Permanence

7

MICHAEL BEQUITH SORTED through a cloud of public inscape windows his employer had left open and floating over his bed. Usually Michael's eyes and hands were on his task— everything he did was done with meticulous perfection. Today, his hands went about their task, closing, nesting, and arranging insubstantial windows with the usual precision. His mind was elsewhere.

Dr. Herat's room was bigger than Michael's, but that was not saying much. Laurent Herat, Ph.D., had inhabited a metal cell four by five meters in dimension for the last three months. Michael's room was three by four. There was no decoration in these living quarters, beyond a failed attempt at wood panelling on some of the walls. The lights were harsh, the air recycled and flat and there were no physical windows because they were twenty meters underground.

Twice a day the walls shook with the force of a tidal bore thundering overhead. Dr. Herat was always in the control room during the tides, so Michael had taken that as the best time to tidy up after the professor. The rest of the day was his own, for there was precious little he could do for Herat in a research station as minimalistic as this one. He struggled with the vagaries of interstellar e-mail, trying to keep up with the academic debates raging back home, but his summaries for Herat were meager these days. They both knew where the discussion was going to leave them, anyway.

He finished arranging the windows and looked around for any other untidiness. Dr. Herat always left a half-glass of wine on the bedside table from last night. It was his habit to sip that while reading his mail and jotting notes on the day's research. Today the glass was there, but it was still full.

That was odd. Dr. Herat was in a glum mood lately; Michael had read the exobiologist's last report and knew it was doomed to explode like a bombshell back home. It was, in fact, an attack on the whole endeavor that had sent Herat and his research assistant to this and dozens of other worlds. It called into question the grant expenditures of a hundred top scientists. The first casualty of the grant application process was truth; Herat was going to be pilloried and he knew it.

Maybe he was just tired. Dr. Herat wasn't as young as he'd been when Michael first sought out his patronage. (Neither was Michael, but that sort of consideration never entered his mind.) Herat usually worked fourteen-hour days and slept only five hours. He had been operating on this schedule, machinelike, for ten years now. Small wonder that he should finally start nodding off before reading his mail.

Michael took the wine and dumped it in the metal sink. Then he took one last look around and left the room.

On other worlds he would have had a full day ahead of him. There was much organization to be done, sometimes behind Dr. Herat's back. Michael knew the supply clerks on thirty stations and understood the vices and habits of a dozen starship pursers. He could usually anticipate Herat's need for equipment or supplies and more than once he'd acquired pieces of equipment from half-legal sources that no amount of pleading with the Panspermia Institute had been able to produce. Dr. Herat proclaimed Michael's talents uncanny, but it was merely that he spent all his time learning the human side of bureaucracy and working it to their advantage.

Kadesh was not their usual research destination. Herat had a great reputation and several times in the past had been called in to examine priceless relics of ancient extinct civilizations. On those occasions the skies of the «dig» planet had swarmed with ships— news media, other researchers, guard ships, the yachts of the rich. There were no ruins on Kadesh; there was no swarm of ships, only the supply ship in orbit and this lone station buried under the tidal flats of a northern continent.

The tides were such that Michael couldn't even go out for a walk if he wanted to.

By his watch it was about fifteen minutes until the next bore. He stood in the narrow hallway for a bit, debating where to go. Finally boredom drove him back to his own room.

He sat on the bed and studied the walls. It was good to be leaving this place, even if they didn't know where they would go next. It might be time for Herat to resume his long-neglected teaching practise on Noctis Regina. Certainly Herat needed to do some hard thinking about his future. For the first time in five years, Michael knew he needed to do the same.

A chime sounded in his mind: an inscape call. "Dr. Bequith! Please call up."

He stood, relieved that he was wanted. "Bequith here," he said.

"Get your ass up here now, man, your boss is still out on the flats and the bore's coming in!"

For a second he just stared at the bed; then Michael was out the door and running.

The station was shaped like a can, buried on end. He raced up the zigzagging stairs from the living quarters, through the exercise level and the galley level and to the control room in record time. The research associates were crowding around a screen there, babbling and pointing.

"Where is he?" Michael demanded of Hart, a young and insolent RA who usually haunted the control room because nobody tolerated him anywhere else. Hart's face was twisted in a sneer.

"He's wading," said Hart. "Won't come back in. Says he wants to watch the bore."

"We've all done it," said Meline, a planetologist Herat had worked with before. "But you don't go down to the shoreline! You stand at the top of the ladder. That way you can slam the hatch before it gets too close." Her voice slightly emphasized the word it.

"All right," said Michael. "I'll fetch him in." He clattered up the next flight of steps, to the suit room. It took two precious minutes to get into his quarantine suit, then another to walk through the scouring jets that removed all trace of Earthly microbial life from the suit's surface. He paced clumsily to the airlock and when it finally released him into the bottom of the ladder well he wondered if he was too late. The bore would arrive any minute now.

He pulled himself out of the well into Kadesh's sunshine.

Kadesh's one moon was much bigger and closer to the planet than Earth's Luna. The tides here were orders of magnitude higher; there were few coastal areas that had not been pounded into gentle inclines by millions of years' worth of tsunamis. Here at the shoreline of the largest continent, Michael could have waded two kilometers out to sea before the water came above his waist. The flat vista was deceptively calm, the air blue with towering pillow clouds.

Any second now a wall of water three hundred meters high would come racing over the horizon, carrying with it a froth of boulders as big as houses. Michael had seen it on video; it was over almost before your eye told you what it was.

The scientist was hunkered down in the very shallows, a gloved hand swishing in the water.

Michael jumped as horns sounded from behind him. The sound was urgent, the kind that might have heralded an attack from the air in centuries past. "Doctor Herat?" Michael's voice sounded loud in his own earphone, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to voice the urgency he felt. It would violate the pact of propriety he and the doctor shared. "You'd better get in here, sir. Tide's almost on us."

"I know." Dr. Herat sounded tired. He stood up slowly (reluctantly?) and began walking along the shoreline. He was a tall, rangy man, his angular frame somewhat softened by the quarantine suit. He didn't look at Michael, but continued to gaze out at the regular pattern of rounded shapes half-visible beneath the waves.

It looked from here like gray diamond-shaped bricks, each about forty centimeters across, paved the coastal floor for many kilometers. Long tongues of the same substance reached up the sandy shore. Herat's team had been observing them for weeks and they had seen the transformation that was about to take place, but only on-screen.

Michael watched him warily. Dr. Herat was coming back, but slowly. Maybe he just wanted to see the transformation with his own eyes.

Dr. Herat walked up the low rise that led to the bunker and paused when he was close enough to dash to the entrance, but far enough away that he had a good view of the shore. Then he sat down on a rounded boulder.

Michael loped down to stand over him. "Sir! What are you doing? It's almost on us!"

"We can make it in time from here," drawled Herat. "I just want to see it come in."

This was so totally out of character that Michael found he had nothing to say. There was a brief silence, as they both stared out over the ocean.

Michael forgot the tidal threat momentarily as he saw the well-ordered tile pattern beneath the water swirl and change. In the space of a few seconds a tumult of activity rolled in from the deeper sea; some of the «bricks» retracted into the sand, while others rose. The pattern was different every time, but it always involved long walls and trenches whose exact spacing and orientation was determined by the strength and velocity of the incoming tidal bore.

Dr. Herat sighed. "We know what is happening out there, and we know why; but we haven't got a clue how." He squinted up at Michael. "I never really believed it before, but you know, Michael, I don't think we'll ever fully understand that."

He turned back to the strange vista. "But it is beautiful," he said quietly.

Outside the narrow frame of the video, the full sight was astonishing. The entire ocean floor had come to resemble an Oriental carpet, its detailing done in raised or lowered shells. The photosynthesizing creatures known as Kadists— neither animal nor plant— that grew these armored domes had acted as one entity over an area of many kilometers. What's more, they had crafted a diffraction grating out of their own bodies. The tidal bore would hit this and shake itself to pieces because of the resonances it set up. Nutrients that would otherwise have been carried many kilometers inland to be deposited on the lifeless deserts of the continent, would instead fall straight down to nurture the living plain that had stopped the tidal wave.

Something glinted in the distance. "Doctor! Now!" Michael took Herat's arm as a white line appeared on the horizon. It thickened by the second. So far, there was no sound.

Herat looked up, sighed and levered himself to his feet.

Michael took his arm and they ran for the bunker's hatch. It was farther away than he'd estimated. As Michael ran the last ten meters he could hear a rising roar behind him. Still, he did his duty and made sure Dr. Herat was first down the hatch. Michael himself didn't look back until he had his hands on the ladder.

A cliff of white water rose above him. Deep inside it emeralds shone.

He ducked down and slammed the round hatch. The next instant, the hatch was hit by something massive. Michael nearly fell down the ladder. Dr. Herat was waiting for him at the bottom.

"That was idiotic, sir. What were you thinking?"

"I knew what I was doing." Dr. Herat, who seldom smiled lately, was grinning like a fool. Michael glowered at his employer, but he was too puzzled right now to say more.

Above and around them a deep vibration rattled the fixtures. Still smiling, Dr. Herat put his hand on the wall. They could always feel the strength of the tidal bore through the metal of the station.

"It's got a rhythm to it," said the scientist, "an almost musical one. The AI can't figure out how the Kadists know what patterns to craft: those gray lumps have a better mental model of local conditions than we do."

"Sir, why did you stay so long?"

"I thought… maybe we've been missing the essential experience by just not being out there. We hide in our holes and poke our instruments out and then we try to imagine what it's like for them." Herat shook his head as he walked to the decontagion chamber. "We're not learning anything."

"This isn't about the Kadists, is it," said Michael to his retreating back. "It's about your report to the High Commission."

Herat didn't answer, but his pace faltered for a second as if he were about to turn and say something. He kept going into the bleach shower, where further conversation became impossible.

By the time they met in the station's observation lounge, Meline, Harp, and the others were well into their analysis of the latest bore. The station was now drowned under several hundred meters of ocean and, outside, the Kadists would be sifting through the flotsam that had settled on them. When the tide went out, they would funnel the excess mud and stones into the deep sea again.

"Welcome to the Topside Club," Hart said to Dr. Herat with a grin. "And you even managed to get Bequith to join you." He smirked at Michael, who simply crossed his arms and watched Herat.

Dr. Herat was looking very tired. He didn't return Hart's smile, but spoke to Meline. "Any word on the supply ship?"

"It's in orbit," she said. "But it's got company— a military cruiser."

Dr. Herat sent Michael a puzzled look. He shrugged in reply; this was the first he'd heard of it. "That's funny," said Herat. "Um, any reply to my report?"

"Not yet."

"Okay." Dr. Herat stretched and nodded at Michael. "Let me know when the lightning bolt hits. Meanwhile I'll be in my quarters."

Michael nodded. "I'm sure they'll see the logic of your argument, sir."

"I'm equally sure they won't. Would you care to bet on it?"

Michael shrugged. "I only bet when it's my idea."

"You're a wiser man than I, Bequith."

Michael couldn't summon a pithy reply in time, as Dr. Herat walked away. He'd never heard Herat talk like this. But then, this wasn't the first time the professor had surprised him.

Alongside the professor, Michael had walked the ruined streets of ancient races who travelled the stars before the dinosaurs died; had floated in deep space outside the wrecks of ancient star ships whose shattered sides glittered mirror-new in starlight. He had taken mining elevators through a kilometer of stone to look at the fossilized remains of an alien nuclear reactor. Michael was shocked with awe at each new discovery. He was inspired; the NeoShinto implants in his cerebrum made it easy for him to find the kami of each place they visited. The monks of Kimpurusha, who had sent Michael with Dr. Herat, believed that humanity could perceive the Divine only in the familiar environment in which the species had evolved. In deep space, surrounded by machinery and on worlds whose scale and physical laws were literally inhuman, the human heart quailed. Human spirits shriveled. In order to survive, the NeoShintoists believed, humans had to learn to find the Divine in each new place and the Divine presented itself in endlessly different ways.

In the dying days of their Order, Michael Bequith was a message they had cast into the ocean, hoping their teachings would live on through him.

For years, it had worked. Michael sent his encoded kami templates out to the galactic data net, using the best and most current tricks to maintain his anonymity. He heard that thousands if not millions of people were aware of his work and that it was a great comfort to them.

Then Dr. Herat's investigations turned to much more alien species and more terrifying places and Michael's courage began to falter.

Today he just felt restless. Apart from the gym or the galley there was only one other place to go in the station and that was back to his room. As he walked he wondered about Laurent Herat's state of mind.

Inside his room Michael flopped down on the bed and frowned at the gray ceiling. His own mood had been black lately, although for reasons other than Dr. Herat's. Herat had his faith in science and that was unshakable, even if it led him to conclusions that broke his heart. Up until a very short time ago, Michael would have said that he had a similar faith. But then they had visited one world too many and on Dis, he had finally run into the limits of his own beliefs.

He sat up and faced the little table in the corner, where he had placed a curved, half-broken piece of basaltic rock taken from the shoreline. This was a symbol of the kami of this world, chosen by Michael in consultation with the NeoShinto AI implanted in his skull. He and the AI had found this stone on the third day of his visit and at that time he had tried and failed to derive a mystical experience from it; he had not tried since. Now he drew the room's one chair next to the table and sat down to contemplate the stone again.

He placed his hand on the stone and closed his eyes, conjuring in memory the sight of the tidal bore coming in. He tried to recover every sense from that moment and wished again that he could have smelled the breeze and felt the cold air on his own skin. Because no one could go outside without a quarantine suit, touching this sterilized piece of basalt was as close as he would ever get to contacting the kami of Kadesh itself.

Still, touching the stone should awaken the proper reverence in him. He remembered the awe that he'd felt, seeing that wall of water rolling toward him. And he remembered the depth of it— the emeralds.

Emeralds… He called up the mental discipline of NeoShinto contemplation, let go of verbal thought and tried to become pure awareness.

The AI took over smoothly; no need for the constant discipline of meditation here. Michael felt his consciousness expand to fill the stone. He heard a sound like the tide, only deeper— the music of the Kadists, perhaps. He let it carry him away.

For a few moments he felt a reverberating awe, as if he were in the presence of some mighty being. He waited for the sensation to translate into something more, but it didn't happen. Missing was the sense of understanding. Also missing, the feeling of acceptance. Most of all, where was the sense of kinship-with-place that he had always been able to find before?

He stared at the stone, straining, for several long minutes. Then he shook his head, let the AI fall dormant again and flopped back on the cot. Rather than feeling elevated, it seemed he could feel the weight of Kadesh's ocean settling onto his shoulders.

He lay there with an arm flung over his face, thinking about the worlds he had seen and whose kami he had captured. Few people would ever have the luck to visit as many exotic places as he had in his service to Herat. After all, Herat was one of the vanguard of the Panspermia Institute— one of the select few who spent their careers in the field trying to identify and contact new intelligent species.

Michael remembered multiple star systems, worlds with suns scattered like diamonds across the sky; cold Galilean planets where they drilled hundreds of kilometers into the ice to find hidden oceans; he had walked in the ruined cities of a dozen extinct starfaring species. Everywhere, he had been able to find the spark of the Divine, hidden though it might be. Dr. Herat left these worlds with a greater understanding of humanity's relation to other species; Michael Bequith left each knowing what kind of religious observations would permit someone's spirit to thrive in that place, or alongside that species.

And then he and Dr. Herat had come to Dis and found things that whispered doubt into both their souls— so that now, Dr. Herat no longer believed in the ideals of Panspermia and Michael could no longer summon the kami of the worlds they visited.

He sat up and entered full lotus position. The hollow echo of Dis was sounding in his mind; he had to clear his consciousness, or he might fall into despair again. Just as he was beginning to gain control of his thoughts, an inscape daemon chimed.

"There's a message from the cruiser for Dr. Herat," said Meline; she was one of the few on this remote station who regularly remembered to notify Michael first about things. Michael's role was mysterious to these technicians, who mostly came from the oldest worlds of the Rights Economy and viewed the idea of service without remuneration as silly, if not criminal.

"Thanks, Meline. Route it to me and I'll let him know."

He opened his eyes— inscape would not write its images across his sensorium with them closed. The inscape window looked into some lounge aboard a starship; the only way to tell that this was a military craft and not a luxury liner was the row of high-gee couches along the wall and the uniform of the man who faced Michael now.

"Dr. Laurent Herat. This is Rear Admiral Crisler, you may remember me from my days at the Institute. You're being temporarily relieved of your appointment here, sir. I'm authorized to take you to a new assignment. If you'd join us aboard the Spirit of Luna, we'll debrief you at twenty-hundred hours." The window blinked out of existence, revealing the stateroom's gray wall.

So, it's happened. He sat up and looked around his tiny room glumly. It was early afternoon; they had a few hours to pack and say their good-byes.

Dr. Herat should never have written that report.

Michael could have called him through inscape and simply forwarded the message, but that wasn't polite. He went and rapped on the scientist's door instead.

We have spent trillions on the search for our equals in the galaxy, Herat had written. What we have found has caused us to change our tactics, our goals and ultimately our ideals. The search as it is now proceeding is on its last legs. We must accept that and understand why.

Herat opened the door. "Yes?"

"The cruiser has signaled us. They want us aboard for a debriefing tonight."

"Ah. I see. Forward me the message, will you?" Dr. Herat turned back inside, leaving the door open. He had been packing, Michael saw.

Michael concentrated for a second and saw Herat purse his lips as the message arrived.

Over the past four decades we strove to find other starfaring intelligent species with whom we could communicate. Our goal was the creation of a galaxy-wide, multispecies civilization, because we knew other species were out there and we had the evidence of past galactic-wide civilizations to inspire us.

"You knew the cruiser had come for us?" Michael asked. Usually it was he who arranged transportation and who knew the starship routes and schedules. Michael knew nothing of the military, but Dr. Herat had his connections.

Herat shrugged. "Nobody else on this planet is worth the effort. Although… I knew Crisler slightly, he used to be a scientist, back in the innocent old days. Now he's a rear admiral? Still doesn't explain why they sent him in particular. I wouldn't think I'd merit more than your average captain."

Michael hadn't thought of that. "Maybe they were the closest ship?"

"That could be. Help me with this stuff, would you? You always could pack better than me."

Our well-funded and highly public search for our equals has turned up none. We have found some intelligent alien species, even a few that travel between the stars. We have not found a single race that shares our ideals, or even comprehends them.

"You know, I can't in all honesty say I'm sorry it's ending like this," said Dr. Herat later as they piled their few belongings in a transit capsule at the bottom of the freight elevator. A few of the staff were fluttering around, upset at the suddenness of their departure. Herat was generally well liked.

"How can you say that?" asked Meline. She stood with her arms crossed, scowling at the doctor.

"It's better go out with a bang than a whimper," said Herat. "We've been reduced to studying lumps of gray rock on tidal flats— have you thought about where it goes from here?"

They had made their inscape public, as was polite, and now Michael saw Dr. Herat summon a clock, which hung in the air above them like some ancient ghost, translucent and dire. "Ten minutes until the tide goes out," said Herat. "I'm going to miss the sound of it."

Michael summoned a video image of topside events. The water above was choppy and low; scintillations of sunlight could be seen through it. He made the image public and placed it near the clock.

The dream of Panspermia goes back to Teilhard de Chardin and his vision of ever-increasing sentience in the universe. We were brought up on this faith without even realizing it. The many assumptions behind it only became apparent when we began searching for a real counterpart to the vision. Then we learned the truth.

Finally the waters parted, revealing late-afternoon sunlight and a few clouds. They said their good-byes and entered the egg-shaped transit capsule. The door slammed and Michael and Dr. Herat sat looking at one another in pensive silence.

The truth is that we are intelligent animals, but animals just the same, subject to the inescapable laws of our evolution. Our first theories about alien intelligence were providential: we believed with Teilhard de Chardin that consciousness is a basic characteristic of complex thinking entities. When we developed the FTL drive, we burst into the galaxy in search of beings more «evolved» than ourselves, in the belief that a universal Reason would unite us with other species at the same level.

What we found instead was that even though a species might remain starfaring for millions of years, consciousness does not seem to be required for toolmaking. In fact, consciousness appears to be a phase. No species we have studied has retained what we would call self-awareness for its entire history. Certainly none has evolved into some state above consciousness.

The Panspermia Institute was formed out of the disappointment of this discovery. We sought to uncover the conditions that give rise to sentience; if we could not find aliens like ourselves, perhaps we could guide candidate species into our mode of experience.

With the faintest shudder, the platform began to rise. The darkness of the station fell below and sunlight stabbed through the capsule's window. Michael and Dr. Herat leaned over as one to look at the shoreline of Kadesh one last time. It was beautiful under the sunlight; you wanted to run into the water every time you saw it. Michael could make out the faint checkerboard pattern of the Kadists under the water. They were just as mysterious now as when he and the professor had arrived.

A shadow flitted overhead, then the capsule rang as something took hold of it. They were lifted gently and silently skyward by Kadesh's only skyhook, which normally reeled itself back to avoid the churning water when it passed over this spot. In seconds they had climbed above the lowest clouds.

Studies on hundreds of worlds have turned up no pattern to the development of sentient life. The idea that Nature somehow instructs or guides species into sentience in a repeatable way also appears to be wrong. There is no discernible policy for the Institute to be gleaned from the evidence of past civilizations. We can neither predict the rise of sentience in a species, nor predict its ultimate course, not even in our own.

We are left with a selectionist theory of sentience: consciousness and space-faring toolmaking ability, arise by chance from countless combinations of traits that in the vast majority of cases fail to produce results. Our studies have turned up thousands of species that "might have been" like ourselves. One, for instance, has all our traits, except that it lacks a tolerance for remaining stationary for long. Its people roam across the plains of their world, incapable of creating tools larger than they can carry.

Countless other species are similarly close, but also miss the mark, some for want of a single trait. Records from extinct starfaring races show that some of our forerunners tried to genetically engineer such candidate species, to no avail: Even a single genetic alteration cascades unpredictable changes throughout culture, language and thought. Only brutal trial-and-error produces results. That, we do not have the moral courage to attempt.

So we are alone. The existing starfaring species of the galaxy are not able to be our companions. We cannot find nor create a companion species. Indeed, the only way we could create a pangalactic civilization would be to exterminate or enslave all potential competition, as the Chicxulub did.

MICHAEL HAD LEFT behind many worlds in his travels with Dr. Herat, but as they rose above Kadesh he was reminded of his very first leave-taking, the day he left Kimpurusha and his family. That time, he had sat and stared out the porthole as white cloud swallowed the city of Manifest and then even the stark mountains that rose above it; he had watched as the horizon became a curve and the whole vast glacial plain of the northern hemisphere came into view. He remembered being astonished at the beautiful and subtle colors that played along the planet's terminator. His life was about to change forever, yet he felt confident and not alone, because he had embarked on this journey as a religious pilgrimage. He was taking Kimpurusha with him; how could he be lonely?

It was hard to believe that was only five years ago. "We've seen a lot of worlds," he said as both he and the professor leaned back again.

"Yes." Dr. Herat looked older than ever. "It's a rare privilege. I'm glad… I'm glad you're the kind of man who appreciates nature, Dr. Bequith."

Compliments from Dr. Herat were rare. Michael smiled. "Thank you, sir."

"I've never felt that you would be reluctant to accompany me on any of these jaunts," Herat went on. "Though some of them have been… well, insane."

Michael grinned. "Like Ember?"

Herat laughed. Ember was a fast-eroding planet recently swallowed by its red giant sun. Its surface was immersed in faintly glowing red fog, a single giant flame; the human settlers had dug their cities deep into the rock and there they claimed to have found artifacts of alien origin, fossilized in the limestone. Herat and Michael had joined a party of archaeologists on the surface, living in thick-walled refrigerant tanks, venturing out only by proxy using telepresence robots. Ember had strained their normally serene relationship almost to the breaking point.

"Very different from Kimpurusha," said Herat. "You've seen fire and ice, now. Something to tell your grandchildren about."

Michael nodded. "Have you heard from yours lately, sir?"

"Yes, I was meaning to tell you. Mina is buying a house! Can you believe it? She's almost thirty years old now. Still single, like you." They shared a grin; it was an old ploy of Herat's to try to marry Michael off to his granddaughter. "And Jackson's completed his second tour for the service. They're actually talking about an expedition to the galactic center, can you believe it?"

Dr. Herat sighed, looking, if possible, somewhat bewildered. Outside the blue of the sky had turned to black. The skyhook would release them soon on a trajectory to intercept the Spirit of Luna. That point of release— when they were briefly weightless— would be the moment when Michael felt he had really left Kadesh.

They talked a bit more about Dr. Herat's family, but when weightlessness came they both fell silent. This was it; the long journey from Kimpurusha might be over today. Dr. Herat had insulted his colleagues by exposing the truth they'd sought to hide for years. He was sure to pay for it. This summons away from an active research project could only mean one thing: dismissal or downgrading in the Service. Oh, Herat would never be disgraced and he would never want for work. In all likelihood, though, their next stop would be Noctis Regina, Herat's homeworld. He had a mansion and a tenured position waiting for him there and if Michael remained in his employ he would likely be housebound, with no opportunity to use his talents for discovering and capturing kami.

Michael had always felt that when the time came for them to part, it would be because Michael was being arrested because his religious activities had been found out; or because Herat was done wandering and Michael had found another way to seek out the spirits of the stars. Never had he imagined that he might lose his own faith and have nowhere to go himself once Herat retired.

The mirrored sphere of the Spirit of Luna appeared and minutes later they were pulled inside it. Gravity returned abruptly and shortly thereafter the hatch undogged itself.

The capsule stood alone in a gigantic hangar. Several uniformed men approached from the far end; one saluted. "Dr. Herat, welcome. I'm Chief Petty Officer McNeill. Here, let me take those bags, sir. We'll just run them through the scanner for you."

Michael had handed over the bags before he realized that his black market kami storage unit was in one of them. It was too late to do anything; he would just have to hope they didn't find it.

"Admiral Crisler is waiting to see you. You can visit your quarters to freshen up if you'd like…?"

Herat waved away the offer. "No, I'm fine. Here, my man can take care of my things. He'll get me settled."

"Good. If you'll come with me?" McNeill and Herat walked away, leaving Michael with several enlisted men. This was their usual pattern; the professor would do the high-level negotiating and Michael would become invisibly part of the local culture. Except in this case there was no way to fit in; he was a civilian.

One of the men ran a wand over the luggage and whistled. "Lookee here, guys. A Mark 820."

That was the offline datapack for the Shintoist AI. Michael folded his arms and watched as they zipped it out of its pocket.

"Uncle of mine had one of these," said the soldier. He hefted it and squinted at Michael. "You realize that neurasthenic storage devices are illegal, sir?"

"Yes, I do."

"Where you from?"

"Kimpurusha."

"Ah, well." Kimpurushans were reputed to be eccentric; Michael found this prejudice sometimes let him get away with things others couldn't.

"Well, I'm going to have to confiscate this, sir. Now normally I would write a report specifying exactly what it is, before we put it in storage." The soldier grinned at his friends. "If we say it's a religious AI you'll never get it back. But I could just as easily mark it down as a porno unit, which are only prohibited on military ships. Then you'd get it back on the way out."

"I see." Michael knew this game. "What would motivate you to do that?"

"Well, you see, we have absolutely no idea where in the hell we are, or where in hell this ship is going. This is unusual…" From their expressions Michael saw that it must be pretty much unheard of.

"You tell us what this sneaking is all about and I'll make sure you get this baby back safe and sound whenever we get to where ever the hell it is we're going."

Michael hesitated. These soldiers looked uneasy; was there combat happening somewhere?

"We've been out of touch," he said after a moment. "Is everything all right, back home?"

"Rebel attack on Kavya," said another of the soldiers. "The fleet's headed there."

"But we're not," said the first. "Instead we come three thousand light-years out of our way to pick up a scientist, under blackout no less. So what's it all about?"

Michael shook his head. "I… I have no idea," he said. "We thought… we thought Dr. Herat was being retired."

"Well then," said the soldier with exaggerated patience, "can you tell us what it is that your Dr. Herat studies?"

Michael felt a sinking feeling: they had been recalled for a reason that had nothing whatever to do with Dr. Herat's report.

"Aliens," he said. "Dr. Herat hunts aliens."

8

"B EQUITH, GET UP here!" Dr. Herat's voice sprang out of nowhere. It was the emergency inscape channel they'd established years ago and rarely used. The soldiers shouldn't be able to intercept it. They were still mulling over Michael's statement.

"Dr. Herat wanted me to join him as soon as possible," he said. "About that…?" He pointed to the AI.

"You haven't given us anything yet," said the soldier.

"I'll tell you what I find out," he said. It was a small price to pay to keep the AI.

"Good on ya." The soldier stuffed the AI into a black case. "Just dial 4330 to get me. Nice doing business with you."

"Right. Now where…?"

"There's only one way to go," said another of the soldiers. "You'll see."

Michael did see. The military neuro interface had effectively taken over his inscape sensorium and it laid its own version of the ship over his vision. He knew there were side corridors and doors because every now and then he saw someone walk out of what looked like a wall; but the edited view of the place he saw had only those doors and stairs that took him in the direction of whatever briefing room they wanted him in. It was disconcerting and he had no idea how far the illusion went; the walls and ceiling themselves might not be real. The eeriness of the effect added to his apprehension.

Because there was only one way to go he quickly found the lounge where Dr. Herat and the admiral sat at a large teak table. Rather, the admiral sat; Herat was pacing, a look of intense excitement on his face.

"Bequith! There you are. Sit, man, sit."

"What's this all about, sir?" There were two other men and two women seated with the admiral. The lights were low and a public inscape window near the far wall showed a blurry gray something surrounded by streaked stars.

"We were just showing Dr. Herat some pictures of the artifact," said the woman to Michael's left. She smiled at him and gestured to the window.

"Why is it named Jentry's Envy?" asked Dr. Herat.

"The owner named it that. We don't know why," said the woman. Michael retrieved her name from inscape: Linda Ophir, Ph.D.

"Owner?" Herat looked down his nose at her. It was an intimidating professorial gesture that would stand him in good stead if and when he returned to teaching.

"The artifact has been claimed by a certain…" She paused, accessing something in inscape, " 'Bud' Cassels. A halo worlder."

Michael felt a bit at a loss as to what was happening; but he looked up at the inscape window as he sat and nearly missed the chair. Kimpurusha had traded with the halo worlds until the early days of his childhood. Michael had faint memories of a time before the FTL ships regularly stopped at Manifest— a time when the stars had been infinitely far away and when his heroes had been the brave cycler captains.

"Does this fellow have any idea what he's doing?" Herat was outraged. "Only the state can own rights to an alien artifact!"

"Here in the R.E., yes," said the admiral. "The halo's different. In any case, this is not only an alien artifact, it's a working starship. And you can claim salvage rights to a ship, even here."

"That's ridiculous. And if it's a working alien starship, where's its real crew?"

"The Envy appears to have been abandoned. In any case, we have to clear all our activities with this Mr. Cassels," said Ophir. "It's something you'll have to get used to. At least until we can buy it or expropriate it."

Intrigued, Michael made a private copy of the inscape window and blew it up. What he saw was a blurry gray cube, streaks of stars behind it. There were several tabs above the window so he flipped through them. The next picture showed nothing but a perfectly round hole in the starscape— a black, spherical object? The next showed two gray cylinders. He recognized the final image; that round, bluish glow with the black circle and bright white dot in the center had to be a ramjet sail, viewed from an unguessable distance away.

"What are these," he asked, "or have you gone through this already?"

"No, we were just getting to that part, Dr. Bequith." He dismissed the private window, just as Ophir was tiling the public ones so that everyone could see the grainy images.

"Whoever they are, they've designed this cycler remarkably like our own," she said. "Humans tend to build cyclers to consist of a number of habitats, separated by tens or hundreds of kilometers, as here. That's part of the normal redundant safety design; if a habitat were to be hit by anything substantial travelling at half light-speed or more, it would simply vanish in a puff of atoms, so you distribute your cargo and passengers among a number of separate containers. But see with this cycler, yes there are a number of habitats, but they appear to be of wildly differing designs."

"Different species?" asked Dr. Herat. He stood, head cocked, staring at the window.

"Cassels reported he and his men opened several of the habitats and they were definitely designed for different life-forms."

"The implications…"

"Are enormous. But we've saved the best for last." Ophir swept away the tiled images and replaced them with a single picture. This was another shot of the black sphere, but in this one some light source had illuminated what looked like faint writing, drawn in thin red lines on the side of the sphere. The characters were geometric, spikey, and woven together in a way that made Michael's eye hurt to follow them. The shapes were instantly recognizable.

Dr. Herat sat down. "That's impossible," he said, very quietly.

"I see you recognize it," drawled Dr. Ophir. "Few people would."

"What do you think that is, Dr. Herat?" asked Crisler.

"That language," he said, waving his hand at it. "It hasn't been used in the galaxy in two billion years. That used to be the script of a species that dominated the whole galaxy when the only life on Earth was bacteria. We know the Chicxulub were obsessed with them; we see reproductions of ancient texts in Chicxulub records— never translated, though. Maybe some modern race has managed to translate it?"

"What were they called?" asked the admiral.

Herat shrugged. Ophir said, "The usual problem— they have a thousand names. The Chicxulub called them the 'lamp bearers' or something like that."

"We call them the Lasa." Herat waved away the question. "We know they existed and that they were everywhere, but almost nothing else. The Chicxulub made a particular point of obliterating all evidence of them. Nobody's sure why, since they predate the Chicxulub by almost two billion years."

"If these really are habitats for multiple species, that might explain why," said Ophir. "A galaxy-spanning civilization encompassing many species— that's the Chicxulub's worst nightmare."

"And now somebody's taken up the torch again? — So to speak?" Herat bounced in his seat like a boy.

"Then why haven't we met them?" asked the admiral. "Why haven't they signalled us? If they're multispecies, surely one of them would have developed the FTL drive. So why aren't they here? You don't mean to tell us, Dr. Herat, that your institute's careful and meticulous search of the galaxy over the past twenty years has missed a civilization that at the same time was searching for you?"

Ophir shook her head. "Above all, why should they send a cycler to contact us? An empty one at that. Unless the contact was accidental, even unwanted."

Michael felt he had to make the point: "From what you're saying, they didn't contact us, they contacted the halo worlds."

"Technically, yes," someone else said. "This Cassels fellow and his crew picked up the Jentry's Envy as it passed a halo world called Erythrion. They rode it into cometary space near Chandaka and then begged beam power to disembark. The cycler's on its way back into interstellar space and Cassels's crew are at Chandaka now."

"That's our next stop," said the admiral. "We will interview Cassels before going on to the cycler itself."

"Um… I assume we have Cassels's permission to do that?" asked Michael.

"Absolutely," said the admiral, a bit too forcefully.

"Beyond what we've just told you, we know almost nothing," said Ophir. "The cycler must have a point of origin within sixty light-years of Chandaka; once we determine its age and isotopic constitution we should be able to close in on its origin. We'll be visiting all the stars in that volume; meanwhile, we need to put a research team on the cycler itself. That is where you come in, Dr. Herat."

"Of course," said Herat. He didn't take his eyes off the image of the cycler. "Of course."

"Nobody can think of a reason why a multispecies civilization would use cyclers when FTL travel was available," said the admiral. "But it's possible that one or more of their homeworlds are substellar in size. So they could only use cyclers to leave their homeworld. Obviously there can't be four or five spacefaring species within sixty light-years of Chandaka, though! There's only twice that in the whole galaxy."

"Yes…" Herat frowned. "The more I think about it the less it makes sense. Something's wrong with this picture."

The admiral nodded. "That's partly why this expedition is being undertaken as a military operation. There's also the fact that we don't know the cycler's origin. We don't want to alert the rebels to this find, lest they stumble on the homeworld first."

"Yes, I understand," said Herat.

"Then, welcome aboard," said the admiral. "We leave immediately for Chandaka. Make yourselves at home."

"W HAT JUSTHAPPENED?" asked Michael later, as he and Dr. Herat settled down in the professor's quarters for tea.

"As they used to say, I think we've fallen down the rabbit hole," said Dr. Herat. "My head's still spinning. To think that I had given up hope! And committed the fact to permanent record. Now this cycler comes along." He shook his head and sipped pensively at his tea. "A cycler! Who would have thought they'd arrive in a cycler?"

"That's not what disturbs me," said Michael. He waited until Dr. Herat's eyes focussed on him. The professor raised a polite eyebrow. "Who's in charge of this expedition?" asked Michael. "It's certainly not the Panspermia Institute."

"What do you mean?"

Michael waved a hand. "This. We're on a military ship, commanded by a rear admiral— even if he was once a colleague of yours, he's military now. Sir, have you tried to send any mail or voicemail since we boarded?"

"No…"

"I can't get an outside link. Something about galactic security. We should be talking to the Institute about this find, but I can't get to them. And I checked the credentials of this Dr. Ophir and the others against our local database. None of them are listed as members or affiliates of the Institute."

"What are you saying?"

"He was at the Institute when you were. How well do you know him?"

Herat sighed. "Not well. There were a lot of us, back in the old days. Let me think…" He frowned at the wall. "Crisler was trained as an evolutionary technologist, I believe. Studied how different technologies are selected for in different species. He published some good papers, if I recall. Which means he understands the issues involved in a find like this one. That could make him unique in the R.E. military." He looked at Michael. "You know, this expedition could well be his initiative."

Michael nodded. "So why did he leave the Institute?"

"Don't know. Could be he became disillusioned, like a lot of them did. I don't remember when he left." He sighed and stretched. "Well, it's late. Could you try to track down some wine? I'd love a glass before bed. Got to go over the records about the cycler."

"I'll see what I can do." Michael turned to go.

"Bequith?" Herat sounded puzzled. Michael looked back from the doorway.

"Something else is bothering you, isn't it?" said the professor.

Michael hesitated, then stepped back into the room. "Actually, yes," he said.

Dr. Herat was examining him as if he were a new specimen. "Do you know what happened to me during those two years?"

Herat frowned. "Your father told me you were in seminary school."

"Did he tell you why?"

"No." Dr. Herat looked nonplussed. "I always assumed… That is, Kimpurushans are known to be devout. And you've always shown yourself to be."

Michael sighed. "Another boy died because of me. I was in the seminary because the alternative was jail, both for me and my father."

Dr. Herat reached for his tea cup, frowning. "What happened?"

"The rebellion. It came to Kimpurusha, I don't know if you knew that. I was a student at the Polytechnic, studying xenology, and… I got involved with a rebel cell at the school. I was a courier. I got caught, because my cell commander betrayed us. People got arrested because my message was intercepted and one of my friends… was killed. I was sent home with a tracking wristband on. This was four months after your first visit."

Surprise was written eloquently on Herat's face; he said nothing.

"I hated what the Rights Economy was doing to our world. But while I was under house arrest I realized that the rebels were just as much a product of the R.E. as the other aspects of it that I hated. I decided that fighting the R.E. would just drag me further and further away from what Kimpurusha had once been. If I wanted to protect my world, the best way would be to perpetuate the values that made us what we were. Those were the values of Permanence. So I went into the NeoShinto seminary."

"You never told me any of this."

"I buried it. I did finish my xenology degree, and when you came the second time I saw a chance to get away from the poisonous atmosphere that had taken over at home. Rigorous discipline was my way to salvation. Besides, I came to admire you and the whole Panspermia project— once I learned to separate it from the Rights Economy."

"And we all admired your critical mind," said Dr. Herat thoughtfully. "They don't teach your skills anywhere in the R.E. — geneaological philosophical analysis and differential deconstruction. You can look at a scientific paper and find the flaws in less than a minute." He laughed. "You know most of the younger academics in the Institute hate you? They call you the Voice of Doom."

"Yes, I know, I'm your secret weapon; you've said that before." Michael poured more tea for the professor, a reflex of Service. "What I'm saying is that entering your employ wasn't the adventure for me that I think you've always thought it was. I went with you in order to survive and to try to find some peace for myself."

"Oh."

"Service was the glue I needed to keep myself together."

"I see. And now that glue is coming unstuck?"

Michael smiled at the overextended metaphor. "Maybe. Yes. Service is no longer enough."

Herat sipped at his tea, then put it down. "It's cold." They sat in silence for a while, then the professor cleared his throat. "So you won't be coming with us on this trip?"

It had been said; Michael sighed, and took the teacup from Herat.

"I don't know," he said. "I feel that I'm still searching for something, but I don't know anymore if I can find it out there." He gestured at space, invisible beyond the metal walls.

Herat sat musing for a while, then smiled wryly. "All that may be true," he said. "The one thing I do know, Bequith, is that in order to find something, you first have to know what you're looking for."

Michael had no answer to that.

I T TOOK SEVERAL weeks to get to Chandaka, even going at the several thousand c that the Spirit of Luna could muster. Each FTL jump took them about a hundred light-years, but it took time to maneuver the ship close to a star to initiate the next jump. There was enough time to thoroughly study the meager findings about the cycler, enough time for Michael to insinuate himself into the confidences of several crewmen and enough time to worry. The rebels were indeed on the march; they had more ships and guns than ever, defying all the predictions of the government. The rebel economy was far more efficient than the Rights Economy, Michael knew, simply because the rebels didn't pay a royalty for every single transaction they made. They were fighting against the crushing weight of the Rights Economy and Michael and most people he talked to admired that idealism. But nobody thought they could win.

The rebels were Crisler's explanation for the tight security. Under pressure from Herat he did produce a document from the Panspermia Institute releasing the professor into military contract. They still weren't allowed to contact the Institute and when pressed Crisler admitted that the Institute hadn't been told the nature of the find.

"Come on, professor," Crisler had said after Herat harangued him for an hour about it. "You don't seriously think that something of this magnitude is going to just bypass the sole government organization set up to deal with it? It'll all fall into your people's lap eventually. And you'll get the credit. Hell, I'll even sign a paper saying we shanghaied you if you like. Meanwhile, this is a military matter."

Dr. Herat wasn't happy about that, but his excitement about the find completely eclipsed his political sense. — Perhaps that wasn't quite fair; Michael knew the professor trusted him to ferret out such details. But Michael had precious little to go on himself.

The whole situation was troubling and not just politically. A few days ago, Michael had been thinking that their long wandering was finally coming to an end. He regretted it; at the same time, he knew it was past time that he face some issues of his own. Now this cycler artifact had come along and it looked as if he and the professor were about to be flung off on another extended jaunt. Stuck in some balloon habitat next to an alien starship, surrounded only by the military and under radio silence, he would be left to wrestle his own demons. Even now, sitting alone in his cabin while Dr. Herat pored over the cycler photos and chatted with Dr. Ophir, Michael felt restless and unfulfilled. He had no focus for meditation and he was, frankly, afraid to use the AI. That which should have comforted him most had become terrifying to contemplate; he could not close his eyes without the shadow of his revelation at Dis creeping up on him. At times he felt like he was falling; at other times, like a sleepwalker going through the motions of his life.

He tried to focus onto minor interests, such as the prospect of meeting some halo worlders— but there was a troubling aspect to them as well. Thinking about the halo worlds always took Michael back to his childhood.

If he lay back on his cot and closed his eyes, he could summon some inscape images of his home. It was as if he stood in the marble-floored atrium again and he could turn and look out the tall leaded-glass windows to where the sun was turning distant peaks gold and mauve. Memory supplied the rest: The air was crisp and thin, even in the innermost chambers. His family's house adjoined the Permanence seminary and at certain times of the day he could hear the faint sound of the chants that drifted down from its distant windows. The music was ever present during his childhood, a reassuring and peaceful counterpoint to the rising tide of chaos outside the town walls.

He remembered one day running up the street to his house's door and his father shouting. That was the beginning and end of his personal experience of the Reconquista, when the FTL ships from the Rights Economy took the government of Kimpurusha.

When he thought about the Reconquista, he always did so through the lens of another, singular memory:

There was a chair in his home. It was unique in the household— made of rosewood, large and with an embroidered seat and splat, where the other chairs were more utilitarian and factory-made. The legs were carved with intricate floral designs. Michael's toys scaled it and it was the biggest mountain in the world; his dolls sat along its front edge and they were steering it, a cycler, through the deepest spaces between the suns. He built constructions of blocks around the crosspiece between its legs and it was a generating station. For the youngest son of the Bequith household, this chair could become anything, with a simple flip of the imagination.

One day, not long after the running and shouting, a strange man came to the house. He was tall and pale and seemed nervous as he paced through the rooms. In each one he took a canister and aimed it at the furniture and fixtures. A fine smoke puffed out and fell slowly to vanish as it touched things.

"What's that?" he had asked his father.

"Nanotags," said Father, as if it were a curse.

The man entered the hall and puffed smoke on the rosewood chair.

Other men came and Michael had to go with them. They took him to a hospital and made him sleep. When he awoke he could feel the distant roar of inscape in his head, like an unsettled crowd. He felt grown-up, because he knew you weren't allowed to get inscape implants until adulthood and he was only ten years old. The men took him home and his mother cried and it was at that point that he realized something was wrong.

He didn't know what for a while, but the inscape laid its own version of things over his sight and hearing. He would learn to tune it out, he was told; but for the moment, he couldn't.

Now, when he looked at the rosewood chair, all he could see was the matrix of numbers superimposed on it, that told the monetary value of its parts and whole. And so with the drapes, the walls, windows, and the rice as he picked it up with his chopsticks.

He imagined— and he knew it couldn't be so— that the people of the free halo worlds still saw things like the boy before they had put nanotags in every object and inscape in his head. As if a chair could be a mountain or a starship and not just a collection of values and registrations.

To think this way was to miss something he hadn't even known was his when he had it.

He would have paced the halls of the cruiser, except that the inscape illusion limited him to a very few sectors. Instead, he exercised in his room, or tried to read, and most evenings when Dr. Herat didn't need him he ended up lounging on his bed, staring at the blank ceiling, longing for home or something more fundamental.

They entered orbit around Chandaka and Crisler lectured them about not talking to the locals. Michael tuned out and summoned a window to look at the planet. Chandaka was bigger and warmer than Kimpurusha; he looked first for polar ice caps, his habitual metric for judging a world. Chandaka's were tiny, almost an afterthought. It was a wet and blue planet, its seas captured in crescents and circles rimmed with volcanoes— the typical Coronae alternative to plate tectonics. Michael felt his spirits lift at the prospect of walking unsuited in the air and feeling a real sun on his face.

After Chandaka, his future was cloudy. He resolved to experience this world to its full, while he could.

MICHAEL TRACED THE lines of intricate carving that ran along the wall, a legacy of Chandaka's history as a halo world. Hovering on the edges of his vision were tiny lines of text and numerals, inscape tags which named the Rights Owners for this place, as well as its value and history. He tried to ignore them and imagine the carvings as they had originally looked, unsullied by inscape.

This giant building, the arcology known as the Redoubt, was apparently the oldest inhabited structure on the planet. Michael and Dr. Herat had been flown here immediately on landing on Chandaka. They had arrived at night local time— morning, by Michael's circadian rhythms. He wasn't ready to sleep, so Michael wandered the vast echoing corridors of the Redoubt in the wee hours.

The halo-worlders who had boarded and named Jentry's Envy were billeted somewhere within the Redoubt's thousands of rooms and corridors; Michael hadn't caught a glimpse of anyone since he and the professor were shown their rooms.

There had been a hurry-up-and-wait quality to the flight out here. The Spirit of Luna had picked up a number of other researchers on its way. Everyone seemed eager, almost frantic to be gone after the cycler. Yet, until Crisler had all the pieces in place, there was nothing to do.

Michael had done his usual work and made friends among the new scientific staff that Crisler was building. He had learned nothing new about their destination or the reasons for Crisler's urgency and secrecy in assembling the team.

Everyone else had turned in, so Michael wandered, thinking. At the end of one carven and frescoed corridor, huge pressure doors stamped with infinity signs stood open to what looked like an open courtyard or garden. The doors would once have kept the air in before Chandaka's volcanic carbon cycle was kick-started with deliberate meteoric pounding. Michael could smell the new air as he approached the door, and unconsciously walked faster. The breeze tasted wonderful— green and fresh.

He stepped out onto a gravel path that led under dark trees. This garden was very extensive, but the cyclopean walls of the Redoubt reared up on all sides to enclose it. Somewhere in those tapering black towers, the rest of the expedition was asleep. Tomorrow they would be meeting the halo worlders and settling their plans. Michael didn't feel a part of that. The problem was, he didn't feel there was a place for him outside the redoubt either, unless he returned to Kimpurusha.

He heard the crunching sound of someone walking up the gravel path and, turning, discovered it was Admiral Crisler. The admiral was walking meditatively, with his hands behind his back. He looked up and smiled at Michael. "Nice night, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I see you're of like mind to myself, Dr. Bequith. Soaking up the feel of being on a planet while you can, eh?"

"Well, I just spent the past few months able to look out my window at places like this, but never touch them."

"Yes… I remember that sense of frustration, back in the days when I was a respecter of planetary quarantines myself."

Michael sensed an opportunity; it was time to be direct. "Sir? Why did you leave the Institute? Was it to join the military, or was that a later decision?"

Crisler arched an eyebrow at him. "Why the curiosity? Are you thinking of leaving the good professor?"

That hit close to home; Michael shrugged. Crisler looked away, grunted, and said, "It's never one thing that changes the direction of your life, you know. I began my scientific career believing that the aliens we studied were fundamentally like us. But they're not. Humans alone are conscious. We really are special, Bequith. Once I realized that, I realized just how precious and fragile that made us. I mean, just for you and me to be standing here talking in this garden… how rare a thing that is. It was a short step from that to wanting to protect that rarity."

"From what?"

Crisler stared at him. "The rebels. Son, you must know that they use alien technology. Some of them have been practicing genetic engineering on their children. They're abandoning humanity. The Rights Economy exists to keep humanity together; they want to pull us apart into a million warring species. I won't have that. Not on my watch."

"I see."

"I hope so." The admiral looked away, sighed heavily. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll continue my walk, and try to store up as much of this fine night air as I can."

They nodded their goodbyes, and Crisler walked away.

To the right lay a jungle-thick garden. Michael walked that way, listening to the titter of tiny lives around his feet, drinking in the strange spicy scents of the garden. Here were all the sensations he had been cut off from on Kadesh. Being here felt like a release from prison.

Maybe in this place he could summon the kami. He looked about for a sheltered place to sit. As he did, movement caught his eye.

She walked with her head down, hands behind her back. He might not have seen her at all had the faint light from Chandaka's starlike second sun not caught her oval face as she passed through a clearing. Her hair was black and she wore a jet coverall that made her face and long hands seem to float among the shadowed bushes.

The young woman hadn't noticed him. She was humming quietly to herself as she drifted through the darkness. She paused in a dark bower and said something he didn't catch. For a moment Michael thought she was speaking to him and he was about to answer when another voice spoke from nearby her.

"You know, it's funny." It was a man's voice. His accent was more familiar. "I'm out of the halo. I thought it would be simple— we'd learn to control the Envy, become millionaires, and I'd head home."

"I'm sorry it hasn't worked out," she said. Her silhouette bent, perhaps to embrace the man. "You risked everything to trust me, Evan. I won't forget that."

"Well… I just wanted to get back to High Space," he said gruffly. "But I thought I'd have something to show for it when I got here."

"I know," she said, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry. What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know. Max and I were going over the terms of your agreement with this admiral. That's when it really hit me: I can't stay here, not as it stands. R.E. laws are so… draconian. You realize that you still don't own the Envy?"

"I know," she said with a sigh. "Crisler knows it, too."

"He could move to expropriate it," said the man.

Michael tried to stay perfectly still, and breathe as shallowly as possible. This was very interesting.

"By R.E. law, someone has to own the rights to the Envy," continued the man. "If it isn't you, then it's the state. And until you're able to control the Envy, you can't complete your claim by Cycler Compact law. So I don't get paid."

"It's why I made this deal to go back, Evan. It's a deal with the devil, I know that. But what else am I supposed to do? I'm responsible, Evan, I know that. I can't just wash my hands of you or the others. I couldn't live with myself if any of us ended up in indentured labor somewhere."

He laughed humorlessly. "What are we going to do about it? Crisler only needs your permission as current claim-owner to visit the Envy. Once he's there, he can expropriate it for the R.E. Then we're all sunk."

"Believe me, I've been thinking about that a lot, Ev. But look at it this way: if we discover that she can be turned during this expedition, my claim is upheld. If we can't turn her, but it turns out in ten years that she's swung about on her own to pass Erythrion again, then my original claim is upheld. So Crisler can't expropriate until he has some idea of where she's going."

"Hmm." The man turned to look at the stars. "Yeah, you may be right. At the Envy's velocity, even if they try to orbit her around Chandaka they'll have to do a constant expensive course correction and the orbit's probably gonna be big enough to include Erythrion. Light years in radius."

"Right," she said. "I may have to give them what they want, but not necessarily at the expense of what I want." She sat down next to the man. "Evan, come with us. You're the only one of us who knows these people— their culture, I mean. We need you."

"I… don't know, Rue. I spent years on the cyclers and that was fine. But when I got stranded on Erythrion…" He looked down. "I couldn't stand to be stranded again. I know myself too well. It would be the end of me."

She hugged him. "Sometimes," she said, "you have to jump right back at whatever just bit you. And bite it back."

Michael turned and walked away as quietly as he could.

Later, he lay in bed and fought with himself. Although he didn't know that man he'd overheard in the garden, Michael felt for him. Stay or go? It was a dilemma he understood.

There was no life for him with Dr. Herat anymore; he could no longer find the sacred in Service or, it seemed, in the landscapes that the NeoShinto AI was supposed to attune him to. He was adrift.

As they flew toward the Redoubt, Michael had seen glimpses of Chandaka, and they had been depressing. On the outskirts of the city they were building a glittering wall that would eventually become a geodesic dome. Michael had asked the local information service what the dome was for. "There's no money for the terraforming anymore," it had told him blandly. "Chandaka is losing its artificial atmosphere." After they landed, Michael had asked their guide at the Redoubt about this. He had grimaced unhappily. "When we joined the R.E., the politicians and businessmen who grew up here became Rights Owners of the lands and industry," he said. "Now they live in luxury on Earth, and they've decided it's too expensive to keep up the terraforming. They've passed on the problem, so the city council is building the dome just so we can keep breathing. Which sucks up money, so there's even less to go to the Rights Owners." The guide made a downward spiral motion with his finger. "It's all going to hell."

Michael knew he could return to Kimpurusha. He didn't want to find out what had happened there since he left.

The only thing that swayed him one way or the other, was the memory of that young woman in the garden tonight. She was of the halos, hence exotic and wild. No inscape indicators hovered over her. Yet she seemed well grounded. He had liked the sound of her voice.

Most of all, he remembered what she had said. "Sometimes, you just have to jump right back…"

In his imagination, the alien cycler was an awesome place, full of mystery and unguessable age. Dis had been like that. Michael sometimes wondered if things had been different, if he had been more prepared at Dis, more wary.

He couldn't go back to Dis; couldn't recover a moment that was lost. But just maybe, at Jentry's Envy, he could still try to capture and accept the infinite one more time.

9

"THIS WHOLE COMPLEX is amazing," said a habitat designer walking with Dr. Herat. "It looks like it was built by hand."

Herat nodded, looking around at the vast corridor they were in. "The detailing was done by monks of the Cycler Compact."

The designer ran a hand appreciatively over a wall carving. "It's beautiful. Intimidating. But almost… obsessive. Inward-turning, you know?"

"Alien to us, yes. It challenges our notions of time. Maybe that was the idea."

"Why do they call it the halo, anyway?" somebody else said. "That implies light. Those worlds are all dark."

Herat laughed. "There's a story about that. They originally called them orphan worlds, but try to imagine encouraging people to emigrate to the orphan worlds! So they renamed them the halo worlds. Just so people would find them attractive to visit." There was a general chuckle at this.

Admiral Crisler awaited them at the doors to what looked like a ballroom. Just inside was a short line of people: the halo-worlders.

Dr. Herat was the first in line to greet them. He shook hands down the line, followed by the man he'd been talking to— a Dr. Katz, it seemed. Then it was Michael's turn.

"Michael Bequith."

"Blair Genereaux." He was surprisingly young, sharply dressed in the latest Chandaka fashion. Michael wondered if he was one of the halo-worlders or a liaison.

"Michael Bequith."

"Dr. Bequith, nice to meet you. I'm Corinna Chandra." She was tall, of indeterminate age, with dark, shadowed eyes and dusky skin. Her iron-gray hair was tied back and cascaded in a fan down her back. She wore a simple red jumpsuit, and the only adornment she wore was a stud in her left nostril. Her gaze was direct and businesslike.

"Max Cassels. How ya doing?" Someone had made an attempt to dress Max well, but he wasn't having any of it. His shirt was untucked and his hair uncombed. He looked distracted.

Was this the famous «Bud» Cassels?

"Rebecca France, M.D." Tall and slender, with gray eyes and broad cheekbones. She seemed secretly amused by something.

"Evan Laurel." This was the man from the garden last night; Michael recognized his voice. He was tall and blond, with lines of care around his eyes, about forty-five years old. He had the sigil of the Cycler Order on his jacket. And standing next to him…

"Ah, yes, the man from the garden last night," she said before Michael had a chance to introduce himself. He felt his face grow hot.

"I'm Rue," she said. Her eyes were hidden behind black pince-nez sunglasses today. "And you are…?"

"Bequith," he stammered. "Michael Bequith."

"Pleased to meet you, Mike." She smiled distantly.

That was the end of the line. He stalked into the hall, still smarting.

They'd set up a long table at one end of the hall. This place was sumptuous beyond belief— the scenes painted on the walls were neither inscape illusions nor copies done by mesobots. The ceiling showed scenes of planetfall and the conquest of nature here on Chandaka, with fabulous beasts and vines carved into the native stone that formed the arches. There was even design in the parquet flooring. Hot coffee and a good Martian breakfast was waiting for Michael as he sat himself.

Once all the members of the expedition were seated, Crisler walked to the end of the table. Where he stood, his head was framed by the baroque jaws of a dragon on the far wall. He said, "Welcome everyone. This is the first assembly of our full scientific crew. There will be seventeen of us, plus the halo worlders and a support staff of forty-five on the Banshee. Today I'd like to go over the mission profile we've developed.

"We're going to rendezvous with Jentry's Envy one point-seven light-years out from Chandaka. That's farther from an inhabited star than most of you have ever been." He smiled woodenly at the halo-worlders. "Since the Envy is receding at eight-five percent c, we can't use a conventional starship to catch up to her. If you'll check your inscape, you'll see the ship we'll be using."

A public inscape window opened over Crisler. It showed the golden limb of some gas giant planet. Clouds swirled below.

"Where's the ship?" asked Cassels.

"Patience," said Crisler. "Here it comes."

As they watched, a dark rectangle, translucent like a fine gauze, moved across the face of the planet. It resolved into a black cylinder of indeterminate size. There were some mirrored spheres at one end and a set of black rings of consecutively larger sizes appeared to be drifting behind it.

"You can't see a lot of the Banshee," said Crisler, "because it's mostly thin spars and cable. There's sixty kilometers of line played out behind the engine you see here. It ends," the image changed, "here." This was a more familiar sight: two standard balloon habitats, joined by a V-shaped elbow at their tops. It seemed to be floating alone in space.

"Banshee's state of the art: a fullerene-wrapped superconducting magnet with a field radius of eight thousand kilometers, a pion drive, and a courier class fast hyperdrive. The drive unit normally tows the habitats, so don't worry about radiation, we'll never get near the thing."

"It's a ramjet?" asked Cassels.

"Hybridized to use antimatter from an onboard supply instead of doing straight fusion. Banshee is very, very fast. We'll approach the Envy's velocity in a little under two months. We'll use the hyperdrive first to get near the Envy, so we can accelerate in empty space. We'll come out of jump three light-months behind her and accelerate up from there. We'll have a six-week window to bail out once we get there. Then we'll have reached a point where it'll be just as worth our while to stay with the Envy until its next stop. So the mission is a five-week exploratory phase, followed by a possibly extended mission of a year and a half. Luckily the Envy is on a course that will take it near the K-class star Maenad in two years. Maenad has no planets or colonies, but it's a massive enough star to start our FTL drive. We can jump back to Chandaka from there."

Dr. Herat was shifting impatiently in his seat. "That's fine. What about the cycler? All we've seen of it so far has been a set of photos. What are we going to find when we get there?"

The admiral smiled. "Well, to answer that, I think we should defer to the owner of the cycler, Mr. Cassels. Max?" He turned to the rumpled halo-worlder, who glanced around and stood up.

"Actually…" said Max. "I'm Max Cassels, all right, but I'm not Bud Cassels and I'm not the real owner of the Jentry's Envy."

He was met with a puzzled silence.

Just as Admiral Crisler opened his mouth to speak, Max said, "We decided that while we were here, the real owner would let me play the part because I've got a bit more experience dealing with… people in powerful situations. She's confident she can take over now and frankly I think the deception really annoys her." He smirked at the other halo-worlders. "So, then, let me introduce the real owner of Jentry's Envy, Rue Cassels."

Michael squirmed in his seat. He was as surprised as the others at this turn of events, but even more embarrassed now than ever that she had seen him eavesdropping last night.

Max sat down and the young woman stood up. Max had made the introduction like a toastmaster and the lack of applause that greeted her was jarring. She stammered. "I… I'm from a station in the back of beyond, you know. Self-confessed rube. When we came here we didn't know whether we'd be conned out of the ship. I didn't know what to do, so I put things in Max's care for a while. Sorry for lying to you all."

Michael glanced around the table; the others were surprised, but not offended— except, perhaps, for Crisler, who was scowling at Max. Michael himself was completely enchanted.

This Rue Cassels was utterly unlike the one Michael had seen in the garden last night; there, she had been poised, confident, even eloquent. This Rue was a shy, barely adult young woman. She seemed to be hiding behind her dark sunglasses. Some of that might be real— but it came to Michael that she might be acting and if she was, she was superb at it.

"I know, Dr. Herat, that you want the facts and figures about Jentry's Envy," she said. "You'll get them. But I had a real hard time thinking of what to say today and I didn't know why for a while. Then I realized it was because the whole experience of being there at the Envy was so… huge, so wild, that I didn't have the words for it. I mean, I went into this whole thing without a clue what I was getting into. The Envy was a shock. I don't think it's fair to any of you to let you think that this is going to be like anywhere else you've ever been.

"Admiral Crisler and his aides have told me what star travel is like in the R.E. You get on a ship, eat some fine meals and use the exercise facility, hobnob with the other passengers for a couple of days, and then you're at your destination. It's seamless.

"Well, cyclers aren't like that." She glanced at Evan Laurel, who chuckled silently.

"To go to a cycler is not to go from one part of your world to another," she said. "To go to a cycler is to leave everything that you know and see it dwindle into specks and disappear in the hugeness. It's not like visiting somewhere, it's like leaving home for good."

Crisler cleared his throat. "With respect, Ms. Cassels, we're all experienced travelers. I think we know what to expect from your kind of travel."

Rue stammered. "Yes, of course…"

"What about Jentry's Envy?" asked Herat mildly. "What did you find when you got there?"

She smiled at the professor. "Well, that's just it. We'd arrived, but not at what we'd expected, and not at anything we could figure out. Radar showed a bunch of spheres of different sizes. There were other things, too— big half-empty gasbags that barely showed up in radar and little dense packets obviously made of metal. They all had thin lines trailing off them, joining up and ultimately connected to the plow sail. Most of them were at ambient temperature— a few degrees above absolute zero. A couple, though, were warm."

"You explored them," said Dr. Herat.

"Well." She adjusted her pince-nez. "We started to. But while the cycler was doing its turn, there was a slight pull on everything. If we parked our little habitat next to something, that something would drift away. If we used fuel to follow it, we were, well, using up fuel. So we found the warmest sphere in the whole collection and we attached a line to its line. Then we were hanging with the other cargoes, like some kind of weird chandelier."

"Surely you did some exploring," coaxed Dr. Herat.

"At first we thought the cycler was going to finish its turn in a couple of months. But it didn't, it kept turning; it was still going to pass Chandaka, but on the other side of the star from what we'd expected. We'd explored Lake Flaccid while we waited, then afterward I decided it wouldn't be wise to waste too much fuel, so we only explored one other—"

"Lake Flaccid?" Dr. Ophir was trying to keep a straight face.

Max gave a long-suffering sigh. "Our Rue has a talent for naming things," he said. "And, as captain, it's her right to name stuff however she wants."

"It is flaccid," cried Rue. "The name is perfect and you know it."

Dr. Herat held up a hand, a pained expression on his face. Michael could see that the professor didn't think much of Rue Cassels. He would never name a priceless alien site so irreverently.

Michael had to smile.

"What is Lake Flaccid?" asked Dr. Herat impatiently.

Rue appeared puzzled. "We took photos. You didn't…?"

Admiral Crisler half stood. "We decided to withhold the key pieces of evidence until we had everyone committed to the mission. Sorry, Dr. Herat, but we couldn't show you everything before."

"Ah." Rue frowned at Crisler. "Well, let's take an inscape look at it now, if you want."

The picture of the Banshee was replaced by another image. This seemed to be a shot down the length of a round tunnel. Evan Laurel stood balanced on one toe near the camera. He was grinning behind his suit's faceplate and he was brightly lit by a light source near the camera while everything behind him faded into shadow.

"That's the rotational axis of one of the midsize habitats," said Rue. "It's huge by cycler standards— sixty meters across, easily. The axis is about seven meters across, so the bulk of the place is 'under' this cylinder. The habitat rotates, so gravity at the outside would be about two gees. At the axis, it's micro."

"This isn't the habitat that has the Lasa writing on it," Crisler said to Herat, who nodded slowly.

Rue paused, staring at the image. "At first we thought we might set up camp here. The atmosphere's pure nitrogen and though it was about minus twenty, we were going to hook up some heaters and oxygenate a tent. Do some real exploring. But when we got to the lake we got too creeped, so we ended up back at the ship. Well, all except Evan and Corinna. They seemed immune to the creeps."

Evan shrugged. "Needed to get off the ship for a while, that's all."

"What is this lake?" asked Ophir.

"You can see it in the picture," said Rue. "See that dark line?" Behind Evan in the picture, a broad expanse of darkness ringed the cylinder. Michael had taken it to mean that most of the length of the cylinder was surfaced with some dark material. Now he could see that that surface was indented some centimeters below the white metal Evan balanced on.

"We shone lights into it," said Evan. "Couldn't figure out what it was. Some liquid, we figured, but if it was water it would have massed an incredible amount and you just don't ship that much water up to light-speed. Costs way too much."

Rue shrugged. "We only visited one other place— and it was even weirder than this." She shook her head. "I'm afraid we don't have much to tell you, Doctor Herat."

"Which brings us to the reasons for this expedition," said Crisler. "Obviously it's a huge undertaking and none of us would be doing this if we didn't expect to reap great reward from it. We all have our agendas and it's time to make those clear. Let's start with yours, Rue."

"I've been up front about it all along," she said. "I own the Envy. It's impossible or at least prohibitively expensive to slow it down to sub-light speeds— like it or not, it's a cycler and therefore the only issue is its course and ability to serve as a habitat for travel between planetary systems. I want to make sure it services the halo worlds. I also have to make sure that its course really is a 'cycle'—it has to pass by Erythrion again eventually. So this time out we're looking for ways to live off the habitats that are already there and change its course if we have to."

Dr. Herat sputtered. "That's… criminal. Well, no not criminal but I'm sorry, this is a priceless artifact, you can't turn it into a floating motel—"

"Doctor Herat," barked Crisler.

"Our civilization is held together by the cyclers and nothing else," said Rue coldly. Her shoulders were hunched now, as if she were anticipating a blow. "There are very few cyclers now and fewer every day, thanks to you people. Anything that can bring back a little of what you stole from us is to the good. If your precious investigation has to suffer so that billions of my people can continue to communicate, then so be it!"

"There is also the fact that not even the Cycler Compact has the systems in place to decelerate something as massive as this starship," said Crisler. "The Envy is not something you can tote home to a museum, Professor Herat. It will continue on its course until it erodes away. Ms. Cassels's plan is only sensible, provided we establish a permanent scientific presence aboard the cycler to investigate it during its occupation."

"Ah." Herat looked chastened. "I apologize, Ms. Cassels. Your people do deserve to benefit from this discovery." Michael could tell he was genuinely sorry for his outburst— but also knew that Herat would still feel the exploitation of an alien artifact for personal gain was wrong. "Of course, if we have a permanent presence on the Envy, in the long run…"

"You'll have to pay for that yourselves," said Max Cassels. "The halo cannot afford to subsidize the Rights Economy."

"So," said Crisler, "one of our priorities is to secure the Envy as a viable cycler for use by the halo worlds. Dr. Herat, what are your priorities?"

"Where to start?" he said. He cracked his knuckles under the table; Michael winced. "This is a find of unknown importance. We have no idea what we're going to discover there. It's imperative that we not make any course corrections until we know what the cycler's programmed course is. We need to find out how old it is, who made it, where it comes from. We may be on the verge of contacting an entirely new civilization. I think Ms. Cassels would agree that this is at least as important as securing a single cycler for the halo— especially if this alien civilization is friendly and also uses cyclers. Imagine what it would mean if they cooperated with the halo worlds to build more!"

Rue, who had sat down, arched an eyebrow.

Crisler ticked off points on an inscape scratch pad. "Origin. Makers. Course. Of course, any technological advances that result from the investigation will be shared by the halo and the R.E."

"So what is your interest, Admiral?" asked Michael.

"It's very simple," he said. "If there really is a hidden civilization out there, one that comprises more than a single species, we need to reach it before the rebels do. I hardly have to tell you that our attempts to create a unified galactic parliament have failed; the other spacefaring species are too alien for us to deal with. The whole construction of the Envy hints at a multispecies civilization, which has been humanity's dream since before we even had space flight. If such a civilization exists, the first faction to make an ally of it will inherit the galaxy."

Michael glanced across at the halo-worlders. Crisler seemed unaware of it, but he had just driven home a deep insult that they must all feel: The people of the Cycler Compact had seen themselves as the inheritors of the galaxy before the Rights Economy had burst out from Earth to steal the lit suns from them. Cyclers had been the essential glue binding the original interstellar human civilization. In thinking only of the polarity of rebels vs. R.E., Crisler was openly relegating Rue Cassels's people to the ash-bin of history.

No hint of this showed on their faces. They politely listened as Crisler set about negotiating the hierarchy of priorities. But as Michael looked around the table, he could clearly see what others might not: competing interests and old wounds ignored for now, but perhaps not forever.

They worked through more details of the expedition. When the formal meeting wound up, everyone remained to shake hands and proceeded to snack on the breakfast that had been provided— everyone, that is, except Max Cassels, who begged off and practically ran from the room.

Michael found himself avoiding the other Cassels. He felt embarrassed about eavesdropping on Rue last night. As he was skulking by the drinks table, Linda Ophir appeared next to him.

"I'm a great admirer of your and Dr. Herat's work," she said, hiding a smile behind a tumbler of orange juice.

"Thank you." He wracked his brains for a suitable complimentary reply.

"Listen, Dr. Bequith, before we get all formal in our roles, I was wondering…"

He reached for a drink. "Ah…?"

"There's some… anomalies… in the data that you should know about," she said quietly. "I'd like to discuss them in a less crowded environment. Would you like to take a walk in the garden later this morning?"

"Oh. Well, sure. Uh, what anomalies are we talking about?"

"Nothing special. But please don't mention this to anyone. Okay?" She smiled winningly at him, and walked quickly away.

Michael realized he was standing holding the ladle to the punch bowl like a weapon. He put it down, shook his head, and went to join the knot of people talking with Dr. Herat.

L INDA DIDN'T SHOW up at the gardens. Michael wasn't sure whether she had been trying to pick him up or talk business, so he waited around for a while, increasingly annoyed. Finally he decided to abandon the wait, and went for a walk. As he stepped through the giant gates of the old Compact fortress, he smiled at the feel of warm air and sunlight on his face.

The sky was blustering today, but it was warm and muggy. The air smelled like cinnamon. Chandaka's star was G-class, like Earth's; the skies were blue here and full of big puffy clouds, and the light seemed natural. He knew that this world had not always looked like this; centuries ago, Compact engineers had blown off the planet's old atmosphere using directed cometary impacts, and had imposed a carbon cycle by force. Free atmospheric oxygen was a new factor in Chandaka's environment; in many places, apparently, deserts and rivers still spontaneously burst into flame now and then. Oxygen was absorbed out of the air almost as fast as it was introduced— sucked into iron-rich rocks and into the oceans for the most part. Though the hills that rolled away to the horizon on both sides looked green and peaceful, the terraforming effort required to keep them green was massive. And expensive.

The streets and towers of the city that sprawled in the valley below the Redoubt at first looked like fabulous confections spun in glass and chrome. Michael tuned his inscape to full realism, and the illusion vanished: Now he saw the buildings and streets of Chandaka's capital as they really were. The older towers were of carved stone, beautiful and baroque; everything new, though, was made of gray concrete, undecorated in reality. Looming beyond the blocky cityscape were giant stacks belching out oxygen; Michael had swallowed some mesotech scrubbers to remove the extra CO2 from his bloodstream, otherwise he would die in this air.

There were no physical signs to designate shops or public areas— or rather there were some, but they were old and faded almost beyond recognition. The people were likewise unadorned, mostly dressed in utilitarian pant and shirt combinations. This spareness was typical of colony worlds that had little real money or resources; real wealth was siphoned from the citizens to the offworld Rights Owners through thousands of daily microtransactions.

Ironically, it cost Michael money to view the city without inscape filtering. He flipped his inscape back to full representation and instantly the streets became canyons of light, full of virtual pennants and floating holographic ads. The gray concrete walls became marble, a thousand kinds of music sprang up around him and what had been bare stalls along the side of the road turned into a carnival market. There weren't that many kinds of item for sale here, but they were presented in thousands of different inscape wrappers. Even buying vegetables became an adventure when you had to choose between the microspirits in each farmer's stock, each of which strove to be entertaining or wise or salacious as it danced upon the potato or breadfruit that housed its broadcast nano. You paid for this wrapping; you paid just to breathe in this place.

Some of the citizens who had been visible a moment ago were blurred out, edited by their own choice from this version of the street. Those that remained were now dressed brightly, even outrageously, in jewels or light or flame or swirling TV images.

There were other versions of the city, though not as many as you'd find in the inner systems. Michael tuned to a religious view and the hawkers and stalls turned into rows of bronze silent Buddhas. The light changed to something limpid and clear and overhead graceful white forms flitted between the clouds. There were very few people visible in this view, most replaced by ghostly cloth-wrapped figures so you didn't walk into them. Once upon a time there would have been NeoShinto shrines here, physically present along with all the other sects of Permanence. But it was illegal for a religion not to charge for its services in the R.E. There was in fact a Church of Permanence here— the bastardized version whose doctrines and rites were «owned» by a cabal of fallen brothers back on Earth. Michael would have had to pay just to walk through its doors.

This view was so crassly deceptive that he couldn't stand to look at it, so he tried a few other views of the city, finally settling on a garden view that emphasized the bowers and fountains that really did dot the streets. He found an outdoor cafe and sat in the sun sipping coffee while gene-adapted finches sang to him from their perches among the crimson leaves of bright bamboolike trees. With some judicious tuning he was able to bring the brightly clad citizenry back into this view and he watched them go by for a while, enjoying the ambience.

The expedition would be leaving for Jentry's Envy in a couple of days. Dr. Herat had given Michael the choice: He could come along or stay behind. The offer was made with seeming lightness, but both knew the implications. This investigation was not like any of the others and it would likely last for years. If Michael stayed behind, he would be leaving Dr. Herat's employ.

Common sense told him it was time to leave. He had to resolve his own problems; he couldn't put it off.

And how would he do that? He could return to Kimpurusha— but the monasteries had become gaming houses and he didn't know if he could find any of the brothers if he tried. Anxious and depressed, he finished his coffee and went walking again.

His footsteps seemed to naturally lead him into the older quarter of the city. Here he was able to switch off inscape entirely, and merely enjoy the architecture for its own sake. Human hands had crafted the stones here for the eyes of generations yet unborn, but not unimagined.

As he was crossing a plaza that had once had an active fountain at its center, he heard a distant clap of sound. At first he took no notice, since the city was full of noises. Then the clap came back to him, from the buildings across the plaza: an echo of a distant and apparently powerful explosion.

Michael shaded his eyes and looked up. A twisting contrail rose up from outside the city, vanishing almost directly overhead. That looked like a rocket launch.

Another bang came from the opposite direction. He turned, and this time he saw the thing rising from somewhere in the suburbs. Michael had time to realize that he shouldn't be standing where he was before the one directly overhead exploded.

The flash was insignificant, merely making him blink. With it came a loud clicking that seemed to come from inside his own head. And the bone behind his right ear felt hot suddenly. That was all: But throughout the plaza, people who had been walking like him only seconds ago were falling to the cobblestones, like dancers obeying music he couldn't hear.

And that was it, of course. He felt behind his ear. The skin there was quite warm— and that, of course, was where his inscape antenna was located, inside the bone. He didn't need to try accessing inscape to know his implants had been fried by the microwave bomb that had gone off a kilometer overhead.

Those who were using inscape at the time— nearly everybody— would have had their world go mad for an instant. There were too many fail-safes in the implant system to permit real brain damage, but these people were as stunned as though lightning had hit right next to them.

Michael took a few steps toward the nearest person, some vague notion of helping in his mind. Then he noticed how the few others who had not fallen were jogging purposefully across the plaza, in the direction of downtown. As he watched, one drew a pistol from inside his tunic.

Only now did Michael start to feel afraid. He was caught outside in the middle of a rebel attack. Common sense told him he should get indoors before real missiles— the explosive kind— started flying. It wasn't the fear that paralyzed him for long seconds, though, but simple déjà vu. He had seen this happen before.

Nor was it fear for his physical safety that had him turning in his tracks, looking for another exit from the plaza, but the realization that if he were caught up in a mass police sweep, they would find his rebel history. Herat might be able to vouch for him; then again, he might not.

Michael ran away from the city center, leaping over people who lay groaning and clutching their heads. He crossed an avenue full of cars, all stopped in orderly lines, drivers slumped in their seats. As he ran he remembered that other time years ago, when he had run through similarly silent, shocked streets carrying dispatches on foot because inscape was down, wire and fiber had been cut, and microwave bombs continued to go off, regular as a metronome. He remembered the echoes, which had bounced between tower and mountain over and over until the louder thunder of government lasers cutting down from orbit had drowned them out.

The rebels would use the current confusion to finish what the microwave bombs had started. They would go on an orgy of destruction in which not a single stone of the city would be damaged, but the values in every nanotag would be wiped clean. Ownership, credit histories, monetary value itself resided in the physical objects traded in these streets. There were no central records, as there might have been in centuries past. In the Rights Economy, information was immanent, and by the time the rebels were done, the citizens of this city would no longer own anything, not even the shoes on their feet. Whole inscape domains would be erased, taking with them jobs and pensions.

Any object that lost its nanotags automatically became government property, so hard-working people and those who had lived for generations in ancestral homes here would see their properties expropriated. The farmers who had brought their produce to sell no longer owned that produce. The government knew this would drive people into the rebel cause in droves, but they had no alternative. Their orders came from Earth, after all. Earth was very far away, and the Rights Owners there would not be sympathetic.

As people climbed to their feet, they would begin to realize all this, and then the rage would come. Within an hour, the city center would be a riot scene. Anyone identified as a rebel would be lynched, but that hardly mattered because resentment against the government economic hardship would drive those who had done the lynching into the rebel fold eventually, in weeks or months.

Michael circled the city, panting with exertion after the first few minutes. People were getting back to their feet, cursing and helping one another up. Some watched him go by suspiciously. And in the distance, he heard the sound of aircars droning low over the buildings.

New echoes came: "R-r-r-remain calm calm calm." Police cars spun in fans of dust ahead of Michael. Officers were leaping out into a milling crowd of workers who were locked out of their office building because its AI doorman no longer recognized them. Michael tried to hang back, but the growing crowd behind him was pushing him forward. Before he knew what was happening he was in a sea of running people, and he heard guns firing. Someone started screaming.

Somehow he managed to make it to an alley, and from there to an underground highway used by automated freight vehicles. Light came from ceiling grates; the vehicles were all frozen in place, and so he wove among them, and by this means made his way back to the streets near the Redoubt.

A few minutes later he paused at the top of the hill to look back at the city. Smoke was rising from a dozen places in the towers, which were now all unrelenting gray, the illusion of faerie riches ripped away. Michael stood still for a minute, letting his breathing slow as he tried to compose himself. Then he walked through the gates into the Redoubt. Just inside the doors, he let himself slump against the walls. He'd made it.

"Dr. Bequith?"

He looked up. A slim figure clad in black stood before him. Rue Cassels was inscrutable behind her black sunglasses, but her forehead was pinched in the suggestion of worry. "What's happened?" she asked. "You look like you've run a marathon!"

"I have." He turned and put his back to the cool stone. "Rebel attack— on the city…"

"You were there?"

He started to nod, but a commotion from deeper inside the Redoubt caught his attention.

Rue Cassels pointed. Someone was shouting at the gates to the garden— several people, one yelling, "Help!"

They ran that way. The entrance to the garden was one of those giant valve doors that were the only egress from the Redoubt. A woman crouched there. "Gods and kami, gods and kami," she was saying. A small knot of people was clustered around her and something lying on the ground. These all looked like local people, Michael noted— townsmen come to trade to the large transient population that stayed in the Redoubt.

"They're on their way," said a man as he stood. At his feet a woman lay in a position that couldn't possibly be comfortable; Michael's scalp crawled as he realized she was dead.

"Linda!" Dr. Herat had appeared from somewhere. He knelt beside the prone figure and only now did Michael realize who this was. His vision dimmed for a moment from the shock.

"Dr. Ophir," whispered Rue. "What happened…"

"Shot," said the young man who had just stood. "I found her like this— it was just a minute ago! Whoever it is…" He gestured vaguely at the entrance hall, which was the way Michael had come.

"No, they must be gone by now." The woman who spoke looked around herself nervously.

Michael felt sick. Had he not gone walking in the city, he might have been with her and able to shield or hide her from the killer. Or he might have been killed as well…

He had to distance himself and so looked clinically and closely at everyone in the small crowd. Then he turned his attention to the body. Dr. Ophir's eyes were open, but her face was expressionless. She lay on her side, one arm flung back, and there was blood all over her chest and back. There wasn't much blood on the ground where she lay, but a splash of it stained the great doors that towered above her. Only a weapon could cause such a wound and not the sort of trifling rat-shooter you could buy from standard black market sources. This had punched a hole right through her chest.

Yes. This was just like that other time, when having been caught, Michael was marched through the streets by troops of the Reconquista, his message pack in the hands of the squad leader. They had passed Michael's designated rendezvous point and there in a doorway a man had lain crumpled like Dr. Ophir, with a hole in his neck and the same expression of dull surprise on his face.

And standing next to that dead man…

He turned away.

"It's the rebels," someone said. "Look, they didn't touch her satchel."

"Who is she? A visitor?"

Dr. Herat took Michael's arm and led him inside. Herat's other hand encircled Rue Cassels's arm.

"I've called Crisler," said Herat. "We'll tell him all about it. But from what you said to me the other day, Bequith, I don't think you'd fancy having to explain ourselves to the local authorities." Captain Cassels pursed her lips for a second, her head turning almost imperceptibly in Michael's direction.

"But who could have done such a thing?" she said. "Why?"

"The rebels?" It took a moment for Michael to realize Dr. Herat was asking him. He felt a surge of resentment at the implication that he might know.

He shook his head— not to deny it, but in confusion. "Why would rebels do this? — shoot one person, then run? It doesn't make sense. Unless…"

"What?"

"Unless the rebels know about the expedition."

"People know about us," said Cassels. "We got interviewed and everything."

"They don't know about Jentry's Envy, do they?" asked Michael.

"Well, we said it was a wrecked halo cycler. Nobody knew the alien bit except the people we contacted— the ones who got us in touch with the admiral."

Michael and the professor exchanged a glance. "Somebody knows," said Herat.

The captain wanted to talk to her people, so they escorted her back to her chambers. Then Dr. Herat and Michael went to find Crisler.

On the way, Dr. Herat said, "Does any of this make it easier for you to decide?"

"Decide what?"

"Are you coming along on this trip, or not?"

"I can't leave you now, after what's just happened."

"That's ridiculous, son. I can take care of myself."

Michael shook his head. It was shameful, the bombs, the people falling, and his own race through the streets— all this had made him feel alive in a way he hadn't felt in years. Something fundamental had happened today, and memories were flooding back of his brief time with the rebels: the excitement, the feeling of commitment.

There was one other memory that he could not deny, though. On the day when they had made their attack and Michael had been captured, he had been marched through the streets and had seen the body of a friend, shot like Linda Ophir had been today.

Standing next to that body, laughing with a colonel of the security forces, had been Michael's commander, Errend. Errend, free and relaxed, watching Michael being marched past after having betrayed all his comrades to the army.

"I'm going with you," Michael said firmly.