CHAPTER NINE

Lawrence's flight to Earth lasted several weeks. He didn't have any of the claustrophobic cabin restrictions and mind-rot routines that were the norm throughout his every subsequent flight. Passengers traveling from Amethi were a rarity; there were only eight on board the Eilean when it activated its compression drive. It meant only one life support wheel was active. But even then he had a whole family cabin to himself, and the rest of the place to roam through. The crew tended to ignore him, assuming he was some rich brat whose overindulgent Board family had paid for the flight and a tour around Earth. He never even registered with the other passengers, McArthur ultraexecutives who spent the whole time interfaced with their personal AS. He got to spend as much time as he wanted in the gym, while the rest of his waking hours were taken up accessing the ship's extensive multimedia library.

It should have been, he decided later, golden-age space travel, slow and leisured. The only possible equivalent was a voyage in a 1930s-vintage airship, although those would probably have better food. And a decent view.

Perfect, if he could just have forgotten about her. But the loneliness and relative isolation contrived to tweak every tiny memory into a full-on reverie. The color of a graphic display reminded him of a certain dress she wore, exactly that shade of turquoise. Food was a meal they had shared once. Menus on the multimedia library brought back the hours they spent accessing together, curled up in each other's arms on the couch in his den.

Starflight, the desire of his life, was made wretched by the love of his life. Ironies didn't come much worse.

Earth, however, did not disappoint. During the orbital transit flight from Glencoe Star, McArthur's Lagrange point base, he spent almost the whole time pressed up against one of the ship's four viewports watching the planet grow larger—blissfully unaware of the radiation threat. He'd thought his departing view of Amethi to be the most wondrous sight of his life, with its surface features of ocher, ash and white, and Nizana's dusky radiance reflected from Barclay's Glacier. But Earth with its vibrant montage of living colors made his heart ache as it grew closer and brighter. He landed in a Xianti, bitter at the spaceplane's lack of windows.

McArthur's principal spaceport was Gibraltar, the Rock's inhabitants still stubbornly clinging to their independence from Spain, if not the European Federation. Their government council had negotiated a deal with McArthur, involving liberal taxes in exchange for infrastructure investment and a mutual noninvolvement/liability clause.

The politics went clean over Lawrence's head. Once he was out of the spaceplane and through the arrivals hall (where he generated a brief flurry of interest from security— uneasy at allowing a Board family member to wander around unaccompanied), all he wanted to do was get outside and experience the romance of the Old World. He walked away from the terminal building that now occupied the site of the ancient RAF base and went down to the huge spaceplane runway that the company had built, a five-kilometer strip of concrete stabbing out into the Med. For hours, he simply stood in wonder on the boulders that skirted the concrete, looking out across the water. Spain was on one side, an unbroken swath of urbanization that ran along the shoreline right over the horizon, with the mottled brown slopes of low mountains rising up behind the tumbling sprawl of whitewashed buildings. Africa haunted the other side of the sea, a dark, featureless stripe highlighting the boundary between water and sky.

For some strange reason, given how he'd actually flown across half of Amethi, this planet seemed much larger. He simply couldn't get used to the scale of the elements. So much water, lapping and frothing around his feet. It gave off the most potent smell, hundreds of subtle scents blending together in a harsh salt zest. And the air... nothing had ever been so warm in his life, he was sure of it, not even the tropical domes. The heat and humidity made it hard to breathe.

It wasn't until the sun fell and the lights from the Costa twinkled over the swelling water that he turned around and made his way into Gibraltar town. Money wasn't too much of a problem; his Amethi credits were easily changed at the bank for EZ Dollars. With the resulting balance he'd be able to stay in any average hotel for several months before even thinking about getting a job. That wasn't what he wanted.

He remained in Gibraltar for several days, spending nearly all of the time accessing the global datapool, filling in significant gaps in his political education. The one thing Roselyn had been truthful about, he was relieved to discover, was Zantiu-Braun. Most companies were reducing their starflight operations to an essential minimum: keeping in contact with existing colonies and asset-realization missions on planets newly acquired from their struggling founder companies. While almost alone, Z-B maintained a small exploration fleet, and was still establishing colonies through their portals. Although even they weren't building any new starships. All the Lagrange shipyards had either been mothballed or turned into service and maintenance bays.

Starflight really was an era that was drawing to a close. But it wasn't over yet Even at its current wind-down rate, there would be ships flying for decades.

A week after arriving on Earth, he took a train to Paris and walked into Zantiu-Braun's headquarters. The personnel division, like McArthur security before them, were slightly flustered by his origin. However, the AS and human supervisor managed to convince him his best way into the exploration fleet was through their general Astronautics Division. He didn't, they pointed out, have enough money to buy himself an initial stake in Z-B large enough to select his career path. What he should do, like hundreds of thousands before him, was get in on the bottom rung and earn the stake necessary to make the transition. As an added advantage, people who applied from in-house were always given preferential selection over those coming from outside. His lack of a university education was dismissed as unimportant at this stage: Z-B always offered educational sabbaticals to any staff member eager to progress up through the company structure. And as it happened, there were openings in an Astronautics Division that would serve as an excellent primer to their starship officer college. Had he ever thought of a career in strategic security?

Two days later he was on the train to Toulouse.

Eight months after that, he was in space again, heading for the Kinabica system. He and Colin Schmidt, the two newest members of Platoon 435NK9, were held in pretty high contempt by their fellow squaddies.

Kinabica was one of the earliest star systems to be settled, and in two and a half centuries it'd achieved a respectable socioeconomic status, with a high-level technology base. Quite how and why its founding company, Kaba, had divested itself of such a primary asset was never detailed in the briefings the platoon were given. Kinabica with its population of seventy million was now effectively self-supporting. All the principal investment had been made. There was no more heavy-duty industrial plant to be shipped out, no more biochemical factories or food refineries required, no mining equipment that couldn't be built locally. Everything was there, in place, wired up and chugging away merrily.

"It's because there's no dividend," Corporal Ntoko told Lawrence one day during the flight. Like every newbie, Lawrence was filling his day with questions, though he asked a lot more than Colin. Ntoko had taken some pity on him and supplied him with a few answers. It did at least stop the questions for a while. "Kaba has poured money into Kinabica ever since its discovery, and it's getting virtually nothing in return. The whole place is a rotten stake for investors on Earth."

"But it's a whole planet," Lawrence insisted. "It must be profitable."

"It is, but only within its own star system. Suppose they produce a memory chip with a density equal to anything on Earth: they still have to ship it across fifteen light-years to sell it. While any Earth factory producing the same kind of chip has only got a couple of thousand kilometers to reach its consumer population, and that's by train or bulk cargo ship. Which transport method is always going to be more expensive?"

"Okay, so Kinabica should produce something unique. That's how real trade works, an exchange of goods between supplier and consumer on both sides."

"That's the theory, sure. But what can Kinabica produce that Earth can't? Even if they got lucky and designed a neurotronic pearl way ahead of anything on Earth, it would only take a couple of months for any of our companies to retro-engineer it. At our current level of manufacturing technology, the only production that makes sense is local production. Starflight is just so goddamn expensive."

"Then why are we doing this?"

"Because asset realization is the one thing that can justify interstellar flight. On Earth, the concept is plain digital accounting, swapping figures around in spreadsheets. There's very little actual money involved. Z-B accepted Kaba's negative equity loading to help with its own starship operation funding problem; the two complement each other perfectly, provided you have the balls to see it through. That's why we're out here in a tin can flying faster than a speeding photon, to turn all that nice corporate financial theory into dirty physical practice. Z-B was in almost the same boat as Kaba was when it came to financing our starflight division; they'd laid out a trillion-dollar expenditure over the last couple of centuries and have precious little on the balance sheet to show for it, except for fifty multibillion-dollar starships with nowhere to go. Except now we have Kinabica's debt on our books, we can legitimately employ our own starships to collect some equity. As we've essentially written off the planet's founding investment debt, all we need is the products from their factories to sell on Earth. That way, the production costs are simply cut out of the equation, so now all the money realized by the sales of Kinabica's high-tech goodies goes directly into maintaining Z-B's starships, the strategic security division, and servicing the equity debt. If the accountants do their sums right, we also come out with a profit."

"Sounds like piracy to me," Lawrence said.

Ntoko laughed at the youth's surprise. "You got it, my man."

Platoon 435NK9 was scheduled to land on Floyd, a large moon orbiting Kinabica. While the rest of the Third Fleet platoons would be trying to keep a lid on Kinabica's resentful and resourceful population, they would be intimidating the three thousand inhabitants of Manhattan City.

Floyd was just large enough to hold on to an atmosphere, a thin argon-methane envelope that occasionally snowed ammonia crystals during midnight on the darkside when the temperature became seriously chilly. There were no seas or even lakes; its surface was covered with a spongy dull rouge vegetation, like a lichen with dendrite fronds. The claggy stuff covered every square centimeter of the moon, from the top of its few sagging mountain ranges to the bottom of crater basins. Not even boulders or cliffs remained free: its grip was pervasive and total. The locals called it Wellsweed, after the avaricious Martian weed in The War of the Worlds.

From the platoon's landing vehicle it looked as if they were gliding over an ocean of thick liquid, with strange crumpled wave patterns suspended in time, casting long, low shadows. They were having to use heavily modified Terran lunar cargo landers to get down to the ground. The vehicles were normally a simple cylindrical pressurized cabin, with rocket engines, tanks, sensor wands, thermal panels and cargo pods clustered around it in an almost random pattern, while three metal spider legs were flung wide underneath to absorb the impact of touchdown. Now the whole clumsy edifice had been encased in a lenticular composite fuselage designed to protect the vulnerable bulky core from the meager atmosphere during descent and deceleration. It was the closest the human race had ever come to building a flying saucer, though it certainly lacked the smooth elegance normally associated with the concept.

The sun had just risen above the low hills behind Manhattan City, beginning its seventy-five-hour traverse of the sky, when they wobbled in over the spaceport. Various strobe lights and guidance instruments ringed the patch of blasted rock that served the city (all currently dark and inactive). Noxious yellow flame belched out of dark holes in the vehicle's fuselage. Legs unfolded with labored jerky motions, allowing them to settle to the ground with alarming creaking sounds and the muted roar of the rocket jets drumming against the badly stained fuselage.

A second, then a third vehicle from the Third Fleet swooped in gracelessly and touched down beside them. Nothing marked them out as interlopers more than the local ground-to-orbit shuttle craft that were parked along the far side of the spaceport, silver-white spire rocketships standing vertically on curving scimitar fins, their pedigree taken direct from the dreams of the 1950s.

The platoon disembarked, edging clumsily down an aluminum ladder welded to one of the landing legs. On the ground, Lawrence's muscle skeleton AS struggled to compensate for the low gravity, restraining every movement. They jostled, bounced and slithered their way toward the main airlock of Manhattan City. Bulky impact armor worn over the muscle skeleton made it look as if they'd sealed themselves in puffball spacesuits to cover the short distance.

The smaller one-person airlocks only just allowed them to pass through.

It was the combination of Floyd's minerals and the odd biochemistry that Wellsweed employed that had justified the construction of Manhattan City. Essentially it was nothing more than a dormitory town for the refineries and processing plants that produced complex organic molecules that were used by Kinabica's medical and chemical industries—high-value, low-mass products, perfect for Z-B to reclaim and transport back to Earth.

Once the platoons were inside Manhattan, the mission proceeded along more standard lines. The commanding officer delivered his polite ultimatum to the city's administrator, who immediately agreed to all the demands. Technical support teams came in and started going through the inventory and refinery specifications.

There were plenty of suitable products that could be shipped back up to the starship orbiting Floyd. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of anything stored at Manhattan; batches were usually delivered straight down to Kinabica. For some inexplicable reason all Manhattan City's industrial facilities had been shut down five hours after the Third Fleet had emerged from compression.

Platoons were dispatched with Z-B technicians to "assist" city personnel in restarting the production lines with minimum delay.

On day two, Lawrence found himself with Colin, Ntoko and a couple of other 435NK9 squaddies, bouncing and tottering over the ubiquitous Wellsweed into a small crater a kilometer to the north of Manhattan City, where a chemical plant had been dug into the protective insulation of the regolith. They were escorting a pair of Z-B technicians and five of the chemical plant maintenance crew who had been assigned to restart the systems.

He scanned his image-intensifiers around, eager to absorb as much as he could. His first Alien Planet. Admittedly it was different from both Earth and Amethi. He was just slightly disappointed that it wasn't more interesting. Wellsweed made it look as if the whole place had been meticulously foam wrapped ready for storage. He kept looking up at the huge, brilliant crescent of Kinabica hanging above the horizon, wishing he'd drawn that assignment. A genuine new world. The i-i's made it glow enticingly.

Apart from the spaceport, the crater was the first area they'd encountered where the Wellsweed was patchy. Dozens of crude tracks and wheel furrows crisscrossed the floor, cutting right through the vegetation. The center of the crater was home to a series of regular humps, each one a couple of hundred meters long. Ribbed cylindrical heat exchange towers stood on top, resembling the brick chimneys of the Industrial Revolution four centuries and seventeen light-years distant. The dirty soil that had been bulldozed on top of each bunker was speckled with dull rouge blooms of new-sprouting Wellsweed, stains that were gradually spreading and merging. In comparison to the torn carpet on the crater floor, none of the new growths seemed particularly healthy.

The airlock was large enough to hold the whole group. After it cycled, the inner hatch opened into a warren of concrete corridors. Long rectangular windows set in the walls provided views across chambers full of tangled machinery and piping. Blank steel doors led away into offices, workshops and vaults lined with deep storage tanks.

It was bewildering to the squaddies, even with their muscle skeleton HUD visors providing them with a full map of the installation. The technicians and maintenance crew were unfazed, making their way directly to the quiet control center. Within minutes, the management AS had begun speaking to them at half a dozen stations simultaneously, while the big status board began to light up with schematics as the plant came back to life.

"You'd better check out the rest of this place," the senior technician told Ntoko—a reasonably polite way of saying "get lost."

"We're with that," the corporal assured him.

"Check it out for what?" Colin asked as they left the control center.

"Revolutionaries and terrorists, I guess," Ntoko said. "Relax, my man, we pulled an easy duty with this one. Walk around the scenery for six hours, and we're back in the barracks with no harm inflicted."

"I thought there'd be more to it than this," Lawrence admitted.

"There never is, son," Ntoko said cheerfully. "The platoons are only ever here for that one anarchist hothead who doesn't give a shit about collateral and the gamma soak. Everyone else knuckles under and gets on with the job. They might not like us, but they don't cause any trouble."

"Do we ever use the gamma soak?"

"Never have. I doubt we ever will."

"Thank Fate for that."

"It's logic, not fate. If we ever got to a situation where it needs using, we've lost anyway. If things are so out of control you need to kill half a million people to frighten the rest into obeying you, there's not really a hell of a lot of point in using it. That kind of madness will never achieve anything except to twist the level of hostility beyond reason, and with it the probability that we'll ever make it home. Use gamma soak against a planet, and they'll throw everything they've got against the starships by way of retaliation and vengeance." His thick, armored hands tapped against his thigh with a sharp clacking noise. "In any case, I could never give that order. Could you?"

"No, sir," Lawrence said firmly.

"Course not. But you'll still have to shoot your scatter pistol when I tell you."

"Ready for that one, Corp."

"Good man. Now, you and Colin make a sweep through the two eastern bunkers. Make sure there's nobody lurking around avoiding collateral status. It's not that unlikely. Some people just don't trust their fellow citizens to behave. Sad but true."

They made their way along badly lit corridors, taking junctions at random. Infrared, motion detectors, i-i's and sound filters couldn't detect anyone else in the bunker.

"This is a total waste of time," Colin grumbled on the local frequency. "It's not like the planet, where people can hide out away from the cities. We know exactly how many people there are in Manhattan; it's listed in the AS memory."

"Quit complaining. Like the corp says, it's an easy duty."

"Yes, but how's it going to look on our records? I wanted to see some action, perhaps get the chance to earn a commendation."

"Will you relax? Keeping the whole of Manhattan City under control without ever having to fire a shot is like the universe's most perfect operation. And we're part of that. Now that's what'll get you a commendation. The company likes things that go smoothly,"

"Possibly."

Overhead pipes began to gurgle and shake as fluids rushed down them. It had been happening all morning as the plant slowly came back to life. The ambient temperature had risen fractionally as the machines all returned to work. Even through the protective layers of armor and muscle, they could feel vibrations building in the walls and floor.

"Newton, Schmidt, get over here," Ntoko ordered. "Bunker three, section four."

"What's up, Corp?" Lawrence asked.

"Just get here." Ntoko's voice was flat.

"On our way."

They couldn't run. Any real strength applied through their legs would smack them straight up into the ceiling. Instead they moved with long, loping strides, arms raised ready to slap themselves down if the arcs became too high.

As they approached the door to bunker three Colin drew his carbine, taking the safety off.

"Are you crazy?" Lawrence hissed. "Those things are loaded with explosive shells. You could blow a hole clean through the wall."

"We're underground, Lawrence. All I'm going to kill is hostiles and rock."

"And chew up a billion dollars' worth of machinery." Lawrence pulled his own scatter pistol out. The magazine was loaded with toxin darts. "You know policy; assets have priority."

"Fine fucking policy that is," Colin grumbled. A further few words were muttered, which the helmet mike had trouble picking up. Lawrence guessed they were German anyway. Colin always reverted to his native language when he felt stressed. He paused and shoved his carbine back into his holster, removing a maser wand.

Lawrence didn't comment He walked forward, and the bunker door slid open. The main corridor stretched on ahead of them, its tube lights flickering at an almost subliminal frequency.

"We're in the bunker, Corp," Lawrence said.

"Good, now get down here to us."

Lawrence's HUD flicked up the plans for bunker three. Section four was at the end of a side corridor eighty meters away. They started walking toward it "You reckon this is some kind of hazing?" Lawrence asked. He'd switched off his radio, using the armor's external speaker on low volume.

"Not sure," Colin murmured back. "You reckon the corp would pull that kind of stunt?"

"Dunno. He might want to see how we react."

"If he'd just tell us why he wants us."

"Maybe he's been captured."

"Oh, come on!"

"Well, it's possible. Why else is he being..."

Lawrence's armor microphone picked up a scuffling sound. His motion detector registered a fast airwave wash down the main corridor directly behind him. Both of them spun around, assuming a low crouch position, weapons searching for a target. The i-i scoured the walls and floor on high resolution, revealing nothing.

"What the fuck..."

Lawrence switched to the secure suit band. "Corp, is there anyone else in this bunker with us?"

"Nobody's been authorized by the AS, why?"

"Somebody moving around out here."

"Just a minute."

Lawrence and Colin straightened up, keeping their weapons ready.

"Could have been the machinery switching on," Colin said. "No telling what effect it'll have on the sensors."

"The AS should filter it"

"I've checked with our people in the control center," Ntoko said. "Everyone's accounted for. The local AS is relaying camera images to my suit. I can see you two, but there's no one else in here."

"We thought it might be the machinery glitching our sensors," Lawrence said.

"Okay. Keep a watch. And put your i-i's to medium resolution; high-rez produces some weird effects."

"Roger. With you in a minute."

They made the side corridor without further incident and started down. The door at the end was open. Lawrence couldn't see anyone inside, just another big chamber full of black-and-silver machinery, the kind of towering mechanical exhibition that could have come straight out of a steamship's engine room. Thin gases were leaking from pipes; the general noise level rose with every step closer.

An armor-suited figure appeared in the door. "Hi, lads," Meaney called. He raised his arm to wave. Something moved behind him, eclipsing one of the ceiling lights.

"Down!" Lawrence screamed. He and Colin thrust their weapons forward. A target circle flashed across his HUD.

Meaney froze, framing his suit in the doorway. His gauntleted hand suddenly made a move for the carbine holstered on his waist. The dark swirl bobbed about behind him, sliding away from the light. Then it was gone, slithering into the intestinal tangle of pipes and valves.

"Behind you!" Colin yelled.

"What—" Meaney was turning, his carbine half out of the holster. The other two were racing toward him, the AS angling their muscle skeletons so they were leaning forward at a sharp angle, providing a degree of balance in the low gravity.

"Where'd it go?"

"In there, in that gap."

Lawrence jumped up cautiously, gun held out in front, pointing into the metallic crevice ready to fire as his helmet sensors rose up level. The i-i's green tinge revealed a gap that was nothing but a dusky jumble of twisting pipes and looping cables. Infrared showed some of the pipes glowing pink.

He relaxed his trigger finger as he landed on his heels. "Shit! Missed it." His HUD display was registering a high heart rate. Adrenaline hummed eagerly in his ears. This was all way too elaborate for a hazing. He tried to concentrate on his training for unknown territory. Be suspicious. Always.

"What the fuck are you two doing?" Meaney demanded.

"Didn't you see it, for Christ's sake?" Colin said. "It was right behind you. Are your sensors screwed or something?"

Meaney's carbine waved around at the cliff of chemical-processing equipment. "What was behind me?"

"I don't know. Something up there."

"Where?"

"Jesus, what's wrong with your sensors?" Colin asked.

"Nothing's fucking wrong with them."

"Then you must have seen it."

"Seen fucking what?"

Ntoko emerged down an aisle formed by the hulking stacks of machinery. He was holding his scatter pistol ready in his right hand. "Okay, what do you two keensters think you keep seeing?"

"I'm not sure, Corp," Lawrence admitted. "We saw something moving about behind Meaney."

"My sensors didn't track anything," Meaney said.

"Something?" Ntoko said. "A person or a robot?"

"Well, it was up there, and smallish," Lawrence said, trying to recall the shady image.

"It didn't move like a robot," Colin said. "It was fast."

"Could have been a rat," Ntoko said.

"A rat?" Lawrence asked. "Why would Kaba import rats, especially to Floyd? They don't contribute anything valid to the ecology."

"They're not imported, son. They just tag along for the ride. Anywhere in this universe where humans are, you'll find them as well. Sneaky little sons of bitches, as well as vicious."

"There aren't any on Amethi."

"No? Well, then, you were lucky. Now get your AS to run a constant track for small object motion. If anyone sees anything, tell me straightaway. Got that?"

"Yes, Corp."

"Good, now come with me." He marched off back down the aisle he'd come from.

"What did you find here, Corp?" Colin asked, hurrying after him.

"Dust."

"Dust?"

"Yeah, dust. But wrong."

Not for the first time, Lawrence dearly wished he could shrug inside a muscle skeleton. The strange sightings had left him hyped; now the corp was telling them they were here for something different. He couldn't relax. Something else was in here with them, he knew it Ntoko led them into an open space at the end of the machinery, where Kibbo was waiting. On the other side from the refinery equipment were two huge cylindrical tanks embedded in the concrete wall. The domed end of the one facing Kibbo was five meters high, weld seams between the metal petal segments clearly visible. Bolts the size of a fist secured its rim to the end of the tank.

Ntoko squatted down, and beckoned Lawrence and Colin over. He pointed at the floor. "There, see?"

Lawrence upped his light amplifier sensitivity, knowing there must be some abnormality. The original gray concrete floor had been darkened from age and chemical stains. Dust lay amid the small ridges and pocks. He pulled the focus back. There was a broad track leading to the tank. Wheels and feet had been moving to and fro in what must have been a regular procession. Interesting but hardly alarming. He switched to the second tank, but the floor there had an even distribution of dirt.

"So?" he asked cautiously. "They serviced this one recently."

"Try infrared," Ntoko said softly.

The tank with the track leading to it was five degrees wanner than the other.

"That was what clued us in first," Ntoko said. "The signature is completely different. Yet according to the plant's AS inventory they both have exactly the same fluid inside."

"So what's—"

This time everybody's sensors picked up the movement. They swiveled toward the source as one, weapons ready. Against all training and instinct, nobody fired.

An alien was creeping out of the machinery three meters above the ground, hanging on to the conduits and support struts so it was ninety degrees to the vertical. Lawrence's first thought was of disappointment; it was unimpressive. A body the same size as a German shepherd, with six (or eight—he couldn't quite see) spiderlike legs, bent almost double round the knee-hinge joint, which ended in small horned pincers. Its fuzzy scale hide had the shading of a dirty oil-stain rainbow. The only gross abnormality, a true alienness, were the eyes, or what he assumed were the eyes: chrome-black buds along the flanks that were flexing about constantly. There was a head of sorts; one end of the body was bulbous, with a blank slit for a mouth.

It wore some kind of plastic bracelet on each of its limbs, right up by the body joints. They seemed to be fused with the flesh.

"General alert," Ntoko was announcing calmly. "Come in, Ops, we have a contact situation here. Ops?"

Lawrence's HUD was flashing red communication icons at him; the local net relays had crashed. He paid little attention. Another alien was crawling out of the machinery.

"Up there," Meaney croaked.

A third alien was walking along the ceiling above them, its limb pincers gripping the pipes with little effort as it picked its way along.

There were eight limbs, Lawrence saw at last. Definitely nonterrestrial, then. He watched the creatures with a mixture of elation and astonishment. The bracelets were hightechnology artifacts. They were sentient! He was making first contact with sentient aliens.

This moment was everything he'd ever wanted from life. He let out a soft, nervous laugh; incredulous that this should be happening here and now. His hand was trembling. He hurriedly engaged the pistol's safety, then asked the skeleton AS to find the rules governing first contact. They ought to be in the memory somewhere.

"Corp, what do we do?" Colin asked, his voice high and excited. He was shuffling back toward the tank, keeping his weapon trained on the first alien.

"Just stay—"

The alien in front of him extended a limb. A maser wand of very human design was gripped in the pincer. Lawrence stared at it numbly.

"That's..."

The alien fired. Lawrence's HUD instantly displayed a schematic of his armor suit Red icons clustered round like enraged wasps, indicating the energy impact pattern. Superconductor shunts were racing toward burnout as they tried to dissipate the beam.

"Move!"

Lawrence dived to one side, trying to break the maser's lock. The effort sent him flying close to the roof, limbs waving in panic. An automatic weapon opened fire below him, projectiles hammering into concrete and metal. The lights went out. Lawrence hit the floor and bounced almost a meter. His HUD reported that the maser was no longer on him. He waved his scatter pistol about ineffectually.

The space around him was illuminated by the muzzle flashes from two guns. Their topaz strobing revealed huge plumes of thick vapor screeching out of the processing equipment. More aliens were scuttling out of mechanical crevices. He saw two of them lugging a mini-Gatling between them.

"Ho fuck!" He rolled fast, abandoning the pistol and reaching for his carbine.

"How many?" Kibbo yelled.

"Where?"

"What happened to the lights?"

Lawrence's motion detector was rendered useless from the billows of vapor. Infrared struggled to acquire targets through the cloying haze. The i-i simply expanded the swirls in the fog, shading them a sparkly green. Another warning icon flashed, accompanying an audio tone, alerting him to the rapidly increasing toxicity level of the chamber's atmosphere.

A carbine opened fire, sending explosive rounds thudding into the dark. Detonations were swamped by the cloying gas, their flashes turning into a whiteout haze. Visibility was down to fifty centimeters and closing fast "Hold your fire."

Lawrence aimed the carbine in the direction he'd seen the aliens with the mini-Gatling and shot off twenty rounds. "They've got heavy artillery, Corp," he shouted as the weapon juddered in his arms. Explosions pulsed around the bunker. Someone else was shooting as well, small-arms fire. A round slammed into Lawrence's armor below his right pectoral. He was flung into the air, spinning. Red and amber icons traced elaborate circles around him like a protective swarm of holographic birds. Pain thumped straight through the hard outer shell and muscle skeleton to punish his ribs.

The radio channel was a caterwaul of yelling and bawled orders. Nothing made sense. Lawrence landed on his back, the impact pushing the last gasp of air out of his lungs. He dropped the carbine. Something moved under his legs, writhing about urgently, pushing his knees apart. Shock mobilized him instantly, allowing him to overcome his pained daze. He twisted quickly, bending down to grab at whatever was lifting itself up between his legs.

Excruciating pain bit into his leg, just above the knee. Icons reported both his armor and muscle skeleton had been sliced open. His hands rumbled into contact with a broad object, his brain telling him it was the same size as an alien's body. Through the swirling vapor he could just make out the ruddy infrared blur. It was an alien, and one of its limbs was holding a power-blade. Lawrence lunged for the knife, jerking it free from the pincers. He saw the alien's limb snap from the force of his grab, took a breath and punched the body with his free hand, delivering the full power of the muscle skeleton behind the blow. His armored fist ripped straight through the creature's hide, squishing into internal organs.

He almost vomited, pulling his hand free again, bringing with it dripping webs of membrane and gore. Another bullet struck him, sending him sprawling.

"Ceiling," Ntoko bellowed. "Shoot the ceiling out. Explosive shells. Do it now."

Explosions pummeled the concrete above Lawrence. The blastwaves made his battered armor creak from intense pressure stress. He fumbled his hand across the floor, searching for his own carbine. A maser beam washed over him again, prompting a flurry of scarlet symbols, and he jerked himself clear. Small-arms fire was raking the air above him. Some kind of gelatinous sludge was creeping across the concrete floor, slopping against his armor shell.

He found both the alien body and his carbine and rolled onto his back. Half a magazine of explosive shells smashed into the ceiling. Heavy lumps of concrete fell out of the fog in what seemed like slow motion, splashing into the sludge.

"What are we doing?" Meaney asked. "Why aren't we killing them?"

Lawrence slapped another magazine into his carbine. He'd been about to ask the same question.

"Breaching the bunker," Ntoko said. "I'm going to blow this gas and those alien mothers clean into space."

Lawrence opened fire again. Above the explosions he could hear a shrill whistling sound gather strength. Abruptly, the chemical fog was thinning, and the whistle increased to a tormented howl. A slice of sunlight prized its way down through the vapor, quickly expanding. Lawrence's i-i hurried to compensate, throwing up filters. He shifted his aim, letting the carbine shells chew the edge of the widening fissure in the ceiling. A huge, jagged section of concrete blew upward, pummeled by the bunker's venting atmosphere. The last of the gas surged upward, tugging Lawrence off the floor. Then he was tumbling down in absolute silence. Blazing sunlight shone into the bunker, revealing confusion and mayhem. The dense conglomeration of machinery had been torn to ruin, pipes ripped open, stolid processor units shredded. Sprays of fluid and gas were still pumping out, their ragged plumes curving upward before dispersing. Several alien corpses were hanging limply from metal fangs. They'd all been hit by weapons fire, pulping the tawny flesh.

"Come in, Ops, we have an emergency situation," Ntoko said. "Request backup immediately. Receiving hostile fire."

Lawrence's AS confirmed that they'd reestablished communications now that the roof had been split open. He clambered painfully to his feet as Ops began to interrogate Ntoko. Blood was leaking out of his knee where the power-blade had cut through, most of it, he was confident, coming from the skeleton muscle. Lines of pain flared along his torso with every move he made. He could see cracked dints in the armor; scorch marks had blistered the outer layer. "Oh hell," he groaned.

"We beat them." Kibbo's voice had a hysterical edge. "We beat the fuckers."

"What were they?" Colin asked. "Where the hell did they come from?"

"Holy shit, lads," Meaney said. "We've just fought our first interstellar war."

"And won the bastard! We kicked some ass, huh?"

"We did, man. They ain't gonna mess with this platoon again, that's for sure."

"I don't get it," Lawrence said. "What did we do? Why did they shoot?"

"Who cares?" Meaney said. "We are the masters now!" He let out a whoop, raising his arms in a victory salute. He froze. "Holy shit!"

Lawrence looked up. Aliens were crawling along the top of the broken roof, front limbs gingerly probing the blackened concrete edges. Several were easing themselves through the gap, gripping the twisted reinforcement struts. Maser beams stabbed down, playing over the squaddies. They returned fire, using carbines to chew away at the concrete.

"Get to cover," Ntoko ordered. He led them over to the wheezing bulk of machinery, firing as he went.

"They're natives," Lawrence said, shocked at the realization. "They don't need suits to survive, look. They have to be native."

"Big fucking deal," Meaney cried. "What did we ever do to piss them off?" He was shooting as he dodged behind a solid hunk of equipment.

"Stole their land and their women, I guess," Lawrence said.

"That's a real big fucking help, Lawrence," Kibbo yelled. "What is wrong with these alien freaks?"

Colin sent a whole magazine from his carbine roaring into the fractured ceiling, mauling concrete and aliens alike. "We didn't blow the bastards into space, we just let them in, for fuck's sake!" Concrete and flesh rained down over the squaddies.

"No more saturation fire," Ntoko ordered. "Let's conserve what we've got. Pick them off."

Lawrence ducked down into an alcove, then raised his carbine. A crossed targeting circle drew sharp violet bars across the ruined ceiling. He switched to single fire and located an alien. One shot blew its body apart. For aggressors, they were terribly vulnerable. That didn't make a lot of sense.

"How long before the cavalry arrives, Corp?" Colin asked.

"Any minute now. Just hang on in there."

For the first time in his life, Lawrence found he was praying. He wormed his way deeper into the too-small alcove, wondering if the God he knew didn't exist could be of any possible use. Asking couldn't possibly make things worse.

* * *

Simon Roderick hadn't expected to visit Floyd during the mission. As far as Z-B was concerned, the moon was simply a minor manufacturing location, easy enough to control and strip of its wealth. That was during the planning stage. Now those assumptions had changed drastically. And as a result, Simon was having to cope with low gravity and the uncomfortable indignity of a spacesuit.

The wretched devices hadn't improved much since the last time he was in one, eight years ago—an inner layer that exerted a fierce grip on his flesh, and a globe helmet that blew dry, dead air into his face, making his eyes water. The backpack weighed too much, which on Floyd translated into awkward inertia.

It was almost tempting to wear a muscle skeleton, as his three-man escort was doing. But he could never quite decide which was the lesser of the two evils.

His escort remained outside as he stepped into the chemical plant's airlock. After it cycled, he emerged into a drab concrete corridor. A reception committee had assembled for him, six squaddies in full muscle skeletons, carrying improbably sleek and dangerous-looking weapons hardware. Waiting with them were Major Mohammed Bibi, the commander of the Floyd operation, and Iain Tobay, from Third Fleet intelligence, along with Dr. McKean and Dr. Hendra from Z-B's biomedical science staff.

Simon's spacesuit AS confirmed the chemical plant's atmosphere was breathable, and he unsealed his helmet. "Are we expecting further trouble?" he asked lightly, his gaze on the stiff-at-attention squaddies.

"Not expecting, no, sir," Bibi said. "But then we weren't expecting this particular incident to start with."

Simon nodded approvingly. The major was probably over-compensating for the unexpected firefight, but it was prudent. He couldn't fault the response.

They clumped along more identical corridors to bunker three, section four. There was a noticeable difference in the air as soon as the steel door slid open. A mild chemical stew permeated the standard oxygen-nitrogen mix, with ammonia percolating to the top. He wrinkled his nose up.

Dr. McKean noticed the motion. "You get used to it after a while. We've brought in extra atmosphere scrubbers, but the processing machinery is still spilling some volatiles."

"I see." Not that Simon cared. Technical types always overexplained their world.

As he walked down an aisle formed by the machinery, the evidence of the fight grew more pronounced. Pools of dark tacky fluid were oozing out from underneath, while the smells strengthened. Metal became buckled and twisted; torn fangs blackened from explosive heat. When he came out into the open space at the end, the elaborate machinery was simply mangled scrap.

Temporary plastic shielding had been fixed across the broken ceiling, its epoxy adding another acidic fragrance to the melange. Bright sunlight shone through the translucent covering, tinged pink.

The tank that had caused all the trouble was now open, its large cap hinged back against the wall on thick hydraulic pistons, like the entrance to a giant bank vault. A ramp had extended from inside. Several Z-B personnel were moving round in front, helping to clear up the mess and shifting trolleys of equipment up and down the ramp.

Simon saw a couple of them were moving slowly, every movement careful, as if they were in pain. He called up files via his DNI: Meaney and Newton. Both in the firefight, both injured and assigned light (noncombat) duties. He was mildly interested by Newton's background.

"How's it going?" he asked them.

Newton straightened up from a mobile air purifier and saluted. His eyes flicked toward Major Bibi. "Fine, thank you, sir."

"Yes, sir," Meaney said.

"That was a good job you did," Simon said. "Muscle suits aren't exactly configured for head-on military action."

"They're good systems, sir," Newton said. He was relaxing slightly now he knew they weren't being bawled out.

"Now that you've used it in combat, any suggestions?"

"Better sensor integration would have been a help, sir. In fact, better sensors altogether. We were operating blind once the AS opened the gas valves; that muck screwed up our i-i and the motion detector."

"That must have been difficult."

"Corporal Ntoko knew what to do, sir, he held us together. But like you say, if we'd been up against serious opposition we'd have been in trouble."

"I see. Well, thank you for your opinion. I'll see what I can do—not that the designers will listen to an executive, I expect. They don't hold us in terribly high regard."

"But you pay them, sir; they hold that in high regard."

Simon grinned. "They certainly do." He indicated the body of an alien, now covered with a sheet of blue polyethylene. "First encounter with an alien life, Newton?"

"Yes, sir. Shame it was under these circumstances. For a moment I thought they were real aliens."

"Real? I don't think you can get much more real than these."

"I meant sentient, sir. It's a crime what was done to these poor things, rigging them up like waldo robots."

Simon pondered the young man's idealistic dismay. Only the truly young could afford that kind of morals. No wonder Newton had rebelled against his background. "I suppose it is. Have you been in the tank, yet?"

Newton pulled a disapproving face. "Yes, sir."

"Ah, well, my turn now."

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"Will they be punished, sir?"

"Who?"

"The... people who abused the aliens, sir."

"Ah, I see. Well, you must understand, Newton, while we're here, as well as enforcing the local law, we're also subject to it. That's what gives us the legitimate right to procure the assets that we do, because we work within their own legal framework even if they don't like or admit that. What we don't do is impose and enforce foreign laws on the indigenous population. If their constitution says it's okay to sleep with your sister, then that's what we let them get on with. So unfortunately, while enslaving and conducting experiments on animals or aliens is illegal in most countries on Earth, it isn't here."

"You mean they've done nothing wrong!"

"Not at all. They launched a serious assault on legitimate law-enforcement officers in the pursuit of their duty."

"So what's going to happen to them?"

"That's what I'm about to decide."

Simon paused as he was going up the ramp, looking down on yet another discreetly covered alien corpse. "Have you learned anything about them?" he asked McKean.

"Not much," the doctor admitted. "They're native to Floyd. Mammalian. Socially, they're halfway between a pack and a hive. Their whole physiology slows down considerably during the night-time cold. They eat Wellsweed; in fact, they spend ninety percent of their time grazing. And that's about it."

"So they're not sentient?"

"No, sir. We're trying to mine some references to them from Manhattan's memory, but so far we've drawn a blank. It's obviously been deep encrypted. Certainly nobody on Earth knew about them. Which is surprising. From a xeno-biological viewpoint I cannot overstate how important they are. Kaba should have been shouting about them from the moment of discovery."

"Kaba's Earth Board probably weren't informed," Simon said. "You never reveal a good poker hand, Doctor."

He continued up the ramp, with Major Bibi leading the way. The interior of the tank had been split into two levels, each subdivided into several compartments. The arrangement reminded him of a bomb shelter. Not a bad analogy, Simon thought. They were certainly zealous about their security.

"I take it you have debugged this?" he asked Major Bibi.

"Yes sir. I've had technicians sweep it for physical defenses, and the plant's AS has been dumped into a sealed storage facility. It was complicitous with the attack on the squaddies, we know that from the gas release. Our own forensic AS is taking it apart code line by code line to determine what kind of routines were hardwritten in. We suspect it was puppeting the aliens as well. I've also had wipehounds running through the plant's datapool to make sure there are no subroutine remnants lurking. But there's a lot of circuitry here, especially in the processing machinery; we should have an all-clear in another ten hours."

"And the Manhattan City AS?"

"Definitely part of the business. Wiping that is more difficult; it does supervise a lot of hardware functions in the city, including life support. So far I've settled for installing limiter and monitor programs in the datapool."

"Very well." They stopped in front of a heavy security door. There was an elaborate DNA lock panel on one side, but the slab of reinforced metal itself was retracted.

Inside the room, medical support equipment had been stacked into elaborate columns. Eight of them were spaced along the middle of the floor. Each one was topped with an opaque plastic sphere fifty centimeters in diameter. Wires and slim tubes wormed out of the equator to disappear into the stacks at various levels. Five of them were inert, while the remaining three hummed and whirred quietly, with small indicator lights winking above various components. A couple of Z-B technicians were busy taking apart one of the inert columns. Dr. Hendra silently signaled them out, and they left without a word.

Simon stood in front of the first active pillar, staring at the globe. "Your opinion on the procedure's viability, Doctor?'

"Oh, it's viable, all right. In fact, it's much more proficient than the kind of rejuvenation treatments that are employed on Earth."

"Really? I thought Earth led that particular field."

"Technically we do. But v-writing a whole human body is enormously complicated. You have to vector new genes into the individual cells of every organ and bone and blood vessel, not to mention skin. Those genes all have to be specific to their destination. The best we ever manage to revitalize in each organ is twenty to thirty-five percent of the gross. Enough to make a difference, but there are just too many cells for all of them to be revitalized. That's why there's no point in extending rejuvenation past the third treatment. You run smack bang into the law of diminishing returns."

"Depends how young you are when you have your first treatment," Simon murmured.

Dr. Hendra gave a complicit shrug. "As you say. But it's unusual for anyone to undergo the treatment before they reach sixty. These days it's far more effective to provide germline v-writing to inhibit the aging process. When you're only ten cells tall, all those shiny new improved genes can be vectored in without any room for error."

Simon smiled knowingly. "Of course." Dr. Hendra's file showed he was born of such a process, which, given the genetic engineering of the time, would give him a life expectancy of around 120 years. His parents had both been stakeholders in Z-B, middle-management level. In those days the company provided it for only the upper echelons. They'd been lucky to qualify. Now, of course, it was available to every stakeholder, regardless of the size of their stake. Another huge incentive to invest your life with Z-B, and one of the reasons they were one of the largest companies on Earth and beyond. "And yet you regard this particular procedure as effective."

"Indeed." Dr. Hendra gestured at the plastic sphere on top of the medical stack. "Isolate the brain, and you can repair at least eighty-five percent of the decayed neuron structure. As you don't have to worry about repairing anything else, it allows you to concentrate your resources most efficiently. After all, you are only rejuvenating one kind of cell, although admittedly there are many variants."

Simon used his DNI to activate the column's communication system. "Board Member Zawolijski, good morning."

"A good morning to you, Representative Roderick," the brain replied.

"That was most impolite of you to shoot at our squaddies."

"I apologize. My colleagues and I are somewhat set in our ways. Your platoon's incursion alarmed us. The corporal had discovered this tank. Ours is not an aspect of Board family life we wish to share with the rest of the civilized galaxy."

"Indeed, and does that include the Board of your new parent company?"

"Certainly not. I speak only of the fact that it can be done. The... cost, in social terms, could be regarded as unacceptably high by certain human factions."

"That's very heartening. The Board that I represent would certainly appreciate a full and complete technical briefing."

"I'm sure that can be arranged."

Simon's personal AS had been scrutinizing Zawolijski's root links into Manhattan City's datapool caches. The brain was reluctantly acknowledging the retrieval probes, allowing access to sealed memory blocks. A file expanded in Simon's vision, indigo script flowering around a single full-color image. It was the Kinabica police and court records of Duane Alden, beginning with his juvenile arrest and cautions for shoplifting, vehicle theft, and aggravated assault. As he matured he'd swiftly progressed to narcotic violation, burglary, armed robbery, extortion and finally murder. The last crime was a holdup that had been bungled thanks to Duane's drug-ridden state. The whole sorry episode had been captured on a security camera. His court case had lasted a mere three days. An appeal had been dismissed a month later. He was due to be executed in another two weeks, a month after his twenty-first birthday. The intervening three months had been spent in a prison's hospital wing, where tough medics had thoroughly detoxed him, at the same time pushing him through an intensive health regimen. Duane had resisted at first, but warders always have methods of guaranteeing compliance among even the most recalcitrant inmates. His lawyer was currently lodging an "abusive treatment" complaint, but that was just going through the motions.

Observing the naked, full-length holographic image of Duane Alden that appeared to hover in the air between him and the encased brain, the one phrase that came to Simon's mind was Golden Youth. Duane was physically flawless and distinctly handsome.

"Your new body, I take it," Simon inquired.

"Yes," Zawolijski said. "He's quite splendid, isn't he? Several centimeters taller than my last. And that face... so bold. I'm sure the ladies will be appreciative."

"I'm curious. Exactly how old are you?"

"Two hundred and eight years, Earth standard."

"And this body would be number...?"

"My fifth replacement. I remained in my original until I was sixty."

"A new body every thirty years. That seems slightly extravagant."

"Not really. Twenty to fifty: the best years of a man's life."

"In the classical model, yes, but now that human bodies can be v-written for enhanced life expectancy, the period of primacy is considerably longer."

"Quite so. But such germline treatments are only just becoming commonplace on Kinabica, and as the parents invariably request additional modifications such as increased intelligence, such specimens are less likely to stray."

Simon canceled Duane's file and frowned at the brain. "You believe that enhanced intelligence ensures a noncriminal life?"

The brain chuckled. "Less likely to get caught, actually. Or if they do, then it's after a long and arduous investigation. By which time they're past their usefulness to the Board."

"You should use equally intelligent police officers to catch them."

"At the salary we pay?"

"I see your point. Which leads to my next question. Why not simply clone yourself a replacement body?"

"Ah, one of our race's favorite myths. Have you any idea how difficult and expensive that is? Growing a human in vitro until—realistically—they're sixteen. How would you suppress the arrival of consciousness over that time?"

"Would that problem arise? I'd have thought the lack of external stimuli would eliminate any chance of thoughts germinating."

"Coherent thought, certainly. But even infants have a basic awareness, and more than that by parturition. Sensory deprivation for sixteen years produces a monstrously retarded consciousness. It doesn't quite qualify as a personality. But believe me, it's a problem sustaining a body in an amniotic tank for any time after its first year. It wants to be birthed and struggles against its confinement."

"Then clone a body without a brain. V-write it out of the genome."

"Oh, please, how would you replace the autonomic function control? Technologically? There are far too many subtleties involved for some kind of wetwired chip to regulate."

"What about growing parts separately? Accelerating a replacement organ's growth to its maturity is a proven procedure. After that you simply assemble them into a full body."

"That merely increases the original problem by two orders of magnitude. The number of separate parts in a body is incredible, and that's just the principal glands and organs. Don't forget the entire circulatory system, skin, a skeleton even. What order would you start stitching them together in, in order to make sure they stay functional during the procedure? How much surgery does it actually take to assemble an adult human being? No. The idea is pure science fiction. I assure you, we have explored all these avenues. The most efficient way to produce a human body is the old-fashioned method of unskilled labor. Until we can develop some kind of active nanonics capable of integrating cellular structures or resetting individual DNA strands, transplanting a brain into a criminal's body is the most reliable procedure to regain a healthy young body."

"Very well. But what about the neuron regeneration process you employ? There must be some memory loss."

"Not from the regeneration. My memory loss comes from standard brain decay. New neurons don't contain old memories. That's perfectly acceptable to all of us; in fact, it's essential. The brain is finite, no matter how many improvements we have v-written in each time we undergo rejuvenation. I have to have the capacity available to store my new life's experiences when I re-enter society."

"If you are forever discarding the past, then you have forgotten who you were."

"Never, that's the beauty of this procedure. I have complete continuity with the baby born those two hundred and eight years ago, which is the overriding psychological factor. The strongest memories anyone has are connected with identity. The events that define what you are, shape your personality and who you have become, are so powerful they are part of your essence. They have become instinct, retained no matter how much regeneration is required. I might not be able to remember the intimate details of a day one hundred and thirty years ago, but that is no longer relevant; I know that I am the individual who lived through that day. Continuity of consciousness rather than unbroken memory, that is the human soul, Representative Roderick."

"Then what of the biological imperative? Your body is not genetically yours. You cannot reproduce for yourself; any offspring you sire will be those of Duane Alden. What is the point of your existence other than sheer vanity?"

"And you accused us of relying on classical models? With so much v-writing these days, whose child is truly theirs anymore? But to answer your question, that particular aspect of rejuvenation has the easiest remedy. My balls are cloned and transplanted along with my brain into every new body. For females, we simply implant cloned ova. All of us take part in life to the fullest degree when we return. We are complete to a degree unachievable by ordinary living, twenty years old with the intellect of a centenarian."

"What do you return as, a distant cousin?"

"Whatever identity is most convenient. Family stakeholding is not scrutinized and analyzed, Board family trusts operate privately, executive Board members are not celebrities."

"The perfect system."

"To sustain us and our chosen way of life, yes. That's why we wrote the constitution the way it is."

"And now your Earth Board has sold you out."

"Please, Representative Roderick, you have no need to sustain your legal fallacy with us. Zantiu-Braun is here because it has the ships and the firepower to raid our world, filling its own coffers with complete impunity. We acknowledge the reality of your strength."

"I'm pleased to hear that."

"So what deal do you require?" the brain asked.

"Deal?"

"For us to continue our existence without interruption. We would be happy to accept your Board members into our fraternity. It is a good life here: Kinabica is a wealthy, advanced world with a stable society. They would lack for nothing."

"The Board I represent would not be able to accept that offer."

"I'm offering you virtual immortality lived as a plutocrat, and you're turning that down?"

"We have different goals and objectives."

"And you don't think these objectives can run in parallel to immortality? I find that hard to believe."

"That really isn't your concern."

"Then what do you want?"

Simon pursed his lips, regarding the isolated brain with a weary disappointment. The techniques and ingenuity of the Kinabica Board were impressive, but their goals were so old. They'd be more suited to life in the Renaissance era, or maybe the British Imperium. They could have achieved so much more with what they had; instead they looked to the past for their template, building themselves an impregnable stone castle amid a stagnant society. All they'd done was secure what they already had. With a brand-new planet offering infinite horizons, no fresh possibilities had been explored, no impossible dreams attempted. It was truly pitiable.

"We want nothing from you," Simon said. "As you said, your planet is a wealthy one. It's in your Board's interest that you continue to keep it wealthy, and that coincides with our wishes."

"You have no objection to our rejuvenation method?"

"None. Keep your lives. We don't covet your banality."