Date: 2012-09-25 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Science Fiction; Action & Adventure; Space Opera
Description: Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. The first intelligent species to encounter mankind attacked without warning. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the invasion, Earth's last roll of the dice was to dispatch three colony ships, seeds of Earth, to different parts of the galaxy. The human race would live on . . . somewhere. 150 years later, the planet Darien hosts a thriving human settlement, which enjoys a peaceful relationship with an indigenous race, the scholarly Uvovo. But there are secrets buried on Darien's forest moon. Secrets that go back to an apocalyptic b

SEEDS OF EARTH

BOOK 1 OF

HUMANITY'S FIRE

MICHAEL COBLEY
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First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Orbit
This edition published in 2010 by Orbit
Reprinted 2010 (twice)

Copyright © Michael Cobley 2009

Excerpt from Dark Space by Marianne de Pierres
Copyright © 2007 by Marianne de Pierres

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All characters and events in this publication, other than those
clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated
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and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-84149-631-3

Typeset in Sabon by M Rules
Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham ME5 8TD

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PROLOGUE

DARIEN INSTITUTE: HYPERION DATA
RECOVERY PROJECT

Cluster Location - Subsidiary Hardmem Substrate Deck

9 quarters)
Tranche - 298
Decryption Status - 9th pass, 26 video files recovered

File 15 - The Battle of Mars (Swarm War)

Veracity - Virtual Re-enactment

Original Time Log - 16:09:24, 23 November 2126

»»» «««

FADE IN:
CAPTION:

MARS

THE CRATER PLAIN: OLYMPUS MONS
19 MARCH 2126

The Sergeant was on the carrier's command deck,
checking and rechecking the engineering console's mod-
ifications, when voices began clamouring over his
helmet comm.

'Marine force stragglers incoming with enemy units
in pursuit . . .'

'. . . eight, nine Swarmers, maybe ten . .

The Sergeant cursed, grabbed his heavy carbine and
left the command deck as quickly as his combat armour
would allow. The clatter of his boots echoed down the
vessel's spinal corridor while he issued a string of terse
orders. By the time he reached the wrecked and gaping
doors of the rear deployment hold, the stragglers had
arrived. Five wounded and unconscious, all from the
Indonesia regiment, going by their helmet flashes. As
the last was being carried up the ramp, the leading
Swarmers came into view over the brow of a rocky ridge
about 80 metres away.

A first glimpse revealed a nightmare jumble of claws,
spikes and gleaming black eye-clusters. Swarm biology
had many reptilian similarities yet their appearance was
unavoidably insectoid. With six, eight, ten or more
limbs, they could be as small as a pony or as big as a
whale, depending on their specialisation. These were
bull-sized skirmishers, eleven black-and-green monsters
that were unlimbering tine-snouted weapons as they
rushed down towards the crippled carrier.

'Hold your fire,' the Sergeant said, glancing at the six
marines crouched behind the improvised barricade of
ammo cases and deck plating. These were all that were left
to him after the Colonel and the rest had left in the hov-
ermags a few hours ago, heading for the caldera and the
Swarm's main hive. One of them hunched his shoulders a
little, head tilting to aim down his carbine's sights ...

'I said wait,' said the Sergeant, gauging the diminishing
distance. 'Ready aft turrets ... acquire targets ... fire!'

Streams of heavy-calibre shells converged on the lead-
ing Swarmers, knocking them off their spidery legs.
Then the Sergeant cursed when he saw them right them-
selves, protected by the bio-armour which had
confounded Earth's military ever since the beginning of
the invasion two years ago.

'Pulse rounds,' the Sergeant shouted. 'Now!'

Bright bolts began to pound the Swarmers, dense
knots of energised matter designed to simultaneously
heat and corrode their armour. The enemy returned
fire, their weapons delivering repeating arcs of long,
thin black rounds, but as the turret jockeys focused
their targeting the Swarmers broke off and scattered.
The Sergeant then ordered his men to open up, joining
in with his own carbine, and the withering crossfire
tore into the weakened, confused enemies. In less than
a minute, nothing was left alive or in one piece out on
the rocky slope.

The defending marines exchanged laughs and grins,
and knocked gauntleted knuckles together. The Sergeant
barely had time to draw breath and reload his carbine
when the consoleman's urgent voice came over the comm:

'Sergeant! - airborne contact, three klicks and closing!'

Immediately, he swung round and made for the star-
board companionway, shouldering his carbine as he
climbed. 'What's their profile, soldier?'

'Hard to tell - half the sensor suite is junk

'Get me something and quick!'

He then ordered all four turrets to target the
approaching craft and was clambering out of the car -
rier's topside hatch when the consoleman came back to
him.

'IFF confirms it's a friendly, Sergeant - it's a vorti-
wing, and the pilot is asking for you.'
'Patch him through.'

One of his helmet's miniscreens blinked suddenly and
showed the vortiwing pilot. He was possibly German,
going by the instructions on the bulkhead behind him.

'Sergeant, I've not much time,' the pilot said in
accented English. 'I'm to evacuate you and your men up
to orbit

'Sorry, Lieutenant, but. . . my commanding officer is
down in that caldera, engaging in combat! Look, the
brink of the caldera is less than half a klick away - you
could airlift me and my men over there before returning
to—'

'Request denied. My orders are specific. Besides,
every unit that made it down there has been over-
whelmed and destroyed, whole regiments and brigades,
Sergeant. I'm sorry . . .' The pilot reached up to adjust
controls. 'ETD in less than five minutes, Sergeant. Please
have your men ready.'

The miniscreen went dead. The Sergeant leaned on
the topside rail and stared bitterly at the kilometre-long
furrow which the carrier had gouged in the sloping flank
of Olympus Mons. Then he gave the order to abandon
ship.

In the shroud-like Martian sky overhead, the vorti-
wing transport grew from a speck to a broad-built craft
descending on four gimbal-mounted spinjets. Landing
struts found purchase on the carrier's upper hull, and
amid the howling blast of the engines the walking
wounded and the stretcher cases were lifted into the
transport's belly hold. The turret jockeys, the consoleman
and his half-dozen marines were following suit when the
German pilot's voice spoke suddenly.

'Large number of flying Swarmers heading our way,
Sergeant. Suggest you get aboard fast.'

As the last of his men climbed up into the vortiwing,
the Sergeant turned to face the caldera of Olympus
Mons. Through a haze of windblown dust and the thin
black fumes of battle, he saw a dense cloud of dark
motes rising just a few klicks away. It took only a
moment to realise how quickly they would be here, and
for him to decide what to do.

'Best you button up and get going, Lieutenant,' he
said as he leaped back into the carrier and sealed the
hatch behind him. 'I can keep them busy with our tur-
rets, give you time to make orbit.'

'Nein\ Sergeant, I order you—'

'Apologies, sir, but you'd never get away otherwise,
so my task is clear.'

He cut the link as he rushed back along to the com-
mand deck, closing hatches as he went. True, the
Colonel's science officer had slaved all four of the turrets
to the engineering console, but that wasn't the only
modification he had carried out . . .

The roar of the vortiwing's spinjets grew to a shriek,
landing struts loosened their grip and the transport
lurched free. Moments later, the fourfold angled thrust
was driving it upwards on a steep trajectory. Some or the
Swarm outriders were already leading the flying host on
an intercept course, until the carrier's turrets opened fire
upon them. Yet they would still have kept on after the
ascending prey, had not the carrier itself now shifted like
a great wounded beast and risen slowly from the long
gouge it had made in the ground. Curtains of dust and
grit fell from its underside, along with shattered frag-
ments of hull plating and exterior sensors, and when the
carrier turned its battered prow towards the centre of the
caldera the Swarm host altered its course.

On the command deck, the Sergeant sweated and
swore as he struggled to coax every last erg from
protesting engines. Damage sustained during the atmos-
pheric descent had left the carrier unable to make a safe
landing on the caldera floor, hence the Colonel's deci-
sion to continue in the hovermags. However, a safe
landing was not what the Sergeant had in mind.

As the ship headed into the caldera, steadily gaining
height, the groan of overloaded substructures came up
through the deck. Even as he glanced at the glowing
panels, red telltales started to flicker, warnings that some
of the port suspensors were close to operational toler-
ance. But most of his attention was focused on the host
of Swarmers now converging on the Earth vessel.

Suddenly the carrier was enfolded in a swirling cloud
of the creatures, some of which landed on the hull,
scrabbling for hold points, seeking entrance. Almost at
the same time, two suspensors failed and the ship listed
to port. The Sergeant boosted power to the port burn-
ers, ignoring the beeping alarms and the crashing,
hammering sounds coming from somewhere amidships.
The carrier straightened up as it reached the zenith of its
trajectory, a huge missile that the Sergeant was aiming
directly at the Swarm Hive.

Ten seconds into the dive the clangorous hammering
came nearer, perhaps a hatch or two away from the
command deck.

Twenty seconds into the dive, with the pitted, grey-
brown spires of the Hive looming in the louvred
viewport, the starboard aft burner blew. The Sergeant
cut power to the port aft engine and boosted the star-
board for'ard into the red.

Thirty seconds into the dive, amid the deafening
cacophony of metallic hammering and the roar of the
engines, the hatch to the command deck finally burst
open. A grotesque creature that was half-wasp, half-
alligator, struggled to squeeze through the gap. It froze
for a second when it saw the structures of the Hive rush-
ing up to meet the carrier head-on, then frantically
reversed direction and was gone. The Sergeant tossed a
thermite grenade after it and turned to face the view*
port, arms spread wide, laughing . . .

CUT TO:

VIEW OF OLYMPUS MONS FROM ORBIT

Visible within its attendant cloud of Swarmers, the
brigade carrier leaves a trail of leaking gases and fluids
in its wake as it plummets towards the Hive complex.
The perspective suddenly zooms out, showing much of
the wreckage-strewn, battle-scarred caldera as the car
rier impacts. For a moment there is only an outburst of
debris from the collision, then three bright explosions in
quick succession obscure the outlines of the hive . . .

VOICE OVER:

In the first phase of the Battle of Mars, a number of pur-
pose-built heavy boosters were used to send a flotilla of
asteroids against the Swarm Armada, thus drawing key
vessels away from Mars orbit. The main battle, and
ground offensive, cost Earth over 400,000 dead and the
loss of seventy-nine major warships as well as scores of
support craft. This act of sacrifice did not destroy all the
Overminds of the Swarm or deter them from their pur-
pose. Yet vast stores of bioweapons, like the missiles
that devastated cities in China, Europe and America,
were destroyed along with several hatching chambers,
thus halting the production of fresh Swarm warriors
and delaying the expected assault on Earth.

That battle brought grief and sorrow to all of
Humanity, yet it also bought us a breathing space, five
crucial months during which the construction of three
interstellar colony ships was completed, three out of the
original fifteen. The last of them, the Tenebrosa, was
launched from the high-orbit Poseidon Docks just four
days ago, following its sister ships, the Hyperion and the
Forrestal, on a trajectory away from the enemy's main
forces. All three vessels are fitted with a revolutionary
new translight drive, allowing them to cross vast dis-
tances via the strange subreality of hyperspace. First to
make the translight jump was the Hyperion, then two
days later the Forrestal, and the Tenebrosa will be the
last. Their journeys will be determined by custodian AIs
programmed to evade pursuit with random course
changes, and thereafter to search for Earthlike worlds
suitable for colonisation.

And so they depart, three arks bearing Humanity's
hope for survival, three seeds of Earth flying out into the
vast and starry night. Now we must turn our attention
and all our strength to the onslaught that will soon be
upon us. In twelve days, spearhead formations of the
Swarm will land on the Moon and at once attack our
civilian and military outposts there. We know what to
expect. The Swarm's strategy of slaughter and obliterate
has never wavered, so we know that there will be no
pity, no mercy and no quarter when, at last, they enter
the skies above Earth.

Yet for all that the Swarm soldiers are regimented
drones, their leaders, the Overminds, must themselves
be sentient and able to learn, otherwise they would not
have developed space travel. So if the Overminds can
learn, let us be their teachers - let us teach them what it
means to attack the cradle of Humanity . . .

»»» «««

END OF FILE . . .

PART ONE

GREG

Dusk was creeping in over the sea from the east as Greg
Cameron walked Chel down to the zep station. The
great mass of Giant's Shoulder loomed on the right side
of the path, its shadowy darkness speckled with the tiny
blue glows of ineka beetles, while a fenced-off sheer
drop fell away to the left. The sky was cloudless, laying
bare the starmist which swirled for ever through the
upper atmosphere of Darien. Tonight it was a soft
purple tinged with threads of roseate, a restful, slow-
shifting ghost sky.

But Greg knew that his companion was anything but
restful. In the light of the pathway lamps, the Uvovo
stalked along with head down and bony, four-fingered
hands gripping the chest straps of his harness. They
were a slender, diminutive race with a bony frame, and
large amber eyes set in a small face. Glancing at him,
Greg smiled.

'Chel, don't worry - you'll be fine.'

The Uvovo looked up and seemed to think for a
moment before his finely furred features broke into a
wide smile.

Friend-Gregori,' came his hollow, fluty voice.

'Whether I ride in a dirigible or make the shuttle journey
to our blessed Segrana, I am always amazed to discover
myself alive at the end!'

They laughed together as they continued down the
side of Giant's Shoulder. It was a cool, clammy night and
Greg wished he had worn something heavier than just a
work shirt.

'And you've still no idea why they're holding this
zinsilu at Ibsenskog?' Greg said. For the Uvovo, a zin-
silu was part life evaluation, part meditation. T mean,
the Listeners do have access to the government comnet
if they need to contact any of the seeders and schol-
ars .. .' Then something occurred to him. 'Here, they're
not going to reassign ye, are they? Chel, I won't be able
to manage both the dig and the daughter-forest reports
on my own! - I really need your help.'

'Do not worry, friend-Gregori,' said the Uvovo.
'Listener Weynl has always let it be known that my role
here is considered very important. Once this zinsilu is
concluded, I am sure that I will be returning without
delay.'

I hope you're right, Greg thought. The Institute isna
very forgiving when it comes to shortcomings and
unachieved goals.

'After all,' Chel went on, 'your Founders' Victory
celebrations are only a few days away and I want to
be here to observe all your ceremonies and rituals.'

Greg gave a wry half-grin. 'Aye . . . well, some of our
"rituals" can get a bit boisterous . . .'

By now the gravel path was levelling off as they
approached the zep station and overhead Greg could
hear the faint peeps of umisk lizards calling to each
other from their little lairs scattered across the sheer
face of Giant's Shoulder. The station was little more
than a buttressed platform with a couple of buiidb gs
and a five-yard-long covered gantry jutting straight out.
A government dirigible was moored there, a gently
swaying 50-footer consisting of two cylindrical gasbags
lashed together with taut webbing and an enclosed g< n-
dola hanging beneath. The skin of the inflatable sections
was made from a tough composite fabric, but exposure
to the elements and a number of patch repairs gave it a
ramshackle appearance, in common with most of the
workaday government zeplins. A light glowed in the
cockpit of the boatlike gondola, and the rear-facing,
three-bladed propeller turned lazily in the steady breeze
coming in from the sea.

Fredriksen, the station manager, waved from the
waiting-room door while a man in a green and grey
jumpsuit emerged from the gantry to meet them.

'Good day, good day,' he said, regarding first Greg
then the Uvovo. 'I am Pilot Yakov. If either of you is
Scholar Cheluvahar, I am ready to depart.'

T am Scholar Cheluvahar,' Chel said.

'Most excellent. I shall start the engine.' He nodded
at Greg then went back to the gantry, ducking as he
entered.

'Mind to send a message when you reach Ibsenskog,'
Greg told Chel. 'And don't worry about the flight - it'll
be over before you know it. . .'

'Ah, friend-Gregori - I am of the Warrior Uvovo.
Such tests are breath and life itself!'

Then with a smile he turned and hurried after the
pilot. A pure electric whine came from the gondola's aft
section, rising in pitch as the prop spun faster. Greg
heard the solid knock of wooden gears as the station
manager cranked in the gantry then triggered the moor-
ing cable releases. Suddenly free upon the air, the
dirigible swayed as it began drifting away, picking up
speed and banking away from the sheer face of Giant's
Shoulder. The trip down to Port Gagarin was only a
half-hour hop, after which Chel would catch a com-
mercial lifter bound for the Eastern Towns and the
daughter-forest Ibsenskog. Greg could not see his friend
at any of the gondola's opaque portholes but he waved
anyway for about a minute, then just stood watching the
zeplin's descent into the deepening dusk. Feeling a chill
in the air, he fastened some of his shirt buttons while
continuing to enjoy the peace. The zep station was
nearly 50 feet below the main dig site but it was still
some 300 feet above sea level. Giant's Shoulder itself
was an imposing spur jutting eastwards from a towering
massif known as the Kentigern Mountains, a raw
wilderness largely avoided by trappers and hunters,
although the Uvovo claimed to have explored a good
deal of it.

As the zeplin's running lamps receded, Greg took in
the panorama before him, the coastal plain stretching
several miles east to the darkening expanse of the
Korzybski Sea and the lights of towns scattered all
around its long western shore. Far off to the south was
the bright glitterglow of Hammergard, sitting astride a
land bridge separating Loch Morwen from the sea;
beyond the city, hidden by the misty murk of evening,
was a ragged coastline of sealochs and fjords where the
Eastern Towns nestled. South of them were hills and a
high valley cloaked by the daughter-forest Ibsenskog.
Before his standpoint were the jewelled clusters of Port
Gagarin, slightly to the south, High Lochiel a few miles
northwest, and Landfall, where the cannibalised hulk of
the old colonyship, the Hyperion, lay in the sad tran-
quillity of Membrance Vale. Then further north were
New Kelso, Engerhold, Laika, and the logging and
farmer settlements scattering north and west, while off
past the northeast horizon was Trond.

His mood darkened. Trond was the city he had left
just two short months ago, fleeing the trap of his disas-
trous cohabitance with Inga, a mistake whose wounds
were still raw. But before his thoughts could begin cir-
cling the pain of it, he stood straighter and breathed in
the cold air, determined not to dwell on bitterness and
regret. Instead, he turned his gaze southwards to see the
moonrise.

A curve of blue-green was gradually emerging from
behind the jagged peaks of the Hrothgar Range which
lined the horizon: Nivyesta, Darien's lush arboreal
moon, brimming with life and mystery, and home to the
Uvovo, wardens of the girdling forest they called
Segrana. Once, millennia ago, the greater part of their
arboreal civilisation had inhabited Darien, which they
called Umara, but some indeterminate catastrophe had
wiped out the planetary population, leaving those on
the moon alive but stranded.

On a clear night like this, the starmist in Darien's
upper atmosphere wreathed Nivyesta in a gauzy halo of
mingling colours like some fabulous eye staring down
on the little niche that humans had made for themselves
on this alien world. It was a sight that never failed to
raise his spirits. But the night was growing chilly now, so
he buttoned his shirt to the neck and began retracing his
steps. He was halfway up the path when his comm
chimed. Digging it out of his shirt pocket he saw that it
was his elder brother and decided to answer.

'Hi, Ian - how're ye doing?' he said, walking on.

'Not so bad. Just back from manoeuvres and looking
forward to FV Day, chance to get a wee bit of R&R.
Yourself}'

Greg smiled. Ian was a part-time soldier with the
Darien Volunteer Corps and was never happier than
when he was marching across miles of sodden bog or
scaling basalt cliffs in the Hrothgars, apart from when
he was home with his wife and daughter.

'I'm settling in pretty well,' he said. 'Getting to grips
with all the details of the job, making sure that the var-
ious teams file their reports on something like a regular
schedule, that sort of thing.'

'But are you happy staying at the temple site, Greg? -
because you know that we've plenty of room here and I
know that you loved living in Hammergard, before the
whole Inga episode . . .'

Greg grinned.

'Honest, Ian, I'm fine right here. I love my work, the
surroundings are peaceful and the view is fantastic! I
appreciate the offer, big brother, but I'm where I want to
be.'

'S'okay, laddie, just making sure. Have you heard
from Ned since you got back, by the way}'

'Just a brief letter, which is okay. He's a busy doctor
these days . . .'

Ned, the third and youngest brother, was very poor at
keeping in touch, much to Ian's annoyance, which often
prompted Greg to defend him.

'Aye, right, busy. So - when are we likely to see ye
next} Can ye not come down for the celebrations ?'

'Sorry, Ian, I'm needed here, but I do have a meeting
scheduled at the Uminsky Institute in a fortnight - shall
we get together then?'

'That sounds great. Let me know nearer the time and
I'll make arrangements.'

They both said farewell and hung up. Greg strolled
leisurely on, smiling expectantly, keeping the comm in
his hand. As he walked he thought about the dig site up
on Giant's Shoulder, the many hours he'd spent
painstakingly uncovering this carven stela or that section
of intricately tiled floor, not to mention the countless
days devoted to cataloguing, dating, sample analysis and
correlation matching. Sometimes - well, a lot of the
time - it was a frustrating process, as there was nothing
to guide them in comprehending the meaning of the
site's layout and function. Even the Uvovo scholars were
at a loss, explaining that the working of stone was a skill
lost at the time of the War of the Long Night, one of the
darker episodes in Uvovo folklore.

Ten minutes later he was near the top of the path
when his comm chimed again, and without looking at
the display he brought it up and said:

'Hi, Mum.'

'Gregory, son, are you well?

'Mum, I'm fine, feeling okay and happy too, really ...'

'Yes, now that you're out of her clutches! But are
you not lonely up there amongst those cold stones and
only the little Uvovo to talk to?'

Greg held back the urge to sigh. In a way, she was
right - it was a secluded existence, living pretty much on
his own in one of the site cabins. There was a three-man
team of researchers from the university working on the
site's carvings, but they were all Russian and mostly
kept to themselves, as did the Uvovo teams who came in
from the outlying stations now and then. Some of the
Uvovo scholars he knew by name but only Chel had
become a friend.

'A bit of solitude is just what I need right now, Mum.
Beside, there's always people coming and going up here.'

'Mm-hmm. There were always people coming and
going here at the house when your father was a coun-
cilman, hut most of them I did not care for, as you might
recall'

'Oh, I remember, all right.'

Greg also remembered which ones stayed loyal when
his father fell ill with the tumour that eventually killed
him.

'As a matter of fact, I was discussing both you and
your father with your Uncle Theodor, who came by this
afternoon.''

Greg raised his eyebrows. Theodor Karlsson was his
mother's oldest brother and had earned himself a certain
notoriety and the nickname 'Black Theo' for his role in
the abortive Winter Coup twenty years ago. As a pun-
ishment he had been kept under house arrest on New
Kelso for twelve years, during which he fished, studied
military history and wrote, although on his release the
Hammergard government informed him that he was
forbidden to publish anything, fact or fiction, on pain of
bail suspension. For the last eight years he had tried his
hand at a variety of jobs, while keeping in occasional
contact with his sister, and Greg vaguely recalled that he
had somehow got involved with the Hyperion Data
Project. . .

'So what's Uncle Theo been saying?'

'Well, he has heard some news that will amaze you -
I can still scarcely believe it myself. It is going to change
everyone's life.'

'Don't tell me that he wants to overthrow the gov-
ernment again.'

'Please, Gregori, that is not even slightly funny ..."

'Sorry, Mum, sorry. Please, what did he say?'

From where he stood at the head of the path he had
a clear view of the dig, the square central building look-
ing bleached and grey in the glare of the nightlamps. As
Greg listened his expression went from puzzled to aston-
ished, and he let out an elated laugh as he looked up at
the stars. Then he got his mother to tell him again.

'Mum, you've got to be kidding me! . . .'

2

THEO

Theodor Karlsson had a spring in his step as he walked
up a private footpath towards the presidential villa. Tall,
thick bushes concealed it from inquisitive eyes, and
waist-high lantern posts shed pools of subdued radiance
all along its length. His long, heavy coat was three-quar-
ters fastened and his custom-soled shoes made little
noise on the tiled path. The villa grounds were dark and
still in the cool of the evening but Karlsson could almost
smell the weave of seamless security which enclosed the
place. There was a visible perimeter of patrols and cam-
eras down at the main wall and gate, and a pair of
guards at the side-door up ahead, but Theo knew that
the best security was seldom seen. The question that
loomed large in his mind, however, was who was it all
meant to keep out?

The guards, both wearing dark imager eye-pieces,
were muttering into collar mikes as he approached.

'Good evening, Major,' said one. 'If you could look
into the scanner with your right eye.'

He stepped up to the plain wooden door, followed
instructions, and moments later he heard several muf-
fled thuds. The door swung open. Inside he was met by
a composed, middle-aged woman who took his coat
then led him along a narrow, windowless corridor, past
a number of bland, pastoral paintings, then up a poorly
lit curve of steps to a landing with two doors. Without
pause she continued through the left one and Karlsson
found himself in a warm, carpeted study.

'Please make yourself comfortable, Major Karlsson.
The president will see you shortly'

'Thank you . . .' Theo began to say, but she ,vas
already leaving the room, closing the door behind her He
surveyed his surroundings, a medium-sized room with
well-stocked bookshelves, a log fire burning in the herrth,
and an ornate adjustable lamp hanging over a large cl zsi .
A ceiling-high rack of shelves partially concealed a second
door in one corner and a hand-eye security lock.

The belly of the beast, he thought. Or maybe the
lion's den.

It always felt like this whenever he had these meetings
with Sundstrom, no matter where they took place.
Which was why he had got into the habit of visiting his
sister, Solvjeg, shortly beforehand, just to quietly let her
know where he would be for the next few hours, with a
veiled hint as to whom he was meeting. Today, though,
she was full of eagerness to know if the rumours were
true, that there had been a signal from Earth.

Theo grinned, recalling the moment. The message
had apparently been received that morning, yet he had
heard it sixth-hand from an old friend in the Corps by
mid-afternoon, so it was no surprise that Solvjeg picked
it up from the old girls' network. Now it was evening
and the rumours were all over the colony. Even
Kirkland, the leader of the opposition, had issued a
statement, but so far there had been no official confir-
mation from either the council or the president's office.

A ship from Earthl he thought. So now we know
that the human race survived the Swarm War, but did
we beat them or did other survivors flee from Earth?
And what happened to the other two colonyships, the
Forrestal and the Tenebrosaf

His mind was a ferment of questions, the outcome of
a year and a half of unpaid work at the Hyperion Data
Project. It had been his own soldiering experience that
had led to helping one of the supervisors with the tran-
scription of a military treatise in Swedish. It turned out
to be a Swedish translation of On War by the Prussian
Von Clausewitz, a book that Theo had only ever read
references to. Engrossed in the steady work of extracting
it from the Hyperion's reams of raw text, and having to
guess where the paragraphs began, he had become fas-
cinated with the Hyperion and her sister ships, including
the ones that were never launched . . .

The door behind the shelves in the corner opened
and the president entered, his wheelchair pushed by a
young man in a brown and grey onepiece.

'Evening, Theodor,' Sundstrom said, dismissing the
attendant then dextrously propelling himself across the
room to stop behind his desk.

'Good evening, Holger,' Theo said. 'Interesting study
you have, some nice books too.' He indicated a glass-
fronted cabinet. 'Is that the Serov edition of Nineteen
Eighty-four over there?'

'Yes, it is,' said Sundstrom. 'Collins's Moonstone is
rarer, of course, but Orwell is much more of a politi-
cian's writer.'

Theo chuckled. Vasili Serov had been a systems tech
on board the colonyship Hyperion and had played a
decisive role in the deadly struggle against the ship's
Command AI. In the Hardship Years that followed,
Serov had cobbled together a crude manual printing
press and painstakingly typeset those few novels sitting
in datapods that had not been linked to the shipboard
comnet. The huge memorybanks of the Hyperion,
buried under layers of encryption by the ship AI, were to
remain inaccessible for decades, so Serov's work had
proved invaluable to the surviving colonists.

For a moment both men were thoughtfully silent,
then Sundstrom spoke:

'I assume you've heard.'

'About two hours before I got your invitation,' Theo
said, watching him. 'So it's true - Earth has sent a ship
to find us, which means that the Swarm were defeated
and all our troubles are over, yes?'

Sundstrom gave a thin smile.

'If only matters were that straightforward. Theo, the
Swarm War lasted two and a half years before the
Hegemony helped chase the last of the Swarm away,
and that was a century and a half ago, which is a long
time in the history of a culture or a society. Just think
about all the strife and upheavals that our little enclave
has been through - the Hyperion AI war, First Families
against the New Generation, the Consolidators versus
the Expansionists, the New Town Secession - and mul-
tiply that to a planetary level.' He shook his head. Tin
afraid that our lives are about to become quite a bit
more complicated, not to say uncomfortable.'

Frowning, Theo sat back, going over in his mind the
dozen or so meetings he'd had with Sundstrom in the
last two years.

'You speak as if you know something I've not heard
about.. .' He leaned forward. 'When you first asked me
to join your little cabal, you said that we were preparing
for the worst, like the possibility of occupation by an
unfriendly species. Now it seems that there's an Earth
ship due in . . . how long?'

'Fourteen hours.'

'Less than a day, fine,' Theo said. 'Yet your
demeanour is not that of, shall we say, delighted antici-
pation.' Then he laughed and snapped his fingers. 'Or
has it been this contact with Earth that we've been
preparing for all along?'

Sundstrom leaned back in his wheelchair, gnarled
hands loosely clasping the handrests. 'Your intuition has
always been sharp, Theodor,' he said. 'If you had been the
leader of the Winter Coup rather than Viktor Ingram . ..'

'If I'd had that sharp an intuition back then, I would
have shot the bastard, not trusted him,' Theo said
testily. 'But you're dodging the question, Holger.'

'I'm waiting for the others to join us first - ah, I think
they're here now.' He reached forward and fingered an
angled display set in the desktop.

The others, Theo thought. Sundstrom had occasion-
ally hinted at the existence of other cabal members, but
in two years Theo had met only one of them, a broad-
shouldered, muscular Scot who was introduced as Boris.
He was not among the three who now entered the study,
two of whom - a man and a woman - he had never seen
before. The third he recognised immediately as Vitaly
Pyatkov, assistant director at the Office of Guidance,
an intelligence organisation founded in the wake ot tru
Winter Coup. Theo was amused by the look of agiias.
surprise that flashed across the man's features on seeing
who was in the president's company, and also by the
bland expression that slammed into place an instant
later.

'Thank you all for coming here this evening,' said
Sundstrom. 'You have all agreed to be part of my little
advisory inner circle, but I intend to keep identities ;o i
minimum for now.' He then introduced the man as
Donny, and the woman as Tanya. Once everyone had
settled, he began.

'First, as Fm sure you've all realised, the rumours are
true. One of our comm satellites picked up a message
claiming to be from the Earthsphere ship Heracles,
offering friendly greetings and informing us that they
will be entering Darien orbit at about ten tomorrow
morning. Simurg 2, our satellite orbiting Nivyesta, is
tracking an object on an intercept course with Darien;
further communications have confirmed that the objec t
is their source.'

'Further communications, sir?' said the woman
Tanya. 'Has there been dialogue? Do we have any clues
about what to expect?'

'There is a special ambassador on board, going by the
name of Robert Horst, but thus far we have exchanged
little more than diplomatic pleasantries.' Sundstrom's
face grew serious. 'However, there are certain truths that
I must make you all aware of from the outset.'

He raised a wire remote and clicked it. The screen at
his back blinked on, showing a blue world from orbit,
with a small green moon in attendance - Darien and

Nivyesta. The perspective swung round gradually, bring-
ing the sun, New Sol, into view, causing a lens flare
before it slid out of the frame, leaving planet and moon
against a hazy backdrop through which a few bright
stars shone, diamond points suspended in misty veils.

'The tract of stellar dust and debris that surrounds
us,' he went on, 'is rather larger than some observers
had reckoned, nearly a thousand lightyears across at its
widest, and our star system is located in one of the
denser swirls. This tract is known as the Huvuun
Deepzone and is one of several scattered around this
part of the galaxy. It also happens to be the focus of a
bitter border dispute between two regional civilisations,
the Imisil and the Broltura.'

On the screen, Darien and its solar system dwindled
into the mottled murk of interstellar dust clouds while
strangely contoured walls emerged, stretching across
lightyears, the three-dimensional boundaries between
the deepzone and adjacent territories.

'The Brolturan Compact is closely allied to a huge
interstellar empire called the Sendruka Hegemony, who
also happen to be allies of Earthsphere. Unfortunately,
the Solar System is nearly 15,000 lightyears away, which
puts us well outside Earth's region of influence. The
Imisil Mergence were once at war with the Hegemony,
which adds a certain tension to the situation.'

Sundstrom paused, and there was an astonished
silence. The others glanced at the screen and each other
as the revelations sank in, and Theo's mind spun with
the implications.

Complicated and uncomfortable? he thought. That's
an understatement.

Pyatkov the intelligence officer spoke:

'Sir, respectfully - I know that your exchanges with
the ambassador have not contained such information, so
I must ask where it comes from.'

'I'm sorry, Vitaly, but I cannot reveal that at the
moment.'

'Then how long have you known all this?' Theo said.

'Nearly two and a half years,' the president said. 'You
will all find out the nature of this source in time, but
they do not wish others to know straight away in fear of
an inevitable political backlash.'

It's got to be the Enhanced, Theo thought. They're
involved in all the tech-heavy projects, and I'll bet that
old Holger has a couple tucked away, translating signal-
trawled from the Great Beyond.

'So who should we fear the most?'

Sundstrom smiled ruefully. 'Realpolitik being what
it is, I feel that none of them are to be entirely trusted,
but Earth's alliance with the Sendruka Hegemony is dis
turbing . . .'

As they listened, Sundstrom launched into an amaz
ing disclosure, sketching the outlines of a topography of
interstellar power, rivalry and conflict they had never
dreamed existed. The Sendruka Hegemony was an
authoritarian, militaristic empire which dominated this
part of the galaxy: it employed a range of unprincipled
tactics in order to get its way while laying claim to the
most altruistic of motives and holding itself up as the
example to which other civilisations should aspire.
Unfortunately, close bonds of gratitude and trade
existed between Earthsphere and the Hegemony, since
the latter had been instrumental in defeating the Swarm
invasion fleet which had nearly overwhelmed Earth and
a dozen other civilisations 150 years ago. That was
when the Hyperion and two other colonyships had
departed the home solar system, after the beginning of
the invasion but before the Hegemony's intervention.

As Sundstrom spoke, Theo glanced at the others. The
woman Tanya was utterly engrossed, her gaze fixed on
the president, while Pyatkov seemed more reserved,
frowning slightly as he took it all in. The other man,
Donny, seemed to be listening but had a relaxed alert-
ness about him that Theo recognised.

Definitely special forces, he thought. Plus an intelli-
gence officer, a networker - maybe she's in government
admin or communications - and a disgraced ex-major.
There have to be others besides us.

'So we're a human colony world very far from home,'
Pyatkov said. 'We've appeared in the middle of con-
tested territory, and Earth's allies are powerful and
unsavoury. What of these Brolturans? Are they prefer-
able to these others, the Imisil?'

'The Brolturans constitute a fanatical offshoot of
mainstream Sendruka civilisation,' Sundstrom said.
'Their culture is centred on the precepts of a faith called
Voloasti which elevates them to the status of God's pal-
adins. The Imisil Mergence on the other hand—' He
shrugged. 'They are a confederation of mainly non-
humanoid races, non-expansionist, yet they're
contesting ownership of this area we're in, the Huvuun
Deepzone, purely to maintain some kind of buffer
between themselves and the Brolturans.'

At this Donny smiled and sat straighten 'So what do
they look like, these Sendruka?'

'A lot like us,' Sundstrom said. 'They are very human
like, except that they average about ten feet in height.'

Theo got a sudden flash of insight, imagining these
tall humanoid aliens fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with
humans to save Earth from the insectoid Swarm. Yearn
that would generate a good deal of useful gratitude.
Tanya and Pyatkov were openly surprised at this piece
of information, but Donny just smiled and nodded.

'They sound formidable,' Theo said. 'Anything else?'

The president gave one of his twinkly-eyed, mischie-
vous smiles. 'Quite a lot else, actually, but there is one
particular nugget which I think you'll all find interest-
ing.' Fie looked at them. 'Since the Swarm War, and
especially since Earth allied itself with the Hegemony-,
the development of artificial intelligence and awareness
has moved ahead in leaps and bounds. AIs have spread
to every level and sector of Earth culture, permeating the
social fabric to the point where many people carry per-
sonalised ones around with them, sometimes as
implants, and calling them "companions", never AIs.
In the Hegemony, such entities are even more wide-
spread, with the majority conferred autonomous rights
by law. Several of the oldest and most complex even
hold senior posts in government.'

There was a shocked pause, and a shared look of
alarm as the meaning of his words dawned. One hun-
dred and forty-eight years ago, soon after the detection
of the world that was to become their new home, the
crew and colonists of the Hyperion had fought a savage
and desperate war against the ship's Command Ai.
From the point when the ship had dropped out of hyper -
space, the onboard systems had begun to exhibit
malfunctions which grew steadily more hazardous as
the landing approached. By the time they made landfall
they were actively struggling against the ship, whose AI
had ceased to obey instructions. It took control of
machinery, bots and various repair drones with which to
sabotage the crew's efforts to get supplies out of locked
storerooms or to directly attack them. Eventually it had
begun waking other colonists from cryosleep, implant-
ing them with neural devices to force them to carry out
its instructions: 11 of the original crew of 46, plus 29
out of the cryosleep contingent of 1,200, had been killed
by the time the survivors shut off power to the AI core.
As to why it had turned against them, the weary victors
could only speculate that the unknown stresses of hyper-
space had corrupted its data or its cognitive substrate,
turning it against them. The horrors of that struggle had
echoed down the decades, becoming a potent symbol
and a widely accepted justification for banning any
research into AI, and commemorated in the annual
Founders' Victory celebrations.

'I shall be making my widecast address to the colony
in a couple of hours, after making a statement in the
Assembly,' the president said. 'There will be no mention
of anything that I've related here, of course, except for
whatever generalities came in the ambassador's mes-
sages. But I wanted to tell you this in person now, since
even our most secure communications may cease to be
so in days to come.'

'Is it possible that the Earth ambassador will have
one of these AIs with him?' asked Pyatkov.

'It might be wise to assume that he has,' Sundstrom
said. 'Which may lead to umbrage on his part come FV

*

Day, but we'll paper over that crack when we come to
it.' He spread his hands. 'That is all for the time being,
my friends. Continue with your preparations, maintain
your colleagues lists, and expect new codewords by
tomorrow night.'

As Theo rose with the others, Sundstrom beckoned
him back. 'Theodor, if you could wait behind a
moment.'

Once the rest had made their farewells and left,
Pyatkov looking grim as he did so, the president
manoeuvred his wheelchair out from behind the cissl
and over to a stolidly designed drinks cabinet. He
poured himself a small glass of something dark red with
out offering one to Theo, knocked it back and gave a
throaty sigh of satisfaction.

'I'm very glad that you agreed to join my little con-
spiracy, Theodor,' he said. 'Even though you still
associate with various rogues and misfits, those
Diehards of yours.'

'Ah, merely a group of friends from my army days,
family friends . . .' He shrugged, smiling. 'Like-minded
folk.'

Sundstrom's smile was knowing. 'In any case, I still
value your experience and military insight, even your
dissenter's viewpoint. But there's something else yon
bring to our clandestine scheming, something that could
prove crucial.'

Theo laughed. 'Somehow I don't think you're refer
ring to my charm and boyish good looks.'

Sundstrom gave him a sidelong look.

T believe that you and your old friends from the
Corps call it "the assets".'

Still standing, Theo almost froze but made himself
relax. 'The assets?'

'A substantial quantity of arms and ammunition went
missing after the Winter Coup, along with explosives,
tech gear, and some vehicles. Now, assuming that this
materiel has been stored at various locations in the
vicinity of the colony townships, it's entirely possible
that such hideaways may have come to the attention of
some intel-gathering arm of government. In which case
that data could be sitting in files that will shortly
become, as I've already indicated, somewhat less than
secure. Of course, if these stores turned out to be empty
then such files could be closed and erased without
delay.' He smiled. 'I don't know why you held on to it -
perhaps you harboured long-term ambitions, or maybe
you kept it so that it wouldn't fall into other hands.
Either way, I'm glad that you did.'

Theo smiled blandly. 'Holger, I am at a loss to know
how to reply to all that,' he said. 'But I shall give it care-
ful consideration.'

'That's all I ask.'

'There is one small favour you might do for me,' he
said.

'Which is?'

Theo smiled. 'From your communications with the
Earth ship, were you told anything about the Forrestal
and the TenebrosaV

'That was one of my first questions,' Sundstrom said.
'But it seems that they have not been found - the dis-
tinction of first contact is ours.'

'After which we will come under the microscope, no
doubt.'

'Why is that?'

'To find out how our experiment in cultural admix-
ture turned out,' Theo said. 'The original colonial
project back on Earth computer-modelled a wide variety
of national-cultural combinations, with the aim of find-
ing those most likely to be able to survive conditions on
alien worlds. And to build a worthwhile society.'

Sundstrom gave a rueful grin. 'Scandinavians,
Russians and Scots - what were they thinking?'

A moment later the female assistant entered with
Theo's overcoat. He donned it, shook the president s
hand and moments later found himself outside the villa
again. It was darker and colder now and he felt a dis-
tinct nip in the air as he left the villa grounds by I
tree-shrouded pair of gates designed to look like the
entrance of an adjacent property. The spinnercab he had
ordered earlier was waiting at the side of the road, and
took him downhill towards the city. Hammergard was
spread along a narrow isthmus which separated Loch
Morwen from the Korzybski Sea and the ocean beyond,
both bodies of water glimmering with reflections of the
night sky's starmist hues. But Theo was dwelling on
Sundstrom's closing remarks about the Diehards, not to
mention the assets, which was something of an unset-
tling surprise. And yet the president had decided to tell
Theo that the assets were vulnerable, a revelation that
could have only a limited number of implications, all of
which spelled trouble.

He had the driver let him out on the Loch Morwen
shore road in the city's Northvale district. With the hum
of the spinnercab fading as it returned to the city centre,
Theo took out his comm as he headed up the sideroad
that led home. It was an older, larger model, its sang-
wood case scored and darkened from use, but the
exterior belied its customised, upgraded components. A
few thumbpresses later the blue oval screen read
'Welcome To The Crypt', and when he raised it to his
ear he heard jaunty bagpipe music for a moment or two
before someone answered.

'Aye, whit is it now}''

Theo cleared his throat. 'Rory, it's me.'

Silence for a moment. 'Ach, sorry about that, Major -
I just had Stef on the line from Tangenberg bitching
about the trainin' rota because he wants tae watch the
Earth ambassador arriving on the vee and I thought
that wiz him again—'

'That's okay, never mind,' Theo said. Rory McGrain
was his deputy, quartermaster and researcher all rolled
into one. 'Listen, we'll need to roust out some loaders
and crews tonight.'

'Won't be easy, chief. What's it for}'

'Sundstrom knows about the assets.'

'Aw, naw . . .'

'Or more accurately, he knows that government intel
knows about them, so we have to move them all
tonight.'

'Hell's fire, chief - are we gonna have to shoot our
way out}'

Theo slowed as he reached the leaf-wreathed stair-
way leading up to his hab.

'That's the funny part, Rory -1 don't think there'll be
anyone watching the caches, never mind getting ready to
jump us. Listen, I'm at my house right now. Have
Ivanov or Janssen pick me up in fifteen. And one more
thing - see what you can find out about a special forces
guy called Donny.' He gave a brief description iron
memory.

'That must have been some meeting ye had up at the
palace,' Rory said. 'Am I right in thinking that this
ambassador's meet 'n' greet isna all it seems}'

'Rory, you don't know the half of it.'

And as he hurried up the wooden steps, he thought -
And I don't think I do either.

3

LEGION

It was a contract survey ship called Segmenter that
found the planet Darien while studying the perilous
gulfs of the Huvuun Deepzone.

Through tangled swirls and curtains of interstellar
dust and debris, Segmenter had painstakingly (and
clandestinely) plotted and scanned and measured for
several long weeks before stumbling over an uncharted
star system, complete with four planets, one of which
was habitable. Since this part of the Huvuun was cur-
rently claimed by two antagonistic civilisations, the
Brolturans and the Imisil, there then followed a tense
hour or more during which the system was scanned
for any other ships, beacons, probes or sensor nets.
Once it was clear that there were no such hazards in
the area, Segmenter moved in closer while its crew set
to work.

Data soon began arriving: a variant-three habitable
world, with a cluster of medium-tecli-level settlements
and also a large habitable moon. The planet's sentients
were confirmed as Human, and their rudimentary infor-
mation network revealed a population of approximately
2.75 million. The moon was inhabited by an indigenous
biped sentient species called the Uvovo, who coexisted
with an extensive forest ecology . . .

A full report was compiled by one of Segmenter's
scanners, then passed up to the captain. He saw at once
that the Human element made it too important for his
remit and had the report encrypted and dispatched via
Tier 2 hyperspace comnet to the headquarters of the
Suneye Combine, the huge interstellar corpora tic 1
which had contracted Segmenter's services. From there it
flashed to the Office of External Measures on Iseri, the
supreme homeworld of the Sendruka Hegemony. Six
hours after leaving Segmenter, the report's contents were
being discussed by the highest Hegemony figures and
their AIs, and policy formulation was well under way.

But the Segmenter's, captain was not above trying to
sell the same goods twice and had quickly found a cus-
tomer at the rogue port of Blacknest. Pleased with his
new acquisition, the datadealer deposited a tidy sum in
a secure account, then streamed the data directly to a
number of patrons with standing orders for informa-
tion on new planets.

One patron was a Kiskashin line-pirate on Yndyeri
Duvo, a 2nd-echelon world in the Erdindeso Autarky.
His reputation for selling anything to anyone had gained
him a string of customers for whom the word 'eccentric'
was merely a starting point. And amongst the most tac-
iturn was one he had named Lord Mysterious. Lord
Mysterious had appeared nearly twenty years ago with
a solid tap of Piraseri credit and a terse description of his
information requirements tagged with a secure, localnet
address on Duvo's sister world, Yndyeri Tetro, The
Kiskashin was a phlegmatic merchant, and as long as a
customer's credit held up he had no interest in finding
out much more about them. So as soon as the Darien
report blinked into his portable dataspace (while he was
haggling with a tekmarker over the cost of band-depth
for the coming hexad) he recognised this as the kind of
thing Lord Mysterious had specified in his gatherer pro-
file. But rather than sending it on immediately, he
abstracted it and pondered the contents: a long-lost
Human colony discovered in the middle of the Huvuun
Deepzone with the Imisil in one corner, the Brolturans in
the other, and the Hegemony looming over it all - hmm,
a risky place to be, without a doubt, and fascinating.
The Kiskashin did not know any Humans, but if any
contacted him with a lucrative proposal in mind he
would certainly-be open-minded about it.

And just in case some of his other clients might be
interested in this little morsel, he slotted the report into
one of the slower outgoing queues. That would give him
time to examine it later and assess its resale potential.
After all, business is business.

4

CHEL

Every time he stepped aboard a Human vehicle, Chel
found himself having to learn forbearance anew. They
were hard, hollow things, completely lacking in the
vitality of organic life yet endowed with cunning engines
that drove them along their way. When the government
zeplin set down at Port Gagarin, Chel breathed more
easily as he hurried down the gantry to the hard ground
of the sunken landing bay. It was difficult to trust to a
thing that neither breathed nor had a beating heart, a
thing that had no lifesong.

Yet we must have been very different in the long-dis-
tant past, he thought, gazing back up at the dirigible.
Once, the Uvovo worked with cold, dead stone and
built places like the temple on Waonwir. What kind of
people were we then?

The short nightflight from Waonwir, which the
Humans called Giant's Shoulder, to Port Gagarin was only
the first stage of his journey. He was met at the landing
bay exit by a breathless, harried-looking young Human
female who introduced herself as Oxana as she quickly
guided him along enclosed walkways to one of the big
loading bays. There they boarded a large, ponderous
freighter named Skidhbladnir, its appearance so battered
and grimy as to make the government zeplin seem pristine
by comparison.

Once inside, Oxana apologised for the rush, blaming
incompetent couriers, and gave him his tickets for the
rest of the journey.

'It should not take more than six or seven hours, and
there are five stops along the way before you reach
Invergault, where you will be met by someone from
Ibsenskog. When you are ready to return, simply send us
a message from the monitor office in the town.'

'I shall remember, Oxana,' Chel said. 'My thanks.'

'Think nothing of it, Scholar,' she said. 'Safe journey.'

After she was gone, Chel sought out the padded shelf
that was his accommodation while the thuds and shouts
of loading continued down in the main hold. A short
while later the hold door was finally raised and the
cargo zeplin lurched as its moorings were uncoupled.
Engines droned and the shelf vibrated faintly beneath
him, then a swaying sensation told him that they were
aloft and under way.

However, Oxana's six or seven hours turned into
nearly nine. As the freighter flew through the night and
on into the morning, Chel managed to doze for a span,
once he had grown accustomed to the dead hollowness
of the Human craft. He almost grew used to the rattle
of the hawser drums, the cries of the hefter crews, and
the sounds of cargo being shifted. But by the time the
Skidhbladnir arrived at Invergault it was an undeniable
relief to clamber down to the zeplin station's small plat-
form, with the cargo dirigible hanging overhead,
creaking on taut cables.

Invergault was a small town sitting upslope from i
pebbly cove near the end of a steep-sided sea loch. Like
most of the Eastern Towns, it was a meeting point and
marketplace for hunters, fishers and trappers. As he
descended from the platform, he noticed that almost all
roofs now carried windspinners, as well as large afftcg
roots affixed to their chimneys and flues, absorbing the
ash and fumes from hearth and cooking fires, chan-
nelling heat into other uses rather than letting it escape
Chel knew from his teachers that, before the Humans
sent their craft up to the home of Segrana, the colonists
had been enthusiastic over-exploiters of natural resources
and had scarcely practised any kind of wardenship. After
the Accord of Friendship, the Uvovo were able to help
the Humans to give up certain wasteful, destructive
habits by showing them how to cultivate and use the
many kinds of sifter root. This opened the way to the
establishment of the seven daughter-forests, from which
a change in cultural attitudes slowly percolated through
the Humans' society. Wardenship of the natural world
gradually became part of their custom and tradition.

On the pebbly slope near the zep station, Chel was
met by a young female Uvovo dressed in plain green
garments and wearing a Benevolent amulet. She looked
anxious surrounded by the taller, bulkier Humans, but
her face brightened when she spotted Chel. She intro-
duced herself as Giseru and led him up to a lohig pen
where an elderly Human stocksman tethered out
riding pair and lashed on the saddles with almost care
less expertise. Moments later, Chel and his guide were
heading out of town and along a broad, rutted track
that led into a bushy gully and the wooded hills beyond.

Chel had to suppress the urge to laugh as he gripped
the reining rod and followed Giseru through the trees.
Lohig were six-legged creatures whose segmented bodies
were protected by bony plates, and whose large dark
eyes were veiled by flickering inner eyelids. Beneath the
canopies of Segrana, they usually grew no larger than
hand-size, but such marked divergence was found in
several strains of plants and animals common to Umara
and its forest moon. Chel had spoken with a few
Human ecologists and heard them speak excitedly of
this or that theory which tried to account for these dif-
ferences. While they acknowledged that once the Uvovo
had inhabited both planet and moon, they failed to
understand that Segrana too had once held sway on
both worlds and that the loss of that blessed presence
was the root cause. The Humans spoke of 'die-back'
and 'extinction events', but Uvovo legends told of a vast
and terrible conflict, the War of the Long Night, a strug-
gle between the Ghost Gods and the Dreamless which
led to the burning of the world that Humans now called
Darien. Human record-keepers and teachers knew of
the Uvovo's legends but did not understand them, just as
they came to visit the high homes,of Segrana but did not
hear her song.

He smiled ruefully, knowing that was not strictly
true. There were a few whose perceptions ran a little
deeper, like Lyssa Devlin or Pavel Ivanov, who might
one day glimpse the outlines of the greatness of Segrana.
Yet there was one Human, a female scientist called
Catriona Macreadie, whose qualities of intellect might
one day allow her to comprehend it.

The lohig he was riding ambled along with a steady,
padding gait even as the track grew uneven and steep.
The sun was high enough to be midday in a mainly cloud-
less sky, sending bright spears down through the layers of
foliage. Insects buzzed and spun in the warm forest air,
feathered hizio trilled in the high branches, and ubakil
hooted mournfully to each other off in the distance. He
smiled to hear these mingled sounds, the patchwork
melody of the forest's denizens, while off at its edge he
detected a calm, persevering voice, faint but unmistak-
able, the voice of Ibsenskog, Segrana's daughter-forest.

His guide, Giseru, said little as they wound their way
through bushy undergrowth, ascending a trail that ran
alongside a small stream. The trickling sounds of water
over stones were a restful whisper merging with the
susurrus of the wooded hills but the voice of the daugh-
ter-forest was strengthening with each passing moment.
After a while Chel heard a hissing, splashing sound and
before long the trail came out on a grassy bank near the
foot of a waterfall. Narrow but smoothly made steps led
up the sheer rock face, which the lohig managed without
difficulty. Insects wove patterns in the warm air, and at
the top a bushy slope led into a tree-shaded gully that
tapered to a fissure full of the sound of rushing waters.
But logs and shaped pieces of stone had been put in
place as a rudimentary but solid walkway. It was dark in
the fissure, its rough walls bearded with moss, beaded
and glistening in a mist of water droplets descending
from above. Then a notch appeared on the right and up
they climbed, roughly hewn steps curving round to
emerge on a grassy knoll with a large boulder at their
backs. To one side, the ground dropped away to the
rocky gully, the waterfall and the wooded hills, while on
the other it dipped gently into a small, flowery dell
beyond which lay Ibsenskog.

Segrana's daughter-forest stretched almost the entire
length of a high mountain valley. Fifty years after the re-
seeding, Ibsenskog and the others had become the
lushest, most flourishing places on Umara yet were still
only comparable to the sparser regions of Segrana, tracts
where the medleys of living things were less numerous.
Chel paused for a moment or two, letting the lifesong of
the daughter-forest sink into him, feeding ears, taste and
smell with its sweet richness, even as he knew it to be
only an echo of Segrana's enfolding, never-ending song
of celebration. Eyes closed for a moment, he smiled.

'Listener Faldri awaits us, Scholar,' came Giseru's
voice.

In surprise he opened his eyes and saw the tall,
cowled form of a Listener standing at the edge of the
forest, near the path that led into its green embrace.

I knew that the Benevolent Uvovo were the wardens
of Ibsenskog, he thought. But I did not know that Faldri
would be here.

Giseru was already steering her lohig down into the
dell, so Chel urged his mount into motion, his eagerness
to enter the forest now tempered by reluctance.

The Listener was leaning on a long stave of red
markwood and seemed not to acknowledge their arrival,
even as they dismounted and tied the lohigs to a notched
pole. Only when Giseru led Chel over to bow to his
right side did the Listener respond - by turning away
and striding unhurriedly towards the forest shade.

'Underscholars will attend to the creatures,' he said.
'Come.'

Giseru looked faintly embarrassed but Chel just
smiled patiently and followed.

Faldri is testing me, he thought. Whether he intends
to or not.

Curtains of fine-tendrilled gumaus hung from
branches to either side, supporting a variety of other
dependent plants and blooms from which fragrance
drifted. As they walked, packs of small red-furred igissa
scampered and leaped from tree to tree, making masses
of foliage sway and rustle. Squeaks and drones, whistles
and clatters, the exuberant sounds of Ibsenskog's
wildlings over which the lifesong of the forest itself
flowed, spilling through his thoughts. He was about to
ask Giseru about the local water pattern but Faldri dis-
missed her, then wordlessly beckoned Chel to continue
to follow. He thought that Faldri intended to avoid con -
versing with him entirely until, a short while later as
they climbed a curve of bark steps, he spoke.

'You have made significant progress since attaining
your scholarhood,' he said. 'Despite choosing to serve in
the Warrior Uvovo.'

The Listener had pulled back a little and now the
two walked side by side. Faldri had been Chel's teacher
and their relationship had not been an amiable one.

'I chose to serve Segrana and the Great Purpose,
Listener,' Chel said. 'I merely judged the Warrior clade
to be more amenable to my temperament than the
Benevolents.'

He was trying to sound conciliatory by downplaying
his preference for the Warrior Uvovo. But instead
comments seemed to provoke anger.

'Judged}' the Listener said, slowing to look directly at
him for the first time. Chel was taken aback by the
changes wrought in his old teacher by the Listener husk-
ing: the lengthened features, the sunken eyes, the paring
away of excess. 'Judgement is for Listeners, not
Scholars!'

Then he was moving ahead, striding up to the top of
the rise. 'Hurry - no dawdling! It will soon be time for
the zinsilu.'

With his longer legs, Faldri was over the crest ahead
of Chel, who had to break into a run to catch up. On
the other side the path led down into a great dark mass
of leafy undergrowth, bushes and small trees inter-
twined with climbing plants and borrower-weeds. Faldri
ducked into a dark opening and Chel followed. A lumpy
path wound down through mossy trees and came out at
last in a clearing dominated by three big vaskin trees
standing around a still pool. Listener Faldri was kneel-
ing between two of the trees, eyes closed, wide,
thin-lipped mouth murmuring, long-fingered hands held
· out, palms up. From some high opening in the canopy
light filtered down and as he drew near Chel could see a
fine mist of droplets falling between the three smooth,
straight trunks.

Chel felt a growing quiver of uncertainty. This was
utterly unlike his previous zinsilu, which had been fasci-
nating discussions between himself and senior scholars
on the direction of his learning, held in comfortable sur-
roundings. This place reminded him of the few times he
had taken the vudron vigil, except that the presence here
was stern and brooding rather than tranquil and contem-
plative.

The fur on his scalp and neck prickled as he
advanced. Faldri remained as he was, hands extended,
lips muttering, his features just visible beneath the cowl.
Chel halted at the edge of the pool, which he saw was
not entirely still, its surface trembling very slightly now
and then. Looking up he could see the falling mist and a
shifting silvery radiance from above. Chel stood in
silence for several moments before deciding to speak,
but Faldri, eyes still closed, forestalled him with a fluid
gesture. Wait.

Long moments passed. Chel inhaled and exhaled in a
slow rhythm, calming himself, smelling and tasting the
odours of wet wood and green leaves. Then Faldri
ceased murmuring and drew an audible deep breath.

'The gate is now open, Great Elder. Your servants
await.'

The Listener's voice seemed to resonate in Chel's ears.
His senses hummed to the lifesong of the daughter-forest
which gathered in strength, climbing up his body like a
slow fountain of energy, rising through his limbs, his
veins, his spine. And suddenly he knew that he was in
the presence of sacred Segrana . . . and another. There,
in the radiant mist above the pool, was a hulking,
stooped form draped in long folds, an indistinct image.

Chel stared in awe and panic. Faldri had called out to
the 'Great Elder', and Chel suddenly realised that he
was looking at one of the legendary Pathmasters.

But the histories say that the last of them died after
the War of the Long Night, he thought. How could one
still be alive after thousands of years}

'There is no death,' came a sighing voice. 'Only a
change in how the universe dreams about us . . .'

In reflex, Chel bowed his head, his thoughts in a
whirl. The long-lived Pathmasters were the third husk-
ings of the Uvovo, which only the wisest, most
enlightened of Listeners could achieve. But the War of
the Long Night had decimated the Uvovo and destroyed
much of the ancient strength of Segrana, without which
the third huskings could not be carried out. The surviv-
ing Uvovo had been confined to the forest moon, their
history fraying and fading into legend after the
Pathmasters were gone, their knowledge shrivelling into
litany, their customs into ritual, until the Humans came.

'Dreams persist,' the Pathmaster sighed. 'The
stronger the dreamer, the more resilient the dream. Some
dream outward dreams, seeking unity with the eternal;
others dream inwardly, dreams of hunger and conquest,
of pain and the escape from pain. Some do not dream at
all. Cheluvahar, do you dream?'

'Great Elder, I . . .' Panic seized him, mind suddenly
blank. 'I have dreamed lately but the details escape me
for now.'

'I know, I see them.' The voice faded to a whisper as
the floating image of the Pathmaster tilted its hooded
head to look upward, revealing a face far removed from
Uvovo appearance, a cluster of bony ridges and two
dark pits that might be eyes. Then the voice came back,
stronger and sharper. 'A ship is coming to these worlds,
a ship from the Humans' home stars. It bears a great
evil, the eyes of a new breed of Dreamless who hunger
for power and dominion as their abominable like did in
the past.'

The Dreamless. The word sat in Chel's mind like a
piece of ice, melting dread into his thoughts while his
heart thudded in his chest.

'Great Elder,' he said. 'Will the War of the Long
Night return?'

'No. This peril is more similar to the cause that led to
the original Great Purpose, which is far more than that
which you have been taught. Just as the Segrana you
know is not the Segrana that once was. Nor do these
Dreamless possess the shattering might of their long-
vanished kin, yet it will be more than enough to turn the
night sky into a vista of desolation. They secretly rule a
vast empire and are as relentless as they are cruel and
cunning.'

The peace of the tree-guarded pool and the ricli
lifesong that enlivened Chel's senses seemed in stark
contrast to all that the Pathmaster was saying. Yet his
thoughts circled back to why he was here, why he was
being told these things . . .

'This is your zinsilu, Scholar,' said the Pathmaster, as
if Chel's inner thoughts were clear as written words. 'A
zinsilu such as has not been seen for a thousand genera-
tions. Scholar Cheluvahar - are you ready to serve the
Great Purpose with all that is body and all that is mind?
Are you ready to place your trust in a convoking of the
Listeners and to obey their edicts?'

Chel felt swept up by the gravity of the Pathmaster"s
demand, but he breathed in deep, steadying himself.

'I am, Great Elder.'

'Good - I am pleased not to be disappointed. When
we are done here, you will return to your work at
Waonwir, which the Humans call Giant's Shoulder - do
not concern yourself with events subsequent to the
arrival of the Human ship. In two or three days you
will be asked to leave for the daughter-forest to the
north, where a secret husking chamber is being pre-
pared . . .'

Suddenly he stopped, hooded head swinging towards
Faldri. 'Ah, so you are shocked, Listener, outraged at
our plan.'

Faldri stared up at the misty form. 'Only anxious for
all our fates, Great Elder. This Scholar shows talent and
promise, yet he is young and lacking in the experience
required of a Listener . . .'

'This is not about husking forth more Listeners,
Faldri,' the Pathmaster said. 'We are planning the cre-
ation of a new clade, the Artificer Uvovo. Once the
Warriors and the Benevolents had artisans aplenty
among their ranks, before the War of the Long Night
took them all. The arrival of the Humans has led to a
regeneration of such skills amongst the younger schol-
ars, skills that will prove crucial in the times ahead.
Those who might be considered Artificer Uvovo already
exist, scattered around the Human towns and working
in the daughter-forests and . . . other places. When
Cheluvahar husks forth, it will be as a Listener of the
Artificer Uvovo, nor will he be alone, since other schol-
ars are undergoing similar examinations today'

'I was not aware of this plan, Great Elder,' the
Listener said, bowing his head. 'But I am confused as to
the uses of such a new clade.'

A good question, Chel thought. Are we expected to
use Human weapons in battle}

'There are a number of constructions on Umara, built
in the time of our earliest forebears, built to merge with
the powers of the ancient, greater Segrana and protect
these worlds. It will be the task of the Artificer Uvovo to
study them and bring them back to life in preparation
for whatever we may face.'

'Are the Humans to be made aware of this approach-
ing enemy, Great Elder?' said Faldri. 'Are we tc
cooperate with them?'

'There have been exchanges with their leadership,'
the Pathmaster said. 'They already know about the
Dreamless and are making their own arrangements.
Cooperation may become inevitable, should events turn
unfortunate.'

'Forgive me, Great Elder,' Chel said, 'but what is it
that draws the Dreamless here? What do they want?'

The Pathmaster sighed. 'For long ages we guarded it,
serving the Great Purpose, thinking that finally all
knowledge and memory of it had passed irretrievably
beyond the veil of the past. But some dreams persist
longer than the lives of the stars and lurk and wait in
hidden places for their time to come round again.' Dark
eyeless hollows regarded him. 'The edifice atop that
prow of rock, Waonwir, is not some old Uvovo temple
of devotion as the Humans have surmised. Beneath its
walls and foundations lies a gateway to the framework
of the universe, a source of power once used to defeat
the first enemy, the cause of the Great Purpose, a terrible
adversary now long vanquished. If the Dreamless were
to gain control of it, all thought in this galaxy and
beyond would become enslaved to their will and life
would have no song.'

He paused a moment. 'Now you know what you are
meant to know. Go - return to Giant's Shoulder and
wait for the command to travel northward.'

As the Pathmaster fell silent, his image blurred and
dissolved into the pale, falling mist. With his vanishing,
the light in the clearing dwindled suddenly, like a door
closing, leaving Chel feeling adrift and burdened with
portents.

War is coming, he thought, and J am to become a
Listener even though I have been a Scholar for only four
hem-seasons . . .

'I am not ready,' he muttered.

'On that I can only agree,' said Faldri, brushing off
his long garments as he got to his feet. 'But higher coun-
sel has determined the course of your doings - now we
must wait to see if the meeting of fate and dream aids or
hinders you.' He took his stave from where it leaned
against one of the vaskin trees, and started up the slope.
'Come, Artificer, let me see you safely back to your
lohig.'

5

CATRIONA

On the moon Nivyesta, beneath the lush, living canopy
of the forest Segrana, it was forever dusk. Through
humid green shadows a trictra swung, long hooked limbs
finding purchase on branches, heavy vines and creeping
webs, descending into the well of gloom. Catriona
Macreadie clung to its dumbbell-shaped torso, strapped
firmly into a woven harness and uncomfortably warm in
a grey concealing robe, feeling slight waves of vertigo as
the creature dipped and swooped in the moon's lower
gravity. In front, Pgal the herder sat easily in the notch
behind the trictra's head, directing it with prods to either
of its frontal joints or with single-syllable cries.
Periodically, Pgal glanced back with his doleful eyes in a
wordless query but Catriona, despite her discomfort,
would shake her head and point onward and downward.
The hunt was on and she was not for turning back.

Clouds of insects parted and swirled in their wake
while innumerable creatures noticed the disturbance of
their passing, mammalian kizpi, their large eyes staring
from leafy niches, or umisk lizards startled and darting
away. It was an exhilarating display of Segrana's biodi-
versity, which Catriona had charted and studied for
nearly two years, filling scores of datacubes with pro-
files, reports and commentaries, as well as hundreds of
images. She had seen how liexaformity was a trait
common to different species, and how some subspecies
exhibited tripartite or even quadripartite life cycles,
changing their physical attributes as they aged, while
others did not. She understood how the vast, continent-
spanning biomass of Segrana shielded its multifarious
denizens from the moon Nivyesta's weather patterns,
regulating the many microclimates found beneath its
canopy, while the lower gravity aided the growth of
wider, taller trees and other plants.

She also knew that the map was not the territory and
that Segrana hid many secrets. Satellite surveys con-
firmed that while Segrana's topmost extremities grew
to nearly a mile above sea level, some of the unseen val-
leys fell to almost two miles below, which implied that
the forest's roots went even deeper, an ancient and ubiq-
uitous grasp. Almost half an hour after receiving the
trip signal it was down there that Catriona was headed,
seeking proof for a wild theory.

To either side massive trunks sloped up towards the
light, some spiralling around each other for strength and
support, others criss-crossing to form junctions where
Uvovo villages nestled, glowing clusters of lamps and
conical roofs, indistinct figures walking or climbing
from dwelling to dwelling amid the entwining dimness.
One such township lay directly below, but Catriona had
given Pgal clear instructions earlier and he was swift to
guide their trictra off to one side, behind a dense screen
of cultivated symbiotic flora. She tugged on the cowl of
her baggy robe, keeping her human features concealed
from any chance Uvovo observer. Yet they were still
taking risks, since only Listeners went about the under-
forest swathed in this manner.

Moments later the village was behind them as they
plunged on into the depths. From beneath her robe she
took a small direction-finder orb then tapped Pgal's
shoulder.

'Leftward a little,' she said.

The Uvovo herder just nodded and guided the spidery
trictra down one of several long, thick vines. Like the
mooring hawsers of some immense ship they curved
away into the gloom, bearded with lichenous webs.
Others snaked up the gnarled, mossy sides of trunks
and branches like veins, leaching away moisture and
nutrients which in turn served to feed a further array of
parasitic plantlife. As the trictra clambered down one of
these great living towers, Catriona looked from side to
side, smiling as she spotted a familiar beetle or reptiloid,
reflexively matching them against the entries in her
codex memory. Whenever she caught sight of something
apparently new she stored it away in her reminder file
for later reference.

All the memory advantages of Enhanced genes, she
thought, without the self-programming skills which
would have earned me a well-paid, high-level research
post. Hoiv tiresome would that have been . . .

Catriona was a failed Enhanced. Her germ plasm
came from the Hyperion's cryostocks and had been
genetically re-engineered to increase memory capacity
and allow conscious, detailed control of information.
The refined higher functions allowed an Enhanced to
use their own cortex as a programmable computer , to
from any chance Uvovo observer. Yet they were still
taking risks, since only Listeners went about the under -
forest swathed in this manner.

Moments later the village was behind them as thev
plunged on into the depths. From beneath her robe she
took a small direction-finder orb then tapped Pgal's
shoulder.

'Leftward a little,' she said.

The Uvovo herder just nodded and guided the spidery
trictra down one of several long, thick vines. Like the
mooring hawsers of some immense ship they curved
away into the gloom, bearded with lichenous webs.
Others snaked up the gnarled, mossy sides of trunks
and branches like veins, leaching away moisture and
nutrients which in turn served to feed a further array of
parasitic plantlife. As the trictra clambered down one of
these great living towers, Catriona looked from side to
side, smiling as she spotted a familiar beetle or reptiloid,
reflexively matching them against the entries in her
codex memory. Whenever she caught sight of something
apparently new she stored it away in her reminder file
for later reference.

All the memory advantages of Enhanced genes, she
thought, without the self-programming skills which
would have earned me a well-paid, high-level research
post. Hoiv tiresome would that have been . . .

Catriona was a failed Enhanced. Her germ plasm
came from the Hyperion's cryostocks and had been
genetically re-engineered to increase memory capacity
and allow conscious, detailed control of information.
The refined higher functions allowed an Enhanced to
use their own cortex as a programmable computer, to
run macros and test their own and others' theories; the
best of them could illuminate solutions with their own
flashes of insight. But Catriona had been part of the
third and final generation, brought to term by surrogate
mothers at a time when anomalies still emerged at
unpredictable stages of development. She had begun to
lose the ability to self-initiate neural pathways at fifteen
years old, after which the pathway net she had already
created in her head began to desync. By the time she was
seventeen, her peers were strides ahead and she saw her-
self as being no better than an ordinary kid with an
excellent memory.

And that just wasn't good enough for the martinets
who ran Zhilinsky House, she thought bitterly.

Yet this, combined with her obsessive interest in the
ecologies of Darien and Nivyesta, gave her something to
hold on to after leaving the Enhanced programme. It led
her along a career path that proved fruitful and satisfy-
ing, as well as aggravating when it came to putting in
equipment requisitions.

Still, occasionally she yearned for that long-gone
fledgling talent, especially when trying to get her head
around the astonishing complexity of the forest Segrana
and the Uvovo's place in it. There was an underlying
story or relationship to it all which she had only caught
glimpses of so far. Of course, deducing the Uvovo con-
nection to the temple on Giant's Shoulder had opened
entire new areas of possible inquiry, but it had also
made the speculation wilder and more tantalising. If she
had been a full Enhanced, rather than a cripple, she
would have seen through to the truth by now, she was
sure of it.

The descent to the deep valley floor took another
half-hour, including pauses to rest the trictra. All he
chirping, whirring sounds of the underforest, vhere
most of the species lived, faded to a high, distant
murmur. Down here the light was filtered and grainy,
and the air was still, warm and very humid. The Uvovo
call it Segrana, she thought, the living forest. I can
almost believe it - this forest moon is itself an anomaly
and its all-encompassing ecology constitutes a strange,
beautiful world. Sometimes, it's almost as if I can hear it
singing, feel it watching . . .

Following the glowing pointer in her direction-finder,
they at last came to the base of one of the forest
Segrana's oldest and biggest trees, a titan measuring
almost 200 feet across. Massive knotted roots showed
through the layer of decomposing foliage that blanketed
the forest floor. Quiet streamlets trickled among some of
the roots, pouring down towards a still deeper part of
the valley. A family of dumpy six-legged baro grubbed
for roots a short distance away, while ophidian pasks
hunting bugs in the mat of decaying leaves made rustling
sounds.

But Catriona's attention was fixed on a point about
20 feet up the side of the giant tree. She pointed across
at it and the herder Pgal nodded, urging the trictra
across the surrounding root tangle and up the tree's
rough, dripping flank. Catriona could feel her heart
beating as she spotted the cam's stalk lens protruding
from the surrounding snarl of fibrous lichen, rootless
and creepers, and once their mount was close enough
she reached into the wet foliage and retrieved the device.
She grinned as she studied it, blew away waterdrops
and leaf fragments, then looked over her shoulder at
what it had been observing.

Several yards away, six tall triangular stones stood in
a circle on a flattened mound oddly free of saplings and
bushes. Her first visit here had been brief and tense as
her guide, an outcast Uvovo scholar called Amilo, had
been terrified of being discovered by the Listeners. He
had been equally edgy on their second visit two days ago
when she had secreted the cam on the tree, setting it to
record anything over a certain size moving in or near the
stone circle. When she called Amilo yesterday, though,
he refused to help a third time but did put her in touch
with Pgal, a young cladeless trictra herder who was
unconcerned about anything as fanciful as Pathmasters.

She weighed the little cam in her hand for a moment,
then pushed the lens stalk into its socket before tucking
it away in a shoulder pouch. Yes, with any luck she
might have something to prove that the Uvovo did
indeed have a third stage in their life cycle after Scholars
and Listeners, namely the Pathmasters, who were sup-
posedly no more than folk tales. She turned to tell Pgal
to head back to the canopy but paused when she saw
him looking up, eyes wide. She followed his unblinking
gaze to see a larger trictra hanging several yards over-
head, clinging to the tree with a large garment-swathed
figure perched on its back, one hand holding a herding
stave.

'Ah, Mistress-Doctor Catriona,' said the newcomer.
'A pleasant surprise to meet you here in Segrana's field
of birth and decay' As he spoke he tugged aside his
cowl to reveal the ageing, bony features of a male Uvovo
she knew very well.

'Greetings, Listener Weynl,' she said. 'Seen any
Pathmasters today?'

The Uvovo Listener's smile made his elongated face
seem skull-like, but his demeanour was full of patient
good humour.

'None yesterday, Mistress-Doctor, and none today.
For they are only a ssu-ne-ne, a kind of myth or . . .' He
frowned. 'There is another word in your Noranglic
tongue - ah, yes, fable, an instructional tale, nothing
more.'

'As I've heard before,' she said. 'Not least from your-
self, and yet I have come across other tales that give
different accounts.'

'Some of the handfolk of the Benevolent Uvovo have
a more literal understanding of the ssu-ne-ne. They are
often led astray by such things as that ruined stone ring,
which was a very old but very ordinary meeting place
and hub of a marketplace . . .'

As they conversed, the Listener urged his trictra down
to ground level. Catriona prompted Pgal to follow suit,
and found that there were another three trictra-mcamed
Uvovo waiting below, all displaying on their beaded
tunics the circular symbols of the Warrior Uvovo.

'. . . and so such imaginings should be considered
with care. We of the Warrior Uvovo retain a more re il-
ist approach to these matters.' Then he indicated the
others with his herding stave. 'Ah, these are my way-
kin - we were returning from a vudron contemplation
when we chanced upon you here.'

Catriona nodded, not believing him for a moment.
'So you feel that I am wasting my time chasing this . . .
arassu?

It was the Uvovo word for 'sad ghost', and as she
said it astonishment flashed across the features of two of
Weynl's companions. The Listener, however, only smiled.

'Just so,' he said. 'Now, since our destination is
Starroof Upper-Way, we would be honoured to escort
you back, Mistress-Doctor, if you wish.'

Part of her wanted to rebel and refuse, but common
sense reminded her of the minicam in her shoulder
pouch, so she graciously consented to the Listener's
offer.

The journey back up the green canyons of Segrana
seemed to take for ever. The weight and shape of the
minicam teased her constantly as Pgal's trictra laboured
from branch to vine-cluster to crossed-trunk. Listener
Weynl stopped for a rest at a junction village that just
happened to be the one that Catriona and Pgal had
bypassed on the way down. As the Listener talked
jovially with his way-kin she wondered if this was an
example of Uvovo humour.

At last the light grew brighter as they neared the
canopy, and when gantries, ladders and platform
dwellings became frequent she knew that they were
near the town of Starroof. Insects glittered in the shafts
of sunlight that angled down through the foliage and
wafts of cool, fresh air brought the fragrance of day-
blooms.

'Our courses must part here, Mistress-Doctor
Catriona,' Listener Weynl said. 'My vudron lies further
above, in the Highsonglade. Please remember that if
you wish to seek knowledge at the roots of Segrana,
you should ask for guidance from myself or any
Listener.'

'My apologies, Listener,' she said. 'I never intended to
give offence.'

'It is more your safety that is of concern,' Weynl said.
'Some of the darker corners below harbour predators
that could devour a Human in a bite or two.'

T understand your concerns, Listener,' she said. I
assure you that I will take them very seriously'

The elderly Uvovo regarded her for a moment, his
amiable smile never wavering, then he nodded.

'Seek with care, Doctor,' he said before tapping his
trictra's side carapace with his herding stave.

Even as the Listener and his companions continued
up the braided cable-ladders, Catriona told Pgal to
hurry. The herder guided the trictra up hanging ne;s
and across leafy curtains, reaching the hammock plat-
form nearest to the cluster of adapted native dwellings
that constituted the enclave of Human scientists.
Unstrapping herself from the saddle restraints, she
climbed out onto the springy matting, stripped off the
bulky robe and turned to Pgal. But he spoke first:

'I not carry you again.'

Astonished, she stared. 'Why, Pgal? Has someone
threatened you?'

It was the herder's turn to be surprised. 'No! - I go to
Highsong vudron. Rejoin Warrior clade.' He smiled.
'Very happy'

Catriona nodded, understanding. Vudrons were
large, spherical chambers fashioned from huge, empty ·
seed husks which grew only at the highest places of
Segrana. Bonded to a branch or trunk near a Uvovo
town or village, they served as a Listener shrine, a
refuge for private meditation, as well as the centrepiece
of public ceremonies. An outcast like Pgal could
become a full member of either Uvovo clade by taking
a vigil in a vudron, but only if invited by a Listener.
Like Weynl.

'I am happy for you, Pgal,' she said. 'Thank you for
all your help, and go in peace.'

The herder smiled, bowed his head, then steered his
trictra down from the platform and along the meshed
vines.

And thank you, Weynl, she thought, watching him
leave. You really don't want me going near the forest
floor, do you? Well, let's see what my wee camera spot-
ted, shall we}

She glanced around her to make sure she was alone,
then took out the cam, fitted a viewing ocle to the
output, pressed Play and held it up to her eye.

And saw . . . only flickering confusion. The timer
readout was the same as when she got the trip signal,
but the recording was a blurred, stuttering mess. She
ran it again and again, trying to find more than just
hints of a dark form that might have been a creature,
or shaky stick-like things that might have been
limbs . . .

She lowered the cam and sagged against one of the
platform's heavy, woven hawsers. She suddenly felt
weary, as if the recording had knocked the vitality out of
her. It had been such a waste, scrounging the cam from
Lyssa Devlin's team over at Skygarden, skulking down
there to plant it then retrieving it, all a waste of time and
effort. It might be possible to process and filter the
image data, but only the Institute office at Viridian
Station would have that kind of equipment and anyway,
how could she explain how she obtained such a record-
ing without admitting to multiple violations of the
Respect Accords?

Disconsolate, she put the minicam away in her
pouch, slung the baggy robe over one shoulder and
climbed the branch stairway that led to the Human
enclave. Halfway up, the stairs trembled a little under-
foot as someone came hurrying across a flimsy-looking
gantry from another platform. It was Tomas Villon, one
of her team's tech assistants. His features were ffusl ed
and excited as he raised a hand in greeting and :al ed
out.

'Doctor Macreadie,' he said. 'Have you heard the
news?'

'No - what news?'

He grinned. 'The president announced it in his wide-
cast this morning, and the channel heads have been
talking about nothing else . . .'

'Sorry, Tomas, but I've been working hard, and Ive
been away all morning. What's happened?'

Clearly delighted at being able to let her in on the
story, he cleared his throat. 'Well, as I said, the president
came on the vee this morning to tell us that the
Hammergard government has been in contact with a
ship from Earth!'

First she gasped in disbelief, then started talking,
almost tripping over her own words.

'But that's . . . incredible! You're sure, Tom as,
absolutely sure?'

'It's the honest truth, Catriona, I swear! The ship is
called the Heracles and it's entering orbit around Dan en
right this moment. Look, there's a vee-panel up in the
mess hut which is where the rest'll be, watching the live
relay from Port Gagarin.'

A web-tethered flock of membrane insectoids drifted
past on a warm updraught as they hastened up to the
enclave buildings. Catriona grinned while trying to
think through the giddy thrill she was feeling.

'It's unbelievable,' she said. 'I never thought I'd live to
see this - I wonder what they'll be like? You remember
that play by Fergus Brandon?'

'The Lifeline?" He chuckled. 'I doubt that any would-
be colonists will be queueing to come out here. Said as
much to Greg Cameron earlier.'

'Greg?' she said, trying to sound vaguely disinter-
ested. 'What were you calling him about?'

'Neh, he called us to gossip about the announcement.
We gabbed on about it and the Brandon play came up.
Yah, he's just as excited about it as everyone.'

Of course, Catriona thought. Those two were good
friends at college, so it's no surprise that he would call. She
felt a small shiver go through her. I wonder how he's been
since he came back .. . but why should I wonder? He's
just another man who's got better things to do than .. .

She had only met him a few times, ever since she'd
suggested the link between the proportions of the temple
on Giant's Shoulder and the physique of the Uvovo, and
she had hoped that their professional friendship might
become something deeper. And then he gave up every-
thing and moved away up north to Trond to get
married, settle down and have kids, apparently - only to
return several months later, alone. Hopes which had col-
lapsed rose again, but tempered this time with a dash of
realism and caution.

And now she was resolved not to let Greg Cameron
or her failed minicam experiment dilute her excitement
at Tomas's news.

'Right, Tomas,' she said with a determined laugh as
they came up to the mess hut. 'Let's see if we can get a
good seat!'

6

ROBERT

On board the Earthsphere cruiser Heracles, in the
largest of its three staterooms, Ambassador Robert
Horst was indulging in the archaic practice of packing
luggage.

'I don't know why you don't ask the room to do it for
you,' said Harry, his AI companion.

'But the room doesn't know what I need to take with
me.'

'The room has access to your sartorial profile, as well
as Darien's styles and customs, such as they are. So
where's the problem?'

'The room can't know what I need,' Robert said,
smiling as he placed a semi-formal tunic into his parti-
tioned valise. 'Because I don't know myself. Or rather,
when I see it I'll know that I need it.'

Harry smiled and shook his head. In Robert's field of
vision, Harry seemed to be standing over by the state-
room's centrepiece, a sleek porcelain and perspex
column with a holobase in each of its five faces. He
resembled a young man dressed in an immaculate but
outmoded black suit, his round features displaying a
perpetual amusement and a hint of cynicism. Robert
had chosen to model his companion upon the main
character from an American black-and-white flat-movie
from the mid-twentieth century, whose storyline dealt
with postwar intrigue and betrayal. Orson Welles's por-
trayal of the mercurial Harry Lime had captivated the
young Robert Horst, and after deciding on his compan-
ion's form he had also resolved that he would appear in
monochrome. After all, he was the only one who would
see it.

'I'm not sure that the personal touch will be helpfu ,'
Harry said. 'After 150 years of isolation and resource
scarcity, social fashions are bound to be a little rustic'

'My God, Harry, you're a snob.'

'Not at all. I just feel sure that these poor, Earth-
hungry colonists will want an ambassador from the auld
country to look the part.'

Robert wagged a finger. 'What, play the lofty aristo
come to dispense wisdom to the local yokels? Sorry,
no - that's the Sendruka approach, not mine.'

'Shame on you, Robert, for denigrating the high
ideals of our allies in the cause of peace and justice,'
Llarry said, adopting a stance of mock grandeur fol-
lowed by a sly grin. 'Besides, your honoured Senclruka
colleague Kuros and his Ezgara goons are just along the
corridor. Who knows how many spymotes are drifting
around the ship by now, listening to our every word?"

'Not with the new antisurveillance systems the
Earthsphere Navy brought in after the Freya incident,'
Robert said, selecting from a small open section of the
storage wall a pair of Russian leather gloves, a couple of
plaid kerchiefs and a carved wooden ring. 'I'm more
concerned about why they're here at all.'

The Heracles had been en route to the Huvuun
Deepzone when new orders came through to divert to
Chasulon, the capital world of Broltur, and take on
board the honoured High Monitor Utavess Kuros and
his unspecified personal guard. Which turned out to be
eight Ezgara commandos, four-armed biped soldiers
with a fearsome reputation, who wore all-enclosing,
steel-blue body-armour and never revealed their faces.
But Kuros and his guards were to be accorded every
courtesy, since they were there at the personal request of
Earthsphere President Erica Castiglione, apparently in a
dual capacity: as Alliance advisers, and as observers on
behalf of the Brolturan government.

Personal request*, he thought. I bet it was more like a
demand and Erica was on the receiving end of it.

T don't imagine that there's much to be anxious
about,' Harry said, resting his foot on the edge of a low
table. 'The Hegemony thinks that it has to keep tabs on
every political event otherwise things might fall apart,
the centre cannot hold and so on. Whereas things would
probably proceed quite normally if Hegemony attention
was elsewhere.'

'Harry, for you that's practically heresy.'

'I know. I blame it on prolonged exposure to the life
and works of Robert Horst! Anyway, it'll be politics on
a rather lesser scale for you in the weeks ahead.'

'True, but it could turn out to be quite productive.
One of the files sent from President Sundstrom's office
gave an interesting summary of their resource manage-
ment and extraction policies . . .'

'Ah, you mean these sifter roots that they got from
the Uvovo?' Harry chuckled. 'Ingenious way of getting
hold of pure elements, for a pre-nanofac society
Properly adapted, they could be put to use in other or -
texts, like hardvac prospecting for example. Or even
licensed out to cultures that prohibit nano applications.'

Robert shrugged. 'That sounds possible. I'm more
interested in the relations between our people and the
Uvovo, not to mention the colony's inner politics.'

'Well, for a small colony they've had a somewhat
chequered history. Problems with a shipboard AI that
went rogue, then a very tough first fifty years, expansion
problems, lack of resources, then contact with these
Uvovo sentients and an abortive civil war which exac-
erbated some already prickly divisions. But it's this Al
taboo that could pose difficulties. You should read some
of their novels and plays - artificial intelligences come
across like the rampaging death machines of the
Commodity Age. I find it positively insulting. What's
more, every year they celebrate the trashing of that poor,
dumb AI. Founders' Victory Day, they call it.'

'I agree, it's a problem, but I'm going to wait until
I've experienced Darien culture first-hand before con-
sidering solutions.' Robert parted another tall section of
the wall and touch-opened the units within. 'It's a matter
of how to establish the notion of everyday, common -
place, benevolent AIs . . .'

As he reached in, almost absentmindedly, and pulled
out one of the shallow drawers, he stopped and stared in
dread at the palm-sized object it contained.

'Ah, so that's where the room put it,' Harry mur-
mured. T can have it stored somewhere else if you like.'

'No, no, it's all right,' Robert said. T can't keep on
avoiding it. . .'

It was an intersim, a flat octagonal pad, mainly pale
blue in colour with ochre trim around the readout and
fingertip controls on one of the sides. The projection
plate on top was like dark, smoky glass within which
clusters of faceted emitters were just visible. It had a
certain solidity to it, like the weight of compacted tech-
nology, or the weight of memory.

It was now almost a year since his daughter Rosa
had died while on board the Pax Terra, z. refitted,
unarmed scoutship owned by the protest group Life and
Peace. The Pax Terra had been taking part in an
attempted blockade of a wayport on the Metraj border
from which Earthsphere and Sendruka Hegemony war-
ships were leaving for the Yamanon Domain. The
official version was that the protest boat was a sus-
pected bombship pursuing a collision course with a
Hegemony cruiser whose commander had no option but
to open fire. Initially Earthsphere government had made
mild objections, but soon dropped the matter.

Robert and his wife Giselle were distraught, and the
Diplomatic Service was thankfully swift to offer him
compassionate leave. But Robert was unable to stay at
home in Bonn and mourn - he had to know the truth
about Rosa's death.

Sitting at the end of a blue settle, he held the interac-
tive sim in his hands and recalled the months spent
tracking down witnesses to the blockade incident and
speaking with her friends and colleagues at Life and
Peace. What he learned utterly contradicted the official
version of events, while confirming much of what he
knew about his daughter, about her intellect and wit,
and about her compassion and her willingness to put
herself on the line for what she believed in. Millions
had died when the Earthsphere-Hegemony coalition
invaded the Yamanon Domain and bombarded the Dol -
Das regime's key worlds. Rosa had called those deaths
an atrocity, a judgement he could no longer disagree
with.

'We taught her to love,' he once said in a message to
his wife during his travels, 'and she did what she did out
of love.'

He was on Xasome in the Kingdom of Metraj, trying
to glean corroborating data from public archive reports,
when he received a package via the local Earthsphere
consulate. It was from Earth, from his wife, and accom -
panying it was a short note that read: 'Dearest, I have
found a way to bring the light back into our lives, and
now you have one too. With love and joy - Giselle.1

Thinking it to be some compendium of images and
other recordings from the family archive, Robert had
placed the intersim on a desk and switched it on. The
device had emitted three flashes, mapping the room, and
a moment later, abruptly, Rosa was standing then,
dressed in one of her favourite outdoor rigs, smiling at
him.

'Hi, Daddy!' she had said.

So brightly she spoke, so vibrant with that delighted
alertness of hers, that he almost said, 'Rosa! - you're
alive . . .'

But the words had choked in his throat as reason
took hold, and he had stared at the simulation of his
daughter in a wordless horror.

'Daddy, how are you?'

Unable to speak or look away, still he had reached
out deliberately, with all of his will, and switched the
device off. Looking at it now, resting on his palm, he
knew what had driven Giselle to have such a thing
made. He had understood and let the anger fade, know-
ing that part of the anger had been directed at his own
despairing need for Rosa not to be dead.

And yet . . . and yet he could not bring himself to
destroy the sim, or at least have its memory wiped, not
then and not now.

Then, reaching a decision, he slipped the intersim
into his jacket pocket, stood and resumed packing.

'Are you sure that's wise?' said Harry.

Robert smiled as he tucked away the last items of
clothing. 'You think I may be putting my negotiating
temperament and thus this assignment at risk?'

Harry assumed a look of mock surprise.

'What a hurtful interpretation of my genuine con-
cern. I merely suggest that leaving the damned thing
here would help your peace of mind.' He paused, face
becoming more serious. 'Robert, I think that you're
hurting yourself by taking it with you.'

Robert sighed. 'I appreciate the concern, Harry, truly.
But you worry too much. Unlike Giselle, I have come to
terms with Rosa's death and I know that this simulation
is not her but a made thing. Not a living, breathing
person that I can touch.'

Harry gave him a considering look for a moment.
'Tell me - is that how you see me, as a made thing?'

'Well, yes. Made by experience and thought and acci-
dent, and by friendship!' Robert smiled. 'Whereas
Giselle's device is a frozen vision, an exhibit that cannot
learn or change. Satisfied?'

'Yes - my crippled self-esteem has been suitably band ■
aged.' Harry gestured towards the two fastened valises
'Are you finished, because the people of Darien and
their representatives await you, not to mention all those
watching back home, in the Glow and elsewhere.'

Robert gave a groan. The Glow was the Solar
System's virtual reality, where celebrity and excess
reigned supreme. 'So the Office of Defence finally gave
in to the media combines, did they?'

'Which means that we shall shortly be going live on
Starstream,' Harry said with a wild grin. 'Since they were the
only ones who would meet the OOD's asking price.'

'Starstream,' Robert said, activating the suspensors
on his luggage. 'I can scarcely express my joy. Let's go.'

7

COLONISTS

West of Hammergard, across the two-mile width of
Loch Morwen, a cluster of low buildings and two
narrow towers sat on a headland overlooking the
waters. Fenced off and patrolled, this was the main
operational base for the Ranger division of the Darien
Volunteer Corps. At that moment, almost six hours after
the president's address to the colony, 185 of the divi-
sion's 200 combat personnel were crammed into the
base's small rec room, craning necks for a look at the
sole v-screen.

'C'mon, get yer head down in front there!'

'Gonna no dae that?'

'Whit?'

'Shoutin' in my ear, ye howler!'

Donny Barbour grinned, listening to this and many
other exchanges from the bench he had snagged at the
front early on. At the moment, though, there was not
much to see, just a pair of aycasters from Vizione, the
main Darien channel, discussing background info that
had already been well chewed over by the tabs and var-
ious radio pundits all day. Behind the sharp-dressed
duo - Maggie and Lev - was a view of Port Gagarin's
longest landing strip, seen from the main terminal. But
when the shuttlecraft landed, Vizione would hand over
to an Earthsphere media channel called Starstream, who
had sent a coverage team on board the Heracles.

Now Maggie and Lev were offering their own tepid
speculation on what the future would hold for Darien,
based on the near-content-free summary documents
released by the president's office that morning. Donny
almost laughed out loud, recalling what he'd heard
from Sundstrom's own lips the night before.

If only you knew the truth.

The two aycasters halted their feeble guesswork,
announcing the approach of the shuttle before makim
the verbal handover to Starstream and their solo com
mentator, Lee Shan.

LEE SHAN: This is Lee Shan welcoming all our
viewers and immersers across Earthsphere and
beyond on this momentous day in the history of
Humankind. I am speaking to you from the shut-
tlecraft Achilles as it descends through banks of
cloud towards Darien Colony's largest landing
zone, Port Gagarin, named, of course, after the
Soviet-era astro-pioneer.

Video (low functionality) The shuttlecraft Achilles
appears in the western sky, a distant speck that
grows into a slender dart as it swoops down over
the northern coast. Its flightpath then curves our
over the sea before making the approach to Port
Gagarin. The vessel's powered descent seems toe
swift and steep until it slows dramatically, braking
on columns of force that ripple the air beneath its
fuselage. Engines drone and moments later the
Achilles settles down gently on its landing gear.

LEE SHAN: The Achilles is one of two fast picket
boats that the cruiser Heracles possesses, both of
which can be deployed for combat as well as
peaceful purposes, as well as the ship's pinnace,
the Hermes. The Heracles, of course, was recently
on duty in the Yamanon Domain as part of
Earthsphere's military commitment to the
Hegemony-led Freedom Alliance, taking part in
the overthrow of the brutal Dol-Das regime, and
. liberating scores of worlds. We at Starstream
salute the bravery of all Earthsphere and
Hegemony forces still engaged in pacification
operations in the Yamanon.

In the kitchen of a farmhouse built into the side of a
hill southwest of Hammergard, Theo Karlsson stared
at the portable vee with a mixture of amusement and
unease while Rory and the rest of the loader team guf-
fawed.

'We salute the whit?'

'Ah, the brave troops, Rory, for whom we must be
joyously united in support!' said Alexei Firmanov.

'Da, and not forgetting the songs,' said his brother,
Nikolai. 'Heroic songs that we all sing while waving
flags, lots of flags.'

Rory squinted at the two grinning Russians. He was
a short wiry Scot with unkempt sandy hair and a pair of
ice-blue eyes that were full of misgivings.

'You're yanking ma chain, the pair of ye.'

'They're not, Rory,' Theo said. 'All this saluting the
troops, waving the flag and singing songs - it is common
to authoritarian cultures, like Soviet-era Russia back on
Earth.'

'Ah, right, ancient history, aye.' Rory sniffed. 'So is th; it
how Earth is, the now, Major? I thought they've got elec-
tions and all that...'

'There were elections during the Soviet era, too,' said
Alexei. 'But there were no alternatives to the Part? 's
candidate and all the media were tightly controlled,' He
glanced at Theo. 'Is it like that on Earth, Major?'

'I'm not entirely sure,' he said. 'But going by radio
reports, the political mainstream across most of
Earthsphere seems to be pro-Hegemony'

Nikolai nodded vigorously. 'Is right - have they not
elected a woman as interim president, and she's sup-
posed to want to pursue more independent courses?'

Rory laughed. 'Aye, and then we pop up in the
Hegemony's back yard, like helpless wee puppies! I bet
they're using us tae make sure she toes the line!'

Theo grinned. Rory, my boy, he thought, you're def-
initely one of the sharper tools in the box.

Just then, Janssen and Ivanov entered by the kitchen's
rear door, the former dumping a bag of tools noisily on
the tiled floor, the latter handing Theo a large cluster of
keys.

'That's the last of the false walls up,' Ivanov said,
loosening his heavy work jacket. 'We restacked the
crates and old Tove helped us dirty up his barn floor again.'

Theo laughed. 'Once he quarters his baro in there
for a night or two it'll be more than filthy enough.' He
looked at Janssen. 'Any news from the others?'

'Maclean and Bessonov finished up in the last half-
hour,' Janssen said, tugging off his brown woollen hat
and scratching his scalp through wild black hair. 'But
Hansen's team was held up by a cracked loader axle.
They're going to be another hour at least.'

Nikolai shook his head. 'What's that old saying? -
"No plan survives contact with the enemy" . . .'

'Right, here we go!' said Rory loudly. 'That's him
now, look . . .'

LEE SHAN: And now Ambassador Horst descends
the gantry to meet the vice-president, John Balfour.
They shake hands, then Vice-President Balfour
introduces him to the president of Darien Colony,
Holger Sundstrom, who is confined to a wheel-
chair due to a spinal injury considered untreatable
by the colony's medical establishment until now.

Video (low functionality) The ambassador is a
tall, grey-haired man with a straight-backed pos-
ture and lean but kind face. He smiles as he comes
face to face with the president, who is accompa-
nied by a flock of officials and guards, and the
smile widens as he leans down slightly to shake the
man's hand. After an exchange of pleasantries, the
assembled party of dignitaries and their attendants
head along a covered walkway towards the main
terminal. Behind them, a handful of reporters hur-
ries down from the shuttle, muttering into lip-bead
mikes or fiddling with head-mounted cams.

c n !_□ N I STS

1

LEE SHAN: Viewers and Glow immersers with holig-
ital systems shall soon be receiving a higher-quality
service now that myself and my, ah, assistant
Tyberio have disembarked from the ambassador's
shuttle. Other viewers, including the newest addi-
tions to the Starstream family right here on
Darien, will be pleased to see a sharper, more
vibrant picture.

'So are you watching thisT

'Well, we were, Tomas,' Greg said loudly into his
comra above the babble of the score or more Uvolvo
crammed into the dig site's meeting hut. 'But the picture
just cut out - all we're getting now is interference.'

'Ah, no luck,' said Tomas, his voice sounding thin
and whistly. 'We got perfect reception up here, but then
our signal is coming directly from Monitor sat.'

'Aye - why doesna that surprise me?' Greg said,
accepting a beaker of something pungent from the
Russian researchers then toasting each other.

'Nastrovya.r

'SlainteV

'Hey, what is that you're drinking}' Tomas said.

'I wish I knew,' Greg said in a hoarse voice, savouring
the smoky aftertaste and the warmth in his throat.
'Tastes a bit like . . . grilled bark, or something. 'S no
bad, though. So why are you calling me in the middle of
this historical event?'

'Just to let you know that Miss Macreadie is, as
they say, carrying a torch for you'

'What?' Greg said, so surprised he almost spilled his
refilled beaker. 'How d'ye know? - did she say so?'

'Of course she didn't say so, but when I mentioned
your name to her a short while ago she acted so disin-
terested it was like a sign saying "I want Greg" going on
above her head.'

Greg chuckled at the image. 'You know, your record
in these matters isna exactly one hundred per cent.'

'Maybe so, but I'm sure that she's thinking of
you . . .'

'Tomas, she's a former Enhanced,' he said. 'I don't
really think that I'd measure up to her intellect, some-
how . . . wait, hold on, our picture's back. I'll speak to
you later, O great matchmaker!'

'Okay, you're allowed to laugh now, but you'll see
that I'm right, trust me. . .'

Video (mid-range functionality) Together, the
president, the ambassador and a senior officer
inspect an honour guard of thirty soldiers from
the Darien Volunteer Corps, drawn up in two
ranks in front of the Port Gagarin terminal
building. A small brass band is playing a march
off to one side as the three men progress steadily
along, pausing to speak with a couple of Corps
troopers. The DVC dress uniform is a form-fit-
ting two-piece in field green with dark brown
trim, soft green cap with a red cockade, and
brown gauntlets. Each soldier carries a sidearm
and an autorifle, slug-thrower weapons based on
proven twentieth-century designs, while a stan-
dard-bearer holds a ceremonial flag showing the
DVC badge, crossed swords beneath a planetary
globe.

LEE SHAN: The ambassador inspects the honour
guard, pausing occasionally to ask a soldier's
name or where they are from. Ambassador Robert
Horst is a highly experienced diplomat who first
came to prominence during the blockade and sub-
sequent liberation of Prodas in 2259. He was
involved in negotiations with Tyat terrorists
during the Farplains hostage crisis in 2262, and
later took up the post of Earthsphere delegate to
the short-lived Convoke of Worlds. Most recently
he played a key role in the concerted attempts to
persuade the Dol-Das regime to give up its planet-
breaker weapons. Since the toppling of the
Dol-Das dictatorship, however, Robert Horst and
his wife have suffered the loss of their only daugh-
ter Rosa, who died in a tragic accident while
taking part in antiwar protests in the Kingdom of
Metraj an e-year ago.

'Poor man,' murmured Svetlana.

Catriona nodded, privately wondering why a pre-
senter would comment so publicly on such sensitive
details. Wouldn't the ambassador and his wife be upset
at the public discussion of their personal grief? But
that was just one snippet in a flood of information
which had no context or background for Darien view-
ers, bare facts merely stated, as if their importance
were obvious.

As if we're expected to be impressed, she thought.

She glanced round the room at the rest of her team,
or at least the nine who had been nearby and off-duty,
and saw a few with perplexed expressions. Others, like

Svetlana, were wide-eyed and engrossed in the unfolding
ceremony.

Then Tomas sidled into the room and resumed his
seat next to hers.

'You missed the ambassador shaking the president's
hand,' she said sardonically. 'Where were you?'

He shrugged. 'I remembered that I had to call up
Gunther's team to see if they have any spare sample
cases - they said they'll send a box over tomorrow. So
what's been happening?'

'I wish I could say it's been exciting, but. . .' She indi-
cated the screen. 'It's all protocol and ceremony - the
most interesting stuff so far has been this 'caster Lee
Shan's side comments. There's been hardly any detail
on recent history'

'It seems that the daily sheets planetside have been
running articles on the Swarm War and how Earth was
saved from destruction by the brave and altruistic
Sendruka Hegemony,' Tomas said, rolling his eyes.

'Aye, well, if that's what they did, then I'm glad,'
Catriona said. 'I mean, we know how bad it was for the
First Families when the Command AI turned on them -
what must it have been like on Earth with the Swarm
bombing cities and getting ready to invade?'

'I hope we'll be getting some reliable historical
accounts from that period soon,' Tomas said. 'And
maybe hear something about the other two colony-
ships . . . Hm, what's happening now?'

'They're about to hold a press conference,' Catriona
said.

'Really?' Tomas said. 'I wonder if they'll take the risk
of allowing questions?'

Video (variable functionality) The terminal
foyer is full of a noisy crowd of Dariens, some sit-
ting in rows before a wide, green-draped
platform while most of them stand to the rear
and sides. Then they erupt into applause and
cheering as President Sundstrom in his wheelchair
and Ambassador Horst enter and approach the
long ramp up to the platform. Once there,
accompanied by the vice-president, the mayor of
Port Gagarin and a dark-suited security detail,
the president grins at the raucous welcome for a
moment then raises his hands and makes hushing
gestures.
■

-

PRESIDENT SUNDSTROM:

Thank you, thank you all for this rousing recep-
tion. Well, I can see how amazed and delighted
you all are at this astonishing event, that 150 years
after the Hyperion touched down we've re-estab-
lished contact with Earth. To know that Earth
survived the Swarm War and went on to become
strong and influential is an incredible source of
joy and pride. So before I become overwhelm3d,
let me just state that it gives me enormous pleasure
to say on behalf of all our citizens - Ambassador
Horst, welcome to Darien!

Video (variable functionality) Even louder
applause breaks out again and the president moves
his wheelchair back a few feet. The ambassador
smiles and as he steps forward the crowd quietens
down to an expectant hush.

AMBASSADOR HORST:

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for this
warm and generous reception. It is a privilege and
an honour to stand here before you as the per-
sonal representative of Erica Castiglione, president
of Earthsphere, for the colony you have made here
in the face of such hardship is proof of the
indomitable spirit of Humanity!

[Applause]

The discovery of Darien Colony is of great impor-
tance to all the peoples of Earth, not least because
the fate of the three colonyships has been an unre-
solved enigma since the defeat of the Swarm a
century and a half ago. We know that each ship
was under orders to flee the Solar System by
taking random hyperspace jumps, which is why
the destinations or whereabouts of the other two
ships, the Forrestal and the Tenebrosa, remain a
mystery.

Of course, the original colonisation plan con-
sisted of fifteen ships, most of which were partially
complete when the Swarm invaded the Solar
System. Those first unprovoked attacks slaugh-
tered millions across our world and destroyed
many of those vessels, which is why your fore-
bears became the first to depart Humanity's home
on such a desperate mission.

It would be difficult to overstate the intensity of
interest in Darien that is gripping Earth and all
the Human communities across Earthsphere.

Indeed, both the Migratory Service and the
Diplomacy Office have been inundated with
requests from Russia, Scotland and Scandinavia
from those wishing to make contact with long-lost
branches of their families. This will involve a con-
siderable amount of work, matching records and
DNA, but we'll begin this as soon as possible.

I feel I should at this point give you an outline
of the wider interstellar situation and Darien's
place in it. Your world is very far from Earth,
almost 15,000 lightyears, and in your immediate
vicinity are a host of civilisations with which
Earthsphere has had little or no regular contact.
Fortunately, the dominant power in the area is one
of Earthsphere's allies, the Sendruka Hegemony,
which has promised to maintain peace and stabil-
ity in the region, thereby safeguarding Darien's
independence and sovereignty. And in order to
establish good relations without delay, a very
senior representative of the Hegemony - High
Monitor the Exalted Utavess Kuros - is on board
the Heracles and will be coming down to meet
you all tomorrow.

Yet despite the great distances involved, there
will be many opportunities for aid and trade
between Darien and Earthsphere, as well as other
markets in the area. In addition, your contact with
the Uvovo and the subsequent cooperation is
bound to be a source of fascination for xeno-spe-
cialists and other scientists across civilised space.
You may not be aware of it yet, but Human com-
munities enjoy excellent relations with many
different sentient races, an experience you will
soon be able to share as friendly civilisations in the
vicinity apply to open embassies here.

That is all that I have to say for now. I know
many of you have hundreds of questions to put to
me, but I intend to provide answers at a full press
briefing to be held tomorrow afternoon in
Hammergard. So let me once again thank you for
your heartwarming welcome and I look forward
to speaking with you tomorrow.

8

KUROS

High Monitor the Exalted Utavess Kuros watched as
Horst and the Darien president left the platform to a
chorus of futile shouted questions. There were others
studying the screen in the Heracles's lowlit lecture theatre,
his personal bodyguard of eight Ezgara commandos.
Quad-armed forms in dark blue body-armour, they sat in
the front row, silent in close-fitting helmets, faceless,
motionless.

And one other, visible only to Kuros.

'7 mislike these Humans,"1 the General said. 'They are
a disrespectful and undisciplined rabble riddled with
dissidents who spread poisonous speculation through
their media, which is lamentably unguided. Even after
an alliance lasting nearly eighty velanns, they still have
not learned their place, or shown any devotional
progress, and these colonists are sure to be even worseV

Kuros smiled at his lifelong companion and AI mind-
brother, General Gratach.

'Then you agree that they present something ot a
challenge?' he said in his thoughts.

The General folded his muscular arms and Kuros
heard the metallic rustle of armour platelets. In keeping
with the real, historical Gratach, the AI was attired in
the battledress of a senior Abrogator officer of the Three
Revolutions War, an ornate harness of gleaming gold
and red, with powershield spikes studding his arms and
shoulders, each one bearing a small votive pennon, silver
lettering on black. His helmet had a bronze sheen and
was plainer, its moulded circlet of chusken skulls offset
by the tactical eyepieces that sat poised at eyebrow level,
ready to swivel down.

'Challenge,' grunted Gratach. 'Only in terms of the
Hegemony's immediate interests - militarily, the colony is
insignificant.'

Kuros nodded, thinking back to his audience with
the Fifth Tri-Advocate just hours before leaving Iseri, the
Sendrukan homeworld. Clad in austere grey, the Fifth
had been sitting in a high-backed overpod, flanked by
holograms of his mindbrother advocates, against a
backdrop of translucent curtains. He had questioned
Kuros on the Darien task dossier which he had received
less than a day before. Satisfied with Kuros's grasp of
the essentials, the Fifth had then offered his observa-
tions.

'We note that the bulk of your record is divided
between Boundary Sector 12, where you held the post of
Second Suppressor, and the Pothiwa Conformation,
where you led several trade delegations. Hopefully, you
will only need to draw upon the latter experience in this
assignment. You will find that Humans are sentimental,
especially about military events and achievements: help-
fully, their governments routinely employ such
sentimentality to mask historical details and to maintain
doctrinal integrity as well as popular support.

'You should make frequent reference to the friendship
between the Hegemony and Humans, mutual coopera
tion and shared values, even though these things an
largely illusory And be aware of media surveillance at
all times: take no action and make no disclosure that
may betray our interest in the ruins of the Ancients.
Devise spectacles to divert the attention of both the
media agents and the colonists . . .'

Then one of the AI advocates had turned in Kuros's
direction - its image was that of the Avulser Hegemon
Moardis, a gaunt, golden-eyed figure attired in a rich
red robe whose collar supported an array of black ver-
tical spikes that curved round the back of the head.
Moardis was the Hegemon who, 400 years ago, had
fought off the clandestine invasions of the Ghaw para-
sites and eventually eradicated them and th i
neighbouring civilisations that they had subverted. Onlv
the most powerful of AIs were allowed to adopt the
image of such an illustrious Hegemon.

'Much depends on this mission, Utavess Kuros. If
you succeed, the future security and glory of the
Hegemony will be safeguarded in Voloasti's name for
generations to come, such is the nature of the power
that awaits us - do you know what it is called?'

'A warpwell, Your Immanence.'

'This is not the first we have investigated, but it
may be the first to be found still functioning. If so, the
Hegemony will have a gateway into the lower
domains of hyperspace. When we control them, we
can deny any foreseeable adversary the strategic scope
to become a threat. Peace and glory shall be our
legacy'

The Fifth had spoken again. 'Prepare yourself thor-
oughly, Kuros. Pray to Voloasti for protection and
guidance. Plan for all eventualities. Let nothing be a
surprise to you. Use the media agents against your
adversaries or even against themselves. Ensure a tri-
umphant outcome, and fame, honour and riches will be
your reward. The Hegemon himself has promised.'

And all through the audience, the second AI advocate
had kept silent, its form that of a coiled, iron-scaled
ocean mohoro, a mighty yet enigmatic creature from
ancient Sendrukan mythology. While the other advo-
cates had talked of glory and honour, the mohoro had
simply stared at him, red-jewelled eyes fathomless, jaws
parted to show triple rows of silver fangs.

Now, as he stood in the dimness of the lecture the-
atre, he reflected upon that encounter and knew that the
mohoro's relentless gaze had spoken of the retribution
he would suffer if he failed.

But there will be no humiliating blunders, he thought.
Nor any bitter bones of defeat. I shall steer events,
rather than be steered by them.

He considered the images on the screen, segments
showing the Earth ambassador's answers to certain
questions and switching back to the studio commenta-
tors, all sound muted. He smiled faintly as his purpose
became a little clearer and glanced at the General.

'While the full glare of media interest is focused here,
we cannot afford the luxury of deploying overt force to
secure our objectives. We must apply a certain subtlety.'

General Gratach sneered. 'Subtlety! These media
insects may buzz and chatter but their stings can still be
a threat.''

'Of course,' Kuros said. 'In every circle of life there
are ruthless adepts, thus in our dealings with them it
will pay to be subtle, especially since we Sendrukans .
have a reputation for directness.' He gazed thought -
fully at his Ezgara bodyguards. 'And if we steer the
correct events, we shall gain indirect control by creating
a situation in which our direct actions would appear
normal. From there it is a short step to neutralising
them altogether.'

'So what is to be our strategy tomorrow}' the General
said. 'Sing the insects and the savages to sleep}'

'Yes - flattery, charm, a dose of anti-Swarm lag-
waving, an appropriate measure of self-deprecating
humour to encourage trust, and after that normalisation,'

'And if that fails to work in the short term}'

Kuros smiled. 'Voloasti will guide us, old friend.
Indirect control is still control.'

He turned to the Ezgara. Eight visored faces were
looking his way, blue-armoured, still and waiting, all
seemingly identical apart from the nearest, who wore an
officer's flash on his temple, a small white triangle.
Nothing about their posture betrayed any inner state of
mind, but Kuros knew what lay hidden behind those
masks.

'Captain,' he said. 'I have a lengthy and demanding
assignment that will require two of your most adaptable
warriors.'

'By your command, Exalted,' the Ezgara captain said
in a flat voice, then pointed at two of the remaining
seven; without a word they rose and moved out to stand
before the High Monitor. They only came up to Kuros's
shoulder, yet he knew that for ferocity and single-minded
devotion to duty the Ezgara were unmatched. Then he
began to explain the details of this special and undoubt-
edly dangerous assignment, while off to one side,
General Gratach smiled his approval.

9

LEGION

On Yndyeri Duvo, the Kiskashin line-pirate was experi-
encing a glow of pride in his mercantile skills. He had
managed to resell the Human colony report (tagged
with some Human cultural profiles) to a wandering
Vusarkan academic, a Piraseri market haruspex and a
Makhori scholar with an obsession for all things
Human-related. There had been other interested par-
ties, but he decided against further delay in relaying it o |
Lord Mysterious. Besides, new merchandise was con
tinually arriving: time might be a function of the
space-entropy continuum but it was also money, thus
money was intimately bound up with the structure of
the universe. As he delighted in explaining to the client;
and customers to whom he turned his attention as the
Human colony report flashed away through the local
systemnet to Duvo's sister planet.

Off the western coast of Yndyeri Tetro's single massh e
landmass, something stirred in the depths. The waters
sparkled and teemed with life all the way from the
shallow shoreline out to the continental shelf, until
they plunged into descending gradations of shadow,
increasingly turbid realms of oceanic gloom thinly pop-
ulated by rare grotesque creatures. Only a meagre
radiance reached the lower depths, reducing jutting
features to vague, blurred outlines, yet a ragged trench
gaped there, a sheer-sided fissure full of ancient, impen-
etrable night. And down, further down, where the last
vestiges of surface light died in the intense darkness,
where a cold, crushing pressure threatened oblitera-
tion, down there amongst unseen, undisturbed debris,
an awareness stirred.

But it was an awareness without consciousness, an
awareness of the environment: sea temperature, tides,
currents and the presence of threat-level objects passing
above or below sea-level. Awareness of the subjective
physical, the balance of mechanical and organic, and the
entropic state of both, which was not good. Objective
assessment of repair and regulation systems, and of over-
all integrity, which was well below optimum. And
awareness of the information that trickled in via its recep-
tors from time to time, of the ancient biocrystalline
matrices which deconstructed, analysed and searched for
matches to an array of images in two, three and four
dimensions as well as any linguistic equivalents. It was a
search that the awareness had repeatedly and tirelessly
undertaken for centuries upon centuries, without a single
instance of success.

Until now, when the memory buffer received a data
packet detailing the discovery of a lost Human colony
world called Darien.

The awareness stripped the Darien report down to lists
of phrases and words, and stacks of images: its analytic
processes sorted them into levels of potential meaning,
discarded the obviously trivial, then sorted through the
visual data. When it came to the stills and motion images
of some ruins which the Humans had uncovered near
their settlements, additional processing capacity was
quickly brought online as the images were examined
down to extrapolated resolutions. The awareness devoted
more resources to the analysis, and when it was finally
certain it opened pathways in the biocrystalline matrices
and let power from the duality core flood through then1.

Tailored glands were stimulated, capillaries relaxed,
and enzymes leaked into the heavily shielded organic
cortex. Synaptic transfer spread through neural nets dor-
mant for long ages, opening up level after level,
augmenting the awareness, feeding a burgeoning bright-
ness . . .

And he awoke to the steel pains of his aged, wounded
body, lying on a cold seabed on an alien world in an
alien universe. He knew that his aeons-old purpose and
duty must have come round at last, otherwise he would
still be sleeping, and that was a joy which in some ways
helped him to endure the torment of old, old injuries. But
when he reached for the memories of when and how he
had been damaged, there was nothing, a gap where
familiar recollection should have been waiting to be
relived. He felt the panicky edge of fear and subdued it,
focusing on discovering the reason.

What he found was a terrible swathe of decay which
had eaten into one of the biocrystal chines of his cortical
augmentation. His awareness function had failed to
detect it as the sensor web had itself been affected, and
the worst of it was that the rot was still advancing. If
unchecked, it would in just a few years kill him.

His thoughts were wry with a black humour. <To have
survived these limitless chasms of time and all the trials
that came before is still a great achievement. And now I
have the opportunity to deliver unto my brothers and sis-
ters a final victory. I am of the Legion, and although
individual knights may fall, the Legion must triumph.
The laws of convergence must triumph. >

The analysis of the Darien report was before him, but
he decided he would institute a final recovery trawl
through the corroded biocrystal while he assessed the
data.

He saw the world Darien, a place of lush vegetation
and a living landscape of mountains and rivers; he saw
the moon and recognised remnants of the enemy's
defences with no sign of his presence . . .

With the powers of their machinemind planetoids, the
Legion of Avatars cut through the extrinsic and intrinsic
layers of material existence and opened an unstable fis-
sure in the face of reality. In vast phalanxes they fled
from a dying universe into this one, then used the plane-
toids to tunnel up through the hyperspace tiers of this one
in search of a new home, a new dominion . . .

He saw the colonists, the Humans, saw all their weak-
nesses and saw how weak they were in the face of the
political realities surrounding them . . .

There had been a battle, a gargantuan struggle spread
across many thousands of star systems, a savage,
resounding clash in which whole worlds and entire sen-
tient species were eradicated as a matter of course . . .

He saw the visual data, the near-complete ruins amid
the forest, recognised more of the enemy's work and won-
dered if it held their deadliest weapon, the one that had
defeated the Legion even in the full glory of its might. If so,
it could be turned to their advantage ...

Fragmentary memories were being recovered . . . it
hard vacuum, a close-quarters grappling struggle with
one of the enemy's sentient machines, hooked and edged
extensors searching for purchase on each other, then
one of his greater tentacles found the jutting edge of. I
hull plate, wrenched it aside and thrust a high-energy
lance into the vitals . . . the knights of the Legion of
Avatars gathered in a council of war, their millions wait-
ing in curved ranks and arrays within the flickering
gloom of a deep, desolate tier of hyper space, all intoning
the catechisms of convergence . . . and an old, old
memory of his own cyborg-form not long after his trans-
formation, the long, armoured carapace patterned in
dark reds and greens, the ten greater, articulated tenta-
cles and the six lesser ones tipped with every kind of
effector from tearing chainclaws to delicate manipula-
tors, a magnificent new body which had freed him from
the pains of the flesh .. . then a part of him realised
that there was no memory of his organic appear am e
from before his ascent to biomechanical immortality,
nothing except the vague recollection that his chist n
cyborg-form was utterly different from his old body . . .

He assessed the Darien situation and the strategic
implications of its location as well as the fact that the
Humans were dispatching a mission to their lost colony.
Then he considered various possible journey routes, but
not for himself. With its battered substructures, leaking
carapace plates, stuttering main drives, and near-defunct
sensor array, his biomachine body might be able to drag
itself into orbit but the lengthy voyage to Darien would
be too hazardous. He would have to delegate that grave
responsibility to lesser agents, three Instruments to carry
out the task, each one an abridged simulacrum of his
own persona, each one created out of his own neural
substrate, each one a small loss, and a small addition to
his freight of pain.

10

THEO

Theo hated formal occasions, and since the ambassador's
arrival three days ago he'd had to endure five of the
damn things, at Sundstrom's insistence. Hammergard's
main hospital, the McPhail Memorial, a zeplin yard,
a root refinery, a church, and a distillery. Today,
Ambassador Horst had been due to spend the morning
at Pushkinskog, the Uvovo-tended daughter-forest south
of Lake Morwen, but plans had changed overnight and
now he was visiting Membrance Vale near Landfall
Town, to see the hollow shell of the Hyperion and to pay
his respects to the dead. And Sundstrom had asked Theo
to attend, in an unofficial capacity. Tonight, a banquet in
honour of the ambassadors was due to be held in thi
Assembly ballroom, followed by speeches and a ceilidh.

Theo was strolling along the westward road that led
from Landfall to the vales of the Tuulikki Hills, which
would take a good thirty minutes on foot. The morning
sky was bright and clear, the air cold and laced with the
odours of growth, ideal weather for walking. Besides,
Theo had decided to walk so that he could meet some -
one on the way, and was pondering once more what
Sundstrom had said yesterday. Holger was a few years
older than Theo but he considered that they were essen-
tially of the same generation; during the Winter Coup
they had been on opposite sides, Sundstrom a Trond
councilman who voted against supporting Viktor
Ingram's insurrection then went underground to actively
work against the coup. That and his political efforts at
reconciliation while arguing forcibly for the new Accord
policies had persuaded Theo that he was a man of
integrity and substance. In addition, just as Theo had
had his years in the wilderness after the failure of the
coup, so too had Holger been forced to quit politics
after the injury that led to his lower-body paralysis. Yet
in later life, both found themselves back in the thick of
it.

And Sundstrom's mysterious information source
troubled Theo. The Enhanced were the living results of
a short-sighted genetics programme shut down twenty
years ago, most of whom worked on research pro-
grammes of one kind or another. Redesigned cortexes
and synaptic connectivity had given them astonishing
mental abilities, but they suffered from a corresponding
lack of social intuition that made it hard for them to
deal with ordinary people. Theo had only met a few in
his time, but he knew from reliable contacts that the
Enhanced were essentially looked upon by government
departments not just as a kind of intellectual resource
but as a badge of prestige which, once acquired, was
retained for as long as possible. The president was sup-
posed to be above this kind of bureaucratic jostling,which made Theo wonder how much political risk he might be taking if he was using Enhanced help.

Before long the road passed into the woods, their
overarching branches interweaving to form a leafy
tunnel through which spears of sunlight lanced to touch
the road with gold. This was a sparsely populated area,
and apart from the occasional spinnerbus taking visitors
back and forth, Theo saw no one else. When he came to
where the road crossed a steep-sided gully, he stepped
off the verge and sat down on a weatherbeaten bench
overlooking the crevice. Moments later heavy footsteps
approached through the undergrowth and an overalled
Rory sat down heavily beside him.

'You're not exactly a woodsman, Rory.'

'Aye, well, I was never any good at all that creepi
about and hidin', Major - canna stand the bugs.' As if to
make his point he vigorously waved away a few hover-
ing insects. Theo grinned.

'Let us hope we don't need to head off into the wilds,'
he said. 'Anyway, what have you learned?'

'Right, Ah got tae the Hyperion early this morning
and sure enough, more graffiti. The manager and his
boss were practically tearing their hair out so when Ah
turn up wi' my handy cleaning sprays and sponges they
put me to work straight off.'

Theo frowned. Such vandalism was almost unheard
of on Darien, yet since the arrival of the Heracles more
and more had been cropping up, mainly in Hammergard
and nearby towns. Then yesterday, the Knudson
Ecumenical Church and the Chernov Brothers distillery
had both been defaced shortly before Ambassador Horst
was due to arrive, which was why Theo had sent Rory
on ahead earlier, pre-equipped.

'What did it say? Any reference to these personal
AIs?'

Rory's eyebrows went up. 'Oh aye! Stuff like
"Machine-lovers leave Darien", "No Al-slaves here",
"The only good AI is a deleted AI", that kinda thing,
along with "Darien for Dariens" and FDF logos.'

FDF stood for 'Free Darien Faction', a previously
unknown group clearly intent on stirring up resentment
and unrest, neither of which Theo was strongly opposed
to, provided it was for a good reason. But the FDF was
appealing to the baser instincts of parochialism and prej-
udice, and with yesterday's breaking news about the use
of AI implants by the Earthsphere ambassador and
others, a dose of fear was stirred into the mix. No doubt
Horst's visit to the site of the colonists' triumph over a
deadly AI enemy was meant to counter such adverse
popular opinion.

He'll never get that imp back in its bottle, he thought.
The only positive tack he could take is to meet the dis-
trust head-on, but he doesn't seem to have the steel for
it. Wonder what advice he's getting from this AI com-
panion of his}

'Okay, Rory,' he said, getting to his feet. 'I have to get
along. You be on your way to the Pushkinskog daugh-
ter-forest - I've already told Listener Gansua to expect
you.'

Rory stood, scratching his sandy hair. 'Whit d'ye
think these FDF guys'll do there? - graffiti a tree?'

'God knows. For all we know they may not be will-
ing to involve the Uvovo, but given their lack of respect
for certain landmarks I wouldn't bet on it.'

Rory paused, a half-smile on his lips. 'I guess you'll
have been asking about the ither colonyships, Major,
aye? I heard that they've still no' been found.'

'Still missing, Rory, still a mystery.'

'Right, aye, but it makes ye wonder, ye know . . I
mean, there's the old Hyperion just up the road,' he
said. 'What if the other ship AIs cracked up too, like a
design flaw, maybe?'

Theo shrugged. 'I've heard that theory before, and if
it is true then perhaps we are the lucky ones to have sur-
vived.'

'Call this luck, Major?'

Exchanging waves, they went their separate ways,
Theo's smile fading a little, his thoughts growing sombre
as he crossed the bridge that led to the outskirts of
Membrance Vale.

11

GREG

The reporter Lee Shan scanned the ruins of the site
through an opaque oval eyepiece attached to a sleek
white headset, its flattened band encircling his bald head
and anchored to a second around his neck. An equip-
ment pannier floated quietly nearby on suspensors.

'Very nice, Doctor Cameron, very atmospheric, so
what we would like to do is take lots of shots of the
ruins - and some of you at work, obviously, especially
at the sacrificial altar, then we embed simz of those
Uvolos, but that'll be done Earthside, before tiercast...'

Greg stared at the reporter, Lee Shan, with a mixture of
annoyance and intent curiosity, wondering who was
speaking, the man or the AI implant. He then pointed to
the grey stone bowl to which the reporter had been drawn.

'They're called the Uvovo, and that is not a sacrificial
altar—'

'I see, I see, so do you know what it is, Doctor?'

'Mr Lee,' he said carefully, 'the Uvovo abandoned these
ruins thousands of years ago, after which this entire
promontory was covered with jungle. Where we are stand-
ing was the roof and this bowl was most probably used for
ritual fires, perhaps even cooking.'

'So you're not completely certain what it is?'

'The Uvovo have affirmed that blood sacrifice never
played any part in their culture.'

'A useful testimony, I am sure, Doctor, but after several
millennia how can they be sure?'

Lee Shan smiled. In the background his aircams
darted around just above head height, scanning every-
thing in sight and unintentionally providing great
amusement for the Uvovo scholars. The reporter's
small, neat smile, however, served only to aggravate
Greg beyond the already strained limits of his courtesy.
He knew that he should ignore the man's arrogance,
but the situation was like a door through which he
could not help but walk.

He matched the reporter's smile with one of his own.

'You know, Mr Lee, perhaps you've got a point.
Perhaps we're not being imaginative enough in our
hypotheses. How about this - we could suggest that the
ancient Uvovo sacrificed criminals and prisoners to, let's
say, giant alligator creatures from the sea, and that these
blood-soaked ceremonies took place at night because
the alligator-things only came up to the beach after
dark. It may be that those sea-borne predators who
failed to consume any of the sacrificial carrion were
themselves killed and eaten by the Uvovo ancestors ...'

'Doctor, do you have any proof for any of this?'

'Not a scrap but it's such fun, don't you think? And -
and to demonstrate these hypotheses I might be able to
persuade our Uvovo scholars to dress up in furs and
ritual paint then hold a re-enactment for you and the
cameras after nightfall, complete with torches, drums
and barefoot dancing. Perhaps some of my Norj and

Dansk colleagues might come in horned helmets and I'll
wear my kilt. What d'ye say?'

There was an awestruck silence, and the sense of
breaths being held by the Uvovo scholars and Rus
researchers, who had all paused to stare at the con-
frontation. Anger smouldered in the reporter's eyes, but
his voice remained level and unhurried.

'I do not take kindly to those who impede my pursuit
of the facts, Doctor.'

'Well, perhaps you made the mistake of ignoring the
facts you didn't like and making up ones that you did.'
He lowered his voice. 'You also made the mistake of
thinking that we're all gullible yokels eager for your
godlike wisdom. Or perhaps you were badly advised - I
understand that these personal AIs aren't quite infalli-
ble.'

Lee Shan's gaze was all icy calm.

'So I am to be shown the way out?'

'Sadly no, Mr Lee, since you undoubtedly have writ-
ten permission from the Institute to be here, which
means that you are at liberty to record whatever you
please. However, I insist that you do not interfere with
any excavation or exposed relics, nor interrupt any of
my staff while engaged in their work. As for background
detail, you have a copy of the site's tourist dossier - I
suggest that you read it.'

For a moment Lee Shan said nothing, then gave an
acquiescing bow of the head and turned away to his
pannier. Greg breathed in deeply and hurried back to
the small hut where he had been categorising finds
before the reporter's arrival. He knew that his treat-
ment of the man had gone beyond rebuke into public
humiliation, which a media celebrity like Lee Shan was
not likely to forgive or forget. And yet it had been so
satisfying, a guilty pleasure.

It took about fifteen minutes and a fresh cup of kaffe,
but eventually he settled back into the familiar rhythm
of his work, sorting, image-tabbing and storing. Before
him was a shallow box full of cloth sample bags con-
taining shards of pottery and other vessels removed
from a recently discovered midden in the northern
corner of the Giant's Shoulder site. Similar finds had
been made ever since the colonists began building or
tilling the land along the coast. Whatever the location,
unearthed pottery fragments showed a fondness for bul-
bous, organic shapes fabulously adorned with flora and
fauna. But those found on Giant's Shoulder were more
plainly decorated with curious symbols like raindrops or
stylised flames, usually drawn around small bumps and
nubs in the glazed surface. Oddly, most Uvovo Greg
spoke to expressed uncertainty about their meaning,
claiming that such symbols were not used on Nivyesta,
under the spreading canopies of Segrana.

So now the scholars and researchers had found a new
source of remains, either a pile of discards or a store that
had been wrecked in the cataclysm event that struck
Darien ten millennia ago. Greg was just starting on the
last bag of finds when there was a knock at the door. A
glance at the clock on the shelf made him realise how
long he had been working, and out loud he said,'(!oi le
in.'

The door opened and a middle-aged man in an
Earthsphere olive-and-maroon uniform entered.
'Doctor Cameron?'

'Indeed I am, and you must be Sub-Lieutenant Lavelle,'
he said, rising to shake hands. 'Good to know that the
Heracles can do without its junior officers - we must be
living in a state of impeccable safety and security!'

'Certainly feels that way, sir,' said the officer with a
smile. Then he saw what Greg was working on. 'If
you're busy I can come back another time.'

'Just now is fine, Mr Lavelle,' he said. 'Since our
exchange of messages yesterday, I've been looking for-
ward to showing a real xeno-specialist round the place.
I'm almost finished here anyway, so if you would follow
me ...'

'Please, call me Marcus.'

'Okay, you be Marcus and I'll be Greg,' he said as
they stepped outside.

Despite his composed air, Greg was truly excited at
being able to show off the site to a visitor from Earth.
The vee and the papers were full of profiles of non-
Human races, although the focus had settled on upright
bipeds like the Sendruka, the Henkaya and the
Gomedra. He was eager to find out how the temple site
and other Uvovo remains rated in the Human experi-
ence of other worlds and civilisations.

Briskly, he led the xeno-specialist Lavelle across the
flagstoned centre of the excavation, explaining on the
way that this was the roof of a large central structure
and that in all probability an ancient Uvovo complex lay
directly beneath their feet.

'Houses, rooms, galleries, outbuildings,' Greg said.
'Who knows what might be down there, carved out of
the rock? All we have to do is dig out ten thousand
years' worth of compacted biomass soil and countless
root networks. Just think of all the spades we'll go
through.'

They came to a halt before a tall wooden scaffolding
lashed here and there to a sheer stone wall covered with
relief carvings. The action of rainwater and plant
growth over the centuries had left veinlike grooves in the
stone as well as cracked and blank areas, but what
remained was breathtaking. An intricate intertwining of
images, trees, creatures and the Uvovo themselves filled
the lower part of the wall, while above the carven
jungle, hanging amid a starry sky, were several geomet-
ric shapes from which spine- and hook-like objects
rained down. Yet from the jungle mass thin shafts lanced
upwards, spearing through some of the invaders which
were depicted in pieces. Greg pointed out the details as
they climbed the scaffold.

'War in the heavens, Marcus,' he said. 'Uvovo legend
calls it the War of the Long Night, an epic struggle
between two groups of transcendent beings, the
Dreamless, cold and pitiless, and the benevolent, com-
passionate Ghost Gods on whose side the Uvovo, or
rather their protector Segrana, fought. Which is how
their sagas tell it.'

Lavelle nodded. 'Segrana, the living forest - is it true
that they believe it to be a conscious entity?'

'Yes, they do. Segrana is part of the web of life,
opposed to an antilife principle occasionally referred to
as the Unmaker . .. did you access the university files as
I suggested?'

'Yes, I did - your notes on the Uvovo sites are quite
extensive but I managed to pick up the main points before
leaving for Darien.'

'I see,' Greg said, feeling slightly nonplussed. 'Well,
I'll spare you the basic spiel then . . . oh, you know
about Ferguson's maps of Nivyesta and the first shuttle
missions?'

Lavelle nodded and took out a small flat grey unit
and patted it. 'I went over a summary of the colony's
history on my way down. You followed a very interest-
ing path to get where you are today.'

Greg laughed. 'You mean we were a capricious,
squabbling rabble!'

'Well, divergent and competitive,' Lavelle said with a
half-smile.

'Wouldn't you say that Earth's history since the
Swarm War has been at least as interesting?' Greg said.
'Explorers on other colony worlds must have uncovered
the remains of vanished civilisations as well as discover-
ing existing ones.'

'There are more historical parallels than you might
think,' Lavelle said. 'About sixty years ago we and some
of our allies joined the Sendruka Hegemony in their inter-
diction against the Jesme Aggregation because one of
their planet-clans was supporting insurgents within
Brolturan territory. Anyway, almost half of the Human
colonies were so opposed to it that they resigned from
the Earthplus Council, cut off all ties with the home-
world, and started calling themselves the Vox Humana
League. When the campaign ended a few years later,
some ties were restored but certain embargoes - on
weapons for example - remain in force to this day.'

Greg nodded. 'We've had our schisms as well. During
the New Town Secession, the Scots, Rus and Norj allies
formed armed camps against one another which caused
a lot of bitterness considering all the intermarriage and
cross-community links.'

'Yes, and the bitterness still affects policy decisions
decades later. The Vox Humana rebels continue to defy
Earthsphere sovereignty and refuse to play their part in
the Security Net, while malcontents on Earth and other
worlds launch public attacks on our coalition with the
Hegemony. But the fact is that it's a dangerous galaxy
out there and we have to stand by our true friends in the
face of the threat to our shared values. Anti-Sendrukans
I've got no time for.'

Shared values? Greg thought. It seemed like a strange
declaration to make, one he would normally have
latched on to and probed until its meaning became
clearer. But he decided to say nothing and let the man
talk.

'As for remains of vanished cultures, some colony
worlds have reported quite a few finds - habitable plan-
ets near the ancient centres and flows of galactic
civilisation usually provide some evidence of previous
occupation. As soon as major discoveries are made,
however, the sites are supposed to be opened up for
inspection by the Grand Commission for Antiquities
unless a commission signatory files an objection. In the
case of Darien, four have done so - four, which is almost
unheard of. Earthsphere was first to file under rights of
sovereignty and duty of care towards the Uvovo; the
Brolturans then filed their objections with the
Commission, claiming that the Darien system lies within
a tract of space promised to them by their god,
Voloasku, as explicitly written in the Omgur, their
divine scripture ...'

'Voloasku? So who's Voloasti? - I heard that men-
tioned by someone.'

'That's the supreme being of the Hegemony's ortho-
dox creed,' Lavelle said. 'Also supported by their version
of the Omgur which, for some reason, hasn't led to sim-
ilar claims.'

'You cannot be serious,' Greg said, laughing.

'I'm afraid I am,' Lavelle said. 'The third to object
was the Second Spiral Sage of Buranj, who claimed that
your temple's position on a jutting promontory exactly
matches the description of the tomb of the divine Father-
Sage Arksasbe. He also insists that the defiling presence
of non-believers ceases immediately.'

Greg stared at him for an astonished moment, then
leaned forward to gaze out at the worn walls and
columns, the Uvovo scholars working in a stepped
trench near the northern barrier and the Rus
researchers, who were patiently sifting dirt removed
from the test ditches over to the south. Then he looked
back at Lavelle, smiling.

'Unfortunately, Marcus, it doesn't look as though
these non-believers are likely to drop what they are
doing. And in fact, I think that my own non-devoutness
has actually deepened since learning of the esteemed
Second Spiral Sage's decree ... by the way, is there a
First Spiral Sage?'

'Oh yes, but he's far too devout to be sullied by tem-
poral matters.'

'But of course. So who filed the fourth objection?'

'The Hegemony. They argued that the Grand
Commission of Antiquities cannot carry out its work
until the conflicting claims of sovereignty and title have
been resolved. Accordingly, all four objectors have
appointed adjudicators and the first hearings will take
place soon.' Lavelle grinned. 'The whole process could
take two or three years!'

Greg smiled uncertainly. 'You seem very pleased
about all of this, Marcus, and I don't know why.'

'Well, if the Commission's inspectors had been
empowered to oversee this site, you and your people
would probably be prohibited from any excavation or
artefact-handling, on grounds of inadequate training or
the use of lo-tech instruments. But they haven't, which
means you can continue working here . . .' He paused.
'.. . and 1 can show you the location of the underground
chambers and their hidden entrance.'

Greg's thoughts jolted to a halt, and he stared at the
man. 'Wha ... what did you say?'

Lavelle glanced out at the site then went on in quieter
tones.

'Greg, the cornerstone of field archaeology is deter-
mining where the treasure is before you begin digging.
A researcher from, say, Planitia University would have
the equipment to make any number of subsurface scans
before breaking ground, but you don't have that
luxury. On the other hand, I have - I used Heracles's
sensor array to make focused scans of the interior of
Giant's Shoulder.' From an inner pocket he took a
folded sheaf of pages and gave them to Greg. 'These are
copies made yesterday and the day before - there's not
much fine detail but you can see the regular lines of the
buried temple complex and beneath it.. .'

Greg stared at several views of Giant's Shoulder, dig-
ital sweeps showing a vaguely block-shaped recess
extending about 60 metres down into the promontory,
just as he had speculated. And there, not far below, was
something circular - glancing between pages, contrast-
ing different views, it really did look like a chamber of
some kind, circular, perhaps 80 metres across . . .

He peered closer, sorted through the images, com-
paring two in particular, one of which seemed to show a
thready, fragmentary straight line leaving the mysterious
chamber and pointing south, while the other had a sim-
ilar line leading inwards from the southern face of
Giant's Shoulder, pointing north.

'It is what it looks like,' said Lavelle. 'It's an entrance-
way and a passage of some kind.'

Greg stared at the images with a burning intensity,
thinking about the sheer sides of Giant's Shoulder,
cracked and weathered rock faces veiled in tangles of
vine and half-dead root. Only experienced climbers
could safely traverse that kind of headwall, yet when he
mentioned this to Lavelle he laughed and nodded.

'Well, fortunately I am a qualified climber, so if you
need my help .. «'

Greg looked up. 'Is tomorrow too soon?'

'Hmm, I'm rostered on tomorrow morning - how
about in the afternoon?'

'That would be . . . perfect. Marcus, forgive me for
asking, but what do you have to gain out of this?'

Lavelle smiled thoughtfully, as if partly at his own
thoughts. 'I guess I could say it's about fame and recog-
nition - well, maybe that is part of it but mainly it's the
chance to explore an ancient hidden mystery never
before seen by Humans, to be the first to see it and
touch it! It's the fourteen-year-old in me, I'm afraid.'

'In that case, my fourteen-year-old salutes yours -
perhaps we should start a club.'

Laughing, the two men descended the scaffold lad-
ders, arranged for tomorrow, said farewells and parted,
Lavelle heading for the zeplin station, Greg hurrying
back to the cataloguing hut. On entering he noticed a
message tag on his workstation's screen, a black-and-
yellow one signifying a locked priority, the kind that
seldom contained good news. He keyed in his password,
read it through, and groaned. Then reread it, just to be
sure, and this time laughed drily. The message was from
the office of V. Petrovich, the Director of the Darien
Institute, informing Greg that tomorrow, at noon, High
Monitor Kuros - and his extensive entourage - would
be making a very official, very public visit to Giant's
Shoulder. Several hours prior to this, an officer from the
Office of Guidance and the commander of the High
Monitor's bodyguard would arrive to inspect the site
and ensure its security. Greg was to offer them com-
plete cooperation and full access to all areas and to all
personnel records. It ended with a pointed and direct
instruction, essentially a prohibition on his 'indulging in
any commentary or verbal wordplay that could be con-
strued as antagonistic or insulting'.

Greg smiled, shook his head. The director was an old
sparring partner and knew just what he was capable of,
a state of being not unlike that of the reporter, Lee
Shan .. . who, he realised, would almost certainly be
present tomorrow.

You wait and hope for a good audience to come
along, he thought, then suddenly it's there but you're not
allowed to perform.

Then he realised that he would have to postpone
tomorrow's exploration with Lavelle so, with a sigh, he
sat down at his desk and began composing a short mes-
sage.

1 2

ROBERT

The Earthsphere embassy was a modest, two-storey
townhouse near the centre of Hammergard, timber-
framed and part of a short terrace of commercial
properties and offices. Although the embassy staff had
only had the keys for four days, Robert Horst had
insisted that their public information desk was up and
running from day one. This was in stark contrast to the
Sendrukan Hegemony embassy, which was a villa in
walled grounds in an affluent district, and which was
reportedly refusing all requests and approaches.

Robert Horst was in a conference call with Deputy-
President Jardine and the opposition Consolidation
party's external affairs spokeswoman, Linn Kringen,
and trying to explain why there was little or no open-
ness from the Hegemony representative.

'. . . what you have to understand is that High
Monitor Kuros is not an official Hegemony ambassa-
dor,' he said to the faces on his desk screen. 'Officially,
Darien falls within the Brolturan sphere of influence, so
Kuros has to wait for the Brolturans to appoint their
own representative before taking on an ambassadorial
rank and opening for business.'

Linn Kringen smiled blandly. She was a pale-
blonde, middle-aged woman with a steely gaze. 'This
is hardly a comforting situation, Ambassador, espe-
cially in the light of the recent revelation that the
Brolturan Compact wants to assert sovereignty over
us! You can surely see how troubling this would be to
all Dariens.'

'Troubling' was putting it mildly. Someone in the
Darien Institute had leaked the Brolturans' faith-based
territorial claim along with some choice excerpts from
the less sympathetic chapters of the Omgur, and now all
the media were in ferment.

'Legator Kringen, I don't think there's any genuine
cause for concern, simply because much of this is no
more than gesture politics,' Robert said. 'The Brolturans
can be somewhat sensitive about their perceived status
so this is a face-saving exercise.'

'Exactly, Ambassador,' said Deputy-President Jardine,
a round-faced Scot with receding hair. 'The fact is that
the Hegemony is the true power in the region and
they're not going to let anything happen to one of their
principal ally's colonies.' A calculating smile came to
his lips. 'I fear that the real reason for Legator Kringen's
visibility on this issue stems from the recent divisions
within the Consolidation Alliance.'

'As ever, the honourable Deputy-President fails to
comprehend the facts, even when they are plain to see.'
Kringen shook her head. 'Ambassador Horst, as oppo-
sition spokesperson it is my duty to attend to the
concerns and doubts of the people and to ensure that the
government is doing its job. I thank you for your time
and courtesy, sir, and I shall convey your estimation of
this situation to the leader of my party. Mr Deputy-
President . . .'

And with a smile that was as sharp as it was frosty,
she broke the connection.

After that Robert was quick to bring the call with
Jardine to a close, citing a pressing workload. Onct the
screen returned to the ready cycle, he heaved a sigh of
relief, leaned back and turned his chair away from his
desk.

'I quite liked Ms Kringen,' said Harry. He was sitting
on the arm of a divan, shirtsleeves rolled up, and hold-
ing a sheaf of papers in one hand. The monochrome
image of Robert's AI companion stood in stark contrast
to the subdued browns and greens of the townhouse's
drawing room. 'Under that prim exterior I bet there's a
champion dancer and an amateur scrimshaw hobbyist.'

Robert gave him a mock-serious look. 'You were
reading her file! - I wondered why you were so quiet.'

Harry shrugged. 'All colonial politics starts to look
and sound the same after a while, Robert, and truthfully
I didn't care too much for Sundstrom's deputy.'

'He was a trade-off placement, apparently,' Robert
said. 'Sundstrom has his own coalition to keep in line
too. But what is Kuros up to? - he's kept his doors closed,
as we expected, yet he's off touring the colony, visiting
landmarks, meeting local officials. We've already had to
change my itinerary twice because he edged in before us.
Then there's the presentation at that archaeological dig
tomorrow, which I had planned to attend until one of
Kuros's assisters told me, oh so politely, that the High
Monitor wanted to be the sole dignitary, the "bearer of
the Hegemony's friendship" to the Darien colony.'

'Why, Robert - you sound peeved,' Harry said with a
wry smile.

Robert spread his hands. 'You'd think that I would
be used to it by now, given our encounters with
Hegemony functionaries down the years. Well, at least
we'll be spared the joy of listening to one of these
speeches he's been making.'

'Ah yes - I've seen the transcripts,' Harry said, shuf-
fling through his papers then striking a theatrical pose.
'"Across the galaxy's vast ocean of stars, and down
through the river of ages, certain values of life and free-
dom have remained constant, changeless. As the willing
inheritors of those cherished values, the Sendruka
Hegemony bears the responsibility of promoting and
sharing them amongst the many-formed family of sen-
tient beings. We welcome you to our great family, as we
welcomed your fellow Humans many years ago, and
invite you to join with us in spreading the values and
benefits of civilisation ..."' Harry looked up, eyebrows
arched. 'And on it goes.'

'What kind of reception is this bucket of platitudes
getting?'

'Rapturous applause,' Harry said. 'But then, the
colony's only source of offworld news is Starstream and
they've always been most supportive of our Hegemonic
allies.'

Robert nodded, feeling suddenly listless and tired, his
neck and back full of aches, his mood growing despon-
dent. It had been a long day and it wasn't over yet. He
needed a short break from his cares and the chance to
lift his spirits.

Looking out of the bay window at the even grey sky,
he said, 'Harry, I need some time to myself, just to
unwind before the reception this evening. Okay?'

'Of course, Robert. Say about an hour?'

'An hour would be fine.'

'See you later, then.'

When he looked round there was no sign of Harry
and he got up and left the room. Along the polished
wood corridor were his personal rooms, one of which
he kept locked with an intricate old-fashioned key which
came with the house sets. Once inside his bedroom he
crossed to that door, unlocked it and stepped through.

'Hi, Daddy - glad you're back. Looks like it might
rain.'

Rosa stood by the window, her faintly opaque form
appearing oddly grainy in the natural light. Like an
ancient, pre-digital photograph. Like a memory.

'It rains a lot in this part of Darien,' he said, settling
into an armchair. 'So, what have you been doing today?'

'Oh, just reading my book and listening to the radio,'
she said.

The ghostly shape of a book lay on the undisturbed
bed, projected there by the intersim which sat on the
shoulder-height mantelpiece. Two thin cables ran out
from the small unit, one to a module that drew power
from the house supply, the other to a pen-sized radio.
The book, Robert knew, was most likely either Lewis
Carroll's Alice Through The Looking-Glass or The
Empire of Propaganda by Nolan Chilcott, her favourite
dissident writer. Her grey cardigan and long blue
woollen dress were from a family holiday six years ago,
but her short hair and flower earrings were from the last
time he saw her alive ...

He knew what Harry would say, that he was being
lulled and enervated by the holosim's verisimilitude, but
he dismissed it. He was using this detailed imitation of
his daughter to dull the grief that he still felt, to help him
come to terms with the loss. Harry was mistaken - he
knew what was real and what was not.

'If I look between those houses,' Rosa said, 'I can see
a lake and a forest and mountains. So beautiful.' She
turned to him. 'Daddy, on the radio I heard that the
moon people, the Uvovo, have planted what they call
daughter-forests, using seeds and saplings from their
world. Have you seen one yet? I've heard that they glow
at night.'

'Actually, I'm due to visit the one near Port Gagarin
the day after tomorrow - would you like to come?'

'Oh, could I? That would be wonderful.'

'It's settled then - we'll go together.'

Rosa's face was bright with a smile free from the
burden of care as she picked up the translucent book
from the bed. 'I know you've not much time, Daddy,'
she said. 'But would you like me to read some Alice to
you?'

'I'd like that very much,' Robert said, smiling.

So he settled back in the armchair's comfort and lis-
tened to his daughter's precious voice tell the story of a
little girl who passed through into a looking-glass world.

13

CATRIONA

As soon as the drinks waiter came up onto the temple
rampart, she selected a glass of yellowbead and
knocked it straight back. Ignoring the waiter's look of
amusement, she took a second glass and went to stand
next to the rampart's mossy, time-ruined wall, staring
morosely down at the chattering knots of people. It
was a cloudless day and not yet noon, and from where
she stood she could see almost the entirety of the
Giant's Shoulder dig site, from the sections of shattered
wall that delineated the blunt point of the promontory
to the grassy, hillocky expanse almost 300 metres to the
rear, where steep, jagged rocks reared up to join the
buttresses and crags that jutted from the densely
forested ridge overseeing all. The bulk of the ruins were
scattered around the area immediately behind the ram-
parts - fragments of walls, corners, tumbled heaps of
masonry debris lying where they were discovered.
Numerous ongoing excavations had been roped off,
although some of the old ones, like the Stairwell or the
Crypt, had been refurbished with benches and info-
panels for sightseers. Areas of flagstones long since
unearthed from the topsoil were now occupied by
small tents within which cabinet displays depicted arte-
facts and an easy-to-digest potted history of the site.
But it was the largely uninterrupted stretch directly
below her vantage point where rows of seating had
been laid out for the reception and presentation in
honour of the Hegemony representative, High Monitor
Kuros.

And part of that presentation was to be delivered
by Catriona Macreadie. It was a source of raw annoy-
ance to her, knowing as she did that many of the
Institute's Darien-based members were perfectly capa-
ble of giving a brief talk and answering the esteemed
Sendrukan's questions. She had made this point
bluntly to her superior, Professor Forbes, in his office
at Pilipoint Station nearly fifteen hours ago, but to no
avail.

'That may be so, Doctor Macreadie,' Forbes had
said, wearing his habitual thin smile. 'But it seems that
the Sendruka delegation has specifically requested that
you be the one to assist Mr Cameron during their visit
to the site.'

'Why me?'

'Sadly, I am not privy to these aliens' reasoning,
nor did Director Petrovich indicate that he possessed
such information. However, he was most insistent
that you be on the next shuttle back to Darien
which . . .' he had paused to look round at the hideous
ornamental clock on his wall'.. . leaves in less than an
hour.'

Catriona had forced herself to be icy calm, deter-
mined not to lose her composure and tell him which
species of forest-floor bug he most closely resembled
This time.

'Professor Forbes, that doesn't give me enough time
to return to my quarters and prepare, not to mention
the question of what to wear.'

'I'm sure that the Externals office at the Institute can
provide suitable attire for you on your arrival,' he had
said. 'And you may use the archive hub if you really feel
the need to brush up on the Uvovo, but whatever you
do please try not to embarrass us. Deliver a straight
summary of our findings and restrict any speculation to
verified facts. That will be all . . .'

Now, standing on the temple rampart, she could still
feel the anger and frustration simmering away inside,
unquenched by the glass of yellowbead liqueur. Anger
at Forbes, and frustration at being a world away while
a certain package was probably sitting in the mail
drawer in the enclave storage hut back at Starroof
Town. She had persuaded Galyna, a researcher friend at
Pilipoint Station, to process her forest-floor recording
with a lab imager on the quiet, thus hopefully revealing
just what had passed before the minicam. The
processed file had been due to arrive in the daily drop
several hours ago.

Instead here I am, getting ready to pose as a glorified
tour-guide for some self-important alien bureaucrat.
Yes, hand-holding offworlders through a pre-teen-level
commentary seems to be all the Institute thinks I'm fit
for...

She halted her spiralling bitterness, swallowed a
mouthful of yellowbead, and sighed. Patience was a
virtue she felt she was always having to learn anew,
despite which she turned her thoughts to listing all the
enigmas she had encountered, ranking the Pathmasters
first. . .

Then music interrupted her musing, the sound of a
lone piper, the high, pure tone of the chanter floating
above the suddenly hushed crowd, picking out the notes
of a stately, soulful pibroch. Then the deeper voices of
the drones rose, a steady undercurrent for the deliberate
pace of the melody. The piper, a young, dark-haired man
decked out in the full regalia, walked in time through
the ruins towards the attentive gathering.

Catriona loved pipe music in general, even the mod-
ernist tranzy dance fads, but it was the performance of
a solo piper that truly moved her. To her it sounded
lonely yet defiant, dignified but not pompous, and it
spoke to her of faraway Earth and that small corner of
it which only some of the First Families had known
first-hand.

More than once during her years as an Enhanced,
she had gone up onto the dormitory roof after dark to
sit with pipe music playing quietly on her little radio
as she looked up at the dust-hazed point of stars. With
no way to know if Earth and Humanity had survived
the Swarm invasion, she could only gaze and wonder
and wish, thoughts and music spiralling up into the
sky . . .

'He is a very good player, is he not?' said a female
voice behind her.

She turned to see a tall, middle-aged woman dressed
in a pale blue, ankle-length gown that was all elegant
folds and embroidered hems and which stopped just
short of ostentatious. A patterned grey shawl covered
her shoulders and arms, and her silvery hair was
braided and held back with a carved wood headband.
She seemed vaguely familiar.

'Yes, he is,' she replied, smiling hesitantly. 'Very
expressive.'

'When I was younger I saw his father win the
Northern Towns Trophy three times,' the woman said
in a Norj accent. 'I am Solvjeg Cameron.'

Recognition flooded Catriona's thoughts. 'Ah, you're
Greg's mother . .. oh, I'm Catriona Macreadie.'

As they shook hands, Solvjeg Cameron smiled. 'So
you are the Doctor Macreadie who worked with Greg
before. Are you here today in an official capacity?'

'Yes, I'm going to be giving a brief speech about the
Uvovo, and answering questions.'

'Fascinating,' Solvjeg said, suddenly giving her a
curious look. 'Macreadie ... are you related to the New
Kelso Macreadies, by any chance?'

Although outwardly calm and poised, Catriona's
thoughts were scattering in panic, and the lie came to
her lips seemingly of its own accord.

'No, my parents were both from Stranghold,' she
said. 'They died when I was very young.'

'I am so sorry to hear that, my dear,' Greg's mother
said, suddenly sympathetic. 'You must have had a diffi-
cult childhood . ..'

But before the next line of questioning could get
under way, Solvjeg's gaze shifted to the side a little and
she waved. Glancing round, Catriona saw an older man
in hillwalker browns wave back briefly before heading
along the grassy slope towards the steps that led up to
the ramparts.

'My brother wants me to come down,' Solvjeg said.
'But no doubt we shall meet again. I hope the day goes
well for you.'

Catriona smiled and gave a little wave goodbye while
inside she was thinking, Why did I say that? How could
I be so stupid? Greg's mother was one of those ultra-con-
nected matriarch types - it would only take a couple of
enquiries to find out that Catriona was a failed
Enhanced. She knew she shouldn't be ashamed or embar-
rassed, but it was an undeniable fact that the Enhanced,
failed or not, were treated differently and not especially
positively, even though the programme ended years ago.
And Solvjeg would then wonder why she had lied and
might jump to conclusions about her and Greg ...

Catriona gnawed her lip - and what if she asked
Greg if they were involved? The embarrassment would
be unbearable.

But before she could brood any further, her comm
gave its cheery little call tune. Seeing it was Greg, she
thumbed the accept and answered.

'Hello, Greg.'

'Cat, I thought you should know that our visiting
VIP has just disembarked from his executive zeplin and
will be here shortly. Can you meet me at the mural
wall?'

'I'm on my way,' she said, heading for the stairs.

'Incidentally, will you be able to wait behind after
this circus is over? There's some new findings I'd like
your opinion on.'

'Sounds interesting,' she said. 'I'd like that.' And
hopefully I'll get up the courage to tell you what I said
before you hear it from your mother.

'Excellent,' he said. 'See you shortly.'

Finishing off the last of the yellowbead, she left the
glass next to the waiter's table and hurried downstairs,
wishing for the umpteenth time that she was back on
Nivyesta.

14
CHEL

In an alcove at the top of a grassy slope, Cheluvahar sat
with Listener Weynl and two other Uvovo scholars,
watching the Human gathering. All had listened intently
to the piper, who finished to an enthusiastic round of
applause, and now another group of musicians was com-
mencing on a variety of stringed and wind instruments.

'Humans are always making songs and stories,' Chel
said. 'Interesting to discover that other races create sim-
ilar things.'

'But not surprising,' said Listener Weynl. 'An exis-
tence divided always seeks attunement, ways to bridge
the gap between the mind and the eternal. Songs and
stories are expressions of the need for attunement, but
when that becomes a yearning to hear the voice of the
eternal it leads to gods and demons, holy books and
such things as the Dreamless.'

Chel knew the principles of attunement well, as did
every Uvovo - from birth the vital rhythms of Segrana
were part of blood and breath and the daily pulse of
living. But Humans had to imagine, needed to imagine
the entirety of the world beyond their own poor senses,
trying to bridge the gap with illusions.

Some distance away from where they sat, a solitary
four-armed figure came into view, pacing deliberately
along the perimeter of the temple site as it had done for
well over an hour. It - there was no outward indication
of gender - was a member of the Sendrukan envoy's
bodyguard, a squad of Ezgara commandos. It wore
some kind of close-fitting, full-body dull blue armour,
with a near-black visor covering the face and no obvious
sign of weapons.

On seeing the soldier making what had to be its
fourth circuit, one of the scholars - a Meshtowner called
Kolumivenur - turned to Weynl.

'Learned one,' he said. 'How can a race such as this
one seek attunement while serving the Sendruka?'

'I know little about these Ezgara,' Weynl said. 'But it is
clear that they have given themselves over to the needs
and methods of military service, just as many Humans
here do. I have heard it said, however, that Ezgara soldiers
are fanatically loyal to their Sendruka masters, in which
case I find myself wondering what kind of people require
utter obedience from their servants. But then, we now
know that all the worlds of the Sendruka, their society
and culture and government, are permeated with the
Dreamless. Machine minds are everywhere, spying,
manipulating, and coordinating the resources of a vast
empire, which clearly include these Ezgara. Perhaps they
in turn extract a kind of obedience from the Sendruka.'

'What of the Humans from Earth,' said the other
scholar, Tesobrenilor by name. 'Some of them have the
Dreamless . . . tiny machines planted inside their heads,
just like this High Monitor Kuros and his companions.
Can they be trusted?'

'Everything they see and hear reaches the Dreamless,'
Weynl said. 'At the time of the War of the Long Night,
the Dreamless were joined to one another by a hidden
web that reached into the underlayers of existence. We
cannot know if these Dreamless have a similar . . . pat-
tern but in caution we should assume so ...'

The Listener suddenly stopped and looked round.
Following his gaze, the rest saw that the Ezgara com-
mando had paused at the foot of the grassy slope with
the gleaming blackness of its visor angled up at them.
For a moment or two no one moved, then the Ezgara
began to ascend the slope.

'Remain seated,' Weynl said quietly. 'Be calm, there is
nothing to fear.'

As the Listener got to his feet, Chel smiled reassur-
ingly at the other two Uvovo, whose eyes were wide
and bright with alarm.

'Greetings, offworlder,' Weynl said, hands clasped at
his chest. 'I am Listener Weynl of the Warrior Uvovo
and these three are my companions. Please be welcome.'

The Ezgara came to a halt and swept them all with an
invisible gaze.

'Warriors?' The words were in Anglic, spoken in a
flat, slightly buzzing voice. 'I see no weapons.'

'I likewise see none about your person, honoured
guest, yet I am not sure I would recognise them if they
were there.'

The Ezgara gave no reply for a moment, seeming to
stare at Weynl as if studying him. The creature stood
with its major arms hanging loosely at its sides while its
lower, lesser arms were crooked back, hands resting in
pockets. That dull blue armour, which covered every
limb, on closer inspection appeared to consist of a
worn, scored surface over a layer of thumbnail-sized
platelets just discernible through the outer material.

'One amongst you spoke the name of my master, the
High Monitor Utavess Kuros,' the commando said at
last. 'Why?'

'We were only discussing . . .' began Tesobrenilor,
abruptly falling silent when the Ezgara quickly turned
on him.

'It is my duty to protect the High Monitor,' it said.
'Why were you discussing him?'

The Ezgara took a step towards Tesobrenilor, who
backed away in fear. At the same time, Weynl moved in
the commando's direction, one hand starting to reach
out, and the moment he saw this Chel knew what was
about to happen.

'Honoured guest,' the Listener said. 'There has been
a misunderstanding ...'

The commando reacted with a speed so blurring that
afterwards Chel had difficulty recalling the exact
sequence of movements. Listener Weynl had reached out
to the soldier's lesser arm on the right side and an instant
later he was hurtling backwards through the air. Chel
caught a glimpse of the Ezgara's right-side arms and leg
lowering but it was the Listener who drew every eye. In
mid-flight he somehow twisted his body, robes
fluttering, and flipped over to land on his feet, legs
crouched. Smiling, he straightened and calmly walked
back to where the others stood, staring in astonishment.

'As I explained, honoured guest,' Weynl said, spread-
ing his long-sleeved arms, with his bony hands open and
empty. 'There has been a slight misunderstanding. My
young companion was puzzled as to the meaning of your
exalted superior's title and so, despite my scant knowl-
edge, I attempted a doubtlessly inaccurate interpretation.'

Silence. For several seconds Uvovo stared at Ezgara,
who seemed also to stare back, both perfectly immobile.
Just when Chel thought he could no longer bear the ten-
sion, the Ezgara raised a hand to the side of its helmet as
it looked downslope to where a second commando was
standing. Then without a word it turned its back and
retraced its steps to join the other one. Moments later
both were moving away, patrolling the site perimeter
along the foot of the western crags, as if nothing had
happened. Glancing at Tesobrenilor and Kolumivenur,
Chel saw his own puzzlement mirrored in their features,
along with a certain relief.

Listener Weynl, on the other hand, seemed quite
unperturbed, even as he guided Chel off to one side, a
little way down the incline from the others.

'Once this ceremony is over,' Weynl said in low tones,
'you will be leaving for the Tapiola daughter-forest in
the north. A floating craft shall be waiting for you at the
zeplin station.'

Chel bobbed his head in respect, suddenly excited
and apprehensive. 'I am prepared, Listener.'

Weynl smiled. 'Yes, I thought I was too, when my own
time drew near. My advice would be to put aside all you
have learned and read because your husking will be
unique to you. Which is as it should be.' He breathed in
deep and nodded. 'Now I must depart for Hammergard -
I have an important meeting to attend.'

'But Listener Weynl - who will represent our people
to the Sendrukans?'

'A straightforward task, Scholar, which I am confi-
dent you can undertake. Besides, you are far more
knowledgeable about this delving site than I. A word of
caution, however - should anything unforeseen take
place here, resist any temptation to become involved.'

'Unforeseen?' Chel said. 'Is something bad going to
happen?'

'I do not know,' Weynl said with a kind of sombre
puzzlement. 'The event itself is provoking a sense of
anticipation, but the instinctive violence of that
Ezgara . . .' He surveyed the site's ruins with brooding
eyes. 'Something else is approaching, something nas-
cent . . . but whatever happens stay focused on your
duty and the work to come. The first aspirants are
already gathering down in the Glenkrylov daughter-
forest, so when you return in a few days we will be
ready to begin confirmations for the Artificer Uvovo.'

He gave Chel a fatherly pat on the shoulder and
went to bid the other two goodbye. Chel thought
about the many sheets of notes he had made on the
ancient Uvovo ruins, the ones the Humans knew about
as well as the ones they didn't, and wondered how
much use they would be after he had gone through the
husking.

Weynl waved to them all and Chel watched him
hurry across the uneven floor of the site's western
stretches. A little further on he paused to wave once
more before disappearing behind one of the main walls.
Chel already knew that the most obvious change
wrought by the husking was the physical, a lengthening
of certain bones, including the skull. Was he really ready
for such an alteration? Those Listeners he had got to
know seemed to be mostly sane most of the time, even
Faldri, which was slightly reassuring.

Then these thoughts were chased away by a repetitive
chiming sound coming from one of his waist pouches. It
was the signal from Gregori that all senior duty staff
were to meet outside the site office hut - Kuros was due
soon. Moments later, the three Uvovo scholars were has-
tening back to the prepared gathering place, careful to
avoid the Ezgara commandos, who were still doggedly
patrolling the perimeter.

1 5
GREG

From the moment he got out of bed, nearly an hour
before dawn, the whole day had just been one damned
thing after another. Crates of seating and modular
gazebos had been delivered overnight, and while he
was organising the carriage and assembly teams, two
grey-uniformed OG officers arrived with Institute
authorisation countersigned by Petrovich himself. By
the time he had given them a brief tour of the site and
left them to their own devices, the caterers had turned
up with a variety of containers and the need for some-
where reasonably clean to get ready. The only halfway
suitable place was the recreation hut, so there they
were sent, much to the annoyance of a group of Uvovo
scholars who were just back from the mountains and
enjoying a leisurely game of hexadominoes.

It was then that the Ezgara commandos had
appeared, three quad-armed humanoids in worn, dull
blue battledress, their heads enclosed by black-visored
helmets. Trailing after them was one of the interns, a
young Rus called Pyotr.

'So sorry for this, Mr Cameron,' he said, slightly out
of breath. 'But these gentlemen...'

'That's all right, Pyotr - now that they're here, I'll see
to them.'

Pyotr nodded, shot a glare at the oblivious newcom-
ers and headed back to the site entrance. Greg smiled at
the Ezgara, taking in the details of their armour, their
identical stances and those extra arms.

'Well,' he said. 'You all look very intimidating, I must
say. Are you here in advance of our honoured guest?'

He broke off as one suddenly stepped up close, bring-
ing them face to face. Greg could see his own breath
lightly fogging the commando's faceplate, but he nei-
ther flinched nor backed away.

'I am Juort,' the Ezgara said in a low, rasping voice
that sounded synthetic. 'I command.'

The commandos all appeared of similar height, and
up close Greg could see that he was a little taller than
the one confronting him. If anything this made them
more daunting, not less, but Greg was determined to
hold his ground.

'By an amazing coincidence,' he said, smiling broadly,
'so do 1.1 command this site and its personnel -1 am in
command here, which means that I have the power to
permit you to enter ...'

'I command you ...' began Juort.

'Ah, wait, I don't think ye've got it quite right. Y'see,
you're supposed to ask me if you can ...'

'Mr Cameron? A word, if you please.'

Greg turned to see Ingerson, one of the Office of
Guidance men, giving him a look that said, Are you
completely out of your mind? while beckoning to him.

'Mr Ingerson, how can I help you?'

'The Ezgara commandos are here to assist with the
security arrangements, Mr Cameron,' he said. 'Their
access is covered by our authorisation.'

'I see,' Greg said. 'If only I'd known earlier . . .' He
turned to the Ezgara, but they were already following
Ingerson in single file while ignoring Greg altogether.
'In that case, welcome to Giant's Shoulder! - enjoy your
visit. . .'

Not a head turned in his direction, so he shrugged
and went back to trying to cope with chaos.

The seating was done and three of the gazebos were
up: he'd left the others in their packaging since the latest
forecast was predicting dry, bright conditions for the
rest of the day. The gazebos, however, were serving as
shelters for three groups of exhibits - flora and fauna of
Darien, ruins and remains, and ancient Uvovo culture.
But the flora and fauna cases were empty since the ecol-
ogist and his materials (both on loan from the
university) had so far failed to appear. Hastily, Greg per-
suaded one of the Russian researchers, Andrei, to
assemble a small exhibit from the archive store - fig-
urines, glyphs, decorated artefacts of any kind. It was
going to cost half a bottle of Glenmarra single malt, but
at least the cases would not be bare.

Then the first zeplin-load of guests arrived, bringing
with them a clutch of reporters both local and offworld.
With ruthless ease they bypassed the guides and atten-
dants and tracked Greg down to the supply hut, where
he was checking the water-tank level. Amid a barrage of
brash, bizarre and often fantastical questioning he main-
tained a look of amused tolerance while giving vaguely
surreal one- or two-word answers: it seemed that news
of his encounter with Lee Shan had got around. Before
long they realised that there would be no verbal fire-
works, so off they wandered to hunt other quarry, and
Greg headed for his quarters to shower and change.

But less than ten minutes later he was back outside,
trying to calm down one of the Norj research teams,
who had discovered an Earth reporter in their hut, open-
ing drawers and recording everything in sight. In an
effort to reach some kind of understanding, Greg gath-
ered the senior reporters together with Olsen, Ingerson's
colleague: the OG officer briefly outlined the case for
security and propriety, and casually mentioned that the
Ezgara commandos now patrolling the perimeter were
very keen to ensure the Hegemony envoy's safety from
any threat and were fully capable of doing so.

At the mention of the Ezgara, glances were
exchanged and Greg noticed a certain shared nervous-
ness. Hmm, so they do have a reputation, he thought.
Or should it be notoriety}

After that it was a hectic rush to get ready for the
presentation, to finalise the programme of events, nego-
tiate a compromise between Andrei and the university
ecologist who had turned up at the last minute, and
arrange for some of the excavations to be roped off,
since some reporters were still poking their noses where
they shouldn't. In between all that he managed to meet
some of the VIP guests, shaking hands and exchanging
the usual pleasantries, and made sure that his mother
and Uncle Theo knew where their seats were. At one
point he caught sight of Catriona through the crowd,
just after she had sent him a comm-note to let him know
that she had arrived.

Then came news that High Monitor Kuros had
disembarked from his official zeplin and was about to
ascend the cliffside path in one of the electric visitor
cars. Greg alerted Catriona and Chel with prearranged
signals and hurried over to the central plaza area.
Catriona appeared seconds after he got there, looking
tense in a formal, high-collared kirtle suit made from
some dark brown ridge-textured material. After an awk-
ward, smiling pause they shook hands, a clasp which
Catriona seemed to break first - or maybe it was
because he was holding her hand for a moment too
long.

'It's good to see you again, Catriona,' he said. 'I hope
this PR exercise isn't interrupting your work the way it
is mine, though I understand our guests specifically
requested that you take part.'

She gave a wry half-smile, tucked a few stray dark
hairs behind one ear, at which Greg felt a tiny thrill. He
kept smiling.

'Well, I can't deny that there's other things I'd rather
be doing,' she said. 'But they asked for me so here I
am.'

A thought occurred to him. 'You don't think it's any-
thing to do with your Enhanced past?'
'Why should it?'

He shrugged. 'Perhaps they're curious about why the
Enhancement project came about.'

She regarded him. 'Hmm. Do you ever wonder why,
Greg?'

Before he could answer, the Uvovo scholar Chel
arrived. He had an anxious, slightly jittery air about him
but he seemed otherwise alert and ready for the task ahead
so Greg launched into a summary of the programme.

'Okay, this is the plan. The Underminister for Culture
will give the official welcome to the Sendrukans and the
other guests, then Catriona will deliver a short presen-
tation on the early discoveries made here on Giant's
Shoulder and later on Nivyesta. After that, I'll give an
overview of the various archaeological sites and the
main finds, and Chel will finish with the Uvovo per-
spective on themselves and Humans, past and future.
How does that sound?'

Catriona nodded. 'I'm happy to lead off - gets it over
with.'

'I too am satisfied,' said Chel. 'I shall learn from both
your performances.'

Greg laughed. 'Good things, I hope.'

After that, the demands of the occasion took over as
all the guests went to their seats and Greg and the others
waited by the low podium. Two of the peculiar Ezgara
bodyguards came into view from the right, stalking
through the ruins in advance of the Sendrukans.

They were a tall humanoid race, and although he had
seen shots of them on the vee, that did not prepare Greg
for the impact of their presence. There were four alto-
gether, three walking single-file behind the High
Monitor who strode leisurely along with the
Underminister for Culture marching briskly at his side.
With a mean height of ten and a half feet, they were
much taller than Humans, tall yet not spindly, their
torsos broader and in proportion, and it was true - next
to them, Humans did look almost childlike. Their attire
was elegant, richly detailed and multilayered with semi-
opaque, long-sleeved garments over stiff, almost
breastplate-like inner ones - the three attending

Sendrukans wore pastel shades of yellow, green and grey while the High Monitor was decked out in striking ultramarine blue counterpointed by magenta patterns and trim. Head-dresses there were, bulbous pale-blue ones with dangling tassels for the attendants, a tall, black, oddly helical one for their superior.

As the Sendruka approached, Greg half-turned to Catriona and in a low voice said:

'I'm glad you can stay behind - the new research data is fascinating.'

'Just how fascinating?'

'Sensor scans showing passages and chambers inside Giant's Shoulder.'

She glanced sharply at him. 'Is that right? And how would you get hold of such information?'

He shrugged. 'Let's say a little space-bird told me. Fascinated yet?'

Her sharp look softened. 'Aye, okay.'

Then they were face to face with Underminister
Hansen and High Monitor Utavess Kuros. As Hansen
introduced each of them in turn, the Sendrukan inclined
his head and then, surprisingly, politely shook hands.
Kuros's hands had a light tan hue and were large with
long, slender fingers adorned with a few plain red rings,
and a grip whose firmness matched Greg's. The High
Monitor said little beyond expressing his pleasure at
^ being here and his anticipation of the event to come, all

spoken in perfect, if accentless Anglic, his voice level,
melodious, kindly. His face was broad, its features flat-
ter than a Human's, with a high forehead and large dark
eyes that seemed perpetually mournful or at least weary-
wise. Despite his preconceptions, Greg found himself

warming to the alien - it was an effort to remind himself
of the AIs that shared these aliens' heads.

The audience settled down as the High Monitor and
his attendants reclined in their specially provided chairs.
Underminister Hansen gave the official welcome from
the podium before introducing Greg. Greg briefly
explained about the three presentations, and finished
with a quotation from Haakon Greig, one of the
colony's early chroniclers: 'History has much to teach
us, and occasionally resorts to beating us over the head
if we don't pay attention.'

A light ripple of applause accompanied him from the
stage. Then, as Catriona took his place, he noticed one
of the Ezgara bodyguards patrolling a stretch of the
temple rampart behind the audience, a sombre reminder
of his earlier encounter.

Cat was a little nervous and faltering to begin with,
but she soon gained confidence as she gave a concise
overview of archaeological discoveries since the colony's
founding. A display screen, one of the new compact
folding ones, was used to show locations and dates, then
a couple of researchers brought out a few artefacts to
pass round the audience. Greg smiled - the folding
screen had worked first time, and no finds were dropped
or broken. When she was finished the audience began
applauding politely while remaining seated, but the
Sendrukan Kuros got to his feet as if to accord her spe-
cial approval. The other Sendrukans also rose, as did
Greg, grinning widely as he clapped, glancing over his
shoulder to see the rest of the audience following suit.

At that very instant he heard an odd sound like some-
one snapping their fingers close by. Out of the corner of
his eye he noticed a figure falling backwards ... then saw
it was High Monitor Kuros, his arms flailing. Greg
thought in that moment that someone must have pushed
him, but when one of the Sendrukan attendants moved
to help there was another cracking sound and the atten-
dant jerked and sprawled sideways, purplish blood
blossoming from his neck.

In a few seconds the orderly, polite audience was
transformed into screaming, stampeding chaos.

My Godl Greg thought, diving for cover. We're being
shot atl

He scanned the shambles of overturned chairs and
stragglers making for sections of wall to hide behind, des-
perately looking for his mother and Uncle Theo. He saw
no sign of them but two of the Ezgara were there, as were
the OG officers, shielding the High Monitor as the two
surviving attendants struggled to carry him out of danger.

'Greg! - over here!'

Craning his head round he saw Catriona and his
mother beckoning to him from the lee of a ruined wall
which stretched almost unbroken to the site entrance.
Reasoning that the gunman would be focused on the
High Monitor, he steeled his nerve and dived across a
patch of open ground to another mossy outcrop of
stonework. From there he dashed to the long wall, join-
ing his mother and Catriona.

'Are you both all right?' he said.

'We are fine, Gregory, fine,' said his mother. 'Such a
disgrace that this should happen, and a shame on all of
us! To think that there are still fools among us who try
to solve an argument by picking up a gun. And Theodor
is away to try and find whoever is ...'

'Wait. Uncle Theo went looking for them?'

His mother sighed and nodded. 'Still thinks he is
thirty-five. Says it's part of his new responsibilities.'

'Right, Mum, which way did he go?'

'He said the shots came from the ridge overlooking
the site . . .'

Greg shuffled to the side, peering round and up at the
mass of dense foliage and the treetops beyond.

'Are you thinking of going after him?' Catriona said
suddenly.

'I am.'

'Then I'm going with you.'

Looking at her he saw that she was smiling a smile
that said, Just try stopping me.

'Two heads are better than one,' she added.

'And certainly present a better target,' he said. 'Right,
then, let's be off.'

His mother shook her head again, this time in exas-
peration.

'Try not to be as foolish as my brother, will you?'

16
THEO

The higher he climbed the denser the forest became,
low-level branches and hanging vines intertwining with
the humid undergrowth to form tangles of greenery he
sometimes had to go round. Nor did it help that the
ground grew increasingly uneven, weed-choked, strewn
with fallen trunks, rotting branches and half-buried
rocks. But despite the obstacles his sense of direction
was unwavering - when that first shot hit the High
Monitor, old reflexes made him follow a likely trajectory
back into the thickly forested ridge, corroborated by the
second shot which took down the Sendrukan attendant.

So now Theo had the sniper's location pegged in his
mind, a target he was homing in on. Of course, hunting
for an armed assailant while kitted out with a cudgel
improvised from a piece of branch probably wasn't the
wisest course of action, but it was better than no action.
He grinned, knowing what Rory and the others would
have to say about taking risks at his age.

Ja, gentlemen, was his imagined response. But I've
learned bow to take such risks and stay alive!

After another ten minutes of climbing over boulders
and trudging across sloping, boggy ground, he reached a
spot on the ridge where the tree cover thinned. Looking
east he got a good view of Giant's Shoulder, the clusters
of ruins and the boxy, grey-green huts and storage units.
It was near here, he was sure of it.

Keeping to cover, Theo surveyed the vicinity and
soon noticed a denser mass of foliage not far away.
Cautiously he slipped through the undergrowth towards
it, realising that it was a jutting spur of rock swathed in
greenery. He slowed to a wary approach, convinced that
the gunman was long gone yet keeping his cudgel ready
in case. The humid air seemed suddenly warmer, the
sound of birds and insects fading as his own movements
became amplified in his own ears . ..

Crouching, he sidled between creeper-wound bushes,
edged round a gnarled tree bole, and there it was, a
sniper lair. The weedy grass was crushed flat in a long,
narrow patch where the gunman had lain down and
stretched himself out. And there, of all things, was the
gun, a scoped Ballantyne rifle with a sculpted wooden
stock, a weapon he recognised from personal experi-
ence. Of the shooter there was no sign, no belongings,
no leavings, nothing but the weapon and the impression
in the grass. Squatting next to it he almost reflexively
reached out to the rifle's stock but stopped himself.

'Good idea, Major,' said a voice nearby. 'Wouldna
want to get yer prints on it.'

Theo stood swiftly and brought up his cudgel two-
handed, only to see a familiar face looking out from the
foliage. It was the special forces soldier he had met at
Sundstrom's villa, Sergeant Donny Barbour if Rory's
informant was right. He nodded and balanced the
cudgel on his shoulder.

'So,' he said. 'Business or pleasure?'

Barbour gave a sardonic smile as he stepped into
view. He wore core-brown camouflage which extended
to the floppy hat and hunting gloves that hung at his
waist.

'Got assigned to deep patrol,' Barbour said, hunker-
ing down for a closer look at the crushed grass. 'Was up
in a tree further back, scanning the surroundings, when
our boy got his first shot off. Had a good idea where it
must've come frae and was looking this way when he
took his second. Next thing, he came running out of
here like the hounds of hell were after him.'

Theo stared down at him. 'So he just dropped the
rifle and ran.'

'Aye, Major - he didn't throw it off into the bushes or
anything, just put it down, got up and breenjed out. He
was moving at a good speed, too, didna trip or catch
himself, just flew through those trees and all they vines
and bushes like a ghost.' He got to his feet. 'Not a civil-
ian, had to be trained. Could be a mountain-man,
somebody from one of the trapper towns ... but that
doesn't feel right. Why leave the rifle?'

'Couldn't he be from an elite unit?' Theo said.
'Maybe even one you don't know about.'

'Top of my list,' Barbour said with a bleak smile.
'Listen, Major, it's time we were both elsewhere - a
couple of those Ezgara are heading this way and we
don't want them getting any wrong ideas.'

'How do you know?' Theo said, half-suspecting the
answer.

Barbour tapped his right ear. 'Got an obs link out
among that audience. Now what you want to do is go
back the way you came but carry on up over the ridge -
your nephew and Miss Macreadie went that way. Might
be wise to find them - safety in numbers.'

He grinned and pointed to the gap in the bushes
through which Theo had entered. But when Theo
looked back round Barbour was gone with just a few
leafy sprigs nodding in his wake. He chuckled to himself
and retraced his steps, found a faint animal trail marked
with recent shoe prints leading up towards the crest of
the ridge. A couple of minutes later he reached it, then
saw that the path led along a hillside to a steeper sloping
ridge further on. Picking his way along he paused on the
crest of the next ridge, overlooking a shadowy, tree-
cloaked gorge, and listened to the sounds of the forest.
Amid the rustles of tiny denizens and the sigh of fitful
breezes, he could make out voices coming from further
up the gorge, from its northerly incline.

He found them on the other side of a cold, clear
stream that ran between rounded rocks and the arched
roots of ancient trees. Greg was helping a limping
Catriona Macreadie as they emerged from a shadowy
notch in the gorge wall. Twisted trees flanked its
entrance and bushes sprouted high up, choking off light
from above. As he drew level with Greg, he glanced into
the fissure, from which a brook ran, pouring into a suc-
cession of small pools before joining the stream ... and
for a moment felt as if he was being watched from the
shadows.

Greg went first, offering Catriona support as they
crossed from stone to stone. Her face was pale and she
gasped occasionally but eventually they were both safely
on the other side, Theo offering his arm at the last.

'So what happened?' he said. 'And what were you
both doing down here?'

At that, Greg glanced quickly to Catriona, who
answered.

'It was my fault, Mr Karlsson -1 was sure I saw foot-
prints leading down to the stream, so I led the way, went
across, and . . . and . . .'

'And Cat slipped and twisted her leg, Uncle,' Greg
added, exchanging another look with her. 'I got her to
rest for a few minutes before deciding to head back, and
then you showed up.'

Theo smiled and nodded. Well, that's a fine line of
nonsense you're giving me, boy, he thought. What are
you hiding? Or should I be wondering?

He was about to ask exactly where Miss Macreadie
had injured herself when there was the sound of footsteps
and rustling foliage from the ridge overlooking the gorge.

'Found them,' said a voice, and several figures came
into view - some OG officers and an Ezgara commando.
'Hello, Mr Cameron - are you and your friends in need
of assistance?'

'We can manage, Mr Ingerson,' Greg called back.
'Did you catch the gunman? Is the Hegemony envoy
badly wounded?'

'The High Monitor fortunately escaped serious
injury but, tragically, his attendant is dead. The
killer ... is nowhere to be found.' He broke off and
turned his attention to someone unseen on the other
side of the ridge. 'Right, Mr Cameron, Major Karlsson
and Doctor Macreadie - you'll have to leave the area
now as the forensics people will soon be here. Let me
know if there's any problem.'

With that, he retreated out of sight, although the
Ezgara lingered, staring down. Theo gazed back for a
moment then turned to Catriona. 'Well, girl, I don't
think you'll manage that climb with a bad ankle, so in
the spirit of gallantry I hereby volunteer my nephew
Gregory to carry you to the top on his back.'

Greg stared at Theo, eyebrows arched in surprise,
but then Catriona uttered a low, warm laugh.

'Well, now,' she said. 'It is the manly thing to do.'

At that, Greg's reserve dissolved into a grin.

'Aye, well, just as long as it's manly!'

Watching Greg ascend the slope with Catriona on his
back, and hearing them both laughing, Theo smiled and
wondered. Then he paused to glance back at the shad-
owy gap in the side of the gorge, frowning.

No, he thought. Just my imagination, populating
dark corners with spirits and kobolds, even though
there's a real monster running around.

Shrugging, he followed the others up the steep path,
noting that the Ezgara was gone.

17

PATH MASTER

From the sheltering veil of shadows he watched the
Humans depart, feeling something akin to amusement
as the eldest of them paused to look back before like-
wise leaving. Then he was alone with the shadows and
cold, the trickling brook and the simple creatures, as
alone as he had been for nearly ten thousand years. Last
of the Pathmasters, last bearer of ancient knowledge,
fading remnant of cherished duty.

Was it all chance and happenstance that his essence
should be drawn here on the same day that a slaying
took place upon Waonwir, directly above the Sleeper's
vault? And that a Human female stunningly radiant
with potential should then wander close enough to get
his attention? Well, the Pathmasters who taught him
had always reminded him that coincidences were only
the most obvious manifestations of the light touch of the
Eternal. After all, the female had said, 'I've been search-
ing for you,' and he had seen in her thoughts the
fruitless outcomes of her exploring in the depths of
Segrana.

Such a prize she was, the avidity of her cognitive har-
mony burning so brightly along the transient edge of the
stable dimensions that he could almost make out the
ambits of possible futures. Questions had come tum-
bling from her in a torrent, but he had stanched it with
a command - seek out a vudron and undertake a vigil.
For in the end it came down to Segrana, to her slow but
sure perceptions, and to the reckonings she made. The
immemorial awareness of the great moon-enfolding
forest, vast yet thinly scattered, was close to the under-
lying qualities of the Eternal, which could not help but
influence Segrana when the human female entered a
vudron back there.

Then her male companion had arrived, a surprise
that had caused her to lose her footing by the brook, slip
and fall. The Pathmaster had allowed his visible mem-
brane of coerced particles to melt away so that when
next they looked he had apparently disappeared.

All the Humans and others were receding and he
knew that there was another place he had to be, a
daughter-forest where another fascinating Human was
taking his ease in strange company. The Uvovo-culti-
vated sanctuary lay several miles away, yet for such as
himself that distance was no greater than that between
one thought and the next, thoughts that were long and
complex, thoughts that bound this self with that succes-
sion of other selves which stretched away towards the
Eternal. He formed the thought of a glade in that daugh-
ter-forest, sweet and strong offspring of Segrana, and by
virtue of the entwining green weave of seed and leaf his
disembodiment travelled there, slipping through to
unfurl his essence in green, sheltering shade.

He found the Human, a male named Horst, sitting
on a low wooden bench beneath a sunny sky, leaning
sideways against the armrest, reading a book balanced
on a raised knee. Next to him on the bench was a
small flat device, its dark surface gleaming in the sun,
while on the long grass a short distance away a young
human female sat crosslegged, making chains of small
flowers.

But this idyllic scene was not at all what it seemed to
be. The Pathmaster knew that, like her flowers, the child
was an illusion, an insubstantial image cast by Horst's
cunningly wrought device. Earth Ambassador Horst
was a man in the grip of grief, as much a prisoner of it
as if he were weeping rather than smiling, and in his
grief he had surrendered part of himself to an unthink-
ing, visionless instrument devoid of true self.

Yet that was not the worst of it. Horst also played
host to one of the Dreamless, an artificial entity of a dif-
ferent magnitude: unlike the clever image of a dead
daughter, these Dreamless possessed a kind of volition
and a degree of self-critical awareness very similar to
their anti-life predecessors who had brought most of the
galaxy to the brink of disaster ten millennia ago.

Unlike those long-vanquished entities, however, these
Dreamless had evolved in symbiosis with a dominant
species, the Sendruka, thus spreading their influence far
and wide throughout the Hegemonic territories and
beyond. The new Dreamless had attained levels of
power and existence unimaginable to those predeces-
sors - every artificial entity consisted of two parts, a
lesser part occupying a physical matrix in the vantage of
the Real, either a device or an implant, and a greater
part that resided in that understratum of reality known
to Humans as the first tier of hyperspace. Such scraps of
information the Pathmaster had gleaned from innumer-
able overheard fragments of offworlder conversation,
the occasional stray thought, and those observations of
scholars and Listeners which he had received.

And the implications provoked in him a deep unease.
Were the implant Dreamless merely a manifestation of
the greater, hyperspace ones, or did they possess auton-
omy? What was the hierarchy of the hyperspace
Dreamless and how did they communicate with their
implant counterparts? That last unknown was the most
immediately worrying - did that method of communi-
cation bear any similarity to the frail bonds that linked
his essence to those former echoes of himself which were
on the path to mergence with the Eternal? His unease
deepened still further when he thought of the Sentinel
asleep in its vault, and how it communicated with deep,
hidden allies.

He regarded the Human Horst once more, noticing
how the man's attention was focused on a point in the
air just beyond the other end of the bench. His lips were
scarcely moving but he was speaking, softly in his
throat. From a tall, broad tree nearby the Pathmaster
tentatively reached out with rarefied senses, trying to
see into Horst's thoughts, with a touch of the mind so
light as to be scarcely extant.

Yet he felt the resonant disturbance of linkage, and he
saw ... so strange, another man, tall and well-propor-
tioned with a relaxed, even amused demeanour, yet he
was an image lacking any colour. Blacks, whites and
shades of grey.

They were talking, something about the sister ships of
the Hyperion, the ones that had gone missing, a tale
that the Pathmaster was acquainted with. I've had an
enquiry from another group of ship-hunters, Horst was
saying, calling themselves the First Flight Association.

And what's their pet notion} said the Dreamless's
monochrome image. That the Forrestal and the
Tenebrosa were flung far back in time and their crews
became the original ancestors of the Sendruka?

No, that's the HTF Society's theory. First Flight have
somehow deduced that all three ships ended up in the
Huvuun Deepzone and they've asked me to persuade
the Hegemony's Grand Archivist to release any Huvuun
survey data into the public domain.

But Robert, don't these people realise that the
Hyperion colonists were incredibly lucky to find an
uninhabited world like this, lucky not to have encoun-
tered any interstellar marauders or resource raiders, and
lucky not to have succumbed to some native micro-
organism? The other two crews would need similar
amounts of good fortune to survive the potential haz-
ards.

Which are many, said Horst. No - / fear that the
Hyperion's luck was a fluke and that the other vessels
were overcome by tragedy or violence. Perhaps in a hun-
dred years, or even tomorrow, a traveller will find a
dead hulk of a ship drifting around an uncharted star, or
the ruins of a settlement on some inhospitable world,
and the mystery will be solved.

The Pathmaster listened, amused at the finality of
Horst's declamation yet puzzled to see a knowing smile
pass across the grey-pale Dreamless's features. And as
the Pathmaster paused to ponder, he felt an echo of
wrongness resonate back from that sombre verdict, as if
there was something out among the stars to contradict
it.

Then the Dreamless turned a thoughtful gaze over at
the seated figure of Horst's daughter. For a moment all
were still in that tableau, the two apparitions hingeing
on Horst's state of mind.

The Pathmaster withdrew his perceptions, returning
to the simpler imperatives of plantlife, to build, to grow,
to put forth leaf, flower and seed, taking in the sun
while drinking from the soil. The cycles and rhythms of
nations and species, however, were vastly more com-
plex than those of plantlife and the Pathmaster had
come to know for certain that several ruthless ventures
and ambitions had been drawn together by the discov-
ery of Umara. Very soon these intersecting forces would
bring great pressure to bear on the colony's leaders, and
also on Horst, whose position might prove to be pivotal.
Also, a lot would come to depend on the resilience and
character of Cheluvahar, the new Artificer Uvovo. The
husking of Cheluvahar would soon take place, shortly
thereafter to be followed by the dispersal of Artificer
teams to their appointed destinations and tasks, many
secret, some formidable, all vital. Assuming that Segrana
was able to carry out the husking as planned.

Now a man approached, one of the ambassador's
staff, attired in a blue, high-necked uniform and per-
spiring visibly as he came hurrying round the forest
path and into view. He would be carrying news of the
shooting, the event that would set the first cogs in
motion, their turning bringing certain forces into play,
allowing larger cogs the freedom to turn, while other
things moved and stalked between the stars ...

As the Pathmaster watched, Horst nodded to the offi-
cial then turned to the ghost-image of his daughter,
speaking gently to her as if she were really there.

Reality, the Pathmaster thought. When it comes, will
it break him or will he learn how to survive?

PART TWO

18

KAO CHIH

Outside his armoured cabin the winds of the gas giant
V'Harant raged and roared as the gravity-tug Biaolong
maintained its spiral ascent, carrying its pendant burden
of six ore containers. Relaxing in the huge, ancient pilot
couch, retrofitted for the human form by Roug techni-
cians decades ago, Chih kept a practised eye on the
exterior monitor and the generator gauges while deftly
swapping the music tab in the couch's headrest. Like
the couch and most of the instrumentation, the exterior
monitor was a conversion hack, a dusty panel cased in
grey plastic and fixed to the original console with webby
struts. It showed a montage of views of the Biaolong's
hull, looking for all the world like an inverted stepped
pyramid, its flanks studded with tapered blocks, while a
perpetual blast of corrosive atmosphere whirled and
scoured and howled.

Watching it, Chih smiled, remembering Great-Aunt
Mei's assertion that the murky skies of V'Harant were
really Di-Yu, the underworld, the abode of demons and
punishment. Then he listened to the sound of that never-
ending storm, muted to a low whisper by the thick alloy
hull and the chemo-suppressor field, imagining it to be
the fangs of a demon host grinding uselessly away, just
beyond the armoured shutters. He laughed and was
about to start the music, a selection of Yunan school
electroniki, when the voice of his copilot, Ta Jiang, came
from the headrest instead.

'Chih - number seven is sliding out of resonance.'

'Not again,' he said, leaning forward. The generator
gauges were flat displays set on brassy, octagonal
plinths that jutted from the main console. Slipping on
the spectrum goggles, he studied gauge 7, switching
between colour lens pairs to take in all the 3D data.
The Roug's willingness to modify the instrumentation
had not extended to the antigrav generator displays,
stemming from the conviction that all operators had to
adapt their sensory perceptions to the equipment in
order to preserve the conceptual integrity of the primal
schemata. Fabulously intricate assemblages of motors,
gyros, gears, levers, mirrors and crystals constituted
the control systems of the gravity-tugs, the mines down
on V'Harant's core, the orbiting refineries, and the
cities of the Roug, floating somewhere in the gas giant's
turbid atmosphere. Three generations of human engi-
neers had been unable to persuade them to introduce
even the most basic digital upgrades, and with never a
reason given beyond a veneration of the original
designers.

'Right, Jiang,' Kao Chih said, lifting his goggles to
catch a glimpse of the main console's powerflow dis-
play, then it was back to the rainbow data-forms of
gauge 7. 'It's radial pair nine in the crystal array - you'll
need to rebalance it by three increments ...'

'Okay ... is that it?'

'Just a moment - yes, Jiang, perfect.' He grinned. 'I'll
buy the ch'a when we get back to the Mountain.'

'That is very noble of you,' said Jiang. 'And who
knows - I might have time to finish it before we go out
again!'

Chih laughed as he tugged off the goggles. After
docking, the copilot always had a longer journey to the
airlock as his monitor station was near the core of the
tug, which left him with a significantly shorter break
than the chief pilot.

The remaining hour and a half of the Biaolong's
ascent was uneventful. Once the tug was clear of the
upper atmosphere, Chih opened the cabin viewport's
shutters and gazed out at the sullen, roiling face of
V'Harant while the headrest played old, poignant syn-
thesiser motifs softly in the background. From this
altitude the turbulent globe did suggest a place of tor-
ment like Di-Yu; Great-Aunt Mei once had scandalised
Kao Chih's mother and father by saying that V'Harant
might even be a Chamber of Hell reserved for those
who betrayed friends and family, abandoning them to
ruthless enemies. The elder Kao's rebuke had been calm
and measured, reminding her of how their forebears had
been forced to flee destruction twice, firstly aboard the
Tenebrosa when she and her sister ships fled the Swarm,
and secondly when Hegemony mercenaries attacked
their settlement on Pyre. He also pointed out that the
ignoble character of her comments was a disservice
towards the sept's collective sorrow.

'Our sorrow?' Great-Aunt Mei had retorted. 'How
do our trials compare with the bitter, wretched misery of
the thousands who were left behind, and that of their
children and their children's children? Deng Guo was a
fool to lead us off into the fog-between-stars - if my
father's father had been elected duizbang of the
Retributor the sept would have sought out allies, not
ended up here, indentured to cruel aliens...'

Which was what such arguments about the past usually
came down to - the flight from Pyre and how Great-Aunt
Mei's grandfather would have made a better duizbang, or
captain. Kao Chih suspected that he would have been no
better, or possibly worse if Mei was any guide to her fore-
bear's temperament. In any case, the 1,500-strong Human
Sept's contract of indenture still had thirty-two years to
run, after which they would be permitted to contact Earth
and appeal for assistance for both themselves and the
colonists on Pyre, if any remained alive by then. One hun-
dred and ten years of servitude and silence, that was the
price the Roug had asked in exchange for sanctuary from
Suneye, the Hegemony-based corporate monoclan which
had seized Pyre for its resources.

Outside the pilot cabin, great cyclonic systems the
colour of tilled earth moved slowly across the face of
V'Harant. Kao Chih could see how an observer might
consider it to be a place of punishment, yet in truth that
was where the great floating cities of the Roug lay,
shrouded by planetary storms in a system veiled by vast
interstellar streams and clouds of dust and debris, the
fog-between-stars which the Roug called Ydred. He
smiled sardonically - anyone would think that they had
something to hide.

The Roug name for their main orbital was Agmedra'a
but the humans called it the Mountain. It had a wide,
roughly circular base from which clusters of refineries,
silos, labs, yardfacs and residential structures rose, close-
packed and tapering towards the apex. A shining,
glittering spire in the full light of the sun, Busrul, or a
conical mass of lights, beacons, and decorative holos
when in the planet's shadow, as it was now. The glowing
motes of hopcraft and other maintenance drones darted
among the towers while the great, slow silhouettes of
freighters came and went.

But the upper reaches of the Mountain were closed to
all members of Human Sept, who were restricted to the
sublevels and the underdocks where they seldom
encountered any crewmembers from visiting ships. Kao
Chih guided the huge mass of the Biaolong into the
embrace of a pair of mooring booms, which latched on,
drawing it and its underslung cargo into the gloom of a
large docking bay. Already unstrapped from the couch,
Chih grabbed his ageing black jacket, told Jiang he
would have the ch'a hot and ready for him in the can-
teen, then headed out and along to the personnel
airlock.

The metal decking quivered slightly underfoot.
Muffled thuds signalled the decoupling of the six huge
ore containers that hung beneath the gravity-tug. As he
approached the big airlock he heard clanks and the
rough hum of motors, a moment's wait and the hatch
opened with a brief pressure sigh accompanied by the
smell of hot oil. It was normally a short walk along the
dockside concourse to the tug-crew operations hall but
as soon as he stepped out of the sinuous connecting tube
a familiar voice called out his name in Mandarin.

'Pilot Kao Chih!'

Turning, he was surprised to see the tall, spindly form
of a Roug approaching. Members of other indenture
septs - furred Gomedra, six-limbed Bargalil and birdlike
Kiskashin - hastened about their own tasks, careful to
stay out of the Roug's path. Like all its kind, it was
swathed from head to foot in tight windings of what
looked like thin leather that gleamed with a dull coppery
sheen. The legs were thin, the feet flat and toeless, and
the long arms had two elbows and nine-fingered hands,
but it was the silvery badges on the conoid head that
confirmed its identity.

'Noble Tumakri,' Kao Chih said. 'Unusual to see you
out here.' Tumakri was assistant overseer of tug-crew
assignments, and thus seldom seen outside the opera-
tions hall.

'Not usual, Pilot Kao Chih, but necessary!' The
Roug's voice had a whispery, papery quality and came
from the wrappings just below the almond-shaped
meshes that protected its eyes. 'Special assessors have
arrived from Chissu'ol, the reigning city on V'Harant,
bearing edicts from the High Index - a Conclave of
Purpose is to be held aboard your sept's chief vessel,
and you are to be present.'

The sounds of the busy dockside washed around
them as Kao Chih stood in astonishment for a moment.
'Me, Noble One? They wish me back on the Retributor?
Must I depart soon?'

'Immediately, Pilot. A hopcraft is waiting in a nearby
rectifier dock and I am to accompany you and deliver
you safely to the conclave. Another pilot will take your
place aboard the Biaolong but you will still be credited
for a full shift.' The Roug made an odd shrugging
gesture. 'This, I confess, is unheard of, unprecedented,
yet we must comply. Please follow me, pilot.'

So I get a paid half-day off and a trip to the
Retributor} he thought, grinning as he hurried after the
Roug. Why not}

The hopcraft was small and cramped and had the
unclean fur smell of the Gomedran techs who usually
flew it and others like it. The rectifier dock's mooring
booms flung the little maintenance boat out of the
underhull where Kao Chih's companion ignited the reac-
tion motors and set course. The Retributor's orbit kept
it in the vicinity of the orbital Agmedra'a and it took less
than half an hour for a bright pinpoint to grow into the
grey, irregular, pockmarked shape that he knew so well.

The Retributor had originally been one of a family of
asteroids that orbited Pyre. After landfall, the colony-
ship Tenebrosa was cannibalised into a number of small
vessels and soon after that one of the asteroids was
chosen as an orbital platform for planetary survey and
as a base for mining operations. Decades later, after the
first probing attack by the Suneye mercantilists, the star
drive from the hulk of the Tenebrosa was hauled up
into orbit and mounted on the adapted asteroid, then
simply called the Rockhab. In the end, however, the
mercantilists had returned with a force of mercenaries so
overwhelming that the Rockhab's captain, Deng Guo's,
only choice was surrender or flight.

And here we are, he thought as the ugly, retrofitted
mass of the Retributor drifted closer. Dispossessed
twice over, trapped by the Roug contract, confined to
certain areas of Agmedra'a and the core mines, but at
least we're still alive.

The Retributor's exterior was littered with protruding
structures, coolant pipes and vanes, vents, bot hutches,
antennae clusters, hatches, loading bays and hardpoint
where defensive weapons had apparently once been
mounted. Kao Chih knew that encrusted carapace,
knew the inner geography that lay beneath those untidy
features. Then he noticed that Tumakri was staring
fixedly out at the Rockhab.

'Tell me, Pilot Kao Chih - is your sept's homevessel
safe?'

Chih gave a small smile. 'Well, I have to admit, Noble
One, that seal repairs are permanently ongoing, the
airscrubbers always need purging, and the grav-decking
can be a little uneven in places, yet 1,500 of my people
are happy to make their home there. They work hard at
keeping it safe.'

'A candid reply, Pilot. I am reassured by your words.'

Kao Chih nodded and went back to studying the
Retributor, wondering if the grapple squads had fixed
the ruptured fuel lines yet.

They docked at the new loading bay, so called
because it had been added soon after the Indenture, as
opposed to the old loading bay, which had been part of
the original facility. Stepping down from the hopcraft's
hatch, they were confronted with another two Roug,
both adorned with silvery hooked sigils attached to their
necks. To Kao Chih's surprise, his companion hastily
bowed to each in turn, which Chih was quick to emu-
late. There followed a brief exchange in the rapid,
polysyllabic Roug tongue, which was never taught to
other races, after which one of the senior Roug
addressed Chih.

'Pilot Kao Chih - we are Assessors of the High Index
and are commanded to escort you and Overseer
Tumakri to the decision chambers of your elders, where
certain materials will be examined.'

Kao Chih swallowed nervously as he went with them
to the bay's main arched entryway. This all seemed
much more serious than he had first thought. Had he
unknowingly infringed the terms of the Indenture, or
perhaps been careless when casting off from the core
mines down on V'Harant? Had he left a trail of wreck-
age behind him, and were they about to show a
recording of it to the Duizhang, K'ang Lo, and the other
elders?

No way to know, he thought, grasping at a straw of
hope. Too soon to be sure.

From the high plascrete curves of the loading bay
and its busy unshipping carrels, they passed into a semi-
circular lobby. Rounded openings led off, up, down and
sideways, and without hesitation the leading Roug
assessor headed for one of the downward exits.

The Retributor was honeycombed with tunnels and
chambers of every size which provided its occupants
with necessities and amenities. As Kao Chih followed
the Roug into the dim, biobulb-lit passageway known as
Shang Street, it was the cooking smells that leaped upon
his senses first, as always. No matter the shift, there was
usually someone somewhere steaming vegetables,
baking bread or whipping up a spiced stirfry. It was the
essence of home, of normality, of an unexciting ordi-
nariness which right then he longed for. The presence of
the Roug, however, was anything but ordinary. Eyes,
some amazed, some fearful, some fascinated to see Kao

Chih in the company of aliens, followed their progress,
heads craned out of doors and windows for a look and
mouths whispered once they were past. This was an
event, a source of gossip that would, he knew, be refined
and refashioned endlessly over the next few days. Who
could tell what they might be saying about him in a
week!

For a stretch Shang Street's right-hand wall looked
out through a line of louvred windows and down into
Many-Voices Hall, the Rockhab's main marketplace and
gathering hub. As he walked Chih caught sight of some
familiar places, the Steel Dragon teahouse, Cho Lai's
repair shop, and the small balcony where Old Mother
Yao gave I-Ching readings. Part of him wished he was
down there, but in truth he was glad that none of his
friends could witness his shame.

Before long they reached the administration and
command levels, quiet, carpeted corridors where
amber-suited assistants hurried serenely on errands,
and where the walls and ceilings emitted a pearly,
ambient light. After turning a couple of corners they
came face to face with two guards standing either side
of a wooden door. On it were the five symbols of the
Pyre colony - a tree, a bear, an open scroll, two crossed
spears, and at the centre the t'ai chi, each one beauti-
fully carved and inlaid with silver from the regalia of
the original colonyship, the Tenebrosa. That was
because it led to the Duizhang, K'ang Lo's, strategy
room.

This is it, he thought as the guard stood aside and the
Roug assessors led them in.

It was worse than he had feared. The eyes of more
than three dozen formally attired people looked round
at the newcomers and Kao Chih realised that everyone
of consequence was present, clan elders, duty directors,
command staff, and his father, Kao Hsien. In the back-
ground, rows of empty chairs waited.

I'm doomed, he thought, resigned to fate - until he
saw a certain look in his father's eyes, the kind he wore
when he knew that a game of wei-chi was his ...

'Ah, Pilot Kao - at last you are here.'

K'ang Lo was a tall, barrel-chested man on whom the
blue-and-black, long-sleeved duizbang's coat looked nat-
ural. At once Kao Chih came to attention and gave a
sharp bow of the head.

'Sir, I...'

'Not now, Pilot. Explanations will come later, once
the mystery is revealed, neh?'

He turned to the senior Roug and gave a slight but
gracious bow, then made a small gesture to the atten-
dants. The light began to dim gradually and everyone
went to find a seat as one of the Roug set up a slender
tripod with a glittering device at its apex. Kao Chih ind
Tumakri found theirs off to the side. Meanwhile, the
other Roug addressed the seated elders in perfectly
inflected Mandarin.

'Most diligent and industrious members of Human
Sept - what you are about to see was very recently dis-
seminated across all first- and second-tier news feeds in
the greater general region ...'

The first Roug straightened, stepped back from the
tripod, and at once a holo appeared and began to play.
A series of human commentators, Caucasian, Asiatic and
African, was shown, interspersed with views of what
looked like villages and towns on a lush, fertile world far
from Earth. The commentary and dialogue was mostly
in Anglic and Russian but someone - Chih assumed it
was the Roug - had added Mandarin subtitles. As the
story emerged and became clearer, excited whispers rip-
pled around the room, because those towns and villages
belonged to a Human settlement founded by one of the
original colonyships which had fled Earth at the height of
the Swarm War, taking random hyperspace jumps into
the depths of space.

The Tenebrosa, the Forrestal and the Hyperion. It
was an old story for Kao Chih's generation, resonant
with the pain and grief of defeat and exile. But for the
Hyperion's crew, the world which they had made their
home - and named Darien - just happened to lie well
within a deepzone which kept it hidden from other
civilisations for a century and a half. And now Earth
was reaching out to them with the promise of friend-
ship and aid, as well as the prospect of opening up
relations with nearby cultures and races. Then the
commentators mentioned that Darien's neighbours
were the Brolturan Compact, an offshoot of the
Sendruka Hegemony, and the mood in the room
changed. All knew from decades of underdock buzz
and unofficial summaries, as well as the sufferings of
relatives still captive on Pyre, what Sendruka involve-
ment really meant.

Indeed, one of the smaller septs working on the
Agmedra'a orbital called themselves the Sundered, a
race whose homeworlds had been seized by the
Brolturans nearly three centuries ago. The Brolturans
had once been a fundamentalist faction within Sendruka
society until prophecy and an intensification of their
shared zealotry drove them to seek independent territory
outside the Hegemony, and the Sundered were the main
victims of their aggressive colonisation. As a pacifist
race without allies, the Sundered were uprooted and
evicted from their handful of planets. Roughly half of
them ended up eking out a miserable existence in scores
of refugee cantonments scattered around the region
while the rest travelled from star to star in ageing,
decrepit cryostore ships, seeking aid or petitioning for
intercession. But since the Brolturan Compact was now
a close ally of the Hegemony none was willing to risk its
wrath and the predictable consequences.

The report included interviews with some of the ordi-
nary citizens of Darien colony, a strange people with
round eyes and brown or red hair yet full of a vitality
that Kao Chih immediately felt a connection with. Then
there were shots of some indigenous creatures and sites
of great natural beauty, followed by a brief, intriguing
glimpse of excavated alien ruins that the colony's
researchers were investigating along with the help of
diminutive humanoid sentients from the planet's inhab-
ited moon. Chih was amazed, and smiled to see Tumakri
leaning forward to stare more closely at the half-buried
stone remains while muttering dry, incomprehensible
things to himself.

The holo-sequence ended with the reception of the
ambassador from Earth and his short speech to the
crowd of onlookers and reporters. Then it was over and
the lighting came up as the Roug collapsed the projector
and its stand down to a small flat unit smaller than a
woman's fist.

I'd wager that's a digital device, he thought. Wonder
how that squares with their non-digital preferences.

'Honourable K'ang Lo, and assiduous leaders of
Human Sept,' said one of the senior Roug. 'The events
shown took place less than two days ago and came into
our hands during the last sleep cycle. It is an unfortunate
fact that this world Darien is located in deepzone terri-
tory currently claimed by two opposing powers, the
Imisil Mergence and the Brolturan Compact. The
Darien system is very far from Earth and still further
away from us, and the Human colony there is small and
weak, thus the prospects of survival seem poor.

'However, strength is not always measured by the
capacity for military violence. The plight of the oppressed
and the destitute, when openly declared for all to know
and see, exerts a moral power which weakens those that
rely on violence to attain their goals. In the light of this,
and of the assessment we compiled, the Contiguals of
the High Index have decided to act. We are instructed to
offer to Human Sept cancellation of the indenture con-
tract, provided there is agreement on three conditions.'

There was a sudden outburst of delighted, almost dis-
believing chatter, and Kao Chih stared at Tumakri.

'Noble One, did you know of this?'

The Roug's features were hidden by the tight, cop-
pery swathes, but there was a certain tension in its
movements that suggested surprise.

'Pilot Kao, I am as unprepared for this as you.'

Then the Duizhang stood, his face stern, his dark
eyes glittering as he raised one hand for silence.

'Noble Assessors, please state your conditions, that
we may determine their fitness.'

'As you wish. Condition the first, that Human Sept
shall aid us in the necessary training once a replacement
sept has been chosen. Condition the second, that the
leaders of Human Sept shall agree to dispatch an emis-
sary to the Darien colonyworld, to meet with the
authorities there and to request permission for all sur-
viving Pyre colonists to settle and join with their Human
compatriots. This task must be undertaken promptly
and without announcement or even communication
with either Darien or Earthsphere - were the Suneye
monoclan or the Hegemony to learn of this too soon,
the consequences would certainly hamper the evacua-
tion preparations.'

Kao Chih could scarcely take it all in. Evacuation}
Duizhang K'ang Lo looked equally stunned. 'The
greater part of my people still endure captivity on the
world Pyre, Noble Ones. Are they included in your kind
and generous plans?'

'They are, Duizhang. As soon as the Darien leaders
issue their invitation, our vessels shall travel to Pyre and
carry out the evacuation. Any attempt to interfere will
be dealt with harshly.

'Condition the third, that the emissary shall be Pilot
Kao Chih, son of Kao Hsien. He has been the subject of
close assessment, most recently by Overseer Tumakri,
and we are satisfied that he meets the criteria for such a
crucial role. We shall provide him with a small but
durable craft and a Roug companion, Overseer
Tumakri, who will be able to impress upon the Darien
authorities the true nature of the Sendruka Hegemony,
and thus the need for secrecy until all the colonists have
departed Pyre.'

Kao Chih sat back in his chair, astonished. Next thing
he knew, people were leaning over to pat his shoulder or
shake his hand, smiling and congratulating him. Mostly
he felt elated, but nervousness assailed his stomach, as if
he were about to step off a precipice.

Out into deep space, he thought. All the place and
races I've heard about and now I'm going to see them!

Then a hush settled quickly over the room as K'ang
Lo broke away from hasty consultations with his advis-
ers, facing the Roug again.

'Noble Ones,' he said. 'We are humbled by the extent
of your generosity. Indeed, there are scarcely words to
express the depth of our gratitude, yet a few of us insist
that we ascertain the reason for this sweeping, purpose-
ful benevolence. May we ask how your people would
benefit from it?'

For a moment or two there was silence. The Roug
assessors were motionless, as was Tumakri next to Kao
Chih, who thought that the Duizhang must have comit-
ted some grave offence. But then one of them spoke.

'Honourable Duizhang, we are not accustomed to
giving explanations, but these are unusual circumstances
so we shall endeavour to put your mind at rest. We are
an old race, so old that the world V'Harant is not our
original home, nor are these bodies the original physical
form of our species. Yet once we were as novices to a
alliance of ancient races whose wisdom and intellect
puts us to shame even now.

'They fell in a vast and cataclysmic war, sacrificing
themselves to ensure the defeat of a terrible, pitiless
enemy. The last of them charged us with the duty of
overseeing this part of the galaxy, and in the aeons since
we have from time to time moved to undermine or
eliminate certain forces that posed a serious threat to
galactic civilisation. For the last 25,000 cycles - in
human terms, a little over 10,000 years - a degree of
calm has held sway, but now, unfortunately, the
Sendruka Hegemony is working to bring it to an end.
Its proxy, the Brolturan Compact, is currently in dis-
pute with the nations of the Erenate over who controls
the bulk of the Huvuun Deepzone, where Darien is
located. If a military response can be provoked from the
Erenate, this would justify an overwhelming interven-
tion by the Hegemony; the resulting conflict would
draw in all the Erenate nations and could spread to
Milybi or even the Indroma. It would be an interstellar
war of horrifying ferocity.

'The discovery of the lost colony on Darien has fun-
damentally altered the balance of power. Humans are
involved in the heart of it, which means that Earth and
by extension the Earthsphere federation are also
involved. The Aranja Tesh are already keeping a close
watch on Hegemony strategy, as are the Indroma
Solidarity, and this will only heighten their interest.
And when it emerges that the survivors of a second lost
Human colony are to settle on Darien, having been res-
cued from captivity under the harsh rule of a Sendruka
monoclan, the Hegemony will be forced to punish Suneye
or lose face. The Darien colony will gain too much sym-
pathy and tiernet attention for the Hegemony to risk
putting its plan into operation, so it will go into abeyance.
During which time we hope that saner minds will prevail
and reshape certain policies.'

Again K'ang Lo conferred with his advisers and the
leading elders, and to Kao Chih's eyes he seemed less
than happy. But before a consensus could be achieved, a
diminutive old man, bald and leaning on a stick, stood
up from amongst the rest, scowling. This was Great-
Grandfather Wu, once deputy to an earlier duizhang and
father to another, and one of a handful still living who
remembered Pyre. He was also well known for his acer-
bic tongue.

'Duizhang, come now, why this delay, heh?' he said.
'Everyone here is eager to see the start of something
good for us - please, more haste.'

'Most venerable Wu,' said one of the elders, Tan
Hua. 'There are several uncertainties which need to be
resolved. Be calm, all shall proceed correctly.'

His condescending tone infuriated Wu.

'Be calm! You hesitate and quibble over petty details
while a precious gift waits to be accepted, and you
expect us to keep calm?' He gazed about him for a
moment. 'I cannot speak for anyone else here, but I
yearn to feel solid ground and honest grass beneath my
feet before I die! Honourable K'ang Lo, do not listen to
the squeakings of this hsiao jen. We must accept the
noble Roug's offer, and young Kao Chih there must
leave for Darien without delay!'

Approving voices rose on all sides and heads nodded
vigorously. An argument broke out between one of the
clan elders, an ally of Tan Hua, and someone seated at
the front, who was then egged on by the crowd. But
before tempers became still more heated and the lan-
guage less than courteous, K'ang Lo clapped his hands
loudly twice and shouted, 'Enough!'

Abruptly, all fell silent, and those on their feet
shamefacedly sat back down. His expression thunder-
ous, the duizhang turned to the waiting Roug.

'Noble Ones, despite the reservations of a few, it is
clearly the will of the elders of Human Sept that we
accept your most generous proposal. In accordance with
your wishes, I shall see that all conditions are met.' He
looked round, straight at Kao Chih. 'Pilot Kao - come
forward.'

Once more the focus of attention, he rose and went
to stand before the duizhang.

'Pilot Kao, you are called upon to be our emissary,
our representative to the leaders of the Darien colony,
indeed to all our brothers and sisters in the great family
of Humanity. You are to be our voice, our face. Be hon-
ourable and courageous but not foolish. Use the tactics
of fox and lion when either is appropriate.' He turned
back to the tall Roug. 'Noble Assessors, how soon must
Pilot Kao depart?'

'Within the hour, honourable Duizhang. A scout-
craft has been made ready and is in transit from
Agmedra'a as we speak.'

'Very well. Pilot Kao, my technical officer shall pre-
pare a datachip containing various files documenting
all the adversities endured by our people, and including
a personal greeting from myself. May the spirits of our
ancestors protect and guide you in your mission. Now,
you have little enough time left to you, lad, so spend it
with your family, neh?'

Never had he experienced such a frantic sixty minutes.
In between grabbing mouthfuls of food and trying to
pack a small assembly of clothes and belongings, he
attempted to reassure his mother that no, hyperspace
was quite safe, and yes, he would be cautious and wary
in busy places, and yes, he would stay near his Roug
companion . . .

His father was quick to undo such placating talk,
pointing out that he was a man, not a child, and he was
engaged on a great task that did not require any molly-
coddling. And during all this, his elder brother, Feng,
made up and enacted ridiculous exploits and perils
which, predictably, served to make his mother still more
anxious. In contrast, his younger sister, Ti, periodically
burst into tears. In addition, other relatives and family
friends came to deliver their farewells, dallying to par-
take of Kao Hsien's peach brandy before departing.

Then suddenly there were less than fifteen minutes to
grab his jacket and kitbag and dash through the tunnels
and chambers, hurriedly waving and greeting other
acquaintances along the way to the old loading bay. His
thoughts whirled as he half-walked, half-ran, thoughts
about this ship of theirs, about his destination, about all
the unknown worlds and creatures waiting for him out in
the vast black distance. The rest of his family was catch-
ing up as he entered the big oval space of the bay and saw
K'ang Lo and all three Roug waiting off to the right,
near the end of the dockside walkway. Nearby, resting in
the worn, battered arms of a berth cradle, was a shining,
metallic-grey ship some 30 metres long, its main drive
nacelles jutting on curved vanes that mirrored the vessel's
swept, beaklike prow and superstructure.

There was the final leavetaking, last words of encour-
agement and well-wishing as well as tearful pleas from
his mother, and his father gave him a jade fu-dog
pendant, an old good-luck charm reputedly brought
from Earth, then firmly clasped his shoulders before
turning away to blow his nose. The duizhang K'ang Lo
handed him a small red pouch containing the datachip
and a scroll bearing ribbons and seals, a declaration of
Kao Chih's role as supreme envoy for the colonists of
Pyre. He and Tumakri bowed to K'ang Lo and the Roug
assessors, then together mounted the long, overswung
gantry which led up to the hatch in the scout's upper
hull. And his thoughts began to slow down, settling on
the minutes, hours, days to come and the realisation
that he was leaving the Roug system, possibly for good,
heading outwards on a great adventure, every young
man's dream.

'So, noble Tumakri, what do you think of our fine
ship?' he said as they clambered down into the vessel,
where small lamps illuminated a cramped space.

'It is a Henkayan two-seater, Pilot Kao, a Shobrulig-
class fast courier with cross-fractulate shields,
full-boundary thrusters and a Tier-1 hyperspace
drive ...'

Inside, Chih was confronted with the walls of a
narrow passage just tall enough for his companion. The
inner wall was cluttered with niches, hinged flaps,
shelves, pullout storage racks, and two long sleeping
compartments set into the lower half. Kao Chih flung
his kitbag into the lower recess and went forward after
the Roug, who was still talking.

'... but has a new environmental unit and sufficient
basic supplies to keep us nourished for the maximum
estimate of six days. Ah, and I believe that this craft's
Henkayan designation translates as Castellan, and
although we are not armed we possess some detection
countermeasures .. .'

His voice tailed off and his head dipped a little. By
now they were both strapped into the cockpit couches,
while a rumbling came from outside as the massive inner
doors closed to seal off the dockside. A whine of servos
then a thud and hiss signalled that the hatch behind
them was closed.

'My apologies, Pilot Kao,' the Roug said, his voice
subdued. 'But I must confess to a certain anxiety about
the task ahead.'

Kao Chih stared at him. 'I'm not sure I understand,
noble Tumakri - you have flown one of these before,
yes?'

'Oh yes, my appraisal was more than satisfactory. It
is just that I have never travelled beyond the borders of
our system, and my briefing suggests the possibility of a
perilous voyage.'

'In what way perilous?'

'Due to the clandestine nature of our mission, we
cannot proceed via the main tier-ports. Sendruka agents
and machines will be alert to any Humanlike species,
and even the presence of a Roug may be enough to raise
suspicions, therefore the authorised hyperspace conduits
will be closed to us, which means that we have to use
illegal ports and purchase course schemata from un-
licensed dealers. I have been given several detailed
itineraries and a few linguistic enablers, as well as the
names of trusted intermediaries who have been told to
expect us. Our onboard navprocessor is already imbued
with our first destination and the autopilot will guide us
out. Hopefully, this is sufficient preparation.'

There was a sudden roaring rush as the outer bay
doors cracked open, venting the atmosphere in a pale
burst of flash-frozen vapour. There was a slight jolt,
then the sensation of motion, acceleration pushing Kao
Chih back as the scoutship Castellan shot out from the
great irregular mass of the Retributor. Seconds away,
attitudinal thrusters came to life, sending them along a
shallow trajectory away from V'Harant. Once they were
a set distance from the gas giant, the flight systems
would bring the hyperdrive online and take them into
the many-tiered continuum of hyperspace.

'So, Tumakri,' Kao Chih said with forced cheerful-
ness. 'What is to be our first port-of-call?'

The Roug took a small oval documenter from a waist
pouch and read from its screen. 'Blacknest: an illegal
way-station engaged in illicit commerce and the har-
bouring of a variety of outlaws, pirates and other
transgressors. It is located in the Qarqol deepzone just
beyond the Erdindeso border, and we are to exercise ...
great caution at all times.'

'Ah yes, standard operating procedure,' Kao Chih
said casually, ignoring the nervy panic that seemed to
radiate from the Roug. 'Nothing to worry about - when
we get to this Blacknest we probably won't even have to
leave the ship. I imagine your people's contact there will
have everything in hand. Just sit back and relax ...'

And I'll try not to think about what Great-Aunt Mei
said to me earlier ...

Less than an hour ago, in his parents' house, he had
just finished a bowl of rice and vegetables and was dig-
ging his old kitbag out of a chest when a finger had
prodded his shoulder. The finger was attached to

Great-Aunt Mei, who studied him with her hawkish
black eyes.

'I heard that old fool Wu got up and singed Tan Hau
in front of the Roug - is that true?'

'Indeed it is, Great-Aunt, and quite a sight it was . ..'

To his surprise, her stern, wrinkled face had then
broken into a gleeful, gap-toothed smile.

'Heh, he always knows too much, old Wu, so all he
can be is the wise fool!' Then her features had grown
sombre. 'And how are you feeling, boy? Frightened?'

'I'm excited, Great-Aunt! - it's a great adventure . . .'

'Adventure, hah! The young always fail to see the
whole of the road ahead, so off they rush. But then, you
don't know enough to be scared, which makes you a
young fool.' Then she had grasped his shoulder, pulling
him closer. 'Listen to me, boy - pain will come to you,
hurts and wounds the like of which you have never felt
before. You must fight and kill them or they will eat you
up, like hungry river serpents!'

Leaning back in the copilot couch, he watched a
shielding layer of hexagonal platelets roll out across the
cockpit viewpane, preparatory to the hyperdrive jump.

His first hyperdrive jump.

He leaned back, hands gripping the armrests. Well,
Great-Aunt Mei, I may not have been scared then, but
be assured that I am now!

19

KAO CHIH

On approach, the rogue port Blacknest looked vaguely
intestinal, like the digestive tract of some huge,
grotesque monster. Within spidering meshes of metal
frameworks, silver, grey and blue flexitube corridors
spread in coils and undulations, connecting polyhedral
modules of various sizes that were embedded in the
mazy tangles like geometric tumours. The blocks and
cylinders of the original station were still visible beneath
the improvised accretion of past newcomers, and it
was from the largest conglomeration that a substantial
docking hub protruded on a squat tower.

'Is that where we're going?' Kao Chih said, studying
the hub's busy traffic on the long-range imager, com-
paring it to the Roug orbital, Agmedra'a.

Tumakri, his Roug companion, peered closely at the
multicoloured symbols on his small console screen, hes-
itantly touching a few with one dark, spindly finger. 'It
seems not, Pilot Kao,' he said in his dry, papery voice.
'At first we were, but now we have been redirected to a
secondary landing stage. Our syncsystem is already plot-
ting a new guide-path.'

He looked round at Kao Chih, who smiled and
nodded. 'That sounds reasonable - the main docking
hub looks pretty busy,' he said, trying to sound both
relaxed and businesslike. Soon after exiting hyperspace
in the Blacknest vicinity, Tumakri had given him a lin-
guistic enabler, a package of Human-configured nanobio
receptors in the form of a translucent golden pill. In half
an hour he was able to understand and respond in the
Roug tongue, and by the time the illegal port was in
visual range he was bordering on the fluent, with the
result that Tumakri's erratic mental state became even
more apparent.

'So tell me, noble Tumakri, who is the intermediary
we are supposed to contact here?'

'One Rup Avriqui, a Voth procurer - I have since
determined from our notes that in addition to providing
the course data for the next stage of our journey, he will
also be accompanying us. I have already sent three
advice requests on the frequency tag shown in the itin-
erary, but thus far no response. This does not seem
normal to me . . .'

Kao Chih shrugged. 'Perhaps their protocols are dif-
ferent in these matters, or custom ...'

He was interrupted by a brief staccato chime from
the comm panel, then a string of syllables whose into-
nation varied between flat, nasal and flutelike. There
was a momentary jarring sensation in his mind, like
sounds and symbols colliding, then suddenly he was
hearing the Voth's words and understanding them. Most
of them.

'... again to present my egremini apologies for this
lapse in finsterral communications. Disturbance between
rabble factions is the cause but our mezgurid business
remains viable. If this addresses to the noble Tumagri
and Gowshee, please to respond.'

Kao Chih and Tumakri looked at each other for a
second before the latter spoke.

'Have we the honour of speaking with Rup Avriqui?'

'This is so, exalted clients-of-unrivalled-lineage.'

'Do you have the .. .'

The Voth cut him off. 'Forgiveness I beg, exalted one,
but it is not wise to speak of important matters over an
unsecured channel. Once you disembark, my lugosiva-
tor will bear you both safely to my hold, where we shall
continue our dialogue. I bid you the short and tempo-
rary farewell.'

The channel abruptly switched to the ready-cycle's
bland, atonal warbling, and Tumakri blinked.

'It seems that he is expecting to meet both of us, Pilot
Kao.'

'Indeed, friend Tumakri,' he said. 'But the truth is
that my appearance is distinctly un-Rouglike, and we
cannot take the risk of my being recognised as Human
in a place like this.'

'Yes,' said Tumakri, slumping down into his couch. 'I
was hoping to persuade you to undertake the encounter
by yourself, somehow ...'

Kao Chih leaned forward, amused. 'In that case, we
shall have to be creative, perhaps even inspired. What
did you bring in the way of spare clothing?'

'A standard long-excursion miscellany,' the Roug
said. 'But almost none of it will fit you...'

'Not to worry,' Kao Chih said, getting up. 'It's the
details that matter, so we'll have to have a good rum-
mage through the storage lockers . ..'

Nearly an hour later grapple-nets were hauling the
fast-courier Castellan in beside two larger vessels that
were moored to a gimballed docking duct. A flexitube
concertinaed out to fasten its mouthlike seal around the
smaller craft's hatch. On opening the hatch they found a
prismoid dock ID tied by a length of finefibre to an eye-
hook, drifting in zero-gee. After a weightless clamber
through the grubby, much-patched transfer tube, then
along the docking duct, squeezing by all kinds of pas-
sengers coming and going from other ships, Kao Chih
and Tumakri finally emerged in some kind of lobby. The
Roug wore an ankle-length, sleeved cloak of a thin, grey
material that clung from neck to waist, while Kao Chih
had opted to don the emergency environmental suit but
without the helmet. Around his head he had wrapped
bandages from the medikit, being careful not to obscure
the dark, faceted goggles he had put on beforehand.

And since Tumakri's itinerary notes had warned of
Blacknest's imperfect eco-cleanliness they were both
wearing small breathing masks. For Kao Chih, heavy
gloves and boots completed the hopefully convincing
non-Human picture.

There were three turnstile gates at the lobby exit,
each with a queue of arriving sophonts, most of whom
were bi-, tri- or quadrupedal: did swimmers, crawlers
and fliers have their own docking areas, he wondered. A
buzz of conversation enveloped them, voices conversing
in all manner of whoops, whistles and words, while the
air was a swirl of odours. In a hubbub like this, Kao
Chih's linguisitic enabler tended to lie partially dormant,
only translating when he focused on a particular voice
or when someone spoke clearly and from close by.

He had prepared himself for a long wait, based on his
observations of similar entry procedures on Agmedra'a.
But it soon became clear that new arrivals were being
processed with haste by three anxious Henkayans in
dimpled blue uniforms. Each was using one pair of
stubby arms to pass a fan-snouted sensor over each life-
form while the other pair dealt with forms and charges.

Then it was their turn. As the gate attendant began
waving his handheld sensor at Tumakri, he took one
look at the prismoid dock ID and said:

'Smallboat berthnetted, minimum fee seventy
keddro.'

Tumakri produced a slender black credit stem,
banded in gold.

'You may deduct from this,' he said.

'Nogood, nogood,' said the Henkayan, jerkily shak-
ing his head. 'Creditransfer network offline, you
mustpay keddro now or returnship.'

'But this ...'

'Nogood, nogood! Yellowfists here soon - pay now
or leave!'

Tumakri swayed on his feet and Kao Chih steadied
him with an outstretched hand.

'What's wrong?' he said. 'Don't tell me you didn't
bring hard currency.'

'I do have such, but it is supposed to be for later in
our journey.'

'If you don't pay the man, we won't be able to meet
Avriqui and there won't be any more journey.'

Clearly unhappy, Tumakri dug into a waistpouch and
surrendered four glittering black triangles, three inlaid
with gold, one with crimson. Their dock ID was
imprinted with a strange curlicue pattern and they were
each presented with a blue plastic tag embossed with a
string of symbols before being hurried out into
Blacknest Station itself.

The corridor floor was covered in a dingy grey
ridged matting, as was the ceiling, which was also a
floor. A variety of sentient creatures was bustling along
the gravplate pathway that ran the length of the ceiling,
most of them, Kao Chih noticed, hurrying in the same
direction. Then as he watched, several yellow-garbed
figures leaped out from the overhead pedestrian flow,
as if taking a collective nosedive towards the floor.
Fearful cries went up from the gate attendants -
'Yellowfists! Yellowfists!' - and Kao Chih then saw the
tethered lines on which the newcomers swung through
the air to land clumsily before the transit lobby
entrance. Regaining their feet/paws/hoofs, they pulled
out slot-nosed sidearms and gestured threateningly at
the attendants.

'Time we were elsewhere,' Kao Chih said, grabbing a
near-paralysed Tumakri and dragging him along the
half-deserted corridor. They had just reached the next
corner when an odd, jingling voice spoke:

'Masters Gowchee and Tumagri? ... up here, good
sirs.'

Kao Chih looked up and saw a boxy, yellow cart
with six fat wheels and a telescopic pole tipped with a
cluster of glittering lenses which were angled down at
him.

'Indeed we are,' Kao Chih said cautiously. 'You
are ...?'

'I am Master Avriqui's number 2 lugosivator - I am
to take you to his hold straight away. If you step onto
the sidepath and join me, we can be quickly under way.'

The lens arm pointed to a strip of grey matting that
curved off the main corridor into a recess and up the
wall, joining the one directly above. Without delay, Kao
Chih stepped onto the branch path, feeling his stomach
bounce a little as he adjusted to walking up the wall
then stepping onto the ceiling strip. Behind him,
Tumakri groaned, holding on to the sides of the recess as
he followed. The yellow cart had seating within a
curved, transparent carapace. Flexible doors popped on
either side and moments later they were strapped into
sideways-facing bucket seats as the vehicle sped away
from the chaotic scenes further back.

'Apologies are tendered for the lack of proprieties,'
said the lugosivator. 'Master Avriqui had intended to
greet you in person but reports of incipient violence
caused him to remain at home.'

'Are such incidents considered normal here?' said
Tumakri.

'No, Master Tumagri, but unfortunately Blacknest is
experiencing one of its periodic outbursts of interclan
rivalry in which revenue sources, such as the embarka-
tion gates, become strategic prizes to be defended or
captured by force.'

'Fascinating,' Kao Chih said. 'What about ships in
dock? Are they also considered prizes?'

'Docked vessels are inviolable, Master Gowchee,'
said the cart. 'Certain categories of passenger, however,
are seen as legitimate quarry at times like this.'

Kao Chih and Tumakri exchanged a worried look.

'Would we fall into that category?' he said.

'Yes - you arrived in your own craft with no per-
sonal bodyguard and no protection brevet. Data
spotters will have already sent your profiles out to sev-
eral gang bosses . . .'

Tumakri hunched down in his seat, staring this way
and that through the cart's transparent hull.

'. . . which is why I have brevets here to give to you,
signed by Master Avriqui.' A thin tray slid out from a
black panel below the windscreen - on it were two doc-
uments, folded sheets of light blue textured plas
imprinted with lines of text in Tralesk, a trading lan-
guage. Underneath was a swirling character written with
a double-nib, which Kao Chih took to be Avriqui's sig-
nature.

'How long till we reach Master Avriqui's hold?' he
said.

'We shall be arriving shortly,' said the cart. 'From the
next junction we follow a vascule out to the tubeworks
and our destination is not far beyond that.'

Kao Chih nodded and glanced out at the busy corri-
dor. Away from the contested arrivals lobby, the station
took on the kind of appearance he had been expecting,
archway and doors along the corridors revealing mar-
kets, kiosks and tiny workshops enveloped in a hum of
activity, a jostling flow of creatures and sentients from
every corner of the galaxy. A red-and-black-furred hexa-
pedal Bargalil gestured with a small forearm to a
Gomedran selling light-splines and bubbles, while nearby
a reptilian biped Kiskashin garbed in hooded leathers
tended a stall where clusters of tarnished pipes smoked
amid gauzy veils and glittering trinkets. A muscular
Henkayan was raking through boxes of hardware with
all four arms, examining finds with a headband scope.
On the other side of the stall, an old battered mech
shaped like an upright dumb-bell was doing the same
thing with microfields while floating on its suspensors.

Relaxing a little, he smiled, enjoying the view which
he was seeing from above as Avriqui's lugosivator trun-
dled along the tall corridor's ceiling path. The shops and
stalls went on and he wondered if most of Blacknest
was like this. He saw a pair of Gomedrans haggling
with a half-shelled Naszbur arms dealer; an octopoidal
Makhori coldly eyeing passers-by from the opacity of its
tank; a long-bodied Vusark propped up on a metal
frame, its many sets of legs flexing rhythmically . . .

And a pair of beady eyes in a small, snouted face that
stared straight up at him for an instant then broke away.
Kao Chih had the merest glimpse of a cowl around the
observer's head before it vanished into a side turning. He
was about to mention this but the cart's sentience spoke.

'Sirs, my master wishes to communicate with you.'

A translucent panel appeared in the cart's forward
windscreen and darkened into a display showing their
adviser and prospective travel companion, Rup Avriqui,
sitting in a high-backed wood-and-leather armchair.
Behind him were the glows and shadows of a low-lit
room. Rup Avriqui was a Voth, a squat bipedal race
which bore a superficial similarity to a presentient Earth
species called orangutans. The Voth certainly had long
arms but also had broader torsos and shorter legs, larger
ears and flatter faces. They also had a liking for bulky,
concealing garments - Avriqui was wrapped in layers of
clothing, some finely woven and intricately patterned,
others coarse and plain, while on his head he wore a
strange cap comprising beads and tiny mirrors over
padded cloth.

'Ah, most viable our business, noble visitors, and
most efficient my preparations. Soon we shall be dis-
coursing upon the urgent matter of your task and my
part in its workings.'

'Please accept our thanks for the brevets,' Tumakri
said. 'Reassurance is a gift which lights our way.'

'I am gratified to be able to confound the misfor-
tunes of the current unrest,' the Voth said. 'I must
confess, however, that I had to nominate Master
Gowchee's species profile as being Roug in order to dis-
patch the brevets with my lugosivator. Now I see by the
evidence of my own eyes, as well as the profiles obtained
just moments ago, that Master Gowchee is not of the
exalted and ancient Roug.' The hooded eyes regarded
Kao Chih. 'Humans are not popular, you see, thus there
is danger for you at every turn. Fortunately, you will
both soon be within my hold and I shall have the brevets
modified . .. what is that noise?'

A faint knocking sound had suddenly become a loud
banging. Muttering angrily, the Voth levered himself out
of his seat and moved out of sight, shuffling footsteps
receding. For a moment all was quiet onscreen, then
there was a shout followed by the sound of running feet.
Rup Avriqui abruptly rushed into view, his headgear
askew, his eyes bulging as he lunged at the controls near
the vidcam.

'Exigency nine, exigency nine!' he shrieked, stubby
fingers scrabbling at the panel as a pair of hands, one
metal, one flesh, grabbed his shoulder and dragged him
screaming away. Then the screen went opaque for a
second before melting into transparency. Kao Chih and
Tumakri stared at each other in horror, then grabbed the
edges of their seats as the cart jerked to a sudden stop
halfway down the corridor wall.

'Passengers must evacuate at once,' said the vehicle as
its sides sprang open. 'Deepest apologies for unforgiv-
able treatment, masters, but the Avriqui hold has been
compromised, therefore this unit can no longer guaran-
tee your safety.'

'But . .. but what must we do?' said Tumakri, voice
quivering with shock.

'Return to your ship is the safest course - the safest
course - safesafesafesafe . . . please return to your seats
there is no danger we will soon arrive at residential unit
stem nine radial twelve ...'

Fighting a surge of panic, Kao Chih jumped up from
his seat and dragged Tumakri away from the suborned
lugosivator.

'It was right,' he said. 'We have to get back to the
ship!'

'... yes,' said the Roug. 'Yes, we must!'

Then he shrugged off the Human's support and
leaped into a headlong sprint back the way they had
come. Amazed, Kao Chih took after him, but with his
longer legs Tumakri soon opened up a good lead. The
Roug wove between stalls and knots of sentients, ignor-
ing Kao Chih's shouts to slow down. So intent on his
destination was he that he never noticed the gang of
fur-snouted Gomedra rushing out at him from a side
passage until it was too late.

Kao Chih saw the ambush, shouted Tumakri's
name . . . and in the next instant felt something tangle
his legs, causing him to dive forward and land with jar-
ring force.

'Bind him!' said a guttural voice.

Half-dazed, he fought against rough hands that tied
his wrists and fixed a gag to his mouth.

'The Blacktooth vermin are escaping with the other
one,' came another nasal, rasping voice.

'Then render him worthless,' said the first.

Fearful, Kao Chih tried to yell around the gag and
struggled against his captors. Instead, he was hauled
upright in time to see an armour-clad Bargalil raise a
hexabow and fire off three bolts. There was a brief, high
shriek and Kao Chih knew with horrible certainty that
Tumakri was dead.

'Sack this one and bring him to our new nest!'

A cloth hood stinking of machine oil enfolded his
head and, grasped lengthways, he was carried off,
friendless, soundless and wrapped in darkness.

20
ROBERT

He hated to be late for meetings, hated being out of
breath and feeling sweaty and grimy, but sometimes the
only thing to do was accept it and move on.

'My most sincere apologies to you all,' he said as
he entered the president's private conference room, a
low-roofed chamber with green-textured walls. 'Comm-
unications with my government have proved very slow
overnight.'

'That is quite understandable, Ambassador Horst,'
said Sundstrom. 'But now we can proceed - I assume
you recognise everyone present?'

There were seven people at the large oval table includ-
ing Robert, Sundstrom; Deputy-President Jardine; the
intelligence chief, Vitaly Pyatkov; Theodor Karlsson, an
adviser to the president; General Morag Soutar, the C-in-
C of the Darien Volunteer Corps; and the sixth, a heavily
built, middle-aged man in a dark sober suit, whose name
escaped him until Harry appeared nearby and said, 'Edvar
Storlusson, master-provost of Trond and Sundstrom's
unofficial deputy-president for the Northern Towns.'

Robert smiled and nodded, partly for Harry but
mostly for the gathering. 'Indeed I do, Mr President.'

'Good, then before we discuss this terrible event, I
want us all to take stock of the latest reports. We'll start
with you, Vitaly - tell us about the High Monitor and
his staff, then what your investigations have uncovered.'

Sundstrom sat back in his wheelchair, looking weary
but also, Robert thought, sustained by the anger and
outrage he had expressed during his vee broadcast to the
colony last night. The man had articulated a burning
repugnance for the attempted assassination in language
of such lyrical force and delivery that Robert was able to
imagine what Sundstrom must have been like in his
younger, healthier years.

'High Monitor Kuros,' said the intelligence chief, 'is
well and fully recovered from the shock and distress of
the attack. He and his staff will be holding a private
mourning ceremony later today for their murdered col-
league, Assister Morild. As to the attack itself, we have
determined that the gunman opened fire from dense
forest cover overlooking the Giant's Shoulder excava-
tions. The murder weapon was a forty-year-old 8.5
calibre Ballantyne rifle, modified for hunting with a
15x50 telescopic sight and a sculpted, rebalanced
wooden stock ...'

Photos of the weapon were being passed around, and
General Soutar was quick to comment.

'Practically an antique,' she said in a booming voice.
'Aye, and pricey, too. But deadly in the hands of a
marksman - wouldn't you agree, Major Karlsson?'

There was a brief but uncomfortable silence, then
Karlsson gave an unflustered smile. 'The gunman was
probably a good shot, certainly, General. He also has
excellent woodcraft and stealth skills, but then so do

RD BERT

03
most of the faraway hunters and trappers. What I'm puz-
zled about is why he abandoned the rifle - he must know
that it will inevitably furnish us with information.'

'We are trying to trace the rifle's origins and previous
owners now,' Pyatkov said to him. 'Although the killer
left no prints or any other evidence, we know from the
flattened grass that he was of average height with a
fairly lean physique. One of the High Monitor's body-
guards took away swab samples from the rifle to see if
any DNA evidence can be recovered.

'As for suspects, we have brought a number of known
seditionists and extremists in for questioning, but
although some claim to be members of the FDF no one
can name their leaders or give a coherent summary of
their aims beyond a handful of slogans.'

Sundstrom nodded. 'There may be a degree of dis-
quiet amongst the general populace about some
aspects of the new situation and its consequences,' he
said. 'But there is no grassroots support for violence
and killing. Every call to my office, and to every other
legator, has condemned the shooting, often in vigorous
and colourful language! This has extended to my deci-
sion to cancel the Founders' Victory Day celebrations,
but you can't please everybody.'

There were a few laughs and knowing grins around
the table. Robert smiled.

'It is most reassuring to know that the Darien Colony
is united in its opposition to this act of terror,' he said.
'Whether they turn out to be this Free Darien Faction or
someone else.' He paused. 'Has anyone claimed respon-
sibility yet, Mr President?'

'No one at all,' said Sundstrom. 'It's as if they were
expecting their vile act to start an uprising but nothing
happened.'

'They're not finished,' Karlsson said grimly. 'The next
one will be worse.'

'We have to make sure that there isn't a next one,'
said Sundstrom. 'The Hegemony is adamant about that.'

'So you've spoken with High Monitor Kuros about
this matter, Mr President?' Robert said.

'No, Mr Ambassador, but informal channels between
ourselves and the High Monitor's advisers have
remained open.'

'I see.'

Robert sat back, stroking his chin thoughtfully. His
AI companion Harry leaned on the back of his chair,
bent close to Robert's ear and said, 'You'll have to give
them some idea of what they're in for if these attacks
don't stop.'

He nodded slightly and sat straighter, facing the wait-
ing Dariens.

'My friends, the Hegemony takes attacks on its
officials very, very seriously indeed - if this shooting
had occurred on Hegemony territory they would have
instituted the severest measures. Curfews, confiscation
of firearms, a ban on public assembly, restrictions and
censorship of all public media ...'

'That's outrageous,' said Storlusson, the provost of
Trond.

'I've not finished, sir. Satellite surveillance would be
employed in conjunction with positioning tags fixed to
all vehicles and, if necessary, to all civilians. Communi-
cations would be filtered and spying devices of every
kind and size would become omnipresent.'

'But this is not Hegemony territory,' Pyatkov said.

'True, but the Brolturans have made a claim to this
region of the Huvuun Deepzone and I have just learned
that they have dispatched their ambassador to Darien
aboard a line warship - originally it was to be a diplo-
matic corvette but news of yesterday's attack has altered
their posture. So you see, it really is in your interest to
show High Monitor Kuros that you mean to keep him
and his staff safe while doing all you can to capture this
murderer.'

The others listened with worried faces, exchanging
glances when he finished, all eyes eventually turning to
Sundstrom. The president was silent for several
moments, his frowning gaze fixed on the tabletop before
him where he slid and turned a pencil through his fin-
gers over and over.

Have I gone too far} Robert thought. Perhaps I
painted too bleak a picture .. .

'This is all... illuminating, Ambassador,' Sundstrom
said at last. 'What is your position on this? What advice
might you have for me?'

'My government fully supports Hegemony policy on
acts of terrorism,' he said. 'Most of the measures I've
described have in the past been enacted by Earthsphere
authorities in response to attacks carried out in our
domains. My advice to you, which my government has
approved, is to pre-empt the High Monitor's request for
heightened security arrangements - offer a detachment
of your best troops as permanent guards for the
Hegemony embassy and as an escort should he or any
of his staff need to move outside its confines. Consider
the measures I mentioned - I'll have a list sent over
later - and go as far as you can to put them into prac-
tice.'

'You'll never get the Northern Towns to agree to the
likes of censorship and weapons confiscation,' said
Storlusson. 'They'll fight it all the way.'

Robert shrugged. 'Then at least propose curfews and
restrictions on public assembly. Also, you might like to
think about temporary legislation to help enforce anti-
sedition options - that would persuade the Sendrukans
that you're serious.'

Voices were raised but Sundstrom cut them off with a
sharp sweep of the hand.

'Ambassador Horst,' he said. 'I would like to for-
mally request the prompt deployment of Earthsphere
marines to aid the security needs of my government.'

'I'm sorry, Mr President,' he said. 'I have been
instructed that no Earthsphere troops are to be dispatched
to the colony at the present time. You see, the Brolturans
would interpret such a move as staking a claim and the
Hegemony would tend to support that view.'

'So what material assistance can you offer us?' said
Pyatkov.

'Some intelligence, some training for police units, but
weapons or support equipment - that would be seen as
technology transfer, which is strictly forbidden under
multilateral treaty. Look, Mr President, I know this
seems very unhelpful but you have to be patient and try
to help the Sendrukans to feel that you're on their side.
To that end, I strongly advise against appealing to the
representatives of other nations or blocs for aid - that
the Hegemony and the Brolturans would regard as an
unfriendly act.'

He stood, glancing at the large oval clock on the wall.
'Now I must take my leave - I am shortly to meet with
High Monitor Kuros's senior assisters and after that the
Heracles's first officer.'

The rest got to their feet, apart from the wheelchair-
bound president.

'Thank you for explaining your government's posi-
tion so candidly, Ambassador,' Sundstrom said. 'We
shall give serious thought to your observations and rec-
ommendations. I should also like to consult further with
you later this afternoon if that is convenient.'

'I'll tell my office to expect your call, Mr President.'

A courteously slight bow to either side of the table,
then he was outside the conference room, following his
personal attendant round to the main elevator with
Harry striding along beside him.

'We// you can't say you didn't leave them wanting
more,' the AI said, smiling drolly.

Robert waited until he was alone in the descending
lift before replying.

'It's a grave situation, Harry, with the potential for
turning nasty if the Brolturans get the wrong idea ...'

He sighed. The Brolturan Compact, like Earthsphere,
was a close ally of the Hegemony; however, their origins
as an offshoot of Sendrukan society and their willing-
ness to act as the Hegemony's military proxy gave them
a kind of favoured-ally status which amplified both their
arrogance and their endemic paranoia. Robert had on
several occasions encountered Brolturan priests and mil-
itary (which often amounted to the same thing) and
knew that they would have to be treated with kid
gloves.

'Jr wouldn't have hurt to let them know that you
asked for permission to deploy the marines down here.'

Robert shook his head. 'It would have softened the
blow. I want to shock them into the reality of their situ-
ation and our role here - they can't afford to harbour
any illusions.'

'Yes, Robert,' said Harry without a hint of irony. 'We
can't have illusions getting in the way of stark reality,
absolutely not!'

21
THEO

Depressed and angry at Horst's response, Theo was
crossing the Darien Assembly's wide foyer, making for
the entrance. The three sets of ogival arched double
doors lay at the foot of a huge mural of the First
Families done in a variety of woods, their colours care-
fully arranged. He was a few paces from leaving when
one of the azure-uniformed government couriers caught
up with him.

'Begging your pardon, Major Karlsson, but the pres-
ident asks if you would care to join him in the
diplomatic suite.'

'Did he say what it's about?'

'No sir, only that you would be glad you came.'

Theo's frown turned into a smile. More presidential
hugger-mugger, eh? Well, could be instructive, maybe
even entertaining.

'I'm game, lad,' he said. 'Lead the way.'

The diplomatic suite was a comparatively recent
extension of the assembly complex. Three levels con-
structed on pillars at the rear with plush room and
conference chambers whose big curved windows looked
out over the Kalevala Gardens. The young courier led
him to the third floor and past several OG guards to a
room adjacent to the big, half-domed auditorium at the
end of the corridor. As the courier smiled and turned
away, one of the guards opened the door and ushered
Theo inside.

It was a long, narrow room with small tables along
one side. The windows were opaque and the wall-
mounted uplights gave off a soft yellow radiance. More
OG guards stood behind Sundstrom, who sat at a table,
flanked by Pyatkov and Soutar, both of whom looked
sombre. When Theo entered, Sundstrom smiled at him
then nodded to a guard officer, who hurried off to the
other end of the room and left by a second doorway,
where another guard was on duty.

'Come and join us, Theo,' the president said. 'This is
quite a sight.'

On the table before him was a portable display. From
a low vantage point it showed a wide section of the
diplomatic suite's roof, which was marked out with a
landing grid. Moments later he heard the sound of an
approaching craft, its engines a blend of deep bass drone
and high-pitched whine, then a strange, webbed cluster
of angular modules came into view, the blast of its drives
sending dust and leaves flying as it banked, straightened
up and drifted to the centre of the grid. The craft, Theo
noted, was a uniform dark, matt, coal-like grey, and he
wondered if that was evidence of stealth technology.
Then landing legs unfolded and it descended, its entire
structure flexing as it settled onto the roof.

'Our guests are disembarking from the other side,'
Sundstrom said. 'So they'll be with us shortly.'

'And who are these guests, Mr President?' Theo said.

'If we're lucky, valuable allies. Otherwise, we may at
least be able to rely on considerable sympathy.' He
turned his wheelchair a little. 'My friends, I have a small
admission to make. For more than two years my admin-
istration, i.e. myself and a few trusted colleagues, has
been in touch with officials from the Imisil Mergence,
one of the nine star nations that make up the loose
alliance of the Erenate. I have had many exchanges with
one of their senior diplomats, Javay shtu-Gauhux, a
Makhori of long and distinguished lineage. Soon after
we got the first messages from the Heracles he predicted
that something like this situation would arise and that
the Earthsphere response would be weak and sub-
servient to Hegemony interests.' He smiled bleakly and
spread his hands. 'This meeting is to formalise relations
between Darien and the Imisil Mergence, but we will
also be introduced to a representative from the
Cyclarchy of Milybi, an immense confederation whose
territory borders the far edge of the deepzone. This
emissary is from a race known as the Chatha who are,
I'm told, insect-like in appearance ...'

Theo knew that the Makhori were an octopoidal
species, but he wasn't expecting the strange, small object
that glided through the doors at the far end, flanked by
diminutive Gomedran escorts. It was an antigravity plat-
form with a transparent carapace beneath which the
Makhori ambassador sat, its long pseudopods nestled
under an inner rim.

'My good friend Holger! It is most refreshing to meet
you face to face at last!'

The Makhori's voice was a synthesis of Human
speech but the cadences and emphases seemed slightly
awry: what made it remarkable was the musical accom-
paniment, soft, fluty notes that gave an undertone to
every syllable. As the words were spoken, Theo could
see one of the Makhori's pseudopods working a little
panel with a cluster of stubby palps. Theo held back
from smiling - it was like having your own personal
orchestra.

'Ambassador Gauhux, I am most pleased to welcome
you to Darien,' said Sundstrom. 'I regret that this could
not take place under more relaxed conditions.'

'Indeed. It appears that the warmth of your welcome
is not shared by the Earthsphere forces which are in
control of your orbital environs. I do not mean that they
mistreated us, merely that they extended the minimum
of courtesy and consideration.'

'I can only apologise, Ambassador.'

'There is no need - such is only to be expected within
the ambit of Hegemony influence.' The Makhori's float-
ing pod turned slightly so that its large oval eyes could
take in Theo and the others. 'You have companions with
you, I see.'

'Yes, Ambassador - may I introduce Mr Pyatkov,
director of our intelligence service; General Soutar, com-
mander of the Darien Volunteer Corps; and Major
Karlsson, my personal adviser.'

Personal adviser?

Theo had to focus hard on keeping any surprise from
showing at this promotion. And from the stiff glance
Pyatkov gave over his shoulder, he wasn't the only one
caught unawares.

'Fellow sentients,' the Makhori said, 'I am very
pleased to meet you and thereby expand the boundaries
of my knowledge. Sadly, this must be a brief encounter -
my travelling companion is a cautious and highly cir-
cumspect being and wishes to return to our ship as soon
as possible - ah, he approaches.'

As Ambassador Gauhux drifted to one side, a pair of
odd, birdlike creatures, tall and feathery in rich shades of
blue and ochre, strode in through the doors at the far
end. They had no wings or arms and in the place of a
beak they possessed a long, prehensile snout ending in
four bony fingers. Each one held a glassy, polyhedral
device whose facets glowed and glittered. The strange
sophonts calmly pointed these things at everyone in the
room before facing each other, bowing, and pressing a
stud on each device. For a moment all were still, then a
newcomer entered.

Theo's first thought was that this was an emissary
from a machine race, going by the four slender metal
legs, but in the next instant he realised that, like the
Makhori's antigrav platform, this was a mobile carriage.
The Chatha was larger and bulkier than the Makhori,
and although it bore a vague similarity to an Earth-type
spider, there were some clear differences. Rather than
hairs on a hard exoskeleton, the Chatha had a leathery,
greenish-purple hide with a pebbly texture, and instead
of a low-slung body there was an oval hump which rose
to a wedge-shaped head with an occipital ridge running
from the smooth, rounded back of the skull forward to
a tapered, beak-like proboscis. There was a pair of eyes
on either side of the head, giving it about 270 degrees of
vision, Theo guessed, while a curved opening under-
neath, at the neck, was probably its mouth. The
Chatha's real legs, he realised, must be quite short and
had to be interfaced with the powered, mechanical ones
which extended from the open pod in which it sat. The
Milybi emissary looked grotesque to Theo and he felt
uneasy in spite of himself.

The trunk-armed attendants presented their devices,
which the Chatha took with its short limbs, examining
each in turn. Then it stowed them away inside its pod,
approached the table where the others were waiting,
and began to speak.

The words were a stream of liquid vowels pro-
nounced with a wide range of pitch, then the speech
changed into a sequence of hard but expressive sounds,
interspersed with an occasional deep hum. Then sud-
denly it was speaking Anglic.

'I am Estimator Jeg-sul-Mur. I greet you in the fair
language of the Great Cyclarchy of Milybi, in the
formal tongue of the Chatha, and in your own lan-
guage. I am deeply gratified to see that none amongst
you is contaminated with the machine virus which
afflicts the unwise Sendruka. Similarly, your race
seems to lack any significant mind-force faculty,
which for weaker races can be a burden rather than a
benefit.' The twin eye-pairs considered them all one
by one, ending with the octopoidal Imisil ambassador.
'Colleague Gauhux, if you would designate.'

'With pleasure, Colleague Sul-Mur. This is the fore-
most leader of the Darien Humans, President
Sundstrom, and his diligent attendants.'

Once again a smile laid siege to Theo's lips. While
'diligent attendant' felt more natural to him, he knew
that the General thought otherwise, at least going by the
dark look on her face.

'President Sundstrom,' the Milybi emissary contin-
ued, 'I am able to tell you that interlocution between
your collective and ours is acceptable but not possible
under these circumstances. And unfortunately, progno-
sis indicates that the Hegemony or their Brolturan
proxies will soon seize control of your world and use it
as a staging post for further strategic expansion
throughout the deepzone.'

Theo was taken aback by the emissary's frankness -
even Sundstrom was visibly shaken.

'I knew that we faced a perilous situation,
Estimator,' the president said. 'But you seem to think
that our cause is lost even before the struggle has
begun.'

'I understand your distress,' said the Chatha, tilting
its long head forward so that all four eyes could regard
Sundstrom. 'But galactic history is littered with
instances of the fate of small communities when they
become an obstruction to powerful hierarchies.
Perhaps my Imisil colleague has related a few more
recent and relevant examples.'

'Estimator Jeg-sul-Mur,' Sundstrom said. 'Your con-
federation is large and powerful - if we were to appeal
directly to you for assistance, would you give it?'

'The Great Cyclarchy of Milybi is indeed large and
powerful, President Sundstrom, but it is also pragmatic
and far away - my echelon senior would be swift to
point out that we have no interests to defend in this
part of the deepzone.' The emissary paused. 'However, I
can tell you that your predicament is developing with
unseemly haste. We have studied the various ploys
which the Hegemonies or their proxies have deployed
against a number of victims, and it would appear that
one or more are in play here. Your world is clearly of
great value to them and they have in the past proved
themselves adept at presenting themselves as the injured
party. I extend my fulsome sympathies but I regret that
I am unable to offer you any direct support.'

Theo's growing frustration was diverted by the
Chatha's final words, which seemed to imply that the
Hegemony envoy Kuros was behind his own attempted
assassination. Unless Kuros was a sacrificial pawn in a
game played by someone else on his own staff ... his
thoughts spun, trying to assimilate the implications of
such a conspiracy. But then his critical faculty rebelled -
how could they locate a skilled marksman (and infiltra-
tor) amongst the Darien colonists so quickly without
raising suspicion?

'I am grateful for your considered remarks, Estimator,'
Sundstrom said. 'A time may yet come when I can invite
you to Darien for a longer, more relaxed period.'

'Against the weight of history I hope that this will
happen,' said the Chatha. 'I would urge you and your
trusted echelon to exercise great caution in all of your
dealings with the Hegemony and any of its servants.
Alternatively, if you need an escape from encroaching
jeopardy, I am certain that diplomatic sanctuary may be
sought with the Imisil delegation . . .'

'Yes, Holger,' said Ambassador Gauhux. 'This avenue
is open to you and your immediate circle.'

'My thanks for this generous offer but my place is
here on Darien.' Then he laughed. 'Gentlemen, there is
an old human saying, "It's not over until it's over,"
which I intend to keep in mind at all times.'

'I applaud your determination in the face of great
odds,' the Milybi emissary said, then began to speak in
the alien tongues again, ending with: i bid you farewell
in the name of the Great Cyclarchy of Milybi - may the
Infinite and the Benign watch over you when you walk
in dark places.'

Then with the two feathery attendants, the Chatha
steered its carriage back along the room, retracing those
deliberate insectile steps. The Makhori Gauhux watched
him go for a moment then looked to Sundstrom.

'My friend,' it said melodically. 'I must accompany
my colleague back to our ship and help him prepare for
his departure — our auxiliary vessel will transport him
back to Erenate space and the nearest Milybi mission. In
the meantime, I shall remain and make plans for a
modest residency ...'

'Does our situation really look that bad, Gauhux?'
Sundstrom said.

'I'm afraid so, Holger.' The Makhori's large oval eyes
seemed to be full of sorrow. 'My own analyst concurs
with my Chatha companion - the Sendrukans are oper-
ating a deep scheme against you. Either one or more of
your fellow Dariens have thrown in their lot with them,
or the Sendrukans have brought a couple of humans
with them for the purpose. Whichever is true, you'll
have to stop them before they bring disaster down on
you all. Now I must return, so until we meet again,
good fortune . . . and hunt well.'

'Safe journey, Gauhux,' said Sundstrom.

As the Imisil glided out of the room Sundstrom
turned his wheelchair to face the others.

'Any thoughts?' he said.

'They seem very certain that the shooting is a
Hegemony ploy,' said Pyatkov. 'And unsurprised.'

'I think we should plan for the worst, Mr President,'
General Soutar said bluntly. 'For example, if you were
killed, then Jardine would become president, correct?'

Sundstrom's lips twitched with a ghost of a smile.
'I'm afraid so, General.'

Soutar nodded. 'And if both of you were killed, what
then?'

'Then the cabinet would vote on a successor, in closed
session.'

'And if the entire cabinet was wiped out?'

'General!' said an angry Pyatkov.

'Hush, Vitaly,' Sundstrom said. 'I understand the
General's reasoning. Well, in the unlikely event of such a
catastrophe it would fall to the Speaker of the Assembly
to either assume the office himself or attempt to negoti-
ate a government of national unity.'

'Unless the military takes control, of course,' Theo
said.

It was Soutar's turn to be outraged. 'That's a
damnable accusation coming from the likes of you!'

'Really? And just how would you define the likes of
me?'

'Verra easily! - as a disloyal turncoat who ...'

'Right, that's enough from the both of you!' roared
Sundstrom with a stentorian fury that made even Theo
step back. 'This carping is of no use ...'

At that moment the climbing drone of the Imisil shut-
tle's engines came through from above, interrupting
tempers and sharp words. As the sound faded
Sundstrom began to point out that divisions would only
help their adversaries, but broke off when Theo's comm
chimed from his inside pocket.

The president frowned. 'I'd hope you would have
had it muted.'

it was,' Theo said, taking it out, staring at the oval
bluescreen. 'Only emergency calls can get through - and
I don't recognise this number.' Swiftly, he thumbed the
answer. 'Hello, who is this?'

'I'm disappointed, Major,' said a man's voice. The
accent was vaguely Russian and his manner quite
relaxed. 'I thought that you at least would have under-
stood, you, Major Karlsson, Black Theo, Viktor
Ingram's right-hand man . . .'

'Understand what?' he said, miming to the others for
something to write on.

'That this is our land, our world, the place where our
forefathers found sanctuary and fought and slew a piti-
less enemy.'' The man laughed softly. 'Ah yes, sounds
like a song, doesn't it, Major? Like a saga. And now our
time of testing has come and we also have an adversary
to fight.'

'You mean the Hegemony?' Theo said as he wrote on
a piece of notepaper - IT'S THE ASSASSIN. 'That's a
sizeable party to choose as your rival, boy. I mean, all
the First Families were up against was a crippled
machine-mind ...'

'It's not just the Hegemony, Major, it's all alien off-
worlders, all those twisted abominations. Like the ones
you just said goodbye to.'

'How do you know about...'

'7 have sources, Major, and a good view from an
office building across the square.'

'So what's your creed - us against the galaxy, is that
it?' Theo said.

'They need to learn that this is our world, our place
in creation,' said the voice, now more earnest. 'And the
Free Darien Faction is going to teach them that they're
not at liberty to wander where they like, that they're not
wanted.'

'You'll be stopped, boy. We'll see to that!'

'You're welcome to try, Major, but I think you'll find
that you've got your hands quite full. . .'

At that moment Theo heard the sound of an explo-
sion, a loud, echoing boom not far away but muffled by
buildings. For one horrible moment he thought that the
Imisil shuttle had been sabotaged, but Pyatkov was
already on his own comm, talking rapidly. Looking
down Theo saw that the mysterious caller had cut the
link.

it's the Founder Square zeplin terminal,' Pyatkov
said, still listening to his comm. 'Both mooring towers
blown off, fallen into the square . . .'

Then the president's comm began to ring, along with
the general's. Moments later, Pyatkov was getting a
fuller picture.

'There were three devices, two on the towers, one in
a waste basket by the entrance ... no reports so far of
fatalities but many seriously injured . . . emergency
response teams already there and the Assembly marshal
has begun lockdown procedures.'

Sundstrom was motionless as he listened but his eyes
burned with anger. 'The scum is going for soft targets,
trying to show that it's not just the Hegemony he wants
to hit. . .'

Then Theo's comm pinged and looking down he saw
the symbol for a new voice note, as well as its origin
number.

i think this is from him,' said Theo, holding out his
comm so they could all hear it when he pressed the play
button:

'As I said, they need to learn that they're not free to
wander where they like. Don't worry, I'll get them, every
last one of the offworld filth - that was just the second
instalment of my course of instruction. I hope you all
learn the lesson.'

22
CHEL

Rain was falling through the dusk, falling on the dense,
lantern-speckled mass of Tapiola, as Chel made his soli-
tary way up a steep path towards the tree line. There
was little wind and the hiss of the rain came from all
around him in the darkened valley, filling the distance
with a vast, hollow murmur against which the drips and
patters from nearby bushes were soft and muffled. The
ground was spongy underfoot and the air was cold,
moist, redolent of foliage.

Forty years before, when the daughter-forests of
Segrana were being planted in the soil of sad Umara,
the senior Listeners of the time had asked the Human
community to give names to them all. After much
deliberation, the Humans decided to name them after
great writers, all except the most northerly, which
they called Tapiola. This was the name of a mystical
forest from an ancient Human saga called the
Kalevala, composed at a time in their past, long before
books and devices, when singers and devout keepers
committed great histories and song cycles entirely to
memory.

As we still do, Chel thought. Even though we have a
written tongue and small archives exist in Segrana, we
continue that tradition.

Subdued lamps grew brighter as he drew near, a
string of hazy glows leading further into Tapiola Forest,
and the tall, hooded form of a Listener stepped into
view and waited. When Chel got to the edge of the
forest the Listener stretched out one bony hand, palm
outwards.

'Name yourself and say why you are here.'

i am Scholar Cheluvahar of the Benevolent Uvovo,'
he said, i have come to be husked in the sight of sacred
Segrana.'

'You will give up that which you were?'
i will.'

'Are you ready to cast off the shell of the now and
don the veil of becoming?'
i am ready.'

'Then enter, Scholar Cheluvahar, and know that this
is the last time you will be called as such.'

Chel shifted the weight of his travelsack to his other
shoulder then stepped out of the rain and into the wel-
coming shadows of Tapiola.

Few Uvovo actually resided in the daughter-forests:
scholars, gardeners and herders watching over the plants
and animals. But here there were dozens, gathered up
high, in or near temporary shelters made from vinework
and leaf layers, the lamplight from within making them
resemble giant cocoons. The Listener, who did not intro-
duce himself, wordlessly led Chel to a clearing from
where a sturdy-looking rope ladder curved up to one of
the lower branches of a huge ironwood tree. A couple of
female Uvovo who were conversing nearby as they
approached fell silent, smiled and bowed to the new-
comers.

'May Segrana make you welcome,' said one.

'May Segrana show you the Eternal,' said the other.

'Sisters, I thank you.' Chel bowed, then seized the
ladder and began to climb.

He had attended huskings before, back on Nivyesta,
and knew the significance of the climb, symbolic of the
rise from the commonplace to the astonishing, from the
familiar to the sublime, from ignorance to perilous
knowledge. He had always imagined that his own husk-
ing would happen back on the forest moon, guided and
cheered by his own family and friends, not here in this
cold, austere place, watched by no one that he knew
well.

From the ironwood branch another rope ladder led
up to a higher branch, and from there across to another
tree. Then straight up and across to a truly massive tree,
looming like a many-armed giant through the gloom.
This one had dozens of branches sprouting quite close
together, making it easy to follow the sequence of little
lamps that spiralled up the gnarled, mossy trunk.

At last he and the Listener came to a sizeable plat-
form of woven branches where a group of Uvovo
wearing thin brown shifts and pale yellow caps waited.
They were known as the Unburdeners and to them he
gave his travelsack, his outer and inner garments, his
knee and feet protectors, and the zoza stone he wore
about his neck. Then, following the Listener's directions,
he climbed naked up to the platform known as
Contemplation, where, as was customary, he paused to
gather his thoughts and prepare himself. Not far above
was the final stage, Threshold with its vodrun chamber,
and a solitary Unburdener who was waiting to offer
him the Cup of Light.

Chel shivered. It was colder at this height, dark and
misty beneath the canopy, with occasional droplets
coming down through the foliage. He thought of
Gregori, who had given him one of the new music
devices as a parting gift, and wondered if the murderer
had been caught. Then he thought about Catriona and
her obsessive search for the Pathmasters, knowing that
she would only find them if they wanted to be found.
And he thought about Listener Weynl and Listener
Faldri and the nameless Listener below (whom he
thought might be a Starroof Listener called Eshlo) and
tried to imagine his own body changed, bones lengthen-
ing, flesh stretching. Would there be pain, and for how
long .. .?

Wishing suddenly that Greg and Catriona were there,
he breathed in deep and turned to face the last ladder.

J am to be unmade and remade, he thought. No more
delay.

With renewed determination he climbed to the
Threshold platform, where a pair of lamps hung from
curved poles. A masked Unburdener stepped forward
and offered a small oval bowl, which he accepted, then
drank from its narrow end. It tasted fresh, like skyleaf
water only carrying a variety of subtle flavours that
eddied slowly across his tongue. The door of the
vodrun lay open and without hesitation he crouched to
duck inside then sat on the plain bench carved from the
interior. Fleetingly he wondered where the Listeners had
found a seedpod of the immense vunris tree, supposedly
extinct on Umara. By the lamplight he could see that
the vodrun's inner surface was covered with fine carv-
ing, patterns, faces, creatures of Segrana, and some
strange shapes that looked like erratic, random out-
lines . . .

The Unburdener stood in the doorway, his wooden
mask regarding him.

'Segrana awaits you,' came a female voice. 'Her pur-
pose will show you all the pathways of the Eternal - be
ready.'

Chel smiled, bowed his head. The Unburdener
stepped back and swung the door shut, plunging him
into darkness.

With eyes closed he leaned back against the rough
podwall. He knew that the Cup of Light was meant to
unfasten the moorings of his mind, but so far he felt
quite calm and unchanged. The flavours from the
strange drink still lingered in his mouth but were
steadily fading, tastes of nuts and berries dissolving
away to nothing - and just then he caught a whiff of
smoke. He sniffed, quickly then deeply, sure that some-
thing was burning just outside the vodrun. Then he saw
a glow next to the floor, bent down and saw a tongue of
flame extending up the curved wall, splitting and
spreading, a fine network of fire.

He called out and banged on the door, but it was
shut fast from the outside and no answer came. Chel
began to panic and fumbled on the floor for the stop-
pered flask of water that was usually left there. Nothing.
The blazing web expanded, covering the whole of the
pod's wall till he was crouched down in the centre,
enclosed in a shell of quivering, rippling flames. The
carven creatures crawled while patterns contorted and
faces turned to him and spoke in harsh voices, demand-
ing, commanding and condemning. The voices all ran
together, echoing and changing as the flames fragmented
and shrank, sinking into the wall of the vodrun until it
glowed a rich reddish yellow.

The shapes and patterns carved there looked far more
detailed now. Fascinated, he moved closer to study, just
as more colours streamed across the wall, shades of dark
green spreading up to and along one of those odd,
erratic outlines while a deep blue flooded and filled the
other side of it. Then an obscuring mass of opaque grey-
ness drifted slowly across the upper part of the wall he
was examining. All distress forgotten, he stared, sud-
denly realising that it was a coastline seen from orbit.
He giggled and looked closer, following the shore round
and down a long, curving stretch to a short peninsula
shaped like a hook.

Just like the one where the Humans have their stilt
buildings, he thought. Pilipoint Station ...

The details drew his gaze; engrossed, he looked still
closer and the coastline leaped a little nearer. More
details emerged, the texture of Segrana's vast expanse,
the rough, dark surface of the Silversong Sea, then
nearer still with coves and inlets becoming visible . ..
vertigo stirred in his head, his chest, his stomach, and he
tried to pull away from the dizzying vista.

Then the wall of the vodrun melted away, and with
nothing to brace against he fell, limbs flailing as he
shrieked, plummeting through layers of cloud in a head-
long dive towards the ground. Soon he could make out
treetops and wheeling birds, lines of waves and tiny
figures walking along the shingle. And Segrana rushed
up to embrace him.

Through layers of foliage he fell, a battering descent
of broken branches, collisions and glancing blows. He
felt every one, yet there was no pain, no sense of bones
broken or blood spilt. He tumbled and rebounded down
into the cool, humid darkness of Segrana's interior,
down towards the forest floor, towards a sheltered
pocket of old, impenetrable shadows where an ancient
swamp lay. It quivered as he plunged into it, a black,
gritty wetness grasping his struggling limbs, dragging
him down further down . . .

Return to the soil, return to the seed of things ...

He was drowning yet not drowning, while immense
thoughts coursed through his mind.

... to your soil, to your seed ...

The swamp faded, its enfolding dark trembling into
misty night strewn with stars and swirling haze, and the
rich light of a planet turning slowly overhead. Umara,
the beautiful blue orb that he had watched countless
times from the high towns of Segrana. But his gaze was
drawn to another distant quarter of the sky where an
array of glittering points moved steadily nearer, stretch-
ing across almost half the firmament, and behind it was
another vast formation and behind that another and
another. Then his mind . . .

His mind was within one of those points, a vessel
crammed with metallic shapes, incomprehensible
devices, all webbed with furious energies while lodged at
the vessel's heart was a creature, an intelligent being ...

An enemy to be pitied, a knight of the Legion of
Avatars, the truncated remnant of something that had
once walked upright. Their race became entangled in
its own technical hubris, eventually surrendering to a
union with the machine, inveigled by promises of
immortality. They hate the flesh and its flaws, a hate
that bred fear and a hatred of other species less invaded
by technology ...

Suddenly Chel was back, staring up into the deepness
of the night as arrow-formations of glittering points
swept towards the spreading web of Legion vessels. An
eyeblink and he saw the graceful lines of the newcomers,
long contours adorned with curved wings and vanes yet
seemingly too few against the swarming attackers.

In their millions the Legion invaded from another
universe, and battles like this bloomed in hundreds of
star systems. Facing desperate odds, the High Ancients
rallied together and wrought a terrible weapon in the
cause of the Great Purpose ...

As battle was joined he was shown fleeting glimpses
of clashes near other farflung worlds, saw scientists and
workers of many races working without cease to finish
the weapons that would end the Legion's destructive
rampage, tunnels bored down into the deep layers of
reality - warpwells.

Vast amounts of power were needed to bring the
warpwells to life, so hundreds of millions of High
Ancients gave up the energy of their minds and bodies to
create those vortices of destruction. Witness their dignity
as they sacrificed themselves to the greater good. A hun-
dred thousand years ago, a sacrifice long forgotten by
almost all, yet our memory is everlasting and we will
deny the Unmaker a final victory . . .

Chel saw the warpwells reach out to drag everything
into their dazzling maws, dust and meteorites, the debris
of battle, lifeless bodies, warships of either side. Some
Legion craft on the edge of the conflicts tried to escape
but the High Ancients gave more minds to fuel the
warpwells and their reach extended out to the space
between the stars. He saw Legion vessels by the thou-
sand drawn inexorably down, many reduced to
wreckage, spilling vapour and ragged fragments, while
others still grappled with the larger High Ancient war-
ships, all funnelled inwards, crashing together, hull
against hull. Then Chel was . ..

Chel was in the middle of it, hurtling downward
amidst the grinding shriek of metal, the buzz of horrify-
ing weapons and the roar of the warpwell vortex, whose
ice-blue-spear-black light blurred everything. Suddenly, a
world loomed - his second descent - rushing upwards, a
dazzling bright eye that gaped, a lacuna of energies into
which he plunged.

From all sides came glimpses of strange worlds and
stranger firmaments, deranged landscapes, inconstant
tracts, distortion, decay and desolation, fleeting and
fading, a shadowy succession of realities through which
he fell. Openings began to appear, pulling great swathes
of mangled machines and vessels, and Chel seemed to
see this from outside, see all the warships, Legion and
High Ancient alike, disintegrate and scatter across the
dark, deep layers of hyperspace. He realised that the
same thing was happening at all the other warpwells,
the utter destruction of the Legion of Avatars, millions,
perhaps billions of them, a cataclysm to stagger the
mind.

Could anything survive such a descent? The rushing
blur slowed as he fell with the battered, broken rem-
nants into a foggy abyss webbed with flickers of silver
radiance, slowing still further, drifting down past black
cliffs . . .

Many died that still many more and their successors
might live on . . . yet Unmaker takes many forms . . .

The cold shadows faded, and he blinked slowly as he
looked up. Once more he stood on that high place,
gazing at the planet overhead and almost crying out
when he saw that it was burning from horizon to hori-
zon. A few stretches of pockets were still green but
smoke veiled the surface of Umara, great wings and tails
of darkness sweeping across forests, plains and moun-
tains.

Ten thousand years ago Unmaker came again as the
Dreamless ...

Something crossed the bright edge of the planet, a
strange cluster of spikes growing as a large silhouette
came into view, a solid curve of blackness, some kind of
disc with antennae and probes radiating, Chel guessed.
Then a rod of polychromatic light stabbed out and
something exploded in planetary orbit, shedding a burst
of illumination upon the silhouette. Chel saw that it was
a massive globe covered with countless columns and
spires of varying sizes, wavering like the spines of a
colossal sea creature. And there were others drifting in
from the lightless gulf of interplanetary space, black
bristling orbs unleashing glittering barbs that fell on the
world below.

From a mountaintop on Umara he saw them strike
and tear apart the land, great slabs of ground and forest
rising up, twisting and disintegrating in the grip of a
terrifying destruction. But the Uvovo held their posi-
tions throughout the burning, tormented forests. Chel
could see them in underground chambers, in hilltop
strongholds, in fortified caves, all working with strange
mechanisms through which the green force of the
planet-girdling forests was channelled.

As I once was, with unity and with a voice . . .

He saw the Waonwir temple in its original state, pil-
lared, open floors rising from the hollowed-out
prominence, Uvovo everywhere engaged in serious
tasks. Its uppermost levels tapered to a slender tower
that sprouted numerous leaflike vanes which shimmered
with energy. Periodically, a massive flash obscured great
stretches of forest and a glowing membrane of light
would leap up into the sky, straight and fast, flying up
out of the atmosphere and wrapping itself around one of
the Dreamless vessels. Spines sheared and snapped, the
globular hulls cracked, the energy membrane surged
inside and found . . . nothing.

So weak, the last remaining, yet an old ally came . . .

Chel knew the story in his heart - at the darkest
moment of the battle, when it seemed that the
Dreamless had won, the Ghost Gods arrived - and now
he was seeing it. Their ships were immense and fash-
ioned to resemble ferocious beasts, four- and six-limbed,
winged and serpentine, many-tentacled and carapaced,
all bigger than mountains and numbering but thirty all
told. When battle was joined they were like giants
assailed by insects, but the Dreamless were relentless.
Wave after wave, horde upon horde of their machines
was hurled against the Ghost Gods' massive vessels, and
while most were destroyed a few got through the
weapon barrages and shields. Of those even fewer sur-
vived the defences and Sentinels, managing to break
through the hull, and of them just a handful evaded the
interior guards.

But that was all that was needed to seed ducts and
pipes with swarms of deadly metal vermin, to infect the
vitals with contagion. Eventually, even these colossal
craft began to succumb one by one to the pitiless tide of
Dreamless machines, to fail and break apart amid blos-
soming clouds of fire.

And Segrana, knowing that defeat could now be
avoided only by paying a terrible price, gave up the
greater part of itself. The forces of the world-forest
were diverted into opening a way to the domains of
hyperspace where the Dreamless kept their vast citadels.
There went the greater essence of Segrana to infiltrate
those strongholds, to spread itself transformed and
unseen across every sense and knot of fleshless mind,
every source of power, and to perish in a cataclysmic
destruction from which not a single machine escaped.
The interlinked meshes of communication and domina-
tion which had given them such strength were also the
cause of their downfall.

Such a victory, such loss, yet Unmaker never wholly
dies.

The vision of ships and fortresses burning in star
mists faded.

These new Dreamless know of our great well, the
last, and they hunger for it.

Sky-filling planetary vistas rolled away into shadow.

Weak and untested, still we must prepare for battle,
for invasions, for desperate sacrifice.

Cold silence enclosed him, limbs held fast, body
curled up, thoughts at rest, eyes tightly shut.

Your time approaches. Elders wish you remade but I
want less from you, much more later.

Was he inside a shell or was he the shell that was
going to crack open and reveal something new? Some
kind of pressure eased and he could relax fingers from
gripping, arms chest-wrapped, shifting his limbs a little,
then shakily standing, feeling with eyes still closed for
the vodrun chamber inner wall, running a hand over
the rough carvings.

'Are you well, seeker?' came the Unburdener's voice
from outside.

Chel smiled as he heard the sound of the door being
unfastened and cracked open his eyes to the lamplight
pouring in.

And screamed.

As soon as he heard the screaming, Listener Eshlo broke
off from his meditations and climbed quickly up to the
Contemplation platform then to the Threshold. It was
not unusual for the freshly husked to be overwhelmed
and distraught, although such a vocal outburst was
quite rare. But when he clambered onto the small shelf
he was helped to his feet by a panicky Unburdener who
pointed to the vodrun. Its door stood open and the
naked, unchanged form of Cheluvahar lay slumped half
inside, head bowed in the shadows, shoulders trembling
as he wept uncontrollably.

'My son,' he said. 'Compose yourself, stem your
sorrow.'

The sobbing abated a little.

'Pain . . . Master, in everything I see . . .'
The Unburdener gripped Eshlo's arm. 'His eyes,
Master!'

Eshlo met her fearful gaze for a moment then put
aside his own unease and reached down to drag
Cheluvahar out of the vodrun chamber. The scholar
cried out, shielding his face from the lamplight. But not
before Eshlo saw the four new eyes spaced across his
forehead, blinking and watering.

'Sister Unburdener,' Eshlo said, barely able to keep
his voice from shaking. 'Tear a strip from your robe -
our brother needs a blindfold.'

23

KAO CHIH

He was dreaming, a disjointed reverie of arguments held
in odd, shadowy halls, and inexplicable searches
through dusty, half-lit shelves, all the while evading
threatening, dog-headed men in a pursuit that led
through the storerooms and backstages of a strange and
immense theatre. Then he came to a towering, cav-
ernous corridor that sloped down towards a colossal
door of fire which was the sole source of light as well as
a smothering warmth. A series of wagons and carriages
passed by, filled with beings from every species, a noisy,
chattering cavalcade that seemed unaware of their jour-
ney into fiery doom. He ran alongside them, away from
the blazing portal, shouting and trying to warn them,
but they took no notice.

The carriages grew larger as the procession moved
onwards and downwards, became interstellar vessels,
tierliners and freighters, garbage scows and warships,
then great cityships and immense orbitals of wheel or
cone or helix or cluster configuration. And, impossibly,
entire planets and their moons joined the parade, sailing
ponderously past, their cloud-strewn surfaces tinged
reddish-gold by the furnace that awaited them.

Then suddenly he was on one of the great, open-
topped carriages, accelerating down towards the
stupendous flaming maw. There was no way to escape -
he was hemmed in by oblivious sentients as the heat
grew intense and the incinerating light flooded his
senses, blinding, burning . . .

And he awoke, stretched out on a wooden floor,
bound hand and foot, with a bright light shining in his
face.

'It's awake,' said a sibilant voice. The words were in
a guttural 4Peljan variant, but the linguistic enabler
Tumakri had given him made them understandable.

'Good,' said another, deep and hoarse. 'Get it on its
feet and move that band up to its knees. It can walk -
I'm not carrying it.'

With the light trained on his eyes, one of his captors
hauled him upright then slid the restraint from ankle- to
knee-level. Kao Chih felt groggy and full of aches from
erratic sleep and lack of food - he didn't know how
long he had been held prisoner but guessed it to be
nearly a day. They had locked him in an upper-floor
room in poor Avriqui's residence, during which time he
had been given nothing but a plastic bowl of brackish
water.

Now, as he was led along a low passageway by a
rope tethered to his neck, he was able to see his guards
more clearly. Both were Henkayan, a brawny, four-
armed race of humanoids taller than Humans by head
and shoulders. However, one of these two was if any-
thing slightly shorter than Kao Chih, scrawny and
walking with a limp. This was the one with the torch,
still held carelessly, and who suddenly became aware of

Kao Chih's regard. Without turning the Henkayan
paused and buffeted the side of his head with an upper
hand.

'Why you looking, Human scum?'

'Leave it alone,' said the other. 'Munaak wants it
undamaged.'

'But it stare at me. Curses with eyes, maybe.'

'Everyone stares at you, Grol, trying to understand
why you're so ugly.'

Grol shook the torch in anger. 'You shut, Tekik, you
shut! You scum-eater ...'

'Shut up your vlasking,' said Tekik, voice louder and
threatening, 'or I'll ram that light down your gullet and
Munaak will shove a spikel up your waster - if you
don't get a move on!'

Kao Chih stared at the floor, his gaze never lifting as
he was steered up a narrow stairway consisting of many
shallow steps. Earlier, while lying awake in the darkness,
he had almost been overwhelmed by the grimness of his
situation, lost far from home, his only companion,
Tumakri, almost certainly dead, while he himself was in
the hand of ruthless brigands. Even if he could somehow
escape, all the border documents and the ship ID tag
had been in the Roug's pocket, along with the hard cash
and the credit spines. But without his or Tumakri's live
presence, they were useless to whoever had them, which
wasn't much of a consolation. Yet somehow the worst
of the bleak dread had ebbed as the hours had dragged
by, aided by a small voice of hope insisting that they had
to be keeping him alive for a reason.

Up on the next floor he was led straight through a
dark open door into a small, wedge-shaped room lit by
a long console of screens and displays. Several large,
indistinct figures were gathered on either side of a high-
backed chair on a swivel pedestal. Kao Chih was
alternately dragged and pushed over to the chair then
made to kneel, close enough to hear an odd-sounding
dialogue. There were two voices deep in conversation,
except that one of them seemed to have a whispery
echo. Then the chair turned.

A pair of reddened, piercing eyes regarded him from
the hollow-cheeked face of a Henkayan who Kao Chih
took to be Munaak. Lenscups protected those eyes,
magnifying their appearance, while puckered cicatrices
criss-crossed the hairless scalp. The Henkayan wore
long black robes marked with symbols in pure white,
and Kao Chih almost failed to realise that he was miss-
ing both right-side arms. But the upper shoulder had
something else attached to it - a head.

'This is the Human creature we reluctantly brought
under our protection,' Munaak said in a smooth, rich
voice, and as he did so the head muttered and whis-
pered, quickly repeating the sentence but mingling its
phrases while the shrivelled eyes stayed tightly shut.
'Does it meet your requirements?'

Over Munaak's shoulder, something moved on one of
the screens, a shadowy cowled form against a dim back-
ground, shelves, racks, yellow light gleaming on glass
and chrome objects.

'My ... my requirements call for many, but you have
only one.' The hooded figure's voice sounded vaguely
metallic and blurred. 'Was this one alone?'

'It was travelling with a Roug but we killed it rather
than let some biter vermin gain a commodity . . .'

'A Roug?' The shadowy figure leaned back. 'An old
race with strange abilities - might they not pursue, seek
redress?'

Munaak made a derisive sound. 'An old race, but
weak and without allies - they will not venture this far.
Now, you know the price so will you pay?'

The cowl inclined. 'I will enable the fund transfer
now and arrange collection of the specimen in three
odas.'

The screen blanked and was replaced by swirling blue
patterns. Munaak regarded Kao Chih for a moment
with his large, gleaming, unwinking eyes then switched
his gaze to the two guards.

'Take our specimen down to the vehicle bay,' he said,
with the head whispering disjointedly. 'Lock it in the
storeroom, and no delays for any reason!'

Kao Chih kept his head bowed and his mouth shut as
the Henkayan guards roughly and swiftly dragged him
out of the room. He had learned early on the value of
silence and now all he could do was hold to both his
sanity and a few shreds of hope.

But now my fate rests on my value as merchandise of
some kind, he thought bitterly. We were foolish to come
here so rashly - where there are no laws the weak
become property.

Neither of his escorts said anything as they hurried
him down a steep stairway in which the gravity plating
was decidedly uneven. Soon they arrived at a heavy,
moulded pressure door that swung sideways to admit
them to a gloomy parking bay with curved walls. A
pathway of spongy, grubby gravplates led along one of
the walls, between the reinforced struts, to what looked
like a rectangular box with a window. The brawny
Tekik opened a door in its side, paused to snap another
restraint around Kao Chih's ankles, then thrust him
inside. He gave the cluttered interior a brief look and
stepped back, but before the door closed the scrawny
Grol poked his head round.

'Human scum going to new owner,' he sneered. 'Soon
wish he was back with good Henkayan friends - we not
scientists!'

He let out a burst of cackling that stopped abruptly
when a large hand grabbed him by the throat and
yanked him back out. The door slammed, a locking
click, squabbling voices receding, the pressure door
closed with a soft clank and the hiss of the seal. Silence.

Kao Chih squirmed onto his back in the darkness
and managed to get into a seated position, leaning
against the wall. Feeling drained and shivering a little,
he tried to take stock of his surroundings. A faint blue
radiance came from a small console set into the grimy
window's lower right corner and as his eyes grew
accustomed a few details became apparent. Dozens of
small objects, parts maybe, were scattered over most
of the floor, and the air stank of degraded machine
oil. Cupboards gaped, revealing rolls of some mysteri-
ous material and heaps of tools, wires, junk. A large
metallic cylinder, a lubricant tank perhaps, was fixed
to the wall, above a few rows of indistinct tools on
hooks...

'Are they gone?' said a voice.

Kao Chih caught his breath in surprise, senses sud-
denly alert.

'Who's there?' he muttered. 'Where are you?'

'First look out of the window and see if either of
those cretins is standing guard.'

Guessing that the hidden speaker might be a survivor
from Avriqui's household, Kao Chih struggled to his feet
and shuffled over to the window.

'No one there,' he said, peering out. 'Must have gone
back in . . .'

'Good - one less obstacle to overcome.'

Pale, bleached light bloomed in the small room and
Kao Chih turned to see the wall cylinder flicker like a
display with a bad feed. Then, in an instant, it went
from a two-metre drum-like fixture with flat ends to a
somewhat dumb-bell-shaped object about a metre tall.
The meagre light from microfield projectors showed up
the scratched and battered casing as it drifted over to the
window.

'Nice trick,' Kao Chih said slowly. It was a sentient
mech of unusual config, yet there was something famil-
iar .. .

'Camouflage projection,' the mech said. 'It has its
uses, now and then.'

Recognition dawned. 'I've seen you before, at that
market in the big corridor where ...' He faltered, vividly
recalling Tumakri's last moments.

'The Roug who was killed yesterday was your
friend?'

'Friend and travelling companion,' Kao Chih said.

'And you are a Human.' The machine paused. 'Your
race is most uncommon in these sectors, yet greatly dis-
liked.'

'So it seems,' he said. 'Were you an associate of Rup
Avriqui?'

'You speak in the past tense so I assume that the vile
Munaak has taken his life, and now he's looking for a
buyer for you . . .'

'He's found one, a scientist of some kind.'

'Ah, a vivisector in other words.' The mech's
microfields showed a glittery diffraction pattern for a
brief moment. 'Now I shall be most honest with you -
although I knew Avriqui slightly I could not be consid-
ered his associate. However, when your Roug friend was
ambushed and killed on Nibril Concourse I was nearby
and chased off those Gomedran scavengers. Even with a
bolt in his head he was still conscious enough to urge me
to take certain items from his garment while repeating a
name over and over, saying I had to find this person,
Gow-Chee. This is you, correct?'

'Indeed, yes,' Kao Chih said, hardly daring to hope.

'You may call me Drazuma-Ha*, although my full
name involves audio frequencies your species is
unequipped to hear.'

The last syllable of the mech's name sounded like a
strange metallic chime, but he made no mention of it
and gave a short, formal bow.

'I am very pleased to meet you, Drazuma-Ha*. Now
that you have found me, are you prepared to help me
escape?'

'I would be more than happy to help you flee this
moron-infested junkheap altogether if you take me
along with you.'

A number of questions came to the forefront of Kao
Chih's thoughts - why did the mech want to leave and
where was it heading, among others - but none seemed
urgent.

'That would be most acceptable - could you begin by
removing these bonds?'

Microfields extended tendril-like from the mech's
upper and lower bulbs, there were faint clipping sounds
and Kao Chih's ankles, knees and wrists were free.

'My sincerest thanks,' he said, trying to ignore the
uncomfortable needling of returning circulation. 'What
plan do you have for leaving this place? Will we have to
fight our way out?'

'That is one possible route,' said the mech Drazuma-
Ha*. 'However, I did think that leaving by the bay doors
in one of Avriqui's lugosivators would be less hazardous
to life, limb and circuitry.'

Kao Chih's eyes widened. 'Like the odd cart that
Tumakri and I rode in? Are they fit for hard-vacuum
travel?'

'Barely,' the mech said. 'Well, we only need to get
from here to a general maintenance lock, near the
Secondary Docking Lacuna, which it should manage
adequately.'

'There is a small problem,' Kao Chih said. 'Rup
Avriqui was to provide a hyperspace course dataset for
the next stage of our journey, which he was supposed to
join us on. It must still be in his system somewhere ...
would you be able to access it from here, perhaps?'

The mech was silent for a moment, its aura display-
ing strings of geometric symbols that pulsed with a soft,
pearly glow then vanished.

'These controls,' the mech said, pointing a microfield
extensor at the small window console, 'are not linked to
the hold's higher data functions. I will have to go up
into the hold itself and hope to find a terminal nearby
without encountering any of Munaak's thugs.' The
machine glided over to the door, which clicked and
swung open. 'Wait here, and please don't make any
loud noises.' It left the storeroom, crossed to the pres-
sure door, which opened and closed behind it.

Kao Chih gazed around him, looking for something
he could improvise as a weapon, and came up with a
long-shafted autoauger and a good, solid panel sledge.
That took about five minutes. Fifteen nail-biting minutes
later the pressure door opened again and Drazuma-Ha'
re-entered the garage hold.

'Do you have the course data?' Kao Chih said, emerg-
ing from the storeroom.

'I do but time is against us - I had to stun one of the
guards, which means he'll be missed before long. Quick
climb up to those stalls while I open their shutters. And
you may as well leave the low-tech arsenal behind.'

Kao Chih shrugged, tossed the autoauger but decidec
to hold on to the sledge. Then he stepped gingerly of
the gravplate walkway, grabbed one of a series of teth-
ered handholds and pulled himself along in zero-gee
over to a now-open alcove in which a lugosivator of a
cheerful blue colour was anchored. As he drew near, its
windowed cowling popped open and Drazuma-Ha *'s
voice came from the storeroom.

'You'd better get in now, Gow-Chee - it seems we
will have to depart in a hurry.'

Once he was inside, the little vehicle shuddered and
leaped out of its recess, sealing itself as it swung towards
the ribbed bay doors. Kao Chih, thrust sideways by
abrupt acceleration, held on to the seat while panicky
questions crowded his thoughts - where was the mech,
how did you steer this thing, and what if he hit some-
thing?

There was a thud from above, and looking up he saw
the metre-long shape of Drazuma-Ha* lying on top of
the cart, its microfields extended in a web that gripped
the cart's upper casing.

'No need for anxiety, Gow-Chee. A brief journey
along this side of the station and we shall be back inside
and on our way to your ship.'

The bay doors concertinaed open and the flash-
frozen atmosphere burst all about them in a glittering
cloud as they flew out. For one breathtaking moment it
was as if they were hurtling through a miniature galaxy,
past swirls, clusters and ripples of tiny gleaming pin-
points. Then the cart slewed round as braking thrusters
flared and off they sped.

The exterior of Blacknest Station was an accurate
reflection of its inner disarray, a maze of spars and
cables, conduit bundles, blobs of vacglue moulded into
handholds, bulging (and frequently damaged) nets of
trash, old pinhole leaks fantastically bearded with spiny
icicles. Improvised bucketseat funiculars provided safe
crossings while a horde of drones, probes and bots of
every size darted about on mysterious errands.
Drazuma-Ha* seemed to be steering the cart in the same
direction as a couple of diamond-shaped bots bearing a
red smiling moon symbol, and minutes later they were
sharing the filthy, battered drum of a maintenance lock.
There was a chorus of grinding, scraping noises as it
turned, flashes of bright light, the loud hiss of repres-
surisation, and the lock swung open to reveal a
cluttered, narrow workshop and a surprised Bargalil
botmaster, its stocky, hexapedal form draped with tool
belts and pouches of spare parts.

'Thank you for the use of your lock, good sir,'
Drazuma-Ha* told it as Kao Chih clambered out of the
cart. 'Please accept this excellent, deluxe-model mini-
loader as a token of our gratitude.'

Then they dashed out of the workshop, leaving
behind the pleased yet confused Bargalil, his gaze
moving from abandoned cart to empty doorway and
back.

'We must be as quick as we can without arousing
suspicion,' said the mech as a lateral slot opened in its
upper section and a bundle of objects protruded - the
boarding passes, dock ID, Tumakri's credit stems and
hard cash. 'At the gate, be polite and calm, and if the
new attendants ask for additional payment pay it with-
out argument. Tell them that I am travelling with you -
if they ask for more details, say that I am your con-
tracted technical support adviser. If they aren't aware of
how vital commercial confidentiality is to a place like
Blacknest I shall be more than happy to enlighten them.'

In the event, their passage through boarding control
went smoothly, and Kao Chih had to pay only a fairly
small amount to meet the 'one-off staff surcharge'. He
felt almost giddy with relief as they reached the other
side of the gates and hurried down towards the vari-
ously sized portals. Following a glowing telltale on the
dock ID, they had just reached one of the medium oval
exits when the mech paused abruptly, and glancing back
Kao Chih saw the gate officials angrily gesturing at two
bulky drones who were pushing their way past the desk.

The next thing he knew, Drazuma-Ha* had bodily
lifted him with pressor fields that held him against the
mech's casing, arms and legs held straight and immobile.

'My sincerest apologies, Gow-Chee, but speed is of
the essence!'

Kao Chih let out a wordless sound of surprise as the
mech launched itself up the docking duct, swooping and
dodging around other passengers.

'Is there something you'd like to tell me, Drazuma-
Ha?' he said loudly as they slowed to edge past a family
of reptilian Naszbur.

'I shall explain it all,' the mech said. 'Once we are
aboard and safely under way. Do not be alarmed, how-
ever - my predicament is no cause for concern over my
integrity.'

Nice of you to let me know, Kao Chih thought as
they reached a circular door which detected his dock ID
and opened like a flower, leaves sliding aside.

Then they were in the flexible transfer tube, dimly lit
by a few glostrips and the docking lacuna's own floods,
filtered through the tube's opaque membrane. Released
from the mech's pressors, Kao Chih kicked and hand-
steered himself along to the Castellan's airlock, a sight
he'd thought he would never see again. He brought the
dock key up to the verifier panel and held it there while
poking his little finger into the biosampler slot.

Something moved outside, occluding the light from
the nearest dock flood, then suddenly it loomed closer
and collided with the tube.

'Does it usually take this long?' said Drazuma-Ha*,
now poised quite close by.

Kao Chih glared at the machine. 'Is that another of
your predicaments? - look, it's trying to cut its way in!'

A metre or two back from the airlock, the tube's heavy-
grade material was being pinched. Kao Chih stared at the
deforming plastic with panic and a growing sense of unre-
ality enhanced by the hammering sounds coming from
the access port at the other end of the tube. Then to his
vast relief the verifier panel beeped and the airlock hatch
slid open. Courtesy was not uppermost in his mind as he
dragged himself in round the edge of the coaming, closely
followed by the mech. Once they were inside he punched
the hatch button and a moment later they were sealed off.

'Show me to the pilot controls,' the mech said. 'We
must leave immediately.'

'This way,' Kao Chih said. 'But why the haste now
that we're safe?'

As they reached the main console he heard distinct
hard knocks and thuds coming through the hull.

'Who are those droids?' he muttered. 'And what do
they want?'

'Collectors,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'Chasing an old
debt. A moment, please.'

Microfield extensors sprang out from the mech's aura
to the console, connecting with several interface ports.
Readouts and symbol telltales flickered in waves across
the cockpit and one of the auxiliary screens unfolded
from its niche to reveal an exterior shot of the
Castellan's hull, underneath, near the midsection. A
strange, angular machine crouched there on several
articulated limbs, reflected light from further back cast-
ing it in silhouette. A second screen showed the other
two droids now in the access tube and making cumber-
some progress towards the airlock. Then a faint whining
noise came from underfoot, beneath the deck.

'It's drilling through the hull,' Kao Chih said, striving
to stay calm.

For a moment the mech made no reply, then:
'All is ready, Gow-Chee - shall we depart?'
'Without delay!'

The Castellan gave a lurch and suddenly he realised
he should have been strapped in. Hurriedly he did so
while keeping most of his attention on the exterior dis-
plays. The access tube had unfastened from the airlock
and was retracting into its housing with the two droids
still holding on. The third still clung to the ship's under-
side and the drilling sound continued unabated. On the
screen, the jumbled shapes and structures of Blacknest
receded as their reaction thrusters burned a departure
trajectory.

'We will soon be far enough away for a safe jump
into hyperspace,' the mech said. 'But there is a problem.'

'What kind of problem?' Kao Chih said hoarsely.

'The hyperjump course data I obtained from Avriqui's
system is supposed to take us to Bryag Station near the
Indroma border, but the value set is several hours out of
date. Clearly he meant to recompile it just before depart-
ing with you and your deceased companion . ..'

Kao Chih's heart sank. 'We could emerge inside a sun
or a planetary atmosphere ...'

'No, not with the safety features built into this vessel,'
Drazuma-Ha* said. 'We would be safe from such perils,
including the one currently attached to our hull - it would
detach itself the moment the hyperdrive initiated its first
phase. But our destination will be indeterminable.'

'And if that breaches the outer hull, we're finished.'
Kao Chih gripped the arms of his couch. 'Do it!'

'You're certain?'

'Just do it now!'

The shield layer rolled across the viewpane and he
murmured a brief prayer to his ancestors as the hyper-
drive gathered all its forces and hurled the Castellan
into the void.

24
GREG

He was almost a dozen metres down the southern face
of Giant's Shoulder, shivering in a cold night breeze,
when his comm chimed. He called out to Teso and
Kolum, his Uvovo accomplices, to stop lowering, then
answered the call.

'Greg Cameron here.'

'Hello Greg, it's Catriona. Just thought I'd call you
before the shuttle leaves.'

'Ah, thanks Cat, that's, um, very thoughtful of you.'

'So, what are you up to this evening? Sounds like
you're outside ...'

'Oh, just studying some pillar carvings, y'know,
trying to figure out if they're ritual or ceremonial ...'
He felt himself break out in a cold sweat, more from the
gnawing sensation of vertigo, suspended there in the
high darkness with a handilamp hanging from his neck,
lighting up the rock face right in front of him.

'Just a moment,' said Catriona. 'Are you ... dammit,
you are! - you're climbing down the side of Giant's
Shoulder in the middle of the night. Are you completely
insane?'

Greg sighed. In the aftermath of the shooting yesterday
he had showed Catriona the scans revealing the passages
and chambers beneath the temple, and together they had
started planning how to reach the opening that led inside.
But Cat had been ordered back to Nivyesta, leaving Greg
to pore over the scans and and an assortment of pictures
of Giant's Shoulder dug out of the files. Then came news
of the bombings, which seized his attention for the rest of
the day.

'Look, I'm fine, I'm safe, the equipment is the best
and I've got friends helping me,' he said, exchanging
waves with the two Uvovo smiling down at him. 'I'm
more worried about you, to be frank.'

'I'm okay. Did you get hold of your mother and your
brothers?'

'I did, and they're all well - no one was anywhere
near Founder Square or the Ros Dubh sports centre,
but there's been no word from Uncle Theo since yester-
day ...'

'Greg, I just wish you'd give up this midnight expedi-
tion and wait for daylight.'

He smiled, thinking - Ah, she really does care. Things
are looking up.

'Och, don't worry, Cat,' he said, i'm strapped into a
body harness with about a thousand D-rings and plenty
of that Uvovo heavy-bearing line . ..' He gave the line a
playful tug. 'Safe as houses . . .'

Which was when the composite strap junction at his
back snapped. He yelled as he swung to the right and
down, head dipping. Through his cold terror he was
aware of his lamp slipping off and falling away into the
blackness, but most of his attention was on trying not to
slip out of the loops that still gripped his legs and left
arm. The two Uvovo called down in fearful voices but
he tried to reassure them - then cursed when he realised
that he had dropped his comm. By now he had worked
himself into a more upright position, holding on to the
safety line with a gloved hand.

Gods, Cat was right! I must be mad to be doing
this . . .

He glanced down and started to tell the Uvovo to
haul him up, then paused, staring at a faintly glowing
spot on the rock face a few feet below. He stared, held
his breath and listened . . . and, just on the edge of audi-
bility, heard a tiny voice calling his name. Catriona! He
laughed shakily - his comm must be lying on a ledge or
in the tangle of a cliffside bush - and shouted to her to
wait a minute or two. Quickly, he rigged the loose
strapping onto the safety line with toothhooks to take
some of the load off the damaged strap junction, then
told the Uvovo to lower him. Slowly he descended
towards the glow, which he now reckoned might well
be sitting in a niche in the rock. Then he came level
with it and saw his comm, resting in a tangle of dry,
dead roots that spilled out of a sizeable gap in the cliff
face.

Reaching in he grabbed it and saw that Cat had dis-
connected. Quickly he sent a note saying that he was
okay, then activated the comm's little torch and shone it
inside the opening. He stared in surprise for a moment,
then chuckled - beyond the opening was a small pas-
sageway sloping down towards the front of Giant's
Shoulder. The opening was just wide enough to crawl
into, which he did, pausing halfway in to undo the har-
ness then shout to the Uvovo to pull it up. When he
told them he was exploring a cave they became agitated,
imploring him to return.

'I'll be perfectly safe,' he yelled back. 'Just get the
replacement harness from stores and listen out for m .'

'Old places are dangerous, friend Greg,' came Teso's
strained reply. 'Please be very careful.'

'I will be, don't worry!'

Then he turned his attention to the passage. It was
quite narrow and low, just a little over average Uvovo
height. The walls were smoothly worked with even
curves, as was the opening through which he had
entered. Shining his torch further down he could make
out another similar aperture, but choked with coils of
redthorn as well as the decaying detritus of dead plants.
This had to lead to the opening he had seen on the
Heracles scans, and which he had intended to find
tonight.

Perhaps this will be safer than hanging about in the
air, he thought as he tugged out his forest blade and
attacked the tangle of vegetation.

The passage went on for another ten metres or so,
blocked at regular intervals by bushes or creepers that
had taken root in the soil-caked floor near the open-
ings. He was sweating freely by the time the passage
turned back the other way: the water-worn vestiges of
steps were just visible under the layers of dirt and decay.
Insects glimmered and settled in the slim beam of his
comm-torch, which chimed just as he started hacking at
another wall of desiccated twig. It was Cat. He took a
deep breath and answered.

'Hi, Cat!'

'Right, what the hell happened?'

'Eh, nothing serious, just juggling with my comm . ..'

'Dammit, Greg, I... was worried ...'

He heard the catch in her voice and instantly regret-
ted the offhand remark.

'I'm sorry, Cat, I'm okay, just had a wee fright when
a clip broke. But I rigged a repair and I'm now inside the
rock face of Giant's Shoulder and making my way down
a passageway.'

'Is it safe?' she said. 'What does it look like?'

He gave a brief description and assured her that he
was not in any danger.

'Aye, well watch out for doubletails - they nest in
dark, dank places.'

'And they're usually found further to the north than
this,' he said. 'But I will keep my eyes open, I promise.
When's your shuttle flight?'

'Less than an hour.'

'I'll call you when I reach the opening,' he said. 'Or
wherever this is leading to.'

After murmured goodbyes, he thumbed the torch
back on and resumed chopping away dead foliage.
Another thirty-odd minutes later he had hacked, kicked
and torn his way through several barriers of roots,
creepers and bushes, most of it dead growth. His exer-
tions had raised wafts of dust which clung to his clothes
and hair, working its way into the creases of his hands
and face - he felt indescribably grimy and often coughed
in the hazy gloom. But beyond the last clump of vegeta-
tion he came to a level landing and a large square door
in the rock. Opposite the door was a semicircular
window that was blocked by a curtain of heavy-leafed
creeper, some of which had spilled inside.

Beyond the dark threshold of the door was a pitch-
black corridor. With his torch lighting the way, Greg
followed it inwards for about twenty paces before
encountering a double row of pillars that completely
blocked the way. The pillars were square and the rows
were set close together in a staggered formation that
obscured what lay further on. Frowning, he called
Catriona.

'Took ye long enough,' she said.

'I've been doing a bit of pruning,' he said. 'Have you
ever seen square pillars in a Uvovo building?' As he
spoke he took out a small field cam and took a few pic-
tures.

'No, never.'

'Well, I'm looking at some now.' He described them
for her, then examined their tops and bottoms. 'The dirt
and dust buildup is solid around the bases but up at the
ceiling there's a definite gap, as if the pillars slid down -
maybe this is some kind of primitive stone portcullis . ..
wait a second, what's that?'

After probing the gap around one pillar he had
pushed it to see if there was any give, and immediately a
sequence of four glowing symbols had appeared on its
face, one by one down its length, and faded away. A
moment later the sequence repeated itself and he swiftly
took more pictures while describing what was happen-
ing.

'What do the symbols look like?' Cat said.
'Nothing like any of the glyphs that the Uvovo use,
now or in the past.' He bent down for closer study.

'They're composed of straight and curved lines, some
crossing others, some not.'

'Could be ideograms,' she said. 'But what kind of
technology can embed glowing characters in stone and
still be functioning thousands of years later?'

'Aye, those ancient Uvovo sure had a few tricks up
their sleeves . ..'

Suddenly there was more light in the passage as sev-
eral triangular symbols lit up on the adjacent pillar.

'Why have you gone quiet? Greg, what's happening
now?'

'Seven triangles have appeared on the next pillar ...
wait, the one at the bottom has gone out so there's
six ...'

'Hmm, odd. Has it come back?'

'No, and another just went out, the top one, when
the four symbols went through the sequence.'

'Hang on, the Uvovo use the triangle to symbolise an
imperative demand for an answer so those other four
ideograms ... must be some kind of question you have
to answer before all the triangles are gone ... I think . . .'

'So how do I answer the question?'

'No idea - how many triangles are left?'

'Two.'

'Get out of there, Greg, now!'

He dived away from the pillars and dashed for the
entrance. As he did, a rumble came from the surround-
ing rock then cracking sounds and a cluster of heavy
impacts. Dust billowed out and settled on his shoes and
trouser legs.

'Greg, are you okay?'

'I am,' he said. 'And now I'm going back inside for a
look.'

if I could reach through this comm . . .'

'There're more pillars, Cat, about fifteen paces in this
time.'

The new obstruction was identical to the first but
pristine, no windblown dust or dry leaf fragments nor
insect remains.

'Don't touch it, Greg - in fact, don't even go near it.
Promise me you'll go back up and wait till morning.
Then you can speak with Foyle at the Institute and get
hold of one of the Listeners to see if they recognise those
symbols.'

'Aye . . . okay, Cat,' he said, retreating to the
entrance. 'Maybe you're right. I'll head back up top,
get some rest.'

'Good, you sleep well and I'll... send you a message
when I'm home.'

'Okay, safe flight.'

For a few moments after the line disconnected, Greg
stood there, smiling thoughtfully, wondering where this
thing with Catriona was going - if it actually was going
somewhere. Then he shrugged.

Hard to be sure now that she's away back to
Nivyesta, he thought. As for this puzzle ... perhaps I'll
wait for Chel, see what he thinks of those symbols, and
when I've got something solid, then I'll tell Foyle at the
Institute ...

He shone the comm torch back along the corridor
one last time, peering at the pillars in the dimness. Then
he saw something he hadn't noticed before, that the
walls were covered in the familiar Uvovo raindrop pat-
tern, incised lightly into the stone. Except that here the
drops were depicted sideways as if they were streaming
into Giant's Shoulder.

And there was something else, an extra detail he had
never seen before; every drop had a round dot in it,
making it resemble an eye, and the more he stared the
more they really did look like eyes, hundreds, thousands
filling either wall, rushing into the heart of Giant's
Shoulder.

Chel, old friend, he thought as he produced his
camera once more, 7 hope you can help me figure out
what this means before I have to hand it over to the
Institute*.

25
THEO

Sixteen hours after the bombing in Founders Square,
with dawn still an hour or more away, Theo and sev-
eral others were hurrying through the streets of High
Lochiel. Rory was in constant contact with the teams
staking out the house while Ivanov, Hansen and
Forshaw provided armed escort, their semi-automatics
hidden by long coats. Theo was likewise prepared
with a 48-calibre hunting revolver holstered at his
waist.

'How much further, Rory?'

'No' far, Major - the house is three streets away and
we'll be goin' in the back door of the building across the
road. Our main obs post is on the top flair.'

'How many exits? Who's covering them?'

'It's a three-storey rooming house, two exits - Fyfe's
team is covering the front, Brunni's at the back wi' his
boys and a sharpshooter.'

'What about comings and goings?'

'Two women entered about an hour ago - Benny says
they were both totally hammered, must've been at a
party - and a man not long after them. Our boy stayed
in his apartment and is still there.'

'Good - tell Fyfe and Brunni that we'll move in the
next twenty minutes.'

It was the rifle which had led them here. Its serial
number dated back to the time of the Winter Coup, and
came from a government shipment of arms that Viktor
Ingram's men had seized just before Theo Karlsson's
small army marched into Hammergard and occupied
the Assembly buildings. After Theo's surrender and
Ingram's suicide, the shipment had been broken up and
hidden away in various locations, apart from one por-
tion that was ditched in the sea by its couriers while in
transit north, pursued by a coastal patrol. The two men
involved, Grieve and Orloff, were later reported dead in
a house fire in Trond. The surviving arms ended up
years later as part of Theo's assets. But Rory had a
record of all the assets' serial numbers and found that
the scope rifle came from the missing weapons cache,
supposedly lying in 200 feet of water due east of New
Kelso. It seemed unlikely that they had ever been
dumped in the sea at all, but the rifle's number provided
no useful lead.

They had more luck with the scope. It was custom-
made but had no makers mark, leading Theo to visit a
smoky trappers' bar in Hammergard's wharfside dis-
trict. There, a leathery-faced veteran hunter called
McTavish studied the wallet of images Theo had
brought along and identified the craftsman as Maxim
Lirmenov, an optician of High Lochiel. Theo and Rory
then travelled the 35 miles up the North Highway to
High Lochiel, reaching its outskirts in the early evening.
The light was still on in Lirmenov's shop and the
moment they entered Rory recognised the optician as
being none other than Kazimir Orloff, one of Ingram's
supposedly deceased gun runners.

With Rory's autopistol pressed against the back of his
neck, Orloff had quickly caved in, admitted that he'd
sold the scoped rifle to a man called Denisov. There was
an address for him in the sales record but Orloff said it
was probably false; while returning from a client in the
north of the town last night he had chanced to see
Denisov using a key to enter a run-down rooming
house. With that address, Theo had Janssen get a couple
of local reliables along there to watch the place while
Rory drafted in some lads from Landfall and Gagarin.

The observation post was in a disused office on the
fourth floor of a rickety building that sat between a
lumber yard and a low warehouse. The stairs were lit by
a couple of minimal glostrips while the room's inky
darkness was broken only by a red lamp sitting on the
floor. As they entered, a diminutive woollen-capped man
glanced round from the tripod telescope positioned at
the window.

'Hello, Rory, Major Karlsson - would you like to
see?' he said, rising from a three-legged stool.

'Thanks, Benny,' Theo said, taking his place. 'Any
change?'

'No, sir, he's still there, sitting and reading, drinking
a cup of tea, as if he's waiting for something.'

'Or somebody,' said Rory with a lascivious chuckle.
'Like a lady friend!'

Theo gave a half-smile as he looked into the tele-
scope, i doubt that he's the kind to take such risks.'

Through the lens he saw a third-floor window with
patterned curtains almost fully open and a leanly built
man reclining in an armchair reading a copy of Crag &
Coast Monthly. Denisov was wearing a short-sleeved
red shirt and dark trousers and wisps of vapour rose
from the cup on a nearby table.

'And that's all he's been doing?' Theo said, frowning.

'Mostly, for the last hour or so.'

Theo thought a moment then nodded. 'Okay, I don't
think we should wait any longer. Rory, tell Fyfe and
Brunni to get ready to—'

Just then Rory and Benny's handsets crackled into
life.

'Activity at the rear,' said a voice. 'Guy in blue work-
wear just came out - he's carrying a toolbox and taking
a bike out of the shed ...'

Theo squinted down the telescope. 'He's still there.'
But something doesn't feel right. He beckoned for
Benny's handset and thumbed the reply.

'Brunni, this is Karlsson - describe the man for me.'

'Short, stocky build, receding hair - looks harmless
but I can have one of my lads grab him if you like.'

Theo stared at the man who called himself Denisov as
he calmly sipped his drink and turned a page.

'Let him go,' he said. 'We don't want to alert Denisov
before we have to.'

'Right... that's him pedalling away now.'

'Okay - Brunni and Fyfe, move your men up to front
and rear doors. When you're both in position, move in:
do your best to take Denisov alive.'

'Understood.'

Theo stood up to get a better view of the street while
using his binoculars to keep an eye on the target. Three
men were heading for the rooming house's front door,
again long coats concealing weaponry from any chance
observation. Theo watched, feeling a knot of tension in
his stomach as he listened to the murmured voices on
the handsets. One of the three forced the lock then the
door was open and they were inside.

'Remember - we want him alive,' he said, raising the
binoculars again. Denisov still sat in his chair, reading,
drinking. Theo's uneasy feeling sharpened as the open
channels relayed the team's stealthy progress up the main
stairs. Denisov never changed and Theo was about to
order a pause when a woman started screaming inside the
house. Denisov didn't so much as flinch. Seized by a rush
of dread, Theo was drawing breath to order a retreat when
the upper floor erupted in flames and a roaring crash.

Theo threw up his arm instinctively as the explosion
ripped off part of the rooming house roof and blew out
the walls of Denisov's apartment. The windows of the
observation room rattled in the shockwave and a few of
the small panes shattered. When Theo straightened and
looked outside, the rooming house's top floor was
engulfed in fire.

'My God, a trap!' said a horrified Benny, it was a
trap ...'

Theo ignored him, instead snarled into the handset.
'All teams report! - Brunni and Fyfe report!'

'Major, this ... is Uvarov - Brunni and Fyfe are both
dead. We've got another three injured and only myself
and Dewar unhurt, but there's people trapped upstairs -
should we go in after them?'

Theo moistened his lips and tightened his grip on the
handset. He could hear the agonised cries from the
window.

'Do what you can, but get any weapons out of sight -
Rory's on his way, Benny too . . .' He glanced up to see
Benny following Rory out of the room at a run.
'Emergency services should be along soon so the story is
you were enquiring about rooms to let when it went
up, okay?'

'Got that, sir.'

'And tell me - who was it that screamed?'

'A woman opened the door across from Denisov's
flat and must have seen our guns - after that everything
went to hell.'

Alarms were ringing, some in the burning building,
others in adjacent houses. Then came the pulsing wail of
fire trucks.

is Rory with you yet?'

'He's here now, sir - he's got all the guns and radios.'
'Right - give him yours when I sign off and don't
forget to stick to the script.'
'Yes, sir.'

'Rory - local police will be here any minute so you
and Benny get over here and wait at the back door. I'll
pack the gear and meet you there.'

'Got ye, Major. We're on our way.'

Theo put down the handset, slipped the binoculars
into his pocket and began to dismantle the telescope.

The man in the blue workgear was Denisov, he
thought grimly. It had to be. When he got to a safe dis-
tance he must have watched my men go in then waited
a few moments before triggering the boobytrap, just to
maximise casualties.

So what had Benny been watching for the last
couple of hours? Some kind of hologram projected by
an offworld device, maybe? If so, it was probably
rigged for self-destruct when the main detonation went
off, leaving no traces, no evidence.

With everything stowed in a heavy backpack, Theo
slung it over his shoulder, picked up the red lamp and
headed for the stairs. Rory and Benny were waiting just
inside the back door and as they slipped off into the
night, he wondered how he was going to explain all this
to Sundstrom. And, more importantly, to the families of
his dead men.

26
GREG

Even wrapped in his wool-lined jacket, he shivered as he
leaned on the ancient, cracked rampart and stared down
at the misty coastal plain. It was a grey morning, the air
cold and moist from the night rains.

'So how bad is it?' he asked his brother.

Captain Ian Cameron, wearing full field camouflage,
rested one booted foot on a low notch in the wall.

'There's a lot of suspicion,' he said. 'Folk in the towns
just won't trust travellers or strangers, anyone who's
noticeably out of the ordinary.'

'That accounts for most of the faraway hunters and
trappers I've ever met,' said Greg.

Ian smiled. The eldest of the three brothers, he was
taller and rangier than Greg and had always been the
most physically active of them all.

'Aye, some of them have been on the receiving end of
it. I mean, the bombings are bad enough, but there was
a street protest in Gagarin last night in support of this
Free Darien Faction, which really got some locals
angry.'

Greg shook his head. 'Who were they?'

'Just some college hotheads waving placards, a few
dozen of them, but they made plenty of noise going down
Tylermans Walk, upsetting the locals, who started arming
themselves, but at least the police were quick to escort
them out of the area.' He rubbed his neck. 'Then that
house went up in High Lochiel last night. Not good.'
Both were silent for a moment.

it's hard to believe that community spirit is that frag-
ile,' Greg said.

'Things could be worse,' said Ian. i was talking to
some old Norj trappers yesterday, real hill-viking types,
and they were telling me a few tales from the time of the
Winter Coup. Reminded me of some of the stories Uncle
Theo used to tell - didn't take them seriously back then,
but now . . .'

'So where is he?' Greg said. 'I've not heard from him
since the shooting up here, neither has Mum, and she's
worried sick.'

Ian nodded. 'Officially, he is a special adviser to the
president's office, but there's no doubt that he's been
getting up to some skulduggery with the Diehards,
something to do with the bombings.' He swept his gaze
around the temple site. 'The Office of Justice has
stepped up security at several locations as well as here,
and not just because of your guests.'

Greg glanced over his shoulder at the grassy area well
to the rear of the main site. Several awnings had been set
up for the dozens of Uvovo who were gathering there to
await the arrival of the Listener who was to lead this
new offshoot, the Artificer Uvovo. Greg knew that it
was supposed to be Chel, but he also knew that the
husking ritual radically altered the Uvovo physique and
sometimes the personality too. Would he be anything
like the Chel he had come to know, and would he even
recognise Greg?

Just then a corporal approached with a clipboard of
supplementaries which Ian read over and signed.

'There's a dirij headed our way from the north,' he
told Greg as the soldier hurried off. 'Should be their
Listener. I'll just have our comms operator let company
HQ know.'

As Ian strode off, Greg steeled himself and straight-
ened. At least there were no reporters present by order
of the Institute, for which he was grateful. Lee Shan's
coverage of the shooting of the Sendrukan Assister had
depicted the security arrangements as amateurish and
ineffective, despite the involvement of Kuros's body-
guards. It had also included a shot of Greg's encounter
with the Ezgara commandos, complete with his every
barbed witticism. The Ezgara and other offworlders
might not understand the sarcasm but the Darien audi-
ence and those back on Earth could not have failed to
pick it up. Not long afterwards, of course, the bullets
had started flying.

Nor exactly a crowd-pleaser, he thought, heading
over to his hut to change.

Fifteen minutes later, a cigar-shaped dirigible drifted
in towards the zep station, the drone of its engines tail-
ing off as mooring cables were made fast. It swayed
gently by the platform, its bulbous gasbag looking pale
grey in the morning haze. Greg could make out a small
huddle of hooded figures as they disembarked, some
making their way up the wide path by foot while a few
others went ahead in one of the motorised buggies. By
the time the buggy arrived at the entrance to the site,

Greg and his brother were standing alongside Listener
Genusul, expectancy of one kind or another in all their
features.

Three hooded figures emerged from the vehicle, the
last of them Chel, who looked unchanged and unal-
tered, much to Greg's relief. But the reaction of the
Listener at his side was noticeably different, concern to
the point of distress visible in his gaunt, long-jawed face.
Chel met him halfway, said something in a low, urgent
voice, then turned to Greg.

Greg's positive feelings cooled and his smile faltered.
Physically, Chel seemed the same but his features were
drawn and his eyes had a bleak, sharp quality as if he
was under tremendous strain. Just above the eyes a strip
of dark cloth was stretched tight across the forehead,
and Greg wondered if it was a dressing for a wound.

'Greetings, friend Gregori,' the Uvovo said with a
faint smile. 'I've learned about these bomb attacks -1 do
hope that your family is safe.'

'They are, Chel - my mother has been giving me
almost hourly updates. My brother Ned has been help-
ing at one of the hospitals where a lot of the injured
were taken.' He hesitated. 'How about you? You look
pretty much the same, apart from needing a couple of
days' sleep, maybe.'

A look of amusement softened the Uvovo's weary,
strung-out expression. 'Yes, the husking did not pro-
ceed quite as I or anyone else expected. Yet it has left its
mark ...' Chel paused as one of his cowled companions
signed to him; he nodded and continued. 'Gregori,
regretfully we must resume our talking later - I have a
very important forgathering to attend.'

i understand - I look forward to hearing about your
travels.'

i promise I will explain what I can,' Chel said cryp-
tically. 'Till then.'

For the next three hours or more Greg went over a
bundle of field reports filed by teams of Uvovo scholars
who had been surveying the valleys northwest of the
Kentigerns. Periodically he had to go over to the large
eco-samples hut to examine this or that specimen - he
would have asked the reports' authors but they were
attending the conclave of this Artificer Uvovo. As he
shuttled back and forth he could see that the numbers
were growing steadily as newcomers arrived via the
densely forested ridges rising to the west. There seemed
to be a lot of discussion, groups walking to and fro,
lone speakers addressing small crowds, knots of Uvovo
milling about. Fortunately the weather was mostly dry,
with just one light passing shower which freshened the
air and made everything gleam in the cloud-fractured
sunlight that followed.

At last a young, wide-eyed Uvovo brought a message
from Chel asking Greg to meet him in the excavated
area known as the Stairwell in half an hour. He spent the
time eating a snack of baroham and gramato sand-
wiches while catching up on the news headlines on the
radio, then, with minutes still to spare, he decided to
head over anyway.

The Stairwell was a perfect example of the problems
inherent in excavating Giant's Shoulder. It did have
some stairs, two flights descending beneath the flag-
stoned expanse, but after that further steps had been
improvised out of broken masonry uncovered by earlier
explorers during their excavations. However, due to the
unstable, cavity-riddled nature of the interior, those pio-
neers found that the baulk sides of their digs quickly
became prone to serious collapse the deeper they went.
After several cave-ins and one fatality a couple of
decades ago, the bottom ten metres of the twenty-metre
hole were filled in and planked over. Further investiga-
tion was restricted to stratification studies and a few
cautiously shallow side trenches.

Chel was already there when he arrived, seated on a
bench in one of the older side trenches, just out of the
fitful sunlight. He raised a hand in greeting as Greg
descended the few steps and joined him on the bench.

'Chel, I could say that you're looking great,' he said.
'But that wouldn't, strictly speaking, be true.'

'The truth, friend Gregori, is that I feel worse than I
look,' the Uvovo said with a tired smile.

'Was your gathering a success?'

in the end, yes. There was much doubt to overcome,
and more distrust and pessimism than I anticipated.' He
gazed up at the ragged clouds. 'They were expecting a
fully-fledged Listener but instead they got... something
else.'

Turning to face Greg, he launched into an account of
his visit to the daughter-forest Tapiola. Greg listened
intently, fascinated at first by the husking ritual and
ensuing hallucinatory trance. But when he spoke of
having visions of the past and hearing the voice of
Segrana in his head, Greg began to wonder if the drug
had affected his mind - Chel seemed convinced that
these experiences were not fanciful creations of his mind
but came from outside, from Segrana.

Chel paused and regarded him a moment. 'Earlier,
many of my brothers and sisters thought that part of me
was still in thrall to the husking sap - do you think that
I have lost my reason?'

'You seem quite rational, Chel - I'd be reluctant to
judge until you've finished your tale. What happened to
you in there? Why didn't you turn into a Listener?'

Chel gave him a considering smile. 'Because I became
something else.'

He pushed back his cowl, reached up to untie the
dark grey bandage and lifted it away.

Greg stared, open-mouthed, at the row of four closed
eyes on Chel's forehead. As he watched the outer pair
fluttered open while Chel kept his own, original pair
tightly shut, along with the centre pair. The new eyes
swivelled to look at Greg, who smiled uncertainly.

'What do you see?'

The eyes looked around the shallow trench, its slop-
ing sides of compacted soil and masonry debris, then up
to the sky for a moment of searching before gazing
down at the Stairwell and its gloomy depths.

i see Umara's hidden face,' Chel murmured. 'I can
see glimpses of lost and forgotten histories. That block
for example—' He pointed to an irregular piece of stone
with a smooth outward surface,'—was once part of an
archway, and that one just along from it was part of a
supporting wall. Or I can look at your face, Gregori,
and see your mother and father, very clearly . . . and
also a thin-faced man with an ear missing, and a woman
with long black hair and a white streak through .. .'

Greg could suddenly feel his heart pounding. 'My
grandfather Fingal was a hunter who lost an ear to a

GREG
cragwolf, and the woman with the white in her hair can
only be my great-grandmother Moira - Chel, how . ..'

The Uvovo regarded him with those eyes, their dark-
ness a mingled hue of brown and green. 'Segrana's gift,
with which to carry out Segrana's work.'

Greg could not help noticing the undertone of resent-
ment in Chel's voice, but now that the initial shock was
past his mind was focused on the Uvovo's new abilities
and what they implied.

'And the other eyes,' he said. 'What do they do?'

i am not entirely certain,' Chel said, replacing the
strip of cloth then opening his ordinary eyes, i have not
yet learned how to interpret what they show me - some-
times it is as if I can see a kind of language underpinning
things around me, then if I look at symbols or written
words or even pictures it feels as though part of my
mind is trying to wrench a different kind of meaning
from them.'

'Are all these eyes meant to work together, perhaps?'

Chel gave a bleak smile, i have attempted that -
once. The effect is ... hard to describe, as if my head is
filled with a thousand arguments except that it is not
voices that war with each other but meanings! When I
came out - crawled out of the vodrun I really thought
that my mind was going insane, like a storm flooding
and tearing apart a town, a city, while all I could do was
watch the destruction from a nearby hill. If Listener
Eshlo had not acted to cover these eyes ...' He left the
sentence unfinished.

Could it really be true? Greg wondered. Is Segrana
actually an aware entity, some kind of distributed sen-
tience capable of radically altering individual Uvovo}

He had never heard of any Uvovo being born with extra
eyes, yet here they were before him, which suggested
that they had to be part of Uvovo DNA. Which also
begged the question, were these characteristics the result
of survival adaptation or of genetic engineering?

'Chel, have you looked at any Uvovo carvings or
symbols with the outer pair?'

'A few times,' Chel said.

'Did any appear unusual?' he said, adding, 'but in a
rational way?'

in Tapiola there are several ground dwellings and
the one where I recuperated is decorated with a number
of meditation pieces, wooden figurines and tablets. One
bore the symbol hmul, meaning "release of burdens",
but when I opened these eyes it became a word -
elishum, meaning "work of calmness".'

Greg nodded, his smile growing as facts fitted together.

'Chel, my friend, I think you might be able to help me
solve a little problem.' Then he told the Uvovo about his
encounter with the Heracles's xeno-specialist, Lavelle,
and took him over to his hut to show him the scan print-
outs of Giant's Shoulder. As Chel stared at the images by
the light of a desk lamp, Greg went on to tell of his mid-
night expedition, the strange passage and the pillar traps
blocking the way. The pictures he took down there had
turned out slightly distorted or blurred but he showed
them to Chel anyway. Chel studied the pictures closely
then shook his head.

i cannot make out these symbols, Gregori.'

Greg grinned. 'Would you like to go and look at the
real thing? Now?'

Chel needed little persuading. Half an hour later, with
the help once more of the Uvovo scholars Teso and
Kolum, they were lowered down the south face of
Giant's Shoulder, first Greg then Chel, entering this time
through the creeper-curtained opening. Equipped with a
torch each, they ventured into the cold, dark passage.
Chel stared about him at the eye-motif carvings on the
walls but made no comment, just nodded thoughtfully.
Greg slowed as they approached the pillars.

'Be ready for when the symbols appear,' he said.
'When that countdown starts it goes by very quickly.'

'Very well, Gregori, as you wish,' Chel said, removing
the headband and opening those strange eyes. Then he
walked the final few paces, bringing him right next to
the row of square pillars. He looked them over carefully
while Greg watched, tense and edgy, and they both
waited. Five minutes went by without incident then five
more. Chel looked questioningly at Greg, who shrugged.

'Friend Gregori, did you not say that you touched the
pillar while examining it?'

'Well, when I touched ... I suppose you could say it
was a bit of a shove ...'

Chel nodded and gave the nearest pillar a firm push.
There was no give to it but almost immediately four
familiar, glowing symbols appeared on the middle pillar.
Chel saw them, gasped and staggered back a step and
shook his head, as if dizzy.

'Are you okay?' Greg said.

Chel glanced at him with his ordinary eyes while
keeping the new ones focused on the pillar. 'No cause
for alarm, friend Gregori. Every time I need to adjust a
little ... ah now ...'

Leaning closer, the Uvovo examined the four intricate
symbols, just as a column of glowing triangles appeared
on the adjacent pillar.

'And that right there is your countdown, Chel,' he
said but the Uvovo waved him into silence, his stance
almost that of someone who was listening intently. After
a moment or two of standing stock-still he suddenly
straightened, his small, neat features creased by a smile,
then he sang a sequence of syllables in a clear, loud
voice. There was a grinding sound, deep vibrations from
above, and trickles of fine dust fell as the double row of
pillars ascended into the ceiling. Beyond it, Greg could
see by torchlight the previous ones and another three
sets after that also rising.

'That,' he said, 'was well done.'

Chel was gazing up at the pillar ends, resting flush
against the plain, unadorned stone ceiling. 'At first I
thought the celfs - the symbols - were showing me
words but when I looked deeper at each one I heard
musical notes which I sang in the order of the words
and ...' He gestured at the now-open corridor.

if only Cat was here to see this,' Greg said, laughing.
'Right, let's see what's along there.'

'Tread carefully, Gregori,' said Chel. 'There may be
other tests.'

Twenty paces on, the passageway turned a corner
and steps went down to a chamber where four columns
stood in a group before three stone doors in a curved
wall. The room was icy-cold - it was like walking into a
storage freezer. Greg shivered, his breath pluming like
silver fog in the torchlight as he went up to the door on
the left. Before he could get near it, though, Chel said:

'Gregori, wait, don't touch it! There is danger in this
room, another test to overcome. These columns .. .' The
Uvovo reached out to one, grazed it with his fingertips
and snatched them back. 'Very cold, sharp as talons,
and something else . . .'

Greg stood back from the stone door, and moved his
torch beam up the heavy frame and across the lintel and
the wall above, illuminating panels of relief carvings of
forest imagery alive with creatures of every kind, includ-
ing Uvovo. Then he noticed something in the wider cone
of torchlight, a circular, seemingly blank panel amid the
carven foliage, and when he turned the torch rightwards
he saw others.

'Chel - look.'

The Uvovo turned to see, adding his own torch beam
to Greg's as he examined the discs, standing motionless
with only his strange eyes staring. After several moments
he let out a long sigh, bowed his head and muttered
something in the Uvovo tongue. When he looked up
again his original eyes were open as well and full of a
dark, relentless concentration. The light from his torch
trembled on the wall and Greg didn't know whether to
speak or keep silent. Then Chel drew in a shuddering
breath as he turned away, all eyes closed, shining torch
dangling from his waist.

it says, "Choose Your Path To Death".'

'How cheery,' Greg said.

'But in the Iterants of the Eternal it says that all paths
lead to death and all deaths lead to the Eternal ... so
why three doors?' The new eyes were closed but his
own glinted in the torchlight. 'And why four pillars?' He
approached the nearest, aiming his torch at it as he
placed his empty hand against it.

'Careful, Chel,' said Greg. 'Frostbite.'

i can resist it for a short while, Gregori. There is
something strange about these pillars . . . could you
shine your torch here a moment - thank you.' Under the
combined light, Greg could see that the column had a
slightly slick, dull sheen. Chel shook his head. 'This is
not stone. Like the ones out in the corridor it signifies
something but I cannot see it. . . with these or these.' He
indicated his normal eyes then the new outer pair.

'What about the other ones?' Greg said.

Still looking at the pillar, the Uvovo said, 'Are you
asking me to risk my sanity, Gregori?'

i could never do that, Chel,' he said, if the risk for
you is too great, then we'll go back up top and see if
there's another way to solve this - your call.'

CheL smiled. 'There is risk, certainly, but as I now
have a responsibility to the Artificer Uvovo I must inves-
tigate this mystery with all of my abilities. Otherwise I
would not be worthy of Segrana's gifts and purpose.'

He closed all his eyes and stood there for a moment,
head slightly bowed. Then he straightened suddenly and
on his brow the centre pair of eyes snapped open,
glanced very briefly at Greg, then stared at the pillar
before him. Greg looked on, trying not to think about
the cold, pitiless volition he glimpsed in those eyes for an
instant.

Chel's gaze seemed to bore into that column.
Occasionally he flinched, a slight twitch of the head,
and his lips began to move soundlessly. Then without
warning he stepped away and went over to the next
pillar, his features fixed in a wide-eyed grimace. After
some moments he proceeded to the next and finally to
the last. When he retreated from it his eyes were all
tightly closed and his face was a mask of pain. As he fell
to his knees, Greg lunged forward to slow his fall, help-
ing him to rest on his side; the hand he had used to
touch the pillars was cradled by the other, and when
Greg reached out to the wrist he felt shockingly stone-
cold flesh.

Guilt washed over him. God, what have I done}

'The test demands . . . demands the correct path to
death,' Chel said hoarsely. 'Each pillar is a meditation
focus that fills the meditator with a particular creed of
thought, an overriding set of beliefs and instincts.'
Levered up into a seated position, he pointed with his
good hand at the pillars one by one. 'Fear, escaping from
enemies; dominance, destroying or preying on the weak;
arrogance, reaching out for godhood; serenity, change-
less and creating no change.' The Uvovo gave an
unsteady smile, if I had been a fully husked Listener, or
had approached with all these new senses open, and
chosen the wrong pillar, I would have been over-
whelmed by it and, soon after, dead from whatever trap
the doors conceal.'

'We'll be calling you "lucky Chel" next,' Greg said.

i would wear the title gladly,' the Uvovo said, getting
to his feet. 'Once we are through safely. Now I must
open myself to the pillar of serenity . . .'

'And that's the correct one, is it?'

'So the Iterants of the Eternal say.'

'How much will it affect you?' said Greg. 'Will you
be safe?'

it is only a temporary veil over the mind and fades
soon after.'

'You hope.'
'Exactly so.'

Greg stood over to one side as Chel approached one
of the rearmost pillars, facing it with all three pairs of
eyes now open, hands clasped across his chest. In the
frozen stillness Greg resisted the urge to stamp his
chill-bitten toes, instead rocking back and forth on the
balls of his feet, keeping the circulation going. Then,
before he knew it, Chel was heading towards the
middle door of the three, arm half-extended, hand
raised palm-outwards. He moved with a swift, gliding
gait and reached the door before Greg was even
halfway there. At his touch the carven stone block
swung inwards and the Uvovo continued on through
without breaking step.

Just as Greg reached the doorway there was a
swelling pulse of pale green light and fearing the worst
he stopped at the threshold, peering in. But at the other
end of a short passage he saw Chel standing a few paces
onward, swinging his torch beam around and above
him, gazing into the pitch-darkness.

'The way is open, Gregori,' said the Uvovo in a
dreamlike voice. 'Join me.'

Nevertheless he felt a prickling sweat as he hurried
through to the other side.

'Such power waits here, Gregori, a vast slumbering
might.' Chel's voice was measured yet slightly drowsy.
'The legacy of the Great Ancients.'

For a moment or two Greg didn't respond as he
looked about him, trying to comprehend what he was
seeing.They seemed to be in the huge circular chamber
shown in the deepscan images, standing near the sheer
wall which rose perhaps 30 metres to a level ceiling.
There was a second waist-high wall, 4 metres in and
made of rough blocks, which ran round the chamber. By
torchlight he saw no decoration on the walls or ceiling,
but when he looked over the low wall he was amazed to
see patterns incised into the dark, polished stone,
strange interlocking, semi-geometrical designs, symbols
and characters quite unlike the glyphs and ideograms of
the Uvovo language, completely covering the circular
floor as far as he could see by his torch's beam. From the
scan printouts he had guessed the chamber to be roughly
250 metres across, which made this vast, ceremonial
decoration a staggering find, not to say a mysterious
one.

Following the low wall, he considered climbing over
for a closer look, but then further along, just visible by
his torch, was a gap. As he drew nearer he saw that
there was a wide platform set into the main wall at
about head-height with steps leading up to it. He
glanced back at Chel, thinking to draw his attention to
it, but the Uvovo was seated cross-legged on the stone
floor, eyes closed, his torch lying beside him, throwing a
fan-shaped shaft of light across the stone.

He'll see it all when he comes out of that trance, he
thought and climbed the steps two at a time. The steps
split halfway up into two stairways flanking a curved
shelf which jutted from the platform like a pulpit. The
platform itself was about 2 metres deep and empty but
on the jutting shelf was a square plinth with an odd
pyramidal depression in its flat top. Standing there he
could almost feel the ancient darkness congeal about
him. The air was cold and still, yet it didn't seem in the
least bit stale.

Was this an altar} he wondered. Or a vantage point,
since the great circular floor was the undoubted focus of
this immense chamber?

Greg descended the stairs. The gap in the low wall lay
directly before him and without pause he walked out
onto the fabulously inscribed floor.

A sudden, fleeting sensation passed over him and he
could feel hairs prickle on his scalp and the backs of his
hands. It didn't feel any colder out there yet there was an
instinctive uneasiness quivering in him. Frowning, he
crouched down with his torch to get a good look at the
patterns. The lines were smooth and precise and had
been incised in the stone with a fine, sharp implement,
yet the edges of every groove were rounded and worn
while the untouched stone surfaces looked pitted and
eroded. He reached down and touched the stone, which
turned out to be slightly warm. Then with a fingertip he
traced one of the pattern lines, a long curve with several
small loops, feeling the rounded edges and the rougher
stone on either side ...

Next thing he knew a bright gleam appeared in the
groove beneath his finger and began to race along it in
both directions. He snatched his hand away but it kept
spreading like a silver thread dividing and coiling and
entwining and surrounding. Seized by dread he stood,
intending to head for the gap in the low wall .. . and
was stopped by an invisible barrier. Fearful, he turned,
took a step and came up against another one. It was
solid and entirely transparent: shining his torch at it
caused a faint ripple effect that quickly faded. Trying not
to panic, he turned, pointing his torch, and saw an open
area but before he could take a step he heard Chel speak
urgently nearby: 'Gregori, as you value your life stay
exactly where you are - don't move!'

27
CHEL

The meditation pillar for serenity had made everything
so clear to him. With all eyes open and his every sense
ready, Chel had looked into the pillar and the pillar had
sung to him a gorgeous, interlocking river of concepts
and revelations that flooded his thoughts with intrinsic
truth. Be changeless and leave the world unchanged, the
highest aspiration, the supernal truth.

And of course, if all paths lead to death it does not
matter which door you take, thus when he chose the
middle door it let him through without hindrance. A
few steps on and he had to stop, his senses over-
whelmed - the huge chamber was alive to his eyes! The
glow of torches, the walls decorated with brightly
coloured hangings, the pulse and pattern of energies,
messages sent and received, visitors coming and going,
greetings and farewells, conversations, commands and
prayers. With the eyes of serenity Chel could see the
changes wrought by the past: changeless he could per-
ceive the warpwell in all its slumbering glory, its use as
a journeying portal expertly operated by those ancient
Uvovo.

He tried to communicate something of this to

Gregori, who had then wandered past him, eyes blind to
all the glory yet clearly still struck by the chamber's
dimensions and the subdued undercurrents of the warp-
well's mighty purpose. In Chel's eyes, the well's surface
was a murkily opaque layer, a thick translucent plate
covering nebulous depths. Not dead but not awake, the
warpwell slept.

Chel had sat down on the stone floor to rest his limbs
and allow his thoughts to drift into a true changeless
state. But something was amiss, something was holding
his mind back, keeping it from the soothing, joyous cer-
tainty of indivisible serenity. And whereas before, just
minutes ago, every precept of the serenity path had
stood pure and whole in his mind, now they seemed
vague, uncertain. Troubled, he strove to reclaim that
cherished state of being, to shore up its bulwarks and
reaffirm its foundations . . .

Then through all these muddled thoughts he heard,
clear and sharp, the impact of Gregori's first footfall
upon the surface of the warpwell.

He scrambled to his feet, the serenity meditation
falling away like misty tatters. The reverberations of
those footsteps were like hammerblows and were being
channelled downwards by the patterns in the stone. And
glittering webs were shimmering in the gloom beneath
the warpwell's opaque covering plate. Something, some
part of the well was responding and if it was in self-
defence ...

He dashed along the walkway. Gregori was several
paces out on the surface, his torch aimed at the stone as
he crouched down and touched the patterning. At once,
glowing tendrils spiralled downwards beneath the
human while restricting veils sprang up around him:
meanwhile, wider, surrounding patterns were starting
to glow. The warpwell was trying to protect itself from
its enemies . . . and its last enemies were the Dreamless,
artificial, inorganic entities, and Gregori's boots con-
tained artificial elements.

Gregori had just realised that something was very
wrong when he collided with the pattern walls. Quickly,
Chel leaped onto the wall and called to him;

'Gregori, as you value your life stay exactly where
you are - don't move!'

The Human froze and looked his way. 'Chel, what's
happening?'

'You are standing on an artefact built by the Great
Ancients at the world's dawn. Its defences have awoken
and will kill you if you don't get back over this wall -
now, remove your boots, your socks too. Roll up your
jacket sleeves, as high as they will go, and your trouser
legs.'

Wordlessly, Gregori did so and finished with his
boots hanging around his neck. He grinned.

'This feels like getting ready for some obscure coun-
try dancing ritual.'

Chel stared at him - sometimes Human humour was
incomprehensible, but especially so now.

'Turn to your left,' he said. 'Reach out and feel your
way along the pattern walls.'

'Why am I doing this?' Gregori said as he began.

'I am guessing that replacing the dead materials of
your boots with the living flesh of your feet may cause
these defences to either slow down or go into abeyance.'

'But you don't know.'

'I can see ... I have seen fragments of the past .. .'

Fleeting images now to his six open eyes, scattered
and fading in the rising heartbeat of an ancient, buried
power. And this is what they are here for, Kuros and the
Hegemony - this is what we must defend, if it does not
kill us first.

'How am I doing, Chel?'

Gregori had turned a corner and was following a
long, curving wall through the patterns, but the ominous
machineries were still escalating beneath him. Were the
warpwell's Sentinels following some ingrained, inflexible
purification ritual?

'Keep going,' Chel said, walking along to stand at the
gap in the wall, staring at the patterns all around
Gregori, pushing at them with his mind, trying to wrench
answers from them. What was this buildup of power
meant to achieve and how dangerous would it be?

Gregori was a couple of paces from the gap when
another pattern wall winked into existence before him.

'Follow it to the right,' Chel said. 'The other way
leads back into the pattern.' And a few moments later
Greg was an arm's-length from Chel, who then stopped
him from leaping the remaining distance. 'First, drop
your boots behind you.'

Gregori unslung his boots from his neck, tossed them
back the way he had come then grasped Chel's out-
stretched arm, which hauled him off the warpwell
pattern.

'Now what?'

Chel heard the sudden change in the building energies
and felt a strange vibrancy in his muscles, his nerves, his
eyes.

'Run!'

They took off in a mad dash back to the entrance.
Gregori had the longer legs and got there first, ducking
along the short passage and swinging round into the
cold chamber, leaning against the wall. Hard on his
heels, Chel saw he had stopped and dragged him
towards the stairs.

'Don't. . . stop . . .'

They made it to the top of the steps when the warp-
well defences finally surged, a soundless eruption. Chel's
eyes were closed but still he felt the edges of that puri-
fying reflex - for a second at its peak he found he could
stare through his eyelids and right through the rock of
Giant's Shoulder, as if it was foggy glass, to see the daz-
zling webs of energy that were pouring out of just that
small section of the warpwell pattern to scour the entire
chamber. Then the ferocious radiance subsided, leaving
him in the dark.

Opening just his ordinary eyes he saw Gregori
crouched at the top of the stairs, eyes wide and blinking.

'Chel? Are you still there?'

'I am, friend Gregori - what can you see?'

'Hmm, a familiar-sounding blur.'

Chel laughed. 'Your sight will return to normal soon.
I'm going back down to inspect the chamber - do you
wish to accompany me?'

'I think I'll sit this one out... Aye, and don't do any-
thing risky, mind. Take it from one who knows.'

'I shall not be long,' Chel said, descending the steps.

The warpwell chamber looked exactly as it had before,
although he was using only his ordinary eyes. The air
was as icy as before but now it had a faint mineral odour,
like stone ground down to fine dust. The incised patterns
on the surface of the well seemed dull and lifeless, and of
Gregori's boots there was no sign.

Not dead but not awake, he thought, recalling the
visions he had seen during the husking, the vast funnel
of energies reaching out to seize the ships of the Legion
and the Great Ancients alike, dragging them down into
the warpwell then further down through the levels of
hyperspace, through crushing, shredding strata to dark
and narrow places. Yet still potent. Will it be any use
against our enemies? Will we have time to puzzle out its
workings}

For a moment he was tempted to open his husking
eyes and gaze upon the fleeting ghosts of the past, but
instead he replaced the cloth headband, tying it at the
side. No, he had to meet with Weynl and the other
Listeners to seek guidance and determine if any useful
knowledge survived from those far-off times.

And he would have to give an explanation of some
kind to Gregori, who had appeared at the door to the
meditation chamber, his torch a bright knot in the inky
darkness. Chel grinned and waved, then hurried to join
his friend, wondering how much he should tell him.

28

KAO CHIH

'Ah hmm, so if I may summarise,' said the droid recy-
cler, a Voth called Yolog, as he prodded the small pile of
money with a long, stained finger. 'You wish to hire me
to recover your corrupted course data, so that both you
and your fine mech companion may travel onwards to
the outlaw anchorage of Bryag Station ... and this is all
you have?'

Kao Chih smiled and spread his hands.

'Honourable artisan Yolog, at every stop in the jour-
ney that awaits us we shall make a point of mentioning
you and the unequalled excellence of your work. Now if
you had to buy that kind of advertising, how much
would it cost? - yet here we are, offering it as part-pay-
ment for a comparatively minor data recovery job. Isn't
that a good deal?'

The Voth regarded him with one large, dark and
doleful eye and a stubby hexagonal lens unit that jutted
from the other socket. The biograft was part of a close-
fitting headpiece which wrapped around the back of the
skull and down around the hairy neck to join with an
odd body harness. It looked brown and shiny and had
beaded black tendrils running to the exoskeletal sheaths
that enclosed the Voth's arms. Yolog sat in a small
mobile chair whose metal framework spread out above
his head, a fan of interfaced tool housings, extensors
and component trays. The Voth seemed to be quadri-
plegic and Kao Chih would have pondered further on
this had his mind not been focused on the predicament
at hand.

'You are by far the most amusing Human I have ever
met,' Yolog said, his expressive lips twitching into a
half-smile. 'But this data recovery is not so minor - since
my own processors are fully occupied recodifying droids
for certain paying customers, I would have to rent time
on the Tagreli hubway which would require authenti-
cated fund transfer. I fear that I must decline your kind
offer to become my publicity agent.'

Despite his growing sense of desperation, Kao Chih
maintained his unflappable, business-like exterior, com-
plete with bright smile, even when the mech
Drazuma-Ha* began displaying in its nimbus a message
in Mandarin characters - Told you it wouldn't work -
Told you it wouldn't work - Told you it wouldn't
work - Told you it wouldn't. . .

'Thank you for your kind consideration, honourable
Yolog,' he said. 'Perhaps you could suggest an alterna-
tive method of payment?'

'I am not ungenerous, Human Kaachi,' said the Voth.
'I would be prepared to accept payment in kind, such as
any redundant or superfluous components from within
your singular mech.'

Kao-Chih stared at Drazuma-Ha*, expecting a
scathing response suitable to their surroundings, Yolog's
spare-parts store. It was a dingy hold full of shelves
crowded with defunct bots and droids, casings, effector
arms, power cores, and motility subassemblies, bins full
of supply connectors, servos, processor nodes, handler
units, and several wall racks on which a few large indus-
trial bots hung. Gloomy, grimy and smelling heavily of
oils, it was undoubtedly a droid graveyard.

'I have no superfluous components,' Drazuma-Ha*
said at last. 'The very notion is impolite.'

'I would be prepared to pay very well,' the Voth said,
his flesh-and-blood eye staring hungrily at the mech for
a moment before snapping back to Kao Chih. 'I will be
frank with you - the likes of such a machine have not
been seen in this vicinity for centuries.' He addressed
Drazuma-Ha*. 'Are you not a Strigida sentient drone of
the Ninth Iteration, fabricated during the final period of
the Salgaic Synerge?'

'Broadly speaking, you are correct,' said the mech.
'And broadly speaking, you are also lacking in cour-
tesy.'

Yolog gave an odd, harness-constricted shrug.
'Courtesy also has its price.' He looked back at Kao
Chih. 'A great shame - Strigida parts are highly sought
after.'

'Why?'

'The Salgaic Synerge was one of several promising
civilisations that were obliterated by the Uncog
Fecundemic, a replicating machine horde which erupted
from the Qarqol deepzone over ten thousand years ago.'

Kao Chih was fascinated. 'I've never heard of this -
what were they like?'

'Oh, typical dumb-smart machines - they all looked
the same, dark globes bristling with weapon spines, but
they came in all sizes, some large enough to be consid-
ered planetoids. They rampaged coreward for hundreds
of lightyears, destroying every opposing force, effacing
every inhabited world in their path until they reached
the Huvuun Deepzone, where they unaccountably
stopped. Every Uncog, whether in planetary orbit or
traversing hyperspace or engaged in battle, simply
halted as if switched off then began to disassemble,
entire fleets of the things turning into vast clouds of
debris. Unfortunately, they had by that time wiped out
the Salgaic Synerge, the Interim Qudek, and a dozen
other starfaring nations . . .'

'An interesting history lesson,' said Drazuma-Ha*.
'But scarcely helpful, since my components are not nego-
tiable.'

The Voth sighed.

'Your options are limited, Human Kaachi. The only
other medium of exchange that interests me would be
unusual cultural artefacts. Might you possess such
items?'

Kao Chih's thoughts raced, in his mind rummaging
through the personal effects in his holdall back on board
the Castellan. Unwashed clothing, hygiene flims, indoor
shoes, a woollen hat, a deck of cards (missing the Prince
of Veils), some pens, a notepad, pictures of his family, a
couple of book tabs (mostly adventure stories written by
Pyre exiles), and ...

He stopped and smiled.

'Most honourable artisan Yolog - do you like music?'

An hour and a half later, the three of them were seated in
the cramped cockpit of Yolog's cargo shuttle as it flew
towards the huge cluster of domes and esplanade docks
that was Tagreli Openport. Positioned at the pilot con-
sole, the Voth's head was bobbing in time to the music
emanating from the audiobuds he had in his long-lobed
ears. Removing one of them he turned to speak.

'Hmm, yes, very good, Kaachi, very good indeed, a
most intriguing range of styles and execution. Your
species appears to have dedicated a great deal of thought
and effort to this pastime, resulting in some fascinating,
hmm, product.'

'Do you have any favourites yet?' Kao Chih said.

'I'm not so keen on that electroniki you recom-
mended - very mannered and precise yet somehow
bloodless - but this rokinrol is, ah, crude, harsh and
fully alive, especially the Deep Purple, the Black Sabbath
and the Led Zeppelin.'

Kao Chih smiled and nodded. His wallet of music
tabs had been a last-minute addition back on the
Retributor, and had proved a wise one. After hearing a
selection of compositions from various eras, Yolog's
demeanour had changed markedly and he made an offer
which covered the cost of his services and increased their
store of hard currency.

'I had thought that your preferences would be the
other way round,' Kao Chih said.

'Matters of taste are scarcely fathomable, friend
Kaachi. Your electroniki is just the kind of thing my
brother Yash would find irresistible, but not the rokin-
rol. What is certain is that many of my contacts will be
eager to obtain entire suites of music once they have
heard a few samples.'

The Voth replaced his audiobud and went back to
monitoring the displays, head nodding, fingers tapping.
Outside, the immensity of Tagreli Openport was loom-
ing ever closer as Yolog guided the craft towards one of
the main esplanade docks. Kao Chih leaned towards
Drazuma-Ha* and in a low voice said:

'Have you learned any more about this place? Are we
safe?'

Soon after the corrupt course data brought them
here, the Castellan's comm system had managed to link
into the local dataplex, but only at a low level. They
knew they had arrived near Tagreli Openport but access
to almost anything other than ad-chains, job agencies
and product catalogues was restricted to secure idents.
So while the mech tried to glean background informa-
tion they posted a request for a data-recovery tech on
one of the agency hireflows and Yolog responded not
long after. The Voth's storage hold was part of an
ancient, demilitarised Indroma troop transport, a gigan-
tic hulk sitting in a parallel orbit to Tagreli's, along with
several other decrepit vessels converted for warehousing,
food production, manufacturing and even prisoner
detention.

'I have determined a few more details,' the mech said.
'Tagreli Openport lies at the border of three nations,
Sul, Weh-Alzi and Iroaroa, impoverished client states of
the Sendrukan Hegemony. The port is tightly controlled
by the Abstainers, a clan of very old Henkayans wholly
dependent on a combination of mechanised life exten-
sion and anti-agathic drugs. Tagreli operates ostensibly
as a neutral port open to anyone, but the Abstainers
know that the Hegemony is boss. And are we safe? -
well, if someone was looking for us it would not be
hard to find us. The sooner we conclude this commerce
and leave the happier I will be.'

Kao Chih nodded and looked round to see the bows
of an immense grey-and-green ship filling most of the
viewport. The vessel's entire forward section was long
and straight with a rhomboid cross-section, its flat prow
occupied by three large weapon ports, probably com-
posite beam cannons, he guessed. The flanks were
studded with more weapon clusters, domes and turret
mounts; the mid-section flared to the aft, which was
wide and Y-shaped, its corners tapering to three huge,
rotating weapons carrels while the main drive tubes
jutted from the stern. There was also battle damage,
scorching, broken and melted shield antennae, and hull
breaches around which repair drones and tekneers were
gathered.

'That's the Heshgemar-Kref,'' Yolog said. 'A
Chastiser-class Hegemony battleship. It's just back from
the Yamanon Domain, where it got into a skirmish or
two with the remnants of the Dol-Das regime.'

'What's that smaller ship?' Kao Chih said, pointing.

As the Voth's shuttle progressed the battleship's other
flank came into view, as did a second ship moored
nearby at the esplanade end of the great open hangar.
This one was roughly a tenth the size of the Heshgemar-
Kref and was all sleek, dangerous lines, as if modelled
after a sea or airborne predator, its long narrow hull
lacking obvious weaponry and sensors while slender
wings curved forward from the rear; the wings' leading
edges were open for repairs, exposing the extendable
weapon arrays. It was a lightly armoured vessel built for
speed and aggressive manoeuvrability, and its livery was
dark blue with silver highlights and a series of symbols
along its dorsal line.

'An Ezgara ship,' said Yolog. 'Ambusher-class,
almost certainly assigned as escort to the battleship. The
names of Ezgara vessels are seldom posted on the dock-
flows but this one has eleven kill sigils on its hull, which
means that it could be the Chaxothal, which was sup-
posedly responsible for the destruction of the Dol-Das
navy's flagship during the Yamanon liberation.'

Kao Chih had known little about the liberation of the
Yamanon Domain, beyond the fact that the invading
coalition included Earthsphere and the Sendrukan
Hegemony, and that the occupation had been dragging
on for nearly four years. Since embarking on his mission
to Darien, however, he had noticed many details, over-
heard scraps of conversation in public places or reports
on news channels, which gave the impression that the
occupation was very unpopular and provoking a grass-
roots insurgency rather than fostering peace and
reconciliation.

Then the shuttle's flightpath took it past the next
open hangar and Kao Chih's eyes widened. The vessel
moored there was gigantic, perhaps three or four times
the size of the Hegemony battleship. In shape it was like
a four-cornered, gleaming gold and red arrowhead set
on its side, its edges curving in to join with a massively
domed aft section, its surfaces bizarrely adorned with
creatures and figures, symbols and lines of characters as
well as great banners and flags. The bas-relief forms
were worked into the warship's exterior features:
mouths gaped around launch bays while beam weapons
jutted from eye sockets. The entire hull was a fabulously
baroque facade, as if enemies were to be awed into sub-
mission by its relentless ornamentation.

'Ah, yes, hmm, the Kbo-Maurz,' the Voth said. 'A
Brolturan ship, which they call a Strategic Offensive
Conveyor but it's really an ancient super-carrier built by
the Ufan Oligarchs during their war with the Sarsheni-
dominated Indroma nearly five hundred years ago.'

'Impressive,' Kao Chih said.

Yolog gave a little smile. 'Just so, and yet the flagship
of the Yamanon navy was produced by the same yard
around that time - it was a super-heavy carrier and was
twice the size of that one.'

Kao Chih blinked and looked at the Voth. 'And that
Ezgara ship ... it's practically a boat in comparison.'

'Yes, yes, but the Dol-Das regime was basically a
gang of incompetents - a quarter of that flagship's
weaponry was out of commission, fifteen of its seventy
decks were sealed off due to disrepair, and just four out
of its twelve launch bays had a full complement of close-
support fighters. Rumour has it that the Cbaxotbal
gained entrance to one of the disused bays and pro-
ceeded to blast a tunnel through the ship's interior to the
stern where it wrecked the drives and set a number of
charges. Once the Ezgaran ship left the way it had come,
the flagship was torn apart by several devastating explo-
sions.'

Teams of engineers worked all over the Kbo-Maurz's
glittering hull, which slid out of sight as the Voth's shut-
tle climbed towards a line of smaller hangars sitting on
top of the big ones. But Yolog steered past them and
through the slow traffic of ships and pilot-tugs towards
a tower around which other similar docks were spaced.

Staring at this tower, Kao Chih took in the wider view
and suddenly realised that Tagreli Openport had a
spoked-wheel configuration with each of the six spokes
ending in a secondary axis tower, and it was one of
those that was their destination.

Soon they were docking in what appeared to be an
access shaft for automated garbage scows. Yolog's craft
clamped itself to a recess in the shaft and a segmented
transit tube swung out, neatly settling over the shuttle's
airlock. Minutes later Kao Chih and an oddly quiet
Drazuma-Ha* were following the Voth into what he
called his 'business premises'. Ceiling arrays of coloured
lights came up to reveal a showroom with rows of pris-
tine-looking bots and droids. Wide double-doors led
into a well-equipped workshop where machines
hummed and odd-shaped displays showed strangely
blurred strings of data flowing in patterns, coils and
grids. Yolog blanked them with a gesture then moved
smoothly over to a terminal with a large, convex oval
screen.

'If you please, Kaachi, your course data.'

Kao Chih handed over a small memory crystal which
was swiftly slotted into a curved console with silvery
beadlike keys. Moments later datastreams began to flow
down the screen, with an inset showing analysis results
flowing left to right. Drazuma-Ha* was floating a few
feet away and Kao Chih was letting his gaze wander
around the workshop, the benches, the assembly rigs,
and the ceiling-mounted scanners, when the mech
spoke.

'Yolog, this equipment appears to be malfunction-
ing.'

The machine was hanging before a large sloping cab-
inet on which various lights and symbols were flickering.

'It is only a battery-charging stall,' the Voth said
without diverting his attention. 'Pay it no heed - the
cut-out will shortly ...'

A loud bang came from the cabinet and pieces of its
shell and sparks burst outward, showering Drazuma-
Ha*. The Voth cursed, turned from the silver keyboard
and sped along to the cabinet, reaching out with one of
his exo-supported arms to shut off the power.

'My good clients, I am deeply sorry for this unfortu-
nate accident,' Yolog said, moving in Drazuma-Ha*'s
direction. 'Are you damaged, most valued machine? Do
you require repair or systems check, hmm?'

Kao Chih rushed over, full of anxiety, but the mech
was retreating from the Voth, then gliding towards the
exit.

'I am undamaged,' it said. 'But I intend to wait in the
shuttle. Please continue with your work.'

Kao Chih watched the mech leave then turned
sharply to Yolog, who was trundling back over to the
console.

'What happened?' he said.

'I do apologise. Most unfortunate - a discharge from
a faulty charging stall,' the Voth said as his long dex-
trous fingers played the bead keys. 'Much of my
equipment is obsolete and in serious need of upgrades
yet my orderbook is so full that I cannot afford to have
machines standing idle. Certain older devices, however,
retain their usefulness, like this manual interface which,
despite its anachronistic nature, permits a more relaxed
approach to neural tasking.' Suddenly Yolog ceased
keying and lifted his hands from the silvery keys. Then a
short melody of soft, descending notes sounded and he
plucked out the memory crystal and returned it.

'Your course data, fully restored and updated.'

'Thank you, honourable Yolog. You have been most
helpful.'

The Voth grinned, showing off a spectacular set of
ochre-hued teeth.

'Yes, hmm, well, our transaction has certainly light-
ened my mood and provided a new store of musical
mysteries to explore. And now you must return to my
shuttle, which will take you back to my parts hold from
whence you can continue your journey.'

'Are you accompanying us?'

'Work detains me, Human Kaachi - the repair of that
junkheap of a charger, amongst others.'

'Then goodbye, Yolog, and good fortune.'

The Voth smiled, nodded and went over to examine
the cabinet.

Back in the shuttle's small cockpit, Kao Chih found
the mech floating lengthwise against the low ceiling.

'Our business is concluded, I trust,' it said.

Kao Chih held up the memory crystal, which was
quickly probed with a brief needle of icy blue light.

'It seems to be in order. What delays our host?'

'Yolog says that he has to work on that faulty charger
and ...'

'Passengers aboard,' interrupted an autovoice from
somewhere in the cockpit. 'Are passengers ready to
depart? - answer yes or no.'

'Yes!' Drazuma-Ha* said loudly. 'Before I am forced
to deal with more trickery.'

'What do you mean?' said Kao Chih.

'That piece of theatre with the charging cabinet was
meant as a cover for the burst-scan which was simulta-
neously directed at me from a ceiling-mounted device.
But I had already reconfigured my sheathing shields
before arriving here - his scandata will show something
besides what he expects.'

'Which will be what?'

'Detailed schemata for a household valetbot, not
unlike those on display back there.'

Laughing, Kao Chih wedged himself into the pilot
couch and pulled the straps tight just as the shuttle
declamped from its mooring. There was a lurch, a faint
thrum of motors, and the Voth's craft flew sedately out
of the garbage scow access. Drazuma-Ha* declared that
he was suspending activity functions in order to run a
systems check. Kao Chih nodded and leaned back, feast-
ing his eyes on the vast intricacy of Tagreli Openport, its
glittering clusters and spokes and hangars, the vessels of
all sizes and shapes that came and went, and the innu-
merable hopcraft, taxis and pleasure-boats, all set
against the muddy grey-green world around which it
orbited. And wished his family and friends were there to
see it too.

Back in his workshop, with the showroom lighting
muted, Yolog sat at his console, looking at the female
Human whose face filled half the screen.

'Got your message - what do you have for me?'

The Voth smiled hesitantly. 'Well, friend Corazon, I
have a lead on a Human and a mech who needed their
course data recovered ...'

'Are you saying that they were in your grasp and you
let them walk out? Were they part of a larger group?'
'Ah, no, they ...'

'That wasn't part of our deal, friend Yolog.' The
woman smiled, cold and dangerous. 'You are supposed
to securely detain solitary Humans ...'

'It was the man's mech,' the Voth said hurriedly. 'It's
an old, very powerful and cunning sentient machine,
which foiled my attempt to scan it. If I had tried to
imprison the Human it might have attacked me, even
killed me!'

The woman, whose full name was Corazon Talavera,
shook her red- and black-furred head. 'If they've left,
they are no use to me.'

'I have a copy of their course data,' Yolog said.
'They're going to Bryag Station and I had one of my
remotes put a tracker on their ship while they were over
here.'

'Better, if not ideal,' said Talavera. 'What are their
names?'

'The man is called Kaar-Chee and the mech is
Drazuma-Ha*.' With a shaky hand he fingered the sil-
very bead-keys. 'I'm sending you all the data I could
obtain on them, image files and statistics as well as the
parameters of the tracking signal.'

'Bryag Station, eh? Not easy to get there before
them.' Corazon Talavera glanced down, no doubt seeing
the data packet arrive, then gave Yolog a hard, apprais-
ing look. 'But when I return we are going to have a little
talk, just to remind you how our agreement is supposed
to work.'

Then the screen was blank, leaving Yolog trembling
and sweating. For a second he sat there, utterly relieved
that she was gone, then anger welled up and he raised
his exo-clad arms, clenching his fists.

Gods of infinite space, how he hated Humans, and
the Talavera woman especially. Were all their females so
cruel and pitiless? Many years past, he had made a
small, very small mistake which had led to the tragic
death of one of the aged and venerable Henkayan
Abstainers, all purely through a chain of chance and
accident. He thought that only he knew the truth until
that cursed Human had turned up and showed him the
damning evidence which she had locked safely away, so
long as he did what he was told.

Yolog thought about packing his essentials and valu-
ables and fleeing Tagreli, off into the depths of known
space, but that was a well-worn fantasy, just like the one
where he fled instead to the Aranja Tesh, to some world
near the Yamanon border, and helped build combat
droids for the struggle against the Hegemony and their
despicable Human lackeys.

He uttered a bleak laugh, knowing that only immi-
nent, life-threatening catastrophe could make him leave.
On the other hand, it was not impossible that the impos-
ing mech Drazuma-Ha* might deal fatally with Talavera
should a confrontation take place.

With that happy thought, he put his earpieces back in
and began checking shipment manifests while the
sweeping rhythms of a song called 'Kashmir' filled his
head.

29

CATRIONA

From her viewport she could see glimpses of Nivyesta's
single massive landmass through breaks in the cloud
cover as the shuttle made its banking, spiral descent.
The green of Segrana was rich, dark and mysterious
from this height, yet the clouds looked soft, inviting.
Whenever she saw them during a shuttle journey she
imagined them to be a strange, floating terrain of pure
whiteness with its own flora and fauna . . . until the
shuttle scythed through them. Then there were only
moisture droplets crawling across the outside of the
viewport while steely-grey fog rushed past.

As they swept on through cloud, her thoughts drifted
back to her encounter with that apparition which
looked so like a Pathmaster, or how she imagined one
would look. Seek out a vodrun and undertake a vigil -
all will become clear to you, it had said in a sighing, sibi-
lant voice, but why would it say such a thing? And had
it been real or had she just imagined it? If the latter, it
called into question her mental stability and fitness for
her position and responsibilities ... and if it was real?
She knew from research with male and female Uvovo
that those who underwent the vodrun vigil said that
they experienced the feelings of Segrana and heard her
thoughts, so perhaps she should attempt it, although
how she would obtain permission from a Listener was
as yet unfathomable. She would ponder this - later,
when she got back to the enclave.

Soon, the cabin staff announced the final approach
and everyone strapped in to their couches. Catriona's
fellow passengers numbered eleven, mostly ecologists
and biologists with a pair of Uvovo scholars well into
their maturity going by the grey tufts behind their ears.
In addition there was one mystery man, seated a row in
front and on the other side of the aisle - during the nine-
hour flight he had eaten nothing and drunk only a few
cups of water, spoken to no one, read nothing, listened
to nothing on his couch phones and watched nothing on
the overhead display. All of which convinced Cat that he
was one of the Enhanced. She didn't recognise him, but
then the project directors had rigorously segregated all
the coactiles of students with the aim of enforcing a
tight group loyalty. The faces of her own coactile were
vividly and accurately recollectable, yet others who were
there at the same time were scarcely more than vague
blurs.

The dear brothers and sisters of my coactile, she
thought sourly. A smothering straitjacket of peer pres-
sure, all individuality subsumed to the group, an identity
controlled by those directors, who were interested only
in creating living processors capable of high-level com-
putation. Walking calculators ...

Sighing, she relaxed back into the comfort of the
couch and wondered how to find out his name, maybe
even discover what an Enhanced was doing on Nivyesta.

From that early, cloistered part of her life she knew that
many Enhanced ended up working for the government
in their Special Designs Division. But what would the
SDD be doing here on Nivyesta?

The approach and landing took another twenty
minutes. Vibration came in successive waves, as did
the loud moan of the engines applying staged braking.
The impact of landing on water made the craft shud-
der and the pitch of the engines altered. Soon they
had taxied up to Pilipoint Station's floating dock, a
large, curve-roofed structure capable of accommodat-
ing two shuttles. As the passengers gathered their
belongings and donned outdoor garments, Cat found
herself wondering, not for the first time, what Greg
was up to back at Giant's Shoulder, knowing full well
that for him the temptation to go back into that
puzzle-trap corridor would be irresistible. As it would
be for her.

Please stay out of trouble, she thought. Or at least go
looking for it with someone you can rely on.

She grasped her holdall and was quick to get behind
the mystery man as the cabin lock cycled open. Slowly
trooping to the exit, she overheard the steward call him
Mr Yurevich and saw him take two substantial pieces
of luggage from the stowing booth before stepping
through the airlock. One was an ordinary barkleather
suitcase but the other was a tall, grey case on small
wheels; its sides had stickers saying HANDLE WITH
CARE - PHOTOGRAPHIC DEVICES but she recog-
nised it as a standard transport case for lab equipment
as used in the Enhanced project.

A moment or two later she emerged from the shuttle's
smelly recycled air, setting foot on the combiplas deck-
ing of the dockside and taking a deep breath of
Nivyesta's atmosphere. Yurevich was hurrying away but
that was okay - his name and description and the 99 per
cent certainty of an Enhanced status was more then
enough to trace him through the whisperway. Now,
however, she faced the onerous duty of reporting to
Professor Forbes, who had no doubt seen coverage of
the shooting at Giant's Shoulder and probably read the
preliminary reports.

What she had to do was put herself in a resilient,
unflappable frame of mind. It was not a question of
whether or not Forbes would be objectionable and
mean-spirited, merely a matter of how it would show
itself.

But all this was forgotten as she entered the low-
ceilinged, slightly shabby transit lounge. The lounge had
two vees, usually tuned to sports and light entertain-
ment, but right now both were showing news and were
surrounded by dozens of anxious-looking people. On
the screen was one of the better presenters, grey-haired
Jan Kronagen, addressing viewers from the studio, so
she paused to see what it was all about.

'.. . but members of the Sendrukan Hegemony dele-
gation have still declined to make any comment, and
since there is as yet no Brolturan Compact representa-
tive on Darien we must gather viewpoints from where
we can. Let us return to the Heracles, where our spot
reporter, Serj Tanilov, has obtained more views of the
Brolturan vessel, as well as some hard data. Serj?'

'Yes, Jan, thank you. More information on the
Brolturan ship, which is called Purifier, by the way - its
official designation is a Tactical Dominance Enabler ...
Ah, we have it now? . .. Right, we can show more vid as
supplied by a Gomedran freelancer who was on board
one of the Heracles's atmosphere boats when this
leviathan took up stationary orbit above Darien.'

The screen abruptly switched to a view of the stars
from orbit, the nearest of them blurred by the dust-
clouds of the deepzone. But the foreground was filled
with an immense, gleaming, fabulously ornate ship, its
forward sections bearing a passing resemblance to a
sweeping, stepped pyramid while the stern tapered
slightly towards the blocky main drive manifold. The
view swayed a little and suddenly zoomed in on the
prow, where a huge statue of a Brolturan in archaic
battle armour emerged from the hull. In one hand it
cradled a mirrored polyhedral while the other held out a
long, straight sword, pointing forward.

The Gomedran freelancer then panned slowly up the
length of the warship, showing decks, launch bays,
weapons arrays, missile batteries, all amid the most
incredible embellishment Cat had ever seen outside
some of the Rus chapels. During all this, the reporter
was reeling off statistics - the Purifier was nearly 700
metres long, had a crew complement of 12,000, a sup-
port and interceptor complement of 2,800, a troop
transport capability of 10,000 alert or 20,000 cryo, and
the commander probably held the rank of father-admi-
ral... Tanilov added that these were not official figures,
having been gleaned from various tiernet sources, and a
few enthusiasts from amongst the Heracles's crew. Back
in the studio, Kronagen reminded the viewing audience
that an ambassador had been expected from the

Brolturan Compact, though not in such an imposing
ship.

Shaking her head, Cat shouldered her holdall and
headed for the shuttle-dock's small lobby.

They might have sent an ambassador, she thought,
but that ship constitutes undiplomatic language. Maybe
we're supposed to be intimidated by its scary ornaments
or something; if so I think they're in for a surprise ...

The way to the exit led past a small bar, and as she
drew near she noticed Yurevich, seated in one of the
easy chairs, talking to someone. Walking further on she
saw that it was a woman with short dark hair whose
face slowly came into view past the foliage of a plantpot.
She was just a few paces away when recognition hit her
so forcefully she almost stopped in her tracks. At that
moment the woman looked round, saw her, straight-
ened, put out a hand to silence Yurevich then rose and
came over.

'Catriona! - it's been many a year. How are you?'
'I'm well, Julia, I'm fine. How are you? You're look-
ing . . . well.'

Julia Bryce, Julia of the warm camaraderie smile and
the icy, disapproving stare, ruler of their nine-strong
coactile, her tiny empire, ruthlessly manipulative and
tactically generous. She was taller than Catriona, pale
skin accentuating her elfin good looks, dressed in a long,
dark coat over fashionable dark green formals.

'Certainly, Catriona, I keep active, as always. I'm here
to work on a research project, very dry and unexciting
but worthy. I have Albrecht and Gustave working with
me - they'll be delighted to know that you're on
Nivyesta.'

Cat made herself smile. So the ice-queen still had
her two favoured minions in tow - Albrecht and
Gustave had played the role of willing instruments
who were also clever enough to conduct their own
little psycho-dramas from time to time. It was unimag-
inable that they would be 'delighted', considering
what she had called them on her last day as an
Enhanced.

'You must pass on my fond regards.'

'Of course. So tell me, have you work here?'

'Oh yes, eco-social studies of the native Uvovo,
including cultural and biological aspects. It's cross-dis-
ciplinary and very demanding but I enjoy it.'

'That is fascinating.' The look of bland regard in
Julia's face didn't change. 'You know, it's such a shame
that your enhancements failed at the last - poor
Catriona, it must have been such a struggle. But you
have work and that's so important. Well, I must say
goodbye - perhaps we'll run into each other again.'

A smile tinged with satisfaction, a nod, and Julia
Bryce was strolling back to Yurevich. Cat kept the fake
composure plastered on until she had turned the corner
out of the lobby and into Pilipoint Station's narrow con-
course.

Bitch! She's working 'on a research project' but I
'have work' — makes it sound as if I pour the tea and
deliver the mail. Chrome-plated bitch!

Then she slowed down, in her thoughts as well as
the furious pace she was marching along at, while
comprehension dawned. Eighteen years on from that
tight, fevered hothouse of a coactile group, and Julia
could still prod her temper and stir up feelings of low
self-esteem. She had nothing to be ashamed of and
every reason to feel good about her achievements, yet
self-justification was not what she needed, rather it
was a tougher skin.

Then she stopped entirely, realising that she had
walked right past the entrance to the small foyer where
an elevator gave access to the floor where Forbes had his
office. And on the spur of the moment she decided no,
she wasn't going to go up there and endure Forbes's
verbal thuggery. If he truly, urgently, needed a report
she would be more than happy to send him a text ver-
sion via the satgrid.

Feeling liberated, at least for the time being, Catriona
strode along the low-ceilinged concourse, past the small
shops and empty cafe, heading for the main security
doors beyond which lay Segrana. Or rather a small com-
munity of Uvovo traders dealing in fresh fish and fruit,
and a couple of trictra sheds. She knew that the security
autosystem would sense her ID tag and log her out when
she left, and that Forbes would find this out not long
after. But she was eager to get back to the trees, back to
Segrana to see if there was anything on the file from
Galyna, but most of all to ponder the Pathmaster
apparition's words.

Seek out a vodrun! - the words had come in a kind of
blackened whisper. Undertake a vigil... all will become
clear to you ...

A vigil. What might she learn from it? Something to
give her investigations an urgency in the eyes of the
Institute, perhaps, and to bring a certain measure of
fame her way? Perhaps even enough to ensure that Julia
and her minions heard about it.

Well, it might not be the healthiest reason for seeking
fame and fortune, she thought as she emerged from the
station and made for one of the trictra sheds. But it's the
way that makes me feel good!

30
THEO

He was recalling the disaster at High Lochiel as he, Rory
and Janssen crouched next to the ground-floor fire
escape in a side alley. Sundstrom had been appalled at
the casualties and furious at the security lapse, fearing
that the media might piece it all together. But since the
woman who saw Theo's men had also died in the explo-
sion, there were no witnesses to their involvement
beyond that of bystanders. Pyatkov had urged the pres-
ident to exclude Theo from taking any further part in
anti-terror operations, but then Rory had appeared with
a lead on a man who was behind a couple of riots and
some false flag incidents, inciting antagonistic groups
to clash on the streets. Rory's informant said the man,
known as Olgren, was taking orders from another stay-
ing in his loft apartment in southwest Hammergard.

So, after a hectic cross-town dash, during which Rory
made certain that both men were still there, Theo and
his men were assigned to secure the fire escape while
Pyatkov's other teams took control of all the stairways
and the lifts. The building had eight floors and was a
mixture of owner-occupier and rented property ... and
Theo's anxiety was winding tighter and tighter. What if
this was another elaborate setup? - what if Rory's
informant had been fooled by another high-tech illu-
sion? Advance reports from the High Lochiel explosion
said that a small device, possibly a hologram projector,
had been recovered from the charred ruins of the top
floor. Could they be sure that they weren't walking into
another deadly trap?
He stood up.

'Okay, no more waiting,' he said. 'Let's go.'
Rory grinned as he got up, but gave Theo a narrow-
eyed glance.

'Thought we wuz waitin' for Pyatkov's order, Major.'

'I want to be sure it's not another pit of spikes we're
getting into, Rory.'

'Well, ma boy Vlad says he seen 'em both in the last
hour . . . but aye, yer right, don't want tae get our teeth
handed tae us again like they did last night.'

'Okay, Janssen - lead the way, and tread lightly.'

It was a nerve-racking climb, trying to use the
wooden flights as cover from above while careful to
avoid any creaking steps. At last they reached the top
landing and crouched outside the emergency exit.

'Rory,' Theo whispered, pointing at the door.

Rory grinned and produced a small device with a
plastic dial and a metal tongue which he fitted to the
bottom of the door. A minute later they were inside,
crouching below the height of the windows in the doors
at either end of an empty, white-painted corridor. Theo
crept to the one leading to Olgren's apartment, took out
a pocket S-scope and peered into it.

What he saw was both alarming and confusing. The
apartment was airy and spacious with half-height
partitions sectioning off small sleeping areas in both of
the far corners. An open-plan kitchen/lounge occupied
the centre of the apartment and tall windows with their
slatted shutters flung wide let in what remained of the
day's sunlight. But in the nearer half of the room sat
what looked like automatic gun sentries, low, tripod-
mounted and positioned to provide deadly crossfire on
anyone entering by the main door.

What confused him was the two men, one sitting
near the far side, the other standing near him and
engaged in a comm call while staring out of the window.
Both had shaven heads, and the seated one was looking
down at some kind of grey device which was attached to
his upper arm.

Just then he felt his own comm vibrate in his jacket
pocket. Passing the scope to Janssen, he took out the
comm and answered in a low murmur.

'Karlsson.'

'Pyatkov here - we're about to head up. Start your
ascent.'

'Word of advice, Pyatkov - don't charge the door to the
apartment. There are two autogun sentries guarding it.'

There was a moment of silence. 'You're up there
already, aren't you? Damn you, Karlsson, you disobeyed
my orders ...'

'And you should be thanking me, but we can argue
about that later, yes? When you are in position, we'll
move first and try to shut down the autogun on the left,
okay, sir?'

'Acknowledged - proceed.'

Rory grinned as Theo put away the comm. 'So, is
Mr Pyatkov still on our side?'

'Oh yes, but I don't think we'll be getting a Christmas
card this year.'

'Something's wrong,' said Janssen. 'They're agitated.'

Theo grabbed the scope and looked. Both men were
now standing over a terminal, one of them tapping on
the keyboard. They stared at the screen for a moment
then went into a burst of activity, gathering together
small satchels and several weapons. The odd grey device
went into a green backpack.

'They know someone's coming,' Theo said. 'Sensors
on the stairs and in the elevators, maybe ... and one of
them is headed this way!' He turned to the other two.
'When he comes through, I'll shoulder through this side
going the other way so while he's looking round at me
the pair of you bring him down.' He thumbed his comm's
quickkey and when Pyatkov answered he said, 'We've
only seconds - they're on to you so we're going in!'

Theo just had time to stuff the comm into his jacket
and ready his rifle, a Makarov semiautomatic, when the
shaven-headed man pushed open the door.

Immediately, Theo charged through the other door.
The man cried and whirled, bringing a handgun to bear,
but Rory and Janssen kicked away his legs and wrestled
him to the floor. The other man looked round and Theo
saw him smile just before the nearest autogun opened
up. As rounds hammered holes in the walls and floor,
Theo dived for cover behind a long display case full of
seashells of every kind. He lobbed a concussion grenade
round the side of it towards the autogun then ducked his
head, covering his ears. The explosion burst apart the
display, blew out most of the windows, made the floor
lurch underfoot and left his head ringing.

Covered in wood splinters and shell fragments he
sneaked a glimpse round the partition corner and saw
the second man wearing a backpack and crouching on
the ledge of one of the tall windows, now empty of
glass. Seeing Theo he laughed and snapped off a shot to
make him dodge back. When he chanced another look it
was in time to see the man tip sideways and fall out of
sight.

'No!' he bellowed and rushed to the window. There
was gunfire behind him but he ignored it as he stuck his
head out the window - and immediately heard a
motorised whine coming from his right. There was a fist-
sized object mounted on the outside wall more than an
arm's reach away, and a taut, vibrating cable was run-
ning out of it. He pushed himself a little way out onto the
ledge and looked down to see, in the gathering dusk, a
figure landing lightly on his feet on the flat roof of an
adjacent building. Sparks spat from the winch device
and the severed end of the cable fell away. Theo brought
up his rifle and squeezed off a couple of shots but the
man was off at a zigzagging run, dodging between the
cover of venting ducts and outlets. Reaching the other
side of the roof he simply rolled over the edge and was
gone.

Theo cursed, then noticed that he had cut his arm on
the jagged remains of the window and cursed again,
wearily this time. Back in the room the two autogun
sentries had been reduced to smoking wrecks and
Pyatkov was standing before the other man, who was
now tied to a chair with Rory and Janssen immediately
behind him.

'The second man got away,' Karlsson told Pyatkov.

'He lowered himself with a light cable winch fixed out-
side the window. He got to the south wall of the
next-door building then I lost sight of him.'

Pyatkov nodded wordlessly and issued abrupt com-
mands on a corps-issue handset. Theo glanced at Rory,
who was nursing a grazed chin.

'Is this Olgren?' he said.

'Aye, and a right handy lout he is, too. Interesting
tats, though.'

Theo regarded the man, who sat there unresponsive
and apparently unperturbed. He was wearing shorts and
a sleeveless shirt, revealing the tattoo patterns which
encircled his ankles, upper arms and neck. Pyatkov put
away the handset and faced Olgren.

'You're in very serious trouble, Mr Olgren, but you
can help yourself by telling me who that other man is
and where we can find him.'

Olgren smiled patiently. 'Utlaginn goes where he's
needed, sir, resisting the enemies of Darien. All of you
should be helping the FDF, not hindering us.'

Theo grimaced - 'Utlaginn' was old Norj for
'outlaw'.

Pyatkov regarded the man with stone-cold eyes for a
moment. 'What are those tattoos for?' he said, pointing.

'They symbolise the FDF's unity and purity of pur-
pose.' Olgren shook his head. 'Sir, beyond explaining the
Faction's principles, I have nothing to say.'

Pyatkov leaned closer. 'You know, I'm glad that you
feel secure and armoured by your beliefs - it means that
when you do break you'll give me all of it, without hes-
itation or resistance. It's just that these tattoos .. . well,
in years to come they will only serve to remind you of
what you betrayed. Very sad.' He straightened. 'Take
him away.'

Olgren gave no trouble as he was led away and at
almost the same moment that he disappeared down the
main stairs, another figure came up and entered the
apartment. Clad in a brown leather town jacket, it was
Donny Barbour.

'Mr Pyatkov,' he said, 'I'm on an urgent assignment
and require some additional personnel - I wonder if I
can borrow Major Karlsson and his men, if that's not
inconvenient.'

Pyatkov regarded Barbour coolly for a moment and
Theo could almost hear his thoughts - You're on an
assignment and I've not been informed!

'Very well, Mr Barbour, but be sure that they follow
orders, yes?'

'Excellent, my thanks ... Major, if you and your men
could follow me . . .' Then in a lower voice, once
Pyatkov had moved away, 'Sorry for the short notice but
we've got a possible lead on the guy that just dived outa
yon window and we have to move now!'

Theo glanced at Rory and Janssen, who both nodded.

'Lead the way,' he said.

Rather than wait for the lift, which was already on its
way down with Olgren, they took the stairs at a swift
pace. Barbour's spinnercar was parked across the road,
its motors humming on idle. Theo was about to climb
into the front passenger seat when Barbour said, 'I'll
need you to drive, Major, while I operate the tracker.'

Once behind the wheel, he checked the controls and
instruments then turned to see Barbour hunched over a
circular display panel whose raised rim was speckled
with mysterious glowing symbols, and had a line of
oval, black studs along the bottom edge. Rory poked his
head through from the back seat, spotted the strange
display and opened his mouth, but Barbour spoke first.

'It's a signal mapper,' he said. 'It can isolate a single
comm call within a radius of 100 metres, match its fre-
quency and piggyback it through the switching node
network to its destination, which then shows up as a
street address. Takes time, though - your boy made a
call just before all the fun started but he was only on for
twenty to thirty seconds. Needs at least a minute . . .'

'Can ye listen in, like?' Rory said.

'Nah. This wee baby is Imisil tech rush-adapted for
use with our somewhat backward comms ...'

Just then the circular screen lit up, showing an odd
schematic of radial spikes and funicular shapes that
moved around in 3D.

'Is that what I think it is?' Theo said.

Barbour nodded. 'Target's making another call . . .
keep talking, you scumsucking dog . . .'

Moments ticked away as Barbour tracked a glowing
line through a strange shifting maze of cones, helices
and blocks of numbers, occasionally switching to a
Hammergard map for a quick look. About a minute
and a half later the signal went dead, but Barbour had
the address.

'Abercromby Hall on Athole Road - it's a Corps
training barracks.'

'Is that off Westerling Street?' Theo said as he
engaged the spinner.

Frowning, Barbour nodded. 'Why are they interested
in a training barracks?'

'Could be a staging area?' Theo said, heading north.
'Maybe just a meeting place?'

'Could be,' said Barbour, sounding unconvinced.

The even darkness of night had fallen by the time
they reached Abercromby Hall, a modest brick building
set between a furniture warehouse and a garment man-
ufacturer. Theo and the others waited by the car while
Barbour went to speak with the duty officer. Moments
later he was back, his face grim as he thumbed the keys
on his comm.

'Everyone back in,' he said. 'We've got trouble.'

'What kind of trouble?' Theo said, ducking back
inside.

'The worst - there's no trainees or cadets stationed
here just now, but last night they were providing tem-
porary accommodation for an escort squad on
detachment from the Second Division. This is the squad
assigned by the president to guard High Monitor Kuros;
Kuros and Ambassador Horst are at Port Gagarin,
where the Brolturan ambassador is about to arrive . . .
he's the target, has to be.'

'My God,' said Theo. 'You think someone in that
unit is collaborating with the FDF?'

'Or our gunman has substituted himself for one of
them ...' he snarled, and tossed his comm onto the shelf
above the dashboard. 'And Pm not getting through to
anybody in Port Gagarin on this thing! Right, let's get
moving and drive there ...'

'They've got nearly half an hour's head-start,' Theo
said as he swung the spinnercar round in a U-turn and
headed for the coast road.

'Maybe we'll get lucky,' Barbour said. 'The Brolturan
shuttle might develop a fault and be called back, the
weather might have the same effect, or the hitman might
already have been caught... or he might miss ...'

'Aye, right,' said Rory from the back seat. 'And the
baro might not shit in the woods, and the bishop of
Trond might turn out tae be an atheist! - is that whit yer
saying?'

Theo glanced at Barbour and saw him grinning.
'You'll have to excuse him - his glass is a bit half-empty
tonight.'

'Better a half-empty glass of truth,' Barbour said,
'than a keg full of deluded hopes, is that it, Rory?'

'Better a cynic than a sucker, sir.'

'Remind me not to be marooned on a desert island
with you - the optimism would kill me.'

31

ROBERT

The passenger lounge serving Port Gagarin's Landing
Bay 2 was closed to the public and the rows of seating
had been moved well back to make room for the
Hegemony and Earthsphere entourages - one with
nineteen members, the other with just two.

Harry, dressed in a long grey coat over a dark formal
suit circa 1930s America, was smiling as he observed the
High Monitor Kuros and his escort of four Ezgara com-
mandos, twelve DVC soldiers and three attendants.

'Robert, sometimes I don't think the Diplomatic
Service takes your safety seriously enough - hell, you
don't take it seriously enough. Yesterday, Sundstrom
offered you your very own personal escort, just like
Kuros, but you turned it down. Why?'

'I've told you already,' Robert said in a low murmur.
'My secretary and his assistant are both armed - any
more would be an unnecessary burden and would get in
the way.'

'Yes, well, I didn't believe you yesterday and I don't
believe you now, so what's the real reason?'

Robert glared at his AI companion, which elicited
only a sunny smile in response. He sighed.

'If you must know, an openly armed escort would
make me feel as if I really was in danger. If this was a
non-Human world, like when we were on Giskhn 4 a
few years ago, I could see the point. But here . . . well, it
would feel like an admission of defeat. These are our
people - we can't fail them so we must make sure that
the special accord between Earthsphere and the
Hegemony actually means something.'

'I'm sure it means something to the exalted Kuros,'
Harry said. 'Loyal dependability, for example.'

For a few moments they regarded the Hegemony
envoy. The tall Sendrukan was attired in a more martial
manner than on previous occasions, his sleeves and leg-
gings resembling ancient metal armour, his headgear
looking more like a helmet than a hat. Also, oblivious to
his guards or Robert, he was clearly in conversation
with his own AI companion, going by the lip move-
ments and infrequent hand gestures. Robert realised that
in the absence of reporters and their cams - banned
from this event - Kuros felt more able to relax. Even the
terminal security cams had been switched off by the
express wish of Diakon-Commodore Reskothyr, the
Brolturan ambassador to Darien.

The other main condition of Reskothyr's visit was that
President Sundstrom not be present, since the Brolturans
insisted on dealing initially only with responsible author-
ities, i.e. Earthsphere. Inevitably Sundstrom was annoyed
but he had quickly grasped the diplomatic realities and
displayed considerable leadership qualities by the speed
with which he reconciled himself to the situation.

'I've met him, you know,' Harry said. 'Kuros's com-
panion.'

Robert stared at him. 'You've met him? You can com-
municate with Hegemony AIs?'

Harry gave him a droll look. 'It's not such a hard
concept to grasp, Robert - avenues for dialogue exist,
according to stringent protocols laid down by both gov-
ernments, and quite recently I chanced to encounter the
High Monitor's companion.'

'I'm fascinated - what was he, or it, like?'

'He's an ogre. His persona is a detailed remap of one
General Gratach, who was a Principal Abrogator during
the Three Revolutions War, an especially gory episode in
Hegemony history.'

'I've seen some recordings from that period. Gory
doesn't begin to cover it.'

'Well, old Gratach was up to his elbows in it, helped
put the first Serrator Hegemon on the throne - both
times. If he's Kuros's companion it might be worth going
over some of his campaigns, just to get a feel for his
strategic style.'

Robert nodded. 'I wish I'd known about this a couple
of days ago, Harry.'

'Well, when I say quite recently it was really pretty
recently. Like last night.'

Robert was about to reply when his comm beeped
softly - it was Gagarin Terminal's security chief,
Porteous.

'Mr Ambassador, I am to inform you that the
Purifier's shuttlecraft has landed and that the Brolturan
delegation will be with you very shortly.'

'Thank you, Mr Porteous. Please extend my sincere
gratitude to all your staff for their efficient profession-
alism today.'

'You're very kind, sir - I shall do so at the earliest
opportunity.'

'Incidentally, any news on the comm network?'

'Sorry, sir, we're still restricted to a local service. I
understand that engineers are working on the local hub
now.'

Harry grinned as Robert put away his comm.

'Relax, it's probably just a blown fuse or melted cir-
cuit, given the backward state of the cell network here.
I've seen the plans - it's a wonder it works as well as it
does.'

Robert shrugged. 'It's my job to worry. How else do
I earn the fabulous salary they don't pay me? But never
mind - what about Kuros? With a brutal old Hegemony
general for a companion, you'd think he would be
rather less than even-tempered ...'

He broke off, seeing figures descending a spiral stair-
case which lay beyond a tall glass wall at the other end
of the passenger lounge. He turned and signalled to his
secretary, Omar, who hurried over from the seats with
the welcoming gift, a hand-carved chess set. Glancing
over, he saw Kuros also receiving a package from one of
his assisters.

'Could be awkward if it's another chess set,' said
Harry.

'Kuros strikes me as more of a poker player,' Robert
said. 'Keeping his cards close to his chest, that sort of
thing.'

'What about our new guest?'

'His game of choice? Something with the ornate qual-
ity of chess and the brute directness of boxing, maybe.'

The Brolturan procession had reached the foot of the
spiral stairs and turned towards the wide open double
doors that led into the lounge. Reskothyr's livery ran to
blood-reds and silver-grey, as manifested in the attire of
the four bodyguards and six officials, while he himself
wore perfect black, a collarless, knee-length coat of aus-
tere cut: his head was bare and shaven, his hands
covered by gleaming black gauntlets. Before them strode
two standard-bearers dressed in plain crimson uniforms
and grey metal helmets. As Robert made Omar stand a
pace behind with the wrapped gift, ready to hand it for-
ward, he realised that there was some kind of music
coming from the approaching entourage, a deep vocal
drone.

Then the procession came to a halt, except for the
standard-bearers. They continued several paces further
on then diverged, one carrying his standard over to the
Hegemony envoy, the other to the Earthsphere ambas-
sador. As the choral droning grew louder Robert realised
that it was coming from a small black cube at the top of
the standards. Then with the huge Sendrukan looming
over him, Robert bowed to the standard, a long banner
of thick, dark blue cloth fringed with jewelled honours
and carrying the duty and family crests of Diakon-
Commodore Reskothyr.

That was when the shooting began.

PART THREE

32

KAO CHIH

Drazuma-Ha* had explained about Bryag Station's sin-
gular security precautions, the outer perimeter markers,
the sensor web enclosing several cubic lightyears of
emptiness, and the semi-random route that the station
followed through it all. But Kao Chih could not help but
feel a gnawing exasperation when they encountered the
third marker buoy. According to Tumakri's itinerary
notes they had been due to contact a Piraseri at the sta-
tion almost three days ago.

Seeing the marker-buoy signal on the console display,
he shook his head and slumped back in the couch.

'Another one?' he said. 'This is beyond paranoia.'

'If I could shrug,' said Drazuma-Ha*, 'I would. But
it's their security and their rules - to my certain knowl-
edge, Bryag has only suffered two attacks since
deploying this system a century ago, once by an
Earthsphere operative, the other by a Kiskashin blood
smuggler with a grudge against the ruling Vusark
Enclavol - both times damage was minimal and no one
died . . . well, no one of consequence . . .'

Just then the intership channel clicked and a syn-
thvoice spoke in 4Peljan, a Vusarkic trade language that

Kao Chih recognised from his dockside work on
Agmedra'a. His linguistic enabler translated it perfectly.

'Attention vessel 433 dash 2506 - you are being
scanned to ascertain your fitness and trustworthiness
with regard to a Bryag Station boarding permit.. . scan-
ning ... all passengers must remain still for 12
seconds . . . scanning . . . speech pattern scan will com-
mence in 15 seconds

Which was a word-for-word repetition of the last two
encounters, both of which had resulted in being offered
course data for a 'stage continuance' or an 'area exit'
microjump. Of course, both were essential, since the
vast sensor web - and thus Bryag's wanderings - were
confined to the fringes of the Omet Deepzone where
dense, swirling clouds of dust and things they hid dis-
torted any attempt at hyperspatial computation.
Travellers had to rely on Bryag's course data or not
bother travelling there at all.

As they waited, Kao Chih gazed out of the viewport
at the foggy darkness of deepzone space. Here and there
the concentrated light of stellar clusters and the nearest
stars managed to pierce the dust veils that glowed
muddy orange and purple, distorted whorls of amber,
stretched ripples of violet. The Omet Deepzone, as
Drazuma-Ha* reminded him, was the source of the
great Achorga Swarms which 150 years ago had torn
through hundreds of star systems in the vicinity, rav-
aging and wrecking entire planets, amongst which was
the homeworld of Humanity, Earth. That particular
Achorga outbreak was not their first and others had
occurred since, many of them sweeping into Indroma
territory, causing havoc and destruction on a vast scale.

Somewhere out there, he thought, in the dark heart of
all that dust and debris, was the world of the Swarm, the
Achorga. Without them there would have.been no
Swarm War, and no desperate, blind launch of the three
colonyships. The Tenebrosa would never have plunged
blindly through hyperspace and arrived at the beautiful
world which the first settlers had named Virtue In The
Valley, nor would they have suffered those attacks and
the sight of their world being mined and scoured around
them, the long indenture for those who escaped . . .

'Scan complete. Permit approved.'

Kao Chih sat up straight, gaping then grinning as the
marker buoy went on.

'Please state course required - station access or area
exit?'

'Station access,' Drazuma-Ha* said swiftly, a neon
yellow microfield extensor flicking out to operate the
com panel. 'Polydigital channel open.'

'Fastchaining data ... fastchain complete. You may
now depart.'

'And not before time,' said the mech, who was
already merging the new course data into the naviga-
tionals. Kao Chih just had time to strap in before the
hyperdrive forcewaves cohered and twist-hurl-dropped
them back into the first tier of hyperspace.

Another half-hour microjump during which he again
went over the notes in Tumakri's documenter, making
sense of the Bryag Station contact - a Piraseri vacsuit
vendor named Milmil S'Dohk - and how to recognise
his suspensor-mobile establishment. After that he spent
a further twenty minutes playing halfboard chess against
the ship's gaming subsystem until hearing the strap-in
alert. Moments later the Castellan emerged-fell-spun
from hyperspace just a few klicks away from their des-
tination. Drazuma-Ha * powered up the manoeuvring
thrusters and soon they were vectoring in on a guidance
beacon.

Set against the dust swirl colour-glow of the Omet,
Bryag Station was a sight. Coasting along on its never-
ending peregrination, it looked to Kao Chih oddly like a
colossal bivalve seashell, like a cockle gaping wide open,
the central hinge pointing the way ahead. Each half was
full of structures, towers, domes, globe clusters, spars,
cables, as well as scores if not hundreds of bots, hopcraft
and jetsuited creatures darting this way and that. The
outer surface of the station's hull halves were dark grey
carapaces of heavy plating, shielded ducts, maintenance
housings and armoured drive vents, pitted and scored by
the Omet's plentiful dust and micrometeorites.

Pairs of docking booms of various sizes fringed the
lip of either half, berthing capacities increasing towards
the station's stern. The Castellan's pilot system followed
the guidance beacon in towards a boom dock on the
leading edge with a learned grace. Grapplenets unfurled
from the booms, snared then drew the small ship
through the glitterglow of an atmosphere shieldfield and
into an auto-adjusting cradle. From the viewport Kao
Chih could see three levels of walkways running the
length of the dock and wide gantries extending tongue-
like between the berths.

Excited, Kao Chih made sure he was first at the air-
lock as it went into equivalence mode and opened fully.
Across the gantry was their neighbour, a Makhori organ-
ics miner, its hull resembling a glued-together cluster of
large, leathery-brown and misshapen ovoids entwined
in numerous cables and ribbed pipes. Engrossed in it, he
had just stepped through the lock with his left leg when
someone collided with him. Reversing out of reflex he
caught his heel on the edge of the hatch and fell back
inside, thumping into a protruding lower drawer handle.
He uttered a strangled cry, assaulted by pain from both
foot and shoulderblade.

'Please, please, please, can you help me? . . . please
help or they'll . . . they'll take me and . . . and . . .'

Grimacing with the pain, Kao Chih sat up and saw a
slender young woman, a human female, cowering inside
the doorway. She wore a zip-pocketed canvas jacket
over a grubby blue teklabourer onepiece, a little shoul-
der bag of some transparent material, and a pair of
heavy, paint-splashed miledriver boots. Her disarranged
hair was a rich brunette and her face, smudged with
something oily and stained with tears, was arrestingly
beautiful.

'You are Human, aren't you?' she said, almost plead-
ing.

The linguistic enabler Tumakri had given him a few
days ago was clearly working perfectly - he hadn't even
noticed that she was speaking Anglic.

'Yes,' he said carefully. 'I am. Who is it that wishes
you harm?'

'They're . . . they're . . . horrible monsters! - they
took my friend Telzy and cut her up . . .' She began
weeping again and darted along to the cockpit. 'Don't
let them take me, please!'

Kao Chih got to his feet and went after her, hearing
Drazuma-Ha* say:

'Young woman, you may not stay here. We have
come to Bryag on serious business and cannot leave you
in our craft alone ...'

'Why not?' Kao Chih said. 'I'm sure we could lock
out the controls and avoid any accidental tampering and
leave our guest with some food and water while we go
and find this Milmil S'Dohk.'

'Of course, Gow-Chee, this is your vessel and your
mission - I merely anticipated that you might wish to
keep the ship as secure as possible. My apologies for . . .'

'Please don't leave me alone,' wailed the girl from
beneath the console where she had wedged herself.

'What's your name?' Kao Chih said, starting to feel
harried.

'Co ... Cora,' she said between sobs. 'They were fol-
lowing me! - they might come here! Please help me,
please please please ...'

'Okay, okay .. .'

'Are they coming? Are they here? Please, you've got
to close the hatch ...'

'Wait, just wait,' Kao Chih said, heading for the air-
lock. 'I'll take a look . ..'

Quickly he ducked out of the hatch, scanned the
walkways in either direction for any commotion and
saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was a heavy
thud from inside followed by a fearful cry, and when he
re-entered the cockpit he saw Drazuma-Ha * lying on
the floor, his field nimbus rippling with silver and red
distortion patterns. Cora was tearfully watching it from
the other side of the cockpit.

'There's . . . something wrong with your droid,' she
said.

'Don't worry,' he said, crouching down beside thi
dumb-bell-shaped mech. 'He should recover his systems
soon . . .'

Just then he felt her fingers press something against
the side of his neck. He whirled round, even as a cold
numbness flooded through his limbs, and he slumped
over to sprawl on the floor. Out of the corner of his eye
he saw Cora, now composed and grinning, lean over to
say, 'And now there's something wrong with you,' just
before he passed out.

When he came round he found he was strapped
into the copilot couch with hands and ankles bound, an
ache in his head and an awful taste in his mouth. The
background chorus of shipboard hums and the hexago-
nal patterns of the viewport shield told him that they
were under way, back in hyperspace. Next to him, in the
pilot's couch, was his captor, watching him with unrul fle< 1
amusement, her hair now silver-blonde and braided tightly
against her scalp. Her clothes, the jacket, onepiece and
her boots were all the same and she was still as beautiful as
before but Kao Chih knew from something in her eyes that
he was in terrible danger.

'Awake, KC? Good. Mouth taste like month-old
spew?'

Kao Chih grimaced. 'Somewhat, yes.'

'I'll give you a drink soon - I may even untie your
hands. But see these?' She took out a paper strip of
white circular patches. 'I took you down with one of
these - give me any trouble and I'll slap another one on
you. Clear?'

'Who are you? How did we get away from Bryag
Station? Where . ..'

'Whoa, too many questions for cargo - okay, I was
recording everything you said from the moment I got
here, fed it into a digimask then used it to tell Docking
Control that news of a death in the family meant I
would have to depart immediately.' She made a mock
sad face. 'They went for it and here we are, KC, on our
way to meet my business associates.'

'What kind of business?'

'Well-paid business,' she said. 'Oh, and I'm Corazon
Talavera, and you are my cargo.'

When Kao Chih heard that he suddenly recalled that
moment back in Avriqui's hold when he was on his
knees before Manuuk and the hooded buyer on the
screen behind him. Is that what this is about} he won-
dered. Is this Manuuk's doing?

'What did you do to my mech?'

'Used a stasis limpet,' she said. 'Strigida drones have
a reputation for being tricksy so I had the limpet con-
figured and it worked perfectly. Two valuable pieces of
cargo, all neatly packaged, ready for delivery.'

'Delivery to whom?' he said, desiring yet fearing the
answer.

'Hmm, I shouldn't really tell you ... but what's the
harm. To certain revolutionaries of my acquaintance
who are always in the market for new recruits.' She
laughed. 'Which I suppose makes me their recruiting
sergeant!'

Kao Chih swallowed. 'But I'm not trained for fight-
ing - I've never even fired a weapon.'

She smiled and gave him a little pat on the cheek.
'KC, for what they've got in mind for you, that hardly
matters.'

Kao Chih looked away, stomach knotted with fear,
mouth dry, throat feeling irritated.

'Can I have that drink now? I assure you that I will
be no trouble.'

She nodded and a moment later he was sipping from
a hot cup of the ship's Roug-style infusion.

'Your name is Chinese,' said Corazon. 'What were
you doing out here - scouting for some big Earthsphere
gongsiV

Kao Chih thought quickly. 'I'm freelance now -1 was
on my way to collect articles for a client. . .'

There was a thudding jolt that Kao Chih felt through
the solid frame of the couch as well as underfoot. Cora
suddenly directed all her attention to the instruments.

'What was that?' he said. 'It sounded like something
hitting the ship, but debris drops back into normal
space, doesn't it?'

'Shut up,' Cora said, emptying out the contents of her
transparent shoulder bag and fitting together some odd-
looking objects.

Tense silence followed for some moments before
there was a second thud, making Kao Chih jump. Then
a hum that he took a few seconds to realise was the
sound of the airlock's outer hatch opening. His heart
began to race.

'Are we . . . being boarded?' he said, feeling panicky.
'How can we be boarded in hyperspace? That is not
possible . . .'

'Shut up,' she said again, pointing a peculiar, skeletal
handweapon at him. 'Keep silent or it's narcopatch time!
Yes, it's supposed to be impossible but I've heard
rumours . . . never thought I'd get to see one though . . .'

By now she was along the side passage, poised near
the airlock's inner hatch, weapon at the ready. Seconds
ticked away and Kao Chih found that sweat was prick-
ling his neck and trickling down his back . . .

The airlock popped and slammed aside and a grey,
bulky figure flew out, arms spread. Cora got off one
shot which knocked the attacker sideways, just before a
foot came swinging out of the airlock and kicked the
odd gun out of her grasp. As it bounced and clattered
back into the cockpit, Cora lunged after it.

Kao Chih was trying to make sense of what he was
seeing - the first boarder lying still and sprawled at the
end of the passage as a second one, garbed in dark blue
body-armour and a face-concealing helmet, dived on
Cora. Then they were half inside the cockpit, fighting on
the floor, Cora with the gun in one hand, her attacker
grabbing at it with one pair of hands while a second pair
fought to choke her throat. . .

He stared, realising with horror that they had been
boarded by an Ezgara commando. He had never
encountered one but everyone on the Retributor had
heard the rumours about these fearsome, quad-armed
mercenaries. It was said that a company of them carried
out security tasks aboard the Suneye trading station that
orbited Pyre.

So who is this four-armed monster after? - me or her}
Then Kao Chih saw that the Ezgara was gaining the
advantage. With his partly untied hands he loosened
some of the couch straps, allowing him to move round
and start lashing out at the helmeted commando with his
bound feet. Yet he was still too far away, only managing
to clip its arm. It wasn't even distracted.

But he kept thrashing away in hope that seemed to
collapse when the Ezgara managed to wrench the
weapon out of Cora's hand. In response she arched he
back, heaving her attacker off with unexpected ferocit).
pushing his upper body sideways in Kao Chih's direc
tion . . . just as his tied-up feet swung round and
connected full-force with the Ezgara's chin. The hel-
meted head twisted savagely, there was an audible crack
and the four-armed commando sprawled motionless on
the floor, helmet knocked off by the tremendous impact.

Kao Chih was only wearing deck shoes and his toes
were throbbing with pain, yet he let out a whoop that
was equal parts relief and exultation. Then his gaze fell
upon the Ezgara's head and he saw an exposed ear, nose,
side of a mouth, eye and hair that looked very Human.

'Is he dead?' Cora said, scrambling over to the still
body. 'Is he ... yes, he is, you idiot!'

'He looks Human . . .'

'Noticed that,' she said, manically dragging the
corpse along towards the still-open airlock hatch. 'And
you had to kill him.'

Kao Chih stared in confusion. 'But I thought yo i
wanted him dead.'

'I wanted him unconscious,' she gasped, hauling the
commando over the raised edge of the hatch. 'But now
that he's dead, a binary liquid explosive is mixing up
and down his intestines and will blow this ship apart if
I don't get him out in time . . .'

She slammed the airlock shut and hit the cycle-
through button. The servos hummed, there was a brief
sucking sound of the airlock contents evacuating to
hyperspace vacuum. For a second Kao Chih imagined
that the body had snagged on the hatch exit and was
about to explode and tear open the Castellan's hull.
Then he heard Cora sigh and knew that the danger was
past, and when he glanced down he saw that her gun
was lying a few inches from his left foot.

Without hesitation he picked it up and straightened
to see her watching him coolly from the passage. They
looked at each other for a moment.

'I don't want to hurt you but I will,' he said.

She shrugged, put her hands in her canvas jacket
pockets and leaned against the bulkhead.

'You're in charge,' she said.

'He was Human, the Ezgara,' Kao Chih said. 'Did
you know that they were Human?'

'There's always been lots of rumours surrounding
those goons,' Cora said. 'But the Hegemony's been
known to use genetic material of other races to breed
useful servants of one kind or another. The fact that
they seem to have done that with Humans, their biggest
ally, just stinks of very nasty politics, which I don't want to
know anything about.'

'How did they find us in hyperspace? And why?'

Cora smiled. 'Has to be you, not me. You've got the
ship, which is easier to track. They probably used a
hyperspace leech-probe adapted to carry an operator
rather than a shipkiller payload. They went to a lot of
trouble just to get at you -1 wonder why.'

Kao Chih frowned, worried that his family and the
rest of the Human Sept back at the Roug homeworld
were at risk. Then he tried to reassure himself by imag-
ining that the Roug would not allow them to be
endangered.

'Okay,' he said. 'First, I want you to undo my ankles,
then get my mech companion out of the rest bunk and
deactivate that stasis device.'

'Hmm, I don't think so,' she said as she moved casu-
ally towards him.

Kao Chih pressed the fire stud several times but noth-
ing happened. Cora firmly took the slender weapon
from him with one hand while the other came up and
thumbed a white patch against his wrist.

'Party's over - time to go bye-byes.'

He tried to speak but it came out as slurred nonsense
as Cora and the entire cockpit turned grey and tilted
away from him.

33
GREG

'It is terrible, Gregory, absolutely terrible. I have never
known such a feeling of... of dread,'' his mother said
on the comm. 'And that horrible murder at Port
Gagarin last night - God knows I remember how bad it
was before the Winter Coup but it was nothing like this,
not at all. At least that was just us fighting among our-
selves, but this? - did you see that battleship on the
news? . .. The size of it...'

'Aye, Mum, I did,' he said. 'So much for all the
Hegemony talk of peace and cooperation.'

He was standing in the large stone window in the
north face of Giant's Shoulder. Behind him the passage
ran straight through the rock to the icy room of pillars,
beyond which was the warpwell, as Chel had called it.
Chel and Listener Weynl were there now, according to a
message he'd got earlier that morning while reassigning
the sector surveys. Most of his Uvovo field researchers
were involved with this Artificer business, but luckily
the Rus and Norj teams had agreed to take up the slack.
Vaguely irritated by Chel's message, Greg had been
on his way to the winch-lowering spot at the wall -
now covered by a gazebo - when he got a call from his
brother Ian asking him to call their mother and say
something to ease her worries. Once he was down in
the passageway he had done so, only to find himself
agreeing with her bleak outlook. He had seen a news
summary that morning and all of it, from the slaughter at
Port Gagarin to the Brolturan troops fortifying the
Hegemony embassy, was grim.

'Surely the Sendrukans and the Brolturans and the
Earthsphere people won't let this get worse,' Greg said.
'Sanity has to prevail.'

To his surprise, she laughed. 'Only if sanity is backed
by heavy weapons, my dear. Do you remember your
father's elder brother, Piers}'

'Uncle Piers? Vaguely - bit of a black sheep, wasn't
he?'

'Yes, you could say that - he was on Ingram's side
during the Winter Coup, helping organise support in the
trapper towns and further out, but his heavy-handed
methods backfired on him and he supposedly met a grisly
end away in the north. Anyway, he had a favourite
saying - "Screw negotiations, break out the ammo" -
which I suspect these Brolturans would identify heavily
with.' She was silent a moment. 'I worry about the three
of you so much, because I fear that it will all get much
worse before it gets better. Ian is a soldier and Ned is a
doctor, so danger will come searching for one of them ...'

'Mum, you shouldna worry so much, and especially
not about me - all I do is rattle about with my stone
carvings and dusty potsherds.' Aye, and a mysterious,
underground chamber built by a vanished race, proba-
bly Forerunner. 'But we'll also be looking out for each
other, and Uncle Theo.'

'Ah, I spoke to him this morning - he said that he
was on the trail of those who killed the Brolturan
ambassador but he was too late to stop it. He's so angry,
at himself too. Oh look, I've talked long enough. I
should let you get on with your work . . . oh, I meant to
ask if your friend Ms Macreadie is still working at your
site.'

'No, she's away back up to Nivyesta, Mum. She
really only was here for that official visit a couple of
days ago.'

'Right, of course. Well, goodbye, dear.'

After their farewells, Greg put his comm away and
headed along the passage, burdened by guilt, knowing
he should be in touch with his mother more often, actu-
ally making the call rather than leaving it to her or, in
this case, Ian.

Perhaps I'm just not a very good son, he thought
gloomily as he walked down into the room of pillars.

Chel and Listener Weynl were out on the chamber's
patterned floor, at roughly the spot where Greg had lost
his boots the day before. Barefooted, they were crouch-
ing down in the cold golden light of a lamp sitting on
the boundary wall, a short strap anchoring it to a shoul-
der pack. Warily, Greg approached the gap and sat on
the wall, legs kept safely away from the floor patterns.

Chel glanced up and smiled. 'Friend Gregori, good to
see you.' He was wearing the headband over his new
eyes and seemed more relaxed and rested than last time.

Then Weynl straightened and gave him a measured
look.

'May I address you as "Scholar", Mr Cameron?' the
Listener said. 'It feels far more appropriate considering
all that you have done for the Uvovo, all the clues ycu
have found, culminating in this amazing discovery.'

'I would be honoured to accept the title, Listener,' he
said. 'Is there a ceremony involved?'

'Yes - it consists of a day and a half of meditation in
a vodrun, followed by individual visits to your family
and friends to sing the Song of New Leaves. However,
there is no vodrun within easy travel and the pressure of
events allows little enough time for even the most vital
of tasks.'

Greg hesitated, not expecting the seriousness in
WeynPs words and his demeanour. Even Chel's smile
was sombre.

'By events, do you mean this diplomatic row with
the Brolturans? Once we catch those murdering mani-
acs, we'll get back to negotiations and it'll all blow over.
And anyway, what bearing does that have on our work
here?'

'Do you remember what I told you yesterday about
this place, Gregori?' Chel said.

'You said that it was built a hundred millennia ago by
a race, no, an alliance of races called the Great Ancients.
And I said, well now, that sounds similar to these
Forerunners I've been hearing about in the news and on
the vee, who were supposedly wiped out in a cataclysmic
war about a hundred thousand years ago.' Greg smiled.
'And I said, so what did this big chamber actually do,
what was it for, and you said that you'd get Listener
Weynl to explain it to me ... and here we all are. I
assume that it has something to do with my dazzling
experience yesterday.'

Weynl nodded. 'A defence - the well has a vigilant

Sentinel, watching tirelessly, guarding against anything
that might be considered a threat.'
'Like my boots?'

'The Sentinel is very wary of unnatural or processed
materials,' Weynl said. 'You'll notice that our feet are
bare. If you take off your footwear you can join us - it's
quite safe.'

Greg held up his hands. 'Once was plenty, thank you.
So, what are you doing, and how does it relate to what
this place is for?'

Chel looked up from the pattern grooves, which were
gleaming where he had touched them, although Greg
noticed that the radiance faded when he lifted his fingers
away.

'We're trying to rouse the Sentinel,' Chel said. 'Then
hopefully speak with it.'

'Speak with it and warn it,' added Weynl. 'The Great
Ancients built this place and others like it on a hundred
other planets, wells of power to counter the terrible
might of the Enemy; numberless in their vast hordes,
they sought to smother and strangle all who opposed
them, but the wells could reach out into the starry black-
ness, drag them down and swallow them, sending them
down into the darkness below the darkness, the empti-
ness within the emptiness.'

Greg stared at the older Listener, not knowing what
to say, feeling oddly embarrassed, but he knew that he
could not dissemble.

'Listener Weynl, I've heard the Saga of the Ancient
Roots and I've read the transcript - I'm sorry but it's a
legend, a myth. All societies and cultures have stories
like this in the bedrock of their prehistory ...'

But Weynl was smiling at him, not quite in pity, more
like tolerant amusement.

'Friend Gregori,' said Chel. 'This is not a matter of
faith for the Uvovo - we know it to be true, as true as
the War of the Long Night.'

'Chel, you've seen our work . . .'

'Gregori, you saw what happened here yesterday -
you were blinded for several minutes by the forces that
came up out of the pattern.'

'I'll concede that this is a technological artefact from
some vanished civilisation,' he said. 'But there's not a
shred of evidence to connect this place to the Uvovo
myths.'

'Scholar Cameron,' said Weynl. 'I tell you in all hon-
esty that this chamber is the reason why the Hegemony
is so interested in Umara. They know of this place and
they want it - its powers would make them invincible.'

It was an amazing statement and lent a growing sense
of unreality to an already bizarre situation. But Weynl
said it with such steady conviction that Greg took a
mental step backwards - could it be true, he wondered.
It explained several coincidences, yet for all that it was a
tantalising conjecture his ingrained scepticism demanded
empirical evidence.

'How may we convince you, friend Gregori?' said
Chel.

'Proof,' he said. 'Show me undeniable proof that it's
all connected - Segrana, this chamber, the Forerunner
Catastrophe, the Uvovo - and I'll ... well, I'll know
better.'

'If we can persuade the Sentinel to speak,' Weynl said,
'would that suffice?'

'That would certainly get my attention, aye.'

Smiling, the Listener looked at Chel, who nodded. As
Greg watched, the Uvovo crouched down, examining
the incised stone, muttering to each other as they ran
fingertips along the lines of the patterns. Silver threads
shone in their wake and he noticed that each Uvovo
was delineating a cluster of lines, symbols and curves
distinct and separate while just a few feet apart. After
working on them for a few minutes, first Weynl then
Chel rose and took three paces out towards the middle
of the floor, crouched down and again scribed out glow-
ing patterns on the stone. Their squatting forms
appeared dim and shadowy a few yards from the lamp,
but the patterns gleamed like mercury.

Chel stood and came back over to the nearer pair,
crouched and began tracing a line from one pattern clus-
ter to the other, while Weynl did the same at his end.
When the links were made, the pattern pairs brightened
suddenly then faded - the Uvovo grinned at each other
and nodded. Then Weynl bent down and began to scribe
a bright thread from his patterns back to Chel's. Just
before the end he paused, smiled up at Chel and Greg,
then closed the gap.

All four pattern clusters brightened significantly and
the wall at the opposite side was now just visible. Like
the last time Greg felt a change in the air, which
became neither warmer nor cooler, with no change in
humidity or odour or even pressure. It was as if
abruptly something was present in the chamber, some-
thing impassive. . .

TUUL-RAAN-SHAYH

Greg jumped as a massive voice spoke. It came from
all around, and while it was not overly loud there was a
deep, resonant timbre to it which made the hairs on his
arms tingle.

Chel and Weynl looked stunned and uncertain. The
Listener started calling out greetings in the Uvovo
tongue while Chel whispered suggestions. Greg how-
ever felt sure that those three words were not from the
Uvovo language.

SHUUL-TANN-RAYH

'Do you know what that means?' Greg said.

The two Uvovo glanced at each other before Weynl
spoke.

'I cannot be sure, Scholar Cameron. At first I thought
it was an ancient dialect of our tongue, or even a high
idiom used by senior Listeners, yet there is no recognis-
able sense to these ... sounds . . .'

'But did you notice with the second announcement
that the initial consonants shifted?' Greg said, a nasty
suspicion forming in his thoughts. 'If it shifts again . . .'

RUUL-SHAAN-TAYH

'Right,' he said. 'I think we should get out of here,
actually ...'

'But why, friend Gregori?' said Chel.

'Remember the tests you and I went through?' he
said as he got to his feet. 'Remember what happened to
my boots?'

Chel smiled. 'I really don't think that we're in danger.
Gregori.'

'How do you know?'

'I have been using my new senses to study the well
and what lies beneath it, and I can tell you that the flow
of powers is very different from before.'

'Hmm, either you're very trusting,' Greg said, moving
in the direction of the entrance, 'or very optimistic'
SHUUL-RAAN TAYH

'I think that sometimes I am a distrustful optimist,'
Chel said, while Listener Weynl continued calling out
greetings in a variety of Uvovo dialects.

'Well I'm an orthodox sceptic,' Greg said. 'So I'll be
waiting back at the corridor while you see what hap-
pens . . .'

Chel grinned and waved and Greg left the chamber.
He was near the head of the stairway when the comm in
his jacket beeped, alerting him to a message. He took it
out, thumbed the keys, saw it was from Catriona and
began to read while walking along the entry corridor.

'Hi Greg,' it began. 'I tried calling you but the node
hub said you were out of range so I'm sending a corn-
note instead. Just to let you know that I'm going to try
something different in my hunt for the Pathmasters - a
Listener I know suggested I spend a few hours in a
vodrun chamber, contemplating the mysteries of Segrana
in the hope that she might see fit to let me in on a few
Pathmaster secrets. Anyway, by the time you read this
I'll probably be in the vodrun, especially given the signal
lag between here and Darien. I guess you're back down
there in that chamber - wish 1 was there too. Bye.'

The comnote had been sent nearly half an hour ago
but had only reached him when he left the chamber and
came to the corridor. Suddenly anxious, he began keying
for a return call but before he could put it through, that
deep, reverberant voice spoke again from below .. .

HORON

Reflexively, Greg turned to the stone wall, clamping
his hands over his eyes. For telescoping moments all
was dark and silent, no remorseless, hammering light
pouring into his optic nerves, turning the world into
white fog. Cautiously, he peered from behind his fingers,
then lowered his hands - all seemed fine, but just to be
sure he hurried back to the stairs, pausing halfway
down.

'Chel, are you both okay?' he shouted.
'All is well, Gregori,' came the faint reply. 'No need
for concern.'

'Great!' he yelled back, then retraced his steps, wait-
ing till he reached the window, where the body harness*
hung, before making the call to Catriona.

34
CHEL

Listener Weynl had been in the middle of an elaborate
greeting delivered in a whispering hinterland accent
when that great voice spoke again.
HORON

... and simultaneously the four glowing pattern clus-
ters went dark, leaving them in the faintly golden light
of the solitary lamp. It cast their shadows in long black
paths across the intricately carved surface of the well,
making all the incised lines, curves and symbols appear
harshly cut, and the stone look like grainy, corroded
metal.

They both stood there for a moment then, to Chel's
surprise, Weynl began to laugh quietly, his shoulders
shaking with mirth. Chel found himself starting to smile
for no apparent reason, and was about to ask what had
set off this display of merriment when Greg's voice came
from far off, probably the main passage.

'Chel, are you both okay?'

'All is well, Greg,' he shouted back. 'No need for
concern.'
'Great...'

On hearing Greg's distant yelling, however, Weynl
went into another bout of hilarity which provoked in
Chel a slight but growing irritation.
'Listener, are you well?'

'. . . I'm . . . sorry, good Scholar ... all this marvel-
lous construction dedicated to preserving the Great
Ancients' work and when we awake their Sentinel we
cannot understand a word.' He smiled. 'But a Human
shouting from outside we can comprehend quite
well . . . my apologies, it seemed overwhelming!)
funny . . .'

'Understandable, Listener,' he said, feeling disap-
proval at WeynPs amusement, then wondering why he
would feel that way. Am I turning into some kind of
strict, humourless traditionalist? Perhaps I'm the one in
need of a dose of merrymaking!

Suddenly, Weynl fell silent and turned to face Chel,
his eyes wide, mouth open.

'Foolish I've been, yes, and blind!' He stretched out a
hand to the well surface. 'The Great Ancients built this
place, so might it not be expected that their Sentinel
would speak their language?'

'Exactly so,' said a sighing, whispery voice from
nearby. 'Disappointing that you took this long to discern
it.'

In the air above the golden-glowing lamp hung the
tenuous outlines of a vague, hooded figure, its spectral
contours formed from minute particles of dust hanging
and glittering in the heat rising from slots in the lamp
cover.

'Venerable Pathmaster,' Weynl said, bowing. 'Then
it is true - the Sentinel speaks only the Great Ancients'
tongue.'

'I seem to recall that it was fluent in a great many
forms of communication, not all of them spoken.
However, I do remember that it could be slightly irascible
in temperament. Perhaps I can persuade it to be more
forthcoming.' The Pathmaster paused. 'Cheluvahar, I see
the changes Segrana has made in you -1 expect you were
surprised.'

Chel almost smiled, imagining how Gregori would
answer such a comment.

'Yes, Pathmaster, surprise was indeed one of the emo-
tions I experienced when I came out of the vodrun'

'Your importance cannot be overstated, newest of
Listeners,' the Pathmaster said. 'Segrana has not husked
forth one such as yourself since the War of the Long
Night when hundreds of Seers were needed to guide the
Scholars. There were battles in the high skies, but there
were also battles here on the ground against the lesser
servants of the Dreamless, metal things that crept, ran,
flew and swam and which infested the forests and the
plains, the hills and the valleys. They strove to disrupt
the defiant unity of the Uvovo but ultimately failed.

'Segrana knows that we need the Seers again but she
is weak - the War of the Long Night took something
from her that can never be replaced, thus she can only
do what she may with the little strength that remains.'

'Venerable one,' Chel said. 'I thought my abilities
were similar to those of a Listener, yet you named me a
Seer . . .'

'There are aspects to your senses that will make
themselves known to you in time. Realise this, too - the
path from Scholar to Listener to Pathmaster is in the gift
of Segrana, but a Seer cannot become a Pathmaster.'

Chel was intrigued. 'So what does a Seer become?
What will I be?'

'After the upheavals and struggles that lie ahead?"
the Pathmaster said. 'Alive, with any luck.' The
Pathmaster's form blurred a little. 'Now, please leave
me to converse with the well's Sentinel - go with the
Human back to the encampment above. I will come to
you in a while and relate what has happened.'

The Pathmaster fell silent. Chel stared at the attenu-
ated form, hazed, almost fragmentary outlines quivering
in the golden heat-haze of the lamp. Then he glanced at
Listener Weynl, who gave a slight shrug and bowed to
the Pathmaster. Chel did the same and both Uvovo
stepped off the patterned surface of the well and headed
round towards the chamber exit.

'Phruson,' Weynl said thoughtfully as they crossed
the room of the four pillars.

'Excuse me, Listener?'

'Phrusonemejas was one of the three great
Pathmasters who survived the War of the Long Night -
in the centuries that followed all three eventually gave
up their failing flesh and began their journey to the
Eternal. Although the remains of two were discovered
where they had lain down for the last time in the
embrace of Segrana, Phruson's were never found.'

'Do you believe that he is this Phruson?'

Weynl smiled. 'It would be hard to determine, but it
is an explanation of sorts, which is better than no expla-
nation at all.'

But if it is wrong, Chel thought, is a wrong explana-
tion better than none at all!

35

PATH MASTER

All was silent now in the cold gloom at the rock's
heart. The Pathmaster let the outlines of his old physi-
cality, maintained for the younger Uvovos' benefit,
drift and blur like the vestiges of a snuffed candle's
smoke trail. Before him yawned the great aperture of
the ancient warpwell, its inscribed control patterns
stretched faint and wispy across those penumbral
depths. The Pathmaster's senses could cut through
appearances to essences and he knew that the Sentinel
of the well was always there, always alert, always lis-
tening.

'Greetings,' he said in the long-forgotten language of
the Great Ancients. 'I do know that you could have
responded in the Uvovo tongue yet you did not. I
wonder why.'

I WAS NOT ACCORDED MY DUE RESPECT
NOR ADDRESSED CORRECTLY ... IT HAS BEEN
MANY CYCLES OF THIS SUN SINCE ANY OF THE
AUXILIARIES HAVE VISITED THIS DORMANT
PLACE, APART FROM YOU AND THE WEARER
OF THE EXTREMITY COVERINGS.

The Pathmaster smiled to himself, knowing that
this was a reference to the Human Scholar Greg's
boots. In any case, the Sentinel knew that the War of
the Long Night had killed most of the Uvovo on the
planet and trapped the rest on Segrana's forest moon,
until the arrival of the Humans - it was just being
petulant.

'The times of peace are ending,' he said. 'War is
almost upon us. You know of the Humans and the inter-
est being shown towards this world?'

I HEAR MUCH AND BELIEVE LITTLE. THAT
WHICH IS KNOWN IS INVARIABLY SHOWN TO
BE INCORRECT OR INCOMPLETE.

'A commendable scepticism, if kept within limits,!
the Pathmaster said. 'This place is now known to our
enemies, an immense empire of the stars called the
Hegemony - they are secretly dominated by their ser-
vants, machine-minds whose power extends to the
underdomains of the Real.'

THE DREAMLESS! I HAD THOUGHT THEM
DESTROYED ALONG WITH ALL THEIR INSTRU-
MENTALITIES.

'This appears to be a distinct genus with no apparent
links with those earlier counterparts,' he said. 'Their
need for aggressive domination is nearly identical, how-
ever.'

THE UVOVO MUST BE MADE READY FOR
BATTLE - UMARA'S DEFENCES MUST BE STRENG-
THENED.

'Such preparations have begun, but resources are
thinly spread and untried, and Segrana is seriously
weakened. I would like to speak with the Construct, if
he still exists, to ask for advice and aid.'

I CONVERSED WITH THE CONSTRUCT A
SHORT TIME AGO - HE SAID THAT YOU WOULD
SOON VISIT ME WITH THE INTENTION OF CON-
TACTING HIM.

The Pathmaster felt a quiver of surprise. 'Did he say
more?'

HE TOLD ME TO SAY THAT AID WOULD BE
RECIPROCAL. HE SAID TO ASK YOU TO PROVIDE
HIM WITH AN ENVOY, PREFERABLY ONE OF
THE HUMANS BUT A UVOVO SCHOLAR WOULD
SUFFICE - THIS ENVOY WILL HELP TO OBTAIN
THE AID YOU REQUIRE. THERE WAS NO FUR-
THER MESSAGE.

Possibilities flickered through the Pathmaster's mind.
Until his husking, Cheluvahar would have been ideal
for such a task, but now he had a new purpose and the
abilities to go with it. It would have to be another of the
Scholars, or . . . or a Human, such as the scholarly
Gregori? It seemed unlikely that he, or indeed any of the
Humans involved in the work of the intellect, would
consider an undertaking like this. Then there was the
matter of secrecy. Keeping the Humans ignorant of the
warpwell and its entrance would prevent such knowl-
edge falling into the hands of the Sendrukans and the
Hegemony machines, although that might delay them
only for a while.

'Did the Construct reveal the nature of the aid that he
might provide?'

HE DID NOT, BUT IT IS CLEAR THAT HE IS
EXTENDING HIS CAPACITIES AND AWAKENING
SELECTED CADRES OF THE AGGRESSION IN
RESPONSE TO SOME THREAT IN THE LOWER

DOMAINS OF HYPERSPACE. IF YOU WISH r0
SPEAK WITH HIM IN PERSON I CAN TAKE YOU
TO HIM.

The Pathmaster almost laughed out loud. 'My incor-
poreal state makes it impossible for me to undertake
such a journey. However, please convey to the Construct
my gratitude at his offer -1 shall give it the most intense
and immediate consideration, and return with a repl)
tomorrow. In the meantime, if you would excuse my
younger companions their earlier lack of courtesy and
engage them in dialogue, I am certain you would find
them a most appreciative and respectful audience.'

I SHALL DO THIS. DO YOU WISH ANY LIMITS
PLACED ON WHAT I MAY SAY TO THEM?

'None, although perhaps you should be vague about
some of the warpwell control patterns.'

NOW THAT I AM APPRISED OF YOUR UVOVO
COMPANIONS, I SHALL ENSURE THEIR SAFETY.

'Thank you - I am gratified.'

There was no response. The Pathmaster listened care-
fully in the deepening silence, widened senses soon
confirming that the Sentinel's immediate presence hail
receded.

The Pathmaster thought on what he had learned. The
Construct, a near-mythical ally of the Great Ancients,
had apparently known or guessed that he would try to
make contact: did that imply that the Construct was
somehow monitoring events here on Umara? Then he
recalled the reporters who kept up a flow of information
to their offworld organisations and the arenas of the
tiernet beyond, and realised that the Construct had
access to more than he could know.

The request for an envoy was strange, however, and
curiously lacking in detail, which he would return to
tomorrow. Also, the mention of cadres of the Aggression
being awoken to deal with an unspecified threat was
sufficient to provoke unease. Many centuries ago, when
he was young enough to still have a physical form, he
had travelled via the warpwell to the Construct's strong-
hold in the unsettling underdomains of hyperspace, the
Garden of the Machines. During his stay he had been
taken to a gloomy vastness where the Aggression
waited, sleeping, an immense phalanx of war machines:
he remembered the inactive hush that hung over the
motionless serried rows, columns and files stretching
back into shadow, thousands upon thousands, yet
knowing that even these great numbers would have been
swallowed by the Legion of Avatars.

None of the Aggression had been awoken during the
War of the Long Night, but some were now. It was a
conundrum which implied much and begged many
questions.

Which I intend to have answered tomorrow, he
thought as he drifted from the chamber.

36

CATRIONA

The darkness of the vodrun was broken by the tiny
flame of a luring candle, the kind some Uvovo used to
catch certain insects for the wing casings they shed.
Catriona lay back against the cushion she had brought
for her back, both hands cupping a beaker of turnsprij
tea, breathing in its vapour and occasionally sipping as
she waited for it to cool. There was no way to get hole1
of the special sapdrink that the Uvovo used in their rit-
uals, so she had made up a flask of turnsprig for its
relaxing, de-stressing properties, which turned out to be
invaluable.

And so here she was, following the mystic utterances
of the spectral Pathmaster whom she might or mighr
not have seen. In fact, the stress of the situation derived
not from the Pathmaster's promptings but from the pos-
sibility of being discovered. True, this vodrun was part
of a high-canopy town which was empty due to the
steady migration down to Darien, but travellers and
traders, humans and Listeners still tramped along the
nearby branchways. It was not impossible that someone
might chance to pass by and see that foliage had been
cleared away from the vodrun .. .

Catriona smiled, shook her head, and took a mouth-
ful of her tea, which had lost some of its heat. Eyes
closed, she could feel the warmth spread through her,
calming, relaxing. She sipped again, cleared her throat
and, with a yawn, settled further back into her cushion's
comfort. Suddenly it was easy to keep her eyes closed, to
breathe deeper, to feel that simultaneous heaviness of
limbs and lightness of thoughts that floated free to
pursue the whims of unfathomable intent.

The first definite thread of her dream was the thing
she was holding in her hands: a datapad, a tech-func-
tions model with a battered alloy casing and worn keys.
She turned it over, examining it, recognising it as the one
she had used during her early Enhanced years.
Deliberately she looked up and found she was standing
in the small, cramped room she had occupied at
Zhilinsky House. There was the bed, the desk, the book-
shelf, the always-closed window shutters, yet everything
was pale, colourless and grainy. She was also aware that
she was dreaming, conscious that she was still in the
vodrun while also standing there in the doorway, staring
along an empty corridor. Out the corner of her eye she
caught sight of herself in a square, wooden-framed
mirror - dark hair tied in a bun, grey nondescript uni-
form, a face that looked on edge and showed her to be
about twelve or thirteen.

Catriona walked, datatpad in hand, shoeheels rap-
ping loudly on wooden floors. Zhilinsky House seemed
deserted and she smiled as an idea occurred to her. It's
my dream, so let's go and take a look at the director's
office, see what my file really says! She took the main
stairwell to the second floor and was halfway along the
south gallery overlooking the senior dining room when a
door opened in the north gallery on the opposite wall
and Julia Bryce stepped into view. Amid the mono
chrome surroundings, the soft greys and inky blacks.
Julia was a knot of rich colour, the pale pink of her skin,
the dark mahogany of her hair, the sky-blue dress uni-
form, the shiny brown shoes. The moment she saw
Catriona, her eyes widened and she rushed to the railing.

'Catriona! - I need to speak to you . . .'

But Catriona didn't wait to listen and dashed for the
door at the gallery's end. Then it was up the fire stairs to
the next floor and quickly along to the opening that led
into the annexe. As she fled she noticed other students
beginning to emerge, peering out from behind cup-
boards or sitting in corners or ducking back into
doorways as she passed.

'Join us, Catriona! Join me!'

She gasped. She was up on the balcony in the minor
gym and Julia was down in the centre of the court,
gazing up.

'I need you, Catriona!'

She ran.

Out the annexe side door, down the garden, past the
brollyberry trees and back into the main building. A
windowed corridor led past the junior canteen where a
few others sat singly here and there, their colouring as
grey-shaded as the environment and the food on their
plates. Then a boy hurried down a stairway in the centre
of the canteen, and came over to the window where
Catriona stood on the other side. Like Julia he was in
full colour - red hair, blue shirt and shorts, and a grin
that she knew, although he had never been at Zhilinsky,
simply because he was a normal. She placed him at per-
haps fifteen, but it was definitely Greg.

'This is my dream,' she said. 'Why are you and Julia
here? I'm aware that I'm dreaming so I should be able to
guide it where I like ...'

'That would be true,' said the young Greg. 'If this
was a dream. Cat, you've got to speak with her.'

'What, with the Julia in my head? Aye, as if I'm going
to waste my time.'

Greg smiled. 'She's not in your head, Catriona -
you're in hers.'

Suddenly fearful, she stepped back and continued
along the corridor which she remembered led to the east
lobby, but once through the door she found herself in
one of the lecturers' offices, a small wood-panelled room
with a cluttered desk, a wall of filing cabinets, a small
window up high . ..

The door clicked shut behind her and she whirled to
see Julia standing before it.

'We're all in terrible danger,' Julia said. 'Two of their
servants arrived last night but I have lost them, some-
where/within my abundance ...'

'This is all very un-Julia-like of you,' Catriona said
sharply. 'But then you did put me through the help-
remorseful-Julia-redeem-herself playlet a few times, I
seem to recall. Not this time, though.'

'I cannot see them, and who can tell what they are
planning?' She stretched out her hands. 'Please,
Catriona, I have been blind for so long - join with me
and be my eyes. You are special, so different from the
People of the Leaves, and so rare, even among your own
kind ...'

A chill went through her, the cold realisation that
this truly was no dream, nor was this in any sense Julia.

She's not in your head, you're in hers.

An unreasoning terror welled up in her, wiping away
the room and the pleading Julia — and suddenly she was
wide-eyed and awake, fumbling the vodrun's door open,
tumbling out to sprawl on damp mats, gasping for
breath.

Was that Segrana} she thought. What did it mean by
'join? Then she remembered something else - 'Two of
their servants arrived last night. . .'

She shivered in the fading light. Nivyesta's orbit
would soon be carrying this part of Segrana into night-
time but for now some sunlight filtered down from
above, striking gleams and glitters from the raindrops
that had fallen while Catriona had been in the vodrun.
And she thought about how it was dark and shadowy
down on the forest floor, and found herself imagining
soft-footed intruders skulking through the undergrowth,
weapons in hand and malice in their eyes.

Still seated on the high, narrow platform, she hugged
her knees and tried to think.

37
THEO

To get to Sundstrom's villa, Theo had to go with three
security guards through the adjacent property's grounds
to avoid the dozen or more reporters camped outside the
villa's main gate. It was overcast and unseasonably mild
this early in the morning, with the promise of more rain
to follow last night's succession of showers.

It had been raining steadily by the time Theo and
Donny Barbour and the others had reached the Port
Gagarin terminal, only to find it sealed off, jumpy local
police and DVC soldiers covering every exit, while all
flights had been grounded. They soon found out why,
which contributed to Donny's ill humour, itself sharp-
ened by news that the DVC squad assigned to Kuros
had been disarmed on the say-so of the Earthsphere
ambassador and were being interrogated by Brolturan
officials and officers. Nothing Barbour could say was
enough to get him through the cordon - the comm
system hubs might have been out but the order had
apparently come through on one of the old landlines,
express instructions from the deputy-president to allow
the Brolturans to conduct an investigation unhindered.

Theo had been astonished to hear this and only a
little more surprised at Barbour's cold and impassive
response.

'The port is theirs,' he had said in low, clipped tones.
'No point in staying here - we should get back to
Hammergard.'

He had then turned and strode off back to the spin-
nercar, followed by Theo, Rory and Janssen. Pausing
by the car, Donny tried his comm once more, got noth-
ing, weighed it in his hand for a second before hurling it
with sudden violence against a nearby brick wall, where
it shattered into pieces. Saying not a word, he calmly
opened the driverside door and got in. Janssen merely
arched his eyebrows for a moment, but Rory had
grinned and nodded. 'Ah wiz worried there,' he had said
as they climbed in and Donny drove off.

Once back in his apartment, Theo had made for the
lounge, thinking to check a news channel on the vee, but
then exhaustion started dragging at him with a hundred
hands and he had found himself swaying on the spot.

J may be a fit fifty-year-old, he thought. But I'm still
fifty.

Almost without thinking, he had staggered into his
bedroom, where he fell asleep fully clothed.

Until he was roused by an insistent hammering on his
door about three hours later. It turned out to be a gov-
ernment courier with a handwritten note from
Sundstrom pleading with him to come to the villa for a
'crucial advisory meeting'. Bleary-eyed, he had starec
at the note and the courier, then sighed.

'Right . . . okay . . .' He jabbed a thumb over his
shoulder at the kitchen. 'Coffee's in the brown jar,
beakers are on the board - I'll be having a shower.'

'It's all right, sir. I don't want anything to drink.'

'It's for me, laddie - my need is greater than yours!'

Now he was following one of the security guards
through a cleverly masked gap in the hedge then along
the side of the villa to a porticoed side entrance. Theo
wondered what would be on the agenda as he was
shown into a dim passage then up a flight of stairs. It
wouldn't be hard to guess, going by the radio reports
he'd heard during the drive here. It seemed that the
Brolturans had determined that the Darien soldier who
assassinated their ambassador had died in a grenade
explosion only moments after the murder. Some of the
DVC soldiers present had been released into the
Office of Guidance's custody while a few others were
still being questioned at the terminal. In addition, the
Brolturans were fortifying the Hegemony embassy on
the basis that the next ambassador would be based
there. The perimeter wall had been heightened overnight
in several places and various mysterious devices were
being installed at intervals around it. Local residents
also reported the comings and goings of small transport
craft; it was not known if the Brolturans had obtained
permission to overfly Hammergard. Staff at Port
Gagarin air traffic centre were said to be tight-lipped
about the matter.

I'll bet, he thought as he was escorted up to the
second floor. No one wants to look a fool, especially
when it might make your boss look one too.

Moments later he was ushered into Sundstrom's
office, exchanging nods of greeting with Pyatkov and
Donny Barbour, who were already seated at a small,
ornamental table occupied with heavy-bottomed glasses
and a bottle of Urquhart. A wood-cabinet vee was mur-
muring in the corner, showing Macroscope, the 24-hour
news channel.

'So, has the Hegemony taken over yet?' Theo said,
pouring himself a drink. 'Has Horst finally caved in?'

Pyatkov's smile was thin. 'Not really. The Brolturans
are pushing the "we are the victims" line and Starstream
are giving them plenty of coverage, along with Kuros
and Horst, who are playing the compassionate sympa-
thisers' role for all it's worth. The Purifiers commander,
this Father-Admiral Dyrosha, even gave an interview -
on Starstream, of course - expressing his outrage that
peaceful Brolturans were slaughtered by, quote "savage set-
tlers", unquote.'

Theo stared at the intelligence chief. 'He really said
that? - "savages" plural?'

'The father-admiral was quite concise in his mean-
ing,' Pyatkov said.

'Savages,' Theo echoed. l]a, and we know who
brought them here! Why don't we go get some of those
reporters in here and tell them who really has been
behind all of this?'

Donny laughed, but Pyatkov was unimpressed.

'Because we have no proof that the Hegemony has sent
Humanlike agents among us . . .'

'Apart from Mr Olgren and his singular tattoos," cut
in Donny.

'Who's now lying in the morgue,' Pyatkov said.
'Aye, in pieces.'

Theo glanced from one to the other. 'What's this
about Olgren? How did he die?'

'Dismembered,' Donny said with a savage relish as he
refilled his own glass. 'Seems they tattoos weren't just
for decoration . . .'

'My officers had brought him to the OG detention
centre and were taking him to Processing when he col-
lapsed on the floor, yelling and gasping,' Pyatkov said.
'Those tattoos were starting to constrict his neck, arms
and ankles.' He grimaced. 'Suddenly there was blood
everywhere and his escort were looking at a dismem-
bered corpse.'

'My God,' murmured Theo.

'Tells ye one thing, though,' said Donny, looking
straight at Theo. 'These people mean business.'

'That may be so,' said Pyatkov. 'But certain events
seem to have no rationale, like the rifle left behind after
the Giant's Shoulder shooting. They must have known
that someone would have traced the scope to High
Lochiel and eventually to that rooming house.' He
shrugged. 'Was that what it was all about, setting up an
elaborate trap? I cannot be sure but my instinct says
no.'

Donny hunched forward. 'There's no doubt that all
those attacks were supposed to exhaust the OG's
resources and divert its attention. Add to that the really
convenient comm hub blackout earlier, along with the
security cameras in the Bay 2 lounge having their plug
pulled just before the Brolturans arrived.'

'Horst requested that,' Pyatkov said sourly.
'Prompted by Kuros, no doubt.'

Theo snorted. 'So there's no record of what hap-
pened.'

'Apart from the one apparently made by one of
Reskothyr's retinue,' Donny said. 'Which they've
promised to release to the news media later today - oh,
and to us, in the spirit of cooperation.'

'So where's Sundstrom?' Theo said.

'Trying to cope with a political crisis,' said Pyatkov.
'Storlusson, the master-provost of Trond, has told him
that if he cannot restore order and persuade the
Brolturans to withdraw their troops, the Northern
towns may reform their League as a temporary security
measure. Also, he is facing a vote of no confidence when
the Assembly meets in emergency session in a few hours.
The Consolidation Alliance are pressing him hard while
certain elements of his Civil Coalition are badly shaken."

'Could he lose?' said Theo.

'It's on a knife-edge - there's a handful of Legators
who are certain to switch to the Consies if he can't sta-
bilise the situation. If that happens and he then lost the
vote, he would most likely step down in favour of
Jardine. Holding an election under these circumstances
is unthinkable . . .'

'Jardine,' Donny said with undisguised distaste. 'That
windbag . . .' :

Just then, the other door opened and Sundstrom
entered in his wheelchair. He looked as if he had aged in
the hours since Theo last laid eyes on him, yet a kind of
dogged tenacity still burned in those embattled features.

'Gentlemen,' he said, steering his chair over to their
table. 'Thank you for coming at such short notice, and
my apologies for shortening your sleep.'

'Sleep?' Donny said to Theo. 'What's that again?'

Theo grinned while Pyatkov kept a stone face.

'I've read Vitaly's report on Olgren, which I assume
the both of you are privy to,' the president went on.

'What none of you know is that you're here to witness
the conference call I am about to take with Ambassador
Horst and the High Monitor Kuros. Depending on the
outcome, we may have to adjust our short-term tactics.'
He leaned forward to pour himself a generous measure
of Urquhart and knocked it back in a single gulp. He
exhaled pleasurably through gritted teeth and set down
the glass. 'My doctor will be most displeased. And now,
gentlemen, as my father used to say - it's showtime!'

He propelled his chair over to his desk, fingered its
control pad and picked up his comm while turning to
face the pair of view screens that had come to life above
the low bookshelves at his back.

'My friends, could you move that way, out of the
screens' two-way sensors?' Then into the comm he said,
'Is that it? Good, then you may put them through.'

A moment later the screens blinked, one after
another, and presented the faces of Robert Horst and the
Sendrukan Utavess Kuros. Sombre greetings were
exchanged, although Theo thought that Horst seemed
the least grave of all three.

'Ambassador, High Monitor - I am sure we are all
aware of the despicable act that took place at Port
Gagarin last night, and may I reiterate my sorrow and
condolences for the victims and their families.' He
paused a moment. 'As you might realise, the events of
the last few days have had repercussions for my govern-
ment, especially me. I can tell you that the death of
Ambassador Reskothyr has brought things to a
head ...' And he laid out the details as Theo and Donny
had been told a short time before.

'A tricky situation, Mr President,' said Horst. 'If I
may be blunt, if you were to stand down, would Mr
Jardine be able to form a stable government? Is that
what this call is about?'

'No, sir - Deputy-President Jardine would be unable
to maintain the Civil Coalition, thereby losing his
majority in the Assembly and facing his own vote of no
confidence, which he would inevitably lose. While this is
happening, Trond and her neighbouring towns would,
I've been assured, re-establish the Northern League, trig-
gering protests, arrests, expulsions and general civil
unrest. Any attempt to run a general election amidst
such upheaval would be almost impossible, and the full
consequences would of course be broadcast for all to
see.'

Both the offworld diplomats were now soberly atten-
tive.

'What this call is about is my persuading you, High
Monitor, to withdraw the Brolturan troops, and you,
Ambassador, to provide Darien Colony with, say, a
company of Earthsphere marines to assist my govern-
ment in maintaining security and stability, as well as
deepening ties with the homeworld. What do you say?'

Theo exchanged astonished looks with Donny and
Pyatkov.

A hard gleam had entered the Sendrukan's gaze. 'This
is scarcely diplomatic language, Mr President. Father-
Admiral Dyrosha would be far less understanding than I.'

Sundstrom smiled and nodded, all evidence of his
earlier fatigue seemingly vanished. 'High Monitor, I
agree that my recommendation lacks the diplomatic
niceties, but I am sure that the honourable father-admi-
ral will understand it if you tell him clearly. If you as yet
remain unconvinced by my determination, then let me
acquaint you with some recent developments. Last night
my security service detained a man known to be a
member of the Free Darien Faction, a man whose body
was decorated with bands of tattoos. Soon after he was
taken into custody, these tattoos turned into some kind
of implants which then constricted, dismembering him
in minutes, so that he quickly died of blood loss and
shock. Analysts tell me that these skin implants can only
have come from offworld, which forces me to conclude
that Darien's internal affairs are being interfered with.'

Are you accusing the Hegemony of responsibility for
this incident, for which you have presented no proof?'
said Kuros.

Sundstrom shrugged. 'To be honest, High Monitor, I
don't know what to think. However, in a few minutes I
shall be holding a press conference, and if I have to
announce my resignation I shall tell the reporters why in
detail, including a coroner's report on the FDF agent's
body and additional testimony from my analysts.'

'Sir, this behaviour is outrageous!' said Horst.

'Indeed it is, Ambassador, but when you have a weak
hand you have to make every card count.'

Theo grinned, enjoying this display of old-fashioned
political rough-house.

'You have a talent for negotiating, Mr President,' said
Kuros. 'Let me first put your mind at rest regarding
Hegemony involvement in any insurgent activities here
on this world - we Sendrukans do not engage in illegal
activities that would threaten stability. That said, I do
feel that, on reflection, your proposals have considerable
merit. I am certain that Father-Admiral Dyrosha can be
persuaded to draw down the Brolturan peacekeepers. I
am likewise sure that Ambassador Horst can easily see
how continued stability can only be beneficial to all con-
cerned.'

For a moment Horst's face stared blankly from the
screen. Then he blinked and life came back into his fea-
tures. .

'Well, eh . . . if my Sendrukan colleague is willing to
persuade . . . persuade the Brolturan commander to
scale back the troop presence, that puts matters in a dif-
ferent light. In the interests of cooperation and stability
my remit would allow me to offer the kind of military
assistance previously mentioned.'

'Your words are most gratifying, gentlemen,'
Sundstrom said. 'You have no objection to my announc-
ing the main points of our accord to the waiting
reporters?'

Assurances were given by Kuros and Horst, along
with strained smiles, then farewells and the confronta-
tion was over. Theo joined the others in an impromptu
round of applause to which Sundstrom gave a sardonic
smile and bow of the head.

'That Horst,' Theo said. 'The man's a hand-
puppet ...'

Aye, he just caved at the end, there,' Donny said. 'I
thought he had more spine than that.'

'Well, we've no way of knowing what advice he was
getting from his AI implant,' said Pyatkov. 'Or how
much control it has over him.'

'Then there's no point in speculating,' Sundstrom
said. 'In any case, this is a temporary reprieve until
Kuros decides on his next move. Pyatkov, Barbour -
could you wait downstairs in the conference room? I
just need to have a private word with the Major.'

The two men nodded, rose and left. Theo returned
his empty glass to the ornamental table and went to sit
on the edge of Sundstrom's desk, silent, waiting.

'The assets, Theo,' the president said at last. 'You've
got to move them again.'

'Again?' His heart sank. 'Why? And where to this
time?'

Away from the towns and settlements. The Uvovo
know of many a hiding place in the East Hills - I'll put
you in touch with one of the Listeners. And why? -
well. . . time is against us, Theo, even though my steam-
roller-ambush ploy bought us a little more.'

'What happens when time runs out?'

'Occupation, maybe internment for the hard cases,
with some kind of justification proclaimed loudly along
with declarations of their generous and enlightened
intentions towards us. I've seen several reports docu-
menting the Hegemony's "generosity", worlds where
every city is reduced to rubble, or where the ecosphere
has been deliberately poisoned, or where tailored micro-
organisms were released to expunge a staple crop or a
vital food animal. Which is what would have been in
store for us had we not been a colonial offshoot from
their principal ally.' His eyes were full of a ferocious
resolve. 'There has to be resistance, Theo, a guerrilla
struggle against the Hegemony that will deny them the
right to be here.'

'Surely public opinion back on Earth wouldn't stand
for Hegemony occupation?'

Sundstrom smiled. 'Public opinion depends on public
perception, and across Earthsphere, especially amongst
Human sectors, that perception is shaped by a news
media consensus led by ...' He raised a hand towards
Theo, expecting him to finish the sentence.

'Starstream,' Theo said sourly. 'What have they been
saying about us?'

'That we're a bunch of ignorant, hairy-arsed throw-
backs. Oh, there have been any number of pretty
documentaries about Darien's flora and fauna, but oth-
erwise the general slant is that we're a parochial,
clannish rabble.'

Theo remembered hearing about his nephew Greg's
run-in with one offworld reporter. 'Is Lee Shan with
Starstream?' "

The president chuckled. 'He's a piece of work, that
one - I saw one of his reports on Darien politics that
went out on a culture and politics channel which isn't
fed through to Darien, surprise, surprise. It was cleverly
done, subtle and nuanced, managing to be both accurate
and completely misleading.'

'You mentioned seeing reports on the Hegemony and
now this one by Lee Shan.' Theo paused. 'Have these
come from the Imisil, Mr President? If so, can they be
trusted?'

'More than that, Theo, we had one of the OG's
newest surveillance terminals, modelled on one from the
Hyperion, patched into a data nexus on board the Imisil
ship in orbit. We were able to access the tiernet itself, that
vast interstellar network; my God, Theo, there are
oceans upon oceans of information out there, the knowl-
edge and culture of thousands of worlds, and that is how
I came to find out the foul history of the Sendrukan

Hegemony. And can they be trusted? - I have no doubt
that they have an agenda, but equally I am sure that our
interests and theirs coincide.'

'Good, so we can expect a shipment of advanced
weapons very soon, yes?'

Sundstrom gave a half-smile. 'Soon, perhaps. That
Brolturan ship has seeded Darien's orbital shell with
probes and detects that track everything in the planet's
vicinity out to beyond Nivyesta's orbit. If something
happens to disrupt and divert attention, the Imisil
ambassador will seize the opportunity.' He thumbed
keys on his desk and the wall screens behind him went
dead. 'Now, time you went about your business and I
tended to mine.'

'Donny Barbour and Mr Pyatkov?' Theo said. 'Why
the separate meeting for them?'

'Actually all three of you are to be briefed separately
and privately by me,' Sundstrom said. 'Thus the capture
of one cannot jeopardise the others.'

A practical approach, Mr President, if a bit pes-
simistic,' Theo said. 'What if they capture you?'

Sundstrom laughed. 'Trust me, no one is going to
capture me alive.'

The two men shook hands.

'Now go,' Sundstrom said. 'Good luck and good
hunting.'

'You too, sir.'

And as he left the study, Theo was struck by a fore-
boding that this would the last time he would see the
man alive.

38
ROBERT

After the conference call with Sundstrom and Kuros, he
sat there at his desk, feeling an odd exhaustion of the
mind. His thoughts were like worms slowly pushing
themselves through a dark, muddy cave, taking an inor-
dinate amount of time to reach the other side.
'Robert, how do you feel?'

How did he feel? He blinked, breathed in deep and
turned to see Harry in a patterned grey lounge suit,
seated at the end of the desk with concern in his fea-
tures.

'You look tired, Robert,' he said. 'It's my fault, I
pushed you too hard on the deployment matter . . .'

'Harry, Harry ... you were only doing your job while
I was just, well ... wrong-footed by Kuros. Just wasn't
expecting it. And Sundstrom - I was so furious at that
gambit of his, and yet I can admire the way he played it,
played us.'

'Politics is politics, whether it's on a backwater planet
or at the Great Assembly on Earth.'

Robert nodded and sighed, gazing out of the first-
floor window. The road was quiet, deserted, lit by a
teardrop-shaped lightpod hanging from a question-mark
lamp-post, ancl as he watched it began to rain, bright
flecks falling within the radiant halo, dark spots speck-
ling the ground.

'So what will you do about the marines?' asked
Harry.

'Order Captain Velazquez to deploy them down
here,' Robert said, turning to beckon Rosa over. 'After a
quick game of chess.' From a desk drawer he took a
folding board and a box of pieces. 'Black or white, my
dear?'

'I'll play .. . black,' Rosa said, and as she sat on an
opaque high stool, sixteen translucent black pieces
appeared on her side of the board while he patiently set
out the white side. This was a joy, he thought, playing a
relaxing game of chess with his daughter after a hard
day's work. But look at the lateness of the hour! - he
would have to see her safely tucked up in bed once this
game was over and not a moment later.

Robert played first, then move followed move, white
pieces and dark, opaque grey pieces staking out terri-
tory, threatening assaults, shoring up defences.

'Robert, Lieutenant Heng is still in the building,'
Harry said. 'I'm sure he would know the state of readi-
ness of the Heracles's marine complement. Might be
prudent to know this.'

'Hmm, you think so?' He pondered a clash of pawns
on the board before him. 'Very well, have him come
up.'

It seemed only a moment or two before there was a
knock at the door. He called out and a young man in
an Earthsphere olive-and-brown uniform entered,
approached and gave a stiffly formal bow.

'Mr Ambassador,' he said.

'Ah, Lieutenant - my daughter, Rosa.'

A moment's hesitation, then the officer bowed again.
'Miss Horst.'

'A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,' Rosa said.

Horst nodded. 'It is very good of you to answer my
summons at this hour. I shall shortly be issuing a request
to Captain Velazquez for a company of marines to be
redeployed down here, but in advance I should like to
know what their state of readiness is.'

'I understand, sir. The Heracles carries two full
marine companies, complete with lowalt fliers, ATVs
and med-mobiles. Either or both companies can be
scrambled and ready for deployment in under an hour,
and a full company can be translocated to the planet's
surface in about six hours, if all three shuttles are avail
able.'

'Excellent, Lieutenant, and how would you describe
morale at the moment?'

'Very good, sir. Everyone's keen to do whatever they
can for the Darien colony'

'Of course, which is only natural and which we are
already achieving!' Rosa moved a bishop across the
board and placed it on a square occupied by one o'
Robert's knights, then poked her tongue out at him. He
smiled and removed the knight. 'So, Lieutenant, when
do you return to your ship?'

'The cutter is supposed to leave Port Gagarin at I
a.m., sir, but we have been advised to be there by 7.30 at
the latest so I thought it advisable to start out as soon as
possible.'

'Then I shall detain you no longer, Lieutenant. Be on
your way, and pass on my warmest regards to your cap-
tain.'

'I shall, sir.' He bowed to Robert and again to Rosa,
who smiled sunnily.

As the young officer left, Robert returned to the game
and after a moment's scrutiny saw that he was a few
moves away from a complete defeat.

Another game, Daddy?' said Rosa.

'Young lady, if your mother were here she would be
outraged to see you still up at this hour . . . well, perhaps
one more . . .'

'Robert, you were going to issue that order to
Captain Velazquez,' said Harry, who was standing at
the other window. He was smiling in that narrow-eyed,
head-tilted manner that signalled disapproval.

'Oh, but I'm busy with Rosa, Harry - would you
patch into my messenger and send a note for me? You
know the basic details.'

Harry was still and silent for a second, then he said:

'That's it done, Robert. Do you want to retire to bed
now? Since you decided not to cancel tomorrow's
engagements, I would recommend catching up on some
sleep.'

Robert frowned as he rearranged the pieces. Why
was Harry being such a nuisance? Couldn't he under-
stand that a father had obligations to his daughter?

'Really, Harry, I've just agreed to play another game.
I'm sure that I'll be able to meet the day's . . . the
day's . . .' He paused, feeling a little dizzy and seized by
an irresistible need to yawn. The room dimmed and
seemed to grow pale as if a grey veil fell upon every-
thing.

Were those his hands that were carefully putting
away the chess board and pieces? Was that his voice
that said 'Goodnight' to Rosa and his fingers that
switched off the intersim? His legs that carried him
upstairs to change into his sleep wear, his bed into which
he slipped? Grey hands, grey veil, grey voice, just like
that moment during the conference call when his mind
seemed to stumble but something in him carried on.
Grey voice, grey hands, grey veil, his mind like a grey
cave across which he crawled, sinking at last into grey
sleep.

39

CATRIONA

Morning sunshine speared down through Segrana's
upper canopy as Catriona guided her trictra along the
branchways, heading back to that deserted village, back
to the vodrun. The cold air was laced with damp odours
of leaf and flower stirred and swirled by the heat of the
sun. Rising wafts of warm air carried insects higher to
unfurled, nectar-beaded blooms, new luscious leaves,
overnight fungi and tiny water pools held in the crooks
of tree limbs. Seeing this, Catriona knew that every
insect had its predator, whether it was a bigger insect or
a bird or some small, furry pseudo-mammal. Or even a
plant, luring with sweet smells and bright colours, trap-
ping the quarry with snapping leafy jaws or sticky,
smothering leaves or steep-sided drowning sacs. There
was even a tree which enticed insects into a crack in its
bark which closed convulsively when an intruder tickled
certain fibres within.

And as Catriona travelled, always her thoughts cir-
cled back to last night's strange dream in the vodrun, to
the warning about invaders gliding through Segrana's
shadows. Predators stalking prey ...

After that unsettling and curtailed vigil, she had
returned to the Human enclave and a restless night of
shallow, inconstant sleep. Rising early, she had tried to
focus on her backlog of research work, sorting and cat-
aloguing samples, but her mind wandered back to that
dream, her childhood at Zhilinsky House, Julia . . .

Yes . . . Julia. Then she had taken out her coram,
pondering the fact that there were people she could
contact and favours she could call in. In the event, how-
ever, the reliable details she gathered provided only a
sketchy picture. For about a year the government's
Special Designs Division had been maintaining a
research post at Pelagios Base, the old oceanography
platform ten miles up the east coast. Then several weeks
ago a dozen or more additional personnel had arrived
but were taken off Pilipoint in a large launch which
headed for Pelagios Base. There was never any mention
of Pelagios and its staff in any public announcement or
memo or directive from Pilipoint's administrators, but
the community's rumour-mongers took it for granted
that the new people had been Enhanced. Another hand-
ful had arrived in the week following, of whom
Yurevich was the most recent, all of them with that
aura of lofty intellect. And then last night, while she
was getting ready for her vigil, some eighteen to twenty
of them had left on a special shuttle flight back to
Darien, including Julia Bryce - a friend on the embarka-
tion staff had noticed the name on a passenger manifest
before it was removed.

Beyond that, there was little of substance. Nothing on
Enhanced identities, and not a clue as to the nature of
the research taking place at Pelagios. And certainly no
explanation for the evacuation, although it wasn't
impossible that the Brolturan ambassador's murder had
played a part.

It was a setback, this near-perfect information black-
out, but not that much of a surprise. The Enhanced and
their minders were secrecy obsessives and habitually
paid great attention to details, ensuring the integrity of
that blackout. Catriona realised that it would take more
digging to find out anything useful, more time than she
had today.

Instead, she had made a few more calls to fellow
researchers in other enclaves dotted around the conti-
nent-spanning forest of Segrana. She was looking for
any reports of odd happenings or sightings and found
herself being offered innumerable reports on the curi-
ous and often inexplicably purposeful behaviour of the
forest's flora and fauna. But when she made it clear
that she was after more mysterious, unattributable inci-
dents documented in the last couple of days, she was
left with a handful of accounts: a set of bipedal prints
leading up the sandy beach of Emmerson Bay on the
north coast; four perfectly circular holes drilled into
the 200-foot-wide bole of one of the five pillar trees
that made up the outer northeast buttress cluster; the
cut-up carcasses of five crab-analog ogmi found beside
one of the eastern underlakes, every incision smooth
and precise; the sighting, on the night before last, of a
large, dark bird swooping low over the dense heart-
lands of the Great Central Uplands before lazily
flapping away eastwards.

Catriona brought the spiderlike trictra to a halt on a
natural shelf of interwoven branches and tied it up
within easy reach of edible foliage. Then it was a brief
downward climb to the small platform where the
vodrun waited. She thought about those singular reports
and what they might mean if yesterday's dream-vision
was right, the possibility that offworld intruders were
lurking somewhere, watching, planning . . .

In her left hand she held a plastic tub on a cloth
strap - inside were some biscuits, nuts, a small flask of
turnsprig tea and a luring candle fixed in a seashell
holder. Then with her right hand she took out her comm
and called Greg, imagining the signal flying up to one of
Nivyesta's comsats and then tight-beamed to another
orbiting Darien, then down to the local hub node. After
several moments a breathless Greg answered.

'Yes? . . . hello? . . .'

'Greg, it's Cat,' she said.

'Well, hi... did you get my message? Did you ... did
you go through with it?'
'I did, and I didn't.'

At the other end Greg chuckled quietly. 'I detect a
wee note of indecision there.'

'Not so much indecision as blind terror,' and she gave
him a terse summary of that unnerving vision, including
her encounters with the younger Greg and Julia, which
also entailed a brief explanation of Julia's role in her past.

'Uh huh, so you were dreaming about me, eh? I'm
honoured.'

She smiled and shook her head. 'No, Greg, there
wasn't any dreaming involved. I'm certain, now, that I
was talking to Segrana and that she was using images
from my memory . . .'

'I must admit that sounds pretty wild,' Greg said.
'But I had my own share of surprises last night...'

She listened as he told of the huge chamber and the
pattern-inscribed floor that Chel and Listener Weynl
called a well, and how the Uvovo had awakened some
kind of automatic defence (which had apparently obliter-
ated his boots during the first expedition).

'Your boots?' she said, laughing.

'Aye, took exception to certain aspects of their man-
ufacture, it seems.'

'I think I'd rather be down there than up here,' she
said.

'Ach, we are where we are.'

'Homespun philosophy, Mr Cameron?'

'Straight from my mother's knee to your ears, Miss
Macreadie. So - are you going to try again?'

How did he guess} she wondered.

'I think ... I think that I have to,' she said. 'It's the
precautionary principle - if Segrana has been talking to
me and if there are hostile intruders around, then it's
wise to be prepared. In the vision she said I could help -
now I'm going to find out how.' She laughed drily. 'And
if it turns out to be a wild goose chase, I'll be on the next
shuttle back to Darien to join the resistance!'

'It's not quite got to that stage,' Greg said. 'In fact,
Sundstrom has somehow got the Brolturans to drasti-
cally reduce their troop presence at the Hegemony
embassy, and persuaded the Earth people to send some
marines down from the Heracles'

'Some good news at last - maybe I'll not have to
leave Nivyesta after all.'

'I don't know - we could need a Uvovo expert on call
when we get round to studying those underground
chambers!'

Their shared laughter was easy and warm, but brief.

'Sorry, Greg, but I'll have to go and get this over with
while I'm still convinced.'

'Aye - I have to go, too. Promise me you'll call the
moment it's done.'

'I will, I promise. Goodbye, Greg.'

'Bye, Cat.'

Call ended, she tucked the comm away, breathed in
deep . . . then swung round, tugged open the vodrun's
circular door and ducked inside. Moments later, the
candle was lit, the tea was poured and the door wedged
shut with a wad of leaves.

Right, she thought as she sipped the hot, herby infu-
sion. I'm here so let's get to work.

40
CHEL

The zeplin pilot was a Finn named Varstrand who kept
up a stream of gossip and rumour as they flew out from
Hammergard, heading southwest across Loch Morwen
towards the Savrenki Mountains, a southerly offshoot
of the Kentigerns. Varstrand's craft, the Har, was essen-
tially a true dirigible with a gondola slung beneath a
gas-filled envelope shaped like a fat cigar. The gondola's
twin-prop motors could run on either alcofuel or battery
power and solar cells glued to the outer skin provided
an emergency backup.

Chel was seated behind Varstrand, in a wire-and-
wicker couch that seemed as rickety as the construction
of the creaky gondola. He was wrapped up well against
the chill and the icy draughts that slipped through
cracks in the hide-and-canvas hull. The noise of the
engines added to the discomfort but this was his first
visit to some of the Burrows to which he had dispatched
the teams of Artificer Uvovo over a day ago. He would
sit it out - there were worse things to be endured.

A two-hour journey under grey skies took the rest of
the morning and, following the map scribed by Uvovo
scouts, brought the Har to a bushy ridge in the foothills
of the Savrenkis. Chel clambered down a rope ladder to
be greeted by Tremenogir, the Scholar in charge. Then
together they grabbed the mooring lines let down by
Varstrand and tied the zeplin between a couple of sturd)
trees.

'How long you be, Listener, sir?' Varstrand yelled
down.

'Not very long, Pilot Varstrand,' Chel called back.
'Maybe half an hour.'

'Good! - I have book ...'

Chel grinned and waved then looked round at
Tremenogir.

'Let us begin, Scholar Trem.'

'It is a great relief to have you here, Listener,' the
Scholar said as he led the way down the other side of the
ridge then up into a steep-sided gully. 'Our findings are
astonishing.'

Chel thought about correcting the Scholar's use of
the Listener title, but since he was not entirely sure of
the difference himself he decided to leave it until he was.

Rocks, bushes and age-twisted trees cluttered the
gully, carved from the hillside over time by a stream
which splashed and gurgled down a notched rock face
at the gully's end, where four immense boulders were
piled to one side. A stair of flat rocks led up onto the
second-highest boulder and a dark gap where the third
boulder leaned against the gully's undergrowth-
swathed slope. Chel followed Scholar Trem into the
gap, which became a low, narrow, curving passage,
clearly hewn out of the tilted boulder.

The passage widened, wood-shored sides showing
many signs of recent repair. Ulby roots and tethered
ineka beetles shed enough blue-green light to see by as
they continued further into the hillside.

'So, Scholar Trem, your findings,' Chel said as they
walked. 'What makes them so astonishing?'

'The expected followed by the unexpected, Listener,'
said Trem as they entered a small, shadowy room where
three young Uvovo sat at a table, scribbling by the light
of a candle. Hastily, they stood and bowed.

'My assistants, Jont, Flir and Kamm - it was Jont
who literally stumbled upon our discovery. But first, the
roothouse.'

The Scholar showed Chel through a doorway leading
off to the right and down stone steps into cold depths.
The carapace glows of a few ineka beetles speckled the
inky darkness. Soon they came to a low, arched entrance
where Trem paused, took a shell candle from a waist
pouch, lit it with a Human match then continued. The
air was dry and musty, like the faint emanation of an
ancient decay. The passage was about a dozen paces
long and showed many holes and gouges where plant
growth had eaten into the stone, most of which had
been cleared away except for one thick, rough root
which had burst through then snaked along to the other
end. And this was the very least of it, as Chel saw when
they emerged into the roothouse and Trem raised his
lamp.

Twisting, coiling and knotted, rootworks filled the
high, circular chamber before them. Through the tangle
Chel saw vague suggestions of carved images on the
walls, all buried beneath encrusting filth, except for a
massive, fallen shard of rock which stood at an angle
across the chamber, webbed with roots. He could also
tell that several other passages led outwards from the
round room - ten or twelve all told.

'I had Flir and Kamm clear away some of the roots
from the bottom,' Trem said. 'There's enough room to
crawl over to one of the laving galleries.' He crouched
down and pointed. 'That one.'

As they crept under the mass of entwined roots, occa-
sionally snagging clothing on twiggy protrusions, Chel
went over in his thoughts what Listener Weynl told him
about the Burrows. They had been built well before the
War of the Long Night as a means of bringing greater
focus to the powers of Segrana-that-was, the Segrana
whose embrace had once enclosed both planet and
moon. Each Burrow, Weynl said, was the meeting point
of hundreds of roots, thousands in the larger ones. With
the use of nutrients and other balms provided by some
of Segrana's most specialised plants, the growth and
extent of the forests and jungles could be managed; like-
wise, Segrana's harsher powers could be channelled and
intensified and, if necessary, put forth in anger. This was
the Artificer Uvovo's urgent task, to find out if anything
useful remained, at least in those Burrows in the imme-
diate vicinity.

A few paces into the laving gallery they were able to
stand up and survey what it had come to. From the grey,
dust-choked remnants of ducts and wall channels, Chel
could see how the roots entered from above and curved
down through one or more stone basins, where they
were fed specific fluids. Now a snarl of uncontrolled
roots filled most of the gallery, grey roots, grey dust,
grey webs.

'This has been abandoned for a very long time,' Chel
said. 'And it provokes in me a certain sadness rather
than astonishment.'

Trem nodded. 'As it did in me until Jont found some-
thing more interesting in another gallery.'

A few moments later, in the root-framed entrance to
that gallery, they were standing over a rectangular hole
in the floor.

'While clearing away dead roots and dried-out debris,
Jont tripped and fell to his knees right here.' Trem squat-
ted down beside the opening. 'Some rotted framework
gave way beneath and he would have plunged into dark-
ness had he not caught the edge and climbed back out.'

A narrow set of steps was visible by the meagre light
of Trem's shell lamp as he led the way down. Chel
immediately smelled something different from the root-
house - a hint of damp, a woody odour, then the
pungency of mould. Something was growing down here.

The steps ended in a small alcove just off a corridor,
but the way was blocked by a large pipe. No, not a
pipe, he realised as Trem went over to it with his lamp,
but a huge root. Like the Scholar he ducked under and
saw a high-walled passageway not unlike the galleries
above, except that here the roots were big and alive,
some bulbous, some bifurcated, some sprouting pale
rootlets that spread across the walls, over faint,
labyrinthine traces of previous rootlet webs. And there
in the quiet, underground dimness he heard the sound of
droplets falling from high onto roots or plinking into
small puddles. He was tempted to tug aside the blind-
fold and open some of his new eyes to all this, but his
perceptions were still unpredictable so perhaps another
time would be better.

'Yes, Scholar Trem,' he said. 'Astonishing is the right
word.'

'Thousands of years,' Trem said. 'Thousands of win-
ters and summers and still it functions - if we'd brought
more lamps you would see the fenfinil roots where the)
come down through the ceiling then push through the
cutting collars that feed the sap down to the spouts -
true, there is mould and moss everywhere, but never so
much that they staunch the flow.'

'Well, Scholar Trem, if the roothouse is above us,
then what is this place?'

Trem smiled and gave a little shake of the head. 'I can
only make a tentative guess, Listener, that it may be
some kind of master regulating system which we've
stumbled upon by chance. But if the other Burrows also
have something similar, we may have to think again on
its purpose.'

If only I had known of this before leaving
Hammergard, Chel thought. But Weynl and the other
Listeners had banned the use of radios to ensure that
positions were not given away by signals easily detected
by those in orbit above. Thus all communication was by
courier, either on foot or by dirigible. Which was what
Chel would have to do now, take Varstrand's zeplin back
to Waonwir rather than continue on to the next Burrow.
The other Listeners would have to be informed and then
enough messengers would have to be dispatched to dis-
cover if there were similar galleries elsewhere.

He explained this to Trem, who nodded.

'A sensible approach, Listener,' he said. 'Would you
like any or all of my assistants to return with you and
give what help they can?'

'No, Scholar Trem - I need you all working hard
here. If your Burrow turns out to be the only one with a
gallery like this, we will need to know all there is to
know as quickly as possible.'

'I shall get them back to work at once,' Trem said.

'Good. Now I shall return to my zeplin and be off
back to Waonwir. We must use the Humans' flying craft
for swift travel while we are still able to do so.'

'Are the Dreamless close to assuming control?' Trem
said as he led the way back up to the roothouse.

'Not yet,' Chel said. 'An emissary from the
Brolturans was assassinated soon after landing at Port
Gagarin, which the Brolturans then used as an excuse to
start sending troops down from their huge warship, sup-
posedly as protection for the Hegemony envoy. Yet the
Humans' president somehow persuaded them to with-
draw while obtaining Human soldiers from the Earth
ship.'

'This Human Sundstrom has great cunning,' Trem
said, helping Chel up out of the floor opening. 'I have
heard some Listeners speak highly of him.'

'Cunning may not be enough,' Chel said. 'I have been
told that the Dreamless are as numerous amongst the
Brolturans as they are across the Hegemony. I fear that
it is only a matter of "when" not "if" they reach out to
take what they want.'

'I fear you may be right,' Trem said. 'Ah, now we
have made several sketches of the roothouse and the
galleries since our arrival. Would you care to take them
with you?'

'That would be most useful, Scholar, my thanks.' By
now they had reached the narrow passage leading to
the exit. 'Shall I send you more paper with the next
courier?'

'That and more blankets,' Trem said, as they emerged
blinking into the daylight. 'There are centuries of cold in
those underground stones and it feels as if I am getting
to know it all too well!'

41
THEO

Grimy, sweaty, streaked with dirt and grease, weary and
aching, Theo, Rory and the Firmanov brothers staggered
into the Bell and Cat, an old-fashioned dockside pub.
Outside, sunlight gleamed on cobbles wetted by a brief
shower; inside, it was as murky and smoky as it would be
by the evening, though perhaps not quite as crowded. As
Alexei Firmanov went to buy the first round, the others
found an empty barrel-table and some stools, and
moments later Theo was slaking his thirst with a hefty
swallow of Golden Lever ale.

As it went down he sighed.

'I swear it's never tasted that good before.'

Aye, Major, right enough.' Rory had already downed
half his pint. 'Reckon we deserve this, and more.'

Nikolai nodded vigorously then lit up a pipe, grin-
ning hugely around the stem as he reminded them how
Maclean had his lunch eaten by a forest baro then later
lost his cap to an inquisitive ginibo monkey. Theo
laughed along, feeling that mixture of camaraderie and
pride reserved for officers who shared a deep level of
trust with those under their command. Yet the Diehards
were not a formal military unit, which made their
trust - and therefore his responsibility - far more
daunting.

Ja, we've done well today, he thought. We managed
to move all the weapon caches again and stow them in
some very out-of-the-way places, just like Sundstron
wanted. But what happens now that the Brolturan
troops have left? - will we have Earthsphere marines
patrolling the streets with the DVC?

He had heard news coverage and comment on the
radio while travelling around all morning and most of the
afternoon. The consensus of opinion among both the
studio quackers and the public phoning in seemed to be
optimistic, yet he thought he detected a fearful edge to it,
even a reluctance to contemplate any kind of worst-case
scenario. Then again, the radio studios could well have
been screening out any phone-ins that voiced such opin-
ions.

Well, whatever the outcome, at least this moment
was a restful one spent in the company of good friends.
The rest of the Diehards were returning borrowed
trucks and vans or heading back to homes and families
in Port Gagarin or High Lochiel or easterly towns like
Laika and Rannoch. And as he gazed around the pub, a
grey-whiskered man in a ragged-brimmed hat seated at
the counter caught his eye and they exchanged a friendly
nod. Poacher Zargov, that was, a reprobate scoundrel
who was just one among several other old-time drinking
buddies that Theo recognised. Nick the Spring, a sly
and patient trapper who once drank Viktor Ingram
under the table; Swedish Harry, a tracker from Trond;
Stamper Nadine with her bandolier of fine metalwork-
ing tools; and here, heading towards their table with a
balding Earther in tow, was Father Josef Terekhov, a
respected trawler captain.

'Theo, gospodin,' Terekhov said, his glare enhanced
by a magnificently bushy beard and moustache.

'Josef,' he said. 'You're looking well. Would you care
to join us?'

'A kind offer, my friend, but I am just here to give this
fellow into your custody, and so prevent him from
annoying the other patrons with questions about you!'

Terekhov's glare softened and a slight change in his
beard indicated that he might be smiling beneath it.

'My thanks, Josef,' said Theo. 'Spaseeba balsboye! I
shall take charge of our guest and deal with his ques-
tions.'

Terekhov nodded, raised a hand and went back to his
table. Theo turned to the newcomer, a young man with
receding hair and a nervous manner.

'Pull up a seat and join us, Mr . . .'

'Oh, ah . . . Macrae, Barney Macrae.'

As Theo made brief introductions round the table,
along with handshakes, Rory frowned at the off-
worlder.

'Macrae's a good Scots surname, but ye speak like
a ... whit are they, again? . .. American, that's it.'

Macrae nodded. 'Yes, sir, that is correct. One of my
distant ancestors emigrated from Scotland, back in the
1800s, I believe. My own branch of the family is from
Boston in the ESA

Rory was about to come back with another question
but Theo cut in.

'So, Barney, Father Terekhov said you were asking
after me, so what can I do for you?'

'Okay, first you should know that I'm a freelance
reporter working under a Starstream licence. . .'
Rory snorted. 'That lot.'

Macrae shrugged. 'I know what you're thinking, but
a Starstream licence was the only way to clinch an
assignment I was offered by a prestigious edumedia net-
corp . . .'

'Barney,' said Theo. 'May I ask if you have an AI
implant?'

Macrae gave a wary smile. 'No, Mr Karlsson - I do
have a gofer-AI back in Boston but his codecore was
done up by a local indie . . .' Meeting blank stares, he
went on. 'Anyways, the answer is definitely no - my
thoughts are my own.'

'Well, then, Barney, what's your point?'

Macrae paused, chewed his bottom lip then leaned
forward and murmured, 'I've got a recording of the
Brolturan ambassador's assassination.'

There was a stunned silence around the table while
the normal hubbub of the Bell and Cat went on about
them.

'Do you have it with you?' Theo said, suddenly tense.
Macrae nodded, patting the chest of his jacket.
'And how did you acquire it?'

'I had got to know one of the soldiers guarding the
Hegemony envoy - before her unit was assigned to him,
I should say - and persuaded her to carry an eyebead on
her uniform.'

'Whit's that, then?' said Rory.

'A tiny videocatcher, smaller than the head of a pin,'
Macrae said. 'I had her put it on her jacket shoulder. But
after the attack the Brolturans detained your soldiers
for questioning and she was among the last to be
released. I only got it back this morning, and when I saw
what was on it I knew I couldn't just sit on it.' He began
to reach into his jacket. 'I can play it for you if you
like . . .'

Theo shook his head and put a restraining hand on
Macrae's elbow, then glanced at Nikolai.

'Ask at the bar for a key for one of the pool rooms
upstairs.'

Five minutes later they were gathered round a pool
table, watching Barney fiddling with a small, notebook-
sized device in featureless beige plastic which was
leaning against one of the cushions. Then the device's
flat surface flickered suddenly into soundless video, a
view of the back of a DVC soldier marching along a
wide corridor adorned with glowing adverts, some-
where in Port Gagarin, Theo guessed. The procession
came to the lounge and as the Darien soldiers formed a
rank behind the towering Hegemony Sendrukans, the
viewpoint showed the Earthsphere ambassador and his
assistants, the high walls and viewing gallery, and the
glass-fronted stairwell from which travellers usually
emerged. Then, as the picture swung back towards the
High Monitor Kuros and his delegation, Macrae froze
the recording with a black, penlike remote.

'See here?' He pointed to a cluster of dark blue fig-
ures, each standing with upper arms folded and lower
arms hanging straight. 'Those are Kuros's personal
bodyguards, four Ezgara commandos. That's what
Lenya saw when she entered the lounge, four of them.'

The recording resumed and events played out just
as the news reports described. The Brolturans emerged
from a pair of wide-open double doors that led out of
the lounge. Two standard-bearers led the way, followed
by four bodyguards and six officials, flanking
Reskothyr himself, attired in a black knee-length coat
of austere cut: his head was bare and shaven, his hands
covered by gleaming black gauntlets. The procession
came to a halt, except for the standard-bearers, who
continued forward, one carrying his standard over to the
Hegemony envoy, the other to the Earthsphere ambas-
sador. Just as they bowed to the standards set before
them, unseen attackers opened fire.

A volley struck members of Reskothyr's retinue to the
left. Cries went up and Reskothyr's own guards hustled
him off to the right. The Earthsphere ambassador and his
aide retreated towards the seats as the Ezgara and the
DVC soldiers began firing back at a dark glass-fronted
gallery overlooking the lounge. But one DVC soldier had
broken from the rest and was heading round to the right,
against the wall, aiming his weapon not at the gallery bit
at Reskothyr. The assassin opened up, bursts of auto-
matic fire cutting down Reskothyr and the Earthsphere
ambassador's aide, as well as one of the standard-bear-
ers, who charged with his banner pole held like a spear.
He went down in a welter of blood, one hand blown off.
Then the gunman shot dead a few others before dashing
towards a door in the corner, but one of the Ezgara
hurled a grenade after him. There was an explosion and
the already jerky viewpoint swung wildly, showing
glimpses of other DVC soldiers diving for cover. Then
the picture spun back round in a blur, showing clouds of
dust and smoke hanging over a scene of devastation, a
wrecked wall, pieces of debris lying over a wide area, and
the still bodies of casualties. Members of Reskothyr's
retinue stumbled through a grey haze, some shouting
into communicators, some weeping, all in silence. Then
Macrae froze it again.

'Okay, my friends - how many Ezgara commandos
do you see?'

The moment he asked the question, Theo under-
stood. And sure enough, when the distinctive
blue-armoured figures were counted there were five.

'The fifth Ezgara didn't enter by the concourse
doors,' Macrae said. 'There were no Ezgara in
Reskothyr's entourage and that side door led into a
storeroom with no other exit.'

'You're saying that the assassin dived through that
doorway, survived the grenade, then changed into an
Ezgara uniform?' Theo said.

'Sure, why not?' Macrae said. 'They could have
rigged up a temporary blast shield for the shooter to
get behind, along with one of those combat armour rigs
that they wear. And yeah, I know they say that they
recovered a DVC soldier's body from the wrecked
room - so what? Kuros's people had effectively sealed
off that lounge more than an hour before Reskothyr's
shuttle touched down.'

'But why?' said Nikolai. 'It makes not any sense to
me. They pulled their troops out overnight so what was
it all for?'

Macrae gave a gleeful little laugh. 'The Hegemony is
fond of big, simple dramas - they love to put on a show,
and that's what this was. I think I heard that they're
going to release their own recording of the attack, is
that right?'

'Seems so,' said Theo. 'The question is, why bring
this to me?'

'Because your president has to see it!' Macrae said. 'I
watched that press conference last night and I could tell
right away that he'd played Horst and Kuros perfectly.
Some guy, that Sundstrom.'

Theo smiled. 'Indeed he is, Barney, but he's not the
one who has to see this first.'

'Then who . . . you can't mean . . .'

'Yah, Horst! - get him on our side and we might
stand a chance of seeing that big battleship of theirs
sailing away.'

'I don't know,' said Macrae. 'Horst . . . he's pretty
staid, pro-Hegemony, pro-alliance to the core.'

'That's why we have to tell him that we have copies
of this in Sundstrom's hands and circulating round the
colony' Theo grinned. 'So if he wants to avoid a public
outcry and diplomatic scandal all rolled into one and
then seized on by every reporter within reach, he'll have
to get Kuros and his pet Brolturans to send their peace-
boat home.'

'Sounds like a flare,' Macrae said. 'But it might fly. So
how do we get this to Horst as soon as possible?'

'It so happens that I know exactly where he is, right
now,' Theo said. 'At the Falls of Gangradur on the south-
ern shore of Loch Morwen ... well, at the Mistwatcher
Guesthouse that overlooks the Falls. I know that he's
been touring a local fishery and the Veiled Caves and th? t
he's to spend the night there, which presents our oppor-
tunity. In my role as presidential adviser I can get in to see
him and show him Barney's recording, safe in the knowl-
edge that Kuros is twenty-odd miles away.'

'How do we get there, chief?' said Rory. 'Take the
coast road?'

'We'll charter a zeplin,' Theo said. 'Fly straight across
the loch and be there in an hour. What say you, Barney?'

'It's a great story, Mr Karlsson,' Macrae said, slipping
the display unit back inside his jacket. 'I'll follow it all
the way'

Theo looked at the others and they all nodded.

'Just as long as my brother stops for a quick shower,'
Alexei said, jabbing his thumb at Nikolai, who sniffed at
him then wafted his hand before his face.

'I'm not the only one . . .'

'Depending on how long we have to wait when we get
to Northeast Fields, we can clean up a bit,' Theo said.

Everyone stood and drank a toast to luck and the
hunt before leaving. It was a ten-minute walk to
Northeast Fields, after which half an hour was spent
looking over the available charters in the hires room.
Given a bid marker by the hires allocator, they went
looking for berth 18 and found a curious, block-shaped
zeplin beneath which sat its captain, a stocky Dansk
named Gunnar. Business was transacted and ten minutes
later they were climbing into the sky over Hammergard,
heading south. As the roofs and streets of the city dwin-
dled and slid away, Theo suddenly remembered that he
had meant to contact his sister and arrange to go round
and see her. 'Damn ...' he muttered, resolving to call
her when he got back, Greg too. It felt as if the whole
crisis was cutting him off from his family, especially the
ones he really cared about. Yet he knew that part of
him was enjoying it, or at least enjoying the intensity of
tactical judgement, the threat and the risk.

Just as long as it doesn't put the ones I love in danger,
he thought. That's what matters.

A little over an hour later, the zeplin was descending
to a stubby mooring platform, engines running down as
its fore and aft cables were hauled in by motorised
winches. Theo paid Gunnar his fee and a retainer and
they all disembarked, waving to the winchmen as they
did so. The mooring platform was situated in a field
bordered by bushes and a stand of whistler trees to the
west, their odd-shaped leaves causing an eerie piping
chorus in the faint breeze. These were the grounds of
Mistwatcher, and as they followed a gravel path through
the trees, the guesthouse came into view, a conglomera-
tion of circular buildings raised stiltlike up on pillars.
This area was about 50 feet above sea level and not far
from the shore of Loch Morwen. But it was dwarfed by
the gigantic spur of stone that jutted from a towering
slope that led up to a high valley so immense it was
almost a plateau set against the grey outlines of massive
peaks. The spur tapered and sloped downward to a
blunt prow from which water fell in a white column
800 feet through clouds of mist to a boiling cauldron
which spilled down a brief series of rapids to Loci:
Morwen.

The constant roar of Gangradur Falls grew louder as
they approached the guesthouse. Mistwatcher's entrance
and admin building was identical to the circular resi-
dence modules, only larger and situated at ground level.
At the front desk, Theo presented his government ID
and asked for directions to Ambassador Horst's suite.
When permission was granted, he took Barney and Rory
with him, telling the Firmanovs to wait in the lobby. A
spiral staircase took them up to a large, covered plat-
form from which walkways radiated to the modules. A
green-uniformed attendant seated in a booth pointed
out which one led to Horst's residence and minutes later
they were standing before its front doors. Theo pre-
sented his ID to the visitor sensor and the doors slid
apart to admit them to a small, tiled, oval hallway. A
slender young man in a dark brown, high-necked suit
came forward to greet them.

'Major Karlsson,' he said in a surprisingly deep voice.
'My name is Carolian -1 am Ambassador Horst's secre-
tary. The desk said that you wish to speak with the
ambassador on an urgent matter.'

'That is so,' Theo said. 'It concerns the events at Port
Gagarin yesterday.'

'I see.' The man Carolian took out a small grey pad
which he studied for a moment. 'Our sensors say none
of you is armed but one of you is carrying a digitact of
some kind.'

Theo put his hand on Barney's shoulder.

'My associate, Mr Macrae, has a device containing
new information about the attack which the president is
keen for the ambassador to see.'

'Very well, I will see if he is ready to receive you.'

Carolian left by a side door then reappeared moments
later to beckon them in. Theo led the way and was ush-
ered through to a well-lit kitchen/breakfast bar where
the ambassador sat at the table, playing chess with a
ghost.

'It's a hologram,' Macrae murmured. 'Supposed to be
his dead daughter.'

The translucent figure was of an attractive young
woman, early twenties perhaps, with long brown hair,
wearing a many-coloured flowery shift over patterned
blue trousers. Theo knew the background from news
reports and Pyatkov's briefings, which said that Horst's
daughter had died a couple of years ago, yet the sight
made the hairs on his neck prickle.

'Good day, gentlemen,' Horst said, rising to face
Theo. He was wearing a calf-length house-gown of
some olive green material, fastened loosely with a yellow
sash. 'Major Karlsson, yes? The president's adviser . . .'

The two men shook hands. Horst's grip was firm,
dry and steady, yet Theo got the impression that there
was some concealed frailty to the man.

'My thanks for agreeing to see us, Ambassador. These
are my colleagues, Mr Macrae and Mr McGrain.'

More handshakes. Rory had blinked on hearing his
surname and his wide-eyed stare flicked between the
ambassador and the opaque hologram. Come on, Rory,
Theo thought. Don't let me down, lad.

'And this is my daughter, Rosa.'

The hologram girl smiled at the three men, who gave
brief, nervous bows. Theo glanced at Macrae, but he
seemed unruffled so he tried to appear unconcerned
himself.

'So, Major,' Horst went on. 'You have more informa-
tion regarding yesterday's horrific events, information so
urgent that it could not wait till my return to
Hammergard.'

'Exactly so, sir - we have a recording of what hap-
pened.'

A look of unease passed across Horst's face. 'A
recording? Is it from the Brolturans?'

Theo shook his head. 'Another source, Ambassador.
May we show it to you?'

For a moment the ambassador was silent, his eyes
glancing sideways for a moment before he gave a sigh
and nodded.

'Very well, Major, do you require any equipment?'

Theo turned to Barney, who already had his displayer
in hand. 'Um, would it be okay to use the ambassador's
vee screen?'

'Certainly,'said Horst.

Macrae produced a coil of tendril-thin cable, hooked
up the displayer to the vee screen, fingered the screen
controls, and moments later was ready. But Horst made
him wait while he spoke with the hologram.

'I'm sorry, Rosa, dear, but I have some work to attend
to. Can we continue our game later?'

'Of course, Daddy - I'll remember where all the
pieces are.'

As fondnesses were murmured, Theo exchanged baf-
fled looks with Barney and Rory. Then the hologram
winked out and Horst slipped a flat, octagonal unit into
the pocket of his house-gown, put away the chess set
and turned back to the others.

'Proceed.'

Barney pointed the black rod remote and the record-
ing played out silently as before. Barney paused it as
before, pointing out the number of Ezgara commandos
before and after the assassination. When it was over,
Horst sat there looking stunned, even a little shrunken
in the baggy folds of his gown. But then he stared off to
one side, frowning, lips moving, shaking his head
slightly as if having a private conversation ...

His AI implant, Theo realised. That's what he's lis-
tening to . . .

'Ambassador . . .' he began.

'Ah, yes, Major, yes . . .' Horst put finger and thumb
to the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezing shut as if in dis-
comfort. 'How confident are you of this information's
provenance?'

'My colleague, Mr Macrae, is the one who obtained
it,' and at Theo's prompting Barney told the ambassador
how and why the recording had come to be made. By
the end, Horst's expression was weary but grim.

'This is very serious,' he said. 'I would be the first to
admit that the Hegemony has in the past employed
questionable methods in pursuit of its interests, but to
do this, and to their closest ally?'

'It looks like a justification for a military intervention.'
Theo said. 'But if anything they've stayed their hand.'

'Darien Colony would be in upheaval now if
Sundstrom had not manoeuvred us into looking bad to
the media.' Horst stared down at his hands. 'If I'd
known about this before I would have deployed the
marines sooner and in greater numbers.'

'Can this be done now, Ambassador?' said Theo.

'Yes -1 have a subspace comset in my luggage . ..' He
paused and looked to one side. 'It's all right, Harry, I
know what I'm doing.' As he got to his feet his attention
came back to Theo. 'It's through in the stowaway -1'll
just...'

The door flew open and the secretary Carolian
rushed in, clearly upset.

'The news channel, Ambassador! It's about you . . I
Quickly, Horst reached for the vee screen's keypad
control and thumbed it on. Up came the Darienwave
news channel with one of the regular presenters, Oxana
Rugov, and with Horst's face in an upper corner box.

'... just to recap on Our breaking story, the Brolturan
delegation has issued a statement accusing Earthsphere
Ambassador Robert Horst of planning and ordering the
terrorist attack at Port Gagarin yesterday, resulting in
the murder of Diakon-Commodore Reskothyr and four
others on his staff. The statement goes on to claim pos-
session of damning evidence, eyewitness accounts and a
testament given by a DVC soldier who Ambassador
Horst allegedly tried to recruit.

'Shortly after the release of this statement, a commu-
nication was received by all media outlets from
Father-Admiral Dyrosha, commander of the Brolturan
vessel Purifier. It says, quite simply, that a Decree of
Arrest has been issued, naming the ambassador and
demanding that he present himself to airborne units
which have been sent forth to detain him ...'

Horst staggered back from the screen and dropped
into a chair at the table, looking pale.

'It's preposterous ... outrageous!... I had nothing to
do with . . .'

'Ambassador, you've got to get to safety,' Theo said.
'Can you call the Heracles and get them to send a shut-
tle to pick you up?'

'Yes, I can,' Horst said, getting to his feet. 'I'll get my
comset. . .'

'I'm sorry, Ambassador,' said Carolian. 'But you and
your visitors will have to remain here until the arrest
detachments arrive.' ..

The slender secretary, poised and composed, was
holding a handgun with a strange oval barrel sporting
curved flanges along its sides.

'Carolian,' said Horst. 'What the hell are you doing?'

'Following orders, sir, which means that you will
have to follow mine.'

Everyone froze. Theo cursed the demented bad luck
of Horst having a Hegemony agent on his staff, even
though it was only to be expected . . . and then he
realised that Rory wasn't in the room. Now he glimpsed
movement along the short passage that connected the
kitchen with an adjacent room, probably a formal
dining room. Carolian hadn't noticed Rory's absence
yet, so a diversion was called for.

'You're walking a razor's edge, you know,' Theo said.
'The captain of the Heracles won't permit this and
Sundstrom will put all military units on high alert.'

'Don't be ridiculous, Major,' Carolian said. 'The
Purifier outguns the Heracles by roughly ten-to-one - if
Captain Velazquez tries to interfere he will be fired upon
and you'll be dredging pieces of his ship out of the ocean
for months to come. As for any forces under Sundstrom's
command . . . well, they don't present any kind of serious
threat, I can assure you ...'

And that was when Rory's left hand slammed
Carolian's head into the wall while his right shoved the
secretary's gun hand up at the ceiling as it went off. A
bright barb of energy punched through the plaster and
woodwork, causing a spray of dust and splinters, while
Rory tore the weapon from Carolian's fingers and then
punched him to the ground. Leaning over the moaning,
bloody-nosed secretary, he said, 'How's that fur a seri-
ous threat, matey?'

'Well done, Rory!' said Theo. 'How . . .'

'Ah was over at that window in the corner when he
came in, and I could see a gun in his back pocket and I
thinks, well now, whit's this all about, so when he pulled
it out I hopped up and through that wee delivery hatch
smart as ye like. Came round the other side and nabbed
him.'

'Excellent. You and Barney get him tied up.
Ambassador, let's dig out this comset of yours.'

But when it was unearthed from a large, wheeled
trunk the device turned out to be dead. The power cells
registered full but nothing was being activated.

'But I used it this morning to speak with Velazquez,'
Hoist said.

'Your secretary must have disabled it soon after,'
Theo said. 'Advance preparation - he couldn't have
known that we were coming or what we had to show
you.'

'So he knew that Kuros was planning my arrest,'
Horst said slowly, then glanced sideways. 'They are?
Thank you, Harry . . . Major, it's not safe here. Those
Brolturan fliers will soon be here.'

'Then we need transport,' Theo said, trying not to
think about the AI as he took out his comm and called
Alexei, who was still down at the entrance with his
brother.

'Yes, Major?'

'Alexei - Brolturan troops are on their way here to
arrest the ambassador so I need you and Nikolai to head
back to the zeplin and tell Gunnar to cast off, fly over
and pick us up from one of the residencies - we'll be the
ones on the roof, waving.'

'We're on our way, Major.'

Theo closed his comm and turned to Horst. 'Time to
go, Ambassador.'

From the viewing balcony outside, a stairway curved
up to a railed-in sunbathing deck on the roof. The view
of the thundering Gangradur Falls in the rosy late after-
noon light was breathtaking but all eyes were fixed in
the other direction, towards the guesthouse's mooring
grove and the sparkling grey expanse of Loch Morwen
beyond.

Theo had been racking his brain to think of some-
where safe to hide both Horst and themselves. Then as
the bulbous, boxy shape of Gunnar's zeplin rose over
the treetops he realised that there was one place which
was perfect and took out his comm, hoping that he
would be able to get through.

42
GREG

Greg was on his way back from having sent provisions
down to the well chamber with Chel (who had recently
arrived by zeplin) when his comm. chimed. Seeing who it
was, he grinned and quickly answered.

'Uncle Theo, good to hear from you. How are you
today?'

'I'm well enough, lad. Listen, would it be all right to
impose myself and a few friends upon you just for
tonight? We'll be up and away early tomorrow.'

'Aye, that shouldn't be a problem, Uncle. When can
we expect you?'

'We're coming in by zeplin so we'll be with you in
about half an hour. Oh, and there's no need to tell the
station warden - our pilot is going to let us down on
that grassy stretch behind the ruins. Can't thank you
enough for your help - you're a good lad. Right, be
seeing you.'

As the line went dead Greg lowered the comm and
stared, half-annoyed, half-amused at having been unable
to get a word in.

He's almost a force of nature is Uncle Theo. What
must he have been like when he was youngerl

At the site huts he quickly checked the state of the rec
room then looked in on the stores to see what bedding
was available. He also stopped at his own hut to assess
how much work he had to cover later on, then put on a
heavier jacket and went back outside.

Dusk was his favourite time of the day he decided as
he strolled through the darkening ruins. Dawn could be
very special if it was bright and dry - a rainy dawn felt
as if the world's burden was being reluctantly dragged
into the daytime. Whereas dusk looked great whatever
the weather, be it cloudless skies or overcast, clement or
a downpour. A few times he had been out and about at
sundown with mist or fog creeping down from the dense
forest slopes, and every time it was a splendidly Gothic
experience.

Now, in the fading, grainy light, the surfaces of
ancient broken walls and columns were beginning to
grow dark and foreboding, the stonework looking
increasingly eroded and time-worn, until the night
finally claimed them, turning them into black shapes,
silently looming. Then, as the sun's last glimmer sank
away, leaving only a dwindling radiance on the hori
zon, Greg heard the hum of approaching engines. A
minute later he saw the faint edges of a light beam
wavering along the cliffs that led east from Giant's
Shoulder. After that it wasn't long before the bulky mass
of a zeplin nosed up over the natural ramparts of the
promontory, a solitary spotlight probing the gloom.

As it descended, engines idling, Greg ran over,
exchanging a wave with the pilot in his glowing cockpit.
When it got to about ten feet off the ground it paused,
hovering, while a rope ladder was flung out of a side
hatch and several figures climbed down. By his own
torch Greg recognised Uncle Theo and Rory but not the
other three, one of whom was dressed in what seemed to
be an elaborate dressing gown. Greg went over to greet
them, but before he could even say hello, Theo had a
hand on his shoulder and was steering him back
towards the huts.

'Good to see you, boy. I hope you didn't let anyone
know we were coming.'

Behind them, the zeplin was gaining height and turn-
ing south to head over the ridge.

'Didn't tell a soul, Uncle. So, what's all this about?'

By the meagre torchlight he saw Theo's craggy fea-
tures crease into what his mother once called his
'devil-may-care' smile, which was usually a sign of trou-
ble ahead.

'Ach, well, it's quite a tale,' his uncle said. 'One that
should be told with a glass of the fair dram in hand.'

'I believe that I can unearth a bottle of
Glenmarra . . .'

'Good man! Always prepared for guests, that's what
I like.'

But when they reached Greg's hut, Poul, one of the
interns, was waiting for him.
'Poul, what's the problem?'

'Not sure, Mr Cameron, but a weird message came
through to our hut terminal from the university, warn-
ing us that those Brolturans are sending troops here to
search for the missing ambassador.'

'What?' Greg said. 'To search for who?'

Poul shrugged. 'Seems that the Brolturans are accus-
ing the Earth ambassador of being involved in all the
bombings and that assassination. It's been all over tha
vee-news since this afternoon.'

'Aye, well I've not had the vee on all day, Poul - too
much to do. Look, thanks for letting me know - could
you pass that on to the other teams, tell them to get
ready?'

As the intern headed off, Greg looked at his uncle,
black suspicion in his thoughts.

'If this has anything to do with you,' he said, Lyou
should tell me now.'

Theo sighed, then beckoned forward the man in the
long robe, who had been hanging back.

'Greg, let me introduce you to the Earthsphere
ambassador to Darien, Robert Horst. Mr Horst, this is
my nephew, Gregory Cameron.'

Up close he recognised the grey-haired man from the
news reports, while feeling a slight sense of unreality as
he shook his hand.

'So, er, Mr Horst, what do the Brolturans want with
you?'

The ambassador looked tired and haggard yet he
managed a smile. 'Mr Cameron, I assure you that I had
nothing to do with the murders at the airport yesterday,
or any other terrorist acts. I was there, I saw it, I could
have been killed myself! . . .' Horst's anger ebbed as
quickly as it had surged. 'The Brolturans usually do
what the Hegemony tells them, so Ihave to assume that
it is all Kuros's doing. Mr Cameron, until I can make
contact with the captain of the Heracles I must appeal to
you and Major Karlsson and his friends for help. I have
no wish to end up in a Brolturan interrogation cham-
ber!'

'Greg, those Brolturans will be here soon,' Theo said.
'We need to find somewhere safe to hide, like in the
forest back there. Are there any caves up behind that
ridge?'

'I don't know, I think so,' said Greg. 'Some of the
Uvovo scholars would know, but it would take time to
reach the nearest, and wouldn't these troops have some
kind of nightvision tracking technology?'

Theo nodded. 'They're bound to.'

Greg ran a hand through his hair. 'Right. Fine. Then
there's only one place you can go - follow me.'

Once everyone was down in the entrance corridor, he
told the Uvovo scholars Teso and Kolum (whom he had
woken earlier) to dismantle the winch and the canopy
and stow them in the storage hut. They were then to
reassemble them about an hour after the intruders had
left. As he watched the empty body harnesses rise up
and out of sight, he muttered a prayer that his instruc-
tions had been clear enough, then turned to take stock
of the situation. At least everyone had a blanket, and
there was a satchel filled with whatever food had been
in his cupboard, along with a couple of hand torches.
Which should keep them from getting too cold and
hungry for a while.

'Never heard o' this place,' Rory said, glancing
around. 'You scientists been keepin' it secret, aye?'

'Didn't know about it myself until a coupla days ago,
Rory,' he said, and launched into a brief summary while
omitting the bit about it having been built as a weapon,
as well as any mention of an ancient, intelligent
guardian, not wanting to have to deal with alarm, much
less disbelief. His audience was nevertheless silently
astonished as they followed him along the corridor and
down into the icy room of pillars.

'This is incredible,' Ambassador Horst said, peering by
torchlight at the carved walls. 'Could this be the work of
the Forerunners?'

'Going by Uvovo histories and the few datings I've
done so far, the time period seems to be about 100,000
years ago,' Greg said. 'Which apparently puts it near the
end of the Forerunner era, going by what I've learned
from offworld sources. But if you come through here
you'll see the main attraction . . .'

Warming to his tourist-guide role, he led them into
the well chamber, torchbeams lighting the way through
the heavy, cold darkness. Two figures were visible off
around the boundary wall, Chel and Weynl huddled
over something in the lamplight. Then one of them must
have heard the clatter of footsteps, straightened and
looked round. Greg waved and the Uvovo stood and
started towards them. As he drew near Greg saw it was
Chel.

'It is a remarkable edifice,' Horst said, approaching
the boundary wall. 'And you say this circular area has a
ritual function?'

Greg nodded. 'There's also some kind of highly
advanced Forerunner technology embedded in . . .'

A shattering, stentorian drone blasted through the
chamber as spears and swirling webs of brilliant radi-
ance erupted from the surface of the well next to where
Ambassador Horst was standing. Everyone reacted the
same way, rearing away from the noise and the dazzle,
except for the ambassador, who was trapped in a cage of
light, quivering meshes interleaving. The roaring drone
lessened in force, becoming a resonant, booming voice
speaking incomprehensibly in a demanding tone.

'What in hell is that, Greg?' yelled Theo. 'Is the
ambassador in danger? Are we?'

'The chamber . . . the well has a guardian . . .'

But before he could continue, Chel came running up
followed by Listener Weynl. Chel's forehead was bare
and the outer pair of eyes were open.

'Who is he, Greg?' said Chel, pointing at Horst. 'Who
is this man?'

'He's the Earthsphere ambassador.'

At the same time, Listener Weynl was shouting at the
coruscating maelstrom of light, responding to the
immense voice that thundered forth from it.

Chel stared at Horst, who was on his knees, looking
terrified and hugging folds of his gown to his chest.

'Does this man carry one of the thing you call AIs?'
he said.

'Yes, he does,' said Greg.

Chel shook his head, teeth bared. 'A Dreamless . . .
we will try to save him from the Sentinel, Greg, but you
must trust me and not interfere.'

Greg breathed in deep, trying to steady himself, then
nodded and watched as Chel and Weynl bared their
arms and crouched down near Horst. There was a
moment of stillness, then they swiftly thrust their arms
through the bright shifting mesh - Greg saw the short,
dense fur on their arms begin to char and smoke - and
touched the ambassador's head.

And the ambassador cried out, the muscles on his
neck taut as cables, his eyes wide with pleading.

43

CHEL

When Greg and the other Humans appeared at the door,
Chel and Listener Weynl were sitting cross-legged on
the walkway floor with a blanket between them and the
cold stone. By the lamp's golden glow they were exam-
ining hand-drawn copies of several patterns recently
uncovered in a very old stone tile archive on the forest
moon. They were comparing the tile patterns with
sketches they had made of portions of the well surface,
looking for similarities. The tiles also contained com-
mentaries, but they appeared to be written in some kind
of abstruse cipher which no one had thus far solved.

So it was over these that the two Uvovo were poring
when Chel heard the hard, dry sound of footsteps and
looked up. He had been using the outer pair of his new
eyes to regard the well patterns, but now he saw a
strange, spiked nimbus around one of Greg's compan-
ions. At the same time, a faint amorphous radiance was
gathering at the edge of the well nearest the newcomers.

'Something is wrong, Listener,' Chel said, getting to
his feet. 'The well is behaving strangely.'

Without waiting for Weynl's reply he started round
towards the group of Humans. He had gone a few paces
when a bright column of energies erupted from the
well's edge, near where the man with the disturbing aura
was standing. A cacophonous, blaring drone accompa-
nied the outburst of light, almost painful to Uvovo ears,
yet he broke into a run. He could see that the man had
been caught in a bright cage of well energy, and he could
hear the blasting drone subsiding into speech, words in
the Uvovo tongue.

INTRUDER! ENEMY DETECTED! THE HIGH
PATHMASTER MUST INSTRUCT ME ON THE
MODE OF ERASURE.

'No, Sentinel, wait,' Weynl cried out. 'This is a
friend.'

CAPTIVE IS IMPLANTED WITH A FABRICATED
ENTITY - THIS ENTITY MAINTAINS A COHER-
ENT CHANNEL INTO TFIE UNDERD OMAINS OF
THE REAL. THIS CHANNEL MUST BE SHUT OFF
OR ERASURE WILL BE ENACTED - YOU ARE NOT
A PATHMASTER.

Chel hurried up to Gregori, who was talking with his
uncle.

'Who is he, Greg?' he said, pointing at the man in the
cage. 'Who is this man?'

Gregori looked stricken by what was happening.
'He's the Earthsphere ambassador . . .'

Chel gazed at the ambassador, a terrified, grey-haired
man who had slumped to his knees, holding the folds of
his robe close to his chest for some reason.

'Does this man carry one of the things you call AIs?'

Chel gritted his teeth. 'A Dreamless ... we will try to
save him from the Sentinel, Gregori, but you must trust
me and not interfere.'

Gregori hesitated, then nodded. Chel removed the
sleeves of his body garment, as did Weynl next to him,
then they knelt down on the stone floor on the other
side of the energy cage from the Human ambassador
He steeled himself, his outer eyes open, staring at the
intervening, shifting bright meshes, saw how they moved
and saw how to move between them. Then as one, he
and Weynl raised their hands and struck through to take
hold of the Dreamless's host. The spikes in that nimbus
signified the Dreamless's presence and gave away th<
nodes of its connection. Some instinct made his hand
move, small, furred hands stroking the man's head, trac-
ing out the contours beneath, applying a touch or a finely
gauged pressure ... no, not an instinct, he realised, but
skills of another agency, the Sentinel of the well.

Both Uvovo withdrew their hands, and Chel noticed
the band of crisped and smoking fur on his upper arms.
There didn't seem to be any pain at the moment.

'Chel, are you okay?' said Gregori as he helped him
and Weynl to their feet.

He felt dizzy and there was a hollowness in his stom-
ach. He fumbled with unsteady fingers at his waist for
the strip of heavy cloth, the blind for his husking eyes.
Once they were covered, he inhaled deeply, held it for a
moment then exhaled a long, shuddering breath.

'Yes,' he said as the tension ebbed a little. 'I feel
better.'

Then he realised that the Human ambassador was
still held prisoner. The Sentinel had fallen silent, for all
that Listener Weynl kept calling out to it. And now the
ambassador had recovered his composure sufficiently
to stand and converse with Gregori in signs.

'Chel,' Gregori said after a moment or two.
'Ambassador Horst says that his AI is absent and making
no contact - why won't the Sentinel release him?'

'I confess I do not know, Gregori,' he said, turning to
Weynl. 'Did it say anything before . . .'

Suddenly the deep, overpowering voice spoke:

THE DREAMLESS HAS BEEN CONFINED AND
ITS TIES TO THE UNDERDOMAINS ABROGATED.
HOWEVER, IT REMAINS A THREAT.

Chel and Gregori exchanged a look of alarm.

'Wait, Sentinel,' said Chel. 'There has to be a way to
make it completely safe. If you release him to us, it may
be possible to remove . . . the device . . .'

NONE HERE ARE PATHMASTERS. NONE MAY
COMMAND ME, THUS I MUST RESOLVE THIS IN
THE LIGHT OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS. THE
CONSTRUCT HAS ASKED FOR A HUMAN PROXY
SO THIS ONE MAY SUFFICE.

'No!' said Gregori. 'We need this man here - he can
help get the Hegemony off this world . . .'

'Certainty is not... immutable ...'

The words came in a dry, sibilant whisper, not loud
yet omnipresent, and Chel felt a surge of relief when he
saw the outlines of the Pathmaster's hooded form
emerging amid the energy meshes that enclosed the
Earthsphere ambassador.

'Venerable one,' he said, bowing along with Listener
Weynl. Gregori was still standing nearby while Theo
and the others retreated off towards the entrance.

'Sentinel,' said the Pathmaster. 'The Human bears a
Dreamless which has been restrained. Why do you still
hold him?'

THE ENTITY IS CAPABLE OF CONTROLLING
ITS HOST, PATHMASTER. IT REMAINS A THREAT.
I JUDGED THAT THE CONSTRUCT'S REQUEST
FOR A HUMAN WOULD BE SATISFIED BY THIS
ONE.

'Yet this Human is a senior representative of the
greater Human culture,' Chel said. 'Left here, he would
be able to weaken the Hegemony's position and even
force their withdrawal.'

'Ah, young Seer Cheluvahar, the Hegemony
Dreamless know this place exists - they will not loosen
their grip, even if the Earth Humans were to turn
against their Hegemony allies. No, the ambassador's
presence will have little or no effect on the strife and
conflict about to befall this world. The Hegemony will
shortly control Umara and soon they will be walking in
this very chamber.'

Chel fell silent, shocked, but Gregori was clearly
upset.

'What does that mean for the ambassador?' he said to
Chel in Noranglic. 'He's not sending him off to this
Construct, whatever that is...'

'Human, the Construct was the Great Ancients' most
faithful ally,' the Pathmaster said in perfect whispered
Noranglic. 'And it remains a steadfast guardian of their
purpose - it has promised us help in our struggle against
the occupiers, and its promises are never broken. Also, it
will know how exactly to deal with the Dreamless
locked up in the host's head, for that is why he has come
here, Human, otherwise he would be elsewhere.'

'No,' said Gregori. 'This man is our best chance of
holding off the Hegemony . . .'

'Damn it!' said Theo Karlsson. 'I didn't get him away
from those Brolturans just to lose him like this!'

'No, Human Karlsson,' whispered the Pathmaster.
'That is precisely why you rescued him.'

'Venerable one,' said Chel. 'Respectfully I ask, is your
certainty immutable?'

'No, Seer Chel, but my judgement must be - Sentinel,
send the Human onwards to the Construct!'

IT SHALL BE DONE.

For a long, agonising moment Chel stared at the hor-
rified Ambassador Horst as he pointed and begged in
silence. Then a dense vortex of well energies engulfed
him, a bright maelstrom swirling for a few seconds before
it began to diminish back across the boundary wall. The
Pathmaster still hovered amid the fading, dissolving flow
of radiance, and in those dying instants it pointed at Chel,
Gregori and the rest in a single, sweeping gesture.

'Leave here - now!'

Then the last threads and grains of energy were gone,
leaving them in the gloom of torchlight, hopes crushed,
plans scattered, and the future . . .

The Humans wandered despondently away through
the door, Gregori lingering, gazing at the darkened well.
Chel went with Listener Weynl back to their small camp
to gather together their sketches and papers. Yet Chel
realised that, despite this dismal, dispiriting outcome,
the future remained unwritten, as opaque and formless
to the Dreamless as it was to themselves. Consoled by
this, he followed Weynl, hastening after Gregori and the
others.

44

KAO CHIH

In his dream he was being chased by a long, winding fes-
tival dragon whose head was the four-armed torso of an
Ezgara commando, its four hands tipped with serrated
claws, its featureless helmet splitting open to show rows
of needle-like teeth, gleaming, snapping . . .

He was jolted in his couch, waking once more to a
sickly mouth and a nasty headache.

'Back among the living, KC? - good. We're docking
with my associates' mothership so it won't be long
before you meet the leaders of the revolution!'

Corazon Talavera, his beautiful and deadly captor, sat
in the pilot couch, monitoring displays, making a few-
adjustments, and glancing at him occasionally. The cock-
pit's viewport was clear, revealing a strange vista, a dull
yellow sun the size of a coin, its amber radiance casting a
daylight crescent over a grey-brown planet which filled
about a quarter of the frame. At first sight, it seemed that
clouds of asteroids hung in spreading orbits about the
nameless world .. . until a dark, jagged object tumbled
past not far off, catching the sunlight on torn metal edges,
a faring, a section of hull. Glittering and dwindling, it fell
away into the planet's gravitic embrace.

-

'Wreckage,' said Cora, who had been watching him.
'Debris, the smashed remains of ships, combat and civil-
ian, big and small, armed and helpless. Welcome to the
Shafis System.'

Kao Chih frowned. 'You say that as if you expect me
to know what it means, but I do not.'

She arched her eyebrows. 'KC, where have you been?
I'm not a newsleech but even I've picked up a few details
about Shafis here and there. Okay, here's the short ver-
sion - which is all I can be bothered with. Shafis is a
system on the edge of the Yamanon Domain, where it
shades off into the Huvuun Deepzone, and so far
Coalition forces have fought three battles here. First
time it was with retreating remnants of the Dol-Das
fleets, then it was against an armed reconnaisance group
from some Aranja Tesh civ, probably Metraj, trying to
rescue survivors from that dustbowl of a planet. Third
time, which was just a couple of weeks ago, it was a
bunch of idiot Sageist zealots putting together a fleet to
attack Coalition positions, using the high-orbit shell
here as a staging post while trying to recruit from the
scrabblers down on the surface. Each time, the
Hegemony - and its loyal Earthsphere sidekick -
stormed in with their ships and destroyed any vessel
which offered resistance. And "offering resistance" was
interpreted pretty loosely, I hear, resulting in these pic-
turesque clouds of wreckage you see today. Along with
a few more additions to the survivors down on the
planet.'

'So why are your employers stationed here?' Kao Chih
said. 'Are they scavengers as well as revolutionaries?'
'Benefactors, KC, rescuers. Since that third battle, the
one with the holy armada, was fairly recent, it is possi-
ble that there may be survivors trapped on some of the
hulks drifting out there, which naturally interests my
employers. Who are also interested in similar individuals
down the gravity well, but orbital searches come first."
'Recruits,' said Kao Chih.

'Exactly. You're catching on.' A clunking sound came
through the hull and a rasping voice spoke over the
ship-to-ship in a language that seemed to defy the lin-
guistic enabler. Cora replied in kind and fingered several
controls, putting most of the pilot controls on standby.
'Time to meet your new masters.'

Kao Chih's bonds were rearranged and lengthened,
then, at gunpoint, he helped her wrap Drazuma-Ha* in
a sheet and together they carried the mech out through
the airlock and into a much larger one made of some
dark, flexible material which had formed an airtight
constriction around the Castellan's airlock flanges.
Hatch doors closed behind and opened ahead and Cora
gestured with her skinny gun to continue. His ankles
and wrists were now bound with two-foot-long secure
straps which made movement a chore, but he managed
to back out of the raised hatch edge, carrying his end of
Drazuma-HaThen he turned and saw that they were
in a large, well-lit hold with equipment racks, luggage
nets, upper-wall walkways, through-floor risers and
overhead cargo lifts. There was also a welcoming com-
mittee, a tall reptiloid Kiskashin and a Gomedran
garbed in grey overalls and carrying an odd figure-of-
eight device.

At Cora's direction he helped carry the quiescent
mech over to the two sentients and stood it on its end.

'Congratulations, Talavera,' said the Kiskashin in
deep-throated 4Peljan. 'A high-grade human and a func-
tioning Strigida-9 drone, just as you described. Truly,
you are my most prized procurer.'

So this is a revolutionary} Kao Chih thought.

The Kiskashin was nearly seven feet high, and
beneath a sleeveless, three-quarter-length bluefibre coat
wore what looked liked pieces of combat armour on his
arms and shoulders, grey polyhedral surfaces worn at
the facet edges, scored and pitted. Kiskashin were upright
bipeds with muscular, birdlike legs and wide-toed feet. It
was only after Kao Chih looked more closely that he
realised that the Kiskashin's arms were artificial, having
spotted the shoulder ball-joints and the fact that those
arms had a longer reach than normal.

'As always, it is an honour and a privilege to serve
your cause, Castigator Vuzayel,' Cora said, giving a
slight bow.

'And to serve your own, hah?' the Kiskashin Vuzayel
said. 'The great cause of money!' With the finger and
thumb of one articulated, armoured, six-fingered hand
he took a black velvety pouch from within his immacu-
late bluefibre coat. 'Selling souls for profit, Talavera -
few sins are as black as that in the eyes of the Great
Sower. I sometimes think about inviting you to join the
struggle, to lay down your sinful burdens and follow the
path taken by those you have already brought into my
care. But then I realise what a loss to the cause, the Writ
of Sacred Revenge, that would be so I decide to forgo
my duty, to further our greater ends.'

'I am glad that I will continue to be of service to you,
Castigator,' Cora said unflinchingly. 'And to be paid.'

The velvety black pouch hung there for a moment,
then was whisked out of sight, stowed back inside the
coat.

'Later. First, I wish you to give our newest arrival the
extended tour of our mighty vessel, the Sacrament, show
him its most inspiring sights while the Strigida drone is
being redacted.' Vuzayel glanced at the waiting
Gomedran. 'Take it down to the examiners.'

The Gomedran bowed then stepped over to where
Kao Chih still held Drazuma-Ha * upright, the sheet
having been removed by Cora. The Gomedran
motioned Kao Chih back, then slapped the figure-of-
eight device onto the mech's carapace, thumbed its
control pad and a moment later was carrying the mech
out of the hold on his shoulder as if it weighed next to
nothing.

Kao Chih found himself being studied by Castigator
Vuzayel, pale yellow Kiskashin eyes regarding him,
occasionally tilting that narrow-snouted head to focus
one of them on him.

'I do not know what barbarous gods you Humans
worship,' he said. 'But when you make your offering in
the name of Sacred Revenge, know that you will be
redeemed. You and the other devotees are the lucky
ones - we, the leaders of the Chaurixa, must put off the
joyous sacrifice until the Great Sower's writ has been
fulfilled, a sorrowful burden which we stoically shoul -
der. But before you begin your journey, Human, tell
your name.'

'I am called Kao Chih, sir,' he said. 'I am a freelance
chandler, so if you have any unfilled contracts I would
most happy to offer my services.'

Vuzayel laughed, a horrible grating sound.

'If nothing else, you Humans are entertaining! Go in
peace, Karrchi, the Great Sower awaits you.'

As the Kiskashin headed for one of the exits with a
heavy tread, Cora pointed with her gun at a flight of
stairs that led up to a grillwork walkway. Glumly, he fol-
lowed her directions, his thoughts inevitably focusing on
his mission to Darien and the erratic route that had
brought him to this end, the reprogramming of his com-
panion, Drazuma-Ha*, and his own conversion to these
fanatics' cause. No doubt he would face some form of
brainwashing, perhaps a combination of drugs and
sense-deprivation, or maybe even some kind of immer-
sive procedure. Whichever it was he was determined to
resist for as long as he could.

Cora prodded his shoulder with her gun then indi-
cated a pair of heavy pressure doors just along the
walkway. 'Straight through and down the ramp.'

Ankles restricted by the secure straps, he shuffled for-
ward and the doors slid aside to let them past.

'I liked the way you tried to take my place,' Cora
said. '"Freelance chandler", eh? Good title. I think I'll
adopt it now that you won't have any use for it.'

'I wouldn't plan too far in advance, Ms Talavera,' he
said, trying to sound as if he were in good spirits. 'Your
master hasn't paid you yet. But then you didn't mention
our little Ezgara problem -1 wonder why.'

Cora's laughter was light and edged with malice.
'Keep flapping that mouth and I'll have one of the aspi-
rants nerve-block it.'

Kao Chih shrugged and continued down the ramp,
which turned leftward twice. The Chaurixa mothership's
interior decor was in simple yellows and greens with
notices and signs in dark red, often hurriedly stencilled to
the walls. From a couple of location guides he discovered
that the ship had a linear module configuration, four
large hull sections built on a central axis, the drives and
engineering at the stern, the bridge and quarters in the
prow segment, while the two midsections were dotted
with a number of arcane-looking symbols utterly myste-
rious to him. He had figured out that they had docked at
the third hull module from the prow and were heading
forward to the second. Cora steered him round a couple
of corners and into the ship's spinal corridor, up steps
and through the connecting passage, and down more
steps. She then had him turn left and follow the grav-
plating track up the portside curve of the hull past a
series of opaque doors. Each door had a grey panel bear-
ing one of the symbols he had seen on the wall guides.

'I know what's going through your head, KC,' Cora
said behind him. 'You think you'll have to endure beat-
ings and torture and drugs and crazy mind-scrambling
virtsensoria . . . well, no, these people don't work that
way. These people are professionals with pressing dead-
lines and precision needs, so they're not going to waste
time trying to beat their point of view into you.'

She stopped him in front of one of the doors and the
grey panel melted into transparency. Inside was a white
surgical theatre where two masked and gowned
Henkayans were working on a bulky form bound to a
large cradle. The patient, or victim, was a Bargalil, its
six-limbed body lying still and silent.

'The Chaurixa medtechs have three ways of remould -
ing minds to fit the task. There's viral programming,
where they use tailored bugs to edit and rewrite an
ordag's brain, creating new compulsions, fears and
desires, whole chunks of behaviour dedicated to carry-
ing out the mission . . .'

'What was that name you called him? Ordak . . .'

'Ordag - short for "ordained agent",' she said. 'Well,
anyway, that seems like the worst way to me. You are
yourself, you feel like yourself, but there's all these mem-
ories and instincts making you do things you don't
understand. Creepy.'

She motioned him on to the next door. The panel
went transparent, revealing a tall Sendrukan male, his
eyes blindfolded as he lay strapped to a cushioned table
while a hooded device on a segmented cable moved all
around his head as if examining it from all directions.
There was no one else in the room.

'Another way is to just simply wipe away the mind,
flatten all the characteristics, leaving aside the auto-
nomic and certain learned reflexes. Then they embed a
new persona sufficiently complex to carry out whatever
task it's needed to do.

'But some tasks can be too involved and socially
demanding for an embedded persona, so the Castigator's
clever underlings came up with kernelling - basically,
parts of the cortex are scooped out and a paraorganic
nanostructure is grown in its place, which serves as the
residence for a partial, or sometimes a full, AL'

'Efficient,' said Kao Chih, horrified but maintaining
his composure. 'In Chinese mythology there are many
hells, some as elaborate as these rooms.'

She looked at him. 'For example?'

'There is the Hell of Disembowelment where hypocrites
and tomb robbers have their bowels cut out. Or there is
the Hell of Sawing where kidnappers and those who force
good people to do bad things are sawn into pieces.'
'You're making that up.'

He shrugged. 'Chinese history goes back a long, long
way, so some things might indeed be made up. And
some may not.'

She smiled and wagged a reproving finger. 'You can't
spook me, KC. Besides, you haven't seen the rest of our
little circle of hell yet.'

The walkway led past another couple of milky
opaque doors, curving over to the starboard side, where
Cora had him stop before a set of double doors.
Through the clear panels Kao Chih saw a white room
with a few thin-legged chairs and another pair of doors.
He also saw an octopoidal Makhori laid full-length on a
wheeled trolley, its pale tentacles stretched out and still
while its torso showed regular, slow breathing. Its large,
open eyes stared blankly upwards.

'It's just been wiped,' Cora said, giving him another
prod. 'This is the augmentation area - go on in.'

He pushed through with both hands and stopped to
gaze down at the immobile Makhori.

'Sometimes missions require a strength or speed
beyond the abilities of ordinary organic creatures,' she
said. 'So ordags are brought here for alterations, modi-
fications, refurbs, whatever the mission calls for,
occasionally the full, customised cyber-augmentation -
heart, veins, muscle, blood and bone, from the roots of
your hair to the nails on your toes. No sense left
untouched.'

One of the inner doors opened and to Kao Chih's
surprise a Human emerged, a thin, old man in a brown
robe, grey-haired and stooped. He saw Kao Chih and,
peering, came over.

'So they got another,' he said in a creaky voice as he
held out a wrinkly hand. 'I'm Josh - what's your name,
son?'

'I am Kao Chih, sir - I am honoured to meet you.
How do you come to be here?'

'Likewise.' Josh indicated Cora, who was still holding
her gun levelled at Kao Chih's chest. 'Came here cour-
tesy of your friend's one-way service.'

'Did she put you to sleep as well, Josh?'

'Three times - I was a cranky passenger.'

Cora rolled her eyes, just as the inner doors opened.
A green-clad Henkayan entered, seized the trolley with
all four stubby hands and wheeled the insensible
Makhori away beyond the doors. A second, more
imposing Henkayan appeared, garbed in pale green,
ankle-length robes and wearing a yellow band around
his throat. His wide, tapering head was crowned with
dense purple hair coiffed into stiff, upward coils and his
large, coarse features were grinning as he approached
Josh.

'Very good, superior one, but keep up practice of
New Montana accent, become perfect. Go now to out-
fitters, they are expecting you.'

'My thanks, Compositor Henach. May the Great
Sower's will be served.' So saying, the man called Josh
straightened his posture and, ignoring Cora and Kao
Chih, strode out of the main doors. The grinning
Compositor Henach turned his attention to the new-
comers.

'Castigator Vuzayel has spoken to me,' he told Cora.
'This one is to be sent to one of the Tertiary Grace
worlds in Metraj, to assassinate a Vikantan industrial-
ist.

Cora made an impressed sound. 'So a partial aug-
menting, I'd guess.'

'Yes, and then wipe and persona overlay, not unlike
my most recent patient.'

'What of the drone?'

'Will be reprogrammed and fitted with anti-personnel
systems and self-destruct.'

Cora nodded and turned to Kao Chih. 'Well, this is it,
KC - it's been a rollercoaster ride but we got there in the
end. So see you in another life - or another hell!'

She smiled and winked, just as the Henkayan touched
something cold and metallic to his neck. Immediately,
everything below his head went numb and like a puppet
with severed strings he fell but was neatly caught.
Bizarrely, he was still conscious and fully alert but with-
out any control over his neck muscles so that his head
lolled this way and that as Compositor Henach carried
him from the room.

'Your new body will be remarkable, Human - we do
only remarkable things here and you will see it all.'

The Compositor placed him in some kind of cradling
couch which had a row of folded surgical extensors
along one edge, like the hooks and pincers of a
grotesque creature, glittering and retracted. He only
caught glimpses of it as the Henkayan fastened him in.
Kao Chih wanted to cry out, even curse his captor, but
the deadening effect encompassed his vocal chords.

'So - augmentation of legs, arms, hands, chest, and
perhaps spine also.' Kao Chih could see die Henkayan
lean over then heard a series of tiny clicks, and a holo-
gram of a human body appeared overhead, an image
stripped of skin and showing muscles, arteries, organs,
the stark, pale orbs of his own eyes staring up, his
toothy jaws gaping but unable to speak, an exhibition in
red. A sense of helpless despair filled his mind.

'Hmm, no dataweave, no cranial conduit, and no
implants . . . except for molecular attachment in lin-
guistic centre ... hmm, still largely unblemished Human
brain - most refreshing . . .'

Suddenly the couch gave a slight jolt and out of sight
there was a metallic clinking, and the clatter of some-
thing falling to the floor. The Compositor cursed under
his breath, put his grin back in place and looked at Kao
Chih.

'First, we cut open your legs, insert builder seeds and
guide membrane,' he said. 'Quick, easy, you feel noth-
ing, then .. .'

This time the entire room lurched and Henach was
thrown sideways to fetch up against the wall. He let out
a shriek of rage and dashed across the room towards
something out of Kao Chili's sight. Outside the surgery
alarms were warbling in the corridors and a moment
later he heard the Henkayan say, 'This is Compositor
Henach - what is happening?'

'So sorry, Compositor, but the Strigida drone has
broken free of its stasisweb and caused damage to the
inner hull...'

'I am working! - no excuses, recapture it!'

'Yes, Compositor, at once. When we find it.'

'What? How can you lose it?'

'It found a way into the maintenance interstices, sir,
and the security scuttlers aren't reporting anything . . .'

The opencom voice was blotted out by a deafening
crash in the room, the sight of flying fragments of what
looked like deck tiles, and a terrified howl from the
Compositor, swiftly cut off. For a second or two there
were only the ticks and knocks of bits of debris falling to
the floor and an odd, muffled, mumbling sound. Then
the familiar dumb-bell shape of Drazuma-Ha* drifted
into view.

'Greetings, Gowchee - I see that you are about to
undergo some physical modifications, which would cer-
tainly enhance your ability to defend yourself in the
future. Would you like me to return later?'

Robbed of his voice, Kao Chih could only frown,
glare and mouth various demands and imprecations in
an attempt to get his meaning across.

'Ah, I deduce that this would be unwelcome - very
well.'

All of a sudden he was plunged back into the sensa-
tions of his entire body again, as if he had convulsively
awoken from a nightmare, or into one. Shivering, itch-
ing, coughing, he scrambled out of the surgical cradle
and saw that Drazuma-Ha* was restraining the
Compositor with a forcefield extension wrapped around
the Henkayan's mouth and neck. Rage mottled his fix-
tures and despite the forcefield gag he was still trying to
shout and threaten, which accounted for the muted
throaty muttering.

'So, how did you . . .' Kao Chih began, but was
forced to break off by a coughing fit.

'Obtain my freedom? Well, our hosts, who think very
highly of themselves, reasoned that providing our female
hijacker with the specifications of the Strigida design
would ensure success. They failed to realise that over the
course of several thousand years I might have intro-
duced some modifications of my own, like
improvements to my power grid as well as multiple
redundancy in the vital systems. Thus I was able to
reroute my core functions, disable the stasisweb and free
myself.'

Swallowing painfully, Kao Chih looked down at the
long gaping hole in the floor. 'Well, it certainly worked.
What shall we do now?'

'Getting off this space-going torture chamber would
be most preferable,' Drazuma-Ha * said. 'I managed to
tap into the security web and sealed the intermodule
access doors, but that will only last until they splice up
a workaround.'

Kao Chih stared at the unrelentingly wrathful
Compositor Henach. 'Does this vessel have escape
pods?'

'Yes, a small number for each module, but if we
departed in one it would be an easy matter to send a
recovery vehicle to bring it back in.'

'We don't go,' Kao Chih said. 'He does.'

'A diversion, very good, making sure that the pod's
comm device is nonfunctional. Then, I assume, we will
head towards the docking ring and your ship.'

'Exactly - if you can make it appear that you have me
restrained with forcefields, we can play guard-and-pris-
oner.'

'I have a better suggestion,' Drazuma-Ha* said as a
shimmering aura formed about it, lengthened, altered its
outline, swirled with colours . .. and suddenly Kao Chih
was looking at two Compositor Henachs, the real one
glaring with undisguised hate at his impostor.

Kao Chih grinned. 'The appearance is precise - can
you sound like him?'

'Of course, puny Earthling!' said the mech in the
Compositor's voice. 'My vocal simulacrum is unri-
valled!'

'Then let us carry out our plan

'You may like to keep this with you,' said Drazuma-
Ha*, tossing a silvery object which Kao Chih caught. It
was a flattened oval with two springy arms tipped with
dimpled pads. 'That is what our companion used on
you - a nerve-blocker. It may be useful if we encounter
difficulty.'

It was not far from the augmentation rooms to the
low, narrow escape pod bay, and there were no guards
to be seen. It seemed that when Drazuma-Ha* had
sealed off the modules, locking all the surgery doors in
the process, most of the guards were in the adjacent
module searching for a missing drone.

Once the pod's comm system was disabled, the real
Compositor Henach was thrust inside, his bellows of
rage muffled by the closed hatch. There was a manual
release in a wall niche which Kao Chih took great pleas-
ure in pulling. A heavy thump, a furious hiss, and the
pod leaped away, small chassis nozzles jetting. Another
alarm started sounding so they ducked back out to the
walkway and quickly made for the access door leading
to the next module. Disguised as the Compositor, the
mech paused nearby to crack open a wall panel, uncover
the datalinks and modify the intermodule access status.

As the door opened and the guards rushed in, shouting,
Kao Chih assumed a listless stance, a drooping head
and a vacant expression.

'Compositor Henach!' said the guard sergeant, an
angry Gomedran with saliva gleaming on its fangs. 'You
have left your . . .'

'Do not delay me, cretin! - this ordag must be wiped,
orders of Castigator Vuzayel!'

'But sir, is this the Human recently arrived? Its
machine has caused much disruption . . .'

'Are you calling me a fool? Are you} This different
Human - fugitives use escape pods, cretin!'

'I see, I understand . . .'

'Why are you waiting for them to escape?'

Wilting in the face of such towering rage, the
Gomedran sergeant saluted and hurried off while Kao
Chih and Drazuma-Ha* proceeded through to the next
module. No one stopped them as they continued up the
ramp to the gantry which led along the docking ring.
There was a Gomedran guard who challenged them but
Kao Chih's speechless, shuffling act got him into the
right place to pounce with the nerve-blocker.

This is a useful device, he thought as he pocketed it
and stepped over the sleeping guard. Wish I'd had one
before Cora invited herself on board.

Drazuma-Ha* used a field probe to bypass the dock-
ing ring security and open the hatch. Moments later
they were back in the familiar, cramped, odorous sur-
roundings of the Castellan's cockpit.

'Gowchee, I rigged a two-minute delay on the dock-
ing clamp release,' said the mech, now returned to his
usual, curved, featureless self. 'I would advise strapping
into your couch as I am readying the main thrusters for
a fast burn . . .'

One of the transparent console screens gave a blink
of static before showing the Chaurixa leader, the
Kiskashin Vuzayel.

'My friends, why such a hasty departure? - there is so
much we have yet to discuss, and I would rather
exchange words than weaponsfire

The Castellan lurched free of the docking ring. In the
next moment acceleration slammed Kao Chih back into
his couch and left him struggling to breathe against the
sudden pressure. He had wanted to make an obscene
gesture at Vuzayel's image but Drazuma-Ha::' cut the
link.

'Vile creature,' Kao Chih said. 'And a vile place,
Drazuma-Ha*. How soon can we leave . .. oh, but have
we any usable course data?'

'I'm checking that now . . . interesting, they had
already commenced merging several course data sets
into the navigationals, purely as place-holder templates.'

'So those course data are out of date?' Kao Chih said,
spirits sinking.

'By about thirty-six to forty-eight hours.'

Kao Chih groaned. 'We went through this trying to
escape from Blacknest! Are we going to have to make
another blind hyperjump out among the stars?'

'It may come to that, Gowchee, assuming we cat
evade the small craft that are now gaining on us.'

The screen in front of Kao Chih flashed to a rearward
view, showing two bright objects following - the per-
spective jumped closer to one of them, revealing I
tapered wedge shape with a large impeller drive and

-

two gimbal-mounted work arms, one tipped with grasp-
ing claws, the other with a drill head.

'Engine-modified scavengers,' Kao Chih said. 'But the
Castellan should be able to leave them behind.'

'That would be true if we were not heading into a
debris field.'

Kao Chih looked up at the viewport just as Drazuma-
Ha* banked the ship to dodge a house-sized piece of
wreckage sprouting twisted beams and buckled sections
of deck and bulkhead. Beyond, the widening, bright
crescent of the planet was speckled by an immense cloud
of wreckage. He knew they would have to cut their
velocity to avoid the possibility of a crippling collision,
whereas the scavenger boats could use their superior
manoeuvring to get in close. Not for the first time, he
wished the Castellan had some decent firepower.

'Could we ram them?' he said. 'Or even use our main
thrusters as a weapon? ... of some sort. ..'

'Creative suggestions, Gowchee,' said the mech. 'If a
little fanciful. On the other hand, we could accelerate
along a path I have mapped through the sparsest areas
and thereby evade our pursuers.'

Suddenly optimistic, Kao Chih gestured at the view-
port.

'Forward then, honourable Drazuma-Ha*!'
The mech blipped the thrusters, an intermittent, muf-
fled drone.

'We need to bypass this approaching dense cluster of
debris, then alter our attitude . ..'

Ahead, he could see a portion of the starry darkness
where unstarlike points and splinters of reflected sun-
light hung like a huge shoal of menace off their
starboard. As the Castellan's attitude changed, the glit -
tering, dark shoal shifted to fill the viewport but then
slid away to starboard again as the ship, drifting side-
ways, came into alignment with Drazuma-Ha*'s
intended trajectory. Another long moment during
which a glance at the stern monitor showed the pur-
suers dodging around ragged pieces of wreckage,
swooping ever nearer. Then the thrusters cut in again
and Kao Chih was shoved back into his couch as the
Castellan surged forward. He was about to let out a
whoop of delight when the ship jolted, as if struck from
beneath.
'What. . .'

'Compensating for course deviation,' said the mech.
Then a familiar voice came over the comm system.

'Well, hi there, KC. Thought I'd come along for the
ride ...'

Drazuma-Ha * switched the external monitor to the
ship's underside, and there was another of the boosted
scavenger boats, induction grapples anchoring it to the
hull while one of the gimballed arms reached out with
heavy claws to a nearby housing.

'You've really disappointed me, KC, as well as put-
ting me in bad odour with my masters - bring you back,
I was told, or don't come back . . . oh, sorry, was that
something important?'

A high-pitched beeping sounded and red symbols
flickered on the console. On the external monitor those
extended claws were holding a torn-off piece of housing.

'Secondary fuel port,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'I've iso-
lated it. She is coming through on the proximal helmet
channel, Gowchee - shall I shut it off?'

Kao Chih shook his head, reached out and fingered
the channel reply.

'Cora, instead of attacking us, why not come with us?'

'Appreciate the offer, KC, but I have to keep up a cer-
tain repute for the benefit of those who make use of my
services - no repute, no job offers, y'see . . .'

Kao Chih was looking out the viewport as he released
the reply button.

'Drazuma-Ha *, are there any wreckage pieces of sub-
stantial size along our flight path and can you adjust our
course to pass close by?'

'How close, Gowchee?'

'Very close. And can you position us for a 180-degree
roll on approach?'

'Yes. Tracking one now - ninety seconds till flyby
from . . . now.'

'You understand my intention, Drazuma-Ha*?'

'Indeed I do, Gowchee.'

It was the only course of action left to them, and they
had to take it because Cora was determined to take
them back or kill them trying. Because Kao Chih was
done with being a captive or a commodity or some
instrument to be used and discarded. Because he had a
mission, because his family and friends and everyone
back at Human Sept were relying on him.

The dull brown face of the nameless world was loom-
ing ahead, through all the strewn clouds of orbiting
debris. Shafis System was a graveyard and was about to
add to its burden.

A muffled whine started coming up from below -
like those pursuit droids back at Blacknest, Cora was
trying to drill through the hull.

'Thirty seconds till flyby,' said the mech. 'Fifteen till
bank manoeuvre.'

Grim-faced, Kao Chih thumbed the comm reply.
'Cora,' he said. Tm sorry . . .'

In the viewport the brown planet began to turn. A
dark, gleaming mass swung round as it swept nearer
and impact alerts began to sound.

'Well, KC, you'll be the one who's gonna be ... you
shit, KC, you sh—!'

Her voice went out in a burst of static at the same
time as a metallic crunch reverberated through the ship.
When he looked at the external monitor the scavenger
was gone, apart from a twisted chunk of the drill
mounting. There were also numerous scores and gouges
in the hull plating, but nothing serious was triggering
warnings on the main console.

'A well thought-out tactic, Gowchee,' said Drazuma-
Ha*.

'Yes,' he said. 'And cold-blooded. Apart from one of
the Chaurixa victims, she was the only Human I'd met
since leaving the Roug system.'

'She rejected your offer, Gowchee - there was no
other option open to us. But I am tracking her craft's
progress and from its behaviour I surmise that she may
have survived the collision . ..'

He perked up at this. 'What behaviour?'

'The scavenger craft is falling in a steep curve
towards the planet and the firing of positional thrusters
seems to have stabilised its .. . ah, something has ejected
but it too is heading towards the planet's surface,
although with a far shallower trajectory.'

Kao Chih sat back, feeling oddly relieved.

'You look pleased, Gowchee, despite her attempts to
enslave or kill us. It is possible after all that the Chaurixa
may retrieve her and exact punishment on her anyway.'

He shrugged. 'I am just glad that she survived,
Drazuma-Ha *. I want to have no deaths on my con-
science.'

'A laudable if somewhat impractical goal, Gowchee.'
'Why impractical?'

'From observation and experience I can state that
there were, are and always will be those that are eager
and willing to use violence to get what they want -
opposing them means responding with violence, leading
inevitably to deaths.'

'What of the use of cunning and non-violent methods
of opposing them?' Kao Chih said.

'Either may well constitute an adequate defence, if
the attackers are significantly less advanced than those
being attacked. However, technological superiority is no
guarantee of success.'

'Which reminds me,' Kao Chih said, gazing at the
external monitor. 'Are we still being chased and how
long till we can attempt a hyperjump?'

'Our pursuers have given up - it seems one of them
sustained a disabling impact from a piece of wreckage
and the other is towing it back to the Chaurixan moth-
ership. As for a hyperspace jump - we will be exiting the
densest area of debris in approximately two minutes,
which will free up that portion of the ship's system stack
that has been occupied with tracking and guidance.
Then you will have a choice to make.'

Kao Chih sighed. 'Will this be a choice between a
risky option and a deeply hazardous one?'

'Well summarised, Gowchee. This star system lies
near the edge of the Huvuun Deepzone and your desti-
nation, the world called Darien, is somewhere within
that hazy region.'

Drazuma-Ha * had called up a representation of the
immediate stellar region. The Shafis System was a bright
pinpoint where a pale green wedge - the Yamanon
Domain - met the amorphous, sepia opacity of the
Huvuun. 'The navigational matrix contains six course
templates, but the only one that's of any use to us ter-
minates at Yonok, a Brolturan world near the border
with the Kahimbryk Avail.' On the screen, a neon-red
line joined Shafis to another bright point on the other
side of a narrow grey territory which separated
Yamanon space from the blue of the Brolturan
Compact. The coreward boundaries of all three
adjoined the Huvuun Deepzone.

'Give me the deeply hazardous option first,' he said.

'That is where we tell the navigationals to guess
where the local hyperspace Tier 1 beacons are, then
guess what our iso-orientation should be as we make
the jump to Yonok.'

Kao Chih shivered. It sounded a lot like their escape
from Blacknest, and they had been very lucky to get to
Tagreli Openport rather than wind up in the middle of
nowhere, or even an unfriendly somewhere. It was
surely too much to rely on that kind of luck again.

'And the merely risky option?'

'The navigationals estimate the location of the near-
est Tier 1 beacon which, according to the course
template notes, is coterminous with Kahimbryk space,
plus or minus 5 per cent. When we reach that beacon we
drop out of hyperspace and head for the nearest com-
mercial centre to see if we can obtain course data for
this Darien.'

'Course errors?' Kao Chih murmured.

'Exactly so, which is why I favour the second
option - a shorter hyperspace jump would mean less
time for errors to magnify. Besides, if we were ever to
reach Yonok safely, the Brolturans would not be inclined
to treat us kindly.'

Kao Chih nodded. 'Very well, the merely risky option
it is.'

'The computations should be ready in less than a
minute,' said the mech.

And when the moment came, he sat back in his
couch, head pressed back against the padded neck sup-
port, hands gripping the arm rests, jaw clenched.

At least this time there's no rampaging droids trying
to tear the ship apart or beautiful kidnappers speeding
us off to some surgical-nightmare-torture-ship, he
thought as the force-waves mounted in the tesserae
fields at the heart of the Castellan's hyperdrive. But I'm
sure something will be waiting for us round the next
corner.

45

THEO-

About fifteen hours after the moment when he'd seen
the Earthsphere ambassador vanish in a swirl of corus-
cating energies, Theo Karlsson was on foot and heading
along the northerly banks of Loch Morwen. He had
been walking for hours since descending the steep hill
paths from the mountain ridges west of Giant's Shoulder
and his feet were crying out for rest. He knew there was
a tannery near here, and roughly a mile further on a
small cove where he was due to meet one of Rory's local
contacts who was supposed to spirit him up the shore
road to a safe house at the edge of the city. A bite to eat,
perhaps even a shower, then the chance to sit down and
take stock of the situation before moving on, that was
all he needed.

He had just caught a whiff of that acrid tannery
odour when his comm rang inside his jacket. He dug it
out, saw the calling number and in a rush of anger
answered abruptly.

'What?'

'Ah, Major, not caught you at a bad time, have I?
A relaxed, confident voice speaking vaguely Russian
inflected Noranglic. Silent since that bomb went off in

Founders Square, it was Kuros's catspaw, the agent
provocateur, the assassin.
'What do you want?'

'To congratulate you, Major. It was breathtaking the
way that you snatched Horst out from under the
Brolturans' noses. I wonder what you will do with
him - personally, I recommend execution.'

'Do you, now?'

'He is a traitor to Earth, Major, to Humanity. For
decades, he and others like him have turned our race
into fawning, deluded minions of the Hegemony and
brought us down to the level of lesser species'

'Ah, the racial purity angle again - you're reliable in
your obsessions.'

'Indeed I am, Major. The Free Darien Faction is
obsessed with striking at those who obstruct our pur-
pose - you've removed our primary target so we can
now go after our secondary one, High Monitor Kuros.'

Theo laughed. 'Still serving up that FDF dreck, son?
Well, it so happens that I know that you're nothing but
a saboteur-goon for Kuros, or someone close to him, so
spare me the fake rebel defiance . . .'

'How sad - seems that their psyops have got to you
somehow, Major . . .'

'What's got to me is what I've seen, you know, at the
Brolturan ambassador's arrival? Remember the ringer
you slipped into Kuros's DVC escort? The firefight and
the grenade going off, enough smoke and confusion so
your man could do a quick-change and return to the
scene as an Ezgara? I've seen it. . .'

'Purest fantasy, Major.'

'You're wasting your breath -1 know what I saw.'

'It's futile to try persuading someone as thoroughly
hoodwinked as yourself, but I do have two little bits of
information that might be helpful to you. First you
should be aware that early this morning the Brolturans
issued a Decree of Arrest in your name, quickly fol-
lowed by a similar warrant put out by Hammergard
Police.'

'No surprise - it was bound to happen,' Theo said.
'Sorry, you'll have to try harder.'

'All right, Major, then how about this? Half an hour
ago, a section of DVC intelligence called KS arrested
your sister and took her to their offices at the Assembly
buildings. So you need to ask yourself why I would tell
you this if I am your enemy.''

Before Theo could respond the line went dead. He
glared at the mute comm.

'Because you want me to hurry over to Hammergard
and straight into a trap, you lausungeV

But that didn't stop it having the ring of authenticity,
especially if Theo was now a wanted man. He knew
that was almost certainly true, and not just about him-
self - last night, as they were leaving Giant's Shoulder by
the forest path (after the visiting Brolturan troops kept
them down in that stone tomb for over four hours), he
had warned Rory, Barney and the Firmanov brothers
that by then law enforcement would have all their
descriptions and that lying low was the only sane course
of action. Rory was to take Barney north to Bessonov's
cabin outside of High Lochiel, then head back to
Hammergard; the Firmanovs were to pick up a van full
of supplies from a garage near Landfall and drive to
meet Rory at the cabin. After Horst had been vanished
by whatever the hell it was that lurked in that chamber,
comm calls had been made, plans were put into effect
and certain Diehards moved out under cover of night.

Meanwhile, Theo was heading for Hammergard
anyway, because come what may he had to get to
Sundstrom to explain what had happened to Horst and
to find out what their next move would be. Any comm
calls into the Assembly or the president's villa would be
subject to intense surveillance, so it would have to be
face-to-face, and Sundstrom would also have to explain
why Solvjeg had been arrested.

He skirted the tannery with its algae-surfaced ponds
and filtration root arrays, and about a mile further on
found the cove. An elderly, weather-beaten man in a
heavy, dark-blue mariner's coat was sitting at the wheel
of a battered spinnervan. Passwords were exchanged,
Theo climbed in and they were soon on the road to
Hammergard. The stern-looking older man spoke
Noranglic with a pronounced Norge accent, even
though his name was Sergei. He was also taciturn to a
fault, and Theo get very little out of him during the half-
hour drive, yet when they reached his cottage on a
rounded ridge overlooking the loch, his hospitality was
unstinting. After a hot shower and a change of clothing,
there was a tasty meal of baked fish and vegetables, set
off by a generous glass of rum and ginger wine that left
Theo with a sense of well-being that he had not felt for
some time.

Then, as he was readying himself to leave, Sergei
faced him, his features as stern as before, and said:

'Kick them off our world, Major, those Sendrukan
gaduki - send them to hell!'

He gripped Theo in a bonecrushing handshake before
they parted, Theo following the road till he reached a
main junction. There he caught a spinnerbus that was
bound for the city centre. He was dressed in a long
shabby coat over a chunky woollen pullover and tough
work trousers tucked into thick wool socks. The coat
and trousers had been streaked and splattered with
mud, which also clung to the field boots he was wear-
ing. He also had on a dusty, soft-brimmed hat and a pair
of small round spectacles with plain glass instead of
lenses. The entire ensemble was far removed from his
usual attire and would hopefully allow him to get as far
as one of the Assembly building entrances. Once there,
he would have one of the couriers take a message to a
particular admin warden who was a Diehard associate -
she had already agreed to get Theo past the stringent
security and up to a storeroom near the president's
offices. Then she would act as a go-between to arrange
a meeting.

Sundstrom did not know that Theo was coming, but
Theo knew that he would be there - ever since the
announcement of Horst's Decree of Arrest, and subse-
quent disappearance, the president and his cabinet had
been in almost continuous emergency session and keep-
ing the Assembly informed of all developments. The last
vee news he saw before leaving Sergei's had said that the
remaining ministers were rushing back to Hammergard
to attend. And knowing Sundstrom, Theo guessed that
he would probably have several reporters close to hand.

From the bus window he saw Earthsphere marines
and DVC troopers out on joint patrols in twos and
fours, some walking, some in military spinner-carriers.

These sightings became more frequent the closer he got
to Founders Square. When the bus stopped near a small
park, he dismounted and continued on foot, his natural
caution heightened by that call from the FDF saboteur.

He was striding up Stefanovich Street, one of the
main roads into the square, and had just passed a long
row of flower sellers when his comm rang twice and
stopped, the alert for a voice note. He took it out, hit the
retrieve and held it up to listen.

'Theo, this is Donny - as soon as you hear this mes-
sage, shut off your comm, take out the battery, then
head for cover, get'out of sight.'

The message ended. It had sounded like Donny and it
was his style. Heart racing, he suppressed the urge to
look around him, calmly put the comm in his pocket
and one-handed switched it off. Then he managed to
slide off the rear panel and pry out the battery. At the
same time he had stopped to look at some of the buck-
ets of flowers and made his way back along past the
stalls to an alleyway with lots of arched side passages.
After following a twisty route involving a couple of
double-backs and plenty of scoping ahead and behind,
he ended up in a doorway down a side road that led into
the square. The main entrance to the Assembly faced
onto Founders Square, with the Reconciliation
Memorial, the tree-shaded grassy plots, the stone
benches, and at the far side the zeplin terminal. The
wreckage of the mooring towers had been removed, and
canvas-hung scaffolding now stood all around the ter-
minal building while the sound of jackhammers and
saws came clearly to Theo's ears.

He breathed in deep, gathering his determination.

There was a secondary entrance round the corner, an ordi-
nary-looking doorway with a sign saying 'Electoral
Registrar' but which also gave access to the ground-floor
public corridors. Theo stepped out of the doorway but
paused when he heard running footsteps approaching
from behind. Casually he leaned back against the building,
a large store called Sachnussem's, and glanced round to
see Donny Barbour hurrying towards him. Warily, Theo
faced him and nodded.

'Ye can't go in there, Theo. They've turned your con-
tact, got her kids hidden away to get her cooperation.'

Theo swore. 'Who's got them?'

'Same ones that picked up yer sister, this K5 mob -
they're a deep-cover intel unit but their commanding
officer has supposedly gone stealth and is issuing orders
to his operatives. We're assuming that the CO and
maybe some of his people are now working for Kuros,
but we've no proof, so the chief of DVC intelligence is
allowing the K5 agents who arrested her to carry out the
interrogation . ..'

'So help me, Donny, if she's harmed I will kill them!'

'Calm yerself, man - she was only brought in less
than an hour ago. Sundstrom knows about this and he's
doing all he can to get her released, but you being under
suspicion in the matter of Ambassador Horst isna help-
ing!'

Theo shook his head, almost snarling with rage and
frustration.

'So what was all that with the comm?' he said.

'DVC intelligence got hold of your comm's signal ID
this morning and they've been listening out for it. Their
tracking is pretty rudimentary but the Brolturans' isn't -

I was told that it would be possible for someone to use
the comm-hub network to locate a particular comm, as
long as the battery's in and it's switched on.'

'Okay, so what is the next move?' Theo said. 'I'm
not leaving Solvjeg in there ...'

'First things first,' Donny said. 'Where's Horst? Is he
all right?'

Theo gritted his teeth, ran his fingers through his hair,
grasping a handful for a second. How the hell am I
going to tell this tale}

'The truth is that I don't know.'

Donny gave him a hard look. 'You're the one that got
him away from Gangradur Falls just yesterday - how
come ye don't know where he is?'

T know the last place I saw him.'

'Which was where?'

'A secret chamber under the temple on Giant's
Shoulder,' Theo said, and gave him a condensed account
of what he had witnessed last night in that cold, black
vault. Wearing a frown of concentration Donny listened
closely and, to Theo's surprise, became neither angry nor
derisory. Instead, he nodded thoughtfully.

'Sundstrom once said that the Uvovo were making
their own plans for resistance,' he said. 'Wonder if that
was what he meant. . .'

'Well that is exactly what happened. Just speak with
my nephew Greg, and he'll confirm it all.'

'Aye, well, there's a thing,' Donny said, suddenly
sombre. 'A short while before I found you I got a mes-
sage saying that K5 has arrested Greg Cameron and
they're bringing him to Hammergard by zeplin.'

Theo bowed his head a little, feeling the weight of
events. My family, he thought. I've put them it.
danger . . .

Then he realised something and snapped his fingers.

'By zeplin . .. that means they'll have to tie up at
Northeast Fields and come the rest of the way by road.
Can I borrow your comm?'

Donny regarded him a moment. 'You thinking of
putting yer Diehards up against K5? - wouldna recom-
mend it, they're hard cases, each and every one.'

'My men know what's at stake,' Theo said, holding
out his hand. Donny give him his comm, a slim, grey
functional model, and Theo punched in Rory's number,

'Aye, who ur youT

'Rory, it's me.'

'Jeez, Major, caught me by surprise, there - didna
recognise the number . . .'

'Where are you, Rory, and who's with you?'

'I'm at Maclean's wee place on the coast road, just
outside the city, and there's Janssen, Ivanov, Henriksen.
Mad Davey, and Nikolai and Barney're here, too.'

'They're supposed to be at Bessonov's ...'

'Aye, Major, but the cabin got raided last night - cops
and some hard-looking milint types hangin' around by
the time we got there so we scarpered.'

'Okay, I need you to get across town to Northeast
Fields - Greg Cameron's being brought in under armed
guard and I want you to take down the escort and get
him safely out of the city.'

'Right, sir, what are we up against?'

Theo looked at Donny. 'How many guards and what
will they be carrying?'

'Shouldn't be more than four,' said Donny. 'Sidearms."

Theo relayed that, adding, 'And these are well-
trained field agents, Rory - they won't be a pushover.'

'That's a'right, Major - me and the boys like a wee
bit ae' a challenge now and then.'

'Fine - and don't take Barney unless he's happy with
the idea of being shot at!'

'Right - we're on our way.'

'Good hunting,' Theo said, then closed the comm
and handed it back.

'I hope you know what your doing,' Donny said.
'Now, are you still set on trying to get your sister?'

'Yes - are you going to help me? I'll make the attempt
on my own otherwise.'

Donny squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, as if at a
stabbing headache. 'I must be off ma head,' he said,
opening his eyes to stare at Theo. "Cos ye know what? -
I am going to help ye, though God knows it's going to
be risky.' He nodded towards the square. 'This way.'

'I thought the ordinary detention rooms were in a
sublevel of the main building,' Theo said, realising that
they were heading across the square towards the
Assembly annexe on the east side, where the Defence
Ministry had its offices.

'Aye, but there's a far better chance of me getting you
past security at the civilian staff entrance ...' He slowed
and cocked his head. 'Do you hear that?'

Theo heard nothing for a second. There was a sound
like a high-pitched whine that grew suddenly into a
loud, roaring rush which terminated in a deafening
crash as something struck the front of the main
Assembly building and exploded. Fire blossomed, the
frontage near the top floors broke apart and debris
flew ... a missile of some sort, he realised amid the
cacophony. The impact of the noise and the abrupt, vio-
lent destruction stunned his senses and he would have
stumbled and fallen had not Donny caught his arm and
dragged him onward.

'Come on! - we've got to get out of the . . .'

The rest of his sentence was lost as a second missile
hit a few yards to the left of the first. Another explosion,
a bright flash and an outburst of flame and pulverised
stone. Alarms were yammering all around the square
and panicking, shouting people were fleeing up side
streets. Then Theo stopped in his tracks as a horrifying
realisation came to him.

'The top floor,' he said to Donny. 'Isn't that where the
president's offices are?'

Donny nodded grimly, then without hesitation they
began running towards the burning building.

46
GREG

It was getting aggravating - these K5 people just would-
n't respond.

'So, Lieutenant, I'm curious - what part has your
organisation been playing in the hunt for the murderers
calling themselves the Free Darien Faction?'

Lieutenant Laing was a tall man with a lantern jaw,
dressed like his three subordinates in dark green uni-
forms lacking any insignia. Seated across from Greg in
the zeplin gondola, his features were as impassive as
they had been when he had arrested Greg back at
Giant's Shoulder. However, Greg was sure there was a
doleful look in his eyes that wasn't there when they left
the site an hour ago.

'Sorry, Doctor Cameron, that is privileged informa-
tion.'

'Ah, privileged - what a happy state that must be.
Well, I imagine that the true answer is "none" because
you're too busy prying into the lives of ordinary folk,
rooting through their bins and opening their mail. I
can't help wondering what you were up to at the
moment when the bullets were flying at the dig back
there and people, myself included, were ducking and
fleeing for their lives. Compiling lists of subversive
library readers, maybe? Or were you secretly recording
dissident joke-tellers or perhaps even photographing
the cludgie wall graffiti in every bar and dive in
Hammergard? Or even arresting elderly women for no
reason other than to put pressure on a relative - now
that is despicable.'

'Your mother is helping us with our inquiries into
the disappearance of Ambassador Horst, Doctor
Cameron,' Laing said in a level, deliberate voice.

'Aye, I'm sure she is.' Greg's anger seethed, and part
of it was directed at Uncle Theo for having snatched
Horst away and brought him to Giant's Shoulder. Part
of it, also, was self-reproach for not having been cau-
tious enough . .. but who could possibly imagine that
the Sentinel of the well would grab someone and spirit
them off to God knows where?

So now Uncle Theo was a hunted man, his mother
was under lock and key and he was on his way to join
her. And the plain fact was that while he was scared for
them, he was most immediately worried for his own
skin - these four men, his escort, seemed to display a
striking similarity of bearing, all sitting in the same stiff
posture, each face impassive and without a hint of bore-
dom or wandering attention. In fact, not one of them
betrayed any kind of personal trait or mannerism, he
realised with growing unease. He pondered on the idea
of trying to engage one of them in conversation, but
before he could do so Laing's comm beeped from an
inner pocket. The K5 lieutenant answered it, listened
without expression, then said, 'Understood,' and put
the comm away.

'There is a security alert taking place in the city,' he
told Greg. 'All flights are either grounded or diverted.
We have been ordered to divert to another destination.'

'Which is where, Lieutenant?'

'Privileged information may not be passed to unau-
thorised persons, Doctor Cameron,' Laing said, getting
to his feet. 'I am going to inform the pilot of our change
of course. Please do not leave your seat or my men will
put you back in it.'

Greg said nothing but sat back, folded his arms, and
gazed over at the three K5 men, thinking for one bizarre
moment how much they reminded him of the three
robot dogs in The Dancing Engineer, a book he'd read
many times as a child. What were they called again? . . .
ah yes, Crusher, Digger and Grinder, that was it...

Laing returned to his seat and strapped in as the
zeplin began to bank into a descent. Greg could only
speculate about their location and battled against feel-
ings of desperation that threatened to swamp his mind.
Suppressing thoughts of what might happen to him at
the hands of these K5 interrogators, he tried to focus on
imagining what Uncle Theo would do in this situation,
or even his brother Ian.

Ten minutes later, while the zeplin was being winched
down to wherever it was landing, he did not feel any
more filled with resolve and a daring boldness than he
had before. But then reason told him that since the odds
were against him it would be better to be stoic yet pre-
pared, so he kept his mind stoic while his digestion and
his legs gave themselves over to quivering terror.

There was a bump as the gondola nudged up against
its mooring platform. Laing's subordinates went to open
the hatch, tip out a set of folding steps then one by one
hurry down them. As Greg followed, with Laing at his
back, he saw that they were moored on the ground, an
expanse of perfect lawn which stretched out to a white-
painted wall with several odd, conical objects spaced
along the top.

When Greg reached the foot of the steps, two of
Laing's men, Crusher and Digger, seized him by the arms
and marched him towards the tail of the zeplin with
Grinder behind him, hand grasping his jacket collar.
Beyond the tapering stern of the gas-filled envelope, an
imposing three-storey house came into view, flanked by
smaller buildings, bushes, gardens, trees, and several
strange vehicles with stubby wings and painted in green
and grey camouflage . . . and in the next instant, with
dread rising in a chorus, he saw the group striding
towards them, long strides made by tall Sendrukans in
uniforms and carrying long weapons with multiple bar-
rels

'No . . . no, you can't do this! Laing . . .' He started to
struggle but his captors only tightened their grips.
'... you cannot hand me over to these people .. .'

'I am under orders to render assistance to the lawful
representatives of the Sendrukan Hegemony,' Laing
said. 'Said representatives have requested temporary
extradition so that questions may be put to you, which
is permissible under emergency powers . . .'

'Emergency . . . are you out of your mind?'

'Thank you for aiding our inquiries, Lieutenant
Laing,' said another Sendrukan, who had appeared from
behind those in uniform. 'I am Assister Sejik, security-
master to the High Monitor.'

Like the soldiers he towered over the humans, but
unlike them he wore pale, flowing garments and in one
hand carried a slender, golden stave bearing a line of
black characters and tipped with a small silver figurine.

'I am glad to be of help, Assister.'

'Under the agreed terms we shall return Doctor
Cameron to your custody in six hours,' said Sejik.
'Would you care to wait?'

'I am instructed to return after the allotted period,
Assister Sejik.'

'That is acceptable.'

Laing's men suddenly released Greg but, before he
could react, one of the uniformed Sendrukans grabbed
both his arms, staring stonily down at him while a
second produced a silver object which was pressed
against his neck. Abruptly, all feeling in the rest of his
body vanished and his head lolled forward.'The terror
that gripped him was swamped by a surge of numbness.
Sights and sounds were blurred, vague shapes passing
by, deep voices booming to one another, strange, distant
sensations of motion, a muffled swaying, a slow heavy
tread . . .

Awareness came back in a rush, like a drowsy half-
sleep dispelled by fearful realisation. Greg found that his
hands were bound behind him and he was sitting at a
square, cloth-covered table on which several glassy,
gourd-like vessels were grouped around a crystalline
pitcher with six or seven spouts. The table and chairs
were on the Sendrukan scale and he felt like a child
seated in an adult's place. The table covering was a
detailed depiction of humanoid creatures, Sendrukans,
he presumed, engaged in a variety of warlike activities.

Similar framed tapestries adorned the leaf-patterned
walls, along with some far more modernistic pieces - or
so they seemed to his eyes. Long, openwork curtails
hung before tall windows, and gauzy, embroidered ban-
ners were draped low over the table and in the corners
of the room. The impression was one of cultured opu-
lence without excess, while the artworks spoke of
violence.

'Doctor Cameron, it is most pleasing to meet you
again.'

A deep voice, rich and expressive, spoke and High
Monitor Kuros stepped into view from behind Greg's
chair. He was dressed in shades and layers of grey, pat-
terned and semi-opaque, and wearing his tall, black
helical headgear. The features, so Humanlike, were com-
posed, the large dark eyes fixed on Greg as Kuros took
a seat near the table's corner, his long, graceful fingers
toying with a small blue vial.

'I cannot say the same, High Monitor,' Greg said.
'Handing me over into your custody clearly runs con-
trary to the basic tenets of liberty. I implore you to
return me to the keeping of Darien's civil authorities . . .'

'But we need you here, Doctor Cameron,' Kuros said.
'We have many questions and we are sure that you have
the answers.'

'But under our constitution I have personal rights,'
said Greg. 'You have given many speeches that mention
the importance of freedom and liberty - surely you
understand . . .'

'I do, Doctor Cameron, but unfortunately you do not
understand what we mean by freedom and liberty. These
are qualities conferred upon Sendrukan society by the
power of the Hegemony - they do not exist by them-
selves in the universe so they must be created by the
pinnacle of Sendrukan culture, the Hegemony and its
laws. Our freedoms and liberties are not permitted to
contradict the purpose and stability of the Hegemony,
since that would diminish its glory and harm its ability
to provide guidance to less mature civilisations. Instead,
they serve the Hegemony's purpose, as must you now.'

Greg stared at him. 'But when our government finds
out

Kuros shook his head. 'As of roughly forty minutes
ago, the colony's governing executive ceased to func-
tion due to the deaths of President Sundstrom and his
cabinet in a rocket attack on the Assembly buildings. Of
course, my government and our Brolturan allies are
ready to offer any assistance in this crisis.' He leaned
forward a little. 'But now I need you to concentrate on
my voice and listen very carefully.'

Then the Hegemony envoy said several strange
words, a phrase in Sendrukan perhaps, enunciated
clearly and precisely . . .

An odd sensation passed through Greg, a disorien-
tating shiver that felt like sounds and tastes and smells,
or was it... a shiver that passed through his surround-
ings, adding something familiar to it all, the furniture,
the hangings, the smiling Sendrukan seated before him.
And for some reason he felt like smiling too - even
though reason told him that he was still in danger.

'Now, Doctor Cameron, what do you know about
the involvement of your uncle, Major Karlsson, in yes-
terday's disappearance of Ambassador Horst?'

'Oh, Uncle Theo brought the ambassador to Giant's

Shoulder in the evening but when I heard that the
Brolturans were coming we all went down to hide in the
well chamber ...'

'Stop,' said Kuros, his posture and unwavering stare
betraying a more intense regard. 'Tell me about this well
chamber.'

And to Greg's horror, he told the Sendrukan all about
the well chamber, the traps, the Sentinel, the Uvovo and
their part in its history, Horst's abduction, everything he
knew. Greg had no control over the flow of words
which came out in an almost happy jabber, as if he were
talking about soccer scores with a close friend over a
pint. Likewise, the muscles of mouth and throat were
being directed by something else, something in his
mind ...

Am I going crazy"! he wondered. Have they made me
mad...

At last Kuros was satisfied, told him to stop and in
mid-sentence Greg fell silent. Kuros smiled thoughtfully
then held up the small blue vial he had brought to the
table - it contained what looked like a fine powder.

'Your talkativeness has, of course, been artificially
induced. While you were semi-conscious earlier, we
instilled an instrumentation into your body, engineered
particles fine enough to become a vapour which you
breathed in, allowing them to quickly find their way to
the ridges and grooves of your brain. They are keyed to
my voice and, having meshed with your synaptic path-
ways, are capable of many things including the divulging
of anything that you know.' Kuros smiled at the blue
vial, tipping the contents to and fro. 'We have encoun-
tered a few races with the ability to resist the vapour -

Humans are not one of them, which makes you very
useful.'

He uttered another phrase in Sendrukan and Greg
caught the sense of it for just a second, a lyrical expres-
sion, a line of poetry perhaps. Then a barrier went down
and his fear and hate connected with the muscles in his
face and his throat and chest, a rushing slam of rage that
came out as a wordless cry.

'Thank you, Doctor Cameron, you have been most
helpful. I look forward to the weeks ahead,' High
Monitor Kuros said as he stood, towering over the
Human.

'You said I... was going back with Laing ...'

'That was only part of the opening formalities, Doctor
Cameron, which must always be observed. No, it will be
announced publicly that we find you innocent of all
charges, then you will say that you have agreed to lead
a joint Human-Sendrukan team dedicated to investigat-
ing new, exciting finds at Giant's Shoulder. A gesture of
solidarity between our two great civilisations, a
strengthening of our precious alliance.'

Greg, head bowed, said nothing. Kuros, though, mut-
tered to himself for a moment or two before addressing
Greg again.

'Doctor Cameron, my inner companion, General
Gratach, wishes to speak to you.'

Greg glanced up to see a change come over Kuros's
features as the Sendrukan reached down and roughly
grasped Greg's jaw, forcing him to look up. Fury and
contempt burned in those eyes.

'I am Gratach, Human - when I capture your uncle,
this Major Kalsun, he will not receive such soft treatment.

I will break him and crush him, then break all you Hum in
rabble and your talking pets!'

The big hand released Greg's jaw and the Sendruk in
turned aside, his face altering once more, as did his stance.

'You will be working with us for a long time to come,
Doctor Cameron,' Kuros said as he moved towards the
double doors. 'Reconcile yourself to your part and you
will reap the rewards. Now I must leave to deal with the
current crisis and ensure that peace and stability return
to Darien.' He left, both doors closing silently behind
him.

Seated there, bound to the chair, Greg's thoughts
dwelled on Kuros's words about that vapour of engi-
neered particles, and imagined the worst.

The peace of death, he thought. Or the nearest thing
to it. Is this what they have planned for us, infecting us
with their vapour, turning us all into happy, compliant
serfs? God help us ...

And what were they going to do to him, or even
make him do? Be the Human mask for their operations
on Darien? Betray his friends, perhaps? - that might be
the worst thing that he could imagine, but he had no
doubt that the vapour's designers had dreamed up a few
more.

As he sat there he could hear other occupants moving
around in the big house, the muffled sound of voices,
the tread of feet in the corridor outside. Then one of the
room's double doors began to open quite slowly to a
quarter of the way before closing again, gradually, with-
out haste and without anyone entering. Greg stared,
thinking dully that maybe a guard had started to come
in, then changed his mind.

'Friend Gregori. . .' came a whisper from nearby.

And before his eyes the air darkened and Chel
emerged like someone stepping through a liquid door.
Then the diminutive Uvovo staggered over to lean on
the table, the short fur on his face and neck bristling and
all four of his new eyes glaring out at the surrounding
room.

'Forgive me, Gregori. . .' Chel began.

'Chel! - in the name of . . . how did ye get in here?
How did ... I mean, you were invisible.'

'Observation is alteration, friend Gregori - these eyes
create strange avenues.' Chel was recovering, standing
straighten 'I have found that I can perceive hidden
meanings and consequences in what I see, but I can also
temporarily alter consequences, like making the air
become a concealing shell which enabled me to climb
aboard the zeplin that took you away, and then to find
my way here after the landing.'

'You look exhausted,' Greg said.

'Well observed,' Chel said as he turned to regard Greg
with all six eyes, whereupon he froze on the spot, staring.
And Greg knew what he was seeing and knew that Chel
would still try to rescue him.

'I see them,' Chel murmured. 'And they can see
me . .. Greg, what are those things?'

He tried to explain the concept of nano-engineered
particles as a mechanism of control but had to settle for
the idea of 'the dust of the Dreamless', a kind of ghost
entity put in his head to compel obedience.

'And I don't see how it's possible to get it out again,'
he said. 'So that makes me a danger to you and everyone
else - you really should leave me here and go ...'

Chel blinked in sequence, a bizarre sight to behold,
then he reached down to Greg's bonds and released him.

'I understand your reasoning, Gregori, but you are
my friend - I cannot let you face this alone. And after
we leave this place, I shall take you to the nearest daugh-
ter-forest and see what the root-scholars can do about
this Dreamless poison.'

Greg nodded, feeling a stab of emotion at this show
of solidarity and brotherhood. He cleared his throat.

'So how are we going to get out of here?' he said.
While avoiding the sound of Kuros's voice.

'I confess, Gregori, I do not know,' Chel said.
'Maintaining the air-shell concealment requires a great
effort -1 could not keep both of us hidden long enough
to reach the front door, never mind the entrance to the
grounds.'

'Maybe you could go for a hunt around this place
and find some weapons,' Greg said.

'I think I could do that,' said Chel, just as they heard
the distant sound of gunfire coming from the front of
the house. They looked at each other for a moment then
Greg started to get up, but Chel pulled him back.

'Listen!'

The gunfire was louder, or there were more guns
firing. There were also shouts coming from other parts
of the house, orders being given, and the thudding of
boots. And one pair approaching the room. Chel's eyes,
all six, widened as he grasped Greg's shoulder ... and
the air turned to swirling eddies of shimmering opacity
shot through with emerald gleams, a flux of slow cur-
rents with Chel as their hub.

The doors flew open and in strode a Sendrukan
soldier who took one look at the empty chair and
dashed back out, bellowing at the top of his voice. The
glittering curtain faded and Chel said:

'Quickly, over there in the corner . . .'

Greg followed the Uvovo's directions and went to
crouch in the corner with Chel kneeling next to him,
eyes staring with a burning intensity into some facet of
reality that Greg would never know. The air darkened
into languid swirls of glimmering fog a moment before
Kuros hurried into the room, followed by one of his
aides. He went round to the chair, examined the loos-
ened plastic cuffs, then stood and surveyed the room.

'How could the Human have escaped, exalted?' said
the aide.

For a moment, Kuros said nothing as he studied the
room, the walls, the tall, curtained windows, even the
floor.

'The floors in this hovel have a substantial gap
between the boards and ceilings,' he said, crouching
down, the palm of one long-fingered hand resting on the
polished wood. 'There may be an access or a trap-
door ... is that where you are hiding, Doctor Cameron?'

His voice was low and deadly as he then began to
intone the words Greg feared most, that phrase, the
key ... He felt the alteration begin, the shiver of sur-
render in those subservient particles, their collective
eagerness to comply as Kuros continued, 'Are you
here? - show yourself now!'

But something stifled that rush to obey, kept the mus-
cles from engaging, the mouth from speaking. Chel, it
was Chel! - Greg knew it had to be him, somehow alter-
ing the consequences and suppressing the parasitic
particles' automated response. Yet the strain was show-
ing in the Uvovo's face, his strength was ebbing and
soon his intervention would fail. While Kuros stood
there, watching, waiting . . .

And that was when the wall and part of the ceiling
fell on him, a cascade of brickwork, joists and plaster
dust. Greg saw the High Monitor go down and when
the soldier went to his aid a massive metal claw punched
through another part of the wall, showering him with
rubble, knocking him senseless to the ground.

There was a raucous machine roar coming from
beyond the half-demolished wall. Greg realised that he
was in control of himself again while finding that he
was having to support Chel's semi-conscious form as he
got to his feet. Then a face appeared at the hole in the
wall, hazy through the clouds of dust.

'He's here!'

A second face replaced the first - it was Rory.

'Hey there, Mr C - how's it goin'? Just a sec and
we'll have ye outa there!'

A moment later, the mechanical claw swung down
again and gouged part of the wall down to floor level,
raising further pale and billowing clouds. This is it, he
realised - we have to make a break for it now!

Shouts were coming from the hallway outside the
wrecked room as he slung the insensible Chel over his
shoulder and hurried towards the jagged gap in the wall
where Rory and others were waiting, beckoning. As he
clambered over rubble and broken ceiling beams, he
risked a backward glance and saw Sendrukan soldiers
running towards the room entrance, curve-snouted
handweapons coming to bear. And as his gaze swept
back he spotted the dust-caked form of High Monitor
Kuros crawling from beneath the wreckage. Their gazes
met for a split second, and a surge of fear propelled
Greg on through the gaping hole to where eager hands
took Chel from his shoulder.

Gunfire like high-pitched, rasping bursts came from
within and was met with return fire including, he
noticed, a couple of crossbows and handfuls of caltrops.
Greg just had time to register the huge mechanical
digger with its hydraulic arm buried in the side of the
house, and Rory tugging on his arm, urging him
towards the waiting hillcar, before Kuros's voice came to
him, those deadly words carrying over the noise of the
firefight.

The world about him seemed to drain away, leaving
only wavering views of the house, muffled sounds of
weaponsfire, Rory yelling at him to stop, but he knew
that he had no control, that the nano-particles were only
obeying their master. Then someone grabbed his shoul-
der and pulled him back, but the particles made him
struggle and cry out until something struck his head and
the light and the house and everything crashed down
into darkness.

PART FOUR

47

ROBERT

The shifting ivory glow that illuminated the bottom of
the immense, winding cave barely reached the narrow
ledges and precarious paths which notched the upper
reaches of its sheer walls. As he paused to peer over a
low rampart of mineral deposit as smooth and nacreous
as melted opal, he glimpsed the shadows of large crea-
tures and heard them squawk and whoop to each other
between the grunts and snorts. Which was the most he
had witnessed since arriving here over a day ago, but
then his escorts had kept him from venturing along am
passages leading downward with emphatic warnings of
deadly danger. The temptation to leave them was tem-
pered by his natural caution and amplified by his lack of
company.

'Must keep moving, Human Horst,' said a tinny,
scratchy voice. 'Conveyance 289 awaits us at the Great
Terrace - it will take us to the upgate and thence to the
Construct.'

It was one of his small mechanical escorts, the one he
had come to think of as Tripod-Reski: the others were
Track-Reski and Hover-Reski. They insisted that they
were elements of a single entity, a kind of machine-mind
collective going by the name Reski Emantes. Tripod-
Reski was a foot-tall mech with three jointed legs
supporting an odd glass torso which contained blurred,
many-coloured components that flickered and glowed,
and was wrapped in a black mesh carapace. A squat
ovoid sat on top, encircled by an ocular band.

'And how long will it take to reach this Great
Terrace?' he said.

'Hours rather than days, Human Horst,' said the
tripod. 'If you make no further delay. Delay means we
miss the upgate, and means adversaries gain advantage.'

Robert sighed and moved on. The little mechs spoke
of adversaries but would not say who they were.
Likewise this vast cave, which they referred to as the
Refulgence, or the Great Terrace or the Broken Dome,
amongst several others which he assumed were also
imposing caves buried deep beneath the mountain
ranges of Darien. Yet all they would voice was the pre-
posterous notion that he had been dispatched far into
the depths of hyperspace to some kind of collapsed con-
tinuum, the kind of fanciful idea one might hear from
the shaman of a primitive culture and which he would
normally have handed over to Harry to deal with.

But Harry was silent and had been so since that ter-
rifying ordeal in the Uvovo chamber. As was Rosa's
intersim device which he had put in his gown pocket
back at the Gangradur Falls. He knew that the batteries
were fully charged yet when he turned it on it remained
inert, unlit, blank, empty.

Like me, he thought. Without Harry and Rosa I
feel... alone.

The path they were following was uneven and strewn
with gravel, and damp with the water that seeped in
from above and collected in a myriad little puddles. Up
ahead, Track-Reski was waving one of its retractable
stalk-arms at them from a side tunnel out of which a
pearly runoff trickled.

'We must take this stone lane,' it said. 'Enemies wait
further ahead along Refulgence.'

'Enemies?' Robert said, alarmed.

'This way leads to the lithosphere of Abfagul,' said
Tripod-Reski. 'That regime is inimical towards AI mechs
such as we.'

'True, but it is even more inimical towards our pur-
suers,' Track-Reski said.

'I have seen no pursuers,' Robert said. 'Who are these
enemies?'

A humming sound drew near and he turned to see his
third escort bobbing and gliding along on an air cushion
generated beneath its oval hull.

'Enemies behind,' it said. 'Enemies across . . .'

Gazing across the stalactite-bearded ceiling, Robert
saw a black shape move in the gloom, long and writhing
like a snake made of black smoke. As he watched it
stretched and flowed up to the ceiling and began to
advance across it.

'We must go!' said Hover-Reski. 'Go now!'

Urged on by his escorts and a jolt of unreasoning
fear, he climbed up the sloping passage, quickly follow
ing the glowing beams shining from Track-Reski's
headlamps, gradually slowing as his strength ebbed. Yet
still he stumbled along as the passage widened, its walls
rising higher, and became a rocky path winding along
the bottom of a long, gloomy fissure while an irregular,
semi-musical clanging noise went on far above. Soon
the narrow path became a tunnel again, which dipped
downwards for a stretch, took an odd twist and turned
back upwards, its dank darkness broken by the escort-
ing mechs' wavering lamp beams.

A grey oval emerged from the dark up ahead and
soon Robert was clambering out of a hole on a grassy
slope dotted with huge, mossy boulders. A thick, grey
mist hung low in the cold, still air and the light was
meagre and diffuse, like twilight or pre-dawn. Off to
one side was a still, reflective pool of water, over which
a group of odd insects with long writhing tendrils
buzzed and spun and danced. Feeling weary he sat on
the ground, heedless of the damp grass, watching the
insects as he got his breath back.

'This is the lithosphere of Abfagul,' said Tripod-Reski
as it presented to Robert a square tablet of the fibrous
ration that the mechs had been feeding him since his
arrival.

'Who or what is Abfagul?' Robert said as he bit and
chewed.

'Species and hierarchy,' said Hover-Reski as it glided
past, heading downslope to scout further ahead.

'Are they native to Darien?' Robert said. 'This climate
feels as if it could be on the same latitude as the colony, yet
I've seen no mention of another established culture ...'

'Our apologies, Human Horst,' said Track-Reski, set-
ting down a thin beaker of water for him. 'We cannot
answer your queries - falsifying your frame of reference
may have unwanted consequences.'

Robert frowned and drank the water, resenting the
comment.

'You have offered no proof that we are in some deep
level of hyperspace, as if the universe were built of
layers!' He gestured around him. 'This seems like out-
doors in a temperate climate, yet you call it a, what, a
lithosphere?'

'This lithosphere is one of several in this particular
stratum,' said Tripod-Reski. 'Some of the others are
almost on planetary-body scales, and thus prone to
entropo-pressure collapse. This one is only about I
thousand miles in diameter . . .'

'All right,' Robert said, angry yet willing to humour
his companions. 'Let's say that hyperspace is another
kind of universe . . .'

'Universes,' said Hover-Reski, emerging from behind
a large split boulder.

'The desiccated remains of dead universes sink down
into hyperspace and accrete in a sedimentary fashion,'
said Track-Reski. 'Do we have time to explain the struc-
ture of the Strativerse?'

'No,' said Hover- and Tripod-Reski in unison.

'Then why have I been abducted?' Robert said, sud-
denly angry at this ridiculous situation and wishing
Harry was here.

'Only the Construct can tell you that,' said Tripod
Reski. 'And the sooner we reach the upgate, the sooner
you will know.'

After that they said little of substance as Robert
allowed himself to be steered across an austere, hilly
landscape veiled in an unending, misty dusk. Now and
then, mournful, ululating cries reverberated through the
sky overhead and once they heard something answer
from far off behind them, a harsh implacable sound.

Not long after they heard the same harsh call but now
from ahead and away to the left.

'Hunters are out,' said Hover-Reski.

'Are they hunting us?' Robert said, suddenly anx-
ious.

'They hunt anything that strays into their sphere,'
said Track-Reski. 'Luckily, the stone lane to the Great
Terrace awaits us on the other side of the next hill . . .'

Robert could feel his heart hammering and his throat
ached from the quickness of his breath, but he felt relief
when a tunnel entrance came into view. The three mechs
paused on the crest of the hill to scan and map the
immediate area before beginning their descent. They had
all gone a few yards when the mechs suddenly leaped
ahead, dashing downslope.

'Quickly, Human Horst!' said one. 'Hostile is closing!'

'But . . . where?' Robert said, breaking into a run,
looking to either side and seeing nothing.

'Above!'

All he could do was snatch the briefest of upwards
glances and almost stumbled when he saw the winged
horror that was plummeting towards them, a writhing
monstrosity of eyeless, snapping heads, hooked tentacles
and clutching claws. The mechs were now only slightly
ahead of him and they reached the mouth of the tunnel
and dived inside just as the monster landed heavily and,
with a deafening, multi-throated roar, threw itself after
them.

Gasping and wheezing from the effort, Robert stag-
gered to a halt to lean against the tunnel wall and get his
breath back.

'Keep running, Human Horst!' said Tripod-Reski.

'... sorry . .. need to ...'

The little mech grabbed the flapping hem of his gown
and pulled at it with surprising strength. In the next
moment the tunnel shook as the winged monster
rammed itself up against the entrance, claws tearing at
its edges while tentacles tipped with gleaming pincers
and fanged mouths snaked forward. The tunnel floor
trembled, stones and clumps of earth fell from its roof,
and now all three mechs were urging Robert to retreat.

'Back to solid rock, human Horst,' said Track-Reski.
'Before entrance collapses.'

The grotesque beast was grinding and gouging the
tunnel wider, howling with a dozen mouths as it tried to
wedge itself further along. Running and stumbling along-
side the mechs, Robert heard the deep rumble of a cave-in
from behind, followed by a muffled roar of hate and fury.
Clouds of dust puffed up from the collapse, and several
yards on Robert's knees gave way and he sat down in the
dirt, legs akimbo, gasping for breath, massaging a pain in
his side.

'What was ... that.. . thing} .. .'
'Abfagul,' said Hover-Reski as it hummed off downs-
lope. 'Small one ...'

48

CATRIONA

The hunt was nearing its conclusion. She and her
troupe, two Listeners and eighteen Scholars, had paused
up in the subcanopy to await the arrival of another
Listener and five Scholars from Seacloud on the north-
ern coast. They were some 900 feet above the forest
floor with the light of day waning, golden yellow shad-
ing into amber and filtering down through Segrana's
leafy veils. Gloom was already seeping into the cooling
depths, but Cat knew where their quarries were because
her eyes had other eyes to help her—

From its perch on a low, leafy branch, the kizpi
watches the clearing. A crouching, camouflaged figure
creeps slowly through the undergrowth at one side, its
featureless armoured head moving from side to side to
360 its sensor sweep, its short-bodied and undoubtedly
lethal weapon held two-handed and aimed forward.

Eyes that she could search for and with, but only for
short spans of time - using these small creatures like
this panicked them, causing them to dart away into the
shadows. But now, some 30 yards west of the kizpi, she
had found an umisk, a flighted lizard with excellent eye-
sight and hearing. It had just caught and eaten a large,
juicy insect and had paused on a branch to preen a few
dislodged feathers when movement below snared its
attention—

Ghosting through undergrowth with precise steps,
the intruder stops to scan its surroundings, around and
above. The diminishing light gleams dully on the
helmet visor as it turns and tilts up, arms raising the
weapon along the same line of sight. Its short barrel
gives the tiniest of jerks along with a quiet, flicking
sound, and an arboreal animal, grazer or hunter, falls
to the forest floor with a rustling thud. The intruder
moves on.

Cat let the umisk slip away, aware of the many other
small beasts going about their business in that earthy
darkness. It was actually possible to use her bonds with
Segrana to call on the senses of all creatures in the forest
surrounding the Ezgara, thereby studying it in the
round, but there would be little advantage to it. Besides,
such an act would leave her weak and mentally exhausted
when right now she needed all of her faculties, both old
and new.

'They know we're here,' she told the Listener who sat
on the branch next to her.

'Will they be aware of what we have done to their
devices?' said Listener Malir, a Warrior Uvovo from
Overstream.

It had only been hours since scouts discovered
charges set against the central pillar-trees of three main
buttress clusters, the outer north, outer northeast, and
outer east. With the use of potent acid (from several
poroon beetles) and quick-setting syldu sap, the trigger
mechanisms were rendered inert. But Cat was sure that
these Ezgara were getting scanning and update infor-
mation from somewhere, possibly a small satellite left in
orbit which could also provide links to their bombs.
When they were disarmed, some alarm might have been
set off, warning the commandos that their presence had
been detected. Hence their high state of alertness as they
headed southwest, straight towards Pilipoint Station.

A lanky Uvovo swung down from an adjacent tree to
join Cat and Listener Malir.

'Honourable Listener and Pathmistress,' he said, eyes
wide. 'The Seacloud Listener approaches.'

That was what they were calling her - Pathmistress.
She didn't like it but the Listeners of Highsonglade had
decided on it soon after waking from the Segrana-sent
dream they had all undergone. And when she went out
into Segrana's dense heartlands she found that the
dream had not been a localised event. It helped when
she needed information and scouts but made her feel a
kind of responsibility she had never experienced before.
But she was able to put that to one side and focus on her
task, the bargain she had made, the protection of
Segrana and the People of the Leaves.

The Listener from Seacloud was called Okass and his
five Scholars were all armed with fishcatcher whips with
which, they asserted, they could snatch a weapon from
unaware hands in the blink of an eye. She decided to
send them with Malir and his seven Scholars while she
accompanied the other Listener, Juso from Skygarden,
whose eleven were skilled with nets.

Malir and Okass moved away and downwards, fol-
lowing Cat's directions towards the more westerly of
the two intruders while she and Juso went after the
other. While the Uvovo could travel with swift agility,
Cat was forced to make do with a trictra, strapping into
the leathery harness then following on through the inter-
woven branches and lichenous curtains of vines. Her
strange connection to Segrana allowed her to catch
glimpses of the two quarries as well as the Uvovo con-
verging on them, and it was soon apparent that the
Ezgara knew what was happening. Abandoning stealth,
both were charging full-tilt through the forest, with 1 he
Uvovo leaping from tree to tree and gaining on them.

And it was Malir and Okass's Scholars who pounced
first, seeking to snare the intruder's feet and disarm him
in one fell swoop. But the Ezgara proved wily, jumped
the hook-tipped whip meant for his ankles, ducked and
rolled under the one coming for his compact rifle. Then
sprayed the forest to either side with arcs of needles or
spines from the smaller weapons held in his lower hands.
Someone shrieked in agony and fell but the hunt contin-
ued.

Catriona lost track of the chase then - most small
animals had fled the immediate area, frightened by the
violence. Moments later she heard a harsh, muffled
buzz coming in short bursts. More cries, then an
uneasy silence. She scoured the nearby forest from the
depths to the heights and found a long-backed vithni a
female out hunting for her cubs. It was easy to per-
suade her that tasty grubs lay in a certain direction
and soon -

The vithni clambers along a series of low branches,
keeping pace with the party of exultant Uvovo who are
carrying a bound figure on their shoulders. Its helmet
and armoured jacket are missing and Cat is astonished
to see that the Ezgara has a very Humanlike face, well-
proportioned male features with calm grey eyes gazing
fixedly upwards. The man does not struggle yet a certain
intensity emerges in his face, the eyes beginning to widen
and stare, the lips drawing back from the teeth, a
flushed hue spreading red and mottled over the skin.
Then his head starts to tremble, his eyes show the
whites, he smiles and fire blooms in his mouth before an
explosion blots out everything

The bond with the vithni vanished and a thunderous
detonation reverberated through the forest. Cat gasped
at the severed connection, gasping for breath, almost
stunned with disbelief. The spidery trictra beneath her
shifted nervously while she tried to calm herself in the
face of this new horror. A suicide self-destruct - was
this another example of Sendrukan cruelty?

'Quickly,' she said to the Scholar escorting her. 'Rush
ahead and tell Juso that I want him to hold back, leave
the intruder alone but keep tracking him.'

The young Scholar nodded eagerly and was off, dis-
appearing into the shadowy trees while Cat urged the
trictra on. Cries of pain filtered through the forest from
the epicentre of that deadly retaliation but she had to
armour her mind against grief and focus on how to snare
the other Ezgara and keep him alive ... then something
came back to her, an image caught by her Enhanced-cre-
ated perfect recall - the bright heat that flared in the
bound Ezgara's mouth, and the way the skin of his neck
and upper chest split along white-hot lines. She recalled
that instant before the vithni link broke, the intense con-
centration in the man's face, the relentless effort - if these
Ezgara could trigger that self-destruction at will, then
their remaining quarry would have to be subdued
quickly then rendered unconscious before a second oblit-
eration could take place.

Listener Josu was waiting for her on the meeting
branch of a small harvest town called Sweetseed - it was
really four large branches interwoven over a pool, plat-
formed with mats and decorated with fragrant blooms
and flowering creepers. The townsfolk stayed out of
sight, except for an elder Scholar who brought cups of
emel juice on a tray for them both then went back inside.

'We have stayed our hand as you instructed,
Pathmistress,' Josu said. 'Are the intruders more dan-
gerous than you thought? We heard a loud explosion.'

Cat explained what she had seen and what she knew,
about which Josu was initially sceptical until one of
Okass's scholars arrived to report the tragedy. Seven
Uvovo were dead, including Listener Okass, and when
questioned he confirmed Cat's account, his words
emphasised by his wounds.

'We must take this other one alive,' Cat said, even as
doubt gnawed at her. Seven dead, from my negligence. 'It
is vital that we find out the Hegemony's intentions, even
if it's only the wee bit that a soldier might know, and I
want to know more about these Ezgara - if they're
Human, we've got to find out where they're from.'

'They have fearsome strength, Pathmistress,' said the
young scholar. 'How can we overcome the other one?'

Nodding, Cat turned to Listener Josu. 'We cannot
afford to have him conscious when we capture him. He
must be put to sleep quickly.'

'A powder for breathing or a liquid for under the skin?'
said Josu.

'A powder might affect those restraining him,' Cat
said. 'So, a liquid - do you have something in mind?'

Josu smiled. 'Ortka root - it is common to this area
and its core sap is easy to extract. For the Uvovo it
relaxes the muscles and thoughts but for Humans it is a
mind-taker.'

'And how quickly does it act?'

'I once saw a Human treated with it, an elder female
who had injured herself while travelling far away in
Segrana - it took effect in four, perhaps five heartbeats.'

Cat nodded. 'Well, this guy is young, fit and well-
trained, so have several doses prepared.'

After that they moved swiftly on from Sweetseed,
Listener Josu racing ahead to organise the gathering of
the ortha while the young scholar returned to his injured
comrades and Cat progressed at the trictra's more sedate
speed, a tense anxiety thrumming in her neck and shoul-
ders. The further the hunt moved away from the site of
the explosion, the more forest creatures were out and
about foraging or engaged in hunts of their own.
Focusing her mind on the bond with Segrana, her senses
widened and spread outwards, showing her glimpses of
what Segrana saw, the sounds she heard, and other sen-
sations for which taste and smell were only
approximations. Just as she could still feel the deathpain
of the Uvovo killed by the Ezgara self-destruct and the
sorrow of the others' loss, she could also sense the
second Ezgara, his passage through the green weave of
forest-floor undergrowth, his relentless, crushing pace.
Segrana knew, felt him journeying through her but she
needed Catriona to look, to see, to find and not to yield.

Thus Cat caught flashes of him in the gloom with
the eyes of a bird or a reptile or a baro, his speed slow-
ing gradually, since he probably reckoned that he had
outstripped his pursuers. By now, Cat had caught up
with the body of Josu's scholars, who deferred to her
with a reverential attitude she didn't feel was justified,
yet she was too preoccupied to make a show of disap-
proval. Then Listener Josu arrived with two local
Listeners, one short, one tall, both Of them wizened
but wiry. Also he brought three cloth pouches, each
containing four reed stalks, their tips sharpened, fire-
hardened and soaked in gleaming ortha sap. These he
gave to three trusted scholars with the instruction that
the intruder be struck on his bare skin with three
stalks. Then he introduced the two locals to Cat - the
tall one was called Gruanu, the short one Hiskaja -
and pointed out that they knew of an ideal place for an
ambush. Cat listened, questioned them and Josu,
thought on it for a moment or two and gave her assent.

'Don't forget, Josu,' she said. 'We need this one alive.'

'This we understand, Pathmistress.'

Half an hour later, the final moves of the pursuit were
played out among the shadowy trees that clustered near
the foot of a sheer, mossy cliff. In the murky gloom,
groups of Uvovo converged on the Ezgara's position
only to veer off or retreat, feints meant to distract or
startle. Then another group made their way from
branch to branch overhead, moving above the intruder,
prompting him to open fire - when he did so, they
dropped nets full of leaves, small forest creatures and
even a pagma nest or two to confuse him while the
Uvovo on the ground started racing towards him from
all directions.

Realising the danger, he swung his autorifle down
and fired off an arc of razor splines, not seeing the pair
of Uvovo swinging down out of the branches. They
crashed onto his shoulders and knocked him to the
ground. He twisted as he fell, lower arms producing
blades that hacked and stabbed, slashing one Uvovo
open diagonally from shoulder to hip while the other
rolled and ducked out of range.

He had barely got to his feet when two more Uvovo
burst up out of the ground and ran at him, dragging
between them a rope that hooked his feet from under
him. He fell, arms flying wide, and one daring Uvovo
lunged in with a weighted sticky net, tangled it around
the Ezgara's weapon and wrenched it out of his grasp.
After that it was almost a free-for-all with most of the
Uvovo diving on the intruder, trying to tie up his limbs
and subdue him.

Cat had guided her trictra onto a tree branch over-
head and watched as they bound up his artificial lower
arms then pulled off the helmet and armoured jacket,
coping as swiftly as they could with unfamiliar clips and
fastenings. As soon as the man's neck and chest were
uncovered, two of the pouch-carriers came in close, the
third lying wounded off in the dark. Three drugged
reeds punctured the man's skin, then everyone hurriedly
retreated to watch from about 20 feet away. The Ezgara,
who was definitely Human, writhed and struggled
against his bonds but his movements quickly slowed
until only his head was moving, sluggishly shaking from
side to side as if in denial, his mutters slurring and even-
tually falling silent, motionless.

Then began the wait. Cat knew that it had taken
roughly five minutes from the point when the first
Ezgara was captured to his self-destruction, so she was
determined to let fifteen minutes elapse this time. Silence
fell in the darkening jungle, abandoned by larger crea-
tures chased away by the violent confrontation. At last,
when the vigil was over, Listener Josu approached cau-
tiously while Cat directed her trictra down to the forest
floor. A couple of the Uvovo brought out ineka beetles
so at least there was a little light.

'He is unconscious, Pathmistress,' Josu said. 'And he
will remain so for the rest of the night.'

Four or five hours, Cat reckoned as she knelt beside
the sleeping man. I hope that's enough time to get that
bomb out of you.

He was handsome, in a graze-cut, square-jawed way,
dark-haired, thick eyebrows, quite full lips - in fact,
there was a vaguely Scandic look to him. Peering closer,
she saw that he had a small symbol tattooed just
beneath his right ear, a red wolf's head. Then she laid
her hand on his chest, just below his neck, but as soon
as she touched his skin she gasped and snatched her
hand away. Nervous whispers passed around and some
of the UvovO began to back off.

'What did you feel, Pathmistress?' said Josu from
nearby.

Felt and saw, she thought. There had been a feeling
of great danger from under the man's skin ... and a
strange, momentary vision she decided to keep to her-
self.

'Something inside him,' she said. 'Something ...' She
touched his face and his uncovered hands with one fin-
gertip and got the same sensation.

'In his blood,' said someone.

Glancing round she saw the two local Listeners star-
ing down at the man, those sunken eyes wide and
unblinking, an intense, twofold gaze.

'His blood?' said Cat.

'A strange fluid, invisible to his body's defences,' said
the taller one.

'. . . but dangerous,' said his short companion. 'When
mingled with the other fluid . . .'

Cat grimaced - they were describing a binary explo-
sive, two inert liquids which became unstable when
mixed. So the other component had to be in some sort
of container that shared a membrane with a main
artery . ..

The shorter Listener seemed to read her mind and
leaned forward to prod the sleeping man's chest. 'Here,
a sac lies by the blood flow.' Those hooded, piercing
eyes regarded her. 'Remove the blood-borne fluid by fil-
tration and he will live. Otherwise . . .'

'Filtration?' She knew that Uvovo healers employed
certain kinds of filtration roots in response to particular
maladies, removing impurities from the blood. But for
Humans . . .

'Could that work for a non-Uvovo?' she asked Josu.
'For a Human?'

'It has never been practised on a Human,' Josu said.
'It may kill him, Pathmistress, but left alone he would
choose death, that much is clear.'

She nodded. 'Aye, there's more than just a touch of
death-or-glory conditioning about them, that's for sure.
Okay, we'll do it - while keeping a close eye on his well-
being.'

With this agreed, the Listeners directed the strongest
of the Scholars to carry the bound and sleeping sol her
at shoulder height while others helped the injured or
brought along the bodies of the Uvovo who had die! in
the fight. As she watched them move off in procession,
her thoughts went back to the strange vision that had
flashed into her mind's eye while examining the Human
Ezgara - for one vivid instant she had seen Greg, lying
seeming asleep at the foot of a curious, many-stemmed
bush from which several pale tendrils trailed to either
side of his head, joined to the skin. Chel sat nearby,
swathed in long, dark robes, keeping watch over him.

Why had Segrana shown her this? Was it a concocted
image meant to allay her fears, or a glimpse of some-
thing that was real?

For a moment she put a hand over her eyes, finger
and thumb massaging an ache in her temples. Then she
straightened and called her trictra over, knowing her
personal worries would have to wait until this situation
was resolved.

49
CHEL

It was late afternoon, almost twenty-four hours since the
escape from the Hegemony envoy's fortified villa and
more than twenty since their arrival at Glenkrylov, a
daughter-forest situated in a shallow valley a few miles
south of Waonwir. It had been Cheluvahar's idea to
bring Greg here in the hope that the root-scholars might
find a way to draw out the enslaving dust of the
Dreamless. The scholars persevered for many hours,
testing a variety of bush and vine filter roots in different
combinations until Chel, with his singular perceptions,
was able to confirm that they had arrived at a safe and
effective arrangement. After Greg had been sedated with
ortha root extract, Chel settled down to keep watch
with all his eyes, studying the diminishing presence of
those baleful motes.

At the same time he was coping with a steady stream of
visitors, Uvovo who were arriving at the forest in twos
and threes or more, fleeing the towns and especially
Hammefgard, where squads of Brolturan troops were
detaining all Uvovo 'on suspicion of collusion with ter-
rorist agitators'. It seemed that the new Unity government
had quickly brought in repressive measures in exchange
for Brolturan aid in securing law and order. Paradoxically,
one of these measures had been the disbanding and dis-
arming of the Darien Volunteer Corps, as well as the
reorganisation of local law enforcement and the arming of
certain police units.

So these escaped Uvovo had to be provided with
food and shelter (and healing in some cases), then
formed into small bands and dispatched to those secret
Burrows and other refuges off in the western hinter-
lands. Then there was his role as Seer, which carried the
previously unsuspected burden of providing reassur-
ance as well as arbitration in disputes between
Listeners. After some eleven hours of this he could feel
his mind crumbling under the strain, his perceptions
gnawed at by weariness. So, covering his eyes, he left
Greg in the care of the healer Najuk, and went to climb
a nearby beholder tree, seeking relaxation and a change
of perspective.

Beholder trees were chosen for their height and stur-
diness, which meant that they were usually rakins, on
both Umara and the moon. Also, their bark had many
knots and wrinkles which provided plentiful hand- and
footholds. As he climbed, Chel could feel the kinks and
aches beginning to ease, and his torpidity dissolve as
the exercise stirred his essential forces. He breathed deep
as he moved higher, enjoying the odours and sensation
of replenishment that percolated through him.

About a third of the way to the canopy, voices came
to him through the leaves, Human voices, and he slowed
to seek out the source. Then clambered up onto a thick
limb and saw them seated and sprawled on a matted
platform fixed to the forked branch of a nearby tree.

Seeing Rory and one of the Firmanov brothers among
them he waved and Rory waved back.

'How's that patient o' yours, Chel?'

'Much better,' Chel called across. 'He improves by
the hour.'

'Any chance he'll be back on his feet in a coupla
hours?'

Chel shook his head. 'Not before tomorrow, I think,
Rory. When he wakes he will be weak and will need
food and rest. Are you planning to leave the forest?'

'Aye .. . well, mebbe, when we've figured out how
tae go lookin' for the Major.'

'Will you be going soon?'

'In a few hours, I reckon - we'll drop in and say our
g'byes before we scarper.'

Chel nodded and they exchanged waves again as he
resumed his climb.

A short while later he reached one of the cloudsteps,
the highest and narrowest of the beholder trees' plat-
forms. A cold and steady breeze stirred the surrounding
foliage, bringing fleeting fragrant whiffs, and he could
feel the entire trunk sway very slightly. All around were
masses of rustling leaves, of shifting treetops over which
insects darted and buzzed, tempting birds to swoop and
snatch in midflight. Occasional afternoon sunshine
broke through the clouds yet it was dry and warm, the
air so clear that he could look eastward across the grey
expanse of Loch Morwen to the small islands clustered
near the mouth of the Gangradur River.

More important, however, was the northerly
prospect, the cliffs that rose to meet the lower slopes of
ridges, and the mountain spur whose eastern extremity
was Waonwir. Chel had heard a variety of rumours
about the temple site from arriving Uvovo: the
Brolturans were going to use it as a prison for dissi
dents, or they were going to demolish it, or they were
going to build a fortress on it. Whatever the truth, they
were definitely doing something up there - last night
one of the forest scholars had been up in one of the
other beholders and had seen a harsh white glow ema-
nating from the top of the promontory. Now, as he
peered at that distant, dark grey mass, there was no sign
of such illumination but he could see a small dark speck
take off and race towards Hammergard.

He recalled the prescient words of the spectral
Pathmaster - the Hegemony will shortly control
Umara . . . soon they will be walking in this very cham-
ber . . . The words had been shocking but he could never
have guessed that they would come true so soon. Such a
possibility had not occurred to him when he stole
aboard the zeplin that transported Greg down to the
city, and now the fate of Listener Weynl and the others,
both Uvovo and Human, was a mystery. The same was
true of other Listeners like Faldri, Eshlo Shikellik and
Murnil, and until now Chel had not realised how much
they had come to rely on the Humans' communication
devices to knit their far-flung communities together.

The temptation to wait here in Glenkrylov for further
news was strong, yet he knew that he and the forest
scholars must lay plans for a swift retreat. He was sure
that if Greg had spilled all that he knew, then the
Hegemony envoy Kuros must now suspect something of
the Uvovo connection with the temple and the well
chamber, not to mention the ancient covenant with

Segrana that went back to the oldest times. As well as
the tales of detentions and beatings, Chel had heard an
unconfirmed rumour that Buchanskog, the daughter-
forest east of Hammergard, had been invaded by
Brolturan troops who destroyed the meditation retreats,
the vodrun and the scholar abodes before carrying off
every Uvovo they could seize. If the offworlders were
ready to raid one of the daughter-forests so soon, it was
only a matter of time before they moved against the
others.

With one last glance at Waonwir, now growing dark
as the sun dipped towards the horizon, Chel began the
descent, keen to check on Greg's progress but also impa-
tient to plan for the worst outcome. At least that way
anything less dire would feel like a reprieve, or even an
opportunity!

50

THEO

It was early evening by the time they reached
Akessonhold, a rambling farmhouse west of Landfall
and their third safe house in the last twenty-four hours.
Theo, Donny and Solvjeg were ushered into the hallway.
a wood-panelled, L-shaped room with several passages
leading off, some up a few stairs, others down a few.
Arne Akesson himself was there to greet them, a bald,
broad-chested man with a wrestler's build that had
earned him the nickname 'the Bull', but among the
Diehards he had a reputation for foxy cunning.

'Theo, Donny, and Solvjeg,' he said, shaking hands
and giving a courteous bow to Theo's sister while his
attendants took care of the newcomers' hats and coats.
'Dearest Solvjeg, it is good to see that you are safe - I
heard how these two heroes plucked you from perilous
captivity. Please be welcome in my house; these are evil
times and friends must stand by each other.'

'Thank you so much, Arne,' said Solvjeg, smiling
tiredly. 'It has been a trying day.'

Theo nodded. 'And a hungry one.'

Akesson grinned. 'Ah, I know I am playing host to a
famous trencherman so have no worries on that score. I
have set aside the small parlour which is just up those
stairs and on the right, and will have some provender
sent there straight away.'

'So shall we go on up now?' said Theo.

'Let Solvjeg and Donny go,' Akesson said. 'There is
someone through in the back room who needs to speak
with you, Theo.'

Theo smiled - Arne's back room was an adjoining
hut at the rear where he kept his radio equipment.

'I'll be back in a few minutes,' he told Donny and his
sister, then followed Akesson out of the hallway.

A narrow passageway lit by oil lamps ran back for
several yards, down some steps into a newer wing of the
farmhouse then through a large kitchen where pots gave
off steamy vapours, stew, baking bread, and something
cooking in wine. From the main store at the rear a cur-
tained archway led into another narrow, undecorated
wooden corridor and finally a creaky door opened into
the hut.

A skinny youth got up as they entered and handed
Akesson the headset.
'He's still'there, sir.'

'Thank you, Gennadiy. Is the signal encrypted?'
'It is, sir.'

Nodding, Akesson sat down at the radio, an obsolete
DVC model whose wooden casing was scored and bat-
tered, despite a recent dark blue paint job. The transmitter
next to it was a nondescript grubby green unit with what
looked like a leather suitcase handle bolted to the side.

'Hello?' Akesson said into the headset's stalk micro-
phone. 'Yes, he's here.' He passed the headset to Theo,
who put it on.

'This is Karlsson.'

'Great tae hear yer voice, Major.'

'Rory!' Hope and trepidation leaped in him. 'How's
Greg? Last I heard, they handed him over to Kuros.'

'Oh aye, but we busted him outa there with some
help from that Uvovo, Chel, and a road digger that Mad
Davey got his mitts on. Greg was kind of wounded but
not badly - we spoke tae him before we left and he's
doing fine.'

Theo grinned. 'Well done, Rory - you've earned your
pay for the week. Where are you now?'
'In Rullinge, at Kruger's.'

Rullinge was a boatyard town a few miles down the
coast from High Lochiel, and Kruger's was an alehouse
of the 'dive' variety.

'And have you been keeping an eye on the news,
Rory?'

'Ye could say that, as well as helping it along, like!'
'Well, it looks as if we have just become the official
resistance ...'

'Suits me fine, sir!'

'... but until we hear from Pyatkov,' Theo went on,
'we won't know if there are any others that we need to
link up with, like former DVC or disgruntled police ...'

Akesson leaned closer. 'Pyatkov is coming here - he's
due in about half an hour.'

Theo nodded. 'Okay, Rory, it seems that Pyatkov will
be with us in thirty minutes or so, then we'll know
where we stand. But I'd like you and the others to head
south and meet us at Membrance Vale. There's a picnic
and observation point overlooking the Hyperion — that
will be the rendezvous, but I want you to keep to cover.

We don't know if the Brolturans have the colony under
satellite coverage, but we'd best be wary.'
'Right ye are, Major.'

'Good. By the way, what's the mood like in Rullinge?'

'Eh, they're no happy, sir. Kinda goes from the sim-
mering angry types to the full-on, carpet-chewing
berserkers. Some of them want to barricade all the roads
in and out, some others want to load up the trucks with
guns 'n' molotovs and head out to find some
Sendrukans tae fight, while the rest are busy getting
hammered.'

'They might be a good source of recruits later on.
For now, be as low-key as you can when you leave. Be
cautious on the roads and watch out for roadblocks - go
cross-country if you have to.'

'Got it, Major - we're on our way.'

Theo took off the headset and laid it on the table.

'You look tired, my friend,' said Akesson.

He shrugged. 'This time yesterday we were upstairs
in Chyornilov's, that restaurant in west Hammergard,
when it was raided by armed police - we got out
through a passageway that led through the attics of the
next two buildings. We found a garage, hired a rattling
old hillcar and got to the Martensson fish farm by about
midnight

'I think I know it - coast road, a few miles south of
Tort Gagarin...'

'That's right. Well, we snatched a few hours' sleep in
an empty worker cottage before being woken at five by
our main contact - turned out that two military intelli-
gence officers and six Brolturan soldiers had arrived and
were questioning everyone. The main gate was blocked
so we had to head across a boggy field to the road, car-
rying bikes that our contact had dug out of the farm
stores for us. After that we kept to the farm roads and
hill paths and eventually got here in one piece.'

Theo remembered again the desperate and fearful
escape under a troubled night sky with an icy breeze
buffeting them as shower squalls flew in from the sea.

'Your sister was arrested and questioned, yes? But
she seems to have come through it.'

Theo gave a sad smile. '/<3, she was always the tough
one - never lets any situation get the better of her, or
anyone. Although she has been very worried about her
boys, Greg especially.' He stood. 'We should return so I
can tell her that he is safe.'

Akesson nodded and led the way, pausing in the
kitchen to make sure that the food and drink had been
sent to the small parlour. Donny and Solvjeg were sit-
ting in armchairs either side of a table crowded with
plates of cold meat, cheese, butter, small savoury pas
tries, and a jug of mulled wine that gave off a heady
vapour. A good-sized wood fire blazed in the hearth
while generations of Akessons gazed down from the
walls. Solvjeg looked up as they entered and when he
passed on the news about Greg she put her hand to he''
mouth and closed her eyes.

'Thank God,' she whispered, then lowered her hand,
which she clenched, and nodded at Theo. 'They are all
safe, Theo.' During the stopover at Martensson's, word
had reached them that Ian and Ned had made it to
Invergault and were heading south into the Hrothgar
Mountains, thinking to hide out in one of the trapper
camps.

Theo and Akesson dragged a couple of wicker chairs
closer, poured out mugs of hot wine, then the four of
them pooled their knowledge to try and gain a fuller pic-
ture of the situation. First, it was now certain that
Sundstrom and his cabinet were dead, killed outright
by the missile attack. A government of national unity
had been formed in the Assembly within hours,
although the tiny Foundationist and Redemptionist par-
ties refused to take part, the latter being Viktor Ingram's
old party and comprising five Legators. Together with
the Foundationists, they represented an official opposi-
tion totalling eight Legators, as opposed to the Unity
government's 104.

This new Assembly swiftly passed a batch of dracon-
ian laws, including several emergency powers which
handed huge discretionary powers to the executive, and
in charge of that executive was Dugald Kirkland, leader
of the Consolidation Alliance and now president pro
tem of Darien. And all of it had been conducted with
almost no reportage or comment, since many journalists
had also been killed in the attack on the Assembly build-
ing; in addition, the police were ordered to shut down
all newspapers, all vee stations (except Starstream), and
all radio stations (except the government information
service, which gave out no useful information).

There was just one fly in the greasy ointment of this
ruthless stealth coup - Alexandr Vashutkin, Sundstrom's
transport minister, was still alive. Having broken a leg
while visiting Trond on official business, he had sent his
deputy to attend the cabinet's crisis meeting on the dis-
appearance of Ambassador Horst. A decade and a half
ago, Vashutkin and Sundstrom had become close friends
in the Progressive Dispersalists, but several years back
policy differences had come between them, causing
Vashutkin to resign from the PD and join the Union for
Land Party. Which later became part of Sundstrom's
Civic Coalition, thus forcing the two former friends to
work together once again.

And Vashutkin was using Trond as his base, from
where he made live radio speeches denouncing the
Hegemony and its envoy Kuros as tyrants and aggres-
sors and describing the Unity government as spineless
collaborators. He reserved his choicest vitriol for
Kirkland himself, saying that his motto should be 'No
Boot Left Unlicked', and that he lived in fear of his own
intestines which, out of shame, might one day reach up
through his throat and throttle him to death.

Vashutkin's tirades, combined with the formal re
establishment of the Northern Towns League, had
already made Trond a focus for dissent, protest against
and mockery of the assembly in Hammergard. The new
laws were being ignored and Hammergard officials bear
ing enforcement orders had this evening been politely
but firmly shown the door. Twenty-four hours since the
missile attack the colony was split down the middle;
Hegemony advisers seemed to be present at every level of
government and Brolturan ground and air patrols main-
tained a high profile in Hammergard and the major
towns, apart from those in the north. From Nivyesta,
there was no news.

'What about Earth?' Theo said, draining the last of
his wine then reaching for some bread and cheese. 'Have
they made any comment?'

Akesson smiled sourly. 'They have not even
appointed a new ambassador. That captain of the
Heracles, Velazquez, was interviewed on Starstream just
after Kirkland was confirmed as president, saying how it
was a new start for Darien and how we should support
the new government, and how grateful we all were that
the Brolturans and the Hegemony were helping to sta-
bilise the situation.'

'Aye,' Donny said bitterly. 'Stabilising it with a boot on
our necks.'

'He didn't manage a smile once during the interview,'
Akesson said. 'He really looked like a man who was
carrying out orders that he loathed.'

Donny snorted. 'But he still carried them out. He's
still got his men patrolling with the Brolturans.'

'What about Horst?' Akesson said. 'What's happened
to him? Did you really kidnap the man?'

Theo shook his head. He had already told Donny
and Solvjeg a truncated version of the story, shorn of the
Uvovo chamber disappearance, on the principle that
what they didn't know couldn't hurt them

'No, no, I saved him from a Brolturan interrogation,'
he said. 'I knew he had nothing to do with the bombings
so I got him away to Giant's Shoulder, then left him with
friends there when I had to go and free my sister. Since
when .. .' He shrugged. 'I don't know if he's hiding
somewhere or if they caught him. The former, I hope ...'

'The Brolturans are doing something up on Giant's
Shoulder,' Akesson said. 'Machinery working round the
clock, big floodlamps lighting it up at night.'

'I heard that they were building a prison or a fortress,
or both,' Theo said, then fell silent when one of the
attendants came in and murmured to Akesson. The big
man nodded and as the attendant left he turned to the
others.

'Pyatkov will be here in about ten minutes - he just
left the wayhouse on the Midgard Road. And he's not
alone, apparently.'

'That'll be the Enhanced, then,' Donny said, matter-
of-factly.

They all stared at him. Enjoying the attention, he
refilled his mug and chewed on a savoury pastry.

'Ye know about them, eh?' he went on. 'The kids
that they

'Yes, we know who they are, Donny,' Theo said.
'Why don't you just tell us what Pyatkov's up to, since
you seem to know more than we do.'

'Och, I don't know that much,' Donny said, sipping
wine. 'But I do know that of the government's secret,
hush-hush projects, there was one whose success rate
was way out in front, and that's who I think Pyatkov's
got with him. Probably wants them moved to a safe
house near Trond, or further north, knowing my luck.'

'Enhanced,' Akesson muttered darkly. 'It was terrible
what they did to those children.'

Solvjeg sat forward. 'When I was young and still at
school, one of my closest friends got herself pregnant by
a young man from a neighbouring town, a very pretty
boy who could dance most dashingly and play the
bala . . . anyway, she and her parents were distraught,
but at that time Zhilinsky was promoting his New
Children's Programme, with government backing,
encouraging women not to have abortions but to
donate the unwanted offspring to his Programme, even
before they had reached full term.

'They never admitted in public that Zhilinsky's sur-
geons were trying to create Human computers - they
used words like adjustment or modification or enhance-
ment. Eventually the whole truth was made public when
the failures could no longer be concealed. One of them
was especially heartbreaking, a young woman of nine-
teen who had tried to kill herself forty times or more,
even though assessments showed her to be a calm,
rational mathematical genius - 95 per cent of the time.
The other 5 per cent she was monomaniacal, self-hating
and self-destructive. When she was discussed on the
radio and in the papers they showed her picture and
gave her first name, which my close friend recognised
right away as her daughter . . .'

A name emerged from Theo's memory. 'Maria . . .
Groenvold,' he said.

Solvjeg smiled. 'Yes, that's right, and her daughter
was called Ulrike - perhaps some of Mr Pyatkov's com-
panions might remember her.-..: .'

Akesson held up a hand for silence, and a moment
later Theo heard the sound of a vehicle outside, tyres
crunching on gravel.

'I'll make sure,' Akesson said, heading out to the hall.
Donny, meanwhile, was already on his feet and standing
closer to the other doorway. Theo and his sister looked
at him askance.

'Hey,' he said. 'Just in case.'

Then Akesson appeared at the door, beckoning them
to follow.

The hallway was busy with Akesson giving orders to
some of his staff while Pyatkov, wrapped in a fur-trimmed
greatcoat, ushered several unsmiling people, three men
and two women, through to another room off the hall.
The Enhanced were wearing thin indoor clothes which
probably accounted for their morose expressions, yet
there was also a certain hauteur to their demeanour and
they regarded no one else as they trooped through the
hall. Solvjeg watched them a moment then put a hand
on Theo's arm, smiled and followed the newcomers.
Observing this, Pyatkov shrugged.

'I'm afraid that your sister may find them a little
close-mouthed,' he said to Theo. 'They've exchanged
barely a dozen words with me since I got them out of
the Delta Facility, and that was over twenty-four hours
ago.' He loosened his coat. 'In any case, this is a short
stopover, five minutes then we have to get back on the
road. And I need both of you to come with us, and any
help from your Diehards, Major, if there are any in the
area.'

Theo and Donny exchanged puzzled looks.
'Expecting trouble on the road north, Vitaly?' said
Donny.

'Not north, Captain, but east,' Pyatkov said stiffly.
'President Sundstrom reached a secret agreement with
the Imisil ambassador that, in the event of a de facto
takeover by the Hegemony, particular researchers would
be offered political asylum by the Imisil. Their ambas-
sador is currently in talks with Kuros, which means that
an Imisil shuttle is sitting on a runway at Port Gagarin
right now - we have to get there with all speed, bypass
security and see the Enhanced safely on board that shut-
tle.'

'Is that all?' Theo said. 'What's so special about these
people?'

'Aye,' said Donny. 'What's their gimmick?'

Pyatkov's lips were set in a thin line. 'I cannot reveal
what I know, but I can tell you that the Hegemony must
never find out what is in those Enhanced minds.'

Donny looked at Theo. 'Must be that recipe for rein-
deer haggis - telling ye, the rumours I've heard . . .'

'Barbour, can you be serious for . . .'

'Okay, Pyatkov,' said Theo. 'Then why are we hand-
ing these people over to the Imisil? Are they really to be
trusted?'

'Yes - the Imisil government has nominated a
member of the Intercessor Council as their guardian.'
'The who?' said Donny.

Pyatkov frowned. 'An interplanetary organisation
which, I'm told, has a high reputation for honesty and
impartial arbitration.'

Theo shrugged and glanced at Donny, who rolled his
eyes then took out his handgun.

'A 50-calibre Chokhov,' he said. 'Just the thing to
encourage honesty and impartiality.'

Checking the magazine, he snapped it back in, then
winked.

Theo laughed and turned to Pyatkov. 'Some of my
men will be waiting at the observation point near
Membrance Vale.'

'We can divert to pick them up without losing time.'

'Also I don't even have a weapon.'

'That will not be a problem,' Pyatkov said. 'I brought
a selection.'

A few minutes later, as the Enhanced filed back out,
now wearing scarves and hats donated by Akesson,
Theo went to say goodbye to his sister. She was standing
with one of the Enhanced, a slender woman with short
black hair and attractive if sombre features. As Theo
approached, she solemnly shook Solvjeg's hand and
went to join the rest outside.

'Her name is Julia,' Solvjeg said to him. 'She remem-
bers Ulrike and said that she was like a comet among
shooting stars . . .' She faced him. 'Are you going too?'

'Yes,' he said. 'It seems that Pyatkov still has need for
an old dog of war ... we're going to break into Port
Gagarin and get these folk aboard a shuttle that is wait-
ing to take them up to the Imisil ship in orbit.'

She nodded, gnawed her lip, then shook her head. 'I
cannot tell you that you're too old for this, because in
truth it's only your body which is too old for it!' Just
then, Donny handed him his coat, which he put on. 'I
am not your wife, only your sister, but that gives me the
right to tell you, Theodor Karlsson, to come back alive,
with or without your shield!'

'Ja, little spear-maiden - who would dare disobey
such a command?'

They embraced, then Theo hurried out to where
Pyatkov's transport, a battered-looking freight bus, was
waiting with its twin flatwheels running. Fine rain was
sweeping and swirling down with a gusting breeze,
making golden haloes of flying motes around the farm-
house pathway lamps. He leaped up the entry steps, the
door concertinaed shut behind him and they drove off
into the night.

51

KAO CHIH

He stared with a kind of morose hope out of the view-
port at the hazy stars, which were few and far between -
only the nearest were bright enough to pierce the cloudy
veils of the Huvuun Deepzone. Also, they allowed the
navigationals to make some kind of approximation of
their position after each microjump - the last three had
zigzaggingly carried the Castellan towards the subsector
where the Darien system was most likely to be, going by
the ship's archive of tiernet news.

But those were the last three out of twenty-four
microjumps. The hyperspace jump from Shafts to Yonok
with its midjourney dropout to normal space had not
gone as planned when the exit left them dozens of
lightyears inside the Huvuun and unable to get an accu-
rate fix on their location. That was a day and a half ago,
since which time Drazuma-Ha* had been employing
point-phase variations in the microjump computations
while the jumps themselves had to be 42.8 minutes apart
because that was how long the tesserae power cells took
to self-recharge.

And for Kao Chili, it was stressful, the waiting, the
build-up to the six- or seven-minute microjump, the
moment of stomach-churning disorientation at the start
and the end, then the moments it took the navigationals
to plot their unreliable position. No, it was beyond
stressful. As he sat there, staring at those few, haze-
haloed stars, he could feel a tide of impatience starting
to swamp his reason.

'Have the concise data been computed, Drazuma-
Ha*?'

'Yes, they have, Gowchee.'

'Then let us make the jump, now - we're getting
closer with every jump, so let's not waste any more time
than we have to.'

'I must point out that engaging the hyperdrive before
the power cells have recharged will cause a drain on
our irreplaceable fuel reserves. And there is no guaran-
tee that we will maintain our progress towards Darien,'

'I realise that, but just this once I feel that we should
go, now, without delay, immediately.'

'The cells will be recharged in another twenty-eight
minutes, Gowchee. Can you not wait that long?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'If you wish, we could play one of the ship's games to
help pass the time for you.'

'Thank you for the offer, Drazuma-Ha*, but I would
be incapable of concentrating. Please engage the hyper-
drive - we may even be lucky enough to come within
range of one of those cloud-harvesters.'

Three times during the earlier microjumps the
Castellan's sensors had picked up at the outer limits an
occasional solitary vessel with an odd emission curve,
which suggested that it was sometimes 150 metres
long and other times 2.5 kilometres long. By the third
sighting Drazuma-Ha* had identified them from a
popnet infodoc he had archived years before as cloud-
harvesters, ships that scooped up the interstellar dust
and debris with kilometres-long energised fields. They
were industrial vessels owned by large-resource corpo-
rations and operated by AIs or small crews. More
important, their drives were T2-capable, as were their
shuttlecraft - one of those could execute far more accu-
rate microjumps.

'We can rely on that occurring with as much certainty
as arriving perfectly in orbit around Darien,' the mech
said. 'However, I perceive that my refusal may lead to an
unpredictable outburst on your part. . .'

'I protest, Drazuma-Ha"' - I am merely . . .'

'No, I do not wish to be the cause of any extreme
reaction . . .'

'That is quite ridic—' Kao Chih began to say, but
Drazuma-Ha"" activated the hyperdrive and the words
and sounds in his throat ran together into a fluttering
slur. Then there was that vaguely numb period lasting a
few minutes before he was tilted into the exit-surge of
spinning-sliding-vertigo, and when it faded he was still in
his couch, waiting for the mech to announce their new
position.

'I am sorry to have to tell you that we are now 7.9
lightyears further away from the target subsector,'
Drazuma-Ha'"" said.

Kao Chih made an inarticulate sound that was equal
parts anger and despair. 'How much longer can this
take?' he groaned. 'How much more can I stand?'

'At the current rate of consumption, fuel reserves will
be exhausted in eleven months and seven days, and the
air will remain breathable for another eight months and
twenty-four days, assuming that scrub filters are used.
Unfortunately, your food will only last for another three
months and nine days, provided that you restrict your
intake to quarter-rations.'

Kao Chih listened and nodded soberly while striving
against an urge to burst out laughing at the idiocy of the
situation. It was irrational, he knew, and a wild mood
swing away from the grimness he had been feeling just
minutes ago.

'Alternatively,' the mech went on, 'I may be able to
adapt one of the large equipment lockers for use as a
cryo-unit, or at least something that will lower your .. .'

The mech stopped in mid-sentence and bright field
rods stabbed out at the console. Screens flickered and
symbol arrays pulsed.

'A ship,' it said, 'has just appeared 1,823 kilometres
away. Its profile is that of an Erdishi midhaul freighter
but there is no ident signal and the thrust motors seem
to be only partly shielded. Their sensors have just found
us . . . they have ignited their thrusters and are heading
straight for us.'

'Have we got them on visual?' Kao Chih said as the
viewport hypershield rolled back. 'Are they responding
to hails?'

'Too far for realtime depiction ... and no comm traf-
fic at all.'

'What about the computations? Are we ready to
jump?'

'Yes, Gowchee, the computations are complete but
another premature jump would further deplete our fuel
reserves.'

'You may recall that we have no weapons with which
to fend them off, unless you want me to sit out on the
hull and throw empty gas canisters at them . . .'

'Their acceleration curve is very steep,' the mech said.
'That and the degraded state of the superstructure
means that the crew cannot be organic'

One of the screens flashed up an image of the
freighter and to Kao Chih it looked like a wreck. Those
parts of the hull still attached were charred and holed,
while pipes, feeds and cable sprouted from exposed and
shattered bulkheads. Something, either a collision or a
weapon, had sheared off a slanted portion of the prow
while the port side was disfigured by a ragged gouge
from the bridge to the midsection. Seconds ticked past
and as Kao Chih watched, something bulky and metal-
lic clambered up that gouge, through torn and twisted
plating to the gaping bridge where it was met by another
two large mech shapes.

Recognition and an awful sense of dread made Kao
Chih's stomach feel hollow.

'Those are the droids from Blacknest!' he said.
'Your debt collectors! How did they track us here?
Why . . .?'

'Because they are very cunning and very persistent,'
Drazuma-Ha * said. 'There may not be sufficient time
for the cells to recharge. Brace yourself, Gowchee!'

And his senses spun and swung and plunged, then a
few minutes of stability, then another surge of dizzi-
ness . . . and he opened his eyes, holding onto the
armrests. Another jump, another shot at Darien.

'Why are they going to all this trouble for a bad
debt? . . .' Kao Chih paused, thoughts assailed by
suspicion. 'You said they were cunning and persistent -
how much do you know about these droids, Drazuna-
Has"? And exactly why are they chasing you?'

'I have encountered them before, in circumstances
not conducive to negotiation and polite behaviour . . .
Gowchee, the answers to your questions would demand
careful exposition. Please, allow me a few moments to
set up the jump computations then we may discuss the
matter.'

Frowning, Kao Chih sat back in his couch and folded
his arms. Then his bad temper waned as the tiredness he
had ignored made itself felt, and when he sighed it
turned into a yawn.

'If you are weary, Gowchee, perhaps you should rest,'
said the mech.

'My mind is unable to relax when faced with mortal
peril, Drazuma-Ha*. It is a Human foible.'

'How inexpedient for your species - perhaps you
should consider cyber-augmentation after all . . .'
Suddenly a console alarm started pinging. 'A ship has
appeared at 1,560 kilometres ... it is the freighter and it
is altering course in our direction . . .'

'This is not a coincidence, is it?'

'No, Gowchee - they are tracking us through hyper-
space somehow. Engaging hyperdrive - now.'

Again the disorientation, senses gyring, the pause,
the vertigo surge, and that momentary impression of
coming to a dead stop without the slam of deceleration.
Drazuma-Ha* hung before the console in silence while
his field aura shimmered with arrays and streams of
ghost symbols and the main console flickered with
waves of computation.

'So, Drazuma-Ha*, what did you do to attract such
relentless pursuit?'

'Simply put, Gowchee, I am their enemy.'

He frowned. 'You'll forgive me for saying so but that
sounds more serious than a bad debt.'

'They have their purpose and I have mine, which is to
prevent an ancient, terrible weapon from falling into
the hands of their masters.'

Kao Chih listened in amazement and growing annoy-
ance. 'You lied to me, right from the start... and who are
these droids' masters? And who are you working for?'

'This explication is straining your credulity,
Gowchee. Perhaps I should say no more.'

'I would rather you continued.'

'Very well, although I can only offer my word that I
am speaking the truth. The droids pursuing us are emis-
saries of the Legion of Avatars, a long-forgotten enemy
of civilisation, and I am an agent of a machine intelli-
gence called the Construct.'

'And what's this weapon ...'

'A fearsome device built millennia ago on the world
you call Darien ... ah, wait, look!'

On the long-range scanner, the freighter appeared
1,332 kilometres away and immediately started moving
towards the Castellan.

They jumped again.

The sequence of events was repeated four times,
while the droids' ravaged, mutilated ship continued to
dog them, their exit point coming closer and closer. As
Kao Chih stared at the sensor sweep holo, where a
tagged symbol denoting the freighter had just winked
into existence 495 kilometres away, he said:

'Drazuma-Ha*, this cannot continue - anothe two
jumps and they may have us.'

'I agree, but our options are limited,' the mech said.
'Therefore I propose that we employ the same tactic
that led us into the deepzone.'

Kao Chih stared at the mech, still trying to come to
terms with the earlier revelations. 'Er, dropping out of
hyperspace partway through the jump?'

'Exactly so, Gowchee. My hypothesis is that our pur-
suers drop a beacon-probe in hyperspace just before
exiting to our position in normal space. When we make
our next jump the beacon analyses our vessel's multi-
field burst and deduces the jump course and duration,
which are passed on to the droids, probably via subspace
link. I am now merging new course data for a longer
jump in the direction of Darien's possible location - I
plan to disengage the hyperdrive a quarter of the way
into the jump. Does that meet with your approval?'

'It does, Drazuma-Ha*,' he said, eyeing the sensor
holo in which the freighter's distance was down to 120
kilometres and closing. 'I suggest that we leave now.'

The mech's reply was to engage the hyperdrive.
Minutes later they emerged into normal space, the pale-
blue console holo lighting up as the sensor came back
online. And Kao Chih groaned when he saw the glittering
symbol of a ship sitting there, out at 1,081 kilometres.

'They got here ahead of us! - how could they possi-
bly

'Calm yourself, Gowchee - it is not them but another
vessel entirely, a cloud-harvester.'

He sat up, loosening the couch straps a little, trying
to contain his excitement as he peered into the holo.

'It is at rest, Drazuma-Ha *. It couldn't be abandoned,
could it, or a wreck?'

'No, its emissions curve indicate that it is functioning
nominally with an active ident that says it is the
Harvester Viganli. The most likely reason for it being
stationary would be a pause for refining or repairs.'

'I cannot help but notice that we too are stationary,
rather than heading towards the harvester,' Kao Chih
said.

'We must wait to see if our tactic has worked,' said
the mech. 'It has been one minute since our arrival - we
should make sure that we have evaded them.'

Vexed, Kao Chih, could only agree, then settle down
to gaze at the console's shiptime counter. A minute
passed with infuriating slowness and the next few went
no faster. After ten languid minutes Drazuma-Ha *
decided that the tactic had succeeded and started the
thrusters, laying in a course for the Viganli.

'We seem to be proceeding at a somewhat leisurely
pace, Drazuma-Ha*,' said Kao Chih, still disgruntled.

'It will reassure the harvester's crew or command AI
that we have no aggressive intentions. Covering this dis-
tance should take just under an hour.'

'Sufficient time for you to tell me about your mission
to Darien?'

'I am sure that it would be, Gowchee.'

'Excellent, now tell me about your boss, this
Construct...'

52

ROBERT

At last - the Great Terrace, a title which by no means
did it justice. As he followed the three mechs-Reski out
of the low, lamplit cavern (into which the tunnel from
Abfagul had led) he thought he heard the rushing sound
of strong winds, a shuddering, sky-filling roar. Then the
cavern opened out to show him that they stood, insect-
like, at the edge of an edifice of incomparable grandeur.

Lit by pearly light from far above, an immense stone
promenade about 100 yards across extended from a
high bank out over the white, hazy curve of a waterfall.
This was fed by numerous sources arriving from further
back, rivers and streams that gushed in from many
directions, splashing among mist-blurred rocks, down
over ledges and runnels and levels of pools that gave
forth their own lesser cascades. Except that both the
promenade and the falls stretched off into the distance
for perhaps a mile, matching the hundreds if not thou-
sands of inflows that coursed down an immense,
boulder-strewn slope where little clumps of trees and
bushes stood like pale ghosts amongst the surging
streams. At the far side, rock walls soared up and up,
pale, sheer, rising to heights obscured by the pure white
light that poured down from what might be a long fis-
sure in the vast cavern's veiled ceiling.

'This is . . . incredible,' he said. Next to this, the
Gangradur Falls were like a decorative garden water fea-
ture. 'Who built this?'

'A race called the Teziyi,' said Track-Reski. 'They
were very fond of statement projects like this.'

'Did they build other things on this scale?'

'Several just after the fall of their universe, while their
species still had the will and the resources.'

Robert frowned - the mechs were sticking to their
stratified universe fantasy. Very well, then he would
observe and deduce for himself.

The flat expanse of the Great Terrace was largely
deserted, apart from a few far-off figures standing along
the balustrade in ones, twos or small groups. As he fol-
lowed the mechs he began to notice more details, the
small buildings constructed along the side overlooking
the falls, the basket balloons that hung out over the
hurtling torrents and were winched in from time to time
to offload sightseers and take on new groups. As for
the other promenaders, few were bipeds, never mind
even vaguely humanoid, the majority being insectile or
reptilian, with occasional hybrids and frequent cyber-
augments. More than a few gave Robert and the mechs
disapproving looks, but he was scarcely concerned
about that as he was leaning on the balustrade, gazing
down in disbelief.

The curved mile-long falls plunged several hundred
feet to a small lake where tiny, sailless boats and galleys
sculled about. Further on the lake narrowed a little to
where another imposing promenade spanned the waters
as they rushed over another brink to another bridged
falls and another after that. The moisture-laden air
hazed the distant downward depths and Robert's mind
reeled as he tried to imagine the scale of it. Doubt crept
in and nibbled at the roots of his assumptions - how
could something like this exist on Darien but not show
up on the Heracles's orbital sensor sweep? Were the
mechs telling the truth?

As he stood there, wondering, a red dart shape shot
out from under the promenade some way along,
wheeled over the hazy spray then swooped and banked,
descending. A glider, he realised as he saw another
launch out over the falls.

'Human Horst,' said Tripod-Reski, 'we have received
a message from Conveyance 289, asking to meet us at
the lower level. We must hurry - there is a ramp nearby'

'There is another level?' Robert said, hurrying after
them.

'Three,' said Hover-Reski.

'They were originally made for the worker dorms and
materials storage,' Track-Reski said. 'When the construc-
tion was complete, they were closed up and forgotten as
the survivors of the great Teziyi civilisation took up resi-
dence, here and elsewhere. That final era began in
defiance but ended amid forgotten purposes and cultural
senescence. The last of the Teziyi finally abandoned their
cities, leaving no records when they either transcended or
were consumed. Then the remnants of other lesser civili-
sations wandered down here to settle, opening some of
the lower levels where refugees could find a place to rest.
Communities grew, vendors found customers, and a few
finessers even have set up glider stations...'

'This is not how I imagined this would be at all,'
Robert said.

'This is a rarity,' said Tripod-Reski. 'A small pocket
of existence amid hyperspace's twisted layers of wrecked
continua. Many here would escape to the real, but there
are no safe routes up the levels.'

The mechs were heading for a fence-enclosed, roofed-
over set of stairs. The steps were wide and fairly shallow,
decorated with colourful mosaics which the many cen-
turies had worn away, although some bore evidence of
unimaginative repairs. At the foot they encountered a
strange thoroughfare that was far busier and noisier than
the promenade. Shops and stalls sold all manner of goods
while gastronomic kiosks provided a tantalising array of
flavours and savouries. The number of species on show
here was prodigious, and he recognised very few. One
common factor was the bulky, trailing clothing almost
everyone wore, along with floppy, decorated hats and
gauntlets. But Robert's opportunity to study this clam-
orous, bustling market (which stretched as far as he could
see) was cut short when the mechs steered him to another
stairway which spiralled down to the next level.

It was quieter down here, darker, with lowlit pas-
sages passing between long featureless blocks and a few
solidly impenetrable iron doors, some of which were
guarded. These were the lower floors of the expensive
residences whose first levels looked out over the falls.
The passages also connected with a wide walkway
which ran along the back of the Great Terrace, provid-
ing an imposing view of the rivers and currents that
poured in from above. It was there that they met
Conveyance 289.

At first there was a scraping, clinking sound from
somewhere very close yet unseen, then a large iron grid
in the flagstones just ahead of them swung open and a
shiny black, elephant-sized insect clambered out. Robert
was alarmed and ready to flee until he saw his mech
companions approach the massive creature ... which on
closer inspection proved to be a machine, not a beast. It
had a segmented metal carapace, fluted cables, access
covers bearing blocks of text in tiny characters, heat-
vane clusters at the rear, effectors and the main
interaction unit at the front. It moved around with sur-
prising agility on four pairs of articulated limbs and on
its back was what looked like a passenger recess covered
by a darkened canopy. Fascinated and a little wary,
Robert advanced and was introduced by the mechs.

'I am pleased to meet you,' he said. 'Are there another
288 like yourself?'

'In all, Human Horst, the Construct's tectories have
produced 3,739 of my series, of which less than a hun-
dred are still in operation.' The machine's voice wis
expressive, almost musical, and possessed an odd
buzzing harmony. 'It will be an honour and a privilege
to fight alongside you.'

Robert froze. 'Excuse me, but did you say "fight"?'

'Indeed so. I have already updated the Reski Emantes
via proximal databurst but I am equipped to deliver a
verbal summary - in essence, our goal, the upgate, is
located below us in one of the empty storage vaults but
unfortunately a small covey of vermax have got to it
first, five of them, and are guarding it.'

'Five of us,' said Hover-Reski.

'Vermax?' Robert said. 'What are . . .'

'When we traversed the Refulgence, you may recall
that we were pursued by polymorphic hunters,' Track-
Reski said.

'The black snake things?'

'Those are the vermax. We do not know who their
creators are but they originate in the Abyss, which sug-
gests several possibilities. They eat metal and are
especially fond of the submesh array where our sen-
tience patterns reside.'

'A dedicated design,' said Tripod-Reski.

'They are also dangerous to organic lifeforms,' said
Conveyance 289 as a niche opened in its side. 'Which is
why you should have this.'

From the niche an arm telescoped out, holding a
long, narrow case. The case then split open lengthways
to reveal a slender black object about three feet long
with a red hilt. It was so black that Robert could see no
surface detail or texture, only a thin silhouette tapering
to an unseeable point. Light seemed to be devoured by
it.

'It's a sword,' he said, confused.

'It is called a kezeq shard. Against creatures like the
vermax, it is deadly. Handle it carefully, however - the
cold of it would cause irreparable damage to your flesh.'

Robert lifted the kezeq by its hilt and found it to be
as light as a wooden metre rule. He had once learned
some fencing when he was at college in Bonn, but that
was 40 years ago - how much could he remember in a
few minutes?

'You will ride in my guest compartment, Human
Horst, while the Reski Emantes will be our valiant van-
guard.'

Five minutes later he was seated and strapped into an
odd, high-backed couch in Conveyance 289's passenger
recess as the machine clambered back down into the
open grating. It was a descent from light and cool fresh-
ness into dank, musty gloom.

'This is a very old storage area,' said Tripod-Reski.
All three mechs were in the recess with him. '289 says
that the upgate is in the next vault along.'

On eight mechanical, multijointed legs, Conveyance
289 provided a surprisingly smooth, comfortable steed,
although stealth demanded that lamp radiance be kept
to a meagre peep. In this murky grey halo, they picked
their way through the immense storeroom, past myste-
rious mounds of belongings, or carefully stacked crates
wrapped in glittery tendrils. Before long they reached
the other side and a rounded, open passage leading to
the next storage vault.

If anything, this room was even more crowded than
the previous one, with many stacks reaching from floor
to ceiling. A poorly assembled few had given way,
becoming huge, slumped heaps blocking corridors or
sometimes providing a short cut over slopes of dusty,
enigmatic debris. Finally they came to a halt at the corner
of a plinth of a huge statue depicting a creature with
seven legs and three heads about to smash a hammer
down on a ringed planet resting on an anvil, or maybe an
altar. With one of its extensible arms, Conveyance 289
held up a triangular mirror, looted from one of the col-
lapsed stacks, and angled it for Robert's benefit.

On the other side of the statue was a wide, clear aisle
which ran straight to the far end of the vault, where a
bright, shining pillar sat in the middle of the floor. It
shone with a cold blue radiance, and as Robert stared at
the reflected image he could make out several long, dark
shapes gliding sinuously around the pillar. He swal-
lowed nervously, feeling a tremble in his hands.

'That glowing pillar is the upgate,' said Conveyance
289.

'It doesn't look like a door or a gate,' he said.

'It will open for us when we get close enough. The
plan is for the Reski Emantes to charge at the vermax
from the sides and draw them away while we head
straight for the gate.'

Robert glanced around and realised that he was alone
in the passenger recess. 'The mechs are gone.'

'They are positioning themselves,' the mechanical
said. 'We will know the signal when it comes . . .'

A voice interrupted it from the companel in the
recess.

'We are ready now, 289. Human Horst, we have been
honoured by the task and your acquaintance - please
tender our cordialities to our descendant.'

Conveyance 289 shifted on its eight legs and Robert
heard the whine of other systems starting within the
mech's body as it shuffled round to face the wide aisle.

'The moment is upon us, Human Horst - hold tight
and be ready to repel boarders!'

Suddenly the mech shot forward, smooth and fast,
and Robert realised that they were flying along on sus-
pensors. He was quivering with the shock and
exhilaration of it. Dim walls of compacted wares flashed
past on either side and he focused all his senses on the
black kezeq shard, gripping it tight in both hands. Up
ahead he caught glimpses of three fights, Track-Reski
already still, one flexible track trailing and broken as a
single vermax, a snake of black smoke, devoured its
vitals. Hover-Reski, with two vermax chewing their way
into its casing, was gliding drunkenly off down a side
passageway. Tripod-Reski had lost most of one leg but
was leading the remaining vermax pair a merry chase
back along the wide aisle, moving with a manic, jerky
gait. They were sacrificing themselves, Robert knew, yet
they had mentioned a descendant. . .

The shining pillar was directly ahead, widening and
growing brighter as they rushed towards it. Robert's
fear began turning to relief tinged with a pang of sorrow
at the small mechs' fate. The gate opened, shimmering
silver and gold and icy blue, and as they plunged into it
Robert was momentarily dazzled.

'Human Horst, I was wrong - there were . . . six .. .'

He felt Conveyance 289 quiver but his eyesight was
blurred, showing him only a flowing, flickering tunnel.

'Help me, Human Horst, I am under attack . . . use
the kezeq sssshhaarrrrddd ...'

He blinked, eyes widening as he saw the vast walls of
opaque images and fractured landscapes past which they
fell. His mind rebelled. A primal terror was trying to
make him curl up into a whimpering ball, eyes closed.
But his eyes were open and he saw one of the vermax
attached to the forepart of the mech's carapace, eating
its way inwards. Shivering with cold and fear, Robert
loosened the couch straps, moved carefully forward to
lean halfway out of the recess and with the shard lashed
out at the writhing black snake.

It squirmed and he stabbed it again and again. As it
began to disintegrate something hot and bristly landed
on his left shoulder and bit his ear with what felt like a
mouthful of needles. Crying out, he lurched backwards,
trying to twist away, and saw yet another vermax cling-
ing to his shoulder, its fang-ringed mouth splattered with
his blood as it reared back, readying for another lunge.

Robert screamed in terror and hate and thrust the
kezeq shard at his attacker, ramming it into the open
gullet as he slipped off the couch. The vermax thrashed,
its hot bristling form hissing as it shoved itself against
his neck, despite the sword.

Which he could feel pressed against his skin and face
by the ferocity of the assault. Then suddenly the vermax
let out a brittle rasp and began to break apart. By now
Robert had slumped to the floor of the passenger recess
and with the vermax crumbling to dry pieces of black-
ness he tried to lift or push the terrible, nullifying cold of
the shard away. But the fingers of his right hand had lost
all strength while his left side felt like a block of ice
from shoulder to hip, from his neck up into his head.

Whiteness flowed. He could hear Conveyance 289
speaking to him but it was far, far away, icy echoes of
words dissolving in the cold along with the strange,
translucent walls that flew silently past.

In his thoughts, whiteness flowed.

53

THEO

They were fifteen minutes from the landing field's west-
ern boundary when a comm began beeping inside
Pyatkov's greatcoat. Theo and Donny glanced at each
other then watched the intelligence chief reach into his
coat.

'How come you've got a comm that works?' Donny
said.

'It's not a comm,' Pyatkov said as he produced an
odd, white object shaped like a curved teardrop. He put
the bulbous end to his ear and said, 'Yes?'

For a moment he was silent, listening, then:

'We did not know of this ... we need at least thirty to
forty minutes . . . yes, it seems likely ... I understand . , .
I'll await your call, sir.'

'Is there a problem?' Theo said as Pyatkov put away
the comm device. 'Was that someone from the Imisil
delegation, and what is that thing?'

'It is an Imisil comset,' Pyatkov said. 'I was speaking
to Ambassador Gauhux himself and he says that there
are violent anti-Hegemony demonstrations going on in
Port Gagarin and Hammergard tonight. Kuros has all
but accused the Imisil delegation of fomenting civil
unrest and has demanded that the Imisil leave Darien
space immediately. Gauhux is already on board his shut-
tle and is trying to stall for time, but Kuros is
threatening to have the port security force open fire if he
doesn't lift off.'

Theo's heart sank. 'But Rory and his lads are due to
set their diversion rolling in twenty minutes and we've
no way of calling them back. We could get through to
the launch pads only to see that shuttle take off . . .'

'No danger of that happening,' said Donny. 'That's it
away now . . .'

Theo hastily shifted over to the other side of the bus
and saw clusters of glowing vortices climbing quickly
into the night sky. At the same time, Pyatkov's comset
beeped.

'Yes sir ... I fully understand ... is there? ... would
they? . . . ah, I see . . . indeed, sir ... . thank you for all
your help.'

With the call over, Pyatkov weighed the teardrop
device in his hand for a moment, then nodded.
'Well?' said Theo.
'We go ahead as planned.'

Donny burst out laughing. 'So ye do have a sense o'
humour!'

Pyatkov looked at him. 'The Imisil had no choice -
Kuros threatened to send over interceptors from the
Purifier and blow their ship out of orbit, and they take
Hegemony threats very seriously.'

'So why are we going ahead with this?' Theo said.

'Because one of the Heracles's shuttles, a cutter they
call it, is sitting in a hangar on the west side of the
launch fields. Captain Barbour, you've trained on the

Imisil simulator - what Earthsphere vessels are you
familiar with?'

'Hmm, tug, scow, repair gig, and close-support
fighter ^ the basics are pretty much the same, though.'
An anticipatory smile came to his lips. 'A shuttle
shouldna be very different.'

'And then what?' Theo said. 'Assuming that you can
get this shuttle up and into space, into orbit, where do
you go? Will the Imisil ship wait around, and if not
what are we going to do?'

'Ask the captain of the Heracles for political asylum,'
said Pyatkov. 'It's certain that he has very specific orders
concerning non-interference, but what if a group of
Darien colonists turns up near his ship in a hijacked
Earthsphere shuttle, begging for safe haven? If
Velazquez handed us over to the Hegemony it would
mean the end of his career because his crew would
know, which means that the story would inevitably get
out to the Earthsphere media. He would have to bring
us on board.'

Theo smiled in resignation. 'That's a very big "if"."

'Perhaps, but I am sure of it.' Pyatkov looked at his
watch and tapped the bus driver on the shoulder, telling
him to slow down. 'We're almost at the outer perimeter
checkpoint. There are two guards so I'll distract them
with my ID and official papers while the pair of you
sandbag them from behind.'

It went smoothly. Minutes after they had the guards
tied up, a call came through on the checkpoint cable
comm to raise the security level because of an intruder
alert on the western fence. Donny took the call, disguis-
ing his voice to sound as if he had a bad cold. At the
inner perimeter checkpoint the same gambit worked,
and the bus with the Enhanced was through in just over
five minutes.

The wooden hangar housing the Earthsphere shuttle
was the middle one of a line of three alongside the taxi-
ing runway. Leaving the bus in a ditch behind a cluster
of bushes, the Enhanced and their armed escorts skulked
through the shadows towards their goal, looking out
for a side or back entrance. There were a couple of port
security guards out the front while inside a solitary
Earthsphere marine kept watch from a partitioned
office. Infiltration went like clockwork, all the guards
put out of action soundlessly and non-lethally. With the
marine bound and sat over to one side, they quietly
came out of the office into the hangar proper. The shut-
tle was a snub-nosed, large-bellied craft about 30 feet
long with its stubby wings spreading from the upper
fuselage. While the Enhanced waited in the office, Theo,
Donny, Pyatkov and the driver, Giorgi, went over to
look at the shuttle's main hatch. They were nearly there
when a tall Brolturan soldier stepped through a door in
the hangar's massive swing shutter, saw them and
opened fire.

There was a stuttering, whicking sound and Giorgi
went down, bleeding from head, neck and back, while
another burst caught Pyatkov in the shoulder and sent
him sprawling forward. Donny and Theo dived for
cover behind the shuttle, handguns at the ready. The
Brolturan started shouting at them and firing short
bursts under the shuttle. Theo cursed and began climb-
ing up onto the upper hull while Donny tried dodging
this way and that. Theo was lying flat on the centre of
the wing surface when the office door opened and one
of the Enhanced, a slender, blonde woman, walked out
and called to the Brolturari. Her hand was already
raised as if in greeting but as he turned her hand
snapped forward, arm abruptly outstretched. The sol-
dier let out a gasping cry, dropped his autorifle, started
to bring up one hand, then collapsed to the hangar
floor with something jutting from his eye. The female
Enhanced walked over, studied him with intense, stem
eyes, then turned and went back to the office.

Theo meanwhile was scrambling down from the
shuttle and hurrying to where Donny was already kneel-
ing next to Pyatkov.

'How is he?' he said.

Donny looked grim, but before he could answer,
Pyatkov spoke.

'Bastard ... got me with ... one of those flechette
machiners . . . clawstorm they call it.. . how did you get
him ...'

'One of the Enhanced did,' Donny said. 'Tall blonde
woman.'

Pyatkov smiled. 'Irenya, da, of course ...' He looked
at Donny. 'The hatch . .. code is blue 24, red 18, green
09 . . .' He paused to grimace at the pain, and Theo
knew he was dying - there was too much blood.
'Giorgi? . . .' Donny shook his head. 'A good man - he
deserved a better death ... you must go. Just leave me
over ... somewhere with his gun ...' He stared at Theo
and Donny, then gave a savage grin. 'No one will be . . .
looking into my head - I have a hollow tooth ... nyet,
don't argue, just ... do it!'

So they did. In six minutes, everyone was on board,

Donny in the pilot couch in the tiny two-man cockpit,
the five Enhanced strapped into passenger seating in the
midsection compartment, and Theo moving Pyatkov
over to sit against a crate near the office, the Brolturan
weapon in his lap. The Russian's eyes were barely open
and his entire shoulder and side were soaked in blood.
'Hangar door . . . office . . .'

Theo nodded, and as he reached through the office
window to thumb the button he felt his skin prickle
when Donny powered up the shuttle's antigravity gen-
erators.

That's it, he thought. As soon as that door starts lift-
ing, the terminal guards'll come running.

Pyatkov's eyes were closed when he turned round
and Theo could not tell if he was still breathing or not.

'Goodbye, Vitaly,' he said quietly then hurried to the
shuttle, ducked inside and closed the hatch. As it
autosealed, he glanced along a short passage to where
the Enhanced were sitting straight-backed, eyes closed,
hands resting palms-up on their knees. Then the shuttle
lurched and swayed slightly and he stumbled forward to
the cockpit. As he strapped into the copilot couch with
shaking hands, Donny gave a pleased laugh.

'Nice ship, this,' he said. 'Responsive controls, clearly
tagged instruments and even an overhead holodisplay.'
He glanced at Theo. 'You ever flown before? To
Nivyesta, I mean.'

'No.' Theo breathed in deep. 'But I'll be okay.'

'Aye, ye will. Just kid on that it's a ride at the carni-
val.' Before them the hangar shutter was almost fully
open. 'Right, time to leave.'

The first few seconds of smooth forward motion
were deceptive - once clear of the hangar, Donny angle d
the nose skywards and fired the main thrusters. A hun-
dred invisible sandbags pressed Theo down into his
couch but then quickly eased off, even though "heir
acceleration did not.

'Inertial dampeners,' Donny said. 'Should've had
them on active tracking - sorry 'bout that. Deck gravity
is on, though, so you'll be able to get up and walk
around soon.'

Theo nodded, staring out the cockpit viewscreen at
the darkening sky where stars were growing brighter as
they climbed out of Darien's atmosphere.

'Did our sudden departure turn any heads?' he said.

Donny grinned, tapping the headset he was wearing.

'Has it ever! Listen to this ...'

He poked a couple of screen controls and suddenly
voices erupted from the console speakers.

'. . . flight is unauthorised and may incur a punitive
response -1 repeat, Shuttlecraft Hermes, this is Gagarin
Tower - you are instructed to return to Gagarin launch-
way 2. Your flight is unauthorised and may incur . ..'

'Earthsphere shuttlecraft, this is Preceptor-Captain
Eshapon of Purifier sub-Phalanx Tuva. A soldier of the
Brolturan Compact was killed by one of those who
hijacked that shuttle. You are instructed to return to
Port Gagarin and surrender yourselves . . .'

'. . . hey, this is a traffic control-restricted frequency!
Cut your signal immediately!'

'My authority supersedes yours - cease your interf-
erence . . .'

'Heracles-ops to Shuttlecraft Hermes - what is your
status?'

Donny grinned at Theo then thumbed the reply.
'Hermes to Heracles-ops - please stand by,' then he
silenced it.

'We're nearly at low orbit,' he said. 'And I've already
laid in an intercept course for the Heracles . . . which
they'll know all about already . . .'

'How?' said Theo.

'Shared telemetry,' Donny said. 'AH this boat's instru-
mentation will be showing up on one of the Heracles's
screens - if they wanted to, they could probably take
control of its navigationals as well.'

'So now we open negotiations,' Theo said.

'Aye.' Donny pressed the channel button. 'Hermes to
Heracles-ops - my name is Captain Barbour, acting
under special orders of President Sundstrom and
requesting to speak with your CO.'

'Heracles-ops to Hermes - please stand by ... sorry,
Hermes, but Captain Velazquez is in a conference call
with the Hegemony ambassador and President Kirkland
right now but he should be speaking to you in a few
minutes.'

'Understood, Heracles-ops,' Donny said, cutting the
respond.

'Was that wise, giving your name?' Theo said.

Donny shrugged. 'My folks are both dead and I was an
only child, so there's nobody for them tae hold hostage.'

'I am sorry to hear that,' Theo said.

Donny grinned. 'Don't be - my friends are my family
and I got tae choose every one.' He paused, glancing at
the console then the pale blue holodisplay overhead.
'Course has been changed, velocity too - we're picking
up speed ...'

Theo leaned on the couch armrest and ran his fingers
through his hair. 'So the Heracles has taken control of
us?'

'Aye . .. dritt, if I knew a bit more I could . ..'

'Heracles-ops to Shuttlecraft Hermes . . .'

A small holoplane appeared over the main console,
displaying the Earthsphere navy's symbol, two flaming
comets against a stylised galactic spiral. Donny sniffed
and thumbed the respond.

'Shuttlecraft Hermes to Heracles-ops - Captain
Barbour speaking.'

The opaque holoplane blinked, suddenly showing a
craggy-featured man with dark hair and intense, hazel-
brown eyes.

'I am Captain Velazquez - why have you hijacked
my shuttle?'

'Had to see ye about an important matter, Captain,'
Donny said. 'Seemed as good a way as any, given that
we're acting under President Sundstrom's executive
order ...'

'Kirkland is president now,' Velazquez said.
'Sundstrom's policies have been superseded.'

'That might be the case, Captain,' Theo said, 'if
Kirkland actually had a spine and a brain to go with
it!'

Velazquez regarded him from the screen. 'And you
are?'

'Karlsson, former major in the Darien Volunteer
Corps.'

The Heracles's captain nodded. 'Major Karlsson,
Viktor Ingram's right-hand man - hoping to overthrow
another government, Major?'

Theo gritted his teeth. 'If the government's corrupt, I
see no problem with the notion.'

'The probabilities are not in your favour, I'm afraid.'
Velazquez seemed to grow impatient. 'Gentlemen, what
is the reason for this charade?'

'Ourselves and a group of researchers are formally
requesting political asylum aboard your vessel, sir,' said
Donny.

'Thought it might be something like that,' Velazquez
said. 'Why did Sundstrom want these researchers kept
out of Hegemony hands?'

Donny shrugged. 'The president originally had a deal
with the Imisil to get them away, but as ye can see
they've been kicked out. And before ye ask, we don't
know anything about what's in their heads, but I guess
it must be important. . .'

And deadly, Theo thought, remembering Pyatkov's
attitude.

'I understand your position, gentlemen, but there is a
problem.' Velazquez glanced at something nearby. 'A
Brolturan soldier died during your illegal hijacking and
both High Monitor Kuros and the Brolturan com-
mander are screaming for the arrest of those responsible.
So if I brought the Hermes on board my ship with the
aim of offering its passengers asylum, this would cease
to be a security matter and become a diplomatic inci-
dent.'

'And yet you've changed our course to meet the
Heracles out beyond high orbit,' Donny said. 'And in
just a few minutes, too.'

'Yes - there is only one option open to you. When
we rendezvous, you will get those researchers into the
emergency suits then send them out through the air-
lock. I will then be obliged to take them on board as
Distressed Persons Adrift under the Rescue and
Emergency protocol.'
'But not us,' Theo said.

'Correct. My report will state that you abandoned
your passengers then took off for that forest moon.'

Theo and Donny glanced at each other in puzzlement.

'And why are we doing that?' said Donny.

'Captain Barbour, if you were better trained you
would notice that the Purifier has launched two inter-
ceptors and that they are already halfway here. I suggest
that you get those people ready.'

Theo looked at Donny. 'Is he telling the truth?'

Without answering, Donny punched up a display
that showed two bright specks moving round the
planet's curve towards where another pair of dots, blue
this time, were converging. Resigned, Theo went with
him to explain the situation to the Enhanced. It was
oddly awkward - he couldn't tell from their expres-
sions if they understood or were angry or calm. Then
the one called Julia asked to speak with Captrin
Velazquez, who assured her that anyone left behind by
the shuttle would be brought to safety within the
Heracles. Listening closely to Velazquez's careful word-
ing, she nodded, once to the captain, once to Donny
and Theo.

After that the Enhanced were quickly suited up in
lightweight metallic blue rigs, and their progression
through the airlock went ahead, first pair, second pair,
and Julia last. As she ducked through the hatch she
paused to look back at them.

'Thank you for helping us,' she said. 'I don't under-
stand why you did this, but thank you.'

Theo and Donny said their own goodbyes then, as
the hatch closed and cycled through, they exchanged a
puzzled look, before hurrying back to the cramped
cockpit to check the long-range sensors. Even as they
saw that the two interceptors were now between them
and Darien, a voice came over the ship-to-ship.

'Attention Hermes, this is Flight-Marshal Kowalski.
Strap yourselves in, gentlemen - we're about to send
you on a bit of a ride.'

'Better do what the man says,' Donny muttered.

Outside the cockpit viewport, the long, tapering
shape of the Heracles loomed at an angle, its grey and
silver hull sporting rows of dark, opaque blisters. Then,
as they fastened their restraints, Theo heard a muffled,
intermittent hum and the Hermes turned, giving them a
transient view of the Enhanced being snagged by power
grappler lines and reeled into an open hold in the
Heracles's belly. Then the green orb of Nivyesta swung
into view and stopped.

'Thruster systems initialised, Hermes - stand by for
fast burn.'

Patterns flickered on the console, then Theo felt a
momentary kick of acceleration before the inertial
dampening cut in. He sat there in the couch's firm
embrace for a minute, breathing the plastic-tainted air,
feeling the vibration of the shuttle's engines with his
back, neck and arms, realising that his fear was still
there but caged, shackled by old combat reflexes. The
knack was in using your fear, knowing when to ignore
it, when to listen and how to use it to stay alive. But
now the kind of trouble that was looming was one in
which he was completely reliant on Donny Barbour's
skills to avoid dying in a fireball of destruction when
those Brolturan fighters caught up with them.

And now Kowalski was back on the comm, telling
them where the two-man escape pod was and how to set
the autopilot for a bail-out when they hit Nivyesta's
upper atmosphere. He also gave Donny a quick run-
down on the shuttle's weapons (or rather weapon, a
single laser cannon), countermeasures and shields.

'But you shouldn't get into the situation where you
have to use them,' said Kowalski. 'Anyway, you've got
another twelve minutes before you enter high orbit
around that moon. After that, you're on your own.
Good luck, Hermes.'

'Aye, thanks, Heracles - when this is all over, we'll
have ye round for a few drinks and all the steak ye can
eat!'

'We wouldn't miss it for anything, Hermes - safe
journey.'

The mood of the exchange was light and amiable and
to Theo seemed to underline the gravity of their position.
'So how bad is it?' he said.

Donny gave a little smile and a sidelong glance. 'No'
much gets past you, does it, Major?'

Theo shrugged. 'I know the sound of bad odds, espe-
cially when I hear them not being mentioned. What are
our chances?'

Donny pointed at the holodisplay. 'Those intercep-
tors are closing on us faster than we'd reckoned - they
might catch us just as we hit atmosphere.'

'At which point we're dead.'

'Well . . . aye, unless we try something a wee bit
unorthodox.' He leaned closer. 'Set the autopilot to
aggressively engage them just after our pod separates.
The shuttle only has to keep them occupied for a few
minutes, long enough for the pod to reach low altitude.'

Theo nodded, feeling a twinge of nausea and a trem-
ble in his hands and legs, and smiled. It was just his
fear, rattling its cage.

'Okay, if that's our only shot,' he said. 'We'll make it
a good one.'

The minutes fled past, Donny working at the console,
setting up parameters for the autopilot while Theo
checked the supplies for the pod. A small hatch in the
bulkhead behind the cockpit led down a few steps to the
open pod, into which they would have to crawl. Theo
had raided the shuttle's medical and ration lockers and
was stowing the booty away when Donny called down
to him.

'Have we got everything?'

'We have - where are the hunters?'

'Practically on top of us. Ye've got it all packed away,
aye?'

'Yes, is it time?'

'It certainly is, Theo.'

Theo heard the pod's own hatch thud shut and seal
with the whine of motors.

A horrible realisation struck him and he lunged
round in the tiny space to get at the hatch, trying to
find controls to open it, but there were none.

'Theo, I know that this is a rotten trick ... aye, I
know, but it's the only way. Better get strapped in -
twenty seconds and you're away.'

'Donny, you damn bloody fool!' Theo raged as he
hurriedly crawled back round again and tugged several
broad straps tight over his body. 'Is this some kind of
Caledonian-warrior-self-sacrifice thing . . .'

'Dinna be daft! - if we both left in the pod, those
interceptors would pick us off with missiles. This way at
least one of us stands a chance. Don't get me wrong -
I've every intention of living to a ripe old age . . . right,
hold on tae yer hat!'

There was a cluster of small bangs and suddenly the
pod lurched and dropped, Theo's stomach protesting as
the tiny craft seemed to flip over then right itself.

'Donny! - what's happening?'

'I won't be able to speak much soon, Theo - just got
my hands full with these two, but then they did come in
staggered overwatch formation . . . right, got tae go.
Good luck and good hunting, Major, and I'll see ye on
the bright side!'

Then the channel went dead.

You're a fool, Donny Barbour, he thought as the pod
shuddered about him. If I didn't know any better, Id
say we were related. "When next we meet we'll drink the
finest whisky and tell magnificent lies about our family
trees.

But a faint and hollow dread told him that he was
thinking about a dead man.

54
DONNY

As he cut the channel, the Brolturan interceptor was on
his tail, lining up for a point-to-point attack. Donny
grinned. He knew he'd been in the enemy's range for
over thirty seconds, but the pilot had obviously decided
that with such a weak opponent he could afford to relax
and indulge in a bit of exhibition gunnery.

Well, he's in for a wee surprise^.

Donny punched up a sequence of special commands,
which he had been preparing while Theo was gathering
together those supplies a short while ago. Working on
his own improvisations, backed up by brief text notes
from Kowalski, he had figured out a handful of
manoeuvres and shield configurations which had
prompted the flight-marshal to call him 'a crazy man'.
Donny didn't mind if his unorthodox scheme offered
only a slim chance of survival. That was better than
none.

The enemy was almost in position, and the Hermes's
sensors told him that its weapons were targeting. Donny
hit the execute in the holodisplay, the attitude jets buzzed,
and the shuttle made a perfect 180-degree lateral turn.
Then the shields reconfigured into airbrakes, and since
they were already entering Nivyesta's upper atmosphere
the shuttle's velocity quickly began to fall. At the same
time the main thrusters fired, ramping up the decelera-
tion, and the Brolturan interceptor, a vaguely oval craft
with weapon indents along its leading edge, seemed to
rush straight towards the shuttle.

Donny flinched in reflex, but there was nothing for
him to do but watch and hope and pray.

The Brolturan was already banking as the two vessels
converged, but Donny's second shield configuration was
ready, huge, curved blades of forcefield projected out
from the prow. Where they collided with the Brolturans
own shields, harmonic interference dissipated in daz-
zling flashes of light and energy and when gaps opened
up in the underside barrier the Hermes's targeting
system was quick to act. The laser cannon sent a stream
of composite pulse bolts through the gaps, hammering
into the hull, smashing open compartments, sending
shattered fragments flying. ..

The interceptor veered away sharply but it was too
late. Lines of vapour and hot gas were trailing from the
stern, then a fuel feed must have been exposed because
an immense explosion abruptly tore the craft open from
the engines forward. Donny let out a roar of delight as
several pieces of burning debris arced and spun away
down towards the forest moon's surface.

But his triumph was cut short when alerts beeped
and the display showed the second interceptor burning I
tight turn towards him, and launching a couple of mis-
siles into the bargain.

Time to make tracks, he thought, bringing the shuttle
round to point forward, angling to gain altitude as he
engaged the thrusters. Another tactical sequence was
selected, a simple but cunning one. Then, seeing that he
had a minute or two before the missiles arrived, he
opened a general widecast channel.

'This is, er, Darien Combat Shuttle Hermes, Captain
Barbour commanding, calling anyone within range of
this signal.'

A moment later, a sceptical male voice.

'This is Pilipoint Station control - what did you say
you were? Is this some kind of joke?'

'Did ye see anything happening in the sky just
recently, Pilipoint?'

'By damn, yes! We've had explosions and burning
things falling . . .'

'Aye, well, that's because I just shot down a Brolturan
fighter that was giving me grief, and I've got another one
chasing after me with a brace,of missiles . . . just a
second . . .'

The missiles were coming in fast and lethal, twin
undeviating trajectories, pale trails of oncoming destruc-
tion. Donny knew that it was wing-and-a-prayer time as
he triggered the countermeasures sequence and sat back,
waiting to see if he lived through the next thirty seconds.

'Hermes to Pilipoint Station - still awake down
there? What's yer name, by the way?'

'Still here, Hermes. My name is Axel, and we've got
you on satellite tracking . . . my God, and we see those
missiles! Bail out, Captain . ..'

'Wish I could, Axel, but I'm stuck here for the dura-
tion - right, here we go ...'

On the external monitor Donny saw a huge spread-
ing cloud of silvery chaff while a decoy dropped away
on a dying curve towards the moon's green face. And he
grinned as both missiles took the bait and plunged after
it.

'Very smart, Hermes, very cunning . . .' said the
Pilipoint comsman. 'You're like the magician, yes? The
hand is quicker than the eye . . .'

'Maybe so, laddie, but I don't reckon that wee shell
game'll work a second time . . . and he's just launched
another pair . . .'

'I see them, Captain - tell me, are you the man who
stole the Earther's shuttle?'

'Heard about that up here, Axel? Aye, that was me
a'right, a bad yin through and through!'

'We've heard what's been going on downstairs, all
those Brolturan troops working hard to keep Darien
free from unrest and protest and such nuisances as free
speech,' said the comsman. 'I have no doubt that in time
we too will be similarly blessed. But tell me, why are you
doing this?'

'What, bearding the lion in his den, y'mean? I guess
ye could say I was overcome with a sense of public duty
and a calm appraisal of the crisis ... but that wouldna
be true.'

'It would not?'

'Nah, it was pure, unadulterated loathing. Ye know
what I really hate? - being lied to. Soon after the
Heracles arrived, that Hegemony envoy Kuros toured
the colony, giving speeches about the Sendrukan
Hegemony's deep sense of liberty and freedom and their
boundless desire to spread freedom throughout known
space and beyond .. . aye, right! All the time he was
coming out with that self-important, sanctimonious
cack, him and his minions were planning how to get us
down on our knees, how to make things so bad that
we'd be happy to have their boots on our necks, just so
long as the bombings stopped . . .'

'I saw one of Kuros's speeches,' said the Pilipoint
comsman. 'It was a real performance but it did not seem
right for us, as if he was performing for another audi-
ence ...'

'Excuse me, Axel, got some missiles to take care of
here ...'

Donny could feel the sweat trickling down the side of
his face as he watched a dark blue display where two
bright specks moved nearer to his position while associ-
ated readouts gave figures for velocity, distance and
altitude. In the cockpit's enclosed darkness, the pilot
console was a strange, muffled cubbyhole crammed with
glowing, touch-sensitive controls and displays, with
small vidscreens showing external views while the over-
head holo gave the wider tactical sweep. The next
countermeasures sequence was running, suspensors and
thrusters were online and ready, and the navigationals
were tracking the enemy interceptor. From the previous
encounter the shuttle's expert system overlay had quan-
tified the missiles' minimum turn radius so now it was
down to timing.

And a mountain of luck.

Then the missiles, gaining with every microsecond,
crossed a certain trigger boundary and the countermea-
sures activated, another chaff burst, silver clouds of
glittering, reflective strips spreading behind the hurtling
Hermes like a silver comet's tail. As before a decoy was
dropped, but this time the missiles ignored it and stayed
on target while the interceptor began moving closer, as if
the end was near. Then it too crossed an invisible line
and the shuttle's forward suspensors came to life, kick -
ing the shuttle's nose up and over as the thrusters
roared. The combination of momentum and extreme
force vectors threw the Hermes into a brutally tight ver-
tical turn.

G-force shoved Donny down into his couch. Over the
wheeze of his breathing he heard the infrastructure com-
plain before the autoalerts began - 'Warning, exceeding
performance tolerances ... minor structural failures in
subassemblies 19a, 21d, 37k . . . major structural failure
will occur in thirty seconds or less . . .'

Then the Hermes was out of the turn and heading
back, upside down. The Brolturan pilot had seen
Donny's crazed attempt at an acrobatic manoeuvre and
had merely banked slightly to avoid a repetition of the
earlier force-field collision. But Donny was still ahead of
him and about to cross over his oncoming flight path.
And that was when the countermeasures released the
last of the chaff on maximum dispersal. And when the
interceptor plunged into the spreading, silvery, instru-
ment-fogging cloud he met his own missile coming the
other way.

On his rear external monitor, Donny saw the dual
explosion flashes, an eruption of light and ignited gases,
and an expanding shell of vapour and wreckage mixed
with glittering fragments of chaff. He was about to
breath a sigh of relief when he noticed that one of the
flying pieces of debris was leaving a hot gas trail and
curving round in his direction.

Cunning dog, he thought. Must've fired that at the
last moment, knowing that I'd got him ... well, ye've
not got me yetl

He nearly made it, at the tail end of a long, twisting,
dodging pursuit down through Nivyesta's atmosphere,
seeking every advantage, trying to lose the missile in
clouds, even trying to shoot it down with the laser
cannon. But on it came, doggedly undeterred and unwa-
vering. And as the chase descended, he kept up a
running commentary to Axel the comsman at Pilipoint
Station, never letting on how desperate his situation
was, livening up the discourse with merciless caricatures
of certain public figures, like Kuros who was 'the
Hegemony's interstellar bile duct', and President
Kirkland, 'the bowel movement that walked like a man'.

When the end came it was quick. He was flying north
at about 900 feet over Nivyesta's southern ocean, less
than 100 kilometres from Segrana's coast. Fuel was low,
most of the suspensors were burnt out, and he was getting
continual structural alerts as a result of the contorted
manoeuvres he had attempted. His last throw of the dice
was to try and ditch in the waters, but the missile found
him 50 feet up, rushing across the waves. There was a ter-
rible brightness... then a terrible darkness ...

Then forever claimed him.

55

CATRIONA

Through a black night of rain they searched for the
downed ship. A casing collector had spotted its descent
in late afternoon while he was ransacking the high web
festoons near Overglowatch. A wedge-shaped craft trail-
ing ragged flags was the description that was relayed to
Catriona, from which she knew that its braking chute
had torn after deploying. The chances of someone sur-
viving a crash landing under those conditions were not
good. However, there was a lot of dense, deep foliage to
absorb such a craft's kinetic energy, so assuming it didn't
hit an outcrop or an especially large tree, the odds
maybe weren't so bad.

Like most of her twenty-strong search party, Cat was
wearing a cowled coat made from a mixture of plain
fibre and silk - it was light and kept her cool and dry as
she rode on trictra-back with the rest. Following the
casing collector's directions, they were heading north to
the wide valley that lay between Girdle Ridge and the
Northern Uplands while water dripped, trickled and
spattered all around them. A cold, black night of rain,
with lamplight and the piercing beams of battery torches
striking clusters of gleams from wet leaves, turning
droplet-strewn webs into flashing regalia, rivulets into
rippling, silver snakes.

After another hour, one of the search parties reported
finding a trail of damaged forest foliage. Everyone con-
verged and hastened along the path of snapped branches
and severed trunks until it became a ragged furrow
gouged in the ground which finally terminated at the
foot of a big prul tree. The craft was small, less than fif-
teen feet long, so it had to be an escape pod from one of
the ships seen dogfighting far up in the sky earlier. Small
thruster nozzles were spaced along its curved stern,
while its hull tapered to a flat, narrow prow that was
solidly wedged under a gnarled prul root as thick as a
Uvovo's waist.

For a moment all the scholars and their Listener
paused and stared wide-eyed at the escape pod while
sending expectant glances her way.

Hmm, okay, so Mummy Pathmistress has to make sure
the alien box is safe, she thought, dismounting from the
trictra. By the time she reached the pod, with light from
lamps held nearby, she could see from the characters and
symbols on the hull that this had to be from the Heracles.
Without hesitation she rapped her knuckles on it.

'Hello - anyone in there?'

Immediately there were a few thuds in response, and
a man's voice:

'Thank God you found me! - please, can you help?
Something is jamming the hatch on this thing ...'

Cat laughed, realised that the big prul root was hold-
ing the pod shut.

'I can see what the problem is,' she said. 'We'll have
ye out of there in a wee bit.'

With a dozen Uvovo lending their strength, they man-
aged to drag the escape pod out from under the prul's
roots. A moment later the upper hull was pushed up
from within and locked into an open position. A grey-
haired man in a hunting jacket and camouflage trousers
climbed wearily out and sat on the edge of the recess,
pulling lumps of something white off his clothing and
tossing them into the pod. It took Cat a moment but
suddenly she recognised him.

'You're Greg's Uncle Theo,' she said.

He straightened in surprise, then peered closer in the
meagre light and nodded.

'Ah, Doctor Macreadie - an unexpected pleasure,
here in the middle of the forest.'

'What is that stuff?'

'Crash foam,' he said. 'It smells terrible yet I find
myself most grateful.' He looked at her and smiled. 'In
case you were wondering, Greg is alive and well, mostly.
He was slightly wounded yesterday ... or perhaps the
day before . . . but some of my people told me he's
mending well ...' He looked about him at the Uvovo
and the drips and trickles coming from above. 'Did
someone see me come down here, Catriona?'

'Aye,' she said, half-wishing he had said more about
Greg. 'An Uvovo from a town several miles away saw
your pod swooping over Segrana after those explosions
in the sky.'

He became more alert at this. 'Do you know what
happened up there? Did Pilipoint Station have any con-
tact. . .'

'I'm sorry, Theo, I've not been in touch with
Pilipoint but I did see some of the big show and heard
about the rest from others. Late in the afternoon there
were a few contrails high up, then there was a bright
explosion and, a few minutes later, halfway across the
sky, there was another. Not long after that your escape
pod crash-landed, and a short while later some Uvovo
on the south coast saw a huge explosion far out at
sea.'

Hearing this, his manner turned sombre. He nodded
and smiled sadly. 'It was supposed to be both of us in
this pod, but he tricked me and sent me off on my own.
Stayed behind to fight two Brolturan interceptors, from
that giant warwagon of theirs. And he beat them! - he
must have . ..'

'What are you talking about? Who beat them . . .'

'A brave man called Donny Barbour.' He looked
at her. 'Can you help me get to Pilipoint Station?
Perhaps someone there knows exactly how it all turned
out.'

Cat nodded. 'I can do that, Theo, though you might
like to stop off at one of the Uvovo towns for a rest and
a bite to eat.'

'That sounds good.' Feeling weariness in his limbs, he
wiped some water droplets from his beard and brushed
away a few more fragments of foam. 'I've heard that
folk on Nivyesta get around on the backs of giant tric-
tra - is that true?'

'It is, aye - you've not got a fear of spiders, have
you?'

'No, not as such.' He gave a rueful smile. 'I'll be okay.
So - which way?'

The Uvovo moved with them in unison as Catriona
led the way back to where the trictra had been tethered,
her own flashlight picking out a path through the wet
undergrowth.

'You must feel hardly involved in what's been going
on down on Darien,' Theo said.

'I wouldn't say that,' Cat said, smiling in the dark-
ness. 'We caught two Ezgara commandos yesterday.'

He stared at her, his pace slowing. 'You captured
them . . .'

'The first one exploded, killing several Uvovo . . . did
ye know that they have a binary explosive in their
bloodstream? Aye, very cunning, very vicious. Oh, and
they're Human too.'

Theo nodded gravely. 'Yes, that I knew. It raises a lot
of questions.'

'Doesn't it? We got to the second one and sedated
him before he could trigger himself, then we used some
extraction roots and what the Uvovo call a cleansing sac
to filter the impurities from his blood. Now he's awake
and alert - he understands Anglic but doesn't speak it
that well. Still, we managed to get a few interesting facts
out of him.'

She recalled how they'd had to restrain his arms and
legs with padded leather straps. He seemed so completely
at the mercy of his fear and anger, as if he had no under-
standing of self-control, and she and the rootmasters
suspected that the cleansing sac had removed something
else from his system besides the explosive component.

'His name is Malachi,' she said. 'He's from a colony
of Humans called Tygra, a highly militarised society,
going by a few things he let slip.'

'My God,' Theo said. 'Were they abducted by the
Hegemony?'

'Not abducted, Major. It seems that his colony was
established roughly 150 years ago.'

'A hundred and fifty years? But Humanity had
not. . .' He broke off, frowning for a moment before his
eyes widened. 'Doctor Macreadie, you're not suggest-
ing . . .'

Smiling she nodded. 'The Tygra colony was founded
by a ship from Earth called the Forrestal.'

Theo was silent, the astonishment in his face replaced
by a growing horror as he absorbed what she had said.
'The Forrestal's crew and colonists were a mixture of
northern and southern Americans, and Australians,' he
said. 'How could they be turned into the Hegemony's
shock troops?'

She shook her head. 'We're not getting much out of
Malachi at the moment, so these questions remain open
to speculation. But for now I think we should keep this
to ourselves. If it got out, how would the people of
Earth react? And what would the Hegemony do to the
Tygrans if they decided that the alliance with
Earthsphere was more valuable than a cadre of Human
janissaries, no matter how loyal?'

'You have a point,' he said. 'My God, I cannot imag-
ine what they went through.'

'Makes you wonder what happened to the third
ship, the Tenebrosa,' Cat said, and even as she spoke
the words she felt a quiver in the perceptive bond she
shared with Segrana. Was it anticipation? A hint of the
truth, or the echo of some lost possibility, fading
amongst the water-veiled trees? She smiled inwardly,
knowing that Segrana had a liking for convoluted
mystery.

'Well, if any of their descendants show up here,'
Theo was saying, 'we can start a club!'

She laughed out loud at that, thinking, Aye, would-
n't that be just amazing?

56

KAO CHIH

They were waiting, languishing, in a lesser sifting com-
partment, a 50-foot-long vault with battered, pitted,
metal walls which were also shiny from the abrasion of
rock dust. In here, complex forcefields winnowed the
immense tonnage of interstellar debris gathered by the
harvester's scoop fields, probably sorting it by mineral
type and grade then funnelling it off to various silos.
Kao Chih also suspected that these same field projectors
were being used to scan and probe both himself and
Drazuma-Ha*, but when he mentioned it the mech
would only answer in a taciturn, uninformative manner,
suggesting some measure of displeasure. Five or six
hours they had been kept waiting in this steel box by the
harvester's steerer, a paranoid Voth by the name of Yash,
and that was in addition to the six or seven spent wait-
ing aboard the Castellan after docking.

At least that earlier period had given Drazuma-Ha*
plenty of time to explain the ins and outs of the crucial
and perilous (yet dramatic and fabulous to Kao Chih)
mission he was engaged on. Back on the ship, Kao Chih
had sat agog, listening to the mech's tale of the leg-
endary Forerunners, the vast war they had fought
against the Legion of Avatars, and the warpwells they
had built to defeat that terrible enemy. And now, a hun-
dred millennia later, an undamaged warpwell had been
uncovered on the world Darien, colonised by a lost off-
shoot of the Human race. Remnants of the Legion yet
survived, trapped in the lowest, darkest, most
inescapable depths of hyperspace, but their servants,
those three combat droids, knew that the warpwell
could be used to release them. Which was why the
Construct, an old ally of the Forerunners, had sent
Drazuma-Ha* to find Kao Chih and help him on his
quest.

'He sent you to find me?'

'Just so,' Drazuma-Ha::' had said. 'You know, for a
millennia-old machine, the Construct has acquired some
curiously sentimental traits - he once told me that
Humanity was a species a little out of the ordinary, that
they possessed an inner fire which set them apart from
others. I was sceptical of these comments, yet now that
I've accompanied you on this quest and shared its dan-
gers and triumphs, I can see and openly say that he was
right. After all, sometimes greatness is buried and must
be brought to the surface, so be alert, Gowchee, to the
greatness within.'

Now, half a day (and a couple of books) later, Kao
Chih found his thoughts winding back to the mech's
compliments and his own reaction to them. He had been
surprised to the point of amazement, and then sombre
and humbled, but now that he'd had time to ponder he
realised that he had also felt embarrassed at being the
recipient of such praise. Almost unbidden, one of his
father's favourite sayings came to him - 'Beware the
unearned handful of gold, for somewhere another hand
is holding a knife' - which made him smile and shake his
head. Sometimes it felt as if he had tiny versions of his
mother and father in his mind, popping up now and
then with a pithy adage.

His thoughts were interrupted by a heavy clank and
the sound of rough servos as the wide door at the end of
the vault began to slide open in three layers. At last, he
thought.

'Apologies for the delay,' came a voice from the red-
lit passage beyond. 'My precautions are exhaustive out
of necessity - too many wily, tricksy bandits skulking
between the stars for anyone to lower their guard . . .
follow the corridor round and up the slope, then turn
right at the top and stop at the blast door.'

The Voth's voice was coming from grilles spaced
along the corridor ceiling. Stubby rounded cones on the
walls shed a ruby-red light and Kao Chih's shoes made
a strange, reverberating noise as he walked. The other-
wise featureless corridor sloped up past a heavy,
dark-coloured door flanked by sensor posts and bearing
an odd, circular keypad in its centre. The blast door
they arrived at a few moments later was identical,
though without the keypad.

'Please wait.'

'With respect, honourable Yash,' Kao Chih said, 'we
have done little else but wait, and for many hours. We
are engaged on a task of the gravest importance . . .'

'Yes, yes, yes, one which may profoundly affect the
fate of trillions, tragedy, war, and so forth, but you've
thus far neglected to say what you want from me. Once
I find out, we can then negotiate a price for this service.'

'A price?' said Kao Chih. 'Disaster beckons and you
wish to haggle over a fee?'

'Wait a moment, Gowchee,' said Drazuma-Ha*,
breaking his hours-long silence. 'The honourable Yash is
merely protecting his interests, and our imposition on
his time can only detract from the attention which the
refining process requires. We must be patient and allow
him to determine the course of our deliberations.'

There was a moment of silence. 'So you know some-
thing about cloud-harvesters, then.'

'A little,' said the mech. 'Just that Viganli is a Star-
Eater-series harvester, I believe, which combines the
heavy-duty capacity of the Fireliner series with the effec-
tive range of the Voidgrinders, while including a larger
scoop field than either of them.'

'Very true, my machine guest, very perceptive.
Please - enter.'

The door hummed aside and they advanced into a
low-roofed, patchily lit and untidy room. One side was
a clutter of odd furniture grouped around a holotank,
while the other side was dominated by a long work-
bench backed by racks of tools, probes, leads and
weapons. Their host was sitting cross-legged on a high
bucket seat next to the bench, smoking a triple-bowl
pipe while resting a large, intimidating weapon on one
knee. For a Voth, Yash was lightly dressed, with only
two jackets, a toolpouch kirtle over long and dusty oil-
streaked pantaloons, and a pair of worn multigoggles
pushed back onto his bare forehead, their data cable
dangling loose by his side. Dark, deepset eyes regarded
them suspiciously through a smoky haze.

'Welcome to my living room,' he said around the
pipestem. 'It's a mess and it smells a bit but I wasn't
expecting visitors.'

So what have you been doing for the last thirteen
hours} Kao Chih wanted to say, but kept smiling
instead.

'Our thanks for inviting us aboard your impressive
vessel, friend Yash . . .' Drazuma-Ha* began.

'I'm not your friend,' the Voth said. 'Not yours nor
this odd-looking Human's. What is he, anyway - your
slave?'

'I am no one's slave,' Kao Chih said, stung by his
insulting manner. 'I am on an important mission to the
Human colony on Darien - we both are.'

The Voth shrugged and puffed some more smoke.
'So what do you need me for?'

'Our ship, sadly, is only capable of Tier 1 hyperspace
travel,' Drazuma-Ha"' said. 'So we originally hoped to
persuade you to either lend us your shuttle for the last
stage of our journey, or even that you might pilot it
yourself...'

The heavy weapon in the Voth's lap whined, previ-
ously opaque sections flickered with dull glows, and
Yash shifted it to aim at the mech.

'Before you begin your persuading,' Yash said, 'be
aware that the walls and ceiling of this room contain
enough targeted multiwave projectors to fry every sub-
quantal pathway in your cognitive core.'

'Yes, I know,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'But be assured
that my persuasion does not rely on brute methods. No,
honourable Yash, I feel that it is only my duty to let you
know that if war comes to this region, then the mining
opportunities for independents like yourself will become
very risky. It is my task to get to Darien and stop war
breaking out, or, failing that, to send a message to allies
who will come out to collect us.'

This was a complete surprise to Kao Chih, who
glanced at the mech. I thought he was prepared to seize
the harvester's shuttle by force if necessary. What is he
planning}

'I cannot leave the Viganli,' the Voth said bluntly.
'And I'm not giving you my jelking shuttle. So a message
it'll have to be.' Putting down the triple-bowled pine, he
slid off the bucket seat and landed on muscular, bowed
legs, still carrying the big gun, which Kao Chih thought
could be some kind of exotic plasma cannon. 'The
bridge is up that way - after you.'

He guided them up another sloping passage to a
small lobby with three doors and a mop and bucket in
the corner. They pushed through the door directly ahead
and found themselves in a long, narrow control room
with viewports, consoles, screens, analysis stations and
holodisplays on both sides. The bridge overlooked most
of the Viganli's upper hull, from the midsection's che-
querboard of big hold hatches to the oval intake
manifold of the flaring bows from which six 100-metre-
long booms angled forward and outward, three above,
three below. These were the emitter masts which pro-
jected the harvester's 2.5-kilometre forcefield before it to
scoop in dust and debris.

Yash entered after them, plasma cannon balanced on
one shoulder. 'And I'm just as protected here,' he said.
'Plenty of EMP gear, and all keyed to my commands.'

Unpleasant and paranoid, Kao Chih thought as he
watched the Voth brush food fragments and a few
empty packets away from one particular console. Away
from the lounge and the pipe smoke, he noticed that
the Voth had a strong, pungent, almost nutty odour. It
was not pleasant.

'So, honourable Yash,' he said. 'How much are you
charging for this aid?'

Yash grinned widely. 'How much have you got?'

Kao Chih met his gaze for a moment before reluc-
tantly pulling out the pouch that held their remaining
funds and emptying it into the Voth's outstretched hand.
Yash looked over the stems and triangles for a moment
then stuffed them into a side pocket.

'Help yourself - but touch nothing else, only the
comms.'

'As you wish, most generous Yash,' Drazuma-Ha*
said, floating over to the communication console, effec-
tor field rods stabbing out even before it had come to a
halt.

Kao Chih watched, confused and not understanding
the mech's actions or how this was going to get them to
Darien. Yash also kept a mistrustful eye on the comms
station, probably out of a twisted need to find some-
thing amiss, Kao Chih guessed.

A few moments later Drazuma-Ha* withdrew its
effectors. 'I have sent a T2 message to my allies' tiernet
handler - they should respond in a short while to tell us
when ...'

The mech was interrupted by a high-pitched peeping
alert from another console further along. Yash cursed
and hurried over, examined the displays and muttered
angrily as he swiftly prodded several keys then grabbed
an overhead monitor and swung it round for them to see.

'So are those your allies, eh? Thought you could just
stroll in here and take my ship, did you? Jelk-eating
pirates! - I should kill you right here and now . . .'

'Wait,' said the mech. 'These are not our allies , . .

'My God,' Kao Chih said, staring at the monitor. 'It's
those droids again - how did they find us? . . .'

'They must have backtracked along that hyperspace
course and found our exit point,' said Drazuma-Ha*.
'Perhaps the tesserae fields leave behind an emission
residue when they collapse ...'

'Wait, wait, who or what are these newcomers?' Yash
said to Kao Chih, pulling the goggles down over his
eyes. 'Are they working with you or not? The truth
now!'

'Honourable Yash, I swear to you that these droids are
not our allies,' Kao Chih said, glancing at the familiar
image of the trashed freighter. 'They've been following us
for days, trying to stop us fulfilling our mission.'

The Voth nodded wearily and pushed the goggles
back up. 'You're telling the truth. So, in other words,
you brought your bad luck with you and dumped it on
my doorstep.'

'Is the Viganli armed, honourable Yash?' the mech
said.

Yash snorted. 'Two beam turrets, particle cannon,
and a missile carrel - they automatically arm and target
unless I countermand them.'

'They may not be sufficient to the task,' the mech
said. 'As you can see, their ship is a hulk but it has
strong fields protecting its engines. . .'

'So I'll pound it into a million jelking pieces,' the
Voth said. 'Just watch.'

Kao Chih heard a muffled charging drone and a faint
resonant thrum, repeating again and again. On the
external monitor shafts and knots of energy and matter
in various combinations flew out at the pursuers' vessel,
which somehow managed to evade them. On the few
times that it was hit, the damage seemed scarcely notice-
able and failed to slow their approach. During all of
this Kao Chih had moved over to watch the Voth keying
in attack variations, but after several fruitless minutes
Yash threw up his hands in disgust.

'Jelk it! - I should be heating up components and
metal filings by now! They must have some other
shields . . .'

He was interrupted by a high, peeping alert. The
Voth frowned and punched up another display and Kao
Chih felt his heart sink when it showed a second similar
ship accelerating towards the Viganli.

'Another one?' Yash was grim and angry, suspicion
returning to his features as he rounded on Kao Chih.
'What's going on ... and where's your mech friend?'

Kao Chih suddenly realised that Drazuma-Ha * was
no longer on the bridge, but before he could profess
ignorance of the situation the mech's voice came from
the comm system.

'Greetings, honourable Yash and Gowchee - the
enemy has called on reinforcements, so you must fire
upon them while I pilot the Castellan towards our first
pursuer. I will attempt to ram their stern and thus make
them an easier target.' Sure enough, another screen
winked on, showing the Castellan manoeuvring away
from the ViganWs underside. 'I shall, of course, leave in
the escape pod before the collision.'

'Crazy jelking machine,' Yash said, his long dark fin-
gers dancing over the weapons controls. 'Now, let's see
if we have better luck with this . . . whoaV

The first volley of particle bolts struck the second
ship in a line from amidships to the stern. Impacts tore
large holes in the ravaged hull, ripping out cascades of
shattered metal, then a couple of bolts found the
engines. Something blew out immediately in a while
eruption behind the main drives, perhaps the coolant
reserves. Then the thrust fuel went up, cracking open the
stern like a silver eggshell fracturing along cold blue-icy
white lines. In seconds the stern had become an expand-
ing cloud of debris and hot, glowing vapour. Astounded
and relieved, Kao Chih applauded.

'Well done, honourable Yash - excellent targeting!'

'Heh, well, yes it was,' the Voth said. 'Now what is
your mech friend up to?'

Another small screen whined as it unfolded from an
overhead recess, flickered once then showed a medium-
range shot of the Castellan. Its main thrusters were
burning intermittently, in concert with the positioning
jets, while further off was the first pursuing ship, the
hulk freighter. Kao Chih watched the two vessels con-
verging with what looked like agonising slowness, even
though he knew they were moving at several hundred
metres a second. He felt horribly powerless and wished
he was out there with Drazuma-Ha*.

'Is your channel still open, Drazuma-Ha *?' he said.

'It is, Gowchee.'

'I hope that you will take the appropriate precau-
tions - I have little desire to attempt to carry out your
task as well as my own.'

'Such precautions have already been taken, Gowchee.
I shall reach my goal and fulfil my purpose. Now I must
deactivate this channel - honourable Gowchee and
Yash, my thanks.'
. Abruptly, the voice cut off, leaving Kao Chih to stare
at the external monitor in puzzlement. The mech's final
words had been odd, lacking in its usual conciseness,
and expressing thanks seemed somewhat out of charac-
ter.

'What . . . the jelk,' Yash said, pointing with a long
forefinger, 'is that?'

The Voth was indicating a touch-control screen on
the comms console - it was glowing a pale blue with
dark blue and green graphics, an app options panel with
the words 'Terminate Simulation?' across the top.

'What simulation?' said Kao Chih.

'Exactly! - there wasn't one running before you and
your machine arrived,' the Voth said as he reached over
to the screen, hesitated a moment, then firmly pressed
the terminate button.

At once, the image of the Castellan and the oncoming
freighter disappeared from several screens up and down
the control room. A second later, a cluster of board
alarms went off, lights and symbols flickered and
flashed, and a rasping synth voice spoke.

'Hull breach, outer hold 4, inner pressure doors clos-
ing . . . hull breach, outer hold 9, inner pressure doors
closing ... inner bulkhead breach, section 23, mainte-
nance drone assigned . . .'

'What. .. what's happening?' said Kao Chih, bewil-
dered now.

'Well, for a jelking start,' Yash said, hefting the
plasma cannon and levelling it in his direction, 'there
never was any message to your allies, was there?
Instead, your machine sets a simulation running, faking
an attack and him taking your ship, while all the time he
was stealing my shuttleV
'No, that cannot be ...'

'Look, idiot Human, look!' An external monitor
showed the Castellan still moored to the harvester's
underside, then it switched to a view of some kind of
hold with a gantry and racks of equipment. 'And that is
Stern Bay 1, where my shuttle is usually berthed, only
now it's . . .'

'Intruder detected, deck 10 . . . intruder detected,
deck 7 . . . hull breach, outer hold 2, inner pressure
doors closing ...'

'And now I'm being boarded,' the Voth moaned.
'Who by? - and where did they come from?'

'It must be the droids from the ship you destroyed,'
said Kao Chih, eyeing the wavering business end of the
plasma cannon. 'They are agents for a cyborg species
called the Legion of Avatars who were defeated by the
Forerunners, but these droids have to get to Darien to
open a well into hyperspace ...'

'Mad,' the Voth said. 'Completely sun-staring, rock-
sniffing insane you are! Legions and Forerunners . . .
I'm being boarded and you're giving me jelk like that.
But here's an idea ...' He prodded Kao Chih with the
cannon. '. . . if they're your enemies, maybe I should
just welcome them on board and treat them as friends,
eh? What do you say?'

'A very sensible proposal,' said a voice from one of
the monitors. 'I suggest you adopt it without delay.'

One of the Legion droids was regarding them from
the screen. It was a bulky, asymmetrical machine with
lens clusters set into a small, off-centre recess. Yash took
one look and sneered.

'Jelk you! This is my ship so we play by my rules . . .'

'I don't think you've grasped the fullness of the situ-
ation,' the droid said.

Just then the control room lights went out along with
all the consoles and monitors, apart from the one they
were watching.

'So - where do you think we are?' the droid contin-
ued.

Yash flared his nostrils and Kao Chih could actually
hear his teeth grinding.

'Power core regulating station,' he muttered.

'Correct. Now, because you destroyed our ship we're
going to have to borrow yours so that we can resume
our pursuit, made all the more difficult by your stupid-
ity in letting the Instrument take your shuttle . ..'

'Stupidity?' said the Voth, long teeth bared.

'Yours and this halfwit Human's. Anyway, before we
can do anything we have to unpick the autodestruct
which the Instrument planted in the hyperdrive startup
datachain.' Some of the consoles came back to life.
'Take a look.'

As the Voth bent over a console and called up streams
of incomprehensible code, Kao Chih slumped into one of
the bucket seats, thoughts whirling. Clearly, Drazuma-
Ha* had been planning all this since before they'd come
aboard the harvester, which included leaving Kao Chih
behind. Perhaps it needed Kao Chih's honest reaction
when the simulated droid ship had appeared, but that
did not make him feel any better. Nor did it quell bis
sense of unease. And why did the Legion droid refer to
the mech as the Instrument?

'Nasty and well hidden,' Yash said at last, straight-
ening. 'But how do I know you didn't put it in there
yourselves?'

'Why should we?' the droid said. 'Why go to all the
trouble? No, that's high-grade Legion work - not our
methodology at all.'

Yash stared at Kao Chih. 'You said that this lot were
from the Legion of . . . what was it?'

'Avatars,' Kao Chih said. 'Legion of Avatars . . .'

'Ah, I see,' said the droid on the monitor. 'I'm afraid
you have been deceived - your mech companion is an
Instrument of the Legion of Avatars while we are field
armigers for the Construct...'

'What proof . .. can you offer?' Kao Chih said. 'Why
should we take what you say at face value?'

'Why did you take what that machine said at face
value?' the droid countered. 'Even its appearance is a
fake ...'

'With respect,' he said, 'that is ridiculous.'

Yash laughed unkindly. 'Didn't you know that it was
running a holoshell behind its forcefield? I was using
my goggles in tandem with my wall sensors to study it,
got a few outline scans and extrapolated a rough
image . . .'

'Did it look anything like this?' An inset appeared
on the monitor next to the hulking droid, showing a
strange metallic object resembling a section of articu-
lated limb with a joint halfway up its length. Seeing it,
the Voth nodded.

'Yes, very similar, except that this one has two joints.'
He squinted at the screen. 'What is this thing? Looks
like a piece of something else.'

'It is,' the droid said. 'This is a limb from a cyborg
creature, a Knight of the Legion of Avatars. A Knight
cyborg is permeated with bio-cortical substrate so
when they hive off parts of themselves they can imbue
them with a version of their own personae. They pos-
sess organic sentience along with the attitudes and
instincts of their progenitors, which is strictly in accor-
dance with their creed. In the convergence of organic
sentience and technology, the part shall reflect the
whole.'

'Can they be killed?' Yash said, patting his plasma
cannon.

'Most definitely,' the droid said. 'But not if we stand
around here talking.'

'I'll get that autodestruct unpicked,' the Voth said, sit-
ting down at the console. =

Kao Chih had listened in silence, absorbing the truth
and feeling a horrible realisation. After the escape from
the Chaurixa torture ship, he had been so determined to
be done with being someone else's pawn or commodity,
yet he had been Drazuma-Ha*'; willing dupe all along.
His father was right - the hidden hand with its knife had
been there from the start.

'When you reach Darien, I want to go with you,' he
said to the droid.

'As you wish, Human. Just don't get in our way.'

'I won't, I give you my word. I just want to be there
when you tear out whatever that treacherous machine
uses for a heart.'

Yash looked up from his screen, chuckling.
'That's more like it, Human!'

In the stolen shuttle's cockpit, the Instrument patiently
observed the console displays, overseeing the ship's
progress through T2 hyperspace as it savoured the suc-
cessful outcome of its deceptions and gambits. He had
come so far in such a short span of time, from awaken-
ing underwater in the shadow of his mighty progenitor
to this final stage of his momentous journey, having
beguiled and outwitted all his adversaries. Even when
the Chaurixa hijacker had taken them by surprise at
Bryag Station and employed a stasis web, he had been
able to divert all available resources to maintaining a
hard holoshell while recovering various crashed sub-
systems preparatory to regaining full functionality.
Another example of ingenious improvisation leading to
success. And was that not because he was, in himself, an
authentic replica of his exalted progenitor's instincts and
craft and ingenuity?

Too soon for celebration, said an admonitory inner
voice. Too far yet to travel, too much still to do, too
many uncertainties and opponents to overcome. Focus
on the task, enumerate resources, assess all likely risks
and possibilities, generate tactical solutions that will
support strategic aims.

Very well - risks and possibilities. Before leaving the
Viganli's bridge he had left a destruct trigger buried in
the hyperdrive datachain matrix, but it was quite likely
that if any or all of the Construct's rustbucket Als
boarded the harvester (itself quite likely) the trap would
be uncovered and made safe. Therefore, there was a
good chance that they were following him to this
Darien, the warpwell planet, which had been colonised
by Humans. He knew, from news feeds picked during
his travels, that there were warships in orbit there, a
dangerous obstacle to any arriving vessel. He would
have to find a way to make that potential aggression,
and the inherent territorial paranoia of military hierar-
chies, work in his favour.

There were a few options but one of them stood out
from the rest in its simplicity. It would require a certain
amount of finely-gauged role-playing, but he was sure
that his recent experiences would prove invaluable in
that respect.

Aboard the Heracles, Sub-Lieutenant Tuan Ho had just
gone on overwatch in Sensory when one of the outer
boundary beacons went off. He shook his head, put
down the plastic beaker of coffee from which he had
been about to sip, and called up Hugo, the resident
expert system.

'Yarr, matey! There be a ship incoming off the lar-
board bow . ..'

Ho sighed when he saw the eye-patched, tricorn-
hatted visage. The middle-watch operators must have
been exceptionally bored.

'Hugo,' he said. 'Setting command - reskin to default.'

Suddenly the head and shoulders image reverted to
Hugo's usual appearance, attired in the pale green one-
piece of a navy tech.

'Okay,' Tuan Ho said. 'Let me have the report again.'

'A badly damaged small ship, possibly a shuttle,
dropped out of hyperspace just inside the deci-au
marker. The pilot is speaking Brolturan, says he is the
sole survivor of a Brolturan prospecting expedition that
was attacked by a hijacked harvester ship, and claims
that this harvester is chasing him. He also says that his
guidance systems are down and that he's flying on
manual with the aim of landing on Darien. His life sup-
port is on backup and his comms are down to audio
only; his ship is not emitting an ident but he claims to
be from the Perquisitor. A Brolturan-registered ship of
that name was reported missing in the Huvuun three
weeks ago.'

Tuan Ho frowned. 'No ident, audio only - could be
anyone or anything. Have you piped it to Tactical?'

'I did so when I piped it up to the captain's portable.'

His eyes widened in surprise. 'Why do that?'

'Because fifteen seconds later the captain received a
direct query about the newcomer from Father-Admiral
Dyrosha aboard the Purifier.'

Tuan Ho grinned. 'And it would have looked bad if
Velazquez had had to get the information from Dyrosha.
Good thinking, Hugo.'

The expert system smiled and shrugged. 'I am coded
for initiative.'

'Over-Lieutenant Schenker once said he wished I was.
So what's happening now?'

'I am tracking this ship in tandem with Tactical,
Velazquez and Dyrosha are still in conference, and the
Purifier has just launched a pair of interceptors.'

'Goodness, I do hope they don't lose those ones too!'

Like almost everyone on board Heracles, Tuan Ho
had watched the incredible dogfight over the forest
moon, which had been shown on all the communal and
rec screens. The sight of one of their own shuttles being
piloted with insane bravado and destroying not one but
two Brolturan interceptors was electrifying, and reveal-
ing. The crew had been divided into a minority who
were shocked and upset, and the majority whose
approval ran from a kind of fateful resignation to out-
and-out pro-Dariens who later put together a
noticeboard shrine to the Scots pilot, Donny Barbour. It
had not escaped Ho's attention that most of the pro-
Brolturans also had Al-companions.

'Well, it'll probably turn out to be nothing serious,'
he said. 'While you're keeping your eye on it, I'm going
to heat up my coffee.'

'You may be right, sir,' said Hugo.

But twenty minutes later, when a Star-Eater-class
cloud-harvester came out of hyperspace a mere 2,000
kilometres from the Heracles, tripping every alarm,
Tuan Ho soon found that there was no time for sips or
even thoughts of coffee.

From the moment they appeared in the Darien system,
they were bombarded with a stream of increasingly
trenchant demands, and finally warnings of dire conse-
quences. Yash, however, was giving as good as he got.

'No, no, Heracles, you listen to me - I am the
wronged party, I am the victim and I'm in pursuit of the
thief who stole my shuttle . . .'

'Harvester Viganli, we have to verify your story
which is why you must cut your velocity and assume
stationary orbit

'Why aren't you putting the clamps on that shuttle,
eh? Why? . . .'

'As a Brolturan vessel it is being handled by . . .'

'It's not a Brolturan ship! - can't you jelkers under-
stand? The thieving, stinking machine who stole it is
lying to you and the Brolturans, lying to everybody . . .'

'Harvester ship - this is Tactical Dominance Enabler
Purifier, Father-Admiral Dyrosha commanding. You are
ordered to reduce your velocity to zero and prepare for
boarding scrutiny . . .'

'No one gets to scrutinise me,' snarled the Voth.

'. . . and possible charges. Failure to comply will
result in diligent threat elimination. That is all.'

'Heracles to Viganli - in case you didn't get the gist of
that, I should tell you that the Purifier has launched fif-
teen close support fighters due to intercept your
trajectory in less than six minutes. But you are already in
range of our standoff weapons and in two minutes you
will be in range of our full deterrent. Consider your
position carefully.'

Yash nodded sourly at the dead channel then looked
round at the Construct droid, the spokesman.

'I hope that you know what you're doing - it looks as
if we're about to become involved in a bit of target prac-
tice.'

'We have reconfigured your fields into defence shields,
Pilot Yash,' said the bulky droid, who went by the name
Gorol9. 'Our opponents should be surprised, especially
when the target starts firing back.' Part of its upper cara-
pace swivelled to bring its lens cluster to bear on Kao
Chih. 'Has there been any change, Human Gowchee?'

Kao Chih had been assigned a console dedicated to
tracking the stolen shuttle's course, velocity and other
aspects of its flightpath.

'None, Gorol9,' he said. 'It is still broadcasting that
Brolturan message and heading straight for Darien at
constant speed - we can expect to overtake it before it
reaches atmosphere.'

'Good, then it is time to get the Instrument's attention
by increasing speed.'

'It is done,' said the droid overseeing navigation, a
broad-torsoed droid called Ysher23; it had four curi-
ously slender legs and two immense arms with
interchangeable effectors.

A moment after the increase, the comm channel
livened up again.

'Heracles to Viganli - you are traversing restricted
space without authorisation! Cut your velocity at once
and power down your defences ...'

'This is Captain-Pilot Yash - I have made no threats
or hostile moves towards you but I will defend myself if
necessary .. .'

'They've targeted our stern,' said Dalqa42, the small-
est of the three droids who was overseeing the
tactical/weapons station. 'Any moment now . . .'

The bridge jolted and Kao Chih and the Voth
grabbed their consoles in reflex. Alerts flashed then sub-
sided,

'Well within shield tolerances,' said Gorol9.

'More beam and particle attacks coming,' said
Dalqa42. 'The Humans have also launched a flight of
missiles.'

The bridge and the ship shook again and again from
repeated impacts, yet there was an air of strange calm.
From the narrow viewports Kao Chih could see Darien,
a fist-sized, dark-blue and white object directly ahead
with its forest moon a dull green coin off to one side. A
few of the overhead screens showed a 3D graphic of the
harvester's shields, red spikes indicating hits, symbol
reels detailing depth of penetration and shield recovery
rates. Then there was the holotank sitting over its pro-
jection niche, displaying the relative positions of the
Viganli and the Earthsphere ship, Heracles, its beam
attacks depicted as stabbing white lines, its missiles a
curve of winking motes sweeping ahead in deflection
strike.

And through it all there was almost no talk, an eerie
peace, even though he knew that the droids had to be
sharing data via proximity transfer, but for Kao Chih
and the Voth there were only the screens.

'We're pulling away from the Heracles,' Yash said,
peering into one of the tactical screens. 'They're holding
position in high orbit but their missiles are still on
target - will these shields be enough to stop them?'

'Probably not,' said Gorol9.

'Beam turret ready for interdiction,' said Dalqa42.
'Outer optimal range now in effect, commencing pre-
emptive strike.'

Out in the murky darkness there was a tiny flare,
then another and a couple more . . .

'What is the status of the shuttle, Human Gowchee?'
said Gorol9.

'We are gaining on it,' he said, trying to ignore the
jolts and quivers of the Heracles's attacks. 'At our cur-
rent velocity we will overtake it in 5.7 minutes -
however, those Brolturan interceptors are still on course
and we will encounter them in . . . 3.8 minutes.'

'That's too much like sticking our head into a mouthful
of fangs,' said Yash. 'We should veer off and make a run
for open space.'

'There is no need for concern, Pilot Yash,' Gorol9
said. 'We have prepared for every eventuality and, after
all, we have every intention of returning your ship after
completing our mission.'

'Right . . . okay then.' The Voth rubbed his face,
nodded and was turning back to the holodisplay when
Dalqa42 said:

'Missile incoming - brace for impact!'

An instant later a crashing explosion shook the ship
and Kao Chih was thrown bodily out of his seat. Alarms
yammered and the consoles flashed with violet emer-
gency symbols as the synth voice spoke.

'Hull breach, outer hold 11, outer hold 12 . . . inner
bulkhead breach, section 32, deck 11... severe pressure
drop detected, junction 89 blast doors closing . ..'

'My ship!' Yash groaned as he picked himself up.

'What happened?' said Kao Chih, climbing back into
his seat.

'A single missile survived our beam-cannon interdic-
tion,' said Dalqa42. 'The Humans are launching no
more, since their Brolturan allies will soon be upon us.'

On a side monitor, he could see a jagged, gaping hole
in the flank of the harvester's starboard bow.

'Comforting,' the Voth said. 'Do they carry missiles
too?'

'I believe that these interceptors are Rampart
Monoclan Mark 8 Warwings,' said Gorol9. 'Rebadged
for the Star Forces of Broltura ...'

'Armed with double-twin pulse cannons, plus triple-
layer field chamber upgrades,' said Ysher23.

'And a dozen Sacred Lance missiles with integrated
expert-system guidance,' said Dalqa42.

Kao Chih looked over at Pilot Yash. 'Isn't that nice -
they have a hobby!'

Yash sniggered. Seconds later, the first Brolturan
interceptor got within range and opened fire.

The next ten minutes were like a passage through hell,
a Hell of Tearing Explosions, Kao Chih thought sardon-
ically, reserved for those who allowed themselves to he
fooled and used. The Brolturan fighters swept past in
twos and threes, hammering the Viganli with beam-
cannon volleys and, like the Heracles, discovering that the
harvester's shield could take all they could throw. Then
came the missiles, which is when the running battle really
began.

Meanwhile, the stolen shuttle had, infuriatingly, put
on more speed and pulled ahead slightly, giving it a two-
minute lead on the harvester, which was hard pressed to
keep pace.

The Brolturan interceptors began sending in wide
spreads of missiles whose inbound trajectories zig-
zagged wildly, thus reducing beam concentration on
their casings. Despite hasty modifications to the beam-
cannon strike patterns, a handful made it through and
slammed into the forward section, blew open three
holds and ripped off one of the huge emitter masts. The
bridge lurched sickeningly but everyone kept their seats
while Yash wailed in distress at the punishment his ship
was getting.

By now the Viganli had reached low orbit above
Darien yet it was continuing along a descent trajectory
with the thermosphere coming up fast.

'Jelk it, why aren't we assuming orbit?' said Yash.

'Because we're still under attack,' said Gorol9. 'And
our enemy is going to attempt a landing.'

Wild-eyed, the Voth clenched his fists. 'But Viganli
has no flight surfaces, no suspensors, and no vectored
thrust - it's a jelking cloud-harvester not a glider! You
said you were going to give me my ship back . . .'

'That was our intention, Pilot Yash, but our enemies'
intentions are otherwise.'

The missile impacts and the loss of an emitter mast
had degraded the shield coverage and beam-cannon
bursts were getting through to punch holes in the hull
plating. Then an interceptor, its stern wrecked by a
lucky shot from the Viganli's particle gun, came flying
in, caromed off the upper hull and smashed into the aft
superstructure. The impact threw everyone violently
back, as the lights and deck gravity died. There was a
terrifying moment of weightless motion in complete
darkness before the lighting and the gravity returned.

'Structural integrity compromised,' said the synth
alert voice. 'Hull temperature rising ... coolant system
coverage at 68 per cent and falling

'Enemy interceptors breaking off,' said Dalqa42.
'More missiles dispatched, however.'

'The shuttle,' said Gorol9. 'The Instrument, where is
it?'

'It's now in atmospheric descent,' Kao Chih said.
'Velocity falling, altitude 520 kilometres and falling,
course . . . banking towards the northern hemisphere. Is
that the location of this warpwell?'

'Yes, and of the Human colony,' said Gorol9.

'Hull temperature at 88 per cent of tolerance . . .

coolant system coverage at 51 per cent and decreas-
ing ...' said the synth alert.

'How close are those missiles?' Gorol9 said.

'First impacts in 4.7 minutes,' said Dalqa42. 'Likely
targets are port and starboard thrust engines, and bridge
superstructure. Droid survival quotient is 19 per cent,
organic crew 8 per cent. Recommend evacuation.'

'Agreed - transfer destination coordinates to escape
boat and shuttle.'

'Done,' said Ysher23.

'We must waste no time,' said Gorol9. 'I and Ysher2 5
will take your shuttle, Gowchee, while you, Pilot Yash
and Dalqa42 take the harvester's escape boat. Our pur-
suit must continue - the Instrument must be prevented
from reaching the warpwell.'

After that it was a mad scramble down to Yash's
living room, from which a trapdoor ladder led down to
the escape boat. There was a pause while the Voth
stuffed a seemingly random selection of items into a
filthy shoulder sack, then they hurried down to the boat.
Muttering incomprehensible Vothic oaths, Yash
strapped himself in, shoulder sack wedged between his
bony knees, while Kao Chih followed suit and Dalqa42
came last, closed and sealed the hatch.

Kao Chih heard a muffled crash from back in the
harvester and felt the boat shake. Then there was a clus-
ter of loud bangs and the boat lurched forward and
dropped, sudden vertigo surging in his stomach.
Without a doubt they were free of the Viganli and a
moment later he heard a cluster of servo whines, and a
sense of weight returned, then a sway to the side along
with the occasional deep buzz.

'Lift surfaces have been deployed,' said the droid
Dalqa42. 'Directional jets functioning normally, guid-
ance system nominal. Time till landing, approximately
7.5 minutes.'

Kao Chih nodded. 'Pilot Yash, is there any way to see
outside?'

'Not until we are below 4,000 meol.' The Voth glow-
ered at him. 'And do not presume to speak to me,
Human jelk! You bear responsibility for the loss of my
jelking ship!' And he turned his face away.

'Yes, you're right,' Kao Chih sighed and settled back,
converting the meol altitude in his head to roughly
2,500 feet.

The minutes crept by. The escape pod often shud-
dered and pitched from atmospheric turbulence, poor
weather according to the droid. In the fifth minute a
pinging sound came from an overhead control pad and
the Voth wordlessly reached up to press a button. Small
triangular panels slid aside on both sides of the nose,
revealing viewports - mostly they could only see the
rushing greyness of clouds but occasionally they caught
glimpses of landscape far below, mountains and valleys,
dense areas of green. Darien, he thought. At last.

'Droids Gorol9 and Ysher23 have landed ahead of
the Instrument's shuttle and have met with armed resist-
ance,' said Dalqa42 all of a sudden.

'Ahead of it?' said Kao Chih. 'How?'

'Weather conditions... wait...' Dalqa42 was silent
for a moment or two, then, 'The adversary's craft just
arrived but crashed into rock formations a short dis-
tance from the warpwell's location, a deep excavation
into a rock promontory ... Gorol9 reports that they
can sense the Instrument's presence and advises us to be
ready.'

'Ready for what?' said the Voth.

'For combat, Pilot Yash,' Dalqa42 said.

'Not my fight, droid,' said Yash.

'Those we are about to encounter will assume that it
is and act accordingly. To increase the possibility of a
successful outcome, Gorol9 and I will now trans-
pose . . .'

Kao Chih and Yash exchanged a puzzled look as the
droid fell silent, immobile. A moment or two later the
droid began to move again, surveying the boat's interior
and its occupants.

'Human Gowchee and Pilot Yash - somehow, it is
pleasing to make your acquaintance again. Now, we are
just seconds away from . ..'

The escape boat lurched upward then seemed to
swoop downwards, banking as it did so.

'Steerable canopy deployed - guidance will take us to
within five metres of the warpwell location. Prepare
yourselves for ...'

Through the small viewport Kao Chih could see a
muddled blur of landscape turning and turning beneath
them then tilting and rushing past, rushing up quite
quickly ...

'.. . a rough landing ...'

The boat swept into a gulf of shadow, an abrupt
plunge followed by a sharp swing to the right as they
slammed into something. Even as Kao Chih and Yash
cried out, the capsule pitched forward and descended by.
steady stages, landing with a bump. Scarcely waiting for
the boat to settle, the droid Gorol9 tugged on the hatcn
release and a curved section of the hull popped open. At
once Kao Chih inhaled a flow of cold, damp air laced
with smells of growing things . ..

Gorol9 helped them both out. They were at the foot
of some kind of sheer-sided excavation faced with
ribbed, composite cladding, looking up at a grey,
evening sky from which raindrops were falling. For a
second Kao Chih stood there, feeling the rain on his
face, enjoying the sensation . . .

'The Instrument is here,' said Gorol9. 'Further in ...'

The sound of weapons-fire came from a doorway at
the end of the narrow trench and the droid started
swiftly towards it. Kao Chih hesitated, until Yash took a
shiny blue beam pistol from his shoulder sack and
offered it to him.

The doorway had a set of steps leading down into an
icy chamber where golden lamps on the floor threw sharp
shadows against a wall with three doors. There were four
dark and glassy pillars here, too, and the motionless, hud-
dled shapes of dead people, seven large humanoids,
Sendrukans, he guessed. The three doors were sur-
rounded by a carving-covered wall, and without pause
the droid dived through the only door that was open.

Beyond, more bodies at the edge of an immense cir-
cular chamber with a low wall running around,
prescribing a kind of walkway. A few small lamps were
spaced along the low wall for about a quarter of its cir-
cuit, revealing to Kao Chih's eyes some of the sweeping
patterns, the symbols and the characters which were
carved into the chamber's wide stone floor. Was this
what all the deceptions, the pursuit, the destruction and
death had been for? - was this the warpwell?

More gunfire came from behind them, and Yash
brought up his plasma cannon.

'I'll hold this door - you go after our droid friend, see
he doesn't get into trouble. He owes me a ship!'

Kao Chih nodded and hastened along the walkway.
Ahead he could make out the spindly shape of Gorol9
(formerly Dalqa42) striding after a glowing blue object
that was heading towards the centre of the chamber's
stone floor. As he walked he saw that the blue thing was
a strange artefact resembling a section of a long, articu-
lated limb or tentacle. A cyborg machine. As it came to a
halt, Gorol9 extended its gait to a lope. Unthinkingly,
Kao Chih stepped over the low wall and began running
towards it, not noticing the silvery, threadlike glows that
flickered across the floor patterns in his wake.

'Fools who rush to their deaths,' said Drazuma-Ha*
in a voice which echoed sharply in the chamber, 'should
not be disappointed.'

A shaft of amber force leaped out and seized Gorol9
around its slender torso and dragged it in close. An
amber blade then hacked off the droid's legs and Kao
Chih, rage in his heart, raised the beam pistol and blazed
away.

'Even if you could get through my exquisitely
designed force shield,' Drazuma-Ha* said, 'that pathetic
weapon would scarcely dent my skin. Admit your
defeat, Human, admit the inherent weakness of your
unaugmented flesh.'

It was true - the beam pistol's bolts flared and
sparked uselessly against the blue aura. Bitterly he low-
ered the weapon, slowed to a halt and fell to his knees.

'You have nothing to admit to this maimed hybrid,

Gowchee,' said Gorol9, still being held down on the
carved stone. 'You have nothing to be ashamed of.'

'So speaks the machine,' said the Legion creature.
'Good, obedient device, just one amongst the
Construct's little horde of windup junkpiles. Attend
carefully, Human - this machine, this contraption, will
never know the wonder of convergence, the intermin-
gling of life's pure essence and a technology perfectly
adapted to life's supreme ambition. Oh, machines can be
made highly complex and made to imitate the permu-
tations of true sentience, but ultimately it is only
obedience to a detailed matrix of commands, a dry,
empty mockery of living sentience.'

'You are a made thing,' said Gorol9. 'Your vaunted
convergence with technology is nothing but your des-
perate need to flee the pains of the flesh, the entropy of
the flesh, the ending of the flesh. And you? - you are
little more than an offcut, stemming from your progen-
itor Knight's need for an instrument...'

'Liar! My essence, my foundation is organic, and my
sentience flows from the purity of convergence ...'

INTRUDERS HAVE BEEN DETECTED!

Kao Chih almost quailed at the thunderous volume
of the voice which reverberated all around but which
seemed to issue from the stone floor beneath. In that
instant he saw a spiderweb of glowing threads spreading
across the intertwined patterns, all emitting a curious,
crystalline brightness.

'Aah, the guardian awakes,' said Drazuma-Ha*.

YOU ARE OF THE LEGION, INTRUDER - YOUR
PRESENCE HERE IS A VIOLATION. YOU MUST BE
ERASED.

'Exactly, machine. Obey the unvarying schemata of
your responses. Open the door through which I may
fulfil my transcendent task ...'

'Sentinel - I am Gorol9 of the Construct's forward
echelon. You must not deploy your energies against the
Legion intruder - it will use them against you.'

I RECOGNISE YOU, GOROL9, BUT YOU MAY
NOT COMMAND ME. THE THREAT IS CLEAR
AND IT MUST BE ERASED.

Feeling helpless, Kao Chih raised his gun again, then
his shoulders sagged and he slumped back, tears of
angry desperation in his eyes. How he hated this
machine-creature.

'Good - you recognise the futility of your position,
Human,' said Drazuma-Ha*. 'You may be weak, yet
there is hope for your species - many have already taken
the first steps towards convergence and when the Legion
assumes its rightful dominance we will help them further
along that illustrious journey.'

'You betrayed me,' Kao Chih said. 'I trusted you! ...'

'Look upon it as a lesson,' the Legion creature said,
lancing out with an amber shaft of force which batted
away the beam pistol then grabbed him round the neck
and hauled him in. At the same time, the crystalline
radiance rising from the warpwell patterns began to
pulse, lighting up the ceiling and the walls.

THE LEGION INTRUDER IS A CLEAR THREAT
AND WILL BE ERASED. ALL OTHERS MUST
LEAVE - NOW!

'And now the pair of you will join me in my triumph,
but only as equals ...' An amber blade extruded from
the Legion instrument's force aura and Kao Chih began
to cry out in horror, struggling as the blade swept round
towards his own legs.

The droid Gorol9 acted. A jointed arm shot out and
its multiclawed hand flew straight at Drazuma-Ha *, col-
liding with its forcefield aura, to which it clung. The
restraints and the blade shafts shrank to nothing as the
forcefield flickered with bands and went out. Kao Chih
reached over to snatch up his beam pistol then gleefully
aimed it at the Legion machine-creature, which was now
lying on its side, a motionless, lopped-off steel tentacle.

'Your weapon is as useless as it asserted, Gowchee.
But you have a neural device in your pocket which
might immobilise it - use it! We have only seconds
before it recovers.'

A neural device? A quick search of his pockets pro-
duced ... of course, the nerve-blocker which
Compositor Henach had used on him back on the
Chaurixa ship! Trusting to Gorol9's advice, he dived at
the Legion Instrument, which was starting to right itself.
He grabbed it round the middle with one arm and with
his other hand took the nerve-blocker and rammed it
into the joint between two of the thing's articulated seg-
ments. A panel opened in the side of it and a tool-tipped
arm lashed out at him. While fending it off with his
pistol, he had to use his body weight to hold the Legion
machine-creature down as he desperately shoved the
nerve-blocker's flexible arms into the joint gap, praying
that it would work.

'Betrayer! - you have betrayed life and aided ... dead
machines . . .'

'I have my honour,' Kao Chih said, gritting his teeth
against the pain of his wounded hand, slashed by the
tool-wielding arm. 'And the satisfaction of knowing that
you are ended . . .'

But the flickering aura went out and suddenly he
realised that he was talking to a lifeless piece of machin-
ery.

Light hung all around in layered veils, just visible
through his overwhelming exhaustion. The voice of the
warpwell Sentinel was booming somewhere overhead,
an exchange involving Gorol9. Pilot Yash was close by,
shaking his shoulder, saying that a company of
Brolturan troops would soon be on top of them. Kao
Chih tried to sit up, but instead he flopped onto his
back, staring up at the chamber ceiling, his tongue mutt,
his limbs numb, his flesh as cold as the wintry radiance
that surged over him like a tide.

He never lost consciousness. Everything was lucid
and he felt quite alert, despite the dreamlike swirl and
eddy of images, his mother and father bidding him
farewell at the dockside at Agmedra'a, the Roug
Tumakri riding with him in the strange AI cart at
Blacknest . . . then instead of Tumakri it was the
Chaurixa surgeon, Compositor Henach, who was shar-
ing the cart's cramped interior. 'Ah, the unblemished
human brain,' he was saying. 'A remarkable canvas for
convergence .. .' Then the cart turned and shot into a
dark corridor full of swaying shadows and, oddly for a
deep space station, the smells of growing things. There
were the sounds of familiar voices and a glow. Eyes
open, he realised that he was lying on his back and
raised his head . . . and regretted it when pain clamped
his temples.

'Back with us, Human?'

The Voth was seated on a fallen log, next to a conical
lamp giving off a buttery yellow light. Propped against
the trunk were the remains of Gorol9, who was regard-
ing him steadily. 'You were poisoned by the Legion
Instrument's desperate self-defence,' the droid said.
'Luckily, Pilot Yash had some anti-toxin infusers in his
big bag so the only effects you suffered were the psy-
choactive ones.'

Yash grinned. 'It's a good high - so I've been told . . .'

Kao Chih looked around him - they were gathered in
a hollow in a darkened forest, beneath an overhanging
rock bearded with moss and grass from which water
dripped. It was raining out in the night, a subdued whis-
pering from the dim shapes of trees, leaves rustling,
branches swaying in occasional breezy gusts. He could
smell and savour the odours of a vastness of biomass
and he shivered, cold and excited - this was Darien, a
living world as lush as Pyre once was.

'How . . .' He paused to cough. 'How did we get
away?'

'Since the immediate threat was over, the Sentinel of
the well graciously condescended to translocate us away
from the Brolturans, although it had to be certain that
this was in accord with the general tenor of previous
commands,' said Gorol9. 'The remains of the
Instrument have been sent to the Construct.'

'Jelking machine mind,' Yash said. 'My bank has a
branch on Yonok - why couldn't it send me there?'

'So where are we now?' said Kao Chih.

'Roughly seventeen miles west of Hammergard,' said
a voice from nearby.

Looking up, he saw two men descending the slope
just along from the overhang - one was short and wiry
with sandy-coloured hair while the other was taller with
dark hair. He recognised them as Europeans, with that
wide-eyed look of astonishment that he had only ever
seen in the Retributofs data files. Both were wearing
blue cheek patches from which pickup stalks protruded.

'Greetings, Humans Cameron and McGrain,' said
Gorol9, then to Kao Chih it said, 'I have fashioned small
translators for them so that we may understand each
other.'

'Very smart wee gadgets,' said the taller of the two,
his odd Anglic dialect smoothly translated by Kao
Chih's linguistic enabler. 'But I'm glad to see that you've
recovered. When myself and Rory got here an hour ago
ye were still in the grip of that drug . . .'

'Totally out of it,' said the other man with a grin.

'Oh yes - this is Rory McGrain and I'm Greg
Cameron,' said the first.

Kao Chih nodded courteously from where he lay. 'It
is an honour to meet you. But how did you know where
to find us?'

'Well, one of our allies has a certain understanding
with the warpwell Sentinel,' said the man Cameron. 'He
couldn't say anything other than to get to this spot with
all speed, and after we did your friends filled us in on a
few details about what happened up at Giant's Shoulder
and what you did.' He shook his head. 'Incredible, just
incredible. But neither of them know how ye became
involved with this Legion cyborg creature, or where
you're from.'

Kao Chih sighed and, ignoring his headache, got to
his feet. 'Honourable sirs, my story has more twists and
turns than a bowlful of noodles. But first I must intro-
duce myself properly and fully - my name is Kao Chih
of the Human Sept of Agmedra'a, and my people origi-
nally came from Earth 150 years ago, fleeing the Swarm
invasion . . .'

The two men listened in astonishment as he told them
about the beautiful world where the Tenebrosa had
finally landed, the colony established by his forebears,
the Hegemony mercenaries and the prospector ships
that strip-mined the planet, the exodus of half the
colony to the Roug orbital, Agmedra'a, and their inden-
ture under conditions of secrecy. His voice shook as he
recounted their sorrowful tragedy and he saw their faces
grow sombre.

'But then news came of the discovery of your world
and, at the Roug's instigation, I was sent to find you,
meet your leaders and warn them of the Hegemony.
Most importantly, I was to ask permission for my
people to come and settle here and be part of your com-
munity. But now I find that the Hegemony and its
Brolturan vassals have taken control of your world,
which has a secret that is attracting the agents of an
ancient enemy.' He shook his head. 'That Earth has
become a willing ally of the Hegemony is almost the
worst of it. Freedom for both our peoples seems a for-
lorn hope.'

'You musn't lose hope, Kao Chih,' said Cameron.
'Hard struggles lie ahead, more than I care to think about,
but only yesterday one of us gave them a humiliating
kicking and that, together with your astounding victory,
all three of you - that gives me hope. The task ahead of us
is monumental and our enemies are innumerable, strong
and vicious, but if we don't take them on, who will?' He
glanced at the Construct droid, Gorol9. 'And sometimes
help can come from the most unexpected quarter ...' His
gaze swung back to Kao Chih. 'And the last thing I was
expecting was you! Just knowing that your people, the
colonists from the Tenebrosa, have survived all those
calamities and are eager to come here and join us - that
gives me hope and strength!'

He held out his hand. 'Kao Chih - welcome to
Darien.'

For a brief moment, he stared back at the man
Cameron, wondering if anything else lay behind the
open smile, the clear brown eyes, and the apparent
integrity. Then he relented, deciding that he would trust
Greg Cameron. Today.

'Thank you, Mr Cameron.'

And they shook hands, smiles widening to grins.

EPILOGUE

ROBERT

Awakening was a slow ascent. He arose gradually from
black oblivion, a no-sound, no-sight, no-place which
steadily dissolved into a blurred grey ocean, dream's
drowsy shallows. It felt as if he was struggling through
thick mud to get to the shore and the lighter it became,
the more he began to remember ... things, faces, places,
nightmarish encounters. In his thoughts he shied away
from those grotesqueries, but they trailed after him, one
seizing his shoulder in an icy, bone-chilling grasp ...

Suddenly his eyes were open and he was aware of
lying on his side in a comfortable bed, in a room full of
natural light, a cool, dawn rosiness. There was a faint,
sweet fragrance in the air and for a second he imagined
that he was in their townhouse on the outskirts of Bonn.
But he knew he couldn't be there, because he knew that
he had been on Darien not long ago.

'Good morning, Robert Horst. How are you feeling?'

The voice sounded vaguely androgynous with a
midrange pitch and lack of expressive highs and lows. It
was coming from the foot of the bed, and when he
pushed back the lightweight cover and sat up he saw an
odd figure garbed in dark blue robes and wearing what
seemed to be an archaic, fully concealing pale mask. But
when it spoke the pale lips moved.

'I am a proximal of the Construct - when you converse
with me, you are conversing with the Construct...'

'Why won't the Construct see me in person?' he said.

'The Construct is a fabricated entity. Its artificial sen-
tience, intelligence and cognition centres interact at
many levels yet their physical manifestors have definite
boundaries.'

'So you represent the Construct - is this your actual
appearance?'

'No, Robert Horst - this was adopted to make you
feel less dislocated. Would you prefer that I present my
actuality to you?'

'Yes, I would, thank you.'

The proximal reached up and pulled away the mask-
head, tugged off the blue robes and compressed it all
into a small bundle. Its appearance was spindly and
metallic, a slender, attenuated hourglass torso with plain
rod-like legs and arms, and a head which was a slender
cylinder with a rounded top. Chrome-like surfaces
seemed etched with strange geometrical patterns or dec-
orated with textured squares resembling aluminium,
brushed gold, opaque glass, or obsidian, while the clear
areas reflected the light and outlines of the room.

'So, Robert Horst, how are you feeling?'

'Actually, I feel very well.' And so he was, alert and
lacking in his normal chorus of aches and twinges, while
also feeling Harry's absence like a missing tooth.

'Excellent, Robert Horst - the remedial process has
been a success. You were seriously wounded during your
courageous battle with the vermax. The touch of the
kezeq shard disrupted your flesh and threatened your
central nervous system, leaving us little choice but to
take steps. So that your body could regenerate the lost
tissues, we suspended your entropic essence then, once
health was restored, we reset it to an earlier stage.'

'I'm sorry, er, Construct, but I don't quite under-
stand.'

A shiny, metallic arm extended, holding out a small
oval mirror. 'Your physical age is now twenty years
younger than it was.'

Stunned, he looked in the mirror and saw smooth
skin, fair hair not yet showing the silver (and beginning
to grow back to that earlier hair line). The eyes were
more alert and some of that old sharpness was back, yet
he still saw the shadow of Rosa's death there, hints of a
sorrow that would probably never fade. Then he
frowned.

'I am very grateful for your help, for all this,' Robert
said. 'But I cannot help thinking that there is a price for
it.'

'You are most perceptive.' The proximal paused. 'You
have arrived at a crucial decision nexus in a situation that
has been developing for some time. To encapsulate it
would be to strip away vital details, yet you deserve to
know some of the background, so I will attempt a sum-
mary. As you may have known before, hyperspace has
many levels, and I think you now realise that those levels
go down much further than you or the Sendrukans sus-
pect, being the remains - attenuated, drained, foolishly
destroyed, or even savagely pillaged - of previous uni-
verses. When a universe dies, a new one is born at some
point, somewhere, and its birth draws forth the energies
and forces and matter-matrix-membranes of the old,
which intermingle in that glorious outburst of newness
and creation. The carcass of the old sinks down to join
the compacted strata of its predecessors, in which the
survivors continue to eke out strange and convoluted
existences.

'Wars there have been a-plenty down the ages, but in
recent times curious events have been taking place - the
disappearance of certain survivor races, the appearance
of others thought long dead, raids on peaceful regions,
and a steady, rising background of reasonless, near-
random acts of violence. I have my suspicions, mostly to
do with the remnants of the Legion of Avatars, a vicious
enemy which besieged the Forerunners' galaxy 100,000
Human years ago, even though the depths of their incar-
ceration should make it impossible for them to send any
of their number upward to higher levels.

'Therefore I want to send an emissary to treat with an
old and powerful sentience called the Godhead which
resides in its own secluded corner of hyperspace, one
deeper than the Legion's prison but away in a different
region altogether. This sentience will almost certainly
possess vital information about other denizens and ves-
tigial species of the lower depths, but it will not
communicate with any artificial lifeform, only organic
ones, which is why you are here -1 asked the Sentinel of
the warpwell to send me an Uvovo or a Human, and it
chose you. Unfortunately, longitudinal warpwell travel is
hard to judge, which is why you appeared near the
Abfagul lithosphere in the stone stratum of the Teziyi.'

Robert felt as if he should be angry at having been
snatched away, but he knew that the alternative would
have been very unpleasant. This situation, including the
unexpected rejuvenation, certainly had its positive
aspect, so for the moment, he decided to give the prox-
imal's proposal serious consideration.

'What has happened to my AI companion?' he said. 'I
have an implant . . .'

'I am sorry, Robert Horst, but we removed it. These
fabricated entities are closely linked to the Hegemony's
AI hypercore which resides in the first tier of hyper-
space - they are intrinsically untrustworthy. However, I
freed it from its imperatives and released it into the tier-
net.'

The proximal moved smoothly towards the door. 'I
realise that this is a lot of information to absorb so I
have arranged a new companion for you. She will be
able to answer questions and aid your adjustment.'

Before he could say anything more, the proximal
strode out of the door. He sighed, wondering who this
'she' was, and stared at the reflection in the mirror. Then
he heard approaching footsteps and looked up to see
Rosa enter the room.

'Oh, Daddy, did he not open the window? Here, let
me do it - you've got to see the Garden.'

'Rosa, you're ... how can you be .. .'

Then it struck him. If the Construct had given his AI
Harry its freedom, then might it not do the same for the
Rosa in the intersim device?

'Are you . . . the simulation?' he said, embarrassed
somehow.

She smiled. 'That's right. The Construct had this syn-
thetic form made for me and gave me full autonomy
and empathy and curiosity sub-imperatives.' She swung
open the shutters. 'There it is, Daddy, look! Isn't it
amazing?'

From the window he looked out over fabulously intri-
cate, descending levels of stone and metal terraces and
roofs, intermingled with niche gardens, small orchards,
many individual trees, even a few greenhouses. And at
irregular intervals a span of metal road or catwalk pro-
jected outwards to a cluster of similar buildings just
hanging there, not dissimilar to the wider, lower thor-
oughfares that extended to larger agglomerations of
habitats. And everywhere he looked he saw machines of
every function and design ethos and he began to wonder if
the buildings were not so much habitats as parking bays
or repair shops.

'You're right, Rosa,' he said. 'It is amazing, and
strange.'

'This is the Garden of the Machines, a kind of sanc-
tuary, a waypoint for AIs and AS machines, a place for
recuperation or repair. It's also the Construct's head-
quarters and home to all its followers and servants. If
you could look back at it from out there it would look
like an island mountain suspended in midair, with other
buildings and walkways on its underside .. . oh, but
there will be plenty of time for sightseeing when we get
back.'

'Get back?'

'From your mission to open a dialogue with the
Godhead, Daddy!'

'But I haven't . . . well, I'm still mulling over the
details.'

'Oh, but the Construct explained it all to me and it's
very straightforward. If you don't go, the Construct will
have to send one of his semiorganics instead, which the
Godhead may just completely ignore. Please say you'll
go, Daddy, please.'

He knew when to yield, especially with the suspicion
that Rosa might be the one asked to go in his stead.
That Construct knows how to coerce without being
obvious.

'Okay,' he said. 'I'll go.'

She hugged his arm, delighted. 'It's going to be excit-
ing, Daddy, an exciting adventure!'

JULIA

Aboard the Deucalion, the Heracles's pinnace, now en
route to Baramu Freeport, Julia Bryce rose from the
data station, thanked the systems op - who doubled as
the small ship's comms officer - and left the tiny console
bay, heading forward. The'passage was narrow and
twice she had to squeeze past crew members going the
other way, an unpleasant experience, but she was getting
used to it, or at least enough not to shudder visibly.

Back in their cramped stateroom, Irenya, Thorold
and Arkady were playing two-board switch-chess while
Konstantin lounged in one of the middle bunks, making
notes as he watched the game from above. Eyes glanced
her way and she met each one.

'Find any?' she said.

Arkady, still studying the spread of pieces, held up his
thumb.

'Obvious one in the light fitting ...' A finger came
out. 'Not so obvious one in the wall clock. Both . ..' He
snapped his fingers.

Irenya looked up. She was a tall, willowy blonde who
always asked the first questions.
'What did you discover?'

'The same as before,' Julia said, sitting at the small
table. The game was abandoned as all attention focused
on her. 'The pinnace's tiernet connection confirms what
that cut-down Imisil one told us - no one knows how to
create dark antimatter, except us.'

'Can we really be sure? Tiernets cannot contain the
sum total of knowledge.' - Thorold, doubter, sceptic
and necessary irritant, as well as being a superb particle
physicist.

'There are no successful theories or experimental
data, nor any papers referring to the same,' she said.
'Nor is there any sign of T-triadic radiation being
detected anywhere.'

'Unless some megalomaniac scientist is hiding a dark-
matter lab in another deepzone somewhere,' Thorold
said.

'The question is, what do we say when we get inter-
rogated by Earthsphere Intelligence?' Julia said.
'Sundstrom was desperate to keep us out of the hands of
the Hegemony, but look where we ended up.'

'If we tell Earthsphere, the Hegemony will know
about it in hours,' said Konstantin, still sprawled on his
bunk. 'Their AIs talk to each other.'

'There are several Al-implanted people on board this
vessel,' said Irenya. 'They unsettle me.'

'Earthsphere Intelligence is going to want an expla-
nation,' said Arkady. 'We should feed them some
alternative theories - God knows we were involved in
enough lunatic military projects down the years.'

Heads nodded.

'Good idea,' said Julia. 'We should all think about
that.' She regarded them for a moment. 'Something else
we should consider are our long-term options, whether
we eventually want to return to Darien or go some-
where else.'

Irenya looked surprised. 'I'd always assumed that we
would be going home.'

Thorold snorted. 'Home! Why should we give any
extra consideration to that place - what did they ever do
for us? After all, we know what they did to us . . .'

'There are a lot of other Human colonies within the
boundaries of Earthsphere, as well as the Vox Humana
League,' said Arkady. 'Assuming that we find a way to
go where we want, perhaps we could travel out to one
of them and start new lives there.'

'Or we could start our own colony somewhere,' said
Konstantin.

Apart from Julia, no one looked at him, a measure of
their disregard for the notion.

'One thing you should remember,' Julia said.
'Elsewhere we will be seen as oddities or even cripples -
on Darien we have status.'

'Back there, we were despised,' Thorold said. 'Guilt
and fear defined our existence in that place.'

Irenya shook her head. 'I'm sorry, Thorold, but there
is more to it than that - a lot of the norms feel shame
and want to reach out to us.'

'Sentimental imagination,' Thorold said. 'Perhaps
you're the one feeling ashamed ...'

Julia leaned forward before the bickering could get
going.

'Reflect on all these aspects - if and when the chance
arises for us to pursue our own course, we need to have
a consensus.'

There was a murmur of agreement and Julia moved
her chair away from the table, took out the notes she
had made in the console bay and began reading. But
her thoughts continued to circle the issues she had
steered the rest past.

We are poorly socialised, she thought. Ask us to
debate topics that have nothing to do with theoretical or
technical matters and we retreat into superficial group
platitudes.

And Irenya was more than half right. For months
now, Julia had had a number of suspicions about the
relationship between the Enhanced and the 'norms', the
normal colonists, which were crystallised by what
Major Karlsson's sister, Solvjeg, had said to her back at
the Akesson farmhouse. At first she had asked about
Ulrike, whom Julia remembered very well - she had
been a genius at everything, including relating to people,
yet there was something in her that could not bear to be
alive and which eventually won.

Then, as Pyatkov had begun ushering everyone back
on the bus, Solvjeg had said something stunning - 'You
are all unique, Julia. You might be our society's mistake
but you still come from us; our society is your parent so
that makes you everyone's children. You need us, just as
we need you, and not just because we want to be for-
given.'

The words had transfixed her, rocked her to the core.
Then it had been time to go, so, not knowing what to
say, she had solemnly shaken the older woman's hand
and got on the bus. Since then the words had gone
through her head time and time again, making her wish
that she had said something.

And then there are the things I wish I had not said,
she thought, remembering her encounter with Catriona
on Nivyesta just a few days ago. Perhaps that's why we
should go home, so that we can say the right things.

LEGION

On Yndyesi Tetro, below the murkiest, chilly depths of
its great western ocean, at the foot of a lightless fissure,
a pain-weary mind considered the facts of failure. One
of his treasured scions was dead, its purpose unfulfilled.
The information had been relayed to him by the other
two, who assured him that they were working tirelessly
towards the goal, the prize, although taking separate
paths.

Grief assailed him, sorrow at a loss both strategic
and physical. He was weakened, lessened, yet he clung
resolutely to his purpose and to the doctrines of conver-
gence that gave him strength to endure and to plan. It
was possible to regenerate neural substrate, but only
certain orders of Legion knights had that capability.
Until the survivors of the Forerunners' punishment were
released from the crushing, hellish depths of hyperspace,
he would have to make do without succour in this black
and silent existence, entombed in his watery abyss.

Despite his other two scions' assurances, doubt
gnawed at him - what if the despised machine-minds of
the Hegemony found out how to break the Sentinel's
control over the warpwell? Or worse, if that windup
toy, the Construct, devised a way of closing the well
altogether?

The conclusion was inevitable - he could not remain
here. As difficult and dangerous as it would be, he
would have to rise from his millennia-long refuge and
make the long hyperspace crossing to the Human
colonyworld, Darien. Carapace plates would have to be
patched, suspensor modules recharged, biofeeds
repaired, sensors rerouted, perhaps even remounted, and
nourisher tanks replenished in full. It would mean
taking chances, scavenging the ocean bed and nearby
shoreline for raw materials, not to mention looking fur-
ther afield for fresh, undamaged resources. There would
be exertion, risk and pain.

That night, a desalination plant on a sparsely inhab-
ited stretch of the western coast was broken into and its
storeroom pillaged. The next day, 30-odd miles to the
south, a chemicals plant was found to have been like-
wise raided when the owners arrived to open up. The
day after that, about 50 miles to the north, a bridge
crossing a wide rivermouth failed and a freight train full
of freshly milled steel crashed down into the waters.

Thirty hours later, a ferocious, sky-blackening storm
tore in from the western ocean, battering the coastline
with high waves, sending gusts of rain screaming inland.
At the height of the gale, three ships went down in the
heaving seas, a 300-foot, double-hulled cargo-hauler
with a forty-strong crew, mostly Henkayan and
Gomedrans, a half-empty timber barge ripped from its
moorings, and a vehicle ferry caught in the fury as it
tried to make for port on one of the larger offshore
islands. A few messages appealing for help were received
by coastal rescue units, after which there was only
silence. Many knew that vessels sinking in such unfath-
omable depths were usually considered unrecoverable.

When calmer weather returned, recovery craft dili-
gently searched the area but found very few ejecta, the
shattered remains of wooden fittings and no bodies.
Over the next few days the search was scaled back, news
reports became scarcer, shoreline clearup operations
were finished, and only a handful of small ships and
boats hired by grieving relatives continued to sweep
the waters. Until the fourth night after the storm, when
a Bargalil mariner on board a lugger noticed something
glowing with a bright blue radiance down in the
depths. She raised the alarm and the rest of the crew
rushed up on deck in time to see a long, irregular shape
erupt from the sea on a pillar of plasma energies. From
a blasted crater in the waters, superheated steam flew up
and swirled outwards in pale shells of vapour while
webs and curtains of water were drawn up after the
ascending craft. Some on board the lugger had been
scalded by the steam and all had flattened themselves
on the deck, craning their heads to stare fearfully as
the strange thing roared up into the night sky and was
gone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As most writers would surely know, a true and compre-
hensive page of acknowledgements would require tips of
the hat going out to manifold persons far and wide. But
in the interests of brevity, clarity, maybe even hilarity, I'll
have to leave out half the human race (y'all know who
you are) and direct thankees to those whose own works
have inspired me to launch myself full-bodied upon the
mighty task of space opera, them being Eric Brown, Bill
King, David Brin, Dave Wingrove, Iain Banks, Ken
Macleod, Gary Gibson, Ian Mcdonald, Vernor Vinge,
Dan Simmons, the Big Three - Asimov, Heinlein and
Clarke - Ian Watson, Neal Asher, Jack Vance, Andre
Norton, and, undoubtedly, a host of others that my fee-
bletastic brain has failed to bring to mind. Checksum
failed, assuredly.

In addition, mention must be made of those stalwart
pioneers of Scottish spec-fic, the Glasgow SF Writers
Circle, as well as our Edinburgh counterparts, and the
redoubtable Andrew J Wilson. Munificent thanks
should also be extended to John Parker at MBA Literary
Agency, and by no means least to my editor, Darren
Nash, whose critical eagle-eye (some kind of editorial
special perception) and amiable, enthusiastic persistence
kept me and the book on track. Encouragement and
rethink-jogging came from other quarters at various
points along the book's timeline, from the likes of John
Jarrold, Joshua Bilmes, Stewart Robinson, John Marks,
Eddie Black and the copy editors at Orbit.

Musical accompaniment was provided by the likes
of Pallas, Fish, Eisbrecher, Colony5, Robert Schroeder,
Klaus Schulze, Racer X, Ozric Tentacles, Opeth, the
amazing Mustasch, as well as such doomlords as
Penance, Novembre, Candlemass, Paradise Lost, and
Krux, as well as Paisley's preacher of prog, Graeme
Fleming, and Sheffield's missionary of metal, Ian Sales.
KDI!

about the author

Michael Cobley was born in Leicester,
England, and has lived in Glasgow, Scotland,
for most of his life. He has studied
engineering, been a DJ and has an abiding
interest in democratic politics. His previous
books include the Shadowkings dark fantasy
trilogy, and Iron Mosaic, a short story
collection. Seeds of Earth, book one of the
Humanity's Fire sequence, is his first full-
length foray into space opera.

Find out more about Michael Cobley and
other Orbit authors by registering for the free
monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net

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