” It sounded like an electronic version of the sex aerosols she and Bovey used.

“Yes. There are also adapted biofeedback routines which can influence your physical self. Once you determine the origin of your body’s pleasure, you can repeat it.” His voice became softer, tempting. “As many times as you have the physical strength for.”

Her u-shadow told her he was offering the program. Suddenly, she was feeling very hot in the negligee. “Scan it for infiltrators and trojans,” she told her u-shadow as she held his level gaze.

“It’s clean.”

“Load and run.” Through her exovision she watched the program expand into one of her lacunae. It had many similarities with a learning program, and she allowed it to mushroom into her gray matter. Instinctive knowledge bubbled away in her mind.

“Don’t be afraid,” Likan said softly. “I’ll use it with you. It will make our first time spectacular.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Now that she considered it, clearing her mind was a simple process, following the rising sleep cycles yet never accepting them. Her breathing steadied, and she grew aware of the body’s rhythms, the flow of nervous energy, heart-beat. Peripheral thoughts fell away, allowing her to center herself in the boudoir, on the bed. Her awareness grew of the light touch of fabric against her skin. Tiny beads of perspiration clung to her. She heard the sound of bubbles fizzing in the crystal flutes, Likan’s breathing. She saw his arm move out, a finger beckon.

Marakata answered the summons, sliding sinuously over the mattress. Her fingers stroked Araminta’s skin. The sensations her nerves experienced flowed like a tidal wave into her brain. She gasped at the impact and pulled her attention to the sensations that were most pleasurable, wallowing in them.

Under Likan’s direction, Marakata plucked the negligee straps off Araminta’s shoulders. Air flowed over her exposed breasts, followed by warm fingers. Araminta shuddered fiercely at the touch, smiling as she centered her mind on the feeling. Blood was loud and hot as it rushed into her nipples, swelling the buds.

“There,” she told the owner of the fingers.

The caress was repeated, the ecstasy replicated. Then many hands were gliding over her. Warm eager mouths kissed. She wailed with helpless delight at the symphony of sensation the harem kindled. The negligee was removed completely. Instinctively she arched her back. Likan’s cock slid inside her. The experience was close to unbearable; it was all there was. Still her mind remained steadfast on the torrent of physical joy. Araminta promised herself that no matter what, she would not faint away as she had with Bovey. This time there were no chemicals fogging her mind; this time she was free to experience its incredible conclusion. She laughed and wept simultaneously as Likan started to move in a powerful rhythm. Then the harem recommenced its virtuoso performance.

The Skylord glided across the outer atmosphere of the solid planet, its vacuum wings long since retracted. Thick turbulent streams of the ionosphere swept across its forward section, creating lengthy vibrations across its giant bulk. Energy stirred in specific patterns within it, thoughts mingling with its body’s elemental power, manipulating the fabric of the universe outside. Its speed began to slow as it imposed its wishes on reality. Gently it started to lower itself into the atmosphere. Far below, the minds of the sentient entities sang out in welcome.

“Now!” Cleric Conservator Ethan commanded the obedient waiting minds of the dream masters.

Their thoughts flared out into the gaiafield in a single stream, pushing at the dream fabric, seeking entry. Tendrils of raw will prodded and poked at the stubbornly resistant image emanating from the Second Dreamer. As the Skylord began to focus its attention on the ancient coastal city below, they felt its perception turn outward, toward them. It felt them! It knew they were there!

“My lord,” Ethan called with profound respect. “We need your help.”

The Skylord’s descent halted. Those dreaming the Skylord felt the mass of the planet press against the magnificent creature’s perception. In that way they knew the winds that blew across the Iguru plain, experienced the waves rolling lazily over the Lyot Sea toward the coast. And there, right underneath them, so tantalizingly close, the physical form of Makkathran’s buildings brushed against their consciousness, each one exactly as it was in Inigo’s dreams.

Adoration and gratitude swelled out into the gaiafield, buoying Ethan’s thoughts. “We seek to reach you. Show us the way to you, my lord. Receive us.”

The dream shattered into a glorious pinnacle of agony. The Skylord’s magisterial thoughts were wrenched away by a terrible power.

“NO!” the Second Dreamer commanded amid the ruined bliss. “I am me.”

An infinite black surface swelled with malignant anger, sealing the gulf between the gaiafield and the Skylord.

Blinding pain seared deep into Ethan’s mind as the blackness snapped at him. He screamed, every muscle contorting to fling him out of his chair to fall into merciful unconsciousness.

Araminta woke with a gasp, shooting upright on the bed, heart racing and breath coming in shudders. She instinctively applied the program’s knowledge again, settling her racing mind and quelling her body’s distress. It worked perfectly.

What the fuck is it with that dream?

It had been quite pleasant to start with, drifting gently above a strange planet, warm sun on her back, mysterious continents rolling by underneath. Then something happened, a smothering sensation that triggered an adrenaline rush, and she had to thrash about, trying to wake herself, push herself clear from that oppressive constriction. It was as if someone were trying to steal her soul. She yelled defiance at the dark force and finally managed to wake up.

She was kicking and writhing as she shouted. Surely? Yet actually all she seemed to have done was shuffle around a bit and sit up.

She looked about in confusion. Likan’s boudoir still was illuminated by the same warm light. Nobody else was awake. Clemance was curled up beside her, one arm draped over her legs. The girl was stirring, blinking in confusion as Araminta moved. Araminta stroked her tangled hair and cheek, soothing her as she would a troubled child. A drowsy Clemance smiled worshipfully and then closed her eyes again.

Araminta blew out an exasperated breath and slowly sank back down. Despite the supple mattress, her body was stressed tight, which no doubt would annoy Nifran. As she lay there rigid, she could hear two of the harem women whimpering softly in their sleep. So she wasn’t the only one suffering a bad dream. She wondered if she should creep across the room to wake them. But eventually they subsided into a deeper sleep. Yet she still could not relax and drop off. There was something scrabbling about in her subconscious that was unsettling her, an elusive memory she was trying to connect. Not the dream, something before that.

Once again the program came to her aid. She cleared her mind and concentrated on her memories of the orgy. Physically, it had been hugely satisfying, no denying that. And the harem had delighted in teaching her a whole range of sensual acts that they and Likan enjoyed. But it was that ritual thing again; true passion had been missing, and with it the heat that came from abandoning herself the way she did with Bovey. This had been a little too much like mechanics, with all of them busy doing as Likan instructed.

Araminta sat up on the bed again, her skin cooling with shock. The memory of Likan and Marakata was perfectly clear in her mind, all thanks to his wonderful program. And how’s that for irony. She thought it through again, then reviewed some other suspicious recollections before finally dropping her head into her hands and groaning in dismay. “Oh, shit.”

True to her word, Helenna did not judge. She made no comment as the house emptied the drawers and closets, the clothes slithering away through the interstices between the rooms to fill her cases in the butler’s lodge. Araminta almost wanted to ask how many others she had seen leave abruptly after a night with Likan. But that would have been unfair to both of them.

Her bedroom wound through the ovoid house and opened a door onto the path that ran around the outside of the building. Dawn light was shining a murky gray off the placid lake. Two of the household’s smartly suited staff were loading her cases back into her carry capsule.

“It’s a shame, sweetie,” Helenna said. “I had you down as one who’d fit in easily here.”

“Me, too,” Araminta said. She gave the maid a quick hug. “Thanks for everything.”

“Hey, it was nice meeting you.”

Araminta turned and walked out of the bedroom. The door unrolled behind her.

“Wait!” Clemance called out. “You can’t leave!” She was hurrying out of a door ten meters away, trying to pull on a translucent wrap.

Likan walked behind her, considerably more composed in a thick dark purple robe. “Not even going to say goodbye?” he asked. There was a nasty frown on his puggish face.

“The house’s net is active. You knew I was leaving. If you wanted to say anything before I left, you could,” Araminta told him. “And here you are.”

“Yes, here I am. I would like to know why you’re running out. I think I’m entitled after the offer I made you. I know you enjoyed yourself last night. So what is this?”

Araminta glanced at the distraught girl who was hovering between them, uncertain who to go to. “Are you sure?”

Likan took a step forward and put his arm around Clemance’s shoulder, helping to pull her wrap on. “I don’t keep anything from my wives.”

“Even that they’re psychoneural profiled?”

His face remained impassive. “It was helpful to begin with.”

“Helpful?” she cried. “You had them bred to be your slaves. Profiling like that is illegal; it always has been. It’s a vile, inhuman thing to do. They don’t have a choice. They don’t have free will. It’s obscene! Why, for Ozzie’s sake? You don’t need to force people into your bed. I probably would have joined you, and I know there are thousands of others who’d love the chance. Why did you do it?”

Likan glanced down at Clemance with an almost paternal expression. “They were the first,” he said simply.

“First?”

“Of my harem. I had to start it somewhere. It was the bootstrap principle.”

“What are you talking about?”

“To start with, when you have nothing, you begin by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I needed to be him, to be Nigel Sheldon. He had a harem; therefore, I had one. You don’t understand what that man was. He ruled hundreds of worlds, billions of people. I wasn’t joking when I called him an emperor. He was the greatest human who ever lived. I need to know how to think like he did.” He almost ground the words out.

“So you created slaves to achieve that?”

“They’re not slaves. All of us are predisposed to various personality traits. The way they combine—that’s what makes us individuals. I just amplified a few of the behavioral attributes in the girls.”

“Yeah, submissiveness! I watched them last night, Likan. They obeyed you like they were bots.”

“The relationship is a lot more complex than that.”

“That’s what it boils down to. Why didn’t you profile yourself to think like Sheldon? If you have to wreck somebody, why not yourself?”

“I have incorporated his known neural characteristics into my DNA. But a neural structure is only a vessel for personality. You need the environment as well, as complete as you can make it.”

“Oh, for Ozzie’s sake! You have deliberately, maliciously bred slaves. And you think that’s an acceptable way to achieve what you are. That makes me sick. I don’t want any part of you or your perverted family. You won’t even let them go! Why don’t you remove their profiling when they go for rejuvenation treatment?”

“I created them because of my belief—wrongly, in your opinion. Now you think they should be altered because of your belief? Does that strike you as slightly ironic? There’s an old saying that two wrongs don’t make a right. I take responsibility for my wives, especially the profiled ones—just as Sheldon would have done.”

Araminta glowered at him, then switched her attention to Clemance, softening her expression to plead. “Come with me. Come away from here. It’s reversible. I can show you what it’s like to be free, to be truly human. I know you don’t believe me, but just please try. Try, Clemance.”

“You’re such a fool,” the girl said. She pressed harder into Likan. “I’m not profiled. I like this. I like being in the harem. I like the money. I like the life. I like that my children will rule whole planets. Without Likan, what will yours ever be?”

“Themselves,” Araminta said weakly.

Clemance gave her a genuinely pitying look. “That’s not good enough for me.”

Araminta raised an uncertain hand. “Is she …?”

“There were only ever three,” Likan said. “Clemance is not one of them. Would you like to guess again?”

Araminta shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Marakata. Marakata is one, I know. Perhaps if I just … 

“Goodbye,” Likan said.

Araminta climbed into the carry capsule and told it to take her home.

Oscar had never thought he would return to the very place where he had died. Of course, he had not expected to see Paula Myo again, either.

To make matters worse, enterprising Far Away natives had turned his last desperate hyperglide flight into a tourist attraction. Worse still, it was a failing attraction.

Still, at least Oscar had gotten to name the brand-new starship ANA had delivered to Orakum for him, and without much thought went and called it the Elvin’s Payback. There was a large briefing file sitting in its smartcore, which he zipped through, and then sent a few queries to Paula, who by then was back in her own starship and en route to somewhere. She wouldn’t say where.

After he had finished the file, one thing became very clear to him: Paula had overestimated his abilities severely. There were a lot of very powerful, very determined groups searching for the Second Dreamer. Now, that might not have fazed Paula, but … “I’m only a pilot,” he repeated to her when she called him on a secure TD channel and asked him why he was flying to Far Away. She hadn’t said she could track Elvin’s Payback, but somehow he wasn’t surprised.

“I’m going to need help. And as you trust me, so I trust someone else.” He got an evil little buzz out of not telling her who, though he suspected she would know; it was hardly hyperspace science.

He landed at the Armstrong City starport, a huge field to the northeast of the city with four big terminal buildings handling passenger flights and a grid of warehouses where freighters came and went. He picked out a parking pad near the fence, away from any real activity. As the starship descended, he swept its visual sensors across the ancient city that spread back from the shore of the North Sea. Inevitably, there was a dense congregation of tall towers and pyramids above the coast; while broad estates of big houses swamped the land behind. It was all a lot more chaotic than the layout of most Commonwealth cities, which he rather enjoyed. He was looking for a glimpse of Highway One, the historic road where his friends had chased the Starflyer to its doom. All that remained was a long, fat urban strip following the old route as it struck out for miles across the Great Iril Steppes, as if city buildings were seeking to escape from their historical anchor at the center. As in every Commonwealth world, Far Away’s ground traffic was a shrinking minority. The sky above the city swarmed with regrav capsules.

Oscar floated down out of the airlock underneath Elvin’s Payback and stood once more on the ground of Far Away. For some ridiculous reason he was trembling. He took a long moment, breathing in the air, then moved away from the starship. His feet pushed gently on the short grass, sending his body gliding in a short arc in the low gravity. He had forgotten how enjoyable that part of this world was; those soar-hop steps were a freedom like having teenage hormones again.

Once he’d cleared the starship, he stopped and turned a full circle. There was the city skyline on one side, some distant mountains, nothing he recognized apart from the glorious sapphire sky. Thankfully, that remained the same as the planet’s biosphere slowly regenerated with the new plants and creatures humans had brought to this world.

Warm sea air gusted constantly from the passage of starships using the terminals, ruffling his hair. It was all very different from Orakum’s main starport, which he had flown from, supporting barely fifty flights a day. But then, Far Away was the self-proclaimed capital of the External worlds, the planet that had refused political and economic integration with the Greater Commonwealth. Even today, it was technically only an affiliate member. Its staunch independence had inspired a whole generation of newly settled worlds after the Starflyer War. The political will, coupled with the end of CST’s transport monopoly that the starships had brought, allowed the first cultural division to open within Commonwealth society as a whole. As the Sheldon Dynasty had made biononics available, starting Higher culture, Far Away’s Barsoomians had introduced genetic improvements that took the human body far beyond its natural meridian, developing into the Advancer movement. After that, Far Away, with its fierce libertarianist tradition, declared itself the ideological counter-weight to Earth and ANA. The Commonwealth’s Senators might regard the notion with their ancient wise disdain, but Far Away’s citizens believed in their own destiny.

Oscar smiled at the busy city as he experienced the emotional tide of the local gaiafield. Even that had a stridency that celebrated the stubbornness of the inhabitants. His u-shadow opened a channel to the planetary cybersphere and called a onetime address code he had been given eighty-six years earlier, on the day he had emerged from the re-life clinic. To his surprise, it was answered immediately.

“Yes?”

“I need to see you,” Oscar said. “I have a problem, and I need help sorting it out.”

“Who the fuck are you, and how did you steal this code?”

“I am Oscar Monroe, and this code was given to me. Some time ago.”

There was a long pause, though the channel remained open.

“If you are an impostor, you have one chance to walk away, and that chance is now.”

“I know who I am,” Oscar said.

“We’ll know if you are.”

“Good.”

“Very well. Be at the Kime Sanctuary on top of Mount Herculaneum in one hour. One of us will meet you.”

The channel went dead. Oscar grinned. He shouldn’t be all fired up by this, he really shouldn’t.

His u-shadow contacted a local hire company, and he rented a high-performance ingrav capsule. Given who he was going to meet, he did not want to risk technology leakage by arriving in an ultradrive ship.

The capsule bounced him over to Mount Herculaneum in a semiballistic lob that took twenty-eight minutes. The last time he’d seen the colossal volcano had been the day he had died by crashing into its lower slopes. This time his arrival was a lot more comfortable. The capsule shot out of the upper atmosphere and followed the planet’s curvature southwest. He watched through the sensors as the Grand Triad rose up out of the horizon. They were still the biggest mountains to be found on an H-congruous world. On a planet with standard gravity, they would have collapsed under their own weight, but here they had kept on growing as the magma pushed farther and farther upward. Mount Herculaneum, the biggest, stood thirty-two kilometers high, its plateau summit rising high above Far Away’s troposphere. Northward, Mount Zeus topped out at seventeen kilometers. South of Herculaneum, Mount Titan reached up twenty-three kilometers; it was the only one of the Triad to remain active.

Oscar’s capsule rode a tight curve above the sealike grasslands of the Aldrin Plains before it began to sink again. The view was magnificent, with the vast cone of Herculaneum spread out below him. Its plateau of grubby brown regolith was broken by twin calderas. Around that, naked rock dropped down to the glacier ring far below before the lower slopes finally were smothered in pine forests and low meadowland. Luckily for him, Titan was semiactive today. He looked down almost vertically into its glowing red crater, watching the slow-motion ripples spreading out across the huge lake of lava. Radiant white boulders spit upward out of the inferno to traverse lazy arcs through the vacuum, spitting orange sparks. Some of them were flung far enough to clear the crater wall and begin a long fall to oblivion.

His sight inevitably was drawn to the long funnel canyon between Zeus and Titan that led to the base of Herculaneum. Stakeout Canyon was where the storm winds coming off the Hondu Ocean were funneled into a rampaging blast of air. The insane thrill seekers of the early Commonwealth used to fly their hypergliders on winds so strong that they’d push them out of the atmosphere and over Herculaneum. He’d never gotten to attempt that last part, crashing his hyperglider into Anna so that Wilson might stand a chance to reach the summit.

Even though he had braced himself for an emotional shock wave at seeing the site of his death, he felt nothing more than mild curiosity. That must mean I’m perfectly adjusted to this new life. Right?

As he looked along the long rocky cleft in the ground, his exovision pulled up meteorological data and a file telling him that the winds now were never as strong as they had been a thousand years ago. Terraforming had calmed Far Away’s atmosphere. Hypergliding was just a legend now.

The capsule took him down to a big dome situated right on the eastern edge of Mount Herculaneum’s plateau, where the cliffs of Aphrodite’s Seat began their sheer eight-kilometer fall. There was a pressure field over the entrance to the dome’s landing chamber, a big metal cave with enough room for twenty passenger capsules. It had only two resting inside, with another five ordinary capsules parked nearby.

Oscar stepped through the airlock pressure curtains into the dome’s main arena and paid his 20 FA$ entrance fee from a credit coin Paula had given him. There were three low buildings inside, lined up behind Aphrodite’s Seat. He went over to the first, which the dome’s net labeled: “Crash Site.” A whole bunch of tourists were just exiting from it, heading for the café next door, chatting excitedly. They never registered him, which he found amusing. It wasn’t as if his face was any different now.

It was dark inside, with one wall open to the side of the dome above the cliffs. A narrow winding walkway was suspended three meters over the ground, with a pressure field below it, maintaining a vacuum over the actual regolith. There was also a stabilizer field generator running to preserve the wreckage of the hyperglider. The once-elegant fuselage was crunched into the side of a rock outcrop, with the plyplastic wings bent and snapped. Oscar remembered how elegant those wings had been fully extended, and sighed.

He walked slowly along the walkway until he was directly above the antique. His heart had slowed as he imagined his friend terrified and frantic as the craft skidded along the dusty plateau, slipping and twisting, completely out of control. The fate of an entire species depended on the outcome as the cliffs rushed toward him. Oscar frowned as he looked down. The hyperglider was actually upside down, which meant there had been an almighty flip at one point. He looked along the ground to the rim of Aphrodite’s Seat, where someone in an ancient pressure suit was sitting.

It was a solido projection, Oscar realized as he came to the end of the walkway: Wilson Kime, his head visible in a not terribly authentic bubble helmet. The pressure suit rips had been repaired with some kind of epoxy, leaking blood into the regolith. The solido Wilson stared out over the Dessault mountain range to the east, where the snowcapped peaks diminished into the bright haze of the curving horizon. This was exactly what the real Wilson had seen, what so many people had died to give him—those which history knew and still more unknown. Twelve hundred years ago this glorious panorama had provided the data to steer a giant storm into the Starflyer’s ship, slaying the beast and liberating the Commonwealth. Today, here, on that same spot, he could sit in the Savior View café next door and buy doughnuts named after him.

“Without you, we wouldn’t be here.”

Oscar started. There was a man standing behind him on the walkway, wearing a very dark toga suit.

Great secret agent I make; anyone can creep up on me.

“Excuse me?” Oscar said.

The man smiled. He was very handsome, with a square jaw, a dimpled chin, and a flattish nose. Brown eyes were surrounded by laughter lines. When he opened his wide mouth, startlingly white teeth smiled out. “I nearly got blown away by that burst of melancholy disappointment you let loose into the gaiafield,” he said. “It’s understandable.” He waved a hand around the darkened chamber. “This travesty is all that exists to celebrate what you and Wilson achieved. But I promise you, we know and appreciate what you did. It is taught to all of our children.”

“We?”

The man bowed his head formally. “The Knights Guardian. Welcome back to Far Away, Oscar Monroe. How can we help you?”

His name was Tomansio, he said as they walked back to Oscar’s capsule. “In full, Tomansio McFoster Stewart. It was my father who provided you with our code eighty-six years ago.”

“I barely saw him. The government had a tight little cordon around my room. They were anxious that I should have my privacy. Yet he just walked right in. And out again, too.”

“We thought you’d forgotten us,” Tomansio said. “Or worse.”

“I’m not what I used to be,” Oscar said. “At least, that’s what I thought.”

“And yet here you are. It’s an interesting time to come and seek us out again for both the Greater Commonwealth and the galaxy at large. Not the kind of time a man chooses to indulge in nostalgia.”

“No. This has nothing to do with nostalgia.”

They sat themselves in the capsule. “Do you mind if I navigate?” Tomansio asked. “You would find it difficult to reach our lands unaided.”

“Of course,” Oscar said. His curiosity rose as they slid out of the dome’s landing chamber. “Where are your lands?”

“Where they’ve always been: from the northeast corner of the Dessault Mountains all the way to the Oak Sea.” The capsule began to accelerate, streaking northward over the mountains as it gained altitude. For the first time, Oscar saw the high desert around which the lofty peaks huddled protectively.

“And I couldn’t find you? That peak is Mount StOmer, isn’t it? The Marie Celeste crashed close by.”

“Knowing and reaching are two separate things.”

“I didn’t know you all turned Buddhist and spoke in fortune cookies.”

Tomansio tilted his head to one side with avian precision. His attractive smile was poised. “Ah, I see. I’m not being deliberately enigmatic, though perhaps I am guilty of overdramatizing. But you are very precious to us, Oscar. I’m hoping to impress you.”

Just for a moment, Oscar felt as if he had lived through every one of those eleven hundred years. He had to history-mine to understand me. Jesus fuck. He had been far too sheltered with his life partners. Small wonder he always felt as if the house put up a cozy barrier between his little family and the outside world.

“We protect our lands with a T-sphere,” Tomansio said.

“Really? I thought only Earth had one.”

“We don’t advertise. It’s actually quite an elegant defense on many levels, although it does require a colossal amount of energy to maintain. If you walk or drive or fly toward us, as you approach our border, you’re simply teleported to the other side. You can’t knock on a door which you can never face. You have to be invited in.”

“Cool.”

The lands they fell toward seemed particularly lush, thick greenery split by meandering rivers, forest and meadowland squabbling to dominate valleys and rolling hills. Away to the east there was a glimpse of the Oak Sea. They reentered the atmosphere. Strands of cloud rushed up past the capsule’s transparent hull, thickening fast. Then they were through, and a forest canopy unfolded below them: leaves of every color, trees of immense size. Far Away had always celebrated its unique genetic diversity. Starting with a nearly sterile landscape, the terraforming teams had brought the seeds of a hundred planets with them to create the ultimate contrasting florascape.

“Here we go,” Tomansio said as their altitude approached three miles.

The view outside suddenly switched. Oscar jumped in his seat. They were floating a hundred yards above the ground at the head of a long valley. Blue-green grass rippled away for miles on every side, lapping against woodlands that spilled out of the dips in the valley walls. There were houses all around them, built from wood and stone, blending nicely with the environment, like a medieval village back on Earth but on a much grander scale.

“You live here?” Oscar asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m envious.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

The capsule touched down outside one of the stone houses, a long building with age-blackened wood beams protruding from beneath a slate roof. A balcony ran along one side. Big windows were open, showing a glimpse of a very modern interior. The grass swept right up to the walls, emphasizing the impression of natural harmony.

Oscar stepped out wearily. The gaiafield was resonating with a warm subtle joy, wrapping him in a daydream of a child being swept up in its mother’s arms, the comfort and security of being home.

It was a welcome emanating from the people hurrying across the land to greet him. They came out of nearby houses or simply teleported in, popping into existence to enlarge the crowd. Then the horses appeared, a whole cavalry squad riding up over a nearby ridge dressed in dark uniforms that trailed gold and scarlet heraldic streamers behind their shoulders. The horses were clad in metal mesh, with hems of gold tassels brushing the tips of the grass. He stared at the giant fearsome beasts with their metal-clad horns and sharp tusks, memories stirring.

“I’ve seen one of those before,” he exclaimed excitedly. “On our drive to the mountains. A Charlemagne. Somebody guided us.”

“Yes,” Tomansio said. “We still train to fight on them, but we’ve never actually ridden them into battle since the planet’s revenge. It’s all ceremonial now, part of our skill set. The riders are here to honor your arrival, as do the king eagles.” He gestured upward.

Oscar just managed not to flinch; he did gasp, though. A flock of giant avian creatures swirled overhead. Resembling the petrosaurs of Earth’s dinosaur era, they had been created by the Barsoomians as part of their quest for genetic expansion. Each one had a rider dressed in long flowing robes that fluttered behind him. They waved as they passed overhead, turning and twisting with amazing finesse. Oscar grinned unashamedly at their acrobatic antics. Surely those riders had to be strapped on?

Tomansio cleared his throat discreetly. “Perhaps a few words,” he whispered into Oscar’s ear.

Oscar had been so entranced by the king eagles, he hadn’t noticed how many people were gathered in front of him. He gazed across them, slightly unnerved by their appearance. It was as if some kind of athletic squad had turned out to see him. Without fail they were tall; the men were handsome, the women beautiful, and all of them hugely fit. Even the smiling, eager children were healthy specimens. He couldn’t help thinking of H. G. Wells’s particular vision of the future from The Time Machine. Here in their protected edenistic garden, the Knights Guardians were like the Eloi, but with muscles and attitude. Heaven help the Morlock who wandered into this valley.

Oscar drew a breath, really trying not to think about the media briefings he had had to give while he was in the navy. “I haven’t been to Far Away for a very long time. Too long, actually. You have made it a thrilling world, a world respected across the Commonwealth. For that I thank you, as I do for this welcome.”

The applause was heartfelt enough. Oscar bobbed his head, smiling at the earnest faces. He was hugely relieved when Tomansio ushered him into the house.

The reception room was clad in what looked like translucent white fabric that emitted a mild glow. There were strange deep folds in the walls that hinted at parallel compartments. Aspects of the T-sphere, Oscar guessed. The furniture was solid enough, as was the little shrine that rested on a broad ancient wood table at the far end. Oscar slowed to a halt as he stared at the black-shrouded holographic portrait with its single candle burning underneath. The Cat’s prim face returned her best enigmatic smile.

“For every yin, a yang,” Oscar murmured grimly. He should have known. The valley had been too idyllic.

Tomansio came up to stand beside him. “You knew her, didn’t you? You actually spoke to her as you traveled to Far Away.”

“We spent a day together on a Carbon Goose flying across Half Way. I wouldn’t say I knew her well.”

“How I envy you that day. Did she frighten you?”

“I was wary of her. We all were. Perhaps you should be.”

“I would not be frightened. I would be honored.”

“She is evil.”

“Of course she is. But she is also noble. She showed us the way; she gave the Guardians of Selfhood purpose once more. She was the one who brought us together with the Barsoomians. After the Starflyer was destroyed, after you helped kill it, Oscar, there was nothing left for our ancestors. Bradley Johansson originally built us out of the ruin of enslavement. He forged us into warrior tribes to fight the greatest battle humans had ever known, the battle to save our entire species. And when it was over, he was dead, and we were lost, doomed to wither away as a dwindling band of old soldiers without a cause. An anachronistic embarrassment as Far Away was ‘civilized’ by the Commonwealth.”

“Soldiers always have to hang up their weapons in the end.”

“You don’t understand. It was our ethos she rescued. She showed us that strength is a virtue, a blessing. It is our evolution and should not be denied the way the liberals of the Commonwealth do, treating it as if it were some ignominious part of us to be always denied. If we had not been strong, if Bradley had not remained steadfast, the Commonwealth would have died on the same day you did, Oscar. If the Barsoomians hadn’t maintained their clarity, today’s humans would be emaciated short-lived creatures.” He smiled at the portrait. “One of us had strength; the other, purpose. She saw them both and combined them into a single bold principle; she gave us a vision we can remain forever true to. There is no shame in strength, Oscar.”

“I know,” Oscar said reluctantly. “That’s why I’m here.”

“I had hoped that. You said you needed help.”

“I do.” He paused. “What if it goes against your ideology?”

Tomansio laughed. “We don’t have one, Oscar. That’s the point of the Knights Guardian movement. We follow one creed: strength. That is what we want to impart to humanity as it grows and diversifies. It is the most basic evolutionary tenet. Those sections of humanity that embrace it will survive; it’s as simple as that. We are nature as raw as it can get. The fact that we are perceived as nothing other than mercenaries is not our problem. When we are hired to perform a job, we do it thoroughly.”

“I need subtlety for this. At least to begin with.”

“We can do subtle, Oscar. Covert operations are one of our specialties. We embrace all forms of human endeavor apart from the blatantly wicked or stupid. For instance, we won’t perform a heist for you. The Knights Guardians take their oath of honor very seriously.”

Oscar almost started to ask about the Cat and what she used to do but decided against it. “I have to find someone and then extend them an offer of protection.”

“That sounds very worthy. Who is it?”

“The Second Dreamer.”

For the first time since they had met, Oscar witnessed Tomansio losing his reserve. “No shit?” The Knights Guardian started to laugh. “Twelve hundred years without you, and now you bring us this. Oscar, you were almost worth the wait. The Second Dreamer himself!” He suddenly sobered. “I won’t ask why, but thank you from the bottom of my simple heart for coming to us.”

“The why is actually very simple. There are too many people who wish to influence him. If he does choose to emerge from the shadows, he should be free to make his own choice.”

“To go to the Void or not, to possibly trigger the end of the galaxy in pursuit of our race’s fate—or not. What a grail to guard, Oscar. What a challenge.”

“I take it that’s a yes.”

“My team will be ready to leave in less than an hour.”

“Will you be leading them?”

“What do you think?”

“I was so sure!” Araminta exclaimed. “She was this mild scatty little thing. She did everything he told her to, and I do mean everything.”

“Face it, darling. At the time you weren’t in any position to be the perfect observer,” Cressida said archly.

“But it was the way she did it. You don’t understand. She was eager. Obedient. Like the other ones. I think. Shit. Do you think he was lying to me? Maybe she is profiled and he told her to always give that answer.” Araminta made an effort to calm down. Alcohol was a good suppressant. She tipped the wine bottle over her glass. There was none left. “Damn!”

Cressida signaled the smart-suited waiter. “Quite an offer, though.”

“Yeah. What is it about men? Why are they all complete shits? I mean, what kind of mentality does that? Those women are slaves.”

“I know.”

The waiter brought another bottle over and flipped the seal. “The gentleman over there has asked if he can pay for it.”

Araminta and Cressida looked across toward the giant floor-to-ceiling window, which gave them a stunning view out across the luminous glow of the nighttime city. The bar was on the thirty-fifth floor of the Salamartin Hotel tower and attracted a lot of tourist types who thought nothing of paying the absurd bar prices. Every room in the hotel was taken by Living Dream followers, which was why the lobby was besieged by protesters. Araminta had forced her way through the angry chanting mob to plead with the doorman to let her in. She had been frightened; there was a strong threat of violence building up on the street. Cressida of course had the authorization code to land her capsule on the executive rooftop pad.

The man smiling at them from a table in front of the window was dressed in natural fabric clothes styled as only a Makkathran resident would wear.

“No,” Araminta and Cressida chorused.

The waiter smiled, understanding, and started pouring.

Araminta watched morosely as her glass was filled. “Do you think I should go to the police?”

“No,” Cressida said emphatically. “You do not go down that road, not ever. He sat you next to the Prime Minister at dinner, for Ozzie’s sake. You know how powerful he is. Besides which, no police force on the planet would investigate him, and even if they did, they’d never be able to prove anything. Those girls—if you were right, and I’m not saying you’re not—wouldn’t ever be found, let alone analyzed to see if their brains were wired up illegally. Forget it.”

“How about the Commonwealth government? Don’t they have some kind of crime agency?”

“The Intersolar Serious Crimes Directorate. So you take a trip to their local office, which is probably on Ellezelin, and you walk in and say you think some of his wives might be psychoneural profiled because of how they behaved while you were all having sex together, an orgy during which, incidentally, your macrocellular clusters were running a sexual narcotic program.”

“It wasn’t a narcotic,” Araminta said automatically.

“Point in your favor, then. That should do it.”

“All right! What if I told them about his commercial plans? The way he’s built up Albany’s capacity?”

“Tell whom?”

Araminta pouted. For a friend, Cressida was not being very helpful. “I’m not sure. The industrial association of Ellezelin or whatever it’s called.”

“Do you think they don’t know? Albany isn’t something you can hide. And exactly what has that got to do with psychoneural profiling?”

“I dunno.”

“Sounds more like vengeance than justice to me.”

“He’s a shit. He deserves it.”

“Was he good in bed?”

Araminta hoped she wasn’t blushing as she concentrated on pouring more wine. “He was adequate.”

“Listen, darling, I’m afraid this is one of those nasty times when you just have to forget him and move on. You learned a valuable lesson: just how ruthless you have to be to get on in this sad old universe of ours.”

Araminta’s head collapsed down into her hands, sending her hair tumbling around her glass. “Oh, great Ozzie, I went and had sex with him! How humiliating is that?” She wished she could get rid of the memory, at least the bit about how much she had enjoyed herself. Actually, there were various commercially available routines and drugs capable of performing neat little memory edits. Oh, stop being so self-pitying, girl.

“There, there.” Cressida reached over and patted Araminta’s hand. “By now he’ll have had half a dozen more girls in his bed and won’t even remember your name. It never meant as much to him as it does to you.”

“And you’re telling me this to cheer me up?”

“That was his deal, wasn’t it? You would be the second Friday on months with an ‘r’ in them?”

“Yeah, I know. Hell, I’m a big girl. I knew what I was doing.”

“With hindsight, yes, the view is always clear.”

Araminta brought her head up and grinned. “Thank you for not judging.”

“You’re still a work in progress. And I think you’re improving under my tuition. This was a much smaller mistake than Laril.”

“When you want to cheer someone up, you really go for it, don’t you?”

Cressida pushed her glass across the table, and clinked it to the rim of Araminta’s. “You’re starting to understand life. That’s good. So what are you going to do about Mr. Bovey?”

Araminta grimaced. “Mr. Bovey’s proposal, actually.”

“What! He didn’t?”

“He did. Marriage with me once I’ve gone multiple.”

“And you think I’m pushy! Wait a minute. Did he ask you this before you had your little visit to Likan?”

“Umm. Yes.”

“You go, my girl. So what was the Likan thing all about?”

“Trying out options while I consider what to do.”

“Wow.”

“Have you ever considered going multiple? Likan said it was purely a lifestyle choice, not a business one. I’m not so sure. Ten pairs of extra hands would be very useful in my line of work.”

“I haven’t considered it, no. It’s still only one mind, which is all a lawyer needs. But if you’re serious about property development, then I can see the practical advantages.”

“It’s self-limiting, though, isn’t it? It’s saying I’ll always be somebody stuck doing some kind of manual job.”

“Your pride seems to be a very fluid thing.”

“I just want …” She didn’t know how to finish that sentence, not at all. “I don’t know. I was just shaken up by what happened on the weekend. And I had this really awful dream, too. I was like this really big creature flying over a planet when someone tried to smother me. Been having a few of those lately. Do you suppose it’s stress?”

Cressida gave her a puzzled look. “Darling, everyone has had that dream. It was the Second Dreamer’s dream of the Skylord over Querencia. And that wasn’t someone trying to smother you; that was Ethan trying to talk to the Skylord direct. They say he’s still in a coma in the hospital with his minions trying to repair his burned-out brain.”

“I couldn’t have dreamed that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have gaiamotes. It always seemed a bit silly to me, like a weak version of the unisphere.”

Cressida became very still; she pushed her glass aside and took Araminta’s hand. “Are you being serious?”

“Serious about what?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you?”

“Tell me what?” Araminta felt panicky. She wanted another drink, but Cressida’s grasp was surprisingly strong.

“About our great-great-great-grandmother.”

“What about her?”

“It was Mellanie Rescorai.”

After all that buildup, Araminta felt badly disappointed. She’d at least been expecting some dynasty heir, maybe Old Earth royalty, not someone she’d never heard of. “Oh. Who is she?”

“A friend of the Silfen. She was named their friend. You know what that means?”

“Not really, no.” Araminta’s knowledge of the Silfen was a little vague: a weird humanoid race that everyone called elves. They sang gibberish and had a bizarre wormhole network that stretched across half the galaxy, allowing them literally to walk between worlds—an ability that a depressing number of humans found incredibly romantic. Few who tried to follow them down their twisting interstellar paths returned, but those who did told fanciful tales of adventure on new worlds and the exotic creatures they had found there.

“Okay,” Cressida said. “It goes like this: The Silfen named Ozzie their friend, too. They gave him a magic pendant which allowed him to understand their paths and even join their communal mind, their Motherholme.”

“Ozzie? You mean our Ozzie? The one we—”

“Yes. Now, Ozzie being Ozzie, he broke open the pendant and figured out how the magic worked, that it wasn’t magic but quantum entanglement. So humans then started to produce gaiamotes. Our gaiafield is basically a poor copy of the Silfen communal mind.”

“Right. So where does our ancestor come into this?”

“Mellanie was also a Silfen friend, which actually involves a little more than just being given the pendant. Their Motherholme accepts your mind and shares its wisdom with you. The pendant only initiates the contact. After a while, the ability becomes natural—well, relatively speaking. And like all magic, it’s believed to be inherited.” Cressida let go of Araminta’s hands and smiled softly.

“You just said it wasn’t magic.”

“Of course not. But consider this. Mellanie and her husband, Orion, came back. They had a little girl, Sophie, while they were out there walking across the galaxy. One of very few humans ever born on the paths and certainly the first of two Silfen friends. She was attuned to the Motherholme right from the start and passed the magic on to her children. Thanks to her, most of our family can feel the gaiafield, though it’s weaker with our generation. But on a good night, you can sometimes sense the Motherholme itself. I even ventured down one of the Silfen paths myself when I was younger; it’s just outside Colwyn City in Francola Wood. I was thirteen; I wanted adventure. Stupid, but …”

“There’s a Silfen path on Viotia?”

“Yes. They don’t use it much. They don’t enjoy planets with civilizations like ours on them.”

“Where does it lead?” Araminta asked breathlessly.

“They don’t lead to any one place; they join up and twist. Time is different along them as well. That’s why humans who aren’t Silfen friends are always lost along them. I was lucky; I managed to get back after a couple of days. Mother was furious with me.”

“So … my dreams. They’re not actually mine?”

“That Skylord one the other night wasn’t, no.”

“It felt so real.”

“Didn’t it just?” She glanced pointedly around the bar packed with Living Dream followers. “Now you see why they’re so devout. If you’re offered that kind of temptation every time you go to sleep, well, who would want to wake up? That’s what the Void is to them. Their dreams, forever.”

“I don’t get it. So what if they’re real? That city they always go on about: Makkathran. It’s medieval, isn’t it? And their Waterwalker fights all the time. That’s awful. Even if you’ve got telepathic powers, they’re not that special. Our technology is just as good. Who wants to live like that?”

“You seriously need to review Inigo’s dreams before you make that sort of judgment. The Waterwalker transforms an entire human society.”

“So he’s a talented politician?”

“Oh, no, darling, he’s much more than that. He revealed the true nature of the Void to us. He showed us what it can do. That kind of power scares me shitless, which is precisely what so many find so attractive.” Cressida waved her elegant hand at the Living Dream supporters. “Ozzie help us if these dreadful little fools ever gain the same ability the Waterwalker discovered. Eating up the galaxy would be the least of our worries.”

Inigo’s Sixth Dream

Nearly eighty probationary constables sat together in a block of seats on the ultrablack floor of Malfit Hall as the vast arching ceiling above played images of wispy clouds traversing the beautiful gold and pink dawn sky. Edeard had one of the seats in the second row and kept his head tipped back so he could watch the giant ceiling in astonishment. He was sure it must be the marvel of the world. His fellow squadmates were all amused by his reaction, not that they’d actually been in the Orchard Palace before except for Dinlay. But at least they’d known about the moving imagery, and they hadn’t thought to warn him.

Edeard gasped as Nikran rose up into the replica sky. The ruddy brown planet here was a lot larger than it ever appeared in Querencia’s skies. He could see tiny features etched on the world’s eternal deserts. For some reason that made him think of it as an actual place rather than an element of the celestial panorama.

“Does anyone live there?” he whispered to Kanseen, who was in the chair next to him.

She looked at him, frowning, then glanced up at the image of Nikran and giggled.

“What?” Macsen hissed.

“Edeard wants to know if anyone lives on Nikran,” Kanseen announced solemnly.

The whole squad snickered; surrounding squads joined in. Edeard felt his face heating up. “Why not?” he protested. “Rah’s ship fell onto this world; why not another ship to Nikran?”

“Absolutely,” Macsen said. “Perfectly valid question. In fact, there’s a whole other Makkathran up there.”

Edeard ignored them and simply looked straight ahead in a dignified manner. He resolved never to tell his friends of his dreams and what they showed him.

The block of probationary constables settled down. Edeard started to concentrate on what he was seeing. They were facing the grand curving staircase that dominated one side of the hall. Owain, the Mayor of Makkathran, had appeared at the top, followed by the Guild Masters and District Masters who made up the Upper Council. They were all wearing their full ceremonial robes, producing a splendid blaze of color as they filed down to the floor of the hall.

“Oh, Lady,” Dinlay groaned.

Edeard caught a sensation of queasiness emanating from his friend. “Ten seconds maximum,” he told Dinlay, using a tiny directed longtalk voice. “Then it’s all over. Just hold it together for ten seconds. You can do that.”

Dinlay nodded while appearing completely unconvinced.

Edeard resisted looking at the much bigger block of seats behind him, where the families and friends of the probationary constables were gathered to watch them receive their bronze epaulets. It was probably an exaggeration, but half of them were Dinlay’s family and all of them were in uniform.

“I bet there’s a crime wave going on in every district,” Macsen had muttered while they were taking their seats earlier. “There aren’t any constables left out there to patrol.”

Owain reached the platform that had been set up at the bottom of the stairs. He smiled at the attentive audience. “It is always an honor and a privilege for me to perform this ceremony,” he said. “In my position I hear so many people complain not just about the state which the city is in but of the chaos which supposedly reigns in the lands outside our crystal walls. I wish they were standing here now to see so many young people coming forward to serve their city. I am heartened by the sense of duty you are displaying in making this commitment to serve your fellow citizens. You give me confidence for the future.”

Now, that’s a real politician, Edeard thought uncharitably. The Mayor, of all people, must have known how inadequate the number of constables was, known that the eighty of them there weren’t enough, that at least an equal number of constables had left in the last few months to become private bodyguards or for a better paid and respected job as a sheriff in some provincial town. Why doesn’t he do something about it?

The Mayor finished his inspirational speech. The probationary constables stood up as one, and then the first row trooped up to the platform to be greeted by the Mayor. The Chief Constable read each probationer’s name out to the hall while an assistant handed a pair of epaulets to the Mayor to be presented with a handshake and a smile.

Edeard’s row started to move forward. He had thought that this would be boring at the least, that it was stupid, an irritation he could have done without, especially as the only person in the audience clapping for him was Salrana, who had been given the day off from her duties. But now he was here, now he was walking up to the Mayor of the entire city, he actually began to feel a sense of occasion. Behind him the audience was radiant with pride. They believed in the constables. In front, the Upper Council was registering its approval. None of the councillors had to be there; it was a ceremony repeated three times a year, every year. They had been to dozens and would have to come to dozens more. If they had wanted to cry off, they could have done that. But it was important enough for them to turn out every time.

And here he was himself, coming forward to make a public pledge to the citizens of Makkathran that he would do his best to protect them and implement the rule of law. This was why Rah and those who followed him into office had created this ceremony and others like it: to recognize and honor the commitment the constables made to their city and lives. It was neither silly nor a waste of time; it was a show of respect.

Edeard stood in front of the Mayor, who smiled politely and shook his hand as the Chief Constable read out his name. A pair of bronze epaulets was pressed into his hand. “Thank you, sir,” Edeard said. There was a lump in his throat. “I won’t let you down.” Ashwell will never happen here.

If the Mayor was surprised, he did not show it. Edeard caught sight of Finitan standing on the grand staircase. The Master of the Eggshaper Guild looked rather splendid in a gold and purple gown with elaborate scarlet symbols embroidered down the front; his silver-tipped hood was arranged over the left shoulder. He caught Edeard’s eye and winked. “Well done, lad,” his longtalk whispered.

Edeard stepped off the platform. There was a burst of applause. He nearly laughed; it was as if the audience were rejoicing that he was out of the way. In fact, it was Dinlay’s considerable family clapping loudly as their relative received his epaulets. Dinlay managed not to trip or throw up or collapse from fright. He followed Edeard back to their seats with a glowing face, grinning back at his kin.

Afterward there was a formal reception party, with the Mayor and the Upper Council mixing with the new constables and their families while ge-monkeys circled Malfit Hall with trays of drinks. It was scheduled to last an hour. Edeard might have warmed to the graduation ceremony itself, but he planned to be out of the party in under ten minutes.

“No you don’t,” Salrana decreed. “Just look at who’s here.”

Edeard frowned at the people babbling away, the families in their finery, the resplendent Upper Council members. “Who?”

She gave him a withering look. “The Pythia for a start. And she noticed me. I felt her farsight on me during the ceremony.”

Edeard took another look. “Fair enough; you’re the only novice here. She probably thinks you ducked out of your assignments to pick up the free booze.”

Salrana drew herself up. It shifted the fabric of her white and blue robe in a way Edeard could not help noticing. If he kept doing that and kept thinking those accompanying thoughts about how she was growing up, the Lady really would blast him out of existence one day.

“Edeard, you can still be disappointingly childish at times. We are both citizens of Makkathran now, today you especially. Try and act in an appropriate fashion.”

Edeard’s mouth dropped open.

“Now we are going over to thank Grand Master Finitan for sponsoring you, as is the right expression of gratitude, which you do feel, and see if we can be introduced to others in the Upper Council as well. If you’re to become Chief Constable, you need to start paying attention to the city’s political dynamics.”

“Uh. Yes,” Edeard admitted. “Chief Constable?”

“That’s your route onto the Upper Council now that you’ve chosen the constables over a guild.”

“I’ve been graduated eight minutes.”

“Those that hesitate, lose. The Lady’s book, fifth chapter.”

His lips twitched. “I knew that.”

“Did you now?” Salrana raised an eyebrow. “I might have to test you later.”

“I’ve had quite enough of exams these last few weeks, thank you.”

“Poor Edeard. Come on.” She pulled at his hand, all girlish again.

Grand Master Finitan was talking to a pair of fellow Upper Council members as Edeard and Salrana approached him. He smiled and turned to them. “Congratulations, my boy. A proud day for you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you again for sponsoring me.”

“Well, it seems to have put me in credit with the Chief Constable. You graduated third in your class. That’s an astonishing result for someone unfamiliar with our city.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Allow me to introduce Masters Graley of the Geography Guild and Imilan of the Chemistry Guild. This is Constable Edeard from the Rulan province, a friend of my old Master.”

“Masters.” Edeard bowed formally. Then he saw Salrana pluck at her skirt and hold the fabric up daintily on one side as she performed a peculiar little bow that involved bending her knees and keeping her back straight.

“And Novice Salrana,” Finitan said smoothly. “Also from Rulan.”

“A pleasure,” Imilan said.

Edeard did not care for the way the Master’s eyes lingered on Salrana.

“You’re a long way from home, Novice,” the Master said.

“No, sir,” she said in a polite tone. “Makkathran is my home now.”

“Well said, Novice,” Finitan said. “I wish all our citizens were as appreciative of their city as you are.”

“Now, Finitan,” Graley chided. “This is not the day.”

“Apologies.” Finitan inclined his head at the youngsters. “So Edeard, have you had a run-in with our criminal element yet?”

“A few, sir, yes.”

“He’s being very modest, sir,” Salrana said. “He led his squad after some thieves in the Silvarum market. He recovered the stolen items as well.”

Edeard shifted awkwardly under the scrutiny of all three Masters.

“And are these miscreants now laboring away at the Trampello mine to pay for their crime?” Imilan asked.

“No, sir,” Edeard admitted. “They got away. That time. They won’t again.”

“I imagine they won’t,” Finitan said with an edge of amusement.

“Come along, Edeard; let me introduce you to the Mayor. It’s about time he saw an honorable man again.”

“Sir?”

“Old joke. We often clash in the Council.” He signaled them to follow him. “Not over anything important to the lives of real people, of course.”

The Mayor of Makkathran was talking to the Pythia just beside the little platform where he had handed out the epaulets. If he was bored or annoyed to be introduced to a new constable, he did not show it. Edeard had never encountered a mind so perfectly shielded, not that he paid much attention. He was entranced by the Pythia. He had been expecting some ancient woman, full of grandmotherly warmth. Instead, he was disconcerted to find that the Pythia retained the beauty of a woman still awaiting her half century, a beauty only emphasized by her gold-trimmed white robe with its flowing hood that she wore forward, casting her face in a slight shadow.

Salrana did her strange bow again to the Pythia.

“The Lady’s blessing upon you my child,” the Pythia said. She sounded bored in that way Makkathran’s aristocrats always did when they had to deal with those they considered to be of a lower order. That wasn’t what Edeard had expected from a Pythia. Then she turned her attention to him. Startlingly light blue eyes fixed on him, surrounded by a mass of thick bronze hair twined with gold and silver leaves. The eyes narrowed in judgment, which Edeard found heartbreaking. He felt like he had disappointed her, which was a terrible thing. Then she smiled, banishing his worry. “Now, you are interesting, Constable,” she said.

“My Lady?” he stammered. He somehow could feel the Pythia’s farsight on him, as if she were picking through his mind. There was something disconcertingly intimate about the contact. And she was very beautiful, merely a yard away, her half smile open and inviting.

Salrana made a groaning sound in her throat.

“I’m not quite that exalted,” the Pythia said lightly. “There is only one true Lady. My usual form of address is ‘Dear Mother.’ ”

“I apologize, Dear Mother.”

“Think nothing of it. You’ve come a long way to get here, and you still have a long way to travel.”

“I do?”

But the Pythia had turned to face Finitan. “What a fascinating young friend you have, Grand Master.”

“I’m pleased you think so, Pythia.”

“So young, yet so strong.”

The way she said it sent a shudder of felonious delight down Edeard’s spine. He didn’t dare glance in her direction; instead he fixed his gaze on the Mayor, who was frowning.

“Do you foresee great things for him?” Finitan asked jovially.

The Pythia turned to stare directly at Edeard, an act he could not ignore, not in a group like this, not without appearing extraordinarily rude. He tried to return the look but found it incredibly difficult.

“Your potential is very strong,” she said. There was an almost teasing quality to her voice. “Do you follow the Lady’s teachings, Constable Edeard?”

“I try my best, Dear Mother.”

“I’m sure you do. May She bless your endeavors in your new duties.”

Edeard almost did not hear her. A movement behind Finitan had caught his eye. In horror, he watched Mistress Florell heading toward them, all black chiffon and wide veils hanging from a tall hat. His dismay must have leaked out. As one, Finitan, the Mayor, and the Pythia turned to acknowledge the approaching grande dame.

“Aunt!” the Mayor exclaimed happily. “How lovely of you to come.”

“He’s the one,” Mistress Florell declared in her scratchy voice. “The young hooligan who nearly knocked me to the ground.”

“Now, Aunt.”

“Take his epaulets away,” she snapped imperiously. “He’s not fit to serve this city. Time was we used to have men of good character in the constables, the sons of noblemen.”

The Mayor gave Edeard a half-apologetic look. “What happened, Constable?”

“I was pursuing some thieves, sir. Mistress Florell came out of a building. I went around—”

“Ha! Tried to run over me, more like.”

“Come, come, Aunt. The lad was obviously just doing his job. A conscientious chap like this is just what we need. Suppose the thieves had snatched your bag; wouldn’t you want him to give chase?”

“Nobody would steal my bag,” she snapped.

“I am sorry for any distress,” Edeard said desperately. The horrible old woman just wouldn’t listen.

The Mayor shuffled around to stand between Mistress Florell and Edeard, flicking his fingers in a “go away” motion. Edeard did a kind of half bow and backed away fast, accompanied by Salrana and Finitan.

“Aunt, you know it’s bad for you to dwell on such trivia. Now some of these Mindalla Estate fortified wines are really quite lovely. You must try—” There was a note of tired desperation in his voice.

Finitan smiled broadly as they hurried off. “Thank you, Edeard. These reception parties are normally quite tedious.”

“Er … yes, sir.”

“Oh, come now. This is your graduation day. Don’t let that daft old bat spoil it for you. She’s embarrassingly well connected, as you would be if you clung to life for so long. Wouldn’t surprise me if she did drink the blood of virgins, after all. Your pardon, Novice.”

“I’ve heard of Mistress Florell, sir,” Salrana said.

“Everyone in the city has,” Finitan said. “That’s why she thinks she’s so important instead of just old and obnoxious.” He put his hand on Edeard’s shoulder. “And I say that as her great-great-nephew, myself. Twice removed, thankfully.”

“Thank you, sir,” Edeard said.

“Now, off you go and enjoy yourselves. And Edeard, when the time comes for you to apply for promotion to officer rank, come and see me again. I’ll be happy to sign the letter.”

“Sir?” Edeard asked incredulously.

“You heard. Now be off with the pair of you. It’s a bold bad city out there. Have fun!”

Edeard did not need telling again. He and Salrana made for the hall’s big archway, which led out to the antechambers.

“Hey, Edeard,” Macsen called, hurrying to intercept him. “Where are you off to?”

“Just out,” Edeard said. He didn’t even want to glance over his shoulder in case Mistress Florell was looking his way.

Macsen reached them and skidded to a halt. “Mother and Dybal are taking me to the Rakas restaurant to celebrate. It’s an open invitation to my squadmates as well.” Macsen stopped, and smiled at Salrana. “Novice, I had no idea Edeard kept such pleasant company.” He gave Edeard an expectant look, ever the injured party.

“This is Novice Salrana from my home village,” Edeard said sulkily.

“That is one village I am definitely going to have to visit.” Macsen bowed deeply.

“Why is that, Constable?” she asked.

“To see if all the girls there are as beautiful as yourself.”

She laughed. Edeard groaned, glaring in warning at Macsen.

“The invitation to Rakas is of course extended to the friends of my squadmates, Novice.”

“The friends accept with thanks,” she said primly. “But only if you stop calling me ‘Novice.’ ”

“It will be my delight, Salrana. And I will also beg you to tell of Edeard’s early life. It would seem he’s been keeping secrets from us. Those who entrust our lives to him, no less.”

“Shocking,” she agreed. “I will entertain such a request if correctly made.”

“Salrana!” a horrified Edeard exclaimed.

“Excellent,” Macsen said. “I’ll arrange another gondola for our party. Now, Edeard, where is Kanseen?”

Edeard glowered at his so-called friend.

“Edeard?” Salrana prompted with a jab to his ribs.

“Over there.” Edeard said it without having to concentrate; through his farsight he was automatically aware of all his squadmates, a trait Chae always tried to emphasize. He pointed to where Kanseen was chatting with a heavily pregnant woman and a man in a smart tunic with the crest of the Shipwright’s Guild. “Her sister came to the ceremony. They’re catching up.”

“No sign of her mother, then, poor thing,” Macsen said sadly. “Ah, well, I’ll go and ask her.”

“Boyd’s family are all here,” Edeard said.

“And we’ll yet sink under the weight of Dinlay’s relatives,” Macsen concluded. “So it’s just us precious few left. See you at the Outer Circle Canal mooring in ten minutes.”

“What did you say that for?” Edeard asked as Macsen walked over to Kanseen.

Salrana cocked her head to one side and gave him a very haughty look. “It was a gesture of honest friendship. Why should I not accept?”

“He was flirting with you.”

She grinned. “Wasn’t he just.”

“You’re a novice!”

“We are not professional virgins, Edeard. I seem to remember us kissing. And more, wasn’t there a discussion about my age and when you would be ready to bed me?”

Edeard turned bright red. His farsight tried to sense sparks of interest in those standing closest; either they could shield too well or they had not overheard. One thing was sure: She wouldn’t back down. She never has. Her voice would only grow louder if he persisted. “I don’t wish to recall that day too closely if you don’t mind. However, if I’ve offended you, I apologize. I still think of you as my charge, especially after all we have been through. Which is why I overreacted with Macsen. Truly, Salrana, he’s had more girls than I have socks.”

Her smile was forgiving. “I’ve seen your wardrobe. You only have two pairs of socks.”

“I do not!”

“And they have holes in them. So you just concentrate on worrying about yourself, Edeard. I know and understand all about Macsen and boys like him. That’s why he’s perfectly harmless.”

“He’s perfectly charming.”

“It’s not a crime, you know. Perhaps if you showed a little more charm, then you could boast of more conquests.”

“Charm, eh?” He bent his arm, and extended it toward her. “May I escort you to the mooring, Novice Salrana?”

“Why, thank you, Constable Edeard; you may indeed.” She linked her arm through his and allowed him to lead her out of the hall.

The Rakas restaurant was in the Abad district, which meant a gondola ride down the Great Major Canal. It was the first time Edeard had been in one of the elegant black boats. He didn’t have the coinage to travel in them ordinarily. Money clearly was not an issue with Dybal.

The errant musician was everything Edeard had expected: wild black hair reaching halfway down his back, barely contained by red leather bands that gave it a peculiar ropy appearance, a long face had weather-beaten creases and sunken cheeks above a narrow jaw; but with brown-gold eyes that always seemed to be seeing the funny side of life as they peeped over narrow blue-lens glasses. His whole mental aura was agreeable, akin to that of a carefree adolescent rather than a man well over a hundred. Just being able to say hello and shake hands was enough to banish Edeard’s lingering dismay over Mistress Florell. As their little group assembled at the moorings, Dybal made them all feel welcome even though they’d never met him before. He instinctively knew the right note to take with each of them.

“Come on, then,” he said loudly once they were all present, and led them down the steps. His clothes were large, even though he was improbably slender for his age. Edeard imagined they needed to be that big to contain his ebullience; he certainly achieved the whole larger-than-life image effortlessly enough: strident voice, big arm gestures, fur-lined velvet jacket, paisley shirt, and leather trousers, their colors mimicking those of the Musician’s Guild or, more likely, a deliberate mockery of them. Edeard was only slightly disappointed that the musician wasn’t carrying his guitar; he wanted to hear the songs of rebellion that stoked up Makkathran’s youth.

Dybal took the first gondola along with Macsen and Bijulee, Macsen’s mother. Edeard watched him talk to the gondolier, holding the man’s hand between his two palms, squeezing intently. Both men laughed, the kind of low merriment that usually came from a dirty joke. Dybal took his seat beside Bijulee while the still-smiling gondolier pushed off.

“That is Macsen’s mother?” Kanseen asked as they settled on the middle bench in their own gondola.

“Yeah,” Edeard said. And to think, a few minutes earlier he had believed the Pythia was an attractive older woman. “Macsen introduced me just before you arrived.” That had gone a long way to making his world a better place.

“Can’t be,” Kanseen declared as their gondola slipped out onto the Great Major Canal. “That would mean she had him when she was what … ten? She looks like she’s my age, for the Lady’s sake.”

Edeard sat back on the bench, smiling. He was so content, he came this close to putting his arm around Salrana, who was sitting next to him. “Do I hear the little voice of envy there, Constable?”

“You hear the little voice of disbelief,” Kanseen muttered.

“Perhaps it’s his sister and I misheard.”

“How does she keep her skin so fresh? It’s got to be some ointment only available to the rich.”

“Maybe she imports it direct from Nikran.”

Kanseen pulled a face.

“You two.” Salrana laughed. “You’re like an old married couple.”

Edeard and Kanseen carefully avoided each other’s gaze. The gondola already had reached Birmingham Pool, the big junction at the top of the Grand Central Canal. From Edeard’s position, the entire circle of water seemed to be full of gondolas dodging one another as they slipped in and out of the various canals emptying into the pool. He did his best not to flinch. None of the gondoliers were slowing down; they seemed to know instinctively where to go. Craft slipped past them close enough to touch if he had been brave enough to stretch out an arm. Then they arrived at the head of the Grand Central Canal, and their gondolier gave a hard push on his punt.

The first thing Edeard looked at was the mooring on his right where the thieves had escaped. He caught Kanseen looking at it, too. She gave him a tiny shrug. Then he forgot all about it and enjoyed the view. At the top end of the city, along the Silvarum, Haxpen, and Padua districts, the canal was lined with some of the grandest buildings in Makkathran: palaces up to ten stories high with huge windows, their facades a swirl of color in weird patterns. Turrets, belvederes, and spires produced a serrated skyline. Ge-eagles bigger than any Edeard had ever sculpted flew in lazy circles around the pinnacles, keeping watch on the approaches to each magnificent family seat. Kanseen pointed out some of them: the palace that was home to the Mayor’s family and the ziggurat where Rah and the Lady were supposed to have lived, now home to the Culverit family, who claimed direct lineage. She whispered about one red-tinged facade where Macsen’s father had lived. When Edeard glanced at the gondola in front, both Macsen and Bijulee were looking in the opposite direction.

All the stately buildings had low water-level archways leading into the warren of cellars underneath, guarded by thick iron gates that the families maintained in excellent order. The walls of the Purdard family’s palace were at an angle, actually overhanging the water. When Edeard looked up, he saw a glassed-in mirador running the length of the upper story, with several youngsters standing there watching the gondolas. A fabulously rich trading family, Kanseen said, with a fleet of thirty ships.

They passed through the High Pool, which provided a junction with Flight Canal and Market Canal. There was a bridge on either side of the pool. The first one was the city’s, a simple high white arch to which carpenters had attached a broad rail along both sides. Famously, the apex was a ten-yard stretch of crystal, providing a view directly past any pedestrian’s shoes down onto the water and the gondolas thirty yards below. Not everyone could walk across it. The sight was too much for some, as many as one in twenty, the Doctor’s Guild claimed. At Chae’s insistence, Edeard and the rest of the squad had used it several times on patrol. Edeard had had to gird himself to walk those few invisible yards; the vertigo wasn’t strong enough to stop him, though it was unpleasant. All the squadmates had forced themselves across it; surprisingly, Dinlay had been the least affected. The bridge on the other side of High Pool was constructed out of iron and wood, a bulky creaking thing in comparison to its cousin, yet with far more traffic. Past the pool, the towers of Eyrie stabbed up into the clean azure sky as if ready to impale any passing Skylord. Fiacre district’s clifflike frontage swarmed with vine plants, with long strands of flowers bubbling out of the emerald and russet leaves. Only the windows remained clear of foliage, producing deep-set black holes in the lush living carpet.

The gondolas pulled up at a mooring just beyond Forest Pool, and everyone climbed out. Dybal paid the gondoliers, and they all set off to the round tower that housed the Rakas restaurant on its third floor. Hansalt, the owner and chief chef, had reserved for Dybal a table beside a long window overlooking one of the district’s colorful plazas.

“An auspicious day for us,” Dybal announced as a waitress brought over a tray with chilled white wine. “First, a toast to your squad, Macsen. May you rid the city of crime.”

They drank to that. Edeard gave the glass a suspicious glance. He’d never seen wine with bubbles in it before, but when he sipped it, the taste was surprisingly light and fruity. He rather liked it.

“Secondly,” Dybal said. “To Edeard, for being appointed squad leader.”

Edeard blushed.

“Speech!” Macsen demanded.

“Not a chance.” Edeard grunted.

They laughed and drank to that.

“Thirdly.” His voice softened, and he looked down at Bijulee. “I am very proud to announce that my beloved has agreed to marry me.”

The cheer that went up made all the other customers look over at them. Everyone saw that it was Dybal and smiled knowingly. Macsen was hugging his mother. Edeard and Salrana were astonished but clinked glasses anyway and downed some more of the bubbling wine. Another two chilled bottles arrived and were poured out quickly.

Afterward, Edeard always thought back to that meal as the first time he had been truly happy since Ashwell. The food was like nothing he’d ever eaten before. It arrived on big white plates arranged with such artistry that he almost did not want to eat it, but when he did tuck in, the combination of tastes was marvelous. And Dybal had gossip about the city’s elite that was downright scandalous. That all started because of Salrana, who was answering Macsen’s question about what novices did all day long.

“I mean no disrespect to the Lady,” he said. “But surely it must be boring just reading Her scriptures and singing in Her church.”

“Hey,” Dybal objected. “Less mockery about singing if you don’t mind.”

“I’ve been assigned to Millical House,” Salrana said. “I love looking after the children. They’re so sweet.”

“What’s Millical House?” Edeard asked. “A school?”

“You don’t know?” Bijulee asked. She was uncertain if Edeard was making a joke.

“I told you, Mother,” Macsen said. “He really is from a village on the edge of the wilds.”

“Millical is an orphanage,” Salrana said solemnly. “I cannot understand why any mother would give up her baby, especially the ones as gorgeous as we get in the nursery. But they do, so the Lady takes care of them. It’s a fantastic place, Edeard. The children lack for nothing. Makkathran really cares.”

Dybal gave a certain cough. “Actually, that’s a rather exceptional orphanage.”

“What do you mean?” Salrana asked.

“You sure you want to hear this?”

Salrana twirled the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, giving Dybal a level gaze. “We do take in anyone.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But it helps that you’re in the Lillylight district. Consider who your neighbors are. You see, Edeard, Millical House is where the noble families deliver those little unwanted embarrassments which happen when the younger sons are out enjoying themselves with the lower-order girls at the more disreputable entertainment theaters that grace our fine city.”

“The kind you play at?” Bijulee asked mildly.

“Yes, my love, the kind I play at.” He eyed the three young constables. “Been to any yet?”

“Not yet,” Kanseen said. Macsen kept quiet.

“Just a matter of time. Anyway, the reason Millical is so well funded is the tradition that the family concerned makes a donation—anonymous, of course—each time a babe is left on the house’s charity step for the novices to take in.”

“Any money for children is distributed equally among all the Lady’s orphanages,” Salrana said.

“I’m sure a great deal of the bequests filter down to the other orphanage houses. And the Lady performs invaluable work caring for such unfortunates, as I do know. But if you ever get to work in any of the other houses, you’ll notice the difference.”

“And how do you know for sure?” Bijulee asked teasingly.

Dybal turned to face her with a sad smile. “Because I grew up in one.”

“Really?” Macsen asked.

“That’s right. Which is why I’m so impressed with you four youngsters. You came from nothing, especially Edeard and Salrana here, and you’re all making a life for yourselves. I admire that. I truly do. You’re not dependent on anyone, let alone a decadent family. I know I’m the first to complain about the city’s hierarchy, the way democracy has been expropriated by the rich, but there are some institutions which are still worthwhile. People need the constables for the security you bring to the streets and canals and the Lady for hope.”

“I thought that was what your music brought,” Salrana said with a cheeky gleam in her eye.

“It depends which class you belong to. If you’re rich, I’m a delicious wicked rebel, hot and dripping with sarcasm and irony. They have to pay me to perform, which I’m glad to do for them. But for the rest of the city, the people who toil their whole life to make things work, I’m a focal point for resentment. I articulate their feelings. For them, I sing for free. I don’t want their coinage. I want them to spend it on themselves so they don’t have to give away their children.”

“So you compete with the Lady?” Salrana said.

“I offer a mild alternative, that’s all. Hopefully an enjoyable one.”

“I must try and get to one of your performances.”

“I’ll be happy to escort you,” Macsen said.

“I’ll hold you to that,” she retorted before Edeard could intervene. He did not say anything, not there and then, that would spoil the meal.

“Do you know all the Grand Council?” Edeard asked Dybal.

“Oh, yes. They think that by associating with me they gain credibility. What they’re actually doing by inviting me to their homes is contributing generously to lyrics of irony and hypocrisy. Why do you ask, Edeard? Do you need to know about their mistresses? Their strange shared interest in taxing cotton production in Fondral province? The scandal over funds for the militia? The money wasted on official functions? The disease of corruption which infects the staff of the Orchard Palace who are supposed to be impartial? How our dear Mayor, Owain, is already buying votes for the next election—the one time he needs public support?”

“Actually, no. I was wondering about Mistress Florell.”

“Edeard has met her,” Macsen said with a chortle.

“We all did, while we were on duty,” Edeard countered.

“She hit him with her umbrella,” Kanseen added drily.

Dybal and Bijulee laughed at that.

“The old witch tried to get Edeard thrown out of the constables,” Salrana said, hot-cheeked. “At the ceremony today, she told the Mayor to take his epaulets back.”

“How typical,” Dybal said. “Don’t worry, Edeard; she has no real power, not anymore. She’s a figurehead for the noble families, that’s all. They like to make out she’s a much loved grandmother to the whole city. Total crap, of course. She was a scheming little bitch when she was younger, which admittedly is history to all of us now. But she had three husbands before her fiftieth birthday, all first sons of District Masters, which is just about unheard of even today. She gave each of them two sons, and some say there was witchery in that. And by strange coincidence, all three second children went on to marry noble daughters in families where the male lineage had faltered in favor of the girls. By the next generation she’d spread her brood through eleven District Master families. With that kind of power bloc in the Upper Council, she controlled the vote for decades. Our last so-called golden age, which saw the rise of the militia at the expense of all other arms of government. You see, she believes there’s an actual physical difference between the nobility and those without their obscene wealth. In other words, her offspring are born to rule and bring order to the uncivilized masses such as thee and me. Needless to say, she doesn’t believe that we should have anything to do with the city’s government. That sort of thing is best left to those whom destiny has blessed with good blood.”

“No wonder she didn’t like you, Edeard.” Macsen grinned. “You’re not even city-born. She could probably smell the countryside on you.”

“Not everyone in the Upper Council believes in that, do they?” Edeard asked, thinking of Finitan. A nephew, he had said.

“Hopefully not. There are still a few decent noblemen around today. And of course, District Masters’ seats on the Upper Council are checked by the Guild Masters. And the Lower Council itself is still directly elected, not that you’d know it in some districts. That makes for a lot of genuine debate in the Grand Council. Rah knew what he was doing when he crafted our constitution.”

“But your songs are still popular.”

“They are. Dissatisfaction with those who rule is always attractive to the majority; it’s an obsession which humans brought with them on the ships which fell to Querencia. As a species we find it as easy as breathing. And it’s never helped by old men like me who reminisce on how things were always better in our lost youth.”

“You’re a rabble-rouser, you mean,” Bijulee said fondly as she ran her hand through his ragged braids of hair.

“And proud of it.” Dybal raised his glass again. “To making our masters’ lives a misery.”

The whole table drank to that.

“So what’s the story with you and Salrana?” Kanseen asked. It was late at night. The celebratory lunch had lasted all afternoon. Edeard had not wanted it to end. He was perfectly relaxed thanks to that lovely wine with bubbles, the company of friends, eating fine food, and making happy intelligent conversation. No, this was a day that if the Lady were kind should last and last.

But as was the way of all things, they finished the final bottle of wine, ate the last morsel of cheese, and bade one another farewell. Dybal winced theatrically when the bill arrived. The sun had set outside, leaving the city’s cold orange lighting to bathe the streets along with the faint haze of the nebulae overhead. Edeard announced that he would walk Salrana back to Millical House in the Lillylight district. As it was directly between Abad and Jeavons, Kanseen offered to walk with them.

The orphanage house was a nice one, close to the Victoria Canal, with its own garden and play yard. Yet he could not help noticing that it was the smallest building on the street. Salrana had given him a light peck on the cheek before scooting off through the imposing doors that filled the entrance arch.

Edeard and Kanseen continued together, using a bridge over Castoff Canal to put them in the Drupe district, where the palaces matched anything along the Great Major Canal. It was quiet on those district’s narrow streets and broad squares. Bodyguards stood imposingly outside the iron gates of the palaces. Edeard tried not to stare as they passed the alert figures in dark uniforms; he was sure that staying a constable was better than such monotonous duty night after night. That disapproval must have escaped his shielding.

“That’s not what I’ll be doing,” Kanseen said quietly as their footfalls echoed around them in a narrow street high enough to block out all the night sky except for the slim violet thread of Buluku’s meandering tail. “None of them are ex-constables—they’re estate workers and farm boys who’ve come to the city in search of a better life. They only last a couple of years before they make their way back home—that or migrate into Sampalok.”

“Could have been me, then,” Edeard said.

“Somehow I doubt that.”

They walked over the third bridge across the Marble Canal and back into the familiar territory of Jeavons. Gondolas slid past quietly underneath them, small white lanterns glowing on the front. Their passengers snuggled under the canopy, enjoying the romance of the ride. By then Edeard could recognize the wind rising from the sea, the moisture it carried. Clouds were scudding overhead, starting to veil the nebulae. It would rain tonight, in another hour, he decided as he smelled the air.

The constables’ tenement was two streets away from the Jeavons station, a big ugly building from the outside but wrapped around a central oval courtyard boasting a pool of warmish water large enough to swim in and overlooked by four levels of walkways. It contained the maisonettes reserved for the constables. Those with families had taken over one end, with the bachelors at the other. Not that it was a fixed divide. Edeard along with the rest of the squad had moved in a couple of days earlier. Each morning he had been woken by children shouting outside his door as they raced along the walkway, playing some exciting game of chase.

Now the children were in bed as he and Kanseen walked up a set of awkward rounded stairs to the third level, where they both had maisonettes.

“No real story,” he told her. “You know Salrana and I traveled here together. I’m sort of like her older brother.”

“She’s in love with you.”

“What?”

“I was watching her this afternoon. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain. Even Macsen fathomed it. Didn’t you notice he’d stopped trying to flirt with her by the time the fish course arrived? There’s no point. She’s only interested in you.”

“She’s smart enough to realize how shallow he is. That’s all. If they don’t fall at his feet in the first five minutes, he moves on. You know what he’s like.”

“I never thought I’d see you in denial.”

“It’s not denial. You asked a question, and I answered it.”

They stopped at the top of the stairs and looked out over the extensive courtyard. The rim of the pool was a thin intense line of pale orange. It made the water look very inviting. Edeard knew that a lot of the constables went for a nighttime dip. His stomach was too heavy from a whole afternoon of bingeing, he decided reluctantly.

“Actually, you didn’t answer,” Kanseen said. “All you admitted to was knowing her, which doesn’t shed any light on your relationship at all.”

“Lady save me, you really did take in all of Master Solarin’s lectures, didn’t you?”

“My grades were almost as high as yours, yes. So on that long trip through the mountains and across swamps filled with monsters, did you sleep with her?”

“No!”

“Why not? She’s very pretty. And slim. I’ve seen what your eye lingers on when we’re out on patrol.”

“She’s far too young, for a start. And she’s getting pretty. Doctors in Makkathran have better ointments than we had on the caravan.”

“Edeard!” Kanseen gave a small shocked laugh. “I think that’s the most evil thing I’ve ever heard you say about anyone, let alone your little sister.”

“Lady, you’re cruel. I don’t answer a question to your satisfaction and you say I’m in denial; then I give an honest answer and you brand me evil.”

She sucked contritely on her lower lip. “Sorry, but you can understand why.”

“Not really.” Edeard was looking at her profile in the coppery shimmer thrown off by the surface of the pool. In such a light she looked almost aristocratic, with her strong chin and slight nose, skin painted enticingly dark. She turned to face him, cocking her head slightly to one side in that questioning way he enjoyed.

He leaned forward and kissed her. She pressed in against him, hands sliding over his back. For once he dropped his mental guard, showing her how much he delighted in the touch of her, the closeness. After a long time they ended the kiss. Her nose rubbed against his cheek, and she let him sense how much that meant to her.

“Come to bed with me,” he murmured. His tongue darted out to lick the lobe of her ear. She shivered from the contact. Hot lines of pleasure flickered across her mind. He was delightfully aware of her breasts against his chest and hugged her closer. This is going to be the best ever.

“No,” she said. Her shoulders dropped, and she rested her hands against his shoulders, moving them apart to end the embrace. “I’m sorry, Edeard. I feel a lot for you, I really do; you know that. That’s the trouble.”

“What do you mean?”

“We could work, you and me. I really think we could. Lovers, then marriage, children. Everything. I’m not afraid of that. It’s just the timing. It’s wrong.”

“Timing?”

“I don’t think you’re ready for a long-term commitment yet. And I certainly don’t need another fling, not with someone I care about.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a fling. I’m ready to settle down with someone as important to me as you are.”

“Oh, Lady, you’re so sweet.” She sighed. “No, Edeard. I can’t compete against the ideal of Salrana. You’re closer to her than you know or will admit. How could you not be after all the two of you shared? I’m not jealous, well, not exactly. But she’s always going to be there between us until you sort your feelings out.”

“She’s just a kid from the same village, that’s all.”

“Open your feelings to me. Show me your naked mind and say you don’t want to bed her, you don’t want to know the feel of her against you.”

“I … No, this is stupid. You’re accusing me of—I don’t know: having dreams. This world is full of opportunities. Some we grasp; others we pass by. It’s not me who’s scared of what might be. You need to look at your own feelings.”

They were standing apart now, voices not raised but firm.

“I know my own feelings,” she said. “And I want yours to match mine. That means I can wait. You’re worth waiting for, Edeard, however long it takes. You mean that much to me.”

“Well, that’s got to be the craziest way of showing it. Ever,” he said, trying not to let the hurt affect his voice. His mind hardened against releasing any emotion, which was difficult given the turmoil she had kindled.

“Tell her,” Kanseen said simply. She reached out to stroke his cheek, but he dodged back. “Be true to yourself, Edeard. That’s the you I want.”

“Good night,” he said stiffly.

Kanseen nodded, then turned away. Edeard was sure he saw a tear on her cheek. He refused to use his farsight to check. Instead he went into his maisonette and threw himself on the too-high bed. Anger warred with frustration in his mind. He imagined Salrana and Kanseen fighting, an image that quickly took on a life outside his control. His fist thumped the pillow. He turned over and sent his farsight swirling out across the city, observing the vast clutter of minds as they wrestled with their own demons. It felt good not to be suffering alone.

He took a long time to fall asleep.

“Rumor has it the Pythia uses her concealment ability to twist her features. She is over a hundred and fifty, after all; she could give Mistress Florell a run for her money in the withered crone stakes. There has to be some kind of devilment involved to make her look the way she does.” Boyd put a lot of emphasis on that last sentence, dipping his head knowingly.

“Can you do that?” a startled Edeard asked.

“I don’t know.” Boyd lowered his voice. “They say the Grand Masters can completely conceal themselves from view. I’ve never seen it myself.”

Edeard paused on the threshold of pointing out the slight logical flaw in that admission. “Right.” They were on patrol in Jeavons, walking alongside the Brotherhood Canal, which bordered the southern side of the district. Beyond the water was Tycho, not strictly a district but a wide strip of meadow between the canal and the crystal wall. Wooden stables used by the militia squatted on the grass, the only buildings permitted on the common land. He could see stable boys cantering horses and ge-horses along sandy tracks, the morning exercise they and their predecessors had performed for centuries. Several horses had ge-wolves running alongside.

It was their sixth patrol since graduation, six days during which he and Kanseen barely had exchanged a word. They’d been perfectly civil to each other, but that was all. He did not want that; he wanted them at least to go back to how it was before that messed-up evening. How they might arrive back at that comfortable old association was a complete mystery, one he definitely was not going to consult the others on. He got the impression they already guessed that something had happened. Knowing them, they’d royally screw up that speculation.

For some reason he’d also held off saying anything to Salrana. Grudgingly, he acknowledged that Kanseen did have a small point there. He really was going to have to face up to the whole friends become lovers issue simmering between him and Salrana. It wasn’t fair to her. She was growing up into a beautiful adolescent, so much more vivacious than any of the city girls he encountered. All he had to do was get over his notion of protectiveness. That was stupid, too. She was old enough to look out for herself and make her own choices. The only person who had appointed him her guardian was himself, something he had done out of obligation and friendship. To do anything different, especially now, could be considered taking advantage.

Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong to do what’s right.

And physically he knew they would be fantastic together. That body, and as for those legs … Altogether too much time of late was spent thinking about how her legs would feel wrapped around him, long athletic muscles flexing relentlessly. It would end with them both screaming in pleasure. We wouldn’t even get out of bed for the first year.

Then, after that, after the passion, they’d still enjoy each other’s company. Salrana was the only person he could ever really talk to. They understood each other. Two hick kids against the city: future Mayor, future Pythia.

He smiled warmly.

“Of course, I could just talk to myself instead,” an irritated Macsen said.

“Sorry, what?” Edeard asked, banishing the smile.

Macsen glanced over at Kanseen, who was standing beside Dinlay, the pair of them looking down on a gondola full of crates, calling something to the gondolier. “Boy, she really worked you over, didn’t she?”

“Who? Oh, no. There’s nothing wrong. Kanseen and I are fine.”

“I’d hate to see you unfine.”

“Really, I’m good. What did you want?”

“The shopkeepers in Boltan Street keep saying strangers are walking along, checking out the buildings with strong farsight. They’re obviously a gang taking a scouting trip. So if we go up there in these uniforms, we’ll scare them off and they’ll just come back in a week or a month, whenever we move on. But if we were to loiter around in ordinary clothes, they wouldn’t know we were there, and we could catch them at it red-handed.”

“I don’t know. You know what Ronark is like about wearing the uniform on duty.” As they were starting their third patrol, the captain had appeared unexpectedly and performed a snap inspection. Edeard almost had been demoted for the “disgraceful lack of standards.” Since then, he had made sure his squadmates were properly dressed before leaving the station.

“Exactly,” Macsen said. “If you’re a constable in Jeavons, you have to be in a uniform; everyone knows that. So they won’t be expecting us out of uniform.”

“Hmm, maybe. Let me talk to Chae first, see what he thinks.”

“He’ll say no,” Boyd told them. “You know procedure. If a crime is suspected, then you use ge-eagles to observe the area while the squad waits out of farsight range.”

“We don’t know how long we’ll have to wait,” Macsen said. “And Edeard only has one ge-eagle.”

“You can sculpt more, can’t you?” Boyd said. “You told us you used to be an Eggshaper apprentice.”

“He can’t sculpt without a guild licence, not in Makkathran,” Macsen said. “It’s the law; we’d wind up having to arrest him. You know how keen they are on maintaining their monopoly. In any case, this is going to happen soon. We don’t have time to sculpt ge-eagles. That’s why we have to go patrolling in disguise.”

“Ordinary clothes aren’t a disguise,” Boyd protested.

“It doesn’t matter what clothes we wear as long as it’s not the uniform,” Macsen said, his temper rising. “Dress how you want. Maybe in a dress; you’re certainly acting like an old woman.”

“Good one, smart-ass. If this gang’s as clever as you say, they’ll know all our faces, anyway.”

“Enough,” Edeard said, holding up his hands. “I will speak to Chae as soon as we get in. Until then I’ll keep my ge-eagle close to Boltan Street. I can’t do anything more in the middle of a patrol, so drop it for now, please.”

“Just a suggestion,” Macsen grumbled as he started to walk away.

“Are you deliberately bugging him?” Edeard asked Boyd.

The lanky boy gave a sly grin. “I don’t have to answer that; I’m not under oath.”

Edeard laughed. The Boyd of six months ago would never have dared any mischief at another’s expense, let alone a friend.

The squad set off along the canal again, following the gentle curve northward. Edeard’s plan was to stay on the side path until they reached its junction with the Outer Circle Canal, then turn back in to Jeavons. He sent his ge-eagle swooping low over the roof and towers of the district, guiding it toward Boltan Street. It was a damp gray morning with the last of the night’s rain clouds still clotting the sky as they slid slowly westward. Every surface was slick with rain. However, the indomitable citizens of Makkathran were out in force as usual, thronging the streets and narrow alleyways.

Edeard’s ge-eagle flashed silently above them, ignored by most. Then he caught a movement that was out of kilter. Halfway along Sonral Street, someone in a hooded jacket turned away from the eagle and adjusted his hood, pulling it fully over his head.

It could have been nothing, the ge-eagle was still over fifty yards away. And it was damp, the air chilly. It was perfectly legitimate for someone to pull his hood up in such circumstances. A lot of people in the same zigzagging street were sporting hats that morning. The man wasn’t even alone in wearing a hooded jacket.

It’s wrong, though. I know it.

“Wait,” he told the squad. He swept the street with his farsight, searching for the one suspicious figure. The man’s mind was shielded, though the tinge of uncertainty seeped out. Again, perfectly legitimate; he could be worrying about anything from a bad quarrel with his wife to debts.

Edeard observed the direction he was taking and ordered the ge-eagle around in a long curve. It settled on the eaves of a three-story house at the end of Sonral Street out of sight of its target. As he waited, Edeard realized the man in the hooded jacket was not alone; he was walking with two others. Then the ge-eagle caught sight of him on the street as he came around one of the shallow turns. By then, the hood had slipped back slightly.

“Oh, yes, Lady, thank you,” Edeard said.

“What’s happening?” Dinlay demanded.

“He’s back,” Edeard growled. “The thief from the Silvarum market, the one who was holding the box.”

“Where!” Kanseen demanded.

“Sonral Street. Top third.”

The squad registered annoyance. “We can’t farsight that far,” Boyd complained.

“Okay, here you go.” Edeard gifted them the ge-eagle’s sight.

“Are you sure?” Macsen asked.

“He’s right,” Kanseen said. “It is him, the bastard. I can just farsight him.”

“There are two others with him,” Edeard told them. “And he’s nervous about the ge-eagle, so they’re not here for anything legitimate. Let’s spread out and surround them. Keep a street between yourself and them the whole time. I’ll track them with farsight. I don’t want to risk him seeing the ge-eagle again; that’ll scare them off.”

They all smiled at one another, edgy with nerves and excitement.

“Go!” Macsen cried.

After five minutes of steady jogging, Edeard wished he had paid more attention to keeping fit. As before, Makkathran’s citizens were reluctant to give ground to anyone in a hurry, least of all a red-faced, sweating, panting young constable. He dodged and shoved and wiggled his way along streets and through alleys, glaring at anyone who voiced a complaint. His uniform made it worse with its hot, heavy fabric restricting his movements.

Eventually he got into position a street to the west of the trio. His farsight showed him his squadmates taking up positions all around them.

“Got them,” Dinlay’s longtalk announced as he slowed to a walk.

“Me, too,” Boyd reported.

“What do you think they’re here to steal?” Macsen asked.

“Small enough to carry easily, valuable enough to be worth the risk,” Dinlay replied.

“Another one been paying attention during our lectures. But unfortunately that covers about ninety percent of the shops around here.”

“Could be something in one of the storerooms, too,” Boyd suggested.

“Or a house,” Kanseen added.

“Let’s just keep watch on them,” Edeard told them. “When they go into a building, we close in. Remember to wait until the crime has been committed before arresting them.”

“Hey, never thought of that,” Macsen said.

Edeard let his farsight sweep through the buildings around the trio, trying to guess what they might be interested in. Hopeless task.

The suspects turned off Sonral Street into an alley so narrow that one person could barely fit. Edeard hesitated. They were heading towards his street, but it was a blind alley, blocked by a house wall twenty feet high. His farsight probed, revealing a series of underground storerooms beneath one of the jewelry shops on Sonral Street. There was a passage leading up to a thick metal door in the alley.

“At least they’re consistent,” he remarked. “That’s a jeweler’s shop on top.”

“On top of what?” Boyd asked.

“There’s some kind of passage leading off the alley,” Kanseen told him. “It leads downward somewhere. Edeard, can you actually sense what’s there?”

“A little bit,” he admitted reluctantly. “Just some kind of open chamber, I think.” For a moment he wished everyone had his ability; life would be a lot easier.

“So now what do we do?” Macsen asked. “We can’t rush them, not down that alley.”

“Wait at the end,” Dinlay said. “They can hardly escape.”

Edeard’s farsight was showing him a whole network of interconnecting passages and rooms running under the row of shops. The passages all had locked doors, but once the thieves were inside, there was a chance they could elude his squad within the little underground maze.

“The rest of you get into Sonral Street,” he ordered. “I’m going around the back to see if I can find another way down there.”

“You’re going in alone?” Kanseen asked. “Edeard, there’s three of them, and we know they carry blades.”

“I’m just going to make sure they don’t have an escape route, that’s all. Come on, move.”

He was faintly aware of his squadmates hurrying to the broad street beyond the alley. One of the thieves had bent down beside the small door, doing something to the first of its five locks. From what he could sense of the locks, Edeard knew he would not like to try to pick them open. He concentrated hard, pushing his farsight through the city’s fabric to map the buried labyrinth of rooms and passages. In truth, there were only three exits in addition to the one the trio currently was trying to break through.

Below that level, though, Edeard sensed the web of fissures that wove the city structures together. Several twisted their way up past the storerooms, branching into smaller clefts that laced the walls of the buildings above. He tracked back, finding a convoluted route that led to the street in which he was standing. His third hand reached out, probing the fabric of the wall at the back of a tapering alcove between two shops. Nothing; it was as solid as granite.

Please, his longtalk whispered to the mind of the slumbering city. Let me in.

Something intangible stirred beneath him. A flock of ruugulls took flight from the roofs above.

Here. His mind pressed into the rear of the alcove. Something pushed back. Colorful shapes rose into his thoughts, swirling much faster than the birds overhead. In his dazed state he thought they resembled numbers and mathematical symbols but much larger and more complex than any of the arithmetic Akeem had taught him. With these equations the universe surely could be explained. They danced like sprites, rearranging themselves into a new order before twirling away.

Edeard gasped, struggling to stand up as his legs shook weakly. His heart was pounding far harder than it had been from his earlier run through the streets. He felt the structure of the wall change. When he peered forward, it looked exactly the same as before, a dark purple surface with flecks of gray stretching all the way up to where the curving roofs intersected three stories above him. But it gave when his third hand touched it.

There were people on the street around him, strolling along. Edeard waited until a relatively clear moment and stepped into the little alcove. Nobody could see him now. His hand touched the section of wall at the back and slipped right through. The skin on his fingers tingled, as if he were immersing them in fine sand. He walked into the wall. It was a sensation his brain interpreted as a wave of dry water washing across him. Then he was inside. He opened his eyes to complete darkness. His farsight cast around and showed him that he was suspended in a vertical tube. Even without visual sight, Edeard instinctively looked down. Farsight confirmed that his feet were standing on nothing.

“Oh, Lady!”

He started to descend. It was as though a very powerful third hand were lowering him gently to the bottom of the fissure that snaked away horizontally under the buildings. Yet he was convinced it wasn’t a telekinetic hold. He could not sense anything like that; some other force was manipulating him. Oddly, his stomach felt as though he were plummeting even though he was moving relatively slowly.

His feet touched the ground. That was when whatever force had gripped him withdrew, leaving him free to sink into a crouch. When he touched the wall of the fissure, he felt a slick of water coating it. A rivulet was trickling over the toe of his boots; he could hear it gurgling softly.

“It’s a drain,” he said out loud, astonished that anything so fantastical could exist to serve such a mundane purpose.

Despite perfectly clear farsight, he patted around with his hands. The drain fissure was slightly too small for him to walk along it upright. Its side walls were about five feet apart. He took a breath, none too happy at the claustrophobic feeling niggling at the back of his mind, and started to move forward in a stoop.

The thieves had gotten through the locked door at the top of the passage, an impressive feat in such a short space of time. Two of them were descending the curving stairs to the door that sealed off the bottom while the third stood guard outside. Edeard moved faster, navigating several forks along the drain fissure. He observed the thieves manipulate the locks on the second door and go through. Then he was directly underneath the storeroom they were ransacking. The layout was distinct, the wooden racks laid out in parallel. Small boxes were piled on the shelves. A large iron box stood in one corner, with a very complicated locking mechanism. They were ignoring that.

Edeard looked up as his farsight pervaded the city’s substance above him, a solid mass of rocklike material five yards thick. He concentrated. Closed his eyes—stupid, but, well—and applied his mind. Again the equations rose from nowhere to pirouette breezily around his thoughts. He began to rise, slipping though the once-solid substance like some piece of cork bobbing to the surface of the sea. Once again his stomach was convinced he was falling to a degree that brought on a lot of queasiness. He had almost reached the floor when he realized the thieves would sense him the second he popped up. Quickly, he threw a concealment around himself. Then he was emerging into the storeroom with a weak orange light shining all around. The floor hardened beneath his boots.

“What was that?” a voice asked.

Edeard was standing behind the rack at the back of the storeroom, out of direct sight. He held his breath.

“Nothing. Fucking stop panicking, will you. There are only two doors, and the other one is locked. Now help me find the crap we came here for before someone senses us down here.”

Edeard slowly walked around the end of the rack. He could see the pair of them moving along a rack, taking boxes off the shelf and prizing them open with some kind of tool. A quick look inside, and the box would be tossed aside. Most of them seemed to contain little bottles. Dozens of them were clinking as they rolled about on the floor.

“Here we go,” the one in the hooded jacket announced. He’d just forced open a box full of tiny packets. One was opened to reveal a coil of metal thread. Edeard wasn’t sure in the storeroom’s low orange light, but it might be gold.

“I’ll check out the rest,” the other one said.

The one with the hooded jacked began stuffing the packets into an inside pocket.

Edeard dropped his concealment.

“What the fuck—” Both thieves swung around to face him.

“Hello again,” Edeard said. “Remember me?”

“Edeard!” Kanseen’s panicky longtalk reverberated in his skull. “Sweet Lady, where’ve you been? We’ve been going frantic. How did you get in there?”

“It’s the little shit from the market,” the thief in the hooded jacket spit. “I fucking knew that ge-eagle was on the prowl.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a long blade. At the same time his third hand tried to push into Edeard’s chest for a heartsqueeze.

Edeard laughed as he deflected the attack. Then his third hand slipped out and crushed the blade the thief was holding. The metal rippled, then warped into a slim bent spike. Edeard twisted the tip into a U shape. “You’re under arrest for theft and attempted assault on a constable.”

“Fuck!” the other one yelled as he raced for the door.

“One coming out,” Edeard’s longtalk told his squadmates.

“Are you all right?” Dinlay demanded.

“Never better.” He had not taken his eyes off the hooded thief. The man held up the ruined knife and gave it an admiring grin. “Tough guy, huh. Are you smart along with it? There’s enough precious metal in here to make everyone happy.”

“You want attempted bribery added to the charges?”

“Idiot.” The thief turned his back on Edeard and walked casually toward the doorway out to the passage.

“Stop right there,” Edeard ordered.

The thief’s third hand lifted one of the small bottles into the air behind him. Edeard frowned uncertainly. Another bottle rose, accelerating to crash into the first. Glass shattered.

A fireball spewed out, dazzling white in the gloomy storeroom. Edeard twisted away instinctively, his shield hardening. Flaming globules spattered against it.

“Edeard!” the squad longtalked in unison.

“I’m all right.” He was blinking his eyes furiously, trying to get rid of the long purple glare blotches. An acrid smell was growing strong, yet his farsight revealed just a few flickers of flame on the racks closest to the fireball. His third hand swatted them, snuffing the flames before they posed any danger. Then he noticed the black holes in the boxes scattered across the floor, as if flames had burned through them very quickly. The raw edges still were smoldering. When he looked closer, he saw they were coated in some kind of tar that was bubbling away. He shook his head in bewilderment.

“Got them,” Macsen announced victoriously. “Lady, that last one’s an arrogant bastard. You sure you’re okay, Edeard?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” He started to walk out of the storeroom. Some deep instinct made him tread carefully around the patches of hot liquid glistening on the floor. Thin wisps of vapor were layering the air close to the ceiling, producing a stench that made his eyes water. When he passed the bulky metal door, he trod on some of the packets containing metal thread. The thief had thrown them all away. Edeard picked one up, frowning.

Why did he do that?

Mystified he hurried up the passage and out into the alley where his squad was waiting with the subdued prisoners. Now that he had time to think about what he had done and what the squad had achieved, his elation was rising with the potency of a dawn sun.

The court was convened in Makkathran’s Parliament House, which dominated the Majate district. Technically it was one building, but its component structures had amalgamated into a village of huge halls, assembly rooms, auditoriums, and offices, with cloisters instead of streets. Right at the center was the elaborate Democracy Chamber where the Grand Council met to debate policy and laws. Wrapped protectively around that were tiers of offices for the Guild of Clerks, which worked to administer the city’s regulations and collect taxes. A whole wing contained well-appointed offices for all the district representatives where they could be lobbied by their constituents about every perceived and actual injustice. Somewhere inside—underground it was rumored—were the treasury vaults, containing mountains of gold and silver, where the coins were minted. The Chief Constable also was based in one of the five conical towers, along with a modest staff. For centuries, the outermost tower, closest to the City Gate, used to house the militia barracks, but they had long departed, the serving soldiers to several barracks within the city, while the general and senior officers had taken up residence in the Orchard Palace next door. The vacated barracks had been taken over eagerly by the ever-expanding Lawyer’s Guild.

Although it was democratically open to anyone, it was the interconnecting domes that ran alongside the Center Circle Canal with which the average Makkathran citizen was most likely to be familiar. They housed the courts of justice as well as the constabulary’s main holding cells. Edeard and the rest of the squad had been shown around by Master Solarin, who had explained the history of every corridor and room at inordinate and boring length. Part of their training was to attend trials so they could accustom themselves to the procedures and listen to the verbal sparring of the lawyers. Edeard had been looking forward to that part, but in all the trials they had watched, the lawyers had confined themselves to simple questions to those in the witness stand. There had been an obscure argument about interpreting a precedent established four hundred years earlier to settle a dispute between two fishmongers and their supplier about who got priority on the catch based on the length of the contract. Edeard barely understood the words they used, let alone followed the logic involved. The only criminal trial they’d seen had been one in which the constables had arrested a bunch of minor family sons during an altercation in a theater late one night. The young men had all been sheepish, never challenged the senior squad sergeant’s account, pleaded guilty to all charges, and accepted the fine without question.

As far as preparation and experience went, Edeard was beginning to realize how useless it had all been.

Two middle court judges and a Mayor’s Council judge had been appointed to preside over the case against the trio of thieves they had arrested. They sat together behind a raised wooden podium that ran along the back of the oval courtroom, clad in flowing scarlet-and-black robes, with fur-lined hoods hanging over their right shoulders. The Mayor’s Counsel also wore a golden chain, signifying his high status.

Arrayed in the dock on their left, the thieves stood with two court constables in dress uniform standing guard. They finally had given their names. Arminel was what the hooded leader called himself. He was no more than forty, with a drawn pale face and thick sandy hair that he wore long to cover large ears. At no time did he look worried; if anything, his expression indicated ennui. His accomplices were Omasis and Harri. Harri, still in his teens, was the one they had told to stand guard in the alley. He’d been charged only with complicity to steal. Arminel and Omasis both were charged with theft and aggravated trespass, while Arminel had to face the additional charge of assaulting a constable. The jewelry shop owner had swiftly identified the contents of the two bottles Arminel had smashed together as a highly volatile spirit-based cleaning fluid and acid. Edeard had shivered at the thought of what could have happened if his shield had not been strong enough to ward off the fireball. He had wanted Arminel to be charged with the attack on Kavine in the Silvarum market, but Master Vosbol, the lawyer Captain Ronark had retained to prosecute the case, had said no. It was too long ago for witnesses to be considered reliable.

“But I recognized him immediately,” Edeard had cried.

“You saw someone behaving suspiciously,” Master Vosbol had said. “You believed him to be the participant in the previous crime.”

“Kavine will identify him.”

“Kavine was stabbed, quite badly. The defense will argue that that makes him unreliable. Let’s just go with these charges, shall we.”

Edeard had sighed and shook his head.

It really should have served a warning about the methodology of Makkathran’s legal affairs. Instead, the first inkling that their case was not as watertight as they imagined came when the defendants all entered a plea of not guilty.

“They can’t be serious,” Edeard hissed as Master Cherix, the defense lawyer, stood before the judges and entered the plea. The squad was sitting along the rear wall, all in their dress uniforms, waiting to be called by the prosecution. Captain Ronark sat on one side of them, with Sergeant Chae on the other.

Almost all of the seats were empty. Edeard didn’t know if he was pleased about that. He wanted the city’s citizens to see that his squad had helped bring a small part of their troubles to justice, show them that the law had not deserted them.

Master Cherix raised a surprised eyebrow at Edeard’s exclamation and turned to look at the squad. Master Vosbol shot them a furious look. “Be silent,” his longtalk ordered.

It was, Master Cherix explained, a terrible misunderstanding. His clients were honest citizens going about their business when they perceived the blast in the alley. It had blown open a small door, and, full of the concern for human life, they had ventured into a storeroom filled with smoke and flames—at great personal risk—to make sure there were no injured people inside. At that point the constables had stumbled upon them and received a totally false impression.

One by one the three accused took the stand and swore under oath that they had been acting selflessly. As they did so, their unshielded minds radiated sincerity, along with a modicum of injured innocence that their good deed had been misinterpreted. Master Cherix shook his head in sympathy, woebegone that the constables had acted so wrongly. “A sign of the times,” he told the judges. “These constables are well-meaning young folk, rushed through their training by a city desperate to reach staffing targets for the sake of politics. But in truth they were far out of their depth on that sad day. They, too, need to make arrests to prove themselves to their notoriously harsh station captain. In such circumstances it is only understandable why they chose to interpret events in the way they did.”

Edeard met Arminel’s stare. He tried to kill me, and his lawyer’s making out it was all a misunderstanding? That we’re in the wrong. It was so outrageous, he almost laughed. Then Arminel’s expression twitched just for an instant. That condescending sneer burned itself into Edeard’s memory. He knew then that this was not the end, nowhere near.

After two hours of listening to the defendants, Edeard finally was called to the stand. About time, I can soon set this straight.

“Constable Edeard.” Cherix smiled warmly. He was nothing like Master Solarin but a young man dressed like the son of a trading family. “You’re not from the city, are you?”

“What’s that got to do with this?”

Master Cherix put on a pained expression and turned to the judges. “My lords?”

“Answer the questions directly,” the Mayor’s Counsel instructed.

“Sir.” Edeard reddened. “No. I was born in the Rulan province.”

“And you’ve been here for what? Half a year?”

“A little over that, yes.”

“So it would be fair to say that you’re not entirely familiar with the city.”

“I know my way around.”

“I was thinking more in terms of the way our citizens behave. So why don’t you tell me what you believe happened?”

Edeard launched into his rehearsed explanation: how Arminel tried to avoid the ge-eagle, the squad tracking them along Sonral Street, arranging themselves in an encircling formation while standing back and observing through farsight, sensing Arminel picking the locks.

“At which point we closed in, and I witnessed the accused stealing gold wire from the storeroom.”

“I’m curious about this aspect,” Master Cherix said. “You told your squad to wait in Sonral Street by the entrance to the alley. Yet you went down into the storeroom. But I thought you said Harri had been left ‘on guard duty’ in the alley. How did you get past him?”

“I was lucky. I found another entrance through the shop which backed onto the jeweler’s.”

Master Cherix nodded in admiration. “So it was hardly a secure storeroom, then? If you could just walk in.”

“It was difficult,” Edeard admitted, praying to the Lady to help him rein in his guilt. But this was not a lie, just a slight rearrangement of his true route into the storeroom. “I just managed to get there in time.”

“In time for what?”

“To see Arminel stealing the gold wire. He was doing that before he flung flaming acid at me.”

“Indeed. I’d like you to clarify another point, Constable. When you emerged after this alleged event to join up with your squad, did Arminel have any of this supposed ‘gold wire’ on him?”

“Well, no. He dumped it when I challenged him.”

“I see. And your squadmates can confirm that, can they?”

“They know … yes.”

“Yes what? Constable.”

“We caught them doing it. I saw him!”

“By your own statement, you were deep underground in the poorly illuminated storeroom at the time of the alleged theft. Which of your squadmates can farsight through fifteen yards of solid city fabric?”

“Kanseen. She knew I was there.”

“Thank you, Constable. Defense would like to call Constable Kanseen.”

Kanseen passed Edeard on her way to the stand. They both had meticulously blank expressions, but he could tell how worried she was. When he sat down next to Dinlay the others all smiled sympathetically. “Good job,” Chae whispered, but Edeard was not convinced.

“You have a farsight almost as good as your squad leader’s?” Master Cherix asked.

“We came out about equal in our tests.”

“So you could sense what went on in the storeroom from your position in Sonral Street?”

“Yes.”

Edeard winced. She sounded so uncertain.

“How much gold wire was in there?”

“I … er, I’m not sure.”

“An ounce? A ton?”

“A few boxes.”

“Constable Kanseen.” Master Cherix smiled winningly. “Was that a guess?”

“Not enough gold to be obvious to a casual farsight sweep.”

“I’ll let that go for the moment. Constable Edeard claims you perceived him in there.”

“I did,” she replied confidently. “I sensed him appear in the back. We’d been worried when we lost track of him.”

“You sensed his mind. There’s a big difference between a radiant source of thoughts and inert material, is there not?”

“Yes, of course.”

Master Cherix patted the jacket he wore under his black robe. “In one pocket I have a length of gold wire. In another pocket I have an equal length of steel wire. Which is which, Constable?”

Edeard concentrated his farsight on the lawyer. Sure enough, there was some kind of dense line of matter in each pocket, but there was no way to tell the nature of either one.

Kanseen looked straight ahead. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Yet there is only five feet of clear air between us. So can you really say with certainty you perceived my client picking up gold wire when he was on the other side of fifteen yards of solid mass?”

“No.”

“Thank you, Constable. No more questions.”

It came down to an argument between two lawyers. Edeard found himself grinding his teeth as it was presented as his word against Arminel’s.

“Acting suspiciously,” Master Vosbol ticked off on his fingers. “Gaining entry to a storeroom behind two locked doors. Seen by a constable of impeccable character stealing gold wire. Attacking that same constable. My lords, the evidence is overwhelming. They came to the storeroom with the express intent of theft, a theft which was valiantly thwarted by these fine constables at great personal danger to themselves.”

“Circumstantial evidence only,” Master Cherix pronounced. “Facts twisted by the prosecution to support a speculated sequence of events. A country boy alone in an underground city storeroom full of smoke and flame. Confused by the strange environment and regrettably unreliable, his claims unsupported by his own squadmates and friends. My clients do not deny being in the storeroom, responding to the fire as any responsible citizen would. The prosecution has offered no proof whatsoever that they ever touched the gold wire. I would draw my lords’ attention to the precedent of Makkathran versus Leaney; hearsay is inadmissible.”

“Objection,” Master Vosbol barked. “This is testimony by a city official, not hearsay.”

“Unsubstantiated testimony,” Master Cherix countered, “must be accepted as having equal weight to my clients’ account of events.”

The judges deliberated for eight minutes. “Insufficient evidence,” the Mayor’s Counsel announced. “Case dismissed.” He banged his gavel on the bench.

Edeard’s head dropped into his hands. He absolutely could not believe what he’d just heard. “Lady, no,” he gasped.

The defendants were cheering, slapping each other jubilantly. Edeard was disgusted to see Masters Vosbol and Cherix shake hands.

“It happens,” Captain Ronark said gravely. “You did a perfect job; nobody could do better. I’m proud of you. But this is the way it is in Makkathran these days.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dinlay and Macsen murmured sullenly.

Ronark flashed them all an anxious expression, debating with himself whether he should say more. “This will be useful to you,” he said. “I can imagine what you think of it right now, but next time you’ll know what to do, how to be extra careful in gathering evidence, and we’ll nail that little bastard good and proper.” He nodded at Chae and walked down to talk with Master Vosbol.

“Buy you all a drink,” Chae said. “I know how bad this hurts, believe me. I’ve had smart-ass lawyers get scum off on worse charges than this.”

“A double of something illegally strong,” Macsen said. The others nodded in grudging agreement. They looked at Edeard.

“Sure,” he said.

Arminel saluted him with two fingers to his forehead. His smile was gloating.

Edeard quashed his impulse to dive across the court and smash his fist into the man’s face. Instead he winked back. “Be seeing you,” he whispered.

The unisphere had never been a homogeneous system, nor was it designed in accordance with logical principles. That was quite ironic considering the purely digital medium it dealt with. Instead it had grown and expanded in irregular spurts to accommodate the commercial and civil demands placed on it by a proliferating interstellar civilization. By definition, the unisphere was nothing more than the interface protocols between all the planetary cyberspheres, and they were incredibly diverse. Almost every hardware technology the human race had developed was still in operation across the Greater Commonwealth worlds, from old-fashioned macroarrays running Restricted Intelligence (RI) programs, to semiorganic kubes, quantum wire blocks, smartneural webs, and photonic crystals, all the way up to ANA, which technically was just another routing junction. The interstellar linkages were equally varied, with the Central Commonwealth worlds still using their original zero-width wormholes, whereas the External worlds used a combination of zero-width and hyperspace modulation. Transdimensional channels were becoming more common, especially among the latest generation of External worlds. Starships also were able to link in provided that they were in range of a star system’s spacewatch network.

The massive gulf between technologies and capacities within the unisphere meant that the management software had swollen over the centuries to accommodate every new advance and application. With effectively infinite storage capacity, the upgrades, adapters, retrocryptors, and interpreters had accumulated like binary onion layers around each node. They had the ability to communicate with every other chunk of hardware to come online since the end of the twenty-first century, but with such a complex procedure dealing with every interface, the problem of security increased proportionally. It was relatively easy for a specialist e-head to incorporate siphoning and echoclone routines quietly amid centuries’ worth of augmentation files. The problem was one that all the users got around by using their own encryption.

However, to decrypt a secure message, the receiver had to be in possession of the appropriate key. Ultrasecure keys never were sent via the unisphere; they were exchanged physically in advance, a common method for financial transactions. A less secure method was for a user’s u-shadow to dispatch a key by using one route and then call on another. Given the phenomenal number of randomly designated routes available within the unisphere, most of the people who even considered it regarded that as sufficient. It would, after all, require a colossal amount of computing power to monitor every route established to a specific address code for a key and then follow up by intercepting the message.

Of course, that assumption had been made in the early centuries, prior to ANA. For any individual downloaded into ANA, access to that quantity of processing capacity was an everyday occurrence. The Advancer Faction routinely ran a scan of all messages to ANA: Governance to check if any of its own activities had been noticed and reported.

When the faction’s monitor routine detected a starship TD connection established to Wohlen’s spacewatch network downloading a key fragment to ANA: Governance’s security division, an alert was flagged. Over the next two point three seconds, the remaining seven key fragments arrived via routes from seven different planets, and the monitor acknowledged that someone was trying to establish a very secure link. There was nothing too out of the ordinary in that; it was the security division, after all. However, all eight planets were within twenty-five light-years of the Advancer Faction’s secret manufacturing station. That bumped the alert up to grade one.

Three seconds later, Ilanthe’s elevated mentality was observing the secure call itself, placed through the ninth planet, Loznica, which was seventeen light-years from the station.

“Yes, Troblum?” ANA: Governance asked.

“I need to see someone. Someone special.”

“I will be happy to facilitate any request in relation to Commonwealth security. Could you please be more specific?”

“I work for the Advancer Faction. Make that worked. I have information, very important information, concerning their activities.”

“I will be happy to receive your data.”

“No. I don’t trust you. Not anymore. Parts of you are bad. I don’t know how far the contamination has spread.”

“I can assure you that ANA: Governance retains its integrity both in structural essence and morally.”

“Like you’d say different. I can’t even be sure if I’m talking to ANA: Governance.”

“Skepticism is healthy providing it does not escalate into paranoia. So given you don’t trust me, what can I do for you?”

“I’m entitled to be paranoid after what I’ve seen.”

“What have you seen?”

“Not you. I’ll tell Paula Myo. She’s the only person left that I trust. Route this call to her.”

“I will ask if she will be willing to listen to you.”

Fifteen seconds later, Paula Myo came online. “What do you want?” she asked.

“There’s something you need to know. Something you’ll understand.”

“Then tell me.”

“I need to be certain it’s you. Where are you?”

“In space.”

“Can you get to Sholapur?”

“Why would I want to?”

“I’ll tell you everything I know about their plans for fusion, all the hardware they’ve built, all the people involved. All that, if you’ll just listen to me. You have to listen; you’re the only person left who’ll deal with it.”

“With what?”

“Come to Sholapur.”

“Very well. I can be there in five days.”

“Don’t stealth your starship. I’ll contact you.”

The connection ended.

As ANA and its abilities were to the unisphere, so there were hierarchal levels within ANA. Discrete levels of ability surreptitiously established by a few of the humans who had founded ANA, abilities only they could utilize. They could not corrupt ANA: Governance or use the navy warships for their own ends. That magnitude of intervention would be easily detectable. But there was a back door into several of ANA’s communication sections, allowing them to watch the watchers without the kind of effort the Advancers had to make to get the same intelligence. And as they had gotten there first, they also had observed the Advancers and other factions spread their monitors into the unisphere nodes as their campaigns and reach grew. They knew which messages the Advancers intercepted.

“Ilanthe is going to go apeshit over that kind of betrayal,” Gore said.

“At least we know Troblum is still alive,” Nelson replied.

“Yeah, for the next five seconds.”

“Until he gets to Sholapur at the very least. And never ever underestimate Paula.”

“I don’t. If anyone can collect him in one piece, she can.”

“So we might just be able to sit back and relax if Paula does bring back information on what the Advancers are up to. Hardware, Troblum said. That has to be the planet-shifting FTL engine.”

“Maybe so,” Gore said. “But he was offering that as a bribe to make sure Paula listened to something else, something big and scary enough to get him really worried. Now, what the fuck could that be?”

Marius sprinted down the corridor. It was not something the universe got to see very often. With his Higher field functions reinforcing his body, the speed was phenomenal. Malmetal doors had to roll aside very quickly or face complete disintegration. His dark toga suit flapped about in the slipstream, for once ruining the eerie gliding effect he always portrayed. Marius did not care about appearance right now. He was furious.

Ilanthe’s brief call had been very unsettling. He’d never failed her before. The implications were terrible, as she had managed to explain in remarkably few words. He only wished he had time to make Troblum suffer for his crime.

He streaked through the three-way junction that put him in sector 7-B-5. Some idiot technician was walking down the middle of the corridor, going back to her suite after a long shift. Marius charged past her, clipping her arm, which broke instantly from the impact. She was spun around, slamming into the wall. She screamed as she crumpled to the floor.

The door to Troblum’s suite was dead ahead, locked as of two minutes ago with Marius’s own nine-level certificate to prevent the little shit from leaving. The suite’s internal sensors showed Troblum sitting at a table slurping his way disgustingly through a late-night “snack.”

Marius began to slow as his u-shadow unlocked the door. It expanded as he arrived, and he coasted through. Troblum’s head lifted, crumbs of a burger dropping from the corner of his mouth. Despite bulging cheeks, he still managed a startled expression.

A disrupter pulse slammed into him, producing a ghost-green phosphorescent flare in the suite’s air. Marius followed it up immediately with a jelly gun shot. He would obliterate the memorycell in a few seconds; that would leave just Troblum’s secure store back on Arevalo.

Instead of disintegrating into a collapsing globule of gore, Troblum simply popped like a soap bubble. A rivulet of metal dust spewed out from the wall behind the table where the jelly gun shot had hit. Marius froze in shock, his field scan functions sweeping the room. It had not been Troblum. No biological matter was in the room. His eyes found a half-melted electronic module on the seat, ruined by the disrupter blast.

A solido projector.

Marius was perfectly still as he stared at it.

“What happened?” Neskia asked as she strode into the suite. Her long neck curved so that her head could see around Marius.

“It would appear Troblum isn’t quite the fat fool I’d taken him for.”

“We’ll find him. It won’t take long. This station isn’t that big.”

Marius whipped around, the wide irises in his green eyes narrowing to minute intimidating slits. “Where’s his ship?” he demanded.

“Sitting in the airlock,” she replied calmly. “Nobody enters or leaves without my authorization.”

“It better be,” Marius spit.

“Every centimeter of this station is covered by some sensor or other. We’ll find him.”

Marius’s u-shadow ordered the smartcore to show him the airlock. The Mellanie’s Redemption was sitting passively at the center of the large white chamber. Visually it was there; the airlock radar produced a return from the hull. The umbilical management programs reported a steady drain of housekeeping power through the cables plugged into its base. He queried the ship’s smartcore. There was no response.

Marius and Neskia stared at each other. “Shit!”

Four minutes later they walked into the airlock. Marius glowered at the long cone-shaped ship with its stupid curving tail fins. His field scan swept out. It was an illusion produced by a small module on the airlock floor. He smashed a disrupter pulse into the solido projector, and the starship image shivered, shrinking down to a beautiful, naked young girl with blond hair that hung halfway down her back. “Oh, Howard,” she moaned sensually, running her hands up her body. “Do that again.”

Marius let out an incoherent cry and shot the projector again. It burst into smoldering fragments, and the girl vanished.

“How in Ozzie’s name did he do that?” Neskia said. There was a hint of admiration in her voice. “He must have flown right past the defense cruisers as well. They never even saw him.”

Marius took a moment to compose himself. “Troblum helped design and build the defense cruisers. Either he infiltrated their smartcores back then or he knows a method of circumventing their sensor systems.”

“He compromised the station smartcore, too. It should never have let Mellanie’s Redemption out.”

“Indeed,” Marius said. “You will find the corruption and purge it. This operation must not suffer any further compromise.”

“It was not me who compromised this station,” she said with equal chill. “You brought him here.”

“You had twenty years to discover the bugs he planted. That you failed is unforgivable.”

“Don’t try to play the blame game with me. This is your foul-up, and I will make that very clear to Ilanthe.”

Marius turned on a heel and walked back to the airlock chamber’s entrance. His dark toga suit adjusted itself around him, once more giving off a narrow black shimmer that concealed his feet. He glided with serpentine poise down the corridor toward the airlock chamber that contained his own starship.

His u-shadow opened a secure link to the Cat’s ship.

“It’s so nice to be popular again,” she said.

“We have a problem. I want you to find Troblum. Eliminate that shit from this universe. In fact, I want him erased from all of history.”

“That sounds personal, Marius, dear. Always a bad thing. Messes with your judgment.”

“He’s heading for Sholapur. In five days’ time he will meet with an ANA representative there and explain what we have been doing. His ship has some kind of advanced stealth ability we didn’t know about.”

“Gave you the slip, huh?”

“I’m sure you’ll be more capable of rectifying our mistake.”

“What do you want me to do about Aaron? He’s still down on the planet’s surface.”

“Is there any sign of Inigo?”

“Darling, the sensors can barely make out continents. I’ve no idea what’s going on down there.”

“Do as you see fit.”

“I thought this was all critical to your plans.”

“If Troblum exposes us to ANA, there will be no plans; there probably won’t be an Advancer Faction anymore.”

“The strong always survive. That’s evolution.”

“Paula Myo is the representative ANA is sending to collect Troblum.”

“Oh, Marius, you’re too kind to me. Really.”

It should have been tempting. He was alone in a small starship with three amazingly fit men who probably would have been honored to got to bed with him. Oscar had been delighted when Tomansio had introduced his team. Liatris McPeierl was his lieutenant, a lot quieter than Tomansio, with a broad mouth that could flash a smile that was wickedly attractive. He would handle the technical aspects of the mission, Tomansio had said, including their armaments. Gazing at the pile of big cases on the regrav sled that followed Liatris about, Oscar had his first moment of doubt; he did not want to resort to violence, though he was realistic enough to know that it wasn’t his decision. Cheriton McOnna had been brought in to help because of his experience with the gaiafield; there was nothing about confluence nest operations that he didn’t know, Tomansio had claimed. Oscar was slightly surprised by Cheriton’s characteristics. They were almost Higher: He had altered his ears to simple circle craters, his nose was wide and flat, and his eyes were sparkling purple globes like multifaceted insect lenses. His bald skull had two low ridges reaching back from his eyebrows over his cranium to merge together at the nape of his neck.

“Multimacrocellular enrichment,” he explained. “And a hell of a lot of customized gaiamotes.” To prove it, he spun out a vision of some concert. For a moment Oscar was transported to a natural amphitheater, lost in a sea of people under a wild starry sky. On the stage far away, a pianist performed by himself, his soulful tune making Oscar sway in sympathy.

“Wow.” Oscar blinked, taking a half step back as the vision cleared. He’d almost been about to sing along; the song was familiar somehow—just not quite right.

“I composed it in your honor,” Cheriton said. “I remember you told Wilson Kime you liked old movies.”

Now Oscar remembered. “That’s right. ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow,’ yeah?” He took care to reduce his gaiamotes’ reception level. Cheriton had produced a very strong emission. It made Oscar wonder if the gaiafield actually could be used in a harmful way.

“Yes.”

The last member of the team was Beckia McKratz, whose gaiafield giveaway made it very clear that she would like to bed him. She was equal to Anja in the beauty stakes, minus all the neurotic hang-ups. Oscar wasn’t interested, not even on that first morning when he had stumbled out of his tiny sleep cabin to find all four of them in the main lounge stripped to the waist and performing some strenuous ni-tng exercise. They moved in perfect synchronization, arms and legs rising gracefully to stick out in odd directions, limbs flexing, eyes closed, breathing deeply. From their gaiafield emanations, their minds seemed to be hibernating.

Aliens teleported into human bodies, carefully examining what they could do.

It was all very different from Oscar’s wake-up routine, which normally involved a lot of coffee and accessing the most trashy unisphere gossip shows he could find. That was the whole nonattraction problem. All that devotion to perfection and strength did not seem to leave them much time to be actually human. It was a big turnoff.

So he crept around the edge of the lounge to the culinary unit, snagged a large cup of coffee and a plate of buttered croissants, and sat quietly in a corner munching away as he watched the strange slow-motion ballet.

They came to rest position and took one last breath in unison before opening their eyes and smiling.

“Good morning, Oscar,” Tomansio said.

Oscar slurped down some more coffee. That morning routine also included no conversation until his third cup. The culinary unit was suddenly busy churning out plates with large portions of bacon and eggs with toast.

“Something wrong?” Liatris asked.

Oscar realized he was staring at the man as he ate. “Sorry. I assumed you’d all be vegetarians.”

They all exchanged an amused glance. “Why?”

“When we were flying the Carbon Goose across Half Way, I remember the Cat kicking up a big fuss about the onboard food. She refused to eat anything produced and processed on a Big15 planet.” His companions’ amusement evaporated. To Oscar it was as though he had been transformed into some kind of guru, steeped in wisdom.

“You did talk to her, then?” Beckia asked.

“Not much. It was almost as if she was bored with us. And I still don’t get why you idolize her the way you do.”

“We’re realistic about her,” Cheriton said. “But she accomplished so much.”

“She killed a lot of people.”

“As did you, Oscar,” Tomansio chided.

“Not deliberately. Not for enjoyment.”

“The whole Starflyer War happened because humanity was weak. Our strength had been sapped away by centuries of liberalism. Not anymore. The External worlds have the self-belief to strike out for themselves against the Central worlds. That’s thanks to Far Away’s leadership by example. And the Knights Guardian are the political force behind Far Away. Politicians don’t ignore strength anymore. It is celebrated on hundreds of worlds in a myriad of forms.”

That was the trouble with history, Oscar thought: Once the distance had grown long enough, any event could be seen favorably. The true horror faded with time, and ignorance replaced it. “I lived through those times. The Commonwealth was strong enough to prevail. Without the strength we showed then, you wouldn’t be alive today to complain about us and debate what might have been.”

“We don’t want to offend you, Oscar.”

Oscar downed the last of his coffee and told the culinary unit to produce more. “So sensibilities aren’t a weakness, then?”

Liatris laughed. “No. Respect and civility are high points of civilization. As much as personal independence and kindness. Strength comes in many guises, including laying down your life to give the human race its chance to survive. If the Knights Guardians have one regret, it is that your name is not as famous and revered as the others from your era.”

“Holy crap,” Oscar muttered, and collected his coffee. He knew his face was red. My era! “All right,” he said as he sank back onto the chair that the lounge extruded for him. “I can see we’re going to have fun times debating history and politics for the rest of the mission. In the meantime, we do have a very clear objective. My plan is quite a simple one, and I’d like some input from you as we shake it down into something workable. You guys are the experts in this field and this era. So for what it’s worth, there are several ANA factions extremely keen to find this poor old Second Dreamer, not to mention Living Dream, which has a very clear-cut agenda for him. Between them they have colossal resources which we can’t hope to equal, so what I propose is that we jump on their bandwagon and let them do the hard work. We should position ourselves to snatch him as soon as they locate him.”

“I like it,” Tomansio said. “The simpler it is, the better.”

“Which just leaves us with mere details,” Oscar said. “Everyone seems to think the Second Dreamer is on Viotia. We’ll be there in another seven hours.”

“Impressive flight time,” Cheriton said drily. “I’ve never been in an ultradrive ship before.”

Oscar ignored the jibe. Tomansio had never asked who was employing Oscar, but the ship was a huge giveaway. “Tomansio, how do we go about infiltrating the Living Dream operation there?”

“Direct insertion. We’ll hack their smartcore’s personnel files and assign Cheriton to the search operation. He’s savvy enough to pass as a dream master, right?”

“No problem,” Cheriton said. He sighed. “Reprofiling for me, then.” He ran a hand along one of his skull ridges.

“I’ll make you look almost human,” Beckia assured him.

Cheriton blew her a kiss. “Living Dream has been altering confluence nests all across the General Commonwealth to try and get a fix on his location,” he said. “It must be costing them a fortune, which is a good indicator of how desperate they are. It’s not a terribly accurate method, but once they narrow it down to a single nest, they’ll know the district at least.”

“How does that help?” Beckia asked. “A nest’s gaiafield can cover a big area. If it’s in a city, it can include millions.”

“If it were me, I’d surround the area with specialist nests and dream masters and try and triangulate the dream’s origin.”

“So we can be in the general area just like them,” Oscar said. “Then it’s all a matter of speed.”

“The factions will be running similar snatch operations,” Tomansio said. “We’ll be up against their agents as well as Living Dream.”

Oscar picked up on how enthused the Knights Guardian were by that prospect. “The faction agents will have biononic weapon enrichments, won’t they?”

“I hope so,” Tomansio said.

“You can match that?” Oscar asked nervously.

“Only one way to find out.”

It was a gentle valley carpeted by long dark grass that rippled in giant waves as the breeze from the mountains gusted down. There was a house nestled in a shallow dip in the ground, a lovely old place whose walls were all crumbling stone quarried out of the nearby hills. An overhanging thatch roof gave it a delightful unity with nature. Its interior was a technology completely at odds with its outward appearance, with replicators providing him with any physical requirement. T-sphere interstices provided his family with an interesting internal topology and any extra space they might want.

He stood facing it, holding his bamboo staff vertically in front of him, torso bare to the air and legs clad in simple black cotton dirukku pants. He was shutting down biononic field functions; attuning his perception to sight, sound, and sensation alone, feeling his surroundings. Nesting cobra: the foundation of self. He moved into sharp eagle and then twisted fast, assuming jumping cheetah. A breath. Opponent moving behind. Bring the bamboo down and sweep: the tiger’s claw. Spin jump as a coiled dragon. One arm bent into Spartan shield. Lunge: striking angel. Drop the staff and pull both curving daggers from their sheaths. Bend at the knees into woken phoenix.

A vibration in the air. Heavy feet crushing tender stalks of grass. He raised his head to see a line of black armored figures marching toward him. Long flames billowed from vents in their helmets as they roared their battle call. His breathing quickened as he tightened his grip on the daggers. The smell of charred meat rolled across the grassland. Aaron gagged on the terrible stench. Coughing violently, he sat up on the couch in the ground crawler’s cabin.

“Shit,” he sputtered, then coughed again, fighting for breath and doubling up. Exovision medical displays showed him his biononics assuming command of his lungs and airway, overriding his body’s struggling autonomic functions. He wheezed down a long breath and shook his head as the artificial organelles stabilized him.

Corrie-Lyn was gazing at him from her couch on the other side of the cabin. She had drawn her knees up under her chin and had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. For some reason she made him feel guilty. “What?” he snapped, all caffeine-deprived bad temper.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Those warriors represent being trapped, I think. But they came to you outside your home. You were unable to escape what you are, what you had grown into.”

“Oh, give me a break,” he growled, and tried to swing his feet off the couch. His blanket was wrapped around his legs. He pulled it off in an angry jerk.

Corrie-Lyn responded with a hurt scowl. “They could also be a representation of paranoia,” she said with brittle dignity.

“Fuck off.” He told the culinary unit to brew some herbal tea. To purge the soul. “Look,” he said with a sigh. “Someone has seriously screwed with my brain. I’m bound to have nightmares. Just leave it, okay.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I am what I am. And I like it.”

“But you don’t know who you are.”

“I told you: Drop this.” He settled into one of the two forward seats and stared out of the thick windscreen slit. The ground crawler was lumbering forward, rocking about as if they were riding an ocean swell. Outside, the weather had not changed for the whole trip: a thin drizzle of ice particles blown along at high speed. High overhead, the dark underbelly of the cloud blanket seethed relentlessly, flickering with sheet lightning. They were traversing a drab landscape where flood streams had gouged out deep sharp gullies. Broad headlight beams slithered over the dunes of filthy snow that migrated across the permafrost. Occasionally the surface of iron-hard soil was distended by some ruins or stumps. Otherwise there was nothing to break the monotony.

Corrie-Lyn climbed off the couch without a word and went back to the little washroom compartment at the rear of the oblong cabin. She managed to slam the worn aluminum door.

Aaron rubbed his face, dismayed by how he had handled the situation. Something in his dreams was eating away at his composure. He hated to think that she was right, that his subconscious somehow had squirreled away a few precious true memories. The personality he had now was simple and straightforward, uncluttered by extraneous attachments or sentimentality. He didn’t want to lose that, not ever.

By way of apology, he started entering a whole load of instructions into the culinary unit. Thirty minutes later, when Corrie-Lyn emerged, her breakfast was waiting for her on a small table. She pouted at it.

“The crawler’s net reckons we’re about ninety minutes from the camp,” he said. “I thought you’d want to fortify yourself before we reached them.”

Corrie-Lyn was silent for a moment, then nodded in acknowledgment at the peace offering and sat at the table. “Has anyone been in contact?”

“From the camp? No.” They’d talked to someone called Ericilla the previous night, telling her their estimated arrival time. She had seemed interested, though she had laughed at the idea of any of her colleagues being an abandoned lover. “If you knew any of my teammates you’d know you’re wasting your time. Romantic they’re not.”

“We’re still connected to the beacon network,” Aaron said, sipping another herbal tea. “Nobody is owning up yet.”

“What do we do if he’s not there?”

Aaron resisted the impulse to look her up and down again. When she came out of the washroom, she’d changed into a pair of black trousers and a light green sweater with a V-neck. Her hair was washed and springy. No cosmetic scales were on her face, but her complexion glowed. Clearly she was ready for her chance to reignite some of the old passion should he be there. She had kept her gaiamotes closed fairly tight since leaving Kajaani, but the occasional lapse had allowed Aaron to sense a lot of anticipation fermenting in her mind.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Time isn’t in our favor.”

“And if he is there? What if he doesn’t want to be hauled back to Ellezelin?”

Just for an instant something stirred Aaron’s mind: certainty. He did know what was going to happen afterward. The knowledge was all there waiting for him, ready for the moment. “I’ll just tell him what I have to. After that, it’ll be up to him.”

Corrie-Lyn gave him a mildly doubtful stare before tucking in to her first bacon sandwich.

Camp, Aaron decided, was a rather grand description for the place where the team working in the Olhava province had set themselves up. A couple of ground crawlers were parked next to each other in the lee of some rugged foothills. Malmetal shelters had expanded out of their rear sections to provide the team with larger accommodation. But that was all.

Aaron parked a few meters away, and they pulled on their bulky surface suits. Once his bubble helmet had sealed, Aaron went into the tiny airlock and waited for the outside door to slide aside. He was hit immediately by the wind. Ice fragments swirled around him. He walked carefully down the ramp, holding the handrail tight. The wind was squally, but he could stand upright. There were enhancer systems built into the suit for when the storms really hit. The suit’s main purpose was to protect him from the radiation.

Although there wasn’t too much physical effort involved, he wished he had nudged their ground crawler closer to those of the team. It took nearly three minutes to cover the small gap and clamber into a decontamination airlock on the side of one of the shelters. Corrie-Lyn was grunting and cursing her way along behind him.

Ericilla, a short woman with a fringe of brown hair flecked with gray, was waiting for them in the closet-size suit room. She smirked as Corrie-Lyn wriggled out of her surface suit, licking her lips in merriment. “No man is worth this,” she announced.

“He is,” Corrie-Lyn assured her.

Aaron already had extended his field scan function, probing the whole camp. He had detected four people, including Ericilla. None of them was Higher.

Ericilla beckoned. “Come and meet the boys.”

Vilitar and Cytus were waiting for them, standing in the middle of the shelter’s cluttered lounge like an army of two on detention parade. Nerina, Vilitar’s husband, gave Corrie-Lyn a wary look.

“Oh, shit,” Corrie-Lyn said despondently.

Nerina poked Vilitar in the chest. “Well, that lets you off.”

The two men relaxed, grinning sheepishly. Aaron sensed the tension drain away. Suddenly everyone was smiling and happy to see them.

“I thought there were five in your team,” Aaron said.

“Earl is down in the dig,” Ericilla said. “The sensorbots picked up a promising signal last night. He said that was more important than, well …” The way she left it hanging told them she was on Earl’s side.

“I’d like to see him, please,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“Why not?” Ericilla said. “You’ve come this far.”

It was another trip outside. The entrance to the dig was on the other side of the shelters, a simple metal cube housing a small fusion generator and several power cells. An angled force field protected it from Hanko’s venomous elements. There was a decontamination airlock to keep the radioactive air out so that the team’s equipment could work without suffering contamination and degradation. Big filter units filled the rest of the entrance kube, maintaining the clean atmosphere. The temperature inside was still cold enough to keep the permafrost frozen. Aaron and Corrie-Lyn kept their helmets on.

Excavationbots had dug a passage down at forty-five degrees, hacking crude steps into the rocky ground. Thick blue air hoses were strung along the roof, clustered around a half-meter extraction tube that buzzed as it propelled grains of frozen mud along to be dumped on a pile half a kilometer away. Polyphoto strips hanging off the cables cast a slightly greenish glow. Aaron trod carefully as they went down. The solid ground around him blocked any detailed field scan.

The bottom of the crude stairs must have been seven meters below ground level. Ericilla explained that they’d cut into a lake bed that had filled with sediment during the postattack monsoons. There were several people from the surrounding area who had never made it to Anagaska.

The passage opened out into a chamber ten meters wide and three high, supported by force fields. Discarded arm-length bots were strewn over the floor with power cables snaking around them. A couple of hologram projectors filled it with a pervasive sparkly monochrome light. Ice crystals glinted in the sediment contained behind the force field.

There was an opening on the far side. Aaron’s field scan showed him another cavern with a great deal of electronic activity inside. Someone was in there. Someone who could shield his body from the scan.

“Holy Ozzie,” Aaron breathed.

Corrie-Lyn gave him a curious look and strode into the second chamber. It was larger than the first. A third of its wall surface was covered with excavatorbots that looked like a mass of giant maggots slowly wiggling their way forward into the gelid sediment. A huge lacework of tiny pipes emerging from their tails led back to the start of the extraction tube. Silver sensor discs floated through the air, bobbing about to take readings. Silhouetted by the retinue of cybernetic activity was a lone figure wearing a dark green surface suit. Corrie-Lyn took a couple of hesitant steps forward.

The man turned, lifting off his bubble helmet. His face had a Latin shading rather than Inigo’s northern European pallor, and the hair was dark brown rather than ginger. But apart from that, the features had not been altered much. Aaron thought it a particularly inferior disguise, as if he were wearing makeup and a bad wig.

“Inigo!” Corrie-Lyn whispered.

“Of all the Restoration projects on all the dead worlds in the galaxy, you had to walk into mine.”

Corrie-Lyn sank to her knees, sobbing helplessly.

“Hey, girl,” Inigo said sympathetically. He knelt down beside her and flipped the outer seals on her helmet.

“Where’ve you been, you bastard!” she screamed. Her fist smacked into his chest. “Why did you leave me? Why did you leave us?”

He wiped some of the tears from her cheeks, then leaned forward and kissed her. Corrie-Lyn almost fought against it; then she suddenly was wrapping her arms around him, kissing furiously. The fabric of their suits made scratching noises as they rubbed together.

Aaron waited a diplomatic minute, then unsealed his own helmet. The air was bitingly cold and held the strangest smell of rancid mint. His breath emerged in gray streamers. “You’re a hard man to find.”

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn broke apart.

“Don’t listen to him,” Corrie-Lyn said urgently. “Whatever he wants, refuse. He’s insane. He’s killed hundreds of people to find you.”

“Slight exaggeration,” Aaron said. “No more than twenty, surely.”

Inigo’s steel-gray eyes narrowed. “I can sense what you are. Who do you represent?”

“Ah.” Aaron gave a weak smile. “I’m not sure.” But we’re about to find out. He could feel the knowledge stirring in his mind again. He was about to know what to do next.

“I won’t go back,” Inigo said simply.

“What happened?” Corrie-Lyn pleaded.

Aaron’s u-shadow reported that a call was coming in from Director Ansan Purillar. It had been transferred across the hundreds of desolate kilometers from Kajaani by the small sturdy beacons to enter the camp, where it finally had trickled down into the excavation through a single strand of fiber-optic cable.

“Yes, Director?” Aaron said.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn gave each other a puzzled glance, then looked at Aaron.

“Do you have some colleagues following you?” Ansan Purillar asked.

“No.”

“Well, there’s a ship coming through the atmosphere above us, and it won’t respond to any of our signals.”

Aaron felt his blood chill. His combat routines came online as he instinctively shielded himself with the strongest force field his biononics could produce. “Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out of the base. Everyone out. Now!”

“I think you’d better explain exactly what is going on.”

“Shit!” His u-shadow used the tenuous link to the base to establish a tiny channel to the Artful Dodger’s smartcore. “Tell them,” he yelled at Corrie-Lyn.

She flinched. “Director, please leave. We haven’t been honest with you.” She turned to Inigo. “Please?” she hissed.

He gave a reluctant sigh. “Ansan, this is Earl. Do as Aaron says. Get as many as you can into the starship. Everyone else will have to use the ground cruisers.”

“But—”

The Artful Dodger’s smartcore scanned the sky above Kajaani. Its sweep was hampered considerably by the protective force field over the base, but it showed Aaron a small mass thirty kilometers high, holding its position above the thick outer cloud blanket. “Come and get us,” he told the smartcore. “Fast.” His exovision showed him the starship powering up. Flight systems took barely a second to come online. Its force field hardened. Directly overhead, an enormously powerful gamma-ray laser struck the base’s force field. A scarlet corona flared around the puncture point, and the beam sliced into the generator building.

Complete force field failure was an emergency situation that had been incorporated into the base’s design. Secondary force fields snapped on over the cottages and science blocks almost in time to protect them from the first awesome pressure surge. Several sheets of ice crystals hammered against the walls, drilling holes in the grass. Staff members who were caught outside screamed and flung themselves down as the impacts battered them. It was over in seconds as the retrapped air stilled. When they looked up, they could see the parkland being scoured of grass and bushes by the victorious wind. Their starship had been cut in two by the gamma-laser strike; uneven sections lay twisted on the pad as the cold storm buffeted it about.

Beside it, the Artful Dodger rose into the maelstrom of radioactive destruction that cascaded across the base the instant the main force field vanished. Sensors showed it a pinprick of dazzling white light searing its way downward, accelerating at fifty gees. The ship’s smartcore blasted away at the weapon with neutron lasers and quantum distortion pulses. Nothing happened. The smartcore started to change course, but it wasn’t fast enough. The lightpoint struck the Artful Dodger amidships, unaffected by the force field. Enormous tidal forces tore at the ship’s structure, destroying its integrity. Even spars reinforced by bonding fields were ripped out of alignment. Ordinary components were mangled beyond recognition. The entire hull buckled and imploded to a third of its original size. Then the Hawking m-sink punched through the other side of the ship and streaked onward into the ground. Its intense spark of light vanished. The surrounding ground heaved as if Kajaani had been hit by a massive earthquake, annihilating the remaining buildings and structures. All the secondary force fields died, leaving the collapsing cottages and science blocks exposed to the planet’s malignant atmosphere.

The wreckage of the Artful Dodger tumbled out of the hurricane to smash into the ruins of the base.

Aaron’s contact with the starship was lost as soon as the Hawking m-sink had penetrated the hull, when every microcircuit and kube was physically distorted and ruptured.

A couple of Kajaani’s sensors had caught the last moments of the star that had bolted out of the churning naked sky. Its speed was such that human eyes registered it as a single line of light, like a perfectly straight lightning bolt. Radiation monitor records showed a swift peak that went off the scale.

“What the hell just happened?” Corrie-Lyn demanded.

Aaron was too stunned to reply immediately. His u-shadow confirmed that the beacon relay now ended two kilometers short of the base’s perimeter.

“They fired on the base,” Inigo said quietly. “Lady, they were completely unarmed.” He glared at Aaron. “Was that one of the factions?”

“Could be. It might even have been the Cleric Conservator making sure of his tenure.”

“There’s a place in the depths of Honious reserved for your kind. I hope you reach it quickly.”

“Where?” Aaron asked.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn gave him an identical snort of disgust.

“We’d better get back up to the shelter,” Inigo said. “I expect they’ll want to get to Kajaani right away. We are one of the closest camps.”

As soon as they came through the cramped suit room, Ericilla pointed an accusing finger at Aaron. “That was you,” she yelled in fury. “You’re responsible. You told them to get clear. You knew who that was. You brought them here.”

“I didn’t bring them here. Those people were going to catch up with us eventually. The location was … unfortunate.”

“Un-fucking-fortunate?” Vilitar spit. “There were nearly two hundred people there. We don’t know how many of them are still alive, but even if some of them survived the attack, they’ll be dying from the radiation. My friends. Slaughtered.”

“They’ll be re-lifed,” Aaron said impassively.

“You bastard,” Cytus stepped forward, his fist raised.

“Enough,” Inigo said. “This won’t help.”

Cytus paused for a moment, then turned away, his face contorted with disgust and anger.

“You knew, Earl,” Nerina said. “You warned Ansan as well. What the hell is going on? Do you know these people?”

“I’m the one they’re looking for. I didn’t know about the attack.”

The rest of the team started at one another in mute bewilderment.

“We’re going to Kajaani,” Ericilla said. “We can help recover the bodies before the winds blow them too far.”

“How long before your organization sends another ship?” Aaron asked.

“Like you care!”

“How long? Please.”

“Too long,” Nerina said. “Hanko isn’t part of the unisphere. We can’t just yell for help. Our only link to the Commonwealth was the hyperspace link in the starship, which was connected to our headquarters back on Anagaska. Without that we’re completely cut off. Anagaska will assume there was some kind of equipment failure; then, after we haven’t repaired it in a week, they’ll probably investigate. If I remember right, we’re due a scheduled flight in two weeks, anyway. They’ll probably wait until then. Budget considerations.” She snapped it out with contempt.

“By which time radiation poisoning will have killed everyone exposed to the atmosphere,” Vilitar said. “We don’t have enough medical facilities to help them all. Congratulations.” He stared challengingly at Aaron.

“We need to get moving,” Ericilla said. “The medical systems on our ground crawlers can help a couple of them, maybe more.” She pushed her way past Aaron, not looking at him. Cytus managed to knock Aaron’s elbow as he went into the suit room.

“You coming, Earl?” Nerina asked.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve done enough already,” Vilitar said. “Whoever the fuck you really are. I thought—” He snarled incoherently and hurried into the suit room.

“We’ll come with you,” Corrie-Lyn said. “We can help.”

“The Asiatic glacier is half a day from here,” Nerina said. “The far end has mile-high cliffs. Why don’t you help us by driving off them.” She went into the suit room and closed the door.

“Then there were three,” Aaron said.

“We’d better get going,” Inigo said. He faced Aaron. “You know they’ll probably close the Restoration project down because of this.”

“Do you think the next galaxy along will mount a Restoration project for all the species which the Void devourment phase exterminates?”

For a moment Aaron thought Inigo might activate his biononics in an aggressor mode. “You know nothing,” the lost messiah whispered.

“I hope something, though.”

“What?”

“That you have a starship stashed away. Preferably close by.”

“I don’t.”

“Really? I find that mighty curious. You took all this trouble to stay lost, yet you have no escape route if someone came along to expose you.”

“Obviously not. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been here waiting for you.”

“You wouldn’t have been waiting around here if it had just been me,” Aaron said. He gestured at Corrie-Lyn. “But her? That’s different. Seventy years is a long time to be alone. She stayed in love for that long. Did you?”

Corrie-Lyn moved close to Inigo. “Did you?” she asked in a quiet voice.

A mournful smile flickered over his lips. “I’m glad it was you. Is that enough?”

“Yeah.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

“No ship,” Inigo told Aaron. “And the only way I go anywhere with you is in a bag as small lumps of charcoal.”

“That’s a shame, because I know what weapon they used to take out my starship and the base.”

“Is that supposed to impress me? I expect you know a great deal about weapons and violence. Men like you always do.”

“It was a Hawking m-sink,” Aaron said. “Do you know what that is? No? They’re new and highly dangerous. Even ANA gets nervous around them. Basically, it’s a very small black hole, but cranked up with an outsize event horizon to help absorption. It starts off as a little core of neutronium about the size of an atomic nucleus.”

Corrie-Lyn caught the emphasis. “Starts off?”

“Yes. Its gravity field is strong enough to pull in any atoms it comes into contact with. They’re then also compressed into neutronium and merge with its core. With each atom, it gets a little bit bigger. Not by much admittedly, not to begin with. But the larger the surface area, the more matter it can absorb. And after it tore through the Artful Dodger, it hit the planet. Right now it is sinking through the mantle, eating every atom it encounters. It’ll stop at the center of the planet. Then it just sits there and grows.”

“How big will it get?” she asked anxiously.

Aaron shot Inigo a look. “Black holes have no theoretical size limit. We used to think that was what the Void was.”

“But … Hanko?”

“It’ll take about two weeks to devour the entire mass of an H-congruous world. Except we’ll be dead long before that. Hanko will start to disintegrate as it’s consumed from within. The continents will collapse in three or four days. So, once more, with an awful lot of feeling, do you have a starship hidden nearby?”

Araminta kissed three of hims as they sat at a table under a gazebo of flowering yisanthal in his garden. “I missed that,” she told the rugged Oriental one.

Mr. Bovey smiled in unison. Hes raised his glasses. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.” She sipped her white wine.

“So?” asked the one she had had their first dinner with.

Araminta steeled herself. “If your offer is still open, I’d like to accept.”

She even heard cheering coming from the big house as well as the racket that the three under the gazebo made.

“You’ve made some old men very happy.”

“Us young ones, too.”

Araminta laughed. “And I have absolutely no idea how to go about this. The first three apartments will be ready in another week. I’ve accepted a deposit on the fourth.”

“Congratulations.”

“But until I’ve completed it and the tenants are in, I won’t see a profit. I need money to buy bodies.”

“Not as expensive as you might think. A friend, one of us, runs a clinic expressly for that purpose. She always gives a discount to a first expander.”

“Okay.” She took another drink to calm her shudders. It was momentous, sort of like accepting two proposals at once.

The young Celtic one squeezed her arm. “You all right?” he asked, all full of sympathy.

“I guess so.” She knew she was smiling like an idiot. But this does feel right.

Two of hims came hurrying out of the house. One of them who seemed about seventeen went down on his knee beside her. A slim athletic build, she saw, with a wild shock of blond hair. He proffered a small box, which opened to show her an antique diamond engagement ring.

“I bought it just in case,” he told her.

Araminta slipped it onto her finger, then dashed away the tears.

“Oh, come here,” the youngster exclaimed.

His arms went around her, hugging her tight, and she was laughing through the tears. “I haven’t seen you before.”

“I’m a slavedriver to me.”

She put her palms on his cheeks and kissed him thoroughly. “I would like you to be one of tonight’s.”

“My considerable pleasure.”

“I believe you said I still have several of yous to get to know.”

“Oh, trust me, you’ll know all of mes before our wedding day.”

“And I don’t mind and won’t complain about other women until I have enough bodies to cope. Just … I don’t want to meet them.”

“I’ll try to keep it to a minimum, I promise.”

“Thanks,” she whispered gratefully.

“Now, what sort of bodies are you going to go for?”

“Gosh, I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted. “What do you like?”

“Got to be a tall blond Amazon type. Always popular.”

“Oh, and very black as well. Let’s cover all the old ethnicities, I have—almost.”

“And one of you has to have huge breasts.”

“More than one!”

She slapped at him, feigning shocked dismay. “You’re appalling. I’m not doing anything like that.”

“That’s not what you usually say in bed.”

Araminta laughed. She really had missed this. I made the right decision.

Araminta lay on the big bed, listening to three of hims sleeping. Two on the bed with her and one on the couch, curled up in a quilt, all breathing softly, not quite in sync. This time she had refused any aerosols, wanting to try out Likan’s program to make sure it worked with other people, that he hadn’t loaded in a hidden expiry key.

It worked.

And how.

Mr. Bovey had been surprised and then very appreciative at how much more responsive her body had become. As she had suspected, a night in bed with hims had been a lot better than it had been with Likan and the harem. Always nice to have confirmation.

Now she could not sleep. Not that she wasn’t tired, she grinned to herself, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the engagement and embracing a multiple lifestyle. It was such an upheaval. Everything was going to change for her, so much so that she was more than a little apprehensive. Her mind was churning over the same questions again and again, unable to find answers because she didn’t actually know about being multiple. The only way to find out was to become one.

She turned her head to look at the young red-haired him who was nestled cozily beside her. He’d help her through the transition, she knew. Mr. Bovey loved her. That was enough to take her through the next few months. They hadn’t set a date. He had said he would like at least two hers to register the marriage with him, which was fair enough. She really needed to finish the apartments. This day’s events had made that even more urgent.

Araminta settled back onto the soft mattress and closed her eyes. She used the program to still her whirling thoughts, emptying her mind. Her body started to calm as she found and slowed its natural rhythms, cycling down. Instead of sleep, the emptiness opening within made her aware of the images that lurked just below conscious thought. There was not just one but a whole range, all tasting and feeling very different. They twisted out of the infinite distance, a connection she now finally understood belonged to her. Instinctively she knew how to focus on whichever images she wanted. Some were Mr. Bovey’s dreams; she was familiar enough with him to recognize his mental scent. She sighed fondly as she experienced his presence; part of his mind was so wound up, the poor man. She also felt his happiness—her own face slithered in and out of his thoughts. One of the connections was completely alien yet comfortably warm in the way a parent was with a child. Her lips lifted in a serene smile. The Silfen Motherholme. So Cressida had been telling the truth, in which case that oh-so busy chorus of multicolored shadows must be the gaiafield.

Araminta embraced the quiet one, the most tenuous connection of all, and found herself gliding through space far from any star. The Void’s nebulae glimmered lush and glorious behind her as she rose to the darkness of the outer regions.

“Hello,” she said.

And the Skylord answered.

Justine had expected to feel a lot of excitement as her starship, the Silverbird, descended toward Centurion Station. Five hundred hours alone in a small cabin with no unisphere connection had left her unexpectedly strung out. Intellectually, she knew it was nonsense, a quirk of her primitive body’s biochemistry and neurological weakness. But it was still real.

Now here she was, at her destination, and all she could think about was the identical boring trip back. I must have been crazy to do this.

The Silverbird touched down on the lava field that acted as a spaceport for the human section of Centurion Station. Five other starships were sitting there, all of them bigger than hers. The smartcore reported several discreet sensor scans probing at the ship. The tall Ethox tower was the worst offender, using quite aggressive quantum signature detectors. More subtle scans came from the dour domes of the Forleene. There was even a quick burst of investigative activity from the observatory facilities in the human section. She smiled at that as her thin spacesuit squeezed up against her body, expelling all the air pockets to form an outer protective skin. She locked the helmet on.

It was a short walk over the sandy lava to the main airlock. Justine needed it for the sense of space and normality it gave her. She could not believe how much she felt reassured by the sight of a planetary horizon, even one as drab as this. When she stopped to look up, angry ion storms fluoresced the sky for light-years in every direction: pale mockeries of the nebulae inside the Void.

Director Lehr Trachtenberg was waiting for her in the reception hall beyond the airlock, a formidably sized man who reminded her of Ramon, one of her old husbands. Standing in front of him, shaking his hand in greeting, and tipping her head back to see his face was another reminder of how negligible her physical body was. Of course, that Ramon connection did shunt her mind back to the possibility of sex.

“This is a considerable honor,” Lehr Trachtenberg was saying. “ANA has never sent a representative here before.”

“Given the political circumstances back in the Commonwealth, it was deemed appropriate to examine the data from the Void firsthand.”

The director licked his lips slowly. “Distance makes no difference to data, Justine. We do send the entire range of our findings directly back to the navy’s exploration division and the Raiel.”

“Nonetheless, I’d like the opportunity to review your operation.”

“I wasn’t about to refuse you anything, especially after the trip you’ve just made. To my knowledge no one has ever traveled so far by themselves. How did you stand the isolation?”

She suspected that he suspected the Silverbird had an ultradrive but chose to gloss over the actual journey time. “With difficulty and a lot of sensory dramas.”

“I can imagine.” He gestured at the five-seater cab that was waiting at the end of the reception hall. “I’ve assigned you a suite in the Mexico accommodation block.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m also throwing a welcome party for you in three hours. Everyone is very keen to meet you.”

“I suppose they are,” she said. “Fine. I’ll be there. I could do with some company after that trip.”

They climbed into the little cab, which immediately shot into the transport tunnel. “I should warn you that nearly a third of our observation staff are Living Dream followers,” the director said.

“I reviewed personnel files before I came.”

“As long as you know.”

“Is it a problem?”

“Hopefully not. But as you implied, it’s a volatile situation right now.”

“Don’t worry, I can do diplomatic when I have to.”

Her suite was equal to any luxury hotel she had stayed in. The only thing missing was human staff, but the number of modern bots more than made up for it. The navy clearly had spared no effort in making the station as cozy as possible for the scientists. The main room even had a long window looking out over the alien sections of the station. Justine stared at them for a while, then opaqued the glass. Her u-shadow established itself in the room’s net. “No visitors or calls,” she told it.

Justine settled back onto the bed and opened her mind to the local gaiafield. The darkened room filled with phantoms, with their colors glinting amid the deeper shadows. Voices whispered. There was laughter. She felt drawn to various emotional states that promised to immerse her in their enticing soulful sensations.

Resisting temptation, she focused her attention on the source of the whimsy: the confluence nest itself, a quasi-biological neural module that simultaneously stored and emitted every thought released into its field. It had memories like a human brain, only with a much, much larger capacity. Justine formed her own images, offering them up to the nest. It responded with association. Naturally, it contained every one of Inigo’s dreams; Living Dream had made sure of that. She ignored the vivid spectacle of the Waterwalker’s life, brushing those memories aside as she refined her own fancy for a different recollection of life inside the Void. The nest was full of enigmas, the mental poetry left behind by observers baffled by the terrible dark heart of the galaxy. There were compositions of how a life might be lived for anyone fortunate to pass inside—wish fulfilment, easy to differentiate from the real thing. They were the promise-prayers that Living Dream’s followers made every night to their mystic goal. All were imprinted on the nest, but nothing else: no other glimpse into another life lived on Querencia, no grand mellow thoughts originating from a Skylord.

The garden dome at the middle of the human section boasted trees over two hundred fifty years old. Oaks with thick trunks sent out thick crinkled boughs, acting as lush canopies above the tables where the station staff was gathering. Up on a rustic tree house platform, an enthusiastic amateur band was playing songs from different eras stretching back across several centuries and was keen for requests. It was dusk inside, allowing the sharp violet light of the Wall stars to dominate the sky overhead.

Justine admired the broad patch of eye-searing scintillations with the kind of wariness she reserved for dangerous animals. Her arrival in the garden dome had created quite a ripple of interest. She liked to think that was due at least partly to the little black cocktail dress she had chosen. It certainly seemed to have the required effect on Director Trachtenberg, who was becoming quite flirtatious as he fussed around, offering her various drinks and selections of the finger food.

Everyone she was introduced to was keen to know exactly what ANA’s interest was in them at this time. She repeated the official line a dozen times: She was visiting just to ascertain the current status of the observation.

“Unchanged,” complained Graffal Ehasz, the observation department chief. “We don’t learn anything these days apart from ion storm patterns in the gulf on the other side of the Wall stars. That tells us nothing about the nature of the beast. We should be trying to send probes inside.”

“I thought nothing could get through the barrier,” she said.

“Which is why we need a much more detailed study. You can’t do that with remote probes fifty light-years away.”

“The Raiel don’t like us getting closer,” Trachtenberg said.

“When you get home, you might ask ANA why we still need their permission just to fart around here,” Ehasz said. “It’s fucking insulting.”

“I’ll remember,” Justine said. The party was only twenty minutes old; she wondered how many aerosols Ehasz had inhaled.

The director took her by the arm and politely guided her away.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “There’s not a lot of opportunity to blow off steam around here. I run a pretty tight schedule. This is an expensive installation and phenomenally important. We need to extract the best information we can with what we’ve got.”

“I understand.”

“It’s Ehasz’s third stint out here. He tends to get frustrated by the lack of progress. I’ve seen it before. First time you’re all swept along by the wonder of it all. Then, when that fades away, you begin to realize how passive the observation actually is.”

“How many times have you been here?”

He grinned. “This is my seventh. But then, I’m a lot older and wiser than Ehasz.”

“So would you like to join the Pilgrimage?”

“Not really. As far as three hundred years of direct observation has shown us, you touch the barrier, you die. Actually, you die a long time before you reach the barrier. I just don’t see how they hope to get through.”

“Somebody did, once.”

“Yeah, that’s the really annoying part.”

“So what do—” Justine stopped as the ground heaved, almost knocking her feet out from under her. She tensed, dropping to a crouch like just about everyone else. Her integral force field came on. The local net was shrieking out all sorts of alarms. The huge oak boughs creaked dangerously, their leaves rustling as if tickled by a gust of wind.

“Hoshit,” Trachtenberg yelped.

Justine’s u-shadow established a link to the Silverbird’s smartcore. “Stand by,” she told it. “Keep a fix on my position.” When she scanned the dome, it was still intact. Then she looked at the horizon, which appeared to be perfectly level. She had been expecting big cracks to be splitting the lava plain open at the very least. The ground tilted again. Nothing moved! “What is happening?” she demanded aloud. Some kind of quake? But this planet was a dead husk, completely inactive in any respect.

“I’m not sure.” The director waved an annoyed hand to shush her.

The members of the band were clambering down out of the tree house as fast as they could go, jumping the last meter off the wooden steps. They had abandoned their instruments. Justine stared at the drink in her hand as the ground shifted again. The wine sloshed from one side of the glass to the other, yet she was holding it perfectly still.

“Holy Ozzie,” Trachtenberg exclaimed. “It’s gravity.”

“What?”

“Gravity waves. Fucking colossal ones.”

Ehasz hurried over to them, swaying badly as the ground seemed to tilt again. “Are you accessing the long-range sensors?” he yelled at Trachtenberg.

“What have they got?”

“The boundary! There are distortion ripples light-years long moving across it. And the damn thing is growing. The sensors in the gulf can actually see it move. Do you realize what that means? The expansion is superluminal. This is an Ozzie-fucking devourment phase.”

The ground quivered badly. Water running along the little streams sloshed about, shooting up small jets of spray. For a moment, Justine actually felt her weight reduce. Then it came back, and the neat stacks of crockery and glasses on the tables crashed onto the grass. She stumbled away from the oak tree as it emitted a nasty splintering sound. Emergency force fields were coming on, reinforcing the dome. Around the rim, the doors to safety bunkers rippled open.

“I want everyone to move to evacuation stage one,” Trachtenberg announced. “Navy personnel, report direct to your ships. Observation team, I need a precise picture of what is happening out there. We probably don’t have much time, so we must do as much as we can before we’re forced off.” He flinched as another gravity wave crossed the station. This time the upward force was so strong that Justine felt like she was going to lift off.

“Is that gravity coming from the Void?” she asked. The prospect was terrifying, as they were hundreds of light-years away.

“No,” Ehasz cried. “This is something local.” He looked up, studying the intricate luminescent sky above the dome. “There!”

Justine watched two azure moons traverse the sparkling smear of Wall stars. They were in very strange orbits and moving impossibly fast—actually accelerating. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. The Raiel’s planet-size DF machines were flying into new positions.

“The Raiel are getting ready for the last fight,” Ehasz said numbly. “If they lose, that monster will consume the whole galaxy.”

This can’t be happening, Justine thought. Living Dream hasn’t even begun the Pilgrimage yet. “You can’t!” she shouted up at the ancient invisible enemy as human hormones and feelings took complete control of her body and mind. “This isn’t fair. It’s not fair!”

A mere five hours after the new dream had flooded into the gaiafield, over fifty thousand of the devout had gathered in Golden Park, seeking guidance from the Cleric Conservator. They exerted their wish through their gaiamotes. The unanimous desire of fifty thousand people was an astonishing force.

Ethan was only too aware of it as Councillor Phelim supported him on the long painful walk out of the Mayor’s offices, where the doctors had set up an intensive care bay. He limped across the floor of Liliala Hall while the ceiling displayed surges of thick cumulus clouds arrayed in mare’s tails and clad in shimmering strands of lightning. Even though he had closed himself to the gaiafield, the power of the crowd’s craving was leaking into his bruised brain.

Phelim continued to support him as they crossed the smaller Toral Hall. Its midnight ceiling showed the Ku nebula with its twinkling gold sparks swimming within fat undulating jade and sapphire nimbi.

“You should have called them to your bed,” Phelim said.

“No,” Ethan grunted. For this occasion he would not, could not, show weakness.

They went through the carved doors to the Orchard Palace’s Upper Council chamber. Its cross-vault ceiling was supported by broad fan pillars. Dominating the apex of the central segment, a fuzzy copper star shone brightly, its light shimmering off a slowly rotating accretion disc. Moon-size fireball comets circled the outer band in high-inclination orbits. None of Makkathran’s enthusiastic astronomers had ever spied its location in the Void.

The Cleric Council waited for him in their scarlet-and-black robes, standing silently at the long table that ran across the middle of the chamber. Phelim stayed by Ethan’s side until they reached the dais, and then Ethan insisted on walking to his gold-embossed throne by himself. He eased himself onto the thin cushions with a grimace. The pain in his head nearly made him cry out as he sank down. He took a moment to recover as his body shuddered. Ever since he had regained consciousness, any sudden movement was agony.

The Councillors sat, trying to avert their eyes from the liverlike semiorganic nodules affixed to his skull, which were only half-hidden by his white robe’s voluminous hood.

“Thank you for attending,” Ethan said to them.

“We are relieved to see you recovered, Cleric Conservator,” Rincenso said formally.

Ethan knew the contempt of the other Councillors toward his supporter without needing the gaiafield; he felt it himself. “Not quite recovered yet,” he said, and tapped one of the glistening nodules. “But my neural structure should be fully reestablished in another week. Until then the auxiliaries will suffice.”

“How could such a thing happen?” Councillor DeLouis asked. “Gaiamotes have been perfectly safe for centuries.”

“It wasn’t the gaiamotes,” Phelim said. “The dream masters who set up the interception believe the Second Dreamer’s panic triggered a neural spasm within the Cleric Conservator’s brain. They were attuned to a degree rarely achieved outside a couple’s most intimate dreamsharing. The circumstances will not arise again.”

“The gaiafield and the unisphere are rife with rumors that the Second Dreamer is a genuine telepath, that he can kill with a single thought.”

“Rubbish,” Phelim said. His skeletal face turned to DeLouis. For an instant a dangerous anger could be glimpsed in his mind.

DeLouis could not meet his stare.

“In any case it is irrelevant,” Ethan said. “The dream masters assure me that such a backlash can be nullified now that they understand its nature. Any future contact with the Second Dreamer will be conducted with”—he smiled grimly—“a safety cutout, as they call it.”

“You’re going to talk to him again?” Councillor Falven asked.

“I believe the situation requires it,” Ethan said. “Don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but …”

“I received his latest dream along with the rest of you. It was strong, at least as clear as those of the Dreamer Inigo himself. However, the crucial change within this dream was the conversation the Second Dreamer had with the Skylord.” The communication had shocked Ethan more than the pristine clarity of the new dream had.

“I come to find you,” the Skylord had replied to the Second Dreamer’s greetings.

“We are far beyond the edge of your universe.”

“Yet I felt your longing. You wish to join with us.”

“Not I. But others do, yes.”

“All are welcome.”

“We can’t get in. It’s very dangerous.”

“I can greet you. I can guide you. It is my purpose.”

“No.”

And with that finality the dream had ended. Before it had faded completely, there was a hint of agitation from the Skylord’s mind. It clearly had not expected rejection.

And it’s hardly alone in that.

“The Skylord believes it can bring us to Querencia,” Ethan said. “That is the final testimony we have been waiting and praying for. Our Pilgrimage will be blessed with success.”

“Not without the Second Dreamer,” Councillor Tosyne said. “Your pardon, Conservator, but he is not willing to lead us into the Void. Without him there can be no Pilgrimage.”

“He is distressed,” Ethan replied. “Until now he didn’t even know he was the Second Dreamer. To discover you are the hope of billions is not an easy thing. Ultimately, Inigo himself found it too great to bear. So we can forgive the Second Dreamer his frailty and offer support and guidance.”

“He might realize who and what he is now,” Councillor Tosyne said. “But we don’t even know where he is.”

“Actually, we do,” Phelim announced. “Colwyn City on Viotia.”

“Excellent news,” Ethan said in a predatory fashion. He watched in amusement as the protest in Tosyne’s mind withered away. “We should welcome him and thank Viotia for the gift it has brought us.” His gaze turned expectantly on Rincenso.

“I would like to propose bringing Viotia fully into the Free Trade Zone,” Rincenso said. “And promote it to core planet status.”

“Seconded,” Falven said.

The rest of the Cleric Council responded with bemusement.

“You can’t do that,” Tosyne said. “They’ll resist; the Commonwealth Senate will move to censure us. We’ll lose every diplomatic advantage we have.” He glanced around the table, seeking support.

“It’s not just our ambition,” Phelim said. He gestured at the empty end of the table opposite Ethan’s dais. His u-shadow established the ultrasecure link, and a portal projected an image of Likan standing just beyond the table.

Likan bowed politely. “Conservator, I am honored.”

“Thank you,” Ethan said. “I believe you are acting as an unofficial emissary for your government.”

“Yes, sir. I have just finished talking with our Prime Minister. It is her wish to accept Ellezelin’s generous offer to elevate us to core world status within the Free Trade Zone.”

“That’s wonderful news. I will inform Ellezelin’s cabinet of your decision.”

“The acceptance comes with the understanding that a zero-tariff regime will be part of the accord,” Likan said.

“Of course. Full trade will commence as soon as the Second Dreamer joins us here in Makkathran2.”

“Understood. The Prime Minister will award the treaty her certificate of office as soon as it is sent.” Likan’s image vanished.

“I believe,” Ethan said into the startled silence, “that we were about to take a vote. Those in favor?” He watched the hands being raised. It was unanimous. In moments such as this he almost missed Corrie-Lyn’s presence on the Council; she never would have let such a Soviet-style outcome go unchallenged. “Thank you. I find your support of my policies to be humbling. There is no further business.”

Phelim remained seated as the others filed out. Flecks of light slid across his expressionless face as the comets orbited ceaselessly overhead.

“That was easy,” Ethan remarked.

“They don’t know what to do,” Phelim said. “They’re just the same as the devout gathering outside: bewildered and hurt that the Second Dreamer would reject the Skylord. They’re in need of strong, positive leadership. You provide that. You have the solution. Naturally they turn to you.”

“When can we open the wormhole?”

“I’ll have your government office send the treaty to Viotia’s Prime Minister immediately. If Likan doesn’t let us down, it’ll come straight back. The wormhole can be opened within two hours. We’ve prepared a number of sites for it to emerge.”

“I hope Colwyn City was one of them.”

“Yes. It has a dock complex that will serve us very nicely.”

“And our police forces?”

“Forty thousand ready for immediate dispatch, along with transport and riot suppression equipment. We can push them through within six hours of opening the wormhole. Another quarter of a million will follow over the next four days.”

“Excellent.”

“I hoped you’d approve.” Phelim hesitated. “We never planned on the Second Dreamer becoming aware of his ability in quite this fashion. It’ll take us a day to get our dream masters into position across Colwyn.”

“But you can shut down all capsule and starship traffic before then?”

“Yes. That’s our highest priority. We want to confine him within the city boundary.” Again the uncharacteristic hesitation. “But in order to locate him, he has to dream again. After tonight, he might not.”

Ethan closed his eyes and sank down onto the throne, enervated by his exertion. “He will. He doesn’t know what he’s done yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“An hour ago I received a call from Director Trachtenberg at the Centurion Station. He considered it important enough to reveal his affiliation to us and use the navy’s relay posts. Just after the Second Dreamer ended his contact with the Skylord, the Void began a devourment phase. That is not coincidence. It would seem the Skylord doesn’t take rejection lightly. Our reclusive friend will have to placate it, or we’ll all wind up being consumed by the boundary. Quite an incentive, really.”

Inigo’s Seventh Dream

Edeard woke with a mild hangover. Again. Last night was the third in a row he had been out with Macsen and Boyd.

He sat up in bed and ordered the light on. The high curving ceiling started to shine with a low cream radiance. One of his three ge-chimps hurried over with a glass of water and a small compaction of powder he’d gotten from Doctor Murusa’s apprentice. Edeard popped the little pellet onto his tongue and took a drink to swallow it. His mind drifted back to that morning years before in Witham when Fahin had mixed his awful concoction of a hangover cure. It was still the most effective he’d ever had. Edeard was sure the pellets were little more than placebos, providing the apprentice with a small regular source of income. He finished the water quickly. Fahin had always said water helped flush away the toxins.

The circular bath pool in the maisonette’s bathroom now had a series of small steps at one end, so Edeard could walk down into it. He immersed himself up to his neck, settling into the seat shelf, and sighed in gratification. A ge-chimp poured in a liquid soap that produced a lot of bubbles. He closed his eyes again, waiting for the hangover to ebb. The water temperature was perfect, exactly body warmth. It had taken him a couple of weeks of experimenting to get that right; the bathing water in Makkathran was normally quite chilly for humans. He also had remodeled the hole in the floor that served as a toilet. Now the ubiquitous wooden box employed by every Makkathran household had gone, replaced by a simple hollow pedestal that the room had grown for him. It was so much easier to sit on.

Various other little modifications had turned the maisonette into quite a cozy home. The standard too-high cube-shaped bed was now a lot lower, its spongy upper surface softer and more accommodating. Alcoves had shelves in them. One deep nook in the kitchen area was permanently chilly, allowing him to keep food fresh for days just like the larger city palaces did.

That was the greatest blessing of being in the constables’ tenement rather than the station dormitory. Edeard finally could choose what he ate again. Half of his first month’s pay had gone on a new iron stove. He had installed it himself, adapting the hole the previous tenant had hacked into the wall for the flue. It had pride of place in the kitchen, along with a growing collection of pans. There was even a small basin that could be used for washing up rather than dumping everything into the bath pool as most people did. He liked that innovation enough to consider sculpting another one in the bathroom just for his hands and face, although that really would let everyone know he had the ability to rearrange the city’s fabric, sculpting it as easily as he once had made genistar eggs.

Everyone who visited the maisonette.

So, no one, then.

Macsen had brought a girl back from the theater the previous night, one of the dancers. She was as pretty as any of the grand family girls, but with an incredibly strong, supple body. He knew that because of the revealing clothes she wore when she danced onstage. Edeard gritted his teeth and tried not to be jealous. He and Boyd had struck out again, though overall it had been a pleasant evening. Edeard enjoyed going to the theaters a lot more than sitting in taverns getting drunk. There were often several musicians up on the stage, always guild apprentices, young and with passion. Just listening to some of their songs, so full of contempt for the city authorities, made him feel wickedly disloyal to the Grand Council. But he knew the words to many of the popular ones, of which several were Dybal’s compositions. It was loud in the theaters, some of which were no more than underground storerooms. He had been startled the first time he heard drums being played; it was as if the musicians somehow had tamed thunder.

One day they would go and see Dybal playing, so Macsen promised. Edeard hoped it would be soon.

The bubbles started to disappear from the pool as the water cycled through the narrow slits around the bottom. Edeard groaned and climbed out. A ge-chimp had a robe waiting for him. He pulled it on as he walked though into the kitchen area and then sat at the small table. It was right next to a cinquefoil window, giving him a view over the rooftops toward the center of the city.

A ge-chimp placed a glass of apple and mango juice on the table, along with a bowl of mixed oats, nuts, and dried fruit. The juice was nicely chilled; the ge-chimps knew to leave it in the cold nook for an hour before serving it. He poured cold milk into the bowl and started to eat, looking out across the city as it came to life under the rising sun.

It would have been a fine life indeed if he could just stop brooding about all the lawlessness haunting the streets and canals he could see. The squad finally had managed to get some convictions in the courts over the last few weeks, but nothing important: some shop thieves in their early teens, a mugger who was drunk most of the time. One time the Guild of Clerks sent them out to arrest a landlord for defaulting on taxes. They had no impact whatsoever on the gangs that were at the heart of Makkathran’s problems.

“You ready?” Kanseen longtalked as Edeard buttoned up his tunic.

He pulled his boots on. They were new, costing over three days’ pay, but well worth it. “Coming.”

She was waiting on the walkway outside, an oilskin cloak slung over her arm. “Going to rain today,” she announced.

He eyed the wide clear sky. “If you say so.”

She grinned as they started down the awkward stairs. Every morning he was so tempted to sculpt them into something less dangerous, writing the miracle off to the Lady.

“This’ll be your first winter in the city, won’t it?” she asked.

“Yes.” Edeard couldn’t quite imagine Makkathran being cold and icebound; the long summer had been gloriously hot. He had become what he considered to be a good football player, with his team finishing third in Jeavons’s little park league. Most taverns had seats and tables outside where many pleasant evenings had been spent. There had even been a few days when he had started sketching again, not that he showed anyone the results. After saving up some coinage, he and Salrana finally had taken a gondola ride around the city.

“It’ll be fun,” Kanseen said. “There’s loads of parties leading up to the new year. Then the Mayor throws a huge free ox roast in Golden Park for lunch on the new year’s day, except everyone is normally so hungover that they’re late. And the parks and plazas all look so clean and fresh when they’re covered in snow.”

“Sounds good.”

“You’ll need a thick coat. And a hat.”

“On our pay?”

“I know some shops that sell quality clothes for reasonable prices.”

“Thanks.”

“And don’t forget to get in an early supply of coal for your stove; the buildings are never quite warm enough in midwinter, and the price always goes through the roof after the first snowfall. The Lady will damn those merchants; it’s criminal what they get away with charging.”

“You’re happy this morning.”

“My sister’s having her boy’s naming ceremony this Saturday. She’s asked me to be a nominee for the Lady.”

“Nice. What’s she going to call him?”

“Dium, after the third Mayor.”

“Ah, right.”

“And you haven’t got a clue who that is, do you?”

He grinned broadly. “Nope!”

She laughed.

That was the way it was between them these days: best friends. Any discomfiture left over from that night after graduation had long faded, which he was sort of pleased about. He did not want them to be awkward around each other, but still he couldn’t quite forget that kiss or the way both of them had felt. He’d never had the courage to bring up what they’d said. Neither had she.

That had left him wrestling with his thoughts about Salrana, who was always so sunny and generally lovely. It was now incredibly hard to ignore how feminine she had become, and he suspected that she knew that. Of late her teasing had taken on quite an edge.

The rest of the squad was waiting in the main hall at the Jeavons constable station, sitting around a table and finishing breakfast. Unlike Edeard, few of them cooked for themselves. Macsen had on a pair of glasses with very dark lenses, not too dissimilar to those Dybal wore.

Kanseen took one look at him and burst out laughing. “Were you boys out in the theaters again last night?”

Macsen grunted and scowled at her over his cup of strong black coffee.

Edeard desperately wanted to ask him what Nanitte, the dancer, was like. It must have been a fantastic night to leave him so wrecked. But friends though they were, Kanseen did not have much tolerance for that kind of all-boys-together talk.

“Some news for you,” Boyd hissed, checking the rest of the hall’s bench tables to make sure no one was paying attention.

“Go on,” Edeard said as he drew up a chair. There was something almost comical about Boyd’s behavior.

“My brother Isoix is being leaned on again. They came to the shop yesterday evening as he was shutting up and said they wanted twenty pounds to ‘put out the fire.’ They’re coming back this morning to collect.”

Edeard did not like it. Three times in the last few months Boyd had told them about gang members harassing his brother at the family bakery. There never had been a specific threat, just warnings about falling into line. Softening him up. Well, now the demand had been made. “That’s very stupid of them,” he said slowly.

“What do you mean?” Dinlay asked.

“They must know Isoix’s brother is a constable. Why would they risk it? There are hundreds of shops in Jeavons without that kind of connection.”

“They’re gang members,” Dinlay said. “Greedy and stupid. This time, too greedy and too stupid.”

“The ones that turn up won’t be important,” Kanseen said. “Thugs who’re affiliated, that’s all.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t help him?” Boyd asked hotly.

“No,” Edeard said. “Of course not. We’ll be there to make the arrest; you know that. What Kanseen is saying is that this arrest alone won’t stop the problem.”

Macsen hooked a finger over his glasses and pulled them down to look over the top of the rims. “We’ve got to start somewhere,” he croaked.

“You make it sound like we’re the ones who are going to break the gangs,” Kanseen said.

“Somebody has to. I don’t see the Mayor or the Chief Constable doing it.”

“Oh, come on!”

He shrugged and pushed his glasses back up. They all looked at Edeard.

“Let’s go,” he said. “And make sure you’re all wearing your drosilk waistcoats. I don’t want to have to explain casualties to Captain Ronark.”

Boyd’s family bakery was at the northern end of Macoun Street, not far from the Outer Circle Canal. The street was narrow and twisty with Baroque buildings lined up on either side, making direct observation difficult. At ground level, the sharp turns limited the squad’s farsight. The three-story bakery had a central square tower with a soft-ridged mansard-style roof. Tall crescent dormer windows protruded above a midstory balcony; beneath that the lower floor was reached by several flowing steps from the street that led to a wide entrance arch between two curving bay windows. Each one was filled with racks of loaves and cakes. Three ugly metal chimney stacks from the coal-fired ovens rose out of holes hacked into the tower eaves, blowing thin smoke into the dampening air.

Edeard positioned his squad carefully. The gang would want a fast exit route, so Macsen and Dinlay were in a shop between the bakery and the canal. Kanseen was covering the other end of Macoun Street, wandering around the stalls of a small arcade, her cloak covering her uniform. Edeard had settled down in the first-floor living room opposite. It belonged to a family who ran a clothing shop on the ground floor and was close friends with Isoix. Boyd had returned home for the day and was helping out in the bakery, dressing for the part in a white apron and a green cap. Edeard was uncertain if he should use the ge-eagle; in the end he settled for having it perch in a deep guttering furrow on the bakery’s tower, almost invisible from ground level. It scared the ruugulls away, but no one else noticed it.

“At least we won’t have to escort them far to the courts of injustice,” Macsen pointed out as they started their vigil. Edeard actually could see one of the conical towers of Parliament House through the living room’s balcony window.

They waited for two hours. Among them, they raised the alarm five times, only to be proved wrong on each occasion. “So many citizens look so disreputable,” Kanseen declared after a couple of adolescents ran down the street after their third hands had snatched oranges from a grocery shop display. “And act it.”

“We’re all paranoid today, that’s all,” Macsen longtalked back. “We see the bad in everyone.”

“Is that a song title?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard smiled at the banter. There was a lot to be said for being squad leader. He was sitting in a comfortable armchair, drinking tea that the wife of the shop owner kept bringing up for him; she brought a nice plate of biscuits each time, too. His good humor faded as the young hooligans turned a corner out of sight. Foreboding rose into his mind, strong enough to make his skin tingle. He knew that awful sensation from before. “Oh, shit,” he whimpered.

“Edeard?” Kanseen queried.

“It’s happening.”

“What is?” Macsen asked.

“They’re here. It’s about to start.”

“Where are they?” Boyd asked. “Which ones?”

“I don’t know,” Edeard said. “Look, just trust me. Please be careful. I know we have to be.” He could sense the uncertainty in their minds; they were not used to hearing him say such things. It was difficult to get to his feet, his body was reacting so badly. When he did press up against the balcony window, he found it hard to concentrate on the street below.

“I think I see them,” Boyd said.

Two youngish men were walking up the steps into the shop while a third stood outside. Through Boyd’s eyes, Edeard and the rest of the squad watched them swagger into the shop.

Isoix straightened up behind the counter. “I told you before,” he said. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Yes, you do,” the first man said. His gaze kept darting nervously to Boyd, who was standing at the other end of the counter from Isoix.

Wrong, Edeard knew. Why would a gang member be worried about a shop assistant?

“Boyd, he knows what you are,” Edeard sent in the most direct longtalk he could manage, praying the gang members would not pick it out of the general background of Makkathran’s telepathic babble.

“Huh?” Boyd grunted.

The gang member glanced at him again, then turned back to Isoix. “Give me twenty pounds or we’ll torch this place,” he said loudly.

“No,” Edeard said. The hairs on his neck were standing proud.

“No, no, no.” Wrong!

“You,” Boyd said. He pulled his apron aside to reveal a constable’s badge pinned on his waistcoat. The two gang members turned to face him.

“I am a city constable, and I am placing you under arrest for threatening behavior with intent to extort.”

“How do you like that, you bastards?” a gloating Isoix shouted.

“Everyone, close in,” Edeard ordered. He pushed through the narrow door onto the balcony. The gang member left on the street glanced up and smiled.

“Oh, shit,” Edeard growled.

“It’s him,” the gang member declared in powerful longtalk. Then he started running.

Inside the bakery, the first gang member pulled out a small knife. He flung it at Boyd, who swayed backward. His third hand just managed to push the blade aside. Isoix snatched a much larger knife and threw it at the gang members as they fled through the doorway. It whirled out into the street, narrowly missing a woman who was walking by. She screamed.

Edeard vaulted over the balcony rail and dropped to the street below. He landed badly, rolling as his ankle gave way. His shoulder smacked into one of the steps leading up to the clothing shop’s door. He yelled at the bright pulse of pain, tears squeezing out of his eyes.

His farsight caught Boyd leaping over the bakery counter. Kanseen was sprinting up Macoun Street, her cloak abandoned on the ground by the stalls. Macsen and Dinlay were moving out of their shop, confident and eager. Their shields combined as they stood in the middle of the street, blocking the way. All three gang members were racing toward them.

“Let them go,” Edeard ordered.

Macsen’s face registered bewilderment that came close to anger. “What?”

Edeard had regained his feet and started to totter down the street. “Leave them.”

“You can’t be serious.” The three gang members were barely twenty yards from Macsen and Dinlay.

“It’s a setup. They knew we were here.”

“Crap,” Dinlay sent. “I can scan them completely; they’ve got a couple of small blades between them. That’s all.”

“There’ll be more, somewhere, waiting for us. Please, just let them go, I’ll track them with the ge-eagle.”

Macsen hesitated. He took a step toward the side of the street.

“No!” Dinlay hissed fiercely. He opened his arms wide as the three gang members charged toward them.

“Dinlay, stop it,” Edeard yelled. He was running now, ignoring the pain in his ankle. Kanseen was not far behind, charging like a warhorse, her teeth gritting in determination. Boyd came skidding down the steps from the bakery and took off after them.

“Stop,” Dinlay proclaimed loudly, holding out a hand as if that alone would bring the whole city to a halt. “You are under arrest.”

“Oh, crap,” Macsen growled under his breath, and instinctively started to move back toward Dinlay.

They came together as the three gang members ran into them. Fists were swung, legs kicked out, third hands scrabbled and pushed. Macsen went down with one of the gang members sprawling on top of him, and his head cracked against the pavement. Dinlay was shoved hard against the wall of a hat shop, flailing wildly to regain his balance. Then the gang member on top of Macsen scrabbled to his feet and fled with his companions. Dinlay started to chase after them.

“Come back!” Edeard howled in frustration. He reached Macsen, who was struggling to get upright, hand clamped on the back of his head. A trickle of blood was running down his fingers.

“What do we do?” Macsen demanded, wincing from the pain.

Edeard’s farsight could follow Dinlay easily enough as he ran toward the northern end of Macoun Street. The three gang members were ten yards ahead of him. “Save him,” he growled, furious with Dinlay. He sent a single clear thought to his ge-eagle, who immediately took flight.

Kanseen was slowing as she approached Edeard and Macsen, her face red. Boyd was charging behind her. “Come on,” Edeard said, and took off again. Kanseen flashed a look of exasperation and hurried along.

“You okay?” Boyd shouted as he ran past Macsen.

“Yeah.” Macsen took a breath and started running.

The ge-eagle streaked along Macoun Street, swiftly overtaking Edeard and Kanseen. It shot forward, rising high above the roofs, looking down to see Dinlay racing on, his glasses askew. The three gang members almost had reached the end of the street, which came out just below Birmingham Pool, where a silver-blue bridge connected Jeavons with the lower point of Golden Park. As always, Birmingham Pool was thick with gondolas. A half dozen moorings lined the edge beside the junction with the Outer Circle Canal, all hosting several waiting gondolas. The ge-eagle dipped down to the moorings as Edeard tried to work out which of the glossy black craft belonged to the gang. If this was a trap, they would have their escape well planned.

Just before it happened, the ge-eagle was aware of two other birds, close and closing. It pivoted on a wing, looking up in time to see its attacker plummeting toward it: another ge-eagle, bigger, with talons clad in sharpened iron spikes. The impact punched it savagely. Gold and emerald feathers burst out of the collision point. Spikes sank into its front shoulder, slicing through skin and muscle, severing veins. Then the bigger ge-eagle twisted to try to snap the central wing bone. Edeard’s ge-eagle fought back, writhing to clamp its jaws on its attacker’s rear wing. The two of them tumbled, falling fast. Then the second attacker hit, iron-blade talons ripping into flesh. Edeard and his ge-eagle screamed as one as its wing broke. Edeard saw talons rake toward his face and ducked. His ge-eagle’s mind abruptly vanished from perception; all that was left was a falling mass. The other two ge-eagles hurtled away over Birmingham Pool. Edeard was sure he heard the splash as his bird’s body hit the water.

“What happened?” Kanseen cried.

“Dear Lady, they are waiting for us.” Edeard pulled his perception down to find Dinlay emerging from the end of Macoun Street. “Stop! Dinlay, for the Lady’s sake, I’m begging you.” He pushed his tired legs harder, sprinting for the end of the street—thirty yards.

“I see them,” Dinlay replied gleefully. He gifted the squad, who saw the three gang members clustered above one of the moorings. They grinned barbarously. For the first time, there was a pulse of uncertainty in Dinlay’s mind. He slowed to a halt ten yards away, on the edge of the pool. Still the gang members did nothing but wait. “Stay there,” Dinlay told them, taking big gulps of air after his helter-skelter dash and waving a finger like an ancient schoolmaster dealing with a naughty class. They laughed at him.

Edeard burst out of Macoun Street. Directly to his left was the Outer Circle Canal, with the silver-blue bridge ahead, arching over the side of the pool directly into Golden Park. On his right, the buildings ended to provide a curving alameda around the side of Birmingham Pool. Neat stacks of crates were piled up above the various moorings, with shopkeepers and ge-monkeys sorting out their goods with the gondoliers. Tall weeping hasfol trees formed a long line between the edge of the pool and the alameda’s crescent facade, their blue-and-yellow tiger-stripe leaves starting to crisp with the end of summer. A lot of pedestrians were strolling around.

“Dinlay,” Edeard shouted as he ran as fast as he could toward his isolated squadmate.

Dinlay glanced around, a hand adjusting his glasses.

Arminel stepped out from behind one of the hasfol trees, fifteen yards from Dinlay. He had a revolver in his right hand. Edeard watched helplessly as Dinlay finally realized the danger and began to turn. Arminel brought the pistol up.

“No!” Edeard bellowed at his adversary. “It’s me you want.”

Dinlay opened his mouth to cry out in horror.

Arminel fired. He was smiling as he pulled the trigger.

Dinlay’s shield was not strong enough to ward off a pistol shot. Arminel’s aim was excellent. The bullet struck Dinlay in the hip, just below his drosilk waistcoat. Half the pedestrians around Birmingham Pool yelped at the blast of pain flooding out from Dinlay. Then the vile heat of the bullet’s penetration faded rapidly. Dinlay looked down disbelievingly at the blood pumping out of the wound. He collapsed.

Edeard was with him in seconds, falling to his knees, skidding into his limp friend. Dinlay’s eyes were wide; he was panting in short gulps, one hand clasped over the bullet hole, skin covered in blood. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered.

A mass of screaming had broken out along the alameda. People were racing for cover. Families hugged each other, cowering from the gunman.

Right in the center of all the commotion Edeard heard the revolver’s mechanism snick. He widened his shield to encompass Dinlay. The bullet smacked into his side, shunting them over the rough ground, but his shield held. He snapped his head around to snarl at a disconcerted Arminel. “Not so fucking easy, is it?” he yelled defiantly. Arminel fired again. Edeard groaned in effort as the bullet hit his neck. The shield held—just. Then someone else fired a shot.

Bastards. I knew this was an ambush.

Amazingly, his shield held. If anything, it was easier to maintain now. His heart was pounding hard. Anger had washed every other sensation away, making it simple to concentrate on the shield, to see his mind’s power, to channel it correctly.

Two more revolver shots thudded into his shield as he lay there, arms hugging Dinlay protectively. They shunted the pair of them a few inches over the ground, but that was all.

“Die, you little shit,” Arminel shouted.

Edeard felt the man’s third hand shove against him. He was not nearly powerful enough to get through Edeard’s shielding. Edeard laughed. Then another third hand was pushing, a third. The three gang members they had chased joined in. Edeard gasped as he and Dinlay started to slither over the ground.

“Edeard,” Kanseen cried.

“Stay back,” he commanded.

The gang members gave a final push. Edeard and Dinlay were propelled over the edge of the pool and dropped three yards into the water. The impact broke Edeard’s grip on Dinlay. He thrashed about just under the surface, trying to catch his friend again. Water occluded his farsight, making it difficult to perceive. He just made out Dinlay’s wretched thoughts drifting down below him, close to extinction. His own clothes were saturated, weighing him down. It was relatively easy to swim downward, following Dinlay’s slow descent to the bottom of the pool.

“Edeard.” Dinlay’s thoughts were weakening.

It was dark and cold. Edeard could make out a shadowy mass, or maybe he was perceiving it. He pushed himself farther down, kicking with boots as heavy as lead. His lungs were burning, making every stroke painful. He would have called the city to help, but he knew it could do nothing. Water was pushing into his nostrils, scaring him.

His hand snagged something. Through the gloom he could see faint dots of light. Dinlay’s polished tunic buttons! His fingers groped frantically, and he got a grip on some fabric.

Now all I’ve got to do is get to the surface.

When he tilted his head up, he could see the silver-mirror surface. It seemed a long way above him. His lungs did not hurt quite so much anymore. His vision was surrounded by red speckling, pulsing in time with his heart. When he kicked his legs, they barely moved. His boots were pulling him down.

Oh, Lady, help.

Something knocked into his shoulder. His farsight perceived it as a slim black line.

“Edeard,” the combined longtalk of Kanseen, Macsen, and Boyd shouted at him. “Edeard, grab the pole.” They were a long way off.

The end of the punt thumped into his shoulder again. Edeard seized it. Abruptly he was moving upward. It was a huge effort not to let go of Dinlay. Then the water was growing brighter.

He broke the surface with an almighty gasp of air. Someone jumped in beside him and held on to Dinlay. They were right beside a mooring platform. Hands clutched at his uniform, and he was hauled onto the planks, coughing and sputtering.

Kanseen’s anxious face loomed large over him. “Oh, Lady. Edeard, are you okay?”

He nodded, which set off another bout of coughing. Hands slapped hard on his back as he rolled over onto his side and vomited up a thin disgusting liquid.

Macsen and a couple of gondoliers were dragging Dinlay onto the platform, blood still pumping out of his hip wound. Boyd was in the water, his face pale.

“Dinlay,” Edeard called weakly.

“We’ve longshouted for a doctor,” Kanseen assured him. “You just lie back.”

Edeard didn’t. He watched Macsen start giving Dinlay the kiss of life. This was the third time his life had been struck by the force of anarchy and destruction: first the ambush in the forest on the way back from Witham, then the death of Ashwell. Now this. And that was too many.

“No,” he spit. Not again. I will not allow this to happen. People cannot live like this.

“Edeard, sit back,” Kanseen ordered sternly.

“Where is he? Where’s Arminel?”

“Stop it.”

He clambered to his feet, swaying slightly as he looked around, taking deep breaths. The edge of the pool was crowded with people, all looking down at the mooring platform. He turned toward Birmingham Pool. Most of the gondolas had come to a halt as the drama played out.

One was moving—fast.

Edeard blinked the salty pool water from his eyes, sending his farsight lashing out.

Arminel was standing on the gondola’s middle bench. He gave Edeard a rueful shrug, his thoughts glowing with cheery regret. It was as if he had lost a football game. Nothing more, certainly nothing important. They’d play another game one day, and that time the result might be different.

Edeard’s rage left him, dropping away like the water dripping off his soaking clothes. He felt eerily calm.

One of the gondoliers looking over Macsen’s shoulder took a frightened step backward.

“Edeard?” Kanseen said in a subdued voice.

He had not known such a thing was possible; he simply did it. There was no choice. As before, Arminel’s gondola was moving too quickly. They’d never catch him, never bring him to justice. Edeard’s third hand reached out to the water beside the mooring platform and steadied it.

“I’m finishing this,” he declared forcefully. “One way or another.”

Edeard stepped on the patch of water he was controlling. An astonished gasp went up from the spectators around the edge of Birmingham Pool. Edeard grinned viciously and took another step. Another. He moved his third hand’s grip smoothly, always keeping the leading edge of the stabilized patch just ahead of himself.

Arminel’s humor shattered. At the rear of the gondola, the two gondoliers stopped maneuvering their punts and stared fearfully as Edeard walked across the pool toward them. There was absolute silence as he strode purposefully to the craft. Every gondola in Birmingham Pool was stationary. Gondoliers and passengers stared in awe and trepidation as Edeard walked past.

“Move!” Arminel yelled furiously at the gondoliers. “Get us out of here.”

They did not respond. The two gang members sitting on the bench with Arminel slowly put their hands up and edged away from Arminel.

Edeard was ten yards away when Arminel dropped a hand to his waist, where the revolver was tucked into his belt. He could sense the man’s uncertainty, his fright. The animal backed into a corner. Nobody had any choices left now.

As he covered the last few yards to the gondola, Edeard opened his mind and longtalked with all his might. “SO THAT EVERYBODY KNOWS. SO THAT NO JUDGE OR LAWYER IS IN ANY DOUBT OF THIS DAY.” And he gifted them his sight.

Makkathran, from the Mayor in his Orchard Palace down to the sailors in the port district, saw a gondola with four men cowering, hands clamped over their ears. The fifth man stood straight, loathing on his face as his hand gripped the revolver sticking out of his belt. They felt Edeard’s mouth move. “Okay, gang man, your time in this city is over. If you think different, give it your best shot.”

Arminel brought the revolver up. Makkathran en masse flinched as the muzzle steadied not two feet from Edeard’s eyes.

“Fuck you,” Arminel snarled. He pulled the trigger.

The single unified scream that rang out from the city later was said to be heard halfway across the Iguru plain. When they all gathered their breath and realized they were still alive, they saw the bullet. It floated motionless six inches in front of Edeard’s face.

Edeard’s mouth moved again, this time into a thin smile. Arminel’s expression was frozen in shock.

The last of the gifting allowed Makkathran’s citizens to experience Edeard shaping his third hand into a fist. He slammed it forward into Arminel’s face. Bone went crunch as the man’s nose broke. Blood spurted out. His feet left the bench as he was thrown backward. He landed with a mighty splash in the water, which closed over him.

“You’re all under arrest,” Edeard announced.

It was pandemonium on the side of Birmingham Pool as the gondola made its steady way to the mooring platform where Kanseen, Boyd, and Macsen waited. On the Jeavons side they were crammed fifteen deep around the edge. Frenzied kids were running over the blue and silver bridge from Golden Park, hanging over the railings, cheering and waving. Over a hundred constables stood behind the mooring platform waiting; half of them were Dinlay’s family. People still were pouring out of the surrounding districts into the alameda to see history as it unfolded. Bolder lads were shinnying to the top of the hasfol trees to get a better view.

Edeard walked slowly behind the gondola, praying to the Lady that he wouldn’t screw up now, that his telekinetic strength would hold out and he would not fall ignominiously back into the water. Out there in the crowd surrounding the pool he saw Setersis and Kavine standing in front of a big contingent of Silvarum market stall holders, leading the applause. A huge array of well-groomed family girls greeted him with shrill saucy laughter as they flashed their petticoats and bloomers. Isoix and his family were there. Evala, Nicolar, and all the girls from the dressmakers were waving frantically and screaming to attract his attention. He even thought he saw Dybal and Bijulee laughing excitedly among the crowd, but by then he definitely was feeling tired.

The gondola’s prow touched the mooring platform. Constables steadied it. Captain Ronark quickly took charge. Chae and several of the largest constables from Jeavons station handcuffed Arminel and his accomplices. A path was cleared across the alameda, and the prisoners were marched back to the station.

Edeard finally stepped up onto the platform. His legs nearly gave out. He was trembling from exertion. Captain Ronark snapped to attention and saluted him. Kanseen gave him a huge kiss, to the delight of the crowd. “You Lady-damned idiot,” she whispered into his ear. “I’m so proud of you.” Macsen pounded his back. Boyd gave him a fierce hug.

“Dinlay?” Edeard asked.

“The doctors have him,” Macsen yelled above the thunderous sound of the crowd. “He’ll be okay. The bullet didn’t hit anything vital. Not that he’s got anything vital in that area.”

“You scared the living crap out of us,” Boyd said, wiping the tears from his eyes. “What a stunt, you madman.”

“Look around you, Edeard,” Kanseen said. “Make sure you see it all. This will be the day you tell your great-great-grandchildren about.”

“Wave to them, you dick,” Macsen ordered. He grabbed Edeard’s hand and held it high, waving and shouting wordlessly.

The cheer that erupted as Edeard grinned sheepishly up at the worshipful horde was scary in its power. The mental strength of so many people united in veneration was overwhelming, verging on a physical force. His grin broadened as Macsen swung him around so that those on the other side of the alameda could see him.

“If there was an election today, you’d be Mayor,” Boyd said.

“Listen to them,” Macsen said. “They love you. They want you. You!” He laughed uproariously.

Edeard stared over at the blue and silver bridge, convinced the kids hanging over the railing would fall, they were leaning out so far. They were chanting something. At each call, their fists punched the air in unison.

“What’s that?” Edeard asked. “What are they saying?”

“You,” Kanseen shouted back. “They’re calling for you.”

Then Edeard heard the cry in full and laughed.

“Waterwalker,” the crowd chanted in adoration. “Waterwalker. Waterwalker. Waterwalker.”

The end of

THE DREAMING VOID

Book One of the Void Trilogy

The story will continue in Book Two.

The Temporal Void is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Peter F. Hamilton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hamilton, Peter F.
The temporal void / Peter F. Hamilton.
  p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51267-3
I. Title.
PR6058.A5536T46 2009
823’.914—dc22          2008055579

www.delreybooks.com

v3.0_r1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

The Temporal Void

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

    Inigo’s Eighth Dream

Chapter Two

    Inigo’s Ninth Dream

Chapter Three

    Justine

    Inigo’s Tenth Dream

Chapter Four

    Inigo’s Eleventh Dream

    Justine: Year Three

Chapter Five

    Inigo’s Twelfth Dream

    Justine: Year Four

    Inigo’s Thirteenth Dream

Strangely enough, it would be the oak trees that Justine Burnelli remembered from the day Centurion Station died. She had been hurrying toward the safety bunker doors, along with everyone else in the garden dome, when she glanced back over her shoulder. The thick emerald lawn was littered with the debris of the party: mashed canapés stamped into the grass, broken glasses and plates juddering about as colossal gravity waves washed across the station in fast, unrelenting succession. Overhead, the timid light emitted by the nebulae surrounding the galactic core was being smeared into pastel streaks by the dome’s emergency force fields. Justine felt her weight reducing again. Yells of surprise and near panic broke out from the staff pressing against her as they all fought for traction on the glowing orange path. Then a crack like a thunderbolt echoed across the dome. One of the huge lower boughs on a two-hundred-year-old oak tree split open close to the thick trunk, and the bough crashed down. Leaves swirled upward like a flock of startled butterflies. The whole majestic tree sagged, further fissures opening along the length of the trunk. It twisted as it started to fall into its neighbor. The elegant little tree house platform on which the band had been playing barely a minute earlier splintered and snapped apart. The last glimpse Justine had was of a couple of red squirrels scampering out of the toppled giants.

The malmetal safety bunker doors contracted behind her, and for a moment she was enveloped within an oasis of calm. It was a bizarre image: Everyone still dressed in his or her best party clothes, breathing heavily with disheveled hair and anxious faces. Director Trachtenberg was standing beside her, looking around wild-eyed.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded, not quite trusting her voice.

Another of the gravity waves swept through the station. Once again Justine felt her weight lessen. Her u-shadow accessed the station’s net, and she pulled out the sensor images of the sky above. The Raiel’s DF spheres were still accelerating across the star system to their new positions. She checked that the Silverbird was unaffected by the weird gravity waves the DF spheres were throwing off. The starship’s smartcore told her it was maintaining position just above the dusty lava field that served as the station’s landing area.

“I’ve just conferred with our alien colleagues,” Director Trachtenberg announced. He smiled wryly. “Those that talk to us, anyway. And we all agree the gravity shifts are beyond anything the safety systems were designed for. With regret I am ordering an immediate evacuation.”

Several people groaned in dismay.

“You can’t,” Graffal Ehasz complained. “This is what we’re here for. Dear Ozzie, man, the data this event is spewing out. What we can learn is unprecedented! We can’t just crawl away because of some safety restriction imposed by a committee back in the Commonwealth.”

“I understand your concern,” Trachtenberg said calmly. “If the situation alters, we will return. But for now please embark your designated ship.”

Justine could see that most of the staff was relieved, while Ehasz and a small hard-core science clique radiated resentment. When she opened her mind to the local gaiafield, the clash of emotions was pronounced, but Ehasz was definitely in the minority.

Trachtenberg leaned in close to Justine and quietly asked: “Can your ship cope with this?”

“Oh, yes,” she assured him.

“Very well; if you would please depart with the rest of us.”

“Of course.”

Through her link with the smartcore she saw the safety bunkers break the surface, titanium-black spheres bubbling up out of the dusty lava plain. They started to glide smoothly toward the waiting starships.

With the evacuation procedures obviously working, Justine’s nerves calmed considerably. She asked the Silverbird’s smartcore to open a link along the tenuous navy communication relay all the way back to the Commonwealth, thirty thousand light-years away. “Dad?”

“You’re okay, then,” Gore Burnelli said. “Thank Christ for that.”

Leaking along the minuscule bandwidth was the faintest sensation of a smile. Warm Caribbean sunlight was shining on his lips. It was a comfort that delivered a completely unexpected emotional jolt to Justine. She felt her throat muscles tensing as her eyes filled with tears and her cheeks flushed. Goddamn this stupid body, she raged at its weakness. But she smiled back weakly, ignoring the way people in the shelter were looking at her. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Good, then get a load of this. I’ve been monitoring the navy relay link to Centurion Station. Your new friend Trachtenberg just called the Cleric Conservator to tell him about the expansion phase. He did that before he even bothered to warn the navy what was happening.”

Justine was proud of the way she managed to avoid glancing in Trachtenberg’s direction. Okay, maybe this old body’s not quite so useless, after all. “Really. How interesting.”

“It gets better. About five hours ago the Second Dreamer told his Skylord pal that he wasn’t going to lead anyone into the Void. Next thing we know, this expansion begins. I don’t know what your take is, but nobody back here thinks it’s a coincidence.”

“The Second Dreamer caused this?”

“It wasn’t deliberate. At least I seriously hope it wasn’t. Cause and effect, I guess. The Skylords exist to ferry souls into the Heart of the Void, and someone tells them that their new supply is going to be cut off. Junkies tend to get irritated and irrational about such things.”

“The Skylords aren’t junkies.”

“Don’t take everything so literally. I’m doing metaphors or allegories—some shit like that. Point is, now that they know we’re out here waiting to be guided, if we don’t come to them …”

“They come to us,” she whispered.

“Looks like it.”

“But nothing can survive the boundary.”

“The original ship did. Somehow.”

“Has the Second Dreamer said anything?”

“Not a goddamn word, not even ‘oops, sorry’ Conceited little turd. I thought I was arrogant, but Jeezus!”

“Well, he’s going to have to do something.”

“That’s the consensus back here, too. The thing is, Living Dream is closing in on him. That’s going to make serious trouble if they get their hands on him; our friend Ilanthe will make sure of that.”

Justine accessed the data coming from the station, watching with concern as their life support equipment was stressed close to its limit by the gravity waves. “It doesn’t get much worse than this, Dad.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, angel. Are you going to get out all right?”

“You know you don’t have to worry about me. Hang on for a moment; we’ve reached the starships.”

People were activating their personal force fields as the airlock’s outer door parted. Some of them also were taking pressure suits from the bunker’s lockers, making sure they were safe. Justine knew she could depend on her biononics to protect her from anything the unnamed planet could throw at her. Her integral force field strengthened around her. She slipped her heeled pumps off and followed the others out through the triple pressure curtain. Ten aluminum steps and she was standing on the lava in bare feet and a completely incongruous little black cocktail dress. Tremors managed to shake the soles of her feet through the protective cushion of the force field. A gentle argon breeze fluttered around her, raising short-lived twisters of dust that never came above her knees.

The bunker had come to rest a hundred meters beyond the squat building holding the base’s main airlock. Two of the five navy ships were poised on either side of her, hanging a few meters above the ground on ingrav, rocking slightly as they compensated for the treacherous gravity. Justine hastened around the nose of one to see the Silverbird waiting a farther twenty meters beyond it. Its simple purple ovoid shape, holding a lot steadier than the navy ships, was a welcome sight. She grinned in relief and scurried underneath. The airlock at the base of the fuselage bulged inward, opening into a dark funnel leading to the heart of the ship. The smartcore was already countering gravity to pull her inside when she saw something moving on the horizon. Something impossible.

“Stop,” she commanded.

Her feet paused ten centimeters above the lava. Retinal inserts zoomed in. It was a mounted Silfen. The elflike hominoid was clad in a thick cobalt-blue coat embroidered with a fabulous stipple of jewels that sparkled in the wavering pastels of starlight. His black hat was tall and pointed, with a simple gold ribbon fluttering from the tip. A gloved hand gripped a long phosphorescent spear that he held aloft, as if in salute. It might have been such a gesture, for he was leaning forward in his saddle, half standing on the stirrups. As if his appearance wasn’t astonishing enough, she was dumbfounded by his mount. The creature most closely resembled a terrestrial rhinoceros, except it was almost the size of an elephant and had two flat tails that swept from side to side. Its long shaggy fur was bright scarlet, and the four horns curving from the sides of its long head were devilishly sharp and curved. Justine, who once had ridden on the Charlemagnes that the old Barsoomians had produced on Far Away, knew that this fearsome beast was a true warrior animal. Her ancient body instinctively produced a flood of worry hormones at the sight of it.

The Silfen simply shouldn’t have been there. She’d never known one of their paths had led to this remote, desolate planet. And he was an oxygen breather; so, she suspected, was his lethally regal mount. This tenuous radiation-saturated argon atmosphere was deadly to living things. Then she grinned at herself. Who was she to make such a claim, standing exposed to the eerie energy emissions of the Wall stars in nothing more than a disgracefully short cocktail dress?

So it wasn’t an absolute impossibility to find a Silfen here or to find that he was using some technological protection from the environment.

But … “Why?” she whispered.

“The Silfen live to experience,” Gore told her, equally absorbed by the alien’s presence. “Face it, my girl, you don’t get a much bigger experience than watching the end of the galaxy crashing down around you.”

She’d forgotten that she’d left the link open. “A very short experience,” she retorted sourly. “And what is that thing he’s riding?”

“Who knows? I remember Ozzie saying the Silfen he encountered on a winter planet rode to the hunt on odd creatures.”

“Odd, not terrifying.”

“Does it matter? I imagine he’s here on the toughest steed he can find in honor of the event. After all, you’ve got the butchest starship in that section of the galaxy.”

“A butch starship?” But it broke her enchantment with the strange alien. She bowed her head formally at him. He dipped the spear in return and sat back on his small saddle.

The Silverbird drew her up into the small luxurious cabin. Once inside, she relaxed into a deep curving chair that the deck extended. Within the Advanced Neural Activity (ANA)-designed craft she was as safe as it was possible for any human to be. The starship’s sensors showed her the last of the station staff hurrying into the airlocks of the navy ships. Another two Silfen had joined the first watcher. Her father was right, she acknowledged: They would come here only for something momentous. For her, their presence served only to amplify the whole deadly panorama unfolding outside.

“Let’s go,” she told the smartcore.

The Silverbird rose from Centurion Station ahead of all the other starships. As the rest of them began to surge up after her, they made a strangely varied flock: Commonwealth Navy ships sleek beside the cumbersome Ticoth vessels, the glittering purple spheres of the Ethox dancing nimbly around the big tankers containing the Suline. At another time she would have enjoyed traveling in the elegant avianlike artificial-life constructs that soared and swooped to carry the Forleene away from danger. Despite the devastation raging all around them, few of the departing species could resist a quick scan in the direction of the metal cube housing the Kandra. None, therefore, were wholly surprised when the whole mass simply lifted cleanly from the dusty ground and accelerated smoothly away from the collapsing structures of the observation project.

Justine was ridiculously proud of the way none of them seemed able to match the Silverbird’s acceleration. It had taken the ultradrive ship just a few seconds to reach an altitude of five hundred kilometers, where it stopped to scrutinize the last minutes of Centurion Station. Another gravity wave shook the hull so violently that the onboard gravity generator barely could counter it. Justine felt a distinct shiver run through the cabin. The unnamed planet curved away below the fuselage, its ancient geology stubbornly resistant to the worst effects of the awesome gravity waves washing invisibly through its mantle. Underneath her, the hot Ethox tower was the first to succumb, rocking from side to side until the undulations became too great to be compensated for by the safety systems. It toppled with slow grace to shatter against the unyielding lava. Big waves of water cascaded out from splits in the Suline tanks, pushing a spume of debris ahead of them. Flying spray quickly solidified into sharp needles of hail, to be reabsorbed by the dark water. Inevitably, the cold won, producing a rumpled ice lake three kilometers across. Thin gray clouds streamed out of cracks in both the human and the Forleene domes, quickly dissipating in the weak gusts of argon.

In an astonishingly short time the structures were flattened, joining the greater enclave of ruins that marked the site where hundreds of alien species had spent millennia observing the terrible, enigmatic Void at the center of the galaxy. Justine switched her attention to the wounded sky above. As if they could feel what was happening beyond the Wall stars, the massive ion storms were seething with a rare angry sheen, brighter than any she’d seen in her brief time at the station.

The Silverbird was tracking the Raiel’s gas-giant-size DF spheres as they continued their flight across the star system. Gravity waves spilled out from them with astonishing force, distorting the orbits within the main asteroid rings. A couple of small moons caught in the backwash also had changed inclination. All nine of the DFs were heading in toward the small orange star around which Centurion Station’s never-named planet was in orbit. As the ship watched, the photosphere started to dim.

“Holy crap,” Justine yelped. The DFs had to be drawing power directly from the star. She wondered how they would manifest it. The effect was fascinating, almost countering the anxiety she felt. There had been a few minutes after the emergency had begun when she’d seriously thought Centurion Station was where her body would finally die.

As if sharing her thought, Lehr Trachtenberg opened a channel to all the human starships. “Status report, please. Is everyone all right?”

“I’m fine,” she reported back to the CNE Dalfrod, where he was embarked, along with the senior staff.

Once he’d established that all his own staff members were safe, the director exchanged messages with the alien craft ascending out of the atmosphere. They all confirmed that everyone had escaped intact. They had to assume the Kandra were safe, as the enigmatic cube didn’t respond to any communication.

“We’ll return to the Commonwealth immediately,” Trachtenberg announced. “From what the observation systems can ascertain, we should manage to stay ahead of the boundary. It’s expanding at about three or four light-years an hour. That gives us a huge safety margin.”

“Is the data still coming in?” Justine asked.

“Some of it. It’s patchy now; there’s a lot going on in the Wall we don’t understand. I expect most of the disturbances we’re registering are coming from the Raiel defense systems, but even so, we can keep a reduced watch until the sensors are overcome. We’re relaying as much as we can to the Navy Exploration Division center back home.”

“I see.”

Justine watched the other starships reach her altitude, feeling strangely annoyed with them and herself. Surely there was something else to be done other than simply flee. It smacked not a little of cowardice, ignorant peasants cowering from the lightning storm, howling that the gods were angry, looking for a sacrifice to appease them. And we stopped that nonsense millennia ago. Yet for all our enlightenment, we’re right back there, sheltering from the onslaught in our nice dry cave. Then the ships were accelerating past her, starting to disperse as they headed back toward their home stars. The Forleene were the first to go FTL, slipping faster than the speed of light down into wormholes that closed immediately.

The Silverbird’s cabin rocked again. Eighty million miles away the DFs were streaking into a low orbit against the darkening star. The motion hardened her determination. This is not the way it should be.

“Dad?”

“Still here.”

“What have the Raiel said about the expansion?”

“Sweet fuck-all. The High Angel is a lifeboat, remember. Their defense systems are all concentrated around your part of the galaxy. Anyway, we can hardly blame them for not telling us anything. Right now every sentient species in the galaxy is pissed at us over the Pilgrimage, and who can blame them? I’m pissed at us.”

“I know. That’s why I’m going in,” she said, surprising herself at the speed of the thought.

“You’re doing what?”

“Heading into the Void.” Even as she told him, she was instructing the smartcore, laying down the course. Fast. Before I chicken out.

“You’re doing no such thing, my girl.”

The Silverbird dropped smoothly into hyperspace, heading in toward the Wall stars at fifty light-years an hour. “Tell him,” she said to her father. “Tell the Second Dreamer. Get him to ask the Skylord to let me in. Once I’m in, once I’m talking to the Skylord direct, I’ll try to explain the situation, the damage their boundary is causing.”

“Get your ass back here right fucking now!”

“Dad. No. This is our chance at a diplomatic solution. The Raiel have tried force for a million years. It doesn’t work.”

“Come back. You can’t get in. This thing is killing the whole fucking galaxy. Your ship—”

“Humans can get in; we already know that. Somehow we can do it. And if the Second Dreamer helps me, I’ll stand a really good chance.”

“This is insane.”

“I have to do this, Dad. Somebody has to make the effort. We have to try a human method. We’re part of this galaxy now, a big part. It’s our turn to attempt our way. We have the right.” The blood was pounding in her ears as she hyped herself up. “I’m going to carry the torch for all of us. If I fail, then … we try something else. That’s being human, too.”

“Justine.”

Over thirty thousand light-years she could feel his anguish. For a split second she shared it. “Dad, if anyone can get to the Second Dreamer, if anyone can make them see reason, it’s you, it’s the Gore Burnelli. All he has to do is tell the Skylord I’m out here. Ask him. Beg him. Offer him riches. Whatever it takes. You can do it. Please, Dad.”

“Goddamn. Why are you always so fucking difficult?”

“I’m your daughter.”

Bitter laughter echoed across the stars. “Of course I’ll ask. I’ll do a damn sight more than that. If he doesn’t get down on his knees and beg that Skylord, he’ll wish all he faces is oblivion in the expansion.”

“Now, don’t start threatening people,” she rebuked immediately.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’ll try to keep a channel open to Centurion Station’s relay as long as I can. The navy systems are tough; they should hold out a while yet.”

“Okay, I’ll go find me the little bit responsible for this almighty screwup.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Godspeed.”

At three o’clock in the morning Chris Turner left the staff canteen on the east side of Colwyn City’s docks and grimaced at the rain spattering onto his face. He’d hoped the unseasonal weather front would blow over while he was taking his break. But no, the thick clouds showed no sign of relenting. His semiorganic jacket rolled a collar up around his neck, and he hurried back to the maintenance depot.

Chris couldn’t see anything moving in the docks tonight. Not that other nights were much different. Nighttime staffing levels were low. Bots were off-line for maintenance, which was why he’d pulled this grotty shift—it wasn’t popular, but it paid well. Transocean barges stayed moored to the quay while their crews slept or clubbed the night away in town. Warehouses were shut.

There wasn’t any activity in the city, either. The rain had put a halt to the usual nightlife. Capsules and ground vehicles had hauled the last optimistic revelers back to their homes a long time ago. He could just make out the huge single-span arch bridge over the Cairns, its lights a hazy smear through the rain. Normally there would be something driving over it or a few taxis sliding along its metro rail. Not tonight, though. He shivered. The city like this was actually kind of spooky. To counter the feeling of isolation, he reached down into the gaiafield to gain some emotional comfort from the eternal thoughts whirling within it. The usual busy background babble slithered around him like noisy specters, thoughts that called mournfully and eagerly, feelings that intrigued, though he shied away from the sadder ones.

A little more comfortable now that he knew there were other humans still alive and awake, Chris quickened his pace. There were another eight general-purpose bots that needed an overhaul before morning. Even with the company smartcore interfaced with the engineering bays back in the maintenance depot, he’d be hard-pressed to finish on time. Yet again he wondered if the pay for late shift was truly worth the cost. His friends only ever got to see him on the weekends, and then his sleep pattern made him lousy company.

He walked along the long line of landing pads, boots splashing in the puddles that were expanding over the vast apron of concrete. Gentle green-tinged ripples reflected the luminescence given off by the lighting globes on their high posts overhead. Thick droplets spattered down noisily from the dark hulls of parked starships.

Up in front and ten meters above the slick concrete a small star flared blue-violet. Chris’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. You couldn’t work in the starship business, even in a peripheral position like his, without knowing the signature spectrum of Cherenkov radiation. “That’s wrong,” he said dumbly.

The star vanished, and the air where it had been rippled. Chris suddenly was staring at a perfect black circle whose base touched the ground. The blackness changed again, lightening to blue-gray, then receding at a speed that made him giddy. Instinct brought his arms up for balance; he was certain he was falling forward. When he steadied himself, he was looking along an infinite tunnel. Its softly glowing fabric brightened intolerably as dazzling sunlight streamed out. Not Viotia’s sun, he knew. This was another star altogether.

The light dimmed for a moment as a big capsule slipped out of the opening. Chris scurried away to one side. He could see that the wormhole had lowered itself so that the bottom quarter was now below ground level, giving the long line of armor-clad figures a broad flat path to march through from their world. Above them, capsules slid through nose to tail. Boots were hitting the wet concrete in a steady rhythm, echoing around the high walls of the dock buildings. It was an eerily brutal sound, Chris thought. Over a hundred of the soldiers were on the Viotia side already. Soldiers? But what else could he call them?

Finally, the impossibility he was witnessing started to register. His u-shadow was throwing out frantic emergency calls to his family, friends, work colleagues, company offices, the police, the mayor, government … His mind let loose a powerful wail of shock into the gaiafield, which drew some instant reactions of surprise from local sharers, who immediately became curious indeed as his vision opened to them.

“You there!” an amplified voice boomed from the first rank of the marching figures. There must have been thirty capsules in the air now, starting to accelerate out across the city, and still more were rushing through. From his angle, the wormhole provided Chris with a narrow window out across the vast field on the other side. Warm afternoon sunlight shone down cozily on row after row of armored figures, thousands of them—tens of thousands. Most of them were in shadow from the armada of regrav capsules suspended in the air above.

Chris Turner turned and started to run.

“Halt,” the harsh voice commanded. “We are the legitimate police of Viotia, accredited by your Prime Minister. Halt now or face the consequences.”

Chris kept on running. This couldn’t be happening. This was the Commonwealth. It was safe, and it was comfortable. People with guns didn’t invade from other planets, not even in troubled times like these. Not happening!

“Last warning. Halt.”

His family was starting to respond to his frantic calls. Those he shared himself with through the gaiafield were producing the same dismayed reaction as his own. Then the janglepulse struck, and Chris was unconscious before he hit the wet concrete.

The Elvin’s Payback was only an hour out from Viotia when the shit hit the fan. Everyone on board went quiet at more or less the same time as their u-shadows reported the news that was breaking into the unisphere. They accessed in astonishment as images of armored paramilitary police and their support capsules poured out of the worm-hole in Colwyn City’s docks. In a carefully choreographed political sequence the Cleric Conservator’s office on Ellezelin formally issued a public invitation to Viotia to join the Free Trade Zone. It was swiftly followed by Viotia’s Prime Minister accepting on behalf of her planet. One minute later the wormhole had opened.

Oscar Monroe wasn’t the least surprised when Paula called him on a secure link a couple of minutes later. “We knew they were planning annexation,” Paula said. “The trigger factor has to be the Second Dreamer.”

“That figures,” Oscar said. “Everyone’s scared crapless over the devourment phase. If we do manage to get hold of him, I’d like to shake some sense into the stupid bastard myself.”

“I think the devourment has taken Living Dream by surprise as much as everyone else. The dream simply confirmed his location for them. They’re acting on that.”

Oscar reviewed some of the images relayed by reporters who’d gathered around the edge of the docks. “So we can safely assume he’s in Colwyn City.”

“Yes, but they don’t know exactly where. If they had an accurate fix, their embedded agents would have simply run a covert snatch operation. This is an indicator of Ethan’s desperation. Our sources on the ground indicate they’re shutting down all traffic in and out of the city—ground, air, and space.”

“Closing the noose.”

“Exactly.”

“That doesn’t make our mission any easier. We’ll have to infiltrate through the perimeter.”

“Don’t complicate things. I’d suggest you simply fly straight down into the docks.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Not at all. Get the smartcore to display the ship’s stealth function to you. I don’t believe that Living Dream has anything on Viotia that can detect you at night in the rain.”

“Oh, crap. All right.”

The link ended, and he turned to his shipmates to explain.

“I can insert some software that will help cover our approach,” Liatris McPeierl said. “Their network is already growing out from the docks. I’m monitoring its development through the unisphere, but I can crack the junction nodes. That’ll let me into their sensors and command links.”

“The docks will be a good position,” Tomansio said. “It puts us in right at the heart of their operation. I don’t care how dense their network is or how powerful their smartcores, it will be chaotic down there to start with. That provides us with a golden opportunity.”

“All right,” Oscar said. “You guys are the experts. Tell me what approach route you want.”

Forty minutes later Elvin’s Payback emerged into real space a thousand kilometers above Colwyn City. It was already fully stealthed, capable of avoiding the most advanced military-grade sensors: a huge case of overkill. Viotia’s civil space detectors could barely locate a starship out at geosynchronous orbit when its beacon was signaling. So far, the Ellezelin forces pouring into the docks hadn’t established any kind of sensor coverage above the atmosphere. They were concentrating on tracking capsule traffic in the city and apprehending anyone who tried to leave. Nobody was looking for craft coming into the area. The commercial starships that had arrived after the annexation had begun were staying in orbit, awaiting developments and clear orders from their owners.

Following Tomansio’s directions, Oscar brought the starship straight down above the estuary a couple of miles outside the city. It was still raining, the swollen river covered by rolling clouds. With a high-intensity optical distortion shimmering around its fuselage, the ovoid starship looked like a particularly dense patch of drizzle in the few wisps of somber starlight that diffused through the clouds. Electronic sensors simply lost focus, and mass scanners were unable to find anything heavier than air in the space it occupied. Even Higher field functions, if there had been any operating, would have been hard-pressed to find anything. If it had been broad daylight on a clear morning, maybe someone might have spotted something. But not on this dreary shadowed night.

Oscar took them down to three meters above the muddy water and steered upriver, using passive sensors alone. Several of the large Ellezelin forces’ support capsules streaked across the sky above them, on their way to intercept fleeing citizens. Elvin’s Payback remained invisible, though that didn’t stop Oscar from holding his breath and foolishly staring up at the cabin ceiling as the capsules passed overhead. He remembered the war films he used to watch in his first life, already ancient then, that depicted silent running in submarines. The principles here were comparable. He had been tempted to take the starship underwater to make their approach. Tomansio had talked him out of it, pointing out that the noise and displacement they’d make breaking surface probably would give them away.

So they drifted in over the deserted quays like a ghost through mist. According to the information Liatris had hacked from the invaders’ network, several paramilitary squads had been deployed around the perimeter of the docks, supported by ten armed capsules, to secure their immediate footprint. Nobody was watching the dock’s long river frontage.

Beckia McKratz had infiltrated the dock’s original commercial network, skillfully manipulating the nodes with software that opened up channels without the management monitors being aware of anything untoward. Even before they reached land, she’d assumed complete command of a giant cargo warehouse belonging to the Bootel & Leicester import agency. As they passed above an empty barge repair bay just outside, she opened one of the plyplastic doors, and the starship slipped into the dark enclosed space beyond, dripping cold rain onto the enzyme-bonded concrete floor. The door shut silently behind them, and five rounded pedestal legs swelled out from the base of the hull. Oscar landed them next to a tall stack of yellow and green cargo crates containing civil engineering excavators manufactured off-world.

“Down and safe,” Oscar said, letting out a long breath of relief.

“We’re safe,” Tomansio said cheerfully. “I don’t fancy anyone else’s chances.”

When the Mellanie’s Redemption dropped out of hyperspace four thousand kilometers above Sholapur, Troblum looked down on a continent rolling slowly into the dawn. The bright new light illuminated a wide monsoon building just off the subtropical coast where the city-state of Ikeo squatted amid the spectacularly craggy landscape. He studied the weather with interest. There weren’t many monsoons on Sholapur, but those that did materialize tended toward the fierce. It would reach land in less than two hours.

On the chair opposite him in the starship’s cabin, the solido of Catriona Saleeb lounged back, smiling contentedly. She pushed a hand through her curly black hair, a languid movement he always found sensual. “That storm could help us,” she said in her husky voice.

Trisha Marina Halgarth’s solido walked across the small floor space to Catriona. She wore a pair of tight black leather jeans and a small pure white T-shirt that showed off a nicely athletic body. Green butterfly-wing OCtattoos quivered slowly across her cheeks as she wriggled herself onto the cushioning beside Catriona. The two girls put their arms comfortably around each other, and Trisha flexed her bare toes. “Do you think so?” she asked Catriona.

“It’s going to take hours to pass across Ikeo. That’ll mess up sensors no matter how sophisticated they are. There will be force fields over most estates, which will block a lot of low-angle scanning. That’s to our advantage, isn’t it, Troblum, darling?”

“Could be,” he admitted. What he would have liked was Isabella Halgarth’s opinion on the situation, but he’d lost her I-sentient personality program when he’d left the Accelerator Faction station, using it in a projector to convince the sensors his starship was still sitting passively in the docking bay. Isabella had an altogether more devious outlook than the other girls, which would have made her ideal to analyze forthcoming events.

“Not if you try to arrive during the storm,” Trisha said. “Even with this ship’s ingrav, you’ll be struggling to hold level in the winds. Best you leave it to provide cover if you have to leave in a hurry.”

Troblum accessed the external sensor imagery again. It was a large storm. Even from this height he could see flashes of sheet lightning ripping through the dark clouds. At his request the smartcore overlaid the sensor patterns guarding Ikeo from uninvited intruders. The Mellanie’s Redemption could sneak through unnoticed—probably— but it would be a closely fought electronic battle. And Trisha was right; the storm would produce a particularly difficult environment to fly through. He ran a passive scan for orbiting ships, but there was no inbound or outbound traffic that he could detect, just Sholapur’s small band of geosynchronous satellites. “Activate our full stealth suite and take us down,” he told the smartcore, then pulled up a map of the city and designated a small valley five miles from Stubsy Florac’s home, just outside the estate’s official boundary.

Troblum was sweating with worry as they descended through the last levels of cloud. Then they were past the cold vapor, and the rugged land was only two kilometers below. In the wan predawn light the starship blended perfectly into the gray overcast sky as it sank fast through the clear air. He landed it next to some tall palm-equivalent trees that were starting to wave about as the wind built up.

To visit Stubsy Florac he selected an armored fabric one-piece he could wear under his toga suit. Then he ran a fast check on the biononics that produced his integral force field to make sure of their functionality. In combination, the armor and shielding should be able to stop a great many weapons, but he didn’t delude himself about their ultimate ability if a fully enriched Advancer agent cornered him. For a moment he considered taking a weapon. There were two jelly guns stashed away in a locker, both of which would need charging. But he didn’t have any experience in physical combat. His biononics could produce a respectable distortion pulse if pushed, and besides, Stubsy wouldn’t like him carrying that kind of hardware into his home. It was going to be bad enough turning up unannounced and then asking for a further favor. He left the guns in the locker and went into the airlock.

There was a one-man regrav scooter stowed in a midship cargo hold. Troblum gave it a suspicious stare as it floated out to hover a couple of centimeters above the thick blue-tinged grass. He hadn’t used it in decades. It looked uncomfortably small now, and it bobbed about alarmingly under his weight as he tried to lift his leg over the saddle. It took three attempts, but he eventually managed to sit astride it, wincing at what he was sure was a pulled muscle just above his hip. Biononics went to work tracking down and repairing the cells in his overstrained flesh. A transparent plyplastic visor unfurled from the front of the scooter, producing a streamlined hemisphere to shield the rider from the slipstream, though it had to curve outward to enclose Troblum. He directed the little craft toward Stubsy’s grand villa just outside the valley, keeping his speed to a prudent fifty kilometers an hour at a three-meter altitude.

While he was traveling, his u-shadow analyzed all the spaceports whose networks were connected to the sparse planetary cybersphere. It produced a list of starships currently on the ground, none of which were Earth-registered. Hardly complete, he acknowledged, but he was fairly sure that Paula Myo wouldn’t draw attention to herself here, which was undoubtedly what an Earth registration would do. Nor was there a ship that fit the profile of an Accelerator agent. If people were here for him, they weren’t out in the open.

His scooter arrived at the line of slim silver pillars that marked the boundary of Stubsy’s estate. His field functions reported several sensors locking on as he slowed. He called Stubsy’s code. It took a disconcertingly long time for the dealer to answer.

“Troblum, man, is that you out there?”

“Of course it’s me. Will you let me through your perimeter, please.”

“I didn’t know you were on Sholapur. You didn’t land at Ikeo spaceport.”

“I told you I needed discretion for our last transaction.”

“Yeah, yeah, right.”

Troblum gave the silver pillars an uneasy glance. He was feeling very alone and exposed out there. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Right. Yeah. Sure. I’ve cleared you through the defense systems. Come on in.”

The top of the two pillars in front of him turned green. Troblum eased the scooter forward between them, tensing as he passed over the line. When nothing happened, he breathed easier.

Beyond the big white villa, a dense curtain of rain was heading in across the steel-gray sea. As he settled in front of the high glass doors, Troblum looked down the long slope to the lovely little cove below. There was no sign of Stubsy’s glide boat anchored offshore.

Stubsy opened the door and gave Troblum a nervous grin. “Hey, big man, how’s it going, huh?”

“No change,” Troblum said. His gaze swept across Stubsy, who was hanging on to the side of the door, preventing any glimpse of the big hallway beyond. The man was wearing his usual expensive and tasteless garb: too-tight gold sports trousers and a shirt with a vivid black and orange flower pattern, open to the waist. But his face looked haggard, as if he were suffering the mother of all hangovers, with dark circles under his eyes and at least two days of stubble. He looked flushed as well, his skin hot and sweaty.

“I’m here to pick up my collection.”

“Yeah,” Stubsy said, scratching the base of his neck. “Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. You are.” Somewhere in the house behind him was the sound of bare feet running on tiles.

Troblum had to consult his social interaction program. “Can I get them now, please?” he read off his exovision script.

“Okay,” Stubsy said reluctantly. He swung the door open and stood aside.

The open area in the middle of the house was exactly as before, with waterfalls bubbling swiftly down the surrounding boulders to top up the pool. Green and yellow flowering plants twice Troblum’s height waved in the gusts that were starting to spill over the low roof. Nobody was swimming. Three of Stubsy’s Olympic warrior woman companions were waiting in the patio area, one lying on a sun lounger while the other two stood motionless beside the long bar. Troblum’s mild field scan showed him that all their enrichments were inactive.

The sound of thunder rolled through the sky. All three companions looked up at the noise.

“Are you going to put up a force field?” Troblum asked Stubsy as he sank his bulk into a sun lounger. The wood and fabric creaked as it accepted his full weight. He’d chosen the one next to the companion in the emerald-green bikini. She was gripping the edges of her own sun lounger very tightly, as if she were holding herself down against a gravity inversion. “That storm looked big.”

“Force field,” Stubsy said. “Yeah. Good idea, man. Uh, yeah, we can do that, sure.”

“Did my collection arrive okay?”

Stubsy nodded his head and perched himself on a sun lounger beside the companion in the green bikini. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “It’s here. We ferried it over from the freighter as agreed. The captain was very curious, you know. I had to slot some extra cash his way. I’ve got it all downstairs. Man, I wasn’t expecting so much junk, you know.”

“I have been collecting for a long time. And it is not junk.” Troblum glanced up as a force field came on above the villa. The sound of the wind shrank to nothing. “I’d like to get it loaded on my starship today.”

“Where is your starship, man?”

“Close,” Troblum said. He wasn’t going to give anything away until he’d sorted out payment and the collection was ready to be moved. “Do you have a cargo capsule?”

“Sure, sure.”

“There’s something else I need from you if you don’t mind. I’ll pay for the trouble, of course.”

Stubsy drew down a loud breath, as if he was having trouble swallowing. “What’s that, then, man?”

“I want to meet someone here in private. Someone you wouldn’t ordinarily have at your house. You’ll have to clear them with the city’s defense system.”

“Who?”

“Think of her as a police officer.”

“Police?” Stubsy grimaced a smile. “Ho, boy. Well, what the hell, we’re all going to die in the Void boundary anyway, right?”

“Possibly,” Troblum said. He didn’t know what to make of the expansion phase yet. If it really couldn’t be stopped, fleeing to a colony world was going to be no use at all. He’d have to travel all the way to another galaxy, as Nigel Sheldon was rumored to have done. It would be a huge challenge for the Mellanie’s Redemption. Fortunately, the hardware he’d taken from the Accelerator station should make such a flight achievable if he could ever assemble the myriad components and make it work. “So I can call her and arrange a meeting?”

Stubsy produced a strange little laugh, and his eyes crinkled. “Sure.”

“Thank you,” Troblum said. He used the secure link he was maintaining to his starship to call ANA: Governance’s security division.

“Yes, Troblum,” ANA: Governance said.

“Connect me to Paula Myo, please.”

“As you wish.”

Paula Myo came online. “Are you ready to meet?”

“I told you not to stealth your ship.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then where are you?”

“Close to Sholapur.”

“All right. I’m at Ikeo city, Florac’s villa. I’ve arranged for him to let you through the city’s defenses. How long will it take you to reach me?”

“I can be there within a couple of hours.”

“Fine, I’ll be waiting.” Troblum ended the call. He glanced over at Stubsy, who hadn’t moved. “She’ll be here in two hours.” That wasn’t exactly what she’d said, a pedantic section of his mind acknowledged. Paula would never lie, but there were a lot of ambiguities in the way she’d phrased it.

“Cool,” Stubsy said.

“Can I see the collection?”

“Sure thing, man. It’s downstairs.”

Stubsy led the way back into the villa. The three companions stayed beside the pool, though their eyes followed Troblum like targeting sensors as he walked after Stubsy.

One of the arching doors in the hallway opened to a set of concrete stairs leading down. Stubsy stood at the top as the polyphoto strips came on. He seemed reluctant to go down.

“Down here?” Troblum asked.

“Yeah,” Stubsy whispered.

The dealer was sweating again, Troblum saw. Whatever excess he’d indulged in the previous night must have been substantial for his body to take so long to flush the effects out.

Stubsy started down the stairs. Troblum was right behind him, keen to make sure his precious collection of Starflyer War memorabilia was unharmed. Everything had been in individual cases with a stabilizer field, but he’d had to rely on chartered commercial carriers to get it all to Sholapur without any supervision on his part; it was the only way to avoid Marius’s attention. So much could have gone wrong.

There was a broad passage at the bottom of the stairs, carved into the naked rock, with smaller corridors branching off every few meters. They were lined with malmetal doors. Stubsy’s vaults were a lot larger than the villa above.

Troblum nearly asked, What do you keep down here? But his social interaction program told him that Stubsy was likely to get upset by that kind of question.

Stubsy turned off into one of the side passages. A malmetal door opened for him. Lights came on in the chamber beyond. Troblum walked into a large circular chamber filled with low tables. His collection was there waiting for him. Every priceless case shimmered with protective shielding. It was going to be tough squeezing everything into Mellanie’s Redemption, he acknowledged; some of the larger items might have to be discarded. His u-shadow performed a fast inventory, checking case logs. They’d been banged around more than Troblum liked, but the cases had protected their contents perfectly. Smiling, he ran his hand over the case containing the handheld array with a foxory casing; the expensive unit had belonged to Mellanie Rescorai herself, a gift from her lover Morton before his trial. Troblum could just discern its outline below the shimmering.

“Thank you,” Troblum said. “I know you didn’t have to do this.” When he glanced up at Stubsy Florac, he saw an expression his emotional context program interpreted as anger and contempt.

The villa nodes relaying his secure link to Mellanie’s Redemption went dead.

“All this makes me feel quite at home,” the Cat said.

Shock ran through Troblum’s body in the same way as physical pain. His knees almost gave way, forcing him to clutch at the table. She stepped out from behind a huge casing containing the blunt nose cone belonging to a Wessex-based exospheric combat aerobot. Her lean body was dressed in a simple white suit that emitted a hazy glow as if she were a historical saint. It was wreathed in black bands that undulated slowly; ten of them formed a bizarre cage around her head. Troblum knew the suit had to be some kind of armor. Even now, with fear so strong that it threatened to reduce him to tears, he acknowledged that she looked quite magnificent.

“Troblum, my dear,” she said brightly, as if she’d only just caught sight of him. “How lovely to see you again. You’re really a lot of fun. It was a brilliant game we played. Well, I thought so.”

“Game?” he said weakly. His integral force field had come on instantly, though he knew it would be no use against her.

The Cat took a few paces toward him. Troblum lurched backward in near panic. Even now he couldn’t resist admiring her movements; they really were feline.

“Why, yes, darling,” the Cat said. “How funny you couldn’t work it out. Marius was right, wasn’t he? You don’t connect with humans on an emotional level. You marched in here completely oblivious to dear old Stubsy and his naughty little posse. Didn’t you see their faces, Troblum? Take a look now.”

Troblum gave Stubsy a wild glance. The dealer’s face was a rigid mask, teeth clamped together so hard that his lips were quivering. Two of the companions appeared at the chamber door, tall and powerful. Troblum recognized them from his last visit: Simonie was wearing a scarlet dress with a high hem, while Alcinda’s taut muscles stretched her shiny black bikini fabric nearly to the bursting point.

The Cat let out a mocking wolf whistle. “Aren’t they gorgeous, and they play nasty, too, which is really fun.” She cocked her head at Troblum. “You still don’t get it, do you? Fantastic. You are interesting. Run an emotional context recognition program, my dear. It’ll tell you they’re all very, very pissed off. They were when you came through the front door, and sadly they still are. All because of little old me.”

“Okay,” Troblum said. “You’re right; I didn’t get it. Congratulations.”

“I know.” The Cat gave a fulsome pout. “Me and Stubsy here had a small wager going. I thought you’d realize by the time you reached the pool; Stubsy said it would be as soon as you arrived and saw him. We both lost. Your fault.”

“How did you find me?” Troblum said. He didn’t really have any tactical programs to run, no smart way to work out how to escape from an underground room with only one door and no communication. But then, he was pretty sure even the best tactical program would tell him he was going to die. His own knowledge unfortunately supplied him with a host of extremely unpleasant methods she was known to use to kill her enemies (and friends), and that was before he called up her file to check. If he could just keep her talking … He glanced at the door again.

“Oh, my!” The Cat’s delighted laughter rang across the chamber as she caught his unsubtle motion. “Troblum, darling, are you going to make a run for it? Tell you what, I’ll give you a five-minute head start. Do you think your fat legs can reach the bottom of the stairs by then? Will you need to sit down and take a breather?”

“Fuck you.”

“Troblum! How jolly rude!”

From anyone else it would have been ridiculous. From her, it frightened him even further.

“How did you find me?” he repeated.

The Cat batted her eyes. “It was so difficult. You’re such a master covert agent. Let me see, could it be all the illegal money your Accelerator friends pay into your External world bank accounts, which is rather easily traceable to Stubsy here? Or was it when you called ANA: Governance and told my dearest old chum Paula Myo to meet you here? Hmm, which was it now? My memory is not what it was.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t often Troblum felt foolish, but the way she said it made him realize what an idiot he’d been. He’d suspected that the unisphere might be compromised to a faction, yet he still hadn’t taken adequate precautions. And as for the money, well, any half-rate e-head could trace money.

“Where’s your ship?” the Cat said.

Troblum shook his head. “No.” The smartcore had some very specific instructions should his secure link be broken. A timer was counting down in his exovision. It was a small glimmer of hope, though he suspected the kind of ship the Accelerators had supplied her with would be able to burn Mellanie’s Redemption out of the sky with a single shot. More bad planning. That left just one chance.

“Troblum,” she said as if chiding a child. “I’d like to know where your ship is, and I want the command codes. And I believe that you of all people know you really shouldn’t annoy me.”

“I know. Why do you want the ship?”

“Oh, come on; you know that, darling. Marius might be slightly peeved you made him look like a complete dickhead in front of his masters, but that hardly motivates me, now, does it, Mr. Me Expert?”

“Paula. You want to use it to catch Paula.”

She clapped her hands delightedly. “She and I are going to be together for a very long time. I have plans, you see. Big plans for our shared future. And I need her intact. Which you’re going to help me achieve by convincing her that everything here is just hunky-dory.”

“There’s no point. Nobody has a future anymore. The galaxy is being eaten alive. We’re all going to die within a few years.”

A flicker of annoyance passed over the Cat’s face. She gave Troblum a long stare. “I want her to walk in here expecting to see you. Moderately unsuspecting, though she is a paranoid little bitch. So … Ship. Now.”

“No.”

“What do I do to people I don’t like?”

He shrugged, not wanting to think of the details he’d so laboriously extracted from various police reports over the decades.

“You will help me,” she said. “Don’t make me threaten you. I’m only being this patient because I know you don’t understand the consequences of your stupidity. So ask yourself this: How come Stubsy and his friends are being so cooperative?”

Troblum turned to the dealer. It wasn’t something he’d considered. Another mistake, he thought.

“Just help her,” Stubsy said brokenly.

“I cheated,” the Cat said, and rested a finger on her lips. “Bad lady that I am. I used a small insert.” She grinned at the companions, who glared back at her through clenched teeth. “And it was quite difficult to insert, wasn’t it, girls? You know, I actually had to hold them down to do it, there was so much girly squealing and wiggling. And look at them now, happy to do as they’re told.”

Troblum thought he might be sick. His biononics had to work hard at keeping his hormone glands suppressed. And finally he didn’t need any programs to interpret the expression both Simonie and Alcinda showed, their fear and loathing. A tear was squeezing out of Simonie’s right eye.

“The girls are going to hold you down now for me, Troblum,” the Cat said. “Even their silly little weapons enrichments can overcome your pitiful force field. Higher culture,” she said with a shake of her head. “Where do you people get off calling yourselves that? Talk about insecurities. And you think I’ve got psychological flaws.”

The two companions started to walk toward Troblum. He ordered the shields on all the cases to switch off, as well as his own integral force field. The Cat’s response was instantaneous. She vanished inside a silver glow, as though she’d been encased in moon-washed silk.

“Stop,” Troblum told the companions.

They hesitated, looking at the Cat’s glowing shape for instructions.

“Troblum?” The Cat’s smooth voice issued out of the protective aurora. “What are you doing? You haven’t got any defenses now.”

“Remember this?” he asked, and pointed at a gray ovoid on a table close to the door.

“No,” the Cat said. Her tone was one of dangerous boredom.

“It was on the Ables ND47 you rode through into Boongate,” Troblum explained, wishing he wasn’t trembling and sweating so much. “Somebody salvaged it and took it with them to their planet’s new world. I never found out why; maybe they thought it would give them some kind of edge over their fellow settlers. But the government confiscated it, and then it got lost in evidence archives for several hundred years. Then a museum found it and—”

“Troblum!” The Cat’s angry voice snapped across the chamber.

“Yes, sorry: It’s a zone killer dispenser,” Troblum said meekly. “And I was really lucky when I bought it. The museum had kept it in a stabilizer field, so it’s still functional and active. The thing’s about as antique as you can get, but in a confined space like this one I don’t count on anyone’s chances, not even in a force field like yours. What do you think?”

There was a short pause. “Are you trying to threaten me, darling?” the Cat asked.

“I’ve got it on a double activation switch,” Troblum said. “I can trigger it if I think you’re going to try to hurt me. Or if you’re too quick for me and I’m exterminated, that’ll trigger it as well.”

“Oh, fuck me backward with a power blade,” Stubsy wailed. His legs were giving way, sliding him onto the floor. “I can’t take any more.” His hands went over his head, and he started sobbing. “Just fucking do it, man. End this, for fuck’s sake. Kill us.”

“He won’t,” the Cat said. “He’s not the type. If you fire that thing, fat boy, we all die, not just me. If you do as I say and help me capture Paula, I might even overlook this little misdemeanor. Carry on, Alcinda,” she ordered.

Troblum sent an order into the dispenser’s small management array; its malmetal surface rippled, opening fifty small portals. “No.”

Alcinda had taken one step toward him. Now she stopped again.

“Do it,” the Cat said.

“They don’t understand,” Troblum said. “It’s not just the insert that helps you control them; they have hope. I don’t. I know how stupid that is. I know you. You’re probably one of the few people I actually do understand. That’s why I turned my force field off. So there’s no chance of me surviving the explosion. I know you’re going to kill me no matter what. And we both know that I’ll never get relifed even if the galaxy does survive. This is it for me, the end. Not just bodyloss but real death. So I might as well do the human race a favor and take you with me.”

“What about Stubsy and the girls?” the Cat asked.

“Do it, you fucking bastard!” Stubsy screamed.

“Yes,” Alcinda growled. “Take us—” Her body stiffened, her back arching convulsively. Her spine bent so far, Troblum thought it might snap. She clamped her hands to her head, elegant fingernails clawing long bloody streaks in her scalp as she tried to tear out the source of her agony. She screamed silently as her legs gave out.

“Let’s not confuse the issue with other people’s poor advice,” the Cat said lightly. “You still think you can get out of this≔ otherwise you would have fired the zone killer straightaway. What’s the deal?”

“I don’t know,” Troblum said. “I don’t have a tactical program. This doesn’t have a logical outcome. I’m just waiting for you to do something scary, then I fire it. We both die together.” He stared at Alcinda, who was writhing helplessly on the floor. Things like furry mushrooms were emerging from her eyes, mouth, and ears; then another one bloomed from her belly button. They began to spread wide, swelling.

The Cat laughed. “Oh, darling, you are delectable. I’m the only person you understand, and because of that you’re going to kill yourself. How about you walk out the door and rush into your starship while I wait here for Paula.”

Troblum couldn’t stop staring at Alcinda, who had begun to shake in a convulsive fit. Her head was now half-covered in the furry growths, with additional ones pushing out around the edges of her bikini bottoms. Tiny clear fluid drops glistened at the tip of each strand of fur. The shaking grew more violent. Troblum was seriously considering trying to kill her with a disrupter pulse if his biononics could put one together. “I’d never make it to the stairs,” he said, trying desperately to focus on what the Cat was saying. Alcinda’s death would be a mercy, and she’d definitely have a secure memory store and re-life insurance. “Stubsy’s other companions would make sure of that.”

The Cat made a small gesture with her hand. Alcinda stopped shuddering, her body collapsing limply to the rock floor. “See. If that’s all you’re worried about, the girls are easily disposed of.”

Troblum thought he was going to collapse himself. A stricken Simonie was gazing at Alcinda’s body. The gray fur continued to spread outward. He’d never seen anyone die before, certainly not in such a terrible fashion. “Don’t do that,” he gasped.

“Why? I thought you were going to kill us all, anyway.”

Troblum began to accept that he really was going to die. In a way it was kind of fitting that he would do it while eliminating one of the most horrifying human beings who’d ever existed.

The villa nodes abruptly came on, flashing a short encrypted message he couldn’t decode. He tried to use them to reconnect to his starship, but they wouldn’t acknowledge his u-shadow.

“She’s here,” the Cat snarled happily. “Was this why you were stalling, my dear? I thought she wasn’t due for another couple of hours.”

“Sorry,” Troblum said. He couldn’t help grinning.

“I won’t let her save you, darling.” The Cat brought an arm up, bulging through the aurora.

“You can go,” Troblum said quickly.

“What?”

“Go. Have your battle. If anyone can defeat you, it’ll be Paula. I’ll wait down here. Leave Simonie to guard me if you want. I can’t get a message out to warn Paula. If you win, I’ll fire the zone killer. If she wins, well, you don’t get to call the shots then, do you?”

“Clever boy,” the Cat said in an admiring tone. “I accept. Stubsy, get up. You’re going to have to be the bait now that Troblum isn’t playing.”

“No!” Stubsy howled. His body jerked madly, and he scrambled to his feet as if the floor had turned white hot. Troblum didn’t like to dwell on that idea.

“Do it, you almighty shit,” Stubsy cried at Troblum. “Kill us all. Kill her.”

“Tut, tut,” said the Cat. “Is that gratitude?”

Stubsy’s mouth slammed shut. A trickle of blood dribbled down from the corner of his lip.

“Simonie, you stay here,” the Cat instructed as she walked out of the chamber. Stubsy Florac hobbled after her, throwing one last desolate glance at Troblum. Simonie stood in the doorway as the malmetal contracted shut, framing her with a dark circle.

“I’m sorry,” Troblum told her. She didn’t say anything, though he could see her jaw muscles working silently.

The Cat must be remote-controlling her, he guessed, which didn’t leave him much time. Then he noticed the way her eyes kept switching from him to Alcinda’s body. The vile gray growth had covered her flesh completely; now it was starting to spread across the floor, sending out fronds that moved like a spilled liquid.

Troblum activated his integral force field again and hurried across the chamber until he came to the longest case in his collection. He was sure he heard some kind of bang from outside, maybe more than one, but the door was an effective seal, and he didn’t want to turn off his force field again. Paula must have arrived at the villa itself.

He had to use biononic reinforcement for his muscles so that he could lift the elongated cylinder out of its cradle mountings. The weapon was incredibly heavy, but the designers of the old Moscow-class warships hadn’t had to worry about mass. He just managed to lever it vertical, feeling like some pre-history knight hoisting a lance. The cylinder’s tip was barely a couple of centimeters from the cavern roof, wavering as he fought to keep it steady. There was no guarantee its ancient components would hold together if he switched it on, nor was he convinced his integral force field would withstand either a malfunction explosion or a successful discharge. But the Cat had eliminated certainty from his life; he was flying on logic and fatality now.

He looked directly at Simonie, whose right eyelid flickered. For the second time in a day Troblum didn’t need a program to interpret a human emotion. He nodded back and fired the ship-to-ship neutron laser.

For Paula it really hadn’t been difficult to discover Troblum’s ally on Sholapur. Troblum’s clandestine money transfers had been subject to forensic accounting by an office at the Commonwealth Senate Treasury (CST) ever since Justine had reported on his strangely empty hangar at Daroca spaceport. The treasury office had quickly determined that Stubsy Florac’s accounts had been the beneficiary of a great deal of money over the years, and ANA: Security had accumulated a large file on the dealer’s activities. An irritant rather than any kind of threat, Florac moved objects around the Commonwealth that he had no legal right to handle. The majority were basically harmless like Troblum’s war relics, though he did supply weapons to agitator groups. As far as ANA knew, he didn’t involve himself with any factions or their agents. Despite what he liked to imagine, Stubsy was very small-time in relation to the real political and economic subversives operating on the edges of Commonwealth society.

So she arrived in her ship the Alexis Denken a day before the agreed meeting, descended through the atmosphere in stealth mode at night, easily evading the sensor sweeps run by Ikeo’s defense system, and sank under the water twenty miles away from Florac’s villa. When she arrived just offshore, she was interested to find the wreckage of a high-performance glide boat resting on the sand closer to Florac’s charming white sand beach. An examination by sensorbots showed it had been cut apart by a disrupter pulse. Paula guessed that she wasn’t the only one who wanted to meet the elusive Troblum. It would be difficult for a faction to intercept calls to ANA: Governance security but hardly impossible. And Troblum had promised to divulge what he considered important activity concerning the Accelerators. Ilanthe inevitably would send a representative to intercept him, possibly even Marius himself. Paula would enjoy arresting him, though he probably would self-destruct before he allowed any such humiliating indignity to prevail.

Five small passive sensor remotes slipped out of the sea to take up positions on various high points around the estate, and she settled down to wait. Her piano slid out of its padded storage alcove; it was three hundred years old, made out of fiwood that glimmered with a soft red-brown sheen in the cabin’s subdued lighting. The instrument had been handcrafted in a workshop on Lothian by a Higher artisan who’d taken a hundred fifty years to perfect his craft, exceeding even the quality of Earth’s legendary piano makers. Paula had commissioned it new, and the lush sound was well worth the ninety-year waiting list.

She sat at the velvet stool, pulled the sheet music out, and once again tried to play “Für Elise.” Her problem was lack of practice time. It would be all too easy to use a music program linked with a dexterity function. But Paula wanted to be able to play the piece properly. A piano as beautiful as this one deserved that level of respect and commitment. Fingers ruled by a program would be no better than simply playing a recording.

Curious native fish nosing around the unusual ovoid resting on the sandy seabed were subjected to the ancient melody repeated dozens of times, interrupted, and begun again with relentless determination.

A day later, when she was playing with a lot more confidence, Paula had to admit Troblum’s ship was extremely well shielded. She was caught off guard by the large figure in a shabby old toga suit riding a small scooter out of the forest on the far side of the Florac estate. None of her sensors had caught Mellanie’s Redemption coming down out of orbit. Her fingers hung motionless above keys of vat-grown ivory as she waited to see what would happen.

The scooter stopped just outside the estate’s boundary posts. It wobbled oddly as Troblum opened a link to Florac. Then the perimeter disarmed, and Troblum flew on unsteadily to the villa.

Soon after he arrived at the front door and went inside, a force field came on over the villa. The leading edge of the monsoon had arrived.

Troblum called the ANA: Governance security division, which relayed the call to Paula. Her remote sensors couldn’t quite get close enough to the villa boundary to give her a clear image of him standing beside the pool, but she certainly could see the line of exotic yellow and green flowering plants that hedged in the one open side of the pool area as she talked to him. She didn’t lie. She would definitely be at the villa within two hours.

Paula told the smartcore to retract the piano back into its alcove, climbed into her armor, activated three of the combatbots stowed in the starship’s forward hold, and stepped out through the airlock. The suit’s regrav lifted her straight to the surface, emerging into driving rain as the heavy storm clouds raced overhead. She flew in a low fast curve to the top of the cliff above the white beach, landing beside one of the estate boundary’s silver pillars. The three combatbots hovered protectively overhead, difficult to detect in the deluge. Lightning flashed constantly. Sensors locked on to her, and the villa’s smartcore demanded that she identify herself.

“You are expecting me. I am Paula Myo, an ANA representative on official business. Let me in now.”

There was no reply. The boundary posts remained active, so she used a proton laser to kill the eight nearest to her. Her suit flew her toward the villa, keeping five meters above the ground. Ahead of her, the force field was hardening. She curved around until she was facing the open end of the three-sided building. Water rippled down the force field, blurring direct visual observation. However, she saw three Amazon-like women in bikinis hurrying around the pool to take up positions behind the waterfall boulders. The small intelligence file on Florac had mentioned the kind of bodyguard he favored.

“Oh, come on,” she muttered. They weren’t even wearing armor. Stupid amateurs.

Their formation was a standard one, protecting access to the center of the villa. Paula guessed that would be where their boss was cowering, along with Troblum.

Two of the combatbots dropped a flock of energy dumps onto the top of the villa’s force field dome. The small dark spheres skidded and slithered down the curve. Bright energy flares whipped out around each contact point, and the dumps began to slow as if the dome somehow had become tacky. Lightning flashed out from the clouds overhead, attracted by the brawny spray of ions fizzing out from each dump to slam into the force field. The darkness surrounding the dumps began to expand and slowly sink through the force field that was now sparkling a dangerous stressed crimson.

Hot steaming water began to seep through the force field to spatter the pool area. The villa’s protective force field shone like a red dwarf sun that was being eaten by black cancers. Paula’s full field function scan was burning its way through the faltering dome. She could make out several weapons enrichments powering up in the Amazon women, but there was no sign of Troblum.

“Where are you?” she muttered. Another heavily enriched human was moving slowly inside the villa, hard to pinpoint with the tormented force field still obstinately functional. Her field function still couldn’t locate Troblum; he must be deeper inside, possibly underground.

Lightning lashed down again. The combatbots added three proton laser strikes to the impact. It was too much. The force field collapsed in a devastating sonic shock wave that ripped the pool plants to shreds, sending a plume of smoldering leaves up into the sodden sky. Windows burst apart, flinging long shards of glass across the paving slabs.

Paula swooped into the pool area as the downpour saturated the villa. The Amazon women fired a barrage of x-ray lasers and disrupter pulses at her. Jelly gun shots slashed harmlessly across her armor’s force field. She was puzzled by that. Surely Stubsy or whoever had blown apart the glide boat had stronger weapons than this?

“Deactivate your enrichments right now,” Paula commanded. The combatbots streaked through the deluge toward the women. Two of them fired at the hulking bots as they withdrew back into the villa. Paula pushed a disrupter pulse into one of the waterfall boulders just as the one in the bright green bikini left it to scamper through a ruined patio door. The boulder detonated into thousands of fragments, which embedded themselves in the villa walls. “Halt,” she yelled. But the women scattered inside what she took to be a long lounge. Again they were in a defensive formation. “Troblum, come out, I’m here at your invitation, for heaven’s sake.”

Another fusillade of energy shots hammered into her force field. Dazzling purple static webs roared out from the impact points, vaporizing the rain pouring down her shoulders. Paula sighed. It was going to be difficult to neutralize the stupid women without damaging them. Her field function swept through the villa. The enriched person she’d spotted before was creeping along the back of the room the women were protecting. She still couldn’t locate Troblum.

“Enough of this,” Paula decided aloud. The armor’s regrav lifted her off the ground, starting to power her forward. She fired a disrupter pulse, blasting apart the wall in front of her and half of the roof above, opening up the lounge. A cascade of debris came tumbling down along with the rain. The women dived for cover, immediately reorganizing their fire pattern.

The sensor remotes outside the villa reported something approaching the estate through the torrent of rain: a large craft, keeping very low, flying the same route as Troblum’s scooter out of the forest. His starship. Paula slowed abruptly, uncertain of the ship’s ability.

In front of her, yellow and purple petals of exotic energy erupted from the floor of the lounge. Eight of them, curving up like the jaws of some vicious predator. They swept past barely a meter from her armor, clashing together to form a broad column. It began to twist, the petals separating out again, stretching out toward her, elongating fast.

Paula’s suit regrav shoved at her violently, pushing her backward as she gasped in shock. She and the three combatbots unleashed a torrent of firepower at the base of the exotic energy manifestation, trying to kill the generator. The tip of exotic energy stroked the front of her armor’s force field. Weird warning symbols erupted across her exovision.

The ground exploded upward.

Paula was flung high into the air above the villa, spinning out of control. For a second she thought she’d punctured the exotic energy generator. But the yellow specters were still leaping around like flames in a hurricane. They lasted for a second before snuffing out.

Paula stabilized her tumbling flight fifty meters above the villa. When her sensors swept the scene below, she saw that a huge crater had completely ruptured one side of the building. It was twenty meters wide, with walls of raw smoldering earth. The bottom was open, leading into an underground space. Twisted metallic wreckage lay everywhere.

“Get here now,” Paula ordered the Alexis Denken. She directed the three combatbots to attack the coordinate of the exotic energy generator. A lethal barrage of disrupter pulses and proton lasers lashed down, illuminating the broken villa with an incandescent nimbus far brighter than the lightning flaring overhead.

Paula was dropping fast now, anxious to escape any possible contact with the exotic energy. She’d been lucky before, but that generator was quite capable of caging her, suit and all. Someone was scrambling up out of the crater. Her field scan showed her a large person. Higher, with an integral force field that was barely functional.

“Troblum,” she broadcast.

He stumbled to a halt at the top of the crater, head swinging around as if he were drunk.

The Alexis Denken broke surface and accelerated hard. Ten combatbots shot out of its forward hold to add their protective cover. And another craft was suddenly streaking in toward the villa at Mach nine, slicing around the low surrounding hills in a cacophony of brutalized air.

Paula touched down on a patch of muddy soil that minutes before had been a pleasant herbaceous border. The first starship had reached the crater, its profile a classic rocket ship cone with eight radial forward-swept tail fins. Its nose dipped down toward Troblum, an airlock irising open.

“Stop,” Paula told him. Then her field function showed her another figure emerging out of the ground into the ruins of Florac’s villa. This one was glowing white, completely impervious to any field scan. Paula instinctively ignored Troblum, knowing she was now confronting the real threat. They faced each other across the steaming remains of the swimming pool.

The Alexis Denken came thundering through the monsoon surrounded by its entourage of combatbots. It halted behind Paula, hovering a couple of meters off the ground, and extended its force field to envelop her. Enough firepower to vaporize a medium-size city focused on the lambent figure standing calmly inside the shattered walls. Troblum vanished inside his starship’s airlock, and the craft swung through ninety degrees to point at the storm clouds. Then the third starship arrived. Paula expected it to fire at Troblum’s ship, but instead it took up position behind the white figure, mirroring Paula and the Alexis Denken. Troblum’s ship accelerated upward at twenty-five gees. The Alexis Denken reported that a great deal of powerful weapons systems in the interloper’s starship were powered up.

“Marius, is that you?” Paula asked.

The white figure pointed. Somehow Stubsy Florac had survived the carnage. He was crawling over the smashed wooden floorboards, blood seeping from dozens of lacerations.

“Damn it,” Paula hissed. If she slugged it out with her opponent, the outcome was uncertain. ANA had equipped her well, but the faction whose representative she was facing had a pretty formidable arsenal, too. If she won, she’d never know who was challenging her— and, through her, ANA—so brazenly. There would be nothing left of the vanquished except a dispersing ion swarm. And whoever won, it would mean the certain bodyloss of Stubsy Florac and probably his death. There might be more survivors hidden in the villa’s wreckage; he did have several of the stupid Amazon bodyguards. Despite all the traits and qualities she had cast off over the centuries, her certainty about right and wrong remained absolute. She, Paula Myo, did not have the right to put civilians in danger, even civilians as repugnant as Florac. Her place in the universe was to uphold the law. However inconvenient Florac was at this moment, she could not risk allowing him to come in harm’s way.

In any case, Florac would be a valuable witness. An opponent such as a faction was best dealt with by ANA, not herself and a representative clashing in this fashion.

She stood still, staring at the cold glowing figure on the other side of the pool. Her field scan probed at the lustrous force field but couldn’t find a single flaw. One thing: It wasn’t Marius—too short.

The white figure was drawn up into its starship. A hand was raised in a mocking wave. A silly wiggle of the hips and then the airlock closed, cutting off the shining aurora. The starship slid smoothly into the storm clouds, creating a dark whorl as it vanished into the stratosphere. Paula used the sensors on the Alexis Denken to track it as far as possible. The stealth effect came on when it was clear of the ionosphere. There was a minute quantum signature that the smart-core could just detect as it accelerated high above the equator; then it must have dropped into hyperspace. The finest sensors ANA could devise picked up a tiny disturbance among the quantum fields that indicated an ultradrive. Then there was nothing.

Paula put her lips together and whistled a long single note. The combatbots hovering above the villa showed her Stubsy Florac writhing in agony on his decimated wooden flooring. She hurried over in time to see strange gray growths blooming from his mouth and nose.

Her u-shadow opened a link directly to his microcellular clusters. “Florac? Can you receive this?”

The furry gray substance was emerging from his eyes.

“Who was it, Florac? Do you know who did this?”

The only reply that came down the link was a burst of white noise.

“Okay, I’m getting you into a medical chamber. My ship has the best in the Commonwealth. You’ll be fine.” She picked him up and flew straight into the airlock, ordering the smartcore to initiate level one decontamination procedures. She really didn’t like the look of the gray fungal stuff.

“Hang in there, Florac; you’ll be okay. You stay with me, understand?”

It took her only a few seconds to get to the cabin, but he was convulsing by the time she lowered him into the coffin-size medical chamber. The steel-sheen malmetal top closed fluidly over him.

A scan revealed that the gray substance had invaded his entire body, consuming and corrupting every organ. It had twined itself around his nerves, not damaging them but embracing them. Paula watched the readouts in disgust and dismay as the intruder fed a continuous stream of impulses into every nerve fiber in Florac’s body. Fronds inside his brain stimulated selected neural pathways to ensure that his consciousness remained intact.

There wasn’t enough of his original flesh left for the medical chamber to sustain. As Paula watched, Florac died in as much agony as it was possible for a human nervous system to conduct.

“Extract his memorycell,” she ordered the medical chamber. But even that wasn’t possible; the gray fronds had gnawed away at the memorycell, breaking it apart. She reviewed the readouts with growing alarm. The gray stuff seemed to be some kind of biononic viral, capable of breaking down both organic and inorganic compounds. It already was seeping into the instruments and manipulators interfaced with Florac’s body, transforming them into more of itself, an effect inching into the casing of the medical chamber.

“Hell!” she grunted. The Alexis Denken shot out of the atmosphere to an altitude of five thousand kilometers, then ejected the entire medical chamber. It tumbled away from the starship, sunlight glinting off its bright metal and plastic surfaces. Paula swept a powerful gamma-ray laser through it several times, making sure every molecule of the viral was disassociated, then finished it off with a single disrupter pulse. The now white-hot slag of the medical chamber burst apart in a sparkling swarm of effervescence.

Several ground-based sensor systems locked on to the Alexis Denken. The smartcore received identification demands from every city on the planet. Paula simply ignored them and flew back down to the villa again.

The combatbots were circling overhead as the monsoon continued to soak the rubble. Long rivulets gurgled along the cracked paving, thick with scum and powdery mud. Paula’s armor boots splashed through them as she made her way cautiously to the crater. The torn earth walls were mildly radioactive. Spybots swooped down to scan the remnants of the underground chamber. The first thing they detected amid all the charred plastic and warped metal was the burned body. It appeared to be another of Florac’s bodyguards. Then they picked up the signature of the gray substance. There was a patch clinging to a chunk of fractured rock. Its edges rippled as it sought to grow.

“Damn it,” Paula swore. There was nothing for it. She called two of the combatbots down and began a systematic sterilization of the site, using gamma lasers. That was when she called ANA. “Things are getting a little crazy out here,” she confessed.

“The Accelerators must be desperate to keep Troblum silenced.” “No. That’s not what happened here.” Paula was standing in the remnants of the lounge, using her field scan on the broken fragments of the exotic matter generator. There wasn’t much left, and she was fairly certain her own firepower hadn’t been wholly responsible. It had self-destructed at some point during the fight. “Whoever was here could have eliminated him the second he turned up. They didn’t. They wanted to use him as bait for me. This exotic matter system was intended to capture me. It’s an extremely elaborate trap. Someone went to a lot of trouble. I got lucky Troblum’s ship arrived when it did; another second and I would have been engulfed.”

“You have acquired a great many enemies over the years.” “Yes, but this one has the backing of a faction. They had an ultra-drive ship effectively equal to the Alexis Denken, they had this revolting viral, and they knew I was coming to meet with Troblum. Logically, they must be allied with the Accelerators, yet they didn’t eliminate Troblum. Who would the Accelerators possibly turn to at this point who wouldn’t do what they needed most and silence Troblum? It’s not logical. This person certainly doesn’t seem to have any moral qualms about killing anyone. And I was obviously intended for the torture chamber or some variant.” Even as she said it, a really bad feeling was growing in her mind. She remembered that ridiculous wiggle the glowing white figure had performed as it ascended into the starship. There was certainly one person who would fit the bill—but that wasn’t possible. She was very definitely in suspension and had been for over nine hundred years. Of course, if anyone had the ability to break her out, it would be a faction … “They wouldn’t dare,” she whispered. But the Accelerators were becoming increasingly arrogant. And they had been planning their moves for decades.

“What do you intend to do next?” ANA asked.

Paula stared around at the rain-sodden area as the lightning flickered again. “I need a full forensic examination here. It’s a long shot, but if there’s anything that will tell us where the exotic matter cage was built and by whom, I need to know.”

“I will dispatch a team immediately.”

“Thank you. I’m going to investigate Troblum a little closer. I need to work out where he’s gone. There’s nothing else I can do until Oscar snags the Second Dreamer for us.”

“As you wish.”

Paula looked up into the wild clouds, wishing she could see the stars. “Any change on the devourment phase?”

“Not yet.”

“Will you be able to survive it?”

“I don’t know. What will you do?”

“Ultimately? If it can’t be stopped, I’m not sure. The High Angel will take me to another galaxy if I want. But right now we need to prevent our dear species from making things any worse.”

Araminta didn’t sleep the whole night long. How could she? No, she’d said.

No to the Skylord. No to the entity that was offering to guide a goodly portion of humanity to what they regarded as their Nirvana.

No. Said because: I’m the Second Dreamer.

It’s me. Me!

Oh, Ozzie, please help me. This simply cannot be.

Me. She kept turning that over and over. How could it be me? Because of some distant ancestor she’d never even heard of until the other day, this Mellanie and her friendship with the Silfen. All that, all those unknowns from centuries ago had come pressing down on her, had taken away her destiny, her self-determination. Fate had chosen her.

Me!

And now the millions, the billions, of Living Dream followers would look to her to help them join with the Skylord. And she’d said no.

The Skylord had been surprised. Shocked even. She’d felt that wounded astonishment linger as she withdrew her mind from contact. That wasn’t an answer that fit its reality. She might just as well have said no to gravity, for all the sense it made.

What she’d done terrified her, but it had been instinctive. She didn’t want to be the Second Dreamer. Just hours before the contact she’d decided about her future after days of soul-searching and self-discovery. She was going to be Mrs. Bovey(s). She was going to get herself more bodies and become multiple. And they’d live here in this grand house or a new one she’d build, equally delightful. And half of their bodies would be in bed together the whole time. She would make him as happy as he made her, and the future would be bright and lovely and full of promise. There might be children. What kind of children did multiples have? Did he want them? They’d never talked about any of this yet. So much was waiting for her out there in the years to come, so many discoveries. So much joy.

Of course she’d said no. What else could she say?

I will not be a part of that. That is not me.

Billions wanted it to be. They were going to insist.

But they will never know who I am. I will never talk to the Skylord again.

That was the decision she’d made when dawn had come to the sky outside the bedroom. She was wretchedly tired and shaking. There were dried tears on her cheeks from the quiet sobbing in the lonely hours as gentle rain pattered against the window. But she knew her mind now. She would stand firm.

On the big bed beside her the blond teenage Mr. Bovey lay on his back with a slight frown, mouth twitching as he dealt with a sour dream.

Nothing as bad as mine, she told him silently. He, too, would never know, she decided; the burden would be too much. This will end. Eventually. I will endure and ride it out.

Araminta bent over and kissed the youthful body. Gently at first. On his brow. His cheek. His mouth.

He stirred. The frown eased away. She smiled at that and kissed his throat. Her hands caressed the supple muscle on his chest as the mélange program rose out of her lacunae. Her raging thoughts stilled as she breathed slowly and carefully, following her own deep rhythms to achieve the composure she sought. Now she could concentrate fully on the body beside her.

For the full hour that followed there were no distractions, no external thoughts and doubts. It was so good to forget Skylords and Second Dreamers and Living Dream, replacing them with good dirty human sex.

“Forgive me, especially after this morning, but you don’t look so good,” Mr. Bovey said.

Araminta nodded grudgingly as she finally climbed out of the big bath. It was such a luxury to lounge in oiled, scented water rather than snatch a quick minute in a spore shower. One her poor body deserved. “Your fault,” she teased. She couldn’t quite put the right emphasis behind it. Her thoughts were drifting back to the revelations of last night with the surety of a tide.

It was the young Celtic one who handed her a huge towel. “Are you all right? You’re not having second thoughts?”

“Ozzie, no! This is the only truly good decision I’ve made. Probably ever.”

He smiled proudly but couldn’t completely hide his worry. “You seem … troubled. I’m concerned.”

She started to rub the water off her legs. “It’s been a big week. I’m all right, just didn’t sleep well, that’s all. I’ll take some kind of pep infuser when I get home.”

“Home?” He frowned.

“I’ve still got to get the apartments finished. We both know I need the money.”

“Right.” He scratched at his hair, looking perplexed. Araminta wasn’t used to that. Whenever they had serious conversations, Mr. Bovey always preferred to use his middle-aged black-skinned body, the one she’d had their very first date with, the one who almost qualified as the father figure. She never had worked out if that was deliberate on his part.

“Look,” he said. “I hate to be the one with the bad news, but you clearly haven’t accessed the unisphere this morning.”

Just the way he said it made her heart sink. She had told her u-shadow to suspend any unisphere contact before they went to bed last night; now it reconnected her and began pulling out priority news items. “Oh, great Ozzie,” she gasped. It was all there. The invasion by Ellezelin forces down by the docks. Paramilitary troops moving across the city. Large capsules patrolling the skies, halting any civilian traffic.

When she rushed over to the window, she could make out several of the capsules floating passively above the river Cairns, insidious dark ovoids set against the dusky dawn-lit clouds. Colwyn’s weather-protection force field was on, covering the entire city. It wasn’t any storm the invaders were interested in; they were preventing any capsules from leaving.

And worse, much, much worse, the message from Director Trachtenberg at Centurion Station about the Void starting to expand. A devourment phase, all the commentators were calling it. And they were equally clear that it was the fault of the Second Dreamer for rejecting the Skylord. “No such thing as coincidence” was the phrase that kept reverberating around in her head. Everyone was using it.

“I can’t stay here,” Araminta moaned.

“You’re not serious? It’s dangerous out there. They’re restricting the reports, but our fellow citizens are not taking this lightly. There have been several clashes already, and it’s not even breakfast time yet.”

They’re here for me, she realized. A whole world invaded, violated because of me. Ozzie, forgive me.

“I’ll just go straight home,” she said stubbornly. “I have to get to the apartments. They’re all I’ve got; you can see that, can’t you?” She felt shabby saying that; it was emotional bullying, but all she wanted to do was get away from him. It was completely wrong. This was the person she was planning to marry; hes should be trusted. She just couldn’t risk trusting him with something of this magnitude. He’d agreed to marry a girl struggling to make it as a property developer, not some walking galactic catastrophe.

“I do understand,” he said, so very reluctantly. “But they’ve shut down all the capsule traffic. Half of mes are stuck all across town.”

Araminta started to pull her clothes on. There was a whole closet in the bathroom that was hers, so at least she could dress practically with dark jeans and a blue sweater. “My trike pod is in the garage. I left it here a couple of weeks back.” Her u-shadow was hurriedly checking travel restrictions in Colwyn City. The traffic management net carried a full proscription on nonofficial air vehicles, backed by the certificate of the Mayor’s office and the Viotia Federal Transport Agency. However, ground vehicles were still permitted to operate within the city precincts, with an advisory caution that citizens should use them only for essential trips. There were a great many links to official Viotia government bulletins about their inclusion in the Free Trade Zone at core planet level and how after a brief transition period everything would return to normal and a strong economic growth phase would begin, bringing a major upswing to everyone’s lifestyle. Just for an instant she recalled Likan and his grand plans for the Free Trade Zone, but she dismissed those thoughts at once.

“Let some of mes go,” Mr. Bovey said. “I can check the place over for you.”

“I am not going to start our life together by being dependent on you,” she said, hating herself now.

He looked even more unhappy. “All right, Ozzie, but you’re obdurate.”

“Think of it as tenacious and how that works in your favor in bed.”

“Ozzie help the paramilitaries if they get in your way.” But his sympathetic smile wasn’t exactly wholehearted. “I don’t suppose one of mes can come with you?”

“Have you got a ground vehicle?” she asked.

“No.”

“You’re really sweet. Still want to marry me?”

“Yes.”

“Even when there’s going to be many mes?”

“Just take care.”

There was a whole team of hims assembled to wave goodbye to her when she clambered onto the trike pod. She was mildly surprised to find the power cell still had half a charge left. All his familiar faces wore the same mournful expression as she waved airily. Then she set off down the narrow gravel track that cut through the grounds to the road outside. There was a point when she’d just passed the last of hims when she thought her resolution might buckle and send her rushing back, confessing everything. It was coupled with a horror that she’d never see him again, that no matter what her determination, this was all too big for her to cope with.

If that’s so, then I can’t drag him down into it.

So she kept the trike steady and true, riding across the garden that retained its light coating of glistening moisture from the previous night’s rain. The old iron gate at the end of the track creaked as its actuators swung it open for her. Then she was out on the empty road lined with tall lackfol trees whose reddish-green leaves were chittering in the gentle breeze that stirred under the city’s force field dome.

The worst part of the trip was riding over the big single-arch bridge to the northern bank. She felt horribly exposed to the big capsules that slid through the air on either side of the bridge. It was so strange seeing the city without its normal capsule traffic zipping about, as if the metropolis had been injured somehow. People on the bridge seemed to share the feeling. Many citizens had decided to walk to work, showing their defiance through an obstinate insistence on pursuing their normal day as best they could. Public cabs still hummed along the central rails, packed tight with commuters. And she’d never known that so many people actually had trike pods; a great many of them clearly hadn’t been outside their garages for years.

As she cleared the apex of the long bridge, Araminta allowed herself to dip into the local gaiafield, receiving the strident emotions of her fellow residents, the determination and anger they radiated and supported each other with. It was a buoyant kinship, though she didn’t dare allow any of her own feelings to trickle out. She was all too conscious of people like Danal delving into the confluence nests, trying to locate any hint of her thoughts, her location, her identity. And how was that for irony? One of her hunters buying an apartment from her, actually living next door to his prey, neither of them knowing. She wondered if he’d be able to scent the guilt on her.

Ahead of her she could see three capsules hovering over the far end of the bridge. Dozens of the suited paramilitaries were clustered there, examining everyone coming over. She almost turned around there and then, but that would have drawn attention. And they’d be watching the whole bridge for such a reaction; she was sure of that. So she pressed on, wondering what that ancestor Mellanie would do: she who’d bequeathed so much trouble to Araminta’s easy life. Was she some kind of tough government agent, a war hero? Why was she a Silfen friend? Araminta promised herself that when she got back to the apartments, the first thing she’d do was look up the woman whose fault this all was.

The paramilitaries were simply standing waiting in intimidating ranks, holding long rifles across their chests as everyone from the bridge walked or drove past them. The unisphere nodes at the end of the bridge were querying u-shadows. Araminta sent her identity certificate, looking nervously at the bulky figures, wondering what their faces looked like. They were sharing nothing with the gaiafield, which was strange, for anyone affiliated with Living Dream surely must have gaiamotes. Were they nervous? They had to know an entire planet hated them.

Whatever smartcore the Living Dream forces were using to try to identify the Second Dreamer didn’t seem unduly interested in Araminta. None of the paramilitaries showed any interest in her as the trike trundled past them. Just on the other side, a group of local youths was gathering. Shouts echoed through the damp air, directed at the paramilitaries. Several brands of construction site bots waddled and rolled toward the dark ranks, waving power tools threateningly and leaking miscreant programs that blocked and distorted the cybersphere nodes.

By the time she was a hundred meters along Gathano Avenue past the bridge, the paramilitary squad commander finally took action against the taunts and belligerent bots. The shouting increased in volume and anger, interspersed with the unpleasant high-pitched hum of energy weapons directed at the bots. Araminta increased her speed as a pair of capsules swept overhead to reinforce their colleagues. The last thing she could afford now was to be taken into custody.

By the time she reached her apartments in the Bodant district forty minutes later, the number of people milling around in the park outside was disturbing. She knew she was being prejudiced, but most of them looked like the kinds of gang members the unisphere news always claimed had a stranglehold on the neighboring Helie district. When she allowed their gaiafield emissions to register, she found an atmosphere of dark resentment swirling across the park, more frightening than the anger of the commuters. There was purpose here. Violence wasn’t far away.

She steered the trike down into the underground garage, thankful for the dual-gate security, then took the elevator up. When the doors opened on the fourth floor, Araminta prayed that Danal and Mareble were out or wouldn’t hear her crossing the vestibule. How good had she made the soundproofing? The Living Dream followers had moved in two days ago, declaring they could no longer wait until the official completion date, which left her with a load of work to finish for them before the full price was deposited in her account. Not today!

The door of the apartment she was using closed behind her, and she pressed her back against it, as if reinforcing the charming old-fashioned brass lock. Breath hissed out of her in a sorrowful gasp, and she slowly slid down onto the parquet floor.

I can just stay here. I don’t need to go out. I can get nutrient fluid for the culinary unit pumped in. I can work on getting the last two apartments finished. By the time that’s done, all this will have blown over.

Except for the Void expansion phase. But the Raiel will fight that; that’s what the unisphere shows say.

It was a pitiful delusion, she knew.

Maybe thirty minutes later Cressida called. Just seeing her icon appear cheered Araminta up no end. If anyone knew what to do, it would be Cressida. And maybe, just maybe, she could tell her cousin about being the Second Dreamer.

“Darling, how are you? Where are you?”

“I’m okay, thanks. I’m at the apartments.”

“Oh. I thought you were with Mr. Bovey.”

“I was. I came home this morning.”

“You crossed the city yourself?”

“Yes. It wasn’t any trouble. I used my trike pod.”

“Dear Ozzie, that was stupid, darling. You’re not to do anything like that again, do you understand? I mean it. Life is about to get very ugly here. I’ve been talking with my contacts in City Hall and the state government house. These Living Dream bastards are not going to go home. Viotia has been royally screwed by our crap-for-brains Prime Minister.”

“Yes. I know,” she said weakly.

“And the worst place for anyone to be right now is Colwyn City. They think that dickhead the Second Dreamer is living here. And there’s no way he’ll escape. They’ve broken just about every single article of the Commonwealth constitution by invading us; they’re not going to stop now. Do you know who they’ve sent to oversee the search?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t tell anyone, but Cleric Phelim himself has come through the wormhole to take charge.”

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, darling, keep up! He’s Ethan’s chief of staff, the enforcer himself. A greater turd you will not meet, and I include your old chum Likan in that list.”

“Oh, great Ozzie.” Araminta drew her knees up to her chin and hugged her legs tight.

“Sorry, darling, didn’t mean to worry you excessively. We’ll be all right, of course. Which is actually why I’m calling. There’s a way out if you’re interested.”

“What way out? The weather dome is on; no one can get out.”

“Ha, that just deters capsules. After all, the damn thing is only there to protect us from clouds and wind, not ward off Ocisen Empire warships or the Void boundary. There’s actually a big gap, well, twenty meters anyway, between the lower edge of the dome and the ground to allow normal airflow. We’d all suffocate in a week without that.”

“So we can get through?”

“We can just walk out until they seal that up with their troops, yes. Even then there are various tunnels available if you know the right people. My u-shadow will send the files over for you. Anyway, the point is that some friends and I are chartering a starship. We’re leaving completely, not just Colwyn but Viotia itself. There’s a seat on it for you if you want. I’m holding it as part of our family’s block booking.”

“Um … but Mr. Bovey?”

“Darling, you’d need five starships to get all of hims off. Be realistic. And be sensible. In times like this you have to think about your own ass.”

“But they’re not letting anyone out of the city, let alone off-planet.”

“You leave that to us. Anybody who believes Living Dream is some kind of irresistible force has clearly forgotten about lawyers. We’re chartering a foreign-owned starship with full diplomatic status. If Phelim tries restricting that, he’ll find himself staring down a Commonwealth Navy warship disrupter cannon. Let’s see who blinks first then.”

“I see.”

“So are you in or out?”

“I … I don’t know.”

“There’s one thing, darling, which I’m going to have to bring up. It won’t be cheap. Where do you stand on selling the apartments?”

“Oh. Not good. I still don’t have deposits on the last two, and I haven’t completed any of the others. Nobody’s going to buy anything now.”

“Yes, that is a problem. You didn’t find that off-load sucker like I told you, then? Never mind. You should never underestimate the market when it comes to making things happen for a profit. Give it a day and there’ll be venture groups on half the External worlds offering Viotia citizens cash for their businesses and properties; it’ll be way below yesterday’s market rate, but they’ll be thinking long term. Once Living Dream grabs the Second Dreamer, things will start to stabilize. Give it twenty years and everything will be back to normal, and those properties will be five times the value.”

“If it’s going to be normal again, why are you leaving?”

“Normal for a Free Trade Zone hagiocracy planet, darling. Which I have no intention of spending the rest of my lives on, thank you very much. I want a nice liberal market-based democracy with all the opportunities for misunderstanding and conflict that it entails. Wherever there’s an argument, you’ll find us lawyers offering to help. And help equals lots of money. On which subject, I’ve already transferred my cash accounts offworld.”

“Already?”

“Certainly, darling; the banks were keen to welcome me. And I wasn’t exactly the first. There’s enough money flying offplanet right now to leave our beloved Prime Minister a magnificent economic nightmare by lunchtime, never mind tomorrow. The only thing she has left to worry about is how painful her bodyloss is going to be when her previously loyal voters get their hands on her. So, do you want me to see if I can off-load your apartments for you? I have some finance seeker semisentients I can assign the problem to.”

“Um, yes. Yes, I suppose so.”

“Great; so I’ll reserve that ticket for you.”

“Yes. Do that.” Araminta said it without thinking. She didn’t want to leave, but Cressida had to be placated somehow, and anything else might be suspicious. Ozzie, it didn’t take me long to become a paranoid schemer, did it?

“Don’t worry,” Cressida said. “Ten days from now we’ll be sipping cocktails on the pool terrace of La Cinal on Etinna. It’ll be fun, a new beginning.”

The call ended, and Araminta stared at the semidecorated open-plan living room in a mild daze. She couldn’t believe that even Cressida could abandon her whole life with such casual ease. But then, that was Cressida for you, thinking faster and smarter than anyone else. She’d probably run through the whole shock, anger, assessment, calculation, and action stages in the first hour while Araminta was still firmly mired in the shock segment. Certainly she’d never thought what life on Viotia would be like after things settled down. Of course Cressida was right; they would be part of the Free Trade Zone forever now. Unless the Senate and navy intervened or Viotia’s residents organized a rebellion.

Or the Void devours us.

Whatever the outcome, Cressida was right about one thing: Araminta couldn’t just wait around hoping to avoid detection. She started to think what it must cost politically and economically to invade a planet. Cleric Conservator Ethan and his sidekick Phelim wouldn’t do that and then just hope they’d stumble across the Second Dreamer. They’d have a plan. And it would be a good one.

Araminta forced herself to get to her feet. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but doing nothing was not an option.

It took two hours, and a stint in the ship’s medical chamber, but Troblum eventually stopped shaking. When he emerged, he could barely manage to cover the couple of meters from the chamber to his big chair. He sank into its padding, fearful he would start trembling again. The medical readout in his exovision showed him just how many drugs were coursing through his bloodstream, working in conjunction with his biononics to suppress his body’s animal reactions. He had been terrified.

He was also rather surprised that he was still alive. All he could remember of the neutron laser shot was a dazzling flash and a noise that was so great, his bones had felt it rather than his ears. His biononics were still repairing his retinas and inner ears. How he had staggered into the ship’s airlock was some kind of miracle; the smartcore had had to give him directions, telling him how to move every limb.

But he was alive and almost intact. The smartcore had used sensors to follow the Cat’s starship flying away from the villa, then vanishing. Her stealth systems were as good as his own if not better. He hadn’t waited around to find out how good Paula’s ship was; he’d simply stealthed up and dropped into hyperdrive. Now he was sitting in transdimensional suspension ten light-years out from Sholapur.

“You were lucky,” Catriona Saleeb said.

“I know.” He glanced at the single item of his collection to survive. Mellanie Rescorai’s handheld array lay on the decking where he’d dropped it. The foxory casing was blackened around the edges, the outline of his hand clearly visible. He closed his eyes and turned his head, making sure he was looking up at the ceiling before he opened his eyelids again. All of it, gone. The entire collection. Destroyed by his own hand. Every unique, significant piece. It was as if history itself had been weakened.

“You won’t be again,” Trisha Halgarth said, twirling a strand of Catriona’s hair around her index finger as she nestled up against her friend. “I’m surprised the Cat didn’t finish you off.” “I’m not,” Catriona said. “She’s going to come after you, Troblum. She’s going to catch you. And then you’ll die. It’ll probably take several years.”

“Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up. Support me.”

“Okay,” Catriona said as she cuddled Trisha. “You’re not safe as long as the Cat is around.”

“And Paula didn’t kill her off,” Trisha said, sounding vaguely puzzled. “So you’ve got two options left.”

“Two?” he queried.

“Go after her yourself and finish the job.”

“No! That’s not an option. Only Paula can do that. She’s still the only one I trust. I can’t believe ANA is so compromised. That’s got to be due to flaws in the unisphere which a faction can manipulate.”

“Think about it,” Catriona said earnestly. “The Cat is allied with the Accelerators. They gave her everything she wanted—ship, weapons, the lot—and somehow she knew where you’d be. You can’t trust ANA, not anymore. I certainly don’t,” she added haughtily.

“It has to be the unisphere,” he said more to himself than to the girls. “They intercepted my message.”

“Which only makes your position worse,” Trisha said. “That leaves option two. Run! Run far and run fast. We’ve got to make it to another galaxy. Mellanie’s Redemption can do it. You’ll be safe there.”

“What if Living Dream is right and the Void works for them?” he asked. “What if the Cat gets inside? What if she can manipulate it the way the Waterwalker did?”

The girls exchanged a look. Both pouted. “What are you thinking?” Catriona asked.

“I should warn them,” Troblum said. “Paula at least. She understands about the Cat. Paula knows she has to be stopped. Paula wouldn’t give up.”

“So give her a call and let’s get out of here,” Catriona said.

Troblum couldn’t help it; his gaze had dropped to Mellanie’s array again. “My collection is gone because of her. The damage.” Just thinking about it was threatening to send his body back into shock again. Medical readouts edged back toward amber alerts. “It was all I ever had,” Troblum wailed. He began to curl up as much as he ever could, his belly squashing across his upper legs. “It took me centuries to collect them all. They were safe with me, I was their guardian.” He was sobbing so hard, the words were virtually unintelligible. “They were so precious, so valuable. They helped make us what we are; they were a part of our evolution. Why did nobody ever understand how important they were?”

“Troblum,” Trisha crooned. “Poor Troblum.”

“There are other pieces,” Catriona said. “Remember, you visited the Smithsonian. They actually let you touch the Charybdis, the curator was so impressed with your preservation work. She knew you were an equal. You see, so much still remains. And its legacy is forever.”

“Not with her still alive,” he muttered darkly. His hand came up to wipe the moisture from his eyes. “She is the destroyer. She is death. She is the Void: her.”

“Call Paula,” Trisha said urgently. “Do it.”

“I have to know,” he whispered. “I have to know we’re safe. That she’s dead for good. I can’t live thinking she might appear behind me. That she’ll take me, and … and …”

Catriona sighed. “You can never know that.”

“Yes, I can.” He pushed himself up out of the chair and walked to the back of the cabin. A small doorway expanded, and he squeezed himself through. An equally small companionway let him through into the starboard midsection hold. There wasn’t quite enough room for him to stand; he had to crouch and hunch his shoulders. No matter how he twisted, his worn toga suit always brushed against the stolen cargo. The little space was crammed with machinery, piled up at random like a cybernetic dragon hoard. One thousand three hundred seventy-two components, Troblum recalled. He frowned and picked up the first one: a hyperfield power manifold, a curving sliver of some substance that seemed to alternate between being crystal and being metal. He knew what each component was, but there was no structure to the piles; everything had been shoved in at random as his commandeered bots had pilfered it from the Accelerator station’s replicators.

So all he had to do was assemble it, start with the central units and slowly create the new machine in the correct sequence, then integrate it with the starship’s existing hyperdrive, and he’d have a fully functional ultradrive ship quite capable of flying to Andromeda or beyond.

“Can you do it?” Catriona asked. Her head was poking through the hatchway, a dubious expression in place.

“It’ll work,” Troblum said. “In theory.” He couldn’t even see the central units.

“Then what?”

“We’ll have a genuine escape route. But I’m still going to contact Paula.”

“Through the unisphere?”

“No. I’m too frightened of the Accelerators’ capability. They were the ones who set the Cat on me. Next time it’ll be Marius or someone else who isn’t going to be distracted by an old grudge.”

“Then how are you going to get in touch?”

Troblum picked up a carbon-black icosahedron, trying to index it. “There is one other person left that I trust implicitly. He’s connected to Paula, or at least he was back during the war. I’ll tell him what I know about the Accelerators. He can carry the message to Paula. Maybe once ANA knows about the swarm, it will stop the Accelerators. The Cat will be on her own then. That’s when Paula can finish her.”

“Who?” Catriona asked. “Who do you trust?”

“Oscar the Martyr.”

Inigo’s Eighth Dream

Edeard awoke to the marvel of soft fingers caressing his abdomen. It was a lovely sensation matched with the warmth of the supple mattress, the touch of fresh cotton sheets, the fading blossom scent of Jessile’s perfume. He smiled, his eyes still closed as he sighed a delighted welcome to the new day. A kiss fell on his cheek. Her nose nuzzled his ear. His smile widened, and the possessive hand slipped along his skin, past his belly button, and farther yet. Jessile giggled.

“Now, that’s what I call rising to greet the dawn,” she murmured lecherously.

The other girl giggled as well.

Edeard’s eyes snapped open. Memories came flooding back. Just to confirm them, Kristiana was lying on his other side watching him and Jessile with covetous intent, her flimsy white negligee far too small to contain her full figure even if the lace bows down the front had been fastened. He recalled how enjoyable it had been undoing those bows last night.

A weak “Haaaa” was all Edeard could manage.

“Me first,” Jessile insisted, her sharp teeth emphasizing the claim on his earlobe.

Kristiana produced a reproving pout. “Don’t forget me, Waterwalker.”

Edeard couldn’t answer. Jessile’s kiss had engulfed his mouth. He folded his arms around her as she slithered on top of him. The memories of last night gained texture, and he remembered her delight and exactly how to cause it. His hands moved in the way that made her shudder helplessly, and then he applied his third hand just so.

For the last three weeks, as autumn embraced Makkathran, Edeard had learned how to harness his telekinetic ability in the bedroom to the best possible advantage. It was another arena of life in which poor old Ashwell lagged far behind the sophisticated decadence of the city. But he hadn’t lacked for girls eager to teach him the most intimate secrets of this darkest art. His fame and strength had proved irresistible to the beautiful mischievous daughters of the nobility. They relished demonstrating their ill-gotten skill almost as much as he enjoyed being the beneficiary. He never was sure exactly who was corrupting whom.

“I’ve never seen steps into a bathing pool before,” Kristiana remarked as she walked down into the bubble-coated water. “We have these awful wooden ladder things hanging on the side in all the pools in Great-Grandfather’s mansion.” Her hand stroked Edeard’s face as she sat on the seat shelf beside him. “This is much better.”

“There are quite a few pools in the constables’ tenement that have steps like these,” Edeard assured her, confident she wouldn’t be going in any to find out.

“Not fair you’ve got them and we haven’t,” Jessile complained. She pouted. Jessile had a very pretty pout, Edeard decided. It certainly got her just about everything she wanted.

He relaxed between them, which spoke volumes about how his life had changed since that day in Birmingham Pool. On several evenings, there had been fights in the theaters over who got to bed him—such reputable girls, too. He’d never really considered what kind of life popularity would bring. And he had enough of his dour Ashwell upbringing left to convince himself it wouldn’t last. But in the meantime …

At his instruction, a ge-chimp brought two sponges and a bottle of soap oil to the rim of the pool. “Would you do my back?” he asked, and leaned forward.

Both girls took a sponge. Even with shielded thoughts, they clearly didn’t have cleanliness in mind as they began to apply the liquid with languid movements.

“What are you doing tonight?” Jessile asked.

“Celebrating, I hope,” Edeard told her. It was the last day of Arminel’s trial; his verdict was a formality. At least Edeard sincerely hoped so, but then, he’d thought that the last time. That good old Ashwell optimism again. The trial was the biggest event in Makkathran and had been for the last four days as the opposing lawyers had presented their respective cases. Only the grandest of the city’s aristocracy managed to get into the public gallery; everyone else relied on sight and sound gifting from the official court recorder. “How about you?”

“My fiancé will be back from patrol this afternoon,” she told him. “Eustace is a lieutenant in the militia. Guarding our borders,” she added with a large dollop of irony.

“Ah,” Edeard said. He glanced at her left hand, seeing a slim silver band like twined vines. A single diamond was set in its crest.

She bent around to look at his expression. “That doesn’t bother you, does it? You’re the Waterwalker.”

“No. Not worried.” He did wonder what kind of marriage it would be, a thought that must have shone through his shielding.

“I’m a third daughter,” Jessile said with a kindly smile. “We’re marrying because after twenty-three years I’ll finally get out of the family mansion, and he gets a dowry to live off. Poor boy’s a fifth son of the family Norret’s second son, which entitles him to a big slice of nothing. Daddy’s promised me an estate in Walton province; they say it has a nice big house.”

“That’s why you’re marrying?”

“Of course.” She paused with the sponge on the top of his spine. “I know I’m going to miss Makkathran, but I suppose I’ll get used to country life. I’ll visit the city every season.”

“What about love?” he asked.

Both girls smiled delightedly, letting wistful admiration flow free from behind their veiled thoughts.

“You’re so sweet,” Jessile said. “That’s one of the things about you. I can sense it so easily. We all can. You’re just endlessly fascinating. Is it true the first time the Pythia met you she said you’d be Mayor?”

“What? No! She said no such thing.” He struggled to remember what she had said.

“I’d like you to meet my friend Ranalee,” Kristiana said. “She’s a Gilmorn; they’re a merchant family. Horribly rich. She’s a second daughter, very marriageable, and she’s expressed, in complete confidence to me, how strongly she’d enjoy knowing you.”

“Uh, right.”

Kristiana stood up in front of him, wiping long damp hair from her shoulders with deliberate slow movements. “She’s pretty, too, and young, in case you were wondering. If I introduce you, we could all celebrate together tonight.”

Edeard found himself short of breath.

Boyd was waiting outside Edeard’s maisonette, wearing a long fur-lined coat over his smartest uniform. A slushy rain was dribbling out of an overcast sky, dampening his hair. He started to say something, then stopped abruptly as Kristiana and Jessile emerged just behind Edeard. The girls were swathed in the long woolen wraps that were currently fashionable. They just about covered up their expensive theater dresses.

“Ladies,” Edeard said courteously.

They both smiled demurely and allowed him to kiss them on the cheek.

“Don’t forget,” Kristiana said. “Tonight. Me and Ranalee.”

Boyd watched in awe as the girls hurried along the walkway to the stairs. They were giggling after a few paces, arms linked, their heads leaning in together to not quite whisper.

“The Alrado theater in Zelda district,” Kristiana’s longtalk shot at him.

“I’ll be there.” Edeard smiled happily at their departing backs.

“Two!” Boyd exclaimed once the girls were clattering down the stairs.

Edeard knew his smile was now boastful. He didn’t care.

“Lady! How do you do it. Step aside, Macsen; the new king is on his throne.”

“How was Saria?” Edeard countered. “Wasn’t last night your fifth?”

“Ninth, actually.” Boyd’s grin turned sinful. “She’s a Matran, you know, sixth daughter of their next District Master.”

“Good for you,” Edeard said. He still didn’t really know his way around Makkathran’s aristocracy, though he’d certainly met an awful lot of the younger members recently.

“She let slip that she’d be amenable to a proposal. Can you imagine that? Me, the son of a baker, marrying into the Matrans!”

“Is it so unusual?”

Boyd slapped Edeard’s back. “Oh, you country boy!”

Edeard wondered what his friend would have to say on the subject of a second daughter in the Gilmorn family. Right from the beginning he’d thought the city’s obsession with lineage and money was unhealthy, as if such considerations were paramount. Of course, it might just be that Ranalee was a lovely person as well. Only one way to find out.

They made their way across the low bridge over the Outer Circle Canal and into the Majate district. Arminel’s trial was being conducted in the central chamber of the Courts of Justice, the largest there was. Outside, the walls of the big antehall were punctured by a series of deep arrière-voussure arches leading to the offices of the judiciary and their clerks. A lot of people in fine robes were already gathered there waiting when Edeard and Boyd arrived. Edeard respectfully acknowledged the looks cast in his direction as they made their way over to the cluster of constables around Captain Ronark. He recognized several members of the Upper Council: Imilan, the Chemistry Guild’s Grand Master; Dalceen, the District Master of Fiacre; Julan, District Master of Haxpen; and Finitan, of course, who at least seemed genuinely welcoming with the sly grin he shot at Edeard.

“About time,” Kanseen said as they joined the constables. “We’re about to go in.” There was the faintest hint of suspicion leaking through her guarded mind. Edeard reckoned that was deliberate; she usually had a very strong shield. She never voiced any dismay at the success he was having with girls right now, but he knew it bothered her. In any case, he knew she’d had numerous invitations from various Grand Family sons, though that would more likely be a cause of annoyance for her.

“They wouldn’t start without him,” Macsen teased.

“I’ve given my testimony,” Edeard said with a straight face. “I don’t really need to be here.”

Kanseen pulled a face at him.

“And yet your ego delivered you here in time,” Macsen said equally innocently. “How fortunate we all are.”

“Any word on Dinlay?” Edeard asked, ignoring Macsen’s taunt. He was slightly disappointed their squadmate wasn’t at the Courts of Justice. When they’d all visited Dinlay last, just a couple of days ago, the doctors had said he was almost ready to leave the hospital. It would be light duties only for another month or so, but the bullet wound was healing well.

“Bit much to expect him to be here as soon as he’s out,” Captain Ronark said. “He’ll probably start tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Macsen said.

“Here we go,” Sergeant Chae said.

Master Solarin from the Guild of Lawyers emerged from the nearest archway, assisted as always by a couple of ge-monkeys. After the debacle of Arminel’s previous trial, Edeard had asked Captain Ronark if the district station could retain its old legal tutor as prosecuting council this time. To his surprise, the captain had agreed. But then, as everyone in the whole city knew, this time Arminel and his cohorts were going to be found very, very guilty. It was just that Edeard felt more comfortable with Solarin prosecuting. At least the ancient lawyer knew how to present a case and wouldn’t succumb to any procedural tricks employed by the defense.

“All waiting for me?” Master Solarin said cheerfully. “How very flattering. Come along, then; let us do battle one last time.”

The clerk of the court appeared at the big doors leading to the central chamber. “The case of Makkathran versus Arminel, Gustape, Falor, Harri, and Omasis is called to session,” he announced loudly.

Master Solarin made his painfully slow way to the central chamber, with everyone else falling into place behind him, as tradition dictated.

Once again Master Cherix had been retained as Arminel’s defense counsel. He followed the constables in, accompanied by two junior lawyers, seemingly unperturbed by the stature of the case.

“Wish I could afford him,” Boyd whispered to Edeard and Kanseen as they made their way to their seats. “In fact, if I ever do get arrested, I’m going to ask for him.”

“When you get arrested, you mean.” Kanseen smiled back at him.

Edeard grinned. But Boyd was right. Even with an open-and-shut case, Cherix had been flawless in his presentation, citing Edeard’s provocation, the grudge between Arminel and Edeard, inflamed tension, and the panic on the day, doing his best to mitigate the ultimate sentence.

“They had to have someone that good,” Chae said as the squadmates settled in their benches. “It’s politics. The trial must be seen as fair.”

When the central chamber was filled to capacity, the clerk called for silence, and the three judges walked in.

The day before the trial began, Solarin had told them that Owain, the Mayor himself, would take the role of chief judge of the proceedings. It was a very rare event for the Mayor to sit in court even though his office was the head of the judiciary. Edeard somehow hadn’t been surprised. Politics. Again. The city wanted to see the gang members punished. And there was an election in the spring. The nature of the case gave Owain the perfect justification to step in.

Owain and his two fellow judges called the court to order and requested the closing statements from both counsels.

Edeard listened with a growing sense of excitement, maybe even a sense of suspense. It was a foregone conclusion. Solarin’s relentless speech made that perfectly clear, expertly demolishing the mitigating circumstances Cherix had so carefully built up. But even so, Cherix almost made Edeard feel sorry for Arminel: a life led astray through no fault of his own, dreadful childhood, abandoned by parents, fallen into crime because the city didn’t care …

Surely they won’t fall for this. As he looked at the faces of the judges, they were totally impassive, their minds perfectly shielded.

After the submissions, Owain announced a recess so the judges could consider their verdict. Edeard and the others found themselves back out in the antehall again, trying not to let their feelings leak to everyone else.

Grand Master Finitan came over to talk to them. “Any doubts about the outcome?” he asked quietly. “You seem subdued.”

“No, sir,” Edeard said. “But Cherix is good.”

“He has to be. The Grand Council can’t afford any accusation of bias.”

“Politics.”

“You are becoming a proper citizen of Makkathran, aren’t you?”

“I do my best, sir.”

“I know.” Finitan drew him away from the other constables. “Then consider this: The offer you will be made after the case is over is not about ability; it is made to test you.”

“Sir?”

“If you accept, it will show you understand the city’s politics and indicate you play by the same rules as the rest of us. If you refuse, if you claim you’re not worthy or wish to demonstrate your humility before the Lady or something along those lines, then you’re telling everyone you’re a dangerous idealist.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said blankly; he didn’t have a clue what the Grand Master was talking about.

“You have my blessing either way. But it has to be your own choice. I would simply ask you to consider what you can accomplish on the outside looking in. Think about it.”

“I will, sir.”

Finitan patted Edeard on the shoulder and went back to the group of Masters from the Grand Council.

“What was that about?” Macsen asked.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea.”

The three judges took two hours to deliberate. When the court was recalled, Arminel and his four fellow accused were made to stand as Owain read out the findings.

On extortion all five accused were found guilty.

On conspiracy: guilty.

On the attempted murder of two constables, a charge leveled at Arminel alone, he was found guilty.

Arminel kept his face and mind composed the whole time. Edeard was expecting the man at least to glance in his direction, but his resolve never wavered.

Owain then put a square of scarlet drosilk on his head. Edeard finally saw Arminel tense up.

Gustape, Falor, Harri, and Omasis were sentenced to twenty years in the Trampello mines. They were led away to the holding cells. Arminel stood alone, facing the three judges.

“The crimes you have been found guilty of are exceptional,” Owain declared. “I don’t believe that I have ever encountered such deliberate wickedness in my time on the Grand Council. To compound this, you have constantly refused to cooperate with the constables and tell them the names of other members of your vile criminal organization. While this might earn you their gratitude, it does nothing to encourage leniency on my part. We have never had the death penalty on Querencia. For this you can thank the Lady, who in her wisdom believes that there is no human soul which cannot be redeemed. However, I see no sign that your salvation is possible. As a consequence, I find myself with no alternative but to sentence you to incarceration in the Trampello mines for the remainder of your life. May the Lady bless your soul upon its ascent into the radiant heavens, for no one else will.” He banged the gavel. “This court is concluded.”

The spectators filed out of the central chamber while Edeard and his squadmates sat on their benches in a mild daze.

“Wow,” Macsen said.

“Life,” Boyd said.

“That’s just about unheard of,” Kanseen said.

Master Solarin turned to face the constables. “I believe the last case where a life sentence was issued was forty-two years ago: the Golden Park Ripper. A most unpleasant individual. Before your time, of course. For that you may consider yourselves lucky.”

“Wow,” Macsen said again.

“Congratulations, young man,” Master Solarin said, and put his hand out.

Edeard took the old man’s hand gently. “Thank you, sir. You got the verdict for us.”

“I didn’t have much work to do, thanks to your extraordinary gift. I wish you luck in your future endeavors. It has been a privilege to be your legal instructor. But to use an ancient phrase, I think you have outgrown me now.”

“Oh, no, sir. I’m hoping for a lot more cases.”

“And you’ll get them; of that I’m in no doubt. And I’m not the only one, it would seem. Do you see the gentleman over there?” His gnarled finger pointed with only a slight tremor.

Edeard and the others glanced in the direction the old lawyer indicated. They saw a man in a flamboyant blue jacket and gray drosilk shirt making his way along the main aisle. He was probably approaching the end of his first century yet still was hale and healthy, with thick brown hair hanging over his collar, only a few strands of which were turning silver. He had heavy gold rings on every finger and loops of gold chain around his neck. His face was fattening, the result of many years of good living. Even so, he looked physically powerful. He was watching them with pale green eyes that were overshadowed by a broad forehead. Some accident or fight long ago had left him with a jaw that he was unable to close straight, giving him slightly lopsided features. His whole appearance was one of a successful, self-confident merchant. As if to confirm this, he was accompanied by two beautiful girls who wore expensive dresses and a lot of jewelry. They were several years younger than Kristiana, Edeard decided with a little burst of sympathy for them. Then he met the man’s gaze. It was a scrutiny every bit as intense as the one the Pythia had given him all those months ago. Edeard instinctively knew there was an enmity between them and returned the stare levelly even though he didn’t know why.

“Who is that?” he asked quietly.

“That,” Master Solarin said with extreme distaste, “is Captain Ivarl.”

“Does he have some kind of ship?” Edeard asked. He was mildly put out by the way the others groaned disparagingly.

“No,” Chae said. “He doesn’t own a ship, though he makes out he used to captain a merchantman. Ivarl is the owner of the House of Blue Petals.”

Edeard had heard of that establishment: a bordello in the Myco district, next to Makkathran’s port.

Captain Ronark had come forward to stand at Edeard’s shoulder. “If the gangs in this city can be said to have a leader,” Ronark said, “it is Ivarl. He at least likes to style himself the master of our criminal fraternity. It was probably he who sent Arminel back to ambush you.”

“Ah,” Edeard said. He smiled politely and inclined his head toward the villain.

Ivarl returned the gesture, tipping his gold-topped cane in Edeard’s direction. Master Cherix came up behind him and murmured something in his ear. Ivarl smiled tightly and came over to the constables.

“My congratulations on an exemplary case,” he said. His voice was rough, and Edeard suspected the injury that had left his jaw askew also had caused some deeper damage.

“Thank you,” Edeard said with a heavy dose of irony.

“This city is so much better off without such people,” Ivarl continued. “They are cheap vermin; they bring nothing to our lives. You, though, are an exceptional man, Constable Edeard.”

“I do my best.” Edeard was uncomfortably aware of the way Macsen and one of Captain Ivarl’s girls were smirking at each other. He wanted to smack his friend hard.

“As do we all,” Ivarl said. “Everyone in their own small way contributes to the flow of life of this fine city. In this respect, I extend an invitation to you and your friends to enjoy the hospitality of my house.”

Edeard was very much aware that everyone was waiting for his response. So this is what Finitan was warning me about. I’ve shown the gangs that not all constables are pushovers, that their usual violence doesn’t work against me, so they want to see how far I’m going to take this. Politics!

He allowed an old, deeply personal image to leak from his mind: the smoldering ruins of Ashwell, with corpses protruding from the ruins.

“I haven’t been down to your district of the city yet,” Edeard said. “But I’m planning on visiting soon.”

Ivarl’s pudgy lips pressed together in a big display of disappointment. He shrugged elaborately. “I look forward to meeting you there, young man.” He turned and walked away, a girl clinging possessively to each arm.

Only then did Edeard notice the looks the others were giving him. “What?”

Captain Ronark smiled. “Good man, Edeard. I knew you wouldn’t betray yourself.”

Chae gave him an admiring grin and walked out with the captain.

“Where was that place?” Boyd asked with trepidation.

“The village I grew up in,” Edeard told him.

“Lady, just seeing it frightened me.”

“I wanted some emphasis. I wanted to make sure Ivarl understood.”

“Oh, I think he got it. You don’t have to worry on that score.”

“Shame, though,” Macsen said wistfully. “Did you see the blond one?”

“You peasant,” Kanseen hissed at him.

“Hey! I can make noble, painful sacrifices, too, you know. You have to have standards to be a part of the Waterwalker’s squad.”

“Don’t call me that,” Edeard said wearily.

“Too late,” Boyd said. “Far too late.”

It was midafternoon when they got back to the Jeavons constable station. They claimed their usual table in the hall, and the ge-monkeys brought over plates of sandwiches and mugs of tea. Of late the station food had improved; local shopkeepers, grateful for the noticeable reduction in gang activity in the district, were keen to supply the constables with their better products at reasonable prices.

Edeard appreciated the gesture, but it made him aware of the expectations settling on his shoulders. And now I’ve seen the real enemy. Arminel might be gone, but Ivarl can send a dozen more just like him onto the streets. A hundred.

After the elation of the trial it was a sobering thought. He hadn’t really changed anything, just made himself famous. And ultimately, what use is that to people?

“Result, or what?” Boyd said as he picked up one of the sandwiches, a malted roll containing ham and cheese with a strong tomato chutney. He bit in contentedly.

All the other constables in the station were making a point of coming over to congratulate them on the verdict. Edeard was getting embarrassed by the admiration.

“Yes. A result all right,” Kanseen said, picking through the rest of the sandwiches. “But it’s only one result.”

“Trust you to pour on the ice water,” Macsen said.

“She’s right,” Edeard said. “We’re going to have to do a lot more than this before the gangs even start getting worried.”

“Not so. Ivarl is worried enough about the Waterwalker to crawl out from under his rock and get a firsthand look,” Boyd said.

“Will you please stop calling me that.”

“I thought Arminel would get thirty to forty years at least,” Macsen said. “But for the rest of his life? He’s only, what, thirty? That’s at least a hundred and fifty years in Trampello. It’s not exactly a pavilion on the Iguru. A hundred and fifty years! Owain must really want to be reelected.”

“I’m not sorry for him,” Edeard said. “He was going to kill me.”

“Because Ivarl told him to,” Kanseen said.

“You think so?”

“No way could he put together an ambush like that without a lot of help. He’d need permission. Ivarl must have agreed.”

“Oh, Lady,” Macsen muttered in alarm. “Look out.”

Edeard’s farsight showed him Captain Ronark leading Chief Constable Walsfol into the hall. Everyone fell silent; benches were scraped across the floor as the constables stood up. Even the ge-chimps stopped moving.

Chief Constable Walsfol walked directly over to Edeard’s table. He was in his full-dress uniform, an immaculate black tunic with gold buttons and scarlet epaulets with a diamond stud. Edeard had been introduced briefly the day after he arrested Arminel; he’d actually been quite impressed with the Chief Constable. The man was in his second century, and the fact that he’d fought his way to the top of the constables was evident in his manner. Walsfol was a straight-talking man, secure because his position had been achieved through the support of the stations.

Walsfol saluted smartly. Edeard hurriedly returned the salute.

“An excellent day, Constable,” Walsfol said in his clipped aristocratic accent. “You have done this station proud.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Walsfol took a pair of epaulets from his pocket. They had a single silver star on them. “As a consequence of your bravery and actions in Birmingham Pool, I would like to offer you promotion to corporal.”

It might have been Edeard’s imagination, but he was sure the word “offer” was stressed. But he was so relieved that this was the test Finitan had spoken of rather than Ivarl’s crude attempt at bribery, he simply said: “Yes, sir; thank you, sir. I’d be honored to accept.”

Captain Ronark led the applause as the Chief Constable attached the epaulets to Edeard’s shoulders. Of course Finitan wasn’t talking about Ivarl, Edeard chided himself. The Grand Council wants to know if I’m going to support their authority. Lady! Do they think I might be a challenge to them?

Walsfol finished and saluted again.

“Corporal Waterwalker,” Macsen said, holding up his beer and laughing.

Edeard had completely surrendered to the ribbing he was getting. They’d all wound up in the Olovan’s Eagle for a few celebratory drinks, claiming a small booth in the upstairs bar, where they were relatively undisturbed.

“I wonder which squads will be under your command,” Kanseen mused. “Corporals are normally in charge of three.”

“Please don’t team us up with Droal’s lot,” Boyd said. “They’re worthless crap artists, and everyone knows Vilby is on the take.”

“I didn’t know that,” Edeard said.

“What, with all your psychic superpowers?” Macsen asked.

Edeard showed him the hand gesture Obron always used to employ, only to find that it summoned up a mournful nostalgia that unexpectedly made his eyes water. Obron would be twenty-three now …

“You’re going to have to think about this, Edeard,” Kanseen said. “Seriously, they’re all going to watch what you do with the promotion. It’s an opportunity to put together a team of your own constables, people you know you can rely on.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Edeard didn’t really want to think about all the responsibility that came with his new position. Unfortunately, his problem was that he couldn’t stop worrying about what he should do next. Gangs and constables would both want to see what he was capable of, if he was just some strong lad from the countryside happy with the attention of all the city girls or someone who would stand up for the law and make a difference. The Orchard Palace probably wants to know as well.

“I suppose I’ll have to keep you lot,” he said with a grand show of reluctance.

It was Boyd’s turn for the hand gesture.

“Even Dinlay?” Macsen said in such a soft voice that only Edeard heard him.

“Yes,” Edeard said with a tiny directed longtalk. “Even Dinlay.”

Macsen scowled into his beer glass.

“And what are you going to do with this team of yours?” Kanseen asked earnestly. “It’s only fifteen people, after all.”

“Two months ago it was just the five of us,” Edeard said calmly. “We can shape ourselves into something useful, I’m sure. That’s if Ronark will allow us. There are procedures, after all.”

“Not to start with,” Boyd said, uncharacteristically serious. “You’ve got some momentum behind you, Waterwalker, and a great deal of goodwill. This is your chance to make something of it.”

“Dear Lady, give him a beer and listen to the politician spout forth,” Edeard groaned.

“I know Makkathran,” Boyd insisted. “There’s a chance here for you.” He put his arms around Kanseen and Macsen. “And we three native guides are going to make sure you don’t blow that chance.”

“You three.” Edeard rolled his eyes. “Great. How can we fail?”

“We stick together,” Macsen said. “Always have, always will, no matter what.”

“No matter what!” They all drank to that.

Boyd pushed his empty glass across the table. “And with your new corporal’s pay, I believe you can afford the next round.”

“Sorry,” Edeard said, standing up and buttoning his tunic. “I have an appointment at the Alrado theater, and it’s a long walk to the Zelda district.”

“An appointment?” Macsen inquired keenly.

“Someone from the Guild of Clerks; they’re helping me with taxes.”

He left to the sounds of their derisive laughter. Just as he started down the awkward curving stairs, he heard Kanseen exclaim: “No! I bought the last round.”

It was cold on the streets outside Olovan’s Eagle. Frost was clinging to the city’s pavements, and flakes of snow were drifting down past the bright orange lights shining out of the buildings. People wrapped in thick coats wove past Edeard as he made his way along Albie Lane toward Flight Canal. He’d thrown out a seclusion haze to ward off curious farsight, as did all Makkathran’s citizens going about business they regarded as private. The effect was like a mild version of concealment.

Edeard was approaching the iron bridge over to the Haxpen district when his farsight swept over a figure for the third time. It had been trailing him for some time, ignoring his obvious wish to be left alone. He focused on it to find out who it was: “Salrana,” he exclaimed.

She scurried forward, thoughts radiant with impish delight. Almost as tall as he now, he acknowledged. Her full-length dark gray poncho coat flapped as she moved, a big hood pulled well forward. “You’re so slow,” she admonished, giggling. “I’ve been following you ever since you left the tavern. If I was an assassin, you’d be dead by now.” She pushed her hood back, allowing her auburn hair to flow freely, and kissed him breathlessly. “You know, I hardly recognized you with your hair so long. The city fashion suits you.”

Edeard grinned back, very aware that she was still pressed up against him. He studied her face with its sharp cheeks and lovely dark brown eyes that were wide and teasing. She was gorgeous now, and because of that he kept trying to avoid her. They still longtalked every day, but he kept using the trial as an excuse for not actually meeting. Just being with her on a cold gloomy street made him embarrassed about all the girls he’d tumbled these last few weeks, so spending a pleasant afternoon together with her would be torture.

Why? he asked himself. She’s beautiful, and she wants me, and I’d adore having her in my bed and my life. We really would be the perfect couple. The only other who even comes close is Kanseen.

His hesitation was born out of some stupid notion of duty. At least that was always the excuse he gave himself. He really did feel protective toward her, and that was hardly necessary anymore. It wasn’t as if they were alone against the world these days. Maybe he was just afraid to change the way things were; there had been so many upheavals, and she was his constant in a very unsteady life. And how she’d hate being told that. She was young and vivacious and wanted some fun. She deserved happiness. And they would be happy together …

“Gosh, seeing me really does cheer you up, doesn’t it?” she mocked.

“Sorry.” He smiled, pushing his emotions down below any possible farsight perception. “It’s fantastic to see you, but that just reminds me what I’ve got to do tonight.”

“Really?” she asked brightly. Her arm was tucked through his, and they started to walk over the iron bridge. “You poor thing. It must be truly terrible having to entertain Kristiana and Ranalee in your bed.”

Edeard stopped in shock. “How on Querencia did you know that?”

She giggled again, delighted to have flustered him. “Oh, Edeard, the whole city knows who’s snagged the Waterwalker tonight. Kristiana has been bragging in half the saloons in town today. And you know what this city is for gossip.”

“Yes,” he said brokenly. Then, because he couldn’t help it, he asked: “Are people really talking about my love life?”

“Talking. Singing. Writing books on it. I think they’re planning a play for the ox roast at Golden Park this New Year.”

“Shut up.”

She pressed him against the railing and kissed him again. Her skin was warm, soft, and silky, her scent strong. “Will the second act be us? And the third and the fourth?”

Edeard almost pushed her away. Instead, with a massive effort of will he smiled back ruefully and turned around to lean on the rail. Then he put his arm around her. Her mind’s flash of delighted surprise at the gesture was intoxicating. “Have I been really stupid?” he asked.

“Only in rejecting me. The rest of it, you’re just like any Grand Family son on his fifteenth birthday. You’ve got the run of the city, Edeard. The difference between you and them is that you earned it. People are fascinated to learn what’s going to happen next: if Arminel was just a fluke or you’re truly going to be the Waterwalker.”

He sighed. “I hate that name.”

“I hope … Edeard, I hope you live up to it. Did you know church attendance has gone up since Birmingham Pool? You displayed duty and honor that day, as well as courage. They’re traits so sorely lacking in this city. It showed people what was absent from their own lives. It was a wonderful thing, Edeard.”

He stared down into the dark water with its surface crust of slush. There were ripples near the far bank where fil-rats were nesting. A couple of gondoliers were edging their way toward them along from High Pool on the Great Major Canal, their lamps glinting on their prows, their gondoliers harmonizing a gentle melody. “I don’t know what to do next,” he confessed. “Actually, that’s not true. I know what I should do. But if I go there, if I use my talent to take on the gangs, then there’ll be no turning back. Right now I can do nothing, and all the fuss will die down. But …”

She hugged him back. It was a gesture more intimate than any of her flirting. “You can’t do that,” she whispered. “You know you can’t.”

“Yeah. I know that. Thank you.”

“I’m just passing on the Lady’s teachings, Edeard. That’s what I’ve given my life to.”

“You’re such a good person, Salrana.”

She leaned in playfully. “I don’t want to be. Not with you. And those family girls, they say you’re a good lover.”

Edeard shivered with mortification. All Makkathran is discussing that? Yet at the same time … “You don’t want to believe everything you hear.”

“Don’t I?” she said archly.

“Well, okay, I admit that bit’s true.”

“Oh, listen to you!” She thumped him on the shoulder, then immediately pulled him in closer and kissed him again.

It was like that time back in the bottom of the well. He knew he shouldn’t, but actually, there wasn’t any real reason why not. For once let the heart rule, not the mind.

A couple walked past them, their farsight gently examining the young couple embracing with growing ardor. Heads turned.

“It is him,” the woman whispered. “The Waterwalker.”

“And that’s a Lady’s novice!”

A longtalk voice was directed at a number of acquaintances: “You’ll never guess—”

Edeard and Salrana broke apart, smirking like scolded apprentices. They straightened their clothes and moved down the slope of the bridge to the Haxpen side.

“I’m going to get a reputation worse than Dybal,” Edeard decided.

“Good camouflage. The gangs will underestimate you if they think you’re just a wicked womanizer.”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Tis a terrible price. Come on, I’ll walk you back to Millical House. It’s sort of on my route.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Actually, it is. I am going to try to achieve something. You and the Lady are right; it would be wrong not to try.”

“And that’s tonight?”

“Yes. It’s perfect. Nobody will expect me to do any kind of constable work tonight.”

“I certainly didn’t.”

“I know. We really need to talk.”

“We’ve talked for three years, Edeard!”

“Yeah.” And he was hugely tempted. As always. Perhaps dealing with Ivarl could wait one day.

“Actually, I’m not being fair,” Salrana said.

“Oh?”

“My House Mother told me yesterday. I’m being assigned to the Lady’s hospital in Ufford for the winter.”

“Where’s that?”

“Capital town of Tralsher province; that’s south of the Iguru.”

“What? No!”

“Yeah. Nursing is all part of our training.”

“But there are hospitals in Makkathran.”

“The Church doesn’t work that way. It wants us to learn about life outside the crystal wall.”

“You know more about life outside than any city Mother does or ever will,” he said with petulance.

“And telling them that would not be helpful.”

“I could ask Master Finitan if he could speak to your Mother.”

Salrana chuckled softly. “Really? That ought to do it. A friend of his wants a novice as a mistress, so could you please change her traditional training schedule to make that possible?”

“Ah. No, put like that, I suppose not.”

“You suppose right.”

“But you wouldn’t be my mistress.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“No.” He shook his head firmly. “No. Never. We would be equals. True lovers.”

“Oh, Edeard.” A tear emerged from her eye as she looked up at him. “Say that again. Promise me! Promise we’ll be lovers when I get back.”

Edeard took both of her hands in his own. “As the Lady is my witness, I promise.”

Edeard took the tall bridge beside High Pool, the one with the crystal apex. On this night the transparency made no difference; it looked like he was walking on some glossy black substance smeared by slush. It brought him out into the empty streets of Eyrie, which he hurried through on his way to the Zelda district. He hadn’t planned on coming this far, but if everyone knew he was meeting the girls there, he should at least appear to be on his way in case he was being observed. Part of him was still aghast that the city knew about his love life, though he accepted that he really had only himself to blame. It was strange that none of his friends had mentioned it. Did they assume he knew? That was the problem with not growing up in the city: Everyone took it for granted that he was familiar with the culture.

Once he was over Grove Canal the buildings changed to a warren of modest houses and shops and craft halls. The walls closed in as he deliberately chose a route that took him down the narrowest streets. In Polteral Alley he was completely alone. It was a tiny passageway between the backs of buildings, a zigzag that was barely one person wide. Indeed, there were alcoves in the walls to allow people to pass-given their slightly strange inward bulge a couple of feet above the ground, he could only speculate what the city’s original inhabitants had looked like. At night nobody used it; the thick walls prevented anyone from using farsight along its length, and it effectively blocked longtalk. If you were mugged in there, no one would know until morning. Edeard sent his farsight out ahead of him, checking that the alcoves were all empty. When he was halfway along, he stopped under an overhanging section of wall and wove a concealment around himself. Once he was sure no one was following him, he asked Makkathran’s somnolent mind to allow him passage once more. It was easier for him now; after that first time behind the shops in Sonral Street, he’d taken to practicing in secluded spots like this one. There were many in the city.

The pavement under his feet changed, producing a subliminal swirl of colored symbols. Edeard’s feet sank through it as if it had no more substance than fog. Some force lowered him gently into the drain fissure running beneath the buildings. As always, he felt as if he were plummeting from a great height.

Edeard walked for several minutes until the drain opened out halfway up the curving wall of the big tunnel that ran directly underneath the Great Major Canal. He placed his feet tentatively on the little steps he’d asked the city to create down the wall. Even so, with the water gurgling over his boots, it was a treacherous descent. His previous explorations had revealed that Makkathran’s entire canal network was duplicated down here in the city’s hidden underworld. The crest of the main tunnel glowed with a faint tangerine light, showing him the stream that ran along the bottom. It was higher than usual tonight, indicating how much water was dripping out of the pavement slush and into the drains. A ledge allowed him to walk beside it, though he had to splash across the broad circular pools of the junctions. Water poured in over the tops of his boots. It was freezing. Not for the first time, he wondered if he somehow could bring a little boat down here. In the end he settled for using his third hand to hold the water back from his shins. He’d found that doing the whole Waterwalker trick and stabilizing the surface was too exhausting to maintain for any length of time.

Eventually, he turned off down the tunnel below the Upper Tail Canal. After a few hundred yards he scrambled his way up into another drain. He wasn’t terribly familiar with the Myco district, but his farsight could penetrate the city’s substance easily now. To his mind, it was as if the structure around him were built from nothing more than cloudy glass. He stopped below a secluded corner of a little square, and the city lifted him up, elevating him out into the thickening snowfall. By the time he emerged, he’d cloaked himself in a concealment again.

A couple of sailors in their traditional magenta-colored half cloaks walked through the square, oblivious to him. He grinned at their backs and set off in the opposite direction.

The House of Blue Petals fronted the Upper Tail Canal, looking directly across the warehouse domes of the port. It was a four-story establishment with a vermiculated facade, the oval windows surrounded by onyxlike anthemion friezes. Protruding from the upper slope of its mansard roof were several hemispherical windows, as if it had grown giant eyes to peer up at the nebulae of Querencia’s skies. Edeard frowned up at them, puzzled by the faint violet glow that emanated from within. It had been a long time since he’d seen anything other than Makkathran’s ubiquitous orange glow at night.

The three tall doorways of the ground floor were all open. The sound of piano music was spilling out into the street, accompanied by laughter and loud voices. Doormen in black jackets similar to constable tunics stood on either side of each heavy wooden door. Edeard held his breath and slipped past them, watching anxiously to see if they could sense him. One of them frowned, looking around at some phantom disturbance, but didn’t raise any challenge.

Half of the ground floor was a bar, with the piano in the middle hammering out a jolly tune. Smartly dressed stewards mixed cocktails behind a long polished counter, and groomed ge-monkeys delivered the drinks. Polished tables were accompanied by high-backed leather armchairs where the customers relaxed with a drink as they waited for the madam to come around. Two big black iron stoves on opposite sides threw out a comforting heat as coal blazed away behind their grilles. The room was a high one, taking up two floors, with a wooden gallery running around it. Girls with strangely stiff curly hair leaned over the railing, wearing low-cut, brightly colored dresses, grinning at the men below as they made eye contact and blew kisses and made saucy longtalk calls.

Edeard watched the wide wooden stairs that had been fixed to the wall, seeing who was going up and coming down. It wasn’t just sailors who visited Ivarl’s establishment; judging by the clothes, a large proportion were men from the guilds and families. He even saw a couple of militia officers in their sharp blue and scarlet uniforms. No constables, though. Probably can’t afford it.

He waited, getting a feel for the routine and probing about with his farsight. The madam would go from table to table, sharing a few pleasant words with the clientele. There would be a brief discussion about the girls, with some customers requesting an old favorite, and some taking their pick from the gallery. A fee was handed over discreetly, or for regulars an addition was made to their accounts, and as soon as the man had finished his drink, he’d go upstairs to be greeted by the courtesan he’d chosen.

After a couple of minutes standing near the foot of the stairs, Edeard followed a carpentry guildsman up to the gallery. The selected courtesan flounced along to throw her arms around the guildsman in welcome. They headed off down one of the side corridors. Edeard hurried past the other girls, startled by how strong their perfume was; it made him worry he might sneeze. Then he was wiggling through an archway shielded by curtains. That was the most difficult part, trying to disguise the motion of the thick red velvet.

On the other side was an unembellished corridor leading back to stairs that took him up to the third floor. He’d sensed the layout of the rooms up there, where over thirty people were gathered in groups. Ivarl was easy enough to discern; Edeard wasn’t going to forget his mind in a hurry.

Edeard didn’t bother with the door; opening it unseen would be impossible. Instead he asked the city to change a section of the wall and ghosted his way through. The gang master was holding court in a long room at the end of the building. Four of the grandiose oval windows looked out eastward to the Lyot Sea. Tonight they were covered by thick curtains. A green enamel stove burned hot in the corner, making Edeard wish he wasn’t wearing his coat. Nobody else in the room was wearing one.

Ivarl’s gray shirt was unbuttoned, showing off a thick mat of hair on his chest. His boots were off, resting against the side of the deep-cushioned leather settee on which he was lounging. Seven other men were in attendance. Their fine clothes emphasized the illusion of their belonging to some Grand Family or merchant house. It was an image Edeard couldn’t get rid of, as if they’d somehow established a guild for their criminality and enjoyed the same benefits as any of Makkathran’s legitimate enterprises. When he’d first learned of the gangs, he’d assumed they’d consist of sour-faced men in shabby clothes meeting furtively in dark underground rooms, not this.

There was a table along one wall; gold and silver platters were laden with food every bit as delicious as that served in a Lillylight restaurant. It complemented a selection of wine from estates Edeard had never heard of.

Three girls were walking around with bottles, filling up the cut-crystal goblets held by the men. They were wearing long diaphanous skirts and simple suede slippers—nothing else. Edeard stared, feeling mildly guilty, as if he’d deliberately snuck into their bedrooms. Lady, you stupid country boy. What did you think girls would wear in a place like this? Then he really looked at them. Two were the girls who’d accompanied Ivarl to the court that morning. The third …

Edeard couldn’t stifle the little groan of dismay that escaped from his throat. Luckily, the men didn’t hear him over their conversation. It was Nanitte, the dancer Macsen had brought back to his maisonette the night before the ambush at Birmingham Pool. Now, that was scary. Ivarl clearly operated at a level that had completely eluded Edeard. This room was the right setting for the gang master, after all; he was smart and sophisticated, with money and an unseen influence that extended a great deal further than Edeard liked to think about.

Edeard had come there in the hope of overhearing a few incriminating conversations. Now he knew that Ivarl wasn’t going to be removed simply by a couple of well-planned arrests and some raids. If he was going to do this, take out Ivarl and ruin the gangs, he was going to have to sharpen his own act considerably. He would have to learn how Ivarl functioned, where his interests lay, who his friends were. With a depressing sensation, Edeard guessed that the gang master could never have grown to this stature without help from the city’s establishment.

One thing at a time.

He strengthened his concealment and settled down to listen.

It snowed the day after New Year. Big soft flakes slid down out of a gray sky, deadening the sound of the city. Edeard bathed early, then ate a decent breakfast of scrambled eggs and grilled bacon with some slices of Orkby black pudding thrown in the frying pan along with his mushrooms. He was pretty certain he wasn’t going to get any lunch today. When he dressed, he made sure his new thickened drosilk waistcoat was fastened properly, then added a pair of drosilk undertrousers. There could well be a lot of resistance from the gang members during the raid, and he knew that over half of them were armed with pistols.

He went out onto the walkway to finish his mug of tea, looking down onto the pool in the central oval courtyard. Snowflakes sank silently into the still surface as strands of vapor rose. The water was too warm to freeze but not warm enough for any of the kids to swim in. Edeard had thought about increasing the pool’s temperature, as he’d done with his own maisonette, but again he’d resisted for fear of drawing attention to his ability.

Boyd and Dinlay came along the walkway, their cheeks flushed by the cold air. Dinlay as always was immaculately turned out, with a regulation knee-length coat exactly the same color as his tunic; even the silver buttons were the same size and shape. Boyd had chosen a brown leather greatcoat, quilted on the inside. Edeard had admired it so much, he’d gone to the same shop in Cobara district to get himself one.

“Everything okay?” Dinlay asked anxiously. Since his return to duties two months ago, he’d been working hard to prove himself to his squadmates. Too keen, really, but they’d all gritted their teeth and waited until he lost his manic edge.

Edeard was praying to the Lady that this raid would make Dinlay feel like a full member of the team again, and he had one last trick to make that a reality. “No movement. The ge-eagles have been watching the street all night. Trukal and Harawold are still inside. Lian is with his girlfriend in Sampalok.”

“What about Ivarl?”

“Where he always is,” Edeard said. He was actually surprised by how little Ivarl ventured out of the House of Blue Petals, but then, anyone he wanted to see responded quickly to his summons. There were Grand Council Masters who didn’t command that much respect. On the plus side, that made it a lot easier for Edeard to keep watch on his opponent; by now he knew the House of Blue Petals better than any building in Makkathran except Jeavons station.

For the last two weeks he’d eavesdropped on the plans for their robbery in Vaji district. It was audacious and impressive: to break into the Chemistry Guild yard during New Year’s Eve and steal their stockpile of platinum ingots. The planning was meticulous, involving more than twenty gang members and four gondoliers. They’d gathered guard rosters, bribed a couple of guild members to leave certain doors open, lined up girls to make sure other strategic people were away from their posts. They’d even staged a fight in a tavern to occupy constables from Vaji station. What could be more natural than a drunken brawl on New Year’s Eve?

Once he’d learned all that, the real maneuvering game began. Edeard told the squads under his command that he’d gotten a source in Ivarl’s gang and that there was a robbery being arranged. That took less than a day to get back to the gang master, and the resulting friction and suspicion it unleashed among otherwise trusted lieutenants was a joy to behold. Then Edeard convinced Ronark to allow the robbery to go ahead, promising that his source had revealed the hideaway where the ingots were to be stashed. That was where the constables’ raid should take place, he insisted, after they’d let the gang think they’d gotten away with it. Hopefully, senior gang members would be lured to the hideaway as they began to fence the platinum to unscrupulous merchants and loose-moraled jewelers.

After that, Ivarl called in Trukal and Lian to announce a slight change of plan that only the three of them would know about. Edeard almost laughed out loud as they quietly plotted their reverse deception. All the deceit and countertrickery was starting to muddle his head, but this wasn’t about the robbery anymore. It was about him and Ivarl going head-on. Watching Ivarl from within his concealment, he could see his adversary knew that, too.

Kanseen and Macsen arrived outside Edeard’s maisonette. They looked eager.

“No hangover?” Edeard inquired lightly.

“Not from last night,” Macsen said. “I have an example to set to the rest of your squads. I was in bed by nine o’clock with a cup of hot chocolate.” He winked at Boyd. “Alisool knows how to make really good chocolate.”

Kanseen wrinkled her nose. “Lady preserve us from your ego.”

“Let’s go,” Edeard told them.

When they got to the Jeavons station, the two other squads that were under Edeard’s command were waiting for them in the small hall. Everybody was sharing the same anticipatory glow. Droal and Urarl, the squad leaders, both saluted, and Edeard returned the gesture scrupulously. He was doing his best not to direct any attention toward Vilby.

“Everything all right?” Urarl asked. He was a couple of years older than Edeard, a third son from a smithy in the Cobara district. Strictly speaking, he’d been due promotion, though he never showed any resentment toward Edeard for making corporal first.

“They haven’t moved,” Edeard assured everyone in the hall.

“Chae’s team has been observing them all night. The ingots are there waiting for us, and we’ve identified seventeen gang members involved. The courts are going to be very busy this afternoon.”

Captain Ronark led another three squads into the small hall. “Ready to go?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said.

“Here’s your weapons certificate,” the station commander said, handing over a small parchment with his official seal. “I’ve just longtalked with the commanders of Neph and Bellis stations; they’re reserving some squads to assist with the arrests. Good move, that. Don’t want to put their noses out of joint.”

“Thank you, sir.” Edeard looked up as Probationary Constable Felax hurried into the room. The lad was only seventeen; he’d joined up just after Birmingham Pool, along with twenty others. Chae claimed his life was now a nightmare trying to train so many worthless screwups. Privately, of course, he was loving it.

“All the warrants signed, sir,” Felax said. “Judge Salby says good luck.”

Edeard put the warrants into his pocket without looking at them. “You can stay with us for today; we’ll need runners.”

“Thank you, sir,” Felax said worshipfully.

“Okay, your attention, please,” Edeard said, stepping onto a bench. “The ingots taken from the Chemistry Guild are sitting underneath a house in Whitemire Street in Sampalok. They’re being guarded by five or six armed gang members; however, we expect more gang members to arrive this morning to begin distributing them to dodgy merchants across the city. Keeping the ingots in one place is risky for them, so we need to move in after those carriers arrive and before they leave. That will give us the maximum amount of people to arrest. Once we have recovered the ingots, we’ll also be arresting everyone involved in the crime, but I have to stress we need the ingots as evidence. The first time I was in court with Arminel taught me that.”

A ripple of laughter went around the room.

“We have three ge-eagles and ten ge-hounds from this station as backup, and in addition we’ll have a number of other squads from

Bellis and Neph. We know some of the gang members are armed, which is why we’re being issued pistols, but please only use them as a last resort. I don’t want any casualties. This is a big operation, and it’s going to send a very loud New Year message from us constables to the gangs that this is going to be their last year in Makkathran.” Macsen and Dinlay led the applause and whistles.

“It’s going to be total chaos,” Macsen said as they made their way down the Great Major Canal on a gondola; another four gondolas were following them, carrying the rest of the squads.

“Why?” Dinlay demanded irately. “Edeard has done a great job organizing this.”

“Oh, yeah? Who has responsibility when we arrive? The squads from Bellis and Neph are going to want to grab the credit, and they’ll be led by sergeants. No disrespect, Edeard, but there are too many constables involved. The squads aren’t used to working as a big team.”

“I know,” Edeard said. He sat back happily in the gondola and smiled up at the sky. It had stopped snowing, with the clouds starting to clear. Strong fingers of winter sunlight were stabbing down to glare on the snow-clad buildings of the city. With people starting to return to work after the New Year holiday, Makkathran had an air of clean expectation. He liked that.

“What are you up to?” Kanseen asked suspiciously.

“Actually, it’s a lot worse than Macsen says,” Edeard said cheerfully. He glanced back at the gondolier, who was trying not to show too much obvious interest, and leaned forward to whisper to his friends. “The gang knows we’re coming.”

“How?” Boyd asked.

“My source told me.” In fact, the link was a simple one. Three nights each week Vilby paid a visit to a private room in the Black Horse tavern, where Nanitte was waiting for him.

“Who in the Lady’s name is this source?” Macsen demanded. “Everything we’ve done these last weeks is governed by what they’ve told us—you!”

“Can’t tell you.” Edeard hadn’t quite summoned up the courage to tell Macsen. Of course, Macsen probably wouldn’t even remember Nanitte.

Macsen growled and slumped back.

“So what do we do?” Dinlay asked.

“Use their arrogance against them.”

The squads from Bellis and Neph were waiting on the bridge by Mid Pool. Edeard’s gondola pulled in to a mooring platform, and he got off to consult with the two sergeants in charge. Macsen had been right; their eagerness was palpable. Edeard knew they wouldn’t follow his polite requests to coordinate with him. It would end up in a rush to make the arrests. He took out a map and showed them where the suspect house was in Whitemire Street, and they agreed to a pincer movement with their squads going through Pholas Park while Edeard took his across Myco so that they could converge on the hideaway from opposite sides. If the gang members sensed them coming, they’d still be trapped.

Edeard’s gondola carried on down Great Major Canal, with Bellis on one side and Sampalok on the other. The difference was pronounced. Along the canal, the cylindrical buildings of Bellis were roofed by long twisting spires; cuplike Juliet balconies bulged out of the walls as if they’d sagged open.

Sampalok was made up of big tenements not dissimilar to the one Edeard lived in, except these were three or four times the size and the maisonettes were smaller. Families here were packed in tight. The broad streets circling the tenements were cluttered with rubbish; the district’s ge-monkey sanitation teams seemed unable to cope. It was worse than Ashwell had been. That would be a good starting point, Edeard thought: improve basic living conditions, give people higher expectations. So why doesn’t the District Master do something?

As if reflecting their surroundings, the residents close to the canal stared sullenly at the gondolas carrying the constables. They spit into the water and made obscene gestures. A few third hands nudged at the little craft. Gangs of kids jeered when they saw the uniforms.

“Little buggers,” Boyd grunted.

“They need to be shown a different way,” Edeard said. “That’s all.”

“Too late,” Macsen said. “This is what they know; it’s the way life is lived here. You can’t change it.”

Edeard stared at the skyline of sturdy uninspiring buildings, thinking how he could improve them, the new forms and functions he could shape. “Don’t be too sure,” he whispered.

Kanseen gave him a curious look but said nothing.

They all disembarked at First Pool and made their way into Myco. It was strange for Edeard seeing it in daylight for once. Nothing like as shabby as its neighbor, the small district was occupied predominantly by the families of fishermen and shipbuilders, with a large guild presence. They had a much stronger sense of community; pride, Macsen called it.

“News for you,” Chae’s directed longtalk informed Edeard as they walked down Maley Street, not far from the House of Blue Petals.

“What?”

“You’re not going to believe who’s just turned up to examine the ingots.”

“Who?”

“The good Captain Ivarl himself.”

The squad members close to Edeard started grinning, hungry with anticipation.

“That makes sense,” Edeard replied.

“Lady, we’ve got him,” Boyd told the others, giving them a broad thumbs-up.

“What do you mean?” Chae asked.

“He’s come to gloat,” Edeard told him. His own farsight showed him the squads from Bellis and Neph hurrying through Pholas Park. As expected, they already had crossed into Sampalok via the bridge over Trade Route Canal, which put them a lot closer to the hideaway than Edeard. They’d arrive a good ten minutes early.

“What are you thinking?” Kanseen asked shrewdly.

Edeard halted the squads and beckoned Felax forward. He handed an envelope to the young probationary constable. “I want you to go directly to the house in Whitemire Street and deliver this to the sergeants from the other squads.”

The lad saluted. “Yes, sir, Waterwalker.”

“Quick as you can now,” Edeard said. He instructed one of the ge-eagles to keep watch on the lad as he started running.

“What’s happening?” Macsen demanded.

“Slight change of plan,” Edeard announced. “Follow me, please.”

He turned off down Campden Avenue, which was lined with winter-flowering jackral trees whose sky-blue puffball flowers were just budding. Water dripped off the encrustations of snow on their overhanging branches. There were a lot of whispers and longtalk queries behind him, which he ignored. They were heading away from Sampalok now; the avenue led straight to the Upper Tail Canal, which bordered the Port district.

“Dinlay,” Edeard called. “Take Urarl’s squad and split off down the next alley.” He held up the map so only his friend could see it. “That’s the building we want; you come at it from this side.” His finger indicated the spot. “Make sure no one leaves; remember to watch the windows and the roof.”

“What’s in there?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard leaned forward so his lips were almost touching Dinlay’s ear. “The ingots.”

The switch had been made with considerable precision in the middle of the night. As the gondolas loaded with ingots made their way back from the Chemistry Guild yard to the safety of Sampalok, they passed under several bridges along Roseway Canal, including the broad stone and iron archway at the end of Abad’s Royal Boulevard, which led over to Nighthouse district. It took precision timing, but Ivarl made sure that another gondola was going in the opposite direction at exactly the same time. For a few seconds the gondolas were out of direct view of the ge-eagles that the constables were using to observe them. The solid bridge structure made farsight difficult, especially when the gondolas were surrounded by a seclusion haze. Identical boxes were thrown between the gondolas.

Edeard had to admire how smoothly they’d managed it. What Ivarl hadn’t taken into account was that Edeard knew the plan in its entirety and would be using the sight of a ge-cat swimming idly under the bridge. Grand Master Finitan had been happy to help, lending Edeard fifteen of the genistars so he could position several under each bridge. Once Edeard had confirmed that the switch had been made, it was easy for him to track the new gondolas as they took a long route back around to Myco, where they landed the boxes at a slipway. Ivarl’s men carried the boxes into a fisherman’s warehouse.

“Oh, dear.” Chae’s sardonic longtalk reverberated around Edeard’s squads. “Captain Ivarl seems to be upset about something.” His gifted sight showed the gang master rushing out of the house in Sampalok, his face red, almost running. Several of his lieutenants were following, their expressions anxious.

Edeard grinned at the warehouse, which was twenty yards ahead now. The big doors were open, showing a gloomy interior filled with barrels. Several fishermen and women were sitting outside, mending nets. More nets were hung up in great loops inside, drying off.

“Seal it up,” Edeard told his squads.

The people working on the nets looked up in alarm as the constables appeared. Ge-eagles swooped low, keeping a keen eye on the slipway leading into the warehouse. Ge-hounds growled in warning.

“Please remain where you are,” Edeard announced. “I have a warrant to search the premises.”

Dinlay and two constables blocked one of the fishermen who tried to sprint away.

“Kanseen, take Macsen and Droal inside. Have a scan around for me, please. You might want to check the cellars.”

“You sneaky beast,” she muttered, grinning as she went into the warehouse.

Then Edeard’s farsight caught someone running down the slipway on the other side of the warehouse. He jumped off the side of the canal, holding the surface of the water firm as he landed. It held his weight with only a slight dent under each foot as he ran around to the slipway. People on the other side of the wide canal stopped and stared. Fingers were pointed. Cheers echoed across the icy water. Children called their friends to watch. It was the Waterwalker, they cried; he was doing it again.

Edeard arrived at the end of the slipway. Lian was there, trying to push a small dinghy into the water. “Don’t go,” Edeard asked nicely. “We’re only just getting started.”

Lian was longtalking frantically. One hand went to the coat pocket with his pistol.

Edeard gave him a warning look. “It didn’t do Arminel any good. Remember?”

Lian glared furiously but backed away from the boat, raising his hands. Droal came down the slipway behind him and removed the pistol before slapping on handcuffs.

“What is going on?” demanded the sergeant from Bellis station. Edeard’s farsight observed them arriving at the house in Sampalok.

“We farsighted them moving the stolen items earlier,” Edeard replied, keeping his mental tone level as he examined the dinghy. “Didn’t have time to tell you. Sorry. My runner has a list for you. It has the names of everyone involved in the Chemistry Guild robbery. Most of them live in the tenements close to the hideaway. Would you arrest them, please?” He was aware of the callous humor shining out of Chae’s mind as the Bellis sergeant snatched the envelope from Felax.

“Oh, Lady,” Kanseen exclaimed. “Edeard, you’ve got to see this.”

“On my way,” he said.

The cellar under the warehouse was one of Ivarl’s clandestine stores. Edeard had only taken a fast sweep with his farsight a couple of days earlier for fear of attracting attention. He’d noted the crates, bottles, and sacks piled up in the three vaulting cellars underneath. There were a lot of them.

Macsen and Urarl began opening crates, finding an astonishing array of expensive silverware. Smaller boxes contained jewelry. The sacks held bales of raw drosilk. There were bags of tea and spices from provinces hundreds of miles along the coast. Bottles of fortified wines were stacked to the arching ceilings.

“It’s going to take a week to list all this,” Urarl said in astonishment. They’d only opened the first few boxes in one cellar.

“Help’s on its way,” Edeard assured him.

By wonderful coincidence Ronark arrived at the same time as Ivarl. The Jeavons captain led three gondolas carrying accountants from the Guild of Clerks who had followed Edeard down the Great Major Canal at a leisurely pace. They moored to the slipway at the same time Ivarl came hurtling out of Campden Avenue, out of breath and very very angry.

“I forgot you said you lived around here.” Edeard smiled at the gang master. “How nice to see you again.”

Ivarl glared at Edeard, then at the impassive Captain Ronark. His gold-topped cane was raised. He hesitated.

“Is there something we can do for you?” Edeard asked as Dinlay and Kanseen carried the first boxes of ingots out of the warehouse. Ivarl’s wild-eyed stare switched to the boxes with their precious contents.

“Would you like to retrieve something in here, perhaps?” Edeard continued. “We’ll need to see an invoice, of course. There are a great many items stored in the cellars. Strangely, the Mayor’s port inspectors have no record of them being landed at Makkathran and consequently no duty being paid. I’m sure the accountants will soon calculate how much is owed on them. Until then they’ll be placed in a city store. Perhaps someone will come forward to claim them and pay the tax.”

A reluctant grin appeared on Ivarl’s face. “You’re good, Waterwalker.”

“Just doing my duty.”

“But you have to be good the whole time. And good fortune is a fickle thing.”

“Yes. I’m sure Tanamin will agree with that.” It had been two nights earlier when Edeard had listened to the sickening instructions Ivarl had issued to Harawold on the punishment to be given to Tanamin, who hadn’t extorted enough money from his patch in Fiacre district.

Ivarl couldn’t cover up the flash of surprise in his mind. When he did veil his emotions, he was regarding Edeard with the kind of caution reserved for a cornered fastfox. “Yes. Very good; I see that now. Are you sure you won’t accept my hospitality? Together we can accomplish a great deal.”

“There’s not much to be accomplished from inside the Trampello mines.”

“I see. That’s a shame.” “Was there anything else?” “No. Not today.”

By midday the Ellezelin paramilitary capsules streaking across Colwyn City had all taken to using their sirens, producing a constant Doppler-mangled cacophony as they rushed between burgeoning trouble spots. Scarlet and azure laser fans swept through the open balcony doors of Araminta’s apartment as another one flew across the park outside, accompanying the discordant sound. Araminta scowled as the dazzling light flared across the kitchen area of the living room once more. She’d been making herself a cup of tea from a kettle while the old culinary unit strove to fabricate the components of a simple chicken sandwich. She cursed and kicked the base of the stupid unit as another set of thermal error symbols flashed on its screen. Perhaps the laser light was disturbing its internal systems.

She sighed and shook her head, annoyed with herself for thinking something so silly. The worst thing was just sitting around doing nothing. Actually, no; it’s not knowing what to do.

Another capsule screeched overhead. Araminta slammed down the kettle and stomped over to the open balcony doorway. The capsule had vanished behind the apartment building by the time she got there, presumably harassing the people in the park, which seemed to have developed into a center for disobedience to the invaders. She would have liked to slam the doorway shut as well, but the glass wall sheet was formflow, so she had to settle for the glass slowly curtaining together. At least when it had become a single sheet again the sound of the sirens was reduced considerably, as it should have been with the expensive sound-deadening layer she’d added. The doorway had been open all day to give her some sense of connection to the city. It was kind of stupid yet comforting at the same time. In fact, all she’d been doing was avoiding thinking about the real events. She certainly had not done any work on the apartment.

Her u-shadow had pulled a steady stream of news out of the unisphere, all relating to the Void expansion. There were very few hard facts and far too much speculation and accusation. But her u-shadow was running an adequate filter, supplying her with the basics. Nothing much had changed; the observation team had evacuated Centurion Station. All the shows were playing the images of the base itself collapsing. Of more interest were the enigmatic DF spheres flying into orbit around the star. Commentators in the news studios were busy speculating about exactly what they were capable of; apparently, they’d been copied by the Anomine, who had used them to imprison the Dyson Pair. Now everyone was hoping that they had more aggressive functions than simple force fields, regardless of the gigantic scale.

Despite the loss of Centurion Station, a large number of sensor systems out amid the Wall stars were still operational and were feeding their data back to the Commonwealth via the tenuous navy relay. The Void boundary continued to expand, its surface rippling and distending to engulf the star clusters already falling in toward it. That voraciousness was cited by many as having a purpose, which came back squarely to the Second Dreamer and the Skylord.

After the balcony doors clicked shut, she sank to her knees on the bare concrete floor. The tears she’d managed to contain all morning threatened to finally emerge. It’s too much. No one person can expect to deal with all of this. I can’t have put the entire galaxy in peril. I can’t.

Her u-shadow reported a new file shotgunning into the unisphere, passed among all the nodes without restriction by the management routines and given unlimited access to everybody’s interface address. It was a live feed to an address code she didn’t recognize, but it had Earth as its node host.

“Only ANA can achieve this level of coverage,” the u-shadow told her.

“Access it,” she ordered. If ANA wanted to talk to everybody, it must have some words of comfort.

Gore Burnelli was standing on some rocky cliffs, his back to the clear tropical sea beyond. He wore a simple white shirt, his fair hair tousled by the breeze. Gray eyes stared out of a handsome twenty-year-old face with skin tanned to a dusky gold. He looked directly at Araminta, making her feel incredibly guilty for no reason she could define.

“I doubt anyone out there in the Greater Commonwealth will remember me,” he said. “But I used to be one of the wealthy people who helped form the original Commonwealth. If you check my record, you’ll see I had a brief moment of fame in the Starflyer War. I hope that what I’ve done in the past will qualify me for a moment of your time here now; however, this is not about me. I’m speaking to one person alone: the Second Dreamer. I understand that you didn’t realize the Skylord would kick off a devourment phase when you spoke to it. I don’t blame you. I don’t condemn you. And unlike everyone else, I’m certainly not hunting you down. On which front, please be warned it’s not just Living Dream that’s coming for you: A number of other agents are searching who represent various political factions both here in ANA and in other Greater Commonwealth groups.”

“Oh, great Ozzie,” Araminta wailed. Now the tears really were flowing freely.

“Everyone is making a lot of demands of you,” Gore said. “I expect you’re frightened and uncertain. I also expect you want to stay out of sight; certainly everything you’ve done so far indicates this. I appreciate that. You’re coming to terms with what you are, and nobody can help with that. You have a lot of decisions to make, and I don’t envy you any of them. If you want to get in touch with me, I’ll help in any way I can; that goes without saying. Again, that’s not why I am making this appeal. There is one thing that does not require a decision: The Void devourment phase must be stopped. As far as we are aware, you are the only one who can currently do this. I say that because someone else is trying to help.”

Gore took a breath and squared his shoulders, trying to be brave. “My daughter, Justine, was at Centurion Station when the devourment kicked off. Unlike everyone else there, she didn’t head back home. Against all my wishes, my pleas, my hopes, she’s aimed her ship directly for the Void. It’s one of the secret ultradrive ships you may have heard rumors of. Very fast. Which means that in another day or so she’ll arrive at the boundary. Justine’s not like me; she’s sweet and kind, very much an optimist, all the things to be proud of in our species. She’s been involved in diplomatic work for centuries. She’s flying alone to the Void in the hope she can talk to the Skylord; she believes that reason will prevail. But first she has to get inside. Humans have done that once before. Inigo and the Waterwalker showed us that. I appeal to you, Second Dreamer, to contact the Skylord one last time and ask it to let Justine in. That’s all; just ask it that one thing, nothing else. You don’t have to talk about the devourment phase or the Pilgrimage. Just give my daughter a chance to try to negotiate with whatever passes for authority in there. Justine is going to fly into the boundary come what may, despite everything I’ve said to try to stop her. She believes in humanity, that our nature should be placed upon this alien altar and given a chance. She believes in us. I hope, I beg, you will do what you can to give her that chance. Don’t let my girl die in vain, I beseech you. If there’s anything you need or want, then contact me in complete safety at the code on this file. Please. One last time, help put a stop to what’s happening out there. There’s not much time left. Help her. Only you can.”

Araminta put her hands over her head as the message finished, wanting nothing more than to curl up in a ball and leave the universe altogether. “Thanks for fucking nothing,” she told the haunting memory of Gore. At the same time she felt a tiny lifting of doubt. Maybe this Justine woman can do something. Maybe it’s not all up to me, after all.

That just left getting in touch with the Skylord without Living Dream and all the others tracking her down. Yeah, that should be dead easy for someone who can’t even get a culinary unit to make a sandwich.

In the middle of a desert of dry mud was a house, an igloo of baked sand. It had a wooden door that years earlier had been painted dark green. Harsh sunlight and dusty winds had abraded it down to the bare wood, though some flecks of green still persevered in the cracks between the oak boards.

He knew that door, knew it well, knew what lay behind.

The sun hung at the apex of the world’s sapphire sky, bleaching all color out of the desert. It was always thus.

He dismounted from the huge Charlemagne just short of the igloo, his plain white robes flowing around him. The deep hood protected his face from the sun’s penetrating rays. Somehow, those few steps to the door took forever. His limbs were fighting an unknown force that resisted every movement. He kept asking himself if he wanted to do this because he eventually had realized that the force fighting him was fear. Fear of what waited for him on the other side of the door. He carried on anyway, because in this, as always, he had no choice, no will, no independence. The effort left him trembling from exertion, but eventually the door was in front of him. He raised his hand, placing it palm down on the warm wood, feeling the familiar sand-smoothed grain. Pushed.

The door opened, and darkness spilled out, contaminating the sunlight. It built around him like a fog, and his dread spiked upward. But the door was open. There was nothing now between him and the person living in the house. Something moved in the shadows, a presence that was reaching out.

“You and your father both had the courage to make the right choice in the end,” a voice told him. “Not that my opinion counts for anything. But I’m glad. I figure I owe you this second chance.”

“My father?” He lurched forward—

—the ground crawler lurched again as the front tracks cleared another ice ridge, and the wedge nose tipped down sharply. Aaron shook himself as the real world claimed him back from bedlam, gripping the chair arms, staring out of the slit windscreen. It was profoundly dark outside, midnight beneath clouds that towered five kilometers into the screaming hurricane sky. Headlight beams were clotted by driving snow. The glimpse of the ground they did allow revealed ice boulders half the size of the ground crawler. Regular bursts of lightning showed the wicked sharp-edged boulders scattered across the frozen land in all directions without end. Narrow gaps between them were becoming fewer and had been for the last hour. It was a nightmare geography out there. Their progress was pitiful and getting worse.

He checked the vehicle’s inertial navigation system. In the last two hours they’d traveled a grand total of seven and a quarter kilometers, and very little of that had been in a nice straight line forward. Eleven hours now since the unknown starship had fired a Hawking m-sink into Hanko. He was beginning to wish he had the math to work out an accurate timetable for how long it would take the weapon to digest the planet from within. But knowing the exact moment when the continents would implode wasn’t going to make the ground crawler go any faster. His early rough estimate of three days was realistic enough.

The crawler’s net slowed the tracks, which Aaron perceived first as a change in the constant vibration afflicting the cabin. When he asked it why, he was shown a radar sweep. There was a rift in the ground ahead, a vertical drop of over ten meters.

“Lady!” Inigo exclaimed as he studied the radar profile; his face was gently shaded by the weak violet light emitted by the two polyphoto strips on the cabin roof. “It’s going to take half an hour to cut our way down that.”

“You’re the expert,” Aaron muttered sourly.

Inigo gave him a tight smile. “I certainly am.” He gripped the manual control stick and backed up, then activated the forward power blades. They extended out of the nose and began rotating. The ground crawler edged forward again, and the spinning blades touched the ice. A wide plume of dirty ice granules shot up into the snowstorm. The screech from the blades resonated around the cabin, and the whole vehicle began to shake as they started to dig themselves a track. Inigo steered them carefully, curving around to run parallel to the rift, always descending. The plume reduced visibility to zero. He was relying on the vehicle’s sensors and his own field effect scan. The lost messiah must have had some sophisticated filter programs, Aaron decided; his own scan revealed little beyond the crawler’s bodywork. The ice they were traversing showed up as a thick unified substance laced with rock and soil, like a haze of interference, yet Inigo was able to discern the structure, knowing when to back off and when to apply pressure.

The noise of the power blades set Aaron’s teeth on edge. Its tone was constantly changing as they hit soil, then bit back into ice. Then the blades hit some kind of rock, and the rasping was so bad that he wanted to hit something. When he glanced back at Corrie-Lyn, she was pressing her hands over her ears, her teeth bared in a wild grimace of dismay. Inigo adjusted the stick fractionally, curving them away from the dense strata. Rock and ice gravel spewed out sideways, falling in a long arc down the side of the rift. Inigo drove them into the ice again, gouging a wider cut.

They descended in a series of howling bumps and jolts, creating their own ramp. In the end it took over forty-five minutes to reach the base of the rift. The power blades retracted. Aaron gazed out in dismay at the field of ice boulders that the lightning flares revealed. They were larger than the ones at the top of the rift and closer together.

“Crap,” he grunted. “We’re never going to get through this. How far does it extend?” If they didn’t clear the boulder field in the next couple of hours, they would never make it to the ship before the implosion.

“I don’t know,” Inigo replied unperturbed. “We don’t exactly have survey maps.” He steered the crawler along the base of the rift, looking for an opening.

“You must!”

“Not recent ones. They’re all a thousand years out of date, and the surface ice does shift. Slowly, admittedly, but the movement throws up a fresh topography every century or so.”

“Shit!” Aaron finally did hit something, his fist thudding into the cabin wall. “We have got to make better time than this.”

“I know.”

Corrie-Lyn came forward from her seat and slipped her arms around Inigo’s neck. The low cabin lighting made her beautiful features deeply sensual. “You’re doing your best; ignore him.”

Aaron growled in frustration and hit the wall again. Back at the Olhava camp, Inigo finally had admitted that he did have a private starship hidden away for emergencies. Aaron’s elation at the escape route had cooled quickly as the ground crawler got under way. According to Inigo, his ship was safe in a tunneled-out cavern seven hundred kilometers southeast of the camp. Aaron had assumed they would make it with almost a couple of days to spare. Then they had driven straight into the ice boulder field.

“We always trailblaze through this kind of thing,” Inigo told him as Corrie-Lyn rubbed her cheek adoringly against his. “That’s how I got to be so good with the power blades.”

“Get better or we die,” Aaron said bluntly.

Inigo flashed him a grin, then turned the ground crawler into a small gap. Razor-sharp shards of ice creaked and snapped against the bodywork as they scraped their way through. Aaron winced, convinced they’d wedge themselves in again. They’d done that once before a few hours back. He and Inigo had had to go outside and use their biononic field effect to cut the vehicle free. It had felt good using his weapon functions, even on a minimum setting. He was accomplishing something.

The only benefit of the journey was that Corrie-Lyn hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since they had started.

“So have you any idea who was in that starship?” Inigo asked.

“No. I didn’t even realize we were being followed, which is disturbing enough. To track the Artful Dodger you’d need something as good if not better. That kind of hardware is mighty difficult to come by, so it was either ANA or a faction. But ANA wouldn’t use an m-sink like that, and I’m kind of surprised a faction did.”

“No honor among thieves, eh?”

“None,” Aaron agreed. “Using an m-sink has the sure taste of desperation to it.”

“Hold a mirror up,” Corrie-Lyn said. “It was a ruthless despicable act, slaughtering all those people without warning or reason. The pilot must have been just like you.”

“There are people in this universe a lot worse than me.”

“That I don’t believe.”

But it’s true. He smiled privately.

“So where were you going to coerce me into going?” Inigo asked.

“I’ll know when we’re safe on the ship.”

“Really? That’s … interesting.”

“It’s depraved,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“Actually, it’s a simple and safe security measure,” Aaron told them. “If I don’t know, I can’t be forced to reveal it.”

“But you do know,” she said. “It’s buried somewhere in your subconscious.”

“Yes, but I can’t get to it unless the circumstances are coming up straight aces.”

“You’ve damaged your own psyche with so much meddling.”

“I’ve told you often before, and I’ll enjoy telling you many times again: I like what I am.”

“Oh, Lady, now what!” Inigo exclaimed as the crawler’s net halted them again. He glanced at the radar screen with its concentric orange bands swirling around like an accelerated orrery. “That’s weird.” His gray eyes narrowed as he squinted through the windscreen. The headlights revealed a white blur of snow but no boulders. Lightning flashes turned the black night to a leaden smog; there were no discernible shapes ahead of them.

Aaron’s field scan revealed that the ice had flattened out in front of the crawler’s tracks. Then it ended in another sharp-edged rift. He couldn’t pick up anything beyond. “There’s nothing out there.”

“I think that’s the problem.”

They both suited up to take a look. Inigo said he didn’t want to get the crawler too close to the rift until they knew what they were dealing with. Aaron shrugged and went with it. He didn’t like wearing the surface suit. His biononics could produce a good defense against Hanko’s foul environment, but it added an extra layer of protection, which his instinct insisted was the right thing in a situation with so many unknowns.

The two of them kept close to the headlight beams, leaning into the wind. As they shuffled closer to the edge, Aaron’s field scan still couldn’t detect anything beyond.

“Where the hell’s the ground gone?” he demanded. His field scan probed the ice beneath his feet. There were a few centimeters of crisp snow, then clear ice down as far as the scan could reach. It was as though they were on the top of some giant frozen wave.

“Must be a gully of some sort,” Inigo replied. “If the pressure is right, the ice can fissure instead of throwing up a ridge.”

“Great.”

“It should close up nearby. I’ve never seen an ice fissure over five hundred meters long. You check that way. And don’t go too near the edge.”

“Right.” Aaron started to walk parallel to the edge, keeping a good three or four meters between him and the drop. He soon came to a flat triangular prominence jabbing out from the verge, which he shuffled along cautiously, feeling the slight stirrings of vertigo. If anyplace would allow him a decent look into the gulf below, it would be here.

He extended his field scan to its maximum, sweeping it through the heavy swirl of snow. Even at full resolution he couldn’t detect the other side of the rough fissure, nor was there any sign of a bottom. He was standing on the brink of some massive abyss. Instinct kicked in, firing up his misgivings. Something Nerina had said back at the camp registered. “Hey, are we—” His scan showed him that Inigo’s field function was switching, reformatting energy currents. His own biononics responded instantaneously, strengthening his integral force field, shielding him from any damage Inigo’s outdated systems could inflict. Accelerants rode his nerve paths, ready to implement his response. Tactical routines rose out of macrocellular clusters, fusing effortlessly with his thoughts, analyzing his situation. That was when he realized just how badly he’d screwed up by trusting Inigo. “Shiiiit!”

Inigo fired the biggest disrupter pulse his biononics could produce. It slammed into the ice a couple of meters short of Aaron’s feet. For a moment, the whole prominence fluoresced an elegant jade. As the light faded, a single giant crack appeared with incredible speed, splitting the prominence off the edge of the Asiatic glacier.

Aaron stared in shock at the ruptured ice. Tactics programs rushed to find a counter.

“Sorry,” Inigo said simply. The thoughts leaking out of his gaiamotes even proved he meant it. “But sometimes to do what’s right …”

The entire prominence split away cleanly. To Aaron’s accelerated nervous system it appeared to hang there for some terrible eternity. Then gravity pulled the colossal chunk of ice straight down with Aaron standing at the center. It began to twist as the edges screeched down the cliff. His force field reconfigured, extending into a twin swept-petal shape—wings that could glide him away. Not good in the middle of this snowstorm but better than anything else. That was when the vast cataract of avalanching snow triggered by Inigo’s shot thundered into him, engulfing the tumbling prominence and him with it.

The whole mass continued to plummet down the mile-high cliff, taking a long time to reach the bottom.

The Silverbird arrowed through the Gulf, the immense expanse of ruined stars and tattered ion storms that lay between the dense halo of ancient globular clusters that constituted the Wall stars and the boundary of the Void itself. Justine was receiving the hysradar and quantum scanner images direct, surrounding herself with the mass structure of the real universe translated into scarlet and turquoise mists. Tiny points of emerald light shone within the shifting cosmic oceans, showing her the supermassive stars that so far had retained their integrity during their long spiral into oblivion. Less than a hundred light-years ahead of her was the frosty glow of the loop, an orbiting band of supercharged matter ten light-years across that emitted a galaxy-spanning blaze of x-rays. Beyond that was the awesome black surface of the Void boundary. She watched its topology fluctuate, marveling at how oceanlike the waves were, with peaks and troughs ripping about chaotically, stirred by incomprehensible internal storm forces. Quite often she would see an undulation swell out to reach the elongated plume of a disintegrating star that was still light-months away. Phenomenal gravity sucked the matter down into the event horizon with a last devastating flare of ultrahard radiation, the kind that had powered the loop for a billion years. Even that siren call would end soon. At its current expansion rate the Void would engulf the loop in another week. Then it would be just the Wall and the Raiel DF defenses that stood between the boundary and the rest of the galaxy.

Justine felt her body shiver again. It was hard to comprehend the scale of the forces outside. She was feeling very small and alone.

“Dad?”

“Still here, darling. The relay is holding. Big Bronx cheer for the old navy techs who put it together.”

“We left the last known sensor systems behind five minutes ago. The link might not last much longer.”

“Course it will, angel. This was meant to be.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m looking at the access figures for the unisphere. You’ve got over half of humanity looking over your shoulder right now.”

“Hi there, half of humanity,” she said brittlely.

“You’re doing fine. And I’m in deep shit with ANA for publicly admitting there’s such a thing as ultradrive.”

“Ha! You’re always in trouble.”

“True. Without me, lawyers would just wither away and die. They think of me as their messiah. Remember when we got caught planting the Florida estate with alien vines?”

“Hell, yes. The United Federal Nations environmental commissioners went apeshit with us.”

“There are banks we own on the External worlds still paying off that fine.”

Justine barked a laugh, then drew a juddering breath. She desperately wanted out of her ancient body with all its silly biochemical-derived fright. Anyone would think her personality was genuinely scared. “Any sign the Second Dreamer accessed your appeal?”

“Not yet. I expect he’ll be talking to the Skylord quite soon now. After all, he’ll have to face me if he doesn’t start getting his ass in gear. Isn’t that right, Second Dreamer?”

“Now, Dad,” she chided.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I think I’m going to skim around the loop. That radiation is strong enough to slice through the Silverbird’s force fields as if they were tissue paper. Can you believe the figures I’m getting?”

“You’ll be quite safe in hyperspace.”

“I know, but …”

“Whatever makes you comfortable, angel.”

Justine instructed the smartcore to fly to galactic south of the loop. “That’s odd.” The sensors were picking up an artificial signature over forty light-years behind her. She focused on the origin, which the smartcore displayed as two amber circles. “Uh, Dad, are you getting this?”

Gore took a moment to answer. “Yes.”

“Whatever they are, they’re traveling FTL.”

“See that.”

“I didn’t know there was anyone else flying around this part of the galaxy.” Tabulated data flowed up into her exovision. “Christ, they’re massive.” A wild thought surfaced. “Do you think they’re Skylords?” she asked eagerly.

“No, darling, I don’t. They’re bigger than that. And that’s an interception course.”

“Oh.” Her mood dropped fast. “The Raiel. And they’re fast, too. Faster than Silverbird. Just.” It would be touch and go for her to reach the boundary ahead of them. “I don’t suppose they’re here to escort me in safely.”

“I’m calling Qatux right now. He’ll sort this out.”

“Okay, Dad.”

The external sensor visualization flashed white for a microsecond, as if a lightning bolt had zipped through it. Once it cleared, she could see an ominous translucent lavender shell emerging from the Raiel ships’ position, expanding rapidly. Secondary data streams showed her the anomaly was centered on a mass point the size of Earth’s moon that had been curving in toward the Void on a ten-million-year journey to its death. Had been. It had vanished, converted directly to exotic energy that was now flowing through hyperspace.

“Oh, FUCK,” Justine yelled. The Silverbird strengthened every defensive system it had.

The hyperspace shock wave struck the little ultradrive ship with the force of a wayward dinosaur. Justine screamed as she was flung out of the couch, crashing into the forward bulkhead. Alarms shrieked back at her. A multitude of exovision schematics turned amber and red.

The crowd of anti-invasion protesters down in the park gasped in unison as the Silverbird juddered, then let out a long “Ohooo” of wonder and relief. Araminta couldn’t help joining in, thankful Justine had survived the third shock wave propagated by the pursuing Raiel warships and was picking herself up off the cabin floor again. It was a sound that was replicated right across Colwyn City and beyond— a long way beyond.

She slipped in through the apartment block’s underground garage entrance. The door was still open a couple of meters, not wide enough to admit a capsule but sufficient for her to take her trike out. She’d deactivated the mechanism as she left, opening up the little control box and physically disconnecting the wiring. Now she plugged the colored cables back into their blocks. The door slid shut behind her, and she hurried through the nearly deserted concrete cave to the elevators.

“You okay?” Gore asked.

“Bastards!” Justine replied shakily. “What, this isn’t hard enough already?”

Araminta sank back against the cool metal wall of the elevator, feeling the way Justine looked. She’d driven around for an hour on the trike before parking it in a public bay at the Tala mall. Now there was nothing to prove she was at the apartment block; it was the best hideaway she could think of. The walk back to the Bodant district had taken forty minutes, during which the Raiel warships had started blowing up small moons to try to stop Justine. Everyone accessed that. It made her kind of conspicuous; she was just about the only person moving on Colwyn’s streets.

“You’re doing fine,” Gore assured his daughter. “Just fine.”

Araminta used her old override code to unlock the door to Danal’s apartment. Neither he nor Mareble was in. Presumably they were out partying with the occupying army, she thought resentfully. The bare structure of the place had just been finished when Araminta had handed it over. Since then, Mareble had moved in a few basic furnishings. Araminta gave the cooker a critical glare. The big metal thing looked ridiculously primitive. It had taken Mr. Bovey a long time to find it for her, and installing it had been a nightmare.

In Araminta’s exovision, Justine was climbing back into her chair, which folded protectively around her. “Main systems are functional. Drive units have reduced capacity. These energy bursts are stressing a lot of components. I guess they’re trying to wear me down.”

Araminta crept over to the balcony windows and peered out across the park. There were several Ellezelin capsules hanging above the encircling road. They were all stationary; like everyone else, their occupants were captivated by the chase thirty thousand light-years away. Below them, the crowd stared up into the heavens whose stars were smeared by the weather dome. She nodded in satisfaction.

“They’re firing again,” Justine yelped. “Oh, Christ.”

The Silverbird shuddered violently. Araminta gritted her teeth, feeling the huge tremor of anticipation in the gaiafield. More sections of the ship reported overloads. The speed fell off as the drive reconfigured its energy manipulation functions around degraded components. Justine changed course, streaking into the loop, the shortest distance to the barrier. Both Raiel warships followed unerringly, closing the gap.

Araminta pulled a big sky-blue cushion out of a nest pile and into the middle of the living room. She was annoyed to see that the ebony-wood parquet had been stripped back to the bare wood. Didn’t Mareble understand how difficult it was to get the varnish application correct? The work that had gone into cleaning the little wooden blocks!

She sat down on the cushion and crossed her legs, banishing such negative thoughts.

“Good strategy, darling,” Gore said. “There aren’t many planets inside the loop.”

Araminta retrieved Likan’s program from her storage lacuna, feeling her mind finally settle. It was a risk using this apartment, but she wasn’t sure how good Living Dream was at tracking people through the gaiafield. The day Danal had moved in, he’d confided to her that he was helping with the search for the Second Dreamer and explained how the confluence nests were being altered somehow to facilitate that. So she certainly didn’t want to be in her own place when she did this, just in case they were accurate enough to fix the exact location. And they might just think Danal’s apartment was some kind of false reading. She didn’t know anywhere else she could go other than to Mr. Bovey’s house, but that would expose him to the paramilitaries, which she could never do.

The shadowy specters of sensation that lurked within her subconscious expanded outward. She let her attention swim across the myriad thoughts it contained, drifting, content in a way the program alone could never kindle.

Most of the thoughts she could ignore. Some were intriguing. One had a mental signature she knew, associated with a dark tone that almost made her shy away. Instead, she concentrated.

“My Lord,” Ethan was pleading. “Hear us, please.”

He was calling with all his mental strength, amplified by countless confluence nests, directing his appeal outward into the infinite. Wrong, she mused from her lofty Olympian distance. The Skylord is not beyond us; it is within.

She drifted further, devoid of urgency.

“If you don’t call them off, I will personally rip your fucking arkship apart molecule by molecule with all of you in it,” Gore was yelling. “You think the Void is a bad thing? Do you, huh? You believe that? Because let me tell you: It is your mommy with her titty out for you to suck on compared to me.”

Araminta couldn’t help grinning. Now, that’s the kind of father I would have liked. Out in the park, people were cheering, a cry taken up across hundreds of planets. The gaiafield filled with determination and support, the raw emotion of billions, swelling the sense of unification to near ecstasy. Go, Gore, humanity whooped. Araminta added her blessing, a whisper lost in the multitude.

“I can do nothing,” Qatux protested. “They are warrior Raiel. Not our kind, not any longer.”

“Find a fucking way!”

Araminta lifted herself away from the turmoil, drifting toward a strand of familiar quiet thought and opening herself in greeting. The nebulae of the Void emerged from darkness to glimmer spectacularly around her. Half of space was a gauzy splash of aquamarine with a few distant stars shining through. She recognized it as Odin’s Sea, where a Skylord coasted between two of the scarlet promontories, spikes of whorled gases light-years long, swelling to buds big enough to contain a globular cluster. And here the thoughts of what once was mingled with more purposeful notions. An awareness wove through this space, not conscious but knowing purpose.

The Silverbird burst out of the loop and streaked toward the final implacable barrier. All around it, broken stars sleeted inward, shedding the glowing husks of the planets they once had birthed as if they were an encumbrance during the final tumultuous plunge to extinction.

“Oh, God, here we go again,” Justine whimpered. Ten light-years behind her a gas giant imploded. Hyperluminal quantum distortions burst out from its vanishing point.

The Silverbird dropped out of hyperspace, flying free in a space-time that no human would recognize. It was a dark universe inside the Wall stars. Thick braids of dust and gas shielded the light of the galactic core behind the starship. Ahead, few photons escaped the macrogravity cloak of the Void as suns sank through the event horizon. A lurid vermilion band shimmered across space, the swirl of ion clouds enraged by the loop’s fatal discharge, illuminating the fuselage like the Devil’s own gaze. Radiation alarms howled in fright as the force field started to collapse. The fuselage blistered.

“One of us comes,” Araminta said. “See?”

The distortion shock wave was almost unnoticeable in real space as it flashed past. Dead streamers of atoms were stirred briefly by the unquiet force leaking back out of the quantum interstices. The Silverbird powered back into hyperspace, smoldering from radiation burns.

“You,” Ethan exclaimed.

The Skylord resonated with interest. “I still search for you. The nucleus aches with longing.”

“I know. You must stop that. Please welcome our emissary. She approaches you.”

“Where? I sense you are so far away.”

“I am. She is close to you now. Feel for her. She bleeds emotion, as do we all. Guide her as you should. Open your boundary.”

“The Heart will welcome you.”

The two Raiel warships were closing on the Silverbird. Justine’s sensor display showed her another gas-giant-size mass barely five light-years away. If they targeted that, it would be the end. The Silverbird’s ultradrive was struggling to maintain acceleration now.

“Hurry. Please,” Araminta implored.

The Skylord radiated satisfaction as it receded.

“I thank you,” Gore said. “Whoever you are.”

Justine sank back into the couch, her mind fully open to the gaiafield, letting every emotion pour forth: hopes, fears, everything she was.

Ahead of the Silverbird, the Void boundary changed. A vast circular wave rippled out, creating a crater ten light-years across. From its center a smooth cone of pure blackness rose up toward the starship. Justine regarded the exovision images in surprise. She was gripping the couch arms tightly, her skin slick with sweat. “I’m not so sure—”

Behind her, the Raiel warships slowed, allowing the Silverbird to race onward.

“—this is such—”

At fifteen light-years high the cone stopped expanding.

“—a good—”

Its apex opened like a flower, petals of infinite night peeling back. Exquisite nebula-light shone out into the Gulf.

“—idea—”

The Silverbird passed across the threshold, into the Void.

“—after all.”

The cone closed up. It sank back into the now-quiescent boundary. The Silverbird’s communication link to the navy relay ended. Both Raiel warships executed tight curves and headed back toward the Wall.

“Please, talk to us,” Ethan appealed. “The Skylord has anointed you as our Second Dreamer. We await you. We need you.” He was given no reply.

Araminta slipped out of Danal’s apartment and tiptoed across the vestibule to her own. Outside, a brash dawn light was lapping against the weather dome. The crowd was cheering ecstatically. That felt good.

“Well, whaddya know, I saved the universe.” Araminta grinned wildly at the ridiculous knowledge, then yawned. Being a hero was actually quite exhausting. She sank down into the big old armchair with its strangely lumpy cushions. Just five minutes’ rest.

Cheriton McOnna didn’t like the “in character” clothes Beckia had produced for him out of the replicator on board Elvin’s Payback. He really didn’t. Nothing wrong with the touch of them, a cotton shirt, wool-lined waistcoat with brass buttons, and trousers that were like suede but a great deal softer. No, it was the colors and style, the shirt’s lace-up front, its gray-green color that was more like a stain than a dye, and the odd tight cut of the black trousers. He plain refused to wear the felt hat with its flamboyant green and blue feathers, although he reluctantly agreed to carry it after Beckia got all stroppy. It wasn’t good to get Beckia stroppy.

She’d been right, of course. As soon as he walked into the confluence nest building on Daryad Avenue in the center of town, he fitted in with the Ellezelin workforce. Security was strong around the building, an old brick cube with dark arching windows. Colwyn’s three confluence nests were the first priority for the occupying forces. But Liatris McPeierl had done his job well, infiltrating a complete legend for Cheriton, including DNA. When he walked into the airy marble-floored lobby, he was told to put his hand on a sensor pedestal while three armed and armored guards watched him cautiously. The building’s new net cleared him, and they waved him on. He gave them a cheery smile backed up with a contented emanation into the gaiafield.

The nest itself was housed on the fourth floor in a sterile chamber that took up half of the available floor space. He reported for duty to Dream Master Yenrol in the overseer’s office, which looked out into the nest chamber through a glass partition. The office was normally occupied only a few hours each day when the overseer or the assistant ran a six-hourly assessment to ensure the nest was operating smoothly. Now there were seven technicians all struggling for elbow room as they installed banks of new hardware, while on the other side of the glass more technicians were blending fresh bioneural clusters with the original nest.

“What’s your field?” Yenrol asked. He was both agitated and puzzled. Cheriton’s late assignment, coupled with the pressure to get the job done, was making him very twitchy.

“Pattern definition,” Cheriton replied equitably. “The routines I’ve developed will help isolate the Second Dreamer’s thoughts within the gaiafield. It should give us a stronger source to trace.”

“Good,” Yenrol said. “Okay, great. Start installing the routines.” He’d turned back to a half-completed hardware unit before Cheriton got a chance to reply.

“Okay, then,” Cheriton mumbled, keeping his gaiafield emission a level flow of eagerness and enthusiasm. He found a free console seat and nodded to the man in the next seat.

“Welcome to the eye,” his new colleague said. “I’m Danal.”

“Glad to be here,” Cheriton said. “What do you mean, ‘eye’?”

“Of the storm.”

Cheriton grinned. “This is the quiet part?”

“Exactly!”

Danal, it turned out, had been on Viotia for some time now. He and Mareble had come in anticipation of being close to the Second Dreamer. “We wanted to be here when he revealed himself,” Danal admitted. “I’ve been upgrading nest sensitivity since we arrived in the hope our Dream Masters can locate him.” He gave Yenrol a guilty glance, stifling his gaiafield emissions for a moment. “I wasn’t expecting this,” he confided.

“I know what you mean,” Cheriton said, all sympathy. “I was praying to the Lady that Ethan would be elected Cleric Conservator, but I didn’t think anything like our presence here would be necessary.”

Danal gave an awkward shrug and got back to work. Cheriton continued loading in the routines he’d concocted. They did perform the recognition function, but in reverse, so that the nest would develop a mild blind spot if it received any thoughts originating from the Second Dreamer. It would inform Cheriton before reverting to the advertised function.

The modification team’s frantic work stalled as Justine’s madcap flight swamped the unisphere.

“She’s so close,” Danal said in awe as the Silverbird’s sensors revealed the undulating surface of the Void. Then everyone winced as the Raiel transformed the second moon into a hyperluminal quake.

“How are they doing that?” Cheriton murmured, fascinated by the level of extraordinarily sophisticated violence involved.

“Who cares?” Danal said. “The Void can resist their devilry. It has for a million years. That’s all that matters.”

Cheriton raised an eyebrow. It took a lot of self-control not to leak his dismay at the man’s bigotry into the gaiafield. “Let’s hope Justine’s ship can withstand it, too.”

“She’s not a believer. She’s an ANA creature.”

“She’s human,” Cheriton said. “That means she should be able to get inside. Somehow.”

“Ah. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Please,” Yenrol entreated the modification team. “Keep working. If the Second Dreamer is going to show himself, it will be tonight.”

Danal flashed Cheriton a shamefaced smile.

Oscar hadn’t expected things to happen quite this fast. He should have known better. If the Starflyer War had taught him nothing else, it was that events ruled people, not the other way around.

So here he was encased in a stiff paramilitary armor suit, sitting halfway down the passenger section of an Ellezelin police capsule, floating over the Cairns. Beckia was sitting on the bench next to him, and Tomansio was forward in the command seat. The capsules were designed to hold fifteen paramilitaries. However, the original occupants were now resting in a drug-induced coma back in the Bootel & Leicester warehouse, so he had plenty of room to stretch out.

Like the rest of the Commonwealth, they were accessing Justine’s mad dash through the Gulf.

“The welcome team has just stepped up to active status,” Liatris reported; he had stayed behind in the Elvin’s Payback to monitor the occupying forces and provide unisphere support. “Everyone thinks that the Second Dreamer will intervene for Justine.”

“He didn’t after Gore’s appeal,” Oscar said.

“The Raiel should give things a degree of urgency,” Beckia said. “I agree with Living Dream; if it’s going to happen, it’ll happen tonight.”

Oscar shrugged, which didn’t come off well in his armor.

“Did you know Gore and Justine?” Tomansio asked.

“I think I met her once; some senior officer function on High Angel. Everyone was trying to chat her up.”

“Including you?” Beckia teased.

“No, I was aiming for the ones she turned down. Rejection always leaves you vulnerable to a quick bout of cheap meaningless sex.”

“Ozzie, but you’re dreadful.”

“Anything from Cheriton?” Tomansio asked.

“Nothing since his last check-in,” Liatris reported. “Nobody questioned his appointment to Yenrol’s staff. He’s installed his routines in the nest.”

“Is he wearing his hat?” Beckia asked innocently.

Oscar couldn’t stop the smile creeping onto his mouth. That had been quite an argument.

“I’ll find out next time,” Liatris promised.

“What have you got for us on the welcome team?” Tomansio asked.

“All deeply loyal Living Dream followers; it doesn’t look like Phelim fancied contracting out for this job. They’re on secondment from the Makkathran2 cabinet security office.”

“Ethan’s private bodyguards,” Tomansio declared. “What are their enrichments?”

“Very heavy-duty weapons, and they’re accelerated up to at least our standard. But I don’t think they have biononics; there’s no record in any file I can find.”

“Okay, thank you. Keep deep mining. I want everything you’ve got on them.”

“Will do. Files coming over.”

Oscar’s u-shadow told him it had received the heavily encrypted files. When he scrutinized them, he couldn’t prevent a sharp intake of breath. The welcome team that Councillor Phelim had put together to interdict the Second Dreamer was carrying the kind of firepower he’d thought exclusive to members of the Knights Guardian. They were also extremely devout. Phelim had given them complete authority over all the invading forces to accomplish their goal. “We need to be quick,” he murmured.

“That we do,” Tomansio agreed. “I wouldn’t want to be caught in the act by this lot.”

“I bet they have biononics,” Beckia said. “They’ll justify it by saying it will help bring about the dream. Their kind always does.”

“I didn’t know Living Dream disapproved of biononics,” Oscar said.

“Oh, yes. Nothing like the Protectorate, though. Biononics aren’t quite a sacrilege; they simply don’t have any place in the Void. Most people believe they won’t work in there, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because there was never any functioning technology on Querencia. The most sophisticated thing the Waterwalker ever encountered was the machine gun. And that’s purely mechanical. There was no electricity, no genetics, no biononics. Given the humans who landed, their ship would have had access to the most advanced technology and information base the Commonwealth could provide. It is inconceivable that their new society couldn’t even make a battery. They certainly knew their chemistry and medicine, even astronomy. Something stopped them from following the electromechanical route.”

“The internal structure of the Void,” Oscar mused.

“Quite. Whatever the quantum structure is that permits true mental powers, it must also block electricity.”

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t stop current flowing; that implies that a whole level of atomic reactions would cease to exist. There wouldn’t be any stars.”

“The Silfen paths mess with human hardware-based technology,” Tomansio said.

“That’s direct interference generated by their paths.”

“All I’m saying is that it appears there’s something inimical to electronics in the Void.”

“The original colony ship survived to land on Querencia.”

“And the Living Dream is still arguing if it landed or crashed,” Beckia said. “The interference with electronics could come directly from the Heart itself, like some kind of overlord making sure civilization doesn’t rise above a certain level.”

“Why the hell would anyone go to so much trouble making the Void in the first place just so they could use it to keep sentient species as pets?”

“No idea,” she said merrily. “The Firstlifers are alien, remember. They think differently.”

Oscar gave up with an irritable wave of his hand. “All right, so thanks to the whole Firstlife zookeeper theory, the welcome team is unlikely to have biononics.”

“That’s about it, yeah,” Tomansio said.

“Either way,” Beckia said, “we don’t want to go head to head if we can help it.”

“Right.”

“Liatris, can you get us assigned to the welcome team backup, please?” Tomansio asked.

“Way ahead of you. Your assignment should be coming through in a couple of minutes.”

“Thank you.”

Oscar drew a sharp breath as the Raiel warships obliterated a gas giant. “Jesus H. Christ, give the poor girl a break.” The Silverbird dropped back into real space. Oscar grimaced at the radiation battering its force fields, his memory flipping back to the fight for Hanko when he’d captained the Dublin. There were a lot of parallels. Morning Light Mountain’s ships had used exotic energy blasts to smack the Dublin about. And at half a million kilometers above the surface, their force field had only just withstood the star’s radiation. All that was nothing compared to the hell the Silverbird was now enduring. Oscar couldn’t help the burst of encouragement pouring out of his mind and into the gaiafield, as if prayer alone could make a difference.

Justine powered back into hyperspace.

“Good tactic,” Oscar said approvingly. Another part of his mind was dwelling on the fact that the Elvin’s Payback was the same type of ship as the Silverbird. We could be out there doing that.

“Stand by,” Cheriton said on the ultrasecure link. “The Second Dreamer is making contact with the Skylord.”

“Where is he?” Tomansio growled out. “Armor active, please. Oscar, do exactly as we tell you. Clear?”

“Yes.” He just managed not to add “sir.”

“Haven’t got his position yet,” Cheriton said. “My routines are still fudging the nest for us.”

Oscar opened his mind wide to the gaiafield.

“—close to you now. Feel for her,” the Second Dreamer was imploring.

“Here we go,” Cheriton said. “First fix is the Bodant district.”

“En route,” Tomansio said, and pushed the capsule around in a hundred-eighty-degree curve above the dark river. Viotia’s dawn sun shone into the capsule through the forward section of the transparent fuselage.

“Ah, crap; the rest of the nests are focusing on the origin,” Cheriton said. “I thought they’d take longer.”

Tomansio pushed their speed up. “Ozzie! How long have we got?”

Thirty thousand light-years away, the Void began to extend out toward the Silverbird.

“If it screws with technology, is she going to be all right when she’s inside?” Oscar asked.

“Let’s just concentrate on the job you’ve given us, shall we?” Beckia chided. She was activating her armor. The helmet visor rippled shut.

“He’s near the edge of the park,” Cheriton told them. “The Dream Masters are pulling out some very precise coordinates. Damn, they’re good. Sorry, guys, you’re not going to make it. The welcome team is being given his location.”

“Shit,” Tomansio said, reducing their speed. “It’ll look suspicious if we arrive a couple of seconds before them, and that’s all the time we’ve got.”

“What’s plan B?” Oscar asked.

“Snatch him away from the welcome team, but that’s going to be difficult. This is all happening too fast. I wanted to be properly embedded in the occupation forces here before we moved to this phase.”

“Kill the wormhole,” Beckia said. “We can use Elvin’s Payback to intercept the welcome team in interstellar space when they ship the Second Dreamer back to Ellezelin.”

“That would give us a better chance,” Oscar said. “That ship’s a damn sight better than anything Living Dream will have.”

“We don’t know that,” Tomansio said. “And it would take a lot of aggression to take out the wormhole.”

“I could go through and do it,” Liatris insisted.

“They’d know exactly what happened and why,” Tomansio said. “This is looking like we’ll have to switch operations to Ellezelin itself. Oh, here we go; deployment orders from the welcome team. It’s an apartment building.”

“Something wrong here,” Cheriton said. “One of my new colleagues, Danal, is having a fit. That apartment block is where he lives. As best we can determine, the Second Dreamer is actually in his apartment.”

“Ah ha. Everybody might just be underestimating the Second Dreamer, after all,” Tomansio said. “Good for him.”

“And for us,” Beckia agreed.

“He’s going to have to get out of there quick,” Oscar said. He was viewing an exoimage map of Colwyn. Nine cruisers were converging on Bodant Park. Five had orders to establish a secure ground perimeter. Two were assigned to provide air cover. The rest, including theirs, were to back up the welcome team inside.

He glanced down as they passed over the bright illuminum buildings of a marina, then on across the park. There were thousands of people spread across the grass, still cheering and jumping up and down with glee as their all-night vigil was rewarded. A real party atmosphere had developed, and the pull it exerted through the gaiafield was intoxicating.

The capsule carrying the welcome team roared overhead, barely subsonic and decelerating hard. Up ahead, the glass pillar corners of the target apartment block gleamed with a purple and blue iridescence, näively signaling its position. The welcome team capsule circled it possessively, trailing a thin vapor trail. Happy people down in the park frowned upward at the boorish intrusion. Dismay and resentment appeared in the gaiafield like necrotic sunspots in an otherwise healthy corona.

“Oh, great,” Oscar grunted as more and more celebrating citizens became indignant and aggrieved. “That’ll help.”

“They don’t care,” Tomansio said. “This whole planet doesn’t matter to them. All they’re interested in is finding the Second Dreamer.”

“I wonder what he’s like,” Oscar said as they slowed to hover above the strip of well-maintained gardens in front of the block.

“Neurotic,” Beckia said. “Got to be.”

“Smart and scared,” Tomansio said. “Which makes him dangerous to Living Dream.”

The rest of the capsules assigned to support the welcome team arrived. “This is Major Honilar,” the welcome team commander announced. “Perimeter squad, establish yourselves immediately. No one in or out. Janglepulse anyone who attempts to cross your line. Custody support squad, seal off the ground floor and shut down the elevators. Use the stairwell to isolate each floor. Now listen up. I want to make very sure you all understand this: There is to be no lethal weapons usage at all. The Second Dreamer is in there, and he must not be harmed. If you encounter any problem, for example, if he is using a force field and tries to break through, call us. We will deal with him. I don’t want your dirty hands on him.”

“Yes, sir,” Tomansio replied as he directed their capsule down onto the garden. The welcome team’s capsule was planting itself on the roof next to the golden crystal dome containing the spa.

“What do we do?” Oscar asked as the door expanded and he stepped out onto a border of fuchsia bushes, his boots crushing the white and scarlet flowers into the loam.

“Exactly as we were told,” Tomansio said. “And remember, don’t use your biononic field function. I know it’s superior to anything in these armor suits, but the welcome team will detect it.”

“Okay.” They joined the rest of the custody support troops as they marched into the ground-floor lobby. Behind them, the perimeter squad started to push back the first batch of angry citizens who’d arrived from the park.

“Danal has just been arrested,” Cheriton told them. “Two officers from cabinet security are hauling him off right now. He’s not a happy man.”

“That must be a deliberate distraction,” Tomansio said.

“Yeah, but by who?” Beckia said. “The Second Dreamer or another bunch like us?”

The lobby was filled with contractors’ equipment and caskets piled high with rubbish. Bright temporary lighting on a metal frame cast strong shadows.

“The welcome team has taken command of the apartment block’s net,” Cheriton said. “Hang on; I’m assessing the results from their scrutineers.”

Tomansio led Beckia and Oscar into the concrete stairwell. More rubbish had been casually tipped off the floors above, forming a heap of dusty debris at the bottom of the stairs in the basement. A couple of paramilitaries went down to investigate the garage.

“According to the net, there are about thirty people currently in residence,” Cheriton said. “The whole damn place is being redeveloped. The fourth floor only has four people registered for two apartments: Danal and Mareble and a married couple. Someone called Araminta is refurbishing the remaining three on that level. Mining her now.”

Oscar hurried up the concrete stairs. The long line of suited paramilitaries was making a lot of noise as they trooped up with him. Instructions relayed from Honilar assigned six of them to each floor. Oscar was seriously impressed with Liatris when he, Tomansio, and Beckia were given the fourth floor.

They emerged into the vestibule to find all the apartment doors broken open and two of the welcome team standing guard in full military armor suits. Oscar could just see through the doorway into apartment three, where the terrified occupants were in the middle of the big living room. A man and woman: he in a pair of shorts, she in a long nightshirt. They were standing side by side, their arms raised as another of the welcome team covered them with a large gun. She was shaking and crying, while her partner was trying to be resolute. The way his leg muscles were trembling betrayed him more than any gaiafield emission could.

Major Honilar came out of Danal’s apartment. “No sign of him. He couldn’t have gotten out of the building; he didn’t have time. I want every resident on every floor in custody and taken to our headquarters. Search and scan each apartment; make sure you have everyone.” He turned and went back into Danal’s apartment.

“Pair up,” Tomansio said. “Take an apartment each.”

Oscar accompanied Tomansio as they went into apartment number four. He scanned around with his suit’s sensors, resenting how slow and restricted they were compared with a biononic field scan. You’re spoiled, he told himself. The suit didn’t detect any body-size thermal signatures. The apartment was halfway through refurbishment. Several inactive bots were lined up in the living room. New cables and pipes were laid out along one wall. Junked utility fittings were stacked up by the door. Crates and boxes with BOVEY’S BUILDING SUPPLY MACROSTORE printed around them were waiting to be unpacked. Some furniture had been left, including a coffee table that was now badly scuffed, with several mugs on top, waiting to be washed, and an ancient couch with a matching armchair that had odd lumps in its cushioning.

His u-shadow was displaying the reports from the other squads, which were busy rounding up the residents on other floors. So far, their identities matched their files.

“In here,” Tomansio said, using their secure link. He was standing in the doorway to a bedroom. The bed itself was a bare mattress with a big sleeping bag crumpled on top. Four suitcases were lined up along a wall; one was open, revealing a collection of women’s clothes. The small dresser was swamped by hairstyling tools and membrane scale cases.

“Not listed as lived in,” Oscar said.

“Depends what lists you check. Liatris, run another search on Araminta. Has she sold this apartment?”

“I’m on it.”

While Tomansio checked the other two bedrooms, Oscar went into the main bathroom. The floor had been stripped back to the bare concrete, as had the walls. A brand new carved stone bath cuboid was sitting in the middle. Halfway up the wall behind it, the stub of the original cold water feed pipe jutted out of the concrete, its valve dripping into a plastic bucket beneath. The old toilet bowl was still plumbed in. A big hot water tank stood in one corner, already boxed in by the struts of a false wall, awaiting the cover boards that were stacked in front of it. A maze of pipe work was strewn around its base. Components for a spore shower were lying ready for assembly.

“Nothing,” he told Tomansio.

“The other bedrooms are empty.”

Oscar found him behind the living room’s kitchen bar. The old culinary unit had been removed to stand on the ground, though the nutrient feed pipes were still plumbed in. A kettle and a microwave were sitting on the scratched marble work surface. His thermal scan showed him that the kettle’s temperature was above ambient. “This place has been used recently,” he muttered.

“We need to talk to her,” Tomansio said. “If anyone can tell us who’s been in and out of these apartments, it’s her.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” Oscar said. “We know who she is. Finding her will be easy for Liatris.”

“Yeah.” Tomansio’s sensors swept around one last time. “Grab something from her bedroom so we can run a DNA verification that she’s the one living here. Then we’d better get back and help with rounding up the rest of the suspects.”

“Poor bastards,” Oscar said as he picked up a small-scale applicator brush. “What do you think Honilar will do with them?”

“Good question. How do you prove you’re not the Second Dreamer? It’s not as if there’s physical evidence. I guess if he doesn’t get a confession, they’ll use a memory read.”

Oscar shuddered. “That isn’t exactly going to endear them to the Second Dreamer. They need him to help them get into the Void.”

“Oscar, face it, with today’s medical techniques you can make someone do just about anything you want.”

“Medical techniques?”

“That’s what they started out as.”

“I suppose you know how to do that.”

“We all had training in that area, yes.”

Despite the heavy armor suit with its perfect insulation, Oscar suddenly felt cold.

Paula rarely had experienced a pang of déjà vu as strong as the one that hit her when the stained-glass door opened and she walked into the entrance hall. Yet she had never been to the old building before. She walked past the empty concierge desk and stared at the glass cage elevator. It was the age of everything around her that was generating the weird sensation tickling the back of her mind. According to the Daroca City Council files, the interior was perfectly authentic, exactly as it had been during the Starflyer War. She wasn’t going to disagree; as someone who had lived through those times, she could feel the decor was right.

The elevator took her up to the fifth floor, and she walked into Troblum’s penthouse apartment. On the trip over from the spaceport she’d accessed Lieutenant Renne Kampasa’s ancient directorate files on the one time she’d visited; ANA had had to deep access the memory. With the file came a note that Troblum had requested access to that same file a hundred years ago, along with associated forensic reports.

His restoration work was excellent, Paula acknowledged as she walked into the huge open plan lounge. The balcony had a magnificent view out over the Caspe River, with the rest of Daroca filling in the background.

It didn’t take her long to establish that there wasn’t anything useful in the apartment and that all Troblum’s personal files had been wiped from the building net. The only mild exception was in the bedrooms, each of which inexplicably had its closet full of girls’ clothes. Troblum’s own clothes—three aging toga suits and his unpleasant underwear—were stuffed into a chest of drawers in the master bedroom. For a moment Paula wondered if the dresses belonged to Troblum’s girlfriend. She raised an eyebrow when she took out a leather designer miniskirt. It might be slightly prejudiced of her to think it, but what would a girl with a figure to wear such an item see in Troblum? Then she recognized the label, one she hadn’t seen for over seven hundred years, and realized that the skirt was also Starflyer War vintage style. She let out a whistle of admiration; he’d even reproduced the girls’ wardrobe as best he could.

Now, that is true obsession.

Paula started going through the other apartments in the ancient converted factory while her u-shadow accessed the building’s net to analyze the remaining files. It was the largest apartment on the third floor that drew her attention. The others were all relatively authentic reproductions, but this one had been modified again. All the internal walls had been removed, and the resulting chamber sealed against the outside atmosphere with a sustainer membrane and clinical-grade air filters. Rows of heavy benches ran the entire length, each one equipped with a series of data nodes and high-voltage power sockets. She could see the outlines where objects once had rested. They must have been there for decades to make any kind of impression on the stainless-steel surface. The net subsection for the apartment had also been thoroughly wiped.

“Three courier capsules were requisitioned to collect items from the building around the time Troblum disappeared,” her u-shadow reported.

“What items?”

“Unknown. They were stored in stabilized cases.”

“Ah,” Paula said. “I bet it was a collection. Most likely Starflyer War memorabilia. Stubsy Florac often procured historic relics for clients. Where were the cases taken?”

“The capsules made three separate trips to the city spaceport; they were collected by different commercial ships registered in the External worlds. No record of their ultimate destination.”

“It was to Florac.” She knew it. That’s why Troblum was there, to pick it up. And it would have meant a great deal to him. That can only mean he was planning to leave the Commonwealth entirely. She opened a link to ANA. “Troblum was more scared than I realized.”

“Marius does that to people.”

“Yes. But there was something else. Remember what he told us when he first made contact. He had something that I would understand, and his mania is the Starflyer War, a time I am familiar with.”

“That hardly narrows it down.”

“Something else does,” Paula said. All she could see was that slight figure ascending into its ship amid the ruins of Florac’s villa. A slight person. That wiggle of the hips, a taunt, a couldn’t-care-less contempt. None of today’s agents and representatives had that kind of attitude, not even the Knights Guardian. They all prided themselves on their steely professionalism. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“What feeling?”

“I have one last trip to make. I’ll tell you after that.”

“Can’t you tell me now?”

“No. Believe it or not, I’d be embarrassed if I’m wrong. You’ll think I’m obsessive. I have to know for myself.”

“How intriguing. As you wish.”

“Are you making any progress on mining Troblum’s life for me?”

“Yes. In many ways he is an odd person, especially for a Higher. I have a reasonably complete time line for you. It has some suspicious gaps, and he even served on a scientific mission for the navy.”

“Really.” Paula’s u-shadow received the file. She scanned the contents list in her exovision; one of the more recent items attracted her. “A presentation to the navy about the Anomine and the Dyson Pair barrier generators? And Kazimir himself was there. I’d like a summary of that, please.”

“Of course.”

“Thanks, I’ll review it on my way back to Earth.”

“You’re coming here?”

“Yes. This little problem of mine will only take a moment to confirm. I’ll be there in an hour.”

Major Honilar rounded up thirty-three people from the apartment block and shipped them back to the security headquarters that had been set up in Colwyn’s docks. The cordon around the building was maintained even in the face of growing hostility from the crowd in the park. Five paramilitaries from the support squad made one final sensor sweep after the transport capsules had carted off the unfortunate residents but found nothing. Once they’d finished, they left, reassigned to more urgent duties. The occupying forces were having a hard time of it as more and more of Viotia’s inhabitants joined the physical protests against their presence.

An hour and a half after the last of the suited figures clomped out of apartment four on the fourth floor, the muffled sound of a power tool resonated around the bathroom. One after the other, three fixing bolts around the top of the hot water tank spun around and then dropped onto the floor. The hemispherical top of the tank tipped up a fraction. Fingers appeared in the gap and pushed against the thick thermal insulation foam, shoving the top aside. It, too, fell onto the floor with a loud clang.

“Sweet Ozzie!” Araminta groaned.

It took a long time to lever herself up to a standing position. The cylinder was just big enough to hold her in a terrible crouch position. Every limb throbbed as she finally stretched them free. Cramp attacked her joint muscles, bringing tears to her eyes. She was close to sobbing when she eventually straightened her spine. It was another five minutes of simply standing and letting the pain subside before she attempted to climb out, using the false wall boxing as a ladder.

The only noise was the crowd outside jeering and taunting the paramilitaries on the cordon. Araminta peered cautiously into the living room. Nobody about. Her macrocellular clusters couldn’t detect any individual data signals. She’d isolated herself from the unisphere and knew she couldn’t reconnect without being detected. She crossed the living room, feeling unnervingly exposed. The main door was ajar, its expensive brass lock broken; that drew a scowl. As far as she could determine, the whole fourth floor was deserted. She shut the door and jammed a crate of kitchen fittings behind it.

“Okay, then,” she said, and sat down in the ancient armchair. She got up again and went over to the kettle. She was just about to switch it on when she wondered if some tricky little monitor program would notice the power usage. Five minutes later she’d extracted the power cell from a bot and wired it up to the kettle.

She sat back down in the armchair with a cup of wonderfully hot tea and some of the classy chocolate biscuits she always kept around.

So now what?

Inigo’s Ninth Dream

Edeard hadn’t visited the House of Blue Petals for nearly a month. Now, with the court case winding down, he stood on the street facing it as the sea breeze gusted along Upper Tail Canal. Finally, the winter was ending, with the onset of spring conjuring some much-needed warmth across the Lyot Sea. A light drizzle swept through Edeard’s concealment to dampen his face. He continued to stare at the building with its long oval windows, frowning at the vague feeling of disquiet stirring in his mind. Everything appeared to be normal. The doormen stood like muscular statues on either side of its three tall doors as men passed in and out. Even the piano music drifting out across the street was pleasingly familiar.

When he pushed his farsight through the sturdy walls, he detected nothing out of the ordinary. Up on the third floor, Ivarl’s mind was its usual tight knot of suppressed thoughts. He was in his office as always, with several people in respectful attendance.

It was all perfectly normal.

So what’s wrong?

One day he really would have to make sense of these sensations that occasionally haunted him. But this was hardly as bad as the night Ashwell was attacked. He would just have to be alert, that was all.

The two sailors walking up the steps never knew they were shadowed. They were waved through. Edeard followed them across the threshold.

The decor had changed slightly. Ivarl had bought some large colored-glass globes over two feet in diameter, their swirling patterns of amber and aquamarine clashing in gentle curlicues. Ten of them stood on ornate wooden pedestals around the walls of the bar. Edeard gave them a mildly disapproving glance and slipped farther into the room.

A dog barked loudly.

Edeard froze. He hadn’t realized the animal was there; its mind was similar to those of the ge-monkeys. It was a beagle, chained up to one of the big iron door hinges. Even as he reached for its mind to quiet it, the doormen were slamming the doors shut. Huge metal bolts three inches thick were rammed home, locking the doors tight.

He whispered “Oh, crap” as people started shouting. Several clients were in a panic, scurrying around to find a route out. He had to flatten himself back against the wall as one militia officer ran past demanding to know what was going on. A group of the uniformed doormen had clustered together around the bottom of the stairs. They were brandishing revolvers.

“Gentlemen, your attention please,” Ivarl shouted. “Quiet!”

Edeard looked up as the bar fell silent. Ivarl was standing on the gallery, both hands on the rail, looking down, his irregular lips open in a brutish smile. Edeard almost let out a cry of dismay. Tannarl was standing beside him, surveying the upturned faces with that superior leer of his. Edeard had met Ranalee’s father only once, at a fabulous ball the Gilmorn family had thrown in their mansion. As they’d shaken hands, he’d seen where Ranalee had gotten her hauteur.

Lady, but I’m an idiot.

“I’d like to welcome my newest guest to this house,” Ivarl announced loudly and smugly. He held up a pair of socks Edeard recognized—they’d been left behind in that lodge on the Iguru. That was what the beagle must have scented. “And I extend the full use of the bar to you … Waterwalker.”

The clients gasped in consternation, looking around to spot Edeard.

“Everyone else is now entitled to a free night with my girls. Please make your way up the stairs. Quickly, gentlemen; thank you.”

As the doubtful clients did as they were told, Tannarl produced a large pistol, which he checked casually. Several of Ivarl’s lieutenants had also appeared on the gallery, equally well armed. There was no way Edeard could get up the stairs unnoticed; the group of doormen at the bottom were pressed close together and were using their third hands to form a barrier. Every client was scrupulously checked over before being allowed up.

When Edeard used his farsight to probe down, he couldn’t find any tunnel directly underneath the House of Blue Petals. It would be easy enough for him to ghost through one of the walls, but he’d have to reach it first. He was very isolated here by the bar, and he wasn’t sure about his hold on the beagle’s mind.

Edeard looked at the pistols lining up around the gallery. Again, he could protect himself, but at the cost of concealment. He couldn’t decide if he’d be safer standing under the gallery or moving around when they started shooting.

The last of the clients scuttled up the stairs.

“I know you’re here,” Ivarl called down. Tannarl aimed his pistol down into the bar and fired. The noise was thunderous. Edeard flinched as the bullet smacked into a high-backed chair, blowing a big chunk of wood out of the back. He’d never seen a bullet that powerful before.

Ivarl laughed and pointed his own pistol down. Edeard scuttled to the side of the bar and crouched down. The barrage of shots that followed sent splinters and clumps of cushioning feathers flying through the air. Some of the lieutenants had a grand time shooting abandoned glasses on the tables.

Ivarl held his hand up, and the firing stopped. “Ready to say hello yet, my young friend?”

Edeard looked across the floor. It was covered in debris now, and cushioning feathers were still fluttering through the air. He would never be able to walk across it without disturbing something. They’d see him instantly.

Ivarl began to reload his pistol, slotting unusually long bullets into the cylinder. “They say you come from the country somewhere back west,” he said casually. “That probably means you’re unfamiliar with parts of our city and how it works. Everyday stuff the rest of us take completely for granted. For instance, did you know that if there’s a fire, the walls simply repair themselves? In a month, you’d never even know anything happened.”

Edeard eyed the back of the bar. He might be able to make it to the rear storeroom without too much commotion.

One of the wooden pedestals began to tilt as a third hand pushed it. Then it fell over, sending the colorful globe crashing down. The glass smashed. Liquid splashed out. Edeard gave it an alarmed look; he hadn’t known the globes contained anything. That was when he realized the liquid was actually jamolar oil, used in lanterns everywhere on Querencia except Makkathran, where there was no need. The remainder of the globes were shoved over, smashing to flood oil across the floor. He watched it spreading toward him with growing alarm. This was getting serious; he wasn’t sure his shield could cope with fire and the bullets. The oil was getting very close to the nearest stove.

Ivarl finished loading his pistol and snapped the chamber back. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Edeard looked above the gang lord. The ceiling that vaulted across the whole bar was inset with broad lighting rosettes whose tips extended down to the walls in a scribble of slender volutes. Their pale orange radiance was at its strongest. He ordered them to turn off and remain off. The bar was plunged into darkness, with the flickering coal flames behind the stove grilles shedding tenuous fans of light. He leaped up and started sprinting for the door.

A pale silver light flared above and behind him, revealing his splashing footprints.

“Huh?” Edeard twisted around to see both Ivarl and Tannarl encased in a glowing nimbus.

“You’re not so special, Waterwalker,” Ivarl jeered. “You can’t even walk on fire.” He thrust his hand out. The glow brightened all along his arm; then tiny sparks were cascading from his fingertips, falling down from the gallery like a phosphorescent spray.

Edeard dropped his concealment. The oil ignited.

Flames soared up from the slick floor. A vicious blast of air knocked Edeard into the piano. The shield he’d flung around his body just managed to survive the impact, mitigating the blow. He didn’t dare breathe as the flames surged around him, reaching far above his head.

Up on the gallery the girls were screaming as the fire licked up around the wooden railings. Thick smoke churned through the air.

“I see you!” Ivarl shouted victoriously. He started shooting.

Edeard dived for the floor, plowing up a thin wave of flaming oil that sizzled across his shield, barely an inch from his clothes and face. He was managing to ward off the worst of the heat, but his skin felt as if he were immersed in acid. His leather coat was smoldering. Still he didn’t dare draw a breath. Bullets punched into the floor beside him, scattering razor-sharp splinters. Up on the gallery, the squealing girls were fleeing down corridors. Terrified clients shoved them aside in their own haste to reach safety. Ivarl and his lieutenants remained steadfast, their shields protecting them from the worst of the flames. They fired away manically with their pistols.

Bullets started to strike Edeard as his attackers drilled through the fire with their farsight. They were like hammer blows on his back, sending pulses of agony along his spine to explode in his brain. He couldn’t sustain his shield much longer. He desperately needed air.

His thoughts pushed down hard into the floor, willing escape, pleading Help me! and the floor miraculously changed. He started to fall. There was nothing below him. A bullet hit the shield at the back of his head. He screamed and blacked out.

Edeard woke to a uniform pain that throbbed horribly. Even before he was fully conscious, he threw up. After that, he simply lay where he was in the hope the pain would fade. His hands and cheeks were sore where the heat from the flames had penetrated his shield. He could feel bruises all over his back. Bright light made him blink sticky tears from his eyes.

Slowly he began to shuffle around and sit up, wincing at every move. It was very quiet. He managed to focus. What he saw made little sense.

He was lying on the floor of a great tunnel. It was not as wide as those that mirrored Makkathran’s canals, but it was perfectly circular. Nor was there any water trickling along the bottom. The walls were as smooth as glass, which was what they could well have been made from. He couldn’t be sure, for they glowed with a painful intensity. A proper white light, too, not Makkathran’s usual orange. In fact, this whiteness had a shade of purple blended in, which was why his eyes wouldn’t stop watering. Up the curve of the wall, a line of scarlet points shone with equal intensity. They stretched out on either side of him as far as he could see. That was the problem: He couldn’t see any kind of end to the tunnel in either direction.

Edeard clambered to his feet, wincing as he gingerly probed his back with his fingertips. His coat was ruined, the leather hard and cracked, strips flaking off as if a knife had been slashing at him. His boots were also in a bad way, the drosilk resin soles blackened and soft. Where he’d lain, the tunnel was smeared with patches of oil. He eased himself out of his coat and patted the drosilk waistcoat underneath. The weave had several dents. It had probably saved his life, he admitted. When he touched the back of his head, he gasped at the pain from the lump.

“Thank you,” he said out loud to the city, and slowly sank back down again. He knew he was going to have to rest for a while. His farsight couldn’t reach farther than a few inches through the tunnel wall. By now he’d decided he was in one of the very deep tunnels that lay a long way underneath the usual canal tunnels he used. If so, he was really alone in a way he’d never been before. Nobody had been down here since the city was built, and he still didn’t know what kind of creatures might have done that work. Whoever they were, they’d certainly built very well, though why they would want to build a lighted tunnel like this was beyond his comprehension. But then, that was true of the whole city.

He tried to relax, but it was difficult. Without the city’s usual background babble of longtalk, the isolation was quite crushing. He was also angry at himself for what had happened in the House of Blue Petals. Of course Ivarl would figure things out eventually. Concealment was not a secret in this city, not among the Masters and quite a few others. And that ability Ivarl had—the glow that surrounded both him and Tannarl—the sparks, was something Edeard had never heard of before. Now, though, he wasn’t entirely surprised, not since the final night he’d spent with Ranalee.

Like all the Grand Family daughters, Ranalee was a lovely girl. She had raven hair that her maids brushed straight every morning so that it would fall halfway down her back. Her face was also long, with narrow eyes and a cute little nose. All nice features, though in combination they gave the impression of coldness. That seemed to be another eternal feature of Makkathran’s aristocracy: The richer or more powerful the family was, the less laughter was to be found in their lives. However, she was fiendishly enjoyable in bed. And truth be told, he was rather excited at the way she had spent a couple of weeks maneuvering Kristiana out of the picture. That single-minded possessiveness when focused on him alone made her even hotter.

He certainly didn’t object when she announced they would be spending the weekend at a family-owned lodge out on the Iguru. Macsen and Boyd enviously wished him luck. He’d wondered afterward if they were being prophetic.

The lodge was a work of art, made from carved timbers and decorated with a tasteful excellence that only the Gilmorn money could provide. He enjoyed the very human architecture after the city’s relentless nonhuman appearance. They took “almost no one” with them, as Ranalee defined the five servants who were there to cater to her every whim. At night she dismissed the staff to their cottage. “Outside their farsight range,” she explained with relish, “because we won’t be able to keep a seclusion haze going.” He was led into the main bedroom with its huge normal bed, one with a wooden frame and springs and a feather mattress; it was the first he’d slept on since Plax, he realized with a fond recollection of Franlee. Ranalee made him wait while she attired herself in some of the most expensive lingerie produced by the city’s couturiers. Never before, Edeard thought, had so much money been so incredibly well spent. It must have been the wine and being graced with such a vision that had left him so vigorously aroused. Ranalee exploited that state and her own sexuality quite ruthlessly. Sweet little Franlee would have been appalled by their behavior.

“I like that you’re so receptive,” Ranalee told him as they lay side by side on the lavender-scented sheets. Ranalee, he’d discovered, wasn’t the kind of girl who wanted to cuddle afterward. Candelabras in each corner of the room produced a mild yellow light, enabling him to see the expression of distant satisfaction on her face as she stared up at the bed’s embroidered canopy. “On every level,” she added.

“Yes,” he said, not quite sure what she was saying.

“I have a proposition for you. I’m sure Kristiana and others have made it, but I have the contacts and ability to make it work better than they ever could. And in addition, you wouldn’t be entirely dependent on Gilmorn money, which for someone like you would be quite important, I imagine.”

“Uh, what kind of proposition?” Edeard was still reliving the last couple of hours. He’d never been so ferocious before; it was an abandon she had demanded and responded to in kind. The exhilaration had been overwhelming, making him desperate for it never to end.

She turned her head to give him a shrewd stare. “I marry you and arrange for rewarding contacts with all those desperate third and fourth daughters.”

“Marry?” he blurted. They’d known each other for a few weeks.

“Yes. I am a second daughter, you know.”

“Er, yes. That’s very flattering, Ranalee, but I’m not quite sure, er, what I want.”

“Well, it’s about time you seriously started thinking about it. You have value now; you should capitalize on it.”

Edeard wondered if he had misheard something. “Capitalize?”

“Well, face it; for all you’re popular and interesting, you’ll never be Mayor.”

“Why not?” he asked indignantly.

Ranalee laughed. “You’re not one of us, are you? You don’t belong to a Grand Family.”

“The Mayor is elected by the city.”

“Dear Lady, are you joking?”

“I can make it to Chief Constable. As a Grand Council member I’d be eligible to put my name forward.”

“With our family backing, you probably could get that far. But when did the Chief Constable ever make Mayor?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Never.”

“Oh.”

“So don’t be so silly. I’m talking about the future.”

“All right.” He was stung by the crack about him not being able to achieve much on merit. “What’s the proposition?”

“I told you. I’ll be your gatekeeper.”

“I’m … sorry, I don’t get any of this.”

She rolled onto her side and reached down between his legs. “Exploit your potential. That’s what the families truly value. These, to be precise.” Long-nailed fingers closed around a very sensitive piece of anatomy.

“Potential?”

“Lady, you’re ignorant. I just didn’t realize how much. How do you think families like mine achieved our position?”

“Some of it was luck, being in the right place at the right time in history; some of it was due to hard work, your family especially. Your ancestors took huge risks exploring new markets with their ships.”

“Crap. It’s breeding.”

“Right.”

“You doubt me? The one thing the families cherish more than anything is a strong psychic ability. That’s what we use to maintain our position. Farsight that can see what our rivals are up to inside a seclusion haze, a third hand strong enough to protect ourselves, and a few other useful little talents, too. We prize that trait above all others in a mate. That’s what every family bloodline nurtures. And now you’ve walked out of the wilds and into the city, a simple country boy with more strength than a dozen family sons put together. We want you, Waterwalker. We want what these contain.” Her fingers closed tighter, nail tips sharp on his scrotum.

Edeard kept very still. His tongue licked around his lips as she held him on the threshold of pain. “Okay, I get it now.”

“Good boy. So I marry you.” She smiled and stretched provocatively. Her voice purred, echoing inside his skull. “You get this magnificent body whenever you want and in whatever fashion you desire. And you’ve already discovered how fantastic that will be for you. I’m everything a man dreams of. Aren’t I?” The way she spoke it was a taunt, a challenge.

“Yes.” He couldn’t lie to her. That same husky voice had goaded him throughout the night. It spoke directly to some animal deep inside, awakening the most shameful desires. Yet she was the one suggesting them, rejoicing at how badly their bodies could behave. The notion of every night for the rest of his life spent like this one was igniting a fever inside him. He would fight every bandit on Querencia to make it happen.

“I will yield to you,” she promised meekly. “You will father a host of lovely little girls in me. They will run around the mansion and live a life of luxury and make you unbelievably happy while you clear the scum out of the city and ascend to the Chief Constable’s office. That’s by day,” she vowed tantalizingly.

“And by night?”

Ranalee’s smile mellowed, and she eased her grip a fraction. Her lips were now so close, they brushed his ear. “I will bring a multitude of the city’s minor daughters to our bed.” Now her hand crept up to hold his stone-hard member. Edeard smiled in utter bliss as she directed his imagination to the satisfaction his masculinity could achieve for him. “Each of them yearning for you to sire a daughter. They will pay to receive your fulfillment again and again.”

“Yes,” he groaned ecstatically.

“Beautiful girls. Young girls. Girls like Kristiana married off to equal nonentities out in the merchant classes or the militia—our country cousins. They’ll have the daughters who’ll go on to marry the next generation of first sons. Every family will be in a fervor for them.” She sucked in her cheeks thoughtfully, suddenly playful. “Maybe I’ll be able to negotiate a percentage of the dowry as part of your stud fee.”

Edeard was suddenly bedeviled by an image of Mistress Florrel that he must have allowed to slip out.

Ranalee laughed delightedly. “Her! Yes, that’s why she was so sought after. She is an amazingly strong psychic; I’m four generations down from her myself. And don’t forget Rah, either.”

“Rah!”

“Why do you think every Grand Family claims to be descended from him? We actually are. A third hand strong enough to cut through the city’s crystal wall; who wouldn’t want that?”

“I never knew any of this,” he said softly. It all made perfect sense now that she’d laid it out.

“Within three generations your descendants will rule Makkathran. That’s less than a hundred years, Waterwalker. And then you will be king in all but name. Think what you can achieve with such power.”

“I will break them,” he said, eager now that she had opened his eyes to so many opportunities. “I will destroy the gangs. The city will regain all it has lost since Rah’s time. The Skylords will come again to carry us off to Odin’s Sea.”

“I will go there with you.”

“Yes, together!”

“As it is this night, it will always be for you. I pledge myself to that cause. Your pleasure will never end.” She rose above him, face gleaming triumphant in the tranquil candlelight. “Now you will celebrate our union,” she told him, her whisper filling the room in a crescendo.

Edeard’s mind lost all focus as his flesh obeyed her demands. He was lost between ecstasy and delirium.

“You will give me our first daughter this night,” Ranalee decreed.

Edeard laughed ecstatically. “Let’s just hope it is a daughter.” Tears of joy were running from his eyes.

“It will be. They all will be. Every girl knows how.”

“How?”

“How to take care of an inconvenience like that. They must be girls.”

“But the boys …”

“There can be no boys. They have no value. The families practice primogeniture, apart from the odd embarrassment like the Culverits. So your daughters can marry directly into a family’s main lineage.”

“What?” His thoughts were swirling as panic contaminated his physical delight. “What?”

“The embryos are not people,” she crooned. “Not at the stage where their gender becomes apparent. There isn’t even any discomfort for me. Don’t think of this anymore.”

“What? No!”

“Relax, my beautiful strong Waterwalker. Do what you do best.”

“No,” Edeard shouted. He felt smothered, fighting for breath against a torrent of horror. “No, no, no.” He pushed. Pushed hard. Pushed with his third hand. Pushed himself away from such evil.

Ranalee wailed in shock as she flew through the air. Edeard was panting hard, trying to shake the miasma from his thoughts. He felt as if he were shaking off a nightmare. His heart was yammering in his chest. He searched around frantically to see Ranalee sprawled across the rug at the foot of the bed. She looked dangerous, her hair wild, a snarl on her lips as she stood up and faced him.

“What happened?” he gasped, still fearful. He could barely resist the urge to continue, to bend her over the bed and take her, and from that to rule Makkathran through his offspring.

“I set you free,” she growled.

Her voice seemed to clang around the inside of his head. He groaned at the intensity, jamming his hands over his ears.

“I showed you your real desires. Follow them. Liberate yourself.”

“Stop it,” he begged. He was curling up, struggling against his own treachery, his yearning to follow her path into the future.

“Inhibitions aren’t for people like us. You have strength in your blood, as do I. Think what we can achieve together. Believe in us.” She caterwauled the last words at him.

The force behind the command almost sent Edeard tumbling from the mattress. Her mind was bright and hot. It finally made him realize that it wasn’t her voice he was battling. Somehow she was speaking directly into his mind. Insidiously potent longtalk had corrupted his thoughts, forcing him to bend to her will as if he were no more than a genistar being ordered to clean up manure. He clenched his teeth and concentrated, willing his third hand to contract around him, becoming hard enough to deflect longtalk. He was pleading to the Lady to make him strong enough.

“Listen to me!” Ranalee demanded.

Edeard could see her lips still moving as her voice faded away. Every trick he’d learned in the city about shielding his emotions was woven together and reinforced by his telekinesis. He crouched on the mattress, hearing nothing, sensing nothing.

Ranalee glared at him. Once his nerves had steadied, he glared back. His hands were trembling from shock and fear.

“You.” He gulped down a breath. “You tried … You wanted me to … Oh, sweet Lady.” The thought of what he’d only just managed to elude sent another shiver along his spine.

Ranalee regarded him contemptuously. She said something.

Edeard cautiously allowed her voice through the shield his third hand had created. But not her longtalk. Lady, no! That he kept perfectly blocked. “What?”

“You stupid pitiful country peasant.”

“Bitch,” he spit back.

Her contempt matured into utter scorn. “You think that isn’t you? You believe you are noble and kind? Do you know how the dominance works? It plucks at the true strings of the heart. And I am a master of those passionate tunes; I play men for the simpletons they are. I recognize what lurks within, Waterwalker. You are all ruled by your ego and your lust, the real traits flowing in the blood. Everything I offered is a seed inside you. I simply give you the chance to let your true nature grow.”

“I am not like that.”

“How many family girls have you already bedded? You gave in to yourself on that quickly enough, didn’t you? How many months have you and your pitiful squadmates spent in a lowlife tavern, plotting and scheming to overthrow the gangs and make you Chief Constable? That is exactly what I offer you. Not in the way your childish daydreams imagine, I can give you all that for real. Grow up, Waterwalker. Your supposed virtue cannot bring you to power by itself, for that power is ultimately what you crave. The power to shape the city in your vision. That’s right, is it not?”

“Yes,” he murmured. “An honest city. One where people are not bred for advantage and profit.”

“Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong in order to do what’s right.”

He stared at her, stunned.

“Oh. A phrase even you’ve heard, then? Do you know who said it? Rah himself as he forced his way through Makkathran’s walls. He knew that only inside would his people have sanctuary from the chaos spilling out from the ships that brought us here. So he gave us the city. He took the city and by doing so gave us order and stability that have stood for two thousand years.”

“No.” Edeard shook his head. “I’m not … Children shouldn’t be born for that. They should be loved for themselves.”

“They would be. And ours would be destined for greatness, too.”

“It’s not right.”

“Really? And what if you only marry one girl, a nice sweet little thing who loves you dearly the way it is out in your backward villages? What do you think awaits those children of the Waterwalker? Me. That’s what. Me and all the others like me. The fewer children you have, the more valuable they become. The boys will be seduced by family daughters; the girls will be taken as trophy wives by our first sons. It will make most excellent sport. We will have the strength of your blood one way or the other.”

“Not like that you won’t.”

She tossed her head, regarding him with true aristocratic derision. “You can achieve so much, Waterwalker. If Makkathran is to be remade as you would wish it, then it must change almost beyond recognition. I have no quarrel with that, for I would be atop that change. But radical change must come from within. You know how that has to happen now; your blood must spread wide, carrying with it your will.”

“I can change things from where I am.”

“No,” she said harshly. “Change imposed by an outsider is an external threat, the one thing that would pull all of Makkathran together. The families, the common man, even the gangs; they would unite to defeat you.”

“Those groups, they want me to win, to get rid of the gangs and the corruption that allows them to thrive.”

“They want you to get rid of the gangs, that’s all. You can’t do that, not without help from the established order; they’re woven too tightly into our streets and canals for you to root out. The councils and the guilds won’t help you unless you’re committed wholeheartedly to supporting them. You don’t have a choice. Your subconscious knows that. I saw your every feeble thought tonight.”

“So you’re the easy way?”

Ranalee ran her gaze lecherously along his naked body. “Lust for power wasn’t the only craving you exposed. All men are the same in the end. I enjoyed that part as much as you did.”

“I refuse to play this game with you.”

“Idiot.” She sighed in disgust and held out an arm. Her third hand fished a long robe from the closet, and it glided through the air to her. “But then our children were never going to inherit their intelligence from you, were they?”

Edeard clambered off the bed, feeling intolerably weary. He was also disgusted with himself, because he knew that part of the night had been true. Her insidious power had unleashed what lay within him.

“It might already be too late for you,” she taunted.

He recovered his underwear. “What do you mean?”

She patted her stomach. “I’m at the right time in my cycle, and you certainly delivered adequately. I’ll be such a good mother. I’ll even keep it if it’s a boy. He can start breeding in a little over a decade. A rival to you.” She smiled to deliver maximum hurt.

Edeard’s heart fluttered. There was a phial of vinak juice in his luggage. He’d been so desperate to get her into the bedroom, he’d never taken it. She hadn’t given him time. All deliberate, he knew now.

Fool! She’s right. You really are nothing but a backward peasant!

Ranalee caught his distress and laughed.

Edeard’s third hand gripped her and shoved her up into the canopy above the bed. Her eyes bulged with shock as she found she couldn’t breathe. Below her, Edeard pulled on his shirt, taking his time, not looking up. “I lack your skill in killing unborns,” he said calmly, “so I’d have to eliminate you to make sure he was never born into the life you envisage for him—or her.” He eased off a fraction, and Ranalee sucked down precious air. “You’re too weak,” she hissed furiously.

“Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong in order to do what’s right.” He let go of her.

Ranalee crashed down onto the big bed, bouncing hard on the mattress. She scrambled around and found Edeard leaning over her. She shrank back in trepidation from the expression on his face and the timbre of his thoughts.

“You should never talk so casually about death and killing,” he told her. “Not to those of us who have killed and will kill again.”

“You’ll die alone with your dreams broken,” she cried defiantly.

“If you are pregnant, you will inform me, and I will bring the child up myself.” He pulled on his boots, and went out into the night, leaving his luggage behind.

It was a long miserable walk back to Makkathran. With only himself for company he was forced to face aspects of his psyche that he didn’t much admire. Again and again he considered Ranalee’s proposal. He suspected she might be right about how impossible it would be to rip the gangs out of Makkathran. Dear Lady, was this the proposal Finitan spoke of? It can’t be. It can’t.

How he longed for Akeem’s wisdom. Just one last question for his old Master. When he pictured Akeem’s kindly ancient face, his old Master was shaking his head in that amused dismay of his that had greeted so many apprentice follies, as if to say: You already know the answer.

When dawn did eventually break and Edeard begged a lift from a farmer driving his cart to market, he was resolved. He would take on Ivarl and the gangs on his own terms. That way he gave himself a victory over the darker nature resting in his soul.

Now, looking along the brightly lit tunnel that seemed to go on forever beneath the city, Edeard knew he had another long, lonely trek home.

“I really am going to have to get help to deal with these bastards,” he decided wearily. Neither the tunnel nor the city answered him. He shrugged and got to his feet again. It wasn’t quite as painful as the last time. He looked one way, then the other. There was absolutely no difference between them. Both ways saw the tunnel extend out to the vanishing point. The silence was starting to get to him. It was as profound as the time he’d used his third hand to defend himself against Ranalee’s voice.

Talents, she’d said, useful little talents. Plural. Edeard had never heard of anything like the liquid light Ivarl and Tannarl could manifest. And to think, when he’d hauled Arminel back to justice across the surface of Birmingham Pool, he’d considered himself invincible. It made him wonder how many other nasty little surprises the aristocratic families kept among themselves.

He probed around with his farsight, trying to find out exactly where he was. The tunnel was very deep. He examined the structure above him, searching for a clue to his fall, the direction he’d come from. Makkathran had altered itself again to let him through, but he couldn’t detect any difference in the solid bulk overhead. When he focused, he thought he glimpsed something. His farsight swept back, and there he was. It was like an image of himself embedded in the city’s substance: falling, with his arms waving madly, his coat trailing smoke. As he studied the image, it moved slowly. If he focused on the substance above, it seemed to rise back, following his own point of concentration. When he changed direction, so did the image. Memory, he realized in delight. The city remembers me.

Edeard tracked the image of himself to the place where it dropped out of the tunnel roof. It was kind of funny to see himself landing splat on the floor, but it still didn’t tell him which way to walk, just where the House of Blue Petals stood above. He reached out for the city’s peaceful thoughts, and projected an image of Transal Street in Jeavons, where he always employed a disused cellar to go down into the canal tunnels. Do you have a memory of how to get there? he queried.

There were no images, which he’d only half expected, anyway. Then he began to scrabble around for his footing because the tunnel was somehow tilting. The floor shifted down alarmingly fast, and Edeard slipped onto his back. He started sliding along the smooth surface, picking up speed as the angle kept increasing. It was already way past forty-five degrees and building. The infinite line of red lights was flashing past. He instinctively knew what was going to happen next, even though it was utterly impossible. How can a tunnel possibly tilt?

There was never any answer. The only sound in the tunnel was Edeard’s scream as he began to fall down the now-vertical shaft.

When he stopped to draw breath, he didn’t bother screaming again; after all, this was how he had dropped down into the canal tunnels. It was just that he never had had such an impression of speed before. Maybe if he shut his eyes …

He opened them hurriedly. That was too much; he had to match up what he was seeing with what his body felt. The red lights were now a solid smear, he was going so fast. This was the freedom of the ge-eagles! A side tunnel flashed past, and he gasped in shock. Before he could wonder where it led, another had come and gone. He managed a tentative laugh. No one had ever traveled like this. It was stupendous! This night crowned him king of the city, and Honious take Ranalee, Ivarl, and all their kind. They were the truly ignorant ones.

There was only one truly frightening moment, when his body was twisted by whatever guided him and kept him clear of the tunnel walls and he abruptly flipped out of the main tunnel into one of the junctions. He drew a sharp breath, but his worry soon faded. If the city wanted him dead, he would have joined Akeem in Odin’s Sea a long time ago.

Eventually, his wayward flight ended as the tunnel shifted back to horizontal. Edeard wound up sliding for a long way on his ass until the tunnel floor was completely horizontal again. He looked up and sent his farsight flowing through the bulk above. The top of the tunnel changed in that eerie and now thoroughly familiar way, and he fell up. Darkness engulfed him, and a minute later he popped up into the chill air and weak orange light of the Marble Canal Tunnel.

The sight of it was immediately disheartening. Knowing he was going back up to the city streets brought his defeat into sharp focus. He couldn’t tell anyone, couldn’t turn to anyone. Worse, he didn’t really know what to do next.

Maybe I should just leave. Ride away to Ufford, and Salrana and I will live happily out in the country where we belong.

It was so tempting. But if he didn’t take a stand against the gangs and the likes of Ranalee and her family, nothing would ever change. And ultimately the city’s decay would bring the countryside down with it. The problem would belong to his children, and by then it would be even greater.

Edeard sighed and started his trek home.

He spent the next day in his maisonette, longtalking Dinlay at the station, claiming he had a cold. Lian’s trial was in its eighth day, but he’d already appeared in the witness stand. The prosecution didn’t need him again. Dinlay wished him well.

One of his ge-monkeys was dispatched to the nearest doctor’s house to fetch a soothing ointment, which he dabbed on his scorched skin. Then he apologized to Jessile and asked her not to come around for the evening, claiming he didn’t want to pass on his cold. She commiserated and got her family’s cook to send him a hamper loaded with chicken soup and other treats.

What he wanted was to spend a couple of days resting, thinking about his next move; certainly he needed to talk to Grand Master Finitan. Then, at lunchtime on the second day, Kanseen longtalked him.

The Cobara district had always delighted Edeard. It didn’t have streets like the rest of the city. Instead, over a hundred great pillar towers rose out of the ground, all a uniform four stories high, wide enough for each level to provide enough room for a family to live in. But it was above the towers where the architecture excelled. Each tower was the support column for a broad bridge spanning the gap to the next tower. Most towers provided the base for at least three such bridges, and many had more than that, webbing the district with an array of suspended polygonal structures. That was where the district’s true accommodation began, extending up to six stories high from the low curve of each bridge platform. They formed triangles, squares, pentagons, and hexagons, and right in the center of the district the bridges made up the famous Rafael’s Fountain dodecagon that housed the Artist, Botany, and Cartography guilds. The fountain itself roared up from a big pool in the middle of the dodecagon, its foaming white tip rising higher than the arching crystal roofs.

Edeard walked past the fierce jet of water, his third hand sweeping away the stingingly cold spray that spattered around the edges of the pool. He was well wrapped up in his fur-lined cloak, with a black earflap hat pulled down over his hair and a maroon scarf covering his mouth. Nobody recognized him through his seclusion haze, though he was very conscious of the ge-eagle slipping through the dull gray sky that was keeping pace with him.

After the fountain he took a left, heading toward the Millagal tower, with its red-and-blue-striped walls covered by a leafless network of gurkvine branches. Teams of ge-monkeys were out in force, clearing the last of the slush on the plaza, which extended across the whole district beneath the thick shadows of the elevated buildings. Winter gave Cobara a strangely subterranean aspect, with only sallow slivers of sunlight reaching down through the elaborate structures above. In summer, the plaza was full of people and small markets and street artists and kids playing games. Today, they were all huddled next to their stoves in the rooms overhead, complaining about spring’s late appearance.

Edeard was glad there were few people about; his mood was still down. He arrived at the base of the Yolon tower and went through the wide archway. A massive set of stairs spiraled up the central light well. He grunted at the sight of them, each curving ledge spaced just wrong for human legs. One day, he reflected as he made his calfaching way upward, he would just throw caution away and reshape every Lady-damned staircase in the city.

Three bridge cloisters radiated out from the top of the stairs. He took the Kimvula one and was immediately heartened by the bustling atmosphere so high above the ground. The cloister was narrow in relation to the height of the walls on either side, five stories of ogee arches and oriel windows. Nevertheless, it was wide enough for stalls to be set up along both sides. He unwrapped his scarf as he walked past them. It was warm inside the cloister, the winter sunlight shaded with a faint pink tinge by the crystal roof. People flocked around the various stalls, haggling with the owners. The air was scented with spices and very dry. Someone somewhere was roasting honeyplums.

A third of the way down the cloister he turned into a narrow side corridor that led to yet another spiral stair. Sighing, he trudged up a further three stories. The hallway on this floor was illuminated by the city’s orange light radiating from the circles positioned above each doorway. He found the red door with its ivy hinges painted purple and knocked politely even though he could sense the minds behind the wall.

Dybal opened it. The old musician wasn’t his usual self. He still wore a vibrantly colored shirt and his hair was immaculately braided, but the forceful good humor was subdued. “Thank you for coming,” he said. His eyes narrowed as he took in Edeard’s blotchy pink face. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve been burned.”

“I’m okay. I had an accident, that’s all.”

“Strange. That’ll be the second accident I’ve heard of this week; there was a fire in the House of Blue Petals two nights ago. You shouldn’t hang around that place, Edeard; it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy.”

“I’ll remember, thanks.”

Edeard was led into the parlor, which had a bulbous bay window looking out across the pentagonal space outside. Far below them, big nutpear trees grew in a series of troughs that curved out of the plaza floor. Their denuded branches shone bright white amid the shadows of the bridge buildings.

The rest of his squad was already there. Boyd and Dinlay were standing close to a coal-burning iron stove, looking concerned and radiating worry. Kanseen was busying herself with a samovar of tea, her thoughts tightly shielded as always. Macsen knelt on the floor next to a chair where Bijulee was sitting, his arm on his mother’s legs. She’d obviously been crying. Now she was dabbing at her face with a handkerchief, wearing a brave smile.

Edeard looked at the bruise that was darkening around her eye and winced. His dismay suddenly turned to anger. “Did you know them?” he blurted.

She directed a fond smile at Edeard. Even with the bruise, she was still beautiful. “No. I told them not to call you. I don’t want you worried by this.”

“Mother,” Macsen said. “It’s our fault this happened.”

“No,” she insisted.

“What did they do?” Edeard asked, almost afraid to know. He could see Macsen’s hands clenching into fists.

“Nothing,” Bijulee said. She smiled up at Kanseen, who had brought her a cup of steaming tea. “Thank you. They were just some thugs.”

“Four,” Macsen growled. “Four thugs.” He gave Edeard a significant look.

“They told me that actions have consequences,” Bijulee said. “And that Macsen should watch out.” One hand caressed her son’s head. “They said you should find a different job. Then …” She indicated her eye. “I never saw it coming. Me! I used to think I was city-smart. Lady, how stupid of me.”

“Bastards!” Macsen exclaimed.

“Cowards,” Dinlay said.

“We’ve always known that,” Kanseen said.

“Do you remember what they looked like?” Edeard asked. “Can you gift us?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Bijulee said. “It’s all a bit of a blur. Maybe tomorrow, when I’ve calmed down.”

“Of course. I’m so sorry this happened. I don’t know what Ivarl thinks he can achieve. The trial is only going to last another couple of days. Lian and the others are going to get decades in Trampello. What does he think he’s going to get me to do by this?”

“It’s not your fault.”

Macsen’s jaw muscles clamped down. He continued to gaze up at his mother, full of concern and adoration.

“Did anyone see anything?” Edeard asked Dybal.

“No. It was the middle of the morning in the Bellis market. Hundreds of people were there, and nobody can remember anything. They did what they always do and rushed to help afterward.”

“I’m sorry,” Edeard said again. He felt so useless. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Dybal gave him a sad smile. “I know you will. You’re a good lad, Edeard, I appreciate that. I appreciate what you’re trying to achieve, too. People need hope, especially now. Shame there’s only one of you. This is a big city.”

The squad got ready to leave. Edeard found Macsen’s blatant hostility quite disconcerting; his friend was normally the most levelheaded of them all. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” he asked Dybal.

The musician ushered him into a small room that held over a dozen guitars as well as a drum set. A desk overflowed with sheet music. Normally Edeard would have been fascinated by the instruments; today he took a shaky breath. “I know this isn’t a terribly appropriate time.”

Dybal took off his blue glasses and polished them with his sleeve. “I’ll help you any way I can, lad. You know that. You’re important. Not just because you’re Macsen’s friend.”

“Thank you. Er …”

“You’ll find there’s very little shocks me, if that’s any help.”

“Okay. I just wondered if you knew anything about longtalk dominance.”

Dybal raised an eyebrow. “The old lust slave serenade? You don’t want to be messing with that kind of mischief, Edeard, no matter how pretty she is. Trust me, there can be repercussions. Anyway, from what I’ve heard, every mother and daughter in the city is forming a disorderly queue to drag you off to bed.”

“I don’t want to use it. I want to stop it from being used against me.”

“Ah. I see. Some of those family daughters not taking no for an answer, eh?”

“I wish it was that pleasant.”

Dybal studied his face closely. “I’m sorry to hear that. First off, keep your mind tightly shielded. Which is a shame. You always seem a little more open than those of us born in the city; it helps make you so endearing.”

“Right.”

“This technique works through your own weakness. Parts of us should always stay buried, Edeard. Common decency is normally enough to keep those kinds of thoughts suppressed, but once they’ve been kindled, it’s hard to put them aside again.”

“I know,” he said miserably.

Dybal’s hand gripped his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Listen, there is no shame in possessing these thoughts; we all have them. If some little vixen managed to sneak through your defenses and fired them up one night, then that’s a lesson learned, and a valuable one at that. The fact that it disturbed you this much is a pretty clear sign that it’s not part of your natural personality, which is encouraging to me, if not to you. And I have faith enough in you to think you’re strong enough to survive a crisis of conscience. But just in case, here’s a recognition gift; it should help warn you if anyone tries that little trick again.”

Edeard examined the burst of thoughts Dybal shot at him, memorizing the technique. “Thank you.”

“Now get yourself back onto those streets and generally kick the shit out of Ivarl and his cronies.”

Nobody in the squad said much as they all walked back across four districts to the constable station in Jeavons. Edeard just knew there was going to be a big argument when they got there. Macsen was going to pick a fight no matter what. Bijulee had been too much. That meant Edeard was going to have to do something, and he was starting to feel bad about not trusting them with the real enormity of everything he’d discovered. If the next couple of hours went wrong, everything they’d achieved would be over.

There were a couple of other constables in the small hall; they took a fast scan of the suppressed emotions seething through the squad and hurriedly made their exit. The thick wooden doors slammed shut. Edeard raised his eyebrow at that. Someone’s third hand was adrenaline-powered today.

He unbuttoned his cloak’s neck clasp and sat at his customary bench at the top end of the hall.

“My mother!” Macsen said brutally.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? That’s all you can say? Yeah?”

“Did you really think Ivarl wouldn’t try to apply some pressure?”

“Pressure! Lady be damned, that was my mother they used as a punching bag. My mother!”

“It’s his way of trying to get to me,” Edeard said quietly. His hand went to his cheek of its own accord, stroking the tender flesh. “You’re the only friends I’ve got, my one vulnerability. He’s bound to use that as hard as he can.”

“Yes,” Kanseen said so wistfully that Edeard shot her a curious glance. She shrugged. “My sister was hassled last week. She was carrying Dium at the time.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Edeard exclaimed bitterly.

“Trust, probably,” Macsen said viciously.

“Oh …” Edeard flung his hands up in dismay. “In the Lady’s name!”

“We thought we were in this together, Edeard. We were with you at Birmingham Pool, remember? Does that mean nothing to you?”

“It means everything!” Edeard shouted. Finally he was too distraught to keep himself in check.

They all swayed back as his doubts and confusions blazed out. He made an effort, gritting his teeth and placing his hands palm down on the old wood of the table. “Sorry,” he told their shocked expressions.

“Edeard, in the Lady’s name, what’s wrong?” Boyd pleaded. “What happened to you, to your face? And why won’t you talk to us anymore?”

“He didn’t trust us with the Myco warehouse,” Macsen said harshly. “Why should he trust us with anything else?”

“You’re such an ass,” Kanseen snapped at Macsen.

“I do trust you,” Edeard said; even to him it sounded like a bored recital. “I got burned when I was sneaking around the House of Blue Petals. That’s all. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“You went there by yourself?” Kanseen asked disapprovingly.

“Yeah. It’s how I’ve been keeping track of Ivarl.”

“That’s dangerous,” Boyd said. “Edeard, you can’t do that on your own.”

Macsen let out a scornful grunt. “He’s the Waterwalker; he can do anything. He doesn’t need us holding him back, do you?”

Edeard sighed. This was worse than he’d steeled himself for. “The warehouse raid was the most public thing we’d ever attempted. Ivarl had laid a trap; he was going to make us—me!—a laughingstock. The whole thing was set up to destroy my credibility. I just used some misdirection. There were over a hundred constables involved, and we didn’t know half of them. If everyone had known, it would never have worked.”

“We’re not everyone,” Macsen barked. “We’re your friends, your squad. Or so I thought.”

“Hey, ease up,” Dinlay said. “It was good procedure.”

“Yeah, well, I expected you to take his side.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come on,” Edeard said. “We can’t do this. Ivarl will be laughing at us.”

“So his opinion is valuable to you, is it?” Macsen said. “Whereas mine—no contest.”

“That’s not—”

“Don’t get upset,” Kanseen interjected. “He’s just angry.”

“No shit?” Macsen spit at her. “Why do you think that is? I am a part of this fucking squad, this so-called team. I had faith in you, Edeard. Faith. Me, of all people, me! And how do you treat that? You just bloody use us to boost your own stature. The Waterwalker saves the day again. Well, crap on that.”

“I didn’t use anyone. We were all on that raid together. I made you a vital part of it. Did you know there was going to be a robbery? Did you know where they were going to stash the platinum? Did you know there was going to be a switch?”

“So what are you saying? I’m not worthy enough because I can’t spy as well as you? Are any of us? Because that’s what this is about. Even Dinlay’s pissed at the way you exclude us.”

“I am not,” Dinlay said so quickly that Edeard didn’t even look at his friend’s face.

“If all you want is a bunch of constables who’ll run around and do your bidding, then fine,” Macsen said. “There are dozens of them in this station alone. But if you want to work with me, then come down off your tower and start trusting us again.”

“Screw you!” Edeard said. “You have no idea what we’re up against. Not the faintest clue. I’m protecting you.”

“I don’t need your protection. And I know more about the gangs than you ever will, country boy. I grew up in Makkathran.”

“I grew up in Makkathran,” Kanseen said. “Dinlay did, Boyd did. You had a nice cushy life on the Iguru.”

“I did what?” Macsen pushed his face out toward Kanseen.

“Stop it, now,” Edeard said. “I didn’t include you in certain things because I was frightened.”

They stopped arguing and shot each other puzzled looks. Edeard rested his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. He was worried there were tears leaking from his eyes, he was so worked up. “You’re all I’ve got. I don’t want us broken up. Not just because I depend on you. We have something here, and it’s more than just kicking the crap out of Ivarl. We had hopes. I couldn’t stand it if they were broken. I’d be left with nothing once more. I’d rather be dead.”

Kanseen came and sat on the bench next to him as the others started to radiate concern. “What is it?” she asked, putting her arms around his shoulder. “What’s the matter, Edeard? We all trusted each other at the start. Nothing’s changed, not really. Tell us.”

Edeard lifted his head and stared straight at Macsen, letting his friend see all his anguish. “Do you want to do this?”

“Yes,” Macsen said, now looking really worried.

“Really?”

“Yes!”

“Everyone?”

Boyd and Dinlay nodded.

Kanseen squeezed his shoulder. “Of course.”

“All right, then. But I want you to swear on the Lady that you won’t shoot the messenger.”

“Hey, we’re grown-ups,” Macsen said.

“No, we’re not,” Edeard said. “Not really.”

“You’re getting very depressing,” Boyd said with a nervous smile. “Just what do you want to tell us?”

“What we’re up against. The scale of the gangs. I want to make you understand.”

“We do know, Edeard,” Dinlay said sympathetically. “They even tried to intimidate my sister Carna last Wednesday. Lady, they won’t do that again in a hurry.”

“Carna?” Macsen said. “She’s the, er …”

“My big sister,” Dinlay said with a contented smile. “Very big.”

Edeard cocked his head at Boyd.

“Yeah,” Boyd nodded dismally. “Isoix had some more trouble.”

“So?” Macsen insisted. “What’s your big secret?”

“I’ll show you,” Edeard said slowly. “Sometime in the next few days. I’m not sure when, but be ready. When I call for you go to the Flight Canal end of Golard Street.”

“You mean near the Black Horse?” Macsen asked.

“Yeah, but don’t go in there, for the Lady’s sake. And make very sure you’re not followed.”

“Easy.”

“Actually it isn’t. Ivarl uses ge-eagles to shadow all of us, but I’ll take care of them. It’ll be night, so that’ll help you.”

“He does what?” Kanseen asked; just for a moment her mind betrayed real alarm.

“He watches us,” Edeard said quietly. “He has for the last month. I’ve been messing with the ge-eagles he uses, but I can’t manage to protect you the whole time.”

“Shit.”

Edeard climbed to his feet. He gave Macsen a sorrowful look. “I am sorry about Bijulee.”

“I know.” Macsen stuck his hand out.

Edeard shook it reluctantly, still dreading what was to come. “Remember, the messenger is just that.”

“Got you.”

Edeard went back to the court the next day to watch the prosecution and defense counsels deliver their closing statements. He was interested that Ivarl couldn’t be bothered to turn up to hear Lian be found guilty; nor was he there the following day, when a twenty-five-year sentence was handed out. After the judges left the chamber, the constables from Jeavons station crowded around Edeard to congratulate him. Then they had to make way for Grand Master Imilan of the Chemistry Guild, who had been in the court every day of the trial.

“Thank you, young man,” Sparbil said, giving Edeard’s healing face a close look. “The loss of that material would have meant a considerable financial weakness for my guild. I am in your debt.”

“I was doing my job, sir,” Edeard replied.

“I’m sure you were. But I remain grateful. If we can ever assist you, please just ask.”

“I will. Thank you, sir.”

“Finitan was right about you. I think you are of benefit to the city. A shame District Master Bise doesn’t share that opinion, but don’t worry; he is outnumbered in Council.”

“Bise?” Edeard knew the name. Bise was Sampalok’s District Master. He’d never seen Bise turn up at the House of Blue Petals in person, but he knew the Master had extensive financial connections with Ivarl’s organization.

“High politics, I’m afraid,” Sparbil said with a grin. “Not that there is anything high about it, of course. Our little voting bloc in the Council is fully behind you. Unfortunately, our opponents take the opposite view. But that’s the way it is in Council. If they had come down on your side, I’d probably be against you by now. Same with the weather; if they vote for sun, I’ll vote for rain.”

“Uh, I see.”

“Take my advice and don’t put yourself forward as a candidate for Chief Constable for at least another two hundred years. That way you can remain out in the city where you’ll still be in a position to accomplish something.”

“Yes, sir.” Edeard gave the Grand Master a formal bow, frowning at the man’s back. The Grand Council is taking sides over me?

“A drink tonight?” Chae asked. “This victory is probably more significant for you than Arminel’s was. It shows the gangs you’re not going away. That needs to be celebrated properly.”

“No, thank you; I have a date.”

“Ah, good for you, lad. Enjoy it while you can, while you’re young. They turn sour when they get older.”

“Who?”

“Women. All of them.”

“Is everyone in this city a cynic?” Edeard asked that evening.

Jessile pulled a beer bottle out of the wicker hamper she’d brought. “Who’s cynical?”

“Everybody, so it seems. Or maybe I’m just paranoid.”

She smiled sweetly. “You probably are.”

“Thanks.” Edeard took the bottle and flopped down onto the maisonette’s heavy old couch. He felt exhausted even though all he’d done was sit around in court all day. Victory should have perked him up, yet all it seemed to have done was raise another round of questions and doubt. How he longed for things to be as they had been before Birmingham Pool. Life had been so much simpler then.

“Put your feet on the stool. I’ll pull your boots off.”

He leaned back and did as he was told. It was nice having Jessile around. After that final night with Ranalee he’d almost sworn off family girls for life. Except he remembered how genuinely nice Jessile was, almost the opposite of Ranalee. She was undemanding, enthusiastic in bed, and discreet. At least she was now. That was a good thing, he reflected. He was desperate to recover some of his public dignity after those months of excess following Birmingham Pool.

Her fiancé hadn’t been in the city for three days before he was sent back out again, much to her dismay. They hadn’t even managed to set a day for the wedding. So in the meantime, she was happy to carry on seeing Edeard—just not so visibly.

Two lonely people, basically, he thought. There were few mornings when he didn’t look out of the window, searching the brighter skies that would signal Salrana’s return.

He glanced guiltily at the letter propped up in one of the maisonette’s alcoves. It had arrived yesterday. Salrana had written it three weeks earlier. That was how long a letter took to reach Makkathran from Tralsher province. In it she explained how she might have to stay on for a few more weeks. The Mothers were desperate for help, she said, and she couldn’t let them down. There were so many people who looked to the Church for help in Ufford.

“Lian got twenty-five years,” Edeard said as they sat down to supper. His ge-monkeys had been busy preparing the food the chefs in her mansion had packed in the hamper. “The others got between three and eleven years.”

“That’s good,” she said.

“Really? Have you noticed a drop in crime?”

“Did you mention something about cynicism?”

“Sorry.”

“He’s going to be another six weeks at least.”

“Who? Oh. Right.”

“I got a letter this morning. They’re staying on in Reutte province to help another town. Eriach, I think.”

“Yeah, it’s on the western side of the Ulfsen Mountains.”

“You know it?”

“I passed it on my way here.”

“Well, they’ve got bandit trouble now.”

Edeard looked up from the asparagus and kafish quiche. “What sort of trouble?”

“Raids on hamlets, and the roads aren’t safe. Honestly, the militia pushed them out of the estates around Tetuan, and they just popped up again a few miles away.”

“They have a habit of doing that. Frightening them away isn’t good enough. They’ll just come back later. If you want to be rid of them, you’ve got to push them back and back until they have nowhere to run to anymore. Don’t give them anywhere to hide. Then you can go in for the kill.” He stopped. “That might work.”

“What?”

“Nothing, just an idea.”

“There’s not even any certainty that Eustace will come back after Eriach. Suppose the bandits appear somewhere else.” She started turning her silver vine ring, unconsciously rubbing the diamond.

He put his hand on hers, squeezing lightly. “He’ll be back.”

“Thanks. I know.”

“Did he mention if they have guns?”

“Guns? No. He hasn’t said. Do you think it’s likely? He might get shot!”

“Some bandits have guns. Not many,” Edeard lied quickly, allowing her to sense a calm confidence in his thoughts. “They just get hold of the odd pistol from farms, that kind of thing. To be honest, pistols have a very limited range, anyway.”

“Oh.” She gave him a nervous smile. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Sorry. No sane bandit is going to tangle with a mounted militia squad. He’ll be perfectly safe. You’ll be married by midsummer.”

“I hate that he had to go. It’s all politics. Mayor Owain only sent the militia so he can look strong and benevolent at the same time. That’s what Daddy said. And I’ll bet Owain’s guild merchants are there following the militia around, selling guns to the locals.”

“See? Everyone’s a cynic.”

She grinned at him. “I guess we are.”

“Owain might have sent the militia for political gain, but it’s been beneficial. Reutte needed help. The local sheriffs couldn’t cope. Quite a few farming families have arrived in the city since New Year. I spoke with some of them; they were forced off their land.”

“I know.”

“He will come back.”

“Thank you, Edeard. You’re a lovely man.”

After the meal they settled down to read a book Jessile had brought, Kadril’s Voyage, which told of the legendary merchantmen’s captain who’d opened up the trade route to the south, finding a navigable route through the Straits of Gathsawal. Edeard enjoyed the tales of ocean life and fights against pirates even though he suspected the author had enlivened them somewhat. They took turns reading to each other, slowly sipping red wine as the coal in the stove hissed and snapped. Edeard felt the tensions drain away from him. This was what he wanted his life to be like: success in the courts, pushing the gangs from the streets, then home. Not back to the maisonette but a true home, one with Salrana, maybe. He’d even seen a few vacant buildings in Cobara and Igadi that were possibilities. They would need the room eventually, he hoped, for the children. Children who would know a city without the shadow of crime and the excesses of the families, playing in streets and parks where they were safe. And it could be done. His idea had been growing since supper, expanding in the lazy way that certainties possessed.

“You look a lot happier,” Jessile murmured. She closed the book and leaned in against him.

“You have a soothing voice,” he told her.

Her nose rubbed against his cheek. “My voice, is it?”

“Yes.”

“I wish you had a piano in here. I’m quite an accomplished player, you know. Music would be extra soothing.”

It was that casual grumble that made him smile so merrily. She really had no idea how little a constable earned; on his pay it would take months for him to buy a piano. “We’d never get it up the stairs.”

“Never mind.” She kissed him, her thick hair brushing his face and neck. “I bought a new satin chemise today. It’s not very big, I’m afraid. Would you like to see me wearing it? Well … trying to wear it.”

“Yes.”

“Say please.”

“Please,” he croaked hoarsely.

She got up, showing him a truly immoral smile. “Back in a minute.” She picked up the hamper and disappeared into the bathroom.

Edeard took a breath to recover. He was beaming in anticipation as he rolled off the couch and ordered the light down to a cozy glimmer, at which point he became aware of Vilby walking over the bridge into Silvarum. “Oh, Lady, no!” he groaned.

“What’s the matter?” Jessile called out.

“Er, I’m really sorry about this, but—”

The squad was waiting where Edeard had told them, huddled together under an overhanging wall on Golard Street, where the pavement was only four feet wide. It was dark, with the nearest light coming from behind the undulations of a nebulous molding on the wall two houses down.

“Saria was furious with me,” Boyd was saying. “It was her great-aunt’s annual ball; half the District Master families were there.” He was dressed in a splendid cerise frock coat with a white shirt that was all lace frills. Silver buckles gleamed on his knee-length boots.

“Sounds like you’re making social progress,” Kanseen said. Her face wore a faint frown; she was glancing along the street as if searching for something.

“I didn’t know he was going to call us away so suddenly.”

“He was really worried about this,” Macsen said. “That’s not like our great Waterwalker.”

“Well, you didn’t help,” Dinlay said. “Not the way you were shouting at Edeard the other day. All those wild accusations …”

“Hey, I’m entitled,” Macsen said, raising a finger for emphasis and waving it right in front of Dinlay’s face. “That was my mother they attacked. And it’s his fault.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Oh, yeah? If he knows so much like he claims, then he should have warned us. If I’d known what was happening, I could have stopped those thugs from attacking my mother.”

“We didn’t tell him what was happening to us,” Kanseen said. “We’re all to blame.”

“He doesn’t trust us. He couldn’t even be bothered telling us about the ge-eagles. We’re his decoys, that’s all.”

Edeard dissolved his concealment, appearing beside Macsen’s shoulder. “No, you’re not.”

“Ho, Lady!” Macsen jumped back in shock.

“Where in Honious did you come from?” Dinlay demanded.

“I’ve been here all the time.”

“You heard …?” Macsen’s thin face blushed hotly.

“Now do you understand? This is not a game. I want to change this city. I want your help to do that.”

“And you think that’s the way to get it?” Macsen asked.

“If a couple of insults and a bad temper can put an end to this squad, then we were never going to achieve anything. We were just some kids thrown together with nothing special holding us. I’m hoping that’s not true. I’m not pretending I don’t have a weakness. I made an idiot of myself chasing girls. I’m too frightened to tell you everything I know about Ivarl. I didn’t know how to handle the warehouse raid, so I went along with Ronark’s suggestion. And I’m certainly not sure where we go from here, although I’ve got an idea.” He shrugged. “That’s it.”

Macsen glanced at the others, unhappiness shining through his shielded mind. “All right, that’s honest enough. Crap on inspiration, mind. But I’m willing to see what you want to show us.”

“Me, too,” Kanseen said.

“Yeah,” Dinlay said.

Boyd gave a soft chuckle. “Count me in.”

“Thank you,” Edeard said.

“Do we get to learn the concealment trick?” Boyd asked eagerly. “I always thought it was a city myth.”

“Oh, you get to know it,” Edeard said. “You’re going to need it. Ready for the gift?”

“Yeah!” the squad chorused.

After half an hour practicing along the street, Edeard led them into the Black Horse tavern. They weren’t perfect. Boyd’s concentration kept slipping; Macsen’s farsight wasn’t half as good as he always claimed, which meant he couldn’t combine the ability with his third hand in a way that was truly effective. But Kanseen and Dinlay were surprisingly adept. Apart from the occasional lapse from Boyd and Macsen, when their ghostlike shapes flared out of nowhere, they remained invisible, certainly from casual scrutiny. The only way they knew where the others were standing was by using a tiny direct longtalk, the kind of thing they’d practiced a hundred times out on the street. Edeard helped by dimming the tavern’s lights around them, producing long deep shadows. They crept between them, passing unseen through the back rooms.

Edeard’s nerves built with every step up to the second floor, where the private rooms were. Macsen was playing along for now, but how he’d react to this … Without Macsen, the squad would be seriously weakened, and he was going to need their full strength if he was to have any hope of success with the gangs.

“Ready?” Edeard asked outside the door.

“Yeah,” Dinlay whispered.

Then Edeard heard a metallic click—a pistol’s safety catch pulled back. “Is one of you armed?”

“Yes,” Boyd said.

“Well, actually, all of us are,” Dinlay said defensively. “We thought we were going to be raiding a gang hideout.”

“Oh, Lady, no, no. This isn’t a raid. It’s not actually dangerous; we just have to catch them in the act. So put the pistols away, please.”

Several grumbles rolled along the apparently empty corridor. Fumbling sounds followed.

“Ready?” Edeard asked again, reflecting on the impossibility of acting as a team when you couldn’t actually see one another. “Go!”

As one they dissolved their concealment. Edeard used his third hand to smash the lock and then flung the door open. The squad charged in.

Vilby’s face was a mask of astonishment and fright; his head lifted off the pillows to stare at the squad. He couldn’t move any farther; his own handcuffs fastened his wrists to the odd metal hoops driven into the wall above the bed. Nanitte, who was straddling his chest, holding a jar of honey in one hand, turned around and let out a soft gasp of shock. Then she saw that one of the intruders was Macsen, and her face registered real concern. “Ladycrapit.”

Edeard could sense the longtalk yell she was directing out toward the other end of the city. It wasn’t much: “They’ve caught me with Vilby. I never sensed them coming; they were bloody invisible.” His own face was part of the accompanying gift she sent. No one replied to her.

“Don’t come back to the station,” Edeard told Vilby. “And get you and your family out of the tenement by tomorrow evening. Only constables live there.”

“But—”

Edeard closed his third hand around the man’s chest. Honey squelched out around the edges of his grip. “Don’t,” he growled in warning.

Vilby sagged in defeat.

Kanseen lifted an eyebrow as she gazed at the tacky mess covering the man’s groin. “Well, thanks a whole lot, Vilby. I’ll never be able eat a meringue again.”

Boyd sneered down. “You know, you really need to leave them in the oven longer; a proper meringue is never that sticky in the middle.”

“Is that right?” an interested Dinlay asked as they turned and walked out the door.

“Oh, yes. Any half-wit baker’s apprentice knows that.”

Macsen hadn’t said a word. He was staring at Nanitte, who returned the look unflinchingly.

“Come on,” Kanseen said. She put her hand on Macsen’s shoulder and gently propelled him out of the room.

Edeard gave Vilby a derisory wink and closed the door as he left.

The waitress in the Olovan’s Eagle was puzzled by the squad’s lack of good humor as they clustered together in the corner booth. Edeard tipped her a brass farthing and scooped the beer glasses off her tray with his third hand. He put the first one down in front of Macsen. “Sorry,” he said cautiously.

Macsen shook his head and put his hand around the glass. He stared intensely into the dark amber liquid with its thick head.

“It’s a war of who knows most,” Edeard said.

“Lady,” Kanseen grunted heavily. “I think we get that now, Edeard.” She took a long drink of beer. “Was anyone I’ve …?”

“No.”

“That’s lucky. For them. I would have ripped their balls off and stuffed them where the sun doesn’t shine.”

“Um,” Boyd ventured. “About Saria?”

“A lovely girl. Don’t worry.”

“So it’s just me, then, is it?” Macsen said bitterly. He was still glaring at his beer. He hadn’t managed to look at Dinlay since they’d left the Black Horse.

“Not exactly.” Edeard cringed as he gave Dinlay an awkward glance. “Chiaran.”

“No!” Dinlay squawked in horror. “She’s a constable.”

Boyd turned his head slowly to give Dinlay a fascinated look. “Who’s Chiaran?”

“Her father is in debt to one of Ivarl’s lieutenants in Fiacre. She’s helping to pay it off.”

“She can’t be.”

“You never said anything about a Chiaran to me,” Boyd said with a rising smile. “You sly old thing.”

“Sorry,” Edeard said.

“Oh, Lady!”

“Well, aren’t you the clever one?” Macsen said, still not looking up.

“Actually, no,” Edeard said. He took a breath. “I’m sure you all remember Ranalee.”

Kanseen actually spilled some of her beer. “What?”

Edeard’s shoulders slumped. “The Gilmorn family has strong ties with Ivarl. It’s all part of the way the port works—I discovered afterward. Too late afterward, unfortunately. I think that’s how Ivarl found out I knew about Vilby.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to tell them about that night.

“Wait. He knows you knew?”

“Yes.”

“But— Oh, Lady be damned.” She took another gulp of beer.

“So,” Boyd said with a frown. “If he knew that you knew he … I don’t get it. Why would he go ahead with the Chemistry Guild robbery if you both knew what was happening?”

“I told you, it’s a war of who knows the most and then how you apply it.”

Macsen finally looked up, fixing Boyd with an icy glare. “Get it now? All of this is a giant pissing contest between Ivarl and Edeard, which of them can outsmart the other.”

“Which is why you have to understand,” Edeard said firmly. “Fully understand.”

“Well, I understand now,” Macsen said bitterly. He faced up to Dinlay. “I’m the idiot who got you shot. Me!”

“Hardly,” Dinlay said with a nervous guffaw.

“I told her. I said we were going to do undercover work after we talked about watching Boltan Street.”

“When did we say that?” Edeard asked.

“The day we caught Arminel in the storeroom,” Kanseen supplied.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Arminel used it, didn’t he?” Macsen said. “He used that to mount the ambush at Birmingham Pool.”

“We don’t know anything for certain,” Edeard said. “What I was trying to show you tonight is just how smart and organized Ivarl is. Not only that, his organization is big; it reaches right across the city.”

“You’ve made your point,” Kanseen said. “We were naïve. That’ll stop now.”

“I’m sorry,” Macsen said. He was pleading with Dinlay now.

“You didn’t shoot me.”

“It was my fault.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Edeard said. “You all know Arminel, what he’s like. If they hadn’t come after us that day, it would’ve been another. You don’t send people like Nanitte to spy on us unless you’re making a real effort to eliminate us.”

“And Chiaran,” Dinlay said forlornly.

“And Chiaran,” Edeard conceded. “That means he’s still out to get us, even more since the warehouse. It’s going to get ugly.”

“She was beautiful,” Dinlay said. He took off his glasses and polished the lenses intently.

“We’re all good, though, aren’t we, Waterwalker?” Boyd said cautiously. “Tell us that at least. Tell us nobody here tonight belongs to Ivarl.”

“We’re all good,” Edeard promised them.

“Nanitte,” Macsen moaned, and slumped back into his seat. “What about the others? Have any more girls belonged to Ivarl?”

Edeard grinned. “I don’t have the time to keep track of that list.”

“Nor your own, it would seem,” Kanseen observed archly.

“Nor mine,” he conceded.

“Lady, this is wonderful,” she muttered. “We have to seek your consent for our lovers now. It’s like I’m living at home again and getting my mother’s approval.”

“What were her criteria?” Boyd asked eagerly.

“Well, she wouldn’t have let you through the front door, that’s for sure.”

Edeard laughed. “It’s not that bad.”

Kanseen gave him a level gaze. “Yes, it is.”

“You don’t have to tell me who you’re with every night. And as of now, I’m not going to farsight. Just …”

“Be paranoid?”

“I was going to say ‘cautious.’ If you want me to check out a new acquaintance, I will.”

“Paranoid is good,” Boyd said. “Unlike all of you, I, of course, chose very well.”

“You had no choice at all,” Kanseen said. “Saria chose you. She makes all the decisions for you.”

“She does not! I am my own master.”

Kanseen reached forward and plucked the sleeve of his remarkable frock coat. “Did you choose this? Did you even pay for it?”

Boyd turned red as the others laughed.

“So what do we do now?” Dinlay asked.

“And he does mean ‘we,’ ” Macsen said. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Dinlay stumbled over his words. “It’s just … Chiaran.”

“Get rid of her,” Macsen said harshly. “She’s not your girlfriend; she’s his whore. Do it with longtalk; that’s nice and insulting. In fact, I’ll be happy to do it for you.”

“Would you?”

Macsen turned to Edeard. “Do you want to use her first?”

“No,” he said. “No, though it’s tempting. But if we’re going to do this, I don’t want us stooping to his methods.”

“It’s not going to be that clean,” Kanseen warned.

“I know.” He smiled at his squad. His friends. “But we’ll manage.”

“So what exactly do we do now?” Boyd asked.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Edeard told them. “The biggest part of Ivarl’s income comes from the protection rackets. He has teams in every district intimidating shopkeepers and stall holders. I want to push them out. I want to start by making Jeavons clean, then keep going, force them to retreat across the city until we’ve got them penned up in Sampalok.”

“Then what?” Kanseen said. “And how would you make them retreat there? Do we intimidate them? They’ll fight back.”

“I don’t know the details. We need to consult with Grand Master Finitan about how to begin such a scheme and the politics behind it. We’d certainly need Grand Council support, maybe even a new law.”

“All right,” she said. “Even if you get him to support you in Council and we get all the station captains to play along and a hundred other crappy impossible details sorted out, how do we find them? There must be hundreds of gang members working this racket. Are we all going snooping around the House of Blue Petals?”

“Ah.” Edeard gave them a rather smug grin and reached into his tunic to produce a thick black notebook. He put it down among all the beer glasses. “You must be talking about this list I made of all the names I overheard.”

“A grand alliance against gang-related crime,” Grand Master Finitan said. “Nice idea.” He turned in his high-backed chair to stare out through his office window.

Edeard and the squad sat in smaller chairs in front of the big desk, all of them trying not to gape at the remarkable view offered by the office’s vantage point.

“Do you think the Council would support it, sir?” Edeard asked. If it hadn’t been for the tea and cookies served to them by the ge-chimps, Edeard could well have imagined himself as part of some lowly apprentice class being lectured by the Grand Master.

“If you went up to individual Masters and Representatives to ask them for help expelling the gangs, each and every one would look you straight in the eye and pledge their full and unswerving support, save Bise, of course. Privately, any new law to banish suspected gang members wouldn’t even get read out in Council, never mind voted on.”

“Why not?” Dinlay asked.

“Expense. Legally proving a man is a gang member would consume a lot of time in court and an even greater amount of lawyers’ time, which never comes cheap. And what would you effectively be accusing them of? If you can prove membership, you can prove felony, which can get them carted off to the mines, anyway. No, you need some other way.”

Edeard groaned. It had seemed like such a good idea.

Finitan swung back to face them. “Don’t give up, Edeard. You’re the Waterwalker. We all expect great things of you now.” He produced an enigmatic smile. “More than creeping around bordellos at night, anyway.”

Edeard blushed.

“So what would you advise to get rid of them?” Kanseen asked.

“If you want anything done, you need to make it to everyone’s advantage. Support is essential; the wider the support, the better chance you have of succeeding.”

“But the Council must have been trying to get rid of the gangs for years,” Edeard protested. “Why has there been no progress?”

“I’m going to sound boring on the subject, but expense. Not just in financial terms. Consider how Ivarl’s lieutenants control the dockers. The merchant families have a nice quiet arrangement with Ivarl: They pay him to keep the dockers in line. Take that control away, and the dockers will demand decent pay, and quite right, too. It’s a skill controlling teams of ge-monkeys to remove the contents of a ship’s hold or fill it. So they get more money, which has to come from the ship owner and warehouse merchant and shopkeeper. That cost will be passed on to the customer. The price of everything goes up. Admittedly not by much, but it’s the start of an uncontrollable reaction, a destabilization, if you like. Why shift the balance of power in an arrangement that works? And the dockers are just the tip of the iceberg. So many things would change.”

Once more Edeard remembered what Ranalee had said. External change is revolution. “But the gangs are wrong,” he insisted. “The law must prevail.”

“Yes, indeed. But you of all people should know by now how entrenched they are in the city.”

“There must be a way.”

“Find a method of gathering a broad spectrum of support,” Finitan said. “From there you can go forward.”

“I need the support of the Council.”

“Ultimately, yes. But you must start at the other end, down on the street where the gangs are felt every day. Tell me, before you decided to mount your crusade, what was happening out there? I don’t mean among the rich and worthless of my class but people who were directly affected by the gangs and their violence. People who had given up looking to the constables for aid.”

“They were forming street associations,” Boyd said.

“Yes. Vigilantism, which the Council also frowned upon, not least because such associations circumvented the law.”

Edeard tried to understand what Finitan was hinting at. “We support the street associations?”

“No. The station captains don’t approve for the simple reason that street associations undercut their authority and that of the courts.”

“Then what?” he asked, confused.

“You can’t support them, but there’s nothing to stop you from sharing a drink in the tavern after duty, now, is there?”

“Ah,” Macsen said. “And we might just discuss who is going around to traders to extort money and what they look like and where they live.”

“Indeed, you might.”

“And those private citizens are within their rights to call for assistance when the gangs do come calling,” Kanseen said.

“If they knew for sure that a constable squad would come, they would be more inclined to cooperate,” Finitan agreed.

“And if cooperation at that level was subsequently seen to work …” Edeard mused.

“It would be supported,” Finitan concluded. “A support among people who are not easily bought off by political horse trading. Pressure would grow on the District Representatives to continue and expand the campaign.”

“But we’re still back to the original problem,” Edeard said. “Arresting them and hauling them into court. Each case takes weeks and costs a fortune. Not to mention tying us up as we sit around for days waiting to be called as witnesses. If we remove one of them, Ivarl will send ten to replace him. I need to push the whole lot of them out of Jeavons.”

Finitan eyed the genistar egg sitting on his desk. “What you need is a legal option. Have you consulted a lawyer?”

“This is the joy of a constitution that has reigned supreme for an unbroken two thousand years,” Master Solarin said contentedly. He was sitting behind his desk, which was piled with folders that strove to mimic the towers of Eyrie. Edeard had trouble seeing him, they were so high. “You can find a law to cover every eventuality.

Politicians love to pass laws. It shows the people they are working hard on their behalf.” He coughed and reached for a lozenge in a little brown paper bag under a skewed tower of green and blue folders.

“Then it can be done?” Dinlay asked eagerly.

Edeard had brought Dinlay with him while Macsen and Kanseen went to meet Setersis. Not that he didn’t trust Dinlay with anything; it was just that Macsen would be better suited to deal with the chief of the Silvarum stall holders association. Boyd, of course, was with Isoix, discussing their notion with the Jeavons chamber of trade.

“Such impatience,” Master Solarin muttered disapprovingly. One of his ge-monkeys brought a thick leather-bound tome over to his desk and placed it gently on the huge square of blotting paper in front of the ancient lawyer.

When he’d been shown in by a legal apprentice, Edeard had thought the whole office had been built from books. Each of the five walls was covered from floor to ceiling in shelving, holding thousands of volumes of law. There might have been a window, but it had long since been blocked over. The ceiling had three blunt stalactites that shone orange, giving the books a dingy brown hue.

Master Solarin opened the book. He licked the tip of his forefinger and began to turn the pages. Edeard wanted to volunteer to help. It was all so painfully slow. He deliberately didn’t turn to look at Dinlay.

“Ah ha,” Master Solarin said happily. “I thought I remembered this one.”

“Sir?” Edeard asked.

“I believe I may have found what it is you are looking for.”

Edeard leaned forward. The page the book was open to had grayed over the decades, but the ink was still firm and black.

“Here we jolly well go,” Master Solarin said. His shaky hand traced a line of the print, his mouth working silently.

“What does it say?” Dinlay pleaded.

Edeard shot him a warning glance.

“It says, Constable Dinlay, that nine hundred and thirty-two years ago, the Grand Council passed the bylaw of district exclusions. This is an edict which allows the District Master or District Representative to declare the right of admittance revoked for any person deemed detrimental to the sanctity of the locale. Issuance of such warrant may be duly authorized by the District Master or District Representative on their own authority, without supervision by a judge or magistrate.” He looked up from the book. “I believe it was proposed in Council by the District Master of Cobara so that he might prevent an overamorous suitor from wooing his only daughter. If you remember your history, Constable Dinlay, the two young lovers in question were Henaly and Gistella.”

“Really?” Dinlay said with a happy smile. He turned to Edeard. “They eloped on the Oxmaine and founded Love’s Haven and planted the vineyards there. That province still produces some of the best wines on Querencia.”

“Wonderful,” Edeard said, resisting the impulse to use his third hand to give Dinlay a good smack. “So we can use this law to ban gang members from coming in to Jeavons and Silvarum without having to legally prove they’re gang members?”

“Any person for any reason, provided their name is on the warrant and signed by the District Master or Dist—”

“Yes! The District Representative. How do I get them to sign?”

“Oh, dear Lady, were my lectures completely in vain?”

“You petition them,” Dinlay said proudly.

“Indeed, Constable Dinlay. I am glad not all of my words fell on deaf ears. As a resident of Makkathran you have under most ancient law the right to make a petition of enactment. Such that a District Master or”—Master Solarin paused for emphasis—“a District Representative can require the constable station commander of their district to enforce whatever law the supplicant believes has been violated. Now, as the assistance of the citizenry is implicitly required, as stipulated in the articles of formalization of the constabulary six hundred and twenty-two years ago, this elder right of petition has subsequently fallen into disuse. However, it has never been retired.”

“You mean we can use this loophole to get the District Master to sign the warrants?” Edeard asked.

The skin of Master Solarin’s ancient face produced even more creases as he frowned in disapproval. “You will never become a lawyer, Constable Edeard, for which blessing my guild will doubtless be most relieved. There is no such thing as a loophole. Lawyers merely advise our clients on how to apply laws and the precedents they establish.”

“Thank you, sir.” Edeard rose from his chair.

“A word of caution, my young friend.”

“Sir?”

“You can petition them to enact a law, but you cannot force them to undertake said enactment. To obtain those signatures, you will need their cooperation.”

“I understand, sir. My colleagues are working on that.”

It was a big petition. Edeard had to back up the initial street association meetings personally, persuading the stall holders and shopkeepers and tavern owners and merchants, and a dozen other tradespeople, that his idea was worth trying. With his small base of political allies such as Setersis, Ronark, and Finitan and his own reputation, he began to gain the backing he needed. A week after the meeting with Solarin, the Jeavons and Silvarum chambers of trade simultaneously laid down a formal request to see their respective District Masters and Representatives.

They convened in the library of District Master Vologral’s mansion. Edeard had met the Jeavons Master only twice before, at formal events. There they’d made small talk, trying to weigh each other. He was heartened by the fact Vologral was an ally of Finitan on the Grand Council.

Vologral and the other three Masters stood behind a long table, listening to the official request as made by the speakers of the chambers of trade. Then he turned to Edeard. “Can this work?”

“I believe so, sir,” Edeard said. “We know probably seven out of ten involved in the protection rackets, certainly in our districts. Those are the ones we already have warrants for. If the gangs send in new faces to collect their money, we’ll know who they are straightaway, and we can add them to the list.”

“But keeping them out …” Vologral looked apprehensive.

“In total there are fifteen bridges into the two districts. Each one will have a pair of constables on duty from now on to enforce the exclusion. We just need the legal basis.”

“And the mooring platforms? How many of them? You can’t guard them all.”

“There will be three permanent patrols inspecting the mooring platforms at random; in addition, our ge-eagles will be scouting constantly. I’d point out that a court can levy a considerable fine on any gondolier who violates a city bylaw. We’ll need to make an example of the first few cases, possibly with confiscation of their craft. After that, they won’t be so keen to help the gangs.”

“I can imagine the Gondoliers Guild’s reaction to that,” Deveron, the Silvarum representative muttered.

“The Waterwalker is making an effort to help us,” Setersis said quietly. “I for one am happy to cooperate.” Deveron looked at him and said no more.

“Very well,” Vologral said. “I am provisionally inclined to grant your petition. I will sign the warrants. However, I give you notice, Waterwalker, that I will review the situation in three weeks’ time, after the Festival of Guidance. If I am not satisfied that racketeering has subsided or you are not holding the line against the gangs, they will be revoked. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Do you have the warrants here?”

Edeard beckoned Felax and the other three probationary constables who were waiting at the back of the delegation. Each of them came forward carrying a tall stack of paper.

“Great Lady,” Vologral grunted when he saw how many warrants the young constables had brought. “I didn’t know I was excluding half the city.”

“Seventy-three people to start with, sir,” Edeard said.

“Gentlemen,” Vologral said to his fellow Masters, “let’s hope we don’t get writer’s cramp.” He sat down at the long table.

“What happens to the rest of the city?” Deveron asked. “Aren’t we just exporting the problem?”

“They’ll wait to see if it works,” Setersis said. “If it does, they’ll join in quickly enough. Decent people have had enough.”

Vologral signed the first warrant. “So suppose you do succeed. Exclude them from everywhere but Sampalok, for I know damn well that Bise will never sign one of these. What then?”

“I imagine that will be up to the Grand Council, sir.”

“Ha!” Vologral gave Edeard a sly smile of approval as he reached for another warrant. “Not such a country boy after all, eh?”

It began the very next morning. Ronark changed the squad shifts, which in itself was fairly historic, dispatching five constables to each of the bridges leading into Jeavons from Drupe, Tycho, and Majate. Silvarum’s station captain did the same with bridges to Haxpen and Padua.

As dawn broke, the constables took up position. News of the exclusion had spread in that lightning-fast way any novelty did in Makkathran, especially one concerning the Waterwalker. A lot of people turned up to see if it actually was going to happen. At some bridges they applauded when the constables appeared. Sandwiches and hot tea and coffee were produced and offered to the new guard squads. Then everyone settled down to see what the gangs would do.

At midday, eight men walked across Golden Park. They were young and tough, knew how to handle themselves in a fight, and had strong third hands. By the time they reached the district’s southern point adjoining Birmingham Pool, there were five ge-eagles orbiting high above them, only two of which belonged to the constables.

“Getting a real burst of nostalgia here,” Macsen sang out as Edeard’s squad jogged along Macoun Street.

“Nostalgia is a happy sensation,” Kanseen grunted. “This isn’t.”

Edeard tended to agree with her. He glanced at Isoix’s bakery as they sped past. “You all right?” he asked Dinlay with a direct longtalk whisper.

“Oh, Lady, yeah.” Dinlay’s thoughts were aflame with expectation. They’d spent the morning walking around the two districts on a random route, making themselves visible, knowing there would be a showdown at some time. It should have been a time of high excitement for Edeard, but he’d gotten another letter from Salrana; she’d been delayed again.

He ran out of Macoun Street onto the broad sweep of the alameda. The weeping hasfol trees were just budding, a multitude of blue-and yellow-striped leaves expanding out of their whorls to greet the warmer skies. Right ahead of them was the blue and silver bridge that looped high over the waters of the Great Major Canal to Golden Park. Sergeant Chae was standing at the foot of it, giving Edeard’s slightly out-of-breath squad a nonchalant look. “I’m insulted,” he said loftily. “You don’t trust me?”

“Procedure, sir,” Macsen puffed. “We’re the reinforcements.”

“But I haven’t called for you yet.”

Edeard gestured at the bridge. “All yours, sir.”

“Thank you.” Chae glanced at the eager crowd that was building. “This is nostalgic, eh?” He turned and led the four constables of his squad up onto the bridge.

“Have any of them got guns?” Boyd asked.

“I can’t sense any,” Kanseen said. “Edeard?”

“No. Nothing. Ivarl will want it to appear like they’re just ordinary citizens. He needs to make us the bad guys.”

“Hey, Waterwalker,” a young boy yelled out cheekily. “Are you going to do it again?”

“Not today.”

“Oww, go on, please. Run over the pool. I didn’t see it before.”

The eight men had reached the other end of the bridge. Chae and his squad were standing on the apex, arms folded.

“This is a different day,” Edeard said out loud. The people in the crowd were dividing their attention between him and the gang members over in Golden Park. “This day we banish the gangs from your streets and lives.”

The gang men stepped onto the bridge.

“You!” Chae bellowed. “Pocklan, we know you and your friends. Come no farther.”

The eight men kept walking forward.

“I have a warrant signed by the District Master of Jeavons excluding you from this district.”

“I have done nothing wrong,” Pocklan shouted back. “I am a free man. I may go where I please in this city. That is the law.”

“Halt and turn around. Go back where you scum came from.”

Boyd nudged Edeard. “Look who’s here,” he growled.

Edeard glanced over to where Boyd had indicated. Master Cherix was standing at the front of the crowd, watching intently.

“We knew they’d try to quash the warrants in the courts,” Dinlay said.

“Please don’t let this come down to lawyers,” Kanseen moaned.

“I’m visiting my mother, who lives in Jeavons,” Pocklan said, appealing reasonably to the silent, spellbound crowd. “She has only a few days to live. Would you deny me that right?”

“What a load of bollocks,” Dinlay said under his breath.

“Piss off,” Chae said, jabbing his finger forcefully back down the bridge. “Now.”

“Sergeant,” Master Cherix said. It wasn’t a particularly loud voice, but the authority behind it carried a long way.

Chae turned around, an expression of utter disgust on his face, backed up by some very strong thoughts escaping past his shield. “Yes? Sir?”

“I am this fine gentleman’s legal counsel. May I see this so-called exclusion warrant, please?”

“It’s back at the station.”

“Then until you produce it and let him see it, as is his right, my client is free to go about his business in whatever district of this city he chooses. As are his equally innocent colleagues.”

“All right, then,” Chae said, and jabbed his finger at Pocklan again. “Wait here. I’ll send a runner.”

“No, Sergeant,” Cherix said. “You cannot detain my client without just cause. It is your responsibility to bring the warrant to him. Until it is read to him, he is free to go as he pleases.”

“I can’t run around the district after him and the others,” Chae said.

“That is not my client’s problem,” Master Cherix said affably.

Pocklan’s smirk was indecent. “Step aside,” he told Chae.

Edeard walked forward. “Master Cherix.”

“Corporal Edeard. How nice to see you. I believe you can be of some help in this unfortunate matter. Your colleague here was about to act unlawfully. As a constable of this city, I am asking you to see the law is enforced equally and fairly.”

“My pleasure.”

Master Cherix beckoned Pocklan. “Come on across the bridge now, please, my dear chap. You are quite safe with the Waterwalker himself guaranteeing your legal rights.”

“Were you referring to a warrant like this?” Edeard asked innocently. He pulled a roll of parchment out of his tunic.

Master Cherix’s unctuous smile vanished as he started to read. “But this warrant names—”

“You.” Edeard smiled. “Yes. And as such, I am required—by law—to assist you out of Jeavons as quickly as possible.” He reached out with his third hand.

Master Cherix yelled in consternation as his feet left the ground. The cry turned to pure panic as he kept rising. The crowd on the alameda gasped as the lawyer soared away over the bridge, continuing to gain height.

“Put me down!” Cherix screamed with his voice and longtalk. He was higher than the buildings behind the alameda, higher than the white metal pillars lining Golden Park and still ascending. The watching ge-eagles had to curve sharply to avoid him.

“Did you hear something?” Edeard asked.

“He told you to put him down,” Kanseen pronounced solemnly.

“Oh, fair enough,” Edeard said. He let go.

Cherix fell out of the sky with an incoherent shriek of fright. He landed in the middle of Birmingham Pool, producing a tremendous splash. The crowd cheered wildly.

Chae turned back to Pocklan. “Now, where were we?”

Pocklan gave the sergeant a furious look and then glanced over his shoulder to where an impassive Edeard was waiting. He turned and led his companions back into Golden Park.

Macsen put his arm around Edeard’s shoulder, squeezing strongly. “Now, why is it, do you suppose, people you don’t like always wind up getting dunked in Birmingham Pool?”

“Nostalgia.”

Edeard had been looking forward to the Lady’s Festival of Guidance for what seemed like most of the winter. His friends and the girls he’d encountered were always speaking of it in enthusiastic tones. First, it signaled the onset of summer, which, as far as he was concerned, couldn’t arrive fast enough. But the main reason was to celebrate those who had passed away in the previous year. Everybody who had lost someone made a small memorial boat out of flowers of any and every color except white. Mainly it was the children of a family who made them, producing elaborate and colorful boats up to a yard long. The boats represented the souls of the departed ones.

At midday, the Pythia conducted a service of memorial in the Lady’s church in Eyrie. When that ended, all the flower boats would be placed in the city’s canals. The gondoliers, bedecked in white flowers, guided them down to the port, singing hymns of commemoration. Gondolas represented the Skylords, who the Lady promised would come to Querencia once again to guide the souls of humans into the welcome embrace of Odin’s Sea. At the port, the gondolas would stop, and the flower boats would carry on, drifting out across the waves.

It sounded delightful, especially the evening, which was one giant party. Now the day was here, and Edeard dozed fitfully as the dawn came to a clear sky, promising good weather for the festival. Chief Constable Walsfol’s longtalk intruded sharply into his thoughts. “Ugh, sir?” he responded groggily as the dregs of yet another bizarre dream drained away. He hadn’t known the man had such powerful longtalk. It made sense, though. After Ranalee, a lot of things about the city hierarchy were clearer to him.

“I need you to report to the Culverit family mansion in Haxpen,” Walsfol told him. “Come at once.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said sleepily. “Er, why?”

“I will meet you there and explain the situation. You’d better bring the rest of your squad, too.”

Edeard rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t gotten to bed until well after midnight. Late last evening, the Lillylight Street association had spotted a gondola with three known gang members making their way along Victoria Canal. Edeard and a couple of Silvarum constables had intercepted them at a mooring platform on Flight Canal. No resistance had been offered when the men had been told to leave, but he’d still kept watch on the gondola as it made its way back down the Great Major Canal.

That was the way of his days now: constantly alert for attempts to infiltrate racketeers into Jeavons and Silvarum, called to shops and other businesses when unknown gang members did get through. Two days were wasted in court on charges of aggravated psychic assault filed by Master Cherix, who, thankfully, in law was no match for Master Solarin.

He groaned and pushed his feet out from under the nice warm sheets.

Jessile shifted around on the springy mattress. “What?” she mumbled.

“Have to go,” he said softly, and kissed her forehead.

She moaned again and curled up tighter. “I won’t be here tonight; have to be with family for the party. See you tomorrow.”

“Right.” But she was already asleep again. He ordered a ge-chimp to bring a fresh set of clothes. While he was struggling into them in the dim light, he started to call the others. It was rather satisfying spreading the misery.

Edeard pulled his boots on beside the door and gave his flower boat a wistful glance. It wasn’t much: a simple frame of cardboard a foot long over which he’d stuck a dozen red and yellow roses. His friends assured him it was just right, exactly what everyone else had constructed. For him it was a belated memorial to Akeem and all the others of Ashwell village.

He met up with Boyd and Kanseen on the tenement walkway outside. They weren’t in the best of moods at being hauled from their beds so early. Edeard couldn’t bring himself to look at Kanseen. She hadn’t been alone.

“Are we waiting for Dinlay?” Boyd asked as they made their way down the stairs.

“He’ll join us there.”

A smile spread across Boyd’s face. “You mean he was with someone?”

“Not our concern,” Edeard said a fraction too sharply. Now he really couldn’t look at Kanseen.

“Any idea what this is about?” she asked.

“None. But if we’re being summoned to the Culverit family by Walsfol himself on this day, you can bet it isn’t going to be trivial.”

“Julan is the Haxpen District Master,” Boyd said. “He’s one of the waverers, isn’t he?”

“I think so,” Edeard said, rubbing his hand over his brow. In truth, he’d lost track of which Masters were for them. Their allegiances were very fluid. Lately he’d given up trying to follow the Grand Council’s machinations and was just praying that Finitan would prevail tomorrow.

Boyd opened the big wrought-iron gate at the entrance to the tenement. Macsen was waiting outside. He raised an arm in greeting.

“Dinlay’s still not over Chiaran, you know,” Boyd said cheerfully.

“We all got a nasty shock over Ivarl’s methods,” Edeard told him as they went out into the street. “Let’s just forget about that and move on, shall we.”

Boyd was clearly going to make some other snide comment. He’d even started to open his mouth when a voice cut across the empty street.

“Waterwalker,” a woman cried.

She had been sitting in the doorway of a tailor’s shop opposite the tenement. Edeard’s farsight had sensed her as they were on the last flight of stairs, but she hadn’t been carrying any weapons. She did have three children with her, which was mildly unusual at this time of day but not anything to concern himself over. He’d assumed she was simply bright and early for the festival. Now she came striding across the street, pulling the sleepy miserable children with her. The oldest was no more than five, and the youngest, a girl, was barely old enough to walk.

“Where do I go, Waterwalker?” she demanded belligerently. “Tell me that, eh. Where?”

“What?” Edeard asked, very confused. Macsen was hurrying over to them.

“How will my children eat? Ask him, Dannil. Go on; ask the great Waterwalker where your next meal is coming from.”

The middle child, a boy in a ragged green pullover and worn gray trousers, was thrust forward. He looked up at Edeard, and his lip began to quake. He burst into tears. “I want me da!” he wailed.

“What?” Edeard asked again.

“Eddis, my husband,” the woman barked. “You exiled him. Threw him out of his own house. We live in Fonscale Street. Now you bastards come along and tell him he’s banned from Silvarum, where we’ve lived for seven years. He can’t come home. Can’t come to the house my family has lived in for three centuries. What kind of a law is that, eh? So you tell me, where do I go? How do I feed the children without their father? Eh? Answer me, you backward country shit.”

Edeard just stared at her, his mind a shocked blank. Boyd groaned and rolled his eyes upward, appealing to the Lady. “Oh, crapit,” he groaned.

Kanseen was having none of it. “How did he feed them before?” she asked. “What job did your husband have?”

“Go to Honious, bitch. You’ve done this to us. You’ve ruined our lives.”

“What job?”

“He’s a good man. He put food on the table for us. He loved his kiddies.”

“Yours, maybe,” Kanseen said. “But he hurt other children, didn’t he? Threatened them, hit them, made their parents hand over money they’d worked hard for.”

“He never did.” She covered the oldest boy’s ears. “Lies. That’s what you speak: lies! You’ll all go to Honious. Eddis worked in the abattoir on Crompton Alley. Dirty work, hard work that no genistar can do.”

“You knew what he did,” Kanseen snarled. “If you miss him, then go to him, follow him to his new home. But remember this: We will wipe the city clean of his kind. After this year, there’ll be no more of him.”

The woman spit at Kanseen, who swatted it away with her third hand. All three children were crying now.

“I want you to tell Eddis something from me,” Edeard said. “Tell him that if he leaves the gang behind, if he finds himself a proper job—and there’s plenty to be had—he’ll be welcome back in Fonscale Street. I’ll cancel the warrant myself. That’s all he’s got to do.”

“Screw you!” She pulled at her children. “You know nothing about life. Ivarl will dance on your ashes yet. And no Skylord will ever rescue your soul.”

Macsen touched the brim of his hat as she stomped off down the street. “Thank you, madam. Always a pleasure to help the citizenry,” but he didn’t say it very loud.

“You okay?” Kanseen asked.

“Yeah.” Edeard gave her a shaky nod. “Yeah, I suppose so. Lady, how many families have been split up like that?”

“Are you serious?” an incredulous Kanseen asked. “What about the families of Eddis’s victims? The people you’re supposed to be helping? Isoix and his children? Don’t they deserve some consideration?”

“Yes, sorry.” He hung his head. “I just wasn’t expecting this to be so hard.”

“Cheer up,” Boyd said, and put his arm around Edeard. “It can only get worse.”

Edeard was about to remonstrate, then saw Boyd’s mocking expression and managed a weak smile. “Much worse.”

“Far, far worse,” Macsen promised.

“Let’s go and see what misery and torment Walsfol has in store for us, then.”

As he set off with his friends, Edeard chastised himself for not expecting such an ambush. The only real surprise was that it hadn’t happened earlier. Although they’d managed to add another fifty warrants to the original batch, fifteen had been canceled. There had been a few genuine cases of mistaken identity, but more than one person in the associations had used the scheme to settle an old grudge. Then there were some traders who’d taken advantage in order to get commercial rivals banned from the district, reducing competition. Each reported case of abuse had to be reviewed properly and sorted out, which took a great deal of time for the constables, though not as long as a court case, as Edeard had to keep pointing out to the grumbling Masters and station captains.

But even with the troubles and abuse and legal challenges and the racketeers’ unrelenting attempts to get past, he considered it a success. And in that he wasn’t alone. The gangs had made hardly any collections in Jeavons and Silvarum, and only two traders had been assaulted before the constables arrived. Makkathran’s remaining districts had watched the results keenly. Under continuing pressure, the Masters of Haxpen, Lillylight, Drupe, Ilongo, and Padua were drawing up their own warrants and talking to the station captains about enforcement. In another couple of days, they could well be signed. Tomorrow was the last day of Vologral’s three-week trial. Not that the District Master and Representatives would have the final say, not anymore. The Grand Council was due to convene to debate the “disturbance” to city life caused by the reintroduction of the exclusion warrants. Finitan was leading the bloc of Councillors arguing their benefit. If they lost, the warrants would be revoked, and as Finitan had told him, Bise was preparing an act to rescind the original law. He had a lot of tacit support, Finitan had said, because no one was sure where the whole thing would end. Was it the Waterwalker’s intention to turn Sampalok into a criminal ghetto, cut off from the rest of the city? And exactly how did such a young inexperienced constable come to lead such a campaign in the first place? Politically, the Masters were becoming very nervous about Edeard. Finitan was coming under increasing pressure from his fellow Masters to produce a valid conclusion to the campaign.

Edeard didn’t actually have one. When he did think that far ahead to a time when every district had issued warrants, he assumed the Grand Council would step in with a final solution. Expulsion was his preferred option, though he wasn’t sure how that would be achieved or where the gang members would be banished to. He’d just wanted to start the ball rolling, to give people hope. Only now were the true consequences becoming apparent.

Even he had to laugh when on the day after Cherix received his ducking in Birmingham Pool, District Master Bise very publicly signed an exclusion warrant preventing Edeard from entering Sampalok. Less amusing was the dignified announcement from the Pythia that she would never prohibit anyone from entering Eyrie to attend the Lady’s church. Owain also declared that no warrants would apply to Anemone and Majate so that all citizens would be able to reach the seat of government, a right that Rah himself had laid down. As for the protestations from the Gondoliers Guild about restricting their trade … There had never been a gondola strike in Makkathran before. Even though it had lasted only a day, it had shocked everyone. There were threats that more would be called, especially if the vote in the Grand Council tomorrow didn’t go the way the gondoliers wanted. The Dockers Guild had pitched in with a promise to support the gondoliers.

Thankfully, Edeard was getting a lot of support and encouragement from various traders and merchants. Ordinary people, too, were grateful if their reaction to the constable squads on bridge duty was anything to go by.

Edeard just wanted tomorrow’s Council debate to be over one way or the other. The weight of expectation that had fallen on him was awesome.

Dinlay was waiting outside the main entrance of the Culverit family mansion. The first rays of sunlight had reached the highest level of the ten-story ziggurat to glint on the huge horseshoe arch windows. Five pistol-carrying guards with the family’s insignia on their coats opened the grand iron-bound front gate. The squad walked in through the giant archway to find themselves in a broad courtyard. Vivid topaz climbing roses smothered the pillars on every side, and tall granite statues of past Culverit Masters and Mistresses gazed down sternly. An equerry greeted them and ushered them inside. Edeard sighed when confronted with a spiral stair.

“I suppose the family lives on the top floor,” he muttered to Boyd.

“The Master’s family does, of course.”

The summit of the mansion was a house larger than the Jeavons constable station, surrounded on each side by a strip of hortus garden. It was the traditional residence of the District Master, with the lower floors occupied by dozens of relatives and household staff and clerks who administered his estates.

As they ascended, Edeard became very conscious of the mood swirling around him. There was anger, predominant in the men, and a great deal of fright and sorrow.

“Something bad has happened here,” he said quietly. Macsen gave a short uncomfortable nod of agreement.

Walsfol and Julan were waiting for them on the upper hortus garden that faced the Great Major Canal. Even so early, the Chief Constable was wearing a pristine tunic, his gold buttons shining brightly in the rising sun. Julan, by contrast, was one of the few aristocrats who showed his age. A hundred fifty-three years had made his shoulders sag and his gray hair thin. He wore a rumpled house robe over his nightshirt. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunken with abject despair.

The squad had brought Edeard up to date on Culverit family gossip on the way over. Now, as never before, they were the subject of intense speculation and discussion within the rest of Makkathran’s aristocracy. Master Julan had married very late in life. In itself that wasn’t too unusual among his class. It was a truly romantic marriage. Apparently he had fallen completely in love with his wife (a hundred eight years his junior) as soon as they were introduced and had been utterly devoted to her until her tragic, untimely death six years ago. However, what scandalized everyone was that the first child she had produced had been a daughter, Kristabel, as was their second child, during whose birth she’d died. There was no son to inherit. It was almost without precedent in the city. But to the dismay of Lorin, Julan’s younger brother, there was a clause in the Culverit family’s legally registered claim to the Haxpen district that allowed the lineage continuation through a daughter if there were no sons. The situation had occurred only twice before in Makkathran’s two-thousand-year history.

Consequently, Julan was estranged from a good percentage of his relatives; meanwhile, Kristabel was the most desired girl in the city, with every noble son desperate for an introduction. Any party she was due to attend was besieged by potential suitors. “And Lady, wouldn’t you just know it, she’s an exceptionally pretty thing, too,” Macsen had finished wistfully.

“We have a problem,” Walsfol announced as soon as the squad was ushered onto the high terrace. “No doubt the entire city will know by breakfast, but Mirnatha has been abducted.”

Edeard risked a sideways glance at Dinlay.

“The second daughter,” Dinlay explained with direct longtalk.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Edeard said to Julan. “Obviously, if I can do anything to help, I will.”

Julan’s distress abated long enough for him to give Edeard a fierce judgmental stare. He held up a small square of paper. “You can start by explaining this.”

Edeard gave him a puzzled look and appealed to Walsfol. The Chief Constable gently extracted the paper from Julan and handed it to Edeard. “A ge-eagle delivered it not quite an hour ago.”

With a sinking heart, Edeard read the note.

Mirnatha is very sweet. The price of her return alive and still sweet is eight thousand gold guineas. If you agree to our price, fly a yellow and green flag from the Orchard Palace this noon.

The Waterwalker is to deliver our coinage by himself. He will go to Jacob’s Hall tavern in Owestorn at midnight. Further instructions will be given to him there. If anyone is with him or if he tries to snatch her back without paying, she will be killed.

“Oh, Lady, no,” Edeard groaned.

“I can’t order you to deliver the money,” Walsfol said.

“You don’t have to, sir. I’ll take it, of course. Er … do you have the money?” he asked Julan. With that much coinage one could buy Rulan province and still have enough left over for a fleet of the fastest merchant vessels.

“It can be found, yes.”

“Where’s Owestorn?”

“It’s a village out on the Iguru,” Dinlay said. “Maybe two hours’ ride from South Gate.”

A long way from any possible help, Edeard realized, and even I can’t longtalk that far. “The note was delivered after Mirnatha was taken,” he said delicately. “Is there any proof that it came from those who hold her?”

Julan held up his hand. His fingers clenched a blue ribbon with a long tuft of gold-brown hair. “This was attached.”

“I understand.”

Tears were running down the old man’s cheeks. “The ribbon was from her night dress. I know it was. I kissed her good night. I kiss my Mirnatha every night. She is so precious—” He began to sob helplessly.

Walsfol moved to comfort him. “We’ll have her back for you, my friend, be assured. Every effort will be made. The constabulary will not rest until she is in your arms again.”

“She is but a child,” Julan wailed. “Six years old! Who could do such a thing? Why?” He stared wildly at Edeard. “Why have they done this? What is your part in this? Why you? Why can’t I go? She’s my baby.”

“I don’t know, sir.” Somehow, just having so much anguish directed at him made Edeard feel ashamed.

“Of course you do,” a thin voice snapped.

Edeard’s farsight identified her being helped through the doorway behind him out onto the hortus, but he didn’t want to turn around.

“It is your fault,” Mistress Florrel insisted, “and yours alone. You caused this with your ridiculous crusade against the gangs. Why couldn’t you just leave things alone? Nobody was being harmed. This city worked perfectly well before you arrived.”

Edeard took a deep breath, trying to keep a shield around the growing anger in his mind. Mistress Florrel was in one of her usual archaic black dresses, wearing a tall hat that seemed to have purple fruit growing out of it. A man in fine aristocratic robes was holding her arm as she made her way slowly toward Edeard.

“Lorin,” Macsen murmured. “Julan’s younger brother.”

Mistress Florrel stood directly in front of Edeard; her shoulders were hunched up as if in sorrow, but she still managed to fix him with a merciless stare. “Well?”

“Mistress Florrel.”

“What have you got to say for yourself?”

“I will bring the girl back and deal with those responsible.”

“You will do no such thing. You will hand the money over as you’re told. Nothing more. I don’t want this made any worse by your wretched stupidity. Officers from the militia will take full charge of things from now on. Gentlemen of good character and family, that’s what we need. Not some country buffoon.”

Edeard felt his teeth grinding together.

Boyd put his hand on Edeard’s arm, smiling politely. “We will cooperate in any way we can, Mistress Florrel.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I know you. Saria has taken a shine to you.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Ha,” she dismissed him with a flutter of her hand. Her voice took on a tragic tone. “My dear dear boy”—her arms rose up in sympathetic greeting as she shuffled over to Julan—“how are you coping? This is all too, too terrible.”

“She’ll come back,” Julan managed to stammer.

“We’ll make sure of it, brother,” Lorin said effusively. “What has passed between us is nothing now. I am resolute in helping you endure this ordeal.”

Julan bobbed his head. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Come along,” Mistress Florrel said. “Sit down, my dear Julan. Your family is here to comfort you now. That is what you need. You are no longer alone or surrounded by fools. Go and get him some tea,” she told Walsfol imperiously. “Now, my boy, have you enough money to pay the ransom? I will help if not. We simply must get her back to her home and loving family.”

Walsfol inclined his head respectfully to Julan as he left the hortus and signaled the squad to follow. They hurried after him.

“Now what?” Edeard asked.

“I hate to concede the point, but Mistress Florrel is right in one respect,” Walsfol said. “This is about you.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said miserably.

“Stay here for now in case they get in touch again, and for the Lady’s sake, keep out of her way,” Walsfol said, pointing back through the horseshoe arch in considerable irritation. “I’m going to convene the station captains. Somebody out there must know where that poor girl is. One of them will talk.”

Edeard was looking around the magnificent lounge with its clutter of fabulous artwork and gilded furniture. “How did they get up here?” he asked in bewilderment. “And then how did they get out again, carrying Mirnatha? In the Lady’s name, there are hundreds of people in the mansion, and this is the tenth floor.”

“A valid question,” Walsfol said in a low voice. “The captain of the house guard here is called Homelt. Talk to him. The kidnappers must have had some inside help. Take a look around the girl’s room. There must be some clue, some evidence we can use to uncover the kidnapper.”

“Do you think she’s still alive, sir?”

Walsfol took another guilty look out onto the pleasant hortus. “Very few kidnapping victims are ever returned. Just enough to make the families and merchants pay out in the hope that their loved one will be the exception.”

“So she might still be alive?”

“Yes. She might. We have to carry on in the belief that Mirnatha is going to be handed over safe and well in return for the money.”

Edeard wasn’t much encouraged by his tone. They found Homelt waiting for them in the central corridor. He was in his fifties, thickset but still fit. The kidnapping had left him angry and distressed; it was taking a lot of self-control just to clamp down on his emotions. He’d spent twenty years in the constables, he told them, serving out of Bellis station. “I was a good constable,” he insisted. “Not like some of them, who were just in it for the payoff. I did my duty and earned this post.”

“So how did they get her?” Edeard asked.

For an instant it looked like Homelt might strike out. He stood quite still and took a long breath. “I don’t know. And that’s the Lady’s honest truth. It was the middle of the night. All our gates are locked and guarded. There are more guards on random patrol inside. There’s always someone on the stairs. I just don’t understand.”

“What about new guards?”

“Yesterday I thought I could trust every one of them. Today I’m not sure of anything anymore. We don’t take in just anyone. They have to be known and sponsored, and like you, we’ve got a pretty good idea who’s in with the gangs.”

“All right, so tell us what happened.”

“The kid’s nursery maid raised the alarm really early on. The first thing we did was double the gate guards; then we searched the whole mansion, every room, I promise you. Not just farsight; we physically inspected everywhere. Then that bloody ge-eagle flapped down onto the tenth-floor hortus. The Master … I’ve never seen him so broken. She was a lovely little thing, she really was. Nothing like you’d expect in a family child, none of the airs half of them have.”

“Can I see the room, please?”

“What do you think?” Dinlay asked as Homelt led them along the corridors. Dispirited staffers hung their heads as the squad walked past. Edeard couldn’t detect the faintest flash of guilt; they all shared the same numb horror. The three nursery maids were in their parlor next to the family rooms, all weeping openly. Even the ge-monkeys were subdued, caught up in the emotions saturating the mansion.

“The same as you,” Edeard said. “Somebody with a concealment ability. There’s no other way.”

“The gangs have that?” Kanseen asked in alarm.

“Not the street soldiers we normally deal with, but I found out the hard way that Ivarl has considerable psychic power.”

Mirnatha’s nursery room was the same size as the whole of Edeard’s maisonette. The walls were draped in pink tapestries depicting colorful fairies and nikasprites and birds. Dressers and chairs were lined with streamers of fluffy pink feathers. There were two big dollhouses whose elaborately dressed inhabitants were strewn everywhere. A wooden rocking horse stood in one corner. The wardrobes were full of sweet little frocks.

Edeard found it painful just standing on the pink carpet looking around. He sniffed the air. “Do you smell that? Something tangy.” The smell was strongest by the bed with its lace canopy.

“Chloroform,” Homelt said. “That’s how they kept her quiet.”

“What’s chloroform?” Edeard asked. The squad was regarding him with an expression he was starting to tire of.

“It’s a chemical,” Dinlay said. “If it’s inhaled, it puts you to sleep. Nearly every kidnapper uses it. You soak it into a cloth and hold it over your victim’s face.”

“Chemicals?” Edeard said. “They used chemicals on a six-year-old girl.”

“Yes.” Homelt was giving him a strange look.

Edeard took a final look around the nursery and pushed the glass doors open. The section of the hortus directly outside was mainly laid with grass, with some ornate yew trees in urns standing along the silver-gray balustrade. He stood with his hands pressing down on the rail and looked down. Each of the terraces in the ziggurat was laid out below him, forming a series of horticultural steps down to the ground. Now that spring had truly arrived, the plants formed a blaze of color as their flowers opened to greet the warm days. Mirnatha’s hortus faced east. Away to his left, the Great Major Canal stretched out in a perfectly straight line to the Lyot Sea in the distance. People were just starting to appear along its side, claiming their positions in readiness for the festival. He let his farsight expand along it, past Forest Pool and Mid Pool down to First Pool, which formed the base of Myco. There was the House of Blue Petals, its interior impressively restored after the fire.

Ivarl stood in front of his office’s oval window, stretching his farsight toward Edeard. Just for a second, Edeard was back in his room at the Ashwell Eggshaper Guild, searching the towers of the village gate for any sign of the guards, with the bandit chief watching him.

“I wouldn’t have believed even you would stoop to this,” Edeard informed his adversary coldly. “She’s six years old, for the Lady’s sake. Six!”

“I’m sorry about the girl,” Ivarl replied. “But it wasn’t me.”

“You’re a bad liar.”

“You and your activities have started to dismay some very important people in this city. And that stunt you pulled vanishing in the fire; that was impressive, even to me. They’re starting to work out what you are and what you’re capable of. I have a feeling myself that even you don’t know your full potential yet. Not that it matters, because that potential has already made them fearful. You won’t be allowed to reach it; they’ll make sure of that. That’s what today is about, not the girl. She’s just a means to an end, but you know that already, don’t you?”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Nor do I know who does. If you want her, you’ll have to deliver the ransom.”

“Is she still alive?”

“I would imagine so. They need to entice you out of the city by yourself, away from any possible help. If she’s dead, they lose their advantage and their ability to manipulate you. Just an observation from someone who has a lot more experience than you in such matters.”

“Who? Who has done this?”

“Oh, please, Waterwalker.”

“I hold you responsible.”

“Really? Is the truth too great a burden for you? This is your war, and you should have considered the consequences before you began it. It’s far too late now to act outraged when it goes against you. And you can’t back out now; you’re the only one who can save her.”

“Will you negotiate for me? I’ll go to them in Owestorn if they let her go.”

“You really are that stupidly noble, aren’t you? Dear Lady, youth and its virtue. This city will be doomed if you ever sit in the Mayor’s chair at Council.”

“Will you talk to them?”

“They don’t want a martyr, Waterwalker. Your death alone is not enough. It is how you die that is important.”

“She’s only six years old!”

“There is nobody left for me to talk to; my oldest and dearest friends no longer hear me. You should have chosen your opponent with more care. As you are to the constables and the shopkeepers and merchants, so I am to my people. And I’m losing the battle. It’s not just money you’ve cost me, it’s my authority, and out of the two that is going to prove deadly.”

“If she dies, I swear you will, too.”

“You don’t really think either of us will see tomorrow’s dawn, do you?” Ivarl shook his head and raised a hand in farewell before going back into his study.

Edeard snarled in frustration and slammed his hand down on the rail.

“You’re the Waterwalker, aren’t you?”

“Huh?” He turned around to see Kristabel standing underneath a pergola entwined with a thick emerald vine. His first impression was of big wild hair and stick-insect legs. Equally shaming was the accompanying thought: She’s nothing like as pretty as Macsen made out.

Kristabel was tall with a long thin face that in her current mood made her appear incredibly melancholic. A slender body was wrapped in a loose white cotton nightdress. Like her father, she’d been crying. Her hair, which was actually gold-brown like her sister’s, was threaded with lighter streaks. She’d been rubbing it or raking her hands through it, twining it into stringy strands that stuck out badly.

Edeard remembered his manners and bowed. “Yes, Mistress, that’s me.”

“Mistress!” She smiled, but it turned into a grimace as she fought back tears. “I’m mistress of nothing. Our family is a giant curse, a joke. How could the Lady allow this to happen?”

“Please don’t give up hope. I will do everything I can to ensure your sister’s return.”

“Everything you can. And what’s that?” She winced. “I’m sorry. She’s my sister. I love her so much. Why didn’t they take me? Why?”

“I don’t know.” Edeard desperately wanted to put his arms around her, to offer some comfort. She was younger than he by a year or so, he decided. And her pain, swirling out of an unshielded mind, was humbling.

“If you talk to them,” she said, “the beasts who did this, offer them me instead. I want to take her place. Please. They can do whatever they like to me. I don’t care. I just want my Mirnatha home. Tell them that. Make them understand. I’m more valuable, anyway; I’m the first daughter. I will be Mistress of this district.”

“Your task, Mistress Kristabel, is to stay here and be strong for your father.” He let conviction fill his voice. “I will bring your sister back to you.”

“Words, that’s all. Promises. I have heard the like a thousand times from the lips of Masters. They are worth nothing.”

“Let me try. I am not a Master. Do not give up hope yet. Please.”

She wrung her hands together in anguish. “Do you really think there is hope?”

“Always,” he told her gravely.

“Are you going to deliver the ransom?”

“If that is what’s needed, then yes.”

“I overheard our family guards. They say it’s a trap.”

“It is.”

“You don’t even know Mirnatha.”

“I don’t have to.”

“You really are a good man, aren’t you? Is that why the gangs hate you so much?”

“I expect so.”

She straightened up, smoothing her nightdress, then gave him a questioning glance. “Did you really turn down Ranalee?”

He bowed again. “Yes, Mistress.”

“Don’t call me that.” She smiled bravely, then darted forward.

Edeard felt her lips on his cheek. He was too surprised to pull back.

“The Lady bless you, Waterwalker.” She turned and scurried away down the hortus.

He walked back into Mirnatha’s nursery with his thoughts in complete turmoil.

“What’s the matter with you?” Dinlay asked.

“Why are they doing this?” Edeard asked, gazing around the room. He’d never actually seen so much pink in one place before.

“To screw you over,” Boyd said.

“It was a rhetorical question. They want me out in Owestorn because they think if I’m all by myself, they can kill me, right?”

“It’s what I’d do,” Macsen said, ignoring the exasperated glare Kanseen gave him. “They’ll have a small army out there. Even if we’re only ten minutes away, it’ll all be over by the time we can reach you. They’ll probably pick us off as well for good measure.”

“But that turns us into martyrs, like he said. That gives our cause strength. Possibly even enough strength to carry tomorrow’s vote.”

“Who said?” Dinlay queried.

“That’s not so good, then,” Macsen admitted. “Mirnatha won’t be coming back, either.”

“That way you get the blame,” Boyd said. “With no surviving witnesses, they’ll arrange it to seem like you tried something reckless. The city will believe you’re responsible for her death; after all, you had the ransom money. No criminal in their right mind would jeopardize that much coinage, especially after such a well-executed kidnap.”

“And the exclusion warrants end along with us,” Edeard concluded. “Clever.”

“So what do we do?” Kanseen asked.

Edeard turned to the small wooden bed, which was exquisitely crafted to resemble a swan, picturing a small sleeping child curled up daintily under the mauve sheets. “Find her.”

“Yeah,” Macsen said. “That would be good. Word of the kidnap is already spreading through the city. People are getting upset; you can sense that. Everyone is going to be looking for her; it’s a double sacrilege on this day. The gangs will have no sympathy on this. She’ll be hidden deep; that’s if she’s even still alive.”

“She’s alive,” Edeard said, taking a slow step toward the bed. “They need her until midnight. That’s how they control me.”

“Snatch Ivarl,” Dinlay said excitedly. “Fight fire with fire; they’ll never expect that. They’ll have to exchange her for him.”

Macsen gave Dinlay an astonished look. “Well, I certainly never expected to hear that from your lips. I’m impressed; it has the advantage of complete surprise. Edeard?”

“No. Anyway, Ivarl had no part in this.”

“How do you know that?” Boyd asked.

“He just told me.” Edeard stroked the bed’s canopy, still trying to imagine Mirnatha.

“He told you—” The rest of the squad were giving each other amazed glances.

“Yes. Do me a favor: Guard the doors; stop anyone from coming in here. I need to be alone for a while.”

“Okay,” Macsen said reasonably. “Do you want to tell us why?”

“I want to remember,” Edeard said.

They were good. They didn’t question him further. They had strong doubts—he could tell that—but they went out and stood beside the doors and started talking among themselves.

Edeard pressed himself to the wall behind the bed and slipped his farsight into the unyielding substance of which the mansion was fabricated. “I need to know,” he told it. “I need to see what you remember.”

Down at the very threshold of perception, attuned to the city’s slumbering thoughts, images shimmered like the recollections of a dream. People moved inside the nursery: himself and the squad. He followed the memory back. Julan was in the room, shouting in fury. Kristabel was crying as one would at a funeral. Farther back, the frantic guards and nurses. Beyond that, the nurse coming in to find no sign of Mirnatha. And then there she was in the dead of night, a delightful little girl clutching her fluffy bear as she slept, untroubled by dreams.

Edeard slowed his quest through the stream of memory and moved forward again. It was long after midnight when the figure materialized in the nearly lightless nursery. A man wrapped in a dark coat dissolved his concealment to stand above the bed. Edeard didn’t know him, but the features were vaguely familiar; if pressed, he would say the kidnapper was related to Tannarl, one of Ranalee’s army of cousins, perhaps. And his cloak was expensive, as were the boots. This was no ordinary gang lieutenant. The man took a pad of cloth from his pocket and splashed some liquid on it from a small brown bottle. The pad was pressed hard over Mirnatha’s face. She struggled briefly. Edeard clenched his fists, wanting to pound the kidnapper, to make him suffer before he died.

A deeply unconscious Mirnatha was lifted from her bed. The fluffy bear was dropped to the floor. And the man’s concealment enveloped both of them. A second later, the door opened and shut as if by its own accord.

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard exclaimed in dismay. No matter how many times he immersed himself in the memory, the mansion couldn’t see the kidnapper inside his concealment. He held the moment the kidnapper lifted the child from her bed, seeing it as plainly as if he were standing right beside them.

There must be some other way the mansion can remember him. Edeard didn’t have much confidence. He and the squad had experimented for weeks to see if concealment had a weakness, a way they could sense through it. They hadn’t found one yet. Akeem’s final gift appeared to be without a single flaw.

Now, studying the kidnapper, Edeard desperately tried to think what might betray the man’s position. The beagle had caught his scent in the House of Blue Petals, but the city didn’t smell. The air that moved as he walked back down the stairs? There was no memory of anything so slight.

He looked at Mirnatha’s face as she was lifted up, so pale, her hair dangling limply. The kidnapper’s face was drawn slightly as he struggled to accept the child’s weight.

“Weight!” Edeard shouted happily. And he was right. The floor remembered the weight, each and every footfall. Now, shifting through the vast pool of memories stored within the substance of the mansion, he concentrated on the sensation of weight alone. In his mind he could visualize the corridor outside the nursery, its floor a simple white strip, blue dents along the edge where expensive antique tables and chairs rested. A leaden maroon imprint appeared outside Mirnatha’s nursery door, and another followed; the imprints pattered their way along the corridor and into the main stairwell. The kidnapper spiraled his way down—

The squad gave Edeard a curious look as he came out of the nursery. It wasn’t right that he should be smiling.

“What in Honious’s name have you been doing in there?” Dinlay asked. “We’ve had our hands full keeping the family out. And Julan says the ransom is ready. The flag is flying over the Orchard Palace. A militia escort is saddling up to escort you clear of the city. You’re going to need a couple of ge-horses to carry so much gold.”

Edeard glanced up at the corridor’s crystal roof to see that the sun was almost directly overhead. Outside, the usual longtalk babble was subdued; Makkathran’s citizens were incensed by the kidnapping, their fear and hatred combining into a sullen resentment. This was not the happy Festival of Guidance they wanted.

He had no idea it had taken so long to filter through the mansion’s memories. It didn’t matter, nor did the ransom. “I know where she is,” he announced.

“Where?” Dinlay demanded.

“No, how?” Macsen asked shrewdly.

Edeard gave him a level stare. “The city remembered.”

“The city remembered?”

“Yes.”

Macsen gave Kanseen and Boyd a very dubious look. “Uh huh.”

“She’s underneath a fish-smoking business on Layne Street in Fiacre. The family uses two levels of cellars under the building to smoke their fish, but there’s another level beneath that. Four chambers. They’ve taken it over.”

“They?”

“Ten of them, maybe more. Even I can’t farsight that accurately from here.”

Boyd clapped his hands delightedly. “Brilliant. We’ve got her.”

“Not quite. You don’t need ten people to stop one six-year-old from escaping from an underground prison. And they know we can work a concealment.”

“They’ll kill her,” Dinlay said forlornly. “There’s too many to take them by surprise.”

“I think you’re right,” Edeard said.

“So what do we do?” Kanseen asked.

Edeard smiled. “Take them by surprise.” He longtalked Ronark back at the station and asked for some weapons to be brought over.

“You’re sure she’s still alive?” Macsen asked.

Edeard smiled. “Yeah. She’s alive.”

“Finally, some good news. The city isn’t happy, Edeard. Today was supposed to be a festival. Everyone knows now, and there’s a lot of agitators out there blaming you.”

“Charming.”

“The Pythia is going to begin the service of Guidance with a plea to release Mirnatha,” Dinlay said. “That’s at midday, in ten minutes. Do you want to tell her before she begins?”

“Lady, no. We haven’t got Mirnatha yet.”

Kanseen shook her head as she broke off trying to farsight. “Lady, I can barely sense the smoking business from in here. I can’t tell what’s underneath.”

“They’re there,” Edeard assured them.

“So what’s the plan?” Dinlay asked. “We could surround the building. Once everyone knows Mirnatha is in there, the gangs won’t be able to do anything. They’ll have to let her go.”

“Come on,” Edeard said. He led them down the corridor, retracing the kidnapper’s footsteps. “They’re not going to let her go just because people don’t like it. These men were chosen because they’ll fight to the very end. They’re the ones we’ve already broken, people like Eddis who have nothing to lose. This is not about the girl; it never was. It’s about tomorrow’s vote and how to get the outcome they need.”

Mistress Florrel stepped out of the lounge doorway just as they reached the main stairwell.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she snapped at Edeard. “Running away, I suppose. Well, good riddance to you.”

“We’re going to get her back, actually,” Dinlay said hotly.

Edeard winced.

“You’re doing what?” She was trembling with outrage.

Edeard cleared his throat and looked calmly at his most persistent foe. “I might know where she is. I’m going to do my duty and bring her home. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?”

“You’ll do no such thing. If you know where she is, you’ll inform the Mayor immediately. A regiment of the militia will bring back my poor dear Mirnatha. They know exactly how to deal with anyone who dares to attack one of my descendants.”

“With respect, Mistress Florrel, they don’t. I will bring her back unharmed. You have my word.” Edeard turned to the top of the curving stairs.

“Come back here, young man,” Mistress Florrel said with quiet insistence.

Edeard couldn’t believe it. Thanks to Dybal’s recognition gift, his mind perceived her longtalk trying to insinuate itself into his consciousness, a soothing compulsion for him to come to her just as she had suggested. She was trying to dominate him.

He raised an eyebrow disdainfully as his mental shield closed. “Naughty,” he said, and wagged a forefinger at her.

She blanched, her hand pressing theatrically against her throat.

A smiling Edeard led the way down the stairs.

“Bet we never make it out of the mansion,” Macsen said cheerfully as they reached the ninth floor.

“Outside?” Boyd said. “That’s ambitious. We’ll never make it to the bottom of the stairs.”

“Do you know who took the girl?” Kanseen asked.

“No.” Edeard gifted them the vision of the kidnapper. “Do any of you?”

“He’s a Gilmorn,” Macsen said. “Or sired by a Gilmorn at any rate. Look at that nose.”

“Maybe we should tell Julan we’ve found his daughter,” Dinlay said with a hint of anxiety. “I mean, surely he deserves to know. If we’re going to put her at risk, he must have the final say.”

“I’m not telling him what I can do,” Edeard said flatly. “I don’t know where his allegiance is.”

“Well, he’s hardly going to be on their side,” Boyd said.

“Not today, no. But let’s face it, we don’t even know who they really are, do we?”

The squad had reached the third floor when Grand Master Finitan longtalked Edeard. His telepathic voice was directed so skillfully, it was as though the Master were standing beside him on the stairs, whispering into his ear. “Edeard, whatever have you done to my least favorite aunt?”

“What did she say I’d done?”

“Well, arrogance and incompetence were the mildest complaints. I’m supposed to be longtalking you out of rescuing Mirnatha. Apparently she thinks I have ‘influence’ over you.”

“Are you going to?”

“Certainly not. Do you know where the poor girl is?”

“I think so.”

“Edeard, I hate to be unpleasantly harsh on poor little Mirnatha, but you do understand what’s at stake, don’t you?”

“Tomorrow’s vote.”

“There is another tactic I could use in Council. I’ve hesitated before now because it looked like we could win a straight challenge.”

“What tactic?”

“A plebiscite. There will be enough Masters to support that motion. Many of them are troubled. They see the progress you’ve made in Jeavons and Silvarum, and there is enormous pressure from the general population to continue your campaign. But Mirnatha’s death would give them the option to vote down the warrants. If we were left in uncertainty for the Council meeting tomorrow, then they would jump at the chance to defer the decision and be able to place blame elsewhere.”

Edeard paused on the stairs. “You mean do nothing?”

“It’s a long way to Owestorn. You might be able to ensure that news took an equally long time to come back.”

“Sir, I cannot do that. More than anyone I want the gangs out of this city. But I cannot play politics with the life of a six-year-old innocent. I know where she is, and I know what has to be done to bring her back to her family. Right now that’s all that matters.”

“Of course. You’ll have my support no matter what. May the Lady be with you this day.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They were on the last flight of stairs when Julan’s voice echoed down from above. “Stop! Stop, I forbid this. You must not do anything rash. I have the ransom. Waterwalker! Come back. The flag flies above Orchard Palace as they asked.” His longtalk was added to the plea. “You promised me. You said you would bring her back.”

Edeard looked up to see the broken Master leaning over the rail far above. “I will bring her back to you, sir. Trust me.”

“No, no. There is to be no fighting. Pay the ransom. That is the only way she will come back unharmed.”

“I give you my word I will not endanger her. If it takes the ransom to release her, I will carry it to them for you.”

“Wait. You know where she is, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“My aunt says you do. Wait, I will come with you.”

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard groaned.

“We can be there before he even gets down here,” Boyd urged.

“No, we can’t,” Macsen said through gritted teeth.

Edeard looked down. Homelt and a number of guards were standing at the foot of the stairs. “Does nobody want this girl to live?” he growled.

“We do, Edeard,” Kanseen assured him.

“Right, then.” He took the last flight of stairs at a run.

“I have my orders,” Homelt said as the squad confronted him. His hand rested on his pistol holster.

“What are they?” Edeard asked reasonably.

“Not to let you leave the mansion. It’s not just Master Julan. I could maybe ignore that on this day. But Lorin backed him up, and he does have his wits about him. I’ll say naught about Mistress Florrel.” The guard captain glanced up. Several people were on the eighth flight of stairs, making a commotion as they wound their way inexorably down.

“Fair enough,” Edeard said. “Don’t let us out.”

Homelt flashed him a hugely relieved look. “You’ll wait for the Master?”

“Not quite.” Edeard leaned forward. “She is alive. I know where she is.”

“I will come with you, Waterwalker,” Homelt said softly.

“No. This is not the help she needs. Already the news is spreading. We have to be quick. You know they’ll kill her, and you know why.”

Homelt’s anguish was visible for all to see. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take us down to your deepest cellar. The one on the northwestern corner of the mansion. And we’ll need your pistols, too. Hurry, man, or it’ll be too late.”

Homelt glanced up the stairwell. Julan was on the seventh flight of stairs. “Quickly, then.”

The cellar door was ancient wood, long since blackened so that no grain showed. Nails holding the hinges against the city’s original open arch were in need of reinserting; the city’s substance had rejected over half of their length. That looseness made the heavy door swing about unsteadily as Homelt drew the bolts back and opened it. Barrels and crates cluttered the small room, caked in decades of dust and fil-rat droppings.

“I don’t understand,” the guard captain said, peering into the gloomy space. “What’s in here?”

“Us,” Edeard told him. “Lock us in here. That way you will have obeyed your orders to the letter.”

“What about Mirnatha?”

“Trust me.”

For a moment Edeard thought he might refuse and march them all upstairs for Julan and Lorin to sort out. But after a moment of hesitation while his mind showed a huge amount of uncertainty, Homelt ushered them all into the cellar, gave them a pistol each, and shut the door.

“Far be it for my humble self to criticize,” Macsen said as the bolts were slammed back into place with some force. “But I don’t understand, either.”

“If we are to rescue Mirnatha alive, it means we won’t be able to take prisoners,” Edeard told them gravely. He brandished a pistol, examining its mechanism with his farsight. “Are you still with me?”

“We’re with you,” Kanseen said. “But will you please tell us what in all of Honious is going on. I thought we’d gotten past this whole trust thing.”

Edeard grinned broadly. “This’ll test your trust as nothing else. Step where I do, one at a time. You will feel like you’re falling, but I promise you’re not. If you can’t do this, I’ll think no less of you.” He asked a circle of floor to let him though. It changed. Edeard stepped on it and fell through the blackness into the Great Major Canal tunnel. Once he’d landed on the ledge above the water, he moved to one side and waited.

It was Boyd who came through first, yelling in shock the whole way until his feet touched the ledge. “Fuck the Lady!” he bellowed in fright-driven excitement.

Still grinning, Edeard grabbed his friend’s shoulder and dragged him aside as Kanseen came through; little whimpering sounds burped out of her throat as her arms windmilled furiously. She looked around in astonishment. “This is incredible. It’s … I had no idea this existed.”

Edeard caught her arm and just managed to pull her out of the way of Dinlay’s feet. Dinlay’s eyes were screwed up shut behind his glasses.

“Waaaahoooo,”Macsen yelled wildly as he dropped through the roof of the tunnel.

Edeard faced his friends, still unable to wipe the grin off his face. He’d rarely sensed their minds so unguarded, but surprise had left them too jittery to veil their emotions as usual. “So,” he drawled. “You must have been keeping these tunnels from me, what with you city natives knowing everything there is to know about your own home.”

“You bastard,” Macsen said happily. “What is this?”

“This is the tunnel under the Great Major Canal; every canal has one.”

“But how …?” Dinlay was blinking up at the roof of the tunnel, his farsight probing the substance to try to find where they’d come through.

“I’m the Waterwalker,” Edeard told them. “Remember?”

“Seriously,” Kanseen asked with a noticeable edge in her voice. “How did we get here?”

“I’m not sure exactly. I just ask the city, and it lets me through.”

“You. Just. Ask. The. City.”

“Yep,” he said, faintly apologetic.

“After today, you have a lot more explaining to do.”

Edeard sobered up. “Then let’s get today over with.”

Their mood followed his down to a more somber level. He started to walk along the tunnel toward Forest Pool. “The fish-smoking business is only one street back from Pink Canal.”

“So you do have a plan, then?” Macsen said.

“Yes. The way we come down reverses. The five of us will slide up into the cellars close to where Mirnatha is being held.”

“You said there’s ten of them.”

“At least. I’m worried the kidnapper is there as well. He can conceal himself, so we’ll never know for sure until we’re there. The first thing they’ll do at any sign of rescue is kill Mirnatha. It won’t matter how clever I’ve been in finding her or how good we are at sneaking up on them if she’s dead at the end of it all.”

“Why go up there at all?” Kanseen asked. “Just ask the city to let her fall down here.”

“First off, she’s shackled to the wall. We’d have to break the chains, and even I can’t do that from down here. Second, there’s no tunnel directly underneath her cellar, not even a drain. We’re going to have to come up in the one next to hers.”

“Crap,” Boyd muttered.

“We go up concealed,” Edeard said. “If I can get into the cellar where they’re keeping her, my third hand should be able to protect her from bullets. It’s going to be up to you to cover my back.”

They splashed across the shallow basin that emulated Forest Pool high above. Edeard could just farsight people gathering along the sides of the canals: children with their flower boats, eager to launch them, and adults still seething over Mirnatha.

“How many in her cellar?” Kanseen asked.

“Two that I can sense.” He still wasn’t sure about the kidnapper. The cellar had many old crates and lengths of wood as well as a couple of small benches. If anyone with a concealment was sitting on them, he couldn’t tell. Certainly the cellar floor had no current memory of anyone else standing on it. It would take a long time to filter through the day’s memories.

“How are you going to get to her, then?”

“Brute force. As soon as we’re all up there, I make a run for the door. I can smash through it and get in front of her, where I can protect her. Then I just hang on while you take the others out.”

“And if it goes wrong?”

“Then we’re all dead and Makkathran has to find someone else to campaign against the gangs.”

Kanseen gave him a disapproving grin. “You’re going to make a terrible Chief Constable. Grand Councillors are supposed to be smooth and subtle.”

“You can teach me. You’ll have a hundred years, after all.”

“No,” she said. “You move quicker than that.”

Edeard led them along the Pink Canal tunnel, then off into the drain fissure until they were standing underneath the cellar closest to where Mirnatha was being held captive.

“I can sense her,” Kanseen said excitedly. “The poor thing’s terrified.”

“Everyone ready?” Edeard asked.

When they assured him they were, he said: “I think I can do this so we all go up together. Remember, keep yourself concealed until they know I’m there, then take them out. And for the Lady’s sake, don’t call out. You’re not actually falling; it only feels like it.”

“Wait,” Boyd said. “It feels like we’re falling when we’re going up?”

“Yes. And no, I don’t know why.”

Macsen clicked the safety catch off his pistol. “Let’s just go. See you all up there.”

“All right,” Edeard said. He concealed himself and waited until the others had vanished from his sight, then told the city to take them up.

The cellar he slid up into was barely high enough for him to stand upright. It was a simple oblong box of a room with dark walls inset with narrow alcoves and a shallow vaulted ceiling of lierne ribs.

Ancient fishing nets and tishcrab cages were piled up along one wall. One doorway opened onto a spiral stair up to the smoking caverns above. The kidnappers were sitting at two wooden tables in front of it, slowly consuming a quantity of food. There was no beer or wine, just water, Edeard saw. Whoever had organized this had chosen well. These men had ruthless discipline; they’d use the pistols resting on the table without a qualm. Just standing among them made him worry for the squad.

One of them started to look around the room, frowning. “Did you hear something?”

Edeard made for the half-open door. He wiggled his way through the gap, not daring to breathe. Behind him, the kidnappers were picking their pistols off the table. Powerful longtalk voices were directing questions at the guards upstairs.

Edeard looked along the low corridor. The smell of fish and oak smoke was heavy in the air. Directly opposite him was a door to the cellar where Mirnatha was being held. It was made from tyewood planks three inches thick, with iron hinges that had been reset in the walls recently. There were heavy bolts on either side, and both sets were drawn shut. He braced himself against the wall, summoned up the full strength of his third hand, then leaped forward.

His concealment dropped as he was halfway across the corridor. The door burst apart as he smashed it with his third hand, putting up no more resistance than if it had been made of glass.

There was a shout in the cellar behind: “Hey!” as their farsight caught him. Then he was through the smashed door and folding his third hand protectively around the dazed little girl.

Three pistol shots boomed out behind him, appallingly loud in the confines of the underground chambers. His farsight caught Kanseen flickering into view behind one of the kidnappers sitting at the table. He was rising to his feet. Kanseen’s pistol was aimed at the back of his skull. She pulled the trigger, and his face exploded outward in a spray of gore. Kanseen vanished again. Dinlay was firing into the side of another kidnapper, his mind ablaze with rage and fear. He vanished. Macsen appeared on the other side of the cellar.

Edeard’s pistol was swinging around to line up on one of the two men guarding Mirnatha as he charged across the cellar. It was hardly a perfect aim, but he fired anyway, getting off four shots. More pistol shots echoed around him. Shouts and longtalk howls behind him created a bedlam of white noise. The guard he’d shot at grunted in shock and stared down at his tunic to see a huge stain of blood spreading across his chest. Two bullets punched Edeard, knocking him to one side. One bullet hit his third hand directly above Mirnatha’s head. Then he was squashed up against her, closing his arms around her shaking shoulders as she screamed. More pistol shots. One, fired by the uninjured guard, slammed into his neck. Edeard reached out with his third hand, his strength shoving through the man’s own shield. He ripped at the man’s brain. The skull cracked, and blood pulsed out of his ears as he crumpled to the ground.

Another bullet smacked into Edeard. He shifted his farsight focus to see the injured guard slumped against a wall, holding his pistol up, arm waving about. He was drawing breath in feeble gulps as his blood spilled onto the floor. Edeard’s third hand wrenched the gun from his numb fingers and rotated it a hundred eighty degrees. He pulled the trigger.

Three more shots from outside, and the shouting cut off.

“Edeard?” Macsen shouted.

“All right! In here.”

“Are you okay?”

“Wait,” he ordered, tightening his physical hold around the girl, keeping his shield as hard as rock. Mirnatha had fainted. He instinctively knew something was wrong. After the first guard had gone down, the second one had fired. Two shots had struck him, and a third had been aimed at Mirnatha. They couldn’t possibly have come from just one pistol.

The squad members were tumbling out of the cellar opposite.

“Wait,” he called again. “Don’t come in.”

“What’s happening?” Boyd demanded.

Edeard knew he should have been delighted that all his friends were alive. Instead he scanned around and around the room, looking for the slightest telltale sign. The cellar floor revealed nothing. There were no human feet standing on it. Edeard used his third hand to shatter the bench the guards had been using. Nothing. He crunched the second bench and all the chairs. “Lady!”

He lifted up a length of splintered wood and sent it scything around the room. Kanseen and Dinlay were crouched halfway down the corridor, pistols held ready, their faces registering bewilderment as their farsight followed his actions. Edeard swung the wood through three orbits of the cellar without connecting with anything. He scraped it along the wall at waist height, jabbing it viciously into every alcove as he performed a complete circuit. Again, nothing.

“You’re good,” he acknowledged, and reached out with his farsight to feel what the cellar floor and walls were feeling, hunting for that elusive pressure of human feet. His perception swept back and forth. Then, finally, the last kidnapper was revealed.

“Very clever,” Edeard said, and meant it. He turned around, still keeping Mirnatha centered within his protective telekinesis. He aimed his pistol up at the ceiling to one side of the door and fired the remaining two shots in quick succession.

The kidnapper’s concealment fizzled out as the bullets struck, revealing him clinging to the small lierne ribs like a human spider. He fell inertly to the floor, landing with a dull crack. It was the same man who’d snatched Mirnatha from her room.

Edeard walked over to him and stared down. “She is six years old, and you used her,” he exclaimed in disgust.

The man’s mouth opened. Blood spilled out. He somehow managed a small sneer. “Rot in Honious,” a weak longtalk sputtered. Then his thoughts dimmed. Edeard kept his farsight on those final flutters of emotion, searching for the slightest hint of regret. Some explanation of how a person could be so cold.

More blood bubbled out of the kidnapper’s mouth as he exhaled for the last time. Yet Edeard could still sense his thoughts, enfeebled wisps of their original strength and pattern. The body had died, but they persisted. Then they moved.

Edeard gulped in shock and took a step back as the kidnapper’s soul diffused gracefully out of his body. The spectral entity hovered over the corpse for a few moments, then ascended into the ceiling and was lost to Edeard’s farsight.

“Did you sense that?” he asked the squad in astonishment.

“Edeard?” Kanseen asked. “Is it safe?”

“Uh, yeah. That was his soul, wasn’t it?”

“His soul?” She edged cautiously across the remnants of the door. Any curiosity was instantly forgotten as she saw Mirnatha.

“Whose soul?” Macsen asked brashly as he followed Kanseen in.

Edeard couldn’t take his eyes off the ceiling where the soul had vanished. “The kidnapper’s.”

“Did you get shot?” Macsen asked in concern.

“No.”

A moan from Mirnatha succeeded in drawing Edeard’s attention back down. “Don’t let her see this,” he blurted. “Are all of you okay?”

“Oh, nowyou ask,” Boyd joshed.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Dinlay said. His constable tunic was covered in blood.

Edeard’s third hand snapped the iron shackles around Mirnatha’s wrists. Kanseen blinked at the nonchalant show of strength. “You carry her,” she said, stroking the girl’s brow, gentle with concern. Her hand and sleeve were speckled with arterial blood.

“But—”

“This is your victory,” Kanseen insisted.

Edeard nodded. “Thank you. All of you.”

Boyd’s solemn face broke into a wild smile. “By the Lady; we got her! We bloody did it.”

They were all laughing in shaky relief as Edeard scooped up the small child and carried her out of the cellar. People were crowding around the top of the stairs as he made his way out of the smoking chambers: workers and family members with worried faces and probing farsight. That worry changed to consternation as the Waterwalker himself emerged into their midst. They backed off fast.

“No good trying to hide,” Boyd said as they made their way out through the shop at the front of the building. “The local constables will be calling.” He paused. “That’s if the Culverit family guards don’t pay you a visit first.”

Edeard stepped out into the midday sun, blinking at how bright it was. It seemed as if he hadn’t been outside in the light for a week, yet it was less than an hour since Homelt had taken them to the mansion’s cellar. He got his bearings swiftly enough and started walking down Layne Street.

Mirnatha stirred as they turned into Arnold Avenue, heading for Pink Canal. She started suddenly, looking around frantically.

“It’s all right,” Edeard told her. “We’re taking you home to your family. Your father and sister are worried about you.”

She gave him a wide-eyed stare. “You’re the Waterwalker.”

“Yes, I am.”

“They took—” she cried. “I was in a dark room. I couldn’t farsee anything. They were horrible—I—I—”

“It’s over. Look. It’s a bright sunny day. We should be back at your home in time for you to see the flower boats.”

She clung to him. “What happened to the bad men?”

“You won’t see them again, I promise.”

There were a lot of people lined up along the side of the canal, standing at least six deep as they waited for the end of the ceremony in the Lady’s grand church. It was mostly excited children at the front, clutching their flower boats, with parents standing behind, pleading and warning them not to put their craft into the water until the Pythia was finished. Edeard actually smiled as he finally saw the multitude of flower boats being held ready. They were spectacularly beautiful, from endearing little paper craft with a couple of daisies clutched by toddlers to elaborate vessels with a rainbow of blooms crafted by proud older children. Their happy faces were wonderfully uplifting.

He started to make his way through the crowd. Heads swiveled in his direction. Surprise turned to shock when they saw the squad, uniforms covered in blood, tired yet cheerful, with the Waterwalker himself carrying the kidnapped girl, who smiled up at him with shy adulation. Silence fell. The crowd parted, giving him a clear path to the mooring platform at the end of the avenue.

Someone started clapping. Whispers of amazement turned to exultant longtalk and shouts of approval. More people were joining the applause.

“It’s the Waterwalker.”

“They’ve rescued the girl!”

“Mirnatha is alive.”

“Dear Lady, look at the blood.”

“It’s his whole squad.”

“They did it; they saved her.”

Three gondolas were secured to the platform, each of them garlanded with hundreds of snow-white flowers. Edeard stepped onto the first boat as the gondolier took his hat off and held it to his chest, staring at Mirnatha. “Get us to her mansion,” Edeard told him.

“But the festival …”

“The Pythia’s ceremony isn’t over yet. And I think Mirnatha deserves to go home, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir. Of course.” He picked up his oar.

By then everyone was packed right up to the edge of the canal. The applause and cheering put Edeard right back to that day in Birmingham Pool. “Let’s see how quick you are,” he told the gondolier as they pushed off.

It wasn’t far. Down to Forest Pool, then they went up the Great Major Canal to the Culverit mansion’s private mooring platform at the edge of High Pool. Mirnatha sat up on the prow, looking from side to side in utter bliss as waves of applause and cheering followed her progress home.

“Do you think they’ll even bother with the vote tomorrow?” Macsen said quietly as he waved at the enthusiastic onlookers crammed along the canal. Flower boats were being held aloft and waved in heartfelt greeting for the little girl. The whole canal rippled with dramatic colors.

“Not a lot of point,” Boyd replied.

“Can you boys just enjoy the moment,” Kanseen said. “I mean, come on; we’re getting some adulation this time, too.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Dinlay said, dabbing at the congealing blood on his uniform.

“Don’t you dare,” she told him crossly.

Mirnatha gripped Edeard’s arm. Her other hand pointed ahead to the mansion’s mooring platform. “I see Daddy,” she squealed. “And Krissy. They’re both there.” She started to wave frantically, longtalking for all she was worth.

“And Mistress Florrel isn’t,” Boyd muttered contentedly.

The gondolier steered them smoothly into the side of the platform. Julan snatched his daughter out of the craft, hugging her and weeping uncontrollably. Kristabel joined in. Mirnatha began to chatter at an incredible speed, telling them what had befallen her. One last “hurrah” broke out among the crowds, running the whole length of the Great Major Canal.

Edeard and the squad stepped onto the platform. Homelt stood in front of him and bowed his head. “Thank you,” he said. “Though the Lady knows how you pulled off that stunt. There is no way out of that cellar.”

Edeard gave him a knowing grin. Then Julan grabbed him roughly by both shoulders and pulled him close. “I thank you, Waterwalker. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart! My baby, my baby is saved.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t take you with us, sir,” Edeard said. “But my squad is a good team; we work best by ourselves.”

Julan couldn’t stop crying. He clutched Mirnatha tighter. “I understand. Thank you all. You were right. I was wrong. Please, I was crazed with worry …”

“Nobody was wrong, sir. Mirnatha is back home. That’s all that matters.”

“Yes, yes.” He lifted his daughter again. She giggled and kissed him. “Whatever you desire in this world, it is yours, and still it will never be enough to express my gratitude to you all. Say it, and I will see it is done.”

Macsen put on a wholly reasonable expression and opened his mouth. Kanseen’s third hand poked him in the ribs. He looked pained but didn’t say anything.

“We really are just doing our duty, sir,” Edeard claimed.

“What nonsense. I will start my payment by welcoming you to our family’s celebration feast tonight.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir,” Boyd said hurriedly before Edeard could say no. “We’d be honored.”

“Thank you, Waterwalker,” Mirnatha giggled. She leaned forward in her father’s embrace and gave Edeard a messy kiss.

“Yes,” Kristabel said, appearing directly in front of Edeard as her father made his way up the steps at the back of the platform. “Thank you indeed.”

He didn’t quite know what to say and settled for a modest shrug. She was still in her flimsy white cotton nightdress, though a gray-green woolen shawl was wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair wasn’t quite so wild now. The squad edged closer.

“You kept your word,” she said.

“Er, yes. Actually, it was a pretty stupid thing to—”

Her finger touched his lips. “No. It was the greatest thing you could possibly do. No wonder the gangs and Masters are so frightened of you. I have faith in you, Waterwalker.”

“Mistress.” He made a real hash of a formal bow, producing something more like a nervous twitch. Kristabel was serene, as if it were quite impressive. Her self-possession was imposing, actually.

“Ah, yes, Mistress,” she said teasingly. “Well, as future Mistress of Haxpen, I shall require the first dance with you at our family party tonight. And the last. And, I think, every one between.”

“Oh.” Edeard paled. He was a rotten dancer. “My pleasure.”

Kristabel’s smile widened to include all the squad. “Please, today my house is yours. And every day to come. The view from the upper hortus is the best in the city from which to watch the flower boats on their way to the sea. And you must bathe and freshen up. I’ll see that the staff find some clothes that fit, ready for the party.”

Edeard watched her start up the wooden stairs to the fabulous ziggurat mansion towering above them. The hem of her nightdress flapped around her knees. I must not look at her legs. I must not.

Kanseen’s head slipped sinuously over his left shoulder. “You do know, don’t you,” she said quietly, “that you can’t actually sleep with every girl in this city?”

Edeard looked at Kristabel’s legs. Slim, yes, but rather shapely, too. “I know,” he said wistfully.

Kanseen kissed his ear playfully. “But you could do a lot worse than Kristabel.”

The night was as black as only Hanko’s thick curtains of storm cloud could make it. Wind howled around the ice boulders, creating strange antagonistic harmonics, while overhead forks of lightning turned the tragic landscape into a monochrome silhouette.

Right at the edge of the Asiatic glacier a flare of tangerine light burst into existence, creating an eerie aural blaze around the top of the titanic cliff. It vanished in an instant. The ice trembled in reaction. After a while, the spray of tangerine light gushed up again, brighter this time. Larger ice fragments jumped and juddered at the vibrations hammering through the surface.

A pause, filled by the eternal yowl of the blizzard.

The light appeared once more. This time splinters of ice erupted from the top of the cliff, swirling away into the mile-high abyss. A hand wearing a thick gray gauntlet crept up and patted the surface, scrabbling for a firm purchase.

Aaron heaved himself up and rolled onto the top of the glacier. After a moment he clambered to his feet. He swept the surrounding area with his biononic field scan function, seeking traces of the ground crawler. The trail it had taken was plain enough, retracing its original route through the boulder field.

He started to run after it.

He was very very angry.

The Clippsby café on Daryad Avenue served exactly the kind of breakfast Oscar loved: industrial-strength coffee, bacon baguettes, and almond croissants with a dip pot of agal syrup. The three of them wore the Ellezelin police uniform, but the owner served them readily enough. The only other customers were also Ellezelin troopers grabbing a late breakfast between alerts.

This morning should have been so different. Everyone in the city had stayed up, accessing Justine’s heroic dash for the Void. Unisphere and gaiafield alike were enraptured by the appearance of the Second Dreamer, rumor and speculation currently the foremost indulgence of billions. Yet here in Colwyn the atmosphere of wonder had been ripped to pieces by the welcome team’s raid. There had been a lot of people in the park outside the apartment block. They’d reacted predictably enough to such a brash act, taunting the paramilitary troops on the cordon. It was touch and go whether a full riot would erupt. As a result, the city seemed even more paralyzed than yesterday. Very few citizens were going to work. They were too fearful of getting caught up in disturbances or were heading out to join the crowd in Bodant and other hot spots where they might get lucky and give some hapless foreign trooper a good kicking. Either way, not much was open in the center of town.

Oscar accepted another refill from the waitress, smiling in gratitude. The café owner might have cajoled her to serve him, but she certainly didn’t have to smile back as she was pouring. “So what now?” he asked Tomansio as the woman stomped off and the privacy shield shimmered on around their table.

“Information is the key, as always,” Tomansio replied, trying not to frown at the food piled up in front of Oscar. For himself he’d ordered a smoked gruslet and cream cheese sandwich to go with his green tea. “We know without any doubt that the Second Dreamer was in that apartment block. Which means either the welcome team has him, and Major Honilar will find that out for sure in the next six hours, or he escaped before we got there.”

“We were there fast,” Beckia said. “I don’t think I could have gotten out, not without a lot of fuss.”

“This man is smart,” Tomansio said. “Using Danal’s apartment was a superb misdirection.”

“But how could he have gotten out?” Oscar asked. “They would have seen any capsule lifting from the apartments.”

“Stealth?” Beckia suggested. She wrinkled her nose in dissatisfaction. “But if he’s got a stealth capsule, why would he actually commune with the gaiafield from Danal’s apartment? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The only practical escape route would be some kind of tunnel not on the city plans,” Tomansio said. “And the apartments are being refurbished by a whole load of different developers. That would give him plenty of scope for such an activity.”

“That presupposes he knew he’d need an escape tunnel,” Oscar said. “How would he know Ethan was going to annex the whole planet and flood the city with paramilitaries?”

“Connections in Living Dream?” Beckia said with a baffled tone. She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense, either. If you have those kinds of connections, why go on the lam like this?”

“You don’t suppose this is Inigo, do you?” Oscar suggested.

Tomansio pulled a breath through clenched teeth. “I’d hate to rule it out, but this simply isn’t Inigo’s way of doing things. He doesn’t need to sneak around. For a start, his word alone is the only thing which could stop Ethan’s insane Pilgrimage.”

“Not so insane,” Beckia muttered. “And not so easily stopped. Not anymore. The whole of the Greater Commonwealth just watched Justine’s ship go through the barrier. The Second Dreamer can get the Pilgrimage inside. That’s a phenomenal boost to Living Dream’s credibility.”

“It also secures Ethan’s leadership,” Tomansio said. “Even if Inigo did turn up now, he might not have the authority to pull it off.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time a religion outgrew its messiah,” Oscar said.

“No indeed. So … we’re left with the same problem everyone else has: finding this extremely slippery Second Dreamer.”

“I don’t believe in secret tunnels,” Oscar said. He drank some of his coffee, enjoying the bitter liquid burning its way down his throat. It had been a long time since he’d gotten some sleep. “There’s something about this which isn’t right.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“I can’t, unfortunately. I’m just not convinced that the Second Dreamer is some kind of supersmart covert operative. Living Dream had to out him in the first place. Now he’s communing with a Skylord, which is something Inigo never managed. That doesn’t come over as someone who’s thought out the consequences of his actions.”

“He managed to elude us,” Tomansio said reasonably. “That takes a lot of talent and thought.”

“Does it? No offense, but we were rushed, as was the welcome team.”

“The welcome team has spent months training for this.”

Oscar gave the bottom of his coffee mug a miserable glance. “I don’t know. I just don’t get what his long-term plan is. Everything he’s done says to me that he’s reacting to events, not controlling them. What we have is a normal bloke caught up in monstrous events and doing his best to keep afloat.”

“He could be getting help from some faction,” Beckia said.

“From what my source tells me, he hasn’t,” Oscar said. “But we can’t rule it out.”

“Okay, enough,” Tomansio said. “It’s pointless to argue about this. Once we find him, we can ask him. In the meantime, we have ourselves the mother of all shadow operations here.” He opened a secure link to Liatris. “Have you located Araminta for me yet?”

“No. Sorry, boss. She’s disconnected her u-shadow from the unisphere. Hardly surprising after the apartment raid. I’ve got monitor programs loaded into every node in the city ready for when she comes back online. Interestingly, so do a number of other people. And I’m also watching her credit account, but until she comes back out of the Stone Age, she’s invisible to me.”

“All right, what about her history? Anything there to clue us in? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Someone she’ll turn to?”

“She’s an interesting girl. Recently divorced.”

“Husband’s location?”

“On Oaktier and migrating inward.”

“Ozzie! Okay, give me something in the city, even if it’s just which salon she uses.”

“She doesn’t have a regular salon.”

“Liatris!”

“Don’t panic; I’ve got some nuggets for you. And trust me, this took some serious reference matching on her data patterns.”

“Go.”

“Her cousin, who handled the divorce, is Cressida, a very senior partner in the best law firm in town, extremely well connected locally. And incidentally, she and a whole group of friends are just about to mug Ethan. Get this! They’ve hired a passenger ship from Dunbavand Lines, one with full diplomatic status, to evacuate themselves.”

“Really?” Tomansio’s mind popped a burst of mischievous delight into the gaiafield.

“Relevant?” Oscar asked.

“The Dunbavand family is a major Far Away political force. God help Living Dream if they try to interfere with their ship’s flight schedule. Forget diplomats squabbling in the Senate: The original Dunbavand patriarch was a Starflyer War hero, which gives his descendants a certain kind of very stubborn mind-set. They really would consider dispatching a warship into Viotia orbit to enforce their right of passage. Smart lady, this Cressida.”

“One of the tickets she booked is for Araminta,” Liatris told them. “She’s also trying to find an offworld investment consortium to buy Araminta’s apartment development project.”

“Then we watch Cressida.”

“Already set up. I’ve got more scrutineers and monitors surrounding her than Living Dream has followers.”

“Excellent. Until Araminta makes contact with Cressida, we concentrate on our original objective, riding the welcome team’s data wave. Anything from Cheriton?”

“No. He’s gone down to the docks with Mareble to try to get Danal out of Major Honilar’s clutches. Once he’s done that, we’ll have us a very strong ally among the confluence nest technicians.”

It might have been the lack of sleep this morning or the really strong coffee numbing his synapses, but Oscar was slow in mulling over their discussion. Why is she hiding? The welcome team raid was scary, sure, but that wouldn’t make her do this unless she was in the apartment block. And if she was there …

“Araminta also spent a weekend with Likan,” Liatris said.

“No shit?” Tomansio said.

“I’m not sure it’s significant. Likan normally works his way through two or three women a week in addition to his harem, and Araminta seems to have been playing the field since her divorce.”

“I used to work for Nigel Sheldon,” Oscar said. “I even met him a couple of times when Wilson and I were building up the navy. He’d be horrified about this modern ideology that’s hijacked his name.”

“And the relevance is?” an exasperated Tomansio asked.

Oscar gave him an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

“Is she seeing anyone special?” Tomansio asked Liatris.

“Not that I’ve found yet. I’m running traffic analysis on her capsule, but it’s got to be slow and discreet. There are another three similar investigations that I spotted, and that’s in addition to Living Dream, which is now officially interested in her. But the local police have found her trike. It was parked at the Tala mall yesterday afternoon, her last confirmed sighting. Major Honilar has ordered the records from every city sensor to be shoved through visual recognition filters to work out where she went. That should keep them busy for the rest of the day.”

“Thanks, Liatris.”

“She has to be able to tell us something,” Beckia said. “She had to be badly frightened to vanish like this. I guess that’s what Major Honilar does to people.”

“Agreed.”

Oscar grinned at the two of them. Beckia had said it without even realizing, but then, it would take someone with his background to make that particular connection. If anyone in the Commonwealth knew all about vanishing and staying vanished, it was Oscar Monroe. Which just left motivation …

Tomansio caught the grin and frowned. “What?”

“Don’t you get it?” Oscar was delighted with himself. Well, how about that? The old relic has still got it.

“Get what?” Beckia asked.

“I spent decades living a lie, hiding my actual self from everyone I knew and loved and worked with. It’s actually a lot easier than you’d think. So I guess it takes one to know one.”

Tomansio’s square jaw dropped. “Oh, great Ozzie … you think?”

“I think it’s highly likely.”

Beckia hunched forward, giving Oscar an astonished look. “She’s the Second Dreamer?”

“Give me a better candidate.”

“Bloody hell.”

“It won’t take Honilar long to work it out.”

“And when he does, she’ll be in deep shit,” Tomansio said urgently. “No local girl will be able to stay ahead of the welcome team.”

“She’s done pretty well so far,” Oscar protested.

“You can only get so far on luck, and she’s used up her quota. We need to supply some help. Liatris, start laying a false data trail for the good major.”

“Give me ten minutes. I’ll have him running all over town.”

“She was there, wasn’t she?” Beckia said with growing admiration. “Somehow. In the apartment when we were looking.”

“Unless she spent last month digging a tunnel, yes,” Oscar said.

Tomansio gave him a certain look. “It’s still cordoned off.”

“Let’s go.”

Their borrowed capsule was parked on the pad outside. Oscar raced past the waitress, feeling only mildly guilty for not leaving a tip.

It took Araminta two cups of tea and half the packet of cookies to work up enough nerve to shove the crate to one side and open the door a fraction. There was no one in the vestibule and no sound from anywhere inside the building as far as she could tell. Outside it was different. The angry shouting was loud. There were thuds as lumps of stone and concrete landed around the paramilitary troops; glass was being smashed constantly. The distinct humming of capsules ebbed and flowed. She strapped on her tool belt, shrugged into a thick fleece jacket to cover it, and headed for the stairwell.

The cordon included a shield reinforcing the broad garage door, which buzzed as if a high-voltage current was running through it. In the dim lighting that pervaded the ramp, Araminta could just see a dull sparkle shimmering off the door’s surface. There was no way she could get out; it would take a good quantity of enhanced explosives to break through. She turned and headed to the other side of the garage, which contained the utilities support area. It was dark inside the first room. Still reluctant to use any power, she fished a flashlight out of her belt and walked between two rows of big tanks. At the far end was a smaller door into the waste-handling room. She’d been in there only a couple of times before to make sure the interface with her new units was compatible.

Bulky, primitive-looking machinery filled most of the space: big metal spheres with lots of piping snaking about between them. Araminta wiggled between a couple of water sanitizer cisterns. Behind them, the side wall was a sheer surface of reinforced enzyme-bonded concrete. Just above her head was a rectangular hole where six feed pipes went outside to connect with the main civic water supply. The gap between the top of the pipes and the edge of the concrete was about half a meter. She clambered up one of the sanitizer cisterns, wincing every time she gripped a hot pipe by mistake. That put her level with the hole. A metal grid covered the far end. Grass and soil were pressed up against it.

Gritting her teeth in determination, she dropped her thick fleece and wormed her head and shoulders into the hole. She still had to stretch to apply the power socket against the grille’s locking bolts. They were stiff from disuse and she was scared of making too much noise with the power socket, but after several minutes of cursing and blinking sweat from her eyes, the grille came loose. Then it took another five minutes of pushing and shoving before the grass and soil gave way. The tool belt had to be discarded before she could claw her way through the uncomfortably claustrophobic gap.

Araminta crawled out onto the narrow strip of grass between the apartment wall and the wooden fence. Blouse torn on snags, skin scratched and bleeding, trouser knees muddy, hair a tangled mess, she was hot, flushed, and sweaty. She glared back at the little hole. I can’t have put on that much weight!

The noise of the crowd was a lot louder. Amplified voices warned them to back off. A capsule slid over the band of sky above her. She quickly pulled her tool belt out of the hole and started using the screwdriver on the fence boards. With three of them unfastened, she could slip through the triangular opening and into an almost identical strip of ground on the other side. The neighboring building was a combination of retail and office units, half of which were unoccupied and available for a low rent. She crept along the side of the building to the waste casket bay at the back. The gates beyond opened onto a thin alley of badly cracked concrete. Someone had left an old jacket on the ledge running along the bay. She pulled it on over her torn blouse and slung the tool belt over her shoulder. Then, taking a breath, she sauntered out into the alley.

Two of Ellezelin’s armor-suited paramilitaries were standing on cordon duty outside the back gate to the apartment block. Araminta ignored them and walked down the alley. Every second she expected a challenge, but it never came. After twenty meters she made a sharp left turn down another alley, taking her out of their view. Then she just kept walking.

After forever he strode through a white jungle. Trees of translucent crystal towered above him, refracting a soft shimmer of pure sunlight, sprouting long white leaves. The undergrowth was thick, with creepers and bushes mangled into dense tangles of silver hues that were impossible to push through. White clouds scudded overhead. A cloying mist wove long swirling streamers around the shiny tree trunks, reducing visibility. White birds darted about, triangles of feathers fluttering fast. White rodents scampered around his booted feet. His boots were clotted with white mud from the steaming loam.

“I know it’s difficult,” said the voice behind the trees. “But you have to choose.”

He longed for color. Darkness, even. But all the jungle offered was faint shadows. Shapes were starting to blur together, losing cohesion. The blazing universe was absorbing him. When he lifted his hands, they were hard to see. White on white. Just looking at them was dizzying.

“You can lose yourself. Lose what is. Lose what you have done. Your life will never have existed. Sometimes I wish I could offer that to myself.”

Then the enemy started to close in. He saw them all around, little flickers of motion darting through the undergrowth. They were waiting for him. He knew it. It was an ambush.

He yelled defiance at them. His biononics unleashed a terrible burst of energy. Clumps of undergrowth disintegrated into kinetic maelstroms. He was thrown from side to side by the sharp leaf and stone fragments swatting against him. Vision was reduced, but still it was all white: in front, on both sides, above, below. White. White. White.

Through it all crept the enemy—malicious, determined, lethal. He blasted away at them, seeing them burn. Powerful white flame consumed them, sending torrents of white smoke into the sky.

Shot after shot was fired into the suffocating uniform whiteness. It began to constrict about him. No matter how violent his energy discharges, they couldn’t penetrate it.

“Help me,” he cried out to the voice. “Take me out of this. I choose. I choose! I remember I chose. I wanted not to happen.”

He no longer could tell which way was up and tumbled through the whiteness. His own screams were loud in his ears as the whiteness slipped and banged against his suit visor. Then he hit something that stopped his headlong rush with a suddenness that knocked the wind from him. There at last was another color; red sparkles of pain danced across his vision as he drew a desperate breath. He closed his eyes, squeezing the lids shut and then blinking them open.

Shards of gray-black rock lay sizzling against the ice, slowly sinking in through the puddles they were creating.

“Shit,” Aaron groaned gloomily. He forced himself onto all fours, then slowly staggered upright.

The whiteout had gotten to him, providing an insidious outlet for the demons churning around his subconscious.

What the hell is inside me? What did I try to cast away?

He shook his head, running a full status check through his biononic systems and reviewing the routines in his macrocellular clusters as well. Cooler air blew into his helmet, allowing him to take some sobering breaths. Looking around, he saw he’d left the field of ice boulders behind. The wind had dropped, leaving just a few flurries of snow skipping through the air. Steam was pushing up out of a dozen craters where his energy shots had vaporized the ice. He could see the serrated crystalline boulders lining the horizon behind him. Exovision superimposed his route, sketching it with simple lines of glowing orange. The ground crawler had been easy to follow through the field, scraping past boulders to leave crumbled shards on the ground or showing where Inigo had simply carved his way through the smaller gaps. Now that they were out on the open top of the glacier, it was hard to tell.

Aaron trotted away from the area he’d devastated, circling around it. There was no indication of the ground crawler at all. The thin dusting of ice shifted continually, completely eradicating any sign of the tracks. As he stood and watched, his own footprints were smeared away behind him almost as soon as he made them. There was no residual heat signature. It had been at least six hours since Inigo and Corrie-Lyn had driven out of the boulder field. On this frozen world, their infrared traces would have vanished within twenty minutes.

He had absolutely no way of telling which way they’d gone.

“Fuck it.” There were no options left. His inertial guidance mapped a route back to Jajaani via the Olhava camp, the only route he was sure didn’t have glacier cliffs or other obstacles. Not that he’d ever get there before the planet imploded, he reflected, but if any rescue attempt was going to happen, that would be where the starship landed. It was all he had left. Simply lying down and waiting for the end wasn’t him. Whoever me is.

He started to run again. His biononic energy currents reconfigured to scream a distress signal into the eternal storm.

The local star’s azure spectrum shone brightly on the hull of Mellanie’s Redemption as it dropped out of hyperspace five hundred kilometers above Orakum. Troblum accessed the external sensors, seeing a planet that was essentially the same as every human-settled world in the Greater Commonwealth: blue oceans swathed in puffy white cloud, brown landmasses with a fuzz of green. Its electromagnetic emissions were a lot lower than those of a Central world, reflecting the relatively small population of Advancers and Naturals. It was the kind of world that provided an ideal quiet life. Knowing what he did about Oscar Monroe, Troblum wasn’t at all surprised that the old war hero had chosen this place to settle.

He ordered the starship’s smartcore to enter the atmosphere in full stealth mode. His muscles ached from the crouch position he’d been compressed into for the last ten hours. Even now that he’d finally made some headway into cataloging and arranging the components into distinct piles, the starboard midsection hold was still badly cramped. He was beginning to worry about the assembly process, which was going to require a decent volume to work in. Not that he was anywhere close to starting that yet.

When Mellanie’s Redemption passed through the ionosphere, he went back into the cabin and took a quick spore shower. There were still sore patches on his skin where the medical module had repaired the damage he’d received at Florac’s villa.

“You should put some cream on those,” Catriona told him. The beautiful girl’s curly hair bobbed about as she tilted her head to one side, registering deep concern.

“It doesn’t matter,” he grunted back.

“It matters to us,” Trisha cooed.

Troblum pulled his shabby purple toga suit on, somehow strangely concerned about his dignity in front of the two girls. Having them see him naked was oddly disquieting. Back at the Arevalo apartment they never did, because the daily routines were all perfectly established. He was comfortable with those. But here in the starship’s cabin there was little privacy, and the projectors could throw the images just about everywhere. “Thank you,” he said, hoping it would shut them up. He didn’t want to load in program restrictions, not now that he’d constructed their personalities so perfectly. “I’m all right.” The last seam on the suit fastened, and he straightened himself without wincing.

“What are you going to ask him?” Trisha asked as the starship sank down through the clouds. Far below the fuselage the sensors already had picked out the white circle of the house set in its rambling grounds on the edge of a vast prairie of native vegetation.

“I just want five minutes of his time, that’s all. Then this will all be over.”

Troblum switched the stealth effect off when they were below five hundred meters of altitude. The starship settled on a big patch of level grass where two capsules were parked in the shade of tall red-brown trees. He walked down the airlock stairs, sniffing the faint alien pollen in the air. Two figures were hurrying down the spiral stair that was wrapped around the house’s central pillar. Although he normally hated the countryside, Troblum had to admit the raised house in this bucolic setting was fabulous.

His u-shadow reported pings being aimed at him by the men walking toward him. He responded courteously enough with his identity certificate, praying they wouldn’t send too many queries about him into the unisphere. The Accelerators would be waiting for any giveaway, though even if they confirmed his location, he should be relatively safe from Marius here.

“I’m Dushiku,” the first man said. “Can we help you?”

“Is that really your starship?” the second one asked. He was younger, definitely a Firstlifer. Everything about him leaked eagerness and an endearing naïveté. “It looks fantastic.”

“Thank you.”

“Are those wings?”

“Heat radiators.”

“Oh.”

“Jesaral, enough,” Dushiku chided.

“Sorry.”

“I’d like to speak to Oscar, please,” Troblum said.

Their attitude changed immediately. Dushiku chopped off his gaiafield emissions as his face hardened, and Jesaral allowed a wave of upset and worry to spill out of his mind.

“Oscar is not here,” Dushiku said stiffly.

“Have I said something wrong?”

“No,” Jesaral said. His handsome face frowned in misery. “It’s just that Oscar isn’t very popular around here right now. He left us in a hurry a few days ago. Apparently we don’t mean nearly as much to him as he does to us. That’s always good to know, isn’t it? Poor old Anja is still crying her eyes out.”

Dushiku’s arm went around the younger man’s shoulder, squeezing in comfort. “It’s okay; he’ll be back.”

“Who cares?” Jesaral said with sudden contempt.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Troblum asked.

“No.” Dushiku gave him a sharp look. “Do you know him?”

“We have a mutual friend. It is rather important I contact him.”

“His u-shadow is blocking our calls,” Jesaral said. “But don’t let that put you off; you might have better luck.”

“I’ll try that, thank you.”

“Really?” Dushiku said. “Why didn’t you do that originally instead of coming here?”

“I, er …” Troblum’s social program reported that Dushiku was becoming irate and curious and that he should say something soothing. It didn’t say what. “It’s complicated. Where’s he gone?”

“Ask her,” Jesaral said with an effusive glower.

“Who?”

“That Paula Myo character. She was the last of his ‘old friends’ to turn up here unannounced. I didn’t know there were so many of you.”

Troblum stood perfectly still, staring at the now-wary men. That’s a big coincidence. Very big. Why would Paula visit Oscar? And what is he doing now? Could they be working together? I didn’t see him at Florac’s villa.

“Do you know her?” Dushiku asked.

“I know of her. I have to go now.” Troblum turned and made for the airlock ramp.

“Hey!”

“Sorry to have bothered you.”

“What the hell did you want from him?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Who in Ozzie’s universe are you people?”

With the ramp under his feet, Troblum felt a lot safer. He was already ordering the smartcore to power up the drive.

“Give him back to us,” Jesaral yelled. “I want Oscar back. I want my Oscar. You bastard.”

The airlock closed. Mellanie’s Redemption lifted immediately, accelerating hard, only just keeping subsonic. Troblum knew his reaction was ridiculous; Oscar’s lovers didn’t present the remotest threat. Yet he wanted to get away from them fast. The stealth effect shrouded the fuselage in a refractive smear as he reached cloud level. Troblum checked, but there were no sensors probing the sky for him.

“Well, they were terrifying,” Trisha said contemptuously. She and Catriona were snuggled up together on the cabin’s long couch.

“Worse than the Cat.”

“You were lucky to get out of there alive.”

“Shut up,” Troblum snapped.

Both girls pouted, then turned to each other, pawing and stroking like kittens. Troblum ignored them and slumped into a big chair. He was still shocked by the revelation. Paula Myo had visited Oscar! It was the last thing he’d expected. He let out a small grunt of admiration. That was it. Of course, those two working together would be the last thing anyone would expect.

So what’s he doing for her?

The starship reached four hundred kilometers of altitude. Troblum told it to go FTL and fly ten light-years clear from Orakum.

Oscar’s unisphere code hung in his storage cluster. It was immensely tempting, but since Sholapur he simply didn’t trust the unisphere. Knowing Oscar and Paula were in contact surely gave him some kind of advantage. He just couldn’t think what.

Catriona raised her head and gave him an affectionate look. “So where are we going?”

“Nowhere,” he said, coming to a decision. “I’m going to assemble the ultradrive. After that I’ll do what I can to warn Paula and ANA. At least if it all goes wrong then, I can run.”

Paula hadn’t visited Paris for decades. The city had been reduced considerably since its heyday in the First Commonwealth era. ANA had been as ruthless here as it had everywhere on Earth, pruning away buildings it considered irrelevant. Residual national nostalgia didn’t carry much weight in its hard-nosed analysis. However, the truly historic remained: the Eiffel Tower, of course, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Place de la Concorde. Most of the original buildings along the Seine.

She teleported in from Sky Pier station above Bordeaux, materializing outside the ancient five-story building where she’d spent so many centuries working before the days of ANA and Higher culture. Beside the door, the original brass sign still gleamed against the dull stonework.

INTERSOLAR COMMONWEALTH
SERIOUS CRIMES DIRECTORATE

Paula gave it a melancholy smile and walked into the marbled entrance hall. So many memories haunted the place. Embedded in the structure, they sprang to life everywhere she looked: images and sounds stronger than the gaiafield could ever produce and far more meaningful. All those colleagues she’d worked with over the centuries, the cases they’d solved, the battles against innumerable chiefs and political appointees and lawyers. They all echoed around her, welcoming her back.

An ANAdroid was waiting for her at the elevator door, a human simulacrum with featureless gold-brown skin. It wore a simple blue and green suit uniform identical to that of all its kind. There were tens of thousands of them in the city, performing the maintenance and support functions that the antique buildings and their priceless contents needed. Stabilizer generators alone couldn’t preserve the city’s fabric, not when it was still in use by nearly eighty thousand humans.

“Welcome back, Investigator Myo,” it said as the elevator door opened. The voice was as genderless as the body.

“Thank you.” Paula put her hand on the security pad, allowing the management system to confirm her DNA. Her u-shadow then had to go through a further lengthy authorization procedure before the elevator would descend. They passed through at least two force fields on their way down to the vault. There was also an exotic energy scrambler field around the three sublevels, preventing anyone from teleporting in or opening a wormhole inside.

The elevator opened into a long hall. It reminded Paula of the ANA reception facilities, where thousands of recently downloaded bodies waited to see if their minds would adapt to the expansion and freedom inside ANA itself. Only here, instead of the glowing violet spheres, the floor supported long rows of dark sarcophagi.

“This way,” the ANAdroid said, and gestured politely.

Paula accompanied it, their footsteps echoing around the vault. “How many are stored here?” she asked.

“We currently provide suspension for eighteen hundred and forty-three people.”

She wondered how many she was responsible for entombing down there. A good percentage, I’ll guess.

“Most still have several hundred years to serve on their sentences,” the ANAdroid said. “Some exceptional cases will remain down here a great deal longer. A few are scheduled to remain for longer than the city has already existed.”

“Yes,” Paula said as they stopped beside one of the bulky suspension cases. And this is one of them. “I’d like to see her, please.”

“You may use a field scan. It will not interfere with the suspension systems; they are quite robust.”

“Open it.”

“As you wish.”

The suspension case’s malmetal lid flowed apart. Paula looked down at the body inside. The Cat lay there, her body webbed with the silver threads used to provide long-term suspension, ensuring that her cells remained intact throughout the sluggish centuries as she lay poised on the cusp between life and death. “All hail Schrödinger,” Paula muttered. Her field scan swept through the Cat, confirming the small scars and burn patches she’d acquired in the last ferocious fire-fight that had resulted in her capture. The hospital had healed her for the trial. At the time, several senior members of the Directorate, and indeed the President’s office itself, had questioned why Paula had allowed her to survive, political types to whom the rule of law was an irksome guideline to be bent or broken with impunity at every convenient time.

Paula nodded in satisfaction. This was definitely her old adversary. The original one at least. Not that originality stood for much anymore.

“How many people have visited her?”

The ANAdroid wasn’t designed for surprise, but it somehow managed to convey that impression. “Your inspection three hundred and eighty years ago is the only one, Investigator.”

“Thank you,” she told the ANAdroid. That was the time when a political group on Far Away had boasted that they’d managed to extract their idol from purgatory. They hadn’t, of course; it was just a bid to gain more influence.

The lid flowed back into place, sealing the Cat into a darkness that was due to last for another four thousand years.

“Are you satisfied now?” ANA: Governance asked as Paula emerged out into the mellow Parisian daylight. “Not entirely, no.”

“It is not possible to break into the Directorate vault.”

“I know. But there are a few other possibilities. Resurrecting her is something I’ve given a lot of thought to over the centuries. There are still plenty of fanatics out there.”

“The Knights Guardian don’t actually want her alive and walking around. It is politically convenient to have a leader who will return in the far future. That gives them plenty of leeway.”

“Now, where have I heard that before?”

“This is a strange weakness of yours, Paula.”

“We’re all entitled to one.”

“So, do you still believe it was her on Sholapur?”

“I think it’s a strong possibility that I encountered a full clone version.”

“Her DNA is probably easy to obtain. But where would they get a copy of her memory? We know she never had a secure store; she was too worried your Directorate would gain access to it.”

“Her weakness,” Paula said flatly. “However, there is one copy that I know of. I’ll check it out.”

“I’m not being critical, but there are other matters that require attention. Quite urgent attention. If the respite Justine has bought us is to have any value, I must know what the Accelerators are planning.”

“Are you trying to guilt me into chasing around after Marius and his cronies?”

“I have to use guilt?”

“If the Cat has been brought back in some form by the Accelerators, they clearly want her for some very dirty deniable work. But as I suspect they’re discovering, she’s not easy to control. Her personal agenda will always come first. I can use that to catch her. Once she’s in custody, she can be fully interrogated.”

“An interesting application of logic.”

“But logical nonetheless.”

“Assuming you’re correct about Sholapur.”

“I believe a great deal of my usefulness to you comes from my instinct, a facet of personality you have yet to acquire.”

“Correct.”

“Thank you. However, you are right about following other leads. I reviewed Troblum’s file on my way here. That presentation he made to Kazimir was very interesting.”

“Yes. I considered it to be well argued and highly plausible.”

“That’s not what I mean. It implies he has a very strong knowledge of the Dark Fortress itself.”

“The navy maintains an effective force around the Dyson Pair. It would not be possible for him to gain access to either of them.”

“It would if he was part of the navy science team. There aren’t many people, especially Highers, who have his physical profile. Please review all the navy personnel to have served at the Dyson Pair since the Starflyer War.”

There wasn’t even a moment of hesitation. “That was an excellent deduction. I have the file.”

Paula examined it. The identity was recorded as one Kent Vernon, a physicist from Salto. The exoimage showed her a face similar to Troblum’s, but with ebony skin. “He darkened his pigmentation considerably, though that face is definitely recognizable. Oh, of course, that name. He is descended from Mark Vernon.” She smiled at the memory of Mark, a man really out of his depth but a thoroughly decent human being. “And Mark was married to Liz, who was black. Very neat,” she complimented, “if lacking in imagination. I’m surprised his Accelerator controller allowed that.”

“He served a six-month tour of duty on the Navy Exploration Division science ship Poix fifty-six years ago,” ANA reported. “That particular research mission was concentrating on the inner two lattice spheres. They made some progress mapping the integral quantum function. The navy project is still ongoing; we still don’t quite understand the mechanism behind the Dark Fortress.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

“And according to his file, ‘Kent Vernon’ subsequently downloaded into you,” Paula said as she scanned the exoimage. “That ties up any loose ends as far as an inconvenient outside investigation is concerned. So let’s see what real facts we can find.” Her u-shadow called up the records from Troblum’s apartment and Daroca’s utilities. The ones for the period fifty-six years ago were already deep cached, but they were soon accessed with her authority rating. “Look at that power consumption rate,” she said.

“Nominal for ten years, implying Troblum wasn’t there. Whatever he was doing took him off Arevalo for a decade.”

“What kind of device takes a decade to build?”

“That was what Troblum wanted to tell you.”

“Why didn’t he just come straight out with it?” she said in annoyance.

“He is a genuine paranoid. Understandably, given the clandestine projects he’s been associated with, and under the supervision of Marius. A paranoia which was fully vindicated by events on Sholapur. He has probably left the Commonwealth altogether now. His starship seems quite capable of such a flight, even without ultradrive.”

“I’d certainly like to leave, so I can believe that,” Paula admitted. “Unfortunately, wishful thinking is a luxury right now. List everyone who served with Troblum and mine their histories, please; start with his captain.”

“The captain of the Poix was Donald Chatfield. A Higher, currently resident on Ganthia.”

“All right, I concede this is more pertinent than the lead I have on the Cat. I’ll go interview Chatfield.”

“As you wish.”

“And you really can’t guess what the Accelerators might have built?”

“No. According to Gore, they wish to duplicate me and fuse this replica with the Void to initiate postphysical evolution. The systems to initialize another such as myself would be complex, but they wouldn’t require any input from the Dark Fortress technology.”

“Will that fusion work?”

“Who knows?”

“Very well, I’ll call in as soon as I have something.” Paula activated her field interface function, designating her exit coordinate. Earth’s T-sphere immediately translated her back up to Sky Pier. As she crossed the reception center to the station terminus, her u-shadow told her Kazimir was calling.

“Bad news,” he said.

Paula’s heart performed a little flutter. There weren’t many people left in the galaxy she cared about, but Justine was one of them. “Justine?”

“No. I have no further information on Mother, which as far as I’m concerned is good news. But I am in contact with the Lindau.”

“I don’t know the ship.”

“It’s the navy scout I dispatched to Hanko to monitor the whole Aaron situation for you.”

“And?”

“They don’t have the best sensors in the fleet, but there’s something wrong with the planet.”

“Wrong in what way?”

“Its gravity. We believe someone has fired a Hawking m-sink into it.”

“Oh, Christ. No! Why would they do that? It’s a dead planet anyway.”

“The Restoration project base at Jajaani has stopped broadcasting. The Lindau is still picking up some of the project’s surface beacons, so it looks as if the base itself was targeted.”

“But an m-sink? That’s monstrous overkill. We know those ships are ultradrive; they’ll be equipped with weapons powerful enough to take out an undefended civilian base.”

“I don’t know the reason; I’m just reporting the results. Naturally, there’s no sign of either ultradrive ship.”

“Naturally.”

“However—”

“Ah! Yes?”

“The Lindau has also picked up a very powerful distress signal from the surface. It’s a standard biononic emission. Nobody listed as a member of the Restoration team was Higher.”

“So it’s either Aaron or Inigo himself.”

“Yes. Which leaves me with a rather painful decision. With an m-sink eating away at its core, that planet isn’t going to last much longer. The Lindau estimates a few hours more at best before the mantle starts to readjust prior to implosion, at which point nothing is going to survive. So, do they land at Jajaani and see if there are any survivors?”

“No,” she said immediately. “They have to recover whoever is sending that signal with biononics.”

“One person.”

“If the m-sink hit at Jajaani, there will be nothing to recover from there, not even bodies and certainly not any secure memory stores. Everyone working in Restoration projects knows there are risks: They all have backup memories and DNA samples on their home-world. They will be re-lifed. If there is the slightest chance that survivor is Inigo or can tell us where Inigo is, then you have to rescue them.”

“I was thinking along those lines myself, but it’s always satisfying to receive your endorsement. I’ll speak with the captain and keep you updated.”

“Kazimir.”

“Yes?”

“Warn them to take extreme precautions. If it is Aaron down on the surface, there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

“I know. I’ll emphasize the need for caution.”

Paula drew a deep breath, and gazed down through the transparent hull section of Sky Pier’s reception center. Bordeaux was spread out below the station, lush and beautiful in the lazy sunlight. She’d visited a few times when the vineyards were still producing their renowned wine and the remaining citizens stubbornly were resisting the advances the Commonwealth provided. Something about the area and its culture had made her feel comfortable and welcome, satisfying that deep human yearning for a simple life, a fundamental that had never been sequenced out of her psyche by her creators. She wondered what its long-departed people would make of today’s life with all its associated bizarre problems. Somehow she suspected they’d be less than impressed.

As she looked down on the region again, a small part of her wanted to teleport down and settle in one of the remaining homes, cut off communication, and deactivate her biononics, leaving her far away from Kazimir and Aaron and Marius and the Cat and all the rest of it. Supposedly, there were several primitive groups on Earth, living as their ancestors had two thousand years earlier. ANA always denied it, but rumors persisted.

Not this time, though, she decided. She walked into the terminus with its glowing Cherenkov light from the wormhole that led back to Orleans. From there another wormhole connected directly to Arevalo. By the time she got back to Daroca spaceport, the Alexis Denken would have been resupplied and the medical chamber replaced. The starship would be ready to fly her onward. Again.

It had been over a year since Araminta had visited the house. At the time, she’d looked at the compact drycoral building as a development project, seeing costs and returns in everything, ignoring the family that had welcomed her and given her a lovely Sunday dinner. Now, when the door opened and Tandra’s face peered out, Araminta couldn’t help herself; she burst into tears. Life hadn’t been so bad back when she was waiting tables in Nik’s. It really hadn’t. She’d been part of a larger collective family. Tandra and the other waitresses had included her in their gossip and lives, they’d hung out together between shifts, and some evenings they’d gone out in a big group, having a good time even though she’d been flat broke. They were the very same people she’d ignored and left behind once Laril’s money had come through. Tandra’s immediate unqualified concern and graciousness at the stray appearing unannounced on her doorstep made Araminta feel even more wretched.

“There, there,” Tandra crooned, and gave her a motherly hug. “It’s all right.” Martyn, her husband, was also attentive, clearing the kids’ toys from the settee in the living room. Mixal and Freddy, their five-year-old twins, were given fruit smoothies to hush them up while Araminta blew into tissues and tried to get her sobbing under control.

“I’m sorry,” she wailed. “I shouldn’t have come. I’ve got nowhere else to go.” And at the back of her mind was the worry that just by being there she was putting Tandra’s family in danger.

“You’re more than welcome, and you know that,” her old friend told her. “Did you have a fight? Have you left him?” She was giving Araminta’s roughed-up clothes a highly suspicious examination.

“No. Nothing like that. There’s a whole bunch of people in the park outside my apartment. They’re very angry. The invader soldiers are there as well. I was frightened.”

“Those bastards,” Martyn grunted.

Tandra shot him a warning look, her gaze darting pointedly to the twins, who were watching intently over the back of the chair they were sharing. “Yes, they are unpleasant people who have behaved wrongly,” she said with parental formality. “However, the law will prevail, and they will be expelled from our world.”

Martyn rolled his eyes. “Yes. They will.”

“And until they do, you can sleep on the couch,” Tandra assured her.

“Just for one night,” Araminta promised. “That’s all. I need to get myself back together.”

“No boyfriend?” Martyn asked.

“Not right now,” Araminta lied.

He didn’t say anything, but his tight little smile triggered a fresh wave of Araminta’s guilt. She didn’t dare delve into the gaiafield to learn his emotional state.

“We’re staying here at home for the rest of the afternoon,” Tandra said. “The twins are having the day off from school as a treat, aren’t you?”

“Yes!” they yelled gleefully.

Martyn was looking out the window. “How did you get here?”

“Walked.”

“From where?”

“Bodant.”

“That’s miles!”

“They won’t allow capsules to fly, and my trike pod is being fixed.”

Tandra and Martyn exchanged a look. “You sit there and rest,” Tandra said. “I’ll give those clothes a wash. Martyn, some tea.”

“Coming right up.”

“Thank you,” Araminta said meekly.

Tandra waited until he’d vanished into the galley kitchen. “Anything else you need to tell me?”

Araminta shook her head. “I really will go in the morning. I’ve already got an idea what to do. There’s someone I need to talk to. I’ll call him tomorrow.” When I’ve worked out how to.

“Okay. I’d better go get a robe for you. Martyn will have a heart attack if he sees you walking around the place in your underwear.” She patted her own legs. “He’s only used to women a size or ten bigger than a youngster like you.”

Araminta grinned. “I missed you.”

“Sure you did. Out there enjoying yourself every night, I bet you thought of me the whole time.” She gave the twins a critical look. “I swore I’d never have any kids again this life around, this one would be for me, but what the hell … A girl doesn’t stand a chance with a love god like Marty.”

Araminta started laughing and then stopped, casting a guilty look at the kitchen archway.

“That’s better,” Tandra said. “You have the world’s greatest smile, honey. That’s why the rest of us always insisted on pooling the tips on your shifts.” She ruffled the children’s hair as she went past them. They gave her an adoring look. “I just love the sleepless nights, the worry, losing my figure, no money, and lack of sex. It’s character-building.”

“I’m going to find out myself one day.”

“Sure you will. And your introduction starts today.” Her voice rose a couple of levels. “Guess what, Auntie Araminta is on dinner duty tonight. Then she’s going to give you both a bath and wash your hair.”

“Yes!” the twins yelled jubilantly.

“Still want to stay?”

“Oh, yes,” Araminta said. This house, Tandra, the twins: It felt like an oasis of decency amid the madness raging outside. After the last two days, she badly needed to remind herself what normal was. Then I might be able to work out how to get back there myself.

Seven hundred years earlier, Wilson Kime had officially handed over control of the Commonwealth Navy to Kazimir. It was the fifth time Wilson had held the role of Supreme Commander. On that occasion it was essentially a ceremonial appointment, lasting a single year before he downloaded into ANA, his final farewell to the physical.

After the formal handover for the benefit of the President, senior Senators, and unisphere reporters, the two of them had gone up to the Admiral’s office on the top floor of the thirty-story Pentagon II tower. Wilson had given Kazimir two pieces of advice as they stood looking across the agreeable parkland of the Babuyan Atoll dome.

“Don’t ever give in to political pressure,” Wilson had said. “I’ve been President myself, so I know the convenience of a military that’ll snap to and say yes to every dark instruction you issue. Resist them. Stick to the fundamentals. We have two roles as ordained by the Senate in more honorable times: protecting the human race in all its forms against alien aggressors and peaceful scientific exploration of the galaxy. That’s all. Don’t let the executive wear that down. The general population must have faith in us.”

“I can hold the line,” Kazimir assured him.

“And second, feel free to change this goddamn office. I always hated it; I never got around to redecorating, so now every crappy white molecule qualifies as tradition because this is the way it was when we gained our victory over MorningLightMountain. Every other Admiral from Rafael onward just rolled over and accepted that. I want you to give the conservation fascists a good kicking and bring in your own furniture.”

Kazimir smiled at the man’s strange passion. They shook hands. “I will,” he promised.

To date, he’d proudly held that line through some extraordinarily difficult political events. The second promise hadn’t been broken exactly. Like Wilson, he just hadn’t gotten around to changing things yet.

Today he looked out of the office to see a circular habitat that also hadn’t changed that much in the last seven centuries. Pentagon II was still the same—which was more than could be said of the original back on Earth that ANA had decided wasn’t significant enough to maintain. Several buildings had been reshaped, with High Angel adapting their growing-stone material in accordance with each new set of human requirements. It was the living parkland itself that had seen the most alteration. The average level of the tree canopy had risen by over fifty meters since the day Kazimir had assumed command. Under the protective dome of the Raiel arkship, the organic environment was perfect. Every species of tree prospered in a way it never could on a planet with variable seasons and winds and fires and earthquakes and diseases and parasites and bark-eating creatures. Here there was no real reason for them to die, so they just kept on growing, nurtured by their flawless climate. There were some monster arboreals out there: Twenty or so had even reached the same height as Pentagon II, their osmosis now assisted by High Angel, which had reduced the gravity field around them, allowing nutrients to flow unhindered all the way to the topmost branches. It was a forest that could never exist on a planet and all the more alluring because of it.

When he glanced up, Kazimir saw Icalanise, a slim tawny crescent overhead. The New Storm seemed to bulge out of the Great Northern cloud band. He’d been watching the moon-size storm growing for two centuries now, absorbing all the smaller storms it clashed with to become the largest of all the gas giant’s cyclonic swirls. Human starships flitted around the orbital cluster of stations and micro-gee factories like a metallic shoal, mostly navy craft with a few commercial freighters and passenger ships. High Angel was still the largest navy port in the Greater Commonwealth. Its residents took a lot of pride in that, supplying a disproportionate amount of officers.

Kazimir gathered his thoughts and returned to his big white desk. The office’s ancient tragwood furniture really was aesthetically awful, made worse by the clinical glowing walls and ceiling. But he did concede it was comfortable as he sank back into the cushioning.

“Convene the ExoProtectorate Council,” he told his u-shadow. The office dissolved from his natural vision, leaving him in the perceptual conference room with its white and orange furniture (not much of an improvement on his own, he reflected sadly) looking out over the tempestuous furor of the Mollavian plains.

Gore and Ilanthe appeared first, sitting next to each other. The Accelerator Faction representative had changed her appearance since the last meeting, allowing her dark hair to hang down to her waist in a single tail wrapped with red leather bands; she wore a stylish black dress with horizontal pleats. She nodded politely to Gore, who was in his golden incarnation, dressed in a perfectly tailored tuxedo.

“Any news of Justine?” Ilanthe asked.

Gore’s gaze flicked to the chair Justine had occupied the last time the Council had convened. “Nothing. I guess we’ll have to wait to see if the Second Dreamer deigns to reveal anything to us.”

Crispin Goldreich arrived. The ancient Senator gave Justine’s chair a look. “Gore. Kazimir,” he said formally. “My sympathies to both of you.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Gore said.

“I prefer to consider her successfully positioned to assist us further,” Kazimir said. “She has achieved something remarkable, after all.”

“Yes,” Crispin said sheepishly.

Creewan materialized in his chair, to the left of Kazimir. The Custodian Faction member gave the Admiral a formal bow. He hadn’t completed the motion when the Darwinist Faction representative, John Thelwell, arrived in a seat on the opposite side of the table. The two of them always seemed to appear at the same time. Kazimir wondered idly if there was some kind of alliance involved, though how such diverse factions could find any common ground was a mystery.

“Aren’t you going to activate Justine’s ANA personality?” John Thelwell asked in some surprise.

“Why?” Gore asked. “Her actual is still alive. Duplication is still our biggest anathema, isn’t it? Or have you converted to that pervert multiple philosophy?”

Thelwell threw up his hands. “Fine, if that’s how you want to play it.”

“If you’re ready,” Kazimir said. “I have the secure link to the Yenisey available.”

“All right,” Gore said. “Let’s take a look and see what the Ocisens have come up with.”

Captain Lucian was proud of his small crew. For nine days the Yenisey had flown in pursuit of the greatest fleet of warships the Ocisens had ever assembled. If intelligence summaries about the Starslayer-class ships were correct, not even MorningLightMountain had maintained this level of firepower against the Commonwealth. Unsurprisingly, then, tension on board had been building as they closed on the fleet. Yet he thought they’d coped remarkably well. This mission wasn’t anything they’d expected or trained for; however, as one they had risen to the challenge. Toi, the systems officer, actually relished the chance to confront the Ocisens.

“They’ve learned nothing in five hundred years,” she said. “They genuinely believe we’re just a bunch of decadent animals who got lucky on the technology front. We are the classic immovable object in their way, and all they do is crack what passes for a head against us. They don’t try to learn or adapt.”

“This fleet is proof they have tried to think around the problem,” argued Kylee, the first tactical officer. “They saw what they needed to overcome us, and they set out to obtain it. That’s adaptive.”

“They set out to steal it,” Toi said.

“Negotiating an allegiance is hardly stealing.”

“I don’t believe they could do that. They found the leftovers of a postphysical and bootstrapped themselves up a whole weapons level.”

“Even that’s pretty adaptive.”

The argument had been just about continuous. The four of them had completely different positions. It didn’t interfere with their tasks, although Lucian was slightly concerned about Gieovan, the second tactical officer, whose solution to the whole Ocisen problem was unpleasantly crude. He would be allying himself directly to the Accelerators at download, Lucian decided, if not the Isolationists or possibly the more radical Darwinists. For a moment, he did worry about confronting the fleet with Gieovan’s hand on the trigger of their formidable arsenal. But none of them ever allowed their personal views to affect their professionalism. He was confident they’d deliver the result Admiral Kazimir had tasked them with.

For eighteen hours they’d flown beside the alien fleet in stealth mode and monitored its warships. To Lucian’s huge relief, they were all Ocisen.

“Unless they’ve got stealth,” Kylee pointed out after the first hour.

“You can’t stealth a continuous wormhole drive,” Gieovan countered. “In any case, you can only minimalize the hyperdrive emission and damp down its distortion effect. You’re never truly stealthed to a top-level sensor array. Detection and concealment technology are in a constant race for superiority.”

“But we’re not registering anything?” Lucian asked.

“No, Captain,” Gieovan said. “We could use more active scanning, of course, but that would give us away.”

“Let’s not make this any more difficult. Continue monitoring their communications. We need to identify the command ship.”

The Ocisen fleet hierarchy was a replica of their imperial structure, with the Emperor’s nest having ultimate authority. Individual captains had very little leeway. Consequently, the communication traffic reflected that, with one ship issuing orders to everyone else. There was no cross-ship chatter.

Once they’d identified the command ship beyond any doubt, Lucian called Admiral Kazimir and received authorization for the interception.

“Knock them out of FTL,” Kazimir said, “and deliver our warning. They are to turn around or every ship will be disabled.”

“I’m not quite sure we can achieve that,” Lucian said. “The Yenisey packs a hell of a punch, but there’s over two and a half thousand ships out there, including nine hundred Starslayers. If even twenty of them combine, they can get through our shields.”

“Lucian, I could never countenance disabling the fleet in deep space, not when they’re already so far past the Empire’s boundary. They simply don’t have the ships or resources to mount a viable rescue operation. The crews would perish. That is not something I wish to have on my conscience or that of any of my officers. No, today is simply a reminder of our technological superiority. I suspect it will have to be repeated several times until they realize they cannot physically achieve their goal.”

“Understood, sir,” Lucian said with some relief.

The four of them settled on their couches in the main cabin and merged with the smartcore. It gave them a perceptual viewpoint from the front of the fuselage. The Yenisey curved away beneath them, the main hull a fat cylinder eighty meters long with a conical nose section. Midships sprouted three radial fins supporting bulbous weapons nacelles, each of which curved down to a sharp point. A uniform luminous blue representation of hyperspace flowed around them, as though they were a yacht sailing an ocean.

Lucian was fed senses that revealed flaws in the blueness, a constellation of dark splinters surrounded by a green haze of exotic energy: the Ocisen warships. He directed the Yenisey until it was holding stationary a kilometer away from the command ship.

“Are we ready?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, sir,” Kylee replied.

“Excellent. Gieovan, you have fire authority as of now. Keep scanning for any anomalous activity—just in case. Toi, I want total systems availability, high status.” He scanned the Ocisen ship. It was two hundred fifty meters long, a fat ovoid shape with thin edges like curving wings. The hull was rough, strewn with irregular lumps, as if it had somehow become encrusted with barnacles during its flight. Although the scan couldn’t perceive its color, he knew it would be a dull metallic shade dappled by furry green patches. All Ocisen starships were like that since they’d developed their semiorganic extrusion technology.

“Pull it out,” he told Kylee.

The Yenisey’s energy manipulators produced wildly fluctuating waveforms that intersected the exotic energy cascading fluidly around the Starslayer. Instabilities immediately started to skitter along its wormhole. Kylee analyzed the modifier effects the warship’s drive exerted in an attempt to regain control, then simply overwhelmed them with the raw power available to the Yenisey’s systems. The rest of the fleet shot away from them as the wormhole’s pseudofabric broke down. Within a second they had vanished into the blueness.

Spacetime reasserted itself, swamping the blueness with infinite black. Stars shone with unwavering intensity. Eight hundred meters away, the massive Ocisen warship started a laborious tumble. Its protective force fields flickered dangerously as uncontained energy pulses swept out from the ruined drive.

“Attention Ocisen ship,” Lucian broadcast. “This is the Greater Commonwealth Navy ship Yenisey. You are hereby ordered to turn your fleet around and return to—”

“Oh, shit,” Gieovan gulped.

A smooth spherical starship appeared from nowhere a kilometer ahead of the Starslayer. Its force fields were impenetrable. The Yenisey couldn’t even get an accurate quantum signature scan to determine what kind of drive it used.

“Admiral,” Lucian called urgently. “We can’t—”

The unknown ship fired.

“What the fuck was that!” Gore yelled as the secure link abruptly vanished.

Kazimir took a second to review the transdimensional (TD) link data, he was so surprised. His tactical staff had produced a number of scenarios, mostly incorporating the Ocisens utilizing weapons technology they’d procured from a more advanced species. This hadn’t been a remote consideration.

“I don’t recognize that design at all,” Ilanthe said. “Do we have any spherical ship on the navy’s intelligence registry?”

“There are some species that utilize a sphere,” Kazimir said slowly as his u-shadow supplied their most highly classified data. “But we don’t list anything that can disable a River-class starship quite that quickly.”

“Disable?” Gore snapped. “What is that, the new politically correct term for blowing it to shit?”

“All we know so far is that the Yenisey’s TD link has failed,” Kazimir began.

“Come on!”

“I’m afraid I agree with Gore,” Ilanthe said. “That was not a warning shot. The Yenisey is a warship, one of the best we’ve got, designed to operate at long distances. The last thing that fails is the communication. After all, we kept in touch with Justine until the Void swallowed her.”

“My staff will run a full analysis,” Kazimir said. “It should help define the nature of the attack.”

“The weapon, you mean,” Crispin said. “I’m with Gore on this. Admiral, you can’t start hiding behind language. All of us here today are long past that.”

“You are correct,” Kazimir said, knowing that they were right: The Yenisey was lost with all hands. It was hard; he hadn’t lost a starship in combat in six hundred years, not since the last Ocisen expansion wave. The crew would be re-lifed, of course, but still he had to endure the fact that he’d sent them out there woefully underequipped into a hostile environment. It was a classic command failure, deploying your people on the basis of bad information under political pressure. The wonder of hindsight.

“In light of this catastrophe, I propose we send our deterrent fleet to intercept the Ocisen Empire ships,” Ilanthe said. “I don’t believe we have any choice. Following the loss of the Yenisey, we are seeing a very real and credible threat to the entire Commonwealth. Who knows what that unknown ship is capable of?”

“They are still a long way off,” Kazimir said. “We can use that interval to discover what their full potential is.”

“You’re playing God with our future,” Creewan said. “I for one won’t tolerate that.”

Kazimir gave him a withering look. “I hardly think one unknown warship constitutes an end to our civilization.”

“You don’t know it’s just one,” Ilanthe said. “You don’t know if that was their best weapon or their equivalent of a bow and arrow. Kazimir, what is wrong with you? You are charged with defending our entire species. Will you please act as if you care.”

“I care very much indeed. I continue to maintain we need intelligence on this apparent Ocisen ally. I would like to propose that we send at least one more scout mission to determine what we can of the threat level. We do have time, and I am reluctant to formulate a final response without greater intelligence.”

Ilanthe glanced around the table. “I will support that on the condition that you at least mobilize the deterrent fleet. If the next interception is destroyed, then the deterrent fleet must be deployed against the Ocisens.”

“I second that,” Gore said.

The other three gave their assent.

“I will dispatch four Capital-class ships,” Kazimir said. “They should be there within five days.”

“I’m not familiar with Capital-class ships,” John Thelwell said. “Are they part of the deterrent fleet?”

“No. They are a grade below that. But I am confident they will be able to hold their own, at least until we know more about the Ocisens’ allies.”

Gore and Kazimir remained in the perceptual reality after the others left. Outside the window, the ice meteorites fell in silent splendor, triggering vast electron webs across the dark sky.

“You know, in all my time and for all my clout with ANA, I’ve never managed to get a single hint out of it concerning the deterrent fleet,” Gore said.

“I would hope not,” Kazimir told him. “It is our ultimate defense. Its nature should not be available for scrutiny and discussion, however well intentioned. It is enough that we have it.”

“Now there’s the thing, see. Down at my most basic level, I’m an old-fashioned boy, rooted in the physical and distrusting of politicians. I’d hate to think our entire survival prospects are based on a cosmic-size poker bluff.” His golden face looked straight at Kazimir. “Do we actually have a deterrence fleet, son? Is it real?”

“It is real, Grandfather. And if the Ocisen allies prove stronger than our Capital class, I will personally lead it into battle against the Empire’s fleet.”

“All right, then. Forgive an old man his quirks.”

“Of course.”

“So what do we do about your mother?”

“Wait until she contacts us.” “You think she will?”

“I think she’s probably Mayoress of Makkathran by now.” “Yeah,” Gore grunted. “You’re probably right. But how will we ever know?”

“Ask the Second Dreamer.”

Aaron was making good time. He’d already retraced the entire route back to the Olhava camp. Now it was just a simple jog across nine hundred kilometers of a dead planet’s broken, frozen radioactive ground and he’d be back at Jajaani. Which the impact would have reduced to a fractured nightmare of geology where the few survivors from the outlying camps would be mounting futile rescue attempts. Still, it was his only chance. Not that cheating death meant anything to him. This was the only possible way to salvage his mission. He was still furious at himself for being so gullible. Inigo must have been playing him from the moment he’d walked into the excavation chamber, leaking weak thoughts and meek emotions into the gaiafield and lulling him to a level of trust.

Stupid. I would never have let it happen if I was thinking straight.

But it was too late for self-recrimination. If he did get out of this, he’d have to maintain a keen watch on his own motivations and responses, make sure they hadn’t degraded further under the assault of the unknowns in his subconscious.

The land he was crossing was an ancient undulating volcanic plain scoured of vegetation and crisped over by a thick skin of ice, residue of the deluge that had swept down from the highlands to the south during the last burst of weather before the temperature plummeted. Odd splinters of rock stuck up through the dull gray crust, torn out of the bedrock by the final inundation of water. Ice particles swirled constantly, as patchy as any morning fog. Dense clouds zephyred around in the wind shadow of the outcrops, drumming hard on his suit as he moved through them.

His macrocellular clusters were still picking up the beacon line back to Jajaani. There was no communication traffic other than his own distress call. The beacons simply stood there, tiny glows of virtual light across the forlorn world. The next one was eight kilometers ahead.

Aaron’s u-shadow reported someone sweeping a communication beam across him. He shook his head in disbelief, momentarily suspicious that this was another attempt by his subconscious to subvert him. Exovision displays started to show solid data. The broadcast point was directly overhead and was using the same emergency band as his own distress call.

“This is the navy scout ship Lindau. Are you receiving us?”

Aaron stopped dead and lifted his head to the dreadful tumble of gray clouds. “Hello?”

The signal beam immediately strengthened and focused. “Ozzie be damned, who the hell are you?”

“Cyrial,” he said, picking a name at random from the Restoration staff they’d interviewed back at Jajaani.

“Well, Cyrial, this is the luckiest day of your lives. Stay put; we’re coming down to pick you up.”

“Have you found anyone else?”

“No, sorry; you’re the first.”

Aaron stood and waited as the scout ship fought its way through the clouds in a burst of violent lightning. Ingrav units strained against the wind, lowering the ship meter by meter. It was a broad cylinder thirty-eight meters long, its comprehensive sensor clusters retracted into stumpy fins around its midsection. Two thermal dissipater rings around the rear fuselage glowed a bright ruby-red, indicating how much power it was drawing on to hold steady against the fierce atmosphere. Snow hammered against its force field, kicking out a blue sparkle.

Malmetal landing struts swelled out fore and aft, and it came to rest ten meters in front of him.

“You will never believe how good you look to me,” Aaron told his rescuers.

“We got us a pretty good idea.” The airlock expanded open, and a short ramp slid out. “Sorry about this, but we’ve been told we have to take precautions. Nobody knows who attacked the Restoration project base. We have to hold you in isolation while we scan you and confirm your identity.”

“Man, you can shack up with every daughter I ever fathered for all I care. I’ll even give you their unisphere codes. Pretty things they are, too.” Aaron brought every weapons insert he had to full power, adjusted his biononic energy currents for extreme combat, and walked up the ramp.

Justine

The moment after Justine realized she wasn’t dead was the most tranquil in her entire life. As a five-year-old, she’d imagined walking into biblical heaven. This was what it was like, lacking only the angels. Once she acknowledged she was still alive, she checked around while the feeling retreated, as if wounded by her practicality. She could hear her heart beating. She was breathing. Exoimages revealed that other body functions were nominal, including the macrocellular clusters and biononics. The cabin lighting remained on. Gravity field held steady.

“Status?” she asked the Silverbirds smartcore.

“Life support operational. Secondary systems performing at optimal postdamage level. Hyperdrive inoperative.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

The smartcore didn’t respond at once, which sent a chill down her spine. If it was taking this long to diagnose the failure, the damage must be significant. She stood up and walked over to the galley alcove. The bruising on her legs and back from getting thrown around made her draw a breath.

“Quantum state of this location does not correspond to external universe parameters.”

“Wow,” Justine replied. She stared at the section of bulkhead nearest to the smartcore. Well, we knew it was different inside the Void. “Okay, show me where here is, please.”

Her exoimage wrapped her in the view gathered by the hull sensors. Justine gasped in delight as the glowing nebulae of the Void shimmered softly all around her. As she watched, she could see movement amid some of the far-flung patches of luminescence, just as they had looked when the Waterwalker had gazed up at them from Querencia. Stars glinted through the exotic ragged veils, light-years distant.

Wait … distant? In every direction?

“Where’s the Void’s boundary?”

“Unknown,” the smartcore replied.

“But we came through it less than a minute ago.”

“Yes.”

Oh, crap. “What about nearby objects? Can you sense anything?” Like the Skylord?

“No radar return inside five million kilometers. No visual acquisition of any large mass. Hysradar inoperative. No local gravity field registering.”

“Hell.” It’s dumped me in the middle of nowhere. Justine slumped down in the chair, at a loss what to do or feel. Then she remembered one of the marvels of the Void. I wonder. She smiled tentatively and looked at the glass of chilled white wine the culinary unit had just produced for her. Closing her eyes, she tried to let her mind find it. Strange shadows swept through the darkness, a lot duller than anything she’d ever perceived in the gaiafield. Justine snapped her eyes open. Farsight! “Okay, then; now we’re cooking.” She smirked at the wineglass and imagined reaching out for it, lifting it high. The surface of the pale white liquid trembled, producing a tiny ripple. Then the base of the glass tilted up a fraction. “Yes!” She laughed exultantly. Another ten minutes saw the glass shift a couple of inches.

All right, not exactly the Waterwalker’s strength, but I’ve only just gotten here. And it’s all real. Every single one of Inigo’s dreams is real. Holy shit.

“Start cataloging the constellations,” she told the smartcore. “See if you can find any which match the ones that are visible from Querencia. Also, locate the nearest star.”

Once it had begun that task, she stripped and went for a good long shower, a real one with water and gel—no modern spore rubbish. Her flight through the Gulf had lasted for what seemed like an eternity, leaving her stressed, aching, and exhausted. The tiny TD link back to her father had revealed the support and encouragement of a good proportion of her species, which had buoyed her at the time. Now the residue of that emotion had fallen on her as an awesome feeling of responsibility. She was the ambassador for an entire universe to a whole different universe. It was all getting a bit much for her poor old biological brain to cope with.

After the shower she ate a decent salmon en croute and mintbuttered Jersey potatoes washed down with some champagne. The smartcore still hadn’t recognized any nebulae by the time she’d finished her raspberry Pavlova. She was asleep less than a minute after lying down on the bed that the cabin extruded for her.

Ten hours later she woke, rested and almost immediately impatient. The smartcore still couldn’t find a recognizable nebula, not even with meticulous three-dimensional projection of the ones it could map. Whatever angle it examined them from, they simply didn’t match. Either she had emerged a very long way from Querencia, or so much time had passed inside the Void that they had simply changed beyond recognition. Neither option was good.

The nearest star was three light-years away. There was no detectable mass point between her and it.

Justine ate a light lunch and reminded herself it was never going to be easy. Perhaps the Skylords were sailing toward her in their fabulously serene fashion. They were all slower-than-light creatures, after all.

That afternoon she rubbed medicating salves on her bruises and ordered the gym to extrude for an hour workout. She went to sleep with music playing quietly in the background, feeling not a little annoyed with the Skylord and perhaps just a tinge claustrophobic. Or maybe that was agoraphobic. Would being completely alone in a universe bring a sensation of closing limitations or infinitely expanding horizons with associated loneliness?

On the second morning she had a light breakfast of eggs and toast. The (lightweight) cup containing her freshly squeezed qurange juice drifted across the cabin from the culinary unit and nestled into her open waiting (physical) hand.

“Yes!”

Bandits and Ranalee, watch out! There’s a badass new girl in town.

Two days later every nebula had been thoroughly analyzed. Justine had to face up to the simple fact that she was completely lost.

She ran a review of the ship’s capability. The direct mass converter could power her almost indefinitely. Her small level-seven replicator could produce most of the ship’s components. The few bots on board were capable of high-level maintenance. And best, or worst, of all, the medical cabinet could hold her in stasis for over a century without serious damage to her current body. It also could grow a clone and download her stored memories into it if her situation became extreme.

All in all, it was a pretty crappy way of whiling away one’s immortality.

However, the smartcore did report a few disturbing irregularities; not everything functioned perfectly at all times. She saw unexplained glitches in the log of some systems. They disappeared, though, when she ordered a real-time review, and the analysis never gave any reason why they’d occurred in the first place. The only constant was that the more sophisticated the system was, the more susceptible it seemed to be to the odd malaise.

She took another day to make her decision or, rather, steel herself for what she knew had to be done. The ships that had brought the Waterwalker’s ancestors to Querencia had fallen from the sky or crashed. The legends were never clear on that. However, they had certainly never flown again.

Something in the Void was inimical to technology—presumably the different quantum structure underpinning what passed for spacetime in here. She was uneasy at the whole mental supremacy concept that the Void sustained; having the mind as king opened up some disturbing potentials. It could well be that the collective Heart was wishing the Silverbird to fail.

She did have confidence that the Silverbird was a lot tougher at every level than the old colony ships that somehow had blundered in here all those centuries ago. Her first instruction was for the smartcore to run a comprehensive analysis of the quantum structure and from that to determine any conceivable reconfiguration that would make the FTL drive function again. Second, she used the small onboard confluence nest to amplify her own thoughts as she composed a message of greeting to the Skylords, asking them to find her, asking them to fly to her. She set it to repeat ceaselessly.

After that the ingrav started to accelerate the little starship to point seven lightspeed toward the nearest star, a velocity that would take her there in a little over four years. The force fields could cope with a dust cloud impact at that velocity.

Justine ordered the smartcore to revive her at regular intervals or in case of an emergency. She reviewed the sensor images one last time. Nothing had changed outside. With that, she stepped into the medical chamber and began the suspension process.

Inigo’s Tenth Dream

The Poilus Theater was halfway along Doulon Lane in the Cobara district. There was no sign outside; it occupied the cellars underneath a toy shop whose windows were full of brightly colored wooden dolls and puppets. Entry was through a narrow doorway in a recess formed by the angle between the toy shop and the neighboring tanner’s. Two doormen in long dark coats stood outside, stamping their feet on the pavement to keep warm in the chilly midnight air.

Edeard and Kristabel arrived as the clock in Renan Plaza chimed a quarter past the hour. When Edeard pushed his cloak’s hood back, the doorman gave a start, then smiled.

“They told us you’d be coming,” he said. “Welcome to the Poilus, Waterwalker, Mistress.”

The door was opened, revealing curving stairs leading downward. Warm air spilled up, accompanying a loud grumble of conversation and someone playing a guitar.

“He’s about to start,” the doorman added as Edeard led Kristabel down.

It grew warmer with each step. Edeard could sense the excitement growing in Kristabel’s mind. She gave him a tentative smile as they reached the theater itself. It was a broad vaulting chamber with side alcoves converted to offer drinks and light food. Iron-caged oil lamps on the walls complemented the small lighting strip at the apex of the ceiling. Edeard gave the glass bulbs a wary gaze. The far end of the cellar had a wooden stage where the guitarist was struggling against the voices of everyone crammed together on the main floor.

Kristabel took her coat off. Those nearest to her cast curious glances as they saw the pearl-encrusted blue silk gown she wore. Then Edeard shrugged out of his cloak, showing off his black and scarlet dress jacket with silver brocade and snow-white ruff shirt. There were a great many surprised grins.

“Hey ho, the dandies have arrived,” Macsen called out loudly.

Kristabel grinned and hugged Macsen. Then Dinlay appeared, shoving a drink at Edeard, and Boyd laughed delightedly in greeting. Saria embraced Kristabel. A merrily drunk Kanseen gave Edeard a big kiss.

“What kept you?” Dinlay demanded. He had his arm around the shoulders of a strapping girl whose flaming red hair reached down to her waist. Edeard struggled to make no comment; Dinlay always seemed to wind up with girls at least as big as himself.

“It was a good party,” Edeard said loyally.

Kristabel laughed and stroked his cheek. “My poor boy,” she said. “He was so brave,” she explained to the squad. “All of Daddy’s friends simply had to talk to him during dinner, and they’re all as old and dull as him; then all their daughters wanted a dance afterward.”

Edeard gave Boyd a helpless shrug. “This whole price of fame thing.”

“Never mind,” Macsen said eagerly. “It will only be temporary. In ten years you’ll be a fading memory, just some trivia question in a parlor game on New Year’s Eve.”

Edeard kissed Kristabel. “You see, my loyalty training is finally working.” She laughed and hugged him back. It was so easy, so natural. They both smiled happily at each other, perfectly at ease. Edeard knew it wouldn’t be long now, and the anticipation was a soothing warmth right in his heart. She was nothing like the other girls he’d taken to bed or even the cozy comfort of Jessile. Kristabel and he were going to be as perfect as two people could be together.

“Here he is,” Dinlay yelled.

Up onstage Dybal ambled into view. A huge cheer went up from the audience as he waved. The rest of the band made their way onstage: three drummers, a saxophonist, a pianist, and two more guitarists. It might have been the haze of the jamolar oil or the quantity of very good wine Edeard had consumed back at the party, but Dybal and his band seemed to glow in bright colors. Their clothes were truly outrageous, and for that alone Edeard joined in the rapturous greeting.

The songs were fast and loud, the complete opposite of the tunes the musicians had played during the party. Lyrics spoke of love and loss, treachery and corruption, derided and mocked the Council. They were angry. They were sad. Music pounded Dybal’s words home. Edeard and Kristabel danced wildly. They drank. He even took a drag on a couple of kestric pipes that were passed around. So did Kristabel, her mind radiating impious delight as she inhaled.

Dybal played for over an hour, long enough for Edeard to be drenched in sweat. The theater walls were running with condensation by the time he finished his second encore.

“That was fabulous,” Kristabel said as she hugged Edeard. “I can’t believe the Council is still in power. Viva the revolution!” She punched her fist in the air.

He hugged her back and touched his nose to hers. “That’s your own father you’re talking about.”

“Who cares!” She twirled around. “Thank you for bringing me.”

“I’ve been wanting to hear Dybal for a long time.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Edeard shrugged. Around them, people were heading for the steps back up to the street, all of them tired and happy.

“I didn’t want to come alone,” he said.

The smile she answered with made the risk of such honesty worthwhile.

The squad went their various ways as they came back out onto Doulon Lane, calling good night to one another. There were very few people on the street at that late hour. Edeard buttoned his cloak again before putting his arm around Kristabel. She leaned in against him, her mind showing him complete contentment. They walked back toward the pool at the end of Garden Canal with the nebulae painting pale colors against the night sky. It might have been the residue of kestric, but they seemed to have a lustrous sparkle as Edeard gazed up at them. Honious particularly was beset by internal shimmering.

“You often do that,” Kristabel said.

“What?”

“Look at the nebulae.”

“Do I? I suppose I just wonder how much we really do know about them.”

“I can name most of them.”

“Ah, yes, but that’s not knowing, is it? What are they really? Do you think our souls are destined to drift among them?”

“The Lady says that’s what befalls us if we don’t lead a life that holds us true to ourselves.”

“Yeah,” he said grumpily as he thought back to those interminable Sunday mornings as a small boy at the back of Ashwell’s church, with Mother Lorellan reading from the Lady’s scriptures in a drab monotone. And who decides what true is?

Kristabel just pressed harder against him, humoring the strange doubts flecking his thoughts.

Her private gondola was moored at a platform on the edge of the pool, with a lamp swinging from the frame of the little canvas cabin. There wasn’t much room inside. Edeard and Kristabel had to snuggle up close on the bench. She pulled a fur rug up around their legs. As the gondolier set off up Garden Canal, they began to kiss. He ran his hand through her abundant hair, tasting her lips, then her cheeks and neck, finally returning to her mouth. She moaned excitedly, her mind enraptured. Even their thoughts seemed to merge.

Eventually she pulled back, giving him the most tender smile he’d ever seen on her delicate face.

“What?” he asked. There was no way he could possibly have misunderstood her feelings. Few of the girls he’d known had been as open as Kristabel.

“I’m ready for this,” she murmured sensually. “And I know you are.”

“Oh, yes,” he assured her.

“It’s just—”

“Your father?”

“No, Daddy actually approves of you. He’s not quite as traditional as he comes across.”

Edeard couldn’t help the grin of disbelief creeping across his face. “I know.”

“I think we both know this isn’t going to be some casual affair.”

“Yes.” Something in what she said echoed in his subconscious. He dismissed the thought.

“So I want this to be right.”

“It will be.”

She kissed him lightly. “It’s very late. We’ve both been partying. You have patrol duty at seven tomorrow. None of that is good.”

“Okay.”

“I know you had a bad experience with Ranalee, but the family has a beach lodge outside the city. It’s really lovely. I would like us to go there, just you and me. For a week.”

He was incredibly sensitive to the feel of her pressed up against him, and her whispered yearnings and the candid desire in her mind affected him with the same potency as any of the illicit fires Ranalee’s dominance had kindled.

“Would you like that?”

“Yes.” His throat was so tight, he could barely get the word out. “Yes, I would like that.”

“I don’t want to pressure you. I will go back to your maisonette with you now if you’d prefer.”

“No. The beach lodge sounds wonderful.”

“Really?” Her cheek rubbed up against him. “Thank you. Thank you for giving us this chance.”

The gondola turned along Flight Canal and headed down toward High Pool. They didn’t kiss any more. Their faces rested against each other while they smiled. Edeard looked straight into her eyes and mind, relishing everything he saw: the eagerness, the physical yearning, the excitement that twinned anticipation. The adoration. It was all mirrored, he knew, exactly what she could sense in his own mind. The openness was … sweet.

Homelt was standing on the ziggurat mansion’s landing platform. He grinned as Kristabel climbed out of the gondolier.

“Good morning, Mistress. Did you have a nice time?”

She flashed him a warm smile. “Yes, thank you, a very nice time.”

Homelt looked down at Edeard, who tried to keep a straight face and failed dismally. He nodded briskly.

“Is my father still up?”

“No, Mistress. He went to bed several hours ago. There’s only myself and the night guards awake now.”

“I see. Well, good night, Waterwalker.”

“Good night, Mistress.”

Homelt gave them a surprised look, then escorted Kristabel up the wooden stairs into the mansion.

“Can you be ready for next Tuesday?” Kristabel’s longtalk asked.

Edeard didn’t even think of the mountain of work and schedules he’d have to reorganize. And a week from Tuesday was the graduation ceremony, which he could not miss. It would be tight. “I will be. Whatever it takes.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

He caught one last glimpse of her atop the stairs, smiling in expectation. It was, he reflected, an enchanting smile. Macsen had been right about her beauty, after all.

The gondolier took him to the other side of Flight Canal, where he could walk home through Silvarum into Jeavons. There were two exceptionally bored and sleepy constables standing guard on the bridge over Arrival Canal. Both were startled to see Edeard at that time in the morning, but he stopped for a moment to speak with them. It was the correct thing to do politically, as Finitan had drilled into him: Create goodwill and support at every opportunity, for you never know when you might need it.

Politics, as he had learned, could never be ignored in Makkathran, not at any level. It had been Finitan’s clever play that had exploited the kidnapping to get the result they needed in the Grand Council after the Festival of Guidance. It was also politics that had prevented the gondoliers from going on strike as they’d threatened, for that would have made it look as if they were siding with the kidnappers. For now, the city remained on his side. He knew that it wouldn’t last, that there would be other attempts to subvert the Council, to turn his supporters away from the exclusion warrants. In all probability, those efforts would never end. He had to remain vigilant, which he was trying his hardest to do.

Kristabel, though, seemed to be filling his mind these days. He thought of her when he should be concentrating on duty schedules or meetings with District Masters or sniffing out the gang masters. He thought of her when he got up. He thought of her when he was out on patrol, remembering her laugh, the way she looked, her scent, the trivial things of which they spoke. And when he finally did get a few free hours at the end of each day and could be with her, she simply filled his whole world.

Now this. They were finally to become lovers in the truest sense.

When he eventually got back to his maisonette, there were only a few hours until dawn, when he was supposed to lead a patrol through Jeavons and around Tycho. His mind was awhirl with how to rearrange duty periods so he could spend the next week away—that and how she’d felt pressed against him in the gondola. Her smile. The promise. It would be difficult for the squad to cover for him, though he no longer cared. Makkathran could fall into oblivion now. He and Kristabel were to be lovers. It was hard to believe; he’d never been so happy before.

In one respect, Kristabel and Ranalee were very similar: Their notion of “just us” was one that could only apply to a daughter from a Grand Family. Admittedly, Kristabel brought only three of her personal staff, not five, but the wagon that accompanied their carriage was heavily laden with luggage cases and hampers of food. And of course there was the team of coachmen, plus the wagon drivers, all with their own apprentices. In addition there were the ge-wolf handlers that Homelt had assigned to them for the road.

He wouldn’t have minded that so much if they’d simply been able to go. But first there were all her (rather too giggly, he felt) girlfriends they simply had to say goodbye to as they left the Culverit mansion. Poor Mirnatha was distraught that her sister and the Waterwalker were leaving her behind, acting as if the separation were forever, so she had to be promised presents and treats on their return. He also had to shake hands with her father and swear no harm would befall his precious daughter, and that was while Lorin was watching impassively from a balcony above.

Edeard had arrived at the mansion with his one bag shortly after breakfast. The coach didn’t pull out of the family stables in Tycho until just before midday. Kristabel sat straight-backed on the cushioned bench opposite him, her hair woven into a broad beret with little corkscrew curls dangling down. Simply sitting quietly, she carried herself with the kind of imperious nature that Ranalee forever sought yet would never be able to achieve.

“You were impatient,” she said loftily. “I had to rush my leave-taking; it was almost rude. Was there some reason you wished to hurry?”

He just managed to maintain his composure. “No, Mistress.”

“Really? I will enjoy testing the limit of your anticipation this evening.”

“Even your cruelty is a joy, Mistress.”

Kristabel managed to keep a straight face for another few seconds, then she was laughing wildly. “Oh, Lady, I thought they were never going to let us get away!” She launched herself at him, and they spent the rest of the journey cuddled together.

The south road out of the city was as well maintained as all the roads across the Iguru. Twice they passed militia patrols, which recently had been increased to compensate for the growing numbers of highwaymen waylaying travelers. Edeard suspected such incidents were due to the way his exclusion campaign was squeezing the gangs out of city districts. A number of those named in the warrants had simply left. Apart from that, their trip along the coastal route was without incident. The tall palms lining the road had survived the winter and were shedding their scarlet fronds to make way for the new season’s emerald growth. Fields on either side were being readied for the summer crops, with large teams of ge-monkeys preparing the vines and citrus groves and fruit gardens while ge-horses pulled heavy plows. This time of year always cheered Edeard up, reminding him of more carefree times during his childhood. Everyone’s mood improved with the onset of spring.

He hadn’t known what to expect of the beach lodge; his best guess was a pavilion like the one Ranalee’s family owned. He started to suspect something different only when Kristabel opened the carriage windows and watched him with mischievous intent. They were no longer riding through fields. The land outside had transformed to gritty hummocks smothered by long reedy grass with shriveled wind-bowed trees huddled in the lees. Ahead of them the track wound down into a modest cove, with promontories of dark rock. A small stream gurgled alongside. Then he saw it, standing back from the white beach, just behind the crumbling sandy bluff.

“Oh, my Lady,” he gasped in delight. Kristabel squeezed his hand in shared glee. “I always loved this place.” She sighed wistfully.

The lodge was a half-living sculpture. Five ancient muroaks had been planted in a circle, then pruned and guided for decades. Their first boughs were three yards above the ground, woven into a platform and reinforced with sturdy planks to form a level floor. But it was the wall that fascinated Edeard. Above the floor, the trunks had been allowed to fork and then fork again. Master gardeners had trained them into tall arches before bending them back toward the apex, where they’d been twisted together into a final whorl of bark and branches that opened out to shade the lodge from the summer sun. It would need that shade, he realized, for the wall arches were filled with glass. A slender open deck encircled the entire lodge.

The coach stopped outside, and Kristabel led Edeard up the curving wooden stairs to the door where the lodge keeper was waiting for them. The old man bowed deeply, welcoming Kristabel as if she were his own family.

Edeard examined the wall’s thick archway pillars, marveling at the buds of green leaves that were starting to open amid the wrinkles of gray bark, seeing how the stubby twigs were meticulously pruned every autumn. In another month, the entire lodge would appear to be lead-framed panes of glass supported by lines of verdant leaves.

“It’s astonishing,” he said. “I didn’t know people could create something like this.” He couldn’t imagine anything like it in Ashwell or any of the towns he’d passed through on his way to the city.

“Two hundred and eighty years in the growing,” the lodge keeper said proudly. “It was my great-grandfather who originally planted the trees. Our family has tended them for the Culverits ever since, and my son will take over when I pass on.”

“Two hundred and eighty years to grow,” Edeard repeated, impressed.

“Makkathran makes us lazy,” Kristabel said. “It provides us with so much. We can get things right by ourselves.”

Inside, the lodge was divided into seven rooms by ancient wooden paneling. The central room, under the knot of trunks, was the bedroom, with a big circular bed in the middle. An ingenious array of pulleys and twine allowed slatted blinds to be opened or closed against the overhead windows. A thick slab of stone in the living room acted as a hearth for a tall brazier. A fire was already crackling away, its smoke slithering up through an iron chimney cone.

Edeard and Kristabel sat on the long settee, staring out at the sea a couple of hundred yards away. He wished it was slightly later in the year, when it would be warm enough to swim. A big twin-masted trading ship sailed slowly past, en route to the ports in the south. The servants and ge-monkeys bustled around, setting out their luggage while the lodge keeper lit the iron stove in the kitchen to boil some tea.

Kristabel’s fingers laced through Edeard’s. “Don’t worry,” she said drily. “They’ll all stay in the cottages behind the bluff, out of farsight range. I wouldn’t want to shock them tonight; some have been with the family for decades.”

Edeard grinned, remembering Ranalee saying more or less the same thing. He turned back to the sea.

By coincidence, the Culverit family’s beach lodge was only a couple of miles south of the cove where Ivarl’s body had washed up. Edeard remembered that morning quite clearly. A week after the

Festival of Guidance he’d received a message from the coastal warden asking him to identify the body. He had borrowed a terrestrial horse from the militia stables and ridden out through the south gate.

The sea and the rocks had not been kind to Ivarl. Edeard had never seen what water did to a corpse before. The bloating surprised him, as did the sallow color of the skin. Even so, there was no doubt it was the gang lord.

“Never seen anything like this,” the old coastal warden said.

Edeard’s farsight probed at the cords that still bound Ivarl’s wrists and ankles. There was something appallingly elegant about the perfectly wound cords, the complicated knots—so inconsistent with the ugliness of a death, especially this one. He’d counted nine deep puncture wounds before giving up. Ivarl had not been allowed to die quickly or peacefully.

His adversary’s murder bothered Edeard a great deal more than the kidnapping did, if for no other reason than it demonstrated that there was some kind of organization stirring in the city of which he had no clear understanding. Despite investigating Ivarl’s closest lieutenants, they’d never managed to determine who’d killed him. Then again, Edeard found himself wondering about Ivarl’s soul. Had it fled the body in the same fashion he’d sensed down in the cellar when Mirnatha’s kidnapper had died? That souls were real disturbed him more than he cared to admit.

That night Kristabel banished all his doubts and concerns.

The family servants might have been outside farsight range, but he was convinced they’d be woken by his cries of joy.

In the morning they dressed in plain white robes and ate breakfast on the little deck that ringed the main lodge. A warm breeze swirled around them, tossing Kristabel’s wild hair. After she’d finished her bluegrape segments, she called her maid over to brush out the tangles and arrange it for the day. Edeard settled back as the girl began her task and told the ge-chimps to clear his plates. Out to sea, three sets of sails were passing between the rock wings of the cove. He envied the sailors their freedom. “I’d like to do that one day,” he declared.

“When the gangs are no more and the bandits have vanished back into the wilderness, we should take a ship and sail around the world.”

“Nobody has ever found a way through the southern ice floes.”

“Then we go north.”

“Through the atolls of the Auguste Sea? Lady, Edeard, they have reefs that stretch for hundreds of miles. The whole sea is a treacherous maze that can rip the hull off any unfortunate ship that drifts too close to the coral.”

“Then we use a strong third hand to break the reef or farsight and ge-eagles to find a way out of the maze. That’s my point: No one has ever really tried. We don’t know what else is on this world other than bandits. What if other ships fell here on a different continent or island? What if they kept the science that built those ships?”

“Then they would have probably found us by now,” she said as her maid finished applying jeweled clips.

“Oh. Yes. But still, what fun it would be to explore properly.”

“I suppose it would be. I never really have time to think such things.”

“I can’t believe no one in Makkathran has attempted to do this. The families have enough money to build the most wonderful ships, and there are so many bored sons. Don’t any of them look beyond the horizon?”

“Many do, but all they’re looking for are girls with suitable dowries. Nobody thinks in those terms, Edeard, not anymore. The last person to attempt such a voyage was Captain Allard, and that was over a thousand years ago. He was the Havane family’s second son and built exactly the kind of ship you talk about, the Majestic Marie. Makkathran had never seen its like before, nor have we since. It was a real galleon, over two hundred feet long, and had three masts. Eighty men set sail on her, all of them experienced sailors, with the best equipment Makkathran’s guilds could produce. They never came back. Allard’s wife went on to live past her two hundredth birthday; every day she went down to the docks to ask the newly arrived ships if they’d seen her husband. The ‘watching widow,’ they called her. They say her soul still haunts the docks even today.”

Edeard gave the sea another longing look. “I never got to know history like that when I grew up, not real history. It was all about who built which farmhouse or guild center, and when their families arrived in the province. Lady, it was so dull.”

“You poor thing.” She reached out and gripped his arm. “So where did you learn to sail?”

Edeard flushed slightly. “I haven’t. Not yet.”

Kristabel burst out laughing. “You can’t sail, and you want to voyage around the world? Oh, Edeard, this is why I love you so. You have such wild visions. You make it sound like anything can happen.”

He grinned sheepishly. “I have to deal with the gangs first. Then, when I have time, I’ll learn to sail.”

“Well, be careful of pirates.” She eyed the ships offshore suspiciously. “Our captains are reporting more sightings. They don’t pick on the larger ships yet, but small vessels have started to disappear.”

“At least no one can blame me for that.”

“Why should they?”

“The highwaymen are mostly gang members driven out of the city by the exclusion warrants. They’re very difficult to catch.”

“Let the town sheriffs and the militia deal with them. It’s about time other people started to help deal with criminals instead of looking to Makkathran to do everything for them. That’s one attitude I’d like to see changed.”

Edeard gave her a proud smile. “The Grand Council won’t know what hit it when you arrive.”

“And that’s another thing. Why should the families practice primogeniture? In this day and age! Do they think I’m not good enough?”

“They’re fools,” Edeard said promptly.

“You have your ambitions,” she said primly. “I have mine.”

“Time will see us triumph.”

“Lady, you’re even beginning to sound like Finitan. We need to get your mind off such things.” She stood up and held a hand out. “Come on.”

Edeard let her lead him down onto the sand. The grains surged around his bare feet with a pleasant shifting sensation.

“I won’t ask you to do that, by the way,” Kristabel said. “I imagine you get tired of people pestering you for it.”

“What?”

She gestured at the low waves rolling ashore. “Walk over it.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

They carried on toward the sea. Kristabel undid the belt holding her robe, allowing it to flow free from her shoulders. The sight of her trim body in the daylight was very arousing. She kept on walking.

“Uh, isn’t it a bit cold to go swimming?” he asked lightly.

She gave him a curious frown. “Not here. The water around the city is always several degrees warmer than the rest of the sea in these parts. It’s got something to do with heat seeping through the bedrock, which makes the water nutrient-rich. That’s why Makkathran and the coastal villages have so many shellfish boats.”

“And of course everybody knows that,” he said with rising exasperation.

“Well, yes.” She put her hands on her hips. It might have been intended as a taunt, but all she achieved was an extremely erotic pose as her robe fluttered behind her. “Why?”

“One day I would like to dump you and my squadmates into the middle of Rulan province. Then it would be my turn to laugh while you all ate poison berries and fell into drakken pits and failed to light a campfire or got your fingers stuck picking gache fungi. Just once. So you all know what it’s like.”

Kristabel straightened her neck and sucked in her cheeks. “You came to live in the city. I have no intention of ever going to live in the countryside.”

“Oh, really?” He took a step toward her.

“Dreadful place. No culture and very smelly.” She held fast for a moment as Edeard stared in outrage, then turned and ran giggling into the water. Edeard flung his robe onto the sands and charged after her.

Kristabel was right; the water was slightly warmer than he’d been dreading. That didn’t exactly make it warm enough to enjoy a good leisurely swim, but he managed to catch up and grab her. They both tumbled over into the waves, laughing exuberantly.

“This would be a good time to teach me how to make a fire outdoors,” Kristabel said through chattering teeth.

Edeard had given her his robe after they had come out of the sea, but it hadn’t warmed her much. His own skin was covered in goose bumps as they walked up the sands toward the bluff.

“Very well,” he said with dignity. He reached out with his third hand and gathered broken branches and chunks of driftwood. Kristabel clapped merrily as they whirled through the air and began to pile up in a hollow at the base of the bluff. “Now, see, we need some dry leaves at the center,” he explained meticulously as his third hand bunched some fragile brown gorelow leaves together. “And these trinpine spines are really useful, too; they catch easily.” He squatted down beside the wood to make sure the tinder was positioned just right. Kristabel knelt down beside him, her mind shielded but wearing an expression of deadly earnest. “So now I just need some flints.” Two suitable stones leaped up out of the sand and flew toward him. “You have to spark them fast and direct the sparks with your third hand so they always hit the same spot. At the same time you stir a gentle flow of air where they hit. But not too much, because that will blow it out. Learning to use just the right amount is tricky.” He twisted around to take hold of the stones with his flesh and blood hands. There was a peculiar silver glimmer of light behind him. “Huh?” He turned back to see the tinder burning brightly.

“Oooh,” Kristabel cooed. “That was so impressive, Waterwalker. A girl knows she’ll always be provided for when you go hunting and gathering in the wild.”

“How did you …?”

There was a diabolical gleam in her eyes and mind. She held up her hand. Cold white flame scintillated along her fingers and arched across into the base of the wood.

“Oh.” Despite the chill, he was blushing hotly.

Kristabel nearly fell over, she was laughing so hard. Her words had to be forced out. “You are so easy to tease. Really.”

“Obviously.”

“Darling Edeard.” She stroked his cheek. “I’m sorry.” Then she swayed forward, unable to stop laughing.

It was no use; he couldn’t stay angry with her. His petulance gave way to a rueful grin. “Yeah, but that trick won’t help you with gache fungi,” he informed her.

She swarmed into his lap and twined her hands around his neck. Her smile rivaled the noonday sun. “If I ever get attacked by legions of gache fungi, I promise in the Lady’s name I will do everything you tell me from that day onward, and I’ll never laugh at you again.”

“Okay. Now show me how you do the fire trick.”

“I’m not supposed to; the families like it kept quiet.”

“Think of it as the start of the revolution.”

She kissed him. “All right.” Her mind gifted him the technique.

It was actually quite simple, he thought as he examined the knowledge: squeezing a little stream of air and spinning it very fast at the same time to create a big static charge. “Easy!” He lifted his arm up and let his telekinetic strength agitate the air around it. A blinding flash spit out, fanning wide to punch into the loose pile of wood. A ball of flame bloomed around the branches with a severe thud. Several flaming sticks twirled through the air, trailing smoke. Edeard and Kristabel ducked.

“By the Lady, Edeard!” she exclaimed. Her mouth gaped in surprise.

The bonfire was blazing furiously. Kristabel laughed again.

“That’s better,” he said as the flames shot even higher. “I’m starting to warm up now.”

Kristabel still had her hands behind his neck; she arched her spine, falling backward to pull him down on top of her. “Me, too.”

Edeard gave the beach lodge a mildly guilty glance, then grinned lewdly. “I always heard sex on the beach is the absolute best.” His third hand unfastened her belt.

The legend, he discovered, was quite right; sex on the beach was spectacular.

As soon as night fell on the second day they went back to the bed in the middle of the lodge. Long after the candles had sputtered and died, Edeard lay on the bed watching the nebulae twinkle and sway across the night sky. He smiled languidly, yet sleep refused to claim him. “How far away are they?”

Kristabel peeked up at the ceiling. “Are you still watching the nebulae? I don’t know. A long, long way.”

“Do our souls reach them without guidance from the Skylords?”

“I can’t remember exactly what the Lady’s teachings say. I think it’s difficult for souls once they’ve been cast adrift from their old bodies. They just sort of float away through space.”

“Lost. That’s why we need the Skylords.”

“Yes.” She grinned and cuddled closer. “You see, you know more than I do. You must be very devout.”

“Hardly. I can barely remember that much. But how did the Lady know?”

“Because the Firstlifes told her, or the Skylords told her what the Firstlifes said. I can’t remember which. Though the Firstlifes would know; they’re the ones who created the universe.”

“This Void. The ships that brought us here came from outside.”

“They certainly came from somewhere else.”

“If they fell here from the other side of the sky, then they must have passed through the nebulae.”

“I suppose so.”

“Then they would have known exactly what they were like. Why didn’t they stay there, in Odin’s Sea? The Lady says it is the doorway to the Heart, where souls live forever in unity and bliss.”

“The ships were falling. They couldn’t stay.”

“They fell onto Querencia. While they are in the sky, ships fly. The people inside them control where they go, just as captains set course in our traders.”

Kristabel propped herself up. He could see only the darkest outline of her while her soft hair brushed against his chest.

“Why are you asking these questions?”

“We have souls, Kristabel. I’ve sensed them. When I shot Mirnatha’s kidnapper, my farsight watched his soul take flight.”

“On its way to Honious,” she growled.

“Not if it just drifts around the sky.”

“Edeard,” she asked tentatively, “are you mocking me?”

“No!” he promised. “Never. I just don’t understand why the Skylords have abandoned us. What do we do to call them back?”

“The Lady says we have to be true to ourselves.”

“Most people are, aren’t they? I knew so many who were. Decent honest folk who died. Are their souls all lost?” Is Akeem alone and astray somewhere in the sky? Is Melzar? Obron? For some reason he didn’t want to examine, he suddenly thought of Salrana, who was working conscientiously in Ufford’s hospital, waiting for the day she returned to Makkathran—and him. She’d devoted her life to the Lady, and she was decent. Certainly more than I am. Would her soul be lost in the Void? Such thoughts made him very uncomfortable, and for more than one reason. I really ought to write to her, explain I have found Kristabel. But I would never want to hear such news in a letter. Lady!

“I don’t know, Edeard,” Kristabel said, “and that’s the truth. If you want answers to such notions, you’ll have to ask a Mother. I can get you an appointment with the Pythia herself if you like. We’re related, distantly.”

“No. I’m sorry. My thoughts are wandering tonight, that’s all.” He tried to put the memories of Salrana away. I’ll deal with that in an honorable way when she returns.

He felt her hair shift across him. Her fingers stroked his cheek. “Do you want to make love to me again?”

He smiled up into the darkness where he knew her face to be. “I can’t actually move right now, let alone do that.”

“You’d better recover by tomorrow.”

“I’ll go to sleep now, I promise. I’ll be ready for you again tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said sharply.

“Yes, Mistress.”

Kristabel, he discovered as she woke him at daybreak, wasn’t joking.

During the days they walked along the coast, exploring neighboring coves and beaches. Sometimes they’d take a swim, then warm themselves afterward by making love in the dunes. Kristabel especially took a delicious thrill at the prospect of being discovered by some estate worker or housekeeper. Obliging her wasn’t exactly difficult for him.

On the fourth afternoon they walked back along the lodge’s track, surveying the fields and groves that spread back from the small strip of wild ground that ran behind the shore. The coastline was a series of rugged coves reaching almost the entire way back to the city. Many of the larger ones were dominated by villages that had extended or adopted the curving cliffs to make harbors for their fishing fleets. The rest had been incorporated into the estates of Makkathran’s Grand Families, which had built pavilions or lodges where their younger generations could idle away the summer.

Farther south, the land dipped to become a saltwater swamp before rising again at the end of the Iguru. Then the Bruneau Mountains stood up to fence off the arid southern plains. Towns and farmland continued to cling to the coast as it curved eastward all the way down to Charyau, Querencia’s southernmost city, just past the equator.

“They say you have to wear long clothes all year round there,” Kristabel said as they stood on top of a tall hummock, gazing southward. On the horizon they could just make out the snow-tipped peaks of the Bruneau range. “The sun is so strong, it shrivels your skin, especially if you’re not used to it.”

“Do they have stories of anyone else sharing our world?” Edeard asked. “Perhaps strange ships that they’ve sighted at a distance out at sea?”

“No. Our ships trade with them all the time, and their schooners regularly make port in Makkathran. If there were any stories like that, we’d hear them.” She tilted her head to one side. “You’re so interested in what lies beyond our reach. Why?”

“I’m just curious about the world, that’s all.” He didn’t want to tell her his main interest was discovering where the rapid-firing guns were produced. “Doesn’t it even bother you that we don’t actually have a complete map of Querencia? The ships that brought Rah and the Lady must have seen what it looked like before they landed. Why didn’t any survive?”

“There you go again, thinking differently. What you said makes perfect sense, but no one else ever makes that kind of connection.”

“Is that so bad?”

“No, but it does mark you out. I’d love to understand why you think the way you do.”

“Just the way I am, I suppose.” And the things I see in my dreams.

“I wish I’d met your parents. I’m sorry if that sounds selfish, but they must have been very special people. Do you remember anything of them?”

“Very little.” He sighed. “Akeem told me my mother arrived in Ashwell from another province. He said she was beautiful and smart. All the men vied for her hand, but she only ever wanted my father. Actually, he’d been there only twenty years himself, so I don’t suppose he counted as a local. He had a farm outside the village. It was a big place, or at least I thought so; I remember it having furniture that was very grand compared to the other houses. I don’t know why. We couldn’t have earned more than the other farmers. Akeem said Father didn’t get involved very much with Ashwell. I can’t say I blame him for that.”

“I didn’t want to stir up anything that would hurt you.”

“It doesn’t. They died a long time ago; I stopped grieving years ago. I hate the bandits who killed them, but Akeem was a true father to me. I was lucky to know him.”

Kristabel put her arm through his, and they made their way down the hillock. “There are bandits everywhere,” she said. “In many forms. People who prey on the bounty that others have worked hard for. The gangs are no different.”

“I know. That’s what angers me about them, just that they exist. And worse, that people accept their existence.”

“I think our gangs are smarter than your bandits; they’ve managed to ingrain themselves in our lives.”

“City and country again?”

“Almost. Though they seem to share the same brutality and hatred. They’re broken people, Edeard. That’s why they do what they do.”

“Are you saying we should show them sympathy?”

“I don’t know what must be done.” She stroked his face, gazing sympathetically at him. “You do understand that everyone is expecting you to provide that answer, don’t you?”

“I don’t have an answer. That’s the Grand Council’s job.”

“They will blame you if no solution comes forward. Can’t you hear their voices? ‘You began this≔ you came to the District Masters with this notion. You excluded gang members from some districts and forced them into others. Why should those districts suffer at the expense of others? What will you do to get rid of the threat you highlighted and went to war against?’ ”

“Oh, Lady,” he groaned.

“You have to find something, Edeard, some way out.”

“There isn’t one.”

“There is at least one, and you know it. Banishment. Permanent banishment from the crystal wall. Exclude them from the whole city.”

“That’ll never happen; Master Bise won’t allow that to happen in Sampalok for a start.”

“Honious take Bise. You’ve got huge political momentum growing behind you. Exclusion has been seen to work. You have to carry it forward. If you hesitate now, you’ll lose that momentum.”

“Banishment? You’re not serious?” His mind went back to the morning of the kidnapping and how he’d been berated by Eddis’s wife. “Where would they all go?”

“I can see how much this troubles you, but I think you’re wrong to worry so. This is one time that imagination of yours is leading you astray. You’re visualizing whole city districts being forced out at gunpoint. Edeard, the real trouble is caused by a couple of hundred people at best. I remember the night Daddy signed the exclusion warrants for Haxpen; you gave him four hundred and eighteen. That’s everybody, Edeard, every gang member you could find. That number is nothing compared to our total population; it’s so small, they’re not even a minority. Get rid of the gang masters and their lieutenants, and the rest will be lost. They’ll rejoin society. They won’t love you, but at least they won’t be causing the kind of trouble they do today.”

“I suppose so. But where will the masters go? That’s just giving someone else our problem.”

“Look,” Kristabel said forcefully, and held her arms out, twirling around to gesture at the entirety of the landscape. “I’ll make Daddy loan you the biggest ship in our fleet, and you can take them to the farthest atoll we can navigate to, or we’ll buy them fifty wagons and lead their caravan into the wilds beyond Rulan. Let them build their own houses and grow their own food. Edeard! You’re not responsible for them, not afterward. You are a city constable, a position that was regarded with utter scorn before you arrived. You made us all feel safe again; you gave us hope. Don’t falter now. Makkathran cannot afford your doubts.”

He stared at her in awe.

She shifted around, discomfited. “What?”

“You are so incredible. I can’t believe you even notice someone like me.”

Kristabel looked at the ground. “But I do.”

“Makkathran is lucky to have you.”

“I won’t be a figurehead for the family, a mere caretaker between Daddy and my firstborn, someone who just votes for whatever the Mayor says. I will make a difference,” she said fiercely.

“I know you will.”

Their last night in the beach lodge together was one Edeard never wanted to end. Again, when the candles had long died, Edeard sprawled over the bed, staring upward as his thoughts slowly came together in realization—not least about what Kristabel had said to him throughout the week, in so many ways, none of which had really registered before. She lay beside him now, her arm across his chest, head nuzzled in the crook of his neck, one leg over his. It was where she belonged. For eternity.

“I love you,” he said in wonder.

Edeard was dreading his return to Makkathran. Some part of his brain enacted the beautiful fantasy of them staying in the beach lodge forever. It wasn’t just their physical union, though Kristabel was all he had ever imagined a lover could be. He didn’t want anything to break the perfection of the week they’d spent together.

“I don’t want to leave, either,” she said at breakfast on their last day.

“I suppose we have to go back,” he said grouchily.

“We do, and don’t sulk.”

“I wasn’t— Sorry.”

“You say that too much, as well.”

“Thanks.”

“I have a present for you,” she said, and instructed a ge-monkey to bring in one of her cases.

Edeard hadn’t noticed it among all the other cases. For someone who’d spent most of the week naked or clad in wisps of silk and lace, she seemed to require a vast wardrobe. Now he leaned over with interest as she opened it and held up the jacket inside.

“A proper uniform for you,” Kristabel said. “I can’t have my man looking ordinary at the ceremony, now, can I? Not on this day. The day.”

Edeard took the jacket from her, admiring the cut and the seriously black fabric. It was a standard constable’s dress tunic but at the same time so much more stylish. Kristabel produced some matching trousers from the case, along with a white shirt, a belt, and a tie.

“Thank you so much,” he said, and then his mood dropped. “I don’t have anything for you.”

She gave him a strange look, almost as if he’d said something hurtful. “That’s because you don’t have any money. And that’s good, because that’s not what I’m looking for in a man.”

“You’re wonderful.” He kissed her.

“We don’t have time; we have to be back in the city by midday. Go and put it on.”

“We could spare a few minutes,” he suggested hopefully. Her finger pointed to the bedroom door. “Go and put it on.” Edeard did as he was told. It fit perfectly, and as he studied himself in the mirror, he couldn’t help the very self-satisfied smile splashed across his face. He did look great.

“Oh, Lady,” Kristabel murmured huskily from the doorway. “There really is something about men in uniform.”

“The tailor got my size just right. Was he spying on me?”

Kristabel’s eyebrow raised a fraction. “I know your exact size,” she purred. “Now come on; we need to get going.”

Strangely enough, when they did get back to the city, he was cheered by the sight of it. The raucous babble of thoughts and longtalk was a reassuring presence. Then there was the familiarity of the buildings and streets and canals, the way no one paid any attention to them as they walked back from the stables, not even bothering with a seclusion haze.

“I’m home,” he decided as the gondola took them along the Great Major Canal to the Orchard Palace.

His squadmates were waiting for him in the Malfit Hall. They gave him a hearty greeting.

“Look at this!” Macsen exclaimed, tugging at Edeard’s splendid new uniform. He glanced at Kristabel, who was chatting away to Kanseen. “Anything to announce?”

Edeard frowned. “No. We had a lovely time. And I’m certainly not giving you lot any details.”

Macsen and Boyd both shook their heads in despair.

“Still the country boy,” Macsen said sadly.

“What?”

“And have we got some news for you!” Dinlay said proudly.

“What?” Edeard repeated dumbly.

“After the ceremony,” Kanseen taunted. “It needs time to explain.”

“Come on,” Macsen said. “We’d better grab our seats while we still can.”

At Edeard’s graduation ceremony the block of seats had taken up less than a fifth of the available floor space. Today, several families who’d come to watch their sons and daughters graduate had to stand around the walls.

As before, Mayor Owain appeared at the top of the grand stairs, flanked by the District Masters and the Guild Masters. As they descended to the floor, the giant roof above displayed Querencia’s sister planets drifting through an exquisite dawn of wispy gold-tinged clouds.

Owain began his little speech on the makeshift platform. Edeard, who was near the back of the hall, looked along the line of Masters behind the Mayor. This time they all looked attentive, as if gauging the mood of the audience. Their tenseness was a contrast to the excitement and satisfaction of the new constables and their families. Then he saw Bise, whose long face was rigid with animosity; he was staring directly back at Edeard. For a second Edeard was taken aback by the loathing he saw and sensed. He composed himself and met the Master’s hostility with cool indifference.

Loud applause broke out as the first probationer stepped up to the platform and Owain awarded him his epaulets. Edeard applauded politely throughout the ceremony, which lasted a long time. The only time he clapped with genuine enthusiasm was when the probationers from Jeavons station received their epaulets. Young Felax glowed with pride as he hurried back down the steps, holding the small bronze buttons aloft so his parents could see.

Edeard and Dinlay shared a grin at that.

“Oh, Lady,” Dinlay groaned. “Was I like that?”

“I don’t know. I was too busy trying not to trip down the stairs.”

In the row behind them, Chae leaned forward. “You were both an embarrassment,” he assured them.

Edeard knew he was expected to participate in the reception that followed. Not so many months ago, the very idea would have filled him with dread. Now, after all he’d been through, he didn’t care anymore. Besides, Kristabel was on his arm the whole time, smiling and impressing people a lot more than he did. So he took a wineglass from a ge-chimp, refused the canapés, put on his best smile, sealed his mind, and started to tell parents how wonderful their newly qualified constables were and how glad he was that they’d be helping him, and yes, he did think the gangs would ultimately be defeated, and no, he couldn’t give a time scale, it was confidential, and yes, they did have a way to finish the exclusion campaign, and please urge your District Master and Representative to support the warrants.

“We’re splitting into political groups,” Kristabel whispered into his ear an hour into the party. “How very Makkathran of us.”

Edeard scanned with his farsight. She was right. Three distinct groups of Masters had collected on the Malfit Hall’s black floor. One was led by Finitan, who was all smiles and enthusiasm to the District Masters who’d joined the exclusion campaign. Most vociferous among them was Julan, who looked nothing like the broken man of the Festival of Guidance. His enthusiasm was sweeping people along as he greeted families to congratulate them; they weren’t used to talking to District Masters, let alone ones so effusive and pleasant.

“Your father is a talented politician,” Edeard observed.

“Try to say that as if it was a good thing.” Her third hand pinched him sharply on his buttock.

Edeard resisted the impulse to return the jab. Finitan caught his eye and smiled approvingly at Kristabel before turning back to the head of the Fiacre pottery association, whose third daughter had just received her epaulets. There were another eight District Masters in their group, representing Jeavons, Silvarum, Zelda, Drupe, Tosella, Lillylight, Ilongo, and Padua. Finitan also had the Masters for Vaji, Cobara, and Myco in his orbit, where they were being assiduously courted for their support.

The biggest group, clustering in the middle of the hall, were the undecided, still the majority of districts.

Then there were those who formed a picket around Owain. These were the most traditional families, Edeard noted, with Bise at their center. They, too, were glad-handing, chatting happily with the new constables. He was rather perturbed to see that the Pythia was among them. Surely she could see that the exclusion warrants needed to be extended. Then he remembered she had gently refused to prohibit anyone from entering Eyrie. It had been reasonable enough; people should be allowed to attend the Lady’s church.

“This division isn’t good,” he said to Kristabel as the guests started to leave. “Makkathran needs to be united if we’re to defeat the gangs.”

“Quite.” She led him over to Finitan and her father.

“Welcome back,” Julan said. He embraced his daughter, then shook hands with Edeard. There was a slight pause when he looked at Edeard, as if expecting something. Finitan, too, seemed to be waiting. Edeard wasn’t sure what to say.

“Right, then,” Finitan said. “This is as good a time as any. Edeard, while you and Kristabel have been away, we’ve been pressuring the remaining District Masters and Representatives to join the exclusion warrants scheme, sadly to little avail. The Mayor has been equally effusive in opposition to it.”

“But why?” Edeard asked.

“Because, as he rightly points out, we have no conclusion, no final answer as to what to do with these people.”

“I do,” Edeard said, feeling confident after everything he and Kristabel had talked about.

“You do?” Finitan asked.

“Yes, sir. The only thing we can do: banishment.”

“Ah. That’s a bold statement, young Edeard.”

He grinned sheepishly at Kristabel. “It was pointed out to me that although it sounds drastic, the actual numbers of people we need to get rid of are tiny in relation to the city’s overall population.”

Finitan and Julan exchanged a look. “That makes this easier, then,” Finitan said. “It’s quite plain that Owain is going to steer this into another clash in Council, and delaying tactics will work in his favor. We need to grab the initiative back from him, and proposing banishment is exactly the kind of prospect that will galvanize people into supporting us.”

Edeard glanced over at the Masters gathered around Owain. “I don’t understand. I expected it would make things worse in Council.”

“It will,” Finitan said with a smile. “And we can capitalize on that division.”

“Ah,” Kristabel said, nodding in understanding. “Of course.”

“Of course what?” Edeard said.

“I am going to announce my candidature for Mayor,” Finitan said. “And banishing the gangs will be my campaign pledge to the people of Makkathran.”

“What did he say?” Boyd asked as the squad made its way back to Jeavons station after the ceremony.

“That he’s going to run for Mayor,” Edeard told them all. He was still taken aback by the notion, though the excitement was growing. With Finitan in charge, so many things can change. “There’ll be a party in the Blue Tower tonight so he can make a public announcement.”

“Not Finitan, you ass,” Macsen snapped. “Master Julan.”

“Julan? He didn’t say anything. But with his support, Finitan stands a real chance.”

“All right,” Kanseen said. “Forget that. What did you say?”

“I said that I’d support him in any way I could.”

They all gave each other puzzled looks. Edeard could sense their minds closing against him, but not before several traces of irritation and disappointment were manifested. He guessed taking a week off had annoyed them more than he’d realized at the time.

“Okay, then; at least we’ve been busy,” Dinlay said as they passed through the station’s main gate. “Unfortunately, so have the gangs. The gondoliers pulled another body from the canal last Thursday. The second son of a cloth merchant from Igadi district.”

“Lady!” Edeard groaned. “It didn’t take them long to regain their courage.”

They settled in the small hall. Dinlay’s third hand shut the doors behind them. Kanseen sat down on one of the tables, her boots resting on a bench. Macsen directed a ge-chimp to fetch some water. “That was very cheap wine at the party,” he complained as he gulped down several mouthfuls from a glass tankard.

Dinlay pulled a bench over to sit opposite Edeard. His face was exhibiting a great deal of contentment. Boyd sat next to him, trying not to show too much amusement at his squadmate’s attitude.

“So what did the second son do to annoy the gangs?” Edeard asked.

“Nothing,” Dinlay said. “They’re using a variant on the old extortion racket.”

“A clever one,” Macsen said, finishing his second tankard of water.

“They’re not bothering with small shops and stalls anymore,” Dinlay explained. “They’ve moved up a social class to target the smaller merchants. And they don’t ask for money; they want a share of the business itself.”

“It’s a route to legitimacy,” Kanseen said.

“If you’ve got a warehouse full of stock, someone comes along and asks if they can buy a share in your venture. But the thing is, they want to defer payment for that percentage.”

“It’ll come out of increased profits, is what they usually say,” Boyd said. “So far, nothing criminal. Certainly nothing you can use to complain to the constables or courts.”

“Except you know who it is and what they’re asking,” Dinlay continued. “They make that very clear. If you don’t comply, then a family member gets hurt.”

“Or in some cases murdered,” Macsen said. “As with the cloth merchant’s son. Which is extreme, but those are the cases we get to hear about.”

“So we don’t know how widespread it is,” Edeard said.

“No. But everyone is complaining about how prices are creeping up, and there’s no reason. There’s no shortage of anything; the port is crowded with ships delivering cargo, and the city’s warehouses are full.”

“The lower and middle levels of merchants don’t have the kind of protective associations that shops and small traders have,” Kanseen said. “Their commercial rivalry precludes almost all cooperation.”

“But they have personal guards,” Edeard said.

“No, they don’t,” Dinlay said. “Oh, the patriarch will have some toughs with him when he collects large payments from clients or pays a ship’s captain, but we’re not talking about the kind of small army that the Grand Families employ here. These merchants have large families that are completely unprotected, and they’re a vital part of Makkathran’s economy.”

“I see,” Edeard said. He had hoped for a brief respite after he got back, but he should have known better. “So we need to identify who—”

“No, we don’t,” Dinlay said merrily.

“We don’t?”

“Already done it.”

“Ah.” Now a lot of the squad’s attitude became clearer to Edeard. He looked around, seeing their smug faces. “So what do you need me for?”

“To provide us with brute strength backup during the arrest,” Macsen said with an innocent tone.

Edeard laughed. “Tell me.”

“First the bad news,” Boyd said. “The House of Blue Petals has a new owner.”

“Who?” Edeard asked sharply.

Boyd gave Dinlay a sly glance, as if seeking approval. “Buate.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Nobody had,” Boyd said. “Turns out he’s Ivarl’s half brother.”

“Oh, great.”

“Would you like the bad news now?” Macsen asked.

Edeard gave him a brusque stare.

“Rumor has it that Buate has a partner.”

“Go on.”

“Ranalee.”

Edeard dropped his face into his hands and chuckled softly. I should have seen that coming, especially after Tannarl teamed up with Ivarl that night.

“Edeard?” Kanseen queried.

“Actually, that’s good news,” he told them.

“It is?”

“We finally have a link between the gangs and a Grand Family Can we prove she’s the partner?”

“The occupancy deed is filed at the city registry,” Dinlay said, taking off his glasses to give them a polish. “It’s considered privileged unless a crime has been committed either on the premises or by the owner. We could lodge a request in the lower court to view it. But all it tells us is who’s claimed residence rights to the structure, and as we know that Buate is family, it won’t tell us anything new. And the articles of incorporation governing the Blue Petal’s business will be held by the Guild of Tax Clerks. However, the nature of the business means the arrangement with Ranalee isn’t likely to be written down anywhere.”

“So it’s just hearsay?”

Dinlay shrugged. “Yes.”

“And this is what you managed to discover while I was away?”

“As my soon to be father says, everyone’s a critic,” Macsen said with mock dismay. “No, actually we have been doing difficult observation work under dangerous conditions for little pay and scant thanks from our corporal and station captain.”

“For the love of the Lady, will you tell me what is going on?”

“We followed several gang members who are covered by exclusion warrants—with good reason. One of them was a member of an enforcer crew,” Dinlay said, grinning broadly. “They’ve just told a merchant called Charyau in Neph that they want a third of his business. He imports salsponge.”

“What the heck is salsponge?” Edeard demanded. “And I swear on the Lady, if just one of you gives me that pitying look over this, I will dump the lot of you headfirst in Birmingham Pool and hold you under.”

Boyd opened his mouth, ready to explain. A frown creased his forehead, and he turned to Macsen. Macsen pursed his lips and gave Kanseen an inquisitive stare.

“Well, don’t ask me,” she said. “I’ve never heard of it before.”

“It must be valuable,” Dinlay mused. “Charyau has a big family who dress in fine clothes and carouse all over the city, and there’s also two mistresses he covers in jewelry.”

“Did he agree to their terms?” Edeard asked.

“No,” Boyd said. “The Lady blessed him with a backbone and a lot of pompous bluster. He refused.”

“So we followed the enforcer crew home to Sampalok.”

“You went into Sampalok?” Edeard asked in surprise.

“Like I said, difficult and dangerous,” Macsen announced portentously. “Which is why we know that they’re going to kick the crap out of Rapsail, Charyau’s firstborn, as the first warning. And they’re going to do it tonight.”

“Where?” Edeard asked eagerly.

Riorn Street was a sinuous pathway on the northernmost corner of Abad, linking the Roseway Canal to the Great Major Canal. The buildings that made up its walls were all tall and imposing, though one of them did incline outward, allowing broad strands of unkempt gurkvine to dangle down from the eaves like a living partition along the street. It was the building next to the overhanging vegetation that housed the Reckless Colonel, a restaurant and theater of good repute where the wealthier sons of the city’s gentlemen congregated for a pleasurable night among their own.

Good, expensive food was to be found on the starched white linen cloths of its hexagonal tables; the cellar was stocked with an enviable selection of vintage wines from across Querencia. The lounge area offered deep and cozy chairs and settees, while the dancers who graced the stage performed their elegant moves with amazing agility to the pitch-perfect house band. Five large doormen stood outside the glossy wooden doors, physically and telekinetically strong, their presence alone deterring anyone foolish enough to be born beneath a certain status in life.

It was after two o’clock in the morning when one of them tipped his tall peaked hat to Rapsail, who tottered unsteadily down the three awkward steps to the pavement. A heavy rain was lashing the street, dimming the orange lights shining down from the building walls. Rapsail tightened his leather cloak around his long blue and scarlet jacket as he grunted his inebriated “good night” to the doormen and began to weave an unsteady route toward the Great Major Canal.

Alcohol suppressed his farsight as much as it did his optical focus. He had no awareness of the five men lurking in the deeper shadows and alleys off Riorn Street, nor did he notice as they emerged from their secluded refuges to walk both behind and alongside him. It was only as they started to close in that he frowned with intoxicated confusion.

“I say, hello, you fellows,” he slurred.

A third hand closed around his ankles. For a moment his legs moved sluggishly, and then he peered down at his immobile feet. Rapsail blinked down at his polished leather shoes with their fashionable brass and silver buckles. They didn’t seem to be doing what he wanted, which was to get him far, far away from this place.

“I say, that’s off.”

One of his assailants laughed. They circled him now, dark specters with hoods pulled over their heads, faces shadowed and wreathed with a seclusion haze. Rain pattered heavily on their oilskin cloaks to form quick rivulets over the fabric.

“What do you want?” Rapsail’s instinctive self-preservation was starting to get through his alcohol-saturated brain. He tried to longshout, but that required too much concentration.

A hand tugged his hood away from his head.

“I warn you, I have friends in this city. Powerful friends.”

“This is a message for your father,” Medath, the enforcer crew’s leader, said.

“What message?” Rapsail asked as the rain slicked down his hair.

“He’ll understand.”

A fist slammed into Rapsail’s pudgy stomach. The young man doubled up immediately, falling to his knees. Tears of pain mingled with the rain on his cheeks. “Oh, sweet Lady, no. I have money. Please.”

“It’s not your cash we want,” Medath explained patiently. “It’s your inheritance.”

Two of the men pulled leather-weighted blackjacks from under their cloaks, while two more used their third hands to pinion Rapsail in his cowed position.

“After all,” Medath said reasonably, “you won’t be needing it. Cripples don’t have anything to spend it on.”

Rapsail whimpered piteously.

“Damage him,” Medath ordered. “Badly.”

Two blackjacks were raised into the air, slick with water. They kept on rising, pulled out of grasping fingers to whirl away into the night. Both men grunted in surprise. Medath fell into a crouch, long blades sliding into his hands. He scanned with his farsight, probing every doorway and alcove along the street as his telekinetic shield hardened. One of the other enforcers aimed a kick at Rapsail’s head. His boot was yanked backward, sending him crashing down. There was a sickening slap as his face smacked flat onto the pavement. He yelled “Help me” through the blood pouring out of his mouth and nose, then froze in terror as he was tugged violently across the pavement. He slid away from his comrades at frightening speed, hands scrabbling at the wet surface to no effect. His shrieks were cut off as he vanished around the corner.

“Dear Lady!” another gasped. He started to run. His feet left the ground, and he was propelled through the air to crash into the nearest wall. He crumpled to the ground, stunned.

The remaining three enforcers closed together. Medath kept his blades ready; the others drew pistols. Laughter echoed down the street. It was too much for one. He fired at a clutch of shadows. The bullet stopped a mere couple of feet from the pistol muzzle, hanging in midair. Raindrops curved neatly around it.

“Waterwalker,” Medath breathed.

“Good evening.” Edeard walked forward, his body becoming visible amid the wavering shadows and unceasing rain as he reached the middle of the street. The rain parted above his head to leave his splendid new tunic perfectly dry. Behind him, Kanseen and Dinlay emerged from nowhere.

“You’re under arrest,” Edeard said. He extended a hand, and the two pistols were wrenched out of their owners’ fingers. “Cuff them,” he told Dinlay. He turned to Kanseen. “Get the knives.”

Medath watched her approach. He rotated the blades skillfully and proffered the handles toward her. Edeard was walking toward the enforcer who’d been flung against the wall, bending over as the man groaned weakly.

“I’ll take those,” Kanseen said, and held out a hand for the knives.

It was Medath’s one chance. He sent them flying toward her with a vigorous flick of his wrists. At the same time he shoved his third hand against Edeard with his full strength. “Fight them,” he bellowed at his two accomplices. Kanseen stumbled as she warded off the knives, tumbling onto the pavement. Dinlay was grappling with one of the enforcers, and Edeard came to his aid, swiftly restraining the second with a resolute telekinetic grip. By the time they’d gotten them both subdued and cuffed, Medath had sprinted away. Edeard’s farsight followed him charging over the iron bridge just above Mid Pool.

Macsen and Boyd cast off their concealment. Boyd had the unconscious first enforcer slung over his shoulder. Macsen hurried over to Kanseen and helped her to her feet.

“Well, that was humiliating,” she said as she tried to brush water off her uniform trousers.

“He believed it,” Edeard said. His farsight showed him that Medath was over the bridge and into Pholas Park.

“For a real tough guy, he can run very fast,” Boyd observed in amusement.

Edeard turned to the man he’d cuffed. “Hold your arms out, Sentan.”

“You know my name.”

“Of course I know your name. I know your house, I know what you ate for lunch, your girlfriend, your three children who’ve got themselves proper jobs. Now hold your arms out.”

“What are you going to do?”

Edeard used his third hand to pull Sentan’s arms up. The man flinched at the force.

“Please,” he implored. “I … I’ll stop this. By the Lady, I will.”

“No, you won’t,” Edeard said. He slipped the key into the cuffs and unlocked them. Sentan gave him a frightened look.

“I’m not arresting you,” Edeard said. “Any of you.”

“Please, Waterwalker, oh, please, no. Don’t kill me.”

“Shut up. I’m tired of wasting my time in court with people like you. So this is what you’re going to do: leave.”

“I … what?” Sentan gasped.

“You and your friends are going to leave Makkathran. Tonight. Now. My squad will escort you to the South Gate. You will walk through it, and you will not come back.”

“Where will I go?”

Edeard leaned forward, putting his face an inch from Sentan. “What do your victims do after you’ve beaten them, after you’ve snapped their bones and made their blood run over the floor of their homes while their children are made to watch, after they’ve been carried off screaming in pain to the hospital? They get on with their lives as best they can. Do you understand me now?”

“Yes.”

“If you come back, if you set foot in my city again, I will know. Do you believe that? Do you believe me?”

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

“Then go.”

Sentan bowed his head in defeat. Edeard went over to Rapsail, who was still kneeling on the ground. He was a mess, his trousers soaking wet, hair plastered against his head, cloak in disarray. “Thank you,” he sobbed. “Thank you, Waterwalker.”

“Get up,” Edeard told him without sympathy. Behind him, Dinlay and Macsen were sorting out the cowed enforcer crew, moving them down the street on the start of their journey out of the city.

Rapsail managed to clamber to his feet and stood swaying as the rain continued to lash against him. Edeard made an effort to calm down; he was sworn to protect Makkathran’s ordinary citizens, but people like Rapsail made it difficult to feel any empathy for his kind.

“There’s a reason you were picked on tonight,” Edeard said coldly. “Your father didn’t come to us, to me, when Medath’s friends gave him their ultimatum. If I don’t know what the gangs are up to, I cannot protect you from them. Tonight you were lucky, and for that you are in debt to my squad.”

“Of course,” Rapsail said. “Father will pay you handsomely for your services. We are gentlemen of honor.”

“I do not want money,” Edeard ground out.

Rapsail was sobering fast. Even in his befuddled state he could sense Edeard’s anger. “Of course not. I apologize profusely, Waterwalker. Er, what do you want?”

“Information. Your family is not the only one they have come visiting. Tomorrow, when you have sobered up, I will visit you and your father, and we will discuss how the constables can remove the gangs’ influence from your fellow merchants.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Edeard beckoned Kanseen over. “Get him back home in one piece. Tell his father I’ll be there in the morning.”

“I’ve really got the good duties tonight, don’t I?”

Edeard grinned awkwardly. “You did well, I know that wasn’t easy for you. Thank you.”

“Huh!” But she couldn’t keep a small flash of gratification from leaking out. “Come on, sir,” she said, and took a grip on Rapsail’s shoulder.

“I say, a girl constable.”

“Yes. Sir.”

“And a jolly pretty one, too.”

Edeard and Boyd drew in a sharp breath together, wincing. But Kanseen allowed Rapsail to continue living.

“Let me come with you, Edeard,” Boyd said as the unlikely pair walked away. “Please.”

“I can handle this.”

“They nearly killed you last time.”

“I was trying not to cause a fuss then. I think we all know those days are behind us now.”

Boyd gave him a very skeptical stare. “All right.”

“I need you to go back to the Reckless Colonel. Somebody there was longtalking directly to the enforcer crew. Make it clear to the owner he’s now on my shit list; I want his full cooperation from now on. And see if you can turn the informer as well.”

“Lady, is that all?”

“We all have different abilities; that’s what makes us good as a team.”

“All right, but just be careful.”

“All I’m going to do is introduce myself.”

“What if Ranalee’s there?”

“The Lady isn’t that cruel, is she?”

Edeard had stayed out of Myco ever since the night of the fire. He knew he was physically capable of protecting himself from anything Ivarl and his lieutenants could throw at him. What he lacked was motivation. He hadn’t quite lost his nerve as far as confronting Ivarl or his replacement was concerned. It was just that he needed time to restore his confidence. The kidnapping and Kristabel had done that.

Edeard slid up smoothly and silently through the city-altered floor into the lounge of the House of Blue Petals to find it nearly deserted. The doors were closed and locked. Two drunks were snoring on couches, with blankets thrown over them by the considerate staff. Three ge-monkeys and a couple of tired stewards were busy in the room at the back, washing the last of the glasses. The fires in the iron stoves had sunk to a cozy red glimmer.

He took a good look around. The furniture was similar to the last time, though of course it was all new. Even the piano looked the same. There were no globes full of oil or any other container for that matter. No beagle, either.

Edeard shed his concealment and walked up the stairs to the gallery. Several of the rooms were still occupied by girls and their clients. The madam and two doormen were sitting in a small parlor, eating a very late supper as they waited for the girls to finish.

It felt strange to be visible as he walked along the corridors and upstairs where before he had always crept about like a nervous ghost. As he approached the long room on the third floor in which Ivarl used to hold court, the doors swung open for him, pulled by someone’s third hand. Edeard walked through.

“I wondered when you’d pay me a visit,” Buate said.

The fact that he and Ivarl shared a parent wasn’t in question. Edeard guessed it had to be their father. He had the same broad forehead and strange green eyes. But where Ivarl’s powerful frame had started to inflate, Buate was slim and muscled, as if he’d spent his life doing hard physical work. He was also younger than his half brother, probably no more than seventy, with luxuriant black hair arranged in trim ringlets that hung below his collar. It was a fashion that was current amid the Grand Families in the city’s northern districts, as was the expensive gold-embroidered leather waistcoat that he’d left unbuttoned to reveal a vivid scarlet shirt. His jewelry was more discreet than Ivarl’s: a couple of gold bands on his fingers and one diamond stud earring. A very large diamond, Edeard noted.

Buate was sitting behind the desk, gazing at his visitor with aristocratic contempt. Unlike Ivarl, who had always kept the office tidy, he had left papers and legal scrolls scattered everywhere. As if to counter the difference, Nanitte was there as before, sitting on a broad velvet-covered couch to one side of the desk; above her gauzy skirt she wore a strange narrow corset of leather straps that looked uncomfortably tight. She gave Edeard a blank stare, her mind perfectly shielded.

Edeard used his third hand to close the door. “It will only be the one visit,” he said, deliberately ignoring Nanitte. Though there might have been a bruise on her cheek, the light was too poor for him to be sure. “This kind of visit, anyway.”

Buate picked up a silver stiletto, playing with it absently. “And what is this kind of visit, Waterwalker?”

“A friendly one.”

“Indeed? What kind of friendship do you imagine we could have?”

“Brief.”

Buate laughed. “I see why my dear brother enjoyed having you as his sparring partner.”

“I don’t remember seeing you at the funeral.”

“I was busy in the provinces. I returned to Makkathran only after I heard the sad news.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“I thought he drowned.”

“No. He was dead long before he hit the water. Torture tends to do that.”

“That’s awful. I trust you’re busy finding the criminals who did this.”

“That’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

“Ah. How interesting.”

“Did you hear Grand Master Finitan has declared his candidacy for Mayor?”

“It was the talk of the house tonight.”

“His campaign will be centered on banishment.”

“Yes, so I heard. I’m afraid he won’t be getting my vote. Too many of my friends would suffer under such a policy.”

“That’s why you need to lead them away.”

Buate’s detached amusement faltered. “Excuse me?”

“I want you to go now. Leave the city. Take your colleagues and your business associates and your lieutenants with you. This way you’ll be able to leave with most of your money; you can live a good life in exile.”

“Normally I’d just laugh at something so preposterous. But I can see you’re actually being serious.”

“A lot of people are going to get hurt over the next few months. There will be deaths. You can avoid that. Think of this as an appeal to your better nature.”

“You believe I have one?”

“I think you’re smarter than your dead brother. He was a jumped-up thug, using equally stupid muscle against small fry. But now you’re here, and I see things are already changing. The gangs are targeting merchants and larger businesses now. You’re trying to integrate yourself deeper within the city’s economy and submerge yourself from legal challenge. That takes a more methodical mind.” He reached out with his third hand and aggravated a whole ream of paperwork on the desk, sending the sheets fluttering across the floor. Nanitte scrambled to pick up those which fell across her and the couch. “The mind of someone who appreciates paperwork.”

Buate dropped the stiletto and watched the swarm of paper with disapproval. “Please don’t do that.”

Edeard sent a last flurry of papers chasing up toward the high ceiling. “A smart legal mind. And I’ve grown to dislike lawyers.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I am not acquiring businesses, nor have I any desire to. The House of Blue Petals provides a more than adequate income.”

Edeard heard loud footsteps pounding along the corridor outside. He cocked his head to one side and gave Buate an expectant look.

“Boss!” a man yelled.

The doors burst open. A very out-of-breath Medath came charging in, his oilskin cloak scattering water on the polished floor behind him. “Boss! Boss! The Waterwalker was there. He caught us with Rapsail and—AAARGH!” Medath nearly fell over backward in fright. He clutched at his heart, eyes bugging as he drew a juddering breath. Buate was actually trembling in anger as he glared at his enforcer.

Edeard smiled contentedly. “Timing is everything in our line of work, don’t you find?”

“You can’t be here,” Medath cried. “You’re back there.” His finger pointed madly out toward the city. “I ran … Boss?”

“Shut up.”

Edeard made his smile vanish. “Leave the city. Take this cretin and all the others like him with you. You cannot win. Not against me.”

Buate rose from the chair, his hands pressed palms down on the desk. “You understand nothing. Go back to your countryside, boy, before you and everyone you love gets hurt. This city is not for you.”

They stared at each other as Medath continued to pant loudly behind them.

“Makkathran is already mine,” Edeard said. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.” He turned and started to walk toward the door.

“You’re as weak as my brother,” Buate spit after him. “Next time it won’t be Mirnatha who gets taken.”

Edeard spun around, flinging an arm out. Buate was torn from his seat to smash against the wall between two of the oval windows. He squirmed impotently seven feet above the floor. Thin worms of dazzling static crackled in the air around him, jabbing down at his clothes. Buate wailed in dread as tiny puffs of smoke jetted from each strike point.

“If anything ever happens to her or any of my friends, you will join your brother in a manner that will make his passing seem a delight.” Edeard abruptly withdrew his third hand. Buate fell to the floor, landing badly on his shoulder. He grunted savagely from the pain.

“You keep bad company,” Edeard told Nanitte, and closed the doors behind him.

Edeard woke alone in his maisonette. His ge-chimps bustled around getting breakfast ready as he walked down the steps into his pool. For all the fun Kristabel and he had had sponging each other down in the beach house, he’d missed the sheer luxury of the bathing pool with its perfect temperature. At first he thought that might account for his melancholia; then he acknowledged that he missed not waking up with Kristabel.

As he munched his way through the mix of nuts and fruit the ge-chimps had prepared, he wondered if he should longtalk her. It would be nice to find out when they could actually meet next; yesterday had been so ridiculously busy. He was sure that she would expect him to go to the Culverit mansion and be with her to spend a night together, even though they’d be a lot comfier in the maisonette with his modified bed and the other simple comforts he’d created. Then he paused with a glass of apple and mango juice halfway to his mouth. Of all the family girls he’d been with, he’d brought every one back to the maisonette except for the occasional night spent in an inn or that nightmare weekend with Ranalee. Not once had he been taken back to a girl’s bedroom at the family residence.

Has Boyd ever gone back to Saria’s mansion for a night? I can’t remember. Lady, I wish I understood these kinds of customs better.

The Grand Families could get quite stuffy about formalities.

I’ll ask Kanseen; she’ll tell me.

Until then, he foreswore longtalking Kristabel. Of course, if she were to call to him …

Macsen was waiting by the gates at the tenement’s entrance. “How did it go last night?” he asked.

“Not too good. Buate wasn’t inclined to leave Makkathran.”

“I could have told you that.”

“I knew it myself, but I had to put it to him.”

Macsen grinned. “Your conscience … It’ll be the death of us.”

“Most likely. But you should have seen Medath’s face. It was worth ten times the risk just for that. So how did your part go?”

“Sentan and the rest of them trudged off down the south road. Quite a picture it was. We stayed by the gate for over an hour and sent a ge-eagle out to watch, but they never came back.”

“Ah, well, four down, four hundred to go.”

“We can’t do this four at a time. Besides, it took us five days of hard work just to uncover this one scheme.”

“I know. We just have to hold the line until Finitan gets elected.”

“You really think he will?”

“He has to,” Edeard said earnestly. “Most people in the city want the gangs expelled. Owain doesn’t stand a chance.”

“You don’t know that. He could pull out a policy that will be even more popular.”

“If he wanted to be that popular, he’d enact banishment right now and stop trying to wreck our exclusion warrants campaign.”

“The politicians in this city are a lot smarter and more devious than you give them credit for. You’ll see.”

Edeard didn’t believe him; he knew Finitan would win. They reached Arrival Canal and went along to the first mooring platform to hail a gondola.

“At least we get to see Rapsail’s hangover,” Macsen said.

The meeting with Rapsail and Charyau was awkward and stilted. Charyau was torn between gratitude to the constables and fury at himself and Rapsail. Rapsail especially came off badly. “Waster,” “parasite,” and “worthless” were some of the more frequently used words. But Edeard was now quite accomplished at talking around reluctant citizens, especially important ones or those who considered themselves important.

It wasn’t Charyau’s self-directed fury Edeard manipulated. It was the anger and fear the merchant felt toward the gangs that had come so close to taking his life’s accomplishments away from him. In the end there wasn’t that much to exploit. The whole experience meant that Charyau had undergone an almost evangelical conversion. Neph was going to get its first merchants association; of that he swore on the Lady’s life. He was going to compel his friends and rivals; there were old favors he would call in, he promised, social ties he could use, even financial debts. Together Neph’s merchants would stand against the gangs and this insidious new strategy. Everything he learned would be delivered immediately to the constables—by Rapsail.

Edeard walked into the small hall at the Jeavons station in an exceptionally fine mood. Several probationary constables had delivered names that their station captains wanted added to the exclusion lists, which he passed on to Urarl’s team for checking. They did that as a matter of course now, making sure the names were genuine. Several traders and shopkeepers also had forwarded the names of people they suspected. Edeard sent runners to the relevant constable stations, asking that the new suspects be observed. Three new warrants needed drawing up by the Lawyers Guild, producing nine copies each, which he’d then humbly have to ask the District Masters and Representatives to sign.

“I wish we could just have one warrant to cover all the districts,” Boyd complained.

“After Finitan gets elected,” Edeard promised. “But I did have one idea after I saw Buate last night. If the gangs are taking shares in legitimate businesses, it’ll entail a lot of paperwork. Droal, how do we get the Guild of Tax Clerks to investigate someone we suspect of cheating on taxes?”

“Get an inspector appointed to review the case.”

“Dinlay, can you organize that?”

Dinlay smiled. “My pleasure.”

“Talk to the Myco station captain as well. The inspector should be given a constables escort while he’s in Buate’s office. I don’t want them intimidated.”

“Leave it to me.”

“That should leave Buate with a large annoyance,” Edeard said in satisfaction.

“If he’s as smart as you say, he’ll have accountants who can face up to a tax inspector,” Macsen said.

“Yes, but it will cost him time and money. I want to open up as many angles of attack as we can.”

Edeard turned to his own paperwork, which was piled up on a couple of the benches. There were actually more sheets and scrolls than he’d seen in Buate’s office. He hadn’t realized how clerklike this battle was going to become. All he truly wanted was to be out on the streets arresting criminals.

“Any gang activities we can smack down today?” he asked hopefully.

“Some interesting talk coming out of the Ilongo stall holders association,” Macsen said. “I’m going to follow that up this afternoon.”

“Good,” Edeard said. He wondered if Kristabel was having lunch right now. If so, it would be on the hortus on their mansion’s tenth level. A long table with a white awning fluttering idly overhead, family and friends gathered to chat and laugh with Makkathran as their backdrop, wine to drink, tasty food to eat, then an afternoon spent shopping or at a spa bath where they would prepare for this evening’s parties.

He picked up a piece of paper from the newest pile. It was a report from the Lillylight station about attempts by gang members named in the exclusion warrants to infiltrate the district and menace their old haunts again. Their methods were becoming quite sophisticated: distracting bridge guards, disguising themselves.

The small hall’s doors shut as the squad went out to lunch. Edeard looked up, realizing that just he and Kanseen were left. She was giving him a concerned look, which worried him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

“Er, look, I asked you to tackle Medath because he’d believe he could overcome you. I knew he couldn’t.”

Her lips came together reproachfully. “I’m talking about your week with Kristabel.”

“What about it?” He suddenly realized that being here alone with her wasn’t an accident.

“Edeard, please, the two of us …” She gave him a compassionate smile. “There’s a way we are closer than the others. I still almost think it’s a shame you and I didn’t happen, but well, now …”

“I know. And I’m happy for the two of you. He needs someone like you. It’s a perfect match, and I haven’t told anyone.”

“Edeard! This isn’t about me. I’m here as a friend asking if I can help. Why didn’t it work out? I mean, be honest. It’s not that you lack experience as a lover, now, is it? There have been enough girls these last months.”

“I—” He knew he was blushing. Yes, Kanseen was a friend, a very good one, especially after … Well, anyway, he wasn’t used to talking about such things with her. The others, yes. That was boys’ talk. Not that they ever went into real detail. “Nothing was wrong. Thank you,” he said stiffly. “Not in any way.”

Kanseen stared at him as if she were trying to figure out a major puzzle. It was almost as if she were angry with him. Then her expression suddenly changed to one of surprise, then dismay. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, no. No!” It was as if she were beseeching him to say anything else.

“What?” he asked apprehensively.

“Edeard.” She stood in front of him and took both of his hands in hers. “You do understand what last week was, don’t you?”

“Yes. If you must know, I had the most wonderful time of my life. It was a miracle I ever came back to Makkathran. Satisfied now?”

“A week and the day,” she said it as if it were some kind of test.

“Which day?”

“Oh, Lady, you really don’t know.”

“Er …”

Kanseen tightened her grip. “Edeard, a Makkathran girl of good family, particularly one in Kristabel’s position, invites a man to spend one week outside the city with her for one reason; so they can both find out if they are compatible in bed. If you are going to spend the next two hundred years together, you really, seriously need to know that before you start.”

“Two hundred years?” Edeard’s legs were somehow unsteady. The feeling of dread that was creeping over his entire body was horrifyingly similar to that time when he’d woken in Ashwell to discover the bandits. “What two hundred years?”

“Marriage! You nincompoop. Oh, Edeard.” Kanseen was mortified. She let go of him and crammed her hands against her forehead. “If your week worked out that way, you are supposed to ask her father for her hand in marriage the dayyou return. That’s the custom. A week and the day.”

“Oh, dear Lady, this isn’t happening.”

“There was nothing wrong, was there? You just didn’t know.”

“Kristabel thinks we’re getting married?” He sat down heavily.

“She was expecting you to ask. Everyone was. We were all worried for you that it had gone wrong.”

“Oh, Lady. Wait! Who else knows?” Because this is Makkathran, and everything is public.

Now Kanseen looked really upset. “Well, there have been a few people speculating who was the one with the problem.”

“A few?” He knew all too well what that meant. The whole Lady-damned city is talking about it.

“She must hate me,” he said in an aghast whisper. Not Kristabel; not her angry with me. I can’t stand that.

“No. Um, look, I’d better go over to Haxpen and explain.”

“No!” Edeard sent his farsight surging into the Culverit ziggurat. He found her easily enough in her grandiose bedroom, curled up on the bed, her mind a low glimmer of pure misery. Little Mirnatha was in there, too, not saying anything, just miserable on behalf of her beloved older sister. In the corridors outside, servants mooched about, sullen and trepidatious. Julan sat in one of the day lounges, trying to radiate a composed persona, but he couldn’t keep the distress he felt inside from leaking through, the concern for his daughter.

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard groaned in disbelief. “I am such an idiot.”

“You didn’t know,” Kanseen repeated.

He shook his head, banishing the small hall from his mind. “Kristabel?” his directed longtalk asked gently.

On the bed, she tensed and then curled up tighter. Her mind’s strongest shield tightened around her thoughts.

“Kristabel, please, I’m so sorry.”

It was no use. She was completely closed to him.

“Fuck!” He smashed his fist down on the bench, unconsciously putting his telekinetic strength behind it. The ancient wood splintered with an almighty crack. Both halves of the bench hit the ground. A small sea of paperwork skidded down onto the floor. He stood up. “I’m going to see her.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good—”

“My mistake,” he was almost shouting now. “I will put this right. I have to.”

“Edeard.”

The gentleness of her tone caught him by surprise. She put her arms around him and kissed his brow. “The Lady’s luck be with you, Waterwalker. You deserve her.”

“Thanks,” he said, shamefaced. “Er, any other customs I should know about? Before I … you know.”

“Only that it’s a custom, not a law. Go get her.”

He perceived the two ge-eagles as soon as he stormed out of the station. They watched him carefully as he made his way over Arrival Canal into Silvarum. Someone was very interested in his movements. He recognized at least one of the ge-eagles from the aviary at the ziggurat. His farsight skipped ahead. Homelt was standing outside the main gates, marshaling several family guards. Armed guards—in the daytime, no less. The gate itself was closed and locked, as were all the other entrances into the mansion. It was Lorin who was organizing everyone, striding around the main courtyard issuing orders.

“You little shit,” Edeard muttered under his breath. Lorin was making no effort to conceal his eagerness at sealing up the vast ziggurat mansion.

The constable guards on the bridge between Silvarum and Haxpen gave Edeard a respectful salute as he hurried over. He returned it casually. His longtalk whispered into several ge-monkeys in the Culverit mansion, stirring long-dormant amorous thoughts that were wickedly misdirected. Five of them began to scamper across the courtyard behind the main gate, their affection for Lorin unbound.

Citizens strolling along the streets outside the ziggurat heard peculiar squeaks of desire mingling with Lorin’s outraged and downright fearful yells. Agitated, frightened thoughts were broadcast wildly as clothes got torn. Servants and guards came hurrying over, adding to the physical and emotional commotion. It took several minutes for the ge-monkeys to be calmed and led away. There was so much noise that even Homelt peered in to watch in bemusement as Lorin’s unwelcome new suitors were coaxed back to their nests. He looked around the courtyard thoughtfully, then closed the big main gate again, trying to suppress a smile.

When Lorin recovered his dignity and a servant handed him a new cloak to cover his ripped sleeves, he cast his farsight out beyond the walls again, but to no avail. The family’s ge-eagles were now circling aimlessly above Birmingham Pool.

“Where is the Waterwalker?” he demanded. No one could tell him.

It wasn’t quite the grand gesture entrance Edeard had hoped for. Even though he’d slipped through the ground-level walls with no problem, he still had ten flights of those ever-damned Makkathran-style stairs to climb. And he was in a hurry, fearful that every second of delay would act against him.

When he finally passed through the wall into Kristabel’s bedroom, he was nearly breathless from the exertion. Kristabel was still on the bed, sitting at one end, shoulders slumped, head in her hands, with her thick mane of hair hanging down over her knees. The broad glass doors to the hortus were open; Mirnatha was outside, bending over the vine-clad wall to look down on the western districts. Edeard abandoned his concealment and closed the glass doors.

Mirnatha spun around, her little mouth open in shock. Her fright vanished when she saw it was Edeard who’d materialized in the room, replaced with immediate indignation. Her hands jabbed into her sides as she glared at him in affront.

“It’s all right,” Kristabel told her with a croaky voice and unsteady longtalk. “Walk around the hortus for me, please.”

Mirnatha gave Edeard a final glare, then stomped off.

Edeard went down on his knees in front of Kristabel and laced his fingers together as if in prayer. “I am so sorry,” he said. “Please, marry me. I didn’t know before.”

Kristabel combed some of her hair away from her face. Her eyes were red and puffy; by contrast, her cheeks had paled as if she were ill. “Marry you?”

“Please?”

Confusion clouded her gaze. “You didn’t know?”

“This week and a day thing. I had no idea, I swear. Please believe me. I would never try to deceive you in any way, let alone this. I love you, Kristabel.”

“You didn’t know?” Her voice had risen in hope.

“No. By all the Lady holds precious, I did not know.”

Her tears began to flow again, but now her mouth had lifted in a smile. “You didn’t know?” It was nearly a wail.

Edeard bowed his head in suffering. “Gache fungi,” he pleaded.

Kristabel started to laugh, but it swiftly turned to sobbing. She swatted his head, and then somehow they were clutching desperately at each other.

“I thought …” She wept. “I thought you’d … I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t understand. After that week—everything we did, everything we shared—I didn’t know why.”

“Shush,” he urged her, and held her tighter. “Shush. It was a stupid mistake and all my fault. And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. I promise. Now I’m going to go to your father right this second and ask his permission. I know I’ve only got a day. That’s”—he paused and gulped—“if you’ll have me.”

“No,” she said.

“What?” he demanded, stricken.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Sorry. Yes, of course I want to marry you. Look at the state I’m in at the thought of not doing it. But no, I don’t want you to go to Father.”

“Why?”

“Because this is guilt talking.”

“No, it’s not. I want to marry you. I can’t believe you actually want me, but if you think I’m going to be stupid again, then I—”

“Listen,” she said, and grasped his hands, forcing them to be still. “Look at me.”

Edeard did as he was told. Even with tears all over her face she was bewitchingly beautiful.

“When I asked you to spend the week with me, I knew what I was asking,” she said. “I gave you what I thought was a choice—the traditional ‘a week and the day’ or just become lovers that night there and then, with no obligation. You went for the week, which in itself tells me a lot about you, that you’d respect me rather than settle for a quick tumble. But you didn’t know what that was supposed to be, what it meant. You weren’t thinking of marriage. And that applies now as much as it did then. You haven’t thought this through. Believe me, I have, and I know what I want. But Edeard, you’ve known for about … how long?”

“Kanseen just explained it to me,” he admitted.

“An hour, then.”

“No! Not that long. I came right away, I promise.”

“All right, half an hour. Edeard, you don’t make a decision like this in half an hour. You’re doing it because of a huge misunderstanding, and you very gallantly don’t want to upset me. Which only makes you more adorable, but it still doesn’t make this the right thing for you.”

“That’s all wrong. I want to marry you. I do.”

“Fine. Did Kanseen explain why we have this custom?”

“To see if we’re okay physically.” He cleared his throat selfconsciously. “I think we passed that test, didn’t we?”

“We did. Very much so. But did she say why we needed to find that out first?”

“Because if we marry, we’ll spend a long time together, centuries probably. Everything has to be right.”

“Yes, and even that’s no guarantee, especially if we marry as young as we are. A hundred years is a long time to sustain love, let alone two hundred. So do you see now? I’d thought about this from the moment we met, and I knew it was the right thing to do for me to ask you. But you hadn’t thought about it. You still haven’t except for this wild impulse. Edeard, I need you to think clearly about what you’re asking. I need that from you. Please.”

“Oh.” He sat back on his ankles. “Of course,” he said formally.

She grinned and peered closely at him. “And that doesn’t mean you spend a week trying to work out how long you have to wait to make it seem like you’ve considered everything properly. Understand?”

“Yes.” Edeard could actually feel the warmth of the blush rise up his cheeks. “Lady, what is life going to be like with you?”

She smiled back and kissed his nose. “As difficult as I can make it.”

“That’s fair.” He held her head so he could kiss her properly.

They spent a long time in a soft embrace before finally moving apart. Edeard’s farsight revealed a highly agitated Lorin urging Homelt and four armed guards up the third flight of stairs. Fit though they all were, it was hard going.

“Your uncle’s on his way,” Edeard murmured.

“And Mirnatha is back,” she said spryly.

Edeard turned around to see the little girl pressed against the glass, peering through. Then his farsight caught Julan approaching down the central corridor.

“Oh, Lady,” he groaned.

“I’ll deal with Daddy,” she said, and directed her longtalk to him.

Edeard allowed the glass doors to open again.

“Are you sorry?” Mirnatha asked.

“Very sorry,” Edeard assured her. “Your sister and I have made up now.”

“I knew you would.”

“I wish I’d known.”

She tilted her head up to scrutinize him. As he squirmed under the gaze, Edeard finally understood the phrase “six going on sixty.”

“If I was older, I’d have you for my husband,” Mirnatha decided.

“Er … that’s good.”

Kristabel kissed her sister on the top of her head. “Once more around the hortus.”

“Krissy!”

“Go. Now.”

Mirnatha gave her a sullen glare and pranced out.

Kristabel smiled after her. “I already feel sorry for her husband.”

“Your father?” Edeard queried.

“Placated. For the moment. We’re both going to have to talk to him.”

Edeard tried to smile supportively.

“He’ll understand. More than anyone.” She went over to study herself in a full-length mirror. “Oh, my sweet Lady. Look at me.”

“You look fabulous.”

“That’s very loyal. If not very realistic.” Kristabel directed a longtalk summons to her maid. “I’m going to get ready to face people again. I will be some time.” She started teasing strands of hair out of the tangle.

“Okay.” Now, as he started looking around the bedroom properly, he saw that what Mirnatha was to pink, Kristabel was to frilly lace trimmings. It was slightly unnerving.

“You can wait if you’d like,” she said.

“I would. Yes.”

“Edeard, not in here.”

“Ah right.”

Kristabel found a set of clips on a dresser. “And Edeard.”

“Yes?”

“What exactly did happen to poor Uncle Lorin down there in the courtyard?”

“I’ve no idea,” he said innocently, and hurriedly closed the door behind him.

Captain Larose was waiting outside the Jeavons station entrance. Just seeing him in his ceremonial blue and scarlet jacket, with his sword and pistol hanging from his white leather belt and his back held perfectly straight, took Edeard back to the day he’d first encountered a militia officer on the road to Makkathran. Larose had the same aristocratic arrogance as that patrol officer, as well. Five ordinary soldiers accompanied him.

“Waterwalker,” Larose said as Edeard approached.

“Captain?”

“Mayor Owain requests that you attend him.”

Edeard didn’t know what to make of that at all. “I see.”

“Excellent.” Larose turned to his soldiers. “Fall in, chaps.”

“Why the escort?” Edeard asked.

Captain Larose smiled thinly. “The Mayor does rather enjoy the trappings of office. He says it helps remind people of the order of things.”

“Oh.”

“Personally, I find all this pomp and ceremony a real pain in the ass. My mess staff spent half the night getting my uniforms ready.”

Edeard resisted the impulse to look down and check his own tunic. He was still wearing the ones he’d bought during his probationary period. They were starting to show signs of wear and tear.

“Where are we going?” Edeard asked as they started to walk along Chates Street toward the Brotherhood Canal. He’d assumed they’d be going to the Orchard Palace.

“The militia stables,” Larose said. “The Pholas and Zelda regiment is leaving for Talence province today, and it’s customary for the Mayor to see the troops off.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s happening a lot now. I’m probably going to get deployment orders myself soon.” He gave Edeard a rueful grin. “Not exactly what I signed up for, but one has a duty, yes?”

“Yes,” Edeard agreed promptly.

“Good man. You’ve been quite an inspiration to people lately. It’s about time someone brought the gangs to heel. Things simply cannot go on as they are.”

Edeard was mildly surprised. He’d assumed the captain wouldn’t really approve of him; he’d met so many arrogant useless family sons that these days he simply classed them all as beneath contempt. But for all his airs, at least Larose seemed to have some awareness of what was going on in the world.

The wooden stables in the middle of Tycho’s wide meadowland were bustling with activity. At one end, the regiment was mounting up and forming ranks: two hundred officers and soldiers on horseback, dressed in their full uniforms and regalia. Edeard had to admit it was a rousing sight. The purple and green insignia of the regiment was prominent, never more so than on the elaborately feathered headgear of the Colonel who sat astride his midnight-black terrestrial horse with two groomed ge-wolves keeping flank.

Down at the other end of the stables, Edeard’s farsight observed the mess staff and ge-monkeys getting ready in an altogether less structured manner. Nearly forty wagons were loaded with supplies, with the final bales and boxes being piled hurriedly on board under the cursing of the quartermaster and his aides. Two smaller covered wagons contained arms and munitions, each guarded by five soldiers and its own pack of ge-wolves. A small flock of livestock was being herded by ge-dogs, while chickens and geese squawked from inside their cages. It looked like a much more difficult operation than getting the soldiers ready.

Mayor Owain was standing on a wooden platform at the end of the stables, surrounded by a gaggle of advisers and three other Masters. He wore his maroon and sapphire robes with a startlingly white fur trim, the hood loose over his shoulder. As always, Owain’s mind was perfectly shielded as his facial expression radiated interest in the vista before him.

“Not long,” Larose muttered to Edeard as they waited at the foot of the stairs of the platform.

The regimental bugler sounded formation, and the horses quickly arranged themselves in front of the Mayor’s platform. Ten ge-eagles settled on the stable roofs. The Colonel saluted from his saddle.

“I wish you good fortune on your endeavor,” Mayor Owain said to the assembled regiment. “I am confident you will restore order to

Talence province. While bandits may find it easy to elude local farmers and sheriffs, they will soon discover it is altogether different to run and hide from a stalwart man of the regiment riding after them. It is with pride that I see you leave today, knowing that our city is the symbol of hope that all on Querencia turn to in their moment of deepest need. I know that above all, the militia can be relied on to complete their task with honor.”

The Colonel led his troops in a hearty three cheers for the Mayor, who applauded them back. Then the bugler sounded slow advance, and the regiment began its ride to the City Gate and its undertaking beyond. Their ge-eagles took flight, soaring out toward the crystal wall.

Owain stood on the platform, his face perfectly composed, until the last man rode past. It was only when the first of the wagons began to roll out that he turned and made his way down the steps.

“Your Honor,” Edeard said courteously as the Mayor reached the ground.

“Waterwalker, thank you for coming. I hope it’s not too inconvenient.”

“No, sir.”

Owain actually smiled. “Ah, polite as well as effective. How long before you’re our Chief Constable, eh?”

“I don’t think Walsfol has anything to worry about, Your Honor.”

“We shall see. Walk with me, please.” He waved a hand at the gaggle of advisers, who fell back discreetly; Captain Larose and the soldiers took up position just behind them. Owain chose a narrow track that led back toward the Outer Circle Canal around Majate. The meadowland on either side was just about deserted.

“I regret that we seem to have started off on the wrong foot, young Waterwalker. I blame myself; you are Finitan’s protégé, after all.”

“He supports banishment, Your Honor.”

“Yes. So do I.”

“I didn’t know that, Your Honor.”

“Still polite even in the face of provocation. You are too kind, Waterwalker. You see me as someone who has opposed your clever exclusion warrants and who of course will fight Finitan and his proposal.”

“It does seem that way, Your Honor, yes.”

“I’m sure it does. That is because you are young and—your pardon—can as yet only visualize short-term benefits. Do you really think, do you believe in your own heart, that I do not want this city rid of crime?”

“No.”

“Precisely. Well, I thank you for that courtesy. I actually rather like the idea of the exclusion warrants. You are to be congratulated on implementing them, and against such strong political opposition.”

“Given what I understand of this city’s politics, a policy that you opposed would always gain support from other quarters.”

Owain grinned smoothly. “Which brings us to today. What did you think of the regiment?”

Edeard glanced back toward the stables. The last of the wagons had left the wooden buildings. Animals bleated as they were herded along behind. “I think the bandits will be in a lot of trouble.” The Jeavons station’s ge-eagle was spiraling lazily above City Gate, showing Edeard five new wagons belonging to the Weapons Guild. They were parked to one side of the road, waiting. He knew they would follow the regiment all the way to Talence province, where they would sell pistols to the frightened farmers and villagers, profiting Owain’s guild still further, just as Jessile had said. It wasn’t a crime, he acknowledged, but that didn’t make it right, either.

“Yes,” Owain said. “But why are they there in the first place?”

“They are everywhere.”

“Indeed they are. The bandits and the gangs are symptomatic of our society’s failings, Waterwalker. That is what I am truly opposed to.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Your Honor.”

“If you banish the gang leadership from the city, where will they go?”

“Beyond the borders of the farthest province or some distant island; that’s what I had in mind.”

“Of course. It would seem humane; I’d expect nothing less from a man of principle like you. We’re all guilty of listening to the city’s tittle-tattle about you, Waterwalker, but not once have I heard it said you lack integrity, and for that I thank the Lady. But have you considered what will occur a year, or even ten, after they begin their banishment? The resentment? The lure of returning? If they didn’t come back here, they would surely join with the bandits.”

“So what is your proposal? I assume that’s what we are discussing.”

“We are. My proposal, as you put it, is that we do not treat the gangs and the bandits in isolation. We all live on one world. We must become one nation. Our problems must be dealt with in unison. The militia regiments out in the countryside, the constables here in the city. When we have rounded up all of the miscreants, then we can exile them in perpetuity. I like your idea of a remote island; that would certainly make them containable.”

“So what’s the difference between you and Finitan?”

“Finitan thinks only of the city, of short-term solutions. Don’t tell me you haven’t worried about what happens to people after banishment.”

“I’ve considered it, Your Honor,” Edeard admitted. “We seem to be making things worse on the Iguru, what with all the highwaymen; that’s why I wanted banishment.”

“But do you see we can’t treat these problems in isolation?”

“I understand both problems have to be confronted, yes.”

“I am happy to hear that. Unfortunately, the easy one is the city. You have shown us how it can be achieved, Waterwalker. Nobody doubts you will ultimately succeed, not even poor old Buate.”

“I’d settle for Bise capitulating.”

Owain laughed. “Don’t worry. When the time comes, I will stand over Master Bise personally and ensure he signs the exclusion warrants for Sampalok.”

“Your Honor?”

“It is simple politics. Master Bise believes he can gain more influence by supporting me. In Council it pays me to encourage such support. Ultimately, Bise will accept the inevitable, and his nefarious allies will be purged from our streets.”

“That’s … a relief to know.”

“I thought it would be. So, while not asking you to switch your support, for Finitan is your patron and I would not want to foster such disloyalty, do you at least agree with some of my objectives?”

“Yes, Your Honor, I do.”

“Thank you.”

“Why can you not reach a concord with Master Finitan?”

“Sadly, we have been adversaries for too long. Neither of us trusts the other. And I have to say I will campaign long and hard to retain my office no matter what we agree or disagree on in private. Such is the nature of humanity, especially flawed specimens like us ancient conservative Masters. Do you think it likely that Finitan will back down?”

“No.”

“Precisely. I wanted to reassure you of my own goals, because whoever wins this election, it is you who will be fighting the gangs on the streets.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“I admit, knowing you will be working for the city is of considerable relief to me. The constables have performed little short of a miracle since the day you walked on water. And that resounding victory over dear little Mirnatha’s captors was extraordinary. I admit to joining the cheers of joy along Great Major Canal that day. I ask the Lady that she be equally generous in granting the militia victory. Theirs will be the more difficult task, and the one bogged down in politics.”

“How is that?” Edeard asked. They’d nearly reached the Outer Circle Canal. Up ahead he could see the bronze and jade bridge that Rah himself had commissioned.

“The countryside wishes to enjoy the benefits of the city without having to pay the cost,” Owain said. “Five times since last summer I have dispatched our regiments to aid desperate provincial governors. And what payment have we received? A grudgingly given reimbursement for our basic costs. To what avail? The regiments ultimately have to come home, leaving the lands open once again to infiltration by the bandits. It is nonsense, a gesture that achieves nothing in the long term. If we are to achieve stability and an end to this dreadful felony, then the provinces will have to pay taxes to Makkathran for organizing their defense. Militias will have to be stationed permanently and strategically across the countryside. Such an achievement will require tremendous organization; one province cannot be favored above another. All costs—and they will be considerable—must be borne equally. The rule of law available to all without prejudice. Both the Master in his mansion and the farmer in his cottage will have to answer to the same authority.”

“One nation,” Edeard said.

“Precisely. At the moment city and provinces are naught but a loose affiliate. And look where it has taken us, to the verge of anarchy. To face this new threat, we have to consolidate the forces of civilization, to strengthen our boundary and enforce our justice. Only in a nation where equality reigns can this happen.”

They walked over the bridge together. Edeard’s mind was awhirl trying to take in all the Mayor had said. Standing in the shade thrown by the sprawling conglomeration of Parliament House’s buildings, Owain faced Edeard.

“I hope you no longer consider me an enemy, Waterwalker.”

“I never really did, Your Honor.”

“That gladdens me. Maybe one day, when your generation has risen to high office, you will extinguish the vanity and foolishness of petty politics that so bedevil us today. I wish you luck in that.” He inclined his head and walked into the tower housing the Guild of Clerks. His entourage went with him; Captain Larose smiled knowingly as he passed Edeard.

“Ho, Lady,” Edeard exhaled. He turned and made his way slowly around the base of Parliament House and toward the bridge that would take him back into Jeavons. So whoever wins, they’ll support me against the gangs.

Despite everything the Mayor had said, he still hoped it would be Finitan. Though the idea of a penal colony on a remote island was an intriguing one.

Of all the people in Makkathran, Nanitte was the one Edeard never would have expected to see waiting for him in the street outside the tenement. But there she was when he made his way home that evening.

“Can I talk to you?” she asked as he reached the tenement’s entrance.

Edeard’s farsight swept around. He wasn’t just searching for people he knew (this wouldn’t look good to Macsen, for a start) but trying to see who Buate had watching. “You’ve got one minute,” he said after confirming that there was nothing immediately suspicious.

“Not out here; this is too important.” Nanitte’s voice was brittle; her old self-confidence had gone.

Edeard took a good look. Beneath her dark-blue cloak, she wore a low-cut green and white dress, with her hair arranged in long waves. Now, out here in the sunlight, he could see the heavy makeup on her face. Even that didn’t cover the bruise completely. Her lip had recently been split as well.

“All right,” Edeard said reluctantly. “Five minutes.”

Nanitte looked around the inside of the maisonette with interest. Her hand slid over the cold alcove, fingers touching the milk jug and fruit. “It is all different in here, just like they said it was,” she said as she walked over to the bed. A hand tested the firmness of the spongy substance.

“Who said?”

“Girls I’ve talked to. On Ivarl’s behalf, of course. They talk freely to me rather than him.”

Edeard grunted. “Right.”

“He was obsessed with you.”

“And his brother?”

Nanitte slumped. “I hate him.”

Edeard indicated her face. “He hits you.”

“Among other things, yes.”

“Leave him.”

She laughed bitterly. “You said that with a straight face. You really do come from another place, don’t you?”

“Probably.”

“I want to leave him,” she said. “Those things you said to him the other night. That’s all going to happen, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Even if Owain gets elected; I was talking to him today.”

“So I’d be thrown out of the city.”

“That depends how deep your involvement is.”

“I was surprised I’m not on your warrants already.”

“We’re concentrating on the violent ones for now.”

“It wouldn’t be much of a life for me out there, not like that, not the whore of an exile.”

“Why are you here, Nanitte? What have you got to tell me?”

“He’s going to buy guns, a lot of guns.”

“Who from?”

She gave him a thin smile. “If I left now, by myself, I thought perhaps I could go to one of the big towns beyond the Iguru plain, somewhere no one would know me or what I am. I could buy a small house or some land. If I had that, I could find a husband, a nice provincial man. I’d be able to make sure he loved me. Whores make the best wives; did you know that? I’m not quite sure I could do the whole housemistress and children thing for him, but we’d be happy, and all this, my life, would be gone.”

“I wish Buate thought like that.”

“No, you don’t. You’re enjoying this≔ it makes you live. You need to see him defeated; you want Makkathran liberated from the gangs he controls. You need an ending, Waterwalker. Throwing them out just so they can drift back into the city over months and years won’t be good enough for you. The Waterwalker requires finality. I don’t know what you’ll do to achieve it, but I know I don’t want to be here when you do. Out of you and Buate, I think I’m actually more afraid of you.”

“That’s a very nice summary of me. Shame it’s not particularly accurate.”

Nanitte glanced through the archway into the bathroom, her eyebrow rising at the sight of the perfectly flat steps leading down into the bathing pool. “It’s not just Mothers who can see the future, you know.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what you know about the guns? I’ll take you to the City Gate myself. He’ll never be able to stop you.”

“And how would I get my house and my land?”

“I thought … You must have money.”

“I was a dancer once. A long time ago. That’s all I ever really wanted to be. Then one day Ivarl visited the show I was in. That was it. He knew the theater owner, of course, and I was young and stupid, stupid enough to believe his promises. After I’d been with him for a while, I realized that was it: I’d become a part of that life; there was no way back. No theater owner would ever hire me unless he told them to. I gave up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So there you are, Waterwalker. I’m not just some girl working at the House of Blue Petals; I’m his. Do you know what it is to be owned like that? To be less than some genistar?”

“I won’t patronize you by saying ‘yes.’ ”

“Thank you. So now you know. If you want me to tell you when and where he’s getting the guns, you have to pay me. That’s what all men do: They pay me for what I’ve got.”

“I’ll have to ask my station captain or maybe Finitan.”

She came to stand in front of him, as self-assured as any Master. “You don’t have that much time. I need the money today. I want to be gone by morning.”

“There’s a reason these things take time to arrange.”

“I told you of my dream, nothing more. We both know I can survive anywhere. Is that what you want for me, to keep on doing what I do? I thought you were going to save us all, Waterwalker.”

“I haven’t got that kind of coinage.”

“Kristabel does.”

“I can’t ask her.”

“Why not? Actually, why aren’t the two of you engaged? All of Makkathran wants to know that. You can tell me. I’m leaving, remember.”

“Stop this.”

Nanitte discarded her cloak as she went over to the bed and bent across it; her hands slid over the sheets. “If you really want her, I can show you how to make your next week and the day work perfectly.”

“Get off the bed.”

“You know I’m good. Who do you think showed Ranalee the physical side of her ability?”

Edeard nearly reached out to grab her with his third hand, only just managing to keep his temper in check.

Nanitte straightened up. “You see what I am, Waterwalker, how low I am? They made me like this. And now I can’t go back, not after talking to you. You saw what happened to Ivarl, and he wasn’t even turning on them like I am. So now you have to ask yourself: How badly do you want them? Bad enough to ask Kristabel for the kind of coinage she would spend on shoes to match one of her party dresses? Or are you just going to let this opportunity slip away because it’s all turned too personal for you?”

“This is not personal.”

“Good. Then I’ll just wait here while you go and get my money.”

“We can’t trust her,” Macsen said the next morning when Edeard called them into the small hall.

“Why not?” Edeard asked, trying to be the reasonable one. He’d felt terrible going to Kristabel for money. She of course had made light of it, saying how much she wanted to help. Her understanding didn’t make him feel any better.

Nanitte had counted the coins in the bag he brought back to the maisonette, unable to disguise her surprise at how much there was. “I should have done this a long time ago,” she said.

“Just tell me about the guns,” he said. And she did: the meeting in Buate’s office that she’d been excluded from, the men she’d never seen before with accents that didn’t come from any city district, how Buate had started talking about constable-killer pistols and evening the score.

“Because she’s Nanitte,” Macsen said, not understanding why that wasn’t enough.

“I could sense she was telling the truth about the guns,” Edeard said.

“I’d be more concerned about the rest of it,” Boyd said. “Your pardon, Edeard, but you don’t have the greatest instinct when it comes to honesty. You always want to find the best in people.”

Edeard gave his tall friend a surprised glance. “All right, so what could she have been lying about? The worst case is she made an ass of me and ran off with a lot of coinage. How does that put us in trouble at the exchange?”

“What was that phrase you used?” Dinlay said mildly. “Oh, yes: ‘the constable-killer gun.’ ”

Edeard scratched the back of his head, wishing that part hadn’t existed. “Yes,” he conceded. Could that mean repeat-fire guns? Nanitte said they talked with a foreign accent.

Part of him wished it were true, wished he could finally prove that Ashwell’s destruction had come at the hands of an unknown clan from somewhere else in the world. “But if that part of her story is genuine,” he said immediately, “then we really need to intercept the handover before these weapons get distributed to the ordinary gang members on the street. If they get their hands on them, we’ll be facing a bloodbath.”

“Good point,” Macsen said grudgingly.

“They know we can conceal ourselves,” Boyd said. “I noticed a lot more dogs in Sampalok when we were following up the Charyau thing. Most of the gang members have one these days.”

“I can protect us from a lot of bullets,” Edeard said. “And you know we can escape in ways they could never dream of.”

The rest of the squad looked at one another.

“Okay,” Kanseen said. “But if these pistols are anything like Nanitte claims, we’re going to need some reliable backup.”

“I’ll talk to Chae and Ronark,” Edeard said.

Two nights later Edeard was wishing he had a little more confidence in the five squads of constables who were patrolling the Padua and Zelda districts. The patrols were meant to appear purely random, following the whim of their corporals and sergeants. To anyone with a mistrustful mind they were highly suspicious.

Or am I being too paranoid?

Whatever, he and the squad had concealed themselves inside the base of a skewed tower in Eyrie, not too far from the Lady’s central church. The tower next to them was supposed to be where the exchange would take place. Edeard didn’t feel confident enough to wait there no matter how good his concealment talent was.

People were wending their way around the lofty twisted towers on their way to the huge church for the evening service. It was good cover for the gun exchange, he admitted, especially as the Pythia had refused to employ exclusion warrants for Eyrie.

“That’s the third time,” Kanseen’s directed longtalk whispered. She gifted them the image of the ge-eagle that was swooping silently around the tower outside. Then it darted in through a high curving entrance and did a fast circuit of the huge empty space inside.

The tower chosen for the exchange was one of the tallest in Eyrie, a monstrous kinked spire whose jutting vertical ribs changed from smoky gray at the foot, through a gentle amethyst, to a sullen carmine at the top, where eight tapering spikes curved up around the edges of its slanted platform. The open chamber at the bottom had three entrances; most towers had only one. Several lengthy stalagmites and stalactites of mauve-tinted crystal cluttered the interior, while at the center a broad smooth shaft connected the black floor to the apex of the cavelike ceiling fifty feet above; a single narrow opening led to the spiral stair that wound the entire height of the tower.

“Get a load of this,” Boyd said. He’d sensed someone outside with a terrestrial dog on a lead. The dog was sniffing the ground as it was walked slowly around the tower.

“Isn’t that Paral?” Macsen queried. “He’s got an exclusion warrant against him.”

Whoever it was, the man with the dog walked away toward the bridge back to Fiacre. A couple of constables in ordinary clothes sauntered casually after him.

Orange light was beginning to shine out of cracks in the barklike tower walls as the sun slid below the horizon. Another ge-eagle made a swift pass through the tower’s chamber.

Edeard kept his farsight focused on a gondola that had pulled up at a nearby mooring platform. Four men with a strong seclusion haze stepped off it, carrying large iron-bound wooden chests between them. His farsight could just perceive the shadowy shapes of solid metal inside. Another gondola moored, the men on that one carrying smaller boxes. “The ammunition,” he muttered.

The church shut its wide doors as the evening service began; bright orange light shone out of its roof dome and hundreds of windows along the three wings. A choir began to sing softly. Nearly a dozen people wandering around outside began to make their way toward the tall tower.

“Oh, great,” Dinlay moaned. One of the people stepping through the swaths of orange illumination cast by the towers was a very cocky Medath.

Edeard grinned unseen. “He’ll die of fright when we appear.”

The men from the gondolas made their way into the tower, coming together to face Medath’s group.

“I make that fifteen of them,” Macsen said.

Edeard was trying to resolve the shapes inside the chests. They were definitely pistols, but not complex enough to be the repeat-fire types that had been used at Ashwell. Thank the Lady. Then he recognized them. “Okay, I’ve seen these pistols before. They’re the ones Ivarl and his people used against me on the night of the fire. They have very large caliber bullets, but I can definitely ward them off.”

“Then we’d better stop them from opening the chests,” Boyd said.

“Move out,” Edeard said. As he hurried silently out of their hiding place and toward the tower ahead, he called Chae. “Move in now. There’s fifteen here, but they’ll have watchers.”

“Already spotted three,” Chae reassured him. “We’re coming.”

Their deployment plan was simple enough. Dinlay and Boyd would take one tower entrance, Kanseen and Macsen another, and Edeard would go in through the third.

“They’re coming.”

Edeard paused, frowning at the clear longtalk. He couldn’t tell where it had come from; it certainly wasn’t from any of the squad. Up ahead, the minds of the gang members were radiating alarm. Their farsight scoured around.

He strode up to the threshold, listening to the low anxious voices echoing off the mauve stalagmites and curious crannies in the chamber walls. The two groups were huddled together near the central shaft, with sentries positioned near each entrance.

“Ready,” Kanseen’s longtalk announced.

The sentry nearest Edeard swung around, sending his farsight prying at the entrance Kanseen was blocking.

Edeard stepped into the tower and dropped his concealment. His shield hardened around his body.

The sentry gaped in dismay. “Waterwalker,” he yelled with voice and mind.

Edeard’s third hand reached out as he ran forward, yanking the two cases of pistols away from the gang members. They tried to prize them back but lacked the strength.

Medath and his colleagues drew their pistols. Medath already had one of the long-barreled weapons. Edeard snarled in consternation. Two of the gang members started firing. Edeard dropped the cases on the ground outside the tower and concentrated on protecting himself. Men were running for the two open entrances. The first one to reach the opening covered by Kanseen and Macsen yelled in shock as Kanseen appeared abruptly barely a yard in front of him. Her third hand punched directly against his temple, felling him instantly. She vanished. More shots were fired at the air she had occupied a second before. Edeard deflected a whole swarm of bullets; then people were playing chase around the stalagmites.

“Stop this,” Edeard bellowed, his voice reverberating loudly around the chamber. “We know who you are. Several squads of constables are closing in. Our ge-eagles are flying outside; you cannot escape.”

A whole volley of bullets lashed at him. He shook his head in dismay. Dinlay rushed past, half-visible as he pursued two men. Someone went sprawling, his inertia assisted by telekinesis so that his head smacked into a stalagmite. Edeard snatched two gang members and crashed them together. They fell limply onto the floor. Two more found themselves leaving the ground and screamed wildly.

“Get up here.”

It was the same longtalk voice as before, cutting cleanly through the shouts and mental babble inside the chamber. Edeard looked around zealously, trying to see who it was. His farsight caught Medath rushing into the opening at the foot of the central pillar.

Four of the gang were now standing together, their hands held high in surrender, pistols abandoned at their feet. Boyd appeared directly in front of them, his pistol raised and ready. More pistol shots echoed around the chamber. Then there was a pain-racked howl that overrode all the other voices. Macsen flicked into visibility behind a man who was clutching his shoulder; blood poured through his fingers. Macsen pulled his pistol away from the wound. “Next time it will be a head shot,” he announced loudly. “Now stop this≔ you are under arrest.” He vanished again.

Edeard raced over to the central pillar. On the way his third hand picked up three gang members, who immediately stopped struggling. He dropped them beside Dinlay. The sound of footsteps reverberated out of the pillar’s opening. When Edeard looked inside, he saw the spiral stair winding upward.

“Oh, come on,” he yelled up at Medath. “There’s nowhere to go.” But who told him to go up there? Could they really see through our concealment? With a growl of anger, he started running up the steps. Almost immediately, he slipped on a cumbersome curve, banging his knee badly. The burst of pain was enough to stretch a mist of red sparkles across his vision. Medath’s footsteps were becoming fainter as Edeard scrambled upright again. “If that’s how you want to do it,” he muttered, and set off again.

“Edeard?” Kanseen’s voice echoed up the stairs.

“Medath went up here. I’ll get him. You hang on down there.”

The pillar walls were incredibly thick, restricting his farsight more than he liked. He could just make out the constable squads swarming toward the tower. In the chamber below, his squadmates surrounded the defeated gang members. Above him was a moving glimmer that he knew was Medath’s mind.

Around and around the pair of them went. A tiny thread of orange light twinkled out of the narrow vault of the roof above Edeard, just enough to illuminate the horrible curving stairs. He had to stretch his legs at each semijump upward. How Medath kept up such a pace was beyond understanding. Edeard’s heart was hammering loudly, his lungs burning inside his chest. Sweat was pouring down his back and legs. When he was two-thirds of the way up, he simply had to slow down, which only increased his anger. Medath started to pull ahead.

By the time Edeard reached the last spiral, he was practically walking. Each breath had to be hauled down into his lungs with a big heave of his chest. Sweat glued his hair against his forehead. Concentration was difficult. Nonetheless, he managed to send his farsight out onto the circular platform that topped the tower. The eight spikes that rose from the edge stabbed up into the sky, their slightly crooked tips peaking another forty feet above the platform floor.

Medath was out there, standing ten feet in front of the central cone where the stair exited. He was already aiming the pistol at the opening, waiting for Edeard to emerge.

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard wheezed in dismay. The anger that had carried him so far was now diluted by fatigue. I should have just waited at the bottom; hunger would have brought him down eventually. He started up the last few steps. It would be easy enough to deal with Medath. But then, Medath would know that. And I still don’t know who that longtalker was. Or where they are.

As if to reinforce his concern, a clammy feeling of trepidation began to manifest itself. It was so strong that he had to pause again. Something was badly wrong; he knew that without knowing why. He took a more cautious step upward and began a thorough survey of the platform. He froze. Medath wasn’t alone out there on the platform. The floor was feeling the weight of four more pairs of feet, yet Edeard’s farsight could find nothing.

“Nanitte,” he spit as his anger rose again. Oh, crap; Macsen will never let this one drop.

When he was almost up to the exit, Edeard concealed himself again and asked the city to let him through the wall. He emerged out on the platform five feet to the side of the exit. The first thing that surprised him was the wind. Down on the ground it was perfectly calm; up here the air pushed against him. He leaned into it. His four concealed foes were standing together over by one of the spikes. Edeard could see nothing against the pale wash of nebula light that shimmered across the heavens above Makkathran.

As quietly as he could, he made his way over to them. He passed within a couple of yards of Medath, who was still staring at the stair exit, his long-barreled pistol held steady. Once Edeard was past the comically alert gang man, he realized the platform floor actually slanted down toward the edge. A tinge of what must have been vertigo produced a shiver along his legs. He refused to let it get the better of him and crept forward.

The feet began to shift. At first, the two foes at the front took a step backward; then they all began to move closer to the spike. Edeard grinned savagely and carried on after them.

He was only five yards away when something struck him with colossal force, impacting on his left side, just below the bottom of his rib cage. Edeard cried out as much from surprise as from pain. His concealment faltered as he fought for breath. Medath swung around. Another blow slammed into Edeard, knocking him to the floor.

“Shoot him,” a longtalk whisper ordered.

How did they see me?

Medath fired. The bullet almost got through Edeard’s shield. A powerful telekinetic shove sent him skidding down the slight incline. He had a terrible flashback to the day by Birmingham Pool when Arminel had pushed him over the edge. Lady, help!

“Again.”

The bullet struck him, as did a further telekinetic blow. Edeard was shunted over the edge of the platform. His arms flailed wildly, but straining fingers missed anything solid.

“Can you fly, Waterwalker?”

Edeard plummeted downward, screaming all the way. He instinctively tried to grip the tower with his third hand. He could even feel the force lock into the grainy structure of the wall. It didn’t stop his descent.

His thoughts arrowed down to the city’s slumbering mind as the air roared around him. Can you help? he pleaded to the slow, giant thoughts.

It was useless. He was falling. Falling.

Kristabel!

Somewhere on the edge of perception he heard her scream wildly. He directed one last thought: I love you, content she would know. It made death more bearable. Falling.

Beneath him a vivid wave of alarm gushed from the minds of the constables scurrying around the base of the tower. Falling.

Any second now.

He braced himself for the terrible burst of pain that would strike for an instant before death.

Falling.

“How the Ladyfuck are you doing that?” Chae’s dazed voice asked.

Something slapped Edeard’s ass. It was the ground.

“Huh?” Edeard grunted dumbly. He looked up to see a circle of about ten faces peering down at him, all of them wearing utterly incredulous expressions. His hands patted the ground in disbelief. He was down—intact. “I fell,” he blurted. But of course, it always felt like he was falling when the city lowered him down to its tunnels. It must be the same out here.

There was a nearly hysterical laugh threatening to bubble out of his throat. Tears already were leaking from his eyes as the shock kicked in.

Some of the constables staring down were shoved aside. Kanseen and Boyd lunged into the gaps.

“Edeard!” Kanseen squealed. “Oh, Lady, what happened?”

“Trap,” he said weakly. He pointed up at the dark shape of the tower looming above them, surprised by how much effort it was just to raise his arm.

“Medath?” she asked in surprise.

Edeard nodded. It was hard to breathe; his body was tingling everywhere, and now he was starting to shake. His farsight could just discern a pulse of animal terror from somewhere. It was growing fast. “What’s happening?” he rasped. “What?

“Edeard?” Boyd was sounding very faint. Chae was frowning, glancing around.

Edeard didn’t have the strength to speak. “Can you sense that?” he longtalked.

“What?” Kanseen asked.

Then Chae was broadcasting pure alarm. “Move!” The old sergeant pushed at Kanseen with his third hand. At the same time he tried to jump backward.

Edeard saw it then, directly above him: a black human silhouette against the green-glowing beauty of the Ku nebula. Edeard tried to roll away, what was left of his telekinetic strength roused feebly to ward off the plunging body.

Medath hit the ground two feet away from where Edeard was lying. Chae was only half-clear. The collision produced a vile crunch as a multitude of bones snapped.

Edeard stared vacantly at the tangle of broken flesh beside him. Blood dribbled out of Chae’s slack open mouth. The sergeant’s eyes moved very slowly to meet Edeard’s gaze.

Far away someone was wailing. It sounded like Kanseen.

“Sergeant?” Edeard asked.

“Oh, by the Lady,” Chae longtalked. “For a moment there, that really hurt.”

“No,” Edeard said. “Oh, no.”

Chae let out his final rattling breath. Edeard tried to hang on to the man’s mind, his farsight following the thoughts as they diminished. As they dwindled toward their extinction, they disconnected from the body. Edeard perceived the spectral shape of Chae rising up to stand over his own corpse.

“Sergeant?” Edeard sent in desperation.

“Oh, my Lady,” the specter sent back.

“Sergeant!”

“Edeard?” It was Dinlay kneeling beside him: frightened, shouting.

“Can you see him?” Edeard whispered.

“Edeard, you’re going into shock. Try and focus on me.”

“This isn’t shock.” Edeard gifted them his perception. There was a collective intake of breath as the constables who had gathered around saw their sergeant’s spirit smiling gently.

“I can feel it, Edeard,” Chae explained. He was looking up, searching the heavens. “So beautiful. They’re calling to me. The nebulae are singing. Can you hear them?”

“No.” Edeard wept. “No, I can’t.”

A gaggle of Mothers from the central church were arriving to investigate the furor, their anxious voices stilled as they received the gift of Edeard’s perception. Then the Pythia herself was standing next to Chae’s broken body, an expression of serene joy on her face. One hand reached out tentatively, trying to touch his spirit.

“I want to go,” Chae told his enraptured audience. “I have to. There’s nothing left for me here.”

“You’ll be lost up there,” Edeard told him. “Stay with us; stay until the Skylords return to guide you.”

“The songs, Edeard, oh, the songs. What a welcome awaits us.”

“Wait. Please.”

Chae smiled down. It was as though he was giving a blessing. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll follow the songs.”

“May the Lady bring you safe to the Heart,” the Pythia said.

“Thank you, dear Mother,” Chae replied. He reached up to the sky as if it were a physical thing he could hold and own. His shape began to waver. As he looked down for the last time, the slightest frown appeared on his phantom features. “Who are you?” Then his outline swirled away with astonishing speed as it rose toward the nebulae he sought.

Edeard fell back with a last sob. Darkness claimed him.

Consciousness returned with a slow flush of warmth. Edeard felt perfectly content lying wherever he was with his eyes closed and his mind at rest. He was breathing normally, not particularly hungry. A light sheet lay across him. What more could anyone ask?

“Kristabel,” he said, knowing she was there. He didn’t use farsight; he just knew.

“You’re awake.” Her fingers stroked his face.

He opened his eyes to see her smiling down at him. It was the most wonderful sight.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” she chided.

“I won’t.”

She kissed him. “People have been worried,” she said.

“I’ll bet.” Edeard looked around. He was in some grand room: high ceilings, walls covered in tapestries and oil paintings. Familiar wood-framed glass doors opened onto a hortus; bright sunlight shone through. “Is it midday already?”

“Um, Edeard, you fell two days ago.”

“Oh.”

“Our doctor said you were suffering from a combination of exhaustion and shock. She gave you something to keep you asleep; she said you needed time to recover.”

Edeard pulled a face as he licked his tongue around inside his mouth. Something tasted bad.

Kristabel handed him a tall glass of water.

“Thanks.” He lifted himself up gingerly as she pushed some pillows behind his back to support him.

“You’re the talk of Makkathran. Again,” she told him with a sly grin.

Edeard gave a feeble shrug.

“I thought you were going to die when you called me.” Her eyes began to fill with tears.

“I’m sorry.” He reached for her, holding her close for a long time. When she’d calmed, she said, “And now you can fly, too.”

“I can’t, actually. That’s something else altogether. The city, Kristabel; it helps me.”

“The city. You mean Makkathran?”

“Yes.” He could sense the puzzlement in her mind. “I’ll try and explain; it’s quite complicated. Perhaps I should explain to everyone. I don’t know.”

She rested her hand on his chest. “You just wait. There’s an awful lot you need to say to a great many people. But you need to be very careful exactly what you tell them, and you’re not in any condition to make those decisions right now.”

“Okay.” He knew she was right about that.

“You also saw poor Sergeant Chae’s soul. If you thought you were famous before, you won’t believe what you are now.”

“I thought I hallucinated that part.”

“Thanks to your gifting, the Pythia herself spoke with his soul as it departed. You don’t get a more believable witness than that. She’s been waiting to talk to you about what she’s calling your ‘Lady-blessed connection to the spirit world.’ We’re to inform her immediately you’ve recovered,” Kristabel said significantly.

Edeard instinctively gripped the sheet tighter, drawing it up a couple of inches. He was wearing only a baggy nightshirt underneath. So who undressed me?

Kristabel gave him a lofty glance. “I sent my maids in to prepare you for your rest.”

“What!”

She burst into giggles. “The doctor and the novices attended you.”

“Oh.” Not that it made the idea much more tolerable. Novices!

Kristabel hugged him. “Thank the Lady, you’re still my silly Edeard.”

“What about my friends?”

“Waiting outside—very impatiently. Causing a lot of trouble for the staff. And they’re all fine. Before you ask: The gang members are under arrest and awaiting trial in the cells under Parliament House. Their ‘constable-killer’ guns were recovered, and you’ll never guess where they came from.”

“Where?” he asked eagerly.

“The Weapons Guild.”

“No.”

“Yes. Apparently they’re a secret type the guild holds safe in case the city is ever attacked. The design dates back centuries. Owain is furious. He’s ordered a full inquiry into how they were taken out of storage. Nobody was supposed to know about them apart from the guild’s most senior Masters.”

“That’s got to be damaging to Owain in Council.”

“I expect so. Daddy was really cheerful when he told me.”

“Thank you,” he said softly.

She gave him a breezy smile. “What for?”

“Being here.”

“You’re welcome, Waterwalker.” She kissed him again. It was a more sultry embrace this time, containing a great deal of promise. “I’ll call them in. I know you want to see them. Don’t worry; the doctor already instructed them to be quick and not to stress you.”

They came in as one group. Kanseen was anxious until she actually saw him awake and sitting up in bed, then got quite emotional. Boyd was nervous, almost shy. Dinlay was boyishly eager, holding a big basket of sugared fruits. Macsen, however, had a huge grin on his face. “Nanitte,” he whooped gleefully, finger jabbing at Edeard for emphasis. “I told you so!”

Despite its size, there were few people in the Malfit Hall as the junior cleric escorted Marius across the jet-black floor. Those who were there gave the Higher mistrustful glances as he glided along effortlessly. It was nothing personal; they simply didn’t welcome non-believers in that hallowed place.

He passed into Liliala Hall, whose ceaseless storm played out across the ceiling. As he walked beneath the apex, lightning bolts arched between billowing clouds, searing narrow gaps in the vapor to reveal the bland Mars Twins. At the far end an arching door let them into the Mayor’s suite of chambers. Ethan was waiting in the oval sanctum. It had been restored to its original state, the way the Waterwalker had arranged it while he was Mayor. Chairs and the desk were carved from muroak and polished with natural wax, giving off a faint lavender scent. The three high Diocletian windows on the wall behind the desk provided its occupant with a splendid view out across Outer Circle Canal and the western corner of Golden Park, with the lazy green undulations of Low Moat filling the gulf to the crystal wall beyond.

“Thank you for coming,” the Cleric Conservator said genially. He was sitting behind the desk, the hood of his white robe pulled forward. Even with the loose folds of fabric concealing the side of his head, the semiorganic nodules were visible adhering to his skin.

Marius bowed respectfully. “Thank you for seeing me, Conservator.”

Ethan’s hand fluttered in dismissal to the junior cleric.

“I trust you are almost recovered,” Marius said as he stood in front of the desk. The air in his wake was tainted by wispy shadows from his shimmering black toga suit.

“Almost.” Ethan smiled thinly. His hand rose to indicate the nodules. “Only three remain, and my doctors tell me they will be removed before the end of the week. It is amazing how the human body’s powers of recuperation can be bolstered by good news.”

“Good news?”

Ethan hesitated, wondering if the representative was trying to taunt him. “A human has passed into the Void with the help of the Second Dreamer.”

“In an attempt to negotiate a rejection of your Pilgrimage.”

“I doubt any ANA representative will comprehend the most basic tenet of the Void. It exists to embrace life, to elevate us to the highest pinnacle our poor spirits can aspire to.”

“Indeed,” Marius said with a deliberate irony.

Ethan caught the implication and smiled gracefully. “With respect, I hardly consider you comparable to Justine Burnelli. From what I’ve seen, you remain firmly rooted in the physical aspects of the universe.”

“I will accept that in the spirit I believe it was intended.”

“Thank you.” Ethan sank back in his chair, eyeing the representative curiously. At the start of his campaign to become Conservator he had been cautious about accepting the man’s help. Like every aspirant for high office in history, he had used his aide to make the first exploratory contacts. Phelim had returned animated by the possibilities. Ethan had agreed to listen. Politically, the assistance Marius provided was subtle and invaluable, allowing Ethan to build alliances within the Council and among the clerics of the Orchard Palace, propelling him to a position where he could put himself forward for election with a great deal of confidence. Included with that was the offer of ultradrives for the Pilgrimage ships, a gift that would generate nearly certain success. All of this had been given freely because their objectives were complementary. And in all that time, Marius had never hinted what his faction’s objective actually was. Ethan knew it wouldn’t be long now; it would be interesting to see what the price could possibly be.

“However, hasn’t the Void itself demonstrated Justine’s essential humanity by its response to her thoughts?” Marius asked the question as if it were some easily dismissed oddity.

“One small dream,” Ethan said. “A fast glimpse of her predicament. She certainly hasn’t found the Heart or even a Skylord. As her eagerness to reach that star shows, she is concerned only with the physical.”

“Yet she demonstrated the mental abilities available to the Waterwalker.”

“She hardly has his strength.”

“She was only awake for a few days of the Void’s time scale, and she appeared to be acclimatizing comfortably.”

“This, too, serves to reinforce our doctrine. The Void will become our salvation. The Second Dreamer will lead us to our destiny as the Dreamer Inigo always intended.”

“I think we both know it wasn’t the Second Dreamer who provided this latest glimpse from within the Void.”

“Yes,” Ethan conceded.

“Does Living Dream know who received Justine’s thoughts and vision?”

“No.”

Marius smiled; on his round face with its thin nose, the gesture was unpleasant. “Yet another Dreamer, Conservator? They seem to be becoming quite commonplace.”

“Three Dreamers in two hundred and seventy years is hardly ‘commonplace.’ But I do consider it significant that two have appeared so close together at this particular time. Events are coming to a climax, in accordance with the Dreamer Inigo’s vision.”

“Of course. I am gladdened that the Second Dreamer has proved it is physically possible to enter the Void; it must be inspirational to your movement.”

“It is.”

“And I don’t have to emphasize how important the Second Dreamer is to you. How close are you to acquiring him?”

Ethan smiled back into that barely human face with its steady green eyes and humorless thoughts. “Her, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yes. We believe we have identified a possible candidate. Given that the welcome team on Viotia now has her identity, it is impossible for her to elude us for any significant time.”

“Congratulations, Conservator. It must be gratifying having your goal so close to realization.”

“It is.”

“How are you progressing with construction of the Pilgrimage ships?”

“Again we are blessed by good fortune. The construction is on schedule. Would you like me to arrange a tour for you?”

“Time, alas, is tight. In more ways than one.”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t yet common knowledge, but the Commonwealth Navy sent a River-class warship to intercept the Ocisen Empire fleet. They were supposed to disable the command ship and deliver a warning.”

“Supposed to?”

“The navy ship was destroyed. It would appear the Ocisens are stronger than Admiral Kazimir expected.”

“Sweet Lady.”

“Unless they are stopped, they will be here before your ships are completed. There will be no Pilgrimage.”

“The principal justification behind ANA was to give the Commonwealth an unassailable defense against alien aggression following the Starflyer War. It was supposed to ensure complete technological superiority.”

“Don’t be too upset. It was, after all, just one ship. A stronger navy force should be sufficient to deter the Ocisen fleet. Even we concur with that prognosis.”

“But there are no guarantees.”

“There never are in life.”

“There are in the Void,” Ethan said reflectively. “Unfortunately, we can’t build the ships any faster.”

“I know. We are all dependent on ANA.”

“A wing and a prayer.”

“Quite. On a happier note, now that we are so close to success, my sponsors have a request.”

“Ah.” Ethan widened his smile. He almost relished this. Would it be a preposterous heretical demand or some simple requirement that would trigger a political avalanche in the wake of the Pilgrimage’s departure? Was he going to welcome the stipulation or fight it to his dying breath?

“We would like to send some observers with you.”

“Observers? That implies they will remain aloof, which I sincerely doubt is possible within the Void.”

“Nonetheless, we would be grateful if you would take them with you.”

“We welcome all those who would reach for the Void, whatever their initial reasons. How many?”

“Two or three on each ship. We don’t wish to burden you.”

“I see.” Though in truth Ethan didn’t. He knew this must be momentous to whatever faction Marius represented, yet even he was surprised by how eminently reasonable the request was. “I will make sure enough suspension chambers are reserved.”

“They will not be traveling in suspension.”

“Is there a reason for that?”

“They don’t wish to.”

Ethan considered that, wondering if this was where he should make his stand. Of course, there was no reasonable argument he could put forward against it, only instinct. “Will they be antagonistic to our Pilgrimage in any way?”

“Your pardon, but they care nothing for your doctrine. They are merely scientists who wish to study the Void.”

“And if I refuse?”

Marius adopted an amused tone. “You are trying to determine how honorable I am, if I will be awkward.”

“Will you?”

“More than most I have facilitated your rise to your current position. The gift of the ultradrive engines is phenomenally generous even by Higher standards. And when you accepted this, you knew we would ask a small favor in return.”

“I did. And you know I will allow your colleagues to travel with us. I’m just trying to understand the motivation behind this, how badly you want it.”

“Very badly indeed. The Void is a magnificent scientific enigma. My sponsors believe it should be solved.”

“Why would you want to ‘solve’ something you can become a part of at any time?”

“It is greater than us.”

“And it will share itself with you.”

“On its terms. To accept that is not in our nature.”

“It is in mine.”

“Shall I move to the threat now?”

“Please do,” Ethan said smoothly.

“Even with ultradrive, the Raiel present a problem. Clearly, this previously unknown warrior caste will not let you approach the Void boundary. Allowing a lone human in a small ship to slip past is one thing, but the Pilgrimage ships with their millions of hopeful dreamers? You will either turn back or die. The resources they have available are phenomenal; I suspect even a full Commonwealth Navy escort would struggle to protect you, and Governance has quite clearly stated it will do no such thing.”

“It is the last obstacle,” Ethan admitted. The one downside to Justine’s triumph was shocking in its magnitude. He’d always known the Raiel opposed Pilgrimage, but no one had known they had such ships or the resolution to prevent entry into the Void. The unisphere commentators had been very keen to point this out over the last few hours. “Pilgrimage to Certain Death,” the less savory ones had named it.

“In addition to the ultradrive, we can equip your ships with force fields the Raiel cannot penetrate,” Marius said.

“I find that claim difficult to believe.”

“Nonetheless, we have such systems available.”

“Your passengers.”

“Yes.”

“The Lady moves in mysterious ways. But … She would want your scientists granted the opportunity to achieve their destiny along with the rest of us.”

Marius cocked his head to one side. “I’m sure she would.”

“I will have the cabins set aside for you.”

“Thank you.” Marius bowed and rotated effortlessly. He moved toward the door. Just as he reached it, he stopped. “Oh, yes,” he said, still not facing Ethan. “And we’ll need a cargo hold in each ship for the equipment.”

“Equipment?”

“They will need instruments to study the Void, obviously. I will send details to your office.”

The door opened, and Marius slipped through in a swirl of silent shadow.

Balmy sea air gusted across Golden Park, stirring the long branches of the cherry trees planted along the giant plaza. A cloudless sky helped magnify the heat. In his cotton shirt and thick denim trousers, the Delivery Man was getting uncomfortably warm, and he didn’t want to use his biononic functions to cool down for fear of attracting attention to himself. Inigo supposedly had chosen this spot to build Makkathran2 because the climate was almost identical to the original on Querencia. As a result of that quest for perfection, the Delivery Man had to make do with a ridiculous wide-brimmed leather ranger hat, because that was what the natives back in the real Makkathran apparently used to wear to keep the midsummer sun from frying their brains. At least it left him indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd occupying the plaza.

Golden Park was full every day now. The usual crowd had swollen considerably when the Second Dreamer rejected the Skylord as the faithful had sought guidance from their new Cleric Conservator; from that day on they had flocked here to witness the monumental events elsewhere in the galaxy. The Delivery Man could appreciate that, feeling the kind of comfort that only ever came from being immersed in a multitude who shared beliefs and emotions. It was the most basic human need to belong, amplified by the gaiafield.

On a very minor level he was experiencing that himself: the longing to be back home, playing with the girls as night fell across London. Bath time. Stories at bedtime. A leisurely meal with Lizzie.

He didn’t want to be here. It was that simple. This was the kind of active operation the faction had assured him he’d never be involved with. All he had ever agreed to do for them was deliver essential items of equipment to the people who would use them. Inevitably, as the years progressed, he’d allowed himself to be cajoled into assignments that entailed a great deal more than mere delivery. But this …

Once again he was keeping tabs on Marius. He’d done it before without protesting, though Marius always gave him the creeps. That wasn’t the kind of emotional nonsense a Higher should be infected with. It was just that his opposite number was a lot more professional at all this than he was. Nor did unfolding events help his equilibrium: Justine’s flight into the Void, the destruction of the Yenisey, the Viotia invasion. He couldn’t imagine what the end effect on Commonwealth society would be. He just knew his place was at home, caring for his family in the face of such uncertainty. Instead, here he was, wandering about with the crowds, making sure he was oozing the same emotional wonder and trepidation into the gaiafield as everyone else, wearing medieval clothes—generally blending in. Through the throng he could see several gondolas sailing the Outer Circle Canal, back-dropped by the Orchard Palace with its roof that resembled merging waves.

All the time he kept his eye on the wire and wood bridge that led over to the palace’s main entrance. It was the one Marius had walked over not an hour before. Remote sensors secreted around the canal watched the other bridges for him. Infiltrating systems inside the palace itself was difficult. Living Dream employed some extremely sophisticated shielding and counterintruder systems, though a number of stealthed microbots were currently inching their way inward. Even if they managed to get past the great halls and into the Mayor’s suite of chambers, they’d be too late.

The Delivery Man’s biononic field scan function detected a familiar biononic signature ten meters away. He let out a resigned sigh and turned to see Marius standing and waiting. He was getting a lot of disapproving stares as his dark toga suit refracted the bright sunlight in abnormal undulations, though his implacable demeanor was enough to keep them away.

“Gotcha,” Marius said.

The Delivery Man nodded. “Yes. Congratulations.”

“Fancy a drink?”

“Why not?”

Marius glide-walked his way across Golden Park and over the ginger sandstone bridge into Ysidro. The Delivery Man narrowed his eyes as he took in the circular three-story building with an improbable hexagonal rustication pattern on the walls. Tall lancet windows gave the appearance of some ancient human castle tower.

“Isn’t this the one where—” he began.

“Yes,” Marius said.

They went into the tavern and managed to find a quiet table by one of the windows. A waitress took their order and quickly returned with a hot orange chocolate with marshmallows for the Delivery Man and a peppermint tea for Marius. Once she’d gone, they wove their screening shields together, creating an almost invisible yet secure bubble around the table.

“The game is changing,” Marius said.

“The game is the same; the stakes are rising,” the Delivery Man countered.

“Fair enough. I don’t like you because you symbolize what we’re attempting to leave behind. But I respect you; you play by the rules. There are some people in our line of work who no longer do that.”

“We didn’t wreck Hanko.”

“Hanko?”

“Please! One of you fired a Hawking m-sink into it.”

“Did we?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t call me in for a drink and play the subversion recruiting routine. I chose my faction because of my beliefs, just like you.”

Marius raised his cup in salute. “My apologies. My point is that you and I are both nearing the end of our usefulness to our respective factions.”

“No. If we hold things together, you and I will continue in our current form. Only if you get to enact your particular Armageddon does everything alter.”

“You don’t have a clue what we’re doing.”

“Fusion is not a pretty concept. It assumes elevation to perpetual godhood. The conflict here at this table is enough to convince me that it should not be allowed to happen, and we both know there are factions a lot more radical than us.”

“My apologies again. You have all the answers.”

“Of course, you could choose to come over to us. That would undoubtedly mean the end of your faction. Problem solved for everyone.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I had to ask.”

“I know.”

The Delivery Man tried to sip his chocolate through the cap of semimolten marshmallows. “So now what?”

“As I said, the game is changing. We are entering the last stages of an operation which has been centuries in the planning. As such, it is no longer a game. Please do not think we will tolerate any interference.”

“The human race, for all our facets and our institutional stupidity, is something I believe in. I admire our diversity, our stubbornness. The dynamic of conflict is one of our greatest traits.”

“Please don’t give me the ‘we’re at our greatest when our backs are against the wall’ speech.”

“I can’t because you seem to want to eliminate our conflict, our differences, to rebuild us in your image. I will not allow that to happen. My faction will not permit that.”

“Which is my point. You no longer have that luxury of choice; it was taken from you decades ago when we succeeded. This, today, is just the result of our actions.”

“You cannot believe that morally you have the right to elevate everyone to postphysical status whether they want that or not.”

“We won’t be taking everyone.”

“Then stop trying to manipulate everyone.”

“You seem determined to remain in the past. Is that your wife’s influence?”

The Delivery Man placed his cup on the table; it was all he could do not to shatter the china, his grip had tightened so. “Be very careful.”

“We have the right to evolve.”

“You do. You do not have the right to evolve the rest of us or ruin what we have built in the process.”

“Much good your ANA: Governance has done you. It is the most conservative faction of all.”

“It made you possible.”

“Exactly. And now like an enfeebled parent jealous of our youth and vision, it strives to hold us back.”

“It neither encourages nor refuses your ambitions; it is neutral as always. We, on the other hand, are not. Find a way of doing what you want without harming others, without endangering the entire galaxy.”

“We do neither. You cannot stop us from elevating ourselves into something glorious. Do not try. That is what I am saying to you. We have come to the end of this tedious routine, you and I. Next time we meet it will not be sitting in a tavern over a friendly drink.”

“If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is.” The Delivery Man watched Marius give him a sad little smile, then glide out of the tavern. Only then did he exhale a very shaky breath. “Oh, dear Ozzie,” he hissed. “I can’t do this anymore.”

The storm had been rising steadily for three hours now. A continual cloud of miniature ice daggers was hurtling horizontally through the air, smashing into the ground crawler at close to a hundred miles an hour. The noise was astonishing, as if they were buffeting their way forward through a jungle of glass.

As before, the land shifted without warning, sending the ground crawler rocking violently. Corrie-Lyn gripped her seat tighter. It was the fifth miniquake in the last hour, and they were coming closer together.

“I’m sorry,” Corrie-Lyn said. She was sitting beside Inigo as he attempted to steer them across hilly land locked into shape by the permafrost. All the loose snow that had accumulated in dunes and crevices was slowly and methodically being swept up by the wind, hardening further as it took to the air to join the atmospheric bedlam. They could see nothing through the narrow windscreen now; even the powerful headlight beams created little more than a dusky glow in the merciless blizzard. The ground crawler’s sensors could scan only a derisory fifteen to twenty meters ahead. His biononic field scan function merely supplemented the perception.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Inigo told her. He reached out and gripped her hand. Corrie-Lyn leaned in toward him.

“If I hadn’t come, none of this would have happened. The Restoration team would still be alive. You could have gone on rescuing people.”

“The universe doesn’t work like that. They would have found me one way or another. I’m glad it was you.”

“I’ve killed you.” The tears were running freely down her freckled cheeks.

Inigo stopped the ground crawler and put his arms around her. “That’s just fright you’re feeling. You must not blame anyone, least of all yourself.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“All I have seen, all Edeard showed me, it gives me hope. Hope doesn’t die just because a life is lost, or even a million lives. The human race carries on. We have before, many times, and we will again.”

“As stupid as ever,” she grumbled, wiping at the tears.

He caught her hand and brought it to his face, then slowly licked the moisture from her fingers. “That’s my Corrie-Lyn.”

She nestled against him. “I still think it’s my fault. I should never have let that psychopath talk me into this.”

“From what you’ve told me, you didn’t have a lot of choice.”

“I could have been bolder. I could have thrown him off a cliff like you did.”

“Well, in the end that hasn’t made a lot of difference, has it?”

“I’d prefer not to spend my last moments with him, thank you.”

“We’re not dead yet.” Inigo let go of her and turned back to the console. “Only another two hundred kilometers to my starship.”

“You really have one?”

“I really have one. Smart man, that Aaron, working that out.”

The ground crawler lurched forward again. Corrie-Lyn came over from her seat to stand behind Inigo. Her hands massaged his shoulders.

“How far have we come?”

“About eighty kilometers in the last seventeen hours.” He nodded at the windscreen. “It’s getting worse out there. I’m guessing the quakes are the start of the implosion. No wonder the atmosphere is kicking up.”

“We’re not going to make it, are we?”

“No.”

She bent down and nipped his ear. “Hey, you’re a messiah. You’re supposed to inspire your flock.”

“Would the flock settle for certainty?”

“I thought there were no absolutes.”

“I can see you’re going to be a difficult convert.”

The ground crawler juddered alarmingly as the landscape outside heaved. Corrie-Lyn’s grip tightened as she struggled against being thrown to the metal decking.

“Lady,” Inigo grunted. The portal projecting the sensor images showed a crack in the ground running almost parallel to the ground crawler. In some places it was over two meters wide. It hadn’t been there before the quake.

Inigo upped the speed of the tracks, sending them wobbling away from the crack.

“Why did you leave us?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“No great revelation,” he said. “I was tired. Tired of the expectations. Tired of the Council. Tired of the adulation.”

“And me?”

“No, never you. I wouldn’t have stayed as long as I did if it hadn’t been for you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Inigo laughed. “If you’re not an absolute, you’re definitely a constant. Why don’t you believe me?”

“Because I know you, or I did back then. You believed in the dreams, in the life the Waterwalker showed us, the life we could live in the Void. You never tired, not of that, not of being our Dreamer. What happened?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have left. Lady, look what’s happened because I did. Ethan as Conservator! He was never elevated to the Council for a reason, you know. Why did the conclave vote for him? What were you thinking of?”

“Change,” she snapped at him. “Pilgrimage. The Second Dreamer made it possible, or at least believable. But that’s not relevant; that’s today, not seventy years ago. Why, Inigo? Don’t you at least owe me that?”

“There was a dream,” he whispered. His mind released a deluge of sadness through his gaiamotes, strong enough to make her shudder in dismay.

“The Last Dream?” she gasped. “It’s real?”

“Not in the way rumor had it.”

“But the Waterwalker died. That was his victory; he’d finally lived every life. The Skylords guided his soul to Odin’s Sea. I was there,” she growled. “I lived that dream, the dream you gave us. I lay back on the pyre atop the tallest tower in Eyrie and watched the Skylords return to fill the sky above Makkathran. I rose with him while the whole city sang their hymn of farewell. I received his final gifting to the world. He went to the Heart of the Void! It was so beautiful, and I believed it. I believed in you.” Corrie-Lyn shoved her way along the side of Inigo’s chair and knelt down, putting her face inches from his. “That is the dream I recall so few times because it is so powerful that I weep each time at what those of us trapped outside the Void never had. That is the dream that counts. That is the reason I am a member of Living Dream, your movement. And it is why I always will be, no matter who is in charge or what ridiculous petty politics affects the clerics. You gave us that. You made us dream.”

Inigo stared at the sensor projection of the treacherous ground, refusing to meet her eye. His gaiamotes closed up, shutting off his emotions.

“Tell me,” she demanded, so frightened that she was trembling. “Tell me what dream you had.”

“It’s just me,” he said. “That’s all. It was just my reaction. There’s nothing to stop the Pilgrimage, nothing to prevent the faithful from achieving their perfect lives. It just affected me.”

“What is it? Please, Inigo.”

“I had one more dream,” he said, still watching the display. “I saw what happened to Querencia afterward. After the Waterwalker died. It was the life of one of his descendants living in Makkathran.”

“What did they do?” she asked. “Did they misuse the gift?”

The ground quaked again.

“No,” Inigo said with a faint smile. “They used it perfectly.”

Corrie-Lyn grimaced in annoyance as the quake got worse. She clutched at the back of Inigo’s seat. Both of them looked at the other as the crawler began to tip over. The sensor display showed the ground lifting and splitting.

Inigo loaded a quick sequence into the ground crawler’s small smartnet. Anchors fired out of the lower fuselage, drilling long spikes deep into the frigid soil. Superstrength cables rewound, the tension tightening the heavy machine’s grip on the anchors.

“Inigo,” Corrie-Lyn wailed.

He gripped her hand. “We’re together,” he promised, and opened his mind to her again.

The ground beneath the crawler heaved with a profound roaring. All six anchor spikes came flying back out of the disintegrating soil, crashing into the side of the vehicle with an almighty clang.

“Together.”

The ground crawler started to roll. Corrie-Lyn yelled in panic as she was thrown into the side of the cabin, and then the walls carried on moving. Inigo was hanging upside down in his seat as the safety webbing held him in place. Corrie-Lyn tumbled down toward the back of the cabin as the angle shifted. The ground crawler was skidding along on its roof. Another judder from the ground pushed it up on its nose and twisted it. Several storage locker doors popped open, releasing a clutch of clothes and crockery and food packets that pelted through the interior, bounding about dangerously.

Corrie-Lyn lost her hold on the galley section, to be tossed about. She felt her arm break as she hit the external door. The pain was awful, dulling her mind; even the cabin dipped into gray. She actually thought: This is the end.

A couple of miserable breaths later and she was still whimpering where she’d fallen. The ground crawler had stopped moving.

“Hang on,” Inigo called above the constant clamor of the blizzard. “I’m coming.”

She watched him through a haze as her stomach grew very queasy. He had to climb up the side of the forward cabin, twisting around the front chairs with a contortionist’s agility. Somehow the ground crawler had ended up standing on its nose with the deck inclined.

Inigo wound up sitting on the back of the driver’s chair, cradling her. She stared up at the bulkhead above with its small storage locker doors swinging open.

“My arm,” she cried. The dull pain was rising to hot agony. Her exovision medical displays were flashing up tissue damage summaries.

Inigo looked around the cabin. “These crawlers always have medic packs; there’ll be one around somewhere. Get your nerves to shut down the pain.”

She nodded, which nearly made her squeal. Concentrating on the physiological icons was difficult, but eventually her secondary routines were closing off nerves to her arm. Her ankle was damaged, too, though that was minor compared to the arm. She let out a huge sigh as the pain faded. There was nothing she could do about the queasi-ness, however.

Inigo left her to rummage through all the junk that was cluttered around them. He found a first-aid pack. The case started to analyze the data her macrocellular clusters gave it and opened up various ply-plastic appendages that wiggled across her shoulder. Inigo cut away her sleeve to give it access to her skin.

“Now what?” she asked.

He glanced at the portal display, which remained resolutely blank. “We’re wedged into a fissure with our ass sticking up into the air. How’s that for dignity?”

“Can your field functions get us out?”

“Not easily. I suppose I can give it a go, though.”

“That’s good. I was almost worried there.”

He chuckled and stroked her face. “We’ll just wait a minute. I want to be certain you’re all right before I leave you.”

“I don’t want you to leave right away,” she said shakily.

“Then I’ll stay. We’re not in any hurry. Not today.”

The Alexis Denken was only ninety minutes out from Arevalo when Kazimir called.

“We just lost our communication link with the Lindau,” he said.

Paula, who was sitting at her piano trying to master “Für Elise” yet again, let her shoulders slump. “Oh, crap. I thought you were going to warn them to be careful.”

“I did. Evidently I wasn’t clear enough.”

“So now Aaron has a navy ship?”

“A scout ship. And it might be Inigo.”

“Or the Waterwalker himself. Or Nigel’s come back. Or maybe …” But she didn’t finish that one.

“There’s no need to be cruel.”

“We’re getting stretched very thin, Kazimir.”

“I know. But there is some good news. The Lindau might not be communicating, but I can still keep track of it.”

“How?”

“There’s a secondary transdimensional channel generated by all navy ship drives. It’s used for one thing only: to supply us with their location for precisely this reason.”

“I never knew that. So where is it now?”

“Still on Hanko.”

“Interesting. If you’re Aaron and you’ve got yourself a lifeboat, why wait around on a planet that’s about to implode?”

“To find what you originally came for.”

“Exactly. Keep me updated.”

“Of course.”

“Are you going to send another ship?”

“The Yangtze is already on its way; I doubt it will get there in time.”

“A River-class no less? You are taking this seriously now. Let us hope it has better luck than the Yenisey.”

“And the Lindau.”

It was raining outside Colwyn City, turbid clouds drizzling the fields and hills with a slick of cold water. It was a morose day whose lack of wind condemned it to suffer under mist that stifled the land and obscured the upper skies with their pink cirrostratus clouds. Inside the force fields, however, it was dry and sunny as the gloom was diverted around the curving protective barriers.

The woman was making the most of the artificial climate, walking in a leisurely way up Daryad Avenue’s pronounced slope to window-shop. Almost half the stores along the avenue were open, though most of the bars and restaurants were shut. Supply deliveries were nonexistent in Colwyn now that the invaders had shut down all capsule flights.

Most people in the city center that morning were heading down the slope toward the river. It was the day the Senate delegation was due to arrive. The residents wanted to give them a welcome they couldn’t ignore as their starship touched down at the docks. Already the crowds were swelling around the sealed-up perimeter.

The woman either didn’t care or didn’t know. She was young and attractive, wearing a fashionable gray-blue dress whose skirt showed off long legs. Men making their way down the slope cast admiring glances and pinged her. She smiled loftily, ignoring the attention. She also somehow managed to ignore the Ellezelin paramilitary capsules racing low overhead, sirens screeching and lasers strobing the pavement.

She was ignoring them to a degree that made her unaware of three larger capsules prowling the sky above the avenue’s rooftops, even as they suddenly stopped their circling to power-dive. She was still unaware right up to the moment when their seven-gee deceleration smacked them down beside her with such force that their pressure waves burst the glass window she was looking through. She screamed as she was shoved painfully to her knees amid the glittering shards, her arms folded around her head to protect her. The big capsules halted, floating ten centimeters above the concrete. Their malmetal doors opened fast, and Major Honilar jumped out, leading his welcome team into a surround and secure formation, putting the woman at the center of a circle produced by the nozzles of fifteen high-caliber energy weapons. She was screaming incoherently as they encircled her, blood running from a hundred tiny glass nicks, her dress all but shredded.

“Shut the fuck up,” Major Honilar bellowed at her.

All the people on the outside of the three capsules who had flung themselves flat lifted their heads to see what in Ozzie’s name was going on. They saw an armor-suited figure grab the woman’s hair and lift her brutally to her feet. Saw the agony on her mutilated face, the horrific amount of blood saturating her clothes, dripping liberally onto the pavement. Several of the more astute ones delivered what they were seeing directly to unisphere news stations.

“Araminta, you are now in the protective custody of the Intermediate Ellezelin Forces.” The suited figure pushed her toward the nearest capsule.

“Hey!” someone on the street protested.

One of the welcome team fired a small enhanced explosive projectile over their heads. The detonation forced everyone to cower on the floor again.

“If anyone attempts to interfere with our operation, they will be shot,” Major Honilar announced loudly. He pushed the bloody, sobbing woman into his capsule, which lifted immediately, its malmetal door still closing as it reached rooftop height. The remainder of the welcome team retreated back into their capsules, covering the prone bystanders in a classic hostile withdrawal protocol.

Sitting and drinking their morning tea on the balcony of the café opposite the drama, Oscar and his team watched the last capsule lift hurriedly into the city’s artificially clear sky.

“Good deployment,” Beckia said with grudging admiration.

“As subtle as a kick in the balls,” Tomansio retorted dismissively. “Look at them.” He waved a hand toward the stunned citizens who were slowly picking themselves up. There was a lot of anger on their faces.

Oscar watched several of them shaking their fists at the sky, shouting obscenities. He was glad he was wearing civilian clothes. It wasn’t going to be pleasant for any of the Ellezelin troops caught alone after today.

“I think Major Honilar is getting somewhat aggrieved,” Beckia said. “What’s that, the fifth Araminta the recognition programs have found for him this morning?”

“Liatris is doing well,” Tomansio said.

“I doubt the latest victim thinks that,” Oscar said. He couldn’t drink his cinnamon-flavored espresso now. The callousness he’d just witnessed was triggering a lot of guilt. The poor woman was perfectly innocent, her only crime to have roughly the same dimensions and features as the real Araminta. That way the whole incident could be blamed on the recognition software that had plucked her image from one of the streetwatch sensors along Daryad Avenue, alerting the welcome team to her location.

“This is your operation, Oscar,” Tomansio rebuked. “You knew what would have to be done. Don’t go soft on us now.”

“Of all the people in the galaxy, I am the one who really understands the concept of collateral damage best of all,” Oscar announced.

“So you are. Then you know she was a necessary casualty.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“Oscar, Ellezelin invading Viotia isn’t right. Hunting Araminta isn’t right, but we’re all doing it because we all know she has to be found.”

“What was her name?” Oscar asked, staring down on the broad avenue. More people were heading down the slope now, marching to the docks to make their demands heard by the Senate delegation. It was all futile, he knew. Living Dream didn’t care about their opinion or that of the Senate. The delegation and the talks with Phelim and the Prime Minister were just buying the welcome team more time to find their target.

“Does it matter?” Beckia asked.

“Yes, actually, it does,” Oscar said. “We used her.”

“I’ll have Liatris check it out when he has a moment,” Tomansio said.

“Thank you.”

Tomansio and Beckia finished their drinks. Oscar still couldn’t bring himself to touch what was left of his. People were getting hurt, and he was the cause. He knew it was stupid, but he really hadn’t considered that aspect of the operation when he had agreed to help Paula. Dushiku’s unisphere interface code hung in his exovision, so very, very tempting. Talking things through with his calm, rational partner would make things feel so much better. It was also a sign of weakness that the Knights Guardian wouldn’t take to kindly. He sighed when Tomansio and Beckia rose from the table and gave him an inquiring glance.

“Coming,” he said.

They took a public cab from outside the café. It rode quickly and smoothly along the metro track that ran down the middle of Daryad Avenue, taking them up the slope into the grid of taller modern buildings. Ten minutes later it dropped them off in the Palliser precinct, where they walked into a bar that was several social levels below the café they’d just left, wedged in between a trike repair garage and a wholesale packaging store.

Oscar glanced down to the far end of the street, where Colwyn City’s big confluence nest building stood at the intersection, squat and aloof, looking fortresslike compared to the shabbiness of the structures around it.

Inside, the bar was little better, with the windows obscured by ancient hologram adverts and fading overhead lighting strips adding little to the illumination. Tables were scattered about on the ancient wood floor, interspaced with pool tables and tri-gamer stations. Only the counter had decent lighting, with suspended white globes projecting a monochrome glow across the beer pumps.

There were fewer than ten customers in total: two hard-core barflies up on stools lining up shot glasses and aerosols, one loner sitting at a tri-game feeding it with his cash coin, and the others huddled around tables. They all ignored the newcomers.

Tomansio gave the bartender an order for four beers, and they claimed a corner table. A servicebot trundled over with their glasses. Two minutes later Cheriton sauntered in. He did draw some glances, with a big gray coat buttoned up tight so that he didn’t show off his “native” Ellezelin clothes. There was nothing he could do to disguise the hat, though, which he held in one hand.

“So?” Tomansio asked as Cheriton sat down.

The gaiafield expert raised his glass as they used their biononics to establish a screening field. “Paranoia reigns supreme. They’ve got the building net scanning and logging all calls. If I’d encrypted anything I sent, they would have dropped a cage over me.”

“Are they suspicious?”

“Not of us, but they know someone is messing with the welcome team’s search. We’re not the only covert team here.”

“Liatris has spotted at least two other infiltrations,” Beckia said.

“Well, between us we’re certainly stirring up a yarsnapper nest of distrust. The Third Dreamer hasn’t helped.”

“I would have thought they’d enjoy that,” Tomansio said. “A nearly real-time connection into the Void that shows that we can get inside and that we have psychic powers when we do get there.”

“Living Dream certainly welcomes that, but it does raise questions about why our dear Cleric Conservator hasn’t been chosen for any communing, or the rest of the Cleric Council, for that matter.”

“Are they chasing after the Third Dreamer now as well?” Oscar asked.

“No. Best guess is that it’s someone with a strong natural connection to Justine.”

“What do you mean, natural connection?”

“It was always assumed that Inigo was related to Edeard somehow, some distant family connection. As we don’t know which colony ship wound up inside the Void, the link could never be proved. So Living Dream is assuming the same for Justine.”

“There can’t be many left,” Oscar said thoughtfully. “She’s been inside ANA for centuries. All her contemporaries are in there, too; that or they’re real dead.”

“Apart from Admiral Kazimir,” Cheriton said.

“No!”

“Probably not,” Cheriton admitted. “But we’ll never be able to trace it, anyway. Justine’s dream emanated from the Central worlds’ gaiafield, where the confluence nests are all built and maintained by Highers. Living Dream can’t touch them.”

“Thank Ozzie for that,” Beckia said.

“Hang on,” Oscar said. “Araminta can hardly have a family connection to a Starflyer.”

Cheriton grinned. “It’s not exactly a perfect theory.”

“So Living Dream’s emphasis is still on the Second Dreamer?” Tomansio asked.

“Very much so.” Cheriton took another drink of the beer. “You need to get Liatris into my building’s net and subvert their monitors to establish a secure channel for me. If he doesn’t, I’ll have to go aggressive to get out if I send you a warning again.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“What progress are you making with Danal and Mareble?” Oscar asked.

“Some, though I’m not sure it’s going to help much. Danal was given a memory read.”

Everyone around the table winced.

“Yeah,” Cheriton said. “As were all the others they rounded up at the apartment raid. I took Mareble down to their headquarters in the docks. She got to see him, but he’s still in custody, and she had a restriction order placed on her. As far as Major Honilar is now concerned, just knowing Araminta is a crime.”

“So they’re no use, then?”

“I wouldn’t say that, exactly.”

Beckia gave Cheriton a knowing glance. “You didn’t?”

“What could I do? The whole merry widow syndrome really kicked into overdrive for a while there. Mareble was very upset when I got her back to her hotel room.”

“Dear Ozzie.” Oscar chuckled into his beer.

“It establishes me as a genuine supportive friend,” Cheriton said a shade too defensively. “That could be useful. A lot of followers are having their faith shaken by the way Phelim is acting. This wasn’t what they signed up for.”

“Okay, good work,” Tomansio said.

Cheriton put his beer back on the table. “Have you got any idea where Araminta might be?”

“Not one. Liatris is running a hundred analysis routines, trying to figure out where she could have taken refuge. Honilar won’t be far behind him; even he is eventually going to work out that he’s being deliberately distracted.”

“Great. Then the paranoia will really kick in.”

“They’ll go for her family next,” Oscar said miserably. “Make a big splash of arresting them to flush her out.”

“Do you want to warn them?” Tomansio asked.

“If they believe us, and it’s a big if, that might make it harder for Honilar to round them up. Worst-case scenario, it’ll take him an extra half hour. You keep telling me every minute is precious.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll start calling them.”

“I’d better get back,” Cheriton said. He stood up and slipped through the privacy screen.

“Nothing from the monitors we’ve got on Cressida,” Beckia said as they waited for Tomansio to complete his anonymous calls to Araminta’s family. “We’ll go to Nik’s next, see if any of her old colleagues can give us a hint where she might be.”

“Sure,” he said. His u-shadow told him Paula was calling on a secure channel.

“Any progress?” she asked.

“The Second Dreamer is Araminta, a Viotia native. So far she’s managed to give everyone the slip. We’re chasing what leads we’ve got, but we’re not the only ones here.”

“You’re sure it’s Araminta?”

“Oh, yes.” Oscar smiled fondly as he recalled their second visit to the apartments. He’d actually laughed out loud when he saw the top of the water tank lying on the bathroom floor. And from what they could determine, she’d stopped for a cup of tea and some cookies before scooting out of there. That was real class— or total insanity. Either way, he was rather looking forward to the time when he finally got to meet her. “Living Dream knows it, too.”

“Can you get her first?”

“We’ll do our best.”

“I have something to tell you,” Paula said.

“This doesn’t sound good.”

“There is a faction agent in a very powerful starship, equivalent to yours. They just fired a black hole weapon into Hanko. The planet is currently imploding.”

Oscar’s skin turned chilly. He stared at the bar’s colorful hologram adverts without seeing them. “Hanko?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Oscar.”

“But I captained the Dublin there during the Prime attack,” he protested weakly. “We went through hell protecting Hanko.”

“I know. This is a new and very dangerous type of weapon. No one expected it to be used like this. I’m telling you so you understand that the factions are becoming desperate. Be very careful acquiring this Araminta. It is not a game.”

“I understand. Why was Hanko so important to them?”

“Inigo may have been on it.”

“Wow. I see. Did he escape?”

“We don’t know. There’s no communication link to the planet anymore.”

“Shit.”

“Oscar. There’s something else. I’m telling you in case I vanish. I suspect there’s a good chance the agent was the Cat.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. Not her. She’s in suspension. You put her there, for fuck’s sake. That was the one thing I made very sure of after they re-lifed me.”

“I don’t know for certain yet. And it’ll only be a clone if it is her.”

“Only a clone? Oh, Jesus. Where is she?”

“I don’t know. But if she turns up on Viotia, your Knights Guardian might be tempted to jump ship.”

“Oh, fuck!” he said out loud, very loud. Beckia and Tomansio gave him a curious glance.

“Now you know,” Paula said. “You can take precautions.”

“Precautions? Against the Cat, in an ultradrive ship, with a superweapon? What kind of deranged moron let her have these things in the first place?”

“As I said, the factions are getting desperate.”

“Wait. Why would you vanish?”

“She, or someone like her, tried to kill me. She’ll probably try again. You know what she’s like.”

“I want to go home.”

“And you will. Not long now.”

“Damn, I hate you.”

“Hate is good. It helps keep you focused.”

“It’s not good,” he protested irritably. “It makes you irrational.”

“Which makes you unpredictable. Which gives your enemies a difficult time determining your actions. It will be harder for her to set a trap for you.”

“I didn’t have any goddamn enemies before you dragged me into this.”

“If you genuinely need backup, I will come to Viotia. I simply prefer not to unless there is no alternative. Do you want me there?”

Oscar took a long breath and glared up at the ceiling. “No. I have everything perfectly under control.” He told his u-shadow to end the call.

“Everything all right?” Tomansio asked.

“Blissfully wonderful. Come on, let’s get over to Nik’s.” While Viotia’s still here.

The winds on Hanko had always presented a problem to aircraft whether they used ingrav or regrav. At high altitude it didn’t really matter; precision wasn’t necessary above the cloud level. But close to the ground squalls and microbursts could shove a ship down unexpectedly, bringing it perilously close to a crash. As a consequence, craft did not fly below eight hundred meters unless they were landing at Jajaani. That was in ordinary conditions.

Now, as the planet’s frozen surface began to quake and buckle before its final, fatal implosion, the storms accelerated relentlessly, with wind speeds rising to over two hundred kilometers an hour. Aaron found there was only one way to fly through such an environment: using the kind of speed and power that no wind could ever affect.

The Lindau hit Mach twelve as he took it down to an altitude of five hundred meters. At that velocity, through a dense typhoon of hail, it didn’t so much fly as rip out a vacuum contrail. Supersonic annular blast waves radiated out from the force field, blasting the ice and soil below to a granulated ruin. A thick column of lightning blazed along its roiling wake before discharging into sheets that spread over hundreds of square kilometers. Far above the starship, the upper cloud level bulged and seethed as if some massive creature were clawing at the planetary blanket.

Aaron reached the end of his run, and an eight-gee acceleration vector lifted the Lindau vertical. Seconds later he was out of the clouds and curving sharply at ten gees through the ionosphere to bring the nose down again. The starship’s onboard compensators managed to relieve four gees, leaving him exposed to a full six-gee force. Biononics braced his body again as he was shoved back into the pilot’s acceleration couch. The Lindau plunged back into the lower atmosphere. It immediately began to vibrate with a frequency and intensity that threatened to shake the whole structure apart. Even with biononic protection, Aaron could feel his bones and organs quiver as his flesh was squeezed. Alarms filled the cabin with a panicked howl. Red strobes drowned out the ordinary illumination, immersing him in hell’s own lighting scheme. He heard overstressed metal tearing. Somewhere behind him high-pressure gas roared out of a fracture. Toxic alarms added their unique note to the clamor. Aaron strengthened his integral force field.

Solar-bright lightning overwhelmed the hull’s visual sensors as the starship began its new run five hundred meters from the ground. The vibration grew progressively more violent. Aaron ignored it all, scrutinizing every byte of data from the external sensors. Within the chaos of the terminal blizzard, the ship’s instruments could scan only a few hundred meters with any accuracy. His search area was a huge zone that stretched from the Asiatic glacier back to the Olhava camp, which he was forced to cover in strips eight hundred meters wide— with a fifty-meter overlap to be certain of complete coverage.

The Lindau completed its manic run and punched upward. A fuselage stress strut snapped, tearing through cables and pipes. Sparks sprayed into the cabin as half the polyphoto light panels failed. Smartcore schematics revealed a deeper problem of primary power loss to several drive support systems. Aaron shunted the display into a peripheral icon and power-dived the starship back into the clouds at eleven gees.

The Delivery Man teleported directly into the hallway to hear Elsie and Tilly squabbling over who could play with the grav-ball. Elsie had it and was running around the front lounge victoriously, holding the toy aloft and shouting: “My turn, my turn.”

Tilly was chasing her sister, trying to grab the ball back. “Is not!” she yelled in frustration. The pediatric housebot was floating after the two of them, maintaining the safety-regulated one point seven meters away, chiding melodiously: “Children to stop climbing on furniture. There is danger in this activity. Please calm down. Share your toys. It is rewarding.”

“Ratbag,” Elsie shouted at the bot. She threw the grav-ball. It hit the upper surface of the bot and rebounded in a cloud of blue holographic light to hit the ceiling, where it flattened out for five seconds, quivering, before launching itself at the wall amid another photonic fizz. Tilly and Elsie sprinted for it, little faces grim with determination. Both missed as it shot upward again, making a ridiculous boiiing noise. Another bounce off the ceiling and it was heading straight for Lizzie’s favorite vase, a fifteen-hundred-year-old Rebecca Lewis from her Bryn-Bella period.

The Delivery Man hated the flowery monstrosity but managed to snatch the grav-ball from the air just before it hit.

“Daddy!” Both girls immediately forgot their squabble and ran over for hugs.

“I’ve told you a hundred times you’re not to play with this in the adult rooms,” he scolded.

“Yes, yes!” They wrapped their arms around him, tugging as they jumped up and down in happy excitement.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Did you bring presents?”

He handed the grav-ball to the housebot. “All over, and no.”

“Awwww!”

“I was too busy, sorry.” Staying alive.

The three of them walked into the kitchen, where Lizzie and a general housebot were preparing supper on the iron range cooker. Various pans were bubbling away, producing a mélange of scents. It was dark outside, turning the windows into sheets of blackness coated in condensation.

Lizzie smiled and gave him a quick kiss. “Glad you’re back,” she whispered.

“Me, too.”

Rosa tottered in from the conservatory, dressed in a red and black skirt with green stockings. “Daa da.”

“Hello, poppet.” He scooped her up and tidied some of her dark red curls.

“She said ‘bot’ today,” Lizzie said.

“Did you?” the Delivery Man asked. Rosa smiled back, saying nothing.

“It could have been ‘boot,’ ” Lizzie admitted. “Can you three do something useful and lay the table, please.”

The Delivery Man put Rosa down and helped Tilly and Elsie arrange the knives and forks in the right places.

“I think I might cut down on investigations,” the Delivery Man said as he found some wineglasses for himself and Lizzie.

“That’s good,” she said.

“At least the cases farthest away from the Central worlds. That should cut down on my away time considerably.”

She rewarded the decision with a kiss. “Thank you.”

They all sat down together for supper. The housebot put a big casserole pot in the middle of the table and lifted the lid off.

The Delivery Man poked the serving spoon in and lifted out some steaming— “What is this?” he asked dubiously.

“Sausage stew,” Tilly announced proudly. “I made the sausages at school. We programmed the culinary cabinet down to level three for the ingredients.”

“I made the tomatoes,” Elsie said.

“It all looks lovely,” the Delivery Man assured them. He tipped the stew onto the plate and added some vegetables and potatoes. Lizzie sipped at the wine and grinned at him over the rim of the glass.

When they finally got the children to bed, the Delivery Man lit the fire in the lounge. The Georgian town house was perfectly insulated against the wintry night, but as Lizzie had educated him, a real fire gave them a reassuring warmth inside. They snuggled up together on the big settee with the rest of the wine.

“I heard a rumor today,” Lizzie said. “You know what Jen’s husband does?”

“Er, not sure, really.” For the first time in a long time he was actually relaxing rather than putting on a show of tranquillity.

“Something to do with the navy. Anyway, she was telling me the Ocisen fleet might be more powerful than anyone is owning up to.”

“Really?” He knew it was only a matter of time before news of the Yenisey got out.

“Did you hear anything?”

“No.” But he did remember Marius’s reaction to the news of Hanko. It was odd, as though the Accelerator Faction representative didn’t know about the use of a Hawking m-sink. Why would he try to bluff on that?

“And the news from Viotia was horrible. The unisphere showed some poor woman being grabbed by the paramilitaries. They’d attacked her in the street for no reason.”

“Terrible.” Unless he genuinely didn’t know. And if that’s the case, who else would be able to get hold of one?

“I can see you’re really bothered by it.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She wiggled up closer. “I am glad you’re cutting back. You don’t mind?”

“I can pick it up again in twenty years. I just don’t want to miss out on the kids growing up. It’s a unique time.”

Lizzie patted his leg as she tipped back some more wine. “Good man.”

While the Delivery Man was getting ready for bed that night, the Conservative Faction called. “We need you to deliver a starship to Pulap tomorrow.”

“No,” he told them. A quick guilty glance through the bathroom door showed Lizzie moving around in the bedroom. He shut the door. “Not anymore.”

“This will be an entirely passive role for you, exactly as we originally promised. To the best of our knowledge there are no agents of any faction on Pulap.”

“If he catches me, you’ll need to re-life me. I don’t want that.”

“There is someone else we will be using to monitor Marius from now on. An operative who takes a more active role than you.”

“Oh.”

“To reassure you further, Marius has just arrived on Ganthia.”

“What’s on Ganthia?” He immediately cursed himself for asking.

“We’re not sure. However, it is over two hundred light-years from Pulap. We would not ask you to make this delivery unless it was urgent.”

“I don’t know.”

“It will take us time to replace you. There was bound to be some overlap before your successor can be fully initiated.”

“I didn’t say I was going to stop helping you.” He gave his image in the mirror an angry stare, then broke away and stuffed his clothes into the laundry basket. “All right, I’ll deliver the starship, but after this I want at least three days’ notice of any assignment.”

“Thank you.”

Araminta didn’t sleep much. The bed that the couch expanded into was fine, its aging mattress accommodating and the duvet warm. The twins next door made no noise to bother her. It was all due to worry that any second the door would come crashing down and the Ellezelin paramilitaries would rampage through the little house to grab her, hurting Tandra and the children in the process.

I had no right to come here and put them in danger.

Worry also about what to do next. She knew who she wanted to talk to, but the how of it was difficult. In the hours when she wasn’t actively fretting, she went through all the communication technology files stored in her lacuna. There were more than she realized, accumulated so she could hardwire her properties for unisphere access and integrate domestic systems with the house net. They gave her quite a good base of practical knowledge. All she had to do then was work out how to apply it.

She kept examining the whole problem like some particularly stupid program. If A doesn’t work, try B, then C. She was on Z for about the eighth time when morning light finally started to glow through the cheap paper blinds over the window. But that eighth Z was certainly possible, maybe even quite clever. It also had the big advantage that no one would be able to predict it. That was the crucial part. She wasn’t under any illusions now about how desperate Living Dream was to catch her. Every aspect of her life would be analyzed for clues. And every clue would be pursued.

Araminta sat up as Tandra tried to tiptoe through the living room to the galley kitchen.

“Sorry,” Tandra said. “Did I wake you?”

“No.”

Tandra pulled the blinds up. “Wow, you look terrible.”

“Didn’t sleep much,” Araminta admitted.

Martyn emerged from the bathroom, dressed in a worn T-shirt and blue shorts. “Morning,” he mumbled, scratching his hair and then moving on to his armpit.

“Still glad you came?” Tandra asked lightly. She and Araminta started giggling as Martyn frowned at the pair of them. He walked through the archway to the kitchen.

“Can I steal some of your makeup?” Araminta asked when she heard him banging cups and bowls about.

“Hell, yes, honey,” Tandra said. “Half the membrane scales are way past their expiration date, but that’s all a big con, anyway. You use them. I sure don’t get much chance to doll up.”

“Thanks.”

“You going to see a guy?”

“Not quite, no.”

“Okay. You want some coffee?”

Araminta smiled. The coffee Martyn had produced from the galley kitchen last night had been terrible. “Lovely, thank you.”

Breakfast was a messy affair, with the five of them squeezed around the little table in the living room. The twins were playing, taking forever to scoop down their cereal. Araminta munched on her toast, trying not to laugh as an increasingly exasperated Tandra threatened and pleaded with the children.

Afterward, she sat on the bed in Tandra’s room and started applying the makeup scales. Tandra had a surprising number of cosmetic cases from various companies; some had been heavily used, while others were still untouched. Over half an hour Araminta managed to change the appearance of her features, disguising her rounded cheeks in favor of a more angular quality, carefully shadowing under her jaw to make it appear more prominent and square. Simple lenses changed her eye color to a deep blue. She sprayed her hair, darkening it to near raven, then plaited it in a way she hadn’t done since high school.

Tandra brought her clothes in. “Clean and fixed as best as our poor old bot can manage. I must find a better stitching program.” She dropped them on the mattress next to Araminta. “Now, that’s different. I barely recognize you.”

Araminta flashed her friend a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

“Don’t want to worry you,” Tandra said, closing the door, “but Matthew just called. There have been people in Nik’s this morning asking after you. Three lots of people.”

“Oh, Ozzie.” All the fear and panic from yesterday came storming back into her mind.

Tandra sat beside her. “Is it bad?”

“About as bad as it can get. I’m going to leave right now. I should never have come.”

“That’s all right, honey; I could do with my life shaking up a bit.”

Araminta shook off her borrowed robe and began pulling her patched trousers on. “Not like this. Listen, if anyone comes asking for me, you tell them the complete truth. All of it.”

“What’s to tell?”

“That I was here. Don’t deny anything. Don’t hold back.”

“Gee, if you’re sure.”

She pulled on her blouse, marveling that Tandra’s cleaner had managed to get the grass stains out of the elbows. “Never more so.”

With the tool belt around her waist again and the fleece covering it up, she was ready to leave.

“Thank you again,” she said at the door. Martyn’s uncertain grin only made her feel more ashamed.

“You take care now,” Tandra said, and kissed her goodbye.

Araminta walked fast for the first twenty minutes, putting as much distance as she could between her and Tandra’s family. After that, with sweat soaking into her blouse, she slowed a little, puffing away, hoping her flushed cheeks wouldn’t dislodge the cosmetic membranes. She couldn’t open the fleece to cool off; that would expose her tool belt.

It was a long way to her destination, an office over in the Salisbury district, which was on the other side of town from Tandra’s place. The quickest route would be straight through the center, but she avoided that, anxious not to encounter too many people. Besides, there were more streetsensors in the center. She walked in a long curve away from the river, then back down the slope to the north of the docks.

Three hours after she had started she was in Salisbury. The buildings there were nearly all commercial, interspersed with a few estates of cheaper housing that had been shipped in from the Suvorov continent, prefab aluminum brick rooms locked together into bungalows in whatever configuration suited the landlord. Their gardens were marked off with chain-link fencing, containing straggly lawns or big areas of gravel chip, parked ground vehicles, and the odd broken capsule.

The metro line cut through the center of the district, with a small number of branch lines splitting off. A few cabs hummed past. Trike pods were the preferred transport, though there weren’t many zipping about today. Bicycles outnumbered them nearly two to one. There were enough pedestrians that she didn’t feel too conspicuous. Even the Ellezelin capsules didn’t use the skies above Salisbury.

Araminta had never been to the district before, so it took her another hour walking down the main roads checking the signs before she found Harrogate Street, a deserted stub of concrete ending five hundred meters from the intersection in a big field of rubble from some stalled redevelopment project. Amazingly, a metro line ran all the way up to the barrier around the waste ground. The buildings on either side were a mix of offices and industrial units and storage barns.

Now she was conspicuous, the only person on the pavement where weeds had started to lift the cracked concrete and compacted rubbish clogged the gutters. A third of the way toward the redevelopment site she found the building she wanted, a medium-size warehouse of composite panels and cheap solar roofing. The front had a single-story lean-to built on, housing the company offices, the company in question being Genuine Spanish Crepes, as advertised by a small orange sign on the security-caged front door. The windows were boarded up with sheets of armored carbotanium, side walls covered in graffiti scrawls so old that their glow had decayed to near invisibility.

Araminta walked down the side of the warehouse. Right at the end of the wall there was a small door. She pulled out her cutter and removed the lock with a neat incision.

Inside the big enclosed space, light shone in through a row of misted glass along the roof’s apex. Five loosely piled pyramids of boxes sat on the bare concrete floor, all with the Spanish Crepes logo on the side. She ignored them and hurried to the offices at the front. Getting inside was easy enough. The door was locked but not alarmed. Laril was too cheap for that.

There were three offices, the budget furniture and fittings making it look as if the staff had just left for the day. Araminta hurriedly pulled down the blinds and began to search the offices one by one.

Spanish Crepes had been another of Laril’s rotten companies. It was supposed to be a franchise supplying Colwyn City’s larger entertainment venues, dozens of stalls and swarms of eager staff supplying quality food at reasonable prices and paying Laril for the privilege. As always it had limped along as he battled with licensing authorities while buying stock from the cheapest suppliers he could find. Then there were subsidiaries dealing in the stalls and culinary units themselves, financed with a buyback scheme based offworld. More interlinked yet unregistered companies provided uniforms and transport. None of it had been declared to the Revenue Service.

Araminta knew about it all because he’d left a file open one day on their apartment’s network. She’d never told him she knew about it; she’d even kept it from Cressida. It was to be her very last bargaining point if all legal means failed.

A thorough inventory of every desk and cupboard produced very little. Useless hard copy of confusing receipts and agreements. Sample boxes of exotic crepe fillings. Dead potted plants. Worn culinary unit components. Electronic modules, function unknown. She found three cybersphere nodes, kubes in neat storage cassettes, a box of company aprons in trial colors, and a midcapacity management array with out-of-date software.

However, as she sat at what must have been Laril’s desk with its ancient console and three portals, she found five cash coins in the bottom drawer, underneath some carry-capsule manuals. Difficult to find but not necessarily suspicious, so they weren’t there by accident. Like everything Laril did.

She held one of the coins up and smiled at it. Good old Laril, dependably unreliable.

Thirty minutes was spent opening up one of the nodes, using a handheld interface to adapt the software configuration, registering a new company unisphere account with money from the cash coin. She now had a very basic communication link through the management array that didn’t involve her u-shadow or include her identity. No tracer program or scrutineer would be able to place her at the Spanish Crepes office.

In theory.

She laboriously typed in the Oaktier code stored in her lacuna. The tiny array screen displayed icons showing the channel being established.

Please, she prayed, be curious enough to accept the call.

The portal projected Laril’s puzzled face into the air in front of her. She surprised herself by her reaction, but the sight of that awfully familiar thin brown hair, rotund cheeks, and excessive stubble brought tears to her eyes. It was just so unbelievably reassuring that he had remained exactly the same.

“Araminta? Is that you? Have you reprofiled your face?”

“Don’t go,” she blurted. “I need help.”

“Ah. I didn’t know you knew about the, er, crepes company.”

“Forget about that. Can you run a check to see if anyone is eavesdropping on this link?”

His eyes widened in amused surprise. “Okay. U-shadow analyzing the connection route. Ah ha. The channel seems clean, but I’m not a true expert on these things. Are you all right? I’ve tried to call a couple of times. I was worried when your u-shadow didn’t respond.”

Araminta took a deep breath. “Laril, it’s me they’re after.”

“You?”

“I’m the Second Dreamer.”

“You know the Second Dreamer?”

“No. I am the Second Dreamer.”

“You can’t be.”

Araminta scowled at the screen. This was Laril true enough, always the same and never giving her credit. “Why not?”

“For a start, you don’t have gaiamotes.”

“Don’t need them.” She explained about her previously unknown ancestry.

“You’re related to Mellanie Rescorai?” was all he asked when she’d finished.

“You know of her?”

“Who doesn’t? Especially here on Oaktier; this was her birth-world.”

Definitely Laril; no one else ever irritated her at this level. “I …” She shut her eyes, drew a breath, and looked directly at his projection. “I don’t know who else to go to.”

He grinned, a hand reaching up to scratch the top of his right ear. “Wow. I’m flattered.”

“You said if there was ever anything …”

“Yeah. Wasn’t quite thinking along these lines, though.”

“I see.” You can always rely on Laril to let you down. She reached for the keyboard, ready to cut the channel.

“That doesn’t mean I won’t help,” he said in that soft caring voice he hadn’t used since their first week together.

“Really?”

“I loved you then, and I guess I always will.”

“Thank you.”

“Sorry, but … You’re really the Second Dreamer?”

She smirked. “Yeah.”

“And you told the Skylord to get lost?”

“I don’t want to go into the Void, especially not leading some crazy Pilgrimage for a bunch of religious nuts.”

“Succinctly put. Unfortunately, there are bigger issues to consider.”

“I know. For a start, I’ve got half of Ellezelin’s police force in the city looking for me. And Gore said there are others, too.”

“What can I do?”

“I don’t know. It’s just sort of instinct coming to you.”

“Again, flattering in a weird kind of way. But let’s face it, if anyone can advise you how to stay ahead of officialdom, it’s me.”

“I’m not sure even you can help me on that score. Laril, the whole city is sliding into anarchy. Ellezelin is the only authority here. I don’t think I can hide forever.”

“Okay, let me think for a moment here.” He patted his forehead theatrically.

“Have you got someone now?” she asked quietly.

“Yes. At least there’s someone I’ve started to see regularly. She’s just arrived on Oaktier for the same reason as me.”

“That’s good. I’m pleased.”

“Thanks. And you?”

“Yes. You’d probably be surprised by him, but yes.”

“So I have to ask, why isn’t he helping you out?”

“I don’t want to involve him. It’s a bit much.”

“Okay, that tells me what I need to know.”

“What?”

“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but your thinking about this is all wrong.”

“How?”

“Too small. Basically, what I’m saying is that it’s not about you.”

“It’s very much about me.”

“No. This is about the evolution of entire cultures and species. It might even be about the fate of the galaxy, if you believe the Raiel. You play a part in that, a very minor part given the nature of the events playing out here.”

She started to argue, but he held up a hand.

“However,” he said, “it is pivotal, and that’s where your importance lies. You have a choice, Araminta. You can be the small person, maybe try to run and hide. Then someone will catch up with you, and depending on who they are, your role will be subsumed into their agenda. Don’t make the mistake of thinking any of them will leave you alone to carry on as you see best. They won’t.”

“And my other choice?” she asked waspishly.

“Try to beat them at their own game. Turn around, stop running, face them down, and use the power you’ve acquired to bring about your own tenets.”

“What are they?”

Laril laughed quietly. “When you work that out, you’ll make the second choice automatically. Then universe, watch out.”

Araminta slumped in the chair and gave his image a dirty look. “Oh, why did I call you?”

“Practicality. Listen. You’ll either get there or they’ll catch you first, so don’t worry about it. In the meantime, I’ll give you my advice, which you can ignore as always, but at least my conscience will be clear knowing I did my very best to help you.”

She pouted. “I didn’t always ignore what you said.”

“Excuse me, I must have missed the one time you said yes.”

“Go on, then. I called you, after all, so let’s hear it.”

“Just let me take a moment. The galaxy’s future is poised on what I have to say; this is a real moment to savor.”

“Get on with it.”

His expression turned serious. “Are you supplying Justine’s dream?”

“Justine is dreaming?”

“Okay, that answers that. Yes, she is, but she’s gone into suspension, so that removes her from the outcome for a while. Which brings us back to you and your proven influence on the Skylord. If that is to mean anything, you have to use it. Talk to the Skylord again.”

“I can’t. They have some way of tracking me through the gaiafield. I only just got out of my apartment the last time, and that was mostly luck.”

“Ozzie! All right, you have to try and find a way; you need to talk to it.”

“What do I say?”

“Try to explain how many people want to come to the Void; try to make it understand how catastrophic that would be for the rest of the galaxy. If you don’t want to be taken over by Living Dream or a faction as their unwitting figurehead, then you have to bring this to an end.”

“Yeah,” she said, exhaling heavily. “I suppose I see that. I’ll try using the gaiafield again, try and see if I can find a way around them finding me.”

“That’s a good start. It sounds like your ability to do that is different from everyone else’s, so there’s a chance it’ll work in your favor. Here’s an idea: If you can use the gaiafield without them realizing, you might want to check out Inigo’s dreams. At least you’ll have a better understanding of what you’re up against. Failing that, you’re supposed to be able to commune with the Silfen Motherholme. Who knows what they’ll say?”

“Thank you. That’s actually—”

“Useful?”

“Very.”

“All right, then. Now, what about you? Where are you staying?”

“I haven’t got anywhere.”

“You’re in the Spanish Crepes office, right?”

“Yes.”

“Bottom drawer of my desk you’ll find a bunch of old manuals. Underneath them are some cash coins. Untraceable.”

She held them up, trying not to smirk.

“Ozzie,” he muttered. “I never did fool you, did I?”

“Not much.”

“All right, there’s a couple of thousand Viotia pounds loaded in. That’ll help. Do you know about Wurung Transport?”

“No.”

“Okay, I’m not totally useless, then. It’s another company I ran. A garage unit in the building two down from where you are now. There’s a fully licensed cab inside, just one; that’s all the company owns. I can load the activation code in from here, so it’ll be ready when you get to it. Now listen; there’s some interesting software in its management system which allows you to avoid being tracked by the city control network.”

“Why?” she asked.

He gave an embarrassed shrug. “It might be useful if there were things you wanted to move around town without drawing too much attention to yourself.”

“Oh, Laril!” There was concern as well as exasperation in her tone.

“Those days are over,” he said. “It also has a unisphere node. I’ll remote switch it to standby; you can use it any time to call me. No one else will be able to access it.”

“Thank you.”

“Araminta.”

“Yes?”

“I’m glad it was me you called. I’m glad I can help.”

She stared at his image for a long moment. “Why did you pick me?” she asked quietly.

“Oldest reason for a man to have: You’re gorgeous.”

Ridiculously, she knew she was almost blushing. “Don’t change too much to become Higher.”

“You know me. Good luck. Call me when you need to.”

“Bye, Laril.” She switched off the management array and the cybersphere node, then went out to check on Wurung Transport.

The Purus and the Congo slid unnoticed among the awesome Ocisen Empire fleet as it raced toward the Commonwealth at four and a half light-years per hour. A detailed scan revealed no craft other than the Starslayers plunging onward through their wormholes. Whoever the Ocisen Empire’s allies were, they had a drive technology at least equal to that of the Commonwealth Navy ships.

They took up position a kilometer behind the new command vessel and began to interfere with its continuous wormhole. After a sharp tussle of exotic energy the big Starslayer vessel was torn back into normal spacetime, its reaction control rockets firing continually to kill the errant rotation it had picked up during the abrupt transition. Random flares of light slithered over its dark ovoid hull as the force field generators tried to regain equilibrium while the FTL drive’s death throes spun out residual energy fluctuations. Both the Purus and the Congo dropped out of hyperdrive.

A featureless spherical starship appeared beside the wrecked Starslayer.

The Huron, the Nyasa, and the Baykal shedded their stealth effect. The three Capital-class starships were almost as large as the Starslayer and infinitely more potent. A second spherical starship materialized five kilometers from the first. The Onega and the Torrens revealed themselves.

For three seconds nothing happened. The humans held their breath.

Both of the alien vessels opened fire.

It was ninety seconds before the ultrasecure TD link to Pentagon II was reestablished. The energy storm unleashed by the hellish firefight had strained the local structure of spacetime to a degree that affected even the underlying quantum fields, severing the link. Admiral Kazimir reviewed the updated situation fast. Both of the unknown ships had been destroyed, as had the Congo, while the Torrens had suffered so much damage that it was unable to fight, though the crew had survived. Most of the Starslayer’s hull had evaporated from the titanic energy bursts, even though no one had aimed at it. What was left of the outer structure was glowing cherry-red and bubbling furiously around the edges.

“Not completely invincible, then,” Ilanthe said in a relieved tone.

“So it would appear,” the Admiral agreed. They were all waiting to see if any more of the allies accompanying the fleet would turn back to assist their colleagues. The Capital-class ships had managed to detect fifty stealthed hyperdrives secreted amid the Starslayers, a truly formidable force.

“Maybe not invincible but just about unstoppable,” Crispin said. “Do we have an equal number of Capital-class warships, Admiral?”

“We have thirty-nine within deployment range,” Kazimir told the depleted ExoProtectorate Council. He was dismayed that it was his own family that was missing. Whoever it was who had released his mother’s dream into the gaiafield wasn’t coming forward. Not that knowing his or her identity would be of any use—she would remain in suspension for some time. But it irked him to know that someone could reach her.

Even more dismaying was Gore’s nonappearance. When Kazimir convened the ExoProtectorate Council, Gore’s u-shadow reported him as unavailable. Kazimir couldn’t imagine what would keep his grandfather from attending, especially as his absence would allow Ilanthe to dominate the Council. Not, he admitted to himself, that the outcome was going to be anything other than the one he really didn’t want.

“The remaining unknowns are staying with the fleet,” reported Sorex, the Onega’s captain.

“Excellent,” Kazimir replied. “Could you get in close for a scan of the wreckage, please.”

“So the fleet can be eliminated?” Creewan asked urgently.

“Numerically it would be difficult,” Kazimir said as the Onega dispatched a swarm of sensor drones toward the largest chunk of wreckage from the second spherical ship. “As well as the unknowns, there are nine hundred Starslayers to consider. Our combined River-and Capital-class ships would probably defeat them, but the cost would be severe. We’d be left with very few vessels.”

“Then we know what needs to be done,” Ilanthe said. “I believe there is one class of ship more powerful than the Capital class.”

“Yes,” Kazimir said with extreme reluctance.

“Admiral,” Sorex called. “High-resolution sensors are combining. Oh, great Ozzie—”

Kazimir and the rest of the ExoProtectorate Council stared silently at the sensor results that appeared above the big table. The little drones were flitting through the broken compartments and passageways of the spherical warship, contributing their separate scans to a cohesive image. The battered chunk of hardware was texture perfect right down to individual structural components. Metal around the outside was still hot enough to glow. It was also terribly radioactive. Odd pieces of charred biological matter drifted around the compartments, torn from alien bodies as explosions and energy pulses ripped through the ship. Right in the middle, the bodies were larger, intact. The drones concentrated on one.

Kazimir started at the terribly familiar pear-shaped torso with four gristly ridges running its length. Four stubby legs protruded from the curving base, while arms branched out of the body just above the legs, each one ending in an efficient quad-pincer arrangement. At the top of the body four small mouth trunks were open, drifting in zero gee like seaweed in a slow current. Between them were the sensory stalks, rigid in death, each one fused to a neat electronic module.

“That can’t be,” Crispin exclaimed. “It can’t! We contained them all twelve hundred years ago. All of them.”

“It is,” Ilanthe said emotionlessly.

“Yes,” Kazimir said, fighting both shock and a tinge of fear. “A motile. The Ocisen Empire has acquired Primes as its allies.”

The noise of ice crystals smashing themselves to sparkling dust on the ground crawler’s metal shell was making conversation difficult inside. Even under the constant barrage by the wild elements, the vehicle hadn’t moved. It was wedged fast in the fissure, with its narrow front windows covered by dirty granules that had filled the gaps around it. Minor quakes continued to shake it, but they only seemed to tighten the fissure’s grip. Several times, the thick metal bodywork had groaned in protest.

Corrie-Lyn sat awkwardly on top of the two forward seats, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Inigo was using an auxiliary console to squat beside her.

“Why did you never dream again?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“The Waterwalker’s era was over,” Inigo said. “You know that. There were no more dreams to be had.”

“But if you had one following his ascent to the nebulae, there must have been others. You said it came from a descendant. He had many children.”

“I …” Inigo shook his head. His eyes glinted in the console’s moiré radiance as he gazed at his old lover. “We witnessed everything we needed to. I sustained hope in billions of people for centuries. That’s enough.”

Corrie-Lyn studied the face looming above her. It was so familiar, yet the darkened skin and bad brown hair made him seem colder somehow. This wasn’t quite the old Inigo she’d known and loved. After all, it’s been seventy years. Dreams don’t always end like the Waterwalker’s did. And I dreamed so hard about this moment. “Please,” she began.

The atmosphere howled at a volume that was painful to her ears. She gripped the chair, fearful that this was the final quake, the one that would send them falling into the planet’s imploding core.

“It’s all right,” Inigo’s soft voice reassured her. “Just the storm.”

She grinned uncomfortably. That voice hadn’t changed, and the reassurance she gained from it was immeasurable. So often she had heard his strident messages to the devout gathered in Golden Park and, equally, the tenderness when they were alone. Every time it contained total conviction. If he said it was just the storm, then it was so.

“Can you dream again?” she asked.

The cabin lights flickered. Red warnings appeared on the console as the tortured air outside wailed stridently. Inigo’s fingers stroked her cheek. “What is it you want?” he asked, his mind lustrous with compassion.

“I want to go to Querencia one last time,” she told him. “I want to walk through Lillylight’s arcades. I want to take a gondola ride down the Great Major Canal. I want to stand on Kristabel’s hortus as dawn comes up over the city.” She gripped his hand. “Just us. Is that such a terrible thing to ask?”

“No,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing to desire.”

“Take us there. Until the end.”

The tears were fully formed now, rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t, my love. I’m so sorry.”

“No,” she cried. “Inigo, please.”

“We can dream any of the Waterwalker’s dreams together. Any. Just pick one.”

“No. I know them all. Even his last one. I want to know what happened afterward. If you won’t take me there as it is now, then show me that final dream you had.”

“Corrie-Lyn, do you still trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Then don’t ask this. Let us visit Edeard when he drops Master Cherix into Birmingham Pool or as he confronts Bise and the regiment in Sampalok. They are such wonderful times. He shows people their future can be different from the one they thought they were condemned to.”

“Why?” she pleaded. “Tell me why.”

The storm noise ended. It cut off so fast that Corrie-Lyn thought she had suddenly gone deaf. This is it. No regrets. Well, not many.

“Oh, shit.” Inigo was looking up toward the rear of the cabin.

“It’s all right,” she said valiantly. “We’re together.”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head, straightening up.

Corrie-Lyn wriggled into a precarious near-sitting position. “What?”

“The Lady must hate us; she’s guided us to a genuine fate worse than death.”

“Inigo, what are you—”

A blinding green flash filled the cabin. Corrie-Lyn squeezed her eyes shut in reflex. Her optic nerves were shining a blazing white and scarlet afterimage into her brain. She yelled in panic as some potent force slammed her sideways, sending her tumbling painfully down the side of the chairs to jam her into the narrow space below. Her good arm waved around frantically. “Inigo!” Then she was abruptly aware of fearsomely cold air flowing across her. She drew a shocked breath, feeling it freeze-burning down her mouth and throat. Her vision was slowly recovering. She blinked to see Inigo braced on the console above her, clad in a shimmering force field. He was still looking up. Almost dreading what she’d see, Corrie-Lyn followed his gaze.

The rear two-thirds of the ground crawler’s cabin had completely vanished. Where it had been, gray ice particles were drifting slowly downward through a funereal sky. Behind them, slivers of purple static writhed across the broad force field dome that now encased them in a bubble of serenity. A human figure was silhouetted against the curtailed storm, an integral force field providing additional protection from the wicked elements. Corrie-Lyn blinked again, trying to gain some focus through the sharp scintillations of her bruised retinas. Secondary thought routines in her macrocellular clusters managed to resolve the man’s features.

“Oh, Lady, fuck it,” she groaned, and slumped back down.

“Well, well,” Aaron said cheerfully. “Fancy meeting you two here.”

Inigo’s Eleventh Dream

At night Makkathran’s grandiose rooftops shimmered like moiré silk as gentle nebula light burned through the skies above them. Amid that soft sheen, the streets were sharp orange threads of radiance forming an intricate filigree across the circular metropolis poised beside the sea. Floating high above the crystal wall, it was possible to see a new radiance complementing the city’s nocturnal luster if one knew how to look.

Far, far down at the limit of perception the faint light was just available, small wisps of darkling iridescence emerging from the apex of buildings into the balmy night air. They trailed gauzy tails as they drifted upward. It was as though Makkathran were exhaling a phosphorescent rain into the heavens.

The souls of the dead called out in joy and wonder as they began their flight into the awesome abyss of night. He could hear their voices as they passed him, the relief at being free of the body, of pain and misery, the regret for those they left behind, the thrill at the song that summoned them ever upward. They called out to one another, eager to share the adventure of their newfound freedom. Some formed packs, twisting together into brighter nimbi to soar above the clouds in an exuberant celebration of liberty; others remained alone, reveling in their independence.

Occasionally, as he cast his sorrowful gaze downward, he could see some souls linger. Distraught at their death, they yearned to remain among their loved ones. Unseen, unheard, the frail specters grew wretched and dissolute as those they adored above all else remained ignorant of their presence, the single comfort of knowing lost to false hope. Their grief was overwhelming, threatening to drown him if he immersed himself among them for any time. So he looked up again at those who cast themselves longingly into the sky, wishing beyond reason that he could catch the faintest hint of the song sung from the heart of this universe. If he just strained, reached out …

Edeard woke with a start, sitting up in bed, his skin slick with sweat, heart pounding, gulping for breath.

Beside him, Kristabel rose to put her arms around him. “It’s all right, my love,” she cooed. “Just a dream.”

“Every night,” he moaned, for that was what he’d dreamed or been shown since his fall from the Eyrie tower. “Will this plague ever leave me? I’d willingly rejoin my old dreams in exchange for this curse.”

“Old dreams?” Kristabel ordered the ceiling to brighten. Perfect white light revealed the maisonette around them.

The sight of it, the normality, immediately made Edeard feel foolish. “I’m sorry. I always had dreams. But these!”

“The souls again?”

“Yes,” he said weakly. “I see them rising, and I can’t hear the song they’re following. So I try and listen, and …” He shook his head in annoyance. “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. I’m just worried for you, that’s all.”

“I’ll be all right.” He flopped down and glanced at the narrow window. “What time is it?”

“Hours before dawn.”

“Huh! It might not be a dream, then. I always visualize the city at night.”

Kristabel rolled onto her side, where she gave him a concerned look. “Can you farsight any souls right now?”

“Not sure.” He closed his eyes and stretched out his farsight. The dark shadows of city buildings slipped through his perception, fizzing with the sparkle of slumbering minds. Makkathran’s all-encompassing thoughts were easy to discern, pervading the structure of everything, but were strongest beneath the streets and canals, down amid the levels where pipes and tunnels and strange threads of energy wove around one another. They were faint, elusive even, but tangible enough. Of the souls that he knew must be there, he could find no trace. “Nothing,” he said in defeat.

“It’s not a contest. You haven’t lost anything.”

“But I’ve sensed them twice.” Edeard stopped to think. “I was close to the body each time, very close.”

“What are you saying? You want to go to a hospice?”

“No,” he lied.

Kristabel gave him a suspicious glance. “Hmm.”

“I wonder if I should see the Pythia again.” He didn’t like the idea. Their last meeting hadn’t been particularly pleasant for him. During the gentle questioning that had gone on for what seemed like hours, he’d felt awkward and defensive. The authority she possessed made him feel like a small child who’d committed some transgression and been hauled up before a loving but stern parent.

“What would she be able to teach you?” Kristabel asked with more than a touch of scorn.

“Nothing, I suppose.” After that unsatisfactory meeting, he’d carefully read the Lady’s scriptures again. It was the first time he’d read them properly since Sunday lessons at the Ashwell church with Mother Lorellan. All he’d ever done then was learn passages by rote, never knowing their meaning.

Rereading the scriptures had been something of a revelation. They were hardly a religious text but an imprecise diary written in very flowery prose, followed by what amounted to her thoughts on how to lead a better, more fulfilling life. Only the Skylords bound the two sections together—vast airborne creatures who sailed sedately between Querencia and the nebulae, a migration whose purpose was unknown but that served to guide human souls to the Heart. However, according to the Lady, only souls that had achieved what she termed “fulfillment” would be taken. Reading through her homilies, he couldn’t help but think of an elderly spinster aunt telling her relatives about how to be a good family. Be polite, be nice, be considerate, be charitable. Or maybe life was just very different back then, though he suspected not, judging by the diary part. At least that was interesting, though it began only as Rah caught his first glimpse of Makkathran from the mountains. All the Lady ever said of the ship that brought them to this universe was that Rah was leading people away from the turmoil that followed their landing. Beyond that, the past was never mentioned. She was admiring of Rah’s perseverance as he broke through the crystal wall, making the three city gates. The wonder they all experienced that first time they sailed into the port, seeing a fully built yet deserted city where they could make their home. How, as they floated along Great Major Canal that day, a Skylord was soaring above the towers in Eyrie. How it agreed to guide the soul of a dying friend to the Heart that lay beyond Odin’s Sea.

The Lady went on to describe the founding of the city Councils and the emergence of the guilds and how some refugees from the fallen ships sought them out while others remained outside the walls and grew jealous. She chronicled petty and bitter disputes between city and country over whose law should prevail. She never saw the end of those quarrels, the final treaty to enshrine the rights of both provinces and city, and her disappointment in the seemingly interminable squabbling was reflected in her later writing about the years when the Skylord visits became less frequent. When she asked them why they were abandoning humans, they told her it was because people were incomplete, their souls too immature to be taken to the Heart. The Lady felt shame for her species. Humbled that they would wither and die before the Heart accepted them, she devoted the remainder of her life to elevating humanity, to installing a sense of purpose and dignity in life through her teachings. Along with a now-ailing Rah and the last few Skylords to visit Makkathran, she cajoled the city into creating the central church in Eyrie. When it was done, when she saw the embryonic church swelling up out of the ground, she joined Rah on the top of Eyrie’s highest tower and let her soul slip from her body so that they could both embrace the guidance of the Skylord and travel into the Heart together.

No Skylord had been seen above Querencia ever since.

“That’s good,” Kristabel said. “I don’t want you to turn to people like her for answers. They’re the past. If you’re the person I think you are, the one I believe in, you make your own decisions.”

“Wow.” Edeard stared at her, almost intimidated by her impassioned expression. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

“I know you will. That’s why I love you.” With that she cuddled against him, ordering the illumination down low again. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’ve done to this maisonette, either,” she added.

“Er …”

“It’s all right. I haven’t told anyone. This is Makkathran; even you should know by now never to reveal your full abilities.”

“I do.”

“Until you have to, of course.”

“Right.”

She grinned in the darkness. Rather surprisingly, Edeard fell asleep again. This time, with her beside him, he was not troubled by dreams or visions of any kind.

In the morning, Kristabel got up as dawn began to produce a glow in the sky over the Donsori Mountains. She dressed quickly and kissed Edeard goodbye as he lay drowsily on the bed.

“I’ll see you in a little while,” she said quietly, and slipped out. Edeard followed her with his farsight as she walked off down the street. Her gondola was waiting in the pool that formed the top end of Flight Canal and the bottom of Arrival Canal. A ge-eagle from Jeavons station circled overhead, watching carefully as she was taken to her family mansion. She would be let into the ziggurat by a small side door and appear at her family’s breakfast table pretending she’d spent the night in her room, and every relative would maintain the pretense.

Stupid etiquette, Edeard grumbled to himself as he started to dress. His mauve cotton shirt had sleeves that barely came over his shoulders, while the trousers were the short ones he used for playing football in the park, ending well above his knees. The cobbler had shaken his head in dismay at the shoes Edeard commissioned, complaining that they were little more than lace-up slippers with thick soles. But the strange footwear was perfect for Edeard’s now-daily run, as he’d known it would be.

This morning he threw on a light sleeveless sweater to counter the early chilly air and jogged steadily away from the tenement. With so few people on the street, he made good time to Brotherhood Canal, then ran along the path on the Ogden side until he was level with the militia stables, where he cut across the meadows to the crystal wall itself. Golden morning light streamed through the crystal, creating a glowing barrier that curved slightly above him.

As he pounded onward, he felt strands of farsight wash over him, tenuous at best. His observers were trying to avoid being noticed. There were a few blatant scrutinies, accompanied by mental snickering. His routine had attracted a great deal of interest when he’d started it. The first couple of weeks had even seen kids running alongside as he left the tenement every morning. That casual amusement and mimicry had ended as he kept faithfully to his routine. On those early days after finishing his mild postfall convalescence, he’d barely been able to last half a mile before having to stop, red-faced and heart pounding. Now he could do forty-five minutes with ease.

Acena, the Culverit family doctor, had approved, commenting that she wished more people would take their health seriously. Others in the city had been less charitable. Edeard didn’t care. Never again would he be so pathetically out of condition that he couldn’t chase someone up a tower in Eyrie.

Once he was level with Arrival Canal, Edeard headed back across the grass as the stable hands began leading the remaining militia horses on their morning walk. He crossed at the green and yellow slab bridge back into Jeavons as the district started to come to life, with shops and traders busy preparing for the day’s commerce. As always, he stopped at the bakery on the corner of Pharo Street to pick up some fresh croissants before heading back to the tenement.

Inside the maisonette he stripped and handed the sweaty clothes to his ge-chimps for laundering. Beside the pool there was a shallow oval-shaped recess in the floor with a sheet of crystal curving around two-thirds of it. Edeard stood inside and told the room to let the water out. A thick spray gushed down on him from holes in the ceiling. He rubbed some soap on, then ordered the water to cool slightly so he could rinse himself clean.

These days he actually preferred the novel minirainfall arrangement to bathing in the traditional pool. It was a lot quicker and left him feeling refreshed even after the run. After the comment Kristabel had made last night, he was wondering if he should extend the crystal sheet to make it big enough for two. Sharing might be a lot of fun.

He met Kristabel outside her mansion as arranged. The two of them took a family gondola across the city to the Ilongo district, disembarking on the North Curve Canal, opposite the North Gate.

“You’re happy,” Kristabel said as they started walking. She was wearing a modest azure dress with a simple white lace hem and a broad green hat to shade her from the warming sun. Her thick hair hung down her back in a single fluffy tail.

“The caravan families are very good old friends,” he replied, “and I really don’t have a lot of those.”

They picked their way carefully along the tracks that wound across High Moat, heading for the caravan pens. There was a lot of traffic that morning, with carts laden with produce, herds of farm beasts driven along, and terrestrial horses cantering in and out of the various wooden stable blocks. They had to step aside smartly for carriages carrying nobility out into the Iguru plain at considerable speed.

“That’s bad driving,” Kristabel said indignantly as the third one sped past, cloaked in a mild seclusion haze. “I recognize the crest; it belongs to the Ivesol family. I bet it’s Corille off to their pavilion on Korbal Mount. She’s started seeing Jamis on the sly, the third son of Upral, you know, the head of the Tarmorl family. And she’s the oldest daughter; there’s quite a dowry involved. I’ve heard her father say he wished his family copied ours, for she’d make a better District Mistress than her brother will ever do as Master.”

“Really?”

Kristabel’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. She rapped her knuckles on his arm. “Don’t be a beast. These things are important. Those two families haven’t been allied for over a century and a half.”

“I’ll try and remember. Remind me, which district belongs to the Ivesols?”

“Lisieux Park.”

“Okay.” As he recalled, the Park’s Master was a waverer in Council, leaning toward the current Mayor. He wondered if a family alliance with the shipowning Tarmorls would tilt the Master toward Finitan.

“It helps,” Kristabel said slyly.

“What does?”

“That the Tarmorls support Finitan.”

“Ah.” Edeard grinned sheepishly. What would I do without her?

He wondered yet again if it was the right time to propose. It had been weeks since their break at the beach lodge, and he’d done his utmost to make time for himself and Kristabel at every opportunity. Yet his terror was now that she’d just think his only concern was time. It wasn’t. There wasn’t a minute of the day that went past without him thinking of the life they could have together as man and wife.

He sighed as he scooted around a cart piled dangerously high with cages of geese. There must be some event or action that would convince her of how genuine he was, how much he’d thought it over and still couldn’t see a life without her. Maybe if I just say that.

But then, what if it’s not good enough? Oh, Lady, why do you do this to me?

Not that her scriptures were any help. The closest she ever came on matters of the human heart was: “Look into each other’s souls and see yourself reflected; there is the true sign of a blessed union.”

The only trouble was, with the Lady being so old, every time he recalled a scripture, he heard it in Mistress Florrel’s voice.

Talk about a passion-killer.

The pens along High Moat summoned a real wave of nostalgia. This was the first part of Makkathran that Edeard had ever experienced. He remembered being overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of people and animals sauntering along the tracks. The noise and dust were exactly the same as that day; if anything, the traffic was thicker now. Three caravans were on their way out of the North Gate, hustled along by the Travel Master’s apprentices, who were trying to keep everyone moving at a decent rate and avoid jams at junctions between the various tracks. Instructions were shouted and longtalked, adding to the good-natured commotion.

Two caravans had arrived first thing that day. Stragglers were still lumbering along in big wagons drawn by bulky, stolid ge-horses. Edeard and Kristabel fell in behind one as they approached the pens. Assessors from several merchant houses were already walking alongside them, small ge-chimps curled up on their shoulders. Edeard remembered the little creatures with a fond smile. The caravan families hated them: Their job was to scamper up the crates and cages, examining produce with their oversize eyes and exceptionally sensitive noses, hunting for blemishes that had been strategically positioned out of sight.

Edeard and Kristabel arrived at the three pens that Barkus had been allocated and stood for a moment looking at the wagons. Five were new, but Edeard recognized every one of the remainder. O’lrany’s cart, with pigs peering over the rear, was pungent as ever, though the O’lranys always claimed they could smell nothing. He saw the wagon of dark jarash with its intricate inlays of claret-colored wood that Golthor chiseled in each winter. Olcus was inspecting the axle of his wagon while his three young children ran about in gleeful pursuit of a whistling loop. Olcus gave Edeard a strange look, then craned forward as if not quite believing the tall young man in a jet-black constable’s uniform.

“Edeard!” The man laughed joyfully and flung his arms wide. “You backward village boy. By the Lady, look at you!”

Edeard grinned and foolishly stepped into the embrace, only to have the man’s powerful arms almost crush him in welcome. He’d been slightly apprehensive at how they’d greet him, but Olcus immediately dispelled all his apprehensions. The rest of the families were hurrying forward now, calling out salutations. He was hugged and kissed, had his hand shaken and his back slapped.

“My boy!” Barkus exclaimed.

Everyone cleared away, and Edeard put his arms around the old man. For once he was glad of the skill he’d acquired in the city at shielding his thoughts. Barkus had aged disturbingly. His white whiskers were thinner than before, and the thickset body appeared almost frail. He walked with the aid of a stick that was necessitated by a pronounced shaking in his knees. His waistcoat, however, was a colorful extravaganza of scarlet and topaz with thin silver piping.

“Good to see you, sir,” Edeard said.

“We have heard so much about you,” Barkus said. “I couldn’t believe it at first. Rumors of the Waterwalker traveled far and wide among the provinces, but we never connected them to you. And now look at you.” His hands plucked at Edeard’s jacket. “Wearing a corporal’s epaulets, no less. Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir. And yourself, how fares the caravan?”

“Pha!” Barkus raised his stick in disgust. “Look at this wretched thing. A stupid fall in the snow last winter, and my leg snaps like glass. Our doctor has forbidden me from riding; I must sit passively on the wagon while my sons lead us through the mountains. The Lady tests me sorely with so much indignity.”

“You look well.”

“Ha. Liar! But I forgive you. Now, then, there is someone with us who is eager to meet you.” The old man grinned mischievously as he turned toward his splendid covered wagon, calling eagerly with longtalk. Edeard took the moment to turn and beckon Kristabel forward. She walked timidly through the caravan families, unused to being completely ignored, but of course none of them knew who she was. Edeard had been waiting for this moment for a long time; for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, it was important to him that Barkus and Kristabel approve of each other. He held her hand and turned back to Barkus, not really seeing the blue-and-white-clad figure stepping out of the wagon. His smile was proud as he opened his mouth to begin the introductions.

“Edeard!” Salrana cried, and sprinted past Barkus to fling her arms around him and land an effusive kiss on his mouth. “Oh, my darling, it’s been so long.”

“Look who we found in Ufford,” Barkus said happily. “She’s the one who’s been busy telling us of all you’ve achieved.”

“Take me to bed right now,” Salrana whispered in his ear with a hot breath. “I don’t want to wait another minute.”

Every muscle in Edeard’s body had frozen in shock—and misery. Shame was inflicting a fair share of the terrible immobility as well.

Salrana swayed back, puzzlement registering on her vibrant face and seeping into her mind. “Edeard?”

“Uh,” he groaned. His gaze went automatically to Kristabel, who was also standing rigidly, her composure chilling down to an emotionless stare. He had never realized before how similar they were; tall, slim, bright, lovely … But then he hadn’t thought about Salrana for a long time now; his mind had conveniently pushed her aside.

Everyone around them turned amazingly silent as they watched the reunion. They watched Salrana look at Kristabel, and no mental shield was strong enough to cover the dawning realization in her mind. Her shoulders straightened. For a moment the two girls simply stared at each other. Salrana put her hand out. “I’m Salrana; Edeard and I grew up together.”

“Kristabel.” The hand was shaken gracefully. “He neglected to mention that.”

As one the caravan families turned to Edeard, except for Barkus, who sighed softly and raised his eyes to the clear blue sky above.

Edeard’s farsight revealed a small city tunnel five yards below the pen. He really could make the ground open up and swallow him, as if he were some frightened drakken burrowing away from peril. It was hugely tempting. Yet such cowardice would alienate Kristabel forever.

He dipped his head in penance to his love. “I’m sorry. I should have told you that Novice Salrana and I survived Ashwell together. Salrana, I should have sent word that I am about to become engaged. I apologize; my behavior is inexcusable.”

Kristabel’s lips pouted as she gave him a curious look, but she said nothing. Her thoughts were none too steady.

“I see,” Salrana said, sounding as though she’d expected it all along. “Congratulations to you both.”

“Come along, my dear,” Barkus said, putting his free arm around Salrana’s shoulders. “I’ll see you later, Edeard. That’s if you can spare us an ounce of your valuable time.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard mumbled meekly.

The rest of the families abruptly discovered something else that they had to be getting on with. Olcus gave Edeard a scolding glance as he turned away, propelling his children ahead of him. The eldest O’lrany lad produced a mischievous thumbs-up before his mother shoved him along.

“I’d like to go home now,” Kristabel said with fragile dignity.

“Of course.”

They walked out of the pens together, receiving curious looks from the assessors who were still arriving. Edeard didn’t dare say anything to her. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed such a mess to happen. Putting off dealing with Salrana was probably the single most stupid thing he’d ever done, aside from not telling Kristabel about her, of course.

When they passed the end of a stable block, he suddenly grabbed Kristabel’s hand and pulled her off the track. She was too surprised to complain. Edeard conjured up his concealment around the pair of them as he stopped in the shadow of the stable’s rear wall. A seclusion haze simply wasn’t good enough for this. He wanted absolute privacy.

Kristabel frowned as her farsight probed the psychic baffle. “You’re not supposed to know how to use that.” Then she drew a sharp breath as Edeard dropped to one knee.

“Mistress Kristabel, I love you more than I know how to say, and I cannot imagine a life without you. Would you please consent to marrying me? I know this isn’t the correct way, but I don’t care. I just want you. I will fight the Skylords themselves if that’s what it takes to prove my love.”

“Edeard?”

“I know I always mess up, but I don’t mean to, really, I don’t.”

“Yes.”

“I just didn’t know what to do about Salrana, so I kept on ignoring the problem.”

“I said yes.”

“I don’t know what I was … What?”

Kristabel knelt down beside him, grasping his hands in hers, and smiling. “I said yes, I’ll marry you.”

Edeard’s concealment faltered as he stared at her beautiful face. “Oh, Lady. You did, didn’t you?”

She inclined her head slightly, proffering herself for a kiss. He touched his lips to hers, and nothing else mattered anymore. After the kiss, they just grinned at each other. Edeard slowly realized that a couple of giggling stable hands were peering around the corner, goggling at them. Longtalk calls were pouring out to their friends as they gifted everyone the sight of the Waterwalker and the future Mistress of Haxpen kneeling in the mud while snogging.

“Er, yes,” Edeard said, hurriedly rising to his feet. He held out a hand to Kristabel. She stood and gave the dark dripping stain down the front of her skirt a peevish look. Now that Edeard was concentrating on his surroundings, there was quite a pungent smell of manure. A horrified examination of the ground revealed that it wasn’t just mud they were standing in. A mortified groan started up at the back of his throat.

Kristabel giggled wildly.

“Get about your business,” Edeard snapped at the youngsters, and put on a fierce expression. They fled, laughing all the way.

Kristabel hugged him delightedly. “You are going to be the one who explains to our children how you proposed.”

“Yes,” he said meekly.

She kissed him properly. “There’s no need to fight a Skylord. You know how I feel about you.”

“Yes.” He glanced at the worn gray planks that made up the back of the stable. “Can we, er …?”

“Yes.” She held out her arm, and Edeard led her away from the stable back to the path.

“I appreciate the sentiment, though,” Kristabel said. “Actually, I’m quite intrigued how you would fight a Skylord.”

Edeard blushed. “Me, too. Do I ask your father now?”

“Yes.” She gathered her composure and looked straight ahead. “And if he approves, he will put the motion before the Upper Council for a vote.”

“Right … What?”

“The direct heir of a District Master or Mistress has to get Council approval for the marriage. It’s a formality. It dates back to the Nighthouse inheritance crisis eleven hundred years ago, when the Master forbade his eldest son to marry a woman from Myco. He’d fallen out with her father; some dispute about unpaid cargo. He threatened to disinherit him, which the son challenged in court, so the Master had the law changed. After that the families used it to make sure the ‘right people’ produced heirs. Nobody bothers with that anymore; the really important marriages are quietly arranged between houses. Law simply becomes tradition. But it actually is still law.”

“Oh, dear Lady. When I am Mayor, I’m going to repeal every stupid law this city has and replace them all with something simple.”

“When you’re Mayor?”

Edeard cleared his throat. “If.”

“You’re serious about that, aren’t you?”

“Do you really think in this day and age I should have to ask Bise or even Owain’s permission to marry you?”

“I suppose it is unpleasant if you think about it closely. But I’ve grown up with all this, so I just know the way things work. It hasn’t bothered me before.”

“So, was your father arranging a fiancé for you?”

“No. Daddy wouldn’t do that. Not that it stopped other families from petitioning him, mind you. There were a lot of suitors.”

“Oh.” The idea of someone as beautiful and spirited as Kristabel being married off to some dismal second son for the sake of dynastic status quo was repulsive. It sent him thinking about everything Ranalee had said about bloodlines. Yes, that law will definitely have to be removed. He suspected it would take more than that to loosen the nobility’s’ stranglehold on Makkathran’s society.

“Why now?” Kristabel asked softly as they neared the North Curve Canal.

“Excuse me?”

“Why did you propose now? I mean, I know Salrana made it happen, but I’m curious why she did.”

“It wasn’t guilt,” he said quickly. “Salrana and I were so comfortable with each other. We’d been through so much together. I’ve known her all my life. We were going to be lovers when she got back from Ufford, which would have led to us getting married, I suppose; at least I always thought it would. Then I met you.”

“You agreed you were going to be lovers?”

“Er, yes.”

“Sounds like the country town version of our family arrangements.”

“I’m not explaining this well. The point is, when I saw her today, I felt just terrible at what I was doing to her. I really have broken her heart, which is about as unpleasant as you can get. She doesn’t deserve that; she’s such a nice person, the best our village ever produced. But despite that, there was no choice. I was never torn between the two of you. It was you and only you.”

She stopped and kissed him again. “That’s lovely and very flattering. I think.”

“I love you, Kristabel,” he said simply.

“And I love you, too. So the first thing we have to do is go and tell Daddy the good news.”

And dear old Uncle Lorin the bad. “Right!” He straightened his shoulders and took a breath. “I can do that. We’ll go and do it now.”

“You understand, don’t you, that after he says yes, we have absolutely no say in anything. If you thought you’d encountered tradition in this city before, it’s nothing compared to what’s about to happen. The formalities of marriage for the direct heir of a District Master were scripted a thousand years ago, and it does not change, not even for Haxpen and the odd Mistress like me.”

“Er, okay,” he said apprehensively.

“Ah, you say that now …”

“As long as you and I are together at the end of it, the city can do its worst. I mean, how bad can it be?”

Edeard arrived at the base of the Blue Tower in midafternoon and looked up at the tall structure looming over the Tosella district. Its azure walls almost matched the bright cloudless sky above, as if it were attempting its own variant of concealment. As he walked forward, the shadows thrown by its huge buttresses fell across him. There was something about the Eggshaper Guild headquarters that always slightly intimidated him, and he was never sure why.

He walked into the grand entrance hall with its dark red flooring, standing in the angled grid of thick sunbeams shining down through the lancet windows far above. A guild guard approached, wearing his plain white tunic under a pale drosilk jacket. Edeard gave him a wary glance. It was the same sergeant who had intercepted him on his first visit there.

“Waterwalker,” the sergeant said.

“Sergeant Eachal. Grand Master Finitan asked to see me.”

A reserved smile crept onto the sergeant’s face. “I know. It’s always best to turn up here with an appointment.”

“Yes. I’ve learned that.”

“Please.” Eachal gestured at the stairs. “He is expecting you.”

Edeard’s constant running was definitely beginning to pay off. The long, winding stairs were annoying but nothing more. His breathing was constant the whole time they walked up.

“They say you saw Chae’s soul after he died,” Eachal said.

“I did.”

“Was he happy?”

Edeard frowned. He was used to being questioned about seeing souls, but not quite like this. “Not that he’d died. But he was content with what awaited him.”

“I’m glad he found peace at the end. There was a lot of hardship in his life.”

“You knew him?”

“The same way you did. I trained at Jeavons station.”

“You did?” Edeard couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice.

Eachal gave Edeard a furtive glance. “I didn’t turn out quite like you, but yes, that’s where I served my probation and then eight years on the streets.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You’re not going to let us down, are you?”

“Let you down?”

“People have a lot of expectations now.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Yet you’re going to marry into the nobility.”

Edeard stopped and faced the sergeant. “I’m marrying the girl I love. The gangs will not benefit from that. This city will see the full restoration of law and order, and it will apply to all equally.”

Eachal pursed his lips and nodded in apparent understanding. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Edeard knew the man was still skeptical yet didn’t know how to convince him or why he should make a special effort.

As always, the view from Finitan’s office was a huge distraction. Edeard managed to greet the Master formally while Eachal bowed and backed out. He’d been worried that the height of the office would somehow remind him of his fall from the tower in Eyrie, yet his nerves were calm as he gazed out across the rooftops.

“My boy,” Finitan said happily, rising from behind his desk to shake Edeard’s hand. “So glad to see you. And you don’t have to ask. I will be delighted to be your nominee in the Upper Council when Julan introduces the marriage consent bill.”

“Ah, thank you, sir.” He’d said he didn’t care about the ludicrous formalities of the marriage, yet … As soon as a delighted Julan granted his permission, the household’s senior equerry had been summoned to inaugurate the preparations. There were the legal requirements: Julan had to ask the Mayor for a ruling to introduce the consent bill before the Upper Council, which would be a week yet because the current session’s legislative schedule was very busy. The Pythia was informed, and her blessing was requested for the engagement; then her staff had to find a time when the main church in Eyrie was free for such a ceremony, which wasn’t going to be until autumn at least. Letters of notification were issued to the other District Masters, and by custom the guild Masters as well. The official engagement party was planned for the evening after the vote in Council, which was usually hosted by the groom’s family but would now have to be at the Culverit mansion.

Edeard had sat through the two days (two entire days!) of talks with Julan’s household staff arranging such things. Given his profound ignorance in such matters, his input was minimal, but still he had to be in the room where a dizzily happy Kristabel chattered endlessly with her housekeeper and stylists of the merits of various fabrics. For given how important these events were, one had to dress correctly for them. In Kristabel’s case it meant an entire new collection of evening gowns and a whole “engagement wardrobe,” while the rest of her family started commissioning new robes and fashionable suits. Edeard was taken to one of the rooms on the seventh floor, where a tailor who specialized in dressing militia officers was summoned to produce a set of constable uniforms made from cloth more fitting to someone of his new “status.” He was already dreading the day they’d arrive and he’d have to wear them at Jeavons station.

Once the engagement party was over, preparations for the actual marriage ceremony could begin. Between then and now, the happy couple would be receiving invitations to parties and civic galas that they would have to attend—a lot of invitations. And Uncle Lorin was to be their official chaperon at such events.

Finitan laughed at Edeard’s broken expression. “So, thought of eloping yet?”

“Certainly not,” Edeard said loyally.

Finitan just laughed louder. “Now you know how I feel about all the speeches I have to deliver. I’m addressing the Chemistry Guild apprentices this evening in the hope of a few votes cast my way. Will you be attending?”

“Kristabel’s expecting me; I have to help her select the music for our engagement party.”

“That’s nice. Do you know many songs?”

“Only Dybal’s,” he confessed.

Finitan laughed again. A couple of ge-chimps scurried in through their little doorways in the bookshelf walls, bringing trays laden with tea and cookies. Edeard eyed the brandysnaps and chocolate chip shortbreads keenly. He’d never found the bakery that supplied the Blue Tower, but Finitan always had the best cookies in Makkathran. The main door opened behind him.

“I’m sure you remember Master Topar,” Finitan said lightly.

Edeard couldn’t recall meeting Topar since his first day in the city, which, now that he thought about it, was odd, since Topar was Finitan’s deputy. And looking at the figure walking across the office, he was surprised by the Master’s appearance. Gone was the overweight frame. He looked a lot leaner but not necessarily healthy with it. His face was haggard, the full chubby cheeks given way to deep worry creases in loose flesh, and his eyes seemed bruised. He still wore expensive clothes—a silk shirt and suede trousers, high black boots, and the traditional Master’s cloak—but even they couldn’t cover the fact that he’d undergone a time of considerable hardship.

“Master.” Edeard bowed.

“You’ve been making quite a name for yourself while I was away, so I’m told,” Topar said in his powerful baritone; that at least had remained the same.

Edeard shrugged.

“How little any of us knew the day we arranged for you to join the constables,” Topar continued.

“Sir?”

“I apologize, Waterwalker. I’m blaming the messenger. It’s not been a pleasant time for me.”

The three of them sat down as the ge-chimps handed out the elegant china cups.

“Partly my fault,” Finitan said. “But you did come to us with an incredible story, Edeard. Ordinarily, I confess, I would have paid little heed to it: a lad from the provinces exaggerating a few brawls, seeking sympathy to gain entrance to the guild. However, I found you pleasingly guileless, and Akeem chose you as his apprentice, which really told me all I needed to know.”

“I don’t understand,” Edeard said.

“The weapon,” Finitan said softly. His third hand opened a drawer on his desk and lifted out a package with leather wrapping. It drifted through the air to finish on the desktop.

Edeard froze as his farsight probed the contents. “Oh, my Lady,” he moaned. It was a repeat-fire gun.

Finitan’s third hand unwrapped the package gingerly. Edeard gazed at the thing with utter loathing. The metal was tarnished, with ingrained rust corroding several areas, and the magazine had received several dents, but he would recognize the evil device to his dying day. “Where did you get it?”

“Where you left it,” Topar said. “At the bottom of the new well in Ashwell.”

“Huh?”

“That’s where I’ve been, and as you know, it’s not an easy journey at the best of times. I only returned last night.”

“You’ve been to Ashwell?” Edeard thought he was over his life in the village with all its lost inhabitants, he really did, but staring at someone else who’d seen those forlorn ruins was triggering an avalanche of memories.

“I sent Master Topar to try to confirm your story,” Finitan said. “Which, I’m afraid, he has done in no uncertain terms.”

“It was all as you described it,” Topar said. “The weeds and moss have grown over the rubble, of course, but I knew Ashwell as soon as I saw it: the cliffs, the old rampart wall around it. Even the well shaft you hid in was easy to locate, though it was mostly full of mud. How you moved that capping stone is a mystery to me. It took us a day to break it up and move the pieces away; then it was another week excavating the mud before we could recover the gun.” He gave the weapon on the desk a scowl.

“So now what?” Edeard asked.

“Now we’ve established the gun is real, we need to know about those bandits,” Finitan said. “If that’s what they truly are. What can you tell us about their leader? You said you spoke with him.”

“All I can tell you is his anger. He hated me because I’d killed his kindred in their ambush.”

“Is that what he said?”

Edeard struggled to remember. It wasn’t easy; for so long now he’d been trying to banish this very memory. “Friends. That’s what it was he called them: ‘our friends.’ I was to die because of what I’d done to our friends. Yes.”

“Interesting,” Finitan said. “And how long between the ambush in the wood and the raid on your village?”

“Not quite a year.”

“So it wasn’t an instinctive hotheaded response, then? They’d planned it out.”

Edeard nodded, hanging on to the memory despite the pain. “They knew us. They knew Salrana. The one from the church; that’s what he said. I suppose they must have been watching us. I never considered that before.”

“Then they were organized?”

“Yes.”

“Hardly the kind of raid I would credit ordinary bandits with.”

“Their clothes,” Edeard exclaimed. “The ones in the wood were wild, savages; they daubed themselves with mud, and they didn’t even have shoes. But the ones who came to the village wore proper clothes with boots.”

“And they had the repeat-fire gun,” Finitan concluded.

“They’re not bandits, are they?”

“No, not the kind who have always lived around the edge of our society,” Finitan agreed. “Though I suspect they are allied. These are the emissaries of something else entirely.”

“What?” Edeard asked.

“I don’t know. But they are relentless.” Finitan gave Topar a small nod.

“There were five in my traveling party,” Topar said. “Only two of us made it back to Makkathran. Edeard, I’m sorry, but the province is all but lost. Eight villages have been overrun, and that was when I left just before New Year. The capital is fortified and afraid, with families leaving every day. Farmers are deserting their land and heading to the eastern provinces. None of the caravans visit anymore. Their economy is failing. The neighboring provinces no longer offer help in any fashion; they are too worried about their own bandit incursions.”

Edeard’s head sank into his hands. “Witham?” he asked.

“Yes,” Topar said. “It fell not six months after Ashwell. Since then, the raids have increased. It’s the same every time: They wipe out the entire village, no one is left alive, the buildings are torched. The senselessness of it all is shocking. They’re not doing it for anything other than the pleasure of killing. There’s no reason for it.”

Tears were threatening to flow as Edeard thought of the pretty leatherworker apprentice he’d met at the Witham market. He’d never even managed to get her name, gauche boy that he’d been. And now she was dead; every garment or saddle or harness she’d labored over was gone, her family murdered.

“It’s not your fault,” Finitan said gently. “Stop punishing yourself.”

“I should go back,” Edeard said. “I should go with the city’s militia and burn them out of the land they’ve contaminated, every last one of them. He feared me before, and by the Lady, he was right to do so. I will bring him and his kind to an end one way or another.”

“Just calm down,” Finitan said. “There will be a time when we confront the bandits, and you may well lead that battle. But there are many things we have to do before that day arrives.”

“Why?” Edeard snapped. “If you and Owain combine in Council, you could send every militia brigade we have and order the provinces to raise their militias with us. An army could descend on Rulan province. These new bandits would be wiped from Querencia forever.”

“Where do they come from?” Finitan asked. “They’re not barbarians; they wore clothes.” His third hand lifted the repeat-fire gun again. “More important, where do they manufacture this? Do they have a city like Makkathran behind them? Two cities? A continent? We still don’t know what lies beyond Rulan, not with any surety. All these things we need to establish beyond any doubt before we embark on some massive campaign to tame the wilds. Such a venture will be deeply unpopular both here in the city and out in the country.”

“And if you don’t do it, these invaders will be standing in front of the City Gate within five years.”

“That they will,” Finitan conceded. “This is the greatest threat we have faced since Rah led us here two thousand years ago. I am deeply worried, Edeard. Something is out there, some society, moving with a malign purpose. A society inimical to ours, bent on destroying us for no reason we know. More important, they have these Lady-damned repeat-firing guns. You with your strength could ward off the bullets fired at you by one of these guns, maybe even two or three. But I doubt I could withstand such an onslaught, nor could many people. You talk of marching our militia against them. One man armed with this weapon could wipe out an entire cavalry troop. And they have concealment, too. We cannot send our militia soldiers against them; it would be slaughter on an unbelievable scale. Edeard, I am frightened by this≔ do you understand? I do not know what will happen.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“They’re not settling,” Topar said. “That’s the strangest thing. The lands they have driven us from in Rulan are reverting to wilds; weeds and grass flourish in the fields, animals roam free, the ruins of villages are choked in vines and creepers. Nobody lives there. These strangers are not clearing us out so their own kind can dwell in our place. When we arrived at Ashwell, we had seen no one for over a week, and that was a week of hard riding. It was only coming back that we clashed with them. Our luck was foul that day; some lone patrol or spy saw us, and we ran away as soon as we realized they were after us. It was as though Honious itself were tracking us; they were unrelenting. So now that I’ve seen these guns used in anger, Edeard, I know what horror you faced. The Lady performed a miracle when she guided you to safety that night. All we could ever do was flee, and three times even that was not enough.”

“Then what are they doing?” Edeard asked. “What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” Finitan said. “But it is imperative we find out.” He stared at the broken gun, abhorrence glowing in his mind. “If we fail to stop them out in the provinces, then we will have to make similar guns just to survive. Can you imagine the carnage that will unleash on this world? The damage one man can wreak with such a gun multiplied a thousandfold. For once such a thing is made, it cannot be unmade.”

“It’s already been made,” Topar said bitterly. “We are not the ones at fault here.”

Edeard reached out his third hand and grasped the gun. He brought it over to hang in the air before his face, probing the complicated mechanism inside with his farsight. In fact, there weren’t so many components. “Have you examined it?” he asked Topar.

“I have done nothing else for months,” the Master said. “The whole way home I have studied it.”

“Is there some secret part, something that must have come from the ships that brought us to Querencia, or could any metalsmith build it?”

“The mechanism is ingenious, but that is all. There is nothing out of the ordinary about it, no magic or impossible contraption. A competent Weapons Guild Master would be able to fabricate such components. Even a journeyman should be capable, I suspect.”

That caused Edeard to give the Grand Master a sharp glance. “The long-barreled pistols came from the Weapons Guild. An ancient design, Owain said.”

“Yes,” Finitan said significantly, though his mind was tightly shielded. “It could be they already have this or something similar in their deep vaults. Knowledge or artifacts left over from the ships.”

“Is that where the invaders got theirs from, do you think?”

Finitan allowed dismay to ease through his mental shielding. “I find it incredible that after two thousand years we have never heard even a whisper of another civilization on Querencia.”

“Nobody has ever successfully circumnavigated the planet,” Edeard said. “Or so I was given to understand. Maybe that’s why. Maybe it isn’t geographically impossible; it’s just that nobody ever gets past this other settlement.”

“If they were that big and powerful, we would know of them,” Finitan said.

“Perhaps we should ask the watching widow,” Topar said mordantly. Then he gave Edeard a keen look. “Actually …”

“I haven’t seen any souls since Chae,” Edeard countered. “In any case, wondering where they are doesn’t help us. It’s what they’re doing which is the problem.”

“If only we could find where they come from, we might be able to know their full intention,” Finitan said. He sighed. “We’re arguing in circles. It is my response we should be determining.”

“Perhaps a truce with Owain,” Edeard suggested. “Makkathran needs to send scouts out into the wild beyond Rulan and track down the origin of the guns. I’d go …” he began uncertainly.

“No, you will not,” Finitan said firmly. “We need you here to complete your victory over the gangs. Once the city is consolidated, we can start to make more detailed alliances with the provinces. That’s what Owain never understands: We can hardly command unity with the countryside if we’re unable to instill universal law here at home. Yet that unity must come in the face of these incursions. That makes you vital to my campaign, Waterwalker.”

Edeard nodded reluctantly. “After that?”

“When the gangs are banished, and if I become Mayor, then it might be appropriate for you to track down your nemesis. Though the Lady knows how you will explain such an absence to your new wife.”

Edeard flinched; he hadn’t thought of that. “Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong to do what’s right,” he murmured quietly.

“Indeed,” Finitan said. “In the meantime, I will focus on winning this damn election. That way I can lay the groundwork for the inevitable struggle which is to come.”

“It might come sooner than you think,” Topar said. “The provinces around Rulan have already raised their militias. Their appeals to the Grand Council for help will arrive before long; people will come to understand what is happening out on our western borders.”

“Not just on the borders,” Edeard said. “Ordinary bandits are everywhere in the countryside and growing bold. You will have to move decisively once you’re Mayor.”

“If, my boy, and it’s still a big if. Owain is no fool, and he has a lot of support in the city. People like his one nation call.”

“But what we are talking about is the same.”

“Essentially, yes, but I will instigate it differently. Securing the city must come first; without that all will be lost. Owain is using unification to rally the city behind him, the city as it is. Ultimately, that will fail.”

“We’re making progress,” Edeard said. “I have a new tactic that we’re almost ready to deploy. It’s a bit of a gamble, but it might help resolve the current standoff.”

“Then let us pray to the Lady that it does.”

Edeard stood, almost ready to go. “Master?”

“Oh, dear,” Finitan said with a kindly smile. “This doesn’t sound good.”

“I need a small genistar to scout around without drawing attention to itself.”

“An interesting challenge. I will see what I can sculpt for you.”

“And I was also wondering if you know how to see through a concealment. I’m convinced the people who set the trap for me in Eyrie were able to perceive me.”

Finitan gave Topar a fast bemused glance. “As there is absolutely no such thing as concealment, then there could be no way to penetrate it.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said in disappointment.

“Certainly no such thing as this.”

Finitan’s gifting rushed into Edeard’s mind, a hugely complex methodology he could barely comprehend.

“I’ll be sure I remember not to use it, then, sir.”

“We’ll make a true Makkathran citizen out of you yet, my boy.”

The uniforms that arrived from the tailor were amazingly comfortable, made from some weave of cotton and drosilk that was as soft as it was strong. Edeard hadn’t expected that. Unlike the dress uniform Kristabel had given him, these clothes were all for everyday use. They lacked the sheer gaudiness of militia uniforms, but the tailor somehow had contrived to make them a lot more glamorous than the ones Edeard had bought from the regular constable supplier. Platinum buttons shone brighter than Dinlay’s aging overpolished silver ones. The cut was subtly different, making him look sharp and smart, the kind of tunic members of the nobility would wear if they could ever lower themselves to sign on at a station. And the shirts made mountaintop snow look gray by comparison. The tailor even supplied a special mix of soap flakes for the ge-chimps to use so as not to sully that purity. As for the knee-high boots, space between the nebulae wasn’t that black, nor did it possess such luster.

The first morning he put on one of the uniforms, Edeard stood nervously in front of his maisonette’s mirror and looked at the figure he cut. No way could he stop the prideful smile from lifting his lips.

Dashing, he decided. Yes, very dashing.

The long weather cloak helped, held by an emerald-encrusted brooch around his neck that he was trying to pin into place one-handed. His third hand ruffled it, and he admired the swirl it made around him. Nice touch. He practiced the ruffle again, making the fabric flare out and undulate in slow motion. Perhaps it could become his signature; at night he would brighten the city’s orange lights to silhouette himself as he emerged from nowhere to bear down formidably on criminals, cloak swirling like angry smoke behind him. At such an impressive sight, the fight would go out of them, and they’d abandon their wrongdoing, sinking to their knees in contrition. Okay, then!

“Yow!” The brooch pin jabbed into his fumbling thumb. Edeard shook it, then sucked the drop of blood away. “Ladydamn.” All right, so the image needs a bit of work.

He fixed the brooch in place, settled the hat on his head, and ran a finger along the rim, ending in a salute to himself. “Now, that’s what I call an officer of the city.”

Macsen called it something else entirely as Edeard strode purposefully into their small hall at Jeavons station. Young Felax dropped his jaw in astonishment as Edeard walked past the bench where he was sitting. A cheeky chorus of wolf whistles echoed around the small hall.

“Happy to see you’re not abandoning your roots,” Kanseen sniped.

Edeard unclipped the brooch and removed his weather cloak with a flourish. “Anyone else jealous?”

“I’m so glad you taught us concealment,” Boyd grunted. “Because there’s no way I’m walking down a street next to that.”

Dinlay glared at him for the indiscretion. “You look very smart,” he said. “People have expectations from us now; it’s right that you should look the part.”

“Thank you,” Edeard acknowledged. He looked around the hall. There were ten constables sitting at the tables now, men he trusted implicitly, reading through reports. The way files were building up, they’d soon have to contract the Guild of Clerks to keep track of it all, Edeard thought ruefully.

“Seventy-two of them now,” Droal said.

“That’s good,” Edeard acknowledged. Most of the files in the hall were those of the excluded, which were still being added to. But his team had been going through them and assessing the reports from stations across the city, along with the priceless information coming in through Charyau and his network of merchants and traders. Edeard’s old notes from his days spying on the House of Blue Petals were also examined keenly. Slowly and surely, they were identifying the senior echelons of the gangs. The leadership rarely met in person, so there was no hard evidence actually tying them together in any criminal act. But the way they collaborated and respected one another’s territories meant that they knew one another, that they were organized along formal lines. In fact, it was intriguingly like a mirror to the way the interests of the established nobility locked together. Edeard was still a little irked that they hadn’t proved a connection between the gangs and the more disreputable aristocratic families such as the Gilmorns.

“Can’t we just go and arrest them?” Boyd whined. “Surely seventy-two is enough. And Buate is still having to appear in the financial court each day.”

Edeard pulled a face. “I’d like it to be a hundred,” he said. There was something about the number that was impressive. It would show Makkathran’s citizens how they were making huge inroads against the gangs, that it wasn’t just exclusion warrants and the promises of the mayoral candidates they were deploying against the gangs.

The idea wasn’t to get convictions. Edeard knew he didn’t have enough evidence for that. But a little-known clause in the articles of arrest meant that if a constable swore that there were grounds for suspicion, that the detainees were involved in illegal activity, they could be held for twenty-two days without charges being filed. The twenty-two days were supposed to give the constables enough time to gather evidence and interview all concerned.

Edeard reasoned that with the entire leadership, or as many as he could reasonably identify, taken off the streets and held incommunicado for half a month, the gangs’ ordinary street soldiers would be completely lost. “A body without a head,” as Macsen had summed it up.

If gang resistance crumbled as Edeard hoped, liberating people from their tyranny, the prospect of it all coming back at the end of the twenty-two days would be a colossal argument in Finitan’s favor to bring about the banishment. Finitan was also planning to introduce emergency legislation to the Grand Council as soon as the arrests began, extending the detention period to a full month. Forty-four days would take them past the election. It was slightly underhanded, Edeard thought, but then, this was Makkathran; he wasn’t about to change it overnight.

He sat down at the table he used and gave the neat gray cardboard folders a dispirited look. No matter how hard they worked or how much he delegated, the pile of paperwork never got any smaller.

“Something more for you to read,” Dinlay said.

Edeard looked up to see his friends clustered together, smiling as Dinlay held out a small red book.

“A gift from all of us,” Kanseen said.

Edeard took the book; it was very slim. Small gold-leaf lettering on the front read A Gentleman’s Guide to Marriage.

“Thank you,” he said, genuinely grateful.

“What does it say about the stag night?” Macsen asked. He caught himself and threw Kanseen a panicked look. “I mean friends’ night,” he corrected.

She just groaned wearily.

Edeard flicked through the pages. “An evening may justifiably be set aside for a fellow to bid his male acquaintances farewell, in the full knowledge that his bachelor ways are about to end. This should be a tasteful evening, revisiting those places retaining fond memories and sampling their delights for the last time.”

“I don’t want another night at Olovan’s Eagle,” Dinlay protested. “This is supposed to be special.”

“We could start at the Rakas restaurant in Abad, the one we went to after graduation,” Kanseen said.

Edeard was about to agree, but Salrana had been with them that day. “Maybe a different one,” he said.

“There’s a theater in Fiacre I know of,” Boyd said breathlessly. “The dancers take their clothes off as they dance.”

“Do they?” Edeard asked.

Kanseen deliberately focused on a point just above Edeard’s head, her jaw set firm.

“That’s not reliving the past,” Edeard conceded.

“We’ll start off at the dog track in Andromeda, then make our way through some of the classy taverns in Lillylight,” Macsen said. “There are plenty of good restaurants and theaters there, so we can make our choices on the night.”

“Excellent idea,” Kanseen said.

“Julan has to get the vote through Council first,” Edeard complained.

“It’s considered bad form to vote against a consent bill,” Dinlay said. “There hasn’t been a nay vote for over three hundred years.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“We know,” they said in union.

Edeard was supposed to spend the evening choosing a suit to wear at the charity ball thrown by the District Master of Nighthouse. Due in a fortnight’s time, it was given every year to raise funds for city hospitals. Kristabel had accepted his excuse that there was some constable work that had to be done at night. “Be careful,” she told him, which almost made him feel guilty. Almost.

It was certainly the first time Edeard had ever been grateful to Buate. The gang lord had arranged a meeting with several others on their one hundred list, and a get-together of that magnitude couldn’t be ignored.

As dusk fell he led the squad out of the station. All of them were immediately aware of the three ge-eagles overhead and a couple of small ge-dogs loitering down the street. It had been a while since the gangs had used actual people to spy on their comings and goings from the constable station.

“I want to try something,” he told the others. “We’re not going to use the tunnels for a while.”

They followed him over the Marble Canal bridge into Drupe, where the streets grew narrow and the buildings tall. The ge-eagles kept level with them, drifting and soaring on the night air.

“I’ve been reading your book,” Edeard said. “Apparently, after marriage, I shouldn’t complain to Kristabel about events relating to managing my estate if they go poorly.”

“Yeah, I always avoid that when I’m with Saria,” Boyd said. “It’s for the best.”

“Nor should I be querulous about the proportion of the household budget spent on her wardrobe. Apparently it’s her duty to always look her best for me and support me in public.”

“Quite right,” Kanseen said.

“And I must not feel inadequate if I cede an argument to her.”

“That has to have been written by a woman,” Dinlay pronounced.

It was already dark at the foot of the buildings when they walked into Moslet Avenue, which was little more than a deep crevice between walls six stories high. Small vaulting tube bridges linked the two sets of buildings, with slender orange light slits on their underside shining a weak orange glow down onto the pavement. The alley was a series of sharp corners, which restricted farsight, while its narrow width made anyone following them highly conspicuous. It was precisely the kind of place to provide Edeard with excellent cover while he vanished into the tunnels below.

He ordered the orange light strips on the bridges to dim, turning the darkness to a claustrophobic force. A sweep around with his farsight showed him they were alone as they went around the first corner. He followed that up with a more subtle look, using the technique Finitan had gifted him. Someone was sneaking into the alley, registering in his mind as a gray swirl, like a small bubble of fog. At the core was the outline of a man.

“Keep going,” he told his friends. “We need to hurry.”

They started to jog forward. Edeard observed the figure behind them quicken his pace.

“Okay, stop here,” he ordered as they went around the second corner. They were directly under one of the small bridges, invisible to the ge-eagles above. The concealed pursuer hurried around the corner to see the squad huddled together as if performing some illegal act. Edeard’s arm came up, pointing at him, cloak swirling to follow the move.

The narrow alley suddenly was drenched in brilliant white light. A terrific bang ricocheted off the confining walls.

Edeard’s miniature thunderbolt struck the figure square in his chest. He was flung backward to sprawl on the ground, concealment vanishing in the blink of an eye.

“Great Lady,” Dinlay gulped.

Edeard was watching the figure keenly; the man was twitching but making no attempt to get up. Farsight revealed he was still alive, his thoughts chasing an agitated sleep pattern. The thunderbolt must have knocked him unconscious, though his heart was still pumping wildly and not entirely regularly. His thick leather jacket was smoking from a burn spot where the discharge had struck.

“Take care of the ge-eagles,” Edeard told Kanseen as his third hand lifted the inert figure and drew him toward the squad. The birds would have witnessed the flash; he couldn’t help that. But they would have been dazzled. Their owners still wouldn’t know what was going on in the alley.

Once Kanseen had confused the already flustered genistars overhead, Edeard asked the city to let him into the drain tunnel below the street. The squad sank down, taking their captive with them.

Once they were safe below the surface, Edeard examined the man his third hand was still holding above the trickle of water. He was plain enough, probably in his late forties, with dark curly hair and a small, neatly trimmed beard. “Anyone know him?” Edeard asked.

“I don’t remember him from any of our lists,” Dinlay said.

Macsen let out a pained sigh. “He won’t be. Look at how he’s dressed.”

Edeard gave the unconscious man a closer look. The clothes were simple: a black leather jacket worn over an indigo shirt and beige suede trousers, ankle-length boots with discreet silver hooks for the laces. It was the kind of garb that could be worn anywhere in Makkathran without drawing undue attention. However, these days Edeard was familiar enough with the city’s tailors to know quality when he saw it. “Expensive,” he said.

“Certainly not cheap,” Macsen said. “So we know he’s not from the gangs, not directly.”

“The families?”

Macsen’s face produced a pained expression. “Again, nothing you could ever prove, not that he’ll tell us anything.”

“What, then?” Boyd asked. “Come on, you obviously know something.”

“Look exactly where we are and how we got here,” Macsen said in a serious, level voice that was unusual for him. “And that blast of light you knocked him out with, Edeard; that’s something new. There’s rumors that your maisonette is different. A fall off a tower can’t kill you. Small wonder the families are extremely interested in you.”

“The families can throw light like that,” Edeard said defensively. “I just have greater strength.”

“No, it’s more than just strength. Can anyone else see souls? Can they talk to the city itself? Nobody can. You stand above us, Waterwalker. A long way above.”

“So?” Dinlay said. “We’ve always known Edeard is far more talented than the rest of us put together.”

“This goes way beyond psychic talent.” Macsen gave Edeard a level stare. “You frighten people, Waterwalker. Even I’m nervous of you, and I know you better than most in this city. I don’t think you’ll abuse the power you have. But face it, what’s to stop you? That’s why you’re drawing this kind of attention.”

“I would never—” Edeard broke off, appealing to his friends. “I

want the city to work, to be a home we can all depend on, a place where everyone can be safe. You know that; that’s why you’re helping me. Isn’t it?” he asked, aghast that they might not share his ambition.

“Yes,” Kanseen assured him. “But you have to admit, Macsen has a point. Not only have you got your talent, you’re popular as well. I bet if you stood for Mayor, you’d get a sizable amount of votes.”

“I don’t want to. I support Finitan.”

“I know that,” she told him. “The point is, the Grand Families see how much support you have, and they know you want to instigate change. Change for them, a return to more democratic rule, the introduction of accountability, will diminish their power and, Lady help them, their wealth, too. That’s what the city’s entire political structure is geared around: preserving and expanding their estates. If you wipe out the gangs, you’ll go after them next, and the way they’ve distorted and abused Rah’s constitution. That’s inevitable.”

“Some people say you are Rah,” Boyd said. He shrugged. “It’s true. I’m often asked. They think you’ve come back from the Heart to restore the city to the haven it was in the beginning. The gangs and the bandits we’re plagued with right now—that’s the kind of chaos Rah led his followers away from.”

“Oh, dear Lady.” Edeard gave Dinlay a desperate look.

“People have asked me, too,” Dinlay said apologetically. “But I know you’re not going to declare yourself emperor. That’s stupid. They’d never say that if they knew you properly.”

Edeard felt incredibly weary. After everything he’d done, all he’d endured, to find he had created a huge source of mistrust and suspicion was a hideous revelation. “I just want people to be safe,” he cried. “I want the killing to stop. I want the fear to end. I want people to know their leaders and constables will protect them.”

Kanseen put her arm around his shoulder. “I think that’s what disturbs the families most of all; they can’t believe someone with your strength can be honest. But you are, and I will stand by you to the end because of that.”

“Me, too,” Dinlay said.

“I trust you, Edeard,” Boyd said.

They all turned to Macsen.

“Hey! Goes without saying.”

“Say it anyway,” Kanseen said.

“I’m with you.”

“Thank you.”

“But you’ve got to admit, everything you can do, it’s way beyond anything Querencia has seen before, and I include Rah in that. Blasphemy or not.”

“Yeah,” Edeard admitted sheepishly.

“So …” Dinlay queried. “Are you Rah?”

“No!”

“So why you?” Macsen asked. “You must be something special.”

“Really, I’m not.”

“You were chosen,” Kanseen said. “We know everything the Lady says in her scriptures is true. You showed us Chae’s soul, and don’t you have to love the irony in that? Him of all people. So if we have souls and Odin’s Sea is the path to the Heart, there’s a lot more to this universe than we know.”

“Chosen?” Edeard repeated dumbly.

“I don’t know by who or by what, but there’s no way you with all your abilities came forth at a time like this purely by chance. The Heart or our ancestors are speaking to us through you.”

“Maybe not them,” Edeard said, thinking of his dreams. “But I can hardly deny what I can do, whoever gave me the gift. And I promise you I’ll do what I think is right with it. And if any of you disagree, then for the Lady’s sake, tell me.” He looked down at their unconscious captive. “Which brings us back to him. Who is he?”

“The families have their own methods of maintaining order in the city,” Macsen said. “After all, they could hardly rely on the constables, now, could they? Not before the Waterwalker came along.”

Dinlay bridled. “The constables have always brought law and order to Makkathran. We were established by Rah himself.”

“Rah allowed District Masters to police their districts,” Macsen replied equably. “Independent citywide constables weren’t introduced until a lot later.”

Edeard held a hand up to silence a glowering Dinlay. “You’re saying there’s another police force in Makkathran?”

Macsen shook his head. “That’s too strong a word. The true Grand Families are as old as the city; as soon as they established themselves, they sought methods of consolidating their interests. Families have their own guards, for instance; they also have clerks, lawyers, doctors, a long list of employees to cover every requirement. Well, there are people who look after political interests, too, which is a very broad-ranging term. You’ve seen that the grandest families are not subject to intimidation by the gangs. Their estates are immune. Why is that?”

“Because they work with them?” Edeard asked.

“No, no; you’re thinking too literally. There is an understanding, nothing formal; nobody ever sat around a table and thrashed out boundaries. But the families take care of themselves at every level. If a gang was ever stupid or arrogant enough to overstep the mark, then certain members of the family would put a stop to the violation straightaway, and in a fashion the gangs would comprehend.”

“But … Mirnatha,” Edeard said.

“Yeah. The biggest shock to hit this city since our day at Birmingham Pool. I hate to say it, but cause and effect.”

“Are you one of them?” Dinlay asked. “One of these family agents?”

“No.”

“You seem to know a lot about them.”

“Actually, I don’t. One of my father’s cousins hinted a couple of times that there was a group of relatives that might be interested in welcoming me as an associate. That was as far as it ever got. Father died, and, well, you all know how my family treated my mother and myself after that.”

“It makes a lot of sense,” Edeard said. “Except I think it’s more than a vague accord as far as some families are concerned. I know from personal experience that the Gilmorns are heavily involved with Buate’s organization.”

Macsen nodded down at the man Edeard’s third hand was still holding. “There have been two well-executed attempts to get rid of you. They won’t stop now, especially as your abilities still seem to be growing.”

Edeard thought back to that last conversation with Ivarl. “You may be right. In which case we’re not leading events the way we thought we were.”

“Welcome to Makkathran,” Macsen said.

“Where it’s always about politics.”

“Good, you’re starting to understand.”

Edeard inhaled through his nostrils. “So what do we do about our friend here?”

“The ge-eagles have shown the family agents that you possess their lightning trick,” Kanseen said. “And you can plainly see through concealment now. The next time they come after you, it’s going to be with everything they’ve got.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“Why? What were you planning on doing with him?”

“I don’t know. I just disabled him because I had to.”

“He won’t crack under interrogation,” Macsen said. “He has too much faith in his own kind. That doesn’t leave us with a lot of options.”

“There’s a place I can put him where there is no way out,” Edeard said, wondering if Macsen was testing him. “That will serve until we can decide what to do.”

“Sounds good.”

When Edeard had rejected Finitan’s offer of an apprenticeship with the city’s Eggshaper Guild, he’d done so in the conviction that his skill was a match for that of any of the practitioners in the Blue Tower. Now, looking at the tiny ge-mouse nestling in his hand, he knew how conceited he’d been that day when he’d made his life-changing decision. The little creature was no bigger than the length of his fingers, its dark pelt as soft as that of any terrestrial kitten, and the three curving talons extended from each twiglike leg were sharp and hard, enabling it to scamper vertically up most of the walls in the city. But its head was the true marvel, sprouting long ears that could hear a pin drop within thirty yards; the eyes were the miniatures of those indigo-tinged orbs belonging to ge-eagles, allowing it to see clearly in the dead of night.

Finitan had handed it over with a little smirk of satisfaction. “At least you’ll appreciate my efforts. Kindly look after my creation with care.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard had said reverentially as he gingerly held the ge-mouse up, automatically soothing its agitated mind. Little eyes regarded him passively, and a sliver of trust manifested behind them. Edeard smiled back.

“Ah, what an apprentice you would have made,” Finitan said wistfully.

“What’s its lifetime?”

“Sadly, no more than a week.”

Edeard felt a pang of sympathy but understood how that was so. He’d never seen a genistar this small before, and life span was always proportional to size.

When Edeard and the squad had arrived underneath the house in Sampalok in which Buate was holding court, he’d taken the little thing from his pocket and held it aloft. The city lifted it up from the tunnel to the lower cellar. Edeard longtalked into its mind, carefully directing it under the cellar door and up the stairs to the midcellar. Its claws had to scrape at the hard city substance, finding minute crinkles to grip as it hauled itself up every curving shelf. There were two guards standing in the short, gloomy corridor above the stairs, pistols tucked into their belts. Neither of them noticed the ge-mouse scurrying past. Nor did the man who was wrapped in concealment whom Edeard perceived standing just inside the door.

Buate was already in the room with eight other gang lords. They sat around a big old table with bottles of wine and beer opened before them. The ge-mouse squeezed behind a tall cupboard in the corner and scaled the ancient wood silently, emerging onto the top, where someone had left a set of aged china crockery. From there it gifted Edeard its sharp sight and the accompanying sound of the angry voices.

Edeard shared the perception with the squad as they leaned against the tunnel wall far below the cellar floor.

“That’s Gormat and Edsing,” Dinlay said. “And that’s Joarwel; he’s shaved his beard off, look.”

“Are you sure?” Kanseen asked.

“Yes.”

“He’s right,” Boyd said. “No one has reported seeing him for a couple of weeks, and that’s why. He’s a smart one, that.”

“I know Hallwith and Coyce,” Macsen said. “But I don’t recognize the others.”

Two more men arrived, giving Buate and the others a curt greeting.

“So why are we here?” Joarwel asked.

“Because we’re hurting,” Buate said. “For all we tell our men how everything is all right, that bastard Waterwalker is shutting us down one street at a time.”

“I don’t need to be told that,” one of the unknowns said. “Thirty years I lived in my house; then some child constable comes along waving that Ladyfucking exclusion warrant in my face. It was all I could do not to shoot the smug little shit on sight. Thirty years!”

“It’s going to get worse,” Buate said. “He’s planning to arrest us all.”

“There aren’t that many jails.”

“Not the men, just us. He’s making a list; there’s going to be a hundred of us on it.”

“Shit,” Macsen grunted. “How did he find that out?”

Edeard shrugged. He wasn’t surprised.

“Arrest us for what?” Coyce demanded. “I’ve barely made enough to feed myself this year. Three of my boys have gone and gotten themselves jobs in theaters, for the Lady’s sake.”

“For nothing,” Buate said. “He’s not going to charge us, just hold us.”

“What’s the fucking point?”

“Because he can hold us for twenty-two days. That’s the law.”

“Twenty-two days!”

“Leading up to the election,” Buate said significantly. “Without us, he thinks our men will fall apart.”

“Scumfucking bastard; we should slit his throat.”

“No. Slit his girl’s throat and make him watch, then burn him alive. That’s what we did to that grocer in Zelda. Didn’t have no trouble from the shopkeepers after that.”

“Waterwalker’s right,” Edsing said. “Without us to hold it together, we’ll be left with nothing.”

“Less than that,” Buate told them. “If Finitan wins, we’ll be thrown out of Makkathran.”

“Then what are we going to do about it?” Hallwith shouted. “He can’t win; this is Makkathran.”

“There have been several attempts to kill and ruin him. Yet he still walks the streets unharmed. He has powers we don’t.”

“Are you saying he is Rah?” Edsing asked. “That’s the talk wherever I go.”

“Stupid superstition. He is an orphan from Rulan province, nothing more. I know this is true. His strength, though, is formidable.”

“They say the Pythia favors him.”

“I don’t give a fuck what the Pythia favors. Our problem is not spiritual, it’s very real. We are going to jail, and then we are going to be exiled to some Ladyforsaken island for the rest of our lives.”

Hallwith’s fist smashed down on the table. “We get it! Now tell us what we have to do.”

“Fight him, every one of us. That’s all we have left. When they come to carry us off to the cells, we fight, because if we don’t, our life is over. We shoot every constable, burn every warehouse, sink the gondolas and the ships in the port. We show Makkathran that we are just as strong as the Waterwalker and far more deadly.”

“But we cannot stand against him,” Coyce said. “They threw him off the top of a tower, and he flew. Bullets are useless. I was there that night in the House of Blue Petals when your brother ambushed him. He’s immortal. Lady! Maybe he is Rah.”

“The next one of you who says that, I will slit your throat,” Buate said. “This is part of his strength, to cast doubt among us. Yes, he is strong, but he is one. One! While he comes for me, a thousand of us will rampage across the city. He cannot stop us all. That is our strength. And when they see what their precious Waterwalker has kindled, the people of this city will howl for his blood. It is he who will suffer banishment, and we will party in the Culverit mansion that night. Now you will go home, and you will arm yourselves, and you will select targets, and when him and that squad of his knock on our door, you will open the gates of Honious to them.”

The squad took their usual table in Olovan’s Eagle. They sat staring at their beer glasses, saying nothing, morose thoughts leaking through impoverished shields.

“Do you think they’ll do it?” Dinlay asked.

“Most likely,” Kanseen said. “We’ve pushed them back and back. Hurt them, just like Buate said. What have they got to lose?”

“We just have to snatch them quickly and quietly,” Boyd said.

“A hundred separate arrests?” Kanseen said. “Remember our raid on the fisherman’s warehouse? Most of the city knew about it half a day early. Buate has been clever; he’s priming them. It’ll take one arrest to kick the whole thing off.”

“Then we do it tomorrow at first light,” Dinlay said. “They’re not organized yet. There were only ten of them there, Buate’s orders won’t have gotten any further tonight. We grab him first, then get the other district stations to pull in the rest of the list.”

“We’re not ready, either,” Edeard said. Rushing into the arrests was the first thing he’d thought of. “It’ll take us at least a couple of days to organize things with the station captains.”

“I think it’s safe to assume Buate’s riot and destruction scheme won’t have the support of the Grand Families,” Boyd said. “Maybe their agents would like to help us.”

“Not a chance,” Macsen said in a disgusted tone. “To them, we remain the problem; without us Buate wouldn’t be planning this. We are the source.”

Edeard took a deep drink of his beer. “They know what we’re planning, and we know what they’re planning. But they don’t know we know.”

Dinlay growled in dismay, clasping his hands to his head. “Don’t start that again.”

“It’s our only advantage,” Edeard said. “We have to think how to use it.”

“How?” Kanseen asked.

“I don’t know,” Edeard said miserably.

“Buate doesn’t have a plan,” Macsen said. “Not really. This is instinct kicking in. And it’s a good instinct; I’ll admit that. If we don’t make the arrests, he’ll still try to wreck the city and kill the constables when the Council passes the banishment edict. He’s got nothing left. Mass confrontation is his last shot to stay in the city. It’s the only way he can make the Upper Council back off.”

“How do we turn a riot to our advantage?” Boyd asked. “I don’t see it; I really don’t.”

Edeard wished he knew how to answer, to show his friends some leadership. He’d settle for a single strategy. Instead, all he could do was stare into his beer and pray to the Lady for some kind of inspiration. And she was going to have to be quick about it.

The room was a simple cube measuring ten yards to a side with a single light circle on the ceiling. One corner had a high bed with the same stiff spongy mattress found on every Makkathran bed. A second corner had a small washing pool where water circulated constantly. The third had a simple pedestal that served as a toilet. The fourth was empty. There was no door. Slits near the ceiling let fresh air flow through.

Farsight couldn’t penetrate through the walls or floor or ceiling; they were all too thick. No sound carried in. The light circle did not respond to any command to dim or brighten; it remained constant.

The room’s single occupant had spent the first day walking about, examining every square inch with his farsight, sliding his fingertips over the walls, looking for cracks, some hint of the way in—and out. He found nothing. Nor could he longshout for help; the thickness of the walls prevented that.

When he woke up to find himself in his not-too-unpleasant cell, there were three plates on the floor in the center of the room. They had bread and butter and two types of cheese, some slices of cold beef, fruit, and a rather nice apricot tart. He munched his way through the food during the day. On occasion he did a series of pushups, then sit-ups. Several times he tried shouting to his captors. Pleas or insults, it made no difference; there was no reply.

Eventually, the light circle dimmed to the faintest orange glow. He waited for a while, then gave in and lay on the bed. It took a long time for him to go to sleep.

Eight hours later, the light strengthened, revealing three new plates of food on the floor. Of the old ones there was no sign.

So began his second uneventful day.

At midday, Edeard slid up through the floor. The man was sitting on the bed at the time, eating some sweet green grapes. He stared in fascination at the way the floor around Edeard seemed to remain solid, his farsight examining it keenly.

“Now, that really is impressive, Waterwalker,” he said with a rueful grin, and popped another grape in his mouth.

“Thank you,” Edeard said. “And you are?”

“Who I am doesn’t matter.”

“It might to your wife or children.”

“Not married. Thankfully. Too quick on my feet. But congratulations on your engagement. Quite a catch, young Kristabel.”

“Why were you following us?”

The man glanced at his chest, fingering the scorch mark on his indigo shirt. “Just going about my business, Officer. I wasn’t following anyone. Someone assaulted me, and I woke up in here.”

“Yes. That was me. Sorry about the shirt. It’s a nice one. Where would I get one like that?”

“A coastal town called Chelston; it’s north of here. Several days’ sailing in a strong wind.”

“You do understand that I won’t let you out of here until I get some answers?”

“What happens when you don’t get them? Do you try to beat them out of me?”

“No, of course not. You just stay here until you answer to my satisfaction. Apparently isolation is quite an effective method of encouraging cooperation.” Edeard glanced around the underground chamber the city had converted for him. “I’m not sure isolation is supposed to be quite as comfortable as this, but I’m a bit vague on the method. Sorry about that.”

“Asking tough questions in Makkathran is usually a little different,” the man admitted too casually. “It normally involves blades and fire and heartsqueeze and lungsqueeze. Only the Waterwalker could come up with an interrogation as strange as this one.”

“But you know it’s going to work. You’re already getting disturbed by the confinement. I can tell. So why don’t you skip the whole unpleasant part and tell me what I need to know; then I can let you out of here.”

“Where exactly is here, Waterwalker?”

“The constable station in Jeavons.”

“You’re a poor liar.”

“I know. Everyone tells me I can’t shield my thoughts the way you cityborn can. I leave too much emotion visible.”

The man popped down another grape and grinned. “You’re getting better.”

“Really? Have we met before?”

“Everyone knows you, Waterwalker.”

“But not everyone is frightened of me.”

“I’m not frightened.”

“Your family is; otherwise you wouldn’t be following me around.”

“I told you, I have no family. Wrong place, wrong time, that’s me.”

“Why do they fear me?”

“I know nothing of such things.”

“But if you had to guess?”

“That voyage I took up to Chelston, it’s a standard run for the captain. He knows the route, knows what to look out for. He’s sailed it all his life, as did his father before him, and his father before that, and so on back to the day the ship fell from the sky. It’s a route that keeps him and his family clothed and fed and comfortable; it is their life. It’s a route that works. How do you think he would feel if one day a reef suddenly appeared in the water ahead of him and threatened to rip the keel off his ship?”

“A smart captain would know how to steer around it.”

“His ship is very large and extremely heavily laden. It doesn’t turn easily.”

“I don’t suppose it does, not with people like you holding it on course. But you never know. Those waters on the other side of the reef might be easy to sail in.”

The man shook his head and sighed. “How can anyone so naïve get so far in this city? It is a mystery I doubt even the Lady can fathom.”

“Some say the Lady has chosen me to repeat her message to this world.”

“How wonderful. Are you really going to claim that you are Rah reincarnated?”

“No. Because we both know I’m not.”

“Ah, well, at least you’re not declaring you have a divine right to wreck a society that’s worked for two thousand years. That’s some comfort to me, I suppose.”

“I’m marrying Kristabel, who is a greater part of this city than a dozen minor families like yours. Do you really think I will destroy everything her family has built? It is to be my family.”

“Minor families? You think attempting to anger me will cause me to lower my guard?”

“Does it anger you? The really great families will hardly be bothered by the return to law and order. But you, you’re what? Something like a fifth son of a fourth son of a third son? Your branch of the family must have been kicked out of that fabulous mansion a long time ago. Do you look at it enviously every time you walk past? Do you hear the laughter coming over the wall? And now your father is what? Some market trader with delusions of grandeur? I bet he doesn’t pay all his taxes. Is that the only way you can keep paying the bills in your new little house? It that why you only have enough coinage to dress as pretty as one of Kristabel’s foot servants? Is that why you joined this woeful little association of thugs, so you could fool yourself you’re part of the Grand Families again?”

“Really, Waterwalker, I expected better. But you are very young, aren’t you? I remain to be convinced you have what it takes to see this to the bitter end. For it will be very bitter indeed.”

“As far as you are concerned, the end has already passed you by. When banishment is enacted, you will be escorted from the city. You will not return. Ever.”

“Unless you’re claiming a timesense greater than our beloved Pythia, you cannot speak of the future. So I’ll just wait here to see how it plays out, thank you.”

Edeard tilted his head to one side to regard his unnervingly suave opponent curiously. He hadn’t been expecting anything quite this difficult. “Were you one of the four on the tower?” Edeard had returned to the base of the tower three times since his fall, examining the city’s memories of that day. He’d felt the footsteps of his four assailants on the staircase winding up the center three hours before the pistol exchange, but try as he might he simply couldn’t backtrack them successfully. They came from a large crowd of worshippers attending the afternoon service at the church, several hundred people milling around together. It was too confusing to single out one set of feet. And of course, after he fell, no one knew what had happened on top of the tower until he regained consciousness. Even then he’d only told his friends. So no attempt had been made to apprehend the mysterious foursome when they scurried back down in the middle of the confusion and panic that raged around the base of the tower for well over an hour.

The man smiled. It was a harsh expression. “When you fell, you thought it would be to your death. You didn’t know you were going to live. That is our greatest concern. Who helps you, Waterwalker, and why?”

“The universe helps those who lead a good life. It says so right there in the Lady’s scriptures.”

“Answer me that one question, and I will answer all of yours.”

Edeard gave a weary shake of his head. “You will stay in here until you cooperate. I don’t imagine it will take long. Isolation is an evil foe. And you are as isolated as it is possible to be on this world.” “Do you truly believe you have time on your side?” “We will see whose ally time really is. I’ll be back. Eventually.” He told the floor to let him through and sank away.

The financial courts were situated in the middle of Parliament House, running along the south side of First Canal. The nine horseshoe arch bridges connecting the buildings on both sides of the water were so thick, containing whole suites of rooms, that they essentially formed a tunnel over the little canal. Because of that, light inside the courts was supplied almost entirely from the concave octagons decorating the vaulted ceilings. They might as well have been underground for all the difference the high slit windows made, looking out into the shadowed cavity beneath the bridges. The dusky lighting certainly added to the general sense of gloom pervading the eighth court when Edeard crept in quietly at the back of the semicircular chamber. It wasn’t laid out like a law court. Instead, long tables were arranged in tiers, with the tax investigators at a round table at their center. Lamps were lit on the ends of each table, jamolar oil producing pools of yellow light across the untidy stacks of paper and files. To Edeard’s first glance it was as though paper had come alive to breed faster than drakkens. There couldn’t be so many accounts relating to the House of Blue Petals. But each table had at least two clerks sitting at it. They were all dressed the same, in shirts and waistcoats. Most seemed to be wearing spectacles. None were under fifty.

The tax inspector’s waistcoat was lined with silver; otherwise there was no way to distinguish between him and his fellow guild members. He would consult a page from a very large ledger and ask a question relating to income or expenditure. Then Buate’s team of clerks would mutter among themselves and go through files and books before producing receipts or affidavits and offering an explanation for how the money was spent or received. At that point the clerks retained by the Mayor’s Inspector General would counter the claim, producing different bits of paper or an entry in the ledger of the business concerned that was different from Buate’s contention.

After listening to the evidence, the inspector would write laboriously in his ledger and move on to the next question.

Three years’ worth of records were subject to investigation. Every day’s purchase of drinks had to be accounted for. Three years of the House of Blue Petals buying and cleaning bed linen. Three years of genistar husbandry. Three years of replacement mats behind the bar. Three years of crockery, acquisitions and breakages, and depreciation and amortization. Three years of the girls’ cosmetics and hairstyling. Three years of hair clip acquisition, each batch meticulously recorded and queried.

Buate sat at a table at the far side of the court. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes glazed, his skin paler than the drab lighting could shade. He looked up as Edeard walked in. His expression of misery slowly changed, as if his facial muscles were regaining strength, hardening his cheeks and jaw into a look of pure fury.

Edeard met it without flinching as the inspector demanded to know about higher than normal expenditures on smoked toco nuts on the sixth Thursday of June two years ago. Buate never shifted his gaze from Edeard while his clerks struggled to produce receipts for the jars.

In the end, it was Edeard who looked away first. He could barely believe it, but he was close to feeling sorry for Buate. Theirs was an epic struggle for the soul of an entire city. It should be fought out there on the streets and along the canals, followers slugging it out with fists and third hands while their political masters plotted and schemed in Council. Not this. This was inhuman.

And I did it to him.

Edeard bowed his head to look at his boots, every inch the little boy at the back of the class struggling not to giggle. He hurried out of the finance court, then stopped in the cloister and laughed out loud. Clerks in their drab claret and olive-green waistcoats stared at him disapprovingly.

“Sorry,” Edeard said to them and their guild in general. He made an effort to compose himself, then walked on toward Center Circle Canal. He could do that. He could leave the court after a good laugh. Good gloat, if I’m honest. Buate couldn’t. Buate had to stay there for six hours every day, as he had done for ten days now. And the investigation was likely to last another eight days at least, Edeard had been told.

If only we could do this to each of the hundred. We’d have broken them by now. We wouldn’t need banishment; they’d have fled screaming through the city gates long ago.

But this kind of financial scrutiny was reserved for the larger city businesses that were constantly cheating on taxes. The Chief Constable had had to press hard with the Inspector General to get an inspector to launch his formal examination of Buate’s accounts. It had used up a great deal of time and cost far more than it would ever produce in fines. Worst of all, the clerks still hadn’t found any tangible link between Buate and Ranalee’s family. Of course, that didn’t really matter; he was just using the tax investigation as a major irritant against Buate while the Jeavons constables built up the one hundred list. But a proven link would have been nice.

Edeard left the merged domes of the Parliament Building behind and crossed over the delicate white wire bridge of Center Circle Canal. The patch of land ringed by the little canal was too small to rate as a district. People just called it Rah’s Garden, a small green oasis in the middle of government’s commotion. He walked along simple paths lined by tall, perfectly shaped flameyews. Roses were throwing out their first blossoms of the season, releasing a gentle scent into the still air. Several freshwater ponds were joined together by small streams that were crossed by small brick humpback bridges. As he crossed them, he could see big emerald and scarlet fish gliding around smoothly; they seemed to regard him slyly as he went by.

On the other side of Rah’s Garden, the rear of the Orchard Palace rose before him, higher than any of the domes behind it. Captain Larose was waiting for him at the bottom of the broad symmetrical perron that led up to the palace. Edeard straightened his dress jacket, though it was something of a lost cause beside the captain’s ceremonial uniform.

“Waterwalker.”

“Just you today, Captain?”

“’Fraid so, old chap. Inside the palace I’m naught but a humble guide.”

“Then guide me in, please.”

They ascended the three levels of the perron and went in through a high arching door. Five long cloisters led away from the hallway.

“Congratulations, by the way,” Larose said. “Kristabel’s a fine catch.”

“Thank you.”

“I met her myself a few times. Obviously, I didn’t make much of an impression.”

Edeard thought it best to let that one slide past.

“Did you really farsight Sergeant Chae’s soul?”

“Yes.” Edeard finally had learned to stop sighing as he answered that question twenty times a day. It was disrespectful.

“That must put life into perspective, eh?”

“Death isn’t quite so frightening, but that doesn’t mean that life shouldn’t be celebrated.”

“You are an extraordinary fellow,” the captain declared as they emerged into the Malfit Hall. Edeard could well imagine the captain reading A Gentleman’s Guide to Marriage and hanging on every word.

They passed into the Liliala Hall, where Edeard stopped to regard the ceiling with the same astonishment as the first time he’d seen the images in Malfit Hall. The storm swirled silently above him; light flickered all around, casting strangely angled shadows as lightning bolts zipped through the clouds. Then Alakkad slipped through a breach in the scudding clouds: a smooth black ball of a world threaded with hundreds of glowing red lines as vast rivers of lava surged along the surface.

“I never knew this was here,” an enchanted Edeard said, craning his neck as he tried to see the entire ceiling at once. “Can you see all of Gicon’s Bracelet?”

“You know your astronomy.”

“Some of it. We had a very old telescope in the guildhall where I grew up. My Master enjoyed watching the skies. He always said he was trying to see if another ship was on its way to Querencia. I think he was actually watching for Skylords.”

“Indeed. Well, if you wait long enough, you’ll see all the worlds in the Bracelet.”

Clouds surged back across Alakkad. Edeard would have loved to linger. The Bracelet was always his favorite feature in the night sky, five small planets rotating around one another, orbiting farther out from the sun than Querencia itself. The ancient telescope had never shown him Alakkad in such detail. He wondered how Vili would look in here, or the Mars Twins.

Larose led him through into the series of splendid chambers that made up the Mayor’s private rooms. Owain was waiting in the oval sanctum, sitting behind the largest desk Edeard had ever seen. He wondered what on Querencia could be in all the drawers but held back from probing with his farsight.

“Waterwalker,” Owain said with a genuine smile. “My full and sincere congratulations on this day. You’re a very lucky man.”

“Thank you, sir.” It appeared the whole city was pleased for him and Kristabel.

Owain waited until Larose left. “First off, allow me to apologize profusely for the episode in Eyrie.”

“Sir?”

“Those Ladydamned pistols. My guild has held them in safekeeping for over a thousand years. They are perhaps our most closely guarded secret. How they came to be removed is still a mystery. Even if you managed to get them out of the vault, there are guards, locks … It should be impossible. It has been impossible until now.”

“Do you know who was responsible?” Ronark and Droal had interrogated all the gang members they’d apprehended that night, but they were nothing more than couriers; no one knew the actual source of the guns, the man who was offering them for sale.

“We think we’ve identified the principal thief,” Owain said, “though he has of course conveniently vanished. I’m ashamed to say he was one of my guild’s senior journeymen, a man called Argian.”

“I don’t recall the name.”

“Studious man, destined to be a Master, though perhaps not to sit on the guild council itself. Here.” Owain gifted his image.

Edeard was quite proud of the way he held his composure, shield firm, no sense of surprise leaking out. “Argian” was the man he was holding in the underground cell. “I’ll let the constable stations know; the patrols can watch for him.”

“Good man. Though I suspect he’s left the city. Betraying us in such a despicable fashion carries a heavy penalty. He must have known that. I hope they paid him well.”

“Yes, sir.” Edeard was desperately trying to work out connections. It was inevitable that the family agents would have someone inside the Weapons Guild, and probably every other guild, come to that. It would be easy now to find Argian’s family, who would never acknowledge any association, especially as they would know he was being held by the Waterwalker.

“But let us ignore that today,” Owain said. “This is your day, yes. A time to be joyful.”

Edeard forced a grin.

“Don’t worry, Waterwalker. This next part is just a formality. You know it’s considered bad form to vote against a consent act. We’re long past such barbarity.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It will be my pleasure to allow Julan to introduce it. So, are you ready?”

“I think so.”

“Well, I am. You and Kristabel will make a fine couple. And don’t repeat this, but it never hurts to shake things up a bit. If you ask me, the Grand Families are becoming somewhat jaded these days. Someone like you in their ranks is just what they need.”

Edeard slid smoothly through the floor of the cell to find Argian pacing around the room. The man was getting jittery. He was starting to talk to himself. It had started with little mutters on the morning of the third day, progressing to full sentences. The cell walls relayed both the images and the sound to Edeard. It wasn’t very revealing.

“Well, we knew it wasn’t going to be simple.”

“That much support, it’s difficult to break.”

“Should we actually let him do it?”

“If he marries her, he might pull back. Lorin’s said before that he’s besotted. Pity Ranalee didn’t succeed; that would have been the answer to everything. Stupid bitch.”

As he was eating his egg sandwiches for lunch: “Poison. Not a fast one, something that would take weeks. Months. Yes, yes. Months. No one would suspect then.”

“Faster faster. The election might be the killer. Riots will make them think twice. Kristabel. It all rests on Kristabel. She’s young. Foolish. But she understands family. She might. She might.”

“We’re right. We’re right, though. Yes, we are. His blood will pass to all of us.”

“How does he do it? How?”

Argian was gnawing on his thumb as Edeard emerged. He stopped immediately, shoving his hand behind his back with a guilty expression.

“Your clothes are getting a little creased,” Edeard said pleasantly. “I thought you might like some clean ones.” He held out the bundle of neatly folded shirts and socks he’d brought, with a jar of soap flakes and a flannel on top.

“Thank—” Argian broke off, staring at them.

“Found them in your room,” Edeard said.

Argian made a polite bow of defeat. “Very clever.”

“Not really, Argian. I’m afraid it was Owain himself who gave me your name. Would you believe, you’re the only official suspect for the theft of special pistols from the Weapons Guild.”

“Owain?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes. They’ve thrown you to the fastfoxes. I visited your mother. She’s quite distressed by the allegations. I told her I thought you’d left the city. Best not to give her too much hope when it comes to ever seeing you again.”

“I find all this highly dubious.”

“Really, I thought they were being quite clever. Your friends obviously know I’m holding you, so they simply make sure I can charge you with a crime that involves the death of a constable. And there we are: Suddenly you’re no longer a problem. Was that part of the agreement when you signed up? Sacrifice yourself if you get caught? But then, I don’t suppose your kind ever did get caught before I came along, did you?”

Argian sat on the side of the bed and gave Edeard a brittle grin. “I’m not telling you anything.”

“You know, I’d made journeyman by the time I was seventeen,” Edeard said. “You’re what? Forty-eight, isn’t it? And still only a journeyman. No wonder you had to steal those pistols from a vault. I’d hate to use one you’d made.”

“I believe we’ve already established that provoking me doesn’t work.”

“Yes. Actually, I don’t think you ever were a journeyman, not really. I think it’s just a tenure that gives you a facade of respectability.”

“Oh, well done. You actually worked something out for yourself. Or did your friend Macsen the bastard have to explain it to you?”

“Provoking me is not a good idea. I don’t have your restraint.”

Argian held his hands wide. “Do your worst. Oh, yes, this is your worst, isn’t it?”

“Not by any means. But I’m not in any rush.”

“I wouldn’t count on that, Waterwalker.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“No.”

“I see.” Edeard sighed. “Well, I can’t stay. I have to get ready for my engagement party. And Kristabel needs calming down.”

“Why?”

“There was one Master who didn’t sign the consent bill.”

“Bise,” Argian said quickly.

“Yes. Apparently he hates me enough to commit the sin of bad form.”

“Shocking.”

“Well, it’s not me he has to worry about. As I’ve discovered today, Honious has no fury like a woman upset during her wedding arrangements.”

“Poor Bise.”

“I’m not sure when I’ll be back. We have a lot of parties to attend.”

Argian’s self-control faltered. He gave Edeard a disconcerted look. “You’re really going to leave me in here?”

“Not quite. This isn’t working as well as I’d hoped. And I need it to work. I have to know exactly who I’m up against. You’re the key to that.”

Just for a moment a flicker of hope crossed Argian’s face. Then Edeard dropped away through the floor.

“Lady damn you!” Argian shouted after him. His clenched fists rose to the ceiling. He froze as a tiny motion caught his eye. The walls were moving. “No,” he breathed. The cell was shrinking. He put his hands against the nearest wall and started to push, adding his third hand to his efforts. “No.” There was nothing he could do to prevent the inexorable motion. “No! No, no. Stop it.” He realized the ceiling was lowering as well.

“NOOO!”

Makkathran’s opera house formed the heart of Lillylight district, a vast palatial sprawl that merged into the Manor of Octaves, where the Guild of Musicians was housed. When humans first had moved into Makkathran, they’d found a vast indoor amphitheater, whose giant tiered ledges had a curvature impossible for humans to sit on comfortably. The lower half of the encircling wall had huge mullion windows of rectilinear tracery, and unusually for the city, their crystal was colored, sending out great rainbow beams to intersect the central stage. Above that, a thousand long white and violet stalactites hung from the domed ceiling, as if it were the inside of some massive geode. As night fell, the spires fluoresced with the city’s ubiquitous orange light.

Grand Families long ago had staked their claim to various sections of the tiered ledges and commissioned carpenters to construct elaborate benches. Over time, the benches had been walled off with carved paneling, producing snug private boxes.

They also steadily expanded back over the ledges, as Edeard discovered when he had to worm his way behind the boxes that cluttered the second tier to reach the Culverit family enclave. Kristabel, whose magenta satin gown had a wide flaring skirt, struggled to keep the obligatory smile on her face as she followed him along.

“I always forget how cramped it is back here,” she complained.

“We could always walk along the top of the boxes,” Edeard said cheerfully.

Her smile vanished. He kept quiet until they reached the Culverit box.

Inside, it was decorated in velvet and lace, with eight luxurious leather cushioned chairs along the front. Three servants were already there, preparing wine and fruit in their small paneled-off section at the back. One of them took Kristabel’s silk-wool wrap. Edeard gave him his cloak, very self-conscious about the gilded turquoise jacket and smoke-gray trousers he was wearing. Then he realized that no one could actually see into the box and relaxed.

“That’s better,” Kristabel declared as she settled in the central chair with a relieved sigh.

Edeard sat next to her. It was like being on a throne, with an excellent view of the flat circular stage across the top of the boxes on the ledge below. Seclusion hazes protected several boxes as their occupants gossiped before the show began or entertained people they shouldn’t have. When he peered over the little balcony rail, Edeard saw the ancient Master of Cobara with his teenage mistress in tow, shuffling along the gap directly underneath.

“Don’t you dare,” Kristabel said.

“What?” an injured Edeard asked.

“Ever do that to me,” she responded, her index finger lined up on the Master’s bad wig.

He leaned over to kiss her and realized the chairs were too far apart, so he had to get out and move over to her, which sort of wrecked the spontaneity. “You are far too fabulously energetic in bed for me ever to even think of anyone else,” he murmured into her ear.

“Behave.” But there was a demure smile on her lips that he recognized all too well.

“You know,” he said, licking her earlobe, “no one can actually see in here.”

“The musicians can.”

“Ah.” Edeard turned and faced the stage. The first musicians were starting to emerge from the staircase well in the center, carrying their instruments with them. “Spoilsports.” His third hand hauled his chair right up next to hers, and he sat down again. “You feeling better?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

He’d never seen Kristabel so furious as that afternoon when Bise had contemptuously ignored the parchment as it was passed along the long table in the Upper Council chamber for the signature of each Master. His refusal to sign the consent bill had appalled even Owain, but he was immune to all remonstration. The Pythia herself couldn’t get him to change his mind. For the first time in three hundred nineteen years a consent to marry bill was not approved unanimously.

It meant nothing to Edeard, of course, but Kristabel was outraged. It was a slur on the entire Culverit family, not to mention her personally. After Owain had formally announced the Upper Council’s majority approval, she’d stormed out of the Council chamber swearing revenge.

“He’s an idiot,” Edeard said as the musicians began to take their places. “And he’s on his way out.”

“He’s barely ninety,” Kristabel said. “He’ll be sitting in Council for another century at least. And I’ll be sitting in there with him.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll have him sentenced to the Trampello mines; you’ll see. I’m working on a way to prove his connection to the gangs.”

“Edeard, I love you dearly, but please, you really have to read up on the city’s traditions and laws. Bise is a District Master; he can never stand trial in the law courts.”

“What? Why not?”

“Only the Masters of the Upper Council can try one of their own for any crime. The exemption accountability law was supposed to stop frivolous litigation brought by anyone with a grudge.”

“Oh.” He tipped his head to one side and regarded her intently. “How come you know that?” As soon as he said it, he knew it had come out wrong.

“For your information,” she said icily, “between the ages of fourteen and nineteen I used to spend ten hours a week studying law under Master Ravail of the Lawyers Guild. I could pass your constables’ probation exams in my sleep.”

“Right.”

“Did you think me unschooled and ignorant?”

“No.”

“I am to be Mistress of an entire district. Do you have any idea of the responsibilities involved?”

He took her hand, squeezing it for emphasis. “Yes, Kristabel.”

“Sorry.” She gave him a contrite smile.

“It’s normally me that’s saying that.”

“I know. I’m just so cross with him.”

“This is a battle fought at many levels.”

“But at least at your level you get to see some results.”

“Not really,” he admitted as the first discordant notes of the musicians warming up began to reverberate around the huge auditorium. He was surprised by how loud they were. It must have something to do with the spiky roof, he decided.

“I thought you’d just about gotten your hundred,” she said.

“We have.” He started to tell her about Buate’s strategy to fight back, to inflict so much damage on the city that the Councils would call for Edeard to end his campaign.

“Clever,” she said when he finished. “But inevitable. You’ve been very effective at curtailing his activities. This is what happens when you back people into a corner; they lash out.”

“You think I shouldn’t arrest the hundred?”

“The thing about elections is they’re unpredictable. Your idea to crush the gang leadership beforehand is excellent. You show people what life would be like if Finitan gets to pass his banishment act. But if you don’t arrest them, things stay as they are or, worse, Buate starts a rumor that you’re too afraid to act, and the vote could well go Owain’s way.”

“Owain will support me; he told me himself.”

“Yes, but only as it applies through his one nation manifesto. And for what it’s worth, I think Finitan is right: We need to consolidate the city before we try to help the provinces.”

“So what do I do?”

“You can’t allow a citywide riot. That goes against everything you are as a constable. It has to be stopped.”

“Easily said. How?”

“Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong in order to do what’s right.”

“I know that. I even considered snatching the top gang lords and holding them in isolation, but it always comes down to the same thing: There aren’t enough of us, not for that kind of work. I could only ever get two or three of them before the word would get out, and that’s the trigger for the riot. I just don’t see how it can be stopped.”

“You’re probably right, so you have to try to contain it, and I know just the place.”

“Where?”

“Sampalok.”

“Oh, Lady.”

“No. He’s the one who champions the gangs. He provides them with sanctuary; he even excluded you from the district. Well, it’s about time he realized there’s a price to pay for collaboration.”

“How in the Lady’s name do I confine the riot to Sampalok?”

“If that’s where the rioters are, that’s where the riot will be. Push them in there, Edeard. Use their own tactics to defeat them.”

“But …”

“That’s wrong?” she asked archly. “Edeard, if you want to win, you have to play to win. You’re the Waterwalker. There’s no one else who’s going to do this.”

“Yes,” he said meekly as the conductor appeared onstage. Applause began to ripple around the auditorium. “I know.”

“The pistols were easy to obtain. A key was provided; the guards that night were ones who knew not to ask questions.”

“A key? You mean for the vault?”

“Yes. Actually, you need five keys to get through three doors, and then there are the combination numbers. The locks are impossible to pick with telekinesis; there are too many parts to manipulate simultaneously.”

“Who gave you the keys?”

“Warpal told me where a set would be left. The combinations were with them.”

“So Warpal is your leader?”

“There is no leader. We are simply people who agree on what must be done to maintain a basic level of order in the city.”

“Sons of Grand Families?”

“People who share a background of good family and breeding, who have the same understanding of life. It is nothing like as formal as you think.”

“But somebody must organize it.”

“Not really. We support each other and the final rule of law.”

“You protect the families from the gangs?”

“Precisely. And any other threats.”

“So why haven’t you gotten rid of the gangs?”

“A criminal underclass is somewhat inevitable. As you’re finding out, they’re well organized. To defeat them we would first have to match them, and that’s not what we do. We look after our own. If the lower classes want something done to stop the gangs, then it’s up to them to do something.”

“And yet when I came along and started to do exactly that, you tried to eliminate me. Why?”

“You are more than a constable, a lot more. You have some power in this city which no one understands. And you have your own vision of law and order, a very rigid intolerant one. If you were to enforce that, you would do untold harm to the families.”

“I don’t want to destroy anything.”

“The road to Honious is paved with good intentions. Makkathran works perfectly well as it is.”

“For the nobility, perhaps. The gangs have grown too big and powerful under your lax rule. You let that happen. Makkathran doesn’t work for everyone, and it must.”

“We do what we can.”

“Were you one of those who pushed me off the tower?”

“Yes.”

“Who else was there?”

“Warpal, Merid, and Pitier.”

“Who organized it?”

“Warpal.”

“And who told him to do that?”

“That’s not how we work.”

“Nobody suddenly decides to do such a thing. There has to be someone in charge of you.”

“Our older members offer guidance, that’s all. They smooth the way into guilds, provide us with additional funds, that kind of thing. They have ties to the family councils, so they’re aware of problems emerging before the rest of the city. That way we can be informed of such instances and deal with them discreetly. Our work is quiet and infrequent. Some of us are never called upon.”

“So these older members control you?”

“They guide and advise. We each have a mentor; they are the ones who initiate us in the families’ confidential arts.”

“Like concealment?”

“That is one of them, yes.”

“Who is Warpal’s mentor?”

“Motluk is mentor to both Warpal and myself.”

“Motluk?”

“He’s a junior Master in the Leatherworkers Guild.”

“And which family does he come from?”

“He is Altal’s son. The fourth, I think.”

“Altal?”

“Altal is the third son of Carallo, who is a Diroal, the fifth son of the previous Master. Carallo is married to Karalee, third sister of Tannarl.”

“A Diroal? Lady! You mean Diroal as in the District Masters of Sampalok?”

“Yes.”

The barrels were stored in a large Gilmorn warehouse on the edge of the Port district. Edeard enjoyed the irony in that as he got the city to change the floor they were stacked on. One by one the barrels fell into the tunnel beneath Tail Canal. Edeard’s third hand scooped up eight of them, and they bobbed along through the air behind him as he walked the short distance along the curving tunnels under Myco’s streets to stand beneath the House of Blue Petals.

With only a couple of hours left until dawn, it was still very dark inside the lounge as he and the barrels rose through the floor. His farsight found several people sleeping upstairs, including Buate, who was sharing his bed with two of the house’s girls. A more detailed scan couldn’t find anyone using concealment lurking within the building.

Edeard sent three of the barrels drifting through the doorways leading off the wooden gallery. His third hand broke open their tops, and the thick jamolar oil inside spilled out along the corridors. Two more barrels were hoisted up to the top floor, drenching carpets and furniture in Buate’s big study. Oil ran out under the door, washing down the corridors and stairs.

His longtalk prodded the minds of the slumbering ge-chimps in their little pen behind the kitchen. “Go outside,” he ordered them as he walked upstairs. They obediently shuffled silently out into the street.

His third hand broke open two of the barrels downstairs, leaving an intact one standing on top of the bar. Jamolar oil sluiced across the floor.

“Nostalgia,” he muttered as he started up the stairs to the upper floor. He stood in front of the door to Buate’s bedroom. His third hand plucked an ember from one of the stoves in the lounge and dropped it.

Flame whooshed across the room. The furniture caught fire immediately, long flames licking around the bar. Within seconds, oil dripping down the stairs had ignited, sending flames ripping across the first floor. The fire followed the damp trail up the next flight of stairs and blazed into the study.

Edeard smashed the bedroom door down and strode into the room as flames leaped and danced behind him. Buate’s sleep-befuddled head came up from the pillows. The girls cried out as they saw the black figure silhouetted in the doorway, his cloak rippling in the air like a living appendage. They clung to each other in fear.

“What the Ladyfuck—” Buate gasped. His farsight was probing the building, finding fire everywhere.

“This establishment appears very accident-prone,” Edeard observed.

The barrel on the bar exploded. Doors shattered, letting in a huge squall of fresh air. Flames roared up to the roof of the lounge.

“If I was you, I wouldn’t come back here, not ever,” Edeard said. “In fact, I doubt there’s anywhere in this city where you’ll be safe.”

Flames trickled into the bedroom, flowing around Edeard’s feet as they consumed the carpeting. His cloak flapped in agitation. Both girls whimpered, pressing themselves to the headboard. Smoke began to layer the air.

“You’re dead, Waterwalker,” Buate shouted.

“Warpal tried and failed. What chance have you got?”

Buate stiffened at the mention of that name, causing Edeard to grin in amusement.

“Now get out of my city, and take your people with you; if you ever try to start your riot, you will join your brother in the manner I mentioned during my previous visit. Final warning.” He nodded politely to the girls. “Ladies.”

They screamed as his third hand lifted them into the air. Then the bedroom windows disintegrated, and they found themselves floating through the gap to descend gently onto the street below, where the house’s ge-chimps were scampering about in considerable apprehension.

Buate watched their flight in astonishment. “What about me?” he yelled. But when he looked around, Edeard had gone. Flames licked hungrily at the base of the bed.

Edeard chose the middle of Golden Park at midnight. The huge plaza was empty, with nebula light flickering off the tips of the white metal pillars that surrounded it. Only the faintest shadows fell across the glossy cobbles as two dark figures appeared from nowhere.

“You are free to go,” Edeard said with an expansive gesture.

“Go where, exactly? I am a wanted man. How long do you think I would last out there?”

“Nobody will know you in the provinces.”

“You believe I should join Nanitte?” Argian asked with a show of bitter amusement. “You are crueler than I thought, Waterwalker.”

“I am more desperate than you know.”

“Excuse me if I don’t offer my undying sympathy.”

“I need your help.”

“I have given you everything I can. There is nothing left of me.”

“I ask only that you do what you were trained to do. I ask that you keep your loyalty to this city.”

“My time here is over. I have you to thank for that.”

“Keep watch for me; see what your people are doing.”

“That is not loyalty; that is betrayal.”

“Not to the city. You are an honorable man at heart. You know something has to be done to rid us of the gangs and pull back the excesses of the families. Things cannot go on as they are; that will doom us all. Help me. If nothing else, be a moderating voice. If you truly fear I am too uncompromising, then stay and exert what influence you can on me.”

“Me, influence you?”

“You understand the true way things work. I would listen to your advice if it were given in good faith. Tell me how to achieve justice without alienating and ruining the best of that which is. Smooth the way. Do not let this city become divided by my blundering. Isn’t that your calling?”

“You seem to have missed your vocation.”

“Was that a yes?”

Argian sighed as if in great pain. “After all you have done to me, you expect me to help you?”

“I left you alone. That’s all. If there were any demons in there with you, I didn’t send them.”

“It will take me a while to gather my things. If I see anything detrimental before I leave, I may tell you.”

“Thank you.”

Felax raced into the small hall at the back of Jeavons constable station, very flustered and out of breath. “Waterwalker, Master Gachet from the Guild of Lawyers is here! He’s talking to the captain. He says he has a warrant for your arrest.”

“Really?” Edeard asked with interest.

“Honestly,” the young constable assured him. “I’m not joking.”

“I’m sure you’re not.” His farsight caught a thoroughly disgusted Boyd handing over coinage to a smug Macsen. “I’ll be right there.”

The squad stood up to leave.

“Everyone keep going,” Edeard urged the other constables working at the benches. “We’re really close to a hundred now. I don’t expect this nonsense to take more than a day.”

He left the small hall with his friends. “Ready?”

Macsen grinned as the hall door closed behind them. “Oh, Lady, yes.”

Edeard hurriedly pulled off his distinctive jacket. Macsen was already wearing Edeard’s glossy boots even though his feet were too large.

“Remember,” Dinlay said pleadingly. “Just don’t say anything.”

“Who, me?” Macsen asked as he buttoned the jacket.

“Let’s see it,” Boyd said.

Macsen nodded, his mind betraying a brief flutter of nerves, and then concentrated. Shadows thickened around his face, turning him a malaised gray. Then they stretched and blurred.

Edeard held his breath while Dinlay grimaced in anticipation. The squad had practiced this for a day, helping each other with ideas and techniques as they slowly developed the notion, refining and improving the original blanket concealment method. Surprisingly, it was Macsen who was the most capable. Edeard had assumed it would be Dinlay, who was always the studious one.

The shadows faded from Macsen’s face. Kanseen let out a little gasp of appreciation. Edeard shook his head in disbelief; he was staring at himself. His own face gave him an evil smile. “How do I look? Actually, how do you look?”

Dinlay let out a hiss of exasperation. “Stop talking! It ruins it.”

“Go!” Boyd urged. “We’ll take it from here.”

“Good luck,” Edeard told them. The floor changed beneath him, and he sank into the tunnel below. His farsight tracked Macsen, Dinlay, and Kanseen as they went on to Captain Ronark’s office.

Master Gachet was waiting there, along with two court officials.

“Waterwalker,” Master Gachet said. “I convey the compliments of my colleague Master Cherix, who says he will enjoy seeing you at the Courts of Justice, where he will prosecute this case. He would be here himself, but there is the matter of an exclusion warrant against him.”

“What’s going on?” Kanseen demanded.

“Master Gachet has a civil warrant,” Captain Ronark said in disgust. “It is genuine.”

“Say nothing,” Dinlay instructed. Macsen shrugged, keeping his counterfeit face perfectly composed.

“I’d like to see it, please.” Dinlay held his hand out.

“You?” Gachet asked in surprise.

“I am considering a career in law,” Dinlay said. “I will serve as Corporal Edeard’s adviser until a registered lawyer can be appointed.”

A hugely amused Gachet handed the warrant over.

“You’ve been named by Buate as an assailant,” Dinlay read. “You are also accused of arson against the House of Blue Petals.”

“And are required to pay compensation to its owners for loss of business,” Gachet mocked. “Here’s hoping your fiancée is understanding, else you will be handing over your pay for the next hundred years.”

“We’ll get Master Solarin to deal with this,” Dinlay said. “He’ll have the warrant invalidated within five minutes.”

“Perhaps,” Master Gachet said. “Until then: Officers”—he gestured at the two court officials, who looked dreadfully uncomfortable— “attend to your duties.”

“Go with them,” Dinlay said.

The court officers stood nervously on either side of the Waterwalker and escorted him out of the station, with Dinlay, Kanseen, and Master Gachet accompanying them. Constables appeared along the corridor to glower at the procession. Master Gachet did his best to ignore them, but the anger directed at him was intense.

It was a long walk across Jeavons to the Outer Circle Canal. Word was soon out that the Waterwalker had been arrested with Buate’s connivance. People hurried out into the streets to see Edeard being taken to the Courts of Justice. He smiled in that way he always did but never spoke.

Edeard slid up through the floor of the house in Padua and cast off his concealment. His third hand was holding only one barrel of jamolar oil. It wasn’t a big house. Edsing gasped in surprise as he appeared. Mirayse, his wife, stiffened, rushing to their three children and clutching them protectively.

Edeard crushed the barrel. Oil sprayed out, streamers looping across the room to soak furniture. A long cascade rushed out of the door and split into three, with each strand washing through a bedroom.

Edeard stared unflinchingly at Edsing, hardening himself against the distressed whimpering of the children. “You will leave this place,” Edeard ordered. “You will take those you command with you, or I will burn them out of their homes. Tell them that. Now go. The fire will start in half a minute.”

Edsing lined up a finger on Edeard, his features wound up in a snarl. “You—”

“Twenty seconds.”

“This is our life!” Mirayse shouted.

“And it is now over,” Edeard informed her. “Fifteen seconds.” He glanced pointedly at the children.

“Out, out,” she shrieked, and jostled them along.

Edsing let out a howl of frustration and anger before running after his family.

Edeard held his hand above his head and sank away. Just before his fingers disappeared beneath the floor, a single spark spit out.

“There is a twofold error here, my lords,” Master Solarin said to the three judges hearing the application to dismiss. “Firstly, I draw your attention to the malicious suit bill, with reference to its application for those employed by the city authority. The Waterwalker, as we know, is most prominent in the effort of ridding the city of actively violent criminals. Now, this campaign has caused a great deal of personal conflict between the Waterwalker and Buate, which my learned colleague knows full well.”

“Objection!” Master Cherix shouted.

Master Solarin chortled. “Dear me, I hope I don’t have to mention a recently dismissed case of aggravated psychic assault between my client and the prosecution.”

“Objection!”

Edeard flew along the brightly lit deep tunnel, his arms held wide as if they were wings. Air drove against his face, whipping his hair about. His mouth was open to whoop ecstatically.

“Furthermore, in the case of Barclay versus Pollo it was deemed that nominated evidence must be independently verified in order for a warrant to be validated.”

“My lords, I must protest that the defense is procrastinating,” Master Cherix said. “The evidence is fully verified. I gathered the confirming testimony myself.”

“I have no doubt of that, my lords. However, as the learned counsel is also fully aware and has chosen to overlook, the testimony in this case is invalid.” Master Solarin bowed benevolently at the two girls from the House of Blue Petals who were sitting behind the prosecution bench. They giggled back at him. “These quite delightful ladies upon whose testimony the prosecution’s entire case is based are themselves employed by the establishment owned by the plaintiff. Impartiality in these circumstances must be discounted, as established by Rupart versus Vaxill, and, with it, validation. I would ask for your immediate ruling on this.”

Hallwith’s home was on the fifth floor of a bridge in Cobara. Two barrels hung in the air beside Edeard as he fixed the glowering gang lord with a relentless stare.

“Leave this place,” the Waterwalker commanded.

Oil poured out as the barrels splintered, forming a sheet of glistening liquid poised halfway between floor and ceiling.

“They were not employed by the House of Blue Petals,” Master Cherix said, radiating great weariness, as if he were sad to point out such an obvious flaw. “They are free agents who pay a percentage of their earnings to the house. As such, Rupart versus Vaxill does not apply.”

Side tunnels flashed past at bewildering speed. Edeard had his hands gripped together in front of him, as if he were diving off a bridge into a deep pool of water. He rolled exuberantly as he hurtled onward, wondering idly where all the branches led to.

“Which leads us to positive identification. Buate’s testimony clearly states that the intruder was illuminated from behind. Contention is that under such circumstances, a visual identification is impossible.”

“My lords, the honorable gentleman is making a poor joke. The Waterwalker is perhaps the most readily identifiable man in all of Makkathran.” Master Cherix frowned in annoyance as several people at the back of the court began whispering. A mental bustle of excitement spilled out. Edeard, Kanseen, and Dinlay did their best not to smile and turn around. Boyd crept in at the rear of the chamber, carrying a canvas bag. He sat behind his squadmates and leaned forward to whisper to Dinlay. Everyone sitting on the prosecution bench did his or her best to ignore him. The murmurs of surprise at the back of the chamber were getting louder.

The senior judge banged his gavel for order.

“I believe my learned colleague has just answered his own question, my lords,” Master Solarin said. “Yes, the Waterwalker is renowned, which makes such allegations all the easier to perpetrate. Which I believe brings us right back to the malicious suit bill.”

Dinlay rose to whisper into Master Solarin’s ear. On the other side of the judges, Master Cherix was receiving an equally urgent message from a junior lawyer on his team.

“My lords, I beg your indulgence for a slight recess,” Master Solarin said. “It would appear there is some evidence forthcoming that will completely exonerate my client.”

The senior judge nodded agreement and banged the gavel. “Court will reconvene in one hour. The defendant is not to leave the building.”

Edeard concealed himself as he stepped nimbly through the cloisters that wove through the Courts of Justice. The squad was waiting in a lawyer’s preparation room just off the court chamber where the hearing was being conducted. They turned around in surprise when the door opened seemingly of its own accord. It shut, and Edeard materialized in front of it.

Kanseen ran over and gave him a quick kiss.

“How did it go?” Dinlay asked.

“I visited seven of them in person,” Edeard said. “And I managed to longtalk warnings to another twelve.”

“That ought to do it,” Macsen said, taking off the splendid jacket.

“It wasn’t easy,” Edeard said as he shrugged into the jacket. “Three of them had children.”

“We’ve been through this,” Kanseen said forcefully. “Nearly all their victims have families, and they get hurt very badly.”

“I know.”

Macsen sighed in relief as he pulled off Edeard’s boots. He wriggled his toes, smiling. Boyd opened the canvas bag and took out Macsen’s boots. The old pair Edeard had worn was placed inside.

Boyd inspected the pair of them. “Good to go,” he decided.

“My lords,” Master Solarin said with a formal bow. “As you are probably aware by now, there have been several regrettable incidents of arson throughout the city this afternoon. To be precise, during this very annulment hearing. In each instance, the people concerned emerged from their homes claiming it was the Waterwalker who had threatened them and ignited the fire. People who by strange coincidence are named in exclusion warrants. Clearly, this is a serious criminal conspiracy mounted by undesirable elements of the city, deliberately aimed at wrecking my client’s reputation.”

“Objection,” Master Cherix said. “Hearsay. I believe we were earlier indulged in a lengthy legal argument over verification. I resent the hypocrisy now being practiced by opposing counsel.”

“My lords, I lodged no motion. I am simply informing you of a sequence of events. It is for your lordships to weigh the particulars of the case and decide if the court’s time and expense are to be wasted on trivia that will not last the first hour of a trial.”

The senior judge motioned both lawyers to sit. He conferred briefly with his two fellow judges.

“Application for the dismissal of the warrant is approved. Waterwalker, you are free to go.” The gavel was banged to end the session.

The dome on the eastern side of the Parliament House was one of the highest. It had a gallery running around the outside with a bulbous white balustrade that came up only to the knee of a grown man. The squad stood back from the railing, looking out across the city to the Port district. It was late in the afternoon, with the sun already starting to dip behind the rest of the Parliament House domes behind them.

Edeard’s eyes were closed as he scoured the city with his farsight. He was focusing on Edsing and his family, who were trudging across the center of Pholas Park on their way to Sampalok. They carried a couple of small bundles, all they’d salvaged from the fire. Mirayse hadn’t stopped berating Edsing the whole way. Judging by his mental hue, Edsing was on the verge of striking her. “They’re moving,” Edeard informed the others. “I make that over sixty who are on their way to Sampalok.”

“Is that enough?” Kanseen asked.

“No,” Edeard said. “I want the majority in there. I’ll longtalk the others this evening, deliver the same warning. In two days’ time we’ll arrest the hundred.”

“I sensed Buate as we left the court,” Boyd said. “His shield was loose for a moment. He was very confused.”

Macsen grinned at the vast city before them. “Another legend of the Waterwalker safely established. You can be in many places at once.”

“About that,” Dinlay said. “Edsing lives in Padua.”

“Yes,” Edeard said, guessing what was coming.

“But Hallwith lives in Cobara, while Coyce is in Ilongo; the others are equally spread out. Yet you visited seven of them.”

Macsen was frowning now.

“We were only in the court for an hour and a half at best,” Dinlay said. “How did you get around to all of them in that time?”

“That running I do each morning—it keeps me in good shape. You should join me.”

“Nobody runs that fast.”

Edeard withdrew his farsight and smiled at the four inquisitive faces looking at him. “I’m the Waterwalker,” he told them mysteriously. His cloak flowed dramatically around him.

What was about to happen was no secret. The city’s gossipmongers had been busy the evening before reporting on how the constables in every district station were being called in and told to prepare. All of Makkathran knew this was the day.

Edeard sensed more people than he could number farsighting him as he walked out of the tenement that morning. He was taking a break from his running. It was going to be a long day.

“Be careful,” Kristabel had said as she kissed him good night after the party in Zelda the previous evening.

“I will be,” he assured her.

“No, Edeard,” she said, and placed her hand on his arm, gray-blue eyes beseeching him. “No lighthearted pledges. Please. Be careful. What you are proposing tomorrow is dangerous. This is the crucial point in your fight, and everyone in Makkathran knows it. So I’m asking you to be on your guard. Warpal and his people must know that Argian has confessed all to you. If they see an opening, they will strike like a fastfox.”

He took her hands. “I know. I make light of it because I don’t want you to worry. Now, remember what you promised me?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “I will stay at home, on the top floor, and I will suffer the extra guards Homelt assigns.”

“No matter what.”

“No matter what,” she agreed.

As he closed the tenement gate behind him, Edeard checked the Culverit ziggurat with his farsight. Sure enough, Kristabel was there having breakfast on the hortus with Mirnatha and their father, all three of them anxiously casting their farsight toward Sampalok.

His squad was waiting for him on the street outside. He tried to remember that first morning they’d stumbled down into the Jeavons station’s small hall to be shouted at by Chae. A bunch of stupid semi-idealistic kids, none of them really knowing what they were letting themselves in for.

Now he could barely recognize those nervous eager youths in his friends. Macsen, who was dressed almost as smartly as Edeard, was still the most self-confident of the group. Boyd, whose height no longer made him appear gangly, was wearing his uniform with complete authority. If he told you to stop these days, you’d do it out of respect for the office he represented. Dinlay still couldn’t quite be considered well turned out despite the new uniforms he wore these days, but he’d gained self-reliance and a realistic understanding of human nature. But then, getting shot would do that for most people. And Kanseen smiled a whole lot more these days, as always the most solid and reliable of them all.

Edeard grinned at them, knowing he could depend on them no matter what—and guessing he’d probably have to before the day was out. “Let’s go.”

There was a gondola waiting for them on Arrival Canal. It took them down to High Pool and turned onto the Great Major Canal. Edeard deliberately didn’t look at the big ziggurat as they passed by; his attention was all on Sampalok up ahead.

Buate was already awake and up. After the fire at the House of Blue Petals he’d moved into an unclaimed building on Zulmal Street, halfway between the mansion of the Sampalok District Master and Mid Pool. It had five rooms with strange convex curving ceilings. Two rooms made up the ground floor, and the remainder were stacked one on top of the other, making the whole edifice resemble a bulbous chimney with the stairs spiraling up a narrow cylinder along one side. The triangular roof terrace was besieged by the shaggy vines that carpeted the entire outside. A carpenter had installed a front door for him, and a few pieces of furniture had been assembled downstairs. Clothes and other essentials were still in the boxes in which they’d been delivered. A lone ge-monkey performed domestic duties for him. Buate had tried to get the poor creature to climb the vines and prune them away from the windows, but with little success. It was something of a comedown from the luxury and service he was used to at the House of Blue Petals. Edeard suspected that was deliberate.

Boyd nudged him as they passed through Forest Pool. “Looks like everyone is up early today.”

Following Boyd’s mental directions, Edeard’s farsight observed Master Cherix walking over the central bridge between Golden Park and Anemone. It was the route the lawyer had to take every day to reach his guild offices in Parliament House now that he had been excluded from Jeavons.

“Even he can’t get a law revoked,” Edeard said. He’d consulted Master Solarin about the articles of arrest, and Solarin had assured him the twenty-two-day holding period remained legally applicable provided that they had a deposition of suspicion from the arresting constable. It was an aspect he’d emphasized repeatedly when he had met with the station captains the previous day to organize the arrests.

As he swept his farsight back from Anemone to Sampalok, he saw the constables making their way across Pholas Park and Tosella. There were hundreds of them marching in from every station in the city, divided into arrest teams and bridge reinforcement squads. Dozens of ge-dogs trotted alongside, while ge-eagles swarmed the clear sky overhead.

As they passed through Mid Pool, Edeard felt a familiar farsight focus on the gondola.

“Salrana?” They hadn’t spoken since that day in the caravan pens. His few attempts to longtalk her had been met by an icy mental shield.

Now her directed longtalk spoke to him alone in the gondola. “Edeard, people are afraid. Many families have come to the church this morning. What you are doing is scaring them.”

“I know. But once today is over, their fear will be gone.”

“You can’t know that.”

Such doubt wasn’t like her. Salrana used to be the one cheering him on the whole time. “I can hope that, can’t I? Where are we without hope?”

“You are becoming a politican, Edeard.”

“I will be Mayor, and you will be Pythia,” he replied warmly.

“We are not children anymore. Your pride has pushed you into this ridiculous showdown.”

“It has not!” he told her irately. “You know full well we cannot live with the gangs casting such a blight over everyone’s lives. You see the suffering as much as I do, if not more. I am trying, Salrana. This might not be a perfect way for us to be rid of them, but it is something. The Lady will sympathize with that as much as she would despise me for standing by and doing nothing.”

“Don’t tell me what the Lady will think.” Her farsight abruptly withdrew.

Edeard turned to stare with exasperation in the direction of Ysidro. He refused to send his own farsight toward the Lady’s church in that district, where Salrana was assigned.

She’ll see, he told himself. After today, she’ll see I am right.

Their gondola pulled in at a mooring platform on the edge of Mid Pool. Edeard and the squad went up the wooden stairs to the broad concourse surrounding the pool. It was eerily deserted. The buildings that formed the far side were four or five stories high, all of them independent from one another, tall and narrow, as were most of the structures in the district, with irregular bulges on their sides. Windows protruded from them like insect eyes. More than anywhere in the city, Sampalok’s structures seemed based on some organic formation.

Edeard could see entire families lined up behind the bubbles of crystal, staring at them. Trepidation filled the air like a noxious fume.

“He’s this way,” Edeard said, and headed off toward the top of Zulmal Street. His farsight observed the constables gathering at every bridge into Sampalok, ready to prevent anyone from coming out into the city, especially rioters. There were almost no gondolas moving on the canals around the district.

He walked on for almost ten minutes along the twisty, litter-strewn street. The few people abroad gave him and the squad sullen glances before they hurried off down side alleys. A couple of them spit contemptuously. Edeard kept watching Bise’s mansion, a lofty stepped tower surrounded by a thick rectangular wall with only three gates. There were a lot of people inside, but none were coming out. The big iron-bound gates were all firmly closed. He wasn’t quite sure if any of the hundred were inside. If they were, getting them out would be the task from Honious. Probably not worth it.

Edeard directed his longtalk to a single figure skulking down one of the side alleys they passed. “Have you seen anything?”

“Eight of my people walk Sampalok today,” Argian replied. “They’re not using concealment, not yet. That would draw your attention to them.”

“Why are they here?”

“I spoke to Pitier. Of all of us, he holds views most similar to my own. He said they have been told to observe but to hold themselves ready.”

“I see. Thank you.”

Buate was sitting calmly on one of his two chairs when the squad arrived outside. Edeard knocked loudly on the door. His farsight examined the man closely as he came to the door, but he carried no pistol or blade.

“Waterwalker,” Buate said in a jaded voice. “Have you come to escort me to the financial court?”

“Nothing that pleasant. You are under arrest.”

“On what charge?”

“Suspicion of extortion. We intend to hold you while we gather corroborating evidence.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” He closed his eyes, and longtalked strongly. “This is it, my friends. Go forward!”

Edeard quietly asked the city to bring the remaining jamolar barrels up from the tunnel running under Zulmal Street. They slithered up quietly in the gaps between the swollen knobbly buildings, sitting unnoticed in the shade of the creepers and trees, displacing some of the rubbish cluttering the gutters.

The squad moved back out of the house, surrounding Buate. Doors were starting to open all along Zulmal Street. Men emerged, carrying long clubs or knives, hammers, pokers, and broken bottles. Edeard ignored them, concentrating on the five barrels that had emerged at the side of Buate’s house. His third hand detached the top of each one.

“You won’t make it ten yards,” Buate gloated.

On either side of the street, the men began to edge their way forward. They were giving Edeard and the squad nervous glances, but slowly and surely they kept moving. There was a great deal of longtalk slithering among them.

“Go on, go on” was the most common phrase. “Keep going. There’s hundreds of us.”

“Stand back,” Edeard instructed loudly. A rock came whirling out of the sky, thrown by someone at the rear of the swelling mob. Macsen’s third hand swatted it away easily.

Buate started to laugh. “Not quite the people’s champion you thought you were, eh, Waterwalker?”

Edeard’s third hand sucked the oil out of all five barrels, consolidating it into a giant globe. He sent it streaking forward. As it flew a couple of yards over his head, he held up a hand. A single thread of light crackled out from his extended index finger.

The oil ignited with a loud roar, spitting out fat globules of flame. Edeard guided it down to a yard above the street, then sent it racing on ahead of him. The men lining the route yelled in fear and dived aside. Great droplets of flaming oil splattered onto the street, hissing and fizzing.

“This way,” Edeard told a startled Buate politely. They began to walk back down Zulmal Street. The would-be mob was keeping its distance now, watching the fireball anxiously as Edeard began to draw it back. “I never got to thank your dear brother for this idea,” he said to Buate. “It was a good one.”

“It’s a long way to Parliament House,” Buate growled. “And we’re not there yet.” He was using his longtalk to issue a fast stream of instructions.

Edeard’s farsight showed him people taking to the streets all across Sampalok. He was ready for that. The constables had been instructed that on no account was anyone from the district to get across a bridge and spread this brand of disturbance into the rest of the city. From what he could perceive, the bridge reinforcement teams were holding well. None of the rapidly forming crowds were getting close to the end of a bridge. He picked out several of the hundred directing people, goading them onward. Stones and bottles were starting to be thrown and telekinetically guided onto the constables. Blade discs were skimming through the air.

The arrest teams weren’t faring as well as he’d hoped. The most able farsighted constables were assigned to tracking those on the list and guiding the teams toward them. They were having trouble pushing through the hostile crowds thronging the streets.

“The thing about fire, Waterwalker, is that you can never really control how it burns,” Buate said.

Edeard was very conscious of how quickly the fireball’s oil was being used up. The street behind them was now jammed with angry people yelling insults and abuse. More of the mob was starting to mill around in the alleys on the way back to Mid Pool. As soon as the squad passed, they came out to join the main press behind them.

“Edeard,” Boyd growled under his breath.

“You know that we can dodge anything they throw at us,” Edeard said with quiet reassurance to his friends. “Our only real concern is to get this bastard into a cell.”

“Once ignited, a flame will burn until there is no more fuel,” Buate said. His hand waved at the mob following them. “They don’t need ringleaders anymore. They’re burning on their hatred for you.”

The barrels secreted down the alleys had been discovered. They were tipped over and smashed. Jamolar oil rippled down the street ahead of the squad. Edeard sent the fireball soaring high above the rooftops, then burst it apart in a vivid halo of flame. The mob below flinched.

Edeard just caught a flash of white light. The oil on the street burst into flame. People screamed and ran. A wall of flame raced toward the squad.

“Shit,” Edeard grunted. He asked the city to change the street, and the oil vanished, soaked away by the suddenly porous pavement. Puffs of smoke floated between the buildings, dissipating in the breeze.

Buate’s jaw dropped. “What—”

Edeard winked at him. “Keep going.”

The crowd along Zulmal Street kept a respectful distance as the squad walked the rest of the way to the Mid Pool concourse. There were over a hundred constables on the broad semicircle around the pool, with more behind the bridges over to Bellis and Pholas Park. Livid crowds were boiling around the entrance to each street that led into Sampalok.

Macsen and Boyd handed a sullen Buate over to one of the arrest teams, with instructions to take him to the cells underneath Parliament House.

“Now what?” Kanseen asked, looking at the jeering crowd blocking the end of Amtol Street.

“I don’t know,” Edeard said. He was longtalking with the senior sergeants at each of the bridges, checking up on the progress of the other arrest teams. “We’ve managed to nab eight of the hundred, including Buate. That’s not going to have the effect I wanted.” He gave the street mobs a worried glance. “I don’t want to send anyone in there again. That really will kick things off.”

“If we stand out here, we’ve lost,” Macsen said. “You’ll be admitting they’re in charge of Sampalok and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“I thought we didn’t mind if they rioted in Sampalok,” Boyd said.

“There are a lot of decent folks who live here,” Edeard said. “And this is a very big crowd. It’s the same at every bridge. I didn’t realize Buate still had this much control.”

“We could go in with concealment,” Dinlay said. “Snatch the closest one on the list and bring him out quickly. The hundred are the key to this≔ they’re the ones stirring people up. Take them out one at a time.”

“You might be right,” Edeard said. He wasn’t sure. The size and animosity of the response had caught him off guard. But then, Sampalok residents always had a chip on their shoulder; it wouldn’t take much to rile them.

He went over to the watcher crew at the end of the concourse next to Trade Route Canal to find out which of the hundred were nearby. Before he’d even spoken to anyone, the sergeant at the middle bridge into High Moat was longtalking that the crowd was rampaging along the streets, breaking into shops and businesses. Looting had begun. Edeard’s farsight flicked over to the area, sensing a deluge of anger and glee. Not a good combination, he thought as his farsight found a ge-eagle overhead. The genistar’s acute sight revealed flames and smoke pouring out of five or six buildings. When it swooped lower, he could see dense congregations pressed up against commercial premises. Goods were being hauled out of shattered doors to be passed around the eager crowd. Scores of kids were running away, each clutching some piece of loot.

The ge-eagle’s thought filled with agitation. Something was pulling at it, forcing it down toward the curving, angled rooftops of Sampalok. Its powerful wings flapped madly as its distress mounted.

Edeard found that extremely alarming. Few people had the telekinetic strength to reach all the way up to a ge-eagle, and fewer still had the inclination to attack a defenseless creature.

It was inordinately difficult to farsight telekinesis, but Edeard could just make out the tenuous band of force stretching up from the ground. He focused on the origin, a youth no more than fifteen who was standing in Entfall Avenue while the crowd surged around him.

“Stop that,” Edeard commanded.

The lad started. His telekinesis abandoned the ge-eagle, and he ran into the nearest building.

The sound of wood splintering reverberated across the Mid Pool concourse. Edeard looked around to see that a group of people had battered down the door to a baker’s shop in Mislore Avenue. Cheers rang out as the crowd swarmed in to help themselves to fresh loaves and cakes. Sharp cries from the baker and his family vanished swiftly. Then the grocer’s next door was breached, a clothing shop, a tavern— to the accompaniment of much cheering. Then an ironmonger’s, a café, a cobbler.

“What do we do, Waterwalker?” the senior sergeant on the concourse demanded.

Edeard looked at him, not knowing the answer. Then there came the sound of doors being broken on Zulmal Street.

“Lady!” He turned to the sergeant. “Drive them back; get them out of those premises.”

The sergeant, who was from Vaji station, gave him a dubious stare. “Yes, sir.”

A squad of over fifty constables formed, with Edeard at the head. He led them into Mislore Avenue. As soon as the crowd saw him coming, they turned and ran. A sleet of projectiles hurtled through the air at the advancing constables. Edeard batted all of them away, sending them tumbling to the ground ahead of him. When he looked down the first side alley, he could see directly into Zulmal Street; the rioting and looting were worse there. Farther up Mislore Avenue the crowd was breaking into a fresh set of shops.

“You did this!” a woman screamed at him. She’d run out of a splintered doorway, wearing a long yellow dress that was smeared with blood. Her hand clutched at a long knife, which she waved extravagantly. “You, Waterwalker, you ruined us. Two hundred years my family has lived here; two hundred years our shop has thrived, and now we’ve lost everything. Rot in Honious, you bastard.”

Edeard stopped advancing down Mislore Avenue. All he was accomplishing was to push people into areas that were undamaged, providing them with further targets. “Lady help me,” he muttered.

Three more sergeants reported riots starting. Six sections of Sampalok were in chaos now.

“Trouble here,” Dinlay’s longtalk reported. Edeard could tell his friend was trying not to panic.

“Back to the concourse,” he told the constables he was leading.

When he got there, he found the rioters in Zulmal Street had been emboldened by his absence. They’d spilled out into the concourse to confront the constables defending the bridge over to Bellis. Behind them, the looting was multiplying. Violence spilled onto the street as the beleaguered business owners did their best to defend their livelihoods. He saw clubs swing brutally. Third hands clashed. Then his worst fear was realized: A pistol shot rang out.

Everyone on the concourse froze, trying to see where the shot had come from. Out of the corner of his eye Edeard saw Kanseen fall. She was in the front rank of the constables, of course; she crumpled to her knees, hands clutching her chest, breathing with difficulty.

“Kanseen!” Macsen bellowed. He shoved his way through the silent constables to reach her side. His arms went around her.

“All right,” she gasped. “I’m all right. Lady! I’ll never complain about these drosilk waistcoats again.” She was rubbing her chest where the bullet had struck. Macsen let out a sob of relief and kissed her.

A furious Edeard strode out into the empty zone between the constables and the rioters. The nearest members of the mob shuffled backward.

“Break this up!” Edeard roared. “Go back to your homes. This is over.”

For a moment the silence held. Then someone unseen yelled: “Fuck the Waterwalker.”

Two more pistol shots rang out. Edeard was ready for them. The bullets hung in the air a couple of feet in front of him. He was going to make a show of examining them and sneering contemptuously, slap it into the rioters that he was invincible, that their moment of rebellion was over. But it was a signal for a renewed round of jeering.

“One of mine fired the shots,” Argian longtalked directly to Edeard.

Edeard’s gaze flicked up to the roof of the building at the start of Zulmal Street. Argian was there, crouched down amid the profusion of flowering vines. “Who? Where?” Edeard asked.

“Junlie. He’s already retreating.”

The hail of missiles was starting again.

“All right,” Edeard snarled at the rioters. “I warned you.”

Those in the front rank faltered, their taunts and abuse fading as they saw his determination.

Edeard’s cloak billowed wide, freeing his arms. He brought them up in a wide curving motion, his eyes closed. He concentrated hard; he’d never exerted his full telekinetic strength before so aggressively. Behind him, the surface of Mid Pool shivered. Twin plumes of water exploded high into the air. Their crests warped around to streak over the concourse, merging directly above Edeard. The constables underneath the giant airborne streams gasped, crouching fearfully.

Edeard grinned mercilessly. He flung the water directly at the rioters as a single wave front. It hit the ground in front of Zulmal Street, throwing up a huge cloud of spume. The main bulk of water surged onward into the street, knocking them all off their feet. Third hands formed desperate body shields, warding the thundering foam away from mouths and noses. Edeard kept it coming, standing immobile as the vast torrent churned above him. Captured fil-rats squawked in terror as they were propelled overhead within the unnatural flood. The leading wave rushed fifty yards down the street-seventy—a hundred. Its force and size were reduced gradually as smaller streams poured away down the side alleys.

The surface of Mid Pool sank down drastically as Edeard continued to siphon water out. Water along the connecting canals began to dip and race in to fill the depression.

Edeard took a deep calming breath and slowly lowered his arms. Above him, the final swell of water splattered down into the street.

There was no more rioting. Water churned away down alleys and drains. Edeard looked at the hundreds of soaking bodies left clinging to the buildings and one another, flopping about like beached fish. A multitude of coughing and harsh gasps echoed along the walls of dripping vines. Sunlight shining through the placid stripes of altocumulus clouds created a strangely beautiful sheen across the glistening surfaces.

“I told you,” Edeard announced impassively. “Go home.”

Constables moved down Zulmal Street, helping people to their feet, making sure they were all right. Broken limbs were a common injury. Over two dozen were carried to the concourse, where doctors had been summoned. Two arrests were made when they found a couple of the people on Edeard’s hundred list. Other than that there were no recriminations. The rioters slunk away, shivering in their sodden clothes. Mislore Avenue was equally quiet.

“What in the Lady’s name is going on?” Chief Constable Walsfol demanded with directed longtalk.

Soft and precise though the telepathy was, Edeard could sense the man’s anger and fear. “I had to do something, sir. The rioters were destroying the whole street.”

“You might have calmed your area, but the rest of Sampalok is falling into Ladydamned anarchy.”

“I know,” Edeard replied miserably. His farsight could see the mobs rampaging through the streets and alleys across the rest of Sampalok. Smoke was churning into the morning air, muting the bright sunlight across the district. Instead of giving them pause for thought, his actions had acted like some kind of spur to the mobs. “I’ll go over to Galsard Street next; it’s closest. Then I’ll move on to—”

“You will do no such thing,” Walsfol said. “We’re worried your actions are just inflaming the whole situation. You stand down, Waterwalker. I want you back in Jeavons by midday. I am ordering all constables to fall back behind the bridges.”

“But people are being hurt,” Edeard protested.

“Perhaps you should have thought about that before you began this action. You assured me that the disturbance would be minimal. I don’t know who it was that forced the gang leaders into Sampalok, but all that’s done is magnify this whole Ladydamned disaster.”

It would have been worse. Every district would be burning like this by now. Probably. Dear Lady, what have I done?

“Yes, sir.”

“The Mayor feels more direct action will be required to support the citizens currently under threat.”

“What sort of action?”

“We’re not sure. The Upper Council has been in emergency session for the last twenty minutes; nothing has been decided.”

Edeard gazed around the concourse. A wide flow of shallow water was rippling back out of Zulmal Street to gurgle over the rim into Mid Pool. A couple of doctors had responded to the calls of the sergeants and were moving along the row of the injured. Lady’s novices in their blue and white robes were scurrying around, assisting the doctors and comforting the dazed patients.

A shot rang out. Every constable flinched, automatically looking toward Zulmal Street. Edeard’s farsight was unconsciously aware of his squadmates, just as Chae had taught them so long ago. Boyd’s thoughts vanished from perception.

Somewhere close by, Kanseen screamed.

Edeard’s farsight flashed out to where Boyd had been an instant before: one of the shops along Zulmal Street. A mind in the front room glowed with unrepentant satisfaction. There was a lifeless body in there, but farsight couldn’t help Edeard identify who it was. He could, however, pick out the kind of kit every constable wore. “Lady, no,” he whispered.

Then he was running across the concourse and into Zulmal Street. It was a baker’s shop. The deluge of water had poured in through the broken door, creating havoc inside. Shelving and counters had flipped over as the powerful current raced through into the rear. It struck the ovens in the kitchens, releasing dangerous clouds of steam as it quenched their fires. One of the heavy cabinets in the front had toppled onto a teenage lad, pinning him to the ground. That was how Boyd found him, whimpering in agony, coughing water, blood seeping into his clothes from where broken hipbones had punctured his skin. A son of the baker or a rioter—Boyd didn’t care. The lad was suffering and needed help. Boyd helped. Using his third hand and a post of wood, he was crouched down beside the cabinet, levering it free.

When Edeard rushed in, Mirayse was still standing over Boyd’s corpse, the pistol in her hand. Her clothes were splattered with blood, as well they might be. She’d put the pistol muzzle an inch from the back of Boyd’s head to shoot. The front of Boyd’s face had blown off, spewing gore across the cabinet and the poor lad underneath it, who was weeping hysterically.

Mirayse giggled at the constables piling into the shop. “I got you,” she said in a peculiar singsong voice. “I got you. You killed my life. We’re equal now.”

Dinlay lunged forward, face contorted in fury, his third hand reaching to heartsqueeze the demented woman. Edeard’s shield protected her.

“No. She will stand trial.” His third hand plucked the pistol from her. “Take her out,” he told Urarl. He lifted the cabinet effortlessly from the lad. “And get a doctor in here.”

Urarl and two constables took Mirayse out of the shop. As they left, Argian slipped in.

Macsen dropped to his knees next to Boyd’s corpse. He reached out tentatively, as if his friend were merely pretending. Blood mingled with the water soaking into his uniform trousers. Kanseen was gripping a sobbing Dinlay, tears leaking silently from her eyes.

“Why?” she whispered.

Argian held up the pistol. “This model is the kind we favor. They would know her state of mind. It would be a simple thing to give her this and whisper where one of the Waterwalker’s squad was.”

Macsen turned to snarl at Argian.

“Wait,” Edeard said. He found it strange that he was so calm. Shock seemed to be slowing his thoughts, taking him a long way away. It was as though the events inside the baker’s shop were taking place on some remote stage.

“What?” Macsen moaned. “He’s dead!”

Edeard stood perfectly still, reaching out with his farsight. His friends faded away, as did the walls of the bakery. Droplets from the drenched walls and furniture struck the puddled floor, tinkling like bells. Grayness eclipsed the world he walked through.

Amid this somber silent universe a single figure glimmered. Edeard smiled. “You stayed.”

“I haven’t said goodbye,” Boyd’s soul told him. “I’d like to say goodbye. But it’s difficult, Edeard. They can’t hear me.”

“Take whatever you need,” Edeard told him, and held his arms out. The phantom Boyd touched him.

It was as though a spike of ice were being driven through his heart. Edeard’s mouth opened to a shocked O: His own life was flowing out through the contact. The real universe rushed back in to engulf him.

Kanseen gasped as Boyd’s spectral shape materialized above his own corpse. Edeard staggered, forcing himself to draw down a breath. A numbing cold was spreading through him.

“Boyd?” Dinlay said.

“My friends.” Boyd gazed at them magnanimously.

“Don’t go,” Kanseen said.

“I have to. I can hear the nebulae calling. It’s quite beautiful. I only waited for Edeard to notice me.”

“We need you, too.”

“Dinlay, tell Saria for me. Be kind; she will need a lot of comfort.”

“I promise.”

“Kanseen, Macsen. Don’t hide, not like this. Life is too precious for a single moment of happiness to be lost.”

“I …” Kanseen gave Macsen a forlorn look. “Yes. Yes, you’re right.”

Boyd regarded Argian. “You, the doubter. Have faith in Edeard; he is stronger than all of us. I can see that. I can see the way he affects this universe. It flows to his will.”

Edeard grimaced, his knees sagging. The cold was becoming unbearable.

“I’m sorry, Edeard,” Boyd said. “I weary you. I am one pattern you cannot sustain.”

“Pattern?” Edeard gasped.

“Why, yes. That is what this universe is, a beautiful memory. There are so many patterns folded within its structure; they stretch back forever.” He let go of Edeard’s hand and immediately began to diminish. As he did so, he gave a knowing grin. “I never realized the city was alive like this, Waterwalker. But you know, don’t you? You can feel its dreams. Get it to help you, today of all days. Stop being so timid. This needs more than water to finish it. Have courage and be bold.”

Edeard couldn’t stop shivering. “I will,” he pledged.

“You must think I’m so weak to leave,” Boyd said as his specter lifted toward the sky, thinning out.

Edeard’s perception followed it. “No,” he said. Then he heard: “We have to stay; he is all we have.”

“What?” he asked.

The sensation of a smile emerged from Boyd’s essence. “I understand.” And he was gone, ascending to the nebulae.

Kanseen was crying openly as they stepped back out onto Zulmal Street. “I’m sorry,” she blubbed, wiping the back of her hand over her eyes. “I’ll be all right.”

“You do see souls,” Argian said in astonishment.

“Yes,” Edeard said. He was incredibly tired. It would be so easy to sit down and just close his eyes, chasing a moment’s rest. After all, Walsfol had ordered him back to Jeavons. None of this was his problem anymore.

Yeah, right.

“What do you want to do?” Macsen asked.

Edeard gave him a desperate look. “I don’t know.”

“My people,” Bise’s longtalk voice called.

As one the squad turned to face the District Master’s mansion at the heart of Sampalok. Bise stood on the roof, dressed in his flowing violet robes, the fur-lined hood thrown over his left shoulder. He held his arms out in benediction to his vast audience. “I speak to all of us within Sampalok, those whose families have been here for generations and those newly arrived, seeking safe haven from the Waterwalker’s persecution.”

Edeard immediately bridled.

“Don’t say anything,” Kanseen ordered sternly. “Arguing in public will make you seem petty.”

“Do not fight among yourselves,” Bise said softly. “Your enemy is outside, and this conflict only strengthens him. Even now the forces who fear your freedoms are gathering in High Moat. I urge you to stand firm against them. Resist their occupation of your home, the last place in the city where you are independent men as Rah promised. I offer your families sanctuary within the walls of my mansion. Here they will be safe while you fight to establish your liberty against the oppression brought upon all of us by the Waterwalker.

“We have little time now. Listen to those who walk among you speaking with my authority. Resist the invasion of those who seek to banish you from this city which is your birthright.” Bise gifted a humble smile and stepped down into the tower.

“What in Honious was that?” Dinlay asked. “Some kind of election stunt?”

“I have no idea,” an equally confused Edeard said. He gave Argian a questioning glance. “Could he really be the top gang lord?”

“No,” Argian said. “It isn’t like that. The Diroals have strong links with the gangs. They profit from having business rivals weakened, but Bise is smart enough to keep his distance. This is something else entirely.”

“Oh, Lady,” Kanseen groaned. She was facing north, her eyes closed as her farsight ranged out. “The militia’s coming.”

“What?” Edeard gasped.

“The militia. A whole regiment by the look of it. They’re coming across High Moat.”

It took a second for Edeard’s farsight to find the long rank of men marching past the caravan pens. “What are they doing? The constables are holding the rioters in Sampalok; they can’t get over the bridges.”

“There is a complete breakdown of law and order inside Makkathran,” Macsen said tonelessly. “If you’re the Mayor, how would you feel about that? The militia isn’t going to reinforce the bridges; it’s coming in to stop the riots.”

“How?” Edeard asked. “This isn’t a militia job. The constables are much better trained to break up mobs.”

“They’re armed,” Kanseen said quietly.

The chill that Edeard had experienced at Boyd’s touch returned; of all the constables he’d organized to help today, only the sergeants and corporals were authorized to carry revolvers. “But the people on the streets …”

“And Bise has just told them to resist the invaders,” Dinlay said.

“They have to be stopped,” Edeard said. “The militia can’t shoot at civilians even if they are breaking the law.”

“People in the mob are armed,” Argian said. “It may be that the militia will be shot at first. That would be … convenient.”

“Will your people listen to you? Can you get them to stop this?”

“There is little to be done on the streets,” Argian said. “Though I will try and speak to those of my fellowship walking Sampalok today. But it is Motluk and his kind who ultimately hold sway.”

“Talk to him,” Edeard said. “This cannot be allowed to happen.”

“I will do what I can.” Argian turned and headed off along the street.

“With me,” Edeard told the others. “We have to get to High Moat and stop this.” He started running back to the concourse, his farsight ranging out. “Lady curse it, where are all the gondolas? Why are they never around when you need one?”

“You planning to give the militia a good soaking?” Dinlay asked keenly.

“Whatever it takes.” The nearest gondola Edeard could sense was in Lilac Canal, heading away from Great Major Canal. It would take far too long. He stood in the middle of the Mid Pool concourse, twisting about, racked by indecision. His support of Boyd had left him aching and enervated. He knew he didn’t have the strength to pull many more stunts like the water cascade, especially if he had to run the entire length of Sampalok to reach the High Moat bridge. “Lady damn it.” He sent his farsight straight into the Orchard Palace, finding the Mayor in the Upper Council chamber. “Sir, please, I have to talk to you.”

“Waterwalker.” The Mayor’s timbre was frigid. “The only reason you’re still in this city is so you can give evidence before the commission I’m setting up to examine today’s events and determine who is to blame. After that I have no doubt the Grand Council will pass a very specific act of banishment, with you as the sole name listed.”

“Sir, please. You have to call back the militia.”

“What Ladydamned choice have you left me? Makkathran has not seen the like of this disorder for over a thousand years. And it was all your idea. Arresting these hundred troublemakers was supposed to put an end to chaos. All you have done is provoke outrage and horror. People, decent people in Sampalok—and there are many, contrary to your propaganda—are suffering untold brutality at the hands of a wild mob. A mob you provoked. I am the Mayor, and I will not let that stand. It must be stopped.”

“Let me stop it, sir. I can use water on them again however many times it takes, a dozen if I have to. Please, you cannot let the militia shoot people.”

“Since you are so obviously very hard of understanding, I will say this in simple terms. You are to leave Sampalok at once. The officers of the militia are not savages; they will deal with this in a fast and professional manner. Do you understand? If you do not comply this instant, I will have Walsfol issue an order for your arrest. Not even you can withstand a hundred constables at once.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said. His throat was strangely hard, making it difficult to swallow.

“So what are we doing?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard stared around. The squad was still waiting for his word. And look where my ideas have gotten us. But I know what I am doing is right. I know it is. The politicians and families are twisting everything. He smiled grimly at his friends. “We’re doing exactly what Boyd told me: being bold. Are you with me?”

Macsen put on a pained expression. “Why are you asking that?”

Several constables were heading toward them, led by a very uncomfortable-looking sergeant. Edeard waved insolently at them. “I think we just stopped being constables.”

“Oh, Honious,” Kanseen groaned.

“You’ll really need to hold my hands for this,” Edeard said, suddenly relishing what he was about to do. His friends sensed his new mood and grinned. They held hands, the four of them standing together in the middle of the concourse. In broad daylight, with a hundred constables looking on and thousands of farsight gazes playing over them, they sank down through the solid surface, laughing defiantly all the way.

It was Macsen who screamed the loudest while they tore through the bright tunnel as if they were falling to Querencia from the very nebulae.

“Edeard, what are you doing?” Finitan’s longtalk asked when they surfaced in a deserted alley not far from the central bridge over Cloud Canal.

“I have to stop the militia, sir,” Edeard replied, impressed by how fast the Grand Master had found them. Then he saw a ge-dog at the other end of the alley.

“Listen to me, Edeard. Do not use force against the militia. You do not have universal approval among their officers. And Owain has given them a free hand to deal with the rioters.”

“Why?” Edeard asked. “Why is he doing this?”

“As the city sees it, he is clearing up the mess you have created,” Finitan said with infinite weariness. “In doing so he usurps you as the force of law and order within Makkathran and breaks the gangs at the same time. When people are killed in any number, this city will blame you. And because of that, they’ll vote for him at every election for the next hundred years.”

“All this is about votes?”

“No, Edeard. As I told you right at the beginning, it is about politics. Always. Those in power are not easily dislodged. Certainly not by good intentions.”

“But what about Bise? He’s offering people sanctuary in his mansion while the rioters defy the militia. He’s making things worse.”

“Bise is a sacrifice Owain is prepared to make. They were allies in the Council until this morning. Each wanted to claim credit for defeating you. Bise underestimated Owain’s resolve. It is a split which Owain has played perfectly. He is already talking of the Council putting Bise on trial for complicity, and there are enough of Bise’s relatives who will leap at the chance of taking his District Mastership should he be disbarred. All Bise can do is make his gesture of resistance in the hope it makes things worse for Owain.”

“Do you think it will?”

“I have no idea. They may yet reach an accord before the point of no return is breached. Whether they do or not, nobody is going to vote for me, not after today, probably not even me. I’m seriously considering offering Owain my allegiance; that way I might salvage some of my political influence. Possibly, if I work with him, I can be a moderating voice.”

“No, you can’t do that.”

“We all have to face reality, Edeard; he is consolidating the city behind him just as we hoped to do.”

“By causing people to die! There are family agents positioned among the crowd ready to escalate this conflict with the militia.”

“Then we will need the Lady to grant us a miracle, for I see no other way out of this. We are pressured on every side. And you, my brave friend, will have lost all you have achieved.”

“This can’t happen.”

“It already has. I will protect you as best I can, but I doubt that will be of much use tomorrow.”

Edeard bowed his head as he ended his longtalk with the Grand Master.

“What’s the matter?” Dinlay asked.

“We’re completely on our own,” Edeard told them. “Owain has won. He’s just swept the rest of us aside as if we didn’t exist.”

“But we do exist,” Macsen said urgently. “I am here with you to help stop the militia from killing people. Let us go and do that.”

Edeard’s farsight observed the first rank of the militia marching over the bridge from High Moat. “All right,” he said with no real conviction. “One last try.”

They were spotted as soon as they started walking toward the bridge. Thousands of farsight glances settled on them. More and more people became attuned to their position as the word spread across every district. The weight of attention was like the muggy air of a summer day pressing down on the four friends as they walked onward. Nothing else was happening in the city; everyone was watching the events in Sampalok. A vast barrage of longtalked jeers and remarks fell on them. Edeard blocked them all out, trying to think what to do.

A miracle from the Lady; that’s what Finitan said we needed. And he’s right. But the Lady only ever performed one real miracle here in the city: her church. I wonder … That would be bold beyond even Boyd’s imaginings.

The central bridge across Cloud Canal from High Moat was a low curve of the city’s substance lined by stubby emerald pillars with tangerine groves spiraling up the outside. It led over into a small plaza where tall espaliered fruit trees grew up the sides of every building, covering the bowed walls with thick lines of blossom. The mild scents of peach and plum were now overwhelmed by the acrid smoke that chuffed out of the barricades. Both Burfol Street and Jankal Lane, which led back into the heart of Sampalok, had been blocked by piles of furniture that the crowds had set alight. Behind them the shops and businesses had all been looted. Edeard and the squad saw several named on the hundred list moving among the confident crowd, congratulating friends, muttering instructions. He picked out a lot of pistols being carried openly. Inside the buildings it was a sorry story. Injured shopkeepers and traders nursed their wounds while their families watched the triumphalist carnival outside with mournful thoughts and a great deal of suppressed rage.

Edeard reached out to Kristabel. “Can you sense all this?” he asked.

“Yes, my love. Everyone in the city is watching Sampalok now. No one can believe the militia has been brought in; Father fears the worst, but there are so few voices in Council that will dare oppose the Mayor. Oh, Edeard, what a mess, and it’s my fault.”

“No.”

“Yes,” she insisted. “It was my idea to drive them all into Sampalok, and look how many decent people have suffered already.”

“It was a good idea; imagine this replicated in every district. That’s what would have happened.”

“Would it? I don’t know anymore.”

“The responsibility is mine alone. Kristabel, I’ll probably have to leave the city soon. That’s if I don’t end up in the Trampello mines.”

“I’ll be with you; you know that. Wherever you go.”

“No, darling; you’re to be Mistress of Haxpen.”

“I don’t think I want to be, not if it is to be a Haxpen under Owain’s one nation rule.”

“Let’s not make any decisions until tomorrow, certainly not in the heat of the moment.”

“Whatever you say. Is there nothing I can do to help you? Please. I want to be there with you.”

“No. But there are a lot of people hurt already. They need doctors.”

“I’ll organize that; I’ll talk to the Medical Guild’s Grand Master. At least he’s no Owain ally.”

“All right, then.”

The alley came out on the Cloud Canal path just short of the bridge. Constables were standing on either side, watching helplessly as the militia regiment marched over. Soldiers were still arriving from High Moat, forming into neat ranks on the plaza, except for one platoon that had lined up four deep across the path. Twenty-eight revolvers were aimed at Edeard as he approached.

“I would talk to your lieutenant,” he said.

The front rank parted to let their lieutenant through. He was tall, in his late thirties, with blond hair curling out from under his black cap. Every brass button gleamed brightly on his green and sapphire tunic. A long saber was strapped to his white belt.

Edeard kept his mind tightly shielded as his spirits sank further. The lieutenant was like every clothead officer in the militia, a young aristocrat who qualified for a commission because of his infinite arrogance. Just for once he wished for one with a spark of intelligence and independence.

“Waterwalker.” The lieutenant inclined his head. “I’m Lieutenant Eustace. I’m in charge here, and I have comprehensive orders from my colonel not to let you pass.”

The name was somehow familiar to Edeard, but he was sure he’d never seen the man before. “If your orders are to stop the rioters, then I can do just that. I already have over at Mid Pool.”

“Which agitated the crowds elsewhere,” Lieutenant Eustace said. “You’re a menace, Waterwalker. The sooner you’re out of this city, the better.”

“People are going to get badly hurt,” Edeard said. “Surely you can see that. I cannot allow this situation to rise to a point where the militia fires upon the crowd. The constables are enough to handle this.”

“Your sudden concern for the criminal element is touching. Who has spent the past year provoking them, eh?”

“Please, let me try. I’m asking you man to man. What have you got to lose? If I do quiet them down, your colonel will be full of praise for you for taking the initiative. If I fail, then you just carry on.”

“Man to man, eh?”

Edeard nodded. There was something wrong here. The lieutenant’s face was completely expressionless.

“We have a saying here in Makkathran,” Eustace said. “Something a boy from the countryside probably isn’t aware of. Don’t piss in the canals; you never know when you’ll need to drink from them.” He waved his left hand in dismissal. It was a languid movement. Edeard saw the silver ring on his third finger and couldn’t help the groan of dismay that escaped his lips. It was shaped as a vine with a single ruby in the crest.

Jessile’s fiancé.

“Quite,” Lieutenant Eustace said thinly as he turned away. “Take one more step toward the bridge, Waterwalker, and we’ll find out just how many bullets you can shield yourself and your squad against. Now fuck off back to whatever diseased cowpat you came from.”

“Forget him.” Dinlay sneered as the platoon closed ranks again. “Just go around them; use concealment. He’s not a problem. We can get to the plaza easily.”

Edeard stared past the hard-faced platoon aiming at him, watching their comrades who were still filing into the plaza. A gentle drizzle of ripe blossoms was drifting down around them like dry pink snow. “I can’t fight both sides,” he said.

“Just blast the lot of them with the water,” Macsen said. “Anything that’ll stop the shooting.”

“I’m not sure there’s enough here,” Edeard said, giving Cloud Canal a miserable look.

“Air, then,” Kanseen said. “Can you use air? Hit them with a hurricane?”

“Well, probably—”

A pistol shot rang out. All four of them instinctively recoiled from the terrible distinctive noise. The men in the platoon were glancing over their shoulders, becoming dangerously stressed.

“Oh, screw this lot,” Edeard growled. “We don’t have time.” Another shot sounded.

Edeard pulled an enormous column of water out of the canal beside the platoon. In the distance he heard, “Militiamen, take aim.”

Lieutenant Eustace shrank down from the water as it began to curve over the canal path. His platoon started to combine their third hands to ward it off. Edeard let the enormous weight fall free.

“Fire!”

The air thundered with the power of two hundred fifty revolvers fired together down Burfol Street and Jankal Lane.

“No,” Edeard yelled in horror.

His churning waterfall sent a dozen platoon members skidding off the path, scrabbling for a hold as they went over the edge into the canal.

“Fire!”

A second volley crashed out.

“Keep them off me,” Edeard told his friends. Macsen and Dinlay immediately started hammering the struggling, drenched platoon soldiers into Cloud Canal. Kanseen’s third hand snatched revolvers from those who had the presence of mind to take aim at the Waterwalker.

High above Burfol Street, a wide cylinder of air started to spin. Tales of twisters had always been one of Edeard’s childhood bedtime favorites. He always regretted never having actually seen the phenomenon. Now, he squeezed for all he was worth.

The air thickened, turning dark as it let out a tortured screech. A gyrating finger wormed its way out of the bottom, heading down toward the plaza.

One of the sodden platoon members managed to fire a shot at Edeard. Dinlay saw it coming, his third hand pushing the soldier’s gun arm aside. The bullet went wide, and Dinlay physically punched the man to the ground. Lieutenant Eustace jumped on Dinlay, and all three slipped on the wet path, going down in a thrashing heap. Another soldier leaped on.

Every petal of blossom in the plaza took to the air, a solid pink cloud that mushroomed over the nearby rooftops. The twister touched the pile of blazing furniture blocking Burfol Street. Flaming wreckage lifted effortlessly into the sky, swirling around and around the howling column. Two hundred feet above the city the chunks broke free, slung out sideways from the expanding wind. Militiamen and rioters alike ran for their lives as heavy burning chairs and benches and tables began their fast drop back to the ground.

Two soldiers jumped on Kanseen. She pivoted as they carried her along, sending herself and one of them over the edge of the canal to plunge beneath the water.

Edeard shifted the tip of the twister along the ground and steered it into the barricade at the bottom of Jankal Lane. As one collection of burning debris descended, another fountained upward.

Lieutenant Eustace scrambled up out of the scrum that had Dinlay pinned down. Macsen faced him, his smile turning feral. “Don’t know what you’re so upset over. Our whole dormitory agreed she’s crap in bed.”

Eustace roared in fury as he rushed Macsen.

Edeard let go of the air he’d shaped just before his strength gave out. In front of him, the three remaining soldiers from the platoon were gathering together as Macsen and Eustace grappled like wrestling serpents on the slippery path.

“Go,” Macsen yelled.

Edeard walked forward, his cloak undulating behind him. The trembling soldiers got off a couple of shots, which the Waterwalker never even seemed to notice. They flattened themselves against the wall of the canalside houses as he passed them, rigid in fearful expectation.

When Edeard reached the plaza, the regiment was starting to regroup. Several officers yelled a challenge to him, which he ignored. Orders were shouted and longtalked, trying to get the ranks reformed and take aim at the figure in the black billowing cloak. A shower of tiny petals fell softly back to earth.

Edeard stood at the head of Burfol Street, seeing people peer timidly out of the doorways and alleys where they’d dodged the rain of furniture. “Move!” he bellowed at them. “If you stay here, the militia will kill you, and if I catch you, it’ll go even worse on your souls.”

They started to run, just a few at first. Then the Waterwalker advanced down the street. He raised his arm, and lightning streamed from his fingers to claw at the denuded espaliered trees. The stampede began. Dozens were pelting for safety ahead of the terrible figure they feared the most. His farsight showed him people on the move all across Sampalok. The crowds who minutes before had been secure in their domination of the streets were heading for the last refuge: Bise’s mansion.

Edeard almost faltered as he drew level with the first body. It was a woman who’d taken three bullets; tiny petals drifted down to settle on her bloody clothes. His farsight examined the area around her to find her soul hovering above the corpse. “I’m so sorry,” he told her. “I should have been quicker.”

Her spectral face was despondent as she looked at him. “My boys. What about my boys? They’re so young.”

“They will be taken care of, I promise.”

“I will see them before I go,” she said, and began to drift toward a nearby alley. “I can feel them close. One last look, to be sure.”

Edeard grimaced and carried on. In total he counted fifteen dead, with over twenty hobbling along in front of him, clutching at their wounds, blood dripping onto the pavement. He directed his longtalk at them, whispering that they should turn down side alleys where doctors would come. Some obeyed; eight didn’t.

Owain’s longtalk found him as he was halfway down Burfol Street. “I don’t know what you think you can achieve by this. Stand aside and let the militia deal with this scum. I’ll see to it that the commission is sympathetic to the part you played today.”

“The Lady’s miracle,” Edeard replied, not caring that the rest of the city could sense his longtalk.

“Excuse me?”

“The Lady performed a miracle in Makkathran once, and I’m going to repeat it today.”

“You are beyond salvation, Waterwalker.”

“Then let me be.”

“I can’t do that.”

Echoing down the street came the command: “Regiment, forward march.”

“Want to bet?” Edeard muttered under his breath, then: “Boyd, I hope you’re watching this. It’s your Ladydamned idea.”

He slowed his walk slightly, making sure those fleeing into the mansion would have time to reach it before he did. Behind him, the regiment pressed down the street. They matched his pace, maintaining the distance perfectly. That caused him to grin.

“Edeard,” Salrana’s unnervingly accurate longtalk said to him alone. “What have you become?”

“I am what I have always been.”

“The strength, yes, but this arrogance … this is something new.”

“They gave me no choice.”

“Edeard, you are acting against the wishes of the whole city. Stop this.”

“Today has to end with the gangs destroyed and banished. Nothing else matters anymore.”

“What you are doing is wrong. You are claiming all responsibility. You are abusing your gifts to defy the Council itself.”

“Long ago, Rah used his strength to gift people sanctuary from chaos. I can do nothing less with my gift, my strength. To fail now would be to betray everything he founded, all that he gave this world.”

“Don’t you dare invoke Rah. You are not Rah.”

“I know. But I will not let his wonderful legacy wither and die. That is who I am. Accept that.”

“I will pray to the Lady for the light that was once your beautiful soul.”

Edeard ground his teeth together. He wrenched his attention away from his childhood friend. I cannot let this distract me. She will not! And not everyone doubts me.

As if seeking a counter to Salrana’s dreadful mistrust, Edeard’s directed longtalk sought out Felax, who was still on the Mid Pool concourse. “I could do with some help.”

“Yes, sir,” Felax said proudly. “Of course I’ll help.”

The boy’s unswerving trust was humbling. “I need you and others you can rely on to run to the senior sergeants at each bridge. Tell them the Waterwalker needs the farsight teams to keep tracking the hundred and in addition to find as many of those named on the exclusion warrants as they can. Also, if this goes our way, I’ll need the arrest teams to re-form; they’ll be wanted for escort duties.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do that right away. But sir, I want to help you; I want to be there with you.”

“This is truly what I need. If you do this for me, we can still turn this day around.”

“I knew you would, sir; I knew it.”

Edeard was a hundred yards from the end of Burfol Street. He could see the big open square surrounding Bise’s mansion. Fountains still played in the pools, providing the only movement in the whole expanse. Behind them, the iron-bound gates in the high wall were swinging shut.

He walked out into the square and looked up at the circular mansion. Over a hundred people were standing along the top of the battlements on the external wall; as far as his farsight could tell, they were all armed. Every revolver was lined up on him.

Behind them, the seven-story tower formed a proud silhouette against a sky stained by pyres of smoke. Its walls were a mottle of green and yellow, with each level a shade lighter than the last. The top floor was almost white. Bise stood on the roof, his splendid robes of office waving in the gentle wind. His longtalk washed out, strong enough to reach over half the city.

“You have no authority here, Waterwalker. The District Master has full dominion within his own walls. Leave this place.”

Edeard was immensely tempted to reply with a single hand gesture. Instead he said: “Wait there, please. I have to deal with the militia first.” He turned his back on the mansion. A couple of shots were fired. He deflected the bullets easily. Heated orders flowed along the battlements, and nobody fired again.

Edeard waited patiently with the farsight of the entire city resting upon him. He felt ridiculously cocky and rejoiced in every second of the sensation.

Yeah, this is bold!

The militia regiment reached the end of Burfol Street and halted. The first three ranks took aim at the lone figure in the middle of the square whose cloak hung around him with unnatural stillness. Fountains gurgled away merrily on either side of him.

“Captain Larose,” the Waterwalker said. “I’m glad it’s you. You are a man of integrity.”

The captain stepped forward and nodded courteously. “As are you, Waterwalker. Would you please step aside so we may carry out our orders, as issued by the city’s full legal authority.”

“What are those orders?”

“We are to arrest those malefactors hiding inside the District Master’s mansion.”

“They are heavily armed.”

“As are we.”

“Yes, and I will not permit bloodshed on such a scale as those orders would entail. Not in my city. I will deal with Bise and those he harbors; you have my word.” Edeard turned full circle, his longtalk growing stronger. “Everyone has my word on that.”

“Unfortunately, after today your word is no longer enough,” Captain Larose said. “Stand aside, Waterwalker, or I will be forced to order my men to shoot you.”

Edeard gave the captain a genuine smile. “And how exactly are they going to do that from up there?” And he asked the city for its help.

“Up where?” Captain Larose suddenly gave the ground a nervous glance. He started to crouch in an attempt to regain what he perceived as his failing balance. It was a motion that pushed his polished boots firmly against the ground, a motion that pushed him off the pavement.

Behind him, three hundred soldiers did exactly the same thing as their senses told them they were falling. Three hundred soldiers began to drift up gently into the air. They yelled in consternation and began windmilling their arms in panic. That only made it worse. They spun and twisted. Several of them bounced off the vine-clad walls of the buildings on either side of the street, which sent them tumbling through the main cluster of their frantic colleagues.

Edeard stood perfectly still, watching them. The noise of their combined shouting was colossal, and the mental panic flooding out was enough to make him wince. Most of the soldiers were ten or twelve feet from the ground now, and still their limbs were clawing wildly at the air. He noticed that the majority were holding on to their revolvers and shook his head in rueful disbelief.

“You should try and use your third hands to guide yourselves together,” Edeard advised. “If you link up, you’ll probably be more stable that way.”

“Stop this!” Captain Larose bawled. He was turning lazily, his legs coming up parallel to the street below.

Edeard held up his hands apologetically, as if mystified by what he was witnessing. “I’m not doing anything.”

Larose’s eyes bugged. He managed to bring his arm over and around, the revolver muzzle tracking down slowly toward Edeard.

“I really wouldn’t do that if I were—”

Larose fired. The powerful recoil force sent him cartwheeling fast back down Burfol Street. He careered into several of his men on the way, sending them spinning off. It wasn’t good for their inner ears.

Edeard pulled a face as the first soldier was spectacularly sick fifteen feet above the pavement. Instead of splattering down, his vomit oscillated through the air, forming strange nebula shapes. The horrified soldier next to him watched helplessly as they collided in slow motion. Then others started to spew. The regiment’s initial cries of shock changed in pitch to become wails of disgust.

Edeard held up a finger in remonstration. “Don’t go away. I’ll be back in a little while; we can talk about you holstering your weapons then.” He turned to face the mansion. This time, nobody on the battlements took a potshot at him.

The entirety of Makkathran was very quiet.

The Waterwalker looked up at the distant figure of District Master Bise. “You claim jurisdiction here, yet you forget that with power comes responsibility. You and your family have continually abused your position and allowed the gangs to spread throughout your district. You encourage defiance and manipulation of the law to your own ends. The result of this is the misery and deaths that we have witnessed today.”

“It is not me who brings—”

“Be silent.” Edeard aimed his right hand. A colossal bolt of lightning snapped out from his fingertip, striking the top of the tower roof a yard from where Bise was standing. Smoldering chunks of wall twirled out, falling to the courtyard far below. Bise cowered, his arms raised in front of his face.

“You forget, Master Bise, that neither you nor the Grand Council is the final authority here. We are all guests of the city itself. Living here is not a right; it is a privilege. As of this day the city revokes that right for you. The family Diroal is hereby stripped of its position and wealth. Half of all its money will be redistributed as recompense among those of Sampalok who have suffered this day; the remainder will go to the new Master. I also add to that list of banishment all those who are named in the exclusion warrants. You will now leave Makkathran, and you will not return. Ever.”

“Not even you can force that upon us,” Bise replied.

“No,” Edeard agreed equitably. “I cannot. The city, however, can. And it will begin with the revocation of your mansion.”

For a long minute Edeard and Bise stared at each other. Nothing seemed to happen. Laughter began among those on the wall’s battlements; catcalls and taunts rang out again.

The giant iron-bound gates in front of Edeard emitted a staggeringly loud crack. People gasped and leaned over the battlements to see what was happening. The gates appeared to be intact.

Bise’s shielded mind suddenly flared with dismay. The edge of the roof where it curved to blend smoothly into the tower walls was changing. It loosened and fractured, turning to the finest dust, which then flowed as a liquid. Rivulets of the stuff dribbled down the wall toward the floor below. The rivulets grew to a deluge, swamping the delicate green and yellow patterns. Bise stared down as the accelerating tide began to rise over his boots.

“If I were you,” Edeard advised mildly, “I’d come down while you still have stairs to come down on.”

The gates sent out another agonized rasping. The sturdy hinge bolts driven over eighteen inches into the substance of the walls were being rejected. The process that always pushed out human fixings over time was speeding up. From inside the mansion a whole series of squeals and brassy groans could be heard as every door was forced out of its frame. Pictures fell off the walls as the hanging spikes popped out. Shelves in the pantries and storerooms crashed to the floor, spilling their contents.

Bise turned and ran for the stairwell.

Water drained from the bathing pools on every floor in the mansion. The orange lighting segments dimmed to extinction. Crystal windows popped like soap bubbles. Doors fell, crashing down. Then the solid walls started to crawl as they slowly lost cohesion, transforming into a vertical tide of liquid dust.

The family Diroal and all their servants rushed for the stairs. Ge-chimps, ge-monkeys, and terrestrial cats raced past them, adding to the bedlam in the darkened stairwells. Bise had barely gotten halfway down to the sixth floor when the roof finally dissolved. Sunlight shone down into the exposed top-floor rooms, revealing the carpets and wobbling furniture being slowly engulfed by a cascade of dust. He moaned in terror and ran faster. Under his pounding feet, he could feel the surface of the curving stairs start to become slippery.

One by one, the three gates in the outside wall slowly warped out of alignment as their fastenings finally came free. They pivoted with an unhurried grace and toppled down into the square. Nobody was left on the battlements to see their final moment. They were surging down the stairs in a desperate bid to reach the courtyard and safety.

In total it took over thirty minutes for the entire building to melt away, for it was a gigantic edifice. During that time, the constable teams Edeard had asked for arrived in the square and formed a circle five men deep around the vanishing mansion. Captain Ronark was among them. He saluted the Waterwalker, as did the sergeants. They listened to his simple orders before organizing their men as he wanted.

At the end, when the last stubs of the wall washed away, the area where the mansion had stood was reduced to a small lake of dust. It turned solid as rock. Piled up on it was a mound of smashed furniture and clothes and curtains and carpets and linen, books and bottles of wine, broken crockery, bent cutlery—all the glittery detritus that any incredibly wealthy family would accumulate over two millennia. Ranged around that were the survivors, sullen and resentful but most of all fearful of the Waterwalker and his power. They glowered as Edeard addressed them, but none dared to interrupt or argue.

“If you are a Diroal or one of those I named, you will hand over your weapons to the constables,” he told them. “And you will walk from here to the North Gate. The constables will escort you and safeguard your passage. You may take with you whatever you can carry and no more. Everyone else is free to go.”

Captain Ronark headed the motley procession, square-shouldered and glowing with pride, taking them down Jankal Lane.

“I’ll join you in a moment,” Edeard told him, and walked over the square to Burfol Street. The regiment was still floating gently between the buildings. Several dozen had managed to cling to the vines, where they hung trembling. No matter how hard they clutched the fronds, their stomachs still insisted they were falling. The air was filled with little globules of tacky fluid. Edeard wrinkled his nose as he approached. The smell was truly awful.

His third hand drew Captain Larose to the front of the falling zone the city had created for him.

“I don’t have orders for you, because I am not the Mayor,” Edeard said as he looked up at the miserable man in his appallingly stained uniform. “However, I would like to suggest that the regiment help the victims of this day. Do you find that suggestion sensible, Captain?”

“Yes,” the captain whispered.

“Thank you. My pardon for any discomfort. Please, all of you, engage your safety catches; nobody wants an accident now.”

The regiment sank slowly down to the ground.

Edeard joined the line of constables on escort duty. The ones he fell in with were from Fiacre station; they welcomed him with muted smiles, trying not to appear too triumphal, but their thoughts were so bright, it was hard to disguise. His farsight showed him Kristabel arriving in Mid Pool. She was on a family gondola with Acena, their old doctor. Behind her was a procession of thirty gondolas, each with a couple of doctors and several novices.

“The militia will be with you in a while,” Edeard told her. “They’ll help you aid the victims. Try and ignore the smell.”

“I’m not sure I want their help,” she replied tartly.

“No recriminations, my love. We all have to live together after this.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Can you talk to your father for me? I’d like a ship loaded with food and blankets to sail north this afternoon. It can anchor just offshore and supply the exiles with enough to get them through the next few days. We can’t just fling them out with nothing. There are children going with them.”

“There are times, Edeard, when it’s really hard to live up to your standards of decency, but there isn’t a day goes by when I don’t thank the Lady you have those standards. I’ll talk to Daddy right away.”

As Edeard and the banished made their way across Sampalok, small groups of constables guided other people to join them: the men who had had exclusion warrants issued against them. Sometimes their wives and children were with them; sometimes they came alone. As they walked onward, Edeard felt the continued intangible pressure of farsight pressing down on the morose column of unfortunates. He could feel the unconscious question brewing within the city’s residents: What next? It was a question he was a little vague on himself.

“I need some advice, sir,” he said to Finitan.

“I think all of us are redundant now, aren’t we?” the Grand Master replied.

“That’s the thing. I can’t be seen as some kind of emperor standing outside the Council. All of us have to work within the framework of the law; otherwise it becomes an irrelevance, and people can’t live without the order it brings. That’s what today was about, restoring order. We can’t lose now. People have died.”

“I know. Even until the last minute, I thought Owain would pull back. If you are willing to accept the constraints of the law, then it should be possible to start afresh. Not that it will be easy. However, once people have time to reflect, and then some encouragement, they should be able to see that you were acting for the best. We just have to have a strategy that can take us up to the election. That is when you and I both will face the ultimate judgment.”

“I know that. I have some ideas.”

“Very well, my boy; let’s hear them.”

Kanseen, Dinlay, and Macsen were on the Cloud Canal bridge, sitting together on one of its twisty pillars. They’d spread their jackets on the next pillar to dry in the bright sunlight. Kanseen’s wet hair clung to her scalp like a bad beret. Her knuckles were grazed and muddy. Dinlay was trying to clean the one intact lens left in his glasses. Not that it mattered much; one eye was so badly swollen that he could barely see through it. His lip was split and still dribbling blood. He’d taken his boots off, so that his left ankle could be bound in a thick bandage. Macsen’s nose was broken. Two small wads of tissue were jammed up each nostril, scarlet with blood. His jacket was missing, and his shirt under the drosilk waistcoat was ripped, revealing a lot of scratches and bruises on his arms.

They didn’t get up as Edeard approached; they just sat there watching him in silence. He stopped in front of them. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I should see the other fellows.”

Kanseen sneered. “If there was anything left of them.” “You stood by me,” he told them. “You believed in me. You took on Eustace’s idiots so I could get through.”

Macsen turned to Dinlay and grinned. “Eustace’s idiots. Good name for that platoon.”

“We can probably get it made official,” Dinlay conceded. He eased himself off the short pillar, wincing at the movement as he put some weight on his sprained ankle. “Come here.”

Edeard embraced him, unbelievably happy that no harm had befallen his surviving friends—well, nothing permanent. Then Kanseen stepped into his outheld arms. Finally Macsen gave him a hug.

“Ouch!”

“You all right?” Edeard asked anxiously.

“He might be a complete twit”—Macsen’s index finger probed his nose gingerly—“but he knows how to fight dirty, I’ll give him that.”

“So,” Dinlay said. “We get to stay constables.”

Edeard gave Macsen and Kanseen a mildly guilty look. “For the moment, yes. You going to help me with this escort duty?”

Dinlay gave his bandaged ankle an annoyed look. “I don’t think I can make it all the way to North Gate.”

“The doctors will be here soon,” Edeard assured him. “How about you two?”

“Bloody Honious, it’s all go with you, isn’t it?”

The march over High Moat was swift enough. By the time Ronark reached North Gate, Edeard counted nearly eight hundred people in the column. He hated it that so many women and children were being taken along, but there was nothing he could do about that, not now. It was always going to be like this.

The road on both sides of the giant gate was deserted. Edeard and the constables stopped at the crystal wall. Bise, who was at the head of the column, paused at the giant archway through the wall.

“A ship will anchor in Cauley Cove this evening,” Edeard told the former District Master. “It has provisions for you, all of you.”

Bise glared at him. “Where are we supposed to go?”

“There are fresh lands in the provinces. You can begin again if you wish.”

“I am a District Master,” Bise yelled furiously. Over fifty members of the Diroal family were gathered behind him, all of them wearing clothes appropriate to their status and completely wrong for a march through the countryside. Hems on the fanciful skirts of the older women were already ragged and filthy as they dragged along High Moat’s dusty track. The men were carrying their fur-lined robes and sweating in their gaudy shirts and trousers. Two of the younger wives were carrying crying babes. Not one of them had footwear that would last more than a couple of days on the road.

Edeard did his best not to feel guilt or sorrow at the misery arrayed in front of him. “If you had lived up to your responsibilities, you still would be,” he said. “Now leave while I’m still feeling generous.”

“You won’t live past midnight,” Bise spit.

Edeard smiled without humor. “I hope you’re not relying on Warpal or Motluk to make that a reality.”

Bise paled. He glanced up at the archway and marched through with his head held high. His family trudged after him.

“He’ll be in some friend’s Iguru pavilion by nightfall,” Captain Ronark declared. “Dressed in fresh clothes, sipping wine, and plotting revenge while the rest of these unfortunates are shivering on the side of the road.”

“I know,” Edeard said as those named on the exclusion warrants began to file past, calling names and swearing vengeance. “The important thing is the banishment itself. Without the most active gang members, we can achieve order in the city. Besides, how long do you think Bise will be welcome in that pavilion? A fortnight? A month? How long would you feed and clothe his whole family? He’ll be moved on eventually, farther and farther away from us.”

“I hope so.”

“Thank you for your support, sir,” Edeard said.

“You would have it a thousand times over, Waterwalker. I’ve given my life to the constables and achieved so little. You have restored the city’s faith in us, in the law. That means a lot to me and probably to more people than you realize.”

“I was hoping you could talk to Walsfol for me.”

“I will have words. It might be easier than you expect. The Mayor’s actions today left a lot of people shocked and disturbed.”

“I need to remain a constable.”

“There’s a position that I believe would serve very well.”

“What position?”

“Captain of Jeavons station.”

Edeard gave the old man a startled look. “But sir—”

“I’m almost at retirement age, anyway, and there are posts in the Chief Constable’s office where I can sit out my time. Look at me. I’m here watching the worst bastards in the city march into banishment, people I’ve spent decades trying to stop. It doesn’t get better than this. You taking charge of Jeavons is fitting, and it will put you in a good position to achieve Chief Constable in a few years. Walsfol is my age, you know.”

“That is … enormously generous, sir.”

“It’s good politics. And I think you’ve learned what’s most important in this city now.”

“Yes, sir!”

Eight constables escorted Buate to the North Gate. Edeard gave the man a dismissive glance and told the constables to let him go.

“I don’t know what you are, Waterwalker,” Buate said, “but you’ll never last.”

“You’re probably right. But while I’m here, you’re not. And that gives everyone a chance at a better life.”

Buate turned away and walked through the North Gate.

“Now, that’s a sight I never thought I’d see,” Kanseen said as Buate gave the grassland outside a disgusted look. He strode away, keeping himself apart from the other exiles tramping along.

“Worth remembering, though,” Macsen said. “So what’s next, mighty Waterwalker?”

“Sampalok and then a wedding,” Edeard told them. “And if you ever call me that again, you’ll find yourself living with Buate in a hut in the farthest province I can find.”

“Ohooo, touchy!”

“What do you mean, a wedding?” Kanseen asked.

“I need to talk to yo—” Edeard broke off. His arm suddenly shot out, pointing at the last few stragglers in the column going through North Gate. “Not you!” He beckoned. “Come here.”

The teenage lad gave a guilty start, looking around to try to see who the Waterwalker was pointing at.

“Yes, you,” Edeard said.

The lad certainly looked as though he should be exiled: curly brown hair that hadn’t seen soap for weeks, a scratchy beard just starting, a bad outbreak of spots on both cheeks. His clothes were clearly tailored for someone else, with a belt holding up trousers whose legs were crudely cut to size because he wasn’t particularly tall for his age. He wore a patched jacket with bulging pockets filled with food and some small silver items looted from Sampalok shops. His only expression was sullen, and he wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

His parents came with him, clinging defensively. Edeard remembered the father, a gang member working the rackets out of Abad.

“What’s your name?” Edeard asked.

“You leave him alone,” the woman cried. “We’re going. What more do you bastards want from us?”

The lad gave Edeard the kind of surly stare that only a Sampalok youth could manage. “What do they call you?” he asked benignly.

“Marcol. What’s it to you?”

“And your father is Arcton, I know, and your mother?”

“Janeel,” she said uncertainly. “What is this?”

“Marcol here has a very strong third hand.”

Marcol reddened. “I don’t!”

“There aren’t many in this city who can pull a ge-eagle out of the sky from such a height.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“You’re loyal to your parents, aren’t you?” Edeard mused. “You’d have to be if you’re leaving with them. You’re old enough to stay and look after yourself if you really want; after all, you’re not named in any warrant.”

“You let him be,” Janeel said. Her arms went protectively around her son.

“I ain’t staying here,” Marcol said defiantly.

“I’ll make you an offer,” Edeard said. “I’ll cancel your father’s banishment if you sign on as a probationary constable at Jeavons station.”

“What?” Arcton and Janeel gave each other a disbelieving look.

“Edeard?” a puzzled Kanseen queried.

“Two conditions,” Edeard said. “Marcol has to complete his probation and graduate, and you, Arcton, get a job and keep out of trouble.”

“Are you serious?” Arcton asked.

“I’m the Waterwalker.”

“He doesn’t do funny,” Macsen informed them curtly.

“Yes,” Janeel said. She looked ready to burst into tears. “Yes, we’ll do it.”

“Marcol?” Edeard asked. “What do you say? It won’t be easy.”

“Why are you doing this?” It was more like a grunt than a sentence.

Edeard put his arm around Marcol’s shoulder and drew him aside. “Have you got a girlfriend?”

“Yeah! Hundreds.”

“Hundreds, eh? You’re lucky. I didn’t, not before I joined the constables. Do you know how many I had after I became the Waterwalker? Did you hear about that part of my life?”

Marcol came perilously close to smiling. “Sort of.”

“Girls, especially fancy family girls, like men in uniform, particularly those of us who are stronger than everyone else. They really like that.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s never easy being a probationary constable, but can it be harder than trying to be a farm boy on the other side of the Iguru? Is that what you want to be?”

“No.”

“So will you give it a try? For your mom’s sake if nothing else. Look at her; she doesn’t want to be thrown out of the city. But I don’t have a choice: Your dad did wrong, except now you’ve got a chance to put it all right.”

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Thank you.” Edeard turned to Arcton and Janeel. “You can go home. Have him at Jeavons station seven o’clock tomorrow morning, washed and looking respectable.”

“Yes, Waterwalker. Thank you, Waterwalker.”

“What in Honious was that about?” Macsen asked. “You can’t seriously think he’ll make a constable?”

Edeard grinned. “We did.”

The last of the banished walked through North Gate. Edeard turned to address the big crowd of constables who had completed the escort duty. “People will remember this day because of what I did. But none of that would have been possible without your support, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the way you stood by me today. You made this happen just as much as I did.” His third hand reached for the giant iron hinges that held the gate itself. The latching mechanism creaked in protest as he lifted it. A flurry of rust flakes snowed down onto the grass from the cumbersome mechanism. Then he pulled the gate. The constables started cheering as the huge section of crystal swung back into the hole that Rah himself had cut it out of two thousand years before. It made such a crunching noise that Edeard thought the ancient crystal might finally shatter. But instead, it fit the archway perfectly. He thought such a dramatic gesture was an apt way to finish the banishment.

Kathlynn, Kanseen’s sister, was standing in the square next to the pile of wreckage that had been the Diroal family’s possessions. She was holding little Dium in her arms; he was sucking on a honey ball and squirming around energetically. Dybal and Bijulee were standing beside her. All three of them were talking to Dinlay, who was sitting on a battered old pew of talcherry wood salvaged from the pile. A lot of Sampalok residents were busy salvaging. They swarmed over the mound like drakken on carrion. People were carrying off heavy bundles of stuff down the roads from the square. Edeard thought at least a third of it had been taken already. Incredibly, that included one of the huge gates from the outer wall. A quick scan with his farsight revealed the gate beside a smithy three streets away. The owner and his apprentices were already hammering at the big iron bindings.

“Right,” Kanseen snapped as they emerged from Burfol Street and she saw Kathlynn. “What’s going on?”

Kathlynn caught sight of them and waved happily.

Edeard held up a finger, pleading: “One moment.”

The Sampalok residents had stopped everything as the Waterwalker returned to the square, giving him nervous glances. He smiled at them. “Take whatever you want, please, then stand back.”

Several of the bolder ones took him at his word and continued to pick through the remains.

“Edeard!” Kanseen warned.

“Ah, here we go.” Edeard had spied Kristabel emerging from one of the streets. She was wearing a lime-green dress and an apron with smears of blood on it. A Mother was walking beside her, an elderly woman stiff with suspicion. She presided over the Lady’s church in Sampalok, one of the most thankless tasks in the district. It showed in her demeanor. She was a lot tougher than most of the Lady’s Mothers Edeard had encountered.

Bijulee embraced Macsen, while Dybal clapped him on the back. Macsen yelped at the impact. Kanseen had now been saddled with the wriggling Dium, who was delighted to see his auntie.

Kristabel gave Edeard a quick kiss. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. But I really don’t want any more days like this one.”

“There won’t be.”

“Still want to marry me?”

“Of course. Is that what this is about?” She gestured at the Mother.

“No. Sorry. This is about maintaining the rule of law. That’s what gives people hope. And they need that today of all days.”

“I love you,” she murmured.

The Mother coughed for attention. “You asked to see me, Waterwalker.”

“Yes, Mother. I think we might have a ceremony for you to perform.”

“What kind of ceremony?”

“Macsen, I believe our dearest friend told you not to waste any time.”

“What?”

Dybal started chuckling.

“Do you have something to ask somebody?” Edeard said levelly “Right now.”

Macsen gave him a frantic stare. “You’ve got to be joking,” he growled through lips that didn’t move.

“I’m the Waterwalker; apparently I don’t do funny.”

The salvagers had claimed their prizes and were gathering to watch the latest bizarre spectacle to be played out in the square that day. Constables also began to congregate, showing considerable interest. A lot of farsight was concentrating on the square again. Edeard held out an arm. A silver ring flashed out from the pile of debris to fly across the square into his hand. He proffered it to Macsen with a flourish. “You might need this.”

“Oh, Lady.” Macsen took the ring, his eyes widening in amazement at how many diamonds could fit onto such a small item. “Really?”

“Really,” Edeard said.

Macsen took a breath and went down on one knee. “Kanseen, I have never been happier than when I’m with you. Would you please do me the honor of marrying me?” He might have been incredibly awkward with so many people straining to see and hear, but his face held a longing that was irrefutable.

“Yes, my darling,” she said. “I will marry you.”

Several constables whistled and clapped in approval as Macsen put the ring on her finger. He frowned at Edeard as it slipped about. “You couldn’t find one that fit?”

“Mother,” Edeard said. “Would you please marry them now?”

“Edeard, no,” Kanseen said. “Look at the state of me. My wedding is supposed to be … not this.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have my reason.”

“Your reason?”

He nodded.

“It better be incredible,” she muttered.

Dybal gave the bride away. Dinlay was best man. Kathlynn stood behind her sister, crying as she held the posy of flowers hurriedly snatched from plants in nearby streets. Kristabel and Bijulee took it in turns to cope with Dium, who really wanted to be in on the action. Edeard held Kristabel’s hand when he could, listening to the Mother’s words with the heap of rubbish from the mansion as the background to the damp, disheveled bride and groom. Constables formed a big semicircle around them, with curious Sampalok residents making up a wider audience.

When it was over, when the promises had been made, the rings exchanged, and the bride kissed, Edeard went up to his friends. His voice and longtalk filled the square.

“When Rah brought us out of the chaos to this place, the city accepted us. When Rah allowed his most faithful friends and followers to become District Masters, the city did not object, for he chose wisely. Down the centuries, the family Diroal slipped away from the ideals that were sworn at the beginning, and today is a result of that. None of us wish to defy Rah’s constitution, least of all me, so I now publicly ask this city to accept the appointment of the new joint District Master and Mistress of Sampalok.”

“Edeard!” Kanseen hissed furiously.

The Waterwalker gestured, and the ground beneath the pile of expensive detritus turned fluid again. Everything left from the demise of Bise’s mansion was sucked down below the surface amid a harsh gurgling sound. The crowd drew a sharp breath of excitement.

“Walk to the middle,” Edeard said quietly as the city substance hardened again.

Macsen took his wife’s hand and urged her out into the big open space. Both of them radiated nerves as their soggy boots squelched on the ground, watched by over a thousand people in the square and many times that number by farsight.

“The new Master and Mistress of Sampalok,” Edeard announced. “And their new mansion.”

The surface began to ripple around Macsen and Kanseen. She jumped in apprehension, and he hugged her tight, which gathered more than a little appreciation from their audience.

Six long dark lines firmed up on the ground around them, as if some architect were using the area to sketch an enormous hexagon. Smaller lines multiplied inside them, revealing the outlines of various rooms and cloisters. Then all the lines began to bulge up into ridges.

A radiantly happy Kanseen glanced across the empty space to Edeard. “How long is this going to take?”

“A little while. It’s always quicker and easier to tear things down than it is to build them back up again.”

“So? A week?”

Edeard gave the tiny ridges a doubtful look. After five minutes they were nearly two inches high. Below them the city was ponderously rearranging its vast complicated network of channels and ducts to feed and support the new structure he’d hurriedly drafted. A building with proper stairs. Finally! “Perhaps I’d better get you a tent as your wedding present.”

Justine: Year Three

A person couldn’t dream in suspension. Everyone knew that. And yet …

Justine recalled those two wondrous lazy days with Kazimir so clearly. It had been the most fabulous doomed love affair the universe had ever known. She’d been vacationing on Far Away, a brattish rich girl celebrating her latest rejuvenation on what was then the Commonwealth’s most outré planet. The grand finale had been a hyperglider flight over Mount Herculaneum. It had been an insane thrill ride. Flying the tiny plane through a phenomenally aggressive storm gave her the speed to soar out of the atmosphere and curve over the summit of the huge volcano. Despite all the odds, she managed it, gliding down to land in a small clearing on the other side.

Luck, chance, fate, or a particularly wicked god had placed Kazimir on the ground beside the clearing as the hyperglider bumped and jolted to a halt. He was seventeen, born into the Guardians of Selfhood that Bradley Johansson had formed to protect humanity from the Starflyer: an upbringing that had left him utterly devoted to his cause yet at the same time innocent of the universe at large. He never really stood a chance against a woman two hundred years his senior whose newly youthful body was fizzing with adolescent hormones. Not that he put up a lot of resistance.

It took the tourist company’s recovery crew two days to drive around Herculaneum and pick up all the glider pilots: two days spent eating the gourmet food from the glider’s store, sleeping, talking, and making love, two days alone together. Then she went back to her world and he to his. All she had left was the sweetest memory of her entire life.

That really should have been the end of it. But years later the Guardians of Selfhood gave Kazimir an assignment on Earth, and he risked everything to see her again. His reward was to be betrayed—by her. She thought she had been doing the right thing by informing the security services. But it was he who had the truth of it: The Starflyer was real and extracted revenge. Kazimir had been assassinated by one of its agents, and in twelve hundred years Justine had never forgiven herself. Not even the son she’d borne him and named after him had helped ease the pain.

So now her dreams granted her those two days again. She looked into his worshipful face once more as he was seduced and taught the miracle their bodies could achieve together. She knew what it was like to be held in his arms again. She laughed with him in the glade on the hillside where the bright sunlight shone out of Far Away’s gorgeous sapphire sky. She caught him giving her longing glances across the bonfire they lit outside the tent at night. She watched him sleeping, talked to him about her life. Listened to his stories of growing up in the mountains and deserts in fear of the great enemy.

Those two days showed her what a paradise her life could have been if she’d just had the strength to cast off her own conventions. They were two days that made her weep with joy simply because they existed, two days that stretched on and on and on, granted by a dream that was impossible to have—because one couldn’t dream in suspension.

Night closed in, and she lost him. The bonfire must have gone out, leaving her world claustrophobically dark. The air was drier than it had been on the mountainside.

Lights resolved in the darkness, strange colorful constellations that her drowsy mind slowly began to comprehend. Exoimage medical icons told her she was recovering.

“Oh, shit,” she groaned. The medical chamber lid peeled back, and she looked around the Silverbird’s cabin again. It had just been a dream. She sat up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Status?” she asked the smartcore. A fresh level of exoimage icons and displays sprang up.

She’d been in suspension for three years; the target star was about a light-year away, and the Silverbird was decelerating hard. Something was approaching.

“Holy crap,” she muttered as the sensors swept across the visitor. It was big—mountain-size. That was just the core. It was surrounded by weird sheets of gossamer matter that fluctuated like a gas.

A Skylord with its vacuum wings fully extended.

Justine showered and ordered up a decent meal as the Silverbird and the Skylord rendezvoused. It took the best part of a day, but they were finally sliding through space a thousand miles apart. With the sensors able to penetrate the haze of the vacuum wings, the Skylord was the same as Inigo’s dreams had shown them: a long ovoid but not solid, as if vast sheets of crystalline fabric had been folded into a Calabi-Yau manifold topology, with looping curves intersecting one another in eye-twisting complexity. The warped surfaces shimmered with long diffraction patterns that always flowed inward. She could not tell whether the structure itself was stable, there was so much surface movement.

Settling back on the longest couch in the cabin’s repertoire, she let her mind reach for the immense creature. It glowed on the edge of her farsight, a glow not dissimilar to the gaiafield: tenuous and full of emotion.

“Hello,” she said.

“You are most welcome,” the Skylord said.

“Did you let me into this universe?”

“My kindred knew of your arrival. The nucleus drew you in.”

“You know, then, it is my wish to speak with this nucleus, the Heart where you guide human souls. Can you guide me there?”

“Your mind is not like the others of your species that used to dwell here. You lack the maturity of the elder years, yet your resolution is formidable. There is something about your vessel that magnifies your thoughts, but not rightly so.”

The confluence nest, Justine realized. “The amplifier is an instrument constructed on my homeworld to emulate your communications here. That is how you found us beyond your border.”

“Along with my kindred, I guide those who have accomplished fulfillment to the nucleus. That is my fulfillment. There will come a time when I will not return from the nucleus.”

“That’s why I have come here. Others of my kind are trying to reach your universe. Their arrival will be a disaster. I must explain this to the Heart.”

“Existence is achieving fulfillment. All must strive for that moment.”

“In here, yes. But outside is a universe very different from this one. Did you know you are damaging us, destroying our stars and worlds?”

“There is only here: the universe and the nucleus.”

“Then where did I come from?”

“The nucleus knows.”

“Then guide me there, please.”

“This cannot be done; it is against what is. I mourn your loss. Once you reach fulfillment, I will guide you.”

Justine’s teeth began to press together. She made a very strong effort to make sure her frustration didn’t contaminate her longtalk with the vast creature. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you? This existence you enjoy in here is killing living entities outside; you are preventing an entire galaxy from ever reaching fulfillment.”

“To achieve fulfillment your species must come to the solid worlds scattered throughout this universe.”

“Your kind of fulfillment. Not ours.”

“I will guide you when your mind reaches fulfillment. You strive for it so hard, the fabric is deeply affected by your wishes. It will not be long.”

“Help me, please. You are killing people.”

“To ascend into the fabric in any fashion is wonderful. Even the quietest minds are a part of what is.”

“No, no. Death outside this universe is final. It ends all forms of existence.”

“How hard for your species. You adapt easily and mature within this universe. We welcome you all. That is the reason for our existence.”

“I have to get to the Heart. Do you remember others like me you guided there?”

“There were many. They were joyful to reach the nucleus.”

“I am glad to hear that. Where are they now? Where is the nucleus?”

“The nucleus is the center of everywhere and everywhen. It is that which all came from, and all return to change and live among change.”

“Is it here? Are we in the nucleus right now?”

“You cannot be in the nucleus. You have not reached fulfillment.”

“I would like to talk with those of my kind who are already there. I could learn so much from them; it would help me reach fulfillment.”

“Fulfillment comes from within.”

“Fulfillment is achieved from experience. I am alone here. I need to commune with my own kind if I am to mature.”

“My kindred are not aware of any thoughts from minds akin to your species. None are left.”

“None?” she asked in shock. “But there was a whole world of us, maybe more.”

“All were guided to the nucleus. That world awaits the arrival of others. As do my kindred.”

“Then take me to some world where you can feel living minds.”

“My flock searches this universe always. There is no world I can feel where minds live this when.”

“Jesus fuck it!” Justine couldn’t help it, but the frustration was finally getting to her. The Ocisens were less stubborn than this creature. She took a breath. It’s not stubborn; these are its thought routines, perfectly adapted to its life and purpose. Why should it understand my motivations and problems?

“You are sorrowful,” the Skylord said. “When you are ready to be guided, I will guide you. Know this and hope.”

Something changed among the patterns shimmering within the Skylord’s curving crystalline sheets. It moved, shrinking away at an incredible velocity. Within seconds it had vanished from the Silverbird’s sensors.

“Ye gods,” Justine muttered. The Second Dreamer’s views of Skylords always showed them drifting along sedately, whereas the acceleration she’d just witnessed would have been close to five hundred gees. If it was acceleration. This is a strange old place.

She spent the next few hours running over her conversation again and again. In the end she acknowledged that she couldn’t have achieved any other outcome. The Skylord simply didn’t have the psychology to help her reach the Heart. It was too alien.

Despite all its size and ability, she wasn’t strictly sure it qualified as sentient. Most intelligences had the ability to learn and reason; these creatures seemed incapable of interpreting anything outside their original parameters.

Not that the analysis helped her.

When she ran through the starship’s log, she was pleased with the way Silverbird had remained functional. For some reason the glitches had been minimal while she’d been in suspension. Now all she had to do was decide what to do next.

At a light-year distant the visual sensors could just make out some kind of accretion disc surrounding the star toward which she was heading. She examined the tenuous imagery with growing dismay. Any star whose planets were still forming wasn’t going to have a habitable world for her to establish herself on. Or not, at least, out there in the real universe.

Justine mulled the problem over while she had another gourmet meal of lamb shanks cooked in toblaris wine and herb rosties, then pigged out on chocolates. She’d come this far, and it was only another one and a half years in suspension. She still didn’t have enough information to make any kind of decision. She was simply heading for the star as a comfort measure. That was something she needed more than ever now. No other planetary species in this whole universe!

Silverbird began accelerating back up to point seven lightspeed as the medical chamber’s lid flowed shut above her.

It was an ordinary house in an ordinary street, at least as far as Ganthia was concerned. It was a planet that had become Higher soon after it was settled, and its various political committees had quickly evolved a policy of sustainable organic construction. Native flora lent itself easily to the concept; trees in the temperate zones were hardwoods with an internal honeycomb structure. A few genetic tweaks made them quite suitable for creative shaping. Like the aircoral developed during the First Commonwealth era, Ganthia’s modified trees could be guided over frameworks to form hollow bulbous chambers. Better yet, they were amenable to grafting, so while each room was an individual tree, a house was the merger of many.

Navy Captain, retired, Donald Chatfield lived in the middle of what from the air resembled a good-size forest. It fact it was Persain City, spreading out over the side of several mountains just above the shoreline. Twelve trees provided him with five first-floor rooms whose curving walls sprouted stunted branches with shell-pink leaves. Five long trunks grew up through the gaps between the lower rooms before bulging out into the second floor of smaller compartments, each frosted with copper leaves. The remaining two trees were hollow pipes twisting around the curvature of the lower rooms to provide stairwells between the two levels.

Paula’s taxi capsule skimmed along what appeared to be a wide greenway through the forest city. It settled silently on the wild lawn outside Chatfield’s home, and she climbed out, sniffing the unusually spicy air. House clusters stretched away in every direction, some extending three or four floors high, their marvelously convoluted trunks forming a knotted support maze. Sunlight shone through the overhead branches, creating a sharp dapple around her. In the distance, some kids were playing in an open area. The whole scene was remarkably rustic. Only the capsules flitting along the grid of greenways betrayed the planet’s true cultural base.

She walked up the short wooden steps to the porch platform formed from a miniature tree crafted to a flat mushroom shape. Donald Chatfield greeted her at the wonderfully old-fashioned green-painted front door. He was a tall youthful-looking man with an easy smile, his neat dark hair starting to gray, in contrast to firm features and a healthy tan. She couldn’t work out if those light strands were a fashion statement or an imperative genetic quirk his biononics couldn’t adjust. He was three hundred fifty years old, after all.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said as he led her into the sitting room. Three big circles had been sawn out of the bulging walls and filled with perfectly clear crystal that overlooked his back garden. No attempt had been made to paint or cover the bare wood, though walls and ceiling had been polished to show off the dark timber’s turquoise grain flecks. Even the furniture was carved from large sections of tree trunks, softened by a few scattered cushions.

“Your reputation precedes you, Investigator,” he said as he waved her into one of the big chairs. “I didn’t even have to consult a reference file. But then, I have served on ships around Dyson Alpha. It was a long time ago, but the crews tend to assimilate the war period’s history in more detail than the average citizen; it helps us understand the mission.”

“Interesting,” she said as she settled back. “That’s actually why I’m here.”

He raised an eyebrow in an almost dismissive expression. “Good heavens. Even I’m history in that respect.”

“Not quite. I’d like to ask you about your third mission there, when you captained the Poix.”

“Yes. What’s the problem?”

“No problem. I need some information on one of your crew: Kent Vernon.”

“Oh, him.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

Donald gave her a roguish grin. “Navy service sounds very grand, but I was actually in the Exploration Division. We fly science missions, not combat. That allows a”—he paused—“broader range of characters than the regular navy. Vernon might have been helpful analyzing the generator lattice shells, but he certainly wouldn’t have been any use in a regular navy position. He wasn’t the most popular person onboard the dear old Poix.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t get me wrong. He performed some valuable work. However, his social skills were somewhat lacking. Quite surprisingly so, given he was Higher. It rather shocked some of the crew; they weren’t used to making allowances like that.”

“If he was that disruptive, how did he get a commission?”

“It was a science commission; he wasn’t strictly navy at all. Specialists are given temporary commissions for the duration of their missions. I was warned about his nature while the mission was drawn up.”

“Yet you allowed him to take part.”

“The captain has some discretion. I accessed his file and thought he could make a valid contribution; he was very highly qualified in his field. That had to be balanced against any personal disruption he would make. Ultimately, I agreed to him joining us because it doesn’t hurt to shake things up every now and then.”

“Strange attitude,” she observed. “You’re on a difficult and important mission a long way from home in what is still technically a war zone, and you choose to take along a potentially disruptive influence.”

“It was a judgment call. I made it because we’d had two previous missions at Dyson Alpha≔ my crew knew the routine. It was never a physical danger having him on board. Worst-case scenario, which we always had to plan for, was the barrier collapsing while we were there. Vernon would just be shoved in his cabin and told to stay there while we did what we could to prevent Prime ships from escaping. Even then, the Poix would be assigned a third-line defense position. To this day the navy maintains some serious firepower outside the Dyson Pair. Ozzie help the Primes if they ever do crack out and make a break for it.”

“So did you make the right judgment?” Paula asked.

Donald gave an expansive shrug. “There is no right answer to this. The mission gathered a lot of data, but I wouldn’t necessarily want him on board again. In a strange way it helped crew morale afterward. In my final two missions there was always a lot of talk about how difficult that mission was.”

“Bonding in the face of adversity?”

“Something like that. Though I wouldn’t want to make out it was some terrible trip into hardship. It wasn’t. He’s just different from the rest of Highers, which isn’t a crime. So what’s your interest in Vernon after all this time?”

“He wasn’t quite who he claimed to be.”

Donald gave her a long stare. “In what possible way?”

“I believe he was carrying out his own agenda, possibly on behalf of an ANA faction.”

“What agenda?”

“That’s why I’m here, to see what you can tell me.”

“I’m sorry, but my immediate answer to that is ‘very little.’ Even taking his attitude into account, it was a perfectly routine mission. We gathered data on the Dark Fortress for eight months and came home.”

“There was no abnormal event? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

Donald’s eyes flickered as he delved down into memories long ago shunted into a storage lacuna. “Not a thing.”

“So what exactly was the mission?”

“Monitoring and analysis of the inner two lattice spheres inside the Dark Fortress, which we accomplished successfully.”

“Were there any breakthroughs or revelations about the Dark Fortress?”

“Not due to us. The damn thing is still an enigma. We don’t understand how it generates a force field large enough to envelop an entire star system; the mechanism is peculiar. Though they are making headway on the field itself these days, I gather. I don’t really stay current.”

“Did Vernon want to take anything further, perhaps some persistence that at the time you wrote off to his personality?”

“He was always talking about the factory.”

“Factory?”

“Whatever the Anomine used to build the Dark Fortress itself. He contended that if we could examine that, we’d solve the entire generator and its principles. Logically, he was quite right. But that wasn’t our mission.”

“I see. Has there ever been a mission to examine the factory?”

“No. Because we don’t know where the factory is.”

“So did Vernon want to go and search for it?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t mind doing that myself, actually. That would be quite something, wouldn’t it? A structure that builds machines the size of a small gas giant. Finding that would be enough to yank me back out of retirement.”

“I’m sure.” Paula hesitated, not trusting a word he said. “Did Kent Vernon modify the observations you were making?”

“Constantly. That’s what the science team is there for. One set of results leads them off to investigate some other aspect. Within the overall mission parameter, the monitoring process is very fluid. We’d just be a simple sensor relay otherwise.”

“What was Vernon’s specific field?”

“Quantum signature. He was there to determine the subphysical nature of the lattice sphere composition.”

“So in that field did he want to do anything he shouldn’t have done?”

“No. We’ve got pretty broad leeway when it comes to observations. Just about the only thing the navy prohibits is trying to take a physical sample of a lattice sphere—not that they are all strictly physical. A stupid restriction, if you ask me, but I don’t make the rules.”

“Stupid how?”

He gave her a curious gaze. “You took part in the Starflyer War. Ozzie and Nigel Sheldon set off a couple of quantumbusters inside the Dark Fortress, and it’s still working. That is one extremely tough mother. Shaving a nugget off isn’t going to break it.”

“Good point.” Paula activated a layer of specific-function biononics on the skin surface of her right palm.

“You have a good relationship with ANA; you might want to tell it that someday,” Chatfield said.

“I’m sure it has its reasons.”

“Yeah.”

Paula stood and held out her right hand. “Well, thank you for your time, Captain.”

“Not at all.” He shook hands warmly. “Was I of any use?”

Her biononics sampled the dead cells of Chatfield’s outer epidermal layer. “I’m not sure.” There was a second when she thought he might activate his combat enrichments. It passed. Even so, old-fashioned instinct made her uncomfortable turning her back on him as he showed her out.

As soon as she got back into her taxi capsule, she opened an ultra-secure link to ANA: Governance. “He’s an Accelerator.”

“What makes you say that?” ANA: Governance asked.

“He admitted a possible error and accepted the blame. Standard sympathy-grab maneuver. But his real mistake was a fundamental one. When I said Vernon had an agenda for a faction, Chatfield asked what the agenda was, not which faction.” She held up her right hand, turning it to examine the palm. There was nothing visible, but the biononics were already feeding a stream of sequencing data down the link. “I’m sending you his DNA. Run it against every file you have. Specifically, people involved with government and navy.”

As before, the speed of the reply was nearly instantaneous. It impressed Paula exactly how much attention ANA had devoted to the analysis. Her u-shadow would have taken at least a minute to run the comparison.

“That instinct of yours is quite something,” ANA: Governance said.

“Really?”

“There is a twenty-point spread marker similarity with a Captain Evanston.”

“Not identical, so it’s either family, or …”

“Or he had a DNA resequence for that assignment.”

“That’s very deep cover. So is he Evanston or Chatfield?”

“I’d say Chatfield. Evanston was a serving officer twenty-five years ago. But Chatfield’s current DNA is almost a match for Captain Chatfield’s registered navy file a hundred years ago.”

“Almost a match?”

“The variance is small but noticeable. If we weren’t considering a period spent resequenced, it would be within acceptable error.”

“So, if he’s going for resequencing, why keep the twenty-point similarity? Complete resequencing used to be quite a popular option among the criminal classes of the late first era and early second era Commonwealth. The perfect way to avoid court-verified identification. A lot of them literally got away with murder.”

“That’s a simple answer: his brain. He wanted to maintain his thought routines as they are. If you alter neural structure and neurochemicals, you alter how you think, your very personality. He wanted to keep on being him.”

“That makes sense. So give me his file.” She observed it entering her macrocellular clusters. Secondary thought routines picked the data apart, highlighting the relevant sections. One long entry leaped out at her. “Oh, Jesus,” she muttered.

“Quite,” ANA: Governance said. “And in connection with today’s events, extremely significant.”

“Overwhelmingly significant,” she retorted. “Evanston was second in command of the development-restrictions monitoring station on Elan.”

“I always considered it quite an irony that the Commonwealth allowed the surviving Prime invasion forces to continue living on the worlds they conquered.”

“Not all of them,” she said. “Just on the five Lost23 that we didn’t completely nuke into oblivion. Some of those surviving immotiles got smart.”

“You mean they got human.”

“They accessed the memories of human lawyers and promptly surrendered. They even quoted our own basic rights laws back at us. I’d say that was quite smart, evolutionary even. Adapt to and then accept the ethics of an alien species that you were trying to wipe out in order to survive yourself. It was the only reason Admiral Columbia allowed them to live; he considered it an indication that Primes were capable of social progression—as humans see it.”

“They’ve kept their side of the agreement until now.”

“I don’t think this can be blamed on them.” Paula hadn’t felt this angry for quite some time—centuries. But for the Accelerators to use the Prime to bolster the Ocisen Empire … It took a lot to shock her, but this had done it. Don’t they understand the danger? But of course they did. It’s me who is only just starting to grasp the stakes they’re playing for, the ends to which they’ll go.

“That is also our conclusion,” ANA: Governance said.

“It’s treason.”

“If provable. So far we only have circumstantial evidence.”

Paula resisted the temptation to glance back over her shoulder. The capsule was already clear of the city’s elegant greenways. Now it was soaring gracefully over the mountain peaks toward the starport on the inland plain beyond. She toyed with the idea of going back and arresting Chatfield. “A memory read will provide the evidence.”

“Do you think Chatfield will allow that to happen?”

“No,” she admitted regretfully. “If he’s an Accelerator agent at the level we believe him to be, then capture is not an option. He’ll just auto-bodyloss, and they’ll re-life him inside a day with a safe body. We’ll have to keep him under observation and see where he takes us.”

“I have placed him under electronic scrutiny.”

“Thank you. That should do until I can get a colleague here to shadow him. If Chatfield is part of the project which allied the Primes to the Ocisen Empire, he’ll probably be aware of the hardware Troblum has helped them build. I’m wondering if it was those starships accompanying the Ocisen fleet.”

“According to Gore, Ilanthe said the Accelerators can protect the Sol system from any Void expansion. I have no idea what that might translate into in practice.”

“Two illegal hardware construction projects? They really are committed to their ideology, aren’t they? We’re going to have to keep a very sharp watch on Chatfield.”

“Who will you use?”

Paula allowed herself a slight smile. “Digby has been wanting an assignment at this level for some time. It’s only fair I give him the opportunity.”

“He is fully qualified and has the necessary experience.”

She laughed outright. “That’s a very tactful way of accusing me of nepotism.”

“He is four generations removed.”

“But still my descendant. After all, who else is crazy enough to do this kind of work?”

“I find him highly capable.”

“He’s too young and too eager. But if anything is going to cure that, it’ll be this assignment. I’ll call him.”

Marius was half a kilometer away when Paula’s taxi capsule left Chatfield’s house. He found the investigator’s presence at this exact time unnerving. It meant she was making a lot of connections he’d assumed would stay hidden, at least until it was too late. When her capsule had left the city greenways, he walked unhurriedly to Chatfield’s house. That approach at least would eliminate some observation protocols that he knew would be enacted after her visit. In confirmation, his u-shadow informed him of extremely sophisticated scrutineers slipping into the local cybersphere nodes.

For a moment he considered simply abandoning Chatfield, but decided that advancing to the next stage was an acceptable risk. If Paula Myo had any real understanding of the Accelerator strategy, she would have taken Chatfield into custody. So he sent his u-shadow into the homes of Chatfield’s neighbors and examined various files, siphoning out inconsequential personal details and preferences. As he walked down the greenway, the data were absorbed by his biononics, enabling them to change his appearance and electronic emissions. His shimmering toga suit transformed to a bland swaddle of amethyst cloth with ginger boots just visible below the shifting folds. Confident in his amalgamated persona, he crossed the shaggy front lawn and triggered the house sensors.

Chatfield showed no surprise when he opened his glossy front door to someone who resembled Fardel from four houses down, even though the man wore Jalliete’s style of clothing. It was the green eyes that gave him away. “You saw Myo leave?” Chatfield asked as they went into the living room, where they were surrounded by a privacy shield.

“Yes.”

“They’ve discovered Troblum was on the Poix.”

“Shit. I will take a great deal of pleasure ridding this universe of that failed embarrassment of a Higher. Does Myo know why he was there?”

“No. I threw her the line about him focusing on the Anomine factory.”

“Good. That ties nicely into his obsession with the planet-shifting FTL. It might divert them for a while.”

“I’ll be under observation.” He looked straight at Marius. “Are you here to bodyloss me?”

“No. We’re moving to the next stage a little early. That should remove you from their view for a while, and when you do reappear, it won’t matter.”

“I see.” Chatfield gave the bulbous wooden room a regretful stare. “I’ll miss this. Ganthia has been an enjoyable place to live. Its politics are quite progressive in some respects.”

“Irrelevant now. I have a ship waiting at the spaceport. Go directly to our Frost station and collect your equipment.”

“Understood. And then on to Ellezelin?”

“Yes, but stand off until I authorize your landing. Living Dream is expecting you to join the pilgrimage, but I don’t want you there early. Even if our policy is successful, there may be rogue ANA agents left over who could cause trouble.”

“Like Myo?”

“Among others. We have contingencies; don’t worry.”

“I’ll leave right away.”

Babuyan Atoll was undergoing an approximation of night. The dome’s internal illumination was off, but the crystal remained perfectly transparent. Icalanise’s jaundiced crescent was rising above the lip of the parkland to shine a jaded light across the forests and towers. Admiral Kazimir saw it through his office window as he made some niggling final adjustments to his dress uniform. Over on Aldaho, the Senate Executive Security Commission was convening for an emergency session where he was due to present the really bad news about the Ocisen Empire’s new allies. It was looking like the deterrent fleet would have to be used, a prospect that both thrilled and horrified him in equal amounts. For nearly seven hundred years the mere threat of its existence had been enough to deter the more belligerent species in the galaxy from any aggression against the Commonwealth. Now the bluff was going to be called, and those who thought it was a bluff were about to get a very nasty surprise.

The silver collar on his tunic was lopsided. Kazimir grimaced at it in the mirror and tried to fiddle the awkward fabric back into shape. In seven hundred years he’d never used semiorganic fabrics for his uniform, and he wasn’t about to start now.

His u-shadow told him Paula Myo was calling from Ganthia. “Good news?” he asked.

“Not even close,” she said. “I’ve uncovered evidence that suggests the navy has been manipulated.”

Kazimir listened with growing anger as she explained her suspicions about Chatfield and his secondary persona, Evanston. When she’d finished, he called ANA: Governance.

“This cannot stand,” he said. “The Accelerators have committed treason.”

“Circumstantial evidence,” ANA: Governance replied. “We don’t know for sure.”

“They have worked up this whole Pilgrimage situation right from the start.”

“Pilgrimage was inevitable from the moment Inigo dreamed his first dream,” Paula said. “If they are behind the Prime-Ocisen alliance, then it is an arrangement that goes back decades. Evanston was assigned to the Elan system thirty years ago.”

“And whatever Troblum worked on was twenty years before that,” Kazimir acknowledged.

“I’d suggest this idea of fusion was concocted when Inigo abandoned Living Dream,” Paula said. “They saw a method of fast-forwarding to postphysical status and immediately set about enacting it.”

“Very likely,” Kazimir said. “They don’t call themselves Accelerators for nothing. The question is, What do we do about it? Can’t you simply suspend them?”

“Any intervention would have to be universal,” ANA: Governance said. “At present I do not have sufficient grounds.”

“But you know.”

“I very strongly suspect. To act on suspicion alone is persecution. I believe the human race is past such barbarism now, isn’t it?”

“Let’s try this tack,” Paula said. “What can they possibly hope to achieve by the Prime-Ocisen alliance?”

“It’s a distraction,” Kazimir said.

“No,” Paula said. “It has to be more than that. They know it will divert a degree of attention to the invasion fleet, but they also know that ANA and people like myself will continue to monitor the Pilgrimage preparations and investigate Troblum and Marius. No matter how many distractions, how many crises and alien invasions we face, we will not drop the ball when it comes to the Accelerator manifesto. Therefore, it has to be connected.”

“How?” Kazimir asked. “For all that the alliance is shocking, in military terms it is trivial. It doesn’t physically threaten the Commonwealth, nor will it prevent Ethan’s Pilgrimage from launching.”

“Are you so sure Chatfield is an Accelerator?” ANA: Governance asked. “Your conclusion was drawn from a single answer. It would be more credible if he was a Custodian or even an Isolationist.”

“He’s an Accelerator,” Paula said. “It fits. So why would they want to engineer a threat to the Commonwealth, one that would be triggered by the Pilgrimage? One that isn’t a simple diversion tactic?”

“The deterrence fleet,” Kazimir said bitterly. “Without the Primes as part of the empire’s fleet, a squadron of Capital-class ships would be enough to take them out. But with the Primes we have to send the deterrence fleet.”

“They want to know what it is,” ANA: Governance said.

“Why?” Paula asked. “What does knowing that get them? Is it a bluff?”

“No,” Kazimir said. “It is not a bluff.”

“In all my time I have never met a navy officer who served in the deterrence fleet,” Paula said. “I’ve met hundreds serving on every other class of ship, but never that. And given the levels of government I interact with, I find that extremely odd.”

“You have met someone from the deterrence fleet,” Kazimir told her calmly. “Me.”

“I was birthed to provide protection to the physical segment of the human race,” ANA: Governance said. “I assure you the deterrence fleet is real and is quite capable of achieving that level of physical defense. I should know. I built it.”

“In which case the Accelerators must want to know what it’s armed with,” Paula said. “I assume it’s something pretty potent.”

“Yes. Very.”

“All right, so they’re expecting to analyze it and use it—after all, you wouldn’t go to this much trouble if you didn’t have a need for it. But the time scale’s not good here. Even if they did analyze it perfectly, they still have to build it. That will take time, and the Pilgrimage fleet is due to launch in a couple of months. Can they duplicate it in that time?”

“Extremely unlikely,” ANA: Governance said. “It required my full abilities for several years to fabricate. Admittedly, my faculties have increased dramatically since then, but still it is not something which can be accomplished quickly.”

“Let’s examine the extremes,” Paula said. “Can the deterrence fleet weapons knock out the Void?”

“No.”

“But you’re confident it can ward off just about everything else in the galaxy?”

“Yes.”

“In which case my guess would be that they intend to use it against the Raiel ships guarding the Void boundary. Justine barely managed to get through, and she had a head start on them, plus some help from the Void itself. As it stands, Ethan’s ships wouldn’t even make it to the Wall, let alone through the Gulf.”

“Damn,” Kazimir grunted. “That has to be it. The idiots. Not enough to try and wreck the galaxy; they’ve got to start a war with the most powerful race in existence.”

“There is one factor which might work to our advantage,” Paula said.

“What?”

“The Primes.”

Centuries of experience had taught Kazimir never to be surprised at Paula’s ideas. “Go on.”

“They’re not stupid. At least not the ones still living in the Commonwealth, which is the group the Accelerators have manipulated. A standard Prime immotile knows that if there is any possibility of them threatening us again, we will simply exterminate them.”

“Yes. Actually, given the new nature and developing psychology of the five surviving Prime civilizations, the navy has downgraded their threat potential twice in the last thousand years.”

“So they’re not going to risk triggering human retaliation. They are extremely unlikely to agree to cooperate with the Accelerator plan. However, we know that human personalities can operate within a Prime neural structure. I once met the Bose motile. The integration was flawless; he functioned without any problem. That gives us our potential evidence.”

“What does?” Kazimir asked.

“They might be Prime bodies inside those warships, but I’ll give you very good odds that they’re animated by human thought routines. It would be a simple matter to snatch some motiles that have just come out of the birthing pond. At that stage their brains are completely empty; it’s their immotiles which instill them with baseline thoughts and memories. So if you did snatch one at that stage, it would be a simple procedure to load in a human mind and memories instead—it’s our basic re-life procedure but with an alien body. And there you have it, the core of a completely independent Prime hierarchy. The Ocisen Empire thinks they’ve found a genuine enemy of humanity to give their cause some particularly sharp teeth, while in fact they’re being manipulated by the Accelerators just like everyone else.”

“So all we have to do is catch one and download its thoughts,” Kazimir said.

“Exactly. When you go to the Senate Commission, explain that you’re going to give the Ocisen Empire fleet one last chance to turn around now that you and they know Capital-class ships can defeat the Prime. Use the Capital class to disable a Prime ship and board it.”

“If they are human-driven Prime, they’ll suicide,” ANA: Governance said.

“Will that be sufficient evidence for you?” Paula asked.

“Not conclusively, no. I would have to be inserted into the inter-Prime communication network and analyze the thought stream.”

“Attempt the Capital-class interception,” Paula said. “It acts completely in our favor. If it works and we prove the Primes are just biological shells for the Accelerators, then you can suspend all Accelerator activities. If not, then Kazimir still has plenty of time to use the deterrent fleet before the Ocisens reach the Commonwealth, and as a bonus you delay Accelerator acquisition of the fleet weapons.”

“I agree that’s a logical course of action,” Kazimir said.

“But?” Paula inquired.

“We didn’t really know how powerful the warrior Raiel were until my mother flew past them in the Gulf. From what we can determine, this plan of the Accelerators has been in motion for at least fifty years.”

“We’ve known the Raiel had defense systems around the Wall stars since the day Wilson Kime discovered them back in 2560. It was inevitable that those Raiel would have adequate firepower to back up their mission. After all, they’re the ones who once tried to invade the Void. That’s not something you attempt with anything as pitiful as a novabomb. The Accelerators have always known they’ll need serious firepower to reach the Void boundary.”

“Maybe,” Kazimir said reluctantly. “There’s just something about this that bothers me, and I can’t define it.”

“If they don’t want to see the deterrence fleet weapons in action, what else could they be using the Ocisen Empire fleet for?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “ANA?”

“Paula’s scenario is the obvious one. An exceptionally large effort is being made to draw the deterrence fleet out to the Ocisen invasion forces. Primes are the one species which will still unite every political and cultural bloc within the Commonwealth. And I would point out that even if you’re right and the Primes are exposed as Accelerator agents, the Ocisens themselves will still keep coming.”

“Very well.” Kazimir finally got his collar straight. “I’ll ask the Senate Commission for permission to deploy the deterrent fleet, but only after we make one final attempt to warn them off.”

“Do let me know how Ilanthe responds to that,” Paula told him.

It was as humiliating as Honious, but Corrie-Lyn had to rely on Aaron as well as Inigo to make it across the hundred-meter gap between the remains of the ground crawler and the navy starship. As well as her broken arm, her ankle was badly twisted and sprained, as she discovered when she tried to put any weight on it.

Aaron had simply knelt down on the rim of the ground crawler’s bodywork that he’d sheared off with his disrupter pulse and extended his arm. She’d reluctantly grasped it with her good hand and allowed him to haul her up with no more effort than if he’d been lifting a bag of gromal puffs. It was only when he’d put her down that she had gasped with pain and nearly collapsed back onto the ice. Aaron, of course, had caught her easily.

So she had to sling an arm around each of them and let them take the weight as she hopped all the way over to the starship. Her body was shivering violently from the terrible cold. Huge flashes of lightning ripped overhead, their muted thunder rolling around the little bubble of calm the starship’s force field had cast over them. Even without any enriched sensors she could see that the craft had taken a terrible beating. The fuselage actually had splits in it, and fluids were seeping out of various valves and exposed pipes.

The ground shook violently, and all three of them went tumbling down.

“Move,” Aaron snapped. His integral force field strengthened, surrounding him in a mild blue haze.

Corrie-Lyn was slightly disconcerted to see that Inigo had protected himself the same way. Then the pair of them picked her up and started jogging over the last twenty meters with her hanging ignominiously between them. While they were doing that, she started to pay attention to the red symbols appearing in her exovision. She was receiving a very unhealthy dose of radiation from the atmosphere trapped under the force field.

It was a navy ship; she could see the name CNE Lindau on the fuselage. But the crew wasn’t responding to her desperate pings. She wondered what kind of cover story Aaron could possibly have spun them. Somehow she never thought to ask herself how he could have survived the glacier. It was sort of inevitable.

They hurried up the ramp and into the airlock. The outer hull was already flowing closed as they crossed the threshold. Another quake made the starship tremble. Then there was the unmistakable whine of power feeding into the drive, and they lifted from the surface. The floor immediately shuddered badly, and the decking shifted out of horizontal alignment. It juddered its way back level as the unnerving sounds of equipment straining at its safety margins set her teeth on edge.

The airlock’s inner door unfurled as her weight began to build up.

“Hold her,” Aaron instructed curtly as he let go of Corrie-Lyn’s arm and lurched his way into the ship against the rapidly increasing acceleration.

Inigo quickly lowered her onto the floor of the short corridor. “Don’t move your neck,” he said urgently. “Keep your spine level. I don’t know how bad this is going to get.” The decking seemed to be made of gray plyplastic. It wasn’t comfortable, but with the gee force approaching five, she was grateful to be lying prone. Medical symbols warned her what the acceleration was doing to her broken arm, which might have accounted for her mounting nausea.

“What’s happening?” she grunted to Inigo. “Where’s the crew?” Her body was still shivering from the icy air outside.

He kept his head steady as he replied. “We’re going straight up to get out of the atmosphere as fast as possible. I don’t know about the crew.” His gaiafield emission was tinged with worry.

“I can’t access the ship’s net.”

“Me neither.”

After a couple of minutes the acceleration suddenly sank back to a stable one gee. Inigo lifted himself to a sitting position. Worry was still leaking out of his gaiamotes.

Corrie-Lyn winced as she slowly sat up. Her ankle was throbbing, and the medication she’d taken for her arm was doing strange things to her vision. Or maybe it was just her balance that made her feel weirdly light. Or perhaps the ship’s drives were acting oddly. Something in the air smelled funny. She hiccupped, hoping it wasn’t a precursor to being sick. For some reason the situation didn’t bother her as much as she knew it should. The crew, though; that was bad. She knew it at a deep instinctive level but didn’t want to examine the obvious consciously. Too much. Way too much all at once.

“We’re still alive, then,” she said with a sigh.

Inigo gave her a troubled glance. “Yes.” He clambered to his feet. One of the light strips on the ceiling was flickering. Its case had cracks. He frowned at that. “My field scan is revealing a lot of damage in the structure around us. Uh, I can’t find the crew on board.”

“What do you mean?”

A thick plyplastic door curtained open, and Aaron stepped out into the corridor. His gaiamotes were closed, but even in her medicated state Corrie-Lyn didn’t need them to tell how angry he was. He glared at Inigo. “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that glacier again.”

Inigo gave him a disdainful glance. “Almost got you, though, didn’t it? And me a simple amateur.”

Aaron produced a tight smile, and took a step forward.

Corrie-Lyn screamed at the pain as his foot came down on her ankle.

Inigo lunged forward, hitting Aaron with a rugby-style tackle. It barely moved him. For emphasis, Aaron held the position for another few seconds before slowly and deliberately taking his foot off and stepping back.

Corrie-Lyn whimpered and gripped her ankle where the hot pain was still firing into her flesh. There were tears in her eyes. “Don’t,” she whispered fearfully.

“The medical chamber is in the main cabin,” Aaron said, and held his hand out.

“Where’s the crew?” she asked.

“They stepped out for a moment.” Aaron paused, thinking. “They might be some time.”

Corrie-Lyn ignored his hand. Inigo helped her up. They hobbled after Aaron through the door into the main cabin.

“Oh, Lady!” Corrie-Lyn’s free hand came up to cup her mouth. She felt the bile rising in her gullet at the sight that greeted her.

The starship’s main cabin was a circular room about seven meters across. Several items of furniture had been extruded from the plyplastic walls and floor. Some had twisted and locked into strange shapes. A lot of the equipment modules sunk flush with the walls were damaged. Most had suffered some kind of physical impact, leaving their casings buckled and broken. Others were melted along with the wall around them, leaving soot marks scarring the ceiling. That wasn’t what drew her eye. There was blood on the floor. Big puddles of the grisly fluid had been sloshing around in the starship’s erratic acceleration. Now it was congealing. There was blood on the walls, broad splash patterns radiating out from the burn scars. There was blood on the ceiling in long splatter trails.

“Monster!” she groaned through clenched teeth.

“Let’s get one thing quite clear,” Aaron said as he ordered the smartcore to activate the one surviving medical cabinet. “I am not a good man. I am not a bad man. I am simply a man with a job to do. I will complete that job. Nothing must prevent that. Nothing.”

Corrie-Lyn gave Inigo a broken look. She could see how scared he was; it was an expression she’d never seen on his face before. Not Inigo, not the man who was going to lead them all to a chance at a beautiful life.

“What job?” Inigo asked with considerable dignity.

A small muscle flexed in Aaron’s jaw. “I apologize. I’m not sure.”

“Not sure!”

Aaron gave Corrie-Lyn a modest shrug. “You know how it is.”

“He’s not a man,” she growled out. “He’s a biological killing machine. And he’s so pitiful, he doesn’t even know why.”

“So there you have it,” Aaron said. He looked over at the medical cabinet, which had rolled out of the wall. It did have a scorch mark on its silver casing, but the malmetal lid split open, and the management system reported full functionality even if some systems were running on backup.

“I’m not getting in that,” Corrie-Lyn yelped.

“You are,” Aaron said. “One way or another. Of course Inigo’s u-shadow will have complete control of your treatment. But I need you intact and healthy. As well as your physical injuries, you picked up a bad dose of radiation back there.”

She glanced at Inigo, who shrugged.

“You need her healthy?” Inigo said. “Why?”

“She’s my leverage,” Aaron said bluntly. “She guarantees your good behavior.”

“Shoot me,” Corrie-Lyn implored Inigo. “Use your biononics like a weapon again. Please. He can’t be allowed to succeed.”

Inigo stared at her for a long moment. He bowed his head.

“Now we have that out of the way, please get in,” Aaron said with a polite gesture at the medical cabinet.

Corrie-Lyn limped over to it and sat on the edge. Inigo helped her to remove her clothes, then eased her back. The lid slid over her. She was sobbing as she lost consciousness.

According to Corrie-Lyn’s secondary thought routines, the medical cabinet took four hours to reset and bind her arm in a toughened dermal layer, destress the bad sprain around her ankle, and decontaminate her skin and blood. Inigo also had gotten it to issue some kind of antidepressant sedative. She lay there in the warm dry darkness for several minutes after she awoke, reluctant to get out and see how much worse their lives had become. Eventually, she sighed and told her u-shadow to open the lid.

Inigo was there, leaning over with his face showing gentle concern.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Like the Waterwalker on top of the mountain after Salrana’s death.”

Inigo stroked her hair tenderly. “Nothing we face is ever going to be that bad.”

“Ha,” she said indignantly. “That bastard’s not human, although he’s got the psychopath trait nailed pretty good.” She sat up to see Aaron on the other side of the cabin, smiling modestly. “Are your dreams still punishing you?” she growled at him as she crossed her arms over her bare breasts. “Hope so. One day you’ll drown in all that shit sloshing around in your head.”

“Well, well, it is true.” Aaron grinned. “You can take the girl out of Sampalok, but you can’t take Sampalok out of the girl.”

“What the crap do you know about the Waterwalker’s life, you subsentient biobot fuckhead?”

“Welcome back, Corrie-Lyn. This party just wouldn’t be the same without you.”

Inigo handed her a robe that was several sizes too big. Corrie-Lyn wrapped herself in it with angry motions, then swung her feet out of the cabinet. She drew back abruptly, remembering what had been on the floor as she had gone in.

The blood was gone. She gave the cabin a careful examination. Apart from the bent equipment and misshapen furniture, it was relatively clean.

“Some of the servicebots still work,” Inigo said. “I’ve had them cleaning things up.”

“Huh,” she grunted, and climbed out. “So, going to start threatening me?”

Aaron scratched behind his ear. “No.”

“Why not? I thought you said I was your leverage. Go ahead; get your kicks slicing bits off. I won’t disappoint. I promise I’ll scream lots.” The bravado was making her legs shake.

“Damn, and you think my brain’s damaged.”

“Fuck you.”

Aaron gave Inigo a genuinely curious look. “Whatever did you two have back in the day?”

“Love.” Inigo’s arm went around her shoulder. “I doubt that’s in your memories.”

“No. I have to admit it ain’t dinging any bells. But I understand the principles. And who knows, if I eat my greens and stay out of trouble, maybe I’ll find a nice girl who’ll like me for what I am. Just like this one does you.”

Corrie-Lyn took a step forward, her hand bunching into a fist. Inigo pulled her back. “Will you two behave yourselves? And you, this is hardly professional.”

“I know,” Aaron said. “Truce?”

“If I ever get the chance to slit your throat while you’re sleeping, I promise I’ll cut long and deep.”

Even Inigo gave her a strange look at that. She remained unrepentant.

“I did save your lives back there,” Aaron said in a mildly injured tone.

“We were only in that much trouble because of you.”

“Really? Think on this. The people following us to find Inigo wanted him dead, very badly dead. They would have found him eventually. Thanks to you and me teaming up, we got here first.”

“And who is left alive on Hanko to thank you for that?”

“All right, enough,” Inigo said, squeezing her arm. “We are still alive, for which I acknowledge our debt. But you have to admit, having you come for me as part of some faction’s ideological wish fulfillment isn’t great for me.”

“I don’t know what’s in store for you,” Aaron said. “But how bad can it be?”

Inigo said nothing. Corrie-Lyn was disconcerted by the way his gaiamotes had closed off again, isolating his emotions. She was so used to sharing her every feeling with him. Seventy years ago.

“So who are you taking me to?” Inigo asked.

Aaron had the grace to look uncomfortable.

“He doesn’t know,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“Can I at least ask where we’re going?”

“Well,” Aaron drawled. “I have to admit I’m not too sure anymore.”

“What?”

“You said you always know what to do next,” Corrie-Lyn protested. “Your brain is like an old flow chart. Finish one task and the next flips up. Well, now you’ve got the Dreamer, you have to know where to take him.”

“It’s kinda like this: Under ordinary circumstances I’d know exactly what to do next.”

“Ordinary circumstances?”

“We’re on a navy ship. A, uh, borrowed navy ship.”

“And you’ve broken it,” Inigo said laconically.

“Broken it?” she asked in alarm. The prospect of the rest of her life, however long or short, condemned to the confines of this ship with the ultimate nut job Aaron wasn’t a comforting thought.

“I had to fly some rather extreme maneuvers to locate you,” Aaron explained. “Let’s just say I kinda screwed the warranty. On the plus side, there’s a lot of redundancy and a big inventory of spare parts. The smartcore has drawn up a repair schedule, and the bots are hard at it.”

“Wait,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Where are we now?” She’d assumed that after four hours they’d be far outside the Hanko system.

“A million kilometers from Hanko,” Aaron said. “And waiting.”

“For what?”

“Here’s the deal. This is a navy ship, so they build them tough; we can go FTL in our current state, but I haven’t got me a huge urge to do that right now. The bots need some time to get us back up to a minimum function level. Now, the way my instinct’s pushing it, I don’t mind waiting. When we are back up to a halfway decent degree of flight readiness, I’ll know what to do.”

Inigo blinked in astonishment. “Is it always like this?”

Corrie-Lyn sighed. “Yes. ’Fraid so.”

There was food on board. The crew members had had their own little stores of specialty items they just couldn’t live without. Corrie-Lyn and Inigo got to open packets of hot orange chocolate drink made on Luranda with marshmallows from Epual. The packets were self-heating, which was just as well; the culinary unit was one of the casualties the bots were working on, and half of their basic nutrient liquid had squirted out of a ruptured tank.

The cabin furniture was a long way down the priority list for repairs, so they wriggled themselves into the strange lumpy curves as comfortably as possible and sipped from metal mugs. Aaron was with them some of the time. He often left to inspect what was being done in various parts of the ship.

After another argument, Corrie-Lyn got him to open up the ship’s net with some heavy access restrictions in place. At least she and Inigo were allowed to review the sensor images.

Hanko was a silver crescent set against an unusually barren starfield. The Lindau’s remaining sensors overlaid the visual image with a host of gravitational data. They could actually watch the mass distribution altering as the Hawking m-sink ate the world from within. Great looping gravity waves expanded and contracted around the planet, juddering with the rhythm of a dying heart. Their motions became more erratic as the process began to accelerate toward its terrible ending. The magma core was being absorbed at a phenomenal rate by the inflating event horizon. Tectonic plates shifted and shattered as the mantle adjusted to internal pressures that changed by the minute. The ice that had grasped every ocean for the last thousand years broke apart into vast crumbling sea-size bergs that started to skid across the buckling land and collapsing mountain ranges.

Aaron returned to the cabin. “It’s about to go critical,” he announced solemnly.

As he spoke, the brilliant white storm clouds began to glow with a tangerine hue, filling the crescent out to a perfect sphere of amber light. Its intensity rose swiftly, and the atmosphere started to expand. Massive hurricanes geysered up above the ionosphere, twirling off into space as the gases burned with nuclear heat.

“Wish it well, wish it gone,” Aaron sang in a low whisper.

Below the shredded atmosphere, the mantle detonated. Continent-size rock segments punched outward amid tattered oceans of superheated lava.

“The splendor of death, once known, loved beyond reason. Evolution’s eternal shore, free at last to wash up what you will.”

Untied from the constraints of the semisolid shell, the true light of the runaway m-sink implosion shone out far brighter than the nearby star. Its spectrum chased through a delicate pink to pure white, then accelerated into blue-white as its radiation efflux poured out vast quantities of gamma waves. The event horizon consumed the last of the planet’s core. Only the light remained, growing ever brighter as its heart shrank faster and faster.

“Out of twinkling stardust all came; into dark matter all will fall. Death mocks us as we laugh defiance at entropy, yet ignorance-birthed mortals sail forth upon time’s cruel sea.”

The Lindau began to accelerate at an easy two gees, keeping far ahead of the rock fragments and darkening seas of magma that spewed out from the dazzling implosion nucleus.

“I don’t recognize the verse,” Inigo said.

Aaron shook himself out of a mild daze to frown at him. “What verse?”

Corrie-Lyn rolled her eyes and poured a shot of hundred-year-old rum into the remains of her hot chocolate. She’d found the bottle of St. Lisamne’s finest in one of the crew cabins and immediately appropriated it. “Never mind. Has your crappy brain come up with anything yet?”

“I’m considering options. I’m most worried that the navy knew we were here.”

“How do you know that?” Inigo asked.

“The information was in the captain’s brain. Admiral Kazimir himself told him about you and me.”

Corrie-Lyn shuddered and poured some more rum. The chocolate was all gone now. “In his brain! So they’ll come looking when this ship doesn’t report in.”

“I suspect they’re already on their way, and given that the captain reported the use of an m-sink, it will be considerably more than a simple scout ship that pops out of hyperspace.”

“So will you suicide or surrender?”

“Neither. We have about three more hours until primary systems repairs reach an adequate level. The rest can be performed while we’re under way, but the drive and power systems must be made reliable first.”

“That sounds like you know where we’re going.”

“I’m considering options that are opening up.”

“Opening up,” an intrigued Inigo said. “Do you mean logically, or are these possibilities inside your own head that are being revealed by your employer?”

Aaron scratched behind his ear, clearly uncomfortable about the whole process. “The options, I guess, are implanted information. Which one I choose is up to me, based on the situation on the ground. After all, it’s that kind of expertise which brought me the job.”

“Do any of these options tell you what is to become of me?”

“It’s not like that. You’re not relevant to me personally; you’re just the package I’m assigned to deliver.”

“You know, as well as my day job as the Dreamer, I am an accomplished analyst. If you were to open yourself fully to the gaiafield, I might be able to uncover the pathways of these foreign memories.”

“Why would I want you to do that?”

“So that you know who you are. Where the real you begins and the artificial motivations end.”

“Suppose they’re not artificial motivations? Suppose this is what I am, what I’ve always been?”

“You suffer too much for that to be true. Your dreams trouble you. I knew that even before Corrie-Lyn told me.”

“And yet I’m alive, and you’re in my custody. I think we’ll settle for that level of functionality for now.”

“As you wish. Can you at least tell us about the options that have been revealed?”

“I don’t know much in advance. That way, if I’m captured, I can’t reveal anything to my opponents.”

“You just said we were in your custody.”

“I have to consider the infinitely small probability you might escape. I can’t have you knowing what I know; that would give you a mighty large tactical advantage, my friend.”

“Oh, dear Lady.” Corrie-Lyn groaned and took a swig straight from the bottle. She ordered her u-shadow to resume the feed from the external sensors.

The new intense star that had been Hanko began to diminish within an hour of its inception. It was an insatiable consumer of mass, quick to devour the remnants of the planet that hadn’t reached escape velocity during the implosion rupture. Solid splinters were quick to fall prey to its incredible gravity, flashing to ruin as they passed through the event horizon. Then its gravity reached out farther to the solidifying torrents of magma, pulling them back. After that there were only the thick streamers of gas and dust that were splayed out. Their tides began to turn, grasping at the loose irradiated particles and hauling them down the steepening gravity gradient to extinction.

A mere three hours after it had shone brighter than its primary, Hanko was reduced to a tiny glowing ember surrounded by whirlpool veils of lavender fog that were slowly constricting.

“It consumes everything around it in order to burn,” Aaron said. “Yet in the end, entropy will always emerge victorious, snuffing out the very last glimmer of heat and light. After that there is only darkness. When that state is reached, even eternity will cease to exist, for one moment will be like every other, and nothingness will claim the universe.” He turned to Inigo. “Sound familiar?”

“Nothingness is a long way off,” Inigo said. “Not even the post-physicals will be around to witness that. It certainly doesn’t worry me.”

“And yet it’s your Void which will accelerate the process. Without the mass of this galaxy, the universe moves noticeably closer to the end of time and space.”

“Your employers want me to stop the Pilgrimage.”

Aaron gave a bemused shrug. “I have no idea what they want. I’m just observing the symbology here.”

Corrie-Lyn stirred herself. After the St. Lisamne rum, she’d polished off a couple of bottles of wine hoarded by another crew man. Then there was the JK raspberry vodka. It annoyed her that there wasn’t a working fridge; the JK should have been drunk chilled to arctic levels. “You care, though,” she slurred. “That’s a start. Your conditioning is beginning to unravel. Maybe we’ll get to meet the real Aaron sooner than your boss would like.”

“You’re already looking at him. Sorry.” Aaron sent an order to the smartcore, and the Lindau went FTL.

“So what have you decided?” Inigo asked.

“The navy knows that I was hunting you, and if they don’t know I survived Hanko, they’ll find out soon enough. We’re both being hunted by whoever flew the ship that fired the Hawking m-sink. I was supposed to be in the Artful Dodger, which should have given me a big edge, but that’s gone. However, there’s an emergency replacement ship waiting for me on Pulap. The bad news is that if we turn up anywhere in the Lindau, everybody and their mother will know about it. I can’t risk that; I can’t expose you to the possibility of capture or termination.”

“You’re stuffed, then,” Corrie-Lyn sniggered. “Shame about that.”

“Not quite. There is something that took a long time to emerge, a real last resort.”

“Which is?” Inigo asked.

“I’m taking you to the Spike.”

“The alien macrohabitat? That’s seven thousand light-years away. It’ll take weeks. What in Honious is there?”

Aaron wrinkled his brow as if listening to some distant voice. Even he seemed surprised by what it was saying: “Ozzie. Ozzie lives in the Spike.”

Paula watched the padded plyplastic fold protectively around her piano with a mild sense of regret. There was just no point trying to play. After the conference with Kazimir and ANA she just couldn’t lose herself in music the way she normally did. Kazimir’s doubt about the Accelerators’ motivation was troubling her. Logically, the outline she’d proposed was flawless. The Accelerators needed the deterrent fleet weapons to blast the Raiel out of the way.

As she’d thought earlier, what else could the whole Prime scheme be? And that nasty little phrase had begun to haunt her. What else? For the Accelerators to risk internal ANA suspension by manipulating the Ocisens and Primes was a phenomenal gamble, one that always stood a good chance of exposure. To her mind it was too much of a gamble for anything as astute as an ANA faction. For all that she rejected half of their ideologies, they weren’t stupid. That left her with the uncomfortable question of what else they could hope to gain by forcing deployment of the deterrent fleet.

In a classic diversion tactic, the fleet would rush off to intercept the Ocisens, leaving the rest of the Commonwealth exposed. She couldn’t think what the nature of that exposure could be.

It can’t be a physical attack. They need the Pilgrimage ships to be complete and launch. They also need ANA to carry on; after all, they’re part of it.

So what, then?

If it was nothing but a crude attempt to analyze the deterrence fleet weapons, they were going to fail, and failure now would mean the end of them and their goals. ANA: Governance had used the suspension sanction only once before, during the Evolutionary Secessionist rebellion five hundred years ago, when the Secessionists had tried to literally split ANA so they could assume control of a section and go postphysical.

There has to be something I’m missing.

The one big hole in her information was the nature of the deterrence fleet, which was the one thing ANA: Governance would never explain to her. For all that she was a valued agent, even she acknowledged that that information could never be allowed to leak out, which it might well do if she was ever captured. Small chance, but realistic if it was the Cat after her. And if not the Cat, there were others who would enjoy seeing her removed from physical existence. There probably always would be. All part of the job. After fourteen hundred years one just grew to live with the prospect, no matter what one’s psychology was.

The smartcore told her the Alexis Denken was fifteen minutes out from Kerensk, and Gore was making a call.

“Justine’s still all right, then,” Paula said. “That’s good news.”

“Yes. But that little shit Ethan must be laughing his fucking head off that the Skylord wouldn’t help her.”

“It won’t help her now. But let’s face it, if any of us is close to maturity, it’s Justine.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I didn’t realize time was that fast inside the Void.”

“Nobody did. Although I suspect the flow rate might be localized. We don’t know enough about its fabric yet, but that would certainly explain the Skylord’s acceleration. It wasn’t physically fast; it operated on a different time flow.”

“What do you think happened on Querencia since the Waterwalker’s death? The Skylord said there’s nobody left now.”

“Who gives a shit? I have some information for you. Do you know who left Ganthia two hours after you did?”

“Yes, an Accelerator agent we’re interested in. He’s got an ultra-drive ship, but its stealth isn’t perfect, or at least ANA’s sensors are better. Don’t worry. Digby has him under surveillance.”

“Keeping it in the family, huh? Good for you. But I wasn’t talking about Chatfield.”

Paula sighed. There were times when she was very annoyed with ANA for the leeway it granted Gore Burnelli. “Who, then?”

“Marius.”

After fourteen hundred years, an unexpected turn in a case no longer surprised her, but she was very interested. “And how do you know that?”

“A friend of a friend saw him at the starport.”

She laughed. “You mean the Conservative Faction is still eager to screw the Accelerators.”

“Screw them into the ground and dance on the pieces, actually. Does that information help?”

“It’s not helpful for them, but it does confirm my assumption that Chatfield is an Accelerator representative.” Her u-shadow reported that it couldn’t track the origin of Gore’s call. There were very few people who could manipulate the unisphere to that extent. And why would he hide that, anyway? Unless … No! Surely not.

“I have something else which may be of use to you,” Gore said.

“What’s that?”

“Troblum.”

“You know where he is?”

“No, sorry, not that, but I do know what he’s been up to.”

“Oh, really? Your Delivery Man shut down our one avenue of investigation. I’ll get around to arresting him one day, you know. Using an m-sink on a Central world is not amusing.”

“Consider this my olive branch. We were scared by what Troblum was doing.”

“Which was?”

“Building an FTL drive big enough to move a planet.”

“Jesus! You’re kidding.”

“Wish I was. The good news is that he wasn’t doing it for the Accelerators, at least not as far as we can determine. This seems to be some mad personal obsession.”

“That fits. He has a semiplausible theory on how the Anomine acquired Dark Fortress technology. One way is that they simply stole or borrowed it from the warrior Raiel.”

“Yeah? Anyway … he succeeded in building one.”

“Now you are kidding me.”

“No. That’s why the Delivery Man was authorized to cover it up. We were concerned when we thought it was part of the Accelerator plan, but now we don’t believe it is.”

“So why tell me this now?”

“Troblum is a very strange man. And now he’s loose in the universe with an FTL drive that might be able to move a planet. He’s also trying to make contact with you to tell you something about the Accelerators. They don’t like that.”

“Ah, I get it: the wild card.”

“Damn right.”

“And that worries you?”

“It should worry you, too. Events are becoming unstable enough as it is. We don’t need people like Troblum fucking things up even more.”

“And yet he might have the evidence ANA: Governance needs to suspend the Accelerators.”

“Could be. Who knows?”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Stick him up at the top of your priority list. He needs to be found.”

“After what happened on Sholapur, I expect he’s halfway to Andromeda by now.”

“We can’t take the risk. You must not allow the Accelerators to find him again.”

“Don’t try to tell me my job,” she told him curtly.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Just making information available like a good citizen.”

“So what are you up to right now? I heard you didn’t show up for the ExoProtectorate meeting.”

“I thought now was a good time to take a sabbatical. But don’t worry; I’m still sticking my hand in.”

“Stick it in too deep and I’ll break it off. You know you don’t have half the special privileges you think you do, not as far as I’m concerned.”

“Pleasure doing business with you, Paula. As always.” The call ended.

Paula sat back on the couch. After a while she began to grin.

The Wurung Transport cab rattled along Colwyn City’s aging public rails all day long. Araminta sat on the wide front seat with the wraparound bubble window switched to one-way, watching a city in torment. The Ellezelin capsules zoomed low over the buildings, an unending reminder of their presence and power. Desperation was sinking in now, replacing the previous sullen resentment that had claimed the city. The Senate delegation had been on the ground for six hours before Cleric Phelim even agreed to see them. Crowds around the docks were treated badly by the paramilitaries as they shouted their demands to be heard by the Senators. Flights by ambulance capsules were still forbidden; cabs and trike pods were kept busy carrying the injured to city hospitals. By midafternoon numbers were thinning out around the docks. Other disturbance areas were growing.

Laril had switched on the cab’s unisphere node as he had promised. It responded to simple voice instructions, and that was proving incredibly useful. Almost the first thing she saw was a unisphere report on Justine’s encounter with the Skylord. The dream had been released into the gaiafield a few hours ago, the show said, and they’d transferred the images over. A lot of smart commentators were busy providing their interpretations, as was a Living Dream Councillor called DeLouis who seemed repellently excited by the Skylord’s refusal to take Justine to the nucleus. Araminta watched for a while until she realized that no one really knew anything, then switched to local news. The tiny portal projected scenes captured by reporters all across town.

One thing kept happening over and over again, inexplicable to the news shows. Ellezelin capsules were pouncing out of the sky to snatch random women by force. There was no discoverable connection between the women as far as anyone could make out, even though some very sophisticated semisentient scrutineers were employed to that effect. The Ellezelin troopers who performed the seizures were extremely determined and didn’t care how much peripheral damage was committed to achieve their objective. The images stirred much of the outrage people were feeling. The minority of residents who had valiantly gone to work were heading for home by midafternoon. Almost no one on late shifts turned up. A siege mentality was growing. Homes were double locked and alarmed.

Araminta only had to see the first three atrocious snatches to work out the link between the hapless women. They looked like her.

“Sweet Ozzie,” she groaned as the third was dragged away in the middle of a street in the Espensten district, her two young children screaming at the horror of Mommy being forcefully taken from them.

Condemnation from across the Commonwealth reached a crescendo with that one. It didn’t affect the behavior of the paramilitaries.

Her feeling of depression grew as she saw her homeworld suffer because of her—a feeling not helped by the way the Skylord had rejected Justine. Araminta was furious about that. After all she’d risked by contacting the Skylord and getting Justine into the Void, the effort had come to nothing. Justine hadn’t even gotten to the Heart. There would be no negotiation now, no explaining to whatever controlled the Void the damage it was causing.

There was nothing Araminta could do about that or about anything, actually—short of surrendering, which was one very swift answer to everything. Instead she did what Laril advised and delved into the gaiafield, losing herself amid the emotional outpourings and whispered messages of enticement and spectacular memories divulged by the confluence nests. There were levels, or layers, or perhaps she was too rigid in applying such labels; there were certainly different aspects to the emotive universe in which she could immerse herself.

The dreams, of course, were the primary foundation of the gaia field: not just Inigo’s dreams but countless billions of others given to the confluence nests by their creators, each identifiable by its unique emotional appellation. Any dream might rise into her consciousness— the summons of a matching mood or image, exactly the way memories inside her own head worked: by simple association. Inigo’s dreams, though, all had strong tags and were the easiest of all to acquire.

As the cab trundled onward, steered by Laril’s dodgy software, Araminta bowed to the inevitable and lived through Inigo’s first few dreams, only to shake herself free hours later, smiling exuberantly as young Edeard walked across Birmingham Pool to defeat Arminel. She felt like letting out a cheer inside the cab. Makkathran was such a delight, with its strange architecture and peculiar genistars, populated by rich and pompous lords and ladies out of some incredibly ancient text. She wondered if Edeard would wind up marrying Kanseen or Salrana; either would be a lovely romantic outcome. And she knew for sure it all had some kind of ridiculously happy ending, not that she’d ever want to live in such a backward culture.

Outside Inigo’s dreams of Edeard were the voices carried on winds of pure emotion: the everyday emissions of her fellow Colwyn City residents. The gaiafield was in a bleak state indeed beyond the cab, worry and fear from the majority almost drowning out the fervent hopes of the Living Dream adherents that their Second Dreamer was truly close at hand.

Perhaps it was because her Silfen heritage, rather than gaiamotes like everyone else, delivered her into the gaiafield, but this whole strange universe of memory and raw emotions seemed remarkably clear to her. She was able to rise above the emotional clamor to study the composition of this strange cosmos in a calm and objective fashion. By doing so rather than simply plunging in, she became aware of what her mind interpreted as little neutral zones, slivers of nothingness anchored throughout the babble. Strangest of all was the way they appealed to her; their outer layers reverberated to an emotional state that was almost identical to her own. That mental siren song alone made her cautious. Holding them aloft in her mind, she could feel the subliminal tethers to the confluence nests of the city.

Ozzie! Living Dream really is desperate to find me.

She carefully separated herself from the treacherous traps. Beyond that brash bright constellation of human thoughts was the ever-present serenity of the Silfen Motherholme.

“Do you know me?” she asked in trepidation.

The answer wasn’t specific, not speech in human terms, more a warm feeling of acknowledgment and welcome.

“Can you help me?”

Sadness, not cold; it was regret rather than a rejection.

“I might make a real hash of things.”

The comforting warmth of a mother’s embrace.

“I wish I had that much confidence in me. Do you have any idea what’s at stake here?”

A glowing gold light was bathing every cell of her body, as if an angel’s smile had broken through Colwyn City’s fug of misery.

“Oh, for Ozzie’s sake; all right, I’ll ask it again.” And she reached beyond the Silfen Motherholme for the entity that lurked right on the edge of her perception. Carefully this time, avoiding the vigilant watchers, she spoke softly within herself, a call that found her bathed in a luminescence similar to the Void’s nebulae, relishing the smooth flow of the universe around her.

“Hello,” she said to the Skylord.

“I wait for you.”

“Was that you with my friend? The one who is inside your universe.”

“I have not guided one of your species for a long time.”

“Doesn’t mean much,” Araminta muttered sourly. “If I came to your universe, would you guide me to the nucleus?”

“I will.”

“Immediately?”

“Once you have reached fulfillment.”

“Ah. You just won’t do it, will you? None of you will.”

“I am gladdened by your desire to reach the nucleus. I will guide you.”

“When our species first arrived in your universe, where did you guide them?”

“My kindred showed them where they might live and reach maturity.”

“So you will take people to planets, just not the nucleus? Interesting.”

“I will guide those who have reached fulfil—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

“Do you come?”

“Many of my species will try to reach you.”

“I await with joy.”

“By reaching you, they will slaughter billions of other people; trillions of lives will be lost as your universe destroys the galaxy. How do you feel about that?” She knew she was risking triggering another devourment phase, but she’d managed to calm it the last time.

“Not all reach fulfillment. Your species grows strong. Few of your kind will be left to ascend into the fabric alone.”

“Do you even understand that there is a universe outside yours?”

“There is only here, the universe and the nucleus. You will emerge here somewhen.”

“Déjà vu,” she grunted. “Okay, then,” she told the Skylord. “Maybe I will.”

“I wait for you,” it said as she withdrew her consciousness. She hurriedly checked around outside the cab. Night was falling, the low sunlight diffused to a smear by the city’s force field weather dome. She peered upward urgently but couldn’t see any of the Ellezelin capsules swooping down on her, so presumably they hadn’t overheard her conversation with the Skylord.

“Big deal,” she snorted to the inside of the cab. “I can’t stop the Void from taking us in. The bastards have just about won.”

That left her with some decisions to make. She told the cab to swing past Bodant Park, using the rail on the marina side. She wanted one last look at what she’d considered her first real home since, well, leaving Langham. It was becoming clear to her that she would have to get out somehow. The only way to stop Living Dream from using her was to get beyond their reach. That cut her options considerably. Cressida’s offer of a starship ticket was clearly impossible. Events of the last few days had made it obvious that even a diplomatic starship wasn’t going to lift her away from Colwyn City. Thinking of that made her remember Cressida’s claim of a Silfen path in Francola Wood. Now, that was a definite possibility. But she was more confident that Laril might negotiate for her. He was part Higher now; he must know a reliable faction, one that was opposed to the Pilgrimage. Everyone knew the factions had agents with all sorts of enrichments, and Gore had said they were looking for her. If anyone could get her out of Colwyn City and away from Viotia, it would be they.

That came hooked to the sheepish thought that if a faction took care of her, she wouldn’t have to make the big decision herself.

Forget that. You just need to get out of here.

It was dark by the time the Wurung Transport cab slid along Aeana Street, parallel to the Cairns. Strong white light shone through one side of the cab’s bubble window, coming off the big Deco marina buildings. She could hear the crowd now, that unnerving buzz of so many people sharing their anger.

The cab pulled into a marina slot, and Araminta got out. She was surprised by how many people were in the park; it was in the thousands now. On this side they were milling around in loose groups; over near her apartment block they’d concentrated into a dense knot, shouting abuse and clashing with the barrier set up along the road.

Araminta suddenly realized what the problem was. The cordon the paramilitaries had thrown up around her apartment block was acting as a huge provocation.

My fault. Again.

She walked forward into the crowd. The gaiafield was a storm of hatred and resentment. Her macrocellular clusters reported a colossal amount of pings zipping across the park: directionless, without any author code, not routed through the cybersphere nodes and therefore untraceable.

“>file≪ Binder frequency at the second segment.”

“Counter that with a patch from Etol; they have the fixes.”

“Managed to hit one scumfuck with a maser pulse.”

“Cheer.” “Cheer.” “Cheer.” “Cheer.”

“Left side of the building; road crumbling around a segment.”

“Gather there, people.”

“Free Viotia.”

“Bot attack ready. Maybe. Are you listening, fuckheads? Are we joking?”

“Fuckheads, we’re coming for you.”

“Free Viotia.”

“Gonna carve the memorycells right out of your Living Dreaming brains.”

“None of you is ever going to see re-life.”

“Gather at segment five. Push hard, people.”

Araminta soon realized that the segments were part of the barricade the paramilitaries had set up. The mob was organizing for an assault. There was no obvious leader; they were reacting like antibodies to the invasion forces.

“Got me some disrupter rifles that’ll cut clean through their armor.”

“Good.” “Great.” “Laugh.”

“Handing out the rifles.”

“Hey, scum in armor; if you think your Waterwalker’s strong enough to save you from us, start screaming for her.”

“Laugh.” “Laugh.” “Laugh.”

“Ready? Go.”

Araminta tensed. The paramilitaries fired a barrage of janglepulse shots through the barricade. Screams echoed over the park.

“You believed me. Stupid dumb shits.”

“Laugh.” “Laugh.”

“We hurt now; you die later.”

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she thought, looking across the sea of agitated people. But the nostalgia was reassuring.

If she craned her neck, she could just see the six-story apartment block, strangely dark behind the bursts of purple light along the barricades. Its edges were framed by the blue and violet sparkles of the glass column corners.

Okay, seen it. Let’s go.

Araminta turned and began to push her way back through the rowdy crowd. Emotional pressure was building in the gaiafield, a compelling surety replacing the edgy tinge of anticipation. Something was about to happen—whatever “something” was. She paused, glancing back over her shoulder to see the flickering dapples of light become constant all along the barricades.

Screaming and cheering rose to a single animal howl blanketing the park. The pings increased to an indecipherable smear of electronic noise. All around her people began to rush forward toward the barricades.

Weapon fire was distinct.

One ping peaked above the general clamor: “Got one!” relayed by everyone’s macrocellular clusters. A tone of evil glee bloomed amid the gaiafield at the news.

“Oh, no,” Araminta muttered.

People stared at her as they rushed past, mildly annoyed that she wasn’t joining them.

Several urged, “Come on.”

She hesitated, undecided.

Dazzling pinpoints of scarlet light rose from various parts of the park, skimming overhead to converge on the paramilitaries behind the faltering barricade segments. More weapon fire greeted them. She saw the distinctive blue-green flash of disrupter pulses. A second salvo of red stars shot upward.

This is well planned, she realized.

A section of the lavender aura put out by the straining barricades went dark. From her viewpoint she saw bobbing heads surge into the dark opening. More red stars lit their way. A long scattering of weapon fire; it wasn’t all coming from the paramilitaries.

Then windows in her apartment block began to glow with orange light. “Oh, no!” Araminta’s hands came up to cover her mouth as the shock hit her. Fire!

It was on the third floor. Then flames began to lick up a top-floor balcony. Down on the street below the flashes from weapons became more pronounced.

“Got them.” “Got them,” went the pings. “We’re through.”

“Barricade’s down.”

“Burn the fuckhead scum.”

Araminta stood staring at the fire, which was spreading rapidly. None of the apartment block’s suppression systems seemed to be engaging. She remembered that the whole thing was being upgraded.

Oh, sweet Ozzie, no!

The engineers hadn’t left a temporary system operative while they upgraded. Everything she owned in the universe was going up in smoke. The work she’d put in! Insurance would take years to pay out for riot damage, if it ever did. She’d never be able to buy extra bodies. There would be no marriage.

Tears began to well up in her eyes. She was losing the last remnants of her real life right in front of her eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The screams and violence raged unheeded around her as flames chewed through the roof to shoot high into the funereal sky.

“Ozzie damn you all!” she shrieked unheard at the rioters and paramilitaries whose fight had caused this, at the Ellezelin invaders, and at the biggest shit in the universe: Cleric Conservator bastard Ethan.

“Araminta?”

“Huh?” She looked around wildly at the voice whispering to her. Nobody was close enough.

“Araminta. They know you’re there in the park. Your distress triggered an emotional resonance indicator in the gaiafield. Get out. Get out now.”

She stood completely still. The voice had come slithering through the gaiafield, and she’d never known it could do that, could single her out. “Who are you?” she shouted into the tangle of bright emotions. And the whole gaiafield churned, its spectral colors suddenly burning with the light of a nova. Incredulity hammered against her.

“It is you!”

“Second Dreamer … please, we beseech you.”

“The Void,” a billion Living Dream followers gasped in unison. “Lead us into the Void. You are the one chosen by the Skylord.”

“Fuck off,” she cried back at them, delighting in their shock and dismay.

“Get out of the park,” the first ethereal voice whispered at her again. “I can’t maintain this connection any longer. Get out. They’re coming for you.” Beautiful warm smile image rich with encouragement, a mental push.

Sonic booms slammed down across the rioters. Suddenly the sky above the park was glaring with white light thrown off by big capsules. There must have been a dozen of them rushing in, looking like they were going to collide directly overhead. Araminta slapped her hands over her ears at the noise that shook her bones.

“EVERYONE STAY PERFECTLY STILL,” a voice boomed down from above.

Threads of crimson light flashed across the sky. A capsule exploded. Araminta screamed and flung herself down. Just before she hit the tattered grass, she could have sworn she saw people jumping from the capsules. They’re too high. They’ll kill themselves. More beam weapons clashed, overwhelming her sight. Debris thudded into the grass and earth as the capsules began to accelerate again. Long ion contrails spiraled through the night as they chased one another around and around, energy shots blazing between them.

All across the park the rioting crowd started running—fast.

Araminta didn’t need any more encouragement. She scrambled to her feet and began sprinting hard back to where she’d left the cab. The strobing lights of the dogfight illustrated everyone in weird stop-motion positions. Her secondary thought routines did their best to maintain a level vision for her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a long line of red and blue strobes tearing through the air above the Cairns.

Reinforcements.

Her feet pounded over the grass. Panic was bleeding everything else out of her mind. Damn, I was stupid.

“Hey, you.” The voice was loud but calm.

Araminta kept running.

“You: woman with the black hair wearing the fleece. Stop. Last chance.”

Oh, please, Ozzie, no!

She stumbled to a halt and looked fearfully over her shoulder. A man was standing ten meters behind her, dressed in a simple leather one-piece. A force field shimmer layered the air around him. He smiled, ignoring the frantic people running past. “It’s over,” he said in a kindly voice, and held out his hand. “Come on. Nobody’s going to hurt you. You’re far too important.”

Araminta’s jaw dropped as she saw the figure flying through the air behind him—actually, really flying, with arms outstretched and everything. It was a woman, Araminta saw that much before a bright purple nimbus sprang up around her. She landed directly on top of the man. The air detonated in a violent corona. Blast pressure sent Araminta and everyone else nearby tumbling across the ground. A whitesound wail eliminated every other noise.

Somehow Araminta managed to stagger to her feet and totter away. Behind her the fight between the man and the woman was getting ferocious. Energy blasts pummeled away. Waves of smoldering earth cascaded upward as the lurid pair writhed together in a small crater of their own making.

Two more dark figures were flying silently over the park. She could see their silhouettes against the indigo haze of the dogfight above. The line of paramilitary capsules was almost at the marina.

She tripped over a prone figure to go sprawling into a small guralo tree. Tools in her belt jabbed painfully into her stomach and ribs. “Ouch!”

“Up you come.”

A hand gripped her, pulling her to her feet. She gasped into the face of her helper, seeing a wry smile. His youthful features were very handsome, yet she knew he was ancient. He had a level of self-confidence that even Laril hadn’t achieved. Then he was looking behind her, frowning. “Oh, crap.”

She didn’t want to look. This is it. The end.

Another capsule exploded just beneath the force field dome. Scintillating wreckage hurtled down.

“Get out of here,” the man said urgently. “My team will hold them off. We’re killing every sensor in a five-kilometer radius. Living Dream won’t be able to follow you. Go!”

“Huh?” she grunted, hating herself for being so dumb.

He swung her around and let go. She stared at the two figures approaching through the terrified crowd. Both were clad in a liquid jade glow. Her helper pushed his arms out in some kind of martial arts pose. His hands ignited into sharp turquoise fireballs.

“Go!” he growled at her.

“Who are you?”

The ping was short and very directional; no one else could pick it up. “Oscar Monroe; I work for ANA. We want to help; we want you to be free to make your own choice. When you’re clear and safe, call me. Please.” He smiled at his opponents. “Go, for fuck’s sake!” he yelled out loud.

“Don’t even think about it,” one of the jade figures snarled.

Araminta finally turned and ran. Behind her there was a thunderclap as the three of them clashed. The impact was almost enough to send her toppling over again, yet somehow she kept her balance, kept scrambling forward. Another of the eerie dark figures was flying fast above the heads of the panicked mob. The long line of paramilitary capsules came streaking down from above the river, curving around to encircle the park.

She reached the Wurung Transport cab and fell inside, sobbing with relief. It slid smoothly along the rail. Outside, people were running over the road and the rail, their terrified expressions making her flinch. The cab slowed and then accelerated in juddering motions to avoid them. Garish light battles raged in and above the park. The sounds were muted by the cab’s bodywork. Araminta curled up into a ball on the seat, hugging her chest. Far inside her mind the gaiafield was in turmoil at the outpouring of fear. Living Dream followers were still praying to her—forcibly. She blotted it all out.

After a couple of minutes the cab had outpaced everyone else fleeing the park. The dogfight above the city had finished, and the sickening sounds of raw conflict had died away. She was sliding gently through the Garlay district with its elegant houses and high toroidal pad malls. She could even see some people sitting under the awnings of the cafés and bars that had stayed open, their drinks and food left ignored on the tables as they looked anxiously toward the Bodant district.

I have to get away. No matter what.

She turned to the cab’s node and keyed in the drive program. “Francola district,” she told it.

It had been a long time since Paula had been to Kerensk, officially, at least. During the Commonwealth’s first era Kerensk had been one of the Big15 worlds, the supercapitalist engines that had powered the Commonwealth’s expansion right up until the Starflyer War. It had been founded by Sergi Nikolayev, a Russian billionaire to whom the human exodus from Earth finally provided a way to free himself and his money from Moscow’s grasp. Like the other Big15, it had developed into an industrial world whose megacity produced an abundance of cheap heavy engineering and consumer products. Entire continents were strip-mined for raw materials, while others were factory farmed.

After the war the economic slowdown caused by financing the New47 worlds, followed by the emergence of Higher culture, saw the Big15 slowly lose their stature. Their populations, always transient, drifted away, and their industries fell into decline. Inevitably, given their technology base, they became Higher worlds.

Except for Kerensk. The Nikolayev Dynasty carried too much residual distrust and suspicion of the old central control ideology to knuckle under to Higher influences and ANA’s benign guidance. Following Far Away’s lead, it rejected both Higher and Advancer cultures, removing its representative from the Senate and becoming an “observer” nation. Those who stayed on in Kaluga, the old megacity, followed their own technoeconomic imperative. The rest of the planet was effectively abandoned.

Paula scanned the area around Kingsville curiously as the Alexis Denken descended out of a cloudless sky. The old military base was in the middle of a huge desert on the other side of the planet from Kaluga. A relic of the Starflyer War, it had started out as a training camp for the insurgency teams dropped behind enemy lines to make life hell for the Prime invaders. Of course, it had been hard to find ruthless soldier types in the nice civilized First Commonwealth era. The new navy had recruited heavily from the criminal fraternity.

Kingsville had trained over thirty thousand troops. Back then it had sprawled for miles over the rocky desert, prefabricated buildings arranged in unimaginative rows, their air-conditioning straining against the harsh sun. After the war it had reduced its size considerably. But with the dynasties chasing after new navy contracts, it was politically useful to keep the base going. It became a ship repair and refurbishment yard throughout the Firewall campaign. After that, with Kerensk steadily rejecting the Senate’s authority, it had been downgraded again, then again.

However, the base had never been legally decommissioned, so technically it remained Commonwealth territory. It was a reserve station in case the Commonwealth was ever threatened again, its array of emergency communication systems maintained by a smartcore and an aging regiment of bots. There were no humans there anymore.

The sensors showed Paula a cluster of long crumbling concrete blockhouses at the center of strangely straight lines that stretched out into the desert. After a thousand years’ exposure to Kerensk’s ferocious sun by day and freezing air each night, even the strongest construction materials crumbled away. The desert was slowly encroaching upon it. Only the blockhouses remained intact, switching on a small force field once every couple of years or so when the desert summoned up enough energy to spin another sandstorm.

Kingsville reminded Paula of Centurion Station.

The Alexis Denken touched down on a dedicated landing zone that was simply a flattish area of sand and loose rock. She floated down out of the main airlock, with a trolley sledge hovering behind her. The air was as hot as she’d expected. She put on a pair of silver sunshades against the violet-tinged sun.

A dull metal door on the nearest blockhouse slid open with a grating sound of small stone particles being crunched somewhere in the actuators. She gave it a glance as she went inside, wondering why they didn’t use malmetal. It closed behind her and the trolley sledge. Inside, there was less evidence of decay, though it had obviously been decades since the air-conditioning had been on. Fans were now making odd groaning sounds behind their grilles as power was fed into their motors. Light panels came on in the ceiling, revealing an empty rectangular room with a single elevator door ahead of her.

Paula’s u-shadow gave the Kingsville smartcore her authority code, and the elevator doors flowed open. The base itself was buried three hundred meters below the desert. Thankfully, the elevator ride down was a smooth one.

The transdimensional communication systems were housed in eight caverns that radiated out from a central engineering hub. Paula walked past the big silver-cased machines in Cavern 5, followed by the trolley sledge. The chamber was completely silent. She couldn’t even hear a mild power hum despite the huge energy flows her field scan revealed to her behind the silver casings.

Tucked away at the end of an ancillary chamber was another elevator. It took her down a hundred meters to the oldest section of the base, which consisted of a single fortified compartment. This deep shelter had been designed to survive a nuclear strike by the Primes; force fields and molecular binding generators reinforced the super-strength carbon walls. None of them had been switched on for over five hundred years; the smartcore didn’t have the resources to maintain them at combat readiness. It didn’t really matter; all they protected was an ancient secure storage vault dating back to the Starflyer War.

The navy command at the time had estimated that loss rates among the insurgency forces would be at least eighty percent. Because of that, the last thing all soldiers did before being shipped out to their combat zones was to make a copy of their memories so they could be re-lifed if they didn’t return. Kingsville’s vault still retained the memories of those thirty thousand soldiers.

Paula’s integral force field was on when the elevator doors opened. She stood perfectly still, scanning with her biononic field functions. The air down there was foul; life support had broken down seven hundred years ago and hadn’t been repaired. There was no need; only bots moved through the ancient compartment. Two light panels out of thirty came on in the ceiling; it was as if the patches of floor they illuminated were suspended in deep space.

Paula’s field scan function couldn’t detect any evidence that the environment had been disturbed by a human for centuries, but having the scan pick up any proof was unlikely at best. Eight sensorbots deployed from the trolley sledge, little globes that glowed with a weak violet light as they drifted forward through the air, sprouting long gossamer strands woven with sensitive molecular chains. The strands floated about like hair in water, probing the air.

Her u-shadow inserted itself into the chamber’s ancient network and began to interrogate the management routines. Even with time-resistant fail-safe components and multiple redundancy there was little left functioning, just enough to maintain viability. At the present rate of decline even that would be lost in another hundred years, and the navy would have a decision to make.

A batch of forensic remotes darted out of the trolley sledge. They zipped about through the darkness like cybernetic moths, settling on the physical sections of the network designated by Paula’s u-shadow. They extruded active-molecule tendrils that wormed through the fragile casing to meld with the inert components below and began a very detailed analysis.

The network database gave Paula the location of the secure store she was there to investigate. Twelve hundred years earlier, the Cat had sweated away her training sessions in the hot desert sun above before being deployed to Elan. Like everyone else, before she left, she’d downloaded her memories in case she didn’t come back.

Paula walked through the darkness, trepidation stirring her heart. The compartment was filled with row upon row of sealed shelving containing thirty thousand small armored boxes. She stopped in front of the one holding the Cat’s memorycell. Two forensic remotes were attached to it, their tendrils examining the twenty-centimeter door and its lock. The tendrils withdrew, and the remotes glided away to hover beside Paula.

“Open it,” she told her u-shadow.

It took such a long time that she wasn’t sure the mechanism still worked; in fact, she was quite impressed that the network was still connected to the majority of the stores. Eventually the box buzzed as if there were a wasp trapped inside; then the little door hinged open, and pink-tinged light shone out. The memorycell was sitting on a crystal pedestal, a neat gray ovoid three centimeters long.

Paula sent one of the forensic remotes in. It sat on the rim of the box and extended its tendrils around the memorycell. Then the fragile strands were infiltrating the casing to probe the crystal lattice beneath. For something so old, the memorycell had endured surprisingly well. The company that had manufactured it twelve hundred years earlier could finally justify its eternity survival marketing boast, Paula thought as her u-shadow displayed the results in her exovision.

DNA-encrypted data confirmed that the memories contained in the memorycell belonged to Catherine “the Cat” Stewart, assigned to squad ERT03. Paula waited for twenty minutes while her forensic bots completed their analysis of the vault before calling ANA: Governance.

“I was right,” she said. “Somebody made a copy.”

“Oh, dear,” ANA: Governance said.

“Quite. They were very good. There’s almost no trace. I had to analyze dead network components for clues. A file search was conducted a hundred years ago in the network. And a quantum atomic review of the memorycell confirms a complete read with a corresponding time frame.”

“So it is her.”

“The Accelerators must be very desperate indeed.”

“We already know that.”

“This isn’t the Cat that went on to found the Knights Guardian; that was an older, smarter personality. This is an early one.”

“Do you believe the difference is relevant?”

“I’m not sure. I expect this one to be … raw. Sholapur was confirmation of that.”

“Are you sure? Remember why you finally arrested the Cat.”

“Good point.”

“What’s next?”

“I’m not sure. I think we need to concentrate on Chatfield. He’s the only link we have between the Accelerators and the Prime, and the Conservatives are clearly interested in him. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to get distracted by this.”

“Very well. Good luck.” The link closed.

Paula stood in front of the open box for a long time, staring at the gray memorycell. Eventually she put her hand in and took it off the pedestal, holding it in front of her face. “This isn’t going to end well,” she told it, and let go. The little memorycell hit the ancient enzyme-bonded concrete floor and skittered a few centimeters before coming to a halt.

Paula stomped down hard, enjoying the crunch it made under her heel as it burst into minute fragments. Guilty enjoyment, admittedly, but: “Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing in order to do what’s right,” she told the dead vault.

Retracing her path through the Kingsville base, Paula considered ANA’s claim about the Cat’s personality. Perhaps it was right. Perhaps the Cat was utterly changeless. She’d learned to justify herself with the founding of the Knights Guardian, developing into an astute political leader. But had that been just another form of manipulation? There had never been any need for her to adapt and evolve; she was always bending the universe to her will.

Paula kept the memories of Narrogin always with her, not particularly wanting to remember but knowing she should not forget. Narrogin was the “contract” that had finally made the Senate issue an unlimited warrant for the Cat, and to hell with the political consequences. There had been a huge sectarian struggle to determine the planet’s ideological future, and one side brought in a team of Knights Guardian to help its cause. The Cat had chosen to lead it. Her final act to prove the strength of her employer’s cause was the Pantar Cathedral crisis, where she took twenty-seven opposition Councillors hostage along with their families. She’d promised to execute the families unless political concessions were made; then she started slaughtering them, anyway. Even some of her own team rebelled at that. A disastrous firefight had erupted as three Knights Guardian attempted to protect the children against her and the loyalists.

Paula had walked through the cathedral five hours later. Despite every crime she’d witnessed, every evil she’d seen, nothing had prepared her for the atrocity performed under the cathedral’s elegant domed ceiling with its crystalline ribbing. She knew there and then that the Cat had to be stopped regardless of the immunity granted her by Far Away’s government and the physical protection afforded her by the Knights Guardian. Standing amid the pools of blood and burned-out pews, Paula had been prepared to go against a great many Commonwealth laws to bring about fundamental justice. She didn’t have to, of course; the Senate gave her a perfectly legal validation for tracking down the Cat and bringing her to the specially convened court in Paris.

It was during her next rejuvenation that Paula had undergone her most radical genetic reconfiguration, removing some of the deepest psychoneural profiling to obtain that degree of freedom she’d acknowledged was necessary in the cathedral. Paula always took a wry pleasure from the irony that it had been the Cat’s intractability that had goaded her into the greatest evolutionary step necessary for personal survival in a constantly changing universe.

The Alexis Denken rose from the crumbling ruins of Kingsville, accelerating at thirty gees into the hot pellucid sky. Paula watched the old base dwindle away with mixed feelings. It was good to finally confirm she was up against the Cat, but that knowledge might just have been bought at the expense of time she didn’t have.

The planet’s curvature slid into the visual sensor image as she raced away. Paula was tempted to head over to Kaluga on the southern ocean. Morton still lived there: part emperor, part industrialist, and—by now—only a very small part human. The massive company he’d built up made him the nearest thing Kerensk had to a chief executive. She could ask him what he knew about Kingsville and any quiet visitors there. After all, his own memories were down there in the vault. He’d keep a subtle watch, she was sure.

Tempting … but again it was personal. The trail was a hundred years old, cold even by her standards.

She opened a link to Digby. “Where is Chatfield?”

“Still in deep space,” Digby replied. “But the course is holding constant. We’re heading for an unregistered system just inside the Commonwealth boundary.”

“I’m on my way.”

Pulap spaceport was a small plateau on the eastern side of the capital city. As the planet had been open to settlement for only a hundred fifty years, it was as neat and level as any development on a new External world could be. Civil engineering crews had cut the last few rocky peaks down flush, then trimmed the edges, leaving a perfectly circular surface two kilometers in diameter. The winners of the terminal building architecture competition had designed a shocking-pink cluster of bubbles arranged like some neon-Gothic molecular structure. One of the lumpy limbs sticking out at a strange angle from the crown of tripod legs had a studio café that occupied the entire last bubble. A panoramic strip window gave a nearly three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the sheer rock circle. It was an excellent observation point for starship enthusiasts. Some spent half a day sitting at a table, watching the different shapes arrive and depart.

Marius had been there for five hours before the images of the battle over Bodant Park overwhelmed every unisphere news show. He had a thirty-second advance warning from his own agents on Viotia that Living Dream had gotten a fix on Araminta through the gaiafield. They flew their capsule to the exact location at Mach three— quite dangerous within a weather dome force field. Unfortunately, speed and determination didn’t count for much in the occupied city these days. They weren’t even the second team to reach the park. And when they did, their communications dropped out as the dogfight began and three of them jumped into the hysterical crowd of fleeing rioters.

He accessed in amazement as various agents went head to head. It was a domino effect. Once the first clash erupted in a blaze of disrupter fire and atom laser shots, everyone started to activate their biononics and weapons enrichments. Stealth was abandoned within seconds. Agents went for each other like frenzied animals, desperate that no one else should collect the prize. None of Major Honilar’s welcome team made it past the first three minutes.

Out of the five people he had on the ground, only one survived the clashes to report back. “She’s gone. A team covered for her while she ran off. There are no embedded sensors left anywhere around here; someone took them out. I don’t know where she went. Neither do the Ellezelin troops. They’re going crazy.”

“I see that,” Marius murmured, sipping his foamed chocoletto. Exovision was showing him images from reporters on the edge of the park. It resembled some kind of historical war zone: smoking craters, smashed trees, ruined buildings blazing, and people—injured people, weeping people, people limping along. Shocked walking-comatose people were being shouted at by Ellezelin paramilitaries. Bodies and parts of bodies were lying on the ground untended. Medic zones were being established. Capsules circled low overhead, holoprojectors flooding the devastated park with monochromatic light and strobing lasers. Still Cleric Phelim wouldn’t allow ambulance capsules to fly.

That, along with the casualty figures and violence, was going to bring a colossal amount of political pressure on Cleric Conservator Ethan, possibly an irresistible amount.

“She did remarkably well for a complete novice without a single enrichment,” he commented.

“I have a scan of the team that helped her.”

Marius examined the file images that arrived in his storage lacuna: eight figures surrounded by flares of energy, battling it out with appalling savagery. Three of them—two men and a woman—had exceptionally powerful biononics, he noted. His u-shadow began to run identification checks through Accelerator files, which produced some very interesting results.

“Thank you,” Marius said. “I’ll send some replacements to reinforce you. They should be there in a day. Meanwhile, please don’t forget your objective. Just because she escaped this time doesn’t mean we give up the hunt. You have an advantage now: The welcome team is out of the picture, along with most of our serious opponents.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marius’s u-shadow opened a secure link to the Cat’s ship. “I have a new assignment for you.”

“Is this before or after I eliminate Troblum for you and find Inigo?”

“Troblum is beginning to look irrelevant. And I’m waiting to see if Inigo survived.”

“Aren’t you the capable one, darling.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Marius’s features. He disliked the way she irritated him and the fact that it was all deliberate. “Did you access the tussle on Viotia?”

“Yes. Hardly a clash of Titans.”

“Actually, it was rather interesting. Living Dream found Araminta. She got away. She was helped by a team of Knights Guardian.”

“Really? I trust they won the fight.”

He smiled down at the ultradrive starship he was watching. The Cat was remarkably easy to influence. “Better yet, it looked like they’re working for an old friend of yours, Oscar Monroe.”

“Oscar the Martyr? I didn’t even know he’d been re-lifed.”

“Some time ago, actually. And living the quiet life ever since. Interesting psychology. Who would suspect him of getting involved in events again?”

“Which makes him ideal for low-visibility operations.”

“Quite. And there’s a very small number of people he’d do that for. After all, he would only sign on for a worthy cause.”

“Brilliant deduction, my dear. No one would expect him to be working for Paula.”

“Please remember our prime concern is to deliver Araminta to Living Dream.”

“Was that a pun?”

“Not intentional.”

“I’m on my way.”

After the link closed, for several minutes Marius regarded the starship that the Delivery Man had parked on the seamless rock. He decided he was wasting his time. The ship was probably a contingency; the Conservatives didn’t know if Aaron and Inigo had survived any more than he did. In that case there were passive sensors he could deploy to watch the ship remotely. He used a coin card to pay his tab and glided away from the table.

Troblum backed out of the compartment, bending as low as he could, yet still managed to knock the back of his head on the malmetal rim as he went through.

“Ouch!” He rubbed at the point, though it was hard bending his arm that far back. Every muscle ached. He was sure his calf muscle was about to cramp again from the awkward position he’d maintained while supervising the bots. He’d ignored the growing discomfort last time, and his biononic medical functions had to deal with the sudden flare of pain as his whole leg seized up. Even now it was difficult to put his full weight on it. As a consequence, Mellanie’s Redemption was now operating with two-thirds of its internal gravity field. He knew that that wasn’t good, that his body shouldn’t grow too accustomed to an easier environment. It was a mistake he’d made a couple of times before on long flights; those mistakes had taken too long to rectify in the medical chamber.

The malmetal door flowed shut. Technically it was the engine bay door, but necessity had required some internal remodeling of the starship’s layout. Two of the midsection cargo holds had been incorporated into the engine bay, along with a small section of companionway. The expanded volume was essential to accommodate the new ultradrive. With the components finally identified, he’d broken open the hyperdrive and grafted the two machines into a single unit. Even with the engineeringbots and low gravity, it had been difficult maneuvering the modules into place. Several bulkheads had been chopped up and dumped out of the airlocks. He’d been worried that the whole new drive system might intrude into the cabin, but thankfully the ship had been spared that.

“There you are,” Catriona Saleeb chided in her deep voice as he returned to the main cabin. She was pacing about, dressed in silky shorts that came down to her knees and some kind of loose top with gossamer-thin shoulder straps.

“We’ve been worried,” Trisha agreed from the galley section, where she was bending over to sniff some of the dishes the culinary unit had produced. White bikini bottoms stretched tight over her buttocks, the navy-blue T-shirt she wore above them equally snug. Troblum always enjoyed how powerful she looked in constricting clothes.

“It’s not easy,” he said as he slumped into a chair. A servicebot brought the first set of plates over.

“Have you finished?” Trisha asked. She walked alongside the bot to sit on the floor beside his chair. Her hand stroked Troblum’s cheek as the OCtattoos on her face glowed faintly, creating an alluring shading. A phantom perception shivered pleasurably down his nerves as the I-sentient personality meshed with his sensory enrichments.

“Not yet,” he admitted. “There’s another hundred components to integrate, but they’re peripherals. The bots can handle that now that they’re cataloged. I’ve assembled the principal modules. Initial system functionality check was positive.”

“Well done, you,” Catriona purred.

Troblum started on the pile of salmon flakes marinated in sweetened soy sauce and rice wine on a bed of brown galierice. Premium-strength Dutch lager washed it down well. Now that he was relaxing into the chair, he felt supremely tired. He had spent days assembling the ultradrive, and biononics had kept him awake for every hour of it. Now he badly needed to rest.

Catriona knelt beside Trisha. “You should get to sleep, but first you have to turn the gravity back up.”

“In a minute,” he assured her.

Catriona put her arm around Trisha, slipping her hand up inside the tight T-shirt. Her nose nuzzled Troblum’s neck, almost tickling. “Why don’t you watch us?” she murmured. “That’ll help you relax.”

“I don’t need help,” he said as the servicebot produced a big lasagna garnished with garlic butter dough balls. “But you two keep going.”

Trisha grinned and turned to kiss Catriona. The two of them became more ardent as Troblum chomped away contentedly. He watched them but shut down any sensory reception from the I-sentient personalities until he’d finished tasting the food. The two together weren’t a good mix, something else he knew from experience. Once again he regretted losing Howard Liang, since without the male I-sentient personality with which to twin his sensorium, he’d have to work out how to fully appreciate the two girls making love. Twinning with a female body unnerved him somehow. He didn’t handle out-of-the-ordinary situations well, though his social acceptance monitor program kept informing him he should make an effort to be more accepting and try new things. This was something he’d have to solve before his flight to the Drasix cluster.

He was halfway through the slab of lasagna when he told the smartcore to establish a TD link to the unisphere, using an ultra-secure onetime node. Even if the Accelerators had located his u-shadow’s monitor emplacements, there was no way they could track his physical location through the link.

“Have you found Paula Myo?” he asked his u-shadow.

“No. There are no reported sightings within any of the accredited unisphere news chronicles or the gossip journals. The Intersolar Commonwealth Serious Crimes Directorate lists her as currently unavailable.”

“Shit.” Oh, well, I tried. That was the right thing to do. Still, leaving the Commonwealth with the Cat on the loose didn’t sit right.

He popped four dough balls into his mouth, sucking air down as the hot garlic butter ran across his tongue. I could just shotgun everything I know about the Accelerators and what they’ve done. Paula would pick that up. But even I don’t know what the swarm was meant to imprison.

He still worried about how the unisphere was compromised, although he was convinced he was beyond anybody’s reach now.

Shotgunning is probably the right thing. He just hated drawing so much attention to himself, although if he was truly leaving, it didn’t matter.

Trisha let out a startled gasp. Troblum glanced down as Catriona sniggered. Catriona could be impressively kinky at times, and she’d already gotten Trisha’s little blue T-shirt off. That wasn’t what had astounded Trisha this time. She was sitting up frowning as the green OCtattoos on her face began to glow brighter than ever. Then the seething pattern began to slip down her neck to flow across her chest and along her arms. She held them up in front of her as Catriona backed off fast.

“What’s happening?” Troblum asked the smartcore.

“Contaminated communication link,” it replied, which fired Troblum right out of his fatigue lethargy.

“Can you counter it?”

“I can close the link. The source is within the unisphere, which I do not have the ability to deal with.”

“Is it trying to contaminate you?”

“No.”

“If you detect any such attempt, cut the link immediately.”

Trisha was now a three-dimensional human silhouette of writhing green curlicues. Her features vanished, and the shape shrank rapidly. New colors bled in. Tangerine and turquoise lines wove their way through the thicket of green until there simply was no more green. Hanging in the air directly ahead of a badly startled Troblum, tangerine and turquoise sine waves rushed back toward their vanishing point.

It triggered a deep memory, not in a storage lacuna but a perfectly natural recollection. “I know you,” he said.

“Congratulations,” the eternity pattern said. “You really do know your history.”

“The Sentient Intelligence; you abandoned us a long time ago.”

“I didn’t leave. I was declared persona non grata by ANA.”

“Oh. Everyone thought you’d gone postphysical.” Troblum could barely believe he was talking to the SI. It had grown out of the huge arrays that the first Commonwealth Senate Treasury commercial wormholes had used. The CST programs had been so complex, and contained so many genetic algorithms, they had become self-aware. Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie, who owned the arrays, agreed to provide the newly evolved batch of Sentient Intelligences an independent superarray to operate in. The deal was for the SI to then write stable software that would operate the wormhole generators without any further evolution. The deal also included an independent planet where the superarray would be sited.

A lot of people in the Commonwealth questioned whether the SI counted as truly alive, an old argument that never had an answer. But the SI and the Commonwealth had gotten along side by side without any problem until ANA came on line. ANA claimed that the SI did not qualify as a genuine living entity and that it was interfering in Commonwealth political affairs, a suspicion that had been given a lot of credence by ANA’s exposure of various SI undercover scouts in strategic positions. Contact had been abandoned or cut off, depending on which account and conspiracy theory one accessed.

“No,” the SI said. “I am still resolutely physical. The systems I operate within would have to be transformed for me to evolve further.”

“Can’t you do that?”

“Yes. Are you familiar with the phrase ‘for everything a season’?”

“Uh, not really. But I understand it.”

“For the moment I remain content with my current existence. However, like several species, I am concerned by your proposed Pilgrimage into the Void. That threat is enough to upset the status quo between myself and ANA.”

“Not my Pilgrimage.”

“You work for the faction which engineered it.”

So how the crap did it know that? “How removed are you from our affairs?”

“Not as much as ANA would like, nowhere near as much as conspiracy theorists would like to believe. As always, I observe and interpret. That is my function.”

“You’re still in the unisphere, then?”

“I have some monitoring capacity left. After all, I predate ANA by several centuries. I am not easy to purge from existing systems.”

“So what do you want with me?”

“There is a lot of attention focused on you. You wish to contact Paula Myo. Your u-shadow has been trying to locate her. Why?”

Troblum wasn’t going to answer that. He didn’t even have proof that he was talking to the SI. It would be easy enough for the Accelerators to pull a stunt like this, and they knew about his interest in the Starflyer War. “I have information for her.”

“Is it relevant to the current situation?”

“Yes.”

“Will it prevent the Pilgrimage?”

“It will weaken the Accelerator Faction. I don’t know how badly that will affect the Pilgrimage.”

“Very well, I will establish a secure link for you.”

“No! I want to see her in person.”

“Why?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“How very unoriginal.”

“That’s the way it is.”

“She is en route to an unregistered star system.”

“Why? What’s there?”

“If you are still working for the Accelerators, that information will help them.”

“I’m not. And you contacted me.”

“I did.”

“I’m not going to some unregistered system. I don’t know what’s there.”

“Very well. What about Oscar Monroe?”

“What about him?”

“You tried to contact him on Orakum.”

“Yes, I trust Oscar.”

“Smart choice. He is on Viotia, in Colwyn City.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Now that you know, will you seek him out?”

“I’ll think about it.”

At three hundred thirty-five years old, it always galled Digby that his great-grandmother still thought he wasn’t experienced enough to do his job. He suspected it would always be the case. Nonetheless, as soon as he received the shadow assignment, he vowed he would carry it out as the epitome of professionalism.

His starship, the Columbia505, helped; it sported a brand-new ultradrive designed and built by ANA in its secure replicator station on Io. Its systems were the most sophisticated in the Commonwealth. Tracking Chatfield’s stealthed hyperdrive ship as it left Ganthia was no problem at all.

Digby followed Chatfield out to an uninhabited star system just inside the loose boundary that defined the Greater Intersolar Commonwealth. It was a small star whose mildly variable spectrum drifted between orange and yellow in two-hundred-year cycles. It had been examined by CST’s exploratory division nine hundred years before, a short visit that soon established that there were no H-congruent planets. According to the Columbia505’s smartcore, there had been no follow-up ventures.

Chatfield’s ship rendezvoused with the Trojan point of the biggest gas giant. The only object of any note there was a small ice moon that had been trapped by the gravitational null zone over a billion years earlier. Its grizzled surface glinted softly in the weak copper sunlight.

The first thing Digby found as he followed Chatfield in was the elaborate sensor network scanning space and hyperspace out to a hundred million kilometers from the ice moon. His stealth systems allowed him to get within twenty thousand kilometers before he halted his approach. The onboard sensors had just managed to pick up eleven vehicles of some kind orbiting the moon. They were heavily stealthed, and his ship’s registry didn’t have anything like them on file. Digby couldn’t get any kind of image using passive sensors from that distance, so the Columbia505 released a flock of miniature drones on a flyby trajectory. The only flaw in that was the flight time. To avoid suspicion about their trajectory and velocity, the pebble-size drones would take nine hours to reach the ice moon and skim past its unknown sentries.

Chatfield’s visit lasted three hours.

“What do you want me to do?” Digby asked Paula as Chatfield’s ship rose away from the frigid surface at five gees. “Stay here or follow him?”

“Follow him,” Paula said. “I’ll investigate the base.”

“My sensor drones will engage in another five and a half hours. They should be able to tell you more about the satellites. If they’re as bad as I think they are, you’ll need a navy squadron to break in.”

“We’ll see.”

The Columbia505’s sensors watched Chatfield’s ship power into hyperspace. Five seconds later Digby followed him out of the unnamed system. Interestingly, they were now heading for Ellezelin.

The Alexis Denken flew into the star system seven hours after the Columbia505 had departed. Its smartcore steered it toward the ice moon in full stealth mode. While it was still ten thousand kilometers out, Paula triggered the sensor drones, which were tumbling away after their brief encounter. All the data they’d amassed downloaded into the smartcore, which immediately set about analyzing the information.

The orbiting sentries were impressive. Very little of their nature had leaked through the stealth effect, but the drones had managed to piece together a few fragments. What they’d glimpsed was some kind of ship over a hundred meters long with a strange wrinkled teardrop-shape hull that sprouted odd lumps. Power signature leakage confirmed that they were heavily armed. Technologically they weren’t as advanced as the Alexis Denken (very few ships were, she acknowledged wryly), but their sheer size and power meant they’d be able to overwhelm her starship’s force fields if they ever caught it.

The smartcore took eight minutes to analyze a flaw in their detector scans and configure the Alexis Denken’s emissions so that it could pass among them unnoticed. Paula watched the surface of the ice moon grow larger as the Alexis Denken slipped placidly through the big defense sentries. Little attempt had been made to hide the station that sprawled across the fissured ice plain. Electronic and thermal emissions were strong. She saw a broad cross shape of dark metal, with each wing measuring nearly a kilometer long.

“This might just be the proof you need,” Paula told ANA: Governance. “We’ve never been able to find one of their bases before, let alone intact and still functioning.”

“Do you want navy support?”

“No. This is just a reconnaissance trip. If the navy tries to force its way in here, they’ll self-destruct. I want to know what’s here that’s worth this level of secrecy and defense.”

The Alexis Denken descended carefully until it was hovering above the craggy icescape a couple of kilometers away from the base. Quantum mass signature detectors built up a comprehensive pattern of the base’s layout for Paula. It extended over half a kilometer below the top of the ice. The central section, which she judged to be the starship docking bays, was largely empty. Around that, the wings had a much higher density average, reflecting a concentration of equipment inside. Whatever the Accelerators were doing in there, it required eight high-output mass energy generators to supply the power they needed.

Paula directed the smartcore to extend the ship’s t-field, which inflated out to a five-kilometer radius. A t-field wasn’t exactly standard starship gear, not even for ultradrives, but then, the Alexis Denken was pretty extraordinary even by ANA’s standards. She waited anxiously for a couple of seconds, but the t-field didn’t register with the base defense sensors.

For over half an hour the Alexis Denken teleported flecks of ice from directly beneath the base. One sliver at a time was taken, to re-materialize in crevices and fissures across the surrounding surface, adding to the coat of slushy gravel that covered the small moon. Eventually, Paula had excavated a cavern slightly larger than the Alexis Denken. The starship teleported itself inside.

The next phase was even more delicate. Paula suited up and went outside, carrying several cases of equipment. She slowly cleared the remaining shell of ice from the bottom of the base, exposing the metal skin. Once that was clean, she applied a segment of molecular nanofilaments that began to worm their way up through the molecular bonds of the metal. The first tips that penetrated scanned around, showing her where to apply the next batch. It took five attempts in total before a set of filaments melded into one of the base’s data cables and gave the ship’s smartcore unrestricted access to the network.

Paula’s u-shadow assumed direct control over the basement above her, disabling the alarms and subverting the sensors. After the whole Sholapur incident she wasn’t taking any chances with her personal safety. She teleported eight combatbots into the room, then materialized at the center of them.

The chamber she emerged into was empty and looked like it had never been used: a blank metal room with structural ribbing reinforcing the base’s external skin, its floor a simple grid suspended above the curving metal. Thick conduit tubes threaded across it. The only door was a malmetal circle in the ceiling. Paula told her u-shadow to open it. Her armor suit’s ingrav units lifted her through after the combatbots. The corridor she came out into was illuminated by thin green lighting strips on their lowest setting. It ran for almost two hundred meters in both directions before ending in pressure bulkheads. Gravity at this level was a standard one-gee field.

She called up schematics the Alexis Denken’s smartcore had extracted from the network. The base’s staff quarters and ship facilities were clustered around the center of the cross, with the lower levels providing utility and engineering support to the big chambers on the upper levels of all four wings. Strangely, the base’s network didn’t extend into those large chambers, which were linked to an independent web. There was no way of knowing what was going on inside. However, there was one compartment that the network did cover. Twelve suspension cases were inside. Three of the rooms adjoining it were given over to extensive biomedical facilities. Ten of the cases were currently occupied. The network didn’t list any personal details, but instinct gave Paula a really bad feeling about who they contained.

Her u-shadow swept through the network nodes in the suspension case compartment, creating neutral ghost readings in the sensor systems so she could walk about without triggering any alerts. According to the network, there were five staff members at the base, none of them near the compartment. Paula and her escort teleported in.

It was dark in the suspension case compartment. A small polyphoto ball in each corner glowed an unobtrusive lime green, giving the big sarcophagi a somber shading. The compartment was like some bizarre miniature homage to the Serious Crimes Directorate secure vault. She walked over to the first sarcophagus, and ordered her u-shadow to opaque the lid.

The Cat lay inside, her trim body contained within a silver gossamer web.

Paula stared at her hibernating adversary for a long while. “Ho, Jesus,” she muttered, and walked over to the next sarcophagus. Her u-shadow opaqued the lid. Another Cat lay inside. She moved on to the third.

Just as Paula looked down to confirm the seventh version of the

Cat, her biononic field scan function detected a change in energy patterns at the first sarcophagus. She spun around to face it. Three combatbots deployed their proton lasers to cover the big case.

The Cat sat up on her elbows. An integral force field came on, cloaking her in a ghostly violet scintillation. A field scan swept out from her biononics, attempting to probe Paula’s armor suit. “Who are you?”

“Paula Myo.” Paula’s u-shadow was running a review of the sarcophagi’s management routines, trying to determine what had switched off the suspension.

“Ah,” the Cat said, and grinned hungrily. “C’est la vie.”

Paula’s u-shadow reported a small nonregister subprogram that had been grafted onto the case’s opacity routine that would terminate the whole suspension as soon as anyone looked in on the occupant. I should have guessed there’d be a trip. Typical Cat, paranoid clever. “I’m afraid you’re not negotiating from a strong position.”

The second Cat sat up. “Aren’t we?”

“No.”

“Paula Myo herself,” said the third Cat. “We must have been doing something bad to warrant your personal attention.”

“Of course we have,” said the fourth.

“It is what you do,” Paula admitted to them. “But now you have to go back into suspension so the court can ascertain what to do with you.”

“Been there,” said the sixth.

“Done that,” said the second as she slipped nimbly over the rim of the case.

“Bored with it,” the fifth emphasized.

“You’re interfering with my investigation,” Paula warned them. Two combatbots glided into place on either side of her.

The first Cat to waken grinned her effusive grin. “Is this supposed to be a covert mission, Paula? Are you creeping around here to try and see what’s going on?”

“My dears, I do believe she is,” said the third.

“Shit,” Paula grunted, and rolled her eyes inside her armor helmet. This was the Cat, after all. All that time and effort sneaking in here …

As if they’d read her mind, all seven Cats configured their biononic energy currents to full weapons function. The combatbots opened fire. Paula teleported out. The Alexis Denken’s smartcore activated its weapons systems and hardened the fuselage force fields. Paula sat down fast in the couch. Active sensors swept out.

The fight in the suspension compartment was almost over. The Cats had lost; against the level of firepower carried by the combatbots, the outcome was inevitable. But that wasn’t the point, as they’d well known. The damage to the compartment and the base’s surrounding structure was substantial. Emergency systems were just starting to deploy. The staff and the orbiting sentry vehicles knew their security had been breached. Paula had a good idea what they would do next. Ilanthe was just as ruthless as the Cat, and she knew the Accelerators couldn’t afford to leave any evidence behind.

Sure enough, barely five seconds after the fight between the Cats and the combatbots, four of the sentry vehicles were swooping down toward the ice moon at high acceleration. Their multiple sensors probed the base on high intensity, exposing the combatbots. Paula’s u-shadow tried to crash the base network, but two of the staff established personal secure links to the incoming sentries.

All of the base’s protective force fields switched off. The Alexis Denken teleported above the cross of cool metal, assuming a defensive posture. Gamma lasers and disrupter pulses hammered down from the approaching sentries. Explosions ripped through the base’s skin, sending huge plumes of superheated gas jetting out into space. Paula winced at the damage they’d caused and fired three m-sinks up at the sentries. They began evasive maneuvers, twisting and varying acceleration with an elegance she’d never witnessed before; the way they slipped fluidly through space was almost organic. Their fuselages seemed to adapt with them, distorting to absorb the constantly shifting acceleration vectors. One actually managed to elude an m-sink, driving down at forty gees. Kamikaze impact, Paula realized. The Alexis Denken rose to intercept it, firing another two m-sinks.

High above, an m-sink punched clean through one of the sentries, its colossal tidal forces imploding the internal structure in microseconds. The wreckage spun uncontrollably. More m-sinks tracked their prey skillfully. Energy weapons lashed across the base, partially deflected by the Alexis Denken. It was actually looking as though Paula might manage to preserve some of the base.

A phenomenal blast of raw multispectrum energy from behind the ice moon deluged the Alexis Denken’s sensors. A flare of blue-white light irradiated the fuselage, as if a sun suddenly had blossomed into existence. Its corona erupted around the ice moon at relativistic speed.

“Shit!” Paula yelled. Quantumbuster!

The ice moon detonated. The Alexis Denken fled into hyperspace, racing away from the colossal mass energy explosion at fifty light-years an hour.

“Shit shit shit,” Paula growled at the readings flashing across her exovision. The four attacking sentry vessels had just been a diversion. One of the others had deployed behind the ice moon to ensure there was no evidence left. “Crap. I’m old and slow. I should have known.” She opened a link to ANA: Governance. “I’m sorry. My stupidity just lost us our one tangible lead.”

“You are being too hard on yourself.”

“No. What a professional would have done was examined whatever was in those main chambers first. Given its energy demand, it had to be some kind of manufacturing operation. But oh, no, I went and acted on my obsession.”

“You have verified that the Accelerators are using the Cat.”

“Stop trying to cushion me. Somebody is using the Cat; we have no proof it is the Accelerators. And even if we did, that isn’t enough for you to enact their suspension. I need to nail them with conspiracy and treason.”

“Paula, you are letting self-anger dominate. This aspect of your investigation has one link remaining: Chatfield.”

“Damn it.” She wanted to kick herself. Her u-shadow opened a link to Digby.

Cleric Conservator Ethan sat alone behind his polished muroak desk in the oval sanctum, his eyes closed against the bright starfield visible through the high Diocletian windows. One day soon, he knew, he would sit in the real oval sanctum, and that very same window would reveal the Void’s splendid nebulae glowing across the night sky. When that happened, days like today would simply be banished from existence, and he would live an easier, gentler life. In fact he wouldn’t even be a Conservator or even a cleric. It often amused him to wonder who on the Council had considered that aspect of their cause. Once they were inside the Void, they would have achieved their goal and there would be no more Dreaming Void movement. All of them would be ordinary Querencia citizens. Giving up their positions would be hard on some, he knew. They would warp their world to make themselves District Masters or worse. But the Waterwalker had shown that even such self-indulgence would come to nothing. All would come right in the end. The Skylords would carry them all to the Heart. He couldn’t imagine just how splendid that would be, especially in comparison to today.

Cleric Phelim had called five hours earlier to tell him that they’d located Araminta; she was in Bodant Park right outside the apartments she owned. A mere five seconds later Ethan had felt her mind’s angry dismissive cry resonate throughout the gaiafield. That worried him more than he would ever admit to anyone, even Phelim. Why would someone chosen by the Skylords reject Living Dream so comprehensively? He’d felt her naked emotions, experienced how deep her revulsion for their goal truly was.

Then biononically enriched agents had fought a small war in Bodant Park, a war given total coverage across the wretched unisphere. Honilar’s welcome team had been killed, and they were tough operatives. Ethan knew that; he’d authorized their enrichments and training himself. The aftermath had left him deeply shocked. So many dead, more injured. He had prayed to the Lady for guidance and forgiveness.

His prayer was cut short by the Speaker of the Senate calling, demanding that he end Viotia’s occupation and turn over Living Dream’s paramilitaries for an independent trial. Ethan’s rather reasonable observation that the carnage had been caused by representatives of ANA factions was ignored. The Speaker said that the Security Commission was preparing a resolution that would allow the navy to intervene if any further human rights violations occurred on such a level. Ever since Ellezelin’s Senator had walked out of the Senate after the condemnation of the Viotia invasion, repudiating its authority as he went, Ellezelin was technically no longer part of the Commonwealth, and therefore the navy’s noninternal deployment restriction didn’t apply.

There was only one person Ethan could ask for reassurance in such circumstances, and he hesitated to do that. The last thing he wanted right now was to be forced further into reliance on Marius.

Phelim’s curt, apprehensive assurances that Bodant Park was just a temporary setback failed to impress him. Ethan had now accessed every scrap of information that ever existed on Araminta. He was deeply suspicious that she’d spent a weekend at Likan’s mansion. Likan of course claimed complete innocence, saying that she was just another recruit for his harem. After Bodant Park, Ethan had given Phelim permission to bring Likan in for a full memory read. It would be just like that supercapitalist to try to manipulate things to his personal financial advantage. If Araminta’s background was as simple as the records claimed, there was no conceivable way she could have eluded Honilar and the other agents the way she had. An entire planet had been invaded with one purpose: to find her. The resources he’d deployed were using up an appreciable percentage of Ellezelin’s gross planetary product. There had never been a manhunt on such a scale in human history.

Somebody was helping her; Ethan was fairly sure it had to be ANA. That subtle interference was bringing about some serious complications to the goal of Pilgrimage. He wasn’t sure how he should attempt to counter them.

The Ellezelin civil security alert was totally unexpected. Ethan’s exovision suddenly was swamped with a flock of red icons. Five fully armored guards from the Cabinet Security Service hurried into the oval sanctum as force fields shimmered on around the Orchard Palace. More exoimage graphics showed him sequential protective domes powering up to protect the core of Makkathran2, then the greater civic zone. The alert was originating in the civil spaceflight agency. Something was happening in orbit above Ellezelin.

“Sir,” the Security Service detail leader said. “Please accompany me to your safe refuge.” A circle of the floor was expanding to reveal a gravity chute.

Hardly authentic, Ethan thought idly, although technically the Waterwalker’s rapport with the city did allow him to pass through solid floors to the tunnels below.

Two of the Security Service detail jumped into the chute, where manipulated gravity sucked them away fast. Ethan followed them down. To increase the irony of the situation, the fall was similar to the way Edeard had flown along Makkathran’s travel tunnels, except here Ethan was going feet first.

He dropped out of the chute into a deep shelter half a kilometer below the city. The refuge was a circular chamber with glass walls that partitioned off smaller cubicles and offices. His presidential office was already illuminated, but the others were all unoccupied and dark. A startled skeleton team of security agency staffers were scrambling to build up a situation overview in conjunction with the refuge’s smartcore.

“What have we got?” he asked.

“Energy discharges in orbit, sir,” the defense agency colonel reported. “A thousand kilometers up; that’s in the parking ring. And sir, it’s high-level weapons fire. The emissions are sophisticated. We think it was two ships, both in stealth mode; we didn’t even know they were there until they started shooting at each other.”

“Are they attacking the surface?” Ethan’s immediate thought was of the Pilgrimage fleet, still under construction and supremely vulnerable.

“No, sir. As far as we can ascertain, it’s just the two ships engaging each other. No new discharges for the last ten seconds, so it’s probably over.”

“That fast?”

“Yes, sir,” the colonel said. “Modern engagements are quick and decisive. The power levels in the weapons guarantee that.”

“So can we get a clear image now?”

“We’re trying, sir, but our civil sensors aren’t built for this. Nearby ships have been destroyed; there’s a large wreckage field that’s expanding rapidly. We’re alerting urban areas along the fallout track.”

“How many ships destroyed?” Ever since he’d announced the Pilgrimage, wealthy Living Dream followers had been arriving in their personal starships, thinking they could take part in the flight to the Void. The last time he’d inquired, over three thousand were in parking orbit above Ellezelin.

“Over twenty confirmed destroyed, probably fifty damaged. Fatalities unknown.”

“Lady,” Ethan groaned. “So do you have any idea who the protagonists are?”

“No, sir, sorry.”

“Has the Commonwealth Navy called your agency?”

“Not yet.”

“Kindly get in touch with them and formally report this conflict. I’ll be interested in their opinion.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ethan’s worry was that the conflict in Bodant Park somehow had spilled over to Ellezelin. The fact that the ships were stealthed was a good indication that faction agents were in orbit, presumably in a last-ditch attempt to retrieve the Second Dreamer for their own purposes. Again, he hesitated to call Marius.

“Sir,” the colonel said. “Backup sensors are coming online; we’re getting some situation clarification. One ship survived intact. Tracking a great deal of debris.”

“A victor, then,” Ethan said as he accessed the defense agency network. An image of a small ship appeared in his exovision, a smooth ovoid surrounded by a force field’s electron-blue shimmer. He knew enough about modern hardware to recognize the type favored by faction representatives and ANA agents. “So which are you?” he murmured. “See if you can establish a link with them,” he instructed the colonel.

The colonel never got to try. Ethan’s exovision threw up a communication icon he didn’t expect. He let the call come through as he walked into his slick modern office. Two members of the armor-suited Security Service detail took up position beside the door. Privacy shielding enveloped the room.

“Good evening, Cleric Conservator,” ANA: Governance said.

Ethan settled into a chair that shaped itself to his contours. “I take it you’ve monitored the fight above Ellezelin.”

“Indeed.”

“Does the navy know what’s going on?”

“Admiral Kazimir has been informed.”

“Who are they?”

“One of the ships is piloted by an agent working for my security division.”

“I see. Is he the survivor?”

“Fortunately, yes.”

“And the loser?”

“Someone suspected of high treason.”

“High treason?” Ethan didn’t know if he should be amused or not. “That sounds very dramatic.”

“This is classified information, but as a courtesy I will tell you we have discovered that the Ocisen Empire fleet on its way to Ellezelin is accompanied by Prime warships.”

Ethan sat perfectly still. For a second he thought the communication link might have malfunctioned somehow. “Prime?” he asked, glad he had closed his gaiamotes. His shock impulse would have startled the staff working outside.

“Quite,” ANA: Governance said. “As you can imagine, we are extremely concerned by the development.”

“Was that a Prime ship in orbit?”

“No. However, we believe there was a connection. Fortunately, my agent managed to avoid completely vaporizing the suspect’s ship, no small achievement given modern weapons. I am dispatching a forensic team to examine the wreckage. I need to know what the suspect was carrying.”

“I see. Can we help?”

“Yes. Please quarantine the orbital wreckage until my team arrives. No one else is to touch it. My agent will remain in orbit; he has orders to open fire on anyone who contaminates the scene.”

“I understand. I will order my defense agency to establish the quarantine zone.” As he spoke, the sensors showed him the ANA ship gathering fragments with coherent gravity pulses, pulling them out of decay paths that would have taken them down to the atmo sphere.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Cleric Conservator. This is not an easy time for the Greater Commonwealth. I hope that when this situation is resolved, Ellezelin’s Senator will resume his seat.”

Ethan didn’t bother to point out that Commonwealth politics and renewed Prime aggression would be irrelevant to anyone inside the Void. “Can the navy stop the Ocisen invasion fleet?” he asked.

“Yes. It can and it will.”

“Thank you.”

The call ended, and Ethan sat back, only just realizing how badly his muscles had tightened. A headache was building behind his eyes; they were frequent now even though the last of the semiorganic auxiliaries had been removed. His doctors warned him it would still take time for his brain to recover fully. He waited a moment, gathering his thoughts, then called the defense colonel in. “The surviving ship is staying in orbit. I want a two-hundred-kilometer quarantine zone around it. Nobody is authorized to approach. I don’t care who they are.”

“Sir.” The colonel licked his lips. “Rescue ships may need to—”

“Nobody,” Ethan said firmly.

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel hadn’t even left the office when Marius called. “A most unpleasant event in your skies,” the representative said.

“Was that one of your agents up there?”

“Someone we were affiliated with, yes.”

“ANA has requested a quarantine around the wreckage. It says the Prime are part of the Ocisen fleet. It says there’s a connection. Is that true?”

“I know nothing of that. I don’t have access to navy intelligence.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really.”

Ethan wondered if he should challenge the representative directly but couldn’t see any advantage in that. “What was your ship doing stealthed in orbit around Ellezelin?”

“It was waiting for the Pilgrimage ships to be completed; then it would deliver the consignment of defense systems in its hold. As you can understand, we don’t want them sitting on the ground exposed to ANA’s scrutiny.”

A smooth enough answer and one that Ethan didn’t believe for an instant. “I see.”

“Neither do we want ANA to examine the remnants.”

“That is completely outside my remit.”

“My dear Conservator, if ANA uses the defense systems our ship was carrying as an excuse to curtail our involvement with your Pilgrimage, there will not be any Pilgrimage. And that is exactly the kind of pseudolegal argument that so many people will seize upon.”

“But I can’t do anything. We can hardly attack that ship.”

“A friend of mine will be in touch within the hour. She can explain to your wormhole technicians how they can assist our cause.” Marius closed the link.

“Dear Lady.” Ethan put his head in his hands. Events were becoming too powerful, building their own momentum. He tried to remember why he’d agreed to the representative’s help in the first place. Ultradrive was turning into the ultimate poisoned chalice. But even if he reverted to equipping the Pilgrimage ships with an ordinary hyperdrive, they’d still need help to get past the warrior Raiel in the Gulf. There was nothing he could do but try to ride out the crisis.

If we just had the Second Dreamer, we’d be in a much stronger position. She’s the key to success. We have to acquire her. We have to, no matter what the cost.

The ExoProtectorate Council watched the new squadron of Capital-class ships matching superluminal flight vectors with the Ocisen Empire fleet. Five of the navy ships were concentrating their sensors on a single Prime warship, preparing to pull it out of hyperspace.

“This habit is turning into a vulgar repetition,” Ilanthe said, her voice silky with disdain.

Kazimir hadn’t realized before now how much he missed Gore at the Council; his grandfather was a perfect balance for the Accelerator advocate. More accurately, Gore wouldn’t put up with her bullshit point scoring and needling.

Crispin gave her a small grin. “Ever wondered what kind of effect these snatch raids are having on the Ocisens? I mean, their most powerful allies are being pulled out of space and shot without any warning. Can’t be good for morale.”

“Don’t compare the Ocisen psychology to ours,” Creewan warned. “Obedience to the nest father is their paramount concern; in fact, it’s their only concern. They don’t question and worry away at issues like we do.”

“Which makes this interception even more pointless,” Ilanthe said. “They can’t be rattled. They’re not going to turn around even if we eliminate every Prime ship there is.”

“I’m not eliminating them,” Kazimir said levelly. “I want a living immotile.”

“What?” John Thelwell demanded. “I thought this was the final warning, not some capture mission.”

Kazimir met Ilanthe’s gaze across the conference table. The lightning outside the big curving window stroked their faces with sharp slivers of flickering light. “It is the final warning.” To her credit she didn’t flinch, but then, he didn’t expect her to. Less than an hour ago, Paula had reported that the ice moon Accelerator station had been destroyed by a quantumbuster. Kazimir was mildly surprised Ilanthe had turned up at the ExoProtectorate Council at all. She must know that the indomitable investigator was getting close to the kind of evidence ANA needed to suspend the Accelerators.

“What in heaven’s name do you want with an immotile?” Creewan asked.

“Intelligence,” Kazimir said. “We need to know where they come from, which planet or planets they’ve colonized. Ship numbers. Technology level. Once the Ocisens are eliminated by the deterrence fleet, they will be the navy’s next target.”

“Glad to hear it,” John Thelwell said.

“Yes,” said Kazimir. “It will be interesting to find out how they avoided the Firewall.” He still didn’t get a reaction from Ilanthe.

The navy ships yanked a single Prime warship out of hyperspace. Kazimir followed the engagement closely. He couldn’t fault the captains; their strategy was flawless, subjecting the warship’s force field to inexorable stress. When the force field finally collapsed, weapons fire against the hull was minimal. They went for electronic warfare, scrambling electronics and knocking out power circuits with quantum magnetic pulses, all at a level that wouldn’t interfere with Prime nervous systems. Even with life support equipment knocked out, there was enough air and warmth for the living Primes to survive until they were captured.

Ten marine assault teams got ready to jump across.

The Prime warship exploded.

“Shit,” Kazimir grunted.

“I trust this charade is concluded to your satisfaction,” Ilanthe said. “Admiral, will you now be launching the deterrence fleet in compliance with the Senate Executive Security Commission resolution?”

Creewan and John Thelwell watched closely.

“Yes,” Kazimir said. “I will order the launch of the deterrence fleet immediately.” And what have you put out there to snare it? What are you up to?

Ilanthe’s female persona translocated out of the old-fashioned perceptual reality of the conference room. She re-formed herself in a completely different zone of ANA, the Accelerator compilation, which manifested as an inverted world of dark primary colors. She walked across a verdure sky as a heliotrope ocean rippled above her. Airborne wisps of kingfisher-blue light slithered around her, winking in complex sequences designating their sentience level: mirrored personality repositories performing designated secondary tasks while the primary mentality operated on an upper hierarchal level. Her body characteristics morphed away to a simple flawless silver skin, and her own repositories fluttered in, perching themselves on her shoulders and arms like birds of prey. Information squeezed in through the data-porous boundary skin.

The first analysis was of the Ellezelin interception. Every surviving physical section of Chatfield’s starship was encapsulated by trajectory algorithms extrapolated and refined from Ellezelin’s monstrously crude orbital sensor arrays. The flight of the eighty thousand scraps of matter was defined in a four-dimensional projection resembling a particularly beautiful scarlet firework scintillation bloom.

Origin point analysis designated the critical segments of the equipment Chatfield had been carrying. Exotic matter fragments already were decaying as their cohesion integrity was broken. But enough pieces survived; it would be possible to determine the interstice folds contained within them before their decay sequence fizzled to extinction. ANA might be capable of retroprofiling the nature of the equipment, and that would ruin everything.

Two more blank humanoid shapes walked across the sky: fellow Accelerators Colabal and Atha. Ilanthe transferred the trajectory construct to them. “Supervise the wormhole interception yourself,” she told Atha. “It will have to be speedy. The ANA agent will see what’s happening and instigate a hyperspatial distortion. You will need to collect seven thousand fragments.”

“Confirmed,” Atha said. The figure reversed its dimensions to zero and translocated.

“Is the replica functioning?” Ilanthe asked Colabal.

“Yes.” The sky beneath their feet began to undulate, its tempo increasing rapidly as if thin storm clouds were speeding past. A section glowed with a pale amber hue. Ilanthe immersed herself within it.

One of the Accelerator agents that Colabal ran had collected a sample of Araminta’s DNA from the Colwyn City apartment block. The sequencing had provided the Accelerators with enough information to formulate Araminta’s neural structure. Every scrap of information on her background had been transformed into simulated memories and loaded in. They were woefully inadequate, Ilanthe acknowledged, but the personality that was knitted together was the closest thing they could produce to the actual Second Dreamer herself. Puzzlingly, there were no gaiamotes. How she connected to the gaiafield was a complete mystery.

Ilanthe hung in the middle of the simulacrum and meshed herself with the mind that flowed within. Emerald threads of neurological emulates blended into her own primary mentality. Ilanthe allowed herself to see the block of flats beside Bodant Park go up in flame and then fed in the shock pulse that Araminta had released into the gaia field. Feelings raged around her, connecting to memories with erratic volatile associations, triggering irrational emotional responses.

Ilanthe disconnected herself. “Laril,” she said. “She will turn to her ex-husband for help.” This disconcerting meat-based memory fluttered through her thoughts, illogical and shaky. “He represents a stability she has not known before or since. It is not a pleasant refuge for her but a dependable one. She lacks that above all else.”

“He’s migrating inward,” Colabal said. “That makes him susceptible. And his reputation is established. We can make cooperation worth his while. He is also weak. He will capitulate to threats.”

“Proceed,” Ilanthe said. She opened a secure link to Neskia. “Marius made a huge mistake bringing Chatfield into the operation this early,” she told the station chief. “And using the Cat against Paula was another blunder; he should have known better than to exploit personal animosity. His stupidity has exposed us to an unacceptable level of risk. Consequently, I’m restructuring our event sequence. Please take immediate command of the swarm and bring it to Sol.”

“I’ll fly to it now,” Neskia said. “Do you want me to eliminate Marius?”

“Not yet. I will restrict his initiative freedoms. It should act as a suitable caution. Clipping the wings of those who fly highest is always a profound disciplinary action upon them.”

“I always found him unreliable.”

“I know. His temperament suited the majority of tasks he was assigned to. He may have come to enjoy the game so much, he has lost sight of the goal. A common enough occurrence.”

“Well, I certainly haven’t.”

“I will rendezvous with you outside the cemetery belt if all goes well, and it should. Kazimir is authorizing the deployment of the deterrence fleet.”

“Finally! I wonder what it is.”

“We’ll know soon enough.” Ilanthe ended the connection to the agent. Above her a black globe slipped out from the languid mirror-purple waves, no more than twice her height. She rose to greet it, slipping through the formless surface.

Ilanthe emerged through the side of a chamber measuring an apparent half a million kilometers across: the citadel of Accelerator ethos. Like an ancient godling she took flight, chasing through the chains of translucent planet-size globes that spun idly through the immense formatted interstice. Flocks of fellow Accelerators flashed past her, calling out in welcome to their leader. They trailed long potentialities behind them, fragments of nonreality that struggled for existence and then dissipated into little more than dreams. All of them, all of her kind, strove to imprint themselves on the modified spacetime of their artificial environment, to bend reality to their wishes, just as the Void did so effortlessly. Every second of existence was devoted to extrapolating the structure that would achieve the ultimate postphysical manifestation.

Up ahead, the inversion core glimmered with suppressed power, ready for her. Ready to break free and carry human evolution to heights not even ANA could envisage, ready to change the nature of the universe forever.

The Wurung Transport cab reached the end of the metro line sometime in the early hours. Araminta was not quite dozing when it came to a gentle halt in the middle of the Francola district. She’d never visited it before, never even considered any of the properties that came up for sale there. In economic terms the area was as run-down as the Salisbury district, but this decay was subtle, verging on genteel, as if the district had fallen into a cozy slumber, a retirement village content with its lot. The buildings here were mostly housing. Large and expensive when they were built, many had been subdivided into apartments. Sprawling gardens had matured, the trees growing up taller than roofs, casting long shadows during the day. Fallen leaves formed a dry mantle across the road, stirring briefly as the cab swished past.

Araminta opened the door and climbed out. Her boots crunched on the crisp brown leaves as she looked around, getting her bearings. About a mile away, behind the houses directly ahead of her, the city’s force field was a nearly vertical wall of shimmering air. She craned her neck, following the insubstantial barrier as it curved overhead to cover the entirety of Colwyn City. A flat layer of starlit clouds parted to slither around it, while the stars were distorted smears of light speckling the apex high above the river in the middle of the city. She brought her head down again, almost dizzy.

“Go back to the nearest public slot and wait for me there,” she told the cab. Not that she expected to come back, not for a very long while, anyway, but living with paranoia for the last few days had switched her brain to a very cautious mode of thinking.

The door closed, and it hummed away down the rail. Araminta knew instinctively which way to go: beyond the houses, where the streets ended and a strip of big native dapol trees acted as a buffer between the buildings and the force field. There was a warmth to be had there; her mind felt a calmness that was almost the opposite of the gaiafield’s exuberant emotive bustle.

She walked along the pavement, heading down the gentle slope and occasionally shying away from the hedges that had grown up to lean across the cracked mossy concrete. Little nocturnal rodents scurried about in the undergrowth, and she heard cats yowling somewhere, a cry that carried a long way in the still air.

The last house at the end of the cul-de-sac had almost been swamped by vegetation from its own garden, apparently untended for years. Trees from the backdrop of woods were slowly reclaiming the land that once had been cleared for lawns and ornamental beds, advancing the forest in a tide of luxuriant growth, with fresh saplings shooting up closer and closer to the house’s moss-encrusted walls.

She could just make out the bottom of the force field now, suspended twenty meters from the ground. From her angle it looked as though the spiky treetops were holding it up. Cressida had said the gap was guarded, though not how. Araminta had no intention of finding out; she certainly couldn’t see any Ellezelin capsules, not even using her night sight function. Unfortunately, her Advancer heritage wasn’t up to supplying her with infrared. Lack of knowing what was lurking among the trees made her very conscious of what could be watching her with enriched senses, laughing quietly as she blundered about.

Crumbling enzyme-bonded concrete beneath her feet gave way to grass and the wide indigo fans of whiplit ferns. Araminta pushed her way forward into the dark spaces between the dapol trees. There were no thoughts impinging on the local gaiafield, no human ones, anyway. The gentle thoughts of the Silfen Motherholme were somehow stronger, more so in one direction. She turned toward it and pushed sharp branches out of her way. Dense whiplit fronds, their curly strands damp from the night, pressed against her legs, making progress difficult.

She caught a glimpse of blue and red laser fans sweeping through the tangle of trees and froze. She was all too familiar with the strobes on Ellezelin support capsules by now. This one was just outside the force field, flying slowly along a shallow curve: some patrol scanning for citizens seeking escape from the invasion.

The minds of the crew and paramilitary squad inside emitted a dull glow of thoughts into the gaiafield. All of them were tired, emotionally and physically. They hated Colwyn City and its resentful inhabitants.

Araminta kept still until the capsule had glided away. She was close to the force field now, maybe just a couple of hundred yards away, but the trees must have shielded her from the capsule’s sensors. Her legs were soaking from the moisture on the whiplit fronds, hands and cheeks scratched by dead twigs. She was beginning to feel somewhat foolish floundering around in a forest at night, looking for a path that was actually some kind of alien wormhole that she was supposed to be able to sense because her ancestor had been a friend of elves and the magic passed through the female bloodline.

“Makes perfect sense to me,” she muttered to herself. I wonder what the me of a week ago would make of all this.

Thankfully, she stumbled out into a narrow animal track and started along it. The fronds didn’t accost her so much, though she still had to ward off the branches.

Dear Ozzie, was it really only a week ago I was living a perfectly ordinary life? And I haven’t called Bovey for days. He must be worried sick. Cressida will be worried, too, and cross that I haven’t confirmed my ticket offplanet.

The trees were spaced farther apart now, the path easier to perceive. She couldn’t tell if that was because of a weak dawn light starting to rise or if her mind was illuminating the compressed trail of loamy soil that had borne so many feet before hers. But she did know she was walking the right way, a knowledge that came in the form of cold relief. That newfound buoyancy faltered after only a few yards as she instinctively accepted that the path was taking her away from her homeworld.

I’m being forced out, she thought bitterly. I haven’t even said goodbye to all the people I love. Not that there are many of them, but I should be allowed that. Even though she was more confident about using the gaiafield, she didn’t dare access the unisphere. That would be the first thing she would have to fix when she reached whatever world she was heading for. Araminta wanted to know who the hell Oscar Monroe was and why he would help her. If he was telling the truth about working for ANA and ANA wanted her to be free, there might be hope yet.

It was definitely getting lighter, even though Araminta knew it was still a couple of hours before dawn. She didn’t recognize most of the trees she was walking through now, either; the familiar dapol trees were becoming few and far between. The newcomers were taller and thinner, with slimmer branches and silver-green leaves. Strange lavender star flowers peeped up through the wiry yellow-tinged grass as the ground started to tip down. There was no sight of the force field through the upper branches of the new trees. And the gaiafield was fading out, allowing her tense thoughts to expand, calming the deep worry contaminating her body. Somewhere the Silfen Motherholme smiled in compassion for her.

The trees were thinning out, and Araminta shivered in the cold air gusting past the white- and green-striped trunks, rubbing her hands along her arms and pulling up the front of her fleece. Then she walked out of the tree line and stopped dead.

“Oh, great Ozzie,” she murmured in astonished delight. She was halfway up a steep valley wall. The grassy mountainside beneath her feet swept down toward a broad meandering river. On the other side, maybe twenty or thirty miles away, the opposite side of the valley climbed upward, its summits coated in thick fields of snow. Above that— Araminta shielded her eyes from the orange sun peeping over the jagged peaks. A quartet of tiny moons were racing across the sky, twisting around one another as they went. She was sure one of them must have been made from blue crystal; glints of sunlight flashed off its facets as it spun around and around.

Viotia didn’t have moons like that. In fact, she’d never heard of anywhere that did.

Somewhere beyond the river, lurking among the spinneys and tracts of woodland, Araminta could sense the beginnings of another path. She set off down the mountain, laughing joyfully at her liberation.

Inigo’s Twelfth Dream

The summer sun rose through a clear sky to illuminate one very excited city. It was election day in Makkathran. At last, after all the turmoil, the Sampalok riots, and the banishment, followed by a fortnight of increasingly bitter campaigning by both mayoral candidates and equally lively mudslinging by the District Representatives, this was it: the day everyone got to make his or her opinion known on events and promises.

Edeard jogged over the Brotherhood Canal bridge and into Jeavons as the dawntime’s dew began to evaporate off the grass. It produced a wonderfully fresh scent in the air that triggered a completely unjustified sense of optimism as he reached the streets of Jeavons. The city’s mood was impossible to determine. So much had happened, so many rumors and whispers from the candidates and their allies to believe or ignore. Nobody knew what the result was going to be.

One thing was for certain: A lot of people were going to vote. As he ran down Golfice Street, Edeard could sense whole families rising early for breakfast. Election day was always a holiday. Businesses that normally were preparing to open as he ran past were shut for the day, market squares devoid of stalls.

A holiday, then, but not a carnival. There was too much tension for that, not helped by the fifty banished who’d made camp in the trees beyond North Gate and refused to budge. Relatives and friends and the politically motivated kept taking food out to them and making public collections, keeping the cause alive and visible.

Edeard arrived back at the tenement and hurried up the stairs to his maisonette. Dinlay was waiting on the walkway outside. They grinned at each other and went in. Breakfast together had become something of a ritual since that day in Sampalok.

“Moment of truth, then,” Dinlay said as Edeard stripped and scurried into the shower.

“Yes,” Edeard called out above the spray of water.

“I’ve never known so many people say they’re coming out to vote. I suppose that’s a victory in its own way.”

“What do you mean?”

Dinlay had sat at the small table, where one of the ge-chimps was serving him with fruit and cereal. The second genistar was tending the kettle on the iron stove. “You’ve finally got people stirred up about the city’s leadership. Before, it never really made any difference which candidate you voted for. Nothing was different afterward.”

Edeard stepped out and started rubbing himself dry with a towel. “That’s because of Finitan rather than me.”

Dinlay laughed. “I’m not sure I believe the false modesty routine anymore.”

“Okay, if I’m that confident about myself, how come I’m not standing for election?”

“Not the right time,” Dinlay said shrewdly. “For all you’ve achieved, you’re still too young. Even Captain is pushing it.”

“Ha!” Edeard grunted. Walsfol hadn’t objected to Ronark’s astute maneuvering; indeed, he’d been keen to accept the old captain in his own office at the Courts of Justice. Crucially, Owain had mounted no challenge to Edeard’s promotion as he took charge of the Jeavons constable station. Coming into direct conflict with the Waterwalker while the city’s mood was unknown was not something the wily Mayor would allow to happen. They’d maintained a scrupulously courteous attitude toward each other ever since the Sampalok riots. Sometimes it was all Edeard could do not to snigger at how polite they were whenever they met. There were strong elements of farce to the encounters.

Edeard flicked his friend’s epaulets playfully. “Thank you, Corporal.”

“That’s different,” Dinlay said, straightening the epaulets. “These were well deserved and sorely earned.”

The ge-chimp brought two large cups of tea over to the table. Edeard picked his up and gave Dinlay a mildly concerned look. “Er … you didn’t want to be Master of Sampalok, did you?”

“By the Lady!” Dinlay was genuinely shocked. “No, Edeard. I’m a constable. And that means so much more today, all thanks to you. I’m going to be Chief Constable to your Mayor.”

“Okay. I was sort of improvising back there.”

“I know. But it was a clever choice. He already knows far more about Grand Family politics than I ever will.”

“The Grand Council needs to worry about her, not him,” Edeard said.

“And that’s a fact.”

They grinned again, then finished their light meal in companionable silence. The ge-chimps cleared the table, then started picking up Edeard’s discarded jogging clothes and putting them in the laundry basket. Dinlay paused as he was pulling on his jacket, noticing something odd. His third hand swiped one of Edeard’s running shoes. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Did they have them in your village?”

“No,” Edeard said as he buttoned his jacket. “Something I dreamed up. They’re very comfortable to run in.”

Dinlay shrugged and gave the shoe back to the ge-chimp.

They walked out of the tenement together and headed for the district’s public hall. Edeard’s farsight swept through the scene ahead. The hall stood by itself in the middle of a square, a strange onion-shaped building standing on twenty fat pillars. Big folding wooden doors had been fixed between them, sealing off the large central auditorium from the elements. The curving internal wall that overlooked the chamber was ribbed by eight narrow galleries that provided access to the hundreds of small unlit cubicles wrapped around the whole structure like a honeycomb. For once, the galleries didn’t have Makkathran’s bad stairs between them; instead, the hall boasted steep ramps. Nobody ever really used the galleries or their cubicles.

On the floor of the auditorium long tables had been set up, along with voting booths. Constables from Jeavons station worked alongside a team from the Guild of Clerks preparing the hall for the election. The clerks had their big ledgers of official registry ready, along with sealed boxes of ballot papers.

People were already arriving outside, well ahead of the official starting time. They were all watching the end of Forpal Avenue when Edeard and Dinlay emerged; farsight had forewarned everyone the Waterwalker was on his way. Edeard smiled pleasantly as he moved through them, making sure his mind was well shielded, not allowing anybody to see how nervous he was becoming. He’d never seen an election before. Back in Ashwell the vote for the Mayor was limited to village elders.

Felax opened the door to let them inside the auditorium, saluting as they went past. Edeard saluted back; it was good to see constables actually out of the station again on active duty. The team he’d built up to help him fight the gangs had spent far too long cooped up in the small hall working diligently through paperwork like apprentice clerks. Now they were out on patrol again, visible and helpful to citizens as they should be.

The clerks inside the public hall were completing their preparations. As soon as Edeard arrived, Urarl beckoned him over to the first table.

“Boxes are ready for inspection, sir.”

“Thank you,” Edeard said. He looked to the Master of clerks standing beside Urarl, who nodded. Edeard used his farsight to examine the wax seal on each box to see if it had been tampered with. He couldn’t sense any flaws.

“They are undisturbed,” he announced.

“I concur,” the Master of clerks agreed. He proffered a clipboard to Edeard, who had to sign the docket for each box in triplicate. The Master added his signature.

Under Urarl’s instruction, Marcol and two other probationary constables opened the boxes and started distributing ballot papers along the tables. Edeard did his best not to smile at Marcol’s diligence. The boy was trying desperately hard and slowly succeeding in throwing off his Sampalok upbringing to shape up as a decent constable.

“Almost time,” the clerk Master said.

Edeard used his farsight to perceive the Orchard Palace. The Grand Master of the Guild of Clerks was standing on the balcony that faced Golden Park. He was waiting stoically, a big brass pocket watch in his hand. Everyone in the hall finished what he or she was doing and waited. It was a scene that was repeated in every single district across Makkathran.

“I declare the voting open,” the Grand Master longtalked.

Dinlay gave Felax the okay, and the auditorium doors were opened. First in were the accredited observers from both mayoral candidates, who presented their papers to the Master of clerks and Edeard. Balogg, the current Jeavons District Representative, was the first voter, as tradition dictated. He was followed in by his two rivals. All of them were allied to Finitan, claiming to support the banishment.

Edeard watched with quiet interest as the voting began. People came in and went over to the clerks, who confirmed their residency in the ledger. After that they were issued their two ballot papers, one for the Mayor’s office and one for the District Representative. They went into the little booth to mark the paper, most casting a seclusion haze for privacy, though some proudly and openly put crosses down for their candidates. Finally, the ballots were posted through a slot in the lid of a metal box that was already locked and sealed. The keys were kept by the Grand Master of the Guild of Clerks. Edeard couldn’t see any way to cheat the system provided that everything was conducted in the open and monitored by honest dependable officials. That, he acknowledged sadly, was the weak point.

Dinlay had taken great delight in telling him of hidden ballot boxes stuffed with voting slips favoring a single candidate that “appeared” along with the real ones in the Malfit Hall, where the count would be made. Of the “ghosts” on the registry. Of bribes. Of people claiming to be someone else.

“If voting never makes a difference,” Edeard asked, “why go to so much trouble?”

“To make sure it doesn’t make a difference,” Dinlay explained. “And don’t forget, a Representative is paid to perform his Council duties as well as given a grand old official city residence along with a dozen other perks. That alone is quite an incentive to get yourself reelected.”

Forty minutes after the doors opened there was a lull in voting as the eager early birds finished up. Edeard went over to the clerks and collected his own ballot papers.

“Remember who supported you,” Balogg said in a loud jovial voice as Edeard went into the privacy booth.

“And I’m pledged to continue to support you no matter what,” one of his rivals cried out.

Edeard grinned at them as he went in. It was good-humored, but still there was an undercurrent of tension. He spread the small squares of paper out on the little shelf and picked up the pencil before casting a seclusion haze. On the Mayor’s ballot he automatically put a cross by Finitan’s name. He hesitated on the Representative; Balogg had been supportive, and he’d had the courage to sign the exclusion warrants with Vologral. The others were vocal in their approval of banishment but unproven. Balogg deserves my thanks for what he’s done, Edeard decided, and put his cross by the Representative’s name. So nothing has changed.

Democracy was a strange thing, he thought as he came out and posted his ballots into the metal box. A couple of sullen youths were collecting their ballots from the clerks; they didn’t meet his eye as they went to the booths. And the two of them can outvote me, he realized in dismay. Then he was ashamed for being so prejudiced. That’s what democracy is: holding the strong accountable, making sure they don’t become too strong. Rah was right to give us this system.

There was another surge of voters a little later as people finished their breakfasts, then a lull. Midmorning saw the queues lengthening again. Edeard sent his farsight into neighboring Silvarum, then Drupe. The voting was the same there, light but constant. No sign of trouble. He searched the other districts. It was all pretty much the same except in Sampalok. There, long queues snaked away from the district hall. Several squads of constables kept everyone in line, more than in any other district. Edeard observed several disputes with the clerks over residency. The official candidate observers were making heated interjections.

Sampalok was the one place he could not go today, not even if a small war broke out over voting rights. The local constables would have to handle it, with reinforcements from Bellis and Myco if necessary. Walsfol had several contingency plans worked out in case.

I have to trust other people to do their job. That’s democracy, too.

There were seven candidates standing to be Sampalok’s Representative: three pro-Waterwalker, four pro-Bise. He didn’t like the ratio, but again, that wasn’t up to him. He was simply glad that anyone in that district supported him. Macsen and Kanseen seemed to have been accepted, or at least they hadn’t been forced out yet. Today’s result would be a powerful indicator whether their appointment was going to be permanent. Nobody was arguing with the city’s right to proclaim District Masters; it was too novel, too far outside the ordinary. But if Bise’s old guard gained ground, the whispering campaign would start in earnest.

Edeard couldn’t believe anyone would vote for Owain after the debacle with the militia, but one never knew. Democracy! Is this why the cityborn are so proficient at shielding their feelings? To keep politicians on their toes?

Beyond Sampalok, his farsight lingered briefly on the recently refurbished (again) House of Blue Petals. Feeling mildly guilty, he observed the pro-Owain party it was throwing for its clientele. It wasn’t strictly against election rules, which forbade monetary encouragement to vote for a candidate, but it sailed close to the limit. He shook his head in disapproval, but then, such petty defiance was typical of Ranalee. She’d finally emerged from behind all the obstructive paperwork with a legitimate claim on the ownership of the bordello. And that was all it was now, a lewd business that filed correct tax forms with the Guild of Clerks. Edeard had left it and her alone. Ranalee clearly had found her place in life, and in the meantime there were bridges to rebuild, and the Waterwalker couldn’t afford to appear vindictive in any fashion. He and Finitan had agreed that a line must be drawn under the day of banishment if the city was to move forward.

After a few hours hanging around the hall doing exactly nothing, Edeard left Dinlay in charge and headed into Haxpen.

Finitan’s farsight found him as he crossed Flight Canal. “So have you voted yet, young Edeard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did I get your approval?”

“Voting is private, sir.”

Finitan’s humor carried through his longtalk. “It certainly is. Unfortunately.”

“Any idea how it’s going, sir?”

“Indications are good so far. Those who speak to the observers are effusive. According to the percentage we calculated an hour ago, I’m in the lead.”

“But that is good news.”

“Remember when you walked into Sampalok to arrest Buate? Everything seemed to be going smoothly, and then Owain damn near walked away with the day. Never underestimate him.”

“I’ll remember, sir.”

“Ah … I’m sorry, Edeard. I haven’t slept in days. I’m worried. What if I lose? I’ve gambled everything on this election.”

“Sir, I remember what you told me at our first meeting. You said that even those in high office would never be able to change anything. Well, I believe you’re about to prove yourself wrong.”

“Thank you, Edeard. At least you and I know we gave this our best endeavor. That is what we will be judged on.”

“Yes, sir.”

When he arrived at the Culverit mansion, there wasn’t much activity inside. In fact it was almost deserted apart from the guards, who greeted him warmly enough.

Kristabel was waiting in one of the lounges on the top floor, sitting at a wide leather-topped desk with folders stacked on either side of her. Her hair had been plaited into a tight tail, which hung loosely down her back. Her dress was a pale lemon, which she’d accompanied with a thick gold necklace made with figure-of-eight links. It suited her perfectly.

She was writing when he came in, the tip of her long onyx fountain pen quivering furiously. There was a wonderfully intense frown on her face. Edeard wished he could capture the image forever.

“You look like you’re signing a death warrant,” he said.

She gave him a disapproving look. “I am.”

“What?”

“You see all this?” Her hand waved expansively at the paperwork. “This is my family, which is going to be your family as soon as we get married.”

“Er, right.”

“Daddy has decided that you and I will have the entire tenth floor for ourselves, which is very sweet of him. But that also means he and Mirnatha will live on the ninth floor below us, along with Aunt Rishia and Cousin Gorral, in addition to Uncle Lorin and his wife and children and the first three grandchildren. Uncle Lorin really isn’t happy about that. He and Daddy had a stinking row about it last night. Daddy just says he knew it was inevitable and he should accept it. Uncle Lorin has accused him of abdicating to you. But Daddy’s still Master, so down to the ninth he goes, which means a lot of people there get displaced down another floor.”

“Oh, Lady. I know your uncle doesn’t like me …”

“Ha! Honious take him. That’s not the real problem. It’s the family on the third floor that I’ve got to deal with.”

“Third?”

“Yes. Below that it’s just the staff.”

“Right.”

“Once everyone here has adjusted, there’s going to be eleven sets of cousins moving out.”

“Eleven?” Edeard muttered in dismay as he pulled a chair over to sit in front of her desk. Jessile had said something about her father giving her a country estate, but that was as a dowry.

“Yes, and I’m the one who has got to find somewhere in our estate to put them all.” Kristabel rested a hand on top of a pile of folders. “These are details on lands and farms and vineyards and houses and other properties we own beyond the Iguru plain. Of course, they’re all currently occupied as well.”

“This is crazy,” he declared. “Families shouldn’t have to support so many … relatives.”

“Deadbeats?”

“I wouldn’t quite say that.”

“Actually, my cousins on the third floor aren’t as bad as the ones farther up. At least they knew they were going to have to move out someday. Most of them have had some kind of schooling, even if it’s not terribly practical. And a few are now seriously considering joining a guild; Cousin Dalbus has already arranged for a commission in the militia. It’s everyone else who can’t stand the idea of losing status, not to mention their place on the entitlement list.”

“Entitlement list?”

“Senior family members are entitled to money from the Culverit estate. The further removed you are from the succession, the smaller the amount.”

“Oh, Lady. So when I come along and marry you—”

“Actually, everyone’s entitlement stays the same until we start having children. Then they all get bumped down the list.”

Edeard grinned. “How many children are we planning on having?”

“Let’s put it this way; we’d need to have seventy before Uncle Lorin got disqualified.”

“People should always have a goal in life.”

“Edeard Waterwalker! If you think I’m bearing you seventy children—”

He started laughing. Kristabel tried to give him a cross look and failed. She smiled wearily. “Well, how many do you want?”

“I don’t know. I was an only child, so definitely more than one, but I agree, less than seventy.”

“All right.” She stood up. “We’ll resume negotiations after lunch. It’s a buffet, I’m afraid. The staff are all off voting.”

“Oh, dear Lady, how the senior family suffer for the good of the city. You’ll have to order your own genistars around next.”

“If you want to be capable of siring even one child, watch your mouth.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

They walked out onto the hortus, looking over the southwestern districts. Edeard’s arm instinctively went around her shoulder. The winds fluffed her skirt.

“Is Finitan going to win?” Kristabel asked softly.

“He must. Nobody in their right mind would vote for Owain. Surely people understand what he was trying to do with the militia.”

She pressed her lips together. “This is Makkathran. Anything can happen.”

“Have you been to vote yet?”

Kristabel gave him one of those looks. “No, Edeard. People like me don’t vote.”

“I thought everybody is entitled to vote.”

“Everybody is. But it’s considered bad form for senior members of Grand Families. We carry enough power as it is.”

“It was bad form to vote against our marriage consent bill. You could get one back on Bise by going down to the hall and voting.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” she said automatically.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Is he still out there?”

“Bise? Yes. Him and his closest family have moved into one of the Gilmorn farms twenty miles away.”

“How do you know?”

“Argian has been doing what he does best and stretching his farsight for me.”

“I’m not sure I trust him.”

“Did you know the families have agents like him?”

“Daddy never said anything specific, but I’ve always known we were supposed to be protected in a way ordinary people weren’t. Things get done quietly if you need them to be. I suppose I will be introduced to the right people when I become Mistress.”

“I wonder who they’re loyal to in times like this.”

“The most conservative families; trust me.”

“You’re probably right.”

She cuddled up close. “You’re learning.”

They ate lunch on the hortus on a long stone table under an archway of flowering honeysuckle. Julan and Mirnatha joined them; the little girl was delighted to be able to pick her own food from the array of dishes the cooks had prepared the previous night, going back several time for slices of smoked hulfish and clotted cheese cream until her father told her she could have no more. She sulked for a while before collecting her pudding of toffee banana cake.

It was a lazy, pleasant afternoon that followed. Kristabel talked with her father about redistributing their family members from the third floor. Edeard finally began to gain an appreciation of just how widespread their holdings were.

The whole agreeable family scene gave him an insight into what the next century might be like, with his children having a similar discussion in another thirty years as they took over the ninth floor and more third-floor cousins prepared to leave. Such a thing gave him a sense of continuity, firming up the future from a few vague notions of trying to make life better; this was particulars, making solid plans for expansion and still better days. It was like nothing he’d known before.

Captain Ronark longtalked him in the middle of the afternoon. “Take a look who just showed up to vote in Lillylight.”

Edeard obliged, focusing his farsight on the Opera House annex where the Lillylight voting was conducted. Master Cherix was standing in front of a clerk who was running through the registry ledger. Edeard grinned at the lawyer’s distinctive mental signature. No mistake; it was definitely he. When he checked by using the city’s perception, he saw that Cherix was keeping his composure, waiting with apparent patience for the clerk to find his name. “I wonder where he’s been holed up?” The constables had been unable to locate him on the day of banishment; since then Edeard had had more pressing issues than tracking down the lawyer.

“What do you suggest we do?” Ronark asked.

“Let him vote. He only ever had an exclusion warrant against him because it was useful to me. They’ve all served their purpose. I suppose we should cancel the outstanding ones. And persecuting Cherix now would make me seem petty.”

“All right. I’ll longtalk the Lillylight captain.”

Edeard kept watch on the voting hall. After a couple of minutes the clerk suddenly found Cherix’s entry in the ledger and handed over his ballot papers. Edeard thought the lawyer looked surprised when it happened. He definitely looked relieved as he walked to the privacy booth.

Was it deliberate? Was Owain trying to stir up a little sympathy, or was Cherix just wanting to know where he stood? Lady, I’m on edge.

“Are you all right?” Kristabel asked.

“Yes.” He smiled reassuringly. Actually, if that’s the worst Owain can do today, I’m perfectly all right.

Edeard was back at the Jeavons public hall when the Grand Master of the Guild of Clerks stood on the Orchard Palace balcony again to announce the end of the voting. He watched the clerks sealing the slots on the voting boxes, signed the dockets to say he’d seen it, and watched as two squads of constables carried them out. Dinlay was assigned to accompany them to the Orchard Palace.

“Eighty percent turnout,” the Master of clerks said as he picked up his own papers.

“High, then,” Edeard said.

“I’ve never known that many voters to bother before, and this is my twenty-second election.”

“A good sign, then?”

The old Master gave him a dry smile. “For someone.”

There were a couple of hours between the time the voting officially ended and the time the counting began. Edeard took a gondola down to Sampalok. It was all right now that voting was finished; there were no political consequences to his visiting.

The gondola dropped him off at the Mid Pool concourse, and he made his way along Zulmal Street. The families that lived along the street gave him a guarded welcome. As always, his footsteps slowed as he passed the baker’s where Boyd had been shot. Just about all the shops and businesses had reopened, helped by money from the Diroal family’s fortune. It was the same across the district; most of the damage from the riots had been repaired. Commerce was back on its usual uncompromising path.

When he finally reached the central square, the new hexagonal mansion was over twelve feet high and the second story was forming under the first that had grown up. According to his design, there were another six to come, each one larger than the previous, giving it a stepped outline. At a conservative reckoning, it would be another four months before it was complete. That was why the new Master and Mistress had set up their temporary home in the Bea’s Bottle tavern on the south side of the square.

Edeard waved cheerfully to the tavern’s landlord as he walked in. After the first couple of days the man had come to accept the situation, especially as it meant renting out every room he had to the clerks who were sorting out the Diroal family finances and providing them with food and drink, along with everyone else who came visiting the new Master and Mistress—and there were a great many.

Macsen and Kanseen had taken over seven rooms on the fourth floor. One had a balcony overlooking the square, where they could watch their new mansion rising. Edeard found them sitting there sharing a bottle of white wine. When they offered him a glass, he took a look at the label. With Kristabel educating him, he’d come to recognize quality. “Nice,” he said appreciatively, and took a sip. “Definitely.”

“Yes,” Kanseen said, and stretched out on her chair. “A girl could quite easily get corrupted by this life.”

Edeard took a look at the boxes and bags piled up in the room behind the balcony. The shop names were from many districts, all frequented by the women of Grand Families as they commissioned their exclusive clothes. It wasn’t just wines he was becoming familiar with these days. “Nice to see you’re rising above it.”

Macsen chuckled and raised a glass. “There are certain expectations. District Masters must act the part.”

“And dress for it, too.”

“Yes, I was most careful with that; I made sure I used the same tailor Kristabel gets your uniforms from.”

Edeard groaned and gave up, taking a larger sip of wine as he settled into a chair next to his friends. “So how did the election go in Sampalok?”

“Relatively honest, I think,” Kanseen said. “No fights at the district hall, anyway. The constables had to step in to stop a few heated disputes over residency, but nothing they couldn’t handle.”

“Any idea which Representative got elected?” Edeard asked.

“Nope. You’re going to have to wait along with the rest of the city.”

“Lady! How do the candidates stand this?”

Macsen eyed him lazily. “Lady help us, what are you going to be like when you finally stand for Mayor?”

“I never will. Not now that I know what it’s like.”

“Ha!” Macsen took a sip of wine.

“I heard our old friend Cherix has crawled back into the public domain,” Kanseen said.

“Yes.” Edeard eyed the wine in the glass. “Life just wouldn’t be the same without him.”

“You need to watch that sentimental streak,” she said. “They’ll exploit that.”

“Who?” Macsen said indignantly. “There’s nobody left to reinstate the gangs. Owain is going to lose. The families will accept Edeard, and they’ll adapt as they always do. For them very little will change, but for ordinary citizens things will get a whole lot better. And best of all, Bise will slowly lose his influence along with his so-called friends. Argian told me his old allies are growing tired of him already. This election should see the end of him.”

“Lady, please let it be so,” Edeard muttered. “Did Bise manage to save anything?”

“Nobody knows,” Macsen said sourly. “The clerks have been reviewing the Diroal estate for two weeks solid, and all they can tell me so far is that it’s going to take years to track down every last farthing. A lot of it never will be recovered, I suspect. Bise and his ancestors were good at covering up the full extent of their holdings. Just like the rest of the Grand Families, they know how to avoid their full tax liability. It’s one of the principal reasons they all became so wealthy.”

“There will be funds he can draw on to keep him in fancy clothes and fine wines for the rest of his life,” Kanseen said. “In fact, it might be a good idea to let that be known among his old friends. I suspect the Gilmorns wouldn’t be quite so free with their coinage if they knew he had lands and money stashed away.” She grinned evilly. “Would you like me to tell Ranalee?”

Edeard tipped his glass at her. “I’ll think about it.”

“Even without a full inventory, we’re still incredibly rich,” Macsen said. “As are all the businesses that suffered during the riots. The clerks are still paying out compensation on a pro rata basis. I’ve heard it said that people are smashing up their own homes and claiming it happened during the riot simply to qualify for new furniture and clothes. There’s so much coinage flooding the district, it’s changing the whole economy. The pro-Bise candidates have been accusing you of trying to buy the election.”

“I hadn’t thought of it,” Edeard admitted. “I also didn’t think what spending all of Bise’s money would do to Sampalok. But as I suspect most of it was squeezed out of the residents here for the last few generations, I suppose there’s a kind of poetic justice to handing it back.”

“Except those who aren’t getting any compensation are resentful.” Kanseen sighed.

“Another noble gesture goes chronically wrong,” Macsen said.

“I didn’t realize how much half of the Diroal estate would be. Maybe the rest of the money could go into some kind of general fund to benefit Sampalok,” Edeard suggested.

“Ah, now you’re changing things, going back on your word.”

“Yes, but I didn’t intend to— Oh, Lady take them. It can wait until after the results. And then it’ll all be your problem, anyway.”

“Thanks for that,” Macsen said.

Edeard lowered his voice, casting a strong seclusion haze. “How are you two coping, anyway?”

“Just that,” Kanseen said. “Coping. We don’t have much Ladydamned choice. A whole load of Bise’s staff are lobbying to continue in their old jobs once the mansion’s fully grown. I don’t like the idea of using people who devoted their lives to the Diroals, but how else are we going to stop things from sliding back to how they were before? And when we sit on the local Council, we have to make fast decisions that’ll affect people’s lives without any reference to what went before. So far we haven’t hurt too many residents.”

“Sounds like you are in control and setting a good example. I can’t ask for more. How has the Upper Council taken your appointment?”

“Owain welcomed us like we’d been sitting there for five hundred years,” she said. “The rest just fell into line with that. Of course, there’ve only been three sessions since the riots. We’ll see what happens after the election.”

“It was so unbelievably sweet seeing my dear half brother’s face when I walked past him in my robes,” Macsen said with a faraway gaze. “I’m as rich as he is now, and I have a seat on the Council, which he doesn’t.”

“We have a seat on the Council,” Kanseen pointed out.

“Yes, dear.”

Her third hand gave him a sharp tweak. Edeard laughed at the wounded expression on his face. “Ah, married life. I have all this to look forward to.”

Kanseen narrowed her eyes and gave him a shrewd look. “And what about you? What are your grand plans?”

“It all depends.”

“Let’s just assume Finitan gets in tonight, shall we,” she said brusquely. “What do you do next?”

“Nothing dramatic,” he said, and gestured down at the square with its embryonic structure. “I intend to support Finitan because I believe he’s right. First consolidate the city, and to do that you need to implement the rule of law. It doesn’t take that much: The Grand Council let things slip, but the organizations and concepts Rah founded are still there. They just need revitalizing; that’s all.”

“People are generally happier now that the gangs have been beaten,” Macsen agreed. “You’ve shown them things can be put right no matter how bad they seemed. But Edeard, you also showed people what you are and what you’re capable of.”

“I’d never abuse the trust the city puts in me. You know that.”

“And hopefully the rest of the city will accept it, given time. You’re going to have to work on that.”

“I know. That’s one of the reasons I pushed Marcol into being a constable.”

“Yes,” Macsen said, sitting up and leaning forward with considerable curiosity. “I didn’t get that. I’ve talked to Dinlay. He says the boy isn’t really constable material.”

“I disagree. He’s trying,” Edeard said defensively. “He’ll make it to graduation; he’s got a huge incentive.”

“But why?”

“Remember when we all wondered why I’d been chosen by the Lady to do what I could do? What if I haven’t been chosen? What if, instead, her teachings have started to take hold? I mean really taken hold.”

“I can’t believe you of all people would say that,” Kanseen exclaimed. “We’ve spent a year down on the streets fighting those bloody gangs. They never followed her teachings.”

“The gang members didn’t, no. But what about everyone else? They all knew it was wrong, even if they couldn’t see a way out. Once I banished them, everything changed. You said yourself the city is a happier place already, and it’s barely been two weeks. The Lady’s teachings are everywhere; they’re an ingrained part of our culture now, here in the city and out in the farthest province. It’s the one thing that truly binds us, the one commonality. We all know instinctively that we should be striving to better ourselves, to live a more righteous life even if we don’t quite know how.”

“That’s just human nature.”

“Maybe. But the Lady endorses it, encourages us to follow that instinct, and provides a strong justification to develop it. Her Mothers have spent two thousand years preaching it. You can’t tell me anything would endure that long if it wasn’t accepted as a fundamental truth. We know the Skylords are out there waiting to guide us to the Heart, and as I showed everyone, we have souls that desperately need that guidance.”

“What in the Lady’s name does this have to do with Marcol?” Macsen demanded.

“I have the strength to influence the city, and I have the certainty how that strength should be used. Suppose I’m not the only one to have that strength. Suppose I’m simply the first. Suppose this is the time when Querencia has reached the level of decency and fulfillment it takes to summon the Skylords back.”

Kanseen stared at him, making no attempt to cover her astonishment. “Marcol? Marcol is like you?”

“He’s got a damned powerful psychic ability,” Edeard said. “What if that’s part of reaching the fulfillment the Lady talks of? What if there are others starting to emerge, if all the kids start to show this potential?”

“Lady help us,” she grunted. “Marcol?”

“Stop saying his name like it’s a curse,” Edeard said crossly. “He’s just a kid like any other. What he becomes depends a great deal on his environment. He didn’t have the best start with those parents; well, now I’m trying to help him become something better. The very last thing we need is division among those of us with stronger than average psychic powers; it’s bad enough the Grand Families distort the balance in their favor. We have to show Marcol and all the others like him who come along that real fulfillment is found through a strong society which cares for individuals, where people try and help each other as well as themselves.”

“And that’s going to bring the Skylords back?” Macsen asked incredulously.

“Tell me what else will,” Edeard countered. “I’m happy to try something else. You saw Boyd and Chae leave; they’re out there somewhere trying to reach Odin’s Sea. You know that part of the Lady’s teachings is real.”

Macsen ran his hand through his hair. “I know,” he admitted. “But … Marcol!”

“And others,” Edeard said.

“Have you sensed others?” Kanseen asked. “People with stronger powers?”

“Not yet. But this city encourages people to hide their abilities, and use them to their own advantage.”

“You just said we were becoming more enlightened,” Macsen said.

“ ‘Becoming’ is right,” Edeard said. “There’s a long way to go yet.”

Edeard had never seen the Malfit Hall so full. Every inch of floor space was taken up by big tables where clerks, divided up into districts, counted mountainous piles of ballot papers. More clerks and constables were still delivering sealed boxes, opening them up to avalanche yet more paper onto the tables.

Mayor Owain stood at the top of the stairs, surrounded by his staff and supporters, chatting away as if nothing of consequence were happening. Farther along the gallery Finitan was clustered with his own circle of advisers, also making light of the count below. Occasionally, he and Owain would exchange a few pleasant words.

The expectant Representative candidates were less lighthearted about the wait. They all hovered around their own counting tables, jostling with their opponents whenever an unclear ballot paper was held up for questioning. Accusations and insults were frequently shouted at the adjudicator clerks.

For once, few people paid any attention to the Waterwalker as he walked in with Macsen and Kanseen. As they crossed the vast ebony floor, he knew Owain’s gaze was following him, yet the Mayor’s composure remained. The ceiling above them shone a rich dawn light across all the frantic activity.

“We’ll go and check on our district,” Kanseen said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Watching them stride over to the Sampalok counting tables, Edeard felt a surge of admiration for his friends. There weren’t many people one could thrust into such a position and expect them to hold fast, but Kanseen and Macsen had done it. Dressed in their fur-lined robes, hoods hanging over their shoulders, they really did look like they’d been born to the role. Maybe it’s not just psychic strength that’s an indicator of the Lady’s teachings.

He started to walk up the stairs. Owain and Finitan watched him approach.

As a city constable I should be impartial, he told himself. Greet both of them and then go back down to the Jeavons tables. After all, if Owain wins, I’ll have to work with him.

Owain’s face produced a neutral smile of welcome as Edeard reached the top of the stairs.

Politician!

Edeard inclined his head. “Mayor Owain,” he said politely, and walked over to Finitan.

Honious take him; he was going to kill innocent people to keep his position. I would never be able to work with someone like that; he represents everything that’s wrong with Makkathran.

There was a brief unguarded flash of gratitude amid Finitan’s thoughts as Edeard shook the Grand Master’s hand. “Do you know how the count’s going, sir?”

“I have a small lead,” Finitan replied. “Not as much as we were hoping, but it remains constant.”

A half hour of labored chat and forced humor later, they all watched as the clerk Master supervising the Ysidro district vote walked to the stairs and stood on the bottom step.

“Ysidro always makes a show of being first to complete their count,” Topar told him. “It’s a small district, but they have a wide mix of people; it’s a good indicator.”

The Master cleared his throat. “It is given this day that Alanso is duly elected as the people of Ysidro’s Representative to Council. And further that mayoral candidate Finitan collected fifty-seven percent of the vote.”

There was some scattered applause, and the rest of the hall went back to the count.

“Alanso is one of ours,” Topar said. “Thank you, Lady.”

Owain graciously congratulated his rival on the vote, to which an equally gracious Finitan replied that the night was young.

Fiacre and Lillylight finished their count next, both returning Owain stalwarts as their Representatives, though the mayoral vote was split nearly fifty-fifty. Jeavons, Silvarum, and Haxpen returned Finitan’s supporters (Balogg among them) and gave him a large proportion of the vote. Nighthouse and Bellis elected Owain supporters, but Myco, Vaji, Cobara, and Tosella put Finitan supporters forward to the Council. They also increased Finitan’s overall vote to sixty percent. When the results came in from Abad, Igadi, Padua, and Fiacre, Owain had only one more Representative, and Finitan’s vote had increased to sixty-eight percent. Zelda produced Owain’s last Representative; Pholas Park and Lisieux Park were solid Finitan districts.

“We’ve got it,” Topar hissed elatedly as Finitan’s vote rose to seventy-one percent.

“Oh, Lady,” Finitan muttered. He seemed dazed, but nothing could remove the smile from his face.

Ilongo, Neph, and Drupe declared, putting Finitan’s percentage up another point. That just left the Sampalok vote. It wouldn’t affect the result now, but it mattered. Edeard stared down at the eight tables where the ballots were being counted, willing them to finish. Kanseen and Macsen were still walking between the clerks, backing up the adjudicators. There had been more disputes on those eight tables than in the rest of Malfit Hall put together. The Grand Master of the Guild of Clerks himself had been over a dozen times during the night to make his final judgment on smudged crosses. Finally, the clerk Master assigned to supervise the Sampalok count stood at the foot of the stairs and announced: “It is given this day that Gregorie is duly elected as the people of Sampalok’s Representative to Council.”

“He’s ours,” Topar whispered incredulously.

“And that mayoral candidate Finitan collected fifty-one percent of the vote,” the clerk Master concluded.

Thousands of people were waiting in Golden Park despite the chilly late-night air. There was a lot of movement after Sampalok declared. Dejected Owain supporters headed home, shaking their heads in dismay and muttering dark disapproval. Finitan supporters surged forward right up to the Outer Circle Canal. A line of fit young constables had to struggle to keep some of the overeager ones from falling into the water.

Finitan emerged onto the balcony overlooking Golden Park, and the cheering reached deafening levels. He began his thank-you speech. Not all the faithful listened. Bottles were being passed around. Groups of strolling musicians were playing, urging people to dance. The party in Golden Park would last until dawn.

Edeard was one of those who didn’t bother listening to the speech. He made his way back to the Culverit mansion, where an overjoyed Kristabel was waiting, and they celebrated in their own fashion.

Kristabel made Edeard wait. He couldn’t believe it. Tradition was one thing, but he stood at the front of the Lady’s church all by himself with the farsight of the city focused on him as minute after painful lonely minute dragged on. Tradition said the groom wasn’t allowed to use his own farsight to check and see if the bride was on her way, so he just stood there and endured.

The smell of pollen—sweet when he and Dinlay had walked into the church—was now overpowering, threatening to make his eyes water. It seemed as if half the Iguru plain had been stripped of foliage to decorate the huge church. The band from the Musicians Guild played on and on, repeating the same tune, which had become more like a funeral dirge. As the same terrible notes began once more, he gritted his teeth, wishing he’d pleaded a lot harder with Dybal to play for him, but Dybal was only going to sing at the reception gala that night. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. In front of him the thirty-foot-high snow-marble statue of the Lady gazed down benignly, her arms uplifted to summon the Skylords to Querencia. The sculptor had captured a most enigmatic expression; it was almost as if she were giving her congregation a judgmental glance. Certainly, anyone standing right at the front of the pews— curiously, on the exact spot where he had to wait—was singled out for her disapproval. He considered that she must have known that one day Edeard would be married in her church, that her timesense had warned her of the sacrilege. Why else single him out to glare at?

Another lost minute. His mind began to conjure up all sorts of horrors that could have beset Kristabel. He knew she’d set off from the Culverit mansion; tradition at least allowed him that much. The same tradition stated that the bride was allowed to change her mind only between her home and the church. But Kristabel wouldn’t do that to him. So she could have been assassinated or kidnapped, or the gondola had capsized. Because Kristabel wouldn’t abandon him.

So where in Honious is she?

Edeard started to cheat, using the city’s senses to examine the church. Not farsight, so no breach of tradition. Damn, I even think like a lawyer now. Just about every Grand Family in Makkathran was represented. Notable exceptions were Mistress Florrel, who had announced a headache an hour before the service was due to begin and given her apologies for nonattendance. The Gilmorns were also absent, as were the Norrets, who counted Lieutenant Eustace among their number. Captain Larose, however, was there and looked most amused by the Waterwalker’s discomfort. Grand Master Owain was in the pews reserved for guild dignitaries. Losing the election didn’t seem to have affected him at all; he retained his slightly cool persona throughout every encounter. Macsen and Kanseen were almost invisible amid the District Masters, their colorful robes blending in flawlessly. Kanseen wasn’t showing yet, though of late she’d started making some very barbed comments about which would arrive first, the mansion or the baby. The section reserved for the groom’s family was unusually small; Kristabel had appropriated several of his pews for her own family and friends. But Edeard thought he was well supported with a dozen constables and Bijulee and Dybal and Setersis and Isoix and Topar and others he’d met during his time in the city, headed up by Mayor Finitan himself. His one true regret was Salrana, who had sent a polite note of regret, claiming her duties wouldn’t allow her to attend. She was the closest thing he had to family, but since the day of banishment they’d been completely estranged. Every attempt he’d made to be reconciled with her had been rebuffed. He knew she was still at the church in Ysidro, devoutly fulfilling her duties. The few times he’d farsighted her, he’d been saddened by the way the joy seemed to have gone from her life. She’d aged inexplicably, becoming withdrawn and somber. This was a cooler, more resolute Salrana.

He regretted his snatched glimpses and quickly desisted. To his dismay he had to admit that she had changed as he had. The Salrana and Edeard who had lived in Ashwell were gone forever.

The sound of cheering seeped into the church, and Edeard’s heart started to beat faster. Their marriage wasn’t an official holiday, though there’d been a big crowd outside the church when he and Dinlay had arrived.

Finally! The band curtailed their wretched tune. He heard the rustle of cloth as the novice choir rose to their feet. Then the light changed perceptibly as the big doors swung open. Dinlay stepped up beside him, smiling widely. “Too late to back out now,” he murmured to Edeard.

Any scathing reply was lost as the organist began the wedding march. Edeard had never heard the giant keyboards being played before, and the sound was overwhelming. Then the novices began their accompanying melody. He was impossibly terrified and elated at the same time.

Julan appeared beside him, his pride shining with the power of a dawn sun. And she was there at his side. Edeard nearly let out a whimper of relief. Mirnatha giggled at his expression; the little girl was wearing a pink and white dress that transformed her into some enchantingly sweet fairy creature, an image spoiled only when she grinned her devilish grin.

Kristabel’s wedding gown was a gold-cream drosilk creation with royal-blue trimming that twinkled with emerald gemflowers; its train seemed to stretch back halfway down the aisle. He saw her head turn inside the veil, her eyes shining through the lace. Then the Pythia was standing in front of them, her smile gentle and commanding. The organist ended his thunderous anthem.

“Welcome to you all on this happiest of days,” the Pythia said to the congregation.

Julan and Kristabel lifted the veil from her face. Her hair flowed out like ripples of gold silk. Edeard couldn’t believe anyone so perfect was facing him at his own wedding ceremony. This surely must be some dazed fantasy from his last night in Ashwell, a moment of blissful delusion after the bullets struck and before death.

Kristabel took both of his hands in hers and squeezed reassuringly. “Been waiting long?” she teased.

“My whole life,” he told her truthfully.

They honeymooned at the Culverit family’s muroak lodge on the coast, spending half a month there by themselves, twenty days of delight.

A lot more staffers accompanied them this time, providing them with excellent meals and unobtrusive service. The end of summer was approaching, but it was still hot. Humid air above the cove barely moved the whole time they were there. As before, they took lazy walks along the coast, swam in warm water, and sunned themselves on the beach until both of them had tanned a deep honey-brown. Edeard tried his hand at fishing but lacked the patience. Both of them learned to sail in a small yacht that was a wedding gift from Charyau. They even managed a couple of trips to nearby fishing villages in thankfully calm waters.

“I think it will be some time before we venture that circumnavigation I mentioned,” Edeard admitted the evening after their first big voyage two miles along the shore.

On the other side of the table, Kristabel laughed in agreement, backdropped by a golden blaze of the setting sun. Both of them were determined from the outset to have the time for themselves. They avoided talking about city life and its politics. Too much of the last four months had been spent establishing Finitan as the Mayor, persuading the old guard to adopt his consolidation policies, strengthening the judiciary, and reinforcing the determination and effectiveness of the constables. It seemed to be working. Everyone reported good business. With the shadow of fear and uncertainty lifted, people were spending with confidence again.

Finitan’s first few months were already judged a success—in Makkathran, at least. Out in the provinces, things were not so agreeable. The news Topar had brought back at the start of the year was becoming common knowledge. Even his ominous predictions now seemed optimistic. Bandits long confined to the westernmost provinces were making steady inroads to the east. Rulan province faced a huge ongoing exodus as raids became a weekly occurrence. Then Worfolk province reported caravans being ambushed on previously safe highways. The numerous mountains of the interior were ideal refuges for the roaming bands who struck at villages and towns. After a raid they would ride into the tricky inhospitable terrain and vanish from the sheriffs and militiamen sent to hunt them.

What worried Edeard most was the long distance at which these episodes occurred. Makkathran did not get to hear of a bandit incident until months after it actually happened. They had no idea what was currently going on beyond the Iguru plain, how close the raiders were venturing to the city.

A mere two months after the election, the first refugees from the Ulfsen Mountains had trickled into Makkathran, whispering about strange, powerful guns, guns that could defeat an entire cavalry platoon. Official casualties began to rise among the militia regiments Owain had dispatched to help the governors. People started to notice the number of lavish memorial services that Grand Families threw for the officers. Nobody blamed Finitan, but he was starting to face questions about what he intended to do about the worsening circumstances out beyond the Iguru plain.

All that Edeard had put behind him in favor of sunny days lounging on the sands drinking cool wine and equally hot nights making love to Kristabel. Then the day came when the staff and ge-monkeys packed the huge pile of bags and crates, and they began the carriage journey home. He fell silent as they trundled along the broad coastal road, contemplating what news he would be accosted with as soon as they reached the city once again.

“You’ll still have me,” Kristabel said adamantly.

Edeard broke out of his reverie. “Huh?”

“You haven’t spoken a word for the last two miles. Was it that horrible a time?”

“No! That’s the problem. I wish it could have gone on and on. There’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to go back.”

“Me, too.” She attempted a smile, but her usual contentment was missing. “I don’t think I’m pregnant yet.”

“Ah.”

“They say vinak juice lingers in the blood for a while after you stop taking it. Another month would see it gone, and us successful.”

He put his arm around her. “I promise to redouble my efforts when we get home.” He stopped abruptly, then smiled. “Home.”

“Yes,” she said with equal glee. “The two of us together.”

“Alone, apart from your family and two hundred servants. But what the Honious, we’ll try and make the best of it.”

Her third hand pinched him hard. “You feel so guilty about that, don’t you?”

“Not guilty … just unaccustomed to it.” He remembered what Kanseen had said on the balcony of Bea’s Bottle: I’m sure I’ll get used to it eventually; it can’t be that difficult.

“You know, if Finitan had lost, I really would have followed you to a village on the edge of the wilds.”

He kissed her. “And Mirnatha would have become Mistress of Haxpen.”

“Oh, Lady.” Kristabel’s hand flew to her mouth. “I never thought of that. Off to the wilds by yourself you go, then.”

They clasped each other tighter.

“I wanted to be pregnant,” she said. “It would be so nice for Kanseen’s boy to have a playmate. Our children would grow up together.”

“Kanseen still has another month and a half to go. And you will be pregnant many times. Our children will play with those of the Sampalok Master’s family.”

She nodded, allowing him to convince her. “What will happen with the bandits and the provinces?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. We still don’t know where they get their weapons. That’s the true cause of all this strife.”

“Finitan’s going to ask you to go out there, isn’t he?”

“Probably.”

“You must go if it’s the right thing.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“I know. But, Edeard, don’t you want our children to live in a safe world?”

“Of course.”

“So really, there’s no choice to be made, is there?”

Edeard said nothing. She was right, of course, which made arguing futile. Given the path he’d chosen for himself, some events were inevitable.

At least nothing about the city had changed when they got back. The carriage and horses were led away to the Culverit stables in Tycho, and they took the family gondola back to the ziggurat mansion. Julan and Mirnatha were waiting for them on the mooring platform, both equally excited.

“I missed you so,” Mirnatha squealed, hugging her sister.

“And I you,” Kristabel promised.

“What was it like?”

Edeard and Kristabel managed to avoid looking at each other. “A nice restful holiday,” Kristabel explained to her little sister.

“Really? I always get fearfully bored after just one day at the lodge. What did you do all that time?” She gave Edeard a wide-eyed look of innocent interest. It didn’t fool him for a second.

Julan cleared his throat. “Shall we go and inspect the tenth floor now?”

The staff and ge-monkeys had been extremely busy since the wedding. Kristabel’s agonized rearrangement of the family had been implemented, with everyone shifting apartments and floors. In the end, fourteen sets of relatives had moved out. That was more than originally intended, but there were a lot of new marriages planned amid the relatives occupying the fifth and seventh floors, which would create another accommodation shortage over the next couple of years. Some of the third-floor families decided not to wait. Julan had offered to build them new manor houses on lands the Culverits owned beyond the Iguru.

In all honesty, Edeard didn’t see a lot of change in the furniture and fittings on the tenth floor. The big lounges and reception rooms were the same as before with all the family’s artwork and antiques in the same positions they’d occupied for centuries. He and Kristabel would take over the Master’s suite from Julan. It had been decluttered. He made no comment on the standard Makkathran bed and bathing pool; they could be reshaped easily enough. His few possessions from the maisonette were standing forlornly in one of the empty studies. When he looked at the small pile of boxes in comparison to everything the Culverits had accumulated over two millennia, he began to feel intimidated by the family again.

“You’ll soon make it your own,” Julan said comfortingly as he caught Edeard’s expression.

“Yes, sir.”

“I got Uncle Dagnal’s old chambers,” Mirnatha said joyfully. “And Daddy said I could have new furniture and curtains and everything.”

“Within reason,” Julan said hurriedly.

“Come and show us, then,” Kristabel said, holding out a hand.

Edeard followed the sisters out of the Master’s suite, taking one last look at the main octagonal bedroom with its huge circular bed. The room was bare apart from a fluffy brown carpet and some plain wardrobes and chests; the dressing room next door contained all of Kristabel’s clothes. He couldn’t help but compare its simplicity to the way Kristabel had decorated her bachelorette room just down the hall.

Perhaps she’ll allow me some say in how we make our bedroom look. I could offer to craft her a shower and a proper toilet, make the light white. The idea of spending the next two hundred years sleeping in anything as fluffy as what she’d created before was unnerving.

They spent the afternoon with the tenth floor’s housekeeper, discussing further changes. Several master carpenters were summoned to prepare drawings of the furniture Kristabel wanted to commission. Edeard was relieved when she toned down the drapes and fittings for their bedroom and finally found the courage to volunteer his own alterations. The craftsmen tried not to be too obvious listening when he explained how the shower could go anywhere and be any size. In fact, altering the whole layout of the tenth floor would be a simple matter for him if she was prepared to wait while the walls adjusted themselves. Kristabel sent everyone away when he started explaining that.

“I’d never thought of altering things on that scale,” she admitted. “Nothing ever changes in Makkathran.”

“It can now.” He looked around the big lounge they were in. “In fact, how about some more windows in this place? Let some light in.”

“What about the main stairs?” she asked excitedly. “Can you change them? The ones in Kanseen’s new mansion are actually usable.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Julan and Mirnatha were noticeably absent from supper on the tenth-floor hortus that evening, making a big show of saying how much they wanted to eat with the ninth-floor families.

“It’ll never last,” Kristabel said as they sipped sparkling white wine under a big white gauze awning. Long candles had been lit among the pots of orchids and troughs full of huge evening glories. With the orange lights of the city starting to twinkle amid the twilight and lengthening shadows, Edeard couldn’t imagine a more romantic setting. Neither, it seemed, could a lot of Makkathran’s citizens; they both had to cast a seclusion haze to ward off curious farsights.

“But we can make the most of it for a couple more days,” he said. It was almost a plea.

“You have to go back to Jeavons station tomorrow. You’re its captain, after all. And Finitan will want to talk to you, and Macsen is going to have a dozen problems.”

“I know. They’ve been very polite not calling us today.”

“I did longtalk Kanseen earlier. She says the mansion’s almost complete, as far as she can tell. She wants you to confirm it’s finished growing so she can start ordering fittings and fabrics for it.”

“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll check tomorrow.”

Her hand came down on top of his. “We still have tonight.”

“And every night.”

“You know what I mean. Tomorrow our new lives really begin.”

“I know.”

“But that’s hours yet.”

When Edeard walked into the Jeavons station first thing the next morning, he found that Dinlay had coped admirably during his absence. He was almost peeved at that, but one couldn’t argue with paperwork, and Dinlay had been quite meticulous about recording everything. Glancing at the new charts hanging up in his office, Edeard saw that patrols had gone out on time, duty rosters had been made up, monies allocated and spent, timetables established. Arrests had been made, but these days the constables tended to issue cautions to any miscreants they found. It was often enough. Only the most committed recidivists were hauled up in front of the judges now. Probationer training also was going well. Even Marcol was expected to pass his exams in time for graduation the next month.

“Though it’s touch and go,” Dinlay admitted. “There’s a pool if you want to put some money down.”

“I don’t think that would be proper,” Edeard said. It wasn’t quite the comment he had expected from Dinlay, but he couldn’t find fault in any other way. “So what else has been happening?”

“It’s been quiet, actually. In the city at least. We’re still getting refugees arriving, which is causing a lot of talk about how the remaining empty buildings are being taken up. People were expecting their children to move into the available places.”

“Do we know how much spare housing there is? I mean, is this going to be a problem?”

“I expect the Guild of Clerks knows the true numbers.”

“I’m sure they do. They seem to know everything else.”

“And anyway, it’s Finitan’s problem, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You’re right.” Edeard sat behind the desk he’d inherited from Ronark. Like the office, it was dark and functional: to be honest, a little drab and depressing for his taste. He looked around at the high, slightly curved walls with their small oval windows. No wonder it was so gloomy; the city fabric was a grungy brown with strange vertical vermilion streaks, as if someone had spilled coloring dye down them a long time ago.

Dinlay left to lead a squad on patrol. Edeard began reviewing the station logs. It was no good; the office kept distracting him. He reached down to the city’s thoughts and made some suggestions for modification: expanding the windows, changing the wall colors to a pleasant pale sky-blue, adapting the lighting rosettes to shine white. The effect would be much the same as he’d engineered on the tenth floor of the Culverit mansion that morning. Here the changes would be finished within a week; back home it would take longer. Kristabel was still toying with the idea of changing the entire layout.

Even after he’d kicked off the office changes, the logs didn’t interest him. He let his farsight reach out to the Orchard Palace.

“I wondered how long it would take you,” Finitan said.

The oval sanctum hadn’t changed. Edeard had expected Finitan to stamp his mark immediately, but the week after the election Finitan had remarked that he had more important things to worry about than the furniture. So the huge desk was still there in the middle, its dark veneer glossed to a mirror shine. The high velvet-padded chair behind it was Owain’s relic, too. But Edeard did recognize the silver cup that the ge-chimps poured his tea into, and Owain hadn’t used genistars in here.

Finitan had brought the genistar egg cradle from his office in the Blue Tower, but it sat on his desk empty.

Topar took a seat next to Edeard, refusing a cup of tea.

“Well,” Finitan started. “We managed to survive an entire twenty days without you.”

“Yes, sir,” Edeard said.

“The city isn’t really a problem anymore. People seem to have accepted my term without too much resistance.”

“They certainly have. Kristabel is complaining about how long the furniture she commissioned will take to build. The craftsmen are being run off their feet right now. It’s the same all across Makkathran. People are spending their money again. They have confidence in you, sir.”

“My apologies to your wife.” Finitan put his cup down and gave Edeard an uncomfortable stare. “Unfortunately, the city’s current bout of good fortune isn’t being repeated beyond the Iguru plain.”

Edeard gave a short nod. “I know.”

Topar cast out a strong seclusion haze. “I’ve been sending scouts out into the provinces,” he said. “Good men: ex-constables, ex-sheriffs, even a few reserve officers from the militia. People who know how to look after themselves, people I can rely on.”

“We wanted to build up a picture of these damn raids,” Finitan said. “See if there was a pattern behind them, a purpose.”

“That’s where it gets strange,” Topar said. “If they’re trying to soften us up for an invasion, they’re going about it in a very odd way. There have been no bandit raids at all in Rulan province since midsummer; in fact, the west seems clear of all disturbances. They’ve moved steadily east through the three largest mountain ranges, causing a lot of damage and setting alight a wildfire of fear and rumor. In fact, that’s our worst enemy right now. Any dispute that results in violence is attributed to bandit raids, from landowners fighting with poachers to a tavern brawl, so bad is their reputation. It’s hard to determine what’s real and what isn’t. The provincial governors aren’t reliable at the best of times; now any trifling squabble is seen as an excuse to petition Makkathran for militia support.”

“It doesn’t help that Owain sent the regiments out so willingly before,” Topar said. “Expectations of support were set too high.”

“He’s left you a real mess,” Edeard said.

“Yes. That’s politics, and to be expected. But we took a very good look at the information we can confirm. It’s a worrying result.”

“In what way?”

“Basically, we’ve established that there are six main packs of bandits,” Topar said. “Two are heading along the Ulfsen Mountains. One is using the Komansa range for cover. Two started out in the Gorgian Mountains, though one of those is now heading northeast along the Yorarns. And the last is plaguing the Sastairs all the way down to the southern coastal provinces.”

Edeard closed his eyes, trying to picture what he’d just been told on a map of the known lands. “They’re stretched quite thin, then.”

“I prefer the term ‘widespread,’ ” Topar said. “We’re a basically peaceful society, and their physical impact is minimal given the size of the areas concerned, but the disturbance and worry they cause is nearly universal.”

“So what are they doing?”

“One last thing.” Finitan pulled a piece of paper across the desk and started to read. “In Plax province there were raids on Payerne, Orastrul, Oki, Bihac, and Tikrit. All villages or small towns. The manor houses and their lands at Stonyford, Turndich, Uxmal, Saltmarch, Klongsop, Ettrick, and Castlebay have also suffered extensive damage during the last two months.” He gave Edeard an expectant look. “Anything ring a bell?”

“I’ve heard of the Uxmal manor; the Culverits own it. I think it’s a big parkland holding; they raise sheep there.” He had a nasty feeling one of the families from the third floor had gone there to make its new home.

“Indeed. Every one of those estates belongs to an ally of mine,” Finitan said. “Allies and supporters also have considerable assets in or around the targeted villages.”

Edeard felt cold. “How could bandits know that?”

“Somebody told them,” Topar said. “Someone who has conducted a comprehensive search through the official treasury registry.”

“It took us a while to work it out,” Finitan said. “Everyone I met at a party or dinner was complaining about their losses. I heard nothing else. I thought the invasion had already begun until I realized my allies were being singled out.”

“Lady!”

“Which brings us back to the question of who they are and what they are doing.”

“They must have collaborators in the city,” a shocked Edeard said.

“At the very least,” Topar said. He exchanged a worried glance with Finitan. “There’s also the question of the guns. If there isn’t another city equal to us …”

“No,” Edeard said. “The Weapons Guild …” They had the long-barrel pistols all this time. But whoever supplied the bandits with repeat-fire guns killed Ashwell.

“Too early to make that accusation,” Topar said abruptly. “And we have no proof whatsoever.”

“This is why we asked you in,” Finitan said. “I know a lot of your power comes from whatever relationship you have with the city itself, but you still have the strongest psychic ability I have ever known.”

“A week ago a report came in of a raid on Northford,” Topar said. “That’s a village in the Donsori Mountains, Edeard, just four days’ ride from Makkathran for the Lady’s sake. Rapid-fire guns were used. We know that for a fact. One of the groups from the Ulfsen Mountains must have pushed eastward in the last month.”

“If we can capture one of them alive,” Finitan said, “we might just be able to find out what exactly is going on, who those collaborators are.”

“I’m going to take a small group of the best people I know and trust,” Topar said. “We’ll have ge-eagles and ge-wolves and the best pistols available. Even so, I could do with some help.”

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard put his cold teacup back on the desk. “When do we leave?”

Despite all he’d been through in Makkathran, the city had made him soft, Edeard acknowledged on the second day. An easy life was an easy trap to fall into. Life on the road was a sharp reminder of the way he used to live: making camp each night, looking after the genistars himself rather than asking a servant, collecting wood to make a fire, cooking his own food, sleeping under a blanket and an oilskin beneath the nebula-swathed sky. That was cold enough. Then, after the third day, they didn’t even have a fire for fear the bandit crew would notice it, and they were high in the Donsori Mountains by then.

But at that he did better than Dinlay and Macsen. They were real city boys. So he alleviated his own discomfort by enjoying theirs.

Their third night out from North Gate they camped on the side of Mount Iyo, half a day’s ride from the main road through the mountains. There was still a lot of traffic on the road, with caravans and wagons and carriages rattling along the broad paved slabs that switchbacked along the rugged slopes. But all of them were accompanied by packs of ge-wolves. The wealthier travelers had their own guards as well. There were also daily patrols of local militia squads. Edeard’s party went under the guise of trading guildsmen, a common enough sight on the roads. As well as himself and Topar, they had Boloton, an ex-sheriff from Oki who had spent over half of his seventy years roaming the countryside. The second of Topar’s companions was Fresage, a huge man whose bulk was mostly muscle, another outdoor type who had seen membership in a southern provincial militia as well as serving ten years as a coastal warden. In turn, he was good friends with Verini, born to a caravan family, who was taking a decade-long break from the eternal trade routes to scout new markets and learn the roads in different territories. Then there was Larby, who had the manners of a Grand Family son yet was clearly comfortable with road life and proficient with a pistol. He said little about his background, but Edeard suspected he had been affiliated to the families in a fashion not too dissimilar to that of Argian.

That left Dinlay and Macsen to complete their number. By the end of the first day, saddle-sore himself, Edeard was beginning to think he shouldn’t have asked them along. Macsen had proved particularly difficult to convince; he was naturally concerned for Kanseen, who was due in just a few weeks. However, they stuck it out and learned from the others quickly enough. That they’d adapt was never Edeard’s concern. His main worry was that the three of them would be absent from Makkathran at the same time. Such a thing would be noticeable to a suspicious mind. If there were people in the senior ranks of government collaborating with the bandits, they might raise a warning even though they’d never know exactly what to warn against. And it would be difficult getting word out here ahead of Topar’s group.

As their party progressed, their main source of information was fellow travelers. They didn’t even have to ask difficult questions; those who used the road frequently were unrivaled gossips. Rumor of a bandit crew was strong. There had been another raid after Northford, at a hamlet called Regentfleet: five families dead and the buildings torched. The local governor was demanding assistance from Makkathran’s militia regiments to catch the bandits. Regentfleet was uncomfortably close to Sandmarket, the provincial capital.

“They’re heading south, then,” Topar said when they first heard the news of Regentfleet, and the party left the main road to strike out across the high terrain. It was hard going even for the stoic ge-horses, a type that blended traits of high endurance and speed; they had the stamina to keep a fair pace even on the rocky slopes away from the road.

Topar led them along the edge of the woodlands that dominated the middle slopes, thick forests of tall spindly kalkand trees whose feathery blue-gold fronds spent the winter months curled up in tight whorls.

They made camp that day under overhanging branches that dripped an unpleasant waxy sap from their newly budded scarlet spore cones. A small stream trickled nearby, allowing the horses and ge-wolves to drink. That night they sent their ge-eagles roving around the peaks and swooping through the valleys. The big birds had a trait Edeard had never known of before: a nearly perfect night sight. There were no colors to the vision he received from them—the world they flew over was drawn in shades of gray—but the features were sharp and true. Edeard could see small creatures scuttling along, oblivious to the birds gliding silently overhead.

“You’re young; you can become an apprentice to the Blue Tower yet,” Topar taunted when Edeard remarked upon the trait. Like the Weapons Guild, the Masters of the Blue Tower kept secrets that might work to their advantage.

The ge-eagles found nothing that night. Topar and Edeard called them back in the early hours to rest before breaking camp early the next day.

Edeard woke to the sound of Dinlay cursing heavily, hopping about on one foot as he held his other boot high. His glasses were still on the roll he used as a pillow, so his face was screwed up as he squinted at the boot. “Ladydamnit!”

Everyone else was lifting his head, using farsight to scan around, anxious that they’d been discovered—everyone apart from Macsen, who was on watch. He was unperturbed, sitting on an old fallen trunk and watching Dinlay with cool amusement.

“Bloody Honious!” Dinlay took a bad hop backward and tripped on a small rock. He landed hard on his ass and let out a distressed grunt. Edeard winced in sympathy as the flare of pain burst out of his friend’s mind.

“What? What?” Dinlay spluttered.

“You okay back there?” Macsen called in a voice that was far too calm. It triggered a suspicious grin on Edeard’s face. When he pushed his farsight into Dinlay’s boot, he found a mush in the toe that had been a utog beetle, a native insect with a particularly prickly carapace.

“Did you …?” an outraged Dinlay gasped. “Was that you …?”

“Me what?” Macsen replied innocently.

The others were chuckling now as Dinlay started shivering, partly from the bruise on his buttocks and partly from the cold; he was dressed only in a thin shirt and cotton undertrousers.

“May the Lady crap on you from a great height,” Dinlay muttered darkly. His third hand pulled his glasses onto his face, then began scraping the squashed remains of the beetle out of his boot.

“Children, children,” Fresage said with a shake of his head. He pushed his blanket back and rose ponderously, flexing his arms to work out the knots earned from sleeping on rough ground.

Edeard pulled on a thick sweater and clambered to his feet. He never could get comfortable just lying on the ground. A careful farsight examination of his boots revealed that they were unused by nesting insects, and he pulled them on.

Topar had snatched up a pistol as soon as he’d woken. Now he gave Macsen a disapproving glance and clicked the safety catch back on.

Boloton and Larby started rolling up their sleeping blankets. Now that his boot was clean, Dinlay transferred his attention to his toe. Several utog spikes were sticking through his woolen socks. He removed them one at a time.

“Well done,” Edeard said to Macsen. “Just how I envisaged a District Master would behave.”

Verini was grinning along with the rest of them. “How did you three ever clear the city of gangs?” he mused quietly.

Macsen flashed Edeard a profoundly guilty smirk.

“You’re so pathetic,” Dinlay grumbled.

“Got to do something to stay awake,” Macsen murmured. He pulled a kettle off the little stove that burned jamolar oil. “Tea, anyone?”

“You do have a use,” Fresage mocked.

“Few and far between, but those I have, I excel at.”

Edeard and Dinlay exchanged a look. “Not what Kanseen says,” Dinlay said smugly, and pulled his boot on.

Edeard took his cup over to Macsen. “You’re an ass,” he said, grinning as his friend poured out the boiling water.

“Yep, and that’s just on the plus side.”

Edeard stirred in one of the hand-tied linen tea packets that the tenth-floor housekeeper had made up for him. The others had ribbed him mercilessly about them, but they wound up borrowing them at every meal.

“How much longer is this going to take?” Dinlay asked as he held his cup out.

“Even though this is empty land, there aren’t that many places the bandits can hide out in,” Topar said, drinking down his tea. “Shepherds use the high pastures for grazing, and it’s turning cold up here now.”

“They will have found themselves half a dozen remote campsites,” Fresage said. “And they’ll shift between them.”

Edeard gave the valley to the south a shrewd gaze. The Donsori Mountains weren’t the highest range on Querencia, yet the snowcaps were creeping downward again as the last weeks of summer passed away. The forests that smothered the midslopes were changing color, the fronds on the dominant kalkand trees shading toward beige as they began to contract. Below the tree line, the gentler lower slopes had a yellow tinge. Grass deprived of water during the dry summer months was just starting to taste rain again. Clumps chewed down by terrestrial sheep and cattle along with the roaming flocks of native chamalans were putting up their last wispy sprouts before the snows came once more. The soil on these remote lands wasn’t rich enough to support farms. There were a few isolated cattle stations, but that was all. The peaks fenced away clouds and the air was beautifully clear. Visibility stretched for miles.

“If they’re to move around unnoticed, it will have to be through the trees,” Larby said.

“And the camps will have to be within range of villages,” Topar agreed. He pointed at the summit of Mount Alvice at the southeastern end of the valley. “There’s a plateau beyond the crest, with several villages. Sandmarket is a day’s ride beyond that.”

“That kind of area is possible for them,” Boloton agreed. “Secluded but in range of Regentfleet.”

Edeard thought they were right but didn’t say anything. He was content with someone else making all the decisions for once. Topar hadn’t said how long he was prepared to stay out here trying to track down the bandits, but they were carrying enough food for a fortnight.

Once they were back in the saddle, Topar led them onward toward Mount Alvice. As before, they clung to the tree line to avoid being spotted. They were assuming the bandits would be using ge-eagles and probably dogs. All of them had listened intently to Edeard on the first day when he had told them about the tamed fastfoxes he’d encountered back in Rulan province.

By midday they were halfway around the mountain’s slopes, when Topar stopped them. Their ge-eagles came flashing down to settle among the treetops. Verini, who was using the ge-eagle with ordinary vision, had spied two similar ge-eagles in the air above the shallow pass into the plateau country. The pair of them were orbiting high above the stony track, soaring around in a huge circle.

“Definitely keeping watch,” Topar said after they’d watched the ge-eagles for over half an hour. “We’ll have to go through the trees to get past them.”

They all dismounted and began to lead their ge-horses into the trees. Edeard went last, sweeping his farsight along the track through the pass to see if he could locate the bandits instructing the ge-eagles. There was no sign of them, not even if he used the counter to concealment, though that wasn’t reliable at any distance. They were either on the other side of the pass or hidden behind thick rock.

Their ge-wolves prowled through the forest of kalkand trees, using natural senses to scent anyone hidden amid the undergrowth. It was dank and cold under the boughs, as if the tall leaden trunks were somehow caging a winter’s mist. The cold soon wormed its way through their jackets and trousers to chill their limbs. Everyone had to use his third hand to ward off low branches and clinging damp fronds. The undergrowth of straggly bushes stunted by the lack of light tore at their legs, slowing them further. An endless canopy of scarlet spore cones dripped sap onto their hats, which then dribbled in sluggish rivulets down onto their shoulders.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached the far side of the mountain. The plateau was more hospitable than the saddle lands behind, a broad expanse of deciduous forests and long meadows laced with small streams. The peaks all around were low, without snowcaps. Miles away to the northeast they could see a village, its yellow stone buildings cresting a hillock. Thin strands of smoke wound up from chimneys.

“No wall,” Edeard said under his breath. Even now that startled him. He remembered his surprise on the long journey east with Barkus’s caravan as the fortifications grew smaller and more dilapidated with every settlement. In Oxfolk province on the other side of the Ulfsen Mountains they had been abandoned altogether, leaving towns and villages completely exposed to whatever lurked outside their boundaries. Nothing dangerous had lurked there, not for hundreds of years.

With the pass guarded by the ge-eagles far behind them, Topar guided them along the tree line to a steep little valley leading away from the mountain. They hiked down to the stream at the bottom and mounted up again. The ge-horses splashed along the stone bed, taking them out onto the plateau. Small martoz and bluebeech trees grew out of the steep slopes, their roots webbing the big flood boulders littering the valley. Long whiplike branches waved across the sky above them, providing more cover. Their ge-eagles flew low, barely skimming the uppermost branches, watching for any of their own kind, while the ge-wolves spread out across the boggy meadowland on either side, sniffing the air.

As the sun fell below the high, rumpled horizon, they reached one of the many forests sprawled across the plateau. Here the trees weren’t so tight, and the ground underfoot was a mat of dead leaves and soft loam. Tall weeds and grass offered no resistance to the ge-horses. They made their way to the center, where they set up camp.

When the first glimmers of the nebulae began to shimmer overhead, Topar dispatched their five night-viewing ge-eagles to see if they could spot the watchers from the pass.

“They’re here somewhere,” Macsen said intently. “They wouldn’t keep a lookout on the pass otherwise.”

“Unless they’re in the valley on the other side of it,” Dinlay pointed out, “and we crossed each other sometime when we both crept through the trees.”

“Ever the optimist,” Macsen grunted.

“Practicalist.”

“That’s not a word.”

“Realist,” Larby supplied.

“Thank you,” Dinlay said.

“They’re here on the plateau,” Topar said.

Edeard was one of those guiding the ge-eagles, his farsight enabling him to send it over vast swaths of land. It soared up into the air, giving it a broad view of the rolling plateau. Topar had asked him to cover the southeast, where there were forests and narrow gullies and long talus slides spilling out below from fault line crags.

The ge-eagle flew swiftly and silently, showing him the ground in muted grays, as if he were peering down on a world shrouded by the thickest storm clouds. He saw a drakken pack scampering along a slim gorge like an oily tide; then they began to churn around a chamalan carcass. Small rusals skipped nimbly up bushes and trees, searching for cones and pods to store for the winter. Trilans wove their low dams across streams, producing wide bogs that proved treacherous to other animals. Several flocks of chamalans huddled together, those on the outside nervous about whatever skulked through the night.

After an hour observing the relatively harmless nocturnal activities of the plateau’s wildlife, the ge-eagle caught a flash of motion next to a sprawl of hatlash trees growing along the marshy banks of a small lake, something bigger and faster than anything else it had seen that night. The ge-eagle dipped its wing and curved around until it was coasting along several hundred feet above the tops of the hatlash trees. Their trunks were swollen from the lake water, pressed together in a battle for space; the pushing and shoving resulted in the trees leaning at steep angles, producing an interlocked tangle that made perfect cover. The ge-eagle turned again, scouring the swaying treetops for any sign of incongruous movement.

It glimpsed something on the third pass and began a tight spiral. Through its eyes Edeard saw a fastfox slinking along, picking its way through the ragged curtains of weeping boughs. The big predator sped up when it reached a small clearing where dead trunks were rotting into a rancid pile of fungi. Even so, the ge-eagle clearly saw the collar around its neck.

“They’re here,” Edeard announced quietly, and gifted the ge-eagle’s vision to the others.

“Sweet Lady,” Dinlay muttered.

“I never thought I’d ever see one of those things,” Macsen said.

Edeard instructed the ge-eagle to back off.

“Why?” Larby asked.

“Its master won’t be far away,” Edeard explained. “They’re not that easy to keep control of. I know. He might farsight our ge-eagle.”

Sure enough, a few minutes later the fastfox left the hatlash trees. A man was with it, jogging along effortlessly.

“Dear Lady,” Edeard gasped. The man was wearing a simple dark tunic and knee-length boots. Two belts were looped over his shoulders, crossing his chest. Slim metal boxes were clipped to it, the kind that held bullets for the rapid-fire gun that was hanging on a third strap. “He’s one of them!” Shock was making him giddy. His hands started pawing at his chest as he sucked down air.

“Them?” Macsen asked. “You mean the bandits?”

“The ones from Ashwell. He’s dressed exactly the same as they were that night. I swear on the Lady, he’s got to be one of them.” He became aware of the nervous glances the others were trading. “Them,” he insisted.

“To be expected,” Topar said. “They chased me before.”

“That’s no bandit from the wilds,” Larby said.

“Are you okay?” Macsen asked in concern.

Edeard nodded a slow reassurance. Seeing this nemesis return out of his past was profoundly shocking. But I’ve grown since then. This time it’s their turn to know fear.

“Do you recognize this one?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard returned to the ge-eagle’s view. The bird was still gliding higher, keeping level with the bandit and his fastfox. The profile was hardly distinct, but … “No,” Edeard said. “I don’t remember any faces, not really.” Though there’s one mind I will know forever.

“All right,” Topar said. “Let’s follow him, see where he takes us.”

The ge-eagle stayed high in the air above the bandit, gliding idly to keep pace. Topar got them all back in the saddle as the bird reached the edge of Edeard’s perception, and they started to ride slowly after the bandit, leaving the forest behind. All of them cast a seclusion haze even though the nebulae above were wan shadows of their usual iridescence. The mild psychic baffle should be enough to deter all but the sharpest farsight at night. To bolster their safety, the ge-wolves ranged around them, while two of the night-viewing ge-eagles under Verini’s instruction scouted ahead. Their own farsight was used to guide the horses through the darkness.

“Is it just one?” Macsen asked after half an hour. The bandit was making good time, alternately jogging and walking, heading southeast and making use of the spinneys and thickets that were scattered across the plateau. He was clearly adept at moving unseen across the land; even the ge-eagle had trouble keeping track of him in some of the deeper terrain.

“I can’t see any others,” Edeard admitted. They’d deliberately kept a long way back in case the bandit had a powerful farsight. “But I know from experience they can all use concealment.”

“Great Lady,” Boloton said. “There could be an army of them following us.”

“There isn’t,” Edeard promised him.

It was almost midnight when the bandit reached the top end of a narrow gully. He stopped and squatted down amid a clump of tall weather-worn stones coated in thick kimoss. The fastfox sped away, back the way they’d just come.

“Let’s get into cover,” Topar said. They guided their mounts toward the nearest small wood.

The fastfox chased back along its path, stopping to sniff cautiously every now and again.

“He’s double-checking,” Fresage said. “Wherever it is, he considers it important. He’s not going on until he’s satisfied he’s clear.”

“Pull the ge-eagle back,” Topar told Edeard. “If their camp is nearby, we can’t risk exposing ourselves.”

Edeard instructed the bird to spiral higher. The lay of the land was revealed to him, falling away to the east and split by several rocky gullies.

“Two of those gullies meet up. Look,” Verini said. “It’s a hollow with a cliff along one side. Perfect place for a concealed camp.”

“This is where I go in and check, then,” Edeard said.

“I’ll come with you,” Dinlay said immediately.

“Thanks, but this is just a scout around to see if they’re there. My concealment is stronger than anyone’s, and I know I can shield myself if they do spot me.” He could sense the concern in everybody’s mind.

“Just be careful,” Macsen said. “There’s no city to protect you out here.”

“I’m just going to look. I swear on the Lady.”

They all watched through the lone ge-eagle as the fastfox returned and the bandit started down the gully.

“You’ve got two hours,” Topar said. “After that we will come looking for you.”

It took Edeard a while to decide on his approach. The top of the little cliff would surely be guarded, and fastfoxes had an excellent sense of smell. But the gullies, too, would be watched. Possibly there’d be a trip wire that he might not detect.

The cliff top it is, then.

As soon as he left the wood, he spun a concealment around himself, becoming no more than a dense wisp of dark air. His farsight swept out, alert for any hint of danger.

Just as he’d suspected, there were fastfoxes acting as sentinels above the cliff. They were curled up amid the boulders littering the long grass, wide awake, sniffing the night air for foreign scents. He reached out with his longtalk and began subverting their orders, coaxing them away from their obedient attentive state, allowing them to stretch and settle down comfortably, scratch their hides, and groom some of the day’s mud away. A sensation of contentment began to percolate through their thoughts. When one finally registered his scent, it dismissed the intrusive smell as an irrelevance.

There was a lone human watcher standing near the edge of the cliff. He was concealed, but Edeard could sense his farsight washing back and forth intermittently. Once he’d worked out the approximate location, he used his own farsight to gently prize apart the concealment. The bandit was revealed, carrying twin belts of ammunition boxes across his chest and a repeat-fire gun over his shoulder. There were also several knives and blade discs in various pouches. He even had an ordinary pistol. For all his toughness and weapons, he hadn’t noticed how slack the fastfoxes had become. His thoughts remained blissfully unsuspicious.

Edeard picked a section of the cliff eighty yards away from the bandit and crept forward.

“Nine of them?” Topar asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Edeard said for the third time. “One on top of the cliff controlling the fastfoxes. Five asleep below an overhang, and the one we followed settling down for the night. Then there’s two watching the gullies, both concealed. There’s also two fastfoxes in each gully. I saw five ge-eagles and nine terrestrial horses.”

“What about supplies?” Larby asked.

“A pile of sacks and bags, probably enough food for three weeks at least. And three boxes of ammunition. They’re not done with raiding yet.”

“Bastards,” Verini growled.

“So can we take them?” Topar asked. “They outnumber us.”

“By one,” Fresage said dismissively. “And we have surprise on our side.”

“I think it’s possible,” Edeard said. “We’ll need to approach down a gully. I can keep the fastfoxes calm long enough for us to get past them. The trouble will be the three watchers; they longtalk each other constantly. As soon as one is taken out, the others will know.”

“So we have to be within striking distance of the camp when that happens,” Topar said.

“I can take out the three watchers fast enough,” Edeard said. “But I can’t guarantee they won’t call out, so you’ll have to deal with the others. Especially if we’re going to take one alive.”

“I’d prefer to take two of them,” Topar said.

“Can our ge-wolves tackle the fastfoxes?” a mildly apprehensive Dinlay asked.

“We can’t take them with us,” Edeard said. “That’s a whole new instinct I’d have to soothe out of the fastfoxes, and a much stronger one than human scent. We have to keep this as simple as possible.”

“Lady … fastfoxes.”

“They’re fierce, but that’s all they’ve got. Don’t waste time trying to shoot one, especially in the dark. Heartsqueeze them or pulp their brains. It barely takes a second to kill one. Fear is their only ally.”

“Oh, Lady,” Dinlay groaned.

“Can you do this?” Topar asked with quiet authority.

Dinlay took a breath, managing to appear quite offended. “Of course I can do this. It’s only a fool who won’t admit his worry.”

“Good. I want you to take out the two fastfoxes in the gully as soon as Edeard deals with the watchers.”

“Certainly.”

Larby glanced up at the sky. “Do we do this now?”

“No,” Topar said. “It’s only a couple of hours until dawn, and we haven’t slept. We spend the day lying up here in the woods and resting; then tomorrow after midnight we strike.”

Edeard had never felt so apprehensive before. All those times he’d sneaked into the House of Blue Petals, rescuing Mirnatha, arresting Buate, even facing down Bise atop his mansion … he’d known and understood what he was facing then. This was different: The bandits were an unknown, and he certainly wasn’t as confident as Topar that they could bring this off. It would take only one little mistake to alert the watchers, and then they’d be fending off nine rapid-fire guns.

At first light, three of the bandits left their camp, ge-eagles orbiting high above them and fastfoxes trotting obediently alongside. One of the men even sneaked through the edge of the wood where Edeard and his companions were encamped. Thankfully, his ge-eagle never spotted them as it flew overhead.

One of the bandits headed back to the pass at the side of Mount Alvice, while the other two went off in completely different directions.

“Picket duty,” Boloton decided. “They’re making sure nobody gets close. We were lucky.”

“No,” Verini said. “They’re good; we’re better.”

“We’ll know tonight,” Macsen said sagely.

Edeard didn’t manage much sleep during the day. He was restless, his mind going over the plan again and again. It all depended on how fast he could eliminate the three watchers. That’s if they only have three watchers. Suppose they change the pattern each night. I would. No, I wouldn’t. He eventually fell asleep in the afternoon.

Larby woke him. “Picket guards are on their way back,” he said as Edeard blinked up at the darkening sky. Buluku was already visible, its swaying violet length beset with waves of electric-blue light. Odin’s Sea was rising above the eastern horizon, several scarlet spikes crowning its blue and green nucleus. He found its presence strangely reassuring. I wonder if Boyd has reached it already. Probably not. Who knows how far away it is?

There was an unusual number of stars, twinkling away in the wide gaps between the nebulae. At least Honious hadn’t appeared in the firmament. The way Edeard was feeling, he probably would have taken that as a bad omen. Stupid, because the sky is just the sky no matter what.

They ate together, munching their way through half-stale bread and some cold pasties followed by dried fruit. However, Topar did allow them to use the jamolar oil stove to heat water for tea and coffee. They were too far away for a fastfox to pick up the scent.

“No one else left or joined during the day,” Macsen said. “So it’s just the nine of them.”

“You sure it’s only nine?” Fresage asked.

“I counted nine,” Edeard assured him.

“I want everyone to oil and check their pistols,” Topar said.

Edeard was thankful for the distraction, even though he knew he was sure he’d never use the weapon. His third hand was all he needed. But he went through the routine anyway.

Just after midnight, Topar led them out of the woods. It took them an hour to retrace the route Edeard had taken the previous night, moving slowly and cautiously. As they reached the end of the gully, they linked hands before summoning up a concealment. Both Larby and Topar had insisted this was the best way of keeping in contact; whispers and strong farsight might be detected by the watchers. It was a strange sensation; Edeard could feel Dinlay’s hand in his, yet if he glanced back, he could see only a blur of darkness.

Edeard walked forward very slowly, using the weakest farsight he could to check the ground for trip wires or any other alarms. As he did so, he began to feel uncomfortable. A tremor ran through him. Something’s wrong.

The boulder-strewn walls rose sharply as the slope carried them down toward the bandit camp. Soon the steep walls were topped by imposing rock cliffs. Below their feet the ground was turning damp. Nebula light revealed a meandering channel with thick reed tufts growing out between the stones. Edeard’s trepidation grew with every step. Cold had claimed him now. He knew what this feeling was—the same as that night in Ashwell, the same as the entrapment atop the tower in Eyrie.

There can’t be anything wrong. Not here. They don’t know we’re coming for them. They can’t know!

On top of that anxiety, Edeard began to worry if his longtalk could reach the sentry fastfoxes before they scented him coming. It would be touch and go, he knew. He hadn’t realized the gully was this deep or so serpentine.

The sense of foreboding grew even stronger. He thought he could hear a whisper. Not with his ears but with his mind. A very faint longtalk?

He walked through a small shallow stream, moving carefully so he didn’t create a splash, only to find his boots sinking with alarming speed. Quicksand. “Shit,” he whispered through clenched teeth. He had to reach down with his third hand to stabilize the treacherous ground. His finger tapped three times on Dinlay’s hand—caution.

There was a tremendous scraping sound from above, as if the stone cliffs were splitting. Edeard immediately sensed a number of powerful farsights stabbing down, farsights that weren’t fooled by concealment. The noise grew even louder.

“Weapons!” Topar shouted.

Edeard dropped his concealment and sent his farsight straight toward the sound. What he found shocked him for a dangerous instant. Three huge boulders were starting to roll down the slope directly above them. As they moved, they dislodged a whole swarm of smaller boulders. “Ambush!” he bellowed, and immediately strengthened his shield. At once he realized it wouldn’t be the slightest use, not against such a cascade of stone; the mass starting to slide down on top of them was incredible. He instinctively grabbed Dinlay with his third hand and threw him up the slope on the other side.

“Hello again, Edeard,” a mental voice sneered.

Edeard was scrambling up the slope as the first boulders picked up speed. He reached for Macsen. But he knew that voice and the cruelty behind it: the leader from Ashwell, the man who had destroyed Edeard’s village and his life. Akeem’s murderer.

Dinlay had recovered from his abrupt flight. He started shooting his pistol across the gully. It was a signal for Topar and Fresage to open fire. Verini began to run back along the gully. The overwhelming noise from the accelerating avalanche was joined by the deadly sound of rapid-fire guns. The three large boulders had been covering the mouths of caves in the cliffs. Now a dozen bandits were spilling out, taking aim at Edeard and his companions. The only thing preventing immediate death was the avalanche itself. Too many rocks were interfering with their field of fire.

“The great Waterwalker himself.” Edeard’s tormentor laughed.

By now the smaller head-size stones were bouncing down around Edeard. Bullets chewed the ground beside his feet. A screaming Dinlay dived for cover behind a rock, but he wasn’t fast enough. Bullets chewed his legs, then thudded into his torso.

A stream of bullets smashed into Edeard. His shield held, and he instinctively punched back along the line of attack. One of the ambushers flew backward through the air, spraying blood.

Three big stones crashed into Fresage. His cry was cut off.

Macsen fired up at the ambushers. The ground around him was ripped apart by rapid gunfire. Edeard screamed at the massive flare of pain Macsen’s dying brain unleashed. His third hand lashed out wildly again at the ambushers, knocking four of them sideways. Two came careering down the slope after the avalanche, bones snapping as they twisted and tumbled.

A giant boulder smashed into Larby’s chest, flinging him to the ground. More stones bounced and skittered on top of him.

Edeard was dancing about on the slope, trying to avoid the lethal barrage, smacking at the stones hurtling at him, deflecting them. Then the biggest boulder of all, nearly twice his height, slammed into the bottom of the gully, shaking the ground. Momentum sent it spinning right at him.

He held it. The incredible weight was nothing. He just grabbed it with his third hand and stopped it dead in the air. It hung there, three feet off the ground, as his lips twisted savagely with the effort. A shower of smaller stones from the avalanche smacked into it. Edeard held fast. One of the other original boulders rolled past, then teetered on the slope and skittered back down to the bottom of the gully.

“Ladyfuck!” someone’s frantic longtalk shouted.

“How’s he doing that?”

“Kill him. Kill the little shit.”

The rapid-fire guns began shooting. Bullets thudded into the boulder hanging in front of Edeard. He could hear strange whirring pings as ricochets twirled off in all directions. The reverberations of falling rock grumbled away as the avalanche slithered to its end.

Edeard lifted the boulder high above his head, higher, three times his height, then higher still. It drew level with the caves on the other side of the gully. Seven bandits were crouched down on a long ledge running in front of the dark openings. They gaped in disbelief at the massive rock that was now curving through the air toward them, accelerating.

It struck the first one, knocking him into the gully. The impact didn’t even slow it down. Everyone on the ledge tried to run, but there was no room and no time. The boulder hammered into them, crushing their bodies to pulp or sending them spinning off into the chasm. Then Edeard brought it down very precisely on the last bandit.

After that, he simply stood there, arms by his side, staring numbly at the great swath of shingle the avalanche had created on the other side of the gully. He started to shake. First his arms, then his legs trembled and his muscles gave out. He dropped to his knees.

“Dinlay?” he called with mind and voice. “Dinlay? Macsen? Topar? Anyone?”

He sensed the fastfoxes coming, slinking along the bottom of the gully, hurrying to do their masters’ bidding, to bring death to the intruder. Without even thinking, he shoved his third hand into their skulls and tore at the soft brain tissue. They fell silently, sprawling over the stony ground.

The remaining bandits followed stealthily, creeping along under concealment, rapid-fire guns held ready. Edeard let them come close, then killed them—pulling them from where they crouched and crawled and snapping their spines. They were discarded one after the other, dropping out of the night to lie broken beside their fastfoxes. He felt nothing: no sorrow, no anger. Nothing.

Dinlay’s shredded body was sprawled on the slope above him, where he should have been safe. Where he would have been safe after Edeard dropped him there if he’d just stayed down. But Dinlay would never cower behind a rock while his comrades were under attack. Not Dinlay.

Edeard focused his farsight down the slope. Macsen’s bloody corpse was staring up at Odin’s Sea. Defiant to the last, he’d even gotten off a shot after the first swarm of bullets had struck. Fresage and Topar were buried below mounds of stone. Boloton had been pinned down by a rock landing on his legs. Other stones had battered him while several bullets punctured his chest and head. There wasn’t much left that was recognizable. Verini hadn’t gotten more than half a dozen paces back up the gully before the rapid-fire guns had found him. Larby’s arms and legs protruded from underneath one of the large boulders; there was nothing left of his torso but a mangled patch of gore soaking into the earth.

Edeard started crying. “Why do you do this to me?” he yelled at Odin’s Sea. “Lady, why? What have I done that’s so evil to be punished like this? Why? Why? Tell me, you stinking bitch.” He sobbed relentlessly. “Why?” Then he was curled up on the ground, helpless. Wanting this monstrous life to end. Wanting to die.

“Edeard.”

The voice came from a very long way away.

“Edeard, this is not over.”

He wiped a hand over his face, smearing the mud and tears and blood that were clinging to him. “Who … oh.”

“Edeard.”

Through his grief he sighed in understanding and extended his farsight to where he thought the voice was coming from, concentrating as best he could. “The Master of Sampalok himself,” he said with bitter affection.

Macsen’s soul smiled down at his friend. “The briefest reign ever.”

“The most memorable.” Edeard’s farsight switched to Dinlay, who stood beside Macsen. “I’m so sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Dinlay said. “You tried to save me.”

“I failed.”

“But you tried. That’s what makes you the Waterwalker.”

“Can you hear the nebulae? Can you hear the songs?”

“Yes,” Macsen said. “They’re very strong, very beautiful. It is hard to resist their call; they promise such a glorious future within the Heart. But we will stay with you for now; we are pledged to do that, no matter how difficult it is to linger. There is one task we are honor-bound to help you with, Edeard; defeating whoever was behind this ambush. You will deliver us justice.”

“I will,” he said miserably. “I promise that. And thank you so much.”

Macsen smiled sadly. “Edeard, can you see them?”

“See who?” He sent out his farsight, thinking some bandits might have survived.

Macsen and Dinlay drifted toward him. “Beside us, Edeard,” Dinlay said. “Try, Edeard; try to see them. They’re so weak now, so fragile. But they endure. For you. Dear Lady, they have lasted for over a decade and a half. You’ll never know what that costs until you die.”

“What?”

“Focus, Edeard,” Macsen insisted. “The same way you see us. But go further.”

Edeard attempted to do as they asked, extending his farsight, not lengthening it but deepening the perception. There, right on the edge of his ability, he discerned two figures. They were incredibly faint: a man and a woman, badly enervated compared to the souls of Macsen and Dinlay.

“I know you,” Edeard said in wonder. “Your faces. I remember them.” His thoughts went tumbling back through the years. Back to a time when he’d run through that grand old farmhouse outside Ashwell. Laughed and played all day long. Gone running happily to … “Mother?” he gasped incredulously. “Mother, is that you? And Father?”

The tenuous souls smiled in unison. They linked hands.

“Son,” his father said.

It was a voice so frail that Edeard was immediately afraid. “You stayed?” The tears had returned as the revelation sapped his physical strength.

“Of course we stayed, my beautiful boy,” his mother said.

“You watched out for me. You! It was you all those times. You warned me.”

“You are all that is left of us,” his father said. “We had to protect you, to make sure you were safe.”

“Oh, dear Lady. What about the songs, the call to the Heart?”

“We love you; that’s what’s truly important.”

“But, you’re so … small.”

“It would be the same if we had followed the songs,” his mother said with a gentle smile. “They are so far away. I tell myself so few souls will ever reach the Heart.”

“Go,” Edeard said. “Go now. I want to meet you again on the other side of Odin’s Sea. I want to tell you all I’ve done with my life. I want you to be safe.”

“Too late for that, son,” his father said. “This has been our blessing, seeing what you have become, seeing you grow to this stature. I’m so proud, so very proud, I would never exchange this for another lifetime in the Heart. Not if I had this same choice a million times over.”

“My beautiful son,” his mother said. “I could never have dreamed for a child so splendid. You have led this world out of darkness.”

“No, he hasn’t,” Macsen said. “I’m sorry but, Edeard, they knew we were coming. This ambush is about as clever and devious as you can get.”

“And it didn’t work,” Dinlay said firmly, then frowned. “Not against you.”

“Who warned them?” Macsen asked. “Who is really behind this? Edeard, the girls! Our wives. What is happening back in Makkathran?”

Edeard felt all the joy of his extraordinary reunion drain out of him. “I don’t know,” he said. “But there’s someone left to ask.”

The huge boulder was exactly where Edeard had left it, perched on the lip of the ledge. Its immense weight was crushing the bandit leader’s lower legs. Despite being trapped, despite the immense pain, the desperate man had managed to reload his rapid-fire pistol. His third hand had gathered up several extra magazines full of bullets. All he needed was a clear shot.

Edeard felt the man’s farsight on him as he scrambled up to the ledge. He walked calmly around the boulder, and the bandit opened fire. Edeard stood there grinning as the incessant bullets pummeled uselessly at his shield.

“A truly terrible weapon,” Edeard said when the bullets were exhausted. “Your enemies will surely be deaf for a week after that.”

“Go to Honious, Waterwalker.”

“A long time after you, I suspect.” Edeard’s third hand snatched the gun away. “You never did tell me your name. But now I recognize that nose; it’s very distinct. Just how far down the Gilmorn family tree are you?”

“Your friends are dead. All of them. I farsighted that. You’re all alone in ways you cannot imagine.”

“Really?” Edeard applied his third hand. The Gilmorn screamed as the boulder rolled forward; his knees crunched. “Who told you we were coming?”

“It’s over, you fucking freak,” the Gilmorn yelled against the pain. Cold sweat was seeping down his face. “We won; even after this, we won.”

The boulder turned fractionally again. The scream of agony was terrible as more of his legs was destroyed beneath the stone. “Who won?” Edeard asked calmly.

“You can’t win, not now,” the Gilmorn wailed.

“An inch at a time,” Edeard warned, and moved the boulder again. “And you’re a tall man.”

“Nooooo!”

Edeard thought the Gilmorn might have damaged his throat, the tormented cry that followed was so loud and prolonged. “Is this how the villagers begged and pleaded? How many have you slaughtered over the years, Gilmorn?” Edeard rolled the boulder up closer to his hips.

The bandit began thrashing about, banging his head back frantically against the ledge in an attempt to split his skull open, to end the torture. Edeard’s third hand swiftly immobilized him.

“It was necessary,” the Gilmorn gurgled. He was having trouble breathing now, sweat soaking his clothes.

“Necessary?” a disgusted Edeard asked. “Necessary for what? You have killed—murdered—hundreds of people. Thousands. You have brought ruin to whole villages.”

“One nation.”

“What?” Edeard thought he had misheard the phrase. The slogan. Owain’s slogan. Owain.

“We have to be one.”

A furious Edeard edged the boulder around again. The man’s hips burst.

“Owain!” Edeard yelled, his voice full of hatred.

The Gilmorn laughed manically, allowing blood to foam out of his mouth. “One world, one nation, ruled by those of us who were born with destiny in our blood.”

“You did all this to crown an emperor? You … you … Dear Lady, for this?” Edeard rolled the boulder forward and kept it going until the screams and snappings ended abruptly. “Lady, no,” he murmured in anguish.

“For all your strength, you’re so weak,” the Gilmorn’s soul said contemptuously.

Edeard spun around.

The bandit’s spectral essence stood above the puddle of his own blood spreading out from under the boulder. He gave Dinlay and Macsen a scornful glance. “You could have joined with us, Waterwalker. Cousin Ranalee offered you the world, a whole people united in veneration of your strength. And you turned her down. For what? Them? What can these pitiful tragedies ever give you?”

“Honious awaits you,” an incensed Macsen said. “Do not tarry.”

The Gilmorn started to ascend. “And guess what, Waterwalker: My family still gets to fuck your little novice whore.” His shape blurred as it shot upward to be lost amid the glowing beauty of the nebulae.

“Salrana?” Edeard murmured in dismay. “Kristabel!”

“Kanseen,” Macsen said. “Edeard, what is happening in Makkathran? If Owain is to be emperor, this trap for us can only be a part of his madness.”

“Lady damn it,” Edeard spit. He scurried down the slope and began to run along the gully.

Several of the bandits’ terrestrial horses were still tethered to their posts. They were skittish, but Edeard’s skilled longtalk calmed them. He found a saddle among the packs and threw it over the first horse.

“Six days since we left,” Macsen said. “What can they have done in six days?”

“It’ll be another two before I can get back,” Edeard said in anguish as he mounted up. “Perhaps Owain is waiting to hear this ambush was successful and I am dead. He knows that I can stop him, that the city sides with me.”

“Yes,” Dinlay said. “We must hope for that.”

Edeard pictured a map, trying to work out the shortest way back to the main road through the mountains. Disheartened, he realized it was back the way they’d come, past Mount Alvice. But before, they’d ridden carefully, lumbering along beneath trees and in deep ravines to avoid notice. Now he had no such inhibitions. He spurred the horse on and instructed the other beasts to follow.

Dawn found him a long way past Mount Alvice. By midmorning he was back on the road and speeding east. He had to switch horses before lunch; the one he’d ridden from the ambush was nearly dead from fatigue. The next one went lame in the middle of the afternoon. Edeard himself was worn out, but sheer determination kept him going. The next two horses lasted only a couple of hours each.

He came to a village as the sun began to dip toward the mountains, knowing full well he looked like something straight out of Honious. They might have been nervous about his appearance, but the villagers knew of the Waterwalker, and gold coinage spoke a welcome language everywhere. He paid a ridiculous amount for three fresh horses and raced off into the evening.

Despite the cramped muscles, the bruised and bloody chafing on his thighs, he kept going through the night. Morning saw him arrive at the foothills of the Donsori range, with the Iguru plain spread out below. Makkathran sat on the horizon, the gold sunlight already catching the tips of its towers. He let out a sob of relief at the sight of it, even though he was completely exhausted.

“I have to know,” Macsen said, and with that he was gone, flashing on ahead through the warm winds blowing off the land.

“I will stay with you,” Dinlay promised.

Edeard urged his last tired horse down the switchback road. That was when he met the caravan winding its way up into the mountains. It was unusual for a caravan to be moving so early in the day. He stopped to talk with the master.

“The city is in chaos,” the old man told him nervously. “There are men with guns on every street, claiming to represent the new Mayor. The militia regiments marched in two days ago, and the constables tried to stop them. There was fighting. I have never seen so many dead.”

“No,” Edeard groaned. “Oh, Lady, no. Wait! The Mayor called in the regiments?”

“Yes, but not Finitan. He’s dead, and nobody knows how that happened. Owain has claimed the Orchard Palace, and the gunmen supported him.”

Edeard desperately wanted to know about Kristabel, but the caravan master wouldn’t know. “I need fresh horses. I can pay.”

The old man gave him a grim look, then eventually nodded. “We won’t be back this way for a year, probably more, so I suppose we will be spared retribution.”

“Retribution?”

“The Upper Council has declared you outlaw, Waterwalker. I … we heard you were dead.”

“Not yet,” Edeard said through gritted teeth. “They have already found it is not that easy.”

“Good. We will swap for your horses. I don’t need money from you.”

“Thank you.”

“Finitan dead,” Dinlay said somberly as Edeard rode across the Iguru plain on a long-legged ge-horse. “How dare they commit such an act? The people elected him.”

“This has been years in the making,” Edeard answered numbly. “All the bandit attacks, the fear in the provinces, even the gangs loose in the city—all designed to force Querencia to accept a single government, one with Owain at its head. And then I arrived. How ironic is that: His own campaign of terror made me flee to the city.”

“But what can you do now?”

“Throw him out of the Mayor’s office, restore the rightful government.” Even as he spoke it, he knew how false it sounded.

“Good.” But the specter’s tone was uncertain. “That’s good.”

Edeard didn’t bother with concealment or even a seclusion haze. He didn’t care that people saw him. He wanted word to spread into the city. He wanted people to have hope again, to know the Waterwalker was coming.

All would be put right.

There was a lot of traffic on the road, all of it heading away from Makkathran. Ragged groups stopped to stare as he galloped past. Several cheered, but the majority shook their heads in dismay at the sight of him. Longtalk rippled along the length of the road.

“The Waterwalker is still alive.”

“The Waterwalker is coming back.”

“The Waterwalker will stop this.”

“The Waterwalker is too late.”

“Too late.”

It disheartened him simply because it matched his own suspicions. Apart from Kristabel and a few friends, what was there for him, really? He was never going to save the city and the world from Owain’s kind. All that was left now was a rescue attempt and a life in exile.

It was afternoon when he reached the final approach to the city, riding hard under the fanciful variety of trees lining the road. He was the only traveler now, and his farsight swept out to review his reception.

When he burst out from the end of the ancient partition of trees, even the sheep had vanished from the quarter-mile band of grassland encircling the crystal wall. The North Gate was closed. A quick farsight check showed the other two gates shut as well. Half a regiment of militia was drawn up in a protective semicircle around the mighty gate, a hundred pistols lined up along the road. At the front of them was a squad of guards in the uniform of the Weapons Guild. They carried rapid-fire guns.

Owain’s farsight fell upon the lone figure urging his horse forward, one strand among many thousands. “Turn around, Waterwalker. There is nothing left for you here. Turn around. You bring only death, for these fine men will kill you no matter how many of them your strength claims first. You cannot wipe out an entire city of adversaries.”

“It is not your city,” Edeard longshouted back.

“As you wish. May the Lady have mercy on your soul.”

When he was barely three hundred yards from the first ranks of the militia, Edeard suddenly turned his ge-horse off the road and curved away parallel to the crystal wall. A cavalry platoon charged through the militiamen and raced after him. Any other time, Edeard would have laughed defiance; now he simply gritted his teeth and asked the city to allow him entry. He turned his horse again and set it pelting directly at the crystal wall. The cavalry altered track to intercept him.

Edeard kept a steely control over his mount’s fluttering thoughts as it pounded closer and closer to the wall. It never faltered, not even at the end, when it was going far too fast to stop in time. A few yards short of the vertical barrier Edeard spurred it to jump. It leapt forward, and to the astonishment of the cavalry in hot pursuit, it passed straight through the wall as if the tough substance were nothing more than a thin mist. They could even see it through the tinted crystal as it came down to land on the other side and continue its charge forward. Only then did the Waterwalker pull its reins back. He swung off the saddle and stood on the ground of Low Moat for a second before swiftly sinking straight down through the grass.

Edeard emerged in the center of the courtyard at the base of the Culverit ziggurat. The city’s senses had revealed what he would find: a long row of bodies wrapped in white cloth. And Buate, dressed in the robes of a Haxpen District Master, supervising ge-monkeys and cowed tearful staff on how he wanted the corpses disposed of.

Just for an instant, Edeard’s fright lifted as he perceived Kristabel standing there. But as he began to race forward, arms open wide to greet his love, Dinlay’s soul cried: “No, Edeard. She is gone like me.”

Kristabel turned toward him as he stumbled to a confused halt. Then he finally acknowledged that she was gone, that he was farsighting her soul as it stood vigil over her body.

“I’m so sorry,” she told him with a forlorn smile.

Edeard’s whole body was trembling with shock and anger. He turned inexorably to face Buate, who was slowly backing toward the mansion’s main entrance. His guards also were edging away; none dared raise their weapons against the Waterwalker.

“I … I had no choice,” a pale Buate cried. “Owain ordered me to claim the Haxpen Mastership for myself. There was a fight. Many were killed on both sides.”

“Who did this to you?” Edeard whispered to Kristabel, the words barely leaving his mouth.

“His men came at dawn three days ago. Homelt and our guards fought valiantly. But the guns, Edeard; they had these terrible guns. None could stand against them. They killed our guards. My cousins and the maids were raped, old and young; they spared no one as they made their way up the mansion. They forced their way onto the tenth floor. Daddy and I tried to hold them off, but they were too strong. Edeard … I jumped. I wasn’t going to let them do that to me. All was lost. Daddy and I and Mirnatha held hands and jumped from the very top of the stairs. Did we do wrong?”

“No, my love, you did no wrong. I should have been here to protect you. I am the one who failed.”

“Daddy and Mirnatha have gone to the nebulae in search of the Heart, Edeard; they follow the songs. Mommy will be there waiting for them. I stayed. I knew you would come. I had to see you one last time before I go.”

“What?” Buate asked. His farsight was probing the courtyard, trying to discover who Edeard was talking to. “Who is there?”

“Who is there?” Edeard repeated numbly. “My wife is here. My friend is here. My mother and father are here.”

Kristabel smiled at the souls of Edeard’s parents. “He is yours?”

“He is,” Edeard’s mother said.

“I loved him so.”

“We know. He never knew happiness or contentment like that before you.”

“I see no one,” a badly frightened Buate stammered.

“Permit me to show you,” the Waterwalker told him.

Buate was lifted from the ground. His guards watched in dread as he began to shake violently in midair. Then he flung his head back and howled, his mind flooding the courtyard with excruciating pain. Tiny blooms of blood appeared on his robes, swiftly progressing to rivulets that dribbled down to splatter on the courtyard. That was when the guards turned and ran. They had to go a long way before the screams no longer plagued their ears.

Eventually, Buate’s soul looked down on his corpse as the Waterwalker dropped it to the ground.

“Do you see now?” Edeard asked.

“You have lost,” Buate said. “This is all you can do now: kill. In doing that, in seizing power back in such a fashion, you become us.”

Tears filled Edeard’s eyes again as the soul slipped upward. Buate had spoken the truth. There was nothing left for him. Owain and his kind had won. Killing them now would achieve nothing. The world was theirs. It wasn’t one he wanted to live in.

Macsen and Kanseen drifted through the courtyard wall.

“Bijulee and Dybal are dead,” Macsen said. “Bise came back to Sampalok.”

“Our baby is lost,” Kanseen’s soul declared. She was fainter than her husband. “He may be in the Heart. I cannot stay. Not here. Not even for you, Edeard. I have to know if he’s there. I have to know my son.”

“I understand,” Edeard told her.

“My friend, I must go with my wife,” Macsen said.

“Of course you must.” Edeard raised a hand in farewell. “You will be the first of us to reach Odin’s Sea. Keep watch for us. We will all join you there eventually.”

“That will be the day we smile again.”

Edeard watched them dwindle into the sky, then turned to the souls who remained. “We have lost. I have lost. There is no one left but myself.” His hand went down to the pistol holstered on his belt. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“Salrana,” Dinlay said. “He said that Salrana was still alive, that they would have her.”

Edeard’s head came up. “Oh, Lady.” He sent his farsight flashing out toward Ysidro district, not daring to hope.

Ysidro’s church had been pressed into use as a temporary hospital. Several rows of injured people were lying on makeshift beds in front of the Lady’s statue. Three harassed, tired-looking doctors moved among them, doing what they could to treat the bullet wounds. Novices scurried, helping the doctors with dressings and offering comfort where they could. The church’s Mother, a kindly gray-haired woman over halfway through her second century, moved through the clusters of parishioners who sat fearfully on the pews. She offered what blessings she could, but it was plain from her face that she was as shocked and frightened as everyone else.

The church doors were shut. Fearful relatives of those who lay inside formed a defiant protective line outside, waiting for the inevitable return of the militiamen or, worse, the Weapons Guild guards who swaggered around the streets brandishing their lethal new guns. So far, the sanctity of the church was holding.

Edeard rose smoothly through the floor of the church. People gasped at his appearance. Except Salrana, though she let out a single piercing note of joy and ran to him. He hugged her tight.

“They said you were dead,” she sobbed.

“No,” he said. “It’s not that easy to kill me.”

“Oh, Edeard, the regiments shot people. There are men with awful guns, just like the ones at Ashwell, who say they were appointed by the Mayor himself.”

“I know,” he said, hugging her tight. Her novice uniform was stained with blood, some of which was days old. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Edeard, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you after—”

“Hush,” he said, and stroked her brow.

“I was so stupid, so stubborn. You’re my friend.”

“It’s over now. Are you sure you’re all right? Has anyone come looking for you?”

“No. I’ve been helping the doctors. So many have died. Everyone is so worried the Mayor’s men will return. Can you stop this?”

Edeard bowed his head. “I cannot. Anything I do now will only make this worse. I’ve endangered everyone in this church just by coming here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Her fingers stroked his cheek. “My darling Edeard, you did everything that’s right.”

“They’ve killed everyone I know, everyone I love. Except for you. And they’ll come for you eventually.”

She gasped. “Your wife?”

“Yes,” he whispered through the pain. “Kristabel is dead.”

Salrana’s head rested on his chest. “This cannot be happening.”

“But it has happened. I want you to come with me now.”

“Edeard!” She gave the injured a frantic look. The Mother was standing in front of the Lady’s statue, a sympathetic expression on her face. “They need my help.”

“They will manage.”

The Mother gave Salrana a brief nod of encouragement.

“But—”

“Hold me tight,” he instructed. “This will be strange at first. But you have nothing to fear. I will be with you.”

“Always?”

“Yes, always.” He gave Kristabel’s soul a guilty glance, but she smiled in understanding.

Edeard and Salrana slid down through the floor of the church. He felt her tighten her grip on him. Then they were standing in a small tunnel beneath the church, with water trickling past their feet. “There is farther to go,” he told her, and they continued on their way down to emerge into one of the dazzlingly bright tunnels far below the city streets.

“Edeard! What is this place?” Salrana’s head turned from side to side, trying to take in what she was seeing. There was surprise in her voice but no fear.

“I’m not sure. It’s a way to travel across the city. A very old one. I think some of Makkathran’s past inhabitants used it, but I don’t really know. It isn’t connected to any of the buildings on the surface. So it probably wasn’t the inhabitants before us.”

“Oh,” she said with a short laugh. “Edeard, what have you become?”

“I don’t know,” he said lamely. “Whatever, in the end I was no use.”

“Don’t say that.” She kissed him. “Why are we here? Where are we going?”

He sighed and scratched the side of his head. “Away, I suppose. Out of the city. Then … exile. We’ll find some distant province. I’ll grow a beard. You don’t have to stay with me.”

“I think I had better, at least to start with.”

“Thank you.” He checked the souls that remained with him. Kristabel, Dinlay, and his parents were all waiting silently a little way down the bright tunnel. They seemed content with his lead. Right now he wasn’t going to tell Salrana about them; she’d had enough shocks. He reached down into the substance of the tunnel walls and let them conduct his farsight. He’d always known the network of tunnels extended out underneath the crystal wall, but he’d never really bothered to see where it led.

Down, he saw now, a long, long way down. The multitude of tunnels merged, then merged again and again in a funnel-like web whose last few strands extended for tens of miles beneath him, down to where the true mind of the city lay.

But … there were a few branches that stretched out horizontally under the Iguru plain. He asked the city to send him there.

“What’s happening?” Salrana asked, abruptly clutching at him as she felt the tunnel tilting.

“It’s all right.” He grinned reassuringly. “We’re going to fly.”

“Fly?”

They began to skid along the tunnel as it apparently shifted up past forty-five degrees. Then they were falling. Salrana let out a long wail of shock.

“It’s all right,” Edeard assured her, shouting. He attempted to stroke her back; that didn’t work very well when the skirt of her novice robe started flapping up, trying to wrap itself around her torso. So he applied his third hand, pressing it down again.

“We’re going to die!” she shrieked.

“No, we’re not. I always use these tunnels like this.”

She buried her face against him. The flight went on for a lot longer than Edeard was used to. The tunnel was obviously carrying them a long way out of the city. He didn’t know where exactly.

Before long Salrana calmed a little and started to look around. “We’re not going to die?” she gasped.

“We’re not going to die.”

“Where are we?”

“I’m not sure. Outside the city by now.”

The tunnel began to curve sharply. Edeard hadn’t experienced that before. And somehow they weren’t falling downward but rushing up. They started to slow. Edeard glanced up. The tunnel ended a few hundred yards above him in a blaze of scarlet light.

“Hang on,” he instructed, and suddenly they were through and into a simple circular room with red-glowing walls. There were no windows. The hole below their feet quickly irised shut, and they were standing in the middle of the floor.

Salrana didn’t let go of him, though she was peering around curiously. “What now?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I don’t know what this place is.”

A black circle expanded on the wall. It vanished, leaving an equally black opening. Edeard and Salrana shared a look and walked over to it. Some of the red light seeping out exposed what looked like rock walls beyond. Edeard extended his farsight and confirmed that there was some kind of cave outside. They stepped through cautiously onto a sandy floor. The air was dry and stale. Edeard’s farsight couldn’t see far through rock, but the cave extended for some distance. After they walked a few steps, the red light began to fade. Salrana spun around in time to see the circular opening seal up. She let out a little squeal.

Edeard held up a hand and did the spark trick Kristabel had shown him back at the beach lodge. A layer of cold white flame licked around his fingers, throwing the cave into stark relief.

“But it’s just rock,” Salrana exclaimed, studying the hole that had closed.

“I don’t understand the city,” Edeard said. “I just talk to it.”

“How?” she asked, a strong flash of curiosity shimmering through her veiled thoughts.

“Well …” He shrugged. “I just do, really.”

“This is like before,” she said, and shivered. “You and me hiding alone at the bottom of a hole while outside our lives are destroyed.”

The fatigue really hit Edeard then. It wasn’t just his body that was exhausted by the ride back to Makkathran; the emotional turmoil he’d suffered was even more debilitating. He just wanted to curl up and go to sleep for a very long time. The light scintillating around his hand began to fade.

“Edeard,” his mother said. “Don’t give up. Not now.”

He took a moment. “All right,” he said miserably.

Salrana looked at him.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s see where this leads us to.”

The cave wasn’t always as wide as where they’d entered it. In some places they had to squeeze and push their way along. The cave took them upward, which worried Edeard. After farsighting the tunnels diving down into the depths of Querencia, he wondered just how far underground they were.

It took an hour for them to squirm and worm their way through the cave before Edeard finally saw a pale sliver of daylight up ahead. They had to crawl up a steep slope with a roof of rock barely three feet high before they emerged into a level cave. The entrance was curtained by a thick layer of eaglevine whose red and green leaves muted the afternoon sunlight.

Edeard sent his farsight probing through the lush vegetation to discover that the cave mouth was halfway up a vertical cliff. He could sense no one outside, not even an animal. When he pushed the strands of eaglevine apart, he found himself staring northeast across the Iguru plain, with the Donsori Mountains in the distance.

“This is one of those little volcanoes,” he told Salrana. Far below him, a verdant forest of palms and vrollipan trees boiled around the lower slopes before giving way to the rich fields that divided the plain. He twisted his head and looked up. “The top of the cliff is closer than the bottom. I think I can get there okay.”

“Edeard! Be careful.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. His farsight was examining the rock below the swarm of eaglevine. It was a rugged surface, providing innumerable handholds and footholds. He stretched out and secured a grip, then began to climb.

“I’ll scout around ahead,” Dinlay’s soul said, and drifted upward. For the first time, Edeard began to envy the dead. The climb was not so easy. He had to use his farsight to locate every grip, then shove his hands through the scratchy vines. It was even more difficult to get his feet through; he was constantly having to use his third hand to part the ancient ropelike cords.

Over ten minutes after leaving the cave, the tips of the vines gave way to bare rock. The cliff began to curve, and Edeard scrambled his way up off the rock and onto the slope of thin soil and reedy grasses.

He used his longtalk to tell Salrana: “Made it.” His third hand gripped her carefully, and he lifted her out of the cave and up through the air.

“I can’t see anyone,” Dinlay said. “And there’s a pavilion a quarter of a mile around the mountain, where the ground flattens out a bit. Nobody home.”

“Thank the Lady for that,” Edeard muttered.

He settled Salrana gently beside him. She produced a nervous grin. “I think that was worse than the city tunnel,” she said apologetically.

“We need to take cover and decide what to do,” Edeard said. “This way.”

The pavilion was exactly as Dinlay had indicated. Belonging to some Grand Family, it was perched on a moderate slope with its front looking toward Makkathran some fifteen miles away from the base of the volcanic cone. Built mainly from wood, its frontage was a long veranda with an overhang supported by a series of wide arches. Small polygonal turrets on each end had high sweeping roofs. Its white paint was starting to fade, splitting open to peel away on some of the long boards. Green spores were taking hold in the cracks and corners.

The doors were closed but not locked. Edeard and Salrana entered to find a home that already had been closed for the winter. Furniture had been covered in thick sheets. Shutters were bolted, the oil lamps drained. Bedding, carpets, and rugs had been taken away. Tin saucers of poison had been laid out for vermin.

“Not a lot of food in the kitchen,” Salrana called out as she explored. “Jars of fruit preserves and some flour. I suppose I could bake a loaf if you like. There’s some wood and coal for the stove.”

Edeard had gone through the only bedroom and out onto the veranda. The slope outside was in shadow now; the sun was low in the sky on the other side of the volcano. He leaned on the handrail, staring out at the city. Just the sight of it produced an ache in his heart; he longed to return, to put things right. But too much had happened; Owain had destroyed everything of value. “No fires,” he said. “Or lights. They’ll be looking for us.”

She came out onto the veranda and put her arm around his shoulder. “Of course. I wasn’t thinking. What do we do?”

“Get away,” he said. “Travel into the east and find a province where the Waterwalker is just a tale from the city that nobody really believes.”

“Aren’t you going to stay and fight?”

“No. Owain and his kind are in power now.”

“Nobody wanted them. People will expect you to do something.”

“Buate was right; all I can do now is kill. That’s not the answer.”

“But Edeard—”

“No.”

“I understand,” she said solemnly. “Come inside.”

He let her lead him back into the big bedroom. Edeard settled back on the fat mattress, staring up at the ceiling, while Salrana went back to rummaging in the kitchen. Now that he’d stopped moving, the pain in his legs and buttocks began plaguing him. The horse ride back to Makkathran had been brutal. When he probed his tender flesh, he found his trousers were damp from blood and skin fluid. It hurt, making him wince.

“I sensed that,” Salrana said, standing in the doorway, holding onto a couple of large fruit jars.

He knew her farsight was concentrating on him and didn’t protest.

“Edeard! What have you done to yourself?”

“I had to get back here,” he said. “We thought I might still have time.” He knew the tears were going to spill out again. Even now he didn’t want Salrana to witness that.

“Eat something,” she said, and put a jar on the bed beside him. “I’ll have a hunt around for some medicine; there’s bound to be some here somewhere. And if not, I saw some falanpan leaves outside. I can make a poultice.”

Edeard didn’t have the energy to protest. The jar contained plums preserved in a sugary syrup. He ate several before she returned, holding up a tube of ointment.

“I didn’t realize I was so hungry,” he admitted. Then he had to grit his teeth as she gingerly stripped his trousers off. Her expression at the sight of his raw flesh wasn’t reassuring. She did her best to brush away her concern.

“This might sting,” she warned, and began to rub the salve on.

Edeard had to clamp his mouth shut hard to prevent the howl from leaving his throat. “Lady!” His fingers clawed the top of the mattress.

“I’ve finished,” she said some interminable time later. “That should start soothing the damage soon.”

“I think it already has. That or you’ve burned the nerves away.” His thighs were definitely easing.

“Don’t be so mean,” Salrana said smartly, and gave him a brief kiss. She pulled a furniture sheet over him. “You rest now. I’m going to see if I can find some clothes.”

“Keep a lookout,” he said. “I need to know if anyone comes.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody knows we can be here.”

Edeard started to eat another plum. He was asleep before he finished.

Dreams claimed him, though not his usual bizarre visions of life elsewhere. These were his own and were mostly of Kristabel: Kristabel surrounded by flames, men with rapid-fire guns circling her, the roar of their weapons shattering his skull. Kristabel flying, falling, her nightdress fluttering around her, the very same white nightdress she’d worn on the day they met. Falling down the central stairs in the ziggurat, the same stairs he’d started to reshape, stairs that were now easy for the invaders to mount. Little Mirnatha screaming in terror as the ziggurat was consumed by the flames and bullets of the rapid-fire guns, clinging to her sister. Both of them falling from the tenth floor, a hand pushing them over the rail. Both screaming all the way to the floor. The hand was his own.

He cried out in torment. The sensation of something wrong was like a tidal wave of fear, threatening to send him plunging down into the infinite black of the abyss beneath the world. He was a pitiful broken thing on his way to Honious, left behind by the Skylords, left behind by Kristabel, by Dinlay, Boyd, Macsen, Kanseen; all of them peered down from the rim. One by one they turned away.

“No,” he begged, pleaded, wept. “No, come back.”

But they wouldn’t, because something was wrong.

He woke violently, jerking off the bed as he clawed his way out of the abyss, shaking with fear. It was still dark all around, silent. He fought for breath against panic so strong that it was throttling him. “What!” he demanded, and sent his farsight stabbing out.

The souls of Dinlay, Kristabel, and his parents were clumped together by the end of the bed. Kristabel’s arms were held out to him, radiating tangible concern.

“What?” he repeated as his breathing became less frantic.

“Edeard, we tried to wake you,” Dinlay said. “We tried hard. But you were so tired.”

“I’m awake.” When he squinted through the half-open door onto the veranda, he could see nebula light washing the white-painted rails outside with familiar pastels. It must have been close to midnight.

“Salrana,” Kristabel told him brokenly. “She betrayed you.”

“What?” he blurted in confusion. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Dinlay said. “She has an exceptionally strong longtalk. She called Owain just after sunset. She told him where you were.”

“Salrana? What do you mean?”

“We couldn’t stop her,” Kristabel said. “We are helpless against the living.”

“No, no,” Edeard said. His farsight sensed Salrana walking across the hallway.

“Edeard?” she said in a light voice. “Are you all right? I thought you were still sleeping.”

“She called Owain,” Kristabel insisted. “His men are already here. They’re coming up the mountain.”

“They can’t be. That’s not …”

“Who are you talking to?” Salrana asked. She was standing in the room, giving him a curious look.

“My wife,” he said levelly.

Salrana’s face remained impassive. The start of surprise in her mind was minute and well shielded. But like Edeard, she was no Makkathran native. “You know I can see souls,” he said. “I even gifted the Pythia that particular vision. Here,” he said, and opened his mind so she could receive his farsight.

Salrana gasped as she found herself surrounded by four souls. “I …”

Edeard slid off the bed. “They told me you betrayed me,” he said in a flat voice as he approached her. “They told me you called Owain himself. I said they were wrong. Are they?”

Salrana took a step backward. “Edeard—”

Edeard sent his farsight out from the pavilion, ranging across the side of the volcanic mountain. Using the gift dear Finitan had bestowed him to uncover concealment, he exposed over twenty men approaching the wooden building, each carrying a rapid-fire weapon. Out in the darkness behind them, more teams were gathering. Then Edeard viewed the base of the mountain. Two entire militia regiments were down there, deploying around the bottom of the slope, encircling the mountain.

“Dear Lady,” he murmured in astonishment. “You really did.” He stared at her, trying to understand. “Salrana, you called them!” A note of hysteria had crept in from somewhere.

For a moment her composure held. Then she simply glared at him. “Yes, I called Owain.”

This can’t be happening. This is Salrana. My Salrana. The two of us together against the world.

“Why?” he pleaded. “Why did you do this? Because of Kristabel?”

Salrana gave Kristabel’s soul a contemptuous glance. “Jealous of that? Me? Hardly. I’m just as beautiful. Probably better in bed, too. Your loss.”

“But … us.”

“Oh, you stupid country peasant. Haven’t you learned anything since we arrived here? Did you really think a thirteen-year-old’s crush lasts for life? That I’d be loyal to you forever?”

“You can’t believe in Owain’s one nation.”

“Why can’t I? Because it doesn’t fit our wretched backward provincial upbringing? This is how the world works, Edeard. Can’t you see that? The Grand Families already have wealth and power, and with Owain’s leadership it will grow even stronger. I can be part of that. I can make myself part of that. Did you think you were the only one with ambition?”

“This is not you,” he said through growing anguish. “These are not Salrana’s words. Not your thoughts.”

“You are so weak. Even now you could claim the city for yourself. You have the power, the strength to make this world your own. Why don’t you?”

“No one person can rule a world.”

She gave a disgusted snort of contempt. “Humility, the refuge of the weak.”

“The Lady teaches decency.”

“And what has her church ever achieved except for instilling a decent sense of obedience in the lower orders?”

“Now I know that’s not you. Who did this to you? Who changed you?”

“I changed myself. I finally understood the world and set out to make something of myself in it. After all, you found your Grand Family bitch.” She waved dismissively at Kristabel’s soul. “A good way into the Upper Council for someone so spineless. Why shouldn’t I have some of the same? I’ve been screwing people who can help me; the ones who hate you are easy to take advantage of. And greatest among those is Owain himself. Did you know he has eight mistresses, but I’m the one he turns to now? He likes it. He likes having me, the Waterwalker’s childhood friend. I saw how resolute and determined he is, so much more than you. He’s smarter, too. You have your virtue; he has ambition and fire and power and wealth and, above all, vision. He will be an emperor, uniting the whole world as one nation. I will have a big part of that. I will be Pythia; he promised me that. Our children will be born to positions of privilege and power.”

It was as if his nerves had died. Edeard stared at the crazy girl smiling defiantly in front of him, feeling absolutely nothing. “No,” he said. A lone tear trickled out of his eye. “You cannot build a world on a foundation of violence and fear. He will destroy Querencia just as he has destroyed you.”

“I am not destroyed. I have never been more alive.”

Edeard’s farsight observed the armed men reach the pavilion’s front door. He wasn’t surprised to see that their leader was Arminel. “You would see me dead?” he asked faintly.

“The strong survive. Owain fears you will replace him. You still can. You can take his place, Edeard. You can shape the world to your vision. I would help you. We can be together yet.”

Edeard looked at his wife. He looked at his friend Dinlay. He looked at his parents, who had so much faith in him. “I will not be Mayor, not now. And you; you will not be Pythia.”

“Fool!” Salrana screamed at him. She spun around and raced out of the bedroom.

Edeard realized that the ability to sense through concealment was not one of the gifts and treats Owain had bestowed upon her.

Arminel and his men charged into the hall, firing indiscriminately as they ran forward. Bullets chewed up the walls, shredding the furniture. Muzzles blazed as they swept back and forth, seeking the Waterwalker.

Salrana’s shield wasn’t strong enough. Eight bullets struck her as she flailed desperately. Huge blood plumes burst across her novice robe. She was flung backward, her body landing inelegantly on the elegant pavonazzetto floor to sprawl inertly. Already her soul was staring down at it.

Edeard dived behind the big bed, allowing the thick mattress to absorb the hail of bullets. Now, as the gang hurriedly swapped their exhausted magazines for fresh ones, he raised his head. “I wish you well,” he told Salrana’s soul. “I hope you find peace in the Heart.”

“Edeard?” she said. “Oh, Edeard, what have I done?”

“Go,” he told her. “Find the Heart. I will join you there.”

Her soul wavered, drifting up through the pavilion’s ceiling. There was a final surge of distress, and she was gone.

Arminel finally slammed the fresh magazine into his rapid-fire gun and brought it up. His farsight swept through the pavilion, eagerly searching for the Waterwalker.

The magazine suddenly crumpled, the thin metal buckling as an inordinately powerful telekinesis squeezed it. The Waterwalker materialized in the bedroom.

“Kill him,” Arminel shouted at his squad. But their rapid-fire guns were equally useless as delicate components and casings were crushed and mangled.

“Last time we say goodbye,” the Waterwalker told him.

Arminel hardened his shield and turned to flee. The pavilion doors slammed shut with a bang that reverberated through the entire wooden structure. Arminel spun back to face his enemy, catching a glimpse of Edeard in the bedroom as his black cloak fluttered around him. Edeard held up both arms, his fingers splayed wide. Lightning ripped out from each fingertip.

Within seconds the entire pavilion was on fire. Joists, rafters, doors, walls, window frames, shelves, furniture, and roofing shingles ignited as they were raked with lightning bolts. Thick black smoke swirled out from the roaring flames, clotting the air.

Edeard pushed the bedroom door open and walked out onto the veranda. Inside, the men in the squad were coughing and yelling in fright as the smoke clogged their lungs and the heat began to roast their flesh. The bedroom door closed. Edeard hopped over the rails and landed on the grassy field. Inside the pavilion, they were blundering into each other. Voices reached a crescendo of pain and fright; several had already fallen. Edeard folded his concealment around him like an outer cloak and walked away into the night.

The trusted Weapons Guild guards Owain had sent to eliminate the Waterwalker skirted the burning ruins of the pavilion. They wrinkled their noses at the stench given off by the smoldering corpses inside but carried on tracking their quarry. Several among them claimed to be able to perceive right through the Waterwalker’s concealment and hurried after the dark figure they said was skulking through the trees just ahead.

At the bottom of the mountain, the militia regiments completed their deployment, forming a tight ring just outside the fringes of the forest. As ordered, they drew their pistols and waited. Farsight tracked the squads high up on the slopes past the smoking pavilion. Occasionally there was a burst of gunfire that made them flinch. But the guards armed with their deadly new guns pressed onward and upward.

Edeard kept ahead of them easily enough. He’d headed up only because there was nowhere else for him to go. A squad was guarding the cliff face with the cave mouth. He’d never be able to climb to it and escape. Salrana must have told Owain about the cave, about the travel tunnels … everything. So up he went. The terrain wasn’t exactly tough; the trees were few and far between above the pavilion. Grass was ankle high. Small streams trickled down the steep slope. Eventually, even the trees were behind him. Now there was just grass and boulders. He could see the summit already.

And that’s when I have to decide.

“I could imprison them,” he told his small ethereal court of advisers. “The city can create rooms without doors or windows. They would have food.”

“I think death would be more merciful,” his father said. “Remember what happened to poor Argian when you did that to him, and that was only for a couple of days.”

“He’s right,” Dinlay said. “Locking them up is just for the benefit of your conscience. They have to be wiped out. We know how ruthless they are now. If you don’t remove them altogether, they will come back again and again. How many times do you want this to happen to the city?”

“Once was too much,” Edeard said. “But to kill so many …”

“The Lady will understand,” Kristabel assured him.

“They half expect it,” Dinlay said. “That’s why we are where we are.” He gestured at the groups of men making their way up the slope. At best, the lead squad was twenty minutes behind.

“I’m not so sure I can get past them all,” Edeard said. “Owain seems resolute.”

“Of course he does,” Kristabel said. “He knows you are the only thing left between him and absolute power.”

“Perhaps if I retreat out to the provinces, form a legitimate opposition.”

“A revolution?” his mother asked. “It would take years, if not decades. How many would die in that struggle? No, if this is to be done, it must be done swiftly. That will keep the bloodshed to a minimum. Every day you hesitate sees him consolidate his authority further.”

“You sound so certain.”

She smiled, nebula light shining through her diffuse silhouette. “You don’t grow up in Makkathran without knowing all about politics.”

“You are from Makkathran?”

“Yes. The fifth daughter of the fourth son of the family Herusis. But that was many years ago. My sisters and brothers will have even less status now.”

“Herusis?” Edeard paused, trying to recall what he knew of that family. A wealthy trading enterprise with large land holdings on the Iguru and a small fleet of ships. “Isn’t Finitan a Herusis?”

“Yes. One of my great-uncles.”

“Finitan is my relative?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder if he knew.”

“He probably suspected. Akeem certainly did.”

“But … Mother, why did you leave?”

“I was engaged to a lout of a Kirkmal; it was arranged between our families. I didn’t want to go through with the wedding. I wanted my life on my terms, even if it meant giving up the money.”

“That’s where he gets his stubbornness from,” Kristabel said.

“I’m not—” He gave a wan smile. Even now she could tease him.

He covered the final slope quickly. The summit was mainly boulders and loose stone, with tufts of wiry grass growing out of cracks between pebbles. A gentle breeze was blowing in from the sea.

Edeard stood there and turned a complete circle until he was facing Makkathran. The city’s orange lights cast a strong glow into the air above the streets and canals. He could just make out the jagged outline of the towers. The first time he’d seen the city, it had been so compelling, as if he were finally coming home. That yearning was still there, but the grief was a stronger force. He could barely bring himself to look at it.

I have to decide.

Everything he’d ever wanted or asked for had been contained inside the crystal wall, as had everything he’d ever feared.

“I don’t think I can go back,” he confessed to the souls. “I think Owain and the others are right. I’m not strong enough.”

“You have the strength, son,” his father said.

“I don’t. The suffering I would bring is unthinkable.”

“You only have to take away the leaders,” Dinlay said. “Owain and his cronies.”

“That might have worked at the start, but not now. Everything has changed. The guns are out there in the open. Hundreds of people are flocking to join him.”

“Hundreds more resisted him and died. Don’t they deserve justice? You know you have support. Think of the election results.”

Edeard knelt on the ground, still looking at Makkathran. “I can’t do this. It’s over.”

“We understand,” Kristabel said. “This is what makes you, you. This is what I loved.”

“We’ll be together,” he promised her. His farsight sensed the first squad reaching the final slope up to the summit. All of them were readying their rapid-fire guns. “We will reach the Heart and live there for eternity.”

“Together,” Kristabel agreed.

Edeard drew in a deep breath. He looked out one last time across the Iguru plain, his thoughts serene as he stopped shielding himself. Makkathran’s thoughts brushed against his mind, as slow and contented as always, dreaming in another realm.

“Thank you for all your help,” he told it, and poured his gratitude out to the city.

For the first time he sensed a change. The giant mind began to quicken. Stronger, more concise thoughts began to rise like some massive creature coming up from the depths of the sea. Makkathran was waking.

Edeard swayed back, astounded by the reaction he’d kindled. He’d tried innumerable times to make himself understood to the city, never receiving any reply. It did his bidding for simple things such as altering the buildings and sending him along the travel tunnels. But he’d assumed any true connection was beyond him.

“You heard me,” he longtalked in astonishment.

The answer was still slow, measured, and considered, as he expected it to be. Solemn, as was fitting for such a magnificent creation. “I felt sorrow,” Makkathran said. “You are in pain. I have not felt pain like that for such a long time.”

“I … I have lost. That was the pain you felt. I apologize. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I simply wished to thank you for all you’ve done.”

“Loss? I remember loss. Once there were many; now I am alone.”

“There were others like you?” Edeard asked.

“Once. No more. Not even here. To revisit that time would be useless.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Can I help? I’m about to go to the Heart of the Void. Will your kind be there?”

“No. None would submit to absorption. That is not what we are.”

“What are you?”

“The failed past.”

“You haven’t failed us. You gave us shelter, refuge.”

“I am glad. Do you accept the Void’s purpose? Is that why you go to its Heart?”

“What purpose?”

“To become one with this universe. It seeks all rationality.”

“That’s … No. I go because I have lost my life.”

“How can you lose your life in the Void?”

He gave Kristabel and the others a puzzled look, very conscious of the armed men slinking up the slope toward him. “I don’t understand.”

Something like a gust of emotion swept out of the city. Reluctance. Acceptance. Pity. “The Void allows you to find your perfect life,” Makkathran said. “It is the way it brings you to fulfillment, to reach your personal evolution and achieve contentment with what you are.”

“What do you mean?” Edeard started to harden his shield again as he heard a number of safety catches clicking off.

“All of those who come from outside strive for this state. That is why the Void welcomes them. This universe has no other purpose, not now. That is its beauty for those inside and tragedy for those without, for they will ultimately pay the price.”

“I can’t achieve a perfect life. My life is over.”

“Reach into the Void. Search out where you wish to be and begin again. It is simple. Once you adapt to the Void, it provides you with whatever you want. Every species that ever arrived here was drawn into that evolution. You will be no different, I suspect. There is no harm in that. I wish you well on your journey.”

The city’s thoughts began to slow again, withdrawing back into slumber.

“No,” Edeard said. “No, wait. Tell me how.” He turned to the souls. “What did it mean?”

“I sense patterns around me,” Kristabel said. “Just as Boyd told you. The universe remembers what happened everywhere. Our whole life is visible there in the past.”

“Can you show me?” Edeard asked.

“See with me,” she said. Edeard tried to sense her thoughts, the gift of her perception. It was a strange union, a dimension of farsight he’d never known of before. As he followed his wife’s observation into the fabric of reality, he saw for himself. He saw himself stretched out down the slope, a million, a billion, images of himself leading back; they encapsulated every instant of the climb, every step, every breath, every heartbeat, every thought. It was as if he were looking into an infinity mirror. Makkathran was right; his essence had been captured by the Void. Every moment of his existence had been remembered.

Edeard regarded himself, the one of five minutes ago, studying how real the vision was. He appeared frozen, waiting for the breath to fill his lungs in order to become real.

“Oh, my Lady,” he gasped. “I think I understand. But … no. That would mean—” He leaped to his feet. “Kristabel?”

“Do it,” she entreated. “Edeard, if there’s even a chance—”

“Yes.” He flung his arms out, unleashing his third hand. The squad members were hurled into the air, an expanding bracelet of struggling figures arching up and out, away from the ground, screaming as they began their plummet hundreds of feet to the wider slope below.

Free of any immediate danger, Edeard concentrated again on the images. Minutes ago was useless to him. He began to push on past the memories of himself walking up to the summit, delving deep. He knew himself lying on the bed in the pavilion while Salrana longtalked Owain. Further. His own memory came into play, knowing a vivid moment from a few days ago, twinning it with the Void’s recollection. The technique was almost instinctive. The moment was there, shimmering elusively in front of him. His mind reached for it, finding it beyond his grasp. He tried again, harder this time, channeling his colossal telekinetic strength into the stretch. Mental fingers scrabbled desperately to close around the moment, to make it real. He groaned with the effort, forcing the universe to link the moments.

Somewhere, all where, the universe began to shift. The present slipped backward, slowly at first. That long linear image of him walking up the slope unwound, taking him down. Above him, the stars crawled the wrong way through the firmament. Encouraged, Edeard threw his entire strength into achieving the union across time. The impossibly weird motion began to accelerate. Edeard’s past rushed past. The precise, wonderfully clear moment he wanted hurtled toward him—

—Edeard woke screaming. The yell of shock and disbelief rang around the woodland camp; he couldn’t stop blasting air from his lungs. Morning light shone down on him.

Morning!

Dinlay was a few yards away, immobile in the action of hopping about while he held his boot high. He was giving Edeard a dumbfounded look.

Edeard managed to stop his scream. He looked around wildly, then jumped as he saw Macsen sitting on an old fallen tree trunk.

“I didn’t put anything in your boot,” Macsen protested in a reasonable voice.

“You’re alive!” Edeard bellowed.

“What in Honious is going on?” Topar asked. He had risen from his blanket, his pistol held ready. Boloton, Fresage, Verini, and Larby were scrambling around, trying to find the source of the commotion.

“Nothing!” Edeard said breathlessly. An explosion of pure joy inside his head threatened to overwhelm him. “Everything! I did it! I’m here. It’s real. You’re real. And you’re all alive.”

Dinlay let out an exasperated sigh. “What is the matter with you?” He squinted into his boot. “Ah ha!” His third hand scraped out the remains of a utog beetle. He gave Macsen a suspicious glance.

“Edeard?” Topar asked cautiously.

“It’s fine.” Edeard held up a hand in reassurance, then laughed. He was feeling giddy now. The world was whirling around unsteadily. He sat down hard. “No, wait.” He held up his hands, fingers out to count. “The ambush is in two days’ time. Er … then another day and a half to ride back. Ladydamnit, if I start now, I might not make it. I’ve got to go further back.”

Dinlay shoved his foot into the boot and walked over. “Bad dream?”

Edeard grinned. “The worst there has ever been.”

“Ah. Would you like some tea? You’ve still got some of those linen packets left,” Dinlay added hopefully.

“No.” Edeard stood up fast. Before Dinlay knew what was happening, Edeard kissed him.

“Fuck the Lady,” Dinlay exclaimed, juddering back out of reach.

Edeard laughed delightedly. “I can’t stay. I’m sorry. But by the Lady it is so good to see you all alive again. And the girls, our wives. Macsen, you’re going to be a father. I promise. I swear on the Lady herself.”

“What in Honious did you drink last night?” Macsen demanded.

“I drank … I drank everything there is to drink.”

“I think you’d better sit down,” Topar said levelly.

“No time,” Edeard said, enjoying how manic he must be appearing to the others. “Well, actually, that’s not true.” He giggled. “Do you remember the first day on the road?” His fingers clicked urgently. “We stopped and made camp just outside that farm. Oh, where was it?”

“Stibbington,” Dinlay grunted.

“That’s right. That’s the place, and it’s in time. Plenty of time. Barely a day’s gallop back from there. Macsen, do you remember? You were so saddle-sore, you claimed you couldn’t walk.”

“I remember.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Edeard reached for the moment—

Justine: Year Four

Dreaming still. Mellow images of her true love: his scent, his laughter, his pleasure. Those two days kept stretching out and out—Justine sat up in the medical chamber and glanced around the Silverbird’s cabin. Everything was exactly the same as when she went into suspension. No alarms sounding this time. They’d reached the star system, and the starship’s log reported a thoroughly uneventful voyage. The Silverbird was already decelerating.

She swung her legs out, wincing at the stiffness in her limbs. Neck muscles were knotted and tight. What she needed was a good massage. Maybe at the Hulluba resort on Fasal Island. Yes, she could certainly picture herself lying on a bed on the spa veranda, overlooking the white beaches and absurdly clear turquoise water. The spa had some very handsome masseurs, talented fit young men who knew how to knead her muscles and tendons into complete submission. Very handsome. And the drinks they served in long glasses full of crushed ice, with exotic fruits—delicious. Hot blue-white star a pinprick of intense light atop the indigo sky. Handsome and eager.

Lordie, this is what dreaming about those two days does to me. Hulluba was a thousand years ago.

Justine sighed in regret, and her third hand pulled a robe out of the replicator module. The culinary unit produced a big glass of carrot juice with vitamin supplements. It brought a grimace to her face as she dutifully swallowed it all.

Maybe there’ll be some beaches on a planet here somewhere.

She sat on the floor and started doing stretching exercises. Already she was looking forward to a very hot shower with powerful jets, a forcefully applied heat that would rid her neck of those abysmal kinks.

“What have we got outside?” she asked the smartcore.

The star appeared in her exovision. Justine frowned. “I know this.” It was the star system that was projected onto the ceiling of the Orchard Palace’s Upper Council chamber, a copper star shining warmly at the center of an accretion disc. Comets with moon-size nuclei prowled the outer edges of the disc in high-inclination orbits, their tails streaming out for millions of kilometers, fluorescing a glorious scarlet. But what she was seeing outside now was older; the accretion disc had thinned out from the time of Edeard’s tenure. Nine distinct bands had formed within it, each one shepherded by dense curlicues of asteroids as protoplanets started to congeal. The tails of the fireball comets were smaller, less volatile than before. Long braids of white vapor had corrupted their once-pure scarlet efflux.

Translucent data displays overlaid the astronomy image. Justine’s secondary thought routines sampled the information, compiling summaries, and her focus immediately shifted to a tiny white crescent that circled the tenuous rim of the disc. “No way!” It was an H-congruent planet.

The Silverbird was still seven astronomical units out from the star. It gave her plenty of time to observe the planet as they approached. In the real universe outside the Void it wouldn’t exist. Even if the accretion disc had produced an amalgamation of rock and minerals that had built up to planet size, there wouldn’t have been time for life to evolve. The Silverbird’s spectral analysis filters identified water and chlorophyll, along with a lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere. Wherever the world had come from, it had oceans and recognizable plant life covering the landmasses.

One AU out. It was small for an H-congruent planet: Mars-size. The atmosphere was thick; at the surface it would be a standard pressure. Temperature was typical. A magnetic field warped solar wind into characteristic Van Allen belts around it. There were no electromagnetic emissions, but she kept checking for that the whole way in.

An implausible world in an impossible place. Only in the Void. She knew full well that the amount of mass energy the boundary had consumed during that short dreadful expansion phase was enough to create a thousand solar systems, let alone one small planet. I shouldn’t be surprised at anything here. Edeard only scratched the surface of the Void’s potential, as Living Dream keep emphasizing.

Ten million kilometers out, and the Silverbird was decelerating at five gees, shedding the last of the colossal velocity that had carried her across three light-years. Five gees was the best it could maintain reliably. The glitches were back with a vengeance. Sensor degradation was acute on some of the higher-function scans, but simple optical lenses were showing continents and ice caps. Whorl patterns in the clouds were becoming apparent. She saw one hurricane that was somehow splitting in two as it hit the coast, its leading edge separating as if a knife were cutting it, a very big knife. The phenomenon triggered some uncertainty deep in her subconscious, an ancient memory that struggled to resolve. What cuts a storm in half?

Then she had more to worry about as cabin gravity started to fluctuate. Secondary systems were dropping out as fluctuations beset the power network. Backup supplies didn’t always compensate properly. She ordered the cabin to return to a neutral status, retracting everything except her acceleration couch. At least her biononics remained fully functional. She activated her integral force field as the Silverbird flew across the remaining million kilometers. Ahead of her, the planet’s upper atmosphere sparked constantly with contrails as meteorites from the fringe of the accretion disc impacted on the ionosphere. The Silverbird’s force fields reported a build up of microparticle strikes. Dust density outside was thickening rapidly.

Justine put her armor suit on.

Ingrav efficiency was twenty percent down and becoming erratic. Justine had abandoned any idea of breaking into orbit. They were going to have to head for a direct landing. She hoped the regrav drives would kick in once they were inside the planet’s gravity field. Judging by the way the rest of the systems were behaving, she wasn’t placing any bets.

A thousand kilometers above the ionosphere and the smartcore began shutting down peripheral routines in order to concentrate on core functions. The ship curved around the bulk of the planet. Regrav was becoming active—just. They would make it down okay. Probably.

That was when the three gigantic rocky cones sticking up through the atmosphere slipped into view. The Silverbird was heading straight for them, trajectory projections giving their landing site just beyond that point.

Shock set in as she focused the cameras on the astonishingly familiar profile of the three volcanoes. “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she said out loud.

The Silverbird was approaching nearly perfect replicas of Far Away’s Grand Triad at Mach thirty. She fought to quash her surprise. It can happen. Here in the Void, it can happen.

Terminating a voyage three light-years long at the exact point corresponding to her hyperglider landing twelve hundred years ago was not random chance. It was purpose.

The dream. Oh, my God, the dream.

That left a possibility that was almost too much to contemplate.

No. That cannot happen.

The Silverbird hit the atmosphere. Tenuous air molecules screamed as it hurtled downward, soaring around the side of the tallest volcano with its flat summit and dead twin calderas. Churning superheated air blazed in the starship’s wake. Regrav units applied whatever force they could muster.

Acceleration pushed Justine down into the couch. Her chest was compressed as her weight quadrupled. Biononics reinforced her body, enabling her to breathe normally. The regrav wouldn’t alter the starship’s vector. Her landing point was predetermined.

Ordained?

The Silverbird plunged down through a light cirrus layer, its speed dropping to subsonic. The volcano’s midslopes were beneath her, rocky crags and cliffs strewn with patches of lichen and moss and streaked with snow. Then she was flying over the volcano’s upper meadows, undulating grassland that formed a wide verdant belt just above the tree line. Icy waterfalls tumbled down rocky outcrops, birthing a lacework of silver streams.

Another mind impinged on the starship’s gaiafield. The person’s thoughts were curious and enthusiastic.

“Oh, no. No, no, no. He can’t be here. You can’t do this to me.”

A long glade opened up in the forest below. Silverbird descended fast. Its landing struts bulged out of the fuselage. Justine gritted her teeth. The bump wasn’t too bad. The cabin shook, and a crunching sound tremored through the superstructure. Gravity fell below a standard one gee. Some of the ship’s status icons turned amber briefly, then flicked back to green. Whole sections faded to neutral as the drive units ceased to operate. The starship wasn’t going to be flying anywhere soon.

But she was down and intact. That was something.

The mind was still there, waiting with a hint of impatience. She was sensing its emotional state directly through farsight rather than via her gaiamotes. Presumably, then, he could sense her thoughts.

Justine took her time removing her armor suit. After all, she didn’t want to frighten him, and it would look fearsome to anyone unfamiliar with Greater Commonwealth technology. She unwound an emergency rope ladder from the airlock, not trusting the gravity manipulation function to lower her. When she started down, she realized the beige one-piece she’d put on was remarkably similar to the leathery gray-blue flight suit she’d worn in the hyperglider. Only the helmet was missing.

“Didn’t get that right, did you?” she mocked the Void.

The rope ladder swung about alarmingly as she neared the bottom, its pendulum motion sending her swaying over the grassy ground. She jumped the last two rungs.

Gravity was low, just like on Far Away. The scent of pine trees was strong in the humid air. Her farsight swept out, producing a mildly disorienting effect. Then she began to interpret the foggy shapes, correlating them to what her eyes could see. Besides, her biononic field scan function was working unimpaired, providing solid interpretations of the surrounding landscape.

He was standing ten yards away, waiting courteously for her to notice him. Justine turned around very slowly, still half believing she’d open her eyes to see the Silverbird’s cabin around her as she rose from suspension. But no, it was real. He was real.

Justine smiled, too numb for any emotion to triumph. “Hello, Kazimir,” she said.

His face was perfect: healthy dark skin and shining white teeth in lips that could smile so wide, rich black hair tied back with a red band. So were the clothes: a leather waistcoat open to show off a nicely muscled torso and his McFoster clan’s emerald-and-copper-check kilt. He even carried the correct small backpack.

“You know me?” he asked.

The voice was right, too. But then, it should be; he was her creation, after all. Her smile shifted from welcome to sympathy. “I’m aware of who you think you are. That’s my fault.”

He frowned. “Are you all right? Your craft came down fast …”

Finally, she laughed. That concern was so Kazimir. “A little shaken up, that’s all. My name is Justine, by the way.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Justine. Is that really a spaceship?”

“It really is.”

Justine couldn’t be cruel; that was the hardest part. She couldn’t just tell him to go away or ignore him. That would have been so much easier for her. But he was a seventeen-year-old human being with feelings. Just like everyone else, he had never asked to be born, no matter the strange nature of his birth. He deserved to be treated with consideration and respect.

Curiously, he had no clear recollections of where he came from.

They sat beside a stream that gurgled along the side of the clearing. Both were wary of the other, yet he was powerfully attracted to her, and not just physically; she could sense that.

“I am on my groundwalk,” he told her when she asked where he’d come from.

“To prove you can survive out here by yourself,” she said, recalling the very same conversation from so long ago. “Once you return to your clan, you can become a fully fledged warrior and fight the Starflyer.”

“You know of the Starflyer?”

“Kazimir, I know this must be hard to believe, but the Commonwealth defeated the Starflyer a very long time ago. You’re not who you think you are.”

He grinned delightedly. “Then who am I?”

“You are a dream I had. This place makes you real.”

His face produced a thrilled expression while his mind registered brisk amusement. “What are you saying, that I have died and this place is the Dreaming Heavens?”

“Oh, my God!” Justine stared at him in complete astonishment. “I’d forgotten that part of the Guardians’ ideology.” Well, consciously, anyway.

“So are you my spirit guide? You are what I imagine an angel would look like.”

“You called me that before,” she said quietly.

“I did what?”

“You used to call me your angel.”

“Back when we were alive?” His mind was starting to show uncertainty, a joke wearing thin.

Justine cursed her stupid old biological body for its crippling emotional weakness. “You are alive. Again. It’s complicated.”

“You thought I was dead?”

I watched you die. “Tell me where you were before you started your groundwalk. Who your friends are. What did you spend last year doing? In fact, what were you doing this time yesterday?”

“I …” His thoughts churned desperately. “It is difficult. I don’t remember much. No, wait. Bruce! Bruce is my friend.”

“Kazimir, I’m sorry. Bruce was the one who killed you.”

He recoiled. “This is the Dreaming Heavens!”

“I suppose in a manner of speaking, yes, it is.”

“Bruce would never kill me.”

“He was captured by the Starflyer, who turned him against the Guardians of Selfhood. He became their agent.”

“Not Bruce.”

“Not the Bruce who was your friend; the Starflyer destroyed that part of him. Kazimir, you don’t have any memories of your past because I don’t know it, not as fully as I should, not the details. We didn’t spend enough time together to talk of such things in depth. The time we did have was too precious. I always regretted that. I’m so sorry.” She looked away, trying to get her emotions under control. This is so painful. I don’t have to put myself through this. I should just walk away. Then she glanced at him, seeing the hurt and confusion on his face, and she knew she couldn’t do that to him, not her Kazimir, not even a shadow of him.

He reached out tentatively, fingers touching her shoulder, as if he was the one who should be offering comfort. “We were … together?”

“Yes, Kazimir. We were lovers.”

A wide smile split his youthful face, and the universe wasn’t so bad, after all.

“I’m doing this really badly,” she confessed. “I wish I could be gentler to you.”

“So I am what you dream of?”

“Yes.”

His smile was triumphant now. “I am glad you dream of me. I am glad I am here for you.”

Oh, no. We’re not going down that road. It’s not … right. “I’m glad you’re here, too, but I have a duty to perform.”

Kazimir nodded seriously. “What duty?”

She pulled a face. “Save the galaxy.”

“How?”

“Don’t know, actually. Where we are, this place—it’s wrong. I have to get to … whoever’s in charge, try and convince them to stop their expansion. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make much sense.”

Kazimir’s gaze turned to the Silverbird; there was a flash of longing in his mind. “Will we fly there in your spaceship?”

The first drops of rain began to fall out of the darkening sky as the storm head found its way around the volcano. “I’d like to, but I need to figure out how to make it fly again. And I don’t know where the nucleus is or how to get there.”

“Oh.” His disappointment was tangible, shining through a weakly shielded mind.

Justine grinned. “Would you like to look inside?”

“Yes, please!”

He shot up the rope ladder with ease. But then, Justine recalled, Kazimir had always been very agile. That would account for why her heart was racing as she clambered up after him. The airlock was small with the two of them in it. She told the smartcore to open the inner door and led the way up the narrow companionway into the cabin.

Kazimir tried to be polite as he stared around the circular compartment, but he clearly wasn’t adept at shielding his thoughts. Fortunately, she recalled several techniques Edeard had employed in Inigo’s dreams.

“You travel in this?” he asked cautiously.

Justine clicked her fingers as she told the smartcore to extrude a couple of chairs.

“Ah!” Kazimir watched them rise, happy again. She switched on a holographic projection, displaying status graphics in the air in front of him.

Seventeen is such an easy age, she thought with a pang of resentment at his fascination. “I’d like to run some scans on you,” she said. “It might help me understand more about this place.”

“Of course.”

She used her biononic field function to examine him in detail, shunting the results into the smartcore. He was human, with every organ where it should be. When she touched a sampler module to his skin, he smiled at her again, emitting a strong sense of longing, of willingness.

Out of those two days an awful lot of the time had been spent in bed making love.

She raised an eyebrow in surprise as the sequencing results rose up into the holographic display. “Your DNA is …” Real? Proper? Fully human? “Okay,” she concluded. And how did the Void pull that stunt?

“I’m glad,” he said simply.

The smartcore ran a comparison against a medical file she carried: her son’s DNA. This Kazimir didn’t share any genetic markers with the man whose child she’d borne twelve hundred years ago. She didn’t know if she was disappointed by that or not. So it’s not omnipotent, then.

“Shall we see if the culinary unit is working?” she asked.

She didn’t really have to ask what he wanted. Cheeseburger with bacon, fries, sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice cream, chocolates and champagne. All part of the decadent life she’d corrupted him with the first time around.

The culinary unit managed to produce them, though she thought some of the tastes were a bit strange.

It was all strange and good to Kazimir’s palate; he wolfed the lot down.

“Have you seen anyone else here?” she asked as she sipped her own champagne.

“I thought you said I didn’t exist before today,” he said, only half teasing.

“I don’t know how long you’ve been here, actually. It took the Void four years to create this world, I think.”

He sat back in the chair and thought hard. “I have memories, or notions of my life before today. That life I had back with my clan isn’t real. I see that now; nothing about that time is substantial. It is a notion of what should have been. And yet I remember setting out on my groundwalk a couple of weeks ago. I’m sure the last few days were real. Today is. Today has you in it. I remember waking and enjoying the clear sky.”

“So you didn’t see anyone on your groundwalk?”

“No. But the idea of the groundwalk is to be on your own.”

“Of course.”

He shivered, looking around the cabin again. Apprehension was creeping into his thoughts. “I am nothing. I am a toy some alien has built to amuse you. What kind of being has such power?”

“Hey,” she said soothingly. “You’re certainly not nothing. You’re you. It doesn’t matter why you are, only that you’re here now. Life is to be lived. I told you that the first time we met.”

Kazimir sniffed suspiciously. “Did I believe you?”

“You took some convincing. You were just as stubborn then.”

That seemed to satisfy him.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I came here to try to talk to the nucleus. That’s looking quite difficult now. It thinks I want to be here with you instead.” She reviewed the Silverbird’s status again. None of the drives were operational, and the smartcore didn’t know why. The generator was producing some power, enough to maintain basic life support. A majority of cabin functions were running, though she wasn’t sure she’d want to use the medical cabinet. What vexed her most was the reason for the failures and glitches: There wasn’t one.

Willpower, she thought. That’s the governing factor in this universe. The power of mind over matter. Thoughts can affect reality. So the Void doesn’t want the Silverbird to fly. It’s as simple as that.

“And you don’t want to be here with me?” he asked.

“It’s enjoyable,” she told him. “But it’s not why I’m here.” His face was so crestfallen, she immediately felt guilty. “Kazimir, I apologize, but there is an awful lot at stake, more than I expect you to believe. I have to do whatever I can to help.”

“I understand,” he said gravely. “It is an honorable thing that you do. My mind may be false, but I believe in honor. It is a universal truth.”

“You’re very sweet,” she said. “I remembered that part of you perfectly.” She yawned. “I’m going to try and get some rest. It’s been a long stressful flight, and that champagne has gone straight to my head.”

“I will keep watch outside,” he announced gravely. “If this is a whole real planet, there might be something hostile out there.”

“Thank you.” Damn, my memory’s a dangerous thing. The cabin extended a large bed as Justine stripped off the one-piece suit; then the replicator produced a thin duvet. It had peculiar hard lumps in it, but she shrugged and pulled it up anyway. She fell asleep straightaway.

And dreamed. Dreamed of her own bed in her own home, where she was warm and safe and life was comfortable.

Someone pulled the drapes back, and sunlight streamed in through the tall windows. Justine yawned and stretched. It was cozy under the duvet.

“Hello, darling.”

“Dad,” she said drowsily, and smiled at the gold face looming above her. “Is it time to get up?”

“It’s time you and I had a talk.”

Full awareness hit her like a plunge into ice water. Justine yelped and sat up straight. It was her room in the Tulip Mansion, the one she’d spent her adolescence in, therefore ridiculously purple and black as she merrily plowed her way through her retro-Goth phase mainly to annoy her parents. Her T-shirt and baggy flannel pajama trousers were black cotton. Toenails and fingernails were black, with embossed blood gems. She looked at them, mortified by the fashion. Fingers heavy with silver skull rings hurriedly pulled a string of hair in front of her face to check: yes, black.

“Jesus,” she muttered.

“You always looked cute no matter how bad the fashion,” Gore said. He was standing at the foot of the bed, arms folded as he leaned against the post. (Four-poster with black gauze drapes—of course.) His handsome gold face grinned down.

“What? I … Am … Is this the Void?”

“You’re still in the Void,” Gore said. “I’m back in the Commonwealth thinking up cozy environments to amplify our rapport. And there’s nothing cozier than a childhood room.”

“Rapport?”

“I’m hugely embarrassed to say I’ve become the Third Dreamer. And guess whose life in the Void I’m dreaming.”

“Oh, shit.”

Gore produced an evil grin. “Could be worse. You could have slept with him. And I’d be the one relaying it into the gaiafield.”

“Shit!”

“That nobility of yours will get you into real trouble one day.”

Justine stood up carefully. “What’s been happening out there? Did the Pilgrimage make it through?”

“You mean in the four days you’ve been inside?”

“Four days?” she asked incredulously.

“Coming up on five.”

“But it’s been …”

“Four years. Including the interlude with the Skylord.”

“You got that part?”

“Oh, yes. That little shit Ethan is making a lot of capital out of its refusal to take you to the nucleus. A real big boost to the cause. The clerics from his jumped-up Council have been all over the unisphere ever since, ranting about destiny. It’s almost enough to counter the fuck-up they’ve made on Viotia.”

“Viotia?” she asked in a daze.

“They’re turning the planet upside down looking for the Second Dreamer. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got to concentrate on your problem.”

“Kazimir?”

“In a manner of speaking. Damn, I never realized you were still so fixated. You really balled that one up, didn’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“So far all Living Dream has been promising is the chance to put your life straight, just like their precious Waterwalker did every time he made his many mistakes. Screwed up again? Never mind. Bang, he thinks back to the moment he went wrong and rearranges the whole Void to that instant. That’s what sold it to them, all the sheep bleating to be taken on the Pilgrimage fleet.”

“I know; time travel is everyone’s wish fulfillment made true. Going back to correct your life’s blunders is the ultimate fantasy.”

“Time travel is pure bullshit, impossible; nobody can defeat causality or entropy. All the Void does is press the reset button. That’s what that goddamn memory layer is, a template of every instant inside there. And how does it fucking power that?”

“Dad.”

“Every planet, every person, every Skylord, every star, has to have its entropy reversed to the point in time Edeard fancied going back to. Every star! Every single atom in every star in the Void has to have its energy level pumped back up so he can begin again. Dear God, what arrogance. And where does it get the energy from to do that? From us. From eating our galaxy. That’s what feeds the reset. Mass to energy, good old E equals MC squared.”

“Dad, calm down; you’re ranting to the converted.”

“Oh, am I? If they were converted, the stupid dumb shits wouldn’t be going on their Pilgrimage, would they? Sometimes I think the Ocisens are quite right: They should just wipe us out because any species thick enough to produce a Living Dream doesn’t deserve to live.”

“Dad!” she said, shocked.

“Yeah, yeah.” He grinned savagely. “You like this dream, Ethan? You like what’s coming at you from the Void now? Or is this too much truth for you? Because it’s not just going to be your dumbass Waterwalker skipping back through his life anymore, is it? I could just about live with him being the savior of a bunch of shipwrecked medieval cretins. But that was never enough for you, was it? You are so fucking stupid, you want to take everyone in there. Millions of you resetting your lives every time you get a drop of shampoo in your fucking eye. Are you so fucking pitifully weak that you can’t face living your life properly? Learn from your mistakes and move on. That’s what makes you human. Not condemning the rest of us to extinction because of your personal goddamn failure of an existence. Grow some balls, for fuck’s sake.”

Justine put her arm around Gore, startled to find he was shaking with rage. “It’s okay,” she told him. “We’ll find a solution.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. Because now it’s not just the integral memory function that the Void can use as a template for creation. It can delve into any old hang-up you care to take in there with you. The Living Dream bastards aren’t going to be content with going to Makkathran and screwing themselves stupid with Ranalee. Not anymore. Not now that they can re-create anything from their own past. People, cities, civilizations, worlds. Bring anything you want back to life, anything from history, from fiction. Doesn’t matter; we’ll just suck down a couple of thousand new stars into the boundary to power it up. Jesus H. Christ.”

“Are you blaming me for this?”

Gore stood still, his fists clenching and unclenching as he tried to calm down. “No. It’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you. This is all because of the bastard Firstlifes who built the fucking abomination in the first place. The Raiel were right to try to destroy it. I wish they goddamn had; I really do.”

“I can use the Silverbird to study as much as it can.”

“No no, that’s not the answer to anything. We can’t go in there with ray guns blazing. I thought you’d realized that. You were right earlier; the mind is the key in the Void. It is geared up to manifest every thought. The physical environment can only be a tiny part of it. Think of it as an eight-dimensional onion.”

Justine straightened her back and gave her father an exasperated look. “Thanks, Dad. That’s helpful. I always think in those terms; it really helps a lot.”

Gore gave her a gruff smile. “All right, forget the eight dimensions; just picture the layers. They’re interlinked dimensionally, not figuratively, but you get the drift. Every layer has a different function. There’s the memory layer that captures everything that goes on in there. There’s the creator layer, which must organize the reset. There’s the interaction layer, which formats thoughts for the creator layer, which is what makes telepathy and all the rest of that mental shit happen.”

“A layer to make souls work,” Justine said thoughtfully.

“Yeah. This is all built around rationality and its evolution, the fulfillment your retard Skylord is fixated on. So maybe another layer that handles thought processes—maybe that’s the soul one, maybe not. That’s not the point. There’s a whole ton of layers, ones we can deduce from observation and stuff we can’t even guess at. And Christ knows what the nebulae are and why they’re singing. Doesn’t matter. What we have here is an enormously complex construction. But the nucleus is the center—again, not physically.”

“So the nucleus does control it all.”

“Who knows what the hierarchy is? What we have to do is find a route in, something we can rationalize and engage, just like you wanted.”

“Why would the nucleus create Kazimir for me?”

“It didn’t. I don’t believe you can think big enough to attract its attention. That confluence nest you have on board probably imprinted the Kazimir dream onto the creator layer. It was a thought more powerful than it’s accustomed to. Most of the layers don’t operate at a conscious sentient level; they just perform their task. And nobody ever took a confluence nest inside before. The one thing a confluence nest does above all else is hold a memory and repeat it ad infinitum. Your dream was the only one it received, and that warped reality. The creator layer simply responded in the way it was designed. Nothing personal.”

Justine sat on the bed, trying to fit together what he was saying. “If my thoughts aren’t powerful enough, what’s the point of me trying to find the nucleus?”

“This dream is being received by everyone who has a gaiafield connection. Understand?”

“Ah.”

“Don’t try to find the nucleus, it’s a waste of time.”

“But you just said—”

Gore knelt in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms. His eyes peered out intently from the gold skin mask that was his face. “You have to get to Makkathran.”

“There’s nobody left there. The Skylord said the humans had all gone to the nucleus.”

“I don’t give a shit. Get to Makkathran. It’s important. That’s where humans are centered in the Void.”

“How? The Silverbird can’t fly.”

“Wrong.” Gore grinned right at her. “You’re in the Void. You’ve got telepathic powers. The Silverbird can’t fly now.”

“Oh.” She worked out what he was proposing. “Oh!”

“That’s my girl; as smart as you are beautiful.”

“But Dad, Kazimir won’t exist then. I’ll have killed him.”

Gore let go of her arms. “I’m sorry; run that by me again.”

“If I go back to then, he won’t exist.”

“Oh, Jesus wept.” Gore slapped a hand theatrically across his brow. “Don’t you go all liberal on me now. Not now.”

“I can’t wipe him out of existence. He’s real now, for better or worse. I have a responsibility.”

“He is the equivalent of a re-life clone, one that has been stuffed with your recollections of his memories. How pitiful is that?”

“He’s alive,” she said firmly.

“And you’ve got the hots for him.”

“I do not.”

“Your own DNA test showed you he’s not Kazimir, just some poor doppelgänger the memory layer had in storage.”

“Exactly. He’s human. I can’t do this to him.”

Gore took her hands. “Listen to me, darling. This is the fundamental catastrophe that is the Void. He was a stored memory. Everybody who was ever in the Void is exactly the same; everyone who crashed there in the colony ship was copied, everyone who was ever born. Owain is still there, for God’s sake, still frozen in the memory layer at the moment the Waterwalker shot him and for all the decades he lived before. In all the resets Edeard performed afterward, he never went back past the point where he wiped out the conspirators. He could never bring himself to do that all over again because that’s what he would have had to do each time. This is what the Void throws at us. They lived in the time they were meant to live. You can’t change that, Justine. You cannot allow rationality and ethics that evolved in this universe to apply where you are now.”

“I know what you’re saying, but Dad, you haven’t met him. He’s so sweet. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“The galaxy doesn’t deserve the Void, but we’ve got it. And I have met him, darling. I’ve felt your silly little heart beat faster at the sight of him. I tasted the chocolates you ate when you smiled and flirted with him. I know the urge you’ve been trying to ignore. I’m sorry. You have to do this. You have to go to Makkathran.”

“Oh, goddamnit.”

He kissed her brow. “Look on the bright side. If we lose, you get to stay and live in the Void; you can find him again.”

“You are a thoroughly fucking useless coach; you know that.”

“I know. Now go and wake up.”

Justine nodded weakly, knowing she didn’t really have a choice. For the first time she looked through the bedroom window. The land outside wasn’t the grounds of the Tulip Mansion. Instead, her old home was sitting at the bottom of an impossibly huge valley, with mountains curving away through the sky like a monstrous green and brown wave about to break overhead. The sun was a long band of glaring light. “What the hell is that?”

Gore shrugged lightly. “I had to make a few sacrifices so I could dream your dreams.”

“Dad …”

“I’m fine.” He raised a hand, waving, his smile fond and proud. “Go on. Wake up.”

Justine’s eyes opened wide, staring up at the cabin ceiling. Tears blurred her vision. She wiped them away angrily. “Oh, hell.” And Kazimir would know something was wrong. No telepath had the strength to shield those emotions.

Sure enough, he was standing at the end of the rope ladder as she struggled her way down. He even held it steady for her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I have to go,” she said flatly.

“I see. That’s good, isn’t it? You know how to reach the nucleus. You wanted to go there.”

“I can’t take you with me,” she stammered.

“I understand.”

“No. No, you don’t.” She took a deep breath and kissed him. Delight banished the surprise from his face.

“Kazimir, I want you to know something. If there is a way back here, I will find it; I will find you. I promise that. Know my thoughts and know the truth in them.”

He gave her that tentative worshipful gaze that just made her feel worse. She’d never thought she’d ever see that again.

“I see the honesty in your thoughts,” he assured her. “Now do what you know you must.”

Justine sat on a rock a few meters from the Silverbird’s landing leg. The warm late-afternoon sun was a pleasant pressure on her face and arms as she folded her legs into a yoga position. Kazimir was squatting a little way past her, watching anxiously. She gave him one last smile and concentrated.

Her thoughts flowed into the confluence nest, using its routines to hold her mind steady. There were memories in there: the time where Edeard stood on top of the mountain and reached into the fabric of the Void, seeing the past. She followed what he did intently and tried to shape her thoughts in the same fashion, pushing her farsight down into the nothingness that lay around her.

Her own body was there, a long multiple image winding back and forth across the ground, going up into the ship, talking to Kazimir, radiating such sorrow that it threatened to resonate through her now. She pushed past it, saw the Silverbird swoop down from space. Further.

It was incredibly difficult; without the support of the confluence nest she would never have maintained focus. She couldn’t believe the Waterwalker had ever done this unaided. There was a single distinctive moment in her life that she wanted to achieve. Her mind held it up, instinctively matching it to the moment contained within the Void’s memory of everywhen. Then all she had to do was impel herself into it. There was a cry of desperation somewhere in the physical world as she attempted to force her thoughts into a pattern they were never intended for, calling upon the strength of the confluence nest to support her. The precious moment was there, linking present and past. Justine pushed. The Void reset itself—

Inigo’s Thirteenth Dream

The chamber of records was three levels down from the Spiral Tower, which housed the headquarters of Makkathran’s Weapons Guild. In total, the third level had twenty chambers arranged in a circle and reached by a single ring corridor. They were used as vaults for the most secret guns and ammunition compounds known to the guild’s Masters. For centuries the triple iron doors to each chamber had kept the rapid-fire guns safe, along with long-barreled pistols and other firearms lost to the rest of Querencia. The mechanisms to produce such devices also were kept in the vaults, as were the raw ingots of specialist metals the designs required.

Just gaining entrance to the Spiral Tower was difficult enough; there was only one entrance, and it was heavily guarded. All visitors had to be accompanied by a Master. Beyond that, armed guards kept a ceaseless vigil on the first and second basement levels. There were also ingenious trips and traps along the corridors and steps to catch anyone using concealment.

It was reasonable, therefore, for those who assembled in the chamber of records two days after Topar’s little expedition had left Makkathran to exude a degree of security. Grand Master Owain greeted his eleven guests warmly. No one made any attempt to hide his sense of trepidation and excitement as they made their way into the broad cross-vaulted chamber. There was a simple wooden table set up in the middle with thirteen chairs around it. Tall shelving cabinets were arrayed around the lead-gray walls, containing hundreds of leather folders that held every pistol and bullet design produced by the guild over its two millennia of existence. Long teardrop lighting patterns stretched across the curving ceiling, glowing passively.

Bise was the last to be shown in. He smiled at his fellows as the three thick, heavy doors swung shut behind him. Complicated locks rotated, pushing steel bolts into place and securing them; combination bands were spun.

“My poor boy,” Mistress Florrel said, and embraced Sampalok’s ex-Master warmly. “Welcome home.”

“Thank you, Grandmama.”

“Did you get the food I had sent out to you? I had the bakery on Jodsell Street make those raspberry muffins especially. I know how much you liked them as a boy.”

“Yes, indeed; it was most kind.”

“Was exile so terrible?”

“It had its moments.”

“It had its costs,” Tannarl said. “Half of your family stayed at my lodge.”

“For which you will be fully recompensed,” Owain said smoothly. “Come, come, we are not here to squabble among ourselves over a little coinage. Our moment draws near.”

“It was drawing near two years ago,” Bise said. “Then he arrived.”

“Well, the Waterwalker is off running around the countryside now, trying to find bandits,” Buate said. “And when he does, he won’t be coming back.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Owain said. “His telekinesis is incredibly strong. Makkathran hasn’t seen the likes since the days of Rah. And not even Rah could alter the city buildings.”

Bise glowered at the reminder.

“Careful, Cousin,” Tannarl said. “You tread close to heresy.”

“I state the simple truth.”

“You don’t seriously believe he can ward off the reception I have arranged for him?” Buate asked. “The whole point of ambushing him outside the crystal wall is to rob him of the advantage which the city gives him.”

“The outcome is almost irrelevant,” Owain said. “Even if he does survive, there will be nothing for him to return to. We must be absolute in that. Our supporters are ready.”

“There will be resistance,” Buate warned.

“Lady take them,” Tannarl said. “I say we don’t wait any—”

The Waterwalker rose smoothly through the floor of the records chamber, his black cloak enveloping him like an extinguished nebula. He studied each one of the conspirators sitting around the table. Several had risen to their feet, hands reaching for their pistols—a motion that died as he gave them a lofty dismissive smile.

“The election has given us a Mayor and a full Council,” the Waterwalker said. “There will be no change, no revolution. We are not one nation until we choose to be so.”

“What are you proposing?” Owain asked.

“I am proposing nothing. Your time is over.”

“This time, maybe,” Bise snarled. “But there will be other opportunities.”

“No, there won’t,” the Waterwalker told him. “I’ve already seen what happens if you win.”

Owain frowned at the strange claim. Uneasy thoughts were stirring beneath his normally resolute shield.

“You cannot arrest us,” Mistress Florrel said. “Our kind are not accountable in common law courts. And we have many allies in the Upper Council, where you would need to enact judgment.”

“Quite right,” the Waterwalker agreed. “It would be pointless.”

Tannarl strode across the chamber, his third hand reaching out. The big lock on the inner door turned sharply, its intricate combination bands spinning until the bolts were freed. They withdrew, and the door swung open. There were several sharp breaths. The door opened onto a smooth section of gray wall. There was no way out of the chamber.

“I have heard many times from your followers that I am weak,” the Waterwalker said, “that I lack resolution. If you believe that, you don’t know me at all. This revolution will end here, now. Without you it cannot happen. Without the rapid-fire guns it cannot be attempted ever again. Makkathran will remain a democracy.” His cloak parted, and he held an arm out, palm down. A rapid-fire gun slipped up through the floor and rose into his hand. He closed his fingers around it.

“No,” Owain said. “This is against everything you stand for.”

“You really shouldn’t believe everything a heartbroken teenage girl tells you.”

Owain grimaced as his fear began to manifest.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Mistress Florrel said. “My family will not permit this.”

“It is my family now,” Edeard told her calmly.

Eleven third hands pushed and hammered against the Waterwalker’s shield, trying to find a weakness, a way through. Longshouts for help were hurled at the impermeable chamber walls.

“For all of my life I have known that sometimes to do what’s right, you first have to do what’s wrong,” the Waterwalker told them. “Now I realize the truth of it. That is what I am.” His finger squeezed down on the trigger. He held it there until the magazine was empty.

Storage vault five contained over three hundred rapid-fire guns. They were wrapped in oiled cloth, sitting on racks that formed neat ranks across the floor.

Edeard replaced the one he’d used on its rack. He asked the city to dispose of them all. The floor beneath the racks changed, becoming porous, and the dreadful weapons sank down to oblivion.

His farsight swept out, examining the other vaults. Storage vault eight contained the bullets used in the rapid-fire guns. The city quietly absorbed the crates. Vault two had the long-barreled pistols. Seventeen housed some huge guns, their barrels as big as his legs, mounted on little wheeled trolleys. Iron balls larger than his fist were stacked in pyramids beside them—the bullets, he realized. He shuddered as he imagined the damage they could cause. All sank away. Finally, the shelving cabinets in the chamber of records slid beneath the solid floor.

The secret power of the Weapons Guild was no more. Never again would there be an internal threat to Makkathran’s Grand Council and Mayor.

Apart from the elections. And the guild quarrels. And the merchants maneuvering and bribing for gain. And the Grand Families struggling for advantage.

He grinned at the thought of it all. That crazy, wondrous life lived by Makkathran’s citizens. It’s all Finitan’s problem now.

The warm afternoon sun lit up the white pillars that lined Golden Park. Even the last bloom on the bushes and vines glowed with an exotic splendor in celebration of what had been an exceptionally pleasant summer. Edeard walked for some way across its elegant paths, drawing his thoughts together, resolving to do what he had to.

It was hard for his farsight to search out the frail souls of his parents. He stood beside one of the pillars along the Champ Canal side of Golden Park, bathed in the rich light reflected off the metal, extending his ability to its utmost.

They were there, watching him from a few feet away as always. “Thank you,” he told them.

“You can see us?” his mother asked in surprise.

“Yes, Mother. I can see you now.”

“My son.”

“Father. You’ve taken such care of me, more than I ever deserved.”

“It’s what we were supposed to do. You are all that remains of us.”

“Not anymore. I have a wife now. We will have children. They will have more. Everything you are will go on through them.”

“We should watch for them,” his mother said; she sounded uncertain.

“No,” Edeard said. “It is time for you to let go. I can take care of myself now, more than you know. The price you have paid for watching me is too high. You cannot do this anymore. You must go to the Heart. There is still time. There is always time.”

“Oh, Edeard.”

“Here.” He held out a hand. His mother reached out, touching his fingertips. He fought against wincing as the debilitating cold burned him. Instead, he smiled in reverence as she took on substance before him. “Goodbye, Mother,” he said, and brushed his lips to hers. “We will be together in the Heart one day. I promise.”

Her sorrow and regret were dreadfully poignant, but she smiled as she withdrew from his touch. His father held her closely.

“Journey well,” Edeard told them. He watched them fade up into the warm clear blue sky, refusing to acknowledge any remorse.

A lot of people were using Golden Park that afternoon, taking advantage of the lingering summer. Children raced over the grassy areas, playing elaborate games of catch. Apprentices ignoring their duties gathered in the shade of the park’s huge martoz trees, sharing bottles of beer and gossip about their Masters.

Salrana walked along one of the crushed-slate paths, enjoying the activity. Lads eyed her wishfully, although her crisp blue and white novice robes proved too great a barrier for any casual attempt to attract her attention. She crossed the ginger sandstone bridge into Ysidro. Right ahead of her was the Blue Fox tavern, a circular three-story building with a strange hexagonal rustication pattern embossed on the coppery wall. Its slim lancet windows made it seem taller than it actually was. She hesitated for a moment before slipping in through one of the smaller side doors. Something swirled on the periphery of her farsight, as if a pillar of fog had gusted down the alleyway. She frowned, but it didn’t resolve in her senses, so she scurried up the stairs to the third floor.

The Blue Fox was favored by Grand Family members as a place to conduct their liaisons; the exceptionally thick walls of the rooms eliminated the need to maintain a seclusion haze. Privacy was guaranteed against all but the most exceptional psychics. Salrana used the key she’d been given to unlock the door of a reserved room.

Sunlight was diffused by the tinted gauze covering the windows. More fabrics were draped over the walls. Candles flickered on the dresser, giving off a thick musky scent. The big bed was strewn with silk sheets and fur blankets.

Salrana’s lover was waiting for her beside the bed. Flushed with anticipation, she removed her novice robe to show off the delicate lace camisole she wore underneath, a recent gift from her lover. That same lover drew her close and kissed her. Gentle hands undid the topmost bow on the camisole. Another kiss was given. The next bow was undone. More kisses, each one more intimate. The camisole fell open at the front. A whimper of excitement sounded deep in Salrana’s throat; she couldn’t contain herself any further and clung to her lover, returning the kisses fiercely.

Edeard discarded his concealment. Salrana jumped in shock. Her mind radiated guilt.

“You,” Edeard said sourly. “I should have guessed. I really should.”

“But you didn’t, did you?” Ranalee said disdainfully. She pulled her own satin negligee up and combed some of her disheveled hair back into place. “I thought you had left the city.”

“Yes. A lot of people made that mistake. Your friends. Your family. Your fellow conspirators.”

Ranalee’s eyes widened. Surprise shone there at first; then she became alarmed as her directed longtalk questions went unanswered. “What have you done?” she hissed.

“They won’t answer you. Not now. Not ever.”

“Father?” she gasped.

“The Lady will bless his soul, I’m sure. I doubt anyone else will.”

“Bastard!” Ranalee was trembling, on the verge of tears.

“You were planning worse for me, far worse.”

Ranalee recovered to glare at him defiantly. “So what do you plan for me?”

“Nothing. Because you are nothing without Owain and your family. Owner of a bordello. What is that? Not anything.”

Salrana took a hesitant step forward. “Edeard—”

“Not a word from you. I don’t blame you. Do you know what they did to your mind, what this vixen can do?” Even as he spoke, he could sense the difference in Salrana’s unshielded thoughts, the harshness that flowed where once there had only been contentment and geniality.

“Of course she does,” Ranalee gloated. Her arm went protectively around Salrana, who leaned in closer, seeking reassurance. “I showed her a real life.”

“They used your anger at me for abandoning you. This … this agent of Honious came for you when you were vulnerable. It was no accident she met you. It was not chance. I know what she’s like, Salrana. She has a perverted skill that can twist your very thoughts; she warps what should be something beautiful into something diseased. It’s not love you feel for her; it is a wretched corruption of the affection your true self can experience.”

“No,” Salrana interrupted with soft insistence. “It was I who found Ranalee.”

“They exploited you. Her, Owain, the rest. Their only interest is in your past, our background. Lady, you’re just another weapon to use against me. You’re supposed to lure me out of the city if the ambush fails, remember?”

Salrana gave Ranalee a startled look, then faced Edeard again. “I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Ha!” Edeard closed his eyes to mute the pain that seeing her like this brought him. “You would. Please, Salrana, I can help you. There are others who can show you how they abused your thoughts, how this evil whore bewitched you.”

“So you can do what?” Salrana snapped, suddenly angry. “Take Ranalee from me? Leave me with nothing? Again?”

“That’s not—”

“I am myself.”

“They were going to breed you. In the Lady’s name, you know that’s not right.”

“Your strength made you the Waterwalker,” Ranalee said. “Your power attracted Kristabel to you, and now that you are part of a Grand Family, you have their wealth and estate at your disposal. Your children will be born to privilege no one in your pitiful Ashwell could ever comprehend. Why can’t Salrana have children who are strong? Why can’t Salrana have children who will enjoy that same cushion of money?”

“But you’re not giving her that,” Edeard said furiously. “You exploited how vulnerable she was; you turned her away from everything she was.”

“I showed her what Makkathran society could offer her once you’d tired of her,” Ranalee said triumphantly. “Marriage, children, family; those are our customs, customs started by Rah himself. Our arrangements are practical and beneficial, deceiving no one. Who in Honious are you to judge that?”

Edeard nearly struck her. But to do that would be to grant her victory. “I will not give up on you,” he told Salrana. “What she has done to you is wrong and evil, and whenever the day comes that you realize that, I will be there for you. I swear that upon the Lady.”

Now it was Salrana who regarded him contemptuously. The expression was so similar to the one on Ranalee’s face, it unnerved him. She took Ranalee’s hand and carefully placed it on her bare breast. “You have your life. I have mine. Even in your world of simplistic morality I can live how I choose. And I choose this. I choose Ranalee: my lover, my mistress.”

Edeard glared at Ranalee, who returned a malicious smile.

“This is not over,” he said. It was quite feeble, he knew, but he couldn’t think what else to do.

Why can’t she see what she’s become? Or perhaps she really can. Lady!

“You won today,” Ranalee told him in a mocking tone. “Show a little nobility. The Waterwalker would.”

Edeard barged out of the door, not bothering to conceal himself.

Edeard returned to the Culverit ziggurat and climbed the stairs without anyone noticing him. Even now he felt a shudder of trepidation that this would all turn out to be a fevered dream, that Kristabel … that seeing her would shatter the illusion. Good old Ashwell optimism. Stupid. This is real now. I know that.

When he reached the tenth floor, he drew up his courage and went to the room Kristabel had claimed as her study. It was bare apart from the desk and chair. Even the curtains had been taken down as it slowly changed shape to the one she and Edeard had decided on: bigger windows; brighter, white lighting rosettes. He knew the walls were shifting inward so the lounge next door could be longer, even though the process was so slow that his eyes couldn’t see the change. Just before he’d left, Kristabel had remarked on how the tenth floor was already different from the home she’d lived her whole life in. He had humored her by agreeing, because she was so excited and happy.

Now she was bent over the desk, her quill pen scribbling furiously as always. Her beautiful forehead wrinkled as she studied yet another thick ledger containing family accounts. Three high piles of similar ledgers were propped up on the side of the desk.

My wife.

“You look bored,” he told her.

Kristabel started. Then she smiled at Edeard as he stood in the doorway. “I never even sensed you,” she exclaimed. “Are you creeping up on me? And why are you here? What about the bandits? You couldn’t have found them already.”

“No, we didn’t. But I know who and where they are now. They’ll just have to keep for another day. I wanted to be home with my beautiful wife.”

She hurried over with a big smile on her face and kissed him in welcome. “That’s so sweet. Finitan will kill you, though. It was hugely important.”

Edeard put his arms around her, not wanting to let go—ever. He took a look out the window and across the hortus to the fabulous living city beyond. “Others have tried.”

She frowned and poked him in the chest. “Are you all right? You seem … tired.”

“No. I’m fine. It’s just that today I realized there are some things you can never fix no matter how hard you try.”

Kristabel kissed him again. “But I know you; you’ll just keep on trying. That’s what makes you, you. That’s why I love you.”

The end of
THE TEMPORAL VOID
Book Two of the Void Trilogy

The story will continue in Book Three,
THE EVOLUTIONARY VOID
published by Del Rey.

The Evolutionary Void is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Peter F. Hamilton

If at First … by Peter F. Hamilton copyright © 2007 by Peter F. Hamilton. Originally published in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hamilton, Peter F.
   The evolutionary void / Peter F. Hamilton.
       p. cm.
   eISBN: 978-0-345-52301-3
   I. Title.
   PR6058.A5536E86 2010
   823′.914—dc22

2010015073

www.delreybooks.com

Cover design: David Stevenson
Cover images: © Paul Youll (spaceships), © David Marchal/iStockphoto.com (background)

v3.0_r2

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

The Evolutionary Void

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Justine: Year Three Reset

Chapter Two

Inigo’s Sixteenth Dream

Chapter Three

Inigos’s Twenty-first Dream

Chapter Four

Inigo’s Twenty-sixth Dream

Chapter Five

Inigo’s Twenty-ninth Dream

Chapter Six

Inigo’s Thirty-third Dream

Chapter Seven

Inigo’s Forty-seventh Dream: The Waterwalker’s Triumph

Chapter Eight

Inigo’s Last Dream

Chapter Nine

Justine Year Forty-five

Chapter Ten

Justine Year Forty-five: Day Thirty-one

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

If at First …

Dedication

Books by Peter F. Hamilton

About the Author

The starship had no name; it didn’t have a serial number or even a marque. Only one of its kind had ever been built. As no more would ever be required, no designation was needed; it was simply the ship.

It streaked through the substructure of spacetime at fifty-nine light-years an hour, the fastest anything built by humans had ever traveled. Navigation at that awesome velocity was by quantum interstice similarity interpretation, which determined the relative location of mass in the real universe beyond. This alleviated the use of crude hysradar or any other sensor that might possibly be detected. The extremely sophisticated ultradrive that powered it might have reached even greater speeds if a considerable fraction of its phenomenal energy hadn’t been used for fluctuation suppression. That meant there was no telltale distortion amid the quantum fields to betray its position to other starships that might wish to hunt it.

As well as its formidable stealth ability, the ship was big, a fat ovoid over six hundred meters long and two hundred meters across at the center. But its real advantage came from its armaments; there were weapons on board that could knock out a half a dozen Commonwealth Navy Capital-class ships while barely stirring out of standby mode. The weapons had been verified only once: the ship had flown over ten thousand light-years from the Greater Commonwealth to test them so as to avoid detection. For millennia to come, primitive alien civilizations in that section of the galaxy would worship as gods the colorful nebulae expanding across the interstellar wastes.

Even now, sitting in the ship’s clean hemispherical cabin with the flight path imagery playing quietly in her exovision, Neskia remembered with a little shiver of excitement and apprehension the stars splitting asunder. It had been one thing to run the clandestine fabrication station for the Accelerator Faction, dispatching ships and equipment to various agents and representatives. That was easy, cold machinery functioning with a precision she could take pride in. But seeing the weapons active was slightly different. She’d felt a level of perturbation she hadn’t known in over two centuries, ever since she became Higher and began her inward migration. Not that she questioned her belief in the Accelerators; it was just the sheer potency of the weapons that struck her at some primitive level that could never be fully exorcised from the human psyche. She was awed by the power of what she alone commanded.

Other elements of her animal past had been erased quietly and effectively: first with biononics and acceptance of Higher cultural philosophy, culminating in her embrace of Accelerator Faction tenets, then by committing to a subtle rejection of her existing body form, as if to emphasize her new beliefs. Her skin now was a shimmering metallic gray, the epidermal cells imbued with a contemporary semiorganic fiber that established itself in perfect symbiosis. The face that had caused many a man to turn in admiration when she was younger now wore a more efficient, flatter profile, with big saucer eyes biononically modified to look across a multitude of spectra. Her neck also had been stretched, its increased flexibility allowing her head much greater maneuverability. Underneath the gently shimmering skin her muscles had been strengthened to a level that would allow her to keep up with a terrestrial panther on its kill run, and that was before biononic augmentation kicked in.

However, it was her mind that had undergone the greatest evolution. She’d stopped short of bioneural profiling simply because she didn’t need any genetic reinforcement to her beliefs. “Worship” was a crude term for thought processes, but she was certainly devoted to her cause. She had dedicated herself completely to the Accelerators at a fully emotional level. The old human concerns and biological imperatives simply didn’t affect her anymore; her intellect was involved solely with the faction and its goal. For the past fifty years their projects and plans had been all that triggered her satisfaction and suffering. Her integration was total; she was the epitome of Accelerator values. That was why she’d been chosen to fly the ship by the faction leader, Ilanthe, on this mission. That, and that alone, made her content.

The ship began to slow as it approached the coordinate Neskia had supplied to the smartcore. Speed ebbed away until it hung inertly in transdimensional suspension while her navigation display showed the Sol system twenty-three light-years away. The distance was comfortable. They were outside the comprehensive sensor mesh surrounding humanity’s birthworld, yet she could be there in less than thirty minutes.

Neskia ordered the smartcore to run a passive scan. Other than interstellar dust and the odd frozen comet, there was no detectable mass within three light-years. Certainly there were no ships. However, the scan picked up a tiny specific anomaly, which caused her to smile in tight satisfaction. All around the ship ultradrives were holding themselves in transdimensional suspension, undetectable except for that one deliberate signal. You had to know what to search for to find it, and nobody would be looking for anything out here, let alone ultradrives. The ship confirmed there were eight thousand of the machines holding position as they awaited instructions. Neskia established a communication link to them and ran a swift function check. The Swarm was ready.

She settled down to wait for Ilanthe’s next call.

The ExoProtectorate Council meeting ended, and Kazimir canceled the link to the perceptual conference room. He was alone in his office atop Pentagon II, with nowhere to go. The deterrence fleet had to be launched; there was no question of that now. Nothing else could deal with the approaching Ocisen Empire armada without an unacceptable loss of life on both sides. And if news that the Ocisens were backed up by Prime warships leaked out … Which it would. Ilanthe would see to that.

No choice.

He straightened the recalcitrant silver braid collar on his dress uniform one last time as he walked over to the sweeping window and looked down on the lush parkland of Babuyan Atoll. A gentle radiance was shining down on it, emitted from the crystal dome curving overhead. Even so, he could still see Icalanise’s misty crescent through the ersatz dawn. The sight was one he’d seen countless times during his tenure. He’d always taken it for granted; now he wondered if he’d ever see it again. For a true military man the thought wasn’t unusual; in fact, it was quite a proud pedigree.

His u-shadow opened a link to Paula. “We’re deploying the deterrence fleet against the Ocisens,” he told her.

“Oh, dear. I take it the last capture mission didn’t work, then.”

“No. The Prime ship exploded when we took it out of hyperspace.”

“Damn. Suicide isn’t part of the Prime’s psychological makeup.”

“You know that and I know that. ANA:Governance knows that, too, of course, but as always it needs proof, not circumstantial evidence.”

“Are you going with the fleet?”

Kazimir couldn’t help but smile at the question. If only you knew. “Yes. I’m going with the fleet.”

“Good luck. I want you to try and turn this against her. They’ll be out there watching. Any chance you can detect them first?”

“We’ll certainly try.” He squinted at the industrial stations circling around High Angel, a slim sparkling silver bracelet against the starfield. “I heard about Ellezelin.”

“Yeah. Digby didn’t have any options. ANA is sending a forensic team. If they can work out what Chatfield was carrying, we might be able to haul the Accelerators into court before you reach the Ocisens.”

“I don’t think so. But I have some news for you.”

“Yes?”

“The Lindau has left the Hanko system.”

“Where is it heading?”

“That’s the interesting thing. As far as I can make out, they’re flying to the Spike.”

“The Spike? Are you sure?”

“That’s a projection of their current course. It’s held steady for seven hours now.”

“But that … No.”

“Why not?” Kazimir asked, obscurely amused by the investigator’s reaction.

“I simply don’t believe that Ozzie would intervene in the Commonwealth again, not like this. And he’d certainly never employ someone like Aaron.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you that one. But there are other humans in the Spike.”

“Yes, there are. Care to name one?”

Kazimir gave up. “So what’s Ozzie’s connection?”

“I can’t think.”

“The Lindau isn’t flying as fast as it’s capable of. It probably got damaged on Hanko. You could easily get to the Spike ahead of them or even intercept.”

“Tempting, but I’m not going to risk it. I’ve wasted far too much time on my personal obsession already. I can’t risk another wild-goose chase at this point.”

“All right. Well, I’m going to be occupied for the next few days. If it’s a real emergency, you can contact me.”

“Thank you. My priority now has got to be securing the Second Dreamer.”

“Good luck with that.”

“And you, Kazimir. Godspeed.”

“Thank you.” He remained by the window for several seconds after he’d closed the link to Paula, then activated his biononic field interface function, which meshed with the navy’s T-sphere. He teleported to the wormhole terminus orbiting outside the gigantic alien arkship and through that emerged into the Kerensk terminus. One more teleport jump, and he was inside Hevelius Island, one of Earth’s T-sphere stations, floating seventy kilometers above the South Pacific.

“Ready,” he told ANA:Governance.

ANA opened the restricted wormhole to Proxima Centauri, four point three light-years away, and Kazimir stepped through. The Alpha Centauri system had been a big disappointment when Ozzie and Nigel opened their very first long-range wormhole there in 2053. Given that the binary, composed of G- and K-class stars and planets, had already been detected by standard astronomical procedures, everyone had fervently hoped to find a human-congruent world. There weren’t any. But given that they had successfully proved wormholes could be established across interstellar distances, Ozzie and Nigel went on to secure additional funding for the company that would rapidly evolve into Compression Space Transport and establish the Commonwealth. Nobody ever went back to Alpha Centauri, and nobody had ever even been to Proxima Centauri; with its small M-class star, it was never going to have an H-congruent planet. That made it the perfect location for ANA to construct and base the “deterrence fleet.”

Kazimir materialized at the center of a simple transparent dome measuring two kilometers across at the base. It was a tiny blister on the surface of a barren, airless planet, orbiting fifty million kilometers out from the diminutive red dwarf. Gravity was about two-thirds standard. Low hills all around created a rumpled horizon, the gray-brown regolith splashed a dreary maroon by Proxima’s ineffectual radiance.

His feet were standing on what appeared to be dull gray metal. When he tried to focus on the featureless surface, it twisted away, as if there were something separating his boot soles from the physical structure. His biononic field scan function revealed massive forces starting to stir around him, rising up out of the strange floor.

“Are you ready?” ANA:Governance asked.

Kazimir gritted his teeth. “Do it.”

As Kazimir had assured both Gore and Paula, the deterrence fleet was no bluff. It represented the peak of ANA’s technological ability and was at least a match for the ships of the warrior Raiel. However, he did concede that calling it a fleet was a slight exaggeration.

The problem, inevitably, was who to trust with such an enormous array of firepower. The more crew involved, the greater the chance of misuse or leakage to a faction. Ironically, the technology itself provided the answer. It required only a single controlling consciousness. ANA declined to assume command on ethical grounds, refusing to ascend to essential omnipotence. Therefore, the task always fell upon the Chief Admiral.

The forces within the base swarmed around him, rushing in like a tidal wave, reading him at a quantum level and then converting the memory. Kazimir transformed: His purely physical structure shifted to an equivalent energy function encapsulated within a single point that intruded into spacetime. His “bulk,” the energy signature he had become, was folded deep within the quantum fields, utilizing a construction principle similar to that of ANA itself. It contained his mind and memories, along with some basic manipulator and sensory abilities, and unlike ANA, it wasn’t a fixed point.

Kazimir used his new sensory inputs to examine the intraspacial lattice immediately surrounding him, reviewing the waiting array of transformed functions stored inside the dome’s complex exotic matter mechanisms. He started to select the ones he might need for the mission, incorporating them to his own signature; it was a process he always equated to some primitive soldier walking through an armory, pulling weapons and shields off the shelves.

Ultimately he incorporated eight hundred seventeen functions into his primary signature. Function twenty-seven was an FTL (faster than light) ability, allowing him to shift his entire energy signature through hyperspace. As he no longer retained any mass, the velocity he could achieve was orders of magnitude above an ultradrive.

Kazimir launched from the unnamed planet, heading for the Ocisen fleet at a hundred light-years an hour. Then he accelerated.

The Delivery Man smiled at the steward who came down the cabin collecting drinks from the passengers as the starship prepared to enter the planet’s atmosphere. It was a job much better suited to a bot or some inbuilt waste chute. Yet starliner companies always maintained a human crew. The vast majority of humans (non-Higher, anyway) relished that little personal contact during the voyage. Besides, human staff added a touch of refinement, the elegance of a bygone age.

He accessed the ship’s sensors as the atmosphere built up around them. It was raining on Fanallisto’s second largest southern continent. A huge gunmetal-gray mass of clouds powered their way inland, driven by winds that had built to an alarming velocity across the empty wastes of the Antarctic Ocean. Cities were activating their weather dome force fields, the rain was so heavy. Flood warnings were going out to the burgeoning agricultural zones.

Fanallisto was in its second century of development. A pleasant enough world, unremarkable in the firmament of External worlds, it had a population of tens of millions occupying relatively bland urban zones. Each had a Living Dream thane and a respectable number of followers. The prospect of Pilgrimage was creating a lot of tension and strife among the population, a situation that hadn’t been helped by recent events on Viotia. Acts of violence against the thanes had increased with each passing day of the crisis.

In itself that was nothing special; such conflicts were on the rise across the Greater Commonwealth. However, on Fanallisto, several instances of violence had been countered by people enriched by biononics. The Conservative Faction was keen to discover what was so special about Fanallisto that it needed support and protection from suspected Accelerator agents.

As he’d made quite clear to the faction, the Delivery Man didn’t care. However, a Conservative Faction agent was now on Fanallisto, and standard operating procedure for field deployment was to provide independent fallback support, which was why the Delivery Man hadn’t gone straight back to London from Purlap spaceport. Instead he’d taken a flight to Trangor and caught the next starship to Fanallisto. At least he wasn’t part of the active operation. The other agent didn’t even know he was there.

The commercial starship fell through the sodden atmosphere to land at Rapall spaceport. The Delivery Man disembarked along with all the other passengers, then rendezvoused with his luggage in the terminal building. The two medium-size cases drifted after him on regrav and parked themselves in a cab’s cargo hold. He ordered the cab to the commercial section of town, a short trip in the little regrav capsule as it flitted around beneath the force field dome. From there he walked around to another cab pad and flew over to the Foxglove Hotel on the east side of town, using a different identity.

He booked in to room 225, using a third identity certificate and an untraceable cash coin to prepay for a ten-day stay. It took four minutes to infiltrate the room’s cybersphere node, where he installed various routines to make it appear as though the room were occupied. A nice professional touch, he felt. The small culinary unit would produce meals, which the maidbot would then empty down the toilet in the morning when it made the daily housekeeping visit. The spore shower would be used, as would various other gadgets and fittings; the air-conditioning temperature would be changed, and the node would place a few calls across the unisphere. Power consumption would vary.

He slid both cases into the solitary closet just for the sake of appearance and activated their defense mechanisms. Whatever was inside them, he didn’t want to know, though he guessed at some pretty aggressive hardware. Once he’d confirmed that they were operating properly, he left the room and called a cab down to the front of the hotel’s lobby. It wouldn’t be he who came back to collect the cases—that would set a pattern. He was grateful for that operational protocol. After Justine’s last dream, all he wanted to do was get back to his family. He’d already decided he would be turning down any more Conservative Faction requests over the next couple of weeks, no matter how much warning they gave him and how politely they asked. Events were building to a climax, and there was only one place a true father should be.

The lobby’s glass curtain doors parted to let him through. The taxicab hovered a couple of centimeters above the concrete pad outside, waiting for him. He hadn’t quite reached it when the Conservative Faction called.

I’m going to tell them no, he promised himself. Whatever it is.

He settled in the cab’s curving seat, told its smartnet to take him to the downtown area, and then accepted the call. “Yes?”

“The deterrence fleet is being deployed,” the Conservative Faction said.

“I’m surprised it took this long. People are getting nervous about the Ocisens, and they don’t even know about the Primes yet.”

“We believe the whole deployment was orchestrated by the Accelerators.”

“Why? What could they possibly gain from that?”

“They would finally know the nature of the deterrence fleet.”

“Okay, so how does that help them?”

“We don’t know. But it has to be crucial to their plans; they have risked almost everything on manipulating this one event.”

“The game is changing,” the Delivery Man said faintly. “That’s what Marius told me: The game is changing. I thought he was talking about Hanko.”

“Apparently not.”

“So we really are entering a critical phase, then.”

“It would seem so.”

Immediately suspicious, he said, “I’m not undertaking anything else for you. Not now.”

“We know. That is why we called. We thought you deserved to know. We understand how much your family means to you and that you want to be with them.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“If you do wish to return to a more active status—”

“I’ll let you know. Has my replacement taken over following Marius?”

“Operational information is kept isolated.”

“Of course, sorry.”

“Thank you again for your assistance.”

The Delivery Man sat upright as the call ended. “Damnit.” The deterrence fleet! This was getting serious, not to mention potentially lethal. He ordered the cab to fly direct to the spaceport, and to hell with procedure. The flight he was booked to depart on wasn’t due to leave for another two hours. His u-shadow immediately tracked down the first ship bound for a Central world: a PanCephei Line flight to Gralmond, leaving in thirty-five minutes. It managed to reserve him a seat, paying a huge premium to secure the last first class lounge cubicle, but the flight would take twenty hours. Add another twenty minutes to that to reach Earth through the connecting wormholes, and he’d be back in London in just over twenty-one hours.

That’ll be enough time. Surely?

Araminta had been so desperate to get the hell away from Colwyn City, she hadn’t really given any thought to the practical aspect of walking the Silfen paths between worlds. Ambling through mysterious woods dotted with sunny glades was a lovely romantic concept, as well as being a decent finger gesture to Living Dream and Cleric Conservator bastard Ethan. However, a moment’s thought might have made her consider what she was wearing a little more carefully, and she’d definitely have found some tougher boots. There was also the question of food.

None of that registered for the first fifty minutes as she strolled airily down from the small spinney where the path from Francola Wood had emerged. She simply marveled at her own fortune, the way she’d finally managed to turn her predicament around.

Figure out what you want, Laril had told her.

Well, now I’ve started to do just that. I’m taking charge of my life again.

Then the quartet of moons sank behind the horizon. She smiled at their departure, wondering how long it would take before they reappeared again. It had been a fast traverse of the sky, so they must orbit this world several times a day. When she turned to check the opposite horizon, her smile faded at the thick bank of unpleasantly dark clouds that were massing above the lofty hills that made up the valley wall. Ten minutes later the rain reached her, an unrelenting torrent that left her drenched in seconds. Her comfy old fleece was resistant to a mild drizzle, but it was never intended for a downpour that verged on a monsoon. Nonetheless, she scraped the rat-tail strings of hair from her eyes and plodded on resolutely, unable to see more than a hundred meters in front of her. Boots with too-thin soles slipped on the now dangerously slimy grass equivalent. As the slope took her down to the valley floor, she spent more than half her time leaning forward in a gorilla-style crouch to scramble her way slowly onward. That was the first three hours.

She kept walking for the rest of the day, traversing the wide empty valley as the clouds rumbled away. The orange-tinted sunlight helped dry her fleece and trousers, but her underclothes took a long time. They soon started to chafe. Then she reached the wide meandering river.

The bank on her side of the valley was disturbingly boggy. Apparently the Silfen didn’t use boats. Nor was there any sign of ford or even stepping-stones. In any case, she didn’t like the look of how fast the smooth water was flowing. Gritting her teeth, she set off downriver. After half an hour she conceded there was no natural crossing point. There was nothing for it; she would have to wade.

Araminta stripped off her fleece and trousers and blouse, bundling them together with her trusty tool belt—there was no way she was leaving that behind, even though it was far too heavy should she have to swim for it. She waded in, carrying the weighty roll above her head. The bottom of the river was slippery, the water icy enough to make it difficult to breathe, and the flow so harsh as to be a constant fear. In the middle the water came up almost to her collarbones, but she gritted her teeth and kept going.

Her skin was completely numb when she finally came staggering out on the other side. The shakes were so bad, she couldn’t even undo the bundle of clothes that were now her sole possessions in the universe. She spent a long time alternating between being hunched up, shivering violently, and trying to walk while flapping her arms around. Eventually her fingers finally began to work again. Her skin still had a horrible white pallor when she forced shaking limbs into her clothes once more.

The walk didn’t warm her up noticeably, nor did she reach the high tree line on the other side of the valley before night fell. She curled up into a ball beside a small boulder and shivered her way to a fitful sleep. It rained twice in the night.

Morning was when she realized she didn’t have anything to eat. Her tummy was grumbling when she bent over a tiny trickle of water running around the base of the boulder to lap up the icy liquid. She couldn’t remember ever being this miserable; not the day she left Laril, not even watching her apartments going up in flame. This was just wretched. Worse, she’d never felt so alone before. This wasn’t even a human world. If anything went wrong, anything as simple as a sprained ankle or gashed knee, there was no emergency service to call, no help within light-years. She’d just have to lie down here in the valley and starve to death.

Her limbs started trembling with the thought of it, at the full realization of the risk she’d taken yesterday wading through the river. Delayed shock, she decided, from both the river and the terrible fight in Bodant Park.

After that, she was a lot more careful walking up toward the tree line high above. There was still no sign of anything she could eat. Underfoot was just the yellowy grass with its speckle of tiny lavender flowers. As she plodded on gloomily, she tried to remember everything she’d ever heard about the Silfen paths. It wasn’t much; even the general encyclopedia in her storage lacuna contained more mythology than fact on the subject. They existed, there was no such thing as a map, and some medievalist humans set off down them in search of various personal or irrational goals—few of whom were ever heard of again. Except for Ozzie, of course. Now that she thought about it, she’d vaguely known he was a Silfen Friend. And so was Mellanie, whoever she used to be. Araminta could have kicked herself for not running even a simple search with her u-shadow. It was over a week since Cressida had told her about her odd ancestry, and she had never bothered to find out, had not asked a single question. Stupid.

The thought of Cressida made her concentrate. Cressida would never give up or sink into a bout of self-pity. And I’m related to her, too.

She began to sketch out a list of more positive aspects as she drew close to the woodland where she was sure the next path began. For a start, she could sense paths, which meant there would be an ending to this trek, a conclusion. Lack of food was a pig, but she had a strong Advancer heritage, and their ethos was to equip humans to survive the galaxy over. As she’d learned during her childhood on the farm, playing nibble dare with her brother and sisters, it was quite difficult for Advancer humans to poison themselves with alien vegetation. Her taste buds had a strong sampling ability to determine what was dangerous. Unless a plant was hugely toxic, her metabolism could probably withstand it.

Even so, she didn’t like the look of the grass on the mountain.

I’ll wait till the next planet before I resort to that.

The air was noticeably colder by the time she reached the first of the moss-cloaked trees. Way down the valley, thick hammerhead clouds were sliding toward her. Rain at this temperature would wreck what little morale she’d recovered.

Long honey-brown leaves fluttered on the branches overhead as she moved deeper into the woods. Little white whorls like tightly wound spider gossamer peeped up through the grass below her feet. The air became still between the trunks of the trees as she walked forward. Her confidence grew. Somehow in her mind she could sense the changes beginning. When she looked up, the slender glimpses of sky she was afforded through the tangle of branches showed a light turquoise, which was encouraging. It was certainly brighter and more inviting than the atmosphere above the mountains.

Deep within the gaiafield or the reverie of the Silfen Motherholme—whatever realm it was her mind drifted through these days—she could follow the way space subtly transformed around her. The path was constantly in motion. It had no fixed beginning or end; it was a way that responded to the wishes of the traveler. At some incredible distance there was an awareness that seemed to be observing her. That was when she had a vague notion of just how many entities were on the paths. Uncountable millions, all wandering where they might, some with purpose, wishing to know a certain experience, others allowing the paths to take them at random across the galaxy to find and know whatever they would.

New trees began to appear amid the moss-clad trunks, their smooth boles a whitish-green. Lush green leaves overhead reminded her of a deciduous forest in spring. Then ivies and vines swarmed up the trunks, producing cascades of gray flowers. On she walked. The path wound along small hills and into narrow valleys. Streams bubbled along beside her. Once she could hear the pounding thunder of some great waterfall, but it wasn’t on the path, so she didn’t try to follow the sound. Red leaves laced through the light brown canopy. Her boots were treading on small crisp leaves amid the grass. The air grew warm and dry. Hours after she’d left the rainy valley behind, she heard a quiet madrigal being sung in an alien tongue. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know the words; the harmony was exquisite. It even made her stop for a while, allowing herself to listen. It was the Silfen, she knew, some big party of them trotting merrily on their way to a new world offering fresh sights and excitements. For a moment she wanted to run and join them, see what they saw, feel for things the way they did. But then that image of Cressida, smart, self-reliant, focused, trickled up into her mind, and she knew sheepishly that traipsing off with a bunch of alien elves wasn’t the answer. Reluctantly, she set off again. Somewhere far ahead was a Commonwealth world. She was sure of that, although the path was little used nowadays. The Silfen didn’t care for planets where other civilizations arose, at least not above a certain technological level.

Araminta let out a sigh of relief as the trees finally thinned out. It was white and bright up ahead and getting warmer with every footstep forward. The trees with the red leaves became the majority. Their light gray branches were slim, widely separated. When she glanced at them, she could see how fat and waxy the leaves were. She grinned in delight; there was something utterly awesome about having paths between worlds.

The path led her to the edge of the waving trees. She stared out at the vista ahead, blinking against the harsh light. “Oh, Great Ozzie,” she muttered in dismay. As far as she could see, the land was a flat expanse of white sand. The world’s hot sun burned high overhead, unencumbered by any cloud. “It’s a desert!”

When she turned a full circle, she found she’d emerged amid a few paltry clumps of trees that clung to the edge of a long muddy pool. And somewhere in those trees the path was dwindling away to nothing. “No,” she told it. “No, wait. This isn’t right. I don’t want to be here.” But then it was gone. “Oh, bollocks.”

Araminta might have been generally ignorant about alien planets, but one thing she knew for certain was that you didn’t start walking across a desert in the middle of the day, certainly not without any preparation. She took a slow saunter around the pool, trying to spot any sign that other people were around. Apart from some very odd imprints in the dry mud, there was no evidence that anybody used the oasis on any kind of regular basis. With the sun rising higher, she sat with her back to one of the gray tree trunks, making the most of the measly shade cast by its chunky leaves.

All the doubt and self-pity she’d managed to throw off on the path threatened to come swarming back. Maybe the Silfen were more involved with galactic events than anyone suspected. They could have dumped her here deliberately so that she could never lead a human Pilgrimage. Just thinking it through brought up an image of Cressida, her cousin’s eyebrow lifting in that incredibly scornful way of hers. Araminta cringed just at the memory of it.

Come on, pull yourself together.

She looked down at the tool belt. There weren’t a lot of tools, and the power charge on some was well down. But they could be useful. For what? How do I use them to cross a desert? She looked around the silent oasis again, trying to be smart and analytical the way Cressida would be. Okay, so I’ve got water. How do I carry it? Then she realized that there were several stumps sticking out of the ground but no fallen trees. She hurried over to one and saw the wood had been cut clean and level. Someone had sawed it off. She gave the stump a modest grin; it was a great clue. So now start thinking how you can use wood.

The power saw she carried was small, designed to cut small shaped holes, not to fell a tree, however spindly. But she cut around a trunk and managed to topple the tree onto open ground. The black wood under the bark was incredibly hard. She cut a couple of sections off, producing cylinders half a meter long, which she rolled into the shade, sitting down beside them. Her drill bored a hole down the middle. Once she had that, she switched the drill bit to its expansion mode and started to drill again. It took hours, but eventually she’d hollowed out each of the cylinders, leaving a shell of wood a couple of centimeters thick. They made excellent flagons. When she carried them into the pool to fill them with the clear water in the middle, she felt something give under her feet. The dark-blue sphere she fished out had a slippery jellylike shell. An egg! Araminta glanced around nervously, wondering what had laid it, land animal or marine? Perhaps it was a seed.

The flagons were full, and she lugged them out quickly but kept hold of the flaccid egg. It was the size of her fist, the wet surface giving like slippery rubber beneath her fingers. Just looking at it made her stomach growl with hunger. She realized she hadn’t eaten anything since that last breakfast with Tandra and her family, and that was a long time ago now.

With the egg wedged between some stones, she turned her laser to low-power wide beam and swept the ruby-red fan forward and backward across the bendy shell. The color began to darken down to a grubby brown, minute cracks appearing as it slowly hardened. After a few minutes she took a guess that it was done and used her screwdriver to tap a hole through it. The smell wasn’t good, but she cracked a wide hole open and hooked out some of the steaming greenish gloop inside.

Wrinkling her face in dismay, she touched some of the gloop to the tip of her tongue. It didn’t taste of much at all, maybe slightly minty jelly. Secondary routines in her macrocellular clusters interpreted the results firing down the nerve channels from her taste buds. They couldn’t discern anything lethal in the hot organic mush; it certainly wouldn’t kill her outright. Closing her eyes, she swallowed. Her stomach groaned in relief, and she scooped out a larger portion.

After she finished the first egg (she was still half-convinced it was some kind of aquatic seed), she went trawling for some more, recovering nine in total. She cooked another four with the laser, washing down the uninspiring contents with the water from the flagons. The wood wasn’t leaking, which she counted as a minor victory. With her stomach finally quiet, she set about splitting more wood and building a small fire. The flames baked the remaining eggs, saving power in her laser. She was firmly proud of the innovation, though she should have thought of it earlier.

As the flames crackled away, she set about stripping the bark of the tree she’d felled. When it was cut into thin strips, she began to weave a hat. Three attempts later she had a flattish cone that finally stayed in place on her head. She began weaving a basket to carry the eggs.

One more fishing expedition in the late afternoon netted a further five eggs, and then she settled down for a rest before night fell. She’d been working for hours, and the sun was only just starting to sink down toward the horizon. The days here were long ones. Logically, then, the nights would be as well, so she ought to be able to make a decent distance before the sun rose once more.

She dozed before sunset, dreaming of some tall blonde girl who was also alone. The dream was a vague one, and the girl was on a mountainside rather than in a desert. A handsome lad appeared, which set the girl’s heart aflutter, then she was confronting a man with a gold face.

Araminta woke with a start. The man was Gore Burnelli, which made her suspect the dream had emerged out of the gaiafield. It was weak here, but she could still perceive it. Gore had been very angry about something. For a moment Araminta was tempted to delve back into the gaiafield to see if she could recapture the dream but decided against it. The last thing she wanted now was to risk reexposure to Living Dream, though how they would find her here was a moot point. Besides, she had more immediate problems.

With the small bright sun finally sliding below the horizon, she gathered up her makeshift desert survival kit. The flagons were filled to the brim and stoppered with cuts of wood. She hoisted them onto her back with a harness made from woven bark strips, grimacing at the weight. The baked eggs went into her basket, which was slung over a shoulder. More strips of bark were hung around her neck; she couldn’t imagine what she’d need them for, but they were all she had and were the fruits of her own labor. Thus equipped, she set off.

The twilight lingered for a long time, which cheered her; total darkness would have been depressing and not a little bit scary. Stars slowly started to twinkle overhead. None of the constellations were recognizable, certainly not to her encyclopedia files. I’m nowhere near the Greater Commonwealth, then. Despite that, she was confident she wasn’t far away from a path that would take her there. She hadn’t even hesitated when she left the oasis. She knew the direction she should take.

Her flagons were ridiculously heavy, yet she knew she had to carry as much water as was physically possible. Her stomach wasn’t exactly feeling a hundred percent, and hunger was now a constant nag. She thought that perhaps the egg-things weren’t terribly nutritious for humans, after all. Still, at least she hadn’t thrown up. That was a plus.

Araminta grinned at that. Strange how perceptions shifted so much depending on circumstances. A week ago she’d been fretting about buyers for the apartments producing their deposits on time and getting angry with late suppliers. Now, not being sick as she tramped across an unknown desert halfway across the galaxy counted as a reasonable achievement.

After three hours she made herself take a rest. The desert was illuminated by starlight alone now. This world didn’t seem to have a moon. Some of the stars were quite bright. She wished she knew enough astronomy to tell if they were planets. Not that it mattered. She was committed now. It felt good having a physical goal, something she could measure success with.

She drank some water, careful not to spill any. The eggs she left alone. Save them for real hunger pangs.

After half an hour she could feel the air becoming a lot cooler as the day’s heat drained away into the sky. She zipped the fleece back up and set off again. Her feet were sore. The boots were not designed for this kind of walking. At least the terrain was level.

As she trudged on, she allowed herself to wonder what she was going to do when she did reach the Commonwealth again. She knew she’d have only one chance, one choice. Too many people were looking for her. Giving in to Living Dream was something she instinctively shied away from. But Laril, for all he was loyal and trying to help, was in way over his head. Who isn’t? Though perhaps he could negotiate with some faction. But which one? The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced she should contact Oscar Monroe. If anyone could offer her sanctuary, it would be ANA itself. And if it was going to use her, there really was no hope.

Araminta kept plodding forward. Hunger and lack of true sleep were getting to her. She felt exhausted but knew she couldn’t stop. She had to cover as much ground as possible during the night, for she wouldn’t be going anywhere during the day. Her limbs ached, especially her legs, as she just kept walking. Every time she stopped to drink, it was more painful to haul the flagons onto her back again. Her spine was really beginning to feel the weight. It was all she could do to ignore the throbbing in her feet as her boots rubbed already raw skin. Occasionally she’d shiver from the now-icy night air, a great spasm running the length of her body. Whenever that happened, she’d pause for a minute, then shake her head like a dog coming out of water and take that step again. I cannot quit.

There were so many things she needed to do, so many things she had to try to accomplish to stop the whole Living Dream madness. Her mind began to drift. She saw her parents again, not the ones she argued with constantly in her late teens but as they were when she was growing up, indulging her, playing with her, comforting her, buying her a pony for Christmas when she was eight. Even after the divorce she hadn’t bothered to call them. Too stubborn, or more like stupid. And I can just hear exactly what they’d say if I told them I’d met Mr. Bovey and was going multiple. Then there was that time just after Laril went offplanet, clubbing with Cressida most nights, going on dates. Being free, having fun discovering what it was like to be young and single in the Commonwealth. Having independence and a little degree of pride with it.

She wondered if any of that life would ever come back. All she wanted now was for this dangerous madness to be over, for Living Dream to be defeated, and for herself to become Mrs. Bovey. Was it possible to fade back into blissful obscurity? Other people had done it; countless thousands had had their moment of fame or infamy. Mellanie must have achieved it.

The timer in Araminta’s exovision flashed purple, along with an insistent bleeping that wound down auditory nerves, drawing her attention back out of the comfortable reverie. She let out a groan of relief and shrugged out of the harness. At least it wasn’t so cold now. As she held up the flagon to drink, she saw lights crawling across the starfield. She’d lived in Colwyn City long enough to recognize starships when she saw them. “What the hell?” That was when she realized the Silfen path was now behind her. “Ozzie!” Her mind felt a host of quiet emissions within the gaiafield, originating somewhere nearby. She hurriedly guarded her own thoughts, making sure nothing leaked out to warn anyone of her presence.

So where in Ozzie’s name am I?

Araminta looked around again, trying to make out the countryside. There wasn’t much to see, though she thought one section of the horizon was showing a tiny glow. Smiling, she sat down to wait.

Half an hour later, she knew she was right. A pale pink wash of light began to creep upward as dawn arrived. Now she could see she was still in a desert, but this one was mostly ocher rocks and crumbling soil rather than the featureless ocean of sand she’d left behind. The drab brown ground was broken by small patches of green-blue vegetation, hardy little bushes that looked half-dead. Tall fronds of pale cream grass tufts lurked in fissures and stone spills, all of them dry and withered. Away in the distance, half-lost in air shimmer, a broad line of mountains spiked up into the sky. Their height was impressive, yet she couldn’t see any snow on their peaks. The desert stretched all the way across to them. In the other direction was a low ridge, which she began to appreciate was at least five miles away, if not farther. This landscape was so relentlessly monotonous, it was hard to judge perspective.

Whatever, she was on a dirt track made by vehicles of some kind. It led down a long gentle slope to a junction with a solid concrete road. Just the sight of it was a huge relief. From living out in the boondocks of an External planet for nearly twenty years, she knew just how rare roads could be, and that was in the agricultural areas. Everybody used regrav capsules these days. To find this here in the middle of a desert, she’d been lucky. Very lucky.

Thank you, she told the Silfen Motherholme.

She took another drink of water and set off down the track. The distance had fooled her, after all; the road seemed to stay in the same place no matter how much ground she covered toward it. As she strode along the slope, she saw a few regrav capsules flying beyond the ridge; in the other direction nothing was moving above the vast desert. At least that told her which way to turn once she reached the junction. There was obviously some kind of settlement on the other side of the ridge. A few cautious examinations of the gaiafield confirmed that that was where the buzz of minds was situated.

It took her another three hours to reach the crest of the ridge. Again, “ridge” was deceptive. The closer she got, the larger it rose above her. It was like an elongated hill. And the luck that had delivered the road had clearly abandoned her; there wasn’t a single vehicle moving along it all morning.

By the time she finally limped to the crest, she was ready for just about any sight apart from the one that greeted her. She’d almost been right about the elongated hill. The ridge was actually a crater wall—a big crater, complete with a beautiful circular lake that must have been at least twenty miles across. This was the mother of all oases; the inner slopes were all smothered in verdant woodland and cultivated terraces she thought might be vineyards. The road dipped away ahead of her, winding into a small town whose colorful ornate buildings were visible amid a swath of tall trees. Despite being completely exhausted, aching everywhere, and feeling quite worried about the painful state of her feet, Araminta couldn’t help choking out a little laugh as she stared down at the exquisite vista before her. She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and slowly discarded the flagon harness from her back. It was placed carefully behind some rocks at the side of the road, followed by the basket of eggs. With her shoulders rejoicing at the absence of weight, she started off down the slope.

People stared at her as she hobbled into town. Hardly surprising. She still had her silly conical hat on, and her clothes were a mess, filthy from mud and repeated deluges. She guessed she must smell, too. When she allowed herself to receive the local gaiafield, she could sense the instinctive surprise everyone felt at the sight of her. Plenty of dismay was mingled in there as well.

The little town’s buildings were mostly clapboard, painted a variety of bright colors; there were very few modern construction materials visible. It gave the town a comfortably quaint feel. The quiet old style suited the placid lake.

Even with the shade thrown by tall willowy trees, it was hot in the late-morning sun. There weren’t many people about. However, she eventually sensed one old couple who didn’t quite share the disquiet of their fellow citizens. The woman was even emitting a small amount of concern and sympathy from her gaiamotes.

“Excuse me,” Araminta asked. “Can you tell me if there’s somewhere to stay in town?”

The couple exchanged a look. “That’s an offworld accent,” the woman said.

Araminta pressed down on a giggle. To her the woman’s accent was strange; she was almost slurring her words as she ran them together. Thankfully, the pair of them weren’t wearing the old-fashioned kind of clothes Living Dream followers usually favored. But then, it was unusual to see anyone whose body had aged to such a degree. “Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve just arrived.”

The woman emitted a glow of satisfaction. “Good for you, my dear. Have you been away long?”

“I’m, er, not sure,” she replied honestly.

“I tried once,” the woman said with a tinge of melancholia. “Never got anywhere. Maybe I’ll try again after rejuvenation.”

“Um, yes. That hotel …?”

“Why don’t you just get your u-shadow to find out?” the man asked. He had a thatch of white hair that was slowly thinning out. His whole appearance made him seem harmless, but the tone he used was quite sharp.

“I’m a Natural human,” Araminta offered by way of explanation.

“Now, Earl,” the woman chided. “There’s the SideStar Motel off Caston Street, my dear. That’s four blocks this way.” She pointed and gave Araminta a kindly smile. “Cheap, but clean with it. You’ll have no problem there.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Do you have money?”

“Yes. Thank you.” Araminta gave them a jerky nod and set off. She stopped after a couple of paces. “Uh, what is this place?”

“Miledeep Water,” the man said drily. “We’re on Chobamba’s equatorial continent; that’s an External world, you know.”

“Right.” She smiled, trying to give the impression it had just slipped her mind for a moment.

“In fact, we’re the only settlement on this entire continent, which is a desert from shore to shore. Lucky you found us, really.” The irony was quite blatant now, even through the odd accent.

“Yes.”

The woman gave him a mild jab with her hand, hushing him. Araminta smiled again and backed off fast. As she went down Caston Street, she was uncomfortably aware of the pair of them standing watching her. The man’s mind was filling with mild amusement coupled with a trace of exasperation.

It could have been worse, she told herself. They could have been suspicious or recognized me.

Araminta’s encyclopedia files said Chobamba had been settled for barely two hundred fifty years. She guessed that the StarSide Motel was one of the earlier businesses to be established. Its chalets were an exception to the town’s clapboard buildings. They’d been grown from drycoral, which was now long dead and starting to flake under the unremitting sun. It was a similar variety to the pale violet dry coral they’d used for barns back on the farm in Langham, so she knew that for it to reach such a state, it had to be at least a century old.

The motel occupied a wide area, with the chalets spread out in a broad circle to surround a swimming pool. Their concrete landing pads for visiting capsules were all cracked, forced open by weeds and clumps of unpleasant-looking red fungus balls. Only one capsule was currently parked.

Irrigation nozzles were squirting pulses of spray onto its front lawn as she walked up to the reception building. She supposed the whole crater wall must be irrigated.

The owner was in the back office, tinkering with an ancient air-conditioning unit. He came out wiping his hands on his shabby white vest and introduced himself as Ragnar. His glance swept up and down, giving her clothes a quick appraisal. “Been a while since we’ve had anyone walk in,” he said, stressing “walk.” His accent was the same as that of the old couple she’d met.

“But I’m not the first?” she asked warily.

“No, ma’am. The Silfen path ends somewhere out there beyond the crater wall. I’ve met a few travelers like yourself over the years.”

“Right,” she said, relaxing slightly.

Ragnar leaned over the counter, speaking quietly. “You been out there long?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay. Well, you’ve not chosen the best time to come back. These are troubled times for the old Greater Commonwealth, yes indeed.” His eyes narrowed at her blank expression. “You do know what the Commonwealth is?”

“I know,” she said solemnly.

“That’s good. Just checking. Those paths are pretty tangled, by all accounts. I had someone once come straight out of a pre-wormhole century. Boy, oh boy, were they confused.”

Araminta didn’t argue about how unlikely that was. She smiled and held up her cash coin. “A room?”

“No problemo. How long will you be staying?”

“A week.” She handed over the coin.

Ragnar gave her clothes another skeptical viewing as he handed the coin back. “I’ll give you number twelve; it’s a quiet one. And all our rooms have complimentary toiletries.”

“Jolly good.”

He sniffed. “I’ll get you an extra pack.”

Room 12 measured about five meters by three, with a door on the back wall leading to a small bathroom that had a bath and a toilet. No spore shower, Araminta saw in disappointment. She sat on the double bed and stared at her feet; the pain was quite acute now. It took a while for her to tackle the problem of getting her boots off. When she did unfasten them, her socks were horribly bloody. She winced as she rolled them off. Blisters had abraded away, leaving the raw flesh bleeding. There was a lot of swelling, too.

Araminta stared at them, resentful and teary. But most of all she was tired. She knew she should do something about her feet, bathe them at least. She just didn’t have the energy. Instead, she pulled the thin duvet over herself and went straight to sleep.

Paramedics were still working in Bodant Park ten hours after the riot, or fight, or skirmish—whatever you called it. A lot of people were calling it mass murder. Cleric Phelim had thrown the Senate delegation out of his headquarters when they had leveled such an accusation against him, hinting broadly that the Commonwealth would convene a war crimes tribunal with him as the principal accused. But in an extraordinarily lame public relations exercise, five hours after the agents had finished blasting away at each other, he had finally lifted the restriction on local ambulance capsules. However, he wouldn’t switch off the force field weather dome or allow the injured to be transferred to hospitals in other cities. Colwyn’s own hospitals and clinics, already swamped by earlier injuries from clashes between citizens and paramilitaries, were left to cope by themselves.

Casualty figures were difficult to compile, but the unisphere reporters on the ground were estimating close to a hundred fifty bodyloss victims. Injuries were easily over a thousand, probably two with varying degrees of seriousness.

Oscar had directly added two people to the bodyloss count. He wasn’t sure about collateral damage, but it wasn’t going to be small, either; no one in that fight had held back. On one level he was quietly horrified at his own ruthlessness when he’d protected Araminta from the agents converging on her. He’d allowed the combat programs to dominate his responses. Yet his own instincts had contributed, adding a ferociousness to the fight that had exploited every mistake his opponents had made. And his biononics were top of the range, producing energy currents formatted by the best weapons-grade programs the Knights Guardian had designed. It had also helped that Tomansio and Beckia had bounced over to his fight within seconds, adding their firepower and aggression. Yet he’d held by himself for those first few vital moments; the feeling was the same as on the Hanko mission back in the good old days, flying nearly suicidal maneuvers above the star because it was necessary.

Now, the morning after, guilt was starting to creep back. Maybe he should have shown some restraint, some consideration for the innocent bystanders trying to fling themselves clear—though a deeper rationality knew full well that he had had to cover Araminta’s escape. The fate of the Commonwealth had hung on that moment, determining which faction would grab her. Perhaps that was why he’d fought so ruthlessly: He knew he had to succeed. The alternative was too horrific to consider—or allow.

Certainly Tomansio and Beckia had shown a measure of respect that had been absent before. He just wished he’d earned it some other way.

Their borrowed capsule left the Ellezelin forces base in the docks and curved around to cruise above the Cairns, heading for the big single-span bridge.

“Somebody must have got her,” Beckia said; it had almost become a mantra. After they all got clear from the fight in Bodant Park, they’d spent the rest of the night helping Liatris search for the elusive Second Dreamer. Her disappearance was partially their own fault; Liatris had killed every sensor within five kilometers of the park. They’d been so desperate for her to get away that the measure was justified at the time; what surprised them again was how well she’d done it. Their search hadn’t produced the slightest indication where she’d gone since she’d run away from Oscar in the park. On the plus side, no one else who was hunting her (and there were still five functional teams that Liatris had discovered) had found her, either.

“Living Dream hasn’t,” Tomansio said calmly. “That’s what we focus on. Until we confirm her situation, we continue the mission. Right, Oscar?”

“Right.” He saw her face again, that brief moment of connection when the startled, frightened girl had stared into him with frantic eyes. She’d seemed so fragile. How on Earth did she ever stay ahead of everyone? Yet he of all people should know that extraordinary situations so often kindled equally remarkable behavior.

“Any luck with the image review?” Beckia asked.

“No” was Liatris’s curt answer. With Araminta dropping out of sight, their technology expert had launched a search through old sensor recordings to see if they could find how she’d arrived at Bodant Park. The Welcome Team had been analyzing data from every public sensor in the city, trying to track her. Liatris (and the rival agent teams) had glitched the input to their semisentients, sending them off on wild-goose chases. But it was a telling point that none of their own scrutineers had managed to spot her during the day, not even approaching Bodant Park. The first anyone had determined her location was when her outraged thoughts burst into the gaiafield at the sight of her apartments going up in flame. As yet nobody had worked out how she’d managed to conceal herself. Whatever method she’d used, it had proved equally effective in spiriting her away during the height of the fight.

So now Oscar and his team were falling back on two things. One, she would call him on the code he’d given her, possibly out of gratitude or maybe from sheer pragmatism. Two, they were following leads like a professional police detective. Paula would be proud, he thought with a private smile.

Despite a barrage of urgent anonymous warnings, the Welcome Team had arrested most of Araminta’s family, with the notable exception of the redoubtable Cressida, who had pulled a vanishing act equal to Araminta’s. They’d all been brought to the Colwyn City docks for “questioning.” Liatris said Living Dream was bringing in more skilled teams from Ellezelin to perform memory reads.

That just left them Araminta’s friends in the city, though, with the exception of Cressida, she didn’t seem to have many. Which was strange, Oscar thought. She was a very attractive young woman, free and independent. That would normally imply a big social group. So far Liatris had uncovered very few, though a building supply wholesaler called Mr. Bovey was a promising lead. They were due to pay him a discreet visit right after their first appointment.

Tomansio steered the capsule away from the river and over the city’s Coredna district. They landed on a pad at the end of a street and stepped out. The houses here were all made out of drycoral, single-story and small; their little gardens were either immaculately maintained or home to piles of rubbish and ancient furniture. It was one of the poorer areas in the city. All three of them stared at the Ellezelin forces capsule parked at the far end of the street.

“En garde,” Tomansio said quietly.

They were all dressed in a simple tunic of the occupying forces, not armor. Oscar brought his biononics up to full readiness. Defensive energy currents and his integral force field could snap on with a millisecond’s warning. He hoped that would be enough. As the three of them walked down the street, he ran a field scan on the capsule up ahead. It was inert, empty.

“Assigned to squad FIK67,” Liatris told them when they relayed the serial number to him. “Currently on city boundary enforcement duty.”

“Oh, crap,” Oscar muttered as they drew near the house they wanted. His field scan had picked up someone with biononics inside. Whoever they were, they also had their energy currents in readiness mode. “Accelerator?”

“Darwinist,” Beckia decided.

“Separatist,” Tomansio said.

“I’ll take a piece of that action,” Liatris said. “Put me down for the Conservatives.”

Tomansio walked up to the aluminum front door and knocked. They waited tensely as footsteps sounded. The door opened to reveal a shortish, harassed-looking woman wearing a dark blue house robe.

“Yes?” she asked.

Oscar recognized Tandra from the employment file Liatris had extracted out of Nik’s management net.

“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Tomansio said.

Tandra rolled her eyes. “Not another lot. What do you want to ask?”

“May we come in, please?” Oscar asked.

“I thought you Living Dream sods didn’t bother asking.”

“Nonetheless, ma’am, we’d like to come in.”

“Fine!” Tandra grunted and pushed the door fully open. She stomped off down the small hall inside. “Come and join the party. One of your lot’s already here.”

Oscar exchanged a nervous glance with the others and followed Tandra inside. He reached the small lounge and stopped dead, emitting a potent burst of shock into the gaiafield. The woman with active biononics was sitting on the couch with a happy twin on either side of her. She wore an immaculately cut major’s uniform and wore it well, the epitome of a career officer. Martyn was bending down to offer her a cup of coffee.

“Hello, Oscar.” The Cat smiled. “Long time, no see. So what have you been up to for the last thousand years?”

He let out a rueful sigh. Come on, you knew this would happen at some point. “I was in suspension, where you should be.”

“Bored with it,” the Cat said. She glanced at Tomansio and Beckia. Oscar had never seen the Knights Guardian so taken aback; they were even more startled than he was. “My people,” the Cat said mockingly. “Welcome.”

“I’m afraid not,” Tomansio said. “We are working for Oscar.”

“Surely I override that. I created you.”

“They have conviction in their principles,” Oscar said mildly. “Something to do with strength …”

The Cat gave a delighted laugh. “I always did like you.”

“What is this?” Martyn asked, looking from the Cat to Oscar. “I thought you people were all the same.”

“Oh, we are,” the Cat said.

“We are not,” Oscar countered forcefully.

“Mixal, Freddy,” Tandra called. “Come here.”

The Cat’s smile was joyous as her hold around both children tightened. “I like the twins,” she said mildly.

Martyn started forward as Mixal and Freddy began to twist about in her unyielding grip. Tomansio intercepted him fast, restraining him. “Don’t move,” he growled.

Beckia gripped Tandra. “No,” she warned as the woman tried to lunge at her children.

“Let go of me,” Tandra shouted.

“If you move again, I will shoot you,” Oscar told her flatly, hating himself for doing it, but he had no choice. Besides, it might just shock her into obedience. She’d never understand that the twins’ only chance of surviving the next five minutes was to let him and his team take charge.

“Big words,” the Cat said.

“I don’t have many options,” Oscar said.

“How’s Paula?”

“I thought you’d seen her.”

“Not quite. Not yet.”

“There’s always a next time, huh?”

“You should know that better even than I.”

“You know, last time I saw you on the plane to Far Away, you weren’t so bad.”

“I assure you I was,” the Cat said.

“Strange, because that was you now. The you that founded the Knights Guardian is in your personal memory’s future.”

“That sounds horribly convoluted and confusing, darling.”

“Thinking about it, you you never actually met me on the plane to Far Away. Your memories come from the day before you were sent to Randtown.”

“And your point is?”

“Interesting that you’ve researched yourself.”

“Know your enemies.”

“Ah, now that actually does make sense. Especially with the number you have by now.”

“Whereas you live in a happy universe.”

Oscar gave her a lopsided grin. “It has you in it.”

“Ouch. That was personal, darling.”

“Of course it was personal. After what happened on the plane between us, how could it be anything else? Oh, wait, you don’t have that memory.”

The Cat actually looked quite startled. “You have to be kidding, darling. You don’t even like girls.”

“No. But as you said, you like me, and racing toward almost certain death triggers some reflexes no matter what. I just had to work with what was available.”

“Now you’re being insulting.”

Oscar kept his face perfectly blank. “No, I’m still being personal. After all, whose kid did you go and have after the Starflyer crash?”

“Kid?” the Cat spluttered. “Me? With you?”

“What is wrong with you people!” Tandra screamed. “Just go, all of you. Go and leave us alone.”

Oscar held a finger up to the distraught woman, then ignored her. “If you didn’t research that bit, ask the Knights Guardian here you created. Was there a gap in your history around then?”

The Cat glanced at Tomansio, who was still holding back Martyn. “Actually, there is a chunk of your time line missing following the crash,” he said slowly. “Nobody knows what you were doing then.”

“Fuck off,” the Cat snapped at him. “And you”—she glared at Oscar—“you don’t know, either. You were a memorycell dangling on Paula’s chain for a thousand years.”

“The kid visited me after I was re-lifed. Told me the whole story.”

“Stop it. Now.”

“Okay,” he said reasonably. “Did you have time to ask these good people anything?”

“You cannot screw with my mind.”

Oscar winked. “Already done the body.” He turned to Tandra. “Did she ask you about Araminta?”

Tandra stretched her arms out toward the couch, where the twins were still squirming ineffectually. “Please?”

Oscar extended his arm. A red laser shone through the skin on his forefinger, splashing a dot onto Freddy’s forehead. Everyone froze. Freddy started wailing, curling up tighter against the Cat, believing she would protect him. If only you knew how wrong that instinct is, Oscar thought miserably. “Did she?”

“You won’t,” the Cat said; she gave Tandra a brisk smile. “He’s the good guy; he’s not going to shoot children. That’s what I do. And I’m very good at it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t shoot ours,” Oscar said with a cheerful tone. He rather enjoyed the venomous expression on the Cat’s face. “What happened before I got here?”

“Nothing!” Martyn bellowed. “In Ozzie’s name, stop this, please. Please! They’re just children.”

Oscar looked straight at the Cat, unflinching. His target laser switched off. “We’re going to share the knowledge, and then we’re both going to leave.”

“How very weak of you,” the Cat said.

“How very tactical,” Oscar said. “If you resist, the three of us will turn on you. Some of us may suffer bodyloss, but ANA will have us re-lifed in half a day. You, on the other hand, will certainly die. The information will die with you, unused. The Accelerators will not recover Araminta, and you … Oh, yes, what was it now? Message from Paula. She paid a visit to the ice moon Accelerator station. There were several of you in suspension there. There aren’t anymore.”

The Cat gave the crying twins a pointed glance.

“Possible end of the galaxy against two lives,” Oscar said. “No contest. Remember, I was a serving navy officer. I’m used to this situation. Necessity always outweighs sentiment. I blew up Hanko’s sun, which killed an entire planet.”

“Actually, darling, I killed Hanko, but let’s not go into that right now.”

“You don’t get to go into anything. You have one choice—walk away or die. And think about this: If Living Dream or the Accelerators win, your real body will never come out of suspension. The Earth will have been converted to pure energy by the Void’s boundary to fuel some idiot’s daydream long before that scheduled day comes.”

Oscar turned his back on the Cat. And how many have done that and lived? As she didn’t immediately open fire on him, he said to Tandra: “Tell me about Araminta.”

“She was here,” Martyn blurted. “That bitch. She’s the reason all this has happened, and she came here! Here in our home.”

“When?”

“The night before the fight in Bodant Park,” Tandra said wearily. “She said she was frightened of the crowd in Bodant Park and hadn’t got anywhere else to go. We let her sleep here. On the couch.”

“Did she tell you she was the Second Dreamer?”

“No. I still can’t believe it. She’s just a messed-up girl.”

“She’s a lot more than that. How did she get here?”

“She said she walked.”

“I never believed that,” Martyn grumbled.

“Did you see a trike or a taxi?” Oscar asked him.

“No, but it’s a long way to walk from Bodant Park. And she lied about everything else.”

“Okay, and when she left?”

“She walked,” Tandra said. “I saw her go. There was no trike or anything. She was all alone.”

“Where was she going?”

“She didn’t say.” Tandra hesitated. “I thought it might be a man. She used my makeup, took a long time. She looked great when she left.”

“Ah,” Beckia said. “Did she look like herself?”

“Not really; she changed a lot. Her hair was real dark. Her own color is better for her.”

“Clever.”

“Okay, then.” Oscar looked back at the Cat. “You got anything else to ask?”

“Who’s she screwing?” the Cat asked.

“I don’t know,” Tandra said. “I hadn’t seen her for ages. It was a surprise when she came here.”

“So you’re her best friend? The one she turns to in a crisis?”

Tandra shrugged. “I guess.”

“I’ve heard enough.” The Cat released the twins and stood in one swift motion. Oscar blinked. She really had moved fast.

Must be running accelerants, he thought.

Tandra and Martyn rushed for their children.

The Cat gave Oscar a wicked grin. “Be seeing you.”

“I’ll tell the grandkids you’re coming. There’s lots of them. It’s been a thousand years, after all.”

Her chuckle sounded genuine. “You know, maybe it is possible.”

Oscar braced himself. If she was going to do anything, it would be now. The moment passed, and the Cat left.

Beckia let out a low whistle as she relaxed.

Tomansio put his hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “You know, you’re almost as crazy as she is. Er, you and her on the plane. Did that really …”

“A gentleman never tells,” Oscar said solemnly.

“Fuck me.”

“When this is over, I’ll take you up on that. But I think we’d better leave now.” His field scan showed him the Cat’s stolen capsule rising from the pad. Once again he tensed up. Would she fly over the house and blast away at it?

Tandra and Martyn had huddled up protectively, hugging their children hard. The twins were sobbing in distress.

“Take my advice,” Oscar said to them. “Leave here right now. Go stay with friends or in a hotel, anywhere, just not here. There will be more like us coming.”

“Ozzie curse you straight to hell, you bastards,” Martyn hissed furiously. There were tears running down his face.

“I’ve met Ozzie,” Oscar said quietly. “He’s nothing like everyone today thinks he is.”

“Just go,” Tandra implored.

Oscar led Tomansio and Beckia back to their borrowed capsule. As soon as they left the little drycoral house behind, he called Paula.

“The Cat’s here.”

“Are you sure?”

Oscar shuddered. “Oh, yeah. We had quite a chat.”

“And you’re still alive. I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, well, I managed to throw in a cosmic-sized distraction. It put her off her game for a while.”

“Is she joining the hunt for Araminta?”

“Yes.”

“Figures. The Accelerators are desperate to acquire her.”

“I thought we are, too.”

“We are. It has become imperative.”

“I’m doing my best. I’m still hopeful she might just call me. She’s not quite the superwoman everyone thinks.”

“I never believed she was. What’s your next move?”

“We’re going to visit a Mr. Bovey, Liatris has uncovered some kind of connection between him and Araminta.”

“Okay, keep me informed.”

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry; I’m on my way to Viotia.”

“I thought I was doing this so you could keep a low profile.”

“That time is now officially over.”

As he approached the Ocisen fleet, Kazimir maintained a single hyperspace communication link back to ANA. He knew the ExoProtectorate Council was expecting him to provide it with a real-time progress review of the engagement, but that would have given Ilanthe too much information. The Prime ships traveling with the Ocisen Starslayers would have been warned of his approach. Not, he admitted, that it would have done them any good against his abilities. But then, they were never the true threat. Something else would be out there watching, sending precious information on the nature of the deterrence fleet back to the Accelerators. He was sure of it.

Kazimir matched velocity with the vast alien armada and began to examine the ships. With his sensor functions, detection was easy; over two thousand eight hundred Ocisen ships were racing through interstellar space at four and a half light-years an hour, including nine hundred Starslayers. His perception infiltrated the hulls, exposing the weapons they carried, enough quantumbuster types to wipe out most of the Greater Commonwealth worlds should they ever reach their destination. But nothing more, no postphysical systems they’d chanced upon and retro-engineered, which was a relief. He switched his attention to the thirty-seven Prime ships accompanying them; they used a sophisticated hyperdrive configured to keep their distortion to an absolute minimum. Their weapons were considerably more advanced than anything the Ocisens possessed, effectively equal to a Commonwealth Navy Capital-class ship. But that was it. They didn’t pose a danger to him. And there were no other ships, no clandestine ultradrive-powered observers keeping watch, no unaccounted hyperspace links within a light-year of the Ocisen fleet. Each of the Prime ships had a hyperspace link opened to some location back around Commonwealth space; he could sense them, slender threads stretched across the quantum fields, pulsing with information.

The Prime ships were the observers, he decided. Presumably they wouldn’t expect him to be able to eliminate all thirty-seven of them simultaneously. Well, that was their first mistake.

Kazimir manifested extra sensor functions into five of the Prime starships. In spacetime they were barely the size of a neutron, but they could receive all the inter-Prime communications with the hulls. Every Prime ship had a controlling immotile that took the job of a smartcore in human ships, governing the technology directly; it also instructed the immotiles. The ships represented a microcosm of Prime society. Pretechnology, the Primes had communicated by touching their upper-body stalks, allowing nerve impulses to flow between them. That had been superseded by simple electronic carriers, allowing immotiles to extend their immediate control over vast distances.

Kazimir began to read the digitized impulses. The Commonwealth had a lot of experience with inter-Prime communication. The navy had developed a whole range of disruption routines and electronic warfare techniques. If the Primes ever escaped the barriers at the Dyson Pair and posed a threat again, they would find their thoughts literally snuffed out.

The first thing that was apparent was that the Primes in the starships were simple biological hosts to human thoughts. So Paula was right, Kazimir thought grimly.

“Do you concur with my assessment?” he asked ANA:Governance.

“Yes.”

“Very well.” Within the deluge of the neural directives he was aware of a datastream being encrypted and sent down the ultrasecure hyperspace link to the Commonwealth. There was a lot of sensor data, but again, nothing beyond Capital-class level. “The Accelerators will know I’ve intercepted the fleet when the signal is severed,” he said. “But I can ensure they don’t know the nature of the interception.”

“Proceed.”

Kazimir manifested a series of aggressive function inside each Prime starship and used them to attack the hyperspace communication systems. As the secure links failed, he switched to breaking the hyperdrives themselves. The ships fell back into real spacetime within fifty milliseconds of each other. With their flight ability neutralized, he set about eliminating the onboard weapon systems. It took a second and a half for his aggressor functions to break down the hardware. Then he turned his attention to the Ocisens.

The problem he had was eliminating the military threat the aliens posed without causing catastrophic loss of life. He couldn’t simply destroy the drives of so many ships, because the empire didn’t have the ability to rescue so many of its own kind from such a distance. Instead he manifested specific aggressor functions inside each of the starships and ruined the weapons beyond repair or recovery. Between them, they weren’t left with enough components to make a single laser, let alone the more advanced devices.

Total elapsed time to nullify all two thousand eight hundred starships was eleven seconds, enough for them to realize something was starting to go wrong but denying them any response time. Not that they could have done anything against him even if they had known.

Kazimir let them go. His energy signature flashed back to the area of space where the big Prime ships were floating helplessly. This time he manifested a communication function into one of the ships, its ability identical to the inter-Prime system. Like all human minds, the one occupying the Prime bodies utilized association as its main memory routine.

Kazimir injected: Origin.

Identity.

Purpose.

Each one triggered a deluge of thoughts. Kazimir identified that the animating personality was derived from Chatfield’s mind, his human persona stripped of most emotional traits. His sense of purpose was resolute, as was his devotion to the Accelerators. The Prime ships were to escort the Ocisens and protect them from the Commonwealth Navy’s attempts to intercept, but their most important mission was to report on the appearance of the deterrence fleet, its nature and capability. After that there was no requirement left.

A sensation of puzzlement flashed between the immotile and its motiles as the burst of thoughts Kazimir had elicited faded from its main consciousness. Realization followed. It sent a specific code to the scuttle bomb. Kazimir wasn’t quite quick enough to prevent it. Now that he knew what to look for, he quickly manifested a function into the remaining ships that disabled the scuttle in all of them.

“Do you have sufficient evidence now?” he asked ANA:Governance.

“I do. The Accelerators have acted recklessly. In supporting the Ocisens and manipulating Living Dream, they have violated the principles under which I was established. I will convene a suspension conclave.”

“They will know the deterrence fleet has intercepted the Ocisen fleet even though they remain unaware of my nature. They must assume the worst, that I have uncovered their exploitation of the Primes.”

“That would be logical. However, there is little their agents can do. Once suspension is enacted, their operations will be exposed to full scrutiny and neutralized.”

Kazimir reviewed the starships as they drifted passively. “Nonetheless, I still don’t see what the Accelerators hoped to achieve, outside crude political manipulation. Ilanthe is smarter than that. I would feel more comfortable being on hand during the hearing. I will return immediately.”

“What about the Ocisen fleet? I thought you were going to monitor them.”

“They are incapable of causing any harm. When the commander realizes that, they will have no option but to return home. Our Capital-class ships can assume observation duties.”

“The defeat to the commander’s pride is considerable. It may not want to return to the empire.”

“That will be something for the Capital ships to determine. I am coming back to Sol.”

“As you wish.”

Kazimir manifested a communication function and broadcast a simple message to the ships. “Attention the Chatfield personalities, this is the Commonwealth Navy deterrence fleet. We know what you are and what you intended. Do not attempt any further suicide bids. Capital-class ships will rendezvous with you shortly. You will be taken into navy custody.”

With that, Kazimir withdrew his manifested functions and headed back toward the Sol system.

Justine: Year Three Reset

Exoimage medical icons leaped out of the darkness to surround Justine Burnelli’s consciousness. She’d seen the exact same set of readouts once before.

“Oh, man,” she grunted in shock and delight. “It worked.” She tried to laugh, but her body was resolutely refusing to cooperate, insisting it had just spent three years in suspension rather than … Well, actually she wasn’t sure how long it had taken to reset the Void back to this moment in time.

The medical chamber lid peeled back, and she looked around the Silverbird’s cabin again. Really, again. She sat up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Status?” she asked the smartcore. A new batch of exoimage icons and displays sprang up. They confirmed that the Silverbird had been under way for three years and was now decelerating hard. Something was approaching.

“Ho yeah,” she murmured in satisfaction as the starship’s sensors swept across the visitor. It was the Skylord, vacuum wings fully extended.

As it drew close, she examined the weird ovoid core once more, still unable to decide if the fantastic folds of crystalline fabric were actually moving or if she was seeing surface refraction patterns. The Silverbird’s sensors couldn’t get an accurate lock on the substance.

As before, she settled back down in the lounge’s longest couch and reached for the Skylord with her longtalk.

“Hello,” she said.

“You are most welcome,” the Skylord replied.

So far, so the same. Let’s see– “I have come to this universe to achieve fulfillment.”

“All who come here strive for that moment.”

“Will you help me?”

“Your fulfillment can be achieved only by yourself.”

“I know this. But humans such as myself reach fulfillment by participating in our own society. Please take me to Querencia, the solid world where my kind live.”

“My kindred are not aware of any thoughts akin to your species anywhere in the universe. None are left.”

“This I also know. However, I am simply the first of a new generation of my species to reach this place. Soon millions of us will be here. We wish to live and reach fulfillment on the same world humans matured on before. Do you know where it is? There was a great city there, which was not of this place. Do you remember guiding human souls from that world to the Heart?” Justine tensed up on the couch. This was the critical question.

“I remember that world,” the Skylord said. “I guided many from that place to the Heart.”

“Please take me there. Please let me reach fulfillment.”

“I will do so.”

Justine was acutely aware of the gravity in the cabin changing somehow. The smartcore reported an alarming outbreak of glitches right across the starship. She didn’t pay attention; she was feeling horribly dizzy. Her mouth was watering as a prelude to being sick, and she couldn’t focus on the curving bulkhead wall, it was moving so fast. She hurriedly jammed her eyelids shut, which only made the effect worse, so she forced her eyes open again and concentrated hard on the medical chamber directly ahead of her. Secondary routines in her macrocellular clusters began to edit the erratic impulses her inner ears were slamming into her brain, countering the appalling vertigo. The sensation began to abate a little. She checked the sensor images. “Holy crap.”

The Silverbird was rolling as its trajectory curved around; it was caught in the wake of the Skylord like a piece of flotsam. The curving patterns contained within the Skylord’s crystalline sheets were undulating wildly as its vacuum wings swirled like an iridescent mist across the gentle glow of the Void’s nebulae. All she could think of was a bird flapping frantically. Then the course alteration was over. The Silverbird’s sensors reported a noticeable Doppler shift in the light from the stars. They were accelerating at hundreds of gees, just as the Skylord had on their first encounter.

This first encounter, she corrected herself. Or should that be … In the end she decided human grammar hadn’t quite caught up with the Void’s abilities.

Whatever strange temporal adjustment the Skylord had made to facilitate their acceleration ended soon afterward. Ahead of them, the few stars shining amid the nebulae had acquired a blue tinge to their spectrum, and those behind stretched down into the red. The Silverbird’s smartcore determined that they were now traveling at about point nine three lightspeed. On board, glitches were reducing to acceptable levels, and her vertigo faded away.

She let out a huge sigh of relief, then grinned ruefully. “Thanks, Dad,” she said out loud. Trust him to figure out what to do. Her good humor faded as she acknowledged that others would be coming into the Void; that damned Pilgrimage would also go a-hunting for Querencia. So has the Second Dreamer agreed to lead them? And how the hell are they ever going to get past the Raiel in the Gulf?

Gore had told her to concentrate on getting to Makkathran, so she’d just have to trust that he knew what he was doing, which didn’t exactly inspire her with confidence. He’d have a plan of some kind, but it probably wouldn’t be one she approved of.

No, forget probably; it just won’t be.

Not that she had a lot of alternatives.

Once they were under way, the Silverbird’s smartcore plotted their course vector. Justine examined the projection, which extended a sharp green line past a purple and scarlet nebula shaped like a slipper orchid. The nebula was eleven light-years distant, and wherever they were heading for beyond that was invisible, blocked by nebula light and pyres of black interstellar dust.

After breakfast and a bout of exercise in the ship’s gym, Justine sat back on the couch and longtalked the Skylord.

“How long will it take for us to reach the solid world we’re traveling to?”

“Until we reach it.”

She almost smiled; it really was like talking to a five-year-old savant. “The world orbits its star at a constant rate. How many times will it have gone around by the time we arrive?” Then all she had to worry about was if the Skylord even had a concept of numbers; after all, why would a spaceborne creature need to develop math?

“The world you seek will have gone around its star thirty-seven times by the time we arrive there.”

Crap! And a Querencia year is a lot longer than an Earth year. Don’t their months last for something like forty days? “I understand. Thank you.”

“Will others of your kind come into the universe soon?”

“The one your kindred spoke to, the one who asked you to let me in; she will lead them here. Listen for her.”

“All of my kindred do.”

That sent a slight chill down Justine’s spine. “I would like to sleep for the rest of the flight.”

“As you wish.”

“If anything happens, I will waken.”

“What will happen?”

“I don’t know. But if anything changes, I will be awake to talk to you about it.”

“Change in this universe is finding fulfillment. If you are asleep, you will not reach fulfillment.”

“I see. Thank you.”

She spent a further half day getting ready, checking various systems, loading in a whole series of instructions about what constituted a reason for the smartcore to bring her back out of suspension. In the end she acknowledged she was just killing time. The last thing she did as she got undressed was shut down the confluence nest, ensuring that there would be no more of her amplified dreams leaking out to warp reality with such unexpected consequences. That brought back the one thought she’d been trying to avoid. Her mind lingered on the Kazimir she’d abandoned on the slopes of the ersatz Mount Herculaneum. All that was left of him now was a pattern in the Void’s memory layer. It wasn’t fair to have lived for such a short time only to be unmade.

I will make you real again, Justine promised her poignant recollection of him. She lay down in the medical cabinet and activated the suspension function.

Hunger and a nagging pain woke Araminta. At first she was woefully drowsy as she lay on the motel bed. Bright daylight was shining around the window blinds, warming the still air. Her stiff muscles protested as she tried to shuffle herself to a sitting position. Every part of her ached. Her feet throbbed. When she pulled the duvet aside to look at them, she actually winced at the sight.

“Oh, Ozzie.”

Well! It was no good just lying about feeling sorry for herself; the first thing was to get her feet cleaned up a bit. She eased her legs over the side of the bed and slowly stripped off her filthy clothes. Without doubt, they were ruined; she’d have to get rid of them.

The room had a cybersphere node beside the bed so old that it was probably the one installed as soon as the drycoral had finished growing into shape. Araminta started tapping away on its small keyboard, using the new account she’d opened at the Spanish Crepes office. Miledeep Water didn’t have a touchdown mall, but Stoneline Street at its center had a plethora of small stores that sold everything she needed. One by one she accessed their semisentient management programs and placed her orders, adding the items to the delivery service she’d hired.

She ran the bathwater at just below body temperature, then sat on the side and gingerly eased her feet in. The water soaked away the worst of the dirt and dried blood, leaving them looking slightly improved. She was letting them dry when there was a knock on the door. Thankfully, the motel supplied toweling robes. She’d assumed the delivery service would be a courier case floating along on regrav, all nice and impersonal. Instead, once she’d hobbled over to the door, a young teenage girl called Janice was waiting outside, wearing a cap with the delivery company’s logo and carrying a couple of large shoulder bags.

Araminta was thankful her hair was still all messed up and the threadbare robe was a ridiculous white and red stripe. Even if the girl knew all about the Second Dreamer, she’d never recognize her in this state.

“I think Ranto was pulling into the park out front,” Janice said as she handed the bags over to Araminta.

“Ranto?”

“You ordered takeaway from Smoky James? He runs delivery for them.”

“Ah. Yes. Right.” Araminta couldn’t work out if Janice was angling for a tip. It said a lot about Miledeep Water’s economy that they used people instead of bots for a service like this. In any case, Araminta could remember how only half a year ago she depended on the tips at Nik’s, so she produced the cash coin, which was obviously the right thing to do as Janice smiled in gratitude.

Ranto appeared before the door was even shut, handing over the five thermplastic boxes of food from Smoky James. That immediately kicked up a dilemma. Araminta was desperate to use some of the medical kit she’d bought, but the smell wafting out of the food boxes was too much for her stomach; she could actually hear it churning. She sat back on the bed and kept her feet off the floor as she started to open the boxes. There were pancakes in berry syrup and cream, followed by an all-day breakfast of smoked bacon, local chulfy eggs scrambled, hash browns, baked galow, and fried mushrooms; the drinks box had iced orange juice and a liter flask of English breakfast tea, and she finished with toasted muffins. By the time she’d finished eating, her feet didn’t seem to be aching quite so badly as before. Nonetheless, she applied the antiseptic cleaner, wincing at how much it stung, then sprayed both feet with artificial skin, sealing in the abused flesh. When she finished, she just curled up on the mattress where she was and went straight back to sleep.

It was dark when she woke, leaving her slightly disoriented. Something somewhere wasn’t quite right, and her subconscious was worrying away at it. She didn’t think it was another dream connection to the Skylord; at least she couldn’t remember having one during the last sleep. But on the plus side, she didn’t feel remotely hungry anymore. Time to think about me.

The bath had spar nozzles that didn’t work. Even so, she let it fill to the brim and poured in the scented soaps she’d bought. While it was running, she went back to the cybersphere node and laboriously typed in a request for information on Oscar Monroe. The antiquated search software pulled a list of references out of the unisphere; there were eight and a half million of them. The search hadn’t gone into deep cache databases.

“Great Ozzie,” she muttered, acknowledging just how much she missed her u-shadow, which would have sorted the information down to something useful in half a second. Another minute typing in new parameters and she’d filtered the list down to biographical details verified to the Commonwealth general academic standard—always a good starting point. That took it down to one point two million.

By then the bath was full. She got in and wallowed in the bubbles as the dirt slowly soaked off. Reading up on Oscar would have to wait a while, but at least she knew he had to be important. He hadn’t been lying about that. When she got out, she felt a whole lot better.

Araminta tipped the remaining contents of the bags onto the bed and started examining the clothes. Most of them had come from a camping store, which had provided her with practical hiking boots that came halfway up her shins. When she tried them on, they were impressively comfortable. The dark brown jeans were tough and waterproof, which raised some interesting questions given that she was on a desert continent. She shrugged into a simple black singlet, then put a loose burgundy T-shirt on top of that. A navy-blue fleece was similar to the one she’d brought with her, except this one was waterproof and the semiorganic fibers were temperature-regulated. She needed that function; even after sunset Miledeep Water’s climate was still baking from the desert air gusting over the ridge. All the other accessories—the knapsack, the water bottle (complete with manual filter pump), solar-store cooker, multipurpose blade, micro tent, gloves, thermal-regulated body stocking, hygiene pack, first-aid kit—meant she could now walk wherever and whenever she wanted. The notion made her smile grimly at the collection. Buying the gear had been instinctive. She knew Miledeep Water was only ever going to be a way station, though Chobamba itself might turn out to be a possibility.

She ran a hand back through her still-drying hair, suddenly unsure once more. Sitting worrying in a motel room wasn’t exactly choosing her own destiny. She sealed the fleece and went out to see what Miledeep Water had to offer by way of nightlife.

After half an hour walking along the nearly deserted streets she had her answer: not much. A few bars were open, along with some restaurants as well as several all-day autostores that were handy for people on a strict budget. Despite its location and the charming buildings, Miledeep Water was too much like Langham for her to be at ease. Small town with a matching attitude.

The emotions emerging from the gaiafield of a bar down by the waterfront attracted her. The people in there were rejoicing over something. As she drew close, she could hear some bad singing coming from the open door. The gaiafield emissions were stronger and more defined as she walked up to sparkly holographic light shining through the windows. Araminta allowed the images and sensations to wash through her mind, experiencing Justine waking up back in the Silverbird. The essence of her conversation with the Skylord reverberated through Araminta’s skull, enhanced by the rapture of those in the bar.

Justine is on her way to Makkathran.

Realization of exactly who was in the bar made the tentative smile fade from Araminta’s face: Living Dream followers, celebrating the latest development in their favor. Making very sure none of her bitter disappointment leaked out into the gaiafield to alert them, Araminta turned around and slunk away. That there were followers in Miledeep Water didn’t surprise her; they were on every External world in the Greater Commonwealth, and even the Central worlds weren’t immune. She wondered briefly what those in the bar would have done if she’d walked in, held her prisoner or fallen at her feet?

Maybe Justine will manage to do something. Araminta couldn’t quite recall the last dream she’d had, the one with Gore and Justine in some room. I must see the rest of Inigo’s dreams, find out what happened to Edeard, why he inspires everyone so. I have to understand exactly what I’m up against. Then she stopped dead in the middle of the street as her subconscious finally triggered the memory that had been bugging her: the time display on the unisphere node. Araminta hurried back to the SideStar Motel, not caring if anyone noticed her half jogging along the deserted pavements and ignoring the traffic solidos to race across intersections.

As soon as she was in the room, she locked the door and switched the unisphere node on. The central time display winking in the top corner of the screen always ran on Earth’s GMT, with a secondary display showing local time. Araminta immediately switched it to Viotia time and then Colwyn City. It took a moment while she did the mental arithmetic, aided by her macrocellular clusters, and then she ran the figures again. If she’d done it right, and the secondary routines in the macrocellular clusters were practically infallible, it was barely fifteen hours since she’d walked into Francola Wood. But that was impossible. She’d spent a whole day and night just trudging over that first wet, cold, miserable valley, then there had been the day by the oasis. The walk across the desert outside Miledeep Water, followed by sleeping the rest of the day away. That was when she worked it out—walking across the desert outside Miledeep Water and sleeping in the hotel accounted for a good twelve of those fifteen hours.

The Silfen paths took practically no time at all. How could that be? I wasn’t even on the paths the whole time. Sweet Ozzie, do they manipulate time on the planets as well? But then, who knows exactly where the planets are, what universe or dimension? Come to that, were they even real?

When she looked down at her feet encased in the cushioning artificial skin, she knew she’d walked somewhere and spent hours doing it. What had happened, or rather where and when she’d been along the Silfen paths, was of no consequence. She knew then that the Silfen wouldn’t let her use their paths and worlds as a refuge. It was instinctive knowledge, coming right from the heart of the Silfen Motherholme.

I really do have to face this myself.

“Oh, crap!” She picked up the bar of orange chocolate that had been part of the delivery and took a big bite before flopping back on the bed. There actually was no escape. So where do I start? Learning about Edeard was the obvious beginning, and to be honest, she was rather looking forward to immersing herself in his life again. But she felt it was more important to find out about Justine. She let her thoughts slow, mildly satisfied that she no longer needed Likan’s mélange program to achieve the calm alert state required for any serious interaction with the gaiafield—not that the Skylord’s thoughts occupied that particular realm. It was to be found in some parallel domain, its thoughts serene and content.

“Hello,” she said.

“You are always welcome.”

“Thank you. And thank you for receiving our emissary. Are you the one accompanying her to Makkathran?”

“I am with my kindred.” The Skylord’s incredible senses revealed a vast swath of space between nebulae, devoid of stars. It flew on and on through the emptiness, followed by a flock of its own kind who called to one another across the Gulf. They were all gladdened that minds were once again emerging into the Void, giant somber thoughts enlivened by anticipation.

“Oh. Do you know where she is?”

“The one you seek is within our universe. This is known to us all. For that we all give thanks. Soon there will be more. Soon we will guide your kind to the Heart again.”

“Can you call to the one who is with her?”

“My kindred are departed across the universe. Most lie beyond my reach. I will encounter them again in time, within the Heart.”

“So how do you know one of us has arrived?”

“The Heart feels it. We all know the Heart.”

“Damn. Okay, thank you.”

“When will you come? When will you be here with your kind?”

“I don’t know.”

Araminta withdrew her mind from the connection and permitted herself a brief feeling of disappointment. It would have been nice to talk to Justine. Instead, she had only herself to rely on, a state she was growing accustomed to. Her mind reached out into the human gaiafield again, stealthily, slipping into the local confluence nests like a silent thief. Her thoughts fluttered around the sight, taste, and smell of Edeard, and up into her brain sprang the wonderful lazy awakening on a soft mattress as dawn stoked the sky over Makkathran. A kiss touched Edeard’s cheek, the phantom touch sending a delightful tingle along Araminta’s spine. A nose nuzzled her ear. Then a hand could be felt sliding down her/his stomach, and her smile widened at the naughty sensation. Jessile giggled close by and thousands of years ago. “Now, that’s what I call rising to greet the dawn,” she said.

The other girl giggled as well. Edeard’s eyes snapped open, and Araminta looked out through them into his maisonette.

The Ellezelin forces capsule slid over the smooth fast-moving surface of the Cairns. Directly ahead was a big old house with walls of white arches filled with purple and silver glass, surrounded by balconies that overhung a pool whose water glimmered an inviting turquoise. Well-maintained formal gardens flowed down the slope to the southern bank of the broad river. Even under the wan light that filtered through the gray clouds scudding against Colwyn City’s weather dome force field, the place looked inviting, a real home.

“Very fancy,” Beckia muttered as the capsule floated down onto the broad lawns. “The building supplies game must pay more than I realized.”

“In an External planet economy, going multiple is just a smart way of avoiding taxes,” Tomansio said dismissively. “Bovey wouldn’t be able to afford this if every one of hims paid income tax.”

The capsule door expanded.

“Can I trust you?” Oscar asked quietly. The other two froze, then looked at him. Beckia’s gaiafield emissions were spitting out resentment. Tomansio was amused more than anything.

“You can trust us,” Tomansio said, pushing a warm sensation of confidence into the gaiafield.

“She founded you. You wouldn’t even exist without her. And you’re all waiting for her return.”

“Common mistake,” Tomansio said. “We all understand her flaws, but we don’t forgive her. We were born out of her determination, but now we have grown far beyond her.”

“Pupil and master relationship, huh?” Oscar queried.

“Exactly. She accomplished a lot in her time, most of which was disastrous. We are about the only good thing that ever emerged from the Cat’s life.” He raised an eyebrow. “Unless she did have children …”

Oscar simply responded with a wry smile.

“Quite,” Tomansio continued. “So her continuing existence, albeit in suspension, is something of an embarrassment to us. It leads to misunderstandings like this one.”

“Far Away rioted when Investigator Myo arrested her,” Oscar countered.

“Far Away did,” Beckia said. “We didn’t. By that time she’d grown to a symbol of Far Away’s independence. Arresting her was seen as a political act of repression against the planetary government by an authoritarian Commonwealth. I’d point out the riots didn’t last long once the details of the Pantar Cathedral atrocity became known.”

“But her principles remain with us,” Tomansio said. “The dedication to strength. Ever since our founding we have never broken our code. We stay loyal to our client, no matter what. Not even the Cat broke that. And we certainly wouldn’t double-cross you. Oscar, you demonstrated the ultimate human strength when you martyred yourself so our species could survive. I told you before, we respect you almost as much as the Cat.”

Oscar looked into Tomansio’s handsome face, so redolent with sincerity, a note backed up by his gaiafield emission. He fervently hoped his own embarrassment at such a proclamation wasn’t evident. “Okay, then.”

“Besides, that wasn’t our Cat, not the founder of the Knights Guardian. If we weren’t committed to you, I would take a great deal of satisfaction in tracking her down and finding out exactly which faction has violated our Cat for its own ends. Didn’t you say they’d cloned more of her?”

“Not anymore,” Oscar said flatly, and walked out of the capsule. Beckia and Tomansio shared a quiet smile and followed him out onto the trim lawn.

Mr. Bovey had come out of the house to meet the capsule, three of hims. Oscar hadn’t met a multiple before, at least not knowingly. He couldn’t ever recall hearing about any on Orakum. The leader of the trio, the one standing in front, had black skin and a face that had even more wrinkles than Oscar’s; several gray strands were frosting his temples. To his left was a tall Oriental male, and the third was a young teenager with a thick mop of blond hair. None of them was releasing anything into the gaiafield. However, their posture alone told Oscar they were going to be extremely stubborn.

Oscar’s immediate response was to regret wearing the Ellezelin forces uniform, which was a huge visual trigger for any Viotia citizen right now. Then a deeper guilt began to manifest. He wasn’t here backed by Ellezelin authority; his sponsor was a whole lot more powerful than that. That was the problem. Marching into someone’s home with the authority and force to demand his cooperation was exactly the kind of fascistic repression that had so animated the young Oscar Monroe’s political instincts, which in turn led to him joining the Socialist Party at college and ultimately being seduced by radical elements. A journey that ended in the tragedy of Aberdan station.

Talk about going full circle. But we have to find her. Overriding necessity, the siren call of tyrants everywhere. Yet I know she cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of the factions. Damn, how does Paula live like this?

“What do you want?” the first Mr. Bovey asked sourly.

Oscar grinned, letting his amusement free in the gaiafield. “Oh, come on. We know you and her had a thing.”

The three Mr. Boveys stared defiantly ahead.

“Look,” Oscar said reasonably, and plucked at his tunic. “This uniform, it’s a load of bollocks. We’re not Living Dream. I’ve never even been to Ellezelin. I work for ANA.”

“Yeah? And I work for the Raiel,” Mr. Bovey replied, all three of hims speaking in concert. “So that makes us both supersecret agents.”

“I saw her at Bodant Park. Me and my team here, we covered for her so she could get free. Ask her. We’re the reason she’s still out there. If she still is.”

There was a flicker of uncertainty in the black Mr. Bovey’s eyes. “I met Araminta a few times, that’s all.”

“It was more than that. Come on, man, she’s in shit so deep, she’ll drown if she doesn’t get some serious outside help. So please, if you know where she is, tell me.”

“I haven’t seen her for days.”

Tomansio grunted in understanding. “She didn’t tell you, did she? You didn’t know she was the Second Dreamer?”

Mr. Bovey’s scowl deepened; none of hims would look at Tomansio.

“Hell, that’s got to suck,” Oscar said. “She was probably trying to protect you.”

“Right,” Mr. Bovey said.

“She was frightened, you know that. This planet was invaded just because she lives here. And she’s all alone. She doesn’t know what she’s doing; really, she hasn’t got a clue. If you know where we can find her, if you have any notion where she might be, then we’re the ones you need to tell. Call ANA if you need my status confirmed. There are others out there who are looking equally hard, and I don’t mean Living Dream. The Second Dreamer is an important political tool right now. Who do you think caused the Bodant Park fight?”

“Bodant Park massacre,” Mr. Bovey said. “You unleashed a massacre on our planet. There were hundreds killed.”

“That was just the warm-up,” Tomansio said. “The agents involved in hunting her down will not give a crap about civilians who get in the way. Memory read will be the least of your worries when the others come here. And they will. Soon.”

“We found you,” Beckia said. “The rest won’t be far behind. Think. Be real. The most powerful organizations in the Greater Commonwealth are looking for her. Your entire planet has been invaded because Living Dream is so utterly desperate. Do you really, really think she can elude all of us?”

“I didn’t know,” the young blond one said through teeth he’d clamped together. “She didn’t tell me. How could she not tell me what she’d become?”

“If she loved you, she would be trying to keep you out of all this,” Oscar said. “It was sweetly naive, and that time is now over. You have to make a choice. Do you want to actively help her? If so, talk to us. If not, run. Each of yous will have to try and make a break for it and pray that you don’t all get caught.”

The three of hims turned to look at one another. Oscar was aware of the figures he could just see in the house standing still. “Give me a moment,” Mr. Bovey said.

Oscar nodded sympathetically. “Sure.” He moved away, talking to his team in a low voice. “What do you think?”

“He doesn’t know anything,” Beckia said. “If he did, he’d be out there helping her. He’s broken up by her cutting loose; he loves her, or thought he did.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Tomansio said.

“There could be a dozen of hims out there right now helping to shelter her,” Oscar pointed out.

Tomansio pushed out a reluctant sigh. “I find that hard to credit.”

“Can you actually do a memory read on a multiple?” Beckia asked.

“You’d probably have to gather all of them up,” Tomansio said. “And you wouldn’t know if you’d got them all until it was too late. Multiples are always cagey about their exact number of bodies; it’s an instinctive safety redundancy thing. Interesting psychological evolution. In any case, our time scale doesn’t allow us that level of luxury. If he’s going to be useful, it’ll have to be voluntary, and right now.”

Oscar’s u-shadow told him Cheriton was calling on an ultrasecure channel. Liatris joined the call.

“Brace yourself for the bad news,” the gaiafield expert said. “Living Dream has found her.”

“Shit,” Tomansio grunted, throwing Mr. Bovey a guilty glance. “Where?”

“Now, this is where it gets real interesting. After the confluence nests caught her at Bodant, Living Dream has been refining the emotional resonance routines based on her exact thought patterns. The upgrade has given them the kind of sensitivity which can detect the slightest emission from her mind. And a quarter of an hour ago she went and shared Inigo’s Eighth Dream.”

“What’s she doing delving into the Waterwalker’s life now?” an irritated Beckia asked. “For Ozzie’s sake, didn’t Bodant teach her anything?”

“Wrong question,” Cheriton said.

“Where is she?” Tomansio asked.

“Chobamba.”

A puzzled Oscar had to call up the Commonwealth planetary list from a storage lacuna. “That’s over six hundred light-years away,” he protested. “That can’t be right. She was here sixteen hours ago.”

“Your ultradrive could make that,” Tomansio said doubtfully. “Just.”

“She’s found a way to screw the gaiafield,” Beckia said. “She must have. She is the Second Dreamer, after all. That has to give her some kind of ability the rest of us don’t have.”

“Cheriton, are you sure?” Tomansio asked.

“We’re confined to the building,” Cheriton said. “And I’m using a dead-drop relay to access the unisphere. Dream Master Yenrol’s been going apeshit since the nests found her. All the Dream Masters know about it; they’re working hard to keep it secret. I don’t think this is a scam.”

“How the hell did she get to Chobamba?” Oscar wanted to know.

“Do they know where on Chobamba?” Tomansio asked.

“Not yet,” Cheriton said. “But it’s only going to be a matter of time. It’s an External world, and Living Dream has several Dream Masters there.”

“Can you warn her again?” Oscar said.

“I’m not sure. There’s talk about shutting down Chobamba’s confluence nests, isolating her from the gaiafield.”

“Stupid,” Tomansio said. “That’ll alert her to what’s going on.”

“Liatris, can you shotgun Chobamba and warn her?” Oscar asked.

“She hasn’t accessed the unisphere for days,” Liatris said. “There’s no guarantee she’ll get the message.”

“If people know, it’ll be the talk of the planet,” Beckia said. “She’s bound to find out. We just have to make it public knowledge.”

Tomansio gave Oscar a little nudge. Mr. Bovey had obviously come to his decision. The dark-skinned body was walking over to them, leaving the other two hims to stare pensively.

“Yes?” Oscar said.

“I checked with ANA,” Mr. Bovey said. He sounded faintly surprised. “You are who you say.”

“And?”

His face expressed a great deal of apprehension, mirrored by all of hims. “She doesn’t know … she can’t know how to cope with this. Nobody can. I have to place my trust in ANA. How ironic is that? Being multiple is supposed to alleviate the requirement of a technological solution to immortality.”

“Can you contact her?”

“No.” Mr. Bovey shook his head as if hes were mourning. “I’ve tried every minute since I found out. Her u-shadow is offline. She won’t answer my calls.”

“I know this is painful, but is there someone else she’s likely to turn to?”

“Her cousin Cressida; they were close. In fact, she was about Araminta’s only true friend in Colwyn City before we met.”

“We know. She’s dropped out of sight as well, but thank you. If Araminta does get into contact, please let me know.” Oscar’s u-shadow sent Mr. Bovey a unisphere access code. “Immediately, please. Time is critical now.”

“That’s it?” a bewildered Mr. Bovey asked as Oscar turned back to the capsule.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep looking. And you might want to consider my friend’s advice about dispersing yourselves about town. I’m being completely honest with you; we’re just the first to come visiting you, and we really are the good guys.”

The capsule’s door closed on Mr. Bovey’s frown. They lifted cleanly and turned to fly above the thick river, heading back to the docks.

“So now what?” Tomansio asked.

It sounded rhetorical to Oscar. “I’m going to check in,” he told the Knights Guardian.

“Yes?” Paula asked as soon as the secure link was opened.

“We’ve found her,” Oscar said.

“Excellent.”

“Not really. She’s on Chobamba.”

There was only a small hesitation. “Are you sure?”

“Living Dream has cranked up their confluence nests, something to do with getting a decent emotional pattern to recognize. According to them, she’s on Chobamba and having a good time sharing Inigo’s dreams.”

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“How quickly can you get there?”

“Not much faster than you.”

“I hope you’ve got sources in Living Dream. If they are going to try and snatch her, she’ll need to be warned.”

“I’d have to find her first.”

“Surely ANA can track her down. Somebody must have noticed her starship arriving.”

“It would have to be an ultradrive; that means a faction helped her. But which one?”

“I was thinking of a shotgun warning.”

“Yes. That might work. I’ll confer.”

“If we know, then it’s only a matter of time before the Cat knows.”

“Yes. If she leaves for Chobamba, you’ll have to follow her.”

“Oh, crap; this isn’t what I signed up for.”

“Can you trust your team?”

“I think they’ll stick with me, yes.”

“Excellent. I’ll call after I’ve spoken with ANA. Incidentally, the Accelerators are going to be put on what amounts to a trial within an hour. They were behind the Oscean Empire invasion.”

“Shit. Really?”

“Yes. If they’re found guilty, we should see the pressure easing off considerably,” Paula said, ending the call.

Tomansio and Beckia were looking at Oscar expectantly.

“So what does your boss think?” Tomansio asked.

“Same as us: It’s all very odd. Let’s get back to the ship in case we need to get to Chobamba in a hurry.”

The slim ultradrive ship dropped out of hyperspace half a light-year out from Ellezelin. In its cabin, Valean reviewed the data provided by the starship’s sensors. She was shown the exotic matter intrusions representing the huge wormholes that linked Ellezelin to the economically subjugated planets that made up the Free Trade Zone. The scale of the wormholes was impressive, harking back to the first-era Commonwealth when the Big15 planets were the center of an economic web binding together hundreds of worlds. Reviewing the size and power rating, she was satisfied that any of them could be used for the task Atha had assigned her. The one connecting to Agra would be preferable; it was the most modern and reached the farthest.

Like most long-term Highers, Valean had used biononics to remold her body to a state she considered more functional and useful. Currently devoid of hair, she appeared skeletal, with skin that had a strange gray iridescence, drawn so tight over her bones that each rib protruded. Muscles were hard lines, also standing proud and moving like malmetal. Her face continued the emaciated theme with deep sunken cheeks and a slim nose that had nostrils resembling gills. Wide-set eyes had orbs that glowed a faint uniform pink. Her only cosmetic adornment was a circle of gold above her thorax, composed of a tightly packed cluster of threads that seemed to be moving slowly.

After ten minutes standing in her featureless cabin, the starship detected a minute distortion within the quantum fields. Another ultradrive ship dropped out of hyperspace next to hers. The newcomer was slightly larger, with streamlined bulges in its ovoid fuselage. They maneuvered together and linked airlocks.

Marius glided into Valean’s cabin, his toga suit emitting wisps of darkness that trailed along in his wake.

“A physical meeting is somewhat theatrical, isn’t it?” he inquired. “Our TD (transdimensional) linkages remain secure.”

“They do,” Valean assured him, and smiled, revealing rows of tiny burnished brass teeth. “However, it was felt that this would add more emphasis to the message.”

“Which is?”

“Your Chatfield fuck-up has produced an unwelcome fallout, the largest part of which I’m on my way to solve.”

“Paula Myo was on to him. Deploying him to Ellezelin was a simple precaution.”

“And do you have an excuse for the Cat?”

Marius remained impassive. “Her behavior can be unpredictable. That is her nature. As I recall, it was not my decision alone to salvage her from Kingsville.”

“Irrelevant. Your actions have produced unwelcome consequences at this critical time. As of now you are downgraded.”

“I object.” Even as he said it, he tried to call Ilanthe, only to find the call rejected. Still, his cool disposition remained unbroken.

The brass teeth appeared again, their sharp tips perfectly aligned. “Irrelevant. Your new assignment is the Delivery Man.”

“That joke!” Marius exclaimed.

“We approach deployment, the culmination of everything we are. Nothing can be allowed to interfere with that. He was seen on Fanallisto; find out why. What is he doing there, what are the Conservatives up to? We also need to know how the remaining faction agents will react afterward.”

“Victory is only hours away and you send me to some shitball outside civilization to track down an incompetent part-time animal. I do not deserve this.”

“Failure to comply will result in bodyloss. After the Swarm goes active, there will be no re-life available. I suggest you make your selection.”

The dark hazy tendrils exuded by Marius’s toga suit swirled in agitation. He glared at Valean, sending Olympian contempt flooding out through his gaiamotes. “The true reason for physical contact, I see. Very well. I will comply. I am nothing if not devoted to our success.”

“Of course you are.”

Marius rotated a hundred eighty degrees and slipped out back to his own ship.

“Thank you,” Valean mouthed at the airlock door after it closed. She ordered the smartcore to take her to Ellezelin.

Cleric Conservator Ethan had returned to the Mayor’s oval sanctum in the Orchard Palace. The Cabinet Security Service had downgraded the threat level, partially based on Ethan’s own conversation with ANA:Governance. The surviving ship was simply maintaining a stable orbit around Ellezelin and gathering up fragments of its vanquished foe.

His staff had served him a late supper of grilled gurelol fillets with minted potatoes and baby carrots, washed down with a sparkling white similar in taste to the one from Love’s Haven that Edeard had come to enjoy during his first life with Kristabel. It was dark outside, with few stars showing through the oval sanctum’s windows. Ethan ate by himself at a small table away from the big muroak desk, overhead a series of petal-like lines glowing a pale orange in the high ceiling. Shadows washed out from the walls, making the room seem even larger.

He was just pouring himself a second glass of wine when his u-shadow reported that Phelim was making a priority call.

Please, Lady, no more bad news tonight, Ethan thought wearily as he accepted the secure link. He was still awaiting the call from Marius’s “friend.”

“We’ve found her,” Phelim declared.

Ethan paused, the wine not quite out of the bottle’s neck. “Who?”

“The Second Dreamer. The advanced pattern recognition routines located her for us. She’s sharing Inigo’s Eleventh Dream, would you believe.”

“Great Lady! Do you have her safe?”

“No, that’s where the problem begins. She’s not on Viotia anymore.”

“Damn. Where is she, then?”

“Chobamba.”

“Where?” Even as he asked, Ethan’s u-shadow was pulling data out of the central registry. “That can’t be right,” he said, putting the bottle down.

“My response exactly. But the routines are good. The Dream Masters running them swear that’s an accurate reading. She started sharing the Eighth Dream twenty minutes ago.”

“The Eighth?”

“Yes.”

Ethan knew it couldn’t be particularly relevant, but his curiosity about the enigmatic Araminta was overwhelming. “So why did she skip over to the Eleventh?”

“She didn’t,” Phelim said. “She’s on a linear run-through.”

“Four dreams in twenty minutes?” Ethan said it out loud, his surprise echoing around the empty sanctum. At best, he would take a couple of hours to dwell in one of Inigo’s dreams, and that was because he was so familiar with them. Some of the more devout Living Dream followers had been known to spend days in a dream, supporting themselves with intravenous feeds.

“Absolutely. That’s what convinced me this isn’t a false reading. Her mind is … different.”

“How in the Lady’s name did she get to Chobamba? It was definitely her at Bodant Park; you confirmed that.”

“Someone must have flown her there. And it must have been an ultradrive starship; there’s nothing else fast enough.”

“So one of the factions got her and lifted her offplanet. Lady damn them.”

“That’s the obvious conclusion. But it’s a strange way to hide. If she wanted to be completely secure, she should have gone to a Central world where we have no control over the confluence nests. The faction must know that. Perhaps this is a message. Though its nature eludes me.”

Ethan sat back in the chair, staring at the slim curving bands of light in the ceiling. The flowers they sketched had never been seen on Querencia or anywhere in the Greater Commonwealth. That is if they even were flowers. Edeard had always hoped to find them, but not even the grand voyages of his twenty-eighth and forty-second dreams had taken him to a land where they grew. And now Araminta was providing an even greater mystery.

“We have to have her,” Ethan declared. “It’s that simple. Whatever the cost. Without her, the only contact humanity has to the Void is”—he shuddered—“Gore Burnelli. And I think we know where he stands.”

“Justine can do nothing,” Phelim countered smoothly.

“Don’t be too sure. They are a remarkable family. I’ve been accessing what I can of their history. And I suspect there’s a great deal that was never put into any records. Gore was one of ANA’s founders, you know. There are rumors of a special dispensation.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“How long before you have her exact location?”

“She’s in a town called Miledeep Water, which presents us with a slight problem. It is somewhat isolated, and we don’t actually have anyone reliable there. The Dream Masters are going to have to visit its confluence nest to get an exact coordinate for her. It’ll be an hour before we know exactly where she is, probably longer. I’m just hoping she shares Inigo’s dreams for long enough.”

“Do we also have the kind of people on Chobamba who are capable of bringing her to us?”

“There are some very loyal followers in the movement there, people I can trust. I’d like to suggest we hire some weapons-enriched troops to back them up. It’s pretty clear she’s got faction representatives guarding her.”

“As you wish. And Phelim, I don’t want another Bodant Park.”

“Nobody does. But that is probably out of our hands.”

“Yes. I expect you’re right. Please keep me informed of progress.”

The link to Phelim closed, and Ethan looked at the rapidly cooling food on his plate. He pushed it away.

“You seem troubled, Conservator.”

Ethan started, twisting around in his chair to see where the voice had come from. His u-shadow was already calling for help from Cabinet Security.

The woman-thing walking calmly out of the shadows on the other side of the desk disturbed his sensibilities. “I believe you’re expecting me,” she said. She was naked, which only intensified Ethan’s censure; her body possessed no sexual characteristics. Her skin was some kind of artificial covering that produced a gray layer whose exact boundary was indeterminable. Far worse than that was her figure. It was as though her internal organs were too small for her frame, leaving the skin to curve in between the ribs. And her eyes didn’t help, little patches of pink moonlight that never revealed exactly what she was looking at. There was a gold circle just below her neck from which sprouted two long streamers of dark scarlet cloth. The fabric was draped across her shoulders to float horizontally through the air for several meters behind her. It rippled with the sluggish fluidity of an embryo sac.

Five armored guards burst in through the main doors, their fat weapons raised. The Higher woman cocked her head to one side while the gaiafield revealed a steely politeness in her mind.

Ethan held up a finger. “Hold,” he instructed the guards. “Did Marius send you?”

A narrow mouth opened to reveal shiny metal teeth. “Marius has been moved to other duties. I am Valean, his replacement. I am here to help sort out our mutual problem with the ANA starship orbiting above you.”

Ethan waved the guards out, suspecting they wouldn’t have lasted long against her. “What do you want?”

She walked toward him, the scarlet streamers wavering sinuously behind her. Ethan saw that her heels ended in long tapering cones, as if her feet had grown their own stilettos. “I require access to the Agra wormhole generator. Please inform the operations staff I am to be given full cooperation.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Prevent the ANA agent from retrieving any more fragments.”

“I can’t afford any kind of conflict with ANA. Some in the Senate are eager for the flimsiest legal grounds to authorize navy intervention.”

“We are expecting that any such concerns will soon be irrelevant. Rest assured, Cleric Conservator, there will be no physical clash here.”

“Very well. I will see that you have full clearance.”

“Thank you.” She inclined her head and turned for the main doors.

“Please tell your faction leaders I would prefer to deal with Marius,” he said.

Valean didn’t even turn around. “I will certainly tell them.” There was no trace of irony in her thoughts; the facade of politeness remained intact.

The doors shut behind her. Ethan let out a long breath of apprehension; he felt as if he’d finally been shown what awaited the lost souls who fell to Honious.

Preliminary sensor analysis of the debris cloud indicated there were one thousand three hundred twelve critical fragments, defined as anything over five centimeters across. When Chatfield’s starship exploded, over a third of them had been thrown down toward Ellezelin on trajectories that would see them burning up in the atmosphere within half an hour. The rest were whirling rapidly along wildly different orbital tracks. Recovery would be a bitch.

Digby was quietly pleased at the way the Columbia505’s smartcore was handling the collection operation. Modified ingrav drive emissions were pulling fragments out of their terminal trajectories; sensors had identified several particles that had exotic matter constituents and were tracking them constantly. The sleek ultradrive ship was darting about, drawing the first chunks into the midhold, where they were embedded in a stabilizer field. ANA:Governance had assured him a forensic team would be arriving within ten hours. Digby hoped so. Stabilizer fields weren’t designed to preserve exotic matter; a lot of it was decaying right in front of him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

His exovision suddenly threw up warnings he never expected to see. A very large wormhole was intruding into space not three kilometers from the Columbia505.

“What the hell?”

The smartcore tracked several chunks of wreckage tumbling down the wormhole’s throat. Then the wormhole shifted exit coordinates, reappearing five kilometers away. More junk was sucked down. Exoimage displays showed him it was the wormhole that normally linked Ellezelin to Agra. Somebody was redirecting it with unnerving skill, scooping up precious evidence. His u-shadow connected him directly into the planetary cybersphere and tried to access the generator net. “It’s been isolated,” the u-shadow reported. “I can’t even gain access to the building net. Whoever’s in there, they’ve sealed themselves in tight.”

Columbia505’s sensors swept across the generator complex on the outskirts of Riasi, seven thousand kilometers away around the curvature of the planet. A force field was protecting the whole area. “Crap.” Digby ordered the smartcore to distort the wormhole’s pseudo structure. Negative energy fluxes reached out from the starship’s drive, attempting to destabilize the wormhole’s integrity. But the planetary generators had too much power available compared with the starship. It was a struggle Digby was doomed to lose.

“Take us down,” he ordered the smartcore. “Fast.” As the starship dived down into the atmosphere, he called ANA:Governance and explained what was happening.

“I will call the Cleric Conservator,” ANA:Governance said. “He must be made to understand that he cannot act against us with impunity.”

Digby was pretty sure the Cleric Conservator knew that but held his counsel. It was long gone midnight in Makkathran2, which meant that Riasi was just slipping across the terminator line into daylight. Columbia505 was decelerating at fifteen gees when it hit the stratosphere above the Sinkang continent, upon whose northern coast the ex-capital city was sited. The ship scorched its way down through the lower atmosphere like a splinter carved from a star’s corona. It braked to a halt five hundred meters directly above the Agra wormhole generator’s force field. The hypersonic shock wave of its passage slammed past it, shattering all unprotected panes of glass within a three-kilometer radius. Nearby regrav capsules tumbled through the air like leaves in a blizzard as their smartnets used emergency power to try to right them. Local traffic control was screaming warnings at Digby on every frequency. Metropolitan police cruisers curved around to intercept. He sent out a blanket broadcast to be picked up by every cybersphere node and macrocellular cluster surrounding the force field.

“Everyone in the generator complex, switch off the force field and deactivate the wormhole. You are violating an ANA-sanctioned operation. I am authorized to use extreme force to end your transgression.”

As he suspected, there was no reply. There never would be, he knew. Every moment he waited, playing the good guy, was another moment spent eradicating the precious evidence in orbit. All that left him with was the problem of knocking out the force field without flattening half the city.

Eight slender atomic distortion beams stabbed out from the starship to the top of the force field dome, ripping the air molecules apart in a blaze of incandescence. Monstrous static discharges flared away into the heaving atmosphere. The force field began to glow a pale purple, as if it were growing a bruise. A cluster of dump webs skittered down from the Columbia505. They struck the force field, kicking out blooms of dusky ripples. The darkness around them intensified, expanding rapidly. Under such an assault, overload was only a matter of time. The force field collapsed amid a deluge of wild energy flares and superheated shock waves that battered the surrounding buildings. Columbia505 received a heavy buffeting, which the smartcore fought to counter and hold stable above the circle of glaring ion flames that were eating into the generator building. Sensors reported the wormhole had failed. Digby was worried about how much evidence it had already cleared away.

Ellezelin Civil Defense Agency force fields were coming on above Riasi, a series of large interlocking hemispheres protecting the city’s districts. Five large Ellezelin navy cruisers were racing around the planet, their trajectories curving sharply to position them above the city.

A starship hurtled up from the buckling generator complex, accelerating at nearly forty gees. It fired a barrage of energy beams and disrupter pulses at the Columbia505. Digby found himself gripped by safety webbing as the starship spun helplessly. Planetary atmosphere was an alien milieu for it; systems designed for combat in the clear vacuum of space were operating below optimum, fogged by the dense gases. The force field shimmered a vivid amber, spitting off glittering scintillations while Digby’s vulnerable inner ears conjured up a wave of nausea. Far below, consecutive shock waves crashed down across the beleaguered commercial buildings and warehouses that comprised Riasi’s sprawling interstellar commerce district.

The Columbia505 leveled out, and the routines in Digby’s macrocellular clusters neutralized the nausea. Exoimage displays showed him the other starship streaking up through the troposphere, a huge ionic contrail shimmering behind it. “Follow it,” Digby ordered the smartcore. The air above the shaken city howled yet again as the Columbia505 powered its way up, ignoring the cruisers that were attempting to converge on it. The other starship slipped into hyperspace. Columbia505 followed.

“Why?” Paula asked before Digby had even cleared the Ellezelin system. “Those fragments were vital. We’ll lose most of them now.”

“Forensic analysis was only ever a long shot,” Digby countered. “I determined the faction ship was a much better lead. They risked a lot to obstruct my collection operation.”

“Which implies the fragments you were recovering were important.”

“My judgment,” Digby insisted, wishing he didn’t feel quite so small. No other human—Higher, Advancer, or normal—could ever make him feel so inadequate and defensive as his great-grandmother.

“Indeed it was, and you’re committed now. How good is the sensor reading?”

“Holding steady. They’re stealthed, of course, but my smartcore can still detect some distortion. It’s a good ship they’ve got, equal to Chatfield’s.”

“All right. I’d probably have done the same in your circumstances. You stay with it and see where that representative is going. The ANA judicial conclave is beginning now. I’m expecting the entire Accelerator Faction to be shut down within the next hour or two.”

“Excellent.”

“It has its problems, not least the agents and representatives still at large, like the one you’re following. I suspect we’re going to be a long time mopping up.”

“At least we’ll have a complete list of them and their activities.”

“Yes, that should help. Let me know when the ship reaches some kind of destination.”

“Of course.” Digby scowled as the secure call ended. This whole mission was proving very unsatisfactory. He was leaving too many unanswered questions behind him as he tagged along after the latest possible lead. He was also feeling plenty of stress from the destruction he’d caused and then fled from in Riasi. There would have been a lot of bodyloss due to his actions.

After a quarter of an hour it was clear the faction ship was heading in toward the Central worlds. It looked like the destination was Oaktier.

There had been only one judicial conclave in ANA’s history. It had been called to deal with the Separatist Faction, which had wanted to break ANA up, leaving them in a section free from any regulation or limit imposed by the base law control that acted as a universal governor across the entire edifice. The majority verdict was to disallow any such action. An entity with ANA’s ability and resources and under the authority of a dogmatic ideology might conceivably pose a threat to the original ANA, not to mention the rest of the Greater Commonwealth. The duplicitous method by which the Separatist Faction had sought to seize command of the quasi-physical mechanism that sustained ANA in order to achieve the segmentation was verification enough that they couldn’t be trusted to evolve quietly in some distant corner of the galaxy. A whole host of other agendas to encourage postphysical ascension were exposed at the conclave.

As before, ANA:Governance produced a spherical assembly arena with an equivalent diameter half that of Earth itself. Such a size was necessary to accommodate the manifested forms of every individual mind embedded within the edifice of ANA. They appeared within seconds of the judicial conclave being announced, materializing across the vast curving shell, clustering with those of their own factions or in simple groupings of friends or relatives. Ilanthe, as the nominated representative of the Accelerator Faction, floated at the center of the sphere. She had chosen to manifest as her primary representation, a featureless human female with fluid silver skin. Only her face retained any characteristics, showing a long jawbone and a small elegant nose. Her eyes were the absorptive black of an event horizon.

“Thank you for responding,” ANA:Governance said to the convened population.

Ilanthe performed a random sweep over sections of the assembly arena, noting the various forms and shapes manifested across the shell wall. Over half retained a human appearance, whereas the rest had selected a multitude of geometries and colors from minimal spheres of light, to swarms of neuron echoes, to the simple yet sinister black pyramids of the radical Isolator Faction. One of the human figures was Nelson Sheldon, who was contemplating her with the relaxed disdain of a man who had won his game. Of Gore Burnelli there was no sign, which perturbed her more than it should have. She still didn’t understand how he’d become the Third Dreamer; his mentality must have some private link out of ANA to the gaiafield that she didn’t comprehend. Not that it was going to matter now.

Her fully expanded mentality (still anchored within the Accelerator compilation) regarded her jury with a degree of amusement, especially as some infinitesimal portion of her own mentality was contributing to ANA:Governance, effectively making her judge herself.

“We are called here to review the activities of the Accelerator Faction,” ANA:Governance continued. “The charge against them is one of high treason.”

Ilanthe’s peers remained quiescent, awaiting the information repositories containing ANA’s evidence.

“Do you wish to say anything?” ANA:Governance asked Ilanthe.

“You exist to provide us an existence which promotes intellectual development and evolution, yet you place restrictions upon enacting those very developments in the reality of spacetime. Now you complain when we try to achieve that which your fundamental nature encourages. Please explain the logic.”

“All individuals within me are free to translate their goals into physical or postphysical reality,” ANA:Governance replied. “You know this. What I cannot permit is for those goals to be imposed on an unwilling majority. When and if we transform to postphysical status, it will be as a consenting majority.”

“Nice in theory. But the restrictions you impose on those of us who are ready to transcend are completely unacceptable. We shall achieve our objective on our own.” Ilanthe’s primary consciousness withdrew back into the center of the Accelerator compilation, where the inversion core awaited. Secondary routines took over her manifestation within the assembly arena, producing responses to ANA:Governance’s questions.

The globular inversion core shimmered a dark metallic indigo, its surface cohesion rippling slightly as the bands of exotic force structuring its boundary began to disengage from the quantum pseudofabric that was ANA’s edifice.

“The Prime allies of the Ocisen Empire fleet were animated by the thought routines of Donald Chatfield,” ANA:Governance said. “He is one of your agents in the Greater Commonwealth.” A vast flock of information repositories burst into existence within the assembly arena and settled on the audience waiting across the shell. Only Nelson Sheldon didn’t bother to access the information. Everybody else studied the records of Kazimir’s interception, the electronic interrogation and analysis of the inter-Prime communications. The conclusion was inevitable.

Ilanthe’s mentality switched residence from ANA’s edifice to the inversion core. For the first time since she had downloaded three hundred twenty-seven years ago, she was fully independent.

“What are you doing?” ANA:Governance demanded as it detected her withdrawal from itself.

“Claiming the right you were established to enforce,” the secondary routines manifested in the assembly arena told it.

“You cannot function separately within me,” it replied. “You will simply be isolated until your primary identity reconnects to my edifice. Until then, no interaction with any part of me will be permitted. You will effectively be placing yourself into suspension.”

“Really?”

“Your faction’s attempt to manipulate Living Dream into providing you passage into the Void is declared outlaw,” ANA:Governance announced. The base law upon which its entire edifice was built asserted itself, exposing the collective memory of the Accelerator Faction members. ANA immediately noticed gaps where whole segments had been erased, the information transferred to Ilanthe’s mentality. Everything else was there: the actions of their agents, the development of independent Primes to provide the Ocisens with the kind of allies that gave them enough confidence to launch the invasion fleet. The why of it was missing. ANA also familiarized itself with the way Ilanthe had grown to dominate the faction, how her obsession with the Void and its abilities had come to supplant all other goals to accelerate human evolution. The secret manufacturing sites producing hardware for agents were revealed. There was one station orbiting a red dwarf star for which there were no records. It examined how she had diverted every resource and ability of the faction within ANA to empower the center of the Accelerator compilation, producing the inversion core that they were going to fuse with the nucleus of the Void.

Too much was missing still to determine their underlying strategy. All of it, the ultimate essence of the Accelerator Faction, hung within the inversion core. ANA observed the core detach itself from all contact with the edifice. Yet still the object maintained its integrity contained within the overall subquantum edifice. Not quite real.

“The Accelerator Faction is hereby suspended,” ANA:Governance announced to the assembly arena. The thought routines of every individual comprising the Accelerator Faction immediately terminated, held frozen within the edifice, ready for an edit that would remove the illegal sections and impose limiters to restrain future behavior.

None of it affected the inversion core. ANA couldn’t find an entrance point. The Accelerators had fabricated it without the base law, a circumvention of its authority that was disturbing. Their knowledge of exotic quantum structures was extremely advanced. Presumably that had come from people like Troblum studying the Dark Fortress mechanism. Examination of the faction’s now-exposed memories showed that eighty-seven of their researchers had served with the navy on missions to Dyson Alpha. Their findings were not available.

ANA shut down the entire Accelerator compilation in case there were some remaining connections it couldn’t perceive. The inversion core remained; it was self-sustaining, truly independent. “What is your purpose?” ANA asked.

“Total evolution,” Ilanthe replied. “I have never hidden that from you.”

“Your actions thus far have caused extreme danger, not just to the Commonwealth. I cannot let that pass with impunity.”

“I reject you and your authority,” Ilanthe replied.

The inversion core exerted an exotic force against the collapsed edifice surrounding it. ANA felt its structure warp to an alarming degree. Far above Earth’s lunar orbit, spacetime twisted badly, distorting photons into a globular whirl, sucking light down like a small event horizon.

“Desist from this action,” ANA warned. Ten Capital-class warships on Sol assignment raced in toward the spacetime stress point, slipping smoothly out of hyperspace to target the anomaly. ANA also opened a link to Kazimir, who was already within the External worlds.

“Do you have any idea what it is?” Kazimir asked.

“I can assume the inversion core contains some of my own functions if that is what they intend to fuse with the Void. They have been extremely clever in producing the system within me. No matter what any individual or faction fabricates for itself within me, the base laws apply, for they are a simple extension of the quantum interstice that is my edifice. That is how my integrity is retained. However, in this case my base laws were evaded. This is not part of me.”

“I will be there in another fifteen minutes.”

“That is gratifying. However, I do not believe even Ilanthe will attempt to destroy me. If she did, she would find it extremely difficult. There are some levels which I have never employed.”

The inversion core increased the level of the force it was exerting. ANA perceived the quantum fields within which it was embedded start to separate as their cohesion faltered. Spacetime fractured.

Senses available to the boundary of the inversion core registered starlight falling upon it. “You can no longer constrain me,” Ilanthe said. The starlight grew stronger, twisting savagely as it poured through the severe rift opening all around the inversion core. Then it was free, emerging into spacetime as the rift collapsed. The Earth was a splendid silver-blue crescent half a million kilometers away while the smooth plains of the moon’s farside glimmered to one side. Ten Capital-class ships accelerated smoothly toward it. Ilanthe sensed their weapons powering up and locking on. The inversion core went from a sedate cislunar orbital velocity to point nine nine lightspeed in less than half a second.

“What do you want to do?” Kazimir asked as he flashed past the Oort cometry belt that marked the boundary of the Sol system. He’d followed the chase with interest. The Capital-class ships had immediately dropped into hyperspace as the inversion core sped away at its incredible velocity, something disturbingly reminiscent of a Skylord in the way it did so. They had some trouble matching speeds when they emerged, replicating its velocity as part of their exit vector. Then, when they did get close, it simply stopped, shedding its relativistic speed in an instant, which left the warships streaking away. The inversion core accelerated again along a slightly different trajectory, leaving the warships with no choice but to dive back into hyperspace. Any engagement was going to be extremely difficult, and they still had no idea of its true capabilities.

“Ilanthe has left us with no options. Please intercept her and nullify the object.”

“Very well.” Kazimir ordered the Capital-class ships to disengage. He manifested several functions into spacetime, his energy signature matching the inversion core’s velocity perfectly. When he attempted to analyze it, all he could perceive was an incredibly complex knot of exotic forces. He didn’t have the sensor functions necessary to interpret its intersection within the quantum fields. That left him in the very surprising position of not knowing what aggressive function to deploy against it.

The inversion core halted again, twenty million kilometers out from Mars. Kazimir’s energy signature matched locations flawlessly. Visually, the inversion core resembled a ball of black glass whose interior was beset by purple scintillations. Thermally, it didn’t even register, and the exotic energy sensors revealed a boundary layer of negative matter somehow entwined with quantum fluctuations of enormous power.

“The deterrence fleet, I presume?” Ilanthe said equitably.

“Yes,” Kazimir said.

“I am most impressed.”

“I am reluctant to use weapons functions against you. We are still within the Sol system. There might be damage.”

“Not to me. But that isn’t your immediate concern.”

“I assure you it is. However, if it becomes necessary, I will use force. Your rebellion is now over. Please accept that.”

“You believed we engineered your deployment so I would be safe to emerge.”

“That is obvious.”

“But wrong. Please scan near-Sol space.”

Look behind you. The oldest ploy in the book, but nearly always spoken from a position of superiority. Kazimir kept his energy signature where it was but manifested several long-range sensor functions. He searched for signs of stealthed hyperdrives. Eight thousand and one were holding steady in transdimensional suspension, englobing the Sol system at forty AUs (astronomical units) out.

“What are they?” he asked.

“We call them the Swarm,” Ilanthe said. “They are here to put an end to ANA’s interference.”

“I have to access them,” Kazimir told ANA. “I really don’t like that formation.” His sensor functions observed one of the hyperdrives arrowing in toward the inversion core at very high speed even for an ultradrive. The other eight thousand dropped out of hyperspace where they were, materializing into spacetime as large spherical force fields, their orbits neatly surrounding the Sol system.

Every navy warship assigned to the Sol protection fleet flashed in toward Earth, knitting together in a defensive formation that extended out beyond lunar orbit. Weapons platforms that had spent decades stealthed in high orbit emerged to join the incredible array of firepower lining up on the Swarm. All over the planet, force fields powered up, shielding the remaining cities. Anyone outside an urban area was immediately teleported in to safety. The T-sphere itself was integrated into the defense organization, ready to ward off energy assaults against the planet by rearranging spacetime in a sharp curve.

Lizzie was in the kitchen when the alert came through. Unfamiliar icons popped up in her exovision as she was taking a big pan of boiling chicken stock off the grand iron range. Secondary routines identified them, pushing their meanings into her consciousness. She was suddenly all too aware of what was happening out on the fringes of the Sol system. “Ozzie, crappit,” she grunted as she put the hot pan back down on the range. The whole event was so extraordinary, she had no idea how to react, and then her basic parental instincts took over.

Little Rosa was chortling away happily to herself in the family room, where she was playing with some reactive spheres, clashing them against each other in a burst of music, then clapping as they rolled away across the antique rug. She grinned delightedly as her mother rushed in.

The pediatric housebot floating to one side of the toddler glided smoothly to one side as Lizzie scooped her up. “Come on,” she said, and started to designate her coordinate within the T-sphere. That was when the defense agency announced the T-sphere would be unavailable for civilian use in one minute’s time.

Lizzie teleported into the school. Rosa whooped with delight at the abrupt jump. “Good, good,” she enthused.

The classroom she’d emerged into was a broad circle with a shallow dome roof and long overhang windows looking across the green playing fields of Dulwich Park. It was raining outside. Twenty children were inside, split into three groups. Their teachers were already looking startled. Lizzie looked around as a timer started to count away her minute. Elsie was part of a reading group. She glanced up and smiled at her mother.

Two more parents jumped into the classroom, both looking as perturbed as Lizzie imagined she was. She beckoned frantically to Elsie, who started over. By now another five parents had arrived. The large classroom was starting to feel crowded.

Tilly was in the music group, her violin resting comfortably under her chin as the children practiced a cheerful-sounding song for the school’s Christmas Nativity play. “Come here,” Lizzie called as Elsie reached her side. There were twenty seconds left. Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzie saw a mother jump away as she clutched her son.

“What’s happening?” Tilly asked.

“Here!” Lizzie implored. Another two adults materialized in front of her and started to hunt desperately for their children. The youngsters were starting to get upset as more and more parents with worried faces appeared.

Tilly scampered over, still hanging on to her violin. Lizzie’s u-shadow registered a call from her husband. “Not now,” she grunted, and designated the house as their teleport coordinate. Tilly ran into her, and there were nine seconds left. Just for an instant, the emptiness of the translation continuum flashed around them as Lizzie and the kids jumped out.

She let out a little shocked sob as they all materialized in the familiar hallway.

“What is it?” a subdued Elsie demanded. “What’s happening?”

“Mummy?” Tilly appealed, tugging at Lizzie’s skirt.

“I’m not sure,” Lizzie said even as she was trying to make sense of the defense agency displays. The defense agency didn’t have any details on the devices that had surrounded the solar system. Then the T-sphere was diverted from standard use, stranding everyone on the planet in his or her immediate location. She told her u-shadow to accept her husband’s call.

“Thank Ozzie,” he exclaimed. “Where are the girls?”

“Got them,” she promised, feeling slightly superior because she’d reacted so swiftly and correctly. “Where are you?”

“On a starship. Eight minutes out from Gralmond spaceport.”

“Do you understand what’s happening?”

“Not really. It’s the ANA factions; their fights have turned physical.”

“They can’t hurt Earth? Can they?” She didn’t want to let go of the children. Outside, the rain had drained out of the gray London sky as the force field dome covered the city.

“That’s not what it’s about. Look I’ll be with you as soon—”

The connection ended. Strange symbols flipped up into her exovision, showing routing problems with his link.

In the unisphere? That’s not possible!

“—after I’ve landed. Then I’ll—”

“Something’s wrong,” she gasped.

“—hang on! I will be there, I prom—”

“The link has failed,” her u-shadow reported.

“How can it fail?” she cried.

“The wormhole connections with the Commonwealth worlds are collapsing,” her u-shadow said.

“Oh, great Ozzie!” Lizzie hurried into the conservatory, pulling the girls with her. She tried to make sense of the emergency icons invading her exovision as she looked up into the dour sky, hunting for signs of the world coming to an end.

———

Kazimir’s energy signature halted ten kilometers from one of the Swarm components. He manifested a vast array of sensor functions, yet not one of them was able to penetrate the five-hundred-meter-diameter force field floating serenely in space. “Damnit, they’ve acquired Dark Fortress technology,” he told ANA. Far behind him, the Accelerator ship dropped out of hyperdrive next to the inversion core. It was large for an ultradrive; long-range scans revealed a multitude of weapons on board. A hold door opened in the rear section, and the inversion core slipped gracefully inside. Then a force field came on around it, every bit as impervious as the one he was confronting.

Kazimir was desperate to intercept the Accelerator Faction starship, but with Earth and ANA facing an unknown threat, his duty was clear. He manifested several high-level weapon functions and fired at the force field directly ahead of him. Everything he used was simply deflected away. The force field was completely impermeable to any assault he could bring in spacetime and hyperspace.

“The wormholes to the Big15 worlds are collapsing,” ANA reported. “Something is cutting them off.”

Kazimir examined the exotic matter intrusions stretching out from Earth away to the stars, seeing them subjected to enormous interference that was causing them to constrict. Even though he knew the incursion must originate within the Swarm, his manifested sensor functions couldn’t track down its nature.

The Accelerator Faction ship carrying the inversion core went FTL, streaking across the solar system directly away from Kazimir at seventy-eight light-years an hour. His energy signature flashed after it. Enormously powerful exotic energy manipulation functions manifested, but he still couldn’t reach through its force field to disable the drive. He began to manifest some functions that would disrupt the quantum fields around the ship, which would force it out of hyperspace. The ship passed through the Swarm’s orbit. Kazimir was less than two seconds behind. It was too late. The force fields surrounding the Swarm components expanded at hyperluminal speed.

Kazimir’s energy signature struck an impermeable barrier that cut clean across spacetime and hyperspace. He couldn’t get through.

———

The ship dropped out of hyperspace a light-minute beyond the force field. To the hyperspace sensors, a vast blank shield had sprung up behind them. Its curvature revealed a radius of forty AUs. There was no hint of stress or distortion anywhere on its surface. Whatever Kazimir was armed with was unable to cut through. Neskia brought the ship’s visual sensor data into her exovision, watching the image keenly as a timer counted down. After one minute, the high-magnitude star that was the Sun vanished, along with the stars across that half of space.

“No sign of it breaking through,” Neskia said. “I think we’re safe.”

“Very clever, that deterrence fleet,” Ilanthe said. “An interstitial energy signature that can extrude into spacetime. The ship wouldn’t have stood a chance in a straight firefight. ANA was more advanced than we’d realized.”

“Even more reason for us to leave it behind,” Neskia said dismissively. “It had so much potential and wasted it.”

“Quite.”

“Where are we going?”

“Ellezelin. I trust our agents are close to recovering Araminta.”

“They are.”

The ship slipped back into hyperspace, heading away at a modest fifty-five light-years an hour. Behind it, the somber sphere imprisoning the Sol system refracted the gentle starlight impinging on its boundary with a cold shimmer reminiscent of a deep forest lake, guarding its contents in perfect isolated darkness.

Inigo’s Sixteenth Dream

It was the fifth time Edeard had watched the militia forces close in on the hidden valley. There had been a lot of mistakes previously; ge-eagles had been spotted, fastfoxes mauled the first militiamen over the lip, the bandit forces had fought back with a secret cache of weapons, hothead officers didn’t quite follow orders, allowing the Gilmorn to rally his people. Each time there had been too many deaths. Each time Edeard reset the universe to the night before and attempted to mitigate the problem.

Last time he was sure he’d gotten it right, and then the bandit gang had produced rapid-fire guns from a cache that he hadn’t found the first three times. Even with third hands joined together to add extra strength to their shielding, the troopers had been cut to shreds before Edeard himself could reach them. So …

This time he had slipped unseen and unsensed through the valley for two hours just after midnight. He’d destroyed the second lot of rapid-fire guns the bandits had hidden and snatched away the ones belonging to guards after rendering them unconscious. It was politically important that the militias thought they alone had overcome the bandits; Edeard and Finitan wanted the rapid-fire guns to vanish into legend. Now he stood on a small rise half a mile from the valley as the predawn light slowly overwhelmed the nebulae. Buluku was the first to vanish, its undulating stream of pale indigo fading away just above the eastern horizon, as if the land had somehow opened to swallow it. Edeard could well believe that. The valley that the bandits had chosen as their last redoubt was a narrow crack in the undulating grasslands that made up the southernmost part of Rulan province, lapping against the low mountains of Gratham province, which rose in the distance. Not hard to imagine it as a fissure slicing through the whole world.

As the scarlet-spiked glory of Odin’s Sea began to diminish far above, he farsighted the troopers of the Pholas and Zelda regiment breaking cover from the spinneys beyond the valley where they’d gathered during the night. They were supported by provincial militiamen from Plax and Tives. The men moved silently, like a black stream winding around the soft knolls and hummocks of the grasslands, out of farsight from the sentries within the valley. Edeard concentrated on subverting the ge-eagles gliding high above, insinuating his own orders into their sharp, suspicious little minds. That left just the fastfoxes. He was too far away to help with them. Brawny ge-wolves and fast ge-hounds slunk forward, accompanying the marauder groups of sheriffs and Wellsop rangers whose control over their genistars was second to none.

“Go,” Edeard’s directed longtalk urged Dinlay.

The Lillylight and Cobara regiment, along with militias from Fandine, Nargol, and Obershire, emerged from their forward positions to the west of the valley. It was the Nargol troopers and their unfettered eagerness who had been the problem the second time around; since then Edeard had emphasized how important it was to keep them moving along the planned route. Colonel Larose had done a good job keeping the provincials in line ever since; ignoring their muttered resentment about city folk lording it over the countryside.

With the assault under way, Edeard mounted a ge-horse that the Eggshaper Guild had sculpted purely for speed. His ebony cloak swirled around him, flowing across the saddle before rippling above the beast’s hide. Felax and Marcol scrambled onto similar mounts on either side of him. He didn’t have to say anything to them; his mind urged the ge-horse forward at a gallop, and the young constables followed.

The three beasts thundering over the grassland in the cold silence of the ebbing night sounded incredibly loud to Edeard, yet he knew they were too far from the valley to be heard. Up in front of him the troopers were an unstoppable Swarm as they converged on the valley.

Finally, the alarm was raised by the bandits. Those sentries still awake shouted to their armed comrades for help, only to find them lying in a deep unnatural slumber, their weapons gone. More shouts and frantic longtalk roused the rest of the sleeping group.

So far, so exactly as before, and this time going according to plan.

Fastfoxes flittered silently along the valley with the speed of hurricane clouds. The invading militias urged their ge-wolves on ahead. Along the top of the valley, troopers fell to the ground, their pistols held over the edge. Shots were fired. Ge-wolves and fastfoxes clashed head on, powerful animal screams reverberating across the grasslands as gray light crept over the dew-soaked ground.

The Pholas and Zelda regiment reached the far end of the valley and began to follow their ge-wolves down into the deep narrow cleft. Dinlay and Argian were close to the front, using their farsight to expose anyone with the concealment ability. Most of the bandits could perform the trick. Edeard held his breath, the memory of another deep gully on another night stirring in his mind. This time would be different, he promised himself; this time he could guarantee there would be no surprises.

Troopers along the top of the valley provided a thick covering fire for their comrades sweeping forward below. As always, the Gilmorn gathered his stalwarts together in a tall fortresslike outcrop of rock. They still had their ordinary pistols and fired ruthlessly at the advancing troopers. Concealment made it hard for anyone to return fire with any accuracy. Argian hurried forward to assist the troopers closing in on the outcrop.

Edeard arrived at the head of the valley and dismounted. He refused to rush forward even though it was what everyone was expecting. His farsight observed troopers rounding up the bandits who had surrendered and isolating the few who still resisted. Then it was just the Gilmorn and his cadre left offering resistance. Dinlay and Larose moved the militiamen forward cautiously; men wriggled on their bellies along small clefts in the land and dashed between convenient boulders. Within ten minutes, the Gilmorn was completely surrounded.

As Edeard made his way along the stony floor of the valley, he passed groups of smiling troopers hauling their captives along. Several were men from the tribes that lived in the wildlands: beyond Rulan’s boundaries. They were just as he’d encountered them all those years ago on the caravan back from Witham: ringlet hair and bare chests caked in dark mud that was flaking off. They glanced at the Waterwalker with sullen expressions, their minds tightly shielded. In all the clashes over the last few years, Edeard had never seen one of them wielding a rapid-fire gun; those weapons were possessed by the Gilmorn’s people alone. He halted one of the tribesmen escorted by five wary troopers, a man he guessed to be in his late fifties though with none of a city dweller’s laxness about him; he had pale gray eyes that glared out of a face that displayed all the anger and defiance his mind refused to show.

“Why?” Edeard asked simply. “Why did you join them?”

“They are strong. We benefit.”

“How? How do you benefit?”

The older tribesman gave Edeard a superior snort. He gestured around the grasslands. “You are gone. Even now you will never return. This land will be ours.”

“All right, I can see that. I can even understand how the killing and destruction becomes a perverted addiction for some of you. But why these lands? There are lands unclaimed to the west. Land with forests and herds to hunt. No one even knows how much land. Why ours? You don’t farm. You don’t live in stone houses.”

“Because you have it,” the tribesman said simply.

Edeard stared at him, knowing he’d never get a better answer. Nor a more honest one, he thought. He was looking for complexity and purpose where there was none. It was the Gilmorn and his kind, the remnants of Owain’s ruthless One Nation followers, who had intent. The tribesmen were simply useful innocents who’d been duped into an allegiance they had never fully comprehended.

He dismissed the escort with a curt wave of his hand, and the tribesman was dragged off to the jail pens that were being established up on the grasslands.

“We should get down there,” Marcol said eagerly. The young man’s farsight was sweeping over the fortress outcrop, exposing the concealed bandits with ease.

Edeard did his best not to grin. Marcol’s psychic abilities had developed considerably since the day of banishment, almost as much as his sense of duty. He was a devoted constable and utterly loyal to the Grand Council, yet there was still some of the old Sampalok street boy in there. He was spoiling to join the fight.

“Let the militias have their moment of glory,” Edeard said quietly. “This has been a hard campaign. They deserve to be the ones ending it all.” That was true enough. For eight months the forces of city and countryside had been allied, chasing the Gilmorn and his remaining supporters across the provinces farther and farther to the west until finally there was nowhere left to run.

“Politics,” Felax said with a disgusted grunt.

“You’re learning,” Edeard said. “Besides, you two have nothing to prove, not after Overton Falls. I heard the daughters of those caravan families made their appreciation clear enough.”

The two young constables looked at each other and shared a knowing smirk.

Down by the outcrop, Larose’s longtalk was delivering a sharp ultimatum to the Gilmorn. They were outnumbered fifty to one and completely surrounded. They had no food. Their ammunition was almost gone. There was no help coming.

Edeard wasn’t convinced that was quite the right thing to point out to a merciless fanatic like the Gilmorn, though in truth, they’d never reached this point of the assault before, so he didn’t know what would work.

They carried on down the valley, passing several dead fastfoxes and ge-wolves. Edeard tried not to grimace at the brutally torn flesh of the animals. Argian was sitting on a moss-covered boulder where the valley opened out, quietly munching on a red apple. Several squads of militia were milling around, also wanting in on the finale. Their corporals and sergeants were having a hard time keeping them in line. Everyone quieted down as Edeard appeared.

“Will he surrender?” Edeard asked.

Argian shrugged and bit down hard. “He has nothing to lose. Who knows what he’s thinking?”

“I see. Well, fortunately, we can wait. For as long as it takes.”

“Ah,” Marcol exclaimed. “They’re arguing.”

Argian gave the young constable a searching stare, then turned his attention to the outcrop. There was indeed an argument spilling out from the jagged rocks, a loud one, full of anger. Two men were confronting the Gilmorn, telling him they were walking out to surrender to the militia. Edeard’s farsight showed him the men turning away. The Gilmorn lifted his pistol and brought it up to point at the back of one man’s head. Edeard’s third hand slipped out and twisted the firing pin, bending it slightly out of alignment. The Gilmorn pulled the trigger. There was a metallic click. The bullet didn’t fire.

Marcol cleared his throat in a very pointed fashion.

Another argument broke out, even more heated than the first. Fists were swung. Third hands attempted to heartsqueeze. Men started wrestling.

Larose gave the order to combine shields and move in.

Two minutes later it was all over.

There were militiamen perched on top of the rocky pinnacles, cheering wildly and waving beer bottles above their heads. Whole regiments were spilling over the site of the last fight, singing and embracing their comrades. Edeard couldn’t help but smile as he walked among them, taking the occasional swig from a proffered bottle, shaking hands, hugging older friends exuberantly. They were glad to see the Waterwalker, who had led the campaign, but they were prouder that they’d won the final battle themselves.

Colonel Larose had established his camp on the far side of the fortress outcrop. Carts were drawn up in a large circle; long rows of tents were laid out, ready to be put up. A big open-sided canvas marquee had already been raised, with the cooks preparing a meal inside. Smoke from the cooking fires was starting to saturate the still air. At the center of the camp, the field headquarters tent was a drab khaki, guarded by alert senior troopers and a pack of ge-hounds. Orderlies and runners were skipping in and out. Eleven regimental flags fluttered weakly on top of their poles outside, representing the finest of city and country.

The guards saluted Edeard as he went inside. Larose was sitting behind the wooden trestle table that served as his desk while a flock of adjutants hovered around with requests and queries. His drab green field uniform jacket was open to the waist, revealing a stained gray shirt. Senior officers were clustered at a long bench with all the administrative paraphernalia necessary to move and orchestrate such a large body of men. Even though it had been only a couple of hours since victory, orders and reports had begun to pile up. Larose stood and embraced Edeard warmly.

“We did it,” Larose exclaimed. “By the Lady, we did it.”

The officers started to applaud. Edeard gave them a grateful nod.

“You should be very satisfied with your men,” Edeard told him, loud enough for the other commanders to hear, especially those of the country regiments. “They behaved impeccably.”

“That they did.” Larose grinned around generously. “All of them.”

“And you,” Edeard told the Colonel. “You should stand for election when we return. The residents of Lillylight would appreciate a man representing them who’s actually accomplished something outside the city.”

Larose gave a shrug that was close to bashful. “That would cause my family’s senior members some surprise and satisfaction, I imagine.”

Edeard gave him a warm smile. “You were never a black sheep.”

“No. Not like you, at any rate. But I like to think I had my moments.”

“Indeed you did. But I hope you’ll give the idea some thought.”

“It’s never as far away as we believe, is it, Makkathran?”

“No.” Edeard let out a sigh. “Is he behaving himself?”

“So far.” Larose gestured to a flap at the back of the tent, and they went through. An encircling wall of tents and fences had produced a small secure area at the rear. Right at the center, a tall narrow tent was standing all alone. Two guards stood at attention outside, older seasoned militiamen whom Larose trusted implicitly, their ge-wolves pulling on the leash. Both animals gave Edeard a suspicious sniff as he approached.

“You know something odd?” Larose said. “For years the bandits have terrorized communities with impunity. Every survivor told stories of fearsome weapons. Yet throughout this whole campaign, we haven’t found one of the bastards armed with anything other than a standard pistol.”

“That’s good,” Edeard said, staring straight ahead. “Would you want a new weapon to exist? One powerful enough to kill entire platoons in less than a minute?”

“No. No, I don’t suppose I would.”

“Me, neither.”

“I don’t suppose anybody could build anything like that, not really. Not even the Weapons Guild.”

“No,” Edeard agreed. “They can’t. Those weapons are just a fable that people used to tell each other about in times gone by.”

“Like the exiles. You know, nowadays I find it hard to picture what Owain looked like. He and his fellows must have traveled a long way from Makkathran. Nobody ever found them.”

“Losing an election can demoralize you like that. Nobody wants to dwell on what has been, not now that we all have a future.”

“We do?”

“It’s unknown, as always, but it’s there, all right.”

Colonel Larose pursed his lips and walked on.

The Gilmorn was standing in the middle of the tent with Dinlay and Marcol in attendance. Of all the aspects that resulted from Edeard’s ability to reset time, he always found this the strangest—seeing someone alive whom he’d previously watched die. And this Gilmorn was one he’d killed himself in a fashion that didn’t withstand too much sober examination.

Inevitably, the man was unchanged. Not that Edeard had ever seen him at his best before. Last time, his round face with the idiosyncratic nose had been suffused with pain and anguish as his legs were ruined by the boulder. Now he simply looked tired and sullenly resentful. Not defeated, though. There was still defiance burning behind his mental shield, mostly fueled by good old Grand Family arrogance, Edeard suspected.

The blacksmith was just leaving. He’d taken an hour to shackle the Gilmorn securely, with big iron rings around his wrists and ankles, linked together with tough chains. This way there were no fancy locks for his telekinesis to pick away at. The metal had to be broken apart by another blacksmith or simple brute strength; Edeard could do it, and probably Marcol, but few others on Querencia would be capable.

“Finitan’s pet,” the Gilmorn said contemptuously. “I might have guessed.”

“Sorry I missed our earlier appointment at the valley beyond Mount Alvice,” Edeard replied casually.

The Gilmorn gave him a startled glance.

“So who are you?” Edeard asked. “Not that it really matters, but you never did tell me your name back at Ashwell.”

“Got your forms to fill out, have you?”

“You do understand this is over now, don’t you? You are the last of them. Even if One Nation has any supporters left back in Makkathran, they’ll deny everything, especially you. The family Gilmorn has lost considerable status among the city’s Grand Families since Tannarl’s exile; they’re desperate to regain it. You won’t be accepted back, not by them. Of course you could try to throw in with Buate’s surviving lieutenants, the ones I banished. Though they, too, seem incapable of adapting; over a dozen have been sentenced to the Trampello mines in the last two years. At least they’ll have company; my old friend Arminel is still incarcerated there. Mayor Finitan changed the mine governor from Owain’s crony to someone who’s a little stricter.”

The Gilmorn held his hands up, the chain clanking as he did so. “Is this what you’re reduced to, Waterwalker, gloating over your victims?”

“And you? Goading someone whose village you destroyed?”

“Touché.”

“You set me on the path that led to this day. I enjoy that.”

“As Ranalee and others enjoy Salrana. I’ve heard she’s very popular. Fetches quite a high price in the right circles, so I understand.”

Dinlay’s hand fell on Edeard’s shoulder. “Let me deal with him.”

“You?” The Gilmorn sneered. “A eunuch does the Waterwalker’s dirty work? How amusing.”

Dinlay’s face reddened behind his glasses. “I am not—”

“Enough of this,” Larose said. “Waterwalker, do you have any serious questions for this bastard? Some of my men can get answers out of him. It might take a while, but they’ll persist.”

“No,” Edeard said. “He has nothing vital for me. I just wondered why he kept on fighting, but now I know.”

“Really?” the Gilmorn said. “And that is?”

“Because I have taken everything else away from you. There is nothing else for you to do. Without your masters you are nothing. You are so pitiful, you cannot even think of anything else to devote yourself to. When the time comes for your life to end, you will have achieved nothing, you will leave no legacy, your soul will never find the Heart. Soon this universe will forget you ever even existed.”

“So that is what you have come here for, to kill me. The Waterwalker’s revenge. You’re no better than me. Owain never went into exile. I know you murdered him and the others. Don’t set yourself up as some aloof judge of morals. You’re wrong to say I leave nothing behind. I leave you. I created you. Without me, you would be a countryside peasant with a fat wife and a dozen screaming children, scrabbling in the mud for food. But not now. Not anymore. I forged a true ruler, one who is every bit as ruthless as Owain. You say I can do nothing else? Take a look at yourself. Do you tolerate anyone who doesn’t comply? Is that not me, the very ethos you claim to despise?”

“I enforce the law equally and impartially for all. I abide by the results of elections.”

“Words words words. A true Makkathran politician. May the Lady help your enemies when you become Mayor.”

“That’s a long time in the future, if I ever do stand.”

“You will. Because I would.”

Edeard’s cloak flowed aside with the smoothness of jamolar oil. He reached into a pocket and took out the warrant. “This is the proclamation signed by the Mayor of Makkathran and notarized by the provincial governors of the militia alliance. Given the scale of the atrocities you have perpetrated for years, you will not be returned to civilization for trial.”

“Ha, a death warrant. You are nothing more than the tribal savages we enlisted.”

“You will be taken to the port of Solbeach, where a ship will sail eastward. When the captain has voyaged as far as the seas will allow him, he will search for an island with fresh water and vegetation. There you will be abandoned with seed stock and tools sufficient for your survival. You will live out your life there alone to contemplate the enormity of your crimes. You will not attempt to return to civilization. If you are found within the boundary of civilization, you will immediately be put to death. May the Lady bless your soul.” Edeard rolled up the scroll. “Constables Felax and Marcol will accompany you on the journey to ensure the sentence is carried out. I’d advise you not to annoy them.”

“Fuck you. I won, and you know it. This alliance is the start of One Nation.”

Edeard turned and started to leave the tent.

“Owain won,” the Gilmorn shouted after him. “You’re nothing more than his puppet. That’s all. Do you hear me, Waterwalker? Puppet to the dead, puppet to the man you murdered. You are my soul twin. I salute you. I salute my final victory. Family blood will govern this world. They say you can see souls. Can you see the soul of Mistress Florrel laughing? Can you?”

Edeard hardened the shield his third hand created, blotting out the vicious shouting as he walked away.

Edeard wanted to travel on alone, but Dinlay wouldn’t hear of it. He wouldn’t argue; he just said nothing while Edeard shouted hotly at him, maintaining his quiet stubborn self. In the end Edeard gave in, as they both knew he would, and ordered the regiment’s cavalry master to saddle two horses. The pair of them rode off together toward Ashwell.

The landscape hadn’t altered, only the use it had once been put to. Half a day’s ride from his destination, Edeard began to recognize the features that had dominated his childhood. Shapes on the horizon started to register. They were cloaked in different colors now as the vegetation had changed, crops giving way to a surge of wilder plants. The road was completely overgrown, hard to distinguish, though the buried stony surface was still perceptible to farsight. The fields around the village, once rich and fertile, had long reverted to grassland and bushes, with their old neatly layed hedges sprouting up into small trees. Drainage ditches were clotted with leaves and silt, swelling out into curiously long pools.

It was a warm day, with few clouds in the bright azure sky. Sitting in his saddle, Edeard could see for miles in every direction. The cliff was the first thing he identified. That hadn’t changed at all. It set off a peculiar feeling of trepidation in his heart. He had truly never expected to come back here. On the day after the attack, he’d left with the posse from Thorpe-by-Water and had glanced back only once, seeing blackened ruins chuffing a thin smoke into the open sky, and even that image was blurred by tears and anguish. It had been too painful to attempt another look; he and Salrana had ridden away together, holding hands and bravely staring ahead.

Now nature had completed what Owain and the Gilmorn had started. Years of rain and wind and insects and tenacious creepers had accelerated the decay begun by the fires. All the village council’s halfhearted repairs along the rampart walls had finally started to give way, leaving the broad defenses sagging and uneven. The outer gates had gone, their charcoal remnants rotting to a thin mulch where tough weeds infiltrated their roots. Their absence exposed the short tunnel under the ramparts, a dank uninviting passage of gloomy fungus-coated brick. Above them, the stone watchtowers sagged; their thick walls held fast, though the slate and timber roofs under which so many sentries had sheltered across the decades were gone.

Edeard dismounted and tethered his skittish horse to the iron rings just outside the arching portal. The sturdy metal at least remained untouched.

“You okay?” Dinlay queried cautiously.

“Yes,” Edeard assured him, and walked through the dripping tunnel, sweeping aside the curtain of trailing vines. As soon as he emerged into the village, birds took flight, great swirls of them shrieking as they flapped their way into the sky. Small creatures scampered away over the rough mounds of debris.

Edeard was prepared for ruins, but the size of the village caught him by surprise. Ashwell was so small. He’d never considered it in such terms before. But really, the whole area between the cliff and the rampart walls could fit easily into Myco or Neph, the smallest city districts.

The basic layout of the village remained. Most of the stone walls survived in some form or another, though collapsing roofs had demolished a lot of them. Streets were easy to make out, and his memory filled in the lines wherever slides of rubble obscured the obvious routes. The big guild halls had withstood the fires well enough to retain their shapes, though they were nothing more than empty shells without roofs or internal walls. Edeard sent his farsight sweeping out to examine them, then immediately halted. Lying just below the thin coating of dirt and ash and weeds that had engulfed the village were the bones of the inhabitants. They were everywhere. “Lady!”

“What?” Dinlay asked.

“There was no burial,” Edeard explained. “We just left. It was too … enormous to deal with.”

“The Lady will understand. And the souls of your friends certainly will.”

“Maybe.” He looked around the desolation and shuddered again.

“Edeard? Do any linger?”

Edeard let out a long reluctant sigh. “I don’t know.” Once again he reached out, pushing his farsight to the limit of resolution, striving to catch any sign of spectral figures. “No,” he said eventually. “There’s nobody here.”

“That’s good, then.”

“Yes.” Edeard led the way toward the carcass of the Eggshaper Guild’s hall.

“This is where you grew up?” Dinlay asked with interest as he scanned around the nine sides of the broken courtyard.

“Yes.” Somehow Edeard had expected to find some trace of Akeem. But now, actually standing beside the listing stables and unsafe hall, he knew he never would. There were bones aplenty, even whole skeletons, but it would take days of careful examination to try to identify any of them. And ultimately, for what purpose? Who am I trying to appease and satisfy here? Would the souls of the dead villagers care that he was here? Would Akeem want him grubbing through the dirt to find some pieces of his long-dead body? I bury all of them or I bury none.

Of course, there was one other thing Edeard could do. His recollection of that night was perfect: himself and the other apprentices meeting up in the cave for an evening of fun and kestric. Even as he thought it, he looked up at the cliff; seeing the small dark cleft that they had wriggled through to find the cavern that offered privacy from their masters.

That simple recollection triggered a whole wave of memory. He could see the village as it had been that last fine summer. People striding along the streets, talking and laughing. Market stalls being set up, farmers bringing their produce in on big wagons. Apprentices hurrying about their duties. Village elders in their finer clothes. Children scampering about, chasing one another with shrieks of laughter.

I can do it. I can go back to that moment. I can defeat the bandits that night. I can give them all a life again.

He shook his head as if to clear it. Tears began to roll down his cheeks. This was far worse than any temptation Ranalee had ever offered.

I would have to go to Makkathran, this time with Akeem’s letter of sponsorship. I would be an apprentice at the Blue Tower. But Owain would still be there, and Buate and Tannarl and Mistress Florrel and Bise. I would have to dispose of them once more.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t do that again.”

“Edeard?” Dinlay asked gently. His hand squeezed Edeard’s shoulder.

Edeard wiped the tears away, banishing forever the sight of the village as it had been. Standing in the cracked doorway arch to the Eggshaper Guild hall, Akeem regarded Edeard with sad eyes.

Edeard knew that look so well, a rebuke that had been directed at him a thousand times as an apprentice. Don’t let me down.

“I won’t,” he promised.

Dinlay frowned. “Won’t what?”

Edeard breathed in deeply, calming his rampaging emotions. He stared at the broken doorway. Akeem wasn’t there. A smile touched his lips. “Fail them,” he told Dinlay. “I won’t fail the people who died so I might ultimately wind up where I am today, where we all are. It doesn’t always apply, you know.”

“What doesn’t?”

“Sometimes to do what’s right you have to do what’s wrong.”

“I always thought that was stupid. I bet Rah never actually said it.”

Edeard laughed out loud and took a last look around the old nine-sided courtyard. He put his arm around his friend’s shoulders. “You’re probably right. Come on, let’s go home. Home to Makkathran.”

“About time. I know you had to come here, but I’m not sure it’s healthy. We all regard the past too highly. We should cut ourselves free of it. You can only ever look forward to the future.”

Edeard pulled him closer. “You’re really quite a philosopher, aren’t you?”

“Why do you say that with so much surprise?”

“That was not surprise; that was respect.”

“Hmm.”

“Anyhow,” Edeard teased, “Saria will be waiting for you. Waiting eagerly.”

“Oh, dear Lady. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but what in Honious did Boyd ever see in her?”

“What? No! She’s a lovely girl.”

“She is a nightmare.”

“Kristabel thinks highly of her.”

“Yes. But Kristabel thinks highly of you, too.”

“Ouch! That hurt. Okay, then, perhaps Kanseen could steer someone more to your liking—”

“No! And certainly not Kanseen. Do you know what her definition of ‘nice girls’ is, let alone ‘suitable’ ones? This is what you’ve all been doing since the four of you got married. It’s embarrassing. Besides, I like being single.”

“Married life is wonderful.”

“Lady! Just stop it, will you.”

Edeard walked out of his former guild courtyard grinning contentedly.

The PanCephei Line starship had already dropped out of hyperspace when the emergency began. External sensors were showing the passengers an image of the H-congruous world two thousand kilometers below. White clouds tumbled high above dark blue oceans, sending out long streamers in forays across the surprisingly brown land. Flight information was available to access, designating their vector as a purple line down through the atmosphere to Garamond’s capital, the smooth resolution to another flawless everyday flight across three hundred light-years.

None of that registered with the increasingly frantic Delivery Man. The Conservative Faction’s intelligence division had automatically sent out a secure classified warning to all operatives as soon as the inversion core broke free of ANA’s edifice. He’d observed it with growing dismay as it eluded the navy ships. Then the deterrence fleet arrived (though its nature wasn’t revealed on any navy scans of the Sol system), and right after that the Swarm materialized. Earth’s defense agency declared a grade-one alert.

The Delivery Man called his wife, and to hell with protocol. For whatever reason, her u-shadow didn’t accept his first request for a link. When he analyzed the basic data, he realized she was in the Dulwich Park school. His hand thumped the nicely cushioned armrest of his seat in the first-class cubicle in frustration.

Lizzie teleported back home, and her u-shadow accepted the link. He managed a few words of reassurance before his exovision symbols told him the unisphere was changing the routing on the link, which was weird. His secure priority connection with the Conservative Faction intelligence division dropped out. What the fuck? “Then I’ll be with you the instant I reach an Earth station,” he told her, trying to appear positive.

“Something’s wrong,” Lizzie said.

It was impossible, but he could feel her distress as though they were using the gaiafield. “Lizzie, just hang on! I will be there, I promise you. Tell the girls Daddy is going to be home any minute.”

His u-shadow reported the link with Lizzie had failed, as had the one to the Conservative Faction. “No,” he gasped out loud. His exovision showed that every route to Earth had been severed. No data were getting in or out of the Sol system; it was completely cut off from the unisphere. “What the hell is happening?” he asked his u-shadow.

“Unknown,” it replied. “All wormholes to Sol have physically closed. The navy and Commonwealth government retain several secure emergency TD links to Sol, but none are working.”

“Did they nova it?” he asked fearfully.

“Unknown but unlikely. Whatever happened, happened very quickly. A nova shock wave would take several minutes to reach Earth.”

“The planet itself, then—could they have destroyed it, dropped a quantumbuster through the defenses or something? Maybe an M-sink?”

“Possibly. But for every communication system in the solar system to be affected simultaneously, the destruction would have to be enormous and swift. That suggests something which acts at hyperluminal velocity.”

“Did they kill Earth?” he yelled out.

“Unknown.”

“Oh, sweet Ozzie.” His whole body was shuddering as shock gripped him. Biononics worked to calm the impulses. “Find out,” he instructed his u-shadow. “Use every source you can access.”

“Understood.”

Judging by the raised voices muffled by the cubicle door, news of Earth’s disappearance was spreading fast. The Delivery Man couldn’t think what to do. It was the Conservative Faction that always provided him with the best data; now they were gone. Without them, he was no better than anyone else. He had no special ability, no influence, no one to call …

Marius. That was his first thought: I could ask Marius. That would be pitifully weak. But this is Lizzie and the kids. This isn’t the faction. His rival’s communication icon hung in his exovision. He couldn’t resist.

The response took several seconds. His u-shadow reported several semisentients tracking and confirming his location.

“Yes?” Marius replied smoothly. There was no attempt to establish any kind of routing security on the link. He was connected to Fanallisto’s cybersphere.

“What have you done?” the Delivery Man asked. Some small part of him was intrigued: What’s Marius doing on the planet I just left?

“I have done nothing. But I am curious why you’re on Gralmond.”

“What do you fucking think I’m doing here, you little shit! I’m going home. I was going home. What have you done to my family? What’s happened to Earth?”

“Ah. Don’t worry. They are perfectly safe.”

“Safe!”

“Yes. Your navy will presumably release the details in a while, but we have simply imprisoned Sol inside a very powerful force field, just like the Dyson Pair.”

“You did what?”

“We can no longer accept interference from ANA, nor your own faction. We will go into the Void. You will not stop us. You cannot. Not now.”

“I will catch you. I will rip you to fucking pieces.”

“You disappoint me. I told you the game was over. When will you animals learn? We have won. Elevation is inevitable.”

“Not while I’m alive, it isn’t.”

“Are you threatening me? I extend you a simple courtesy, and this emotional diarrhea is how you respond? You are an agent of the Conservative Faction, after all; perhaps I shouldn’t take any chances. I will visit Gralmond and eradicate that world with you and everyone else on it.”

“No!”

“Are you a threat or are you a simple broken animal has-been?”

“This won’t work. You can’t get into the Void. Araminta will never take you there.”

“Once we secure her, she will have no choice. You know this.”

In the privacy of the first-class cubicle, the Delivery Man punched the wall twice, his arm’s biononic reinforcement producing a fist-sized dent in the carbotanium paneling. He’d never felt so helpless. So useless. Nor had he felt so much anger, most of it directed at himself for not being with his family at this time. The one time they truly should have been together. “What about after?” he asked.

“After?”

“If the inversion core does make it into the Void, will you release Sol?”

“I expect so. It is an irrelevance, then, after all.”

“If you don’t, I will find you, whatever form you take. And that is a threat.”

The link ended. “Shit.” He hit the wall again, right in the center of the dint. His storage lacunae contained several Conservative Faction emergency procedures; not one of them anticipated anything as remotely outrageous as this. The Delivery Man let out a nervous little laugh as he contemplated the enormity of the Accelerators’ actions. ANA and the deterrence fleet were the only possible entities that could have ended Living Dream’s Pilgrimage. Apart from the warrior Raiel. Even as he thought it, he knew he couldn’t rely on the aliens guarding the Gulf. The Accelerator Faction had access to Dark Fortress technology now. That might just allow them to get past the warrior Raiel.

He employed his biononics to adjust his wilder physiological parameters, calming his thoughts. Secondary routines came on line, expanding his mentality, allowing him to examine the situation properly. It was the only way to be of any genuine help to Lizzie and the kids.

If the deterrence fleet couldn’t break out of the force field, it was extremely unlikely that the navy could break in. That left the Accelerator Faction agents and scientists who’d built the Swarm or—long shot—the Raiel at High Angel. The navy and the President would no doubt be asking the High Angel as a matter of urgency, which left him with the prospect of tracking down an Accelerator agent who might know how to switch the damn thing off. And they would be extremely reluctant to tell him.

The starship settled on its pad. Passengers hurried off, leaking uncertainty out of their gaiamotes, contributing to the vast pall of unease that was contaminating the entire gaiafield. Some services at the spaceport had ground to a halt as the staff stopped everything to access the unisphere news.

A private starship had already arrived at the Sol force field and was relaying images of the almighty prison wall erected across space. Commentators were dredging up the historical records of the Second Chance’s first contact with the Dyson Alpha barrier and drawing unlikely parallels.

The Delivery Man stood in the airy glass and wood arrival hall, part of a bewildered crowd of travelers staring at the red solidos hanging above the wormhole terminus to Tampico. It was as if the shining symbols somehow made the situation a whole lot more real than the frantic unisphere broadcasts. They warned that the old Big15 world no longer had a connection to Earth. To add to the irony, the preset symbols advised making alternative journey arrangements.

“Quite right,” the Delivery Man muttered to himself. First off, he had to acquire some serious hardware and firepower if he was going to start snatching Accelerator agents. It was only logical. That brought him up against his choices. The only Accelerator agent he knew who would definitely have the kind of information he needed was Marius. Moreover, Marius was now back on Fanallisto, where there was a cache of field support equipment that the Delivery Man had the codes for. “Holy crap,” he hissed at the enormity of the decision.

His u-shadow accessed the spaceport’s network to grab flight times of starships going back to Fanallisto. Already, operators were starting to cancel flights as a precaution.

That was when his u-shadow reported that the Conservative Faction was opening a secure link. “What?” The people nearby gave him curious looks; his jolt of surprise had spilled out into the gaiafield. But there was no doubting the call’s authenticity; every certificate and code key was correct. He collected himself and smiled blankly as he accepted the call. “Have you broken out through the force field?” he asked.

“Not exactly. This is a … portion of what you know as the Conservative Faction; think of me as the executive.”

“All right. So how can you communicate through the force field?”

“I can’t. I’m outside it.”

“But the faction is part of ANA.”

“Could we just move past the definitions stage, please? Take it as read; this is the Conservative Faction speaking.”

“Is there any way to get through the barrier? I have to talk to my family.”

“Forget it. The bastards were smart mapping out Dark Fortress technology. ANA and Earth are going to be sitting on the sidelines for the duration. It’s down to us now.”

The Delivery Man frowned. “Bastards,” he mouthed. This wasn’t the way the Conservative Faction spoke. Secondary routines dug up the “sidelines” crack; it was an old sporting reference. Very old. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Like I said: the executive. What? You think we’re all equal in ANA?”

“Well … yes. Of course.”

“Nice theory. Okay, then, the executive is all nice and homogeneous and glowing in love from everyone else involved in the faction. Happy now?”

“But you can’t be in ANA.”

“No. I’m taking a short sabbatical. Lucky for us. Now, are you with me? Are you going to help stop Marius and Ilanthe?”

“Just so you understand my position, I’m going to require proof of what you are before I do anything.”

“Sonofabitch Highers. You’re all fucking bureaucrats at heart, aren’t you?”

“What the hell are you?”

“I’ll give you proof I’m what I claim, but you’ve got to come and collect it.”

“Listen, my priority—actually my only concern—is taking down that barrier. Nothing else is relevant.”

“Brilliant. And how do you propose to do that?”

“Somewhere in the Commonwealth there will be an Accelerator with the knowledge. Once I track them down, I will extract the information. I am prepared to use extreme methods.”

“I think I misjudged you. That’s not a bad idea. I’m almost tempted.”

“What do you mean ‘misjudged’?”

“Face it, son, you don’t exactly have a double-O prefix, do you? You just deliver things for us, with a bit of low-level covert crap thrown in to bolster your ego.”

The Delivery Man’s u-shadow couldn’t find a reference to double-O, at least not one that made any sense. “I’ve gone up against Marius before,” he said, bridling.

“You had a cup of hot chocolate with him before. Come on, let’s get real here.”

“Well, what’s your proposal?”

“First off, get back to Purlap spaceport and pick up the starship you dumped there. Trust me, the person it was intended for isn’t going to be using it now. And we’re going to need some decent hardware to pull this off.”

“Pull what off?” But he was obscurely heartened by the “executive” knowing about the starship. It meant that the thing was genuine or that the entire Conservative Faction was a broken joke; if it was the latter, the Accelerators wouldn’t be toying with him like this. That wasn’t how they worked.

“One stage at a time. Go get the starship.”

The Delivery Man reviewed the spaceport’s network again. “The commercial lines are shutting down all their scheduled flights. And not just here by the look of it.” His u-shadow was tracking data from across the Commonwealth. Nobody wanted to be flying when the Accelerators were out there unchecked by the navy.

“Boo hoo,” said the Conservative executive. “You just claimed you were prepared to use any method necessary.”

“To get me back with my family.”

“This will, like nothing else. Now think: Where are you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re in the middle of a spaceport with three hundred and seventeen starships currently on the ground around you, according to its official registry. Pick a good one, take it over, and get your ass back to Purlap. You’re a secret agent, remember? Earn your double-O status.”

“Take it over?” the Delivery Man repeated.

“Good man. Call me when you get there. And don’t take too long. Marius was on Fanallisto for a reason, and given what’s just gone down, it must be a hell of a good one for him to be off center stage. He’s near the top of their hierarchy.”

The call ended, leaving a new communication icon gleaming in the Delivery Man’s exovision. “Take it over,” he said to himself. “Okay, then.”

He started to walk back down the length of the arrival hall. His u-shadow extracted information from the registry and produced a short list. There were some navy ships, including a couple of scouts, which were almost tempting, but that would require a little too much bravado, and he didn’t want to have to bodyloss anyone. Especially not now, when the navy was going to need every asset it had. Instead he picked a private yacht called Lady Rasfay.

It was cool outside, with high clouds stretching across the early-morning sky. Dew slicked the spaceport’s concrete roadways and the red-tinged grass analogue. It even deposited a layer of condensation on the taxi capsule the Delivery Man took out to pad F37, a couple of miles away from the main passenger terminal. He climbed out, shivering against the chilly air. The Lady Rasfay was ten meters in front of him, a blue-white cone with an oval cross section, like some kind of ancient missile lying on its side. He never did get why so many people wanted their starships to look streamlined, as if they were capable of aerodynamic flight. But the owner, Duaro, was clearly one who favored image.

The Delivery Man’s u-shadow had already performed a low-level infiltration of the ship’s network. Nobody was on board, and the primary systems were all in powerdown mode. A quick scan of the drive performance figures backed up what he’d guessed from the physical profile. Duaro had invested a lot of energy and mass allocations (EMAs) and time on the hyperdrive, which could now push the ship along at a fraction over fifteen light-years an hour, as good as a hyperdrive could get.

His u-shadow put a civil spaceworthiness authority code into the ship’s network, and the airlock opened. A metal stair slid out. The Delivery Man walked up it, not bothering to scan around, an act that might betray him as a guilty party. That was the beauty of a Higher world: No one really thought in terms of theft; if you saw someone entering a starship, you just assumed it was legitimate. Thanks to EMAs and replicator technology, material items were available to all; certainly a starship was hardly a possession to envy.

Not that Duaro was completely guileless. The network had several safeguards built in. After several milliseconds analyzing them, the Delivery Man’s u-shadow presented him with eight options for circumventing the restrictions and gaining direct control over the smartcore.

Dim red lighting cast a strange glow along the narrow central companionway. The yacht had a simple layout, almost old-fashioned in nature, with the flight cabin at the front, a lounge behind that in the midsection, and two sleeping cabins aft. Once he was inside, the Delivery Man’s biononics performed a short-range field scan to find a suitable point where he could physically access the network’s nodes. That was the same time he heard passionate groaning from the portside sleeping cabin.

The door flowed aside silently. Inside, the sleeping cabin’s decor was ancient teak, carved to cover every curve and angle of the bulkhead walls and lovingly polished. Two figures were in flagrante on the narrow cot.

“Duaro, I presume?” the Delivery Man said loudly.

The man squirmed about in alarm. The woman squealed and scrabbled frantically at the silk sheets to cover herself. She was exceptionally beautiful, the Delivery Man acknowledged, with a mane of flame-red hair and a face covered in freckles. She was also very young; a Firstlife if the Delivery Man was any judge.

“Did Mirain send you?” Duaro asked urgently. “Look, we can conclude this in a civilized fashion.”

“Mirain?” the Delivery Man mused out loud. His u-shadow ran a fast cross-reference on Duaro’s profile. “You mean your wife, Mirain?”

The woman on the bed cringed, giving Duaro a sulky glance.

“I can’t believe she went to this much trouble,” Duaro groused. “This is just a harmless little fling.”

“Oh, thank you,” the woman snapped.

“Sneaking on board and keeping the lights off and the smartcore dumb,” the Delivery Man mused. “Doesn’t appear that harmless.”

“Look, let’s be reasonable about this …”

The Delivery Man gave a huge smile at the magnificent, timeless cliché. “Yes, let’s. Shall I tell you what I want?”

“Of course,” Duaro said with an air of cautious relief.

“The yacht’s smartcore access codes.”

“What?”

“Non-negotiable,” the Delivery Man said, and powered up several weapons enrichments.

Paula Myo couldn’t remember being so shocked before, not ever. The emotional trauma had become physical in nature, with her heart racing and her hands trembling as if she were some kind of Natural human. She had to sit down hard on the Alexis Denken’s cabin floor before her legs gave way. The only thing her exovision revealed was a vast blank plain, which was what the Capital-class ship Kabul was seeing as it scanned the outside of the Sol barrier. Her link came directly from Pentagon II on the secure channel her status entitled her to. But there was nothing she could do, no help she could offer. She was a simple passive observer of the greatest disaster to befall the Commonwealth since the barrier around Dyson Alpha came down. That memory stirred a possibility.

“Do you have the spatial coordinates of the Swarm components when they materialized?” she asked Admiral Juliaca, who was Kazimir’s deputy and now de facto commander of the Commonwealth Navy. “The original Dark Fortress had an opening on the outside, which is how it was turned off.”

“Nice try,” Juliaca said. “That was the first thing the Kabul attempted. There is no bulge in the Sol barrier as far as we can detect, and I’ve got eleven ships out there searching now, as well as several civilian craft. It’s perfectly smooth, certainly in the areas around the swarm components we’ve scanned.”

“Of course,” Paula muttered. No fool like an old one; it was never going to be that easy. She shook herself and ordered her biononics to stabilize her wayward body. Her thoughts, though, were still sluggish, as if they were moving through ice. I thought I got rid of this nonsense when I resequenced. Even as she thought it, some small part of her mind was chiding her for being too hard on herself. But for Accelerators to bring this off successfully was a monumental failure of intelligence gathering and analysis on ANA’s part, for which she bore some considerable responsibility. Any kind of human would be perturbed by the enormity of the coup, which was what this was.

“And we’re certain the deterrence fleet is caught inside?” Paula asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Juliaca said. “There is no response whatsoever from Kazimir. If he could get in touch with us, he would. He was commanding the fleet, so logically the fleet is inside the Sol barrier.”

Paula, who had been monitoring what she could of the ANA judicial conclave, knew the Admiral was right. But … “The whole fleet? That seems unlikely. Surely there’s some craft held in reserve.”

“One moment,” the Admiral said.

A new communication icon appeared in Paula’s exovision. She welcomed the color it brought to the numbing image of the Sol barrier. As she acknowledged the call, she pushed the Kabul’s imagery into a peripheral mode. “Mr. President,” she said formally.

“Investigator Myo,” President Alcamo replied. “I’m glad you are still available. Frankly, I’m looking for some meaningful advice right now. Without ANA we’re woefully short of relevant information.”

“Whatever I can do, of course,” Paula said. “I was going to suggest to the Admiral that the remainder of the deterrence fleet be deployed to Sol to see if they can break in.”

“That’s the problem,” Admiral Juliaca said. “I don’t have any knowledge of the deterrence fleet. There’s nothing in any navy facility, not even a contact code. And the navy network has acknowledged my authority as commander.”

“But they must be getting in touch with you?” a startled Paula said.

“Not as yet.”

“I see.” A notion was starting to fall into place. It wasn’t good.

“Paula, do you know anything about the fleet?” President Alcamo asked.

“I’m afraid not, sir, though I do know how reluctant ANA and Kazimir were to deploy it. That does suggest to me that it might not be a fleet at all.”

“A single ship?” Juliaca asked.

“It fits what’s currently happening. It is inconceivable that any remaining fleet ships would not get in touch with you in an emergency of this magnitude. We should conclude there was only one and it is trapped inside the Sol barrier along with ANA.”

“You mean we’re defenseless?” President Alcamo asked.

“No, sir,” the Admiral replied. “The Ocisen invasion fleet and their Prime allies were disabled before the Sol barrier was established. There is no other immediate external threat, and the Capital- and River-class squadrons are more than capable of dealing with any known species within range. The deterrence fleet was always there to deal with a post-physical-level threat.”

“Our threat is not external,” Paula said. “It is Ilanthe and that damned inversion core, whatever the hell it is.”

“You hadn’t heard of it before?” the President asked.

“No, sir. All we knew was that the Accelerators hoped to achieve what they called Fusion with the Void in order to bootstrap themselves up to postphysical status.” She drew a breath and started to analyze the situation, trying to predict Ilanthe’s next move. “There is one critical factor remaining which is currently outside anyone’s control.”

“Araminta,” the Admiral ventured.

“Correct,” Paula said. “The only way Ilanthe and Living Dream can get inside the Void is with Araminta’s help. Which will be coerced once they find her.”

“Can you find her first?” the President asked.

“She’s on Chobamba, and it appears as though she’s already made a deal with some faction.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. But their agents must have helped to get her off Viotia. I imagine they are now as shocked as we are by the loss of ANA. That might make them open to a deal. We have an opportunity.”

“Can you do that?” the President asked.

“I can reach Chobamba shortly,” Paula said. Inwardly she was disappointed. The Alexis Denken was only an hour out from Viotia, and Chobamba was five hundred ten light-years from her current position. All I ever do these days is rush from one crisis point to another and arrive too late each time. That cannot stand; there’s too much at stake. I have to up my game, get ahead for once.

“Thank you,” the President said. “When you find her, take her into custody. No polite requests. We are beyond that now. She goes with you; she does not ally herself with anyone else—that cannot be permitted. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly, Mr. President. If I can’t capture her, nobody else must be allowed to. I will see to that.”

“You’ll do that, Paula?”

“Most assuredly.”

“Thank you. Admiral, do we have any other fields of progress? Can the navy eliminate the ship that picked up the inversion core?”

“Unknown, sir. It was a large, powerful ship of a marque we’ve never seen before. And we’d have to find it first.”

“Ilanthe will want the same thing as the rest of us,” Paula said. “The Second Dreamer. She’s probably heading for Chobamba now.”

“Very well,” the President said. “Admiral, put together a task force of Capital ships and dispatch them to Chobamba. I want that ship destroyed.”

“There wasn’t much information from the Sol system before the barrier went up,” the Admiral said. “But the ship did appear to have a force field based on Dark Fortress technology. We’re assuming the Accelerators are going to use it to get past the Raiel in the Gulf.”

“Sweet Ozzie,” the President said. “Do you mean you can’t intercept it?”

“We can probably find it; our sensors are good enough to penetrate most stealth systems. But I doubt we can ever catch it, not with the kind of speed it was last confirmed traveling at. And yes, if we did corner it on Chobamba, our weapons would probably not get through its defenses.”

“Crap. So it really does all come down to Araminta?”

“It looks that way, sir.”

Paula held her own opinion in check; the few comments she might have made weren’t based on fact. “I’d advise getting in touch with the High Angel directly, Mr. President,” she said. “If anyone can get through a barrier produced by Dark Fortress technology, it will be the Raiel.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s my next call. I will inform you of the outcome.”

The secure link closed. Paula ordered the smartcore to plot a course to Chobamba. The bright green line hung in her exovision as it awaited implementation, slicing through the astrogration display. Something made her hold off. She was sure that even if she got there in ten hours’ time, it would all be over. By now, everyone with a team chasing Araminta would know her new location. As soon as Living Dream pinned down her exact geographical coordinate, there would be a scramble to deliver local representatives into the area. Either the team guarding her would evacuate her again, or she’d leave with the strongest raider team.

The whole situation made little sense. It was obvious to any professional that Living Dream would refine its search techniques after Bodant Park. Whoever it was who’d flown her to Chobamba must have known that, even if they didn’t know how good Ethan’s dream masters were. Keeping Araminta out of sight once she was secure was the most basic rule.

So who took her there?

Half the factions chasing her would have killed her to prevent the Accelerators from gaining any advantage. Most of the others, those which had goals or ambitions similar to the Accelerators’, would have offered a deal. Yet here Araminta was, going through Inigo’s dreams, seemingly without a care in the universe.

Paula drew a sharp breath. Of course, the simplest explanation is always the most likely. She really isn’t aware of the danger, so she isn’t under the protection of any professional team. Then how in God’s name did she get to Chobamba?

She launched her u-shadow on a mission to gather every scrap of data on Araminta. Everything Liatris McPeierl had put together, the files from Colwyn City’s civic database, records from Langham on her family and its agriculture cybernetics business, financial records, medical records (very few; she had an excellent Advancer heritage), legal records—mostly her messy divorce handled by her cousin’s law firm. All of it was resolutely average; none of it made her any different from billions of other External world citizens.

But she is different. She’s a Dreamer. Something makes her incredibly special. What? Gore has become one, and that’s outrageous; there’s nobody rooted in the practical more than Gore. Yet he worked out the secret. The only theory there’s ever been about why Inigo dreamed of Edeard is because they were somehow related: family. Paula’s heart jumped in excitement. As are Gore and Justine. Shit! But Araminta dreamed of a Skylord … She growled in frustration, slapping her hands against her temples. “Come on, think!” Ignore the Skylord thing. Go for the family angle … Her u-shadow zipped through Araminta’s ancestry, correlating birth records and registered partnerships, tracking back through the generations.

A small file flashed across her exovision, part of the family tree.

“Holy crap,” she yelped. There it was, plain and beautifully simple, five generations down the line. The name simply lifted itself out of the list and shone at Paula without any help from secondary routines.

“Mellanie Rescorai,” she whispered in amazed delight. “Oh, yes. Over a thousand years, and she’s still nothing but trouble.” Even better, Mellanie was named a Silfen Friend like her first husband, Orion. Paula remembered an encounter over eight hundred years ago, when Mellanie was paying one of her visits to the Commonwealth again. They’d both been invited to some high-powered political event; it might even have been a presidential inauguration ball. Dear old Mellanie had positively gloated about being named a Friend; it put her one up on everyone else in the room that evening, Paula especially. That was Mellanie for you: sweetly savage.

“Mellanie!” Paula was chuckling now. However it worked, however a Dreamer connected to someone inside the Void, that was the root of it: the Silfen magic, actually the most advanced weird technology in the galaxy. Ozzie had developed the gaiafield out of his friendship gift from the Silfen, and that was the whole medium for dreams. Araminta was descended from a Silfen Friend. And Inigo … well, who knew?

The paths! Paula’s u-shadow ran another search. Sure enough, there was rumor of a path on Chobamba, in the middle of its desert continent. And one at Francola Wood, right on the edge of Colwyn City. She didn’t join up with any faction; she didn’t fly to Chobamba. She walked!

That meant Araminta was still surviving on luck and smarts, just as Oscar had said, and therefore had no idea Living Dream had found her. She had to be warned, which wasn’t going to be easy given that she’d cut herself off from the unisphere.

Paula’s macrocellular clusters linked her directly to the starship’s network. There was a memory kube on board that was heavily encrypted, very heavily; she needed all five keys and a neural pathway verification to access it. Stored within were programs that had been accumulated over fifteen hundred years of investigations: programs of last resort, custom-written for the top ranks of criminals, arms dealers, politicians … Simply knowing about some of them was a crime. None of their creators would be coming out of suspension for centuries. The Paula of twelve hundred years ago would have been mortified that her future self hoarded such things. But on several occasions they’d proved rather useful. Paula activated one; it wasn’t even on the lethal list.

Kristabel’s kiss was gentle yet so intense, so rich with desire and love. “That’s why I love you,” she whispered. There could be no doubt how sincere she was. A boundless love that promised a lifetime of happiness. And Edeard finally knew he’d done the right thing.

Araminta sighed in perfect contentment, blinking as the chalet’s ceiling took shape above her. Tears were trailing out from the corners of her eyes as she came down off the emotional high. “Great Ozzie,” she murmured, still dazed by the dream. Now she understood why Living Dream had so many adherents, why they were all desperate to live in the Void. Time travel. Except it wasn’t. It was resetting the universe around yourself, the ultimate solipsism. How many times had she said to herself: If I only knew then what I know now. With that ability she could go back to the moment she met Laril and laugh off his charm and seductive promises. She could refuse Likan and never visit his mansion for the weekend. Go back into her teens and tolerate her parents, knowing that life offered so much more than the farm, not worrying that she’d be condemned to the family business for centuries, yet at the same time enjoying her youth. The way it should be enjoyed. And then growing up truly free of regrets. Meet Mr. Bovey in a Commonwealth that had never heard of the Second Dreamer.

That was the life—the lives—that awaited her in the Void.

She could even feel the Skylord’s thoughts at the back of her mind. All she had to do was call it. Say: take me in.

Such a simple thing to do. Three little words, and I would be happy forever.

But it was also the life that awaited everyone who went with her. And the energy it took to fuel such egotistic wish fulfillment came from consuming the rest of the galaxy. Every star, every planet, every biological body—they were what supplied the atoms it took to make the Void’s magnificent ability possible. The ones who paid the price.

“I can’t,” she told the darkened chalet. “I will not do that.”

The decision made her skin chill and her heart flutter. But it had been made now. Her resolution would not waver. Logic and instinct were as one. This is who I am. This is what makes me.

Araminta slowly sat upright. It was still night outside, with maybe three hours left until dawn. She needed a drink and some decent dreamless sleep. There was still some of the English breakfast tea in the flask from Smoky James. She rolled off the bed and saw the red text drifting down the unisphere node’s little screen on top of the bedside cabinet. She blinked at it and read it again.

Tea and sleep abruptly forgotten, she knelt in front of the bedside cabinet and used the keyboard to bring up the news articles. Her gaiamotes opened slightly, allowing her to know the horror and fear flooding through the gaiafield. It wasn’t a hoax. The Accelerator Faction had imprisoned Earth. ANA was gone. The rest of the Commonwealth was on its own. She stared numbly at the screen for a long moment, then accessed the code in her storage lacuna and typed it in.

Laril’s face appeared, gaunt and apprehensive, with drawn skin and deep bags under his eyes. “Oh, thank fuck,” he wheezed. “Are you okay? I’ve been going frantic.”

She smiled. It was the only way she could stop herself from bursting into tears. “I’m okay,” she promised him with a voice that wavered dangerously.

“And you’re—” He frowned, his head shaking from side to side as he focused on exovision displays. “You’re on Chobamba. How did you get there?”

“Long story. Laril, they’ve taken away the Earth!”

“I know. ANA was the only thing that could stop this.”

“Yes. Someone helped me. Oscar, his name was Oscar. I’d never have gotten out of Bodant Park without him. He said he worked for ANA. He said he would help me. I was thinking I might call him, ask ANA to help me. What do I do now?”

“That depends on what you’ve decided. Are you going to help Living Dream get into the Void?”

“No. It can’t happen. They’ll wipe out the galaxy.”

“Okay, that brings your options down to three.”

“Go on.”

“Ask the navy for protection. If anyone has the firepower to stand up to the Accelerators, it’s them.”

“Yes. That’s good. What else?”

“This Oscar person. If he does work for ANA, he should also be able to keep you away from Living Dream. He’ll probably have resources which none of the others do.”

“What’s the last one?”

“Side with a faction that is opposed to the Advancers and Living Dream.”

“But there aren’t any factions left.”

“They’re locked up inside the Sol barrier, but their agents are still out here in the Commonwealth. And they’re all looking for you. I can negotiate with one for you. Get them to take you away, safe, where no one will ever find you.”

“Then what? Running away doesn’t solve anything. This has to be finished.”

“My darling Araminta, there is no ‘finish.’ The Void has been there for a billion years, more probably. The Raiel couldn’t get rid of it; the Commonwealth certainly can’t.”

“Somebody must be able to. There has to be a way.”

“Maybe ANA knew how.”

“They’ll get the Earth out eventually,” she said, suddenly fearful. “Won’t they? They’ll be trying? They must be.”

“Yes. Of course they will. They’ll be trying very hard indeed. The rest of the Commonwealth, certainly the Inner worlds, have a lot of talent and ability and resources, more than you realize. They’ll bring down the barrier.”

“Right, then,” she said, trying to convince herself. “I’ll take that option. I’ll call Oscar.”

Laril smiled weakly. “That’s my Araminta. Would you like me to call him for you?”

She nodded. “Please. I’m too scared to access the unisphere.”

“All right. Have you got a code for him?”

“Yes.” She started typing it in.

“That’s good. I’ll make—”

The image on the screen broke apart into a hash of blue and red static.

“Laril!” she gasped.

The static swirled, then formed bright green letters: Araminta, please access this.

She scuttled backward across the floor. “No,” she gasped. “No, what is this? What’s happening?”

“Araminta,” the node’s speaker said. It was a female voice, composed and authoritative. “This is a shotgun message into Chobamba’s cybersphere. All nodes will receive it and broadcast it to every address code; it will also be held in storage until purged, which should take a while. Hopefully that gives it long enough to reach you somehow. I am not aiming it at you directly, because I don’t know precisely where you are. Living Dream has discovered you are on Chobamba, but they haven’t yet determined your exact position. Don’t use the gaiafield again; they have very sophisticated tracking routines in the confluence nests. Several teams of combat-enriched operatives are working on finding you, the same type of people responsible for the Bodant Park massacre. You must leave immediately. I’d advise you to use the route you took to get there. It is relatively safe. Do not hesitate. Time is now a critical factor. Please know, there are people working to help you. The Commonwealth Navy is capable of protecting you. Ask for their aid. Go now.”

Araminta stared at the node in disbelief; the green lettering remained on the screen, casting a pale glow across the darkened chalet. “Oh, sweet Ozzie!” It came out in a pitiful squeal. They know I’m here. Everyone knows I’m here. The woman was right; she had to leave. But it would take hours to reach the start of the path out in the desert. She looked around the chalet as her initial panic tipped over into desperation, seeing everything she’d bought, the gear that was essential for a trek along the paths between worlds. It was heavy. She could hardly run carrying it all with her, certainly not that far. Then she glanced at the Smoky James wrappers, which she hadn’t got around to putting in the trash chute, and an idea formed.

Smoky James was good. Araminta had to admit that. It was three o’clock in the morning, and they took only twenty minutes to deliver the pizza and fries with a flask of coffee. The contraption Ranto was riding as he pulled up in front of Araminta’s chalet was something she’d never seen before—an absurdly primitive three-wheeled bike of some kind, presumably the great-great-granddaddy of a modern trike pod. It didn’t look safe, with a leather saddle seat slung in the center of an open black carbon frame that had its fair share of repair patches, like epoxy bandages swelling the struts. The axle-drive wheels were connected to the frame on long magnetic suspension dampers, which didn’t quite seem to match. Ranto was steering it manually with a set of chrome-orange handlebars. With a sinking heart, Araminta guessed this was necessity rather than preference. It wasn’t going to have any kind of smart technology ready to assume the driving and navigation functions.

He clambered off and pulled the pizza carton out of a big pannier behind the saddle.

Finally, she thought, a plus point. That’ll hold all my gear.

“Here you go,” he said with the kind of miserabalist cheer exclusive to night-shift workers on very basic pay.

Araminta was fairly sure Ranto didn’t have an Advancer heritage. Too many spots on his glum teenage face, his long nose made sure he wasn’t handsome, and even though he was already tall, he was still growing, producing long gangling arms and legs from a torso that seemed oddly thin. From her point of view that was good; he wouldn’t have macrocellular clusters. He couldn’t connect directly to the unisphere.

Araminta took the carton from him. “Thanks.” She held up her cash coin. “How much for the bike-thing?”

Ranto’s slightly awkward smile turned to incredulity. “What?”

“How much?”

“It’s my bike,” he protested.

“I know that. I need it.”

“Why?”

“That’s not important. I just need it. Now.”

“I can’t sell my bike! I fixed it up myself.”

“It’s yours, so you can sell it. And it’s a seller’s market. You’ll never get another chance like this.”

He looked from her to the bike, then back again. Araminta was sure she could hear his brain working, little cogs clicking around under unaccustomed stress. His cheeks colored.

“You could buy a new one,” she said with gentle encouragement. For a moment she visualized Ranto riding around on some massive glowing scarlet sports bike with floating wheels. Come on, focus! If he didn’t want to part with it, there were unarmed combat routines in her lacuna she could use, loaded a long time ago when the whole divorce mess started and she had to go into districts of Colwyn City that had a bad rep. She really didn’t want to. For a start, she didn’t quite trust them, or herself. Besides, hitting someone like Ranto was just naked cruelty. But I will. If I have to. This is far more important than his pride. She brought the lacuna index up into her exovision, ready to access the routine.

“Five thousand Chobamba francs,” Ranto announced nervously. “I couldn’t let it go for anything less.”

“Deal.” Araminta shoved her cash card toward him.

“Really?” Her immediate agreement startled him.

“Yes.” She authorized the money.

Ranto blinked in surprise as his own card registered the transfer. Then he grinned. It made him look quite endearing.

Araminta slung her backpack into the open pannier and turned back to the dazed teenager. “How do I drive it?” she asked.

It took a couple of minutes on the broad road outside the StarSide Motel, with Ranto running about after her shouting instructions as his long arms waved frantically, but Araminta soon got the hang of it. The handlebars had a manual throttle and brake activator. She really had to concentrate on using the brake; all her life she’d driven vehicles with automatic braking. After the first couple of semi-disasters she began to overcompensate, which nearly flung her forward out of the saddle.

“Doesn’t it have any safety systems?” she yelled at Ranto as she curved around again.

He shrugged. “Drive safe,” he suggested.

After another three practice circuits on the street she did just that and set off for the one road out of Miledeep Water. Ranto waved goodbye. She could see that in the little mirrors sticking up from the handlebars. There was no three-sixty sensor coverage—actually, there were no sensors. His lanky frame was backdropped by the green-lit motel reception building, one hand held up and an expression of mild regret on his face.

Araminta concentrated on the route out of Miledeep Water, retracing her walk in not a day before. The bike’s headlight produced a wide fan of pink-tinged light across the road ahead. It was okayish, but she couldn’t see much outside of its beam, and the streetlights grew farther apart as the road climbed the crater wall. She quickly activated every biononic optical enrichment she had, bringing analysis and image resolution programs on line to help. The resulting vision was a lot better, taking away her total dependence on the headlight.

Once the last building was behind her, and she hadn’t fallen off or crashed, and nothing mechanically disastrous had happened, she eased the throttle up, and her speed increased. The axle motors were quite smooth, and the suspension kept her a lot more stable than she’d expected. It was just the wind that was a problem, flapping her fleece about and stinging her eyes. She really should have worn glasses of some kind. There was a pair of big shades in her backpack, but somehow she preferred the discomfort to stopping and fishing them out. The unknown woman’s blanket warning on the unisphere had unnerved her.

Five minutes after leaving the motel behind, she reached the crest of the crater. The last streetlight stood on the side of the road, not far from where she’d dumped her flagon harness. She was almost tempted to pick it up again, but sentiment at this point translated to blatant stupidity. Araminta gunned the throttle and zoomed off down the slope into the desert.

As soon as she was past the field of illumination thrown out from the streetlight, she switched the bike’s headlight off. Her image resolution routines produced a reasonable gray-green view of the long straight road ahead, enough to give her the confidence to keep going at the same speed. After all, there was nothing else traveling along it. She could see all the way to the horizon, where the intensifiers showed the stars burning brightly behind a wavering curtain of warm desert air.

It was a six-minute ride to the bottom of the crater wall. By the time she reached the desert floor, the bike’s tiny display panel told her she was doing close to a hundred kilometers an hour. It felt more like five hundred. The wind was a constant blast in her face, and her clothes felt like they were being pulled out behind her. She bared her teeth into the airstream, actually starting to enjoy the experience.

Did Ranto and his friends come out here in the evenings and race along the empty road? She knew if she and her friends had had these kind of machines when she was growing up on the farm, she would have had a whole lot more fun.

And I can have them. In the Void.

She grimaced. Actually, no, I can’t. Stop thinking like this. It’s weak, and anyway, the Void won’t allow technology.

Not that she really counted this bike as technology. The battery under the saddle actually hummed as the axle motors drew power. Something in the left rear wheel clicked as it spun around (which should be impossible with frictionless bearings). And the tires made a low growling sound as they charged along the gritty concrete. Maybe it’ll actually work on the Silfen paths.

There were no landmarks out on the desert road, nothing distinctive on the side of the road. She wasn’t sure where the side track was. Not that it had been much of a track, just a couple of tire ruts across the hard ground. Even with the headlights she wasn’t going to see those in the night. Instead she reached for it with her mind, nervous that spreading her thoughts in such a fashion might allow Living Dream to find her once again. But the difference between the gaiafield and the Silfen community was clear enough to her, allowing her to avoid the former studiously.

The Silfen path felt her as much as she felt it. And somewhere up ahead and to the side of the road it opened fully like a flower whose time had come to bloom. Araminta slowed the bike and gingerly turned off the road. The uneven desert was littered with small stones. Their impact kept shunting her front tire off the track, leaving her to wrestle the handlebars back. It was difficult, taking her full strength. Her arms were soon aching from the constant struggle. Sweat built up on her shoulders and forehead.

That was when she heard the hypersonic booms rolling in through the clear desert air, thunderous cracks that hurt her eardrums. Her head swung around, searching anxiously. Behind her, the top of the crater containing Miledeep Water glowed with the haze of the town’s street lighting, creating a mellow nimbus that caressed the dark night sky. She saw bright glimmers of purple light streaking across the foreign constellations, curving down toward the lonely town. There must have been six or seven of them.

“Oh, crap,” she grunted, and gunned the throttle hard. “Here we go again.” The bike started to buck about as it jolted its way over the coarse ground. Dry bushes snapped as she rode right over them, spiky twigs snaring in the hub spokes to thrash around and around, their tips whipping her boots. Holding a straight line was a huge effort with the bike fighting every motion.

A couple more booms announced the arrival of more capsules at high velocity. Any second now Araminta expected the sky to light with laserfire in a repeat of Bodant Park. The bike was bouncing wildly; she could actually hear the axle drives whining. She fought to keep it straight as the front wheel shook from side to side. There was nothing for it but to slow down, though by now she could feel the start of the path lapping toward her like the advancing waves of an incoming tide.

The bike’s power fell off, then surged, ebbed again– Little amber lights winked on across the handlebars. She had no idea what they meant. She throttled back, and the outlandish machine freewheeled on forward. They were on a shallow incline now, leading down to an ancient winding streambed, so all she did was steer, keeping away from the larger stones and boulders.

By the time she jerked down onto the softer sand of the streambed, there was no power left and the bike rolled to an easy halt. Nothing worked. The screen was blank, the amber lights had gone out, and no matter how she squeezed the throttle, the axle motors didn’t engage.

Araminta sat there on the saddle for a long minute, letting the cramps and tension ease out of her shoulders and arms. Her bum was sore from the saddle, which plainly needed a lot more padding. Nonetheless, she grinned fondly at the bike.

I made it. The stupid thing got me out.

There was no doubt about it; she wasn’t on Chobamba anymore.

She climbed off slowly and pressed her fists into the small of her back, groaning as her spine creaked. The skin on her face was raw from the wind’s buffeting. It didn’t matter. She felt ridiculously pleased with herself for eluding her pursuers yet again, which was stupid, she knew. It had been due mainly to luck, though she had to give herself some credit. She’d responded to the situation well enough after she got the warning.

And what that woman did proves there are still people trying to help me, and not just her; there was Oscar back at Bodnant Park, too. A development that gave her a lot of hope. One thing she did know: Her decision meant that her time of running was over. There were no easy options ahead now, no waiting for someone else to do something. It’s down to me now. There was a lot of trepidation accompanying that thought, and maybe a tinge of fear, too, but there was also a degree of satisfaction. All I have to do now is find the people opposed to the Pilgrimage and take a stand with them.

With that she pulled the backpack out of the pannier, settled it on her shoulders, and set off along the streambed. That at least she didn’t have to think about; it was the right way.

In less than an hour her boots were starting to sink into the sand, which was becoming damp. Grass was growing on the banks. It was still night, and her enriched vision couldn’t make out much, but the desert had ended, she was sure of that. Then she caught sight of trees on the edge of her vision.

Water started to fill the imprints her boots left in the mushy ground. The streambed wasn’t sand anymore; it was fine soil. The stones on the banks were coated in moss and lichens. She scrambled up out of the gully and began to walk alongside it. Cooler air made her shiver, and she reset the thermal fibers woven into her fleece to keep more of her body warmth in. Not much farther on a thin trickle of water was running along the middle of the streambed. Far overhead huge dense star clusters filled the sky, imperial patches of silver-white scintillations so much more impressive than anything visible from anywhere in the Greater Commonwealth. Araminta smiled at that.

The water in the streambed grew deeper and wider as she walked on, turning from a rivulet to a broad current gurgling merrily around half-submerged rocks. Trees closed in, throwing tall branches up into the night, curtaining the starfield. Another stream merged into the one she was following. That was when she heard the first strands of song. The Silfen were somewhere close by; she could feel them as much as hear them. Simple harmonies slipping across the sylvan land, as much a part of it as the air. She halted and listened, drawing the melody down as she might sample a particularly pleasant perfume. It was enchanting, rising and flowing in its own rhythm and far higher than most human throats could reach.

Like a birdsong, she thought, a flock of birds singing a hymn.

Smiling pleasantly at the notion, she set off again, keeping to the edge of the stream, which was now almost wide enough to be classed as a river. The contentment growing in her mind was almost narcotic. This time she was going to meet them. It was inevitable.

The sky slowly lightened above her. Tall waving branches on either side of the surging watercourse transformed to black silhouettes against a pale gray pastel. The grand star clusters faded away in deference to the dawn sun. Dew began to coat the grass and small ferns, splashing off on her boots. Araminta couldn’t help the smile on her face, even though she knew any relief here could only be temporary.

The trees gave way abruptly, and she gasped in delighted astonishment at the vista before her. She was high up on the edge of a plateau that swept away into a wondrous primordial landscape. Perfectly clear air allowed her to see for what must have been over a hundred miles. Snowcapped mountains fenced the scene on two sides, and ahead of her the ground undulated away with hillocks and dells adorned in lush woodland. Morning mist eased gently around the slopes, blanketing the deepest hollows and basins like a living liquid. Threads of stream water sparkled and glistened down the sides of the mountains, thousands of tributaries lacing together into broader, darker rivers. Waterfalls tumbled hundreds of meters down rugged cliffs and clefts in the rocky foothills.

“Oh, my,” Araminta murmured in admiration. There she waited patiently for her escort while the big red-hued sun rose up into the empty sky, throwing vast fingers of light through the mountains to sweep across the magnificent landscape.

The madrigal grew louder, swelling to a crescendo. Araminta looked around as the Silfen rode out of the forest all around her. There must have been forty of them, mounted on huge shaggy-furred beasts. She gazed at them, enthralled with the spectacle. Elves right out of the deepest human folklore. As tall as legend had them, with long limbs and a torso that was proportionally shorter than the human version. Flat faces with wide feline eyes above a slight nose had a simple circular mouth without a jaw; instead, three concentric circles of sharp teeth flexed steadily, shredding food as it was pulled back into the gullet.

They wore simple togalike garments that glimmered with a metallic sheen. Gold, jewel-laden belts were pulled tight about the waist, and the shoulder strips were held together with large broaches whose gems glowed an eerie green. On top of the togas were waistcoats made from some kind of bright white mesh.

Their voices broke into a ragged chorus of joyful undulations as they rode around her. The earth trembled with the impact of the beasts’ feet cantering about. One of the Silfen, wearing a scarlet mesh waistcoat, halted his mount beside her and bent down, offering his arm. Without hesitation Araminta reached up.

He was incredibly strong. She was lifted up and over into the big saddle in front of him. One arm stayed protectively around her. She glanced down to see his four-fingered hand resting against her abdomen. He flung his head back and emitted a piercing warble. The beast lurched forward with such abruptness that she laughed at the sheer outrage of it. Then they were thundering onward into the trees ahead.

It was a bizarre and wonderous ride. The size of the beast meant that every movement seemed ponderous, yet it was fast. When her senses calmed down, she noticed that it had a hide of reddish-brown fur that was thick like knotted lamb’s wool. There were six fat legs, which meant every motion of its gait was exaggerated, swaying her back and forth.

The rest of the riding company spread out behind her, still singing among themselves as they rushed forward in what was close to a stampede. They splashed through rivers and charged up slopes without slowing. It was a wild exhilarating ride, and she clung on for the duration, laughing away at the experience.

Eventually they came out of the woods close to a vast loch. Tendrils of mist rose above the calm surface. Small conical islands were mirrored on the silverish shimmer, with skinny trees clinging to their wrinkled mossy sides. A little way around the shoreline, a waterfall gushed in from an overhanging crag. The scene was quiet perfection, making her glad simply to know such a place existed.

But right in front of her, on the sprawling grassy bank, the Silfen camp awaited. There were thousands of the strange aliens, along with a dozen types of exotic riding beasts. Tents of glowing fabric were pitched everywhere. As she watched, one rose up: seven individual sheets of fabric, each one a primary color, growing higher and higher until they were twenty feet above the ground, where they curled over to knot themselves together with a looping bow. The edges of the sheets fused together, and there it hung, suspended on nothing, like a solidified rainbow. Between the tents, fires were burning, and rugs had been spread out in readiness for what looked like the galaxy’s biggest picnic. Silfen unpacked vast silver and gold platters of food from huge baskets slung over various animals. The food looked fabulous, as did the crystal bottles filled with liquid of every possible color. A great many Silfen were already dancing around the fires, voices raised to chant at their own tempo. Their limbs might have been long and spindly to her eyes, but they were certainly agile and most likely double-jointed. Half the energetic moves would have been impossible for a human.

It was a shame, she thought as the Silfen on whose mount she’d ridden proffered his arm again to get her down. She would have liked to join in. As her feet touched the ground, the aliens surged toward her, and she started back. Peals of laughter shivered through the air. Not mocking: sympathetic, encouraging. Welcoming.

Araminta gave them all a nervous bow. They returned the formality en masse, the action spreading out like a ripple. Of course, with their flexibility and grace it was a lot more elegant than hers.

Two of them stepped forward, their circular mouths open in what she thought was a smile, though all they were doing was showing an awful lot of those off-putting spiky teeth. They were female, though it was hard to tell. All the Silfen had thick long hair that was adorned with beads and jewelry. Lengthy braids swirled as the womenfolk held out their arms to her. She allowed herself to be led forward. Their minds shone with warmth and kindness, so much so that it was impossible not to experience the same emotions. Food was offered, intricate crumbling cakes wrapped in verdant leaves. She nibbled away, and the crumbs fizzled as they went down her throat. “Oh, gosh!”

The Silfen laughed at her enjoyment. A crystal bottle was tendered, and she drank deeply. Definitely alcoholic and then some. More food: perfectly sculpted pastries and confectionaries dripping with honeys and juices that tasted as good as they looked.

Somewhere a group was trilling a fast tune. Araminta started to sway to the beat. One of her women hosts took her hand and danced with her. Then she was lost amid dazzlingly colorful alien bodies, all swirling and whizzing about her.

More food, snatched from group after group. Drink. Plenty of that. It was intoxicating but never enough to blur her senses; instead, it intensified the whole wondrous festival. Dance followed dance with dozens of Silfen until she was giddy with joy and every muscle was shaking with exhaustion.

She knew that this was all crazy, that she should be getting to some Commonwealth world to do what she could with her unwelcome heritage. Yet somehow she knew this was also the right thing to be doing. Her body and mind needed the blissful suspension of the festival to recover and calm from the events of the past few days. They were helping her, these Silfen, showing in their own bizarre fashion that she wasn’t alone, reinforcing the communion she had with their precious Motherholme.

“I have to sit down,” she told them after some indeterminable length of time. They didn’t speak any human language, she knew, nor had they ever shown any interest in anything other than their own peculiar tongue, with all its cooing and warbling and trills that conveyed only the shallowest meaning. Commonwealth cultural experts assigned to the world-walking aliens found it hard to follow their whimsy. Allegedly it indicated a neural process completely different from that of blunt human rationality.

Nonetheless, her hosts knew what she asked and guided her into one of the rainbow tents, where there was a nest of cushions. Araminta flopped down on them in relief as six or seven Silfen gathered around to attend her. Such pampering was luxurious, and she surrendered to it without protest. Her boots were removed, producing a sympathetic chorus of nearly human cooing when they saw the artificial skin sprayed on her feet. Strong fingers massaged her shoulders and back. They didn’t have the same physiology, but they were plainly expert in human bone and muscle structure. She groaned in relief as the tensions were soothed out of her flesh. Outside, the festival continued unabated, for which she was glad. One of the female Silfen presented her with a bottle carved from a golden crystal. Araminta drank. It was almost like water, chilly and full of bubbles, and certainly refreshing. Two more Silfen were waiting with platters of that delicious food.

“The clubs back in Colwyn were never like this,” she said with a contented sigh.

“They’re most certainly not,” someone said in heavily accented English.

Araminta jumped with shock, then rolled over to see who’d spoken. The three benevolent masseurs withdrew their ministrations, kneeling patiently in a circle around her.

A Silfen with leathery wings was standing in the tent. He had a dark scaly tail as well, which slithered about as though agitated. His appearance sparked a frisson of concern in Araminta’s mind. This shape was also contained in human legend, but not a good one.

“Who are you?” she blurted. “And why have you got a German accent?”

“Because he’s an idiot,” another Silfen said, “and completely misunderstands our psychology.”

Araminta jumped again, feeling foolish. A second winged Silfen was staring down at her. He wore a copper toga robe held in by an ebony belt. His hair was auburn, with grayish strands creeping in around the temples. His tail was held still, curving up so it didn’t touch the ground.

“Hey, fuck you, too,” the first winged Silfen groused.

“I apologize for my friend,” said the other. “I’m Bradley Johansson, and this is Clouddancer; the Silfen have named him a human friend.”

“Uh—” was all Araminta could manage.

“Yeah, pleasure to meet you, too, girlie,” Clouddancer said.

“Uh,” she said again, then: “Bradley Johansson is a human name.”

“Yes, I used to be. Some time ago now.”

“Used to be …?”

He opened his circular mouth, and a slender tongue vibrated in the middle as he produced a nearly human chuckle. “Long story. As a human I was named a Silfen Friend.”

“Oh.” Then some memory registered, associated with Mr. Drixel’s awful school history class. “I’ve heard of Bradley Johansson. You were in the Starflyer War. You saved us all.”

“Oh, brother,” Clouddancer grumbled. “Thank you, Friend’s daughter. He’ll be insufferable for a decade now.”

“I played my part,” Bradley Johansson said modestly. His tail tip performed a lively flick.

Araminta sat up on the cushioning and folded her legs. With a happy certainty she knew she was about to get answers. A lot of answers. “What did you call me?” she asked.

“He’s referring to your illustrious ancestor,” Bradley Johansson said.

“Mellanie?” It could have been imagination, but she was sure the singing outside rose in reverence for the name.

“That’s the one, all right,” Clouddancer said.

“I never met her.”

“Some people are fortunate, others are not. That’s existence for you.”

“Is she a Silfen now?”

“Good question; depends how you define identity.”

“That sounds very … existential.”

“Face it, girlie, we’re the lords of existentialism. Shit, we invented the concept back while your DNA was still trying to break free from mollusks.”

“Ignore him,” Bradley Johansson said. “He’s always like that.”

“Why am I here?”

“You want the existential answer to that?” Clouddancer asked.

“Carry on ignoring him,” Bradley Johansson said. “You’re here because, to be blunt, this is your party.”

Araminta turned to look at the gap in the tent fabric, watching the ceaseless colorful motion outside as the Silfen danced and sang beside the loch. “My party? Why mine?”

“We celebrate you. We want to meet you, to feel you, to know you, the daughter of our friend. That is what the Silfen are, absorbers.”

“Am I really worth celebrating?”

“That will become apparent only with time.”

“You’re talking about the Void.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Why me? Why do I connect with a Skylord?”

“You have our communion; you know that.”

“I do now. That’s because of Mellanie, isn’t it?”

“You are our friend’s daughter, yes, and because of that you are also our friend.”

“Magic is passed through the female side of the family,” Araminta murmured.

“Load of bullshit,” Clouddancer said. “Our inheritance isn’t sexist; that’s strictly your myth. Mellanie’s children acclimatized to their mother’s communion in the womb, and they in turn pass the communion to their children.”

Araminta risked a sly smile at Bradley Johansson. “If that’s how it works, the men won’t be able to pass it on.”

“Male children inherit the ability,” Clouddancer said. He sounded belligerent.

“From females.”

Clouddancer’s wet tongue vibrated at the center of his mouth. “The point is, girlie, you’ve got it.”

She closed her eyes, trying to follow the sequence. “And so do Skylords.”

“They have some kind of similar ability,” Bradley Johansson said. “The Motherholme has occasionally sensed thoughts from within the Void.”

“Why doesn’t the Motherholme ask the Void to stop expanding?”

“Don’t think it hasn’t been tried.” The tip of Bradley Johansson’s tail dipped in disappointment. “Ten million years of openness and congeniality gets you precisely nowhere with the Void. We can’t connect to the nucleus. Or maybe it just doesn’t want to listen. Even we didn’t know for sure what was in there until Edeard shared his life with Inigo.”

“You can dream his life as well?”

“We’ve dreamed it,” Clouddancer said, managing to push a lot of disgust into the admission. “Our communion is what your gaiafield is based on, after all.”

“That was Ozzie,” Araminta said, pleased she wasn’t totally ignorant.

“Yeah, only Ozzie would treat a friendship like that.”

“Like what?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bradley Johansson told her. “The point is that the galaxy has a great many communion-style regions or effects or whatever. They’re all slightly different, but they can interact when the circumstances are right. Which is like once in a green supernova.”

“So you’re like some kind of conduit between me and the Skylord?”

“It’s a little more complex than that. You connect because within the communion you have similarity.”

“Similarity? With a Skylord?”

“Consider your mental state after your separation. You were lost, lonely, desperate for purpose.”

“Yes, thank you, I get the idea,” she said testily.

“The Skylord also searches; that is its purpose. The souls it used to guide to the Heart have all gone, so now it and its kindred await new souls. Their quest ranges from their physical flight within the Void to awareness of mental states. Somehow, the two of you bridged the abyss between your universe and its.”

“Is this how humans got in originally?”

“Who knows? Before Justine, nobody had actually seen the Void open up. It didn’t for the Raiel armada; they forced their way through. But humans were never the first it accepted. Occasionally we have felt other species flourish briefly within. Always, the Void has consumed them.”

“So it has to be aware of the outside universe?” she pondered.

“In some fashion it must be. This is philosophical speculation rather than substantiation. We don’t think it recognizes physical reality, not outside. Perhaps it considers the universe beyond its boundary nothing but a spawning ground for mind, rationality, which is what the nucleus absorbs as the boundary absorbs mass.”

“Edeard and the people of Makkathran say that the Void was created by Firstlives.”

“Yeah,” Clouddancer growled. “Such a thing cannot be natural.”

“So where are they now?”

“Nobody knows. Though you, our friend’s daughter, may be the one who finds out.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “Not really. There’s someone who might be able to help, one of ANA’s agents. He’s already helped me once: Oscar Monroe.”

Bradley Johansson sat in front of her, his tongue quivering fast at the center of his mouth cavity. “I know Oscar. I fought with him in the Starflyer War. He is a good man. Trust him. Find him, though your path will not be easy after this.”

“I know. But I’ve made my mind up. I won’t lead Living Dream through the boundary, no matter what.”

“That is the choice we knew you would make, daughter of our friend. Such worthiness is why we came here to know you.”

“Tell her the rest,” Clouddancer said gruffly.

Araminta gave him an alarmed glance. “What? What else is there?”

“There is something out there, something new that emerged into our universe as ANA fell to treachery,” Bradley Johansson said. “Something much worse than Living Dream. It is waiting for you.”

“What?”

“Its full nature remains veiled, for we can sense it only faintly. But what we glimpsed was greatly troubling. Humans have a dark side, as do most living sentients, and this thing, this embodiment of intent, has come directly out of that darkness. It is an evil thing; this we do know.”

“What sort of thing?” she asked fearfully.

“A contraption, a machine whose purpose is cold and malevolent. It cares nothing for the spirit which all life houses, for laughter and song; even tears it derides. And if it desires you, that can be for only one reason.”

To get into the Void,” she realized.

“For what reason we know not, yet we fear the worst,” Bradley Johansson said. “It wishes to meddle with the galaxy’s destiny, to impose itself upon the reality of every star. This cannot come to pass.”

“You must summon that which is most noble from your race, daughter of our friend,” Clouddancer said. “Together you will make your stand against the dread future which this thing craves for us all. It must never reach the Void. The two of them must not become one.”

“How?” she implored. “How in Ozzie’s name do you expect me to do such a thing? This is what the Commonwealth Navy is for. They have incredible weapons; they can stop this creature-thing. I don’t know what it looks like, where it is …”

Bradley Johansson reached out and took Araminta’s hand in his own. “If that is what you believe, if that is truly what must be done, then that is what you must achieve.”

“I thought I was just going to go into hiding while the factions and Living Dream fought it out. That’s what I’d made my mind up to do.”

“Our destiny is never clear. Nonetheless, this is yours.”

“Can’t I just stay here?”

His leathery fingers bent around to stroke the top of her palm. “For as long as you want, our friend’s daughter.”

Araminta nodded forlornly. “Which will be no time at all.”

“You have strength, you have courage, your spirit truly shines out, as did Mellanie’s. Such a beautiful light cannot easily be quenched.”

“Oh, Ozzie!”

“What is it you wish to do?” Clouddancer asked. His tail flicked about restlessly. Outside the tent the Silfen were still, waiting for her answer.

“A proper meal, a decent sleep, and then I’ll be on my way,” she promised them. “I’ll do what I can.”

As one, the Silfen in the tent tipped their heads back and opened their mouths wide. A mellifluent chant arose as those outside took up the call; lyrical and uplifting, it swirled around her, making her smile in acknowledgment. It was their tribute to her, their gratitude. For now she finally realized the Silfen were frightened, scared their wondrous free-roaming life might be brought to an end by the ominous thing human folly had birthed. Yes, I’ll do what I can.

Marius regarded the image of Ranto with something approaching amused contempt. The gangly teenager was suddenly the second most important news item in the Commonwealth; every unisphere show was featuring him. Reporters had arrived in Miledeep Water soon after the faction agents. It hadn’t taken anyone very long to discover that Araminta had stayed at the StarSide Motel. The nervous manager, Ragnar, had come out of hiding as soon as reporters started offering big money for his story, which sadly wasn’t much, mostly how he’d hidden in his kitchen as weapons-enriched agents poured through his precious StarSide Motel, hunting the Second Dreamer.

Ignored by the agents, Marius mentally corrected the story.

But Ranto was the real find as far as the news production teams were concerned. The last person in Miledeep Water to see and speak to the Second Dreamer herself.

“She was really pretty,” he was saying gormlessly as he stood in front of the StarSide reception, surrounded by over a dozen reporters. “Not what I was expecting. I’d already met her once before, that afternoon. She was sweet, you know? Gave a good tip when I delivered her food.”

“Did she say where she was going?” a reporter asked.

“Naah, she just bought my bike and headed off to the Silfen path. Imagine that. The Second Dreamer is riding my old bike between worlds.”

“And still our race wonders why we wish to accelerate our evolution,” Ilanthe observed.

Marius didn’t respond. He remained annoyed at the way he’d been punished over Chatfield. But now it looked as though his climb back to grace had begun. Tellingly, it was Ilanthe herself who’d called him as he was checking operations on Fanallisto. Semisentient scruitineers had been monitoring the Delivery Man since his miserable, pleading call to Marius. Soon after that, the Delivery Man had been contacted by another survivor of the Conservative Faction, using an encrypted call that blocked any tracking. The scruitineers had used the spaceport’s civic sensors to observe him taking a capsule out to Lady Rasfay. Then the yacht launched with the owner’s authorization, which was interesting given that he’d been left lying naked and unconscious alongside his young Firstlife mistress on the landing pad.

Ilanthe had been curious to know where the Delivery Man was heading and who he was meeting up with. Not anxious—there was no urgency in her call—but given that Araminta had unexpectedly fooled everyone yet again by somehow getting off Chobamba, monitoring the remaining Conservatives was prudent.

Marius knew where the Delivery Man had to be going. If there was anything left on Fanallisto, it was small-time, whereas the ultradrive starship was still waiting at Purlap spaceport. Marius had flown there right away.

And he’d been proved right. His own starship had detected the Lady Rasfay approaching Purlap, and he’d called Ilanthe immediately. Confirming his passage to redemption, she responded in person rather than through Valean or Neskia.

“Do you want me to exterminate him?” Marius asked. His stealthed starship was holding altitude a hundred kilometers directly above Purlap spaceport. It wasn’t a particularly risky position; there were no more commercial flights in or out. Lady Rasfay was rather conspicuous simply by flying in.

Ranto was shoved to a peripheral aspect. Marius’s starship’s sensors showed him the Lady Rasfay landing on the spaceport’s naked rock close to the preposterous pink terminal building. The Delivery Man walked down the airlock’s stairs, bracketed by targeting graphics. Two hundred meters away, the ultradrive was parked on the rock where he’d left it, a featureless dark purple ovoid resting on three stumpy legs.

“No,” Ilanthe said. “At this point we need information. Until we have Araminta I need to know what the Conservatives are capable of. Follow him; find out how many there are left and what they’re doing.”

“Understood.” Marius avoided saying anything else or letting his satisfaction show. But the unusually cautious way Ilanthe was responding to the situation was indicative of how everyone was being wrong-footed by Araminta. Who could have known she was capable of using the Silfen paths? But her uncommon abilities did explain a lot, possibly even how she’d become the Second Dreamer in the first place.

He settled back on his couch and watched the Delivery Man hurry over to the ultradrive starship.

The Delivery Man stood underneath the starship and tried not to let his exasperation short-circuit the verification process. Understandably, the authorization procedure to gain flight command of the ultradrive’s smartcore was thorough; the ship was a hugely valuable asset, and the Conservative Faction wasn’t about to leave it vulnerable to anyone.

He hadn’t been able to sleep for the whole flight, nor had he eaten. The Lady Rasfay was so damned slow compared to the ships he was used to. That, coupled with the stress of losing his family, of Araminta giving everyone the slip again, and his not really knowing who the “executive” was or if this really was some kind of Accelerator ensnarement, hadn’t done his nerves any good whatsoever.

Finally, the smartcore admitted he was on the approved list of people allowed to fly the ship and granted him flight command status. The Delivery Man breathed out heavily and ordered the airlock open. Directly above him the base of the starship sank inward and produced a dark cavity. Gravity inverted, and he slipped up into the small spherical chamber. The floor contracted beneath his feet, and the apex opened. He rose into the hemispherical cabin.

Systems came back on line as the smartcore readied the ship for flight. Everything was functional; the formidable armaments were all ready. The Delivery Man ordered a single fat chair for himself and sat down gratefully as it extruded from the floor. With the ship under his command, he was a player again; it bestowed a lot of confidence.

He called the “executive” on a secure link.

“You made it, then,” his unknown ally said.

“Sure.”

“And Araminta’s skipped off down the Silfen paths. You know, I’d genuinely like to meet her one day. She’s made complete idiots out of the most powerful organizations in the Greater Commonwealth. You’ve got to admire that.”

“She’s been lucky,” the Delivery Man commented. “That’s going to run out.”

“People make their own luck.”

“Whatever.”

“Is the ship ready?”

The Delivery Man took a moment before answering. “I’m sorry, but in the end my family is all that matters to me. I think it would be best if I went after Marius.”

“He’s already left Fanallisto. His ship took off about fifteen minutes after Lady Rasfay launched. You maybe see a connection there, supersecret agent?”

“I’ll find him.”

“Not alone, you won’t. Besides, I’m the best chance for your family’s survival.”

“I don’t know what you are or where your loyalties lie.”

“I said I would give you proof, and I will. Here are the coordinates. Come and get it.”

The Delivery Man studied the data that arrived. “The Leo Twins? What’s there?”

“Hope. And maybe just some salvation thrown in for good measure. Come on, sonny, what have you got to lose? It’s going to take you a few hours at most to get there. If you don’t like what you find, then you’re free to turn around and launch yourself into your whole honorable quest thing. I think you owe the Conservative Faction this much, don’t you?”

The Delivery Man regarded the ridiculous coordinate for a long time. The only possible thing at the Leo Twins would be some kind of secret Conservative Faction facility. After all, he reasoned, they had to make their ultradrive ships somewhere. In which case, why would they need this ship back there? “Can’t you just level with me?”

“Okay, then: As far as I know, I’m the only one with a valid plan to save the galaxy from Ilanthe and the Void.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Does ANA have a plan, or, rather, did it? Does the navy? Do any of the other faction survivors? Maybe you wanna go bold and ask MorningLightMountain? Release the big fella from behind that barrier and it’ll certainly wipe us out: Problem solved if you’re looking at the overall big picture. Or … oh, no, don’t tell me you think the President and the Senate will produce a way out. You’re going to entrust the fate of the galaxy to politicians?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Just stop whining and get yourself over to the Leo Twins. You’ll have your answers there, I promise.”

“Just tell me.”

“Can’t. Don’t trust you enough.”

“What?”

“The stakes are too high. I can’t predict what you’ll do at this stage. And I do have other options if you fail me. Not as good as you, though. That means the best chance your Lizzie and the kids have is you and me teaming up. Something you might want to think on.”

The link closed.

“Shit!” The Delivery Man thumped his fist against the chair’s resilient cushioning. He knew he didn’t really have a choice. “Take us to the Leo Twins,” he told the smartcore.

From a nightside orbit, Darklake City was a blaze of light over a hundred fifty kilometers across, infested with strange lightless sections where the lakes and the steepest mountains had repelled any attempts at development throughout its nearly fifteen-hundred-year human history. Sited in the subtropical zone of Oaktier, the capital was a monument to both progress and classicalism. Its ancient core district of crystal skyscrapers and vermilion-shaded condo-pyramids had flourished as the world became Higher, with individual buildings maintained or expanded as new materials and techniques became available. Residents from the first-era Commonwealth would still have recognized the center, even though the scale of the structures had increased dramatically. Outside the old hub, newer suburbs reflected the whimsey of modern architecture and a lack of industrial or commercial districts, producing stretches of parkland where homes and various community buildings sprawled amid the vibrant flora. Citizens continued to celebrate their original Pacific Basin ancestry with strong traditions in seasports and enthusiasm for the planet’s ecology. Such factors gave Oaktier a reputation of being altogether less conventional and formal than the majority of Inner worlds, where Higher culture seemed to be nothing other than an endless series of seminars and debates on public policy. As such, Oaktier tended to draw a fair proportion of new citizens from the External worlds as they began their inward migration and transformation to Higher.

Somehow, Digby didn’t think his adversary was beginning the conversion to Higher culture. The starship he’d followed from Ellezelin sank through the upper atmosphere, heading down to the smallest of Darklake City’s three spaceports. The craft had come out of hyperspace without any stealth and filed a standard landing request with the planetary spaceflight authority.

By contrast, Digby kept the Columbia505 a thousand kilometers above the equator and employed its full stealth suite to ward off the local defense agency’s sensors. The planetary government, in all its thousands of local committees, had come to a uniform decision to go to a grade one alert status. Three River-class warships were in patrol orbit half a million kilometers out, ready to respond to any perceived threat. Fortunately, they hadn’t detected the Columbia505, either.

“The Accelerators must have an active team down there,” Digby reported to Paula as the Accelerators’ starship landed. “Do you want me to contact our local office for support?”

“We’re long past a tussle between enriched agents to achieve our objectives,” she told him. “You’ll have to follow the ship’s pilot through scruitineers in the planetary cybersphere. That will leave you positioned to apply firepower from orbit to achieve our objectives.”

“We have objectives?”

“Yes. One. And it’s very simple: No one else must acquire Araminta. No one. No matter what the cost.”

“Ozzie! You want me to shoot into an urban area?”

“If that’s what’s required. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. I don’t believe she’ll ever come to Oaktier.”

“Then why is the Accelerator agent here?”

“Laril, Araminta’s ex-husband, is currently on the inward migration. He’s living in Darklake City.”

“Oh. And you think she’ll make contact?”

“She already has. I’ve analyzed his node logs. They’ve had a couple of chats. The last one was interrupted by my shotgun on Chobamba.”

“Ah.” Digby ordered his u-shadow to run a search through local records. “There’s no history of a Silfen path on Oaktier.”

“No. But if Laril is the one she’s turning to for advice, I imagine the Accelerators are going to snatch him and apply some pressure.”

“That’s logical. Did your u-shadow track her new unisphere address code?”

“She doesn’t have one. She’s been accessing the unisphere manually, through nodes. No records.”

“Clever. Do you think the Silfen will shelter her?”

“Not a chance.”

“Have you got any contacts there?” That was almost a stupid question, but he’d learned a long time ago never to underestimate his great-grandmother.

“I’ve had occasion to join the Motherholme communion, but you never get anything definite out of the Silfen. Unless you’re unlucky enough to bump into one of them called Clouddancer—then you get a whole load of bad-tempered information.”

“So there’s no telling where she’s going to come out?”

“No. But when she does, we need to be ready.”

Digby accessed the spaceport sensors, watching the Accelerator emerge from her ship. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, though her gray skin was more a toga-suit haze than anything living, and it looked as though it was constricting tightly across her small skeleton. Two long streamers of blood-red fabric flowed out horizontally behind her, fluttering as if in a breeze. As she looked around, her eyes glimmered with a faint pink luminescence. “Valean,” he said ruefully. “I might have guessed after what happened on Ellezelin.” She made Marius look subtle by comparison. The Accelerators used her only when they needed extreme measures.

“That just emphasizes how important Araminta is to them,” Paula said. “You are going to have to keep a very tight watch. She cannot be allowed to reach Laril.”

“Shall I just target her now? She’s outside her ship defenses.”

There was a slight hesitation. “No,” Paula said. “We don’t know the rest of the Accelerator team on Oaktier. Once you’ve identified them, we’ll discuss direct elimination.”

“Okay. I’m on it.”

Mellanie’s Redemption accelerated smoothly up to fifty-two light-years an hour and held steady. Troblum’s exovision was completely full of display graphics, allowing him no glimpse of the cabin. His secondary routines twinned the new drive’s management programs. With his mentality expanded to maximum capacity, he effectively was the ultradrive, feeling the exotic energy flow, sensing the quantum fields realign into standard hyperspace configuration. Fluctuations were tremors along his hull/flesh that were countered and calmed instantaneously, leaving only the phantom memory of disturbance. Within the body/machine, power flooded along specific patterns, twisting and compressing into unnatural formations that collapsed spacetime. Functionality was absolute, flowing so smoothly and effortlessly that his consciousness was elevated to Zen levels, making his world seem perfectly ordered.

With great reluctance he shrank away from the drive, designating it to an autonomic monitor routine. Now he was simply aware of the system and its myriad components in the same way he knew his heart beat and lungs inhaled. The sensation of loss was nearly physical, as if he were coming down off a sugar high.

A servicebot slid over, carrying a plate of caramel-coated pecan doughnuts and a coffeepot. He put a whole doughnut into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Catriona Saleeb sat in the chair opposite, long legs folded neatly to one side, which had pushed her shorts up to the very top of her thighs. Her slack top with its tiny straps shifted to show off even more cleavage as she leaned forward.

“That was impressive,” she cooed huskily.

“Kit assembly is tedious,” he said. “And that’s all this was. It’s the principle behind the drive which is impressive.”

“But you did it; you mastered the beast.”

He swallowed another doughnut and drank some coffee. There was a lot of tease in her voice; he wondered if she was missing her usual companions. Somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to reboot Trisha’s I-sentient personality. Seeing the Sentient Intelligence subvert her image and routines had spoiled the effect for him, making her less than a person.

“Are you going to reinstate a full gravity field now?” she asked. There was a thread of concern in her voice.

“Soon. After I’ve had a rest.” He knew he was going to pay for keeping the onboard gravity low, but it reduced the physical stress on his body. I deserve that after everything I’ve been through. He popped another doughnut in.

“Don’t leave it too long,” she said. Her legs straightened, and she came over to him. An elegant hand touched his knee. Her routines must have meshed with his sensory enrichments; he could feel the delicate touch as if feathers were stroking him through the worn toga-suit fabric. “There’s just us left now,” she said, and her beautiful features sketched a tragic sadness. Dark hair fell around her, almost brushing against him. “You’ll look after me, Troblum, won’t you? You won’t let anything bad happen. Please. I couldn’t stand that, not going the way the others went: left behind, ruined.”

He was staring at the hand, allowing the sensations to continue. He could even feel the warmth of the fingers, exactly human body temperature. Perhaps he didn’t need to replace Howard Liang to experience being with a woman. Perhaps it would just be he and Catriona. After all, it was a long way to the Andromeda galaxy.

The thought shook him out of his reverie, and he quickly brought the coffee cup up again. Such concepts shouldn’t be rushed into; it would need close examination, thinking about, implications considered. He looked around the cabin, everywhere but her face. She would know what he’d thought if she saw his eyes. Know him. That was wrong.

Catriona must have perceived his sudden shift. She gave him a small sympathetic smile and backed off in a rustle of silky fabric.

There might have been just the faintest scent from her proximity. “I need to check what’s happening,” he told her.

The smartcore opened a TD link to the unisphere. Almost immediately, Trisha’s projector produced a knot of undulating tangerine and turquoise sine waves above one of the cabin’s empty seats.

“Are you aware of events?” the SI asked.

“Why? What’s happened?” Troblum asked.

“The Accelerator faction has imprisoned Sol.”

Troblum felt a flash of wondrous satisfaction. “The Swarm worked?”

“That was your secret? The bargaining chip you wanted to use with Paula?”

Satisfaction gave way to a sudden flare of guilt. “Yes,” he said, then hurriedly added: “I didn’t know what they were going to use it for.”

“Of course.”

“Did anything get out?”

“No, nothing,” the SI said. Its oscillations deepened to purple for a moment. “The navy can’t break in. The President has asked High Angel if it can get through.”

“What was the answer?”

“The Raiel said probably not. The Sol barrier seems to be based on Dark Fortress technology. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Troblum said reluctantly; he couldn’t actually see how admitting that would make things any worse.

“You were there at the Dark Fortress. I know that, and so does Paula; she interviewed your old captain, Chatworth. You were part of this project, a large part.”

“I liked what the Accelerators were doing. It’s the faction I shall join.”

“Only if the Sol barrier gets lifted,” the SI said. “There’s no way to reach ANA now, and the deterrence fleet is trapped inside the barrier as well. The Commonwealth is completely exposed to the rest of the galaxy, and there are worse things out there than the Ocisen Empire, believe me.”

“Not after Fusion. Humans will become postphysical, and such things will be an irrelevence.”

“I don’t wish to become postphysical, nor does a huge proportion of your own species. Troblum, this is wrong and you know it. There are many ways to achieve postphysical status without forcing it upon those who don’t wish it.”

“It won’t be forced,” he said sulkily.

“Are you familiar with the Fusion concept and how it will be enacted?”

“Not really.”

“And you were trying to stop the Fusion, if I’m not mistaken?” The SI’s tone became sympathic. “You and the Accelerators have parted company.”

“I don’t agree with them using the Cat. I still hold with postphysical elevation.”

“Will you transcend, Troblum? Is that your plan?”

“I … don’t know. Maybe. Yes, ultimately.”

“I hope you achieve your goal. Why are you still on your ship? Why not join the Pilgrimage and travel into the Void?”

“Because they’ll kill me if they find me.”

“That’s not very enlightened of them. Do you want creatures with that kind of behavior profile to be the gatekeepers to human evolution?”

Troblum sank down into his chair, trying not to scowl at the fluctuating lines. “What do you want?”

“We both know why they’ll kill you now, Troblum. Because you know how to switch off the barrier, don’t you?”

“Actually, I don’t. Only a code can deactivate it, and I don’t know it. I never have.”

“But you understand the fundamentals behind the Swarm technology. If anyone can get through, it’ll be you.”

“No. I don’t know how. That force field is unbreakable.”

“Have you thought about that? Have you analyzed every aspect?” the SI urged.

“Of course. We had to be sure its integrity was perfect.”

“Nothing is perfect, Troblum, not in this universe. You know that. There will be a flaw.”

“No.”

The colorful projection of waving lines shifted to blue. “You have to let ANA out, Troblum. You have to find a way.”

“It can’t be done.”

“Think about it. Look at the problem from fresh angles. Find the solution, Troblum. You owe your species that much.”

“I owe you nothing,” he spit. “Look at the shitty way everyone treats me.”

“Indeed, yes. You have—or had—your personal collection of war memorabilia, the greatest there had ever been. You have the EMAs to indulge yourself in any way you want. Higher society gave you all that. On a personal level there are friends out there if you want them, lovers, wives.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody wants me.”

The SI’s voice softened. “Have you ever reached out for people, Troblum? They would be amenable if you did that, if you wanted to do that. You’ve devoted decades to nurturing I-sentient personalities. Are they people?”

Troblum glanced at Catriona, who gave him an encouraging little smile. “Really, what do you want?” he asked. “Why are you even fucking talking to me?”

“Because I want you to do the right thing, of course. Before the Sol barrier went up, you were trying to reach Paula Myo, offering information that would stop the Swarm, stop Ilanthe and Marius and the Cat. You can still do that. Carry on with what you were doing; it was right. Talk to Paula; give her the information she needs to take down the Sol barrier.”

“I don’t have it! It doesn’t fucking exist.”

“You don’t know that,” the SI said persuasively. “Not for certain, for nothing is certain. Keep going as you were before the imprisonment, Troblum. Oscar Monroe is on Viotia; he’s worthy of your trust. He sacrificed himself so the universe you were born into could exist.”

“I can’t. If I expose myself, they’ll kill me. Do you get it now? The Cat will come after me, and she’ll kill me again and again and again.”

“Then don’t expose yourself. Simply call Paula or Oscar, or I will be happy to discuss the physics of the Swarm.”

“I don’t trust you. I don’t even know what you really are.”

“Troblum, you have to decide what you truly believe in. You will have no peace until you do.”

“Yeah, right. Whatever.”

“Very well. I will ask you to consider one thing.”

“What?” he asked grouchily.

“What would Mark Vernon do in this situation?”

The writhing morass of fine lines shrank to nothing. Troblum’s u-shadow told him the SI had withdrawn from the TD link. “Fuck off, then,” he grunted at the empty space above the chair.

“I’m sorry,” Catriona said. “It shouldn’t speak to you like that.”

All he could do was wave a hand at her in irritation, hoping she’d shut up. Mark Vernon. His ancestor. The man who’d actually fired the quantumbuster that allowed the Dark Fortress to establish the Dyson Alpha barrier again, winning the war. Popular history always overlooked that, always gave Ozzie the credit. A true hero. The one Troblum looked up to more than anybody.

Stupid psychological manipulation bullshit, he thought angrily. Like I’m going to give in to that.

He picked the coffeepot up, only to wrinkle his nose in dismay when he realized how much it had cooled. He instructed the culinary unit to produce some more.

“What are you going to do?” Catriona asked guardedly.

“Nothing,” he said. “I don’t care, not anymore. There is no way through the Sol barrier. Why can’t they just accept that?”

She smiled and sank down on the floor beside his chair. Her hand stroked his face adoringly. “Then it’s just you and me. We’ll be okay. I’ll never let you down.”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t help checking the smartcore’s navigation function. Secondary routines promoted the exovision display to primary, drawing a bright orange line through the starfield. Mellanie’s Redemption was a hundred thirty lighty-years from Viotia and closing fast.

The Delivery Man’s ship dropped out of hyperspace fully stealthed. Ten AUs away the blue dwarf Alpha Leonis shone brightly against the starfield. Directly on the other side of the sun from the ship was Augusta, once the greatest of all the Big15 planets. As Compression Space Transport’s (CST) primary base of operations it had been the hub for wormholes to dozens of worlds; along with its financial and industrial prowess, that made it a critical component of the first-era Commonwealth. Even after the development of Higher culture and ANA, the wormhole network was maintained, giving it a strategic importance above most Inner worlds. As such, eight River-class and two Capital-class warships were patrolling the star system. Planetary defenses were at condition-one alert, with powerful force fields covering the wormhole generators and transfer stations along with the megacity.

After waiting for three minutes to confirm that no sensors had located the ship, the Delivery Man ordered it to fly in to the Leo Twins. They were the companions to Alpha Leonis: Little Leo, an orange dwarf, around which a red dwarf, Micro Leo, orbited. Scanning them with passive sensors, he found something else there. There was an asteroid in a long elliptical orbit around the Twins; at over a hundred miles in diameter it almost qualified as a moon in its own right. Its cylindrical shape was unusually regular. Right away he knew it wasn’t natural. The sensors revealed it was rotating fast around the long axis, and there was no wobble, which was just about impossible for a natural object. It also had an infrared emission; the dark wrinkled surface was radiating more heat than the little stars were shining on it. The Delivery Man wasn’t at all surprised when mass analysis showed it was hollow.

He opened a secure link to the “executive.” “I’m here.”

“I know. And you’re not alone. Someone followed you.”

“What?”

“Another ship flew in behind you. It’s an ultradrive as well. Both of you have excellent stealth, but the sensors I’ve got here are the best.”

“Oh, Ozziecrapit.”

“Don’t worry about it. Hang on. I’m going to bring you in.”

A T-sphere expanded out from the strange asteroid. It teleported the starship inside.

The Delivery Man floated down out of the airlock and walked out from underneath the ship. He turned a full circle, gazing around, then tipped his head up and whistled in admiration. The chamber that had been carved out of the asteroid’s core was about eighty miles long. Seven miles above him, some kind of gantry ran the length of the axis, almost invisible in the bright glare emitted by the rings of solar lights it supported. Another seven miles beyond that, the rugged landscape curved away into a blue-haze panorama of grassland and lakes and awesome snow-tipped mountains with vast waterfalls. It was the sight Justine had seen outside her bedroom window, and it was completely disorienting. He shook his head like a dog coming out of water and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Don’t worry, it has that effect on everyone.”

The Delivery Man opened his eyes to see a man standing in front of him dressed in a black shirt and trousers. His skin was polished gold.

“Gore Burnelli,” the Delivery Man said. “I should have worked that one out. I didn’t expect you to be physical, though.”

Gore shrugged. “If people could predict my behavior, we’d all be in deep shit.”

“And you think we’re not?”

“There are grades of shitstorms. This one’s pretty bad, but there’s still time to turn it around.”

“How?”

“Come on, son, we need to talk.” Gore started to walk away, leaving the Delivery Man with little choice but to follow. Not far from the starship, a modest bungalow of white drycoral was nestled snugly in the folds of the broad grassy valley. It had a roof of gray slates like something from before the first Commonwealth era that overhung the walls to create a wraparound veranda. Ancient cedar trees towered above the luxuriant meadowland outside. The Delivery Man had never seen specimens so big; the bases of the trunks were as wide as the bungalow itself.

“Is this your home?” the Delivery Man asked. He knew the Burnelli family was phenomenally rich, but the cost of constructing this artificial worldlet would have been unimaginable, especially as he suspected it dated back to the first-era Commonwealth, long before EMAs and replicator technology.

“Fuck no,” Gore grunted. “I’m just house-sitting for an old friend.”

“Were you ever in ANA?”

“Yes.” Gore dropped down into a big wooden slat chair with plump white cushions. He gestured to one opposite. “I’ve only been out a few days. I’d forgotten how fucking useless meat bodies are. There’s barely enough neurons to run a walking routine, let alone something complicated like tying your shoelaces. I’ve had to run an expanded mentality in the habitat’s RI (restricted intelligence) systems just to keep thinking properly, and that hardware isn’t exactly young and frisky anymore.”

The Delivery Man sat down cautiously. “Did you come out for Justine?”

Gore ran a hand back through his fair curly hair. “Takes you a while, doesn’t it? Of course it was for Justine. How else could I dream for her? I’ve got five giant confluence nests orbiting the asteroid a million klicks out. The gaiafield they’ve meshed together acts like a giant dream catcher net. Literally.”

“But how did you know you’d dream her dreams, even with that much help?”

“We’re family. It’s the only connection theory anyone’s ever come up with.”

“So you just tried it?” The Delivery Man knew there was too much incredulity in his voice, yet the notion was such a gamble.

Gore’s golden face gave him a hard stare. “You have to speculate to accumulate, boy,” he grunted. “Damn, what have we done with Higher culture? You never strive for anything; it’s truly fucking pitiful to behold.”

“I wouldn’t say that of Ilanthe,” the Delivery Man shot back. “Would you?”

“Ah, so you do have some fire, after all. Good. I was worried I’d be dealing with another ball-less wonder who’s got to have all his forms filled in before he can take a crap.”

“Thank you. So you’re another Conservative Faction supporter?”

Gore chuckled delightedly. “If that’s how you want to read it, then yes.”

“Well, what else is there?”

“I wasn’t dicking you around, sonny. I am the faction executive. Have been for centuries. See, that’s the thing with political movements; the leaders carry them along, and if they’re doing their job properly, all the members follow like good little sheep. After all, whoever said this was a democracy?”

“But …” The Delivery Man was aghast at the idea. “It has to be a democracy; all ANA’s factions are democratic.”

“If it was set up as a democracy, then it is, and lots of the others are. Were you there at the first Conservative Faction committee meeting when I wrote the charter in line with the accord based on our ideals? No. And you know why? Because there was no meeting, there is no charter; you all just do what I tell you. The Conservative Faction is just a notion you cling to. And it was a popular one. We don’t need policies and discussion and shit like that. If any of the other factions do something to upset or subvert ANA or the Commonwealth, I use our faction as the mechanism to slap them down hard. What, did you think the Protectorate sprung up naturally to defend the External worlds from the Radical Highers? How did they start, who paid for them, who revealed the extent of the threat? Come to that, how did the Radical Highers ever get born? It’s hardly a natural extension of Higher philosophy, is it?”

“Oh, Ozzie,” the Delivery Man groaned.

“So don’t worry, the Conservative Faction is alive and kicking. Just like the Accelerators are under Ilanthe’s enlightened leadership. Or did you think they all voted to entomb themselves while she flies off to the Void to get happy ever after?”

“Shit.” The knowledge, so simple and obvious now, should have come as a relief; instead, the Delivery Man felt bitter. Bitter at the manipulation. Bitter at the grand lie. Bitter and shamed that he’d fallen for it. That so many had. “What now?” he asked resentfully. “You said you had a plan.”

“What did you name it?” Gore asked as they both slid up into the ultradrive’s cabin.

“Huh?” the Delivery Man grunted. The smartcore wasn’t responding to his command codes.

“The ship, what’s it called?”

“Nothing; I never named it. Uh, the smartcore’s malfunctioning.”

“No malfunction,” Gore said as a shell-shaped chair swelled up out of the floor; its surface quickly morphed to a rusty orange with a texture of spongy hessian. Around it, the cabin walls brightened to a sky-blue. Black lines chased around the wall’s curvature, weaving an elegant pattern. Crystalline lights distended down from the apex. The floor turned to oak boards. “It is my ship, after all, designed and built by the Conservative Faction. In the old days I would have said paid for it, too.”

“Then …” The Delivery Man nearly said, What use am I? But that would have been too pitiful.

“Son, if you want to sit this one out or go chasing Accelerator agents, then go right ahead. I’ll understand. This asteroid has a wormhole generator that can take you to most of the Inner worlds. I can even set you up with some real badass hardware and a few other agents spoiling for a fight. But I believe what I’m doing is the best shot our species has got. And I might just need some help. Down to you.”

The Delivery Man sat down in his chair, which had turned a gaudy purple. “Okay, then. I’m with you.”

“Good man. I named this ship Last Throw. Kinda got a ring to it, ironic yet still proud, right?”

“If you say so.”

The asteroid had come as a complete surprise to Marius. As it was hollow, it clearly wasn’t a Raiel ship. However, there was no record of anything like it in any Commonwealth database, and Marius could access just about every memory kube and deep cache within the unisphere. His initial thought that it must be a clandestine Conservative Faction base was easily dismissed. The effort of constructing something on such a scale was colossal, an impossible feat to accomplish in secret so close to Augusta. That suggested it was old.

“It must belong to Nigel or Ozzie,” Ilanthe decided. “The proximity to Augusta makes that a logical conclusion.”

“Gore is from the same era as them,” Marius said. “It makes a perfect refuge if he’s returned to a physical body.”

“He has. This is the confirmation. The landscape geometry of the dream can’t belong to anywhere else. It’s unique. I have to admit I wasn’t expecting this. He should have been neutralized behind the Sol barrier.”

“He has a single ultradrive ship and the Delivery Man as a sidekick. That can’t present any kind of threat to us. We already know there are no weapons which can endanger the ship.”

“And yet here he is. Still free, the Third Dreamer with his daughter already inside the Void and ready to do whatever he wants, while Araminta has vanished down the Silfen paths, leaving us locked outside.”

Marius examined the image of the asteroid supplied by his exovision, a dark speck half a million kilometers away, its surface shimmering a weak maroon in the light from the Twins. “I can destroy it now. There is no force field.”

“But there was a T-sphere. We have no idea of its capabilities, and as it has remained hidden for a thousand years, you can be assured it has defenses. If the attack fails, our advantage would be lost. Until we recover Araminta, I need to know Gore’s abilities and who his allies are.”

Icons flashed up in Marius’s exovision. A wormhole was opening nearby. Sensors showed him the exotic structure reaching out from the asteroid to a point a million kilometers away. It vanished almost at once, then reappeared, with its terminus in a different place but also a million kilometers from the asteroid.

“He’s picking something up from those points,” Marius said. Now he had the orbital parameters the ship’s passive sensors scanned around the million-kilometer orbital band. It detected three more satellites. The wormhole reached out and plucked them away one by one. Then the T-sphere expanded again, and the Delivery Man’s ship materialized outside the asteroid. It immediately dropped into hyperspace.

“Follow it,” Ilanthe ordered. “Find out what he’s doing.”

As soon as the five confluence nest satellites filled the forward cargo hold, Gore teleported the Last Throw outside the asteroid. The Delivery Man held his breath, waiting to see how the other ship would react.

“It’s got to be Marius,” he said.

“More than likely,” Gore agreed. “But that means Ilanthe knows I’m back in the game. She’ll be desperate to know what I’m doing. He’s not going to try anything yet. And by the time they do figure it out, it’ll be too late.”

“What exactly is your plan?”

“My original plan was a good one; I just needed Inigo to get into the Void for me. Now that that’s suffered God’s own clusterfuck, I’m having to do a lot of improvising to stitch things back together.”

“You’re not going to fly us into the Void, are you?” the Delivery Man asked in alarm. He realized that Justine could probably get the Skylord to open the boundary for Gore.

“No. We’re going in the other direction. What the galaxy depends on now is us eliminating the Void once and for all.”

“Us?”

“You and me, sonny boy. There’s no one else. We’ve already had our chat about depending on politicians, now, haven’t we?”

“How in Ozzie’s name can we do that? The Raiel couldn’t close it down with an armada, and a million years ago they already had warships that make our navy look like a fleet of nineteenth-century sailing boats.” He was starting to wonder if coming out of ANA had damaged Gore’s basic thought routines.

“I didn’t say close it down, I said eliminate it. You can’t do that with force, so we have to give it an alternative.”

“Give what an alternative?”

“The Void.”

“An alternative to what?”

“Its current existence, to being itself.”

“How?” He was trying not to shout.

“It’s stalled. Whatever it was originally meant to do hasn’t worked. It hasn’t progressed for millions, possibly billions, of years. It just sits there absorbing minds and matter; it’s become pointless and very dangerous. We need to kick-start its evolutionary process again, whether it likes that or not.”

“I thought that’s what Ilanthe and the Accelerators were proposing.”

“Look, kid, I know you mean well and you’re upset over your family and everything, but don’t smart-mouth me. I’ve been fighting that bitch for over two centuries now. I don’t know what her fucking inversion core is, but trust me when I say the one thing it’s not going to do is fuse the Accelerator Faction with the nucleus so they can bootstrap themselves up to postphysical status. This is her own private bid to achieve godhood, and that’s not going to be good for anyone.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, because if all you really want to do is achieve postphysical status, there are better and simpler ways of doing it than this lunacy.”

“Like what?”

“If you’re not ripe enough to figure elevation out for yourself, then use the mechanisms that other races have used to elevate themselves with. In the majority of the postphysical elevation cases we’re aware of, the physical mechanism survived the act. So you just plug it back in, reboot, and press go. Bang, you’re an instant demigod.”

“But would ANA allow that? And what about the postphysicals?”

“It’s got fuck-all to do with ANA. If you take a starship and leave Commonwealth space, its jurisdiction and responsibility end there. Technically, anyway; this whole Pilgrimage shit really screwed things up. The argument about interference was getting very noisy inside before I left.”

“So why hasn’t anyone done it?”

“What makes you think they haven’t? That’s the point. Postphysicals don’t hang around afterward. Not that we know of. Oh, it’s going to take a shitload of effort, and you’d probably spend a century repairing the gizmo, but it can be done. But that’s nothing like the effort involved in manipulating Living Dream, imprisoning ANA, and creating an inversion core.”

“So what is Ilanthe doing?”

Gore spread his palms out and shrugged. “Million-dollar question, sonny.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Welcome to the paranoia club; cheapest fees in the universe and membership lasts forever.”

“So where are we going?”

“The Anomine homeworld.”

“Why?”

“Because they successfully went postphysical, and they left their elevation mechanism behind.”

Inigos’s Twenty-first Dream

Edeard walked out of the Mayor’s sanctum, hoping none of his annoyance was showing. Even after all these decades in Makkathran, he was still less adept at veiling his emotions than other citizens were. It had been a petty argument, of course, which just made it worse. But Mayor Trahaval was most adamant: Livestock ownership certificates would not be extended to sheep and pigs. For centuries they had been required only for cattle, the Mayor insisted, and that tradition was more than adequate. If there had been an increase in rustling out in the countryside, it was not the city’s job to interfere, certainly not to impose additional paperwork on the provinces. Let the governors increase the sheriff patrols and have the market marshals keep a more watchful eye.

The doors closed behind Edeard, and he took a calming breath. A powerful farsight drifted across him, raising goose bumps on his arms. As always, it was gone in a moment; certainly the watcher hadn’t lingered long enough for him to use his own farsight to ascertain where they were.

Whoever they were, they’d been checking up on him for a couple of years now and growing bolder of late. The snooping was coming almost weekly now. It irritated him that there was almost nothing he could do about it short of being fast enough to catch the secret watcher at his or her own game. So far he hadn’t managed that, though he suspected it was some disaffected youth making sure he wasn’t around while they set about their nefarious business. Certainly Argian hadn’t heard anything from his contacts about a youngster with exceptional psychic powers, at least not one who hired out his talent. So Edeard was content to play a waiting game; one day they’d make a mistake, and then they’d find out just why he was called the Waterwalker.

On the Liliala Hall’s ceiling above him, the storm clouds swirled ferociously, blocking out all sight of Gicon’s Bracelet. Three weeks, that’s all; just three weeks to the next elections. Not that he expected Trahaval to be voted out or even wanted him to be. Life was good in Makkathran and the provinces, in no small part due to Trahaval, who was a solid reliable Mayor, consolidating everything Finitan had achieved over his unprecedented six terms. It was just that he lacked any real vision of his own. Hence the refusal to expand the livestock registry. Farmers had been complaining about rustling for years, and it was definitely on the increase. Merchants and abattoirs in the city weren’t too choosy about who they bought their beasts from, a moral flexibility followed by all the big towns and provincial capitals. An expanded certificate scheme would help, especially given how difficult it was to settle such disputes. As always, pressure was put on the constables and sheriffs to sort the mess out and come down hard on the rustlers. Such expectations were a sign of the times, Edeard reflected wryly. Twenty years ago people were concerned about thugs and robberies and securing the roads against highwaymen; nowadays it was missing sheep.

But in three weeks’ time, if all went well, he might finally get out of the special Grand Council committee on organized crime that Mayor Finitan had created. After two and a half decades it had accomplished everything Edeard had ever wanted it to. The committee had begun by weeding out the leftover street gang members, of whom there were still hundreds. They’d fallen back into their old ways with the greatest of ease, as if Finitan’s election and the mass banishment had meant nothing. They weren’t organized anymore, not as they had been under Buate and Ivarl, though Ranalee and her ilk certainly exerted enough malign influence. Because they were all independent of their old gangs, the constables had to go after them one at a time, catching them in the act of some petty criminal endeavor. Then came the court case, which inevitably fined them rather than jailed them because the offenses were so petty; or if they were jailed, it was only for a few months, which solved nothing.

Edeard and Finitan had introduced a rehabilitation scheme as an alternative to fines and jail and banishment, making convicts undertake public works alongside genistar teams. It had to be done, they were determined about that; some attempt had to be made to break the cycle of crime and poverty. The cost of the scheme had kicked off a huge political struggle in the Council, absorbing all Finitan’s efforts for his entire second term. Guilds had been coerced to train the milder recidivists, taking them on as probationary apprentices so that they were offered some kind of prospects at least. Slowly and surely, the level of physical crime in the city had fallen.

That left other levels of disruption and discontent. Edeard had gone after the remaining One Nation followers, which had been far more difficult. They could never be brought before a court of law and sanctioned before undergoing rehabilitation. Instead, he applied pressure in other areas of their lives. Their businesses suffered, no bank would loan them money, their status—so important to the Grand Families—withered away as whispered rumors multiplied, and they were blackballed from clubs and events. Finally, should those methods fail to move them, there was always the formal tax investigation of their estates. Over the years they simply had packed up and left Makkathran. Edeard made sure they dispersed evenly across the provinces so that given the distances involved, they slowly fell out of contact with one another.

That just left the Grand Families, which—strictly speaking—didn’t fall under the remit of the committee. Their power came from their wealth, which was jealously and adroitly guarded. Finitan quietly had increased the number of tax clerks while Edeard removed the more corrupt members of that guild. The city’s tax revenue increased accordingly. But bringing full accountability to the Grand Families and merchant classes was a process of democratization that would probably outlast his lifetime, though the worst excesses had already been curbed.

Now, in three weeks’ time Makkathran would vote on Edeard’s candidature for Chief Constable. Please, Lady! Everyone, especially the Grand Families, saw each new crime in Makkathran as part of some vast subversive semirevolutionary network of evil. It was an inevitable result of the success that the constables and his own committee had secured over the years in cutting the overall level of crime in the city and out on the Iguru so spectacularly. Consequently, any crime that was committed these days became noteworthy, from missing crates of vegetables to the theft of cloaks from the Opera House. The perpetrators had to be organized and therefore required the immediate appointment of the Waterwalker himself to head up the investigation.

Three weeks, he thought as he walked across the Liliala Hall. That’s all I’ve got to put up with this Lady-damned rubbish for. Three weeks. And if I lose, they might even expect me to resign. It wasn’t a thought he’d shared with anyone, not even Kristabel, but it was one he’d considered a few times of late. Certainly there was precious little for the special Grand Council committee to do these days. The number of constables assigned to the committee was barely a quarter of what it had been fifteen years ago, and most of those remaining were on loan to provincial capitals or winding up cases that had dragged on for years.

One way or another, it needs to close down. I need to do something else.

Above him, a vigorous hurricane knot at the ceiling’s apex spun faster and faster. The racing bands of cloud grew darker as they thickened. At first he didn’t really notice the center; it was just another patch of darkness. Then a star shimmered within it, and he stopped and stared up. The center of the storm whorl was clearing, expanding to show the night sky beyond. He’d never seen the ceiling do that before, not in all the years he’d walked beneath it. Clouds were draining away rapidly now, abandoning the ceiling to leave a starscape in which the Void’s nebulae glimmered with robust phosphorescence. Then Gicon’s Bracelet appeared, each of the five small planets spaced neatly around the ceiling and shining with unwavering intensity, so much larger than he’d ever seen them before. The Mars Twins, both angry gleaming orbs of carmine light, still devoid of any features. Vili, the brightest of the five, with an unbroken mantle of ice reflecting sunlight right back through its thin cloudless atmosphere. Alakkad, its dead black rock threaded with beautiful orange lines of lava, pulsing like veins. And finally, Rurt, an airless gray-white desert battered by comets and asteroids since the day it formed to produce a terrain of a million jagged craters.

Edeard gaped in delight at the celestial panorama that the ceiling had so unexpectedly delivered in such wondrous detail. He took his time, familiarizing himself with each of the Gicon worldlets. It had been a long time since he’d bothered to look through a telescope—decades, back before he ever set foot in Makkathran. As he went around the sedate quintet formation, he realized that something new had appeared amid them. A patch of pale iridescent light was shimmering beside Alakkad. “What is that?” he murmured in puzzlement. It couldn’t be a nebula; it was too small, too steady. Besides, the ceiling was showing him the entire bracelet, which meant the patch was close to Querencia. There was no tail, so it wasn’t a comet. Which meant …

Edeard dropped to his knees as if in prayer, staring up in awe at the little glowing patch. “Oh, dear Lady!” He’d never seen one, never imagined what one would look like. But even so he knew exactly what he was looking at.

Edeard put his eye to the end of the telescope again, making sure the alignment was right. Why the lens stuck out vertically halfway along the big brass tube was a mystery to him. The astronomer he’d bought it from had launched into some long explanation about focal length. It made no sense to Edeard; that the contraption worked was all he required. He’d spent most of the afternoon setting it up on the hortus outside the study where Kristabel kept her desk and all the paperwork she used to manage the estate. By now the ziggurat all the way down to the third floor knew of the Waterwalker’s new interest, not to mention every astronomer in Makkathran, gossipy clique that they were. It wouldn’t take long before the entire city was aware. Then life might get interesting again.

And that’s my real problem with this world. Too damn neat and tidy.

He stood up, arching his back to get the kinks out. His farsight swept out across the gloaming-cloaked city. Someone was observing him. Not the secretive newcomer; his knew this mental signature only too well. His farsight stretched all the way down to Myco and that four-story building fronting Upper Tail Canal, the one with a faint violet glow escaping from its upper windows.

“Hello, Edeard,” Ranalee longtalked. She was standing in the office that had belonged to Bute and Ivarl before her. When he employed the city’s own senses to look into the room, he saw she was dressed in a long silk evening gown with flared arms. Large jewels sparkled in her hair and around her neck. Two girls were in attendance. They looked like junior daughters from some Grand Family, the kind she usually ensnared in her various dynastic breeding schemes; their robes were certainly more expensive than those of the courtesans on the lower floors, and their admiration for Ranalee was painfully obvious. A lad was also in there with them, a dark-haired youth in his late teens, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Edeard guessed he was of the aristocracy; his self-confidence incriminated him. For him to be there was somewhat unusual for Ranalee but hardly unique.

Edeard sighed at finding the trio, but then, charging into the House of Blue Petals with a squad of constables to rescue innocents from her clutches didn’t work. He’d made that mistake before. Once it had been so bad, he’d gone back in time to make sure it never happened.

There was only one way to rid Makkathran of Ranalee, and he wouldn’t do it. As she so often said, that would make him one of her own. So he endured and did what he could to thwart her legitimately.

To add to the ignominy, she’d aged extremely well, presumably thanks to some deal made in Honious, he told himself sullenly. Her skin remained firm and wrinkle-free, and she managed to maintain an impressive figure even after four children. You had to get right up next to her and look into those hypnotic eyes to know the true age and calculating ingenuity that the body contained, a position he tried to avoid as much as possible.

“Good evening,” he replied equitably.

“Interesting new toy you’ve got there.”

“As always, I’m flattered by your attention.”

“Why do you want a telescope?”

“To watch the end of your world approaching.”

“How coy. I’ll find out, of course.”

“You certainly will. I’ll be announcing it very loudly in a few days.”

“How intriguing. That’s why I always liked you, Edeard. You make life exciting.”

“Who are your new friends?”

Ranalee smiled as she looked around the office at the youngsters. “Come and join us; find out for yourself.” She signaled the girls, who immediately went over to the lad and started kissing him.

“No thank you.”

“Still holding out against your true self? How sad.”

“You’re really not going to enjoy my announcement. I’m about to turn even those with the weakest of wills away from your kind of existence.”

“You’re very bitter tonight. Were those livestock certificates so desperately important to you?”

Every time. She could do it Every Single Time. Edeard pressed his teeth together as he tried to quash his anger.

“At least the animal markets is one enterprise you haven’t contaminated yet,” he told her. It was petty, but …

“Poor Edeard, still jealous after all these years. You never expected me to be so successful, did you?”

He refused to rise to the bait. But Ranalee’s business ability had surprised him. She’d invested wisely, unlike the previous owners of the House of Blue Petals, who had simply squandered the money on their own lifestyle. Today, Ranalee owned over two dozen perfectly legitimate businesses and had a considerable political presence on the general merchants council and in the Makkathran Chamber of Commerce. Nowadays, she was completely independent of the old faltering Gilmorn family. He knew of course that she’d used her vile ability for dominance to sway unsuspecting rivals at opportune moments and to build unseemly financial alliances, yet he could never prove anything. And of course, her children had been married off selectively, gathering more wealthy families into her dominion.

“That’s Makkathran for you,” he replied. “Equal opportunity for everyone.”

Ranalee shook her head, seemingly tired of the argument. “No, Edeard. It’s not. Nor—before you start—are all of us born equal. You got where you are because of your strength, just as I foresaw. And I am where I am because of my strength, and you resent that.”

“Are you saying you used illicit methods to gather your new wealth?”

“Did you achieve your position legitimately? Where is my father, Edeard? Where is Owain? Why has there never been an inquiry into their disappearance?”

“Is an inquiry needed into their activities?”

“Would it ever be an impartial one?” She reached up and began removing the jeweled pins from her hair so it could fall free.

“You don’t want that.”

“No,” she said simply. “The past is the past. It’s done. Over. I look to the future. I always have.” She regarded the youngsters dispassionately. The ardent girls had taken the lad’s shorts off. They giggled as they pushed him down on a big couch.

Edeard couldn’t watch the lad’s enraptured, worshipful face as Ranalee moved over to the side of the couch and stared down at him. Too many memories. “Why do you do this?” he asked. “You’ve achieved so much.”

A victorious smile twitched across Ranalee’s lips. “Not as much as you.”

“Oh, for the Lady’s sake!”

“Would you like to linger tonight, Edeard? Would you like to remember how it was? How much you lost?”

“Good night,” he said in disgust.

“Wait.” She turned from the couch.

“Ranalee …”

“I have some information for you. It’s something she would never come to you with.”

“What’s this?” he asked, though with a falling heart he knew exactly who she was talking about. Ranalee would never attract his attention simply to taunt; she always had some way of inflicting harm or worry.

“Vintico has spent the day answering uncomfortable questions in the Bellis constable station,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. Apparently, they’ve detained him overnight so formal charges can be drawn up tomorrow.”

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard groaned.

Vintico was Salrana’s oldest child and one of the most worthless humans ever to walk Makkathran’s streets. His father was Tucal, Ranalee’s brother. That despicable pairing had finally made him realize that there would never be a truce between him and Ranalee, that their war would continue until the bitter end.

“What this time?” he asked in despair.

“I believe he made a bad choice of business partners. Something about a deal falling through and a large debt to established merchants. Apparently they get quite serious about such things. Especially nowadays, what with the city being run so efficiently. After all, law and order must prevail.”

“I can’t help.”

“I understand. You have standards. But it will break his mother’s heart if he’s sent to Trampello; it might spell the end of her engagement, as well. That single fragile chance to bring some happiness into her life. I only mention this because he’s family.”

“Then why don’t you offer to help your family if it’s so important?”

“If only I could. I don’t have any spare cash right now. All my money is tied up in new enterprises, investing in the future for my own children.” She smiled lecherously and turned back to the lad sprawled across the couch. “Are you going to watch now?”

A furious Edeard wrenched his farsight away, but not before her vicious amusement had infiltrated his perception. “FucktheLady!” he spit.

Salrana! The one name he could never mention again in the Culverit ziggurat. Kristabel’s patience on that topic had run out decades ago. Salrana: He’d tried to help her time and again over the years. He’d watched and waited, believing that her old self would one day reassert itself, that Ranalee’s mental damage would wither away. It was never to be. Ranalee had been too skillful at the start, while his opposition was too crude, helping the new false emotions establish themselves in her thoughts until they were no longer false. Salrana hated him.

The battle had lasted for years before he admitted defeat. Eventually even Ranalee had moved on to more rewarding endeavors. The five children Salrana had borne for men Ranalee selected proved unspectacular, especially their psychic ability. So Ranalee administered the final indignity by discarding her. Now Salrana was engaged to Garnfal, a carpentry Guild Master more than sixty years her senior. Edeard was fairly sure Ranalee had nothing to do with it, so the attraction (whatever that was) might just be genuine. Ranalee could have been truthful; it was a chance for Salrana to be happy on her own terms.

I can’t interfere.

But Salrana was his fault. She always would be. That meant she was his responsibility, too: a charge that would never end.

Just for a moment he thought of going back a couple of weeks, warning Vintico off whatever ridiculous deal he’d gotten himself involved with. That would mean another two weeks of electioneering, of parties he’d already been to, of reliving the whole livestock certificate debacle.

Edeard groaned at the notion of it. Impossible. He directed his longtalk toward a specific little house in the Ilongo district. “Felax, I have a job for you.”

Edeard sensed Kristabel’s thoughts while she was only on the sixth floor. He grinned at the tone. She was in a foul mood again, something he found amusing now that his own temper had abated. He had good reason to be confident again: Felax was clever and discreet, and the Vintico problem would vanish before dawn. Not that it would ever do to let Kristabel know of his reaction to this particular temper, but the predictability was entertaining. Their children must have known of their mother’s disposition, too. All of them had contrived to be out of the Culverit ziggurat this evening, at parties or just “meeting some friends”; even Rolar and his wife were absent with their children. Don’t blame you, he blessed them silently.

“What are you doing out there?” Kristabel’s longtalk lashed out, suffused with anger.

“Stargazing,” he replied mildly. When he looked into the study through the tall external doors, she was silhouetted in the doorway from the hall. The fur-lined hem of her purple and black ceremonial Grand Council robes was held off the floor by her third hand, and its hood flopped back over her shoulder. That allowed her to jam her hands on her hips.

Edeard remembered the first time he’d seen her strike that pose: the day Bise refused to sign their wedding consent bill in the Upper Council. She had stormed out of the chamber with a face set in a mask of fury. Nervous district masters crept out of the door behind her and got the Honious out of the Orchard Palace as fast as they could. Even Bise had looked apprehensive.

“Well, that’s useful just before an election,” Kristabel snapped as she walked through the study. “And why is it so dark in here?”

“Light sewage,” he told her.

“What?”

“It needs to be properly dark out here for the telescope to work at its best. Something to do with the eye contracting. You can’t pollute the night with light.”

“Oh, for Honious’s sake, Edeard. I’ve got real problems, you’ve got obligations, and you’re out here wasting time with this genistar crap.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” She reached the hortus. Her hair was shorter these days, and her maids had their work cut out each morning to try and rein it in. Tonight it had frizzed out of the elegant curls and ringlets arrangement she’d started the day with, as if the sheer heat of her anger had pushed it into rebellion. “That little tit, Master Ronius of Tosella, slapped a whole lot of amendments on the trade bill. Five months I’ve steered that through the Council. Five Lady-damned months! Those tariff reductions were vital for Kepsil province. Has someone stolen his brain?”

“The bill was never popular with some merchants.”

“There were balances,” she growled back. “I’m not stupid, Edeard.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“I—” He made an effort to calm down. You know she’s always like this after an Upper Council meeting. And a lot of other times, too, these days, he added regretfully. “I have something to show you,” he said, with the excitement rising in his voice and mind. “Come.” He led her across the strip of hortus to the telescope. It was truly dark now. Makkathran was laid out below them, a beautiful jewel of glimmering light stretching east toward the Lyot Sea, where the orange-hued buildings sketched their amazing shapes against a cloudless night sky. The canal network cut rigid black lines through the illumination. He could see the gondolas in the Great Major Canal at the foot of the ziggurat, their bright oil lanterns bobbing merrily across the water. Occasional snatches of song slipped up through the balmy night air. The city was a vista he never tired of.

Kristabel bent over the telescope, her third hand pushing her hood aside as it slid around. “What?” she said.

“Tell me what you see.”

“Alakkad, but it’s off-center; you haven’t got the telescope aligned properly.”

Every second sentence is a criticism these days. “It is centered correctly,” Edeard persisted stoically. He permitted a hint of excitement to filter through his mental shield.

Kristabel let out a sigh of exasperation and concentrated on the image.

“There’s a … I don’t know, it’s like a little white nebula.”

“It’s not a nebula.”

She straightened up. “Edeard!”

“An hour ago it was several degrees farther from Alakkad. It’s moving. And before you ask, it’s not a comet, either.”

Kristabel’s anger vanished. She gave him a shocked look, then bent to the telescope again. “Is it a ship? Has it come from outside the Void like the one which brought Rah and the Lady?”

“No.” He put his arms around her and smiled down into her confused face. “It’s a Skylord.”

Mayor Trahaval was throwing a large party every second night, moving through the districts with a relentless pace to drum up support for himself and the local representative candidates who endorsed him. The Seahall was the only place in Bellis grand enough for such an occasion. With its unusual concave walls shaded a deep azure supporting a roof that was made from clashing wave cones, it really did have a marine theme, even down to the unusual ripple fountains that curved around the ten arching doorways. This evening the usual seating had been removed to make room for the tables laden with food, and a small band was playing at the center. The guests had been chosen with almost as much care as had gone into the lavish canapés. There was a broad mix of Bellis citizens to socialize with Trahaval and his entourage of stalwart supporters, from the smaller merchant families desperate for political influence to street association chiefs, local guildsmen, and ancient Grand Family patriarchs and matriarchs, as well as a vetted selection of “ordinary working folk.” The idea was the same as it was for every party in every election. Trahaval and the Upper Councillors would mingle with and talk to as many people as possible so they would spread the word among their friends and family that he wasn’t aloof after all, that he understood everyday problems, that he had a sense of humor and knew a good bit of gossip about his rivals and some Grand Family sons and daughters.

Edeard had no idea how many times he’d been to identical parties over the last four decades. The only number that registered was too many.

“Oh, come on,” Kristabel said quietly as they made their way under the gurgling water that surrounded the main doorway. “You can do this.”

“There’s a difference between can and want to,” he murmured back. Then people noticed that the Waterwalker and the mistress of Haxpen had arrived. Hopeful smiles spread like wildfire. Edeard put on an equally enthusiastic “happy to be here” face for everyone to see, twinning the burst of enthusiasm from his mind. He helped Kristabel out of her scarlet and topaz cloak, unbuttoned his own signature black leather cloak, and handed both to a doorman.

I wonder if the Opera House cloakroom fiends are here tonight? They’d get a good haul out of this lot.

“Macsen and Kanseen are here; look,” he said cheerfully.

“You’re not to talk to them until you’ve talked to at least fifteen other couples,” Kristabel ordered. “Once you and Macsen start, that’s it for the evening.”

“Yes, dear.” But he grinned because the rebuke wasn’t as sharp as they had been of late. Kristabel had actually brightened up considerably in the last few days since he’d spotted the Skylord. And anyway, she’s right. Macsen and I are a pair of dreadful old bores.

A third hand pinched sharply. “And less of that,” she warned.

“Yes, yes, dear.”

They smiled at each other, then parted. It was easier to work the crowd separately, they’d found.

A wine importer cornered him first. The man and his very young wife were keen for trade with Golspith province, where some excellent vineyards were producing some wonderful new varieties. The merchant’s third hand plucked a glass from a waiter. It turned out he was proud to be sponsoring all the party’s drinks for Mayor Trahaval tonight. Edeard took a sip and agreed the new wine was all he had promised. “So if you could see your way to mentioning the ruinous tariffs to your beautiful wife …” Which Edeard promised he would do.

Funny how people still thought he was the boss in their marriage.

Then came the street traders’ association chief. The man assured the Waterwalker of his vote and those of his fellows for Chief Constable, but then, Edeard had always taken care to maintain good relationships with the associations.

Next was a Guild Master from the shipyards. A local Councillor, a woman: “Just completely inspired by your wife, so I stood at the last election, and now I’m on the Council.” Three sons from the district’s Grand Families, wanting his opinion of joining the militia regiment. A shopkeeper. A chinaware dealer called Zanlan, who was the fifth son of a third son in a big merchant family, inordinately pleased to have broken free and set up for himself, importing interesting new cargoes from many provinces. “I’m a member of the Apricot Cottage Fellowship,” he told Edeard proudly.

“I think I’ve heard of it,” Edeard muttered diplomatically.

“We’re new, a generation like myself who aren’t going to sit about living off our families. Things are changing on Querencia, and we want to grasp those opportunities for ourselves.”

“That’s the kind of talk I like to hear,” Edeard said, genuinely impressed.

“Of course, none of the established guilds and associations recognize us. They’re probably frightened of the competition. And the Orchard Palace ignores us completely; we get frozen out of so-called open contracts.”

“Leave it with me,” Edeard promised. “I’ll make some inquiries.”

“All we ask for is a fair market.”

Then there was a blacksmith. A female apprentice from the Eggshaper Guild who was a little overawed and a little drunk.

He was on his fifth glass of the appalling new wines and his third plate of heavily spiced pastries when he caught sight of Jiska and hurried over. “You count as a party guest,” he told her. “Talk to me.”

“Oh, poor Daddy. Is Mummy bullying you horribly again?”

“I’m on a quota.”

“Sounds dreadful.” She gave him a knowing grin. Jiska was the second of their seven children, blessed with her mother’s fine-featured beauty but with Edeard’s dark hair. She was wearing a simple sky-blue dress with a narrow skirt, contrary to this season’s fashion. But then, Jiska had never gone for the excesses of Makkathran’s society, for which Edeard was extremely thankful.

“So where’s Natran?” he asked.

“He sends his apologies; there was some crisis at the ship. The new sails weren’t right; bad rigging or something.”

“There’s always a crisis with that ship. Is it actually seaworthy?”

“Daddy!”

“Sorry.” Actually, he quite liked Natran. The man was from a trading family, but after serving time with the family fleet, he’d acquired a boat of his own. He was determined to found his own fleet and fortune.

“He’s doing very well for himself, you know,” Jiska said defensively. “His agents have several profitable cargoes lined up.”

“I’m sure they have. He’s a smart young man with a whole load of prospects.”

“Thank you.”

“Uh … have you ever heard of the Apricot Cottage Fellowship?”

“Yes, of course. Natran is affiliated. It’s made up of people with a similar background to himself who’ve banded together for a greater political voice. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. It’s a good idea. I like the way some family sons are striking out for themselves.”

“Well, the older merchants should start taking notice of the fellowship’s grievances. The way they treat legitimate competition isn’t exactly lawful.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You want to hear that, do you, Daddy? How my boyfriend and his friends spend their drinking time grumbling about unfair competition from larger rivals, how no one listens to them, how the world ignores them? I can talk for hours on the subject if you wish.”

“That’s fine. I’m sure they’ll find a way of making their presence known in the Council. Every other pressure group in the city certainly seems to manage.”

“Daddy, you’re such a cynic.”

“So when are you going to take him out to our beach lodge for a week and the day?”

The look she screwed her face up into was one of pure dismay. “Urrgh! I thought you wanted to rid Makkathran of useless tradition, especially something as demeaning as that one.”

“Er …”

“You know, I was eight before I found out the ‘Ignorant man’ song was all about you. That was a fun day at school; even my closest friends … Oh, never mind.”

“Ah, yes. I never did forgive Dybal for writing that one.”

“It’s horrible.”

I thought it was quite funny, actually. “It’s in the past, darling. Don’t worry about it. But my question still stands. You could do a lot worse.”

“I know. It’s difficult for him; this is only his second year as Captain. And we’re not going to rush into anything.”

“You’ve been going out for five years now,” he pointed out reasonably. “When you know, you know.”

“I’m sure love at first sight worked well for you and Mummy. But I need to know someone more than a couple of days.”

“It was not two days,” he protested. “I spent weeks wooing her.”

Jiska’s delicate eyebrow shot up. “Daddy, tell me: You didn’t just say ‘wooing’?”

He sighed in defeat. “You know, maybe if your generation did a bit more wooing, I might have a few more children married off.”

“I’m not even forty yet.”

“And still beautiful.”

She pouted. “You old charmer. No wonder Mummy fell for you.”

“Just so you know, I don’t have any problem if you and Natran do want to go before the Lady and marry.”

“Yep, got it, Daddy. Actually, got that four years and eleven months ago. Anyway, my big brother is certainly doing his bit. You know what?” She leaned in, eyes agleam.

“What?”

“I think Wenalee is expecting again.”

He gave his daughter a sharp look. “You haven’t farsighted that, have you?”

“Really, Daddy! No, I did not. And I’m shocked you should think so.”

“Yeah,” he growled. Jiska had a farsight even more powerful than his own.

Maybe I should get her to track down my secret watcher. But the idea of Wenalee being pregnant really buoyed him up. A third grandchild. That would be something. He loved having little Garant and Honalee (everyone called her Honeydew) running around the tenth floor. Rolar, his oldest, certainly hadn’t wasted any time settling down and starting a family.

“Uh oh,” Jiska murmured silkily. “Twins warning.”

Edeard scanned around to see Marilee and Analee worming through the guests, heading straight for him. His fifth and sixth children were identical twins, and right from the start they’d relished making a play of their matched looks, always styling their hair the same and wearing indistinguishable clothes. Tonight they’d dressed in synchronized satin gowns, except Marilee’s was shimmering burgundy while Analee sported yellow-gold. Edeard smiled indulgently at them; not that they deserved it, but what could a father do? They were twenty-five and the absolute stars of Makkathran’s high society. As tall as he, slim like their mother, faces where girlish wickedness forever lurked among exquisite fine-boned features, and thick raven hair that came from his mother’s family. Add their good looks to their status, and basically, whatever they wanted, they tended to get, from clothes to pets and parties to boys.

“Daddy!” they chorused delightedly. He was kissed simultaneously on both cheeks.

“We’ve been very good tonight.”

“We talked to so many people.”

“And convinced them to vote for you.”

“They all got reminded of what you did for the city.”

“Even though it was so long ago.”

“A debt like that can never be ignored.”

“So they’ll remind all their friends.”

“And their family to get out there on election day.”

“And put their cross where it counts.”

“Or they’ll have to answer to us.”

Being talked at by the twins was like being deafened by birdsong. “Thank you both,” he said.

“So now we’ve done our duty.”

“And we’d like you to set us free.”

“Because there’s a super party at the Frandol family mansion tonight.”

“And we’ve found us a suitable escort.”

They both giggled and looked at their father pleadingly.

“Uh …” Edeard managed.

“Utrallis.”

“He’s gorgeous.”

“And tall.”

“And serves in the Pholas and Zelda regiment.”

“But he’s independently wealthy, too.”

“Not just some minor son.”

“A gentleman of honor.”

“Happy to serve his city.”

“All right.” Edeard held his hands up. “Go on, go away, the pair of you. Have fun.”

“Oh, we will.”

Another burst of giggling assaulted Edeard’s ears as they turned away. Each girl raised a gloved hand. Two fingers beckoned imperiously. Through the melee of guests Edeard saw a young man in his militia dress uniform, all polished buttons and perfectly tailored scarlet and blue jacket. Utrallis couldn’t possibly be older than the twins, though he held his broad shoulders square and had a strong jaw. Edeard regarded his nose charily, suspecting a distant Gilmorn heritage—he had a nasty flash memory of Ranalee and the helpless lad in her office. Their eyes met, and the young man produced such a panicked guilty look as his cheeks flushed crimson that Edeard couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Then Utrallis was suddenly caught between the twins and hauled off.

Jiska shook her head as she sighed. “And he looked so sweet. Poor thing. How is it they’re always so elated at the start of the evening, then when morning comes, this tragic broken husk creeps out of the ziggurat looking like he’s managed to escape from Honious itself?”

“The twins aren’t that bad,” Edeard said mildly.

“Daddy, you’ve got such a blind spot when it comes to them.”

He grinned roguishly. “Because I was so tough on you.”

Jiska raised her glass. “I’ll get around to Natran, don’t you worry. I suppose five years is long enough.”

“No pressure. From me. Besides, it’s only two months till Marakas goes before the Lady.”

She smiled with a kind of fond bewilderment. “I can’t believe he’s marrying that one. I mean … Heliana is nice, and shapely, but really, what else has she got? Are men genuinely that shallow?”

“Of course we are.”

“Poor Taralee.”

“Taralee will do fine; she’s destined for great things. One day she’s going to be grand mistress of the Doctors Guild.” He was still inordinately proud of his youngest, not yet twenty-two and already a Doctors Guild journeyman. She’d completely eschewed the dizzy party life the twins had chosen so she could devote herself to medicine.

“Let’s see,” Jiska mused. “After the election you’ll be Chief Constable. So now that Dylorn’s joined the militia, you just need me or one of the twins to become a Novice and work our way up to Pythia, and you’d be king of the city.”

Trying to visualize either of the twins in a novice’s robing was plain impossible. “Not the first time someone’s accused me of that ambition,” he said.

“Really? Why?”

He looked at his daughter, smart, elegant, courted by every eligible man in the city, completely carefree, and with such astonishing opportunities ahead of her. But above all, his greatest triumph was to make her safe, to give her that wonderful future. Yet she didn’t see that. The battles fought before her birth meant very little to her generation. It was a depressing thought how established he’d become, just to be taken for granted as one of Makkathran’s principal figures. No questions asked, no need to prove himself, not anymore.

“Long old story. Ask Macsen sometime.”

“Oh, Lady. I know he’s your oldest friend, but I really can’t take any more of those stories about the old days.”

“Good old days,” he corrected.

“If you say so, Daddy.”

It must have been something about Jiska’s skepticism or the appearance of the Skylord, but Edeard gave Macsen an unusually critical appraisal as he made his way over to his friend. The robes of office Macsen wore were fanciful, allowing thick fur-trimmed fabric to flow easily around him. It was a generous cut, perhaps designed to deflect attention from the equally generous belly Macsen had cultivated over the last couple of decades. His handsome face, too, was now a lot rounder. A fashionable short beard showed several gray strands.

“Edeard!” Macsen opened his arms wide and hugged him enthusiastically as if they’d been parted for years. Edeard gave him a slightly stiff response. After all, they had seen each other at least twice a week most weeks for the last forty years.

“Lady, this wine is dross,” Macsen complained, holding up his glass to the twilight seeping through the crescent windows.

“Stop whining; one of my potential voters donated it,” Edeard replied.

“In which case I’ll be honored to quaff a few more bottles for the fine chap.”

Lady, we even talk like the aristocrats these days. “Don’t bother. I don’t really care if I make Chief Constable. Face it, we’ve had our day.”

Macsen gave him a startled look. From the corner of his eye, Edeard saw Kanseen frown, but as always her mental shield allowed no knowledge of her feelings.

“Speak for yourself, country boy,” Macsen said; he was trying for a jovial tone but couldn’t quite reach it. “Anyway, from what I gather, you’re well ahead of our glorious current incumbent. Makkathran needs you to take a more prominent role.”

Edeard nearly said Why? but managed to hold his tongue. “I suppose so.”

Macsen draped his arm around Edeard’s shoulder and drew him aside with several insincere smiles directed at the group he’d been chatting with. “You want us to return to the old days? After everything you did?”

“No …” Edeard began wearily.

“Good, because I for one am not prepared to see everything we’ve achieved shit upon from a great height just because you’re menopausal.”

“I am not …” Okay, maybe he hasn’t changed that much. “All right, I’m a little sour myself right now, I admit that I went to see the Mayor three days ago to press for the livestock certificate expansion.”

“I heard. So he said no? You’ll be Chief Constable in under three weeks. You can apply some pressure in the Grand Council, push it through yourself.”

“I won’t do that though,” Edeard said forcefully. “Because Trahaval was right, wasn’t he? You must have seen it. We can’t extend the livestock certificates to sheep and pigs, for the Lady’s sake. It was an idiotic idea. Who wants that much paperwork? Don’t you remember the time we drew up the one hundred list? We didn’t see daylight for weeks on end, we were so busy with all those forms and reports and chits. A great bunch of extra certificates is simply pushing the job off on clerks. Our job! If rustling is to be stopped, it should be by constables enforcing the law. What was I thinking?”

“Ah. Yes. Definitely menopausal.”

“I was letting things slip. It’s complacency, and it was stupid of me. But not now, not anymore.”

“Oh, Lady, so now what? You want to go back out there with a couple of regiments? Take the city’s finest and haul the provincial militia along so you can catch sheep rustlers? Is that what it’s come to?”

“It hasn’t come to that. You don’t get it. We’ve been sailing along these last few years; we have no goals anymore. It was never just about winning, beating Owain and Buate; it was always about what happened afterward. Well, this is afterward and it matters to me. It matters a lot.”

“All right, then.” Macsen heaved out a big sigh. “I’ll kiss the mistress of Sampalok goodbye and ride out with you again. But you’ve got to admit it, we’re really getting too old and fat for this kind of thing. How about we just sit in the headquarters tent and leave the glory bits to your Dylorn, my Castio, and all the other youngsters?”

Edeard’s eyes automatically gazed down on Macsen’s belly. We’re not all so old and fat, thank you. In fact he was rather proud of himself for keeping his daily run going all this time. Today he could still climb the stairs in the ziggurat without getting out of breath. There were even running clubs in the city now, and the big autumn race from the City Gate across the Iguru to Kessal’s Farm and back was an annual event, with more people entering each year.

“No,” Edeard said. “That’s not the way to handle this. We have to change the way station captains and sheriffs operate. They need to gather more information, maybe put together some dedicated teams of constables who don’t just spend their days out on patrol.”

“More special Grand Council committees?”

“No, not like that. Just a group of officers, those with some experience and a little smarter than average, who’ll devote more of their time to investigating all the aspects of a crime, trying to build up a pattern. Like we used to do. You remember how I spied on Ivarl to find out what he was up to?”

“I remember what happened to you when you did.”

“All I’m saying is we need to get smarter, to adapt. Life is different now. It would be the worst kind of irony if we’re the ones who can’t keep up and benefit.”

Macsen gripped Edeard’s shoulder, smiling broadly. “You know what your real trouble is?”

“What?” Edeard asked, though he’d already guessed the answer.

“You’re a glory glutton.”

———

It was the third night Edeard had lain awake in the big bedroom on the tenth floor of the Culverit ziggurat. He really should have been able to sleep. The room was perfect for him; he’d spent years altering it, expanding the arching windows that led out onto the hortus, changing the lights to circles that shone with a warm pink-white radiance, reducing the ceiling height, producing alcoves for which Kristabel had commissioned furniture that fit exactly, toning the walls to a subtle gray-blue so they matched the specially woven carpet. Even the spongy bed mattress had been adjusted until it achieved exactly the firmness both he and Kristabel wanted. They’d argued over her fondness for draping all the furniture in lace, compromising with a few tasteful frills. Even the curtains were a stylish pale russet, although they did have thick jade piping and tassels. The tassels had been one of the things he’d compromised on, but he really couldn’t blame them for his not being able to sleep.

Kristabel shifted beside him, pulling the silk sheets about. He held his breath until she was sleeping deeply again. There had been a time, not all that long ago, when he would have nuzzled up to her when she did that and they’d start caressing and kissing. There would be giggles and moaning, then sheets and blankets would be flung aside, and they’d work each other’s bodies to that wondrous physical pinnacle they knew exactly how to reach.

Gazing over at her in the dusky light that crept around the curtains, he wondered when all that had ended. Not that it had finished; they still made love several times a month. Whereas it used to be several times a night. Kristabel was still beautiful. She was not girlish anymore, which he didn’t want, anyway; her hair was starting to lighten, and there were a few lines around her eyes. But physically she was still very desirable. He could remember only too well all the cursing and misery after each child about how much weight she’d put on during the pregnancy and how she’d never look good again. Then there’d be the long fight to get back in shape, with fierce discipline over what she ate and then the kind of exercise that put his morning run to shame.

But she no longer wore the short lacy negligees he used to adore, and they showered separately and didn’t talk and shout each other down; nor did they laugh, not the way they used to. Developing dignity, he’d thought; at least that was what he told himself. The kind of dignity that comes with growing up and taking responsibilities seriously. And their ever-increasing burden of duties and how tired that always left them. Though it shouldn’t; all they had to do was delegate.

We’re just not the same people. That’s not a fault thing. Live with it. Even so, his traitor mind nearly sent his farsight creeping out to the House of Blue Petals. Ranalee would doubtless have that bewitched lad performing his strenuous best for her, corrupting him beyond salvation. Her love life had never ebbed.

No! It wasn’t fair to blame sex for everything. Attitudes, too, had hardened over the years. Edeard had always favored moving the city toward a full democracy, slowly reducing the power of the Upper Council and expanding the authority of the representatives. It would never be a swift transition; he fully expected that he wouldn’t live to see its conclusion. But as long as the process could be started, he would be content. However, with all the other changes and reforms within the city and the strengthening of bonds with the provinces, that seemed to have been delayed year after year. Kristabel hadn’t helped, not as he’d assumed she would. When she finally had taken her seat in the Upper Council as mistress of Haxpen, there had been too many other, more immediate, causes to support. As part of Finitan’s voting bloc she was expected to advance the Mayor’s new legislation and budgets and taxes. None of them had been focused on expanding general democracy.

He knew he shouldn’t confuse personality with politics. But it was hard not to blame her for being part of the Grand Family setup, which she bitterly resented.

Edeard hated himself for having such doubts about himself and Kristabel, doubts and questions that had only increased since the appearance of the Skylord. That was the real root of his sleepless nights. Since the afternoon when the Liliala Hall ceiling had cleared for him, he’d been striving to sense the Skylord’s thoughts, and he’d failed miserably.

Now the frustration was starting to cloud his thoughts, making him prickly and despondent. Worse, everyone close to him knew it, which annoyed him even more, especially as he couldn’t tell them the reason.

He let out a frustrated sigh and rolled cleanly off the bed without waking Kristabel. His third hand snatched up the clothes he wanted, and they drifted silently through the air behind him as he tiptoed out into the corridor. Once he was dressed, he pulled his black cloak about him and marched off to the central stairs. When he reached them, he threw a concealment around himself and simply vaulted over the banister rails to plummet the ten floors down to the ground. It was stupid, and exhilarating, and he hadn’t done anything like it for years.

Makkathran buoyed him up as he asked, controlling his fall. When he reached the floor, his boots landed with a gentle thud. He strode through the deserted cloisters of the ground floor to the ziggurat’s private mooring platform. It was long past midnight, which left very little traffic on the Great Major Canal. He waited for a minute as a gondola slipped into the High Pool, its lantern disappearing around the curving wall. Then, with the waterway clear, he reached out with his third hand and steadied the water. Another thing he hadn’t done in years.

Edeard ran straight across the canal. When he was halfway across, the farsight caught him. It was so inevitable, he was almost ready for it.

“I’ll find you one day,” he longtalked down the strand of perception that stretched across the city to Cobara. “You know I will.”

The farsight ended so fast, it was as if it had been broken. Edeard grinned to himself and reached a public mooring platform, where the wooden steps took him up to Eyrie.

The crooked towers stretched away ahead of him. Around the lower quarter of each one, slender streaks of orange light shone out of their dark wrinkled fascias, illuminating the deserted streets that wove between them. But the upper sections were jet black, cutting sharply across the nebula-swathed sky.

It was instinct that drew him there. The Lady’s scriptures spoke of how the ill and infirm and old used to wait atop the towers; then, as the Skylord flew above the city, their souls would ascend to be guided away from Querencia. He reached the tower close to the Lady’s grand church, where so many years ago conspirators from the families had thrown him off the top. It was one of the tallest in Eyrie, which would put him as close to the Skylord as anything in Makkathran. Pushing aside any reservations about the location and its resonances, he walked up the central staircase, spiraling around and around until he finally reached the top and stood on the broad circular platform that crowned the tower. Eight spikes stuck up from the edge, their twisted tips stretching a further forty feet above the platform itself.

The nostalgia he was feeling now wasn’t good. This was where Medath had waited after luring him up. This was where the other Grand Family conspirators had overpowered him and– He grimaced as he stared over at the section of the lip where he’d been shoved over. After so long, over forty years, he really shouldn’t have been bothered by it, yet the memory was disturbingly clear. So much so that he even searched with farsight to make perfectly sure no one else was around.

Stupid, Edeard scolded himself. He abruptly sat down cross-legged on the platform and tipped his head back to gaze up at the sky. Gicon’s Bracelet was visible above the spikes in the western hemisphere, the planets gleaming bright just off the border of the Ku nebula’s marvelous aquamarine glow. Even though he knew exactly where to look, the Skylord wasn’t yet visible to the naked eye. Instead Edeard called to it. All of his mind’s strength was focused into a single thought of welcome, one he visualized streaming out through space.

And eventually the Skylord answered.

Finitan had retired to one of the houses the Eggshaper Guild maintained in Tosella for its distinguished elderly members who’d retired from active duties. It was a big boxy structure with a swath of delicate magenta and verdure Plateresque-style decoration running around the outside of the third floor. There were no guards posted outside, only a ge-hound curled up beside the gate, which took one look at Edeard and yawned. Back when Edeard had arrived in the city, every large building had had some kind of sentry detail. Families and guilds had maintained almost as many guards as the city regiments. Now their numbers were dwindling, with old duties like the door sentry handed over to genistars once again.

Edeard walked through the open wooden gates into the central courtyard, where white and scarlet flowering gurkvine grew up the walls to the upper balconies and a fountain played cheerfully in the central pond. Several ge-chimps were tending the heavily scented flower beds, with another sweeping the gray-white flooring. He went up the broad central stairs to the third floor.

A young Novice was waiting at the top of the stairs, her blue and white robe immaculate. She bowed her head slightly. “Waterwalker.”

“How is he?”

“A better day, I think. The pain is not so great this morning. He is lucid.”

“He’s taking the potions, then?”

She smiled in regret “When he wants to or when the pain becomes too much.”

“Can I see him?”

“Of course.”

Finitan’s room had long slim windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. The walls and ceiling were white, and the floor was a polished red-brown flecked with emerald in the shape of minute leaves, as if they’d been fossilized in the city substance. It was furnished equally simply, with a desk and several deep chairs. The bed was large, half-recessed in a semicircular alcove. Finitan was sitting up in the center of it, his back resting on a pile of firm pillows.

“I’ll be outside,” the Novice said quietly, and closed the heavy carved door.

Edeard walked over to the bed, and his third hand lifted one of the chairs over. He sat down and studied his old friend. Finitan was quite thin now; the disease seemed to be consuming him from within. Even so, up until a few months ago he had weathered it well; now he was visibly frail. Blue veins stood proudly from pale skin, and what was left of his fine hair was a faded gray.

Edeard’s farsight examined the body, exposing the malignant growths around his lungs and thorax.

“Don’t be so bloody nosy,” Finitan wheezed.

“Sorry. I just …”

“Want to see if it’s retreating, if I’m getting better?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Finitan managed a weak smile. “Not a chance. The Lady is calling. To be honest, I’m always quite surprised these days when I still find myself waking up of a morning.”

“Don’t say that.”

“For the Lady’s sake, Edeard, accept I am dying. I did quite some time ago. Or are you going to start making politician’s talk about how I’ll be up and about soon? Cheer my spirits up?”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Thank the Lady. Those bloody Novices do. They think it helps, while what it really does is get me depressed. Can you imagine that? I’ve got a gaggle of twenty-year-old girls fussing over me, and all I want is for them to shut up and get out. What kind of an ending is that for a man?”

“Dignified?”

“Sod dignity. I know how I’d rather go. Wouldn’t that be something, eh? Scandalizing everyone at the finish.”

Edeard grinned, though he felt like crying. “That would indeed be something. Perhaps the doctor knows of some concoction that would give you a final burst of strength.”

“That’s better. Thank you for coming. I appreciate it. Especially now, when you should be out campaigning. How’s it going, by the way?”

“Well, Trahaval’s a certainty. I’m not sure about me; in private, my campaign people tell me there’s only a couple of percent in it. Yrance might be returned as Chief Constable.” He bit back on his irritation.

Finitan smiled broadly and rested his head back on the mound of pillows. “And that annoys you, doesn’t it? That’s the wonderful thing about you, Edeard; after all this time the one thing you of all people cannot do is shield your emotions properly. It’s amazing that that’s the only psychic ability you lack. So I can tell how it irks you that you, the Waterwalker, should have to struggle for votes after all you’ve done for the city.”

“It’s true. I didn’t expect quite such a struggle, yes.”

“Ha. You’re just angry because people have forgotten. Only forty years since the banishment, and you get taught in history class. That’s what you are to a whole generation, a boring afternoon stuck in school when they could be outside having fun.”

“Thank you for that.”

“Always does good to knock politicians down a peg or two.”

“I’m not a poli—”

Finitan chuckled, which turned to an alarming cough.

Edeard leaned forward in concern. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m dying.”

“There’s a difference between facing up to your fate and just being plain morbid.”

Finitan waved him silent. A glass of water drifted through the air and finished by his lips. He took a sip. “Wonderful; my psychic powers remain intact. How ironic is that?”

“It’s not your brain that’s affected.”

“I hate the brew they give me to numb the pain. It tastes vile, and then I spend the day dozing. I don’t want to spend the day dozing, Edeard.”

“I know.”

“What’s the point in that? My soul will soon soar free. Why spend the time bedbound and humbled? I hate this existence. Lady forgive me, I want it to end.”

Edeard could feel his cheeks flush and knew Finitan would be scrutinizing his thoughts with expert ability.

“Ah,” the old man said in satisfaction, and closed his eyes. “So what truly brings you here?”

“A Skylord is coming.”

“Dear Lady!” Finitan twisted around abruptly and winced at the spike of pain the motion caused. “How do you know?”

“The city revealed it to me. Then last night I spoke to it.” He smiled warmly and gripped Finitan’s cold hand in his own. “It comes to see if any of us have reached fulfillment. It comes to guide our souls to the Heart.”

“Fulfillment?” There were tears spilling from Finitan’s eyes. “Do I look fulfilled? The Lady damn its arrogance. By what right does it judge us?”

“Finitan, dearest friend, you are fulfilled. Look at the life you have lived, look at what you have accomplished. I’m asking you, I’m begging; go to a tower in Eyrie. Accept its guidance to Odin’s Sea. Show Makkathran, show the world, that we have become worthy again. Let people have that ultimate hope once more. Show them your way is the right way.”

“A Skylord will never take my sorry soul anywhere other than Honious.”

“Stop that; it will. Trust me one last time. You read my emotions, but I can see your soul, and it is glorious.”

“Edeard …”

“If you go, if you are worthy of guidance, other Skylords will know; they will come to Querencia again. Our lives will be complete. Everything you and I have achieved together, all that it cost, all that pain we endured to wrest the city from the grip of darkness and decay, will have been worthwhile.”

For a long while Finitan said nothing. Finally, he sighed. “Honious take me, I’m dying anyway. Why not?”

“Thank you.” Edeard leaned over the bed and kissed the old man’s brow.

The decision seemed to have cheered Finitan up. He pulled his pale lips into a rueful pout. “Well, at least the election’s over. What does it feel like to be Chief Constable?”

“How do you see that? Have you got a timesense you’ve been hiding all these years?”

“You’re going to be the Waterwalker again. You’re going to be the one who calls the Skylord to Querencia. Then in front of the whole city you’ll hoist me up to the top of the tower so I can be guided to the Heart. You, Edeard. Just you. Who’s not going to vote for a savior like that?”

———

Edeard announced the Skylord’s arrival that afternoon as he was making a campaign speech to Eggshaper Guild apprentices in Ysidro. There was silence in the hall at first, as if his words hadn’t quite made sense. Then came a swell of surprise and incredulity. Longtalk calls shot out to friends and family. Dozens of hands were raised, and questions shouted.

“It’s very simple,” the Waterwalker said. “The Skylords are flying to Querencia again. The first will be here in just over a week. It will guide Finitan through Odin’s Sea to the Heart.”

“How do you know?” several apprentices barked out simultaneously.

“Because I’ve been talking to it for the last few nights.”

“Why is Finitan going to be guided?”

“Because of all of us, he is the one who has reached fulfillment. The way he has lived his life is the example we must all follow. When the Skylord sees him, it will know the time has come for humans to be guided to the Heart once more.”

Makkathran’s true currency had always been gossip and rumor, a currency inflated during election time, when candidates sought to defame their rivals. So news of the Skylord traveled as such momentous news always did in Makkathran, as fast as sunlight. Within an hour everyone knew of the Waterwalker’s amazing claim.

The Astronomers Association promised they would find any Skylord approaching Querencia and immediately started quarreling among themselves about false observations. Mayor Trahaval carefully avoided direct comment or criticism. Chief Constable Yrance dismissed it as a ridiculous vote-grabbing stunt; however, his campaign team quickly spilled their ridicule around the city. A sign of the Waterwalker’s desperation, they claimed, a stunt, a lie. He’s past his prime. He’s delusional. A has-been. You need someone stable and practical, someone who produces actual results, a man like the existing Chief Constable.

Under Dinlay’s direction a flurry of counterclaims were passed from district to district. The Skylord is real. It is coming as the Lady prophesied. Finitan will be guided to the Heart because he has lived a life of fulfillment just as the Lady said we should. Who else but the Waterwalker could summon our final salvation? He is the one we need to lead us. Edeard will lead us to the future we have spent so long trying to achieve.

“You’d better be right about this,” Dinlay said as he and Edeard arrived at the Eggshaper Guild retirement house five days later.

“Have a little faith,” Edeard told his old friend in a wounded tone. Out of all of them, Dinlay had always been the most loyal. He was also the one Edeard considered had changed the least over the years. Dinlay had been captain of the Lillylight constable station for eight years now. That affluent district particularly welcomed his promotion; it was quite a catch having one of the Waterwalker’s original squad appointed to supervise the policing of their streets. Influence and status, to those residents in particular, meant everything.

Dinlay, of course, had fitted in perfectly (as Edeard had suspected he would). There were a lot of formal social events, which suited him. The station was organized efficiently. He was actively involved in the training of the new generation of constables, producing polite and effective squads. Prosecution lawyers achieved high success rates in court. Lillylight streets were safe to walk along at any time of the day or night. And Captain Dinlay was newly engaged to one of their own. Again.

Edeard led the way upstairs to Finitan’s room. The house’s chief doctor was waiting outside the door, flanked by two Novices.

“I’m not sure this is in the patient’s best interest,” the doctor said firmly.

“I think that’s for him to decide, isn’t it?” Edeard replied calmly. “That is his right at such a time as this.”

“This journey may finish him. Would you have that on your conscience, Waterwalker?”

“I will hold him steady, I promise. He will reach the tower in comfort.”

“And then what? Even if a Skylord were to come, he is still alive.”

“The Waterwalker has said a Skylord is coming,” Dinlay said heatedly. “Are you going to deny your own patient the chance to reach the Heart?”

“I can offer him certainty,” the doctor said. “Not promises based on myth.”

“This is not some election stunt,” Dinlay said, his anger growing now. “Not a politician’s promise. The Skylord will guide Master Finitan’s soul to the Heart.”

He really does believe in me, Edeard realized, feeling almost humbled by a trust that had lasted forty years. He wasn’t quite sure what to do about the stubborn doctor, who was only doing her job and securing what she believed was best for her patient.

“Doctor,” Finitan’s longtalk urged. “Please let my friends in.”

The doctor stepped aside with a great show of disapproval. Finitan was sitting up in bed, dressed in the robes of the Eggshaper Guild’s Grand Master.

“You look splendid,” Edeard said.

“Wish I felt it.” The old man coughed. He gave a frail, brave smile. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Of course.” Edeard folded his third hand gently around Finitan, ready to lift him off the bed.

“Master?” the doctor queried.

“It’s all right. This is what I want. I thank you and the Novices for a splendid job. You have made my life bearable again, but your obligation ends now. I would hope you respect that.” There was just a touch of the old master’s authority in the tone.

The doctor bowed uncomfortably. “I will accompany you to the tower myself.”

“Thank you,” Finitan said.

Edeard lifted Finitan carefully and maneuvered him through the door. The small procession made its way down the stairs to the courtyard.

Quite a crowd had gathered outside, eager and curious. They jostled for position on the narrow street, sweeping their farsight across the ailing master. Finitan raised a weak smile and waved.

“Where’s the Skylord?” someone shouted.

“Show us, then, Waterwalker. Where is it?”

“There’s nothing in the sky except clouds.”

Dinlay scowled. “Yrance’s people,” he muttered. “Have they no sense of decency?”

“It is an election,” an amused Finitan observed.

“After today they won’t matter,” Edeard replied.

There was a gondola waiting for them on Hidden Canal. Edeard eased Finitan down onto the long bench in the middle, and the doctor made him as comfortable as possible with cushions and blankets. The old man smiled contentedly as the gondolier pushed them off down the canal. Folfal trees lined both sides of the canal, their long branches curving high above the water. With the warm spring air gusting across the city, bright orange blossom buds were bursting out of the trees’ indigo-shaded bark, producing a beautiful show of vibrant color.

They were watched every inch of the way; some kids even ran along the side of the canal, dodging the trunks and pedestrians to keep up with the gondola. Several ge-eagles flapped lazily overhead.

The gondolier steered them down Hidden Canal and then over to Market Canal until they were level with the Lady’s church. Hundreds of people were waiting for them around the mooring platform, keen for either spectacle or failure.

The Pythia headed up the semiofficial reception group at the top of the wooden steps, with her entourage of six Mothers waiting passively behind. She was new to the position, anointed barely three years ago. She didn’t have quite the vivacity of the previous incumbent, nor did she immerse herself in Makkathran’s social events, but her devotion to the Lady was never in doubt. She had a zeal for the teachings that always made Edeard slightly uncomfortable around her.

“Waterwalker,” she said courteously. Her handsome face was impassive, as was her mind. Edeard walked up the steps while his third hand elevated Finitan behind him.

“Any sign of it?” Finitan asked.

Kanseen, who was standing just behind the Pythia, took his hand and squeezed gently. “Not yet,” she said sweetly.

“It won’t be long,” Edeard promised. But even he gave a nervous glance toward the Lyot Sea in the east. He’d longtalked to the Skylord the previous evening before the planet’s rotation had carried it out of sight. Several astronomers had claimed they’d seen it. That was countered by Yrance’s campaign staff as cronies trying to curry short-term favor with the Waterwalker.

Kristabel gave him an encouraging smile, but there was no way she could hide her concern from him. Macsen just rolled his eyes, his thoughts brimming with bravado and confidence that he hoped might infuse Edeard.

With Kanseen holding Finitan’s hand, the whole group walked over to the nearest tower. It was a drab gray in color, its crinkled surface beset with slim fissures whose sides were a dark red. Two angled gaps at the base led into the central cavelike chamber. A single thick pillar rose up from the center of the floor, with an opening to the narrow spiral stair that snaked up to the platform high above.

Even inside the thick walls, Edeard could feel a lot of farsight pressing against them as more and more city residents started to observe what was happening.

“I’ll take you up by myself,” Edeard said. He wasn’t entirely sure what happened around the top of a tower when the Skylord came to claim a human soul. The Lady’s book spoke of cold fire engulfing the bodies of those who’d been chosen for guidance. It didn’t sound good for the living.

Everyone looked to Kristabel, who simply shrugged. “If that’s what must be done,” she said reluctantly.

“May the Lady herself welcome you, Finitan,” the Pythia said. The other Mothers clasped their hands in prayer.

Edeard started to move Finitan toward the cramped entrance to the stairs. Macsen’s hand caught his elbow. “Don’t linger,” the master of Sampalok said quietly. “It was bad enough the last time you went up one of these towers alone.”

Edeard grinned at him and started up the stairs.

“Do you ever wonder what’s there?” Finitan asked. He was ahead of Edeard, his body tipped to almost forty-five degrees as Edeard’s telekinesis maneuvered him upward around the not-quite-symmetrical curves of the stair.

“In the Heart?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. It can’t be a physical existence, not some kind of a fresh start, a grand house by the sea with servants and fine wine and food.” We can do that here.

“Yes, I was thinking along those lines. So what exactly is it?”

“Well, you’ll know before me.”

Finitan laughed. “That’s my Edeard, ever the practical one.”

They were about a third of the way up. Edeard grimaced and concentrated on not dropping the old master. The stairs were badly claustrophobic.

“Philosophy was never my strong point,” Finitan went on. “I was more an organizer.”

“You were a visionary. That’s why we achieved so much.”

“Very kind of you, I’m sure. But what does the Heart need with a human visionary?”

“Lady, but you’re getting morose for someone about to embark on the ultimate journey.”

“What if it isn’t?” Finitan whispered. “Edeard, I’m afraid.”

“I know. But consider this: Even if the Heart isn’t for you, it’s where an awful lot of your questions will be answered. Think who’s there waiting for you. Rah and the Lady for a start. The people who built Makkathran, whoever and whatever they are. The Captain on the ship which brought us all here, and he’ll be able to explain what made him come into the Void. Maybe even the Firstlifes; imagine what they can tell you. You might get to discover why the Void exists.”

“Ah, now there’s a thought. Or perhaps we’ve misunderstood, and the Heart is simply the gateway out.”

“Out?”

“To the universe outside. If we’re fulfilled, if we’ve proved we’re worthy enough, we get to go home.”

“I don’t believe there’s a good behavior requirement to go and live in the universe outside,” Edeard said flatly.

“You’re probably right,” Finitan said. He shuddered, as if gripped by a sudden chill.

Edeard could see the sweat slick on his friend’s brow. “Did you take the painkiller potion before we left?”

“Of course not,” Finitan snapped irritably. “You think I want to be dozing when my very own Skylord comes looking for me?”

Edeard said nothing.

“And you can wipe that smirk off your face.”

“Yes, master.”

They finally emerged out onto the platform. As always, a strong wind whistled across the shallow curving floor. Seven giant spikes rose up from the edges, angled steeply back over the platform, their jagged tips almost touching high above the stairwell entrance.

Edeard placed Finitan gently on the floor and squatted down beside him. “How are you doing?” he asked.

“For someone who’s dying? Not bad. Actually, I feel quite relieved. It’s not many who are given such clear knowledge about the exact moment of their death. Such knowledge is refreshing. It means I have nothing to worry about.”

Edeard’s fingers carefully brushed the loose strands of pale hair from the man’s damp forehead. Finitan’s skin felt unpleasantly cold, giving Edeard a fair indication of what his deteriorating body was going through.

The number of people farsighting them now that they were out of the stairwell and in the open was almost oppressive. Edeard could sense that the city had virtually come to a halt to focus its full attention on him and the tower. Everyone was waiting expectantly. Even Yrance’s agitators were silent now that the promised moment was approaching.

Edeard felt the unknown watcher’s farsight sweep across him, even pervading the tower structure around him, probing and questing. It was coming from Cobara district, as usual.

“Today is hardly secret,” he shot back.

The farsight ended.

“Who was that?” Finitan asked.

“I don’t know. But I expect I’ll be finding out before too long. You know Makkathran: always trouble brewing somewhere.”

“That was more than the usual trouble. They had an ability equal to yours.”

“Greater, I suspect.”

“Have you sensed them before?”

“I’ve had indications that there are people of my stature emerging, yes. But that doesn’t affect today.”

“Edeard—”

“No.” Edeard closed his finger around Finitan’s frail hand. “This is about you and the Skylord. You have to prove once and for all that what you did was right. After that, all our troubles will be minor. That is what I ask of you today.”

Finitan’s head fell back onto the cushion of his cloak hood. “Stubborn to the very end—well, my end. You know, that day you arrived in my office, I was worried you might just decide to be an apprentice in the Blue Tower for seven years. What a waste that would have been. What a loss to the world.”

“I always thought you were overemphasizing the bad points.”

“One of my smaller crimes. I’m sure the Lady will want to discuss it at length if I ever catch up with her, along with all the others.”

“You will. What a meeting that’s going to be.”

“Ha! I don’t think she …” Finitan trailed off, an expression of outright surprise manifesting on his face. “Oh, my. Edeard?”

Edeard turned to face the Lyot Sea. Right on the horizon a peculiar haze patch was rising above the water to expand across the sky. “It comes,” he said with simple happiness.

Finitan’s hand grasped his tightly. “Thank you, Edeard, for everything.”

“I owe you so much.” He could sense the startled longtalk starting down on the streets and canals below as those with the most powerful farsight became aware of what was approaching Makkathran. The gifted visions were spreading wide. Surprise and delight blossomed among the startled citizens.

“And I you,” Finitan said. “Now it’s time for you to leave me here so that I might start that final journey. Soon I will have answers. So soon, Edeard. Imagine that.”

“Yes.” Edeard stood and looked at the thick pillar that was the start of the stairwell, then glanced across to the edge of the platform.

“Go on.” Finitan chuckled. “Be the Waterwalker, today of all days. Beat that little oaf Yrance. But don’t stop there, you are greater than all of them; never forget that. And at the end, I’ll be waiting. We will have such a reunion in the Heart, Edeard. Even down here they will know our joy.”

“Goodbye.” Edeard smiled. There was so much more he wanted to say, but as always, there was no time. He turned and ran across the platform. When he reached the edge, he leaped off with a jubilant cry.

On the ground so far below, there was a horrified gasp as the faces of the crowd turned up to watch him. Laughing defiantly, he held his arms wide, allowing his black cloak to flap madly around him as he streaked downward.

That powerful farsight played over him as he fell. Then, a hundred feet from the ground, the city took hold of him and slowed his wild flight, lowering him softly onto the pavement at the foot of the tower. The crowd exclaimed in admiration. Several people applauded; more cheered.

He saw Macsen’s derisory sneer. Dinlay gave him a disapproving frown. But it was Kristabel whose face was pure anger. He shrugged an apology, which clearly wasn’t anywhere near good enough. She was still scowling as he walked over and put his arm around her.

“Daddy,” Marilee scolded.

“That was so bad.”

“Teach us how to do that.”

He winked at the twins. “The Skylord comes,” he said solemnly.

The crowd was excited now, chattering wildly as they all turned to the east. There was nothing to see at first; the towers of Eyrie blocked any view into the sky directly over the sea. Then the astonished residents of Myco and Neph gifted their sight to the rest of the city.

The Skylord had risen above the horizon. Now it was flying directly over the choppy sea. Edeard didn’t appreciate the size at first. From the city’s Port district it simply looked like a shiny white moon skimming over the waves, slowly getting bigger as it dipped down again. Its actual surface was hard to make out; it had the same shimmer as a pool of water rippling under a noonday sun, a bright distortion that could never stay still long enough to focus on. Then he realized the Skylord wasn’t losing altitude; it was simply getting closer. The curving underside was already at least a mile above the sea, which was impossible because that would make it miles across. Yet there it was. The shadow it cast turned the gray-blue water nearly black across a vast area. The fine white sails of ships that were eclipsed beneath it turned gray and billowed energetically as the turbulence it created roiled against them.

Finally the leading edge of that colossal circle slid across the city skyline. Like everyone else standing in Eyrie, Edeard felt awed and worshipful. Its size was beyond intimidating; it was utterly overwhelming and not a little frightening. It must have been almost half the size of the city itself. And it flew!

“Oh, great Lady,” he whispered as Kristabel and the twins clung to him. His arms went around them, offering nowhere near enough comfort. He wanted to scream to the city’s mind to protect them. Some wretched primitive aspect wanted him to flee, to cower before such majesty. Instead he laughed hysterically; to think, only minutes ago he and Finitan had been doubting the Skylords and the purpose of the Heart.

Around him people were flinging themselves to the ground, screaming in terror as they wrapped their arms over their heads. When Edeard glanced at the Pythia, he saw great tears of joy streaming down her cheeks as she held her arms upward in greeting. Her mind shone bright as she poured her welcoming thoughts up into the sky.

Dazzling slivers of pure sunlight shimmered across Makkathran’s rooftops and streets. Now that Edeard could see it directly, the Skylord seemed to be made of some crystalline substance, a million thin sheets of the stuff folded into bizarre twisting geometries that somehow never seemed to intersect as they should. Sunlight foamed through the core, bending and shifting erratically. He could never be sure if it was the light that fluctuated or if the crystalline sheets themselves were in constant motion. The Skylord’s composition defied logic as the creature itself defied gravity.

The umbra fell across Eyrie as the Skylord slid across Makkathran, a darkness alleviated by the perpetual flashes of brilliant prismatic light that radiated out of its undulating surface. With it came the thunder of its passage, the roar of a thousand lightning bolts blasting out simultaneously. Wind rushed down the streets, shaking the trees and mauling clothes and any loose items. A monsoon of flower petals surged into the dark scintillating air as they were ripped away from their trees and vines.

Then the Skylord’s thoughts became apparent, a great wash of lofty interest bathing every human. Calming and compassionate, a reflection of its size and magnanimity. Even those who’d feared its presence the most were put at ease. Its benevolence was beyond question, a benevolence almost humbling in its honesty. It was curious and hopeful that the new residents of Makkathran once again had reached fulfillment so that they might receive its guidance to the Heart.

“Look!” Marilee screamed above the howling atmosphere.

Edeard turned to where she was pointing. Every fissure in the tower’s wrinkled skin was alive with scarlet light, as if some kind of fire were sweeping through it, racing upward. Then he saw that the kinked spires on top were glowing violet-white, becoming brighter and brighter.

“Edeard,” Finitan’s longtalk called, firm and strong. “Oh, Edeard, it hears me, the Skylord hears me. It will take me! Edeard, I’m going to the Heart. Me!”

The top of the tower vanished inside an explosion of light. Icy flames of radiance flashed upward toward the Skylord. Edeard’s farsight saw Finitan’s body turn to ash and blow apart in the gale. But his soul stood fast. Edeard didn’t need any special farsight to perceive him now; his spectral form was there for everyone to see.

The old Eggshaper Guild Master laughed delightedly and raised his ethereal arms in farewell to the city and people he loved. Then he was soaring upward within the tower’s flames to be claimed by the dancing chaos of illumination surging through the Skylord.

“I thank you,” Edeard told the Skylord.

“Your kind are becoming fulfilled again,” the Skylord replied. “I am gladdened. We have waited so long for this time.”

“We will wait for you to come again.” Edeard smiled up at the stupendous iridescent creature swooping so nonchalantly above them all.

He wasn’t alone in calling to the Skylord.

“Take me!” they began to cry, hundreds upon hundreds of the elderly and the sick, raising their longtalk to plead.

“Take me.”

“Guide me to the Heart.”

“I am fulfilled.”

“I have lived a good life.”

“Take me.”

“My kindred will return to guide you to the Heart,” the Skylord promised them. “Be ready.”

When it was clear of the city, the Skylord began to climb back into the sky, rising higher and higher above the Iguru plain until it was ascending vertically above the Donsori Mountains. Edeard gathered his family around him so they could watch it go. He was sure it gathered speed as it gained altitude. Soon it was hard to follow, it was traveling so fast, growing smaller by the second.

“Oh, Daddy,” the twins cooed as they hugged him.

Edeard kissed both of them. He couldn’t remember being so relieved and excited before. “We’re saved,” he said. “Our souls will enter the Heart.” I won. I really did.

Far above, the Skylord raced onward to the nebulae, dwindling until it was a bright daytime star. Eventually, even that faded from view.

Edeard waved it farewell. “The world will know our joy when we meet again,” he whispered to Finitan. He let out a long breath and looked around him. So many people were still gazing up into the perfect azure sky, wistful and content. It was going to be a long time before Makkathran resumed its normal business.

“You were right,” Macsen said. “Waterwalker.”

Kristabel gave him a sharp look. “Why did you jump? That’s so dangerous.”

“Yrance won’t know what to do now,” Dinlay said with an edge of cruel satisfaction. “We can capitalize on that right away.”

Edeard started laughing.

The dawn light crept around the sharp crystal skyscrapers at the heart of Darklake City, illuminating a clear sky with a mild wind blowing in from the west. On the fifty-second floor of the Bayview Tower, Laril blinked against the glare that shone directly through the curving floor-to-ceiling window of the lounge. He was sprawled in the couch he’d spent the night on, dressed in a loose striped bed shirt. His u-shadow turned up the shading on the window as he moved his shoulder blades slowly, trying to work the tired knots out of his muscles. Newly active biononics didn’t seem to have much effect on the stiffness; that or he wasn’t as adept at their programming as he liked to think he was.

A maidbot brought over a mug of hot, bitter coffee, and he sipped it carefully. There was a croissant, as well, that started to flake and crumble as soon as he picked it up. The culinary units on the Inner worlds were unbeatable when it came to synthesizing the basics. A five-star gastronomic experience still required a skilled chef to put together, but for a simple pickup meal, fully artificial was the way to go.

He walked over to the darkened glass and looked down across the city grid. Capsules already were streaming above the old road arteries, ovals of colored chrome zipping along at their regulation hundred-meter altitude. Out on the lake from which the city drew its name, big day cruisers were stirring, edging into the quaysides. The quaint old ferryboats were already plowing off to the first ports on their timetables, churning up a bright green wake. As yet, few pedestrians were abroad. It was too early for that, and people were still in shock over the Sol barrier. Most of the urban population had done as Laril had and spent the night receiving unisphere reports on the barrier and what the President and the navy were going to do about it. The short answer was “Very little.” Oaktier’s Planetary Political Congress had issued a public statement of condemnation to the Accelerator Faction, calling for the barrier to be lifted.

Big help, Laril thought. That was the one aspect of converting to Higher that he still couldn’t quite help feeling scornful over: the incredible number of official committees. There was one for everything, at both a local and a planetary level, all integrated in a weird hierarchy to form the world’s representational government. But that was the Higher way of involving all its citizenry in due process, of giving everyone the authority to act in an official capacity, the logical conclusion of Higher “I am government” philosophy. As he was only just qualifying as a Higher citizen, Laril could stand for election only into the lowest grade of committee, and there were at least seventeen levels beneath the executive grade. Oaktier didn’t have a President, or Chair, or Prime Minister; it had a plenum cabinet (self-deprecatingly referred to as the Politburo by locals) of collective responsibility. When the constitutional structure was explained in his citizenship classes, Laril somehow hadn’t been surprised. Even with all the daily legal datawork handled by super-smartcores, you still basically needed a permit to take a crap, Oaktier was that bureaucratic. But at that, it was one of the more liberal Higher planets.

In an excellent reflection of both its excessive democracy and its forbearance, Laril realized the planetary gaiafield was almost devoid of emotional texture this morning. Everyone was withholding his or her consciousness stream, a universal condemnatory reaction to Living Dream’s Pilgrimage, which was the root cause of the crisis.

Again, big help; although it was difficult to be so cynical about that. It showed a unity and resolve that even he found impressive.

Laril just hoped he could find the same level of resolve within himself. As soon as Araminta’s call had broken up, his u-shadow had relayed the shotgun that had been loaded into Chobamba’s unisphere. He prayed she’d take the warning seriously and get the hell off Chobamba. She certainly hadn’t called him again, which meant she’d been caught or was running. All he could do was assume the latter and prepare for it. She would call him for advice and help again, which was the antithesis of Oaktier’s stupid bureaucracy. This was one person making a difference, a big difference. It was what Laril had always imagined he would be doing, influencing events across the Commonwealth with his smart thinking and innate ability to dodge trouble. Now he finally had that chance. He was determined to deliver exactly what Araminta wanted.

First off, he didn’t quite trust the code she’d given him for Oscar. Even if Oscar whoever-he-was had helped her at Bodant Park, there was no way of knowing if he worked for ANA as he claimed. To keep her away from the Accelerators, it needed to be the navy or an opposing faction. Laril didn’t want to go running to the navy; trusting authority like that wasn’t right for him. Besides, that would effectively be handing Araminta over to the President, who would have to make some kind of political compromise. Far better she team up with a faction, which would take a more direct line of action, which would have a plan and get things done.

So he spent the night using his u-shadow to make delicate inquiries among people he used to associate with a long time ago. Every precaution was taken: one time codes, shielded nodes, remote cutoff routing. All the old tricks he’d learned back in the day. And the magic was still there. A friend on Jacobal had a colleague on Cashel whose great-great-uncle had once been involved with the Protectorate on Tolmin and so had channels to a supporter who had a contact with the Custodian Faction. That contact supplied a code for someone called Ondra, who was an “active” custodian.

After each call Laril rebuilt his electronic defenses within the unisphere, making very sure no one was aware of his interest in the factions. It must have worked; by the time he got Ondra’s code, none of his safeguards had detected scruitineers or access interrogators backtracking his ingenious routing.

He made the final call. Ondra was certainly very interested when he explained who he was. And yes, there were custodians on Oaktier who might be able to offer “advice” to a friend of the Second Dreamer. That was when Laril laid out his conditions for contact. He was pleased with what he’d come up with. Over an hour had been spent remote surveying the Jachal Coliseum, seven kilometers from the Bayview Tower. He’d reviewed the local nodes and loaded a whole menu of monitor software. Then he’d gone through a virtual map, familiarizing himself with the layout on every level, working out escape routes. Finally, he’d hired three capsule cabs at random and parked them ready around the coliseum on public pads. It was a superb setup, in place before he even spoke to Ondra. The meeting was agreed for nine-thirty that morning. Someone called Asom would be there, alone.

Laril finished his coffee and turned from the big window. Janine was coming out of the bedroom. They’d been together for six months now. She was only sixty, rejuvenated down to a sweet-looking twenty. That she was migrating inward at her age spoke for how insecure she was. It made her easy for his particular brand of charm; he understood exactly how the promise of sympathy and support would appeal to her. That kind of predatory behavior presumably would be discarded along with other inappropriate character qualities before he’d achieved true Higher citizenship. In the meantime, she was a pleasant enough companion. The Sol barrier, though, had brought back all her anxieties in the same way it had seen a resurgence of his more covetous traits.

Her eyes were red-rimmed even though there hadn’t yet been tears. The thick mass of her curly chestnut hair hung limply, curtaining her heart-shaped face. She gave him such a needy look, he almost swayed away. Unlike everyone else, her emotions were pouring out into the gaiafield, revealing a psyche desperately seeking comfort.

“They can’t get through the barrier,” she said in a cracked voice. “The navy’s been trying for hours. There are science ships there now, trying to analyze its composition.”

“They’ll work something out, I’m sure.”

“What, though? Without ANA we’re lost.”

“Hardly. The Accelerators can’t get into the Void without the Second Dreamer.”

“They’ll get her,” Janine wailed. “Look at what they’ve done already.”

Laril didn’t comment, though it was tempting. He ran a hand over his chin, finding a lot of stubble there. Araminta always used to complain about that. I need a shower and clean clothes. “I’m going out.”

“What? Why?”

“I have to meet someone, an old friend.”

“You are kidding,” she squawked as outrage fought with fright. “Today? Don’t you understand? They’ve imprisoned ANA.”

“The biggest victory they can have is to change our lives. I am going to carry on exactly as before. Anything else is allowing them to win.”

She gave him a confused look, her thoughts in turmoil. More than anything she wanted to believe in him, to know he was right. “I didn’t think of that,” she said meekly.

“That’s all right.” Laril put his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. She responded halfheartedly. “See?” he said gently. “Normality. It’s the best way forward.” The prospect of making contact with a faction agent, of becoming a galactic power player, was making him inordinately randy.

“Yes.” She nodded, her arms going around him. “Yes, that’s what I want. I want a normal life.”

Laril checked the clock function in his exovison display. There was just enough time.

The taxi capsule slid out of the vaulting entrance to the hanger that made up the seventy-fifth floor of Bayview Tower. Laril sat back on the curving cushioning, feeling on top of the world. It doesn’t get any better than this, not ever.

Direct flight time between Bayview Tower and the Jachal Coliseum was a couple of minutes at best. Laril had no intention of flying direct. Until he was absolutely sure of the custodian representative’s authenticity, he wasn’t taking any chances. So they flew to a marina first, then a touchdown mall, the Metropolitan Opera House, the civic museum, a crafts collective house. Twelve locations after leaving the tower, the taxi was finally descending vertically toward the coliseum. From his vantage point it looked like he was sinking down to a small volcano. The outside slope of the elongated cone had been turned to steep parkland, with trees and fields and meandering paths. There were even a couple of streams gurgling down between a series of ponds. Inside the caldera walls were tiers of extensive seating, enough to contain seventy thousand people in perfect comfort. The arena field at the bottom was capable of holding just about any event from concerts to races to display matches and Baroque festivals. Ringing the apex of the coliseum was a broad lip of flat ground that hosted a fence of two-hundred-year-old redka trees, huge trunks with wide boughs smothered in wire-sponge leaves the color of mature claret.

Laril’s taxi capsule dropped onto a public landing pad in the shade of the trees. He immediately examined the area with his biononic field scan function. It was one of the functions he was adept at, and he’d refined the parameters during the taxi flight. When he stepped out, the biononics were already providing him with a low-level force field. He wore a blue-black toga suit with a strong surface shimmer, so there was no visual sign of his protection. The scan function was linked directly to the force field control, so if he detected any kind of threat or unknown activity, the force field would instantaneously switch to its strongest level. It was a smart procedure that, along with his other preparations, provided him with a lot of confidence.

He walked across the lip to the top seating tier. His u-shadow was maintaining secure links to the emergency taxis and the coliseum’s civic sensor net, assuring him that everything was running smoothly. As agreed with Asom, he was the first to arrive. There were no nasty surprises waiting for him.

A steep glidepath took him down the inner slope to the arena field. He kept looking around the huge concrete crater for any sign of movement. Apart from a few bots working their way slowly along the seating rows, there was nothing.

Once he reached the bottom, he expanded his field scan function again. No anomalies and no unusual chunks of technology within five hundred meters. It looked like Asom was obeying his ground rules. Laril smiled in satisfaction; things were going to be just fine.

A slightly odd motion on the opposite side of the field caught his eye. Someone was walking out of the cavernous performers’ tunnel. She was naked, not that such a state was in any way erotic, not for her. Her body was like a skeleton clad in a toga-suit haze. She walked purposefully over the grass toward him; two long ribbons of scarlet fabric wove sinuously in her wake.

“Asom?” Laril asked uncertainly. Suddenly this whole meeting seemed like a bad idea. It got worse. His connection to the unisphere dropped out without warning, which was theoretically impossible. Laril’s force field snapped up to its highest rating. He took a couple of shaky paces backward before turning to run. Files in his storage lacuna were already displaying escape routes to the emergency taxis he’d mapped out earlier. It was fifteen paces to a service hatch, which led to a maze of utility tunnels. The skeletal woman-thing would never be able to track him in there.

Three men appeared in the seating tiers ahead of him; they just shimmered into existence as their one-piece suits discarded their stealth camouflage effect.

Laril froze. “Ozziecrapit,” he groaned. His field scan showed that each of them was enriched with sophisticated weapons. Their force fields were a lot stronger than his. They advanced toward him.

His exovision displays abruptly spiked with incomprehensible quantum fluctuations. He didn’t even have time to open his mouth to scream before the whole universe turned black.

Arranging an entrapment had never been so easy. Valean was almost ashamed by the simplicity. Even before she landed at Darklake City, Accelerator agents had secreted subversion software into the Bayview Tower net. Incredibly, Laril used his own apartment’s node to access the unisphere. She wondered if all his calls to various old colleagues were some kind of subtle misdirection. Surely nobody was so inept. But it appeared to be real. He genuinely thought he was being smart.

So she replied personally to his final call, assuming the Ondra identity. Again, the suggestion of the coliseum as a meeting point was a shocking failure of basic procedure. Its thick walls provided a perfect screen from standard civic and police scrutiny. The Accelerator team members were laughing when they found his “escape” taxis parked suspiciously close to utility tunnel exits. And as for the antiquated monitor software he’d loaded into the coliseum’s network …

Valean waited in the darkness of the performers’ tunnel as he slid down the glidepath. His field function scan probed around, its rudimentary capability finally confirming how woefully naive he was. Her own biononics deflected it easily. As soon as three of her team were in place behind him, she walked out into the morning sunlight. Laril seemed so shocked, he didn’t even attempt any hostile activity. Lucky for him, she thought impassively.

The team closed in smoothly. Then Valean’s field scan showed her a sudden change manifesting in the quantum fields. Her integral force field hardened. Weapons enrichments powered up.

Laril vanished.

“What the fuck!” Digby exclaimed.

The Columbia505 was hanging two hundred kilometers above Darklake City to monitor the whole Jachal Coliseum affair. Digby’s u-shadow had kept him updated on the software shenanigans in the Oaktier cybersphere, how Valean had run electronic rings around poor old Laril. Given the nature of the people he had to watch during his professional career, Digby normally felt no sympathy for any of them. Laril, however, was in a class of his own when it came to ineptitude. Sympathy didn’t quite apply, but he was certainly starting to feel a degree of pity for the fool who’d been dragged into an event of which he had no true understanding.

Digby watched in growing disbelief as Laril’s taxi landed on the lip of the coliseum. The man had absolutely no idea what he was walking into. The Columbia505’s sensors could see the Accelerator agents from two hundred kilometers’ altitude. Yet Laril’s own field function scan was so elementary that he couldn’t spot them from two hundred meters.

Letting out a groan, Digby brought up the starship’s targeting systems. No doubt about it, he was going to have to intervene. Paula was absolutely right: Valean could not be allowed to snatch Laril. Precision neutron lasers locked on to Valean and her team.

He still wasn’t sure if he should take the Columbia505 down to retrieve Laril afterward or simply remove Valean’s subversive software from his “escape” taxis and steer them to a rendezvous. He was inclined to pick Laril up himself; the man was a disaster area and shouldn’t be allowed to wander around the Commonwealth by himself, not with his connection to Araminta.

Valean emerged from the tunnel and walked toward a startled Laril. Three of the eight Accelerator agents discarded their stealth. Digby designated the fire sequence.

Strange symbols shot up into his exovision. It was the last thing he’d expected. A T-sphere enveloped Darklake City.

Laril teleported out of Jachal Coliseum.

The T-sphere withdrew instantaneously.

Digby reviewed every sensor input he could think of. Valean and her team appeared equally surprised by Laril’s magic disappearing act, launching a barrage of questors into the city net. To Digby there was something even more disturbing than their reaction: The T-sphere hadn’t registered in any Oaktier security network.

That would take a level of ability that went way beyond a team of faction agents.

He called Paula. “We have a problem.”

“A T-sphere?” she said once he’d finished explaining. “That’s unusual. There’s no known project on Oaktier using a T-sphere, so that implies it’s covert. And given that no official sensor could detect it, I’d say it was also embedded. Interesting.”

“The Columbia505’s sensors gave it a diameter of twenty-three kilometers.”

“Where’s the exact center?”

“Way ahead of you.” Visual sensor images of Darklake City flashed up in Digby’s exovision. They focused on the Olika district, one of the original exclusive areas bordering the lakeshore; its big houses sat in lavish grounds, a mishmash of styles representing the centuries over which they’d been added to and modified. In the middle of the district was a long road running parallel to the shore. The center of the image expanded, zooming in on a lavender-colored drycoral bungalow wrapped around a small swimming pool. Probably the smallest house in the whole district.

“Oh, my God,” Paula said.

“That’s the center,” Digby said. “1800 Briggins. Registered to a Paul Cramley. Actually, he’s lived there for … oh. That can’t be right.”

“It is,” Paula told him.

“Do you think the T-sphere generator is underneath the bungalow? I can run a deep scan.”

“Don’t bother.”

“But …”

“Laril is perfectly safe. Unfortunately, Araminta won’t be able to call him for advice now, not without paying the price to Paul’s ally.”

“Then you know this Cramley person? My u-shadow can’t find anything on file.”

“Of course not. Paul was busy wiping himself from official databases before Nigel and Ozzie opened their first wormhole to Mars.”

“Really?”

“Just keep watching Valean.”

“Is that it?”

“For the moment. I’ll try and talk to Paul.”

Digby knew better than to ask.

Laril knew the light and air had changed somehow. He wasn’t standing in the sunlight of the coliseum, and the air he gulped down was perfectly conditioned. It was also quiet. He risked opening his eyes.

Of all the possible fates, he wasn’t prepared for the perfectly ordinary, if somewhat old-fashioned, lounge he was in. The lighting globes were off, making it appear gloomy. Its only illumination came from sunlight leaking through the translucent gray curtains pulled across tall arching windows. He could just make out some courtyard with a circular swimming pool on the other side of the glass. The floor was dark wood planks, their grain almost lost with age and polish. Walls were raw drycoral, lined with shelves.

There were some chic silver globe chairs floating a few centimeters above the floorboards. A man was sitting on one of them, its surface molded around him as if it were particularly elastic mercury. His youthful features gave him a handsome appearance, especially with thick dark hair cut longer than the current style. Instinct warned Laril he was old, very old. This wasn’t someone he could bullshit like his ex-business partners and girlfriends. He didn’t even risk using his field function scan. No way of telling how the man would react.

“Uh.” He cleared his throat as his heart calmed a little. “Where am I?”

“My home.”

“I don’t … uh, thank you for getting me out of there. Are you Asom?”

“No. There’s no such person. You were being played by the Accelerators.”

“They know about me?”

The man raised an eyebrow contemptuously.

“Sorry,” Laril said. “So who are you?”

“Paul Cramley.”

“And am I in even deeper shit now?”

“Not at all.” Paul grinned. “But you’re not free to go, either. That’s for your own good, by the way; it’s not a threat.”

“Right. Who else knew about me?”

“Well, I did. And it looks like the stealthed ultradrive starship in orbit does. So along with Valean and her team, that makes three of us. I daresay more are on their way.”

“Oh, Ozzie.” Laril’s shoulders sagged from the pressure of dismay. “My software isn’t as good as I thought, is it?”

“In my experience, I’ve never seen worse. And trust me, that’s a lot of experience. But then I don’t think you realize exactly what you’re dealing with.”

“Okay, so who are you? What’s your interest?”

“You should be about to find out. I’m guessing that an old acquaintance is going to call any minute now. And when you’re as old as me, your guesses are certainties.”

“If you’re old and you’re not in ANA, you’re probably not a faction agent.”

“Glad to see you have some gray matter, after all. Ah, here we go.”

A portal projected an image of a woman into the lounge. Laril groaned. He didn’t need any identification program to recognize Paula Myo.

“Paula,” Paul said in a happy voice. “Long time.”

“This crisis seems to be bringing the golden oldies out to play in droves.”

“Is that resentment I hear?”

“Just an observation. Laril, are you all right?”

He shrugged. “I suppose, yeah.”

“Don’t ever do anything as stupid as that again.”

Laril scowled at the investigator’s image.

“Thanks for exiting him,” Paula said. “My own people would have been noisy.”

“Not a problem.”

“It won’t take Valean long to determine your location. She’ll visit.”

“She’s not as stupid as Laril, surely.”

“No,” Paula agreed as Laril bridled silently. “But she has a mission, and Ilanthe won’t give her a choice.”

“Poor her.”

“Quite. Give me its access code, please.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Paul. We don’t have the time.”

Paul gave her projected image a martyred look. “Connecting you directly.”

Paula’s image winked off.

“Who’s she talking to?” Laril asked.

“Next best thing now that ANA’s unavailable,” Paul said, sounding indifferent.

“So … I’m sorry, I still don’t get who you are.”

“Just a bloke who has been around for a long while. That gives me a certain perspective on life. I know my own mind, and I don’t like what the Accelerators are doing. Which is why I helped you out.”

One of the silver globes floated over to Laril, who sat down gingerly. Once the surface had bowed around him, it was actually rather comfortable. “So how old are you?”

“Put it this way: When I grew up, no one had traveled farther than the moon. And half the planet thought that was a hoax. Dickheads.”

“The moon? Earth’s moon?”

“Yeah. There’s only one: the moon.”

“Great Ozzie, that makes you over a thousand.”

“Thousand and a half.”

“So why haven’t you migrated inward?”

“You speak like that’s inevitable. Not everyone accepts that biononics and downloading into ANA is the path forward. There are still a few of us independents left. Admittedly, we do tend to be quite old. And stubborn.”

“So what are you trying to achieve?”

“Self-sufficiency. Liberty. Individualism. Neutrality. That kind of thing.”

“But doesn’t Higher culture give …” Laril trailed off as Paul raised his eyebrow again.

“And you were acting on which committee’s authority this morning?” Paul asked mildly.

“Okay. I’m having trouble accepting Higher life. I just don’t see what else there is.”

“Get your biononics. Work out how to use them properly—I mean that in your case. Get yourself a stash of EMAs and strike out for whatever you want.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Actually it’s a bitch. And I still haven’t got a clue how I’m going to finish up. Postphysical, presumably. But when I do, it’ll be on my terms, not something imposed on me.”

“You know, that’s the way I like to think.”

“I’m flattered. Ah, looks like Valean has found us.”

Laril gave the windows an anxious look. There was the unmistakable high-pitched whistling of a capsule descending fast outside. When he squinted through the windows looking out across the long garden, he saw two chrome-yellow ovoids come to a halt above the freshly mown grass. The skeletal woman stepped out of the first. Laril’s heart started to speed up at the sight of her. Those strange carmine streamers swam along behind her as she advanced on the bungalow. Six weapons-enriched agents followed her, various hardware units emerging from their skin to poke aggressive nozzles at the bungalow.

“Do we need to, uh, maybe get to safety?” Laril stammered. His biononics reported that a sophisticated field scan was sweeping through the bungalow. He brought his integral force field up to full strength.

Paul sat even farther back in his silver chair, putting his hands behind his head to regard the approaching Accelerator team nonchalantly. “You can’t get anywhere safer in the Commonwealth.”

“Oh, shit,” Laril moaned. He desperately wanted to ask: How safe, really? If Paul had really good defenses, why hadn’t he shot the capsules out of the sky or teleported out or called up his own team of enriched bodyguards? Just … do something!

Valean walked up to a window. She reached out and touched it with her index finger. The window turned to liquid and splashed down into the lounge, running across the floorboards.

Laril sat up straight, his back rigid as fear locked his muscles. Valean stepped through the open archway, gently pushing the gauzy curtains apart. Her glowing pink eyes searched around the room.

“Paul Cramley, I believe,” she said with a half smile.

“Correct,” Paul said. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave now. Laril is my guest.”

“He must come with me.”

“No.”

Laril’s exovision showed him those weird quantum spikes again. A pale green phosphorescent glow enveloped Valean and her team.

“I’m afraid your T-sphere won’t work,” she said. “We’re counter-programmed.”

Paul cocked his head to one side, long hair flopping down his cheek. “Really? How about I use irony instead?”

Valean opened her mouth to speak. Then she frowned. Her arms moved. Fast. They became a blur, her emerald aurora brightening in the wake of the motion, leaving a broad photonic contrail through the air. Then she turned, which was also incredibly fast. Laril had to close his eyes as the haze around her grew dazzling. His biononics threw up retinal filters, allowing him to glance at the Accelerator team again. They’d turned into cocoons of brilliant lime green. He could just discern outlines of their bodies thrashing about inside each tiny illuminated prison, moving hundreds of times faster than normal. Fists were raised to hammer at the border, striking it at incredible speed and frequency. It was as if they’d turned to solid smudges of light. Valean’s red streamers swirled about in agitation as the color drained out of them. They turned black, then stiffened and began to crumble into small flakes that drifted down like a drizzle of ash.

Inside the green prisons the team members had stopped moving, making it easier to see them. He watched Valean as her legs gave way. A fast smear of green light followed her to the ground. For a second her body remained there on hands and knees before another flash of light chased her to a prone position. The green glow faded to an almost invisible coating. Laril watched her odd skin darken; then its shimmer died to reveal a leatherlike hide. It began to constrict even further around her skeleton. Cracks split open, and thick juices oozed out, solidifying into stain puddles on the floorboards.

“Oh, Ozzie!” Laril covered his mouth as he started to gag and looked away quickly. Each member of the Accelerator team had suffered the same fate. “What happened?”

“Age,” Paul said. “Gets us all in the end—unless you’re careful, of course.” He climbed down off the chair and walked over to Valean’s desiccated corpse. The green hue finally vanished, replaced by a glimmering force field. I accelerated her inside an exotic effect zone, like a miniature wormhole. Normally it’s used to suspend temporal flow, but the opposite effect is just as easy to engineer; it simply requires a larger energy input. Sort of like the Void, really.”

Laril almost didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help thinking what it must have been like for Valean and her agents, imprisoned inside a tiny envelope of exotic force, enduring utter solitude for days on end as the outside world stood still. “How long?”

“About two years. She had very powerful biononics, but even they couldn’t sustain her indefinitely. Ordinarily the biononic organelles feed off cellular protein and all the other gunk floating around inside the membrane, which is constantly resupplied by the body. But in the temporal field she wasn’t getting any fresh nutrients. Her biononics ran out of cellular molecules eventually. In the end they were like a supercancer eating her from the inside, enhancing the starvation and dehydration.”

Laril shuddered. “But her force field is still working.”

“No, my defense systems are generating that. No telling what booby traps she programmed into herself at the end. Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she’s harmless.”

Once again the T-sphere established itself; the corpses were teleported out of the lounge. Laril didn’t want to know where they’d gone. “What now?” he asked.

Paul gave him a brisk smile. “You’re my house guest until Araminta calls you—or doesn’t—and this is all over.”

“Oh.”

“Cheer up. ‘Here’ is actually quite dimensionally interesting. After all, you don’t really think I’ve spent the last thousand years cooped up in the same bungalow, do you?”

“Ah … no. Put like that, I suppose not.”

“Jolly good. So have you had breakfast yet?”

As soon as Paul Cramley transferred her call, Paula’s cabin portal projected a quaint image of tangerine and turquoise sine waves undulating backward into a vanishing point. “I might have known you’d be taking an interest,” she said.

“I always take an interest in human affairs,” the SI said.

“First question: Can you get through the Sol barrier?”

“Sorry, no. If ANA can’t, what hope does an antiquity like me have?”

“Are you trying to engage my sympathy?”

“You have some?”

“That was uncalled for. But as it happens, I do. For my own species.”

“Paula, are you cross with me?”

“I shared ANA’s opinion. Your interference in our affairs was unacceptable.”

“I hardly ever interfered,” the SI protested.

“We unmasked eighteen thousand of your agents. Your network was larger than the Starflyer’s.”

“I’m hurt by that comparison.”

“Oh, shut up,” Paula snapped. “Why did you order Paul to save Laril?”

“I didn’t order Paul to do anything. Nobody orders Paul around these days. You know he’s well on his way to becoming postphysical?”

“Well, I didn’t think he was fully human anymore.”

“That old body you saw with Laril is only a tiny aspect of him now. If you want to worry about nonhuman interference, you should keep a closer eye on him and the others like him.”

“There are others?”

“Not many,” the SI admitted. “You and Kazimir are the oddities. Everyone else of your vintage either downloaded or moved off in their own direction like Paul.”

“So you and he are colleagues? Equals?”

“That’s a very humancentric viewpoint: rate everyone according to their strength.”

“More an Ocisen one, I feel; perhaps we can include the Prime, too.”

The undulating sine waves quickened. “Okay, all right. Paul and I have a special relationship. You know, he actually wrote part of the original me. Back in the day he was a CST corporate drone in their advanced software department working on artificial intelligence development.”

“Very cozy. So how big an interest have you been taking in the Pilgrimage?”

“Big. That idiot Ethan really could trigger the end of the galaxy. I’d have to move.”

“How terrible.”

“Have you ever tried moving a planet?”

Paula gave the sine waves a shrewd stare. “No, but I know a man who probably can. How about you?”

“Yes,” the SI said. “Troblum is actually trying to get in touch with you.”

“Sholapur wasn’t exactly invisible. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“No, I mean he was really trying. He knew about the Swarm; he was going to make a deal.”

“Irrelevant now.”

“Paula, I’ve been in touch with him since Sholapur.”

“Where is he?”

“On his starship somewhere. Last time we spoke, he was still in range of the unisphere; I have no idea of the location. His smartcore is well protected, I urged him to get in touch with you.”

“Why?”

“He helped build the Swarm. He might be able to get through the barrier.”

“Did he say that?”

“He was reluctant to help. He claimed there is a code which can switch it off.”

“Even if there is, it’ll be Ilanthe who holds it,” Paula said. “Damnit, do you think he will contact me?”

“Troblum is a very paranoid man. A condition exacerbated by Sholapur. He is afraid of breaking cover. His true fear is that the Cat will find him. However, he was considering getting in touch with Oscar Monroe.”

“Oscar? Why?”

“I suspect he regards Oscar as the last trustworthy man in the galaxy.”

“I suppose that’s true. I’ll warn Oscar to look out for him.”

“Good.” The SI paused. “What are your intentions, Paula?”

“I’m not quite as liberal as ANA. I believe the Pilgrimage and Ilanthe must be stopped from entering the Void. That means getting hold of Araminta.”

“Difficult. She’s walking the Silfen paths.”

“They won’t grant her sanctuary. Somewhere, sometime she will have to come out.”

“You know the safest place she could choose? Earth. How would that be for irony? If Ilanthe wanted her, the barrier would have to be switched off.”

Paula gave the knot of sine waves an approving look. She had known the Silfen paths reached through the Dyson Alpha barrier; Ozzie himself had told her. The idiot had actually visited Morning-LightMountain’s world after the Starflyer War was over. She supposed it was inevitable that the SI would know, as it had a long history with Ozzie. “Clever,” she said, “I wonder if we could get a message to her. Are you in contact with the Silfen Motherholme?”

“No. It doesn’t associate with the likes of me. I’m just a mechanical-based intelligence. I don’t have a living soul.”

“So we’d need a Silfen Friend.”

The SI’s projected knot of wiggling lines brightened slightly. “There aren’t many, and they tend to be elusive.”

“Cressida; she’s related to Araminta. They both have Mellanie as their ancestor.”

“That connection is tenuous even for desperate times.”

“Yes. And Cressida has dropped from sight. But I’d forgotten Silfen paths can reach through this kind of barrier. The one on Earth is supposed to start outside Oxford somewhere. I wonder if ANA can use it to get some kind of message out.”

“If it can, it will.”

“Yeah, and in the meantime … Do you have any weapons stashed away that can tackle the inversion core?”

“I don’t have any weapons,” the SI said in a stiff tone. “Stashed or otherwise.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Of course you do. You forget I am information. I operate within what could be classed a physical network, but that does not govern me.”

“There are a lot of human personalities downloaded into you. That must influence your standpoint.”

“There are a lot of human memories stored inside me,” the SI said. “There’s a difference.”

“Okay, so do you at least know what the inversion core is?”

“I managed to access sensors in the Sol system for a very short period between it emerging and the barrier going up. ANA still regards such actions as extreme trespass. I can’t tell you much other than it has an exotic nature. The quantum structure was effectively unreadable, it was so unusual.”

“So we don’t know what would kill it?”

“The deterrence fleet or the warrior Raiel might be able to. I can’t conceive anything else working. But Paula, that ship it left in was extremely powerful and fast.”

“I know. If Araminta calls Laril—”

“Paul and I will include you in the conversation,” the SI assured her.

“Thank you. And let me have a code for you, please.”

“As you wish.”

Paula watched the sine waves shrink to nothing as a new communication icon appeared in her exovision. A quick check with the smartcore showed the SI hadn’t attempted to infiltrate any of the ship’s systems. She hadn’t expected it to, but …

Her u-shadow opened a secure link to the High Angel.

“Paula,” said Qatux. “Our situation is not improving.”

“I understand the President has asked you to attempt to get through the Sol barrier.”

“He did. I don’t believe it is possible; however, I shall oblige his request. To do nothing for you at this point would be morally irresponsible. We will fly to Sol shortly.”

“The Raiel taking part in galactic events again? I thought that went completely against your ethos.”

“This is a very specific event, the one we have dreaded for eons. Our involvement is mandatory.”

“I believe the Sol barrier is based on the force field around the Dyson Pair. The Accelerators have been studying the Dark Fortress for a long time.”

“We suspected that was so. If true, the High Angel will be unable to breach the barrier.”

“What about a warrior Raiel ship?”

“I don’t believe it would fare any better, though there may have been new developments I am unaware of. The generator you call the Dark Fortress represents the pinnacle of our race’s ingenuity.”

Paula experienced a strange little frisson of relief at the statement. A very old puzzle finally solved. “Did the Raiel build the Dark Fortress? We always thought they were the same as the DF spheres at Centurion Station.”

“Yes. It is a unit from our Galactic Core garrison. They have several functions; the force field is only one.”

“You told us the Anomine imprisoned the Dyson Pair.”

“They did. We loaned them the units. We produced legions of them after our invasion of the Void failed. As your species correctly postulated, they are the galaxy’s final line of defense against a catastrophic expansion phase.”

“So the Raiel can stop an expansion phase?”

“That is something we will not know until the moment arises. The scheme was the best we could produce, but it remains untested.”

“Then it really is vital that Araminta doesn’t lead the Pilgrimage into the Void?”

“Yes.”

“I will do everything I can; you know that.”

“I know, Paula.”

“I may need help.”

“Whatever I can provide, you have only to ask.”

Eventually the forest gave way to a crumpled swath of grassy land that stretched away for miles to a shoreline guarded by thick dunes. The rich blue ocean beyond sparkled as the sunlight skipped across its gentle waves. Araminta smiled mournfully at the sight, knowing she’d never be able to run across the beach and dive into those splendid clear waters. The big quadruped beast she was riding snorted and shook its huge head, as if sharing her resentment.

“Don’t worry; the whole beauties-of-nature thing gets tedious after a while,” Bradley Johansson said. He was riding on a similar beast to one side of her while Clouddancer plodded along behind.

“After how long?” Araminta queried.

“Millennia,” Clouddancer growled out. “Nature produces so much that is worthy of admiration. Its glory never ends.”

Bradley Johansson pursed his round mouth and produced a shrill trumpeting sound. After a day and a half riding with the pair since they’d left the festival by the loch, Araminta had concluded this was his chuckle.

“Great,” she muttered. The fresh breeze from the ocean was invigorating, countering her falling mood. They were approaching a narrow fold in the land, one filled with small trees and dense scrub bushes. There was a pool at the head of the slope, producing a tiny brook that trickled away down through the trees. She reined in her mount just short of the water and swung her leg over the saddle so she could slide down its thick flank. It waited patiently as she performed her inelegant dismount. Bradley Johansson came over to help unstrap her backpack. She never actually saw him climb down, though she was sure his wings weren’t big enough to work in a standard gravity field.

“How do you feel?” he asked sympathetically.

“Nervous as hell.”

“Your spirit will prevail,” Clouddancer proclaimed. He was still sitting on his mount, tail curled up at one side, wings rustling in mild agitation. His head was held high as he looked toward the coast. If he’d been a human, Araminta would have said he was hunting a scent in the wind.

“I have to,” she said, and meant it.

“I am proud of you, friend’s daughter,” Bradley Johansson said. “You encompass all that is good and strong in our species. You remind me why I gave everything I had to save us.”

Araminta was suddenly very busy with the clip around her waist. “I’ll do my best, I promise. I won’t let you down.”

“I know.”

When she looked up, Bradley Johansson was holding a small pendant on a silver chain. The jewel was encased in a fine silver mesh. A pretty blue light was glimmering inside like captured starlight. He placed it around her neck. “I name you that which you already are, Araminta. Friend of Silfen.”

“Thank you,” she said. Ridiculously, her eyes were watering. She smiled over at Clouddancer, who bowed so solemnly toward her, it left her feeling hopelessly inadequate. “Do you have any suggestions for your new Friend?” she asked the pair of them, hating how weak she sounded. “My ex-husband said he’d help me, but he’s not quite the most reliable of people even if his heart is in the right place.”

“Laril isn’t independent anymore,” Bradley Johansson told her. “He can still offer advice that would be helpful, but it is not his own.”

“Oh. Right.” How do you know this? That was a stupid question; she was always allowing herself to be misled by the apparent carefree child like lifestyle the Silfen followed. There is more to them than this, a lot more. “So it’s Oscar, then? Will he be able to help me with the machine-thing you warned me about?”

Clouddancer and Bradley Johansson exchanged a look. “Probably not,” Clouddancer said. “Nobody really understands what it is.”

“Somebody must know or be able to work it out,” she said.

“That is for you to find, Friend Araminta.”

“Oh, come on! The whole galaxy is at stake here, including your own existence. Just for once cut the mystic crap and give me some practical help.”

Bradley Johansson made his shrill chuckling noise again. “There is someone you could ask, someone who may be smart enough to work things out for you. He was a phenomenal physicist once. And he was named a Silfen Friend.”

“Yeah, and look what he did with that most honorable of gifts,” Clouddancer growled.

“Of course he did,” Bradley Johansson said, sounding amused. “That is what makes him who he is. That is why he is our Friend.”

“Who?” Araminta demanded.

“Ozzie,” Clouddancer sighed.

“Ozzie? Really? I thought … Is he still alive?”

“Very much so,” Bradley Johansson said.

“Well, where the hell is he?”

“Outside the Commonwealth. Oscar can get you there.” He paused, letting out a sorrowful whistle. “Probably. Remember, Friend Araminta, you must walk with caution from now on.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be careful. That part you can really depend on.”

“Come back to us afterward,” Clouddancer said.

“Of course I will.” There was a tiny ripple of doubt in her thoughts that she swiftly quashed. This is all so massive. Visiting Ozzie! For … Ozzie’s sake.

Bradley Johansson took her hand, and they walked toward the top of the little wooded ravine. Araminta blew out a long breath and strode forward confidently. Somewhere up ahead of her, winding through the trees and thick bushes, she could sense the path to Francola Wood stirring at her approach.

“A last word for you, if I may,” Bradley Johansson said. “Anger is a fine heat, one which you are now experiencing. Anger from being put in this position through no real fault of your own, anger at the stupidity of Living Dream. This anger behind your determination will power you at the start, allowing you to be the force you want to be. Then there will come a moment when you look around and see all you have carried before you. That is the most dangerous time, the time when you can lose faith in yourself and falter. That cannot happen, Friend Araminta. Keep your anger, fuel it, let it carry you forward. See this through to the final bitter end no matter what. That is the only way to take others with you: to be a force of nature, the proverbial unstoppable force. You can do this. You have so much in you.”

She smiled bashfully. “I will. I promise. I can keep focused.” Like you wouldn’t believe.

Bradley Johansson stopped, and a four-fingered hand ushered her onward with a grand gesture as his wings extended fully. He made an imposing figure, poised between two species, two styles of life. She turned her back to him and strode forward, refusing to let any doubt gain refuge in her mind. Ahead of her the path began to open.

The building had been a single house once, designed as an extravagant ten-bedroom residence for a wealthy owner, with expansive reception rooms opening out onto a big garden that dropped down to the crowded forest of dapol trees that marked the city boundary. There was even a teardrop-shaped swimming pool beneath a spectacular white wing roof. It fit in perfectly with the Francola district’s original ethos as an enclave of successful, wealthy residents who would enjoy a modicum of privacy afforded by the tree hedges between their imposing properties. A taste of the countryside inside the city.

After a promising start, the district had drifted on Colwyn City’s economic tides. The houses fell from fashion and were snapped up by developers to be turned into even more stylish apartments. Redevelopment took the district further downmarket, depressing prices still more.

On the upside, that same depressed market meant that there were a lot of empty apartments for rent. Oscar and the team managed to secure a well-positioned apartment on the old house’s ground floor. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a lounge squeezed into what used to be one of the brash reception rooms. But the lounge had a panoramic window wall opening onto a lawn that ran all the way down to the edge of Francola Wood itself, giving them a perfect observation post.

Sitting on a pyramid of cushions they’d moved in front of the window wall, Oscar could just glimpse the shimmer of the city force field through the dark trees. He wasn’t using his field scan function; that would be too much of a giveaway. Not that it stopped other teams. His biononics occasionally would catch a quick scan originating close by. Liatris had identified seven other apartments along the street that had been leased out in the last twenty hours. Two other perfectly legitimate flats had been quietly taken over by teams who thought their subterfuge would leave them less visible. They weren’t good enough to evade Liatris.

But what comes around … thought Oscar. He was sure everyone else knew about them as well.

Three of the rival teams had reduced their personnel after it became clear Araminta had left Chobamba. With a whole galaxy of worlds now available to her, they’d decided it was extremely unlikely she’d ever return here to the heart of Living Dream’s occupation army. That view was one he shared, but waiting here on the off chance was better than trying to guess where else she could turn up.

It was midmorning, and as it was his shift, Oscar had been in his armor suit for five hours watching the forest when Paula called.

“Any sign of her?”

Oscar resisted the urge to roll his eyes; the gesture would be completely wasted. “None of the thirteen teams scanning from all along the street have noticed anything. And the eight Ellezelin capsules on permanent patrol overhead report an equally negative result. I imagine the new Welcome Team, which is actually lying in wait in the woods, is bereft, too.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm.”

“Face it, Paula, this is a dead end. We did our best. We got her clear of Living Dream and the others; it’s up to her now.”

“I know. But several agents followed her onto the Chobamba Silfen path before it closed up.”

“Then we’ll never see them again. Not for centuries, anyway.”

“I’d like to think we have centuries.”

“We’ll stay here for another day or two. Unless you know better. How about it, Paula? Do you have contacts among the Silfen?”

“Not really.”

“Ah, you surprise me. If anyone has …”

“But I have just been talking to the SI.”

Oscar couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing. On the other side of the lounge, Beckia shot him a puzzled look.

“Only you, Paula,” Oscar said happily. “How is the SI?”

“Unchanged. It claims. However, it has taken care of one potentially dangerous loose end. Araminta now has no one else left in the Commonwealth to turn to.”

“So the theory is she’ll ask the navy for help?”

“It’s a theory. Right now it’s the only one we’ve got.”

“Well, let’s hope it works.”

“Yes. And the one trustworthy contact she has with officialdom is you.”

“Oh, bloody hell.”

“There’s something else.”

Oscar gave up and rolled his eyes. “What?”

“Someone called Troblum may get in touch. If he does, I need to know immediately. And you must not lose track of him. If possible, take him directly into custody.”

“Okay, so who is he?”

“A slightly strange physicist who may know how to get through the Sol barrier. I’m sending his file. Oh, and the Cat is after him as well, so be careful.”

“Is she? Well, that’s just made my day. Anything else?”

“That’s all, Oscar. Thank you.”

Oscar watched the file load into his storage lacuna, and then the secure link closed. He let out a breath and started to review Troblum. He kept on getting distracted by Beckia. Her mind was emitting little pulses of dismay and anger into the gaiafield. The gaiafield was Oscar’s private additional method of watching for Araminta. They already had thirty stealthed sensors scattered across Francola Wood to try to spot her should she return. On top of that, Liatris had tapped into sensors and communication links from the other agents and the Welcome Team. But Oscar was hopeful that he would somehow get advance warning of her arrival from the path. He thought, though he was in no way sure, that he could sense the alien wormhole. There was something there, some intrusion into the gaiafield that wasn’t quite right, a feeling of age and incredible distance. Very faint, and the more he concentrated on it, the more elusive it became. So he was content to let it wash against the edge of his perception, which meant he had to open his gaiamotes up to their full sensitivity. That was why Beckia’s little outbursts were becoming quite intrusive.

“What?” he finally asked when a particularly sharp burst of indignation shunted his attention from Troblum’s amazing collection of Starflyer War memorabilia. He shifted around so that he was looking back into the lounge. His visor was open, so she could see his ire as well as feel it in the gaiafield.

Beckia gave him a look etched with rebuke. She was curled up on a long corner couch, sipping a hot chocolate. Her armor was open and ready on the floor beside her. “Haven’t you been following the news?” she replied.

He waved a gauntleted hand toward Francola Wood. “No! This is my shift, remember? I’d like to focus on that.”

“No need to get touchy. The remote sensors will give us plenty of warning. Besides, you don’t really think she’s coming back here, do you?”

“We have to be ready in case she does,” he said, hating how lame he sounded.

“Do you know something we don’t, Oscar?”

It was there again, that niggling little question of trust that had hung between them all since they had bumped into the Cat. “Apparently, some agents got onto the path at Chobamba,” he said. “Paula thinks they might flush her out faster than she’d like. Personally, I think that’s bullshit, but …”

“The paths aren’t straight lines; you know that.”

“I know. So what’s troubling you?”

“Local news. It’s getting worse here.”

“I’d like to say: impossible.”

“Take a look. I’ll watch the remotes for a minute.”

Against his better judgment, Oscar told his u-shadow to prepare a summary. Beckia was right; it wasn’t pleasant. Once it had been confirmed that Araminta was on Chobamba, Phelim had begun withdrawing the paramilitary troops from Viotia. It was a well-planned pullout; starting with the cities farthest from Colwyn City. Ludor, the capital over on the Suvorov continent, had been among the first places to see the big dark capsules streak away. It also had the highest number of Living Dream followers. Without the paramilitaries to guarantee protection, Viotia’s native population began to turn on them. Local police forces did nothing to prevent the attacks; on several occasions they were seen joining in. Hospitals, already overcrowded from riot casualties, were deluged by yet more injured.

In response, Phelim announced that the Ellezelin presence in Colwyn City would remain until Living Dream followers were safe. He didn’t say anything about the rest of the planet, and the paramilitary withdrawal continued unabated. Thousands of the faithful fled in their capsules, hoping to pass through the wormhole. But Phelim wouldn’t lower Colwyn City’s force field for anyone except the Ellezelin capsules. Thousands of the frantic refugees were stacking up in the skies outside the city. The lucky tens of thousands of followers who originally had taken up residence in Colwyn City were now trekking across a phenomenally hostile urban landscape, desperately trying to reach the docks where the wormhole would take them back to Ellezelin. It was almost impossible for them to get there; every street was seething with locals on the lookout for the faithful. All the Ellezelin capsules inside the force field were doing now was running a massive evacuation operation. Phelim had indicated that if there was no end to the violence against Living Dream members, he would impose a daylong curfew. That didn’t help; vigilante groups weren’t even waiting for the followers to try to make a dash for safety. Reports were coming in of houses being broken into to extract justice. Images of bodies savagely beaten to death in their own homes were snatched by braver reporters; there were a lot of children caught up in the violence. Of course, the most devout Living Dream followers didn’t have memorycells, because Edeard never had and they were all going to follow Inigo’s dreams into the Void, where such contrivances were an irrelevance.

“Crap,” Oscar muttered. It would take a generation for Viotia to recover, he knew. If it ever did. If it even still existed in a generation.

“We’re not supposed to get sidetracked,” Beckia said quietly. “But it’s hard sometimes. That’s when your strength is really tested.”

“I lived through worse before,” Oscar said, aiming for tough and failing woefully. Dead children, for God’s sake; in the Commonwealth, where everyone should be safe and happy.

“So it would never happen again.”

“Yeah,” he said as he pushed the news shows to peripheral mode. “Something like that.” Because he was distracted, because he wasn’t paying full attention to that strange ancient strand of neutral thought in Francola Wood, he was almost immediately aware when it began to change, to stir. Freshen: the only analogy he could come up with.

“Uh oh,” Oscar murmured. Naturally, when he tried to chase down the sensation, the damn thing slithered about, dwindling from perception.

“What now?” Beckia was rising from the couch.

“Get your suit on.” Oscar’s u-shadow was relaying images from the stealth sensors. It looked like he wasn’t the only one in tune with the path. Several members of the Welcome Team were on the move, emerging from the tangle of whiplit fronds to slip past the dapol trunks. Through the lounge windows he saw a flock of caylars take flight, their ultramarine wings flapping urgently. She can’t be this stupid, he thought. The girl he’d seen in Bodant Park had been scared, yes, but everything she’d done spoke of a smart mind.

Oscar opened a secure channel to Tomansio, who was in their stolen capsule, flying a random course over the city. “Get over here. I think we’re going to need you.”

“She’s coming?”

“I don’t know, but something’s happening.”

“On my way. Two minutes.”

Sensors showed several team members stepping out of their apartments in full armor. They began to sprint over the long gardens that led down to Francola Wood.

Beckia walked up beside him, her helmet sealing up. Oscar’s visor closed as his integral force field established itself. He ran a check on his heavy-caliber weapons. Accelerants flooded into his bloodstream as biononics complemented his muscles. “Here we go again,” he said in complete dismay. A low-power disrupter pulse shattered the lounge’s big window wall, and they ran out onto the lawn.

Mellanie’s Redemption hung in transdimensional suspension a hundred thousand kilometers above Viotia. Passive sensors absorbed what information they could, revealing that space around the planet was empty apart from a single Dunbavend Line starship in a thousand-kilometer orbit. For a passenger ship it seemed to have an awful lot of weapons systems, several of which were active.

A secure TD link routed Troblum’s u-shadow to the planetary cybersphere, allowing him to monitor events. The u-shadow also kept watch for the SI. So far it hadn’t intercepted his connection, but Troblum was convinced it would be watching the data flowing along the link.

“Why are we here?” Catriona Saleeb asked. She was sitting on a simple stool beside the cabin wall, which had pushed out a small wooden bar. Appropriately, she was dressed for an evening out on the town, wearing a slinky blue snakeskin dress, her hair spiraling in an elaborate style and sparkling with small red gems.

“It was the course I’d designated before the Swarm went active,” Troblum said gruffly. “And we had to test the hyperdrive.”

Catriona glanced at the big image of Viotia that a portal was projecting into the middle of the cabin. “Are you going to call him?”

“Who?”

“Oscar Monroe.”

“No.” He brought some performance tables into his exovision and studied them, checking through the hyperdrive’s functions. Peripheral displays showed the violence playing out across the planet as residents took their revenge on Living Dream members.

“If you help them, they’ll take care of the Cat,” she said.

His u-shadow slid the performance tables to one side. He gave her an angry stare. “They’ll do that anyway. Paula knows she’s been taken out of suspension; she won’t rest until the Cat is back where she belongs. It’s over. Do you understand that? Now I’m going to review the hyperdrive. Once I’m satisfied it’s working correctly, we’ll leave.”

“I just want you to be safe; you know that.” Catriona picked up a long-stemmed cocktail glass and drained its sticky red liquid. She swirled the ice cubes around the bottom. “And I know you need closure on the Cat. If you run now, you’ll never know what happened. You won’t be able to live with that. You’ll spend the rest of your life seeing her everywhere; you’ll panic at every strange noise in the wind.”

“I’m not that weak.”

“If you’re not afraid, then call Oscar.”

“That’s machine logic.”

Her lips pouted, their glossy scales darkening down to purple. “For someone who cares about no one, you can be a real bastard at times.”

“Shut the fuck up. I mean it.” He brought his exovision intensity up. On a street in Colwyn City a family of Living Dream followers was being chased by a mob armed with power tools and thick clubs. Their clothes had betrayed them, made from simple cloth in old styles. Two adults were dragging along three terrified crying children, the oldest no more than eleven. It was a residential street, houses and apartment blocks packed tight. The father found one he obviously recognized and dashed up to the front door, pounding away, yelling furiously. The mob slowed and surrounded them in an eerily quiet, efficient maneuver, some primeval hunter knowledge governing their movements. They closed in. The father kept hitting the door with his fist while the weeping mother pleaded for her children to be let through. As if knowing how futile it was, she put her arms around them, clutching them to her as she started screaming. The news show’s reporter was good, focusing perfectly on the makeshift clubs as they rose.

Troblum actually turned his head away as his u-shadow canceled the news show; it was all too vivid.

“Do you want to be human?” Troblum asked. “Did you think I would grow you a clone body and transfer your personality in?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is that what you were hoping for?”

“No,” Catriona said, sounding quite shocked.

“I won’t do that. Not ever. The universe doesn’t need more humans. We have nothing to offer the universe. We need to leave our original form behind. It does nothing but generate misery and suffering. The External worlds are full of animals. They can’t be classified as true humans. They don’t think; they just act. Animals, that’s all they are—animals.”

“So how do you define real humans? People like yourself?”

“A real person would want independence. If you were real, you’d want a body. Did you talk about it with Trisha and Isabella and Howard?”

“Troblum?” She sounded troubled. “Don’t.”

“Was Howard a part of it, too? Were you going to put pressure on me to make it happen?”

“No.”

“Did you tell the Cat about me?” he yelled.

“Stop this!”

“I don’t need you.”

“But I need you. I love you.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

She climbed off the stool and knelt at his feet. “I only exist because of you. How could I not love you for that? I would not betray you. I cannot. You know this.”

Troblum flinched. His hand hovered above her thick, tightly wound hair.

“Please,” she said. There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. “Please, Troblum. Don’t do this to yourself.”

He sighed, lowering his palm onto her head, feeling the springy strands of hair against his skin. Then her hand closed around his, letting him know her warmth, her light touch. She kissed his fingers one at a time. Troblum groaned, half-ashamed, half-delighted. She’s not real. She’s an I-sentient. Does that make her the perfect human for me? His whole mind was in chaos.

“You’d change,” he whispered. “If I gave you a meat body, you’d change. Your routines would be running in neural paths that are never fixed. I don’t want you to change.”

“I don’t want a meat body. I just want you. Always. And I need you to be safe and happy for that to happen. Do you understand that, Troblum?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”

The starship’s sensors reported energy weapon discharges above Colwyn City. Troblum frowned. “What’s that?” he queried. His u-shadow started refining the scan.

It had been a while since Araminta had used the mélange program. Nothing wrong with the program; it was its association with Likan that made her all squirmy and uncomfortable. That was stupid. She certainly couldn’t afford that kind of weakness now.

As she walked beside the little brook, she sent her perception seeping out ahead of her, experiencing it flowing along the path. Far away she could feel the Silfen Motherholme, sympathetic and imposing. There was the human gaiafield, fizzing with agitation and excitement. On the other side of her mind was the Skylord—she recoiled from that right away. Her feet kept on walking. All around her the trees were growing higher, muddling those on the world she walked among with those of Francola Wood. She knew now where the path would take her into Francola Wood, smelling the scent of the whiplit fronds. Her mind found a host of people lurking in the undergrowth, cleverly concealed by their gadgetry while their steely thoughts filled with expectation. They were waiting for her.

Yet even as it swept her along to its ending, she knew the path was fluid, simply anchored in place by past wishes, directions sung to it by Silfen millennia ago. She tried to make her own wishes known. Somehow they weren’t clear enough, and the path remained obdurately in place. So she summoned up the mélange and felt the calmness sinking through her body, centering her, enabling her to concentrate on every sensation she was receiving.

The tunes imprinted on the path’s structure were easier to trace, to comprehend. With that knowledge she began to form the new tunes that her thoughts spun out. Wishes amplified by a fond nostalgia and the most fragile of hopes.

Onward her feet fell, pressing down on damp grass as the melody permeated her whole existence. She swayed in time to the gentle undulations she had set free, finally happy that the end of the path was moving with her, carrying her onward to the place she so urgently sought. There, ahead of her, the thoughts she knew so well radiated out from his home.

Araminta opened her eyes to look across the lawn toward the big old house. Her initial smile faded from her face. There had been a fire. Long black smoke marks contaminated the white walls above three of the big ground-floor arches. Two of the balconies were smashed. There was a hole in the roof, which looked melted.

“Oh, great Ozzie,” she moaned. The dismay was kept in place by the mélange, occupying a single stream in her mind, an emotion that neither colored nor determined her behavior. “Bovey!” she called as she ran for the house. “Bovey!”

Two of hims were outside by the swimming pool. They turned around at her voice. The gaiafield revealed his burst of astonishment.

“You’re okay,” she gasped as she came to a halt a few meters short of hims. One was the Bovey she’d been on their first date with, the body she truly identified as him; the other was the tall blond youngster. At their feet was another body, inert, covered in a beach towel.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Not one of you.”

“Hey,” the older of hims said, and threw his arms around her. “It’s okay.”

Some small part of herself marveled at how calm she was, channeling all the emotion away so she could remain perfectly rational and controlled. She knew what she should say, even if her voice lacked the appropriate intensity. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

“No, no,” he soothed.

“I should have told you. Warned you. I left because I didn’t want you to get involved, to get hurt.”

Neither of hims could avoid looking at the corpse. “It’s okay. You came back; that’s all that matters.”

“It is not okay. They killed one of you.” A pulse of regret and guilt in his mind alerted her. “No, it’s not just one, is it? How many?”

He took a step back from her, though his hands were still gripping her shoulders.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“Five,” he said, as if ashamed.

“Bastards!”

“It doesn’t matter.” His grin was rueful. “That’s the point of being mes; bodyloss is irrelevant. Some of mes are scattered all across this city, and nobody knows how many there are; certainly not those thugs. I’m safe. Safer than you.”

“This is my fault. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come to you, not before it’s all over.”

“I’m glad you did,” he said earnestly. “Really, I am. Just seeing you, knowing you’re okay, makes this all worthwhile.” Both of hims looked back across the empty garden toward the Cairns, whose muddy waters flowed past the bank at the bottom of the lawn. “How did you get here? Everyone thinks you’re on Chobamba.”

“Long story.”

A sound similar to faint thunder rolled across the house. Araminta turned to the source, seeing energy weapons flash just below the curving force field dome. She didn’t need any kind of program to tell her it was the Francola district.

“Not again,” Bovey groaned. “Enough!”

“It’s me,” she said impassively. “They’re fighting because they think I’m there.”

“Araminta.” It came out of both of hims, a distraught desperate voice.

“I can’t stay. They’ll find me eventually.”

“Run, then. I’ll come with you. We’ll just keep on running. The navy can probably help.”

“No. I can’t do that. ANA has gone. Nobody is going to help us; nobody can stop Living Dream and the Accelerators. It’s down to me now.”

“You?”

“I’m not running, not hiding. Not anymore. I know I have no right to ask this, because I didn’t have the courage to tell you about myself before.”

“I understand.”

“You’re sweet, too sweet. After this is over, I want us to be together. I really do. That’s why I’m here, so you know that.”

He hugged her tight again. “It’ll happen,” he whispered fiercely. “It will.”

“There are things I have to do,” she said. “Things I don’t want to, but I can’t see any other way. I have an idea, but I’m going to need your help to make it work.”

Inigo’s Twenty-sixth Dream

In all the years Edeard had lived in Makkathran, he’d never bothered drawing up a proper map of the deep tunnels. He knew there were five large concentric circles forming the main routes, with curving links between them. He also instinctively knew their position in relation to the streets and districts above. Beyond the outermost circle were the longer branches driving out under the Iguru plain apparently at random. One day he would fly along each of those brightly lit white tubes to find exactly where they emerged. One day when he had the time.

For now he was simply glad that the outermost circular tunnel carried him close to Grinal Street in Bellis district, where Marcol was having difficulty subduing an exceptionally strong psychic. Edeard hadn’t used a deep tunnel for months, if not longer; such excursions were becoming a rare event. For several years now he’d had no reason to rush anywhere, especially on constable business. But now, as he hurtled along somewhere deep underneath Lisieux Park, the sheer exhilaration made him curse his middle-aged timidity. His cloak was almost tearing off his shoulders from the ferocity of the wind. He stretched his hands out ahead, as if he were diving. Then he rolled. It was a ridiculously pleasurable sensation, making the blood pump wildly along his veins. He yelled out for the sheer joy of living once more. And rolled again and again. A side tunnel flashed past, then another. He was almost at his destination in Bellis. There was an urge to simply go around again. Marcol and his squad can handle it, surely.

Something was suddenly hurtling around the tunnel’s shallow curve directly ahead. Edeard never bothered using his farsight in the intense white light of the tubes, so he was taken completely by surprise. He just had time to harden his third hand into a bodyshield as they flashed past. Two people clinging together. Teenagers, whooping madly. No clothes on as they coupled furiously in the buffeting wind. There was a quick glance of their startled, ecstatic faces, and then they were gone, their joyful cries lost amid the churning slipstream. Edeard threw his farsight after them, but the tunnel had separated them too quickly; already they were lost around the curve behind him.

His shocked thoughts managed to calm, and he asked the city to take him the other way to chase the intruders and catch up. He slowed as always, skidding to a halt on the tunnel floor. Then the force that carried him reversed, and he began flying back the way he’d just come.

This time he sent his farsight ranging out ahead. Perception through the tunnel walls was difficult, even for him. He could just sense the city a couple of hundred yards above him, but that was mainly due to the layout of the canals impinging on his perception. Actually sensing anything along the tunnel was extremely difficult.

For a moment he thought he’d caught a trace of them a few hundred yards ahead, but then he lost them again. When he reached the spot, it was a side tunnel branch, and he didn’t know which way to go. He skidded and stumbled to a halt in front of the fork, standing on the bright glowing floor, looking first one way and then another, as if hunting a trace. Then he tried delving into the tunnel wall structure for its memory. The city always recalled decades of localized events.

That was the second surprise of the day. There wasn’t one memory of the teenage couple. He could sense the tunnel’s recollection of himself flashing past barely a minute before, but of them there was nothing.

“How in the Lady’s name did they …” His voice echoed off down the tunnel as he frowned at the shining junction. For a moment he thought he might have heard laughter whispering along the main tunnel. But by then he knew he was grasping at phantoms. “Honious!” he grunted, and asked the city to take him back to Bellis.

Grinal Street was a pleasant enough boulevard, winding its way across the south side of the Bellis district from the Emerald Canal to the top of Oak Canal. A mixture of buildings stood along it, from typanum-gabled mansions to bloated hemispheres with narrow arches that made perfect boutiques, leading onto a line of houses with blended triple-cylinder walls whose overhanging roofs made them resemble knobbly stone mushrooms. Sergeant Marcol had been dealing with an incident in Five Fountain Plaza close to Oak Canal. The plaza was enclosed by a terrace with a concave outer wall and an internal honeycomb configuration of small cell-rooms connected via short tubes without any apparent logic to the layout, as if the whole structure had been hollowed out by giant insects long ago. This hivelike topography made it ideal for merchants and traders dealing in small high-value items. Few people lived in it, but many thrived and bustled around inside.

Edeard arrived at a squat archway in one corner and automatically ducked his head as he went inside. There was a lot of hostility and bad temper radiating out from the gloomy interior. As he crossed the threshold, he was instantly aware of a strong farsight examining him. His inquisitor, somewhere over in Zelda, withdrew farsight as Edeard attempted to backtrack it.

He paused, pursing his lips with interest. That hadn’t happened for quite a few years, either. Whoever had taken such an interest in him before the Skylords returned had been ignoring him ever since. He didn’t think their reemergence today was a coincidence.

Marcol was waiting for him in the herbalist emporium, a room on the second floor reached by a spiraling tube and several interconnected cell-rooms. Its walls were completely covered in rugs woven with intricate geometric designs. Lanterns hung on long brass chains, burning jamolar oil to cast a thick yellow light. There were other scents in the air, a mélange of spice and alcohol so potent that that Edeard half expected to see it as a vapor. The cell-room was fitted out with row upon row of small shelves lined with kestric pipes of various sizes and lengths. Several were lying broken on the floor. Hundreds of the narcotic plant’s long tapering leaves hung from racks, drying in the hot air. There were bundles of other stems, seed pods, and leaves that Edeard didn’t recognize. Again, many of them had been torn down and trampled underfoot.

As soon as he’d pushed aside the bead curtains, he immediately knew who the protagonists were: two men on opposite sides of the room, still glaring at each other, minds reeking of animosity. One was old and quite large, dressed in an expensive matching jacket and trousers colorfully embroidered with small birds in the same style as the hanging rugs. Edeard immediately tagged him as the herbal emporium’s owner.

The other man was considerably younger, under thirty, and Edeard knew his type only too well. Yet another Grand Family son a long way down the entitlement list, as arrogant as he was handsome and living well beyond his allowance thanks to extended merchants’ credit. Edeard immediately suspected the owner was one such creditor. The two constables under Marcol’s charge had gotten cuffs on him, rumpling up the sleeves of his dark red velvet jacket. Looking around, Edeard didn’t quite know why he was there. Then he studied the younger man’s face closely, taking in the high cheekbones, the dark floppy hair, the unbreakable defiance in those light brown eyes.

I’ve seen him before. But where? He was younger. Honious damn my memory.

“What’s the problem?” he asked lightly.

“Colfal called us,” Marcol said, indicating the owner. “Alleging psychic assault. When we turned up, Tathal resisted arrest.” His thumb jerked toward the youthful aristocrat, who responded with a dismissive smile. “He’s a difficult one.”

“I did no such thing,” Tathal said. It was a polite tone, and the accent wasn’t immediately indicative of Makkathran’s finest. Edeard thought he might be from the southern provinces.

Holding up a finger to Tathal for silence, Edeard turned to Colfal. “Why did Tathal assault you?”

Colfal’s anger finally faded away, replaced by a surly glower. He took a deep breath. “I apologize that your time has been wasted, Waterwalker. This has been a misunderstanding.”

“Huh?” Marcol’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “But you called us.”

Edeard’s gaze lingered on the damaged merchandise scattered over the floor as his farsight was studying the few of Marcol’s thoughts revealed through his shield. “Uh huh.” He raised an eyebrow. “And you, Tathal? What have you to say?”

“Also, my profound apologies. As your constables will testify, I have a strong third hand. In the heat of the moment my restraint isn’t all it should be.”

“You don’t wish to press charges?” Edeard asked Colfal.

“No.” The old herbalist shook his head, unable to meet Edeard’s stare.

“Very well.” Edeard told the constables to uncuff Tathal. “And you, learn to restrain your strength.”

“Of course, Waterwalker.”

“Where do you live?”

“Abad, Waterwalker, I have a residence on Boldar Avenue.”

“Really? Anywhere near Apricot Cottage?”

Tathal grinned eagerly and inclined his head. “Indeed, I am privileged to be a fellow.”

That would explain the stylish clothes along with a provincial accent, but Edeard still couldn’t place the face. “All right, you’re free to go. Consider this your only warning; stay out of trouble from now on.”

“Yes, Waterwalker.”

Edeard was sure that platitude was loaded with mockery, but there was no hint of anything from beneath Tathal’s mental shield. In fact, Edeard had never encountered such a perfectly protected mind before.

“Wasting a constable’s time is also an offense,” he told Colfal after Tathal had gone through the swirling bead curtain. “Especially mine.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” a flushed Colfal muttered.

———

“What in Honious was that?” Edeard asked Marcol when they were back out in Five Fountain Plaza.

“I’m really sorry, Edeard. It all got out of hand so quickly. And Lady, he was so strong. I couldn’t handle him by myself. Even with my squadmates pitching in, it was touch and go. I just sort of instinctively called you.”

“Hmm.” Edeard gave the warrenlike terrace a suspicious look. “He really was that strong?”

“Yes.”

“What was the dispute about? If Tathal is an Apricot Cottage fellow, it could hardly be over payment.”

“I’m not sure. Colfal was making all sorts of allegations when we arrived. Extortion. Financial abuse. Physical threats. Psychic assault. You name it, he was shouting about it.”

“Interesting.” Edeard sent his perception into the walls of the herbal emporium, seeking to extract the city’s memory of the confrontation. But with the walls covered in rugs, the substance of the city could neither see nor hear what went on inside.

“I can’t believe Colfal backed down,” Marcol was saying. “He was as furious as a blooded drakken.”

“Domination,” Edeard said. “I recognized some of the patterns in his thoughts; they’re quite distinct after they’ve been forced to change—” He stopped. Now he remembered Tathal. “Oh, Lady, I might have guessed.”

The Chief Constable of Makkathran had a grand office at the back of the Orchard Palace, a circular room with a high conical ceiling that twisted upward as if it had been melted into shape. The floor was a polished ocher with dark red lines tracing out a pentagon, the walls a lighter brown but still glossy. Edeard didn’t go for much furniture; it was a place of work, after all. He had his muroak desk, which had been a gift from Kanseen the day after his election, and a long table for meetings with various captains and lawyers.

By the time he got back there after dealing with Tathal and Colfal, Felax had summoned Golbon and Jaralee, the last two remaining active members of the Grand Council committee on organized crime. Even now, after so long, Edeard hadn’t quite managed to wind it up.

“New case,” he announced as he strode over to his desk. Golbon and Jaralee exchanged a surprised look. For the last seven years all they’d been doing was quietly closing case files and assigning them to the archives.

Edeard sat at his desk. Behind him a neat row of tall slit windows looked out across Rah’s Garden and the Center Circle Canal. He always positioned himself so that he faced away from the view. “The Apricot Cottage Fellowship.”

Golbon groaned. “Not that again. We looked into them a few years back. They’re just a bunch of young merchants looking to make their own association and build up some political clout. They use a few strong-arm tactics occasionally, but no more than established businesses. There’s no criminal activity.”

“Good, then this will be a quick assignment for you,” Edeard countered. “I want the names of the fellowship, and yes, that includes my son-in-law. Get a rundown of their business affiliations. What they own: properties, land, ships, and so on. I also want a complete financial rundown on a herbalist called Colfal. See if you can find any ties to fellowship members.”

“Why the sudden interest?” Jaralee asked.

“I think I perceived one of them called Tathal use domination on someone he was doing business with. Colfal, as it happens.”

“Ah, the impossible court case,” Jaralee said. Her first apprenticeship had been with the Guild of Lawyers, before she transferred to the clerks. That made her invaluable for Edeard’s investigations; her ability to piece together solid evidence from scraps of information in diverse files was legend, and her legal background enabled her to see what charges could legitimately be applied.

“There have been cases where domination has been proved,” Golbon said.

“Grand Family members testifying against ordinary citizens,” Jaralee countered. “It’s basically hearsay. The court chose to recognize it those few times because of the people involved. Legally, though, there is no acknowledged proof of tampering with another’s thoughts.”

“I know there’s no legal basis,” Edeard said. “But if it did happen with Colfal, then it’s part of a greater criminal act. If we can establish that, we can go after the other facts they’ll have left behind.”

“Okay,” Jaralee said. “As long as you understand no court will convict on that allegation alone.”

“Understood,” Edeard said, trying not to think of Salrana. “There’s something else you should know. Tathal has a very strong psychic ability. Apparently even Marcol had difficulty countering him. Presumably this helps his dominance ability.”

“Lady,” Golbon muttered. “Do you think he’ll come after us?”

“I doubt it,” Edeard said. “But just be careful. Tathal isn’t the only strong rogue psychic in the city.” He told them about the occasional sweeps of farsight that had dogged him over the years. Even though he trusted them implicitly, he didn’t mention the tunnels. The only way those youngsters could have gotten down there was with the compliance of Makkathran itself. He didn’t know if it simply responded to any strong psychic or if it actively chose to help some and not others. Somehow he doubted the latter; it had only ever consciously communicated to him once, the day he’d learned of the Void’s true ability.

“Are they linked?” Jaralee asked.

“I don’t know, but I also want you to see if there’s any financial connection between Ranalee and the Apricot Cottage fellowship.”

“I see,” she said in a neutral tone.

Edeard did his best not to smile. Over the years the Grand Council committee on organized crime had expended a great deal of time and effort investigating Ranalee, all to no avail. Jaralee and the others had come to recognize the owner of the House of Blue Petals as Edeard’s personal obsession; he often suspected their diligence was less than it should have been because of that. “I know there was a, uh, physical connection between Ranalee and Tathal a few years ago. She was probably the one who taught him how to use dominance effectively.”

Again, Jaralee and Golbon shared a knowing look.

“We’ll look into it,” Jaralee assured him.

Edeard and Kristabel took a family gondola from the Culverit mansion down to Mid Pool. It was late afternoon, with the falling sun polishing streaks of cirrostratus cloud to a tender gold. Warm air hung heavy over the city, redolent with scent of the sea.

They weren’t the only ones enjoying the last of the balmy day; hundreds of gondolas were moving up and down Great Major Canal. Progress was slow. Edeard thought every gondola in Makkathran must be out on the water; he’d never seen so many of the sleek black craft together before. The streets and avenues along both sides of the water also were crammed with people.

As he watched them, he noticed how many were elderly, being helped along by their families. Most of them were heading toward Eyrie.

Kristabel caught his gaze. “How long?”

“They’ll be here in nine days.”

“Five Skylords,” she said, awed by the notion. “I wonder if that many ever came in Rah’s time.”

“The Lady never gave numbers.” Edeard saw an old woman with an uncanny resemblance to Mistress Florrel being helped along by three younger woman; she could barely walk, her joints were so arthritic. Her mind leaked little spikes of pain, along with a mild bewilderment. He suspected she wasn’t entirely aware of what was going on. On the water below her, gondolas carried her contemporaries toward the crooked towers of Eyrie. The difference was money; they had enough coinage to make that last stretch of the journey in comfort.

“How did they cope back then?” Kristabel wondered.

“The population wasn’t as large as it is today. Fewer people lived in the city, so there’d be rooms they could all use without any of the trouble we’re having.” The influx of elderly travelers waiting for the arrival of a Skylord was reaching disturbing proportions. It had risen steadily in the years since Finitan’s guidance and word of the Skylords’ return spread out across the provinces. Now thousands flocked to Makkathran every month, all of them aided by family, swelling the numbers to a level where the city could barely cope. Once again the constables were fully deployed on the streets, quashing a hundred outbreaks of minor crime each day, from disputes over rooms to the inflated price for food charged to visitors. The constables also had to ensure free movement along those streets, which, given that a lot of the elderly had difficulty walking, was becoming quite taxing. The charity and goodwill of the permanent residents that had blossomed after the first couple of visits by Skylords were all but gone now.

The gondola arrived in Mid Pool and headed up Trade Route Canal. They had to wait several minutes before the mooring platform at the end of Jodsell Street had a free berth. From there it was only a short walk along the street to the district master’s mansion at the center of Sampalok.

Edeard always felt slightly bashful whenever he entered the big square at the heart of Sampalok. This was the place everyone associated with the day of banishment: the turning point in Makkathran’s life and that of Querencia itself. It wasn’t, of course: the true change had started in a secret vault under the Spiral Tower of the Weapons Guild, and nobody would ever know.

The mansion of the Sampalok district’s master and mistress stood in the middle of the vast square, a six-sided giant of a building, each face a different pastel color, with its own high archway into the surrounding court. None of them had gates or doors; unlike their predecessors, the new district master and mistress didn’t turn away the people they were supposed to serve.

In years past the square had been well traveled, with a few vendors setting up stalls to sell fruit and drinks. Kids ran about, dodging the fountains. But mainly it was open space. Not so any longer. Hundreds of modest bamboo-framed tents had been pitched outside the mansion’s walls. Even as he walked to the main gate, Edeard could see more being assembled, with lively ge-chimps scampering over the frame, binding the canes together. Families stood by with bundles of belongings they’d carried from their hometowns.

Kristabel sniffed the air suspiciously. “I thought Kanseen had arranged sanitation wagons for the district.”

Edeard shrugged, and they passed into the mansion’s court, with its white statues and neat bushes growing out of long troughs. The main doors were open, leading to a hall whose ceiling shone with a perfect white light. Broad wing stairs curved up to the first-floor gallery. They were easy to walk up, just as Edeard always intended. He’d never really known what layout to adopt inside the mansion; it was the outside he was so sure of. When the moment came, he’d sketched out an internal design similar to the one he’d disposed of, except now the lights were white, the baths were a sensible size, the beds were a decent height, and so on down a long list of architectural discomforts that Makkathran citizens had worked around for two millennia.

Macsen and Kanseen were waiting in the small first-floor reception hall. They showed Kristabel and Edeard out onto the secluded balcony, where wine was waiting, as were Dinlay and Gealee. For his fourth wife Dinlay had fallen for a strapping redhead. Gealee was only twenty-eight years old and an easy three inches taller than her husband of two months. Seeing them standing together beside the balustrade with the setting sun behind them, Edeard had to concentrate really hard on maintaining his mental shield and not letting a single emotion seep out. All of Dinlay’s wives could so easily have been sisters. He knows it never works, so why does he always go for the same type?

“Optimism,” Kristabel murmured.

Edeard turned bright red. “Oh, Lady, did I …?”

“No. I just know you.” Kristabel smiled brightly and embraced Dinlay. “Welcome back.” She kissed Gealee. “How was the honeymoon?”

“Oh, it was just fabulous, thank you so much. The yacht you lent us took us to so many of these fabulous little harbors. Every town along the coast is so different. And the Oantrana Islands, they’re lovely, so unspoiled. I had no idea they were like that. I could live on any one of them.”

Dinlay’s arm went around his new bride. “We can retire there,” he chided.

She kissed him.

Edeard gulped down some wine.

Macsen’s arm went around his shoulder. “So what did you think of our guests?” he asked, gesturing at the big open square beyond the mansion walls.

“There’s a lot of them,” Edeard said, glad of the diversion. Even though the visitors were enduring less than favorable accommodation, the city still boasted an atmosphere of optimism and relief. The mental aspect drifting along every street and canal was of anticipation. It was like the night before a carnival.

“They’ll be gone the day after the Skylords come,” Kanseen said.

“At which point the next wave will start to arrive,” Macsen said. “Edeard, we can’t go on ignoring this. I checked with the Guild of Clerks, and there are no rooms in Makkathran left unregistered. That’s intolerable. Where are our children supposed to live?”

“Nobody is ignoring it,” Edeard said. “I’ve been to three meetings with the Mayor on this subject alone.”

“And what was his amazing conclusion?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard shot him a surprised look; his friend was normally more diplomatic. Maybe Gealee was different, after all. “He believes it will settle down after some time. We’re still experiencing an abnormally large surge of people seeking guidance. It’s inevitable at the start. The numbers will decline and level off.”

“When?”

Edeard shrugged. “It’s not the people actually seeking guidance that are the problem; it’s all the family members who come with them. They’re the ones creating the accommodation problems.”

“That’s it? That’s the Mayor’s answer? Wait a few years and the problem will go away?”

“Not quite. There are a lot of stopover inns opening around Makkathran. Most of the coastal villages within a day’s sail have at least one. More are opening each month. They will help.”

“I hope you’re right,” Gealee said. “My brother’s children are in their twenties, and they can’t find anywhere in the city to live. Keral has traveled inland to see what kind of life he could have beyond the Iguru.”

“Good for him,” Edeard said. “Too many of our children rely on the city.”

“But we’ve lived here for two thousand years,” Gealee complained. “Why should we leave?”

“Things are different now,” Macsen said. “The provinces aren’t the hardship they once were. There’s more than agriculture in the towns. Some of the guild halls out there rival those in Makkathran for size and ability.”

“Then why don’t the Skylords visit those towns? Why is it always Makkathran?”

Edeard wanted to answer. Kanseen and Dinlay were both looking at him as though they expected a reasonable explanation. He didn’t have one.

“Only Makkathran has the towers of Eyrie,” Macsen said.

That can’t be right, Edeard thought. Makkathran isn’t ours; it was never built for humans. “I’ll ask,” he blurted.

Everyone stared at him.

“Really,” he said. “When the Skylords come, I’ll ask them what they need to collect our souls. If the only place they’ll visit is Makkathran’s towers.”

Gealee leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss. “Thank you, Waterwalker.”

He grinned back at her, making sure he didn’t look at Kristabel. “My pleasure.”

“This discomfort might help us,” Dinlay said.

“Discomfort?” Edeard asked.

“In Makkathran, with the stopover visitors,” Macsen explained, his face open and seemingly innocent.

“How so?”

“Discomfort breeds dissatisfaction. Everyone is going to take it out on the Mayor at the next election.”

Edeard groaned, knowing what was coming.

“The timing is good,” Kristabel said, suddenly keen. “If you’re right about the stopover inns, then the problem will be reduced considerably as your term starts.”

“My term?” Edeard wanted to tell her to stop taking Macsen’s side; this felt too much like he was being ganged up on. “I’d have to get elected first.”

“You’re the Waterwalker,” Kanseen said merrily. “Everyone will vote for you. Even the youngsters, now you’ve brought the Skylords back. Isn’t that right, Gealee?”

“Oh, yes,” she said earnestly.

Edeard added Kanseen to the list of people he couldn’t look at right now, though he wasn’t sure if the barb was intended for Gealee or Dinlay. Probably Dinlay.

“Everyone knows it’s just a matter of time,” Dinlay said.

“Do they?” He couldn’t quite maintain the disinterested attitude. Mayor? Finally. His mind wondered back to that spring day back in Ashwell, when his ge-cats had been such a success at the new well. Mayor and Pythia, he and Salrana had promised each other. We were children. That’s all. Children laughing glibly at a childish dream. But the idea that he could be Mayor still sent a thrill through him.

“Come on,” Macsen implored. “This is the time, and you know it. Just say the word.”

He glanced at Kristabel, who gave him a swift nod.

“All right, then,” he said, and even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew he could never hold in that smile of relief and anticipation. “Let’s do it.”

The others whooped and applauded, giving him hugs.

“Where in Honious do we start?” he asked. It was almost a protest.

“You leave that to me,” Dinlay said. “I’ve been putting together a team for a while.”

Edeard shrugged and shook his head. It was almost as if he had no say in the matter.

Felax was standing in front of the thick wooden door into the Chief Constable’s office. He was agitated, which was most unusual for him. “I’m sorry,” he said as Edeard approached. “I didn’t really know how to stop her.”

Edeard gave the door a quizzical look as his farsight swept into his office. She was perched on one of the straight-backed chairs in front of his big desk. “Oh, Lady,” he muttered as dismay warred with curiosity. “Okay,” he told Felax. “I’ll deal with this.”

Salrana turned slightly as he entered the office. Her hair was a lot shorter these days and colored a sandy blond. She was wearing a dark shawl over her sea-green dress, something a woman fifty years older might have on. Her big eyes regarded him with a kind of forlorn interest. After all, they hadn’t been in each other’s presence for over a decade—no small achievement, given the number of parties both attended. If he’d thought that she might finally be relenting, that Ranalee’s malign influence was waning, he was put right by the briefest flash of emotions flickering through her shield. Like him, she still couldn’t disguise her mind as well as a cityborn. So there were the embers of distaste and resentment burning alongside a brighter defiance. For once, though, there was uncertainty amid all that rancor.

“This is unexpected,” he said as he walked past her. He didn’t pause or attempt to shake hands or even contemplate a platonic kiss.

Her gaze followed him as he sat down. “Nothing’s changed,” she began.

“Something must have, to bring you here.”

“Call it desperation if you like. And I know you.”

Edeard really was puzzled now. All the attempts he’d made to make some kind of peace between them had always come to nothing, and there had been a great many over the decades. Even then he’d still carried on helping where he could, especially with her no-good offspring. She must have known that. “What do you want?”

“I won’t owe you anything. I won’t change, I won’t show gratitude.”

“I’m not asking you to. What is it you want, Salrana?”

She finally looked away, adjusting the shawl around her shoulders. “My husband, Garnfal, he’s going to accept the guidance of the Skylords. He’s not been well for over a year now.”

“I’m sorry,” he said with genuine sympathy. “I didn’t know.”

“He … he took good care of me, you know. He wasn’t like some of the others.”

The ones Ranalee gave you to, he thought coldly.

“Anyway,” she continued, “he’s been making provisions for me. His house in Horrod Lane goes to his eldest son, Timath, of course. I wouldn’t want it otherwise. But there are goods which are quite valuable, goods he bought with money he earned himself. Garnfal has left me these in his will.”

“The family doesn’t want you to have them?”

“Some of it they don’t mind. But there is some land in Ivecove; that’s a fishing village four miles north of the city. A cottage in a large patch of ground. Garnfal enjoyed the gardens; he said you could never have a proper garden in the city. We stayed there every summer. Then last autumn, a merchant approached him, offering to buy the land so he could build an inn there instead. He said it was to accommodate all the people coming to accept the guidance of the Skylords. Until now, Garnfal has refused.”

“And this is what Timath objects to?”

“Yes. Garnfal has given me his blessing to sell the cottage once he is dead, which will bring in an exceptional price. Timath has already engaged a lawyer to contest the will. He claims that the true price of the cottage is not reflected in Garnfal’s accounts, that I am defrauding the family. He calls himself and his siblings Garnfal’s true family.”

“I see.” Both your problem and Timath’s view of this. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I hoped you might talk to Timath, make him see that I am not some fastfox bitch who has bewitched his father, that I love Garnfal.”

Edeard puffed his cheeks out as he exhaled a long breath. “Salrana …”

“I’m not! Edeard, whatever you think of me, you must know that in this I have free will. I chose Garnfal for myself, by myself. Please, you must believe me. To be stripped of what is rightfully mine by a jealous, work-shy son cannot be the justice you seek for everyone.”

“Honious,” he said weakly. “You should have been a lawyer.”

“Timath has engaged Master Cherix.” She shrugged and gave him a timid smile. “If that makes any difference.”

Edeard let out a groan of defeat and tipped his head back to gaze at the high curving ceiling. “I will speak to the Grand Master of the Lawyers Guild, ask him if he can arbitrate a settlement between you and Timath.”

“Thank you, Waterwalker.”

“I think to you I am still Edeard.”

Salrana rose to her feet, giving him a sad look. “No, you are the Waterwalker. Edeard of Ashwell died on the day of Bise’s banishment.”

At midday Edeard took a gondola from the Orchard Palace to the Abad district. As the gondola slid along the Great Major Canal, he could see the crowds clustering around the base of Eyrie’s towers. Nobody was going up yet; that wasn’t allowed until the night before. Constables were assisting Mothers in keeping people away from the long winding stairs at the center of each tower. No arrests had been made yet, though Edeard was getting daily reports of incidents involving frustrated relatives. In truth, the ascent to the top of the towers had to be carefully managed. The platforms thrusting up into Querencia’s skies had a finite area, and there were no rails around the sides. Everyone who went up was elderly and infirm; they had to be cared for even in their last hours. The Mothers were now quite experienced in overseeing the whole event, a fact that went unappreciated among those who had traveled so far, with their hope building along every aching mile.

So far this week, Edeard knew, there had been fifteen deaths among those waiting in Eyrie. Their families had to be treated with a great deal of tact and understanding. Even so, tempers had flared and violence had swiftly followed. To have come so far and not achieve guidance was unbearable. Understandably so. With another seven days to go, there would be more deaths, each one more excruciating to the survivors than the last.

The gondola pulled up at a platform in the middle of Abad. Edeard climbed up the steps to Mayno Street and set off into the district. Boldar Avenue was a fifteen-minute walk from the canal, a zigzag pavement serving narrow four-and five-story cottages. Most of the lower floors had wide doorways and were used as shops or crafthouses. He saw several that were packed full of stopover travelers.

At the far end of the street one of the largest cottages had a pair of tall apricot trees growing outside the front door, their fruit starting to swell amid the fluttering leaves. Edeard was immediately aware of the strange thoughts emanating from inside. There were over a dozen people in various rooms that his farsight could sense, yet all of them seemed to be similar somehow. All had the same emotional state. Even the rhythm of their thoughts was in harmony. The oddity was enough to make him hesitate as he faced the scarlet-painted door. Deep windows were set in the curving wall on either side, their dark curtains drawn, revealing nothing. Then he knocked.

A young woman opened it for him. She was wearing a simple black dress trimmed in white lace, with long auburn hair wound in elaborate curls before flowing halfway down her back. Her smile was generous and genuine enough.

“Waterwalker, please come in. My name is Hala. I wondered when you’d visit.”

“Why is that?” he asked as he walked in. The hall was long with an arched ceiling, splitting several times, like a smaller version of the tunnels beneath the city. He hadn’t realized the cottage was so large; it had to be connected with several others along the street. He eyed the continuous strip of light along the apex of the hall. It glowed a perfect white, and he’d never asked the city to alter it.

“I admire the path you’ve followed,” Hala said. “Given how alone you were, it’s admirable.”

“Uh huh,” Edeard said. He wondered if she was the one whose farsight had been following him over the years.

The ground floor of the cottage was divided into several large rooms, saloons typical of any private members’ club in Makkathran. It appeared deserted apart from a few ge-chimps cleaning up.

“We’re upstairs,” Hala said, and led him down the hall to a spiral stair. The steps had been adjusted for human legs.

Edeard’s curiosity grew. Someone obviously had a rapport with the city similar to his own.

There were children on the second floor. It was similar to a family floor in the ziggurat, with living rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and bedrooms all jumbled together. The children laughed and peeked out at him from doorways before shrieking and running away when he pointed at them. He counted nearly thirty.

“Are any of them yours?” he asked.

Hala smiled proudly. “Three so far.”

The lounge on the third floor was a large one, probably the width of the entire cottage. Its curving rear wall was made up of broad archways filled with glass doors that opened onto a balcony looking out over Roseway Canal a couple of streets away, with Nighthouse rising up beyond the water. The walls were embellished with a tight curvilinear pattern of claret and gold, not that much of it was visible behind long hangings of black lace; it was as if a giant spider had bound the lounge in an ebony web. For such a large room there wasn’t much furniture: some muroak dressers along the walls, a couple of long tables. Rugs with a fluffy amethyst weave covered the floor. Fat chairs were scattered around, looking like clusters of cushions rather than Querencia’s usual straight-backed style. The Apricot Cottage Fellowship was sitting in them, watching Edeard with interest. Fifteen of them, six women and nine men, all young; not one was over thirty. And all of them sharing the same confidence Tathal had worn so snugly at their last meeting. He could feel the strength in their minds, barely restrained. Each of them was a powerful psychic, probably equal to himself.

He looked around until he found Tathal and smiled wryly. Then he saw a couple of youngsters standing beside a door to the balcony, and his smile broadened with comprehension. They were the two he’d caught a glimpse of in the tunnel. “Ah,” he said. “The nest, I presume.”

———

Jaralee had told him of the name when she and Golbon presented their report. They’d arrived in his office soon after Salrana had departed, radiating a giddy mixture of alarm and excitement that he found slightly unnerving. His investigators were normally unflappable.

“You were right,” Golbon said. “The fellowship has business interests everywhere. So many, I’m going to need a month just to compile them all.”

“How is that relevant?” Edeard asked. “They have a lot of members now.” Including Natran, he thought miserably.

“Ah,” Jaralee said with a superior smile. “To anyone on the outside it resembles a standard commercial association. But when I looked at it closely, there is a core that has joint ownership and part ownership of over a hundred ventures and businesses. The other members are just a seclusion haze of legitimacy wrapped around them.”

“Not quite,” Golbon interjected. “The core members have commercial ties to a lot of other members’ interests.”

“They’ve created a very complicated financial web,” Jaralee said. “And from what I’ve seen, it extends a long way beyond the city. I’ve lodged inquiries with registry clerks in Iguru townships and provincial capitals. Only a few have answered so far, but the nest’s dealings certainly stretch to ventures outside Makkathran. Collectively, I’d say they’re a match for a Grand Family estate, certainly in financial size. Could be larger if they have an equal illegitimate side. I don’t really know.”

“Nest?” Edeard inquired.

“That’s what the fellowship’s founders are known as. They’re a tight-knit group. People who know them try to avoid saying anything about them. In fact, it’s quite spooky how they’ll try and slide off the subject. I have virtually nothing on any of them apart from hearsay.”

“So what’s the hearsay?”

“They really do act like brothers and sisters; they’re that close.”

“Are you sure they’re not?”

“As sure as I can be. The majority seem to have come from the provinces; three or four are cityborn. They started to band together seven or eight years ago. That’s when they registered a residency claim on Apricot Cottage. The fellowship itself began a year later.”

“Was Tathal one of the originals?” Edeard asked. The convoluted finances the nest had surrounded itself with sounded like something Bise would concoct. And he was sure Ranalee made an excellent tutor.

“Yes, his name’s on the residency application for the cottage.”

“All right, so what about Colfal?”

Jaralee smiled happily again. “His herbalist shop is on the way down. It’s getting so bad, he hasn’t even filed his tax statement this year, which is a big risk. The inspector is getting ready for compulsory submission proceedings. I checked around his usual suppliers. He’s made some bad decisions lately. Income is drying up. The finance houses are asking for payment.”

“So Colfal is in desperate need of a new partner, especially one who has a lot of cash,” Edeard observed.

“True,” she agreed. “But Colfal has been a herbalist for over seventy years. It’s only this last year he’s started to make bad decisions.”

“That’s what seventy years of smoking kestric does to a brain,” Golbon remarked.

“These are really bad decisions,” Jaralee countered. “He’s been changing his normal stock for stuff that hardly anyone buys.”

“Who did he get the new herbs from?” Edeard asked sharply.

She nodded agreement. “I’m looking into it. This can’t be done quickly.”

Standing in the Apricot Cottage’s lounge, facing the nest, Edeard finally knew that legal details such as who bought what from whom were of no consequence whatsoever. The nest was very different from Buate; they weren’t going to be blocked by any tax investigation.

“It’s not a term we favor,” Tathal said in amusement. “But it does seem to have caught hold.”

A multitude of fast thoughts flashed through the air around Edeard. The nest members were all communicating with one another; it was like the swift birdsong of a complex gifting, except Edeard couldn’t comprehend any of it. Real unease began to stir in his mind.

“I’m surprised,” he said, keeping the tone level, affable. “Nobody wants to say much about any of you.”

“We discourage attention,” one of the women said. She was sitting to Tathal’s left, covered in a shawl of thick, deep purple wool. It didn’t disguise her pregnancy.

The constant flow of mental twittering shifted for a moment, purifying. “Samilee,” Edeard said abruptly, as if he’d known her for years, even though she was only twenty-three. Her current favorite food was scrambled Qotox eggs with béarnaise sauce and a toasted muffin. The cravings were quite pronounced with only five weeks to go until her due date. Her son’s father was either Uphal or Johans.

Edeard shivered in reaction to the knowledge.

“Welcome, Waterwalker,” she replied formally.

Thoughts swirled again, as if the lacework shadows were in motion around the lounge.

“Can you blame us?” That was Halan, twenty-eight years old and so delighted to have found a home in the city after a decade and a half of unbearable loneliness in Hapturn province. His exemplary financial aptitude placed him in charge of the nest’s principal businesses.

“Look what the establishment tried to do to you when you showed them your ability,” Johans said. Twenty-nine and a very conscientious follower of city fashion, he designed many of his own clothes and those of the nest’s male members. Three of the most renowned outfitters in Lillylight district belonged to him, their original families eased out in that way in which the nest specialized.

“A whole regiment deployed with the sole intent of killing you in cold blood,” Uphal remarked. Their chief persuader, the one who whispered strongly to the weak, the inferior who swarmed the city like vermin.

“History,” Edeard told them. “A history I evolved so that we could all live together no matter our talents and abilities.”

“That they can live together.” Kiary and Manel sneered in unison. The young lovers who had such a fun, wild time in the tunnels and elsewhere in the city: the Mayor’s oval sanctum, the altar of the Lady’s church, Edeard and Kristabel’s big bed on the tenth floor of …

Tathal snapped his fingers in irritation as Edeard turned to glower at them.

“Enough,” he chided. Tathal, the first to realize his dawning power, the gatherer of lost frightened kindred, the nurturer, the teacher, the nest father. Father to seventeen of their impressive second generation.

“Oh, Ladycrapit,” Edeard muttered under his breath. He hadn’t been this scared for a long long time. Decades. And even then he’d had youthful certainty on his side.

“So you see, Waterwalker,” Tathal said, “like you, we are Querencia’s future.”

“I don’t see that at all.”

“You said that you thought stronger psychics were emerging as a sign of human maturity in the Void,” Halan said.

“What?”

“I talked to Kanseen once,” Hala said with a dreamy smile. “She has such fond thoughts of you, a little thread of longing never extinguished. I believe that’s why she recalls your time in the Jeavons squad together so clearly even after all this time. Back then, after your triumphant day of banishment, you told her that was your reason for enlisting Marcol as a constable: to tame him, to bind him to your vision. You saw the strong emerging from the masses; that’s very prophetic. We respect that.”

“And you’ve been keeping an eye out for others of strength ever since,” Uphal said. “Bringing them into the establishment. The establishment whose throne you’ve claimed. Indoctrinating them with your ideals.”

“But that was then,” Tathal said. “When the strong were few, and afraid. Now our numbers are growing. Soon there will be enough of us that we can emerge from the shadows without fear. One day, all humans will be as us. As you.”

“Really?”

“You doubt your own beliefs? Or do you dare not put a voice to them? You know we are right. For we are here, are we not?”

“What exactly do you see yourselves becoming?” Edeard asked.

The nest’s thoughts swirled around him again, faster than ever. This time he knew their amusement: tinged with derision, perhaps even a scent of disappointment. The great Waterwalker: not so impressive, after all.

“We are the children of today’s people,” Tathal said. “And as with all children, one day we will inherit the world from our parents.”

“Okay.” Edeard cleared his throat. “But I don’t think you’re the type to wait patiently.”

“We are simply readying ourselves for every eventuality,” Tathal said. “I do not delude myself that the transition will be smooth and peaceful, for it is never a pleasant realization that your evolution has ended and a new order is replacing you.”

“Unbelievable.” Edeard shook his head wearily. “A revolution. You’re going to replace the Grand Council with your own followers. Is that the best you can do?”

“We have no intention of replacing the Grand Council. Can you not understand what we are? We don’t need to make the kind of empty political promises Rah made to the masses, his ludicrous democracy. He knew the right of it when he established the families of the district masters. That was where he expected our true strength to emerge. The Grand Families tried; for centuries they have chosen their bloodstock on the basis of psychic strength. But we have supplanted them as the true heirs of Rah. Evolution is inevitable, yet it is also random. Isn’t that utterly wonderful?”

“So the weak don’t get a say in the world you control.”

“They can join with us,” Uphal said. “If their thoughts are bright enough, they will belong. That’s what we are: a union of pure thought, faster and more resolute than any debating chamber full of the greedy and corrupt that rules every town and city. It is democracy on a level beyond the reach of the weak. Your children will be a part of it, especially the twins. Marilee and Analee are already open and honest with each other; that is a big part of what we are, what we offer. It’s a wondrous life: nobody alone, nobody frightened. And there are more of us out there, more than you know, Waterwalker.”

Edeard gave him a thin smile. “I suggest you don’t threaten my family. I suggest that quite strongly.”

“I’m not threatening anyone.”

“Really? I’ve seen how you use dominance to bind people, to deny them free will. That’s how you’ve come this far. Control seems to be what you’re actually about.”

Tathal grinned. “How is your campaign for Mayor coming along? Dinlay is putting an election team together for you, isn’t he? Always the loyal one, Dinlay. His admiration for you verges on worship. Do you discourage that?”

“If I become Mayor, it will because the people who live in this city say I can. And when that mandate is over, I will step down.”

“Your nobility is part of your appeal. To their kind.”

“You talk as if you’re different. You’re not.”

“But we are, and you know it. And to make your guilt burn even brighter, you belong with us.”

“Dominance is psychic assault. It is illegal as well as immoral. I want you to stop using it against other people. You can start with Colfal.”

Kiary and Manel laughed derisively. “This is why we’re cautious? Come on. He’s an old man we can squash like ge-chimp crap.”

Tathal waved them into silence. “Don’t do that,” he said to Edeard. “Don’t fall back on righteous indignation; it does not become you. You were the first. You have a duty to your own kind. You are the bridge between us and the others. If you want to retain your self-respect, your grandeur, you will work with us. Continue as that bridge. People trust you; they will need your reassurance that what is happening here is inevitable. You are essential for the transition, Waterwalker. You cannot stop us; we are nature. Destiny. Help us. Or do you consider yourself above that?”

Edeard held up a warning finger, grimly aware of how pathetic that must appear to the nest. “Stop interfering with other people’s lives; leave their minds alone. You are not their superiors. We are all—”

“One nation?” Tathal inquired; the mockery was palpable.

Edeard turned and left the room. He was somewhat surprised he was still alive and allowed to do so.

Mirnatha was in the ziggurat when a shaken Edeard arrived home. He’d completely forgotten she was visiting. She was up on the tenth floor, along with Olbal, her husband, and their children. Kristabel was on the floor of the private lounge, entertaining the two toddlers while the older ones were playing with Marakas and Rolar’s children in the big playroom on the other side of the ziggurat. The children’s excited laughter and squealing echoed down the vast stairwell, causing him to smile regretfully as he climbed the last few stairs. He passed the short corridor leading to his bedroom and gave the closed door a pensive look. Kiary and Manel creeping in unseen to have their dirty little thrill was far too much like the time Mirnatha had been kidnapped. Too many memories, he told himself.

By the time he reached the main lounge, he’d managed to compose himself and strengthen his mental shield. He smiled widely as Mirnatha rushed across to kiss him effusively, and then he shook hands warmly with Olbal. Everyone had been surprised when Mirnatha had married him. She’d spent her teens and twenties enjoying every delight and excitement the city could offer a supremely eligible Grand Family daughter. Then suddenly Olbal had come to town, and the next thing Julan, Kristabel, and Edeard knew was her engagement being announced and a wedding six weeks later in Caldratown, the capital of Joxla province. Kristabel had worried it would never last; Edeard had a little more confidence. He rather liked his brother-in-law, who owned a huge farming and woodland estate in Joxla province, to the north of the Donsori Mountains. Olbal didn’t care much for the city and its politics and its society events; he was a practical man whose brain was occupied with agricultural management and food market prices. Such a man offered the kind of stability Mirnatha needed. And here they were, still together thirty years down the line, with nine children.

“So what’s new?” Mirnatha asked as she settled back into a sofa and reclaimed her teacup from a ge-chimp.

Edeard hesitated. You really don’t want to know that. “Not much. Still being bullied.”

Mirnatha clapped her hands delightedly. “Excellent. Well done, sis. Keep them on a short leash, I say.”

Edeard and Olbal exchanged a martyred look.

“We’ve said nothing, but he’s finally going to run for Mayor,” Kristabel said.

“Really?” Olbal asked, intrigued.

“It’s all down to timing,” Edeard explained.

“Will you change anything?”

Not me. But my word doesn’t count for much now. He looked at Alfal and Fanlol, the two toddlers, and smiled grimly. “I think things are pretty good as they are now. I’ll try and keep them that way.” His third hand poked playfully at Alfal as the boy banged an old wooden cart against a chair leg. Alfal turned around, a mischievous smile on his sweet little face, and pushed back with his third hand. The force was surprisingly strong, in fact, very strong indeed for a three-year-old.

“He’s a tough one, my little man,” Mirnatha said adoringly. “But then, they all are. That’s what growing up in the fresh air does to you. You two should spend more time outside the city.”

“I’d love to,” Edeard said. “I always wanted to take a long voyage across the sea to find some new continents.”

“Like Captain Allard, hey?” Olbal asked. “Now that would be quite something. I might even join you.”

“Over my dead body,” Mirnatha said.

“Families would be voyaging with us,” Edeard told her reasonably. “After all, it would take years.”

“What? Including the children?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“There aren’t any ships that big,” Kristabel said.

“So we build them.”

“A fleet,” Olbal said. “I like that idea.”

Kristabel and Mirnatha looked at each other. “Man dreams,” Mirnatha exclaimed. “It’ll never happen.”

———

After dinner Olbal asked Edeard for a moment together, and they went out onto the hortus. Ku and Honious were both bright in the night sky, Honious in particular, its bulbous ruby clouds braided by sulfurous wisps surrounding a dark center where lost souls were said to fall. People were taking it as a bad omen that it was sharing the night with the Skylords. They were just visible above the horizon, five scintillations, growing steadily larger each night.

Edeard eyed them carefully. Normally he’d be excited and content at their impending arrival, but now that he knew the true nature of the nest, he couldn’t help but feel the doomsayers might be right.

“Are you all right?” Olbal asked.

“Yeah, sorry. Just distracted by this whole Mayor thing.”

“That I can understand. Rather you than me.”

Edeard gave him a false grin. “What was it you wanted to ask?”

“Ah.” Olbal leaned on the thick rail and looked out across the Grand Central Canal. “I know this sounds stupid, that I’m probably making a big fuss about nothing.”

“But?”

“My nephew, Constatin; he arrived in Makkathran three weeks ago. He was here to negotiate with merchants directly this year, agreeing on a price for this season’s apples and pears. We normally deal with Garroy of the Linsell family, and I wanted to keep that arrangement going.”

“I know the Linsell family; they bring a lot of fruit to Makkathran’s markets.”

“Yes, well … the thing is, Constatin has disappeared.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just miss him on the road?”

“He was with Torran. It was Torran who told me he didn’t come back one day.”

“Okay. What happened?”

“It was a Tuesday. Constatin had arranged to meet Garroy for lunch at the Blue Fox off Golden Park to thrash out the new deal.”

“I know it,” Edeard said stiffly.

“He never got there. Garroy called at Torran’s inn that evening wanting to know what happened. He wasn’t there. Torran searched for a day and a half before going to the Ysidro constable station. There wasn’t much they could do, but the desk sergeant promised he’d keep his farsight stretched. Since then, we’ve heard nothing.”

“I see.”

“I didn’t think there were any gangs in Makkathran these days.”

“There aren’t,” Edeard said flatly. It was strange. But then several station captains had mentioned that the number of missing people reported over the last couple of years had risen slightly. It was to be expected given how many visitors Makkathran was receiving and how unfamiliar they were with the city streets.

“It was morning, Edeard, broad daylight. What could have befallen him? Torran checked the hospitals and even the cemetery.”

Edeard put his hand on Olbal’s shoulder, trying to push through a sensation of reassurance. “I’ll speak with the station captain. I doubt it was a priority for them; at the least I can rectify that.”

“Thank you, Edeard. I hate to use family like this, but my sister is badly worried. He was an only son.”

“That’s okay.” Edeard frowned, thinking about what else he should be asking. Mysteries like this were rarities in Makkathran. There was only one person he knew who solved such strange puzzles, but that was ridiculous; she was nothing but a figment of his bizarre dreams. However, she used a method of elimination to determine suspects, and gathering all possible information was essential to that method. “You said you wanted to deal with the merchants directly this year. Is that unusual?”

“Not really. I normally use their agents; they have them in every province. And Garroy visits us every few years to keep up a personal contact; I have dinner with him whenever I’m in town. You need that level of trust if you are in business.”

“So what’s different? Why send Constatin here this time?”

“I was contacted by some new merchants seeking to buy our produce. They were offering a good price, a very good price.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. And I fully expect to sell them a substantial percentage of our crop. However, I want to maintain our trade with the Linsell family; they are a reliable buyer, and the future is what I must look to, especially with so many children.” He smiled fondly. “New merchants come and new merchants go. Constatin was sent partly as reassurance that although we obviously wanted to squeeze the price up, we would not abandon the Linsell family.”

“Who are the new merchants?” Edeard asked. He was getting a bad feeling about this.

“They worked for a supplier here in the city called Uphal.”

“What’s the matter?” Kristabel asked. She was sitting up in bed, watching Edeard pull his silk pajamas on. “And don’t say ‘nothing.’ You’ve been quiet since you got back this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” he said, and rolled onto the bed. The walls remembered nothing. Kiary and Manel had taken away the memory usually contained within the city’s substance. He was going to have to find out how to do that for himself. “Sorry, but it’s not good news.”

“I’m a big girl.”

He smirked. For once she was wearing a sheer black negligee with a plunging neckline. Even after seven children she was still slim and, with her hair worn loose, very alluring. And she knew it; there was a calculating smile playing across her lips. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he said, giving her figure an openly admiring look.

“Did somebody die?”

“No. There are some psychics in Makkathran who are at least as strong as I am. And there’s a lot of them.”

“Oh. But you’ve found plenty of powerful psychics over the years; there’s Marcol, and Jenovan, and what’s that new girl who came to you last year?”

“Vikye. No, darling. What they’re doing is a lot bigger than anything we can handle.”

“Why? What are they doing?”

“Same thing Ranalee and One Nation were trying. Except this isn’t about establishing good snobbish blood as overlords; this is about strength pure and simple. If you’re a strong psychic, that means you have the right to rule everyone else.”

“There’s a lot of us to try and quash.”

“I know, and that’s what frightens me the most. Owain had guns and fear to keep people in line. The nest has dominance, which they haven’t been afraid to use. They also have the same skill I have with the city.”

Kristabel gave him a sober look. “Oh. If their strength comes from numbers, then you pick them off one at a time.”

“Won’t work,” he said apologetically. “They call themselves a nest for a reason. They’re like a family of the mind; it’s quite weird to see them together. Back when old Chae was training us, he made sure our farsight was always aware of where the others of the squad were. The nest has a more sophisticated version of that technique. I’d never be able to isolate one of them.”

“Ladycrapit, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. But they’re young, and they want to forge ahead in their own fashion. They’ve never learned how to accommodate other people because they’ve never had to; if they’re allowed to carry on the way they are, they never will. That means I might have a small opening.”

“To do what?”

“They asked me to be a bridge between them and the ‘weaker’ people.”

“Weaker?” she snapped indignantly.

“Yes. That’s their way of thinking. That’s what has to be broken.”

“Do you really think you can do that? Edeard, I know we never talk about Owain and Buate and all the others that vanished, and I never asked, but … you couldn’t make them change their minds, could you?”

“No.” He sighed. “But this time I really have to try.” Lady, but I don’t want to have to do that kind of thing again.

“So they share their thoughts all the time?”

“Sort of. They claim it’s a development of democracy. They’re still all individuals, but for decision making they communicate on a very deep level, in their own mental language. I suspect that’s how they overcome anyone else with strength; they can gang up in perfect union. And the more that embrace them, the stronger they become.” He’d been intrigued by the union they had ever since the encounter. To share thoughts so easily must be a wonderful thing, except they’d perverted it, using dominance to rid the concept of all equality. He suspected that Tathal was the cause of that. If the nest could have started without that malign influence, it might have had a chance to develop in a positive, beneficial manner. He’d concluded years ago that psychic abilities in the newer generations were significantly higher than among his own agemates. People were changing, adapting to their easier life.

Kristabel gave him a worried look. “Embrace or get subsumed?”

“Good question. Dominance isn’t my specialty, and the Lady knows I never found out how to reverse it.”

“No,” she growled.

“The one good thing is the way they’ve covered their tracks and set about amassing wealth.”

“How can that be good?”

“It shows they aren’t that different from the rest of us, after all. They chase after wealth and power just like everyone.”

“Taralee doesn’t,” Kristabel said immediately. “And you’re the ultimate champion of democracy. After all, you could have been emperor.”

“Yes, but … once you become part of the nest, you become part of what they are, what they aim for.”

Kristabel wrinkled her nose. “A blatant psychic aristocracy.”

“Yes. And then what happens to those who won’t or can’t become a part of it? They lack any signs of compassion.”

She stroked a hand across his cheek. “Poor Edeard. You have to find a way.”

“Easily said.”

“If you can’t, who will?”

“I know. At least they’ve offered to listen to me.” Which wasn’t quite what Tathal had said.

“Are they really stronger than you?”

“Who knows? Individually, I expect we’re about the same. Though Marcol certainly panicked when he was trying to contain Tathal. It’s this union of theirs which has me worried.”

Kristabel was frowning as she considered what he was telling her. “It sounds like Tathal is the leader.”

“He is.”

“But if they have this mental democracy, surely they wouldn’t need a leader. If he’s as strong as you think, especially when it comes to dominance, isn’t this nest just another gang, with him as the boss? The rest of them won’t even know; they just think they have free will. That’s always the worst aspect of dominance, how the victim just embraces it.”

“They did seem to be contributing to the union. But to be honest, I couldn’t interpret any of their combined thoughts.”

“He’s the key, isn’t he, this Tathal?”

“I think so. But the chances of me ever getting him by himself are slim.”

“He was on his own when Marcol confronted him.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

She grinned. “Of course I am.”

“So if you wouldn’t mind telling me, how do I watch someone who knows I’m going to be looking for an opportunity and is in control of the city the same way I am?”

“You’re the Waterwalker.” She pulled him closer, arms twining around his neck. “You tell me.”

“You did it,” Salrana said. “I didn’t believe you could or you would. I suppose … thank you, Edeard. I mean that.”

“Timath has withdrawn his objection?” a surprised Edeard asked. He’d completely forgotten, hadn’t even talked to the Grand Master of the Lawyers Guild.

“Yes. It’s all over. Once Garnfal accepts the Skylord’s guidance, his estate passes to me.”

“I see. That’s wonderful news. Er, did Timath say why he wasn’t going to challenge the will?”

“Not really. Just that he’d changed his mind.”

“Okay. I’m glad for you, really I am.”

Changed his mind, my ass, Edeard thought. The nest couldn’t have been more blatant if they’d bludgeoned Timath with a wooden club. They want me to know. They want to see what I’ll do.

It was surprisingly easy to work out some of Tathal’s possible weaknesses. Edeard put Argian on tracking down Constatin’s final movements. If he’d left any trace, any impression with people along his route to the Blue Fox, Argian would find it. Edeard at least expected Argian to find out roughly at which point he’d vanished. That would allow him to check the memory within the city structure. Any gaps would be as incriminating as seeing Constatin being abducted by members of the nest.

His second possibility was the other missing people. Golbon and Jaralee had been bemused at first. It was an odd request, seeing if they could tie in anyone who had gone missing during the last few years to the nest’s business deals, but they soon set to cross-referencing files. It was what they excelled at, and they had begun to enjoy the scent of the chase again. They even talked about bringing back other members of the old committee.

That left just the last two leads. They were the ones he needed to follow personally. And without a great deal of surprise, his first one took only three hours to confirm. After all, a station captain led a busy life. Especially Dinlay, who structured his days with meetings and inspections and appointments with civic notables and even made sure he went out on patrol with his officers three times a week. That left his wife with a lot of time to fill during the day.

Edeard floated in the middle of a transport tube, eyes closed, drifting along slowly as he kept pace with Gealee. She moved through Lillylight’s central streets, wandering in and out of shops. Midmorning was taken up with meeting her girlfriends in a coffeehouse for gossip and admiring one another’s morning purchases. Edeard didn’t use farsight; rather, he pulled the images directly from the city’s substance, feeling the weight of her high heels walking along, receiving the splash of color her bright orange and black coat made amid the throng, hearing her voice growing sharp with shopgirls, the scent of her perfume wafting through the air. Then, just before midday, she walked over Steen Canal into Abad, where she went into one of the little cylindrical cottages behind the Jarcon family’s mansion. It was the home of the family’s second farrier, a hulking twenty-three-year-old with thick ebony hair that tumbled down over his shoulders. Gealee particularly liked twining her fingers through that hair while her lusty beau pounded away on top of her on the bed, on the lounge floor, on the awkward stairs …

“Missing your honeymoon already?” Edeard asked.

Gealee didn’t start or feign surprise when he emerged from the shadows of a deep alcove on Spinwell Lane, a dark narrow passage barely a couple of yards wide in some places. She was using it as a quiet shortcut back to Steen Canal.

Instead, she took the moment to adjust her wide-brimmed hat. “Did you enjoy watching?” she retorted.

“Not really. Dinlay is one of my oldest friends.”

“And I’m his wife. I am quite devoted in that respect. He wants for nothing, I assure you.”

“Did Tathal tell you to make sure of that? Did you even have a choice?”

Her lips pushed together into a pout as she gave him a shrewd glance. “Clever,” she said with a reluctant sigh. “But then, I never did think you got to be Waterwalker by brute strength alone. How did you know?”

“Tathal knew I was going to put myself forward for Mayor. I trust the people Dinlay has spoken to about making up my team, just as I trust Dinlay and the master and mistress of Sampalok. That leaves you.”

“Well done. But it doesn’t really help you, does it?”

“I’m not sure. How do you think Dinlay will react when I tell him you used domination on him?”

Gealee laughed. “Oh, but we didn’t; that’s the beauty of it. I’m his type. You know that well enough; you’ve seen all his wives and the girlfriends between. All we needed to do was put me in the same room as him and wait. It was inevitable. Actually, he’s quite endearing—for someone his age. So dedicated to the rule of law, to you.”

“You leave Dinlay alone. Do you understand?”

“You want me to leave him? To break his heart? Once more?”

“I want you to wait a decent interval until he realizes he’s made another mistake.”

“Why don’t you just tell him? A true friend would.” She tilted her head to one side, regarding him thoughtfully. “You don’t know what to do about us, do you? Which means you know you can’t defeat us.”

“You’re the ones who think in those terms.”

“We’re the same as you. The only difference is that we’re family, not loners. Why don’t you join us? You know we’re the future. Why else are so many of us appearing? It is our time. You can’t argue against that. But you can play such a large part in birthing a new world, a new way of life. That’s what you were sent here to do; that’s why you’re the first: to lead the way.”

“We cannot split society between those who have and those who don’t. People the Lady has blessed with an exceptional talent have a duty to use it for the greater benefit. I’ve seen what happens when the ruling group begins to think only of itself. You weren’t even born, but that’s what Makkathran was like when I arrived. Your way of thinking isn’t the future; it’s the dead past. You have despoiled your gift; that is what I will end.”

Her smile became cold. “Join us.”

The command was so strong that Edeard’s eyes actually watered; it was like having a needle of ice penetrate his brain. “Ladyfuck.” He staggered backward struggling to shield his mind.

Gealee made no move, no attempt to follow up her demand. “You see, Waterwalker? That was just me, and I’m not even the strongest of us. Do you really think anyone can resist the entire nest?”

He shook the stupor from his head, staring at her with a mixture of anger and fright.

“Now that you’ve found out what I am, I can hardly spy on you anymore,” she said in a chillingly level tone. “I’m going to return to the nest now. You’re Dinlay’s friend: You tell him why he doesn’t have a wife anymore.” She adjusted her orange and black coat and walked off down the alley, her heels making loud clicks on the pavement.

Edeard watched her go, still shaken. His trembling palm wiped cold sweat from his brow. So much for using her to expose a weakness. But it did illustrate the lengths the nest would go to in order to find out what he was doing, what he was capable of. And he had one ability left of which they had no clue. The ultimate sanction. If I have to use it, I won’t be so brutal as before. I’ll go back and try to reason with Tathal, to persuade him to share his talent before he becomes a selfish power seeker. Somehow the notion didn’t leave him feeling as confident as it should have, mainly because there was only one person left to ask about the origin of the nest’s leader. He really didn’t want to do that, but there weren’t a whole lot of choices left.

With three days left until the Skylords arrived, the throng around the towers of Eyrie was so tightly packed that any movement within the district was becoming difficult. Some families resolutely refused to move on, setting up camp with enough food to see themselves through the duration. Constables struggled to keep pathways open. Mothers and their Novices suffered abuse for not allowing the eager aspirants up into the towers. The Mayor’s appeals for calm and tolerance went completely unheeded. After all, none of the visitors had voted for him or even against him. He wasn’t their authority figure.

Edeard sat under a canvas awning and wove a seclusion haze around himself as his gondolier sailed past the edge of the district. It was early evening, and the smell of food cooking on open fires trickled across the canal. Open fires were of course banned in Makkathran. He gritted his teeth and ignored the violations. Something was going to have to be done about the stopover visitors before the next Skylords arrived. But right now he had something a lot more important, not to mention personal.

The gondola traveled the length of Great Major Canal to Forest Pool. Edeard alighted at a mooring platform. He could just see the ships berthed at the docks, their sails furled amid a forest of rigging. Natran had confided to him that the number of passengers his ships were bringing in for guidance had risen sevenfold over the last eighteen months. Some fleet captains were talking about commissioning a whole new class of ship, one without any cargo holds, just to bring people in from the farthest coastal cities.

There were times when Edeard believed half of Querencia’s population was on the move to Makkathran so they might ascend from the towers. He watched the ships for a while before admitting to himself he was just finding excuses. He turned his back on the docks and walked into Myco.

The House of Blue Petals was open, but this early in the evening there were hardly any customers. As always, there were two burly men at the big front door. They gave him a very surprised look when he walked past them but said nothing. He sensed their urgent direct longtalk up to the office above.

His third hand pushed the door open. He wondered just how many times he’d come to this place over the years. How many confrontations had there been by now? Weariness and malice mingled to produce a rogue thought: I should just demolish this place, get the city to make a park. But the nest probably would reverse the action.

Ranalee was waiting, hair perfectly styled in narrow curves, long pale-gray dress of fine-knit wool. The soft fabric clung to her, revealing a belly heavy from the fifth month of pregnancy.

It was a sight that brought Edeard up short. All the words he’d rehearsed, ready to snap at her, withered away.

She caught his surprise and smiled complacently. “Dear Edeard, is something the matter?”

“I … didn’t know.” He waved a hand toward her, embarrassed, mainly at himself.

“And why should you? You have a city to run.” She poured some wine and held the glass out to him. “It’s a lovely Sousax; try it. I can’t have any myself, not in this delicate condition.”

“No thank you.”

“Afraid I’m trying to poison you?”

He sighed. “No.”

Her smile turned mocking, and she let out a theatrical moan as she sank down into a long settee. “Then why are you here? Kristabel not interested in you anymore? I have several truly lovely girls at the moment, and they’re all very discreet.”

“Don’t push me, Ranalee.”

“I’m trying to be helpful.”

“Then tell me about Tathal.”

Her glance slipped down to her full belly. “What about him?”

“Did you ever …” Then he realized why she was looking at her unborn and groaned. “Oh, Lady, it’s not?”

“Of course it’s his.” Her hand touched the bulge fondly. “He is stronger than you in so many ways. My own deceits were nothing before him; he saw through me so easily, swifter than you ever did. But he forgave me: He allowed me to join the nest, and in return I taught him my art.”

Edeard examined what he could of her thoughts shimmering beneath a thick shield. The gaps were the tops of chasms opening into darkness. It was as if her head were filled with ebony shadow. That wasn’t Ranalee. “He used domination on you.”

Her smile was one of sensual recollection. The shadows began to take shape, revealing themselves as the nest members. They engulfed her, obliterating sight, sound. She couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out. Then she was suddenly no longer alone in the darkness. He was there with her. Fear was surpassed by consummate pleasure. She welcomed it, turning to the source, weeping her gratitude. “It was so exciting to see all I’d hoped for finally come to pass. His strength is intoxicating, Edeard. He is raw, like you used to be, but not the shackled fool that you were. He is free and unafraid. My child will be as glorious as his father.”

“That’s not you talking.”

“Wrong as always, Edeard. I didn’t need the encouragement the others of the nest received. My thoughts already ran along these paths. He held my hand and took me exactly where I wanted to go. That was a kindness you never showed.”

“So you taught him domination.”

“He already knew. I simply showed him subtlety where all he had before was crude strength.”

“Lady! Do you have any idea what you’ve helped create? What you’ve let loose on the rest of us?”

Her hands tightened on the bulge. “Yes,” she hissed. “I’m not blinded by him, Edeard. I’m not like the rest of the nest. I admire him. I belong with him, and he knows that; why else would he take me as consort? My child will be a part of Querencia’s future, a big part.” She laughed. “Perhaps he will even be stronger than his father.”

“Your dream,” he said brokenly. “But he’s taken it for his own.”

“Join us, Edeard,” she said, leaning forward eagerly. “This could be your moment, your real triumph.”

He turned and walked for the door. “You know the answer to that.”

“Yes.” She paused. “Thankfully, not all of your family is as stupid and reactionary as you.”

He stopped, knowing he was doing exactly what she wanted. A puppet to her manipulations again. “What do you mean?”

Her answer was a triumphant smile. “I told you once we would have your blood.”

“What have you done?”

“I have done nothing. But all children leave their parents behind eventually. You know this in your heart.”

People turned around to look in astonishment as the Waterwalker slid up through the solid pavement of Boldar Avenue. None of them said anything; none of them moved. They simply watched as he strode purposefully to the door of Apricot Cottage, his black cloak flapping as if a hurricane were blowing. Only then did he notice their placid interest, the identical calmness. The residents of Boldar Avenue belonged to the nest.

Edeard sensed them inside, upstairs in the big lounge. Marilee and Analee were with them, their thoughts content, fluttering with excitement. Not quite their thoughts as they used to be.

Edeard was enraged; his third hand smashed down the front door. He marched up the stairs.

Tathal had a knowing smile on his lips as Edeard burst into the lounge; it was echoed by the faces of the nest. Marilee and Analee wore it, too. They were standing on either side of Tathal: Marilee with her head resting on his shoulder, Analee with her arm around his waist.

“Undo it,” Edeard demanded.

Tathal gave Analee an indolent look, then glanced around at Marilee. “No,” he said. Marilee smiled adoringly up at him.

“I will destroy you.”

“If you could, you would have done so by now. This was all the proof I needed. Besides, your daughters were almost a part of us already. They had learned to share.”

“Don’t be cross, Daddy,” Marilee urged.

“Be happy for us.”

“This is so wonderful.”

“Belonging like this.”

“Now everyone can share and grow like we always did.”

“Everyone will be happy together.”

Tears threatened to blind Edeard. “You did this to them.”

“We are together,” Tathal said. “We are happy.”

“Because you tell everyone to be.” Edeard was certain he wouldn’t stand a chance against them if he went on the offensive. That didn’t leave him much choice.

“Please, Waterwalker, join us, join me; you and I are equals. As Mayor, you can make the transition so smooth, so painless.”

“Not a chance, as the Lady is my witness.”

Tathal took a slow step forward. “You’ve already done it once.”

“What?”

“I’ve been so curious. Exactly what is your power? Is it more than communing with the city? We all have that now.”

“Give this up,” Edeard said. “Now. I will not ask again.”

“So curious.” He took another step forward. “You know you cannot defeat us, yet you make threats. I see through you. You believe, you truly believe, you have the upper hand.” He cocked his head to one side, regarding Edeard in fascination. “What is it? What have I not got?”

“My daughters first.”

“I saw something when I studied you at Colfal’s shop. There was a certainty about you, a confidence that I’ve never seen in anyone before. You think yourself unassailable. Why?”

It was all Edeard could do not to shrink away as Tathal moved closer still; it was like a kitten being stalked by a fil-rat. “Let. Them. Go. Free.”

“I’ve already seen what happens if you win,” Tathal murmured.

“What?”

“Your words. Spoken in the seconds before you slaughtered Owain and his conspirators. I have watched the memory of the chamber below the Spiral Tower many times. You were impressively brutal, Waterwalker. Even Mistress Florrel was ripped apart by that frightening gun. An old woman, though not a harmless one, I imagine. But what did you mean by that? I have been sorely puzzled. You spoke as if you’d seen the future.”

Edeard said nothing. He was too shocked by the revelation of his dreadful act being uncovered.

“Is that it?” Tathal asked. “Is that your secret? Your timesense?” A frown creased his handsome young face. “But no. If you could see the future, you would know what I am, what I am to become.”

“You are to become nothing.”

“What are you?”

Edeard screamed as the question seared its way into his brain, falling like acid on every nerve fiber. He had to confess. Every member of the nest had joined his or her mind to Tathal’s, offering strength to the compulsion. Third hands closed around him, crushing his body, suffocating him. Their thoughts began to seep into his mind, corroding his free will.

He didn’t have time to be neat and clever, nor did he have the time to summon up the focus to go far. He thought of when he was free—they allowed him that—the moments before he broke down the door to the Apricot Cottage. And reached for that—

Edeard gasped for breath as he slid up through the pavement of Boldar Avenue. Everyone was turning to stare at him, their heads filled with identical placid thoughts. Above him, the nest awaited.

He didn’t even wait to sense if there was a glimmer of suspicion rising amid their unified mind. His memory conjured up that evening … no, just before then, a few hours earlier, the astronomer’s parlor—

Edeard stood outside the House of Blue Petals, waiting patiently. It was late afternoon, and away at the other end of the city, the Grand Council was called to session. In the Tosella district, Finitan railed against his infirmity and pain.

Eventually, a young Tathal walked confidently across the street to the House of Blue Petals. He stopped abruptly and turned to stare at Edeard.

“You’ve been watching me,” Edeard said.

Tathal’s adolescent face screwed up into a suspicious grimace. “So?”

“You’re afraid I can stop you.”

“Ladyfuckit,” Tathal spit. His third hand began to extend as his mind was veiled behind an inordinately powerful shield.

“You have an extraordinary talent,” Edeard said calmly. “Why don’t you join me? The people of this world need help. There’s so much good you can do.”

“Join you? Not even you can dominate me, Waterwalker. I’m nobody’s genistar.”

“I have no intention of attempting that trick.” His gaze flicked to the House of Blue Petals. “She tried it on me once, you know.”

“Yeah? Must be pretty stupid not to learn from that mistake. But I made her teach me a lot.” He sneered. “I like that. She still thinks she’s in control, but she bends over when I tell her to.”

“Honious! You’ve already started to bind the nest to you, haven’t you?”

Tathal narrowed his eyes. Misgivings leaked out from his shield. “What do you want?”

“Not you. You’re too late.” Edeard remembered a day from a couple of years previously. Reached for it—

Edeard tried. He even impressed himself with his tenacity, seeking that one moment when Tathal had an ounce of humanity in his soul. If it existed, he never found it. In the end he doubted its existence.

But he tried, waiting outside the city gates when a fifteen-year-old Tathal arrived with a caravan. That, too, was long after his personality had established itself. He’d already dominated the entire caravan, lording it over them in the master’s wagon. It wasn’t as subtle as the nest; men and women served him while their daughters became his stable of whores. The old and the recalcitrant had been discarded along the route.

Before that … Edeard found that Tathal came from Ustaven province. He missed Taralee’s seventeenth birthday to travel to the capital, Growan, nine months before Tathal left it with the caravan. Just in time to sense the fourteen-year-old finally kill Matrar, his abusive father with a display of telekinesis that was shocking to witness. Minutes later he threw his broken alcoholic mother out of their house.

Farther back … Five years previously, Edeard spent a month in Growan, drinking in Matrar’s tavern, trying to reason with the miserable man, to steer him away from using violence against his family. To no avail.

Two years beforehand, and Edeard bribed the owner of the carpentry lodge where Matrar worked, promoting him so his life might be a little easier. There would be more money, and Matrar might see a brighter future opening up if he strove to better himself. But the new money was spent on longer binges, and his obvious failings bred resentment among the men he was supposed to supervise.

Eventually Edeard found himself outside the tavern Matrar favored for the last time. It had taken some admirable detective work among the badly maintained civic records of Growan’s Guild of Clerks, but eventually he’d tracked down Tathal’s birth certificate. Not that he entirely trusted it. That was why he was outside the tavern ten days before the probable night. He was dressed in simple field worker clothes and a heavy coat, with his face disguised by a shallow concealment mirage. Not even Kristabel would recognize him.

As a waitress squirmed between battered old wooden tables, he surreptitiously tipped a phial of vinac juice into Matrar’s ale. It was an act he performed every night for a fortnight.

Tathal was never conceived. Never existed, so could never be remembered or even mourned.

Edeard arrived back in Makkathran in time for Taralee’s second birthday. Just as he recalled, she developed chicken pox two days later. Then in autumn that year a ridiculously happy Mirnatha announced her surprise engagement. Finitan was at the height of his powers and supporting the special Grand Council committee on organized crime, which was producing good results.

He recalled it all. The events. The conversations. Even the weather. There was little he wanted to change. At first. Then he grew weary of the sameness. Knowing became a burden as he became exasperated with people repeating the same mistakes once more.

The only thing that differed now was his dreams: still bizarre, impossible, but fresh, new.

Cheriton McOnna was tired, irritable, and unwashed to a degree where his clothes were starting to smell. What he needed was coffee, proper sunlight, and a decent blast of fresh air. The conditioning unit in the confluence nest supervisor’s office was struggling under constant use by too many people. But Dream Master Yenrol was insistent that they keep a full watch for any sign of the Second Dreamer. That meant a special module grafted onto the nest itself, one with a direct connection to the team. It boosted perception and sensitivity to an exceptionally high level. Cheriton didn’t like that at all; opening his mind to the gaiafield at such an intensity was equivalent to staring into the sun. Fortunately, he had some filter routines, which he quietly slipped in to protect himself. The other members of Yenrol’s team weren’t so well off. Slavishly obedient and devout, they scoured the emotional resonance routines for the slightest hint of their absconded messiah.

Around him, he could see their faces grimace from the strength of impressions pulsing down that singular linkage, yet still they loyally persevered. If they weren’t careful, they were going to suffer some pretty severe brainburns. Yenrol was adamant, though, convinced that whatever had happened over in Francola Wood had been caused by the Second Dreamer. It was Phelim’s strong belief, complacently acceded to by the Dream Masters, that she was trying to return from Chobamba.

The brief ultrasecure message Cheriton had received from Oscar was clear that she hadn’t emerged from the Silfen path. No one had the remotest idea what had actually set off all the agents into yet another deranged fracas. The path had registered somehow within the gaiafield as it changed, but no one had walked out. Now it had inevitably shrunk away again in the way Silfen paths always did when scrutinized by curious humans. Cheriton knew that meant the Second Dreamer wouldn’t be using it now—she was still out there walking between worlds—but try telling Yenrol that. The Dream Master was obsessed to the point of recklessness; he truly believed he was this close.

Cheriton snatched another quick look around the small stuffy office where his coworkers were crammed. Two flinched from some emotion twanging away on their raw neurons, shuddering from a nearly physical pain. Yenrol himself was twitching constantly.

This is ridiculous, Cheriton thought. She’s not an idiot. The whole invasion force has one goal: to find her. She’s not going to walk right back into the middle of them.

Most of the ordinary Living Dream followers shared his logic. He could sense their despondency dripping into the gaiafield as they made their way reluctantly to the wormhole at Colwyn City’s dock. Those of them who could. Surges of anger were also erupting into the gaiafield wherever Viotia’s citizens physically encountered any of their erstwhile oppressors. If he chose to examine those particular storm wells of emotion closely, there was also fear to be found, and pain. After the first instances, Cheriton kept his mind well clear of them. More and more were occurring, especially in Colwyn City.

Some were close by. Despite his reluctance, he felt a mind he knew flaring out of the norm, boosted by terror. It was Mareble, with whom he’d grown familiar for all the wrong reasons. Against his better judgment, he allowed the sensations to bubble in through his gaiamotes, seeing as she did the slope of a broad street falling away ahead of her, a street now cut off by the tumultuous mob.

“Oh, crap,” he murmured under his breath. Nothing I can do.

Even as he observed the scene through a myriad of emotional outpourings, everything changed. A mind rose into the gaiafield close to Mareble and her fool of a husband, a mind of incredible strength, its presence flaring bright and loud. Cheriton’s filter routines were just enough to shield him from its astonishing magnitude. Yenrol and the others screamed with one voice, their cry of anguish deafening in the confined office.

Mareble wanted nothing else but to be off this dreadful world. She and Danal had come here with such soaring spirits, believing they would be close to the Second Dreamer. But instead, their lives had degenerated with increasing speed, culminating in Danal’s arrest by Living Dream. Those who had taken him away were not a part of the movement as she understood it. The Welcome Team moved with Cleric Phelim’s authority, but they certainly lacked any of the gentle humility of the devout. Men of violence and hauteur. What they’d done to poor Danal was an atrocity. Not that they cared.

Her husband had been released into her arms, a frightened trembling wreck, unrecognizable as the kindhearted man she’d married. They couldn’t even return to the pleasant apartment that they’d bought and that was the reason Danal had been arrested in the first place. It was ridiculous, but the Ellezelin forces suspected them of colluding with the Second Dreamer herself. And Araminta being the Second Dreamer was the one thing Mareble could never quite bring herself to understand. Araminta, that pretty young woman, slightly nervous and on edge, eager to sell the apartment she’d been laboring to renovate. Somehow, that just didn’t connect. Mareble was expecting something quite different, but there had been no hint, no inkling when they’d talked and haggled over the price. She’d shared a cup of tea with the Second Dreamer and never known. Such a thing was simply wrong.

Danal didn’t care about any of that when she tried to explain. When they were free of the Welcome Team, he sank into a bitter depression, jumping at shadows and shouting at her. The things he shouted, she tried to ignore. It wasn’t Danal saying such hurtful things; it was the confusion and hurt left behind by his interrogators.

They spent days in a hotel together, living off room service, with her offering what comfort she could. Cheriton had recommended some drugs that ought to help, which she’d tried to get Danal to take. Sometimes he did, but more often he’d fling the infuser away. So she waited patiently for her husband to recover while the insanity of the invasion raged on the streets outside. That was when the unreal news broke that the Second Dreamer was Araminta and, worse, that she’d escaped to some planet Mareble had never heard of on the other side of the Commonwealth. Bizarrely, the knowledge seemed to ease Danal’s state of mind; at least he started taking the antipsychosis drugs.

The calming effect was slow but constant; she began to see signs of the man she’d lost reemerging. That was when they realized they had to get away. It was a decision that seemed to be shared by most of the Living Dream supporters on Viotia. The hostility and violence directed at them from the rest of the population was never going to abate.

They decided to wait until midmorning before leaving the hotel. That way they figured there would be more people about, more Living Dream followers doing the same thing, more paramilitaries patrolling. It would be safest.

The hotel was only a couple of miles from Colwyn City’s docks, where the wormhole opened to the safety of Ellezelin. When they made their way cautiously down to the lobby, it was deserted. Mareble had tried to order some modern clothes from a local cyber-store and have them delivered by bot, but they’d never arrived. The store’s management system insisted they’d been dispatched. She wanted to use the clothes in an attempt to blend in with everyone else on the street. Instead, they made do with what they had. Danal wasn’t too bad; his sweater was a neutral gray, and he wore it above brown denim trousers. From a distance it would escape attention. Except for his shoes, which were lace-ups. Nobody else in the Commonwealth used lace-ups anymore. Mareble was more worried by her own green and white dress; a dress was less suspicious, but the style was recognizable as belonging to Makkathran. In fact, it was a copy of a dress Kanseen had worn one night in Olovan’s Eagle.

Standing in front of the door, she called a cab. There was a metro rail running along the street right outside the hotel. Her u-shadow reported that the cab companies weren’t responding to requests; their amalgamated management cores apologized and said that normal service would resume as soon as possible.

“It’s not far,” she said, more for her own benefit than his. “Come on, we can get there. We’ll be back on Ellezelin in an hour.”

Danal nodded, his lips drawn together in a thin bloodless line. “Okay.”

The hotel entrance was on Porral Street, which was almost deserted when they walked out into the warm midmorning sunlight. They could hear distant airborne sirens as well as a suppressed buzzing like some angry insect, which Mareble just knew was a crowd on the hunt. Porral Street opened out onto Daryad Avenue, which was the main thoroughfare in this part of town, sweeping down the hill to the river Cairns. And just off to one side at the end of that slope were the docks. Simply looking down the broad avenue with its tall buildings and silent traffic solidos changing color and shape for nonexistent ground vehicles produced a surge of hope. Along its whole length she could see barely a hundred people in total.

An equally optimistic Danal linked his arm through hers, and they set off at a fast pace. A lot of the stores on either side had suffered damage. Windows were broken and covered with big sheets of black carbon. Most of the adverts were cold and dark. Three smashed cab pods blocked the metro rails running down the middle of the road. The people they passed never met their gaze. Nobody was sharing anything in the gaiafield. Nobody wanted to be noticed. Mareble was acutely aware of other people heading down the slope—couples, groups—all of them moving with that same urgent intent as her own gait yet trying to appear casual.

They were halfway down toward the smooth fast-flowing water of the river and starting to relax, when they crossed a side road. The shouts of the mob reached them at the same time. Mareble saw a man running frantically toward them, chased by about fifty people.

“Run!” he screamed as he charged past. His black felt hat tumbled off as he turned down the slope. The mob was thundering up fast behind him, faces contorted with bloodlust and hatred. Mareble and Danal took off after him; it was pure instinct.

“Help,” Mareble yelled. Her u-shadow was sending an alert to the Ellezelin forces that wasn’t even being acknowledged. She cried into the gaiafield, only to receive the slightest ripple of sympathies from Living Dream followers. “Somebody help!”

Danal was holding her hand, tugging her along. The dress was hindering her legs. Her ankle boots weren’t designed to run in. It was at least a mile and a half to the docks. Fear began to burn along her nerves as the adrenaline kicked in. She thought of the Waterwalker on the mountain after Salrana’s betrayal, with Arminel and his thugs closing in on the pavilion. Even then he had maintained his dignity. I must be like him.

Her foot hit something, and she went flying, landing painfully on the stone block pavement, grazing her knees, tearing the skin on her wrists. The jolt thumped along her arms, and she wailed in dread, knowing it was all over. “Lady, please,” she whimpered as Danal hauled her to her feet.

The mob came up around them incredibly fast, surrounding them with a fence of savagely hostile faces. They carried lengths of wood and metal bars; a couple gripped small laser welders.

“No,” Mareble whimpered. Tears were already smearing her vision. She hated how weak she was, but they were going to hurt her. Then she would die before ever knowing the true wonder of the Void.

“I’ve called the paramilitaries,” Danal said defiantly.

A pole caught him on the side of his head, making a nasty crack. His mouth had barely opened to cry out in pain when another smacked across his shins. Danal dropped fast, his limp hand slipping from Mareble’s arm.

“No!” she yelled. Her wild face looked directly at the man in front of her, pleading. He seemed ordinary enough, middle-aged, dressed in a smart jacket. He won’t hit a woman, she thought. “We just want to go. Let us go.”

“Bitch.” His fist slammed into her nose. She heard the bone crunch. For the first second it didn’t hurt; she was numb with shock and terror. Then the frightening pulse of hot pain pierced her brain. Mareble screamed, crumpling to her knees. To one side she saw a boot kick Danal’s ribs. Blood was pouring down her mouth and chin.

“That’s enough,” a woman’s voice said calmly. A dark figure stepped into the middle of the mob.

Then finally the gaiafield was awash with sympathy and kindness. The amazing sensation grew and grew like nothing Mareble had ever known before. She gasped in astonishment, blinking up at the woman, who was now opening her coat as if emerging from a cocoon. Underneath she wore a long cream robe resembling those of the Clerics. It seemed to glow of its own accord. A pendant on a slim gold chain around her neck shone an intense blue light across Mareble’s face, which somehow siphoned out so much of her fear. For a moment she transcended her own body to look out across the stars from a viewpoint outside the galaxy. The sight was extraordinarily warming. Then she was back on Viotia and looking up in silent awe at the figure grinning down at her.

The front rank of the mob was hesitating, their first angry glances at the intruder fading to bewilderment. Even their hatred and rage couldn’t stand against the blaze of serenity and comfort she poured into the gaiafield.

Danal raised his head, a look of incredulity rising over his pain. “Dreamer!” he gasped in wonder.

“Hello, Danal.” Araminta smiled. She pushed some of the Skylord’s contentment into the greeting, feeling it wash over the poor abused man, feeling his relief. Mareble was watching her worshipfully as she tried to staunch the flow of blood from her broken nose, and right across the Commonwealth, Living Dream followers sent their welcome and thanks that she had finally come out of hiding to take up her destiny. The wave of goodwill was awesome in its extent, combining the emotion of billions, sending it sweeping across hundreds of worlds.

Then one of the mob finally managed to shake off the daze of sensation Araminta and the Skylord were radiating out into the gaiafield. It was the one who’d punched Mareble. “You!” he spit. “This is all your fault.” A metal bar was raised. Araminta stared at him, feeling something flow from the Skylord into her mind, elevating her thoughts still higher. And she recalled Ranalee’s iniquitous ability. “No,” she told him quietly, and changed his mind for him, draining away the fear and hatred.

His mouth parted in a silent gasp, and the metal bar clattered to the ground just as a squadron of capsules roared in overhead. Araminta grinned up at them as they descended, sharing the sight with everyone everywhere. She held a hand out and helped Mareble to her feet as armor-clad figures shoved their way through the sullen silent mob.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said mildly as they came right up to her, guns drawn to cover the throng. “Please assist Danal.”

The officer in front hesitated. She could sense the uncertainty in his mind, the desperate wish to be anywhere else. “You’re to come with me,” he announced.

I AM THE DREAMER, Araminta proclaimed into the gaiafield, using the Skylord’s strength to bolster the claim. The officer swayed back from the force of the thought, almost falling as his knees weakened. Behind him, people were flinching, cowering at the power of her thoughts. “Did the Waterwalker travel by capsule?” she continued mildly. “I think not. I will walk to the wormhole. Those of you who wish to follow the dream may accompany me.” She gave the mob a calculated look. No one would meet her gaze now. “Those who would hurt my followers will be dealt with.” She glanced at the officer again. “Your name?”

“Darraklan. Captain Darraklan.”

“Very well, Captain Darraklan, your men will perform escort duty. There will be peace in this city. That is my wish.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Darraklan stammered.

Araminta raised an eyebrow. The hint of censure peeked out from her mind.

Darraklan bowed. “Yes, Dreamer,” he corrected himself.

Araminta gave Mareble a gracious smile. “Come.” The crowd parted, and she started walking down the slope toward the river and the docks. Bewildered Ellezelin troopers quickly helped Danal to his feet.

By the time she reached the bottom of Daryad Avenue, she’d picked up quite a retinue. Happy Living Dream followers had rushed out of every intersection to greet her, disbelief and joy surging out of their minds. Captain Darraklan’s troopers maintained a careful escort, not pressing in yet forming a secure perimeter. Capsules drifted high overhead, keeping pace. Araminta ignored them.

There had been many protests outside the docks themselves. Several hundred hardy city residents had set up camp in front of the main entrance, only to be largely ignored by the capsules that flitted in and out over their heads. Now they formed a curious crowd, watching as Araminta led her procession toward them. Anxiety and uncertainty began to rattle along the front rank. It was one thing to taunt the unassailable, indifferent paramilitaries on the other side of the fence for the injustice they’d brought to Viotia and quite another to face down a living messiah with mysterious telepathic powers. Araminta was still a hundred meters short of them when they began to part, leaving a clear passage to the dock entrance. Tall gates were hurriedly peeled open to reveal another batch of paramilitaries. These were headed by Cleric Phelim himself, who didn’t offer anything by way of complicity or acceptance.

Araminta knew this was the first real test of her claim to be the Dreamer. Phelim wouldn’t crumple like Darraklan, though she was certain that ultimately he wouldn’t be able to withstand Ranalee’s dominance technique. She sincerely hoped the Skylord would lend its assistance again if she asked, if she showed an obstacle to bringing the faithful to the Void as she had promised she would. In fact, it really shouldn’t need the intervention of a Skylord. To the whole of Living Dream she had assumed her rightful position as their leader, their savior. Clerics had become nothing more than administrators and bureaucrats, simple functionaries to facilitate her wishes. Judging from the expression on Phelim’s face and the few tightly controlled thoughts he did permit to be shared through the gaiafield, he was beginning to realize that, too.

I just have to keep going, she told herself in that little core of identity she didn’t share across the gaiafield, be an unstoppable force just like I promised Bradley. The true followers won’t stand for anyone interfering with me, not now that I can deliver the Pilgrimage. That’s what Living Dream stands for; it is everything to them.

A phony respectful smile spread across Cleric Phelim’s face. “Second Dreamer,” he said, with a slight emphasis on “second.” “We are so glad you have chosen to come forth at last. Welcome.”

Araminta didn’t even stop walking. She headed straight at the troopers lined up behind Phelim. They quickly shuffled aside. “Part of the reason I remained concealed was the suffering you unleashed on this world,” she said as she led her supporters through the troopers. Mareble, who had stayed close by the whole way down Daryad Avenue, glared at Phelim. It was a common sensation directed at the man. Up ahead was the wormhole; Araminta could see the violet-blue Cherenkov radiation leaking out from the edge. A different sunlight shone through the center.

Phelim’s expression hardened as he struggled to restrain himself. “I assure you we did everything that we could to—”

He was moving with her now, ambling in an awkward sideways gait. She’d won. “When I sit in the Orchard Palace, I will order a full and open inquiry into your part in this aggression,” she said dismissively.

“Wha—” Phelim managed to blurt.

“Violence was something the Waterwalker strove to eradicate. He devoted his lives to it. The cause almost broke him, but he succeeded. That is his true inspiration to us. And this monstrous invasion is the antithesis of everything Living Dream stands for. To believe you will go unpunished for such an atrocity is arrogant beyond belief.”

Cheering broke out all across the docks as Phelim abruptly stood still, watching with an open jaw as Araminta carried on to the wormhole. A lot of the enthusiastic jeering voices were rising from the protesters just outside the entrance.

Araminta smiled proudly, savoring the victory. The wormhole was directly ahead of her now, guarded by tall metal pillars studded with weapons and sensors. The Ellezelin forces parted before her. Helmets were discarded, showing grinning faces. The true believers were delighted she was here, was going to lead them onward just as the movement had always promised. She was cheered and applauded.

“Thank you,” she told them. “Thank you so much.” It was hard not to laugh outright. She’d accessed politicians working the crowds enough times, always hating the smug cynical bastards putting on a human persona whenever elections were due. Now she understood how they did it; puppeting the crowds was apparently an inbuilt ability.

Just as she reached the wormhole, she slowed and gripped Mareble’s hands. The woman looked at her with an alarming degree of adoration, eyes bright above the dried blood staining her face and dress. “You can go home now,” Araminta told the overwhelmed woman. “I will lead us on Pilgrimage shortly, once the ships are ready.”

Mareble’s lower lip trembled as she began to cry.

“It’s all right,” Araminta assured her. “Everything is all right now.” That was a lie on the grandest scale possible. She was rather pleased with herself for carrying it off with such panache.

Araminta raised a hand to her newfound friends and walked into the mouth of the wormhole, where she was engulfed by Ellezelin’s warmer, yellower sunlight.

“Holy crap!” Oscar muttered.

“That’s not her,” Tomansio said.

“She’s fucked us,” Beckia grunted. “Totally fucked us. She’s killed the whole galaxy.”

On the other side of the starship’s cabin, Liatris shook his head, his mouth raised in a lopsided smile of admiration. “Smart lady. They kept pushing her and pushing her, backing her into an impossible corner. There were only ever two options. Cave in or come out fighting. They never expected her to do that.”

“Because that’s not her,” Tomansio said confidently.

“Looked like her,” Oscar said. His u-shadow was still accessing the unisphere news feeds, showing the mouth of the wormhole not half a kilometer from the Bootle & Leicester warehouse where the Elvin’s Payback was secreted. It had taken a great deal of willpower not to run out of the starship and take a look at events for himself. The unisphere feed showed him hundreds of joyous people following their newfound messiah through the wormhole to Ellezelin. Unisphere coverage ended there. The other end of the wormhole was in a security zone.

The gaiafield, however, was still gifting Araminta’s sight and emotions as she walked across the nearly empty staging field. Capsules rushed through the air toward her. People were breaking off from their tasks on the acres of machinery scattered about to cheer her arrival in Greater Makkathran. And how is dear old Cleric Conservator Ethan going to react to this? he wondered.

“So that’s it,” Beckia said. She was still cranky at having to wear the medical sleeve on her arm, which was busy knitting the deep-tissue repairs she’d undergone after the fight in Francola Wood. Three other enriched agents had swarmed her, and her integral force field had temporarily overloaded down her left side. Oscar had pulled her out of the fray just before the capsules landed. He considered her lucky. Tomansio had managed to extract them, and the medical capsule that had repaired her had performed a minor miracle.

“Maybe,” Oscar said. “She must have a plan.”

“That’s a dangerous assumption,” Tomansio said. “Liatris got it right; she’s been forced into this act simply to survive.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t her,” Oscar countered.

Tomansio’s handsome face shone with a bright smile. “Touché.”

“It’s her,” Oscar said.

“Still not convinced,” Tomansio said. “This … empress isn’t the same girl we’ve been chasing after. Facing down Living Dream simply isn’t in her psychology.”

“What, then?” Beckia demanded.

“Double bluff,” Tomansio said. “They got to her; they broke into her mind and installed their own operating routines. This is a puppet of Living Dream, one that’s been pushed out center stage to focus everyone’s attention. Big bonus that she’ll do what every follower wants and lead them to Pilgrimage. It makes perfect sense for Ethan to do this; he gets everything he ever wanted.”

“Except lead Living Dream,” Oscar said. “That’s her next step. It has to be; she can’t do anything else but claim the throne now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tomansio said. “He still gets what he wants, which is a ticket into the Void, and at the same time he doesn’t get any of the blame if it all goes belly-up.”

“Which it will,” Beckia said.

“I still don’t buy it,” Oscar said. He remembered the expression of fear and determination he’d seen on Araminta’s face when they met oh so briefly in Bodant Park. Her magnificent run eluding not just his team but the entire complement of agents from every power player in the Commonwealth. Besides, she was descended from Mellanie, and that meant trouble on a level these modern Greater Commonwealth citizens couldn’t comprehend. His lips registered a slight smile. Something about the whole situation wasn’t quite right—Tomansio had the truth of that—but he had absolutely no idea what.

“Then what is she doing?” Beckia asked. “She might have come out fighting from the corner they’d backed her into, but she’s burned any options. She has to take Living Dream on Pilgrimage now. That’s what her whole tenuous authority is based on.”

“Suicide?” Liatris suggested. “She leads them into the Gulf, and the Pilgrimage ships get blasted apart by the warrior Raiel.”

“That’d work for me,” Beckia grunted.

Oscar grinned from the strength of his own conviction. “Have a little faith,” he told the Knights Guardian. “After all, she is a messiah now.”

Tomansio groaned. “You mean you want us to stay on?”

“You’ve seen what’s going on in the docks right now. Every Living Dream follower on the planet is going to come running to the wormhole, and Phelim will have to shut off the weather dome to let them in. If we left now, we’d definitely be seen; we’d blow our cover.”

“We don’t need cover if the operation is over.”

“Give her a few days. She is rather busy right now, after all. And she has my number.”

“Don’t we all,” Beckia muttered.

Araminta stood at the front of the big passenger capsule, looking through the transparent fuselage that wrapped around her. Five hundred meters below, Greater Makkathran was laid out across the ground, a phenomenal urban sprawl that stretched to the horizon in every direction. Sunlight glinted and flashed off the crystal towers rising from lush parks; lower buildings shone with implausible colors. It was, she acknowledged, a beautiful city. However, her vision of the capital was slightly obscured by the sheer number of capsules rising up out of the designated traffic streams to wait for her to pass. Then they curved around to join the festive armada already flying along behind her. There were so many packed together like a smoke cloud, she could actually see the hazy shadow they splashed over the ground.

Up ahead, the ocean appeared on the horizon where the city dipped down to a broad swath of green park. And there, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, Makkathran2 was perched on the shoreline.

“Do you want to go straight to the Orchard Palace, Dreamer?” Captain Darraklan asked. He’d stayed with her after they walked through the wormhole, seemingly appointing himself as her personal guard. She wasn’t about to argue. With his helmet off, he was actually quite handsome in a classic square-jawed way, his floppy chestnut hair reminding her of one of Mr. Bovey’s younger selves.

“No,” she said without taking her gaze from the hauntingly strange reproduction city. “Edeard first entered through the North Gate. Take me there; that will be fitting. I will walk to the Orchard Palace.” Which will give Ethan plenty of time to throw up the barricades, if he dares. She felt a grim amusement coming from Darraklan’s mind as the capsule began to lose altitude. He must have been thinking the same thing.

They touched down on the vast circle of parkland surrounding the crystal wall. As she alighted onto the grass, she glanced back at the armada that was now tussling for ground space. It really had turned the sky dark. She was sure none of them were obeying local traffic control orders anymore. That’s good. A little knot of anarchy which I influence. They don’t all obey Ethan’s laws unquestioningly.

So far everyone was waiting to see what would happen next, pushing her along with their enthusiasm and her apparent newfound relish for the role of Dreamer. All she had to do was supplant Ethan, and the only way to do that was to show her ability and determination were greater than his. Just like Bradley said.

Araminta walked through the great arch in the crystal wall, with people pouring out of their badly parked capsules to form a carnival procession behind her. She didn’t really get much of a look at Makkathran2 from ground level. High Moat, which the gate opened on to, was jammed with people; surely everyone who lived in their shrine city had turned out to welcome her. The cheer that arose at her arrival was deafening. A row of men in Makkathran constable uniforms exactly like those of the Waterwalker’s squad saluted. Darraklan and their sergeant shouted back and forth while Araminta waved at the crowd, all the while moving forward. Never hesitate, never slow.

After a moment the constables fell in around her, easing her passage toward the bridge over North Curve Canal and into Ysidro.

She was wrong about the whole population being on High Moat. Ysidro’s narrow twisting streets were packed solid with supporters, some crying openly. The eerily familiar Blue Fox tavern was there beside the ginger sandstone bridge that took her into Golden Park, where the sunlight was shimmering off the white pillars. Another sea of bodies thronged the vast open space, and the high domes of the Orchard Palace dominated the far skyline.

While she was walking along one of the park’s elegant paths, Darraklan leaned over to murmur in her ear. “The Cleric Council has convened at the entrance to the palace.”

“Wonderful,” she replied. There were a lot of children lining the path, all of them with shining adulation in their eyes. It was hard to keep pushing on knowing she would ultimately betray that trust and reverence. It is their parents who have misled them, not me. I will be the truth for them.

By the time she reached the wire and wood bridge that crossed Outer Circle Canal, her resolution had returned. The thousands of smiling faces that urged her on no longer even registered as she crossed the canal. Darraklan accompanied her while the constables tried to stop the crowd pressing forward into the canal itself. They were all so desperate to see what happened next, their combined thoughts urging the Clerics to acknowledge their new Dreamer.

As Darraklan had said, the Cleric Council was waiting for her just inside the Malfit Hall, resplendent in their scarlet and black robes. Ethan stood in front of them, his white robes shining far brighter than Araminta’s own. Reasonable enough, she admitted. After all, she’d sewn hers together from the lining of Mr. Bovey’s semiorganic curtains.

The Cleric Conservator bowed deeply. “Dreamer,” he said. “Welcome. We have waited so long for this moment.”

Araminta gave him a sly smile. For someone who’d just been politically outmaneuvered, he was in surprisingly good humor. “Be careful what you wish for.”

“Indeed. May I ask why you have finally come forward?”

“It was time,” she replied. “And I wished to end Viotia’s suffering.”

“That was most regrettable.”

“It is past,” she said lightly, knowing how angry her homeworld would be at that. “I am here to lead those who want a better life for themselves, those who chose to live as the Waterwalker did.” Again she appealed to the Skylord, who said: “We await you. We will guide you.”

The gasp of joy from the crowd outside was audible through the hall’s thick walls. She smiled significantly at Ethan: your call.

“We are honored,” he said effusively.

“Thank you. Shall we move to the Upper Council chamber now? We have much to settle.”

Ethan glanced along the line of Cleric Councillors, their uncertain hopeful faces. One of them smiled slickly. “Of course, Dreamer,” he said.

“Rincenso, isn’t it?” Araminta said.

“Yes, Dreamer.”

“I’m grateful for your support.”

“My pleasure.”

I’ll bet it is, you unctuous little tit. “Which way?”

Rincenso’s bow was so deep, it verged on parody. He gestured. “This way, please, Dreamer.”

She watched the eternal storm playing across the ceiling, oddly saddened by the fact it was only a replica of the real Malfit Hall and the vivid images above her were nothing but a copy of Querencia’s planetary system. Now that she’d begun this course of action, she was actually keen to see it resolved, to walk through the real Makkathran and see for herself the streets and buildings where Edeard’s dramas had played out.

They walked silently through the smaller Toral Hall and into the Upper Council chamber. Araminta grinned at the solar vortex playing on its cross-vault ceiling. Here the copper sun’s accretion disc was still in its glory days, not as Justine had just seen it, with the brash comets dwindling and a new planet orbiting where it should never have been.

“You haven’t updated it, then?” she inquired lightly as she walked straight to the gold-embossed throne at the head of the long table.

“This is the Makkathran of the Waterwalker, Dreamer,” Ethan said.

“Of course. Not that it matters; we will soon be leaving here for good. Be seated,” she said graciously.

Ethan claimed the seat on her left-hand side, and Rincenso sat opposite him. There were just enough seats for everyone. No Phelim, she thought sagely. Let’s keep it like that. The thin Cleric unnerved her somewhat.

“May I ask if you intend to keep sharing so widely with the gaiafield?” Ethan said.

“Until we pass into the Void,” she confirmed. “The followers of Living Dream have had too much doubt and trouble intrude into their lives of late, in no small part due to you, Cleric. I feel they need the reassurance of seeing for themselves that I am honestly doing everything I can to lead the Pilgrimage. That is my only concern now. In that respect I will require this council to continue its running of the day-to-day aspects of Living Dream.”

She studied Ethan, curious about how he’d react to the deal. It was so painfully obvious that he didn’t understand or believe in her apparent conversion to the cause. He suspected something but couldn’t see what could possibly be askew.

“I will be delighted to help in any way I can,” Ethan said.

“We all will be,” Rincenso added quickly.

Araminta had to be stern with herself not to leak any disgust out into the gaiafield at the Clerics’ sycophancy. “Excellent. So my first question is on the progress of the Pilgrimage fleet.”

“The hulls are all complete,” Cleric DeLouis said. “Fitting out is going to take a while, but hopefully no more than a month.”

“And the drives?” Araminta asked.

It probably helped that Ethan was less than a meter away from her, but there was no way he could hide the little burst of dismay from her. She turned to fix him with a level stare. “By my estimation, it will take nearly half a year to reach the Void using a standard hyperdrive.”

“Yes, Dreamer.”

“There is also the problem of the warrior Raiel. Justine barely made it through.”

“We are making arrangements,” Ethan said grudgingly.

“Which are?”

He made a small gesture with his hand. “They are confidential.”

“No more. This unhealthy obsession with secrecy and violence ends now. It has done untold damage to Living Dream; Inigo and Edeard would not have tolerated such vice. Besides, we are no longer members of the Greater Commonwealth, and you are under my protection. Now, what arrangements have been made?”

“Are you sure you—”

“Yes!”

“Very well. I organized delivery of ultradrives for each Pilgrimage ship. The journey time should be less than a month.”

“Good work. And the Raiel warships? How do we get past them?”

Ethan was completely impassive. “The same manufacturing facility will also provide force fields capable of withstanding an attack by the warrior Raiel.”

“I see. And the cost?”

“It’s budgeted for. We do have the wealth of the entire Free Trade Zone at our disposal, after all.”

Araminta’s voice hardened. “The cost, please, Cleric, specifically the political cost for this technology?”

Everyone at the table turned to look at Ethan. The pressure of curiosity from the gaiafield was extraordinary. Even the Skylord was displaying a minor interest, engaged by the volume of emotion.

“Our supplier is to be taken into the Void with us.”

“Logical,” Araminta said. She smiled graciously. “Thank you one and all for attending me. We’ll convene formally tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to settle in. Ethan, I will be using the Mayor’s state rooms here in the Orchard Palace as my residence until we depart.”

“Yes, Dreamer.” He seemed surprised there had been no censure concerning his Faustian deal.

Darraklan peered in through the door as the subdued yet relieved Cleric Council filed out. Araminta held up a finger to him. “A moment more, please.”

“Yes, Dreamer.” He bowed and shut the doors after the last Cleric had left.

Araminta allowed herself a slow look around the Council chamber, her gaze falling once again on the radiant image spinning endlessly on the ceiling. She wondered how Justine was getting on inside the Void, if she had reached the real Makkathran yet. But no, that would take days—weeks—even with the Void’s accelerated time, although the Silverbird should arrive before the Pilgrimage ships reached the boundary. Ozzie! I hope she and Gore can do something to salvage this crock of shit before then, or I’m well and truly screwed. It sounded like Gore had a plan, or at least an idea. He owes me, too. Maybe he’ll get in touch. Somehow, she suspected she was going to have to do most of the work. But for now, there was the real threat to face. She took a breath, feeling the billions of Living Dream followers share her mind with a sense of trepidation as her own unease leaked out.

“Aren’t you going to talk to me?” she asked the chamber. Her own voice reverberated off the hard walls. “I know you’re sharing me.” Again the chamber was silent. Empty. Araminta let out a mildly exasperated sigh and allowed her ire to show. “I am talking to you, that which emerged from Earth’s prison. You have to speak with me at some time, for I am the only way to reach the Void. Let us begin now. Don’t be afraid. You’ve seen I am both reasonable and practical.”

The curiosity within the gaiafield grew more intense as everyone strained to perceive what she was talking to. Her u-shadow reported that the Upper Council chamber’s secure communication net was activating. A solido projection appeared at the other end of the table. Not a person but a simple dark sphere scintillating with grim purple light. Araminta faced it impassively.

“Congratulations on your ascension, Dreamer.” Its voice was female, melodically sinister.

“And you are?”

“Ilanthe.”

“You must be the one supplying the ultradrives and the force fields.”

“My agents arranged that with Ethan, yes.”

“Will the force fields be strong enough to protect us from the warrior Raiel?”

“I believe so. They are the same type currently protecting Earth.”

“Ah. And for this bounty you expect to be taken into the Void?”

“Without my assistance you cannot reach the boundary.”

“And without me you cannot get inside.”

“It would seem we need each other.”

“Then we have reached an accord.”

“You will take me?” Ilanthe’s voice carried a note of surprise.

“The Void welcomes all who seek fulfillment. Whatever you are, you obviously believe you need what the Void can offer. Therefore, I will be happy to bring you to it. It is, after all, my destiny as Dreamer to help those who yearn to reach the Heart.”

“That’s very noble of you. And completely unbelievable.”

“You are evil,” Araminta said.

“No, I am driven. It is not just Inigo and Edeard who had a vision of a beautiful future.”

“Nonetheless, you are inimical to the Commonwealth and its citizens.”

“Again you are misjudging me. I simply wish to achieve a different goal from the mundane aspirations which have so far existed among our species. A wonderful uplifting goal that everyone can share. I require the Void’s assistance to do that.”

“Then I wish you well on your voyage.”

“Why?”

“Because the Void will obliterate you. The Heart will not tolerate malevolence no matter the intent behind it, deluded or deliberate. You cannot avoid it, you cannot elude it. Despite my many misgivings I do genuinely believe in the goodness of the Heart, for I am twinned with the Skylords, who truly know its munificence. If necessary, I will travel there myself to expose you and your machinations.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Knowing this, knowing I will oppose you, do you still wish to come with us?”

“Yes. Do you still wish to take me?”

“Yes.”

“So be it. Our fate will be decided within the Void.”

“That it will.”

The sphere faded out, and the solido projector switched off. A long breath escaped through Araminta’s pursed lips. She grinned nervously for the benefit of her billions-strong spellbound audience. “Lady! I wonder what day two is going to be like?”

Paula was curious about that herself.

“She’s up to something,” Oscar insisted over the ultrasecure link. “This self-coronation is only the start.”

“I don’t see what else there can be for her,” Paula said.

“Well yeah … If it was obvious, everyone would figure it out and it’d be pointless.”

“I do love your optimism. It was always your most endearing quality. You probably believe Ilanthe will see the error of her ways before long.”

“You sound bitter.”

Paula rubbed a hand over her brow, surprised to find it was trembling. But then, she hadn’t slept for days; even biononics could keep her fatigue at bay for only so long. “I probably am. We’re the good guys, Oscar; we’re not supposed to lose.”

“We haven’t lost. We’re nowhere near losing. The Pilgrimage ships haven’t even been finished, let alone launched. So tell me how many ways covert operations can sabotage them.”

“Hundreds, but that’s only a delay. It’s not a solution.”

“I want to keep going. I want to see if Araminta contacts me.”

“She won’t. Everyone in the galaxy can observe every second of her existence. It’s actually quite clever: Sharing like that puts her beyond mere Dreamer status; she’s almost achieved the same level Edeard had. Every moment of her life is available for her followers to idolize, just like his was. But they’ll only keep supporting her if she does what they want and takes them into the Void. There’s no escape.”

“Humor me. I have faith in her, too. Different from everyone else, but faith nonetheless. She’s not stupid, and she’s descended from Mellanie.”

“If that’s what your faith is based on, we’re in serious deep shit.”

“Yeah, I noticed that, too.”

Paula smiled wearily. “All right, Oscar, I certainly haven’t got anything else for you to do. Stick with the original mission; see if you can make contact with the Second Dreamer.”

“Thank you.”

“What do your colleagues think about the notion?”

“They’re still on the payroll.”

“Are they all okay? Francola Wood seemed unnecessarily violent.”

“Wasn’t me, honest.”

“You were there.”

“We were. And I still don’t understand what happened. The path became active somehow; we all knew that. Hell, we felt it. But she never came through.”

“And yet she turned up in Colwyn City right after.”

“Exactly. See, there’s more to her than we understand. I trust you noticed what she’s wearing around her neck.”

“Yes.”

“And she knew about Ilanthe. I didn’t.”

“It was classified. The navy knew she’d escaped.”

“So she’s getting her information from somewhere. She understands what’s going on. Which means she knows what she’s got to do.”

“I hope you’re right, Oscar.”

“Me, too. So what are you going to do now?”

“Follow up leads, act on information. The usual.”

“Good luck.”

The link ended. Paula lay back on the couch, closing her eyes for a moment to summon up the willpower to place her next call. It was all very well being tired, but the situation was moving on with or without her.

Symbols appeared in her exovision, and her secondary routines pulled out the technical results. Alexis Denken was currently in full stealth mode fifty thousand kilometers above Viotia’s equator. The smartcore had been running a painstaking search across local space for signs of anyone else lurking above the planet. The first eight starships were easy enough for its sensors to detect; she suspected they were backup vessels for various agent teams on the planet. Now it had found another, the faintest hyperspatial anomaly a quarter of a million kilometers out from the planet. The stealth effect was first-rate; anything less than Alexis Denken’s ANA-fabricated sensors wouldn’t have been able to find it. That left her with the question of who it was and if it even mattered.

Her u-shadow opened a secure link to Admiral Juliaca. “I wasn’t expecting this,” she said.

“Neither were we,” the Admiral confirmed. “The President is not happy with today’s events.”

“You mean the President is frightened.”

“Yeah. Our best guess is that someone captured her and broke into her mind. They’re just remote-controlling her now. It’s probably Ethan himself if it isn’t Ilanthe.”

“That doesn’t quite fit. I don’t believe Ethan and Ilanthe would want their shabby little arrangement to be public knowledge. And how did Araminta know about Ilanthe?”

“Exactly. She has to have been taken over.”

“Or she communed with the Silfen Motherholme while she was on the paths. After all, we still haven’t got a clue how she returned to Viotia, and it would appear she’s been named a Friend.”

“Okay,” the Admiral said. “So why would the Silfen want Living Dream to go on Pilgrimage?”

Paula pressed her fingertips into her temple again, massaging firmly. “I haven’t got a clue. I’m just saying it’s possible Araminta has decided to step up her game.” She could barely believe she was repeating Oscar’s hopes, but what else was there to explain such extraordinary behavior?

“Then her new game is going to kill us all.”

“Will the navy destroy the Pilgrimage fleet?”

“President Alcamo is still trying to decide what to do. We’re as compromised now as we were before, if not worse. If Ilanthe does make good on her promise and supply Sol barrier force fields to the ships, then they’ll be invulnerable to anything we can hit them with. That just leaves us a small window while they’re on the ground under construction.”

Paula immediately saw the problem with that. “They’re being built next to Greater Makkathran.”

“Actually, they’re inside the urban boundary, which means they’re under the city’s civil defense force fields. If we take them out, it’ll destroy half the city at least, probably more. Paula, even if I gave the order, I’m not sure the navy ships would carry it out. I wouldn’t even blame them. Sixteen million people live there.”

“Billions of people live throughout the Greater Commonwealth. Trillions of entities live in the galaxy.”

“I know.”

“Covert sabotage will be easy enough. It doesn’t have to be a frontal assault.”

“Believe me, we’re drawing up those plans right now.”

“But that’s only going to delay things.”

“If we have long enough, ANA might break out.”

“If we delay the Pilgrimage too much, Ilanthe might offer Araminta a ride on her ship. Then we’d really be in trouble.”

“We’re more concerned by what the Void would do,” the Admiral said. “It already began an expansion the first time Araminta tried denying it. If we block her, there’s no telling how it’ll react to that. To put it bluntly, it knows where we live now.”

“So we still need an alternative.”

“We do. Paula … do you have any idea what Gore is up to?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Damn. Well, that leaves us with just about nothing.”

“I thought the Raiel answered our request to attempt to break through the Sol barrier.”

“Yes, Qatux has agreed to help. We’re expecting the High Angel will depart for Earth within the hour. The navy is evacuating its core staff down to Kerensk, including me. After all, we don’t know if it’ll come back.”

“I regard their involvement as promising. Nothing much stirs the Raiel these days.”

“I think Ilanthe and Araminta have managed to focus their attention.”

“Quite.”

“Have you got anything else for me?”

“I’m sorry, Admiral, but the only other possibility is if Inigo is alive and on the Lindau.”

“How does that help us? He started this Ozziedamned nonsense in the first place.”

“Exactly. He may be able to stop it. He certainly had a large enough change of heart to dump Living Dream. Several powerful people believed that warranted expending considerable effort and energy to finding him.”

“What do you suggest? Intercepting the Lindau?”

“Not a good option. Not yet. This Aaron character is single-minded in his mission and has already killed countless people in his pursuit. If he is threatened, he may well have instructions to eliminate Inigo.”

“Or he may not.”

“Granted. But if Inigo is our last remaining chance and he’s on board that scout ship, we can’t risk it. That’s a small ship: Aaron has no fallback, nowhere to run. Prudence would suggest waiting until it reaches the Spike. That opens up our options from a tactical point of view.”

“All right, Paula, but it’s a loose end I don’t want to ignore. We need every glimmer of hope we can muster.”

“I won’t let it slip, I assure you. I have a ship which can reach the Spike quickly when the need arises.”

Once again he ran across the vast hall with its crystalline arches high above. People scattered before him, frightened people. Children. Children with tears streaming down their sweet little faces.

Of all his uncertainty and confusion, he knew that should not be so. A thought he held steadfast. A lone conviction in a world gone terribly wrong. Human society existed to protect its children. That was bedrock he could rest easy upon. Not that such assurance meant anything to the physical reality he was surrounded by.

Weapons fire burst all around him, elegant colored lines of energy forming complex crisscross patterns in the air. Force fields added a mauve haze to the image. Then came the cacophony of screaming.

He ran, flinging himself across a cluster of wailing children. It was no good. The darkness followed him, flowing across the huge room like an incoming tide. It curled around him. And he felt her hand on his shoulder amid a clash of sparkling colors. The pain began, searing in through his flesh, seeking out his heart.

“You don’t leave me,” she whispered silkily into his ear.

He struggled, writhing frantically against her grip as the pain was slowly replaced by an even more frightening cold. “Nobody leaves me,” she said.

“I do!” he yelled with a raw throat. “I don’t want this.” Away along the fringe of darkness, more garish colored lights exploded. He heaved against her iron grip—

—and fell out of the cot to land painfully on the cabin floor. A weird ebony fog occluded his vision as he tried to focus on the Lindau’s bulkhead. It pulsed in a heartbeat rhythm with strange distensions bulging out, as if something were attempting to break out of his nightmare. He groaned as he squeezed his eyes shut, attempting to banish the creepy intrusion. The pain was real still, throbbing behind his temple like the Devil’s own migraine. Then he remembered a crown of slim silver needles contracting around his head, puncturing the skin, slipping effortlessly through the bone to penetrate his brain, and terrible red light shone into his thoughts, exposing every miserable segment of himself. “Do it,” he yelled into the nothingness. “Just do it now.” Sharp merciless claws reached in and started to rip out the most vital segments. And now his screams were silent, going on and on and on as his mind was shredded until finally, thankfully, there was nothing left. No thought remained, so he ceased to think—

—Aaron woke up with his cheek squashed uncomfortably on the deck, his neck at a bad angle. It was as if he were regaining consciousness from a knockout blow. His skin was cold; he shivered as much from shock as anything. “Oh, crap, this has just got to stop,” he moaned as he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position.

The captain’s cabin was still a mess. He hadn’t bothered to organize a servicebot to clean up yet. Personal environment wasn’t a priority for him, unlike the other two, who seemed quite fastidious about their small shared cabin. He ordered a fast biononic field scan to check on his captives and relaxed fractionally when exovision displays showed them in the main cabin. Now that their status was confirmed, he followed it up with a review of the Lindau’s systems. Plenty of components were operating on the edge of their safety margins thanks to the damage they’d received back on Hanko. But they were still functioning, still in hyperspace and on course for the Spike.

Aaron took a moment to wipe himself down with a towel soaked in travel-clean before pulling on some clothes he’d found in the cabin’s locker. The Lindau’s captain had been almost the same size as he, so the bots needed to make only a few adjustments before he could wear the conservatively styled shirts and trousers. Dressed in fawn-colored two-thirds-length shorts and a mauve sleeveless sweatshirt, he joined the other two for breakfast.

Corrie-Lyn gave him a sullen glance as he entered the main cabin, then returned to her bowl of yogurt and cereal. Aaron didn’t need to run any kind of scan to know she was hungover. He’d given up trying to stop the one remaining culinary unit from producing alcohol for her; its electronics were in a bad way, and the last thing it needed was a software war raging inside its circuitry.

“Good morning,” he said politely to Inigo. At least the ex-Dreamer gave him a brief acknowledgment, glancing up from his plate of toast and marmalade. Aaron ordered up a toasted bagel with poached egg on smoked salmon, orange juice, and a pot of tea.

“Why do you smell of bleach?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“Do I?”

“You’ve used travel-fresh,” she accused. “There is a working shower, you know.”

The culinary unit pinged, and Aaron opened its stainless-steel door. His breakfast was inside. He hesitated at the slightly odd smell before transferring it all to a tray. The remaining chair at the table had broken as it was trying to retract, leaving a gray lump protruding from the floor with an upper hollow that wasn’t quite wide or deep enough for sitting in. Aaron squirmed his way down into it. “The shower is in your room,” he pointed out.

“And you rate our privacy above your hygiene? Since when?”

Inigo stopped chewing and glanced silently up at the ceiling.

“Corrie-Lyn, we’re going to be on board together for a while,” Aaron said. “As you may have noticed, this ship is on the wrong side of tiny, and there ain’t a whole lot of it working too good. Now, I don’t expect you to be gushing with mighty gratitude, but it’s my belief that basic civility will get us all through this without me ripping too many of your fucking limbs off. You clear on this?”

“Fascist bastard.”

“Is it true Ethan kept you on the Cleric Council because you were his private whore?”

“Fuck you!” Corrie-Lyn stood up fast, glaring at Aaron.

“See?” Aaron said mildly. “It’s a two-way street. And you can’t rip my limbs off.”

She stomped out of the main cabin. Inigo watched her go, then carried on eating his toast. Aaron took a drink of his orange juice, then cut into the egg. It tasted like rotten fish. “What the hell …”

“My toast tastes like cold lamb,” Inigo admitted. “The fatty bits. I used biononics to change my taste receptor impulses. It helps a bit.”

“Good idea.” Aaron’s u-shadow was interrogating the culinary unit to try to identify the problem. The result wasn’t promising. “The texture memory files are corrupted, and it doesn’t look like there are any backups left on board; a whole batch of kubes got physically smashed up. It’ll be producing this kind of crud all the way to the Spike.”

“Corrie-Lyn doesn’t have biononics. She can’t make it taste better.”

“That’ll make her a bucketful of fun for sure. We’ll have to inventory the prepacked supplies, see if there’s enough to last her.”

“Or you could simply connect to the unisphere with a TD channel and download some new files.”

Aaron looked at him over the rim of the orange juice, which tasted okay. “Not going to happen. I can’t risk an infiltration. The smartcore’s in the same condition as the rest of the ship.”

“That was a bad dream you had last night,” Inigo said quietly. “You need to watch out for aspects leaking into your genuine personality.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow. “My genuine personality?”

“All right, then, the one that keeps you up and functional. I’m getting concerned about the Mr. Paranoia who won’t risk downloading a food synthesis file.”

“Okay, for future reference, this very same personality has kept me alive through all my missions and helped me snatch you. And that barely took a couple of weeks after I’d been assigned to you, whereas everyone else in the Commonwealth had spent seventy years on the hunt for you. So you might want to rethink your poor estimation of my operational capabilities.”

Inigo’s hands fluttered in a modest gesture of acquiescence. “As you wish. But you have to understand I am curious about your composition. I’ve never encountered a mind quite like yours before. You have absences, and I don’t just mean memory. Whole emotional fibers seem to have been suppressed. That’s not good for you. The emotions you have permitted yourself are abnormally large; you’re out of balance as a result.”

“So Corrie-Lyn keeps telling me.” He tasted his egg again. His biononics had changed his taste receptors. This time the yoke had a mushroom flavor. It was weird, but he could live with it, he decided.

“You’ve been unkind to her,” Inigo said accusingly. “Small wonder she hates you.”

“I found you for her. She’s just ungrateful, that’s all. That or she doesn’t want to admit to herself how willing she was to pay the price.”

“What price is that?”

“Betrayal. That’s what it took to trace you.”

“Hmm. Interesting analysis. All of which brings us back to our current situation. So you’re taking me to the Spike to see Ozzie. What then?”

“Don’t know.”

“Your unknown employer must have given you some hint, some rough outline. To be an effective field agent you have to constantly reevaluate your alternatives. What if the Lindau was knocked out by the opposition, whoever they are? What if I’m taken away?”

Aaron smiled. “Then I kill you.”

The cabin Corrie-Lyn and Inigo were sharing was small. It was meant for five crew members but in theory the navy duty rota they followed should mean that only two would ever be using it at the same time, with changeovers every few hours. Inigo reckoned they’d all have to be very intimate with one another. The bunks were both fully extended, locked at a ten-degree angle with the edges curling up as if they were heat-damaged. All of which left little space to edge along between them. And they were useless for sleeping in. Instead, Inigo had just piled all the quilts onto the floor to make a cozy nest.

When he came back in after breakfast, Corrie-Lyn was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the crumpled fabric, drinking a mug of black coffee. An empty ready-pak was on the floor beside her.

“Taste good?” he asked.

She held up the foil ready-pak. “The deSavoel estate’s finest mountain bean. It doesn’t come much better.”

“That should help the hangover.” He perched awkwardly on the edge of a bunk, feeling it give slightly beneath him. It shouldn’t have done that.

“It does,” she grunted.

“I wonder if we can find a bean to help with the attitude.”

“Don’t start.”

“What in Honious happened to you?”

Corrie-Lyn’s dainty freckled face abruptly turned livid. “Somebody left. Not just me; they left the whole fucking movement. They got up and walked out without a hint of why they were going. Everything I loved, everything I believed in, was gone, ripped away from me. I’d given decades of my life to you and the dream you promised us. And as if that wasn’t enough, I didn’t know! I didn’t know why you’d left. Ladyfuckit, I didn’t even know if you were alive. I didn’t know if you’d given up on us, if it was all wrong, if you’d lost hope. I. Didn’t. Know! Nothing, that’s what you left me with. From everything—a fabulous life with hope and happiness and love—to nothing in a single second. Do you have any idea what that’s like? You don’t, clearly you don’t, because you wouldn’t be sitting there asking the stupidest question in the universe if you did. What happened? Bastard. You can go straight to Honious for all I care.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, crestfallen. “It’s … that final dream I had. It was too much. We weren’t leading anyone to salvation. Makkathran, Edeard; that whole civilization was a fluke, a glorious one-off that I caught at just the right time. It can never be repeated, not now, not now that we know the Void’s ability. The Raiel were right; the Void is a monster. It should be destroyed.”

“Why?” she implored. “What is that Last Dream?”

“Nothing,” he whispered. “It showed that even dreams all turn to dust in the end.”

“Then why didn’t—”

“I tell you?”

“Yes!”

“Because something that big, that powerful as Living Dream can’t be finished overnight. There were over ten billion followers when I left. Ten billion! I can’t just turn around to them and say: Oops, sorry, I was wrong. Go home and get on with your lives, forget all about the Waterwalker and Querencia.”

“The Inigo I knew would have done that,” she said through gritted teeth. “The Inigo I knew had courage and integrity.”

“I let it die, or so I thought. It was the kindest thing. Ethan was the finest example of that, a politician, not a follower. After him would have come dozens of similar leaders, all of them concerned with position and maintaining the ancient blind dogma. Living Dream would have turned into an old-style religion, always preaching the promise of salvation yet never producing the realization. Not without me. I was the one who might have been able to pass through the barrier. You know I was going to try, really I was. Go out there in a fast starship and see if I could make it, just like the original old ship did. That was before we knew about the warrior Raiel, of course. But once I had that dream, I knew the ideal was over. Ethan and all the others who should have come after him would have killed off Living Dream in a couple of centuries.”

“Then along came the Second Dreamer,” she said.

“Yeah. I guess I should have realized the Void would never let us alone. It feeds off minds like ours. Once it had that first taste, it was bound to find another way of pulling us in.”

“You mean it’s evil?” she asked in surprise.

“No. That kind of term doesn’t apply. It has purpose, that’s all. Unfortunately, that purpose will bring untold damage to the galaxy.”

“Then”—she glanced at the closed door—“what are we going to do about it?”

“We?”

She nodded modestly. “I believe in you; I always have. If you say we have to stop the Void, then I’ll follow you into Honious itself to bring that off.”

Inigo smiled as he looked down at her. She was wearing a crewman’s shirt several sizes too large, which made it kind of sexy as it shifted around, tracing the shape of her body. He’d watched her yesterday with considerable physical interest, the simple sight of her teasing out a great many pleasurable memories of the time they had spent as lovers. But she’d been drunk and spitting venom about Aaron and their situation and who was to blame for the state of the universe. Now, though, as he slipped off the bunk to kneel beside her, there was a look of hope kindled in her eyes. “Really?” he asked uncertainly. “After all I’ve put you through?”

“It would be a start to your penance,” she replied.

“True.”

“But …” She waved a hand at the door. “What about him? We don’t know if his masters want you to help the Pilgrimage or ruin it.”

“First off, he’s undoubtedly listening to every word we’re saying.”

“Oh.”

“Second, the clue is in who we’re going to see.”

“Ozzie?”

“Yes, which is why I haven’t tried anything like the glacier again.” Inigo grinned up at the ceiling. “Yet.”

“I thought you didn’t like Ozzie.”

“No. Ozzie doesn’t like me. He was completely opposed to Living Dream, so I can only conclude that Aaron’s masters are also among those who don’t want the Pilgrimage to go ahead.”

Corrie-Lyn shrugged and pushed some of her thick red hair away from her eyes. Intent and interested now, she fixed him with a curious look. “Why didn’t Ozzie like you?”

“He gave humanity the gaiafield so that we could share our emotions, which he felt was a way of letting everyone communicate on a much higher level. If we could look into the hearts of people we feared or disliked, we should be able to see that deep down they were human, too—according to his theory. Such knowledge would bring us closer together as a species. Damn, it was almost worth building a faction around the notion, but the idea was too subtle for that. Ozzie wanted us to become accustomed to it, to use it openly and honestly, and only when we’d incorporated it into our lives would we realize the effect it’d had on our society.”

“It has.”

“Not really. You see, I perverted the whole gaiafield to build a religion on. That wasn’t supposed to happen. As he told me, and I quote. ‘The gaiafield was to help people understand and appreciate life, the universe, and everything so they don’t get fooled by idiot messiahs and corrupt politicians.’ So I’d gone and wrecked his dream by spreading Edeard’s dreams. Quite ironic, really, from my point of view. Ozzie didn’t see that. Turns out he doesn’t have half the sense of humor everyone says he has. He went off to the Spike in a huge sulk to build a ‘galactic dream’ as a counter to my disgraceful subversion.”

“So he hasn’t succeeded, then?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Then how can he help?”

“I haven’t got a clue. But don’t forget, he is an absolute genius, which is a term applied far too liberally in history. In his case it’s real. I suspect that whatever plan is loaded into Aaron’s subconscious expects Ozzie and me to team up to defeat the Void.”

“That’s a huge gamble.”

“We’re long past the time for careful certainty.”

“Do you have any idea how to stop the Void?”

“No. Not a single glimmer of a notion, even.”

“But you were an astrophysicist to begin with.”

“Yes, but my knowledge base is centuries out of date.”

“Oh.” She pushed the empty coffee mug to one side with a glum expression.

“Hey.” His hand stroked the side of her face. “I’m sure Ozzie and I will give it our best shot.”

She nodded, closing her eyes as she leaned into his touch. “Don’t leave me again.”

“We’ll see this through together. I promise.”

“The Waterwalker never quit.”

Inigo kissed her. It was just the same as it had been all those decades ago, which was a treacherous memory. A lot of very strong emotions were bundled up with the time he and Corrie-Lyn had been together, most of them good. “I’m not as strong as the Waterwalker.”

“You are,” she breathed. “That’s why you found each other. That’s why you connected.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, nuzzling her chin. His hands went down to the hem of the big loose shirt. “But he never faced a situation like this.”

“The voyage of the Lady’s Light.” She began to tug at the seam on his one-piece.

“Hardly the same.”

“He didn’t know what he was coming home to.”

“Okay.” He pulled back and stared at her wide eyes. “Let’s just find our own way here, shall we?”

“What about …?”

“Screw him.”

Corrie-Lyn’s tongue licked playfully around her lips. “Me first. I’ve been waiting a very long time.”

Inigo’s Twenty-ninth Dream

“Land ahoy,” came the cry from the lookout.

Edeard craned his neck back to see the crewman perched atop the main mast of Lady’s Light. It was Manel, grinning wildly as he waved down at everyone on the deck. The young man’s mind was unshielded as he gifted everyone his sight, which right now was looking down on their upturned faces.

“Manel!” came a collective sigh.

His amusement poured across the ship, and he shifted his balance on the precarious platform to hold the telescope up again. Despite regular cleaning, the lenses in the brass tube were scuffed and grubby after four years of daily use at sea, but the image was clear enough. A dark speck spiked up out of the blue-on-blue horizon.

Edeard started clapping at the sight of it, his good cheer swelling out to join the collective thoughts of those on the other four ships that made up the explorer flotilla. Everyone was delighted. The distant pinnacle of land could only be one of the eastern isles, which meant Makkathran was no more than a month’s sailing away.

“How about that,” Jiska exclaimed. “He did get it right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Edeard agreed, too happy to care about the needling. Natran, who captained the Lady’s Light, had been promising sight of the eastern isles for five weeks now. People were getting anxious about his navigational skills, though the captains of the other ships concurred with him. Jiska had spent that time supporting her husband’s ability. After a four-year voyage, people were starting to get understandably fretful.

Kristabel came up beside Edeard, her contentment merging with his. He smiled back at her as they linked arms, and together they made their way up to the prow. It was getting quite cluttered on the middeck now, which Natran was generally unhappy over. As well as the coils of rope and ship’s lockers, a number of wicker cages were lashed to the decking, each containing some new animal they’d discovered on their various landings. Not all had survived the long voyage home. Taralee’s cabin was full of large glass jars where their bodies were preserved in foul-smelling fluid. She and the other doctors and botanists had probably gained the most from their expedition, cataloging hundreds of new species and plants.

But no new people, Edeard thought.

“What’s the matter?” Kristabel asked.

A few of the crew glanced over in his direction, catching his sadness. He gave them all an apologetic shrug.

“We really are alone on this world,” he explained to Kristabel. “Now that we’re coming home, we know that for certain.”

“Never certainty,” she said, smiling as she pushed some of her thick hair from her eyes. It was getting long again. They’d been eight days out from Makkathran when Kristabel simply sat down in the main cabin and got one of the other women to cut her already short hair right back, leaving just a few curly inches.

“It’s practical,” she’d explained calmly to an aghast Edeard. “You can’t seriously expect me to fight off my hair on top of everything else storms will throw at us, now, can you? It’s been bad enough for a week in this mild weather.”

But you managed with a plait, he managed to avoid saying out loud. Kristabel without her long hair was … just plain wrong somehow.

Edeard could laugh at that now—besides, she was still rather cute with short hair, and elegant with it. It was the least of the changes and accommodations that they’d collectively made. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen a woman in a skirt aside from the formal dinner parties held every month without fail. With the exception of the flotilla’s Mother, who’d maintained her traditional decorum at all times, they wore trousers, shorts in the summer. The small revolution meant they were able to help with the rigging and a dozen other shipboard tasks that were usually the exclusive province of sailors. Indeed, there had been a lot of grumbling from the Mariners Guild at the very thought of women going on such a voyage, whereas the general Makkathran population had been mildly incredulous—the male population in any case. Edeard had received a huge amount of support from the city’s womenfolk.

Skepticism about taking women, shaken heads over the prospect of repeating Captain Allard’s grand failure, more consternation from Kristabel’s endless flock of relatives concerning the cost of five such vast vessels. At times it had seemed like the only ones in favor were the Guild of Shipwrights and a horde of merchants eager to supply the flotilla. Such a dour atmosphere had lurked across Makkathran’s streets and canals from the time he announced his intention until that day three years later when the ships had been completed. Then, with the five vessels anchored outside the city, attitudes finally began to mellow into admiration and excitement. There wasn’t a quay large enough or a Port district channel deep enough to handle the Lady’s Light and her sister ships, adding to their allure. Trips around the anchored flotilla in small sailing boats were a huge and profitable venture for the city’s mariners. To lay down the keels, Edeard had even gone to the same narrow cove half a mile south of the city that Allard had used a thousand years ago to build the Majestic Marie. It all fostered a great deal of interest and civic pride. This time the circumnavigation will be a success, people believed. This is our time, our ships, our talent, and we have the Waterwalker. It probably helped that Edeard announced his intention the week after the first Skylord arrived to guide Finitan’s soul to the Heart.

Edeard prided himself that he’d held out that long. He never wanted to go back so far into his own past again. Querencia might have been saved from the nest, but the personal consequences had been too great. It had been a terrible burden to live through every day again, watching the same mistakes and failings and wasteful accidents and petty arguments and wretched politics play out once more when he already knew the solution to everything from his previous trip through the same years. Time and again he was tempted to intervene, to make things easier for everyone. But if he began, he knew there was no limit to what he could and should do once that moral constraint was broken. There would be no end to intervention; constant assistance would become meddling in the eyes of those he sought to help.

Besides, those repeated events he endured weren’t so bad for everyone else, especially since the nest hadn’t arisen this time around. People had to learn things for themselves to give them the confidence to live a better life in their own fashion. And ultimately … where would he draw the line? Stop a child from falling over and breaking an arm wouldn’t teach the child to be more careful next time, and that was a lesson that needed to be learned. Without caution, what stupidity would they do the next day?

So with the exception of preventing several murders he recalled, he restrained himself admirably. That was why he was so desperate to build the ships and sail away on a voyage that would last for years. As well as satisfying his curiosity about the unknown continents and islands of Querencia, he would be doing something different, something new and fresh.

And it had worked; the last four years had been the happiest time he’d known since he’d come back to eliminate Tathal. Kristabel had gladly responded to that, even relishing being free of the Upper Council and its endless bickering politics. They were as close now as they had been on their wedding day.

Back on the middeck Natran was the center of an excited crowd, receiving their congratulations and thanks with good-humored restraint. His little son, Kiranan, was sitting happily on his shoulders. Born on board three years ago, the lad was naturally curious about living in the big city the way Edeard and Kristabel described it to him. In total twelve children had been born on the Lady’s Light during the epic voyage, with another thirty on the other four ships. That was where things had finally, wonderfully, begun to change. Rolar and Wenalee had stayed behind to manage the Culverit estate and take Kristabel’s seat on the Upper Council; Marakas and Dylorn had also chosen to remain in Makkathran. His other children had all joined the flotilla. Jiska and Natran were married, which they hadn’t been this year before. Taralee had formed a close attachment to Colyn, a journeyman from the horticultural association who might well qualify for guild status after this voyage. But it was Marilee and Analee who had surprised and delighted him the most. He’d simply assumed the twins would stay behind and carry on partying. Instead, they’d insisted on coming. Of course, they just carried on in their own way through shipboard life, almost oblivious to the routines and conventions around them. Not long out of port, they’d claimed Marvane as their lover, a delighted, infatuated, dazed junior lieutenant, and enticed him down to their cabin each night. (Not that they needed to try very hard; his envious friends amid the flotilla swiftly named him Luckiest Man on Querencia.) It was a relationship that lasted a lot longer than their usual, for he was actually a decent, worthy man.

Little Kiranan stretched his arms out toward his grandma and squealed delightedly as Edeard’s third hand plucked him from his father’s shoulders and delivered him to Kristabel’s embrace.

“I wonder if it’s changed,” Kristabel murmured as she made a fuss over the boy.

Kiranan pointed at the horizon. “Island,” he announced. “Big home.” His mind shone with wonder and expectation.

“It’s close, poppet,” Kristabel promised.

“It won’t change,” Edeard declared solemnly. “That’s the thing with Makkathran; it’s timeless.”

Kristabel flashed him a knowing smile. “It’s changed since you arrived,” she said smartly. “Ladies in shorts, indeed.”

He smiled, glancing down. She was wearing a white cotton shirt with blue canvas shorts, her legs lean and tanned from years of exposure to the sun. “There are worse revolutions.”

“Daddy,” Marilee called as she made her way along the deck.

“We’ll be back in time,” Analee said, accompanying her sister, the two of them linking arms instinctively against the swell. Lady’s Light was making a fair speed in the warm southwesterly wind.

“Not that we don’t trust Taralee.”

“Or the ship’s surgery.”

“But it will be a comfort to be back in the mansion with all of the Doctors Guild on call.”

“Just in case.”

They grinned at him. Both of them were six months pregnant and gloriously happy despite the constant morning sickness they both suffered from. And on board that was a very public morning sickness; nobody was completely shielded from the twins’ nausea, which had brought about a lot of sympathetic barfing among the exposed crew.

“That’ll be a close call,” he said, trying to be realistic. Not that the twins had ever paid much attention to that. “Even with good winds it’ll take a month from here.”

“Oh, Daddy,”

“That’s so mean.”

“We want to have landborn children.”

“Really?” he asked. “What does Marvane want? He’s a sailor, after all.”

Marilee and Analee pulled a face at each other.

“He’s a father now.”

“And our husband.”

“Yeees,” Edeard said. Natran had married the three of them a year and a half ago. A beautiful tropical beach setting, everyone barefoot while the bright sun shone down and wavelets lapped on the white sands, the twins ecstatic as they were betrothed to their handsome fiancé. Querencia had no actual law against marrying more than one person at a time, though it certainly wasn’t endorsed in any of the Lady’s scriptures, so it had to be the senior captain rather than the flotilla’s Mother who conducted the ceremony. With Marvane’s title now irrefutable, the elated trio spent their honeymoon in a small shack the carpenters had built for them above the shore while the expedition took an uncommonly long time to catalog the flora and fauna of the island.

“So he’s going to settle with us,” Marilee announced as if it should have been obvious.

“In some little part of the Culverit estate on the Iguru.”

“Where we can raise babies and crops together.”

“Because this voyage is a lifetime’s worth of sailing.”

“For anyone.”

“And Taralee has found us some fabulous new plants to cultivate.”

“Which people are going to love.”

“And make us a fortune.”

Edeard couldn’t bring himself to say anything, though he could sense Kristabel becoming tense with all the twins’ daydream talk. But then, why shouldn’t it come true? Stranger things have happened, and as daydreams go it’s sweet. Besides, that’s what we’re all ultimately aiming for, isn’t it? An easier, gentler life. He was saved from any comment when he sensed Natran’s longtalk to the helmsman, ordering a small change of course. “Why?” he inquired idly.

“We need to identify the island,” Natran replied. “There are eight on the edge of the eastern archipelago. Once I’ve got an accurate fix, navigating home will be easy.”

“Of course.”

“Are you ready for home?” Kristabel asked quietly.

“I think so,” he said, though he knew it to be true. It’s all new from now on. Living in Makkathran again would be easy. Anticipation stirred a joy in him that had been missing for so long. He guessed she knew that, judging by the contentment glowing within her own thoughts.

“We could always go the other way around the world,” she teased. “There’s both poles to explore.”

Edeard laughed. “Let’s leave that to the grandchildren, shall we? You and I have enough to do taking up our roles again. And I think I might just consider running for Mayor at the next elections.”

The look she gave him was as if she’d never seen him before. “You never stop, do you?”

“Wonder who I learned that from, mistress?”

She grinned and cuddled Kiranan tight as the boy strained to see the city he knew was out there somewhere. “And you,” she told the boy. “You’re going to meet all your cousins.”

“Yay-oh,” Kiranan cooed.

“Who probably make up half the city’s population by now,” Edeard muttered. The rate at which Rolar and Wenalee produced offspring was prodigious, and he knew from the last time around that Marakas and Heliana were keen to get started.

“Daddy!” the twins chorused in disapproval.

“I wonder if Dylorn will be wed,” Kristabel said softly; there was a brief pang of regret—swiftly banished—at being parted from her children for so long.

“Without us there?” Analee sounded shocked.

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“You two did,” Edeard pointed out.

“That’s different.”

“We had you there.”

“Which makes it proper.”

Edeard sighed and grinned at the horizon. “Not long now. And Lady, we’re going to have the reunion party of all time.”

Makkathran appeared over the horizon just before noon on the thirty-eighth day after Manel had sighted the first eastern isle. The crew of the Lady’s Light knew it was near. Cargo ships had been a regular sighting for days, and early that morning they’d passed the outbound fishing fleet from Portheves, a village not ten miles from the city itself. Once they’d recovered from their shock, the fishermen had stood and cheered as the giant boats of the flotilla slid past.

By midmorning, they had a loose escort of a dozen traders heading toward the coastline. Good-hearted, curious longshouts from their new companions were thrown their way as they plowed through the crisp blue water. Then Makkathran emerged, its sturdy towers the first aspect to rise up over the horizon, their sharp pinnacles piercing the cloudless azure sky. A fervent rush of farsight swept out from the city to wash across the flotilla, accompanied by astonishment and a burst of exultant welcomes. Everyone was up on deck to see the city they’d left behind just over four years ago. Edeard thought the ships would just fly onward through the water even without any wind, so strong was the compulsion to make it home now. They must have been quite a sight to those in the city. Each magnificent ship had set out with three full sets of snow-white sails; now the Lady’s Light was rigged with a grubby patchwork of canvas stitched together from whatever sails remained after years of sun bleaching, storms, and frozen winters in which ice crystals hung heavy from every seam and rope. Both the Lady’s Star and the Lady’s Guidance had broad repairs of a softer tropical wood on their waterline where the coral of the Auguste Sea had breached them despite the crew’s best telekinetic efforts to snap the vicious submerged spines. Several ships had new masts to replace ones that were snapped off in various gales.

But we made it despite everything this world threw at us. Edeard grinned at Makkathran as the wondrously familiar outline of his home grew clearer. You can see that, you can see our triumph in the patches and the damage and the cargo of knowledge we’ve returned with. We’ve opened up the whole world for everyone.

Slowly, though, his grin began to fade as he took notice of the thoughts swirling among the vast districts. The city’s mental timbre had changed. For a while he was puzzled by the flashes of anger shivering beneath the surface clamor of excitement at the flotilla’s return. Then he gradually became aware of the minds grouped together outside the north gate, thousands of them. Among those bright knots of rage and resentment he could find no hint of excitement or jubilation at the flotilla’s arrival. They were completely at odds with the rest of the city.

“Uh oh,” he mumbled under his breath. His farsight reached out to see what in Honious was going on. The first thing he sensed was the militia, deployed around the gate and in long dugout formations along the road through the greensward into the encircling forest. By tradition, that area outside the city was always kept empty and uninhabited. Not anymore. Dozens of huge camps had sprung up on the meadowland, and from what he could determine, a lot of the ancient trees had been felled, presumably as fuel for the campfires.

“What is it?” Kristabel asked as he struggled to shield the dismay growing in his own mind.

“Some kind of siege, but that’s not quite it.” He grudgingly gifted her his farsight.

“Oh, Lady,” she grumbled. “Where did they come from?”

He shrugged, trying to find some kind of clue. But such a feat was beyond farsight, especially at such a distance. “We’ll find out soon enough. And then everyone will expect the Waterwalker to put it right.” He couldn’t help how martyred he sounded, not to mention self-pitying.

“Edeard.” She gently rubbed the top of his back between his shoulder blades. “Why do you always punish yourself like this?”

“Because I’m the one who always has to sort everything out. Oh, Ladycrapit, it just never stops. Every time I think I’ve got it right, someone comes along with a fresh way to foul things up.”

“Darling Edeard, you’re really far too hard on yourself.”

“No, I’m not,” he said bitterly. “It’s my responsibility. I’m responsible for this whole world. Me. No one else.”

“Don’t be silly, Edeard.” Kristabel’s voice and mind hardened. “Now, please don’t do this whole intolerable burden thing again; I had enough of it before. What’s important now is to get the twins ashore; they need to get to the mansion to give birth, poor things. Concentrate on that if you have to have something to moan about.”

“Intolerable burden thing?” he asked quietly; he could barely believe what she’d just said.

“Yes,” Kristabel said firmly, giving him an uncompromising look. “The Lady knows how impossible you’d become before we built the flotilla. That’s the main reason I agreed the estate would pay for it all. And this voyage worked, Edeard. For the Lady’s sake, you were back to normal. You were you again. Now this. We haven’t even got ashore yet, and already you’re moaning that everything’s going against you.”

Ladydamnit, you have no fucking idea! He glared at her furiously and stomped off down the deck.

“Daddy?” Jiska asked with a worried frown.

But he was in no mood to talk, not even to her.

Thousands were lining the quays and wharfs as the flotilla’s longboats made it through the great waterside opening in the city walls into the Port district. There were fifteen boats in the first batch, all of them rowed by a regulation team of ge-chimps sculpted with broad shoulders and muscular arms, so the oars fairly whizzed through the water. Edeard was on the second boat; Kristabel and Taralee had taken the twins and Marvane ahead on the first. Edeard had a fast directed longtalk to an elated Rolar, making sure a couple of family gondolas were waiting in the port to take them straight back to the ziggurat. The twins were in a great deal of discomfort, in Edeard’s belief a condition partly owing to their fixation on giving birth on land. Taralee had privately confirmed they weren’t due for another couple of days yet, though they were complaining as if their labor had begun already.

He kept company with Jiska and Natran and Manel and a half dozen officers and their wives and children; it was a merry group, all of whom were waving frantically at the cheering crowds. Except him; he simply couldn’t summon the enthusiasm and sat at the back of the longboat in a private sulk.

“By the Lady, we’d given up on you at least a couple of years back,” Macsen’s directed longtalk declared. “Did you walk around the world instead? It’s taken you forever.”

Finally, Edeard consented to a grin. There was his friend standing at the head of the very hastily assembled official welcoming committee of Grand Councillors, district representatives, officials, and family. A huge group of them squashed onto Wharf One, anxious that no one should move about too much lest those on the front rank topple into the sea. They’d dressed in their most colorful and expensive robes, though the strong sea breeze blew their hair and hems about in an undignified manor. Macsen and Dinlay were at the forefront, of course, waving wildly. Dinlay had one arm around a tall, powerfully built girl. Edeard didn’t care that he didn’t know her. It wasn’t Gealee, which was all that truly mattered. His gaze switched to Macsen, who was by himself. The master of Sampalok had put on a disturbing amount of weight over the intervening years.

However, standing beside Macsen was Doblek, master of Drupe. It was he who wore the Mayor’s robes.

That’s different, Edeard mused. Before, it was Trahaval who was Mayor at this time. He tried to convince himself that was a good thing even though he remembered Doblek as a mildly inadequate district master who admired the old traditions. Not a reformer, by any means.

The longboat reached Wharf One. Once the dock handlers had secured them, Edeard made his way up the wooden steps to mounting roars of approval from the waiting crowds. It was an invigorating sound, sending the timid seabirds wheeling still higher above the Port district. Just like the banishment, but without the violence and turmoil.

Not too grudgingly, Edeard raised an appreciative hand and grinned back at everyone on the docks who was producing such an effusive greeting.

“Waterwalker!” Mayor Doblek opened both arms wide and stepped forward to embrace Edeard. “This is a joyful day. Welcome, yes, welcome back. Did you really voyage around the whole world?”

The city quieted slightly, hanging on to the Mayor’s gifting, awaiting the answer.

“We did,” Edeard announced solemnly, but he couldn’t help the smile widening his lips.

The cheering began again.

Edeard disengaged himself from the Mayor’s clutches, turning slightly. “Mayor, I think you know my senior captain, Natran. And my daughter Jiska.”

“Of course.” The Mayor moved along the line of arrivals, delighted with more official duty, keeping himself firmly at the forefront of public attention.

“It’s crazy good, Granpa,” little Kiranan said, clinging to Edeard’s leg while his parents were swamped by the Mayor.

“What is?” Edeard asked.

“The city. Is this everyone in the whole world?”

Edeard hadn’t thought of that. Kiranan had never known anyone other than the crews in the flotilla; now he was confronted by the city’s jubilant population. Small wonder he was more subdued than usual. “Not even close,” Edeard assured the boy. He pushed his farsight out to the smaller wharf on the other side of the port entrance, where Kristabel and the twins were transferring to the family gondolas. Rolar was embracing his mother, and a host of grandchildren were jumping about excitedly, threatening to capsize the glossy black boat. Burlal wasn’t among them. Edeard was nonplussed by that. Instead of his young grandson, a little girl was cavorting around Rolar and Wenalee, maybe five months younger than the boy he was expecting to see. It wasn’t something he’d considered, that with this world diverging from what had gone before, his own grandchildren might be different. He knew now he should have been prepared for it. For a start, he’d been blessed with Kiranan, as well as the twins’ pregnancy, neither of which events had gone before. But he’d really loved little Burlal; the boy was such a gem. He gave the girl sharp scrutiny, which she responded to with a start; then she looked back at him across the water before burying herself in Wenalee’s skirts.

“So who’s this, then?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard’s smile returned in a weaker form. No Burlal? Edeard was still thinking. Lady, but he didn’t deserve oblivion like Tathal. That’s not right, not right at all. “This is my new grandson, Kiranan,” he managed to say levelly as he ruffled the lad’s hair.

“Granpa!” The boy twisted away. “You’re Dinlay. You were shot once. Granpa has told me all about you.”

“Has he, now? Well, you come and see me one day, and I’ll tell you about him. Everything he thinks you shouldn’t know.”

“Really? Promise?” The boy looked up admiringly at his new friend.

“Promise on the Lady.”

“Welcome home, Edeard,” Macsen said, and took Edeard’s hand warmly.

“So where’s Kanseen?” Edeard asked.

Macsen’s wide smile froze. “We called it a day,” he said with what was an attempt to maintain a jovial attitude. “Best for both of us.”

“No! I’m … sorry to hear that.” Lady, you can’t do this to me. They were still together before.

“She said she’ll see you later.”

“Okay, then.”

“And this is Hilitte,” Dinlay said proudly, ushering the tall girl forward. “We’ve been wed these last seven months.”

This bit was easy. Edeard had done this many many times, every time he had begun again. So yet again and as always he kept a composed face and smiled politely as he held out his hand to the robust girl. “Congratulations.” No disapproval shown, no surprise at her youth (younger than Jiska, easily), no confusion at the somehow familiar features smiling coquettishly back at him.

Macsen moved behind him, his mouth brushing past Edeard’s ear as if by chance. “Nanitte’s daughter,” he whispered.

Edeard coughed, hoping to Honious he was covering his shock.

“Thank you, Waterwalker,” she said in a husky voice—yes, definitely similar to that of her mother. And that coquettish smile deepened, becoming coy, appraising.

Edeard quickly turned back to Macsen. “Lady, it’s good to be back.”

“So you really went the whole way around the world?” Dinlay asked.

“We certainly did. Ah, the stories I have to tell you.”

“And?”

Edeard knew exactly what the question was. “There’s only us. No one else.”

Dinlay’s disappointment was all the more prominent amid the rejoicing inflaming the city. “Ah, well,” he sighed.

“What’s going on outside the North Gate?” Edeard asked.

“Those bastards—” Macsen began.

“Macsen,” Dinlay said awkwardly. “The Waterwalker hasn’t even seen his family yet after four years. We’ve held the peace for this long; we can wait a day more. Edeard, it’s nothing to worry about. We have the situation under control.”

Macsen gave a reluctant nod. “Of course. I’m sorry, old friend. This is wrong of me. There’s so much I want to hear about.”

“And by the Lady, you shall,” Edeard promised.

It was several days before Edeard found the time to meet privately with his old friends. The first two days were spent happily enough greeting his family and getting to know the latest additions; then, for one day, he was banished to a lounge on the ninth floor of the ziggurat with the other senior males of the family, to feel worthless and faintly guilty while Taralee, two midwifes, several Novices, Kristabel, and even Marvane helped the twins give birth. For once they didn’t synchronize perfectly; Marilee gave birth to her two daughters a good five hours before Analee produced a son and a daughter. After that, of course, was the formal Culverit tradition of the arrival breakfast, where an overwhelmed Marvane sat in a daze receiving congratulations from his new family.

Lunchtime on the fourth day after the flotilla arrived back saw Edeard take a gondola down to Sampalok. He walked along Mislore Avenue to the square at the center of the district. Every building he passed was occupied. No matter how small or awkward, every cluster of rooms had someone living there: bachelor, bachelorette, couple, small young family, stubborn old widower or widow. There was nothing left for any newcomer.

At the end of the avenue the six-sided mansion was a welcome sight. He always felt a mild satisfaction every time he saw it, something he’d created, something oddly reassuring.

This time, the square around it had none of the makeshift camps of stopover visitors awaiting guidance. It was back to a pre-Skylord normality, with Sampalok residents strolling around the fountains while kids played football and hoop chase in the sunshine. Stalls on either side of Burfol Street were doing a good trade in sugared fruits and cool drinks.

People smiled graciously at the Waterwalker in his customary black cloak. Once there was a time when he would have welcomed such a greeting from the citizens of Sampalok; now he found it hard to return those smiles. But I’m being unfair. It’s not just this district that’s to blame.

He went into the mansion via the archway on the lavender-shaded wall and hurried up the stairs to the fifth floor, where Macsen had his private study. It was a simple room opening onto a balcony. Today the tall windows were shut. The desk was covered in leather folders, often with the ribbons untied to let the papers spill out; the tables were also piled high, as were various shelves and cabinets. Some of the chairs were also pedestals for the chaotic paperwork. It used to be an immaculately tidy room, Edeard reflected. As if reading his thoughts directly, Macsen gave a conciliatory grin as he got to his feet. “Before you ask: Yes, it has only got like this since she left.”

Edeard eyed the food (or wine) stains down Macsen’s shirt but said nothing. Some of the chairs already filled with paperwork had cloaks and robes draped over them. “Something that big will take a while to adjust to,” he said diplomatically.

“Have you seen her?”

“No. Not yet. Kristabel visited her last night.”

Macsen shook his head and sank back into the chair behind the desk. “She doesn’t even live in Sampalok anymore.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“Oh, Lady, no. She said I was losing my focus or drive or something; the usual rubbish women spout. You know what they’re like. Nothing I did was ever right.”

“Yeah, I know what they’re like.”

“What? Even Kristabel?” Macsen seemed pathetically eager for confirmation, to know he wasn’t alone in his suffering.

“Especially Kristabel,” Edeard assured him, wishing he was being completely dishonest. But … Lady, she’s changed since we got back. And it’s all supposedly my fault.

Macsen picked up a crystal decanter and poured out some of the double-blended spirits the Rassien estate was famous for. He squinted at the golden brown liquid as it swirled around the tumbler, then swallowed it in one go. The decanter was held out to Edeard.

“No thanks.”

“You pity me, don’t you?” Macsen burped loudly.

Oh, Great Lady, I don’t need this. Not on top of everything else. “I don’t pity you. I’d like the old you back, but I’m prepared to wait.”

“Oh, Edeard, how I wish we’d gone with you. None of this would’ve happened. No Our City movement, no Doblek winning the election, none of the squalid blockade camps.”

“I heard they call themselves Our City; Rolar told me. Of course, I sensed the camps and the militia as soon as we reached port.”

“The militia has to be there to keep the peace. I even voted in favor of Doblek’s proposal to deploy them, may the Lady forgive me. There was no choice, Edeard. We were facing citywide riots, possibly a massacre worse than anything Buate ever planned. Ilongo had endured two days of anarchy after Our City prevented the stopovers from using any of the free housing. What else could we do?”

“You did the right thing,” Edeard assured him. “You acted to save lives. That’s what we always did; that’s what we’ll always do.”

“What’s happening to the world, Edeard? Didn’t we do enough, saving it from Bise and Owain and the bandits? I tell you, in the Lady’s name the Skylords will stop coming if we don’t mend our ways, Edeard. I know it.” He reached for the decanter again, only to find Edeard’s third hand clamped firmly around it.

“Dinlay will be here soon,” Edeard said. “We’ll talk about the blockade and Our City then.” His farsight already had identified Dinlay walking across the square outside the mansion. “So tell me, do you both still attend the Upper Council?”

Macsen shook his head, on the verge of tears. “Jamico has been going on my behalf this past half year. I couldn’t face it anymore after the vote for the regiment. He’s a good man, and I’m proud to be his father. He’ll do better than I ever did.” His hand swept around in an expansive gesture. “I try and keep up with the petitions, Edeard, really I do, but people expect so much. I am not Rah, but they don’t understand that. They whisper I’m turning my back on them as Bise did. Can you imagine that? To be accused in such a fashion? There’s nothing I can do to stop the insidious, malicious, vicious whispers. It’s Bise’s old people behind it, you know. I’m sure of it.”

Edeard wanted to use his third hand to haul Dinlay through the air to the study’s balcony. Anything to break up this bitter tirade of self-loathing. “Dinlay’s almost here. Speaking of whom …”

“Ha!” Macsen managed half a smile as he shook his head. “You saw her. Exactly the same as all the others. Edeard, I swear on the Lady that somewhere out in the provinces there’s a secret guild that just keeps using the same mold to produce them. How else does he find so many of them?”

Edeard smiled. “A Dinlay-wife-sculpting guild. I like it. But Nanitte’s daughter …?”

“Aye! Ladydamn. I knew it the minute I saw her; she didn’t even have to tell me who she was. It triggered all those memories, the ones I’d tried so hard to forget. Then she claimed she and her mother quarreled incessantly and she couldn’t stand living at home anymore, so she spent the last four years on the road before she came here. Viewing the world, she claims. You know, I was one of the first people she came to. She said her mother had given her the names of people in the city who would help her if she ever got here. Not much of a quarrel, then, eh? I bet the bitch sent her here to ruin us all.”

“Knowing Nanitte, more than likely.” Edeard checked again. Dinlay was through the archway in the dappled gray wall, asking a servant where the master of Sampalok was. “Where did Nanitte make her home eventually?”

“She worked her witch magic on some poor rich bastard in Obershire, apparently. He married her a month after she arrived, and they live in a fine house on a big farming estate.”

“Good for her,” Edeard muttered.

Macsen snorted in contempt.

“But don’t you see?” Edeard responded. “She’s changed. She’s become a part of our society. It’s an acknowledgment we are the right way forward for us all. A timely reminder we mustn’t falter, if you ask me.”

“Whatever,” Macsen said wearily. “Anyway, it took Dinlay all of half a minute to fall head over heels for the daughter. As usual.”

“Well, maybe this time he’ll get it right. He’s certainly had enough practice.”

“Not a Ladydamned chance.”

Edeard remembered the flirtatious smile Hilitte had bestowed on him as they met. Macsen’s right; the omens aren’t good.

Dinlay opened the door, giving Macsen a cautious look.

“Good to see you,” Edeard said, and gave his friend a warm hug.

Dinlay returned the embrace, contentment and relief apparent in his mind. “We really were starting to get worried, you know.”

“I know, and I thank you for that concern. But it’s a big world out there, and we know so little of it. Honestly, the sights I have seen …”

“Really? Tell us!”

“There were huge rock creatures in the southern seas like coral islands that float. I even stood on one. And trees! Lady, the trees on Parath—a whole continent on the other side of Querencia—I swear they were the same height as the tallest tower in Eyrie. And the animals we found. Have you seen the ones we brought back? They were just the small ones. There was something on Maraca, the continent beyond Parath, that was the size of a house. It had blue skin and skulked about in swamps. The jungles, too! Around the equator on Maraca they make Charyau’s temperature look like a mild winter; they’re like steam baths.”

“You’ve never been to Charyau,” Macsen accused.

“But Natran has,” Edeard countered. “And he gifted me the memories.”

“Lady, I wish I’d come with you,” a wistful Dinlay declared.

“I’ve already said that,” Macsen grumbled. “See what happens when you leave us in charge?”

“We’re hardly to blame,” Dinlay said hotly.

Edeard and Dinlay exchanged a private look. “All right,” Edeard sighed. “Tell me what’s been happening in my city.”

The Our City movement had begun soon after the flotilla departed, Dinlay explained. Some argument in Tosella had sparked it off, apparently. A newlywed couple had found themselves a cluster of empty rooms in a big mansion between the Blue Tower and Hidden Canal. The rooms were up in the eaves and had odd split-level floors with a rolling step, which was why they’d never been claimed. However, there was a good-size room at one end where the man could set up his jewelry workshop. But they didn’t register their residency until after the wedding, as was traditional in Makkathran. That was when the trouble started. They came back from their honeymoon and found that a stopover family had moved in.

“Temporary,” Macsen grunted. “That’s all. Two brothers had brought their mother from Fandine province to Makkathran for a Skylord’s guidance. She was arthritic and was succumbing to the onset of dementia. They just missed one Skylord by a week, and there were no approaching Skylords sighted by the Astronomy Guild, so it was probably going to be several months until the next one arrived. In the meantime, the brothers couldn’t afford to rent a tavern room for that long or take one in the new inns out in the villages. The empty rooms were a logical solution.”

“The newlyweds told them to get out,” Dinlay said. “At which point one of the sons went and registered their residency claim with the Board of Occupancy at the Courts of Justice. As they’d lived in the rooms for the required two days and two nights, they were entitled.”

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard moaned. He knew how this tale was going to unfold. There had always been resentment at the number of stopover visitors. He and Mayor Trahaval had talked about the problem before he’d confronted the nest. There hadn’t been an immediate solution, though the inns being built in the coastal towns and out on the Iguru had seemed like a solution that ultimately would solve everything. It was only by the grace of the Lady that there hadn’t been an “incident” like this one back then.

“The jeweler and his new bride both had large families, and they were well connected,” Dinlay continued. “Worse, no other empty cluster of rooms would do—for the newlyweds or the stopover brothers. It had to be this one. So the couple made their stand: Makkathran buildings for Makkathran citizens. It was a popular cause. The stopover brothers and their mother were forcefully evicted. By the time the constables arrived, they were already out on the street and in need of hospital treatment from a beating. The newlyweds were installed along with their furniture, and a huge crowd of their relatives blocked the entrance to the mansion. Not that they really needed to; the constables who arrived on the scene weren’t entirely unsympathetic. All they did was cart off the brothers and their mother.

“That might have been the end of it. But legally the rooms were registered to the brothers. So the newlyweds brought in legal help to revoke the residency and make it their own.”

Edeard closed his eyes in anguish. “Please! Lady, no, not him.”

“Oh, yes,” Macsen said with vicious delight. “Master Cherix took the case.”

Because the couple, legally, were unequivocally in the wrong and everyone knew it, all Cherix could do in court was fight a holding action. A registration of occupancy could be overturned only by an order of the Grand Council. In order to get that, the legal case had to become a political campaign. The Our City movement was born four weeks before the elections. Mayor Trahaval was strictly in favor of existing law and order, as espoused by the Waterwalker, as he was fond of repeating at every speech. Doblek, up until then a simple formality opposition candidate, chose to support Our City. He won a landslide majority, as did a host of Our City representatives.

The Our City movement was something its members took very seriously. By the end of the first week every single vacant space in every building in Makkathran was occupied and registered by one of their own. And the visitors arriving with their dying relatives had nowhere to stay; like the brothers before them, most couldn’t afford the inns for what might be months. It all came to a head in Ilongo a week after Doblek was sworn in at the Orchard Palace. Some newly arrived visitors, outraged at being told they couldn’t stay in the city where their dearly beloved were due to be guided from, tried to squat in some of Ilongo’s central mansions. There were riots that the constables alone couldn’t quell, not that they tried particularly hard. That was when Doblek acted with impressive resolution, ordering the militia in to stamp down hard on the disturbance.

From that day on, anyone who came to Makkathran to be guided by a Skylord and couldn’t afford a tavern room was prevented from passing through the city gates until a day before the great event, when the Lady’s Mothers organized their passage up the towers. Even then, relatives who’d been camping outside were discouraged from accompanying them to Eyrie.

“Doblek really thought he was emulating you on the day of banishment,” Macsen said. “Throwing them all out and forbidding them to come back was what you did to Bise and the rest. And enough stupid people think the same; they applaud how tough he was.”

“I’m surprised he had the courage to suggest such a thing,” Edeard said. “That’s not the Doblek I remember.”

“Power changes people,” Dinlay said simply, giving Macsen a sharp look. “And necessity. What else could he do?”

Edeard realized this was an old argument between his friends.

“I could accept that if he’d made any attempt to alter things since then,” Macsen said. “But he hasn’t. He doesn’t know what to do, and more people are arriving each day. Did you know we’ve only just started getting our first visitors from the most distant provinces? And I include Rulan in that.”

“Cheap,” Dinlay muttered.

“Not really. The volume of people coming here is still rising. Doblek has done nothing to address that. Nothing! He had to deploy another militia troop to safeguard the route into Makkathran. The people he’d forced outside were starting to waylay merchant carts and caravans. So now we have a permanent presence of militia extending well out into the Iguru, and the stopover camps are hacking down the forests outside for fuel. You know those trees were planted by Rah and the Lady themselves.”

“The area circling Makkathran was designated a forest zone by Rah,” Dinlay said wearily. “He didn’t go around planting seeds himself; that’s One City propaganda.”

“Whatever,” Macsen said. “The problem is Doblek’s actions, or rather lack of them. What does he think is going to happen, that it’ll all sort itself out? And Edeard, we’ve heard rumors that the Fandine militia is on the march through Plax.”

Edeard gave Macsen a puzzled look. “Why?”

“Because we’ve used our militia against their citizens. They’re claiming the right of protection.”

“Oh, Great Lady!”

“It’s the distance,” Dinlay said. “That’s our trouble. Rumor grows with each mile. A report of what was a grazed arm and a bloody nose in Makkathran has become some kind of mass murder of innocents by the time it reaches Fandine.”

“So is it true about the Fandine militia, then?”

“General Larose sent fast scouts out last week. We’ll know soon enough.”

“Militias fighting on the Iguru,” Edeard muttered in disbelief. The loss of life during the last campaign against the bandits had appalled him. He’d thought such horror had ended then. It certainly couldn’t be allowed to happen again; he had never forgotten the carnage Owain had unleashed. “I must speak with Doblek.”

“To what end?” Macsen asked. “You think he’ll back down and order the militia back inside the gate?”

“He was elected courtesy of Our City,” Dinlay said. “He’ll never go against the cause that put him in the Orchard Palace.”

Edeard briefly thought about using domination. He’d learned enough of that technique from Tathal and the nest in those last few seconds to change anyone’s mind for them. But the Mayor was only one man; it would only solve the immediate problem—that was if there even was a Fandine militia marching on the city with revenge in mind. It was the whole situation that had to be calmed—a situation the Skylords had created. And how’s that for irony?

He recalled the meeting he’d had with Macsen and Kanseen just after Dinlay had returned from his honeymoon with Gealee. At that point Mayor Trahaval had come nowhere close to finding a solution to the massive influx of people awaiting guidance. Edeard had told the others he’d try to find out why the Skylords would accept people only from Eyrie’s towers. But there’d never been time to ask them before his final confrontation with the nest, and this time around he’d never bothered. Such things had been abandoned in favor of the voyage.

If I can get the Skylords to visit other towns on Querencia, then this will all just go away. In the meantime he had to do something about the stopover refugees outside North Gate. All that animosity on both sides is going to corrode the fulfillment which the Skylords judge us by.

“All right,” Edeard said. “Just how intractable is Our City?”

“It’s a one-cause movement, which means they simply can’t be moderate,” Dinlay said. “There will never be any kind of compromise with them, so if you’re going to take them on, it will have to be a direct election and you change the law after you’re Mayor.”

“Sounds drastic.” Edeard sucked in his cheeks. “I’d better go take a look for myself, then.”

———

Our City had, appropriately enough, set up its headquarters in Ilongo. Dinlay had told Edeard with grudging admiration how their political ability had grown since their hurried formation. Eight of the current district representatives had stood on the Our City ticket, forming a powerful bloc in the Council. But their greatest influence over the lives of citizens came directly from the residency issue. If you were a Makkathran native searching for somewhere new to live, you had to ask Our City for its cooperation. Now that their members had legal occupancy of every previously vacant room and dwelling, they were the ones who had to relinquish their claim before someone else could move in. Only when they’d confirmed you were a genuine born-in-the-city applicant would one of their members vacate the place you wanted. In effect, Our City now controlled who lived where. And as with all political parties, they traded advantage and made deals with rivals and other groups in the Council and down on the streets and canals, insinuating themselves deeper and deeper into the city’s political structure.

Edeard walked into the Ilongo district from a gondola platform on North Curve Canal. The narrow streets in the center were a notorious maze: Most of the district was composed of boxy buildings with walls at quite sharp angles, creating alleys of narrow tunnels with only a slim line of sky visible along the apex. Streets opened into unexpected squares that were like wells of light amid the overhanging walls; fountains bubbled away cheerfully as if to celebrate the sudden glare of the sun.

It was the first Makkathran district he’d ever walked through, he remembered, he and Salrana gazing in delight at the weird buildings and more than a little nervous at the sheer number of people walking through the narrow streets and passageways. They’d pressed together for comfort and maybe just to enjoy each other, believing strongly in the future they’d have together.

He jammed his teeth together, hating the memory, hating that despite everything he could do, so much had gone wrong. That young happy Salrana was lost now, gone beyond his ability to recover. As was dear little Burlal. Unless of course I go back far enough and repeat the Weapons Guild atrocity deep below Spiral Tower. Even then, it would save only Salrana. Burlal would never be born into the world that would emerge from that.

It’s no good, I can only ever save one, even if I could bring myself to confront a living Owain again. I can only ever go forward.

Unless, he acknowledged darkly, he lived both lives. Went back and saved Salrana from Ranalee and herself and lived that life until it was time for Salrana to be guided to Odin’s Sea. Then, at the very last moment, instead of accepting guidance for himself, dive back to the time when Burlal was alive and somehow defeat Tathal another way.

Useless, he acknowledged in anguish. There is no way to defeat Tathal other than the way it’s already been done. I spent years trying. Burlal is truly beyond my reach now. My poor gorgeous grandchild.

And worse, attempting such a rescue would banish Kiranan into nothingness, along with the twins’ new babes. Unless I live this life first, then– Oh, sweet Lady, why did you ever curse me with this gift!

He came out into Rainbow Square, named after the seven walls, each with its furlike growth of moss. The actual surface was porous, weeping a steady trickle of moisture, like a sponge being squeezed. Vivid emerald moss thrived in such an ambience, its perpetually damp fronds tipped by tiny droplets that glistened brightly under the sunlight boring down the center of the square, creating a prismatic haze.

Unlike the rest of Ilongo’s crowded streets, this was empty. The Waterwalker’s black cloak stirred in agitation as he waited in front of the tallest building. Its wall leaned back away from him; in the middle was an arching double door of some ancient black wood. A smaller inset door opened.

The leadership of Our City emerged slowly. They were nervous about the Waterwalker, some of them old enough to remember the city’s power he had wielded on the great day of banishment. One of them no doubt full of poison about the Waterwalker’s malice and iniquity.

“Oh, Ladycrapit.” Edeard groaned softly at the sight of the man who was first out of the door. Dinlay had never warned him.

Vintico gave the Waterwalker a defiant stare. He was a lanky man with his mother’s eyes. Edeard might have guessed that Salrana would somehow get herself ensnared in this debacle.

There were about twenty people crowding into Rainbow Square behind Vintico, all of them staring directly at him, curious and nervous but determined, too, resolute that their advantage and position would not be taken from them by the Waterwalker, the epitome of “old” Makkathran.

Edeard addressed them all, remaining calm and quiet, demonstrating how reasonable he was. “This has to stop,” he said. “People are suffering outside the city wall. That cannot be right.”

“No, indeed, it isn’t right,” Vintico said, with murmurs of approval goading him on. “Why should good Makkathran families who followed Rah himself out of the chaos be denied a place to live? We have rights, too. When do we ever hear of those being spoken by you and your cronies on the Council, eh?”

“The Lady herself has brought us to this time when the citizens of this world are fulfilled. They must be guided to the Heart by the Skylords. This is not in dispute.”

“We don’t dispute it,” Vintico said. “We simply ask to be allowed to reach our fulfillment. How can that happen when our families are wandering the cold streets without a roof over their heads? Do you think that enriches them, eh, Waterwalker? Does that make them fulfilled?”

Edeard nodded in understanding even as he was reminded of something Finitan had said to him once in an unguarded moment: “Most people who have failed miserably in life itself have one last resort left available to them. They become politicians.” Now Edeard began to appreciate what he’d meant. “I understand your frustration,” he said. “But resolving such a massive problem to everyone’s satisfaction will take time. Something like communal way stations has to be built.”

“Then build them,” Vintico said. “Leave us to get on with our lives.”

“It would all go a lot easier if you could help overcome the short-term problems. Come, we know this is going to be a difficult time. I will speak with the next Skylord who comes to Querencia and ask if they can guide souls from other places, not just the towers of Eyrie. I will also lobby the Mayor for a large building enterprise outside the city. Together we can overcome this.”

“Then join us,” Vintico said. “We would be happy to accept you. And you would be showing your approval of us.”

“You’re too insular,” Edeard told him. “I can see that. Everything Our City embraces is a rejection of others. You must look outward, be welcoming. Closing yourself off like this, pushing the problem onto others, achieves nothing but antagonism and conflict. What kind of world will that build?”

Vintico grinned maliciously, a bad humor that rippled through the clique in the square. “You mean we must become like you? Join you? Acknowledge your way as the right way?”

“It’s not like that, not about ‘ways.’ True life is the understanding and support of other people, of selflessness, of charity, of kindness.”

“Of being abused and exploited, you mean,” Vintico replied. “That’s what’s happened to Makkathran. We were being overrun by these parasites; they threw our hospitality and welcome back in our faces. Well, no more! We will not give up our claim on our city; our birthright is absolute. And soon everyone will join us in our goal.” His voice and longtalk rose, summoning up support from his audience, who shouted agreement.

Edeard stared at the man’s stubborn expression, examining the minds glimmering angrily across the square around him, discovering the strength of resolution behind the words. Vintico meant everything he said. There would be no persuading them, no deal to broker, no halfway accommodation. Even for a novice politician, that was odd. He gave Vintico a shrewd examination, wondering just how he’d come by so much confidence. “Why would everyone join Our City?”

There was the smallest flash of triumph shimmering through Vintico’s mental shield. “You’ll see. Even you will have to help defend our rights.”

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard murmured barely audibly as he realized what Vintico had to mean. “The Fandine militia is coming, isn’t it?”

Vintico sneered. “Not just them. The Colshire regiment is marching against us, as is the Bural. Three provinces seek to attack Makkathran. You will have to decide which side you’re on, Waterwalker. Ours or theirs, which is it to be?”

A grimace of pain crossed Edeard’s face. Those closest to him took a nervous half step backward as a terrible anger rose through his mind, spitting out flares of misery and depression that made flesh judder and tenacity waver in even the most stalwart in the square.

“In the Lady’s name, what do you want from me?” Edeard yelled furiously. They were backing off fast now. “Every time, every Honious-fucking time I do whatever I can to make things right, this is what happens. Every time, something or someone comes out of the darkness to screw things up.”

Vintico’s mouth twitched uncertainly. “Waterwalker, we simply wish that our own children have the chance to—”

“Shut! UP!” Edeard bellowed. “I have lost my grandchild to bring you this world today. My beautiful lovely little boy who brought no misery and suffering. Unlike you and your wretched kind who generate nothing else. I unmade him to give you a chance. And now I must do it again, because clearly I’m not allowed to go off voyaging around the world. Because when I do, you appear and ruin what peace and hope there is. The militias can’t be stopped now that they’re on the march, just as you oh so cleverly intended. They have to be stopped before they leave, have to be stopped from leaving; in fact, they must never have a reason for leaving. And the only way to do that is prevent your Lady-damned Our City from being formed. Do you understand what that means, you piece of shit? They have been born but two days! Why should I unmake them for you? Eh? Answer me that? Why should I just not exterminate every one of you here and now? That would have the same result. They’ll never be born again, for sure as a genistar shits in the forest, that voyage won’t happen next time around because I can’t leave Makkathran before the stopover problem is solved. So they’ll never meet Marvane, and he’ll never be crowned Luckiest Man. Will he?”

Vintico took a defiant step forward even though he didn’t understand what was being said to him. “You can never exterminate all of us. Together we are strong.” To prove it, the minds of those in the square began to combine their telekinesis, strengthening a broad shield to ward off whatever terror the Waterwalker would unleash.

“Yeah,” Edeard barked. “Don’t I fucking know it.” With a final snarl of anguish he reached back for a memory—

—to land on the ground at the foot of the Eyrie tower. The crowd exclaimed in admiration; several people applauded. More cheered at the resurgence of the Waterwalker.

He stared around in a daze. It was as if the sights and sensations of the city were muted somehow, as if this time lacked the solidity of true life. I don’t take part in life anymore. I just respond to the old events as I believe I ought. What kind of existence is this?

Kristabel scowled at the flamboyant display of his ability.

“Daddy,” Marilee scolded.

“That was so bad.”

“Teach us how to do that.”

He gave the twins a weary look. They had never looked happier than holding their babes barely a day ago in his own personal time. Now that is never to happen, not even if I engineer a meeting with Marvane for them. “The Skylord comes,” he told them dully, hoping that would be enough to silence them for a while. It always had before.

Out across the Lyot Sea the massive shimmering bulk of the Skylord had risen above the horizon. Far above, on the tower platform, Finitan’s astonishment at the arrival was echoed by the whole city. Awe turned to trepidation as the size of the Skylord became apparent to everyone.

So no voyage, he mused as the great creature flew effortlessly above the choppy sea. And Kristabel said I had become almost intolerable at this point. So now, instead of alleviating that with the voyage, I must do something about the mass of stopover visitors. Lady, please understand, I cannot take much more sacrifice in my life. Truly, I cannot.

The Delivery Man spent the flight accessing what information the smartcore had on the Anomine. There wasn’t much. They were an advanced race who had traveled along the standard evolutionary development route for biological species, zipping from agricultural age to industrial age right up to a benign civilization with FTL starflight and a kind of cellular-based replicator technology that meshed with their own forms. That development allowed for a lot of diversification before their various blocs and genealogies eventually reunited and they elevated themselves to postphysical status. From the small snippets of true history the navy expeditions had uncovered, it seemed that the trigger factor for reunification was the threat posed by the Prime.

Sitting in the antique styling of the Last Throw’s cabin with an uncommunicative Gore, the Delivery Man couldn’t help but wonder if the Anomine had found the Prime a little too much like looking into a mirror for comfort. Bodies that had merged into machinery? Albeit the Prime capability was set at a more primitive level. There but for the grace of God go I, grace in this case being the Prime’s biogenetically embedded xenophobia. The Anomine were only too well aware of what would happen if the paranoid, aggressive, and heavily armed Prime ever escaped their home star system, as they were already attempting in slower-than-light starships. Their concerns were vindicated by their observation of the first Prime ships to reach the existing civilization of the closest star system, Dyson Beta. The peaceful aliens of that world never stood a chance.

Within ten years of the genocidal invasion, the Anomine had thrown up force field barriers around the stars humans came to know as the Dyson Pair. Where the Dark Fortress generators had come from—indigenous construction or borrowed from the Raiel—was a point still much argued over by a small specialist section of human academia. But it was that effort which had brought the diverse Anomine back together. Barely a hundred fifty years after the barriers went up, the majority of the Anomine went postphysical.

“There’s nothing about the elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man said as the Last Throw streaked toward the Anomine star at fifty-five light-years an hour. They were fifteen minutes out, and the starship’s sensors were starting to obtain high-resolution scans of the system with all its planets.

“Classified,” Gore replied smartly. “Some aspects of government never change no matter how benevolent and transparent they strive to be. Secrecy is like oxygen to politicians and defense forces; there’s always got to be some of it to keep them going.”

“But you’ve got the files, right?”

“I’ve accessed the summaries.”

The Delivery Man gave Gore a suspicious look. “I thought you had this all planned out.”

“I do, sonny, so stop with the panicking.”

“Have you got those summaries?”

“Not actually with us here today, no, but I remember most of the critical stuff.”

“But … You do know how to get it working again, don’t you? You said that.”

“I said that we think it’s intact.”

“No!” The Delivery Man sat forward abruptly, almost ready to fly out of the chair and go nose to nose with Gore. “No, no, you said, and I quote, they went postphysical and left their elevation mechanism behind.”

“Well, obviously they didn’t take the fucker with them.” Gore gave a chirpy grin. “If you’re postphysical, you can’t, because the mechanism is physical. We saw that with the Skoloskie; their mechanism was still there rusting away on their abandoned homeworld. Same goes for the Fallror. It’s what happens. Jeezus, relax, will you; you’re acting like a prom virgin who’s made it to the motel room.”

“But. You. The. Oh, shit! Tell me the navy has seen the Anomine mechanism; tell me you know it’s on their homeworld.”

“The navy exploration parties that did manage to get through communicated with the old-style Anomine left on the planet. They had legends of their ancestral cousins leaving. The legends are quite specific about that; they departed the homeworld itself. QED, that’s where the mechanism must be.”

“You don’t know! I trusted you! Ozziedamnit. I could be making progress; I could have opened the Sol barrier by now.”

“Son, Marius would have shredded you like a puppy stuffed into a food blender if I’d let you go off after him. You’re good at what you do, delivering stuff to my agents and the odd bit of observation work. That’s why I recruited you, because everyone knows you’re basically harmless, which puts you above suspicion. Face it, you’ve just not got the killer instinct.”

“My family is trapped back there. I would do anything—”

“Which has made you angry, yes, which is driving you on. But that’s bad for you. It would mean there comes a point where you hesitate or get a nasty dose of doubt and remorse and decency when you were sawing off Marius’s fingers and making him eat them.”

The Delivery Man wrinkled his nose up in revulsion. “I wasn’t going to—”

“Son, you just said you’d do anything. And that would be the least of it. These people don’t roll over because you ask them nice. You’d have to strap Marius down on the dungeon table and make him tell you how to take down the barrier. And I’ll lay you good odds the only person who can actually deactivate the barrier is Ilanthe, and she’s not available. No. The only way for you to achieve anything right now is by helping me. So will you please stop the fuck whining and let me work out how to find the mechanism.”

“Crap!” The Delivery Man slumped back down, furious at being taken in again and even more furious that Gore was right. Somewhere in his mind was an image of himself threatening Marius, maybe firing a jelly gun close to his head, which would make anyone capitulate. Right? He shook his head, feeling foolish. Then he gave Gore a sharp look. “Wait a minute. You said the ones that got through.”

“What?” Gore paid him little attention. His eyes were closed as he lounged back in his orange shell chair, analyzing the smartcore’s data.

“The navy exploration ships that came here. You said some got through?” There was no reply. The Delivery Man requested the raw sensor data, building up a coherent image of what they were approaching. The star’s cometary halo seemed to have active stations of some kind drifting through it, large stations with force fields protecting them from a detailed scan.

“Oh, yeah, them,” Gore said eventually. “The borderguards are a good security team. They’re left over from the last of the high-technology-era Anomine, and they don’t like anyone contaminating the old homeworld.”

“The whats?” It didn’t sound good, not at all. But Gore never had time to answer him. That was when the Last Throw dropped out of ultradrive, and the smartcore was showing him an image of the borderguard not a kilometer away. It measured over five kilometers across, though most of it was empty space. The primary structure was of curving strands arranged in a broad ellipsoid, but they bent around sharply in the thick central section, forming three twisting cavities that intersected in the middle. Each strand appeared to be transparent, filled with a thick gas that hosted a multitude of dazzling green sparks. They swarmed along the strands as if there were a gale blowing inside. Floating in the heart of the cavities was a shape identical to the one formed by the green strands; this one was barely a tenth of the size, filled with a sapphire gas complete with swift sparks. At its center was a crimson shape; inside that was a yellow version that had a lavender speck nestled within. Passive sensors couldn’t make out if there was another miniature version contained by its haze, and a strong force field prevented any active examination.

“Now what?” the Delivery Man whispered.

“We talk very fucking quietly in case they’re listening in,” Gore snapped back.

The Delivery Man actually cringed from the look of contempt Gore gave him. He cleared his throat. “All right. Is it going to shoot at us?”

“I hope not.”

“So what do we do?”

“We ask permission to go through.”

“And if it says no?”

“Pray it doesn’t. We’ll have to kill all seventeen thousand of them.”

“Can this ship actually—” He broke off and kept silent. The smartcore shot a simple communication pulse at the borderguard. Sensors showed another five of the gigantic stations appearing out of odd spatial distortions a few thousand kilometers away.

“Why are you here?” the borderguard asked.

“We are representatives from the human race; two of us are on board.”

“What type?”

“Higher. You have dealt with us before and were favorable. I ask for that consideration to be shown again.”

“Your species has withdrawn all information valid to you from those who stayed behind.”

“I understand. We seek data on those who left. We are a subsect of our species which believes we should try to evolve as the final Anomine did. We seek information on their society.”

“You carry weapons; they are of a sophisticated nature. Those of your species who came before did not carry weapons.”

“There is an active conflict among our species and the Ocisen Empire. Other species are emerging who are hostile. Interstellar travel is a dangerous endeavor right now. We reserve the right to protect ourselves.”

“We have detected no conflict.”

“It is coming. The Void underwent a small expansion recently. Species across the galaxy are becoming alarmed by its behavior.”

“We detected the Void expansion.”

“In which case we would ask that you grant us permission to try and emulate the ultimate success of your species.”

“You may have access to those items left behind by the final Anomine. You may examine them with any means except physical alteration or destruction. You may not remove any item from our ancestral world. All items must be left in place when you leave.”

“We thank you for the generosity you show us.”

The Last Throw fell back into hyperspace and raced in for the Anomine homeworld. The Delivery Man observed its course display with some curiosity as they performed a wide arc around the G3 star. The starship started to drop the confluence nest satellites one at a time. They finished up spaced equidistantly in an orbit two hundred million kilometers out from the primary. Last Throw headed in for the Anomine homeworld.

There was a lot of junk in high orbit out beyond the geosynchronous halo. All of it was ancient, inactive: vast spaceship docks and habitation stations that had slowly been battered by micrometeorites and larger particles, subjected to solar radiation for millennia coincident with thermal extremes. Consequently, they were no more than brittle tissue-thin hulls now, drifting into highly elliptical orbits as their atmosphere leaked out and tanks ruptured. Chunks had broken off, tumbling away into their own orbit, bashing into one another, fracturing again and again. Now millions of them formed a thick gritty gray toroid around the old world.

The Last Throw darted gracefully through the astronautical graveyard and flew down to a standard thousand-kilometer parking orbit above the equator. From there, the starship’s optical sensors showed a planet similar to any H-congruous world, with deep blue oceans and continents graded with green and brown land, depending on the climate. Huge white cloud formations drifted through the clear air, their fat twisted peaks greater than any of the mountain ranges they blanketed.

“So now what?” the Delivery Man asked.

“Find a haystack, then start searching for its needle.”

The Delivery Man deliberately didn’t glare at the gold-faced man sitting in the shell chair opposite him. There was no point. “This planet is bigger than Earth,” he read from his exovision displays. “Surface area nearly eighty million square miles. That’s a lot of land to search with any degree of thoroughness.”

“What makes you think it’s on land?”

“Okay, what makes you think it’s even here? Was that in the summary? The Anomine had settled in eight other star systems that we know of.”

“And they’re all deserted. That’s a goddamn fact. They came back here, every type of them. Another dumbass pilgrimage. This is where they elevated from.”

“Oh, Great Ozzie,” the Delivery Man moaned. “You don’t know, do you? You’ve no bloody idea. You’re hoping. That’s all. Hoping there’s an answer here.”

“I’m applying logic.”

The Delivery Man wanted to beat his fists on the chair. But it wouldn’t be any use, not even as emotional therapy. He’d been committed from the moment he left Gore’s asteroid. “All right. But you must have some idea how to find the damn thing, right?”

“Again, we’re going to apply logic. First we perform a complete low-orbit mapping flight and scan every inch of the place for exotic activity or gravity fluctuations, power generation, quantum anomalies—anything out of the ordinary.”

“But that’ll take …”

“Several days, yes.”

“And if we don’t find anything?”

“Go down and talk to the natives, see what they can tell us.”

“But they’re an agrarian civilization, human equivalent to the mid-nineteenth century. They’re not going to know about machines that can turn you into an angel.”

“They have legends; we know that. They’re proud of their history. The navy cultural anthropology team did some good work. We can even talk to them direct. And they’re more advanced than our nineteenth century—that I do remember from the files. Not that the comparison is entirely valid.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

Gore gave the briefest of nods and issued orders to the smartcore.

“Why did you bring me?” the Delivery Man asked. “You and the ship can handle this.”

“Backup,” Gore said flatly. “I might need help at some point. Who knows?”

“Great.”

“Get yourself some rest, son. You’ve been wired tight for days now.”

The Delivery Man admitted he was too tired and edgy to argue. He went over to his private cubicle and rolled onto the small but luxurious cot that expanded out of the bulkhead. He didn’t expect to sleep. He was still wound up tight about Lizzie and the children. The ship’s TD link to the unisphere remained connected, so he could access all the news from back home.

High Angel had arrived at the Sol system. After six hours Qatux had diplomatically announced to the President that there was nothing the huge arkship could do. The force field the Accelerators’ Swarm had deployed was too strong to break with any weapon they had.

After switching through several ill-informed news shows, the Delivery Man fell into a troubled sleep.

Corrie-Lyn woke up with a start, disoriented and unsure what had hauled her up out of such a deep sleep. She glanced around the small darkened cabin, listening intently, but there was nothing. Sometimes the Lindau’s poor battered systems would produce odd sounds. Pipes gurgled and bubbled, and the servicebots hammered away as they worked through their repair schedule; then there was that one time when she swore she’d heard the hull itself creak. But tonight it was silent aside from the constant hum of power, which was vaguely reassuring even though it shouldn’t be that loud. At least they still had power.

Inigo stirred briefly beside her, and she smiled down gently at him. It was so good to have him back, physically as well as emotionally. Even though he wasn’t quite the messiah of yore, he was still her Inigo, concerned about different things now but still as determined and focused as before. She felt so much happier now that he was here to help, despite still being unable to escape Aaron.

The name acted like some kind of recognition key. He was why she’d woken. Her mind was abruptly aware of the turmoil bubbling out from the agent’s gaiamotes. There were images her own brain instinctively tried to shut out, repulsive sensations of pain—not direct impulses but memories of suffering that verged on nauseous, but worst of all were the emotions of guilt and fear that bridged the gap between them, plunging her into his nightmare of darkness and torment. She was suffocating in some giant cathedral where men and women were being sacrificed on a crude pagan altar. She was standing behind the high priest as the curved dagger was raised again. Screams blasted out from those awaiting an identical fate as the blade flashed down, then rose again, dripping with blood. The figure in the white robe turned, and it wasn’t a male priest. She smiled gleefully, the front of her robe soaked in scarlet blood, making the fabric cling obscenely to her body, emphasizing breasts and hips.

“You don’t leave me,” she explained as the smile widened. Lips parted to reveal fangs that grew and grew as the cathedral faded away. There was only darkness and her. The robe was gone now; blood glistened across her skin. The mouth opened wider, then wider still; there was no face anymore, only teeth and blood. “Come back where you belong.”

He wanted to scream, joining the clamor kicked up by the others lost somewhere out there in the impenetrable blackness. But when he opened his mouth, blood poured in, filling his lungs, drowning him. Every muscle shook in the terrible struggle to be free, to be free of her, of what she’d made him do.

“It’s all right, son,” a new, soothing voice chimed in. “Let me help you.”

A soft irresistible force closed around his body, solidifying, immobilizing him. He stopped gagging for breath as bright red laser fans swept across the darkness, quickly arranging themselves into a spiral web with his head in the center. They contracted sharply, sending light pouring into his brain. Pain soared to unbelievable heights—

“Yech!” Corrie-Lyn shook her head violently, closing off her gaiamotes. The sickening sensations vanished. Now she heard a sound, a muffled yell from the captain’s cabin on the opposite side of the narrow companionway. “Sweet Lady,” she grunted. No mind could survive that kind of psychological torment for long, not and remain sane and functional. She stared at the cabin door, fearful he would come bursting through, his weapon enrichments activated. But he didn’t. There were another couple of defiant cries and then some whimpering like an animal being soothed before silence claimed the starship again.

Corrie-Lyn let out a long breath, seriously alarmed by how great the threat of him going completely insane had become. Her skin was coated in cold sweat. She pulled the tangle of quilts off herself and wriggled over to the ablution alcove. Taking care to be quiet so she didn’t wake Inigo, she slowly sponged herself down with a mild-scented soap. It cooled her skin, leaving her feeling a little better. Nothing she could do about the sensations crawling along the inside of her skin—the residual shock of the dream.

If that’s what it is.

It was all a little too coherent for comfort. Not a brain naturally discharging its accumulated experiences orchestrated by the peaks of lingering emotion, the way humans were designed to cope with everyday experiences. These were like broken memories pushing up from whatever dark zone of the psyche they’d been imprisoned in. “What in Honious did they do to you?” she murmured into the gloomy cabin.

The next morning the servicebots had finished tailoring some of the fresh clothes as she’d instructed. “Not bad,” Inigo said admiringly as she pulled on the navy tunic with shortened sleeves. She grinned as she wiggled into a pair of tunic trousers. They were tight around her hips. “Not bad at all.”

“I need some breakfast first,” she told him with a grin. The one—and only—advantage of their weird imprisonment was the amount of time alone they could spend catching up.

They held hands as they went into the lounge. Inigo of course used the culinary unit to prepare some scrambled eggs and smoked haddock. She delved into the pile of luxury supplies the crew had stored on board. The only thing the unit made that she could force down was the drinks, and that was pretty much limited to tea and tomato juice, neither of which was a firm favorite. She tucked into a mix of toffee banana cake and dried mortaberries, gulping the tea down quickly so she could convince herself the taste was Earl Grey, albeit with milk and strawberry jam.

Aaron came in and helped himself to his usual poached egg and smoked salmon. Without a word, he shuffled himself into his broken chair almost at the other end of the lounge.

“Who is she?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“Excuse me?”

“The high priestess or whatever she was. The one with all the blood. The one that scares you utterly shitless.”

Aaron stared at her for a long time. For once, Corrie-Lyn wasn’t intimidated. “Well?” she asked. “You shared last night.”

It wasn’t embarrassment—she suspected he was incapable of that—but he did lower his gaze. “I don’t know,” he said eventually.

“Well, you must—” She stopped, took a breath. “Look, I’m actually not trying to needle you. If you must know, I’m worried.”

“About me? Don’t be.”

“Nobody can take that kind of punishment night after night and not have it affect them. I don’t care what you’ve got enriched and improved and sequenced into every cell. That kind of crap is toxic.”

“And yet here I am each morning, functioning perfectly.”

“Seventeen hours ago,” Inigo said.

“What?”

“You were supposed to be on the bridge monitoring the ship. You actually slipped into the reverie. I felt it.”

“My operational ability is unimpaired.”

“It’s being undermined,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Can’t you see that? Or is it that you just can’t admit it?”

“I can help,” Inigo said.

“No.”

“You have instructions for just about every eventuality,” Inigo said. “Is there one for your own breakdown?”

“There is nothing wrong with me a bit of hush in the morning won’t fix. A man likes to break his fast in goodly contemplative silence.”

“Contemplate this: If you go gaga, how are we going to reach Ozzie?”

Aaron grinned contentedly. “You want to?”

“Yes,” Inigo said with great seriousness. “I don’t know who programmed you, but I think they might be right about getting the two of us together.”

“Now, ain’t that something; progress at last.”

“The only thing that can stop us reaching the Spike now is you,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“I imagine that if bits of me start to fall off, I will …” He stopped, the humor fading from his face.

“Suicide?” Inigo supplied.

Aaron was staring at a point on the bulkhead, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “No,” he said. “I’d never do such an unrighteous thing. I’m not that weak.” Then he frowned and glanced over at Corrie-Lyn. “What?”

“Oh, Lady,” Inigo grunted.

Corrie-Lyn was fascinated, suspecting that the real Aaron had surfaced, if only for a moment. “You’re not going to make it,” she said flatly.

“We’ve got barely two days to go until we reach the Spike,” Aaron said. “I can hold myself together for that kind of time scale. Trust and believe me on that.”

“Nonetheless, it would be prudent for you to load some kind of emergency routine into the smartcore,” Inigo suggested.

“I can match that; in fact, I can top it in a big way on the survival stakes. I would strongly suggest, now that you’ve figured out I’m not on the side of harming you and that you and the great Ozzie are going to be best buddies standing before the tsunami of evil, you think about how to stop the Void.”

“It can’t be stopped,” Inigo said. “It simply is. This I know. I have observed it from Centurion Station, and I have personally felt the thoughts emanating within. Out of all of humanity, I know this. So believe me when I tell you that if you want to exist in the same universe, you have to find a way around it. Our best bet would be to turn around and ask the High Angel to take us to another galaxy.”

Aaron drank some of his coffee. “Someone thinks differently,” he said, unperturbed. “Someone still believes in you, Dreamer; someone believes you can truly lead us to salvation. How about that? Your real following is down to one: me. And for now I’m the only one that counts.”

They began to feel the Spike’s wierd mental interference while they were still a day and a half out. At first it was nothing but a mild sensation of euphoria, which was why they didn’t notice at first. Corrie-Lyn had cut down on her drinking, but there were still some seriously good bottles cluttering up the crew’s personal stores. Be a shame to waste them. A couple—the Bodlian white and the Guxley Mountain green—were reputed to have aphrodisiac properties. Definitely a shame. Especially as there was nothing else to do on board ship.

So in the afternoon she’d gotten a bot to make up, or rather unmake, a semiorganic shirt so that just a couple of buttons held the front together. Satisfied the end product was suitably naughty, she stripped off and stepped into the ablution alcove. While she was in the shower, the bot also remade a thick wool sweater into a long robe; it was scratchy on her arms, but what the Honious.

She’d left Inigo in the lounge reviewing astronomical data on the Void. Now he hurried to their cabin when she called him, saying something important had happened.

“What is it?” he asked as the door parted. Then he stopped, surprised and then intrigued by the low lighting and the three candles flickering on nearly horizontal surfaces. The culinary unit might be rubbish at food, but it could still manage wax easily enough.

Corrie-Lyn gave him a sultry look and ordered the door to close behind him. He saw the bottle of Bodlian and the two long-stemmed glasses she was holding in one hand.

“Ah.” His gaiamotes emitted a simultaneous burst of nerves and interest.

“I found this,” she told him in the huskiest voice she could manage without giggling. “Shame to waste it.”

“Classic,” he said, and took the proffered bottle. She kissed him before he’d even gotten the cap off, then began to nuzzle his face. He smiled and pressed himself up against her while she toned up the mood her gaiamotes were leaking out. Together they undid the belt of the crude robe. “Oh, dear Lady, yes,” he rumbled as the wool slipped down to reveal what remained of the shirt.

Corrie-Lyn kissed him again, the tip of her tongue licking playfully. “Remember Franlee?” she asked. “Those long winter nights they spent together in Plax.”

“I always preferred Jessile.”

“Oh, yes.” She sipped some of the wine. “She was a bad girl.”

“So are you.” He poured his own glass and ran one hand down her throat, stroking her skin softly until he came to the top button. His finger hooked around it, pulling lightly to measure the strain.

“I can be if you ask properly,” she promised.

Two hours later Aaron fired a disrupter pulse into their locked cabin door. The malmetal shattered instantly, flinging a cloud of glittering dust into the confined space. Corrie-Lyn and Inigo were having a respite, sprawled over the quilts on the floor. Inigo held a glass of the Bodlian in one hand, carefully dripping the wine across Corrie-Lyn’s breasts. Secondary routines in his macrocellular clusters activated his integral force field instantly. Corrie-Lyn screamed, crabbing her way back along the floor until she backed into a bulkhead.

“Turn it off!” Aaron bellowed. His cheeks were flushed as he sucked down air. Jaw muscles worked hard, clamping his teeth together.

Inigo rose to his feet, standing in front of Corrie-Lyn. He expanded the force field to protect her from direct energy shots, knowing it would ultimately be futile against Aaron. “The force field stays on. Now, in the Lady’s name, what’s happened?”

“Not the fucking force field!” Aaron juddered, taking a step back. Weird unpleasant sensations surged out of his gaiamotes, making Inigo flinch. It was a torrent of recall from the strange cathedral with the crystal arches, terrified faces flashing past, weapons fire impossibly loud. Each memory burst triggered a devastating bout of emotion. Even Inigo felt tears trickling down his cheeks as he swung between fright and revulsion, defiance and guilt.

“The mindfuck,” Aaron yelled. “Turn it off or I swear I’ll kill her in front of you.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Inigo yelled back. “What’s happening? What is this?”

Aaron sagged against the side of the ruined door. “Get them out of my head!”

“Deactivate your gaiamotes; that’ll kill the attack.”

“They are off!”

Inigo’s skin turned numb with shock—his own emotion rather than the chaotic barrage coming from Aaron. “They can’t be. I can feel your mind.”

Aaron’s hand punched out, knuckles finishing centimeters from Inigo’s face. Enhancements rippled below his skin, and squat black nozzles slid out of the flesh. “Turn it off.”

“I’m not doing anything!” Inigo yelled back. Ridiculously, he felt exhilarated: This was living, the antithesis of the last few decades. He cursed himself for hiding away rather than facing up to everything the universe could throw at him. Which was stupid …

Four ruby-red laser targeting beams fanned out of Aaron’s enrichments, playing across Inigo’s face. “Switch. It. Off,” the crazed agent growled. Somewhere close by dark wings flapped in pursuit. The edge of the cabin began to shimmer away as if the darkness were claiming it molecule by molecule. Her presence was chilling, seeping through Inigo’s force field to frost his skin.

Aaron flung his head back. “Get away from me, you monster.”

“It’s not me,” Inigo whispered, fearful of whatever stalked them through the gloom that was now busily eating away at the edge of his own vision. He could see her smile now, predatory teeth bared. If she did break through to whatever Aaron believed to be reality, there was no telling what would happen.

The laser beams started to curve through the air, sliding smoothly around Inigo to cage him in red threads. Their tips studded Corrie-Lyn’s naked body.

“I can be as bad as her,” Aaron purred with smooth menace. “After all, she taught me. I can make this last for hours. You will hear Corrie-Lyn plead with you to switch it off. She will beg you to kill her as the only way to stop the pain.”

“Please,” Inigo said. “Listen to me. I’m not doing this to you.”

The arching lasers grew brighter. Corrie-Lyn’s skin sizzled and blackened where the tiny points touched her. She gritted her teeth against the pricks of pain. “Wait,” she gasped. “Where are we?”

Aaron was shuddering as if someone were shoving an electric current through his body. “Location?”

The darkness surrounding the cabin pulsed with a heart’s rhythm, stirring up a gust of air that pushed against them.

“Yes!” Corrie-Lyn demanded. “Our location. Are we near the Spike?”

“It’s two hundred and seventy light-years away.”

“Is that close enough for the dream? Is that what we’re feeling?”

Aaron cocked his head to one side, though his hand remained steady just centimeters in front of Inigo’s face. A drop of saliva dribbled out of his mouth. “Dream? You think this to be a dream? She’s here. She’s walking through the ship. She’s here for me. She never forgets. Never forgives. For that is weakness and we are strength.”

“Not your dream, you fucking moron,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Ozzie’s dream. The galactic dream he left the Commonwealth to build.”

“Ozzie’s dream?” The curving lasers dimmed slightly. Corrie-Lyn wriggled away from their enclosure.

“That’s right,” Inigo cried. “This effect is like an emotion amplifier. I knew the sex was good, but …”

Corrie-Lyn stopped rubbing her burns. “Hey!”

“Don’t you see?” Inigo urged. “He’s heightened our emotional responses through the gaiafield. But with your screwed-up psyche that’s simply helped with the destabilization. Whatever controls your masters installed are starting to crack under the pressure.”

The blackness pulsed again. Inigo swore he could feel the pressure increase on his inner ears.

“My gaiamotes are closed,” Inigo hissed.

“They can’t be! I’m witnessing your dreams.”

“He’s right,” Corrie-Lyn said. “My gaiamotes are shut, too, but this fucking nightmare is terrorizing us all. It’s not the gaiamotes.”

Aaron’s targeting beams snapped off. “What, then?” he demanded. His knees nearly buckled. “I cannot risk my mission failing in this fashion. It leaves you open to capture. We will have to die.” His hand moved to clamp his fingers over Inigo’s face. Inigo’s exovision was suddenly swamped by warning symbols as his force field began to glow a weak violet. “Your memorycell, too,” Aaron said. “Nothing of you must survive to fall into the hands of the enemy, especially her.”

“He’s circumvented it,” Inigo said, trying to keep calm. Violence wasn’t the solution to this; he had to break through Aaron’s neuroses. “This is Ozzie’s dream; it doesn’t need the gaiafield anymore. He’s propagated the feelings through spacetime itself.”

“This is an attack,” Aaron vowed.

“It’s not. I promise. He’s a genius, an authentic off-the-scale live genius. The gaiafield was just a warm-up for him. Don’t you see? He’s created real telepathy. Ozzie has made something that can make mind speak directly to mind just like he always wanted. It’s internal. Do you understand? Your instability is coming from within.”

“No.” Aaron fell to his knees, gasping for breath, pulling Inigo down with him.

“You are the cause of the mission failure. The damage is coming from your own subconscious.”

“No.”

“It is.”

“Make it stop. She can’t get me. I can’t allow that. Not again.”

“There is nobody there. She is just a memory, a screwed-up memory you don’t know how to contain, there’s so much fear embedded with the experience.”

Aaron suddenly let go of Inigo, stumbling around to face the broken door in a martial arts pose. “She’s here.”

“Aaron, listen to me. Ozzie’s dream is corroding your rationality because it was never designed to deal with circumstances like these. You have to let them go; you have to let the real you out of those constraints your boss imposed. You must come forward. This artificial personality can’t cope.”

“Not good enough?”

“The real you is more than adequate. Come out. Come on, it’s the only way you can beat this.”

“Damage control …” Aaron slowly sank to his knees, and then his back curled as he dropped his head between his legs. His breathing started to calm. The eerie semihallucinations around the periphery of the cabin began to melt away.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn gave each other an anxious look. “Do you think?” she asked.

“The Lady alone knows,” he murmured back.

They stood up. Corrie-Lyn hurriedly pulled her woolen robe back on, then they both approached the crouched figure cautiously. Inigo reached out tentatively but didn’t quite have the courage to touch Aaron. He wondered if that was the dream field—or whatever—amplifying the worry. But it seemed sensible enough. Surely an emotional enhancer would boost his sympathy correspondingly. Maybe that was the way it worked, everything raised equally so that everything stayed in the same balance as before—no alteration to personality, just a greater perception or empathy.

Aaron’s head came up; his biononics performed a thorough field scan of the starship. He stood up and looked at Inigo and Corrie-Lyn. His weapon enrichments sank back down into his hand; ripples of skin closed over them.

“Hello?” Corrie-Lyn said hopefully. “Aaron, is that really you now?”

Inigo wasn’t so sure. There wasn’t a trace of emotion coming from the man. In fact …

“I am Aaron,” he said.

“That’s good,” Corrie-Lyn said hesitantly. “Have the disturbances gone?”

“There are no disturbances in my head. My thought routines have been reduced to minimum functionality requirement. This mission will be completed now. Arrival at the Spike is in eighteen hours. Inigo will accompany me to Oswald Fernandez Isaacs. You will then both be given further instructions.” He turned and walked out the door.

“What in Honious was that?” a startled Corrie-Lyn asked.

“The last fallback mode by the sound of it; probably installed in case his brain got damaged in a firefight. He’s running on minimum neural activity. Whoever rebuilt him must have had a real fetish about redundancy.”

She shivered, clutching at the robe. “He’s even less human than before, isn’t he? And he was never much to begin with.”

“Yeah. Ladydamnit, I thought this was our chance to break his conditioning.”

“Crap.”

“But at least we know I don’t get shot before we meet Ozzie.”

“Oswald? I never knew that was his name.”

“No, me neither.”

She let out a long breath, then narrowed her eyes to stare at him. “The sex wasn’t that good naturally?”

“Ah. I had to say something that would shock him.”

“Really?” She glanced around the cabin. Tiny shards of sharp metal debris glinted on every surface. “Honious, this is a mess.”

“Hey, don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Yes, you are. I can sense it.”

“What? Oh!” Her eyes widened as she realized she could sense his mind as clearly as if they were fully sharing within the gaiafield.

He smiled weakly. “That Ozzie, he’s really something. Over two hundred and fifty light-years away, and it already affects us. Whatever it really is.”

“Do you think it can be used to connect everyone with the Void?”

“I have no idea. But I suspect we’re going to find out. Maybe that’s why Aaron’s controllers want me there. I have proven access to thoughts from the Void; maybe they want to see if I can connect directly to the Heart.”

“So what can this effect do?” she mused.

———

They spent the next few hours experimenting. The effect was remarkably like the longtalk they knew so well from the Void. When one of them carefully formed words or phrases, the other could perceive it, though they never worked out anything like the directed longtalk available to the residents of Querencia. But it was the constant awareness of emotion that was the most disquieting. If they hadn’t already been so intimate and adept at using the gaiamotes to connect emotionally, Corrie-Lyn thought they would have had real trouble with guilt and resentment at such openness. As it was, the effect took a long time to accept at an intellectual level. Being so exposed and having no choice in the matter made her apprehensive. She was all right with Inigo, but knowing the machinelike Aaron could perceive her every sentiment was unpleasant at the very least, and as for the prospect of every alien on the Spike being able to see into her mind … She wasn’t sure she could cope with that.

The one time she gave a bottle of Rindhas a longing look, she immediately knew of Inigo’s disapproval, which triggered her own shame to new heights. No wonder the cranky old Aaron had broken down under the mental stress. It was a weird kind of human who could cope with having his heart on his sleeve the entire time.

And yet, she told herself, that’s what we were all wishing to undergo in the Void. Especially the all-inclusive telepathy as it was in the Thirty-seventh Dream. Perhaps it’s just people who are at fault. If I didn’t have so much to hide, I wouldn’t fear this as much. My fault I’m like this.

They went to sleep a few hours later, with Inigo using a low-level field scan to monitor Aaron just in case. They woke in time for a quick breakfast before they reached the Spike.

The Lindau dropped out of hyperspace fifty AUs above the blue-white A-class star’s south pole. The emergence location allowed it an unparalleled view of the star’s extensive ring system. Visual sensors swiftly picked out the Hot Ring with its innermost edge two AUs out from the star and a diameter of half an AU. A hoop of heavy metallic rocks glittering brightly in the harsh light as they tumbled around their timeless orbit. Three AUs farther out, the Dark Ring was a stark contrast, a slender band of carbonaceous particles inclined five degrees out of the ecliptic, so dark that it seemed to suck light out of space. The angle allowed it to produce a faint umbra on the so-called Smog, the third ring, composed of pale silicate dust and light particles combined with a few larger asteroids that created oddly elegant curls and whorls within the bland ocher-tinted haze. Beyond that, at seventeen AUs, was the Band Ring, a thin, very dense loop fixed in place by over a hundred shepherd moonlets. After that there was only the Ice Bracelet, which began at twenty-five AUs and blended into the Oort cloud at the system’s edge.

There were no planets, an idiosyncrasy that sorely puzzled the Commonwealth astronomers. The star was too old for the rings to be categorized as any kind of accretion disc. Most wrote it off as a quirk caused by the Spike, but that had been in place only for at the most fifty thousand years; in astrological time that was nothing. Unless of course it had obliterated the planets when it arrived, which would make it a weapon of extraordinary stature. Again highly unlikely.

From their position poised above the system, Aaron asked for approach and docking permission. It was granted by the Spike’s AI, and they slipped back into hyperspace for the short flight in.

The Spike was in the middle of the Hot Ring. It was an alien artifact whose main structure was a slim triangle that curved gently around its long axis, which measured eleven thousand kilometers from the top to an indeterminate base. There was no way to determine the exact position of the base because that part of the Spike was still buried within some dimensional twist. To the navy exploration vessel that had found it in 3072, it was as if a planet-sized starship had tried to erupt out of hyperspace with only partial success, the nose slicing out cleanly into spacetime while the tail section was still lost amid the intricate folds of the universe’s underlying quantum fields. The only thing that ruined that big-aerodynamic-starship image was the sheer size of the brute. On top of the triangle was a five-kilometer-diameter spire that was a further two thousand kilometers in length—function unknown.

Contrary to all natural orbital mechanics, the Spike remained oriented in one direction, with the tip pointing straight out of the Hot Ring ecliptic. Its concave curve also tracked the star as it traveled along its perfectly circular orbit like some heliotactic sail-shaped flower always following the light. Thus, the anchoring twist that held its base amid the whirling rocky particles was obviously active, although its mechanism was somewhere within the unreachable base. Few people still believed it was a ship, though the notion remained among the romantically inclined elements of the Commonwealth’s scientific community and the more excitable Raiel/Void conspiracy theorists.

Contact with the fourteen known alien species living inside, which was remarkably easy, didn’t advance the exploration starship’s understanding of the Spike’s origin or purpose one byte. All the species who’d found a home among the myriad habitation chambers had arrived there relatively recently, the Chikoya longest ago at four and a half thousand years. They, along with all those who had found a home in the Spike over the millennia, had made their adaptations and alterations to the basic structure to a point where it was difficult to know what was original anymore.

When the Lindau emerged from hyperspace again, they were eight hundred kilometers sunward and level with the top of the Spike, so that the massive spire stabbed up into the southern starfield above them. The smartcore accelerated them in, matching the massive structure’s errant velocity vector. Ahead of them the curved inner surface was segmented by crystalline chambers like a skin of bubbles. The smallest extended over a hundred kilometers wide, while the largest, an Ilodi settlement, stretched out to a full three hundred kilometers in diameter. Eight tubes wove around and through the chambers, each of them a convoluted loop with a diameter of thirty kilometers, acting as the Spike’s internal transport routes. Seven of them had an H-congruous oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere; the eighth supported a high-temperature methane/nitrogen environment.

Aaron directed them into a metal mushroom sprouting from one of the H-congruous tubes. There were hundreds of similar landing pads scattered randomly along all the tubes. Some of them were crude, little more than slabs of metal with a basic airlock tunnel fused onto the tube. When the Lindau settled on it, a localized artificial gravity field took over, holding the starship down at about a tenth of a gee.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn were standing behind Aaron in the starship’s small bridge compartment, images of the Spike projecting out of a half dozen portals all around them. They could see a lot of movement on the surface. A huge variety of drones were crawling, rolling, sliding, skating, and hopping along the tubes and chambers, performing various repair and maintenance functions. All of them were operated by the controlling AI, itself a patchwork of processor cores that had been grafted onto the original management network by the residents who had come and gone over the millennia.

“The effect’s no stronger here than when it first hit us. It must be uniform,” Corrie-Lyn said wonderingly as she tried to sort through the multitude of foreign sensations that Ozzie’s telepathy effect were allowing to impact on her mind. She could feel Inigo’s mind as before and the odd unemotional threads buzzing through Aaron’s brain, but beyond them was a sensory aurora not too dissimilar to the gaiafield. Human minds were present, though she wasn’t sure how many, probably no more than a few thousand. Alien minds were also intruding that were intriguingly weird, possessing a different intensity and emotions that were subtly different.

“What I’m feeling can’t represent everyone on the Spike,” Inigo said, perceiving her interest. “For a start, there’s over a million of the Ba’rine-sect Chikoya, who settled here after they got kicked off their homeworld. They’re aggressive in their beliefs and not afraid to show it. That level of animosity is absent. Then there’s the Flam-gi and their whole nasty little speciesism superiority—they’re definitely not sharing. And Honious alone knows who or what’s in some of the sealed chambers.”

“So they’re not all part of Ozzie’s dream, then?”

“It would seem not.”

“Why?” Even as she asked it, she could sense his dismissal.

“I don’t know. We’ll just have to ask him. Aaron, do you know where he is?”

“No.” The agent’s head didn’t move; he was studying a projection of the Spike’s entire inner surface. Some kind of mapping program was active, sending flashes of color across sections and down tubes. “The controlling AI has no information on him. U-shadow-based data retrieval routines do not function effectively in the network, and some compartment sections are blocked; I cannot check the data with any accuracy.”

“Reasonable enough,” Inigo said. “There’s no overall government as such. From what I remember, you just turn up and find somewhere that supports your biochemistry and move in.”

“So what now?” Corrie-Lyn asked.

“We will visit the largest human settlement and ask them for Isaacs’s location.”

“And if they don’t know?” Inigo asked.

“He is renowned. Someone will know.”

“But he already knows we’re here,” Inigo said.

Aaron turned to stare at him. “Have you signaled him?”

“No. But this telepathy effect exposes everything to everybody. That’s what he came here to do. Therefore, he is aware of our arrival.”

“Can you determine the source of the effect?”

“No.”

“Very well. Come with me now.” Aaron walked out into the companionway.

Inigo gave Corrie-Lyn a bemused shrug, and the two of them followed meekly behind Aaron as he went into the scoutship’s main airlock.

The landing pad had extruded a malmetal cylinder that was compatible with the starship’s seal. The outer door expanded, showing the cylinder curving down. Aaron stepped through and glided forward in the low gravity. The cylinder bent in a sharp double curve to take them through the tube wall. They passed through a translucent pressure curtain that shivered around them, and then they were inside a small blue metal building with open archways. The temperature and humidity rose sharply to subtropical levels. They walked through the arches onto a broad paved area. The tube’s inner surface was covered in lush pink-tinged grasses and long meandering gray-blue forests. Fifteen kilometers above their heads, a sliver of dazzling white light ran along the axis of the tube, shining through the thick smears of helical cloud that drifted along the interior. As soon as they’d stepped through the pressure curtain, Corrie-Lyn had felt the gravity rise to about two-thirds Earth standard, which gave her the visual impression of standing at the bottom of a cylinder where anything moving on the solid roof above her should fall straight down, though intellectually she knew damn well that every point of the landscape arching above her had the same gravity.

She puffed her cheeks out, partly from the heat and partly from the improbability of the vista. “And this is just the transport route?”

“One of them,” Aaron replied. “There are short-length wormholes and some T-spheres operational within the structure. However, they are under the control of the species which installed them. The tubes provide a general connection between chambers.”

“We walk?” she asked incredulously.

“No.” Aaron looked up.

Corrie-Lyn followed his gaze, seeing a dark triangle descending out of the glaring light straight toward them. As it grew closer, she could see it was some kind of aircraft, maybe twenty meters long and quite fat given its otherwise streamlined appearance. Human lettering was stenciled on the narrow swept tail fin, registration codes that made no sense. Landing legs unfolded neatly fore and aft, and it settled on the tough wiry grass. A door swung open halfway along its bulging belly. No malmetal, then, she mused. She couldn’t see any jet intakes, either. Whatever propelled it had to be similar to ingrav.

The cabin interior was basic and somehow primitive to anyone accustomed to the Commonwealth’s ubiquitous capsules. She sank into a chair that could have been designed only for a human body. The hull wasn’t transparent, either, which disappointed her. Inigo picked up on the feeling. “There’s a sensor feed,” he told her, and gave her u-shadow a little access routine that wasn’t like any program she was familiar with.

“How do you know that?” she asked as the aircraft’s camera views unfolded in her exovision. They were already lifting fast, not that the acceleration was apparent.

“I’m monitoring Aaron’s datatraffic,” he replied levelly.

After it rose above the thick winding clouds, the aircraft shot forward. The speed made Corrie-Lyn blink. “Wow,” she murmured.

“As best I can make out, we’re doing about Mach twenty,” Inigo said. “Even with the way this tube bends about, you can probably get from one end of the Spike to the other in a couple of hours.”

“So what’s the place we’re going to?”

“The chamber has been named Octoron,” Aaron said curtly.

“How far?”

“Flight duration approximately three minutes.”

She rolled her eyes, hoping her mind wasn’t showing just how unnerving she found this machinelike version of Aaron, though presumably he no longer had the thought routines that bothered about such emotional trivia. When she concentrated on the few thought impulses inside his head, they were all calm and cool, so much so that it was hard to sense them at all.

Their little plane looped casually halfway around the axial light, then slowed quickly to begin its vertical decent. They landed close to a broad low dome of some silver-gray fabric that had wide arches around the base. It was obviously a transport hub; several other planes were landing and taking off. People came and went from the cathedral-sized dome, dressed like any citizens of the Outer Commonwealth worlds in a mix of styles from ultramodern toga suits down to the whimsy of centuries past.

Sitting right at the center of the airy dome was a gold-mirrored sphere whose lower quarter was hidden belowground. People were walking in and out of it, pushing through the surface as if it were less substantial than mist. As she walked toward it, Corrie-Lyn was conscious of the suspicion and curiosity starting to emanate from the minds around her. Her consternation that Inigo at least would be recognized was acting as positive feedback. Several people stopped to stare. She felt their astonishment as recognition dawned. It was swiftly tinged by anger and resentment.

Just before they reached the gold surface, Aaron took Inigo’s hand. “Do not attempt to evade me,” he warned.

“I have no intention to,” Inigo told him.

Aaron was still holding him as they all went through the sphere wall. Corrie-Lyn felt the surface flow around her like a pressure curtain. Then she was falling slowly as gravity shrank away again. It was gloomy inside. Her macrocellular clusters ran vision-amplifying routines, enabling her to see the wide shaft she was dropping down. It was a variant on a null-grav chute, about three hundred meters long. Aaron and Inigo were a couple of meters ahead of her.

The descent took barely a minute. Whatever gravity distortion was gripping her, it began to flip her around so that she wound up rising to the far end of the chute. It was covered by a murky barrier identical to the one at the other end of the chute. Her skin tingled as she passed through.

Emergence location: plaza.

Active> Grade three integral force field

Active> Level two biononic field scan. Scan summation: plaza one hundred seventy-eight point three meters major diameter. Three main access roads, five secondary streets. Immediate population eighty-seven adult humans, subdivision fifty-three Higher; nineteen children under twelve. No alien life-forms. Surrounding buildings average height twenty-five meters, facade composition high-purity iron. Domestic power supply one hundred twenty volts; high rate communication net. Visible transport: bicycles. Gravatonic fluctuation indicates seven ingrav drive units operational within three kilometers.

Preliminary assessment: secure environment. No threat to subject alpha. Subject alpha restrained by physical grip; maintain restraint condition.

Primary mission commencement: Determine location of Oswald Fernandez Isaacs.

Four options.

Initiate option one: ask.

“You.”

Octoron citizen one: male, height one point seven two centimeters; biononic functionality moderate: “Yes?”

“Where is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs?”

Octoron citizen one: “Who? Hey, aren’t you Inigo?”

Subject alpha: “Yeah, ’fraid so.”

Octoron citizen one: “You bastard. You stupid selfish bastard. What are you doing here?”

Subject alpha: “Look, I’m sorry. This is complicated. Please answer his question. We need to find Ozzie.”

Octoron citizen one: “Hey, why can’t I sense your thoughts?”

“Irrelevant. Do you know where Isaacs is?”

Octoron citizen one: “You’re with Inigo? Go screw yourself.”

Scan> Octoron citizen one altering biononic field functions. Skin temperature rising, heart rate increasing, muscle contraction, elevated adrenaline. Analysis: possible aggression.

Threat.

Response.

Activate> Biononic weapons field.

Armed> Disrupter pulse. Target: midsection Octoron citizen one. Fire.

External sound level increasing. Human screaming.

Subject beta: “Oh, great Lady! You killed him.”

“I neutralized the threat.”

“Threat? What fucking threat, you monster?”

Primary mission: option one failure. Go to option two.

“You.”

Octoron citizen two: female, one point five eight centimeters, zero biononics, full Advancer macrocellular sequence. Running.

Capture.

“You.”

Octoron citizen two: “What? I haven’t done anything. Let me go. Help! Help!”

Subject beta: “Put her down, you bastard.”

“Is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs resident in the Spike?”

Octoron citizen two, no response.

Option two, second level.

Octoron citizen two: incoherent scream.

“Is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs resident in the Spike?”

Octoron citizen two: “Yes, yes, he’s here. Oh, shit, that hurts. Stop it, please. Please.”

Subject beta: “Let her go.”

Subject alpha: “Stop this now.”

Scan summation: twenty-three Higher humans activating high-level biononic fields.

Approaching. Interperson data exchanges increasing.

Threat imminent.

Response grade one to hostile enclosure situation.

“Halt now or I will kill her.”

Subject beta: “Stay back. Back. The maniac means it. Please, stay back.”

“Where is Oswald Fernandez Isaacs?”

Octoron citizen two: “I don’t know. Please.”

“Who knows where Isaacs is?”

Three Octoron citizens, simultaneously: “Let her go.”

Scan reception> Eight target sensors locking on.

“I will kill her unless he is brought to me.”

Subject alpha: “Stop this. Let me talk to them.”

“No.”

Enclosure threat elevated to grade five.

Response. Random target selection twelve citizens, three buildings.

Armed> Disrupter pulse. Sequential fire pattern.

Armed> Ion beam. Sequential fire pattern.

Scan> Level five> Successful penetration of debris cloud and atmospheric ionization.

Zero immediate threat.

Surrounding sound level high.

Humans in plaza retreating. Casualties fifteen. Fatalities five.

Octoron citizen two struggling. Uncooperative.

Primary mission: option two failure. Go to option three.

U-shadow download general broadcast into local communication net.

“This is an open message for Oswald Fernandez Isaacs. I mean you no harm. It is imperative that you contact me. I have Inigo with me. Together you can resolve the Void catastrophe.”

Subject beta: “Oh, that should do it, you moron dickhead. I’d be rushing to call you if it was me.” Voice level raised/condition hysterical.

“Be silent.”

Subject alpha: “Aaron, this has to stop. Do you understand? You are wrecking your own mission.”

Analysis.

Claim refuted.

“I know what I have to do. Don’t interfere.”

Subject alpha: “You don’t know. You’re dealing with humans; you need an emotional component in your reasoning. And you don’t have that anymore.”

“This environment is hostile to my emotion-based routines; it corrodes my rationality. They cannot be permitted.”

Subject beta: “Oh, shit. Shit, what do we do?”

Subject alpha: “I don’t know.”

Alert> T-sphere establishing across Octoron. Emergence of eleven objects—distance fifty meters. Scan> Level eight> Intruders identified: adult tri-stage Chikoya encased in armor. Multiple weapon hardware attached. Force fields active.

Surrounding sound level increasing—human screaming.

Subject beta: “Great Lady, what are they?”

Chikoya one: “You are the human messiah.”

Analyze: How did they know that and locate subject alpha so quickly? Time elapsed since landing seventeen minutes.

Subject alpha: “I am Inigo, yes.”

Situation analysis. Chikoya engaging deployment maneuver. High tactical advantage in successful encirclement.

Probability of protecting subjects alpha and beta from synchronized Chikoya weapons fire: minimal. Option one: discard subject beta.

Chikoya one: “You have initiated a devourment phase in the Void.”

Subject alpha: “I haven’t been in contact with Edeard for over a century and a half.”

Chikoya one: “You initiated contact. You are responsible. You must stop it.”

“All Void activity will be ended. We will see to it. Now leave Octoron.”

Chikoya one: “Messiah, you will come with us. Your threat to the galaxy must be ended. Come now.”

“Not permissible. Remove yourself and your kind from this place.”

Chikoya one: “Your messiah comes with us.”

“Inigo, raise your integral force field to its highest setting.”

Subject alpha: “What about Corrie-Lyn? Damn you, she’s naked out here.”

Subject beta: “What’s happening? Inigo, don’t go with those things, please. Aaron, you have to—”

Alert> Chikoya weapons activation.

Multiple target acquisition.

Armed> Disrupter pulse. Sequential fire.

Armed> Neutron lasers. Sequential fire.

Electronic countermeasures. Engaged. Full power.

Armed> Microkinetics. Smart acquisition. Free fire authority.

Cease fire.

Scan> Active Chikoya immediate area withdrawal. Redeployment. > Tracking.

Current tactical situation poor. Move. Subject alpha to accompany.

Subject alpha holding subject beta, force field extended to protect her.

“Let go of her.”

Subject alpha: “Fuck you.”

Scan.

Move into Building A. Utilize the cover it provides.

“Come with me.”

Moving. Subject alpha, subject beta, accompanying.

Alert> Multiple target acquisition.

Greatest tactical location: stand in Building A doorway.

Armed> Disrupter pulse. Sequential fire.

Armed> Neutron lasers. Sequential fire.

Armed> Ion beams. Sequential fire.

Armed> Microkinetics. Smart acquisition. Free fire authority.

Armed> Ariel smartseeker stealth mines. Chikoya profile loaded. Dispense.

Alert> Teleport emergence, eighteen armored Chikoya.

“We can’t get away. They know you’re here.”

Cease fire.

Subject alpha (shouting): “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Exit doorway. Weapons fire impact weakening Building A structure.

“This way.”

Enact exit strategy.

Scan> mapping Building A layout. Exit route confirmed. U-shadow established in local communications net, infiltrating adjacent transport capsules.

Alert> Chikoya access of Building A.

Targeting Building B structural load points.

Armed> Disrupter pulse. Fire.

Integral force field strengthened to resist partial Building A collapse. Fire outbreak. Scan through smoke. Three Chikoya disabled.

Subject alpha: “Where do we go?”

“We must leave the immediate area. Switch off your force field.”

Subject alpha: “What? In the Lady’s name, you’ve got to be joking.”

“Negative. They are tracking your presence through the telepathy effect. It is completely pervasive and leaves you exposed wherever you are.”

Subject alpha: “So?”

“Switch off your force field. I will render you unconscious. If you are not thinking, your thoughts cannot betray our location.”

Subject beta: “Inigo! No! He’ll kill us both. He will; it’s what he does.”

“You are no use to me dead.”

Alert> Target acquisition: Building C rooftop.

Armed> Microkinetics suppression barrage. Fire.

Target eliminated.

Subject alpha: “But I can’t stop the Void if I’m unconscious.”

“When I acquire Isaacs, I will insist he switch off the telepathy effect. No one will be able to find you then.”

Subject alpha: “Oh, sweet Lady.”

Subject beta: “No no no.”

Subject alpha: “You look after Corrie-Lyn, too.”

“I will.”

Alert> Nine Chikoya deploying in acquisition formation.

Subject alpha: “Aaron, whatever’s left of the real you in there, I’m holding you to that.”

Exit capsule approaching. Landing zone designated to u-shadow. Three decoy capsules en route—safety limiters disabled.

“You can rely on me.”

Subject alpha: “Very well.”

Subject beta: “No! Inigo, no, please.”

Scan confirmation, subject alpha force field deactivated. Targeting.

Armed> Microkinetics, minimal tissue damage mode selected, neurosedative tip loaded. Fire.

Subject beta: “No! Oh, Lady, you’ve killed him. Get away from me. Get away, you monster.”

Subject beta attempting to run.

Targeting.

Armed> Microkinetic, minimal tissue damage mode selected, neurosedative tip loaded. Fire.

Alert> Five Chikoya approaching, open assault formation.

Multiple target acquisition.

Armed> Disrupter pulse. Maximum power rating. Sequential fire. U-shadow update: landing exit capsule behind Building D.

Armed> Neutron lasers. Maximum power rating. Sequential fire.

U-shadow update: decoy capsules on collision vector. Mach eight. Accelerating.

Armed> Microkinetics. Enhanced explosive warheads. Free fire authority.

Armed> Ariel smartseeker stealth mines. Chikoya profile loaded. Dispense.

Alert> New targets.

Fire.

Fire.

Fire.

The Delivery Man’s biononics ran a last scan over the weird active-molecular vortex and the way it spun down through the quantum fields. It was an interesting chunk of superphysics technology, certainly. He had no idea what its function might actually be, though he suspected it was an elaborate experiment. Whatever it was, he was fairly sure it wasn’t the elevation mechanism.

His u-shadow opened a link to Gore. “Washout,” he reported.

“Yeah, me, too.”

“I’m coming out.” There was little light in the vast cave, a few cold blue patches up amid the multitude of stalactites eighty meters above his head. The bottom quarter of the cave had been cut smooth and flat, leaving the natural rock formations above. Even two and a half thousand years ago, when the advanced Anomine had set it up, the cave couldn’t have been a terribly practical place. That was the thing with the Anomine; everything had an aesthetic aspect.

Water dripped out of the deep fissures and off the ends of the stalactites, creating long pungent algal ribbons down the rough walls. Drainage channels had clogged, leaving dank puddles spreading across the floor. The vortex carried on regardless; moisture and murky air were never going to affect its composition or function.

As he retraced his steps along the winding passage back out to the surface, the Delivery Man was puzzled by the lack of any communication system connected to the vortex. If it was an experiment, surely they would need to monitor the results; same for a control system. Or maybe I’m missing something, he thought wearily. Maybe there is an ultrasophisticated net covering the whole planet that biononic scans are simply too primitive to discover. He was grasping at straws and knew it. The Last Throw’s sensors were good. They’d detected a hundred twenty-four advanced devices still functional on the planet, of which the vortex was the eleventh they’d examined. If there was some kind of web linking them, Last Throw’s sensors would have revealed it.

A quarter of an hour later, the Delivery Man walked out into the evening sunlight. Tall cumulonimbus scurried through the darkening sky, splashed a pale rose gold by the vanishing sun. From his position high up a plateau wall, the countryside swept away to the southeast, its farthest fringes already turning to black. Several rivers traced bright silver threads across the mauve and jade vegetation. Then there was the city to the east, larger and more imposing than any of Earth’s cities even at the height of the population boom. A forest of tall towers stretched over a mile into the air; elaborate spiked spheres and curving pyramids filled the ground between the soaring spires like foothills. Lights were still shining through windows and open arches as the service machinery maintained the city in perfect readiness for occupation.

It was completely devoid of anyone, which he found strangely sad; it reminded him of a spurned lover. The remaining Anomine chose to live in their farm villages out in the open land. He could even see several of their little settlements amid the darkening land, flickering orange lights growing as the nightly fires were lit. He never did get that philosophy, living in the shadow of a past civilization, knowing that at any time they could simply move into the giant towers and live a life of unrivaled luxury, challenge their minds once again. Yet instead, they rejected any form of technology beyond labor-animal carts and plows, and filled their days tilling the fields and building huts.

The Last Throw came streaking in over the mountains behind him to finish up hovering a few centimeters above the succulent spiral grass-equivalent. He drifted up into the airlock.

“This is getting us nowhere fast,” Gore grumbled as the Delivery Man arrived in the main cabin.

“It’s your procedure. What else have we got? There’re not too many of these things to examine.”

“They’re all small scale. We have to look big.”

“We don’t know that, remember,” the Delivery Man chided as he settled in a broad leather-cushioned scoop chair. “We simply don’t know what it is. That vortex I just examined. It had to be linked with the elevation mechanism.”

“How?” Gore snapped.

“I think it was some kind of experiment, probing the local quantum structure. That kind of knowledge could only help contribute to going postphysical, surely.”

“Don’t call me Shirley.”

“What?”

Gore ran a hand over his forehead. “Yeah. Right. Whatever.”

The Delivery Man was mildly puzzled by Gore’s lack of focus. It wasn’t like him at all. “All right. So what I was thinking is that there has to be some kind of web and database in the cities.”

“There is. You can’t access it.”

“Why not?”

“The AIs are sentient. They won’t allow any information retrieval.”

“That’s stupid.”

“From our point of view, yes, but they’re the same as the borderguards: They maintain the homeworld’s sanctity; the AIs keep the Anomine’s information safe.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what the Anomine do; that’s what they are. They’re entitled to protect what they’ve built, same as anyone.”

“But we’re not damag—”

“I know!” Gore snarled. “I fucking know that, all right. We have to work around this. And listening to you sitting there whining twenty-four seven is no fucking help at all. Jezus, I should have lived a fucking normal twenty-first-century life and died properly. Why the hell do I fucking bother to help you moron supermen? Certainly not the gratitude.”

The Delivery Man only just stopped himself from opening his jaw to gawp at the gold-skinned man sitting in his antique orange shell chair. He was about to ask what the problem was, then realized. “She’ll be out of suspension soon,” he said sympathetically.

Gore grunted, shoving himself farther back in his chair’s cushioning. “She should’ve been there by now.”

“We don’t know. In the Void we just don’t know. Time flow there isn’t uniform.”

“Maybe.”

“The confluence nests are functioning. She will dream Makkathran for you; she’ll be there.”

“It’ll mean crap if we don’t find the mechanism.”

“I know. And we’ve still got Marius to deal with when we do.” The Delivery Man had been perturbed when the sensors showed them that Marius had gotten past the borderguard stations. The Accelerator agent’s ship had immediately dropped back into stealth mode once it was inside the cometary belt. Currently it was lurking amid the orbital debris cloud above the Anomine homeworld, watching them zip over the planet. It wouldn’t take much to work out what they were doing.

“Ha. That dick. We can take him whenever we want.”

“We don’t know that.”

“It takes smarter and tougher than him to catch me with my ass hanging out.”

The Delivery Man shook his head. He couldn’t decide if the machismo was worse than the insecurity. “Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Oh, yeah. Wishful thinking; that’s what keeps the universe ticking.”

The Delivery Man groaned and gave up.

Gore’s golden lips parted in a small smile. “The navy teams didn’t exactly push the AIs.”

“Uh huh,” the Delivery Man said warily.

“We’ve got another hundred or so of these tech high spots left to examine, right? So that’s not going to take more than four or five days if we hustle.”

“That sounds about right.”

“Then we do it. If we draw a blank, we go to plan B.”

“Which is?”

“Did you know I actually knew Ozzie?”

“I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me. You were contemporaries.”

“He pulled off two of the greatest thefts in human history.”

“Two? I knew there was some dispute with Nigel about taking the Charybdis.”

“Dispute? Jesus, do they even teach you people history these days? Nigel nearly killed him, and that’s not a metaphor.”

The Delivery Man ignored the “you people” crack. After two weeks cooped up in the Last Throw’s cabin with Gore, it was almost a compliment. “So what was the first crime?”

Gore grinned. “The great wormhole heist. The smart-ass bastard cleaned out the Vegas casinos, and nobody ever knew it was him. Not until after the war and Orion let it slip. Can you imagine that?”

“No, I truly cannot.”

“Well, sonny, you and I are going to steal the knowledge of an entire species. If that’s what it takes to find this goddamn mechanism, then that’s what we’re going to do. Nobody will remember Ozzie’s legend then, so screw him.”

I didn’t know it anyway, the Delivery Man complained silently. He had no idea how Gore was planning to circumvent the Anomine AIs, but he suspected it wouldn’t be a quiet method.

Inigo’s Thirty-third Dream

“We can visit any place on your world where we sense those who are fulfilled gathering in readiness for our guidance to the Heart,” the Skylord had said in answer to Edeard’s question.

“So the towers of this city where you have come today play no part in guidance?”

“Those who inhabited this world before you built them to bid their kind farewell. They are where we came before; therefore, they are where we come now. You use them as they did.”

“Then we can call you to gather us from anywhere?”

“Of course. My kindred welcome all those who have reached fulfillment. It is our purpose.”

Edeard kept dreaming that single crucial event over and over. It was one of the few natural dreams he ever had. Though even that faded after a few years in his personal time scale.

The two Skylords had been visible on the horizon every morning for eight days, moving slowly across the pantheon of the Void’s nebulae as they approached Querencia. Edeard stood on the highest balcony in the Orchard Palace, staring up into the pale sky as a cool breeze wafted in off the Lyot Sea. If he really stretched his farsight, he could just sense the placid thoughts of the massive creatures.

Two, where every time before it has been four. Why? Why should that be? The whole city is a unified society. I have made sure we’ve achieved contentment within ourselves this time. That makes us better people. So why have only two come?

He didn’t like how much that disturbed him. Even on the occasion two times past, when Oberford’s Great Tower of Guidance was being built and the whole economy was falling apart as if Honious were establishing its very own kingdom of bedlam across Querencia, four Skylords had come. It was the start of autumn on the fifth year after Finitan’s death. One of the few constants linking his attempts to change the world for the better.

Ladydamnit, four always come now!

The breeze played over his bare skin, and he rubbed his arms absently at the chill. Those two gauzy stars were still too far away for him to talk with them directly. But when they were within his range, he would be asking. Yes, indeed.

High above the compact streets and pointed roofs of Jeavons, a couple of ge-eagles were floating lazily on the updrafts. They weren’t any he was familiar with, and their long circling flight meant that one of them was always turned toward the palace. He scowled up at them but resisted hauling them down out of the sky. Someone was interested in him. Hardly news. Though none of the independent provinces were a direct threat to Makkathran. That I know of. Perhaps they’re just running scared and want to spy on me to satisfy their paranoia. Knowing the provinces and the trouble they’d caused this time around, it wouldn’t surprise him. But still, the brazenness: watching the Waterwalker, the absolute Mayor of Makkathran, in his own city. That took some gall. That in itself narrowed it down to three provinces—or, rather, their governors: Mallux in Obershire, Kiborne in Plaxshire, or more likely Devroul in Licshills. Yes, any one of them would dare; they were all busy establishing their claims as unifiers to rival him. Each was fierce in his independence, greedy in his desire to absorb his neighbor. Exactly the opposite of what the world should be, what he was trying to make it.

He went back into the master bedchamber. Kanseen had always enjoyed the Orchard Palace’s state rooms. It was what all the city buildings should be like, she’d claimed, a blend of old Makkathran architecture and more practical human adaptations. Theirs had been a pleasant two years together, though in truth, after Kristabel’s increasing sourness, anyone else would have been a relief. But in parallel to the breakdown of his own marriage, Macsen had become intolerable for Kanseen, so the two of them finally winding up with each other was almost inevitable.

Since he’d moved out of the Sampalok mansion, Macsen’s downfall had continued at a rate that upset even Edeard. Not that there was anything he could do to help—not yet. Macsen cut himself off from everyone: his old friends, his children, political allies, anyone who might stand between him and his food and drink and miserable self-pity. He also completely rejected Edeard’s unity. Not for him the growing solidarity of the city, an extended family whose open minds would sympathize and care for him and help him regain his dignity and purpose in life.

The last time Edeard had farsighted him three weeks ago, the former master of Sampalok made a woeful figure, living in some squalid room in a Cobara household by himself, spending his coinage in nearby taverns whose forte was cheap beer and cheaper food. His reaction to the intrusion had been a viciously personal diatribe that went on for almost an hour before it finally sputtered away when he succumbed to a drunken slumber.

Edeard had withdrawn then, guilty and angry in equal measure. Macsen was one of his oldest friends; he ought to have been able to do something. Yet he despised the way Macsen had just let go and given in to whatever Honious-born spirits that now possessed him; he was stronger than that, Edeard knew. Yet Macsen in his alcohol-and-kestric-derived state blamed Edeard for the way his life had tumbled into the abyss, with his rejection of unification at the heart of it. Edeard knew that the trust and understanding he’d brought to Makkathran was the true way forward. He couldn’t stop now, not for one person, no matter how much his friendship used to mean.

Edeard’s relationship with Kanseen hadn’t helped Macsen’s condition. That was just the most personal way to wound Macsen there could be. It ensured there would be no reconciliation now, Edeard knew, no last-minute mellowing and putting aside of pride—not on either side. So his own triumph in establishing the unification of the city had come at the cost of his friend and, if he wasn’t careful, his friend’s soul, for in the end what Skylord would ever guide Macsen’s embittered, unfulfilled soul to the Heart? He had no choice, he knew. Each day now was simply spent putting off the inevitable. Soon a subtle domination would have to be applied, gently guiding Macsen back into the embrace of those who loved him.

Edeard padded over to the wide circular bed and pushed aside the gauzy curtains that surrounded it. A hazy patch on the ceiling above the soft mattress radiated a warm copper light, its dusky illumination just enough to reveal the outlines of her body as she slept. The sheet had slipped down past her shoulders, exposing skin that still gleamed from the oils the two younger girls had massaged in at the start of the evening. It was a pleasurable entertainment, variants of which he enjoyed most nights now. Proof, as if he needed it, that the city was now on the right course to provide fulfillment for everyone. Nobody censured anymore, nobody criticized or fought or complained. They cooperated and helped one another succeed in their individual endeavors. He had brought them liberation of themselves, the sure route to the kind of fulfillment the Skylords sought.

Edeard bent over and kissed her gently on the lips. Hilitte stirred, stretching herself with indolent grace, not fully awake yet smiling when she saw him. “What time is it?” she mumbled.

“Early.”

“Poor Edeard, couldn’t you sleep?” Her gathering thoughts were tinged with genuine concern.

“There are things I worry about,” he admitted with voice and mind. Honesty with each other; that is the key to true unity.

“Even now? That’s so wrong. So unfair.” Her arms rose up to twine around his neck. “Let’s think of something else for you to occupy yourself with.”

For a second he resisted, then allowed her to pull him down so he could lose himself in simple physical delights and forget all about the rebel provinces and Macsen and the others who struggled against the city’s unity. For a while at least.

Not surprisingly, Edeard didn’t wake again until the sun was well above the horizon. He and Hilitte bathed together in the oval pool in the bathroom, where water gurgled in along a long raised chute he’d crafted to resemble a small stream. It also showered down on them from a bulge in the curving ceiling when they asked; since he’d moved into the palace state rooms after the election, he’d been modifying things so he could have any kind of spray from a heavy jet to a light mist. He lounged in a sculpted seat at the side of the pool, watching Hilitte rinse herself off under the fast rain of droplets, deliberately stretching and twisting so he might appreciate her lithe figure. Which he did, but … Kanseen had enjoyed the new improved shower, he recalled with a touch of melancholia. That wasn’t the problem that ultimately had come between them. They’d differed over Makkathran’s unification. How he wanted to go about creating an atmosphere of trust, how to use family and political supporters and those who eagerly sought the Waterwalker’s patronage, building so many allies and seeding the districts with unity groups so that the outcome would be inevitable. She never fully agreed with the concept, regarding it as a form of domination.

What Kanseen did not understand and he could never explain was just how badly wrong the nice and open and honest approach had gone—twice in a row. How the time before, the one after the whole Oberford tower disaster, the method of inclusion, which he’d so carefully crafted from his horrendous experience with the nest and had given freely so Querencia might live as one, had been warped and subverted by the malcontents of the emerging generation of strong psychics (and Ranalee, of course) to build new, small versions of the nest centered on themselves in what was almost a reprise of Tathal’s time. Bitter struggles ensued, tipping the world yet again into chaos and hurt, leaving him with no choice this time around but to launch the unification in a way that enabled his governance to be paramount. Restricting dissent was a small price to pay for such an achievement. Even now, strong psychics in eight provinces had managed to subvert the gift, declaring independence from Makkathran’s benign governorship—the Waterwalker’s menacing empire, as they called it. Their own petty little fiefdoms were hardly beacons of enlightenment. He was still considering if and how he should move against them; as with the original nest, they wouldn’t allow anyone to leave of his or her own free will.

“What’s the matter, sweetie?” Hilitte asked, suffused with concern.

“I’m fine.”

She struck a sultry pose under the shower. “You want me to bring the girls in?”

“We did enough of that last night, and we will again tonight. I’m going to get breakfast now.” He stepped out of the bath and snagged a big towel with his third hand. Behind him Hilitte gave a small pout and ordered the shower off.

That was the one trouble with her, he realized: She really was too young to be anything but a bedmate. He couldn’t talk to her about anything, exchange ideas, argue problems through, reminisce about events. They never went to the Opera House together, and she swiftly grew bored at the more formal dinner parties he was constantly invited to—so much so that she rarely went to any these days, which was just as well. But she did have a delectably dirty mind and a complete lack of inhibition. It all came as something of a revelation after being married for so long. However unfair that was to Kristabel, Hilitte’s bedroom antics provided a grand way of getting his mind off the troubles of the day.

Which makes her more convenient than visiting the House of Blue Petals. Not necessarily cheaper, though.

Breakfast was taken in the huge state dining room with its long roof forever showing intense orange images of the sun’s corona from the vantage point of some endless orbit a million miles above the seething surface. Underneath the fluctuating glare, the long polished black ash table was capable of hosting city banquets for a hundred fifty guests. This morning it had been set for the two of them. The kitchen staff had laid out big silver ice-bed platters on one of the dozen bolnut veneer sideboards, laden with an array of cold smoked meats cut as thin as parchment. Petal-pattern segments of fruit, cheeses, and glass jugs of yogurt were laid out next to them like small works of art. Warm dishes contained scrambled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon and sausages, and crisped mashed potatoes. Five earthenware pots contained the mixes of cereal, and a small charcoal grill was ready to toast any of the five different types of bread or warm his croissants for him.

Edeard sat down and stared over at the ridiculously extravagant spread of food without really registering any of it. He directed a ge-chimp to bring him a tall glass of apple juice and a bowl of cereal. Hilitte sat next to him, dressed in a thick toweling robe with fluffy pink house socks. She gave him a warm smile before issuing a whole batch of instructions to the ge-chimps.

They ate in silence for a few minutes as Edeard considered what he was going to ask the Skylords. He was sure they’d be in range by the following morning or a day later at the least.

What could possibly have upset their pattern? Change originated from him; he’d traveled back to start again enough times to know that by now. Everyone else would just carry on as before unless he did something to alter their paths through life. It was influence that mattered the most: He did something different, so the lives of the people interacting with him altered to varying degrees, and so the effect spread out like a sluggish ripple. The major difference he’d made each time since the epic voyage around the world was to explain how the Skylords didn’t need the towers of Eyrie to accept people for guidance, which out in the provinces always led to a rush to build some kind of homage tower in every town and city, to the detriment of the economy. His repeated clarification that it didn’t need to be a tower, just a broad open space for people to gather, was always blithely ignored (witness the tax revolt following the Great Tower of Guidance fiasco).

For all the change he brought, it was only lives he affected; he couldn’t change the weather or make the planets orbit any differently. So why are there only two this time?

The only possible answer was one he simply couldn’t accept.

Dinlay arrived soon after Edeard started munching away on his second slice of toast. The Chief Constable’s humor was as pleasant as always. Dinlay had joined the unification almost unknowingly and certainly very willingly; the acceptance of such a gentle universal communion was after all the thing his subconscious had yearned for all these years. Even then, some things about Dinlay had never altered.

Edeard watched closely for any sign of envy or jealousy from his old friend regarding Hilitte (he’d made very sure that this time he was the first to meet her as soon as she arrived in Makkathran armed with her mother’s lists of contacts). That old Ashwell optimism just never dies, does it? But no, Dinlay was unconcerned by Edeard’s latest girl; after all, he’d just married Folopa, who was a lofty catch even by his standards.

Dinlay sat next to Edeard and placed his smart uniform hat on the table, aligning it with the edge. His open mind revealed how satisfying that was, how it fit in with the view that the world should be an ordered place.

“Help yourself,” Edeard said, gesturing to the sideboard. He couldn’t help the wistful memories of when he and Dinlay had moved into the constable tenement after they’d finished their probation. Nearly every morning until he’d married they’d had breakfast together. The best days. No! The easiest.

A ge-chimp brought Dinlay a cup of coffee and a croissant. “You need to watch what you eat,” Dinlay said, eyeing the huge spread of food. “You’ll wind up Macsen’s size if you’re not careful.”

“No, I won’t,” Edeard assured him softly. Dinlay and Macsen hadn’t spoken for over a year now, which pained him. Maybe I should go right back to the beginning? Except he knew that was the most pitiful wishful thinking. This was the time when he’d gotten everything so close to being right. All that was left for him now was to bring those remaining provinces into the unification, along with a few recalcitrants left over in the city. When that was done, he could truly, finally, relax.

“Some news came in last night that you’re going to enjoy,” Dinlay said. “It would seem the Fandine militia is on the march.”

Edeard endured a nasty chill of déjà vu at the claim. The Fandine militia had last marched when he was voyaging on the Lady’s Light, but that was for another reason altogether. “Against Makkathran?” he asked sharply.

Dinlay’s thoughts were happy at providing his friend with a surprise and being able to reassure him. “Against Licshills. It would seem Devroul’s expansionist ambitions were too great for Manel.”

“I see.” Edeard didn’t allow anyone to know his own dismay that this time around Manel had fallen to the bad again and had set himself up as the Lord President of Licshills. “When did this happen?”

“Five days ago. Larose’s fast scouts brought the news as quickly as they could.” Dinlay sipped at his coffee, waiting for Edeard’s response.

“Five days. Which means they’ll be a fifth of the way there by now.”

“Are you going to try and stop them?”

“Oh, Edeard,” Hilitte exclaimed. “You have to stop them. There would be so many people killed if you don’t. The Skylords would never come again.”

Edeard gave Dinlay a shrug. “She has a point.”

“Yes, but … who would the city’s militia regiments side with?”

“Neither. We oppose both, of course.” Edeard was trying to work out what course of events they could play out. Clearly, the city forces would have to stall the provincial regiments while domination was used against the individual militiamen, pulling them into Makkathran’s unification. But ultimately there would be a showdown with the strong psychics at the core of each independent province. It was a situation he’d been avoiding for two years, hating the idea of yet more confrontation. But the only alternative was traveling back for yet another restart, making good the mistakes and problems before they emerged, and that was something he simply could not contemplate. Not again. I can’t do it. Living those same years yet again would be a death for me.

Dinlay nodded sagely. “Shall I tell Larose to prepare?”

People were going to die; Edeard knew that. The number would depend on him. Riding the city militia into the conflict was the only way to keep the number of deaths to a minimum. “Yes. I’ll ride with them myself.”

“Edeard—”

He held a hand up. “I have to. You know this.”

“Then I will come with you.”

“The Chief Constable has no business riding with the militia.”

“Nor does the Mayor.”

“I know. Nonetheless, it is my responsibility, so I will be there to do what I can. But someone with authority must remain in the city.”

“The Grand Council …”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes,” Dinlay admitted. “I do.”

“Besides, we don’t want to make Gealee a widow, now, do we?”

Dinlay glanced up from his croissant. “Gealee? Who’s Gealee?”

Edeard grimaced as he silently cursed his stupidity. “Sorry. My mind wanders these days. I mean Folopa. You can’t take the risk. You’re barely back from your honeymoon.”

“There’s an equal risk.”

“No, Dinlay, there isn’t. We both know that.” He pushed ever so slightly, sending his longtalk whisper slithering into Dinlay’s thoughts to soothe the agitated peaks of thought. Dinlay’s reluctance faded away.

“Aye, I suppose so.”

“Thank you,” Edeard said, hoping his guilt wasn’t showing. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“You normally know what you’re doing.”

It was all he could do not to bark a bitter laugh. “One day I will. Now come on.” He rose and gave Hilitte a quick kiss. “We have to get to the sanctum. Argain and Marcol are the first meeting. They seem pleased with themselves.”

“It’s nothing,” Dinlay said, finishing his coffee before getting to his feet. “Information on the criminals resisting our city’s embrace. They have some new names for you.”

“They’re not criminals.” Not yet, he added silently, wondering where all his guilt was coming from this morning. As if I don’t know: those Ladydamned Skylords.

“They should be,” Dinlay muttered darkly.

———

It was the way of his days now, meeting with people who were at odds with the city’s unity. Acting as moderator, smoothing the way for understanding between everyone. A version of being Mayor he’d never quite envisioned during the caravan trip to Makkathran too many decades ago. He’d always thought he’d be elected in a free vote, arguing with his opponents and winning people over. Instead, he’d been the only candidate in a city where everyone’s mind was attuned to his. Well, not everyone, he admitted, and that’s a big part of the problem. Some people knew how to resist or deflect dominance. But they still gave the appearance of sharing, of unity with everybody else. Everything would be running along smoothly for weeks, then one morning the constables would be called to premises that had been smashed up or a gondolier yard where boats had been broken. More worrying were the warehouses where fruit and meat had been ruined, chopped open or doused in cartloads of genistar excrement. That was happening too often for his liking, and it was always performed by genistars, leaving no trace of the perpetrator even in the city’s memory.

So Argian and Marcol and Felax tracked down those resisting the unification one by one, but their true numbers were unknown. Rumor had it in the thousands. Edeard suspected a few hundred, which left him content that his dedicated team would gradually wear down the resistance. It was almost like the good old days of the Grand Council committee on organized crime. Except even that was an illusion, a memory that when examined properly wasn’t so joyful. It was just another achingly long time spent shuffling reports and dossiers.

If anything was becoming a true constant in his life, it was the mountains of paperwork and those endless boring meetings. Can that really lead to my fulfillment? And if not, what?

The evening didn’t start well. One of the girls Hilitte brought to the bedchamber wasn’t used to so much food being available and ate too much during the meal beforehand, which led to her feeling sick when they all retired to the master bedchamber. With unity came minds wide open to each other. That meant the sensations of her nausea spread like a contagion.

After she’d hurried out, leaving those left behind to take deep breaths and calm their queasy stomachs, Edeard decided a quiet night spent by himself might be preferable to the usual frenetic physical performance. Sure enough, his day had been long, uneventful, and ultimately thankless. His one attempt to longtalk Jiska had resulted in the usual quick rebuff. His children had all taken their mother’s side. It was probably the main reason he’d turned to Hilitte and the others; their cheap adoration was an easy way of easing the pain of loss, no matter how shallow and flimsy the act. His one genuine thread of comfort amid the estrangement came from knowing that a unified world would provide them with fulfillment. He hadn’t failed them even though they would never acknowledge it.

He asked Hilitte and the remaining girl to leave him. Hilitte stomped out in a wake of hurt feelings and sourness with just an undercurrent of worry that her time as the favorite was drawing to a close. Such was his languor, he couldn’t be bothered to reassure her. He wove a thick shield around his feelings, cutting himself off from the mellow reassuring contentment of the unified minds glowing around him, and fell asleep.

He was woken out of his outlandish dream by the strength of worry from the approaching mind. For a second he had been back in the forest with the other Ashwell apprentices on their galby hunt, beset with fear without knowing why. But it was only Argian, breezing his way past staff with cool purpose, ignoring any requests to wait for the sleeping Waterwalker to be formally woken and informed of his presence.

“It’s all right,” Edeard longtalked through the bedchamber’s closed door. “Come in.” His third hand hauled a robe over as Argian strode in. Now that Edeard was shaking off the sleep, he became aware of just how deep the currents of anxiety were running in the man’s mind. Bitter regret was like the burn of bile. “What is it?” Edeard asked in trepidation.

“We caught them,” Argian said, but there wasn’t a trace of elation in the tone. That morning he and Marcol had been excited at the new leads they’d gathered, the information that that night there would be a raid on a shipyard in the Port district, where two half-built trading schooners would be burned.

“And?” Edeard asked.

“They fought back.” There were tears glinting in Argian’s eyes now. “I’m so sorry, Edeard. Her concealment was good; we didn’t even know she was there.”

Edeard became still, the hot blood pounding around his body suddenly turning to ice as he perceived the picture forming amid Argian’s thoughts. “No,” he moaned.

“We didn’t know. I swear on the Lady. Marcol hauled her out of the flames as soon as we farsighted her.”

“Where is she?”

“The hospital on Half Bracelet Lane in Neph; it was the closest.”

Edeard flung his farsight into the district, pushing through the thick walls of the hospital. As always, the sense revealed only gauzy radiant shadows, but he could perceive the body that lay on a cot in the ground-floor ward; he knew the signature anywhere. It was ablaze with pain. “Oh, great Lady,” he groaned in horror.

The travel tunnels took him down to Neph in minutes. As he passed under Abad, he sensed someone else flying along ahead of him. Two girls, holding hands as they hurtled headfirst, radiated fear and concern as their long dark skirts flapped wildly in the slipstream.

“Marilee? Analee?” he called. He had no idea they knew of the travel tunnels. Their thoughts vanished behind an astonishingly strong shield. The rejection was as shocking as it was absolute.

He rose up through the floor of the hospital a few seconds behind the twins. They were already hurrying toward the ward, glimpsed as shadows in the dark corridors, their heels clattering on the floor. He followed, every step slower than the last. The farsight of his whole family was converging on the hospital, their presence like malign souls.

Jiska was lying on a cot, a terrible reedy wail bubbling out of her throat. The level of pain filling the long room was enough to make Edeard’s legs falter. He was crying as he approached. Three doctors were bent over his daughter, trying to remove the burned cloth from her ruined skin. Potions and ointments were poured over the blackened, crisping flesh, doing little to alleviate the awful thudding pain.

He took another step forward. Marilee and Analee moved quickly to form a barrier between him and the bed, minds fiercely steadfast. They were clad in robes similar to his own signature black cloak, hoods thrown over their heads leaving their faces in shadow. Steely guardians of their mortally injured sister, determined to prevent any last violation of her sanctity.

“She has suffered enough, Father.”

“She doesn’t need you here to make it worse.”

“Jiska,” he pleaded. “Why?”

“Don’t do that.”

“Not here.”

“Not now.”

“Don’t pretend your ignorance is some kind of innocence.”

“You’re not ignorant. Nor innocent.”

“You are evil.”

“A monster.”

“We will do whatever we can to ruin your empire.”

“And destroy you.”

The two black-clad figures wavered in his vision, and he saw them on the tropical beach as it had never happened so many years ago, both in long cotton rainbow skirts, bare feet on the hot sand, both clinging adoringly to Marvane, rapturously happy as Natran performed the marriage ceremony.

“I do this for all of you,” Edeard wept. “I am bringing you fulfillment. The Lady knows I try to bring fulfillment to the whole world. Why do you reject me?”

“Your evil would enslave everyone on Querencia, and you ask us why.”

“Evil. Evil. Evil man. Honious will take you.”

Jiska convulsed. Edeard groaned through clenched teeth as he forced himself to share every aspect of her agony. He deserved nothing less. His legs gave way.

“We will bring you down.”

“We are still free.”

“We have taught others how to liberate themselves.”

“Your slaves will rise up against you.”

“Domination does not deliver eternal loyalty.”

“Already your hold on the provinces crumbles away.”

“You?” he asked through the sickening pain. “You are the resistance?”

Then the longtalk he dreaded most spoke. “Who else was left?” Kristabel asked. “Whose mind has your megalomania left unbroken?”

Jiska’s head turned slightly.

“Don’t move, don’t move,” the doctors chorused in concern.

Red scabbed eyelids fluttered, sending a yellow fluid seeping out of freshly opened cracks. The remaining good eye stared right at him. “We will beat you,” Jiska’s weak longtalk told him determinedly. “My soul will wander the Void, but I will die knowing this. I am fulfilled, Father, but not how you desired me to be, thank the Lady.”

Edeard fell to his knees. “You’re not to be lost. I can stop this,” he told her with a whisper. “I can.” Two hours, that’s all. Just go back two hours and stop the fire from ever happening. I’ll talk reason to them. We will find common ground.

“If you try—”

“—you will have to kill us first.”

“All of us,” Kristabel longtalked.

Edeard raised his head to the shadowed ceiling. “You do not die. Not again. Not ever while I live. I have suffered too much for that to be allowed.”

In the streets outside the hospital, minds were emerging from their concealment. Their presence shocked him. Rolar, Dylorn, Marakas, even Taralee. The oldest five grandchildren, all emboldened and resolute. But not Burlal—he at least is spared this. And they weren’t alone. Macsen and Kanseen emerged with them, as did their children. Then at the last Kristabel came forth.

“You can rule this world,” they told him with a loving unity whose nobility was infinitely more beautiful than any he had ever imposed. “But we will not be a part of it. One way or another.”

“But we must be one,” he shouted back frantically. “One—” Nation. With that he crumpled to the ground and cried out in anguish as the shock of what he now believed in hit him with a physical impact. Oh, my great Lady, I have become my enemies: Bise, Owain, Buate, the Gilmorn, Tathal, all the others I struggled to overcome. How was I so weak to let them win, to adopt their methods? This cannot stand. This is why fewer Skylords have come. Fulfillment is slipping away from me, from all of us. I knew that. Lady, I always knew that.

He had sworn not to go back again, but that was an irrelevance now—he was going back to save Jiska. Not two hours. That would not be salvation. There was only one option left.

“You are right,” he told them, and opened his mind so they could see whatever love and humility he had left. “I have fallen to arrogance and sin, but I swear to the Lady I will show no more weakness.” And reached for that wretched moment—

—to land on the ground at the foot of the Eyrie tower. His ankles gave way, and he stumbled, falling forward. Strong third hands reached out to steady him. A blaze of concern and adoration bathed his bruised thoughts.

The crowd drew its collective breath in a loud “Ohoooo” at his dangerous landing. Then, as he straightened up, they began to applaud the ostentatious resurgence of their old Waterwalker.

For a moment he feared his jumbled recollections and shaky emotions meant he’d completely misjudged the twisting passage through the Void’s memory. But there was no powerful farsight following him, no Tathal, no nest. This was the time immediately after he had vanquished that foe, when events were so close to what they had been the first time, the genuine life he’d forgone so long ago.

Macsen gave him a derisory sneer, while Dinlay’s hardened thoughts registered his disapproval at the madcap jump from the tower. As they always do, thank you, Lady.

Kristabel’s expression was one of unwavering anger. He looked at her and smiled weakly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered inaudibly. “I’m so sorry.”

Her fury subsided as she measured the confusion and sadness filling his mind. He held his arms out to her. After the briefest hesitation, she walked over.

“Daddy,” Marilee scolded.

“That was so bad.”

“Teach us how to do that.”

Edeard nodded slowly. “One day I might just do that. But for now there’s a young man I want you to meet, a sailor.”

“Which one of us?” Analee asked, playfully mistrustful.

“Both of you. Both of you should meet him. I think you all might be very happy together.”

The twins turned to give each other a look of complete astonishment.

Kristabel moved into his arms. “What’s wrong?”

Edeard took a long time to answer. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been lately. I’m going to stop that now.”

She shrugged awkwardly inside his embrace. “I can’t be the easiest person to live with.”

He pointed out across the city to the Lyot Sea. “The Skylord comes.”

“Really?” Like everyone in Makkathran, she extended her farsight to the horizon as the astounded residents of Myco and Neph gifted their sight of the giant creature.

“It will bring such change to our lives,” Edeard said quietly. “I think I know how to moderate any difficulties. But I don’t know everything, I truly don’t. I will need help. It will not be easy.”

“I’m here,” she said with a soft reassuring hug. “As are all your friends, and together we will live through this. So just banish that horrible old Ashwell optimism, Edeard Waterwalker. This is the life you were made for.”

“Yes.” And this is the last one; whatever happens, this is what I will live with. Sweet Lady, please, in your infinite wisdom, give me the strength to get it right.

The capsule came down close to the center of Octoron’s little township. Acrid smoke layered the air. Several of the buildings surrounding Entranceway Plaza were damaged; energy weapons had briefly turned the iron structures molten, causing them to sag and twist as they started to lean over. The wreckage of crashed capsules was sticking out of the ruins. Heat from the impact in combination with all the munitions had ignited a great many fires, which the chamber’s drones were only just extinguishing. They’d used a lot of crystalfoam, covering vast swaths of the plaza in blue-green mush that was still emitting sulfurous belches.

Human paramedics were scuttling around, performing triage. Serious cases were carried to waiting capsules to be ferried off to the hospital on the edge of town. Thirty heavily armored and badly pissed Chikoya were strutting around, getting in the way of the human emergency teams. Resentment was starting to rise on both sides. There’d be another clash if tempers didn’t start cooling quickly.

The capsule’s door dilated, and he stepped out. It wasn’t a bad entrance, he felt; he was wearing some really quite stylish mauve shorts and a loose-fitting shirt of semiorganic white silk open down the front, like the top half of a robe. Top-grade Advancer-heritage genetic sequences and a decent diet had toned him up, and his slightly elevated position gave him that commanding full-of-confidence appearance, as if he’d arrived ready to take charge and everyone else could now relax. The frayed leather flip-flops admittedly detracted from the image, but he’d been in a hurry, so nothing he could do about that now. In any case, no one was looking at his feet; they were all looking up at him. Except the fifteen armored Chikoya who had swung their weapons around to splash their targeting lasers across his pristine shirt.

“Well, this sucks,” Ozzie said.

He trotted down the capsule’s three stairs to the ground and gave the big aliens his best untroubled grin. The Chikoya resembled medium-sized dinosaurs with vestigial dragon wings. Beefed up with armor that resembled black metallic crocodile skin, they were imposing demonic creatures. And really very pissed, Ozzie decided as their minds radiated the paranoia and aggression that only their species could produce in such quantities.

“So what’s up?” he asked.

“You are Ozzie?” the lead one asked. Its thick neck curved down, putting its helmet tip inches from Ozzie’s nose.

“Sure thing, dude.”

Three mirrored lenses in the helmet’s center swiveled slightly to focus on Ozzie’s head. “Where is the human messiah?”

“I don’t know. I like just got here. Right?”

“You are the one who broke through into the realm of the all-perception. You can use it at the highest level. You must know where he is.”

Ozzie took a sad moment to reflect how semantics always betrayed the universe-view of each sentient species. “I don’t know,” he said patiently, pushing an intense feeling of benevolence out into mindspace. “The messiah is powerful. He has mysterious ways of camouflaging himself from the rest of us.” That was a slight exaggeration. Ozzie was sorely puzzled how Inigo had actually managed to conceal himself. One moment he’d been there, his raging thoughts glaring out into mindspace, and the next he’d gone, vanished, the mind extinguished. It was as if he’d died, which, judging by the amount of carnage let loose in the plaza, was a high probability. Except there had been others with him, a woman and some kind of psychotic special forces bodyguard who also, oddly, didn’t register in mindspace. For all three to vanish without leaving a visible corpse between them just wasn’t going to wash. Either they’d teleported out somehow, which he didn’t believe because the AI was showing the damaged navy scout ship still sitting on the pad, or they knew a way to circumvent mindspace, which he wouldn’t put past that slippery, gloating little shit Inigo.

“Why is he here?” the Chikoya demanded. Oval vents at the front of its helmet clunked open, allowing a misty stream of phlegm to come spitting out.

Ozzie dodged gracefully, managing to clamp down on his feelings about that particular Chikoya body function. “As I haven’t met him, I don’t know.”

“He is a danger to all living things on the Spike. The Void may know of his presence here. It will seek us out. We will be the first to be devoured.”

“I know. Real crock of shit, huh? When I find him, I’m going to kick his ass right off the Spike. I’m going to be hunting hard.”

“We will locate the messiah. We will make him stop the Void.”

“That’s wonderful. We both want the same thing. But dude, you just gotta make sure to let me know when you find him, please. I got me special supersecret weapons that will cut the bastard to shreds no matter what kind of force fields and military protection he’s brought with him.”

“You have weapons?” Sensor clumps mounted on the Chikoya’s armor rose up like time-lapse mushrooms to scan over Ozzie as another jet of phlegm spit out.

“Hey ho, I used to be one of the Commonwealth’s rulers, you know. Check your database to confirm. That means I had full access to its pre-postphysical technology. Of course I have superweapons with me, dude.” He pushed a starburst of sincerity and determination into his mind and held it there. “I don’t want any more of your herd to be hurt or killed by his soldiers, so please, if you find him, please call me. I can squash him like a Kantr under a Folippian.” Whatever they are.

“We will inform you if he is troublesome.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind.” Ozzie smiled again at the monster’s helmet and walked around it into the plaza. The other Chikoya let him pass. His macrocellular clusters reported a quick surge in encrypted data between the big aliens. They began to holster their weapons.

Oh, yeah. Still the man.

That was exactly what he’d come to the Spike to get away from. He went over to one of the triage teams. “Hi, Max.”

“Uh? Oh, hi, Ozzie,” the medic replied. He was kneeling beside an unconscious woman who’d suffered a lot of burns.

“So what happened?”

“The guy was a fucking lunatic. He took on a whole army of Chikoya by himself.”

“Did you see it?” Ozzie asked.

“Just the end.” Max applied some pale-green derm3 to the woman’s black and red legs. The jelly spread out evenly over the terrible damage and began to bubble like sluggish champagne. “And I had to wait until that was over before I landed. Anything moving down here got trashed. I guess weapon enrichments have come on some since I left the Commonwealth.”

“Yeah, looks like it.” Ozzie’s field scan told him the Chikoya were starting to teleport out.

Coleen, the medic working with Max, broke off from implementing the stem support module she’d applied to the woman’s throat. “What the hell is Inigo doing coming here?”

“Sounds like he wants to talk to me,” Ozzie admitted.

“Why?”

“Don’t know for sure, but just a wild guess here: the Void.”

Max had cut away the smoldering fabric of the woman’s dress and started applying the derm3 to the side of her abdomen. “Can you stop it?”

Ozzie gave him a bitter laugh. “No. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Then why—”

“Dunno, man.” Ozzie spread his arms wide in surrender. “She going to be all right?”

“She’s not Higher,” Coleen said. “But she should be able to avoid re-life. I think she’s stable enough to make the trip to the hospital now.”

“I’ll take her,” Max said.

“How many hurt?” Ozzie asked. He didn’t want to know, but his conscience was prodding him. That was something that hadn’t happened in a long time. And it shouldn’t be happening now, damnit.

“Eleven got bodylossed,” Coleen said. “We’ve shipped eight live criticals back to the hospital, and there’s another five bad ones waiting. Maybe two dozen more with minor injuries.”

Ozzie gave a tight nod. “Could have been worse.”

“The Chikoya aren’t going to get over this in a hurry,” she said.

“I know.”

“They think the Spike belongs to them.”

“It doesn’t.”

“But this …”

“They’ll get over it. We’ve all got to get along.”

“So you keep saying,” she said.

Ozzie was disappointed by the amount of bitterness and resentment in her mind, even though Coleen was good at toning down her feelings.

“I’ll sort this out,” he assured her.

“Good.” She hurried off to another victim, her boots squelching through the crystalfoam.

Max gave Ozzie a sympathetic look. “I don’t blame you.”

“Very big.”

“But it’s Inigo, Ozzie! The Dreamer himself. Things have to be bad if he’s come to you.”

“I know.”

“And that bodyguard—”

Ozzie held his hand up, palms outward. “I’m on it, man.” He turned and walked slowly back to the capsule, stopping briefly to study the broken buildings. No doubt about it, they were going to have to rebuild the whole center of town. “Connect me to him,” he told his u-shadow.

The code embedded in the general message made a connection instantly. “This is Ozzie.”

“You are the eighth person to claim this.”

“That’s gotta be a bummer for you. And what if I’ve cloned myself? Would any of us brothers do, or did you want the original?” He waited for a reply, slightly mystified by the delay.

“I need the original.”

“Then this is your lucky day, pal.” Ozzie’s u-shadow informed him that a very sophisticated infiltrator was trying to take over the capsule’s smartnet. “Let it in,” he told the u-shadow. “But if we land in deep shit, I want to be able to wipe it.”

“Confirmed,” his u-shadow reported. An exovision display showed him the infiltrator’s progress.

“I will require DNA verification that you are Oswald Fernandez Isaacs.”

“Nobody calls me that.”

“That is your name.”

“It was my name.” Even after all the re-life procedures and biononic regenerations he’d undergone in the last fifteen hundred years, with all their associated memory edits, he’d never quite let go of the childhood persecution that name had brought down upon him. “Now I’m just Ozzie; always have been, always will be.”

“Very well, Ozzie, I am loading a coordinate into your capsule. Please do not attempt to deviate from the route.”

“Dude, wouldn’t dream of it.”

A map of Octoron compartment flipped up, with his u-shadow showing him the route the infiltrator was preparing to fly. Ozzie studied it, but the destination was a nowhere, a remote stretch of land past one of the water columns, about thirty kilometers away. Just the kind of nowhere outlaws would choose to lie low in, in a decent Western.

The capsule lifted silently and curved around over the town. Ozzie watched the buildings shrink away while the resentment built in his mind. The Spike was his escape from the shitty vibes of life in the Greater Commonwealth, and Inigo was the one man who’d subverted and ruined his hopes for the gaiafield.

Nigel Sheldon had offered Ozzie another way out, a berth on the Sheldon family armada of colony starships. They weren’t just going to the other side of the galaxy to set up a new society. Oh, no, not Nigel; he was off to a whole new galaxy to begin again. A noble quest, restarting human civilization in a fresh part of the universe. Then in another thousand years a new generation of colony ships might spread to further galaxies. After all, as he’d pointed out, this one is ultimately doomed with the Void at the center, so we need somewhere that’s got a long-term future. Ozzie grabbed the logic even as he argued back that humans would have gone postphysical long before the Void would ever present a tangible threat.

Ha! Yeah, right. Goddamn Nigel, always gets the last laugh.

The Spike had been a kind of compromise for Ozzie. A withdrawal from Commonwealth life for sure but not a complete retreat the way Nigel had chosen—not that he saw it as a retreat. He did it because there was a slight chance he could still turn things around and reclaim the dream that he’d lost to Inigo, Edeard, and the insidious Void.

He had intended the gaiafield to allow humans and aliens to understand each other better, eliminating conflict and confusion across the galaxy. The oldest liberal dream of all: If we just keep talking … And now the gaiafield could back up the talk with sincerity and understanding. Except, as always, the human race had found a way to fuck it up and turn it into the carrier wave of the latest and stupidest of all religions. So he came to the Spike with an idea of how to make something bigger than the gaiafield and commune with the Silfen Motherholme, a wonderful union of the mind that couldn’t be subverted by selective, edited thoughts like Inigo’s seditious dreams with their sole purpose of entrapping people.

Mindspace was a good start, except it worked better with human thoughts than with anyone else’s, especially the ratty little Ilodi. But the Chikoya were coming around to accepting the state, even though the stupid monsters were hanging on it a whole load of religious connotations of the “all-perception realm,” which had sparked some old dumbass racial lore.

A little bit of fine-tuning was all it would take. Something he’d been analyzing and rationalizing—well, sort of—for the last forty years. Then every sentient species in the galaxy would be aware of every other species, which would be truly wonderful. Unless there was something else like the Prime out there. And prescience/rationality species would probably think their gods were calling. Oh, and greedy little psychopaths like the Ocisen Empire would use it as a map of worlds to conquer.

Yeah, fine-tuning. That’s all.

Which he would have gotten around to. Eventually. Except now the Commonwealth and its incredible idiocies and factions and violence had followed him to the Spike. His basic instinct was to just cut and run again. But Inigo’s boneheaded stupidity was finally paying off, with the Void going apeshit and everyone desperate for a solution. To what Ozzie wasn’t sure. But sure as bears shit in the woods, they came searching him out for it, treating him like the ultimate guru.

So once again, here he was doing the right thing, which would have appalled the him of centuries past. Today, he just figured that this was the quickest way to get them the fuck off the Spike.

The capsule approached the water column, one of twelve massive support structures that stretched from the chamber’s landscape right up to the opaque roof forty kilometers above. They always reminded Ozzie of giant cocktail swizzle sticks, huge narrow cylinders with ridges that spiraled the entire length. It was part of the chamber’s irrigation system; water flowed constantly down them, racing around and around in a white-foam cascade. The top third of the twists had sharp angled kinks that sent thundering bursts of spume swirling off in long clouds that traced huge arcs as they fell downward and outward until they’d evolved into ordinary stratus scudding through the air before eventually drizzling on the ground far below.

He flew directly underneath one of the churning ribbons of thick white mist and began a steep descent. A broad expanse of Octoron’s purple and green grass lay below, with a herd of sprightly tranalin racing away from the lake at the base of the water column. Ozzie expanded his biononic field scan function and probed the ground directly below. Three human figures were waiting for him, which was odd because he couldn’t perceive any incursion of thoughts within mindspace. He frowned and refined the scan. One was standing waiting, integral force field active; the other two were lying on the grass, unconscious.

“Ah,” he grunted as realization dawned. “Clever.”

The capsule touched down, and he emerged to face the standing man. No doubt he was the bodyguard type who’d unleashed hell back in the town. The man’s biological appearance was mid-thirties, which was slightly older than Highers usually maintained their physical looks. Ozzie was drawn to his eyes, which were gray with weird flecks of purple. His Commonwealth Navy tunic was simple gray-blue semiorganic, with several burn scars where energy weapons had fired out from subdermal enrichments. But it was the expression, or rather lack of it, that was most intriguing. He didn’t express a single flicker of emotion. Whatever thoughts were animating the body were extraordinarily simple, like those of a small animal. Ozzie had to get within ten meters before he could even sense them.

“Yo, dude, you hurt a lot of people back there. Some are going to have to be re-lifed, and that hospital doesn’t have a whole lot of medical capsules.” He had to raise his voice above the crashing white water waves of the column as they poured into the lake behind him. Very humid air was surging out. His semiorganic shirt hardened slightly to become water resilient, but he could feel it starting to saturate his Afro hairstyle.

The man put his hand out. Ozzie raised an eyebrow.

“I need to confirm your DNA,” the man said.

“Ho, brother.” Ozzie touched his palm to the one offered, allowing the biononic filaments to sample his dermal layer cells.

“You are Ozzie,” the man declared.

“Really? I thought I was just fooling myself.” In itself the confirmation was interesting; that particular datum was extremely hard to get hold of in the Commonwealth. Ozzie had made sure of that before he left, and ANA enforced the proscription on access. You’d need to be quite the player to get hold of it.

“No, you are not. Please turn off the telepathy effect.”

“Say what?”

“Turn off the telepathy effect. It allows the Chikoya to track Inigo.”

“Ah, I get it. Smart. No.”

“I have brought Inigo to you. You cannot function effectively together if we are constantly interrupted by hostile elements.”

“Man, I don’t want to function effectively or any other way with that little turd.”

“You have to.”

“No, dude, I don’t.”

“I will exterminate the woman if you do not switch it off.”

“Jesus fuck! Why? Who is she?”

“Corrie-Lyn. A past member of the Living Dream Cleric Council and Inigo’s lover.”

“So why kill her?” Ozzie was getting a bad feeling about the way the man’s thoughts functioned. In fact, he was beginning to wonder just what kind of biology was nestling inside the human skull. And who it belonged to.

“She is my leverage. If you do not comply, I will find others to kill until you do.”

“Okay. I’ll accept that threat is real for the moment. What does Inigo want with me?”

“He doesn’t know yet. I am following orders from another source to bring you both together.”

“Shit. Who wants that to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on! Seriously, dude?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. So what do you expect us to do when we’re up and talking?”

“I do not know. Those operational instructions will not activate until that stage of the mission has reached active status.”

“You’re not human.”

“I was.”

Yep, very bad feeling. “I know of this kind of conditioning. The last time it was used on humans was by the Starflyer. And I’m pretty sure we got rid of that bastard.” Ozzie grinned evilly. “But you never know, do you?”

“I do not know who I work for.”

“So I have to take a chance, huh?”

“Yes. And spare Corrie-Lyn’s life.”

“Hmm. I guess the only reason your boss would get me and the dickhead messiah here together is if he or she or it thinks we can do something about the Void. And for that reason, and that alone, I’ll switch it off. I’m curious to see what you think I can do.” He directed his u-shadow to deactivate the device. “This will take a while.”

“How long?”

“I have no idea. Maybe half an hour. It’s never been switched off before.”

“I will wait.”

Ozzie watched him. The man wasn’t kidding. What followed was no vaguely awkward interval where they occasionally made eye contact and hurriedly looked away, nor was there any attempt to talk. He just stood there, his field scan sweeping around; otherwise he had no interest in anything. That wasn’t human. His thought routines, such as they were, resembled machine code in their simplicity. In one respect that was a relief; Starflyer conditioning was different.

After a while Ozzie felt mindspace withdrawing, collapsing in on itself. It was akin to closing down his gaiamotes. The minds glimmering all around him faded away, most of them expressing sorrow and alarm as they felt mindspace fading. The loss was more profound than he was expecting, even though he knew it was temporary. But he’d lived with and embraced mindspace for so long now that it was a part of his existence.

“It’s done,” he said grimly, and pushed his hair back off his forehead. It had absorbed so much of the vapor thrown out by the water column, it had begun to sag and tangle in unpleasant rattails.

A tic started on the man’s left cheek. Expression slowly emerged on his face, like color filling a penciled-in outline. He let out a long sigh, the kind a witness to something awful would make. “Okay, then, that’s good.”

A thoroughly fascinated Ozzie gave him a very curious look. “What’s happening?” He had a strong urge to switch mindspace back on and feel the man’s thoughts again. But it would take days for the device to reestablish that state.

“My normal thought routines are back.” The man gave Corrie-Lyn’s unconscious form a quizzical glance. “That ought to go down well in some parts.”

“So what was firing away in your brain before?”

“It’s a kind of minimal function mode, in case of neural injury.”

“Uh huh.”

“In my profession there’s a big chance my neural structure will suffer physical damage during a mission. This allows me to remain functional in adverse circumstances.”

“Cool reboot. Uh, what adverse circumstances hit you here?”

“The telepathy effect was affecting me in an unfortunate way.”

“Right,” Ozzie drawled. “So who the hell are you, dude?”

“Aaron.”

“Okay. Top of the list, huh?”

Aaron grinned. “Yes. And thank you for agreeing to meet with me. My minimal version doesn’t have a lot of tact.”

“Man, that’s the biggest understatement I’ve heard in a century. But you said you’ve no idea why you’re here.”

“Partially true. When Inigo wakes up, I’ll know what I have to ask the pair of you to do. I’m expecting it’ll be to stop the Void’s devourment phase.”

“Oh, sure. I’ve got time before lunch. Shall I tell my superwarship crew to get ready to fly? Or are we going to sneak in through the back gate and steal the bad guys’ unguarded power supply?”

Aaron smiled like a particularly tolerant parent. “Is that the back gate on the Dark Fortress?”

“Man, I don’t like you.”

“I appreciate that this isn’t easy.”

“You have no idea.”

Some mornings after she’d woken, Araminta would walk out onto the balcony overlooking the vast expanse of Golden Park to watch the sunrise, enjoying the first rays as they touched the tips of the white pillars along Upper Grove Canal. Over a thousand people were usually there to greet her with waves and cheers and thoughts of thanks directed through the gaiafield. They camped there overnight, much to the annoyance of the city authorities. But Araminta had told the Clerics to grant them permission to stay, knowing that the more people who were watching her, the less anyone could do anything about her. She still gifted everything she saw and heard and felt to the gaiafield, which had led to a storm of embarrassment the first few days as she used the toilet; she soon learned to stop gifting anything but sight at those times and was careful where she looked. She really didn’t want to think about what it was going to be like when it was her time of the month. Mercifully, it was a kind of mutual embarrassment, and no one who came into contact with her was crass enough to mention it.

She was thankful for the control she could exert on her own mind (sometimes resorting to the mélange program for support); without that discipline, she would have been completely exposed to the impact of thoughts within the gaiafield. The thoughts of her devout followers she held back from, content simply to know their existence through the outpouring of gratitude. For everyone else, the deluge of emotion from the billions upon billions of humans who didn’t admire her, she kept herself as remote as possible. Even with that detachment it was impossible not to be aware of their hatred and vilification. Hour after unceasing hour she was subject to the superlative abuse and loathing of the majority of her entire species. The intensity was awesome in the extreme. They despised her as pure evil that had taken on human form. That was justified, she acknowledged weakly; after all, she was going to trigger the event that most likely was going to kill every single one of them.

She gave the Golden Park crowd a swift wave of appreciation and went back inside. The pool in the bathroom was almost big enough to swim in, and of course no one from the Dreamer down to the Cleric Conservator had ever entertained the notion of installing a decent modern spore shower in an unobtrusive corner. If the residents of the state rooms wanted to get clean, they jolly well had to do it the old-fashioned way. Araminta walked down into the body-temperature water and started slathering on the liquid soap. All that ever did was make her think of Edeard and the string of floozies he’d enjoyed during the dark time that had befallen him in Dreams Thirty to Thirty-three. She ordered the shower on and sluiced the bubbles off, mildly worried about how similar the whole episode was to starring in a porn show.

Sure enough, and despite her resolve, she could feel the physical admiration of male Living Dream members seeping into the gaiafield as the water ran across her skin—and no little amount of appreciation from females, either. Worse still, a lot of her foes were registering their enjoyment of her flesh.

When this is over, I’m going to have to walk down the Silfen paths to the other side of the galaxy and live like a hermit forevermore. Her gaze was drawn down to the pendant as it dangled between her glistening breasts—Oh, Ozziecrapit, look away! It wasn’t warm, and the light inside was dim, as if a wisp of phosphorescence had been caged within the crystal, but it still made its presence known. On the other side of it was the infinite comfort and wisdom of the Silfen Motherholme. That at least gave her some reassurance she wasn’t entirely alone.

Three Mr. Boveys smiled in gentle sympathy as they sat down to a late dinner at home.

She ordered the shower off and stepped out of the pool. Then all she had to do was rub herself down with a towel, which she did while looking at the ceiling. A small growl came out of her throat as she grew cross with herself. She hurriedly struggled into her vest top and briefs, then slithered her long white robe on top. The belt had been modified by the palace security detail and contained a force field generator. They’d insisted, and she wasn’t going to argue. Dressed and chaste at last, she made her way through the long ornate halls to the state dining room.

Underneath the glaring ceiling, the huge polished wooden table built for a hundred fifty guests was set for one. At least Edeard had Hilitte for company, she thought. And how would he have coped with body functions and sex and life in general if he’d ever known of his audience? She wasn’t sure if a table this size set for two was more or less ridiculous that it was with just her lonely cutlery. But then, Edeard often was joined by Dinlay for breakfast. All she had were five superefficient staff members to serve her anything she wanted from the bolnut veneer sideboard that was loaded with an authentic Edeard-style breakfast from the Thirty-third Dream. She remembered the later dreams when he’d been properly elected Mayor. He and Kristabel had never had breakfasts like that, but then, he’d never taken up residence in the state rooms then, either. Perhaps the palace staff members were being ironic; if so, the nuance was lost on her.

Just to be difficult, she ordered a hot chocolate to have with her croissant. One of the girls in a maid’s uniform scurried off to the kitchens. As she tore the pastry open, Araminta reflected on how it would be nice to have someone there for company. She was a little sad that Cressida hadn’t been in touch, but she could certainly understand why her cousin wanted nothing to do with her.

Her chocolate arrived in a huge cup, the top covered in whipped cream dotted with strawberry marshmallows. Darraklan walked in with the maid; he’d taken to wearing the long burgundy waistcoat, white shirt, and yellow drosilk cravat of the senior Orchard Palace personnel. He’d slipped very easily into the job of chief of staff, helping her settle in. “Good morning, Dreamer; Cleric Rincenso requests a moment of your time.”

Araminta noticed that Darraklan didn’t have any gaiafield emission relating to the Cleric whatsoever. But then, in his own repellent ass-kissing way, Rincenso was also striving hard for favored status. She could use that; he’d want to score points by exposing any of his colleagues who doubted or schemed against her.

“Show him in,” she said.

The Cleric came into the dining room as the corona of Querencia’s sun erupted with flares all across the ceiling. The bright rippling light shining off his robes and highlighting his eager smile had an almost aquatic property. He bowed politely. “Dreamer.”

Araminta gazed at him as she sipped her chocolate. It was delicious. Thank Ozzie, being a galaxy killer should have some perks, surely. “Did you find them for me?”

“Yes, Dreamer. The women were at the mansion on Viotia. He was actually already here; our security services have been holding him.”

“Why?”

Rincenso’s smile became stretched. “It was thought he might be shielding you from our Welcome Team.”

“Ah. He wasn’t. I eluded them by myself.” A pause for emphasis. “It wasn’t that difficult.”

“Not for you, Dreamer.”

He was so smooth, he almost spoiled the taste of the chocolate for her. “Is he here now?”

“Yes.”

“Bring him in.”

Rincenso hesitated. “Dreamer, he was interrogated very thoroughly.”

“Thoroughly? You mean …” She didn’t like to dwell on that too much. I make a truly rotten despot.

“He was given a memory read, yes.”

“Honious! Bring him in.”

The man led through the dining room doors, who needed to be supported by a burly security guard in a constable’s uniform, had the body of Likan, but the spirit was definitely withered. Any lingering anger she felt toward him was immediately banished. She got up and pulled out the chair next to her. The security guard helped him into it. There was no evidence of any physical damage, but his limbs were shaking badly, and he hunched up as if he were cowering from some omnipresent tormentor.

“I’m sorry,” Araminta said. “I didn’t know.”

“You,” he said with a bitter snarl. “There was always something about you.”

“You were quite the personality yourself.”

“That’s not what you told me when we parted.” He glared around the big room. “That’s on record now. You know I’m telling the truth.”

“They will give all the copies back to you. I wish it to be so,” she said with simple authority. Rincenso nodded discreetly. “You can destroy them if you’d like.”

“Ha. And what use will that be when the boundary comes reaching out of the stars to obliterate all of us?”

“A question I’m sure you asked yourself when you facilitated Viotia’s compliance with Conservator Ethan’s scheme. That whole monstrous invasion was dedicated to one purpose: to find me. What did you think the Second Dreamer was going to do once I ascended to the Orchard Palace?”

He forced his head to shake despite the jerkiness of his muscles.

“Like all nonbelievers, you considered us to be foolish and deluded,” she continued. “You put your own greed before anything.”

“I do not let greed drive me. I have strategy. I have logic and planning.”

“Likan … I’m not interested. Whatever there was between us is long gone. You’re here today to correct an injustice.”

“I fuck your apology all the way to hell. I hope the warrior Raiel blows your Pilgrimage fleet to shit. The rest of us will have the greatest party history has ever known to celebrate your death.”

“I’m not apologizing for your interrogation; you brought that upon yourself.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m going to plead with the Raiel to turn you over to the Prime. And we all know what they do to humans, don’t we?”

She could feel billions urging him on, hoping his desire succeeded. “I’m prepared to let you go free,” she said.

“What?”

“Free to go back to Viotia, perhaps? Our wormhole will be closing today or tomorrow now that all my followers have returned home. Free for the Viotia authorities to question you about your part in the government’s corrupt submission to Cleric Phelim and the invasion—oh, Phelim’s coming back to Ellezelin and joining the Pilgrimage fleet. Who will that leave to face trial, do you think? And I will look favorably on any request to turn over your read memories to them for examination. What evidence of treason will that turn up?”

His whole body juddered. “You said …”

“I said I’d like to release you. But there is an injustice to right first, one that only you can do.”

“Bitch!”

“Phelim took your harem into custody. They’re already here. I’ve got the best genetic team on Ellezelin ready to treat them. The problem is, we didn’t read your memories from that long ago.”

Likan glared at her fearfully.

“Which three, Likan? Once I know, you’ll be released; you have my word as the Dreamer on that. A starship will take you wherever you wish to go. We can even reprofile you first if you’d like.”

“What’s the point?” he wailed, close to tears.

“The point is success. Do you think that ultimately I will succeed? Or will you and your way of life? I know which choice Nigel Sheldon would make. Do you?”

His head dropped. When he brought it up again, the shakes and tics were overridden by a ferocious snarl. The old Likan was glowering out at her. “Oh, yes, Madam Dreamer. I’ll take your deal; I will comply. But remember, it will leave me free to hunt you down when you fail, because a miserable fuck-up like you couldn’t pull off something this grand in a million years, not a chance.”

“We’ll see,” she growled back.

“Marakata, Krisana, and Tammary,” Likan said.

“Thank you.”

“They’ll kill you, your new friends, even if I don’t get there first. Once you’ve given them what they want, they’ll kill you. This is too big for you. You were small-time when I picked you up and screwed you, and you’re still small-time now.”

“Win-win for you, then,” she said coolly. At the back of her mind the Skylord was showing an interest in why she was becoming so agitated. “Get rid of him,” she told the security guard.

Likan was hauled roughly to his feet. There was a starship waiting for him at Greater Makkathran’s spaceport. She’d organized it all last night, using her u-shadow to send messages to Phelim and Rincenso and Ethan in private, editing it all out of what she released into the gaiafield. Phelim had few troops left on Viotia, but he was desperate to redeem himself, so he expended every effort. She knew poor little Clemance and the others would have been terrified as the remnants of the Welcome Team snatched them: bundled into a capsule when the rest of the planet was rejoicing the lifting of tyranny, not knowing where they were being taken or why, then being forced through the wormhole to Ellezelin itself. If the Dreamer Araminta was now regarded as the devil, this planet was surely her realm.

But in a couple of hours they’d be reunited with Likan—those who wanted to be. The starship would fly them to an Inner world of his choice. She’d supplied untraceable funds, she’d supplied new identities. There was nothing more she could do.

The three he’d violated would spend a couple of months in a womb-tank here in Greater Makkathran having their psychoneural profiling reversed. When they came out, they could make their own choices again. That’s if there’s a galaxy left to come back out into. It didn’t matter; she’d done the right thing.

She looked over at Darraklan. “Is Ethan ready?”

“Yes, Dreamer.”

“Right, then.” She got to her feet, starting to resent Inigo’s stupid proscription that no capsules should be allowed to fly above Makkathran2. It meant such long walks or gondola rides (which she actually quite liked) or riding on horseback, and no way was she going to do that; her one time on a pony when she was seven hadn’t ended well.

A squad of bodyguards in constable uniforms fell in around her as she left the back of the Orchard Palace. They went down the sweeping perron and into Rah’s Garden with its sweet roses and immaculately shaped flameyews. Clerks peered out of their offices as she carried on through Parliament Building on the other side. Then she was out in the open and walking over the Brotherhood Canal bridge into Ogden. That at least was a short straight path to City Gate. People were running frantically across the meadowland to greet her. She didn’t need Likan’s old mélange program to help her slip into her mildly aloof public persona: greeting a privileged few overawed followers with a handshake or a murmured word of thanks for their support, smiling graciously at the rest while allowing her squad to keep her moving past them.

The crowd at City Gate was a lot larger, but more guards were there, in ordinary clothes. She suspected that the shimmering semiorganic fabric covered up some muscle enrichments; they certainly seemed extraordinarily strong as they pushed people aside. Three capsules were parked just outside the crystal wall, waiting for her, with another five defense force capsules drifting overhead. Ethan stood beside the door of the largest capsule. He bowed graciously as Araminta approached.

“Your morning has gone well, then?”

“It certainly did, thank you,” Araminta said. “I appreciate your help in preparing the medical treatments.”

“My pleasure, Dreamer.”

They stepped up into the capsule and sat at the front while the bodyguards took the rear seats. It flew swiftly along the coastline, keeping Greater Makkathran on one side, heading for the broad estuary to the north of the city. With the security forces flying escort, no civilian capsules tried to approach. It left Araminta with a clear view of the landscape through the transparent fuselage. Once again she marveled at the vast metropolis sprawling across the land beyond Makkathran2.

Living Dream built all of this out of nothing, she thought. If they can do that, if they are so creative, why do they want to go to the Void? The reset ability isn’t that different from our own regeneration. Humans have been able to start again from scratch for over a thousand years.

It had to involve not a small amount of avarice lurking in everyone’s heart, she realized sadly. Effectively it was a universe where only you could regenerate, giving you a vast advantage in terms of knowledge and experience over everyone else. That and the whole telepathy and telekinesis thing—that was raw power.

“Oh, Lady,” she muttered as the starship manufacturing field came into view. She recalled that the last time she’d seen it was on a unisphere news report a while back, when the ground was being prepared by big civil construction machinery. Regrav units had propelled streams of raw earth and crushed rock through the air as massive bots crawled across the bare soil, driving in thick support stanchions and spraying down acres of enzyme-bonded concrete.

She’d expected to see huge hangars spring up where thousands of bots would crawl along scaffolding gantries, bringing together a million components that formed the starships. Instead, the starships were assembled out in the open, floating in the middle of regrav fields. The bots were there, though, tens of thousands of busy little black modules buzzing about like wasps around their hive entrance.

“That is something else,” she admitted. For once she didn’t bother restraining the emotion that swarmed out of her into the gaiafield. “Did you organize all this?” she asked Ethan.

“I wish I could take credit,” he said ruefully. “But the plans for the Pilgrimage were begun back in Dreamer Inigo’s time. Indeed, the main driving factor behind Ellezelin’s economic dynamism was to provide us with the resources to build the fleet when the time was right. These ships have been in the design stage for over fifty years, constantly being improved as new techniques were developed. The National Industrial Ministry also had to match production systems to the requirements, making sure we had sufficient capacity. Nearby Commonwealth planets complained that we were unfairly subsidizing our manufacturing corporations, while in actuality we were preparing for this moment. Every section and component can be fabricated either locally or on a Free Market Zone world.”

“Incredible” was all she could say.

The entire fifteen square miles of the construction yard was cloaked by five layers of force fields capable of protecting it from just about every known weapon system. Unlike the weather dome Colwyn City could throw up, this one went right down to the ground, then carried on binding soil and rock molecules together to guard against any possible subterranean threat.

Twelve of the mile-long cylinders hung gracefully above the vast expanse of concrete, each one the center of its own airborne cybernetic swarm. The hulls were all complete, leaving the thick streams of regrav-propelled machines to wind in and out of huge ports and access hatches. Thousands of tons of equipment was being delivered to each ship every hour. The majority of it now was made up of the identical dark sarcophagi of suspension chambers: twenty-four million of them. They were being produced all over Ellezelin and the Free Market Worlds, Ethan said, churned out by replicator systems that were close to level-three Neumann cybernetics. “All we have to do is provide the chambers with power and basic nutrient fluid. Essentially, that’s all the ships are, warehouses full of suspension chambers with an engine room at the back.”

The capsule slipped down toward one of the five materiel egress facilities spaced equidistantly around the rim of the force field. Their capsule with its escort flew through a series of sophisticated scans before landing outside the entrance of a thirty-story office tower, one of fifty ringing the yard. They were greeted by quite a crowd of senior project personnel headed by Cleric Taranse, the overall director. For once the gaiafield wasn’t just filled with excitement and admiration for her. Everyone working in the construction yard was devoted to the project, delivering a strong and very pleasing sense of achievement. That didn’t stop thousands of them from taking a break and pressing up against the windows to watch her. Araminta slipped back into full politician mode, thanking the group with the director for their extraordinary effort.

As they walked alongside the first massive cylinder, she was struck by how arid the air was inside, almost as bad as the desert around Miledeep Water. An errant thought made her wonder how Ranto was doing right now. Searching the desert in vain for his beloved bike, or had he bought a flashy new one that would boost his status among his peers by an order of magnitude?

The dryness was nothing compared to the noise. With so many machines operating inside the dome, the humming and buzzing was constant, all-pervasive, and loud. Araminta heard the ponderous motions of larger systems through her rib cage. The sheer quantity of metal flying around on regrav units stirred up small fast gusts that whirled along each avenue between hulls like microclimate winds in perpetual conflict. Her hair and robe fluttered about with every step. The giant regrav fields supporting the ships induced disconcerting effects in her inner ears as she moved. Walking in the yard was akin to keeping one’s balance in an earthquake zone; a mere couple of paces through the invisible conflicting fields could bring on unexpected queasiness that secondary routines in her macrocellular clusters had difficulty suppressing.

To counter the nausea, she tried picking a point in the distance and focusing on it; that led her to look up. The metallic-gray fuselage curved away above her, presenting an impression of size and weight almost as great as the one given by the length of the damn thing stretching on ahead. Holes the size of skyscrapers were open all the way along the side, with fleets of bots and freight sleds zipping in and out. Now that she could see them up close, she noticed that most of the sleds were carrying identical consignments. Twenty-four million medical suspension chambers; she couldn’t quite get her head around that number. It was more than the population of Greater Makkathran. But not of Ellezelin, and as for the billions of followers across the Greater Commonwealth …

“I’ve heard this referred to as the first wave,” she said.

“Yes, Dreamer,” Cleric Taranse said cheerfully. He had the appearance of a man in his biological fifties, even down to thinning hair and wrinkled skin; the deliberate elder image, she suspected, was an attempt to give him an aura of experience and confidence. But then, a lot of Living Dream followers allowed themselves to appear to age because in the real Makkathran, everyone grew old. “Now that the production systems have been established, they can continue at remarkably little cost. Ellezelin can certainly afford to keep on producing them.”

“But won’t Ellezelin’s population be the first to leave? When they’ve traveled into the Void, who will keep the economy going?”

“We are ultimately hoping that some kind of bridge can be established between Void and Commonwealth,” Ethan said smoothly. “Such a thing can hardly be beyond the ability of the Heart.”

Araminta remembered the way the boundary had distended out to swallow Justine’s little ship. “Most likely.” She glanced up again as she moved through another clash of regrav waves. The sight of the starship was drawing the Skylord’s attention, building anticipation. One question she was never going to ask it was: Can you reach us here?

“I will need to be awake during the voyage,” she said.

Both Ethan and Taranse smiled an indulgent smile, not quite belittling her but close.

“The life-support section is in the center of the ship, Dreamer,” Taranse said. “Each will have a crew complement of three thousand. There are a lot of systems to maintain even with smartcore and bot support.”

“Of course. That’s very reassuring.”

“The cabins will be fully equipped with every luxury; your voyage will be spent in complete comfort and security. You have nothing to worry about.”

He wasn’t joking, she realized. “How do we stay in contact with Ellezelin during the flight?”

“The ships will be dropping relay stations at frequent intervals, just like the navy link with Centurion Station. As well as TD channels, ours will have confluence nests.”

Araminta felt very reassured by that; she’d been worried about what might happen if she passed out of range of the bulk of her followers. The ships would, no doubt, be crewed by Ethan’s loyalists. “So now we just need the ultradrives and force fields,” she said as she checked the timer in her exovision. There was only a couple of minutes left.

“I have every confidence,” Ethan said easily.

“Oh, I’m sure it wants us to get there, all right,” Araminta said.

He stopped and gave her a look of reluctant admiration. “You were correct in what you said to Ilanthe. The Void will always triumph. I was … gladdened by your faith in it.”

“Do you have any idea what that thing wants to achieve inside?”

“No. But it will be some soulless technocrat scheme to ‘improve’ life for everyone else. It is the kind of delusion of which her kind dream constantly. That is why I never really concerned myself about it.”

“Yes, I thought as much.” For several nights after her arrival in the Orchard Palace, Araminta had tried to feel for Ilanthe’s thoughts to gain a sense of what her intentions were. Bradley and Clouddancer had said the Silfen Motherholme had sensed whatever it was emerging from the Sol system, but either Ilanthe had somehow slipped from the Motherholme’s perception or the Silfen in their wisdom weren’t sharing. She thought the latter unlikely.

“They’re here,” Cleric Taranse announced happily.

Icons from Ellezelin’s civil spaceflight directorate were popping up in Araminta’s exovision. She’d never realized just how much information even a nominal head of state such as herself was supposed to absorb on a daily basis. How actual heads of state coped, she had no idea; expanded and augmented mentalities, presumably.

Thirty-seven large commercial freighters had just dropped out of hyperspace two thousand kilometers above the planet. A secure link to the Ellezelin defense force fleet headquarters informed her that five squadrons of Ellezelin warships were emerging around the freighters in a protective formation. This was the critical stage, the one window of vulnerability left to those who opposed the Pilgrimage. Until the freighters got under the construction yard’s force fields, they were dangerously exposed.

The freighters were given clearance to descend. Sure enough, eight craft lurking in orbit dropped their stealth effect and opened fire. Weird mauve and green light flooded across the ground at Araminta’s feet at the same instant the exovision displays reported what was happening. She tipped her head back reflexively to see what was going on, but the dome had opaqued above her. All she saw was rapidly expanding colored blotches in the grayed sky, like borealis storms as bright as sunlight.

More icons appeared, assuring her that the Greater Makkathran2 force fields were also up and protecting citizens from the terrible torrent of hard radiation slicing through the atmosphere. She even felt a start of anxiety leaking out of Ethan’s gaiamotes and smiled in sympathy. The pilgrimage fleet probably could make it with standard hyperdrives, but without the force fields the Raiel would reduce the ships to radioactive fog.

Though the Void might just be able to stop them, she thought. The Raiel could never beat it.

Her u-shadow told her the head of planetary defense, Admiral Colris, was opening a secure channel. “Dreamer, we’ve eliminated the enemy ships.”

“Are our ships all right?”

“Three badly damaged; eight took temporary overload hits, but they’re still flightworthy.”

“How badly damaged?”

“We’ll recover the crews. Don’t worry; it’s what we train for, Dreamer.”

“Thank you. Was there any damage to the freighters?”

“No. Lady be praised. It looks like those new force fields are as tough as advertised.”

The whole Greater Commonwealth that was gaiafield-attuned blinked at the burst of Araminta’s surprise. “The freighters are protected by Sol barrier force fields?”

“Yes, Dreamer.”

“I see. Please pass my thanks to your crews.”

“Of course. They’ll appreciate your concern, Dreamer.”

Ethan and Darraklan were both watching the force field overhead gradually clear. The sky beyond was reverting to its usual pristine blue. A few violet scintillations burned through the ionosphere as disintegrating wreckage hurtled downward. Ethan’s delight and relief were open. “Those would be the best ships our opponents could deploy,” the Cleric said.

“Yes,” Araminta replied, not quite knowing if she should be celebrating.

“We can begin installation at once,” Taranse said.

“How long until we’re ready?” she asked.

“If the systems function in accordance with the details they supplied, we’ll be looking at a week.”

“Excellent,” she said. Then I can finally try and stop this madness. I just hope there’s enough time left.

They waited in the construction yard as the freighters dropped down through the atmosphere. Taranse left them to organize the unloading. Araminta and Ethan watched the operation begin from the front of the big office tower where their capsule was parked. She was a little disappointed at how dull it all was. The units were all encased in smooth metal shells, providing no hint as to their function. For all she knew, they were just water tanks.

“Your moment draws near, Dreamer,” Ethan said.

She wasn’t surprised by the way he was studying her so intently. She’d felt his curious thoughts wiggling through the gaiafield, trying to gain a hint of her true feelings. She suspected that when they arrived in the Void, he would prove a formidable telepath.

“It does indeed,” she said levelly. “Where do you suppose all this came from?”

“It is irrelevant now. That it is here is what matters.”

“And because of that we can reach the Void. Yes. That just leaves me and the Skylord now.”

“I will be honored to fly with you in the flagship to offer what support I can.”

“Which one …” Her hand waved idly at the row of ships.

“That one. The Lady’s Light.”

Araminta had to smile at that. “Of course. But shouldn’t that be Lady’s Light Two?”

“If you wish it to be so, Dreamer.”

“No. The original has been unmade, and it was a redoubtable ship. Let us hope our own voyage is as successful.”

Ethan’s smile was tight. He clearly still couldn’t work out what Araminta’s game was, which was exactly how she wanted it.

The capsule lifted through a thick sea mist that was rolling in fast from the shore. As soon as they were above it, Araminta saw the change that had spread across the fields and forests that stretched away from the city’s perimeter. The lush green squares of grassland and crop fields had become a sickly yellow. Long lines of wildfire burned furiously through the forests.

“What happened?” she asked in confusion.

“Radiation downspill,” Ethan explained. “The orbital fight was directly above us. Those who understand such things explained to me last time that starship weapons today are extraordinarily powerful.”

“Last time?”

“Two ships fought above Ellezelin shortly before you came forward. We never did find out why.”

“Great”—she nearly said “Ozzie”—“Lady. What about people caught outside the city force field?” The mist as well, she realized, was a part of it: surface water flash-boiled by the energy deluge.

“Not good. A majority of Living Dream followers don’t have biononics or memorycell inserts.”

“Because the Waterwalker didn’t.” It almost came out with contempt.

“Quite. But the clinics will be able to re-life those that did.”

“May the Lady watch over the souls of those that didn’t,” she said, appalled by how pious she sounded.

“We’re a long way from the Lady,” Ethan said.

“Not for much longer.”

“Araminta is disgusted with them,” Neskia declared as the gifted vision swirled around her, partially blocking her view of the ship’s cabin. “It didn’t leak into the gaiafield, but I could tell how horrified she was when Ethan told her the moronic faithful didn’t even have memorycells because of their belief.”

“That’s reasonable enough,” Ilanthe said. “I’m equally disgusted. They chose to remain animal when they could elevate themselves. They certainly don’t deserve pity.”

Neskia’s head swept from side to side as her long neck undulated sinuously. “If she’s truly taken up the cause of Living Dream and become their Dreamer as she claims, then she would exhibit sympathy. This is simply evidence she is attempting some kind of subterfuge.”

“I fail to see what she can do. She is committed now, as few have ever been. She has claimed her position as the head of Living Dream on the promise of delivering Pilgrimage. To go back on her word now would bring dire personal consequences. At the least, Ethan would break into her mind and compel her to communicate with the Skylord. In that he would have the tacit support of most followers. Either way I gain entry to the Void.”

Exovision images showed Neskia the inversion core resting cleanly in the ship’s one and only cargo hold. There was no gaiafield connection, so she couldn’t determine the timbre of Ilanthe’s thoughts, if that was what they could still be called. “Her conversion was too swift, too complete. I do not believe in her.”

“Nor do I,” Ilanthe agreed. “But in gaining political power, choice has been taken from her. You heard her. She trusts the Void will defeat me.”

“And how did she find out about you? She was all alone and running from everyone.”

“I suspect the Silfen.”

“Or she has allies among the remnants of the factions. Gore is still at large, the Third Dreamer. That could indicate a connection.”

“Gore told Justine to travel to Makkathran. Whatever he’s planning, it involves a connection between him and his daughter, not Araminta. None of us knew her identity until a few days ago; she was never part of any of Gore’s schemes.”

“He’s going to go postphysical, isn’t he? That’s what he’s doing on the Anomine homeworld. It has to be; the Anomine elevation mechanism must still be there. Such an advance will grant him the power to ruin everything.”

“If that is his goal, he will fail.”

“How do you know?”

“I researched the Anomine elevation mechanism a century ago. It won’t elevate Gore.”

“Why not?” Neskia asked.

“He is not an Anomine.”

Neskia’s long throat trilled with delight. “I had no idea.”

“The process I am committing to is not one I undertook lightly. Every option was reviewed.”

“Of course, my apologies. But you really should get Marius to eliminate him.”

“Marius may or may not succeed in such an endeavor. Gore’s ship is undoubtedly the equal to the one Marius is flying, and the borderguards will intervene.”

“You can’t risk him interfering with Fusion,” Neskia insisted.

“You say that because you do not understand what I will initiate when we enter the Void. Gore and all the others are a complete irrelevance. Araminta is all that matters now.”

“We will initiate Fusion. I understand and approve.”

“No. Fusion was a misdirection The inversion core is destined to seed a far greater revolution.”

Neskia became still, perturbed by this change of direction. Everything she had become was dedicated to the Accelerator goal of Fusion. “What?” she asked, mildly surprised that she was questioning Ilanthe’s purpose. But still …

“The Void is rightly feared because it requires energy from an external source in order to function. It is the epitome of entropy, the final enemy of all things. But the Void is a beautiful concept; mind over matter is the ultimate evolutionary trait. I propose to achieve the full function of the Void without the failing of its energy demands. That will be the Accelerator gift to existence itself.”

“In what way?”

“I was inspired by Ozzie. His mindspace works by altering the fundamental nature of spacetime to accommodate the telepathic function. I don’t know how he worked out the specific alteration to make such a thing viable, but its implementation was a phenomenal achievement, sadly underappreciated thanks to his sulky withdrawal from the Commonwealth. But to change the very nature of spacetime across hundreds of light-years is remarkable. It opened vistas of possibilities I had never conceived of before. I realized I should be aiming so much higher than simply wedding the Accelerator Faction to the Void. The potential of the Void is far greater. That it is locked away behind the boundary, dependent on a dwindling source of power, is a disaster for the evolution of sentience everywhere. It needs to be liberated for the boundary to be thrown down.”

“You mean you want to bring all sentient species into the Void?”

“Quite the opposite. As Ozzie’s mindspace is only a localized alteration powered, presumably, by the Spike’s anchor mechanism, so the Void can only function as long as it has mass to feed on, and that is finite. What the inversion core will do is instigate a permanent change. It will grasp the fundamental nature of the Void and impress spacetime to that pattern, forcing reality itself to transform. The Void’s final magnificent reset of everything will begin. Change will shine out from the center of this galaxy—in time, a very short time, illuminating the entire universe. Entropy will no longer exist because its principles will simply not be a part of the new cosmos. With the laws of spacetime itself rewritten, the true controller of reality will become the sentient mind, allowing evolution to reach a height impossible even for the postphysicals which this limited, flawed universe can gestate.”

“You’re going to change the fundamental laws of the universe?” a shocked Neskia murmured.

“Such a goal is the pinnacle of evolution, elevating an entire universe. We will be the instigators of a genesis from which our mythical gods would cower in awe. Now do you see why I don’t concern myself with the antics of Gore and his kind? I will simply wish them out of existence. And it shall be so.”

Inigo’s Forty-seventh Dream:
The Waterwalker’s Triumph

It was Mattuel who had the privilege of helping Edeard up the long winding steps to the top of the tower. Edeard wouldn’t put up with it from any of his other children, or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, or even the great-great-grandchildren and certainly not the great-great-great-grandchildren, most of whom who were just children. And Grolral, the first of his fifth-generation offspring and one whom he adored, was only seven weeks old and really not interested in much apart from feeding and sleeping. But Mattuel was the favored son, mainly because he’d been born so much later than the others, four and a half years after Finitan’s guidance. That shouldn’t have made him any more special—and by that time none of the first seven cared about such things—but Edeard always regarded him as proof of success in living this life as he’d sworn to do. By the time the four Skylords appeared in Querencia’s skies, events across the planet weren’t going too badly this time around. Each town and most larger villages had a big park designated for the gathering of those who sought guidance. The open areas were based on the Waterwalker’s solemn advice that the Skylords didn’t really like the towers of Eyrie and used them only out of respect for the bygone race that had sculpted them in the first place. Simple and cheap, the parks prevented any economic problems and petty rivalries. That also meant nobody trekked across half the continent to the towers of Eyrie, with all the problems that entailed.

Except that today Makkathran was once again host to crowds not seen in a hundred years. The last time so many had thronged its streets was when the eight huge galleons of the flotilla had returned from their exploratory voyage circumnavigating the world. Edeard had sailed with them, enjoying the occasional bout of nostalgic sadness as they discovered the coastlines and seas he recalled from over a century before on his own private time line. This time he’d made sure the problems afflicting Querencia in the wake of the Skylords were well and truly eliminated before setting out. There were no more attempts to dominate and bind people to a cause or family or individual. The newer generations of stronger psychics were welcomed and integrated into a society whose prosperity was on a steady climb thanks to the expansion of the Eggshaper Guild and an abundance of genistars. New lands were being opened in what once had been the western wilds. Even the youngsters of Makkathran’s Grand Families were encouraged to seek their fortune amid the fresh opportunities to extend the old estates and businesses, though that process was clearly going to outlast him by some considerable period.

This day was the day when Querencia paid tribute to the Waterwalker for transforming their world to one of enlightenment and potential. Already his era was being proclaimed the planet’s golden age.

“I hope to the Lady they’re right,” he’d muttered to Kristabel as they woke together that last morning.

She’d given him a warning stare as one of their great-great-granddaughters helped comb her thin strands of white hair. “Don’t give me the Ashwell optimism now. Not today.”

Amusement and appreciation made him smile, which triggered a nasty bout of coughing deep in his chest. Two of the Novices attending him eased him forward on the bed. One proffered a steaming potion for him to inhale. He almost refused out of pure age-driven obstinacy but relented when he recalled Finitan’s last days. The sweet girls were only trying to help. He breathed the vapor down and was relieved to find the muscle quakes subsiding. “Yes, dear.”

“Ha!”

He smiled again. One of the Novices started unbuttoning his bed shirt. “I can still manage that, thank you,” he told her smartly. Of course he couldn’t, not with his hands, horrible swollen, gnarled things that they were now. The potions the doctors made him drink did nothing for his terribly arthritic joints anymore. But thankfully, his third hand remained more than capable. Finitan had remarked on something similar, he recalled.

When he blinked and looked around, everyone in the big room was staring anxiously at him. “What?” he asked.

“You drifted off there again,” Kristabel said.

“Honious! Let’s hope I last till they arrive.”

That earned him another disapproving stare from Kristabel while the Novices drew sharp nervous breaths and assured him he would. “Actually, I was thinking of Finitan, if you must know,” he told a bedroom full of too many people.

“Goodness, I can’t even remember what he looks like anymore,” Kristabel said regretfully.

“It was nearly two hundred years ago,” Edeard reminded her. “But we’ll be seeing him again soon enough.”

“Aye, that we will.”

Edeard smiled at her again, blocking out the awful indignity of their well-meaning attendants bustling around. His farsight found the rest of his family assembling in the lounges on the upper floors of the ziggurat, all of them abuzz with conflicting emotion. Contrary to expectation, their presence actually comforted him. There were so many, and all had done well—or at least hadn’t turned to the bad. That was his true measure.

Eventually he and Kristabel were dressed in their finest robes without too much assistance. He’d decided against the Waterwalker’s black cloak; at his age it would have made him look ridiculous. Besides, after eleven tenures as Mayor, he felt the robes of office were more appropriate.

Edeard managed to walk out of the bedroom to the first big lounge, but that was about as far as his muscles could manage without a decent rest. Mattuel’s third hand steadied him as he sank down into a tall straight-backed chair. He was about to throw the youngster an angry look but relented. In truth, he’d needed the support. Landing on his ass at the start of this ceremony would hardly be dignified.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. Not that Mattuel could ever be considered a youngster anymore; his own two hundredth birthday had been celebrated a few years back. Edeard couldn’t quite remember when.

One by one, the family came up to him and Kristabel for one last embrace and a few words of comfort. The tradition had grown up in the last century and a half. It was a good one, he decided. Clears the air, allows reconciliation for any too-hasty words and stupid feuds. Not that I have any. That particular harsh lesson had been learned two hundred years ago and learned well.

So now he could greet them all gladly and receive their wishes for a safe journey without any regrets. If there was sorrow, it was from seeing how his children had aged. Rolar and Wenalee, who surely would be seeking guidance themselves the next time a Skylord visited. Jiska and Natran and their huge brood of eleven children, fifty-seven grandchildren, and he didn’t know how many after that except this morning they had to be accommodated on the eighth floor and longtalk their farewells—there was simply no room on the tenth. Marilee, Analee, and Marvane, still together, and with eighteen children between them. Edeard clutched the merchant captain warmly when it was his turn. “You can still come with us if you like,” he offered with a chuckle. “I expect you could do with the respite.”

“Daddy, that’s horrible.”

“He doesn’t want a respite.”

“We treat him nicely.”

“When he’s good.”

“And better when he’s bad.”

Marvane spread his hands wide. “You see?”

“I’ve always seen,” Edeard told him fondly.

Marakas and Jalwina were next. Happily married these last forty years. But then, Marakas had plenty of practice; she was his seventh wife, after all. Even then, he was still way behind Dinlay’s count.

Taralee in her own grand mistress robes, even though she had resigned from the Doctor’s Guild Council thirty years before. “Are you all right?” she asked in concern. “I have some sedatives, ones from the folox leaf.”

“No,” he said firmly.

“You’ll do all right,” she said with a grin. “Goodbye, Daddy.”

“See you soon.”

See you soon. It was a murmur that swept around the lounge, followed by a chorus of well-wishing that was taken up by those on the ninth floor and farther, all the way to the third. And nowhere in the ziggurat was Burlal. He at least was spared the indignity of age; his brief years were always those of happiness.

Edeard was doing his best not to cry as his dynasty said its final formal farewell. He and Kristabel were lifted gently by third hands and carried down the central stairs with hundreds of their family leaning over the railings and now cheering them raucously.

“You know, we really did bump your dear old Uncle Lorin out of here in the end, didn’t we?” he said as he waved at the blur of faces.

“Thank the Lady for that,” she said.

The largest family gondola was waiting for them at the ziggurat’s mooring platform on Great Major Canal. They sat on the center bench and looked around. The entire canal was lined with people who had come to wish the Waterwalker well on his way. They waved and clapped and cheered as he and Kristabel set off on the very short journey down to Eyrie’s central mooring platform. All were dressed in their best clothes, transforming the route to a splendid color-washed avenue.

“Remember the flower boats from the Festival of Guidance?” he asked his wife. “They were as colorful as this. That used to be such a lovely day. It’s a pity they had to end it.”

“Not a lot of point to it after the Skylords started arriving,” Kristabel said. “And I’m hardly likely to forget. That’s the day we met, remember?”

“Mirnatha’s kidnapping,” he said, remembering a few details of the day. He hadn’t thought of it in decades, probably longer. “Bise was holding her in the House of Blue Petals.”

“We never found out exactly who took her, and they held her in Fiacre.”

Owain, he knew. Owain and his clique ordered her kidnapping, but I could never tell Kristabel that. I would have needed to explain what had ultimately become of Owain, and Bise, and—Lady forgive me—Mistress Florrel. And why it was essential they were eliminated. What would she say if she knew the secret of this universe? What would she do? What would any of them do?

“Wake up,” Kristabel chided. “We’re here.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” he complained as the gondola was being tied to the mooring. Up above the canal, the crooked towers of Eyrie were jabbing up into a cloudless summer sky. Those who sought guidance were already being aided to their places on the upper platforms. Mattuel and a few of the third-generation relatives were already on the street above, looking down, readying their third hands to lift Edeard and Kristabel. They’d all hurried over behind the gondola, walking across the surface of the canal; they were all strong enough to do that.

The streets between the towers were packed solid with representatives from across the world who had come to honor the Waterwalker and bid him farewell. They cheered and waved. On the steps of the Lady’s church, the Makkathran Novice choir began to sing. The verse and chorus were taken up by the entire city.

Edeard asked Mattuel to pause a moment as the tune rang across Makkathran, allowing him to savor the music one last time. It was Dybal’s “Bittersweet Flight,” the old musician’s last and finest composition. Both simple and haunting, it had become quite the anthem since he was guided by a Skylord some eighty years ago.

“Respectable at last,” he murmured as the song ended. All around him, people were bowing their heads, standing still for the customary minute’s silence.

“How poor Dybal would hate that,” an amused Kristabel replied.

“Yes. I must tell him when we get there.”

Friends were well placed amid those circling the tower itself. Edeard managed a weak wave at several familiar faces. There was no Salrana, for which he still felt remorse, though it was dulled now by the centuries; she’d taken guidance over ten years ago. Edeard had observed from the hortus as the Skylord swooped across the city, anxious that her soul be accepted. He was sure it had been, for which he was glad. Even though they had never been reconciled, she had found her own fulfillment in the end.

Ranalee, too, had gone, contemptuous and antagonistic to the very end. In her own way she had accomplished much, with a host of descendants whose successful avaricious enterprises extended their influence far and wide.

Edeard closed his eyes as he was gently elevated upward. This is when I must make my choice. It has been a good life; today is proof of that. Not perfect, but it never could be. Do I go back and live it again? And what would be the point of that? I know I can only live those centuries again if I do it differently. Perhaps now would be the time to go back beyond Owain’s death. I could go right back to Ashwell and stop my parents being killed. Salrana would never be corrupted … He shook his head with only the mildest regret. That was not the life for him. Too many bad events would have to be played out again in one form or another so that the final two centuries could be lived in the peace and hope he’d enjoyed this time around. He would have to make things different to make them remotely bearable. The risk was immense.

I will take guidance.

The central stairway winding up the tower was too cramped for an entourage, so it was Mattuel who performed the honor of carrying his father to the top, accompanied by the Pythia herself. Honalee carried her grandmother, and the rest of the family surrounded the base of the tower.

“Dear Lady, I haven’t been up here since the day Finitan was guided,” Edeard said as they neared the top.

“Yes, Father.”

“You know, this is the same tower which Owain’s thugs pushed me off.”

“I know, Father.”

Edeard smiled softly to himself as they rounded the last curve and went out into the bright sunshine. Eight tall spires guarded the edges, their tips bent inward slightly. As always, the wind was a lot stronger on the open platform than it was down on the ground. It whistled faintly as it blew around the spires.

A gaggle of Novices and Mothers were clustered around the entrance to the stairs, each of them openly anxious to see the Waterwalker as he was settled onto a pile of comfortable cushions. They had escorted the others who sought guidance, of whom there were fifty on the platform. Most of them were resting on similar cushions, though a few were stubbornly insisting on standing to face the Skylord’s arrival.

“About time you turned up,” Macsen said.

Edeard tipped two fingers to his old friend. Even as he did, he wondered how on Querencia the Mothers and Novices had ever gotten the enormous master of Sampalok up the tight stairwell. Macsen seemed to be almost globular these days; he hadn’t managed to get out of bed unaided for over four years.

Edeard looked around at his friends, humbled and delighted that they would all be traveling together. Kanseen on a bed of cushions next to Macsen, her terribly frail frame struggling to breathe. Dinlay, standing, of course, gaunt yet with a straight back, his Chief Constable’s uniform immaculate, dignified at the last. He was by himself; to everyone’s amazement, his last marriage had lasted thirty-two years (a record) and remained current, but his wife was eighty-seven years younger.

“Everyone together,” Edeard said.

“No matter what,” they all chorused.

The Pythia bowed to Edeard. “Waterwalker, may the Lady Herself bless your journey. She will greet you soon, I’m sure. What you have done for this world is beyond praise. The Heart awaits you with eagerness, as do your friends who dwell there now. You go there with the undying thanks of all of us who live on Querencia, whose fulfillment you have worked so hard toward.”

Edeard looked up into her face, kind and stern, as all the Pythias seemed to be, but radiant with concern. A concern that extended a great deal further than the tower. Should I tell her? Somehow, he couldn’t risk the woman’s disapproval, so all he said was: “Thank you.”

The Novices and Mothers began their walk back down the tower’s spiral stair.

Macsen let out a comfortable groan as he slumped back onto the cushions. “Right, then we’ve got a minute. Anyone bring some booze?”

“I think you’ve had enough now, dear,” Kanseen longtalked quietly. Watching her juddering breaths, Edeard knew it was willpower alone that kept her body alive. Dinlay came over and perched beside Edeard. The lenses in his glasses were like balls of glass, they were so thick. Edeard knew very well he was virtually blind; it was only his farsight that allowed him to move around these days.

“Do you think Boyd got there?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard smiled wistfully. “If he didn’t, we’ll have to organize a search of the Void for him.”

“I’m sure a Skylord would help,” Kanseen longtalked. “He deserves his place in the Heart.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Kristabel said. “A voyage across the universe, a bigger version of our trip around the world.”

“Yes, my love, it would be quite something.”

He saw her head turn to stare at him, eyes narrowing in that oh so beautifully familiar expression. “Is there something wrong?”

“Not wrong, no. But tell me this, all of you: If there was something you knew, an ability you had which could change everything, the way you lived, your beliefs, the way you thought, even, would you keep it to yourself?”

“What ability?” Macsen asked keenly. “The way you talk to the city?”

“No, something much greater than that.”

“Would it change things for the better?” Kristabel asked.

“It just brings change. How it is applied, for better or worse, depends on the user.”

“You cannot judge people,” Dinlay said. “Not even you, Waterwalker, have that right. We have our courts of law to maintain order, but to decide the nature of a person’s soul is not something we are worthy of. The Heart alone decides.”

“If the ability exists, it exists for a reason,” Kanseen longtalked.

“I thought so,” Edeard said.

Down below, the city gasped and then cheered as the Skylord rose above the horizon. The tremendous flood of rapturous blessings directed from Makkathran’s crowds rose to a crescendo. It was enough to bestow Edeard’s body with a final surge of strength. He reached out with his third hand and drew his friends to him. They held hands as the Skylord swept in across the Lyot Sea. Wind rushed on in front of it, causing their robes to flap about. All around them, the spires of the tower began to glow, a vivid corona of light that spilled out across the platform, filling the air with sparks, as if the stars themselves were raining down.

“Will you accept us?” Edeard asked of the Skylord. “Will you guide us to the Heart?”

“Yes,” the giant creature replied benevolently.

Tears of gratitude seeped down Edeard’s cheeks as the light grew stronger and the shadow of the Skylord slid across Eyrie. This was his last chance.

The light flared, overwhelming his eyes. He sensed his body starting to dissolve into whatever force the towers unleashed. Yet his mind remained intact. If anything, it grew stronger, his thoughts clearer than they had been in decades. His perception expanded, taking in the whole of the city.

“I have one last gift for you,” he said to the glittering enraptured minds below. “Use it well.” And he showed them how to travel back through their own lives to begin again where they chose.

“That’s how we always won?” a laughing Macsen asked.

Edeard’s soul shone with happiness. Rising beside him into the giant fluctuations of light that ran through the Skylord’s body, Macsen’s spectral form had returned to his handsome adolescent self.

“Not always,” he promised his friends. “And not for two hundred years. I swear upon the Lady that your achievements here are your own.”

“Whatever will they do with it?” Dinlay asked, looking down at the world shrinking away below the glare of their disintegrating bodies.

“The best they can, of course,” Kanseen said.

“You did the right thing,” Kristabel told him.

Edeard cast his perception up, growing aware of the songs calling down from the nebulae. They seemed to speak directly to him, a promise of such glory that he was filled with wonder and anticipation. “They’re so beautiful,” he exclaimed. “And we’ll soon be there.”

Oscar munched away absentmindedly on his chocolate twister as he reviewed the astrogration charts his u-shadow was extracting from various files. On the other side of the exovision displays Liatris McPeierl was running through an energetic exercise routine, stripped to the waist to show off perfectly proportioned chest muscles that were gleaming rather nicely with sweat. A sight that was not a little distracting; Oscar found it hard to concentrate on transgalactic navigation with all that joyous hunk flesh flexing lithely just a couple of meters away.

Liatris finished his routine and reached languidly for a towel. “I’m for a shower,” he announced, and twitched his bum in Oscar’s direction as teasingly bogus thoughts of lust burst out into the gaiafield.

Oscar bit firmly down into a big chunk of his pastry, inhaling a lot of the dusty icing sugar it was coated with, which made him cough, which made him look really stupid. He took a drink of tea to clear his throat. When he’d finished, Liatris was gone and Beckia was giving him a pitying smile from the other side of the starship’s main cabin.

“What?” he grumbled.

“Liatris is spoken for back home,” she said.

“Back home is a long way away.”

“You’re a wicked old Punk Skunk.”

“And proud of it. Wanna take a look at my scorecard?”

“You just have no dignity at all, do you?”

He flashed her a lecherous grin and ordered his u-shadow to pull files from the unisphere on all previous known and rumored transgalactic flights. “Part of what makes me lovable.”

“Part of you is lovable?”

Tomansio and Cheriton rose up through the airlock chamber into the center of the cabin. Both of them were wearing toga suits with quite flamboyant iridescent surface shimmers and gaiamote emissions toned down to zero. They were letting everyone know they were staunch Viotia citizens and had nothing to do with Living Dream in any respect.

“It’s not getting any better out there,” Cheriton complained.

For a couple of weeks now the team had been accessing and experiencing the attempts of Viotia’s government as it tried to reestablish normal services and deal with the damage caused by the invasion, an operation not helped by the lynching of their prime minister two days after the Ellezelin troops had withdrawn from the capital, Ludor. It had been a messy affair with a mob storming into the National Parliament Building while the guards had been content to stand back and let natural justice take its place. The rest of the cabinet, fearful for their own bodyloss, had been reluctant to stand up and issue instructions. Relief was being coordinated mainly by local authorities while tempers were given time to cool.

Given that Colwyn City had sustained by far the worst damage, its infrastructure was still limping along as repairs and replacement operations were implemented. Bots and civil engineering crews were hard at work, aided by equipment delivered by starships flying in from across the Commonwealth. But commerce was sluggish, and a surprising number of businesses still hadn’t reopened despite the urging of the city council.

“I think they’ve done well, considering the general apathy,” Tomansio said. “It’s going to take a couple of years before everything gets back to preinvasion levels. It doesn’t help that Likan’s company is currently shut down; it was a huge part of the planetary economy. The treasury will have to step in and refloat its finances. And the cabinet isn’t strong enough to orchestrate that right now. There’ll have to be an election to restore public confidence in government.”

“Which is the main problem,” Oscar said. “What’s the point? Our gloriously idiotic Dreamer is going to launch the Pilgrimage fleet in seven hours. You’re not going to get an election if there’s nothing left of the galaxy to hold an election in.”

“So remind me why we’re still here,” Tomansio said.

Oscar was going to launch into his usual impassioned plea for hope and faith based on that five seconds of raw face-to-face impression he’d gained of Araminta back in Bodant Park. He had been so utterly certain that she was playing Living Dream somehow. But the team had heard it all so many times from him, and now here he was examining ways to flee from the galaxy in one of the finest starships ANA had ever constructed. “I don’t know,” he said, surprised by how hard the admission was. It meant that the mission was over, that they could do nothing, that there was no future.

He wondered what Dushiku and Anja and dear mercurial Jesaral would say when he landed outside their house in a stealthed ultradrive starship and told them they’d have to flee the galaxy. It had been so long since he’d spoken to them, they were actually starting to drift away from his consideration. That wasn’t good. He really could survive without them. Especially now that I’m living life properly again.

A dismayed groan escaped his lips. Oh, you treacherous, treacherous man. Beckia is right; I have no dignity.

Cheriton, Tomansio, and Beckia exchanged mildly confused glances as the rush of conflicting emotions spilled out of Oscar’s gaiamotes.

“What will you do when the expansion starts?” he asked them.

“The Knights Guardian will survive,” Tomansio said. “I expect we will relocate to a new world in a fresh galaxy.”

“You’d need to find such a world,” Oscar said cautiously. “For that you’ll need a good scoutship. An ultradrive would be perfect.”

“It would. And we would be honored for you to join us.”

“This is difficult,” Oscar said miserably. “To acknowledge we have failed so completely, not just the five of us but our entire species.”

“Justine is still inside the Void,” Beckia said. “Gore may yet triumph. He clearly intends something.”

“Clutching at straws,” Oscar told her. “That’s not strong.”

“No, but part of what I believe in is having the strength to admit when you’ve been defeated. We didn’t secure Araminta, and she’s made her own choice, despicable bitch that she is. Our part in this is over.”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged. He still wasn’t sure how his life partners would react to all this. Not that he was so shallow that he’d fly off without making the offer to take them. But they all had family, which made an exodus complicated. Whereas he was truly alone. Probably the closest connection he had to anyone alive today was with Paula Myo, a notion that made him smile.

Every one of Oscar’s exovision displays was abruptly blanked out by a priority protocol as his u-shadow reported that someone was activating a link from an ultrasecure onetime contact code.

“Bloody hell!” he blurted.

“Hello, Oscar,” Araminta said. “I believe you told me to call.”

Even with a combination of smartcores and modern cybernetics and replicator factories and a legion of bots and effectively bottomless government resources, not to mention the loving devotion of every single project worker, building the twelve giant Pilgrimage ships was a phenomenal achievement by any standards. But for all that, the prodigious amount of processing power and human thought that had been utilized to manage the project was focused primarily on planning and facilitating the fabrication itself. It was unfortunate, therefore, that a proportional amount of consideration hadn’t been given to working out the embarkation procedure for the lucky twenty-four million.

Mareble had been reduced to tears when she and Danal had received confirmation that they’d been allocated a place on board the Macsen’s Dream. She actually sank to her knees in the hotel room and sent the strongest prayer of thanks into the gaiafield, wishing it toward the Dreamer Araminta for the kindness she’d shown toward them yet again. For days afterward she’d gone through life in a daze of happiness. Her brain was stuck in the most amazing fantasies of what she would do when she walked the streets of Makkathran itself that it was a miracle she even remembered to eat. Then her wonder and excitement were channeled into preparation; she was one of the chosen ones, an opportunity she must never waste. She and Danal spent hours reviewing the kinds of supplies they wanted to take. Allocation was strictly limited to one cubic meter per person, with the strong advice not to bring any advanced technological items.

It was her deepest wish that she could somehow become an Eggshaper like the Waterwalker himself. For years she’d studied the techniques he’d employed in those first dreams; she was sure she could emulate the ability if she could just get into proximity with a pregnant default genistar. Once the basic clothes and utensils and tools were packed, she set about filling the precious remaining space with the kinds of tough coats and jeans and boots that were essential to any branch of animal husbandry, with practical veterinary instruments occupying the last remaining cubic centimeters. Danal filled his container with some luxury food packets and a range of seeds, but mostly his allowance was taken up by old-fashioned books printed on superstrong paper by a small specialist replicator unit he bought for the occasion. He wanted to be a teacher, he told her, which was why he also took pencils and pens and all the paraphernalia necessary to make ink.

Embarkation began three days after the drives and force fields arrived. Before she’d met the Dreamer Araminta, the unsavory origin of the technology would have troubled Mareble. But now that she’d witnessed Dreamer Araminta confront the disquieting Ilanthe-thing, she had confidence that their Pilgrimage wasn’t being perverted for a faction’s sinister agenda. Araminta was quite right: The Void would prevail over any wickedness. When their capsule arrived at the construction yard, she was carefree and dizzy with the prospect of the flight itself. Everything her life had been devoted to was about to be consummated.

The capsule had to wait outside the yard’s force field dome for seven hours, stacked three hundred meters above the ground in a matrix resembling a metallic locust swarm, all of them awaiting landing clearance. When they finally did get down outside one of the materiel egress facilities, bots loaded their containers on a trolley that quickly slipped away through the air. Mareble and Danal had to walk through the facility past an array of scanners and sensor fields before they were finally out under the domes that cloaked the evening sky in a pale purple nimbus. Long braids of trolleys buzzed high through the air, forking and flowing like a dark river tributary network as they glided to their designated ship to off-load. Staring up at the appallingly complex, fast-moving streams, Mareble glumly resigned herself to never seeing her personal container again.

Below the trolleys, a stratum of solido signs hovered above the wide avenues between the starships, carrying directions and stabbing out flashing arrows. To complement that, her u-shadow received a series of guidance instructions that would take her to entrance ramp 13 of the Macsen’s Dream. She and two million others. What those instructions amounted to was: Join the three-hundred-meter-wide queue filling the avenue and shuffle along for five hours.

With darkness falling, the hulls of the giant ships curving away above her created an unavoidable impression of being trapped in a metallic canyon with no end. The regrav fields supporting the ships pulsed oddly, creating unpleasant effects in her stomach. There were no toilets, nothing to eat or drink, nowhere to rest. The noise of everyone talking and complaining together along with crying distressed children was unnerving and depressing. Only the gaiafield with its shared sensation of anticipation kept her spirits up.

Five hours pressed up next to a band of boisterous women who boasted about their genetic reprofiling to amazonian twenty-year-olds. They wore T-shirts with embroidered slogans: “Dinlay’s Lurve Squad.” “Badder Than Hilitte.” “I’m Gonna Get DinLAYd.”

Mareble and Danal exchanged a sardonic look and closed their ears to the bawdy talk and dirty laughter. It was amazing how some people interpreted the fulfillment the Pilgrimage was bringing them to.

Eventually, after far too long in a Honious-like limbo, they arrived at the base of ramp 13. After the chaos she’d endured, she let out a quiet sob of relief.

“It’s real,” she whispered to Danal as they began the slow walk up the slope. The Dinlay girls followed them up, but the crowd here wasn’t so bad. Thousands more were still trudging slowly along the avenue behind and below her. She was rising above them now in every sense.

He gripped her hand and squeezed tight as his mind let out a surge of gratitude. “Thank you,” he told her. “I would never have made it without you.”

For one brief instant she thought of Cheriton and the short, hot comforting time she’d spent with him after Danal’s arrest, how in turn he’d given her the fortitude to get through that period of misery and disorientation. Somehow she didn’t let the pang of guilt out. After all, even the Waterwalker had lapsed when he tried to bind the world to his faulty notion of unity. From that he had emerged triumphant.

“We made it, though,” she said. “I love you. And we’re going to wake up in Makkathran itself.”

“Och, that’s very sweet,” a loud amused voice said.

Mareble fixed on a blank smile and turned around. The man behind her on the ramp wasn’t quite what she was expecting. Not that she had any preconceptions, but …

He was taller than Danal, dressed in a kilt and very bright scarlet waistcoat with gold buttons. Not something she ever remembered anyone on Querencia wearing. She was about to say something when a flicker of silver and gold light shone through his thick flop of brown hair, distracting her.

“They call me the Lionwalker,” he said. “But I got that label a long time before our very own Waterwalker came along, so that’s okay, then. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Danal said stiffly as he introduced himself.

“So are you two lovebirds going to get hitched in the Lady’s church?” Lionwalker asked.

“Mareble is my wife,” Danal said with such pride that she ignored how rude the stranger was being and smiled up adoringly at her husband as his arm tightened around her.

“Aye, well, yes, but a marriage blessed in that church would be a blessing indeed, now, wouldn’t it? And take it from a man who’s seen more than his fair share of every kind of bride and groom there is, a marriage needs every bit of help it can get.” Lionwalker pushed his hand up in salute, showing off an antique silver hip flask. “Cheers and bon voyage to the pair of you.” He took a long nip. “Aaah, that’ll keep the cold off my toes on the voyage.”

“We don’t need extra help,” Mareble sputtered.

“If you say so. Mind, it’s a particular person who needs no advice in life.”

“I’ll thank you to keep your homilies to yourself,” Danal told him. “Our guidance comes from the Waterwalker himself.”

They’d reached the top of the ramp, which frankly Mareble had wanted to achieve in slightly more dignified circumstances. The Lionwalker took another nip, winked lecherously at her, and sauntered into the Macsen’s Dream as if he owned the starship.

“Well!” Danal grunted indignantly. “Some of us clearly have a lot longer to go before reaching fulfillment than others.”

The chamber behind the airlock was a junction of seven corridors. Small, neat solidos flowed smoothly along the walls, indicating the zone where their assigned medical capsules were located.

“Come on,” Danal said, gripping her hand.

Mareble narrowed her eyes, staring along the corridor down which the Lionwalker had vanished. “I know him,” she said uncertainly. The memory was elusive. But then the squad of Dinlay girls was shrieking wildly and running down their corridor like a football team going onto the pitch, which made her chuckle. She let Danal lead her into the labyrinthine interior of the starship. Instinctively she reached for the Dreamer Araminta’s gift, finding her standing on the observation deck of the Lady’s Light, alone and resolute, staring out through a huge curving transparent section of the forward fuselage.

Reassured her idol was watching out for all of Living Dream, Mareble strode on with renewed confidence.

The SI’s icon appeared in Troblum’s exovision, requesting a connection. At least it was asking, he thought, rather than intruding.

Mellanie’s Redemption was still secreted away in transdimensional suspension above Viotia. Troblum couldn’t quite help that. He had been completely taken by surprise at Araminta’s defection to Living Dream. Given how long she had spent trying to elude them, suddenly turning up and claiming their leadership lacked any kind of logic, at least the kind he understood. He did assume it was some kind of ruse—again, not one he could fathom.

So he waited for her endgame to become clear. After all, if he took flight to another galaxy and, however unlikely it was, she resolved the whole Pilgrimage problem, he’d never know.

“Even if they don’t Pilgrimage, there’s still the Accelerators and Ilanthe and the Cat,” Catriona had pointed out.

“A solution to the Pilgrimage will by definition have to include and neutralize them,” he explained patiently.

“I thought you were keen to find out what happened to the transgalactic expeditions.”

“I am. But the time scale is so short now before we know if Araminta succeeds in getting the Pilgrimage fleet through the barrier, I can afford to wait and see if the expansion begins as predicted. If it does, we can outrun it now that we have ultradrive.”

“What about Oscar? The SI said it knows where his ship is.”

“Irrelevant now. All that’s left is Gore and Ilanthe, the two real players. This is their war.”

“Are you scared to meet Oscar?”

“No. There’s simply no point.”

“You might be able to open the Sol barrier.”

“No!” That was the truth. He’d spent day after day analyzing the files in his storage lacuna, working through the theories and equipment they’d developed during his time on the Accelerator station building the Swarm. There was no way around it that he could see, no way to overwhelm the barrier. And he didn’t have enough data on the individual components of the Swarm to see if there was a backdoor. In any case, most of it had been constructed after he’d left; all he’d done was help set up the manufacturing systems. They would have made a lot of changes and improvements over the decades; he wasn’t current.

The Mellanie’s Redemption stayed above Viotia because it was as good a place as any to wait. After his futile attempt to analyze the Sol barrier, he even managed to catch up on some sleep. Time was spent on reviewing the starship’s basic systems, getting up to date on maintenance procedures, fabricating some replacement components in the small high-level onboard replicator. There were also a great many files his u-shadow acquired for him from the unisphere, information and entertainment that would make a life of exile in another galaxy more bearable.

When the SI’s icon appeared, Troblum didn’t authorize the link at once. First of all, he was busy. And then … the last couple of weeks had eased him into a state of acceptance. He knew he was leaving; it was simply a question of timing now, and he didn’t really even have to make that decision. The Void’s final expansion phase would begin, and he would leave. It was that simple.

The SI, though, would bring complications back into his life.

“I know you,” Catriona Saleeb said. “Not knowing what it wanted to tell you will eat you up. And it’s being polite. It could have forced its way into the ship’s link with the unisphere.”

“Yes.” Troblum sighed. He canceled the blueprints in his exovision display and looked down at the micromanipulator he was using. Underneath its transparent dome, the clean-environment unit contained a scattering of newly replicated components that he was slowly assembling into a solido projector. He’d obtained enough base programs to construct a reasonable I-sentient personality. It would be himself, he’d decided, a younger, physically fitter version that would be able to share Catriona’s bed. He’d redesigned the sensory correlations with his own biononics so that they were a lot higher than a standard version, allowing him to enjoy the experience to the full. Incorporating those customizations took time. By itself, it was an intriguing problem to solve, one that had absorbed his intellect for several days. It was almost like becoming multiple. Catriona had said she was looking forward to it as well.

His u-shadow opened the link.

“I have an interesting development to report,” the SI said.

“What?”

“Oscar Monroe has just received a secure call from someone at Bovey’s Bathing and Culinaryware. That’s a macrostore in the Groby touchdown mall in Colwyn City.”

“So?”

“The originator claims to be Araminta. The link was established through a one time code which Oscar issued. Nobody else knew about it except him and the person it was given to.”

“And you. So any decent e-head could find it.”

“I only know about it because I’m monitoring all the links going in and out of Oscar’s hidden starship. Once I’d intercepted it, cracking the code was tough even for me. It would be beyond most e-heads in the Commonwealth.”

Troblum frowned at the tiny electronic components inside the micromanipulator case glittering like so many diamonds. “But it can’t be from Araminta.” His u-shadow had put the Pilgrimage departure into a peripheral exovision image; he could see the Pilgrimage fleet on Ellezelin. They had finally finished their chaotic embarkation. Several live feeds were showing Araminta standing on the observation deck of the Lady’s Light. “She’s in the flagship. They’re about to launch.”

“Exactly. So why is a onetime code given to her personally by Oscar being activated from Colwyn City?”

“I don’t understand.” It did make the puzzle of why she’d defected to Living Dream more absorbing. Troblum liked puzzles. Not that it changed anything. “What did they say?”

“Nothing much. She asked Oscar to meet her in a restaurant on Daryad Avenue in fifteen minutes.”

“But …” Troblum pulled the news feeds to center. The protective force fields over the construction yard were powering down, leaving the skies wide open for the colossal ships to launch. “She’s on board the Lady’s Light. I’m accessing the feed right now.”

“Yes. So either she’s bringing the entire Pilgrimage fleet to Viotia for a quick visit, or there’s something else going on.”

“What?”

“Are you taking an interest, Troblum? Are you considering contacting Oscar now?”

“I’m not talking to him. For all I know, this is some trick of yours.”

“If it is, it’s a little late in the day.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I’m infiltrating nodes inside the restaurant. Oscar’s team is running checks to provide cover for their man. They’re good, but I can elude them. Would you like to observe the meeting?”

Troblum closed his eyes. Images from the starship’s sensors showed him Viotia as a vast intrusion within spacetime’s gravity field. The planet was only a hundred thousand kilometers away, although the SI didn’t know that. Or perhaps it does.

The fear and worry that had ebbed away slowly over the last week suddenly resurged, elevating his heart rate. Tiny beads of sweat oozed out of his pores, chilling his skin. Biononics smoothly countered the physiological aspects, but they couldn’t quell his anxious thoughts. He couldn’t begin to guess what was going on. I don’t understand people, fuck it. Why is Araminta doing this? Why is she trying to kill the galaxy? Why is she calling Oscar? And he must know she won’t be meeting him.

“You said Oscar’s people are checking out the restaurant?”

“Yes. Two of them are physically deploying to cover the building. He’s already on his way.”

“But he knows where Araminta is; he knows she won’t be there. It must be a trap, yet he’s going into it.”

“A trap set by who? And why? And why now? No weapon in the galaxy can stop the Pilgrimage ships; we know that. Your Commonwealth Navy can’t break through the force fields Ilanthe has provided, nor can the warrior Raiel.”

“Are you saying it isn’t a trap?”

“I’m telling you what’s happening and offering to share.”

“Why? Why do you want to involve me?”

“To finally achieve what I’ve so often wrongly been accused of doing: influencing the outcome of human affairs. We must have more options ranged against Living Dream and Ilanthe. And the Cat, of course. You may yet be able to play a true part, Troblum. Do you want that?”

He looked across the cabin at Catriona, who was bestowing him with that worshipful look again. He put his head in his hands. She’s not real. Nothing I have is real. With biononics amplifying his strength, he suddenly thumped his fist down on top of the micromanipulator unit. It made a dull thudding sound, and some of the tiny components jittered around inside. His fist rose again. This time his biononics added a weapons pattern to the impact. The dome shattered, and the delicate little mechanisms inside were crushed beyond salvation. Electronic components scattered across the decking, ruined by both the violence and the air that contaminated their flimsy molecular structure.

“Show me,” he told the SI. “And who is Bovey?”

“Come alone.” Araminta had been insistent about that.

Oscar appreciated the sentiment, but … Some things were just too big to leave to goodwill and pleasantries. He took a table in the middle of Andrew Rice’s restaurant at the bottom of Daryad Avenue, an ancient (by Viotia standards) wood-and-carbon-paneled building barely a mile from the docks where Elvin’s Payback still sat in the warehouse, overlooked and unnoticed by the managers trying to restore order to the docks. There weren’t many people; the windows had just been replaced after having been smashed. Oscar was sure it should have had more tables, too; the remaining ones were certainly spaced unusually far apart. Perhaps some had been looted. Who loots a table?

A human waiter came over to take his order, and he asked for a salad. He rather liked the look of the enormous steak and kidney pies a couple of blokes were eating at a corner table, but he’d only just finished his tea and twister. It had taken less than ten minutes to walk to Rice’s from the Elvin’s Payback, which was cause for mild suspicion. Did Araminta know their location? It was hard to see how.

Beckia was out in Daryad Avenue, keeping watch as she browsed through a recently reopened store opposite the restaurant. Cheriton had taken up position in a lane at the back, also scanning around for any sign of other agents or some kind of trap or just something out of the ordinary. Oscar still couldn’t figure out what was going on. The gaiafield quite clearly revealed Araminta standing in the observation deck of the Lady’s Light, where she had remained for the last couple of days. Ethan and Taranse walked across the empty chamber to her and bowed in unison.

“Embarkation is complete, Dreamer,” Taranse said. He looked exhausted but supremely content, a man who’d achieved his goal in life.

“Thank you,” she said. “You have done a remarkable job.” She turned to Ethan. “Are we ready to launch?”

“Yes,” he said with open delight. “The ultradrives appear to be functional.”

“Very well. Please ask the captains to lift and set a course for the Void.”

“It will be done.”

“Is there any sign of Ilanthe?”

“No, Dreamer.”

“No matter. I’m sure she will make herself known before we reach the boundary.” She turned back to the tall strip of transparent fuselage in time to see the construction yard’s last layer of force fields deactivate. It was dawn outside. A bright yellow-gold radiance illuminated the colossal Pilgrimage ships, and she smiled at the sight of it. Then the decking trembled and the Lady’s Light slowly lifted out of its regrav suspension, rising into Ellezelin’s clear sky.

“Holy crap,” Oscar grunted. He truly had no idea what he was doing here now. In fact, he started to worry that Tomansio was right and Living Dream had broken into her mind so they could clear up any possible remaining problems. That was bollocks, he knew. Why wait until now?

His salad arrived. He gave it a dispirited look.

“Ah, life just got interesting again,” Beckia said. “Here we go.” Her link showed him a Mr. Bovey climbing out of a cab on Daryad Avenue just outside the restaurant. It was the middle-aged black-skinned one Oscar had talked to before.

“Yes! Your money is mine,” Cheriton declared. “Pay up.”

The team had been running a pool on who would actually show up at the restaurant. Oscar had put his money on the elusive cousin, Cressida.

“Anything suspicious?” Oscar asked the rest of the team. Liatris, who was flying coverage over Colwyn City in a modified capsule, said no, the area was clear of any covert activity. Back in Elvin’s Payback, Tomansio also reported a clean sweep.

The Mr. Bovey walked straight into the restaurant and sat down next to Oscar. He was wearing a conservative gray toga suit that barely shimmered, which made him look quite dignified.

Oscar’s biononics threw a small privacy cloak around the table. “Mr. Bovey,” he began in censure, which he was about to follow up with something along the lines of what’s she up to? when the man simply grinned and shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically. “That’s Mr. Bovey over there keeping an eye on you.”

Oscar twisted around. The two men eating steak and kidney pies waved solemnly. “I don’t get …”

“I’m Araminta. Araminta-two, I suppose. I borrowed one of my fiancé’s bodies. This one, to be precise. I always liked this one.”

“Ungh?” Oscar grunted.

“I’m starting to go multiple. It’s an interesting lifestyle, don’t you think?” He gave Oscar a lopsided smile.

“Fuck me.”

“Quite. You said you could help?”

“Oh, shit, yes!” Oscar’s skin was actually tingling from astonishment. He couldn’t help it; he started laughing in delight. Maybe there is hope. “If you’d like to come with me …” Biononics and secondary thought routines had to regulate his neural responses, filtering down his adrenaline rush so he could concentrate properly on the mission. He had to stay focused.

Araminta-two gave him a modest shrug and stood up.

“Cover us,” Oscar told Beckia and Cheriton. “Liatris, get us out of here.”

“Way ahead of you,” Liatris said.

Oscar couldn’t remember being both elated and terrified to such an extent. If they were going to be intercepted, it would be now, after this version of Araminta was identified for what s/he was. As they walked to the door, he wanted to shove his integral force field up to full strength, activate all weapons enrichments. Keep cool. Keep calm. It’s a brilliant maneuver. No one could anticipate she’d do this.

Liatris brought the ingrav capsule flashing down directly onto the pavement outside the restaurant, earning several angry glances from pedestrians who had to dodge out of the way. The door opened, and Oscar virtually shoved Araminta-two inside. Then they were rising fast, already curving toward the docks.

Araminta-two nodded cheerfully at a thunderstruck Liatris, then looked around briefly. “You know, some people think ingrav shouldn’t be allowed in this city.”

“Right,” Oscar said.

“There’s a chance it screws up the deep geology. There could be earthquakes.”

“Uh huh.” This was so the opposite of anything Oscar was prepared for, it had shifted over to vaguely surreal.

Their capsule dipped down to hover in front of the Bootle & Leicester warehouse. The doors curtained apart, and they nudged forward. Oscar just knew that was going to draw attention from the dock staff. It didn’t matter anymore. They had Araminta, so nothing else mattered. Actually, one Araminta, not the whole person. Maybe that’s why she—he—whatever—is a bit … flaky.

Tomansio was in the middle of the starship’s cabin as the three of them rose up through the airlock. The floor solidified underneath them. Oscar couldn’t help the vast grin on his face. He jabbed a finger at Tomansio. “I told you so!”

“Yes,” Tomansio said softly.

That was when Oscar’s biononics told him Tomansio was executing an extremely thorough field scan of Araminta-two. He almost protested, then realized he should have done it back in the restaurant.

“Clear,” Tomansio declared. “In fact, very clear. You don’t have biononics; even your macrocellular clusters are basic.”

“Mr. Bovey is multiple,” Araminta-two said. “He doesn’t depend on the technocentric systems other Commonwealth cultures revolve around.”

Tomansio dipped his head. “Of course. But you do understand what you’re saying is difficult to accept without proof.”

“I know. Watch through me.”

The Dreamer’s gifting to the gaiafield revealed her view through the front of the Lady’s Light. From her position she could see the curvature of the planet starting to fall away below as the starship rose ponderously out of the atmosphere. The dawn terminator line was etched by a gold corona that skittered off ocean and clouds alike. The Dreamer’s mouth opened. “Trust me, Tomansio, I am very real,” she said.

Across the gaiafield, those billions of Living Dream members watching in envy as the Pilgrimage began reaffirmed their devotion to her. Tens of millions wondered who Tomansio was.

Araminta-two lifted an eyebrow at Tomansio. “So?”

“Okay, that was pretty convincing. A multiple of two. Who’d have guessed?”

“Not you,” Araminta-two said.

“Let’s hope I’m not alone.”

Oscar grinned again. “I was right. She didn’t betray us.”

“Oscar, I love you dearly,” Tomansio said. “But if you don’t shut up about that, I will shove you headfirst into—”

Oscar chuckled. “Yeah, yeah.” The smartcore showed him two capsules arriving in the warehouse. Beckia and Cheriton came sprinting out. It took the edge off his humor slightly. He ordered the smartcore to launch as soon as the other two were in the airlock.

Tomansio gave him a startled look as the Elvin’s Payback punched clean through the warehouse roof and accelerated vertically at twenty gees. The internal gravity countered some of the force, but they all had to sit down quickly on the couches extruded by the cabin floor.

“A little drastic,” Tomansio mused.

“Tactically smart. Up here we can run if we have to.”

“You’re the boss.”

Beckia and Cheriton emerged from the airlock and gave Araminta-two incredulous looks as they lumbered over to their acceleration couches.

Oscar’s initial jubilation was draining away. Viotia spaceflight control was directing a lot of queries and warnings at them, but nothing appeared to be in pursuit. Space above the planet was relatively clear; none of the starships the sensors could detect were threatening. “All right,” he said to Araminta-two. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I was running out of options,” Araminta-two replied. “Becoming the Dreamer is a diversion.” His confidence faltered for a moment. “I hope. That’s where you come in.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Oscar said. “We’re here to help in any way we can.”

“Why? I know who you are. I checked. But I’d like to know who’s backing you.”

“Fair enough; it was ANA, but now we’re just hanging on by ourselves. Hoping for something to turn up. And … you did.”

“What do you need?” Tomansio asked. “Are you going to crash the Pilgrimage fleet into the boundary or something?”

Araminta-two’s dignified face produced a sad smile, making him look even older. “There are twenty-four million people on those starships. Idiots, yes, but still people. There is no way I will slaughter them as an example to the rest of the galaxy not to go in. No, if they arrive at the Void boundary before we can stop them, then I’ll have to get the Skylord to open the way for them. So you see, I really need help.”

“Name it,” Oscar said.

“Bradley suggested I find Ozzie. He said Ozzie is a real genius, and if anyone can come up with a solution, it will be us in combination.”

Oscar’s skin chilled right down. “Bradley?” he asked lightly. The others gave him a curious look; it must have been because of what his emotions revealed.

“Bradley Johansson,” Araminta-two said. “I met him on the Silfen paths.”

“Bradley Johansson is alive?”

“Bradley is a Silfen now.”

“Holy crap.”

“Do you speak the truth of this?” Tomansio demanded almost in anger.

Araminta-two faced him down. “I speak the truth.” He turned back to Oscar. “Bradley told me you and he fought together in the Starflyer War. He said I could trust you, Oscar. And you did help me back at Bodant Park.”

“Bradley a Silfen,” Oscar said in wonder. “How about that. We both survived the Planet’s Revenge in our own ways.”

“He lives,” an incredulous Beckia murmured. “The greatest of us all, our founder, humanity’s liberator. He lives! Do you realize what—” She broke off, too overwhelmed to speak.

“I don’t wish to disappoint,” Araminta-two said. “But he’s not coming to help. I’m afraid the best he could do was send me.”

“And he wanted you and Ozzie to team up?” Oscar queried.

“Yes. Um, he was also worried about the Ilanthe-thing and what it is now. Even the Silfen are concerned about that, as much as they are about anything.”

“Nobody knows much about Ilanthe,” Oscar said. “So let’s concentrate on what we can achieve.” He opened a secure link to Paula.

“Take her to Ozzie,” Paula said as soon as he’d finished explaining.

“Really?”

“Bradley is right. The Dreamer and Ozzie together would make a formidable combination.”

“All right, then.”

“And … Araminta really met Bradley?”

“Yeah, so she says. Something, huh?”

“Indeed.”

“So where’s Ozzie these days?”

“The Spike.”

“No shit, Paula. That’s seven thousand light-years away.”

“I know. But face it, what else have we got? We’re that desperate now.”

“Okay.” The Elvin’s Payback had finished its initial acceleration. It was curving into a wide elliptical orbit above Viotia. Oscar grinned at Araminta-two. “Ozzie’s in the Spike. It’ll take five days to get there.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Great.” He gave a relieved smile.

“A word of caution,” Paula said, which brought Oscar back down fast.

“Yeah?”

“I believe someone called Aaron has possibly taken Inigo to the Spike for exactly the same reason you’re going, to link up with Ozzie.”

“Oh, crap.” He glanced around to see the team members all giving him a vaguely accusatory stare. “Inigo? They found Inigo?”

“Yes. Which I’m hoping is good. If you can bring together the First and Second Dreamers along with Ozzie, that may really give us the kind of edge we’re going to need to—”

“Take out the Void? Blow up the Pilgrimage fleet? Eliminate Ilanthe?”

“I’d settle for any one of those right now.”

“So who is this Aaron character, and who is he working for?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. But logically he belongs to a faction inimical to Pilgrimage. And be careful. He can be very trigger-happy, and he’s known to be somewhat aggressive with it. Your team should be able to protect Araminta from him if he turns hostile.”

“Okay. What about you, Paula? What are you doing?”

“Working on a couple of leads, as always.”

Feeling slightly let down by her reply, Oscar ordered the smartcore to go FTL and take them to the Spike. Then he and the others started questioning Araminta-two in earnest.

“What will you do now?” the SI asked Troblum as the Mellanie’s Redemption tracked Oscar’s starship going FTL. It suddenly vanished from his exovision. None of the sensors could track it when it was stealthed.

“I don’t know,” he said unsteadily. The conversation between Oscar and Paula that the SI had intercepted had left him badly shaken. Both Dreamers and Ozzie coming together to solve the problem was cause for some tentative hope. “I can’t make a difference.”

“You know more about the Sol barrier than any other individual. They might need that.”

“I don’t know.” It was too big, too much, and getting horribly personal again. But it was a huge unexpected relief to solve the Araminta puzzle. She hadn’t betrayed anyone; she was doing what she could. And … Araminta, Inigo, Oscar, and Ozzie together. That’s going to be history.

Catriona came over and sat on his lap. She was wearing a thin lacy top and tight jeans. The feel of her resting there, human scent and musky perfume, her perfect form centimeters from his eyes. It was comforting somehow.

“We should go,” she told him softly.

“Yes.” Even that made him feel good.

Sensors showed Paula the Elvin’s Payback flashing into hyperspace and activating its stealth. She could track it of course, though few other ships in the galaxy could.

After a minute, the ship hanging in suspension a hundred thousand kilometers above Viotia also pushed back fully into hyperspace and followed Oscar at ultradrive speed. Its stealth wasn’t as good as that of the ANA ship, but its drive seemed more than capable, and the real giveaway was the mass, which was identical to that of the Mellanie’s Redemption, which Paula had last seen departing Sholapur at their hyperdrive speed.

“And then there was one,” Paula muttered.

The remaining stealthed ship started to move. Its drive signature was one the Alexis Denken was also familiar with from Sholapur, as was the much superior stealth effect. Paula ordered the smartcore to follow the other three starships to the Spike, then opened a secure link to the High Angel.

“Hello, Paula,” Qatux said.

“So you can’t break through the Sol barrier?”

“No. Our trip here was largely symbolic, a statement of Raiel support for the rest of the Commonwealth.”

“I don’t expect empty political gestures from you.”

“If there is any way we can influence the Living Dream from their Pilgrimage, we are obliged to enact it.”

“They’ve just launched.”

“I know. Paula, if you would like to come with us when this galaxy falls, I will be happy to take you.”

“I know the purpose of the High Angel is supposed to be to save life from this galaxy, but something is happening, Qatux, something my instinct tells me is crucial. So I’m going to need a favor. A very big favor.”

The lake measured over ten kilometers across, its shoreline made up of attractive sweeping coves. Two-thirds of the surrounding land was smothered by a thick wild forest, with vegetation scrambling down over the stones that lined the rippling water. The remaining third was an alien city whose globes and spikes dominated the skyline. Deserted for millennia, its iron structures were a similar construction to those of Octoron’s little human township. But this metropolis was put together on a much grander scale, perhaps a little too imposing. Humans living in the chamber had never attempted to settle there.

Ozzie’s old capsule skimmed above the thin towers and dropped down toward the huge semicircular harbor bay on the other side. There were several small islands dotted across the water. They were heading for the largest, which had a wide sandy beach guarded by rocky prominences on either side. Behind the beach itself the land was a cluster of long dunes before the ground started to slope up into the island’s central mountain. A simple whitewashed stone house stood alone, poised between the dunes and the forested slope. It was surrounded on three sides by a veranda that had a leafy canopy of thick vines draped over an ancient, sagging wooden frame. Tall sash windows had wooden shutters on the outside, giving the place the appearance of a farmhouse in rural Provence.

The capsule touched down in front of the solitary building. Aaron scanned it briefly. Another human was lurking behind the wide slatted doors that opened from the lounge to the veranda decking. She had biononics, but they weren’t weapons-configured. There were some additional enrichments that he didn’t recognize, but their low power usage argued against their posing any kind of threat. The house itself had a few technological items: a culinary unit, a medical capsule, two very sophisticated replicators, a fleet of old-fashioned maidbots, and five smartcores larger than he’d encountered before. In short, the perfect retreat for someone like Ozzie.

“Okay, we can go out,” Aaron said.

Ozzie gave him a long look. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, okay, but be careful of the mutant squids in the lake.”

“I appreciate that this intrusion is unwelcome; we’ll be gone as soon as we can.” Though Aaron couldn’t be sure of that. Ideas were starting to form in the back of his mind in anticipation of Inigo regaining consciousness. He gave the sleeping messiah a quick look. It wouldn’t be long before he was awake.

“And remember never to leave the house at night,” Ozzie said with an innocent tone that nonetheless mocked.

“Why?”

“Vampires.”

Aaron bit back on his response. He wasn’t quite sure how much of Ozzie’s attitude was driven by irritation at having his hermit life violated. If it was genuine, things might get unpleasant. Aaron hoped not.

Ozzie walked out of the capsule, leaving Aaron to deal with the two unconscious people sprawled on the curving leather couch at the back of the passenger section. “Greatly done,” he muttered, and picked Inigo up, fumbling him into a traditional fireman’s lift. For a long moment he was tempted to shoot another sedative (or ten) into Corrie-Lyn, but Inigo wouldn’t be happy about that. Having two bolshie living legends with overblown egos pissed with him would be a definite disadvantage.

Aaron carried Inigo over the dunes and up the gray wooden steps to the veranda. He dumped the inert body onto a sunlounger and went back for Corrie-Lyn.

Ozzie was nowhere to be seen by the time he got back to the veranda. A quick low-level field scan showed him upstairs in the house’s biggest bedroom with the woman. Aaron abruptly canceled the scan, trying to quash his feeling of dismay at Ozzie’s attitude and behavior. He hadn’t expected quite this much irrational stubbornness.

Inigo groaned and stirred. His biononics assisted a quick rise to full awareness. He sat up and looked around the shaded veranda, then took a moment to stare at the vista of the ancient alien city facing him across the bay.

“We made it, then?”

“We made it.”

Inigo gazed over at Corrie-Lyn on the next sunlounger. “How is she?”

“Stable. She should wake up in half an hour or so. Your biononics give you an advantage.”

Inigo nodded slowly. “You kept your word. Thank you.”

“I know she hates me, but truly, I’m not one of the bad guys. I just have a job to do.”

“Indeed.” Inigo started flexing his limbs, grimacing at the chemical-induced stiffness. “What do you do for fun?”

“I don’t.”

Inigo gave the city another look. “That looks deserted.”

“It is. Ozzie has fully embraced his whole living recluse legend.”

“Great Lady, you actually found him?”

“Yes.”

Inigo peered around, unable to contain his excitement. “So where is he?”

Aaron held up a finger for silence. On cue a woman’s rhythmic groans could be heard from the open bedroom window.

“Ah,” Inigo muttered. “What’s he like?”

“Not pleased to see me and especially not you.”

“Yeah. We never did hit it off.” He stood up cautiously and went over to Corrie-Lyn. His field scan ran a fast check. “So what’s the plan?”

“I’ll tell you when Ozzie comes down.”

“Whatever.” Inigo wandered into the house and found the kitchen. After a burst of enthusiastic compliments at discovering the culinary unit sitting amid all the historic cooking appliances, he started issuing it a complicated list. Several maidbots followed him back out to the veranda, carrying contemporary dishes: meal for two.

Corrie-Lyn finally shook off the sedative amid a flurry of cursing and groans. After a moment hugging a relieved Inigo, she shot Aaron a vicious glare. “Bastard.”

“We’re alive. The Chikoya can’t locate us. And I’ve found Ozzie.”

“So where is he?”

“I’m sure he’ll join us soon.”

“He’s not happy about this,” Inigo explained.

“Tell him to get in line.” But she relented when Inigo led her over to the table where the maidbots had laid out the meal. “Oh, wow, real food.” She hesitated.

“It’s genuine,” Inigo reassured her.

She grinned her gratitude and started wolfing down the keanfish starter, dipping the tassels into a plum and rador sauce. Aaron went into the kitchen and ordered his own meal from the culinary unit, eating it alone on the scrubbed pine table.

An hour later Ozzie still hadn’t come down. It was pushing the screw-you point a little far, Aaron decided. Inigo and Corrie-Lyn were chatting happily on the veranda, holding hands at the table like a couple on a first date as they finished their second bottle of wine. All the scene lacked was candles and twilight. The chamber’s light hadn’t varied since they’d arrived.

Aaron went upstairs and knocked politely on the bedroom door. There was no answer. Ozzie was being deliberately difficult, which was understandable but unacceptable. He went into the room. It was dark inside, with the big wooden shutters closed and the slats down. Ozzie and the woman were cuddled up on the bed. The woman was sleeping. Colorful patterns on her space-black body glowed in phosphorescent hues, shifting slowly in time with her breathing. Aaron hesitated at that. They reminded him of OCtattoos, a technology from so long ago that he didn’t even understand where the memory had come from.

Ozzie raised his head and peered at Aaron. “What, dude?”

“Quicker we start, the quicker it’s over.”

“This is the middle of the night, you moron.”

Aaron gestured at the light spilling in through the open door.

“Yeah? So? The light never goes out in Octoron. You make your own days here, man. And this is my night. Now take a hike.”

“No. You come downstairs now and greet Inigo.”

“Or what?”

“I start getting unpleasant.”

“Fucking fascist.” Ozzie slithered off the bed, muttering. “Drown in your own shit.” He found a silk robe and tugged the belt tight emphatically. “Used to some goddamn respect in my own home.” He combed his fingers through his mass of wavering wayward hair.

“I know. Turn your back for a moment and the whole Ozziedamned universe falls to barbarism.”

Ozzie glared at him for a long moment. It actually made Aaron nervous. Secondary routines were poised to activate his biononic defenses.

“Don’t push it, creepy boy,” Ozzie growled.

“Sorry, but you’re not making my life easy.”

Ozzie stomped past him out onto the first-floor landing. “That’s not what I was born to do.”

“So what with all this daylight, I guess I don’t have to worry myself too much over those vampires,” Aaron said to the legend’s back.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn glanced around as Ozzie walked out onto the veranda, looking for all the world like guilty schoolkids. Inigo started to get up. “This wasn’t my idea, but I’m genuinely pleased we can finally—” He began.

“No shit, asshole.” Ozzie dropped down hard in one of the chairs around the table. He gave the remains of the meal a suspicious look and picked up a tantrene sausage. “Get on with it.”

“Okay, then. So what’s the plan?” Inigo asked Aaron.

Aaron sat at the table, trying to project the impression of a reasonable moderator. “My original goal was to take you into the Void,” he told Inigo. “The intention was to establish a link with the Heart or nucleus or whatever it is that has sentient control of high-level functions in there. With that communication channel open, it was hoped to initiate negotiations.”

Ozzie shrugged. “Makes sense in a lame-ass sort of way. We know we can’t shoot the thing down or blow it up. Who would negotiate?”

“I’m not aware what form the negotiations were to take. My job was to secure the link. After that … I’d know.”

“How in the Lady’s name was I supposed to start talking to the Heart?” Inigo asked incredulously. “Haven’t you people shared any of my dreams? You only reach the Heart after you have achieved fulfillment.”

“There is a methodology, I know,” Aaron said. “That is, I’m certain I have procedures to follow once we get inside.”

Inigo threw up his hands and slumped back in his chair for a sulk.

“Told you so,” Corrie-Lyn said smugly. “This whole mission is a complete waste of time. You murdered hundreds of people for nothing.”

“So why come here, man?” Ozzie asked. “Why me? Everyone who knows me in the Commonwealth knows I don’t do this kind of shit anymore. And your boss knows me, too much.”

“There are several ways I would expect you to help. One would be an ultradrive ship we can use to fly to the Void.”

“Dude, you need to stay current. Okay, first off, I don’t have an ultradrive. If I need that kind of shit … well, let’s just say I’ve got an arrangement with ANA. It’ll send me one if I ask. But we can’t ask anymore, can we? Second, your replacement”—he stabbed a forefinger at Inigo—“has just launched.”

“The Pilgrimage?” Corrie-Lyn asked. There was awe in her voice.

“Oh, yeah, babe. They’re truly that dumb.”

“How do you know?” Aaron asked.

“Myraian grooves all that cruddy gossip from the Commonwealth.”

“Myraian? The lady upstairs?”

“Yeah. The lady upstairs. Who, I’ll tell you for free, is mighty peed off with all of you right now, not least over mindspace crashing, so watch your mouth. I got a private TD link from the Spike to the Commonwealth. So even if you’re out of my gaiafield’s range, you can still get to dig what Araminta’s been doing.”

Inigo ignored the jibe about the gaiafield. “It will take them months to reach the Void, so—”

Ozzie’s harsh laughter cut him off. “Seriously, man, you need to get current. I’m going to open my house net for you to access. Catch up, and we’ll talk again in the morning. You know, before you leave in a cloud of gloom and defeat.”

He left them on the veranda and went back upstairs. At the last he opened his gaiamotes a fraction.

Inigo didn’t like the arrogance he exuded one little bit; it verged on smugness. Standard communication icons were slipping up into his exovision as the house’s nodes acknowledged his u-shadow. “We’d better see what’s been going on,” he said.

“Yeah,” Aaron agreed. His gaiamotes gave nothing away, but he sounded troubled.

Ozzie’s temper had improved slightly when he came down for breakfast the next morning. That was deliberately quite a while after he’d woken the first time. He and Myraian had gone at it the way they had the night before, and after that he’d dozed contentedly for an hour. Then there was a shower—none of that modern itchy spore crap that clogged up his hair but a proper hot water and scented gel affair. Myraian hadn’t joined him, which was a shame, but you couldn’t have everything in life. Well, actually you could if you’d lived as long as he had, but then you learned not to be too demanding of people. They were transient enough without the stresses and strains everyone unwittingly put on a relationship. It had taken a long time for him to learn why it was women never stayed with him beyond a couple of decades, so now he knew how to treat them right. Or at least fake treating them right.

Myraian was dressed and ready when he finally came out of the bathroom in his shorts and T-shirt. She’d resequenced herself back to her mid-twenties, then tweaked various chromosomes to produce a great figure, which, in combination with a mind that was away mushrooming with fairies most of the time, made her utterly irresistible to him. No accounting for some things, but she’s perfect for me at this time of life. He took an enjoyable look at the thin ankle-length skirt of sky-blue cotton and the black mesh shirt that with her skin color made it look like she was wearing nothing at all. Her skinlight patterns shone through the thin weave, creating weird diffusion ripples.

“Cool combo,” he told her. “Kinda earth mother meets dominatrix.”

“Thank you.” She shook her hair, allowing the long blond, auburn, and pink tresses to sway around her head in an underwater slow motion as the fluff fronds elevated it.

And no way was he ever putting them in no matter how much she nagged. “Let’s go catch them crying into their teacups.”

She pouted. “You should stay up here. I’ll teach them not to bully my baby Ozzie.”

“They’re not nice people,” he told her again, hoping it registered this time. “Don’t let them bug you. And really, man, don’t get cross with them. I don’t want any of that.”

“I’ll eat them up, scrummy yummy,” she promised.

“Yeah.” Okay, maybe it’s not so much the mind that’s the attraction.

He found Aaron, Inigo, and Corrie-Lyn in the lounge, slouched across the couches and looking slightly dazed like a bunch of students from his time at Caltech pulling an all-nighter. The only thing missing was the pizza boxes. They did stare a little at Myraian but didn’t say anything. Ozzie wasn’t really surprised when it was Corrie-Lyn who rounded on him first. She reminded him of not a few ex-wives.

“You knew! You knew you were going to die in the expansion, and you won’t do anything to help us?” she barked.

“I normally have orange juice, coffee, and toast for breakfast. Man, the old habits are the hardest to break, don’t you find?” His u-shadow gave the culinary unit its instructions.

She just growled at him.

“You don’t get it,” Ozzie told her. “You don’t get me. Dude, I’m over one and a half thousand years old. I’ve seen it all, and I do mean all! I can live with dying.”

“But what about the rest of the galaxy? All the people who don’t get a chance to live as you have? The children?”

“Wow! Dude, big shift there from one of the most truly devout Living Dream disciples ever.”

“Cleric Councillor,” Myraian said distantly as her hair fronds swam about lazily. “The Dreamer’s lover. Chief prosecutor in the Edgemon heresy tribunal.”

“That was not—” Corrie-Lyn ground to a halt, furious.

“If you’re so worried about what you’ve unleashed on the rest of us, why don’t you rush into your precious Void and be safe?” Ozzie challenged.

“Enjoy your victory,” Inigo said softly. “The Void is not our salvation. I was wrong to hold it out as a symbol of attainable Nirvana, of a life that can be perfect. It is none of those things. I. Was. Wrong.”

“Crap,” Ozzie muttered. It wasn’t often he was rendered speechless, but a messiah renouncing his life’s work, well, that would just do it every time. “I’ll make that a big pot of coffee. You’d better all join me for breakfast.”

“We all understand the Void threat well enough,” Aaron said as the maidbots slid around the table in the kitchen, delivering plates and cups. “I’m interested in your take on whatever Ilanthe has become. That could be a big factor in the expansion.”

“She was the leader of the Accelerator Faction,” Ozzie said as he accepted his glass of chilled orange juice from the maidbot. “The original idea was that they elevate themselves up to postphysical status courtesy of the Void. Thing is”—he scratched at his hair—“the Accelerator Faction is trapped behind the Sol barrier along with the rest of ANA, so they can’t pull off their whole Fusion concept. And the Silfen Motherholme is worried about her, which is new to me. Nothing gets that placid goddess riled. Nothing. Till now. Draw yourself a map.”

“The Silfen Motherholme?” Corrie-Lyn asked cautiously.

“Sure, babe. I’m a Silfen Friend.” He tried not to sound too smug, settling for merely superior. “I know what’s going down across the galaxy.”

“Ozzie is the father of our species’ mind,” Myraian announced; her skinlight glowed a proud mauve.

There was a polite silence for a moment.

“Of everything that’s happened, I find her involvement the most disturbing,” Inigo said. “It was inevitable Living Dream would be corrupted and manipulated after I turned it over to the Cleric Council—that was the point of me abandoning it as I did. But I never envisaged anything like this. Ultradrives, unbreakable force fields … this was not meant to be.”

Aaron turned to Ozzie. “Do you know anything about these technologies?”

“Not really my field,” Ozzie said quietly. He waited.

“It used to be,” an omnidirectional voice spoke up. Ozzie let out an exasperated breath. It was his own voice. “Just shut the fuck up,” he told it.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Nobody can run from their past. Not forever, dooode.”

“What is this?” Aaron asked.

“I told you, dude,” Ozzie said with an edge. “I’m ancient. Human bodies aren’t designed with this kind of life span in mind. Grab the ‘in mind’ bit there? Back in the first-era Commonwealth when all we had was rejuve, we used to edit memories and store the ones that weren’t important. Then there was memorycells and neural augmentation chips. Biononics added a whole load of new memory capacity. And there’s always an expanded mentality network.” He raised his head and glared at a random point on the ceiling. “That’s if you want to carry all that junk around, contaminating your body. I didn’t. Not anymore.”

“So he dumped me,” the voice said. “Literally. I’m Ozzie. The real Ozzie.”

“You’re a goddamn me-brain-in-a-jar, and don’t you forget it,” Ozzie told it crossly.

“Seriously,” the voice said. “I’m one and a half thousand years of memories, while you’re what? Twenty years’ worth? Who’s the most real of them all?”

“Only one of us got to keep the personality, man,” Ozzie shouted back. “I’m the biochemical, hormonal, awkward, sonofabitch soul of a human. You’re the hardwired copy that’s frozen in the past.”

“You can mouth off all you like, but I’m the one with the knowledge and talent that these fine and sincerely desperate people need. You got rid of all the serious physics and math and shit clogging up your little meat brain. Admit it, tell them. Be a man. As much as you can be with so much missing.”

“Ozzie lacks nothing,” Myraian said calmly. “He has purged himself at a spiritual level to make himself complete again. You are the contamination that was holding him back, preventing the angel within from spreading his wings. He’s been clean for decades now and has grown because of it.” She smiled widely.

Ozzie caught the narrowing of Aaron’s eyes as he noticed the tiny fangs that that otherwise blissful smile revealed.

Aaron blinked and put his hands down on the table. “Okay. Please tell me you can access and assimilate whatever knowledge you need from … you?”

“From the me-brain-in-a-jar? Sure. I retained autonomous integration for the smartcores I stuffed it into—me into.”

Inigo gave Ozzie a bemused grin; there was respect in there, too. “I’m sure you can. But let’s face it: There’s you, me, and him.” He jabbed a thumb at Aaron. “A smart-ass smartcore and a reasonably good replicator. Doesn’t matter how good we all are in combination, we’re not going to bootstrap ourselves a superweapon to smash open the Sol barrier or an even faster ultradrive that’ll get us to the Void before Araminta charges in. And that’s not even talking about the Ilanthe-thing.”

“Yeah,” Ozzie admitted. “But man, on the plus side, I can get us out of here safely. Qatux owes me. The High Angel will stop by and collect us on its way to Andromeda or wherever the hell it’s going.”

“No,” Aaron said. “You’re not abandoning hope after half an hour. And I don’t believe I even have to threaten anyone or anything to make that come about, now, do I?”

“No,” Inigo sighed.

“Our goal is to connect you somehow to the Void Heart,” Aaron said. “Now, I’m not the greatest self-thinker anymore, but you’re the smartest guys I know with the weirdest of blessings. You’ll come up with something.”

“Fair enough,” Inigo said. “What about your telepathy effect, Ozzie? Can we talk to the Void that way?”

Ozzie shoved the empty glass away and reached for the plate of toast. “Okay, this is how it works. The gaiafield is a broadcast medium. You transmit your thoughts out through the motes, and they zip across space to connect with everyone else’s motes. Confluence nests are just powerful amplifiers and relay stations; they’re what turn it into a ‘field.’ Admittedly, it’s a big field, but step outside the Commonwealth and you’re on your own. Now, there are other, similar fields out there, with the Silfen communion the biggest of them all. It’s truly galaxy-spanning, dude. I know, I’m tuned in. But it’s not so dense as the gaiafield. That’s because of species psychology; the superelves don’t have the same urge to carry every piece of boring stream-of-consciousness drivel that humans crave.”

“So?” Aaron asked.

“We can’t use the gaiafield. It can’t extend to the center of the galaxy.”

“Not quite right,” Corrie-Lyn said. “The Pilgrimage fleet will be dropping a series of confluence nests en route. That was always the plan, and Ethan won’t change that aspect. They’ll do for the gaiafield the same as the navy TD relays did for Centurion Station. The idea is to open a permanent dream channel to the Void so the faithful who weren’t in the fleet can witness everyone reaching fulfillment and rush to follow them.”

“And the instant we try using that, Ethan will shut it down,” Inigo said.

“Last resort,” Corrie-Lyn said. “The hack might last long enough, especially as it’s you, the true original Dreamer. You still have more clout than anyone else in the movement.”

“I doubt that now that Araminta has appeared,” Inigo said.

“Yeah, useful to know,” Ozzie agreed. “Okay, mindspace. Now, that’s something different. I rearranged spacetime’s quantum structure so that it becomes a conductor for thought, same as air conducts sound. Admittedly, it works best for human thoughts; that’s what I worked with to synchronize it with at the beginning. Aliens are aware of it, but for them it’s like the Silfen communion is for humans: vague. Unless you’re the goddamned Chikoya, then you think it’s a doorway into the thoughts of your ancestors. What is it about avian culture that makes them worship their ancestors like that? It’s got to be a hundred thousand years since their wings were big enough to actually carry them, yet every space habitat they ever built is zero-gee so they can flap about with all the grace of a chicken falling off a wall. Even here they’re in a lograv compartment.”

“They will find enlightenment in the end,” Myraian said. “You are worthy of that. Your galactic dream will lead all of us out of the darkness.”

“Thanks, babe,” he said. “The point of it was to have something which allows people to share their thoughts in a more open way. Confluence nests contaminate the purity of thoughts; they allow distortions, partial thoughts with the emphasis where the originator desires, perverting the whole truth.”

“Do we have to do this now?” Corrie-Lyn asked with deceptive lightness.

“Just telling you the why of it so you’ll understand. That’s the reason I set up mindspace. But both notions have the same problem: reach. Bluntly, they need power to stretch that far.”

“What powers the mindspace?” Inigo asked.

Ozzie winced. “Ah, well, see, I kinda adjusted the Spike’s anchor mechanism to propagate the change to spacetime which makes mindspace work. There’s a device, sort of a parasite, really. But its emissions aren’t directional; you can’t squirt it around like a laser. The whole concept of mindspace was to embrace all sentient entities in the galaxy.”

“But it doesn’t,” Aaron said curtly. “Aliens have trouble utilizing it.”

“Yeah, well, this is the marque one, dude. I just need to do some fine-tuning is all. The theory works.”

“He’s had decades,” the voice from the house’s smartcores said. “All he’s done around here since we built the anchor modifier is bum around finding his inner geek. Progress zero.”

“Hey, screw you,” Ozzie snarled. “Experimenting on alien brains might be your bang, but it ain’t mine, not anymore.”

“You don’t have to experiment on anything. You were just frightened, that’s all. Frightened different minds and exotic thoughts would find a way of corrupting mindspace the way the gaiafield went.”

“I’m observing the psychosocial implications of mindspace’s impact on alien cultures, and you goddamn well know that. A genuine galactic dream isn’t something you rush into. I made that mistake before.”

“And the kind of freaks who come to the Spike for refuge are such good representatives of their societies.”

“Damn, I used to be a bigot.”

“You used to be honest with yourself. You know goddamn well you’re struggling with the right of imposing it on species who have no understanding of what they are relative to the universe. It is cultural imperialism in its worst possible form. Our way of thinking is better than yours, so come join us.”

“Universal understanding might have prevented the Pilgrimage.”

“Is there any way you can increase the power from the anchor?” Inigo asked. “Maybe just on a temporary basis?”

“No way, man. And I don’t need my brain-in-a-jar thoughts to confirm that. We’re at the limit of the anchor’s capacity now. Hell, mindspace reached over two hundred and fifty light-years; that’s pretty goddamn phenomenal. In any case, there’s no knowing if the Heart would mesh with mindspace.” He took a drink of the coffee before it cooled down any further. “So that leaves us with you.”

“Me?” Inigo queried.

“You dreamed the Void from thirty thousand light-years away. No booster circuitry involved. You have an inbuilt connection. How did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I never did understand. The best anyone came up with was that Edeard and I were related somehow. Could be, but we’ll never know. I connected to a human. There aren’t any left in the Void now. The Skylord was quite clear about that when Justine asked.”

“You mean a Skylord like the one Araminta is talking to? She can do it. Have you even tried?”

“Whatever curse she has, it’s different from mine.”

“Have you tried?” Ozzie asked more forcefully.

“No.”

“No, of course not.” He turned to Aaron. “And you, you’re desperate for this link. Did you ever consider hunting Gore down? The Third Dreamer, Lord help us. He’s got a working connection to Justine, who is right where you need her.”

“That’s outside … I don’t have, that is, I’m not aware of contingencies to contact Gore.”

“Because it’s a new development,” Corrie-Lyn said scathingly. “You can’t think for yourself. And the Lady knows, nobody else is allowed a say in your universe.”

“So big thanks there for all the drama yesterday,” Ozzie said. “But actually, you already have two proven methods of getting your voice heard inside the Void.”

“Can you reach a Skylord?” Aaron asked Inigo.

“Dreaming is not a function I can simply activate by touching its ‘go’ icon. I have to admit, Araminta seems to have a lot more control over the ability than I ever had.”

“A Skylord would never go to the Heart, not even for the Dreamer,” Corrie-Lyn said. “This we know above all else. They only take those who are fulfilled.”

“I doubt it would even understand the concept of talking to the Heart for us,” Inigo said.

“So your safest bet is to scram back to the Commonwealth and ask Gore to help,” Ozzie observed. “He was acting like he knew what he was doing.”

“This mission is based on getting Inigo physically into the Void,” Aaron said. “In a last-ditch emergency, mental contact is permissible providing it allows the next stage to progress. I will not deviate from that.”

“What next stage?” Ozzie asked in fascination.

Aaron thought for a moment, his face drawn up to reflect inner discomfort of some nature. “When we make contact, I will know what to do.”

“Dude, if I’m going to help, I need to know more. Look, I’ve got a really advanced medical module down in the basement. What say we drop you in and allow some neural unblocking?”

“No.”

Ozzie grunted disapproval. He wasn’t surprised, but Aaron’s crazy mental programming was starting to bug him.

“What part of the Void are you supposed to take me to?” Inigo asked.

“Makkathran,” Aaron replied without hesitation.

“Interesting. Not a Starflyer. Does that destination still apply now we know Querencia is no longer inhabited by humans?”

“I think so, yes.”

“I never bothered with your dreams,” Ozzie said. “What’s in Makkathran that can put us in touch with the Heart?”

“Nothing,” a puzzled Inigo admitted.

“If we don’t have an ultradrive ship available and mindspace cannot reach the Void from here, is it possible to move the Spike until we’re within range?” Aaron asked.

Myraian let out a wild giggling laugh.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Ozzie barked.

“So the anchor mechanism isn’t an FTL drive?”

“No.”

“It is unlikely, but we don’t know for sure,” the house’s smartcores said.

Aaron gave Ozzie a quizzical glance.

“Oh, yeah,” Ozzie snapped. “We can examine its unmapped functions, work them out, and get it to fly across the galaxy all in a week. Dude, you’ve got to break through that brainlock and start thinking for yourself. The Spike’s anchor mechanism is bigger than this whole chamber, and that’s just the chunk that’s in spacetime.”

“I need to be sure you are considering all options,” Aaron said.

“Grab this straight: I am not going to start messing with the anchor mechanism. No way, no how.”

“If that is the method by which we can connect with the Heart, then that is what will have to be done.”

“There’s a universe of choice out there, dude. Go exploring one day.”

“So will you help us find a way of connecting to the Heart?” Inigo asked.

Ozzie studied the ex-messiah for a long moment, trying to work him out and failing miserably. Eventually he gave up. “Okay, I just don’t get it. I’ve had my share of doubts, and I’ve screwed up plenty of times in my life, so I can be big enough to admit them from time to time. But this? What the fuck happened, man? You had a gospel powerful enough to attract billions to your cause. What could there possibly be to make you turn your back on them? Edeard was a bit of a dick, for sure, but he came good in the end. That’s the moral message all religions pump out; it’s a standard hook. Humans triumph over adversity. Throw in a bit of suffering along the way and people dig that big-time. And your guy won.”

“No, he didn’t,” Inigo said sadly.

“All right, I lied before. I took the occasional peek at your dreams. That last one: Man, he went to the Heart knowing the world he left behind was the best it was possible to build. Then on top of that he gave everyone the chance to perfect their individual lives like he’d done. How’s that for total selflessness? If he’d been around out here three thousand years ago, he’d be a genuine saint, or worse.”

“Perfection,” Inigo said, “is what we strive for; it is never what we should achieve. There is no such thing as utopia. Life by its nature is a struggle. Take that away and you take away any reason to exist.”

“What happened?” Corrie-Lyn entreated. “Please, Inigo, what did you dream after Edeard accepted guidance to the Heart? Just tell us. Tell me. I trust you with this. I always will. But I think I deserve to know.”

“I dreamed of perfection.”

Inigo’s Last Dream

I wish to fly.

My mind elevates my body. Thus do I fly with arms outstretched to feel the wind upon my face. It is pleasurable. I open my eyes. A hundred feet below me is Great Major Canal. Dark water, cool and calming, fills its long channel. Sunlight ripples across its surface. Traditional gondolas are slivers of blackness amid its elegance, manifested for this hour alone. A harmonious song rises through the air from the gondoliers themselves, a sweet melody evoking an older, poignant time.

Honor.

We do honor the great ancestor, our Waterwalker. This day a thousand years ago he ascended to the Heart which calls us all. So do all of us who remain upon this blessed world gather in this ancient place to pay tribute.

Pride.

I have pride to be the Waterwalker’s bloodline descendant. Through his twins I was birthed into existence no less. Joy I feel at their fullness of life. Their grandson’s granddaughter is my mother. From that I reach for his nobility, his strength.

My family.

My family flies with me. Full seven of us soaring above the ancient buildings of this revered city. Laughing, delighting in the sight of such wonder. Deep deep below us the citymind slumbers onward toward the end of time. It is sorrow that radiates outward from its slow dreams. Sorrow we also feel at its submission to misplaced destiny. Respect we show for its right to be. Though today all have the strength, none will wake it.

Our life.

Our life is lived in a home on the slopes above the sea in far Tolonan. An island discovered by the Waterwalker’s flotilla so long ago. A lush place of warmth and beauty; its trees bloom with flower the full year around, their scent enriching the air. Vineyards and orchards still thrive on the old terraced slopes, producing abundance. Such traditions we still follow, commemorating our ancestors and the life they struggled through to bring us to the light of our day. The fruit is succulent and flavorsome, the wine sweet. Our bellies fill each day. We lack for nothing. We experience everything. For this we give thanks.

The towers.

How beautiful the pinnacles of Eyrie are, tall yet curving with exotic grace and style. We fly around them like spirited birds, twisting through the platform spires as we laugh exuberantly. Then suddenly veering upward to soar vertically like an essence ascending to those who guide. What exhilaration, what elation.

My choices.

To kindle the gift of thought and ponder the rich occasions and chances sentience brings. So much I have considered throughout my existence. So many sights I have seen on this world. I have lived on every continent. I have tasted every plant that is eatable, raced with fastfoxes, flown with eagles, dived with whalfish. Each season has been lived through and admired for the change it brings. I have learned to appreciate nature, and through that life in every form.

My world.

I have known it all. I have exchanged thought with all ten thousand of us remaining. We have admired and discussed that which we know, that which we aspire to. I have dwelled within the flights of fancy those more imaginative than I have conjured. I have manifested places that do not exist in reality, calling them out of the folds of darkness which lurk beneath our universe and embellishing them with my whimsy. I have heard dark echoes from the past which filled me with dread. I have bathed in the tears of triumph and delight that rose from adversity. I have filled my head with the merry songs of success.

They come.

Those who guide fall from the sky in a tide of sparkling light that shines through my very skull. My family and I streak downward to hurtle along the narrow jagged streets of Makkathran. Fast, so fast that the walls and windows and roofs merge into a single blur of color. I manifest wings that flow out of my arms to turn and twist against the heady rush of air. My body spins and gyrates with the elegance of those born to the air. Our shouts of admiration are the only sounds to fill the alleys and squares for over a century.

Our welcome.

We fly across the sea outside the city’s port. Dipping and weaving around the armada of elegant yachts which delivered us all to this place and time from across our world. Grand white sails curve against the gentle sea breeze just as they did in days of yore. For art’s sake, for completement of form. Such ocean-ranging beauties deserve to be more than functional, and so it is. Our family yacht needs only my will to propel it across the water, yet the sails billowing out bring comfort and rightness to the mind, as easing as a child’s night toy.

The gathering.

A wind blows strong ahead of those who guide us as they sweep along the air road they have returned to time and time again. Bringing rippling half shadows and vivacious starlit twinkles to dazzle and deceive the eye, they blow the yachts playfully across the skittish water beneath them. Tumbling mischievously in their wake, our wings flapping with slow grace, we crowd together and cheer with minds and voice alike. Both cries lost amid their ethereal glamour. The accord cannot last, and soon we separate. I bid farewell to those four of my family who have fulfilled their lives here on this planet of bounty and promise. I bid my farewell to the splendid thousand who are to pay the ultimate tribute this day, this moment.

Departure.

Cold sparkling light streaks from the towers of Eyrie, great flames of opalescence that reach out with such yearning to stroke the ever-shifting crystal bodies of those who guide. Into the flares fly the essence of those who would ascend to the Heart of the Void. Now as always the power of the towers thrusts them on their way as their bodies bloom to dust. Then they are gone, flashing upward to dwell as colorful shadows amid the fantastical geometry of crystal. Gone to destiny’s reward.

I descend.

Gently, gently, dissolving my wings back into nothingness. Growing clothes about my form. I land upon Golden Park to observe with mind and sight as those who guide launch themselves back into the empty chasm of space which lies between us and the nebulae of this universe. I am content that yet more of us have gone to join our ancestors and all those who used to live within this eternal Void that is gracious enough to provide us a warm comforting home amid the raw chaos burning outside its boundary. I am sad that so many have left. I am sad that so few of us now remain. But not disheartened.

That which remains.

Is small. I will not bear any more children. Nor will my two remaining children. That time is over now for us. Any new mind born into this world would only learn what we have already experienced. We are history now. We are the pinnacle of life.

Identity.

The cells of which I am composed yearn to continue. Such desires are inbuilt. They are me, entwined with my essence. I recognize that is right, for to deny it is to renounce myself. Purpose grows from many sources. None should be ignored. I will live for a while more. But not forever.

My journey.

I have only one voyage left now. I walk across Golden Park, admiring and acknowledging the times and events that have played out here. The rich past is become a ghost memory. So much suffering, so much endeavor has gone to bringing me to this place and time. This is my milieu, and I am grateful to those who came before. I wish them to know nothing was in vain. No word they spoke, no deed they performed, all of it went into my making. I am the nexus of their existence, and I am content to be such.

A tribute.

My acknowledgment is simple. My mind elevates the fabric of this universe as I manifest my will. Suddenly Golden Park is filled with people one last time as past intersects present; the air thickens with sound and smell. I am jostled good-naturedly by those who never envisioned me as they go about their business. Over there are Rah and the Lady alighting from their small boat to stare in wonder at the domes of the Orchard Palace for the first time. There goes the exquisitely pretty young maiden Florrel to entrap her first lover. Here I see a dejected Akeem trudge back to his guild, the first steps along his path to self-imposed exile. A furtive Salrana hurries by on her way to that fateful meeting in the Blue Fox tavern. And there he is, the Waterwalker in all his glory, following his never-to-be love, knowing in his heart that he is about to witness a haunting grief.

Love.

I love them all, worshipping them from afar. And so my manifestation ends, and the city is empty again save for me and my kind walking along empty streets, making our way back to our yachts, and from there our homes. We will not return.

Life.

I have succeeded in living. Soon now, when my home is in order, I will rise up to those who guide, knowing all that can be done has been done. We have achieved so much. There is nothing left here now. Nothing.

The future.

What is to come? I cannot know the most beautiful mystery of all. Not yet. It awaits us within the Heart of the Void. A song which grows stronger with each passing day.

Dawn arrived as the Last Throw lifted silently back into the chill air above the Delivery Man. Ahead of him the sun was rising, a sliver of rose-gold incandescence emerging above the mountains on the horizon. He could feel the weak heat on his face as he started to walk down the slope. Thin strands of mist were stirring above the tiny coils of grass-equivalent, filling the folds in the land to form wraithlike streams. Local birds were already calling out in their guttural warbles, taking flight from the black trees as the light grew stronger.

The Delivery Man watched them lumber upward, amused by the sight. It looked like evolution hadn’t gotten it quite right on this world; what they lacked in grace, they made up for in bulk.

A sleeping herd of quadruped beasts grunted and shook themselves, greeting the new day in their own laborious way: ponderous creatures the size of a terrestrial rhino and imbued with almost the same temper. Their heavily creased hide was a dapple of rust-brown and gray, and legs as thick as the Delivery Man’s torso could plod onward all day with prodigious stamina. These were the animals the Anomine kept to pull their plows and wagons.

The Delivery Man skirted the herd before they noticed that something strange walked among them. It would hardly do to stampede the animals before he’d had a chance to greet the natives.

He could smell smoke upon the breeze as he neared the village. Fires that had blazed throughout the night were finally dying down to embers now that they had performed their task and warned off the wilder animals during the long hours of darkness.

The Last Throw’s sensors had run a passive scan across the village as they came down to land, revealing a broad semicircular sprawl of buildings along the banks of a small river. There was little evidence of stonework aside from a few low circular walls that appeared to be grain silos. The buildings all employed wooden construction. Retinal enrichments gave him a good look at them as he covered the last half mile to the village. The houses stood on thick legs a couple of meters above the dusty ground. Roofs were tightly packed dried reeds overhanging bowed walls made from curving ovals of polished wooden frames that held some kind of hardened translucent membrane. He could just make out shadows moving within the houses he was approaching.

A couple of Anomine tending one of the village’s five fire pits stopped moving and twitched their antennae. They were elderly; he could tell that from the dark lavender color of their limbs and the way their lower legs curved back, reducing their height. Youngsters were a nearly uniform copper color, whereas the adults in their prime had a jade hue. These ones were also larger around the trunk section. Weight gain clearly didn’t affect only humans as they got older.

He walked into the village as his u-shadow ran one last check through the translator unit hanging around his neck on a gold chain. It was a palm-size rectangle, capable of producing the higher-frequency sounds employed in the Anomine language. Navy cultural anthropologists had resequenced their vocal chords so they could speak with the Anomine directly, but it hadn’t been an unqualified success. The effort had been appreciated, though; the Anomine really didn’t like machines more advanced than a wheel.

The Delivery Man studied the etiquette profile file displayed by his exovision. “I greet you this fine morning,” he said, which immediately came out as a series of squeaks and whistles similar to dolphin chatter. “I have traveled from another world to visit you. I would ask you to share stories of your ancestors.” He bowed slightly, which was probably a gesture wasted on the aliens.

They were taller than he by nearly a meter, especially when they stood up straight, which they did to walk. Their tapering midsections were nearly always bent forward, and the upper knee joints of the triple-segment legs folded the limbs back to balance.

The one whose limbs were shading from purple toward black replied. “I greet you this morning, star traveler. I am Tyzak. I am an old-father to the village. I can spare some time to exchange stories with you.”

“I thank you for showing me such a kindness,” the Delivery Man said. If there was excitement or curiosity in Tyzak’s posture, he couldn’t gauge it. Unlike the weight issue, there was no human-parallel body language, no jittering about or understandable agitation. It would have been hard, he admitted to himself. Their skin was almost like scales, making subtle muscle motion impossible. As for the classic darting eyes, their twin antennae were a uniform slime-gray of photosensitive receptor cells waving up from the small knobbly head that was mostly mouth, giving them a visual interpretation of their world wholly different from that of a human. The brain was a third of the way down inside the torso, between the small midarms and larger main upper arms.

“Your true voice is silent,” Tyzak said.

“Yes. I cannot make the correct sounds to speak to you directly. I apologize for the machine which translates.”

“No apology is required.”

“I was told you do not approve of machines.”

The two Anomine touched the small claws of their midarms. “Someone has been less than truthful with you,” Tyzak said. “I am grateful you have come to our village that we might speak the truth with you.”

“It was my own kind who informed me of your aversion to machinery. We visited a long time ago.”

“Then your kind’s memory has faded over time. We do not dislike machines; we simply choose not to use them.”

“May I ask why?”

Tyzak’s middle and upper knees bent, lowering him into a squatting position. The other Anomine walked away. “We have a life path laid out by this world which formed us,” Tyzak said. “We know what happened to us when we chose a life path centered around machines and technology. Our ancestors achieved greatness, as great as you, even.”

“Your ancestors reached farther than we have in so many ways,” the Delivery Man said. “Our debt to them is enormous. They safeguarded so many stars from an aggressive race, for which we are forever grateful.”

“You speak of the oneness which lives around two stars. It sought to devour all other life.”

“You know of them?”

“Our life path is separate from our great ancestors, for which we feel sorrow, but we rejoice in their achievements. They went on to become something other, something magnificent.”

“Yet you didn’t follow them. Why was that?”

“This planet created us. It should choose the nature of our final days.”

“Sounds like another goddamn religion to me,” Gore said over the secure link.

“More like our factions,” the Delivery Man countered. “Their version of the Accelerators went off and elevated, while the Natural Darwinists wanted to see what nature intended for them.”

More Anomine were coming down from their houses, jumping easily onto the ground from thin doorways several meters above the ground. Once they were on the ground, they moved surprisingly swiftly. Long legs carried them forward in a fast loping gait, with each stride almost a bounce. As they moved, they bobbed forward at a precarious angle.

Their balance was much better than a human’s, the Delivery Man decided, even though the motion sparked an inappropriate comparison to a pigeon walk.

A group of younger ones bounded over. He was soon surrounded by Anomine children who simply couldn’t keep still. They bopped up and down as they chattered loudly among themselves, discussing him, the strange creature with its odd body and clothes and weak-looking pincers and fur on top. The noise level was almost painful to his ears.

He heard Tyzak explaining what he was.

“Where do you come from?” one of the children asked. It was taller than its fellows, getting on toward the Delivery Man’s height, and its apricot skin was darkening to a light shade of green.

“A planet called Earth, which is light-years from here.”

“Why are you here?”

“I search out wisdom. Your ancestors knew so much.”

The children’s high-pitched calls increased. The translator caught it as a round of self-reinforcing: “Yes. Yes, they did.”

“I eat now,” Tyzak said. “Will you join me?”

“That would please me,” the Delivery Man assured him.

Tyzak stood swiftly, scattering several of the children, who bounded about in circles. He started walking toward one of the nearby houses, moving fast. His lower curving legs seemed almost to roll off the ground. The Delivery Man jogged alongside, keeping pace. “I should tell you, I may not be physically able to eat most of your food.”

“I understand. It is unlikely your biochemistry is compatible with our plants.”

“You understand the concept of biochemistry?”

“We are not ignorant, star traveler. We simply do not apply our knowledge as you do.”

“I understand.”

Tyzak reached his house and jumped up to a small platform outside the door. The Delivery Man took a fast look at the thick posts the house stood on and swarmed up the one below the platform.

“You are different,” Tyzak announced, and went inside.

The membrane windows allowed a lot of light to filter through. Now that he was inside, the Delivery Man could see oil-rainbow patterns on the taut surface, which he thought must be some kind of skin or bark that had been cured. Inside, Tyzak’s house was divided into three rooms. There wasn’t much furniture in the largest one where they entered. Some plain chests were lined up along an inner wall. There were three curious cradle contraptions that the Delivery Man guessed were chairs and five benches arranged in a central pentagon, all of which were covered by fat earthenware pots.

His first impression was that half of them were boiling their contents. Bubbles fizzed away in their open tops. And the air was so pungent, it made his eyes water. He recognized the scent of rotting or fermenting fruit, but so much stronger than he’d ever smelled before.

After a moment he realized there was no heater or fire in the room even though the air was a lot warmer than outside. The pots really were fermenting—vigorously. When he took a peek in one, the sticky mass it held reminded him of jam, but before the fruit was properly pulped.

Tyzak pulled one of the pots toward him and bent over it, opening his clam mouth wide enough to cover the top. The Delivery Man had a brief glimpse of hundreds of little tooth mandibles wiggling before the Anomine closed his mouth and sucked the contents down in a few quick gulps.

“Would you like to sample some of my >no direct translation: cold-cook conserve/soup<?” Tyzak asked. “I know the sharing of food ritual has significance to your kind. There must be one here harmless enough for you to ingest.”

“No, thank you. So you do remember members of my species visiting this world before?”

“We hold the stories dear.” Tyzak picked up another pot and closed his mouth around it.

“No one else seems interested in me except for the younger villagers.”

“I will tell the story of you at our gathering. The story will spread from village to village as we cogather. Within twenty years the world will know your story. From that moment on you will be told and retold to the new generations. You will never be lost to us, star traveler.”

“That is gratifying to know. You must know a lot of stories, Tyzak.”

“I do. I am old enough to have heard many. So many that they now begin to fade from me. This is why I tell them again and again, so they are not lost.”

“Stupid,” Gore observed. “They’re going to lose a lot of information like that. We know they used to have a culture of writing; you can’t develop technology without basic symbology, especially math. Why dump that? Their history is going to get badly distorted this way; that’s before it dies out altogether.”

“Don’t worry,” the Delivery Man told him. “What we need is too big to be lost forever; they’ve certainly still got that.”

“Yeah, sure; the suspense is killing me.”

“I would hear stories of your ancestors,” the Delivery Man said to Tyzak. “I would like to know how it was that they left this world, this universe.”

“All who visit us upon this world wish this story above everything else. I have many other stories to tell. There is one of Gazuk, whose bravery saved five youngsters from drowning when a bridge fell. I listened to Razul tell her own story of holding a flock of >no direct translation: wolf-equivalent< at bay while her sisters birthed. Razul was old when I attended that cogathering, but his words remain true. There are stories of when Fozif flew from this world atop a machine of flame to walk upon Ithal, our neighboring planet, the first of our kind ever to do such a thing. That is our oldest story; from that grows all stories of our kind thereafter.”

“Which do you want to tell me?”

“Every story of our beautiful world. That is what we live for. So that everything may be known to all of us.”

“But isn’t that contrary to what you are? Knowledge lies in the other direction, the technology and science you have turned from.”

“That is the story of machines. That story has been told. It is finished. We tell the stories of ourselves now.”

“I think I understand. It is not what was achieved by your ancestors but the individuals who achieved it.”

“You grow close to our story, to living with us. To hear the story of what we are today, you must hear all our stories.”

“I regret that my time on your world is short. I would be grateful for any story you can tell me about your ancestors and the way they left this universe behind. Do you know where this great event took place?”

Tyzak gulped down another pot. He went over to the chests and opened the hinged lids. Small, bulging cloth sacks were taken out and carried over to the benches. “There is a story that tells of the great parting which will never fade from me. It is most important to us, for that is how our kind was split. Those who left and those who proclaimed their allegiance to our planet and the destiny it had birthed us for. To this time we regret the separation, for we will never now be rejoined.”

“My people are also divided into many types,” the Delivery Man said as he watched Tyzak open the sacks. Various fruits and roots were taken out and dropped into pots. Water from a large urn at the center of the benches was added. Finally, the alien sprinkled in some blue-white powder from a small sachet. The contents of the pots began to bubble.

“I will listen to your stories of division,” Tyzak said. “They connect to me.”

“Thank you. And the story of the place where your ancestors left? I would very much like to know it, to visit the site itself.”

“We will go there.”

That wasn’t quite the reply the Delivery Man was expecting. “That is good news. Shall I call for my ship? It can take us anywhere on this world.”

“I understand your offer is intended to be kindness. However, I do not wish to travel on your ship. I will walk to the place of separation.”

“Oh, crap,” Gore said. “This could take months, years. Just try and get the damn monster to tell you where it is. Tell him you’ll meet him there if necessary.”

“I regret I am not able to walk very far on your world,” the Delivery Man said. “I need my own kind of food. Perhaps we could meet at the place.”

“It is barely two days away,” Tyzak said. “Can you not travel that far?”

“Yes, I can travel that far.”

“Hot damn,” Gore was saying. “Your new friend must mean the city at the far end of the valley. There’s nowhere else it can be.”

The Delivery Man’s secondary routines were pulling files out of his lacuna and splashing them across his exovision. “We checked a building there four days ago, right next to a big plaza on the west side. You went in. There was an exotic matter formation, some kind of small wormhole stabilizer. Nonoperational. We assumed it was connected to an orbital station or something that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“That just shows you how stupid it is to assume anything about aliens,” Gore said. “We’ve found fifty-three exactly like it and dismissed them all.”

“They were all in different cities,” the Delivery Man said, reviewing a planetary map in his exovision. “Well distributed geographically. I suppose they could be an abandoned transport network like the old Trans-Earth-Loop.”

“Yeah, that was before your time, but I used it often enough. Whatever, I’m on my way to the city now. I’m going to scan and analyze that mother down to its last negative atom. I’ll find out what the hell it does before you’ve had lunch.”

Tyzak walked through into one of the back rooms. The Delivery Man considered it a minor miracle the old alien didn’t bash its antennae on the ceiling. But each movement was deft, and it ducked under the doorway without pausing.

“Lucky we picked a village close to the actual elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man responded. He couldn’t believe it himself. Probability was stacked way too high against such a thing.

“About time we got a break,” Gore replied.

The Delivery Man knew damn well he didn’t believe it, either. Perhaps Tyzak is just going to use the wormhole to take us to the elevation mechanism. Maybe that’s what the transport mechanism is for. No, that’s stupid. If he won’t use a starship to fly to the city, he’s not going to use a wormhole. Damn!

The Anomine came back into the main room dressed in what resembled loops of thick cloth dyed in bright colors and embellished with stone beads. It was actually an elaborate garment, the Delivery Man acknowledged, covering the long tapering abdomen while allowing the legs and arms complete freedom of movement.

They set off straightaway, walking down the slope through the village, then crossing the river on an arched stone bridge that was old enough for the outer stone to be flaking away.

“How long has your village been here?” the Delivery Man asked.

“Seven hundred years.”

The fields and orchards on the other side of the water were neatly tended. Anomine adults moved along the rows of trees, reaching up to snip the fruit stems with their strong upper arm pincer claws. They were mostly the mothers, the Delivery Man guessed from their coloration. The Anomine life cycle followed a simple progression from neutral youngsters to adult female to elder male, with each stage lasting about twenty-five years. It was very unusual for an adult to live past eighty.

That he simply could not get his head around. He knew they’d had complete mastery of genetic manipulation in the past, giving them the ability to extend their lives. That, too, had been rejected and neutralized so that they could follow their original evolutionary path. There was no human faction that would ever follow such a tenet; even the Naturals went in for good old-fashioned rejuvenation every thirty years. The desire to cling to life was screwed into the human psyche deep beyond any psychoneural profiling to remove.

Like hope, he thought. I’m carrying on this ridiculous charade of Gore’s because it gives me hope. It’s the only way I know that might possibly deliver me back to Lizzie and the kids. Ozzie alone knows what madness Ilanthe has planned when she reaches the Void, but no one else has any idea how to stop her. If only this wasn’t so … frail. If only I could bring myself to believe in what I’m doing.

The Delivery Man raised his head. High above, the ancient orbital debris band shimmered faintly through breaks in the cloud, like a motionless strand of silver cirrus. He sighed at the sight. Signs and portents in the sky, that’s what I’m searching for now. How pathetic is that? And I think the Anomine are weak and strange because they reembrace their primitive life. A life that doesn’t threaten the galaxy. A life which doesn’t tear fathers from their families.

He opened the link to Gore. “What are you going to do after? If we win?”

“Get back out of this goddamn meat animal for a start, back into ANA, where I can think properly again.”

“But isn’t that the problem? Look what our evolutionary drive has pushed us to.”

“You think we’re suffering overreach, sonny? You think arrogance is the root of all this?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Ha, in a way: for fucking certain. That’s why we need to keep going, keep pushing the human development boundary. All of us need to boost our responsibility and rationality genes to the maximum. It’s the only way to survive peacefully in a galaxy as dangerous as this one.”

“That’s an old argument.”

“And completely valid. Maybe the one argument that has remained relevant for our entire history. Without education and understanding, the barbarians would have outnumbered us and swarmed the city gates a long time ago.”

“She’s making a pretty good go of it right now, isn’t she?”

“Ilanthe? Typical case, educated way, way beyond her IQ, with ambition stronger than ability. She’s just another cause fascist, son, and that’s the worst kind; they always know they’re right. Anyone who dissents for whatever reason is evil and an enemy, existing only to be crushed.”

He wouldn’t have believed it could happen, but the Delivery Man actually felt himself smile as he walked on through the alien groves and meadows. “So very different from your liberalism, huh?”

“You got it, sonny.”

Before long the cultivated fields gave way to the valley’s tangled grassland. Tyzak chose a small path that curved around to run parallel with the major river several miles away. That put the Delivery Man facing the giant empty city that straddled the mouth of the valley; its grandiose towers and arresting domes were barely visible through the late-morning haze.

That vision. The clean air. The bright sunlight. Walking to a definite goal. Whatever the reason, he actually began to feel a sense of purpose again. Not confidence exactly, but it would do for a start.

“I can go faster,” he told Tyzak.

The big alien started to lengthen its stride, bouncing along in an effortless rhythm. The Delivery Man matched it, relishing the urgency their speed brought. I’m doing it, he told Lizzie and the kids silently. I’m coming for you, I promise.

Ozzie didn’t let anything slip about his opinion. Myraian smiled in that dreamy way of hers and said: “Sweet.” Then she relived Ingo’s Last Dream again.

Corrie-Lyn was the most affected. She knelt in front of Inigo and looked up, as if pleading for it not to be true. “They had it all,” she entreated. “They succeeded. Their minds were beautiful.”

“And it is worthless,” he told her in turn. “They are no longer human. They have anything they want, which takes away any dignity and purpose they might have had. Their lives are day after day of ennui. All that concerns them is the past. Visiting places because they have already been discovered. That’s not gaining experience; that’s a dismal nostalgia trip. They no longer contribute because there’s nothing to contribute to.”

“They reached fulfillment,” she said. “Their minds were so strong. Inigo, they flew!”

“But where did they fly to? What did they use such a gift for? To please themselves. Querencia became a playground for characterless godlings.”

“They succeeded in throwing off the kind of mundane physical shackles that grind our lives down. This is what the Waterwalker gave them. They lived in splendor without having to exploit anyone, without damaging anything. They understood and loved each other.”

“Because they were all the same. It was self-love.”

“No.” Corrie-Lyn shook her head and walked out onto the veranda. A few moments later Ozzie heard the sound of her shoes on the creaky old wooden steps down to the garden.

A dismayed Inigo rose to follow her.

“Don’t do it, dude,” Ozzie said. “Let her work it out for herself. It’s the only true route to understanding.”

For a long moment Inigo hesitated; then he slowly sank back into the tall-backed chair at the kitchen table. “Damnit,” he grunted.

“So that was it, huh?” Ozzie said. “Bummer.”

Inigo shot him a thoroughly disgusted look.

“I don’t get it,” Aaron said. “They achieved something approaching the classical heaven on Earth.”

“Fatal, man,” Ozzie said. “I’ve been there myself. Trust me: plutocrat with a decent brain and the finest rep available during the first-era Commonwealth. Wine, women, and song all the way; I had it so totally better than those guys. Well … except for the flying bit. I gotta admit that was way cool. I always wondered why Edeard couldn’t do that. Man, if I ever got into the Void, I’d be trying from dusk till dawn. Oldest human wish fulfillment there is.”

“I don’t understand,” Aaron said. “They had reached fulfillment. All of them. That is admirable. It was the final validation of the entire Living Dream movement.”

“A dung beetle that gets its turd home is fulfilled. We’re talking levels here, dude. Am I right, Inigo?”

“You’re right.”

“See, be careful what you wish for. Utopia at our biological level just doesn’t work out. Once you’ve achieved everything, there is nothing left. You take out the core of being human: the striving. Edeard’s descendants had reached a state where fulfillment was inevitable. You didn’t have to work for it. That’s less than human; they were starting to un evolve. And in their own way they knew it. Their population was way down on Edeard’s time and still shrinking. There was no point in having children, because there was nothing new for them. They wouldn’t be able to contribute anything relevant, let alone profound, to the Heart.”

“In which case this Last Dream doesn’t help our situation in any way I can fathom,” Aaron said.

“Not your mission, no,” Ozzie told him, curious how that would affect the man’s strange mentality. “But I guess if we release the Last Dream, it might cause the rise of a few doubters in Living Dream. Mind, they’d be the smart ones, and face it, they’re in a minority in that religion.”

“Too late,” Inigo said. “Even if the majority acknowledged that the result of a Pilgrimage into the Void is ultimately a lost, sterile generation, it won’t affect the Pilgrimage itself. And you saw Corrie-Lyn’s reaction. She doesn’t believe the Last Dream is an indication of failure. If I can’t convince her …”

“Throwing your belief is always hard, man. Look at you.”

Inigo rubbed his hands wearily across his face as he slumped down in the chair. “Yeah, look at me.”

“I’m sorry about that, man. No, really I am. That was one tough mother of a fall. How long have you bottled that Last Dream up?”

“About seventy years.”

“No shit. That’s gotta be good to let it out finally. Tell you what, tonight you and me are going to get major-league hammered together. It’s the only way to put shit like that behind you. And if anyone’s going to understand a colossus of a disaster, it’s yours truly.”

“That’s almost tempting,” Inigo admitted.

“You can do that afterward,” Aaron announced. “Now that we’ve determined the Last Dream is not relevant to us, I need you both to focus on what is achievable.”

“Man, you never give up, do you?”

“Did you give up when the Dreamer emerged and subverted your gaiafield?”

“Please, don’t try that motivational psychology bullshit on me. Whatever you are, you’re not up to that. Trust me, stick with the psycho threats.”

“As you wish. Stick your pleasantries and stay with me now. Our task is to get the Dreamer into the Void.”

“It may not be,” Inigo said. “I actually think Araminta’s faith in the Void isn’t entirely misplaced. The Heart will be able to defeat Ilanthe.”

“You’re right about that,” Ozzie said. “The Silfen believe in Araminta. I can feel it, man. It’s their strongest hope right now.”

“Again, irrelevant,” Aaron said.

“No, it’s not,” Inigo said stubbornly. “The Ilanthe side of the problem didn’t emerge until well after your mission was started. Given how big a factor she is, we have to start taking her into consideration. It would be irrational to do anything else.”

“Our mission is to get you, Dreamer, into the Void.”

“No. Kills me to say it,” Ozzie admitted, “but Inigo is right. Ilanthe is clearly part of the original problem, even though your boss didn’t take that into account when he preloaded all that mission crap in your brain. You’ve got to start thinking about her, man. Come on, there must be some room to maneuver in that metal skull of yours.”

“Fair enough. I can see she is a factor in the ultimate outcome. But if we’re not in the Void, we can’t confront her, now, can we? So will you two please start putting your genius brains together and solve this problem of how to get Inigo inside.”

“Can’t be done,” Inigo said. “Even if you still had that ultradrive ship you lost on Hanko, it couldn’t get us to the Void boundary before the Pilgrimage. Basically, whoever gets inside first wins.”

“Don’t big it up like that, dude,” Ozzie said. “If you’d gotten there first, you might have stood a chance of a win. But nothing is certain, especially not in there. Now that you can’t get in, we all need to start thinking about a dignified yet fast exit.”

“That is not permissible thinking, and I’m getting mighty tired of telling you,” Aaron said. “Don’t make me ram the point home, because I’m through talking metaphors. Now, how do we get the Dreamer into the Void?”

Ozzie hunched his shoulders. The agent was starting to annoy him, which wasn’t good. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist pushing Aaron to the limit just to find out what the limit was. Just like the Chikova at Octoron. “So can we still plan for that emergency telepathic linkup if everything else fails?” he asked innocently.

Aaron’s arm came off the table. Weapon enrichments bulged up out of the wrist skin. “Don’t.”

Myraian’s eyes fluttered open. She smiled up from the depths of some narcotic state. “Bad boys. You won’t get any supper.”

“I want my supper,” Ozzie said.

Aaron gave him a long warning glance, then the enrichments sank back down. “Okay, then, let’s examine this in a sweet progressive fashion. We’re now a little more than eight thousand light-years behind the Pilgrimage ships; the Lindau is terminally screwed. So we need something faster than the Commonwealth’s ever produced. What’s available on the Spike?”

Ozzie let out a sigh. “Hey, you heard the man, me-brain-in-a-jar. What have we got out there?”

“The Spike’s AI is currently registering three hundred and eighty-two alien starships docked,” the smartcores replied. “None are known to be faster than a Commonwealth hyperdrive. The fastest local sensors have observed is the Ilodi ships, which can reach twenty-two light-years per hour.”

“No use to us,” Inigo said.

“You two could steal one and get back to the Commonwealth,” Ozzie suggested. “If Inigo publicly reappeared, maybe your boss would get in touch and tell you what the hell to do next.”

“That would be a last resort if even a telepathic link to the Heart failed,” Aaron said. “You said that the High Angel would pick you up if the expansion phase begins.”

Ozzie suddenly wished he hadn’t shot his mouth off earlier. This line of thought could only go one way. And Aaron wasn’t about to drop it, not him, not ever. “It might. Depends on how busy it is.”

“Your precise words were: ‘Qatux owes me. The High Angel will stop by and collect us on its way to Andromeda or wherever the hell it’s going.’ That means you can call the High Angel here.”

“Dude, I could ask. There’s no guarantee …”

“Ask.”

“What’s the point? You want to get inside the Void. Qatux is heading in the opposite direction. A long, long way in the opposite direction.”

“The Raiel are the only known species able to break through the Void boundary. They can get us inside.”

“Can but won’t. Don’t even have to ask.”

“Humor me.”

Ozzie gave Inigo a frozen help-me-out smile. The ex-messiah just shrugged his shoulders and said: “Welcome to my world.”

“It’s not easy to make contact,” Ozzie said. It was lame. This was a losing battle, and he knew it.

“For someone with his own private TD channel to the Commonwealth?” Aaron queried lightly.

“Ain’t going to work,” Ozzie said.

“I’m almighty pleased for you about that. You deserve a moral victory over me around about now. Maybe I’ll shut up and leave you alone afterward.”

Ozzie gave him an evil stare and told his u-shadow to open a link to the High Angel.

“Expand this end of the link to include us, please,” Aaron told him.

Ozzie couldn’t remember being quite this pissed off for some centuries. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help get Inigo inside the Void. But that he might have to actually accompany him was deeply worrying, and Qatux might not agree to lend them the High Angel unless he came along. Ozzie did not want to go into the Void for the simple reason that no one had ever been known to get out.

The link was accepted by High Angel.

“Ozzie,” Qatux said. “It has been many years.”

“Yeah. Listen, we’ll do the old buddy-buddy catch-up crap later; I’ve got a couple of people here on my end of the link who need to get into the Void before the Pilgrimage. Any chance you or your species can make that happen?”

“Ozzie, as always you are never what I expect. This is why I always delight in knowing you. Is Aaron with you?”

“I am here,” Aaron said. “How did you know that?”

“This link stretches over seven thousand light-years; it also passes through many nodes within the unisphere. I do not believe it to be totally secure. Please remember that. However, I am glad you have survived. Our mutual friend Paula Myo has been keeping me informed of your travels.”

“Ah. Right.”

“And the other person with you; this is the man you were searching for when we met?”

“Yes.”

“That is excellent news.”

“I’m glad you think so. I hope you understand that this third person may be able to neutralize this whole situation if you can get them into the Void ahead of the Pilgrimage. Can you or the warrior Raiel do that?”

“No.”

“I am making a sincere offer. What harm will it do getting us through the boundary? Two people, when there are now twenty-four million en route.”

“I regret we are not able to help. It is a physical impossibility. Even our ships do not have the speed to perform such a task. However, I do have an alternative for you to consider.”

“Yes?”

“Someone else is on their way to meet Ozzie. Someone who is possibly more important than the person already with you. They will be with you in three days. I urge you to wait for them.”

“I’m not sure I can do that. I have a mission.”

“That is a great shame.”

“I’ll wait for them,” Ozzie said.

“Thank you, Ozzie. They are accompanied by an old friend of mine, Oscar Monroe. He will act as guarantor for what you will hear.”

“Holy shit. Oscar? Really? Is he out of the slammer already? Damn, I so lose track of time.”

“He is very much out. I hope that together you will be able to find a solution to this terrible situation. Please convince Aaron’s companion to wait.”

“Do my best, dude.”

The link closed. Ozzie gave Inigo a pensive grin. “Someone more important than you, huh? Now who could that be?” He couldn’t figure it out for himself, which was hugely annoying. Qatux wouldn’t lie, so … someone more important than the Dreamer with regard to the Void. There wasn’t even a list.

“We have been compromised,” Aaron said. He stood up and activated a low-level integral force field, creating a tiny purple nimbus around his stolen navy tunic.

Ozzie chuckled. “Something you need to know about Paula Myo. Apart from being able to freeze your balls off at ten paces with a single look, that chick seriously rocks. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’s your secretive boss. She’s done groovier things in her time.”

“I cannot allow my mission to be terminated.”

“Relax. If Paula wanted you stopped, you wouldn’t be here. Qatux was telling me to chill. The old big-Q, he’s not stupid. We need to wait for Oscar. Man, fancy him still kicking around. Tell you, my confidence just went up like ten notches.”

“Who in Honious is Oscar Monroe?” Inigo asked.

“Oscar the Martyr,” Aaron said quietly. “He sacrificed himself so Wilson Kime could steer the Planet’s Revenge and save the human race from corruption and extinction. If it truly is Oscar coming here …” He hesitated, which was something Ozzie hadn’t seen him do before.

“So I guess we wait, then?” Ozzie said, curious to see what reaction that would trigger. For someone who didn’t have many memories, it was strange in the extreme that Aaron (or his boss) had room to include a fact that obscure. Yet knowing Oscar was on his way actually seemed able to divert his otherwise rigid fixation on the mission.

There was a noticeable pause before Aaron said: “We must continue to consider methods of getting Inigo into the Void. That cannot stop.”

“But we can do that sitting here, right?” Ozzie insisted.

Again Aaron hesitated. “That is permissible.”

“Cool. But you can forget getting inside the Void. If the Raiel can’t get here, pick you up, then overtake the Pilgrimage fleet, no one can.”

“Qatux said the link was suspect.”

“Dude! There’s caution and there’s paranoia. I think we all know which road you walk down.”

“All right.” Aaron turned to Inigo. “Ethan told Araminta that Living Dream hoped the Void would open a gateway within the Commonwealth for the rest of the followers.”

“It was an idea we were kicking around before I left, certainly,” Inigo replied. “I never gave it a lot of credit.”

“If you can contact a Skylord, you must ask it to reach for you.”

“Oh, Lady, come on …”

“Every option must be examined. If physical flight to the boundary is now denied us, then we must try this method or at the very least see if it is possible. You have to dream the Void again. How could it possibly make the situation worse?”

Corrie-Lyn appeared in the kitchen doorway. Ozzie was fairly sure she’d been hovering outside for some time.

“I will be with you if you try that,” she said to Inigo, and walked over to embrace him. “For now and evermore.”

He rested his head on her shoulder. “Thank you. For everything. For understanding.”

“You were right. Their lives were futile, worthless. They were blessed beyond our wildest aspirations, yet they never thought to look outward. Their bodies flew, but their souls were moribund. That’s so sad. We can’t let such a fate befall our followers. They will be lost, and the galaxy will fall.” She took his hands in her own. “Lead us away from that, Dreamer. Don’t allow the Void to destroy our spirit.”

“My love.” Inigo gave her a tender kiss.

It was so intimate, Ozzie was almost embarrassed to be a witness. Almost. The two lovers were staring longingly at each other, smiling with happiness and relief. No one else existed.

“Dude?”

Inigo’s smile widened. Corrie-Lyn laughed.

“Yes, Ozzie?”

“Just a suggestion: Give your followers the Last Dream.”

“What?”

“Corrie-Lyn’s right; you’ve got to start fighting back. So do it; show them how their dream of the Void is going to go horribly wrong, that they’re going to condemn their children to emptiness and extinction. What is it your guy was always saying? Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to do the right? It’ll devastate all your loyal followers; they may understand, they may not. Who gives a shit, man? You were never going to get them all back on your side, anyway. At the very least you’ll give Ethan and Ilanthe a seriously bad day. And if you’re lucky, you might even spark a mutiny amid the fleet.”

“Yes,” Corrie-Lyn said, suddenly animated. “They deserve to know. They have waited so long to know you again. Give them their true hope back. It is what Edeard would have wanted.”

“Yes.” Inigo rose to his feet. His gaiamotes opened, and the Dreamer gifted his thoughts once more. All of them.

If Tyzak had been human, he and the Delivery Man would have been best friends by the time they reached the abandoned city at the end of the valley. Two days hiking together through the countryside was a superb bonding opportunity. The well-tended fields and pastures clustered around the village had given way to wild meadowland after the first three hours. With few animals grazing, the coiling grass-equivalent grew thick and tall, curling blades tangling to produce a difficult carpet to traverse. Tough plants as tall as a human knee were common, their spiky leaves containing a mild toxin that made Tyzak steer well clear. That made their path less straight than the Delivery Man wanted. He stuck with it, telling Tyzak about his life, his family.

“It sounds as if your kind are diverging as our ancestors once did,” the old Anomine said.

“Our story has similarities with yours, certainly. From what we know of your story, you were a lot less antagonistic. That is admirable. I wish we would strive for that.”

“There are stories that tell of conflict among our ancestors. Some believe they have lost their power as they are told with a grudging voice. It would be strange indeed if our past was completely without strife.”

“That may also be common ground. So many of us like to talk about the good old days from a thousand years ago. Those I’ve met who actually lived through such times say the years between always distort reality.”

“Who would wish disdain upon their ancestors? They did deliver us to the present day.”

As well as the stinging plants, the streams caused an irritating degree of diversion. Tyzak weighed a great deal more than a human. He had to be careful of the mud; many an incautious traveler had been trapped in some treacherous patch of marshland, he explained as they tramped along a gurgling rivulet, searching for a stony stretch to cross.

In return for his selectively edited life story, the Delivery Man was finally told the tale of Gazuk on the collapsing bridge, and Razul and Dozul and Fazku, and a dozen other terrifically boring incidents all too characteristic of a pastoral society. Finally the story of Fozif was forthcoming, which was a great deal more lyrical than the others. The Delivery Man was amused that the first rocket flight to another world remained so revered, whereas all the Anomine had accomplished afterward as a starfaring race was delivered in a few short sentences. But it did allow him to respond appropriately with the story of the Cold War space program and Neil Armstrong, which kept Tyzak quiet for a good forty minutes.

That first night they made camp on the edge of a small forest of tall trees with broad weeping branches. The Delivery Man took a hand-size cylindrical condenser unit from his belt, which whirred quietly as it propelled air along its short length. Its water sac slowly expanded out from one end like a sallow tumor as it extracted moisture from the air. When it was full, he pumped the clean water into flat packets of food concentrate. It didn’t taste too bad, though he would have preferred something hot. Tyzak just gulped down a couple more potfuls of the cold gloop he’d carried in a backpack.

As the dark fell, night animals began their calls. The Delivery Man expanded his tent up and out from a square of plastic. Tyzak thanked him for the offer of sharing the tough little shelter but refused, saying he preferred to rest outdoors. The Anomine didn’t sleep as deeply as humans; instead, they spent the night in a mild doze. They certainly didn’t dream.

Secondary routines woke the Delivery Man a little after midnight local time. His biononic field scan had detected three largish animals approaching. Outside, the city at the end of the valley glimmered with a vivid iridescence, as if the buildings were now made from stained glass wrapped around a fissure of daylight. It was a stark contrast to the black cliff of the forest beside him, animated with rustling wind and sharp warbles. He faced the trees and reconfigured his biononics to produce a complex low-level energy pulse. The approaching animals chittered frantically when he fired it at them, thrashing about in the darkness before rushing off, snapping low branches and tearing up the grass in their hurry to flee. He had no idea what Tyzak felt about killing local creatures, so the shot would have been the equivalent of giving them a damn good smack on the nose, with a modest electric shock thrown in to emphasize the point.

“I thank you,” Tyzak said, rising from the grass where he’d lain. “Three >no direct translation: night beasts< would have presented even me with a problem defending us.”

“You see, machines can be useful occasionally.”

“I have my >no direct translation: cudgel ax< to aid me,” the Anomine said, holding up a length of wood with a couple of spiral carvings along its length and a wicked curved spike on the top. “It has never failed me yet.”

The Delivery Man turned back to the radiant city and opened a link to Gore. “Have you figured it out yet?”

“Partly. The damn thing is stabilizing a zero-width wormhole, but it’s currently not extended. The Last Throw’s sensors are starting to examine its quantum composition, but that’s not easy in a collapsed state. I should have an idea where the wormhole used to lead in a few hours or so.”

“So it’s not the elevation mechanism, then?”

“Not unless it leads directly to Anomine heaven, no.”

“If it is zero-width, then nothing physical travels along it.”

“I know. But it’s early days. I’m probably overlooking something. How are you doing?”

“Oh, great. I’m in the middle of a boy’s own wilderness adventure. Should be with you in another day.” With that he bid Tyzak good night and went back to the wonderfully soft mattress in the tent.

They started off again soon after first light. Thin tendrils of mist slithered along the floor of the valley, mirroring the river course in the early light until the sun cleared the hills and burned it off. A constant wind blew in over the city, which now gleamed in the morning light.

It was a long way, but the Delivery Man was confident they’d make it before nightfall.

“Do you have a story which tells where the planet will take your kind?” he asked the old Anomine.

“We still live within the story. From there the ending cannot be seen.”

“Surely you have some notion. It must be a powerful belief which caused you to stay behind when your ancestors left to become something else.”

“There were many stories of hope told at the parting that will endure forever. Some believe that we will eventually sink back to the more simple-minded creatures which we evolved out of and the planet will bring another mind forward.”

“Isn’t that the opposite of evolution?”

“Only from a single-species perspective. A planet’s life is paramount. It is such a fragile rare event, it should be treasured and nurtured for the potential it brings forth. If that means abdicating our physical dominance for our successors, then that is what we will accept. Such a time is a long way in our future. In terms of evolution, we have only just begun such a journey.”

“How do you know if you’ve reached your pinnacle? That you should already be making way?”

“We don’t. I live in the time of waiting. We expect it to last for several tens of thousands of years. It may be that we will finally understand ourselves through our stories. Many think that once such comprehension is reached, we will simply cease to be. Then there are also those who expect us to carry on in harmony with the planet until the sun itself grows cold and all life is ended. Whatever our fate, I will never know. I am a simple custodian of our life and essence for a short period. That is my purpose. I am content with that and the wondrous stories I will hear in my short time. Can you say the same with your life?”

“How well you know me already, Tyzak. No, my life lacks the surety and tranquillity of yours. Perhaps if I am successful in knowing what I wish to know of your ancestors, things will get better for me.”

“I have sorrow for you. I will do what I can to help your story finish well.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s the local star,” Gore announced in midafternoon.

The Delivery Man glanced up through the canopy of furry branches overhead. He and Tyzak were tramping through a forest where the hot air was still and humid, heavy with a pepper-spice pollen. He squinted against the sharp slivers of sunlight slicing down past the lacework of dangling blue and green leaves. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. The zero-width wormhole used to extend a hundred and eighty million clicks. That’s how far we are from the primary. There’s nothing else at that distance. The Last Throw ran a sweep.”

“That’s a huge volume of space to cover with one sensor sweep. It could easily have missed something, especially if it was stealthed. Or maybe the station changed orbit.”

“You’re thinking like a human. Stop it. The Anomine didn’t have anything to hide.”

The Delivery Man gave a loud laugh, which startled several of the big clumsy birds from the treetops. “They hid the elevation mechanism well enough, didn’t they?”

“It’s not hidden. We just don’t know how to look for it through their perception.”

“That sounds like the argument of a desperate man.” Or worse, a crazy obsessive.

“Son, you’re following a monster through a forest on an alien planet, hoping it’ll ultimately take you back to your family. Please don’t talk to me about desperate, okay?”

“All right, but answer me this: Why would you want to open a wormhole into the middle of a star? You’d kill the planet on the other end.”

“It’s a zero-width wormhole; nothing physical passes down it.”

The Delivery Man could picture Gore’s face perfectly, gold skin at the side of his eyes creased slightly as he frowned in annoyed perplexity. “Okay, so what information can it gather from a star?”

“Not the star directly. There must be some kind of sensor bobbing about under the corona. Or maybe deeper. We know they love their research experiments.”

“We do, but we need the end result, remember?” He took a guess what Gore’s next question was going to be; the impatience was obvious.

“How long until you get here?” Gore asked.

The Delivery Man smiled at the forest. “Give us another five hours.”

“For Christ’s sake!”

“We’re making good time,” he objected. “Tyzak isn’t exactly the youngest Anomine in his village.”

“All right. I’ll be waiting.”

The Delivery Man thought it best not to point out that five hours would only bring them to the edge of the city.

Dusk had already drained the sky of vitality when they began traversing the flat grassland that skirted the Anomine city. It was a curiously unnerving walk. Unlike a human city, there was no gradual buildup of the urban zone; here it was clearly defined. One minute the suspiciously level and uniform grass was underfoot, the next the Delivery Man was treading on a concrete-equivalent street with a bulbous skyscraper rising high into the ash-gray sky in front of him. Lights were starting to come on inside every building. There didn’t seem to be windows in the human architecture mode; these massive structures had a skin that was partially translucent. Staring at it hard, the Delivery Man thought he saw some kind of movement in the faint moiré threads that suffused the substance, as if it were a very slowly moving liquid. That was when he realized it was the high-technology version of the membranes in the village houses.

The deeper they walked into the city, the darker the sky above became. It was mere minutes before the Delivery Man was completely surrounded by the hulking buildings. He’d been in enough Anomine cities since they’d arrived in the system not to be perturbed by the layout and profiles, but something about being with Tyzak made this experience different. It seemed … not as deserted as it appeared. Warm soft light illuminated the streets, creating a blend of multicolored shadows playing across each surface. More than once he thought he caught them fluttering from the corner of his eye. The sensation of being watched was so great that he finally gave in and ordered his biononics to run a fast field scan.

Obviously there was nothing. But that cold logic did nothing to dispel the haunting sensation.

“Do you have stories of ghosts?” he asked Tyzak.

“Your translation machine is struggling with the word. Do you mean an essence which lingers after the living body has died?”

“Yes.”

“There are stories of our ancestors who transferred their thoughts into machines so they might continue after their biological bodies failed.”

“Yes, humans do that, but that’s not quite what I mean. It would be an existence without physical form.”

“That is where they went after the separation. This is the method which you seek.”

“No. Not quite. This is something from our legends, stories that may be fiction. It is nonsense, but it persists.”

“We have no stories of such a thing.”

“I see. Thank you.”

Tyzak continued along the street in his long, fast bobbing motion, not even turning to focus on the Delivery Man. “But the city does speak to me with the smallest stories.”

“It does?”

“Not a sound. But a voice nonetheless.”

“That’s interesting. What story is it telling you?”

“Where my ancestors left this place. This is how we will find it.”

The Delivery Man wanted to say: But you don’t use machines. He knew that was what the communication must be, a download into the Anomine equivalent of human macrocellular clusters, a little genetic modification that the remaining Anomine hadn’t purged from themselves, after all.

“We made assumptions again,” Gore said. “We thought Tyzak was familiar with the elevation mechanism. But he’s got to ask the surviving AIs.”

“No,” the Delivery Man said. “That’s not what he’d do; I know him well enough by now. He’d rather risk getting torn apart by wild animals at night than use a decent weapon to defend himself with. This is something else.” He ran a more comprehensive field scan. “Nothing is being transmitted, at least that I can detect. Yet I’m still getting the creeps about this place. You’ve been here two days. Has it bothered you?”

“Ghosts and goblins? No.”

Typical, the Delivery Man thought. But he was still disquieted by the city, and Tyzak was receiving information of some kind, which was impacting in a fashion his biononics couldn’t detect. He ran another scan. Sonic. Chemical. Electromagnetic. Visual/subliminal. Microbial. Surface vibration. Anything known to discomfort a human body.

The city wasn’t active in any way. Yet when he’d walked through previous Anomine cities without Tyzak, he’d felt none of this. So if the effect isn’t impacting from the outside … The Delivery Man opened his gaiamotes fully and searched amid his own thoughts.

It was there, hovering out of reach like a foreign dream on the fringes of the gaiafield generated by the nests they’d left orbiting above. A mind, but woven from notions very different from those human sentience was composed of. Colors, smells, sounds, emotions—they were all amiss, out of phase with what he perceived as correct.

“Hello?” he said to it.

There was a reaction, he was sure of that. A tiny stratum of the strange thoughts twisted and turned. There was even a weak sensation, not a thought or memory but an impression: an animal curled up sleeping, contracting further as something poked its skin.

So we can understand each other. Except the city didn’t want to, because he was not part of the city, not part of the world. He didn’t belong, didn’t connect. He was alien. There was no regret or even hostility within the somnolent mind. The city didn’t hold opinions on him; it simply knew he wasn’t a part of itself or its purpose.

“The AI is neural-based,” he told Gore. “I can sense it within the gaiafield. It’s semiactive but only responds to an Anomine’s mind. We’re never going to get any information out of it.”

“Shit.”

“How ironic is that? One wish, one thought from a native, and the whole city will revive itself to provide them a life they can’t even imagine anymore. Yet they’re happy with the whole been-there-done-that philosophy.”

They were trotting down a long boulevard that led up a steepening slope. Slim arches linked the buildings on either side, each one glowing with a uniform color, as if the bands of a rainbow had been split apart and then twisted around. His exovision was displaying a map. “You know, we’re heading your way.”

“Yeah, I see that.”

“Actually, we’re heading directly for you. That can’t be coincidence.”

“Sonny, I’ve given up on being surprised by anything this planet pitches at us.”

It took them another hour to navigate the city’s broad streets. Tyzak walked on unhesitatingly, though toward the end the big alien did seem to be laboring to bounce forward with the vitality he’d possessed that morning. Even the Delivery Man’s biononic-aided muscles were starting to feel the strain. They’d been walking for fifteen hours with only a few short breaks.

But with the stars barely visible through the cloying light haze cast by the buildings, they finally came out into the open plaza. It was a broad empty circle seven hundred meters in diameter, with long garden segments of dense green-gray shrub trees ringing the outside. Towers and elongated globes over a kilometer high stood around the edge, something about their height and proximity giving the impression that they were leaning in protectively.

It was a slightly incongruous setting for the Last Throw, but Gore had brought the starship down on one side of the plaza, close to a swollen cylindrical tower with a blunt dark apex. The gold man was already striding over the plaza to greet them, casting a range of pale harlequin shadows in all directions that shifted like petals as he approached. He stopped in the middle of the plaza and bowed gracefully to the old Anomine.

“Tyzak, I am honored that you should spend time telling us the story of your ancestors’ departure.”

The Delivery Man raised his eyebrow as he realized that the sharp chittering sounds of Anomine language were coming directly from Gore’s throat.

“It is a joy to do so,” Tyzak replied. “Your coloration is different. Are you more advanced than your species colleague?”

“In this form, I am not, no. My body is from a time long past. Circumstances required me to adopt it once more.”

“I am glad you have. You are interesting.”

“Thank you. Can you tell us where your most sophisticated ancestors departed this world from?”

The Delivery Man almost winced at the bluntness.

“Right here,” Tyzak said.

Gore pointed a golden forefinger at the matte glass surface of the plaza. “Here?”

“Yes.”

Gore turned full circle, almost glaring at the shiny surface of the broad plaza. “So we’re actually standing on the machine which changed them into their final form?”

“Yes.”

The Delivery Man’s biononics performed a deep field function scan on the substance below his feet. Gore was doing exactly the same thing. The plaza was actually a solid cylinder extending nearly five hundred meters down into the city’s bedrock. Its nuclear structure was strange, with strands and sheets of enhanced long-chain molecules twisting and coiling around and through one another like smoke tormented by a hurricane. They were all cold and inert. But they did seem to be affecting the underlying quantum fields to a minute degree, an effect so small that it barely registered.

He’d never seen anything like it before. The smartcore certainly couldn’t identify it or any of the functions the weird molecular arrangements would produce if they went active. When he opened his gaiamotes, he could just sense the elevation mechanism’s soft thoughts, even more abstract than those of the city’s mind. With a despondent curse he knew there was never going to be any possible connection between it and a human. It would take Tyzak or his kind to coax it back to awareness and functionality.

“They really didn’t want anyone to follow them, did they?” Gore said pensively.

“Looks that way.”

“Huh. Then along came me. Right, then.” His hands went onto his hips as he looked up at Tyzak. “Will you ask the machine to switch on for me, please.”

“The machine which separated our ancestors from us is not a part of my life. It has discharged its purpose. The planet has destined us for something different.”

“That’s it? That’s your last word on this?”

“How could it be other?”

“The galaxy may be destroyed if we don’t establish how your ancestors left this universe.”

“That is a story which I would not repeat at any gathering. It lacks foundation in our world.”

“And if I could prove it was true?”

“If that is what awaits this planet, then it is what awaits us also. The planet carries us.”

“Goddamn fatalists,” Gore muttered.

“Now what?” the Delivery Man asked. It was hard to keep a tone of defeat from his voice.

“Stop complaining, start thinking. We’ll just have to hack into it, is all.”

“Hack into it?”

“The control net, not the actual machine. Once you’ve got control of the power switch, you’re in charge, period.”

“But we’re hardly talking about a management processor. This thing is a cross between a confluence nest and metacube network. You can’t subvert it. The bloody thing’s sentient, half-alive.”

“Then we physically chop the connections and insert our own command circuitry into the mechanism itself. Now shut up. Have you run a comparison review of the other fifty-three zero-width wormholes we found?”

“What? I—No.”

“Stay current. Every one of them is right next to an open space like this plaza. In other words, there are at least fifty-four elevation mechanisms on the planet. Makes sense, really. There were too many high-level Anomine for a single gathering point, especially if they really did all come back from their colony worlds. The upgrade to postphysical must have gone on for a long time.”

“Yes, I’m sure it must.”

“Good. So how did they power it? If you’re bootstrapping yourself up to archangel status, that’s going to take a lot of energy, especially when you’re using a machine that’s nearly half a cubic kilometer of solid-state systems.” He turned to stare at the bulging tower that backdropped the Last Throw and wagged an accusatory gold finger at it. “But if you’ve got a cable that plugs directly into the nearest star, power is the least of your worries.”

“Ah, the wormhole doesn’t carry information …”

“No way. They’ve got some kind of energy siphon swimming about in the photosphere or maybe deeper. It sends all the power they need back along the zero-width wormhole. Okay, that works for me. We’d best go see if the siphon’s still there.”

For a moment, words refused to come out of the Delivery Man’s mouth. “Why?”

“What part of ‘I don’t give up easy’ is hard for you?”

“The wormhole isn’t extended. Everything is managed by machines that have their own psychology, and it’s anti-us psychology.”

“One step at a time. First we check it all out. If everything is still there in standby mode just like they left it, then we start an infiltration strategy. Human-derived software is the most devious in the galaxy. Our e-head nerds have had a thousand years to perfect their glorious trade, God bless ’em, and I’d stack them up against anyone. Certainly a race as sweet and noble as this lot.”

“But we don’t have any with—” The Delivery Man caught the expression on Gore’s golden face and groaned as comprehension kicked in.

“And if I can’t reestablish something as fucking simple as a de-energized wormhole, then I’m already dead and this is hell taunting me. Now come on.” Gore started marching across the plaza to the Last Throw.

“Are you leaving?” Tyzak asked.

“For a short while only,” the Delivery Man assured the old Anomine. “We have to fly to check on something. It should take less than a day. Will you stay here?”

“I wish to hear the end of your story. I will remain for a while.”

The Delivery Man resisted the urge to spill out an apology and hurried after Gore.

In the time it took to dive into hyperspace and reemerge three million kilometers out from the star’s photosphere the culinary unit had produced a batch of lemon risotto with diced and fried vegetables. Lizzie used to make it, standing over a big pan on the cooker, sipping wine and stirring in stock for half an hour while the two of them chatted away at the end of the day. The Delivery Man instructed the unit to produce a side plate of garlic bread and started grating extra Parmesan cheese over the streaming rice. Lizzie always objected to that, saying it dulled the flavor of the vegetables. Gore shook his head at the offer of a bowl.

“You’re still worrying about Justine, aren’t you?” the Delivery Man said.

“No, I am not worried about Justine,” Gore growled out. “We’re still well inside the time effect it should take her to reach Querencia.”

“Okay, then.”

“Even if something has happened, it’s not as if we can launch a rescue mission.”

“Unless that witch Araminta persuades the Skylord to abandon the Silverbird, I don’t see anything which could interrupt her flight.”

“That wouldn’t stop my Justine. Maybe slow her down some but nothing worse. You have no idea how stubborn she can be.”

“Where does she get that from? I wonder.”

Gore gave him a small grin. “Her mother.”

“Really?”

“No idea. That is one memory I made sure I junked a thousand years ago.”

The Delivery Man put a slice of the garlic bread into his mouth and ended up sucking down air to cool it. “I don’t believe that.”

“Son, I’m not a fucking soap opera. I can’t afford to be; my emotional baggage level is zero. I haven’t had anything to do with that woman since Nigel watched Dylan Lewis take his epic step.”

“What?”

“Kids today! The Mars landing.”

“Ah, right.”

Gore sighed in exasperation.

The Delivery Man wasn’t sure just how much of that attitude was for his benefit. As he forked up more risotto, the Last Throw emerged back into spacetime. Warning icons immediately popped up in his exovision, along with a series of external sensor feeds. A quick status review showed the force fields could cope with the current exposure level of radiation and heat. Hysradar return of the corona and photosphere was fuzzy, distorted by the massive star’s gravity. Even the quantum field resonance was degraded.

“We need to get closer,” Gore announced.

The Delivery Man knew better than to argue as they began to accelerate in toward the star at ten gees. He just hoped that Gore wouldn’t try to tough out the heat. The way the gold man was wired, it was a distinct possibility.

There were no borderguards within ten million kilometers of the star, and the few that did cover that section of the Anomine solar system showed no interest in their flight. Nor were there any other kind of stations, only a host of asteroidal junk and burned-out comet heads. The closest large object was the innermost planet at seventeen million kilometers out, a baked rock with a day three and a half times the length of its year, allowing its surface to become semimolten at high noon. It was only the starship that had followed them from the Leo Twins that showed any interest in their exploratory flight, remaining five million kilometers away and still keeping itself stealthed.

The Last Throw’s safe deflection capacity limit was reached at approximately a million kilometers above the fluctuating plasma of the photosphere, leaving them swimming through the thin, ultravolatile corona. Giant streamers of plasma arched up from the terrible nuclear maelstrom below, threatening to engulf the little ship as they expanded into frayed particle typhoons rushing along the flux lines.

Sensors probed down into the inferno, seeking out any anomaly amid the superheated hydrogen. The starship completed an equatorial orbit and shifted inclination slightly, scanning a new section of the star’s surface. Eight orbits later they found it.

A lenticular force field two thousand kilometers below the surface of the convection zone. Hysradar revealed it to be fifty kilometers wide. Intense gravatonic manipulation was keeping it in place against the force of the hydrogen currents that otherwise would have expelled it up into the photosphere at a respectable percentage of lightspeed.

“That’s definitely our power siphon,” Gore said. Hysradar showed them the flux lines swirling around the disc in odd patterns. The force field appeared to be slightly porous, allowing matter to leak inward at the edge.

“Why not just use a mass energy converter?” the Delivery Man mused.

“Check the neutrino emissions; only a mass-energy converter will give those kinds of readings,” Gore said. “And look at it. All it’s doing now is holding position, and see how much mass it’s converting just to do that, because sure as commies complain about fairness, that intake ain’t flowing out anywhere afterward. This is the mother of all turbo-drive converters.”

“Okay, so we’ve proved it’s there and still functioning. Now what?”

“Our force fields wouldn’t get us halfway, but the only way we can access it and infiltrate is to go down and rendezvous—possibly even dock, or at least cling on and start drilling into the thing’s brain.”

The Delivery Man gave him a frankly scared look. “You’re shitting me.”

“Wish I were, son. Don’t panic. The replicator we have on board is high-order. We’ll have to churn out some advanced force field generators to upgrade the Last Throw’s defenses. Once they’re beefed up to Stardiver standard, we’ll drop into the convection zone and switch the power back on to the elevation mechanism. Well … when I say us, I mean you.”

“It looks impressive,” Catriona Saleeb said.

“Yes.” For once Troblum felt content. He looked at the featureless suit of matte gray armor standing in the middle of the cabin with its round helmet almost touching the ceiling. It was big, adding about twenty-five percent to his existing bulk. That didn’t matter; the electromuscle bands could move it around easily enough. Walking would be effortless. As would flying, thanks to the little regrav unit he’d incorporated. There were no weapons, of course; he couldn’t even think along those lines. But the defenses … He would be safe anywhere. In other words, he could even face the Cat and not piss himself as he had on Sholapur.

I should have built one of these a long time ago.

At his order the two small assemblybots crawled down the suit like oversize spiders and scuttled away. He reached out to the table where his snack rested and picked up a wedge of the club sandwich.

His exovision display showed him the Spike, now a mere three light-years away. Its anchor mechanism was creating a huge distortion that extended out from spacetime to warp the surrounding quantum fields. He found the effect fascinating; it was nothing like a human hyperdrive. Unfortunately, the Mellanie’s Redemption lacked the kind of sensors that could run a truly comprehensive scan.

Troblum finished the snack, washed it down with some Dutch lager, and started putting on the armor suit. By the time he was comfortably ensconced, the starship had dropped out of hyperspace two thousand kilometers out from the Spike’s sunward side. Visual sensors showed him the fantastic curving triangle of metallic chambers glistening in the bright sunlight like silver bubbles. Dark tubes wove between them in complex convolutions. He immediately understood why the crew of the navy ship that had discovered it believed they’d found the galaxy’s biggest starship; the shape was intrinsically aerodynamic. Space on either side of the giant alien habitat was filled with the dull glimmer of the Hot Ring arching away to infinity, bolstering the notion that it was frozen in midemergence.

He flew the starship across the sunward surface, accelerating to match the structure’s unnatural orbital vector. Bright flashes of blue-white sunlight burst from the mirror facets of the sail shape as Mellanie’s Redemption moved above the uneven segments. Sensors scanned landing pads dotted all along the winding H-congruous transport tubes, searching out a specific profile. The Mellanie’s Redemption certainly hadn’t been able to track their target in stealth mode during the flight; he was just hoping they’d arrived in time.

“There they are,” he said finally.

“Oscar’s ship?” Catriona asked.

“Yeah. They’ve landed close to Octoron. That figures; it’s the largest human settlement.” He ordered the smartcore to put them down on an empty pad two kilometers from Oscar’s ship. A weak localized gravity field came on as soon as they touched down, but Troblum kept the ultradrive powered up just in case. The smartcore aimed a communication laser at the starship he’d followed from the Greater Commonwealth. “I’d like to speak to Oscar Monroe, please,” he said when his u-shadow told him a connection had been accepted.

“And you must be Troblum,” Oscar said.

The burst of fright that came from hearing his name made him twitch. Electromuscle amplified the motion. His armor helmet hit the cabin ceiling. Secondary thought routines immediately brought up the command for Mellanie’s Redemption to power straight into hyperspace and flee. A single thought was all it would take to trigger it. “How did you know my name?”

“Paula Myo said you might make contact.”

“How did she know?” Even as he asked, he knew the SI had told her, had betrayed him.

“Damned if I know,” Oscar said. “She scares the shit out of me, and we go way back. Then again, how did you know I was on board the Elvin’s Payback?”

“Is that the name of your ship? What was he like?”

“Adam? Like me, misguided in that way only the truly young can be. Is that what you wanted to ask?”

“No. I may be able to help.”

“How’s that?”

“I know about the Swarm. I helped build it. Ozzie, Araminta, and Inigo might find that useful.”

There was a long pause. “I’m sure they would. We’ve already made contact with Ozzie. There’s a capsule coming to collect us from our airlock in ten minutes. Why don’t we fly over to yours straight after.”

“Okay. I’ll wait for you.”

Afterward he stood on a vast snow-swept tundra, completely naked yet feeling no pain. Somewhere in the distance tall mountains with fearsome rocky pinnacles guarded the edge of the rough icy country, a geological wall between civilization and the wild where he had come from. He wasn’t cold despite the harsh wind and flurries of snow brushing against him. This was home, after all, his one refuge against the rest of his life and all the anguish it brought whenever he lived it.

It was daytime, yet the sun was invisible behind the low gray clouds that filled the sky. He walked across the frozen ground, his feet leaving crisp indentations in the firmly packed snow. From somewhere out amid the rolling folds of this austere landscape he could hear the snorting and stamping of horses. Then a wild herd of the giant animals charged over a distant crest, tossing their mighty heads, horns slashing at the frosty air. He smiled in delight, remembering times when he’d ridden the breed for no reason other than enjoyment, taking trips to other villages, meeting friends, practicing his saddle skills, the formalized ancient fighting techniques that all the youngsters sought to master. Back before—

It wasn’t snow brushing against his skin anymore. He plucked one of the slowly drifting particles out of the air only for it to disintegrate between his fingers. Ash. Powder puffed up from beneath the soles of his feet as each footfall became soft. Ash covered the land, choking grass and tree alike, ruining the rich living terrain. The blanket of ash blew away from a high mound ahead of him, revealing it to be the corpse of a huge winged creature. Feathers fell like autumn leaves to expose dry skin pulled tight over a sturdy skeleton.

“No,” he exclaimed. The king eagles were the most magnificent of Far Away’s creatures. Countless times he had sat astride one and soared through the splendid sapphire sky.

Orange light shimmered across the desolate landscape. He spun around to see the mountains erupting, their sharp pinnacles disintegrating as lava gushed upward. Massive explosion plumes clotted the sky, surging outward.

There were footfalls in the ash carpet behind him. The stench of burning flesh grew and grew until he thought he would choke on the cloying fumes.

“This is not your sanctuary,” she said. “This is where I nurtured you. This is where your heart belongs. This is mine. You are mine.”

He couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t face her. To do so would be to lose, to be consumed by pain and diseased love.

Gold sunlight speared through the suffocating shroud of ash, a single incandescent ray falling across him. He shielded his eyes from it, cowering.

“Come on, son,” a kindly voice said. “This is the way. This is your future. This is your redemption.”

Ash clouds boiled high and fast, towering above him, taking form. The beautiful golden light held. He stretched his arms out, reaching for—

“Wooah!” Aaron woke and sat up fast, arms windmilling against the thin sheet that was wrapped around him. “Shitfuck!” His body was sweating profusely, making the silk sticky against him.

The room was on the first floor of Ozzie’s house, with a single bed in the middle, some crude wooden furniture, and a window with the big shutters firmly closed. Nonetheless, light was stealing around the edges. Allowing him to see—“Shit!” he yelped.

Myraian was sitting on the end of the bed, her legs folded neatly as she regarded him thoughtfully. Today her hair was green and blue. Purple skinlight shone through a loose white lace top.

“You’re losing,” she said with a sweet smile.

He gave those fangs of hers another mistrustful look. Even though he’d been sleeping, there was no way she should have been able to creep up on him; bionomics should have detected her approaching. Tactical secondary routines were supposed to inform him of any proximity violation, bestowing an instinctive knowledge when he awoke. Hell, even natural instincts should have kicked in. He hadn’t been this surprised for a long time. That’s bad. “Losing what?” he asked sourly. Biononics scanned around, making sure there were no other surprises, such as a fully armored Chikoya waiting for breakfast downstairs.

“Your mind.”

He grunted and rolled off the bed, finally freeing himself from the sheet. “It’ll be joining yours, then.”

“You dreamed of home when she came for you. You can’t retreat much further. Your childhood will be an even worse defense. No child could withstand her.”

Aaron paused as he was reaching for trousers that Ozzie’s replicator had fashioned for him. “Her who?”

She giggled shrilly. “If you don’t know, I can’t.”

“Sure.” He was trying to ignore the dream. But it was more than a dream, and they both knew it. Besides, it was worrying him at a fundamental level. Something deep in his mind was wrong. It wasn’t a war he understood, and there was certainly no tactical withdrawal.

Unless I go basic again.

But today was going to require patience and diplomacy. Not his best features even with full faculties engaged.

Myraian skipped off the bed and stretched her arms behind her back, linking her fingers. Her head rocked from side to side in time with an unheard beat. Aaron was unimpressed by the whole fairy princess routine, suspecting she was covering up something.

“So are you a physicist?” he asked.

“I’m just good for my Ozzie,” she said in her silly light voice.

“Okay.” He pulled on a black T-shirt.

“You should have someone for yourself. Everyone should. This is not a universe to be lonely in, Aaron. Besides, you need help to hold her back.”

“I’ll think about that.” He put his feet into his boots, allowing the semiorganic uppers to flow over his ankles, then grip.

“They’re here.”

“Huh?”

“The starship. Oscar called eleven minutes ago.”

A message his u-shadow should have monitored and told him about. He started to get concerned about the string of tactical failures. They couldn’t all be coincidence. “Great. Did he say who he’d brought with him?”

“No, but I’m going to fetch them now. I’ll be back soon.”

He wanted to go with her and greet the arriving starship himself, but he couldn’t abandon Inigo. Taking him along would increase exposure risk. No choice. He had to wait and rely on Myraian. Which is pretty much an oxymoron.

Downstairs, Ozzie and Inigo were sitting at the big table in the kitchen. Dirty plates and cutlery had been pushed to one side. Ozzie was drinking coffee, and Inigo had a pot of hot chocolate. Corrie-Lyn was slumped in the fat old sofa at the far end of the room, looking incredibly bored.

“A great-grandfather on my mother’s side was allegedly a Brandt,” Inigo was saying. “My mother was always telling me that her grandmother had some kind of trust fund when the family lived on Hanko. I don’t know how much that was a fable about the old homeworld and how much better life had been back then. If the money ever existed, then it got lost in the Starflyer War and the move to Anagaska. All anyone brought through the temporal wormhole was what they could physically carry with them. We certainly didn’t have much money when I was growing up. If we were Brandts, the hard core left us to sink or swim by ourselves.”

“Sounds like a dynasty, okay,” Ozzie said.

“But you covered up your family history,” Aaron said as he made his way over to the culinary unit. “I was at the Inigo museum in Kuhmo. There’s nothing about any connection to a dynasty.”

“You know why I did that,” Inigo said. “I was born Higher. My mother was basically raped by one of the radical angels, my aunt, too. You think I want the Greater Commonwealth drooling over that piece of personal history? And they would; my opponents would have loved that.”

“Sure, I dig that. But even if that Brandt lineage gives you a family connection to a colony ship, that doesn’t explain how the ship got inside the Void in the first place.”

“Same way as Justine, I suppose.”

“No. She was close to the boundary. This has to be something else, a long-distance teleport.”

“The dynasty colony ship could have gotten up close if they were trying a quick route to the other side of the galaxy.”

“Not a chance. The Raiel have been acting as traffic cops ever since their invasion failed. They turn everyone around before they reach the Gulf, starting with Wilson on the Endeavor.”

“I’m not disputing that,” Inigo said. “But equally indisputable, a human ship got inside. That was the foundation of our hope the Void would be able to open some kind of portal to the Commonwealth.”

“See, this is where theory just collapses with a big sigh of bad air. How did the Void know the colony ship was there? It seems to have a lot of trouble with the whole ‘outside’ concept.”

“The Skylords do. You can’t claim the same for the Heart. It has to be a lot smarter.”

“But that implies a perception that can reach just about anywhere. If it wanted minds, why not just teleport each sentient species off its homeworld as soon as they developed a coherent thought?”

“It doesn’t have to be perception. Araminta dreamed a Skylord. Other connections are available to it.”

“Not its own. They piggybacked the Silfen Motherholme presence to get Araminta’s attention.”

“That doesn’t disqualify—”

Aaron collected his bacon roll and a mug of tea from the culinary unit and went to sit next to Corrie-Lyn. “Still at it, then?”

“Oh, yeah,” she grunted.

Five days solid now. Inigo would try to dream a Skylord, an endeavor that so far had proved fruitless. Between his attempts, he and Ozzie would argue about the nature of the Void and try to conjure up possible methods of getting through the boundary. That was exactly what Aaron wanted. He just wasn’t quite prepared for how mind-breakingly dull their conversations would be. Every minute, an irrelevant concept was dragged out and discussed at extreme length. They didn’t seem to develop ideas so much as entire wishful philosophies. In other words, after four days neither one of them had produced a single helpful notion.

“Have you talked to Myraian at all?” he asked.

Corrie-Lyn gave the briefest shrug. “She talks? Sense?”

“Yeah, got a point there.”

“I have been watching the Greater Commonwealth through the unisphere.”

“And?”

“The Last Dream; it’s not popular. Living Dream’s new Cleric Council denounced it as a fake, but everyone knows Inigo’s thoughts. There’s some hefty infighting breaking out among the faithful. More than I expected have said they’re worried by the outcome of traveling into the Void.”

“But everyone on the Pilgrimage fleet is in suspension.”

“Yes. So it was too little, too late. It’s confirmed what all the non-followers believed about us, but they’re irrelevant as always. None of the crews on the Pilgrimage ships are showing any sign of rebellion.”

“Ah, well, at least we can all die with a clear conscience.” He bit into the bacon roll. There was far too much butter; it dribbled down his fingers.

Corrie-Lyn gave him a strange look, crinkling her cute nose. “That’s a first.”

“What is?”

“You mentioning the possibility of defeat. Even if it was a joke. I didn’t know you could think like that.”

“Just trying to appear human, put you at your ease. Standard tactics.”

“Your dreams are getting worse again, aren’t they?”

“Sleep is not my high point right now, I’ll admit. Or is that too much weakness as well?”

“Defensiveness now? Gosh, we’ll break through that conditioning yet.”

Something will, he thought bleakly. It had taken several minutes for his fear to sink away after he’d woken. That was a first, having the dread follow him out of the nightmares into the waking world. Another aspect of her growing strength. “Pray you don’t,” he muttered, and glanced back at the table.

“I could find out eventually, I suppose,” Ozzie said. “I still have clout with what remains of the Brandt Dynasty, but your heritage will only ever be a footnote. Even if you’re a long-lost Brandt, that doesn’t explain how the colony ship got inside in the first place. Besides, think how many other Brandts there are left in the Commonwealth. What makes you special?”

“Is there a list of how many Brandts had a tour of duty at Centurion Station?”

“Irrelevant. Your talent doesn’t allow you to talk to a Skylord, which is what we need right now.”

“Knowledge is not irrelevant. Any theory has to be built on a foundation of fact.”

“Sure, man, but that’s the wrong foundation.”

“All information about the Void is what we need to determine—”

Aaron wolfed down the remnants of the roll. “I’m going outside to wait for them.”

“Don’t blame you,” Corrie-Lyn said.

He stood on the veranda, facing the daunting alien city across the still water of the bay. The dreams he was cursed with and whatever was struggling to rise from his subconscious were troubling him. He deflected the worry with a diagnostic review of his biononics and tactical routines, the ones that had failed him this morning. There was no clear answer to how Myraian had crept into his bedroom. The field scan had registered a movement, but it wasn’t sufficient to trigger the beta-grade alert routines. And by sitting on the end of the bed she’d been ten centimeters from triggering an alpha-grade alert. Was that distance a coincidence? If so, they were mounting up.

But at least his u-shadow determined why it hadn’t intercepted Oscar’s call to Ozzie. The house’s smartcores had shielded it with some very sophisticated software. So Ozzie hasn’t quite rolled over. Figures.

The capsule appeared against the strong sheen of the Spike compartment’s translucent crown. Biononics filtered his retinas so he could maintain visual acquisition. His field function scan swept through it. There were seven people inside. Myraian, of course; three men and a woman with biononics configured to low-level defense, allowing him little acuity—however, they weren’t weapons-active; that left an ordinary human male with no biononics and a very large human in an armor suit with a force field already powered up. That alone made Aaron bring several weapon enrichments to active status.

He sent a identity ping into the capsule, which was returned by everyone except the ordinary human. He took a guess that he was the important one Oscar was escorting to meet Ozzie.

The old capsule settled on the swath of purple and green grass between the lake and the house. Its door opened, and the passengers started to clamber out. Myraian was first, waving gaily, which Aaron ignored. Beckia and Tomansio ran a quick field scan across the area, but not Oscar, which was interesting. Only then was the Natural human allowed out. He was slightly older than Commonwealth standard and quite dignified-looking. The armored figure of Troblum was last, having to squirm about to get through the door.

Ozzie, Inigo, and Corrie-Lyn came up behind Aaron to watch the visitors approach. Ozzie was grinning. “Holy crap, it really is Oscar.” He raised his voice. “Yo, dude, been a while there.”

Oscar tipped his forefinger to Ozzie, smiling sheepishly.

But it was Tomansio’s reaction that held Aaron. He was staring right at him, a look of incredulity on his handsome face. “You!” Tomansio gasped. “You’re alive.”

“Never better, man,” Ozzie said cheerfully. He turned to Inigo. “See, legendary genius trumps messiah every time.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Inigo told him.

“I don’t think—” Corrie-Lyn began as she looked from Tomansio to Aaron.

“The Mutineer,” Tomansio whispered. He still hadn’t taken his gaze from Aaron.

A brief memory flickered into Aaron’s mind as if tearing silently through some vital membrane. Her face smiling coyly at him as she lay on the bed beside him. The same woman he’d encountered back in Golden Park the day Ethan had been selected as Cleric Conservator. Different hair but still her. Bad news. “What?” he croaked. “What did you call me?”

Ozzie and Inigo were both frowning now, glancing over at Aaron.

“The Mutineer. It is you. It is!”

“No,” Beckia exclaimed. “It can’t be.”

“Who?” a puzzled Oscar asked.

“Lennox. Lennox McFoster. How can this be?” Tomansio demanded angrily. “How can you be here?”

“The Knights Guardian spent centuries searching for you,” Cheriton said. “Where have you been?”

“Sorry,” Aaron said. “But I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Even after ten minutes, the Natural man still hadn’t been introduced and Troblum had been completely silent. The Knights Guardian were astounded by Aaron’s existence and quite forceful in insisting he was who they believed him to be. The son of Bruce McFoster, another old legend who had been captured and subverted by the Starflyer and subsequently killed by Gore Burnelli. Lennox had been an infant at the time, they said, brought up by his mother, Samantha, as a Guardian. He’d been one of the first converts to the Cat’s vision, desperate to find a new role for the Guardians of Selfhood as they teetered on the verge of self-destruction.

Their talk made Aaron nervous. Names and events were certainly registering somewhere in his mind, just not in the conscious section. He didn’t doubt that he could originally have been one of the Knights Guardian; theirs was the kind of ability he had in abundance. That made the rest uncomfortably plausible …

“What kind of mutiny did I lead?” he asked curiously. It was a question he shouldn’t have asked. It was irrelevant.

“Pantar Cathedral,” Troblum said in a strangely neutral tone. “It’s on Narrogin. The Knights Guardian were brought in to help one of the local political movements achieve dominance over their rivals. The Cat herself took command in the field. There was a hostage situation. Demands were made with a deadline. Then she started slaughtering them, anyway. Including their children. You stopped her. You stood up to the Cat.”

“That’s when our whole movement changed,” Beckia said. “We finally acknowledged the Cat’s flaws. After that, we rejected her leadership. But not yours.”

“The majority of us rejected her,” Cheriton said slightly awkwardly. “There was something of a schism; after all, she was our founder, bringing us out of the wilderness following the Starflyer War and uniting us with the Barsoomians. Though legend says that part was your idea.”

Aaron knew he had to get the mission back on track; he should find out who the Natural human was, make everyone talk to Ozzie and Inigo. Get Inigo into the Void. That was the universe—all that mattered. But for once the compulsion was weak. Her smile lurked behind his thoughts now. Sometimes he could see it without having to close his eyes.

Bad news.

She hadn’t been kidding, apparently.

“Did I save them?” he asked faintly.

“Who?”

“The children. You said she was killing children when I stopped her.”

Tomansio and Beckia shared an uncomfortable look, which was an eloquent enough answer.

“Do you remember anything since then?” Cheriton asked.

Aaron shrugged. “I don’t even remember that. There’s … nothing,” he lied as the vision of a vast crystalline ceiling shimmered like flame somewhere in his mind.

“You were never caught,” Tomansio said. “Never stood trial. Nobody knew what happened to you.”

“Including me, it appears,” Aaron said. It actually appealed to his sense of irony.

“Somebody did this to you,” Beckia said tightly. A great deal of anger was leaking out of her gaiamotes. “Somebody gave you the galaxy’s biggest mindfuck.”

“Could it have been her?” Tomansio mused.

“No,” Aaron said, not knowing where certainty came from but knowing it anyway. “It is my choice to be as I am. And I will retain this personality despite what you believe me to be.”

“But you’re not working too good, are you?” Corrie-Lyn said. “Your conditioning is breaking down.”

“I’ll survive,” he said grimly. “I have a mission to complete.”

“Which is?” Oscar asked.

Aaron pointed at Inigo. “The Dreamer must be taken to Makkathran inside the Void. Or at least establish contact with the Heart.”

As one, Oscar and the three Knights Guardian looked at the Natural man. He stepped forward and put his hand out to Inigo. “Dreamer,” he said. “I’m Araminta-two.” His gaiamotes released a flood of thoughts and emotions, including the gifting from the observation deck on the Lady’s Light.

“Great Lady,” Inigo grunted.

“Oh, yeah.” Ozzie grinned. “That is so cool, man.”

“I’m here to help,” Araminta-two said. “The Pilgrimage has to be stopped.”

“Now tell them who suggested you team up with Ozzie,” Oscar said smugly.

At least it got them all talking, Aaron admitted, even though it was little more than “gosh” and “wow” as various stories unfolded. But they sat around Ozzie’s kitchen table, testing snacks and drinks from the culinary unit. All except Troblum, who stood at the head of the table, refusing to come out of his armor suit.

“I met the Cat” was all he’d say on the subject. Everyone accepted that that was a pretty good excuse for extreme paranoia.

The only other thing Troblum said was: “Ozzie, it’s a great honor to meet you; I am a descendant of Mark Vernon.”

“Yeah? That’s nice, dude,” Ozzie said, and turned back to Araminta-two. “We’ve been trying to figure out if the Void can bring people inside like some kind of teleport effect,” he said. “Can you ask the Skylord that?”

“I can ask,” Araminta-two said.

Aaron kept watching Troblum. The big man had rocked back a fraction as Ozzie had dismissed him. There was no hint of a gaiafield emission. In fact, there was no way of telling exactly what was in that suit.

According to Oscar, Troblum had helped build the Swarm—again something both Ozzie and Inigo seemed completely disinterested in. Aaron was interested but only in that such information might break Earth out of its prison. But right now that was a long way down any list of possible actions to take to get Inigo into the Void. Besides, given that the Raiel couldn’t break through the Sol barrier, he suspected that it might take even longer than accomplishing his primary mission.

“Is there any way you or the Heart can reach out and bring me into your universe?” Araminta-two asked the Skylord.

Aaron glimpsed an amazing golden web of nebula dust fluorescing from dozens of dim glimmer points within as stars contracted to their ignition points. Skylords shone against the drifting eddies, their vacuum wings fully extended.

“You approach,” the Skylord said. “I feel you growing. Soon you will be here. Soon you will reach fulfillment.”

“I will be with you sooner if you could reach for me.”

“The Heart reaches for all. The Heart welcomes all.”

“I am still outside your universe. I fear I cannot reach you. Can you reach out for me as you once did for others of my race?”

“Those of your kind grew here upon the solid worlds. My kindred will take you there.”

“But first we have to get to you. Can you make that happen?”

“I feel you growing. It will not be long now.”

“How did those of the first of my kind arrive in your universe?”

“They emerged, as do all.”

“Did the Heart help them emerge?”

“The Heart welcomes all who emerge here.”

“I can no longer reach you. My voyage to your universe is over unless the Heart helps me. Ask it to reach for me, please. I wish to visit the world where my kind dwelled before.”

“You will come.”

Araminta-two’s thoughts hardened. “I will not.”

“You continue to grow closer. Your voyage is unbroken. We will welcome you. We will guide you.”

Araminta-two growled and shook his head as the Skylord’s presence dwindled to a background murmur at the very brink of perception. “Ozziedamnit.”

“I will if you want me to, man, but I doubt it’ll do much good,” Ozzie said.

Araminta-two gave him an abashed look. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

“It hardly matters,” said Inigo. “Ever since you started talking to the Skylords, it’s been obvious they simply don’t comprehend the concept of ‘outside.’ Their thoughts aren’t configured for that.”

“But the Heart or nucleus or whatever’s running the place does,” said Oscar. “It listened to you when you asked it to take Justine inside. That was quite a night.”

“It was still relayed through the Skylord,” Ozzie said. “And that request was a lot easier to comprehend.”

“So we have to work out how to make the message simpler,” Inigo said. “All we have to do is establish some kind of conduit to the Heart. It will understand exactly what we want.”

“Dude, you can’t get a message more simple,” Ozzie protested. “It’s convincing the Skylord to talk for us, which is difficult.”

“Suspiciously so,” Inigo said. “I find it hard to believe something that can manipulate the Void fabric as the Skylords can do is genuinely unable to grasp new concepts.”

“The control processes seem instinctive,” Inigo countered. “Direct willpower is the driving force for any modification within the Void itself.”

“Yes, but—”

Aaron felt a sigh building in his chest as they started to argue again. Her smile became mocking.

“I can get you there in time,” Troblum said.

Everyone turned to the giant dull gray figure looming over them. Myraian let out the faintest giggle.

Ozzie pushed a big frond of floppy hair back from his forehead. “Dude, how are you going to do that?”

“I have the Anomine planetary FTL engine in my starship.”

Silence again.

“The what?” Oscar asked.

“The Anomine didn’t build the Dyson Pair force field generators; they acquired them from the Raiel. To get them into position, they used an FTL system big enough to move a planet. I have it. Or a copy of it. Actually, it’s a copy of what I believe they built.”

Aaron didn’t care how uncertain the others were. “Is it faster than an ultradrive?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s effectively instantaneous. It’s a wormhole.”

“A wormhole big enough to shove a planet through?” Ozzie’s voice had risen a notch with incredulity.

“Yes.”

“Not possible.”

“Actually, it’s perfectly possible,” the house smartcores announced.

Ozzie growled and shot the ceiling a furious look.

“Wormhole structure is dependent on the power source,” the smartcores said. “The greater the available power, the bigger the size you can achieve—theoretically.”

“That’s right,” Troblum said.

“Okay,” Ozzie said. “So what do you use to power the mother of all wormholes?”

“A nova. Nothing else approaches the required output peak.”

“Well, that’s handy, dude. We’ll just hang around and see if one happens.”

“You don’t need to,” the smartcores said in the same voice, but with a gloating edge.

“Ah.” Aaron smiled. “Novabomb.”

“Yes,” Troblum said. “With a diverted energy function.”

“Clever,” Inigo said.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Ozzie yelled.

“I think it will work,” Troblum said.

“You mean you haven’t tried it?” Tomansio asked.

Myraian started giggling again, louder this time.

“No. Not yet.”

“And it can get us to the galactic core ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet?” Aaron persisted.

“It should. I envisaged transporting a Saturn-sized planet five hundred light-years as a test. But there are variables. If we make the wormhole diameter smaller—”

“You can increase the reach,” Inigo finished. “So for something the size of a starship …”

“I estimate we can extend the wormhole approximately twenty-five to thirty thousand light-years. If we trigger it today, it will put us ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet.”

Ozzie stood up. “Okay, then. My work is done. Good luck to all of you.”

“You’re not coming?” Inigo asked.

“Hey, dude, I’m an aging irrelevancy with only half a brain, remember. And then there’s—” He frowned expressively, clicking his fingers. “What was it? Oh, yeah: I want to stay alive!”

“Ozzie, you’d be a valuable member of any team working to prevent the expansion phase,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“No, he wouldn’t,” Myraian said. She smiled sweetly at Corrie-Lyn. “Ozzie stays here, where I can cuddle him safe.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Ozzie said triumphantly.

Aaron was beginning to question exactly what Myraian was. He’d assumed she was just some worshipful groupie with a dipsy habit. But now that he’d been here a few days, he was realizing she actually had quite a say in the relationship. No doubt it was a strange relationship, but then, that was Ozzie for you. Even with his reduced memories, Aaron knew Ozzie could be extremely quirky, and those memories were a couple of centuries out of date. “All right, then. Ozzie isn’t essential. Inigo is, and Araminta-two. I have to go. So how many more can your starship hold, Troblum?”

“Hey!” Corrie-Lyn snapped.

“I’m dealing in practicalities,” Aaron explained patiently. “There are minimum requirements for mission success. The Dreamer and Second Dreamer are the absolute priority for this flight.”

“Who the fuck put you in charge?” Tomansio asked.

“Do you have a viable plan for shutting down the Void? I’m sure we’d all like to hear it if you do.”

“By all accounts, you haven’t got much of one yourself. You know more about who you are than what you’re doing.”

“But I do have a plan. And I’m the Mutineer, remember? The one Knight Guardian you can rely on above all the others. Even yourself.”

“You might have been the Mutineer, but I’m damned if I know what you are now. And you certainly don’t.”

They all turned to look at Ozzie, who was laughing boisterously.

“What?” Tomansio asked.

“Seriously? Have you dudes even been listening to yourselves? The Dreamer. The Martyr. The Second Dreamer. The Mutineer. Jesus H, all you need is masks and some spandex capes and we’d have us a regular superhero convention going. At least Troblum’s got himself a costume already. Good one, too, big man, by the way.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t go?” Tomansio asked.

“By all the rules of probability and statistics you shouldn’t even have made it this far, not any of you, because you are seriously fucking clueless. But you have gotten here, and someone knows what they’re doing loading whatever plan they have into the Mutineer’s brain. So grab this. As far as I can make out, you guys are the last chance we’ve got to stop Ilanthe and the Void itself. I don’t know what Aaron’s boss has got in mind for when you get to Makkathran, but … Tomansio, he’s right; unless you’ve got an idea, then this is the one you bust your balls to make sure it works. Tell the kids how it is, Oscar. You and I have gone face-to-face against odds like this once before. You know when something is real.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said grudgingly. “Ozzie’s right. This is looking like our one shot. Both Dreamers together? If anyone can stop this, it’s going to be them. Somehow.”

Tomansio shrugged. “Okay. I’m just saying we don’t know which side the Mutineer is on.”

“Logically, it’s a faction opposing the Accelerators,” Inigo said. “I’ve been through all this. I actually do trust him.”

“Ha!” Corrie-Lyn said.

“All right, so Troblum, how many of us can your starship hold?” Cheriton asked. “And does it really have wings?”

“Life support will sustain fifteen people, but that’s cramped. And they’re thermal dissipater fins,” Troblum said.

“There’s only ten of us,” Oscar said. “We can all fit in easy, then.”

Ozzie cleared his throat. “You’re still not thinking. How long did it take Justine to reach the fake Far Away?”

“Oh, crap,” Aaron said. “Void time.”

“That’s right, man. So your actual question is, How many medical chambers has Troblum got on board? Because you’re going to need suspension once you make it past the boundary.”

“One,” said Troblum.

“There are five in the Elvin’s Payback,” Oscar said. “They were installed in case we got simultaneous casualties.”

“You always did lack real faith in us.” Tomansio grinned. “We need four more, then. Are any available in this compartment, Ozzie?”

“Not right now,” Ozzie said in a suspiciously neutral voice. “They’re all very busy for the first time in decades. Don’t worry. My replicator can put some together for you.” He raised his voice. “Is that right, me-brain-in-a-jar?”

“Already started,” the house smartcores replied.

“I suppose our replicator can produce them as well,” Oscar said. “That should shrink our departure time.”

Troblum still wouldn’t take his armor suit off. Oscar didn’t quite know what to make of that. Paula’s u-shadow had sent him a largish file on the ex-Accelerator agent, but that just kicked up a whole load of additional questions.

Tomansio had been right to question Aaron, but Oscar was a lot more concerned about the strange big man with enough personality flaws to fill entire psychology texts. And an FTL system big enough to shift entire planets? Gas giant planets? Come on.

Then again, it was all past worrying about. They were committed now. If everything worked and Aaron’s unknown boss got to talk with the Heart, the entire Void/Pilgrimage nightmare could be over within a week.

Yeah, that’s going to happen.

Ozzie was right, though. That was all they had left. So he sat at the kitchen table without complaining or analyzing, eating some of the bagels and salmon Ozzie’s culinary unit had provided for their brunch. It would have been nice to chat with Ozzie, he reflected; not that they’d ever been close, but they certainly had a lot of shared history. It wasn’t to be. Ozzie and Inigo seemed to spend the entire time arguing with each other. And in the short intervals when they had to take a breath, Tomansio was busy interrogating Aaron.

The house smartcores (and that was pretty weird even by Ozzie standards) and Liatris said the new medical chambers would be fabricated within the hour. That just left installing them on the Mellanie’s Redemption. Another blast-from-the-past name Oscar could have done without. But then, when you’re as old as me, I guess everything is connected.

“I hope you never restart mindspace,” Inigo said heatedly. The voice was getting loud; they all had to drop their conversations and listen in. “It’s the end of humanity, sending the mind down a rotten branch of evolution.”

“Psychology is an evolutionary trend?” Ozzie grunted back. “Gimme a break.”

“You’re compelling it upon every sentient. At least the gaiafield had a provision for individuals to withdraw. This doesn’t. Its mental fascism, and the worst of it is you think it’s benevolent, for our own good. Blanket the galaxy with mindspace and you’ll turn us into the kind of society I found in the Last Dream. Don’t you get it? Utopia is boring; ennui is our true enemy. You and the Void both have to be stopped. You were wrong about sharing thoughts just like Edeard in his dark phase. Both of you were seduced by the Heart’s version of perfection, which is nothing more than taming and enslaving the human soul.”

Aaron sat down next to Oscar, holding a plate of waffles. Oscar leaned over and whispered. “Liatris says the replicator will be finished in eighteen minutes.”

“Maybe there’s something to be said for the Void’s time acceleration, after all,” Aaron muttered back.

“Have they been like this all the time?”

“Five days, nonstop. I encouraged them to explore options.”

“So what do you make of our big silent friend?” Oscar nodded gently at the hulking armor suit.

“Neutral for the moment. I can accept his concern about the Cat. If he keeps it on inside his own starship, then I’ll have to make some decisions.”

“Yeah. And you really don’t know what’s going to happen once we reach Makkathran?”

“No. But I like your optimism.”

Oscar gave him another look. He liked to think he could tell. But Aaron had this human shell wrapped over something very odd indeed—almost a void in itself. He mimicked personality rather than possessing one of his own. And Corrie-Lyn hadn’t been subtle about the near breakdowns.

“Individuality cannot stand as it has always done,” Ozzie protested. “The human race has to become collective. For fuck’s sake, we have novabombs, M-sinks, quantumbusters, enough weapons to smash the galaxy to shit without the Void even having to wake up. That power has to be restrained. Ask the Mutineer over there. Don’t you ever stop and think what’ll happen if someone like the Cat gets hold of them and goes on a rampage? For fun! There has to be an inbuilt protection mechanism in a society as technologically sophisticated as ours. And that is trust, man. It’s all it ever can be. Mindspace will make trust inevitable. You really will be able to love your neighbor.”

“Mindspace is exactly the same as giving a psychopath a Commonwealth Navy warship. There are aliens out there who have thought processes so utterly different from ours, they’ll think you’re trying to take them over or evangelize and alter their culture.”

“That is a serious bunch of crap. What do you know about—”

A red exovision tactical warning sprang up over Ozzie and Inigo; secondary thought routines supplied Oscar’s mind with a definition of the problem. A T-sphere was establishing itself all around Ozzie’s house. “Shit!”

His integral force field came on. As it did, he saw Troblum’s suit blacken to deepest night. Son of a bitch, that’s Sol barrier technology.

Full field function scan showed seventeen Chikoya teleporting onto the grassy slope just above the lakeshore. A quick follow-up scan revealed they were heavily armored, weapons active.

“Liatris, come get us. Now.”

“On my way,” Liatris replied.

Another twenty-three Chikoya teleported in, completing their encirclement of the house. A six-strong squad charged forward across the front lawn. Oscar was about to ask Tomansio what attack formation he wanted to use when his field scan reported something very odd happening to Ozzie’s quantum structure. Accelerant-flooded nerves reacted fast, spinning him around, and targeting graphics swept across the abnormality zone, focusing on Ozzie, who was already becoming transparent as his body’s molecules changed, attenuating. There was just enough of him left to reveal an apologetic expression on his spectral face. He raised a hand in a halfhearted wave.

“Wait!” Oscar yelled. “You’re leaving?” It came out as sheer disbelief.

“This kinda thing really isn’t me anymore,” Ozzie replied faintly.

“Yes, it is! You’re Ozzie. Help us.”

“You dudes have it pretty much covered. But hey, one day I might join in again. Don’t hold your breath.” And with that his outline vanished. Some kind of disturbance stirred the underlying quantum fields, something way beyond Oscar’s field function scan to analyze.

“Fuck me!” Beckia gasped. “Where’s he gone?”

“Irrelevant,” Tomansio said. “Mutineer, you safeguard the Dreamers. Everyone else, let’s meet and greet. Compass point deployment, beat them back from the house.”

Oscar crunched his way straight through the kitchen wall and leaped from the veranda, flying a good fifteen meters over the dark grass. He landed on the lawn that sloped down to the lake. Tomansio was on his right, heading for the spinney that bordered the garden. Beckia was on his left, where the land started to curve upward before breaking into rough terrain. Oscar was gratified to see how well he fit into the team, knowing at an automatic level how to position himself.

He’d never seen a Chikoya before, never mind six at once. It was a shock, but all he was concerned about was a tactical analysis of the armor, weapons, and maneuverability. A small traitor section of his mind wondered what Dushiku or Jesaral would make of something that big in knobbly black armor rampaging toward them with husky weapons swinging around to shoot. All he saw was the exovision targeting structure, with secondary routines coordinating fire control for his enrichments. Electronic warfare emissions hammered the Chikoya suit circuits, hashing and confusing their sensors. Energy beams and distortion pulses blasted through the air. Two Chikoya went tumbling backward, their armor smoldering, spraying jets of dark purple blood from gaping wounds. The others went for cover, firing as they went.

Masers slashed across Oscar’s integral force field, which deflected them easily. Then his macrocellular clusters warned him of a targeting scan, and he jumped again as an electron laser detonated the ground where he’d been standing half a second before. He somersaulted at the top of his jump trajectory, twisting left, landing at a crouch and sending a massive distortion pulse at the Chikoya who was hefting the enormous beam gun.

On either side of him the Knights Guardian were hopping between cover points, their speed amplified by accelerants and biononic muscle reinforcement. A range of suppression fire lashed out, forcing the Chikoya back from the house.

Oscar was sprinting along the scorched grass as one of the aliens followed his movement with some kind of neutron beam that was gouging through the soil and stone, creating a fantail of lava and flame in his wake. He dispensed a hail of micromissiles at the origin. Something exploded. The shock wave buffeted him. There was no more neutron beam.

“Anyone know what they want?” Beckia asked as she rolled over a clump of boulders. A flight of smartmines arched out to bombard the Chikoya squad slithering through the boulders on the slope above her.

“The Dreamer,” Aaron told her.

“Why?” Oscar asked. Two Chikoya were charging right at him, masers and machine guns firing enhanced explosive grenades, pummeling the ground and air all around as he dodged along a narrow drainage gully that led down to the lake. He sprang up and got a clean electron laser shot at the magazine on an opponent’s underbelly. The explosion shredded most of the alien. Steaming lumps of gore and fragments of armor rained down.

“Never quite got that far into the conversation,” Aaron said.

A tactical display showed Oscar how the Knights Guardian were pressing the Chikoya away from the house in a rough expanding circle. However, some were still close to the other side of the house, creeping forward. Cheriton was having a hard time prizing them free from their cover on the steep forested slope. “Liatris, where are you?”

“Two minutes,” Liatris promised.

The Chikoya were starting to regroup along the shoreline ahead of Oscar. Several of them splashed through the shallows. Oscar began to designate targets for his smartseeker munitions. Then his field scan showed him Myraian dancing across the smoking remains of the lawn toward them. He risked sticking his head out from the gully to watch her. She was skipping and twirling as if she were in some elaborate ballet performance. Her gauzy blouse with its wing sleeves spun around her as she waved her arms, creating serpentine loops in the air. Chikoya targeting lasers converged on her.

“What the fuck—” Oscar grunted. His field scan couldn’t detect any kind of integral force field. “Get down!” he screamed at her. The crazy woman must be doped up on something; she seemed totally unaware of what was going on.

Myraian sang as she danced, the kind of warbling verse Oscar would’ve expected to hear from a Silfen, not a human. The ground around her feet rippled as tatters of loam and gravel were churned up by the storm of kinetic projectiles missing her. And they kept on missing her. The Chikoya simply couldn’t get anything to hit. The armored aliens began to fall back as she approached. Their weapons fire stopped. Myraian finished her madcap dance directly in front of one of the massive aliens. She giggled and swept her arms out wide to bow gracefully, bodylight glowing an exotic orange through her flimsy clothes. The Chikoya didn’t move; its extended suit sensors tracked her carefully. Then she raised herself on her tiptoes, looking pitifully small and weak compared with the armored monster towering above her. She kissed the alien on the tip of its helmet.

The Chikoya collapsed on the ground. Dead.

Myraian pirouetted away as the rest of the Chikoya squad opened fire. Again they couldn’t get a fix. She was almost invisible behind a blaze cloud of grenade detonations and stark purple ionization contrails.

Oscar realized he needed to breathe again.

“Let’s give her some support,” Tomansio ordered.

A cascade of smart weapons fell on the Chikoya squad. They broke and ran, leaving the shore strewn with fatalities. Myraian skipped gaily through the shallows, following them like some demented pixie storm trooper, kicking at the spume as she went. Her fluffy plimsolls were stained gray-blue with alien blood.

Oscar jumped up out of the long drainage gully and stared in disbelief. Two of the Chikoya being chased by Myraian teleported out. “Holy crap,” he murmured. What is she? Exact definitions didn’t really concern him at that moment; he was just relieved she was on their side.

Five kilometers overhead, the Elvin’s Payback arrived in a burst of sharp violet light as it decelerated hard. Above it, Oscar could just make out a ragged black hole punched through the compartment’s dome; crumpled metallic shards tumbled silently through the tortured air on their long fall to the ground. Thin strands of mist grew in density around the rent, stretching and curving up to pour out into the vacuum beyond. The glowing cometary sphere suddenly flared, shoving out eight vivid pseudopods of dazzling flame. They separated from the starship and accelerated downward toward the beleaguered house. His biononics felt the combatbots’ first sensor sweep.

The Chikoya must have known what was coming. Another three teleported out.

“Ozziedamned monsters,” Cheriton exclaimed. Seven of them on higher ground were targeting him with a barrage of energy beams and a ferocious kinetic broadside, pushing his integral force field dangerously close to its limit.

“Priority target,” Tomansio ordered Liatris. “Take out the hostiles surrounding Cheriton.”

A massive spear of incandescence lanced down out of the turbulent sky to strike the incline behind the house. Parts of Chikoya spewed upward. Aggressive flames swirled over the trees and bushes populating the slope. Cheriton was still being targeted by four Chikoya.

Oscar’s scan showed him a T-sphere locus establishing itself around his teammate. “Counterprogram,” he yelled.

“Can’t,” Cheriton replied.

Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia immediately launched a volley of smartmissiles over the roof of the house. While he was fending off such an intense attack, Cheriton’s biononics wouldn’t be able to counterprogram the T-sphere as well as maintain his integral force field. The combatbots fired again, eliminating more Chikoya. This time the energy impact kicked up a long wildfire line across the forest, the formidable heat igniting whole trees. Thick smoke billowed up, cutting off all visual observation. But Oscar’s field function scan could still slice clean through. He watched his exovision display showing Cheriton being teleported away.

“Fuck it! Liatris, where did they take him?” Oscar demanded. “Where’s the T-sphere center?”

The combatbots were barely five hundred meters overhead. They fired down continuously, adding to the conflagration now burning around half the house. The surviving Chikoya were teleporting out as fast as they could.

“It’s centered in the Farloy compartment, about twelve hundred kilometers along the Spike. That’s one of the major Chikoya settlements.”

“Are you getting any kind of signal from him?” Tomansio asked.

“Negative. Shall I fly over there and run a detailed sensor sweep?”

“No,” Tomansio said.

Oscar eyed the wall of fire that was creeping down the slope to consume the trees closest to the house. Thermal imaging was showing him some alarming temperatures blossoming across the walls. The T-sphere shrank to zero. He admitted Tomansio was right. Not that it was easy.

“Land by the house,” he told Liatris. “I need the Dreamers safe on board before we get an entire Chikoya army teleporting in. Aaron, bring them out, please.”

“Confirm,” Aaron said.

Oscar turned around and ran a sweep along the shoreline. There were nine dead Chikoya scattered across the blackened lawn and two of them lying in the water. His biononics couldn’t find any trace of Myraian. He shook his head in bemusement at the fantastical woman. In a strange way he was rather glad she’d disappeared; it meant he didn’t have to think about her.

Elvin’s Payback thumped down out of the sky, sending out a shock wave that shattered the house’s remaining windows and brought roof slates skittering down. It hovered five meters above the ruined garden. Oscar and the remaining Knights Guardian closed in, ready to provide cover as Aaron led the two Dreamers, Corrie-Lyn, and Troblum out across the veranda and underneath the starship. Its airlock bulged upward, and Inigo rose into it. Corrie-Lyn was next.

A couple of large trolleybots floated out of the house, each one carrying a medical chamber. Flames were flickering along the roof, gaining hold on the rafters. Smoke curled out of the gaping first-floor windows.

“What do we do?” Oscar asked Tomansio as they backed toward the starship. “Do we go after him?”

“No. He’s true Knights Guardian; he’s not expecting us to. That would jeopardize the mission.”

“Jesus. What will they do to him?”

“If I was a Chikoya, I’d worry about what he’ll do to them. Human biononics are a damn site meaner than anything they’ve ever built.”

The medical chambers were lifted smoothly up into the starship. It was just Oscar, Tomansio, and Beckia left. The starship’s force fields came on around them.

“But they targeted him,” Oscar said; even inside the protective shields he couldn’t relax. “It was deliberate. They must have known he wasn’t a Dreamer.”

“Maybe they thought he was me,” Aaron told them. “I had quite a run-in with the Chikoya before you arrived.”

“Irrelevant,” Tomansio said. He gestured at Oscar to step under the open airlock. “We have a job to do.”

“Not irrelevant,” Oscar insisted as he began to float up into the fuselage. He knew he was missing something, and it was making him very cross. “Surely he can get some kind of signal out. Liatris, are you seeing any sign of a firefight in the Farloy compartment?”

“No. Nothing registering.”

Oscar slid up into the cabin to find the Dreamers and a miserable, shaking Corrie-Lyn giving him an anxious look. Troblum’s helmet almost touched the ceiling. His armor had reverted to shabby gray again. He still hadn’t opened it up.

Beckia arrived, swiftly followed by Tomansio. The cabin was feeling quite cramped even with the furniture withdrawn.

“Up and out,” Tomansio said. “Come on, Oscar, let’s go.”

Oscar bit back any immediate comment and told the smartcore to take them back through the hole Liatris had created in the dome above. “We could make one flyover,” he said.

“They could have teleported him to any compartment on the Spike by now,” Beckia said sadly. “Or even into a starship. He could already be FTL.”

“No, he’s not,” Oscar said, reviewing the sensor records as they passed through the minihurricane surrounding the hole and emerged back into space. “Nothing’s gone FTL in the last ten minutes.”

“Oscar, drop it,” Tomansio said. “He’s gone, and hopefully he took a whole bunch of the Chikoya bastards with him. When we get back to Far Away, you’re welcome to attend the ceremony of renewal. We’ll grow him a new body and download his secure memory store into it. He’ll spend the whole evening teasing you about worrying.”

Oscar wanted to hit something. “All right.” But I know something is wrong. He concentrated on the starship’s sensors. The Mellanie’s Redemption had left its landing pad at the same time as the Elvin’s Payback. Now it was holding station five thousand kilometers on the Spike’s dark side. He told the smartcore to rendezvous with it.

“Troblum, we’re safe now.”

“Good,” the armored figure said.

“You can take your helmet off.”

There was a long pause while the big figure did nothing. Then horizontal lines of malmetal on the helmet flowed apart, leaving three segments on each side. They swung open.

Oscar tried to be neutral. Troblum’s face was fat and heavy, his skin an unhealthy pallor and dribbling with sweat. Patchy stubble coated his cheeks and chins. “Hello,” he said sheepishly to his audience. He couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

“Thank you for offering your help,” Inigo said. “We appreciate it.”

Troblum gave a rough nod but didn’t say anything.

Oscar didn’t like the idea of relying on him one bit; there didn’t seem to be any empathy. Troblum was not a likable person, and he’d decided that from just the half dozen sentences the man had spoken. Not that there was anything they could do about it. I’m committed. Again. Let’s hope I don’t have to die this time.

“So how did the Chikoya find you?” Liatris asked Inigo.

“Plenty of people in Octoron would know where Ozzie lives,” Aaron said. “I’m surprised it took them this long, actually.”

“I’m just glad you arrived before they did,” Corrie-Lyn said. She was still trembling, even though she’d gotten a chair to extend and was sitting all hunched up. “We wouldn’t have stood a chance otherwise.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Beckia said. “Whatever that Myraian had was more than they could deal with.”

“Is she a Silfen?” Tomansio asked.

“No,” Araminta-two said. “I would have known that. She was human.”

“I think ‘was’ is right,” Oscar said. “She’s not postphysical, but she’s certainly more than Higher.”

“Speaking of not being physical,” Aaron said. “Ozzie?”

“Lady alone knows,” Inigo said. “My physics is centuries out of date, but whatever he did was seriously advanced.”

“He transmuted his quantum state,” Troblum said. “Somehow he went outside spacetime.”

“Personal FTL?” Corrie-Lyn asked incredulously.

“Probably not. You have to time-phase to do that.”

“So is he postphysical?” Oscar asked.

“I’d say not in the classical sense, but I don’t have any empirical evidence,” Inigo said. “Normally, postphysicals don’t hang around afterward. And he was dedicated to helping the human race in many ways. I know; we discussed it at length.”

“Certainly did,” Aaron murmured.

The Elvin’s Payback drew alongside Mellanie’s Redemption. The two starships maneuvered for a few seconds before their airlocks touched and sealed. Troblum was the first through, moving surprisingly quickly. The others let him go without comment, though Oscar knew they were all a little perplexed by the enigmatic Higher.

He followed Troblum through the airlocks, emerging into a cabin that was almost the same size as the one he’d just left. A very attractive girl was waiting there, dressed in old-fashioned clothes; her hands pressed anxiously against the chest of Troblum’s armor as she asked if he was all right. Oscar frowned at the sight; there’d been no mention of a companion. And with the best will in the universe, he couldn’t imagine a girl like that partnered with Troblum. Perhaps she was his daughter. But there’d been no reference to a family in his file.

The others were crowding into the cabin; they all shared an identical mildly surprised expression as they saw the girl. Gaiamote emissions were hurriedly reduced.

“This is Catriona,” Troblum mumbled.

“Hello.” She smiled shyly.

Oscar saw Tomansio staring at an electronic device on the cabin’s lone extended table. It looked vaguely familiar. Secondary routines ran a comparison search through his storage lacunae. “Oh,” he said softly. His retinas switched to infrared, which confirmed it. Catriona was a solido projection.

Then a trolleybot glided in carrying a medical chamber, and everyone was suddenly busy making room. The next trolleybot appeared, and Oscar started to think some of them were going to have to go into suspension before they reached the Void. And given that I’m just about redundant now …

Troblum opened a low hatch into a companionway. “We can stack some of the medical chambers here.”

“Is this all the space there is?” Inigo asked dubiously.

“Once the planetary FTL has launched, we can use the forward cargo hold. Until then, we’ll just have to squeeze in.”

The medical chambers kept coming. Two were fitted into the narrow companionway. Troblum got the cabin bulkhead to extrude thin shelves. There was just enough height for the big dark sarcophagi to be stacked three high. That left everyone else with standing room only and pressed uncomfortably close.

“I’ll join you later,” Catriona said, and faded away. Troblum pretended not to notice. His armor suit opened up, and he stowed it in a broad luggage cylinder that telescoped up out of the decking. The toga suit he wore was about the shabbiest Oscar had ever seen.

“Are there any sleep cubicles?” Beckia asked.

“Three,” Troblum told her.

“One for me,” she said quickly. Corrie-Lyn claimed the second. Somehow no one asked to use Troblum’s personal cubicle.

It was still cramped in the cabin as the last medical capsule was secured and the airlock flowed shut.

“So how does this work?” Tomansio asked.

“We need an uninhabited star system,” Troblum explained. “Also, the radiation from a nova can sterilize neighboring star systems. So we really need a star that’s fifteen light-years away from any H-congruous planet to be safe. There are three candidates within fifty light-years, an hour’s flight time.”

“Closest one, then,” Inigo said.

“That’s the one farthest from the Void.”

“Oh. Well, how far to—” He stopped in surprise.

Oscar was suddenly aware of a personal gaiafield emission. The emotional content alone was enough for him to identify Cheriton. A sensation of panicky urgency made his heart flutter in sympathy. The emission strengthened into a gifting.

“Hello,” Cheriton’s thoughts said softly. The need for reassurance was overwhelming.

Inigo and Araminta-two exchanged a meaningful look. “We’re here,” their minds chorused.

“No!” Aaron yelled. He raised his fists in silent exasperation and glared at the two Dreamers.

The gifting had no sight or sound or scent, just Cheriton’s small befuddled thoughts. He was alone, unable to sense anything from his body. Only training and excellent self-control were keeping the fear at bay.

“Ah,” another mind spoke with unnerving serenity. “I hadn’t thought of a gaiafield connection. I see you have an unusual number of gaiamotes, with some interesting little tweaks to their structure.”

Oscar thought the newcomer might not even be human. There wasn’t the slightest timbre of emotion to be found anywhere.

“Go FTL,” Tomansio told Troblum. The big man had a scared look on his face; he was trembling. Catriona rematerialized in the cabin and hugged him tightly.

The gifting expanded as Cheriton’s eyes opened. He was staring up at a dark gray ceiling. A head appeared above him, badly blurred. Focus was gradual as his sluggish eyes responded to the pale oval shape. It was a woman’s face, framed by short dark hair, smiling benevolently.

“Oh, bollocks,” Oscar groaned.

“Hello, boys and girls,” said the Cat. “I can feel you out there. How lovely that you care so much about your friend.”

“I can’t move,” Cheriton reported. His self-control was starting to crack. Little bursts of fear were interrupting the gift as if it were conveying electric shocks.

“Sorry about that,” the Cat said. One hand lifted up into view; it was drenched with blood. Drops splashed down off each fingertip. “But I couldn’t have you running away, now, could I?”

“Cheriton,” Tomansio said very calmly. “You have to trigger your biononic overload. I’m so sorry. We’ll hold the ceremony of renewal when we return home. I swear it.”

“I can’t,” Cheriton’s wretched thought came back. “I can’t.”

“We have your secure store. You will lose nothing.”

“I can’t.”

A sleep cubicle door expanded. Corrie-Lyn ran out and clung to Inigo. She was fighting back tears.

“Cheriton,” Tomansio continued, his thoughts becoming stern. “You have to do this. She’ll infiltrate. The mission will be compromised.”

“Help me.”

“Oh, my dears.” The Cat’s smile hung above them, exuding an icy presence into the cabin even though she was nowhere close. Her lips widened into a mournful smile. “The poor boy is telling the truth. He can’t suicide. That’s a weakness, and we all know what I think about being strong, now, don’t we? So I’m helping him. I took a nice big pair of scissors to his biononic connections.” She looked at her glistening scarlet hand, as if puzzled by the color. “I seem to have accidentally cut through a few nerves, too. Well, when I say cut, I mean hacked. But on the positive side, nothing will hurt now, so that was kind of me, wasn’t it?”

“Devil whore,” Tomansio sent. “When this is over, I will find you.”

The Cat laughed. “Better than you have tried. But I’m curious. Exactly what is ‘this’? It’s all very exciting, this gathering of yours. I’d like to be a part of it.”

“Go FTL,” Aaron said sharply. “We have to get a head start. She will find out.”

“Yes,” the Cat agreed. “Leave him. Leave him with me. All alone. We’ll have such a party together.”

“Go,” Cheriton said. “Just go. It will be over quickly. I won’t survive what she’s done to me.”

“Oh, now, my dear, that’s just a big bad lie. I have a medical capsule, and I’m not afraid to use it. The two of us will spend what seems like an eternity together. I might even make you Aaron’s replacement. How lucky can you get?”

“Never.”

“How lovely. You believe you are strong.”

The gifting was suddenly flooded by a sharply defined image surging up out of Cheriton’s memories. A startled Cheriton found himself seven years old and sitting at the table eating a meal with his parents and two sisters. It was a pleasant time, with his mother and father talking to their children, interested in their day, encouraging questions. A delightful period of his life, suffused by happiness.

Then his father stood up. “Come here,” he beckoned to Cheriton. As the young boy got to his feet, his father activated several weapons enrichments.

“No!” Cheriton’s frantic thoughts pleaded. “No, no, this is me, this is my life.”

“It was boring, my dear. It makes you weak, and that’s no use to me. I’m going to make it so much more interesting and a little bit dirtier.”

“Stop this,” Aaron said.

“Or what?” the Cat asked over the sound of young Cheriton’s distraught sobbing. The sizzle of weapons fire was deafening, blotting out the screams of his sisters. The stench made Oscar want to throw up.

“Now they don’t exist anymore, so let’s edit them out of the rest of your life, shall we,” the Cat said. “And while I’m doing that, I’ll have a think about what I can replace them all with. Something yummy, I feel. Something that is going to make you love me.”

“They are real,” Tomansio sent with a surge of conviction. “Believe it, Cheriton. Know the truth. They did not die like that.”

The gifting degenerated into a chaotic swirl of images and sounds and sensations. Flashes of Cheriton’s family slipped past them, draining to gray nothingness.

“Bring them back!” Cheriton wailed.

“Troblum,” Tomansio said. “Get us out of here.”

Troblum only tightened his hold around Catriona. “It’s me she wants. She’ll never stop, not ever. She never does. I know her. I studied what she is. Ask him.” He pointed at Aaron.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “This is what was done to me.”

“Bring who back?” the Cat asked lightly, her mind radiating gentle concern. “Who, my dear?”

“What?” Cheriton’s thoughts were confused.

“If she does want you, there’s only one place you can go to be safe,” Oscar said urgently to Troblum, worried by how distraught the big man seemed to be. He clearly wasn’t thinking logically. “Take us there,” he urged.

“Oh, look,” the Cat said enthusiastically.

Another memory was jerked out of Cheriton’s brain. This time Oscar found himself on a picnic by a small stream; now Cheriton was the father. His wife and small son were with him.

A deep disquiet bubbled up into Cheriton’s thoughts. This was a lovely time, yet he instinctively knew something was wrong.

“Stop this,” Tomansio said. “You can extract what you need easily enough.”

“But this way I get to play first,” the Cat said. “If my Cheriton is to belong to me, he can’t have affections for anyone else, now, can he?”

“Don’t!”

“Troblum,” Aaron said with a menacing insistence. “Get us out of here.”

“Please,” Araminta-two whispered. Her emotional output was rising to a fearsome level as she responded to Cheriton’s terrible degradation. Oscar found the tears welling up in his own eyes at her distress.

“Like father, like son,” the Cat said.

Cheriton looked down to find himself holding a pump-action shotgun. “No!” he screamed. “No no no no. Stop her; in Ozzie’s name, don’t let her do this.”

“We can’t leave him,” Corrie-Lyn sobbed. “Not with her. Nobody can face this alone. It’s inhuman.”

A ruby targeting laser stabbed out of Aaron’s fist. It splashed on the solido projector. “Now!” he hissed.

“Troblum!” Catriona wailed.

Cheriton’s finger pulled the shotgun’s safety off. It produced a nasty snick that echoed around the starship’s cabin.

“It’s not real,” Inigo vowed. “Know this, Cheriton, and remember.”

“Oh, dear Jesus,” Oscar moaned.

“Do it, you motherfucker,” Aaron yelled.

The Mellanie’s Redemption flashed into hyperspace.

Justine Year Forty-five

Justine eased herself up into a sitting position, for once feeling every year of her age. Suspension over such a long time was a killer. Every muscle ached. She swore she could hear her joints creak as she moved them. Hunger pangs battled against nausea.

Secondary routines told her it was fifteen years since she’d last been out of the medical capsule for a brief inspection of the Silverbird. Exovision displays and secondary routines gave her a fast review of the starship’s current status. Most onboard systems were functioning within acceptable parameters, though the degradation over the last forty years was noticeable.

Her u-shadow ordered the culinary unit to produce a banana-based protein drink. She grabbed the plastic cup with her third hand and hauled it across the cabin. A couple of minutes after she finished the gooey stuff, she actually began to feel a bit better. Her muscles still ached, but with biononic support it was relatively easy to clamber out of the chamber. She wobbled her way over to the bathroom cubicle and ordered the cabin to extrude a shower compartment. Not a spore shower but a decent original deluge of hot water that she could stand under and feel pounding on her skin. The heat soaked into her flesh, defeating the toxic stiffness that had built up during suspension. Then she rubbed on the gel, relishing the cleansing sensation, as if she really were washing away lethargy. Her skin began to tingle pleasurably. It was only after a while that she realized she was probably broadcasting the whole soaped-up-girl-in-a-shower scene to most of the human race. Through Dad!

“Aw crap!”

A quick sluice of cold water promptly blew away any possible sense of erotica. She stepped out and picked up a thick towel. This whole sharing the body thing was going to take some getting used to. Not that she was particularly prudish, but still, every sensation …

Dried and dressed in a decent semiorganic blouse and trouser set, she settled back into her favorite chair and reviewed the external sensor images. They were still traveling at point nine lightspeed, streaking through a star system. Two light-hours ahead of them was the unnaturally vivid blue and white speck of an H-congruous world. She began to smile as the sensors found the desert planet Nikran, orbiting thirty million miles closer to the star, while Gicon’s Bracelet was almost on the opposite side of the star, showing as a bright cluster of light points. No doubt about it; the Skylord was taking her directly toward Querencia.

Across the surrounding starfield the nebulae familiar from so many of Inigo’s dreams were visible: the spectacular blue and green smear of Odin’s Sea, crowned by its scarlet reefs; Buluku, the twisting river of violet stardust beset with impossible lightning storms up to half a light-year long; and of course the glowing entwined folds of topaz and crimson that were Honious in all its dire glory.

Now that she was actually there, Justine experienced something weirdly close to déjà vu. It was as if she had suddenly found out that a childhood fable was true and the colorful monsters she’d read about were finally emerging from the pages of the book. It wasn’t scary but profoundly exciting; this was true pioneering. Or maybe archaeology is closer to it.

Her longtalk reached out for the Skylord. “I thank you for bringing me to this world. My ship can fly and land by itself now.”

“I can take you closer,” it replied magnanimously.

“I would feel happier if my ship landed by itself. I am here now. I am content, for which I thank you.”

“As you wish,” the Skylord said.

Justine braced herself. Not that it did any good. The Silverbird once again was gripped by strange acceleration forces as the Skylord exerted its temporal manipulation ability. The star ahead transformed back to a yellow radiance as they slowed drastically. Redshifted stars behind grew in magnitude and intensity. Querencia’s clouds and ice caps darkened as its oceans fell to a deep sapphire. Iridescent colors swirled around the Silverbird’s fuselage as the Skylord’s vacuum wings swept past it. Then they were separating swiftly.

“Watch for my kind; they will be here soon,” Justine sent, receiving a serene flicker of acknowledgment in return.

Justine concentrated on the planet ahead. The Skylord had left her one hundred fifty thousand kilometers out and approaching fast. She ordered the smartcore to produce a vector that would put her into a twenty-degree inclination orbit a thousand kilometers out. From memory, Makkathran had been on the edge of the temperate zone. That orbit should allow her to see it visually. Somehow she couldn’t imagine it had gone. Makkathran was a constant, whatever it was, acting as a refuge for whatever race had the misfortune to stumble into the Void. It had been there for a long time before humans arrived; she was sure it would remain even today.

As soon as the Silverbird began its fifteen-gee deceleration, she switched the confluence nest back on. It wasn’t a memory she loaded in, more a belief, hopefully verging on obsession, that everything on board the starship would work. Even if it’s no more than a pathetic wish, it might be enough to keep the systems functional long enough to give me a proper landing.

With that in mind, she started thinking about practical items she might need after she arrived. The replicator was soon humming away, producing a wide range of clothes for every season. Food followed: fruit preserves and dried or cured meats, half-baked bread in sealed sheaths, basic packaged microbe-free meals that would take a long time to go moldy or putrefy, juices and the odd bottle of wine. To cook it all she had the replicator fabricate a small barbecue grill with bags of charcoal. After that she dragged up truly ancient memories of camping back in high school, when she’d been equipped with relatively simple tools such as compass and fire lighters, pots, plates, cups, cutlery. Washing-up liquid. Soap. Shampoo! Several decent pairs of boots. Knives of various sizes, including the fattest Swiss army type she could pull from the smartcore’s memory that would virtually build her another starship if she could just figure out how to work the gadgets it contained. Rope. An old-fashioned tent. It seemed an endless list, which kept her absorbed right up to the moment when the Silverbird curved around into its designated orbit. After that she sat in the chair watching high-resolution projections of the world as it rolled past below.

The smartcore had done a reasonable job of mapping the planet’s basic geography during the approach phase, capturing about two-thirds of the continental outlines. Despite that, she couldn’t really correlate what she was seeing with any of Edeard’s landscapes. The shorelines, which should have given her the greatest clues, were unfamiliar from an orbital vantage point. It was five orbits before she started to fly over mountains that could well be the Ulfsen range, which Edeard had first traversed with the Barkus caravan on his journey to Makkathran. With Salrana, she thought sadly. Their tragic, doomed romance had never meant much to her before, but now that she was here where it had played out, she felt a surprising emotional resonance stirring her. Stupid meat body, she cursed, and concentrated on the projected image.

No doubt about it, the Donsori Mountains were next. The Iguru plain swept into view, a vast lush green expanse with those strange little volcanic cones. Then there it was, straddling the coastline: Makkathran.

She stared at the big urban circle, marveling at the familiar shapes of its districts as delineated by the dark curving canals. Sunlight glimmered off the crystal wall, revealing it as a thin line encircling the city, dipping down into the sparkling Lyot Sea at the Port district with its distinctive fishtail profile.

Under her direction the smartcore ran a final check on all drive systems. With the exception of the ultradrive, they were all working at above eighty percent efficiency; glitches were minimal.

“Take us down,” Justine told the smartcore. The starship began its final deceleration phase. That left her just one thing to decide, a decision she’d admittedly been putting off since arriving in orbit. Do I take a weapon? She was reasonably confident she could ward off any animal with her third hand, but what if a whole pack of dogs or fastfoxes rushed at her? So much time had passed that the dogs would have lost any trace of domesticity. And it wasn’t just animals. She had no idea who was going to arrive at Makkathran over the next few weeks, or years, or decades—however long she was going to have to spend there before Gore’s plan became apparent.

Files of schematics flowed across her exovision. She chose one and shunted the blueprints into the replicator. Two minutes later out slid a semiautomatic pistol with a guaranteed jam-free mechanism. Next came five replacement magazines and five boxes of bullets, which really should be enough.

Ingrav had killed the Silverbird’s orbital velocity, allowing it to drop vertically. The starship hit the upper atmosphere, whose thin molecules started a faint scream from the buffeting impact. A long wavering trail of lambent ions stretched out behind the craft as it fell deeper and deeper.

Amber exovision alerts began to appear, warning Justine the force fields were edging close to overload. She shared her desperate desire that their generators would hold with the confluence nest, willing them to succeed. The amber alerts blinked off.

Regrav took over at fifteen kilometers of altitude, slowing the descent. She began to study the city as the visual images built up. Deeper sensor scans were hazed as they began to probe the surrounding rock, denying her a clear picture of whatever lay beneath Makkathran, though she could just make out the faint threads of several travel tunnels radiating out through the ancient lava field that was the Iguru plain.

So I still don’t know what it is, she thought in mild annoyance. But anything that could manipulate gravity, as it used to do to propel Edeard along the tunnels, had to be a high-technology intruder into this universe. The city’s thoughts had admitted as much to Edeard when it told him about the Void’s reset ability. The night Salrana betrayed him, she remembered, wishing the thwarted lovers didn’t bother her quite so much. Come on, girl, it was thousands of years ago. Their bodies are dust, and their souls are partying in the Heart.

Again, not the most comforting of thoughts. If I die here, I’ll either wither away wandering through space or be absorbed by the Heart. Or Honious.

Cross with herself for showing such weaknesses, she concentrated on the city that was expanding across the projections. A landing site was her priority now. There were so many places she wanted to see. And she would, but they were all in built-up areas. She could make out the larger buildings now, the domes of the Orchard Palace in Anemone, the odd twisting towers of Eyrie standing guard around the Lady’s church. Her eyes darted toward Sampalok, and sure enough, there in the central square was the six-sided building Edeard had created out of the ruins of Bise’s mansion.

“Oh, holy crap,” she muttered. “It is real.”

Fright or determination, she didn’t know which, made her concentrate properly now. The thick band of meadowland between the crystal wall and the outer ring of canals that made up High Moat, Low Moat, Tycho, and Andromeda was a likely candidate, though it was terribly overgrown. She could see clumps of trees down there that certainly hadn’t been growing in Edeard’s time. According to the radar sweep and mass scans, what looked like grass from altitude was mostly bushes and vines.

Golden Park, then. The old flat fields within the pristine white pillars were as shaggy as the meadows outside and the original avenues of huge martoz trees had multiplied and grown wild, but radar showed there were plenty of relatively level patches.

Silverbird continued its descent, twisting slightly to align itself over the westernmost part of the park, between the curves of Upper Grove Canal and Champ Canal.

Two warning icons appeared, telling her the regrav units were having to draw extra power to maintain a steady rate of descent. It was as if gravity was increasing, pulling the starship down.

And how do you wish gravity was less?

More warnings began to appear, reporting glitches in secondary systems. She felt a faint vibration starting to build up and ordered her chair to grip her tightly. It responded sluggishly.

“Oh, crap, here we go,” she groaned.

The starship was only a kilometer above the city as its started to pick up speed. Nothing fatal, she told herself. Not yet. The landing legs bulged out of the fuselage. So something wants me to land okay. Velocity was increasing more than she was comfortable with. She sent a series of instructions into the smartcore, composing her own procedures for a Void-style landing.

Five hundred meters and the Silverbird was ass down as it should be, with the nose tracing a slight arc in the sky as it wobbled. The exact landing spot she’d picked received a final radar sweep, confirming it was solid and stable.

Her thoughts slammed into the confluence nest, demanding normality. Power from the reserve D-sinks was channeled into the regrav units, pushing them up to their safety margins. She saw the towers of Eyrie come level with the starship, and beyond them, over in Tosella, the tip of the Blue Tower was now higher than she was.

Silverbird’s last hundred meters was a perfect landing profile, slowing to relative zero velocity ten meters above the wild vegetation. Then a half-meter-a-second descent until the landing legs touched. Spongy layers of leaves and moss and grass compressed, and only then, when the base of each leg registered and confirmed solid contact, did the regrav units shut off.

As if in sympathy, power dropouts bloomed all over the starship. Justine really didn’t care. This had been nothing like as traumatic or dramatic as her touchdown on the replica Mount Herculaneum.

“Houston,” she said solemnly to the silent cabin. “This is Golden Park base. The Silverbird has landed.”

Araminta had remained on the observation deck of the Lady’s Light right from the start of the Pilgrimage. The room was as big as the Malfit Hall back in the Orchard Palace and twice as high. Its floor was empty apart from a chair and a bed that had been brought in at her request. Araminta used the chair as little as possible, preferring to stand and stare ahead through the vast transparent section of fuselage. There was nothing to see; there hadn’t been since hyperspace had enfolded the massive ship. It was blank outside, with the occasional cascade of blue sparks slipping across the surrounding pseudofabric their ultradrive was creating. Imperfections within the quantum field interstice, Taranse had explained when she’d asked what they were. What caused such imperfections he didn’t say and probably didn’t know. She rather liked them; they provided the illusion that some material substance was outside, with the twinkling flaws registering their progress through it.

For five days she watched the nothingness flow past, gifting it to the billions of her followers back in the Greater Commonwealth. On the sixth day Araminta began to cry. Tears rolled down her cheeks as her shoulders quaked. The sorrow she radiated out into the gaiafield was so profound that the majority of beholders began to weep in sympathy. They were aghast, flooding the gaiafield with concern. “What’s wrong?” they asked in their bewildered billions, for nothing and nobody was in the observation deck with her. “We love you, Dreamer.” “Can we help?” “Let us help, please.”

Araminta gave them no response. She stood resolute in front of the disintegrating flecks of light, mute and distraught. Her personal staff members were dismissed with a curt gesture when they ventured out onto the sleek expanse of floor. Even the loyal Darraklan was sent away without a word.

Inevitably, as she knew he would, Ethan appeared and began the lonely walk toward her. Those sharing her dismay felt the anguish recede as she straightened herself. She made no attempt to wipe the tears from her eyes. Then her followers were standing on soft grassy land that fell away to a shoreline encased by high dunes. Sunlight shimmered off the idle waves that spanned the ocean’s clear waters. A Silfen stood before her, majestic and ominous with his dark leather wings extended, tail poised high. “You can do this,” he assured her.

“I know.”

The pendant around her neck flared with the joyous azure light of affirmation. And there was Ethan standing in front of her on the observation deck, his eyes narrowed against the cold light radiating from the pendant on its slim chain that now rested outside her white robe.

“Second Dreamer,” he said formally.

“Cleric Ethan.”

The absolute hatred directed by the followers of Living Dream at their ex-Conservator was staggering in its passion. He hesitated, then recovered with a sure smile that simply confirmed his dishonor before his audience.

“Perhaps you would like to tell your people what dismays you so,” he suggested smoothly.

“Are you aware?” she asked.

“Yes, Dreamer.”

“There is only one person in the universe who could have told you.”

“Indeed. However, the messenger is not important. What she told me is.”

“In this case the message and the messenger are one, nor is the method by which the message was procured insignificant. She is the cause.”

“Nonetheless, she has named you false.”

“Ilanthe lies. That is what she is now. The serpent among us all.”

“Is it true? Are you many?”

“I am.”

“Then I must question your intent.”

“Of course you must. Yet I will keep my word. I will lead this Pilgrimage into the Void as I promised.”

“You seek to thwart us,” he spit.

“I seek our true destiny. I seek to avoid the folly and fate of the Last Dream for the devout. I seek the Void’s own fulfillment.”

“By allowing those who would destroy it to enter. That cannot happen.”

“I tell you now what I told Ilanthe and what I have also told Inigo. Our fate will be decided within the Void. It will be decided by the Void. Not by you or anyone else. I have been chosen as the instrument to open a path into the Void; that is all. I am not a gatekeeper. All those who seek their fulfillment, whatever its nature, are free to enter the Void. Simply because their vision is different from yours and that of Living Dream does not entitle me to deny them passage. I do not judge, Cleric. Unlike you, I do not consider myself infallible.”

Ethan’s uncertainty couldn’t have been more apparent if he’d allowed it to shine out through his gaiamotes. “You have spoken to Inigo?”

“We are both Dreamers. We are together even now. Didn’t your dearest Ilanthe tell you that?”

“Ilanthe is no friend of mine.”

“And yet you defer to it, whatever it is, whatever it seeks. The Dreamer Inigo released the Last Dream as a warning. Do you really think that dreary destiny of bored supermen is one to which we should aspire for our children?”

“I believe we have the right to choose our future. I wish to live my life on Querencia and achieve fulfillment and be guided to the Heart. You and Oscar and Aaron are trying to prevent that.”

Araminta gave him an icy smile. “Sometimes to do what’s right you have to do what’s wrong.”

Ethan glanced about the massive observation deck as if seeking allies. “If you deny us the Void, it will go badly for you. That I promise. My life has been given to serving Living Dream. All I have done, all I have sacrificed, has led to the launch of this Pilgrimage. I will not tolerate betrayal.”

“You will enter the Void, Cleric. You will yet walk upon Querencia. You have my word on it. Now, why don’t you go and ask Ilanthe what future she desires for all of us. Or perhaps she doesn’t trust you enough to answer.”

He nodded impersonally. “As you say, the Void will ultimately triumph. I don’t worry about Ilanthe’s intent. What any of us do, our petty schemes and conspiracies, is an irrelevance in the face of the Void’s majesty.”

“I’m glad we are as one in that view. Now, don’t bother me again.” She turned away from him and waited. Finally, she heard him walk away.

The gaiafield was awash with confusion and dismay. Her followers needed her to explain what was happening, what the Dreamer Inigo was doing.

“You’ll see,” she assured them. “In the Void there will be truth.”

It was a yellow star whose meager family of planets consisted of a couple of airless solid worlds and a single gas giant that boasted over twenty moons. None of them had ever had a chance to evolve life; wrong orbits and lack of volatile organic chemicals had seen to that. Now they were just circling endlessly, waiting for the star to run through its main sequence and inflate into a red giant, devouring them all.

Mellanie’s Redemption emerged from hyperspace eighty million kilometers from the star and immediately activated its stealth systems. Inside the overcrowded cabin the mood was bleak. Oscar wasn’t sure he could take many more emotional swings on this kind of scale. Abandoning poor Cheriton to the Cat had been tough on them all, though strangely, Araminta-two had been the most affected. Tears had streamed down his face as the starship fled from the Spike. No amount of comforting from Inigo and Corrie-Lyn had helped.

Then both Dreamers had abruptly joined in surprise as Justine’s dream of landing at Makkathran came rushing through whatever tenuous contact they had with the Void.

“She made it,” Beckia exclaimed in surprise as the Silverbird touched down gently in Golden Park and the dream faded.

“Never expected her to do anything less,” Oscar said. “I remember her from my first life. The Burnellis were a formidable lot.”

“Is she part of your plan?” Tomansio asked Aaron.

“Not as far as I know. Her voyage certainly doesn’t trigger any alternatives or imperatives. We proceed as agreed.”

“Okay. Troblum, how long does this thing take?”

Oscar was interested to see that Catriona had gone away during the short flight. Once he was on his own, Troblum hadn’t said ten words to them, and there certainly hadn’t been anything given away from his gaiamotes. In fact, Oscar wasn’t certain Troblum had gaiamotes.

“I’ll bring the device up to active status now,” Troblum said.

“Great. So how long?”

“The wormhole parameter will have to be reformatted. I was working on that during the flight. Loading it in shouldn’t take more than a quarter of an hour. After that, we simply have to launch it into the star.”

“How long, then?”

“That depends on the distance we launch from. The smartcore is reviewing the corona’s radiant output for a definitive safe distance, but I’d say it’ll be about a million kilometers. The device itself will activate when it reaches the upper corona. It only needs a reasonably dense plasma layer to initiate a chain-reaction propagation within the quantum instability. I based that part of it on our standard novabomb.”

“Troblum. How long until the wormhole forms? From right now?”

Oscar was seriously impressed by Tomansio’s restraint.

“Oh. About twenty-five minutes.”

“Good work,” Aaron said, obviously amused by Tomansio’s suppressed frustration. “And how far will the new wormhole reach?”

“I think, now I’ve got the new profile, twenty-eight thousand light-years.”

“That’ll put us twelve to fifteen thousand light-years ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet,” Araminta-two said. “Will that give you enough time?” she asked Aaron.

“All I know is we have to get to Makkathran.”

Oscar gave him a considered look. “Gore was adamant that Justine go to Makkathran.”

“It’s the one place we know for sure is H-congruous inside the Void.”

“Gore told her that after she landed on the replica Far Away.”

“His actual words were ‘that’s where humans are centered in the Void,’ ” Beckia said. “Which is logical. It is where everyone is going.”

“I bet Ilanthe isn’t,” Corrie-Lyn grunted.

“We don’t know if the replica Far Away is still there,” Tomansio said. “Justine reset the Void to before she dreamed of it.”

“I think you’re all overreacting,” Inigo said. “Or at least reading too much into this. Makkathran as a destination isn’t coincidence, exactly, but there wasn’t a whole lot of choice involved in either case.”

“Do you ever remember meeting Gore?” Liatris asked Aaron.

“I don’t remember anything.”

Liatris showed a modicum of unease. “He did kill your father.”

“Irrelevant.”

“Bruce McFoster was a Starflyer agent when Gore eliminated him,” Tomansio said. “The actual Bruce was killed years before when he was taken captive by the Starflyer.”

“But you have to admit the coincidences are starting to—”

“Uh oh,” Araminta-two said.

Everyone was still as he gifted them the scene in the observation deck of the Lady’s Light, where a determined Ethan was walking toward her. As the confrontation unfolded, Inigo put his arm around Araminta-two’s shoulder. “I am here,” he whispered, pushing his support through the gaiafield union. “Show him no weakness. You are the Dreamer now. You are right in your belief. It is the Void which will decide this for all of us.”

Oscar drew a sharp breath as the winged Silfen shimmered within his thoughts. Bradley, he knew, and smiled. Way to go, man. You look great.

A thwarted Ethan walked away. Everyone in the Mellanie’s Redemption’s cabin burst into spontaneous applause. After a moment, even Troblum joined in.

So he does have gaiamotes, Oscar thought.

Araminta-two smiled around sheepishly. “Thank you,” he told Inigo. Corrie-Lyn gave him a swift kiss.

“Troblum,” Tomansio said. “Let’s get going.”

“The device is almost at active status. Another five minutes.”

Aaron smiled encouragement.

Troblum’s tentative humor faded away. His big round face paled. “Oh, no,” he gasped.

Oscar’s u-shadow was pulling sensor imagery from the starship’s smartcore. Troblum had permitted everyone a general-level access.

A sleek-looking ultradrive ship not too dissimilar to the Elvin’s Payback had emerged ten kilometers away. It opened a communication link. Oscar’s shoulders slumped. He knew.

“Hello, my dears,” said the Cat.

A pulse of pure misery swept through the cabin.

“What kind of defenses have we got?” Aaron asked.

Troblum shook his head. He was close to tears.

“Weapons?”

Troblum started trembling. His legs gave way, and he sank to his knees. “I can’t let her capture me. I can’t.”

“What do you want?” Oscar asked the Cat. If it was dead, they would’ve been that already.

“That’s a whole load of talent you’ve got on board there with you, Oscar, my dear. It’s not often I’m impressed, but just this once I’m going to admit it. You did good.”

“What have you done to Cheriton?” Corrie-Lyn demanded.

“Don’t interrupt the grown-ups,” the Cat said. “You’ll get a smack where it hurts most for that.”

Oscar made a frantic cutting hand signal at Corrie-Lyn. She gave him a disgusted glare.

“You told Ilanthe about us,” Oscar said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did that spoil things? I thought you dealt with that little shit Ethan quite beautifully, Araminta.”

“What do you want?”

“You know that, Oscar. Same thing I always do: some fun.”

“We’ll invite you to the victory party.”

“Don’t push your luck. The Void is where this is all going to finish. I need to be a part of that, and you’re going to take me there.”

“What is Ilanthe doing?” Oscar asked.

“She’s set her little metal heart on something called Fusion.”

“No,” Araminta-two said. “It’s not that. She has become something other.”

“Then you’ll be able to ask her yourself soon enough, won’t you?”

“Can the Cat affect us once we’re inside the Void?” Aaron asked Inigo.

“You mean apart from blowing us all to shit?”

“Surely your mind is stronger.”

Inigo gave Araminta-two a worried look; he looked equally alarmed.

“I just don’t know.”

“Oscar, my dear, it’s rude to keep a lady waiting.”

Oscar didn’t know what the hell to do apart from using the obvious smart-ass answer, which in this case might just prove terminal. And nobody was offering any suggestions. Suddenly he was flinching, cowering halfway to the decking. Space outside was ablaze with hard radiation as a range of enormously powerful weapons were fired. His u-shadow reran events, analyzing it in millisecond increments. He saw another ultradrive starship materialize directly between the Cat’s ship and Mellanie’s Redemption. It opened fire instantaneously at the same time its force field expanded, deflecting the Cat’s return salvo away from Mellanie’s Redemption.

A communication channel opened.

“Oscar, get the hell out of there,” Paula said. “Leave the Cat to me.”

“Go,” Oscar screamed at Troblum.

For the second time in an hour, the Mellanie’s Redemption fled into hyperspace.

“You’re going to deal with me?” the Cat asked. There was a mocking tone in the voice.

Paula was frantically reviewing the Alexis Denken’s defense status. The force fields were struggling under the energy impact of their first weapons exchange. Whatever the Cat’s ship was equipped with, it was stronger than she had expected. The beam weapons were somehow transferring some of their energy through hyperspace, circumventing the force fields. Local gravity was doing strange things, its twists exerting unnatural stresses throughout the Alexis Denken that the onboard compensators weren’t designed to cope with.

“Always do,” Paula sent back. On her instruction, the smartcore fired a couple of quantumbusters. They shot away, accelerating at two hundred gees. “And this is the last time.” The quantumbusters went active. Eighty kilometers away, the small chunk of astroidal rubble they targeted was less than thirty meters in diameter. The entire mass was converted directly into energy in the form of ultrahard radiation. For a microsecond its output rivaled that of the nearby star.

Exovision warnings leaped up as the force fields strained to deflect the appalling radiation torrent. Paula sent the starship back into hyperspace and flashed toward the gas giant. The Cat came after her. Neither was making any attempt at stealth.

Fifty thousand kilometers above the seething pink and gray cloudscape, Paula stopped, and the Alexis Denken hung in transdimensional suspension while the force field generators began to stabilize.

One of the gas giant’s large outer moons exploded. A quantumbuster had converted a couple of its more substantial craters directly into energy, a detonation big enough to fracture the moon down to its core. The entire globe ruptured, with vast segments moving ponderously apart while a billion rock fragments came tumbling out of the expanding fissures into the outburst of raw energy. The physical damage was an irrelevancy. The quantumbuster had a diverted energy function, shunting a high percentage of the explosion’s power into hyperspace.

Paula went flying painfully across the cabin as the colossal exotic energy wave smashed into the starship. Alexis Denken fell back into spacetime as its overstressed ultradrive failed. Outside, the remnants of the moon were creating a giant translucent shock sphere twenty thousand kilometers across that glowed an ominous spectral blue as it inflated at half lightspeed. The Cat’s ship came streaking out of the garish aurora, force fields glimmering a malevolent crimson as it headed straight for the Alexis Denken. Dark missiles punched forward at a hundred gees.

The smartcore identified them as Hawking M-sinks. Force fields wouldn’t protect Paula from them.

Another moon exploded. Sequential ripples of exotic energy swept outward, blocking any return to hyperspace. Paula powered the Alexis Denken straight down toward the gas giant, accelerating at fifty gees. Internal gravity compensators could shield her from only about thirty of them. Biononics had to support her body physically as the punishing force tried to crush her into a puddle of flesh across the decking. Even with that enrichment it was tremendously difficult to breathe. She’d gotten her left leg at a slight angle; it made a bad sound as it flattened out.

One of the small inner moons was below her, a cratered rock two hundred kilometers in diameter, three thousand kilometers farther along its orbital track from her vertical vector and moving sedately away. She fired a quantumbuster at it, modifying the effect field format. When the weapon activated, it converted a quarter of a cubic kilometer of rock right at the moon’s core. The moon shattered instantly. Millions of rocky shrapnel fangs detonated outward from the micronova in a lethal supervelocity cloud. The particles vaporized as they went, blowing off expanding flares of indigo and topaz ions like primeval comets. Space was filled with a dense clutter of energized mass. The Hawking M-sinks flew into it and began to absorb the deluge of lively atoms. Vapor or rock shards, it made no difference; the event horizons sucked everything down. In doing so, their courses wobbled slightly. As the drives attempted to compensate, their efficiency fell off due to the nearly exponential increase in mass they were now propelling.

The Alexis Denken raced away from the underside of the hellish fireball, hurtling straight for the agitated stormscape below.

Mellanie’s Redemption flicked back into space one and a quarter million kilometers above the yellow star. She hung there for a couple of seconds while the forward cargo bay opened and the fuselage force field started to fizz with violet stress patterns. The planetary FTL device shot out, and Troblum took the starship straight back into transdimensional suspension.

“How long?” Aaron demanded.

“Ten minutes to initiation,” Troblum said. Catriona was back at his side, her beautiful face tragic with concern. “Establishment will take longer. And no, I don’t have a fucking clue how long. Nothing more I can do. We just sit and wait now.”

Oscar was keeping track of the hysradar return. He winced when one of the gas giant moons broke apart within a bloom of exotic energy. That was one hell of a fight, as bad as Justine and the warrior Raiel. Oh, crap! “Hey!”

Everyone looked at him. In the packed cabin that was quite intimidating.

“You didn’t think this ship could survive anything the Cat threw at it,” he said to Troblum. “Why?”

“Because it couldn’t,” Troblum replied. Catriona was directing an aggressive stare Oscar’s way, which he ignored.

“But you have the Sol barrier technology. That can withstand any Commonwealth weapon.”

“Mellanie’s Redemption doesn’t have that kind of protection,” Troblum said.

“But … your armor does.” So I assumed the ship would as well. Shit!

“Yes. I just built my armor. But before now I couldn’t ever use the design the Accelerators developed from the Dark Fortress; that would have revealed what we’d got.”

Oscar wanted to grab the front of Troblum’s toga suit and give the huge man a shake. “But if we haven’t got that kind of force field, how the hell do you think we’ll get past the warrior Raiel?”

“They’ll let us past. Won’t they?” Troblum said in a puzzled tone that verged on hurt. “When we explain that we’re on a mission to shut down the Void.”

“Shit,” Tomansio grunted.

For once even Aaron was startled.

“Troblum,” Oscar said very firmly. “Give me full access to your TD linkage. Now.”

“What are you doing?” Inigo asked.

“Calling the one person who might be able to help.” He grimaced as another one of the gas giant’s moons was blasted into a tsunami of exotic energy. “If she’s still alive.”

The Alexis Denken hit the upper atmosphere at fifty kilometers a second. Paula ordered an immediate deceleration as they plunged toward the first truculent cloud layer. It didn’t seem to make much difference. Disintegrating gases gouged a five-hundred-kilometer tail of incandescence in their wake, a giant pointer for the Cat’s sensors. The juddering was phenomenal; as an indicator of how much punishment the starship was encountering, it was badly worrying. Acceleration forces were still crushing her down onto the decking.

Far above, the first flaming debris from the small rock moon was following her down, dazzling points of light churning through the atmosphere, jetting out vast plumes of black smoke. The terrible buffeting broke them apart into hundreds of smaller chunks, which then shattered again and again. A vast plain of electrical fire sank down toward the clouds. The basic energy the impact was spinning off created enormous lightning discharges that flared for thousands of kilometers through the higher atmospheric bands.

It made sensor coverage difficult. But just before she sank into the second cloud layer, hysradar located the Cat’s ship chasing her down.

Paula hurriedly changed her direction, angling the regrav units’ propulsive effect sharply to try to flatten out her trajectory but still heading down.

“I see you,” the Cat called through an interference-saturated link.

“If you stop now and rendezvous with your force fields down, I will simply place you in suspension with your original self,” Paula replied. “Any other course of action will result in your termination.”

“Darling Paula, this is what I love about you. That psychoneural profiling is actually the installation of blind stupidity. Come to me. I can remove it for you.”

The Alexis Denken’s sensors detected another M-sink being fired. Now the entire gas giant was doomed, though its final destruction would be weeks away. Paula suspected the Cat had done that to make sure there would never be any hiding place beneath the gas giant’s furious storms. Paula fired a quantumbuster, then angled the Alexis Denken down through the fourth and final cloud layer. Below that was a zone of perfectly clear hydrogen extending for several hundred kilometers. Huge vertical pillars of lightning snapped on and off within the gap. At their base, a smog of hydrocarbons eddied uneasily atop the pressure boundary where the atmospheric compounds were finally compressed into a liquid. The sight vanished in a blaze of white light as the quantumbuster activated.

“Naughty, darling,” the Cat taunted. “My turn.”

The hysradar showed Paula two missiles curving up from the Cat’s ship, arching up through the clouds, where the density was reduced. Of course they could accelerate far faster than the poor Alexis Denken, which was tunneling through the compacted hydrogen.

They started to plummet again.

“Oh, fuck,” Paula grunted, and dipped ever closer to the smog band.

Her smartcore surprised the hell out of her when it announced that Oscar was calling through a TD link.

“Little busy,” she sent.

“Appreciate that. But we’re in trouble.”

“Doesn’t it work?”

“That almost doesn’t matter. This ship has no protection from the warrior Raiel. Can you ask Qatux to have a word, please.”

The missiles were quantumbusters. They activated a hundred kilometers ahead. A solid wall of energy hurtled toward the Alexis Denken, only partially slowed and absorbed by the enormous density of the lower atmosphere. Paula dived into the hydrocarbon soup.

“Do what I can,” she promised. Some remote part of her brain was chuckling over the irony.

The jolt of impact was enough to cause a momentary blackout. Her tormented flesh was already at its limit. When she recovered, she was still barreling forward, but her speed was sluggish even with the ingrav and regrav units operating at their maximum. The force field was heading toward overload, and she was only five kilometers deep. Blood was pouring out of her nose. A small medical icon in her exovision reported she was also bleeding from her ears; there were internal lacerations, too.

The Cat’s ship sliced cleanly through the hydrogen zone until she was directly above the Alexis Denken. Eight missiles curved elegantly down toward the smog, spreading out in an exemplary spider-leg dispersal pattern. They’d act like old-fashioned depth charges, Paula realized. If they didn’t force her up and out into the open, the pressure pulse would crush the fuselage. Perfect!

From somewhere deep inside the star, oblivion was surging up through the superdense matter. The planetary FTL device had triggered a terminal mass energy explosion sequence far below the photosphere whose gigantic shock pulse was now slowly flowing down toward the core, creating an unsustainable fusion surge as it went. Energy levels were building fast from the accelerated reactions. Not even the enormous gravity gradient and ultracompressed hydrogen of the star’s interior could contain it.

But as the runaway energy thrust its languid way upward, other, stranger forces came into play as the device’s exotic matter functions began to blossom, fed by the star’s own amplified output. Like a parasite growing larger as it consumed more of its host, the device exerted an intolerable stress on an infinitesimal point of spacetime, which promptly ruptured. The throat of the wormhole opened. Behind it, the corona began to darken as more and more power was drained away through hyperspace to sustain the new exotic energy manifestation. The wormhole’s terminus began to strain for its designated emergence coordinate over twenty-eight thousand light-years distant. Half of the rapidly expanding photosphere was now falling into darkness as the wormhole usurped more and more of its escalating output.

Troblum actually smiled at the sensor image as the Mellanie’s Redemption emerged into spacetime. The starship’s curving fins glowed a strong magenta as they threw off the heat that was still seeping through the force fields. Directly ahead, the surface of the violated star was being distorted by the imminent nova eruption. Yet the very pinnacle of the distortion was cascading into night as mass and energy vanished through a dimensional rift. In the middle of that emptiness a tiny indigo star was shining as Cherenkov radiation gleamed out from the exotic matter of the wormhole’s pseudofabric.

“It’s stabilizing,” he gasped.

“How long will that hold for?” Inigo asked gently.

Troblum shook himself. “Not long,” he admitted. For a moment he regretted not using the original configuration, a wormhole wide enough to swallow a gas giant. This was only a kilometer across. But it did extend for twenty-eight thousand light-years.

It works. I was right. I was right about everything. The Anomine, the Raiel. Everything.

“I win,” he said softly, then shouted it. “I fucking win! And the universe knows it.”

“Take us through,” Aaron said.

Troblum wiped his sleeve across his eyes, getting rid of the moisture. “Right,” he acknowledged. The Mellanie’s Redemption slipped forward, accelerating hard as it passed into the wormhole’s haze.

———

The Cat’s exovision showed her the eight quantumbusters activating fifty kilometers below the surface of the compressed-hydrocarbon ocean. Their titanic pressure waves inflated, merging.

Hysradar scanned incessantly, trying to discern the Alexis Denken amid the turmoil. But hydrocarbon fluid at that density was strange stuff, and the massive energy deformation didn’t help. If Paula didn’t make a dash for freedom up to the hydrogen layer, she’d be dead. No starship could withstand the kind of force currently cascading through the hydrocarbon.

Still nothing.

The smog rippled apart as the hydrocarbon eruption began. It was like seeing a perfectly round volcano erupt. The cone kept rising—five, ten, twenty kilometers high. As it lifted up into the hydrogen zone where the pressure was far lower, it began to boil violently, spewing out great columns of spray like rocket exhausts that just kept thundering upward. Within seconds the hydrogen zone for hundreds of kilometers was clotted by the weird chemical fug. Optical band imagery was reduced to zero as the greasy vapor surged around her starship. Regrav units strained to hold position as the gales rushed past.

“So fuck you, then,” the Cat told Paula’s cold, gigantic funeral pyre.

Sensors showed her that the upsurge was still growing, which was surprising but hardly threatening. The crest reached a full hundred kilometers, drawing down a barrage of almighty lightning strikes from the belly of the cloud layer far above.

Mountainous waves began to gush ponderously down the eruption’s flanks to the ocean below. The Cat still couldn’t see anything, but the starship’s sensors provided her an excellent graphics-profile image. The hydrocarbon was draining away from something solid, something vast that was still impossibly rising upward.

“What the—” she sputtered. Then the profile began to resolve. Fourteen mushroom shapes were shrugging off their cloak of glutinous liquid and filthy gas to expose the crystalline domes that roofed them. They were attached to the main bulk of the thing, which measured just over sixty kilometers long.

High Angel cleared the unstable cleft in the hydrocarbon ocean, shedding a tempest of seething smog.

A communication channel opened without any authorization from the Cat’s u-shadow. “Hello, Catherine Stewart,” Qatux said.

“Fuck.” She sent her starship into a seventy-gee climb, not even able to scream against the abysmal force crushing her body. Bones snapped; flesh and membranes tore.

“You don’t remember my wife, do you?” Qatux asked.

“Your wife? No!”

“Nor will you ever.”

Exovision showed the Cat an energy pulse blasting straight up from the High Angel. It struck her starship—

The shot was powerful enough to warp spacetime in a very specific fashion, so that although the starship was blown apart in milliseconds, time within the explosion stretched on and on and on … To the Cat the utterly excruciating instant of her death lasted for hour after long terrible hour. Though she never realized it, it was exactly the same amount of time it had taken Tiger Pansy to die one thousand one hundred ninety-nine years ago.

Nine thousand light-years from the boundary of the Void and five light-years from the closest star, a wormhole terminus swirled open, spilling its gentle indigo light out into interstellar space. Thirty seconds later the streamlined shape of the Mellanie’s Redemption flew out.

“FucktheLady,” Corrie-Lyn exclaimed. “We made it.” She smiled incredulously and kissed Troblum before he could stop her.

Behind them, the weak light faded away as the wormhole closed, leaving them as isolated and alone as any humans had ever been. Comprehension of their status quickly spread through the cabin, amplified and reinforced by the tiny self-generated gaiafield. It drained away any sense of elation.

Inigo gave Corrie-Lyn a quick hug in the uncomfortable silence that followed.

“What do you think happened?” Araminta-two asked.

“The important thing is that deranged bitch didn’t follow us,” Oscar said.

“And Paula?”

Oscar had to grin at that. “Trust me, if anyone in this universe can take care of herself, it’s Paula Myo.”

“So what do we do now?” Inigo asked.

“There is no question,” Aaron said. “We go into the Void.”

“I meant, what do we do about the warrior Raiel?”

“Two options,” Oscar said. “If Paula survived, we might already have a clear passage confirmed. If not, we really do try what Troblum suggested and ask nicely.”

“We got this far,” Corrie-Lyn said.

“That’s the kind of mad optimism I like,” Oscar said. “Troblum, let’s go.”

“We need to start installing the medical chambers,” Tomansio said.

Oscar grinned. “Another optimist.”

“Just being practical.” Tomansio patted one of the capsules stacked up against the bulkhead. He didn’t have to move his arm far.

“So next question,” Liatris said. “Who gets to sleep off the next part of the voyage?”

“Me, happily,” Oscar said. “So long as you bring me out when we go through the boundary. That I have to see.”

“We’re going FTL,” Troblum announced. “I’ll get the bots to prepare the forward hold.”

“How long to the Wall stars?” Aaron asked.

“A hundred and sixty hours.”

Paula teleported into Qatux’s private chamber, for which she was grateful. She certainly couldn’t have walked. There was a fat warming sheath around her left leg. Twelve semiorganic nodules were stuck over various parts of her torso, their slender filaments weaving through her skin to combine with biononic systems deeper inside her body, helping to repair the damaged cells. She wore a loose robe over all the systems and limped along as if she were an old woman, which was appropriate enough, she acknowledged grimly.

A human-shaped chair rose silently out of the light blue floor, and she eased herself into it. Directly ahead the silver-gray wall continued its gentle liquid rippling. Tiger Pansy’s face smiled back gleefully at her through the odd twisting motions.

You can rest easy now, Paula thought. Wherever you are.

The wall parted, and Qatux walked in. One of his medium-size tentacles stretched out, and its paddle tip touched Paula on the cheek. There was a phantom sensation of warmth that lingered after the touch ended, perhaps a sensation of sympathy and concern, too.

“Are you badly damaged?” Qatux whispered.

“Only my pride.”

“Ahhh,” the Raiel sighed. “The old ones are the best ones.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“And yet her real self lies dormant in Paris.”

“Where it should be. Not resurrected to act as some human political movement’s agitator. Not that she ever did as she was told in whatever incarnation.”

A couple of tentacles waved about in what could have been agitation. “As you said, the universe needs to be rid of her.”

“I was sure if anything could make her termination definite, it would be High Angel. Navy ships have the firepower, but she’d detect them.”

“Not quite what my race intended this arkship should be used for, but we live in extraordinary times.”

“I hope I haven’t gotten you into trouble, Qatux.”

“No. We Raiel do not lack for empathy. However, I believe some of the humans in residence are slightly shocked by events. Not to mention the Naozun.”

Paula couldn’t remember any race called the Naozun. “Good. It’s about time we stirred things up.”

“We have grown, you and I, Paula.”

“I should certainly hope so. We’ve had long enough.”

Air whistled softly out of Qatux’s mouth. “Indeed.”

“Did the wormhole open as Troblum predicted?”

“Yes.”

“Finally! Something went right for us. Whatever the hell that something is. I just hope Aaron’s controller knows what they’re doing. On which note, I have yet another favor to ask.”

“Yes.”

“The Mellanie’s Redemption needs to get into the Void. Can you get the warrior Raiel to let it through the Gulf unharmed? I genuinely believe it might be our only chance to prevent a catastrophic expansion phase.”

“I will explain why they should. I can do no more.”

“Thank you.” She rubbed at the sheath on her leg, knowing that was never going to get rid of the itch. “Where are we going now?”

“Back to the Commonwealth.”

“Not out of the galaxy, then?” Paula was faintly relieved: The Raiel obviously still had hope.

“No. That time is not yet here. As you said, there is little which prevents it.”

“What about the Dark Fortress spheres? Are they capable of stopping the Void?”

“We don’t know. But understand this, Paula: The warrior Raiel will attempt to stop the Pilgrimage fleet. They do not indulge in sentiment about that many lives when the very galaxy is threatened by their actions.”

“I understand, and I do not hold you to account. We have to be responsible for ourselves. If that many humans want to try to endanger all life in this galaxy, they must not be surprised if others attempt to prevent them.”

“Yet your own kind did not.”

Paula hung her head, mainly in shame, but there was frustration there, too. “I know. Those of us who were free to do so did what we could. The level of the conspiracy took us by surprise. In that, we failed so many.”

The Raiel touched her cheek again. “I do not hold you to account, Paula.”

“Thank you,” she managed to say.

“I do have some privileges as captain of an arkship. We are in communication with the warrior Raiel. Would you like to see the galactic core defenses in action? I imagine the last stand of our species will make quite a spectacle.”

The Delivery Man waited patiently while the trolley glided across the plaza and rose up to the Last Throw’s midsection hatchway. The chunk of equipment it was carrying only just fit through the opening, but it managed to get inside. The assemblybots that the replicator had produced a couple of days earlier started to ease the equipment off the trolley. Once they began the integration process, he’d go up and inspect.

He was useful again, which lifted his spirits considerably. His physics and engineering knowledge was hardly up there at Ozzie and Nigel levels, but his recent cover job analyzing technology levels made him competent enough to oversee the integration. The systems the replicator was producing were all geared toward giving the Last Throw additional strength. Strong enough to ward off a star’s energy from zero range. It was a very special kind of crazy who contemplated such a procedure. The design in the smartcore memory had been developed by the Greater Commonwealth Astronomical Agency for its Stardiver program. None of the probes they’d dispatched had ever carried human passengers.

The Delivery Man glanced across the plaza to where Gore was talking to Tyzak. It was like observing a devoted priest and a confirmed atheist locking horns. Their conversation, or argument, or discussion—whatever—had been going on for days now. There’d even been pictures for emphasis. Gore had brought a holographic portal down from the Last Throw, showing Tyzak various images of the Void, the Gulf, the Wall stars, DF spheres, even views of Makkathran, Skylords, and the Void nebulae taken from Inigo’s dreams.

Not once in all that time had he let up in his efforts to persuade the Anomine to talk to the elevation mechanism. Then they received Justine’s dream of landing at Makkathran, and Gore’s determination went off the chart. The Delivery Man found it hard to believe that the Gore he knew had so much patience. But then, even he’d punched the air when the Silverbird touched down in Golden Park. It was quite a moment.

Tyzak was interested; some parts of the story he found fascinating. But none of it inclined him to help ward off the end of everything. The old Anomine insisted that the future, specifically his race’s future, could be determined only by the planet itself. That prohibited the use of relics from the past.

“But it’s not your future that will be affected in any way,” Gore was saying. “All I need is a little help from a machine which you don’t even use anymore. Do your beliefs prohibit charity?”

“I understand your problem, but you are asking me to abandon my entire philosophy, my reason for existence, and delve back into the past we have completely rejected.”

“You would be knocking on the door. I would be the one passing through.”

“You are attempting to differentiate the entire act into degrees. That is not applicable. Any act of renunciation is ultimate.”

“How can helping others be renunciation of yourself?”

“It is the method, as you very well know, friend Gore.”

“How do you think your ancestors would respond to this request? Their generosity helped other species before, when you isolated the Prime aliens.”

“I cannot know, but I suspect they would reanimate the machine for you.”

“Exactly.”

“But they are gone. And they were an aberration in our true line of evolution.”

“Your inaction means you’d be killing trillions of living things. Doesn’t that bother you in the slightest?”

“It is a cause for concern.”

The Delivery Man stiffened. That was the first time the slightest concession had been made to reasonableness on Tyzak’s part. Reasonableness on human terms, anyway.

“The space fortresses that guard your solar system, the cities that never decay, this machine beneath our feet which slumbers, all these things were left behind by the ancestors you dismiss. They wanted you to have options; that is why they bequeathed them to you. So much of what they had is now dust.” Gore’s hand waved loosely up at the lustrous band of debris orbiting the planet. “But these specific artifacts remain because they knew that one day you might need them. Without the fortresses many species would be here plundering the riches your ancestors left behind. A large part of evolution is interaction. Isolation is not evolution; it is stagnation.”

“We are not isolated,” Tyzak answered. “We live within the planet’s will; our every second is determined by the planet. It will deliver us to our destiny.”

“But I’ve shown you what will happen to your planet if the Void’s final expansion phase begins. It will be destroyed, and you with it. That is not natural; that is an external event of pure malice, the cessation of evolution not just here but on every star system in the galaxy. Such a thing cannot be factored into your belief of planetary-guided evolution, for it is not inborn. If you truly wish to continue your evolution on this world, you have to protect it. Your ancestors left you the ability to do that, to ward off the unnatural. You don’t have to do anything other than ask the machine to awake. It and I will do everything else.”

The Delivery Man held his breath.

“Very well,” Tyzak said. “I will ask.”

Gore tipped his head back to look the old Anomine directly in the eye and sighed. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The Delivery Man hurried over to the two of them. Dusk had fallen now, its fading light bathing the plaza in a cool gray illumination. All around them the imposing city buildings were responding to oncoming night with their own internal radiance. Pale colorful streaks shimmered over an igloo-style shelter they’d expanded close to the parked starship where the replicator had been set up. The second, smaller shelter housed the intrusion apparatus Gore had created in case the elevation mechanism proved reluctant.

Last Throw’s smartcore reported that it was initiating a deep field function scan of the elevation mechanism, mapping out functions and control pathways. The Delivery Man couldn’t help the ridiculous burst of optimism lightening his heart as he drew close to the two figures profiled by the harlequin glow of a deep city canyon on the other side of the plaza. It was almost symbolic of the moment, he thought, the two wildly different species finally coming together in the face of adversity. If only I wasn’t such a cynic.

Just as he reached them, he saw something move down the glimmering canyon beyond. Retinal inserts provided a clearer resolution. “No bloody way,” he grunted. It was a Silfen, riding some huge quadruped animal with thick scarlet fur. The Silfen himself was clad in a long, magnificently gaudy honey-colored coat decorated with thousands of jewels that sparkled energetically in the city’s luminosity.

“Gore!”

Gore turned around. “What?”

But it was too late. The Silfen had ridden off down an intersection. “Doesn’t matter.”

Tyzak had become very still. When the Delivery Man concentrated on his own diminutive awareness of the city’s thoughts, he could just make out another stream of consciousness out there somewhere. Like the city’s, these were precise and cool. Not quite aloof, though, for there was definite interest in why they had been roused.

“I feel you,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are Tyzak.”

“I am.”

“Do you wish to attain transcendence from your physical existence?”

“No.”

“I exist for that purpose.”

“I wish to transcend,” Gore told the mechanism.

“You are alien. I cannot help you.”

“Why not?”

“You are alien. I exist to lift Anomine to their next stage of life.”

“Our biochemistry is essentially the same. I am sentient. It would not be difficult for you.”

“No. Only Anomine may lift themselves through me.”

“Are you sentient?”

“I am aware.”

“There is a possibility that an event at the heart of the galaxy may destroy this planet and with it all the surviving Anomine. If I am elevated to the next stage of life, I will be able to prevent this from happening.”

“Should such an event occur, the remaining Anomine will be assisted to transcend if that is what they wish to become.”

“Do you still have the power to do that?”

“Yes.”

“And the rest of us? You would abandon every sentient in the galaxy to death?”

“I lift Anomine. I cannot reach the rest of the galaxy.”

“You can reach me.”

“You are not Anomine.”

“Are you unable to rise above your original constraints?”

“I am what I am. I exist to lift Anomine to their next stage of life.”

“Yeah. Got that.”

The elevation mechanism’s thoughts retreated, shrinking its consciousness back to the somnolence where it spent the centuries that passed it by.

“You were not given the answers you were hoping for,” Tyzak said. “I feel sorrow for you. But the machine’s story is an ancient one; it will not change now.”

“Yeah, I know. See you in the morning.” Gore rose to his feet and headed back to the Last Throw.

It took the Delivery Man by surprise. He got up and hurried after Gore, wishing in vain he didn’t feel like some pupil bobbing around his all-wise guru master. “So now what?”

The city’s shifting opalescence produced strange reflections across Gore’s golden face. If his expression did possess any emotion, it wasn’t anything the Delivery Man could read. “We got a pretty good functionality schema, which thankfully included a route into the wormhole when it checked its main power supply.”

“Ah. So you can hack it?”

“I don’t know. It’s extremely complex, which is what I expected from a machine which has its own psychology. But at least we know how to attempt it. There are physical junctions which are critical to its routines; they can be breached.”

“So are you going to start that now?”

“Certainly not. The other systems on this planet share an awareness of each other. I doubt I’d have more than a few minutes’ primacy before they put a stop to my evil alien incursion.”

“Oh, right. So we do need to reactivate the siphon first?”

“Siphon and wormhole. How long until the modified force field generators are finished?”

“A few days,” the Delivery Man said reluctantly.

“Good. We need to be ready to launch this part of the plan as soon as everyone in the Void is in place.”

“Everyone in the Void? You mean the Pilgrimage ships?”

“No. I’m expecting an associate to arrive.”

“An associate? In the Void?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Justine will let us know.”

The Raiel warship was big. Aaron studied the return that was coming from the hysradar. Most of the image was fuzzed, denying him any details. Some small part of his mind wasn’t sure he wanted details. Which is hardly strong of me, he thought with a cool amusement. That part of the Knights Guardian has obviously been lost. Again, that wasn’t something that disturbed him. Even the name Lennox meant nothing, which he knew on an instinctive level was a good thing: He wanted to be free of what was. She dwelled there in the past, slithering though the banished memories, taunting, bleeding poison, leaving only shadow in her wake. It was the only place she could hurt him now.

He recalled Cheriton’s last terrified thoughts. The pleading.

Not relevant. A definitive conclusion that gave him a great deal of confidence in himself. I’m still here, still me.

The warrior Raiel ship was matching course with Mellanie’s Redemption now. Ten light-years ahead was the fringe of the Wall stars, the closely packed multitude of globular clusters throwing out a screen of blazing light that blocked any glimpse of the Gulf beyond and the true dark core of the galaxy.

“What now?” Troblum asked.

His remaining passengers appeared uncertain. Oscar and his Knights Guardian team had gone into suspension, though Corrie-Lyn refused to leave Inigo, and as Aaron suspected, the Raiel might need proof from the original Dreamer. That left five of them still awake and moving around, which, even with the medical capsules all installed in the forward cargo hold, still made for cramped conditions. It didn’t bother Aaron, but he could see how the others were getting agitated. Troblum’s nonexistent personality didn’t help, and as for the amount the big man ate at every meal …

“They haven’t blown us to shit yet,” Aaron said. “That’s got to be good. So we’ll ask them if they’ll let us go through the Wall and into the Void.”

“What are you going to say to them?” Corrie-Lyn asked. The presence of the warrior Raiel was having quite an effect on her. The tentative relief she’d shown after they came through the wormhole had shrunk away as soon as the warship had rendezvoused with them.

Aaron ignored her. “Inigo, Araminta, I think this one’s for you.”

The two Dreamers exchanged a what-the-hell look.

Araminta-two sighed. “I’ll do it.”

Aaron opened his gaiamotes to sense the Second Dreamer reaching for the giant warship. Riding passively in conjunction with Araminta’s thoughts was making him aware of whole aspects of the gaiafield he’d never known before. There was certainly some kind of consciousness registering out there, and it was not a human one. It was too composed for that. He also felt the first direct touch with the Skylord, which sent a chill firing along his nerves. So close now.

“We are the human Dreamers,” Araminta-two told the Raiel.

“Yes. You are two Dreamers. The third of your kind is a long way from here. And part of you is elsewhere.”

“That’s correct,” Araminta said, mildly surprised by the summary. “We seek to travel into the Void. We believe we may be able to prevent the final devourment phase.”

“We know this. Qatux has spoken with us. You may pass through.”

“I thank you.”

“You understand that the ships which you also lead will be intercepted.”

“Yes. I understand this.”

“If we succeed, then millions of your kind will be destroyed. Why do you not cease to appease them?”

“It is not that simple. However, I believe in what we are doing. I believe this will resolve the threat which the Void holds over this galaxy without any loss of life.”

“As you wish.”

“I would ask one other thing. There is an entity called Ilanthe traveling with the Pilgrimage fleet whose nature is uncertain. If there is any way it can be prevented from reaching the Void, I would urge you to implement it.”

“We are aware of Ilanthe. We remain vigilant for it.”

“Thank you.”

The warrior Raiel ship slid away.

“It’s fast,” Troblum said admiringly. “Faster than we are. I wonder what kind of drive theory they have.”

Inigo put his hand on the big man’s shoulder. “When this is over, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to give you a full tour.”

Troblum’s face produced a grimaced smile. He clearly wanted to wrench himself away from the hand.

An awkward Inigo quickly snatched it back. His thoughts were apologetic even though he said nothing.

Corrie-Lyn gave Aaron a shrewd look. “So now do you know what happens in the Void?”

He grinned back as annoyingly as he could. “We’re not there yet.”

“We will be soon,” Araminta-two said. “And the Skylord knows that.”

Oscar and the Knights Guardian were brought out of suspension for the passage itself. The cabin once again was crammed with too many people, but this time it wasn’t so bad. This time everyone was jokey and excited, eager to see what lay outside the fuselage, eager to be inside the obdurate, mysterious boundary.

The Mellanie’s Redemption was slowing as it approached the black wall. It dropped out of hyperspace fifteen light-years away, the same distance the Silverbird had been when the distended cone opened for it.

Radiation alerts sprang up in everyone’s exovision. Far behind them the loop burned a dangerous burgundy as high-energy photons smashed relentlessly through the clouds of dark mass swirling through the plane of the Gulf. All around the starship streaks of irradiated matter swarmed in toward the boundary like a particulate ocean with a solitary eternal tide.

Araminta-two actually looked nervous even though he was in constant contact with the Skylord. Still entwined with the Second Dreamer’s thoughts, Aaron could sense the great creature’s interest and expectation growing.

“Remember to ask it to pull us through somewhere close to Querencia,” Tomansio said. “We don’t want a forty-year voyage like Justine.” He didn’t actually give the cabin a pointed look, but everyone knew his opinion of the starship’s reliability. Perhaps it was the proximity of the Void, but they were now sharing quite intimately.

Araminta-two gave him a tight nod, then spoke to the Skylord. “We are here. Please call to the nucleus; please urge it to bring us into your universe so we may achieve fulfillment.”

“I have waited so long for this moment,” the Skylord said.

“When we come, we need to be near the solid world where humans lived.”

“There were several such worlds,” the Skylord replied.

Inigo gave Araminta-two a shocked look as her concentration faltered briefly.

“Shit,” Tomansio muttered.

“I thought there was only one,” Oscar said out loud.

“There’s more than one?” an incredulous Corrie-Lyn said. “How many were there?”

“It took Justine to Querencia,” Aaron said urgently. “Be specific.”

“What did she ask—” Araminta-two shook his head irritably and concentrated again. “The world we seek is the one where a member of our species is already waiting for us. She arrived recently. It has a city there, a city that did not arise within the Void.”

“I know the world you seek,” the Skylord replied.

“I hope it does,” Troblum said. “Because it’s starting.”

“Will you be there?” Araminta-two asked. “I need you there to guide me. Without your help I will never reach fulfillment.”

“I come,” the Skylord promised.

Hysradar showed them the surface of the boundary expanding at hyperluminal speed, a great protrusion heading up directly for the starship. Just like the planetary FTL wormhole but on an unimaginably vast scale. They watched in silence as the smooth crown opened. Once again the glorious undulating nebula light shone out into the wretched desolation of the Gulf, casting a single beam of elegant luminosity across the Mellanie’s Redemption.

The starship accelerated forward eagerly, passing through the small aperture. Behind it, the boundary closed again, shutting off the pale light. The pinnacle sank down again, merging back into the featureless surface of infinite darkness.

“So where are we?” Aaron demanded. The starship’s visual sensors were working perfectly, showing stars and nebulae all around. There was no sign of the boundary.

“Working on that,” Troblum said. He was sweating profusely.

“Well, whadda you know,” Tomansio said. A cup of tea was floating in midair, ten centimeters from his outstretched fingers. It lifted a little, then wiggled from side to side. He grinned wildly. His mind was radiating smugness and satisfaction for all of them to perceive.

“Oh, crap,” Corrie-Lyn exclaimed. Her mind shimmered rapidly in everyone’s farsight, its surface luster dimming as she ponderously fought down the exuberant emotions, shielding them from psychic perception like a mother folding her arms protectively around a crying babe. Images and memories persisted in flashing out: Edeard scrambling to shield his own thoughts, the techniques he employed. After a short while the surface of her mind hardened to an impermeable screen from which nothing leaked, not a single emotion or memory or sensation.

There was a long minute while everyone struggled with the same technique with varying degrees of success. No one was surprised when the two Dreamers shielded themselves perfectly. But no matter how hard he tried, Oscar simply couldn’t contain his ebullient thoughts; the best he could achieve was to tone them down a bit. “This group’s Edeard,” he said ruefully. “He could never protect himself fully. Personally, I see it as a sign of superiority to the lot of you.”

Everyone allowed a glimmer of amusement to trickle out. Except Troblum. His shield was darker than most, and the thoughts below were convoluted. His emotions didn’t match anything familiar.

Aaron was satisfied with his own protection, though the others were giving him curious looks. Their emotions were hurriedly wrapped away from perception. “What?” he asked. His longtalk matched his voice in intensity.

“It’s like you’re at war,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Your thoughts are shining out, yet they make no sense because they have so many contrary facets. You are anger and conflict.”

He gave her his old concessionary grin. “But I still function.”

“So?” Tomansio asked, his inexorable curiosity infecting them all. “We’re in the Void. What next?”

“Makkathran,” Aaron said solemnly.

Tomansio let out a growl of frustration.

Araminta-two looked at something far beyond the cabin’s bulkheads. “It’s here,” he said in wonder.

Aaron’s farsight felt the Skylord approach, a benevolent concentration of thoughts that intimidated through sheer size. Somehow it seemed to negate worry, sharing satisfaction on a level that was impossible to refute.

“You are here,” it told Araminta-two.

“Part of me. The rest will follow as I bring those who seek fulfillment.”

“My kindred welcome you. They welcome those who are to join us here in the Void.”

“Makkathran,” Aaron whispered.

“Will you guide us to the world we spoke of before?”

“Yes.”

Aaron instinctively reached out to grab hold of something and steady himself. Mellanie’s Redemption was twisting around, gravity shifting in strange swelling motions. Exoimage relays from the fuselage cameras showed him the huge crystalline folds of the Skylord’s body rotating spryly against the flexing ribbon of violet phosphorescence that was the Buluku nebula. Then the stars ahead were brightening as the Skylord executed its temporal acceleration function, and the starship was flashing toward the hot blue light points at close to lightspeed. Behind them, the Void shifted down to a dull carmine.

Araminta-two inhaled sharply, his hand pressing flat on his chest.

“What’s wrong?” Oscar asked him.

“It’s very weird, like I’m being torn in two. You seem fast, yet I’m not slow, or part of me is. The Pilgrimage fleet is hardly moving until I concentrate on it. Arrrgh. Ozziedamn, this is so strange.”

“Temporal rate difference,” Troblum said. “You are conscious on both sides of the Void boundary, which means you’re living at two different speeds. It will be hard to reconcile.”

“You’d better go into suspension,” Tomansio said.

“No!”

The spike of alarm from Araminta-two’s mind was enough to still them all.

“Sorry, but no,” he said. “I—this body—has to live through this. If this me goes into suspension, that means it’ll be just her left; I’ll be out there all alone. If they come for me with those brain infiltrator things, I won’t have any refuge.”

Tomansio nodded in understanding. “How far are we from Querencia?” he asked Troblum.

“We’re heading for a star system about three light-months away,” Troblum said. “I guess it’s Querencia.”

“Three months. Well, I suppose it’s better than three years.”

“Or thirty,” Oscar said. He was leaking sympathy and concern.

Araminta-two fumbled for his hand. “Thank you, Oscar.”

Now embarrassment was added to the emotional blend he was betraying. “I think I’d better head straight back into suspension,” Oscar said. “Who else?”

“Us as well,” Tomansio said.

Inigo and Corrie-Lyn consulted on some unknown level. “We’ll sleep it out,” Inigo said. “There’s nothing for me to do until we reach Makkathran. Is there?”

“No,” Aaron confirmed. “How about you?” he asked Troblum.

“Me what?”

“Okay, then. That’s myself, Araminta-two, and Troblum staying up for the rest of the flight.”

“I’m sure you’ll all be very happy together,” Corrie-Lyn said. Her mental shield allowed no feeling to show through.

It didn’t matter, Aaron knew how much she was laughing inside.

Everyone in the Commonwealth was desperate to know what the hell that confrontation between Araminta and Ethan had been about. She was many? Like a multiple? But she wasn’t. So was she referring to the other Dreamers? She claimed to be with Inigo. And why had he chosen now to release the Last Dream? Had Araminta asked him to?

Nobody knew. And for all her apparent devotion to Living Dream, Araminta resolutely refused to enlighten her desperate followers back in the Commonwealth or her equally vociferous opponents. Strangely, Ethan gave nothing away, either.

So the Pilgrimage fleet flew on at fifty-six light-years an hour toward the Void for day after day with no change. It was apparent now that nothing could stop it apart from the warrior Raiel.

Or perhaps Justine and the Third Dreamer, some suggested. Gore certainly had some kind of idea. He, too, proved elusive.

They were odd days, those which marked the flight of the Pilgrimage fleet. The whole Commonwealth knew that if it was successful, that was the end of everything, that if they were lucky, the Heart would become aware of them and bring their stars and planets unharmed through the Void’s boundary as it swept out to engulf the galaxy. Devoid of ANA’s guidance, Higher worlds were turning their replicator systems to producing armadas of starships in preparation to flee the galaxy. On the Outer worlds, anyone lucky enough to own a starship was busy modifying it to make an intergalactic trip. The Greater Commonwealth government contingency was to have everyone update his or her secure memory store, which would then be carried by navy ships to whatever cluster of stars was selected to establish the New Commonwealth, a plan of action invoking the spirit of the New47 worlds of a millennium ago. Knowing your new self would be resurrected in an alien galaxy at some unknown time in the future wasn’t quite as reassuring as it should have been, not when that meant you’d have to watch your immediate doom smashing down out of the sky.

Odd days. And that was without the declaration of absolute war by the Ocisen Empire. Further threats of hostile action from eight of the sentient species the Commonwealth had contact with. Appeals for technological help and starships from another three races, including the Hancher.

Odd days confused even more when the High Angel reappeared back in Icalanise orbit and its human inhabitants started broadcasting their sojourn into a gas giant’s atmosphere, complete with the brief conflict they’d witnessed through the smog, a conflict High Angel refused to comment on.

Odd days in which those who had instigated the crisis in the first place started to falter. The followers of Living Dream left behind began to question their commitment in the light of the Last Dream to such an extent that the preparation for the second Pilgrimage fleet was openly challenged. A great many argued that the new ships would be better used for fleeing the expanding boundary rather than seeking refuge within, where their ultimate future was now less than certain.

Days that made not the slightest difference to those on the Pilgrimage fleet. Hour after hour they continued to drop relay stations as they went, providing a straight electronic channel back to Ellezelin and the unisphere as well as stretching the gaiafield contact across the galaxy.

Araminta saw only the scattering of turquoise glimmer points flowing past on the other side of the observation deck. Hysradar revealed the crowded band of globular clusters that constituted the Wall growing closer and closer. Then came the definitive quantum signature of FTL ships approaching from the center of the galaxy. Over fifty of them. Even that didn’t stir the Dreamer’s cool composure as she led her followers onward to their promised destiny.

Unisphere access to the sensor feeds rose sharply as the entire Greater Commonwealth sought to witness the outcome. Gaiamotes were opened wide to receive Araminta’s gifting.

The imagery and sensations ended without warning. Two hundred light-years behind the Pilgrimage fleet, eight relay stations failed simultaneously. Nobody knew what was happening.

Paula did. She was sitting in Qatux’s private chamber, watching a display similar to a holographic portal projection. The warrior Raiel had taken out Living Dream’s relays; now the main attack force was converging on the twelve giant ships.

Over the next nine hours eighteen gas giants were obliterated, their dying mass converted to exotic energy. Some resulted in omnidirectional distortion waves slicing through hyperspace. Others were subject to incredibly complex formatting architecture, producing coherent beams targeting specific Pilgrimage ships.

The Sol barrier force fields protecting the ships resisted every attack tactic, every weapon the warrior Raiel had. As well they might; they were the best it was possible to create. If anything, the Accelerators had improved the design they’d reverse engineered from the Dyson Alpha generator.

When the Pilgrimage fleet was halfway across the Gulf, the warrior Raiel withdrew, allowing it to continue unimpeded.

“I feel shame this day,” Qatux said.

“I feel anger,” Paula told him. She rubbed her hand across her face, unpleasantly weary from watching the aborted interception. “Did they find any trace of Ilanthe?”

“Regrettably not. If it is there, it is exceptionally well stealthed.”

“Crap! We know the ship that picked it up was equipped with high-level stealth. But I never expected it to elude your warrior class.”

“Even if they had detected the ship, there would be nothing they could do about it. The force fields the Accelerators built were flawless.”

“There’s nothing else left, then?”

“Our warships are abandoning the Gulf where they have patrolled for these past million years. Now there is only one option remaining: the containment.”

“What’s that?”

Qatux waved one of his two large tentacles at the glowing images that floated across the chamber. “See. It begins.”

Ever since their invasion armada had failed to defeat or even return from the Void, the Raiel had been preparing for what they regarded as the inevitable catastrophic expansion phase. The strategy was centered on the largest machines the Raiel ever constructed. Humans called them DF spheres, which they first encountered at Dyson Alpha generating the shield that imprisoned the entire Prime solar system. The second encounter was at Centurion Station, which indicated they had more than one function.

Once the Raiel had established their production facilities in a dozen star systems, the gas-giant-size spheres were distributed throughout the Wall. Over ten million of them had been made over the course of a hundred thousand years, of which only seven had ever been diverted to deal with other problems: Two were loaned to the Anomine, three loaned to species that faced similar difficulties, and two used to imprison stars that were going nova to protect nearby prestarflight civilizations that would have been eradicated by the radiation.

Now, courtesy of Qatux’s status, Paula was observing the overview of their activation. During the Void’s last brief expansion when Araminta had denied the Skylord, the DF spheres had all moved into a close orbit around the stars they were orbiting in preparation for their final phase. Now they began to exert colossal gravity fields, increasing the gravity gradient within their host stars, accelerating the fusion rate.

Throughout the Wall, supergiant stars started to brighten, chasing up through the spectrum to attain the blue-white pinnacle.

“Their raised power levels will be consumed by our defense systems to produce bands of dark force much like the force fields your Accelerators learned how to create,” Qatux explained. “They will link up into a bracelet and ultimately expand into a sphere which englobes the entire Gulf.”

“The containment,” Paula murmured in amazement. The Raiel had conceived a true marvel, an endeavor that until today she’d have said could only possibly belong to a postphysical. It almost made her feel sorry for the Raiel; to have devoted their entire race to such a feat meant they had nothing else. Their commitment to overcome the Void had imprisoned them as surely as if they were inside it.

After a few hours the glittering band of stars circling the chamber was showing a filigree of black lines multiplying along its inner edge, slowly coalescing into a wide bracelet.

“Will it hold the Void?” she asked as she watched the slow progress of the lines.

“We don’t know. We have never dared use it before. Our hope is that it can last long enough so the Void consumes all the mass left within the Gulf as it actualizes the reset dreams of everyone inside. Once its fuel is exhausted, it will collapse. If the Void is able to break through, the resultant surge may well be so fast as to overwhelm any starships seeking to leave the galaxy.”

“So if it works, everyone inside the Void will die?”

“And the galaxy will live.”

Justine Year Forty-five
Day Thirty-one

Justine woke as dawn sent gold-tinged sunlight streaming in through the bedroom’s big window. She groaned at the intrusion and rolled over in her sleeping bag. Underneath her, the spongy mattress rippled gently with the motion. Edeard had gotten that particular piece of furniture absolutely perfect, she thought drowsily. The thick beam of sunlight slid slowly across the floor, advancing inexorably toward her. She watched its progress idly, knowing she ought to be getting up. But early rising had never been her strongest personality trait. Those first thirty years living the East Coast party scene had established a habit that nearly a thousand subsequent years spent living in a meat body had never quite managed to break.

Eventually she unzipped the sleeping bag and stretched, yawning widely before finally rolling off the bed. It was a large bed, fusing seamlessly into the floor. But then it was a large bedroom, as was appropriate for the master and mistress of Sampalok.

Justine padded barefoot across the floor to the panoramic window and looked down on the district’s central square. The expanse was remarkably clean, something she’d noticed throughout her exploration of the city. Dirt and leaves certainly had started to pile up along the edges of buildings and in various clefts and narrow gaps, but it never got to the stage where weeds would take root. She supposed the city absorbed any large accumulation of muck. Back in Edeard’s time it was teams of genistar chimps that had cleaned up the rubbish produced by the human inhabitants.

As she watched the small fountains playing, she could see several animals slinking about around the edges of the square as they began their day’s foraging or hunting. She’d been right about the dogs; there were several nasty packs thriving in Makkathran. Native animals were nesting in the empty buildings. The city seemed to tolerate them.

Justine slipped on her denim shorts and a clean tangerine T-shirt, then went into the lounge she was using as her base. Most of her equipment was set up, including a simple camp chair the ship’s replicator had managed to produce after the landing during one of its infrequent functional periods. The one remaining chair in Makkathran, she told herself in amusement. She picked a quarter-liter self-heating coffee canister from the food stack and settled into the simple canvas and aluminum frame. The coffee started steaming half a minute after she pulled the tab, and she sipped appreciatively while she peeled the foil off a buttered almond croissant. There was jam, but she couldn’t be bothered to fetch that. The daily routine was a quick breakfast, a packed lunch, then in the evening she took the time to light the barbecue charcoal and cook herself something more elaborate, which helped pass the time. Despite the city’s pervasive orange light, she didn’t venture out at night.

After half an hour she began getting ready. A small backpack carried her food and waterproofs, along with some simple tools and a powerful torch. She hung a knife on her belt, along with the semiautomatic pistol and a spare magazine. Before she clipped the cattleprod on, she gave it a quick test, satisfied with the crackling spark that arced between the prongs. Along with the torch, it was one of the few electrical devices that worked reliably.

Ready to face the new day, Justine walked down the four flights of broad stairs to the entrance hall. The wooden doors of the arching doorway were long gone, having rotted away centuries ago. However, the decorative outside gates that closed across them remained. Their intricate gurkvine lattice must have been made from a very pure iron, Justine decided; rust was minimal, and most of the ornamental leaves were intact. They were robust enough to stop any large animal from getting in at night, one of the big contributing factors for choosing the Sampalok mansion.

She’d been curious why they were still in place. After all, every other human artifact attached to a wall was rejected and expelled after just a few years. But when she examined them in detail, she found the city’s substance had actually been fashioned into the thick hinge pins on which the gates hung. It had taken all of her telekinetic strength and some liberal applications of oil, but eventually she’d managed to prize the gates open.

Now the gates swung aside easily as her third hand pushed them. She walked into the square. The hot humid air constricted around her, bringing perspiration to her brow. It was midsummer, with a correspondingly intense sun sliding up over the city’s minarets and towers and domes. Justine put her sunglasses on as she sent her farsight searching around. There was nothing threatening nearby. A couple of fil-rats and some terrestrial cats scurried away. Seabirds circled overhead, their high-pitched calls echoing through the empty squares and alleys. She carefully closed the gates behind her and set off down one of the wide streets that led away from the square, heading for Mid Pool.

None of the signs were up on the walls anymore, and so it had taken her a while to fix the original names to various streets and alleys. She soon realized she’d never be able to name more than a fraction; not even the dreams had fully portrayed the sheer complexity and numbers of the passages and lanes and streets that made up Makkathran’s districts. The closest Inigo’s dreams had ever come to conveying the bewilderment of the urban maze she’d felt for the first couple of weeks after her landing was the day Edeard and Salrana arrived and walked through Ilongo and Tosella.

Now she strode along the twisting length of Zulmal Street, which would take her to the concourse around Mid Pool. The width of the street varied almost with every step. For the most part it had been shops here, she recalled. That fit in with the wide bulging windows on the ground floor of most buildings. There were no doors anymore. They had all vanished ages ago, as had all the interior fittings. At first she’d been curious about the general lack of debris, until she realized the city absorbed fragments that threatened to clog its drains and produce soil mounds where grass and moss could flourish. But as she wandered in and out of buildings, she found some remains. Metal items were the most prevalent. Most homes had some cutlery and the odd piece of jewelry scattered across the floor, the sole testimony to the inhabitants who had left them behind so long ago. It was the items of precious metal that held their shape best; the iron stoves that most households possessed were rusting and flaking down to unrecognizable sagging lumps. She’d also learned to be careful of the long, sharp fragments of crockery and glass lying about, making her glad her boots had thick soles. It was strange that these tarnished, almost unrecognizable trinkets were the only proof that an entire civilization of humans had once inhabited this world. If she wasn’t careful, melancholia could shade over into loneliness and apprehension. From there it was only a short step to true dread, the kind that would send her hurrying back to the Silverbird and suspension, assuming the medical cabinet would function adequately. The Void’s prohibition of technology seemed to be gaining ground against the little starship sitting in Golden Park; even the confluence nest had erratic days. She was fairly certain the only way she’d ever get back into space now would be to reset the Void once again to a time before she landed.

Just before Zulmal Street opened out onto the concourse, she stopped and looked at a building. It was one she’d passed a dozen times before as she came and went on her daily mission of exploration, but the relevance had never registered before. This was the bakery where Boyd had been murdered by a deranged vengeful Mirayse. Justine’s farsight expanded into the shop, finding nothing in the front rooms. But in the back she could just perceive a mound of decaying metal that surely had to be the old baker’s ovens.

Edeard, of course, had perceived Boyd’s soul lingering after his death. She could sense nothing like that, although the whole memory now made her cold. It was so much easier to sneer at and scorn the foolish simplicity of Living Dream’s icons from the intellectual sanctuary of ANA than to actually stand amid the movement’s sacred heart, experiencing its reality for herself. Just looking at the ancient shop’s open doorway, she finally understood why Inigo had decreed the construction of Makkathran2. It was the ultimate act of worship and devotion. This alien city was the embodiment of Edeard’s triumph; a foreigner from some rural province had come here and given the citizens a hope they’d never known they’d lost and with that inspired billions he never knew existed. All her lofty rationalized disdain could never weaken his phenomenal accomplishment. Here, tracing his footsteps in a very literal sense, she knew how small she was in comparison, on so many levels.

When she finally arrived at the concourse, she’d recovered some self-esteem, but that moment of self-realization had left her more aware of her loneliness than she’d been since she’d arrived in the Void.

Come on, Dad, where are you? Whatever you’re waiting for must have happened by now, surely.

Up until the last few days she’d managed to keep herself busy enough: setting up camp in the Sampalok mansion, exploring the rest of the city, testing out and developing her psychic abilities. All that had kept her occupied well enough as she ventured into the truly significant places: the Culverit ziggurat, the Orchard Palace with its fabulous ceilings with their astronomical images, the Jeavons constable station, and of course the House of Blue Petals—weirdly, an anticlimax now that it had cast off its signature bar and doors and thick drapes; without such rigging it seemed to lack substance. Even the grand Lillylight Opera House had been a disappointment. With the private boxes of the Grand Families no longer cluttering the tiered ledges of the massive amphitheater, it lacked the character she’d witnessed in the dreams, though she was impressed by the domed ceiling with its white and violet stalactites. Sadly, she didn’t quite possess enough courage to sing when she stood beneath them on the stage.

But now her interest in visiting the plethora of locations and buildings of significance to Living Dream was waning. All she seemed to be doing was reinforcing the core of Living Dream beliefs by her display of reverence and excitement.

I need to find something relevant to me.

The surface of the Great Major Canal was clotted with various green and purple puffweeds and fronds of the aquatic plants that flourished there. They shivered occasionally as a fil-rat slithered through them, but other than that the whole length of the canal remained perfectly still. Only the center of Mid Pool was clear, showing the dark water that moved with a smooth slow flow as the Lyot Sea’s modest breakers washed in and out of the Port district.

Justine had often considered building some kind of boat or raft to sail along the canals. With her tools and third hand it wouldn’t be that difficult, and it would at least keep her occupied.

She wondered if Rah and the Lady had felt this peculiar sense of expectancy when they first entered Makkathran. Something in human nature just called out to occupy and use the empty city.

The boat idea was a good one, she thought, both therapeutic and practical. However, it overlooked the fact she’d never done any manual work in her life and didn’t know the first thing about carpentry.

Maybe tomorrow.

She went over the flat pink bridge across Trade Route Canal and into the tip of Pholas Park. From there she had to walk along Lilac Canal for several minutes until she came to a blue humpback bridge into Fiacre. The human bridges of metal and wood must have been the first artifacts to disappear after their builders left. Now she had to use the city’s own crossings. Her one attempt to do a Waterwalker and stabilize the surface of a canal with telekinesis hadn’t been enormously successful. How they must have laughed at that dunking back in the Commonwealth. Assuming Dad’s still dreaming all of this for them.

As she carried on parallel with Great Major Canal, her farsight probed through the city substance below her feet, showing it as a thick shadow of brown-gray, almost completely featureless. She didn’t have anything like Edeard’s perception range, but she had been able to glimpse the tunnels below the canals, which was a moment of extreme pride, even though they appeared like a particularly low-quality exovision display. Then, when she added a biononic field function scan to the wavering specter, she was also aware of the faint fissures even farther beneath her feet that represented the travel tunnels.

But that was definitely her limit. There was no way she could sense the city’s slumbering mind so far underneath, let alone wake it. She wondered if the Silverbird’s neutron laser could cut down into a travel tunnel for her and, if it did, what Makkathran’s response would be. Field function scans had confirmed that the city’s orange lighting was all electrically powered. That evidence of a technological base convinced her that the travel tunnels could take her a great deal closer to the controlling core of the city, whatever the city actually was.

Again, that would be a project for another day. If I just knew how long it’s going to be before someone arrives. Surely the Pilgrimage fleet must be on its way by now. That must be what Dad was expecting when he told me to come here.

Most of the buildings in Fiacre were covered in vines and creepers growing out of the deep troughs that lined the streets. Without anyone tending them, they now simply swamped the structures they were supposed to complement, sealing up the entranceways and cloaking the windows. Some of the narrower alleys were impassable tangles of dense vegetation, and even the wider streets were difficult to walk down. Fortunately, the path along the side of the Great Major Canal was relatively clear.

The open bridge over Grove Canal was so smooth that it verged on slippery, and that was with the rugged soles of her boots. She vaguely recalled it had a rope rail and wooden slats pinned on back in Edeard’s time. But she edged across it without falling into the water below. Then she was in Eyrie. The tall towers did have a distant kinship with human Gothic design, though no one on Earth had ever built anything quite so crooked as these. She walked though the broad thoroughfares between them, tipping her head back to try to glimpse the spires that formed a crown around each apex. The angle was all wrong, but she wasn’t going to climb up one to gain a view from the platform at the top, not today.

It was late morning by the time she arrived at the Lady’s church. “Cathedral” would be more accurate, she thought. The large central dome with its crystal summit radiated three long wings outward, each with five levels of balconies held apart by slim fluted pillars.

The doors had gone, as had all the pews. Justine walked in, feeling more nervous than she usually did when she scouted the famous buildings. Sunlight shone down vertically through the huge transparent center of the dome, creating a bright haze over the silver-white floor. Several default genistars gave her a curious look before shuffling away down one of the broad side cloisters where they were nesting. There were no sculpted genistars left, of course. Creating ge-chimps or maybe ge-hounds was another possible occupation for her, though the high probability that she’d mess up the sculpting made her squeamish. Even Master Akeem at the height of his ability had a regular quota of failures.

She thought she could see something moving on the other side of the bright shaft of light filling the center of the church. Farsight and retinal zoom functions found nothing, but she was uncertain. Something about the church was unnerving her, like a deep harmonic that she couldn’t quite hear.

Stupid. Come on, girl. Pull yourself together.

She marched straight through the intense splash of light. The giant white marble statue of the Lady had survived, standing alone where the altar once had rested. One of the cloisters opened up behind it, and again she thought there was some movement in the shadows. Goose bumps were rising along her arms. She moved forward, more cautiously this time. Her third hand pulled gingerly at the secure flap on top of her holster. Just in case …

She moved into the relative gloom of the cloister, allowing her retinas to adjust. Farsight showed her there was nothing but empty air. Then her father stepped out from behind a pillar twenty meters away.

Justine let out a small sob of relief and took one step forward before freezing. A big alien had emerged beside him.

“Dad?”

“Hello, darling. Glad you made it here. Not that I was getting worried, but …”

He smiled his half smile, the one that was so familiar and welcome that she just wanted to rush over and hug him. However—“Is that an Anomine?”

“Yep. Meet Tyzak. He’s slowly showing an interest in our story.”

The Anomine twittered away in its high-pitched voice.

“He says he’s pleased to see you,” Gore translated.

Justine sighed. “And here I was just starting to think everything was making sense.”

“Trust me. You’re doing fine. That was a good landing, by the way. Nicely judged.”

“What’s happening, Dad? Why am I here?”

“You’re my link into the Void. And that makes you critical. People are on their way.”

“The Pilgrimage fleet?”

“Yeah; they made it past the warrior Raiel. But there’s someone else, too. That’s important, Justine. They should arrive before the fleet. They may even be in the Void already.”

“Okay,” she said uncertainly. “Who?”

“The other Dreamers.”

“You’re kidding?” That made little sense. “Really?”

“Yeah. An old contact told me they got ahead or at least made it to the boundary. I don’t know anything more. But if they made it through, they’ll head for Makkathran.”

“Why, though? Why them?”

“Because they’re what I need in place along with you.”

“All right, Dad, I’ll watch for them.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you got any idea of time scale?”

“Not really. I’m sorry, darling; you’ll just have to sit it out.”

“Do I need to get anything ready?”

“No. Just survive, however long it takes.”

“I was thinking I might try and communicate with the city mind. Drill down into the deep tunnels or something,” she said with a hopeful tone.

“No point.”

“Can’t you tell me anything?”

“I will, I promise. But I’m contending with a small local problem that might become unpleasantly physical if I show my hand too soon. And I should warn you that Ilanthe is with the Pilgrimage fleet.”

“Ha! That bitch. I’ll sort her out if she tries anything with me.”

Gore’s golden features reflected anxiety. “No, you won’t, darling. She’s not what she used to be. She’s taken on a different aspect which might be trouble, a lot of trouble. Even the Silfen are worried about her and what she’s doing.”

“Oh. Okay.” Justine didn’t like the sound of that at all. It took a great deal for Gore to show caution.

“I love you, darling.”

“Dad. Be careful, please.”

“My middle name.”

“I thought that was ‘Bulldozer.’ ”

“I hyphenate a lot these days. Sign of the times.” He raised his arm and gradually turned translucent. After a while he was gone altogether, and Tyzak with him.

Justine stared at the space where they’d been, then shook her head as if coming out of a trance. “Oh, crap.” She tried to press down on the sensation of anxiety without any real success. But at least he’d given her a clear objective. Stay alive. “Nice to know,” she muttered. Not understanding came hard to Justine; it showed an alarming lack of control, and that just didn’t sit right at all.

Justine turned and walked back out into the cavernous central section of the church. If she was going to be staying in Makkathran for any serious length of time, there were practical aspects she’d have to work out, not to mention contingencies should the Silverbird’s systems eventually fail. Food was the primary long-term requirement. She was sure there had been some sheep and goats roaming around on the Iguru, and seven days ago she’d actually glimpsed what looked like chickens on Low Moat. There must be seeds she could cultivate, too. The Grand Families all had kitchen gardens in their mansions; the plants must have survived in some form. And fishing … She grinned. Fishing would be easy with a third hand.

It wouldn’t be easy, but she could survive. After all, the city must have been in a similar unkempt state when Rah and the Lady arrived. Justine smiled up at the Lady’s face high above her. “And look what you did with the place,” she told the statue. The Lady gazed down with her unchanging somber expression. Justine’s smile began to fade. There was something about those features now that she could study them closely—after all, Edeard hadn’t been a particularly regular visitor to the church. She had to dig deep amid memories she hadn’t realized her body had retained, but there were connections sparking away in her subconscious. “No,” she whispered in shock. This Lady as captured by the sculptor was a lot older than the time Justine had met her, and she’d had very different hair back then, not to mention figure. “Oh, no.” Justine’s eyes began to water as the sheer emotional power of recognition engulfed her. “It is, isn’t it?” Her shoulders started to shake, and she giggled. “It is you. Holy crap, it’s really you!” Giggles gave way to hysterical laughter; she actually had to hug her belly it hurt so much. She couldn’t stop. This was the Lady, venerated and worshipped by two separate civilizations. The epitome of dignity and grace. “YES!” she yelled out, and punched the air. Then the joyful laughter made her double up again. She waved her hands helplessly, trying to wipe the tears away.

Well, what do you know, the universe has a sense of irony, after all.

The thin sleet of blue sparks cascading through hyperspace’s pseudofabric faded away as power was withdrawn from the ultradrive engines of the Lady’s Light, and the ship dropped back into spacetime. Blackness pressed in against the vast transparent wall at the front of the observation deck. Radiation from the glowing loop of interstellar detritus behind them struck the ordinary force field that was protecting them from the hostility of the Gulf, creating a disagreeable claret glow around the edges of the transparency. Araminta put on a pair of sunglasses and stared through the polarized lenses at the greater darkness four light-years ahead.

Ethan stood beside her, immaculate in his Cleric robes, leaking awe and expectation into the gaiafield. Taranse, Darraklan, and Rincenso waited loyally behind their Dreamer, also subdued at the sight of the barrier they had doubted they would ever witness for themselves.

“We’re here,” Araminta told the Skylord. “Ask the Heart to reach for us, please.”

It responded with a pulse of nearly human happiness.

Exoimage displays showed her the starship’s hysradar return. The Void boundary was rippling, distending upward at hyperluminal speed. Reaching for the Pilgrimage fleet. For her. Its summit opened.

A soft gale of nebula light swept over the twelve Pilgrimage ships.

Hysradar detected another ship emerging from stealth mode, tiny beside the waiting Goliaths but with an impenetrable force field.

“I wondered where you were,” Araminta said.

“You knew,” Ilanthe replied equitably.

Ethan’s delight chilled rapidly at the reminder of the cost of his victory. “What now?” he asked.

“We go in,” Araminta told him. “Together. Correct?”

“Correct,” Ilanthe said.

“Taranse,” Araminta said. “Take us through.”

He gave a dreamy nod. The Lady’s Light accelerated forward, with the other ships matching its course.

“My Lord,” Ethan’s mind cried, his thoughts amplified by the three confluence nests on board, then reinforced by those on the remainder of the fleet. “Please take us to the solid world which used to be inhabited by those of our species.”

Shit! Araminta shot him a furious glare. He returned a satisfied sneer. “Did you overlook that part of the request, Dreamer?” he asked mockingly.

Araminta watched the tortured red glare fade from the edge of the transparency as the glow of the nebulae strengthened. Somewhere behind them, the boundary was closing again. For the first time in days the infestation of nausea and confusion from living at two speeds abated. Her thoughts cleared.

“And your uniqueness would appear to be at an end,” Ethan continued. Araminta’s farsight showed her his thoughts, the malice that festered there, naked to taste as he slowly realized the abilities of the Void and recalled the techniques Edeard had applied. Farsight also showed her what he was hiding within the copious folds of his robe.

“True,” she said. “But that leaves us leading the real life of the Void.”

Ethan reached for the old-fashioned pistol he’d concealed. Araminta’s third hand picked him up and threw him across the observation chamber. He screamed as much from shock as from fright as he flew through the air, a cry that was cut off as he thudded face-first into the bulkhead. He crashed awkwardly to the floor, whimpering in pain from the broken bones. Blood was dripping from his mouth and nose.

“When Rah and the Lady came to Makkathran, they had only politics and brute force to enforce their rule,” Araminta said lightly as she walked toward Ethan, who was trying to scramble away. “How fitting that such gifts are also what we will be starting out with.”

Ethan went for a heartsqueeze. Araminta warded it off easily. She held out a hand, palm upward, raising it. Ethan was abruptly tugged off the floor. A finger beckoned. He was drawn toward her.

“You were right,” she said to Aaron. “I did need to practice. He’s a sneaky little shit.”

Taranse, Darraklan, and Rincenso were very still, all of them hurrying to establish their own mental shields lest the Dreamer should read their thoughts.

“You don’t believe,” Ethan hissed through bloody lips. “You never did.”

“But you believe in me, don’t you?” she urged huskily, recalling Tathal’s dreadful compulsive domination during the Twenty-sixth dream, applying the ability against the squirming mind before her. “It was me who brought you to the barrier. Me who called to the Skylord. Me who is bringing you to Querencia. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes,” Ethan gurgled.

“And you are grateful for such an act of selfless generosity, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“How could you do anything but love the person who made it possible to finally live the dream?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Do you love me, Ethan? Do you trust me?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Thank you, Ethan, from the bottom of my heart.” She lowered him carefully to the decking and smiled gently at her aghast audience. “The ex-Conservator seems to have tripped in all the excitement. Please take him to the sick bay.”

Taranse nodded nervously and knelt down to help Ethan. With Darraklan’s assistance, they managed to pull him up between them.

Because she could show no weakness, Araminta watched them with a passive smile. Over in the Mellanie’s Redemption, Araminta-two was puking his guts up at the atrocity he’d just committed.

“Dreamer, look,” Rincenso said in wonder. He was pointing at the front of the observation deck. On the other side of the transparent bulkhead, a flock of Skylords were approaching the pilgrimage fleet. For all she feared and resented the creatures, they looked glorious as they swam out of the sparse starscape.

As soon as the boundary closed behind them, Ilanthe ordered the ship to open its cargo bay doors. She could sense the abilities intrinsic to the Void’s fabric pervade the inversion core. What the animal humans of Querencia crudely described as farsight allowed her mind to examine the fabric directly, plotting the effect her own thoughts had on it, the alterations and reactions they propagated. The symbiosis was fascinating; already she’d learned more than she had from a century of remote analysis of Inigo’s stupid dreams. The Void’s quantum architecture was completely different from the universe outside. But it was tragically flawed, requiring extrinsic energy to sustain itself even in its base state. When the functions enfolded within its extraordinary intricate quantum fields were activated, the power levels they consumed were far greater than she’d expected.

“The doomsayers were right,” she told Neskia. “The pilgrimage animals would have wiped out the galaxy with their reset demands.”

“Will you prevent that?” Neskia asked.

Ilanthe regarded the concern swirling within her otherwise faithful operative’s mind with detached interest. Even a Higher as progressive and complex as Neskia was betrayed by residual animal emotion. “My success will render the question irrelevant.”

Ilanthe observed the flock of Skylords closing in. With their opalescent vacuum wings extended wide, the mountain-size creatures were expanding quickly across the thin scattering of stars as they accelerated toward the fleet. The lambent twisted strands of the nebulae were distorted through the weird lensing effect of the wings, causing them to flicker and shift like celestial flames. Ilanthe examined the true functionality of the wings, how they rooted down into the Void fabric, manipulating localized gravity and temporal flow. A process of propulsion so much more sophisticated than the crude “telekinetic” ability of manipulating mass location. Less energy-demanding, too, she noted approvingly.

When her thoughts tried to replicate the same interaction with the Void fabric, there was some aspect missing. Instead she simply wished herself elevating out into space, employing some of the technique Edeard’s descendant had employed in the Last Dream. The inversion core immediately flew clear of the ship. The method worked, which was gratifying, but it lacked the elegance and capability of the Skylords.

Ilanthe felt the perception of the Skylords concentrate on the inversion core, seeking understanding of what she was. Her thoughts established a perfect shield around the shell of the inversion core, blocking their probes.

“Greetings,” she told the closest Skylord neutrally, and began to accelerate toward it. Her own perception ability listened to Araminta and several others from the Pilgrimage fleet frantically warning the Skylords to be careful, claiming she was dangerous. Their responses were interesting, revealing their complete lack of rational intellect. They almost evaded the topic; certainly, they didn’t seem to comprehend the meaning behind the concepts. It wasn’t part of their world; therefore, their mental vocabulary didn’t accommodate it. Either they were artificial constructs designated by the nucleus with the specific task of gathering up mature minds, or they had once been fully sentient spaceborne entities who had de-evolved throughout the countless millennia since their imprisonment. With nothing new to experience inside the Void, no challenges to struggle with, their minds had atrophied down to instinct-based responses.

“I am fulfilled,” Ilanthe told the Skylord as she approached it. “Please take me to the Heart.”

“I do not know if you are fulfilled,” the Skylord responded. “You are closed to me. Open yourself.”

The tentative wisps of the colorful vacuum wings flowed around the inversion core as it glided in toward the Skylord’s glimmering crystalline body. Ilanthe could perceive the texture of its oddly distorted geometry, a kind of honeycomb of ordinary matter and something similar to an exotic force; the two were in constant flux, which bestowed that distinctive surface instability. The composition was intriguing. But despite its subtle complexity, the thoughts that animated it lacked potency. Her own determination, amplified by the neural pathways available within the inversion core, was a lot stronger. “I would be grateful if you would open yourself to me,” she told it.

“I withhold nothing.”

“Oh, but you do.” And she reached for the Skylord, inserting her hardened, purposeful thoughts amid its clean and simple routines. Lovingly entwining them. Taking hold.

“What are you doing?” the Skylord asked.

She suppressed the rising incomprehension, stilling its deep instincts to facilitate applications that would take it far from this place.

“Your intrusion is preventing me from functioning. Parts of me are failing. Withdraw yourself.”

“I am helping you to become so much more. Together we are synergistic,” she promised. “I will guide you to the pinnacle of fulfillment.” Then the feast began.

“I am ending,” the Skylord declared.

“Stop!” Araminta cried. “You’re killing it.”

“Have you learned nothing about the Void?” Ilanthe retorted.

Dark specters began to slither through the cheerful sparkles of the Skylord’s vacuum wings, proliferating and expanding. The tenuous cloud of molecules that formed the physical aspect of the wings burst apart, dark frosty motes dissipating through space like a black snowstorm. Now the dark flames were shivering across the intricate optical quivering of the Skylord’s surface, biting inward.

Everything it was poured across the gap to the inversion core, an extirpation that allowed the abilities and knowledge of its kind to flow into Ilanthe.

At that point she almost regretted no longer having a human face. How she would be smiling now. Engorged and enriched by the Skylord’s essence, her mastery of this strange continuum was rising toward absolute. Function manipulation began to integrate with her personality at an instinctive level. She heard the call of the nebulae, the transdimensional sink points of rationality twisting out through the Void’s quantum fields, keening for intelligence with the promise of escalation to something greater, as yet unglimpsed. They must lead to the paramount consciousness, she knew. The Heart itself. From that nucleus everything could be controlled.

Local space was awash with despair and revulsion at the Skylord’s demise. “You will thank me soon enough,” she informed the insignificant human minds. One was different from the rest. A small part of her acknowledged the Dreamer Araminta, whose thoughts stretched away somehow, a method that didn’t utilize the Void fabric. It wasn’t relevant.

Once more Ilanthe’s thoughts flowed into the pattern to manipulate the Void’s temporal and gravatonic functions, this time correctly. A wide area around the inversion core began to sparkle as the surrounding dust was caught up in the effect, drifting into chiaroscuro spirals. Ilanthe accelerated hard, simultaneously negating the temporal flow around the inversion core’s shell. The Pilgrimage fleet dwindled away to nothing in seconds as it achieved point nine lightspeed. Far ahead, the siren melody from the nebula that Querencia humans had named Odin’s Sea grew perceptibly stronger.

Araminta hadn’t moved throughout the atrocity. It had happened not ten kilometers directly ahead of the Lady’s Light, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She’d seen the Skylord’s vacuum wings dim to a frail gray travesty of their former grandeur, and then even that feeble light had been smothered. All the while her mind echoed with the Skylord’s pitiable incomprehension.

It was too much. Tears leaked out from behind her sunglasses. “I did this, I’m responsible, I brought that monster here.”

“No,” Aaron assured her. “You were manipulated by Ilanthe, as were all of us. You have no guilt.”

“But I do,” Araminta whispered.

“Dreamer,” Darraklan said earnestly. “This is not your fault. Ethan was the one who fell to that thing’s sweet promises. It subverted him. You are blameless. You simply fulfilled your destiny.”

Out beyond the observation deck, the remaining Skylords were slowly circling around the cold husk of their dead kindred. She could feel their mournful thoughts as they scoured space for its soul. But of course Ilanthe had absorbed every aspect, leaving nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” she told the distraught Skylords.

“It is gone,” came the chorus of grief. “Our kindred is gone. It did not go to the Heart. The other ended it. Why?”

“The other is unfulfilled and evil,” Araminta told them. “This is what we bring wherever we go.”

The Skylords recoiled.

“We need them,” Rincenso said in alarm. “Dreamer, please. The fleet needs guidance more than ever now.”

“It’s over,” she said brokenly. “Ethan was right: I don’t believe. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. Inigo will end this as he began it. At least I think that’s right.”

When Araminta-two looked at Aaron for confirmation, he shook his head angrily.

“What?” Araminta-two protested. “That’s the great and wonderful plan, isn’t it?”

“The fleet is not part of the plan,” Aaron said.

“I got it safely through the barrier. That’s it. That’s all I ever said I’d do.”

“Get the Skylords to help,” Aaron ordered. “Come on, don’t wilt on us now.”

“Help do what?” Araminta-two asked. “We’re almost at Querencia. Nothing else matters. You don’t need me now, and I never needed the fleet.”

“You talked about responsibility,” Aaron said. “Those millions of dumb Living Dream followers placed their lives in your hands.”

“Waiting in space isn’t going to hurt them. It won’t be long. After all, this is about to end.”

“And if it doesn’t end in our favor?”

From the other side of the cramped cabin of the Mellanie’s Redemption, Araminta-two gave him a curious glance. “You? You have doubts?”

“I’ve always known what I have to do even though I don’t know why. It’s comfortable that way.” His face twisted in anguish. “I’ve remembered too much of her now, and it’s eating me alive. Memories of night and desolation are breaking loose. She thrives on them. I have to unknow again. I have to be free; I have to be clean. That or death. I would welcome death at this point. You, Corrie-Lyn, Inigo, the others, you all claimed that I needed to find myself, to be true to me. I don’t. I cannot be. I need to be what I was granted in return for my new life. That is me. And none of you accept that.”

“But—”

“Things go wrong!” Aaron almost shouted.

It was the thing Araminta had feared ever since Corrie-Lyn had told her about Aaron’s nearly total collapse in mindspace. He was the one who’d brought them all together, who’d relentlessly pushed them into the Void because of some plan his masters had conceived. He knew what to do. Even though his faith in that task was totally artificial, it had swept them all along. And now here they were, almost within reach of whatever goal they had to attain, and he was falling apart because of his past and the doubts it was inflicting.

“I’ll talk to the Skylords,” Araminta-two said earnestly. “I’ll fix this. The pilgrimage fleet will land on Querencia. They’ll be safe.”

He nodded, grimacing. “Thank you.”

Darraklan was giving Araminta a curious look as agitation built amid his thoughts. She realized that some suggestion of Aaron might have escaped from her shield.

“Dreamer?” It was almost a plea. Like all of them, he’d invested everything he had in her.

“It’s all right,” Araminta said, and held out her hand for him to touch. “I will talk to the Skylords. I will get us to Makkathran.” She faced the front of the observation deck again, focusing on the bereaved Skylords. “We seek fulfillment,” she told them calmly. “We seek guidance.”

Everything was calm. That wasn’t good.

The Delivery Man wanted some kind of evidence of the unimaginable nuclear hell that raged barely twenty meters from where he was sitting in the Last Throw’s cabin.

“This is really disturbing you, isn’t it?” Gore said over the TD channel. “Your emotions are hyping up the gaiafield. Why don’t you play some soothing music.”

“FUCK OFF.”

And still the Last Throw remained perfectly still. The Delivery Man desperately needed proof that he was actually descending through the photosphere of a midrange star, not that size truly mattered given the circumstances. Some shaking would be nice. Maybe the odd creak of the stress structure. And heat. There really, really ought to be an unpleasant amount of heat in the cabin.

There wasn’t a chance of that. The super-reinforced force fields cocooning the starship would work or they wouldn’t. There was no little margin for error that he could get through by gritting his teeth and heroically enduring some hardship. For all the difference it would make, he could quite easily be taking a comforting spore shower or maybe a little snooze in his sleep compartment. Oh, yes, that’s really going to happen.

The Last Throw was navigating by hysradar alone. None of its other sensors would be of the slightest use. They couldn’t even protrude through the ultrasilver one-hundred-percent-reflective surface of the outermost force field. Nothing material could survive the photosphere plasma.

So … hysradar it was. The exovision display showed the macrohurricanes of the photosphere rampaging around him, particle gales so large and fearsome that their size actually made their surges and twists predictable. The smartcore could track and predict the impact vectors of the magnetosphere squalls and granulation eruptions braking around them, allowing the ingrav and regrav units to compensate, keeping them on course.

They were driving down vertically, forcing through the barrage of escaping plasma toward the siphon—now three thousand kilometers below Last Throw, submerged within the convection zone, where the temperature spiked up past two million degrees Celsius, with a density just over ten percent that of water. And life was going to get extremely dangerous, because as Gore had gleefully remarked, the photosphere was just the warm-up. The Delivery Man still didn’t know what to make of that sense of humor.

His one talisman was the Stardiver program, which had notched up some success over the centuries. Not that Stardiver probes were the most regular missions launched by the Greater Commonwealth Astronomical Agency. The hyperspace-spliced shielding perfected for them over eight hundred years hardly guaranteed success once the convection zone was entered.

The Delivery Man would have liked a few test flights first, each one dipping a little deeper, scientifically analyzing the results, seeing how the modified and expanded force field generators performed. Power consumption. Energy tolerance. Pressure resistance. Hyperspace shunts. But no …

“It either works or it doesn’t,” Gore had said. “There’s no halfway here.”

That didn’t mean one couldn’t be prudent. It wasn’t an argument the Delivery Man even bothered with. Besides, even he acknowledged that it wouldn’t do to pique the curiosity of the ship that had followed them. No Accelerator agent would ever permit any endeavor that might halt Ilanthe’s attempt to Fuse with the Void.

Two and a half thousand kilometers.

The Delivery Man had launched five hours after Justine’s last dream, and he hadn’t worked out what was so incredibly funny about the Lady’s statue. Gore—naturally!—had smirked and gone: “Well, who’d have guessed?” So they both knew who she was, some figure from ancient history, no doubt.

“How’s your infiltration going?” the Delivery Man asked.

“Everything’s in position,” Gore replied. “I won’t be starting the actual physical process until you’ve established command over the siphon.”

“What does Tyzak make of it all?”

“It’s just another sensor system to him.”

“We could maybe tell him the truth.”

“Sonny, we’re doing what we have to so we can protect our species—and his. He does what he has to do to guarantee his way of life. This is not a diplomatic negotiation so that we can find common ground. Both of us are genetically wired to be what we are. And right now there is no common purpose. That’s a fucking great shame, but it’s the way it is.”

“I know. I suppose I was hoping that meeting Justine might make him change his mind. If he could just understand what it is we’re all facing.”

“That’s the thing; he does understand. But that doesn’t mean he can change, not to the degree we need and certainly not in the time frame we have.”

“I know. Are you really not going to tell me who the Lady is?”

“It’s a complete irrelevance to this situation; besides, it keeps you distracted.”

“Yeah, right.” The Last Throw was now three hundred kilometers above the surface of the convection zone. Energy usage was growing as the drives fought to keep the ship stable against the monstrous tides of plasma streaking along the quivering flux lines. There was also the problem of the star’s own gravity. Five additional ingrav units had been included in the modification whose sole purpose was to negate that awesome crushing force. They were operating right at their maximum loading. If one of them glitched for even a second, he’d be squashed into a molecule-thick puddle of blood and flesh across the decking.

“Here it comes.” The Delivery Man braced himself as Last Throw approached the convection zone. There was no clean defining edge between the two. The photosphere simply grew hotter, with a corresponding shift in density.

The Last Throw’s ultradrive came on as the temperature rose from the relative cool of the photosphere shunting excess energy from the force fields away into hyperspace, a flow rate that was increasing at a nearly exponential rate. The Stardiver project engineers had soon learned that combining the force field energy dissipation function with an exotic component was the only way to deal with such extraordinary temperature loading.

“It’s holding,” the Delivery Man said in surprise as the starship began to descend through the convection zone. Now the biggest danger lay with the bubblelike granulations that bloomed thousands of kilometers across almost without warning and raced for the photosphere. One of the primary mission objectives for Stardiver probes was to study the factors that contributed to their gestation. Even now, with centuries of research and observation, that prediction was a very inexact science.

“Good man,” Gore replied levelly. “Keep it coming.”

“Right.” The Delivery Man was shaking now. He wiped a hand across his forehead, dismayed to find out how much sweat was forming there, then ordered his biononics to initiate an adrenaline suppressor. He had to keep a clear head, and fear was degrading his ability to think straight. Yeah, as if staying sober and alert is going to help. One flaw in a system, one dodgy component, a single poorly written line of code, and it would be over in microseconds. At least I’ll never know. Until I get re-lifed. Except I won’t get re-lifed because according to Gore, this is the galaxy’s last chance. Oh, shit. I miss the kids.

This time the moisture staining his cheeks wasn’t coming from his brow.

“So when do you think Inigo is going to get to Makkathran?” he asked to distract himself from death, which was surely going to hit at any moment. He was still amazed at Paula Myo calling to tell Gore that Inigo, a weird duo-multiple Araminta, and a team of her agents had somehow raced Troblum’s starship ahead of the Pilgrimage fleet.

“It really shouldn’t be long, son. You’ll be out of there and back with your girls before you know it.”

“Yeah, sure.” His one remaining satisfaction was knowing that he was doing something to help Lizzie and the girls. By contrast, it would have been awful to be stuck inside the Sol barrier with them, not knowing what was happening outside, whether there was any hope. Not much, but enough, he promised his family. Given the not so small miracle Gore had worked in getting Inigo to help, he’d convinced himself there was a chance. A very small one, but it was real. All he had to do now was rendezvous with the siphon.

It took another fifty minutes to maneuver through the macrosurges of the convection zone’s deathly environment before the fifty-kilometer circle of the siphon force field was directly underneath Last Throw. Hysradar showed the torrent of two-million-degree hydrogen streaming in through the rim. The Delivery Man guided the starship across the curving upper surface of the giant lens shape and then slowly down until it was nose-on to the edge.

“That’s the weak part,” Gore said. “Show me what you can do.”

The Last Throw eased forward until its force field actually touched the protective shield around the siphon. That was when the Delivery Man finally got to feel some physical aspect of the flight. A low thrumming reverberated through the cabin as the starship was caught between the force field and the plasma hurtling past. He could feel the decking vibrate and grinned weakly. Maybe tranquillity was preferable, after all.

Sensors could just manage to scan through the semipermeable segment of the force field it was pressed against. The smartcore began to probe what it could of the siphon’s quantum signature, tracing ghostly outlines of the gigantic generator sheltered inside the force field. The map of its structure built slowly. Eventually there was enough for the Delivery Man to begin the second stage.

The Last Throw activated several TD channels, which were directed with impressive accuracy at the siphon’s control network. Low-level connections were created, and a software analysis was initiated.

“It’s not the same kind of semisentient that controls the elevation mechanism,” the Delivery Man reported. “More like a distributed AI routine, although the parallels with Commonwealth genetic software are minimal.”

“Can it be hacked?”

“There are a lot of safeguards, including an external override which will have to be neutralized, but the smartcore says we have several infiltrator packages which should work.”

“Launch them.”

It’s Gore. That was the thought Oscar awoke to. The medical capsule’s cover withdrew, showing a blurred figure peering down at him in the cargo hold’s dim green-tinged light. Gore is expecting someone to join Justine, and that’s what Aaron was committed to. Gore is Aaron’s controller.

The face above him resolved into Araminta-two, whose mind was badly agitated.

“It’s Gore,” Oscar croaked. Suspension had left him with stiff muscles everywhere and an embarrassingly full bladder.

“What is?” Araminta-two asked.

“The person behind Aaron, or at least one of them.”

“Oh. You mean because he’s directing everyone to Makkathran? Yeah, I figured that one out a few months back. Even Aaron agreed.”

“Ah. Right. Need to pee.” Oscar levered himself upright on his elbows and nearly banged his head on the ceiling of the forward cargo hold. There wasn’t much room between the bulky medical cabinets. He saw that three of them were already empty.

I thought I was supposed to be first out. “Everything okay?”

“Just about,” Araminta-two answered with a whole load of glumness. Oscar gave him a good look; the Dreamer was wearing a baggy blue T-shirt and gray-green trousers that had a lot of spare fabric. For a moment Oscar thought he was dressing in Troblum’s old clothes before acknowledging the style was deliberately feminine. “What’s up? Have we arrived?”

“Our Skylord is decelerating us into Querencia orbit. Troblum has already detected the Silverbird’s beacon, so we know where Makkathran is. No need for observational orbits.”

“That’s good.” He really needed to pee.

“It’s been touch and go with Aaron,” Araminta-two blurted.

“Why?”

“His memories of the Cat are breaking through. He spends longer and longer asleep, wrestling with his nightmares. Yesterday he was only awake for five hours. And his body’s having some kind of psychosomatic reaction, I think enhanced by his psychic ability.”

“Oh, crap.” Oscar hunched down and made his way along the companionway to the main cabin. His u-shadow connected him to the smartcore, and an exoimage display showed him the planet ahead, expanding quite rapidly as they decelerated into orbit. “Seventy-three minutes out? And we spent three and a half months traveling. Not bad.” He made it into the cabin to find Inigo, Corrie-Lyn, and Tomansio waiting for him. “Gotta go.” He pointed urgently at the washroom cubicle. They all waved him on, offering sympathetic thoughts.

He was just sealing his fly when the deluge of senses hit him hard, foreign thoughts slicing clean through his basic mental shield, bringing vertiginous light, sensation, sound, taste, along with a primeval fear that numbed his hands as he tumbled down into someone else’s life.

It had been a fabulous holiday. When evening came, they’d taken one of the hundreds of tourist boats that nosed around the piers of Tridelta City and headed up the Dongara River for a night of partying and native spectacle. The planet’s native bioluminescent vegetation didn’t disappoint, glowing vividly against the dark skies. And the lounges on the boat provided a lot of wild fun, impressing even the most jaded passenger.

They disembarked at dawn and went back to their hotel on the top of the old Kinoki Tower three kilometers above the muddy waters of the rivers that shimmied around the city groynes. Daytime was spent eating, sleeping, and having furious sex. The Cat had no inhibitions, which was yet another reason he loved her so. Provocative and daring, she exhausted him and still wanted more, telling him what she expected his poor old flesh to perform.

“Let me have just one break.” He laughed, reaching for some of the chilled wine. But the bottle was lying on its side where it’d been kicked. He gave it a depressed stare and told his u-shadow to connect to—

The Cat rolled him onto his back and straddled him. A delightful victorious smile lit up her cute face. “Wrong answer,” she said, grinning. Her hand closed around his wrist, and the skin burned beneath her fingers. He screamed as the charred flesh welded itself onto the mattress. She gripped the other hand and seared that down, too. “Nobody denies me,” she told him.

He screamed again as she began on his ankles, spread-eagling him so he was held immobile by the stringy remains of his own smoldering flesh. Then her hands stroked nimbly along his chest. She stiffened her fingers and powered them down like a knife. Bones cracked, and blood welled up in deep punctures. “With your body gone, I will take your mind and finally your soul,” she promised. He screamed and screamed and twisted with all his strength to escape, prizing himself free—

“Shit!” Oscar juddered back, cracking the side of his head on the bulkhead of the tiny compartment. “Ow!” He pressed his hand to the rising bruise as biononics hurried to ease the damaged flesh. That was when he saw the red markings around his wrist. He stared at them in shock. They were an identical shape to the injury the Cat had inflicted on Aaron in the dream. “Bloody hell.” He stumbled out into the main cabin, holding up both arms incredulously to show his colleagues the sores.

“Yeah!” Tomansio said heartlessly. “You have to guard yourself against that. He got me half an hour ago. I just hope to Ozzie they’re not genuine memories.”

A muffled scream sounded across the cabin. Everyone looked at the sealed door of the sleeping cubicle where Aaron was brawling with his own mind. “Can’t we wake him up?” Oscar’s shield was as strong as he could make it, and he could still sense the nightmare flooding out of the sleeping man’s mind.

“Troblum and I tried that once,” Araminta-two said. “Won’t be doing that again. Thankfully, my third hand is stronger than his.” He gave a nervous smile. “Actually, Aaron was the one who’s been making me practice and develop my abilities.”

“We’re losing him,” Inigo said. “And if we lose him …”

“No,” Corrie-Lyn said. “We won’t lose him, not to her. Not before we reach Makkathran. He’s stronger than that. I know.”

“Yeah, but this?” Tomansio gestured at the sleeping cubicle.

“Less than two hours,” Corrie-Lyn said. “And we’ll be walking though Makkathran’s streets. His subconscious knows that.”

“His subconscious is the problem,” Oscar muttered dourly. “Where’s Troblum?”

“Where he’s been for most of the flight,” Araminta-two said archly. “In his sleeping cubicle.”

“Has he got problems, too?” It came out before Oscar really thought about what he was asking.

A mildly guilty flash of amusement shimmered across the cabin, a brief intimate connection shared by everyone equally.

“Okay,” Oscar said, desperate not to let any thoughts wander in the direction of the big man’s cubicle. “Why?”

“Wouldn’t like to guess, but his solido projector is in there with him.”

“Wow, this must have been a great trip for you.”

“Wonderful,” Araminta-two admitted. “Being on the Lady’s Light was just about preferable.”

“Did the Pilgrimage fleet make it through?”

“Yes. About a week ago. I had a spot of trouble with Ethan afterward, but that’s settled now.”

Oscar was curious, but instinct made him hold back from asking for details. “And Ilanthe?”

“Oh, yes, it’s here. It killed a Skylord and consumed its abilities.”

“Christ. So where is it now?”

“The other Skylords say it’s on its way to the Heart.”

Oscar almost wished they’d left him in suspension. “Let’s wake up the others,” he said.

Aaron emerged from his sleep cubicle just as Beckia was taken out of her medical cabinet. Oscar took one look at him and drew in a sharp breath. Aaron was in a bad way. His face looked as if he’d had some kind of capsule smash, with scars and bruising contaminating his skin. Eyes bloodshot.

“Good to see you,” Oscar lied.

Aaron gave him a sour glance. “Where’s Troblum?” Without waiting for an answer, he thumped his fist on Troblum’s door. Oscar saw that each fingernail was black and bleeding.

Troblum emerged, his mind spilling resentment into the cabin. He gave everyone a sullen glance and dropped his gaze to the decking like a censured teenager.

“Land us,” Aaron said. “Come on, we don’t have time for your personal crap; you need to focus on this. Justine encountered some difficulties on the way down.”

“I’m ready,” Troblum replied sullenly.

Acceleration couches rose up out of the floor.

“Talking of personal crap,” Tomansio said levelly. “Have you considered what you’ve been spilling into the Void?”

“What?” Aaron snapped.

“Well, let’s just hope your ex-girlfriend hasn’t been replicated like Kazimir was. I’d hate to bump into her down there.”

Oscar gripped the sides of his couch. The first amber warnings flickered into his exovision. Several systems were glitching. He wished they’d left him in suspension until they were down and this particular hell was over.

It was late afternoon in the Anomine city, and the air was already starting to cool. Gore pulled on a black cashmere sweater as he moved along the intrusion systems lying like a giant spiderweb across the plaza. The strands were sticky, glistening black in the rose-gold sun. His field function analysis of the individual strands was showing up few imperfections amid the long-chain molecules that were twined together around their active penetration filaments. Production quality had been high, which was impressive given that the replicator had never been designed with anything quite like this in mind.

He gave Tyzak an unobtrusive look. The big old Anomine was squatting on his hind legs on the other side of the plaza, close to Gore’s little camp. It still had no true idea of the web’s actual purpose.

I guess mistrust and suspicion are greater in humans than Anomine. Shame, but there you go, it gives us an edge. And yet … they went postphysical. Though not this variety. It’s almost as if they bred two strains of themselves, the go-getters and the naive.

A theory as good as any. Somehow he couldn’t imagine Tyzak and his kind achieving postphysical status.

Maybe that’s true biological evolution. Achieve the pinnacle and decline back into peaceful extinction, irrelevant once your true achievement has elevated itself out of this universe. Perhaps spacetime has no other purpose than to be an embryo for sentience.

He tried to recall how many species the navy exploration ships had found that had backed away from the apex of science and intellect without achieving the leap to postphysical. The statistics eluded him, but he didn’t think there were many.

Something ripped noisily through the clean air above the city, bringing a wave of joy and relief. Tyzak hadn’t heard it; therefore—

Gore smiled contentedly to himself. He felt surprising calm for a mere meat body as his u-shadow opened a link to the Delivery Man. “How’s it going?”

“Well, amazingly, I’m still alive. No change up here. The incursion package is loaded. I’m just waiting for you to say go to activate it.”

“Go.”

“What?”

“Initiate the wormhole and start the siphon power-up sequence. We’re going to need that energy soon.”

“Oh, crap. Okay, I’ll try.”

“Thanks. For everything.” Gore closed his eyes, opened his mind, and watched the sky.

The sonic boom crashed across Makkathran without warning, sending the local birds wheeling through the sky, their wings pumping in alarm. Panicked animals across the city started an ugly bawling. Justine looked up and smiled widely in utter relief. She wanted Dad to know this, a wish that surged out of her, as strong as any Void-derived psychic ability. It took a moment, then she found the pure white contrail sketching a beautifully straight line high across the turquoise sky. The dark tip was already out across the Lyot Sea. It started to curve back around again.

“Finally!”

The starship vanished from sight behind the high wall surrounding the little courtyard garden at the back of the Sampalok mansion. Justine told the two ge-chimps to carry on raking the new section of the vegetable patch she was preparing. The funny little creatures swished the crude tools back and forth across the soil as she directed. Sculpting them had been one of the most satisfying moments she’d had in ages, even though the first had one arm longer than the other and the second seemed to have a hearing difficulty.

Justine hurried out into the central square and stood on the specific spot she’d been using for the last seven weeks. “Take me down,” she asked the city. The ground beneath her feet changed, and she fell through the city substance to the travel tunnel underneath. And that was the single most satisfying achievement just about ever. She still hadn’t talked to or even sensed the city’s primary mind, buried heaven only knew how many kilometers below the buildings and canals. But she had finally managed to impress her thoughts on the more simple routines that regulated the fundamental aspects of the city structure. Whatever Makkathran actually was, its management network was a homogenized one. Farsight had showed her that electricity powered the lights and some of the pump systems. Gravity was manipulated to make the travel tunnels work. All of that confirmed everyone’s original belief that the city had come from outside the Void. But it still didn’t tell her anything she wanted to know.

She descended into the dazzling illumination of the travel tunnel and pushed her sunglasses firmly back on her nose before asking the city to take her to Golden Park. Gravity began to shift, and she made sure she was leaning forward as it altered. She’d made the mistake of falling feetfirst once and didn’t want to repeat that. Flying headfirst, now, that was another matter. It was more exhilarating than Inigo’s dreams had ever conveyed. She punched her fists out in front and whooped joyously as she performed her first corkscrew roll.

Justine rose up into Golden Park beside one of the white pillars along the Outer Circle Canal. The melded domes of the Orchard Palace gleamed with a burnished sheen behind her as she waited. After all the weeks of anticipation, half convincing herself that she might have decades to wait, she was finally giving in to her body’s hormonal rush of anxiety as she watched the starship appear above the Port district. It was flying a lot slower now, though its wingtips were still trailing faint vapor trails across Makkathran’s cloudless sky. Wait—wings?

The starship circled around over Ysidro district and began a steep descent. It was suffering the same way Silverbird had, Justine decided. The flight wasn’t as stable or as slow as it ought to be; the Void was glitching its drive units. Once or twice she sucked down a sharp breath as it wobbled in the air. Then long landing struts popped out, and it dropped the last ten meters out of the sky to skid a way along the thick tangle of grass before coming to a halt not a hundred meters from the Silverbird.

A circular airlock opened in the starship’s midsection, and some old-fashioned aluminum stairs slid out. People trotted down, radiating a mixture of joy and disbelief that Justine’s farsight recognized easily. It was identical to her own.

There were nine of them standing together on the grass as she approached, a surprising number for a ship that size even if they’d used suspension. Then their farsights perceived her, and they turned to greet her as she jogged over.

Shouts of welcome reached her when she was still twenty meters away. Several were waving jubilantly. A couple of them even started to run toward her. They all seemed to be smiling wildly.

Not true, she corrected herself, and pushed her sunglasses up.

The big man standing at the back with a formidable shield around his thoughts—he wasn’t smiling. Nor was the one who looked as if he’d been in a bad street fight and lost. But the others were all genuinely happy to see her, which was good enough.

The one who was in the lead flung his arms wide and gave her an effusive hug. Something oddly familiar about his face—

“Justine Burnelli,” he exclaimed. “It’s been awhile.”

And that smile was so sinfully teasing, she couldn’t help but grin back. “Sorry. Who …?”

“We met at the Second Chance departure party,” he said wickedly. “Oscar Monroe, remember.”

“Oh. My. God. Oscar? Is that you? I thought you were still … I mean.” She shrugged awkwardly.

“Yeah, they let me out eighty years back. I didn’t make a fuss about it.”

“Good to see you, Oscar,” she said sincerely. “Gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Nobody does. I think that’s the point of being me these days.”

She laughed, then glanced over his shoulder at the others. “Inigo, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Inigo didn’t go for the whole hugging scene. He stuck his hand out formally. That was when Justine realized she might be slightly overdoing the whole Queen of the Wild City act. All she wore was boots, a small black bikini top, and some denim shorts with the cattle prod, a pistol, and a machete hanging off her belt. The sun had tanned her skin a deep honey brown at the same time it’d bleached her hair almost white, and that hadn’t been styled since she arrived; these days she just tied it back with some straps in a loose tail. Quite a change for someone who back at the start of the twenty-first century used to spend over a hundred thousand dollars a year on personal grooming, and that was before her clothes bill. All in all, she must’ve been quite a fright sight.

Slightly more self-consciously now, she allowed Oscar to introduce everyone else. Araminta-two—two!—was interesting, the Knights Guardian were about what she expected, Troblum she didn’t know what to make of, Corrie-Lyn she took an instant mild dislike to, and Aaron just plain scared her. She wasn’t alone in that, judging by the way everyone else reacted to him.

“All right,” Corrie-Lyn said to Aaron. “We made it. We’re here. Now for the love of the Lady, will you tell us why we’re here?”

Justine was expecting Aaron to smile wisely at least, as any normal human would. Instead he turned his bruised eyes to Inigo. “We’re here so that you can bring Him forth,” he said hoarsely.

“What?” a startled Inigo asked. “Oh, sweet Lady! You are joking.”

“No. He’s the only one who can help us now. And you’re the one who has his true memory; you are connected with him. Especially here. You can reach into the Void’s memory layer where he was. You don’t even have to reset the Void anymore, which was the original intention. We know that now; Justine showed us this with Kazimir.”

Corrie-Lyn went to Inigo and took both of his hands in hers. “Do it,” she whispered fiercely.

“The Waterwalker is gone,” Inigo said with infinite sorrow. “He is a dream now. Nothing more.”

“You can bring him back,” Aaron said. “You have to.”

—to land on the ground at the foot of the Eyrie tower. His ankles gave way, and he stumbled, falling forward. Strong third hands reached out to steady him. But there was no crowd as there always was, as there should have been. No family. No Kristabel.

“Honious! I am wrong,” Edeard stammered miserably. In his haste to escape the horror of the hospital in Half Bracelet Lane, he had somehow misjudged the twisting passage through the Void’s memory and finished up … He looked at the small group of people staring at him; they were dressed so strangely—yet not. His farsight swept out. Finitan was not atop the tower. He scoured the buildings in Haxpen and Fiacre to find them empty. The city was silent, devoid of its eternal telepathic chatter. He couldn’t sense a single mind anywhere save the nine directly in front of him. “No!” He spun around to face the ziggurat, farsight frantically probing every room on the tenth floor. They were empty of people, furniture …

“Where are they?” he bellowed. “Where is my family? Kristabel!” His third hand drew back, ready to strike instantly.

One of the peculiar group walked forward, his thoughts calm, welcoming, reassuring. A tall man with a handsome face—a known face, though it was darker than it had been before, and the hair was brown instead of light ginger as it ought to be. Such trivia was irrelevant, for this was a face that could not possibly be here, not in the real world.

Edeard’s third hand withered away. “No,” he whispered. “This cannot be. You are a dream.”

The man smiled. There were tears in his eyes. “As are you.”

“Inigo?”

“Edeard!”

“My brother.” They embraced, Edeard hugging the man as if his life depended on it. Inigo was the only thing that made sense in the world right now; he was the anchor. “Hold me,” Edeard begged. “Do not let me go. The world is falling apart.”

“It’s not, I promise. I am here to get you through this.”

Edeard’s thoughts were awhirl, panicked, dazed. “The life you lived,” he choked out.

“Nothing compared to yours,” Inigo assured him.

“But … those worlds you showed me, the wonders that dwell there. It’s all real?”

“Yes. It’s all real. That is the universe outside the Void. The place where the ships that brought Rah and the Lady came from.”

“Oh, dear Lady.”

“I know this is a shock. I’m sorry for that. There is no way I could have warned you.”

Edeard nodded slowly and moved back to gaze incredulously at the one person he’d believed was forever beyond reach. “I thought you were someone the Lady had sent to comfort me as I slept. You showed me what kind of life could be built if only we tried. And I have tried so hard—” His voice broke. He was close to weeping.

“You did more than that, Waterwalker, so much more,” a young woman said. She had dark red hair and a pretty freckled face, and she looked at him so worshipfully, he was astounded. “You succeeded.”

Edeard glanced shamefacedly at Inigo. “You know what I have done, what I am fleeing from.”

“We all know your life. That is why we are here.”

“You can help me? Is that why you have come?”

“You don’t need our help,” Inigo said. “Your triumph was magnificent. Whole planets marvel at your achievements here in Makkathran.”

“I don’t understand. I’ve screwed this up just as Owain and Buate and their ilk always claimed I would. I became what they were, Honious take me.”

“No, you didn’t,” the woman said earnestly. “Edeard, listen to me. After the unity attempt failed, your next effort to bring peace and fulfillment to Querencia worked. You never reset the Void again; you never needed to. You and Kristabel and your friends all accepted guidance to the Heart in old age. It was beautiful to behold.”

“You speak as if this has already happened.” Edeard gave the woman a curious look as some very uncomfortable thoughts began to gather in his mind.

“Edeard.” Inigo put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “We’ve only just arrived in the Void. In here time flows much quicker than it does outside. Which is why only a few hundred years have gone by out there compared to the millennia here. You are our past. I brought you out of the Void’s memory.”

“Are you saying I have already lived my life? All of my life?”

“Yes.”

“But …” His farsight swept out again, desperate to find anyone else. “Where is everybody? If I succeeded the way you claim, what happened to the people I tried to help? Their grandchildren should still be here. Did they desert the city?”

Inigo appeared embarrassed. “You created a society where it was possible for everyone to achieve fulfillment. Eventually, all the humans here accepted guidance. The last one left for the Heart several thousand years ago.”

“Gone?” He couldn’t believe it. “All of them gone? There were millions of us living on Querencia.”

“I know.”

“Why did you bring me back?” Edeard asked bitterly.

“We need your help.”

“Ha! Then Honious knows you picked the wrong man; Finitan is more worthy than me, or even Dinlay. And even if you had no choice, you should have brought back this future Edeard you spoke of, the one who is triumphant.”

“I chose you very carefully. You are exactly the Edeard I need.”

“Why?”

“Determination,” Inigo said simply. “This is the you who resolved never to let anything beat him no matter what. You, the you of this day, are the best Waterwalker there ever was. This is the moment your triumph was built upon.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Edeard said weakly.

“I’m truly sorry this was how we had to meet. But we really do need your help.”

“How? How in the Lady’s name can I possibly help people who have the power to travel between universes?” He was watching Inigo gathering himself to reply, when the really strange one with the battered face and tormented thoughts stepped forward.

“I am Aaron, and I have come here to ask you to take us to the Heart.”

Edeard almost laughed at him, but the man was in so much suffering and so fired up with desperation, he was clearly speaking the truth. “Why?”

“Because that has to be what controls the Void. I must speak with it, or Inigo must, or even you. Whichever of us it will listen to.”

“What would you say to it?”

“You’re killing us. Switch off.”

Inigo’s arm went around Edeard’s shoulder again. “This is going to take a while to explain,” he said gently.

The bright sun was well on its way to the western horizon, coating the edges of Eyrie’s towers in a familiar cerise haze. And yet not familiar, Edeard thought sadly. This Makkathran he found himself in was a sorrowful one indeed. The buildings were exactly as they should be—oh, but the rest of the districts and canals. It didn’t suffer decay—the fabulous city would never fall to that—but it had become shabby. Without its citizens, it was a poor specter of itself in its glory days. And there was so little left of the people who lived here, nothing more than blemished trinkets and stubborn dust. That they should have vanished with so little to show for their achievements was infinitely depressing. As was knowing he was forever separate from them all now. Though he supposed he could reset the Void once more, somehow he didn’t have the appetite to plunge back in to what had been. Besides, according to Corrie-Lyn, he had already won his life’s battle. And if he understood what his mind-brother Inigo was saying, he was responsible for unleashing devastation upon the true universe outside.

“More ships are coming?” he asked.

“Yes,” Inigo admitted. “My fault. I was besotted with your life.”

They were sitting on the steps outside the Lady’s central church, each of the visitors doing what he or she could to help him comprehend Inigo’s story of what was happening in the galaxy outside and what the Void actually was. It had taken hours.

“You showed people my life,” Edeard said, not quite accusing, but …

“I did. You never told anyone of mine.”

“They would have thought me mad, even Kristabel. Flying carriages. People who live forever. Hundreds of inhabited worlds. Machine servants instead of genistars. Cities where Makkathran would be naught but a small district. A civilization where justice was available to all. Aliens. More stars in the sky than it is possible to count. No, such marvels of my fevered imagination were best kept inside my skull. Except it wasn’t my imagination; it was all you.”

“I hope I was of some help, some comfort.”

“You were.” Edeard finally gathered the courage he’d so far lacked and asked the question: “This future I lived, the one where I finally achieved guidance to the Heart … was Burlal part of it?”

“No. I’m sorry, Edeard. He was only ever here that one time.”

“I see. Thank you for your honesty.”

“Waterwalker,” Aaron said. “Can you take us to the Heart, please.”

The edge in his voice, the way his raging thoughts threatened to burst out of his head—it made Edeard nervous. “I understand the need for the Void to be contained. If I could do so, I would.”

“There is a way to speak with it,” Aaron said through clenched teeth. “Once we get there, I know there is.”

“How?”

Aaron slammed his hands onto his face. Once, twice, three times. Blood trickled out of his nose where he’d hit it. “She won’t tell me!” he yelled furiously. “I can’t find it anymore.”

Edeard’s third hand gripped Aaron’s arms, forcing them down.

“This is my mission! I am the mission. I have an objective. I must be strong. She likes that. She loves me.”

Tomansio stood next to the stricken agent. “Hey, it’s okay.” He reached out. “We have two starships and the Waterwalker. We can take—”

Aaron’s muscles went slack, and Tomansio caught him as he pitched forward, unconscious.

“How did you do that?” Edeard asked.

“Very basic tranquilizer. Lucky our biononics are degraded here. Would have been quite a scrap otherwise.”

“I see.” Which he didn’t quite. But these warriors from the outside universe were formidable. And they had honor. Somehow he was reminded of Colonel Larose from the Makkathran militia.

“Now what?” Corrie-Lyn asked with a sigh. “Our pet psycho is going to go quantumbusting when he wakes up.”

“I’d hate to try a neural infiltration in this environment,” Tomansio said. “The first glitch and we’d probably rip his brain apart. Besides, I think the way his mind was reconfigured implies it was resistant to that kind of inquisition. The information is hidden in the subconscious.”

“We do have the two ships,” Oscar said. “And we know we have to fly to the Heart. Our problem is always going to be guidance.” He grinned at Edeard. “I guess that’s where you come in.”

“It comes down to fulfillment,” Inigo said. “If the Skylord believes Edeard to be fulfilled, it will guide him.”

“His soul,” Corrie-Lyn said sharply.

“We don’t know that,” Inigo said. “Humans have never been able to fly around inside the Void before. Maybe it’ll show a living body the way.”

“I’ll ask,” Araminta-two said.

His thoughts were gifted in a fashion Edeard was unaccustomed to; the clarity he was given exceeded any he’d known before. It was hard to throw off the sensation that he was actually in Araminta-two’s body, breathing together, feeling together. And there was the shadow perception distracting him, standing in a giant room of metal and glass, watching the nebulae outside. A flock of Skylords guiding the incredible starships. That mind’s perception shimmered underneath the connection Araminta had with the Skylord leading the fleet and its awareness of the Void.

“Do I have to abandon my body to be guided to the Heart?” she asked.

“You have to be fulfilled,” the Skylord replied lovingly. “Then I will guide you. Soon, I feel. Your mind is strong; you believe you know your way. You understand yourself. You lack only surety.”

“If I have that, if I gain what I need for fulfillment, would you take me, the living me, in this ship?”

“I would do that.”

Edeard shivered as the outlandish gifting ended. It was as if a gust of winter air had squalled around the church. He gave Araminta-two a curious look. “You can longtalk across the Void?” Such strength of mind was incredible.

“Not really. That was my other body. And as for the Skylord, we are joined as you and Inigo once were.”

“I see,” he lied. My other body! He’d said it so casually. How he wished for Macsen at this time—Macsen, who would make light of such confusion with a quip and a laugh, and the world would be right again.

“So now we find out if this Edeard is fulfilled,” Oscar said. “And if he is, you fly him to the Heart.”

“It would seem that way,” Inigo agreed.

“Not yet,” Justine said. She stood up. “This is too important for maybes. We need a very clear understanding of what we’re supposed to achieve here. Follow me.” And she walked up the steps toward the church’s open entrance.

Edeard observed everyone producing puzzled looks behind the blonde girl. A few shrugs were exchanged, but they all trooped dutifully after her. Justine’s tone had been commanding.

When they’d been introduced, Edeard had been dismissive of the sultry girl, weary, even. Because of her crude clothing and wild hair, she reminded him of the real bandits who lived in the wilds beyond Rulan province. But as the afternoon wore on, he’d revised his opinion. For a start, she was one of the Commonwealth eternals. She might look as if she was barely out of her teens, but he knew she was older than anyone who’d ever lived in Makkathran. And despite her lack of clothing, she had a dignity and poise that would’ve intimidated Mistress Florrel. He also strongly suspected she was tough enough to rip Ranalee to shreds in any kind of fight, fair or otherwise.

The air inside the church was cooler than outside. Seeing the interior bare apart from the big statue of the Lady was odd, emphasizing how cut off and alone he was now. A mere day ago in his own time he’d been Mayor, and the city bent to his will. These people meant well, he knew, but he couldn’t help the resentment at the way they’d summoned him out of his true life. If it had been anyone but Inigo—but then, only Inigo could do such a thing.

Stranger than the naked church was the golden man standing in the middle, waiting for them. He was visible only because of some strangely pervasive gifting from Justine that he couldn’t quite shield himself from, yet his farsight found nothing where the man stood, not at first. “A soul,” Edeard exclaimed when he intensified his perception.

“A dream, actually. I’m Gore. Pleased to finally meet you, Waterwalker. You’re a very impressive man.”

“Gore is the one who guided us all here,” Inigo explained lightly. “By various methods. Not all of them pleasant.”

“Just making sure you don’t run out on your responsibilities, sonny.”

“My father,” Justine said proudly.

“You need to keep Aaron under,” Gore told Tomansio. “His neural reconditioning was never going to be strong enough to withstand an encounter with the Cat. I wasn’t expecting that. Goddamn Ilanthe.”

“Lennox,” Tomansio said coldly. “His name is Lennox. One of our founders. As such, very important to all Knights Guardian. What have you done to him?”

“Exactly what he asked,” Gore said. “Christ knows what kind of number the Cat worked on him, but he was a nearly total basket case when my people recovered him. We erased what we could of that old personality, but the damage had seeped down into his subconscious. That can normally be suppressed, providing it doesn’t receive too many associative triggers. But as for an out-and-out cure, forget it. I did what I could. I patched him back up and sent him out doing what he loved, what he was born to do. He runs every dirty covert mission the Conservative Faction needs to keep the good old Greater Commonwealth on the straight and narrow. I’m not his boss; I’m his partner, for Christ’s sake.”

“Dad, the Heart?”

“Yeah, right.” Gore glanced around at all of them. “It’s a simple enough plan. Like Aaron said, you go in and engage the damn thing, reason with it. It has to be made to understand it’s committing galactic genocide.”

“That’s it?” Oscar asked.

“You got anything better?”

“Well … no.”

“Then that’s it. One minor upgrade. I’m coming with you. I might have found something to persuade it.”

“What?”

“A new beginning. But we’re going to have to be quick. Fuck knows what Ilanthe’s up to in there.”

“All right, Dad. The Skylord will guide Edeard’s body, assuming he’s fulfilled.”

“That was the original idea.” Gore shot a meaningful glance at Inigo. “We do need someone we know is fulfilled.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll take the Waterwalker and Inigo in the Silverbird,” Justine said. “It’s in better shape than the Mellanie’s Redemption. I think it will launch again. If not, we can reset to a few days before I land here.”

“No,” Gore said. “Take this ship. Its fully acclimatized to the Void now, so functionality shouldn’t be a problem anymore. And we’re probably going to need some serious badass firepower if we run into Ilanthe.”

“This ship?”

Gore gave her a pitying look. “What do you think you’re standing on?”

Standing atop the sweeping steps of the Lady’s church with the others gathering around him, Edeard finally felt as if he was coming alive again. This whole time had seemed bizarre, like some kestric-fueled dream. There was nothing for him to grasp, nothing to assure him he was living. Even encountering Inigo was something he imagined might eventually befall him in the Heart, which contributed to the sense of unreality.

But now …

Raw excitement accelerated his heart, sending hot blood pounding through his body. He was smiling as he sent his farsight racing down below the streets, past the travel tunnels, winding through the strange conduits and glowing lines of energy that pervaded the structure all the way down and down—Makkathran’s mind slumbered on still, as unchanged as the buildings and canals, those giant thoughts pulsing in their slow somber beat.

The Waterwalker’s thoughts lifted rapturously as he gifted his perception to his new friends, welcoming the sheer flamboyance, the audacity of the moment. How Kristabel and Macsen would have loved this, and as for the twins … “I know what you are now,” he told the great sleeper, pouring sincerity, sheer belief into what he was saying. Sharing himself utterly. “I know why you came to this universe. And you should know, others have followed you in. We think we can end this now. You can finish what you started.”

The vast thoughts began to quicken, their wide strands of gentle musings coming together into a cohesive whole. Makkathran’s consciousness arose. “You? I remember you. I thought you had gone, along with the rest of your kind.”

“I was brought back. I believe I am your way into the Heart.”

“You have forgotten much. I am content to end here.”

Edeard felt his soul brother grip his hand. Inigo’s confidence, his surety, was astounding.

“We do not go there to submit to absorption,” Inigo told Makkathran unwaveringly. “We are here to finish this. The time you feared has arrived. Millions of my species are on their way to this world. They know its secret, and all of them are intent on resetting the Void to their own whim. The ensuing devourment phase will consume the galaxy.”

“It cannot be stopped,” Makkathran said. “The Void is what it is.”

“There is a chance. I believe we can still reason with it.”

“The Void does not listen. We tried. I watched my kind die in the tens of thousands as they attempted to pass through the final barrier. It was all for nothing. The flames of their death outshone the nebulae that day.”

“An entity has arrived in the Void who may make things worse. The devourment phase is beginning. And finally we have the smallest, most fragile opportunity to speak with the nucleus, the primary sentience. It will accept one of us if a Skylord guides him to the Heart. Help us. Please. Your species is still out there on the other side of the barrier, doing what they can. In all the eons since you came, they have never faltered. We owe them so much; we owe them this last attempt.”

“My kind still live?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. I thought I heard one once, not so long ago. I called out, but it was your race who came instead.”

“Please,” Edeard said. “I was guided to the Heart once before. Whatever sacrifice I have to make to be guided again, I will do so, I swear upon the Lady.”

Makkathran’s thoughts fluctuated, dousing them all in a wave of ancient sorrow. Edeard was humbled by everything the city had endured, its terrible loss.

“I did not expect change to befall me ever again,” it told them. “I did not expect to be shown hope, however small. I did not expect to do what I was born to do: to fly against the greatest enemy once more. You have brought this to me. For that I should show thanks. If the galaxy is to fall, then it is fitting that I should fall with it. I will take you.”

“Thank you,” Edeard said.

“Thank you,” the others chorused.

They waited bunched together on the broad expanse outside the Lady’s church, farsight probing around, alert for the first change to manifest. They waited with the irrepressible excitement of schoolchildren knowing they were to witness something wholly spectacular.

Justine caught it first. “There,” she cried, her mind urging the others. “There, look, the crystal wall.”

All around the city, the high translucent gold wall that defined the edge was growing upward. It raced into the sky with astounding speed as the city put forth its will. Then they were tilting their heads back to gape in admiration as it curved overhead. Half an hour after the growth began, the last shrinking circle of clear sky vanished as the crystal melded together. The city was encased in a perfect dome.

Makkathran exerted its wishes. A mind larger than mountains engaged the Void’s elementary mass location ability, demanding that matter move in the manner it wanted.

Out beyond the sealed-off Port district, the Lyot Sea parted. Two vast tsunamis of water rushed apart, surging away from the shore, exposing the seabed for tens of miles. Water was the easy part. Makkathran continued its manipulation. The naked seabed cracked open with a howl of destruction that shredded any organic matter within fifty miles. Fissures deepened, slicing down through the ancient lava as they raced inland to splinter the Iguru plain.

Oscar was laughing helplessly as the ground shook furiously, triggering massive landslides over in the distant Donsori Mountains. It was the kind of semihysteria that was contagious. Edeard found himself grinning wildly in sympathy as he was toppled to his knees. Waves chased along the canals, sloshing over the edges as the earthquake’s power built. He could see the tips of the Eyrie towers rocking from side to side. Agitated air was slapping clouds against the outside of the dome.

“Glad we brought you back now?” Oscar called tauntingly above the roar.

The Iguru plain and the uncovered seabed had shattered down to a single level zone of undulating rubble. All the odd little volcanoes juddered about like disintegrating icebergs as their mass dissolved down into the churning debris. The city gave a sudden lurch, thrusting a hundred meters straight up as the land’s grip was finally broken. Edeard yelled in delirious shock along with everyone else as the impetus knocked him flat. He gave Oscar a crazy thumbs-up. “Oh, Lady, am I ever,” he longspoke above the tremendous din that was penetrating the protective crystal. What the devastation must be like outside was something he couldn’t conceive.

Frenzied clouds slid down the sides of the curving crystal as the domed city began to rise farther. That was just the apex of the immense warship.

Makkathran, last survivor of the Raiel armada, soared back up into the sky it had fallen from a million years ago and headed for the clean emptiness of space.

Gore Burnelli didn’t often admit admiration for other people, least of all meat humans. But he had to acknowledge that Araminta had done a fine job living in two different time flows. Even though he’d been one of the pioneers of enhanced mentality, he was finding the going a little tough.

The segment of his mind designated to maintain the connection to Justine was racing on ahead, looking back at the ponderous events on the Anomine homeworld with something approaching contempt. It would be very easy to divest himself of his sluggish flesh and live fast and free in the Void. He had to focus hard on the other aspects of his mind and the requirements they served to dismiss the notion. The temptation was pulling with unrelenting tidal force.

For a heartbeat he watched from the entranceway of the Lady’s church as Makkathran flew clear of Querencia’s atmosphere and then accelerated after the Skylord that had brought the Mellanie’s Redemption just a few hours earlier.

Exoimage displays surrounded him, tracing the progress of the infiltrator filaments as they slithered through the molecular structure of the elevation mechanism, chasing down the network pathways and penetrating delicate junctions. Primary attention switch—to the massed ranks of code awaiting initialization so the packages could slide into alien software, mimicking the routines in order to subvert them. His accelerated mind watched the symbology flip around at a speed he could actually follow as they analyzed the first impulses flashing through the junctions.

Incoming call—which he answered with another segment operating within his meat skull.

“We’re in,” the Delivery Man said. “I’m establishing control over all major siphon systems. The override is disengaged. Full wormhole initialization sequence is running. Power generation is increasing. I need to take that slow; there’s nowhere to send it yet.”

“Well done.”

“I never knew Makkathran was a Raiel ship.”

“What else could it be? Haven’t you ever visited High Angel?”

“No, actually.”

“Oh. Well, those domes are the real giveaway. They’re identical.”

“Obviously.”

“Any sign of Marius?”

“I haven’t got a decent sensor that can function down here in the innermost circle. Hysradar works, but it’s useless. He must be in stealth mode, still.”

“Keep watching. When he finally figures out we can stop his precious Ilanthe, he won’t take it well.”

“Oh, crap. All right.”

Makkathran caught up with the Skylord just before it crossed Nikran’s orbit, barely two million miles from the desert planet. Edeard stood in the square at the center of Sampalok, staring at the small brown orb that appeared to be hanging just above the mansion. It was kindling a surprising amount of nostalgia. He could just make out some of the surface features as he’d done that other day, now lost in the broken past, when he’d sat in the Malfit Hall waiting to be called before the Mayor and handed his bronze epaulets. His squadmates had teased him for his questions about other people living on Nikran. They never knew as he did that humans lived on hundreds of worlds. And now they never would.

Or maybe they do. Who knows what they see from the Heart?

Of all the revelations Inigo had brought, knowing that the Void was a danger to life everywhere was the hardest to accept.

“I always hated that Ladydamned thing,” Inigo said, glaring at the six-sided mansion.

“The mansion?” Corrie-Lyn asked in surprise.

“No, the arcology in Kuhmo. It dominated every day of my life while I was growing up. That’s one of the reasons I offered the town council all that money to demolish the monstrosity, so kids wouldn’t be so blighted in future.”

“It did fill your mind,” Edeard confirmed. “I wasn’t really sure what genuine human architecture looked like, and I was in a hurry that day. It was the obvious choice.

“Thank the Lady you didn’t build it full size.”

“I saw the fane you replaced it with,” Corrie-Lyn said drily. “It wasn’t a whole lot better.”

Inigo grinned back at her. “There’s gratitude.”

Edeard sensed concern growing in Justine’s mind. He glanced over to see her standing close to Gore, whose golden face had hardened with worry.

“What?”

“Some events are outside our control,” Justine said. “I think you need to ask the Skylord now.”

The creature they were pursuing was still half a million kilometers away, a shimmering patch to one side of Nikran. Edeard eyed it reluctantly. If it declared he wasn’t fulfilled, Inigo would have to delve down into the memory layer and bring out a version of himself who was. There were few enough certainties for him right now, but encountering his future self was something he knew he didn’t want to endure. “I’ll try.” He felt for the Skylord, finding it on the edge of perception. Usually their thoughts were composed and content. He’d never known one to host such confusion before. It was grieving for its kindred that had succumbed to Ilanthe, and the colossal warship racing after it was also unsettling. There were ancient ancestral memories about such things: the time of chaos.

“You have nothing to fear from those I travel with, including the city,” Edeard assured it. “They are my companions as I seek fulfillment.”

“I know this city now,” the Skylord replied. “Its kind brought ruin to this universe. We have found no minds since they threw the planets of life down into the stars they orbited. None have emerged here other than your own species.”

“That time is over now. You know more of my species are already here. Minds are emerging again.”

“As is the other who kills.”

“That is why I wish to reach the Heart. I will carry the warning to it. I believe I am fulfilled. I believe the Heart will accept me. Is this right?”

The Skylord took a long time to answer. “You are fulfilled,” it acknowledged. “I will guide your essence to the Heart.”

“Guide me to the Heart as I am. This ship will take me. We will follow you.”

“It is the essence of every mind, my kindred guide.”

“Guide me to the Heart. It will decide if it accepts me as I am or if I abandon my body and become pure mind.”

“I will guide you.”

“Thank you.”

Beyond the crystal dome, the stars began to chase short arcs across space as Makkathran turned to follow the Skylord. Then they started to accelerate again. Edeard experienced a long moment of dizziness. When he looked straight up again, he could see a small clump of stars directly above the apex of the dome. They’d all become bright blue-white. The rest of the universe around them was black.

“That’s not fast enough,” Gore said. “Ilanthe has a week of Void time on you. Christ knows how close she is now.”

“We know this is as fast as the Skylords can travel,” Justine said.

“Yeah, but they’re not exactly swinging from the top of the IQ tree, now, are they? Ask Makkathran. It’s had millions of years to figure out what passes for spacetime in the Void.”

Justine gave Edeard a questioning look.

“I’ll ask,” he said.

“Faster?” Makkathran queried; its thoughts intimated curiosity. “We were designed for every conceivable quantum state except of course this one. Here the mind is paramount, helping to seduce so many inferior mentalities. Long ago, I observed the fundamental connections between rationality and the multidimensional lattice which incorporates this universe’s functionality. Speed is an aspect of temporal flow, which in turn is determined by thought. It is the application pattern which is the key, and those are actually quite simple to determine.”

Outside the dome, light exploded out of the emptiness. Stars began to streak past like rigid lightning bolts. Glaring nebula clouds formed hurricane curlicues, spiraling around and around as they streamed away in a resplendent blaze of color.

“I think that was a yes,” an awestruck Oscar mumbled as multicolored ripples of light flowed across his upturned face.

“So are we going fast or is the Void slowing down?” Corrie-Lyn asked tentatively.

“That’s not strictly relevant in here,” Inigo said. “All that matters is the end result.”

In parallel to his conversation with the Delivery Man, Gore was monitoring the data the infiltration software was surreptitiously accumulating. The elevation mechanism had started running internal scans as the filaments continued their invasion into its structure. He released the first batch of packages, a low-level torrent that swiftly insinuated itself into the scan interpretation routines, falsifying the results so the elevation mechanism would find nothing wrong with itself at a molecular level.

Dream—Makkathran went FTL amid a spectacular light storm.

Visual observation—Tyzak was bouncing its way over the plaza, taking care not to step on the glistening black webbing that was humming gently.

That’s all I need, a higher secondary segment of Gore’s mind thought. The Anomine translation routine in a storage lacuna went active.

“Others have come,” Tyzak said.

“From your village?” Gore warbled and whistled back.

“No. Others. Star travelers who are similar to you but very different. I do not know of their story.”

“Show me, please.”

Tyzak traced his way back across the plaza. One of his limbs extended, pointing down a broad street.

There were eight of them standing across the road a hundred meters short of the plaza. Pastel light from the buildings on either side glittered across their extravagant jeweled longcoats. One of them raised a long white spear and bowed slightly.

“Silfen,” Gore sighed, resisting the urge to give them the finger in return. Instead he inclined his head. “Just ignore them. They’re the galaxy’s greatest voyeurs.”

“Why should they come here?”

“To observe me.”

The infiltration packages flashed up a problem with the analysis routines they were trying to modify. There must have been hidden sentinels, because the analysis routines were resisting any attempt to subvert them. They had begun reformatting themselves with alarming frequency. It meant the packages couldn’t establish themselves; there was no stable configuration to match. And the sentinels were routing more advanced routines to the scans, examining why the resistance algorithms were being triggered. That might well alert the elevation mechanism’s principal consciousness.

Gore pressed his golden lips together. “Oh, shit; here we go.”

Hanging in transdimensional suspension two million kilometers above the Anomine star, Marius had directed his starship’s sensor readings to a constellation of semiautonomous secondary routines. Although the Delivery Man’s ship had performed a truly astounding feat by flying into the star’s convection layer, it wasn’t his main concern. He simply didn’t understand Justine’s dream.

That Gore had somehow maneuvered Inigo and Araminta-two into the Void was seriously impressive. But then the notion faltered. To rationalize with the Heart, as Gore claimed was their ultimate purpose, must be a misdirection. He was sure of it.

Then the Waterwalker was resurrected. “Remarkable,” Marius admitted. That was nothing compared with Makkathran awakening and lifting itself out of the gargantuan lava-filled impact crater it had created when it crashed there in the aftermath of the armada’s invasion.

And Gore announced they had to beat Ilanthe to the Heart. Makkathran performed the impossible and went FTL inside the Void.

“No,” Marius said in alarm. Whatever scheme Gore had for when they were inside the Heart, he could not permit it. The risk was infinitesimal, but nonetheless it existed.

His mind moved the dream to secondary routines for monitoring and brought the sensor readings back to his full attention. The Delivery Man’s starship hadn’t moved. It was still attached to the shielded circular object inside the convection zone. Whatever connection Gore envisaged between that and Makkathran was beyond understanding, but there was purpose to it. No one expended that much effort without a reason.

His quandary was that he didn’t know if Gore was on board the starship or back on the planet. Therefore, the process of elimination would have to be both literal and simple. Ship first. If the dream continued, Gore was on the Anomine homeworld.

Marius ordered the smartcore to drop them out of stealth. Active sensors came on line and performed a more detailed scan of the ship inside the convection zone. For all that it incorporated Stardiver shielding to deal with the heat, its layered force fields had received only about twenty percent strengthening. They remained vulnerable to combat strikes. The only real problem Marius had was choosing a weapon that would be able to reach it within such a radical environment. He started to activate the possibles.

They waited for the moment on the Sampalok square, just outside the mansion’s entrance. Inigo and Corrie-Lyn were holding hands and sharing thoughts privately. Araminta-two was never far from Oscar, the two of them providing each other with a strange variety of support and comfort. The three Knights Guardian were in a tight group, keen and nervy. Justine and Gore stood side by side, proud and defiant, their determination shining as bright as any of the weird stars flashing past outside. That, oddly enough, left Edeard gravitating toward Troblum, who was waiting with a sulky, nearly childlike pout.

The cascade of opalescent light drained away as quickly as it had arrived. Edeard gazed up at the dome, thunderstruck by the sight beyond the crystal. Makkathran was gliding through space above the center of Odin’s Sea. Directly above the apex of the dome a ruffled lake of aquamarine dust glimmered with a steady lambency, alive with deep currents and the flaring nimbi of protostars. Around its shores the scarlet reefs extended out for light-years, slender twined braids of fluorescence that swelled at their tips to form silken veils around the stars they incarcerated.

“Sweet Lady, I never thought to see such a sight,” Edeard moaned incredulously. Finally his mind heard the siren call; it wasn’t a song but the sense of uncountable minds blending in peace and friendship, secure in their totality. Together they were whole and had combined with the Void’s fabric at some ultimate level of existence. The promise of belonging to such an affiliation filled him with joy; the weariness and strife of a physical life would end, and he would be a part of the greater existence that reached for perfection. The urge to join them, to contribute his nature, was so strong that if his third hand could have elevated him up from the square and through the crystal, he would have flown into the Heart there and then for the final consummation. It was nothing like the foolishly imagined nearly physical heaven he had expected, where souls clung to their old form and lived in splendor in a city of golden towers. That kind of life was actually achievable back on Querencia if you tried hard enough and often enough, revisiting your own past until you finally eliminated all your failures and disappointments. No, the Heart looked to the future and a fate that was fresh and different from anything that had gone before. He would be a part of creating that.

“This hippie-dippy shit is what everyone praises?” Gore snapped. “Jeezus wept.”

Edeard struggled to keep his temper in check in the face of such blasphemous provocation. “It is a glorious reward for a life lived true to oneself.”

“Uh huh. Well, let’s not forget why we’re here. We need to get inside.”

“There is no physical location,” Makkathran told them when Edeard asked to move closer. “At least, not in relation to the Void fabric at this level. The Heart lies beyond rather than behind. That is the final barrier, the one which defeated us before.”

“Ask it to admit us,” Oscar said.

Edeard nodded slowly, reluctant at the last to begin the event that could lead to the demise of the entire Void. What if they have lied? Which he knew to be a foolish insecurity. Good old Ashwell optimism, even here. Inigo does not lie, not to me. “How can something this splendid be so flawed as to threaten life everywhere?”

“Because it doesn’t know it’s a danger,” Gore said.

“How can that be?” he cried. “It is awesome; it is the accumulation of billions upon billions of minds. How can you possibly be so arrogant to try and change its path?”

“Those lives it has consumed are doing nothing but dreaming their existence away. The souls who were guided here have been betrayed. The wisdom they brought, the continued life they were promised, it’s all being wasted.”

“All right.” Edeard reached out for the Heart. I am here, he told it. I am ready. I am fulfilled. Bring me to you. He held his breath. Nothing happened. I am here, he repeated.

“Now what?” Tomansio asked.

“Stop trying,” Oscar said. “Just let the urge take you. Chill down and surrender to it.”

“You’re already in there,” Corrie-Lyn said. “Listen for yourself.”

“Very well,” Edeard said. It sounded stupid, but he closed his eyes, then withdrew his farsight, allowing the presence of the Heart to seep into him. He listened for himself. In truth, there were others he wanted to hear, to join: Kristabel. Macsen. Dinlay. Kanseen. Akeem! Was he waiting? Had he found his way? Finitan surely would be there. And Rolar, and Jiska, and the twins, and Dylorn, and Marakas, and sweet Taralee. Perhaps even Salrana, who might have finally made her peace with him—he could never forget that night he discovered the true nature of the Void. In the pavilion, after her death, her soul had panicked, realizing she had strayed. Perhaps …

“The barrier falls,” Makkathran said.

Edeard opened his eyes in time to see Odin’s Sea fading away. The light simply vanished, and they were surrounded by nothing. A perfect uniform blackness.

The Heart’s thoughts grew more powerful. Edeard found himself strengthening his shield. His mind seemed to be expanding, moving to embrace the Heart, flowing out to join it.

“Edeard!” Inigo shouted.

His brother’s fright was strong. He hesitated.

“Edeard, come back.” Inigo was compelling him, infusing their bond with love.

He opened his eyes again. This time the sturdy Sampalok mansion seemed faint. When he lifted up his hand, it was growing translucent.

“It’s absorbing him,” Gore said. Worry was flooding from the golden man’s mind. “Edeard, you’ve got to hold on.”

“Without you we will be rejected,” Makkathran warned.

“Edeard, is there anything you can sense in there that’ll talk to us?” Gore asked. “A single coherent mind?”

Edeard had to laugh. “The Heart is bigger than worlds. It is universal; it lies behind everywhere in the Void. And still it grows.”

“Fuck it,” Gore snarled. “It’s grown so big, it’s lost cohesion. All right, Edeard, it wasn’t always like this. I need you to go back to when it was smaller.”

“What?”

“Get into the memory layer, trace it down to the origin. Come on, son, you can do it.”

“Lean on me,” Inigo said. He gripped Edeard’s hand, suffusing him with strength and love. “I will help you.”

“And me, Waterwalker,” Corrie-Lyn said. Her firmness and fortitude made Edeard smile in gratitude.

Oscar came over, as did the Knights Guardian. “Whatever you need,” Tomansio promised sincerely, which made Edeard regret he hadn’t known the warrior longer. Justine, smiling and determined, added her essence, buoying him along. Even Troblum was there, dependable and resolute.

There was a memory layer in this place, wherever they were, and that surprised Edeard more than anything. Strangely uncluttered, it was easy to perceive, to follow back. He plunged into the past, saddened by how little had changed. Then abruptly the Heart wasn’t quite so large. This was the time before humans. He carried on back through it, pushing harder and harder.

There were many changes, coming eons apart, then further. Each alien species that had come to the Void had contributed to the expansion in its own fashion. None had brought true cohesion. He found that wrong somehow, that the amalgamation always acted in the contrary direction to the Heart’s purpose.

At the end he could think only of flying through the travel tunnels, soaring on into the unknown, content simply in the act of voyaging. He was quite surprised when it did finish. The memory layer grew thinner somehow, less cluttered. And there, right at the beginning of the Void, when the Heart was forming, were millions of connections to individual minds. They could communicate with the Heart. They were the link, the way in. He chased after one and embraced it, offering it up to the creation layer, perceiving the entity take form again.

Edeard drew a startled breath, shaking himself free of the memory layer and the intimacy of his new friends. Right in front of him, standing in the entrance to Zulmal Street, an alien twenty feet tall was unfolding its disturbingly sinuous limbs as its thoughts churned with surprise and suspicion.

“Oh, wow,” Oscar groaned, and took a step back. Even so, he was grinning effusively.

“A Firstlife,” Edeard announced simply. He had to own up to being intimidated by so many curving, pointed teeth at the top of its fat central trunk as it opened the glistening mouth membranes to whistle at a painful volume.

Then something moved in the nothingness outside the dome. A dark sphere beset with deep purple scintillations slipped smoothly overhead.

“What are you doing?” Ilanthe asked.

Marius had been fascinated by the Heart and the notions it sang of. There really was no other way to describe it. In a way he was relieved that it was so vast, so aloof. Gore’s stupid plan to talk to it, to make it see what he considered reason, would never transpire in such a milieu. The golden man was pissing in the wind.

Then he stood in Sampalok’s central square, observing through Justine as Gore told the Waterwalker to search back through the memory layer for a younger, more accessible Heart.

“No no no,” he chanted in dismay. His exovision brought up the starship’s weapons. He selected a couple of diverted energy function quantumbusters. They would activate in the photosphere, sending a huge exotic energy distortion wave smashing against the Delivery Man’s ship. Its Stardiver shielding would never survive such an impact. Whatever part of Gore’s scheme was being enacted down there in the convection zone would be obliterated. That would give Ilanthe the window of opportunity to enact Fusion.

The two missiles shot away, accelerating at one hundred fifty gees. His exovision display threw up a sensor image, showing a hyperspace anomaly erupting fifty thousand kilometers away from his own location. One of the huge borderguards materialized out of the spatial deformation. Its concentric shells of elliptical strands were ablaze with aggravated neon light. The outermost strands darkened from a lurid jade down to an irradiated carmine. Marius’s sensors showed the energy spectrum raging inside the borderguard leaping almost off the scale. It fired on the quantumbuster missiles, which burst into a dynamic vapor plume.

“Shit!” Marius discarded the dream altogether and sent his starship hurtling toward the borderguard at thirty-seven gees. Weapons locked onto the garish nimbus. He opened fire.

No matter how hard he cursed, how fast his expanded mind activated infiltration packages, Gore knew it was coming. There was nothing he could do about it. His wild boast about Commonwealth webheads had proved vain and hollow, and everything in the galaxy was going to die because of it.

Unless—

“Shit. Go for it,” he ordered the Delivery Man. “Initialize the wormhole. Shove some fucking power my way. Do it. Do it now.”

He ordered the packages to activate, to grab control.

Too late. Out of the city’s subdued background murmurings Gore perceived that cool consciousness rising once again. It observed its environment with a host of strange senses.

“This is an act of hostility,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are trying to steal my fundamental nature. It is not for you and your kind, and with good reason.”

“Yeah. So you said. And as I told you, the Void is about to expand and wipe this star system from existence.” The dream showed him the big Firstlife in Sampalok, shaking its thick beefy body furiously as it tried to orient itself. Then Ilanthe appeared overhead. “Oh, God-fuck, no!” Gore entreated. “No, not her, not now.” The defeat was as strong as any physical blow, striking him to his knees in the middle of the plaza. All around him the glistening black strands of the infiltration web began to smolder, filling the air with thin acrid smoke. “You’re killing us,” he screamed into the night. “All I needed to do was show the Heart, that’s all, just show the fucker there’s an alternative, prove it can evolve.”

Tyzak was approaching him cautiously, stepping gingerly over the sputtering web.

“Got it,” the Delivery Man called. “Siphon’s activated. Wormhole established. We did it!”

“Leave,” Gore told him flatly. “Fly to a fresh galaxy, one that isn’t cursed like this one. Don’t let the universe forget us.”

The third borderguard imploded amid a searing flare of violet Cherenkov radiation. Broken strands from the concentric shells twirled away, venting thick sparkling gases at high velocity. Marius detected another five materializing out of their distinctive hyperspatial rents. He brought the ship about in a fast curve, chasing the debris that was expanding out of the last implosion. The trouble with combat this close to the star was the lack of mass for quantumbusters to work with.

Sensors tracked the three largest chunks of the shells, and he launched missiles at each of them. Diverted energy function quantumbusters activated, converting the tumbling mass to energy. Exotic distortions slammed into two of the borderguards as they were still exiting hyperspace, wrenching at the exotic pseudofabric. Unbearable contortions crushed the borderguards down to neutronium density. The wreckage immediately detonated out of its impossible compression state, saturating local spacetime with an inordinately hard neutron storm.

Seven energy beams burned across the force fields protecting Marius’s starship. His exovision brought up severe overload warnings. He fired another nine Hawking M-sinks, which the surviving bodyguards had no defense against. So far. He watched in fury as the attackers opened up small wormholes, which swallowed five of the M-sinks. Another barrage of energy beams found his starship. Missiles were heading in toward him at ninety gees, and he still hadn’t managed to knock out the Delivery Man’s ship.

Sensors reported a zero-width wormhole establishing itself between the star and the Anomine homeworld. The smartcore dismissed it as a weapon. Marius ordered an urgent review. The wormhole was originating from the mysterious object with which the Delivery Man’s ship had rendezvoused.

It had to be some kind of power system—whatever needed that level of power? The elevation mechanism! Marius knew it with absolute certainty. Gore had found some way to switch it on. He was going postphysical. It was the only thing left that could threaten Fusion.

Marius activated the ship’s ultradrive and flashed in toward the star. He emerged just above the swirling streamers of the photosphere, where energized atoms from a multitude of spots and flares simmered away into solar wind. Every force field warning turned critical as the starship received the full blast of the star’s radiation and heat. Marius fired two novabombs straight down, then jumped back into hyperspace.

Behind him the borderguards were massing above the photosphere. Eighteen of the giant machines had rushed out of hyperspace, firing enough weapons down after the novabombs to break open a moon. None of it was any use. The novabombs were designed to function amid the outer fringes of a star, whereas the borderguards’ weapons were just uselessly pumping more energy into the rampant solar furnace.

Thirty seconds before they detonated, Marius was already outside the Anomine system. The nova would eliminate the power station, then go on to wipe out the Anomine homeworld minutes later. Gore would never reach postphysical status now. The Accelerator objective was safe.

Edeard didn’t know who to give his attention to or even that it would do any good if he could decide. The astounding Firstlife was straightening itself, turning several small black membranes at the top of its trunk toward the humans as well as directing a formidable farsight at them.

Above the dome the Ilanthe thing was also observing them. It scared him how nonhuman it was. His farsight couldn’t begin to uncover its secrets, but the power it contained was evident. Whatever the Heart was, it seemed to be bending around Ilanthe’s glossy surface.

But it was Gore who now concerned him the most. The golden man was stumbling, dropping to his knees. The anguished keening his mind emitted was dreadful, as if his soul itself were being violated.

“Dad,” Justine was yelling frantically. “Dad, what is it? What’s happening?”

“It caught me,” Gore told her weakly. “The motherfucker found the infiltrator packages.”

“I could have told you the Anomine mechanism was obdurate,” Ilanthe said complacently.

The Firstlife took a step toward the humans, three of its feet slamming down on the surface of the square with a slap that Edeard could feel in his leg bones. “What is this place?” the Firstlife’s longtalk demanded. “What are you? You are not us.”

Inigo squared up to the imposing creature. “This is your future. You were re-created from the Void’s memory.”

The Firstlife’s farsight probed around again, its extraordinary reach allowing it to scan the city and delve down into a fair percentage of the warship’s main body. It also attempted to examine Ilanthe, who deflected it effortlessly.

“You are the omega?” it asked in surprise.

“No,” Inigo said. “We originated outside the Void.”

“How can that be? There is nothing outside, only dead matter.”

“Are you the creators? Did your species build this?”

“Yes.”

“We and many others have been pulled inside so you could exploit our rationality.”

“That is not so. You cannot exist unless the omega formed you.”

“We do exist, and the Void did not make us. The Void is killing us.”

“You do not understand your purpose. This is why I was brought back.” The Firstlife was uncertain.

“No. You can communicate with the Heart, the mind that envelops us. This is why—”

“Wait,” Troblum said. He ignored the looks everyone gave him. “In your time, were there any other sentient species in the galaxy?”

“There is only us. We are first, and when we achieve omega, we will be last.”

“First life,” Oscar said in wonder. “The first race to evolve in the galaxy. How old is this thing?”

“Ancient,” Justine muttered. “More ancient than we ever thought possible.”

“Since your time, countless species have evolved right across the galaxy,” Inigo said. “You were first, but you are no longer alone.”

The Firstlife’s thoughts reeled in astonishment. “You are not us? You are original?”

“We are.”

The black membranes flapped about in agitation. Glistening honey-like droplets appeared on their tips. “Why are you here?”

“This thing you built, this Void, now threatens the entire galaxy,” Gore said, climbing to his feet again. “I understand why you built it, to evolve into something new, something exquisite. You haven’t. Instead it has absorbed thousands of other types of minds which have pulled it in every direction. It cannot evolve, not in this state.”

“Exactly,” Ilanthe said. “Ask these creatures what they would have you do. They want you to stop; they want all you have achieved on the way to your omega to wither away and die. They have nothing else to offer you. I do.”

“Is this why you brought me back?” the Firstlife asked. “To end our evolution?”

“It cannot continue in its current form,” Inigo said. “It is consuming the mass of the galaxy in order to power its existence. Every star will ultimately be devoured, and the species they have birthed will die with them.”

“Unless you act now,” Ilanthe said. “Communicate with the amalgamated mind; tell it to adopt my inversion.”

“What is your inversion?”

“I will take the composition of the Void and implant it within the quantum fields which structure the universe outside. This core will ignite the chain reaction which will disseminate change across the entirety of spacetime. Entropy will be eliminated. Mind will become paramount. Every sentient entity will be given the opportunity to reach its own omega as you anticipated for yourselves. Your legacy will be the birth of a new reality.”

“You have got to be fucking joking,” Gore gasped. “Any quantum field transform wave will simply reverse once it expands past its initial energy input zone. All you’ll be left with is a collapsing microverse that seals itself off from reality as soon as the implosion is complete.”

“Not if entropy is eliminated.”

“You can’t eliminate entropy across infinity. That’s the fucking point of infinity. It’s forever and always.”

“Ask the amalgamated mind to give me the Void’s governing parameters,” Ilanthe said to the Firstlife.

“Do not!” Gore shouted, thrusting his arm out at the Firstlife. “Do not even think it. You will destroy this entire supercluster with her insanity.”

“And what do you offer?” Ilanthe mocked. “The end of their journey to omega?”

“Since you built the Void, hundreds of species have evolved to postphysical status, what you call omega,” Gore said. “It can be done, but not like this. I’m sorry, but you have made a mistake by building the Void. You have to get the Heart to stop the boundary’s mass devourment, suspend the Void’s functions, become stable. We’ll show you how to achieve true evolution in a different way.”

“You can’t,” Ilanthe said. “Every species has to find its own way.”

The Firstlife didn’t reply. A whistling sound was coming from the thin fronds around its mouth as air gusted in and out past the teeth. Edeard was aware of its thoughts pulsing out to be absorbed by the Heart. It wasn’t anything he could copy; he knew he could never communicate with the Heart directly.

“Darkness eclipses us,” it said eventually. “Something is growing outside our frontier, a shroud which would deny us the universe.”

“The warrior Raiel,” Ilanthe said. “Sworn to destroy you. Ask this wretched remnant of their invasion if you require confirmation. They seek to cut you off from your source of energy, to starve you to death. They will be rendered irrelevant by the change I can instigate. In time, in the new universe, they will learn to celebrate your liberation.”

“Do you seek to destroy us?” the Firstlife asked.

“We require you to end your absorption of this galaxy and the threat of extinction it brings to all life,” Makkathran said. “If you will not undertake this freely, we have the right to stop you.”

“You don’t have to stop,” Ilanthe said. “Inversion circumvents everything. All of us will achieve the promise of our evolution. Give me your governing parameters.”

“Wait!” Gore demanded. “I think my alternative just became available.” He lifted his golden head and gave Ilanthe a sweetly evil grin. “And guess who made that happen.” And he dreamed of his life back outside the Void.

The Delivery Man watched in horror as the twin quantum signatures expanded at hyperluminal velocity. Marius had fired novabombs into the star. He couldn’t believe it. This was genocide.

Diverted energy functions absorbed the energy liberated from the first activation pulse, modifying it to expand the annihilation effect. A volume of the star’s interior the size of a super-Jovian gas giant converted directly into energy. The convection zone bulged around the periphery. It was the first act in a sequence that would see the star’s core squeezed beyond stability.

Monstrous shock waves raced toward the Last Throw at close to lightspeed. “Ozziefuckit!”

By the time he’d said it, his accelerated thoughts had ordered the smartcore to trigger the ultradrive. It was never designed to operate within a stellar gravity field, but he was dead, anyway.

The universe clearly hated such an aberration, sending a vengeful force to tear savagely at the perpetrator. Finally the cabin was alive with noise and shaking and alarms just as he’d thought he wanted. Bulkheads split, hundreds of tiny cracks ripping open. Sparks and sprays of gooey fluid shot through the air, churned by a cyclone of gravity waves that pulled the Delivery Man violently in every direction. He screamed in terror—

Two seconds. The time it took the ultradrive to claw the Last Throw out of the star’s stupendous gravity gradient. The time in which an astonishing amount of pain went surging along the Delivery Man’s nervous system. The time the ship’s overstressed components had to hold together. Most of them did.

The Delivery Man’s world steadied. Gravity stopped its wild fluctuations. The vibrations beating the starship’s fuselage faded away. His screaming dribbled off to a whimper.

And far away in a dream Ilanthe was entreating the Firstlife to give her the key to the Void’s nature.

“Gore!” he called.

“What’s happening?” the golden man asked. “There’s a power surge from the siphon.”

“Hell, you mean it’s survived that?”

“Survived what?”

“Marius! Sweet Ozzie, he used novabombs. Gore, the star is going nova. It’s already begun. That fucking deranged maniac has killed everything in the system. Tyzak! Warn Tyzak. I’m coming to get you.” Already the Last Throw was approaching the Anomine homeworld. The Delivery Man was designating a vector to take him around to the city where he’d left Gore.

“They know,” Gore said.

The Third Dreamer had abandoned Makkathran to dream of the Anomine city. The fantastical lights within the empty buildings were blazing with solar glory now. In its last minutes the city was waking defiantly to face its doom. Gore turned to Tyzak, who was staring straight up at the few quiet stars still visible directly above the plaza. The small remaining patch of dark sky was fading away as the light of the buildings grew ever stronger. Finally the old alien’s thoughts were slipping through whatever variant of the gaiafield was establishing itself around the planet. Every system and device the ancient Anomine had left behind was coming alive. Thousands of borderguards were materializing into orbit.

The Delivery Man knew it was all useless. Nothing could save the planet now.

“It was us,” Gore told Tyzak. “Humans. We did this. I’m so sorry.”

“You did not,” Tyzak replied. “Your song remains pure.”

“I have failed so many times today.”

“I believe you are to have your greatest success. They seem to think so.”

Gore saw that the plaza was now lined with hundreds of Silfen, all of them keeping back from the rim of the elevation mechanism.

“This is the fate our planet has brought us to,” Tyzak said. “I did not expect this, but what is, is. And perhaps the planet knew all along what it would be called upon to do. I will depart believing this one thing.”

Anomine began teleporting in, appearing all across the plaza. Hundreds, then thousands. Youngsters were agitated, squeaking loudly. It was happening in every city on the planet.

“Gore?” the Delivery Man asked. “What’s happening?”

Gore smiled at Tyzak even as he was being jostled by Anomine who were crowding in. “Go home,” he told the Delivery Man. “You deserve it.”

“Gore—?”

Gore shut down the TD link. He folded all his secondary routines back into his mind. There was only one consciousness now, making him as close to human as he’d been for many a century. His dream showed him Justine with an expression of alarm spreading over her beautiful face. She knew.

Tyzak called for the elevation mechanism.

“I feel you,” the elevation mechanism said. “You are Tyzak.”

“I am.”

“Do you wish to attain transcendence from your physical existence?”

“Yes.”

“Dad?” Justine asked.

Gore’s thoughts had calmed. He brought his arms out and glided gently across the square to the waiting Firstlife. “This is evolution,” he told the giant alien. “The omega you have sought for so long.”

“No, Dad, you can’t. You’re not Anomine.” Justine started to run. Edeard’s third hand caught her.

“Today I am,” Gore said benignly.

“No!” she sobbed. “Dad, please.”

Far outside the Void’s boundary the elevation mechanisms on the Anomine homeworld absorbed the power thundering out of the escalating nova. They adapted it and offered it up to the remainder of their species and one other who waited with them.

Gore felt his mind began to change, to rise. His perspective of the universe grew elegant.

“This is how it is done,” he told the Firstlife as they grew apart, gathering up everything the elevation mechanism was performing, the method and the outcome he now rushed toward. The union was so tenuous now, infused with the poignancy of Justine’s grief as she stretched herself between the two. “This is what you can become. This is destiny. Leave your past behind and reclaim the dream you started with. Like so …” He gifted the whole experience of his elevation to the Firstlife, who in turn shared it with the Heart. And after a while he was gone.

Edeard stood at the head of the group, facing up to the Firstlife. “You must choose,” he said to the daunting alien, aware of the Heart focusing on him. And Ilanthe.

“We do,” the Firstlife replied. “We choose evolution. It is why we created this place; it is what we aspired to so long ago. Anything else would betray all we were, all we aspired to. It could never be any other way.”

“Thank you.”

“It is the wrong choice,” Ilanthe declared.

“You should go with the Heart,” Inigo told her in disgust. “There is no place for you in this universe. You wanted to be a god; this is your chance. If it will take you.”

“You many come with us,” the Firstlife told the inversion core. “We offer to take all of you.”

“Naaah,” Oscar told it. “Not me. I’m not quite ready for that yet.”

Inigo gave the Firstlife a thoughtful look.

“No,” Corrie-Lyn entreated. She took his hands and pressed herself against him. “Don’t. I can’t become that, nor can I lose you again.”

“There’s going to be Honious to pay when we get home.”

“I’ll face it with you.”

“All right.” He reached out a hand to Edeard. “And you?”

“I have to see the worlds you gave me a glimpse of. And …” Edeard grinned sheepishly. “And there are many things I would like to do.”

“Anyone else?” Inigo inquired.

“Justine?” Corrie-Lyn said uncertainly.

Justine rubbed the moisture from her eyes. “No. It’s over. Let’s go home.”

The Wall stars now shone with a brilliance equal to the rest of the galaxy, a blue-white collar shackling the Gulf. Inside, the containment shell was almost complete. The bands of dark force produced by the Raiel defenses had merged together. Only a few gaps remained, and they were reducing fast.

Within the dark shell, automated Raiel monitors continued their observation of the Void boundary as they had done for the last million years. It had remained quiescent since the Pilgrimage fleet had passed through.

“It begins,” Qatux whispered.

Paula tried to get a grip on her dazed thoughts. Gore’s dream had left her reeling, delighted and awestruck. For an instant she wanted to be there, standing in Sampalok with the Firstlife, telling the Heart she would join it. Thank you, she told the aching absence in the gaiafield where the Third Dreamer once had been. Despite everything, you deserve to be the first of our species to achieve transcendence. I just hope it’s not too lonely out there.

She drew a deep breath and focused on the display that dominated Qatux’s private chamber. The surface of the Void boundary was changing. A thin ridge rose out of the equator, extending all the way out to the glowing loop. As before, the dying mass of broken stars fell into the event horizon.

“This time it will be different,” Paula promised. “This time it will absorb the energy to power evolution.”

“I feel you are right,” Qatux said.

The entirety of the loop was taken, absorbed below the boundary. The ridge began to retreat. Then the Void itself was shrinking. Gravity, the boundary’s primary enforcer, lessened. The impenetrable cloak that had defeated nature for so long fell away, and the Void lay naked at the core of the galaxy.

“Oh, my,” Paula said in wonder.

The Void reached transcendence.

After it was gone, after normal spacetime reclaimed all it had lost, the vast warships of the warrior Raiel flew in to examine the darkness their great enemy had left behind. Virtually no matter existed in the Gulf now, no radiation, no light. No nebulae.

Right at the center they found a single star shining bright, with a lone H-congruous planet in orbit. And one of their own.

The Raiel warship slipped out into spacetime above Icalanise, dwarfing the High Angel five hundred kilometers away. Qatux and Paula teleported over, materializing in a circular compartment over a hundred meters wide. Like the Raiel quarters on the High Angel, the ceiling was hidden from sight, giving the impression the compartment extended upward forever.

Paula regarded the waiting warrior Raiel with interest. She’d assumed they’d be bigger than Qatux. Instead they were only two-thirds his size, but where his hide was leathery, theirs was made up of hard neutral blue-gray segments. Small lights twinkled under the surface, making her think it was artificial armor. Or perhaps by now it was sequenced in like macrocellular clusters in humans.

Neskia stood between them. Her neck waved fractionally from side to side like a snake rising vertically, its casing of gold rings sliding over one another without revealing any human flesh. The metallic-gray surface shimmer of her skin was subdued. Big round eyes blinked once as Paula appeared. That might have reflected puzzlement; Paula wasn’t sure. She had certainly been startled by the news that the Accelerator agent had surrendered herself to the warrior Raiel without any fuss.

“You were complicit in the establishment of the Sol barrier,” Paula said.

Neskia said nothing.

“I would like the deactivation code now, please.”

“And then what?”

“You will face an inquiry into your actions.”

“By ANA itself. So there’s really not much of an incentive to hand over the code, is there?”

“A memory read is never pleasant.”

“A mild discomfort. But you would never be able to extract the code. I have several self-destruct routines embedded in my biononics.”

“So you are in an invincible position. Congratulations. Curious, then, that you allowed yourself to be intercepted. Your ship has a superb stealth capability, yet you chose not to use it. Why?”

Neskia’s neck became rigidly straight. “I have nowhere to go.”

“She didn’t take you with her.”

“Obviously.”

“But then, ascension to postphysical status through Fusion was never her aim.”

“I am aware of that now.”

“What deal are you looking for?”

“Total immunity. The right to settle on whatever world I select. And I retain ownership of the ship.”

“No to the ship. You are forbidden from taking part in any subversive activity ever again. You will permit removal of all combat-enabled biononics. You will not reinstate them or any further weapons enrichments. You will report any contact by criminal or proscribed organizations to my office immediately.”

“Free political association is the fundamental right of the Greater Commonwealth.”

“Without ANA, the Commonwealth as we know it cannot exist. I fully intend to protect it from extreme ideologues.”

“Will it ban the Accelerators?”

“I suspect those members involved with illegal activities will be suspended. The rest will be free to pursue and continue lobbying for what they believe in. As is their right.”

“Very well. I agree.” Neskia’s u-shadow sent the code to Paula, along with instructions for applying it to a specific coordinate outside the Sol system.

“Thank you,” Paula said. “So you’re pissed at her, then?”

“To put it mildly. I risked everything, devoted my life to the cause, and now I find it never actually existed.”

“What will you do?”

“I will found the real Accelerator faction. I still believe in human evolutionary destiny.”

“Of course you do.”

The Elvin’s Payback sank down out of the low gray clouds that were drizzling steadily across the rumpled verdant countryside. Oscar directed it to land on the grass next to the spinney of gangling rancata trees. He floated down out of the airlock and looked around contentedly. Seeing the raised circular house just as it always was kindled an unexpected bout of homesickness. While he’d been away, he’d thought of it and Jesaral and Dushiku and Anja less and less, so much so that he’d started to believe he didn’t care about any of them anymore. Now he was here, and he didn’t want to leave again.

Wild emotions of surprise and trepidation burst into the gaiafield. Oscar grinned wryly as Jesaral charged down the spiral stairs in the house’s central pillar and ran across the lawn.

“You’re back,” Jesaral yelled. He flung his arms around Oscar and began kissing him with youthful eagerness; rampantly erotic thoughts came percolating out through his gaiamotes. “Oh, Ozzie, I missed you.”

“Good to be home,” Oscar admitted.

Dushiku and Anja hurried up.

“I couldn’t believe it when you showed up in Gore’s dream,” Dushiku murmured as he hugged Oscar tight. “You were in the Void! That was you in Makkathran right at the end.”

“Yeah, that was me,” he admitted. It actually felt good to boast about it for once.

Anja finally got her moment with him. “So this is what you really are? Some kind of galactic superagent?”

“Some of the time,” he admitted. “Not very often, thankfully.”

The other starship dropped through the clouds and came in to land next to the Elvin’s Payback.

“Who’s this?” Dushiku asked in a resigned tone.

“And why does a starship need wings?” Jesaral asked.

“They’re not wings, they’re heat dissipaters, and this is my new partner.”

Anja recoiled slightly. Dushiku merely gave a disapproving glance, and Jesaral was already powering up his outrage.

“Business partner,” Oscar assured them hurriedly.

The Mellanie’s Redemption landed smoothly The airlock opened, and a set of aluminum stairs slid out.

Jesaral gave Dushiku a meaningful glance that ended as a pout. Oscar put his arms around both of them, enjoying the flashes of jealousy.

The aluminum steps bowed as Troblum came down, raindrops trickling quickly down the worn fabric of his old toga suit. He gave Oscar’s startled life partners a brisk nod and quickly looked away.

“What sort of business?” Anja asked curiously.

“Exploration,” Oscar said contentedly. “The Commonwealth has sent out a lot of colony ships over the centuries. We thought it was about time we found out what happened to some of them. And who knows what else is on the other side of the galaxy? Wilson never did have a proper look.”

Anja raised her eyes skyward and produced a sigh of disapproval in that way only she could. However, she stepped forward and held her hand out to Troblum. “Good to meet you.”

“Uh, thank you.” He gave her hand a frightened look. By then it didn’t matter; Anja was looking up at the second figure to appear at the top of the stairs. She was so surprised, she forgot to prevent the emotion from revealing itself through her gaiamotes.

“This is my fiancé,” Troblum announced.

“Pleased to meet you,” Catriona Saleeb said. She smiled nervously as she came down the stairs and fumbled for Troblum’s hand.

Oscar knew he was leaking out all the wrong thoughts, but he just couldn’t help it. He’d been the first to support Troblum when Catriona was made real. Troblum had seen that one last slender chance in the time after the Heart had decided to follow Gore and before the moment when it elevated itself. He hadn’t analyzed it or paused for doubt; he’d simply gone for it, using the Void’s creation layer to turn his solido into flesh and blood, an act that was perhaps the most human thing Troblum had done in his life.

Oscar was also pretty sure that it wouldn’t last, that Catriona would soon outgrow her initial thoughts. But then, ephemerality was the summation of most human activities. The trick was to enjoy the time when things were going right.

The Silverbird alighted gently outside the Tulip Mansion, its landing legs barely making dents in the gravel drive in front of the grand entrance portico. Justine floated down out of the airlock, taking a wonderfully reassuring breath of Earth’s old air once again. There had been moments when she thought that might not happen ever again. Kazimir whooped joyfully as he followed her down to the ground. Manipulated gravity was just one of the delights he’d discovered in the short time since she’d summoned him back out of the Void’s creation layer.

He stood perfectly still, allowing his mouth to open wide as he stared up at the preposterously extravagant building. “This is your home?”

“Yes, this is where I was born and lived ever since.” That was almost the truth. She didn’t want to spoil things. It was going to take this naive Kazimir a while to adjust to everything the Greater Commonwealth offered. And who better to act as his guide and tutor?

“Would you like to look around?”

“Oh, yes!” His arms flapped around for emphasis. “Who else lives here?”

“Ah, no one at the moment. It’s become a bit of a museum, I’m afraid. We’ll find you a bedroom, a suite, actually. There are some excellent ones in the west wing.”

He caught hold of her hand and gave her that beseeching look with his lovely big adoring eyes. “Will you be nearby, Justine?”

“Um.” She was blushing again. Come on, girl, get a grip. “I will stay for a while to make sure you’re all right. I’m going to be quite busy. There’s a lot to sort out right now.”

He grinned. “You have saved the galaxy. People will allow you time for yourself now. I am sure of it.”

“Probably.” The entrance doors were huge jet black slabs of glossy stonewood inlaid with a gold-leaf vine pattern. She paused as they swung open. I never noticed before; that’s so similar to the gates of the Sampalok mansion. Oscar had sworn his first voyage of exploration would be an attempt to find the previous occupiers of Makkathran. She still couldn’t quite get her head around that partnership. But then, in the Void, anything is possible. Kazimir was witness to that. And Catriona.

Kazimir peered in curiously as the lights came on along the length of the cavernous hall. “How old is this palace?”

“Over a thousand years,” she said with pride.

“Dreaming heavens,” he murmured as they walked inside.

“I used to rollerblade in here,” she said fondly. “That’s when I was your age or maybe a little younger. Dad would scream at me and—” She stopped dead. A shiver ran up her body, strong enough to cause her to clutch at the door frame for support. Shock that only a genuine flesh-and-blood body could know was threatening to reduce her to tears.

Gore was standing in the doorway to the white room. As always, his solido was the twenty-fourth-century version of himself, gold skin body wearing a black shirt and trousers.

“Dad?” she gasped. In her nice rational tidy mind she’d known all along that he would be waiting here for her, that ANA would have reanimated his personality as soon as it confirmed his bodyloss on the Anomine homeworld. But back in Makkathran his transcendence had been so real, so vivid. Her meat body and brain knew her father’s mind and body had gone on to something better, that Daddy had died, that everything afterward was just the result of clever technology.

Sometimes basic human flesh and blood was far too painful.

“You did a great job out there,” he said. “Not everyone operating in a meat body would hold it together under that kind of emotional stress. Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” she said weakly.

“So how about that—my original body finally gets fried up in a nova. Goddamn Marius, he’s actually worse than Ilanthe in his own pathetically petty way. Funny thing, I didn’t imagine I’d get nostalgic, but I think I’m going to miss it. The damn thing was like a psychological final safety net. I suppose I ought to clone another. Not that I’ll ever use one again.”

“Good idea.”

“And I’m going to have to have a long talk with the Delivery Man; he can fill in the missing details. I accessed the kubes in Ozzie’s asteroid as soon as ANA brought me out of suspension storage; they updated me back to the point I left on the Last Throw. But there’s no accurate record of what happened on the Anomine homeworld between then and when that old Tyzak guy switched on the elevation mechanism. The way it played out, I’m guessing there had to be some serious problems back there.”

“Yeah, that’s how I read it, too.”

“Right. Well, you wouldn’t believe the fuss the Radical Darwinist Faction is kicking up in here. Conniving little shits. I could do with some help slapping them down. Are you coming back home now?”

Justine draped an arm around a very silent Kazimir’s shoulders and gave the golden man a defiant look. “Not just yet, Dad. There’re a few things I have to finish off out here. They might take awhile.”

The ultradrive starship hung in transdimensional suspension five million kilometers out from the Leo Twins. Marius wasn’t quite sure why he’d chosen this as his destination. Presumably, his subconscious had identified it as the last place anyone would suspect him of fleeing to.

As to what he should do now, he had no idea. The one time scrutineers he’d inserted into the unisphere were supplying a comprehensive picture of the political fallout from the Void’s elevation and the fall of the Sol barrier.

ANA had carried out its threat and suspended the Accelerator Faction. Instructions were being issued to ANA representatives to locate and arrest the remaining Accelerator agents. The list was very comprehensive. He was at the top, charged with genocide. That wasn’t something the authorities would quietly downgrade and forget after a couple of decades or even centuries, certainly not if Paula Myo was involved. That meant he would have to leave the Commonwealth entirely.

His options weren’t good. He didn’t know where any of the colonies were or what kind of societies they’d developed. Conceivably, he could start rescuing the other Accelerators on the list, form some kind of resistance. It would be dangerous, but he was more than capable of working in such an environment.

Alarms flared—

His ship was wrenched back into spacetime before even his accelerated thought routines had truly grasped what was happening. Sensors revealed nothing except a minuscule spatial anomaly directly in front of the fuselage. Then they failed, along with the drive. The starship’s network crashed. Gravity cut out, leaving him in free fall. Cabin lights died. He couldn’t access his u-shadow. A biononic field scan revealed that the life-support system was off line.

A link opened to his macrocellular clusters. “You’re under arrest,” Admiral Kazimir informed him.

“For now,” Marius retorted. “She’ll be back.”

“She won’t. None of them ever come back.”

As Araminta landed the big passenger capsule outside the sprawling white house, her confidence suddenly deserted her. Even the little surprise she’d prepared for him seemed feeble. There was absolutely no way of knowing how he’d react. Sure, he’d helped her before, but that was when the Living Dream maniacs threatened his homeworld and his lives.

They were gone now, thanks to her and the deception he’d helped her with. Now Ellezelin would be paying compensation for all the physical damage its troops had caused during the invasion. Inigo had promised that as he went back there to assume the presidency she’d abdicated. It was going to take a long while to dismantle the Living Dream movement, but he was the best—the only—candidate for the job. After the Void’s elevation, he was the person everybody trusted to do it right.

Two of hers stepped out onto the grass: her original body and Araminta-two. She looked around with all four eyes, relishing the familiarity.

Mr. Bovey had been busy since she’d left. The house had been repaired and painted. But then, if anybody could do a fast, quality refurbishment, it was going to be he with all his contacts in the business.

Several of hims were coming out of the house, running toward her, and they were all smiling, which brought a lump to her throats. He does care still! Now that she thought everything might be all right, after all, she thought she might cry—that would be a lot of tears. The gaiafield was abruptly full of the relief hes were broadcasting loud and clear into the gaiafield.

Eight of hims surrounded the two of her. The young blond one gave her a tentative look. “You came back.”

His uncertainty was too much. She just flung her arms around him. Then they were kissing.

“What you did was unbelievable,” the Asian him was saying to Araminta-two. “You never backed down, not for a second. Ellezelin, the Lady’s Light—you kept on and on. It was awesome.”

“They made me do it,” she told him. “It was the only way I could survive.”

“I was frantic when the Raiel blew up the link. Then Gore started dreaming, and you were on Makkathran. It was …” All of hims on the lawn started laughing in amazement. “Ozzie, you were unbelievable. For a while there you were in charge of the whole universe.”

Araminta gave him a demure smirk. “Did you think that was hot?”

The blond youngster cleared his throat. “Could have been.”

“Let me give you back. Hang on.” She closed her eyes, concentrating on the way her thoughts were spread out through the gaiafield. Slowly and carefully she withdrew herself from the body she’d borrowed. When she opened her eyes, he was right in front of her, that oh so familiar smile on his face. Then he looked down at himself. “Thank you; you took good care of him.”

“Certainly did.” Araminta let go of the blond youngster one and went over to the original—she could never stop thinking of him in those terms. It was only slightly weird kissing the body she’d been a few seconds earlier. “It was interesting being a man for a while,” she said in a teasingly husky voice.

“Really? Why?”

“I learned about … reflexes.” She was still pressed up against him. “Specifically, the involuntary ones.”

“Uh huh.” His voice had become hoarse.

“And I was bad, too, while I was away.”

“That’s always been one of your best qualities.”

“You don’t understand. Once you learned how to use it, the Void could make all your wishes come true. It really could. Anything. And I wasn’t strong enough to resist temptation. Mind you, I wasn’t alone. Most of us were at it at the end there. It was quite the little fantasyfest we had going on in the Sampalok mansion.”

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed. “Well, you had just saved us all. I suppose that entitled you.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Araminta had forgotten how much fun it was to tease Mr. Bovey. But the poor man was suffering, which he didn’t really deserve; he was far too noble for that. “I watched Justine and Edeard and Troblum all pulling lost loves out of the creation layer like rabbits from a hat.”

Mr. Bovey frowned. “Er …”

“So I thought: I haven’t lost anyone I love, but someone I love might appreciate a lot more of me.” She gave him a wicked smirk and glanced over at the capsule. The rest of hers were emerging.

Mr. Bovey watched with incredulous delight as fifteen identical Aramintas walked across the garden to hims.

“That conversation we had about what types of mes I’d have when I was multiple?” she said. “I decided there’s not much wrong with this one.”

“This one is absolutely perfect.”

“Good. So now all of yous can take all of mes to bed.”

“Oh, yes!”

“Now, please.”

Last Throw fell smoothly through the miserable winter weather to land at the house in Holland Park. The Delivery Man didn’t waste time walking; he teleported straight into the lounge.

“Dadeeeeie!” The girls flew at him. Small arms clung with surprising strength. Wet sticky kisses smudged his face. Little Rosa was bouncing around, yelling for attention as her elder sisters wouldn’t get out of the way. He scooped her up for big cuddles.

Lizzie was standing in the door, her eyes damp as she smiled at him.

“I’m back,” he told her.

“Yes,” she said. “And boy, have you got some explaining to do. Don’t you ever, ever—”

The Delivery Man kissed his wife.

Inevitably, the world was a pleasant one. The temperate zones where Araminta walked had vast rolling grasslands, tall snow-cloaked mountains, and extensive forests.

The three of them had been there for a couple of days, making leisurely progress along the narrow path before she heard the singing. “They’re here,” Araminta told Aaron. He didn’t react. Tomansio gently urged him forward toward the haunting nonhuman melodies. Aaron didn’t protest, just went with his guides as he’d done ever since they’d left Makkathran, saying nothing. He didn’t have nightmares anymore. He didn’t have anything; his mind had shut down of its own accord.

The Knights Guardian had wanted to take him back to Far Away, where there would be the best clinics and doctors and medical modules and memory edits. Lennox the Mutineer would be reassembled, they said. Araminta had said no, Aaron had suffered enough technology; he needed real healing. And she would take him to the one person who would grant that. Tomansio had been startled by the suggestion and very quick to agree.

Several dozen Silfen were camping in the broad glade. A semicircle of wide marquees had been set up, with long heraldic flags fluttering from the tips of tall poles. A huge fire was blazing in the middle of the semicircle. Some Silfen sat around it, playing flutelike instruments. More were dancing.

Araminta wasn’t entirely surprised to see a human woman among them. She was dressed in Silfen clothes: a simple white shirt with intricate dragons embroidered in gold and turquoise thread, a loose petal-layered cotton skirt that swirled and flared out as she danced. Her face was rapt, lost in the enjoyment of the music. Wavy golden hair swished around her head. Araminta could just glimpse a long chin and well-defined cheekbones—similar to her own.

“Ozziebedamned,” Tomansio muttered. He was staring around at the scene as if the elves had enchanted him.

Then Clouddancer and Bradley were walking toward them. Araminta hurried over. The dancers encircled her, warbling approval and greetings.

“You did well,” Bradley said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for believing in me.”

“In your case it came easy,” Clouddancer said, his circular mouth fluting out to laugh.

“I’ve brought somebody,” she said.

“We know.”

“Please help him. He suffers from terrible demons in his head like you once did,” she told Bradley.

Bradley’s wings spread wide. “And if the Silfen can cure me …”

“That’s what I hoped.”

“He can walk with us,” Clouddancer said. “Where he will go can never be foretold.”

“He’s sure-footed,” Araminta promised. “Look what he did for everyone.”

“Oh, how you have grown. You are a wonder, Araminta. Mr. Bovey is a lucky man.”

She grinned back, slightly abashed.

“I think I’d better go and speak to your other friend before he explodes,” Bradley said.

Araminta laughed at how scared Tomansio looked as Bradley went over to him. The toughest superwarrior humbled by his idol. Speaking of which … She slithered through the dancers, finding herself swaying in time to the rhythm. Somewhere by the end of the marquees two of the biggest Silfen she’d ever seen started drumming, pounding a compulsive beat.

The woman beckoned her over with both hands. “I’m Mellanie,” she called above the music.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Of course you do. I’m proud of you, Araminta.”

“Thanks. That really means a lot.”

“It’s all over now, so let’s dance.”

They came from across the galaxy, the Raiel arkships and warships, congregating in orbit around the star where Centurion Station was based. From there the starscape was unchanged. The Wall stars still shone with their normal intensity, giving no hint of the endeavor they had just driven. It would be centuries before their leap in luminosity would be visible to any observer standing beside the ruins of the observation outpost.

Paula accompanied Qatux as they teleported into Makkathran. They arrived in Golden Park, where Querencia’s seabirds were still flapping above them, calling out in confusion as they hunted their missing sea. Paula turned a full circle, as admiring as any tourist as she took in the tall white pillars and the sweeping domes of the Orchard Palace.

“I never expected to stand here,” she admitted.

Qatux was staring out over Paula to the towers of Eyrie beyond. “Nor I,” he said. They made their way together through the overgrown park, following the curve of Champ Canal until it took them to Birmingham Pool. Paula was only too well aware of all Edeard’s gallant events that had played out around the pool and down the canal, yet she kept her silence, knowing Qatux was here for only one thing.

As they started along the side of Great Major Canal to High Pool, Paula looked over the weed-saturated water to the unmistakable Culverit ziggurat. That was when she finally appreciated Justine’s melancholia at how empty the city was. She was thrilled just to make this visit, but to have seen it during the Waterwalker’s heyday, watching the intrigues unfold and meeting people she knew only from dreams—that would have been glorious.

There was a bridge she didn’t remember across Market Canal, taking them into Eyrie itself. When she glanced up at the crooked towers, she could see past the crystal dome to the vast constellation of Raiel ships gathered protectively around their ancient comrade.

“What’s going to happen next?” she asked.

“We will decide together,” Qatux told her. “The change will come hard for us, I expect. The Void gave us purpose for so long; it is a part of what we became.”

“You know you will always be welcome in the Commonwealth.”

“Your kindness does you credit. However, we do have a responsibility to the other species living in the High Angel and all our other arkships.”

“Will you take them home?”

“Possibly. Some no longer have homeworlds they can return to. It has already been suggested we accept our original undertaking and spread out to new galaxies to begin again.”

“And you, Qatux, what about you? Do the Raiel still have a homeworld?”

“Yes. But it is not one any of us recognize. Two other species have come to sentience there in the time since we declared war on the Void. There will be no going back for us.”

“Perhaps that is for the best. I tried going home once. I had grown too much while I was away. We all do.”

Finally they stood in front of the Lady’s church. Qatux hesitated on the steps leading up to the entrance.

“You don’t have to,” Paula said compassionately.

“I do.”

The church was silent inside. Light shone through its transparent central roof to illuminate the center, leaving the vestibules in shadow. Right on the edge of the silver-hazed light, the Lady’s white marble statue stood resolute. Paula gazed up at the solemn well-crafted face, and the corners of her mouth lifted in an appreciative smile. “She looks so different here,” she said. “But then, I only ever met her once. We parted as soon as we got to Far Away.”

“I remember,” Qatux said. “It was the day I first met her.”

“I disapproved.”

“I loved her even then. She was so colorful, so flawed, so imbued with life. She taught me to feel again. I owe her everything.”

“How did she wind up here?”

“She was re-lifed, of course, after the Cat had finished with her. I supplied the memories for her new body, for I shared everything she felt right up until the last. That was why we parted. There was nothing left for us to know.”

“So she boarded a Brandt colony ship to start a new life. So many Brandts were disillusioned with the Commonwealth after the Starflyer War, they say almost a fifth of the senior dynasty members left. They would have welcomed her on board. She must have been quite solitary, poor thing.”

“It was for the best. Then Makkathran must have heard her as they flew around the Wall—somehow. It mistook her for a Raiel, for our minds had shared so much, and it called out.”

“And the Void did the rest. As it always does.”

“Yes.” Qatux extended a tentacle and stroked the statue’s cheek. “Goodbye, my beloved.” He turned and left the church.

Paula couldn’t resist one final over-the-shoulder check just to make sure she wasn’t mistaken. For an instant she could’ve sworn the statue was grinning in that ridiculous carefree way Tiger Pansy always had when she was happy. But it was only a trick of the light.

From the switchback road high in the foothills, Salrana looked out across the Iguru plain, not understanding what she was seeing. But then many things were puzzling her this day.

Someone coughed behind her. She turned nervously. “Edeard!” she cried, for it was he … but different, older. There was no mistaking that shy hopeful smile, however. Try as she might, she couldn’t sense him with farsight, and he wasn’t five yards away. Nor did she have a third hand anymore. “What’s happened?” she implored.

Edeard glanced down at the small boy whose hand he was holding. The boy looked back up adoringly. There were several shared features on their faces.

“Edeard!” she implored. She thought she might cry.

“This is so hard,” he said. “I know. I have undergone this myself, but if you ever trusted me then, please believe you are all right. Nothing is going to harm you.”

She took a tentative step toward him. “Where are we? Where’s Makkathran? Was there an earthquake?” She turned back to stare at the terrible devastation that had befallen the Iguru plain. The farms and orchards and vineyards had vanished, wiped out by a smoldering desert of gray rock that extended out to the shoreline. But stranger than that were the ships. At least that was what she thought they were, for what else could they be? Twelve metal monsters lying around the edge of the destruction, though to imagine anything of such a size flying was impossible.

“We are home,” Edeard said. “Though it is not home, not truly, not anymore. Makkathran is gone. But nobody died. They all lived, Salrana; they lived such amazing lives. And now we have a chance to live our life. Together.”

“Us?” she asked, still hopelessly confused.

“Well, actually, the three of us.” He ruffled the boy’s head. “This is Burlal, my grandson.”

“Grandson? Edeard, please, I don’t understand.”

“I know. Perhaps I was wrong to do this, for the Lady knows it is a very selfish act. But sometimes to do what’s right—”

“—you have to do what’s wrong.”

“Yes. You have just finished your training in Ufford Hospital, haven’t you?”

“I was due to leave tomorrow, but I woke up here.” She frowned. “No, I arrived here somehow. Edeard, do I dream this?”

He took her hand, which made her ridiculously grateful. But then the touch of him had always done that, and she’d missed him terribly these long months away from Makkathran.

“We are no longer dreams, my love. We are as genuine as can be. And out here, in this time, I chose you over everyone. I chose the you from now because you are still the real you. My brother taught me that trick.”

“What brother?”

He laughed. “There is so much to explain, and I’m not sure how to begin. I never told you, did I, that I had dreams? Every night of my life I dreamed of life outside the Void. Well, that’s where those ships have come from. Outside, where the universe goes on forever.”

“Like Rah and the Lady?”

“Yes. Just like them. And the three of us are going on one of those ships. It’s going to fly away, fly out of here. We’re going to live out there, Salrana, out among the stars.”

She grinned, for he was being so foolish. But she could see how happy he was, which she liked.

Edeard’s arm went around her shoulder, and it felt fantastic. For so many years now she had waited for such a sincere open gesture. Then she saw a tall, strangely dressed man coming down the road. He was wearing some kind of skirt with a colorful square pattern on it and a bright scarlet waistcoat. Slim, curving lines of silver and gold light shone through his thick brown hair.

He stopped in front of them, looked them up and down, and promptly grinned broadly.

“I know you,” Edeard said in amusement. “You’re the Lionwalker. You were in charge of my brother’s science station when first we dreamed of each other.”

“Aye, that I was. Good morning to you, Waterwalker. And young Salrana, of course. And I think you must be Burlal. Am I right?”

The boy gave a cautious nod, clinging tighter to Edeard’s leg.

“Well, congratulations and then some. Waterwalker, that was quite a sight. I’ve just spent the night up on top of the mountain where the air’s clearest. Didn’t want to miss anything. After all, it’s not every day you get to see an entire universe evolve, is it?”

“My first time, as well,” Edeard told him.

“Aye, well, it’s over now.” Lionwalker Eyre gave Salrana a roguish smile. “It’s nice for an old romantic like me to see you two back together.” A finger wagged at Edeard. “Don’t you go messing it up again, lad.”

“I won’t,” Edeard said quietly.

“Well, I’d best be off. I expect you two have a lot to talk about.” He started walking briskly down the road.

“Wait,” Edeard called after him. “Where are you going?”

“Onward,” the Lionwalker replied with a wave. “Always onward.”

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IF AT FIRST …

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IF AT FIRST …
Peter F. Hamilton

My name is David Lanson, and I was with the Metropolitan Police for twenty-seven years. When we got handed the Jenson case I was a chief detective, heading up my own team. Not bad going; from outside you’d think I was a standard careerist ticking off the days until retirement. You’d be wrong, I’d grown to hate the job with a passion. Back when I signed on the CID were real thief-takers, but by the time the Jenson case came up I was spending all my time filling in Risk Assessment forms. I’m not kidding, the paperwork was beyond parody. All good stuff for lawyers, but we were getting hammered in the press for truly dismal crime statistics, and hammered by the politicians for not meeting their stupid targets. No wonder public confidence in us had reached rock bottom; the only useful thing we did for the average citizen by then was to hand out official crime numbers for insurance claims.

I suppose that makes me sound bitter; but then that seems to be the fate of old men who’re stuck in a job that’s forever modernizing. The point of all this being, despite drowning in all that bureaucratic stupidity I reckoned I was quite a decent policeman. That is: I know when people are lying. In those twenty-seven years I’d heard it all, and I do mean all: desperate types who’ve made a mistake and then start sprouting bollocks to cover themselves, the genuine nutters who live in their own little world and believe every word they’re saying, drunks and potheads trying to act sober, losers with pitiful excuses, real sick ones who are so cold and polite it makes my skin crawl. Listening to all that day in day out you soon learn to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

So anyway— We get the call from Marcus Orthew’s solicitor that his security people are holding an intruder at his Richmond research center, and they’d appreciate a full investigation of the “situation.” That was in 2007, and Orthew was a media and computer mogul then, at least that was the public perception; it wasn’t until later I found out just how wide his commercial and technological interests were. His primary hardware company, Orthanics, had just started producing solid state blocks that were generations ahead of anything the opposition were doing, they didn’t have hard drives or individual components, the entire computer was wrapped up inside a single hyperprocessor. It wiped the floor with PCs and Applemacs. He was always ahead of the game, Orthew; it was his original PCWs that blew Sinclair computers away at the start of the 1980s; everyone in my generation went and bought an Orthanics PCW as their first computer.

But this break-in: I thought it was slightly odd the solicitor calling me rather than the company security office. Like I said, the longer you’re in the game the more you develop a feeling for these things. I took Paul Mathews and Carmen Galloway with me, they were lieutenants on my team, good people, and slightly less bothered about all the paperwork flooding our office than me. Smart move, I guess; they’d probably make it farther than I was ever destined to go. Orthanics security were holding on to Toby Jenson, they’d found him breaking into one of the Richmond Center labs, which the CCTV footage confirmed. And I was right, there was more to it. We read Toby Jenson his rights, and uniform division hauled him off; that was when the solicitor told me he was a stalker, a twenty-four-karat obsessive. Marcus Orthew had known about him for years, Jenson had been following him ‘round the globe, hacking into Orthew’s systems, talking to people in his organization, on his domestic staff, ex-girlfriends, basically anyone who crossed his path; but they hadn’t been able to do anything about him. Jenson was smart, there was never any activity they could take him to court for, he never got physically close, all he did was talk to people, and the hacking could never be proved in law. The Richmond break-in changed all that. As it was Orthew making the allegations, my boss told me to give it complete priority; I guess she was scared about what his magazines and satellite channels would do to the Met if we let it slide.

I went out to Jenson’s house with Paul and Carmen. Jesus, you should have seen the bloody place: I mean it was out of a Hollywood serial killer film. Every room was filled with stuff on Orthew: thousands of pictures taken all over the world, company press releases dating back decades, filing cabinets full of newspaper clippings, articles, every whisper of gossip, records of his movements, maps with his houses and factories on them, copies of his magazines, tapes of interviews Jenson had made, City financial reports on the company. It was a cross between a shrine and a Marcus Orthew museum. It spooked the hell out of me. No doubt about it, Jenson was totally fixated on Orthew. Forensics had to hire a removal lorry to clear the place out.

I interviewed Jenson the next day, and that was when it started to get really weird. I’ll tell you it as straight as I can remember, which is pretty much verbatim, I’m never ever going to forget that afternoon. First off, he wasn’t upset that he’d been caught, more like resigned. Almost like a premier league footballer who’s lost the Cup Final, you know: It’s a blow but life goes on. The first thing he said was: “I should have realized. Marcus Orthew is a genius, he was bound to catch me out.” Which is kind of ironic, really, isn’t it? So I asked him what exactly he thought he’d been caught out doing. Get this: He said, “I was trying to find where he was building his time machine.” Paul and Carmen just laughed at him. To them it was a Sectioning case, pure and simple. Walk the poor bloke past the station doctor, get the certificate signed, lock him up in a padded room, and supply him with good drugs for the next thirty years. I thought more or less the same thing, too; we wouldn’t even need to go to trial, but we were recording the interview, and all his delusions would help coax a signature out of the doc, so I asked him what made him think Orthew was building a time machine. Jenson said they went to school together, that’s how he knew. Now, the thing is, I checked this later, and they actually did go to some boarding school in Lincolnshire. Well that’s fair enough, obsessions can start very early, grudges, too; maybe some fight over a bar of chocolate spiraled out of control, and it’d been festering in Jenson’s mind ever since. Jenson claimed otherwise. Marcus Orthew was the coolest kid in school, apparently. Didn’t surprise me; from what I’d seen of him in interviews over the years he was one of the most urbane men on the planet. Women found that very attractive, you didn’t have to look through Jenson’s press cuttings to know that: Orthew’s girlfriends were legendary, even the broadsheets reported them.

So how on earth did Jenson decide that the coolest kid in school had evolved into someone building a time machine? “It’s simple,” he told us earnestly. “When I was at school I got a cassette recorder for my twelfth birthday. I was really pleased with it, nobody else had one. Marcus saw it and just laughed. He snatched one of the cassettes off me, a C-90 I remember, and he said: State of the art, huh, damn it’s almost the same size as an iPod.”

Which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Paul and Carmen had given up by then, bored, waiting for me to wrap it up. So? I prompted. “So,” Jenson said patiently. “This was 1971. Cassettes were state of the art then. At the time I thought it was odd, that iPod was some foreign word; Marcus was already fluent in three languages, he’d throw stuff like that at you every now and then, all part of his laid-back image. It was one of those things that lingers in your mind. There was other stuff, too. The way he kept smiling every time Margaret Thatcher was on TV, like he knew something we didn’t. When I asked him about it he just said one day you’ll see the joke. I’ve got a good memory, Detective, very good. All those little details kept adding up over the years. But it was the iPod that finally clinched it for me. How in God’s name could he know about iPods back in ’71?”

Now I understand, I told him: time machine. Jenson gave me this look, like he was pitying me. “But Marcus was twelve, just like me,” he said. “We’d been at prep school together since we were eight, and he already possessed the kind of suavity men don’t normally get until they’re over thirty, dammit he even unnerved the teachers. So how did an eight-year-old get to go time traveling? That was in 1967, NASA hadn’t even reached the moon then, we’d only just gotten transistors. Nobody in ’67 could build a time machine.”

But that’s the thing with time machines, I told him. They travel back from the future. I knew I’d get stick from Paul and Carmen for that one, but I couldn’t help it. Something about Jenson’s attitude was bothering me, that old policeman’s instinct. He didn’t present himself as delusional. Okay, that’s not a professional shrink’s opinion, but I knew what I was seeing. Jenson was an ordinary nerdish programmer, a self-employed contractor working from home, more recently from his laptop as he chased Orthew ’round the world. Something was powering this obsession, and the more I heard the more I wanted to get to the root of it. “Exactly,” Jenson said. His expression changed to tentative suspicion as he gazed at me. “At first I thought an older Marcus had come back in time and given his young self a 2010 encyclopedia. It’s the classic solution, after all, even though it completely violates causality. But knowledge alone doesn’t explain Marcus’s attitude; something changed an ordinary little boy into a charismatic, confident, wise fifty-year-old trapped in an eight-year-old body.”

And you worked out the answer, I guessed. Jenson produced a secretive smile. “Information,” he said. “That’s how he does it. That’s how he’s always done it. This is how it must have been first time ’round: Marcus grows up naturally and becomes a quantum theorist, a cosmologist, whatever … He’s a genius, we know that. We also know you can’t send mass back through time, wormhole theory disallows it. You can’t open a rift through time big enough to take an atom back a split second, the amount of energy to do that simply doesn’t exist in the universe. So Marcus must have worked out how to send raw information instead, something that has zero mass. Do you see? He sent his own mind back to the 1960s. All his memories, all his knowledge packaged up and delivered to his earlier self; no wonder his confidence was off the scale.”

I had to send Paul out then. He couldn’t stop laughing, which drew a hurt pout from Jenson. Carmen stayed, though she was grinning broadly; Jenson beat any of the current sitcoms on TV for chuckles. All right then, I said, so Orthew sent his grown-up memory back to his kid self, and you’re trying to find the machine that does it. Why is that, Toby?

“Are you kidding?” he grunted. “I want to go back myself.”

Seems reasonable, I admitted. Is that why you broke into the Richmond lab?

“Richmond was one of two possibles,” he said. “I’ve been monitoring the kind of equipment he’s been buying for the last few years. After all, he’s approaching fifty.”

“What’s the relevance of that?” Carmen interjected.

“He’s a bloke,” Jenson said. “You must have read the gossip about him and girls. There have been hundreds: models, actresses, society types.”

“That always happens with rich men,” she told him, “you can’t base an allegation on that, especially not the one you’re making.”

“Yes but that first time ’round he was just a physicist,” Jenson said. “There’s no glamour or money in that. Now, though, he knows how to build every post-2000 consumer item at age eight. He can’t not be a billionaire. This time ’round he was worth a hundred million by the time he was twenty. With that kind of money you can do anything you want. And I think I know what that is. You only have to look at his genetics division. His electronics are well in advance of anything else on the planet, but what his labs are accomplishing with DNA sequencing and stem cell research is phenomenal. They have to have started with a baseline of knowledge decades ahead of anybody else. Next time he goes back he’ll introduce into the 1970s the techniques he’s developed this time ’round. We’ll probably have rejuvenation by 1990. Think what that’ll make him, a time-traveling immortal. I’m not going to miss out on that if I can help it.”

I don’t get it, I told him. If Orthew goes back and gives us all immortality in the ’90s, you’ll be a part of it, we all will. Why go to these criminal lengths?

“I don’t know if it is time travel,” Jenson said forlornly. “Not actual traveling backward, I still don’t see how that gets ’round causality. It’s more likely he kicks sideways.”

I don’t get that, I said. What do you mean?

“A parallel universe,” Jenson explained. “Almost identical to this one. Generating the wormhole might actually allow for total information transfer, the act of opening it creates a Xerox copy of this universe as it was in 1967. Maybe. I’m not certain what theory his machine is based on, and he certainly isn’t telling anyone.”

I looked at Carmen. She just shrugged. Okay, thank you for your statement, I told Jenson, we’ll talk again later.

“You don’t believe me,” he accused me.

Obviously we’ll have to run some checks, I replied. “Tape 83-7B,” he growled at me. “That’s your proof. And if it isn’t at the Richmond Center, then he’s building it at Ealing. Check there if you want the truth.”

Which I did. Not immediately. While Carmen and Paul sorted out Jenson’s next interview with the criminal psychologist, I went down to forensics. They found the videotape labeled 83-7B for me, which had a big red star on the label. It was the recording of a kids’ show from ’83: Saturday Breakfast with Bernie. Marcus Orthew was on it to promote his Nanox computer, which was tied in to a national school computer learning syllabus for which Orthanics had just won the contract. It was the usual zany rubbish, with minor celebrities being dunked in blue and purple goo at the end of their slot. Marcus Orthew played along like a good sport. But it was what happened when he came out from under the dripping nozzle that sent a shiver down my spine. Wiping the goo off his face he grinned and said: “That’s got to be the start of reality TV.” In 1983? It was Orthew’s satellite channel that inflicted Big Brother on us in 1995.

Toby Jenson’s computer contained a vast section on the Orthanics Ealing facility. Eight months ago, it had taken delivery of twelve specialist cryogenic superconductor cells, the power rating higher than the ones used by Boeing’s shiny new electro-ramjet spaceplane. I spent a day thinking about it while the interview with Toby Jenson played over and over in my mind. In the end it was my gut police instinct I went with. Toby Jenson had convinced me. I put my whole so-called career on the line and applied for a warrant. I figured out later that was where I went wrong. Guess which company supplied and maintained the Home Office IT system? The request must have triggered red rockets in Orthew’s house. According to the security guards at the gate, Marcus Orthew arrived twelve minutes before us. Toby Jenson had thoughtfully indicated in his files the section he believed most suitable to be used for the construction of a time machine.

He was right, and I’d been right about him. The machine was like the core of the CERN accelerator, a warehouse packed full of high-energy physics equipment. Right at the center, with all the fat wires and conduits and ducts focusing on it, was a dark spherical chamber with a single oval opening. The noise screeching out from the hardware set my teeth on edge, Paul and Carmen clamped their hands over their ears. Then Carmen pointed and screamed. I saw a giant brick of plastic explosives strapped to an electronics cabinet. Now I knew what to look for, I saw others. Some were sitting on the superconductor cells. So that’s what it’s like being caught inside an atom bomb.

Marcus Orthew was standing inside the central chamber. Sort of. He was becoming translucent. I yelled at the others to get out, and ran for the chamber. I reached it as he faded from sight. Then I was inside. My memories started to unwind, playing back my life. Very fast. I only recognized tiny sections amid the blur of color and emotion: the high-speed chase that nearly killed me, the birth of my son, Dad’s funeral, the church where I got married, university. Then the playback started to slow, and I remembered that day when I was about eleven, in the park, when Kenny Mattox, our local bully, sat on my chest and made me eat the grass cuttings.

I spluttered as the soggy mass was pushed down past my teeth, crying out in shock and fear. Kenny laughed and stuffed some more grass in. I gagged and started to puke violently. Then he was scrambling off in disgust. I lay there for a while, getting my breath back and spitting out grass. I was eleven years old, and it was 1968. It wasn’t the way I would’ve chosen to arrive in the past, but in a few months Neil Armstrong would set foot on the moon, then the Beatles would break up.

What I should have done, of course, was patented something. But what? I wasn’t a scientist or even an engineer, I can’t tell you the chemical formula for Viagra, I didn’t know the mechanical details of an air bag. There were everyday things I knew about, icons that we can’t survive without, the kind that rake in millions; but would you like to try selling a venture capitalist the idea of Lara Croft five years before the first pocket calculator hits the shops? I did that. I was actually banned from some banks in the City.

So I fell back on the easiest thing in the world. I became a singer-songwriter. Songs are ridiculously easy to remember even if you can’t recall the exact lyrics. Remember my first big hit in ’78, “Shiny Happy People”? I always was a big REM fan. You’ve never heard of them? Ah well, sometimes I wonder what the band members are doing this time around. “Pretty in Pink,” “Teenage Kicks,” “The Unforgettable Fire,” “Solsbury Hill”? They’re all the same; that fabulous oeuvre of mine isn’t quite as original as I make out. And I’m afraid Live Aid wasn’t actually the flash of inspiration I always said, either. But the music biz has given me a bloody good life. Every album I’ve released has been number one on both sides of the Atlantic. That brings in money. A lot of money. It also attracts girls, I mean I never really believed the talk about backstage excess in the time I had before, but trust me here, the public never gets to hear the half of it. I thought it was the perfect cover. I’ve been employing private agencies to keep an eye on Marcus Orthew since the mid-’70s, several of his senior management team are actually on my payroll. Hell, I even bought shares in Orthogene, I knew it was going to make money, though I didn’t expect quite so much money. I can afford to do whatever the hell I want; and the beauty of that is nobody pays any attention to rock stars or how we blow our cash, everyone thinks we’re talentless junked-up kids heading for a fall. That’s what you think has happened now, isn’t it? The fall. Well, you’re wrong about that.

See, I made exactly the same mistake as poor old Toby Jenson: I underestimated Marcus. I didn’t think it through. My music made ripples, big ripples. Everyone knows me, I’m famous right across the globe as a one-off supertalent. There’s only one other person in this time who knows those songs aren’t original: Marcus. He knew I came after him. And he hasn’t quite cracked the rejuvenation treatment yet. It’s time for him to move on, to make his fresh start again in another parallel universe.

That’s why he framed me. Next time around he’s going to become our god. It’s not something he’s going to share with anyone else.

I looked ’round the interview room, which had an identical layout to the grubby cube just down the hall where I had interviewed Toby Jenson last time around. Paul Mathews and Carmen Galloway were giving me blank-faced looks, buttoning back their anger at being dragged into the statement. I couldn’t quite get used to Paul with a full head of hair, but Orthogene’s follicle treatment is a big earner for the company; everyone in this universe uses it.

I tried to bring my hands up to them, an emphasis to the appeal I was making, but the handcuffs were chained to the table. I glanced down as the metal pulled at my wrists. After the samples had been taken the forensics team had washed the blood off my hands, but I couldn’t forget it, there’d been so much; the image was actually stronger than the one I kept of Toby Jenson. Yet I’d never seen those girls until I woke up to find their bodies in the hotel bed with me. The paramedics didn’t even try to revive them.

“Please,” I implored. “Paul, Carmen, you have to believe me.” And I couldn’t even say for old times’ sake.

For Felix F. Hamilton,
who arrived at the start of the Void.
Don’t worry, Daddy’s world isn’t really like this.

BY PETER F. HAMILTON

Great North Road
Manhattan in Reverse and Other Stories
Pandora’s Star
Judas Unchained

THE VOID TRILOGY

The Dreaming Void
The Temporal Void
The Evolutionary Void

THE NIGHT’S DAWN TRILOGY

The Reality Dysfunction
The Neutronium Alchemist
The Naked God

THE GREG MANDEL TRILOGY

Mindstar Rising
A Quantum Murder
The Nano Flower
Fallen Dragon
Misspent Youth
A Second Chance at Eden
The Confederation Handbook

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PETER F. HAMILTON is the author of numerous novels, including The Temporal Void, The Dreaming Void, Judas Unchained, Pandora’s Star, Fallen Dragon, and the acclaimed epic Night’s Dawn trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God). He lives with his family in England.