The Evolutionary Void

FOUR

THE DAWN LIGHT crept around the sharp crystal skyscrapers at the heart of Darklake City, illuminating a clear sky with a mild wind blowing in from the west. On the fifty-second floor of the Bayview Tower, Laril blinked against the glare that shone directly through the curving floor-to-ceiling window of the lounge. He was sprawled in the couch he’d spent the night on, dressed in a loose striped bed shirt. His u-shadow turned up the shading on the window as he moved his shoulder blades slowly, trying to work the tired knots out of his muscles. Newly active biononics didn’t seem to have much effect on the stiffness; that or he wasn’t as adept at their programming as he liked to think he was.

A maidbot brought over a mug of hot, bitter coffee, and he sipped it carefully. There was a croissant, as well, that started to flake and crumble as soon as he picked it up. The culinary units on the Inner worlds were unbeatable when it came to synthesizing the basics. A five-star gastronomic experience still required a skilled chef to put together, but for a simple pickup meal, fully artificial was the way to go.

He walked over to the darkened glass and looked down across the city grid. Capsules already were streaming above the old road arteries, ovals of colored chrome zipping along at their regulation hundred-meter altitude. Out on the lake from which the city drew its name, big day cruisers were stirring, edging into the quaysides. The quaint old ferryboats were already plowing off to the first ports on their timetables, churning up a bright green wake. As yet, few pedestrians were abroad. It was too early for that, and people were still in shock over the Sol barrier. Most of the urban population had done as Laril had and spent the night receiving unisphere reports on the barrier and what the President and the navy were going to do about it. The short answer was “Very little.” Oaktier’s Planetary Political Congress had issued a public statement of condemnation to the Accelerator Faction, calling for the barrier to be lifted.

Big help, Laril thought. That was the one aspect of converting to Higher that he still couldn’t quite help feeling scornful over: the incredible number of official committees. There was one for everything, at both a local and a planetary level, all integrated in a weird hierarchy to form the world’s representational government. But that was the Higher way of involving all its citizenry in due process, of giving everyone the authority to act in an official capacity, the logical conclusion of Higher “I am government” philosophy. As he was only just qualifying as a Higher citizen, Laril could stand for election only into the lowest grade of committee, and there were at least seventeen levels beneath the executive grade. Oaktier didn’t have a President, or Chair, or Prime Minister; it had a plenum cabinet (self-deprecatingly referred to as the Politburo by locals) of collective responsibility. When the constitutional structure was explained in his citizenship classes, Laril somehow hadn’t been surprised. Even with all the daily legal datawork handled by super-smartcores, you still basically needed a permit to take a crap, Oaktier was that bureaucratic. But at that, it was one of the more liberal Higher planets.

In an excellent reflection of both its excessive democracy and its forbearance, Laril realized the planetary gaiafield was almost devoid of emotional texture this morning. Everyone was withholding his or her consciousness stream, a universal condemnatory reaction to Living Dream’s Pilgrimage, which was the root cause of the crisis.

Again, big help; although it was difficult to be so cynical about that. It showed a unity and resolve that even he found impressive.

Laril just hoped he could find the same level of resolve within himself. As soon as Araminta’s call had broken up, his u-shadow had relayed the shotgun that had been loaded into Chobamba’s unisphere. He prayed she’d take the warning seriously and get the hell off Chobamba. She certainly hadn’t called him again, which meant she’d been caught or was running. All he could do was assume the latter and prepare for it. She would call him for advice and help again, which was the antithesis of Oaktier’s stupid bureaucracy. This was one person making a difference, a big difference. It was what Laril had always imagined he would be doing, influencing events across the Commonwealth with his smart thinking and innate ability to dodge trouble. Now he finally had that chance. He was determined to deliver exactly what Araminta wanted.

First off, he didn’t quite trust the code she’d given him for Oscar. Even if Oscar whoever-he-was had helped her at Bodant Park, there was no way of knowing if he worked for ANA as he claimed. To keep her away from the Accelerators, it needed to be the navy or an opposing faction. Laril didn’t want to go running to the navy; trusting authority like that wasn’t right for him. Besides, that would effectively be handing Araminta over to the President, who would have to make some kind of political compromise. Far better she team up with a faction, which would take a more direct line of action, which would have a plan and get things done.

So he spent the night using his u-shadow to make delicate inquiries among people he used to associate with a long time ago. Every precaution was taken: one time codes, shielded nodes, remote cutoff routing. All the old tricks he’d learned back in the day. And the magic was still there. A friend on Jacobal had a colleague on Cashel whose great-great-uncle had once been involved with the Protectorate on Tolmin and so had channels to a supporter who had a contact with the Custodian Faction. That contact supplied a code for someone called Ondra, who was an “active” custodian.

After each call Laril rebuilt his electronic defenses within the unisphere, making very sure no one was aware of his interest in the factions. It must have worked; by the time he got Ondra’s code, none of his safeguards had detected scruitineers or access interrogators backtracking his ingenious routing.

He made the final call. Ondra was certainly very interested when he explained who he was. And yes, there were custodians on Oaktier who might be able to offer “advice” to a friend of the Second Dreamer. That was when Laril laid out his conditions for contact. He was pleased with what he’d come up with. Over an hour had been spent remote surveying the Jachal Coliseum, seven kilometers from the Bayview Tower. He’d reviewed the local nodes and loaded a whole menu of monitor software. Then he’d gone through a virtual map, familiarizing himself with the layout on every level, working out escape routes. Finally, he’d hired three capsule cabs at random and parked them ready around the coliseum on public pads. It was a superb setup, in place before he even spoke to Ondra. The meeting was agreed for nine-thirty that morning. Someone called Asom would be there, alone.

Laril finished his coffee and turned from the big window. Janine was coming out of the bedroom. They’d been together for six months now. She was only sixty, rejuvenated down to a sweet-looking twenty. That she was migrating inward at her age spoke for how insecure she was. It made her easy for his particular brand of charm; he understood exactly how the promise of sympathy and support would appeal to her. That kind of predatory behavior presumably would be discarded along with other inappropriate character qualities before he’d achieved true Higher citizenship. In the meantime, she was a pleasant enough companion. The Sol barrier, though, had brought back all her anxieties in the same way it had seen a resurgence of his more covetous traits.

Her eyes were red-rimmed even though there hadn’t yet been tears. The thick mass of her curly chestnut hair hung limply, curtaining her heart-shaped face. She gave him such a needy look, he almost swayed away. Unlike everyone else, her emotions were pouring out into the gaiafield, revealing a psyche desperately seeking comfort.

“They can’t get through the barrier,” she said in a cracked voice. “The navy’s been trying for hours. There are science ships there now, trying to analyze its composition.”

“They’ll work something out, I’m sure.”

“What, though? Without ANA we’re lost.”

“Hardly. The Accelerators can’t get into the Void without the Second Dreamer.”

“They’ll get her,” Janine wailed. “Look at what they’ve done already.”

Laril didn’t comment, though it was tempting. He ran a hand over his chin, finding a lot of stubble there. Araminta always used to complain about that. I need a shower and clean clothes. “I’m going out.”

“What? Why?”

“I have to meet someone, an old friend.”

“You are kidding,” she squawked as outrage fought with fright. “Today? Don’t you understand? They’ve imprisoned ANA.”

“The biggest victory they can have is to change our lives. I am going to carry on exactly as before. Anything else is allowing them to win.”

She gave him a confused look, her thoughts in turmoil. More than anything she wanted to believe in him, to know he was right. “I didn’t think of that,” she said meekly.

“That’s all right.” Laril put his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. She responded halfheartedly. “See?” he said gently. “Normality. It’s the best way forward.” The prospect of making contact with a faction agent, of becoming a galactic power player, was making him inordinately randy.

“Yes.” She nodded, her arms going around him. “Yes, that’s what I want. I want a normal life.”

Laril checked the clock function in his exovison display. There was just enough time.

The taxi capsule slid out of the vaulting entrance to the hanger that made up the seventy-fifth floor of Bayview Tower. Laril sat back on the curving cushioning, feeling on top of the world. It doesn’t get any better than this, not ever.

Direct flight time between Bayview Tower and the Jachal Coliseum was a couple of minutes at best. Laril had no intention of flying direct. Until he was absolutely sure of the custodian representative’s authenticity, he wasn’t taking any chances. So they flew to a marina first, then a touchdown mall, the Metropolitan Opera House, the civic museum, a crafts collective house. Twelve locations after leaving the tower, the taxi was finally descending vertically toward the coliseum. From his vantage point it looked like he was sinking down to a small volcano. The outside slope of the elongated cone had been turned to steep parkland, with trees and fields and meandering paths. There were even a couple of streams gurgling down between a series of ponds. Inside the caldera walls were tiers of extensive seating, enough to contain seventy thousand people in perfect comfort. The arena field at the bottom was capable of holding just about any event from concerts to races to display matches and Baroque festivals. Ringing the apex of the coliseum was a broad lip of flat ground that hosted a fence of two-hundred-year-old redka trees, huge trunks with wide boughs smothered in wire-sponge leaves the color of mature claret.

Laril’s taxi capsule dropped onto a public landing pad in the shade of the trees. He immediately examined the area with his biononic field scan function. It was one of the functions he was adept at, and he’d refined the parameters during the taxi flight. When he stepped out, the biononics were already providing him with a low-level force field. He wore a blue-black toga suit with a strong surface shimmer, so there was no visual sign of his protection. The scan function was linked directly to the force field control, so if he detected any kind of threat or unknown activity, the force field would instantaneously switch to its strongest level. It was a smart procedure that, along with his other preparations, provided him with a lot of confidence.

He walked across the lip to the top seating tier. His u-shadow was maintaining secure links to the emergency taxis and the coliseum’s civic sensor net, assuring him that everything was running smoothly. As agreed with Asom, he was the first to arrive. There were no nasty surprises waiting for him.

A steep glidepath took him down the inner slope to the arena field. He kept looking around the huge concrete crater for any sign of movement. Apart from a few bots working their way slowly along the seating rows, there was nothing.

Once he reached the bottom, he expanded his field scan function again. No anomalies and no unusual chunks of technology within five hundred meters. It looked like Asom was obeying his ground rules. Laril smiled in satisfaction; things were going to be just fine.

A slightly odd motion on the opposite side of the field caught his eye. Someone was walking out of the cavernous performers’ tunnel. She was naked, not that such a state was in any way erotic, not for her. Her body was like a skeleton clad in a toga-suit haze. She walked purposefully over the grass toward him; two long ribbons of scarlet fabric wove sinuously in her wake.

“Asom?” Laril asked uncertainly. Suddenly this whole meeting seemed like a bad idea. It got worse. His connection to the unisphere dropped out without warning, which was theoretically impossible. Laril’s force field snapped up to its highest rating. He took a couple of shaky paces backward before turning to run. Files in his storage lacuna were already displaying escape routes to the emergency taxis he’d mapped out earlier. It was fifteen paces to a service hatch, which led to a maze of utility tunnels. The skeletal woman-thing would never be able to track him in there.

Three men appeared in the seating tiers ahead of him; they just shimmered into existence as their one-piece suits discarded their stealth camouflage effect.

Laril froze. “Ozziecrapit,” he groaned. His field scan showed that each of them was enriched with sophisticated weapons. Their force fields were a lot stronger than his. They advanced toward him.

His exovision displays abruptly spiked with incomprehensible quantum fluctuations. He didn’t even have time to open his mouth to scream before the whole universe turned black.

Arranging an entrapment had never been so easy. Valean was almost ashamed by the simplicity. Even before she landed at Darklake City, Accelerator agents had secreted subversion software into the Bayview Tower net. Incredibly, Laril used his own apartment’s node to access the unisphere. She wondered if all his calls to various old colleagues were some kind of subtle misdirection. Surely nobody was so inept. But it appeared to be real. He genuinely thought he was being smart.

So she replied personally to his final call, assuming the Ondra identity. Again, the suggestion of the coliseum as a meeting point was a shocking failure of basic procedure. Its thick walls provided a perfect screen from standard civic and police scrutiny. The Accelerator team members were laughing when they found his “escape” taxis parked suspiciously close to utility tunnel exits. And as for the antiquated monitor software he’d loaded into the coliseum’s network …

Valean waited in the darkness of the performers’ tunnel as he slid down the glidepath. His field function scan probed around, its rudimentary capability finally confirming how woefully naive he was. Her own biononics deflected it easily. As soon as three of her team were in place behind him, she walked out into the morning sunlight. Laril seemed so shocked, he didn’t even attempt any hostile activity. Lucky for him, she thought impassively.

The team closed in smoothly. Then Valean’s field scan showed her a sudden change manifesting in the quantum fields. Her integral force field hardened. Weapons enrichments powered up.

Laril vanished.

“What the fuck!” Digby exclaimed.

The Columbia505 was hanging two hundred kilometers above Darklake City to monitor the whole Jachal Coliseum affair. Digby’s u-shadow had kept him updated on the software shenanigans in the Oaktier cybersphere, how Valean had run electronic rings around poor old Laril. Given the nature of the people he had to watch during his professional career, Digby normally felt no sympathy for any of them. Laril, however, was in a class of his own when it came to ineptitude. Sympathy didn’t quite apply, but he was certainly starting to feel a degree of pity for the fool who’d been dragged into an event of which he had no true understanding.

Digby watched in growing disbelief as Laril’s taxi landed on the lip of the coliseum. The man had absolutely no idea what he was walking into. The Columbia505’s sensors could see the Accelerator agents from two hundred kilometers’ altitude. Yet Laril’s own field function scan was so elementary that he couldn’t spot them from two hundred meters.

Letting out a groan, Digby brought up the starship’s targeting systems. No doubt about it, he was going to have to intervene. Paula was absolutely right: Valean could not be allowed to snatch Laril. Precision neutron lasers locked on to Valean and her team.

He still wasn’t sure if he should take the Columbia505 down to retrieve Laril afterward or simply remove Valean’s subversive software from his “escape” taxis and steer them to a rendezvous. He was inclined to pick Laril up himself; the man was a disaster area and shouldn’t be allowed to wander around the Commonwealth by himself, not with his connection to Araminta.

Valean emerged from the tunnel and walked toward a startled Laril. Three of the eight Accelerator agents discarded their stealth. Digby designated the fire sequence.

Strange symbols shot up into his exovision. It was the last thing he’d expected. A T-sphere enveloped Darklake City.

Laril teleported out of Jachal Coliseum.

The T-sphere withdrew instantaneously.

Digby reviewed every sensor input he could think of. Valean and her team appeared equally surprised by Laril’s magic disappearing act, launching a barrage of questors into the city net. To Digby there was something even more disturbing than their reaction: The T-sphere hadn’t registered in any Oaktier security network.

That would take a level of ability that went way beyond a team of faction agents.

He called Paula. “We have a problem.”

“A T-sphere?” she said once he’d finished explaining. “That’s unusual. There’s no known project on Oaktier using a T-sphere, so that implies it’s covert. And given that no official sensor could detect it, I’d say it was also embedded. Interesting.”

“The Columbia505’s sensors gave it a diameter of twenty-three kilometers.”

“Where’s the exact center?”

“Way ahead of you.” Visual sensor images of Darklake City flashed up in Digby’s exovision. They focused on the Olika district, one of the original exclusive areas bordering the lakeshore; its big houses sat in lavish grounds, a mishmash of styles representing the centuries over which they’d been added to and modified. In the middle of the district was a long road running parallel to the shore. The center of the image expanded, zooming in on a lavender-colored drycoral bungalow wrapped around a small swimming pool. Probably the smallest house in the whole district.

“Oh, my God,” Paula said.

“That’s the center,” Digby said. “1800 Briggins. Registered to a Paul Cramley. Actually, he’s lived there for … oh. That can’t be right.”

“It is,” Paula told him.

“Do you think the T-sphere generator is underneath the bungalow? I can run a deep scan.”

“Don’t bother.”

“But …”

“Laril is perfectly safe. Unfortunately, Araminta won’t be able to call him for advice now, not without paying the price to Paul’s ally.”

“Then you know this Cramley person? My u-shadow can’t find anything on file.”

“Of course not. Paul was busy wiping himself from official databases before Nigel and Ozzie opened their first wormhole to Mars.”

“Really?”

“Just keep watching Valean.”

“Is that it?”

“For the moment. I’ll try and talk to Paul.”

Digby knew better than to ask.

Laril knew the light and air had changed somehow. He wasn’t standing in the sunlight of the coliseum, and the air he gulped down was perfectly conditioned. It was also quiet. He risked opening his eyes.

Of all the possible fates, he wasn’t prepared for the perfectly ordinary, if somewhat old-fashioned, lounge he was in. The lighting globes were off, making it appear gloomy. Its only illumination came from sunlight leaking through the translucent gray curtains pulled across tall arching windows. He could just make out some courtyard with a circular swimming pool on the other side of the glass. The floor was dark wood planks, their grain almost lost with age and polish. Walls were raw drycoral, lined with shelves.

There were some chic silver globe chairs floating a few centimeters above the floorboards. A man was sitting on one of them, its surface molded around him as if it were particularly elastic mercury. His youthful features gave him a handsome appearance, especially with thick dark hair cut longer than the current style. Instinct warned Laril he was old, very old. This wasn’t someone he could bullshit like his ex-business partners and girlfriends. He didn’t even risk using his field function scan. No way of telling how the man would react.

“Uh.” He cleared his throat as his heart calmed a little. “Where am I?”

“My home.”

“I don’t … uh, thank you for getting me out of there. Are you Asom?”

“No. There’s no such person. You were being played by the Accelerators.”

“They know about me?”

The man raised an eyebrow contemptuously.

“Sorry,” Laril said. “So who are you?”

“Paul Cramley.”

“And am I in even deeper shit now?”

“Not at all.” Paul grinned. “But you’re not free to go, either. That’s for your own good, by the way; it’s not a threat.”

“Right. Who else knew about me?”

“Well, I did. And it looks like the stealthed ultradrive starship in orbit does. So along with Valean and her team, that makes three of us. I daresay more are on their way.”

“Oh, Ozzie.” Laril’s shoulders sagged from the pressure of dismay. “My software isn’t as good as I thought, is it?”

“In my experience, I’ve never seen worse. And trust me, that’s a lot of experience. But then I don’t think you realize exactly what you’re dealing with.”

“Okay, so who are you? What’s your interest?”

“You should be about to find out. I’m guessing that an old acquaintance is going to call any minute now. And when you’re as old as me, your guesses are certainties.”

“If you’re old and you’re not in ANA, you’re probably not a faction agent.”

“Glad to see you have some gray matter, after all. Ah, here we go.”

A portal projected an image of a woman into the lounge. Laril groaned. He didn’t need any identification program to recognize Paula Myo.

“Paula,” Paul said in a happy voice. “Long time.”

“This crisis seems to be bringing the golden oldies out to play in droves.”

“Is that resentment I hear?”

“Just an observation. Laril, are you all right?”

He shrugged. “I suppose, yeah.”

“Don’t ever do anything as stupid as that again.”

Laril scowled at the investigator’s image.

“Thanks for exiting him,” Paula said. “My own people would have been noisy.”

“Not a problem.”

“It won’t take Valean long to determine your location. She’ll visit.”

“She’s not as stupid as Laril, surely.”

“No,” Paula agreed as Laril bridled silently. “But she has a mission, and Ilanthe won’t give her a choice.”

“Poor her.”

“Quite. Give me its access code, please.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Paul. We don’t have the time.”

Paul gave her projected image a martyred look. “Connecting you directly.”

Paula’s image winked off.

“Who’s she talking to?” Laril asked.

“Next best thing now that ANA’s unavailable,” Paul said, sounding indifferent.

“So … I’m sorry, I still don’t get who you are.”

“Just a bloke who has been around for a long while. That gives me a certain perspective on life. I know my own mind, and I don’t like what the Accelerators are doing. Which is why I helped you out.”

One of the silver globes floated over to Laril, who sat down gingerly. Once the surface had bowed around him, it was actually rather comfortable. “So how old are you?”

“Put it this way: When I grew up, no one had traveled farther than the moon. And half the planet thought that was a hoax. Dickheads.”

“The moon? Earth’s moon?”

“Yeah. There’s only one: the moon.”

“Great Ozzie, that makes you over a thousand.”

“Thousand and a half.”

“So why haven’t you migrated inward?”

“You speak like that’s inevitable. Not everyone accepts that biononics and downloading into ANA is the path forward. There are still a few of us independents left. Admittedly, we do tend to be quite old. And stubborn.”

“So what are you trying to achieve?”

“Self-sufficiency. Liberty. Individualism. Neutrality. That kind of thing.”

“But doesn’t Higher culture give …” Laril trailed off as Paul raised his eyebrow again.

“And you were acting on which committee’s authority this morning?” Paul asked mildly.

“Okay. I’m having trouble accepting Higher life. I just don’t see what else there is.”

“Get your biononics. Work out how to use them properly-I mean that in your case. Get yourself a stash of EMAs and strike out for whatever you want.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Actually it’s a bitch. And I still haven’t got a clue how I’m going to finish up. Postphysical, presumably. But when I do, it’ll be on my terms, not something imposed on me.”

“You know, that’s the way I like to think.”

“I’m flattered. Ah, looks like Valean has found us.”

Laril gave the windows an anxious look. There was the unmistakable high-pitched whistling of a capsule descending fast outside. When he squinted through the windows looking out across the long garden, he saw two chrome-yellow ovoids come to a halt above the freshly mown grass. The skeletal woman stepped out of the first. Laril’s heart started to speed up at the sight of her. Those strange carmine streamers swam along behind her as she advanced on the bungalow. Six weapons-enriched agents followed her, various hardware units emerging from their skin to poke aggressive nozzles at the bungalow.

“Do we need to, uh, maybe get to safety?” Laril stammered. His biononics reported that a sophisticated field scan was sweeping through the bungalow. He brought his integral force field up to full strength.

Paul sat even farther back in his silver chair, putting his hands behind his head to regard the approaching Accelerator team nonchalantly. “You can’t get anywhere safer in the Commonwealth.”

“Oh, shit,” Laril moaned. He desperately wanted to ask: How safe, really? If Paul had really good defenses, why hadn’t he shot the capsules out of the sky or teleported out or called up his own team of enriched bodyguards? Just … do something!

Valean walked up to a window. She reached out and touched it with her index finger. The window turned to liquid and splashed down into the lounge, running across the floorboards.

Laril sat up straight, his back rigid as fear locked his muscles. Valean stepped through the open archway, gently pushing the gauzy curtains apart. Her glowing pink eyes searched around the room.

“Paul Cramley, I believe,” she said with a half smile.

“Correct,” Paul said. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave now. Laril is my guest.”

“He must come with me.”

“No.”

Laril’s exovision showed him those weird quantum spikes again. A pale green phosphorescent glow enveloped Valean and her team.

“I’m afraid your T-sphere won’t work,” she said. “We’re counter-programmed.”

Paul cocked his head to one side, long hair flopping down his cheek. “Really? How about I use irony instead?”

Valean opened her mouth to speak. Then she frowned. Her arms moved. Fast. They became a blur, her emerald aurora brightening in the wake of the motion, leaving a broad photonic contrail through the air. Then she turned, which was also incredibly fast. Laril had to close his eyes as the haze around her grew dazzling. His biononics threw up retinal filters, allowing him to glance at the Accelerator team again. They’d turned into cocoons of brilliant lime green. He could just discern outlines of their bodies thrashing about inside each tiny illuminated prison, moving hundreds of times faster than normal. Fists were raised to hammer at the border, striking it at incredible speed and frequency. It was as if they’d turned to solid smudges of light. Valean’s red streamers swirled about in agitation as the color drained out of them. They turned black, then stiffened and began to crumble into small flakes that drifted down like a drizzle of ash.

Inside the green prisons the team members had stopped moving, making it easier to see them. He watched Valean as her legs gave way. A fast smear of green light followed her to the ground. For a second her body remained there on hands and knees before another flash of light chased her to a prone position. The green glow faded to an almost invisible coating. Laril watched her odd skin darken; then its shimmer died to reveal a leatherlike hide. It began to constrict even further around her skeleton. Cracks split open, and thick juices oozed out, solidifying into stain puddles on the floorboards.

“Oh, Ozzie!” Laril covered his mouth as he started to gag and looked away quickly. Each member of the Accelerator team had suffered the same fate. “What happened?”

“Age,” Paul said. “Gets us all in the end-unless you’re careful, of course.” He climbed down off the chair and walked over to Valean’s desiccated corpse. The green hue finally vanished, replaced by a glimmering force field. I accelerated her inside an exotic effect zone, like a miniature wormhole. Normally it’s used to suspend temporal flow, but the opposite effect is just as easy to engineer; it simply requires a larger energy input. Sort of like the Void, really.”

Laril almost didn’t want to ask. He couldn’t help thinking what it must have been like for Valean and her agents, imprisoned inside a tiny envelope of exotic force, enduring utter solitude for days on end as the outside world stood still. “How long?”

“About two years. She had very powerful biononics, but even they couldn’t sustain her indefinitely. Ordinarily the biononic organelles feed off cellular protein and all the other gunk floating around inside the membrane, which is constantly resupplied by the body. But in the temporal field she wasn’t getting any fresh nutrients. Her biononics ran out of cellular molecules eventually. In the end they were like a supercancer eating her from the inside, enhancing the starvation and dehydration.”

Laril shuddered. “But her force field is still working.”

“No, my defense systems are generating that. No telling what booby traps she programmed into herself at the end. Just because she’s dead doesn’t mean she’s harmless.”

Once again the T-sphere established itself; the corpses were teleported out of the lounge. Laril didn’t want to know where they’d gone. “What now?” he asked.

Paul gave him a brisk smile. “You’re my house guest until Araminta calls you-or doesn’t-and this is all over.”

“Oh.”

“Cheer up. ‘Here’ is actually quite dimensionally interesting. After all, you don’t really think I’ve spent the last thousand years cooped up in the same bungalow, do you?”

“Ah … no. Put like that, I suppose not.”

“Jolly good. So have you had breakfast yet?”

As soon as Paul Cramley transferred her call, Paula’s cabin portal projected a quaint image of tangerine and turquoise sine waves undulating backward into a vanishing point. “I might have known you’d be taking an interest,” she said.

“I always take an interest in human affairs,” the SI said.

“First question: Can you get through the Sol barrier?”

“Sorry, no. If ANA can’t, what hope does an antiquity like me have?”

“Are you trying to engage my sympathy?”

“You have some?”

“That was uncalled for. But as it happens, I do. For my own species.”

“Paula, are you cross with me?”

“I shared ANA’s opinion. Your interference in our affairs was unacceptable.”

“I hardly ever interfered,” the SI protested.

“We unmasked eighteen thousand of your agents. Your network was larger than the Starflyer’s.”

“I’m hurt by that comparison.”

“Oh, shut up,” Paula snapped. “Why did you order Paul to save Laril?”

“I didn’t order Paul to do anything. Nobody orders Paul around these days. You know he’s well on his way to becoming postphysical?”

“Well, I didn’t think he was fully human anymore.”

“That old body you saw with Laril is only a tiny aspect of him now. If you want to worry about nonhuman interference, you should keep a closer eye on him and the others like him.”

“There are others?”

“Not many,” the SI admitted. “You and Kazimir are the oddities. Everyone else of your vintage either downloaded or moved off in their own direction like Paul.”

“So you and he are colleagues? Equals?”

“That’s a very humancentric viewpoint: rate everyone according to their strength.”

“More an Ocisen one, I feel; perhaps we can include the Prime, too.”

The undulating sine waves quickened. “Okay, all right. Paul and I have a special relationship. You know, he actually wrote part of the original me. Back in the day he was a CST corporate drone in their advanced software department working on artificial intelligence development.”

“Very cozy. So how big an interest have you been taking in the Pilgrimage?”

“Big. That idiot Ethan really could trigger the end of the galaxy. I’d have to move.”

“How terrible.”

“Have you ever tried moving a planet?”

Paula gave the sine waves a shrewd stare. “No, but I know a man who probably can. How about you?”

“Yes,” the SI said. “Troblum is actually trying to get in touch with you.”

“Sholapur wasn’t exactly invisible. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“No, I mean he was really trying. He knew about the Swarm; he was going to make a deal.”

“Irrelevant now.”

“Paula, I’ve been in touch with him since Sholapur.”

“Where is he?”

“On his starship somewhere. Last time we spoke, he was still in range of the unisphere; I have no idea of the location. His smartcore is well protected, I urged him to get in touch with you.”

“Why?”

“He helped build the Swarm. He might be able to get through the barrier.”

“Did he say that?”

“He was reluctant to help. He claimed there is a code which can switch it off.”

“Even if there is, it’ll be Ilanthe who holds it,” Paula said. “Damnit, do you think he will contact me?”

“Troblum is a very paranoid man. A condition exacerbated by Sholapur. He is afraid of breaking cover. His true fear is that the Cat will find him. However, he was considering getting in touch with Oscar Monroe.”

“Oscar? Why?”

“I suspect he regards Oscar as the last trustworthy man in the galaxy.”

“I suppose that’s true. I’ll warn Oscar to look out for him.”

“Good.” The SI paused. “What are your intentions, Paula?”

“I’m not quite as liberal as ANA. I believe the Pilgrimage and Ilanthe must be stopped from entering the Void. That means getting hold of Araminta.”

“Difficult. She’s walking the Silfen paths.”

“They won’t grant her sanctuary. Somewhere, sometime she will have to come out.”

“You know the safest place she could choose? Earth. How would that be for irony? If Ilanthe wanted her, the barrier would have to be switched off.”

Paula gave the knot of sine waves an approving look. She had known the Silfen paths reached through the Dyson Alpha barrier; Ozzie himself had told her. The idiot had actually visited Morning-LightMountain’s world after the Starflyer War was over. She supposed it was inevitable that the SI would know, as it had a long history with Ozzie. “Clever,” she said, “I wonder if we could get a message to her. Are you in contact with the Silfen Motherholme?”

“No. It doesn’t associate with the likes of me. I’m just a mechanical-based intelligence. I don’t have a living soul.”

“So we’d need a Silfen Friend.”

The SI’s projected knot of wiggling lines brightened slightly. “There aren’t many, and they tend to be elusive.”

“Cressida; she’s related to Araminta. They both have Mellanie as their ancestor.”

“That connection is tenuous even for desperate times.”

“Yes. And Cressida has dropped from sight. But I’d forgotten Silfen paths can reach through this kind of barrier. The one on Earth is supposed to start outside Oxford somewhere. I wonder if ANA can use it to get some kind of message out.”

“If it can, it will.”

“Yeah, and in the meantime … Do you have any weapons stashed away that can tackle the inversion core?”

“I don’t have any weapons,” the SI said in a stiff tone. “Stashed or otherwise.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Of course you do. You forget I am information. I operate within what could be classed a physical network, but that does not govern me.”

“There are a lot of human personalities downloaded into you. That must influence your standpoint.”

“There are a lot of human memories stored inside me,” the SI said. “There’s a difference.”

“Okay, so do you at least know what the inversion core is?”

“I managed to access sensors in the Sol system for a very short period between it emerging and the barrier going up. ANA still regards such actions as extreme trespass. I can’t tell you much other than it has an exotic nature. The quantum structure was effectively unreadable, it was so unusual.”

“So we don’t know what would kill it?”

“The deterrence fleet or the warrior Raiel might be able to. I can’t conceive anything else working. But Paula, that ship it left in was extremely powerful and fast.”

“I know. If Araminta calls Laril-”

“Paul and I will include you in the conversation,” the SI assured her.

“Thank you. And let me have a code for you, please.”

“As you wish.”

Paula watched the sine waves shrink to nothing as a new communication icon appeared in her exovision. A quick check with the smartcore showed the SI hadn’t attempted to infiltrate any of the ship’s systems. She hadn’t expected it to, but …

Her u-shadow opened a secure link to the High Angel.

“Paula,” said Qatux. “Our situation is not improving.”

“I understand the President has asked you to attempt to get through the Sol barrier.”

“He did. I don’t believe it is possible; however, I shall oblige his request. To do nothing for you at this point would be morally irresponsible. We will fly to Sol shortly.”

“The Raiel taking part in galactic events again? I thought that went completely against your ethos.”

“This is a very specific event, the one we have dreaded for eons. Our involvement is mandatory.”

“I believe the Sol barrier is based on the force field around the Dyson Pair. The Accelerators have been studying the Dark Fortress for a long time.”

“We suspected that was so. If true, the High Angel will be unable to breach the barrier.”

“What about a warrior Raiel ship?”

“I don’t believe it would fare any better, though there may have been new developments I am unaware of. The generator you call the Dark Fortress represents the pinnacle of our race’s ingenuity.”

Paula experienced a strange little frisson of relief at the statement. A very old puzzle finally solved. “Did the Raiel build the Dark Fortress? We always thought they were the same as the DF spheres at Centurion Station.”

“Yes. It is a unit from our Galactic Core garrison. They have several functions; the force field is only one.”

“You told us the Anomine imprisoned the Dyson Pair.”

“They did. We loaned them the units. We produced legions of them after our invasion of the Void failed. As your species correctly postulated, they are the galaxy’s final line of defense against a catastrophic expansion phase.”

“So the Raiel can stop an expansion phase?”

“That is something we will not know until the moment arises. The scheme was the best we could produce, but it remains untested.”

“Then it really is vital that Araminta doesn’t lead the Pilgrimage into the Void?”

“Yes.”

“I will do everything I can; you know that.”

“I know, Paula.”

“I may need help.”

“Whatever I can provide, you have only to ask.”

Eventually the forest gave way to a crumpled swath of grassy land that stretched away for miles to a shoreline guarded by thick dunes. The rich blue ocean beyond sparkled as the sunlight skipped across its gentle waves. Araminta smiled mournfully at the sight, knowing she’d never be able to run across the beach and dive into those splendid clear waters. The big quadruped beast she was riding snorted and shook its huge head, as if sharing her resentment.

“Don’t worry; the whole beauties-of-nature thing gets tedious after a while,” Bradley Johansson said. He was riding on a similar beast to one side of her while Clouddancer plodded along behind.

“After how long?” Araminta queried.

“Millennia,” Clouddancer growled out. “Nature produces so much that is worthy of admiration. Its glory never ends.”

Bradley Johansson pursed his round mouth and produced a shrill trumpeting sound. After a day and a half riding with the pair since they’d left the festival by the loch, Araminta had concluded this was his chuckle.

“Great,” she muttered. The fresh breeze from the ocean was invigorating, countering her falling mood. They were approaching a narrow fold in the land, one filled with small trees and dense scrub bushes. There was a pool at the head of the slope, producing a tiny brook that trickled away down through the trees. She reined in her mount just short of the water and swung her leg over the saddle so she could slide down its thick flank. It waited patiently as she performed her inelegant dismount. Bradley Johansson came over to help unstrap her backpack. She never actually saw him climb down, though she was sure his wings weren’t big enough to work in a standard gravity field.

“How do you feel?” he asked sympathetically.

“Nervous as hell.”

“Your spirit will prevail,” Clouddancer proclaimed. He was still sitting on his mount, tail curled up at one side, wings rustling in mild agitation. His head was held high as he looked toward the coast. If he’d been a human, Araminta would have said he was hunting a scent in the wind.

“I have to,” she said, and meant it.

“I am proud of you, friend’s daughter,” Bradley Johansson said. “You encompass all that is good and strong in our species. You remind me why I gave everything I had to save us.”

Araminta was suddenly very busy with the clip around her waist. “I’ll do my best, I promise. I won’t let you down.”

“I know.”

When she looked up, Bradley Johansson was holding a small pendant on a silver chain. The jewel was encased in a fine silver mesh. A pretty blue light was glimmering inside like captured starlight. He placed it around her neck. “I name you that which you already are, Araminta. Friend of Silfen.”

“Thank you,” she said. Ridiculously, her eyes were watering. She smiled over at Clouddancer, who bowed so solemnly toward her, it left her feeling hopelessly inadequate. “Do you have any suggestions for your new Friend?” she asked the pair of them, hating how weak she sounded. “My ex-husband said he’d help me, but he’s not quite the most reliable of people even if his heart is in the right place.”

“Laril isn’t independent anymore,” Bradley Johansson told her. “He can still offer advice that would be helpful, but it is not his own.”

“Oh. Right.” How do you know this? That was a stupid question; she was always allowing herself to be misled by the apparent carefree child like lifestyle the Silfen followed. There is more to them than this, a lot more. “So it’s Oscar, then? Will he be able to help me with the machine-thing you warned me about?”

Clouddancer and Bradley Johansson exchanged a look. “Probably not,” Clouddancer said. “Nobody really understands what it is.”

“Somebody must know or be able to work it out,” she said.

“That is for you to find, Friend Araminta.”

“Oh, come on! The whole galaxy is at stake here, including your own existence. Just for once cut the mystic crap and give me some practical help.”

Bradley Johansson made his shrill chuckling noise again. “There is someone you could ask, someone who may be smart enough to work things out for you. He was a phenomenal physicist once. And he was named a Silfen Friend.”

“Yeah, and look what he did with that most honorable of gifts,” Clouddancer growled.

“Of course he did,” Bradley Johansson said, sounding amused. “That is what makes him who he is. That is why he is our Friend.”

“Who?” Araminta demanded.

“Ozzie,” Clouddancer sighed.

“Ozzie? Really? I thought … Is he still alive?”

“Very much so,” Bradley Johansson said.

“Well, where the hell is he?”

“Outside the Commonwealth. Oscar can get you there.” He paused, letting out a sorrowful whistle. “Probably. Remember, Friend Araminta, you must walk with caution from now on.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll be careful. That part you can really depend on.”

“Come back to us afterward,” Clouddancer said.

“Of course I will.” There was a tiny ripple of doubt in her thoughts that she swiftly quashed. This is all so massive. Visiting Ozzie! For … Ozzie’s sake.

Bradley Johansson took her hand, and they walked toward the top of the little wooded ravine. Araminta blew out a long breath and strode forward confidently. Somewhere up ahead of her, winding through the trees and thick bushes, she could sense the path to Francola Wood stirring at her approach.

“A last word for you, if I may,” Bradley Johansson said. “Anger is a fine heat, one which you are now experiencing. Anger from being put in this position through no real fault of your own, anger at the stupidity of Living Dream. This anger behind your determination will power you at the start, allowing you to be the force you want to be. Then there will come a moment when you look around and see all you have carried before you. That is the most dangerous time, the time when you can lose faith in yourself and falter. That cannot happen, Friend Araminta. Keep your anger, fuel it, let it carry you forward. See this through to the final bitter end no matter what. That is the only way to take others with you: to be a force of nature, the proverbial unstoppable force. You can do this. You have so much in you.”

She smiled bashfully. “I will. I promise. I can keep focused.” Like you wouldn’t believe.

Bradley Johansson stopped, and a four-fingered hand ushered her onward with a grand gesture as his wings extended fully. He made an imposing figure, poised between two species, two styles of life. She turned her back to him and strode forward, refusing to let any doubt gain refuge in her mind. Ahead of her the path began to open.

The building had been a single house once, designed as an extravagant ten-bedroom residence for a wealthy owner, with expansive reception rooms opening out onto a big garden that dropped down to the crowded forest of dapol trees that marked the city boundary. There was even a teardrop-shaped swimming pool beneath a spectacular white wing roof. It fit in perfectly with the Francola district’s original ethos as an enclave of successful, wealthy residents who would enjoy a modicum of privacy afforded by the tree hedges between their imposing properties. A taste of the countryside inside the city.

After a promising start, the district had drifted on Colwyn City’s economic tides. The houses fell from fashion and were snapped up by developers to be turned into even more stylish apartments. Redevelopment took the district further downmarket, depressing prices still more.

On the upside, that same depressed market meant that there were a lot of empty apartments for rent. Oscar and the team managed to secure a well-positioned apartment on the old house’s ground floor. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a lounge squeezed into what used to be one of the brash reception rooms. But the lounge had a panoramic window wall opening onto a lawn that ran all the way down to the edge of Francola Wood itself, giving them a perfect observation post.

Sitting on a pyramid of cushions they’d moved in front of the window wall, Oscar could just glimpse the shimmer of the city force field through the dark trees. He wasn’t using his field scan function; that would be too much of a giveaway. Not that it stopped other teams. His biononics occasionally would catch a quick scan originating close by. Liatris had identified seven other apartments along the street that had been leased out in the last twenty hours. Two other perfectly legitimate flats had been quietly taken over by teams who thought their subterfuge would leave them less visible. They weren’t good enough to evade Liatris.

But what comes around … thought Oscar. He was sure everyone else knew about them as well.

Three of the rival teams had reduced their personnel after it became clear Araminta had left Chobamba. With a whole galaxy of worlds now available to her, they’d decided it was extremely unlikely she’d ever return here to the heart of Living Dream’s occupation army. That view was one he shared, but waiting here on the off chance was better than trying to guess where else she could turn up.

It was midmorning, and as it was his shift, Oscar had been in his armor suit for five hours watching the forest when Paula called.

“Any sign of her?”

Oscar resisted the urge to roll his eyes; the gesture would be completely wasted. “None of the thirteen teams scanning from all along the street have noticed anything. And the eight Ellezelin capsules on permanent patrol overhead report an equally negative result. I imagine the new Welcome Team, which is actually lying in wait in the woods, is bereft, too.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm.”

“Face it, Paula, this is a dead end. We did our best. We got her clear of Living Dream and the others; it’s up to her now.”

“I know. But several agents followed her onto the Chobamba Silfen path before it closed up.”

“Then we’ll never see them again. Not for centuries, anyway.”

“I’d like to think we have centuries.”

“We’ll stay here for another day or two. Unless you know better. How about it, Paula? Do you have contacts among the Silfen?”

“Not really.”

“Ah, you surprise me. If anyone has …”

“But I have just been talking to the SI.”

Oscar couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing. On the other side of the lounge, Beckia shot him a puzzled look.

“Only you, Paula,” Oscar said happily. “How is the SI?”

“Unchanged. It claims. However, it has taken care of one potentially dangerous loose end. Araminta now has no one else left in the Commonwealth to turn to.”

“So the theory is she’ll ask the navy for help?”

“It’s a theory. Right now it’s the only one we’ve got.”

“Well, let’s hope it works.”

“Yes. And the one trustworthy contact she has with officialdom is you.”

“Oh, bloody hell.”

“There’s something else.”

Oscar gave up and rolled his eyes. “What?”

“Someone called Troblum may get in touch. If he does, I need to know immediately. And you must not lose track of him. If possible, take him directly into custody.”

“Okay, so who is he?”

“A slightly strange physicist who may know how to get through the Sol barrier. I’m sending his file. Oh, and the Cat is after him as well, so be careful.”

“Is she? Well, that’s just made my day. Anything else?”

“That’s all, Oscar. Thank you.”

Oscar watched the file load into his storage lacuna, and then the secure link closed. He let out a breath and started to review Troblum. He kept on getting distracted by Beckia. Her mind was emitting little pulses of dismay and anger into the gaiafield. The gaiafield was Oscar’s private additional method of watching for Araminta. They already had thirty stealthed sensors scattered across Francola Wood to try to spot her should she return. On top of that, Liatris had tapped into sensors and communication links from the other agents and the Welcome Team. But Oscar was hopeful that he would somehow get advance warning of her arrival from the path. He thought, though he was in no way sure, that he could sense the alien wormhole. There was something there, some intrusion into the gaiafield that wasn’t quite right, a feeling of age and incredible distance. Very faint, and the more he concentrated on it, the more elusive it became. So he was content to let it wash against the edge of his perception, which meant he had to open his gaiamotes up to their full sensitivity. That was why Beckia’s little outbursts were becoming quite intrusive.

“What?” he finally asked when a particularly sharp burst of indignation shunted his attention from Troblum’s amazing collection of Starflyer War memorabilia. He shifted around so that he was looking back into the lounge. His visor was open, so she could see his ire as well as feel it in the gaiafield.

Beckia gave him a look etched with rebuke. She was curled up on a long corner couch, sipping a hot chocolate. Her armor was open and ready on the floor beside her. “Haven’t you been following the news?” she replied.

He waved a gauntleted hand toward Francola Wood. “No! This is my shift, remember? I’d like to focus on that.”

“No need to get touchy. The remote sensors will give us plenty of warning. Besides, you don’t really think she’s coming back here, do you?”

“We have to be ready in case she does,” he said, hating how lame he sounded.

“Do you know something we don’t, Oscar?”

It was there again, that niggling little question of trust that had hung between them all since they had bumped into the Cat. “Apparently, some agents got onto the path at Chobamba,” he said. “Paula thinks they might flush her out faster than she’d like. Personally, I think that’s bullshit, but …”

“The paths aren’t straight lines; you know that.”

“I know. So what’s troubling you?”

“Local news. It’s getting worse here.”

“I’d like to say: impossible.”

“Take a look. I’ll watch the remotes for a minute.”

Against his better judgment, Oscar told his u-shadow to prepare a summary. Beckia was right; it wasn’t pleasant. Once it had been confirmed that Araminta was on Chobamba, Phelim had begun withdrawing the paramilitary troops from Viotia. It was a well-planned pullout; starting with the cities farthest from Colwyn City. Ludor, the capital over on the Suvorov continent, had been among the first places to see the big dark capsules streak away. It also had the highest number of Living Dream followers. Without the paramilitaries to guarantee protection, Viotia’s native population began to turn on them. Local police forces did nothing to prevent the attacks; on several occasions they were seen joining in. Hospitals, already overcrowded from riot casualties, were deluged by yet more injured.

In response, Phelim announced that the Ellezelin presence in Colwyn City would remain until Living Dream followers were safe. He didn’t say anything about the rest of the planet, and the paramilitary withdrawal continued unabated. Thousands of the faithful fled in their capsules, hoping to pass through the wormhole. But Phelim wouldn’t lower Colwyn City’s force field for anyone except the Ellezelin capsules. Thousands of the frantic refugees were stacking up in the skies outside the city. The lucky tens of thousands of followers who originally had taken up residence in Colwyn City were now trekking across a phenomenally hostile urban landscape, desperately trying to reach the docks where the wormhole would take them back to Ellezelin. It was almost impossible for them to get there; every street was seething with locals on the lookout for the faithful. All the Ellezelin capsules inside the force field were doing now was running a massive evacuation operation. Phelim had indicated that if there was no end to the violence against Living Dream members, he would impose a daylong curfew. That didn’t help; vigilante groups weren’t even waiting for the followers to try to make a dash for safety. Reports were coming in of houses being broken into to extract justice. Images of bodies savagely beaten to death in their own homes were snatched by braver reporters; there were a lot of children caught up in the violence. Of course, the most devout Living Dream followers didn’t have memorycells, because Edeard never had and they were all going to follow Inigo’s dreams into the Void, where such contrivances were an irrelevance.

“Crap,” Oscar muttered. It would take a generation for Viotia to recover, he knew. If it ever did. If it even still existed in a generation.

“We’re not supposed to get sidetracked,” Beckia said quietly. “But it’s hard sometimes. That’s when your strength is really tested.”

“I lived through worse before,” Oscar said, aiming for tough and failing woefully. Dead children, for God’s sake; in the Commonwealth, where everyone should be safe and happy.

“So it would never happen again.”

“Yeah,” he said as he pushed the news shows to peripheral mode. “Something like that.” Because he was distracted, because he wasn’t paying full attention to that strange ancient strand of neutral thought in Francola Wood, he was almost immediately aware when it began to change, to stir. Freshen: the only analogy he could come up with.

“Uh oh,” Oscar murmured. Naturally, when he tried to chase down the sensation, the damn thing slithered about, dwindling from perception.

“What now?” Beckia was rising from the couch.

“Get your suit on.” Oscar’s u-shadow was relaying images from the stealth sensors. It looked like he wasn’t the only one in tune with the path. Several members of the Welcome Team were on the move, emerging from the tangle of whiplit fronds to slip past the dapol trunks. Through the lounge windows he saw a flock of caylars take flight, their ultramarine wings flapping urgently. She can’t be this stupid, he thought. The girl he’d seen in Bodant Park had been scared, yes, but everything she’d done spoke of a smart mind.

Oscar opened a secure channel to Tomansio, who was in their stolen capsule, flying a random course over the city. “Get over here. I think we’re going to need you.”

“She’s coming?”

“I don’t know, but something’s happening.”

“On my way. Two minutes.”

Sensors showed several team members stepping out of their apartments in full armor. They began to sprint over the long gardens that led down to Francola Wood.

Beckia walked up beside him, her helmet sealing up. Oscar’s visor closed as his integral force field established itself. He ran a check on his heavy-caliber weapons. Accelerants flooded into his bloodstream as biononics complemented his muscles. “Here we go again,” he said in complete dismay. A low-power disrupter pulse shattered the lounge’s big window wall, and they ran out onto the lawn.

Mellanie’s Redemption hung in transdimensional suspension a hundred thousand kilometers above Viotia. Passive sensors absorbed what information they could, revealing that space around the planet was empty apart from a single Dunbavend Line starship in a thousand-kilometer orbit. For a passenger ship it seemed to have an awful lot of weapons systems, several of which were active.

A secure TD link routed Troblum’s u-shadow to the planetary cybersphere, allowing him to monitor events. The u-shadow also kept watch for the SI. So far it hadn’t intercepted his connection, but Troblum was convinced it would be watching the data flowing along the link.

“Why are we here?” Catriona Saleeb asked. She was sitting on a simple stool beside the cabin wall, which had pushed out a small wooden bar. Appropriately, she was dressed for an evening out on the town, wearing a slinky blue snakeskin dress, her hair spiraling in an elaborate style and sparkling with small red gems.

“It was the course I’d designated before the Swarm went active,” Troblum said gruffly. “And we had to test the hyperdrive.”

Catriona glanced at the big image of Viotia that a portal was projecting into the middle of the cabin. “Are you going to call him?”

“Who?”

“Oscar Monroe.”

“No.” He brought some performance tables into his exovision and studied them, checking through the hyperdrive’s functions. Peripheral displays showed the violence playing out across the planet as residents took their revenge on Living Dream members.

“If you help them, they’ll take care of the Cat,” she said.

His u-shadow slid the performance tables to one side. He gave her an angry stare. “They’ll do that anyway. Paula knows she’s been taken out of suspension; she won’t rest until the Cat is back where she belongs. It’s over. Do you understand that? Now I’m going to review the hyperdrive. Once I’m satisfied it’s working correctly, we’ll leave.”

“I just want you to be safe; you know that.” Catriona picked up a long-stemmed cocktail glass and drained its sticky red liquid. She swirled the ice cubes around the bottom. “And I know you need closure on the Cat. If you run now, you’ll never know what happened. You won’t be able to live with that. You’ll spend the rest of your life seeing her everywhere; you’ll panic at every strange noise in the wind.”

“I’m not that weak.”

“If you’re not afraid, then call Oscar.”

“That’s machine logic.”

Her lips pouted, their glossy scales darkening down to purple. “For someone who cares about no one, you can be a real bastard at times.”

“Shut the fuck up. I mean it.” He brought his exovision intensity up. On a street in Colwyn City a family of Living Dream followers was being chased by a mob armed with power tools and thick clubs. Their clothes had betrayed them, made from simple cloth in old styles. Two adults were dragging along three terrified crying children, the oldest no more than eleven. It was a residential street, houses and apartment blocks packed tight. The father found one he obviously recognized and dashed up to the front door, pounding away, yelling furiously. The mob slowed and surrounded them in an eerily quiet, efficient maneuver, some primeval hunter knowledge governing their movements. They closed in. The father kept hitting the door with his fist while the weeping mother pleaded for her children to be let through. As if knowing how futile it was, she put her arms around them, clutching them to her as she started screaming. The news show’s reporter was good, focusing perfectly on the makeshift clubs as they rose.

Troblum actually turned his head away as his u-shadow canceled the news show; it was all too vivid.

“Do you want to be human?” Troblum asked. “Did you think I would grow you a clone body and transfer your personality in?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is that what you were hoping for?”

“No,” Catriona said, sounding quite shocked.

“I won’t do that. Not ever. The universe doesn’t need more humans. We have nothing to offer the universe. We need to leave our original form behind. It does nothing but generate misery and suffering. The External worlds are full of animals. They can’t be classified as true humans. They don’t think; they just act. Animals, that’s all they are-animals.”

“So how do you define real humans? People like yourself?”

“A real person would want independence. If you were real, you’d want a body. Did you talk about it with Trisha and Isabella and Howard?”

“Troblum?” She sounded troubled. “Don’t.”

“Was Howard a part of it, too? Were you going to put pressure on me to make it happen?”

“No.”

“Did you tell the Cat about me?” he yelled.

“Stop this!”

“I don’t need you.”

“But I need you. I love you.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

She climbed off the stool and knelt at his feet. “I only exist because of you. How could I not love you for that? I would not betray you. I cannot. You know this.”

Troblum flinched. His hand hovered above her thick, tightly wound hair.

“Please,” she said. There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. “Please, Troblum. Don’t do this to yourself.”

He sighed, lowering his palm onto her head, feeling the springy strands of hair against his skin. Then her hand closed around his, letting him know her warmth, her light touch. She kissed his fingers one at a time. Troblum groaned, half-ashamed, half-delighted. She’s not real. She’s an I-sentient. Does that make her the perfect human for me? His whole mind was in chaos.

“You’d change,” he whispered. “If I gave you a meat body, you’d change. Your routines would be running in neural paths that are never fixed. I don’t want you to change.”

“I don’t want a meat body. I just want you. Always. And I need you to be safe and happy for that to happen. Do you understand that, Troblum?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”

The starship’s sensors reported energy weapon discharges above Colwyn City. Troblum frowned. “What’s that?” he queried. His u-shadow started refining the scan.

It had been a while since Araminta had used the melange program. Nothing wrong with the program; it was its association with Likan that made her all squirmy and uncomfortable. That was stupid. She certainly couldn’t afford that kind of weakness now.

As she walked beside the little brook, she sent her perception seeping out ahead of her, experiencing it flowing along the path. Far away she could feel the Silfen Motherholme, sympathetic and imposing. There was the human gaiafield, fizzing with agitation and excitement. On the other side of her mind was the Skylord-she recoiled from that right away. Her feet kept on walking. All around her the trees were growing higher, muddling those on the world she walked among with those of Francola Wood. She knew now where the path would take her into Francola Wood, smelling the scent of the whiplit fronds. Her mind found a host of people lurking in the undergrowth, cleverly concealed by their gadgetry while their steely thoughts filled with expectation. They were waiting for her.

Yet even as it swept her along to its ending, she knew the path was fluid, simply anchored in place by past wishes, directions sung to it by Silfen millennia ago. She tried to make her own wishes known. Somehow they weren’t clear enough, and the path remained obdurately in place. So she summoned up the melange and felt the calmness sinking through her body, centering her, enabling her to concentrate on every sensation she was receiving.

The tunes imprinted on the path’s structure were easier to trace, to comprehend. With that knowledge she began to form the new tunes that her thoughts spun out. Wishes amplified by a fond nostalgia and the most fragile of hopes.

Onward her feet fell, pressing down on damp grass as the melody permeated her whole existence. She swayed in time to the gentle undulations she had set free, finally happy that the end of the path was moving with her, carrying her onward to the place she so urgently sought. There, ahead of her, the thoughts she knew so well radiated out from his home.

Araminta opened her eyes to look across the lawn toward the big old house. Her initial smile faded from her face. There had been a fire. Long black smoke marks contaminated the white walls above three of the big ground-floor arches. Two of the balconies were smashed. There was a hole in the roof, which looked melted.

“Oh, great Ozzie,” she moaned. The dismay was kept in place by the melange, occupying a single stream in her mind, an emotion that neither colored nor determined her behavior. “Bovey!” she called as she ran for the house. “Bovey!”

Two of hims were outside by the swimming pool. They turned around at her voice. The gaiafield revealed his burst of astonishment.

“You’re okay,” she gasped as she came to a halt a few meters short of hims. One was the Bovey she’d been on their first date with, the body she truly identified as him; the other was the tall blond youngster. At their feet was another body, inert, covered in a beach towel.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Not one of you.”

“Hey,” the older of hims said, and threw his arms around her. “It’s okay.”

Some small part of herself marveled at how calm she was, channeling all the emotion away so she could remain perfectly rational and controlled. She knew what she should say, even if her voice lacked the appropriate intensity. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

“No, no,” he soothed.

“I should have told you. Warned you. I left because I didn’t want you to get involved, to get hurt.”

Neither of hims could avoid looking at the corpse. “It’s okay. You came back; that’s all that matters.”

“It is not okay. They killed one of you.” A pulse of regret and guilt in his mind alerted her. “No, it’s not just one, is it? How many?”

He took a step back from her, though his hands were still gripping her shoulders.

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“Five,” he said, as if ashamed.

“Bastards!”

“It doesn’t matter.” His grin was rueful. “That’s the point of being mes; bodyloss is irrelevant. Some of mes are scattered all across this city, and nobody knows how many there are; certainly not those thugs. I’m safe. Safer than you.”

“This is my fault. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have come to you, not before it’s all over.”

“I’m glad you did,” he said earnestly. “Really, I am. Just seeing you, knowing you’re okay, makes this all worthwhile.” Both of hims looked back across the empty garden toward the Cairns, whose muddy waters flowed past the bank at the bottom of the lawn. “How did you get here? Everyone thinks you’re on Chobamba.”

“Long story.”

A sound similar to faint thunder rolled across the house. Araminta turned to the source, seeing energy weapons flash just below the curving force field dome. She didn’t need any kind of program to tell her it was the Francola district.

“Not again,” Bovey groaned. “Enough!”

“It’s me,” she said impassively. “They’re fighting because they think I’m there.”

“Araminta.” It came out of both of hims, a distraught desperate voice.

“I can’t stay. They’ll find me eventually.”

“Run, then. I’ll come with you. We’ll just keep on running. The navy can probably help.”

“No. I can’t do that. ANA has gone. Nobody is going to help us; nobody can stop Living Dream and the Accelerators. It’s down to me now.”

“You?”

“I’m not running, not hiding. Not anymore. I know I have no right to ask this, because I didn’t have the courage to tell you about myself before.”

“I understand.”

“You’re sweet, too sweet. After this is over, I want us to be together. I really do. That’s why I’m here, so you know that.”

He hugged her tight again. “It’ll happen,” he whispered fiercely. “It will.”

“There are things I have to do,” she said. “Things I don’t want to, but I can’t see any other way. I have an idea, but I’m going to need your help to make it work.”