The Evolutionary Void

ONE

THE STARSHIP HAD NO NAME; it didn’t have a serial number or even a marque. Only one of its kind had ever been built. As no more would ever be required, no designation was needed; it was simply the ship.

It streaked through the substructure of spacetime at fifty-nine light-years an hour, the fastest anything built by humans had ever traveled. Navigation at that awesome velocity was by quantum interstice similarity interpretation, which determined the relative location of mass in the real universe beyond. This alleviated the use of crude hysradar or any other sensor that might possibly be detected. The extremely sophisticated ultradrive that powered it might have reached even greater speeds if a considerable fraction of its phenomenal energy hadn’t been used for fluctuation suppression. That meant there was no telltale distortion amid the quantum fields to betray its position to other starships that might wish to hunt it.

As well as its formidable stealth ability, the ship was big, a fat ovoid over six hundred meters long and two hundred meters across at the center. But its real advantage came from its armaments; there were weapons on board that could knock out a half a dozen Commonwealth Navy Capital-class ships while barely stirring out of standby mode. The weapons had been verified only once: the ship had flown over ten thousand light-years from the Greater Commonwealth to test them so as to avoid detection. For millennia to come, primitive alien civilizations in that section of the galaxy would worship as gods the colorful nebulae expanding across the interstellar wastes.

Even now, sitting in the ship’s clean hemispherical cabin with the flight path imagery playing quietly in her exovision, Neskia remembered with a little shiver of excitement and apprehension the stars splitting asunder. It had been one thing to run the clandestine fabrication station for the Accelerator Faction, dispatching ships and equipment to various agents and representatives. That was easy, cold machinery functioning with a precision she could take pride in. But seeing the weapons active was slightly different. She’d felt a level of perturbation she hadn’t known in over two centuries, ever since she became Higher and began her inward migration. Not that she questioned her belief in the Accelerators; it was just the sheer potency of the weapons that struck her at some primitive level that could never be fully exorcised from the human psyche. She was awed by the power of what she alone commanded.

Other elements of her animal past had been erased quietly and effectively: first with biononics and acceptance of Higher cultural philosophy, culminating in her embrace of Accelerator Faction tenets, then by committing to a subtle rejection of her existing body form, as if to emphasize her new beliefs. Her skin now was a shimmering metallic gray, the epidermal cells imbued with a contemporary semiorganic fiber that established itself in perfect symbiosis. The face that had caused many a man to turn in admiration when she was younger now wore a more efficient, flatter profile, with big saucer eyes biononically modified to look across a multitude of spectra. Her neck also had been stretched, its increased flexibility allowing her head much greater maneuverability. Underneath the gently shimmering skin her muscles had been strengthened to a level that would allow her to keep up with a terrestrial panther on its kill run, and that was before biononic augmentation kicked in.

However, it was her mind that had undergone the greatest evolution. She’d stopped short of bioneural profiling simply because she didn’t need any genetic reinforcement to her beliefs. “Worship” was a crude term for thought processes, but she was certainly devoted to her cause. She had dedicated herself completely to the Accelerators at a fully emotional level. The old human concerns and biological imperatives simply didn’t affect her anymore; her intellect was involved solely with the faction and its goal. For the past fifty years their projects and plans had been all that triggered her satisfaction and suffering. Her integration was total; she was the epitome of Accelerator values. That was why she’d been chosen to fly the ship by the faction leader, Ilanthe, on this mission. That, and that alone, made her content.

The ship began to slow as it approached the coordinate Neskia had supplied to the smartcore. Speed ebbed away until it hung inertly in transdimensional suspension while her navigation display showed the Sol system twenty-three light-years away. The distance was comfortable. They were outside the comprehensive sensor mesh surrounding humanity’s birthworld, yet she could be there in less than thirty minutes.

Neskia ordered the smartcore to run a passive scan. Other than interstellar dust and the odd frozen comet, there was no detectable mass within three light-years. Certainly there were no ships. However, the scan picked up a tiny specific anomaly, which caused her to smile in tight satisfaction. All around the ship ultradrives were holding themselves in transdimensional suspension, undetectable except for that one deliberate signal. You had to know what to search for to find it, and nobody would be looking for anything out here, let alone ultradrives. The ship confirmed there were eight thousand of the machines holding position as they awaited instructions. Neskia established a communication link to them and ran a swift function check. The Swarm was ready.

She settled down to wait for Ilanthe’s next call.

The ExoProtectorate Council meeting ended, and Kazimir canceled the link to the perceptual conference room. He was alone in his office atop Pentagon II, with nowhere to go. The deterrence fleet had to be launched; there was no question of that now. Nothing else could deal with the approaching Ocisen Empire armada without an unacceptable loss of life on both sides. And if news that the Ocisens were backed up by Prime warships leaked out … Which it would. Ilanthe would see to that.

No choice.

He straightened the recalcitrant silver braid collar on his dress uniform one last time as he walked over to the sweeping window and looked down on the lush parkland of Babuyan Atoll. A gentle radiance was shining down on it, emitted from the crystal dome curving overhead. Even so, he could still see Icalanise’s misty crescent through the ersatz dawn. The sight was one he’d seen countless times during his tenure. He’d always taken it for granted; now he wondered if he’d ever see it again. For a true military man the thought wasn’t unusual; in fact, it was quite a proud pedigree.

His u-shadow opened a link to Paula. “We’re deploying the deterrence fleet against the Ocisens,” he told her.

“Oh, dear. I take it the last capture mission didn’t work, then.”

“No. The Prime ship exploded when we took it out of hyperspace.”

“Damn. Suicide isn’t part of the Prime’s psychological makeup.”

“You know that and I know that. ANA:Governance knows that, too, of course, but as always it needs proof, not circumstantial evidence.”

“Are you going with the fleet?”

Kazimir couldn’t help but smile at the question. If only you knew. “Yes. I’m going with the fleet.”

“Good luck. I want you to try and turn this against her. They’ll be out there watching. Any chance you can detect them first?”

“We’ll certainly try.” He squinted at the industrial stations circling around High Angel, a slim sparkling silver bracelet against the starfield. “I heard about Ellezelin.”

“Yeah. Digby didn’t have any options. ANA is sending a forensic team. If they can work out what Chatfield was carrying, we might be able to haul the Accelerators into court before you reach the Ocisens.”

“I don’t think so. But I have some news for you.”

“Yes?”

“The Lindau has left the Hanko system.”

“Where is it heading?”

“That’s the interesting thing. As far as I can make out, they’re flying to the Spike.”

“The Spike? Are you sure?”

“That’s a projection of their current course. It’s held steady for seven hours now.”

“But that … No.”

“Why not?” Kazimir asked, obscurely amused by the investigator’s reaction.

“I simply don’t believe that Ozzie would intervene in the Commonwealth again, not like this. And he’d certainly never employ someone like Aaron.”

“Okay, I’ll grant you that one. But there are other humans in the Spike.”

“Yes, there are. Care to name one?”

Kazimir gave up. “So what’s Ozzie’s connection?”

“I can’t think.”

“The Lindau isn’t flying as fast as it’s capable of. It probably got damaged on Hanko. You could easily get to the Spike ahead of them or even intercept.”

“Tempting, but I’m not going to risk it. I’ve wasted far too much time on my personal obsession already. I can’t risk another wild-goose chase at this point.”

“All right. Well, I’m going to be occupied for the next few days. If it’s a real emergency, you can contact me.”

“Thank you. My priority now has got to be securing the Second Dreamer.”

“Good luck with that.”

“And you, Kazimir. Godspeed.”

“Thank you.” He remained by the window for several seconds after he’d closed the link to Paula, then activated his biononic field interface function, which meshed with the navy’s T-sphere. He teleported to the wormhole terminus orbiting outside the gigantic alien arkship and through that emerged into the Kerensk terminus. One more teleport jump, and he was inside Hevelius Island, one of Earth’s T-sphere stations, floating seventy kilometers above the South Pacific.

“Ready,” he told ANA:Governance.

ANA opened the restricted wormhole to Proxima Centauri, four point three light-years away, and Kazimir stepped through. The Alpha Centauri system had been a big disappointment when Ozzie and Nigel opened their very first long-range wormhole there in 2053. Given that the binary, composed of G- and K-class stars and planets, had already been detected by standard astronomical procedures, everyone had fervently hoped to find a human-congruent world. There weren’t any. But given that they had successfully proved wormholes could be established across interstellar distances, Ozzie and Nigel went on to secure additional funding for the company that would rapidly evolve into Compression Space Transport and establish the Commonwealth. Nobody ever went back to Alpha Centauri, and nobody had ever even been to Proxima Centauri; with its small M-class star, it was never going to have an H-congruent planet. That made it the perfect location for ANA to construct and base the “deterrence fleet.”

Kazimir materialized at the center of a simple transparent dome measuring two kilometers across at the base. It was a tiny blister on the surface of a barren, airless planet, orbiting fifty million kilometers out from the diminutive red dwarf. Gravity was about two-thirds standard. Low hills all around created a rumpled horizon, the gray-brown regolith splashed a dreary maroon by Proxima’s ineffectual radiance.

His feet were standing on what appeared to be dull gray metal. When he tried to focus on the featureless surface, it twisted away, as if there were something separating his boot soles from the physical structure. His biononic field scan function revealed massive forces starting to stir around him, rising up out of the strange floor.

“Are you ready?” ANA:Governance asked.

Kazimir gritted his teeth. “Do it.”

As Kazimir had assured both Gore and Paula, the deterrence fleet was no bluff. It represented the peak of ANA’s technological ability and was at least a match for the ships of the warrior Raiel. However, he did concede that calling it a fleet was a slight exaggeration.

The problem, inevitably, was who to trust with such an enormous array of firepower. The more crew involved, the greater the chance of misuse or leakage to a faction. Ironically, the technology itself provided the answer. It required only a single controlling consciousness. ANA declined to assume command on ethical grounds, refusing to ascend to essential omnipotence. Therefore, the task always fell upon the Chief Admiral.

The forces within the base swarmed around him, rushing in like a tidal wave, reading him at a quantum level and then converting the memory. Kazimir transformed: His purely physical structure shifted to an equivalent energy function encapsulated within a single point that intruded into spacetime. His “bulk,” the energy signature he had become, was folded deep within the quantum fields, utilizing a construction principle similar to that of ANA itself. It contained his mind and memories, along with some basic manipulator and sensory abilities, and unlike ANA, it wasn’t a fixed point.

Kazimir used his new sensory inputs to examine the intraspacial lattice immediately surrounding him, reviewing the waiting array of transformed functions stored inside the dome’s complex exotic matter mechanisms. He started to select the ones he might need for the mission, incorporating them to his own signature; it was a process he always equated to some primitive soldier walking through an armory, pulling weapons and shields off the shelves.

Ultimately he incorporated eight hundred seventeen functions into his primary signature. Function twenty-seven was an FTL (faster than light) ability, allowing him to shift his entire energy signature through hyperspace. As he no longer retained any mass, the velocity he could achieve was orders of magnitude above an ultradrive.

Kazimir launched from the unnamed planet, heading for the Ocisen fleet at a hundred light-years an hour. Then he accelerated.

The Delivery Man smiled at the steward who came down the cabin collecting drinks from the passengers as the starship prepared to enter the planet’s atmosphere. It was a job much better suited to a bot or some inbuilt waste chute. Yet starliner companies always maintained a human crew. The vast majority of humans (non-Higher, anyway) relished that little personal contact during the voyage. Besides, human staff added a touch of refinement, the elegance of a bygone age.

He accessed the ship’s sensors as the atmosphere built up around them. It was raining on Fanallisto’s second largest southern continent. A huge gunmetal-gray mass of clouds powered their way inland, driven by winds that had built to an alarming velocity across the empty wastes of the Antarctic Ocean. Cities were activating their weather dome force fields, the rain was so heavy. Flood warnings were going out to the burgeoning agricultural zones.

Fanallisto was in its second century of development. A pleasant enough world, unremarkable in the firmament of External worlds, it had a population of tens of millions occupying relatively bland urban zones. Each had a Living Dream thane and a respectable number of followers. The prospect of Pilgrimage was creating a lot of tension and strife among the population, a situation that hadn’t been helped by recent events on Viotia. Acts of violence against the thanes had increased with each passing day of the crisis.

In itself that was nothing special; such conflicts were on the rise across the Greater Commonwealth. However, on Fanallisto, several instances of violence had been countered by people enriched by biononics. The Conservative Faction was keen to discover what was so special about Fanallisto that it needed support and protection from suspected Accelerator agents.

As he’d made quite clear to the faction, the Delivery Man didn’t care. However, a Conservative Faction agent was now on Fanallisto, and standard operating procedure for field deployment was to provide independent fallback support, which was why the Delivery Man hadn’t gone straight back to London from Purlap spaceport. Instead he’d taken a flight to Trangor and caught the next starship to Fanallisto. At least he wasn’t part of the active operation. The other agent didn’t even know he was there.

The commercial starship fell through the sodden atmosphere to land at Rapall spaceport. The Delivery Man disembarked along with all the other passengers, then rendezvoused with his luggage in the terminal building. The two medium-size cases drifted after him on regrav and parked themselves in a cab’s cargo hold. He ordered the cab to the commercial section of town, a short trip in the little regrav capsule as it flitted around beneath the force field dome. From there he walked around to another cab pad and flew over to the Foxglove Hotel on the east side of town, using a different identity.

He booked in to room 225, using a third identity certificate and an untraceable cash coin to prepay for a ten-day stay. It took four minutes to infiltrate the room’s cybersphere node, where he installed various routines to make it appear as though the room were occupied. A nice professional touch, he felt. The small culinary unit would produce meals, which the maidbot would then empty down the toilet in the morning when it made the daily housekeeping visit. The spore shower would be used, as would various other gadgets and fittings; the air-conditioning temperature would be changed, and the node would place a few calls across the unisphere. Power consumption would vary.

He slid both cases into the solitary closet just for the sake of appearance and activated their defense mechanisms. Whatever was inside them, he didn’t want to know, though he guessed at some pretty aggressive hardware. Once he’d confirmed that they were operating properly, he left the room and called a cab down to the front of the hotel’s lobby. It wouldn’t be he who came back to collect the cases-that would set a pattern. He was grateful for that operational protocol. After Justine’s last dream, all he wanted to do was get back to his family. He’d already decided he would be turning down any more Conservative Faction requests over the next couple of weeks, no matter how much warning they gave him and how politely they asked. Events were building to a climax, and there was only one place a true father should be.

The lobby’s glass curtain doors parted to let him through. The taxicab hovered a couple of centimeters above the concrete pad outside, waiting for him. He hadn’t quite reached it when the Conservative Faction called.

I’m going to tell them no, he promised himself. Whatever it is.

He settled in the cab’s curving seat, told its smartnet to take him to the downtown area, and then accepted the call. “Yes?”

“The deterrence fleet is being deployed,” the Conservative Faction said.

“I’m surprised it took this long. People are getting nervous about the Ocisens, and they don’t even know about the Primes yet.”

“We believe the whole deployment was orchestrated by the Accelerators.”

“Why? What could they possibly gain from that?”

“They would finally know the nature of the deterrence fleet.”

“Okay, so how does that help them?”

“We don’t know. But it has to be crucial to their plans; they have risked almost everything on manipulating this one event.”

“The game is changing,” the Delivery Man said faintly. “That’s what Marius told me: The game is changing. I thought he was talking about Hanko.”

“Apparently not.”

“So we really are entering a critical phase, then.”

“It would seem so.”

Immediately suspicious, he said, “I’m not undertaking anything else for you. Not now.”

“We know. That is why we called. We thought you deserved to know. We understand how much your family means to you and that you want to be with them.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“If you do wish to return to a more active status-”

“I’ll let you know. Has my replacement taken over following Marius?”

“Operational information is kept isolated.”

“Of course, sorry.”

“Thank you again for your assistance.”

The Delivery Man sat upright as the call ended. “Damnit.” The deterrence fleet! This was getting serious, not to mention potentially lethal. He ordered the cab to fly direct to the spaceport, and to hell with procedure. The flight he was booked to depart on wasn’t due to leave for another two hours. His u-shadow immediately tracked down the first ship bound for a Central world: a PanCephei Line flight to Gralmond, leaving in thirty-five minutes. It managed to reserve him a seat, paying a huge premium to secure the last first class lounge cubicle, but the flight would take twenty hours. Add another twenty minutes to that to reach Earth through the connecting wormholes, and he’d be back in London in just over twenty-one hours.

That’ll be enough time. Surely?

Araminta had been so desperate to get the hell away from Colwyn City, she hadn’t really given any thought to the practical aspect of walking the Silfen paths between worlds. Ambling through mysterious woods dotted with sunny glades was a lovely romantic concept, as well as being a decent finger gesture to Living Dream and Cleric Conservator bastard Ethan. However, a moment’s thought might have made her consider what she was wearing a little more carefully, and she’d definitely have found some tougher boots. There was also the question of food.

None of that registered for the first fifty minutes as she strolled airily down from the small spinney where the path from Francola Wood had emerged. She simply marveled at her own fortune, the way she’d finally managed to turn her predicament around.

Figure out what you want, Laril had told her.

Well, now I’ve started to do just that. I’m taking charge of my life again.

Then the quartet of moons sank behind the horizon. She smiled at their departure, wondering how long it would take before they reappeared again. It had been a fast traverse of the sky, so they must orbit this world several times a day. When she turned to check the opposite horizon, her smile faded at the thick bank of unpleasantly dark clouds that were massing above the lofty hills that made up the valley wall. Ten minutes later the rain reached her, an unrelenting torrent that left her drenched in seconds. Her comfy old fleece was resistant to a mild drizzle, but it was never intended for a downpour that verged on a monsoon. Nonetheless, she scraped the rat-tail strings of hair from her eyes and plodded on resolutely, unable to see more than a hundred meters in front of her. Boots with too-thin soles slipped on the now dangerously slimy grass equivalent. As the slope took her down to the valley floor, she spent more than half her time leaning forward in a gorilla-style crouch to scramble her way slowly onward. That was the first three hours.

She kept walking for the rest of the day, traversing the wide empty valley as the clouds rumbled away. The orange-tinted sunlight helped dry her fleece and trousers, but her underclothes took a long time. They soon started to chafe. Then she reached the wide meandering river.

The bank on her side of the valley was disturbingly boggy. Apparently the Silfen didn’t use boats. Nor was there any sign of ford or even stepping-stones. In any case, she didn’t like the look of how fast the smooth water was flowing. Gritting her teeth, she set off downriver. After half an hour she conceded there was no natural crossing point. There was nothing for it; she would have to wade.

Araminta stripped off her fleece and trousers and blouse, bundling them together with her trusty tool belt-there was no way she was leaving that behind, even though it was far too heavy should she have to swim for it. She waded in, carrying the weighty roll above her head. The bottom of the river was slippery, the water icy enough to make it difficult to breathe, and the flow so harsh as to be a constant fear. In the middle the water came up almost to her collarbones, but she gritted her teeth and kept going.

Her skin was completely numb when she finally came staggering out on the other side. The shakes were so bad, she couldn’t even undo the bundle of clothes that were now her sole possessions in the universe. She spent a long time alternating between being hunched up, shivering violently, and trying to walk while flapping her arms around. Eventually her fingers finally began to work again. Her skin still had a horrible white pallor when she forced shaking limbs into her clothes once more.

The walk didn’t warm her up noticeably, nor did she reach the high tree line on the other side of the valley before night fell. She curled up into a ball beside a small boulder and shivered her way to a fitful sleep. It rained twice in the night.

Morning was when she realized she didn’t have anything to eat. Her tummy was grumbling when she bent over a tiny trickle of water running around the base of the boulder to lap up the icy liquid. She couldn’t remember ever being this miserable; not the day she left Laril, not even watching her apartments going up in flame. This was just wretched. Worse, she’d never felt so alone before. This wasn’t even a human world. If anything went wrong, anything as simple as a sprained ankle or gashed knee, there was no emergency service to call, no help within light-years. She’d just have to lie down here in the valley and starve to death.

Her limbs started trembling with the thought of it, at the full realization of the risk she’d taken yesterday wading through the river. Delayed shock, she decided, from both the river and the terrible fight in Bodant Park.

After that, she was a lot more careful walking up toward the tree line high above. There was still no sign of anything she could eat. Underfoot was just the yellowy grass with its speckle of tiny lavender flowers. As she plodded on gloomily, she tried to remember everything she’d ever heard about the Silfen paths. It wasn’t much; even the general encyclopedia in her storage lacuna contained more mythology than fact on the subject. They existed, there was no such thing as a map, and some medievalist humans set off down them in search of various personal or irrational goals-few of whom were ever heard of again. Except for Ozzie, of course. Now that she thought about it, she’d vaguely known he was a Silfen Friend. And so was Mellanie, whoever she used to be. Araminta could have kicked herself for not running even a simple search with her u-shadow. It was over a week since Cressida had told her about her odd ancestry, and she had never bothered to find out, had not asked a single question. Stupid.

The thought of Cressida made her concentrate. Cressida would never give up or sink into a bout of self-pity. And I’m related to her, too.

She began to sketch out a list of more positive aspects as she drew close to the woodland where she was sure the next path began. For a start, she could sense paths, which meant there would be an ending to this trek, a conclusion. Lack of food was a pig, but she had a strong Advancer heritage, and their ethos was to equip humans to survive the galaxy over. As she’d learned during her childhood on the farm, playing nibble dare with her brother and sisters, it was quite difficult for Advancer humans to poison themselves with alien vegetation. Her taste buds had a strong sampling ability to determine what was dangerous. Unless a plant was hugely toxic, her metabolism could probably withstand it.

Even so, she didn’t like the look of the grass on the mountain.

I’ll wait till the next planet before I resort to that.

The air was noticeably colder by the time she reached the first of the moss-cloaked trees. Way down the valley, thick hammerhead clouds were sliding toward her. Rain at this temperature would wreck what little morale she’d recovered.

Long honey-brown leaves fluttered on the branches overhead as she moved deeper into the woods. Little white whorls like tightly wound spider gossamer peeped up through the grass below her feet. The air became still between the trunks of the trees as she walked forward. Her confidence grew. Somehow in her mind she could sense the changes beginning. When she looked up, the slender glimpses of sky she was afforded through the tangle of branches showed a light turquoise, which was encouraging. It was certainly brighter and more inviting than the atmosphere above the mountains.

Deep within the gaiafield or the reverie of the Silfen Motherholme-whatever realm it was her mind drifted through these days-she could follow the way space subtly transformed around her. The path was constantly in motion. It had no fixed beginning or end; it was a way that responded to the wishes of the traveler. At some incredible distance there was an awareness that seemed to be observing her. That was when she had a vague notion of just how many entities were on the paths. Uncountable millions, all wandering where they might, some with purpose, wishing to know a certain experience, others allowing the paths to take them at random across the galaxy to find and know whatever they would.

New trees began to appear amid the moss-clad trunks, their smooth boles a whitish-green. Lush green leaves overhead reminded her of a deciduous forest in spring. Then ivies and vines swarmed up the trunks, producing cascades of gray flowers. On she walked. The path wound along small hills and into narrow valleys. Streams bubbled along beside her. Once she could hear the pounding thunder of some great waterfall, but it wasn’t on the path, so she didn’t try to follow the sound. Red leaves laced through the light brown canopy. Her boots were treading on small crisp leaves amid the grass. The air grew warm and dry. Hours after she’d left the rainy valley behind, she heard a quiet madrigal being sung in an alien tongue. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know the words; the harmony was exquisite. It even made her stop for a while, allowing herself to listen. It was the Silfen, she knew, some big party of them trotting merrily on their way to a new world offering fresh sights and excitements. For a moment she wanted to run and join them, see what they saw, feel for things the way they did. But then that image of Cressida, smart, self-reliant, focused, trickled up into her mind, and she knew sheepishly that traipsing off with a bunch of alien elves wasn’t the answer. Reluctantly, she set off again. Somewhere far ahead was a Commonwealth world. She was sure of that, although the path was little used nowadays. The Silfen didn’t care for planets where other civilizations arose, at least not above a certain technological level.

Araminta let out a sigh of relief as the trees finally thinned out. It was white and bright up ahead and getting warmer with every footstep forward. The trees with the red leaves became the majority. Their light gray branches were slim, widely separated. When she glanced at them, she could see how fat and waxy the leaves were. She grinned in delight; there was something utterly awesome about having paths between worlds.

The path led her to the edge of the waving trees. She stared out at the vista ahead, blinking against the harsh light. “Oh, Great Ozzie,” she muttered in dismay. As far as she could see, the land was a flat expanse of white sand. The world’s hot sun burned high overhead, unencumbered by any cloud. “It’s a desert!”

When she turned a full circle, she found she’d emerged amid a few paltry clumps of trees that clung to the edge of a long muddy pool. And somewhere in those trees the path was dwindling away to nothing. “No,” she told it. “No, wait. This isn’t right. I don’t want to be here.” But then it was gone. “Oh, bollocks.”

Araminta might have been generally ignorant about alien planets, but one thing she knew for certain was that you didn’t start walking across a desert in the middle of the day, certainly not without any preparation. She took a slow saunter around the pool, trying to spot any sign that other people were around. Apart from some very odd imprints in the dry mud, there was no evidence that anybody used the oasis on any kind of regular basis. With the sun rising higher, she sat with her back to one of the gray tree trunks, making the most of the measly shade cast by its chunky leaves.

All the doubt and self-pity she’d managed to throw off on the path threatened to come swarming back. Maybe the Silfen were more involved with galactic events than anyone suspected. They could have dumped her here deliberately so that she could never lead a human Pilgrimage. Just thinking it through brought up an image of Cressida, her cousin’s eyebrow lifting in that incredibly scornful way of hers. Araminta cringed just at the memory of it.

Come on, pull yourself together.

She looked down at the tool belt. There weren’t a lot of tools, and the power charge on some was well down. But they could be useful. For what? How do I use them to cross a desert? She looked around the silent oasis again, trying to be smart and analytical the way Cressida would be. Okay, so I’ve got water. How do I carry it? Then she realized that there were several stumps sticking out of the ground but no fallen trees. She hurried over to one and saw the wood had been cut clean and level. Someone had sawed it off. She gave the stump a modest grin; it was a great clue. So now start thinking how you can use wood.

The power saw she carried was small, designed to cut small shaped holes, not to fell a tree, however spindly. But she cut around a trunk and managed to topple the tree onto open ground. The black wood under the bark was incredibly hard. She cut a couple of sections off, producing cylinders half a meter long, which she rolled into the shade, sitting down beside them. Her drill bored a hole down the middle. Once she had that, she switched the drill bit to its expansion mode and started to drill again. It took hours, but eventually she’d hollowed out each of the cylinders, leaving a shell of wood a couple of centimeters thick. They made excellent flagons. When she carried them into the pool to fill them with the clear water in the middle, she felt something give under her feet. The dark-blue sphere she fished out had a slippery jellylike shell. An egg! Araminta glanced around nervously, wondering what had laid it, land animal or marine? Perhaps it was a seed.

The flagons were full, and she lugged them out quickly but kept hold of the flaccid egg. It was the size of her fist, the wet surface giving like slippery rubber beneath her fingers. Just looking at it made her stomach growl with hunger. She realized she hadn’t eaten anything since that last breakfast with Tandra and her family, and that was a long time ago now.

With the egg wedged between some stones, she turned her laser to low-power wide beam and swept the ruby-red fan forward and backward across the bendy shell. The color began to darken down to a grubby brown, minute cracks appearing as it slowly hardened. After a few minutes she took a guess that it was done and used her screwdriver to tap a hole through it. The smell wasn’t good, but she cracked a wide hole open and hooked out some of the steaming greenish gloop inside.

Wrinkling her face in dismay, she touched some of the gloop to the tip of her tongue. It didn’t taste of much at all, maybe slightly minty jelly. Secondary routines in her macrocellular clusters interpreted the results firing down the nerve channels from her taste buds. They couldn’t discern anything lethal in the hot organic mush; it certainly wouldn’t kill her outright. Closing her eyes, she swallowed. Her stomach groaned in relief, and she scooped out a larger portion.

After she finished the first egg (she was still half-convinced it was some kind of aquatic seed), she went trawling for some more, recovering nine in total. She cooked another four with the laser, washing down the uninspiring contents with the water from the flagons. The wood wasn’t leaking, which she counted as a minor victory. With her stomach finally quiet, she set about splitting more wood and building a small fire. The flames baked the remaining eggs, saving power in her laser. She was firmly proud of the innovation, though she should have thought of it earlier.

As the flames crackled away, she set about stripping the bark of the tree she’d felled. When it was cut into thin strips, she began to weave a hat. Three attempts later she had a flattish cone that finally stayed in place on her head. She began weaving a basket to carry the eggs.

One more fishing expedition in the late afternoon netted a further five eggs, and then she settled down for a rest before night fell. She’d been working for hours, and the sun was only just starting to sink down toward the horizon. The days here were long ones. Logically, then, the nights would be as well, so she ought to be able to make a decent distance before the sun rose once more.

She dozed before sunset, dreaming of some tall blonde girl who was also alone. The dream was a vague one, and the girl was on a mountainside rather than in a desert. A handsome lad appeared, which set the girl’s heart aflutter, then she was confronting a man with a gold face.

Araminta woke with a start. The man was Gore Burnelli, which made her suspect the dream had emerged out of the gaiafield. It was weak here, but she could still perceive it. Gore had been very angry about something. For a moment Araminta was tempted to delve back into the gaiafield to see if she could recapture the dream but decided against it. The last thing she wanted now was to risk reexposure to Living Dream, though how they would find her here was a moot point. Besides, she had more immediate problems.

With the small bright sun finally sliding below the horizon, she gathered up her makeshift desert survival kit. The flagons were filled to the brim and stoppered with cuts of wood. She hoisted them onto her back with a harness made from woven bark strips, grimacing at the weight. The baked eggs went into her basket, which was slung over a shoulder. More strips of bark were hung around her neck; she couldn’t imagine what she’d need them for, but they were all she had and were the fruits of her own labor. Thus equipped, she set off.

The twilight lingered for a long time, which cheered her; total darkness would have been depressing and not a little bit scary. Stars slowly started to twinkle overhead. None of the constellations were recognizable, certainly not to her encyclopedia files. I’m nowhere near the Greater Commonwealth, then. Despite that, she was confident she wasn’t far away from a path that would take her there. She hadn’t even hesitated when she left the oasis. She knew the direction she should take.

Her flagons were ridiculously heavy, yet she knew she had to carry as much water as was physically possible. Her stomach wasn’t exactly feeling a hundred percent, and hunger was now a constant nag. She thought that perhaps the egg-things weren’t terribly nutritious for humans, after all. Still, at least she hadn’t thrown up. That was a plus.

Araminta grinned at that. Strange how perceptions shifted so much depending on circumstances. A week ago she’d been fretting about buyers for the apartments producing their deposits on time and getting angry with late suppliers. Now, not being sick as she tramped across an unknown desert halfway across the galaxy counted as a reasonable achievement.

After three hours she made herself take a rest. The desert was illuminated by starlight alone now. This world didn’t seem to have a moon. Some of the stars were quite bright. She wished she knew enough astronomy to tell if they were planets. Not that it mattered. She was committed now. It felt good having a physical goal, something she could measure success with.

She drank some water, careful not to spill any. The eggs she left alone. Save them for real hunger pangs.

After half an hour she could feel the air becoming a lot cooler as the day’s heat drained away into the sky. She zipped the fleece back up and set off again. Her feet were sore. The boots were not designed for this kind of walking. At least the terrain was level.

As she trudged on, she allowed herself to wonder what she was going to do when she did reach the Commonwealth again. She knew she’d have only one chance, one choice. Too many people were looking for her. Giving in to Living Dream was something she instinctively shied away from. But Laril, for all he was loyal and trying to help, was in way over his head. Who isn’t? Though perhaps he could negotiate with some faction. But which one? The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced she should contact Oscar Monroe. If anyone could offer her sanctuary, it would be ANA itself. And if it was going to use her, there really was no hope.

Araminta kept plodding forward. Hunger and lack of true sleep were getting to her. She felt exhausted but knew she couldn’t stop. She had to cover as much ground as possible during the night, for she wouldn’t be going anywhere during the day. Her limbs ached, especially her legs, as she just kept walking. Every time she stopped to drink, it was more painful to haul the flagons onto her back again. Her spine was really beginning to feel the weight. It was all she could do to ignore the throbbing in her feet as her boots rubbed already raw skin. Occasionally she’d shiver from the now-icy night air, a great spasm running the length of her body. Whenever that happened, she’d pause for a minute, then shake her head like a dog coming out of water and take that step again. I cannot quit.

There were so many things she needed to do, so many things she had to try to accomplish to stop the whole Living Dream madness. Her mind began to drift. She saw her parents again, not the ones she argued with constantly in her late teens but as they were when she was growing up, indulging her, playing with her, comforting her, buying her a pony for Christmas when she was eight. Even after the divorce she hadn’t bothered to call them. Too stubborn, or more like stupid. And I can just hear exactly what they’d say if I told them I’d met Mr. Bovey and was going multiple. Then there was that time just after Laril went offplanet, clubbing with Cressida most nights, going on dates. Being free, having fun discovering what it was like to be young and single in the Commonwealth. Having independence and a little degree of pride with it.

She wondered if any of that life would ever come back. All she wanted now was for this dangerous madness to be over, for Living Dream to be defeated, and for herself to become Mrs. Bovey. Was it possible to fade back into blissful obscurity? Other people had done it; countless thousands had had their moment of fame or infamy. Mellanie must have achieved it.

The timer in Araminta’s exovision flashed purple, along with an insistent bleeping that wound down auditory nerves, drawing her attention back out of the comfortable reverie. She let out a groan of relief and shrugged out of the harness. At least it wasn’t so cold now. As she held up the flagon to drink, she saw lights crawling across the starfield. She’d lived in Colwyn City long enough to recognize starships when she saw them. “What the hell?” That was when she realized the Silfen path was now behind her. “Ozzie!” Her mind felt a host of quiet emissions within the gaiafield, originating somewhere nearby. She hurriedly guarded her own thoughts, making sure nothing leaked out to warn anyone of her presence.

So where in Ozzie’s name am I?

Araminta looked around again, trying to make out the countryside. There wasn’t much to see, though she thought one section of the horizon was showing a tiny glow. Smiling, she sat down to wait.

Half an hour later, she knew she was right. A pale pink wash of light began to creep upward as dawn arrived. Now she could see she was still in a desert, but this one was mostly ocher rocks and crumbling soil rather than the featureless ocean of sand she’d left behind. The drab brown ground was broken by small patches of green-blue vegetation, hardy little bushes that looked half-dead. Tall fronds of pale cream grass tufts lurked in fissures and stone spills, all of them dry and withered. Away in the distance, half-lost in air shimmer, a broad line of mountains spiked up into the sky. Their height was impressive, yet she couldn’t see any snow on their peaks. The desert stretched all the way across to them. In the other direction was a low ridge, which she began to appreciate was at least five miles away, if not farther. This landscape was so relentlessly monotonous, it was hard to judge perspective.

Whatever, she was on a dirt track made by vehicles of some kind. It led down a long gentle slope to a junction with a solid concrete road. Just the sight of it was a huge relief. From living out in the boondocks of an External planet for nearly twenty years, she knew just how rare roads could be, and that was in the agricultural areas. Everybody used regrav capsules these days. To find this here in the middle of a desert, she’d been lucky. Very lucky.

Thank you, she told the Silfen Motherholme.

She took another drink of water and set off down the track. The distance had fooled her, after all; the road seemed to stay in the same place no matter how much ground she covered toward it. As she strode along the slope, she saw a few regrav capsules flying beyond the ridge; in the other direction nothing was moving above the vast desert. At least that told her which way to turn once she reached the junction. There was obviously some kind of settlement on the other side of the ridge. A few cautious examinations of the gaiafield confirmed that that was where the buzz of minds was situated.

It took her another three hours to reach the crest of the ridge. Again, “ridge” was deceptive. The closer she got, the larger it rose above her. It was like an elongated hill. And the luck that had delivered the road had clearly abandoned her; there wasn’t a single vehicle moving along it all morning.

By the time she finally limped to the crest, she was ready for just about any sight apart from the one that greeted her. She’d almost been right about the elongated hill. The ridge was actually a crater wall-a big crater, complete with a beautiful circular lake that must have been at least twenty miles across. This was the mother of all oases; the inner slopes were all smothered in verdant woodland and cultivated terraces she thought might be vineyards. The road dipped away ahead of her, winding into a small town whose colorful ornate buildings were visible amid a swath of tall trees. Despite being completely exhausted, aching everywhere, and feeling quite worried about the painful state of her feet, Araminta couldn’t help choking out a little laugh as she stared down at the exquisite vista before her. She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and slowly discarded the flagon harness from her back. It was placed carefully behind some rocks at the side of the road, followed by the basket of eggs. With her shoulders rejoicing at the absence of weight, she started off down the slope.

People stared at her as she hobbled into town. Hardly surprising. She still had her silly conical hat on, and her clothes were a mess, filthy from mud and repeated deluges. She guessed she must smell, too. When she allowed herself to receive the local gaiafield, she could sense the instinctive surprise everyone felt at the sight of her. Plenty of dismay was mingled in there as well.

The little town’s buildings were mostly clapboard, painted a variety of bright colors; there were very few modern construction materials visible. It gave the town a comfortably quaint feel. The quiet old style suited the placid lake.

Even with the shade thrown by tall willowy trees, it was hot in the late-morning sun. There weren’t many people about. However, she eventually sensed one old couple who didn’t quite share the disquiet of their fellow citizens. The woman was even emitting a small amount of concern and sympathy from her gaiamotes.

“Excuse me,” Araminta asked. “Can you tell me if there’s somewhere to stay in town?”

The couple exchanged a look. “That’s an offworld accent,” the woman said.

Araminta pressed down on a giggle. To her the woman’s accent was strange; she was almost slurring her words as she ran them together. Thankfully, the pair of them weren’t wearing the old-fashioned kind of clothes Living Dream followers usually favored. But then, it was unusual to see anyone whose body had aged to such a degree. “Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve just arrived.”

The woman emitted a glow of satisfaction. “Good for you, my dear. Have you been away long?”

“I’m, er, not sure,” she replied honestly.

“I tried once,” the woman said with a tinge of melancholia. “Never got anywhere. Maybe I’ll try again after rejuvenation.”

“Um, yes. That hotel …?”

“Why don’t you just get your u-shadow to find out?” the man asked. He had a thatch of white hair that was slowly thinning out. His whole appearance made him seem harmless, but the tone he used was quite sharp.

“I’m a Natural human,” Araminta offered by way of explanation.

“Now, Earl,” the woman chided. “There’s the SideStar Motel off Caston Street, my dear. That’s four blocks this way.” She pointed and gave Araminta a kindly smile. “Cheap, but clean with it. You’ll have no problem there.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Do you have money?”

“Yes. Thank you.” Araminta gave them a jerky nod and set off. She stopped after a couple of paces. “Uh, what is this place?”

“Miledeep Water,” the man said drily. “We’re on Chobamba’s equatorial continent; that’s an External world, you know.”

“Right.” She smiled, trying to give the impression it had just slipped her mind for a moment.

“In fact, we’re the only settlement on this entire continent, which is a desert from shore to shore. Lucky you found us, really.” The irony was quite blatant now, even through the odd accent.

“Yes.”

The woman gave him a mild jab with her hand, hushing him. Araminta smiled again and backed off fast. As she went down Caston Street, she was uncomfortably aware of the pair of them standing watching her. The man’s mind was filling with mild amusement coupled with a trace of exasperation.

It could have been worse, she told herself. They could have been suspicious or recognized me.

Araminta’s encyclopedia files said Chobamba had been settled for barely two hundred fifty years. She guessed that the StarSide Motel was one of the earlier businesses to be established. Its chalets were an exception to the town’s clapboard buildings. They’d been grown from drycoral, which was now long dead and starting to flake under the unremitting sun. It was a similar variety to the pale violet dry coral they’d used for barns back on the farm in Langham, so she knew that for it to reach such a state, it had to be at least a century old.

The motel occupied a wide area, with the chalets spread out in a broad circle to surround a swimming pool. Their concrete landing pads for visiting capsules were all cracked, forced open by weeds and clumps of unpleasant-looking red fungus balls. Only one capsule was currently parked.

Irrigation nozzles were squirting pulses of spray onto its front lawn as she walked up to the reception building. She supposed the whole crater wall must be irrigated.

The owner was in the back office, tinkering with an ancient air-conditioning unit. He came out wiping his hands on his shabby white vest and introduced himself as Ragnar. His glance swept up and down, giving her clothes a quick appraisal. “Been a while since we’ve had anyone walk in,” he said, stressing “walk.” His accent was the same as that of the old couple she’d met.

“But I’m not the first?” she asked warily.

“No, ma’am. The Silfen path ends somewhere out there beyond the crater wall. I’ve met a few travelers like yourself over the years.”

“Right,” she said, relaxing slightly.

Ragnar leaned over the counter, speaking quietly. “You been out there long?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay. Well, you’ve not chosen the best time to come back. These are troubled times for the old Greater Commonwealth, yes indeed.” His eyes narrowed at her blank expression. “You do know what the Commonwealth is?”

“I know,” she said solemnly.

“That’s good. Just checking. Those paths are pretty tangled, by all accounts. I had someone once come straight out of a pre-wormhole century. Boy, oh boy, were they confused.”

Araminta didn’t argue about how unlikely that was. She smiled and held up her cash coin. “A room?”

“No problemo. How long will you be staying?”

“A week.” She handed over the coin.

Ragnar gave her clothes another skeptical viewing as he handed the coin back. “I’ll give you number twelve; it’s a quiet one. And all our rooms have complimentary toiletries.”

“Jolly good.”

He sniffed. “I’ll get you an extra pack.”

Room 12 measured about five meters by three, with a door on the back wall leading to a small bathroom that had a bath and a toilet. No spore shower, Araminta saw in disappointment. She sat on the double bed and stared at her feet; the pain was quite acute now. It took a while for her to tackle the problem of getting her boots off. When she did unfasten them, her socks were horribly bloody. She winced as she rolled them off. Blisters had abraded away, leaving the raw flesh bleeding. There was a lot of swelling, too.

Araminta stared at them, resentful and teary. But most of all she was tired. She knew she should do something about her feet, bathe them at least. She just didn’t have the energy. Instead, she pulled the thin duvet over herself and went straight to sleep.

Paramedics were still working in Bodant Park ten hours after the riot, or fight, or skirmish-whatever you called it. A lot of people were calling it mass murder. Cleric Phelim had thrown the Senate delegation out of his headquarters when they had leveled such an accusation against him, hinting broadly that the Commonwealth would convene a war crimes tribunal with him as the principal accused. But in an extraordinarily lame public relations exercise, five hours after the agents had finished blasting away at each other, he had finally lifted the restriction on local ambulance capsules. However, he wouldn’t switch off the force field weather dome or allow the injured to be transferred to hospitals in other cities. Colwyn’s own hospitals and clinics, already swamped by earlier injuries from clashes between citizens and paramilitaries, were left to cope by themselves.

Casualty figures were difficult to compile, but the unisphere reporters on the ground were estimating close to a hundred fifty bodyloss victims. Injuries were easily over a thousand, probably two with varying degrees of seriousness.

Oscar had directly added two people to the bodyloss count. He wasn’t sure about collateral damage, but it wasn’t going to be small, either; no one in that fight had held back. On one level he was quietly horrified at his own ruthlessness when he’d protected Araminta from the agents converging on her. He’d allowed the combat programs to dominate his responses. Yet his own instincts had contributed, adding a ferociousness to the fight that had exploited every mistake his opponents had made. And his biononics were top of the range, producing energy currents formatted by the best weapons-grade programs the Knights Guardian had designed. It had also helped that Tomansio and Beckia had bounced over to his fight within seconds, adding their firepower and aggression. Yet he’d held by himself for those first few vital moments; the feeling was the same as on the Hanko mission back in the good old days, flying nearly suicidal maneuvers above the star because it was necessary.

Now, the morning after, guilt was starting to creep back. Maybe he should have shown some restraint, some consideration for the innocent bystanders trying to fling themselves clear-though a deeper rationality knew full well that he had had to cover Araminta’s escape. The fate of the Commonwealth had hung on that moment, determining which faction would grab her. Perhaps that was why he’d fought so ruthlessly: He knew he had to succeed. The alternative was too horrific to consider-or allow.

Certainly Tomansio and Beckia had shown a measure of respect that had been absent before. He just wished he’d earned it some other way.

Their borrowed capsule left the Ellezelin forces base in the docks and curved around to cruise above the Cairns, heading for the big single-span bridge.

“Somebody must have got her,” Beckia said; it had almost become a mantra. After they all got clear from the fight in Bodant Park, they’d spent the rest of the night helping Liatris search for the elusive Second Dreamer. Her disappearance was partially their own fault; Liatris had killed every sensor within five kilometers of the park. They’d been so desperate for her to get away that the measure was justified at the time; what surprised them again was how well she’d done it. Their search hadn’t produced the slightest indication where she’d gone since she’d run away from Oscar in the park. On the plus side, no one else who was hunting her (and there were still five functional teams that Liatris had discovered) had found her, either.

“Living Dream hasn’t,” Tomansio said calmly. “That’s what we focus on. Until we confirm her situation, we continue the mission. Right, Oscar?”

“Right.” He saw her face again, that brief moment of connection when the startled, frightened girl had stared into him with frantic eyes. She’d seemed so fragile. How on Earth did she ever stay ahead of everyone? Yet he of all people should know that extraordinary situations so often kindled equally remarkable behavior.

“Any luck with the image review?” Beckia asked.

“No” was Liatris’s curt answer. With Araminta dropping out of sight, their technology expert had launched a search through old sensor recordings to see if they could find how she’d arrived at Bodant Park. The Welcome Team had been analyzing data from every public sensor in the city, trying to track her. Liatris (and the rival agent teams) had glitched the input to their semisentients, sending them off on wild-goose chases. But it was a telling point that none of their own scrutineers had managed to spot her during the day, not even approaching Bodant Park. The first anyone had determined her location was when her outraged thoughts burst into the gaiafield at the sight of her apartments going up in flame. As yet nobody had worked out how she’d managed to conceal herself. Whatever method she’d used, it had proved equally effective in spiriting her away during the height of the fight.

So now Oscar and his team were falling back on two things. One, she would call him on the code he’d given her, possibly out of gratitude or maybe from sheer pragmatism. Two, they were following leads like a professional police detective. Paula would be proud, he thought with a private smile.

Despite a barrage of urgent anonymous warnings, the Welcome Team had arrested most of Araminta’s family, with the notable exception of the redoubtable Cressida, who had pulled a vanishing act equal to Araminta’s. They’d all been brought to the Colwyn City docks for “questioning.” Liatris said Living Dream was bringing in more skilled teams from Ellezelin to perform memory reads.

That just left them Araminta’s friends in the city, though, with the exception of Cressida, she didn’t seem to have many. Which was strange, Oscar thought. She was a very attractive young woman, free and independent. That would normally imply a big social group. So far Liatris had uncovered very few, though a building supply wholesaler called Mr. Bovey was a promising lead. They were due to pay him a discreet visit right after their first appointment.

Tomansio steered the capsule away from the river and over the city’s Coredna district. They landed on a pad at the end of a street and stepped out. The houses here were all made out of drycoral, single-story and small; their little gardens were either immaculately maintained or home to piles of rubbish and ancient furniture. It was one of the poorer areas in the city. All three of them stared at the Ellezelin forces capsule parked at the far end of the street.

“En garde,” Tomansio said quietly.

They were all dressed in a simple tunic of the occupying forces, not armor. Oscar brought his biononics up to full readiness. Defensive energy currents and his integral force field could snap on with a millisecond’s warning. He hoped that would be enough. As the three of them walked down the street, he ran a field scan on the capsule up ahead. It was inert, empty.

“Assigned to squad FIK67,” Liatris told them when they relayed the serial number to him. “Currently on city boundary enforcement duty.”

“Oh, crap,” Oscar muttered as they drew near the house they wanted. His field scan had picked up someone with biononics inside. Whoever they were, they also had their energy currents in readiness mode. “Accelerator?”

“Darwinist,” Beckia decided.

“Separatist,” Tomansio said.

“I’ll take a piece of that action,” Liatris said. “Put me down for the Conservatives.”

Tomansio walked up to the aluminum front door and knocked. They waited tensely as footsteps sounded. The door opened to reveal a shortish, harassed-looking woman wearing a dark blue house robe.

“Yes?” she asked.

Oscar recognized Tandra from the employment file Liatris had extracted out of Nik’s management net.

“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Tomansio said.

Tandra rolled her eyes. “Not another lot. What do you want to ask?”

“May we come in, please?” Oscar asked.

“I thought you Living Dream sods didn’t bother asking.”

“Nonetheless, ma’am, we’d like to come in.”

“Fine!” Tandra grunted and pushed the door fully open. She stomped off down the small hall inside. “Come and join the party. One of your lot’s already here.”

Oscar exchanged a nervous glance with the others and followed Tandra inside. He reached the small lounge and stopped dead, emitting a potent burst of shock into the gaiafield. The woman with active biononics was sitting on the couch with a happy twin on either side of her. She wore an immaculately cut major’s uniform and wore it well, the epitome of a career officer. Martyn was bending down to offer her a cup of coffee.

“Hello, Oscar.” The Cat smiled. “Long time, no see. So what have you been up to for the last thousand years?”

He let out a rueful sigh. Come on, you knew this would happen at some point. “I was in suspension, where you should be.”

“Bored with it,” the Cat said. She glanced at Tomansio and Beckia. Oscar had never seen the Knights Guardian so taken aback; they were even more startled than he was. “My people,” the Cat said mockingly. “Welcome.”

“I’m afraid not,” Tomansio said. “We are working for Oscar.”

“Surely I override that. I created you.”

“They have conviction in their principles,” Oscar said mildly. “Something to do with strength …”

The Cat gave a delighted laugh. “I always did like you.”

“What is this?” Martyn asked, looking from the Cat to Oscar. “I thought you people were all the same.”

“Oh, we are,” the Cat said.

“We are not,” Oscar countered forcefully.

“Mixal, Freddy,” Tandra called. “Come here.”

The Cat’s smile was joyous as her hold around both children tightened. “I like the twins,” she said mildly.

Martyn started forward as Mixal and Freddy began to twist about in her unyielding grip. Tomansio intercepted him fast, restraining him. “Don’t move,” he growled.

Beckia gripped Tandra. “No,” she warned as the woman tried to lunge at her children.

“Let go of me,” Tandra shouted.

“If you move again, I will shoot you,” Oscar told her flatly, hating himself for doing it, but he had no choice. Besides, it might just shock her into obedience. She’d never understand that the twins’ only chance of surviving the next five minutes was to let him and his team take charge.

“Big words,” the Cat said.

“I don’t have many options,” Oscar said.

“How’s Paula?”

“I thought you’d seen her.”

“Not quite. Not yet.”

“There’s always a next time, huh?”

“You should know that better even than I.”

“You know, last time I saw you on the plane to Far Away, you weren’t so bad.”

“I assure you I was,” the Cat said.

“Strange, because that was you now. The you that founded the Knights Guardian is in your personal memory’s future.”

“That sounds horribly convoluted and confusing, darling.”

“Thinking about it, you you never actually met me on the plane to Far Away. Your memories come from the day before you were sent to Randtown.”

“And your point is?”

“Interesting that you’ve researched yourself.”

“Know your enemies.”

“Ah, now that actually does make sense. Especially with the number you have by now.”

“Whereas you live in a happy universe.”

Oscar gave her a lopsided grin. “It has you in it.”

“Ouch. That was personal, darling.”

“Of course it was personal. After what happened on the plane between us, how could it be anything else? Oh, wait, you don’t have that memory.”

The Cat actually looked quite startled. “You have to be kidding, darling. You don’t even like girls.”

“No. But as you said, you like me, and racing toward almost certain death triggers some reflexes no matter what. I just had to work with what was available.”

“Now you’re being insulting.”

Oscar kept his face perfectly blank. “No, I’m still being personal. After all, whose kid did you go and have after the Starflyer crash?”

“Kid?” the Cat spluttered. “Me? With you?”

“What is wrong with you people!” Tandra screamed. “Just go, all of you. Go and leave us alone.”

Oscar held a finger up to the distraught woman, then ignored her. “If you didn’t research that bit, ask the Knights Guardian here you created. Was there a gap in your history around then?”

The Cat glanced at Tomansio, who was still holding back Martyn. “Actually, there is a chunk of your time line missing following the crash,” he said slowly. “Nobody knows what you were doing then.”

“Fuck off,” the Cat snapped at him. “And you”-she glared at Oscar-“you don’t know, either. You were a memorycell dangling on Paula’s chain for a thousand years.”

“The kid visited me after I was re-lifed. Told me the whole story.”

“Stop it. Now.”

“Okay,” he said reasonably. “Did you have time to ask these good people anything?”

“You cannot screw with my mind.”

Oscar winked. “Already done the body.” He turned to Tandra. “Did she ask you about Araminta?”

Tandra stretched her arms out toward the couch, where the twins were still squirming ineffectually. “Please?”

Oscar extended his arm. A red laser shone through the skin on his forefinger, splashing a dot onto Freddy’s forehead. Everyone froze. Freddy started wailing, curling up tighter against the Cat, believing she would protect him. If only you knew how wrong that instinct is, Oscar thought miserably. “Did she?”

“You won’t,” the Cat said; she gave Tandra a brisk smile. “He’s the good guy; he’s not going to shoot children. That’s what I do. And I’m very good at it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t shoot ours,” Oscar said with a cheerful tone. He rather enjoyed the venomous expression on the Cat’s face. “What happened before I got here?”

“Nothing!” Martyn bellowed. “In Ozzie’s name, stop this, please. Please! They’re just children.”

Oscar looked straight at the Cat, unflinching. His target laser switched off. “We’re going to share the knowledge, and then we’re both going to leave.”

“How very weak of you,” the Cat said.

“How very tactical,” Oscar said. “If you resist, the three of us will turn on you. Some of us may suffer bodyloss, but ANA will have us re-lifed in half a day. You, on the other hand, will certainly die. The information will die with you, unused. The Accelerators will not recover Araminta, and you … Oh, yes, what was it now? Message from Paula. She paid a visit to the ice moon Accelerator station. There were several of you in suspension there. There aren’t anymore.”

The Cat gave the crying twins a pointed glance.

“Possible end of the galaxy against two lives,” Oscar said. “No contest. Remember, I was a serving navy officer. I’m used to this situation. Necessity always outweighs sentiment. I blew up Hanko’s sun, which killed an entire planet.”

“Actually, darling, I killed Hanko, but let’s not go into that right now.”

“You don’t get to go into anything. You have one choice-walk away or die. And think about this: If Living Dream or the Accelerators win, your real body will never come out of suspension. The Earth will have been converted to pure energy by the Void’s boundary to fuel some idiot’s daydream long before that scheduled day comes.”

Oscar turned his back on the Cat. And how many have done that and lived? As she didn’t immediately open fire on him, he said to Tandra: “Tell me about Araminta.”

“She was here,” Martyn blurted. “That bitch. She’s the reason all this has happened, and she came here! Here in our home.”

“When?”

“The night before the fight in Bodant Park,” Tandra said wearily. “She said she was frightened of the crowd in Bodant Park and hadn’t got anywhere else to go. We let her sleep here. On the couch.”

“Did she tell you she was the Second Dreamer?”

“No. I still can’t believe it. She’s just a messed-up girl.”

“She’s a lot more than that. How did she get here?”

“She said she walked.”

“I never believed that,” Martyn grumbled.

“Did you see a trike or a taxi?” Oscar asked him.

“No, but it’s a long way to walk from Bodant Park. And she lied about everything else.”

“Okay, and when she left?”

“She walked,” Tandra said. “I saw her go. There was no trike or anything. She was all alone.”

“Where was she going?”

“She didn’t say.” Tandra hesitated. “I thought it might be a man. She used my makeup, took a long time. She looked great when she left.”

“Ah,” Beckia said. “Did she look like herself?”

“Not really; she changed a lot. Her hair was real dark. Her own color is better for her.”

“Clever.”

“Okay, then.” Oscar looked back at the Cat. “You got anything else to ask?”

“Who’s she screwing?” the Cat asked.

“I don’t know,” Tandra said. “I hadn’t seen her for ages. It was a surprise when she came here.”

“So you’re her best friend? The one she turns to in a crisis?”

Tandra shrugged. “I guess.”

“I’ve heard enough.” The Cat released the twins and stood in one swift motion. Oscar blinked. She really had moved fast.

Must be running accelerants, he thought.

Tandra and Martyn rushed for their children.

The Cat gave Oscar a wicked grin. “Be seeing you.”

“I’ll tell the grandkids you’re coming. There’s lots of them. It’s been a thousand years, after all.”

Her chuckle sounded genuine. “You know, maybe it is possible.”

Oscar braced himself. If she was going to do anything, it would be now. The moment passed, and the Cat left.

Beckia let out a low whistle as she relaxed.

Tomansio put his hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “You know, you’re almost as crazy as she is. Er, you and her on the plane. Did that really …”

“A gentleman never tells,” Oscar said solemnly.

“Fuck me.”

“When this is over, I’ll take you up on that. But I think we’d better leave now.” His field scan showed him the Cat’s stolen capsule rising from the pad. Once again he tensed up. Would she fly over the house and blast away at it?

Tandra and Martyn had huddled up protectively, hugging their children hard. The twins were sobbing in distress.

“Take my advice,” Oscar said to them. “Leave here right now. Go stay with friends or in a hotel, anywhere, just not here. There will be more like us coming.”

“Ozzie curse you straight to hell, you bastards,” Martyn hissed furiously. There were tears running down his face.

“I’ve met Ozzie,” Oscar said quietly. “He’s nothing like everyone today thinks he is.”

“Just go,” Tandra implored.

Oscar led Tomansio and Beckia back to their borrowed capsule. As soon as they left the little drycoral house behind, he called Paula.

“The Cat’s here.”

“Are you sure?”

Oscar shuddered. “Oh, yeah. We had quite a chat.”

“And you’re still alive. I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, well, I managed to throw in a cosmic-sized distraction. It put her off her game for a while.”

“Is she joining the hunt for Araminta?”

“Yes.”

“Figures. The Accelerators are desperate to acquire her.”

“I thought we are, too.”

“We are. It has become imperative.”

“I’m doing my best. I’m still hopeful she might just call me. She’s not quite the superwoman everyone thinks.”

“I never believed she was. What’s your next move?”

“We’re going to visit a Mr. Bovey, Liatris has uncovered some kind of connection between him and Araminta.”

“Okay, keep me informed.”

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry; I’m on my way to Viotia.”

“I thought I was doing this so you could keep a low profile.”

“That time is now officially over.”

As he approached the Ocisen fleet, Kazimir maintained a single hyperspace communication link back to ANA. He knew the ExoProtectorate Council was expecting him to provide it with a real-time progress review of the engagement, but that would have given Ilanthe too much information. The Prime ships traveling with the Ocisen Starslayers would have been warned of his approach. Not, he admitted, that it would have done them any good against his abilities. But then, they were never the true threat. Something else would be out there watching, sending precious information on the nature of the deterrence fleet back to the Accelerators. He was sure of it.

Kazimir matched velocity with the vast alien armada and began to examine the ships. With his sensor functions, detection was easy; over two thousand eight hundred Ocisen ships were racing through interstellar space at four and a half light-years an hour, including nine hundred Starslayers. His perception infiltrated the hulls, exposing the weapons they carried, enough quantumbuster types to wipe out most of the Greater Commonwealth worlds should they ever reach their destination. But nothing more, no postphysical systems they’d chanced upon and retro-engineered, which was a relief. He switched his attention to the thirty-seven Prime ships accompanying them; they used a sophisticated hyperdrive configured to keep their distortion to an absolute minimum. Their weapons were considerably more advanced than anything the Ocisens possessed, effectively equal to a Commonwealth Navy Capital-class ship. But that was it. They didn’t pose a danger to him. And there were no other ships, no clandestine ultradrive-powered observers keeping watch, no unaccounted hyperspace links within a light-year of the Ocisen fleet. Each of the Prime ships had a hyperspace link opened to some location back around Commonwealth space; he could sense them, slender threads stretched across the quantum fields, pulsing with information.

The Prime ships were the observers, he decided. Presumably they wouldn’t expect him to be able to eliminate all thirty-seven of them simultaneously. Well, that was their first mistake.

Kazimir manifested extra sensor functions into five of the Prime starships. In spacetime they were barely the size of a neutron, but they could receive all the inter-Prime communications with the hulls. Every Prime ship had a controlling immotile that took the job of a smartcore in human ships, governing the technology directly; it also instructed the immotiles. The ships represented a microcosm of Prime society. Pretechnology, the Primes had communicated by touching their upper-body stalks, allowing nerve impulses to flow between them. That had been superseded by simple electronic carriers, allowing immotiles to extend their immediate control over vast distances.

Kazimir began to read the digitized impulses. The Commonwealth had a lot of experience with inter-Prime communication. The navy had developed a whole range of disruption routines and electronic warfare techniques. If the Primes ever escaped the barriers at the Dyson Pair and posed a threat again, they would find their thoughts literally snuffed out.

The first thing that was apparent was that the Primes in the starships were simple biological hosts to human thoughts. So Paula was right, Kazimir thought grimly.

“Do you concur with my assessment?” he asked ANA:Governance.

“Yes.”

“Very well.” Within the deluge of the neural directives he was aware of a datastream being encrypted and sent down the ultrasecure hyperspace link to the Commonwealth. There was a lot of sensor data, but again, nothing beyond Capital-class level. “The Accelerators will know I’ve intercepted the fleet when the signal is severed,” he said. “But I can ensure they don’t know the nature of the interception.”

“Proceed.”

Kazimir manifested a series of aggressive function inside each Prime starship and used them to attack the hyperspace communication systems. As the secure links failed, he switched to breaking the hyperdrives themselves. The ships fell back into real spacetime within fifty milliseconds of each other. With their flight ability neutralized, he set about eliminating the onboard weapon systems. It took a second and a half for his aggressor functions to break down the hardware. Then he turned his attention to the Ocisens.

The problem he had was eliminating the military threat the aliens posed without causing catastrophic loss of life. He couldn’t simply destroy the drives of so many ships, because the empire didn’t have the ability to rescue so many of its own kind from such a distance. Instead he manifested specific aggressor functions inside each of the starships and ruined the weapons beyond repair or recovery. Between them, they weren’t left with enough components to make a single laser, let alone the more advanced devices.

Total elapsed time to nullify all two thousand eight hundred starships was eleven seconds, enough for them to realize something was starting to go wrong but denying them any response time. Not that they could have done anything against him even if they had known.

Kazimir let them go. His energy signature flashed back to the area of space where the big Prime ships were floating helplessly. This time he manifested a communication function into one of the ships, its ability identical to the inter-Prime system. Like all human minds, the one occupying the Prime bodies utilized association as its main memory routine.

Kazimir injected: Origin.

Identity.

Purpose.

Each one triggered a deluge of thoughts. Kazimir identified that the animating personality was derived from Chatfield’s mind, his human persona stripped of most emotional traits. His sense of purpose was resolute, as was his devotion to the Accelerators. The Prime ships were to escort the Ocisens and protect them from the Commonwealth Navy’s attempts to intercept, but their most important mission was to report on the appearance of the deterrence fleet, its nature and capability. After that there was no requirement left.

A sensation of puzzlement flashed between the immotile and its motiles as the burst of thoughts Kazimir had elicited faded from its main consciousness. Realization followed. It sent a specific code to the scuttle bomb. Kazimir wasn’t quite quick enough to prevent it. Now that he knew what to look for, he quickly manifested a function into the remaining ships that disabled the scuttle in all of them.

“Do you have sufficient evidence now?” he asked ANA:Governance.

“I do. The Accelerators have acted recklessly. In supporting the Ocisens and manipulating Living Dream, they have violated the principles under which I was established. I will convene a suspension conclave.”

“They will know the deterrence fleet has intercepted the Ocisen fleet even though they remain unaware of my nature. They must assume the worst, that I have uncovered their exploitation of the Primes.”

“That would be logical. However, there is little their agents can do. Once suspension is enacted, their operations will be exposed to full scrutiny and neutralized.”

Kazimir reviewed the starships as they drifted passively. “Nonetheless, I still don’t see what the Accelerators hoped to achieve, outside crude political manipulation. Ilanthe is smarter than that. I would feel more comfortable being on hand during the hearing. I will return immediately.”

“What about the Ocisen fleet? I thought you were going to monitor them.”

“They are incapable of causing any harm. When the commander realizes that, they will have no option but to return home. Our Capital-class ships can assume observation duties.”

“The defeat to the commander’s pride is considerable. It may not want to return to the empire.”

“That will be something for the Capital ships to determine. I am coming back to Sol.”

“As you wish.”

Kazimir manifested a communication function and broadcast a simple message to the ships. “Attention the Chatfield personalities, this is the Commonwealth Navy deterrence fleet. We know what you are and what you intended. Do not attempt any further suicide bids. Capital-class ships will rendezvous with you shortly. You will be taken into navy custody.”

With that, Kazimir withdrew his manifested functions and headed back toward the Sol system.