The Marriage of the Living Dark

This one... if s recent. No more than a year old at most”

“You must be wrong, Daniel. These are old machines. Leftovers from the War.” “No. He’s making them again. And if they’re here, they’re here because he’s put them here.”

The thought clearly sobered her. She reached out and lightly touched his arm.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Daniel shrugged, then stood. Emily stared at him a moment longer, then, undipping the spare rifle she carried on her back, she handed it to him. ‘1 think you’ve earned this.”

Daniel smiled, then slung the strap of the gun over his shoulder. Emily nodded, then looked about her at the surrounding slopes. “Okay. I guess we’d better hurry. We don’t want Michael meeting one of these before we get to him.”

“Well?” DeVore asked as they walked along the corridor, heading back to the North Palace. “What did you think?”

“I think I’d like to take one home to study it” DeVore laughed. “It would beat you at chess.”

“It could try.”

DeVore pushed open the door and they went through. “They’ve a much bigger brain than the old model. It’s quicker, too, and subtler. The creature’s reactions are faster, too, and I’ve enhanced the musculature.” “I noticed,” Ben said, slowing to let DeVore open the inner door. “Hannem looked like he could rip sheets of steel in two.”

“Oh, he could. If I asked him to, that is. But they do nothing without my say-so.” DeVore paused, taking a key from his belt, then looked back at Ben. “If s in here.”

“Under lock and key, I note. You think someone will try to steal it?”

“If they could find it At present it isn’t there.”

“Handy. Then why bother with a key?”

“Old habits.”

But Ben sensed there was a reason. DeVore never did anything without a reason. But this intrigued him, more so perhaps than the new creatures. DeVore claimed he had a ship that travelled by folding space - now that was something he would like to own.

DeVore turned the lock then pushed the door open, stepping aside to let Ben pass. “There!” he said.

The ship rested on the floor of the chamber. It was a beautiful thing of silver and pearl and polished wood. Ben turned, surprised, looking across to where DeVore stood in the doorway.

“But I thought you said ...”

“Go over to it,” DeVore said, a teasing smile on his lips. “See if you can find out where it is.”

Ben walked across, putting his hand out towards it. But even as he approached it, it seemed to go away from him, or disappear entirely, so that when he turned, it was behind him.

“I don’t understand.”

‘If s a projection, direct into your retinas. The real ship is in a no-space between universes. In a space that isn’t space at all, if you follow.” “And what powers it?”

“The differential between universes.” DeVore smiled. “Put simply, it skips between the two, in the no-space that exists between their surfaces.” “A gap?”

DeVore shook his head. “No. There is no gap between realities. If one knew how, one could step through from one into another, as if one were stepping through an open door. But that secret has been forgotten, if ever it was known.” “By you, perhaps.”

“Oh, if others knew it, then we too would know about it”

“Maybe.” Ben smiled, then shook his head. “My father would have liked this. He loved to debate theories.”

“This is no theory, my friend. The ship works. One like it brought me from Charon many years ago.”

“Forgive me,” Ben said, “but if thaf s so, why don’t you use this same technology to defeat your enemies? Or at least to confound them.” DeVore looked away. “It is not that easy. The energy involved, if misdirected, could rip apart this tiny system.”

But Ben was not happy with that explanation. If there was a way of harnessing this mysterious energy - and he had no real reason to doubt that this force, whatever it was, really existed - then it could be controlled. And if it could be controlled it could be fine-tuned. And used. For good or ill. So why was DeVore so vague about it? Had he, perhaps, not made but found the ship? And was he lying when he said he understood the principles behind its function? For if he could make a craft that skipped between the universes, why could he not harness this power to break Egan’s blockade or track down and kill the woman?

And yet DeVore had made Hannem, and Hannem and his fellow creatures were a genuine marvel. It was not that DeVore lacked intellectual substance - he was a clever man, and nodoubting it - but one could never be sure just when he was lying and when he wasn’t Standing outside the room again, Ben felt as if he had been given an insight into DeVore. He was powerful, certainly, but not quite powerful enough. Not enough to carry out his plans, anyway. And his need to wear a cloak of invisible power to protect himself spoke volumes.

DeVore was paranoid. And slowly, piece by piece, he was creating a world just as paranoid as he But his spell could be unwoven, by a single bullet or a knife. Yes, or a blow to the skull with the butt-end of a gun.

And what then? How would the world be without DeVore to give it a cutting edge? Like a carp pond without a pike, he thought, recalling what Li Yuan had once said to him.

Back in his rooms, alone again, Ben sat, staring into space, thinking about what he had seen. It did not worry him that DeVore might do away with humanity and place some greater, finer creature in its place. If so, then that was mankind’s fate, and what could individual men do about it? One could not build a dam against such evolutionary pressures. Yet it did worry him that, despite the morphs’ evident intellectual ability, they might not be the chosen race, the natural successors of mankind. For a start they were too docile - far too compliant to the Great Man’s will As DeVore himself proudly boasted, there was no more obedient creature in the galaxy.

No. It seemed more likely that all this was but an act of extreme egoism - an attempt to people the galaxy with copies of himself With minors. And what had vanity to do with evolution?

So what was the answer? Side with DeVore? Or kill him?

And if the latter, could he, personally, do it?

He smiled, remembering what Meg had said before he’d come here to Mannheim.

If you get at all dose, Ben, slip a knife between his ribs and leave it there. He had not thought his sister capable of such hatred. But so it was. Meg loathed DeVore with a passion he could not imagine.And maybe she was right He stood, then went to the window, looking out. DeVore’s woman, Emtu, was down there, walking in the gardens. He watched her a while, wondering just why DeVore had created her. Then, a strange smile forming on his lips, he nodded to himself.

That’s it, he thought That’s bloody well it.

Masso had been as good as his word. He’d given back the carts and freed Michael’s men. And then, he’d brought them here to Saanenmoser. But that had been the end of things, for having come so far, his nerve gave and, fearing that Michael might, after all, have duped him, he decided to take what he could get ‘Tour coats,” he said, his gun levelled directly at Michael’s head, while his other men covered the rest of Michael’s party.

“We’ve still a good day’s travel,” Michael said, as calmly as he could. “We’ll not survive a night without our coats.”

“Find shelter,” Masso said, a sneer on his face now. “Huddle together. If the gods will it, you’ll survive.”

“You gave your word,” Michael said.

“And now I take it back.” Masso shook his head. “I don’t trust you, Trader.

Something about you rings false. So I’ll take what I can and beg your pardon.” Michael stared at the man a long time after that, remembering his face, then, with an angry shrug, he pulled off his coat and threw it down at Masso’s feet, his eyes never leaving Masso’s face.

He heard the sound of his men pulling off their thick winter pelts and throwing them down.

Dead men now. For the weather was against them this far up, and there was little shelter in the hills above Saanenmoser.

“If I live I’ll come back for you, Masso.”

“If you live.”

And there was laughter suddenly. Cruel gallows laughter. And there he’d been thinking them different from the other cutthroats and vagabonds who roamed the lower slopes. Michael swallowed bitterly, wishing he could have seen Emilyonce more before he died, then, with a bellow of rage, he ran at Masso, head down.

He heard the shot but didn’t feel the bullet strike him. Then all hell broke

lose. There was automatic fire and the sound of small detonations. Grenades or

...