Lockstep

Eleven

“I DON’T LIKE POLICE,” Peter had told Toby once, as they were arguing over yet another point of design for Consensus. “They’re people, and how can you trust people? But I hate cop bots, too, ’cause, well, they’re not people.” In their next version of Consensus, he’d provided a solution to both problems.

Toby sat on the floor with Corva and Jay, looking up at that solution.

They had raced up from the bottom of the facility, hoping to head off Shylif. Toby couldn’t believe he was intending to kill one of the passengers in the module, but Corva had confirmed it. “He joined us because he was hunting this man Coley and he’d tracked him to Thisbe,” she’d said as they ran. “I never thought he’d actually find him!”

Apparently, now that he had, all other considerations had ceased to have any meaning for him. So he’d left his post, and in that instant the alarms that his presence there kept suspended had gone off.

It had taken surprisingly little time for the police dirigible to arrive.

In Consensus, red lights on the heads of bots like these four meant they were being “ridden” remotely by professional law officers. Telepresence had been decent in Toby’s day; he had no doubt it was perfect now. The people remotely controlling these bots would feel they were right here and had to be aware that they stood two heads taller than any normal human and had enough strength to tear off an airlock door with their bare hands—if their robot bodies would let them.

The bots had overrides to prevent their human drivers from killing or badly injuring anyone. The humans, in turn, had overrides on the kinds of simple assumptions a bot might make about what kind of situation they were in. Peter had thought it was a nearly perfect solution.

What made it actually perfect was the fifth bot that hung back from these four. Its headlights were green, meaning it was being ridden by a civilian observer, who would also be recording everything that happened here.

The cop bots didn’t seem too concerned about that fifth guy. One of the red-lit ones crouched with a gnashing sound in front of Toby. “Facial’s not getting a match on this guy. They must be stowaways.”

“They had denners,” said a second one, which stood with crossed arms over Corva. “Saw ’em scamper off that way.”

What about Shylif? Toby exchanged a glance with Jaysir, who gave a tiny shake of his head. Had they found him up top? Or was he hiding somewhere?

“Denners…” The first cop leaned toward Toby. “Is it true what they say? Those things’re altered to work like cicada beds?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Toby.

“Shut up,” snapped Corva. “They’ve got lie detection built into those suits. You just said ‘yes,’ you know.”

“Oh.” He felt himself flush.

“Ha,” said the cop bot, tilting its head to one side. “Good readings off this one. So, kid, who are you, and where are you from?”

Toby looked the cop in its lenses. “I am Toby Wyatt McGonigal, I was born on Earth fourteen thousand years ago, and I own this lockstep and everything in it. Including you.”

There was a second’s pause, then the cop bot stood up, shaking its head. “Detector’s not working after all. It says he’s telling the truth!” There was a general laugh at that idea. The cop bot shook its head again. “What he said about the denners might not be admissible. We’ll have to catch them.”

“Hell!” said another cop bot. “I’ll get ’em.” It raised its arms, much like a professional wrestler showing off his muscles, but in this case the maneuver just made room for two cat-size bots to detach themselves from its torso and leap to the floor. They shook themselves and then flitted silently away.

Corva shouted, “Don’t hurt them!”

“Call them, then,” said the first cop bot. “Save us all a lot of trouble.”

Corva sent him one of her most withering glares. It was the first time, Toby reflected, that he’d seen that look directed at somebody other than himself.

“On your feet, then. We’ll catch up to them.” The cop hauled Jaysir up and reached down a metal hand for Toby, but he brushed it off.

“They’re down this way,” said the cop whose cat bots were on the hunt. He stalked off into one of the corridors and everybody followed him in a tight group.

“So,” said the first cop. It had hooked its white metal thumbs into the conspicuous holsters at its waist and was sauntering next to Toby like a man with his hands in his pockets. “You came here to do some looting, then? —No, no, don’t answer, it happens all the time, and, hey, I wouldn’t want to put words in your mouth or anything.”

“Yeah,” said Toby. “That’s why we came.”

The cop bot shrugged at the civilian observer. “Don’t know what’s wrong with this detector.”

“Has this happened before?” asked the observer. Unlike the flat artificial voice of the cops, its was clearly human. Female, mature, perhaps even elderly. Though, as with Kirstana’s white-haired priest of Anti-Origin, you could never be sure.

“What the—” The cop whose body parts were hunting Wrecks and Orpheus paused. Then he swore and started running. From somewhere up ahead came a strange swishing sound.

They caught up with him in a big industrial kitchen. Everything was chrome steel and ceiling-mounted chef assemblers. These were all dormant, but there was a lot happening at floor level.

The cat bots were trapped back-to-back in the middle of the room. Careering and hopping around them were six spinning pinwheels of white spray: pressurized dessert-topping bottles whose valves had somehow come loose. They were coating every nearby surface with white topping, and the cat bots had gotten a liberal layer. The things were back on their haunches now, scrabbling at their cameras to try to clear them.

And then, with majestic slowness, the heavy industrial fridge behind them began to lean in their direction.

“Hell!” The cop bot leaped forward but skidded in the icing and ended up on its back just as the fridge came down like a hammer on it and the cat bots.

The fridge bounced once then settled a few centimeters. The cop bot lay on its back, arms and feet splayed and its head under the heavy fridge. Suddenly it crossed its arms and ankles, and Toby heard a muffled voice say, “Well, this is just great.”

“Get it off him,” said the lead cop. It was impossible to tell, but Toby imagined his voice sounding tired.

Two other cops lifted the fridge as if it weighed nothing, and the one on the floor clambered to its feet. Its head was a bit lopsided, which was nothing compared to the state of the two cat bots.

The civilian observer shook her head. “But how did they…? Oh!”

Behind the fridge were boxes and a long metal tray that must have been used as a lever. Toby felt a prickle up his spine as he realized that the denners could have had only a few seconds to improvise this trap.

He looked to the others. “Are they as smart as…?”

Jaysir shrugged. “Best not to worry your head about it.”

A couple of meters away, an icing-smeared cop bot was trying to fit two squashed subunits into slots in its torso. They wouldn’t fit, and finally it threw them away in disgust. “I’m gonna kill those little freaks,” it said.

Another cop gestured from a nearby doorway. “They went up,” it said. “They’re somewhere in the greenhouse.”

“On civilized worlds,” said the iced cop, “they make crime impossible.”

Corva quirked a smile at it. “Where would be the fun in that?”

It cursed and walked away. Instantly Corva’s smile disappeared. She turned to Toby, and he could see the worry and disappointment that were her true feelings.

“Time to let you earn your pay, heir to the lockstep,” she murmured.

“What?” He nearly tripped as they were hustled up a flight of steps to the open, window-wrapped greenhouse. “You think I can—?” He nodded at the cops.

“I really think you can,” she said, and next to her, Jay nodded. “If you are who you say you are, you can override any Cicada Corp equipment.” When he just stared at Corva, she rolled her eyes and said, “These bots are Cicada Corp bots.”

Toby swallowed. If he ordered these bots to shut down, he’d reveal himself. There was no going back from it. These cops would be kicked out of their system and find themselves back at headquarters, and they’d see that it was a McGonigal override that had taken them out. As if that weren’t enough, they’d have it in his own words: “I am Toby Wyatt McGonigal…” There’d be no hiding anymore; he’d be meeting Evayne and Peter soon, but too soon, far too soon.

Corva hissed at him. “What are you waiting for?”

Toby called up the Cicada Corp console. He could see the activation symbol hovering over the heads of the cops. All he had to do was tweak that, and they’d fall right over. Similarly, he could open the doors. He’d woken the dead just now … He could do this.

“Uh-oh,” said the lead cop bot. They were walking across the greenhouse, and it abruptly stopped and turned to the others. “Did you get that? One of them’s come in person.”

The iced cop swore. “Why?” It turned to Corva and Toby. “What did you do to attract the attention of the Guides?”

Corva gasped. Toby was about to ask Jaysir what a Guide was, but there was no time. Corva turned to him, suddenly frantic. “Do it!” she hissed.

“Do what?” asked the cop even as Toby focused his eyes on the virtual glyph over its head. With a slight squint he turned it from green to gray, and the cop bot froze, its torso leaning back in a skeptical pose, its head tilted to one side.

The others hadn’t noticed yet, so while the leader was saying, “They’re not even going to tell us what it was all about,” Toby shut them down.

“Are they just gonna take over like they always—?” The last cop bot suddenly realized it was alone. “Hey—” Toby shut it down.

“Why didn’t you do that before?” Corva was wavering between outrage and delight.

Using the console felt like cheating. It felt criminal, like an assault on the legitimacy of the whole lockstep. But he couldn’t say that; she wouldn’t understand … and he would sound like a McGonigal. He just shrugged.

Corva grimaced. “Come on! We’ve gotta find the boys.”

A few calls summoned the denners from where they’d been hiding. They seemed very pleased with themselves, especially Orpheus, who pranced around Toby’s feet before climbing him to hang off his backpack. Wrecks was circling the immobile cop bots, obviously curious as to what had happened to them.

“Hurry!” Corva mounted the steps three at a time. Toby couldn’t understand her sudden panic; in fact, now that he’d crossed the bridge of actually using the console to control his surroundings, he felt strangely elated. Sure, it was a cheat, but he hadn’t hurt anybody, just cut the remote connection to some people in a distant building. With luck they wouldn’t even be able to tell that it was a McGonigal override that had done it.

Since he was thinking this way, Toby wasn’t at all unnerved when they reached the gallery level and found the corridors crowded with bustling military bots.

“Oh, crap.” Corva shrank back as dozens of weapons were raised and aimed at them—but Toby just squinted, and the guns drooped.

He strolled through the frozen combat units. “It’s fine,” he said. He wanted to laugh. “These guys can’t touch us!”

“Oh, they can’t,” somebody said.

Standing in the middle of the corridor was an armored man. One of his metal-sheathed arms was crooked around Shylif’s throat, and the other hand held a gun to his head.

“But I sure can,” he said.

“… McGonigal.”

TOBY AND CORVA EXCHANGED a glance. Jaysir looked at the floor. Then Toby sighed.

“Really, does everybody know about me now?”

The man with his gun to Shylif’s head barked a quick laugh, then said, “I don’t know what you did to my bots, but I can’t afford to have you take them over. If any of them so much as twitches, I’m shooting your friend here.”

“That leaves us at a bit of a standoff, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. Elevator’s this way. Come on.” He backed in the direction of the antechamber.

“I’m sorry, Corva,” mumbled Shylif. “When I heard the name I started off without thinking—but then I changed my mind, and I came back but it was too late and…”

Toby had always thought that Shylif was a powerful man and might be a formidable fighter. Indeed, he was the same size as the man whose arm was around his throat, but his own space gear was strictly commercial. The other man’s had a military exoskeleton built into it; he could have squashed Shylif’s throat with a simple twist of his arm.

They disappeared back down the corridor, and Corva, Jaysir and Toby reluctantly followed. The man’s voice floated back from up ahead: “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor, Toby. It’s what I always liked about you.”

Toby blinked. “Wha—”

“He’s a Guide,” whispered Corva. “One of the original Sedna colonists. You didn’t think your family were the only ones to use the locksteps?”

The idea hadn’t occurred to him, like so many other details about this mad future that, once someone mentioned them, became blindingly obvious. He shook his head. “Too much going on.” Then he called out, “Hey! Who are you! It’s been forty years, you know.”

“That it has, Toby. Come in here.” He was waiting for them by the elevator. Four more military bots were standing by its doors.

“Get in the elevator.” The man was nervously eyeing his own bots. Toby knew he could take those over, but he couldn’t be sure he could do it without being noticed. All it would take would be one of them nodding or saluting and Shylif would die. So he marched into the elevator and Corva followed. Their captor edged in, still pushing Shylif ahead of him.

“You spent so much time in those goddamned games that you probably wouldn’t remember me if your life depended on it,” he said as he gave a glance-command to the elevator to start. “I’m Nathan Kenani.”

Toby peered into his face and suddenly saw the younger man in this careworn face. “Nathan!” It was Nathan Kenani, the composer.

“Nice to see you again, kid.” Suddenly Kenani shoved Shylif over to stand coughing next to Toby and the others. “I’m glad you remember me.”

“Of course I remember you! You know, Peter and I used your music in our games.”

“I know you did. Your brother made a goddamned anthem out of one of my pieces. Now every time I hear some innocent young thing belt it out with tears in her eyes, I get the creeps.”

“Sorry about that,” said Toby. “But it’s not really my fault.”

“Isn’t it? You got him started on all this.” Kenani made a wide wave with his gun. “You and your game therapy. Oh yeah, I remember all about that.” He grinned, the drawn skin of his face suddenly giving him a sharklike aspect. Behind him, lightning flickered.

He eyed Corva. “She know about that?” Toby shook his head minutely. “They don’t know anything, do they? Hey, Toby, you remember sheep? Peter and I, we joke about that sometimes. These people have never heard of sheep. If they had, they might be better at recognizing their situation.”

Toby felt sick. “If this world’s so awful, why do you put up with it? There must be others—the whole first generation. Did you all just decide to blindly follow Pete into … this?”

Kenani shook his head. “Some of them fought, but there was a side that was always going to lose, and I decided not to be on it. Us, we’re all that’s left. And, no, this future’s not ‘awful’ at all.”

He glanced up at the approaching cityscape above but kept his pistol steadily aimed at Shylif. “You know what a Guide is, Toby?”

The word had popped up frequently in his library, but so had dozens of other terms; Toby had been overwhelmed by all the details of lockstep history and hadn’t known what to skim and what to research deeply. “Sounded like thought police when I read about it,” he said.

“If you don’t like the lockstep, you can leave anytime you want,” Kenani snapped. “We just have standards for those who stay. It’s pretty simple: if you want to live in Peter’s lockstep, you have to assimilate. That means accepting our way of life—your way of life, Toby, you and your family’s, and mine, and all the originals’. We’ve got millions of people immigrating every year, did you know that? For the most part they come from worlds that are separated from the culture you and I share by more than ten thousand years. They speak languages that share no common words or grammar with ours. They have totally different ideas about basic things like family structure, morality, clothing … If we let them keep their ways, the whole place’d come apart at the seams. And hell, people arriving this month have 360 years of history separating them from those who came from the exact same place one year ago lockstep time.

“We’re the only thing they have in common. The Guides are there to teach people how to live in our culture, is all. That’s why they call us Guides.”

“People worship you like gods,” Corva accused. Her face was pale.

“Not something we encourage,” Kenani retorted. “Unlike your sister,” he added to Toby with an ironic smile.

“Evayne,” said Toby, and his heart was in his throat. He was as responsible for her as he was for Peter. When she ran through the halls of the gray Sedna habitats singing, his heart lifted and he felt he could relax for a minute. When she was silent or had locked herself in her room, then Toby prowled the halls thinking of how to break her out of her shell through some game or gift or clever word. Evayne and Peter, he juggled the happiness of both.

“How is she?”

Kenani blinked at him in surprise. Then he laughed. “You’re probably the first person to ask after her like that in ten thousand years. And nobody’d be more aware of it than her.”

“I want to see her!”

Again the surprise. Then Kenani laughed. “That’s actually what I had in mind.”

“Wait, you can’t,” interrupted Corva. “You’re a Guide, you work for Peter McGonigal.”

“Do I now?” Kenani appeared to consider the proposition. “If that’s the case, then I guess I should do what Brother Peter told me to do…”

“What did Peter tell you to do?”

“Why, kill you, of course.”

“No!” Toby stepped forward, his face hot and his hands balled into fists. “You’re lying! He wouldn’t hurt me!”

Now the old man just looked sad. “You’re right, he’d never hurt his brother, Toby Wyatt McGonigal. But the Lord of Time? The One who Waits to return and deliver the universe to perfection after fourteen thousand years of buildup and expectation setting? He’d kill him in a heartbeat.”

“But I’m none of those things. He knows it. You know it.”

Kenani tried to shrug in his suit, but its shoulders barely moved. “You know it, I know it, some of the other Guides know it … and that’s about it. The rest of the human race and a goodly chunk of the nonhuman intelligences in this part of the universe see you differently. Peter knows this. He knows what’s at stake if you reappear.”

“I don’t want to reappear! I just want to go home!” He bellowed the last word, and he was standing toe to toe with the Guide. Kenani hardly blinked.

“There’s no home to go back to, Toby. I’m not here to kill you. But if I don’t do that, my only alternative is to hand you over to Evayne. Then, she might kill you, but at least it won’t have been me who had to do it.”

He couldn’t believe Evayne would hurt him either, but longing for home had reminded him of something. “You do have another choice,” he said, stepping back. Outside the elevator car, the rain had stopped, the clouds had parted, and the rainbow-colored clouds and glowing spheres of the Continent were lowering toward them.

“You could bring me to my mother.”

Kenani’s eyes widened, and he gave an involuntary hiss. Then, “She went crazy after you disappeared, Toby. There’s a reason none of us has woken her in thirty years.”

Toby crossed his arms and sneered. “I don’t believe that. She went into cold sleep to wait for me. That’s what all the stories say.”

“Stories?” Kenani laughed. He glanced up at the rapidly approaching cities. “All you know is the stories, isn’t it, Toby? Since you woke you haven’t spoken to anybody who was there. You haven’t been told what really happened.”

Trying to keep his voice level, Toby said, “Then why don’t you tell me?”

WHEN THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened in the customs complex, Nathan Kenani holstered his pistol and waved his three prisoners out. A sizable crowd of human soldiers and military bots was waiting; the men all bowed as one as Kenani appeared.

“I know you’ve got the McGonigal overrides, Toby,” he said, putting a hand on Toby’s shoulder. “You could probably cause some serious mayhem if you took over these bots. But my men would fight. Probably a lot of them would die, and you might too—after all, they don’t know who you are.”

Toby shrugged off the hand. “What if I told them?”

“Any that believed you would probably faint. The rest … well, they’ve heard that one before. My point is, don’t try anything, please. It’ll just end badly.”

“Where are you taking us?” Now at the head of a very large and intimidating retinue, they entered a maze of hallways behind the spaceport’s customs hall.

“My original plan was to load you on my ship and take you back to Peter. Let him deal with you. But with everything … and considering you want to see her anyway … I’ve decided to turn you over to Evayne. So we’re not going anywhere.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s already on her way here. She’s coming through the official differential, so her ship’ll be here at the start of the next cycle. We’ll winter over here and wait for her. It’s just easier that way.”

Corva had been silent for a long time, but now she said, “You must have arrived through the Weekly lockstep.”

Kenani nodded. “We do that a lot—shift differentials to move around quicker. Peter, though—he stays on this time. Means he’s even younger than he used to be.” Now that Corva had reminded him that she was there, he eyed her and Shylif. “By the way, Toby, what do you think we should do with these friends of yours?”

“Let them go! They have nothing to do with any of this.”

“But they know who you are?” Toby had no reply to that. Kenani sighed. “I’ll let you hash that one out with Evayne.”

Toby glared at him. “You said you were going to tell me what really happened. At least do that before you let me see Evayne.”

“Let you see her?” Kenani shook his head. “You’re still living in the past. She will see you—and then only if she chooses to. She may not bother.”

“I can’t believe that!”

They’d come to a long low room with about twenty cicada beds. They looked like half-melted plastic seedpods, black and glossy under amber and mauve lights, with blue telltales dotting their sides.

Kenani gazed pensively at the beds. “There was a time when I wouldn’t have believed it either. But now … well, listen, and then tell me what you think.” He waved at the human part of his retinue and they retreated, leaving only forty or fifty armed bots surrounding them. Kenani had one drag over a recover couch from the far wall, and he sat down on it, legs planted widely apart and his hands on his knees like a Chinese emperor. He frowned at Toby.

“Once upon a time,” he said, “fourteen thousand years ago, a family that used to be rich had its last holdings bought out by the nasty hyperrich who’d taken over the solar system. They had enough money from the sale of that last business for one, maybe two generations to live in some comfort. But their grandchildren were going to be wage serfs like everybody else. There was no hope for them.

“Unless they did something crazy. The trillionaires had plowed under all the laws that might have protected the worlds of the solar system from exploitation. It was a winner-take-all situation, and asteroids and even planets belonged to whoever could get to them first.” He turned to Corva. “Toby’s parents knew that all the worlds in the solar system were claimed already—but way out past Pluto, there were other worlds.

“The parents pooled their money and made an offer to some other idealistic or desperate people—like me—to join them in homesteading Sedna. We spent all our money on a couple of ships and basic life-support and mining supplies. Other groups had done this, but they hadn’t had the resources to make it as far as Sedna. But this family was different. They’d pioneered a new kind of hibernation technology back on Earth. It was originally intended for battlefield and emergency use, but they figured they could use it to minimize their life-support needs on the long trip out.

“One day, the family’s eldest son was lost when his ship … well, it just disappeared. He’d been on his way to claim a comet for the colony. They knew where his ship should be, but if he’d been knocked off course, that straight line became a cone of possible trajectories, and the space they’d have to search in widened with each passing day.

“There were … arguments. His mother and the other kids wanted to send their remaining ship to search for him; his father said they couldn’t spare it and they should use long-range radar and telescopes first. Most of the colonists agreed with him, but as the days and weeks passed, they found nothing on the scopes. His mother’s frantic anxiety turned to bitterness and resentment. The family was…” Suddenly he stopped, glancing sidelong at Toby.

“Look, Toby, I’m sorry…”

“What? What happened?”

“They grew apart,” said Kenani. “Your mother and father. He ended up on one side, trying to keep the colony as a whole together, and your mother, your brother, and your sister were on the other side, convinced that not enough was being done to find you.

“Finally, he relented and they used precious resources to send a small probe after you. The rest of us weren’t happy. It was going to take a year just to reach your last known position. Your dad made the decision, then went back to work. He had a colony to run, after all. Your mom, and Peter and Evayne … they watched and waited.”

Toby tried to picture the situation. Yeah, Dad would be steady in the face of a crisis like that. It was painful to think this, but he hoped that Dad would just mourn him and then carry on. It would have been the right thing to do.

“As the months wore on, your mom and Peter found it harder. Peter … he checked out of day-to-day life. You’d built this crazy online virtual reality together, and he became obsessed with perfecting it. Your mother went farther. She declared that she was going to winter over until the probe reported back. And over your father’s objections, she did.”

So that’s how it happened.

Kenani gazed off at nothing. “That time, it was for a year. She revived in time to learn that the probe had found ambiguous readings. Maybe it had seen a sign of your ship … maybe it was just a comet. That was far worse than a simple yes or no answer would have been. She became obsessed with finding out what had happened to you, and because you’d gone into hibernation yourself before your ship disappeared, she was convinced that wherever you were, you were still alive.

“It turned into a war between your mother and father—she trying to scrape together enough resources to send an expedition after you, he insisting that the colony couldn’t spare anything, that it was riding the knife-edge of failure anyway. This went on for … I dunno, a year or two?” He shrugged.

“And then … your mother thought of something. She’d seen the life-support projections. The colony couldn’t support its full population for much longer. She went to your father and made him an offer. It’s now the most famous, most studied deal in history.”

He paused dramatically.

Toby scowled at him. “Come on!”

“No, really. She said, ‘I know we don’t have the resources to send out an expedition. But we would if we had fewer mouths to feed. If I and some of my friends go into hibernation for another year, it’ll take the strain off the colony and give scavenger bots time to gather more ore and the manufactories time to grow more food. In return, you promise me that some of those resources will go toward building another probe to hunt for Toby.’”

A painful knot was growing in Toby’s gut. He didn’t want to hear any more, but at the same time, he had to know. He knit his hands together and stared down at his feet. After a moment, he felt Orpheus shift in his backpack, and the denner nuzzled his neck. He reached back to scratch Orpheus’s chin—and had a sudden idea.

He turned his attention away from the story for a moment.

Kenani was completely absorbed in his narrative, and so were Corva and Shylif, who had doubtless never heard their history told this way before. “So … well, she did have some volunteers. There were enough cicada beds because they’d used them on the trip out from Earth. Anyway, she deep-dove and … she convinced Peter and Evayne to go with her.”

Toby snapped to attention again. “They left Dad alone?”

Now Kenani wouldn’t meet his eye. “Twice: once while he gathered the new resources, and again to wait for the new probe to report back. Two years.

“But … but here’s the thing,” he went on quickly, “it worked! With them wintering over, the strain on the colony was reduced. The bots could do most of the work. When they came out of cold sleep, they pitched in and worked hard—it was almost like the colony had seasonal workers it could call on when needed and then send home when they were done. They could actually afford to send out a probe, and then later another.

“The colonists began to talk about it. If they wintered over during times when they weren’t needed, then they could supply labor when it was needed, and reap the rewards. They’d be richer than they’d imagined they could be, and the colony would grow … So more and more of them began following your mother’s example. This went on for a few years, and your dad fought it every step of the way. Eventually, he gave up.”

Toby gave an involuntary yelp that combined anger, grief, and surprise. His father never gave up. It was his iron will that had made the Sedna expedition possible. Kenani was talking about a man Toby didn’t know. “What did he do?”

“When the colony could afford it, he came to us—the other original founders—and asked us whether we’d join him. Some said yes, and he and they … went back to Earth.

“Listen, Toby, it wasn’t a retreat! They needed to go back to complete their claim on Sedna. By doing it, your father made the Sedna colony into an official world within the Solar Compact. He brought in investments and new colonists. And he brought all of you into the society of the trillionaires—he made it so you could own a world.”

“But he didn’t come back.” Toby had figured that out already. He was also acutely aware of how Kenani’s version of events didn’t match up to the fragmentary records he’d pulled from the twentier’s memory.

“No, Carter didn’t come back to Sedna,” said Kenani. “He…” The Guide grimaced. “After a few years, he remarried. He lived a long life. I don’t know if he was happy. He was a pretty private person.”

Remarried.

Okay, he wanted Kenani to stop talking now.

“Meanwhile, your mother had discovered that the longer she wintered over, the more resources her mining and refining machines could accumulate to use when she woke up. Also, the probes that were hunting you were going farther and farther, and taking longer and longer to report back. Her sleeps became longer and longer, and she convinced more people to join her in them. New colonists arrived, and some of them followed the new pattern, too. Peter and Evayne … they were growing up, and they knew the colony needed a McGonigal to be present at all times to ensure their sovereignty. So they started alternating—leapfrogging forward through time while your mother slept more and more.

“Your mother’s probes had photographed and mapped other nomad planets, far past the orbit of Sedna. It was she who realized that if an expedition visited one of those while everyone back home was wintering over, it would be as if those worlds were right next door. She encouraged an expedition to a planet that was two years away, and when that worked, she put together a colonization program.

“Here’s the thing, Toby: the new colony couldn’t have survived if they’d run all their machines and life support all the time. They wintered over three-quarters of the time; that’s what allowed them to survive. But they did more than that! They thrived. And when regular flights between the two worlds became possible, they decided to coordinate their hibernation times with the people back on Sedna.

“That is how the locksteps began.”

“NOW I’M AFRAID I’M going to have to separate you from those traveling companions of yours,” he said, motioning for one of the military bots to come forward. “Don’t worry—we’ve got cicada beds for all kinds of clients.”

Corva held Wrecks so tightly that he squeaked in protest. “But they always winter over with us!”

“They’ll be nearby,” said the composer. “I know you kids love your pets.” He emphasized that last word without irony—in fact, he had a strangely serious look in his eye, and his attention was focused on Toby as he said it.

Something wasn’t right here. He should know what the denners were. The military bot took several carriers and put them on the floor. As Toby and the other two coaxed their denners into them, Toby was watching Kenani. There was an expectant, almost anxious look in the old colonist’s eye, as if there was something he very badly wanted to say, but couldn’t.

Toby looked at the ranked military bots. The eyes and ears of Peter? Or even Evayne? When he glanced back, Kenani caught his eye and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Corva and the others looked stricken, but there was also an underlying grimness to Corva, a steely determination. Kenani had said nothing about the passenger carrier; was it possible that neither the police nor he had figured out that it was why they’d been in the chandelier station to begin with? No, he decided, it wasn’t possible: Kenani must know. He might be deceived by the falsified schedule Toby had filed, but then again, he might not. And he should know that the denners weren’t ordinary pets but stowaway companions. He was probably pretending to be kind to cover the fact that he was going to send Orpheus and the others to be studied, maybe even vivisected.

If their gambit succeeded, they might not get away themselves, but Corva’s brother would be safe. Toby knew that was all she was holding on to right now.

“Bedtime, kids,” said Kenani. He pressed his thumb to the locks of three lozenge-shaped cicada beds in turn, then stepped back. Toby ordered his suit to unravel, then climbed into his bed. He sat there for a moment, watching as Shylif, then Jaysir, then Corva slammed the lids on theirs. Then he faced Kenani.

“I’m still a McGonigal,” he said. “I can’t believe Evayne would hurt me. And if she doesn’t—if I’m still here in a month or a year or ten years—”

Kenani made a shushing motion. “I know,” he hissed. “You don’t think I know? Stupid boy. But she will kill you, there’s nothing I can do about that.” Again that odd emphasis in his words, and his eyes were fixed on Toby’s with fierce intensity.

Toby nodded. “I’ll remember,” he said.

Then he lay back and shut the bed’s lid.