Fallen Dragon

"Sounds like piracy to me," Lawrence said.

Ntoko laughed at the youth's surprise. "You got it, my man."

Platoon 435NK9 was scheduled to land on Floyd, a large moon orbiting Kinabica. While the rest of the Third Fleet platoons would be trying to keep a lid on Kinabica's resentful and resourceful population, they would be intimidating the three thousand inhabitants of Manhattan City.

Floyd was just large enough to hold on to an atmosphere, a thin argon-methane envelope that occasionally snowed ammonia crystals during midnight on the darkside when the temperature became seriously chilly. There were no seas or even lakes; its surface was covered with a spongy dull rouge vegetation, like a lichen with dendrite fronds. The claggy stuff covered every square centimeter of the moon, from the top of its few sagging mountain ranges to the bottom of crater basins. Not even boulders or cliffs remained free: its grip was pervasive and total. The locals called it Wellsweed, after the avaricious Martian weed in The War of the Worlds.

From the platoon's landing vehicle it looked as if they were gliding over an ocean of thick liquid, with strange crumpled wave patterns suspended in time, casting long, low shadows. They were having to use heavily modified Terran lunar cargo landers to get down to the ground. The vehicles were normally a simple cylindrical pressurized cabin, with rocket engines, tanks, sensor wands, thermal panels and cargo pods clustered around it in an almost random pattern, while three metal spider legs were flung wide underneath to absorb the impact of touchdown. Now the whole clumsy edifice had been encased in a lenticular composite fuselage designed to protect the vulnerable bulky core from the meager atmosphere during descent and deceleration. It was the closest the human race had ever come to building a flying saucer, though it certainly lacked the smooth elegance normally associated with the concept.

The sun had just risen above the low hills behind Manhattan City, beginning its seventy-five-hour traverse of the sky, when they wobbled in over the spaceport. Various strobe lights and guidance instruments ringed the patch of blasted rock that served the city (all currently dark and inactive). Noxious yellow flame belched out of dark holes in the vehicle's fuselage. Legs unfolded with labored jerky motions, allowing them to settle to the ground with alarming creaking sounds and the muted roar of the rocket jets drumming against the badly stained fuselage.

A second, then a third vehicle from the Third Fleet swooped in gracelessly and touched down beside them. Nothing marked them out as interlopers more than the local ground-to-orbit shuttle craft that were parked along the far side of the spaceport, silver-white spire rocketships standing vertically on curving scimitar fins, their pedigree taken direct from the dreams of the 1950s.

The platoon disembarked, edging clumsily down an aluminum ladder welded to one of the landing legs. On the ground, Lawrence's muscle skeleton AS struggled to compensate for the low gravity, restraining every movement. They jostled, bounced and slithered their way toward the main airlock of Manhattan City. Bulky impact armor worn over the muscle skeleton made it look as if they'd sealed themselves in puffball spacesuits to cover the short distance.

The smaller one-person airlocks only just allowed them to pass through.

It was the combination of Floyd's minerals and the odd biochemistry that Wellsweed employed that had justified the construction of Manhattan City. Essentially it was nothing more than a dormitory town for the refineries and processing plants that produced complex organic molecules that were used by Kinabica's medical and chemical industries—high-value, low-mass products, perfect for Z-B to reclaim and transport back to Earth.

Once the platoons were inside Manhattan, the mission proceeded along more standard lines. The commanding officer delivered his polite ultimatum to the city's administrator, who immediately agreed to all the demands. Technical support teams came in and started going through the inventory and refinery specifications.

There were plenty of suitable products that could be shipped back up to the starship orbiting Floyd. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of anything stored at Manhattan; batches were usually delivered straight down to Kinabica. For some inexplicable reason all Manhattan City's industrial facilities had been shut down five hours after the Third Fleet had emerged from compression.

Platoons were dispatched with Z-B technicians to "assist" city personnel in restarting the production lines with minimum delay.

On day two, Lawrence found himself with Colin, Ntoko and a couple of other 435NK9 squaddies, bouncing and tottering over the ubiquitous Wellsweed into a small crater a kilometer to the north of Manhattan City, where a chemical plant had been dug into the protective insulation of the regolith. They were escorting a pair of Z-B technicians and five of the chemical plant maintenance crew who had been assigned to restart the systems.

He scanned his image-intensifiers around, eager to absorb as much as he could. His first Alien Planet. Admittedly it was different from both Earth and Amethi. He was just slightly disappointed that it wasn't more interesting. Wellsweed made it look as if the whole place had been meticulously foam wrapped ready for storage. He kept looking up at the huge, brilliant crescent of Kinabica hanging above the horizon, wishing he'd drawn that assignment. A genuine new world. The i-i's made it glow enticingly.

Apart from the spaceport, the crater was the first area they'd encountered where the Wellsweed was patchy. Dozens of crude tracks and wheel furrows crisscrossed the floor, cutting right through the vegetation. The center of the crater was home to a series of regular humps, each one a couple of hundred meters long. Ribbed cylindrical heat exchange towers stood on top, resembling the brick chimneys of the Industrial Revolution four centuries and seventeen light-years distant. The dirty soil that had been bulldozed on top of each bunker was speckled with dull rouge blooms of new-sprouting Wellsweed, stains that were gradually spreading and merging. In comparison to the torn carpet on the crater floor, none of the new growths seemed particularly healthy.

The airlock was large enough to hold the whole group. After it cycled, the inner hatch opened into a warren of concrete corridors. Long rectangular windows set in the walls provided views across chambers full of tangled machinery and piping. Blank steel doors led away into offices, workshops and vaults lined with deep storage tanks.

It was bewildering to the squaddies, even with their muscle skeleton HUD visors providing them with a full map of the installation. The technicians and maintenance crew were unfazed, making their way directly to the quiet control center. Within minutes, the management AS had begun speaking to them at half a dozen stations simultaneously, while the big status board began to light up with schematics as the plant came back to life.

"You'd better check out the rest of this place," the senior technician told Ntoko—a reasonably polite way of saying "get lost."

"We're with that," the corporal assured him.

"Check it out for what?" Colin asked as they left the control center.

"Revolutionaries and terrorists, I guess," Ntoko said. "Relax, my man, we pulled an easy duty with this one. Walk around the scenery for six hours, and we're back in the barracks with no harm inflicted."

"I thought there'd be more to it than this," Lawrence admitted.

"There never is, son," Ntoko said cheerfully. "The platoons are only ever here for that one anarchist hothead who doesn't give a shit about collateral and the gamma soak. Everyone else knuckles under and gets on with the job. They might not like us, but they don't cause any trouble."

"Do we ever use the gamma soak?"

"Never have. I doubt we ever will."

"Thank Fate for that."

"It's logic, not fate. If we ever got to a situation where it needs using, we've lost anyway. If things are so out of control you need to kill half a million people to frighten the rest into obeying you, there's not really a hell of a lot of point in using it. That kind of madness will never achieve anything except to twist the level of hostility beyond reason, and with it the probability that we'll ever make it home. Use gamma soak against a planet, and they'll throw everything they've got against the starships by way of retaliation and vengeance." His thick, armored hands tapped against his thigh with a sharp clacking noise. "In any case, I could never give that order. Could you?"

"No, sir," Lawrence said firmly.

"Course not. But you'll still have to shoot your scatter pistol when I tell you."

"Ready for that one, Corp."

"Good man. Now, you and Colin make a sweep through the two eastern bunkers. Make sure there's nobody lurking around avoiding collateral status. It's not that unlikely. Some people just don't trust their fellow citizens to behave. Sad but true."

They made their way along badly lit corridors, taking junctions at random. Infrared, motion detectors, i-i's and sound filters couldn't detect anyone else in the bunker.

"This is a total waste of time," Colin grumbled on the local frequency. "It's not like the planet, where people can hide out away from the cities. We know exactly how many people there are in Manhattan; it's listed in the AS memory."

"Quit complaining. Like the corp says, it's an easy duty."

"Yes, but how's it going to look on our records? I wanted to see some action, perhaps get the chance to earn a commendation."

"Will you relax? Keeping the whole of Manhattan City under control without ever having to fire a shot is like the universe's most perfect operation. And we're part of that. Now that's what'll get you a commendation. The company likes things that go smoothly,"

"Possibly."

Overhead pipes began to gurgle and shake as fluids rushed down them. It had been happening all morning as the plant slowly came back to life. The ambient temperature had risen fractionally as the machines all returned to work. Even through the protective layers of armor and muscle, they could feel vibrations building in the walls and floor.

"Newton, Schmidt, get over here," Ntoko ordered. "Bunker three, section four."

"What's up, Corp?" Lawrence asked.

"Just get here." Ntoko's voice was flat.

"On our way."

They couldn't run. Any real strength applied through their legs would smack them straight up into the ceiling. Instead they moved with long, loping strides, arms raised ready to slap themselves down if the arcs became too high.

As they approached the door to bunker three Colin drew his carbine, taking the safety off.

"Are you crazy?" Lawrence hissed. "Those things are loaded with explosive shells. You could blow a hole clean through the wall."

"We're underground, Lawrence. All I'm going to kill is hostiles and rock."

"And chew up a billion dollars' worth of machinery." Lawrence pulled his own scatter pistol out. The magazine was loaded with toxin darts. "You know policy; assets have priority."

"Fine fucking policy that is," Colin grumbled. A further few words were muttered, which the helmet mike had trouble picking up. Lawrence guessed they were German anyway. Colin always reverted to his native language when he felt stressed. He paused and shoved his carbine back into his holster, removing a maser wand.

Lawrence didn't comment He walked forward, and the bunker door slid open. The main corridor stretched on ahead of them, its tube lights flickering at an almost subliminal frequency.

"We're in the bunker, Corp," Lawrence said.

"Good, now get down here to us."

Lawrence's HUD flicked up the plans for bunker three. Section four was at the end of a side corridor eighty meters away. They started walking toward it "You reckon this is some kind of hazing?" Lawrence asked. He'd switched off his radio, using the armor's external speaker on low volume.

"Not sure," Colin murmured back. "You reckon the corp would pull that kind of stunt?"

"Dunno. He might want to see how we react."

"If he'd just tell us why he wants us."

"Maybe he's been captured."

"Oh, come on!"

"Well, it's possible. Why else is he being..."

Lawrence's armor microphone picked up a scuffling sound. His motion detector registered a fast airwave wash down the main corridor directly behind him. Both of them spun around, assuming a low crouch position, weapons searching for a target. The i-i scoured the walls and floor on high resolution, revealing nothing.

"What the fuck..."

Lawrence switched to the secure suit band. "Corp, is there anyone else in this bunker with us?"

"Nobody's been authorized by the AS, why?"

"Somebody moving around out here."

"Just a minute."

Lawrence and Colin straightened up, keeping their weapons ready.

"Could have been the machinery switching on," Colin said. "No telling what effect it'll have on the sensors."

"The AS should filter it"

"I've checked with our people in the control center," Ntoko said. "Everyone's accounted for. The local AS is relaying camera images to my suit. I can see you two, but there's no one else in here."

"We thought it might be the machinery glitching our sensors," Lawrence said.

"Okay. Keep a watch. And put your i-i's to medium resolution; high-rez produces some weird effects."

"Roger. With you in a minute."

They made the side corridor without further incident and started down. The door at the end was open. Lawrence couldn't see anyone inside, just another big chamber full of black-and-silver machinery, the kind of towering mechanical exhibition that could have come straight out of a steamship's engine room. Thin gases were leaking from pipes; the general noise level rose with every step closer.

An armor-suited figure appeared in the door. "Hi, lads," Meaney called. He raised his arm to wave. Something moved behind him, eclipsing one of the ceiling lights.

"Down!" Lawrence screamed. He and Colin thrust their weapons forward. A target circle flashed across his HUD.

Meaney froze, framing his suit in the doorway. His gauntleted hand suddenly made a move for the carbine holstered on his waist. The dark swirl bobbed about behind him, sliding away from the light. Then it was gone, slithering into the intestinal tangle of pipes and valves.

"Behind you!" Colin yelled.

"What—" Meaney was turning, his carbine half out of the holster. The other two were racing toward him, the AS angling their muscle skeletons so they were leaning forward at a sharp angle, providing a degree of balance in the low gravity.

"Where'd it go?"

"In there, in that gap."

Lawrence jumped up cautiously, gun held out in front, pointing into the metallic crevice ready to fire as his helmet sensors rose up level. The i-i's green tinge revealed a gap that was nothing but a dusky jumble of twisting pipes and looping cables. Infrared showed some of the pipes glowing pink.

He relaxed his trigger finger as he landed on his heels. "Shit! Missed it." His HUD display was registering a high heart rate. Adrenaline hummed eagerly in his ears. This was all way too elaborate for a hazing. He tried to concentrate on his training for unknown territory. Be suspicious. Always.

"What the fuck are you two doing?" Meaney demanded.

"Didn't you see it, for Christ's sake?" Colin said. "It was right behind you. Are your sensors screwed or something?"

Meaney's carbine waved around at the cliff of chemical-processing equipment. "What was behind me?"

"I don't know. Something up there."

"Where?"

"Jesus, what's wrong with your sensors?" Colin asked.

"Nothing's fucking wrong with them."

"Then you must have seen it."

"Seen fucking what?"

Ntoko emerged down an aisle formed by the hulking stacks of machinery. He was holding his scatter pistol ready in his right hand. "Okay, what do you two keensters think you keep seeing?"

"I'm not sure, Corp," Lawrence admitted. "We saw something moving about behind Meaney."

"My sensors didn't track anything," Meaney said.

"Something?" Ntoko said. "A person or a robot?"

"Well, it was up there, and smallish," Lawrence said, trying to recall the shady image.

"It didn't move like a robot," Colin said. "It was fast."

"Could have been a rat," Ntoko said.

"A rat?" Lawrence asked. "Why would Kaba import rats, especially to Floyd? They don't contribute anything valid to the ecology."

"They're not imported, son. They just tag along for the ride. Anywhere in this universe where humans are, you'll find them as well. Sneaky little sons of bitches, as well as vicious."

"There aren't any on Amethi."

"No? Well, then, you were lucky. Now get your AS to run a constant track for small object motion. If anyone sees anything, tell me straightaway. Got that?"

"Yes, Corp."

"Good, now come with me." He marched off back down the aisle he'd come from.

"What did you find here, Corp?" Colin asked, hurrying after him.

"Dust."

"Dust?"

"Yeah, dust. But wrong."

Not for the first time, Lawrence dearly wished he could shrug inside a muscle skeleton. The strange sightings had left him hyped; now the corp was telling them they were here for something different. He couldn't relax. Something else was in here with them, he knew it Ntoko led them into an open space at the end of the machinery, where Kibbo was waiting. On the other side from the refinery equipment were two huge cylindrical tanks embedded in the concrete wall. The domed end of the one facing Kibbo was five meters high, weld seams between the metal petal segments clearly visible. Bolts the size of a fist secured its rim to the end of the tank.

Ntoko squatted down, and beckoned Lawrence and Colin over. He pointed at the floor. "There, see?"

Lawrence upped his light amplifier sensitivity, knowing there must be some abnormality. The original gray concrete floor had been darkened from age and chemical stains. Dust lay amid the small ridges and pocks. He pulled the focus back. There was a broad track leading to the tank. Wheels and feet had been moving to and fro in what must have been a regular procession. Interesting but hardly alarming. He switched to the second tank, but the floor there had an even distribution of dirt.

"So?" he asked cautiously. "They serviced this one recently."

"Try infrared," Ntoko said softly.

The tank with the track leading to it was five degrees wanner than the other.

"That was what clued us in first," Ntoko said. "The signature is completely different. Yet according to the plant's AS inventory they both have exactly the same fluid inside."

"So what's—"

This time everybody's sensors picked up the movement. They swiveled toward the source as one, weapons ready. Against all training and instinct, nobody fired.

An alien was creeping out of the machinery three meters above the ground, hanging on to the conduits and support struts so it was ninety degrees to the vertical. Lawrence's first thought was of disappointment; it was unimpressive. A body the same size as a German shepherd, with six (or eight—he couldn't quite see) spiderlike legs, bent almost double round the knee-hinge joint, which ended in small horned pincers. Its fuzzy scale hide had the shading of a dirty oil-stain rainbow. The only gross abnormality, a true alienness, were the eyes, or what he assumed were the eyes: chrome-black buds along the flanks that were flexing about constantly. There was a head of sorts; one end of the body was bulbous, with a blank slit for a mouth.

It wore some kind of plastic bracelet on each of its limbs, right up by the body joints. They seemed to be fused with the flesh.

"General alert," Ntoko was announcing calmly. "Come in, Ops, we have a contact situation here. Ops?"

Lawrence's HUD was flashing red communication icons at him; the local net relays had crashed. He paid little attention. Another alien was crawling out of the machinery.

"Up there," Meaney croaked.

A third alien was walking along the ceiling above them, its limb pincers gripping the pipes with little effort as it picked its way along.

There were eight limbs, Lawrence saw at last. Definitely nonterrestrial, then. He watched the creatures with a mixture of elation and astonishment. The bracelets were hightechnology artifacts. They were sentient! He was making first contact with sentient aliens.

This moment was everything he'd ever wanted from life. He let out a soft, nervous laugh; incredulous that this should be happening here and now. His hand was trembling. He hurriedly engaged the pistol's safety, then asked the skeleton AS to find the rules governing first contact. They ought to be in the memory somewhere.

"Corp, what do we do?" Colin asked, his voice high and excited. He was shuffling back toward the tank, keeping his weapon trained on the first alien.

"Just stay—"

The alien in front of him extended a limb. A maser wand of very human design was gripped in the pincer. Lawrence stared at it numbly.

"That's..."

The alien fired. Lawrence's HUD instantly displayed a schematic of his armor suit Red icons clustered round like enraged wasps, indicating the energy impact pattern. Superconductor shunts were racing toward burnout as they tried to dissipate the beam.

"Move!"

Lawrence dived to one side, trying to break the maser's lock. The effort sent him flying close to the roof, limbs waving in panic. An automatic weapon opened fire below him, projectiles hammering into concrete and metal. The lights went out. Lawrence hit the floor and bounced almost a meter. His HUD reported that the maser was no longer on him. He waved his scatter pistol about ineffectually.

The space around him was illuminated by the muzzle flashes from two guns. Their topaz strobing revealed huge plumes of thick vapor screeching out of the processing equipment. More aliens were scuttling out of mechanical crevices. He saw two of them lugging a mini-Gatling between them.

"Ho fuck!" He rolled fast, abandoning the pistol and reaching for his carbine.

"How many?" Kibbo yelled.

"Where?"

"What happened to the lights?"

Lawrence's motion detector was rendered useless from the billows of vapor. Infrared struggled to acquire targets through the cloying haze. The i-i simply expanded the swirls in the fog, shading them a sparkly green. Another warning icon flashed, accompanying an audio tone, alerting him to the rapidly increasing toxicity level of the chamber's atmosphere.

A carbine opened fire, sending explosive rounds thudding into the dark. Detonations were swamped by the cloying gas, their flashes turning into a whiteout haze. Visibility was down to fifty centimeters and closing fast "Hold your fire."

Lawrence aimed the carbine in the direction he'd seen the aliens with the mini-Gatling and shot off twenty rounds. "They've got heavy artillery, Corp," he shouted as the weapon juddered in his arms. Explosions pulsed around the bunker. Someone else was shooting as well, small-arms fire. A round slammed into Lawrence's armor below his right pectoral. He was flung into the air, spinning. Red and amber icons traced elaborate circles around him like a protective swarm of holographic birds. Pain thumped straight through the hard outer shell and muscle skeleton to punish his ribs.

The radio channel was a caterwaul of yelling and bawled orders. Nothing made sense. Lawrence landed on his back, the impact pushing the last gasp of air out of his lungs. He dropped the carbine. Something moved under his legs, writhing about urgently, pushing his knees apart. Shock mobilized him instantly, allowing him to overcome his pained daze. He twisted quickly, bending down to grab at whatever was lifting itself up between his legs.

Excruciating pain bit into his leg, just above the knee. Icons reported both his armor and muscle skeleton had been sliced open. His hands rumbled into contact with a broad object, his brain telling him it was the same size as an alien's body. Through the swirling vapor he could just make out the ruddy infrared blur. It was an alien, and one of its limbs was holding a power-blade. Lawrence lunged for the knife, jerking it free from the pincers. He saw the alien's limb snap from the force of his grab, took a breath and punched the body with his free hand, delivering the full power of the muscle skeleton behind the blow. His armored fist ripped straight through the creature's hide, squishing into internal organs.

He almost vomited, pulling his hand free again, bringing with it dripping webs of membrane and gore. Another bullet struck him, sending him sprawling.

"Ceiling," Ntoko bellowed. "Shoot the ceiling out. Explosive shells. Do it now."

Explosions pummeled the concrete above Lawrence. The blastwaves made his battered armor creak from intense pressure stress. He fumbled his hand across the floor, searching for his own carbine. A maser beam washed over him again, prompting a flurry of scarlet symbols, and he jerked himself clear. Small-arms fire was raking the air above him. Some kind of gelatinous sludge was creeping across the concrete floor, slopping against his armor shell.

He found both the alien body and his carbine and rolled onto his back. Half a magazine of explosive shells smashed into the ceiling. Heavy lumps of concrete fell out of the fog in what seemed like slow motion, splashing into the sludge.

"What are we doing?" Meaney asked. "Why aren't we killing them?"

Lawrence slapped another magazine into his carbine. He'd been about to ask the same question.

"Breaching the bunker," Ntoko said. "I'm going to blow this gas and those alien mothers clean into space."

Lawrence opened fire again. Above the explosions he could hear a shrill whistling sound gather strength. Abruptly, the chemical fog was thinning, and the whistle increased to a tormented howl. A slice of sunlight prized its way down through the vapor, quickly expanding. Lawrence's i-i hurried to compensate, throwing up filters. He shifted his aim, letting the carbine shells chew the edge of the widening fissure in the ceiling. A huge, jagged section of concrete blew upward, pummeled by the bunker's venting atmosphere. The last of the gas surged upward, tugging Lawrence off the floor. Then he was tumbling down in absolute silence. Blazing sunlight shone into the bunker, revealing confusion and mayhem. The dense conglomeration of machinery had been torn to ruin, pipes ripped open, stolid processor units shredded. Sprays of fluid and gas were still pumping out, their ragged plumes curving upward before dispersing. Several alien corpses were hanging limply from metal fangs. They'd all been hit by weapons fire, pulping the tawny flesh.

"Come in, Ops, we have an emergency situation," Ntoko said. "Request backup immediately. Receiving hostile fire."

Lawrence's AS confirmed that they'd reestablished communications now that the roof had been split open. He clambered painfully to his feet as Ops began to interrogate Ntoko. Blood was leaking out of his knee where the power-blade had cut through, most of it, he was confident, coming from the skeleton muscle. Lines of pain flared along his torso with every move he made. He could see cracked dints in the armor; scorch marks had blistered the outer layer. "Oh hell," he groaned.

"We beat them." Kibbo's voice had a hysterical edge. "We beat the fuckers."

"What were they?" Colin asked. "Where the hell did they come from?"

"Holy shit, lads," Meaney said. "We've just fought our first interstellar war."

"And won the bastard! We kicked some ass, huh?"

"We did, man. They ain't gonna mess with this platoon again, that's for sure."

"I don't get it," Lawrence said. "What did we do? Why did they shoot?"

"Who cares?" Meaney said. "We are the masters now!" He let out a whoop, raising his arms in a victory salute. He froze. "Holy shit!"

Lawrence looked up. Aliens were crawling along the top of the broken roof, front limbs gingerly probing the blackened concrete edges. Several were easing themselves through the gap, gripping the twisted reinforcement struts. Maser beams stabbed down, playing over the squaddies. They returned fire, using carbines to chew away at the concrete.

"Get to cover," Ntoko ordered. He led them over to the wheezing bulk of machinery, firing as he went.

"They're natives," Lawrence said, shocked at the realization. "They don't need suits to survive, look. They have to be native."

"Big fucking deal," Meaney cried. "What did we ever do to piss them off?" He was shooting as he dodged behind a solid hunk of equipment.

"Stole their land and their women, I guess," Lawrence said.

"That's a real big fucking help, Lawrence," Kibbo yelled. "What is wrong with these alien freaks?"

Colin sent a whole magazine from his carbine roaring into the fractured ceiling, mauling concrete and aliens alike. "We didn't blow the bastards into space, we just let them in, for fuck's sake!" Concrete and flesh rained down over the squaddies.

"No more saturation fire," Ntoko ordered. "Let's conserve what we've got. Pick them off."

Lawrence ducked down into an alcove, then raised his carbine. A crossed targeting circle drew sharp violet bars across the ruined ceiling. He switched to single fire and located an alien. One shot blew its body apart. For aggressors, they were terribly vulnerable. That didn't make a lot of sense.

"How long before the cavalry arrives, Corp?" Colin asked.

"Any minute now. Just hang on in there."

For the first time in his life, Lawrence found he was praying. He wormed his way deeper into the too-small alcove, wondering if the God he knew didn't exist could be of any possible use. Asking couldn't possibly make things worse.

* * *

Simon Roderick hadn't expected to visit Floyd during the mission. As far as Z-B was concerned, the moon was simply a minor manufacturing location, easy enough to control and strip of its wealth. That was during the planning stage. Now those assumptions had changed drastically. And as a result, Simon was having to cope with low gravity and the uncomfortable indignity of a spacesuit.

The wretched devices hadn't improved much since the last time he was in one, eight years ago—an inner layer that exerted a fierce grip on his flesh, and a globe helmet that blew dry, dead air into his face, making his eyes water. The backpack weighed too much, which on Floyd translated into awkward inertia.

It was almost tempting to wear a muscle skeleton, as his three-man escort was doing. But he could never quite decide which was the lesser of the two evils.

His escort remained outside as he stepped into the chemical plant's airlock. After it cycled, he emerged into a drab concrete corridor. A reception committee had assembled for him, six squaddies in full muscle skeletons, carrying improbably sleek and dangerous-looking weapons hardware. Waiting with them were Major Mohammed Bibi, the commander of the Floyd operation, and Iain Tobay, from Third Fleet intelligence, along with Dr. McKean and Dr. Hendra from Z-B's biomedical science staff.

Simon's spacesuit AS confirmed the chemical plant's atmosphere was breathable, and he unsealed his helmet. "Are we expecting further trouble?" he asked lightly, his gaze on the stiff-at-attention squaddies.

"Not expecting, no, sir," Bibi said. "But then we weren't expecting this particular incident to start with."

Simon nodded approvingly. The major was probably over-compensating for the unexpected firefight, but it was prudent. He couldn't fault the response.

They clumped along more identical corridors to bunker three, section four. There was a noticeable difference in the air as soon as the steel door slid open. A mild chemical stew permeated the standard oxygen-nitrogen mix, with ammonia percolating to the top. He wrinkled his nose up.

Dr. McKean noticed the motion. "You get used to it after a while. We've brought in extra atmosphere scrubbers, but the processing machinery is still spilling some volatiles."

"I see." Not that Simon cared. Technical types always overexplained their world.

As he walked down an aisle formed by the machinery, the evidence of the fight grew more pronounced. Pools of dark tacky fluid were oozing out from underneath, while the smells strengthened. Metal became buckled and twisted; torn fangs blackened from explosive heat. When he came out into the open space at the end, the elaborate machinery was simply mangled scrap.

Temporary plastic shielding had been fixed across the broken ceiling, its epoxy adding another acidic fragrance to the melange. Bright sunlight shone through the translucent covering, tinged pink.

The tank that had caused all the trouble was now open, its large cap hinged back against the wall on thick hydraulic pistons, like the entrance to a giant bank vault. A ramp had extended from inside. Several Z-B personnel were moving round in front, helping to clear up the mess and shifting trolleys of equipment up and down the ramp.

Simon saw a couple of them were moving slowly, every movement careful, as if they were in pain. He called up files via his DNI: Meaney and Newton. Both in the firefight, both injured and assigned light (noncombat) duties. He was mildly interested by Newton's background.

"How's it going?" he asked them.

Newton straightened up from a mobile air purifier and saluted. His eyes flicked toward Major Bibi. "Fine, thank you, sir."

"Yes, sir," Meaney said.

"That was a good job you did," Simon said. "Muscle suits aren't exactly configured for head-on military action."

"They're good systems, sir," Newton said. He was relaxing slightly now he knew they weren't being bawled out.

"Now that you've used it in combat, any suggestions?"

"Better sensor integration would have been a help, sir. In fact, better sensors altogether. We were operating blind once the AS opened the gas valves; that muck screwed up our i-i and the motion detector."

"That must have been difficult."

"Corporal Ntoko knew what to do, sir, he held us together. But like you say, if we'd been up against serious opposition we'd have been in trouble."

"I see. Well, thank you for your opinion. I'll see what I can do—not that the designers will listen to an executive, I expect. They don't hold us in terribly high regard."

"But you pay them, sir; they hold that in high regard."

Simon grinned. "They certainly do." He indicated the body of an alien, now covered with a sheet of blue polyethylene. "First encounter with an alien life, Newton?"

"Yes, sir. Shame it was under these circumstances. For a moment I thought they were real aliens."

"Real? I don't think you can get much more real than these."

"I meant sentient, sir. It's a crime what was done to these poor things, rigging them up like waldo robots."

Simon pondered the young man's idealistic dismay. Only the truly young could afford that kind of morals. No wonder Newton had rebelled against his background. "I suppose it is. Have you been in the tank, yet?"

Newton pulled a disapproving face. "Yes, sir."

"Ah, well, my turn now."

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Will they be punished, sir?"

"Who?"

"The... people who abused the aliens, sir."

"Ah, I see. Well, you must understand, Newton, while we're here, as well as enforcing the local law, we're also subject to it. That's what gives us the legitimate right to procure the assets that we do, because we work within their own legal framework even if they don't like or admit that. What we don't do is impose and enforce foreign laws on the indigenous population. If their constitution says it's okay to sleep with your sister, then that's what we let them get on with. So unfortunately, while enslaving and conducting experiments on animals or aliens is illegal in most countries on Earth, it isn't here."

"You mean they've done nothing wrong!"

"Not at all. They launched a serious assault on legitimate law-enforcement officers in the pursuit of their duty."

"So what's going to happen to them?"

"That's what I'm about to decide."

Simon paused as he was going up the ramp, looking down on yet another discreetly covered alien corpse. "Have you learned anything about them?" he asked McKean.

"Not much," the doctor admitted. "They're native to Floyd. Mammalian. Socially, they're halfway between a pack and a hive. Their whole physiology slows down considerably during the night-time cold. They eat Wellsweed; in fact, they spend ninety percent of their time grazing. And that's about it."

"So they're not sentient?"

"No, sir. We're trying to mine some references to them from Manhattan's memory, but so far we've drawn a blank. It's obviously been deep encrypted. Certainly nobody on Earth knew about them. Which is surprising. From a xeno-biological viewpoint I cannot overstate how important they are. Kaba should have been shouting about them from the moment of discovery."

"Kaba's Earth Board probably weren't informed," Simon said. "You never reveal a good poker hand, Doctor."

He continued up the ramp, with Major Bibi leading the way. The interior of the tank had been split into two levels, each subdivided into several compartments. The arrangement reminded him of a bomb shelter. Not a bad analogy, Simon thought. They were certainly zealous about their security.

"I take it you have debugged this?" he asked Major Bibi.

"Yes sir. I've had technicians sweep it for physical defenses, and the plant's AS has been dumped into a sealed storage facility. It was complicitous with the attack on the squaddies, we know that from the gas release. Our own forensic AS is taking it apart code line by code line to determine what kind of routines were hardwritten in. We suspect it was puppeting the aliens as well. I've also had wipehounds running through the plant's datapool to make sure there are no subroutine remnants lurking. But there's a lot of circuitry here, especially in the processing machinery; we should have an all-clear in another ten hours."

"And the Manhattan City AS?"

"Definitely part of the business. Wiping that is more difficult; it does supervise a lot of hardware functions in the city, including life support. So far I've settled for installing limiter and monitor programs in the datapool."

"Very well." They stopped in front of a heavy security door. There was an elaborate DNA lock panel on one side, but the slab of reinforced metal itself was retracted.

Inside the room, medical support equipment had been stacked into elaborate columns. Eight of them were spaced along the middle of the floor. Each one was topped with an opaque plastic sphere fifty centimeters in diameter. Wires and slim tubes wormed out of the equator to disappear into the stacks at various levels. Five of them were inert, while the remaining three hummed and whirred quietly, with small indicator lights winking above various components. A couple of Z-B technicians were busy taking apart one of the inert columns. Dr. Hendra silently signaled them out, and they left without a word.

Simon stood in front of the first active pillar, staring at the globe. "Your opinion on the procedure's viability, Doctor?'

"Oh, it's viable, all right. In fact, it's much more proficient than the kind of rejuvenation treatments that are employed on Earth."

"Really? I thought Earth led that particular field."

"Technically we do. But v-writing a whole human body is enormously complicated. You have to vector new genes into the individual cells of every organ and bone and blood vessel, not to mention skin. Those genes all have to be specific to their destination. The best we ever manage to revitalize in each organ is twenty to thirty-five percent of the gross. Enough to make a difference, but there are just too many cells for all of them to be revitalized. That's why there's no point in extending rejuvenation past the third treatment. You run smack bang into the law of diminishing returns."

"Depends how young you are when you have your first treatment," Simon murmured.

Dr. Hendra gave a complicit shrug. "As you say. But it's unusual for anyone to undergo the treatment before they reach sixty. These days it's far more effective to provide germline v-writing to inhibit the aging process. When you're only ten cells tall, all those shiny new improved genes can be vectored in without any room for error."

Simon smiled knowingly. "Of course." Dr. Hendra's file showed he was born of such a process, which, given the genetic engineering of the time, would give him a life expectancy of around 120 years. His parents had both been stakeholders in Z-B, middle-management level. In those days the company provided it for only the upper echelons. They'd been lucky to qualify. Now, of course, it was available to every stakeholder, regardless of the size of their stake. Another huge incentive to invest your life with Z-B, and one of the reasons they were one of the largest companies on Earth and beyond. "And yet you regard this particular procedure as effective."

"Indeed." Dr. Hendra gestured at the plastic sphere on top of the medical stack. "Isolate the brain, and you can repair at least eighty-five percent of the decayed neuron structure. As you don't have to worry about repairing anything else, it allows you to concentrate your resources most efficiently. After all, you are only rejuvenating one kind of cell, although admittedly there are many variants."

Simon used his DNI to activate the column's communication system. "Board Member Zawolijski, good morning."

"A good morning to you, Representative Roderick," the brain replied.

"That was most impolite of you to shoot at our squaddies."

"I apologize. My colleagues and I are somewhat set in our ways. Your platoon's incursion alarmed us. The corporal had discovered this tank. Ours is not an aspect of Board family life we wish to share with the rest of the civilized galaxy."

"Indeed, and does that include the Board of your new parent company?"

"Certainly not. I speak only of the fact that it can be done. The... cost, in social terms, could be regarded as unacceptably high by certain human factions."

"That's very heartening. The Board that I represent would certainly appreciate a full and complete technical briefing."

"I'm sure that can be arranged."

Simon's personal AS had been scrutinizing Zawolijski's root links into Manhattan City's datapool caches. The brain was reluctantly acknowledging the retrieval probes, allowing access to sealed memory blocks. A file expanded in Simon's vision, indigo script flowering around a single full-color image. It was the Kinabica police and court records of Duane Alden, beginning with his juvenile arrest and cautions for shoplifting, vehicle theft, and aggravated assault. As he matured he'd swiftly progressed to narcotic violation, burglary, armed robbery, extortion and finally murder. The last crime was a holdup that had been bungled thanks to Duane's drug-ridden state. The whole sorry episode had been captured on a security camera. His court case had lasted a mere three days. An appeal had been dismissed a month later. He was due to be executed in another two weeks, a month after his twenty-first birthday. The intervening three months had been spent in a prison's hospital wing, where tough medics had thoroughly detoxed him, at the same time pushing him through an intensive health regimen. Duane had resisted at first, but warders always have methods of guaranteeing compliance among even the most recalcitrant inmates. His lawyer was currently lodging an "abusive treatment" complaint, but that was just going through the motions.

Observing the naked, full-length holographic image of Duane Alden that appeared to hover in the air between him and the encased brain, the one phrase that came to Simon's mind was Golden Youth. Duane was physically flawless and distinctly handsome.

"Your new body, I take it," Simon inquired.

"Yes," Zawolijski said. "He's quite splendid, isn't he? Several centimeters taller than my last. And that face... so bold. I'm sure the ladies will be appreciative."

"I'm curious. Exactly how old are you?"

"Two hundred and eight years, Earth standard."

"And this body would be number...?"

"My fifth replacement. I remained in my original until I was sixty."

"A new body every thirty years. That seems slightly extravagant."

"Not really. Twenty to fifty: the best years of a man's life."

"In the classical model, yes, but now that human bodies can be v-written for enhanced life expectancy, the period of primacy is considerably longer."

"Quite so. But such germline treatments are only just becoming commonplace on Kinabica, and as the parents invariably request additional modifications such as increased intelligence, such specimens are less likely to stray."

Simon canceled Duane's file and frowned at the brain. "You believe that enhanced intelligence ensures a noncriminal life?"

The brain chuckled. "Less likely to get caught, actually. Or if they do, then it's after a long and arduous investigation. By which time they're past their usefulness to the Board."

"You should use equally intelligent police officers to catch them."

"At the salary we pay?"

"I see your point. Which leads to my next question. Why not simply clone yourself a replacement body?"

"Ah, one of our race's favorite myths. Have you any idea how difficult and expensive that is? Growing a human in vitro until—realistically—they're sixteen. How would you suppress the arrival of consciousness over that time?"

"Would that problem arise? I'd have thought the lack of external stimuli would eliminate any chance of thoughts germinating."

"Coherent thought, certainly. But even infants have a basic awareness, and more than that by parturition. Sensory deprivation for sixteen years produces a monstrously retarded consciousness. It doesn't quite qualify as a personality. But believe me, it's a problem sustaining a body in an amniotic tank for any time after its first year. It wants to be birthed and struggles against its confinement."

"Then clone a body without a brain. V-write it out of the genome."

"Oh, please, how would you replace the autonomic function control? Technologically? There are far too many subtleties involved for some kind of wetwired chip to regulate."

"What about growing parts separately? Accelerating a replacement organ's growth to its maturity is a proven procedure. After that you simply assemble them into a full body."

"That merely increases the original problem by two orders of magnitude. The number of separate parts in a body is incredible, and that's just the principal glands and organs. Don't forget the entire circulatory system, skin, a skeleton even. What order would you start stitching them together in, in order to make sure they stay functional during the procedure? How much surgery does it actually take to assemble an adult human being? No. The idea is pure science fiction. I assure you, we have explored all these avenues. The most efficient way to produce a human body is the old-fashioned method of unskilled labor. Until we can develop some kind of active nanonics capable of integrating cellular structures or resetting individual DNA strands, transplanting a brain into a criminal's body is the most reliable procedure to regain a healthy young body."

"Very well. But what about the neuron regeneration process you employ? There must be some memory loss."

"Not from the regeneration. My memory loss comes from standard brain decay. New neurons don't contain old memories. That's perfectly acceptable to all of us; in fact, it's essential. The brain is finite, no matter how many improvements we have v-written in each time we undergo rejuvenation. I have to have the capacity available to store my new life's experiences when I re-enter society."

"If you are forever discarding the past, then you have forgotten who you were."

"Never, that's the beauty of this procedure. I have complete continuity with the baby born those two hundred and eight years ago, which is the overriding psychological factor. The strongest memories anyone has are connected with identity. The events that define what you are, shape your personality and who you have become, are so powerful they are part of your essence. They have become instinct, retained no matter how much regeneration is required. I might not be able to remember the intimate details of a day one hundred and thirty years ago, but that is no longer relevant; I know that I am the individual who lived through that day. Continuity of consciousness rather than unbroken memory, that is the human soul, Representative Roderick."

"Then what of the biological imperative? Your body is not genetically yours. You cannot reproduce for yourself; any offspring you sire will be those of Duane Alden. What is the point of your existence other than sheer vanity?"

"And you accused us of relying on classical models? With so much v-writing these days, whose child is truly theirs anymore? But to answer your question, that particular aspect of rejuvenation has the easiest remedy. My balls are cloned and transplanted along with my brain into every new body. For females, we simply implant cloned ova. All of us take part in life to the fullest degree when we return. We are complete to a degree unachievable by ordinary living, twenty years old with the intellect of a centenarian."

"What do you return as, a distant cousin?"

"Whatever identity is most convenient. Family stakeholding is not scrutinized and analyzed, Board family trusts operate privately, executive Board members are not celebrities."

"The perfect system."

"To sustain us and our chosen way of life, yes. That's why we wrote the constitution the way it is."

"And now your Earth Board has sold you out."

"Please, Representative Roderick, you have no need to sustain your legal fallacy with us. Zantiu-Braun is here because it has the ships and the firepower to raid our world, filling its own coffers with complete impunity. We acknowledge the reality of your strength."

"I'm pleased to hear that."

"So what deal do you require?" the brain asked.

"Deal?"

"For us to continue our existence without interruption. We would be happy to accept your Board members into our fraternity. It is a good life here: Kinabica is a wealthy, advanced world with a stable society. They would lack for nothing."

"The Board I represent would not be able to accept that offer."

"I'm offering you virtual immortality lived as a plutocrat, and you're turning that down?"

"We have different goals and objectives."

"And you don't think these objectives can run in parallel to immortality? I find that hard to believe."

"That really isn't your concern."

"Then what do you want?"

Simon pursed his lips, regarding the isolated brain with a weary disappointment. The techniques and ingenuity of the Kinabica Board were impressive, but their goals were so old. They'd be more suited to life in the Renaissance era, or maybe the British Imperium. They could have achieved so much more with what they had; instead they looked to the past for their template, building themselves an impregnable stone castle amid a stagnant society. All they'd done was secure what they already had. With a brand-new planet offering infinite horizons, no fresh possibilities had been explored, no impossible dreams attempted. It was truly pitiable.

"We want nothing from you," Simon said. "As you said, your planet is a wealthy one. It's in your Board's interest that you continue to keep it wealthy, and that coincides with our wishes."

"You have no objection to our rejuvenation method?"

"None. Keep your lives. We don't covet your banality."

CHAPTER TEN

Ten minutes in, and already the day was not going well for Simon Roderick. He had eschewed taking over President Strauss's ceremonial office for the Third Fleet's tenure on Thallspring. That would be too clichйd, he felt. In any case, it was General Kolbe who was the official Z-B liaison to the planetary executive; he should be the one visible to the public. So while the hapless general tried to placate a bitter and resentful press and populace, Simon had found himself a comfortable office in the East Wing of the Eagle Manor, ousting the flock of presidential aides who had clustered around their chief, offering advice, analysis and general chicanery.

The Eagle Manor itself was situated on a slight rise at the center of Durrell, which provided Simon with a broad view out across the city. Normally, the mornings brought a brilliant sunshine beating down on the impressive buildings and lush squares of the capital. Today, thick, dark cloud was clotting the azure sky. A weak drizzle smeared the wide panes behind his desk, blurring the crisp lines of the distant skyscrapers. Vehicles on the circular highway ringing the Eagle Manor's expansive grounds were all using their headlights, nova-blue beams shimmering on the wet tarmac.

As soon as he arrived, his personal AS produced the summaries he used to monitor the state of life in the capital. Overnight, production at the factories designated for asset acquisition had fallen several points. That corresponded to a high number of staff failing to show up for their shifts and reduced supplies of raw material. Even traffic within the capital was light that morning, though when he glanced out of the window at the radial of wide avenues leading away from Eagle Manor's circular highway he couldn't notice any decrease in the volume. There were still lines at every junction. Then the indigo script of the medical alert file scrolled up.

He sat perfectly still in his high-backed leather chair as he read the reports. "Tuberculosis?" he asked incredulously.

"That is the diagnosis," his personal AS replied. "And there is little margin for error. Seventy-five cases have been identified in Durrell already; the projection is for double that by the end of the day, and rising after that. Reports of possible contagion are now arriving from outlying districts and other provinces across the planet. The strain appears to be a particularly vigorous one."

"Do they have a history of it here?"

"No. There has been no recorded case of tuberculosis since first landing."

"Then what the hell is the cause?"

"The preliminary conclusion by local doctors and public health officials is that we are the source of the infection."

"Us?"

"Yes. After conferring with our medical AS, I agree the conclusion is logical."

"Explain."

"This particular strain is the product of several hundred years of combating the disease with increasingly sophisticated medical treatments. Every time human scientists developed a new and stronger antibiotic to treat the tubercle bacillus, the bacillus evolved a resistant strain. By the early twenty-first century tuberculosis had evolved into one of the so-called superbugs; it was effectively resistant to all antibiotics."

"Which if I remember correctly was countered by the new metabiotics."

"That is correct. Metabiotics held the superbugs at bay for nearly a century. Eventually, of course, they developed resistance even to them. By that time, genetically engineered vaccines were readily available. They have provided an effective treatment ever since. For every new strain the bacillus evolves, we can simply read its genetic structure and provide a specific vaccine. This has produced a stalemate in terms of widespread contagion."

Simon stared out at the wet city with the somber realization of where this was leading. "But we still haven't eradicated the bacteria."

"No. That is not possible. Earth's cities remain a fertile breeding ground. Local health authorities are constantly alert for the emergence of new strains. When such cases are discovered it is possible to manufacture a vaccine within thirty hours. In this way, epidemics have been averted for two hundred years."

"And prevented on the colonies as well?"

"Colonists were rigorously screened for a broad spectrum of diseases before departure. If any of them were infected, they would be vaccinated. In all likelihood, the tubercle bacillus was never transported across interstellar space, at least not in an active state."

"So they don't have the same kind of health program in operation here?"

"No."

"In other words, we did bring it here."

"It is the obvious conclusion. The most probable scenario is that one of our personnel was exposed to an advanced bacillus, and was himself immune through vaccination, or he could have received germline v-writing, in which case his immune system would be enhanced and highly resistant. But he would still be carrying it. If that is what happened, then it was spread around the entire starship he was traveling in. Everybody on board will now be carrying and spreading the infection."

"Don't we screen everybody before a mission?"

"Not for specific diseases. Such a screening schedule was deemed too expensive given that the fleets were no longer used to found colonies. The platoons undergo constant medical monitoring from their Skin suits. So far, that has been considered adequate."

"Shit" Simon let his head sink back onto the seat's rest. "So it's not just tuberculosis, it's a superbreed of tuberculosis, and nobody on this planet is going to be immune."

"The medical AS believes the section of the population that received germline v-writing will prove resistant."

"Percentage?" he snapped.

"Approximately eleven percent have received germline v-writing, of which half are under fifteen years old."

"Okay. What does our medical AS recommend?"

"Immediate production and distribution of a vaccine. Isolate all confirmed cases and begin enforced medication treatment."

"Is it curable?"

"There are precedents. The medical AS has templates of metabiotics that have proved successful in the recent past. We can also combine that with lung tissue regeneration virals. Such a procedure will be neither cheap nor quick."

"Estimated time?"

"For full recovery: two years."

"Damn it. What about the time it will take to implement the vaccine production?"

"Production can begin within twenty-four hours once you issue a priority authorization. To produce it in sufficient quantities to inoculate the entire planetary population will take three weeks."

"What the hell will that do to our asset-production schedule?"

"An appraisal is impractical. There are currently too many variables."

His desk intercom bleeped. "President Strauss is here, sir," his assistant said. "He's demanding to see you immediately."

I bet he is, Simon thought. "Show him in."

"Sir."

"And ask Mr. Raines to come in as well, please."

When it came to someone who would soothe the way for asset realization and make sure Z-B's staff integrated well with the planetary legislature and civil service, President Edgar Strauss was not your man. The usual threats and coercion seemed to have almost no effect. He was rude, stubborn, uncooperative and in some cases actively obstructionist. Simon had even refrained from using any of his family for collateral: if they took after him they would probably welcome martyrdom.

Strauss stormed into the office with the same inertia as a rogue elephant. "You motherfucking fascist bastard! You're killing us. You want this planet cleaned out so you can stuff it with your own families."

"Mr. President, that's simply not—"

"Don't give me that, you little shit. It's all over the data-pool. You've released tuberculosis; some v-written type to boost its effectiveness."

"It is not v-written. It is a perfectly natural organism."

"Crap!" Edgar Strauss's gray eyes glared out of his hard, reddened face. "We're absolutely defenseless against it. You committed genocide, and condemned us to a long painful death. You should have done it with the gamma soak, you bastard, because this gives us the opportunity to slice your throats one by one. What use is your collateral now, huh?"

"If you'll just calm down."

The door opened again, and Braddock Raines slipped in. He was with Third Fleet intelligence; in his mid-thirties, the kind of man who could normally blend into the background of any scene, allowing him to assess what was happening with a minimum of interference from local officials. It was the simple knack of invoking trust in people. Everyone who talked to him would always say how pleasant he'd been, the kind of guy you'd enjoy talking to over a beer. Simon knew he could always be relied on for an accurate report of the most difficult situations.

"Who's this? Your executioner?" Edgar Strauss asked. "I know you'll never let me live now that I know the truth. Too scared of me. How are you going to do it, sonny, knife or a nice messy bullet to the brain?"

Braddock's jaw dropped. For once he was too shocked to respond.

"Shut up or I will have you shot," Simon snapped.

President Edgar Strauss sneered contentedly.

Simon took a long breath and sat down, waiting for his blood to cool. He couldn't remember the last time he'd lost his temper. But the man was quite intolerable. How typical of a primitive, backward planet like Thallspring to elect a blunt man of the people like Strauss. "Mr. President. I have only just been informed of this terrible outbreak myself. I am of course shocked and dismayed that such a thing could happen on this beautiful planet. And I would immediately like to go on record to assure you and the entire population that Zantiu-Braun will be doing everything we can to assist the local health authority to combat the disease. Templates for a vaccine and relevant metabiotics will be made available immediately. If all the necessary planetary resources are given over to dealing with the situation, then we're confident of a swift and effective end to the problem."

"It'll take a month before we can make enough vaccine to go round, sonny. How many people will die in the meantime?"

"We estimate three weeks maximum for a sufficient quantity of the vaccine to be produced. And with the correct procedures, nobody who has contracted the disease will die. However, that will require complete cooperation from your authorities. Are you going to assist with that? Or do you want your people to suffer needlessly?"

"Is that why you introduced this, to help subdue us?"

"It was not introduced by us," Simon ground out. "The tuberculosis bacilli have a long history of evolving new and unpleasant variants. Nobody knows where this particular one has evolved. Only a fool or a politician would seek to blame us for this." His personal AS informed him the president was receiving a stream of files from the datapool, all encrypted. Updating him on tuberculosis, no doubt "Oh yeah," Edgar Strauss said. "You and it arriving together is just a complete coincidence. What kind of screening procedures does Zantiu-Braun use on its strategic security personnel before departure? Huh? Tell me that, sonny. The people who come from Earth's big cities, where TB has been breeding away for centuries. You check them all out, do you?"

From the corner of his eye, Simon saw Braddock Raines wince. He kept his own face impassive. "We employ the same procedures that every starship leaving Earth has always used, as mandated by UN quarantine law. We wouldn't be allowed to leave Earth orbit without them. Didn't the Navarro house starships use them?"

"Of course they damn well used them. We've remained uncontaminated until you bastards started invading us."

"Then why didn't it happen last time we were here?"

Edgar Strauss's glare deepened. "So this vaccine is another improvement you want us to adopt. Another product that is more sophisticated than anything we have."

"And your problem with that is...?"

"You're fattening us up for next time. That's what all this fallacious generosity is about. You even turn our misfortune to your advantage. These vaccines and metabiotics will be available for you to harvest on your next violence-crazed invasion, along with all the other advances. I've seen how many new designs you've released to our companies and universities. Neurotronics, software, biochemistry, genetics, even metallurgy and fusion plant design. You've made it all available out of the kindness of your heart."

"We want our investment in Thallspring to be successful. Naturally we help you in upgrading your technology and science base."

"But only for your profit. If we were still producing old-fashioned systems next time you come, you would reap no dividend."

"You think that?"

"I know that, and so do you."

"Then all you have to do is not use them. Go right ahead." Simon gestured expansively at the city beyond the window. "Tell them that, Mr. President. Persuade them they don't need the latest version memory management software, tell them they don't need next-generation brakes on their cars. Best of all, tell them they don't need better medicines."

"You'll lose in the end. You know that, don't you? There are fewer starships this time. Where did they go? Why didn't you build replacements? One day you'll come here and we'll be strong enough to resist. We grow while you wither away like every other decaying society in history. This is our time that's dawning. An end to starflight will bring an end to tyranny."

"Did your speechwriters dream that slogan up, or did you actually manage to think of it for yourself?"

"My grandchildren will dance all over your grave, you little shit." Edgar Strauss turned on his heel and marched out. He whistled the first few bars of Thallspring's anthem as he went.

Simon watched the door swing shut behind him. "My grave doesn't exist," he whispered to the president's back.

"That was fun," Braddock said stoically. "Would you like him to have an accident?"

Simon permitted himself a dry laugh. "Don't tempt me."

"So why am I here?"

"We're going to have to start this vaccination program that the medical AS recommends. I want you to supervise inoculating strategically important personnel: everyone who is critical to continued asset production. Start with the factory staff, but don't overlook people who work at the power stations and other ancillaries. I want to keep any disruption to our schedule to an absolute minimum."

"You've got it."

* * *

The pump station was unimpressive—a flat-roof box of concrete measuring twenty meters on each side, rucked away behind a chain-link fence, itself surrounded by a hedge of tall evergreen thorn bushes. It was in the corner of a small industrial estate on Durrell's outskirts, invisible from the trunk road outside, ignored by the estate.

At night, it was illuminated by tall halogen lights around the perimeter. One of them was off, while another flickered erratically. Maybe it was the angle of their beams, but they seemed to show up more cracks in the concrete walls than were visible during the day.

From his sheltered position in the hedge, Raymond studied the gate in the fence. A simple chain and padlock was all that held it. Although they'd studied long-range images, they'd never been quite sure if that was all. Now he could confirm it. One padlock.

Security wasn't a large part of the water utility's agenda. Enough to discourage local youths from breaking in and causing petty damage. To that end, there were a couple of alarms and sensors rigged outside—at least, they were the only ones listed in the station's inventory.

Prime was probing every aspect of the little station's internal data network, examining each pearl and circuit for hidden traps and alarms. And not just the station: the local datapool architecture was being scrutinized for inert links leading to the station, secondary trip alarms that would link into the datapool only when an intruder activated them. If they were there, the Prime couldn't find them.

Caution could only be taken so far before it became paranoia.

Raymond told the Prime to go to stage two. Images from the visual and infrared sensors around the station's door froze as the software infiltrated their processors, although their digital timers kept flipping through the seconds, making the feed appear live. Another routine inserted itself into the lock. Raymond heard it click from where he was hiding.

He slipped out of the shadows and scrambled up the fence. A quick gymnastic twist at the top, and he landed on the un-mown grass inside. It took another three seconds to reach the door and open it. Total elapsed exposure time, seven seconds. Not bad.

His d-written eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness inside, a tiny scattering of light gleaned from LEDs glowing on the equipment boards. There was only the one room. He could see the pumps, five bulky steel cylinders sitting on broad cradles. Thick pipes rose out of the concrete beside each one. Their heavy throbbing filled the air with a steady vibration.

He took the pack from his back and removed the explosives. Working quickly, he moved along the pumps, securing the small shaped charges directly above the bearings.

His retreat was as quiet and efficient as his entry. The lock clicked shut behind him. As soon as he was back over the fence, the door sensors resumed their genuine feed. The Prime withdrew from the Durrell datapool, erasing all log traces of its existence as it went.

The red-and-blue strobes were visible long before the pump station itself. Simon could see them through the car's windshield as they turned off the main road and into the industrial estate, throwing out planes of light that flickered off the walls of buildings. Over a dozen police vehicles were drawn up around the pump station. Electric-blue plastic Police Crime Boundary barriers had been erected, forming a wide cordon outside the shaggy evergreen hedge. Uniformed officers were standing around it, while forensic personnel and robots carried out a slow centimeter-by-centimeter search of the ground. Skin suits moved around inside the barriers like guards overseeing a chain gang, never physically mixing with the forensic team. A crowd of reporters was jostling the blue plastic, shoving sensors forward. There must have been twenty direct feeds diving into the datapool, delivering the operation direct to the public in every visual and audio spectrum acceptable to human senses. Even laser radars were being used to map out the scene in 3D. Questions were shouted at police and Skins, regardless of rank. A constant harassment, deliberately pitched to provoke a response of any kind.

Simon's DNI was providing him with technical results from the forensic team as soon as their sensors acquired it. The grid of indigo tables and graphs was depressingly devoid of valid data.

"Can you believe this?" Braddock Raines said. He and Adul Quan were sharing the car with Simon. They were both staring out at the rest of the spectators. Staff from the factories and offices on the estate had gathered outside their respective doorways to observe the police operation firsthand. They shivered in the early morning chill, stamping their feet and swapping gossip and rumor, most of it invented by themselves.

Braddock took over manual control of the car and slowed it, steering around the clumps of people standing in the road. Most of them seemed oblivious to traffic.

"You want to go in, Chief?" Adul asked. "It won't be very private."

Simon hesitated for a moment. True, i-holograms could provide him with the scene of the crime to peruse at his leisure. And he had an inbuilt reluctance to be identified as any sort of important figure—especially here. Yet there was something about this whole act of sabotage that unsettled him. He just couldn't work out why. Whatever he was looking for, it wouldn't be in a hologram, no matter how high the resolution.

"I think we'll take a look."

"Okay." Adul started to inform the platoon sergeant they were arriving, while Braddock parked the car as close as possible.

Reporters saw them pull up. Half a dozen made their way over as the doors opened. Three police officers and a couple of Skins moved to intercept them and clear a passage for Simon.

"Are you guys Zantiu-Braun's secret police?"

"Will you use collateral necklaces in retaliation?"

Simon kept a neutral expression in place until they passed through the cordon. When they made it inside the pump station his nose crinkled at the sight. Then he realized he was standing in a couple of centimeters of water.

Each of the pumps had been torn apart, their impellers bursting out of the casing. Chunks of metal were embedded in the concrete walls and the ceiling. No piece of machinery was left intact; even the control boards were buckled and shattered.

Simon's gaze swept from side to side. "Competent," he murmured. "Very competent." He saw the senior police officers, five of them huddled together. The sight amused him. He'd visited a great many crime scenes over the years, and anyone above the rank of lieutenant always sought out and stuck with his or her contemporaries. It was as if they were afraid they'd get mugged by the junior ranks if they were alone.

His personal AS interrogated the police AS and discovered the officer in charge. Detective Captain Oisin Benson. He was easy enough to identify: no other senior officer had hair that unkempt.

Oisin Benson caught sight of him at the same moment. He gave his colleagues a knowing look and came over.

"Can I help you?"

"We're just here to take a preliminary look, Captain," Simon said. "We won't get in your way."

"Let me phrase that better," Oisin Benson said. "Who are you, and why do you think you have the right to be here?"

"Ah. I see. Well, we're from the president's office, and we're here by the authority of General Kolbe. And the reason we're here is to determine if this was an anti-Zantiu-Braun act."

"It wasn't."

"You seem to have come to that conclusion remarkably quickly, Captain. What evidence have you got for that?"

"No slogans painted here. No statement released by freedom fighters. None of your people or operations were targeted. This is purely a civil matter."

"Are there a lot of terrorist explosions on Thallspring?"

Detective Captain Oisin Benson leaned a fraction closer and smiled coldly. "They're about as rare as tuberculosis, Mr. Roderick."

So much for being unobtrusive, Simon thought. "Actually, Detective, our operations were targeted by this. The pump station provides several factories with water. All of them will have to curtail their operations until supplies can be restored."

"Out of the seventeen factories supplied by this station, only five are being forced to provide your tribute. The utility company that owns this station, on the other hand, is the subject of several lawsuits concerning toxic spillage brought by the families of those afflicted. It's a court battle that is taking a long time to resolve, and the company so far has not made any interim payments to the victims."

"Has the company been threatened?"

"Their executives have received a great many threats, both verbally and in e-packages; they're normally directed against them personally or their families, but there have been a considerable number made against the company itself."

"How convenient."

"You don't like the truth, do you, Mr. Roderick? Especially when it doesn't coincide with your own agenda."

Simon sighed, resentful that he had to get involved in a public squabble with this petty official. "We're going to look around now, Detective. We won't take up any more of your time."

"How considerate." Oisin Benson stepped to one side and made a sweeping welcome gesture with his arm.

Simon splashed over to examine the first of the ruined pumps. He could feel the water seeping through his shoes to soak his socks. Two other people were studying the mangled machinery: an engineer who wore the utility company's jacket and a technician from Z-B. The technician gave the three security men a slightly forced nod of acknowledgment. The engineer appeared completely indifferent to them as he ran a small palm-sized sensor over the wreckage.

"Anything of interest?" Simon asked.

"Standard commercial explosive," the technician said. "There are no batch code molecules incorporated at manufacture, so I doubt the police will ever be able to trace it. Apart from that, I'm guessing they were all detonated simultaneously. That implies a radio signal. Could have come from outside, but more likely a timer placed with them. Again, very simple components. Universally available."

The engineer straightened up, pushing a hand into his back. "I can tell you one thing. Whoever did it knew what they were about."

"Really?" Simon said. "Why is that?"

"Size and positioning. They used the minimum amount of explosive on each pump. This station building is like all our others, the cheapest covering you can build, basically it just keeps the rain and wind off the pumps. Concrete panels reinforced by tigercloth, that's all this is. And the whole thing is still standing. Six explosions in here last night, and the only damage is to the pumps. I'd call that a remarkably controlled explosion."

"So we're looking for an expert, then?"

"Yes. They knew plenty about the pumps, an' all. Look." He tapped a section of casing that resembled a tattered flower, fangs of metal peeled back. "They went for the bearings each time. Once they were broken, the impellers tore the whole thing apart from the inside. They spin at several thousand RPM, you know. Hell of a lot of inertia bottled up there."

"Yes, I'm sure there is." Simon consulted a file his personal AS was scrolling. "How long will it take to get the station back online?"

The engineer sucked his cheeks in, making a whistling sound. "Well, you're not looking at repairs, see. This is going to have to be completely rebuilt. I know for a fact there's only two spare pumps in our inventory. We'll have to contract the engineering firm to build us the rest. You're looking at at least six weeks to build and install. More likely eight or nine, what with things the way they are right now."

Back in his office, Simon waited until his assistant had served himself and the two intelligence operatives with tea before he asked: "Well?"

"Clever," Adul said. "And on more than one level."

"There's definitely no evidence to justify using collateral," Braddock said.

"I doubt we'll be able to use collateral for some weeks to come, not with this wretched TB outbreak," Simon said gloomily. "It's going to be tough enough keeping control with the locals blaming us for that. Put collateral executions on top of contagion, and we'd be in serious danger of losing overall control."

"We can hardly leave ourselves wide open to them," Adul protested. "They could pick off our asset factories one by one."

"Humm." Simon settled back in the deep settee and sipped his tea. "This is what's bothered me since I realized how well executed this attack was. Just exactly who is 'they'?"

"Government," Adul said. "Strauss put some clandestine group together and provided them with all the equipment and training they needed. It can't be anyone else: look at the level of expertise involved. Just enough to mess us up, and always short of invoking justifiable retaliation."

"I'm not so sure," Simon said. "It seems ... petty, especially if Edgar Strauss is involved. Which he would have to be to authorize the formation of some covert agency. He favors the more blunt approach."

"Good cover," Braddock said ruefully.

"No," Simon said. "He's not that good an actor."

"It's worse, he's a politician. One of the most slippery, conniving species of bastards the universe ever created."

"It still doesn't ring true," Simon said. "Whoever they are, they know exactly what they're doing. Yet they're not doing anything except letting us know that they exist. List all the anti-Z-B acts here in Durrell since we landed," he told the office AS. "Category two and above."

The three of them read the file headings as they scrolled down the holographic pane on the table. There were twenty-seven, starting with the destruction of the spaceport's hydrogen tank during the landing, moving on to include a couple of riots aimed at platoon patrols, squaddies targeted for fights when they visited bars and restaurants at night, a truck driven into the side of a Z-B jeep, industrial technicians beaten up while the accompanying squaddies were lured away, power cables to factories cut and reserve generators shorted out, production machinery wrecked by subversive software, raw material vanishing en route and finally the explosion at the pump station.

"Twenty-seven in three weeks," Adul said. "We've seen worse."

"Categorize them," Simon said to the AS. "Separate out the incidents that have affected production of assets." He examined the results. "Notice anything?"

"What are we looking for?" Braddock asked.

"Take out the two times our staff were hospitalized by thugs at the factories, and the road crash that wrecked the cargo of biochemicals on its way to the spaceport."

Braddock ran down the list again. "Ah, the rest is all sabotage, and nobody has been caught. There are never any leads."

"Last night's attack on the pump station has the same signature. Whoever it was went through the door alarms and sensors as if they weren't there. There is absolutely no record of anyone breaking in."

"Could have been an employee at the last inspection."

"Eight days ago," Simon said. "And there were three of them. That would mean they all had to be involved."

"How effective has this sabotage been?" Adul asked the office AS.

The holographic pane displayed several tables, which rearranged their figures.

"Jesus wept!" Braddock exclaimed at the total. "Twelve percent."

"That's very effective sabotage," Simon muttered. "Catalogue any slogans at the scene or radical groups claiming responsibility."

"None listed," the office AS replied.

"The other incidents," Simon said, "the riots and fights, catalogue slogans and claims of responsibility."

The list scrolled down the pane again. A complex fan of lines sprang out from each file, linking them to other files. Simon opened several of them at random. Some were visual, showing graffito symbols sprayed on the wall in the aftermath of riots and fights, most of them with daggers or hammers smashing Z-B's corporate logo, while the rest were crude messages telling them to go home in unimaginative obscenities signed by groups who were mostly initials, though someone calling himself KillBoy was quite common. Others were brief audio messages, digitally distorted to avoid identification, that had been loaded into the datapool for general distribution, declaring that various "acts" had been carried out in the name of the people against their interstellar oppressors.

Simon felt a brief glimmer of excitement at the results. The notion of the chase beginning. And most definitely a worthy adversary. "We have two groups at work here," he said, and indicated the list on the pane. "The usual ragbag rabble of amateurs keen to strike a blow for freedom and clobber a couple of squaddies into the bargain. And then someone else." The AS switched the display back to the sabotage incidents. "Someone who really knows what they're doing and doesn't seek to advertise it to the general public. They also know where we're the most vulnerable: financially. There's a small margin between viability and debt on these asset-realization missions. And if our losses and delays mount up, we might not break even."

"I have a problem with this," Adul said. "This sabotage group might keep their activities secret from the rest of Thallspring, but we were always going to know."

"We know, but we can't prove it," Braddock said. "Like the pump station, none of them are directly attributable as anti-Z-B acts. There are always other, more plausible, explanations. And they have covered their tracks well, especially electronically, which I find disturbing."

"We know," Simon said. "And we were always going to know at some stage. They must have realized that."

"That's why they keep their attacks nonattributable."

"There's something missing," Simon said "If they are this good, then why aren't they more effective?"

"You call twelve percent in three weeks ineffective?"

"Look at the abilities they've demonstrated. They could have made it fifty percent if they'd wanted."

"At fifty percent we would have used collateral, no matter what plague is killing the population."

"My God," Adul said. "You don't think they cooked up the tuberculosis as well, do you? That's going to have a huge effect on asset production."

"I won't discount it altogether," Simon said. "But I have to say I think it's unlikely. Suppose we didn't have templates for metabiotics and vaccines? They'd be exterminating their own people. That doesn't seem to be their style."

"But we are going to take a serious reduction in viability from their activities so far. They've been tremendously effective."

Simon shook his head. "They're holding back."

"Chief, the only thing they haven't done is declare all-out war."

"I want to think this through: they always knew we would uncover what they're doing, yes? That much is obvious. Very well, by clever deduction we discover there is a well-organized covert group intent on sabotaging our asset-acquisition schedule. What is our response going to be?"

"Hunt them down," Adul said.

"Of course, and?"

"Step up our security."

"Yes, which is going to tie up a great deal of our capacity, both in AS and human time."

"You think that's going to leave us open to their real attack? That this is all just a diversion?"

"Possibly. Though I admit I could be overestimating them."

"If what we've seen so far is just a diversion," Braddock said, "then I don't want to think what their main attack's going to be like."

"Their ability is worrying, yes," Simon said. "But I'm more concerned by their target. Our presence here is tripartite: personnel, starships and financial. They've already struck at our finances. If they wanted to render asset-realization in-viable, they could have done it."

"They'd face collateral," Adul said.

"Santa Chico faced collateral. It never deters the die-hard fanatics. Consider it from their point of view: five hundred, even a thousand people dead, in exchange for ridding themselves of us for good. Wars of national liberation have rarely cost so few lives."

"So you think it's either us or the starships?"

"Yes. In which case, my money's on the starships."

"They'll never get them."

Simon smiled at the younger intelligence operative. "I know. That's where all our faith is placed, our most impregnable fortress, as secure as e-alpha. The starships are invulnerable. We can detect and destroy any missiles. Our AS's will prevent any subversive software from infiltrating onboard networks. And nothing gets past spaceport security. We deep-scan every gram of cargo. And no natives are ever allowed to dock.

"But just imagine they did get through, or that somehow they have acquired Santa Chico's exo-atmospheric armaments."

"How?" Adul demanded. "Santa Chico's thirty light-years away. Even if they sent a maser message with the schematics, it couldn't have reached here by now. Besides, we haven't seen any of the spin generators in orbit."

"We always assume that Earth is the only source of star-ships, or even portals. If anybody else can construct them, then it will be Santa Chico."

"Dear God, if the Chicos are organizing resistance to the asset-realization missions..."

"Precisely. But I'm not convinced of that myself. I was on Santa Chico. Interstellar revolution doesn't fit with their societal goals. And in any case, that planet is closed to space-flight now. I'm simply using them as an example, a warning against complacency. We are totally reliant on our starships. If they are eliminated, then we are effectively dead. Our nonreturn would damage Zantiu-Braun's interstellar operations permanently, possibly even to the point of shutting them down. That would be a catastrophe we cannot permit to happen. For all their ability to sustain themselves, the new worlds are dependent on us bringing them technological advances. Earth remains our race's intellectual and scientific powerhouse. However unwelcome our links are, they cannot be severed."

"Sir, I think you're overreacting," Braddock said, grinning nervously. "It's one thing to blow up a couple of water pumps. And I acknowledge they did it flawlessly. But from that to shooting down or blowing up starships ... It's not going to happen."

Simon considered the operative's insistence. He'd known he would have trouble convincing them how serious this intangible threat was. Everyone in Z-B placed their trust in the dogma of the invulnerable starship, even Quan and Raines, by nature and profession the most suspicious members of the Third Fleet. Safeguarding this mission was going to test his skill and authority in ways he hadn't envisaged when they embarked.

He held up a hand, a soft smile of understanding on his lips. "Humor me for the moment. If nothing else we need to disprove the notion."

"Sir."

They both nodded eager agreement, relieved by his mild reaction.

"So, let us consider our strategy. We definitely need to tighten up security in the industrial sector. Parallel to that, we need to keep a close watch on possible sabotage routes that can lead to the starships. I'm open to suggestions."

* * *

The population of Memu Bay was giving the platoon more space as they moved along their patrol route. Odel Cureton had been on enough patrols now to notice the difference. Before today, the locals had never really bothered much with them. The adolescents had shouted and spat, adults ignored them, nobody ever moved out of the way on crowded pavements. Pretty standard behavior. He'd seen it on every asset-realization mission (Santa Chico excepted). Today it was as if he had some invisible force field projecting out around his Skin, snowplow-shaped, moving people aside as he approached. One thing hadn't changed: the stares of hatred and contempt; if anything they'd grown more intense.

A day after the TB warning, and their demon status was now irrevocable. Not only were they here to steal Memu Bay's hard-earned wealth, their very presence endangered everyone. Demons with killer breath, every exhalation releasing a new swarm of lethal bacteria into the town's humid, salty air.

He turned down into Gorse Street. Hal was on the other side, keeping level. There were no police with them today. The assigned constables simply hadn't turned up. Odel didn't care; he knew he could rely on Hal out here on the streets. For all the stick he took, the kid was actually a good squaddie. As he watched, he saw the kid's head turn slightly as a couple of teenage girls walked past. He smiled to himself, imagining the kind of sensor imaging that the kid was requesting from his Skin. Not that he needed much enhancement. The girls weren't wearing a whole lot to begin with.

It was about the hottest day since they'd landed. Not a cloud in sight. Every whitewashed wall seemed to reflect the full force of the sun. Several sections of his display grid were indicating just how the heat was affecting his Skin. The weave of thermal fibers underneath the carapace was working at high capacity, radiating the heat generated by both his own and the Skin's muscles. His gill-vents were siphoning heat from the air before he inhaled. Even the carapace had adopted a light shading, partially reflecting the sun's rays.

Tactically, it put him in shitty shape. A glowing beacon to just about every sensor going. Odel had never got the memory of Nic out of his head.

They reached the end of Gorse Street. "Sector eight clear," he reported in. There was a lot of comfort to be had from routine these days. None of the platoon bitched about the sergeant's insistence they stuck to the protocols. If anyone could get them through this and out the other side, it would be Lawrence Newton. After the last few missions, Odel knew his faith wasn't misplaced.

"Roger that. Continue the sweep," Lawrence told him.

"Got that, Sergeant."

Odel and Hal crossed the road and started off down Muxloe Street. It was another row of small shops sitting under tall, austere apartment blocks, most of them claiming to be general stores and packed to their dirty ceilings with junk. But the road was wide, with a constant stream of traffic. The sergeant had quietly dropped side streets and narrow alleys from their itinerary over the last few days. Busy streets and plenty of people made ambushes and booby traps difficult.

Pedestrians melted away with sharp, rancorous glances. One woman pulled her two young children to one side, shielding them with a protective arm, their high voices chirping questions as he passed by.

He had a strong impulse to stop and remonstrate with her and anyone else who was listening—to reason logically, to explain, to prove he was a good chap really. The sergeant had done it with a bunch of children playing soccer the other day. But Odel knew he could never pull off anything like that. He didn't have the words, and people laughed at his accent.

He kept on walking down the street. Tactile sensors flashed up numbers in their designated grid, telling him how hot the pavement slabs were under his Skin soles. He'd heard of people frying eggs on rocks heated by sunlight. These weren't far off.

Several of Muxloe's shops were shut, or closed—five of them together in a dilapidated block whose concrete panel walls were crumbling away in big broken blister patches. Gray-green fungus thrived in the cracks. Their windows were covered with bent, rusty roller blinds. Paint on the signs above the doors was fading, leaving little indication of what they had once sold. Polyethylene waste bags and weathered boxes had been dumped along the outside wall. Near the far end was a big glass bottle full of a bright scarlet fluid. A green T-shirt had been tied to the fat neck.

Odel was almost past the derelict shops when he stopped and spun around. Nearby civilians stared at him fearfully, wondering what they'd done. The Skin helmet's visual sensors zoomed in, the T-shirt filling his vision.

"Sergeant!" he called. "Sergeant, I've found something. Sergeant, come and see this. Sergeant!"

"What is it?"

"You've got to see this." Odel untied the T-shirt. The white lettering on the chest read Silverqueen Reef Tours Cairns.

Inside his hot Skin, Odel started shivering. He switched his sensors back onto the bottle. The liquid inside...

Lawrence waited in the anteroom as various aides scurried in and out of the mayor's study. Every time one of them slipped in he wanted to barge past, to demand Ebrey Zhang's attention. Forty-five frustrating minutes so far.

Captain Bryant had finally lost patience with him after a fruitless hour in the barracks, which they'd spent arguing. "You've had my answer, Sergeant," he snapped. "I cannot authorize any further action at this point."

"Then who can?" Lawrence asked. Given the way Z-B's strategic security force was structured, you simply couldn't be more insulting to your senior officer. Both of them knew it.

Captain Bryant took a moment to compose himself. "You have my authority to raise this with Commander Zhang. Dismissed, Sergeant."

No matter how the meeting with Zhang went, Lawrence had blown it with Bryant. He found himself smiling on the walk over to Memu Bay's town hall. He couldn't give a flying fuck about Bryant and the report he would now be getting from the captain at the end of the campaign. He'd just gone and committed himself. Up until that moment his own private little asset-realization mission had been theoretical. The pieces were in place, but still he had held back from initiating anything. Then that one heated question had relieved him of any conscious decision-making.

Typical, he told himself wryly. Every major turning point in my life is decided by flashes of temper.

Thirty minutes into his wait, the City Hall lights flickered and went out. They were getting used to cuts in the hotel that the platoon had adopted as its barracks. The power supply failed most evenings when someone burned the cable, or lobbed a Molotov at a substation. But the fusion plant itself was always left intact: after all, the town would need that after Z-B left. It wasn't just the barracks that suffered; power to the factories was interrupted. Internal rumor had it that they were over 20 percent behind on their asset-realization schedule.

Lawrence smiled to himself as shouts of alarm and annoyance echoed around the spacious cloisters. The overhead lights glowed like dim embers for a minute; then about a third of them slowly returned to full brightness as the emergency power supply came online, leaving the rest dark. Shadows swelled up out of the ornate arches and alcoves. If City Hall was anything like the hotel, the cells wouldn't have managed to fully recharge since the last time. Their swimming pool had been emptied a week ago because of the power drain that the filtration and heating element placed on the hotel's reserves.

One of Ebrey Zhang's aides called him in. Lawrence pulled down the bottom of his dress tunic and went through the open doors. He halted in front of the big desk and saluted. All of the study lights were on.

"Sergeant," Ebrey Zhang acknowledged with a wearied tone. A hand waved the aide out of the room, leaving the two of them alone. Ebrey moved back in his seat, picking up a desktop pearl to play with. He smiled. "You've been giving Captain Bryant a hard time, Newton."

Lawrence had been hoping for the easy routine. He remembered Ebrey Zhang from a couple of campaigns ago, when he'd been a captain. The man was a good enough officer, a realist, who understood the principles of command. Knowing when to be a ballbuster and when to listen.

"Sir. It's one of my men, sir."

"Yes, I know that. But leave off Bryant. He's new, and young, and still finding his feet. I'll have a word with him this time, but that's all."

"Thank you, sir. And Johnson?"

"I know." Ebrey sighed reluctantly. "But be realistic, Newton, what can I do that Bryant hasn't done already? If you can give me any hint where to search, I'll chopper ten platoons there immediately."

"He's dead, sir. There's no point in searching. We have to show them they can't get away with that. None of us will be safe unless you do something."

"Ah. They. I take it you mean this KillBoy character?"

"Yes, sir, it seems likely. It's his group that is organizing all this. You have to turn the citizens against them. Make everyone understand that he's going to get them killed if he doesn't stop. Without their support he's nothing."

"KillBoy, the conveniently phantom enemy."

"Sir, we've been shot at, booby-trapped, maimed, injured, put in the hospital. We're almost clocking up as many casualties as we did on Santa Chico. Half the platoons are scared to set foot outside the barracks. He's no phantom, sir."

"You really think it's that bad?"

"Yes, sir, I do."

"I know it's tough on the street right now, Newton. But we've faced tougher. I have a lot of confidence in people like you to get the squaddies through this and lift intact at the end of it."

"Do my best, sir. But we need help to keep people in order."

Ebrey turned the rectangular desktop pearl over a couple of times, staring morosely at the furled pane. "I do understand what you're saying, Newton. However, I have a problem right now. It's going to be very difficult to use collateral when this TB threat is still ongoing. Thallspring's population sees us killing them anyway with the disease. I have to be totally convinced that they have murdered Jones Johnson before I can activate a necklace."

"Sir. It's his blood. Four liters of it DNA checks out one hundred percent."

"And that's my problem. Where's the rest? You see, he can survive that loss easily enough. Infusing artificial blood isn't even a difficult medical procedure. Any teenager with a first-aid proficiency certificate could manage it. So what happens after I flood the datapool telling Memu Bay that we're retaliating for them murdering one of my squaddies, and then he turns up alive after the necklace is activated? Have you thought of that? Because that's the situation here. This KillBoy can organize snipers and mysterious accidents. He can certainly hold on to a captive for a couple of weeks until we screw up. I simply cannot allow that to happen."

"He won't turn up, sir. They killed him." There were other things Lawrence wanted to mention. Like how the killers knew where to leave the bottle of blood in the first place. No one outside of Z-B knew the patrol route that the platoon would take, not even the local police. It was planned out in the operations center ten hours before they went out. Even he didn't get briefed until an hour beforehand. To his mind, e-alpha was totally compromised. Yet for all Ebrey Zhang's apparent reasonableness, he could imagine the commander's reaction if he blurted that out. Right now, it would be one conspiracy too many.

"You're probably right," Ebrey Zhang said. "And I've had personal experience on what it's like to lose a platoon member. More than one, in fact. So I know how you all feel right now. But I simply cannot take the risk. I'm sorry, Newton, genuinely sorry, but my hands are tied."

"Yes, sir. Thank you for seeing me, anyway."

"Listen, your platoon's had two casualties now. That will be making the rest edgy. Am I right?"

"They're not happy, sir, no."

"I'll speak with Bryant, have him assign you some extra relief time."

"Sir. Appreciate that."

"And you can tell your men from me: one more incident like this, and I won't hesitate in using collateral. They'll be safe on the streets from now on."

* * *

If he felt any irony at the time that he'd chosen, Josep Raichura didn't show it. One o'clock in the morning, and Durrell's spaceport was illuminated by hundreds of electric lights, making it seem as though a small patch of the galaxy had drifted down to the ground. White-pink light shone out from deserted office windows. Stark white light, with a bleed-in of violet, drenched the giant arboretum at the center of the terminal building. Vivid sodium-orange cast wide pools along the loops of road that webbed the entire field. Blue-star halogen fans burned out from the headlights of the very few vehicles driving along those roads. Dazzling solar cones were embedded within the tall monotanium arches that curved above the parking aprons like the supports of some missing bridge, illuminating -huge swaths of tarmac where the delta-shape spaceplanes waited silently.

An embroidery of dapples, overlapping in some areas, leaving others in somber darkness, and none of them revealing any activity. The universal indication of human installations dozing through the night shift. It was home only to the basic maintenance crews closeted in the big hangars, tending the myriad machines in readiness for the dawn and its surge of activity. Moving among the inert structures, and even fewer in number, were the Skins—the ones who'd drawn the bad duty—surly inside their private, invulnerable cocoons, resenting the tedium that came from walking the empty perimeter, the boredom of checking with the crews hunched over diagnostic instruments, the frustration of knowing that even when their duty did end they'd be too tired to enjoy the day (as much as any of them could in the hostile capital). Sticking with it nonetheless, because they knew this was the one place that had to remain secure if any of them were ever to get off this godforsaken planet and return home.

The spaceport at this time, then, was a little enclave of doleful and miserable people, serving their designated hours with an efficiency well below par. A time when human bodycycles were at their lowest; the classic time for nefarious raids and excursions. A time of vulnerability recognized as such by every guard commander since before the fall of Troy. And still they remained unable to install any sense of urgency and heightened alert among the men they led.

So Josep, armed though he was with his d-written body and Prime software, kept with tradition and history and used the small hours to make his exploratory foray. The perimeter was easy enough to breach. There was a fence, and lights, and electronic alarms that certainly never suffered from the human malaise during the night, and sentry Skins. Had he wanted to, he could have wriggled through it all like a special forces commando, with even the nocturnal animals unaware of his passing. But, frankly, when there's a huge front gate, why bother?

At noon, he rode his scooter up to one of the eight main road barriers, his little machine jammed between a juggernaut full of biochemicals and a convoy of cars belonging to afternoon-shift workers. He swiped his security card through the barricade's slot and took his crash helmet off for the AS to run a visual identity check. Every received byte tallied to the profile that his Prime had loaded into the spaceport network the previous day, and the red-and-white-striped barrier post whisked upward, allowing him through.

He drove carefully around the small roads linking hangars, warehouses and offices on the northern side of the sprawling glass and metal starfish that was the terminal building. Thallspring didn't possess a huge space program, but the respectable number of projects and commercial ventures it did have were all supported by Durrell's spaceport. Fifteen standard low-orbit (six hundred kilometers) stations circled above the equator. Twelve were industrial concerns, churning out valuable crystals, fibers and exotic chemicals for the planet's biggest commercial consortiums; the three others were resorts, catering to very rich tourists who endured the rigors of surface-to-orbit flight to marvel at the view and enjoy zero-gee swimming and freefall sex (occasionally combined) in heavily shielded stations. A small flotilla of interplanetary craft were maintained, principally to support the scientific research bases that the government had established on several planets. And orbiting a hundred thousand kilometers above the equator was the asteroid, Auley, which had been captured eighty years ago, to which clusters of refinery modules were now attached. Thousands of tons of superpure steel were produced there each month, then formed into giant aerodynamic bodies that were flown down through the atmosphere to feed Thallspring's metallurgical industry. In addition hundreds of other, more sophisticated, compounds that could be formed only in microgee conditions were extruded from the asteroid's raw ores and minerals and shipped down by more conventional means. In total, all this activity had developed to a stage where a fleet of over fifty spaceplanes were required to sustain it.

The Galaxycruisers were an indigenous design, so claimed the Thallspring National Astronautical Corporation, a consortium of local aerospace companies that built them— though anyone with full access to Earth's datapool would have noticed a striking similarity with the Boeing-Honda Stratostar 303 that had first flown in 2120, of which eight had been shipped to Thallspring. Whatever the origin, the scram-jet-powered spaceplanes were a success, boosting forty-five tons to low orbit, and capable of bringing down sixty tons.

Zantiu-Braun had diverted several of them from normal operational duties to lift its plundered assets up to the waiting starships. Given that most of the spaceplanes were already used to support the industry that provided the most high-value manufactured products of all, in the orbital stations, the number that could be taken out of scheduled flights was sorely limited. In any case, there were not enough passenger spaceplanes to lift the entire invasion force back up to the starships at the end of the campaign. So Z-B had brought forty-two of their own Xianti 5005 spaceplanes to augment the indigenous capacity.

It was these newcomers that interested Josep. He ate lunch in the maintenance staff canteen, sitting beside one of the picture windows that overlooked a parking apron. Only two cargo-variant Xiantis were parked there, with Z-B's own crews and robots working on them. The rest were flying. He chewed his food slowly, taking the time to examine the area, note where crates had been stacked, the shortest distance from spaceplanes to a building, location of doors.

After lunch he kept moving, either walking through the terminal or riding between sections on his scooter. People who look like they have a purpose can go unnoticed in the most security-conscious environments. All the time, he was correlating the physical reality of the parking apron layout with the electronic architecture that his Prime had trawled out of the datapool. He even risked sending it into the Z-B AS that had been installed in the spaceport command center to run their groundside operations, including security. Details of the alarms and sensors installed themselves in Josep's vision, a ghost diagram of cables and detectors locking into his visual perception, threading their way in and out of buildings and underground conduits. Schedules, timetables and personnel lists followed. He began to work through them all, slowly reducing options, finding the best-placed spaceplane, best route to it, optimum time, multiple escape routes. Afternoon faded into evening, and the spaceport lights came on as the gold sun sank below the hills fencing Durrell. There were fewer takeoffs now and more landings as the big machines returned home for the night.

By one o'clock all flights had ceased. Josep walked along the rear of a vast maintenance hangar, whose arched roof covered five Xiantis and three Galaxycruisers, and still had four empty bays. Inside, there was less illumination than there was outside; the lightcones fixed to the metal rafters were bright, but their beams were well focused, splashing the concrete floor with intense white circles. Beyond them, shadow embraced over a quarter of the hangar's volume. His path kept him on the fringe of the lighted areas, and well clear of the bays where crews were working. A couple of Skins were inside the hangar, wandering about at random, so he had to be careful there was nothing suspicious about his movements. Keeping out of the lights altogether would have drawn their attention.

Josep reached one of the unoccupied bays and moved forward. Just to the side of the massive sliding doors at the front was a smaller door. He reached it and put his palm on the sensor plate. The lock buzzed, and he pushed it open.

Twenty meters away, the sculpted nose of a Xianti pointed at the maintenance hangar. Solar cones shone far overhead, glinting off the pearl-white carbon-lithium composite fuselage. There was a service truck parked on either side of the spaceplane, with hoses plugged into various umbilical sockets along the underbelly. An airstair led up to the forward airlock.

Josep walked over the tarmac, concentrating more on the icons being relayed from the spaceport network than his eyesight. Four cameras covered the spaceplane. His Prime had infiltrated each one, eliminating his image from the feed to Z-B's AS. Three rings of sensors were arranged concentrically around the sleek machine. None of them registered his presence as he walked across them. No Skins were within five hundred meters.

The airstairs were protected by both a voiceprint codeword and a biosensor that registered his blood vessel and bone patterns. It was an effective security device, but only ever as good as the patterns that were loaded into the system's e-alpha fortress. Josep's codeword and body map corresponded to one of those on file, and the airstair door slid open. He took the steps two at a time. The airlock at the top had a simple manual latch. Pull and turn.

Secondary lighting came on, illuminating the small cabin with an emerald glow. This Xianti was one of the cargo variants. Its cabin was cramped, with minimum facilities and room for up to five seats for the systems officer and payload managers. At the moment there were only two bolted to the floor, with the brackets for the others covered in plastic sleeves. Josep went forward and sat in the pilot's seat. The curved console in front of him was surprisingly compact, with three holographic panes angling up out of it. The two narrow windshields allowed him to see down the length of the nose, but showed very little else. He could understand that. Technically there was no need for any controls or windshields at all. The human pilot would always be fitted with a DNI. And that was only used for efficient communication with the AS pilot, which really controlled the spaceplane. The console and its displays were emergency fallbacks, although many people preferred pane graphics to the indigo icons of DNI. Windshields were there purely for the psychology.

Josep took a standard powered Allen key out of his belt pouch and hunched down in the seat to examine the base of the console. There were several inspection panels underneath. He opened two of them and found what he was looking for. The neurotronic pearls that housed the AS were sealed units buried deep in a service module, but they still had to be connected to the spaceplane systems. He wormed his dragon-extruded desktop pearl into the narrow gap toward the fiberoptic junction, and waited while the little unit morphed itself, extending needle probes into the unit. Prime flooded in.

They might have managed to infiltrate a spaceplane AS pilot through a satellite relay, but the risk of detection was too great. It was a single channel, easily monitored for abnormalities by secure AS's on the starships. Either they attempted to take over every Z-B AS, or they established a direct physical link. The first option wasn't even considered.

The dataflow reversed, dumping the entire AS pilot program into the desktop pearl. They would examine it later, learning the minutiae of ground-to-orbit flight in the strange vehicle. Its communications traffic. Docking procedures. When the time came, Zantiu-Braun would never know that someone and something else was on board until it was far too late.

The desktop pearl card informed Josep that it had copied the entire AS. Prime began to withdraw from the space-plane's pearls, erasing all evidence of its invasion. Needle probes slid out of the fiberoptic junction and melted back into the casing. Josep replaced the panel and tightened it up.

Despite all his preparation, planning and caution, the one thing they all accepted was that there could be no protection against chance.

Josep had already opened the secure door at the bottom of the airstair when his relay from the cameras around the parking apron showed him a man emerging from the maintenance hangar. He was dressed in the loose navy-blue coveralls worn by all the spaceport's engineering maintenance staff. Prime immediately ran identification routines. Dudley Tivon, aged thirty-seven, married, one child, employed by the spaceport for eight years, promoted last year to assistant supervisor, fully qualified on Galaxycruiser hydraulics. He didn't have DNI, but his bracelet pearl was on standby, connected into the spaceport network. Prime moved into the communication circuit, blocking his contact with the data-pool.

There was a moment when Josep could have ducked down behind the airstair, out of Dudley Tivon's sight. But that was an unknown risk. He didn't know what direction Dudley Tivon would walk, or how long he would be milling round outside. Every second spent crouched down was a second of exposure to anyone else who came along from a different direction. There were three Skins currently in the vicinity.

Instead he walked straight for Dudley Tivon. That reduced the outcome to two possibles. Either Dudley Tivon would assume he was just another night-shift worker going about his business, and do nothing. Being seen didn't concern Josep. So far his visitation had left no traces. Z-B didn't even know they had to look for evidence of anyone penetrating their security. Or Dudley Tivon would question what he was doing. In which case...

For a few seconds, as he drew close, Josep thought he'd got away with it. Then Dudley Tivon's pace slowed to a halt. He frowned, looking first at Josep, then back to the foreign spaceplane.

Prime in the surrounding cameras immediately began generating a false image, showing four different viewpoints of Dudley Tivon walking on uninterrupted across the parking apron.

"What are you doing?" Dudley Tivon asked as Josep drew level.

Josep smiled, nodding at the hangar. "Gotta get over to bay seven, Chief."

"You came out of that spaceplane."

"What?"

"How the hell did you get in it? You're not from Z-B. Those things are wired up eight ways from Sunday. What were you doing in there?" Dudley Tivon began to raise the arm on which he wore his bracelet pearl.

Information trawled from the datapool came into Josep's mind. Dudley Tivon's wife had been fitted with a collateral collar.

The assistant supervisor was making an issue of seeing where Josep had emerged, and he could never allow acts of sabotage or dissent against Z-B. It might well be his wife's collar that was activated in retaliation.

"I was just—" Josep's right arm shot out, stiffened fingers slamming into Dudley Tivon's Adam's apple. The man's neck snapped from the force of the blow. His body lurched back, but Josep was already following it. He caught the limp figure as it collapsed and lifted it effortlessly over his shoulder.

The Skins were still out of sight. Nobody else was outside the maintenance hangar. Josep jogged quickly to the door he'd used on his approach to the spaceplane and slipped through.

There was an office fifteen meters away from the door, shut for the night. He reached it in five seconds, bundled the corpse inside, then checked to see if anyone had noticed. Neither the maintenance crews nor Skins had reacted, and no alarms were screaming into the datapool.

They even had a contingency for an incident like this. Priority had to be given to getting the body out of the spaceport for disposal. No suspicion must be attached to the area.

Josep called up a menu for cargo robots currently in the maintenance hangar.

Camera feeds outside continued to show Dudley Tivon walking across the parking apron. He opened a door into the neighboring hangar and disappeared inside.

* * *

"After eight years of flight, Mozark had traveled halfway around the Ring Empire, stopping at over a hundred star systems to explore and learn what he could in the hope of inspiration. He could no longer see his own kingdom; that little cluster of stars was lost from sight behind the massive blaze of gold, scarlet and dawn-purple light that was the core. Few of his kind had ever ventured into this part of the Ring Empire, yet he felt comfortable amid the races and cultures inhabiting this section of the galaxy.

"Mozark might not have seen any of these species before, but everywhere he traveled he was able to communicate with his new hosts and eventually able to learn their separate philosophies and interests and goals and dreams. In many ways this heartened him, that he had so many ideas at his disposal, all of which he was eventually able to understand. Some he regarded as magnificent, and he looked forward to introducing them to the kingdom when he returned home. Some were simply so alien that they could never be adopted or used by his own kind, although they remained interesting on a purely intellectual level. While some were too hideous or frightening even to speak of."

Edmund immediately stuck his hand up, as Denise knew he would.

"Yes, Edmund?" she asked.

"Please, miss, what were they?"

"The hideous and frightening ideas?"

"Yes!"

"I don't know, Edmund. Why do you want to know?"

"Coz he's horrible!" Melanie shouted. The other children laughed, giggling and pointing at the beleaguered boy. Edmund stuck his tongue out at Melanie.

"Enough," Denise told them, waiting until they'd quietened down again. "Today's story is all about the time when Mozark meets the Outbounds. Now this wasn't a single race: like the Last Church, the Outbounds attracted a great many people to their cause. In many ways they were the opposite of the Last Church. The Outbounds were building starships. Not just the ordinary ones that the Ring Empire used for trade and travel and exploration. These were intergalactic starships." She gave the children a knowing look as they ooohed with wonder. "The greatest machines the technology of the Ring Empire could devise. They were the largest, fastest, most powerful and sophisticated ships that this galaxy has ever known. The effort to build them was immense; the Outbounds had taken over an entire solar system to serve as a construction center. Only a star with all of its circling planets could provide them with the resources necessary. Mozark spent a month there, flying his own small ship around all the facilities, playing tourist amid these tremendous cathedrals of engineering. The Outbounds proudly told him of the ocean-sized converter disks that they'd dropped into the star, where they'd sunk down to the inner layers to settle amid the most intense fusion process to be found within the interior. That was the only place to generate sufficient energy to power the tens of thousands of industrial bases operating through the system. Behemoths in their own right, these bases were partially mobile, allowing them to swallow medium-sized asteroids in their entirety. The rocks were digested and separated into their constituent minerals, which were then fed into refinery towers. Biomechanical freighters that only operated in-system would collect the finished products and ferry them to manufacturing facilities where they would be fabricated into components for the starships.

"The shipyards they were built in were the size of a small moon. Each individual intergalactic ship was miles long, with silver-and-blue hypermorphic hulls that would gather up every speck of starlight falling on their spinshifted molecules and radiate it away again in a uniform coronal shimmer. When they were parked in orbit, they were smooth and egg-shaped. Then, when their engines came alive, flinging them into the nullvoid at hundreds of times the speed of light, they would instantly convert themselves into sleek rapiers sprouting long, aggressive forward-swept tail fins. It was as though the nullvoid where they now traveled possessed an atmosphere of elementary photons through which only their metasonic profile would fly.

"Mozark, of course, was enthused by the whole project. The Outbounds were the Ring Empire's final and greatest pioneers. The intergalactic ships were taking colonists to other galaxies. New empires would be born out there on the other side of the deep night. That would be a wondrous future flowering out there amid the unknown, replete with challenges and struggle. Life would not be smooth and complacent as it was amid the Ring Empire.

"He watched the ordinary passenger starships dock, bringing the tens of thousands of colonists who were searching for a new life for themselves and their descendants. They had come from kingdoms right across the neighboring section of the Ring Empire, hundreds of different species united by wanderlust. The first time he saw an intergalactic ship launch itself into nullvoid he felt nothing but envy. They were his soulmates, and he was being left behind. But such was his duty; he had to return home to his own kingdom. There and then, with his own ship still floundering for stability in the energy backwash of the intergalactic ship's drive, he wanted to bring word of this enormous venture back to his people. He envisaged the kingdom's resources being turned over to a similar project, carrying them all on a magnificent voyage to the future. It was only after the massive ship had vanished from his sensors that doubts and disillusionment began to creep into his thoughts. He had undertaken this quest voyage to find something that would benefit and inspire all of his people. Yet how many of them, he wondered, would really want to discard everything they had and gamble on a wild trip into uncharted reaches of the universe? Many would: millions, perhaps hundreds of millions. But his kingdom was home to billions of people, all of them leading a relatively happy existence. Why should he make them abandon that? What right could he possibly have to tear them away from the worlds and society they had built, and which served them so well?

"That was when he finally began to understand himself and his own dissatisfaction. Looking out of his own ship at its proud, giant cousins orbiting a nameless barren Out-bounds planet he now saw only a difference in scale. Both he and the colonists were prepared to fly away into the unknown in order to find what they hoped would be a worthwhile life. They were probably braver than he, taking a bigger chance with what they would find and where they would end up. But for them it would be the flight itself that was the accomplishment. When they reached that far shore, they would have every ability and material advantage at their disposal that they had in the Ring Empire itself. There were no new ideas waiting for them out there, only space that was—one hoped—a little less crowded. They were taking the primary Ring Empire culture with them in the form of the technology and data that were their heritage. Just as the similarity that pervaded the Ring Empire was due to its monoknowledge base, so these fledgling seeds would sprout identical shoots. If anything, he decided, the colonists weren't as brave as he was: they were just running away. At least he was trying to help his people back in the kingdom."

Denise stopped, conscious of the way the children were regarding her with faintly troubled expressions. One or two of them were even resentful and impatient, picking at the blades of grass and throwing the occasional wistful glance out at the white town beyond the wall. This was no longer the story they thought it was going to be, a quest with terrible hardships to overcome and monsters to battle. All they were hearing was how Mozark kept turning his nose up at wonders and sights beyond anything they would ever know. A fine hero he made.

She rebuked herself for losing sight of whom she was telling this to and gathered up her memories of the story. There was much that she could discard: shorn of its abstracts and philosophizing, it could still be made to work for them.

"So when he was standing there in his starship, thinking all these thoughts about the Outbounds and the Last Church, and The City, and even the Mordiff, Mozark suddenly knew what he had to do."

"What?" one of the girls asked avidly.

"He had to go home," Denise said. "Because he knew then what he was going to say to Endoliyn, the thing he was going to devote the rest of his life to."

"What!" the chorus was yelled at her.

"It's a beautiful day," Denise said with a mischievous laugh. "You should be out there playing and enjoying it I'll tell you what happened when Mozark returned to his kingdom soon."

"Now!"

"No. I said soon."

"Tomorrow, then."

"Possibly. If you're good."

They promised her they were and would always be.

She let them scatter and fling themselves about on the school's small, protected lawn. There was no need for her to check her big old watch; she knew what the time was. The goodwill soccer game was about to start.

Clusters of d-written neural cells connected Denise with Memu Bay's datapool. Several reporters were covering the game—not that there was much interest. Public access figures for the game were minimal. They were already lining their cameras up on the pitch, bringing the two teams into focus as they went through their prematch kickabout routines.

Lawrence stopped the ball firmly and tapped it with the inside of his right foot. It bobbled along the ground, rolling to a halt a couple of meters away from Hal, who gave him a disgusted look. The maneuver was supposed to be a deft pass, landing just so for Hal to kick into the defenders' goal area.

Instead, as Hal made a frantic dash for the ball, two of the lads they were playing against tackled him. For a moment Lawrence thought they were playing rugby by mistake. Hal hadn't quite reached the ball, and they were high, legs lashing out.

Hal yelped as he fell, his shoulder taking the full impact. "Fuck me," he grunted under his breath.

The ref blew his whistle.

Hal looked up at him expectantly.

"Free kick," the ref grunted reluctantly.

"What card are you showing them?" Hal asked indignantly. The ref walked away.

Lawrence and Wagner got their hands under the kid's shoulders and lifted him up. "He's got to be kidding," Hal cried. "That was a yellow card at least."

"Slightly different rules here," Lawrence said, hoping it would calm the kid down. Hal looked as if he was about to start a fight.

The two lads who'd tackled him were grinning happily. One of them showed a finger. "KillBoy says spin on it."

Hal lurched forward, snarling. Lawrence and Wagner just managed to hold on to him. There were a few desultory cheers from the touchline where the locals were gathered.

It wasn't different rules here at all. For the tenth time since the goodwill game started, Lawrence's Loafers versus the Avenging Angels, Lawrence wondered if this had been such a good idea after all. The locals saw this purely as a way to legitimately hack Z-B squaddies to pieces with the strangely long studs on their boots and tackles that would make a kung-fu master wince.

Just before kickoff, Ebrey Zhang had come over for a quiet pep talk with the team. After he'd finished spouting on about opportunities and enhanced community relations, he'd said to Lawrence: "We don't want to cause any sort of commotion here, Sergeant. Let's just take it easy out there, shall we?"

"Are you ordering us to lose, sir?" Lawrence had asked. He supposed in a way it was flattering, their commander assuming they would automatically win. But he'd seen some of the youths they were up against. Big and fit-looking. It should be quite a tight game.

"No, no," Ebrey said softly. "But we wouldn't want a walkover, would we? Bad feeling and all that."

"Got you, sir."

"Good man." Ebrey slapped him heartily on the shoulder and joined the rest of the Z-B supporters.

Goodwill had run out in the first five minutes. Not that the Avenging Angels had ever brought any to the pitch in the first place.

Hal took the free kick, sending the ball in a long arc over to Amersy. The corporal began his run down the wing. Lawrence ran level with him on the other side, two Avenging Angels marking him close all the way. Close enough to mistakenly knock into him when the ref happened to be looking the other way.

Lawrence skidded along the mud, almost losing his balance. Amersy had raced on ahead now, leaving Lawrence hopelessly misplaced to receive a pass. "Damn it," he growled. His markers were surprised when he elbowed them aside. Fortunately the ref was still watching Amersy as the corporal was tackled.

"Support!" Lawrence screamed at his team. "Support him, for fuck's sake, you pitiful assholes."

"Now, Sergeant," Captain Bryant's voice carried in faintly from the touchline. "No need for that sort of language."

Lawrence glared, managing to force out a few words under his breath.

Amersy was trying to lift himself off the ground as the victorious Avenging Angels made off with the ball. The hulking hooligans actually had good ball control, Lawrence admitted grudgingly. They nudged it between them, easily beating their way around the one midfielder who tried to intercept them.

Where the fuck was the rest of the team?

"Defense," Lawrence shouted desperately. His arms semaphored wildly.

At least his backs had some understanding of tactics. Two were coming forward to take on the Avenging Angels with the ball. Three were guarding the goal area. A midfield duo were heading to the other wing, marking the Avenging Angels striker who was dodging forward into position. Lawrence saw one of their midfielders heading for an open space in the center circle and ran to cut him off.

Not such a bad game after all, and his men could play tough too.

The land mine went off under the Lawrence's Loafer defender on the right of the goal area. It blew him three meters straight up into the air, taking off his legs and shredding his lower torso. Lawrence dived to the ground at the dull thudding boom of the explosion. An eerie moment of silence followed. Then the defender's upper torso thumped down, lifeless arms flopping about grotesquely from the jarring impact. His head twisted around to stare blankly at the goalmouth. Lawrence recognized Graham Chapell, a squaddie from Ciaran's platoon. Blood and gore splattered across half of the pitch. There was still no sound; everyone was too shocked even to scream.

Lawrence looked around wildly, seeing the steaming crater that had ripped out of the ground, understanding immediately what had happened. Everybody else had flung themselves down. He watched in horror as the ball rolled on, bouncing and juddering across the rucked grass field.

Stop, he implored it silently. Oh fuck, stop. Stop!

The damn thing was easily big enough to trigger another mine if it passed over one. It was rolling toward Dennis Eason, who was watching it coming, his face drawn into a rictus of terror and fatalistic expectation.

The ball stopped half a meter from him. He let out a sob of relief as his head dropped back to the mud.

People were yelling and screaming now, spectators as well as players; they were all flat on the ground. Z-B personnel were all shouting at everyone not to move, to stay exactly as they were. Help was on its way.

Lawrence clenched his fists, pushing them into the mud, furious at how helpless he was. Waiting with every muscle locked tight in fright and suspense. Supremely vulnerable without his Skin. Open for death from any passing student revolutionary with a whim to be a hero that day. He hated KillBoy right then. Hated this whole fucking world. That had never happened before. Not ever. The best he'd ever come up with before today was animosity and contempt.

All they were doing here was playing soccer, for God's sake. Soccer. Their own people as well, few of whom were out of their teens. He could hear the young Avenging Angels around him, whimpering in terror, several of them crying.

What the hell was wrong with these people? He wanted to shout it out at them. They'd hear. They'd be here watching, relishing the distress and dread they'd created. Gloating as the knife was twisted.

But all he could do was grit his teeth and lie still, the muddy water seeping into his shirt and shorts. Waiting for the glorious sound of the helicopters.

Seven platoons were rushed to the park where the soccer game was being played. Their helicopters landed on the roads around the outside. The Skins advanced cautiously, sensors probing the ground as they came.

They reached Ebrey Zhang first, leading the commander away down a safe path marked out by beacon tubes that flashed a bright amber. His helicopter thundered away overhead as the remaining Skins spread out over the park, sensors playing back and forth. People were slowly led away one at a time, shaking with relief as they leaned on the squaddies. They reached Lawrence forty minutes after the helicopters arrived. He stood unsteadily, staring around. A confusing grid of amber lights were flashing all across the pitch. Three red lights gleamed bright among them. One was four meters away from where Lawrence had lain.

A medic squad was picking up pieces of Graham Chapell from cleared sections of the pitch, putting him in thick black polyethylene bags.

"Bastards," Lawrence hissed as the Skin eased him toward the waiting jeeps. "You utter bastards."

Dean Blanche was ushered into the mayor's study by one of Ebrey Zhang's aides. The commander only needed one look at the carefully blank expression on the internal security captain's face to know it was going to be bad news.

"So?" he asked when the doors were closed.

"They were our land mines," Captain Blanche said.

"Shit! Are you sure? No, forget that, of course you are. Goddamnit, how could that happen?"

"We don't understand yet. According to the inventory they're still in storage. We did a physical check, of course. Eight are missing."

"Eight?" Ebrey asked in alarm. "How many were planted in the park?" He was never terribly at ease with land mines. Z-B policy required them to be available in case the situation on the ground became troublesome, and the squaddies had to protect strategic areas from outright aggression. Effectively that meant the spaceport during their retreat. He was thankful that he'd never had to order their deployment. The damn things were a lethal legacy that could last for decades, completely indiscriminate in choosing their victims.

"We found five. With one detonated..."

"Oh, Christ." Ebrey went to the small drinks cabinet on the rear wall and poured himself what the locals laughingly described as bourbon. He didn't normally drink in front of his junior officers, and certainly not those from internal security, but it had been a long, bad day, and this wasn't a happy ending. "Want one?"

"No, thank you, sir."

"Your choice." He stood at the French windows, looking up into the night sky. It was three o'clock in the morning, and the stars were twinkling warmly. After today, he was seriously beginning to wonder if he'd ever make it back up there among them. "So we've got three mines planted out there somewhere in town waiting for us to step on them."

"Two, sir."

"What? Oh, yes. Two unaccounted for. Any chance the platoons could have missed them in the park?"

"It's possible, sir. I'm going to order another sweep in the morning, when it's light."

"Good man. Now how in Christ's name did they get them out of the armory?"

"I'm not sure, sir." Blanche hesitated. "It would be difficult."

"You mean difficult for anyone outside Zantiu-Braun."

"Yes, sir."

"I can't believe one of our own people would do this. There's no grudge or vendetta worth it." He looked around sharply at the deeply uncomfortable captain. "Is there?"

"No, sir. Nothing that serious among the platoons."

"We're missing somebody. Jones Johnson, the one whose blood they found. Could he have... I don't know, defected?"

"Possible, sir."

"Is Johnson capable of getting into the armory?"

"I don't know, sir. A lot of the squaddies tend to know shortcuts through our software."

"Damnit. We have safeguards for a reason. Especially on weapons."

"Sir. I do have one possible lead."

"Yes?"

"The other mines were on standby, and the soccer teams were running all over that field for thirty minutes before the explosion. It must have been activated just before Chapell ran over it."

Ebrey brightened. "KillBoy transmitted a code."

"Yes, sir. If it went through the datapool we can try to trace it. Of course, it could have been an isolated transmitter. In which case, someone had to be close enough to send the code. I can review all the memories from every sensor in the district. The AS may be able to spot someone who fits the right behavior profile. But somewhere in today's data there should be some evidence."

"Whatever you need, as much AS time as it takes, you've got it. Your assignment has total priority. Just find this piece of shit for me. I don't care how long it takes, but I'm going to see Mr. KillBoy swinging from the top of this Town Hall before we leave."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Earth. Once more.

The brilliant white-and-blue world continued to fascinate Lawrence as much now as it had during his first arrival five years ago. As always during the transfer flight down from Centralis to low orbit, he spent as much time as possible staring at the real-time images provided by the interorbit ship's visual sensors. As they curved in over the Americas he watched wide swirls of cloud twisting with soft grace out across the western Atlantic, congealing into a single storm spiral, pure white around the ragged edges, but darkening swiftly toward the dense high center as if night were erupting out of its heart. Within days the Caribbean islands would be cowering from winds and waves and stinging rain, unbound elements stripping the leaves from every tree and washing the land into new shapes. Once again their population would hunker down and wait for the howling winds to pass. And then afterward they'd carry on anew, treating the event like an unwelcome holiday. The palms would sprout new fronds, and people would sport and swim on the clean white sands. He smiled down at them from his angel's perch. Only on a world so teeming with life could such acclimatization occur, he thought. A world where life belonged, where symbiosis between nature and environment was the governing evolutionary factor. Unlike Amethi.

He still held a nest of feelings for his old homeworld. They weren't as strong now as they had been when he first arrived, and most of them remained antagonistic. But every now and then, he could recall times and places from that world when he'd actually been happy, or enjoyed himself. None of those times were with Roselyn. He still shielded himself from those recollections. There was too much pain involved, just as sharp and bright now as the day he left.

His hand went to the pendant under his shirt. He'd almost flung it away the day he left Amethi. Then he decided to keep it so he would never forget all of the treachery at loose in the universe. Nowadays it was a kind of talisman, proof he'd survived the very worst life could throw at him.

The Xianti 5005 carrying them down landed at Cairns spaceport in the middle of another of Queensland's bakinghot afternoons. There was no one waiting to meet Lawrence. He walked past his platoonmates as various families rushed forward in the arrivals hall. Wives and long-term girlfriends flung themselves at their menfolk, clinging tightly and trying not to cry. Until the starship arrived back from Quation two days ago, none of them had heard how the asset-realization campaign had gone; who was alive, who was injured, who wasn't coming back. Relief and fear echoed through the big air-conditioned hall. Children milled around the embracing couples, smiling and happy that Daddy was home again.

There had been a local girl called Sandy whom Lawrence could reasonably claim to be a regular girlfriend in the time between Floyd and Quation. Sandy had promised to wait for him, but that was just over nine months ago now. She was twenty-one; he never seriously expected her to hang around.

So he walked out of the terminal building into the clean sea air, taking a long minute to look around at the scrub-covered hills behind the spaceport, looming dark as the sun sank behind them. The humid breeze blowing in from the ocean. Gulls squawking. Another spaceplane splitting the air overhead like slow thunder. He smiled around at all of it, welcoming the scene as he might an old friend. He would always associate the sea and its smell with Earth.

The taxi rank was at the south end of the terminal. Lawrence walked down to it and slung the only luggage he had, his shoulder bag, into the backseat of the elongated white bubble. It had a human driver rather than an AS, an old Chinese man who wanted to talk about how Manchester United was playing this season. He thought Lawrence's accent was British.

"Never been there," Lawrence had to admit.

"But you know about Man-U?" the driver asked anxiously.

"I've heard of them."

"Of course you have. Most famous team on the planet I access every game. I installed a horizontal hologram pane in our apartment so I can watch the whole pitch. My wife doesn't like it."

"No kidding?"

"Yeah, she wanted a new sofa. I access through membranes as well. The last three seasons I've paid the team's media agent for multi-player-viewpoint feed. It costs, but it's worth it. This way I can see what's happening on the ground as well as get an overview. I like to stay with Paul Ambrose as my viewpoint when the first eleven play, he's got good ball sense."

"Sounds great."

"First eleven only play once every four days. I have to make do with second eleven and third eleven in between."

"Uh-huh."

"Afternoons, I access the under-twenty-one side. Sometimes I have to record them when I'm working. My friends in the other cabs, they have fun trying to tell me who wins. I turn my datapool access off and they drive up next to me and shout the result. I always have to shut my ears those afternoons. One day, when I save up enough, I'm going to Europe to watch them play live. My wife, she doesn't know that."

"Really." They had cleared the spaceport to merge with the short highway into town. To his left, Lawrence could see the thin strip of protected mango swamps running along the coastline. On his right, suburban apartments had colonized the land almost up to the foothills.

"You just down from Quation?"

"Yep."

"Your wife not meet you?"

"Not married."

"Wise man. You enjoy yourself while you still can, my friend. When I go to Europe, I won't take my wife. So you got anywhere to stay tonight?"

Lawrence could have returned straight to barracks; it wouldn't have cost him anything. But the whole fleet was on four-week leave, and the bonus pay for the campaign was sitting in his bank as well as the whole nine months' back pay. He'd made no plans at all. Some of the other single guys on the starship were talking about sailing between Pacific islands and raising hell on every beach resort they landed on. Colin Schmidt had invited him on a tour of the casinos in Hong Kong and Singapore. Others promised Perth still rejoiced in its claim to be party capital of the Southern Hemisphere, an easy train ride away. "No," he said. "I don't have anywhere to stay." He pressed the window key and let the glass slide halfway down; wind and highway noise rushed in. Up ahead the glare of lights from the Strip was already flickering through the town's outlying buildings. Lawrence laughed at the sight of the gaudy neon and holograms beckoning him back greedily. He'd never been so perfectly content. No cares, no obligations, plenty of money and lots of time to spend it in. Life didn't get much better.

"I know some places," the taxi driver said, giving him a hopeful sideways glance.

"I'm sure you do. Okay, what I want is a decent hotel, maybe one with a pool. Not too expensive, but somewhere with a wideband datapool feed and twenty-four-hour room service. And where they don't mind me bringing a guest home for the night. Got that?"

"Ah!" The taxi driver nodded happily. "I know just the place."

The hotel was just on the seedy side of its two-star rating. But it did have a pool, and Lawrence's second-floor room had a tiny balcony that looked over the gray geometrical sprawl of southern Cairns. He checked in and wandered down the nearest shopping street, a broad glassed-over concourse whose bargain customers had successfully repelled the bigger chain stores from investing. He bought some clothes in the small shops. Nothing too sharp, just something that he could wear out on the Strip, and that didn't have a Z-B logo.

He scored with a girl early on that night. A great roundabout walker in her late teens, out on the road with her friends, backpacking their way around the coast of Australia. She was pretty, and slim, with olive skin and her dark hair arranged in tight braids that had colored phosgene beads dangling on the end. When she moved her head quickly, they twirled round like a rainbow halo. He sweet-talked her away from her friends before they all hurried back to the hostel and their prebooked cots. She was fascinated that he'd actually been born on another world, appreciative of the classy foreign bottled beer his money bought, and showed a keen interest in the fact he'd spent months away from Earth.

"Deprived, huh?"

"I guess you could say that," he admitted. "The natives weren't very friendly."

Back in the secluded shadows in his room she screwed like an energetic kangaroo, pounding away up and down on top of him. For the first hour he was sure the dilapidated old bed was going to give way under them. He poured more of that expensive beer over her chest and licked it off before she pushed his head down between her legs. They accessed a thrash-rock feed and tried to fuck in time to the thumping music, eventually collapsing in howls of laughter as the codpiece-endowed vocalist screeched out lyrics about giving his baby some hardassed lovin'. Room service delivered club sandwiches with more drink, and they sat cross-legged on the sagging mattress feeding each other. Then they watched a non-i comedy show before fucking again.

She left first thing in the morning to join up with her friends. They were heading farther north, hoping to get some casual work in Port Douglas to pay for the next leg of their great middle-class adventure. By midday Lawrence had to think hard to remember her name.

That next night, it was another girl. She liked highballs instead of beer, and electric jazz rather than rock, but she was just as randy.

The whole of his first week passed the same way. Sleep during the day. Have a decent meal in midafternoon. Take a walk before the evening started. Hit the Strip after the sun went down. Some days he ran into other squaddies from the fleet, and they'd have a few rounds together, maybe shoot some pool or spend an hour in one of the game arcades. He never got drunk; there was no percentage in that, given his endplay. Once or twice he went out on a club's dance floor. Each time it was because the girl was keen to dance first.

Seven days after he landed, his bracelet pearl received a message from fleet administration ordering him to report to the base. His application for starship officer college had been processed. He was going to be forwarded to Amsterdam for entry assessment.

He sat up in bed, holding his glasses up in front of his face, reading the message again with a slow-growing sense of delight. His life was finally coming together the way he wanted. His father, Roselyn, Amethi, that was paying his dues. He'd earned his place on Z-B's starships.

The girl lying in the bed beside him lifted her head and peered around the hotel room in classic morning-after confusion. She blinked at Lawrence. Her expression changed to one of recognition. "Hi," she grunted.

"Morning."

"Good news?" She nodded at the glasses he was holding.

Lawrence considered the question. The obvious thing to do would be blurt out the assignment, tell her about what it meant to him. It was the kind of thing that should be shared, leading on to a happy day spent together, perhaps a good meal with a bottle of champagne. But, truthfully, the only person he could tell who'd appreciate what it meant was Ntoko. And he was pretty sure the corp wouldn't want his own family vacation interrupted by a babbling Lawrence Newton bragging how he was leaving the platoon behind.

That was when he admitted to himself just how lonely he'd become. There really was nobody to call. Nobody on this whole planet who knew him, nobody who cared about him.

He dropped the interface glasses back on the bedside table, then pulled the sheet back off the two of them. A few blades of morning sunlight had crept round the curtains, falling on the bed to illuminate their bodies. The girl gave him an uncertain little smile as he gazed at her. For all of their intimacy during the night, he felt nothing, no connection, no urge to try and make it work. The only reason she was here was for sex. He didn't even feel guilty about that. She'd been eager enough.

To think, after one night with Roselyn he'd been ready to spend the rest of his life with her. God, how stupid had he been back then? Talk about being straight off the farm. He could teach her a thing or two now.

As always, that treacherous little thought sprang up: I wonder what she's doing now.

"Nothing important," he said brusquely, angry with himself for the weakness. Then he rolled closer and put his mouth over the girl's ear, and in a throaty demanding whisper told her what he wanted from her. With a slight show of reluctance she positioned herself over the edge of the bed the way he instructed, so he could celebrate with her the only way it was ever going to happen between the two of them.

Lawrence took one of Z-B's twice-daily flights from Cairns to Paris, a big subsonic passenger jet that refueled at Singapore. From Paris he transferred to a train that whisked him across the heavily forested European countryside to Amsterdam. He arrived at the old Central Station that backed on to the harbor in the middle of the city.

Cairns with its eternal heat had made him forget it was only spring in the Northern Hemisphere. He pulled his full-length coat on as he walked out of the station, but didn't bother to do it up. The sun was shining out of a clear sky, wanning the air.

Outside, Prins Hendrik Kade seemed to be a twenty-lane road given over entirely to bicycles. He'd never seen so many of the machines in one place before. They were all the same silk-white color, with the city emblem embossed on the central spar. Bells rang all around him, making him twist his head about in alarm. Twice he had to jump sharply out of the way as cyclists sped toward him. They obviously weren't going to swerve.

Optronic membranes threw up a city map, and he set off down Dam Rak, the long broad road opposite the station. Trams trundled along rails embedded in the cobbles. He'd never seen machines that looked so ancient, although they were in perfect condition. It was good to be walking through a city and for once not have to be on guard. Quation had not given Z-B a joyful reception. But here, the citizens smiled warmly when they saw his mauve uniform.

He wasn't surprised. According to the briefing he'd downloaded from the company memory, Z-B was a heavy investor in Holland. And where their primary installations were based sprang up a host of smaller companies to provide support, both specialist and general. The country had a high prosperity index, even by European standards.

His first hint of disenchantment came right outside the officer college. Z-B's Amsterdam headquarters, containing the college, was a big five-story stone building that was eighty years old, though its exterior had been crafted in nineteenth-century bleak, with tall vertical slit windows. Squatting across a broad cobbled square from the fortresslike Royal Palace its architecture was more than appropriate.

A small group of demonstrators were clustered around some kind of stall twenty meters from the main entrance. Potatoes were baking in what had to be the most primitive oven on the planet, a cylinder made out of solid iron. Charcoal glowed behind a grate on the front end, while a black chimney stack at the rear made the whole thing look like the boiler from some kind of steam engine. The sign above the stall was offering the potatoes with a dozen different fillings. Very cheaply, too, Lawrence noticed. There was an emerald-green circle at one end of the sign, with a stylized white bird emblem in the middle, its wings swept wide.

None of the pedestrians filling the square seemed interested in buying the potatoes. The demonstrators, mostly young people, were singing in none-too-tight harmony, which was presumably putting off the prospective customers. Lawrence didn't know the song; it seemed to be some kind of folk chant, with the ragged voices rising defiantly for the chorus:

Give us back to ourselves

Take back your money

Give us back to ourselves

Turn back your starships

Give us back to ourselves

Several of them were carrying hologram panes on long poles, blazing with anti-Z-B slogans. A couple of bored police officers were standing fifteen meters away, watching over them. They catcalled and jeered anyone walking up and down the broad stone stairs to the entrance of the big headquarters building. Z-B personnel scurrying in and out studiously ignored them.

When Lawrence started up the stairs they directed several insults at him. He smiled and waved cheerfully, knowing how much that always annoyed their type. His gaze found a girl in the middle of the group, more attractive than any of her cause sisters, with compact dainty features amplifying her intent expression. She was wrapped up in an old-fashioned navy-blue duffel coat with wooden toggles, its hood down to show off raven hair that had been frizzled into a thick mass of short curls. Their eyes met, and he broadened his grin to a male-ape invitation. He laughed heartily at the angry scowl she fired back at him.

Minority-cause fascists, no sense of humor.

Three receptionists sat behind a curving teak desk in the vast, empty lobby. One of them gave him directions to the officer college, in an annex of its own at the rear of the main building. "What are they here for?" he asked, pointing out through the tall glass doors at the protesters.

"Regressors," she said. "They want for us to go away and stop influencing 'their' lives with 'our' policies."

"Why?"

The receptionist gave him a pitying look. "We're not democratic."

"But anyone can buy a stake in Z-B."

"Tell them."

The officer college was a modern glass cube connected to the headquarters building by a couple of bridges on the third and sixth floors. Lawrence walked across the lower one, trying to damp down his trepidation. If all went well he'd be spending the next three years here learning everything from life support engineering to astrogration. Although quite why the flattest country in the world had been chosen as the training ground for starships was a question that his downloaded briefing had never covered. Someone somewhere in the company must have had a strong sense of irony.

He reported in to the corporal in the foyer, saluting sharply. The man gave a disinterested wave back and entered Lawrence into the administration AS.

"Turn up at oh-seven-fifteen hours tomorrow," the corporal said. "You will receive your introduction to the assessment week. This is your accommodation warrant." He handed over a small card. "You're staying at the Holiday Inn. This entitles you to a single bedroom, along with breakfast and dinner. Don't try ordering room service or beer with it You have your lunch here in the mess. You're in group epsilon three. Don't be late." The corporal returned to the pane displays on his desk.

"Thanks. Uh, how many others in the group?"

"Thirty."

"And how many places are we competing for?"

The corporal gave him a tired look. "We process one group per week. And the annual intake is one hundred officer cadets. Work the odds out for yourself."

Lawrence made his way back through the main building. On average they'd take two from each group. A one-in-fifteen chance. No, he corrected himself. Nothing here is down to chance. I'm going to make it.

When he walked into the Holiday Inn half of the people in the lobby were from Z-B, and several of them were obviously in town for their officer assessment. He could spot them from a long way off. In their early twenties, fit, serious expressions, well-cut clothes, trying to hide fluttering nerves. He guessed they could spot him just as easily.

That afternoon he went down to the basement pool and swam a mile. As always, his fitness had suffered on the star-ship back from Quation, and the last week hadn't exactly been dedicated to healthy living. He climbed out, reasonably pleased with his time. The exercise gave him that extra degree of confidence for tomorrow: thanks to their own training, Z-B had kept him in top shape for the last five years.

Lawrence couldn't stand the idea of having his supper in the hotel restaurant. The place would be full of all the other candidates, forcing themselves to be polite to each other. So he set off on a short walk through the old city as dusk fell. Amsterdam's heart had been beautifully preserved, with marvelous old houses lining the canals, each with its own hoist on the top. The antique mechanisms still worked, hauling furniture up so it could be brought in through the windows. Houseboats were tied up on the still black water between the arched stone bridges, ranging from tiny cruisers to barges with double decks and roof gardens. Berths had become so valuable that the city hadn't issued a new houseboat license for over two centuries; his briefing had mentioned that some had stayed in the same families for over eight generations now.

The bar he eventually found on Rembrandtplein served a decent menu of hot food, and beer that claimed to replicate the recipe of an original Dutch lager. It wasn't the classiest place in town, but it had a lively atmosphere, and a hologram pane was showing a sport feed. He sat at a table near the back and ran through the menu. It took him a moment to work out that the last ten items on the sheet were narcotics, three of which were quite hard. There was an option to have some of the lighter ones as garnish on your food.

His waiter took the order and delivered some of the supposed original-tasting lager. Lawrence settled back and took a look around. The big pane on the far wall was showing Manchester United versus Monaco. He chuckled and took another sip of his lager.

The girl from the protest group was sitting up at the bar, giving him a cool stare. He did a double take, then smiled and raised his glass in salute. She looked away hurriedly.

Too bad, he thought. She was with a couple of other girls, no male companion in sight. Her duffel coat was slung over the back of her stool. She was wearing a thin scarlet rollneck sweater, with an unpractically long scarf wound loosely round her neck, and baggy olive-green trousers held up with a broad rainbow bead belt. With those clothes, and an age he estimated at three or four years younger than himself, she had to be a student. Philosophy, no doubt, he decided, that or sociology. Something utterly useless for the real world.

His food arrived. Pasta with a three-cheese sauce and smoked ham. A side order of garlic dough balls. Sprinkling of ground pepper. Hold the hashish.

He wound the first strands around his fork.

"Killed anyone today?"

He glanced up. The girl was standing by his table.

Just like Roselyn, appearing out of nowhere to talk to me.

Somehow, he thought the motive would be different "Not today, nor any day," he answered, politely casual. Her nose was too broad to make her a classic beauty, but she had what people called a fierce intelligence lighting her eyes, analyzing and judging everything she saw. It made her very appealing: that and the raw hostility. Getting her into bed would be quite a challenge.

"You're one of the cybersoldiers," she said. "I can see the blood valves on your neck."

She had an accent he couldn't quite place. "And you're a welfare princess. I saw you standing in the Dam square while everyone else was working for a living."

Her cheeks darkened in anger. "I devote my time to achieving something worthwhile: your downfall."

"Had any success?" Lawrence had heard of opposites attracting, but this was ridiculous. He was sure she was about to throw her drink over him. Except her glass was back on the bar. She couldn't be carrying a weapon. Could she?

"We will," she said.

"So who do you plan to control our factories and revitalization projects once you've driven us out of your country? Yourself and your friends, perhaps?"

"We'll close down your factories. We don't want that kind of society."

"Ah, green anarchy. Interesting ideology. Good luck convincing everyone to adopt it."

"I'm wasting my time. You're not allowed to think: you just recite company dogma. Next you'll tell me to buy a stake if I want to change the way things are."

Lawrence closed his mouth before he said, Well, yes, actually.

"Are your career and your stake worth so much that you have to build them up on the destruction of others?"

She looked so damn earnest when she asked him. It was the worst kind of student politics: we can change the whole world if we can just open a dialogue. Try opening a dialogue to a mob flinging Molotovs at you. "I've never destroyed anyone," he said lightly.

"You've taken part in the campaigns to pillage other worlds. If that's not destruction, I don't know what is."

"Nothing is destroyed. And our campaigns help fund the greatest human endeavor there is."

"What's that?"

"Establishing colonies on new worlds."

"My God, you're worse than a cybersoldier, you're an ecocide advocate."

"It's even worse than that, actually. I'm here in Amsterdam to join the starship officer college. I'm going to find lots of new planets we can ecocide."

Her head was shaken in soft disbelief. "Why?" she asked, genuinely puzzled. "Why would anyone do such a thing? That's what I never understand about your kind. Why do you always think that you can only achieve anything by violating what's right and natural? If you have this urge, why can't you channel it into something creative?"

"Exploring the universe is the most creative endeavor there could possibly be. It's the culmination of a thousand years of civilization."

"Starflight is the most appalling waste of resources and money. Z-B is practicing interstellar imperialism with its expansion program. There's no worthwhile outcome. We have a planet here that desperately needs our help in just about every domain you can mention, and we can't provide that help because you're bleeding us to death."

"Z-B provides almost as much funding for ecological and urban revitalization projects as it does for starflight."

"But they're your revitalization projects. Revitalizing in your image, spreading the dead corporate uniculture into weaker societies."

"Look, I can see where you're coming from. You want money devoted to issues you think are important. That's perfectly natural politics, convincing governments or corporations to pay for your own pet projects, or convincing enough people to win you the popular vote. Fine. Keep on campaigning and raising people's awareness. But you will never, ever, get my vote, because I will always vote for more star-ships. And the only practical way I get those is through a stake in Z-B. Sorry, I'm not going to be converted. I'm already doing the one thing I believe in the most."

"It's wrong, and in your heart you know that."

"I do not know that. I'm afraid all your arguments fall down with me, for the simple reason that you can't look above your own horizon. You have no sense of wonder, no drive. You've limited yourself to seeing only the smallest pixel in the picture. You practice the worst sort of parochialism."

"I see this whole world and how it's hurting."

"Exactly. This world and no other. Without starflight I would never have been born. I'm not from this planet." He smiled at her frown of confusion. "I'm from Amethi. And we don't practice ecocide there. We're regenerating an entire living biosphere. Something I happen to think is worthwhile in the extreme."

"You weren't born on Earth?" she asked.

"That's right."

"Yet you came here to join Z-B so you could fly starships further into the galaxy?"

"Yep."

Her short laugh was of pure incredulity. "You're crazy."

"Guess so." Lawrence grinned back. "So are you going to wish me luck for my assessment tomorrow?"

"No. That I can never do." Her expression was sorrowful as she turned away.

"Hey," he called. "You didn't tell me your name."

For a moment he thought she was going to ignore him. Then she glanced back over her shoulder, hand running through her buoyant hair as she made the decision. "Joona," she said at last. "Joona Beaumont."

"Joona. That's good. I like that. I'm Lawrence Newton. And I wish you a happy life, Joona."

Finally, just before she reclaimed her barstool, she allowed him to see a slight smile tweak her lips.

Breakfast was as depressing as Lawrence expected it to be. The Holiday Inn restaurant was full of his fellow candidates, all being hearty and cheerful. He joined in, putting on that same mannerly facade the way he'd learned back home when his father had other Board members at the house and he had to be a proper little Newton. It was surprising how easily the deceit came.

The other hopefuls were mostly from upper-management families with big stakes in Z-B, fresh out of college, or with a few years spent in one of the company's various spaceflight divisions. Dressed in his strategic security uniform, and with his starflight experience, Lawrence soon became their focal point. They kept him busy answering questions throughout the meal. He was still telling them about Floyd and the aliens when they walked en masse over to the headquarters building. Lawrence looked around the square, but there was no sign of any protesters. Not that he'd expected them there quite so early in the morning.

Group epsilon three's morning started with the introduction, a half-hour talk from a captain about what Z-B looked for in its starship officers. The usual bull about devotion to duty, comradeship, professionalism. Lawrence got a different version from a strategic security officer every time the platoon was put through a new training course. The captain ended with: "We expect you to give us better than your best"

Day one was devoted to testing their reflexes. The college's i-environment was the most sophisticated Lawrence had ever experienced. They were given full stim-suits to wear, a tight-fitting one-piece made from a fabric of piezoelectric fibers; then led into a big anacoustic room with three rows of gyro-seats. Once they were strapped in, the AS started off with simple coordination tasks. It was easy to begin with, three-dimensional grid alignments, like being inside a hologram pane graph, lining up the glowing green-and-scarlet symbols. They soon progressed to steering fast cars through a maze, and different wheel limitations and engine fluctuations were gradually introduced. Crashes became progressively more violent. After lunch they were given full aircraft simulations, taking up single-seat jet trainers. That was when the AS began to put them under stress, giving them engine flame-outs, failed flaps, spins that were so fast they threatened to make Lawrence vomit. Equipment malfunctions at critical moments. Cockpit fires, with real smoke blowing in through the suit helmet vents and heat searing their hands and legs.

When it was finally over, Lawrence had to grip the gyro-seat's support pillar while his legs regained their strength and stopped shaking. There was a noticeable lack of jovial esprit de corps in the locker room afterward as they all showered and changed.

It was raining when they came out of the headquarters building, a thin, cold drizzle whipped up by the erratic gusts blowing out of the streets surrounding the square. Joona Beaumont was standing outside, her duffel coat hood up against the weather, stamping her feet on the cobbles. There were only three other protesters with her, and the potato stall was absent. They propped up their panes, but couldn't summon up the enthusiasm to shout anything.

Lawrence gave her a quick nod, but she didn't respond. He wasn't even sure she saw him.

An hour later it had stopped raining, and he made his way back to the bar on Rembrandtplein. He didn't bother with a table this time, just sat up at the bar and ordered a mixed mango and apple juice.

Joona arrived a few minutes later. She saw him immediately, and Lawrence offered the empty stool beside him. There was a moment's hesitation; then she came over, shaking the water from her coat.

"You look frozen," he said. "Can I get you something hot?"

She signaled to the barman. "Tea, please. Put a gram in."

"It's bad for you, you know," Lawrence said.

"What, it glitches your circuits? I don't suppose you'd like to lose control, would you?"

"Nothing to do with it. It's a poison, that's all."

"All medicines are to some degree. That's how they kill germs. It's perfectly natural."

"Right. So how did your day go?"

"We made our point."

"Did anybody listen?"

"Being there is our point."

"Then I guess you made it well."

Her tea was delivered. She gave the barman a smile of gratitude.

"You going to ask how my day went?" Lawrence inquired.

"No."

"Okay." Lawrence dropped a ten-EZ-dollar bill on the counter, stood up and walked out. And just how cool is that?

He sort of blew it at the door, when he looked back to see how she'd reacted. She hadn't. She was sitting with her elbows resting on the bar, holding the cup of tea to her mouth with both hands.

He shrugged and stomped off into the night Day two was all about puzzles. The AS controlling the i-environment put him on a small tropical island four hundred meters long and barely seventy wide. A few palm trees and spindly bushes grew along the central strip, but it was otherwise desolate. He was in charge of a five-strong party that had been diving along the offshore reef. One of them was badly injured to the extent he couldn't be moved and needed medical care urgently for decompression sickness and unspecified internal organ damage. There were three islands nearby, one with a resort complex, the second with an abandoned plankton harvest factory, and the third also deserted, but with another diving party visiting it. The resort was farthest away, the plankton plant was known to have an advanced first-aid store with a quasi-AS diagnostic. He only had one boat, which couldn't make it to the resort before the injured man died. There were no communications systems.

Lawrence took a quick look at the map, comparing island positions. He left two people to look after the injured man and set off in the boat to the third island and the other divers. He told them to go to the plankton factory and take the medical equipment to the injured man, then set out by himself to the resort. With just himself onboard, he jettisoned all the surplus equipment he could find, allowing the boat to go as fast as possible. In theory, the medical equipment collected by the other divers should allow the injured man to stay alive while he made the long top to the resort to alert a helicopter rescue team.

The AS allowed the scenario, although the chopper paramedics rebuked him for making the boat trip to the resort by himself. There was an experienced sailor in charge of the other diving team who could have made a faster trip. But the injured man survived.

For his second expedition he was in a deep, rocky canyon in a jungle. His little team was moving a lot slower than anticipated because of the difficult terrain; they were starting to run out of food. The canyon walls were too high to be climbed.

Lawrence asked them for their skills and found one member who was proficient with canoes. The team set about chopping down trees and building a makeshift raft. The canoeist was dispatched downriver to contact their base camp.

After two kilometers the canoeist encountered rapids too severe for the raft. He had to wait until the rest of the team caught up on foot and helped rebuild the raft so that it could be taken apart and carried around difficult sections. Right idea, not enough thought for the method.

An Arctic wilderness came next, with Lawrence by himself at the center of a ring of various equipment caches. To get to the food, which was on top of a pressure ridge, he had to collect the climbing equipment to reach it, but the climbing gear was too bulky and heavy to carry in the backpack; he needed the sledge, which was on the other side of a bottomless gorge. The collapsible bridge to get over the gorge needed the sledge to move it.

He just couldn't work that one out. But he did his best, fetching a single coil of rope from the climbing cache and trying to swing across the gorge. He wound up tumbling down into the black abyss when his ice axe anchor broke free.

After that came a classic cell/maze. The AS put him in a room with five doors, each of which led to another room with five doors. The hazards were mostly visible, with hinged flagstones, spikes stabbing out of the walls, flames, a pendulum, lions, walls that closed in, cutting wire at neck level, electrified segments, stones that fell from their ceiling cavities, tripwire-triggered darts, moss with an acid sap, rat swarms—though there were others like gas and ultrasonics that he didn't find until he was already well into the room. The doors all carried clues to what was in the room on the other side, sometimes numerical; then there were symbols, star signs, even poetry.

He was allowed five goes. The farthest he ever got was eight rooms from his starting place.

He was put in a starship just after it had suffered a meteor collision. Environmental support systems were failing, air leaking, power dropping, network glitched, no spacesuit, few tools. He had to make his way from his own badly damaged section to the lifeboat capsule halfway around the life support wheel.

After that the AS dressed him in a spacesuit that was low on oxygen and power reserves and left him clinging to a small asteroid with his ship on the other side. There were different types of survey sensors dotted across the surface, which he could cannibalize for components and gas as he tried to crawl his way back. The rock's microgravity field was just enough to stop him from achieving orbit by muscle power alone, and weak enough to leave him with all the maneuvering problems of freefall. He actually expired within sight of the little silver craft.

The locker room that evening was even more subdued than the previous night. The candidates all looked dazed and shell-shocked. Conversation was all: "But what do you do after that bit where..."

He couldn't see any protesters in the square. And the weather was a lot better that evening, high clouds and a dry wind blowing from off the land. It was still cold. He quite fancied a hot potato.

Joona was in the bar when he arrived, sitting at her usual place, with empty stools on either side. None too sure of his status, he left a vacant stool between them, and ordered his mango and apple.

"Shouldn't you have something stronger?" she asked. "I'd say you've had a hard day."

"Alcohol isn't going to help. I've got an even harder day tomorrow. Have to keep a clear head."

"Is it worth it?"

He took a long drink from his tumbler. "Oh, yes."

"Doesn't seem it to me. Look at the state of you. What did they do to you in there today?"

"Put it this way. If you ever crash-land on a frozen desert populated by flesh-eating zombies, then stick with me, I'll get you out. Piece of cake compared to what I went through."

Joona cocked her head to one side, giving him an interested look. "And how does that help them select their officers, exactly?"

"It's testing our ability to think under pressure. They put us in all kinds of impossible situations today." He rolled the glass between his palms, regarding it with a miserable expression. "I didn't do very well. I lost count of how many times I got killed. Then again, the others were just the same, judging by what they said."

"How good are you?"

"What do you mean?"

She slid her hands across the bar, pushing the tea cup ahead of her, moving with feline grace as she leaned in toward him. "I mean, you're a... you're a soldier who's seen action. You've been in bad situations for real on those other worlds you plunder, right?"

"Yes. But we're trained in how to deal with hostile crowd or ambush situations. I know what I'm doing."

"Right, but what you're basically taught is how to keep cool under fire. And today they simply turned up the heat.

Were those situations genuinely impossible, or did you just flunk them?"

"You don't take many prisoners, do you? I suppose I could have done better in some of them, if I knew more about engineering and stuff."

"Has it occurred to you that these tests were actually dual purpose? It sounds to me like they were testing your character as well as your ability to think."

He slumped down on the stool. "Probably. I'm really up shit creek, then."

"Why is that?" with lazy amusement Lawrence realized just how stoned she was. "I have no character. You said so yourself."

"I didn't say you had no character. I said you had the wrong character, which for the purposes of today's experiment will serve you well. You're what they want."

"Let's hope so. Are you okay to get home from here?"

She straightened up again. "Oh, I don't need any help from you. I have a citybike card. I'll just take one off the rack, and zoooom, I'm home." She caught the barman's attention and wagged a finger at her cup. "Same again."

Lawrence drained his juice and stood up. "Take care." He walked to the far end of the bar where the barman was preparing her tea. "Do something for me," he said quietly to the barman. "When she leaves, call a cab for her. This should cover it." He put an EZ twenty on the counter.

The barman nodded and pocketed the bill. "Sure thing."

Day three was linked teamwork. The AS split them into groups of five and dropped them into a shared i-environment. There were to be eight tests. For the first five, they would rotate the leadership, while the last three were to be a group effort.

Lawrence's group was given a river to cross for its first task. It was running through a hot, unpleasant jungle, complete with insects that bit exposed limbs and reeking marshsulfur air bubbling out of the mud along the foot of the banks. Crocodiles peered at them from midriver, occasionally snapping their jaws in anticipation. Ropes, oil drums and wooden planks were stacked up on the bank. Even laying all the planks end to end, they weren't long enough reach across the water.

Their designated team leader started snapping out orders. He wanted to build a platform that would go halfway across the river, they would take up the section from behind them and rebuild it out in front to the other bank. Lawrence helped willingly enough, even though he knew they were wasting their time. The scheme was overelaborate. They should be building a raft.

He briefly toyed with the idea of slacking off, or maybe not tying off his rope as tight as it needed to be. Not active sabotage exactly, but as the idea was doomed anyway... There were only two places, after all. But he guessed the AS would be watching for anything less than 100 percent commitment.

Sure enough, when they turned the bridge into a platform in the water and started trying to build the last section, two of them wound up falling in the river along with several planks. The crocodiles moved in eagerly, huge jaws hinging open.

For his own command, Lawrence was given the last stone in a henge to erect. He took a quick inventory of the equipment they'd been given, which was mainly poles, shovels and ropes, and issued his instructions. They measured the length of the stone, and the height of the others. That told them how deep to dig the pit at the base of the stone. With that done, they set about tipping it in, rigging up levers and crude pulleys. This was the part that required a high level of coordinated teamwork, and everyone played his part perfectly, following each of the orders that Lawrence shouted out. Eventually the massive block tilted upright. Lawrence had a nasty moment when it rocked about, but it stayed upright.

It was the final three tests that made him irritable and disappointed. There was just too much competition between the group members for them to have their own idea adopted. Lawrence reckoned the AS had deliberately structured the tasks so that there were multiple solutions to each problem. His fellow candidates began to question him and each other, whining and bitching, especially when their own proposals were turned down. When Lawrence was convinced he had the most efficient solution to the second task he had to shout to make them listen, which they resented. They were competing, not cooperating. The simulations were deviating from the way people behaved in real life. Drawing from his own time in action with the platoon, Lawrence knew there would be a better level of rapport.