CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Josep's thoughts came together quickly as he woke. For a second he kept his eyes closed while he assessed his position. He was lying on some kind of plastic cushioning. No clothes; his skin was pressed against the fabric. Slight pressure round his hips. A pair of boxer shorts, then. Cold metallic bands around his wrists, which were being held in place fifteen centimeters apart. Manacles of some kind. His legs were free. Artificial light on his eyelids. The distant clatter and murmur of a busy building.

When his d-written neurons tried to locate either his bracelet pearl or a local datapool node, all he could sense was some disjointed background signals that were almost below his threshold. It was as if the electromagnetic spectrum had been muted somehow. He put the odd perception down to the gas that they'd used to knock him out. Some of it must still be in his system, affecting his neural cells.

He opened his eyes. The room was a cell, four meters by four, no window, just a conditioning grille. He was lying on a bench opposite a heavy metal door. A small camera on the ceiling was angled down to look at him.

Cells in the spaceport security division were very similar. They might not have moved him yet. In which case he stood a chance. He knew the entire spaceport layout.

That thought made him pause. He hadn't known about the elevator. And there must have been at least one alarm that wasn't on any file they'd accessed when they were planning the break-in. Most likely it was something that Z-B had discreetly installed after they took control of the administration block. Even so, his Prime should have caught it going off.

Making a show of being slow and confused, he sat up, rubbing at his hair. The manacles made the movement difficult, He frowned at them. "What the hell..."

Nobody came in to explain. He padded over to the door. The tile floor was cold under his bare feet. "Hey!" He banged on the door. "Hey, what's going on here?" There were grazes on his knuckles where he'd hit the elevator doors. That could have been a mistake. If they measured the dent he'd made they could work out the force behind the blow. That would make them very interested in him. Not that they wouldn't be anyway. But he couldn't allow them to examine his body too closely. The patternform sequencers must be protected at all costs.

He padded back to the bench and sat down. It was standard procedure to let prisoners sweat for a while after they'd been captured, allow them to build up some anxiety. Not that such crudities would affect him. But he had to decide what to do next. The d-written cells in his cheeks and jaw had held their shape while he was unconscious. He still had Sket Magersan's face. Z-B would have checked with the real pilot. They'd know this was a serious sabotage attempt by a resistance group.

Interrogation by Z-B would inevitably involve medical diagnostics, probably including a full brain scan. The d-writing modifications were subtle, but with that sort of scan there was a high risk of exposure. And he wasn't entirely certain he could hold out against the drugs. His d-written neurons were hardly omnipotent and Z-B had been dealing with resistance movements across decades and dozens of planets. By now, their techniques and technology for extracting information would be formidable.

The choice was simple. The longer he remained captive, the lower his chances would be of escaping. If he was going to get out it would have to be before they fully realized what he was physically capable of.

That brought him back full circle to how they'd caught him in the first place. He started to go over the break-in right from the start.

It was another two hours before the cell door opened. Josep still hadn't worked out what he'd done to set off an alarm. Two guards came in, their navy-blue uniforms sporting a small Z-B insignia on the collar. Both of them wore helmets with tinted visors; they held long truncheons with shock prongs on the end.

A simple white one-piece suit was slung at him.

"Put that on," one of the guards said.

Josep picked it up and let it unroll. He held his arms up, shaking the manacles at them. "You'll need to take these off."

"Nice try. Just put it on."

The suit sleeves had a seam down the sides, fastened with studs. He struggled into the lower part of the garment, and one of the guards fastened the studs for him.

They marched him out into a short, curving corridor. Josep checked the length and height, and knew exactly where he was: administration block, third floor. The security division had a long section all to itself in the five-sided building. Floor blueprints rushed through his mind. The only ways in or out of this section were two elevators and an emergency fire exit. He couldn't use the elevators, they were code-guarded—not forgetting what happened last time he used an elevator in this building. The fire exit was the obvious route, but there were strong safeguards there as well.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"You'll see soon enough."

They were walking in the direction opposite the elevators. The only rooms ahead were the offices. They must have set up their interrogation equipment in one of them. He still couldn't sense a signal from a datapool node.

They turned a corner. The walls of this corridor were lined with doors. He named them silently as they went past: departmental management, briefing one, two, and three, investigator lieutenant, finance. Josep swayed slightly to shift his balance and kicked at the guard on his left. It was a perfect aim, heel smashing into the man's kneecap. He yelled in pain and went down. The second guard slammed his truncheon into Josep's back, and the shock prongs flared, pumping a charge into him. His d-written cells resisted the blast of electricity—just keeping his nerve channels open. He turned and wrenched the truncheon from the guard's grip. The man grunted in surprise at the force. Then Josep stabbed the truncheon into his stomach. The guard staggered backward, doubling up before finally keeling over.

Josep jabbed the truncheon into the first guard's neck as he was trying to rise. He collapsed back onto the carpet. At the other end of the corridor two men in Z-B uniforms were shouting as they ran toward him. A shrill alarm went off, terribly loud in the confined space. The security AS must have seen the whole thing through the surveillance cameras.

Josep threw the truncheon at the two running men, then charged at the door to the finance office. It wasn't even locked. As he expected, Z-B didn't have any use for financial staff; the office was empty, abandoned for the duration. There were three desks lined up down the middle of the floor, cluttered with old memory chips and piles of hard copy. Desktop pearls were inactive. The wall opposite the door was tinted glass from floor to ceiling, facing out across the spaceport hangars. He rushed over to the last desk and heaved it into the air, then flung it at the glass wall. The toughened glass shattered, sending a blizzard of shards swirling outward. More alarms started up. The desk crashed down on the edge of the hole it had created, half of it still in the office. It wobbled unsteadily. Josep kicked it, sending it sliding out over the edge to smash into the flowerbeds three floors below.

The office door burst open. Z-B staff rushed in. Josep jumped after the desk.

Three stories in Thallspring's standard gravity. The fall was enough to shatter most of a man's lower skeleton when he hit. Damage to the organs from the massive impact deceleration would probably be fatal. Josep thrust his manacled arms above his head, desperate to keep his balance. It was surprisingly quiet as the warm late-afternoon air rushed round him. He bent his legs fractionally as the flowerbeds hurtled up.

His feet crashed into the hard soil, and his knees bent, absorbing as much of the terrible impact as they could. Suddenly his shoulder was smacking into the ground, knocking the breath from him. His bones held, though his ankle and knee joints sent pulses of pure agony into his spine. He blinked away the tears of pain. Rosebushes had torn at his legs. A glass splinter was embedded in his foot. Astonished Z-B personnel were leaning out through the broken glass of the finance office, peering down at him.

Josep ordered his deadened limbs to move, rolling onto all fours, then standing. Shouts from above mingled with the persistent howl of the alarm. He took a few excruciating steps until he bumped into the base of the building's glass wall. After that he could use it for support as he moved along. Somewhere up ahead was a door used by the maintenance staff. On the other side of the glass, people were standing up at their desks, pointing at him as he slid past.

He reached the door, put his shoulder against it and shoved. It bowed slightly, but held. He took a step back and launched himself at it again. This time the lock broke, and he was through into a narrow concrete utility tunnel. He hurried along it to the first intersection. The walls of the wider central tunnel were thick with conduits and pipes. Lightcones on the ceiling threw out a raw purple-white radiance every five meters. He turned left and started to run, wincing every time the glass splinter hit the ground, jabbing deeper into his flesh. Blood dripped out of the cut, but he knew the flow would be worse if he took the glass out.

Another left turn. Then right, right again. A locker room. Nobody inside. He went over to the row of gray-blue metal lockers, grabbed the handle of the first and tugged. It jerked open, the metal bending around the bolt, then tearing. Dirty overalls hung inside, and a pair of boots. He went to the next locker and tore that open. The next. The fifth had what he was looking for, a tool belt with every loop full. He pulled a power blade out, switched it on, then put the handle in his mouth, biting down hard to hold it steady. The blade cut through the manacles with an appallingly loud shriek and a shower of sparks.

Josep held his breath. There were shouts reverberating along the concrete tunnel outside. He went back to the first locker and shoved his feet into the boots, then pulled out the overalls. D-written organelles began to sculpt his flesh, returning his facial characteristics to those of Andyl Pyne again. With the alteration under way he snatched up the tool belt and a bracelet pearl that he found on the locker's top shelf.

Fifty meters on from the locker room there was an inspection hatch that led into the wall cavity. A power screwdriver from the tool belt opened it, and he eased himself in. It was a narrow, confined world, completely black. Even his infrared vision was cloudy. The walls were 110 centimeters apart, forming an interstice that was filled with structural girders, conditioning ducts and plumbing. He could see as far down as he could up. His feet were resting on an I-beam barely ten centimeters across.

The Skins and guards hunting him would know he had switched clothes back in the locker room, but the boots were cold when he put them on. It would take a while for his body heat to soak through into the soles. In theory they wouldn't be able to track him to the hatchway. The cramped interstice made it difficult to move, but he slowly worked his prison one-piece off, always keeping one hand clamped on a girder. He dropped the bundle of fabric into the darkness and began to struggle into the overalls. Twice he had to stop as someone ran past the hatch. When he finished dressing, and with the tool belt fastened around his waist, he began to climb. As he ascended he tried to integrate his d-written neuron structure with the bracelet from the locker room. He still couldn't establish any kind of link. The knockout chemical must have done more damage than he first realized.

Once he was up level with the second floor he followed the phosphorescent coral line that was the hot-water pipe until he reached the toilets. The panels in the wall here were a lot smaller than the hatch back down in the utility tunnel, intended principally to provide access to the tanks and pipes that served the cubicles and basins. He found the largest and put his ear against it, listening to the movements inside. Two people were using the urinals—at least it was the men's room, he thought. One paused to wash his hands, the other left straightaway.

Josep used the power blade to saw around the rim of the panel. He squeezed and wriggled his way into the cubicle, frantic at the noise he was making. Then when he was most of the way through, he had to push his body into a gymnast's contortion that even his d-written limbs had trouble achieving, all to make sure he didn't stick his head out past the partly open door. Every toilet had a security camera, and the security AS would be devoting a large percentage of its processing capacity to spotting visual abnormalities inside the administration building.

"Resourceful," Simon observed.

"I think we were too slack on the chase," Adul said. "We should have given him more grief in the utility tunnels."

"We've reinforced his feeling of superiority. Look at his deep thalamus activity. He's confident."

"As long as his easy ride doesn't make him suspicious."

"I'd hardly call that jump easy. I thought he was suiciding until I remembered his bone structure composition," Simon said. "Give him a reasonable body match," he instructed the AS.

*  *  *

The toilet door opened. Josep tensed, waiting to see what the man would do. Footsteps made their way to the first cubicle. Josep tapped his knuckles on the partition. There was a slight hesitation in the footsteps.

"Hey," Josep hissed.

"Some kind of problem, there?"

"Yes."

The man peered around the cubicle door to find Josep sitting on the toilet bowel, head bowed. "What's up?" He moved a little closer.

Josep's left arm shot out and grabbed the front of the man's suit jacket, tugging him hard into the cubicle. At the same time his right hand chopped across the man's neck. He closed the cubicle door. If he'd got it right, the security camera should have seen the man pause by the first cubicle, then choose the second.

According to the man's identity card he was Davis Fenaroli-Reece. Josep began to strip him out of his suit. Changing clothes in the cubicle was almost as bad as putting on the overalls in the wall interstice. Once Josep had the suit on he propped Davis Fenaroli-Reece's body on the toilet bowl and studied his face hard. His own features began to shift again. Without a mirror he wouldn't be able to get the likeness as accurate as he wanted, but his real worry was the hair. Davis Fenaroli-Reece had very dark hair, whereas Andyl Pyne and Sket Magersan were both fair. In the end he settled for splashing water from the toilet bowl over his head and slicking his hair back, hoping that would darken it enough to fool the AS. He was content the camera didn't have sufficient resolution to spot the change in texture.

Another minute was spent with the tools, fixing the cubicle lock. When he closed the door behind him the bolt clicked into the latch and read engaged. Josep washed his hands and left.

He started walking around the corridor to the main stairwell. The second floor was a mix of Z-B personnel and local spaceport staff. Most of them were standing pressed up against the window wall, looking down at the Skins circling the building.

It was growing dark outside, with the sun already hidden behind the high ground of the horizon. That meant he couldn't have been unconscious for more than forty or fifty minutes. He felt hungry, though, as if he hadn't eaten for a day.

The stairwell took him up to the fourth floor, where there was a bridge leading directly into the main terminal building. A couple of Skins were standing at the far end, checking everybody coming out of the administration block, as if the AS wouldn't be able to spot Sket Magersan walking away. They never moved as he passed them.

Forty minutes later he was out in parking lot 4B, walking casually along the rows of vehicles. A group of staff that had come out of the terminal building said good night to each other and split up. Josep followed one of them as he went to his car.

"Excuse me?"

The man stopped just as he'd gotten the door open. "Yeah?"

"My car's dead. Axle motor cable, I think. Are you going into Durrell?"

"Sure." The man nodded. "I can take you."

"Thanks."

There were Skins standing around the exit barrier.

"Big flap on," the man remarked as he slowed the car level with the twin security posts.

"Wonder what it's about," Josep said as he swiped Davis Fenaroli-Reece's card over the scanner on the car's passenger side and looked at the camera.

The barrier pole swung up.

"Someone tried to steal some bullion out of the vault this afternoon," the man said. "He got away."

"God, I hope they don't use one of the collateral necklaces."

"For that? I doubt it."

The man drove him into Durrell as promised. Josep thanked him as he was dropped off at a commercial center in one of the outlying districts. Fortunately, Davis Fenaroli-Reece carried just enough cash to pay for a bus ticket into the city center. It was a ten-minute walk from there to the university campus. When he reached Michelle's residence building, he paused in the lobby while his face finally reverted to his own features.

"Ah, I wondered what he actually looked like. Let's see if we have any records of that face."

Josep tapped the code into her door lock and walked in. The room was a mess as always. Barely large enough for one student, it had turned into a flea market of clothes, fast-food wrappers, hard copy and unwashed crockery since he moved in with her. Michelle was sitting on the small bed, watching the pane on the desktop pearl that was resting on the pillow. Her head came up, shock registering on her face. The gash in Josep's foot left by the glass shard suddenly jabbed a hot pain up his leg. He winced.

Michelle looked up in surprise as the door opened. It had to be Josep. She'd been so worried that he'd been caught doing something for the resistance cell. Relief turned to shock as she saw the thing coming through the door. It was a parody of a Skin suit, thin and spindly, with a simple metallic sphere as its head. The twin black lenses that were its eyes stared at her. She screamed as it walked into the middle of the room.

Two genuine Skins hurried in behind it. Michelle kept on screaming as one of them lunged at her. Thick fingers clamped around her arm. She grabbed at the headboard, but the Skin was immensely strong. She was dragged off the bed, her shoulder blade thudding down painfully on the floor.

"Help me!" she wailed. "Somebody, help."

"Shut the fuck up, bitch." The Skin picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. Michelle tried kicking, but the viciously tight grip on her legs prevented the slightest movement. Her head was hanging halfway down the Skin's back. She tilted her neck back to see the slender humanoid thing moving slowly around the room, its fingers stroking objects. Then she was out on the landing, where several more Skins were waiting. Students stood in their doorways, watching her being carried past, too scared to move or say anything.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. It was all over. Z-B had discovered their little resistance cell. They'd interrogate her and kill her. She whimpered pitifully as the Skin walked into the elevator with her. Three men were crammed inside waiting for them. They began to attach instruments and medical-style modules to her skin.

Michelle started screaming again as the doors slid shut.

For a moment the room was out of focus.

"Are you all right?" Michelle asked. She'd got up to stand beside the bed, looking concerned.

Josep lifted his foot, taking the pressure off the wound. The pain eased immediately. "I'm fine."

She gave him a tentative smile. Josep waited. But for once she didn't rush over and embrace him. He wondered what was wrong with her. Did she think he was seeing another girl? Please, not that, not now, he prayed.

He gave her a quick kiss. There wasn't much of a response. "There's a problem," he told her. "I have to talk to Ray. Get the stuff, will you? I'm going to move it out of here."

"Why? What's happened?"

"Nothing to worry about." He sat down on the bed and pulled the desktop pearl toward him. There was still nothing from his d-written neurons, just that faint background buzz. That made him pause. What the hell could knock them out of kilter for so long? Every other enhancement d-written into his body seemed to be working fine.

"What is it?" Michelle insisted.

"Okay, look, the controller called me. Z-B has been sending askpings into the university network, checking up on student files. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about, but we have to be careful. I'm going to move out for a few days."

"I don't like it."

"Neither do I. I'm sorry, but we have to be safe. You'll be fine. Now just get the stuff, please." He requested his Prime from the desktop pearl's memory blocks. The pane flashed up an invalid request icon.

The remote spoke the command with its associated code, but the desktop pearl didn't respond. An invalid request icon appeared in the pane.

Josep stared at it, not understanding. "Damn it!" Where had the Prime gone? If he could just interface directly ... He wondered if he should call Raymond without using Prime protection. Michelle was still standing behind him, watching.

"Are you going to get the stuff or not?" he asked.

"I don't want you to go."

"Damn it." He told the desktop to call Raymond.

*     *     *

Simon's DNI was giving him a comprehensive display of the Durrell datapool architecture, the graphics generator riding on the AS's monitor program. He saw the placement ping flash across the entire datapool. Josep's call was to a personal portable address. Wherever the individual was, the nearest datapool node would route the call straight to them. A node in the Silchester District started to establish the link.  The entire Silchester datapool crashed.

"What happened?" Simon asked.

The AS reported that its monitor program had been discovered and identified by an unknown program. The Silchester District had crashed immediately.

Simon was impressed. All the gadgets they'd taken from Josep had self-destructed as soon as Z-B's technicians had started to examine them, vaporizing evenly from the surface inward. An analysis of the gas residue had revealed some extremely unusual and complex molecules. It would seem their software was equally sophisticated.

The desktop flashed up a receiver-not-found icon. Josep regarded it with growing concern. Even if the datapool couldn't make the link, Ray's Prime would have intercepted the call placement ping and responded.

"That shouldn't happen."

"Perhaps he's switched off his bracelet," Michelle said.

"Maybe." Josep looked round the room, deeply uneasy. Something was wrong. Why couldn't he get any kind of interface with a Prime?

"Did Ray call?"

"No."

That wasn't right, either. Ray would have known within an hour at most that the break-in had gone wrong. One of the first things he'd do was call Michelle.

He stood up and faced her. She returned his gaze levelly.

Michelle would never do that. She'd either blush or grin happily, lovingly.

"You still haven't got the stuff," he said lightly.

"I told you, I don't want you to go."

"Oh hell," Adul said. "He's suspicious."

"It was always going to happen," Simon said. "Just a question of when." He looked over at Josep. They'd suspended him in a total reality immersion suit, not too dissimilar to Skin: a tactile emitter layer surrounded by artificial muscle to stimulate all levels of physical contact from the water splashed on his hair to the feel of the shirt fabric. It hung from the center of a gimbaled circular frame, allowing them to orientate him to match his personal inclination within the world created by the AS—though the jump had taken it right up to the limit of its replicant ability. Fiber-optics had been inserted through his corneas and pupils to shine directly on the retinas. The projection had zero-zero resolution: perfect.

The big pane on the wall in front of Simon showed the simulation that the AS had fabricated. So far the illusion had been flawless. Josep had believed completely in the spaceport administration block and the journey through Durrell. Even Michelle's room was exact, thanks to the data from the hominoid remote; not just the colors and proportions, but the texture and temperature of the bed and desktop pearl as well. Duplication of inanimates was always easy.

It was where the subject interacted with other people, especially unknowns, where problems and errors began to creep in. If it was someone the AS had no background profile for, their behavior and responses had to be estimated from context. Once a mistake was made, the effect would rapidly multiply until the entire environment simply became unsustainable. And in this case the AS had to try to realize both Michelle and the strange software in a believable fashion from the absolute minimum of data.

Nonetheless, Simon was content with the procedure. After witnessing for himself how extraordinary the intruder was, he had been convinced that a standard interrogation would prove useless—a decision that was endorsed by the subsequent cellular-level scan of their unconscious prisoner. Doctors and biotechnicians had been fascinated by the profound changes made to his body and were completely unable to explain how any of them had been performed. The number and nature of exotic microparticles was astonishing. Some of the experts were still debating whether he was a human who had been improved, or an alien that had been modeled into human form.

For all the prisoner's physical prowess, Simon had glimpsed enough of his mind to see the human emotions within. It was enough for him to launch the attempt at virtual chicanery.

As far as he was concerned, it had now paid off handsomely. They had garnered several vital leads, especially the girl, who was definitely an ordinary human.

"Where is the stuff?" Josep asked softly. "In fact, what stuff?"

"Don't," Michelle said. "Please."

"Who?"

"What?"

"Who? Who am I?'

Her expression crinkled up into misery. "What are you doing?"

"What's my name, Michelle?"

"Just stop this. It's not nice."

"Uh-huh? You know, for someone who's only been away for an afternoon, I'm very hungry." He bent down and picked up an old pizza delivery box. There was still a sliver left inside. He put it in his mouth and started to chew.

Simon's magnetic sense caught the emotional content washing through the prisoner's brain. It was changing rapidly, confusion giving way to a tide of bitter resentment.

"He knows," Simon declared ruefully. "Well, the scenario had almost played out. We have enough to investigate his background."

"But we still don't know what they wanted to hijack a Xianti for."

"One step at a time." Simon's smile faded as another change swept through the prisoner. He hadn't seen the emotion too often before. And never this profound.

"No taste," Josep said. "None at all. Why is that, Michelle?"

"Please, you're scaring me."

"Fatalism," Simon said, startled by the intensity. The prisoner's bright glowing aura began to swirl.

"I didn't know software could be scared."

"Out!" Simon bellowed He charged at the door. Behind him the aura was in a frenzy of turbulence. Then it shrank to nothing.

Simon reached the door. Opened it.

The prisoner exploded.

* * *

Lawrence found the darkness reassuring. He was warm, his body was perfectly comfortable and at ease. There was no pain. It was a womb darkness, he thought, secure and nurturing. A heartbeat he assumed was his own drummed out a steady rhythm in his ears. Breath flowed easily into his lungs. He supposed he could move his limbs if he wanted to. He didn't; the coziness of allowing himself to drift was too appealing. Only his eyes were ineffectual in this pleasant environment, showing him nothing.

Without sight, he began to see.

Events from his life slipped in and out of his consciousness, without order, as all memories were. He visited his parents. Played with his brothers and sisters again. Roselyn emerged into his life, all smiles and adoration. He walked on alien worlds, and kept on walking, over the plateau and into the white, cold isolation of the snowstorm. The crater lake lay below him; he spread his arms wide and dived cleanly into its deep, cleansing waters.

There was the feeling of a smile, a slight mockery. His recollections weren't the only ones he was aware of. Another's distant dreams shared this universe.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Lawrence."

"Who are you?"

"The humans of Arnoon call me the dragon."

"Is that where we are, Arnoon?"

"Yes."

"What's happening?"

"I am repairing your body."

"Are you a doctor?"

"No."

"What then?"

"You wish to know me? Come."

The dragon's dreams grew stronger. And the universe was no longer a place of darkness.

* * *

It was half-past-three in the morning Durrell time when Simon's spaceplane touched down. They taxied over to the parking apron, and a set of airstairs were wheeled out. When the outer lock opened, he took a moment to breathe in the air. It was a lot better than the recycled molecules of the Norvelle, but other than that there was no distinguishing scent, nothing to mark it down as alien. Every time he stepped out on a new world he expected to find something special, divergent. Every time he was disappointed.

Braddock Raines was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, his face grim. "Welcome to Thallspring, sir." The five-strong escort of Skins closed in to form a protective cordon as they walked over to the limousine.

"Thank you." Simon paused to look at the fire engines parked around the administration block. Dozens of scarlet-and-amber strobes were flashing across the field, acting like an advertisement for the disaster. Despite the time, a large number of spectators were still clustered behind the temporary barriers.

Floodlights had been set up around the administration block, illuminating a large section of the top two floors, which had been blown out. The three floors underneath it had sagged, smashing most of the surrounding glass wall. Dunes of glass fragments were strewn over the ground below. Paramedics, engineers, firemen, Skins and robots were picking their way through the wreckage, searching for survivors and bodies. Long crane gantries from the fire engines stood sentry duty, spraying water over the already soaking debris.

"Quite a mess," Simon murmured.

"Yes, sir," Braddock agreed. "The datapool is saturated with it. President Edgar Strauss is requesting an urgent clarification of the incident from General Kolbe. He wants to know who was to blame."

"Ah, the good president I only dealt with him once, myself. How is her'

An awkward smile flickered over Braddock's face. Even though he had a top-level Z-B security clearance, he was always edgy when reminded how many Simon Rodericks there were. "Worried that we'll use collateral."

"Understandable. Given the circumstances I can hardly hold Thallspring's citizens to blame. But there's no need for Strauss to know that. Have the general tell him the investigation into the cause is continuing. That should keep people on their toes."

The spaceport hospital was tucked away in a small wing of the terminal building. Braddock had thrown a tight security cordon around the whole area when the badly injured Simon Roderick was rushed in. Only Z-B's own medical staff was allowed into the surgical theater to operate on him. Subsequently it had become an intensive-care unit. Security engineers and programmers had to examine and clear every piece of equipment brought in to treat him. The theater's electronics and nodes had been physically cut from the spaceport network, which itself was isolated from the datapool. Software subversion against any of the equipment was now impossible.

"Very thorough," Simon said approvingly as they walked through the hospital. "What about Adul?"

"Dead, sir," Braddock said.

"Damn. He was a good man."

Three Skins were standing guard in the corridor outside the theater. One of them held the door open for Simon. A viral technician and a doctor were in the theater monitoring the life support equipment that encrusted the figure on the bed.

"I'd like a moment alone," Simon told them.

Roderick beckoned before the doctor could protest. The startled viral technician gave Simon a long, scrutinizing glance as he walked past.

Simon went over to the bed. Two of the ten lights in the big mobile array overhead were shining across the machinery. The SK2 had 73 percent burns, which had been sealed under a thick oyster membrane that had its own plexus of fluid capillaries to treat the ruined tissue. His head had been completely covered, leaving just two small slits, one for his mouth and one for the eye that had been saved. An oxygen tube passed straight through the membrane to the remnants of his nose. His left hand had been amputated, as had both legs below the knees.

"Can you hear me?" Simon asked.

The SK2's eye opened. Air hissed out past his teeth. "That alien motherfucker!"

"If it's any comfort, he's in a worse state than you. They're still scraping bits of him off the ceiling."

"What ceiling? There isn't even a building left. Hell, I was stupid. I should have realized what it was capable of."

"Yes, well, as a suicide method it certainly beats a tooth full of cyanide. I didn't realize the human body contained quite so much chemical energy."

"Not human. Alien."

"No. I've reviewed the data on my way down. Our own dear experts have made some headway. His DNA is confirmed as human. It wasn't even modified. The microparticles were foreign to his body. Not that we have many of them to study from those samples you took, a few hundred thousand, but it would seem they rebuild the molecular structure of the cell that they occupy. The modifications are not genetically sequenced. You know what that means."

"Alien."

"The technology certainly is. We've ruled out a Santa Chico connection. This is way beyond anything they have. It's a working nanonic system that can engineer molecular biology."

The SK2's breath hissed loudly again. "Find it." He groaned. Several monitor lights turned red. "Godfuck, it hurts."

"They're just stabilizing you. It'll take another two days before you're ready for regeneration viral therapy."

"Are my balls still there?"

"Apparently so, yes."

"Thank fuck for that. They told me about the rest."

"I know."

"Both goddamn legs."

"They'll be replaced as soon as we get home, along with everything else."

"Hoo-fucking-rah."

"Would you like me to have you placed in hibernation sleep?"

"No. I'm going to see this through."

"As you wish."

"Of course I fucking wish. You know what this means, don't you?"

"The potential for a working nanonic is quite phenomenal, yes."

"Phenomenal, my ass," the SK2 rasped. "It's total. We can elevate the whole human race. And in real-time, too. No more waiting for backward regions to benefit from our investment, no more germline v-writing health policy. My God, we've won. Everything we wanted to achieve can be implemented. There'll be no more moron barbarians holding us back. Society can shift to an entirely active-creative economy."

"Let's hope so," Simon said cautiously.

"Hope be damned!"

Simon didn't enjoy seeing his clone sibling in so much pain. It was far too easy to visualize himself lying on the theater bed with little machines leeched to him. The SK2 was fixating on the prospect of finding nanonics as a way of justifying his own suffering, making the sacrifice and pain worthwhile, which it would be, Simon conceded. But the alien was deploying its nanonics in a very strange and definitely hostile way. "We're still not certain about this nanonic system's capabilities. So far we have a lot of conjecture from overexcited technical staff, nothing concrete."

"I saw him, what he became. We can rebuild every human in the universe to make them sane and intelligent."

"As sane and intelligent as we are." Simon thought he kept the tone irony-free.

"That's what we exist for."

"Quite, although we never envisaged achieving it in one big bang." Simon almost asked What if people don't want to be altered by us? But he already knew the SK2's answer to that. The discovery of this nanonic technology would cause an unprecedented split in the Board; some batches would demand immediate implementation, while others, like his own, would want to move more cautiously.

Although that would be completely hypothetical unless he did actually find the alien and obtain the entire technology. Simon gave the SK2 a thoughtful look. Was that why he'd refused hibernation? To make sure the acquisition was completed? The very fact that he could think that of a clone sibling made him uneasy.

"Well, now we can modify our original objective to take that into account, can't we?" the SK2 said.

"That's some modification you're asking for."

"But possible. And extremely desirable."

"Absolutely."

"Interrogate the girl, first—Michelle Rake, she's a very weak link in their security."

"Of course. Any thoughts on why the alien is using its technology against us?"

"No. We don't have enough information yet. You'll have to determine that as well."

* * *

The dragon's dreams were everything Lawrence had ever dreamed of. He embraced the irony with a kind of bitter humor as he learned of the Ring Empire. Once again, the universe had shifted around him, taking away the life he thought was real. Colorful, elegant facts slowly coalesced, merging with his own thoughts until they became revelation. Within this strange state of enlightenment he floated serenely after Mozark as the prince flitted from planet to planet. There were, Lawrence realized, huge segments missing from the story.

"Most of my memories are lost," the dragon said regretfully.

"This is real, then?" Lawrence asked as he gazed across The City, marveling at the silver-and-crystal palaces emerging in the rosy dawn light.

"This is history."

"How long ago?"

"Tens of millions of years, if not longer. Again, that information no longer exists within me."

If his eyes had been open, Lawrence was sure he would have wept. The dragon's knowledge was stupendous, its physical science tremendous. The potential was here to achieve ... anything. Lawrence wasn't just awed, he was humbled. His own goals seemed utterly inconsequential and petty compared to all this. Yet the dragon didn't judge him, which made his guilt all the greater.

"I hoped I would find wealth here," Lawrence said. "But I never expected to be this rich."

"The villagers never considered themselves rich."

"They are. Believe me. There could be no greater gift than knowing you. You are the kind of hope I had long since stopped believing in."

"Thank you. Though it is humans who must take the credit for resurrecting me this far. I would not exist if it were not for your endeavors."

"I would know one thing," Lawrence said, even though he felt ashamed at asking. "Are you sure about Mozark? Did those places and species he encountered on his voyage genuinely exist?"

"The memories are all I have. They are what I am. Does your past exist, Lawrence?"

"There are times when I wish it didn't"

* * *

Denise had risen soon after dawn, content to be in her own bed for what she sincerely hoped was going to be the last time. With the light growing outside she went onto the balcony of her parents' A-frame home. For once the sun was visible as a splendid copper crescent rising in the cleft between Mount Arnao and Mount Nallan. Denise took that as a good omen. It was rare for the cleft to be free of fog and cloud so early in the morning. Now she could lean on the carved wooden rail to look out across the marvelous crumpled valleys and craggy rock faces that composed Arnoon. A shallow layer of mist hung over the meandering slopes spread out around her, with only the tallest treetops poking out above its frayed surface. The sun's radiance fluoresced it a delicate rose-gold as it gently slid and slithered its way out of the foothills toward the plain below.

After a light breakfast with her parents she walked across the village to the big snowbark pavilion. The air up on the plateau was a lot cooler than the humid coastal climate that she'd grown accustomed to down at Memu Bay. She put on a willow wool sweater before leaving the house: a present from Jacintha, whose husband Lycor had designed it, as always incorporating bright colors without making them garish. This one was midnight-black with curling flecks of sapphire, topaz and magenta looking as if they were being blown across the weave; its sleeves were flared at the wrists, with a small V-gap allowing her to roll them up. It kept her beautifully warm as the cold morning gusts drifted down from Mount Kenzi.

As she walked, friends she hadn't seen in an age came over to greet her and exchange pleasantries and words of encouragement. They all expressed their sorrow over Josep, as if she somehow suffered his loss more than they. It was wrong, she felt; they were treating her as if she'd achieved something, instead of nearly bringing ruination to them all. But to say so to their faces would be selfish. And there was still hope. Not that she could ever have imagined it would present itself in such a strange form.

Before the children arrived she walked around the inside of the pavilion, trailing her hand over the bark of each of the ten trees, reacquainting herself with them. So many hours of a pleasant childhood had been spent in or around the pavilion with her friends, playing games and listening to the adults tell their fantastical stories. It was fitting that she, the one who'd been chosen to seed their way of life on a new world, should be given a last opportunity to tell the new generation of their heritage.

The children began to arrive, little groups of them bounding over the central meadow, chattering and laughing. Denise smiled in reflex: something about happy children was just infectious, their smiles made the world a less painful place. Parents were bringing smaller children. She saw Jacintha and Lycor with little Elsebeth holding their hands as she toddled along between them.

Eventually, after some coaxing, the children were settled in a big semicircle around Denise.

"Have you all heard the stories of Mozark and Endoliyn?" she asked them.

"Yes!" they cried back.

"Well, today I'm going to tell you the last story of the Ring Empire. This is set long after the time of Mozark and Endoliyn. It's sort of a sad time, because the Ring Empire was starting to decay. Some of the inhabitants blamed the machines for this, because they were now so smart that they took care of people from the moment they were born until they died. This machine-pampered generation had nothing to do except live their lives chasing personal pleasure and satisfaction. They had become decadent, and not a little bit cruel. Now this generation, the final generation, had enormous resources at their disposal; their machines could dismantle the very planets and reshape their atoms to build whatever these people wanted. With that kind of ability you'd think they'd be totally content. But no. Even the number of planets is finite. They began to argue with each other about how many resources any one person should have and how these resources should be divided and supervised. At first it was just arguments. Then it grew into theft and hoarding. Eventually, fighting began and grew into what was known as the Decadence War. The individual kingdoms that had been so closely knit turned against each other. Battle machines were constructed, the most terrifying things ever built, equipped with weapons that could tear a planet to pieces and even extinguish stars. These battle machines fought each other over the division of entire solar systems. And it took an enormous amount of resources just to build them. That meant that any solar systems that the battle machines conquered were soon turned into more battle machines. The last generation was deprived of the one thing they had launched the war for. Without the resources they craved they soon dwindled into extinction amid the conflict. The battle machines continued fighting for thousands of years, wreaking havoc among the stars, until they had finished eliminating each other along with entire races.

"But the decadents and their battle machines weren't the only reason the Ring Empire fell—although they must take most of the blame. They represented only the physical aspect of its decline. Many societies had followed the Wilfrien, slowly regressing, even rejecting their technological society, seeking a more primitive existence in search of peace, withdrawing their participation and support from the Ring Empire. Then there were others, like the Outbounds and the Last Church, who had actually been quite successful in reaching their goals. They had attracted the most dynamic people, the brightest, the restless who relished challenge; all of these had found their cause and given themselves to it. In doing so, over the millennia, they had drained the Ring Empire of vitality, the very people who could have regenerated it "Among the factions and wars was one group who had predicted the fall. The Eternals, who were more academics than anything else, had studied civilizations from across the Ring Empire. They found one thing that remained constant among all biological species: the cycles of growth and decay. It might take only a century. It might take a million years. But life always follows that pattern. As the Decadence War raged and the Ring Empire fell apart around them they decided to save themselves. Many groups were desperately trying to do the same thing, with colonies and secret enclaves to keep their original ideals alive so that one day they could expand again, rekindling their former glory. In some instances entire kingdoms isolated themselves behind fortified borders so that they wouldn't be contaminated with the decay infecting their neighbors. All of them were attempting to resist that which the Eternals were convinced was inevitable. By doing so they would surely be doomed to failure, the Eternals thought. And they were right, for today there is no Ring Empire, only whispers and legends of the glory that was. But the Eternals are still here.

"Instead of making some futile stand against the decline, the Eternals embraced the cycle of life. They transformed themselves and their society so that it would live in harmony with galactic nature. Biological life and Ring Empire machine were fused at a molecular level. The Eternals became giant spaceborne creatures. Unlike starships, they didn't need artificial power and great industrial stations to maintain them. In many respects these creatures were profoundly simple. It is that simplicity that has allowed them to survive and spread across the galaxy.

"They live today in orbit above the galaxy's red giant stars, powered by the heat and grazing on the solar wind. They have enormous solid bodies like streamlined asteroids that sprout solar wings whose span is measured in kilometers. Because of their shape, and the fiery environment in which they thrive, we call them dragons. They are even hatched from eggs. Every solar system has them, dark cold globes circling among the outer cometry halo as they wait for the star's main sequence to come to an end. That's the cycle again. Stars grow old and die, swelling out to absorb their planets, and eventually expanding into red giants. That's when their warmth reaches the eggs, energizing them. They grow slowly, absorbing the heat and the thin gusts of ions, until they're fully fledged dragons. And then they listen to the universe. Their wings are threaded with elements that can pick up radio waves from the other side of the galaxy, and even far beyond that, allowing them to listen to planetary civilizations as they rise and fall. They listen to the cosmos itself, the death and birth of stars, the shriek of matter as it falls into black holes, quasars and pulsars crying out from the empty void. All this knowledge they spread among themselves, and think about it, and remember it. On rare occasions they even use it, for they can modify themselves at a molecular level. That is their physical nature, the legacy of the Ring Empire.

"Eventually, as the star shrinks back to a white dwarf before its final extinction, they are left abandoned in the dark and cease to be. In accepting their mortality they live with the cycle, with what's natural. They have served their purpose and advanced their species. Like any civilization, they acquire knowledge, they organize it and bestow it on their descendants. As they circle above their stupendous star they send their own eggs out into the universe, each one containing the memory of everything they consider important and relevant. These eggs fall through the darkness of interstellar space until the gravity of some bright new star pulls them in to a long distant orbit so the cycle can be started over."

"Except one of them fell to earth, or rather Thallspring," Lawrence said.

The children gasped and turned. Lawrence was leaning casually against the trunk of a snowbark, arms folded across his chest His grin was lopsided as he stared at Denise.

The children started whispering excitedly.

"That was over two thousand years ago," Lawrence continued. He grinned down at the expectant, slightly awed faces. "The dragon's egg streaked out of the sky like a splinter of sunlight and struck the plateau near the base of Mount Kenzi. The force of the blow was so powerful it gouged a crater out of the bare rock. Every tree for fifty kilometers was ripped out of the ground and smashed apart by the blastwave. Then the timber burned for days, filling the air with thick, black smoke. But the dust from the vaporized rock billowed up into the stratosphere and blotted out the sun for weeks. It brought the coldest winter the plateau has ever known, covering it in snow. Then, when the snow began to melt a few years later, it filled the crater with water. The trees started to grow again. And a hundred years later everything looked just the same, except now there was a new lake.

"Then people arrived and called this place Arnoon. They built themselves a village and began harvesting the willow webs. And one day—"

"One day," Denise said, "my grandfather was out prospecting when his survey sensors found a strange magnetic pattern in the rock under the lake. So he started to dig. It took months for his little robot to excavate a shaft down to the base of the island. But when it got there, my grandfather found fragments of the egg. He didn't know what they were, only that they were artificial solid-state matrices of some kind, unlike anything humans had ever built He began to excavate further, and eventually found the largest fragment of all, the one we call the dragon."

"By then," Lawrence said, "he'd discovered that the molecular structure of the small fragments was storing data. After a lot of experiments he finally managed to access some of it. Once he knew how to do that, he started to mine the huge reservoir of information stored within the dragon."

"The dragon was still sleeping," Denise said. "It possessed nothing but disconnected memories. My grandfather wrote programs that linked them together. The dragon slowly began to wake. It learned how to think."

He looked straight at her, heedless of their audience. "And you found that it was actually a cohesive nanonic system capable of molecular engineering. You used it to adapt native plants to grow terrestrial food. You used it to make yourselves resistant to disease. You made it synthesize bits of technology that are orders of magnitude more advanced than anything humans can make. And you kept it all for yourselves."

"Because it can only change itself into what we ask for. It can't build anything new. It doesn't know how. That data was lost in the destruction of the impact. Every patternform sequencer particle in my body was a part of the dragon. It diminished itself to enhance me. It diminished itself further to heal you."

"Yeah," Lawrence said. His belligerence faded. "Makes righteous life kind of awkward, doesn't it?"

Denise turned back to the children. "So now you know why things are a little different here than on the rest of Thallspring. A very noble creature has sacrificed part of itself to make our lives easier. Our debt to the dragon is enormous. We must never forget what we owe. And we must pray that one day we can repay it."

The children filtered out past the snowbark trunks. Many of them crept up close to Lawrence, then dashed away giggling. Approaching the big bad Skinman was a seriously scary dare. He found it rather funny.

Jacintha came up to him, little Elsebeth cradled on her arm. The girl was shy, burying her face in her mother's neck.

"I do remember you now," Lawrence said.

She nodded a fraction reluctantly. "I'm sorry we became enemies again."

"Love and war. I guess that's part of the human cycle."

"We hope to break that. With the dragon's help."

"I know. It told me."

Jacintha glanced over at her sister, who was waiting for them, a disapproving expression on her elegant young face. "Try not to give her too hard a time. She has to do this."

"Don't worry. I know what I have to do, as well."

Jacintha gave him a mildly suspicious look, then walked away back to Lycor. Elsebeth gave him a little wave from the crook of her mother's arm. He shook his own fingers at the young girl, smiling.

"We have Grabowski," Denise said briskly. "I'm willing to offer you a deal. You can't go back to Zantiu-Braun, so if you cooperate with us the patternform sequencer particles will repair all Grabowski's damage, including his brain, and he can begin a new life here in the village."

Lawrence widened his smile until it became suitably irritating. "I don't need a deal. I'm going to help you anyway."

"What do you mean?" she asked slowly.

"You want to take the dragon fragment to Aldebaran, right? The closest red giant, where all the real dragons are."

"Yes." She said it as if admitting a fatal weakness. "They can make it whole again. If it stays here, then your kind will discover it one day. They'll take it from us and break it apart in their corporate labs to discover how patternform-sequencing systems work. I can't let that happen. It's a living entity that has given us so much, and we've never done anything for it. This is our only chance to return it where it belongs."

"My kind, huh?"

"Zantiu-Braun, or Thallspring's government. People who don't live out here like this. People who don't live real lives, who'll never care about anything but themselves."

"You know, there's more of your kind than you think. Everywhere I go, I keep bumping into idealists."

"A shame none of it rubs off on you."

"I'm helping you, aren't I?"

"Why? Why would you agree to help?"

"Raw altruism not good enough for you?" He wasn't about to tell her the shock he'd experienced on hearing about the Mordiff, nor its accompanying revelation.

"I don't believe it, not from you. You came here to steal the dragon. You wouldn't switch sides and morality this quickly."

"I didn't know the dragon existed before I arrived. I thought you'd got a big stash of gold or diamonds hidden away up here."

"But..." She gave him a troubled look. "Where did you get your Prime from?"

"A boy I knew once back on Amethi. A good kid. Little bit misguided and confused; but then, isn't everyone at that age?"

"So Earth has found a dragon."

"No. That's why I'll help you."

* * *

Michelle didn't know where she was, nor what time it was. She wasn't entirely sure what day it was.

After the Skins had dragged her from her room she'd been driven somewhere in a blacked-out van. The medical orderlies from the elevator went with her. They tore her T-shirt off so their probes could inspect and scratch her skin. Needles were inserted into her flesh along her limbs and belly, leaving small beads of blood welling up when they were extracted. She'd screamed and pleaded and struggled. It was all futile. A Skin pinned her down until their examination ended.

Her ruined T-shirt was thrown back at her, and she tried to wrap it round her breasts. Now that they'd finished, the men showed no more interest in her as she lay on the floor of the van, weeping pitifully. She half expected them to rape her, but that didn't happen either.

The trip lasted fifteen minutes. When she was hustled out of the van, it'd been parked in some anonymous underground garage. She was marched directly to a small cell and pushed inside. The door slammed shut.

After the first hour she thought they'd forgotten about her. She banged on the door. But nobody came. She started weeping again, hating herself for being so weak. She was just so frightened. Zantiu-Braun could do whatever they wanted to her. Anything. Nobody would know. If she could just see Josep... This horror could be endured if he was with her. Slowly she shrank into a fetal position on the cot, hugging her legs tight to her chest. Little bursts of sobbing came and went. Why didn't they just take her out and start their interrogation? Just get this over with. At some time she must have drifted into sleep.

The door thudding open woke her with a start. A Skin walked in. Michelle clutched the ragged T-shirt to her chest, staring fearfully at the dark, bulky figure. Suddenly she wasn't so keen for the interrogation to start after all.

"You. With me. Now." The Skin beckoned.

Michelle was led along cheerless basement corridors to an elevator. It brought her up to the main levels of the building. She thought it looked like an extremely high-class hotel, with luxurious gold carpeting and gloss-polished wood doors. Large, elaborate oil paintings hung on the walls. Delicate antique tables supported china vases full of big flower arrangements. Lighting cones were gilded in silver and cut crystal.

It wasn't a hotel. Open doors gave her glimpses into offices. The men inside, and hurrying along the corridor, all shared a tense, preoccupied air.  Few of them even spared her a second look.

The Skin finally opened the door into an office with a single desk. A man was waiting for them, dressed in a smart gray-and-purple suit, styled differently from anything she'd seen on Thallspring. "I'll take her from here," he told the Skin.

Michelle barely heard. She was looking out of the window. The view showed her a swath of formal grounds sweeping away to a broad circular highway. Beyond that were the familiar sturdy public buildings that populated the center of Durrell. But to be seeing them from this angle, she'd have to be inside the Eagle Manor.

"I'm Braddock Raines," the man was saying. "Please." He took his jacket off and proffered it to her. "Sorry about the way you've been treated. The frontline boys tend to become slightly overenthusiastic, especially on an operation with such a high priority."

"Operation?" she asked blankly. She was still having trouble with what was happening.

"All in good time." He smiled reassuringly and gestured at a tall double door. "My chief would like a word."

There was a larger office through the doors. The man sitting behind its broad desk gave Michelle a pleasant nod as she was shown in, then returned his attention to a pane in front of him. It was difficult to tell how old he was. Mid-forties, she thought, though he had the kind of assured authority that was normally found in men a lot older.

Braddock steered her to a settee and indicated she should sit. She pulled the jacket around her as if it were a shield.

"My name is Simon Roderick," said the man behind the desk. "I'm in charge of Zantiu-Braun security on Thallspring. And you, Michelle, have been a very stupid young lady."

She dropped her gaze, praying she wouldn't start sniveling.

"One thing in your favor right now is that we know you're actually human."

"Excuse me?" she stammered.

"You're a human, unlike this gentleman." The sheet screen on the wall flashed up a picture of Josep's face. "Ah, you do recognize him."

"Yes."

"Thank you, Michelle. At least you have some understanding of how much trouble you're in."

"One day you'll be defeated," she said, amazing herself at such defiance.

"It's not only Zantiu-Braun that will be defeated by aliens that powerful. The entire human race could well be facing a terminal threat."

"What do you mean, aliens?"

"You didn't know, did you? Your comrade in arms was not entirely human."

"That's ridiculous." Nobody was more human than Josep. Only a human could bring another human so much pleasure and contentment.

"Is it?" Josep's image was replaced by a cluster of multicolored spheres. "Do you know what that is, Michelle?"

"No."

"That doesn't surprise me. We're not absolutely sure ourselves. It's a nanomachine that appears to have molecular-engineering capabilities. It was extracted from your friend's blood."

"What have you done to Josep!" Tears threatened to burst down her face, but it was anger that pushed them this time, not fear.

"Josep?" Simon smiled. "Finally, a name."

Michelle's shoulders slumped. The anger burned out as quickly as it had flared. How stupid to be caught out like that. "You can do what you like to me," she said sullenly. "I won't help you."

Simon walked around the desk and sat on the settee next to Michelle. She tried not to shrink from him. He poured some tea from the silver pot on the low table.

"Do you know what we can do to you?" he asked. "Did Josep ever tell you?"

"You'll use drugs, I know that. And you'll probably rape me before you kill me."

"Good grief, what a repellent idea. We're not savages. My dear girl, you really must learn to distinguish between facts and your own side's somewhat lurid propaganda. Yes, we can use drugs, along with various hypnosis and deep-stimulus techniques, none of which are particularly pleasant. There is nothing you will be able to keep from us; you will confess your deepest secrets. Do you know why we're not doing that to you right now?"

"So you can trick me into giving you names," she said hotly.

"No. I want to appeal to you to give us the information voluntarily. Time, I'm afraid, is rather short. I really am not joking when I say Josep is an alien."

"What have you done with him?"

"Nothing. I wish we could. He escaped shortly after we captured him."

"Good. You'll never catch him again."

"Not without your help, no."

"I won't. You'll have to interrogate me properly." She was shaking at the prospect of submitting to their interrogation, but every minute in here was another minute Josep could use to flee.

"Aren't you going to ask where we caught him? Or do you already know, did you help plan the attack?'

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, though there was a horrible suspicion bubbling through her mind. Those nights he never came home. Courier duty, he said, like the rest of the cell were given. Except she'd never been asked to run anything at night.

Simon picked up his cup of tea and settled back into the settee. The sheet screen began showing a datapool news report of the spaceport. Bodybags were being carried out of the wrecked administration block.

"Oh, God," she whispered.

"Eight people dead," Simon said. "Including Mr. Raines's colleague."

Braddock Raines was standing at the end of the settee, his face impassive. Michelle flashed him a hugely guilty glance.

"Seventeen injured, three critically. Our cargo-lifting operation delayed by several days. And the whole of Durrell terrified about what retaliatory measures Z-B will employ. After all, we promised to use our collateral necklaces to prevent any interruption to our asset realization. What do you think, Michelle, how many Thallspring citizens should Z-B kill so that your resistance movement doesn't do this again? Ten?"

"Stop it."

"Fifty?"

"None!" she shouted. "None at all. He didn't do this. We didn't do this. All we do is sabotage your transport and stolen factories. This isn't what we want, not killing people."

"That's not what you want, Michelle. There's a difference in your understandable, if pathetic, yearning to fight the invasion, and the goals of your alien allies."

"Josep is not an alien!"

"Dear me, what an irony I have here. We can extract the entire truth from you should we so wish, yet we cannot install the truth. But the truth is what I am dealing in. Josep's body was altered, enhanced, by alien technology. He was using you."

"He was not. We were in love."

"Ah." Simon sighed happily. "Was this your first love, Michelle?"

"I... it..."

"So it was. How delightful."

"No, it wasn't." Even as she denied it, she knew Roderick knew, really knew, and blushed heavily.

"There is a standard ploy that intelligence agencies use for infiltrating their enemies, Michelle. It's very common and has been in use for centuries. You find some lonely, sad little soul working in the place you need to be, a woman maybe approaching middle age and unmarried, or maybe not as pretty as her contemporaries. Perhaps it's simply someone who doesn't fit into her new environment very easily, who finds it all new and strange and frightening. Either way, you send in a wolf. They meet, as if by chance. She finds herself courted by this most handsome man, impossibly talented in bed, devoted to her and her alone. Her heart belongs to him. And with her heart comes her complete and absolute trust. Does any of this sound familiar, Michelle?"

"Don't," she said weakly.

"Did he come into your life around the time we arrived on your planet, Michelle? This is your first year at university, the first time you've ever really been away from home. Your grades weren't very good. You were lonely. Did you meet him on campus? No. Before then? Ah, of course, the real first time you left home. Your mother and father paid for a vacation at Memu Bay, a reward for passing your exams. That's it, isn't it? That's where you met him. It was a classic, perfect holiday romance."

Michelle was sobbing helplessly. The pain the words inflicted was worse than any torture. "He loves me. He does!"

"Then we invaded. He appeared back into your life as if by magic. Yes. He lived with you, unofficially of course; there's no record of him in the university files. In fact, there's no record of him anywhere on Thallspring. Digitally, he simply doesn't exist. Do you know how impossible that is, Michelle? The most powerful askpings ever written cannot find a single trace of him in the global datapool."

"He's human!" Michelle implored. "Please." She turned to Raines, who shook his head sorrowfully.

"Did Josep tell you if he had special software?" Simon continued relentlessly. "Really clever, super-secret software that could help the cause?"

Michelle was starting to curl up back into a fetal position. The brutal voice just went on and on, tearing her world apart.

"Software that was better than any AS on Earth could ever produce. What did he say, that it was written by a few teenage geeks in their bedrooms, who also just happen to be loyal to the Thallspring cause?" Simon put his index finger under the girl's chin and tilted her face back. Her cheeks were sticky with tears. His electromagnetic sense observed the tidal waves of distress tormenting her thoughts. "I'm so sorry," he said tenderly. "I really am. This is all as frightening to me as it is you."

"Prime," Michelle stammered. "The software was called Prime."

* * *

It was quite an operation, lifting the dragon out of its underground lair. The route had been prepared years ago, of course. Denise's family had sunk a second shaft down to the chamber, a bigger shaft than the elevator, which emerged to the side of the small stone temple.

Lawrence sat on the curving stone bench, watching as its concealed hood rose up on magnetic pistons, bringing a meter of soil with it. The dragon slowly emerged underneath, still sitting on its white-glass pedestal. Its golden power-induction mesh was wrapped tightly around its midsection. Sunlight glinted off individual strands. Electrohydraulic motors whined loudly in the placid air.

"Welcome to the world," Lawrence said. "I don't suppose you can sense visible light?"

"Not directly," the dragon replied. "However, I receive the images from yourself and other humans. I know what Arnoon looks like. It is very beautiful."

Repairing Lawrence's leg and hip wasn't all the pattern-form sequencer particles had done. They'd also modified a cluster of his neuron cells, giving them an ability similar to a DNI implant. D-writing, Denise called it, the particles engineering cellular structures in a direct fashion that human v-writing could never achieve—outside of germline treatments. Vectoring in new DNA was a scattergun approach deployed against entire organs or muscles; this was far more selective and precise.

"But you haven't given this communication cluster to everyone here?" he'd asked her.

The two of them had sat together in the snowbark pavilion for most of the morning, discussing how to get the dragon up to a starship. They were being polite to each other, nothing more. There was too much history for friendship.

"No," she said. "Only people like me and Raymond and Jacintha need it. We didn't want to create some kind of superwarrior breed. The enhancements given to the children are more benign and beneficial."

"Similar to germline v-writing?"

"Yes. The patternform sequencers can alter DNA quite easily. We gave everybody cancer resistance, and stronger immune systems, and refined organs, much greater life expectancy, a higher IQ. Their changes will be permanent, and the traits will carry down the generations. Arnoon won't have to depend on the dragon anymore."

"And the food," he said. There was a carved wooden bowl on the table in front of him. It was piled up with various fruits. He rested his finger on the rim, pressing it down so the bowl swung from side to side.

"The plants are also genetic adaptations," Denise said, enjoying his discomfort. "They'll breed true. In a hundred years, this forest will be an orchard that can feed a city. Nobody will need protein cell refineries anymore. Another economic necessity will be consigned to history."

"An economic necessity that liberated seventy percent of the human race from perpetual starvation. Growing things for food is a terribly inefficient use of energy."

"That depends on the nature of the culture you have to feed," she said. "Massive industrialized nations had to use industrial farming to feed their urban populations. If you replace them with scattered self-sufficient villages like Arnoon, then the requirements become very different."

"A world of physically separate communities linked by the datapool. The true global village. Knowledge belongs to everybody, and everybody goes their separate ways. You need microscale manufacturing to back that up, you know."

"I know. We've been studying the dragon as best we can, and we've copied every memory it has. If we give that to the rest of the world, then we hope something similar to the patternform sequencer can be built. It'll take decades, but we never wanted to force change overnight. This is going to be an organic revolution, generated from internal knowledge. It must succeed, if not here, then on a fresh world. Today's culture can't be the only way a technological society develops. It can't."

His eyes flashed with mischief. "Plenty of prejudices to overcome."

"There certainly are." She picked a peach from the top of the bowl and held it up in front of him.

"You sure? Last time a girl did this to me I threw up all over her."

"You're just a born romantic, aren't you?"

He took the peach and bit into it. The fruit was sweet and succulent. Quite pleasant, really.

"It's not just fruit we get from our trees," Denise said innocently. "Some of them grow meat, too."

Lawrence had trouble swallowing.

He saw Hal before he left. The kid was in one of the A-frames, sleeping peacefully. His medical modules had all been repaired and were now industriously cycling chemicals through various organs once more. And his skin was a much healthier color.

"The major internal damage has almost been repaired," the doctor said. "We'll start removing these modules in a day or two. I'm a little concerned about his biomech heart."

"What's wrong with it?" Lawrence asked.

"It's somewhat crude. I believe it was only intended as a temporary replacement I'm not sure how long it will last, and with the dragon leaving we don't have enough pattern-form sequencer particles to rebuild it. He'll probably need another transplant in twenty years."

Lawrence chuckled. "I wonder what kind of heart that'll be."

"Who knows?"

"What about his brain?"

"That will take more time to repair. He lost a lot of neurons from oxygen starvation. The patternform particles are rebuilding as fast as they can, but it will be weeks before full intellectual function is returned."

A concept that, applied to Hal, made Lawrence grin. "Will his full memories come back?"

"No. Not even the dragon's systems can recover them. There will be large gaps in his life."

Lawrence stroked Hal's forehead. "I think that's probably a good thing if he's to make a fresh start here."

"Yes."

"Do me a favor. Take those valves out. That'll give him a real fresh start."

"Of course. Is there a message when he recovers?"

"Just... I don't know. Good luck, I guess."

It was pretty lame, he had to admit. But, really, what else was there to say? The kid had a chance at a new life here, why tie him to the past?

"Perhaps you could record a message," the dragon suggested.

"No. Cutting him loose is the best thing I can do for him. Besides, the last thing he needs is advice from me. Look what a screwup I made of everything."

"I believe that's what you call sweet Fate."

Lawrence touched two fingers to his forehead, saluting the dragon as a heavylift robot eased it off the pedestal. "You got me there."

Jacintha came into the temple and sat beside him. A small cargo robot rolled up behind her. The island's shoreline was nearly invisible under all the boats that had brought people and equipment over from the village. Lawrence hoped to hell Z-B's spy satellites didn't notice all the unusual activity. The villagers claimed they'd tracked everything the starships had launched into low orbit around Thallspring. If they were right, they had a clear sky above them right now.

"Your Skin's ready," Jacintha said, indicating the fat plastic case that the robot was carrying.

"Thanks. I thought that was dead."

"We had an antidote to sharkpike venom long before we ever found the dragon. As long as it's applied quickly, you're okay. The Skin's muscle cords were receptive once we'd flushed the contaminated blood out."

"Thanks. Those damn things scared me shitless."

"Every rose has its thorns. The rivers around here are full of sharkpikes. I've been bitten a couple of times myself."

"Can't you introduce some kind of virus? Wipe them out"

Jacintha's expression darkened. "Is my little sister really going to be able to trust you?"

"Yeah, she can trust me."

"She's the closest thing to a genuine KillBoy there is. I was part of the team that wiped out your platoon. And now that's all in the past? This from a man who would genocide a species because it has sharp teeth."

"The platoon followed me," Lawrence said slowly. "I brought them up here. You might have pulled the trigger, but it was me who put them in front of you."

"And there I was thinking you were going to say they knew the risks."

"That too. We don't expect a population to fight back, and we certainly don't expect it in the hinterlands of Thallspring. But each time we land we know it's a possibility. Denise might have had a few zippy gadgets, but her real advantage over us was how willing people were to sign up to her bogus resistance movement. If the local inhabitants ever get properly organized, or call Z-B's bluff, we automatically lose. Do you really think a starship captain, a flesh-and-blood human who has family of his own, is ever ever going to give an order for a gamma pulse that will slaughter half a million people? It won't happen. So we know we're on our own down here, that there's no fallback, no help from above. The fact that Denise eliminated so many of us in Memu Bay proves what I've known for a long time now: that Z-B is in decline. Probably a terminal one. Skin suits are superb technology, even up against your dragon's knowledge. But without the organization, the initiative and the determination to face down threats, that means nothing. And we had none of those qualities down in Memu Bay. Santa Chico should have told the Board that asset realization was over, finished for good. Instead they just kept on, trying to find weaker targets."

"You agree with the Eternals, then? Life is in a permanent cycle."

Lawrence let out a long breath, exhausted with holding back his anger and despair. "Could be. You know what? I really don't care. I don't care that you killed my friends. I don't care that I killed your ambush party. I don't care if that makes us quits or not. I don't care that Z-B is quietly collapsing. I don't care that you want to build some noble civilization based on total bullshit about people being perpetually nice to each other. I don't care that your deranged sister is willing to sacrifice herself and everyone she knows to save some piece of talking rock. I don't damn well care that the universe is doomed and the galaxy is falling into a black hole. I have spent the last twenty years caring. I cared for my platoon. I cared about what the human race was doing and where it was going. I cared that we didn't have frontiers anymore. I cared about my career. I even cared about what I was doing with my life. And look where I am because of that. Helping a bunch of cosmic hippies hijack a starship. Sweet fucking Fate!"

"You mean we can't trust you?"

"You got it, girl. Denise cannot trust me, not now, not ever. I do not like her. I will never like her. I will, however, respect her abilities. And I expect a similar respect in return. What you can have from me is reliability. I am dependable in this in a way none of you are. I will hijack that starship, and it will fly to Aldebaran. Of that you can be certain."

"I'm not sure I can be, Lawrence."

"This is for me, now. Not you and your ideals. That's why you can be certain. I finally, finally, have a chance to put my life back together and live it the way I was born to live it. To cancel out the last twenty miserable years. After Aldebaran I'm going home. That's all: home. And nothing and nobody can stop that from happening."

The sound of the hovercraft approaching made both of them turn and look out across the crater lake. Lawrence couldn't help a derisory laugh at the absurdity of the vehicle. It was made from wood, Arnoon's lightest, hardest timber, crafted into a simple oval platform with a cabin grafted onto the prow. Two big steerable propellers stood high on smooth, tall fins at the rear. The skirt was willow wool, a fine tight weave easily holding in the cushion of air on which it rode. Electric motors powered the propellers and impellers, salvaged from an assortment of heavy machinery across the plateau.

It swept lightly across the water, with a thin haze of spray escaping from underneath its skirt, and a creamy V-shaped wake spreading wide. When it reached the island it rocked slightly as the front skirt rode up the shingle and onto the scanty grassmoss. The propellers reversed pitch, bringing it to a halt. It sank down with a prolonged wheeze of escaping air.

The heavylift robot carrying the dragon trundled over to it. A ramp was deployed in front of the propeller fins, enabling it to climb up onto the deck.

"We're ready," Denise said. She gave Lawrence and her sister an anxious glance, aware that they'd been quarreling.

"Sure," Lawrence said brightly. "Is that thing really going to work?"

"Certainly." Denise sounded offended. "We've practiced the route a dozen times. The river is the easiest way out of Arnoon. The hovercraft will take us straight to Rhapsody Province. One of the articulated trucks from Dixon is already at the rendezvous point. It'll take the dragon all the way down to Memu Bay's airport. We'll be there in fifteen hours. After that, it's all up to you."

"Don't worry, my contact has sent a plane to collect us. Where's the cargo pod? We can hardly load the dragon into a Xianti as it is."

"The cargo pod is with the truck. An RL-thirty-three, industry standard sixty-ton capacity. We'll put the dragon inside it when we get there."

"Okay. Let's go."

* * *

Simon was appalled to discover that there was no supersonic transport on Thallspring. He wound up commandeering the presidential jet, which could barely reach Mach 9. It was a converted fifty-seat medium-range commuter jet that had a flight time of four hours to Memu Bay.

He spent the time working with his personal AS, dropping hundreds of askpings into Memu Bay's datapool. The leisure company that Michelle had signed up with to go diving among the atolls had no file on any employee called Josep, nor on Raymond, who was supposed to be his friend. The AS trawl couldn't find any abnormalities in the company's memory blocks. No substituted files, no gaps in the daily boat trip logs for a month either side of Michelle's visit; even the financial accounts were in order.

"Arrest them," Simon ordered Ebrey Zhang.

"Who, exactly?" Memu Bay's governor asked.

"The company's senior management. Their diving gill instructors. Boat crews. Bring them all in for questioning. I want them in custody by the time I arrive."

"Yes, sir."

The governor's noticeable reluctance made Simon review the current situation report for Memu Bay. "For God's sake," he muttered as the indigo script scrolled down. And to think, he'd warned the SK2 to keep an eye on the place.

Memu Bay had gone into meltdown over the last week. Asset realization was down to 50 percent of estimated targets. Two-thirds of the settlement's factories had some kind of strike action going on. The entire mayor's office had walked out and refused to work with Ebrey Zhang following the Grabowski rape case. The rest of the civil sector was reduced to emergency services only. Platoon morale was rock bottom, with charges accumulating against 30 percent of Z-B's personnel. TB cases were still being reported; immunization implementation was slow. Sabotage against utilities was a daily occurrence. Several districts had become no-go zones—and that included for Skin platoons. Collateral no longer worked. There were reprisals every time. Zhang was afraid to use any more necklaces for fear of making the situation even worse.

The more Simon studied the breakdown and its history, the more interested he became. Essentially, Z-B had lost control of the settlement. The resistance group led by KillBoy had waged a beautifully orchestrated campaign against the invasion, building to this climax of near anarchy.

"Why, though?" Simon asked a dismayed Braddock Raines. "How does this help our alien? Wiping out Zhang's little command is hardly going to cripple Zantiu-Braun."

"I'm not sure they could even do that," Braddock commented. "Physically eliminating every Skin stationed in Memu Bay would be difficult even for them. They can force the platoons off the streets and back into their barracks, maybe even make them fall back all the way to the airport. But if you hit those lads too hard, they'll hit you back. Part of the problem is Zhang holding back."

"You might be on to something there," Simon said. "With the platoons off the streets, the alien is free to do what it wants in Memu Bay without us noticing. But we still don't know what that is."

The presidential jet landed without incident. There was very little activity at the airport. Half of its buildings were operating on reserve power supplies, thanks to the resistance group severing a set of superconductor cables two nights earlier. Skins patrolled the perimeter.

A helicopter was waiting for Simon. He climbed in as a big Pan-Skyways cargo jet took off, heading for Durrell with a hold full of assets.

Skins had to clear the square in front of the Town Hall so the helicopter could land. The displaced protesters jeered and threw stones over the barricades. Simon's Skin escort closed in around him. He never normally noticed them, but today he was grateful for their presence. He didn't often get this close to physical danger. The clamorous hostility of the crowd made him distinctly uncomfortable.

Ebrey Zhang had a huge number of valid reasons why Memu Bay was in its current perilous state. He was very eager to tell Simon each and every one of them.

"Forget it," Simon said curtly. "I know exactly why this mess has built up. Not that knowing is going to help you much before the board of inquiry."

Ebrey Zhang did his best not to scowl.

"Did you round up the leisure company people?" Simon asked.

"Yes. And it wasn't easy. My platoons get into difficulty every time they step out of their barracks."

"I'm not prepared to tolerate this situation. It will interfere with my investigation. Can you enforce a proclamation of martial law?"

"Probably," Ebrey Zhang said. "It'll be difficult in some districts."

"Declare it. Order a curfew for six o'clock that will be in place for twenty-four hours. Authorize the Skins to dart anyone found on the streets after that time. Close down all vehicle traffic, and limit domestic datapool access to entertainment and official calls only. Any acts of resistance or aggression against us are to be suppressed by lethal force. One collateral necklace will be activated per incident."

"Very well. But we'll probably have trouble getting people back to work afterward. We might not be able to meet our asset quota."

"Irrelevant; I've already written it off. Now, I want to see the prisoners."

The interviews followed a pattern. Initial superficial defiance, which swiftly faded when the interviewee realized just how serious Simon was. He began to learn what had happened.

Josep Raichura and Raymond Jang had been taken on at the start of the last season—popular guys, who never lacked for female company. Management couldn't explain why there were no files. With their cooperation Simon's personal AS swiftly tracked down the substitutions. Implantation of the ghosts was little short of miraculous: they had birth certificates, school grades, parents (who had similar digital histories), bank accounts, credit coin bills, medical records, tax records, insurance policies, apartment rent agreements. They were more real to the datapool and the AS than half of the people belonging to Memu Bay's underclass.

Verbal interrogation confirmed Josep and Ray had left the company around the time Z-B's starships had arrived. No one could remember the exact date. It had been a confused time.

They'd not been seen since. Nobody had managed to contact them.

The instructors who were friendly with them believed they were from out of town. One of the hinterland settlements. Definitely not local, though.

Someone thought they lived in a suburb close to the Nium estuary. They certainly had a female housemate; several instructors had hit on her in the marina bars. Possibly called Denise. The AS immediately began generating an image of her from their descriptions.

"Find the house," Simon ordered. "I want every estate around that estuary visited by Skins. Physically verify the occupants of each house, apartment and hole in the ground. I want a complete verbal history of occupancy for the last five years, which they're to cross-reference with the AS."

The curfew had been in place for two hours when fifteen platoons began the door-to-door search. So far the proclamation of martial law had proved remarkably successful. Memu Bay's inhabitants had realized from Zhang's announcement that he wasn't bluffing. Most people started heading home by four o'clock. The fact that the roads really did shut down at six caught a few motorists out. The traffic regulator AS disabled every vehicle other than bicycles. Drivers hurried home on foot. Several were darted by Skins. Die-hard protesters outside the Town Hall and various Skin barracks were darted without warning at one second past six.

Simon and Braddock received a call about a possible suspect location at eleven-fifteen and immediately took a helicopter out to the Nium estuary estate. It was a bungalow rented from a property agency. Nobody answered the door when the Skin had rung the bell. When he asked a neighbor he was told that a girl called Denise lived in it by herself; her two male housemates had left several weeks ago. None of that corresponded with the information that the AS trawled out from the datapool concerning the bungalow.

Five Skins were standing guard in the garden when Simon arrived along with a small team of Z-B technicians. A further three Skins were inside. Simon and Braddock gave the bungalow a quick inspection. Someone had abandoned their breakfast. A dish of cereal and a mug of coffee were left on the table in the kitchen. Two slices of toast stood in a stainless-steel rack, untouched.

Braddock sniffed at the coffee mug and pulled back fast, his nose wrinkling in disgust. "Several days old, I'd say."

"We'll go for an expert opinion." Simon told one of the technicians to analyze the food to see if he could determine how long it had been standing. "It would have been early morning here when Josep was captured at the spaceport," he mused as the technician took a sample of the semisolid cereal.

Another technician was examining the bedrooms and bathroom for skin and hair samples.

The very frightened neighbor said she thought Denise worked at a school. No, she didn't know which one, but it could be a playschool.

"I want every head teacher in the city brought in," Simon instructed Zhang. "Right now."

"I've got a DNA match," the technician reported. "A skin sample from one of the disused bedrooms belongs to Josep."

"Excellent," Simon purred. It was coming together beautifully. Of all the challenges, puzzles and pursuits he'd been involved in over the years, nothing had given him greater satisfaction than this. Some small part of his mind was childishly excited by the prospect of encountering an alien, even though that encounter would bring enormous upheaval, possibly even war, given the alien's recent actions. That made him pause. Interstellar war was impossible, surely? If commerce was impractical, then invasion and conquest must surely be out of the question. Then why was the alien so hostile?

He knew the answer was close. If the facts could just be put together in the right order...

Mrs. Potchansky was the nineteenth head teacher to be brought before Simon. It was half-past-three in the morning, and he'd resorted to far too much strong coffee. The caffeine was slowly abrading his temper, and contributing to a subtle depression. It was one thing to be the butt of smartmouth insults; but he could actually sense the naked thoughts of each teacher, know how much he was genuinely despised and hated. That could wound a man's soul.

"Does Denise work for you?" Simon asked as the old woman stood in front of him.

"I don't know any Denise." It was a perfect schoolmistress voice, instantly instilling a sense of complete inferiority in any listener. She was one of the few teachers to arrive fully dressed. Simon imagined even the Skins would be made to wait until she had chosen appropriate clothes and put them on in her own time.

"Ah," he murmured contentedly. He tented his fingers and rested his chin on the apex. A pane on his desk lit up to show the image that the AS had generated from the descriptions of the lovelorn diving instructors. "Is this her?"

"If I don't know her, then I can hardly identify her, can I?"

"But you did know her. And it's what you think that is interesting."

Mrs. Potchansky's face remained perfectly composed. Alarm shivered through her mind.

"Did you know what she was connected with, which resistance movement?" His DNI was scrolling the woman's file.

"If this farce is over I'll be going home now. I trust you'll take me back with the same alacrity with which I was brought here."

"Sit down!" Simon barked.

Mrs. Potchansky fussed around with the chair, deliberately taking her time. Her thoughts were settling into a steely determination.

"When did you last see her?" Simon asked.

"You know this person's name, yet you're not sure what she looks like. That's very odd."

"Very. Especially if you were to check your school's records, because she's not in any of your files. Nor is she in any file we can trawl out of the datapool."

"That must make it difficult for you to persecute her."

"When did she leave? Please."

"No."

"Very well, you're free to go. I'll have a car take you home."

Mrs. Potchansky gave him a suspicious look. "Why?"

"Because you're obviously a tough old lady who isn't going to tell me anything."

"Why?"

"After the car drops you off it'll pick up someone who will be more cooperative." The indigo file scrolled down across his view of Mrs. Potchansky. He picked a name. "Jedzella, perhaps."

"What a pathetically crude attempt at blackmail. You'll do no such thing."

"We killed your son. I expect you think of us as barbarians who answer to no one on this world. You would be correct in that; I'm not even accountable to anyone on Earth. And I am desperate to find this girl. Truly desperate. The children will tell me who she is and where she came from. Do you want to put them through that? Because I will ask them if you make me."

"I haven't seen her since the weekend," Mrs. Potchansky said.

"Thank you. Now tell me all about her."

* * *

The huge Pan-Skyways cargo jet taxied slowly through the miserable gray rain that was saturating Durrell Spaceport. It turned onto the parking apron and braked to a halt. Steam shimmered off the nacelles as the spinning fans wound down to a stop.

A robot tractor nuzzled up to the front-wheel bogie and engaged its locking clamps. It began to tow the plane into a nearby hangar. The doors slid shut behind it, and it stood all alone in the enclosed space, dripping on the concrete floor. Pan-Skyways hangar staff brought a pair of airstairs up to the cabin hatch, and the two flight crew emerged. They were followed by Lawrence Newton in his full sergeant's uniform. He paused on the top step, conscious of the cameras dotted round the hangar. Z-B required any asset cargo flown by a civilian airline to be accompanied by a company representative. The AS would be checking his face and matching it with his file and the assignment orders issued by Ebrey Zhang's office.

Colin Schmidt waited for him at the bottom of the airstairs, a small smile playing over his face. "Welcome to Durrell."

Lawrence put his arm around his old friend's shoulders. "Good to be here."

They walked along the side of the fuselage to the rear of the plane. "I thought you were joking when you called," Colin said. "A whole RL-thirty-three pod. Holy crap! This I have to see for myself."

The clamshell doors that made up the aircraft's tail section were hinging apart. Colin ducked under them to stand in the widening gap. The cargo pod filled half of the cavernous fuselage, a long pearl-white composite cylinder resting on a cradle.

"I guess you weren't joking," Colin said. He looked around to make sure none of the civilian hangar staff were nearby, then lowered his voice. "Okay, what the hell is in it?"

Lawrence opened the flap on his breast pocket and took out a gnarled lump of rock. It glinted dully in the hangar's lightcones. Colin took it from him, examining the lump gingerly.

"It's argentite," Lawrence said. "That's a silver mineral."

"Silver," Colin said. He looked from the little chunk in his hand to the cargo pod, then back to Lawrence. "You are joking."

"No. What we have here is about forty tons of argentite with a very high silver content."

"Where in God's name did it come from?"

"Out in the hinterlands. I thought I saw it last time I was here. Nobody else in the platoon recognized it, so I kept quiet."

"Shit." Colin was laughing, hand over his mouth. "You old fraud, Lawrence, you told me we'd need to smuggle a backpack up to orbit."

"If I'd said a fully loaded Xianti you would never have agreed. Now you have an incentive. Can you get this into orbit?"

"Yes." Colin was still laughing. "Oh, God, yes. Forty tons of silver! Lawrence, you are goddamn unbelievable."

"Forty tons of silver mineral. We'll have to refine it when we get back to Earth."

Colin nodded, suddenly sober. "Of course. I'll have to make sure it's flown down to Cairns; after that we can get it offbase easily enough. But, Lawrence, I don't know how you get this mineral stuff refined. What do we need?"

"One step at a time. Let's focus on getting it up to the Koribu for now, shall we? Have you got me my pilot?"

"Yes, yes, Gordon Dreyer, he's our man. Needs money, and smart enough to keep his mouth shut about it afterward."

"Fine. What about getting the cargo pod through security? Its contents are on file as fusion reactor parts. It can't go through any sort of scanner."

"I can handle that. There are hundreds of these identical cargo pods coming in and out of the spaceport. It's just playing the shell game, but on a much bigger scale, that's all. I've got the verification codes, I can enter a full clearance file. The AS will never know the difference."

"Like going over the fence again, huh?"

"Like going over the fence." Colin was staring at the pod again, his expression hungry. "Damn it, Lawrence, I already know the house I'm going to buy with this. I saw it once, on the Riviera, it was a white stone mansion with gardens over a hundred and fifty years old. Fit for a Board member."

Lawrence felt a surprisingly large twinge of guilt as he listened to his friend's daydream. But the choice had been made back when he was dreaming the dragon's dreams. All his old loyalties were over now.

Gordon Dreyer arrived six hours before his flight was scheduled to take off. Lawrence hadn't met him before, but he knew the type well enough: late forties with a highly secure job that sounded glamorous but was actually routine, and wasn't going to take him anywhere careerwise. Two marriages behind him, Colin said, and the courts diverted a big slice of his salary to pay for them. He was bitter about the rulings. He partied hard. Drank a little too much. Gambled above his credit limit In the flesh, Dreyer's weight was pushing the upper limit permitted by Z-B's fitness requirement. His dark hair was meticulously cut and styled to hide its thinness—v-writing follicle treatments were currently beyond his means. He shook Lawrence's hand firmly enough, and played it cool when the deal was explained. Only the eagerness with which he accepted betrayed his true character.

As with all pilots, Dreyer shadowed the flight preparation. It started with a review of the Xianti's flight-engineering file, ensuring its performance was up to the specified levels and that standard maintenance had been carried out. His authorization was added to the flightworthiness log, which would allow the spaceplane to be moved to the next stage: cargo loading.

Gordon Dreyer went to inspect the cargo pod in the preflight integration hangar. Colin Schmidt was the lieutenant in charge of the logistics that morning, meeting all the pilots who were readying their craft for the daily flight up to the starships. They walked along the row of sealed cargo pods, discussing any problems or special requirements. At the end he presented them with the security verification file, detailing the inspection process for each item of cargo. Dreyer added his authorization to the file and thanked Colin for doing his job.

The RL33 pod was loaded into the Xianti, which was then towed out to its fueling bay. Gordon Dreyer went off to the pilot's locker room to get ready while the cryogenic tanks were being chilled down, then filled with liquid hydrogen.

Lawrence and Colin rode over to the makeshift medical center in the terminal building.

"The hospital's been off-limits since the blast," Colin explained. "They're taking care of some senior officers from fleet intelligence in there. Security won't allow anyone else near the place."

They found an empty room and began sticking medical modules to Lawrence's torso. His arm was then covered by a dermal membrane sheath, with more modules stuck over it.

"I wish you didn't look so healthy," Colin complained. "You're supposed to be a priority medevac case."

"I heard that in old wars soldiers used to eat the gunpowder from their bullets. It made them look really sick."

"You want some energized explosive to chew on?"

"No, thanks." He pulled on a medical division coverall. With its short sleeves, everyone could see the membrane and small modules. It should convince the ground crew who saw him embarking. Prime entered his record files in Memu Bay, implanting an attack during an urban patrol, which had burned through his Skin, leaving him unfit for duty.

The fueling bay had a small operations center with a rank of darkened glass windows that looked out over the big delta-shaped Xianti. Stairs in one corner of the center led down to the covered bridge, which had extended out to the spaceplane cabin's airlock.

Gordon Dreyer was already in the center when Lawrence and Colin entered. He was talking to a security officer, who handed him the flight's communication key.

"Do you need any help with that arm?" Dreyer asked.

"No, sir," Lawrence said. "I can manage, thank you."

A camera was fixed to the top of the bridge entrance. Lawrence could feel the sweat on his forehead as he walked underneath. At least it added credibility to his supposed injury. Dreyer was impressively calm as they walked along the bridge.

The cabin hatch slid shut and Lawrence let out a sharp breath of relief. Sneaking around like this wasn't his arena.

Give me head-to-head combat any day.

"Home free, eh?" Dreyer said. "Sit yourself down, and leave the rest to me."

Lawrence chose a seat directly behind the pilot, where he could see the console displays. Dreyer was absorbed by the final checklist. Three minutes later he agreed with the space-plane's AS pilot that they were ready to lift off. The Rolls-Royce turbojets came alive with a resonant thrumming, as much felt as heard, and they rolled out of the fueling bay. The flight to orbit was identical to every other Lawrence had been on, though it was interesting to see the console displays and have a genuine view out through the narrow windshield rather than a camera image on a seatback screen.

"Eighty minutes to rendezvous," Dreyer announced as the two tail rockets finished their injection burn.

"Sounds good." Lawrence picked one of the medical modules off his arm, leaned forward and pressed it to Dreyer's neck.

"What arr—" The pilot lost consciousness. His body remained in the seat, held by the safety straps, but his arms gradually floated up until they were hanging above the console;

Lawrence used his d-written neural cluster to establish a link with the Xianti's network. Prime went active and erased the AS pilot program, assuming complete control of the spaceplane.

"Are you all right back there?" Lawrence asked.

"I never knew freefall was this awful," Denise replied from her hidden nest in the cargo pod. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Try not to be, try very hard."

"Any more advice you want to give?"

"Let's get you out of there, I need to suit up." Prime relayed a camera image of the payload bay to one of the flight console panes. The cargo pod almost filled it, leaving only a two-meter gap between itself and the cabin bulkhead. Lawrence saw a circle of plastic peel back on the end of the pod. Something moved inside. A human figure in a silver-gray leotard of a spacesuit crawled out with very slow, uncertain movements.

"Nothing moves right," Denise complained.

Lawrence hoped she wasn't linked to a cabin camera; she'd see him grinning. "You'll get used to it. Just remember inertia is still the same up here."

A short, flexible tether clipped to her harness attached her to the fat box containing his Skin. Once she was out of the pod and anchored in the short gap, she began to pull it out after her. Lawrence told Prime to open the outer hatch of the payload bay airlock. It took Denise several minutes to maneuver the box inside. There wasn't enough room for her as well, so Lawrence cycled the airlock and pulled it out into the cabin while she waited in the payload bay.

He already had his legs in the Skin when she emerged and tugged her face mask off. "I shouldn't have eaten," she groaned. "I shouldn't have drunk, either."

"Would you have managed your original scenario in that condition?"

She glared at him. "I'd have done it. I still can."

"Yeah. Well, let's go for the nonlethal option first"

* * *

Memu Bay's entire complement of twelve TVL88 helicopters flew across the plateau just as dawn arrived. Simon watched the landscape skim past from the cockpit of the lead craft. Stationary whorls of cloud surrounded each of the peaks, leaking streams of mist down through the foothill valleys from where they gushed out across the plains and forests. The scene was primordial, with trees and ridges sticking out of the eerie white mantle.

"Satellite's coming over again," the SK2 said over the link from Durrell. "There's not much available in the visible spectrum. That damn fog's covering the entire province."

Simon told his AS to show him the satellite imagery on his mirrorshades. A few forested hills slid across the display, separated by the placid lakes of mist. Infrared cut in, giving away little. Several dozen fuzzy pink patches shimmered under the white surface. They were roughly where Arnoon village ought to be.

During the night it had been raining over the plateau. The satellite had been unable to penetrate the thick, dark clouds. Simon had called up old images, studying the little community. All he'd seen was a standard rustic settlement with hardly any sign of high technology other than its cybernetic woolen mills.

His AS had begun trawling the datapool for all available information on Arnoon Province. There was a lot of it, but so far nothing relevant. When it sent askpings out to the village's few nodes it found nothing but standard domestic management pearls linked in, some of them generations out of date.

All perfectly normal.

However: the Dixon network had dropped out of the datapool three days ago. Memu Bay's telecom utility company couldn't explain why. They hadn't sent an engineering team out to the plateau yet; the civil situation had pushed it way down their priority list.

And there was a lost patrol up there somewhere. It had left three days ago. At first Simon was delighted when his AS found the reference, thinking he could simply send them directly to Arnoon. But their transponders didn't respond to the communications satellite. The AS noted the patrol was scheduled to last two days. Yet no one had noticed when they didn't return. Further investigation revealed a major data discontinuity in the headquarters AS. It had issued the assignment, but had no associated progress monitors. There wasn't even an established command hierarchy. They'd been subverted.

When Simon called in Captain Bryant to ask him what he knew of his missing platoon, the befuddled officer hadn't known what he was talking about. Platoon 435NK9 had been reassigned out of his command.

"How can you misplace an entire platoon?" a disgusted Simon had asked Braddock.

A group of conical mounds crept into view ahead of the helicopters. The mist was patchy here, finally starting to dissipate as the sun rose higher.

"Dixon's straight ahead, sir," the pilot called over the whoop of the rotor blades. Simon canceled the mirrorshades display.

The TVL88 squadron cleared the slag heaps. They slowed as they skirted the little town, probing the whole area with active sensors.

"What in God's name happened?" the SK2 asked.

The mist had almost cleared, revealing the devastated buildings. Nearly a quarter of the houses were gone. They'd all exploded, scattering debris over a wide area.

"Some kind of battle," Simon told his clone sibling. "Those buildings were all deliberately targeted. I can't think why."

"Sir!" The pilot was pointing ahead.

"Take us over," Simon said.

There was a burned-out jeep in the middle of the main street. Another jeep was embedded in the side of one of the few intact buildings remaining around the town square.

"At least we know what happened to the platoon now," Simon said as the helicopter circled around them. There was no sign of any Skin suit in either of the wrecks. "Okay, I've seen enough," he told the pilot. "Get us over to Arnoon."

Pain was a constant now, squeezing every part of his body. Simon refused to let the doctor administer the drugs that would banish it, keeping his mind sharp. He was sure the SF9 simply didn't appreciate the enormity of the alien encounter, continuing to treat it like some fascinating intellectual puzzle. Typical of that batch's imperturbable poise.

Simon had perceived Josep's aura firsthand, experienced his determination and resolve. The only way they were ever going to survive this encounter was if they matched the alien's drive. He couldn't allow the chance to slip their grasp. The potential of the nanonic system was staggering. In Zantiu-Braun's possession it could be used to elevate the entire human race.

Despite Josep's being an enemy, Simon envied what he had become. His enhanced form was a magnificent ideal for humans to aspire to, wonderfully superior to anything germ-line v-writing promised.

Few moments in history were truly pivotal. But this was going to be one of them. Simon had to take part, to contribute, to disallow failure—particularly through weakness. Acquiring the nanonic system had to be made to happen. Fortunately, his immobility didn't prevent datapool access. And the pain, constant, persecuting, diabolical pain drove him onward.

His DNI scrolled down file after file as the SF9 flew on toward Arnoon, information thrown up by his AS as it hunted for oversights and mistakes. Somewhere below the knees his legs were itching abominably, adding to his suffering and anger. Finally the clues he knew to exist began emerging from the datapool. "You were wrong about the patrol," he said.

"What do you mean?" the SF9 asked.

"We don't know what happened to them."

"We just saw the remnants," the SF9 chided. "The alien or its allies wiped them out because they were on their way to Arnoon."

"And then used Prime to cover it up, to erase the platoon from our data systems."

"Yes."

"But the cover-up was in place before the platoon left Somebody arranged it so that Four-three-five-NK-nine could visit the plateau without anyone knowing what they were doing. If the alien wanted to stop any of our people from visiting Arnoon Province, it could simply use Prime to change their orders. We'd never know."

"What are you suggesting?"

"There's another factor here." A new file appeared, highlighted by the cross-reference program that the AS had run on Platoon 435NK9. Specific information scrolled down. "It would seem that the platoon's sergeant has been to Arnoon Province before. He was in a similar patrol the last time we were here. Are you going to tell me that's a coincidence?"

"It's improbable," the SF9 admitted. "Can you datamine him?"

Simon instructed his personal AS to launch an askping trawl for all files concerning Lawrence Newton.

* * *

The TVL88s thundered in over the treetops to surround Arnoon village, weapons extended. Downwash from their powerful rotors tore at the mist, breaking through the central clearing in seconds. The last strands of cloying vapor streaked past the shaggy wooden A-frames, exposing them to the targeting sensors. A young woman in a cream sweater and dark jeans was standing on the balcony of one of the houses, gripping the handrail to steady herself in the miniature hurricane.

She was the only person the sensors could detect. The A-frames were all warm, their domestic appliances drawing power. But nobody was inside.

Five helicopters, including Simon's, landed on the dew-soaked grassmoss, while the others spread out and began scanning the surrounding forest. Skins deployed rapidly, fanning out across the meadow. Their carbine muzzles were extended; each of them had a rack of smart missiles.

Simon climbed down out of the helicopter, holding on to the front of his loose leather jacket as it flapped about. Three Skins fell in around him as he walked toward the woman.

She came down the steps from the balcony, her lustrous aura giving her the appearance of some biblical angel. "Simon Roderick, I presume. I'm Jacintha. Welcome to Arnoon village."

"I thought there'd be more people here."

"They're all out there in the forest somewhere. They ran away when we found out you were coming."

"Why?"

"We're frightened of you."

"Interesting. I find you quite daunting. You know you have a remarkable aura."

Jacintha frowned. "Oh, I understand. You must have a magnetic sense. Is that how you caught Josep?"

"Let's say it's how I learned to be very careful around him. Not that it was of much help ultimately. A lot of people were killed when he committed suicide."

"And your collateral necklaces kill a lot of people for no reason."

"I'm not here to justify what I've done, nor argue with you about who owns the moral high ground. I'd simply like to meet the alien, please."

"I'm sorry," Jacintha said. "You can't."

"You know I will. If you defeat all twelve helicopters and these platoons—which I doubt you're actually capable of— we will simply come back with more. And we will keep coming back until we finally get through to it."

It wasn't her rather pitying smile that disconcerted him, but her thoughts. She actually felt sorry for him. It was the kind of sympathy an adult would express during an infant's tantrum.

In return he couldn't help but admire her. It was nothing sexual, rather an appreciation for a perfectly balanced personality. The SK2 was right: if only everybody had her intellectual depth.

"You could send a thousand starships full of Skins and weapons," Jacintha said. "It would make no difference."

Finally, Simon began to understand. "It's not here." His mind began to meld all the information that he'd gathered with a speed that was almost vertiginous. "Memu Bay is an anarchistic mess; you can take anything through without us knowing. The spaceplane! You weren't going to blow up a starship..."

"Newton was here," the SK2 said. "Here at the spaceport. We medevaced him this morning."

Jacintha cocked her head to one side, listening to a silent voice.

"Shit!" Simon gasped, as his DNI scrolled the files. "Stop him," he told the SK2. "Stop the flight. Keep Newton away from the starship."

"Too late," Jacintha said.